Destination Discipline

I’ve never felt comfortable in my own skin. My hips are too wide, but not wide enough to deliver a baby (I’ve had 3 c-sections). My belly is too saggy. My brain gets foggy at times and I’m frequently temperamental. And all my life I’ve felt as if I don’t really fit in anywhere. But somehow, I knew the love of God was bigger than all my flaws. My body is just the temporal habitation for a soul that is traveling to a greater plane of existence. But in the interim, this world can be an awfully painful and lonely place.

“I feel broken. The only thing that makes me feel good is not pretending otherwise.” – Rich Mullins

Rich Mullins

I’ve just finished watching Ragamuffin, the Rich Mullins story. His music has moved me in recent years, though I never heard any of it when he was alive. His cd, “Songs” has been on replay in my car for a few months and I never seem to get tired of hearing buffalo hooves resound early in the morning on my way to work. Not that there are actual buffalo hooves on the album, but I can almost feel them when he sings about them. But there is another one of the turns of phrase he uses never ceases to move me to tears.

 “There’s people been friendly, but they’d never be your friend. Sometimes this has bent me to the ground.” – Rich Mullins, Elijah

The thing is, I stopped trusting church people a few years back. And lately when I go to church, and people are friendly, I think, “These people may be nice, but they are not my friends.” They have never invited me to their house, or called me, or cared one whit for me really. I don’t hold it against them. I haven’t invited them either. Part of that is fear. Another part is that sometimes I’m in so much emotional pain as I deal with my difficult life that I just don’t have capacity for anything else. There was a time in my life I spent a lot of time in house churches and in relationships with church people. And I am sad that I’ve given up on the church. I don’t think that’s right. And I want to keep trying.

Today is Sunday and I had the argument with myself again. Do I try to go one more time or do I just give up and stay at home? So, I went to the park and ran 7 miles around the lake and listened to one of my favorite (dead) pastors preach. Martin Lloyd Jones. He’s done a lot for my soul and I’m grateful his sermons were recorded for lay people like me. And then, I sucked it up and took my granddaughter to church.

It never stops being painful that my husband won’t go with me. And now, my 15-year-old won’t go either. And he gives me all kinds of lip when I ask him to. So, I drive there feeling yet again that ache in my heart that I don’t really fit at this church I’ve been attending, where most of the people have spouses and children and there’s me, the misfit.

It was Palm Sunday after all. And it seemed right to be in church, no matter how wrong it felt.

I guess that is why I found myself weeping while watching Ragamuffin. Rich Mullins gave me words for the brokenness I feel with resounding reassurance of the love God has for me in my brokenness. All of this guilt and shame I feel for sin no one can see, and all of the wrongs I do that bother the people I live with. I get to feeling like I really can’t do anything right. I mean, have you ever felt that way? And then there’s the love of Jesus that’s so much bigger than all that. And He’s just waiting to take me in His arms and remind me that no matter how “wrong” I feel at any given moment, I belong to Him.

There were tears dripping down my chin and I just kept wiping them with the sleeve of my holey t-shirt. And each tear was like a prayer saying, “I accept your love, God. I surrender.”

Because I’m pretty stubborn. And the older I get, the more stubborn I get. Which is why Rich’s lyrics reach me when nothing else does.

“Surrender don’t come natural to me
I’d rather fight You for something I don’t really want
Than to take what you give that I need
And I’ve beat my head against so many walls
Now I’m falling down, I’m falling on my knees” – Rich Mullins – Hold me Jesus

It seems crazy I’ve lost all this weight and I’m living a healthy lifestyle and I’m still rather mixed up inside my head. I honestly thought losing the weight would make me normal. Or at least more like the people around me. And I guess in some ways it does. I can have a conversation about exercise and eating healthy foods with the best of them. But then I go home to my disordered eating and I’m so glad nobody can see. Because I’ll always struggle with food addiction. I know that now. But for the love of God, I would go mad. His mercies are new every morning. Great is his faithfulness.

I was running at the park this morning and grieving my life the way I often do when no one can see. When the sadness piles up like a scratchy wool blanket and starts to smother me, I reach for music to help me breathe again. And I heard the most beautiful song by Sarah Groves and just worshipped. And I’ll end there. Because it’s true, He’s always been faithful.

“Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. ” – Ecclesiastes 4:1

Jack Reacher is the kind of dude you want on your side. He is ex-military. He is strong. He is noble. He seeks to protect the helpless. And he’s easy on the eyes. He is reticent to speak, so you don’t have to worry about him saying stupid stuff. And he is well-intended. But the best thing about Jack Reacher is he has a really strong sense of what is righteous and the drive to punish wicked men.

Evil is nothing new, which is why we need heroes. We want a large, buff guy to run to our rescue and bop the bad guys on the head. We want them to give us a hug and tell us everything is going to be alright. Or at the very least, we want a reassuring grunt and a nod after the villain has been tossed over a cliff. But since we don’t live in tv land, we are kind of stuck with local law enforcement. Unfortunately, they can’t be everywhere at once and when they do respond, they don’t light bad guys on fire to punish them for their evil deeds.

Now maybe you are thinking, “I don’t want the police to light bad guys on fire.” Well, maybe you haven’t been seriously wronged lately. This world is filled with some seriously unholy people. Larry Nassar. Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes. We are surrounded with serial sex offenders to the point the police have a database available online so people can be aware and informed. Worse, we have a seriously flawed justice system that lets bad guys go free. I think this is why the character of Jack Reacher is so popular. He takes care of business to ensure bad people meet a timely demise.

We want justice. We want wrongs to be righted. And much of what happens in this world feels wrong. But what if justice is not actually what we seek? What if what we really seek is vengeance?

One of my favorite books in the bible is Ecclesiastes. The Preacher (a king over Israel) wrote things like, “Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” But he also wrote, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to kill, and a time to heal.” It made me wonder what a conversation with Jack Reacher and the Preacher would sound like. I have a feeling much of the conversation would them be nodding in agreement.

Reacher says, “I’m a rich man. To have everything you need is the definition of affluence.”

The Preacher says, “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity.”

Reacher says, “Hit them fast, hit them hard, and hit them a lot.”

The Preacher says, “For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.”

Reacher says, “I know I’m smarter than an armadillo.”

The Preacher says, “The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness.”

Reacher says, “Slippery slope. I carry a spare shirt, pretty soon I’m carrying spare pants. Then I’d need a suitcase. Next thing I know, I’ve got a house and a car and a savings plan and I’m filling out all kinds of forms.”

The Preacher says, “Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind.”

I’m not going to lie. I kind of wish Jack Reacher was real and I knew him. There are guys like him in the real world. They are the Navy Seals and Marines that protect our country and make the world a safer place. But even they are shackled by laws that forbid them to burn bad guys up.

“Then I saw the wicked buried. They used to go in and out of the holy place and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity. Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil. ” – Ecclesiastes 8:10-11

Jack Reacher

While watching Reacher on Amazon Prime, I’ve thought a lot about what justice is. Is justice killing the people who killed your brother? (The plot of ‘Killing Floor’.) Or is justice locking someone up for life where they can’t hurt anyone else? Because as much as I enjoy watching Jack Reacher dole out his version of justice, it doesn’t square with my worldview and feels more like vengeance. The one thing lacking in the story is any kind of accountability from God. The bodies stack up but there is no eternal significance. And in the end, Jack Reacher is just a (self-proclaimed) hobo wandering throughout the world alone. No family to speak of. No home to go to. He doesn’t have a particularly happy ending. (At least not the kind we can write about on this blog.) In the end, the Reacher series inspires within me a thirst for a truly righteous hero who doles out justice without the vengeance afterburn. Namely, I want a satisfying conclusion. Which is probably what made me think of the Preacher in Ecclesiastes.

“Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God, because they fear before him. But it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow, because he does not fear before God.” – Ecclesiastes 8:12-13

Our lives bear the mark of a creator who is both righteous and just. Otherwise, where would we get our sense of righteousness and justice from? Certainly not from the hearts of men who desire evil constantly (and that would be all of us). The Preacher says we do well to ‘fear before God’. More importantly, Jesus said, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matthew 10:28) The most satisfying conclusion in life for me is faith in and through Jesus – the savior of the world. Jesus is the hero who best suits my needs. He imparts his righteousness to me, a flawed and sinful creature. His rule and reign are forever.  His justice is supreme.

Jack Reacher is a ‘comic’ book character with some seriously witty lines, thanks to author Lee Child. The Preacher was a real king who recognized the vanity in life and pointed to the creator as the source of all that is good and wise. In some of his final words, he wrote, “and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” (Ecclesiastes 12:7) I suppose that would be the king’s retort to Reacher, after all. And probably, in light of this, Reacher would have nothing to say.

I was a child who experienced deep grief. I didn’t know that’s what it was. Grief looked like anger, frustration and illness. It was communicated by my parents as, “I’m tired. Go away. Play outside.” I knew my grandmother had been killed in a car accident, but I don’t remember anyone crying. I remember my mother making meals, taking us to the doctor and cleaning the house. She seemed angry a lot. I thought it was my fault and internalized that grief as intense fear and insecurity. I am an adult now and I can appreciate the stress she was under and how hard she worked to hold everything together. I am grateful for her care and her sacrifices. But when I was a little girl, I didn’t understand what was happening and as a result suffered deep and painful emotional wounds.

We spent a lot of time at my Grandpa Swan’s log house. My mother took care of the house and my young aunt and uncle. My father worked on the house itself, repairing the defects of a house not built properly. They say the cold wind blew straight through the cracks in the walls until he fixed them. My dad was Mr. Fixit. I loved my dad. But he never seemed available to spend time with me. He was either working at the airport (to pay our bills) or working on that old log house. I was lonely and sad. I was always looking for something, though I didn’t really know what.

Box turtle (one should never remove a turtle from his native space)

I spent hours wandering the woods on those 40 acres. I hunted for frogs and turtles and salamanders. I wasn’t afraid of snakes or walking sticks. I knew every nook and cranny of that property. The delight of my life was pulling up in our old yellow station wagon. I would make a beeline for the pond – running down the well-worn path on the hill as fast as I could. I would rush to pull up an old piece of metal siding to see if there was a snake or bullfrog underneath. In the summer I wandered through the woods and scooped up peepers–little baby toads. I remember there were hundreds, if not thousands of them. They were wonderful. I was alone, but nature filled my senses.

I remember the evening I stood in the field out in front of the house and looked up at the sky. The clouds were white and fluffy, and the sun was setting behind them in a glorious display of sparkling gold. I knew there was a God who created that beautiful scene, and I loved Him. More importantly, I felt loved by Him in that moment. I felt as if He was looking down on me and telling me that I wasn’t alone.

This is how I characterize my childhood; intense grief swallowed up in illuminating love.

My Grandpa Swan sold the 40 acres and log house the summer after I finished sixth grade. I was devastated. I loved the land, the garden, the outbuildings, and the old pond. And when I say I loved it, I mean that I still dream about that place 37 years later, and I probably always will. It was my second home, and the land was like a second skin.

I suppose I could call it the land that I lost. I was a child and I didn’t understand why my grandpa had to move to California and sell that wonderful place. My aunt Leslie and I loved it so much we went back to visit years later. The owners weren’t home and so we wandered down to the old pond–which looked much smaller. It’s strange how we can grieve a place as much as we grieve a person. In my dreams I am on the front porch or running through the fields or down to the pond. It is as much a part of me today as my current home.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to lose a place that I love. It feels silly to miss a place. After all, it’s the people we love who lived there that really matter. When they are gone, does the place even have any relevance? But my heart would argue the opposite is true. The love of the people is imprinted on my heart as much as the love of the land. My Grandpa Swan’s Garden was so lush. I remember picking sunflower heads and roasting sunflower seeds. I remember the rhubarb plants, the strawberries, the peach tree. The echoes of love still resound in my heart like a symphony. Each memory is a note. So, when I sit down to remember, there is a song thrumming through my soul that is as timeless as the soil itself.

Chopping wood for winter

I am an adult who remembers the wonder of exploring the land. The love of land has never left me. My husband and I purchased 5.5 acres in a small town in Southern Missouri about 13 years ago. We spent many summers there with only a cooler and a couple tents until we were able to get a small loan and build a little cabin. We have cut down trees, hauled wood and even had a well dug (Oh running water! Luxury of luxuries!). We only work on the cabin as we have money so there is much yet to be completed. But my favorite amenity will always be the toilet and the shower. I spent too many days and nights without either.

The past few visits I have done a lot of thinking about what will happen to our little slice of heaven when I’m gone. It was just a plot of woods when we bought it, but we have made it into a home. I have a bird feeder in the front yard and last Fall I planted iris bulbs. I have a little plot of oregano and this Spring I intend to try a few vegetables. I have made many friends of the people who live nearby, and my mind always wanders there when I’m in the city. I wonder if anyone will ever love the land as I have. Will they get as excited as I do when I hunt for mushrooms?

Chanterelles in my woods

The land taught me about chanterelles, chicken of the woods and elkhorns. Will the people who come after me marvel over wild blueberries and wander through blackberry bushes gobbling each berry until their fingers and lips are bright red? Will they rush down into the woods when it starts to rain to watch the little dry creek turn from a gravel ditch into a cornucopia of waterfalls? Or will they use the firepit we lovingly built out of stones from the nearby hills? It was our first architectural marvel, and we were so proud to park our chairs near it and roast hotdogs and marshmallows as if we were kings and queens.

In writing this I realize I’m no longer looking for what I lost in those 40 acres my grandpa sold. I retain my memories and can stroll there any time I like. More importantly, the people I love live there even though they no longer live on earth. My Aunt Melinda and my Aunt Nina are young and beautiful there. My Grandpa Swan is always making jokes and funny faces and the strange silly sounds only he could make. My Cousin Pleasy was there, sitting on the front porch, all smiles and sweetness. And my Uncle Daniel had space for me on the back of his dirt bike and time to ride me around on the trails in the woods. I even remember my Grandma Swan in what must be one of my earliest memories. I was sitting on her lap and I was loved. Love echoes in my memories and no one can snatch them away.

I spend a lot of time walking around the woods on my little plot of land. I know the hole where the groundhog lives, how to avoid the yellow jacket nest in the ground, and where the deer leave their droppings. The mosses and ferns grow near the dry creek beds, and I find joy and wonder in each little bloom of the wildflowers that sprout in the Spring. Most recently I have made new friends in the nuthatches, chickadees and titmice that visit my feeder. I have found so many beautiful creatures there and I continue to awe over how the land always seems to have more to give.

Life will always have seasons of deep grief and loss. One day it feels as if the pain from what we have lost will consume us and joy will never sprout anew. Our tears are like rain washing away everything we loved. But feelings are more transient than the leaves on my trees. They sprout, then grow, and then shrivel, die and fall to the ground. Then the cycle begins again.

Listen. Do you hear it? Spring is so near I can almost smell it. The robins have arrived. They are looking for worms and berries and they are beginning to build their nests. This is the rhythm of nature, the rhythm of life.

I still feel my Father in Heaven looking down on me with love. Sometimes He shines through the clouds in a glorious sunset as He did when I was a child. But most often, He speaks through his Word to remind me that He is sovereign over all creation. More importantly, with Him nothing is ever lost. In Him I find the love that fills my heart with joy and gladness even on the gloomiest of winter days.