Maundy Thursday

Lent is my favorite season in the liturgical calendar. I love the extended time to focus on the life, ministry, and death of Christ. And I love the anticipation that it builds toward celebrating the Resurrection! It can be such a beautiful season of fasting, grieving, and thorough celebration.

To be honest, this season of Lent hasn't felt very focused for me. Ryan and I were out of town for nearly every weekend in March, which put our search for a church home in Laramie on hold for a bit longer than we were expecting. In addition to that, work at SROM has been incredibly full and a little overwhelming for me at times. It's been a hard season to focus! But I'm realizing that I am thankful for two things: one, that my salvation is not based on whether or not I can keep myself focused and fasting for forty days. And, two, that there is still time to experience some of the richness of this season! God is so good like that, isn't He? To remind us of things that we've distracted ourselves from in enough time to still get to experience them! What a gift!

I pray that in this weekend is a time of rest and reflection. I pray for the grace to sit at the feet of my Lord and meditate on His sacrifice. I pray for a deeper understanding of the Resurrection, and an overwhelming joy and celebration on Sunday!
 

Fullness

My life is messy. It is not perfect. It is not glamorous. In the virtual world of curated social media, my life is not even that photogenic. But, little by little, I'm learning how to live a full life.

My life is full. It is filled with working at a job that I love. It is filled with celebrating the little victories and little wins that happen every week. It is filled with hot beverages. It is filled with quiet moments on the couch. It is filled with laundry and cleaning and endless dishes. It is filled with joy. It is filled with music. It is filled with laughter and smiles and tears and silence. It is filled with empty journals. My life is filled with eye contact. It is filled with small talk and big talk. It is filled with editing. It is filled with grocery shopping and recipe hunting. It is filled with unhealthy comparison. It is filled with tender moments. My life is filled with words, both written and spoken. It is filled with doubt and questions. My life is filled with hugs. It is filled with staring blankly into space. It is filled with ambition that needs direction. It is filled with people. It is a messy, imperfect life. And it is full of love. 

Mine is a life in progress. I don't have all the answers, and I probably never will, but I'm learning to articulate the things I know and to appreciate the perspective that experience gives me. I'm learning to change the things I don't like, and make myself aware of the things I do like. I'm learning again to be disciplined - personally, professionally, and spiritually. I'm learning to stop comparing my life to others I see, and to make this life be the kind that I want to live. And I'm learning how to let people into the messiness and unfinished-ness.

On Receiving Love

"Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved.  Those who think they can love only the people they prefer do not love at all.  Love discovers truths about individuals that others cannot see."

-Soren Kierkegaard 

A coworker shared this quote with me several months ago, and I've had it posted on my desk for so long that I have ceased to notice it's there.  Thankfully it stuck in my brain enough to be recalled the past few days as I've been thinking about love and newly-wedded bliss.

Last night Ryan and I celebrated our first month of marriage, and even though it's been only one month I have realized quite a bit about myself...particularly how difficult it is for me to simply receive love.  Ryan is a very patient man and very good at reminding me that he loves me for who I am, not for the things I do.  His love for me is reassuring because I know him to be a consistent, faithful, man.  The more I know him, the more I can trust his love.  

If Kierkegaard is right about love (and he generally knew what he was talking about), love is an expression more than it is a reflection.  Ryan's love for me is an expression of who he is, not a reflection of who I am.  The more I learn about who Ryan is, the way he lives day-to-day life, the little quirks that make him who he is, the more I learn about how he loves me.  Additionally, the more I get to know Ryan, the more he is able to teach me how to love him.  (There is always a small part of me that worries that I'm not doing enough to let him know how much I love him, how interested in him I am, or how much I want to learn more about him.  I want to know him better because I want to love him better because I already love him so much!)

Because marriage is a metaphor for how Christ loves the Church, and because I tend to learn best in metaphors, I extrapolate much in regards to my relationship with Christ from my marriage.  It's always been difficult for me to receive the unconditional, priceless grace and love of God.  For a long time I lived under self-imposed pressure to prove to God how much I loved Him and how much I valued His grace and mercy.  To be honest, I didn't really understand His heart and what He desires of us, so I was unable to receive His love or truly love Him back.  But God's love for me is an expression of who he is, not a reflection of who I am.  God loves me perfectly, purely, constantly because He is Perfect, Pure, and Constant.  If I want to get to know God more (which I do!) I need to begin by letting go of my preconceived notions of who He is and learn about who He actually is through His love.

1 John  4:7-12 gives us a glimpse into this mystery:

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.  Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

"No one has ever seen God: but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us."  We learn more about who God is by expressing His love to others in our lives.  And, in so doing, that Love changes us and is "made complete in us."

I wish I understood this better.  The more I wrestle with this concept of love, the more I realize that I don't get it.  In order to understand God more, I need to receive His love more fully...but in order to receive His love more fully, I need to first express that love to others?  Or is it that in seeking to love others that I learn more about who God is because I understand the nature of His love better as I realize that He is much better at loving the unlovable than I am?  Is it in realizing my own shortcomings of love that I realize the vast perfection of His love?  All of the above?

Am I really surprised that I'm realizing how little I know about love after a month of being married?  Nope.  Just scratching the surface.  But I am excited to continue to learn about the connection between giving and receiving love and how it informs the "discovery of truths about individuals that others cannot see."  And I am thankful that I have a very patient husband and an infinitely more patient Savior to take this journey with me.

Something Worth Celebrating

I was fortunate enough to spend all last week back at my parents' house in Illinois.  I spend wonderful time playing with my nieces and holding my (enormous) 8-month-old nephew; I got to see the house my sister and brother-in-law recently bought; I had a few precious times of video chatting with my Grandpa John in Florida; I celebrated with good friends at a wedding; and we celebrated Christ's resurrection at an Easter Vigil on Saturday night.  It was absolutely wonderful to get to spend so much time with family and friends, and to get to experience springtime in the Midwest.  (I forgot how green everything becomes!!  Laramie's biggest source of green at the moment are the pine trees and store awnings.)

There are a few very important lessons I learned while I was at home:

1.  No one, not even Idina Menzel, can sing "Let it Go" as passionately as a 3-year-old.

2.  Coffee ground for a drip machine should never, ever be used in a French Press.

3.  When hiding Easter eggs for toddlers, never give them the benefit of the doubt: "hide" the eggs in absolutely obvious plain sight.  And stand next to the ones that might be partially obscured and give hints like "Have you smelled these flowers?  They smell like chocolate!"

4.  I wouldn't trade my family in for all the creme eggs in the world.

It hit me this past week at several moments that Christ's resurrection is truly something worth celebrating.  It is the resurrection that gives us hope and peace in the face of death.  It is the resurrection that gives us the ability to endure suffering with grace.  It is the resurrection that gives us joy in life because we don't fear death.  Death doesn't win; death doesn't get the final word.

My family and I are facing the imminent passing of my Grandpa John, and it's been hard to see him suffer so much pain as he rapidly declines.  My mom reminded me last night that this is what God was trying to protect us from in the Garden: we were never meant to experience the pain and grief that comes with dying and watching loved ones die.  By the same token, this is the victory Christ won over Death!  This is the victory of the resurrection.  This pain and grief serves to remind us that this is not our home, but that through Christ we are headed home.

Grandpa John is an amazing man who is so ready to see the King he has faithfully loved and served during his life.  He has set a foundation of faith for our family, and I know that I am living in the blessing of that foundation.  It is the resurrection that gives my family and I the ability to celebrate my grandpa's life, even as we mourn his soon passing.  As my aunt phrased it, "he is almost to the Gate, and it's beautiful."  Thank you Lord for the life of this incredible man.

If there is anything worth celebrating, it is the resurrection.  Alleluia, Christ is Risen indeed.