why this friday is good

I'm thinking about this day we call Good Friday. And how it felt anything but good at the time.

It was dark and heavy.

A day with more questions than answers.

More confusion than peace.

More doubt than faith.

Despair hung thick in the air, hearts crushed and despondent. The soul-depth disappointment in God was palpable and suffocating.

How could He? Why would He? What do I do now?

None of it made sense. It didn't line up with all they had seen and heard and experienced. The miracles... the teachings... the love... it all hung in the balance of two wooden beams on a hillside.

Everything they thought their Messiah would be, died that day.

All their hopes and dreams shattered with His nail-split hands. They'd given up everything to follow Him -- families, careers, homes -- and now this. A horrible, wretched death.

Of Him.

Of their hearts.

Of their hope.

They didn't know what we know now, looking back thousands of years later. That life comes out of death. That new beginnings spring forth from the worst of endings.

That hope rises.

To me, this Friday is so very good because of the mere fact that it was so very bad.

It reminds me that the dark and heavy times of my life are not devoid of Him, even when I can't see Hm or feel Him. That doubt doesn't nullify my faith. And that questioning isn't wrong.

It reminds me to let everything I think my Messiah should be, die. Because He is so much more than my imaginary version of Him, made in my own image. He loves, redeems, and saves me in ways I would never expect and could never imagine.

And it gives me hope that someday... Someday I may even call my darkest Friday "good".

happy place

City, mountains, water... the perfect trifecta.

I've spent the past week in Vancouver, and my soul has loved every minute of it. Have you ever been up in this corner of the world?

This is my first time here, and I hope it won't be my last. It is stunning in every possible way.

What are you drawn to when your soul needs to breathe? A bustling city, a forrest trail, a gorgeous beach, mountain vistas, a quiet sunroom...? Or, like me, a mix of a few?

If you close your eyes and go to your happy place, what does it look like? Take us with you...

push.

Brené Brown says it best:

"Faith isn't an epidural. It's a midwife who stands next to me saying, 'Push. It's supposed to hurt.'"

THIS. 

This is what I wish I'd learned in church growing up. This is what I now know the faith-journey to be. And yet this flies in the face of the breed of Christianity I was raised in.

Faith was a balm. Salvation was a rescue plan. Jesus was a Savior from all things hard and uncomfortable and icky.

And then life happened.

And I discovered none of that was true.

Jesus didn't come to immunize me against pain or grief or heartache.

He didn't wrap me in bubble wrap and send me on my holy way, safe from harm and hurt. He didn't say I wouldn't (or—gasp!—shouldn't) grieve, be uncomfortable, battle illness, or face insurmountable hardship. He didn't promise that things would be easy or fair or fun.

What He did was assure me that I would never be alone.

God came down to the messy hell-hole that this life can be and chose to sit in it with me. He's right here, sitting cross-legged beside me in the dirt.

He's not trying to fix anything. He's not spouting platitudes—"Let go, and let Me. I'll work all things together for good."—{GAH!}—or even trying to make sense out of the senseless. He's just being present with me. Holding my hand and my heart. And assuring me I don't have to do this alone.

I'm not spared. I'm held. 

When I stop looking for Him to deliver a wonderdrug or bippity-boppity-boo me into a blessed life, I'm able to recognize the gift of His simple presence. His simple, powerful, heart-strengthening, more-than-enough presence right here with me.

Push. 

It's supposed to hurt.

And then I realize what it means to love like He does. What it means to be Christ to you as you face your own darkness and grief.

It doesn't mean pretending to have answers or presuming I can fix things. It certainly doesn't mean telling you what you should or shouldn't be doing.

It means simply being willing to sit in the pain and discomfort with you. And just be.

What I can do is assure you that you won't be alone while you push.

in my after life

My life today looks drastically different than it did 5 years ago. I don't mean in the sense of growing older and the natural progression of life and circumstances. I'm talking about huge, radical changes—like living on a different continent with a new future after the old one disappeared like a shaken up Etch-a-Sketch drawing. The enormous chasm of a three-year hell has left my life unavoidably split into Before and After.

Swallowed up in The Chasm is a pile of hopes and dreams, a life I once lived, and relationships lost. And part of my new After life is a grief that will always linger close. Grief not only for what was lost and what will never be, but also for the bankruptcy of those who've known me on both sides of The Chasm. So many people in my life now didn't know me "back then". They only know my now-stories (however few and far between) of life in Africa, as a wife, as a missionary.

I miss being known wholly.

My past, my journey, my loves and losses and joys and sorrows—all of it—are still the fabric of who I am, regardless of how different I may be in my After life. Even when it's hard for me to see it. The shortage of others who can recognize that as well somehow makes it easier for me to forget.

I got an unexpected note from an old friend recently. She was, like me, a ministry Founder, pouring her heart and soul into the soil of hearts in Southern Africa. She, unlike me, still is. And she sent me a message out of the blue that basically said, "I still see you. You still matter to me. I believe in you and am proud of you. And your life still has value and purpose, though different."

Reading it, the tears flowed.

She knew me in my Before life—young me, back when my eyes were filled with passion and vision and fire.

She knew that me—the me I now feel such a fraction of. And, with written words and photographs, she has followed my journey through The Chasm into my After, and she still sees me despite all the differences. She sees congruencies where I see only contrasts.

Reading it again, the tears washed away some of the blur.

With fresh eyes, I can now see that my life is not Before then After. It is Before and After.

Once again, I am forced to live in the tension of the ampersand. Not one or the other, but both. I am the sum total of it all, even here and now in my very much After life.

The same is true for you—no matter what your journey has held, how your story has played out, or how deep The Chasm has been. You are not the product of one isolated portion of it. You are the grand, courageous, magnificent, formidable total of it all.

That "and" means you and I are stronger than we think.

on his affair being my fault

The conversation started with, "Why do you think he had an affair?"

Between a string of "I don't know"s, I spoke of it not being the first time... of the strains of ministry leadership... of a pattern that had been modeled for him... of the hardships in our marriage... of the choices that, one by one, little by little, led down a slippery slope. Her pursed lips and nodding head let me know it wasn't the answer she was looking for, even before she reworded her question.

"How do you think you contributed to his affair?"

I swallowed hard and blinked back tears, to no avail. They were quickly streaming down my face.

She leaned forward with an I-didn't-mean-to-make-you-cry look in her eyes. "Oh, why are you getting upset? I know he made the choice to have an affair. But there had to be a reason he looked outside the marriage. Why her? What was she offering him that you weren't?"

I sat there, incredulous—and, not knowing what to do, I just started rambling through the sobs. I explained why I think he chose her... I hypothesized on the reasons our complicated, cross-cultural marriage was so challenging... I outlined a long list of my own flaws and failures... The conversation eventually ended, though I don't think my responses ever fully satisfied her. Then again, I still don't know exactly what she wanted out of me.

Looking back, that conversation was one of my lowest moments.

Because I was forced to defend what shouldn't need defending. Because I allowed someone to treat me as though the affair was my fault. Oh, she said all the wrong things in all the "right" ways—making sure to avoid words like fault or cause or reason—yet that is still what she was implying. I felt trapped in a corner, trying to defend myself against a pointed finger and assigned blame.

Disappointingly, I believe her take-away from that dialogue was that I was resistant to taking a close look at my own heart and shortcomings—that I don't allow friends to ask hard questions. And while I know that isn't true of that conversation (or others like it), I was (am) frustrated and hurt at feeling so misunderstood and misrepresented.

Because I've owned my part of the challenges of our marriage. Soon after the news of the affair broke, I processed at length with my therapists about my own personal issues, faults, and sins, and how those impacted my relationship(s). I even had difficult, humbling discussions with my still-unrepentant husband in which I apologized for the ways I'd hurt him and our marriage.

I am extremely introspective, self-analyzing, self-critical. If anything's gone wrong or anyone is upset, I automatically believe it must be my fault. So to assume I haven't taken a hard look at myself throughout the journey of the past few years—the most grievous, painful, heartwrenching season of my life—would almost be laughable. If it wasn't so hurtful.

Believe me. I blamed myself plenty, all on my own.

I waded through the blame my ex-husband heaped on me as well. I analyzed to death all the things that I could have done differently, wondering if it would have led to a different outcome. I assure you—regret, shame, and self-blame abounded.

Even in this, as with most everything—joy and grief, faith and uncertainty, pain and healing—I grapple in the ampersand arena. I live in the tension of two opposing truths I am forced to accept together: I am a co-contributor to the demise of my marriage relationship, and my husband's decision to have an affair is not my fault, in whole or in part.

Both true. Both painfully hard for me to swallow. And both have caused me heartache enough for lifetimes.

You, my friend, need not add to it.

{photo credit}

Originally posted on A Deeper Story. Read the comments there >