In some liturgical Christian traditions, today is the day the church remembers and honors Mary anointing the feet of Jesus with expensive and rare perfume.
It was a beautiful act of great sacrifice as the perfume would ordinarily be a family treasure broken and used only at death for anointing a beloved body.
It’s also an expression of deep sorrow because somehow Mary knew.
Mary. Knew.
So she poured out her precious gift on the One Who loves her most.
Tears are my sacrifice.
Growing up in church I was always taught the story of Jesus clearing the Temple of money changers from a couple of perspectives. One, that He experienced and expressed righteous anger-as distinct from most of our own selfish human anger; and two, that doing business in God’s sanctuary was a no-no.
As I got older and began studying Scripture for myself without all the cues provided in Sunday School booklets for how I should be interpreting the verses, I came to a little different understanding of this very familiar passage.
Read the rest here: Holy Week Reflections: Clearing Our Own Temples
As we enter the week on the Christian calendar when most churches celebrate the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, I am reminded that often we race past the road that lead to Calvary and linger at the empty tomb.
But to understand the beauty of forgiveness and the blessing of redemption, we MUST acknowledge the sorrow of sin and the burden of brokenness.
When our sacred spaces draw boundaries around what we can bring to the Lord’s Table, we exclude the very ones who are desperate for the bread and cup.
Read the rest here: Making Space for Brokenness at the Table of the LORD
Oh, how easy it would be to become bitter!
If I’m honest, part of me just wants to tell the world to “Get lost!”.
But the wiser part of me knows that’s neither a helpful nor healthy response to even this most awful burden of child loss.
Lament is how we bring our sorrow to God. Without lament, we won’t know how to process pain. Silence, bitterness, and even anger can dominate our spiritual lives instead.
~Mark Vroegop – Dark Clouds Deep Mercy
Because my bitter spirit wouldn’t stop with me. It would spread like kudzu on an Alabama roadside.
The writer of Hebrews warns against this very thing:
Be careful that none of you fails to respond to the grace which God gives, for if he does there can very easily spring up in him a bitter spirit which is not only bad in itself but can also poison the lives of many others.
Hebrews 12:15 PHILLIPS
There is sufficient grace for even this.
But I can refuse it.
It’s a choice every single day.
Do I embrace the grace God freely offers or do I turn my back and embrace bitterness? Do I lean in to every promise of God in Christ or do I listen to the enemy of my soul who whispers, “Did God REALLY say….?”
Bitterness never ends with one person. It spreads. It grows.
It ruins lives and relationships and generations.
We all know families where it has taken root. We all know old folks whose faces are frozen in frowns and who rarely speak except to pass along their spiteful comments.
I may not get many things right. I’m pretty sure I get quite a few things wrong.
But I don’t want to mess this one up.
Bitterness is a terrible legacy.
I refuse to pass it on.
For my fellow Christ followers, my early morning post may have been a disappointment.
We’re all schooled in the “right” things to say in the midst of a trial, aren’t we?
“God is good!”
“I know the end of the story!”
“Death doesn’t have the last word!”
And on, and on, and on….
True. Every single one of them.
And yet…
If we are honest (and often we are not, because spiritual honesty is absolutely underrated in the church) we will also have to admit that KNOWING all those things doesn’t minimize pain.
It only makes it tolerable.
But I don’t want leave anyone doubting for one minute that God has been faithful these past five years.
He most certainly HAS.
He has been a silent Source of hope and strength and breath and grace. He has lifted my head when I couldn’t do it myself. He has sent His faithful flock to minister to my needs and the needs of my family. He has held me when I would have let go.
I have wrestled and questioned and even shouted but I’ve never, ever doubted He was here.
I wish I could tell you that there was some super-spiritual moment when He assured me of Dominic’s safety in Heaven, but there hasn’t been.
I wish I could tell you of a morning when His love and assurance and Presence washed over me to take away the angst, but I can’t.
What I can say is that the Word I hid in my heart before this awful pain was also lodged there has been enough. That deep well of living water has been more than adequate to quench my thirsty soul. The torch of truth has been sufficient light along even this black-as-night path.
My faith is still just that-faith.
I don’t have special revelation nor an extra dose of grace.
I’m just following my Shepherd, trusting that He will lead me Home.
I’m not sure when I’ll get the hang of this life after loss.
Five years is long enough to have completed a college degree, so you’d think it would be long enough to explore the edges of how to walk in the world without my son, without the family I used to have, without the confidence I once enjoyed that “every little thing was gonna be alright”.
But it’s not.
I’m still feeling my way in the dark much of the time.
New challenges greet me and I have to navigate them with the profoundly changed “me” that I neither understand nor like.
I make mistakes.
I get upset and I upset others.
If I didn’t believe that there was a Day when all this would be redeemed, I would just give up.
But I DO believe that.
It doesn’t take the pain away. It doesn’t soften the feeling of failure when my sorrow stops me being what others need me to be. It doesn’t blow soft breezes across my weary soul.
It gives me focus and a goal. It gets me out of bed so I persevere. It helps my heart hold on and not give in to despair.
Today is not a good day.
Tomorrow doesn’t look good either.
But one day-
One. Glorious. Day.
So often we hide our wounds.
Sometimes it’s because others have shamed us into covering up. Sometimes it’s because our hearts have been stomped on by folks who might mean well but really don’t understand what it’s like to live every day with a messy and unfinished story.
But there’s no shame in being broken.
And we have no obligation to pretend for those that are uncomfortable with our wounds and our sorrow.
In fact, there is no greater invitation to the good news that Jesus came to redeem and restore than a person whose life makes plain that they are depending on Him for that very promise.
“God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.” ~popular church saying.
I’ve never been comfortable with direction from the pulpit instructing people in the congregation to “repeat after me”. Maybe I’m a little rebellious, but it always seemed disingenuous to appropriate someone else’s sentiment for my own.
And I think there is danger in adopting pet phrases to explain God (as if He can be explained) and creating shorthand for concepts that require so much more discussion to even begin to understand.
Read the rest here: Goodness of God
Since I’m spending time with my new grandson, I’ll be offering a few more reposts than usual this week. If you haven’t seen them, I hope you enjoy them for the first time. If you have already read them, I hope they are a blessing just the same.
Thank you for all the prayers and encouragement as our family rallies around this new life and helps him fight to gain the strength and size to come home. ❤
Part of my Lenten observance includes reading the book of John.
The words are not new to me, I’ve read them over and over-probably dozens of times in the past 30 years. So I decided to use a different translation this time around in order to shake out some new insights and cause me to pay closer attention to what God might have for me right here, right now.
The very first reading did just that.
Read the rest here: Light Years
When I was asked several months ago to speak to a group of hospice care workers, I titled the presentation “Lifting the Veil on Grief”.
One of the topics I covered was how experiencing the death of a loved one-especially out-of-order or untimely death- can cause even the staunchest believer to doubt.
And the first thing I said was, “Doubt in the face of overwhelming sorrow and hard circumstances is absolutely normal. But doubt is NOT disbelief.”
So often friends, family, clergy, social workers and others want to steer hearts away from doubt because they are afraid that entertaining questions or expressing disappointment in God will always lead to someone losing faith.
That is untrue.
When my son ran ahead to Heaven, I reexamined everything I believed.
But I did not “lose” my faith.
I never once doubted that God was still working, was still loving and was still in control.
But I most certainly had to drag out every single thing I thought I knew about how He worked, loved and superintended the world and examine it in light of my experience of burying my son. It took a long time to work through all the pat answers I had been offered and myself doled out to others for years that didn’t fit with my new reality.
One of the ways I did that was to journal my questions, complaints, anger and disappointment. I wrote it out.
Many of the Psalms are precisely that-David and others crying out to God, begging Him for understanding and for a sliver of hope. As the Psalmist breathed out his doubts and fears, the Spirit of God breathed fresh life into his soul.
My journals are filled with strong words and strong feelings. They are also filled with, what I believe, God spoke to my heart in response. Sometimes it was in the form of a Bible verse, sometimes a memory, sometimes song lyrics or a prayer. And sometimes the pages are simply a record of how my Shepherd gently led me through a particular hard moment or day or week.
So if you are struggling with doubt-let yourself off the hook.
You can’t deny it.
And you don’t have to.
You’re in good company.
Grab a notebook and pen and start writing. Just begin. Don’t edit yourself in fear someone may read it one day. God knows anyway.
When you’re done spilling, sit quietly in the Presence of your Shepherd. Listen to what He may be speaking to your broken heart.
I have done this for decades through many hard things- child loss being the hardest.
The Lord is faithful to meet me right where I am and fill me with His Spirit.
He’s never leaves me without hope when I turn my heart toward Him.
thelifeididntchoose 