the shame of the cross

I went with a friend to see the movie Precious last night. I wouldn't recommend it but I am not sorry I went. It has led to some good conversations and prayers. It reminded me of something I wrote a few years ago at Easter about shame. It was part of a series of devotions the stone sent out to help people prepare for resurrection Sunday. Here it is:

I know a lot about shame. There have been times in my life when it has been my most intimate companion. I bet you you could say the same. Oh, I know you’ve probably got trophies on your shelves or diplomas on your walls. There are smiling photos of you hanging in frames and filling your computer. All these declare you’re happy, accomplished, confident. But they don’t tell the full story, do they? We live among a people who have their own unique combination of arrogance and insecurity and selfishness masking results of the fall like fear, guilt, and shame that consume from within. And the truth is that even those of us who are redeemed are not exempt from feeling a portion of it.

The glory and the mystery of the cross is that One worthy of exalting Himself chose humility instead. He demonstrated a meekness that takes my breath away. Our Creator left splendor and stooped to kneel by taking on human skin. When He endured the cross, He crouched with His mouth to the dust. He actually became a curse (Galatians 3:31). Our Savior was naked before the critical eyes of Roman soldiers and His own kinsmen. The fact that they had no right to condemn Him did not remove their scornful stares. The Messiah who could have unmade them all submitted to the most disgraceful death possible and the agony of separation from His Father. Jesus embraced the crushing weight of sin and humiliation that we would do anything not to feel. He bore it for us so we could be clean. He made a way to call us His sisters and brothers (Hebrews 2:11). He did it so that you and I could run into the throne room of our Dad.

The apparent shamelessness of the world system is a garish attempt to disguise the shame inside. It never works. The Accuser whispers that we can never be pure or whole, that our case is just too extreme. The earth-shattering wisdom of God is that He overcame the shame originating from the fall by humbly receiving it. It isn’t the way you or I would have fought. It is the last weapon we would have chosen. And it was the only one that could ever have succeeded. Royalty in a feeding trough… a King on a cross…a Creator who dies to save His creation: God’s wisdom is like nothing I’ve ever known.

There is a song by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors that my friend pointed out to me that captures the heart of pain and shame and suffering that are on my mind today. It is called the Valley and it goes like this:

I don't wanna face this valley
I don't wanna walk alone
You say that you'll leave to find me
Well I am begging you now to come

Don't think I can face the point
A heaviness is on my chest
You say that you will lift this burden
Well, I am begging you to bring me rest

(Chorus)
So come and find me in the darkest
night of my soul
in the shadow of the valley
I am dying for you to make me whole
for you to make me whole

I can't keep myself from sinking
Drowning down in all this shame
throw this one out
for I am calling for help
and I'm praying you will remember my name

I know I can't fight this battle
been surrounded on every side
you say that you will deliver me
I am praying you restore my life

(Chorus)

Answer me out of the greatness of your love
in your mercy turn to me
i know it's you that I've have been running from
but I am seeing that it's you I need
all I need

(Chorus)

Praying you are walking in peace and freedom. Love, terra.

Till We Have Faces

I am including a book review from my goodreads page today. Enjoy (But note that it contains spoilers if you have never read the book)!

This book is CS Lewis' retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche.

I did not enjoy this book the first time I read it several years ago. I got to the end and felt I'd missed the point (I had). However, something made me pick it up to re-read a few weeks ago. I am glad I did. It certainly fits the season I am in. I can identify with Orual in many ways. When Orual cannot see Psyche's palace, I wonder if Psyche is imagining it or, worse, if the gods are cruelly unwilling for her to receive the beauty of Psyche's home. When she catches a glimpse the next morning, she wills herself to disbelieve it because such things are not in keeping with the way she has known the world to be.

I feel that CS Lewis probably means this to be about faith and sanctification primarily (Among other things...he certainly wanted to retell the story in a way that invited sympathy for the point of view of Psyche's sisters. Perhaps he was thinking of his atheist and agnostic friends and even his own past and was tired of the contempt and misunderstanding of Christians toward them.)

"For if the true story had been like their story, no riddle would have been set me; there would have been no guessing and no guessing wrong. More than that, it's a story belonging to a different world, a world in which the gods show themselves clearly and don't torment men with glimpses, nor unveil to one what they hide from another, nor ask you to believe what contradicts your eyes and ears and nose and tongue and fingers. In such a world (is there such? it's not ours, for certain) I would have walked aright. The gods themselves would have been able to find no fault in me." (orual after hearing the story from the gods perspective). This is my cry to the Lord right now. 'Can you please speak clearly? I will obey if You will only TELL me.'

What I receive from this story at this time is that there can be holy and good rather than only evil motives for concealing a truth or for speaking in ways that are difficult to hear. I hear also that some answers that seem urgent in fact take a lifetime to deliver. Orual's quote above sounds as if she has despaired and is ending with sniping and rebellion. It is actually the dying breath of her old ways of thinking and believing. She is on the edge of new life. I am now digesting and trying to apply these truths.

"You also are Psyche."

my first mother's day

I wrote this a year ago as Torey entered her freshman year. A year later, I am still unspeakably proud of my kid. She is a joy in my life. I could not be prouder of the woman she is and is becoming. Soli Deo Gloria.

August 25, 2008.

My first mother’s day wasn’t in the month of May. It happened on June 27, 1989. That was the day I discovered I was a mother.

It was the summer before my senior year in high school. I was headed to a doctor’s appointment. I had started having these strange symptoms that seemed a lot like those of my best friend’s hypoglycemia. I used her one of her blood sugar tests and, sure enough, my levels were not normal. It never occurred to me when the appointment was made that I might be pregnant. My boyfriend and I had gotten a little more intimate than we intended once or twice but…surely. It wasn’t possible.

My stepmother drove me to the appointment. I had just moved in with my dad’s family and she was doing everything she could to help me get settled and feel welcome. I remember how loving and kind she was on that day in particular, even as her live-in stepdaughter began adding much more complication to her family life than she had bargained for.

After my blood had been tested, the doctor, his nurse, my stepmom and I all crowded into the examination room. I don’t remember exactly what words he used but I remember staring around the room in shock at a white coat, cotton balls, and dark wooden cabinets, trying to take in what I had just heard. When my stepmother asked for abortion information, I snapped back to the present. I told them all with uncharacteristic self-confidence that I wasn’t interested. Trying to help in the best way she knew, she urged me to take the pamphlets for later ‘just in case.’

Everything in my world had just been turned inside out with one sentence. I wasn’t sure of anything else but from the very beginning I knew this: I was not going to stop this child from being born. Even though my faith was then and remains vitally important to me, it wasn’t about politics or religion or morality for me in that moment. It was simply about what was true. The truth was that the baby was real. I knew that no discrete procedure was going to change that.

My stepmom drove me home as I stared at the speeding pavement in a fog. As soon as I walked inside, I called my boyfriend and told him he needed to come over. I was waiting on the front steps when he drove up. Once he was close enough to see my face, he knew. He crumpled up into a ball at my feet and wept. As I knelt to comfort him, my step-mom, embarrassed by his display, hustled us inside the house.

After talking with my dad and stepmom and his parents who were all both loving and supportive, we drove to Kyle’s now deserted office for a few moments alone. In the quiet of that place, we knelt to cry and pray for guidance. We asked forgiveness for our foolish and ungodly actions. We prayed God would show us what to do. We left having made no decisions but at peace.

As young as I was—still a child in so many ways—I knew that I loved Kyle and that he loved me. I was certain it wasn’t a crush for either of us but real, live-the-rest-of-your-life-together love. But I also knew that I was ready to do whatever I had to do to protect my child. If he was too scared or wasn’t ready to be married or a father (or both), I would do what I had to do to keep her safe.

Right then, I silently vowed that this being inside me would be loved. That she would never doubt that she was wanted. That she would be given all the training, discipline, and everything else she needed. I promised myself that whatever sacrifice it took, I would not rest and I would not stop until she was well loved and well provided for. I patted my still flat abdomen and whispered, ‘everything is going to be ok.’

As I lay in bed that night and tried to make sense of everything, I experienced for the first time that almost instinctive, nearly violent protective impulse that I have since come to know as something close to the heart of motherhood. I knew then that whatever it cost me, I would be keeping that whispered promise. I was ready to be a single mom working knee deep in fast food grease. I was ready to place her for adoption with a family who would love her and be the kind of parents she needed. I knew that as far as it depended on me, she was going to be born, grow up, and have a great life. And I was ready to do whatever, whatever, was necessary for that to happen.

I think that is what being a mom is. It isn’t going through labor and delivery, the cooking, the school supplies, or the doctor’s appointments. It is being responsible for another human being who is dependent on you for everything, at least at first. Even though Kyle was the man I loved and wanted to spend my life with, he would live without me. Neither of us would be the same without each other but we would survive. I couldn’t say that about my daughter. I knew that I had the power of life and death. I had the ability to determine what kind of future this microscopic human was going to have in a way that no one else on the planet, including him, had. And I knew what I wanted to do.

Today, I sit at my desk realizing that same daughter is all grown up. I have many amazing days I could talk about that are less bittersweet than the one in which I found out she exists. I could speak of the day I married my husband Kyle later that summer surrounded by sweet smelling roses in my friend’s back yard. I could tell of the day we renewed our vows ten years later. I could describe the day just last week when, statistics be damned, we celebrated our nineteenth anniversary with sushi and a movie. It hasn’t been easy starting so young but we are still together and we love each other.

I could try to articulate the joy of that wonderful day in December 1994 when I graduated from college (only a semester later than my peers). Or the quiet happiness of the day in 2002 when I got my master’s degree. Or the excitement mingled with fear of the day in 2003 when we decided to help some newly made friends start a church in our city. I could describe another fateful mother’s day a few years ago when my family and I finally decided to adopt a little girl from China as we’d been discussing. I can’t wait to be able to tell about the day sometime in 2009 when we’ll get to meet her for the first time.

But for today all I can think about is my grown up little girl attending her first day of class in a university a few hours away. She is studying political science. She wants to be an ambassador so she can help defend the poor or helpless. She wants to see the American political system changed to more closely reflect what our Founders had in mind. I have no doubt she is fully able to do all she sets out to accomplish. And it hits me in this moment: I did it. By God’s grace, we made it. Everything I promised I would do for her is a reality. Everything I prayed wouldn’t happen did not. I won’t stop being her mother or doing all I can to love and teach her as long as I live. But I can finally let a breath I’ve been holding for nearly twenty years go. Everything IS ok. She is beautiful, healthy, intelligent, passionate, out-going and fun. She is everything I hoped she would be and more. And while I can’t take credit for the woman she now is, I am at peace. I have not held her back. I am neither a foggy memory nor a source of pain and disappointment to her. She has grown up with two parents, with a father who has loved her deeply and led her well. I have been her teacher, her comforter, her disciplinarian, and, increasingly, her friend. I have laughed with her, cried with her, prayed over her. I taught her to read, to add and subtract, to love good books and good music. I have loved her with everything I have had to give her. And while that isn’t everything, I breathe easy, knowing it has been enough.

eet

It's like forgetting the words to your favorite song
You can't believe it
You were always singing along
It was so easy and the words so sweet
You can't remember
You try to feel the beat
Eeeeet, eet, eet, eet
Eeeeeet, eet, eet, eet
You spent half of your life trying to fall behind
You're using your headphones to drown out your mind
It was so easy, and the words so sweet
You can't remember
You try to move your feet
Eeeeet, eet, eet, eet
Eeeeeet, eet, eet, eet
Someone's deciding whether or not to steal He opens the window just to feel the chill
He hears that outside a small boy just starting to cry
'Cause it's his turn but his brother won't let him try
It's like forgetting the words to your favorite song
You can't believe it
You were always singing along
It was so easy and the words so sweet
You can't remember
You try to move your feet
It was so easy and the words so sweet
You can't remember, you try to feel the beat.
[regina spektor//eet]

Let my soul live that it may praise You, And let Your ordinances help me. I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek Your servant, For I do not forget Your commandments. Psalm 119:175-176

I am Leah

I am Leah. I am the unloved one. I am like Jacob’s first wife, the one he was tricked into marrying. Unwanted, unloved, rejected.

This is Evil One’s message for me. It has been impossible to miss. He wrote it in my flesh and burned it on my heart from the beginning. He did this through a father who left me when I was 3 and never looked back. He whispered ‘you are nothing’ as my dad refused to pay child support but somehow found a way to buy his girlfriend a sports car. He shouted ‘you are worthless’ when those who had themselves been abused and perverted molested me. He willed me to believe it as my mother who should have protected me and delighted in me was oblivious and distracted by her own (very real) pain and betrayal. This was my first reality. It is what I heard and what I knew before anything else.

But the story doesn’t end there. God called me to Himself and became my Father when I was only six. He made His presence known and drew me after Himself. I have heard His voice and sensed His love for these many years. I know that He wants me to have a future and a hope. I know experientially that He is the Father to the fatherless. I know he is the One who sets the lonely in families. I know He knew me in my mother’s womb. I know, too, that He is the One who chose the exact time and place that I should live (the evidence that this is a sign of love and grace sometimes feels sparse). I know these things in my mind and in my spirit. But the other messages, the ones I hope against hope are lies were planted first. The enemy has rarely ceased trying to remind me of his truth about me. He has used his authority as prince of this world to create new situations that confirm what he wants me to know: people will always betray you, no one will ever really love you, you will never belong, you are worthless.

How is it that after more than thirty years of knowing my Savior, the enemy’s words about me still sometimes sound truer? Am I missing something here? What do I need to mourn, confess, pray, or receive? Then again, maybe God doesn’t want this to change. Maybe He wants me to struggle with these things until heaven. Or longer.

In the deepest part of me, I know it can’t be true. I know too much about His ways and His heart to believe that. I know that He is a God who gave up His only beloved Child to save me. I know He will leave the 99 to find the one. I know He is the kind of God Who would run to meet a prodigal daughter, Who welcomes the repentant touch of a promiscuous woman, Who wants people from every tribe and tongue and nation to be part of His family. He is the kind of God who even wants me. Who loves me and will fight for me and will never let me go no matter what.

The battle is far from over. But somehow even now I know I have been given a new name that contains life and love and belonging and wholeness. He has won me and I am His.

Not Funny

I have a great sense of humor. Well, I think so anyway. And I really love to laugh. But some things just aren’t funny. Some are not funny in a Chevy Chase, Robin Hood Men In Tights, groan-then-change-the-channel kind of way. Others are not funny in a way that makes me need to pray hard and breathe deeply so that I don’t start punching. Someone I love recently made a joke of the second type. It was about an interracial couple. This person would never dream of using the “N” word, considers Hispanic and African American co-workers friends, and is excited about my family’s upcoming international adoption. I was shocked by what was said and just as surprised that it came from the lips of someone dear to me who I was confident held views opposite of those (s)he’d just expressed. Even in this midst of the chaos of my life right now, I can’t stop thinking about it. It has led to some good conversations with Kyle and friends. Most seem to think I am blowing it out of proportion, taking it more seriously than it was intended, or worrying about something that I will never be able to change. Am I over-reacting here? Have I spent too much time in the politically correct liberal arts culture? I gotta say, I don’t think so.

Why does it hurt my heart so much and bring a (hopefully) righteous anger out in me? Because every person of every ethnicity is a human being created in the image of God. Even those who don’t know Him bear His mark, no matter how buried or distorted. Because I know, in a different way, what it feels like to be disregarded or disliked for reasons beyond your control and influence. Because I know that some of humanity’s greatest evils have been committed by people who pay their taxes, love their families, and don’t mean any real harm for the most part. Because something inside me recoils in horror at the lie behind even the most subtle or barely conscious racism. The insidious idea that some bear God’s image a bit more effectively, that some fallen sinners are a little less sinful than others has crippled the Body of Christ for centuries—indeed most of its existence—and I am weary of it.

It is true that I have been well-trained in the language of multiculturalism. It was coming into vogue in the early 90s when I entered college. But my secular education is not the source of my passion. It merely served to confirm what God’s Spirit planted in me long ago.
The truth is, enlightened academics and liberated movie stars didn’t come up with these ideas. They are right there in God’s Word from the beginning. He made us as one people. We all have one Father and one origin whether male or female, whether our skin is pale or dark, and whether we are rich or poor, educated or ignorant. It is true that God led Noah’s sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth in three very different directions. But the purpose was that they could obey His instruction to fill the earth (population growth was God’s idea no matter what Thomas Malthus and his modern day disciples think), not to demonstrate which group was more worthy of salvation.

Of course, there is always the fact that God not only created the nation of Israel from Abraham’s seed but was relentless in His admonitions that they remain separate from the nations surrounding them in Canaan. Doesn’t that confirm that some races are chosen and others will never measure up? Not in the slightest. His objection was to their idolatrous influence (see Solomon’s wives). His forbidding of making permanent marks in the skin (tattoos), by the way, was actually a prohibition against idol and ancestor worship. Since He has a tattoo reminding Him of His kids on His palms, I am pretty sure He doesn’t object if we do something similar. But that is another story for another day. Israel was and is chosen and set apart all right. But it wasn’t because they were more pure or less sinful. Just open the Old Testament at nearly any point and read a few paragraphs to dispel that notion. They were meant to record and guard the oracles of God and then share them with the world. When they were in the desert, God told them clearly, “…you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). To whom were they to minister if they were all priests? Don’t you get it? It was to the nations. God never intended to chose ONLY Jews. They were simply set apart as His messengers.

Of course, Jesus confirmed this. He called Himself the good Shepherd and proclaimed, “I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd” (John 10:16). One flock. One people. One Body. One Christ. This went against everything the Jews believed about themselves. Even His disciples never failed to be surprised when Jesus gave a Samaritan or Gentile the time of day. It wasn’t until after His ascension that Peter finally, with the help of a vision, a revelation, and an experience of seeing Gentiles receive the Holy Spirit, understood that God was planning to save people who didn’t look like him.

Paul summed it up this way: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:28-29).

I think a lot of people are going to be really surprised when Jesus comes again and they see what heaven really looks like and who they are going to be spending eternity with. But we shouldn’t be. John has already painted the picture for us. “…[B]ehold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongue, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands…” (Revelation 7:9).

I thank God for William Wilberforce, the abolition of slavery in much of the world, Martin Luther King, Jr., integration, and our first African American president. But there is still refining to be done in our lives. Why else would Sunday morning be rightly criticized as the ‘most segregated day of the week?’ And while a joke may seem innocent, it will always be true that “the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart” (Matthew 12:34).
I really do love to laugh. Here’s to having all our speech, including our joking, honor the reality of the Kingdom of heaven.

“But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints; and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.” (Ephesians 5:3-4)

"Praise the LORD, all nations;
Laud Him, all peoples!
For His lovingkindness is great toward us,
And the truth of the LORD is everlasting.
Praise the LORD!" (Psalm 117)

Hope Does Not Disappoint

Mother’s Day is coming soon. Four years ago, after many months of talking and praying as a family, we decided to adopt a daughter from China. We did paperwork – lots of paperwork. Kyle and I picked out some furniture for her room. I picked out bedding and a color for the walls of her room. I bought books about China, about adoption, about Chinese adoption. I bought her a Christmas stocking. She has gotten gifts in it for the past 2 Christmases.

But as the wait lengthened, my doubts began to creep to the surface. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe it wasn’t God’s plan. I already knew it didn’t make sense to start over as parents with a child in high school (Torey was 15 at the time) but laughingly told people that ‘God’s plans don’t have to make sense.’ But a child in COLLEGE?!? And a marriage that was going through a rough period? And, most recently, a set of family crises that have led Kyle and I to question our life choices at every level? And a husband who, given our circumstances, now articulates worry that we could afford the adoption fees or to provide for her if we were able to bring her home? What was I supposed to do?

I recently had two dreams of my Chinese daughter. I never actually saw her in either but the idea of her presence was palpable. In the first, I was in a grocery store buying formula meant for her. Some days later, I dreamt again. This time, she was in the hospital for some reason. I am not sure if it was for a surgery or treatment of some illness. I was genuinely puzzled by what my dream self did. I found every excuse not to go to the hospital. I let Kyle handle making all the trips to admit her, check on her progress, etc. I wandered about, filling my time with unimportant and non-urgent things but kept calling to check in on her. Finally, just before I woke up, I went to the hospital and made my way to her floor. I walked up to the nurse’s station and asked where her room was. The nurse replied, “So, YOU’RE Mrs. McDaniel. We were wondering when you’d be able to get here.” There was no judgment in her voice, only recognition. As if they’d heard a lot about me and believed it was perfectly reasonable for my daughter to be the hospital and for me to have something –anything – more important to do than be right by her side. As if a mother could stay away for any reason. I am not sure if I realized within the dream or after waking that I was guarding my heart in case she didn’t survive. I believed that if I didn’t meet her, it would be easier to let her go. That isn’t real love. It is only self interest.

I now see that this is how I have gotten through the waiting that began Mother’s Day 2005. Instead of grieving deeply that she isn’t yet here and praying regularly that God would bring her soon, I have spent the last few years protecting my heart in case she isn’t really going to come. I have been afraid to pray because I would have to open my heart to her to do so. I have talked about her to others as little as possible because I have feared we would realize we weren’t called or able to adopt. Was I worried about losing face? Or asking others to pray for something that wasn’t God’s will in the first place? Or protecting myself from talking about her so that I wouldn’t have to think about her? Yes. That is what is inside me, motivating me. It is ugly and it is embarrassing.

It is time to stop playing it safe with her. It is time to tell people about her and ask them to pray she’ll come soon. It is time to believe and hope again. It is time to learn to trust God when His ways terrify me. It is time for my second daughter to come home. Come soon, little Camille.