I can tell that the Holiday season is in full swing as I thumb through my Sunday Denver Post.  There are a few news stories in between all of the advertisements promising, “We’ve trimmed prices . . . Save Money . . . Live better . . . Special hours because every day matters . . . Even more ways to shop your way . . . Christmas Countdown — It’s like getting paid to shop (yeah right!), etc., etc.”  Today’s newspaper is full of promises that all that I am looking for might be found at the mall.  A small headline on page 24A — right beside an ad promising, “Oh, what fun it is to win a 304-horsepower sleigh” catches my eye, “Jesus Irons Out Life’s Wrinkles?”  In case you missed this news in the midst of the holiday hoopla let me share with you Mary Jo Coady’s story and how it compelled me to reflect on some gifts I have received this year that didn’t come from the mall.

Mary Jo is from Massachusetts and this has not been her best year.  Like many of us she is feeling the economic pinch and she and her two college-age daughters have wondered if they are going to make it.  Mary Jo recently separated from her husband and had her hours cut at work.  Last Sunday she walked into her daughter’s room and saw an image of Jesus on her iron.   She explained that the brownish residue on the bottom of the iron that looks like Jesus to her is proof that “he’s listening” and she’s not alone.

Upon first reading this news blurb I filed it away in my Strange & Embarrassing Things Christians Believe file, and then I started to reflect on my own year.  Like Mary Jo, I have experienced financial, relational, emotional, and spiritual distress and I have been repeatedly reminded that redemption comes in small and strange places.  I mean even the story that we sometimes think of this time of year is about Rescue coming in the most impoverished, unlikely, and even smelly of places.  I haven’t seen Jesus on my iron (which I seldom look at and that may be why I haven’t seen Him there), but I have seen Him . . . .

I’ve seen Him as dear friends and clients have sat across from me and we have been able to confess some pretty difficult realities.  It has taken me a lot of years to really believe, heart and soul, that Jesus is found in the ruins of our lives.  One of my favorite friends, former students, and fellow counselors expressed it this way: “I was an addict so that I could sin in ways that I would never forget.  I was an addict so that I could recognize love when it walked into my life.  I found strength where I lost mine.  I found love where I had none.  I found grace where I wasn’t looking.  Jesus found me when I didn’t think I existed anymore.”  Wow — what a gift of sheer grace that Jesus makes Himself known in the midst of our sin.

I’ve seen Him as I sat around the Thanksgiving table with my children this year.  The holidays have been hard for me since our family broke apart years ago and I have tried everything to compensate for the brokenness.  This year I stopped trying.  My daughter, her husband, my son and I sat around my bare kitchen table.  There was no turkey, dressing, or pumpkin pie.  We had all eaten with different family and friends earlier in the day.  We pulled out a word game called Apples to Apples and we played for four hours!  We laughed until we cried.  Some of us cheated (Graham).  No one wanted the evening to end.  As Kristin was teasing her husband and Graham was trying to look ahead at the words cards, Jesus showed up.  I heard Him whisper, “See, Sharon . . . I make all things new!”

I have seen Him at church just a few Sundays ago.  After evening church we have an extended worship service called Resound.  Our wonderful worship pastor, Justin Bullis, creates a space for those who want to stay after the service to listen, pray, sing, and meditate.  The worship band plays about six songs.  This particular Sunday I moved up to the front of the sanctuary and sank down in my chair.  I needed something.  As the lights dimmed and the band played I got this sense that I was the only one in the sanctuary.   I couldn’t see anyone sitting around me.  And there in the dark with the music flooding my heart and soul I saw Jesus.  Well, I didn’t really see Him.  I cried out to Him, “I can’t see you right now,” and I heard His heartbeat through the music of that night assuring me, “I know.  But I can see you.”  I think that’s the greatest gift of all — not seeing Jesus on a household appliance, which is pretty amazing –but knowing that He sees me and when He sees me all He sees is Love.  That’s a miracle.

Finally, I have seen Him in the faces of family and friends.  Some of you who read this blog have emailed me to ask if I still have my roommates.  They moved out about 2 weeks ago.  I hope this is a good move for them, and I am glad that we remain friends and can see each other often.  I have been so grateful for the kindness of my church friends to my house guests.  I have seen Jesus in William, Dana, Dan, Jy, and the Johnsons as they have given food, kindness, jobs, and auto repair expertise.  And I have seen Jesus in my roommates, because surely the desire to get back up and try again and again is a reflection of the Resurrected One. 

When my roommates moved out they left a card on my desk.  It said, “Sharon, thanks for everything.  We don’t take you for granite!”  I laugh every time I look at the card and I hope that it’s true — that they know that I am not a rock, but a fellow-struggler with a heart of flesh that sometimes reveals the image of Jesus. 

“Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you.  Christ himself wrote it — not with ink, but with God’s living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives . . .” 2 Corinthians 3:3

Tags: Where Jesus Shows Up

I lied to a friend of mine this week.  He asked how I was doing and rather than talk about some heartache and struggle, I answered with the favorite Christian f-word, “Fine.”  It’s a tricky question, isn’t it?  My son told me that he recently asked a similar question to someone at the dinner table who proceeded to go on and on in depth about some family problems.  Graham finally said, “I was just trying to be polite.  I didn’t really want to know all that.”  The woman starting weeping uncontrollably in the middle of the restaurant, until the waiter had to bring her a box of Kleenex.  We do this strange dance of wanting to know and be known and yet wanting to keep things a bit superficial.

So is it a big deal that I lied to my friend?  I can tell you some things I observed after my “little white lie.”  I pulled away a little from all my relationships.  I may have gotten together with a few friends, but the conversation stayed on the surface and no Kleenex were required.  I walked out of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting within five minutes of its beginning — I felt irritable, restless, discontent, and didn’t want to hear anyone talk about “working a program” or feeling happy, joyous, or free.  I swore at my new roommates for forgetting to take out their trash (yes, they are still with me and I am still struggling to give up control).  That night they each came to me and kindly asked, “Sharon do you want us to leave?”  Could all of this resulted from that one oh-so-tiny lie?

I started thinking about a story my counselor/sponsor/friend, Tino, told about his early days of recovery.  They were pretty stretched financially, and one night Tino had to scrounge together loose change so that they would have enough to buy one bottle of formula for their baby girl.  When checking out at the grocery store the clerk made a mistake and placed an entire case of formula in Tino’s shopping cart.  Tino left with all the rationalizations any of us would make — maybe this was a gift from God; the store wouldn’t miss 1 case of formula; this was not for him - but for the baby; grocery prices are ridiculously high anyway; and probably some other justification that had to do with the failure of the government!   All of us who listened to Tino’s predicament agreed that it made sense to keep the extra formula.  But Tino had been working the 12 steps and started thinking about Step 5: “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”  He told us that he believes the word “exact” is important because it doesn’t leave any wiggle-room (we addicts are way too good at wiggling).  He explained that if he passed the extra formula off as no big deal, then it would be easier to decide that having one drink is no big deal.

Tino’s humble story reminded me that a little white lie is a matter of life and death for this alcoholic.  

And then I started thinking about a sermon my pastor preached years ago. The title of the sermon was “Why Jesus Rose from the Dead” or “What’s the Big Deal About Sin?” (you can listen at www.sanctuarydowntown.org).  My daughter was 18 years old at the time.  She had been in church on Sunday mornings for most of her life.  She memorized enough Bible verses to win a prize at Vacation Bible School, and she was chosen the Most Outstanding Christian Leader at her middle school.  When she heard the subtitle of the sermon (What’s the Big Deal About Sin?”), she leaned over and whispered to me, “Mom, I have wondered about that all my life!”  It seems that we can hear an old, old story over and over again and forget what it means — what it really means.

I immediately thought of all the times my children had asked me to explain the big deal about telling a little lie, cheating on their homework, drinking a beer, or shoplifting from 7-11.  When my son was a junior in high school he got caught smoking a little pot and he really wanted to know, “Mom, what is the big deal?”  I wrote my answer to his question in Mom, Everyone Else Does!, but after this week I need to remind myself of that answer. 

A little white lie can kill faith.  “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1).  We can lose faith in the absence of visible evidence and then we forget who God is which causes us to forget who we are.  I lost faith in myself and my friend and told a little white lie because I didn’t believe my friend and/or I could handle the messiness in my life. 

A little white lie distorts hope.  In our culture we believe that hope grows out of something that is available, predictable, and working!  When my friend asked how I was, I was disapponted, afraid, and exhausted and I didn’t see how there could be any hope in telling the truth about that.  I believed the lie that hope arises from bright, shiny packages.  I forgot that hope actually abides in the ruins of our lives as we are compelled to cry out, “Whom have I in heaven but you?  And earth has nothing I desire besides you.  My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the hope of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:25-26).  My little white lie distorted hope and kept my friend and I from finding Him in the ruins.

Finally, a little white lie can limit Love.  I didn’t tell my friend the truth because I’d already decided he was sick of hearing about my problems and that I was tried of looking like a vulnerable, needy, insecure woman.  And now I’d have to tell him I’m a vulnerable, needy, insecure liar!  Julian of Norwich wrote that, “To God, sin is no shame — only glory!”  Glory?  Sin becomes the place to experience — heart and soul — what God does when we sin.  He pours out His love.  He is absolute love, and the really big deal about sin is that when we fail and hide all those failures in our hearts we crowd Him out, and so we miss Love.  C.S. Lewis describes the limits we place on Love when we allow unconfessed sin to take up residence in our hearts, “Their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison, and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”  My little white lie limited my capacity to give and receive love.

I called my friend and confessed my little white lie and shared some about what was going on in my life, and he simply said, “Thanks, Sharon.  I really do want to know how you’re doing.”  And as is always true with sincere confession, my heart softened and faith, hope, and love began to fill in the cracks that had started to form with one little white lie.

My pastor concluded that sermon years ago with the best answer about why sin is a big deal.  He got in a lot of trouble for this answer.  I’m really grateful for his courage to preach the Love of Jesus because I start to forget why things matter — not just sin, but Jesus.   I pray that when I sin — even just a “little” — that the Enemy of love will not win by persuading me that it’s no big deal.  I pray that I will know — heart and soul — that sin matters because it keeps me from feeling at home with the Father.

“When we . . . lust, lie, retaliate, we can’t believe in God’s love.  For God is love.  And not believing in God’s love is not just a sin, but the sin.  So I’m convinced that your deepest problem is not the cigarettes you smoke or the alcohol you drink in secret.  It’s not the slander you speak and the gossip you cherish.  It’s not the pornography you pleasure yourself with when no one’s looking.  It’s not the baby you aborted; it’s not that you betrayed your brother, cheated on your bride and lied about the whole things . . . . Your deepest problem is that somewhere deep down inside you believe Jesus the Messiah rose from the dead just to kick your ass, when in fact, He rose from the dead so you would believe all is forgiven.  It is finished.  Justice is accomplished.  And the Father is pleading, “Come home, come home, come home!”

One little white lie can kill faith, distort hope, and limit love.
One little white lie can lead us Home.
Hallelujah.

“What marvelous love the Father has extended to us!  Just look at it — we’re called children of God!  That’s who we really are.” 1 John 3:1

Tags: Faith, Hope, Love, Sin

I have lived by myself for over five years.  I can close my blinds, eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey Ice Cream, and watch reality television for hours — and no one will know.  My house is always clean.  I control the temperature in my home, volume on the television, and foods in the refrigerator.  Things are certainly not perfect — there are light bulbs burned out (I can find my way in the dark), appliances that don’t work (I just stop using them!), and times of loneliness that threaten to swallow me completely.

Well my house as my island changed drastically three weeks ago.  Two fellow-recovering addicts showed up on my doorstep, destitute and desperate for a place to continue recovery.  We decided that we would try living in community for a month — we would support one another in our recoveries, my new roommates would work and contribute to the household as they could, and I would let go of being In Complete Control.  I think things are working out well for my roommates.  Friends have helped them find jobs, we have attended several 12-step meetings together, and it seems like we have fallen into a rhythm that supports recovery.  Initially I thought their staying here was all about them — their destitution, faltering sobriety, and obvious need for food and shelter.  I am discovering, however, that this experiment in community is probably more about me.  I have often taught that emotional recovery only takes place in community, and God in His grace and inimitable sense of humor, knew the places in my heart where recovery is still necessary and brought along the perfect companions.  He has reminded me that living authentically, letting go of control, and allowing myself to be cared for are realities that must continually be challenged in my heart and there is no better way to do this than within the walls of my home.

First, I have discovered that living in this community means it’s almost impossible to hide.  My idiosyncracies of keeping the thermostat low or of going to the grocery store everyday to get my “daily bread” were observed by and impacted my roommates immediately.  Sometimes they wear their winter coats in the house in the morning, and they have learned to stock up for their own grocery needs.  I have discovered that the single force that keeps most people isolated is hiding.  God’s first story about human beings describes this energy in Genesis 3:7-8, “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.  And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.”  They tried to hide from God — but they could not hide from each other.  Maybe that’s why God proclaims, “It’s not good for man to be alone.”  He knew that we would try to hide and miss out on the one thing we want most — to be completely known and unconditionally loved.  Most of us spend so much energy hiding our true selves – guaranteeing we won’t get the thing we want most.   We believe the lie that if anyone really knew us, they would walk away at best or at worst, be completely disgusted.  As I sit at the kitchen table with my roommates and we eat takeout again (because I don’t cook), I marvel at the thought that they are willing to wear their North Face coats to eat with me in my house.  This human reality puts skin on a Divine perspective — that the only reality that allows us to risk trusting others are good is knowing that there is a Greater Good that we can return to in the midst of all our human foibles and failures and be warmly welcomed, “If anyone will come to me, I will sit down and eat with them” (Revelation 3:20).

Second, my new community is reminding me that I am not in control.  I think I believed that my house was a haven because it was one place where I was in control.  Now there are crumbs on the counters, the heating element on my dryer went out, and my schedule is not my own.  I am awakened by noises that are unfamiliar to me and see food in my refrigerator that I would have never purchased.  What is the value of letting go?  I discover that I no longer have to live only for myself and that the only true haven is found in surrendering to a life that is not my own.   Everytime I let go of dirt on the carpet, expenditures that I didn’t plan on, or my “right” to sleep without noises that go bump in the night — all things that seem real and nag me to keep to myself, hoard my house, time, and money, and take control of all that I can — I become open to experience what is most real.  It is only when we let go of controlling all that can be seen, that we begin to experience the Unseen.

Finally, the combination of authenticity and surrender become the perfect context to be cared for.  Without these I get caught in an impasse between high arrogance and low self-esteem.  High arrogance makes me believe that I can handle things, that others can’t be trusted, and even that I can do a better job of managing my life than God does.  Low self-esteem leads me to believe that I must handle things, because I’d be a burden to others if I revealed all of my needs, and that even God eventually gets tired of my constant neediness.  Living in this new community has compelled me to express my needs — “I need you to take out the trash on Thursdays,” or “I need you to save a cup of coffee for me.”  These may sound simple, but I am discovering that I have created a life where I don’t need anything.  I take care of myself.  There is no more inhumane way to live.   When I say, “I need . . .” I am trusting you with my humanness, and perhaps trust and love are the same thing.   

My home has become a haven for two recovering drug addicts with completely dysfunctional lives and for me — a recovering addict who thought her functional life proved something.  My roommates have faced some pretty desperate life and death struggles and ended up homeless and helpless.  As I have adjusted to sharing my space with others and faced my tendencies to hide, control, and take care of myself, I am reminded that these are the root of all life and death struggles and can leave us just as ungrounded, helpless to save ourselves.  So I think that we are rescuing each other. 

My friend Xan Hood (www.trainingground.com) described my new living situation best, “It sounds like you’re living in The Last Addiction House — it’s either a good Halloween horror fright night, or one of the most beautiful mansions of the kingdom.”  I think it’s a bit of both.

“Dear, dear Corinthians, I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life.  We didnt’ fence you in.  The smallness you feel comes from within you.  Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way.  I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection.  Open up your lives.  Live openly and expansively!”  (2 Corinthians 6).

Tags: Community

I visited a church a few weeks ago in a mid-Western state.  Upon walking into the church I was immediately ushered back to countless Sundays in childhood spent in a church that “felt” like the church I was visiting.  Men were dressed in suits and ties and many of the women wore modest “church dresses.”  The place was filled with well-groomed families who carried their Bibles in cases with their names imprinted in gold lettering on the cases.  I felt like I was back in the pews of my childhood sanctuary, and I was flooded with memories of faithfully filing into church with all of the other intact families with bright and shining faces.  I recalled my dad’s frequent admonition to us as we walked into church, “You kids straighten up.”  I would often grumble a few words under my breath, grab my Bible, smooth the wrinkles from my dress, and walk into church with a crooked smile on my face.  I decided early in my church experience that it would not be the place where I told the truth about my life — even to myself.

The church was the place where I learned to hide my sins, prove that I was good enough, and pretend that I could save myself.  For years I held a grudge against the church and blamed it for not offering sanctuary for my sin, woundedness, and confusion.  Fifty years of experiences in church have taught me that it is a perfect place for my addictive, perfectionistic, people-pleasing personality to flourish, but as I looked around this mid-Western congregation I knew what fifty years of living have revealed even more dramatically: it is something in me — whether tempted by vice or enticed by virtue — that forgets that I really am powerless to save myself, I need a Savior, and telling the truth about this sets me free!

As I settled into this church service I thought about my new friend, Gayle, who invited me to church.  I spent a week with her — seeing her beautiful heart for others and for God.  There was a young man right in front of us who fell to his knees during prayertime — unashamed to demonstrate his need and desperation for God.  A worship song reminded all of us to “Cry unto the Lord in time of need . . . .”  And my heart softened to being in this place that reminded me of so many Sunday mornings when I hardened my heart and refused to confess my sins, acknowledge that I couldn’t make life work, and surrender to the truth that even when I am living my best life I cannot save myself.

The enemy slithers into biker bars where drugs are dealt under the counter and into well-maintained churches where secrets are kept in the name of giving God our “best” — deceiving us into believing a lie about God and about ourselves.  But the church is the best scapegoat for the truth of Romans 7, “I realize that I don’t have what it takes.  I can will it, but I can’t do it.  I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway.  Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.”  We blame the church for revealing just how much we need a Savior.  Since my early years of faithful Sunday School attendance I have learned that I can harden my heart to the sanctuary of salvation in all kinds of places — dens of temptation, well-intentioned programs, and individual moments — when I decide to say, “No, God.” 

It’s easier to be mad at the church than see it as another means that God uses to break into our personal life stories to remind us that we cannot save ourselves.  I am overwhelmed by a God who will use failure and faithfulness; worship in a beautiful sanctuary or confession in a 12-step meeting held in a dusty church basement; a saint in a starched white shirt or a saint sneaking out from the service for a cigarette — God will use anything and everything to find us in the midst of our neediness.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book, Life Together, wonderfully summarzies what should happen when we participate in community, we get hurt by others, and we ourselves fail, “God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely we must be ourwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.”  God never intended for church to be our sanctuary, but He will use the church to remind us that He longs to be our Sanctuary, and then in His grace He allows us to be His sanctuary.

The church that I attend today is called The Sanctuary.  My pastor reminds us every week that we are the sanctuary, that God longs to inhabit us even when we are good for nothing, and that we inhabit Him simply because He is good.  I know that when I believe this Good News, I can live with nothing to prove and nothing to protect; I can be the same person at church that I am anywhere else; I can invite others to relationship without demanding that they prove something; and I cannot help but be consumed with wanting to make Christ known because He is the Good News that brings sanctuary.  When I notice that the church is a little messy, that a lot of the people attending are falling apart, and that the service doesn’t really go that smoothly, it becomes another moment for me to remember the theme of the Gospel — that God uses mess, flaws, and brokenness to relentlessly remind us that we really do need Him.  Today I can’t wait to go to church.  I hardly ever wear a “church dress”, and I seldom even bring my Bible to church, but I know that it is the place where I can tell the truth about my life, be vulnerable to others and to God, and see the most remarkable demonstrations of God’s love.  I think the poet’s words really do describe the sanctuary we can experience on Sunday morning: “Here in dust and dirt — o here, the lilies of His love appear.”

“What this adds up to, then, is this: no more lies, no more pretense.  Tell your neighbor the truth.  In Christ’s body we’re all connected to each other, after all.”  Ephesians 4

Tags: Church

Hi, My name is Sharon and I’m fifty years old today.  But that’s not my deepest story.

My name is Sharon and I’m an alcoholic — taking two steps forward and three steps back has been a part of this story.  But it’s not my deepest story.

Hi, I’m Sharon and I’m a workaholic.  I get a lot done, I crash, and start all over again.  It’s an exhausting story, but it’s not my deepest story.

I’m Sharon and I’m a people-pleaser.  As a result I neglect self-care and spend too much time worrying about what others think.  But that’s not my deepest story either.

I’m Sharon — lonely, needy, insecure, fifty-year-old, vulnerable, alcoholic Sharon — a sinner, saved by the Mercy, Grace, and Heart of God — Jesus.  And that is my deepest story.

Today I turn fifty!  I don’t feel fifty, and I’m not sure how you’re supposed to act when you’re fifty.  I’ve read all kinds of accounts about remarkable women who created beautiful art, invented life-saving vaccines, and wrote amazing books — all after they were fifty.  I also remember just a few years ago when Barbie celebrated her 50th.  As unrealistic as she is, I do admire all of her accessories!  I remember when my dad turned fifty and announced that his life was half-over.  When I protested he said, “Well, how many people do you know who are 100?”  I refuse to see my life as half-over, given all of the expensive supplements I choke down daily, and so I woke up this morning wondering what I want for my next fifty years.  I thought I might make a list of fifty things, but quickly dismissed that idea.  I knew that it would look like all of the New Year’s Resolution lists I make on December 31 and can’t find by January 5. 

There are three things that I can settle on that I want to be true today and more true every day of the next fifty years.  They are pretty simple, but since I don’t do the daily recommended Sudoku to keep the brain synapses firing, I need to keep it simple.

First, I want to live in the word “again” with peace and joy.  I am coming to believe that this word — again — is probably one of the most important and most difficult words to live in.  Whether it’s beginning a diet again, a relationship again, a letter to a long-lost friend again, an apology again, sobriety again, spending time with Jesus again.  To risk again, begin again, forgive again, believe again — to live in again - is to dwell in the possibilities.  One of my favorite artists, Brian Andreas, says it this way:  “Anyone can slay a dragon . . . but waking up every morning and loving all over again . . . that’s a real hero!”

Second, I want to never resist a generous impulse.  I have noticed in these tough economic times it is easy to count pennies, calculate my income for the week, and ignore my heart when I have the privilege of being with someone in need.  This past February I had the privilege of spending time with a wonderful man whose name is Chaplain Joe.  I spent about two hours complaining about all the loss I have experienced in the past years.  Chaplain Joe said, “Sharon, God is preparing you to reign with Him.”  Reign?  It felt more like I was being crushed.  I have meditated on Chaplain Joe’s confusing words and discovered that there is life in surrendering our suffering to Jesus, because where will we find Him?  Where there is heartache, sin, woundedness and confusion — there is our King, stooping to forgive an adulterous woman, having all the time in the world for little children, touching the wounds and sores of the sick and outcast, throwing parties for prodigals.  I want to partner with Him in such extravagant generosity. 

Finally, I want to be mindful of the words of George MacDonald: “Have you done one thing today that you know was done in obedience to Jesus?”  One thing.  I have learned this past year that this one thing is the only thing.  When I am not living in, looking for, longing to be obedient — my heart slowly hardens and I am cut off from my Source of Life and Light.  He’s not cut off from me, but I am from Him and that is a dark and lonely place.  This “one thing” is the only thing that allows me to fall more in love with Jesus. 

The forties were a decade of light and darkness, failure and success, unthinkable heartache and inexplicable grace.  I fell a little bit more in love with Jesus.  But I want more with Him — I want to be “captured by the power of a Great Affection.”  Perhaps living in the humility of “again”, reigning with Jesus as He washes the feet of the last and the least, and doing the one thing , the only thing, that keeps my heart available to be captured — obey — will make the next fifty years theLove Story God intended to be mine.  “Oh, unutterable love, even though you saw all the evils your creatures would committ against your infinite goodness, you acted as if you did not see and set you eye only on the beauty of your creature, with whom you had fallen in love like one drunk and crazy with love . . . . You are the fire, nothing but a fire of love, crazy over what you have made” (Catherine of Siena).

My brithday present — for the next fifty years is to hear the whisper of Jesus:  “Come then, my Beloved, my lovely one, come.  For see, winter is past.  The rains are over and gone.  Flowers are appearing on the earth.  The season of glad songs has come.  The fig tree is forming its first figs and the blossoming vines give out their fragrance.  Come then, my Beloved, my lovely one, come” (Song of Songs 2:10-13).

Tags: 50th Birthday

A lot of my closest friends are addicts.  I tend to really like broken, messy people — people desperate for change and yet terrified of change.  One of these dear friends just spent ten days at my house after a near-fatal overdose on heroin.  He got on an airplane early this morning for Oklahoma City to live in a sober mentoring house sponsored by the good people associated with Clay Crossing Treatment Center and Jim Riley Outreach.  We had some good conversations during my friend’s ten-day stay.  In one conversation we talked about tattoos, and my addict-friend told me that his next tattoo would be scrawled across his chest and read, “Only God can stop me.”  I initially wondered if this sentiment was a dare or a prayer, but then I got to thinking about how God stops us.  When we have a loved one or family member who is making destructive choices, we cry out in anguish, “Why doesn’t God stop them?”  When we are suffering ourselves we may wonder the same.  I think this is what the Psalmist wondered over and over and expressed in Psalm 73: “What’s going on here?  Is God out to lunch?  Nobody’s tending the store.”  I love David’s honesty as he laments about his woundedness and confusion and yet almost in the same breath comes to a place of consolation, “When I was beleagured and bitter . . . I [was] still in your presence, but you’ve taken my hand.  You wisely and tenderly lead me, and then you bless me.”  I think that sums up how God stops us.

First, He blesses us — even as we head for disaster.  More than any other story in the Scriptures, the parable of the prodigal son reveals how God stops us.  As the younger son leaves for the “distant country”,  the Father blesses him as he goes — knowing the certain heartache that is ahead.  The “distant country” becomes home to many addicts.  Addiction is a two-steps forward, three-steps back sojourn that comes from creating expectations that always fail to satisfy our deepest needs.  We are all like the prodigal when we search for unconditional love where it can never be found.  God stops us by blessing us as we go, because He knows that it is often in the “distant country” that we begin to long for, cry after, and eventually seek deliverance and our true Home.  Henri Nouwen writes of the Father’s agonizing blessing: “Oh, how much would he have liked to talk to them, to warn them against the many dangers they were facing, and to convince them that at home can be found everything that they search for elsewhere.  How much would he have liked to pull them back with his fatherly authority and hold them close to himself so that they would not get hurt.  But his love is too great to do any of that.  It cannot force, constrain, push or pull.”

After God blesses us in our comings and goings, He waits.  As Nouwen continues, “Here is the God I want to believe in: a Father who, from the beginning of creation, has stretched out his arms in merciful blessing, never forcing himself on anyone, but always waiting; never letting his arms drop down in despair, but always hoping that his children will return so that he can speak words of love to them and let his tired arms rest on their shoulders.  His only desire is to bless.”   It is impossible to exaggerate the desperation of the father’s daily watch and wait for his wayward son, and yet that is how God stops us.  He waits, wincing with hope.

I imagine that most of us who have wandered toward the “distant country” could tell a story of how God stopped us.  He uses pig slop and poverty, success and accolades, addiction and abuse, getting caught and getting away with things, sin, woundedness, and confusion to stop us.  How He chooses what He will use and how He will stop us is a mystery.  Mike Mason writes, “The moment we start thinking that we can discern some pattern to the ways of the Lord, we begin to draw dangerously close to idolatry.  We come to worship the pattern rather than the Person behind it.”  I think that means that the ways that God stops us are unique and personal and designed to cause us to worship Him. 

If you are lost in the “distant country” or love someone who is, may you believe that God will stop us — that He will break into our personal life stories with His furious love.  Some of my favorite words lately have come from Brennan Manning’s new book, The Furious Longing of God.  I have read these words often.  They remind me of how God loves me and of what to do while I am waiting, looking, and longing for God to do something.  Manning suggests that we learn how to pray — but not to pray for the suffering to stop, the sinning to stop, the wandering to stop — to pray for the furious love of God to break into our personal life stories and not just stop us, but drown us completely. 

“When the night is bad and my nerves are shattered and the waves break over the sides, Infinity speaks.  God Almighty shares through His son the depth of His feelings for me.  His love flashes into my soul, and I am overtaken by mystery. . . . It is then I face a momentous decision.  Shivering in the rags of my seventy-four years, I have two choices.  I can escape below in skepticism and intellectualism, hanging on for dear life.  Or, with radical amazement, I can stay on deck and boldly stand in surrendered faith to the truth of my belovedness, caught up in the reckless raging fury that they call the love of God.  And learn to pray.”

To my dear friend — on his way to Oklahoma, may you be stopped by the reckless raging fury of God’s love.  May it drown you and change everything.

“I am my Beloved’s, and His desire is for me.”  Song of Songs 7:10

Tags: The Furious Love of God

“You have way below normal levels in every hormone.  Your thyroid is not working, and you are significantly deficient in Vitamin D.”  This is the way that my doctor welcomed me to the world of being a woman in mid-life, battling hot flashes, dimmed vision, and an occasional mood swing into homicidal/suicidal ideation.  Clearly, I am not getting better and better.  I left his office with a handful of prescriptions and a deep sense that maybe I really did need the AARP card that I’d received in the mail earlier this month.  The news of my mid-life decline and a heightened sensitivity to my aches, pains, and twinges reminded me of the words of Henri Nouwen, “If we are hostage to ourselves, we will be imprisoned by loneliness.”  There is nothing like physical pain, personal struggle, or individual neediness to remind us of ourselves, and that often traps us in a vicious cycle of self-awareness and self-absorption.  There’s not a lonelier place to be stuck.

Mike Mason in his wonderful book, The Gospel According to Job, writes, “Suffering . . . becomes an enormity, a concrete reality so overwhelming that it has the power to engulf all other realities, to eclipse thought except the thought of itself.”  What pulls us from becoming mired in self-absorption and the inevitable loneliness that brings?  My friend Sally has shown me that painful personal circumstances can become the context to give rather than perpetually wonder if we can handle our pain, make our pain go away, or wallow in our pain with a paralysis that keeps us stuck in ourselves.

Months ago Sally’s purse was stolen while she was in the grocery store.  The thief used Sally’s credit cards to charge over $20,000 worth of goods and services.  Investigators were able to track down the woman who had stolen Sally’s purse and charges were filed.  Sally attended the sentencing hearing and asked the District Attorney if she could speak before the judge sentenced her perpetrator.  The District Attorney immediately recognized Sally.  You see, Sally had charges pending in court as well.  A few months before her purse had been stolen Sally had been arrested for driving under the influence.  Sally’s arrest began for her a journey of facing her alcoholism, seeking help, confessing her foolishness and failure, and surrendering control to God.  Even though she could potentially be sentenced to jail for her violation of the law and no one could blame her for thinking about her own pain and problems, Sally has grown a heart of compassion and kindness during her months of surrender.

The District Attorney reminded Sally that her charges might be made known to the Court if she testified in the case of her stolen purse.  Sally calmly informed the D.A., “Oh, I plan to tell the judge about my situation myself.”  When it was Sally’s turn to make a statement about sentencing for the convicted thief she turned and faced the terrified woman, “I will be standing in your shoes in a few weeks.  I am guilty of a crime as well.  At first I wanted them to throw the book at you, but as I prayed about it, I knew what I really wanted was for you to experience the forgiveness and grace of God that I have come to know since I was charged with a DUI.”  Sally told me later that she may very well be joining her perpetrator in jail, but I know that whether she is in jail or out of jail, the fruit of freedom is evident in her life and available to others wherever she is, and in whatever circumstances.

Sally’s story reminds me that although I need to care for myself and faithfully take all the medications that the doctor has prescribed, if I only think of and care for myself I will be in bondage.  Mike Mason goes on to write, “Restless [the Enemy] casts about for something that will prove more compelling, more absorbing, more real than God Himself, for he believes that to find that something would be to dislodge God from His throne.”  Certainly there is nothing that seems more compelling, more absorbing, and more real than ourselves.  When my life becomes about me, then I am God and that’s a scary place to live.   When I can turn to God in the midst of painful, disappointing, boring, humiliating, exhilarating, and daily personal circumstances, I can hear His prescription for mid-life maladies and more:

“ Let your [struggles] bring out the best in you, not the worst . . . . respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves.  In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up.  You’re kingdom subjects.  Now live like it.  Live out your God-created identity.  Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you” (Matthew 5:45-47).

Sally has certainly shown me that it is in the midst of the ruins of our lives that God’s presence abides, and it is in the midst of those same ruins that we can offer beautiful gifts to others.  We may not be getting better and better, but it seems that God is committed to making us more and more dependent on Him because He knows that in that dependence we have the opportunity to be plunged into what Heschel called “radical amazement.”  In His presence, dependent upon His power, self-absorption disappears and we are compelled to, “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and crippled and blind and lame” (Luke 14:21).  When our personal realities become the context in which we love other broken, needy people, we really are free. 

Our personal struggles (even and especially menopause) are absurd and meaningless if we believe that we are here to experience better and better.  Our personal struggles become sacred when they make God more real than any pain or problem and in so doing turn us into professional lovers.  It is good to remember that suffering and sorrow are not the natural state of things.  God is, and God is love.  Quite simply, rooted and grounded in Him (rather than ourselves — our pain, our problems, our dwindling bank accounts, our mounting bills, our physical aches and pains, our hurts, our loneliness) we love.  So bring on the hot flashes, reading glasses, Bengay, and expensive bioidentical hormones — may they only allow me to go in Love.  Go with Love.  Go because of Love. 

“By this will all men know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

Tags: Pain and Problems

I have never really liked parties.  I can’t make small-talk, I don’t have good party clothes, and I never really know what to do with myself when I’m there.  My pastor, Peter Hiett, has been preaching about parties at church the last few Sunday nights.  Last week he used the film Titanic to illustrate two different kinds of parties.  (You can listen to this awesome sermon, “The Tower of Babel and the Name of the Lord” at www.sanctuarydowntown.org.)  The first type of party is the one held on the upper deck where everyone is dressed in their finest party clothes, sophisticatedly sips on champagne, talks easily of politics and the social scene, and always uses the right fork for their salads!  You should watch it - it looks dreadful.

I’ve been to parties like this.  I even attended a Presidential Inaugural Ball a few years ago.  The men wore designer tuxedos and the women wore beautiful gowns.  I saw Jacquelin Smith (from Charlie’s Angels) and Clint Eastwood at the party.  No one complimented me on the dress I wore that cost over $500 or asked me anything about me.  My shoes hurt my feet so badly that I finally had to take them off.  There I was barefoot among the rich and famous, missing my children back at home, and wondering how much longer until I could leave.  I didn’t fit in.

The second party on the Titantic takes place on the lower deck.  Jack invites Rose to join all the other travellers in “steerage” for a real party.  No one is dressed up.  There are expressions of joy and sorrow, passion and hope.  Everyone seems comfortable in their own skin — there is no need to hide under designer clothes, impressive accomplishments, or social standing.  Just watching this party makes you wish that you were invited.

The party for the “lower class” on the Titanic  reminds me of the party at my house on Thursday nights.  Every Thursday night about six or seven of us gather to celebrate.  We are all addicts.  We have engaged in our addictions in some of the best and worst places that you can imagine.  Addiction has dragged some in our party into the sex trade at one time in their lives, and it has compelled all of us to “trade the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand” (Romans 1).  We gather around my dining room table, eat, drink, and talk about the places where we’ve been lost and found.  We talk about the 12 Steps and Jesus.  Our leader was a crack addict and alcoholic.  He was on the verge of losing his family and taking his life when Jesus found him.  Some of us have been arrested and even spent time behind bars.  All of us have made choices that have locked us in the bondage of self and darkness.  There’s no dress code for this party.  We take a smoking break half-way through, and we talk honestly about looking for love in all the wrong places and discovering a Love that has been looking for us all of our lives.  We come from all different kinds of backgrounds.  Some of us can quote Bible verses and others have never owned a Bible.  Some of us have jobs and others aren’t sure what they will do with their lives.  Some of us have done some shocking sinning and all of us have sinned in our hearts (which is where my pastor says is the most damaging place to sin).  All of us have offered Jesus nothing, and all of us are discovering that He wants to give us everything.  That’s a reason to party!  The New Testament says it this way:

“Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life.  I don’t see many of ‘the brightest and the best’ among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families.  Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these ‘nobodies’ to expose the hollow pretensions of the ’somebodies’?  That makes it quite clear . . . . Everything that we have — right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start — comes from God by way of Jesus Christ”  (1 Corinthians 1).

Well, last Thursday we were gathering around the table after the smoking break.  We had been talking about making a fearless and searching inventory of our lives and that we could do that because Jesus had been making a fearless search for us in some of the most unlikely places.  All of the sudden Sarah closed her eyes and started reciting a poem that she wrote.  Sarah is twenty years old and she’s seen a lot of life in those twenty years.  She has been hurt and hurt herself in places that most of us would never go.  Sarah told us that religious people had told her that Jesus wouldn’t be caught in the places that she went.  Sarah has learned that they were wrong.  She’s discovered that Jesus descended into her hell to set her free, and that is why she now chooses to party with people who would never be invited to the upper deck.  Sarah gave me permission to share her poem.  I wish you could hear her recite it.  She closes her eyes and tilts back her head when she speaks.  Short, spiral curls spring up and fall all over her head.  Her voice is rich with passion and sorrow, and when she talks — well, it’s a party!  If you’re feeling distant from God because you think He’s absent or you’re unworthy, this poem might make you want to party.  Sarah knows that the Mercy of God is that He enters us when we are in states of grace or disgrace and that the Humility of God is that we enter Him when we love those who are hungry, thirsty, imprisoned, sick, or in need. 

If it’s easier for you to get sex on the street than a hug in church
I want you to know that I see God in you
Cars speed past
Cardboard signs being held by
Stick people with long dirty nails
I light my cigarette and pass it on
I have no funds to share and my offering
Is a lit cigarette and God
Accepts it takes a puff
And then a long drag as I drive away

I am shivering on this bus shelter bench
When I see a girl
Maybe 16
Clad in a dirty miniskirt
Shaking like me
And my offering
Is a condom and a clean needle
But God takes it
Smiles at me
And jumps into the next car

I lay crying on the floor
Staring at an empty pot
And my offering today
Is bits of flour mixed with dirt and mud
God takes the cookies
He smiles and laughs
And that little bit makes his hunger go away
Enough for him to sleep in my arms

As fists connect to face and
As he tells me he fell down
A flight of stairs
I know being gay
Cannot save you from domestic violence
And I can’t fix this
My offering is a bag of ice
And God takes it grabs it
And brings it up to his face as he cries

God bends over the toilet releasing the contents
Of her stomach for the fifth time today
And I don’t know what to do
So my offering is to hold her hair
And wash her face and mouth afterwards
And she thanks me for not judging her

God just witnessed someone shoot at his house
In the dead of night
And he comes out of the house in his pj’s
Adorned with heavy artillery
And I live across the street
And instead of staying inside and
Ducking under furniture
I rush out to help him
And my offering is trying to talk
Him out of revenge

You see
I never tell people to shut up
‘Cuz I see God in their sufferings
I have seen God shoot up and
Held him as he came down
I’ve seen God run away from an abusive partner
I’ve held God as she told me about
Being gang-raped at a frat party
God ain’t screaming out for offerings
Of millions and money
But of time and community

by Sarah Francois

“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these . . . you did for me.’”  Matthew 25:40

Tags: Parties for Prodigals

Wednesday night I walked into a place that I never intended to be.  I was immediately asked to hand over my driver’s license, leave all my personal belongings behind, and remove any jewelry.  I was given a clip-on badge — no name, but simply a number became my identity.  I followed other women through a metal detector which immediately beeped my infraction of the rules already — I had forgotten to take off my bracelet.  The uniformed guard waved me through and I continued to follow the leader.  She led us through a series of doors.  One door slid open, and as we walked toward the next door the one behind us slid shut with a loud click as the locks latched.  There were no windows.  When the leader turned to us and said, “I hope you don’t get claustrophobic,” I realized we were in the basement of this large cement building.  We finally reached a place in the hallway where the leader pushed a button that released a drawer.  She placed a metal identification chip into the drawer.  It closed and then opened, producing a key.  She took the key out of the drawer and explained, “This will let us into the room.”  There were locked, closed doors everywhere.  The circulated air seemed to whisper, “You can’t get out.  You are locked in.”

I was in jail.

I had volunteered to participate in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the Douglas County jail.  I didn’t know what to expect and I was immediately overwhelmed with the realities of confinement.  As the nine women who wanted to participate in the meeting filed into our quickly re-locked room, I noted the apparel of captivity.  Everyone wore what looked like scrubs — only these clothes quickly identified the owner’s residence — Department of Corrections.  Most women wore orange, which I learned represented that they were in minimum security.  One woman wore navy blue.  She was a trustee.  She had been incarcerated for eleven months. They all wore flip-flops — no nail polish, jewelry, or makeup.  I didn’t know as we began the meeting that these women — so obviously out of control of their own lives — were about to remind me of the truth about surrender.

We began our meeting and started to talk about the 3rd Step of Alcoholics Anonymous:  “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.”  Several women talked about their experience with surrender.  One woman who had just arrived with a sentence of one year’s imprisonment talked about her difficulty with this step: “I just can’t surrender.  I need to be in control.” 

I didn’t have to think too long about the irony of this woman’s confession given her current living situation to see my own illusion of control.  I have surrendered to alcohol, prescription drugs, working, achieving, people-pleasing, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream — only to end up in bondage to choices and behaviors that haven’t taken the pain away and have certainly not given me freedom.  While sitting in the suffocating control of the Department of Corrections, it made sense to surrender to the care of God.  It wasn’t difficult to imagine — sitting there — that He could do a better job of caring for my life than I could.

As I stepped out of the Douglas County jail — grateful to be holding my purse, looking at the mountains, and breathing fresh air — I renewed my desire to surrender to Someone outside of myself.  Surrendered pain, boredom, loneliness, rejection, confusion — that’s Hope.  Our capacity to surrender becomes our capacity to Hope. 

I am learning that Freedom happens when we surrender — heart and soul — to the reckless, raging, uncontrollable, untamable Love of God.  Freedom is experienced not on the basis of where we are or how we perform but upon our knowing that we are loved by what G. K. Chesterton calls “the furious love of God.”  We are available to live freely when we come to believe by sheer grace that God loves us “furiously regardless of my state — grace or disgrace” (Brennan Manning, 2009).  Surrender to the furious love of God unlocks the bondage of self and leads us Home.

My hope for the women I have been privileged to meet at the Douglas County jail and for myself is not found in mustering up an iron will or announcing a plan of action.  As Jean Vanier wrote, “It is not reserved for those who are well-known mystics or for those who do wonderful things for the poor . . . It is for those poor enough to welcome Jesus.  It is for people living ordinary lives and who feel lonely.  It is for all those who are old, institutionalized or out of work, who open their hearts in trust to Jesus and cry out for his healing love.”  The Love of Jesus unlocks us.  May we not be afraid of this furious Love, but allow it to take us out in order to take us in.

Tags: Add new tag, Addiction, Freedom

I met Gigi four years ago.  She had been married for six months.  Gigi explained to me how she had sought God’s guidance in her dating life and her decision to marry.  Because Gigi was an orphan, without mother or father in her life, she relied upon her pastor and others in her church to help her in the important decisions she was making about her future.  Gigi earnestly wanted to honor God.  She knew that He had called her to a path of service that she believed would include a ministry in the areas of social justice and racial reconciliation.  She was scheduled to begin seminary in just a few short months to further her preparation for God’s call on her life.  

            Gigi had been married six months when her husband told her that he wanted a divorce.  He didn’t really explain his reasons for wanting out of the marriage.  Gigi learned that he had a secret life that their marriage threatened and he had decided he didn’t want to live between two worlds anymore.  He chose a world without Gigi.  When Gigi came to my counseling office she was humiliated.   She had prayed, tried to obey, sought counsel, and now this already orphaned girl was outcast and certainly feeling like a stranger – a young woman in seminary, already divorced, wanting to serve God, and wondering how in the world that would ever happen.

            For months Gigi and I grieved together over her lost marriage, her confusion, and her anger at a God who seemed to have abandoned her.   Gigi questioned her calling and wondered who would ever want her in ministry with her humiliating credentials.   And yet Gigi continued on in seminary.   She often worked three jobs to pay her bills.  She spent many lonely nights crying out to God about her excruciating circumstances.  

            Two years after her divorce Gigi began to think about dating again.  She wondered who would want an orphan, stranger, and outcast.  She remained steadfast in her sense of calling to ministry and longed for a husband who would share her vision.  She often asked me, “Sharon, do you think my expectations are too high?  Do you think there’s someone like this out there?  Do you think he’d want me?”  I always answered her the same, “I don’t know.  He would have to be a gift from God.”

            It’s hard to believe that God will give good gifts when we are in the middle of the valley of humiliation.  Gigi became a woman of great courage over the months after her shattering divorce.  She told the truth about her life.  She didn’t hide her confusion or anger.  She didn’t stop wanting good things.  She struggled to obey God in the absence of any reward.  She didn’t know it, but she was becoming a woman who was ready for a calling far beyond her meager human imaginings.

          I was reminded of the words of my friend Dan Allender as I wondered how God might redeem Gigi’s broken story: “Some of our stories describe abandonment, betrayal, and ambivalence.  We experience these losses and assaults as orphans, strangers, and widows.  Should it surprise us then, that God wants to make himself known as the Father who protects the orphans, as the Brother who encourages the stranger, and as the Lover who cherishes the widow?  The Triune God who is One wants to redeem our story and restore with love what our story took from us.”

            One year ago Gigi packed her bags for South Africa to complete an internship required for her seminary degree.  She had interviewed with several mission organizations and had been honest about her journey and her sense of calling to a ministry of social justice and racial reconciliation.  Several missions turned her down.  One mission accepted her and then Gigi was unable to raise the necessary funds for the internship.   One week during our counseling session Gigi asked a question that I couldn’t answer, “Sharon, why would God make me for things I can’t have?   Here I am divorced.  I almost have a completed seminary degree that it looks like I won’t be able to use.  I am lonely.  I don’t have any money.  What is God doing?”  

            I did not have a warm and fuzzy answer for Gigi, but I did remind her of the path I had watched her walk over the past years.

            Gigi longed for faith in the midst of humiliating realities.  Her faith grew as she walked in the world without pretense or cover-up.  Her faith allowed her to believe that she was a woman who found favor in God, because finding favor with God means sharing in His suffering.   Whether we have experienced being an orphan, a stranger, or an outcast, we can bless those realities because we share them with Jesus.  Our humiliating relational realities allow us to share in the suffering of Jesus.  They prepare us for our calling to minister to other humiliated people.  And best of all, they allow us to know a Love that is not based on a resume – a Love that is limitless, that never forgets who we are, that keeps believing in who we can be, that holds our hands when we are afraid, uncertain, or filled with anticipation – a Love that loves us when we are good for nothing because it is that Love alone that makes us ready for something!

            I saw Gigi again this week after her year in South Africa.  She called for an appointment and told me that she would be bringing someone with her.  I had received emails from Gigi throughout the year about her work in a church in Soweto, South Africa.  She wrote about the complicated racial realities and the need for a way to minister in Love in the midst of a lot of hurt, hatred, and violence.  I had prayed often for Gigi’s safety, although I suspected that God was up to more than just keeping her safe.

            I greeted Gigi at my front door and immediately noted the man by her side.  He was an elegant man with eyes that held such sorrow and strength that I was a bit taken back upon first meeting him.  Gigi introduced Sihle and told me that he was the pastor of the church in Soweto where she ministered.  Sihle had grown up in Soweto and experienced the absence of a father, poverty, and violence that was true of so many of his countrymen.  His path had taken a strange turn when he came to know Christ and attended Bible college.  His education eventually led him out of Soweto to seminary, but he could never get away from a sense of God’s calling on his life to return to his town and minister out of what he knew of God and how God’s message intersected in matters of social justice and racial reconciliation.

            As Gigi and Sihle ministered together, talked about their callings, and grew to know one another better it became clear that these two orphans, strangers, and outcasts had been made for a time such as this.  Gigi shared with me that they planned to be married and return to Soweto to minister.   I could see clearly how Gigi’s humiliating experiences as an orphan, stranger, and outcast had uniquely prepared her for the life that God had been planning all along.   Gigi and Sihle’s story is not a fairy tale with a happily-ever-after ending.  They will return to a place of violence, misunderstanding, and potential prejudice.  They will minister in the midst of great suffering in hopes of bringing Good News about the favor of God – favor that does not always bring a warm and fuzzy life, but that does bring a relationship with a God who uses humiliating human realities to bring us to a resting place in a Love that cannot be earned and can never be lost.

            “Oh Sharon,” Gigi grabbed my arm as she was going out the door.  “Do you remember all those times when I asked you if you thought I wanted too much and if there would ever be someone for me?”  I remembered.  I have wondered about that question not only for Gigi, but for myself, and for countless others.  I recalled that I had told Gigi he would have to be a gift from God and often thought to myself,  “But God’s gifts are confusing or can seem a long time in coming!”   What Gigi told me next is something that I will never forget.  Her story reminds me that God’s good gifts come in the midst of our humiliating realities.  His good gifts come because we don’t hide from those realities, but we surrender them to His Love and in the process we discover our calling – a calling that grows not out of who we are but out of how we are loved.
              “Sihle’s name”, Gigi explained while her eyes sparkled, “means a gift from God.”

Tags: Redeeming Love Story