Standing still and standing up

I typically enjoy looking at my Facebook memories each day.

It’s fun to see photos of the boys when they were younger, or to remember fun things we have done.

Sometimes though when the memories are hard ones, like when Aaron was so sick, looking back is hard.

Sometimes I see something that I said that meant something profound at the time and means something even more profound today.

That’s what happened to me today.

The memory that came up referenced a Bible verse from a sermon that morning. One I needed to hear at the time, even though it wasn’t one I wanted to hear. The Bible verse was Jeremiah 29:5-7. Verses 5 and 7 read:

“Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce… Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.”

That passage was relevant to me at the time because I was in a place in my career where I didn’t want to be anymore, but God kept closing doors that I needed to pass through to go elsewhere.

That passage is relevant today because the Methodist Church at large has shown itself to be a place different than what I thought it was. Less than I thought it was. And my immediate instinct based on that is to pack up my toys and go home, and to take my LGBTQ+ child with me.

What keeps me from doing that is that every day this week I have watched my pastor and other leaders and members within my church pull together to figure out the best way to be the church that we have always been. Which is inclusive, and loving, and welcoming, and affirming to all.  A church that celebrates all people regardless of their race, gender, socioeconomic status, age, gender orientation, gender identity, addiction or mental health history. A church that truly lives out the commandments Jesus has said to us are the most important of all: Love God and Love People. 

This behavior and activity isn’t new to this week. I have felt that from the time I first walked through the doors of this church two years ago. I saw it when my child came out as gay and was supported and celebrated for who he is.

I saw it when young people struggling with addiction and mental illness stood before our church and shared their struggles and their hearts.

I saw it when our church started a ministry to the family and members of the LGBTQ+ community, long before the actions of this week occurred.

I have seen that same love and statement within other Methodist churches in the area, and it gives me hope for the future of this church and these people, regardless of what the decisions on Monday and Tuesday indicate to the contrary.

I know that sometimes God has to burn things down before they can be built back up in the way they need to be built. I know that God brings beautiful flowers out of dust. I have seen that in my own life and I fully believe I will see that in this church.

So I will choose to build my house in this church and live in it. I will plant gardens and eat the produce. And I will seek the welfare of the city where God has sent me and my family, even though it feels a bit like an exile right now. I will pray to the Lord on behalf of this church and this community. Because I know that in its welfare, I will have welfare.

Friends, do not be discouraged. God is in this. And God is greater than what has happened this week. Our church is greater than what has happened this week. We will grow stronger because of this, of this I have no doubt. And we will touch people more than we ever could have imagined before.

We are offering LGBTQ+ Ally training this weekend for our church leadership and educational leadership. This is something that was planned long before the events of this week in the general conference, and that timing is not lost on me.

As I was confirming someone’s presence this morning, she told me that it was going to count as her church for the day. I told her that was appropriate, because this work? Loving people the world deems unlovable? That’s the real church.  The rest is just form and ritual and words.

Come back to life. Inhale restoration. Be done with heavy tombstones. The mystery is not in what is lost but in what remains. Resurrection is a birth story.

Let us build our houses and live in them. Let us plant gardens and eat the produce. Let us seek the welfare of this church and this community.

Let us be the church Jesus commands us to be.

Let us stand still.

Let us stand up.

For justice and for love.

Because if we don't, who will?

Seeing the heart in spite of the pain

I had a final termination trial set yesterday morning. The parents have not been in contact with CPS since last October, and honestly, I questioned whether or not they were even still alive, as their meth usage had been so heavy and their lifestyle so unstable.  So when they showed up to court, we were all shocked. The attorney for the children took them aside to talk to them about what was going to happen, and the fact that we were seeking to terminate their rights, and the likelihood that the judge would do that based on their situation and lack of progress. They both agreed that they were unable to care for their children but wanted a goodbye visit with them.

After talking to the caregivers about what would be in the best interest of these children, I went out to talk to the parents. I didn’t know what to expect. I had made the mother cry at our initial hearing when asking how 4 of her 6 children had come to be positive themselves for methamphetamines. She cursed my legal liaison afterwards, while in the office for a visit, confusing her for me.

There wasn’t any love lost between us. And it was hard for me to be compassionate for her as I had witnessed, a number of times, the trauma to her oldest child as she had to leave each week the younger siblings who were in a different foster home than her. The silent tears running down her face. Her joyful cries of “Oh baby!” as she saw the little ones each week.

It was so hard for me to understand how the hold that methamphetamines had on this mother could be stronger than the love she had for these precious children.

These children who cried and grieved because their mother didn’t love them enough, couldn’t love them enough, to let that love win over that drug hold.

As I started to explain to her and her husband the limitations on being able to visit with her children, and the provisions of the termination, she began to get upset. Very upset. And her husband told her she didn’t need to cause a scene. Her response to him was “I can’t help it, I’m just emotional. This is hard.”

Suddenly, I didn’t see her anymore as a person who wasn’t doing everything she could possibly do to get her kids back. As a person who was dirty, and unkempt, with spots on her clothes, her hands shaking. I didn’t see her as the person who had borne these 6 beautiful children and then chosen drugs over them instead. I saw her as a person in pain. I saw her as a person grieving. I saw her as a person who loved her children but didn’t know how to love them the way that they needed to be loved and whose heart was breaking because she knew it.

I looked at her and I said, “It’s okay. You’re right, this is emotional. It’s okay to feel your feelings. It’s okay.”

And suddenly she stopped shaking so hard. Because I took the time to see her heart.

As we went over the relinquishment paperwork, she kept saying how she loved the children but she knew that they were better where they were than they were with her. The children’s attorney and I both told her how selfless her actions were, and how they showed how much she truly did love them. And we meant it, because it was true. And we encouraged her and her husband to get help for themselves so that when these precious children came to look for them one day, they would find them healthy and whole.

I walked them down to the DA’s office to have their paperwork witnessed and notarized. She kept putting her pen to the paper and lifting it back up again. I can’t imagine how hard it was to sign her name to those pages that would mean she was giving up her children forever. I told her to take her time, that it was okay.

When she finally signed the papers, she looked at me and she said, “Thank you for being kind to me. People usually just treat us as addicts rather than humans.”

I felt humbled and ashamed. Because I have been guilty of that myself.

As we walked back upstairs to court, she continued beating herself up over the fact that she had not been able to get herself together to get her kids back, until I finally stopped her. I looked at her and I said, “Look, life is hard. And you’re doing the best you can. And some days that best is better than other days. You just have to give yourself some grace and try again tomorrow.”

As we stood in the well of the court, taking the actions that needed to be taken to finalize the termination of their parental rights, I tried to be as gentle as I could be to them, recognizing the sacrifice that they had just made.

As I left the courthouse, I thought about how much better I felt because I had been kind to these people in their brokenness than I would have felt had I been harsh or judgmental or mean.

After court, I talked to my pastor about what was happening with the United Methodist Church general conference, and in that conversation, I told her my experience with the mother that morning. I commented about how it can be so hard sometimes in this cruel world to be kind to people. Her response was that being kind really was the best way to heal both others and ourselves.

The afternoon went on, and the tenor of the judgment, harshness, and ignorance in the United Methodist Church general conference increased, and the thoughts of that mom were replaced with anger and sadness and grief over the decisions being made to minimize the dignity of the LGBTQ+ community within the church.

I didn’t think of that mom again until waking up this morning. In my grief and sadness over all the events of yesterday, I thought of my abject disappointment with the global Methodist Church. And wallowing in my grief, I thought of the mother from yesterday. And suddenly I realized how alike that mother and the church actually were.

That mother loves her children, without doubt. But the hold that meth has on her is stronger than that love. The hold that meth has on her has caused damage to those children so severe that they may never fully recover. The hold that meth has on her has caused those children to be traumatized again and again, through the loss of their parents, the loss of their siblings, the loss of their home. The hold that meth has on her has caused a complete and total lack of felt safety for these children, as they struggle each day with knowing what their future will be, what further loss they will suffer. The hold that meth has on her has caused these children to go through these past months feeling as if they were different from everyone else in their schools and in their communities and in their churches, like they had nowhere they fully belonged. The hold that meth has on her has caused these children to feel like they weren’t enough for anyone, including their mother, and like they had no place they were truly safe, including with their mother, the one place where they should have felt safer than anywhere else. The one place where they should have had the softest landing.

Those are the consequences of the destruction for these children caused when the hold that meth has on that mother is stronger than the love that she has for them.

The same is true of the church when the hold that bad and hurtful doctrine has on the church is stronger than the love that the church has for God’s children.

That church loves God’s children, without doubt. But the hold that bad and hurtful doctrine has on her is stronger than that love. The hold that bad and hurtful doctrine has on her has caused damage to God’s children so severe that they may never fully recover. The hold that bad and hurtful doctrine has on her has caused God’s children to be traumatized again and again, through the loss of their non-affirming parents, the loss of their non-affirming pastors and church members, the loss of their church home. The hold that bad and hurtful doctrine has on her has caused a complete and total lack of felt safety for God’s children, as they struggle each day with knowing what their future will be, what further loss they will suffer. The hold that bad and hurtful doctrine has on her has caused God’s children to go through their lives feeling as if they were different from everyone else in their schools and in their communities and in their churches, like they had nowhere they fully belonged. The hold that bad and hurtful doctrine has on her has caused these children to feel like they weren’t enough for anyone, including their church, and like they had no place they were truly safe, including their church, the one place where they should have felt safer than anywhere else. The one place where they should have had the softest landing.

And as my heart breaks for that mom for the loss that she has suffered because of the hold that meth has on her, my heart breaks as well for the church for the great loss they are suffering because of the hold on them of bad and hurtful doctrine.

As much as it is my instinct to be angry with the church, I try instead to step back, as I did with that mother, and look not at the hurt that its children are feeling, but at the hurt the church itself is feeling. Not just at the loss of God’s children of the church that was supposed to love them above all else, but at the loss of the church of the joy and honor of watching these precious and cherished and beloved children of God grow into who they were meant to be as loved and affirmed and celebrated children of God.

I try to look at the church, as I did that mother and see not its hurtful actions, but its heart.

I try to look at the church and see not the institution that is choosing bad and painful doctrine over God’s children, but instead as an institution in pain. I see it as an institution grieving the loss. I see it as an institution who loves her children but doesn’t know how to love them the way that they need to be loved and whose heart is breaking because it knows it.

As I consider that love, I encourage the church, like that mother, to get help for itself, so that when these precious children come to look for it one day, if they come to look for it one day, they would find it healthy and whole.

These children who cried and grieved because their church didn’t love them enough, couldn’t love them enough, to let that love win over that bad and hurtful doctrinal hold.

Fearfully and wonderfully made

One of the most surprising parts of becoming a parent is realizing how fiercely you love this little person, who is so helpless and so dependent on you. You find yourself staring at them for hours, memorizing their features, their smell, their sounds, the feel of them resting in your arms. You think there’s no way that you could ever love them more than you do right then. But you do. As they grow, so does your love for them.

So too does your pain, when they are hurt. When they are small, it’s little things like shots and colds and fevers. As their bodies grow, the hurts grow and often change. The hurts are emotional more than physical. And not so easily fixed by a cartoon band-aid or a kiss to make it better. The thing that you want most in the world to do is to protect your child. To protect them from things and people that might hurt them. To protect them from people who might be mean or hurtful to them. To protect them from broken hearts and disappointments.

When there is a diagnosis of an illness that will make life hard for them, you grieve. You grieve for the life you wanted for them and the life that they will have instead. That grief is a socially acceptable one. One that people understand. One that people will support you in. One that you don’t feel you have to hide or conceal for fear of judgment or even hatred.

When your child comes out to you as being gay or lesbian or bisexual or trans, there is grief there too. Not grief because they are gay. Not grief based on judgment or doubt about who they are or who God made them to be. Grief because you know without a doubt that life is going to be harder for them than you want it to be. You grieve for the easy life you wanted for them and the potentially difficult life that they will have instead.

Unlike having a child with physical illness, having a child who is gay is not one that is as socially acceptable. It’s one many people won’t support you in. It’s one many will judge you for and will judge your child and even hate them for who they are.

The pain of having someone hate your child because of something they have no control over is not something I can explain to you unless it is something you have experienced yourself. The fear of having your child targeted for hate crimes or for public ridicule or shaming is very real. The sadness at having someone you thought loved your child say, when they find out your child is gay, that they believe that they should love the sinner but hate the sin, or question whether or not they are really a Christian after all can be debilitating. The rage and pain that you feel when someone tells your precious child that they are going to go to hell because they refuse to repent of their sinful way cannot be fully expressed or explained.  

Being the parent of a gay child is one of the hardest roles as a parent that I can imagine. 

I know that because I walk in those shoes. My son Clayton, in addition to being an incredibly gifted artist, a talented actor and vocalist, a kind, loving, and loyal friend, a thoughtful son and grandson and brother, and a nurturing uncle, is also gay. 

It’s not something he chose. It’s not something he easily accepted. It’s something he prayed for two years would change. It’s something he was convinced happened because God for some reason, that he did not understand, was punishing him. What finally made him realize that he was made exactly as God intended him to be was the love of his friends, and his church, and his pastor, and, thankfully, his parents and brother.

He didn’t choose to be gay. But God chose it for him. This I know.

And I know without a doubt that God has great plans for this precious child. I know without a doubt that God created him as WHO he is, just AS he is, just HOW he is, for a purpose. I know without a doubt that he was fearfully and wonderfully made, in God’s purpose and in God’s image.

And I know without a doubt that people will hate him because of it. And that hurts my mama heart and it always will. 

I have learned so much humility and grace from this precious child of God through this journey since he came out to us a year and a half ago. At only 16, he has far more maturity and compassion to people who judge him than I ever will. Than I ever want to have. His grace to choose to continue to love people who hate him because he is gay is God directed and God given. It must be. Because how else can he turn the other cheek in the face of insults and judgment and continue to love in the face of hate?

This precious child of God has an amazing witness because of his acceptance of who he is and who God made him to be, and his love for others who have shown in so many ways that they don’t deserve it. This precious child of God will change and save lives just by being who he is, without shame, without reservation, and without apology. This precious child of God will change the world for the better because he chooses each day to love above all else. To fight for what is right and what is good with love and compassion rather than fear or hate.

I did not choose for my child to be gay any more than he chose it for himself. But after the shock, and after the grief, I fully embrace who he is and I wouldn’t change it if I could. Because the plans that God has for him are great. They are plans for a hope and a future. They are plans to prosper him and to grow him and to use him in a mighty way.  

God made my child with a purpose. For a purpose. To love and to be loved. Fully. Without condemnation. Without hatred. Without judgment. 

Clayton praises God because he is fearfully and wonderfully made. In God’s love. In God’s image. God’s works are wonderful. Clayton knows that full well. 

And each day he teaches me that lesson a little more clearly.

"For you [God} created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well." Psalm 139:13-14

Seeing God

The theme of this weekend’s retreat was everyday altars. The idea of seeing God in the ordinary parts of our days. 

The thing about retreats is that it’s easy to see God when you’re away from the distractions and responsibilities of every day life like work and laundry and dog hair. It’s easy to focus on God when someone else is cooking your food and making your coffee and the only thing you have to worry about is whether to spend your free afternoon taking a nap or spending time at the cross with people who feed your spirit and tickle your funny bone. 

It’s harder to find God in the every day. 

And so as I thought this afternoon about the places where I most saw the presence of God this weekend, there were big moments for sure. Moments of connection that could only have been orchestrated by God. 

But there were so many small moments as well. 

Moments that you don’t realize are holy unless you’re looking for the holy in them. 

Phoning a friend stuck in an airport so she could be part of the group even though she wasn’t able to physically be part of the group. 

People sharing their stories and their hearts and making themselves vulnerable in ways that formed a connection in ways that weren’t present before. 

Moments where a friend takes the time to cut your chicken because your hands are shaking too hard for you to do it for yourself. 

Moments where another friend tells you to eat that chicken when you are so distracted by what God is doing that you forget to eat, and that same friend sharing her ice cream with you and then taking you on a walk and holding your hand and your heart until they both stop shaking. 

Moments of ditching your prior plans for the evening, stepping out of the fun and comfortable circle you love so much, and widening that circle to include someone else who needs a circle of their own. 

Times of laughing until there were tears over stupid commercials, misunderstood metaphors, and misspelled words. 

And there was the sun rising over the water, lighting the sky up in colors that only God could create. 

Like a direct reminder from God, saying, I’ve got this. 

I’m still at work whether you’re seeing it or not. 

So pay attention. 

Because you don’t want to miss this. 

You’re going to want to see it. 

Pay attention. 

And take off your shoes. 

Because the ground you’re standing on? 

It’s holy. 

Hello, my name is...

I had the opportunity last night to go listen to one of my favorite authors speak about her new book. The author is Nadia Bolz-Weber. She is a Lutheran pastor in Colorado with a congregation of what most of society would term as misfits. She is sarcastic, outspoken, cusses like a sailor, and is covered in tattoos. And she loves Jesus and broken people deeply. She has pretty much all the characteristics I love in a person.

Her first two books were both deeply unsettling and deeply healing to me as she explores her fundamentalist upbringing and her journey through addiction, redemption, and ministry call. 

I expected that her newest book would have the same effect. But I was apprehensive because it talked about sex. Not Harlequin romance sex, but the view of sex within the church. Traditional views of purity, homosexuality, and abortion. It looked at the history on those movements within the church. It talked a great deal about the shame and damage experienced by and inflicted upon those persons who don’t fit within the small circle of persons that the traditional church has deemed as pure. It looked at those persons that God planted in the corners.

I was right that I would be deeply unsettled. But unlike her other two books, I didn’t experience that same feeling of healing. I told a friend that I thought it would take time, and probably a re-read of the book for that feeling to settle in for me. Because what it did wasn’t make me feel better about my history, but worse. Not because of what the author said but because what she said caused me to look at things in a way that I hadn’t looked at them before. But in order to look at things in a different way, I had to look at them again.

There are a lot of things in my past I don’t want to look at again. Because they are painful. Because they are shameful. Because they remind me that some of the decisions I have made in my life showed me to be someone different than who I thought I was. 

And so as I got ready to go to this event last night, I experienced great anxiety at what my reaction might be. I have learned that as part of the process of healing from long buried abuse, sometimes discussions of similar trauma trigger me. I was afraid of being triggered last night. I shared that with the two dear friends who I was going to the event with. Because they are such dear friends, they first fed me good food, and tequila, and then let me sit between them where I could feel the physical touch of one or both of them the entire night. And then afterwards, we went out for ice cream together. Because I actually do have the world’s greatest friends.

I didn’t get triggered during the event like I feared. I just left feeling unhappy. Angry. Thoughtful. Sad. One of the things that she said though resonated with me and I realized that I still have a lot of work to do with looking at things I don’t want to look at. 

Not for the sake of looking at them and reliving the shame.  But looking at them, not in the shadow of shame where I have placed them all these years, but in the light of grace. In the recognition that this shame, the shame I have attached to many of the things I have, is misplaced. 

That the one big pile of ick I had placed things in wasn’t actually the way that these things needed to be sorted. That there are different stacks things need to be placed in. 

A stack of things done to me that I bear no blame in. 

A stack of things that I was a part of but was still mostly innocent in. 

A stack of things that I did to survive emotionally. 

A stack of things that have never been what they should have been because of the ways in which I’ve been shut down inside because of all those other stacks. 

As I thought this morning about this work that I need to do on this front, I realized part of why I had all those things from my past piled together into one pile of rotting, putrid shame.  

Not because they belonged there.

But because the messages I heard growing up told me that any sex outside a marriage between one man and one woman was a sin and abhorrent to God. 

Messages that told me that choosing to give away a part of myself that belonged to my future husband was robbing him of a gift that should belong only to him.

That’s a hell of a message for someone who had parts of herself taken at age 8.

That’s a hell of a message to tell a girl of 16 when the only way she thought she could hold on to her 23 year old boyfriend was to give parts of herself away she had always thought she would and should hold on to until she was married.

The hell of that message is that what happens when that’s the message you carry, a message of ideals you aren’t able to live up to, is you think you’re broken or faulty or unworthy. And unloved. Unloved because you are broken and faulty and unworthy. And so you spend the rest of your life trying to find worth in the ways that caused it to go missing in the first place. 

And you know what?

It doesn’t work.

The pile of shame that started when you were 8, and has grown taller over the years, grows taller still. With the rubbish of things you have done and shouldn’t. With the rubbish of things you should have been able to do but could not. With the carcasses of all the relationships that didn’t work the way they should have because you’ve never been able to connect the way you wanted to because, since you were 8 years old, you haven’t viewed yourself as clean and whole.

Because you are a person different than you thought you would be.

So as I thought about all these things this morning, I got angry.

Who told me that my body was something that was a gift for my husband rather than for me?

Who placed the shame in me so deeply that I was damaged because a part of myself was taken away before I was able to understand the importance of what it was? 

Who made me feel that I was unworthy of love, and because of that, for so many years, I tried to regain that feeling of worthiness, from men who didn’t have the ability, or the right to return it to me?

Who told me that my name was victim, slut, adulterer, divorcee, frigid, confused? Who told me that I was unworthy of love? Who told me that I was broken beyond repair?

The message I should have been given wasn’t that I should be very careful giving away the part of me that belonged to my future husband. 

The message I should have been given was that I should be very careful giving away the part of me that belonged to me.

The message I should have been given was that there is a difference between giving away a part of yourself and having it taken from you.

The message I should have been given is that it was my right to choose what I gave, and to who I gave it to, and when I gave it.

The message I should have been given was that my body, my innocence, my purity, are holy. Not because they were a gift to give to my husband but because they were mine. Given to me, by God, for my use. For my pleasure. As a gift to give to myself.

The message I should have been given was that no organization, no church, no person, no one, has the right to tell me what is mine to give and when and how it is right to give it.

That is mine to give.

And mine to decide who is worthy to receive it.

And mine to decide if I give it away just because I want to.

Mine.

Nadia says in her book that “Shame is like wearing our already forgiven sins like a spiritual name tag.” And she’s right.

I’ve worn those spiritual name tags for too many years because I felt if I took them off I wasn’t being honest about who I really was.

The truth is, it was the refusal to take those name tags off that kept me from being honest about who I really was, not the other way.

My name is not victim.

My name is not unclean.

My name is not adulterer or divorcee.

My name is not unworthy.

My name is PRECIOUS.

My name is CHERISHED.

My name is BELOVED.

My name is GLORIOUS.

My name is REDEEMED.

Who told me that?

My Jesus told me. And that’s the only voice that really matters.

Loving people well

I was talking to a colleague and friend the other day and she was relaying a story where a foster father was describing what he wanted for some children who had been through things no children should ever have to go through, and were struggling with those things. The foster father said, “I just want them to love Jesus.” And my colleague, who loves Jesus herself but who understands the effects that trauma can have, looked at him and said, “They may not.”

There are so many people in this world who have been hurt by the things that other people have done to them, the things other people have said to them, what churches have represented to them, the way the church and society have judged and condemned them, that as much as we may want them to love Jesus, they may not.

We use the phrase “loving people well” often in our church. It’s the goal really. Not just to love people on a theoretical or aerial basis but to really love them well. To meet them where they are. To meet the needs that they have, even the ones that are boring, basic, won’t bring attention to us, or are messy, inconvenient, painful, scary, or hard. To get all up into people’s space because they need it, even when they aren’t able to tell you that they want it. That’s what it is to love people well.

Part of loving people well is recognizing that you aren’t going to be able to love them “well” in the healing sense. That’s not actually our job, but God’s. God can use people to help us to heal. I have experienced that in my own life. But as much as I love those people for their part in my healing, I recognize that the healing comes not from them, but from God. They recognize that as well.

But often, we think that we ourselves have the power to heal people. That we have the power to fix the things that are broken. That if we just love them enough, nothing else matters.

While I wish that were true, I know that it is not.

Some damage is just too severe. Some wounds runs too deep. Some hurt started too early. Some voices won’t be silenced.

There are some things that people cannot fix, no matter how much they want to, or how much they love someone.

Only God can do that.

But maybe sometimes God doesn’t fix those things for a reason.

In small group and in the sermon yesterday, we studied Luke 6:20-26, also known as the Beatitudes. Verses 20-21 read as follows: Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

It strikes me that it doesn’t say Blessed are you who are poor until I give you wealth. It says blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

It doesn’t say Blessed are you who are hungry now until I feed you. It says for you will be filled. Maybe it isn’t talking about food at all.

It doesn’t say Blessed are you who weep now, for your tears will be wiped away and your sorrow eased. It says Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

God doesn’t promise to take away the poverty, the hunger, or the tears. God promises that amidst those things, God is with us. Amidst that bad, there will be good. Because it is often when we are poor, or hungry, or weeping, that we feel God’s presence the most.

It is often when we are poor, or hungry, or weeping, when we feel God’s presence the most, that we most feel the need and desire to serve others who may be going through the same.

It is often through our hurt and through our pain that we are the biggest blessing to others.

So as much as we may want to love people well, we should stop trying to love them “well”.

As much as we want people to just love Jesus, we should stop trying to push that on them, and understand that they may not. That Jesus will always love them, but that only God can work the miracle in their life that will cause them to be able to return that love as we might want. And ultimately, that’s God’s work to do, and not ours.

When asked the greatest commandment, Jesus answered “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment” He went on to add, without being asked, “And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22:37-39

That’s what we are commanded to do. 

To love God.

To love others.

Not to fix what we see as broken.

Not to make others love Jesus the way we think they should.

Not to love people “well”.

But to love them well.

Even when it’s messy or inconvenient or scary or hard.

And to let God do the mending.

Speaking to the gap

I read a devotional back during Advent that had the following advice that really spoke to me: For Advent, pray, work, speak out about the gap between the way the world ought to be and the way it is, while trusting God to work also in the gap.

Good advice not just for Advent but for every day. And direction to us, I think, to move forward in the ways we can, even in heartbreak and disillusionment.

I’ve had the amazing blessing to be part of some really incredible work that God is doing right now in the life of my church and in the life of the adults and youth in our community. It is holy work. Healing work. Long past due work.

Being a part of it is so encouraging, and so life-giving.

But at the same time, it is so heartbreaking.

Because as we learn how to meet needs, to meet people where they are, and to love people well, we learn the ways and places that this very attitude has been lacking. Places where our youth should have felt safe but have not.

I have been an advocate for children and others who needed a voice for more than 20 years. It is my instinct to stand up and to speak up when things are not the way that I think they should be or when injustice exists.

That instinct is in my heart, and in my brain, and in my blood, and in my bones.

As I learn more about the many gaps between how the world ought to be and how it is, it is all I can do not to stand up and to speak up.

Not just stand up and speak up, but jump on a chair, or a table, and yell at the top of my lungs. 

But I can’t. Not just now. Not just yet. Because the time isn’t yet right. Because there’s more than one way to speak to that gap, I have learned. We can speak with our tongues and with our words. Or we can speak with our actions. We can speak with our love. We could choose to tear down. But instead we choose to build.

I was in a permanency conference yesterday where a foster mom was speaking about a baby for which she and her husband are caring who came into their home severely drug exposed and severely neglected. She described how when he first came to them, he didn’t make a sound. He didn’t cry at all. But now that he’s been there for a few weeks, he cries when he’s hungry, cries when he’s wet, cries when he’s tired. She said this, “Once he figured out that if he would cry, somebody would come, he started to cry.” These foster parents are teaching that baby he has a voice. A voice that matters. A voice that he can use to speak to his own needs, a voice that will be heard by those who care for and about him, and a voice that will be honored through the meeting of those needs.

Part of speaking to that gap, between how the world ought to be and how it is, is teaching those within that gap that they have a voice. A voice that matters.  A voice that they can use to speak to their own needs. A voice that will be heard by those who care for and about them, and a voice that will be honored through the meeting of those needs.

As much as I want to speak to that gap, it’s not always my place to do so. Sometimes the best way to speak to that gap is to teach others to speak for themselves. To teach them that they have a voice of their own. To love them as they gain confidence in that voice. To support them as they learn to use that voice on their own. And to stand up, to stand beside them, but to shut up and let them speak to their own truth. A truth that as much as we may feel we have the right and need to speak to, may not be a truth we have the right to speak at all.

This isn’t a lesson I am even remotely liking to learn. It isn’t easy. It isn’t natural. And it makes me really cranky. But I am trusting that this is a lesson God is teaching me for a reason.

So as I learn, I pray: Loving God, give me the courage to speak when it is mine to speak and when it is time to speak. Give me the patience to be quiet when it is not. Let me be a support, a guide, and an encouragement for others as they find their own voices, grow confidence in those voices, and gain the courage to use those voices on their own. Thank you for this call that you have placed within me. Thank you for the opportunity to see others as you see them and to love others as you love them. Help me always to remember that, as I pray, work, and speak out about the gap between the way the world ought to be and the way it is, I can always trust that you are working also in the gap. I pray this in the name of Jesus, who taught us the true meaning of standing up and speaking up.  Amen.

God showed up

After leaving the district attorney’s office the first time, I practiced criminal defense law for a number of years before beginning to practice in the area of child welfare law full time. Some of my clients I really liked, as they were people who had made bad choices rather than being bad people, or had been caught in circumstances at least partially beyond their control, that had landed them in an area where they needed an advocate.

There was one particular client I had that fit that latter situation, who I will never forget. He was charged with possession of a controlled substance. While he had a history with addiction, and had even previously been to the penitentiary for that addiction, the case which I represented him on really was an aberration. He had been caught with drugs that belonged to his brother. He was no longer using himself, as was evidenced by his negative drug tests, his longstanding work history, and his positive involvement with his church and volunteer work with the youth, speaking to them of the dangers of the drug lifestyle. But the bottom line was, brothers or not, reformed or not, the drugs were in his possession at the time he was stopped. Despite all the positive things he had going for him, the offer of the prosecutor was for penitentiary time, because of his prior criminal history. I got the prosecutor to come down to the statutory minimum but could not get him to agree to probation. My client decided to enter an open plea to the judge, in hopes to receive probation. It was potentially a risky move as with an open plea, a defendant pleads guilty without a plea bargain, allowing the judge to set punishment anywhere within the allowed range. I advised him of the wisdom of taking the minimum prison offer, as the judge had the ability to sentence him to a much greater length of time. But his faith was strong that the judge would grant him probation. Far stronger than mine was. The date of the sentencing hearing, my client came to court with his wife and with the youth pastor from his church. Prior to the hearing, I spoke with both as they would be testifying on my client’s behalf, along with my client. I prepared all of them for the likelihood of a prison sentence. The youth pastor shared what the church’s senior pastor, his own father, had said as he left for court that morning. He told him that the only way that my client would get probation, based on his criminal history, was if God himself showed up. Before walking into the courtroom, we all held hands and we prayed. For God’s will and God’s grace. I was shocked when, at the end of the hearing, the judge told my client he was going to take a chance on him and place him on probation. We spoke after the hearing, and the youth pastor, who himself was youthful and exuberant, was beside himself. He said that he could not wait to go back to the church so that he could tell his daddy that, in fact, God himself did show up that day. And he was right. I’ve long since forgotten the name of my client, but I’ve never forgotten the sentiment of that pastor that “God himself had shown up” that day.

I thought of that experience just the other day for some reason. And when I did, I started reflecting on all the times in my life and in my career that “God showed up.”

God showed up when my dad died unexpectedly my senior year of college. Despite the fact that I was at a point in my life where I questioned whether all I had heard about God my whole life was true, and whether God even existed, God showed up. God showed up, and God held me up, both through the sense of peace and calm given to me which truly did surpass all understanding, but also through the friends and coworkers that showed up to stand with me when I couldn’t stand on my own. 

God showed up again and again through that first year of law school, when all I wanted to do was give up and go home and be with my grieving mother and grieve myself. God showed up through the roommate he brought me in a way nothing short of miraculous and through the friends sent to me to be a balm to my injured heart.

God has shown up more times than I can count in the cases I have handled and in adults and children that I have represented over the years.

God showed up to give me the words and the wisdom to successfully defend a young man facing 20 years in prison for a car accident that truly was an accident, but which placed him at risk of imprisonment because he was poor and his skin too dark.

God showed up when at the end of a hard fought battle against a heartless child placing agency who had acted recklessly and without proper planning, the judge had to tell my two teenage clients that they could not stay in the home of the foster mom who had come to love and support them. God showed up in the tears of those boys, of that foster mom, of the CASA advocate, of myself, and of the judge. 

God showed up every time I had to go to court on a juvenile client who had been abandoned by his mom and who expressed his justifiable anger and rage and pain in the most inappropriate of ways. God showed up in my tears of frustration that there was nothing I could do to help this young boy who had nobody to love him. God showed up often over the years with that boy until the unexpected happy day that he was finally able to go home to his mama who had at long last become healthy and whole.

God showed up at the end of an exhausting and emotional weeklong CPS termination jury trial in which I represented a mother who was the pitiful victim of domestic violence and because of that violence and because of the culture in which she had been raised, was unable to protect her child. God showed up through the attorney friend who held me as I cried when the jury terminated my client’s rights and through the attorney friend, and attorney for CPS, who held my client because I wasn’t strong enough to do so. 

God showed up in the hospital room as I held the hand of a dying child and wanted so desperately to pray words of comfort and peace over him, but had no words. God showed up for that child. And for me. 

God showed up in the months that Aaron was so sick and we had no answers as to why or solutions to make him well. God showed up on those long drives to work, the one place that I would allow myself to express the fear and the frustration that I felt. God showed up through the doctors who would not give up testing or questioning or caring until they had a diagnosis and a treatment that worked. 

God showed up in a Starbucks when I poured out my heart and my soul to my pastor, after I realized I could no longer carry my guilt, and my pain, and my shame on my own any longer. God showed up in the way that she looked at me, with unconditional love, and without judgment. God showed up each step of the way those hard months that I peeled off layers of skin to expose unhealed wounds so that I could begin to heal.

God showed up in an attorney friend who named a call in me that I had yet to name for myself, and showed up again in my pastor who named that same call less than two weeks later. God has continued to show up in the people placed in my path to affirm that call. God has showed up in every single detail and every single step on the journey to follow and fulfill the call God placed in me.

God showed up as Clayton and I marched in the Ft. Worth Pride parade this past fall. God showed up through the unity of the marchers, the support of the spectators, and the coming together of people of all ages and races and sexual orientations and identities, to show love to and for all God’s children.

God showed up in every meeting I have had with members of our church and outside our church in the planning and creation of an Ally group to support our LGBTQ+ family, friends, and church members. 

God shows up each time I have words to say but I am afraid to say them. 

God shows up each and every time that I feel I have no more to give. Physically. Emotionally. Spiritually. 

Each time that I am empty, God shows up to refill me.  

Each time that I feel I am not enough, God shows up to prove to me that God is more than enough.

Each time that I feel I have no more to give, God shows up with more than what I could ever do on my own.

God has shown up more times than I will ever be able to recount.

For that, I am so very grateful.

Where has God shown up in your life?

Where have you allowed God to use you to show up for someone else?