The Hula Hoop of Gratitude

Posted last month at Sturdy Answers.com

On cloudy afternoons you can often find me sitting at my kitchen table sipping a cup of tea, my eyes glazed over with daydreams about travel.

I may be imagining a hobbit-style backpacking trip across New Zealand, a picnic on the beaches of Spain, or a motorcycle ride through Chile. And you can be assured that at some point I’m traveling via daydream to the Land of If Only. It’s one of my most frequented destinations.

If only I were making more money.

If only my body looked like it did in college.

If only I were married.

My visits to the Land of If Only leave me dissatisfied with my job, indifferent to the freedom of singleness, and oblivious to the ways my body opens me up to all sorts of pleasure. And yet I keep going back.

And with every trip, I accumulate more stamps in my passport.

— Ingratitude —

— Pride —

— Anxiety —

— Despair —

They’re all I have to show for my travels to the Land of If Only.

The aftermath of my trips isn’t unlike the aftermath of the first human trip to the Land of If Only, back in the Garden of Eden.

You could have more than you do; you could be more than you are, the Serpent hissed over Eve’s shoulder.

And Eve, she was blind to the sight of light dancing through the fragrant fruit trees in front of her. She was deaf to the sound of Adam walking through the garden, humming her a love song his actions had never contradicted. She had forgotten that just that morning she had laughed over a cup of coffee with God.

Instead, she ventured into the Land of If Only, doubtful of God’s goodness and determined that her ideas about what her life should be were better than his. Ingratitude reared its ugly head, pride fed it, and then the two of them wolfed down Adam and Eve's joy. And ever since, we’ve been fighting ingratitude, pride, and their accompanying misery.

My years of inhabiting a sick body have taught me that when I’m traveling the world via daydreams, I had better pack gratitude in my suitcase. Gratitude kills pride and is the key to contentment. It ensures that my imagination won’t take me to the joy-sucking Land of If Only.

And so I am learning the importance of noticing the good gifts of the present, and practicing the spiritual discipline of thanking God for those gifts.

I have found that taking time to play is one of the best ways to learn gratitude for God's goodness.

Every now and then you can find me and a few girlfriends traipsing across the park, hula hoops in hand. My friend Meg is a hula-hooper extraordinaire, so she gives us newbies advice:

“Pay attention to the way the hoop feels as it travels around your waist. With time your body will figure out how to keep it there.”

So I notice.

Around and around it goes.

In front.

To the side.

Behind.

To the side.

Rolling slow and steady, rhythmic.

And then I notice how my chest rises and falls with my breaths,

the water in the hoop sloshes and swirls,

and the light creeps through the trees and lands on my shoulders.

And I feel thankful to be inhabiting this moment in my body.

Several weeks ago a friend and I discovered some caves while hiking. Delighted, we climbed up into crevices and inched across steep ridges. We played in the sand we found in one cave, and sang the Lion King’s “Circle of Life” on a rock platform in another. We became completely absorbed our play, fully engaged in the grace around us.

Our hearts didn’t race with anxiety.

Our minds weren’t preoccupied with worry.

Our bodies weren’t tense with stress.

And as we gloried contentedly in God’s vast playground and the bodies he gave us to explore it, we couldn’t help but feel grateful.

Regular play helps me notice the unparalleled joy of living in my body, in this place, in this moment, rather than fantasizing about the Land of If Only. When I laugh with delight, or feel the fuel of adrenaline, or experience the satisfaction of creativity, I’m mindful of the way God wired me with the capacity to enjoy these things. And so, with ever increasing eagerness, I open my arms wide to God's goodness, knowing that a daily embrace of his generosity is the passport to a life of joy. 

 © by scj

When I Wake Up Hungry

Last night I went to bed craving a bar of swiss chocolate—the kind that's loaded with so much cream it melts in my mouth before I have a chance to chew it. Today I woke up dying for a steaming, frothy latte and a thick slab of pumpkin bread, hot out of the oven.

When I quickly and hungrily climbed out of bed and almost blacked out from the exhaustion of the week I decided it would be nice to take a vacation to Italy where I'd eat loads of fresh bread and butter, heaps of cheesy pasta, and bucketfuls of gelato.

Then I remembered that I'm not allowed to put gluten, sugar, dairy, or caffeine in my body, and I concluded that heaven can't get here soon enough. Because I'll have a new body in heaven, and I'm pretty sure the lattes and chocolate there will be off. the. hook.

So I started dreaming about heaven, where my desires won't ever go unsatisfied, where my Jesus will fully fill all the empty cracks and hollows in my soul. I'm learning that letting my mind drift "further up and further in" to my heaven-home is the loveliest tour an imagination can take— it fertilizes my hope of future glory and helps me to center my heart on the place I belong.

Won't you join me as I muse?

1. I hope Turkish delight in heaven is as exquisite as Edmund thinks it is in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.

When I tasted Turkish Delight for the first time I felt certain someone was playing a joke on me. To think this supposedly smooth, creamy, and divinely sweet Turkish Delight is really just chunky jelly coated in powdered sugar. Heaven will certainly rectify this egregious culinary blunder.

2. Boy but laughter is divine, and I cannot wait to have a deep belly laugh with God. If all of the truest, wholesomest, and rip-roarin' funniest humour is just a shadow of the kind of humor that flows from God's holy character, then we are in for some right good laughs, folks. Especially when you consider that our current belly laughs are facilitated by bellies in fallen bodies. What capacity must a resurrected and perfect body (belly) have for laughing?!

3. Have you ever hiked Half Dome in Yosemite in autumn? It's spectacular. The crisp air is perfumed with traces of summer pine. The mountains rise jagged and majestic on every side, a banner of deepest blue stretched wide behind them. The trail is dotted with fragrant wildflowers, and everywhere there are deciduous trees turning vibrant shades of saffron, amber, crimson, and caramel. Around some bends in the trail there are silvery looking-glass lakes; around others are undulating waterfalls, chortling as they tumble from heights to depths.
If an orchestral symphony could be translated into visual artwork it would look like Yosemite.

Each time I survey this staggering beauty I can't help but remember this land is cursed. This is an imitation of the real thing; it's but a shadow of our heaven-home. Can you imagine what it looked like before the fall of man? I think we will know in heaven. And I hope to find autumn in some corner of heaven. I think its colors and smells are too strong and alive for my senses now, but I sure can't wait

4. Oh how I yearn for the day that I feel really, truly known. In heaven all of my dingy facades and tarnished masks will melt away with sin's soul scars and stains and I will know what it is to stand before my Creator naked, known and loved. And the best part is I will know him fully, even as I am fully known.

What must it be like to hear the voice that spoke the stars into the sky, calls dead men to life, and courses with love say my name....

5. In that same vein, I am so excited to see and really know my dear friends and family in their truest form, uninhibited by fear and unfettered by insecurity; radiant in purity and splendor as they rule and reign with Christ, more themselves they've ever been before. I think I will stand in awe at their beauty.

6. A friend recently shared this by Charles Spurgeon with me: "You may look, and study, and weigh, but Jesus is a greater Savior than you think Him to be when your thoughts are at the greatest."

Now close your eyes and picture his eyes burning love into the darkest corners of your soul, speaking compassion to your withered heart, resurrecting your deepest dreams and desires and then satisfying every yearning you've ever known.

Let your imagination plumb the depths of his goodness and love, and then remember that the Savior is much, much greater than even this. It doesn't matter how far and wide you stretch that imagination of yours, you will never approach his great compassion and loving kindness.

This is the one who fights for you, walks with you, and lives in you. Blessed be his good and holy name.

7. Okay, now it's your turn: what do you hope for in heaven?!

© by scj

When God is the One Writing

I've missed you this last week, Friends. It's been a hard health week for me which always makes it difficult for me to write. But today when God pulled the sun up over the horizon there was healing in its warm light, and I have a bit more energy to share something I discovered this last week and have tucked into the folds of my heart to carry with me through each challenging day.

I found it in the book of John, soon after Jesus rubbed spit and mud in the eyes of a blind man and in two strokes of his hand painted the man's world with light, color, and texture. A couple of chapters later this God-Man, whose fingertips bore unmatchable power, received word from his friends Mary and Martha that their brother Lazarus had fallen desperately sick.

The Gospel writer sets the scene for us: Lazarus's sisters know Jesus of Nazareth loves their failing brother (and won't he do something for him?), and Jesus knows that this story will end well—just you wait and see, he tells his disciples: God will be glorified in all this.

Then, just before the story really picks up, the Gospel writer pauses to tell us something very important:

"Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus."

Yes, yes he did. I nod as I read. This is the first thing I learned about Jesus when I was little tyke in Mrs. Doerschuck's Sunday School class, with her sweet smile, softly curling white hair and singsong voice: "Jesus loves us this we know..."

I go back and read it again.

"Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus."

"So when he heard Lazarus was sick," the Gospel writer continued.

My heart quickens. The English teacher in me knows that the word "So" means "to the great extent that," or, "for this reason." So I know the next words on the tissue-thin page will reveal the sort of thing God does when he loves people a lot—people like us, who need to be reminded of the ways Jesus shows us his love.

I lift my eyes and gaze for a moment at the pink geraniums smiling through my window. The muscles around my spine ache as I sit turning the first few verses of Lazarus's story over and over in my mind, thinking about all of the things that could follow that "So".

 My thoughts move slowly through my foggy mind (has it grown into a forest of cotton?), and I am aware that my limbs have fallen limp and exhausted at my side from the sensation of lead sitting thick and still in them.

My emotions are slumped with my body—a body that almost daily reminds me that it is dying, slowly and quietly.

 I remember realizing as an adolescent that we're all dying; that our bodies consistently deteriorate after childhood and that this is the effect of the Fall of Man. It's just that now it's hard for me to forget about this steady return to dust when my body so often aches and trembles with fatigue.

 And so I daily cry out to God, asking him to sustain and heal me, to keep my body from falling into even more severe illness; and I think, in a very small way, I may understand how Mary and Martha felt and hoped when they asked Jesus to come to Lazarus.

"So when he heard Lazarus was sick he stayed where he was two more days."

Two long days with seconds that passed so slowly the minutes felt like hours, and hours that crawled by slower than lifetimes. Just long enough for Lazarus' body to break and die.

There are tears in my eyes at this point, because this story is not turning out the way it did with the blind man, and I think Jesus shows us his love in ways I wouldn't have chosen.

I keep reading: Jesus makes his way to Martha and Mary's house where he knows Lazarus lies dead, and reminds his disciples along the way of what he'd said when he first heard about Lazarus's illness: "This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory....that you may believe."

I know the rest of the story well. Martha runs to meet Jesus as he nears their house, lamenting his late arrival. He promises her Lazarus will rise, and this Jewish woman remembers aloud another promise: the promise of resurrection at the last day.

 I think Jesus must have tipped her downcast, tear-stained face up toward his when he replied, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die."

I think Martha's heart must have quaked and soared.

Together, Jesus walks with Martha into the village where they find Mary grieving among friends and family. Jesus looks at their heaving shoulders and contorted faces, hears their gutteral wails, and is deeply moved.

Even in the face of his transcendent plan to use Lazarus' sickness and death for God's glory, he enters their pain and weeps with them over their dead friend, Lazarus.

 Then he walks to the tomb and calls for Lazarus, telling him to come out into the arms of his sisters and friends. And Lazarus emerges from the tomb's darkened doorway, tearing off his grave cloths as his blinking eyes adjust to the piercing light.

And the resplendence of God's glory fills that brilliant light, and many of the people around Lazarus believed.  

My soul swells and sighs as I look up from my Bible and I know that I want God's glory to radiate from my weakness so that I and others might believe in his power, goodness, and unmatchable love in order that we might have life.

I also know that this is what God will give me. He is writing more of his glory and goodness into my story than I could ever write myself, and although the story he pens may look very different from the story I'd pen, he writes it this way because he loves me.

And so I try to see my story through his eyes, remembering that he is the God of Resurrection who douses our pain with his life-giving glory.

I thoughtfully close my Bible, set it on my cluttered kitchen table, and walk over to the sink where I begin to slowly wash my dishes, murmuring as I lather,

"Now Jesus loved Sarah Christine. So he allowed her a long season of illness...."

And I ask him to make sure that the story ends in his glory, even if it ends in sickness, because his glory is our greatest good.

How might your story change if you told it this way?

Grace Covers This, Too

I just forced down two muffins that were free of gluten, sugar, and dairy. They were also free of flavor even remotely palatable.

Back in my sugar-indulging, cracker-loving days I wouldn't have expected "health nut" muffins like these to taste any better than cardboard, but these days I know better. I know because I have a mom whose ability to whip up tasty concoctions with bizarre ingredients knows no bounds. I know because I've had some minor culinary successes on this journey toward restored health.

Somehow, though, these muffins didn't make the cut (did I accidentally pour strychnine in the batter?). And as I stared down at the ten remaining crispy and deceivingly enticing muffin tops, I wondered how in the world I would manage to eat them all.

Not eating them was an appealing option for about .0789 seconds, until I started calculating what it cost to make them. Six dollars for the pecans, $1 for the gluten-free flour, $1 for the gluten-free oats, $3 for the raw honey, and on and on, until my bank account had taken quite a hit and my shoulders sagged with guilt at the thought of the extravagant waste I'd indulge in by...not eating them.

The day is almost over now. I haven't touched the fluffy taste bud offenders and my shoulders are still sagging with my guilt-laden spirit, and this is not the first time I can't scrape guilt's sticky residue out of the pit of my stomach.

Just the other day guilt paid me a visit when I broke a gorgeous goblet while trying to carefully wash dishes, found an opened can of moldy refried beans at the back of the refrigerator (all my tupperware were otherwise engaged!), forgot to water my flowers, and went three days without washing dishes.

Guilt's frequent assaults have made me realize that, although I easily admit my frail humanity when discussing sin's iron grip, I leave little room for error in my daily, apparently innocuous activities. I forget that I am human—just human—in a fallen world where the slippery soap that makes dirty things shine can also make you drop beautiful goblets; where fridges aren't magic wardrobes—they have backs, and beans often like to chill there behind the bigger, more attention-worthy items; where things that are out of sight often become out of mind, especially when it's 100 degrees outside and all that matters is keeping cool; and where sickness wreaks havoc on weak bodies, making it hard to roll out of bed some mornings, much less do the dishes at night.

I am a fallen human, *Sigh*, in a fallen world, and sometimes I mess up expensive muffins. I wish I were okay with that. I wish I were better at giving myself permission to just be human; that my heart believed my head when it tells me these foibles are expected and trivial, and there is grace sufficient to cover them.

My battle with chronic illness this year is slowly teaching me the sufficiency of God's grace in dark, sometimes desperate seasons. When I struggle to get out bed, cook dinner, and carry on a long conversation; when I wake up to a new ailment or the doctor finds another worn down organ, and when all I want to do is hike a mountain or hit the weights, I try to invite God into that moment, to teach me the sufficiency of his grace.

And he is teaching me. My experience is confirming something the Bible told me long ago: that his grace knows no bounds. It covers my sin and my frail body. It is the thing that sustains my organs and nourishes my soul. It gently shows me the ways I can grow, and assures me that I'm loved in my weakness.

And so I wonder why I don't invite God to show me the sufficiency of his grace when I ruin muffin batter and waste half a can of beans. For surely, if his grace forgives my sin and sustains me in my illness, it can free me from the burden of trying to be a flawless baker, gardener, finance manager, and dish-washer. Surely grace can teach me, slowly slowly, that Jesus died for the law-breakers and the recipe-destroyers—he died for fallen humans, and he's not under the delusion that we're anything else.

There is no guilt under this human-loving grace, and so I'm learning not to compartmentalize grace by living as if it only covered my sin (and I still struggle to believe this). I want to ask God to teach me the sufficiency of his grace when I'm late to work, bounce a check, neglect my chores, waste perfectly good beans, and mess up really expensive muffins. And I think Grace likes being invited into the little things.

This Is How We Know

One night last October I slowly moved through my pre-bedtime routine feeling lonely and discouraged. After months of enjoying spiritual refreshment and encouragement, it felt as if busyness, change, and health problems had dried up my insides, leaving them shriveled and brittle.

Anxious to shrug off my despondent thoughts, my mind searched for something to uplift my laden spirit.

I immediately thought of my fiancé, who had blended me blueberry smoothies almost every day we'd seen each other since the onset of my illness five weeks earlier. “An anti-oxidant blast,” he’d say. “We’re going to blast this virus out of your system.”

I felt my soul swell with gratitude for this relationship, this gift from almighty God, and sighed with satisfaction as I asked him, “Why me, Lord? Of all the people in the world, why did you give me this man?”

“Because I want you to know how much I love you.”

His words startled me; I wasn’t expecting him to answer. But his voice like raging waters filled my parched soul.

Almost a year later I am single. The tan line from my engagement ring has faded, but the hopes I had last October—for a life companion and family of my own—have not. I meet them around every bend in the road and see them dance by in every flickering shadow. I feel their poignant prick at my heart daily, sometimes sharp and fierce like a knife plunged into my flesh.

The answer God gave me last October hasn't faded from my heart either.

“Because I want you to know how much I love you.”

I feel his words burn hot like embers, and then I count my recent losses. And as I count I know that God, in his goodness, shows us his love just as much by giving as by taking away. But I can't help but wonder exactly what I mean when I say that there is goodness in the taking.

A few months ago, while bed-ridden and discouraged by my chronic illness, I called the phone number on the back of my computer's external hard drive hoping some techy somewhere could help me set it up. My call was routed to the Dominican Republic where I was helped by a patient Haitian man.

While he and I waited for something to download on my computer I asked him a bit about his life. He described his family, his church, and the day he gave his life to Jesus Christ. Then he told me about the day of the earthquake.

He said he had a nine-year-old little girl who loved Jesus. He said she was full of life but her life was short.

He recounted pulling her limp, cold body out of the earthquake wreckage, and then holding her tiny frame high in the air, his face turned toward the sky as he said, “God is sovereign; he is good; and I will still praise him.”

Like Father Abraham, holding his son up to the altar, this seed of the nations a sacrifice to a good God.

A good God who gives and takes; who gives knowing he will take.

A good God who sometimes, after the taking, gives back: A heaving sigh of relief; tears washed in with laughter; a cry of thanksgiving for a good provision.

But what about when God doesn't return what he's taken?

What can we say of his goodness then?

In my house, whenever we're enjoying particularly fine fare—a bar of swiss chocolate, fresh peach cobbler, a plate of homemade krumkake—my dad is known to pause between bites, food in hand, and say, "Now that is good. That is really good." We always chuckle, and maybe even pass him the rest of the treat, because we know what he means is that whatever he's eating is satisfying and desirable and he'll probably want more.

This is how I have understood goodness.

It is pleasing and welcome.

It doesn’t sear sorrow into our hearts of flesh.

When it became clear that I would need to call off my imminent wedding, my epistemology—or way of knowing what is good and true—was rocked. I found myself wondering how in the world I could know anything with confidence.

I had been so certain God wanted me to date and eventually get engaged to this man. I had recognized his voice, assuring me the budding relationship was his idea. Then I had sensed his leading toward the altar—I had even seen him open doors to provide for our upcoming wedding.

Hadn’t I followed Jesus close enough for long enough to recognize his leading when I saw it? Hadn’t godly friends and even acquaintances marveled at our love story, and blessed our engagement and deemed it God's gracious provision?

I had been so confident; could I have been wrong?

I must have been blinded by emotion, I concluded, reeling from the pain and confusion of the break-up. My hopes and desires must have clouded my thinking, making me believe I had heard God's voice and sensed his leading. Maybe the peace I had was nothing more than the byproduct of hope colliding against hope.

Weeks passed and my doubts snowballed. I revisited old memories, traversing my history to reevaluate every time I thought I had sensed God's direction. What had it felt like? Looked like? On what basis did I ever feel confident I had correctly sensed God's leading?

I felt like I was teetering on the edge of a precipice, about to plummet from my previously sturdy and reliable epistemology into the murky marshes of "not knowing."

Then I had an epiphany.

I realized my problem wasn't my epistemology; it was my assumptions.

I had assumed that God’s goodness wouldn’t allow him to clearly and intentionally guide me to a place of loss and sorrow; that if my life bled into sorrowful shades of gray it was my fault, or the Enemy’s.

In short, I had thought I understood God’s goodness, and had believed that if I held my idea of goodness up to God’s, the two would match.

But when my ring-less hands shakily raised my glowing idea of goodness and placed it alongside God’s, I saw that his Goodness was completely and utterly “other.”

There was no comparison between his and mine.

It was as if I held up a candle to the sunset,

A single note to an orchestral symphony,

A paper doll to a man of flesh.

It was unlike anything my wild imagination could create.

It was the kind of Goodness that smears spit and mud in a man’s eyes to give him eyes that see and heart that lives,

And lets a dear friend Lazarus die young so that he can breathe new life into his rotting body.

A Goodness Who once allowed flippant soldiers to twist nails into the flesh of his only Son so that he could remove the sin twisted into our decaying flesh.

A Goodness who is less concerned about giving us lives we think are good, and instead pours out grace that awakens us to his Goodness.

A Goodness who knows that His glory is our greatest good.

A Goodness that is “other”;

Distinct; Set Apart; Holy.

This goodness that is other has changed the timbre of my days. Now, when deep sadness stirs in my spirit it is accompanied by an unwavering confidence that this sorrowful journey was God’s idea. In his great and holy goodness he gave so that he could take away.  

And he took away so that he could give back. He always gives when he takes, but he gives something “other.”

He dashes hopes so that he can give us a Hope that is stronger than the grave.

He pushes us into valleys of weakness so he can give us his power that sculpted the mountains.

He leads us into deserts of desolation so he can breath Divine consolation into our withered souls.

He removes the Hell from our hearts so he can give us a new Eden.

Because his goodness is not concerned with making bad people good, but dead people alive,

And He is a God whose goodness would make us “other”;

Distinct; set apart; holy.

This week two years ago I toasted to God's goodness with my roommates at the beach. This week one year ago my former fiance and I toasted to God's goodness in the park on our engagement day. Both times I was thanking God for the flickering candle-sized vision of goodness I thought lay in store.

I never dreamed he'd give me a sunset.

This sunset, in all its glory, has temporarily disoriented, burned, and blinded me, and I think this is the nature of holiness. God's holy goodness is not something frail eyes can behold and a dying heart can comprehend. That's why the Apostles Paul and John fell to the ground as though dead when they saw the risen Jesus face to face on the Road to Damascus and the Island of Patmos. But this risen Jesus wants to give us more of his holy and good self because he is our Greatest Good, and so he must give us eyes that can behold his loving face and a heart that lives in him.

But first he must remove our vision of the good life so he can give us his eternal, perfect vision; he must sear the scales off our candle-accustomed eyes and burn the black sin out of our fading hearts. He must make us the kind of creatures whose sturdy souls can delight in his holy goodness. And as he works, our clearing eyes will gradually see and be captivated by the golden light that creeps westward on the enflamed horizon; this radiant light a reminder to our changing hearts that one day we will see a Good and Holy God face to face, and he wants us to be ready for that day. And so he gives, and he takes, and he gives back more than he's taken: he makes us holy.

And this is how we know how much he loves us.

© by scj