Lenten Grace

"Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away." Revelation by Flannery O'Connor

I recently half-heard a talk in which the speaker extensively spoke on this short story, and I was so thankful to be reminded of it, even if his point was not what I brought away.

The "they" implied by the pronoun in the above quote refers to the moral, upright Christian folk spied in a religious vision by a woman cut of that same moral cloth. The good folk are at the tail end of a parade following all manner of undesirables into the kingdom of Heaven. Prim and proper, they are the only ones marching in an orderly fashion, singing on key, and generally following the rules--but as they march, they are changed, to their consternation. I don't want anyone to be deprived of the privilege of reading the story, so I won't tell you more. (But find it today if you can!)

I love Flannery O'Connor's short stories. Acerbic, cutting to the quick of the human condition with an elegant and honest knife, her characters are often not attractive- it's difficult to identify a protagonist, much less a hero in her tales of the South. Her stories are brutally honest and filled with a very uneasy look at grace.

Maybe that's why I love her work. Fairly few of us would qualify as a hero, and my view of myself as protagonist may well be in direct contrast to someone's view of me as antagonist. The grace I would like to experience is often not the grace I am given. And when the drought of my local geography reflects my spiritual state, honesty is all I have.

It is Lenten season again, and I don't know that I have ever inhabited the season so fully before. In January, we blew back into my home turf with our possessions like so many tumbleweeds- home gone, job gone, shaken, sad, confused, ill- driven before a circumstantial whirlwind and helpless before it.

Everything is ashen; gray and hard on the surface, soft and shifting underneath, like the fallout of some recent volcanic blast rather than a gentle smudge on my forehead. This ridiculous cavalcade of misfortune- it grits at the soul, leaves a terrible taste in my mouth, renders my prayers bitter.

After so many months and so many prayers, I am finding it hard to keep at it. God and I just sit and look at each other. He's nearly palpable in his proximity but He just doesn't say much. I would do whatever He wants. It is far more tenuous a thing to sit and let a torrent of trouble just wash over my life, knowing God is sitting there watching it happen. At least He holds my hand. This ashen grace is not, at present, one I would choose, but it is what I am being given.

Miss O'Connor, a Catholic single lady in a bastion of Protestantism, somehow found words to describe to what happens sometimes to tidy, comfortable lives. It is happening to me.

Grace, a brutal, ashen grace.

Honest, not easy, but true nonetheless. All my own "virtue" is being burned away, things I never really thought of as dross, things locusts are eating. As for what remains, I am not sure that the term hope describes what sits in my heart but something more certain.

Easter.

Unemployment curve ball one

Being unemployed is a weird state of life. I haven't worked full time since Babalu was a wee boy, but I have been employed in some state or another for most of the past 16 years. Not so anymore. I have no steady job, just a little sub work here and there, but to have had a husband who is unemployed along with me is a little... strange.

I was so consumed by the end date of his job that I hadn't actually considered what he would do once it was over. Well, Hubs was now HOME, all the TIME, and while I love him more than it is possibly normal to love another person, it was WEIRD. He began eating breakfast, he started helping with chores, he kept the baby while I subbed and often drove me to bible study. He was with me all the time. I have to say, there were a couple of days when I did not appreciate his presence.

I really didn't know what to make of this constant "other". I kind of liked my me time, my baby and mom time, my big kids coming home from school time. Now Hubs was around all the time, looking for jobs diligently, but still in the house. I felt like I had lost a little something.

Slowly, I got used to it. We learned to give each other space in the house and to communicate when we need a smidgen of time alone or to do some task quietly. I learned to take space for myself, and give him some also. We have talked about everything and anything and nothing. We have laughed a lot and watched foreign films on Netflix. We have watched the baby grow from infant to toddler together.

And it dawned on me that two things are likely: one or both of us will find full time work soon, and we will not always be together in this life unless by some freak accident, we go together. (Just know, it will probably be my driving if that's the case.)

And it made me happy that he's there, ALL the TIME, for right now. Love you, baby. I will miss you when employment comes our way.

Pulling up the tents again?

If you have followed Christ very long, you soon realize that sometimes you get to "live it." That is to say, it's very easy to spout platitudes and prayers, but sometimes, you get to live down and dirty. That's where we are; yes, that's me, dirt under my nails and on my nose.

When Hubs and I moved to Oregon, we came with the intention of working with a ministry where we knew and loved the director and wanted to partner with the staff to grow a retreat center ministry. The director moved three months after we arrived; although we were aware it was possible, we were hoping it wouldn't come to pass. That should have been the first sign to buckle our seat belts for a bumpy ride.

Hub's newly hired assistant decided she didn't want to work nights and weekends, which is kind of tricky in the retreat business since that's when most retreats happen. The camp did not rehire the position. Then we got a new director who is a wonderful Christian man and great friend.  It became apparent that his vision for camp, coupled with financial realities that were hitting every camp everywhere below the belt,  were not what we felt called to do or were able to perform. 

Hub was doing his job, his assistant's job, and frequently what had been handled by other former staff as well. It is humanly possible to work 17 days in a row for 12-14 hours a day, but I wouldn't recommend it. He burned out pretty quick, got a little help, and stayed as long as he could. But it was only a stopgap. This past summer, the writing was on the wall in many ways- spiritually, emotionally, and physically. Hub made a hard call.

Being in ministry, you don't want to burn bridges or leave anyone in a bad way, at least not if you can help it.  He told the director about his thoughts, and basically offered to resign. He was saddened to receive no resistance, but that confirmed his heart's knowledge.  Paul and Barnabas came to our hearts as we tried to explain to everyone.  We were given an end date of Halloween, ha-ha-- and "living it" began.  

And here we sit, five days away, with no job yet. There are a couple of prospects, and a few interviews, but no actual job. We can stay in our house for a bit longer. (Leaving with grace and integrity is a blessing, people want to help you transition!) We have a little money we can access if we need to, and my parents have a BIG house if it all goes horribly awry.

And I have had to let go of a million small dreams and goals. I have had to grieve over several things and let God have his way with them. I don't want to move my tent, I want to plant tulips around it! But the only hope I have for sanity is this: I have to think like Sarah in her tent, not Martha in her house in Bethany. I have had to trust God with things I would rather not bother Him with, thanks, anyway, but find He is cleaning out of m y life like I mercilessly clean my kids' closets.

But I have found it sharpens my love for my family, it sharpens my trust in God to a fine point. Either I trust Him, or I don't. He KNOWS every little thing about this whole life moment that I see as a mess, but He sees as an opportunity to refine me and mine. I have been blessed to see friends who actually took action, who call and check on me, who PRAY. ( I also have been kind of shocked by who didn't, but that's a whole 'nother set of wheels.)

And you know what? If it all falls apart, like so many other people who lean on God have discovered, He is still there. In the middle of it. He walks through with us. Life is messy. But God can make it not only clean and beautiful again, He lifts us up in the process to become more like Him. That's the kind of down and dirty I can do.

I think. Stay tuned.

"A better country" refers to Hebrews 11:16. While our family would joke that Minnesota qualifies as a better country, it's come to mean a lot more to me than a physical place. When the writer of Hebrews ( some say Paul) spoke about Abraham and Sarah leaving their home to follow God's call, he speaks about a better country that they were setting their hopes on- the beginnings of God's kingdom, the family that would become a peculiar people to God. They left behind their hopes and dreams and plans to follow God's. In many ways, our family has done just that.

I don't claim to be part of a patriarchal family, but we do find some commonality with a nomadic lifestyle. Our family has left our beginnings in Texas to live in Minnesota, Oklahoma, and now Oregon. We have put aside some dreams in order to follow God's call for us in Christian camp ministry. We have undergone two cross country moves and one on-site move in 3 years. I experienced my first job loss ever last year-quite a bit harder experience than I would have thought. And a little like Sarah, we have a new baby in a time when no one expected us to have any more kids, least of all us!

When I worry about our future or how things will work out, I find a lot of comfort in the Hebrews passage. This isn't our permanent home, and we really are just temporary nomads here on this side of things. It encourages me and invites me to hold on to the things in my life loosely and to concentrate on what will last-- people and my relationship with Christ, where my ultimate and permanent home really is.

¹⁵If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. ¹⁶Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.