The Stripping Away

Last year I turned 40...which is ridiculous, because I'm still 22, 26, 35, 39 and all the other important ages of my adult life. I'm still making silly puns and laughing at life, looking for shapes in the clouds and listening to the evensong of robins. And now there are more and more times when my wide-eyed wonder at the world feels replaced by the gritty exhaustion of mundane reality. The poet in me feels lost and the pragmatist slides into the driver's seat.

As I entered the year I was well aware of forty being a significant number in Scripture... The rains came forty days and forty nights during the Flood. The Israelites were enslaved for forty times ten years in Egypt—then they wandered in the dessert for forty years, awaiting the death of an unfaithful generation before entering the Promised Land. Jesus fasted in the wilderness for forty days at the start of His prophetic time. Forty crops up in so many places—always it comes with challenges and hardships, it involves a stripping away. So, one can imagine my trepidation at turning forty last year. I could tell change was coming... Change is unknown and the unknown is scary. 

There were hard moments that Nick and I shared alone, and some we shared with others. There were some blindsiding moments, like when we found out in a group of people we were expected to move, without anyone telling us personally first. Panic, anger, and betrayal made sleeping flee in a flood of tears. Prayer and some conversations brought order, though we were still unsettled about our next steps. 

And of course, there were lovely moments, too. Times shared with family celebrating my nephew's high school graduation, visiting friends and family for our anniversary, sharing a lot of meals with friends, going on dates, seeing moose in the wild, and cosying up reading aloud together in the chill of snowy days. 

Time for introspection and reflection shrivelled in my fortieth year, giving way to time together as a couple experiencing our first year of marriage. It's been a shift for us both, and sometimes for me it feels like a loss of my inner world and of my very self in ways. I'm being re-made, no longer a single woman but a wife, a vital component in a marriage, yet still a self. It's a process which keeps fluctuating and will change again and again as we develop new habits and patterns together.

After weeks of casual browsing, we abruptly plunged into the loan-approval/house-buying process in the autumn. Talk about challenges and treading the waters of the unknown! But there was an even more life altering part of forty... The firework spark of forty weeks, burgeoning into new life arriving this coming spring. A little wriggling, stretching, prodding lively person, pushing out my tummy skin, smooshing my stomach space, enlarging my heart. My body is no longer my own, an uncomfortable sensation physically (especially now), but emotionally and mentally as well. The freedom and breadth of life are feeling their limits more keenly... 

And yet, a door is opening as I look down the narrow galley of pain to come. Our little one is due during Holy Week: a tunnel of sorrow, pain, and stripping away for Jesus. What a time to experience the stripping away of myself—my old self—and being remade not only as a daughter of God (and my earthly parents), a sister, a friend, and the wife of Nick, but now as a mother, too. I'm becoming a new self as the Lord is growing a new person within me. 

Currently I feel like an utter failure, being so scattered in my focus between work, home renovation, cabin upkeep, appointments, the impending stress of moving away from the space I've lived in for 16+ years, and my mind, my heart, my body, my work, and my norms all shifting. I feel the most un-me I've felt since I was an insecure child. Perhaps even more than that, as I wasn't self-aware enough then to know what it was like to be me or not be me yet...

Forty has held more change and shifting than I initially foresaw or feared. I wasn't planning to jump into the tides of change with both feet, being swept into the relentless waves of peeling back layer after layer until all I feel is both raw and numb at once. Yet here I am. Myself and not myself. A squishy, messy, metamorphising self. 

Who will I be on the other side of moving, nesting, birthing, and shifting into new roles? I still want to be that wide-eyed-in-wonder lover of God and His world. One who offers hospitality. Warm and loving and quirky and quick to laugh at the absurdity of being forty and still feeling like I'm 22 and 26 and 34 and not-quite-married. And I want to be the new person God is shaping me to be as He shapes our little person in me (and re-shapes my brain, literally!). 

My Anglican soul feels this pull in a liturgy of sorts...

Do I fear the waves of hormones that come with birth? I do. 
Do I fear the rage and numbness of those hormones? I do.
Do I fear the stripping away required to be made new? I do.
Do I fear the loss of my inner world because my time has been refocused in being a mom? I do.
Do I fear getting stuck in bad habits when I want to create rhythms of Truth, Beauty, and hope for my family? I do.

Do I feel the world is broken? I do.
Do I feel the shadows deepen? I do.
Yet do I know that all the dark won't stop the light from getting through? I do.
Do I wish that I could see it all made new? I do.

Is all creation groaning? It is.
Is a new creation coming? It is!
Is the glory of the Lord to be the light within our midst? It is.
Is it good that we remind ourselves of this? It is!

Does the Father truly love us? He does.
Does the Spirit move among us? He does.
And does Jesus, our Messiah hold forever those He loves? He does.
Does our God intend to dwell again with us? He does!

Is He worthy? Is He worthy?
Of all blessing and honour and glory
Is He worthy? Is He worthy?
Is He worthy of this?

He is!


To see it all made new, to be made new, I must pass through the narrow confines God has set before me. They are my birth canal, birthing me out into a world that is bright and loud and feels anything-but-cosy at times. Like a baby who has to leave the warm, dark, safe womb and learn everything about the world and existence little-by-little, I'll be learning little-by-little how to be the who God is re-making me. I'm thankful that God doesn't expect me to start by running. He starts me with a snack and a nap, with rolling over and crawling, with pulling up and taking a step, long before I'm able to run in the stride of being the new creation He is making.

Is He worthy of all blessing and glory and honour? He is!

_____

Call and response and some above lyrics by: Andrew Peterson and Ben Shive

Dear Elf-Friend

Ten years have disappeared,

Slowly, so-very-slowly in ways,

yet how fast and bleared

go those years of days 

So much has changed, 

and I've changed, too,

but some things stay the same—

like how I miss you

I missed the gift

of your letters, your self,

only when there was a rift

between you and health

Five years, nearly,

since I last saw you, so altered—

I miss you dearly,

even the way your words faltered

So much has stayed:

my foolish words and blind eyes—

but for change I often pray,

and the Lord hears my cries

I miss your songs

and poems, your wonder

and childlike joys, gone,

mind and reality torn asunder

Years and disease

have made you disappear, my friend—

Sorrow brings me to my knees

at how we came to an end

So much might resolve,

but my hopes wane,

as the days and years revolve,

and you don't write again

I miss who you were,

miss what I didn't value

enough when I had it, sir—

oh, if only we knew. . .

If we but knew

how to order our loves,

our minds, our days so few—

how to give thanks to Him above

Had I known

ten years ago,

had I received with thanks,

what difference would that make?

Changing Seasons and Cello Strings

I wish I could write words and have them flow out in music. Tonight's words would be cello and classical guitar—calm, reflective, soothing. There would be the deep voice of the cello, humming that there is no hurry, no place to be. The intricate finger-picking of the guitar would be the drops of thoughts all strung together, drip-dropping slow and steady. Tonight's music would be dark cello softly illuminated by stars of silvery guitar. . .the clear calm of night after a whirlwind. 

Because, life has felt rather like a cacophonous, rushing wind in the last weeks. Work and weddings and writing. New seasons and more responsibilities. These punctuated by loss—coming home to me in a score of ways, in unexpected moments or places. Marriage is so very good, but it changes friendships, and the loss sweeps over me in final slumber parties, in having to share my dearest friends in sacred moments. I don't mind being on my own, but I do mind my fellow adventurer's getting swept further up the mountain at new and different paces. 

And yet. . .if I love my friends—and I do—then I want what is best for them. If it is walking with someone else more often than with me, if it is for their deeper good, if it draws them closer to the Lord, then I will not slow their steps. . .I will not seek to hold them back. Now I am encouraged to change my pace, or to call more frequently upon the Shepherd, the Prince of the High Countries. I can still walk with my friends, even if we are not exactly in sync anymore, and I am grateful for that. They still spur me on, encouraging me to go further up and further in.

As the dust of the whirlwind settles, I find myself too much the same. Rhythms are well and good, but they should not become ruts, deep wells to confine my vision and my stride. It isn't that I should stop taking joy in Autumn colours and crisp air and the scent of crunchy leaves. . .Nor should I cease to find pleasure and renewal in making a meal or crafting thoughts with paints or words. I should not find that Beauty is hollow and empty because the season of life has changed. 

Every season of the year has its special Beauty. Each season comes and fades by degrees to make it bearable. Seasons will not be rushed. They ought not be hurried to or through. Each has glories to enjoy. Perhaps each season also teaches us, a little more, how to be thankful even for the things we don't like. Summer's heat and beating sun are what make the mountain meadows blossom. Though I love Winter, many do not enjoy its frigid cold and barrenness. But the sting of Winter's chill brings a rosy glow to our cheeks; the barren trees sway in their unique Beauty—perhaps if they were never bare, we might not realise how rich it is to have their scores of leaves in the other seasons. Even Winter's grey skies make us appreciate blue ones and they give us the chance to stay indoors before a cosy fire with friends or belovéd stories.

Seasons are good in life, too. Or so I tell myself. Reminded that they come creeping in often—though not always—like a green leaf with gilded edges slowly becomes wholly golden. It is a process for change to happen. Thus, I will not lose my friends in a day—or perhaps at all—though the relationships will change. I will not become good in a day, either. I will not form new and better character all at once, but by daily asking for the Spirit of the Living God to have His way in and through me. I must also submit my will, must expect that the Spirit truly will come, in order for new habits to be formed. 

Tonight carries on, like a throaty cello, reflective. The day melds into evening, the stars are o'erhead. A good dinner and a London Fog cannot fix the loss I feel inside; yet I have savoured these special things, being glad for them and for tastebuds, thankful that the change of seasons is gradual this time. 

Why?

Do you ever find that the answer to "Why all of this, God?" is, "I am Good." It is not "I am God" - though in another way it is that, too. But His answer is "I am Good." 

And He is.

He is good, whether or not the situation changes. He is good, when the heart of a man is slow to change, and all we feel is the tension. He is good when cancer is not cured, or the car crash happens. He is good when He holds us in the midst of searing pain, though He may not remove us, or it. 

God's goodness is not trite. And often pain, sorrow, suffering, and loss are felt more intensely in the midst of knowing just how good God is. Yet it is His goodness that brings Him to walk with us now through the valley of the shadow, through anger, through disappointment, through realising we do not have what it takes to be this or that. We do not have a God Who suffered with us, but a God Who suffers with us, present tense. That is Good. That is God. And that is why.

~ Johanna

Somthing like a Fairytale

It is December. When did that happen?

I suppose it's time to refresh my blog to reflect all of the changes that are happening in my life. A map in the background is fitting. Until now my life has been charted; from here on out it will continue to be recorded in scribblings of ink. The jottings of words, the ink of photos - colours vibrant, some, shades of grey - will certainly be used to capture whatever is left of my time on this rolling sphere.

A map is apropos in other ways, as well. I'm about to make my first venture out of the country. I am glad that my first passport usage will be to England rather than some other part of the American continent.

Yes, the winds of change have blown away frustrating and confusing relationships, the routine of life, and have brought more favourable opportunities. Or perhaps I should say, the One behind the wind has done this. In the span of four days I went from, "This is my pretty chill Colorado life" to, "I'm going to Oxford!"

The story is one for fairytales or those books where you think, "Yeah, too bad that doesn't happen in real life." An anonymous donor offers to send the house-cleaning girl to Oxford. The folks in Oxford make an exception for the girl's lack of college credit. The girl is shocked (of course, who wouldn't be?). She buys a plane ticket to England. The mother of the girl has a friend who offers to purchase a computer for the girl. And then reality hits, the stacks of books grow and time shrinks. The girl has to learn how to manage time well (after many mishaps) and gets to know the Maker of the Story better in the process.

At least, that's the rough sketch. It really is a fantastic story. I wouldn't believe it... If it hadn't happened to me. The stack of books certainly is real. The plane ticket truly is purchased. The adventure has only just begun. I cannot wait to read this entry in 5 months knowing what I know then, rather than knowing what I know now.

Yet I'm glad to be here now... Glad to be in the state of awe and praise to the Author of a story so incredible it must be real life. My life. I think I shall muse on this and turn out the light on yet another wonderful day.

~ Johanna