Relationships are Messy

Today is my youngest son’s birthday. He is 15 today. I am really not sure how he got so old. I can remember his birth and the months nursing him so clearly - like it was yesterday. The years go fast, although it never seems that way when it is 3:00 in the morning and your toddler wants to play. Parenting isn’t always easier because my cubs are older though. As they grow, their struggles do too.

I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships lately - the ways we change and they ways we stay the same. I’ve been pondering my little family - the boys and me (and of course, Castiel - can’t leave out the fluffy one among us.). I’ve been thinking about the ways we have learned to communicate and hold space for each other in our emotional healing, and the way we love one another in our victories and our mistakes. We are not who we were 4 years ago and that is a good and healthy thing.

I’ve also been thinking about my larger family - my parents, my siblings and their spouses, my nieces and nephews. We are a big, noisy, chaotic bunch when we get together - laughing loudly and carrying on, talking over one another and arguing about theology and politics. It is beautiful and overwhelming all at the same time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the way my family has been showing up for me over and over, especially since I became a widow. I was pretty isolated from them for a lot of years. We would see each other some, but there wasn’t the closeness I wished for.

After my husband died though, my family surrounded me despite the distance. My parents basically lived with the boys and me for months. My father literally held me up at the funeral home as I made arrangements. My mom and dad sat with me while I cried and while I was numb. They reminded me to eat, and they helped me pack to move closer to home. My siblings have loved me hard and have become safe places and cheerleaders and confidants again. My family held me and my boys together, even though the long isolation had stunted our relationships for a time. These wonderful people have been a safe container for our grief and pain, and they have been our encouragers as we found our voices and tried new things. They have been literal grace and hope to us.

Relationships are hard work. They are messy and imperfect. Let’s just be honest and name that.

It is so easy for us to choose safety and armor right now. Our country is deeply divided, and recent events have only made that more evident. We tend to circle the wagons with people who look like us and think like us and vote like us. Sometimes our relationships become an echo chamber where everyone we know sounds like us.

But I believe God created us to live in authentic community - the messy kind. We need to get better at hearing one another and listening to understand, not to find the weakness and attack. We are never going to agree on everything. But here is the bottom line: We need each other even when we annoy each other. There are things in this life that we cannot do alone.

Brene Brown often talks about how hard it is to hate somebody up close. That up close part is hard though. We need both courage and vulnerability to get there and to find true belonging. We learn to love and honor our own stories so that we can learn empathy and grace for someone else’s story. Our journey is to listen more than speak, to hear one another’s stories and find commonality. Our journey is to move in close and choose hard conversations and persist through the messy parts.

I will be eternally grateful for the ways my family closed ranks around me and my boys. They moved in close and persisted through some really hard conversations and messy parts. I needed them. I still need them. They are my people. They have been Christ to me in my most needy hours.

I know you have people too. It may be your blood family. Maybe your friends and chosen family are your anchor. Whoever they are, love them hard. Be brave and let them see your true and messy self. Tell them how much you love and need them. Invest in your people and let them invest in you too.

When we live in community, we are better than we would be alone. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, we hurt one another sometimes. But when we choose to love each other over and over, not just in spite of our quirks and faults, but because of them, we better represent the goodness and steadfast love that God has for us.

And Rickleses, I love you, and I am grateful for you every single day.

So tell me, who are your people? What do you love most about them? How have you persisted through the messy parts? How do you reflect grace to one another?

Beautiful Things in Mysterious Places

I find a strange beauty in fallen trees. It is kind of a weird thing to call beautiful. But stay with me here. After a tree dies and falls, one would think its usefulness is over. Of course, it is wood and can be used to create new things. We all recognize that.

But I am talking about the fallen trees in the middle of the forest - the ones with no hope of new foliage or growth. You have seen them - those trunks and stumps with no human to claim them to make a desk or paper or art. Picture this once mighty tree that will now lay on the forest floor, dead and decaying for who knows how long. Maybe you have felt like this tree. I know I have.

After being widowed, I felt like every part of me was dead or decaying. I saw no hope or usefulness beyond just trying to survive as a newly single mom and widow.

The truth is that I had believed I would be a pastor’s wife till the day I died myself. That life was something I felt called to from the age of 8, and I loved it. I loved the connections and I loved pouring my heart into our church family. I don’t always understand it, but for some reason, even when we act like spoiled children, fighting over who gets to sit in the front seat, God continues to use the church to accomplish God’s ways on earth. Despite our selfishness and despite the way we fail to be like Christ, God still loves the church. And I do too. So when all of a sudden that identity was taken from me, I didn’t know who I was any more.

When we see death and suffering and loss, we often try to rush past and avert our eyes. It makes us uncomfortable and anxious. I believe that is why we tend to say the dumbest things to people in pain and grief. Their loss makes us question our own vulnerability, and we rush to make the person feel better so that we can feel better too.

When someone you love is grieving, simply make space and sit and keep watch with them. Nothing you say can fix the hurt and loss. But your presence does help. It is an absolute gift to know know someone is simply there to sit with you and hold space for the emptiness and pain.

These empty spaces are where I believe we need to stop and ponder. I think, if we are courageous enough to look a little closer, we will see something new in the midst of the loss. Now, I am not advocating rushing through grief or simply looking for the proverbial silver lining. Grief is a long, hard journey and nothing can change that. There is a loss there - a real, gut wrenching, life changing loss.

Let’s go back to that fallen tree. Once it hits the ground, the life it knew is over. There is no going back. However, I am curious about what happens next. After the grief has softened and after the empty spaces have been acknowledged, what happens then?

What I see in fallen tree trunks that is so beautiful and so hopeful is that, after a time, there is life that moves in uninvited. Maybe a squirrel uses the openings to store nuts. Under the log, in the dark, moist ground, insects find safety and sustenance. Moss or lichen grows on the trunks. The fallen trunk didn’t even ask for it, but life happens. That dead, decaying tree becomes a place with a new purpose. Hope springs up, and there is beauty in the loss.

I don’t really know how to explain it, but God has been present to me during the past 3 &1/2 years in ways I still don’t understand. There have been plenty of moments when I have been angry or felt betrayed or couldn’t find words to pray. I have cried to God from the depths of my bones and felt only silence and emptiness. But I still believe that Holy Spirit was there, hovering and praying over me in “groanings that cannot be expressed in words” (Romans 8:26 NLT) I felt her presence in those dark moments and days.

There is a strange and mysterious beauty in dead trees. It doesn't make sense.

There is also a strange and mysterious beauty in grief. It really doesn’t make sense. It may take years to recognize. It often comes without permission or invitation.

God’s presence is real in grief, in ways it is not (maybe it cannot be) in joy or in everyday life. I propose that God uses even death to create something of beauty.

“For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.” Isaiah 43:19 (NLT)

Here is a song my sister, Mary, introduced me to a couple of years ago that speaks to finding beauty in lost and lonely places. It is called Beautiful Things by Gungor. Have a listen and let God speak into your silent spaces.

Where has God met you in the quiet, dark places of grief and suffering? What strange and mysterious places have you seen a glimpse of beauty? How can I pray for you today?

Trick or Treat

True confession: I love Halloween. I personally love dressing up, and I love handing out candy to small-ish humans dressed in their favorite costumes.

Tiny princesses and Jedi.

The latest superhero.

The true nerds who love to pick the most obscure costume they can dream up, even if only a few people ever “get it.”

Big lumbering teenagers dressed in a “this is my costume” t-shirt hoping there is candy for big kids too.

I especially love family costumes where every person dresses up thematically.

I love them all.

I have heard people complain about kids being “too big” or forgetting to say “trick our treat.” But I have none of those hang ups. If you come to my door on Halloween, I am going to give you candy no matter what you’re wearing or what you feel brave enough to say.

I’ve spent much of the last few months hoping with all my might that the 2020 curse doesn’t stop Halloween this year. Every year on October 31, I wait eagerly for the first signs of darkness so I can start the candy-giving.

Each year you will find my boys and I sitting on our front porch early, dressed in our favorite costumes, waiting when the first trick-or-treaters show up.

Oh, and then there is the issue of candy purchases. Y’all, I have no willpower when it comes to seasonal candy. Can anyone tell me why a Reese’s tastes better when its shaped like a pumpkin?

Every year, I buy far too much candy, and although I only buy candy we like, I always have so much left over that we are still eating it after the new year. It is a serious thing in our house.

my kids came out of the womb dressing up

Cole, around 4 years old, wearing his new cape that his cool Aunt Mary gave him

one of our family costumes - Doctor Who characters

I am the 11th doctor, Caleb is the 10th Doctor, and Cole is the Empty Child

So, I had this thought today…because weird thoughts come to me randomly.

I think Halloween is a beautiful picture of grace.

What!!! Renae, don’t you know there are entire sections of Christianity that believe Halloween is evil?

Yep, I do. And I still stand by my hypothesis.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches us about effective prayer. He reminds us to keep on asking, keep on seeking, and keep on knocking. And then Jesus reminds us that if we, as humans, know how to give our kids good gifts, how much more must God delight in giving to us. Eugene Peterson in The Message says it beautifully: “Don’t you think the God who conceived you in love will be even better?” (Matthew 7: 7-11)

God loves to give us good gifts. And God is always waiting to reveal God’s own goodness so that we can marvel and delight.

So often, we think prayer has to follow a certain formula - it needs to look a certain way to be accepted. We have this tendency to think we should only “bother” God with the big, important things - sometimes we only ask for the things we can’t figure out how to do for ourselves.

But I think God delights in generously giving to us. God gifts us daily with things beyond our wildest imagination -

a colorful array of gorgeous autumn leaves,

vivid orange and pink sunsets,

the first cool breeze of autumn,

sticky kisses and sleepy cuddles,

a friend who calls just when we need it most,

a good night’s sleep and a hot cup of coffee in the stillness of morning before the family awakes.

I’m not sure I always recognize these things as gifts - sometimes I expect them as rights - but I am on a journey to see through new eyes.

So now I have begun imagining God waiting at the door, candy basket full to overflowing.

God, eagerly anticipating the first signs of us, standing in our best costume with our pumpkin buckets out, knowing that goodness is coming our way.

God, ready to give us good things whether we know how to ask or not.

But I also think our job is to come, with eyes wide open. It doesn’t take special language. We don’t have to look a certain way. We are simply to come and ask. We are simply to see and notice.

What is your favorite Halloween costume and candy? What good gifts have you noticed this week? How can you be more attentive to the gifts God gives every day?

Creativity and Other Scary Words

When you think about a Creative Person, what do you imagine? An artist with canvases and paints? A musician with a guitar, writing a new song? An author and illustrator of children’s books? Certainly these all qualify, but I think we should look closer at this idea of creativity. For years - most of my life honestly - I did not consider myself creative. I would sadly, or sometimes with a sassy tone, tell people I didn’t have a creative bone in my body, or I “couldn’t draw a straight line to save my life.”

In reality though, I longed to be a creative person. I would play around with craft projects or bake something new or draw with my kids, but I wistfully left the real creating to those who had “the gift of creativity.” (Insert angel chorus and fairy dust here.)

But a couple of years ago, I began defiantly buying colored pens and art supplies like they were going out of stock. I dabbled in bullet journaling and added color to every piece of paper I could find. I colored for fun again.

{I should confess here that my mom tells the story that every Christmas, no matter how many cool toys Santa brought me, the new coloring book and fresh pack of crayons in my stocking were my absolute favorite. FACT: There is nothing more precious as an oldest child than a new pack of unbroken, perfectly sharp crayons, unspoiled by younger siblings.}

I felt a joy and lightness as these moments became a solace in my grief and stress. I shared this newfound “coping strategy” with my Counselor, along with the hidden wish that I was creative. She championed the self awareness that art helped me process my emotions and thoughts, but she also challenged my belief that I wasn’t creative. (Wait!!…She had not seen my dubious art skills - how could she even think creativity might live inside of me?) We discussed the abundant creativity of God and sat with the idea that if we are created in the image of a Creative God, that spark of creativity lives within us.

I left my session that day with a secret hope that she was right, and I vowed to research this idea of creativity. I started noticing God’s creativity in everything - the many shades of green in trees above me, the way the sunset changes as time passes, the variety of animals, and the sparks of creativity I saw in other humans.

Then I read a quote by Brene Brown in her book “The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are” (2010, p.108)

I’m not very creative” doesn’t work. There’s no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don’t.”

That startled me. Did I have untapped creativity that I had ignored as a result of listening to my inner critic?

I took to the scriptures and found verses steeped in God’s love and creativity. The Holy Spirit kept pointing me to the truth that when God made humans, God made us to create! We are created to reflect our Creator.

Genesis 1:27 (CEB) God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them; male and female God created them.

Ephesians 2:10 (NLT) For we are God’s masterpiece. God has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things God planned for us long ago.

Psalm 19:1-4 (NLT) The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display God’s craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make God known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world.

At first this scared me. What if I couldn’t create? What if I was the exception? And then I realized how wrong I was to believe that inner voice that said “everyone else, but not you.” I’m not capable of escaping the grace of God. God is big and deep and wide enough to include us all. Even me. Even you. We are included in that circle of love and grace and creativity.

So I started creating on purpose. I doodle and draw, and I use color wherever I can. I call my love of finding the perfect harmony in a song an act of creativity. I cook with an eye of creating something beautiful and nourishing to the soul and body. I believe that I can use creativity to solve problems.

My life verse takes on new meaning with a lens of creativity.

Psalm 19:14 (NLT) May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.

So here we are. I am creative. Full stop. I get to start each day with the choice to use the creativity I am given. It is like a muscle I need to exercise. I choose how I want to express God’s creative spark in me every day. I get to create as an act of worship and self nourishment. And God loves creatively through me. I get to glorify God through my creativity and use it to lead others closer to the Creator of their soul.

What about you? How does creativity show up in your life? Where do you feel resistant to the idea that you are a creative being? How are you creatively loving God and others?

4 Ways We Can Survive Times of Waiting

Weeks have turned into months and we are still in this mess. We assumed (hoped, prayed?) we would be back to “normal” now. The initial fear and anxiety has turned to weariness and a stress level that’s always just below our boiling point. Numbers continue to climb, but now, the stories of illness are closer to home. There’s a lot of fighting over who to believe and what is true. Many of us have mental and emotional health that is suffering. What do we do when we can’t see the end of the story and we feel like we’re wandering in the wilderness?

Exodus story My Spiritual Director said something profound to me in our very first session together. I was sharing my story & we were talking about life giving spiritual practices. She said, “We are all writing our own exodus story. What are the things that are manna for your soul?” Weeks and weeks later, I am still processing this one question.

Here is the truth: We are all wandering in the wilderness these days, and I’ve been thinking a lot about this question. What is the manna that is sustaining me? It sometimes differs by the day, and even by the hour. But there are a few things that continue to sustain me during this wilderness season. Maybe they will be helpful to you too. So here are my top 4 Manna practices for this season and all the seasons to come.

1. Give yourself grace. We’ve never done this before. Literally. We have never lived our lives in the middle of a pandemic. We’ve never had to make these decisions or know the right answer in a situation like this. So be kind to yourself.

   When you feel frustrated that you aren’t making the progress you want, remind yourself that this is all new.

   When you can’t find your normal energy or motivation, say to yourself, “I’ve never done this before.”

   And your kids? This is all new to them too.

   So take the nap, read for fun, go for a walk, savor an extra cup of coffee tomorrow morning. Talk to yourself the way you would talk to your best friend. Tell your inner critic to take a (long) break, and give yourself grace.

2. Simplify. We are so used to busy & complicated lives. Technology claims to make life easier, but we all know that isn’t true. Whether it’s in person or from home, we are juggling jobs and school and family life and “virtual” relationships. We want to add enriching activities for ourselves and our kids and to find time for all of the things. Bur how much of this makes our lives better? How many of these things are just one more thing to get done? Adding things in a time when stress is higher (see above) is a recipe for overwhelm and unmet goals. Instead, let’s find ways to simplify. Order in once a week. Let that home project slide for now. Fill your heart with simple joys. Watch a movie together. Take turns choosing which takeout to order from. Have a “clean out the fridge” dinner. Make your life easier in every way possible. Life is complicated enough without us adding to it.

3. Rest. This one is hard when, fo many of us, everyone is home - All The Time! Right?

   For too many years, I didn’t know how to ask for the rest I needed. I was burned out and my body was failing me from overextending myself so many times. One of the most important spiritual practices I learned after the death of my husband was taking a Sabbath. This is a life saving practice, y’all.

   For me and my family, we have Sabbath on Saturday. We don’t schedule things outside the house if we can help it. We plan to rest. By that I mean rest is literally in our schedule for Saturdays. My man cubs spend much of their day watching movies and playing games. I spend most of my day away from technology. I try not to waste my time scrolling social media (this one is challenging sometimes). most Saturdays I read, listen to podcasts or audiobooks, find a way to be creative, and enjoy silence.

   Now, I realize silence is a rare thing for those of you with tiny humans in the house (my humans aren’t so tiny anymore.) But where can you find those moments of stillness? Can you take a walk together as a family and notice the beauty of nature? Can you take an hour of quiet instead of picking up the toys while your kids nap? Can you take an extra long shower while someone else does toddler time?

   Fight for this time. It’s worth it. You are worth it. You can’t give out of an empty vessel.

4. Breathe. It sounds so simple. We do it all day long without even thinking about it. But when we take time to intentionally inhale and exhale, and pay attention to that process, it calms our heart rate, soothes our anxiety, and it helps ground us in the moment.

   Take a deep breath and exhale slowly. Notice what it feels like to breathe in and breathe out.

   Where do you feel the breath most strongly? In the nostrils? In your belly rising and falling? As it passes through your throat? Focus on that place for a few breaths.

   Notice the tiny pause before the inhale begins and before the exhale begins. Take time to count a few breath cycles. What does it feel like to pay attention to your breathing?

   This is part of mindfulness and is available to you anytime. When things feel overwhelming, return to the breath. When you have a decision to make, pay attention to your breath before you start processing the choices. Your breath is a respite for you anywhere and at any time.

The big takeaway here is to be kind to yourself. You matter. Your health and well-being matters. Your family will benefit from you choosing to be your best self. It isn’t always easy, but it is always worth the extra effort.

I want to hear from you. What are you doing to care for yourself in this season? Name one place you will choose better care for yourself in the next week.