Testimony

I had a dream that I got to church and suddenly found out that I was supposed to get up front and give a testimony. I was not prepared, and I wondered, "What would my testimony even be?" 

A testimony is supposed to tell the story of God's work in your life. If you google "Christian testimony" you will get almost 17 million hits. You'll encounter a page called Christian Testimonies on the official King James Bible online website, or "Amazing Stories, Christian Testimonies, Healing Miracles, and Inspirational Stories" on the 700 Club website. (I'm not linking to that one. Sorry.) 

All of them, if the sample I read is representative, tell stories of healing and forgiveness and change. They all come from the perspective of having been through the fire, and come out on the other side in a place of transcendental hope and joy.

"...the Lord took my dad dying, took my worst nightmare and showed me how he can make it into the best thing that's happened to me."

"All the chains that held me captive for so long have been shattered!"

"J. surrendered to God and hasn't touched drugs or alcohol since."

"All I have to do is live and love in the grace God has given me, and I just stand there and let him do what he loves best--and that is make my life perfect."

After I woke up, I kept thinking about this testimony business. I am in such a broken, desperate spiritual place--I definitely don't have a 700 Club-type testimony. I mostly can't worship; I can only grieve. I can barely praise; sometimes it's hard to be thankful. I can only grieve. 

I can't sing the words to hymns that proclaim 

"I fear no foe with thee at hand to bless; Ills have no weight, tears lose their bitterness.Where is thy sting, death? Where grave thy victory?"

...because I do most definitely feel the "sting" of Aidan's death, and the grave has an excruciating, if temporary, victory. 

I especially can't confess, because my only sorrow is the constant presence of Aidan's absence. I can, however, sing the parts that ask God's help: "In life, in death, Lord, abide with me." This is the only part of worship that I can do these days, most of the time. 

But maybe we need more testimonies that don't have a happy, feel-good conclusion, in which the believer testifies from the other side of suffering. We need testimonies that come from right in the middle of pain and suffering and inadequacy and sin and despair--because that's where we live. 

Even if you're on the other side of your own worst troubles, you are still in this world, and the people around you are suffering; so you must, if you walk with Jesus, feel their sorrow and pain. That should be the place where every testimony begins and ends--rather than beginning with sin and sorrow and ending with the theme song from The Lego Movie.

The wife of a person I know suffered from a dangerous, life-threatening health condition; he was by her side for more than a week, watching the doctors try to diagnose and treat her, watching her sometimes seem like she was getting better, sometimes seem like she was dying.

I emailed him, "You must be exhausted and scared. Hope you get a restful sleep."

He replied: "I'm NOT scared. Why would I be scared? God is in control of space, time, and place. He is in charge; and I and my bride have placed our trust and lives in Him. Because He Lives, I can face tomorrow."

All I can see when I read that are huge flashing red letters: D E N I A L.

It doesn't ring true. If he had said that he did feel fear, but he prayed, and now feels comfort and peace--that would be more believable. But to not even admit the presence, ever, of fear? I'm not buying it. It's definitely not the kind of testimony that buttresses my own feeble faith because it is so far from my own experience.

We need to hear stories from people who are STILL struggling with sin, who are STILL afraid, who are STILL sad, even though they are believers. Trusting in Jesus does not mean we no longer feel normal human emotions like fear and sadness. It doesn't mean we no longer experience the hold of sin on our lives. Rather,the beauty of Jesus is that we are invited to bring these normal human experiences and feelings and struggles to Him, and He will meet us right where we are.

That's my testimony. I mostly can't worship or confess because I don't have it in me. I guess that's Gospel 101. I don't have it in me. But if I do have moments when I can worship, moments of faith or joy or thankfulness, it is very clear to me that those moments come directly from the hand of God. God supplies grace to allow me to cling tenuously to faith and hope; and God provides comfort from other sufferers, other doubters, others who don't have all the answers.

Learning How to Breathe

Like an accident victim re-learning how to walk after months in bed, I am slowly beginning to re-learn how to breathe. 

After Aidan died--it will be two months tomorrow--I felt like I had to remind myself to breathe. I had to push each breath out deliberately, or it would lie too long in my lungs. It helped if I pushed on my chest, right in the middle, at the top of my ribcage. After the exhale, I'd wait to inhale, expecting that if I waited long enough, when I started breathing again, things would be different. Aidan would still be here. Aidan would still be breathing. 

(I have to use his real name, and not his Peevie moniker, because being whimsical just doesn't feel right any more. My whimsy is gone, at least when I'm talking about Aidan.)

I have made progress in the breathing department, but I am still lost and confused and empty with regard to every other aspect of life. How do I go back to work? How do I read books about anything other than grief and loss? How do I tell jokes, and laugh, and find beauty in the world? 

Maybe it's too soon for any of these things.

How do I answer when someone asks me how I'm doing? It's a normal question. It's not wrong that people ask me; in fact, I understand that they say it to be encouraging, to express love and support.

How am I doing? Here are my answers: Nothing is as it should be. Shitty. Empty. Sad. Bereft. I finally started to cry, after four weeks of wondering where my tears were.Like a blanket of fog is hanging low over the architecture of my life, touching and obscuring everything, dampening or deadening all pleasure and enjoyment.

I'm reading (and re-reading) everything I can about grief and loss. So far I've read Lament for a Son, by Nicholas Wolterstorff; The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion; The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis; and I'm halfway through a collection of essays called Be Still My Soul, edited by Nancy Guthrie.

I still want to talk about Aidan all the time, remember him, have people remember him to me. I don't really want to talk about books or movies or politics or celebrity gossip or anything that doesn't directly connect to Aidan. I remember this feeling after Caitlin died. I remember that for a year after we lost her, our first child, born prematurely and living only two hours, the most important thing you could know about me was that we had a baby and she died.

And now this is The Thing that defines me: the lack of Aidan. There is no Aidan--at least, not on this earth.

I am clinging to Aidan's things in his room, to Manny, his stuffed manatee, to his poems, to photos of Aidan sitting on the beach writing in his journal, goofing around with his friends or siblings, smiling into the camera with his gentle, sweet grin.

And with feeble faith, I cling also to the hope of the resurrection, and to God's promise:

We believe that Jesus died and rose again; and so it will be for those who have died in Christ. God will raise them to be with the Lord forever. Comfort one another with these words. --I Thessalonians 4:14, 17-18

Forgiving the Unforgivable: a Review of The Hiding Place

Provision Theater made me cry.  Twice.  Jerks.

The Hiding Place, a play based on the book by Corrie ten Boom, tells the true and compelling story of the ten Boom family and their costly work with the underground resistance to hide and protect Jews during the Nazi occupation of Holland during WWII.  My family and one other decided that there was no better way to celebrate Mothers' Day than by watching a play about Nazis and concentration camps.

We ignored the the warning on the company's website suggesting that the material might be too difficult for children under 10.  One of our under-tenners seemed to handle it just fine; but M. Peevie cowered in my arms with my hands over her eyes and ears for much of the play.  "Are there going to be real gunshots?" she asked, remembering the loud and scary moments from The Three Musketeers.

"No," I accidentally lied.  But there were.  And there was hitting and brutality and other mean stuff that when you see it on stage, with real people, can feel more scary and painful than when you see it on the big blue screen.

"If the Nazis had a report card for niceness, they would get all F's!" M. Peevie declared after the show.

But the story is, of course, ultimately redemptive.  The ten Booms risk everything to help Jewish families -- some friends, some strangers -- escape during the War -- and Corrie's father and sister Betsie paid the ultimate price.  "Hold everything in your hands lightly," Corrie said in her later writings, "otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open."

I cried twice during the show: first, when Betsie died in Ravensbruck, and again when Corrie forgave the Dutch informant who facilitated her family's arrest. She wrote this about this forgiveness

Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him....Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness....And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives along with the command, the love itself.

Adapted and directed by Tim Gregory, the play is sometimes hard to watch because of the subject matter, but definitely worth it.  Lia Mortenson as Corrie strikes believable notes as a believer who sometimes doubts and often struggles to understand God's purposes and the teachings of her faith.  It's a big cast, and the other actors do a great job as well--except for the allegedly German-accented English was distracting and mixed up with some Russian and Eastern European accents. 

The Hiding Place is playing at Provision Theater through May 23.

A Lesson in Apologizing

I learned something about apologies today.

I had grabbed A. Peevie's thumb playfully--but I accidentally hurt him, and he was mad at me.  "I'm sorry, A. Peevie," I said.  "I didn't mean to hurt you."  He was still mad, and not ready to forgive.

"You really, really hurt me," he said, cradling his injured thumb in his other hand.

"I know," I said, and again: "I'm really sorry.  I wasn't gentle enough."  He stared out the window, frowning.  I gave it another try, even though by this time I wanted to tell him to get over it, it wasn't that bad.

"A. Peevie," I said, "I'm sorry I hurt your thumb.  I didn't mean to do that."  No answer.  More frowning.  I gave up.

Several minutes later, I glanced back at him to see if he was ready to forgive and move on.  He still looked grumpy and unforgiving.  "I've already apologized three times," I thought to myself.  "Geez.  He really needs to get his Jesus on, forgive me, and get over it."

A song came on the radio, and I saw my opportunity to try to make peace one more time.  "A.," I said, "Who sings this song?"

"Green Day," he said in a smallish voice, like he was on the verge of liking me again; and that's when I realized several things about apologies:

1.  It's wrong-headed to keep track of how many times you've said "I'm sorry"  for the same injury.

2.  You may have to keep on saying "I'm sorry" until the person you've hurt is ready to hear it.

3.  To say "I'm sorry" once or twice or even several times, and then to unilaterally decide that you've apologized enough, is essentially the same as telling the other person how to feel--which Green Room readers will know is Just. Not. Right.  The unspoken message is, "You should not feel hurt any more; get over it."  It is not your prerogative to tell another person how to feel.

So I apologized again.  "A. Peevie," I said, "I really am sorry that I hurt you."

He smiled at me with gentle forgiveness on his face.  "It's OK, Mom," he said.  "I forgive you."

Christmas Spirit

Oh, I'm filled with Christmas spirit, all right. That's why I'm up after midnight, wrapping gifts, doing laundry, washing dishes, and caulking windows.

Oh, I'm not really caulking windows, but that's one way my friend spends her late-at-night-after-everyone-else-is-in-bed-and-the-house-is-quiet time. Strange, right? But also a tiny bit wonderful at the same time.

The dishes have been piling up faster than usual. The microwave oven broke, and we have to put food into pans on the stove or in the oven to heat it up. Hence: more dirty dishes. Annoying.

[How did people ever live without microwave ovens? I remember the first one Mr. Peevie and I ever bought--we gave it to each other for our first anniversary. It lasted for over 20 years. The next one lasted a couple of months. This one is now about three years old, and the stupid door-opening button took early retirement. M-waves are so cheap now that it's not cost-effective to repair them; but it's still a hundred bucks we don't have.]

Since I'm co-room-momming for the sixth grade class, I'm also putting my secret talent to work arranging a lovely gourmet gift basket for Mr. Santa. Did you know I had this talent? Now it's not a secret anymore. I don't know what teachers like and don't like to receive from their students for the holidays, but this has got to be a good choice: gourmet goodies from Trader Joe's, including spiral ham, lovely cheeses, assorted crackers, nuts, sparkling juices, and some other crap. I mean yummie treats.

Meanwhile, my uterus is doing origami with itself, and I'm allergic to the painkillers that actually work for menstrual cramps, so I'm moaning softly and yearning for menopause.

There are ten jillion more things that need to be done in the next week, and I can already tell I'm going to have to double up on the Lexapro, and maybe add in a few Xanax, to get through it all.

Ah, the holidays. The most wonderful time of the year.

I would love to be that person who is totally focused on the reason for the season (even though that phrase makes me throw up a little in my brain every time I hear it). I would love to be all Jesusy, reading through parts of the Christmas story with my children every night before bed; making care packages for homeless people and delivering them to shelters; baking cookies and wrapping them up in festive containers for all my neighbors; creating and mailing homemade Christmas cards.

But I can't even get my dad's birthday card in the mail. His birthday was two days ago. I can't even brush my hair every day; and forget about getting even store-bought cards in the mail.

I don't know how other people do it: wear holiday-themed jewelry, get their shopping done before Thanksgiving, French braid their daughters' hair and tie it with ribbons that match their outfits, and generally appear to have all their shit together.

Fortunately, I do have a secret for surviving the holidays, and indeed, for surviving any stressful or challenging time in life. Do you want to know what my secret is?

Low standards.

Try it. It works.

Review: Blue Like Jazz

I'm late to the party, as usual.

Six years ago, when Blue Like Jazz came out, a bunch of people recommended it to me. I didn't read it. I tagged it TBR in my LibraryThing catalog. Every time it came up in conversation, or was mentioned in a book or an article, I'd say to myself, "Oh, yeah, I need to read that book soon."

So here it is, six years later. I borrowed it from a friend and read it in one day. The whole time I was reading Blue Like Jazz, I was pissed that I hadn't written it.

Donald Miller charts his spiritual journey in a series of autobiographical essays. His voice is sweet and almost child-like; he's real, and transparent, and funny. Miller, a lapsed Baptist reconditioned into a non-denominational Jesus-lover, struggles with the same existential dilemmas that keep me awake at night: the responsibility of being human, the irrationality of God, the meaning of life, and why girls like Pride and Prejudice so much, but guys don't.

He acknowledges that sometimes faith is inexplicable: "My belief in Jesus did not seem rational or scientific, and yet there was nothing I could do to separate myself from this belief." I feel Miller's pain on this. It doesn't mean that he believes that faith in Jesus is completely irrational; it means that even though some parts of the faith scenario make rational sense, some parts don't, like the resurrection, like the notion that a guy who lived 2000 years ago could have life-altering relevance today. It means that sometimes we just don't feel the presence of God in our lives, even though we confess that God Is There. It means that sometimes believing in God feels like having an imaginary friend.

That's why it's called faith--but there are not many modern Christians who write authentically about this struggle between their heads and their hearts. Miller's unpretentious struggle gives the rest of us the ability to admit our own doubts and fears.

Miller's faith encompasses his emotions, but it does not rely solely upon them. "Early on," he wrote, "I made the mistake of wanting spiritual feelings to endure and remain romantic...When this didn't happen, I became confused." From this confusion and fear, Miller decided to try self-discipline as the means for overcoming the encumbering sins of self-addiction. You know what happened: It didn't work. It never does. The cycle, Miller said, was dehumanizing.

Again: haven't we all been here? We misunderstand or misinterpret the gospel. We have been taught that as believers, we must look different, behave differently--and we want to, we really do. But sooner than we can say "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" or some other annoying Christian catchphrase, we're back in the middle of whatever idolatry holds our hearts.

This is why Miller emphasizes the relationship with Jesus, emphasizes the grace of the cross. Because it's what makes Christianity--or Christian spirituality, as Miller labels it--different from other faiths. We rely on something outside of ourselves to change us, to redirect us. We fall in love with Jesus, and it fuels our change.

I felt kinship with Miller in his pursuit of faith that is deeply connected to the heart, that is deeper than mere intellectual assent. "Too much of our time is spent trying to chart God on a grid, and too little is spent allowing our hearts to feel awe," Miller writes. "By reducing Christian spirituality to formula, we deprive our hearts of wonder."

As the product of a strict, behaviorist upbringing, I am painfully aware of the struggle to grow a faith that is as real to my heart as it is to my head. In our household, loving God meant having the right behavior, with little or no regard for what gurgled behind the scenes in our hearts, in our emotions.

Miller gets this, and even though the Baptists don't like it, and the Presbyterians get nervous with this crazy talk about feelings and emotions (ohmyword is someone going to clap in church?), and even the de-converted despise his "tepid theology of the feel-good variety," his message is valuable to both believers and non-believers.

Miller--whose photo on his website makes him look like my boyfriend, Vincent D'Onofrio--said that when he started writing Blue Like Jazz, he "wanted to end up with something like Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies." He succeeded. I love Traveling Mercies (reviewed here) for the same reasons I love Blue Like Jazz: both authors speak honestly, transparently about what it's really like to be a Christian in a post-modern world.

So, better late than never: Put Blue Like Jazz on your reading list for 2010, if you passed it up in order to re-read Stephen King's The Stand (the uncut version).

Twelve

A. Peevie turned twelve today. This is not a big surprise, since he turned eleven last year.

A. Peevie is a complicated boy. He is deep and thoughtful; he doesn't give an answer until he feels certain and confident. He always tells the truth, and he has a very tender conscience. He always has schemes going in his mind: ideas for game characters; plans for fort-building and club-making; stories waiting to be written.

A middle child, birth-ordered between two extroverts with big feelings and loud opinions, A. Peevie sometimes plays for hours in his own imagination. He lies in bed and invents stories in his mind in which he is the central character. He acts out the adventures of the character in his mind, with sound effects. We often hear shooting noises--"Tffffhhhhhh! Tfffhhh-tffffhh! Dzzhh! Dzzhh!"--coming from his room in the middle of the night.

One time, years ago, he let me watch him while he was playing in his imagination. (Nowadays he wants privacy for his imagination play.) He was making crashing noises, and thrashing around on the bed--up on his knees one moment, falling backward into a crumpled heap the next. I asked him what was going on in the story. A. Peevie was some kind of animal or creature, and there was a huge stone wall involved.

"Did you knock the wall down?" I asked him, taking a stab at interpreting the kinesthetics and audibles.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "The wall fell down on me."

"Ah," I said. "That must have hurt."

"Mm-hmm," he said seriously; and then he went back inside his imagination to continue the carnage.

My theory is that this imaginary play gives him the opportunity to be stronger, braver, and more heroic and successful than he feels in real life, which has presented him with more physical and emotional obstacles than your average 12-year-old faces. He takes meds for complex congenital heart defects; dangerous cardiac arrythmias that presented about four years ago; and hypothyroidism. Plus, he struggles with low self-esteem and a level of anxiety that makes Woody Allen seem like the poster child for self-confidence.

Mr. Peevie and I just want this boy to know how great he is, how much he is capable of accomplishing. He's smart, and kind, and funny. He's a great artist, and has a vivid, energetic imagination.

Tonight, when I was cuddling with him at bedtime, he was worrying about his schoolwork. Again. Still. He hadn't stopped worrying about it all day--even when we were eating pizza for his birthday dinner.

"A. Peevie," I told him, "I want you to do three things when you start to feel worried about school, or about anything.

"Number one: Pray. Just a short prayer, asking God for help. You can just say, 'Jesus, please help me.' God will answer that prayer.

"Number two: Remember this: Mom and dad will help you get through it. We will help you learn it, we will help you figure out how to do it, fix it, or get it done. We are on your side.

"And number three: Tell yourself, 'I am smart and strong, and I can do it.'" I cannot lie: I did think about Stuart Smalley when I said this.

He was quiet when I finished. I thought maybe he had fallen asleep.

"A. Peevie," I whispered. "Are you awake?"

"Mm-hmm," he whispered back.

"Can you do those three things?" I asked him.

"Mm-hmm," he said.

Half the time, Mr. Peevie and I throw our hands in the air because we feel clueless about how to parent this mysterious, imaginative, highly sensitive child.

Jesus, please help me.

How Do You Love an A**Hole?

I have a problem.

My problem is trying to figure out how to love an asshole. The particular asshole I have in mind (let's call him Mr. A.) is rude, arrogant, and disturbingly un-self-aware. I keep wondering if there's a psychological diagnosis that fits him--but I think maybe he's just a mean jerk.

His verbal weapon of choice is sarcasm, and he apparently has not learned that though occasionally funny, sarcasm is often harsh and hurtful. Mr. A. slings sarcastic barbs around like a porcupine slings quills into anything that threatens it. It's impossible to have a civil difference of opinion with this dude--he feels threatened by disagreement, and inevitably responds with condescension, disparagement or sneering.

I cannot totally avoid interaction with Mr. A, so that means I must figure out how to love him. Probably the first thing I could do is stop calling him an asshole. But even that's hard, because, let's face it, that's what he is sometimes.

We all come across people like this in our lives. Sometimes we're even related to them. Or we live next door to them. Or we have them as bosses, co-workers, or God forbid, they go to the same church that we do.

I do know, intellectually, what Jesus calls me to do with regard to this person. Jesus says I'm supposed to love him. "Love your enemies," Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount. "Do good to those who hate you." I'd define enemy fairly loosely here, but even Merriam-Webster agrees that it's someone who "is antagonistic to another; especially, one seeking to injure, overthrow, or confound an opponent."

The answer to the question How do you love an asshole? begins and ends at the Sermon on the Mount--but it begins before Jesus tell us to love our enemies. It begins with the first and primary element of the character of a believer: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Poor in spirit: acknowledging that I am spiritually bankrupt. I have nothing to offer to God, "nothing with which to buy the favour of heaven," as John Stott said. None of us is poor in spirit without God's spirit causing us to be poor in spirit. None of us, on our own, admits to, or even sees, our own spiritual bankruptcy.

But when we do see it and acknowledge that we have no goodness to offer on our own that is not corrupted by Self, then beatitude-wise, my next correlated characteristic is that I mourn over my own sinfulness that separates me from God. "Blessed are those who mourn," Jesus said, "for they shall be comforted."

"The cross is the differential of the Christian religion," said Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Looking at the cross means that I am constantly aware of my own inability to save myself with my own goodness, that I can't be good enough. Looking at the cross means that I'm remembering that Someone paid the highest possible price to redeem me, to pull me out of the pit of Self and Sin.

When I'm mourning over my own sin, I'm less focused on the sins of others. I can look at the asshole, and remind myself that I am an asshole, too, in the grand scheme of things. I know my own self, and my own capacity for selfishness, for self-righteousness, for self-protection and pride. I might not be mean (most of the time), but I am guilty in many other ways, and Jesus took the Way of the Cross just as much for me as he did for that asshole.

The cross is the differential: it changes how I see myself, and how I see other people.

And that is how you love an asshole.

Love and Marriage

For those of you out there who are starting to believe that marriage sucks, that it always ends unhappily, that the mere fact that Drew Peterson could find four women who wanted to marry him indicates an inherent problem with the institution: don't throw out the baby with the banns.

Yes, it appears to be true that marriage is in trouble. The stats on marriage are not hopeful: The divorce rate (3.6 per 1000) is half that of the marriage rate (7.5 per 1000), according to the CDC. (And why this is a statistic that the Centers for Disease Control collects, I have no idea.)

Please note: This does NOT mean that half of all marriages end in divorce. It means that half as many divorces occur every year as marriages--but that's not the same thing. Do I need to spell it out? Fine. If 1000 people get married, and 500 people get divorced, the divorces don't only come from the 1000 new marriages, but from all current existing marriages. Get it?

So articles like this and this are just not getting it right. This NY Times piece posits that "the statistic is virtually useless in understanding divorce rates." Nevertheless, as The Straight Dope points out, the stats are not good on the marriage survival rate even when they are interpreted logically.

Marriage is hard work even when you're married to a near-perfect specimen, as I am; and the problem is, most of us don't want to work that hard.

Fortunately, Mr. Peevie is willing to work very, very hard to make our marriage blissful; and so far (cross your fingers) he has not indicated that he will be seeking to replace me with a younger, cuter, lower-maintenance model. (Version, not runway.)

Here's a teensy anecdote that illustrates how sometimes, one person is giving, patient and peace-making, and the other person tends slightly toward cluelessness, over-reaction, misinterpretation, and general irascibility:

The day started with ten "Mommies" before 7:30 a.m. "Mommy, can you get me breakfast?" "Mommy, I need help with my math homework!" (Note: I don't do well on math after 10 a.m., let alone before 8 a.m.) "Mommy, what's the temperature going to be?" "Mommy, come look at my ginormous poop!" etc., etc.

Between 3 p.m. and 10 p.m., the "Mommies" expanded exponentially, as though there were 16 kids in the house and not just three. I was sick and tired, SICK and TIRED, of people needing something from me.

Then Mr. Peevie came home late after running a 3.5 mile race downtown and snagging some BBQ at the DePaul post-race chow tent. One of the first things he said were these words: "Did you wash any darks today?"

An innocent question, no? But what I heard was, "I need something from you. I need you to make sure my dark socks are clean." What I heard, my therapist cleverly pointed out to me, was, "Mommy!"

I detonated. "Everybody needs a piece of me!" I snapped. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I did wash darks today. In fact, I washed four frickin' loads of laundry, plus two loads of dishes, plus..."

Poor Mr. Peevie just looked at me. "E. Peevie, I just want to know..." he started.

"Yes, I washed your damn clothes!" I martyred, "and I'll go downstairs right this very second to make sure they're done in the dryer!"

Mr. Peevie, God bless him, chose not to repay evil with evil. This is what makes a marriage work: one person being a peacemaker when the other person is unreasonable and a teensy bit insane.

"Honey," he said gently, "I really just wanted to know the answer to the question. I'm not asking you to do anything for me." Talk about a soft answer turning away wrath! This guy lives the Bible, Old Testament and New, every day with me. Marriage is hard work--for him; but for me, it's easy. (Most of the time.)

His words threw sand on the blazing campfire of my hostility, and finally, I heard what he was really saying instead of what I heard through the filter of the irritating context of my day.

"Um, yes, I did wash darks today," I said cautiously. "I don't remember if the last load is in the washer or the dryer, though."

"OK," said my hero, "Thanks. I'll go check in the laundry room." See how easy that was?

In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find, and continue to find, grounds for marriage. --Robert Anderson, Solitaire and Double Solitaire

Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century. ~Mark Twain

Happy 25th anniversary, sweetheart. (Almost two weeks late...)

Creepy, or Just Me?

A boyfriend from eons ago--let's call him David McCall--contacted me through LinkedIn. He used his American name and had shortened his long Middle Eastern last name to a less ethnic-sounding name. He was ostensibly looking for an editor for an engineering report and his resume. I wondered who the guy was, and why was he asking for rates from a writer in Chicago when writers in LA are a dime a dozen.

Then I put two and two together: the first name, the still-recognizable last name, the engineering specialty, the LA location, and most importantly, the LinkedIn connection through the university we both attended--and I figured out who he was. But why the sneakiness? Why contact me as a potential client instead of coming right out and saying, hey, it's me, how the heck are you?

It felt sneaky and manipulative to me, so I did not respond.

The next day, I had another email from David McCall--this time using his full name instead of the Americanized version. This time he was straight up, re-introducing himself, asking about my parents and siblings, and hoping to get re-connected. He also mentioned the engineering report--but I still think it's a smokescreen, a way for him to say how he found me without saying he was looking specifically for me.

I don't know--maybe I'm a little too optimistic about my own attractiveness. But hey, who wouldn't want to hook up with me? I might be a middle-aged, overweight, mildly depressed, unemployed, happily married mother of three above-average-but-incredibly-loud children, but I do have great hair and a killer sense of humor.

But since he was honest, and since I was impressed that he remembered my parents names and the names of all my siblings 20 years later, I responded to his email with an email of my own. I was friendly, but not too friendly, and included details about my perfect family and my deliriously happy marriage, so that there would be no misunderstanding about my intentions.

(Listen to me. I really do have an inflated sense of self-worth, don't I? Like if I'm not careful, every man on the planet who once vaguely knew me would be knocking on my door if I wasn't clear enough about my lack of availability. I crack my own self up.)

When David M. wrote back, I was immensely relieved to find out that he was married, with two very young children. I thought, finally, he's reached a happy, healthy place. (Early on in my marriage, this guy would call me once every four or five years, and tell me yukky stories about his pathetic lonely life and tell me I was still his best friend; and I could not wait to get off the phone. I was happy when he finally stopped calling after about ten years.)

Anyway, I started regretting accepting his friend invitation on LinkedIn when he called me on my cell phone one afternoon shortly thereafter. On my cell phone--after no contact for almost 20 years! My own parents don't call me on my cell phone! Where the hell did he get the number? I wondered-- and then I realized: it's on my email signature line. I gave it to him myself.

And here's the weird part: I picked up the call because the number had a 773 area code--the area code of my part of Chicago. I thought it was going to be a neighbor or a friend, and when I heard this voice from my past, I was flustered, creeped out, and probably rude. I told him I couldn't talk and to call back later. My stomach was still churning hours later--but that might just have been the tuna I had for lunch.

How and why was he calling from a 773 area code? Does he have some kind of magical re-routing software to hide the origins of his calls? It's very 24--and again, this felt slightly manipulative to me.

Later I found that he had emailed me again, requesting my parents' phone number because, he said, "I miss them." My parents. He misses them. Oh, and he asked again for a quote on revising his resume. Doing his resume will require talking to him on the phone for about an hour, and frankly, I don't really want that kind of contact with an old boyfriend who got a little too clingy after our relationship was over. I didn't respond.

About a week later, I got another email from him alleging that that he had heard about the shooting at a church in Illinois and was worried about my family's safety. Again, a little disingenuous. David McCall knows I live in Chicago, and the shooting was nowhere near Chicago. He asked again for my parents phone number.

I wrote back, curtly told him yes, we were fine, and said that I'd need to check with my parents first before giving out their phone number. I never did get back to him with the phone number, or with a quote on his resume. I should have emailed him and just told him it made me uncomfortable--but I didn't.

This week, a month later, I got another kind of weird and freaky email from him, written all in the third person about a man who happened to be surfing the internet looking for a technical writer when he happened upon the profile of a writer who turned out to be his old friend. He even mentioned the earlier calls from 15 - 20 years ago, and specified that he had no ulterior motive, "particularly after knowing that his friend is also happily married."

Doesn't that clause imply that if his friend were not happily married, that there might have been an ulterior motive? I wonder what his wife thinks about that.

His email continued,

"The man kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting for a response from the writer, but for some odd reason, the writer never, ever bothered to get back to the old friend...Was it right for the friend just to put off the man and deny his friendship? Probably not. The good book says the following..."

--and then quotes three Bible verses, including this one from Job: "My relatives and my close friends have failed me." He asked me--in the third person still--to delete everything he sent me.

He visited my blog at least four times the first week that he contacted me--but I don't know if he still comes by The Green Room. He might be reading this right now and thinking, hey, what a bitch! Or perhaps it will give him a clue about normal social boundaries. Part of me is thinking, how does he have time for all this, with two very young kids and a wife and a big-ass engineering job? I can barely get a blog post written once a week even though I have no clients and my kids are in school all day!

The more I think about it, the more irritated I am that this person has any expectations of me at all, let alone has the nerve to send me an angry, manipulative email quoting the Bible at me! It's exactly this kind of response that confirms for me that my instincts were correct.

I'm probably I'm not being very Jesusy here, but at this point, I don't even know what Jesus wants me to do about this.

Is it creepy, or is it just me?

Book Review: Deliver Us From Me-Ville

With admirable transparency and a readable conversational writing style, David Zimmerman examines our need for redemption in the recently published Deliver Us From Me-Ville. He takes on an entire culture of narcissism, born in the Garden and bred in every human interaction since.

Zimmerman argues that superbia (the Latin word for an inordinate sense of self-regard; pride; or self-satisfaction) is common and calamitous, a "besetting sin among all God's children, nipping at the church's heels throughout its history, and as such it must be met by the vigilance of the people of God to hold it at bay." Superbia "sounds like a place," so Zimmerman dubs it Me-Ville, and urges us to endure vulnerability and the pain of re-training in order to allow God to deliver us.

Occasionally, Zimmerman enjoys his own sense of humor a tiny bit too much, and the resulting literary quirks become a bit distracting. He opens, for example, with a story about his niece that includes the colloquialism "yo," and then he continues to "yo" us for the next several chapters.

Also, there are times when the book makes assumptions or generalizations about people that obviously ring true in the author's life and personality--and often in my own, as well--but which do not necessarily hold true for across humanity. For example, Zimmerman looks at Biblical history (the Tower of Babel) and contemporary culture (and I use the word "culture" loosely, since I'm referring to American Idol) to illustrate his point that "...becoming famous is the holy grail for people steeped in superbia." Everyone is steeped in superbia, but not everyone seeks or desires fame.

In general, however, Zimmerman illustrates our condition with an engaging combination of contemporary culture and spiritual classics. His theme is clear and straightforward: "The way out of Me-Ville is unavoidably through Jesus, who visits us, displaces, us, delivers us, and sets us within the bounds of his city, his community."

His transparency is disarming: "My greatest fear in making my writing public...[is] that an audience will read what I write and disregard it as insignificant." This fierce desire to live a meaningful life, to produce something meaningful, or to be considered important or significant in the eyes of other people--this, not the desire for fame, is a universal human condition. It's why we start out in Me-Ville, and why we need Jesus.

Zimmerman dips into the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Thomas Merton, and Henri Nouwen, among others, to develop a modern perspective on ancient Biblical themes; he takes the words of those writers and thinkers and connects them to our contemporary dilemmas. I love this about Zimmerman's book, because in giving me a taste of great thinkers and writers of the faith, it reminds me to pick up the source materials myself for some challenging reading and deep thinking.

Each chapter includes a section called "Escape Routes," practical applications of the preceding theoretical, exegetical material. These sections include activities and questions designed to move the reader to a deeper and more personal connection with the teaching of the chapter. Zimmerman often includes scripts for what we can say to ourselves in order to get more "in the way" of Jesus, such as this:

Before you get together with a group of people, imagine it as a mission, and consecrate it with missional language such as Isaiah's cry, "Here I am, Lord, send me." Be careful not to set a missional agenda for the time together; just make the effort to consecrate the moment.

Deliver Us From Me-Ville is a solid, helpful text that has the capacity to reach you exactly where you are today, and bring you more deeply into God's kingdom here on earth.

I am Jonah

I am Jonah.

My pastors have been preaching on Jonah, and every single week I leave church thinking, "I am Jonah. I am just like him."

Jonah gets a bad rap because, well, he's an idiot. Just like me.

First, he runs away from God. Dumbass. You can't run away from God, Jonah. You can act like God can't see you, can't hear you, can't find you--but duh! Of course he can. He can find you on the ship to Tarshish when you're supposed to be traveling to Nineveh. He can also find you when you're holed up in your bedroom with an open bottle of wine and a high-def TV. And he can find you when you're just minding your own business, trying to be a good person, but deep down beginning to realize that that's not good enough. (Hello, Roseanne?)

Of course God can find you--and the truly amazing thing is, he's actually coming after you. He'll stir up the sea until your shipmates threaten to throw you overboard. Or he'll allow a different kind of storm in your life--maybe cancer, maybe a sick child, maybe unemployment or a really horrible boss, depression, or a million other storms that, if you're smart, will make you remember that God wants you, or wants you back.

He's waiting for you to look up and say, Um, God? Can I get a hand, here?

He's also waiting for you to remember who and what you are. You are Jonah, the guy God called to do a really important job, like preach to the Ninevites, or raise a child, or be an honest cop, a loving spouse, a generous friend, a talented musician, or a million other callings that, if you're smart, will make you remember that God is the one who gave you that calling and is going to help you follow it.

He's waiting for you to look up and say, God? Thanks. And help, please.

God is also waiting for you to remember that you are not God. You do not get to decide what justice looks like. You do not get to point to other people and say, Smite them, God! They are bad, bad people because they worship idols, or take drugs, or fail to live up to your own exceptionally high standards of housekeeping.

But that's what Jonah did, Reverend Moses Butcher told us today at church. He became annoyed at God because he wanted to see justice done to those sinners of Nineveh--just like I become annoyed at the sinners around me, who don't parent like I think they should, or don't obey me as promptly as I want them to, or have the right opinion about social justice issues.

I am such a Jonah.

Jonah was miserable. "It displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry...Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me for it is better for me to die than to live" (Jonah 4:1, 3). Why was he miserable? Because he was waiting for the fireworks of God's destruction of Nineveh. He wanted Nineveh to pay for their sins; he wanted justice.

But, Reverend Butcher pointed out, Jonah's notion of justice does not look anything like God's justice. God is (thank God!) "a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster" (Jonah 4:2). Jonah wants people to pay for their sin; God wants people to repent, and be brought back into relationship with Him.

Like Jonah, I often want people to pay. I want to hear them say, "I was wrong, I am a worm." I want them to pay if they've wronged me, or someone I love. This is how I often deal with Mr. Peevie, with my kids, with my co-workers--not to mention the stranger who has just cut me off in the street.

But wouldn't it be better if Jonah and I, and all of us, were more like God, slow to anger, and willing to wait and work for reconciliation and redemption? God said to Jonah, "Should I not pity Nineveh?"

I am always telling my kids that retaliation is never the answer. But, boy it sure is an instinctive reaction. On Saturday, a bigger boy was sitting on his bike near M. Peevie, who was minding her own business playing with a skip-ball (one of those ankle-jump-rope things), and as he moved his bike to get past her, he said in a tough-guy voice, "If that thing hits my bike, you're gonna pay."

After a decade of telling my kids, "Retaliation is never the answer," I wanted to get up and knock that little boy right off his bike. This is my instinct--not to gently help him understand that bullying and threatening a smaller person is wrong, but to hurt him for trying to intimidate my baby girl.

I am Jonah. But I want instead to be like Jesus, the literal epitome of God's mercy. That's my prayer.

I picked up the images from Biblical Art on the WWW.

The Avon Lady and Jesus

I love the story in Luke about the sinful woman who annointed Jesus' feet with ointment and her own tears in the home of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50). This story has three main characters: a religious host with an impeccable reputation; a woman with a reputation as bad as reputations come; and Jesus, with a reputation as a troublemaker or a teacher/prophet, depending on your perspective.

The woman--I like to call her the Avon Lady, because she arrives with perfume samples--behaves in a shocking and scandalous way toward Jesus, but Jesus accepts and defends her. Simon silently wonders how Jesus could allow her to have such intimate and inappropriate contact with him. Jesus takes this opportunity to tell a parable about faith, and to clearly claim divine authority to forgive sin.

The story is filled with irony, and as the vast readership of The Green Room knows, I heart irony.

Who is Simon?
Simon the Pharisee was a religious, temple-going guy. Maybe his dad was a Pharisee also, and his parents brought him up strictly, going to temple on Saturdays and Wednesday nights, and going on Pharisee youth group outings when he was in high school. They observed the feasts, fasts, and sacrifices; they tithed their dill and shekels precisely; they counted their steps on the Sabbath so as not to break the fourth commandment.

Simon's identity was wrapped up in his religious faith, and he took it very seriously. Maybe he invited Jesus to dinner so he could get to know him better, and decide for himself whether this controversial troublemaker was a real prophet, or a fraud. Either way, Simon would be the go-to guy with 411 on this crazy Jesus character.

Simon reminds me of me sometimes.

Who is the Avon Lady?
What about the woman who had lived a sinful life? Somewhere she had heard Jesus teaching about God's mercy and forgiveness. Maybe she followed him around for a few days or weeks, so she could hear more about God's willingness to forgive any who would come to him. She had never heard anything like this before, and only knew that everywhere she went, people knew her reputation.

I can imagine that she began to weep, standing on the edge of the crowd, hearing the parable of the prodigal son, and feeling forgiveness and acceptance for the first time.

When she heard where Jesus would be dining, she sought him out. The text doesn't indicate that anyone expressed surprise that the woman entered the Pharisee's house uninvited. The shocking scandal is that she goes right up to Jesus, and he allows it--in direct, ironic contradiction to the separation enjoined by Simon the Pharisee.

The Avon Lady anoints Jesus' dusty feet with her tears. She kisses them, pours perfume on them, and wipes his feet dry with her own hair. She is expressing a shockingly inappropriate intimacy, and the dinner guests were horrified. This woman was oblivious to what others thought, or else she didn't care. She had forgotten everyone except Jesus, and she was boldly compelled to show her love and gratitude to Jesus in the most lavish way she knew how.

Why? How did she reach this point of such deep love for and gratitude to Jesus?

Who is Jesus?
Simon doubts that Jesus is a prophet when he doesn't send the woman away. Ironically, Jesus reads his mind, and tells him a parable in response to his unspoken criticism. The parable is simple:

Two men owe a debt to a moneylender. One man owes about two months' income, the other owes ten times more. Repayment was possible, eventually, for the lesser debtor; but the second man knew he'd never be able to pay his debt. The moneylender freely forgives, or cancels, both debts.

Which debtor, Jesus asks Simon, will love the moneylender more?

Simon, who had been reluctant to give Jesus even the smallest and most common courtesies normally shown to a visitor, was also reluctant to believe that Jesus was a prophet. Now he's reluctant to give Jesus the correct and obvious answer to the question raised by the parable, and does so with indifference: "I suppose the one who was forgiven more."

He's also reluctant to acknowledge the depth of his own sin. He had shown very little love to Jesus, in comparison to the woman, who had shown great love--because he did not grasp the nature of his own debt, or the depth of his own sin.

It is a mistake to think that in telling this parable, Jesus was suggesting that the sinful woman was more sinful than Simon the Pharisee. It's a mistake to think that the sinful woman was sinning worse sins than Simon.

The point that Jesus wants Simon, and us, to understand, is that the woman showed
extravagant love to Jesus because she understood the depth of her own sin.

Jesus makes an astonishing statement to the woman: "Your sins are forgiven." Simon did not even believe that Jesus could possibly be a prophet--but now he's hearing that Jesus is claiming to be much more than just a prophet.

Don't let anyone tell you that Jesus never made a claim to be divine. By accepting worship and
reverence from his followers, and by proclaiming the forgiveness of sins, he was announcing his
own divinity. You may choose to believe that Jesus was not God, but don't kid yourself that he didn't claim to BE God, as some false teachers will have you believe.

Do you see this woman?
This is what Jesus says to Simon. He wants Simon to take a closer look at this woman he had judged so harshly. When Simon looked at her, he saw a woman who was not only not as righteous as he, but who was much more of a sinner than most.

But what did Jesus see? He saw a sinner, for sure; he said, "...her sins, which are many..." He knew that her sins had separated her from God.

But he also saw a contrite heart, a forgiven woman whose freedom from guilt and shame compelled her to love lavishly. The irony is that Simon saw a sinful woman, but he himself was the one who still remained in his sin, unforgiven; and he loved little.

Her sins, which are many
I want to be known, like this woman, as a sinful woman. I want people to know that when I walk into a room, sin has entered that room--and not just a little bit of sin, but a great big steaming pile of sin.

And guess what? I don't have to be an embezzler, a prostitute, a child molester, a murderer, or even a Republican! I can just be me, with a deep and realistic understanding of my own capacity for idolatry, anger, selfishness, laziness, gluttony, and pride.

I don't need to go out and find new ways to be a sinner, because sin always finds me. But I want to be like this woman, who poured expensive ointment from an alabaster jar because she knew the depth of her own sin so intimately that she gained a deeper appreciation for forgiveness and an
unselfconscious, extravagant love for Jesus.

Believers--maybe we need to be more transparent about our dirty little secrets, because that's the basis for the Good News in our lives. God didn't choose us because we were already great
people. Rather, "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

What a debt we owe! What a vast forgiveness we've been given! And what a price was paid. Where is our extravagant, unselfconscious love?

The Avon Lady is my hero.

The Alabaster Jar

This is Holy Week, when Christians remember the events leading up to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. My Esteemed Reverend Moses Butcher preached from Mark 14 about what he called The Beautiful Waste--the woman who broke a valuable alabaster jar and poured the rare and costly ointment over Jesus.

The alabaster jar, Rev. Moses said, was probably a family heirloom; possibly the most expensive thing the woman owned. It was her family's financial security, worth almost a year's wages: if they fell on hard times, they could sell the jar and live off the proceeds until their circumstances improved.

The alabaster jar did not have a resealable flip-top; the jar had to be broken, destroyed, in order to pour the perfume. The ointment itself was rare and powerfully fragrant. Imagine the ointment running down his clothing, and making sweet-smelling puddles in the dirt floor.

This woman--Mark doesn't name her, but John says it was Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus--intentionally broke and poured out her most valuable possession without regret or hesitation. She gave no thought to what the onlookers might think of her or her action. The intent of her heart, Jesus discerned, was to do a beautiful thing to honor him.

When the dinner guests criticized Mary for her wasteful extravagance ("the perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor!"), Jesus rebuked them. His words may seem uncompassionate ("the poor you will always have with you") and self-promoting ("you will not always have me")--but Jesus merely reminded them who he was--the divine, long-awaited Messiah (Mark 8:29). He pointed out that Mary had her priorities in the proper order: First Jesus, then everything else, including her own wealth and security, her reputation, and the important social concern of caring for the poor.

Mary's gesture was extravagant and beautiful. She probably didn't realize the significance of her act--that it symbolized the annointing of Jesus' body for burial--but she did what she was able to do, and gave what she was able to give.

I want to have the kind of faith that is extravagant and beautiful. I want to offer up my treasure and my security, so that I can find them again in Jesus. This Holy Week, to tell the truth, I feel far apart from God and from grace. There's nothing extravagant or beautiful about my faith at the moment.

Luckily, or rather, providentially, my feelings are not a factor when it comes to Jesus. I know who and what I am. I know how unfaithful I am, how self-centered, angry, idolatrous. But I also know I can lay the ugliness of my sin at the foot of the cross, where the ransom was paid; I know I can believe this crazy, scandalous story because of the empty tomb.

This is Holy Week. Welcome to the infamy of the cross, and the hope of the resurrection.

A Toast: To Jesus

My friend VoD has a nine-year-old son, Samwise. Samwise took communion at church for the first time last week, and he had a unique, convivial perspective on the holy sacrament.

The ushers delivered the bread-slash-cracker and the wine-slash-juice to the congregants, and the pastor recited the words that Jesus spoke to his disciples at the Last Supper: "This is my body, which was broken for you. Eat ye all of it. This is my blood which was shed for you. Drink ye all of it."

Samwise leaned toward his mom, ready to observe his first-ever communion.

"To Jesus," he said, "Cheers."

He clinked his tiny communion cup against hers, and tipped the juice into his mouth.

I expect this to catch on, and soon congregations across America will be toasting Jesus when they take communion.