Tag: death

The Pain of Healing

December 30th, 2024

The last few years have been a plot twist for my family. If you had asked me to describe my life prior, I would have called it complex. Even so, within complexity, we had few curveballs until the recent season of life hurled a number of them.

When your prior structure and framework for your life becomes a rug pulled out from under you, first, you will experience disruption and disorientation. Then, there is an opportunity to go through a process of healing. The healing has to do with figuring out what is accurate and true. You must dig deeper to discover what was false or faulty about your previous operational mode.

My conclusion about such healing is this–it feels like dying.

In other words, there is a lengthy stage in the healing process where you shed the old and do not yet have the new. This process is a slow, pronounced kind of dying. It is hard to explain unless you have gone through it because it is a dying into health, putting to death things that you will not bring forward with you.

This phenomenon is well-documented. You can read Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward or St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul to think about this on a spiritual and soul level. Or, you can think about it on a medical and bodily level. If you have surgery and a serious recovery process, you may feel temporarily worse before you feel better. The passageway between what was and will be is both painful and inconvenient.

A Real-Life Metaphor

The latest life-inspired metaphor to help ponder this is an appliance flood in our home on December 2nd.

We had just finished a lovely Thanksgiving weekend with our college-age daughter home for her first break. It was the Monday after. She was back at school, my husband was on a plane for a work trip, and I was on my morning Zoom call when I stepped out of our home office to make tea. What greeted me was a washing machine failure from the load I had thrown in just before the call.

Initially, it looked like an inconvenient derailment of my Monday morning, but when I saw the extent of the nooks and crannies the water had flowed into, it became a disruption on a much larger scale. By that evening, insurance had sent a water remediation company to tear out our floors and cut into our walls. They removed any damp materials and left us with eight industrial fans blowing at a deafening frequency.

The beginning of the demolition

What began as a hopeful Monday morning for quiet work and a peaceful start to the extras of the holiday season turned upside down. I asked the contractor for his honest timeline estimate. He told me two months. Four weeks have passed, and his estimate seems accurate. We have made it through the worst. The contractors patched up our walls the day before Christmas, but our possessions and our dining table continue to sit in the garage. Rugs cover a pathway through the rooms so we do not have to stand on hard, cold concrete.

I am seeing in a new way from this unfortunate experience.

Quick Break, Slow Repair

Damage happens relatively quickly. (It took less than 1 hour for the water from one load of laundry to damage half of our first floor.) The demolition is less instantaneous but also relatively quick. I had no time to waste as I pulled every towel out of our linen closet and got to work in back-breaking labor, even pulling out the heavy washing machine that I have seen contractors struggle to move in a moment of Herculean strength. Then, without delay, insurance made sure to do damage control by tearing out every area of dampness and throwing it away.

The process gets slow once the damage is done and the demolition is complete. The rebuild does not begin or proceed with the same sense of urgency.

It would have increased the cost of the claim if the insurance were to act slowly, allowing the water to do more damage. But in rebuilding they take time to negotiate with the contractors over every nickel and dime. They make slow determinations between their other urgent jobs. Then, the estimator finds contractors that can do the work within the parameters of the insurance claim. Because it is the holiday season, the progress is even slower.

Living in Between

On the other end, you have us, the homeowners. We have to live in a state of disrepair. It looks bleak and requires a lot of patience and renegotiating what life looks like daily as you try to cook and live in a disrupted environment. If someone were to walk into my house on the day all those fans were blowing (as several neighbors did), they would say what a disaster (as they did). However, as awful as it looked, those were the first stages of the rebuild. We were preparing a dry foundation.

One of my least favorite days. Living in a state of mayhem as repairs were underway on Dec. 23.

It looked better with the floor in tact, but underneath, dampness was going to mold. The day the floors were left bare and the concrete exposed was the first step in creating something new.

In other words, when it most looked like a catastrophe, the rebuild was underway. Likewise, there are moments that most look like death, where healing is underway. I could see the rebuilding stage in a new way and understand my life in the last year or so.

Hope in Rebuilding

Rebuilding is disruptive but promising. If damage happened without your agency, it is not your chosen path. The only way out is rebuilding and in that stage you are about to experience a good thing.

Things will go wrong in the process. It will feel like chaos and disorient you again. (I have never heard of a rebuilding process for anything without setbacks, mistakes, or delays.) However, brick by brick, you are headed in the right direction.

It feels terrible when you cannot appreciate the progress. When things are incomplete, it can facilitate despair. But when you understand the small steps with gratitude and keep your eyes on the bigger picture (we are getting new floors, new paint, a new washer, new floorboards, etc.), you can persevere. You can have some hope.

If the rebuild process is causing you despair, I understand.

But, I want to offer a perspective I am learning: you deserve to be congratulated. You already made it through the damage and the demolition. You are on the road to something better, something new. Not every day will look like any amount of progress. And some days, nothing truly advances. But you have every right to have hope. This stage is not a teardown. It is a piece-by-piece renovation.

If you are like I was last year, in a season of despair and disorientation, you may not have the capacity to hope (yet). I just want you to know, I have hope for you. From where I stand now, I empathize with your pain, and also see the potential for a significant rebuild in your life–one that will give you what you need for the future rather than keep things as they were in the past.

A Quiet Rebuild

The same principle applies on a macro level. Individuals have been experiencing damage, demolition, and rebuilding, but so has our society. Rather than living in rubble, we can clear it away and build something new over time. The other side of collapse is the first stone being laid.

Christmas is the beginning of a renovation phase. Christ came to earth as a new beginning, the second Adam. The first man and woman acted in ways that brought about damage to every generation. Subsequent generations, like Noah’s, had to deal with the demolition that followed.

The incarnation is a quiet rebuild, a flutter in a young woman’s womb that became light and hope for the world. It looked like nothing, but it was quite something.

You may be engulfed by atrocious damage done to you and others. You may be watching the rubble pile up in the teardown, debilitated like I was a year ago. But if you know the Christmas story, you know the angels, shepherds, and magi were the early witnesses to humanity’s rebuilding.

It did not look like much when he was born among the animals to unimportant people in a tiny city. The threat of more rubble came in the form of edicts for infanticide and crossing borders seeking refuge.

Rebuilds are long and slow. What looks like wreckage today is a new beginning for our home and family.

I believe the same for you. Where you are is not where you will end up.

Damage comes with the loudest bang but is the shortest visitor.

The teardown may take a little while.

But the longest leg of the journey is the rebuilding. And building is good. Piece by piece, you will get there.

We will get there.
French Fries with Steve

July 17th, 2024

Originally written October 19, 2021

In summer 2020 when the world was still in the early stages of COVID-19, my friend, Steve, was navigating his fair share of challenges. In a season of unemployment and between homes, prospects looked poor on both fronts. If I knew then what I know now, things would have been different.

I would have taken Steve into our home, risked exposing my household to COVID, and let him stay indefinitely. But at the time, there were no vaccines. We knew relatively little about COVID-19. With kids in virtual learning and Zoom work-from-home, I was at my limits.

I told my spiritual director, who listens monthly to my narration of my life as we look for God together, “Every Sunday, I drive to the park, pull out my lawn chair and pray with Steve and Jonathan.” I went on to explain Steve’s situation. I met him when he had come back to church fresh out of incarceration and rededicated his life to God. He had fallen on hard times, losing his job and home just as COVID hit. And, he lived out of his car.

I described how, with a sense of urgency, Steve asked me and Jonathan to pray with him in-person. For some reason, we both said yes without hesitation, never missing a Sunday. On the best of days in a pre-pandemic world, it could not have been planned. But, somehow, in this alternate reality, there was a portal to this possibility and the three of us stepped inside.

We coordinate by text, show up, talk and pray, usually for hours, until well past summer sunset. At the end of our time, Steve gets into his car. Where will he go? We never know. How long will Steve be gone? When we will hear from him? These are all mysteries. But as sure as the mid-2020 morning starts on Zoom and the evening ends at home without any organized activities, every Sunday night I spend with Steve and Jonathan.

She gave me a look of bewilderment. This was a new and odd turn that even my trained spiritual director scratched her head about. At the time, we kind of shrugged at the senselessness of it all during the upheaval of the pandemic year. A couple months later it became more than a passing shrug when Steve died alone in a motel room.

My friendship with Steve was not new. My family and I had known him for several years. But Steve, Jonathan, and I were in a new situation, working together on a committee with an important spiritual task to complete when COVID hit. Steve felt strongly that some of us needed to pray in-person. Thus, our Sunday night prayer meetings began in early July, lasting through mid-November.

It is easy to forget how slow and uncertain time felt during this season of the pandemic. While my family stayed home following safety orders, Steve and Jonathan were the only people I intentionally left my house to see. If I can go back and channel the feelings of those early months, it is astonishing. With all worship centers closed, Sunday nights in Library Park became my new rhythm. This togetherness during isolation amplified everything—the prayers, the community, and the bond.

When we met in person, we masked and sat six feet apart. This was inconvenient for Steve who did not have access to hygienic health and safety options and seemed to want to experience closeness.

Only on the very last day that I saw Steve did we unmask and “break bread.” In fact, it was french fries, Coke, and a chicken sandwich, but it felt as sacred as the Lord’s supper. Our fellowship of three huddled together around a space heater in my open garage on a rare, rainy November night. Fries dipped in ketchup were our intinction. Coke and lemonade tasted refreshing like living water. Steve was so excited to eat with friends. Looking back, it may have been his only shared meal in eight months. Little did we know it wasn’t a typical Eucharistic feast, unless you count the very first. We were offering Steve last rites.

Photo credit: Jeff Liou

When we didn’t hear from Steve for six weeks, Jonathan and I were not concerned. Steve, peculiar as he was, had made it clear to us that he would turn off his phone and drive across the country to secure a van that my husband had planned to build out for him as a mobile home. He even took down our addresses and warned us that if ever we didn’t see him for a while, a letter would arrive. When the page turned to 2021, I believed that I would receive Steve’s letter any day or a sudden text asking us to find a mutual time to gather again when his phone was turned on.

But on January 11, 2021, I learned that Steve died on November 27 about 100 miles from my home. He hadn’t been in any known communication by text with any of his friends for about ten days at the time of his death. The news was devastating.

In one phone call, the cord of three strands broke. We lost our friend and leader of our prayer group who had kept us moving with faith through the pandemic. There are “prayer groups” and then there are prayer groups. This was a prayer group. The spiritual atmosphere was vivid. Steve was as strange of a leader as John the Baptist must have been while wearing camel skin and eating locusts. He lived on the margins of society and met us at the edges to pray before he ventured back out.

Often one or more of us felt desperation with a challenge in front of us and then we would walk away from the prayer time and see God answer in an unexpected way. I remember one week where we conducted two prayer times over the phone together, which was not unusual. This week, I was away, borrowing a friend’s mountain cabin with my family. Every aspect of the prayer time is vivid in my memories– where I sat, what I wrote in my journal before and after, how God spoke to me in my dreams, and the exact words that Steve spoke. I can even hear Steve’s voice in my head.

The cause of Steve’s death was still inconclusive at the time of his memorial service in late January. At age 43 he had developed a recent health issue with his pancreas, but that didn’t show up in the initial autopsy. A bit like Elijah, he seemed to be here one minute and gone the next. At the time, I could barely process his death. It was a shock, and we were living shock upon shock in a sort of time warp already.

About seven months later, my body began to release and I grieved more deeply. It was when our committee work was coming to a long-anticipated crossroads and he was not there for it, that I was finally able to cry. During this time, his absence became sharper for me and all the prayers we prayed together flooded my mind. I do not believe in communicating with the dead. But his death was so sudden, I sometimes wondered if he was trying to tell me anything.

Could he see me tossing and turning at night, crying, sweating, wrestling spiritually or was it just my memory of him visiting me in that heavy hour? I remembered his prayers and knew they were effective beyond his living days. I strangely sensed that some of his connection to the Spirit of God was passing on to me. Like John the Baptist, he prepared the way, but he was not there to see it through. The only small comfort at this time was reaching out to Jonathan knowing that he was holding Steve’s memory as well.

There’s no ending to this story because what do you write about unsolved mysteries? The story of Steve is the story of multiple mysteries–a strange fellowship, answered prayers, and Steve’s death. And the mysteries continue because none of this was as strange of an outlier in my life as I originally thought it would be. All of this was absolutely central to everything God was and is doing, even if right now I do not know all that means or entails.

Rest in peace, Steve. As I turned 44 last week, I remember and honor your 43 years, mindful that you did not make it to this one. Thank you for everything you taught me about longing for revival, persistent prayer, trusting God for daily bread, and believing God’s work at the margins. You were one of the best leaders I ever followed.
God in the Nothing

May 7th, 2024

I remember sitting at my desk in my home office, looking at my boss through my computer screen. It was a series of weeks where I was stressed, drifting from the metaphorical shore. I told him, with confidence, “I feel myself drifting, but I know how to get back to shore.” I went on to explain how, usually, it takes me less time than I predict to get my bearings and feel secure again. This assurance grounded me through the busiest and most difficult seasons of work in my demanding role. It was a requirement for managing the day-to-day and keeping my eyes on what was ahead.

A year or two later, I had a very different metaphor. I was out to sea, a dark sea, with no shore in any direction, treading water. God was with me, but there was no comfort in that thought. I felt a bit like Peter when he got out of the boat, looked at Jesus, then the storm, then the waves and wind. God was there, but I felt more terror than peace. Sinking was imminent. God’s presence does not feel like enough to keep you afloat when you are in deep waters without a life raft.

The longer I stayed in this space, drifting, and treading water, I was able to put the experience into words.

“I am just a black dot on a blank page.” These were the words that most resonated with my experience. Never before had I thought to compare myself to a lonely dot. In past seasons, I might have drawn myself as a dot with a circle around me. Between me and the circle was the fullness of life, vitality of people, and joyfulness of hope. Good things were in the closed circle. They embraced me, like the life raft I did not know I was embracing. In contrast, when I look at this black dot as a stand-in for Lisa, Lisa looks all alone in the world. Somehow, currents took me out to the deep where no one swims and few boats pass.

What remains when you no longer have your circle of belonging and comforts? You have God. I knew that within the space of that blank canvas, surrounding the black dot, the white space was God. But, if you consider the image, God looks like nothing–the absence of anything. You might say that, thus far, I knew God as a circle of good surrounding me and suddenly God was without shape, just the air around me. It was painful.

In the inky black sea, God is all-surrounding. God is in the nothing and God is the nothing. God is that empty white space on the page or that silent dark sky over the water. It reminds me of Genesis 1:2, “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Before a single bit of creation was created, God was in the nothing. This means God was the nothing. I know, that does not quite sound right.

It is not that God is in essence nothing. But God is not everything in the way we think of everything. Everything is just a tiny reflection of the fullness of God. Everything put together is still only a mere reflection. We cannot visualize this because before eyes were created and before there was any creation to lay eyes on, there was just God. No wonder the best image I can conjure is a black dot on an empty page. It takes a new mindset to settle into the nothing, and know it as the surrounding presence of God.

It reminds me of a float therapy session I was gifted where I learned to lie completely still in a dark, contained space and trust salty water to buoy me. The idea behind this “therapy” method is to create an environment for relaxation without stimulation. After my session, the woman at the front desk told me, “It takes multiple sessions to get used to.” I don’t think so! It turns out the absence of all stimulation while contained is…terrifying and not particularly relaxing! The experience of trusting God’s presence in the absence of all other stimuli is similar.

God’s created content populates the earth and stimulates our senses everyday so we can see God. As examples, we see God in the flowers, the sun, the variety of fish and birds, crashing waves, and the faces of our loved ones. We understand that no created being or thing is God. However, these things translate the “nothingness” of God into concrete objects for our senses to experience, even if these experiences are just a slice of God’s creativity. It is too much for our brains to understand that before any of it was there, God was. God is eternal, not created, and, therefore, original. There, in the nothing, was nothing but God.

I am in the process of reprogramming my brain and body to receive God this way. I know Jesus’s take on earthly blessings is that they do not define our favor with God. But, I realize, in practice, I still expect a short list of specific blessings to experience God. If you take away my list of what feels essential for my sense of well-being, I experience what feels like emptiness, not divine presence. Because I have transferred my understanding of goodness on to things that God gives and not onto God’s presence alone, I struggle. I have had to learn in deepening ways that God’s everything is, in a sense, best reflected in the nothing.

Jesus hints at this all throughout the gospels. Material stuff is not bad, but it is not the goal. Fasting is a related spiritual practice. Through it, deprivation from food can become closeness to God in a counterintuitive way. I do not mean that suffering and deprivation are holier than enjoyment and fulfillment. After all, God’s word uses the banquet table feast as a frequent metaphor for the kingdom. I mean that our deepest enjoyment and fulfillment are in God, not the things God created. However, it initially feels like starvation and death to be deprived of our creaturely needs. It requires rewiring our brains, body, and spirit to accept a reality of God’s existence and presence surpassing anything else.

In The Critical Journey, Hagberg and Guelph describe a stage and process on the faith journey called “The Wall.” Here, a person is moving from experiencing God in the everything, to wrestling with God in the nothing. It may not be that the person has nothing like Job, but the person feels a nothingness. It is a place of prolonged struggle and silence from God. What looks like the end of all we have known, potentially even the end of our relationship with God, is, actually, a place of depth and transformation.

The Wall comes after a life of action and activity for God brings us to a place where what we have done and known no longer works for new challenges. Our paradigm is beginning to shift because The Wall spurs us from an outward to an inward journey or our inward journey spurs us toward The Wall. Pete Scazzero, author of Emotionally Healthy Spirituality says that most Evangelicals do not make it through The Wall because of the limitations within our image of God. We are very comfortable with the God of VBS, devotions, and small groups, but it is very hard to grasp the God of suffering, silence, and nothing. When you slow down from all the frantic activity of ministry, the challenge is to know God apart from all of our constructs.

The irony of The Wall is that you feel like you are losing your faith, but you are journeying deeper. Learning about “The Wall” has helped me walk beside others, knowing that what looks like a spiritual stall-out has the potential to be their deepest spiritual wrestling thus far, as long as they stay engaged with God (however that looks). It is a sign of spiritual maturity and growth on the lifelong journey. It looks like we might be losing our bearings, but we are losing our training wheels. With patience and perseverance, we are actually drawing closer to God and learning to ride free.

We become like teenagers who want to slam the door in God’s face. God welcomes us to do this like our mothers who knew their presence brought safety during our struggles of adolescence. The process looks chaotic and feels fraught, but an adolescent is not hopeless. A transformation into maturity is taking place. We have to wait with one another, patiently, to make it to the other side. In time, we can go back to serving and doing things for God with a deeper understanding about ourselves and God. First, intense transformations require space and time.

God as “nothing,” it is not about striving for asceticism. It is not necessarily holier to have nothing than to have God’s tangible blessings. Nothingness is not the ultimate reality. God is reality. With Religious Studies as one of my undergraduate majors, I spent a lot of my coursework studying Eastern religions and pondering them as a Christian. The Buddhist pursuit to know nothing as the true reality has a hint of truth. You do know the truest reality when the circle around the dot is taken away. But from the Christian perspective, what you find there is our eternal God–in the beginning, before creation, and in creation. Union with God, made possible for us through Christ, is the truest reality we can experience.

Sometimes in the Christian life, you will know God through the beauty around you coupled with a sense of deep joy and contentment in your soul. Other times, you will learn and see that when all of that is gone, you are okay. You are safe in deep waters with no sight of the shore because you are with the One who Hovers over the Deep. This is the truest reality to which everything points. We tend to miss the forest for the trees. We miss Christ for the bread. We miss God the Father for the good gifts he gives. We miss the Spirit for the miracle. We miss God in the nothing.
Transplant Shock and Waiting to Bloom

April 9th, 2024

It was two springs ago that I brought home a gardenia tree aglow with bright, white, fragrant buds. It was gorgeous. The occasion was to celebrate the end of a long season, punctuated by breakthroughs and new beginnings. My intent was to look at it every spring when it bloomed as a reminder of God’s faithfulness and goodness.

In a matter of days, it shriveled up completely. Every flower, and eventually every leaf, died. I called the nursery to ask what happened and they told me, “It’s either dead or it’s in transplant shock. You won’t know which one until next year, but just keep treating it like it’s alive and you’ll see.”

It was at that moment that transplant shock became my go-to metaphor for everyone and everything in the post-pandemic world, including myself.

This gardenia has a prime spot on our patio in a large decorative pot. Though I was committed to seeing out its destiny, when it became too ugly to justify its occupancy, I pruned every last wilted leaf and brown flower from the tree in an attempt to eliminate the worst blight. The next month, while preparing the patio for a party, my husband suggested we might want to toss the tree. I told him it might not be dead. He looked incredulous. I understood his skepticism. There was nothing about it that connoted a potential for a comeback.

The next week it developed one small green shoot coming out of an otherwise dry branch.

As the months passed, I impatiently and intently studied every green shoot that arrived on my prophetic little transplant-shocked tree and treated them like an answered prayer. It was a visible example of slow growth and the faith to believe something was happening in the soil and roots.

One day, I realized the best, new growth was coming from the neck of the tree and that it was time to prune all the old branches back to the trunk. This was hard. It was not pretty as it was, but at least it was in a shape reminiscent of its initial beauty. Unready to commit to such a drastic action, I pruned everything except for one branch which contained the last remaining evidence of the tree’s original vitality. I was foolishly romanticizing that the new growth and the old branch could somehow meet up and create a pleasant shape.

Months later, I looked at the tree. It had a healthy amount of new foliage at the neck and that stupid-looking singular branch jutting out from its side. I needed to prune the whole branch if I wanted to support the new growth. With equal part reluctance and faith, I took a gardening sheer to it and let it go. There stood an unimpressive and awkward, albeit healthy, tree. It resembled a drawing a first grader might create of a stickman with hair coming straight out of the stick body. No head. No arms. It was nothing like the beautiful, fragrant full-sized topiary I had brought home from the nursery more than a year before.

Stickman lingered and activated my impatience, causing me to study the tree less frequently until, eventually, spring returned. One year after I brought it home, thankfully, it was no longer just a body and a neck; the branches had regrown. Upon the branches, new green leaves made an appearance with renewed vitality. I was content to know we were moving in a positive trajectory. However, I was disappointed that no single bud of flower appeared.

It would be a flowerless spring. Branches and leaves would have to suffice.

I held my breath as winter turned to spring, knowing another year had passed. This month, I look out the doorway and, at first glance, the tree looks about the same as a year ago. Not bad, but will there ever be flowers again?

One sunny day, in between gloomy days, I half-heartedly fertilized it. There was no need to water it as strange, wet weather patterns continue to unfold in Southern California–atmospheric rivers, flash floods, and snow-topped mountains reappearing on Easter. If the sun wishes to come out long enough to warm the tree before the heat of summer, it has the potential to be beautiful and fragrant again. It could thrive.

The other day, from my dining chair, I noticed new, light-green sprouts emerging from darker green leaves. Fertilizer, water, and heat are working and invite me to hope and watch with regularity. Now a part of my morning ritual, just as sure as my cup of coffee, I step outside onto the cold, wet patio to look. Just shy of two years since the transplant shock that resulted in apparent death and definite dormancy, I am fully engaged with renewed hope in the plight of my little tree.

This year, tucked within the light-green growth, 16 blooms are waiting to open.

Waiting, waiting, every day.

And one day, when I step downstairs to brew a cup of coffee, at least one fragrant, white bud will be waiting for me.
We Do Not Have to Accept Death

April 4th, 2024

Last night, a group of people came together to worship God and pray for the things that burden us in our families. We set the table and the Lord prepared a feast.

Beginning with worship, we came to the Lord as we are–broken, hurting, weary. We invited God to take us wherever God wanted and remembered that there is no shortage of the Spirit to rain down on us.

Joy opened us with a powerful confession and repentance time. “We want fire, but we do not want to repent.” In humble contrition, she confessed her own sins so that we all could come openly before God. She reminded us that we are often concerned about our family members without looking at our own sinful hearts.

We looked at the death of Lazarus, the disappointment of Mary and Martha about Jesus’ delay, and the hope they placed in a future resurrection. Meanwhile, Jesus was ready to display his Resurrection identity and power as a disruption to death. He asked them to open the tomb and then declared in a loud voice for Lazarus to come out, and the once decaying Lazarus became a living, breathing, risen man who walked right out of a grave. Jesus then asked them to finish the work and cut off the grave clothes.

Jesus was devastatingly sad about his friend’s death, and he wept. But he did not weep because he was accepting death. He wept because death is wrong. It goes against everything God is and his personal assignment was to reverse it. Because of Christ’s obedience, the things we see as final and irreversible are, in fact, reversible with God. Resurrection changes everything. Jesus demonstrates the glory of God right out of the smelly tomb of death and decay. There is nothing in our lives that his resurrection power cannot transform.

So we turned to God to pray for our families and to “cut off the grave clothes” with one another. We proclaimed and declared the resurrection power of Jesus in the dark, foul, rotting places. It takes courage and risk to remove the stone.

Prayers were prayed for our families as we remembered the power of praying parents and grandparents in our family lines and as we canceled the assignments of the enemy to bring curses instead of blessings.

We blessed one another singing, “May his favor be upon you, and a thousand generations. And your family and your children and their children and their children.” One grandfather blessed grandparents to go and see their most important task as discipling their grandchildren to know Jesus. Pastors caring for families and youth reminded us that our prayers matter. The power of a praying mother and father is real. Christy proclaimed, “We do not have to accept death!” We have been given authority from God and Christ’s blood to pray life for our families and stand against the plans of the enemy. We have not been left defenseless here. Resurrection requires death, but death does not define us.

As the evening drew to a close, there was an opportunity to come forward for healing prayer. Jesus came for the sick, not the healthy, the sinner, not the righteous. We came to the living water for prayer and healing.

This evening was an offering to God. The “golden thread” observed was that God wants to heal us from the trauma that impacts us as the intergenerational family of God. There is healing and power in the name of Jesus. Thanks be to God.

Photo: The cemetery in the town of my maternal grandmother’s ancestry, Agnone, Italy
Nearly Naked and Trying Not to Be Afraid

February 9th, 2024

Have you ever studied a scripture that you could not get out of your head? One that became so clear and so pressing that you had to go on and obey it no matter how inconvenient and abnormal it seemed. I like to think those who follow Jesus are always trying to obey the scriptures, but at certain times, there are invitations that grab ahold of us and just will not let go.

This happened to me a couple of years ago when I noticed, in a new way, Jesus’ radical requirements for sending out his disciples on mission in Mark 6:8-9, “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra shirt.” Familiar words. A simple reading allows us to have a basic understanding. They were supposed to rely on others and God, resisting self-reliance.

Profound as it is, this observation might normally manifest in something like a self-check. Am I growing in relying on God and others? Am I too reliant on myself? But this bothered me. I began to realize that I wanted to experience the power and authority that the disciples exercise. Not because I wanted to be powerful, but because the world needs supernatural help–to cast out demons, heal the sick, and receive the good news in the authority of Jesus’ name. I have been told that all believers have Christ’s authority during many sermons and Sunday school lessons. Yet, quite honestly, my ministry hardly resembles that of the disciples. I work through all the vulnerable and dependent parts of ministry and get them out of the way during my fundraising and personal prayer times so I can arrive ready with my skills, my tools, and the authority of my employer. I bring my PCard. I do some good. But I hardly feel like the authentic expression of the power of Jesus on campus or in the world when I do that.

Why? This elicited in me a deep desire and curiosity. Is this a mindset issue? Or something else?

When I read the words of Jesus in Mark I understand that the power and authority of the cosmic God is passed from Jesus to his disciples. That is dangerous. It was dangerous enough when incarnated into Christ and now in Mark 6, he’s giving it to sinful, scruffy humans? How on earth can this be so?

I condense this phenomenon down to two key words. Jesus sends out his disciples in vulnerable dependence.

They are in danger among the elements (no extra clothing), in need of provision, and risk rejection. They are depending on the power of God and the hospitality of others while dressed like shepherds with just a staff. (This uniform cannot be accidental).

I simplify this picture to myself with my two-word refrain.

vul·ner·a·ble, adj, susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm

de·pend·ence, noun, the state of relying on or being controlled by someone or something else

Putting the two together, Jesus asks his disciples to go out on a trip into strange towns and homes susceptible to harm and relying on, even being controlled by, someone else. In this case, they were relying on strangers and the power and authority of Christ in them.

The shepherds, sent out in the name of Jesus, are also the sheep, lovingly protected and controlled by the staff of their own Shepherd amidst the dangers of the journey.

How terrifying and how beautiful.

Perhaps this sounds crazy and unappealing, but then we have to consider the brilliant quality controls within this model. God’s antidote to human corruption of power is to require that his colossal power and authority, when entrusted to humans, come in a vulnerable package, dependent on others. First a baby, then a crucified carpenter, and, finally, disciples with just a staff and the clothes on their back.

But do we take this seriously? It is no wonder that so many efforts in ministry now have abuses of power and authority connected. How often do we come to preach the gospel in authority given to us by someone other than God and in our self-reliance instead of in the vulnerable dependence Jesus laid out for the disciples? (And we insist upon some fruitful measure of success that neither Jesus in Mark 6:5 nor his disciples in 6:11 are expected to obtain).

And so I obeyed. I undressed. I left my PCard, my email address, my title, and my monthly ministry expenses behind. Ministry has never been comfortable, but I decided to surrender the comforts I had acquired along the journey. My success. My reputation. My significance.

I was worried about who I would become if I kept going with power and the extra tunic. I longed for the kind of pure power and authority that can only come from God, unblemished to heal the world. Because who am I to try to insist that I have Christ’s authority while tucking money in my belt under my overcoat?

It has been a little more than a year. I’m still lightly clothed, vulnerable, and exposed and it’s the hardest thing I have ever done.

Yet, I trust that this journey of decreasing visible treasure is also increasing something invisible, powerful and eternal.

Photo: Oxford, England

September 2022
Standing in Prayer for the Generations

October 29th, 2023

Lord Jesus, we thank you that your promises are for generation to generation and, in Christ Jesus, all your promises are “yes” and “Amen.”

So there is no promise that you will fail to fulfill on behalf of the generations in your Church, on behalf of the generations at this church, on behalf of our children.

Lord, I think about how many times in scripture those promises seemed to be in jeopardy and humankind tried to take them into our own hands. Each and every time, you showed us that YOU are the one who fulfills promises. So I thank you Lord that you fulfill your promises to every generation.

And I thank you that when things look dead or dying, you are the one who called Lazarus out of the tomb. So with anything that looks dead or dying in your church, in the next generation, in our homes, marriages, or children, Lord, you say, “Come out of the tomb!” And so we pray for revival in every generation.

When we come to the communion table we remember that we are one family across all the generations. We think about Timothy who was reminded by Paul that his faith came from his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice and was now in him. You called him to fan into flame the gift of God that was in him through the laying on of hands. We know that you have gifted our children through the heritages of their faith and we pray that you would fan into flame their gifts and that they would teach us and lead us. And we pray that our worship together will bless your kingdom, the nations, and the generations.

Prayer above (slightly adapted), originally prayed October 2, 2022 in Pasadena, CA
The Women Will Lead Us with Their Tears

October 26th, 2023

I remember where I was sitting in a meeting room at the camp and conference center outside San Antonio. It was spring 2019 and I had just heard the testimony of my colleague, Kathy, after a hard year of what she called the “decimation” of her staff team. She was trusting God in a mode of slow, intentional dependence. Preceding that were words from my colleague, Anna. She was reminding all of us in the room that Jesus says the death of the kernel of wheat is what produces many more seeds.

We were discussing revival, longing for it, planning for it, wondering for it and I was bought in. I had been living in a theme of abundance and revival seemed like the natural next step.

And just as I was sitting there listening to these testimonies, the Holy Spirit hit me, out of the blue, with a clear impression in the form of a simple sentence.

“The women will lead us with their tears.”

This impression connected to the sharing of my colleagues and rang true because it was near Easter. In the Bible story, it was the women whose tears led them to show up graveside at dawn. In so doing, they were the first to meet the resurrected Jesus and thus became the leaders in spreading the news to the rest of the disciples about the risen Lord.

Over the last five years, I have continued to ponder and track this theme. How would tears lead us to revival? I didn’t expect to become a woman of tears myself, but in the last two years, I found tears to be a frequent companion. Most recently, I took a leap of faith off a cliff that lead me straight to what felt like a confirmed death. It didn’t even provide solace to have a premonition back in March when, alongside my spiritual director, we had a clear sense that I would die before this process of my career redirection came to completion. When it happened, I was still in shock and so was she. I thought I had died enough in the process of waiting and emptying myself, but evidently there was more dying to do. And with death and the process of death, come immense tears.

How strange this post must read to those outside the Christian faith. Why would tears and death pave the way to something good and holy? The only way to understand is to know and cling to the path of Jesus who went to the cross. His death made way for resurrection, glory, and multiplicative transformations in the world. He was the kernel of wheat that died and produced many more seeds. In mysterious and profound ways, he invites us to take this same path with him and promises to do the same for us.

When you hear the word revival, you may think of a big group of people in an exuberant state of being with massive ministry and church growth. In fact, when we hear the word revival we should be thinking of dead bones that need the Spirit’s breath. If you feel like you may be dying in tears and crushing, you may very well be poised for reviving.

Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. – John 12:24-25

I have suspicions that in this season God is doing something through the suffering of women to prepare us to be the forerunners of revival. We are the caretakers who feel the pain of the splitting and fractured world, especially as mothers to children.

Take heart. The place of your deepest pain and burden, the space where you feel you may have been exterminated, is the soil from which the seeds of new life will sprout.

Esteemed women colleagues Virginia, 2017
Beauty & Horror

September 3rd, 2023

The last few years can only be described as magnificent beauty and dark horror moving hand-in-hand.

I have come close enough to touch the burning fire of glory and I have been held in the cold dark tunnel of evil.

I have seen miracles. I watched goodness line up for takeoff and then saw missiles unleashed in combative schemes for control.

It’s easier to withstand the dance of good and evil if you shut down your senses, choose to be blind, reduce your perception, close your mouth. It’s excruciating to live fully engaged. Firm and loose. Standing your ground and ready to go at a moment’s notice. Active and waiting.

Prayer is the only and perfect posture for this dance, but sometimes you cannot stand anymore. You collapse into exhaustion, succumb to annihilation, and the only option then is to be supernaturally lifted up.

December 2021, Oakhurst, CA –
A place of beauty to enjoy with friends as we healed from horrors

Tag: death

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