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Oh, the in-between, what a place to be.

Right now, I feel like I am in a holding pattern from which I can’t escape. It’s that period of time between diagnosis and action. It’s that time in which my go-get-’em personality struggles because there are so many elements of my life that are out of my control.

It’s also the time in which I feel like I can’t get enough information, not because it isn’t available, but because it isn’t possible to know certain things until other certain things take place. Sound confusing? Welcome to the world inside my head.

Things I know for sure:

• I have Invasive Lobular Breast Cancer.
• I am positive for BRCA2.
• I am facing multiple surgeries, the first of which will be to remove the breast with cancer, and undergo reconstruction.
• Follow up with treatment of some kind.
• At some point in the future, remove the other breast and have a hysterectomy.
• Both of my children, my sisters, a my mom will need to be tested for BRCA2.

Things I don’t know:

• When exactly will surgery occur?
• What recovery will look like?
• What kind of treatment will I need?
• How long will I need to be off work?
• How we will cover things at the church while I am away?
• When will the other surgeries need to happen?
• How will I handle forced menopause without the possibility of hormone replacement?
• How certain things will happen if I am not doing them?
• Am I making the right calls about treatment?
• Will my kids/sisters/mom be positive for BRCA2?
• If any of them are positive (particularly my kids), how do I help them navigate that knowledge?
• Why me?
• Why now?
• Will I face this again down the road in this or another form?

About two weeks after I got this diagnosis, I was scheduled to start a Doctor of Ministry program. I laid in bed one night and asked my husband what I should do. In his wisdom, he said that I start the program as if nothing had changed because we truly felt like God had led me to this program and this cohort at this time. So I did just that. This week I finished yet another required book for this spring and started the next: Hope: A User’s Manual by MaryAnn McKibben Dana. Yesterday, as I sat reading, I found this gem:

At the moment of the diagnosis, including a grim prognosis, my friend experienced a profound, paradoxical sense of both acceptance and non-acceptance. In a flash, she had to accept: any semblance of control and mastery over her life was gone, and whether it ever returned was beyond her. She was stepping into the unknown. At the same time, she moved into nonacceptance. If she was not in control, then maybe nobody else was either, including her doctors with their so-called certainties. Even with their medical training and expertise (which she trusted and relied upon), she know that the math of prognosis is based on odds and percentages. She felt equally invested in both sides of the paradox, both acceptance and nonacceptance, and that helped her move forward.

Her acceptance yielded an equanimity that buoys her to this day, while the nonacceptance allowed her to be defiant, hopeful, even playful…

When we feel we have no options, the clarity of…acceptance and nonacceptance allows us to choose…something. To choose to look for hope. To choose not to give up. To choose to make the most of a bad situation. To choose to allow ourselves to be heartbroken. To choose to do what’s ours and to do and leave the outcome to someone or something else, or fate, or God.

Hope: A User’s Manual, MaryAnn McKibben Dana, p. 60-61, Kindle Edition

When it comes to faith and living into the mystery of the now and not yet, and understanding that there is more unknowing than knowing when it comes to God’s Kingdom, I feel like I am pretty good at embracing that kind of liminality. But, right now, I am not so good at embracing liminality in my own personal struggles.

However, as I read those words over a few times yesterday, I felt like I was given permission to live in that space of not knowing and knowing, not accepting and accepting, of being heartbroken and hopeful all at once, trusting that no matter what I do or don’t know, God knows it all, sees it all, and never leaves my side through it all.

And maybe that’s enough.

Let’s take a moment and think back to grade school. Do you remember when people would have birthday parties and they would bring invitations to school to hand out? Was there ever a time when you didn’t get one of those coveted invitations? How did that feel? Was there a time when you received an invitation, but another of your friends didn’t? How did that make you feel? Was there ever a time when you were the inviter and the one who left someone off the invitation list? How did you feel then?

This morning I am thinking about invitations, and how powerful they are. I have been living in Gulf Shores for a little over fourteen months now. Leaving a town you have lived in for more than 25 years, a town in which you knew people and were known by people and heading someplace where you know very few people and no one really knows you is quite the adjustment. And when you do this during a pandemic, it makes it even harder to make connections and meet people.

But from the beginning, there have been people who have offered me invitations.

The first football game of last year, I was kind of dreading because I knew no one. But a phone call from the mom of one of Ty’s new friends, and an invitation to find her and sit with her made me feel welcomed, and that invitation led to other invitations to get to know more fellow band parents.

As I have been around the neighborhood, there have been various neighbors that have invited conversation and neighborly relationships as we live in this area together.

The church at which I pastor is full of people who have invited me into their lives.

My colleagues in the Presbytery have been wonderful at welcoming me not only into ministry here, but into relationship with one another.

A simple message I sent to someone led to an invitation to join a gym that has led to invitations of friendship – both inside and outside of the gym.

On my day off this week, I was messaging with one of my gym friends and mentioned I was headed to the beach. She told me that one of the people I had met at the gym was also headed to the beach and I should message her.

And I started to have significant anxiety. I thought about how I barely know this gal. I thought about how it would feel if she didn’t respond to my message at all. I thought about how awkward it could be if we met up and then didn’t have anything to chat about. And then I made a decision and sent a message of invitation to her.

Guess what? She responded. She was excited about the prospect of hanging out. She found me at the beach and for the next couple of hours we laid in the sun, played in the surf, watched countless manta rays swim around us, and talked about everything from our children which happen to be the same ages, to our work, and all kinds of stuff in between.

I left the beach completely filled with joy and contentment. Yes, the beach has that affect on me, but it was also the result of an invitation – first someone inviting me to reach out to someone, and second, me being willing to be vulnerable enough to extend said invitation.

There have been many invitations that I have experienced and extended over the last year or so: invitations to serve, invitations to get acquainted, invitations to gather, invitations to health; and my life has been enriched because of these invitations.

Invitations are powerful in our lives – both those that we extend to others and those that are extended to us. Invitations provide opportunities for us to grow, to learn, to connect, and ultimately to love.

How have invitations impacted your life? How have you reached out to others in invitation? What invitation do you need to extend today?

I wrote this for the weekly letter I send to the congregation of First Presbyterian Church of Gulf Shores, the church where I serve as Minister of Word and Sacrament. I wanted to also share it here because I believe it is such an important issue for all of us to think about, learn about, and most especially, do something about. If you are struggling with mental illness of any kind, please reach out to someone for help. If you are in danger of harming yourself, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from one of our snowbirds letting me know about a docuseries they had been watching on AppleTV. It is called The Me You Can’t See. In this series, “Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry join forces to guide honest discussions about mental health. This series features illuminating stories from across the globe, giving us the opportunity to seek truth, understanding, and a newfound hope for the future” (AppleTV). (You can watch a trailer for the series here.)

I finally got a chance to sit down and watch a couple of episodes recently and I can honestly say that the way that this series handles this discussion should be applauded. As someone who has struggled with depression and anxiety, who has many friends and family members who also battle mental illness, and one who has been certtified in Mental Health First Aid, I see the desperate need for more resources for those struggling and those caring for the struggling, as well as more education for those who don’t understand.

Did you know that in the United States in 2018, 14.8 people per 100,000 died by suicide, up from 12 per 100,000 in 2009? And in the state of Alabama that number is even higher, rising from 14.1 per 100,000 in 2009 to 16.9 per 100,000 in 2018. Between 1999 and 2016, the death rate from suicide rose 25.4%. About 48,000 people died at their own hand in 2018, making it the 10^th leading cause of death that year. What is even more frightening is this – 1.4 million people attempted to take their lives that same year.

Right after I arrived in Gulf Shores, I sat down to talk with Police Chief Edward Delmore and he shared with me that one of the hardest things for his officers is the unusually high number of suicides that they encounter here on the Alabama Gulf Coast. Living at the beach doesn’t make everything perfect.

So, why am I addressing this? Because I know that some of you are struggling – not because I know something specific, but because life has thrown many curveballs our way in recent months: pandemics, hurricanes, diagonses, death, hardship, and more. There have been times in which the church has not been helpful in the battle with mental illness – calling it a spiritual issue that just requires prayer, or saying that with God’s help we should be able to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. But that should not be, and while prayer is powerful and God does care for us, God doesn’t expect us to navigate other health issues alone, just like God does not expect us to navigate mental health issues alone. Sometimes that means medication. Sometimes that means being under the care of a certified professional. Sometimes that means just having the freedom to speak the truth about your struggle to those around you.

You are not alone. God stands with you. Those who love you support you. Those of us who also struggle understand. Don’t lose heart if this is you or someone you love. Reach out and begin the journey toward healing.

Hubby and I have been watching How I Met Your Mother for the last 6 weeks or so. In the five months that he was living in Greenville and I was living in Gulf Shores, he had seen some episode reruns and suggested that we watch the whole series together. It is one of those things that gives us something to do together every evening – whether we watch one episode or five – and allows us to have shared moments when we remember a show funny or something in real life mirrors a comedic moment from the show.

If you haven’t seen it, Ted is telling his kids the story of how he met their mother, and the story involves four of Ted’s friends. Marshall and Lily, Ted’s friends from college that are a couple, Barney, a womanizing executive, and Robin, the most recent addition to the group. Every week, Ted spins another tale about the adventures that would eventually lead to Ted and his future wife finding one another.

We are somewhere in Season 6 (of 9), and earlier this week, the show that we have chosen to watch to bring levity and laughter into our living room had one of those “serious” episodes. In it, Marshall loses his father suddenly to a heart attack.

And at three years and ten months since losing my dad in the same way, the episode brought me right back to that day and to the immense sadness of losing my dad.

I told Mike we had to watch one more episode because I couldn’t go to bed with that one on my mind, and the entire next episode was talking about the last words Marshall’s dad spoke to him, which ended with Mitchell finding a voicemail that his dad had accidentally left him the day that he died.

That was almost too much for me because I have one of those voicemail messages. It wasn’t left the day he died, but in the weeks just prior, Dad had called me to ask if one of us could come over and help him bring up the lawnmower from the basement. In the message he said all of our names, Mike, Anne, Ty and Chrisy.

And before I went to bed that night I listened to the message, more than once. I miss my dad’s voice. I miss his wisdom. I miss his hugs. But what a gift I have with this technology that allows me to keep this voicemail and listen to it whenever I need to hear his voice.

The thing is, grief isn’t something that ends. Yes, there comes a point when we get to acceptance, but there are still days when we miss our loved ones so much that it hurts. That has been me this week.

But I am grateful that even in the midst of sadness, I can have joy in listening to his voice, and hearing him say my name, all because of a saved voicemail.

It’s been awhile. My last blog post was way too long ago. I could make excuses – seminary, new job, moving, trying to find a new rhythm – but really, it is just that I haven’t made time to blog. And that’s too bad, because I process life through talking – and writing. So, I’m making time. It may only be once a week for now, but I’m making time to write, and you, my readers, get to be inside my head again.

I have found myself thinking a lot about the idea of allegiance over the last few years. The definition of allegiance is:

loyalty or commitment of a subordinate to a superior or of an individual to a group or cause.

As children we were taught the Pledge of Allegiance – a pledge that we said every morning in grade school.

In this pledge we pledge our loyalty to both the flag of the United States, and to the republic that is these United States.

A book have been reading, Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, who is part of Citizen Potawatomi Nation, includes a chapter called, “Allegiance to Gratitude.” In this chapter, Kimmerer relates a story about her daughter, who made a choice in sixth grade to no longer stand and recite the pledge each morning. For her daughter, reciting this pledge, which references “liberty and justice for all,” didn’t ring true. She told her mom, “…it’s not exactly liberty if they force you to say it, is it?”

As a Christian, and as a pastor, I think often of this idea of allegiance in terms of our allegiance to God, allegiance that God expects from us, allegiance that throughout the bible we see God’s people forsaking and offering to other gods, and as such, bringing with it consequences like exile.

As an American, I have been noticing that some who identify as Christians have allowed their allegiance to shift from God to country, or even from God to another human, and this troubles me. God made it clear from the first that humanity was to put nothing, and no one, ahead of God. Christ also made it clear that humanity cannot serve two masters because one will always rise to the top.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my country and I am glad to be a part of it, even though it is most definitely flawed and in need of some reform in order to make it true that all humanity are worthy of and experience liberty and justice. But, I am disappointed in the way that so many have put love of country above loyalty to God.

I truly believe that our allegiance must first be to God, and that means that we take seriously the commands to love God and love others. If our allegiance to our country leads us to words or actions that are not loving, then we have allowed it to take the first position in our hearts, and our priorities need to be reevaluated.

For me, I strive to pledge my allegiance to God FIRST, and that means living in such a way that God’s love is evident in everything that I say and do. I may fall short, which we all do, but I pray that God will always be first in line for my allegiance.

Before I bring my need
I will bring my heart
Before I lift my cares
I will lift my arms
I wanna know You
I wanna find You
In every season
In every moment
Before I bring my need
I will bring my heart
And seek You

First
I wanna seek You
I wanna seek You
First
I wanna keep You
I wanna keep You
First
More than anything I want, I want You
First

Before I speak a word
Let me hear Your voice
And in the midst of pain
Let me feel Your joy
Ooh, I wanna know You
I wanna find You
In every season
In every moment
Before I speak a word
I will bring my heart
And seek You

You are my treasure and my reward
Let nothing ever come before
You are my treasure and my reward
Let nothing ever come before
I seek You

Gratitude. I wrote about it last week, and here I am writing about it again. Maybe that is because this is my word right now and it is on my mind consistently. Or maybe it is because I am in the middle of writing Thank You notes to all of the 2019 Vine to Wine 1/2 Marathon and 5K sponsors. Either way, it is not a bad thing for it to still be on my mind.

Today, though, I want to take a little different view and ask this question: how often do you tell people that you are grateful for them or that you appreciate one of their attributes or something that they do?

It is one thing to keep a gratitude journal and express our thankfulness to God for the various ways in which we have been blessed, and even to write down someone’s name or action in your journal as a way of thanking God for them, but it is quite another to actually verbalize to a person how grateful you are for them. And I think that this is something that is sorely missing in our world right now.

We are quick to point out when we don’t like something, when we are frustrated with someone, when someone’s beliefs don’t match with our own. What if we were as quick to point out the good stuff? And more than just a simple, “Thank You,” (but even that would be welcomed). A real, heartfelt moment of face-to-face gratitude. How different would the world be if that were our default? Even simple things like instead of saying, “I’m sorry for being late,” saying, “Thank you for being patient with me. I truly appreciate it.”

Since I didn’t get my Monday post up (again) this week, I am adding a song that expresses this idea. Maybe there is someone in your life that needs to hear this from you. No matter what, let’s work on this gratitude thing together, both expressing it to God and to those that surround us with love and grace.

More Than You’ll Ever Know
Watermark (Nathan & Christy Nockels)

Something brought you to my mind today
I thought about the funny ways you make me laugh
And yet I feel like it’s okay to cry with you

Something about just being with you
When I leave I feel like I’ve been near God
And that’s the way it ought to be, yeah

‘Cause you’ve been more than a friend to me
You fight off my enemies
‘Cause you’ve spoken the truth over my life
And you’ll never know what it means to me
Just to know you’ve been on your knees for me
Oh, you have blessed my life
More than you’ll ever know, yeah, yeah, yeah
More than you’ll ever know, yeah, yeah, yeah

You had faith, when I had none
You prayed God would bring me a brand new song
When I didn’t think I could find the strength to sing

And all the while I’m hoping that I’ll
Do the kind of praying for you that you’ve done for me
And that’s the way it ought to be

‘Cause you’ve been more than a friend to me
You fight off my enemies
‘Cause you’ve spoken the truth over my life
And you’ll never know what it means to me
Just to know you’ve been on your knees for me
Oh, you have blessed my life
More than you’ll ever know, yeah, yeah, yeah
More than you’ll ever know, yeah, yeah, yeah

You have carried me
You have taken upon a burden that wasn’t your own
And may the blessing return to you
A hundredfold, oh yeah, a hundredfold, oh yeah

‘Cause you’ve been more than a friend to me
You fight off my enemies
‘Cause you’ve spoken the truth over my life
And you’ll never know what it means to me
Just to know you’ve been on your knees for me
Oh, you have blessed my life
More than you’ll ever know, yeah, yeah, yeah
More than you’ll ever know, yeah, yeah, yeah
More than you’ll ever know, yeah, yeah, yeah
More than you’ll ever know
More than you’ll ever know

Guess what I am up to this weekend!!!

Hanging with these lovelies at the Questival Indy 2017!

Check us out!!

 

I have lots of stuff.

Physical stuff.

Emotional stuff.

Spiritual stuff.

But the stuff that is nagging at me these days is the actual stuff that is filling my house.

Clothing. Books. Papers. Pretty much everything I own.

I am constantly facing this thing called excess stuff as my Bible study group and I continue through 7.

Here are just a few of the things that have jumped out at me this week (all are quotes from the book or the workbook):

• Jesus was simply relentless in His call toward lean living and reckless generosity.
• Show me how you spend money and I’ll show you what you really love.
• …if we mistakenly spend the majority of this short life on earth earning more, buying bigger, possessing nicer, and chasing better, then at the end we have this: a mostly wasted life. Jesus begged us not to get trapped in materialism, because not only does it derail our purpose here, it’s stupid. Our stuff will matter for zero seconds after we die, and all it does is steal precious time, energy, and resources away from our true mission here.
• The more openhanded I became with my stuff, the less power they had over me.
• Our hearts are deeply connected to our treasures.
• We don’t think our way into a new life; we live our way into a new kind of thinking.
• Our justifications are full of holes we can’t make out. How we raise our children, run our churches, consider our communities, interpret who our neighbor is–when done in false illumination, we can sink and entire society, mislead a generation, abandon billions in their suffering, misinterpret the scope of the gospel.
• God, money…these are very powerful masters, both tending to induce complete subjection.
• One master will slowly pull us away from the other, bit by bit, for righteousness or for self-destruction.
• …giving away is somehow sacred, connecting to the sacrificial heartbeat of Jesus. It’s as transformative for the giver as a blessing to the receiver. When God told us to give, I suspect he had spiritual formation in mind as much as meeting needs.
• Do not be fooled by the luxuries of this world; they cripple our faith. As Jesus explained, the right things have to die so the right things can live–we die to selfishness, greed, power, accumulation, prestige, and self-preservation, giving life to community, generosity, compassion, mercy, brotherhood, kindness, and love.
• We’ve invented a thousand shades of gray, devising a comfortable Christian existence we can all live with–super awesome, except the Bible doesn’t support it. According to Scripture no real disciple serves God while addicted to the dollar…Grayed down discipleship is an easier sell, but it created pretend Christians, obsessing over Scriptures we like while conspicuously ignoring the rest.
• Maybe we don’t recognize satisfaction because it is disguised as radical generosity, a strange misnomer in a consumer culture.

Have you ever seen those used-to-be-beautiful homes that have fallen into disrepair and you dream about how awesome it would be if someone would fix them up and bring them back to their former glory? Have you ever been one of those fix-em-up people? If you have ever been part of renovation of any kind you know that in order to bring things back to former glory (or new glory), most of the time there has to be some kind of demolition first. You may have to tear out the old plaster and lathe walls. You may have to remove the old stained and chipped vanity. You might have to pull out the old pipes or wires. And in the process you end up with a much bigger mess than you started with.

But the mess is necessary. It has to be done. You can’t get new while holding on to the old.

In the next couple of weeks, we are going to enter the season of Lent. This is the time in the church calendar leading up to Easter. It is a time of preparation. It is a time to remember the 40 days that Christ spent in the wilderness fasting and being tempted by Satan before beginning His ministry on Earth.

For this reason, I find it quite coincidental or rather, “God-incidental” that my Bible Study girls and I decided to go through the study, The 7 Experiment: Staging Your Own Mutiny Against Excess, by Jen Hatmaker. It is based on her book, 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess.

In less than 14 pages, I was already to the point of being wrecked. The Lord was helping me to see some areas in which I have some work that needs to be done, some tearing out that needs to happen to make room for building back up.

I can tell it is going to be painful. I can tell that I am going to get defensive about certain things that I don’t want to have ripped out because I like them just the way they are. But I can also tell that it is work that is needed and necessary in order to make room for more of Jesus and His ways to take over in my life.

So let the wrecking begin.

I would challenge you to pick up this book, or another one that rocks your world a bit, as we enter this season of Lent. Let some wrecking happen in your life as well, so God can do some rebuilding.

There is a reason that electronic communication backfires when it comes to communicating big issues – there is no context of the non-verbal cues we use to communicate. You can’t see facial expression. You can’t hear voice inflection. You can’t see body posture.

When we communicate using just the typed word and not the spoken word, we are missing part of what is being communicated.

And let’s be honest, the prevalence of electronic communication has emboldened us to say things to one another that we would never say face to face.

The political warfare, belief judgment, and hate speeches waged on Facebook would never happen at a dinner table conversation. And often, these “conversations” begin with one person giving a seemingly innocuous comment, with the purpose of intelligent debate, but without the important non-verbal cues, and even more important relationship factor, these conversations become divisive and hurtful.

I think that this freedom of speaking without context and relationship has spilled over into our face-to-face conversations as well. We don’t think before we speak. We assume that our opinion needs to be voiced and heard by everyone. We don’t think about how our words have the power to hurt and to heal.

But that is the thing. Our words have the power to hurt and to heal. And we need to be mindful of that every time we speak – whether with spoken words or typed ones. We need to be aware of how our words are coming across – both verbally and non-verbally. We need to be aware that people will carry our words with them – both hurtful and healing.

I want to make sure that the words I speak are always edifying and building up. It is hard. Sometimes I fail. But I want what people take away from me to be healing and uplifting. I don’t want them to carry away words that tear them down and hurt them.

As you speak today – at work, in your family, through e-mail, on social media, via text – speak words of healing, hope, health, and edification. And if possible, do as much in person as you can, it makes a difference.