Buried Hopes

I just realized I never updated this site with my new web address. I don't think anyone reads this anymore, but in case you do, I am now blogging at www.buriedhopes.com. Come find me there :)

Out of Darkness and Dust

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. Genesis 1:1-4

I am not a creative person. When we put up our Christmas tree, I place ornaments any which-way, and Tom comes behind me, rearranging them in a more appealing pattern. He does the decorating in our house, I complain about how much money it will cost us. I have an awful time putting together an outfit, and I know that adding jewelry would help things, but it takes extra time and it makes my brain hurt to try to figure out what to pair with what.

I have been writing a little more recently, and because I am not a very creative person, the creativity of writing has been making me pause and analyze (because one thing I am very good at doing is analyzing). I don't consider myself much of a writer, but the past few blog posts took creativity I didn't know I had. My blog posts evolve very (very, very) slowly from poorly written, disjointed paragraphs to something that starts to make some sense. And eventually, I read a post that doesn't seem like it came from me. It starts pretty awful, but now I read it, and it sounds kind of good.

As I consider the brief spurts of creativity from myself, I think about the creativity of God. The way he creates order from chaos, wisdom from foolishness, sacred from the profane. The way he can take something completely awful and turn it into something that is a blessing for the world. He doesn't just create beautiful things from the dust; he creates beautiful things from the dung.

The Bible begins with a God who sweeps over "the formless void and darkness" and from this, creates light and life. When I read those verses as simply a scientific statement, they lose most of their truth and power. I think about atoms and molecules and how light existed before the sun and what God was doing all that time, hovering over that big sea. And it's fine to think about that, but I don't think the writers of this text intended for these verses to be read that way. They weren't just proclaiming the historical event of creation's origin, they were proclaiming a creative God. A God who is still creating today. He is still separating light from darkness, still forming something out of nothing, still breathing life to barren ground. From a poor Jewish girl to a dirty stable to a cursed death on a tree, he is consistently taking the ordinary and dark things of life and making them sacred and brilliant.

If you know me, you know I am not very quiet about my belief that God does not cause or ordain the bad things in our life. It's a theology I've spent years working through, and it's the theology that has set me free to embrace a good and loving God. Every time I wrestle with the sovereignty of God over evil, I end up pounding my fists again the idea of a God who would intentionally hurt me.  I don't care if it's for good, it is not okay to kill someone just to make a point. It is not okay to ordain suffering just for your own glory. That is not a good God to me. I do believe he is sovereign, but not in that way.

And yet I can't deny that this same God who does not cause evil loves to form beautiful things from the bad and the ugly. He is utterly creative in working all things for good. And he does this over and over again, sweeping over the dark and formless void and creating order from the chaos. It doesn't mean that the bad things are good. They are still bad. They are still broken in ways they should not be. But it does means that no matter what bad things happen, somehow, in some way, a creative God will bring good from it.

I am a different person today due to suffering. A better person. And it makes me think about the creativity of God in using something that he hates to make me better, to make me more like him. It's one thing to look at our lives, think about something awful that happened to us and say "God did this so that I would become a better person."It's another thing to say "God did not cause this. He had nothing to do with the origin of this awful thing. And yet he has somehow worked so much good out of it that it feels like it was his plan all along." Sovereignty does not mean absolute control to me, it means unending and unfailing creativity.

When I feel terrified and alone and exhausted, I know he is sweeping over the darkness in my heart, just as he swept over the dark void in the beginning. I know he is creating something beautiful out of the agony, even as he weeps with me in my pain. It's the joy of Christmas, that we have a God who is with us. Not far away or aloof, not turning a blind eye to the oppressed, but with us, creating beauty from ashes. As we exit this Christmas season and enter into a new year, a wide expanse of unknown trials and pain, we can trust that we have a God who has not ceased creating beauty from the bleakest of circumstances.

I don't really know how to pray these days, as we sit in the midst of so many unanswered prayers. I know I'm not guaranteed prosperity and health and fertility, and I know that we may still have a very long road ahead of us when it comes to building our family. But I also know that whatever darkness presents itself, I have a God who will create good from it. No matter how ugly, desperate or dark, he will create beauty, hope and light. It's all I can do these days, to offer up that which I can't control and believe that he will work it to good, for me and for the world.

But the greatest of these is love

His disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” But he said to them, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.” Matthew 19:10-12

One of the most difficult parts of life is being different from everyone else and feeling excluded from the "normal" crowd. I have lived most of my life feeling different in some way. As a child, I was extremely introverted and painfully shy. We moved around a lot, from Canada to Arkansas to Oklahoma to Louisiana, and I felt like an outcast in each new school I attended. I tried to keep track of all my differences and do everything I could to suppress them, but it was hard. I still stumble over words, because I forget the right way to say them. Should I say "y'all" or "you guys"? How should I pronounce "produce"? Do I "call" the person or do I "phone" them? Is it a "napkin" or a "serviette"? In most cases, I learned what not to say because someone laughed at me. My embarrassment and shame drove me to change myself so that I could fit in better.

In my current world of infertility, I often feel alienated from the men and women whose bodies function normally. Most couples our age have several children, and we are different from them. And while I know they don't hold it against us, I wonder what it would be like if people did hold it against us. I regularly have conversations with imaginary rude people in my head (this is what anxious people do; they anticipate imaginary conflicts). I think about somebody telling me that I'm barren because I have sinned or haven't prayed enough. I think about people questioning our choice to pursue fertility treatments rather than adoption. I think about whether or not others think we should just give up or try harder or not try at all or just trust God more. There are so many opinions, and I'm sheltered from many of them and surrounded by a loving community, but I still think about the things that could be thought or said.

It is so hard to be different. But what if your difference had a few Bible verses that could be thrown at you repeatedly whenever you tried to be vulnerable? What if you had a core attribute that you could not change despite all your begging and striving? What if you knew that living life without a mask would likely get you kicked out of most churches, or even your own family?

That's where my mind goes when I hear someone say that they don't understand how another person could be gay. Because I don't understand how I could be infertile. I don't understand why my single friends aren't married. I don't understand most things in this world. It might seem ideal for everyone to be born as a heterosexual, but they are not. As much as we want to believe it can happen, 99.9% of the gay population are unable to change or pray away their orientation. For every one "success" story, there are 999 others who have tried and failed. They are different, and they know they are different, and they are looking for a safe place with which to wrestle with these things. But we throw a verse at them to let them know just how much God finds their actions (which they may not have even done!) disgusting.

When discussing marriage, Jesus all of a sudden decides to talk about eunuchs, those without "normal" heterosexual desires. His followers are asking him about divorce, and he is calling them to fidelity, but he is also reminding them that not everyone is like them. For those of us in the church who idolize heterosexual marriage and think everyone should attain to enter it, we need to let these words sink in. Not everyone is like you. Single, divorced, abandoned, homosexual, asexual, widowed; there are more of these people in our church lobbies than we think. So many people who feel alone and broken and different. So many people who wish they could change, but it simply isn't doable.

I hear a lot of people talk about the need for more Christians who will speak truth boldly. When I think about that kind of person, I think about John the Baptist, the man who called his listeners broods of vipers and warned of coming judgement. But what was he was preaching so vehemently? Those who asked him what they should do were given clear answers: care for the poor, share with those in need, be satisfied with your wages, do not extort money (Luke 4:10-14). I think more of us should get on television and preach about caring for the least of these; I am all about speaking this truth with boldness. But let's not talk about how we just can't understand those "other" people. Let us not use our freedom of speech to decry the very people we are called to pursue.

In Jesus's day, he was regularly seen with prostitutes and tax collectors. Today, I like to think it would be the homosexuals and liberals, and everyone else we cast out as "other". He would be with them, and he would be loving them, and he would be calling them to a life of loving others as he has loved them. And yes, he would be speaking truth to them, but the greatest truth of God is love.

Jesus includes the excluded.  He embraces the other. He makes the last to be first. Those who feel most broken and forgotten and isolated from the rest of the world are treasured and remembered and honored in his Kingdom. May we preach this truth from the rooftops: You are loved, and you are not alone.

Gratitude

"In its peculiar way lamenting is an act of faith because it speaks to our understanding that things are not as they should be"

Enumo Okoro, Silence and Other Surprising Invitations of Advent

I loved this quote from my morning Advent reading, and it fueled the post I wrote on Saturday. It felt good to lament, and I felt freer afterward. It is scary to be vulnerable, but it is scarier to feel alone. I'm thankful for those who hear my laments and respond with care, reminding me that I am surrounded by a loving and believing community.

Another peculiar thing about lament is that it opens you up to gratitude. It's as if allowing yourself to see and share the darkness in your heart is the only way to notice all the light shining through the crevices.Yes, some things are very, very bad. But other things are good. Admitting that certain things are broken in ways they should not be makes me aware of other things that are good in ways they should not be. It opens me up to see Grace.

I think this is why the Psalms so often seem to jump from lament to praise. It is discomforting at times (my friend Brandy expressed this discomfort better than I could). And, like Brandy, I wonder how long it took David to get to that point of praise. Because it doesn't come quickly for me. It takes a lot of lamenting and staring at the darkness before I can see the brief flickers of light. And sometimes we just don't get there, and there are Psalms in which David didn't get there either. But other times, we find that letting out our fears and sorrows allows us to recognize the beauty in the midst of the chaos, the light shining in the darkness.

It is true that I am very often sad and scared these days. But I also have moments in which I am profoundly grateful for all that is around me. I awake from my grief and realize that I am thankful.

.... thankful that I get to be married to my very best friend, who can always find a way to make me laugh.

.... thankful l that I have the cutest dogs in the world. I will never get over how cute and sweet and loving and adorable they are. They make me smile and laugh every day.

.... thankful for my Journey group, filled with women that astound me with their depth and honesty.

.... thankful that I get to go through The Journey curriculum for the third time. It's the kind of stuff that takes time to sink in, and it's finally sinking in this year.

.... thankful for friends like Kari who take the time to write about Advent and suggest reading material. I learn so much from her.

.... thankful that my insurance has covered way more of our fertility treatments than I thought it would. It is still expensive, but it could be so much worse.

.... thankful that teaching online through Ivy Tech makes the fertility treatments doable. The extra income means that we can cover the costs each month, instead of having the debt of failed treatments looming over our head.

.... thankful for my coworkers. They make me laugh, and they love coffee and their pets just as much as I do.

.... thankful for running. I used to hate every second of running, even when I did it regularly. Lately, it has made me feel strong and healthy. And it saves me on days when I am most exhausted and sad.

.... thankful for our little town. It is beautiful and clean with delightful shops and the greatest breakfast place EVER.

.... thankful that we finally own a house. We rented for so long, and I thought we would never be able to own a home, but we do. 

.... thankful that I'm not afraid of Jesus anymore. I don't know when it happened, but I finally stopped feeling like he was disappointed in me and started to believe that he is good and caring and gentle. This is kind of huge, because our picture of God affects everything. And my picture of him these days is pretty great.

It all spills over sometimes, just when you thought your cup was empty. Life seeps through the cracks, and Grace finds its way in.

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. John 1:4-5

Advent

"Christians recognize the four weeks of Advent as a time to anticipate the birth of the Christ child and the second coming of Christ at final judgment. During Advent we repent of the habits and practices that turn us away from the loving God who is always reaching out to be reconciled to us. We want to become a people who seek after God and who cultivate patience as we wait for divine justice to bring peace and freedom to an aching world." Enumo Okoro, Silence and Other Surprising Invitations of Advent

I have always loved Christmas, but I have also always found it lacking. Christmas day rarely lives up to the weeks of anticipation before it, and as much as I love opening presents, they have never satisfied the ache inside of me for more. It always come too soon and leaves too early. I feel sucked in to the whirlwind of Christmas joy and then flung out before I can really experience or appreciate it.

When we joined a church community and I began following Jesus as a teenager, I figured this was the reason Christmas had always felt lacking. It was missing Jesus, and now I had found him. And therefore, Christmas would now feel like the celebration it truly was. And in many ways, it has taken on all sorts of new and beautiful meanings. But in other ways, I have still felt as though weeks of anticipation end with an emptiness inside, unmet by the systems in place.

The Christmas season is great for those whose lives are good, but for those who are hurting, who are broken and dying inside, it can feel like salt on a wound. I would imagine that the majority of people are in the latter camp, whether they admit it or not. And so we decorate and we shop and we sing carols and tell Jesus Happy Birthday, but it doesn't do much for us inside. It doesn't feel like Christmas.

It feels a little foolish to admit that what I've been longing for in Christmas has been Advent, because it has been there all along. But I don't feel like I was taught enough about Advent in my protestant, evangelical churches. We lit the candle on Sunday, but that was it. I didn't really get it. The Advent season, in which we enter into the aching longing of those in the midst of injustice and oppression and fear and abandonment, was lost on me. And I still don't really understand it, but I'm trying to, because this feeling of being abandoned and oppressed and in exile, those feelings often seem more real to me than Merry Christmas feelings.

This will be our seventh Christmas dealing with infertility. I enter every season hoping for a Christmas miracle, and exit it broken and bruised and angry. I look at the nativity scenes, see a mother holding a child that was given to her with absolutely no trying at all, and I ache in the loneliness of having tried so hard and gotten nowhere. We have waited so long, and our prayers go seemingly unanswered, our hearts still broken and longing for a child.

It is striking to me that Luke's gospel begins with a couple who have spent their married years bearing the wounds and scars of infertility. A gift is given to a barren woman, taking away her reproach among people. But we also have a woman who gets pregnant without even having sex. Elizabeth has spent her married years cringing at the sight of pregnant wombs. But the gospel tells us of a barren woman, now pregnant in her advanced years, rejoicing with a young virgin pregnant before her time. The one who has been waiting, and the one who has not waited at all.

There is something beautiful in this for me, as I seek to love and appreciate those around me who got pregnant for free, while we dish out hundreds to our fertility clinic each month. The gospels refuse to allow me to disassociate from those whose lives seem cleaner or easier than mine. They also refuse to allow me to see those lives as clean and easy. Was it really easier for Mary? No, she did not spend years dealing with infertility, but she did give birth to a son who would die at the hands of his oppressors, a son who would never be fully hers. Advent reminds me that we are all in this together, all aching with the "now but not yet" of Christmas hope.

So this is why I am throwing myself head-first into Advent this year. I am reading an Advent devotional in the morning and another before bed. Tom and I are reading a third one out loud in the evenings. I am listening to The Brilliance, Advent Volume 1 and Volume 2 during my 45 minute commute to and from work. The intentionality of it is good for my heart. It is finding me in the midst of my brokenness and cynicism, and it is reminding me to wait in hope and lament with faith in a God who answers, even after years of silence.

Advent is also corresponding to our current fertility situation. Since last writing, one failed cycle followed by a cycle on birth control (due to a ovarian cysts) has led to this one, with more nightly injections and an IUI a week or two before Christmas. I don't know how much hope I have of it working, and I spend more time thinking about finding the money for IVF (in-vitro fertilization) than I do expecting our current treatment to work. But this Advent season is reminding me that God answers the prayers of those who have been waiting and aching and praying for years. Those who feel forgotten and lost find that they have been remembered in this new Kingdom of God, and I am resting in that this Christmas.

Blessed are those who mourn

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Mt. 5:4

I tried to get back into blogging around Easter time, and I had high hopes for it. But that was in April, and in April, we were thrust into the new world of fertility treatments. This resulted in half a dozen drafts written and discarded, mainly due to the fact that I was rarely anything but an emotional, hormonal, angry wreck during the entirety of these months. We are now in a little bit of a resting place, and I feel like I've come up for air enough to regain some composure and write again.

In the last 6 months, we have done 5 IUI's (intrauterine insemination) with 4 rounds of clomid (a fertility drug). Everything has failed. I have spent 5 months devoting myself to prayer, begging for life to be knit inside me, only to end the month in agony. There are many ways in which being a person of faith makes going through something like this easier, but there are also many ways in which it does not. It's not just my body that I curse at the end of each month, it's the God who seemed to turn a deaf ear to my cries. When I crawl into the living room from the bathroom, dissolving in fits of tears and screams, my husband aches and does his best to soothe me. But God, well he doesn't seem to care so much then.

There are words that help during this time, and there are words that don't. Curse words actually help the most. I know that is not the most holy thing for a pastor's wife to say, but a strong, angry curse word from a trusted friend is somehow able to make me feel like they get the depth of my pain. It is much more helpful than "God is in control". I know it is said by the most well-meaning people, but the phrase just hurts, and it brings up more questions in me than it does grant peace. If God is in control, why does a meth-addict have no trouble getting pregnant, while I've endured 6 years of waiting? Why are there so many women who get pregnant for free, while I'm spending half my income on failed treatments?

There are times when life seems good and fair. Times when prayers get answered immediately, promises are kept, blessings overflow and the way of the righteous seems the sure pathway to happiness. The proverbs tell us of the blessings that come to the good and righteous man or woman. If you choose wisdom, you will be blessed. Choose foolishness, and you will reap the folly of your ways.

It's true, except when it isn't. Israel wrestled with this in the book of Job. Job, the righteous man, sat covered in sores, impoverished and broken, and his friends repeated proverbs to him. And I get it, I do. It's hard to see someone in that much pain; you want desperately to find a solution for them, to give them an answer that will fix their problem. But I think Job might have been much more comforted if his friends had sat down with him and said "This is so unfair. You do not deserve to go through pain like this." Those words, they bring me life, and I think they would have done the same thing to Job.

So where is God in all of this? Well, he doesn't seem to be answering the deepest cry of my heart, and yet Jesus, God-made-flesh, has been so very present in every crevice of my pain. And he has been bringing me up from clouds of depression I thought I could never get out of. Our last failed cycle was some of the worst pain I have ever felt, and I spent a week wanting to die. And then, it got better. It shouldn't have been any better, but it was. I felt able to breathe, think, laugh and joke. That's more than just my antidepressant kicking in; I know it is my God bringing resurrection to my pain.

And there is something about serving a God-made-flesh like Jesus, one who walked and lived among humans. You can't take just any old God into a doctor's office, inviting him to reside in the room with you, a nurse, your husband, and a doctor, performing the very unholy, unnatural task of intrauterine insemination. But a God who became flesh, who lived and breathed and sweat and excreted and bathed, that God is different. And in a sterile office, as my hands shook and I flinched in pain, my husband grabbed my hand and the one who became flesh resided with us. His presence has been so tangible in those doctor's offices that it has brought us both to tears. Why does he reside so strongly in the treatment and yet seem to behave so weakly in the outcome? I have no clue, and I really don't like it. But I am thankful for his presence.

For those who would like to join us in prayer, I would love to have you. However, I will warn you: it is hard to pray and fight for something like this. Tom and I often feel guilty at the end of a cycle in which we asked many faithful men and women to pray; it is hard to let them down with the news that the prayers "didn't work". So, if you are going to fight with us, be prepared to endure the discouragement that comes with bad news. It's hard work. A hard battle. All I can hope for is that, in the end, it will be worth all this fighting.

We took last month off of treatment, and we were forced to take this month off as well. This time off feels good to me; it has enabled me to breathe a little. We will (hopefully) start back up with treatment next month, with new doctors and new medication. We feel strongly that this is the right path as of now (we have prayed about adoption, and it doesn't feel right yet), but we have no idea how far along this path we will have to go until we get a miracle.

It is hard to understand why a good God would allow me to go through so much hell before answering my cries. It's the age-old question, and I'm not sure there will ever be a good answer for it. But I believe in a God who brings resurrection in the midst of death and pain. And I'm holding strong to the belief that I am blessed as I mourn, while clinging to each ounce of comfort I receive.

Trembling and bewildered, they fled...

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’” Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. (Mark 16:6-8)

For the past few years, this has been my favorite Easter text. I love the unsettling way that the book of Mark ends. Most bibles include alternate endings, because from the beginning, people were unsettled by it. Why end a gospel with a group of people filled with trembling, bewilderment and fear? We need to end this with Jesus, right? With signs and wonders and rejoicing?

The other three gospels help to satisfy us in this (though they also beautifully record the initial reactions to the empty tomb), but I love that Mark leaves us hanging. I love that the last verse tells us of women who were being really horrible evangelists. They had just encountered angels, just been told that Jesus had risen, and yet they flee with fear, saying nothing to anyone.

And if we are unsettled by the reactions of the women, lets be reminded that these were the "good ones". These were the women who had followed Jesus through his trial and crucifixion, who had arrived at the scene that morning with burial spices, ready to anoint his body. The disciples, the ones who had fled early on, were somewhere else, in hiding, in mourning, entrenched in anger over the Messiah who had let them down. Peter had not just fled, but he had told everyone who asked him about Jesus that he didn't know him, hadn't followed him, hadn't had anything to do with him.

Many people will enter church today with rejoicing, filled with great joy over the Jesus who has risen and transformed their life. But others will enter church with trembling and bewilderment, saying nothing to anyone, because they are afraid. Some will enter church with anger, because this God has let them down. They know they should be there, because this is what you do on Easter. But they can't respond to this Easter message with the hope that others do. And they can't shake the doubts in their mind, the questions that rise up saying "what does this mean, and how could THIS story be real?"

And the beautiful thing about Easter is that there is room for us all to gather around this empty tomb, room for us all to respond with our own mix of emotions. It is ok to be you. It is ok to be afraid, it is ok to feel doubts arising in your heart, ok to question the sermon and feel confused over the gospel message.

And there is room for us all to be surprised this Easter. Surprised by a new creation springing up all around, inaugurated by the one who went ahead of this bewildered group of people, waiting for them with great patience and love. This Easter is about encountering that Jesus, the one who loves those trembling women as much as he loves the unfaithful Peter.

So come. Come just as you are, and meet this humble, loving, risen King. Lets look with wonderment at this empty tomb, then move on to Galilee where he awaits us.