Thursday Thematics: To Comfort All Who Mourn

Thursday Thematics is a new and ongoing series of posts focused on given topics or passages of scripture relevant to adoption, knowing God, and learning to live simply and love radically. Please feel free to tweet theme suggestions to me @AmandaEPeterson.

For our first theme, we're walking through the anointments of Isaiah 61--the passage Jesus read in the Nazareth synagogue at the beginning of his earthly ministry (Luke 4:16-20). After finishing his reading, Jesus rolls up the scroll and says to the crowd, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." If this scripture has been fulfilled, how does a fulfilled version of Isaiah 61 impact our lives today?

...to comfort all who mourn, 

and provide for those who grieve in Zion--

to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, 

the oil of joy instead of mourning, 

and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair...

I've only truly mourned twice in my life.

The first was when my grandfather--my dad's dad--passed away. Although he'd been sick for more than half a year, he was getting better and his dying caught me off guard. It caught me off guard in far away Portland where I had just moved. It caught me off guard in a place that although I thought I knew it for the summers I had spent interning at our small urban church, ended up being strange and all together unfamiliar and very different from the safe confines of my native small town Texas.

I cried in ways I've never cried--deep, heaving, pop blood vessels in your eyes sobs.

I cried for my loneliness. I cried for my determination to be so perfect and do so well and for my overwhelming feelings of imperfection. I cried for the dark hidden feelings inside of me--feelings of being unloved and unwanted and alone. I cried for the suicidal thoughts dormant for years, starting to make themselves known again. I cried for how I hated my body and how I hid the eating-disorder that had kept me company for so many years. I cried for my grandfather, deeply cried, not knowing I was also crying for all these other things.

The second time I really mourned--deeply and uncontrollably--was when I broke up with a long-term boyfriend--him a man who I'd loved deeply, loved like none I had ever loved, loved like myself. Him who I believed I would marry and who I was waiting for the proposal from. Him who walked away and left me a shattered portion of myself--unable to function and remember the Amanda I was without him.

I have grieved many other losses--I've grieved the passing of my maternal grandmother. I've grieved the loss of friendships. I've grieved over sickness and death, and pain and hate, and misunderstanding and jealousy, and losses of many kinds. But these are the two times in my life I can point to and know how my grief turned into a mourning, a deep loss of far more than I was able to name at the time.

It's the nature of life that we all grieve and mourn. None of us will come through without grief. None of us will come through without knowing what it is like to have your heart ripped out of your chest and the subsequent numbness take control of all we were. None of us will escape loss.

But Jesus came to change the way we mourn. He came to bring hope to the hopeless and joy to the joyless. He's come to not only offer comfort to all those who mourn, but for those of us in Zion--those of us who've entered into his church and his kingdom--for us He's come to provide for us in our grief.

He's come to offer us the Spirit of comfort and of consolation. He's come to invite us to share our grief with him. To come as Hannah came to the temple in her distress and to poor all our heart-sobs out before him. He's come to adorn us with joy--with crowns of beauty and oils of joy and garments of praise--an outward sign of what he's doing in our hearts to bring true healing and true comfort.

We are never promised that when we befriend Christ we will not have troubles. In fact, Jesus says just the opposite, "Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows." But thankfully Jesus doesn't leave off there. He continues, "But take heart, because I have overcome the world" (John 16:33, NLT).

Take heart--be certain of this and completely undaunted by the trials and sorrows and troubles.

If given the opportunity, would I undo those things? Would I give us more years with my grandfather? Would I mend the broken relationship? Absolutely. The answer is always absolutely. We would all undo the things which brought us the most brokenness. But at the same time, I don't regret the brokenness.

It's the brokenness I wouldn't undo because that brokenness shaped me. It made me a deeper, richer person more capable of empathy, more capable of love.

Befriending Jesus does not and never did mean eschewing all worldly trouble, but it does mean a Jesus and a Spirit who will mourn with you and provide for you in your grief. It does mean a Jesus who will not abandon you in your troubles and trials and sorrows. It does mean on the other side of brokenness, deeper, richer people.

And that. That is a comfort to me in my distress.

____________________

Like today's post? Read other posts in this series:
Proclaiming Good News to the Poor
Binding Up the Brokenhearted
Proclaiming Freedom for the Captives

Release from Darkness for the Prisoners

The Year of the Lord's Favor

Thursday Thematics: Release from Darkness for the Prisoners

Thursday Thematics is a new and ongoing series of posts focused on given topics or passages of scripture relevant to adoption, knowing God, and learning to live simply and love radically. Please feel free to tweet theme suggestions to me @AmandaEPeterson.

For our first theme, we're walking through the anointments of Isaiah 61--the passage Jesus read in the Nazareth synagogue at the beginning of his earthly ministry (Luke 4:16-20). After finishing his reading, Jesus rolls up the scroll and says to the crowd, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." If this scripture has been fulfilled, how does a fulfilled version of Isaiah 61 impact our lives today?

...release from darkness for the prisoner...

I reported a child abuse case to Children's Protective Services yesterday.

A first.

Yes, I know and have known many kids who have been abused. I've been involved in their healing process. I've been involved in loving them and teaching them to trust adults again. I've been on the what-happens-after side of things.

And yes, I've suspected children I know are being abused, but I've never had enough evidence to report. I've never been able to say I know.


I know.

And it feels dark and heavy.

Hanging up the phone with CPS, I wanted to run into the open air, to feel light and sunshine on my face, to throw off the darkness.

I left my desk for a bit and took a walk around the building.

I shed a bit of the darkness and prayed. I prayed as Jesus taught me to pray:

Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.

Amen.

I prayed for this family. I prayed protection over them. I prayed for the evidence to be clearer to CPS than it is to me so the family might get the help they need. I prayed for light to penetrate the darkness and for all to be exposed.

I prayed for a family, for children, imprisoned in their own home and begging for the light.

***

Preparing for this post, the phrase "release from darkness for the prisoner," stumped me. Release from darkness seems to be so much more than simply being let out of prison. To my mind, the simple poetry of it had to imply a more metaphorical meaning.

Other translations use a more literal "opening of the prison" (NKJV) and some repeat the idea of "freedom" (NAS) from the previous statement. But pulling out the big word study books given to me years ago as a college graduation present--the big books that were too much for the Peace Corps luggage weight restrictions and have set in storage for three and a half years dearly missed--there seems to be a much bigger idea here. It seems to be both a literal opening of prisons and a figurative opening of eyes.

Emma Donoghue in her novel Room tells a transfixing story of a boy and her mother taken captive by a man and imprisoned in a one room shed in his backyard. The woman is the man's sex slave and the boy the result of years of imprisonment. Donoghue crafts her story entirely from the view point of this little boy who was born in the room and in his five years of life has never left it.

Never felt sunshine on his face. Never felt grass between his toes. Never smelled fresh air. Never met another human being besides his mother and the man.

(Spoiler alert)

Eventually the boy and his mother escape and he is introduced to the world outside. It is both a terrifying and freeing experience for him as he longs for the comfort of the known but is discovering grandparents and trees and wind and all the many things that make up the world. When he eventually goes back to see the room he grew up in, he finds it small and barren and colorless and not a place he wants to be or live.

I think this is what release from darkness is like--opening the prison and opening our eyes to what we were not aware existed. This release is the awareness that comes with encountering Christ and discovering our own bindings, our own prison. It's the encounter we have each time the Spirit shows us something in our lives we didn't know was there, we didn't know was holding us captive. It's the coming back to the old prison, the old habits, the old life after we've found freedom trying them on again and realizing they are much less satisfying than our new life. It's the shedding of the old way of life and the being made new.

It's the blind man healed.

There had to be moments of terror. Moments when he wanted to unsee what was just seen. Moments where the world seemed unbelievably big and overwhelming. But if you asked him if he wanted to be blind again, I have no doubt he would say "no" every time. Just as the prisoner will say "no" every time you ask him if he wants to go back to prison.

This release from darkness is a whole new way of life--a whole new way of being. And we're fools if we choose to go back into the darkness. We're fools if we choose dark over light.

We're all familiar with the groan moment that comes when we've sat in darkness for a long time and someone walks in and flicks on the light. You're eyes cringe at the sudden brightness and you squint and try to make your eyes adjust faster so you can see once again.

But eventually your eyes adjust and the light is welcome. You see more clearly.

This is what Isaiah is saying, Jesus is coming to flick on the switch and bring light were there was once darkness. He's coming to release you from the darkness where you are bound and imprisoned.

______________________

Read other posts in this series:
     Proclaiming Good News to the Poor
     Binding Up the Brokenhearted

     Proclaiming Freedom for the Captives

Finding the Dress with the Right Twirl

My future daughter Hannah* is a ruffles and lace, gowns and tiaras kind of girl.

In other words, she's a girly girl.

I am not. Well, I was when I was little, little. I was until my sister got too old to play with me and the mountain of Barbies and accessories got replaced with Nerf guns and sports equipment. I was an up-a-tree, skinned-knee, filthy, tomboy kind of girl.

Hannah, on the other hand, loves to feel dainty and pretty.

She is one of those girls who requires a dress to twirl just the right way before it can even be considered as a plausible option. So many times, I've sat in the store trying on dresses, "Oh Hannah, that's cute! What do you think?"

"But it doesn't twirl."

"It doesn't twirl," minor irritation in my voice as this is the umpteenth dress we've tried on and I was sure it would be the winner, "Ok, [sigh] let's try this one."

But, I get it, the twirl of the dress is important. The twirl of the dress is what makes her feel pretty. It's what makes her feel feminine.

I have only come to understand, accept and embrace my own femininity within the past few years. For most of my life my femininity has frightened me and I have felt decidedly unfeminine.

Any time, I needed to "dress up" for a formal occasion, the event would send me into a tailspin of fear and self-doubt. Other people would tell me how beautiful I looked, but I simply couldn't see it. I felt not like Cinderella at the ball, but the ugly stepsister cramming all her ugliness into something beautiful to deceive and win a prince. And the longer the event went on, the more and more uncomfortable I became.

I was always a tall girl. Always taller than the boys in my class, and, well, chubby. Chubby, but I felt gargantuan. Even as an  eleven, twelve year old girl, I felt huge. It's hard to feel feminine when you think you are massively out of proportion to everyone else around you.

I tried various ways to disguise this perceived hugeness.

The grungy nineties were great for disguise purposes with their baggy clothes and flannel shirts. I even experimented with dressing in nothing but boy's clothes for a summer. But finally, I settled on jeans, t-shirt and flip-flops. If I couldn't like what I looked like, at least I could be comfortable.

Jeans, t-shirt and flip-flops stayed with me for over a decade as I continued to ignore my own femininity and be tortured by my perceived lack of it.

Here's the conundrum I think a lot of women find themselves in due to the messages society currently tosses at them: On the one hand, we have the image of beauty most often portrayed in the media--skinny and sexy. But then countering, the feminist image of strength and I-can-do-it-all and I-can-have-it-all. I've known so many women who are lost in the in between of I should look this way but act this way and often the two do not go together. I can't be sexy and self-respecting. I can't be breaking through the glass ceiling and walking the runway.

I think for most women it comes down to an either or kind of choice. And neither really lands us in a place where we are completely comfortable with our choice.

But for me, discovering my own femininity has freed me from the debate.

The first time I ever felt feminine I was standing next to my ex. He is at least a foot taller than me, and to kiss him, I actually had to stand on my tippee-toes. Being in his arms made me feel small and delicate and feminine, and it made me want to try other things to enhance this new experience.

I bought dresses and heals, and, for the first time since middle school, painted my toenails.

I discovered my personal style--classic and chic. A style in which I can still feel every bit the tomboy but the tomboy grown up with a hint of sophistication.

For me, owning my femininity is about understanding and embracing my own beauty rather than running from it and hiding it. Its about having an edge but a beveled edge, a little softer, a little more open, and a self-respect not just for my mind and my character but for my body and my beauty, as well.

I absolutely think you can feel feminine in jeans and a t-shirt just as much as in a dress and heals. It's less about what you are wearing and more about your bearing and your own understanding of yourself.

Loving our femininity, honoring it as part of ourselves, is part of what shapes great women. And I hope, now that I finally have a love for my own femininity, to teach Hannah to love hers and to help her build up her self-confidence in her femininity over time, however she chooses to express it.

There are still days when I wake up and can't find where I put my femininity. There are days when I'm too busy comparing the size of my thighs with the size of hers, oh and hers...look how small and toned hers are, to remember to embrace and love my femininity. There are days and always will be days because hey, I may be a woman embracing my femininity but I'm still a woman who falls short but for the grace of God.

But today, I'm going to love my thighs for the size they are. I'm going to take them out for a run and love them for all their wobbly glory. I'm going to enjoy my femininity and thank God for making me a woman.

Women, do you agree? How have you embraced or reclaimed your femininity? 




*Hannah is a pseudonym. In order to protect her identity until she is fully and legally mine, I use "Hannah" in all posts regarding my one day daughter and her adoption.

Year Twenty-Nine

29 was all at once the worst year of my life and the best year of my life.

A week after my birthday, my long-term boyfriend and I parted ways. We’d been together for a year and a half and just a few short weeks prior to my birthday, he had shared his plans to propose soon and we had talked seriously of a spring wedding in South Africa—flying my family across the world for a traditional Tswana wedding, having a reception in the US for friends and family sometime around Christmas, merging cultures and traditions to create something entirely our own.

And then it was over.

I cried for a week straight and for several weeks after would break down into uncontrollable sobs. There were times that I was sure that I was unable to stop crying and that the grief would be unending. It had been a long time since I had given my heart to anyone and never so completely.

I phoned the counselor who had helped me through the transition from rural Peace Corps life to modern Johannesburg. I leaned heavily on the few close friends I had made. And I waited anxiously for phone calls and emails from home.

Slowly I began to regain bits of myself. Little things that I didn’t know that I had lost. I realized that despite the many good things in our relationship, slowly overtime, I had lost site of myself. Little bits chipped away until I woke up one morning and didn’t know the me who I had become and couldn’t find the me who I was.

Realizing this was when I knew it had to be over. It needed to be over. I needed to find the me that I was and even more the me that God has created me to be.

During this time, I read Bittersweet by Shauna Niequest. In it Niequest talks about “composting for the soul.” I love this idea and I’ve shared the quote here before. Some things in life have to die, to be mulched and turned, and to be subjected to nature’s processes, so that new things can grow—stronger, healthier things.

Through this dying off, through the natural processes of grief, I can come out of 29 and head into 30 knowing that it was a good year. A year in which I have finally grown comfortable with the me that I am and the me that God has created me to be. Although it was the most painful experience of my life, I needed the composting. I needed that pain and those tears. I needed to explore deep inside myself and find the strength and the hope that I didn’t know was there.

Composting seasons are not fun, but they are necessary. If you are in a composting season right now, all I can say to you is to lean not on your own understanding (Prov 3:5), but let the peace of God which transcends all understanding, guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus (Phil 4:7). Join in the composting process and know that out of it, something better will grow.

Creation, Death & Rebirth

When you've been away for a long time, it is very difficult to know how to start again.

You think:

I should really update my blog...but does anyone ever read it anyway...

What would I write? How can I sum everything up?

I'm probably too tired to put a coherent thought together anyway...

And eventually you find that you've talked yourself out of it. So the blog lies dormant and months pass, and occasionally someone might mention that you haven't blogged in a while. You think, Yeah I should do that, but you don't.
____________________


Over the past month or so, Don Miller has been writing a serious of posts on "the creator" and the process of creation. They're thoughts that I genuinely hope he will compile into a book, and I would recommend taking the time to search through his blog and read some if not all.

Whether we are an artist, writer, sculptor, teacher, banker or other--we are all creators. We all creating something on a daily basis, and we are all working to improve that created thing. It's in our God-nature. God the Creator put His Creator image on us.

I'm always in the process of creating. My fingers moving across the keys, I'm putting words together to make a created thing. On a daily basis, I'm putting bits and pieces and relationships together to create a stable and sustainable environment for "the fatherless" and "the least of these."

I think it's the act of creation that keeps us moving forward. And when you are in the process of creating for the sake of redeeming, that forward movement comes with great reward.
____________________

A friend loaned me Shauna Niequist's latest book, Bittersweet. Upon the loaning, she told me it would be like a good friend. And she has been right.

A favorite passage:

I don't believe that God's up in heaven making things go terribly wrong in our lives so that we learn better manners and better coping skills. But I do believe in something like composting for the soul: that if you can find life out of death, if you can use the smashed up garbage to bring about something new and good, however tiny, that's one of the most beautiful things there is.

I like that, composting for the soul. I've tried my hand at gardening many times. I like the idea of being a gardener, a farmer. It's a romantic notion for me. But inevitably I grow tired or find I don't have the time to dedicate to it, and I give up on the idea

I remember helping my parents weed the garden and the flower bed when I was small. I would yank at maybe five weeds, before I would become tired and bored and decide gardening was a generally miserable task. I think its the many romantic metaphors associated with gardening more than the actual act that stirs at my soul.

I like the idea of death and rebirth. A seed has to die before something new can grow. Waste and death go into compost to create rich, healthy soil and ultimately rich, healthy plants.

Death and rebirth. God is always taking the bad and redeeming it for His good.

Composting for the soul.

Working Out of a Redeemed Imagination

While reading an article on the emerging movement for the elimination of nuclear-weapons in the latest issue of Relevant magazine, I was struck by the following statement:

"We live between two realities that we haven't seen: on the one side, the cross and resurrection; and on the other, the fulfillment of God's Kingdom...that is a redeemed creation. When Christians are faithful to this vision, there is a savor to our salt and a brightness to our light that the world needs badly."

We have heard of and believed in the cross and the resurrection. Now we wait for and hope for the redeemed creation. And it is this redeemed creation that I see when I dream of a world without extreme poverty, a world without hunger, a world without pollution.

Often, I encounter a kind of cynicism and pessimism that says these dreams cannot be achieved. Often, when I start listing off the statistics and tallying the odds, I encounter the same cynicism in myself. Poverty, hunger, global-warming--they seem to be immovable objects. Barriers that cannot be thrown aside no matter how large or how powerful the counterforce.

But when challenged with the idea of a redeemed creation, we can see a world without them because we can foresee the Kingdom of God. We stand in the midst of the good news brought near to us through Jesus Christ and the coming good news of the Kingdom of God and the splendor of the new creation. It is through these eyes that we see immovable objects moved--mountains thrown into the sea. And it is with these eyes that we act. Not to be ourselves savior of humanity and of creation, but instead to be living testimony of the redemptive vision of God.

In view of a redeemed creation, we need a new and redeemed imagination. A redemptive imagination that envisions creative solutions to the world's most pressing problems. A redemptive imagination that promotes freedom and effectively disbands the slave trade and sex-trafficking. A redemptive imagination that disarms and destroys conflicts between peoples and puts an end to genocide. A redemptive imagination that feeds every child and eradicates disease.

A redemptive imagination that knows no limits because it is fueled by a limitless God.

It is the redeemed imagination of Christ that can serve as our guide. Jesus took the tattered pieces of the Jewish nation, pieces of the Law that were meant to bring redemption, and rewove them through the limitless powers of His imagination into the redemptive power of the cross and the resurrection. That same imagination is now offered to us through the power of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. It is intertwined with faith, hope and love. A redeemed imagination that envisions a redeemed creation.

With a redeemed imagination at our fingertips, the redemptive power of the cross and the resurrection behind us, and a redeemed creation before us--we can offer to the world an unmatched savor to our salt and brightness to our light. Both of which are desperately needed.