rice and eggs and a place of abundance

I ate lunch outside today. Why I don’t do that more often? We’ve been blessed with such beautiful weather lately. A beautiful day and a good meal – rice and eggs. My grandmother used to fix that for me sometimes. She was a wonderful Southern cook. She could make anything taste good, even rice and eggs. It was all very satisfying until my mind drifted away to some not-so-generous thoughts about a friend. To be honest, I was surprised to find them there and a little confused.

I'll be the first to admit that I’m no saint but I typically try to regard others with kindness and respect. It is a rare occasion when I find myself feeling negatively towards someone, especially someone I consider a friend. I could have blown it off but today I was curious. Why would I desire a dream to be dashed, a hope to be crushed? Why would I withhold love and encouragement? Why would I secretly desire failure for a friend? All good, uncomfortable questions. I was surprised at how suddenly the answer came. Gently, like a breeze, the word “scarcity” floated into my mind. Something within my spirit began to resonate.

For a moment, or perhaps a lifetime, I have tolerated a great, disastrous untruth – that there is not enough to go around - that you have to beat out everyone else out if you want the prize – that to succeed you must crush the competition. Truth is, if you beat down the competition, you indeed win the race, the game, the fight, whatever, but in doing so, you brutalize your soul. How satisfying is a victory when it leaves behind a trail of broken and bleeding, hurting people? How soon before your glory fades and the trophy begins to tarnish? And when you withhold yourself, your support, your love, your help, how long before you yearn for the very thing you once refused to give?

You know the ending. All of the fame, the glory, the stuff, evaporates. Only faith, hope, and love remain. In these there is no lack or striving, no selfish ambition to muddy the motives of the heart. If I allow it, these glorious ideas move me far beyond hurt and desire, beyond even pride and selfishness. They move me to a wide open space. I imagine it as an expansive field, beautiful and peaceful. Here there is no fear. Here I am free to give my love, my support, and my encouragement to a friend without regard to my own desires. God knows them after all. His hand nourishes and supports them. It is a good place. I think I would like to live here.

my valentine

I thought I’d do something really special for Shaun today, Valentine’s Day, so at lunch I leaned across the table and whispered discreetly, “I just wanted you to know that after lunch I’m going home…to do my taxes.” Hey, it might not been sexy but boy did it bring a smile to his face! So I’ll have to write fast. I don’t want blogging to make a liar out of me.

My CD player has gone on strike recently and I am now forced to listen to random radio stations while driving. Today, apparently, is good music day for free radio - songs about love and romance or at least hooking up - classics like “Love Shack,” and “Pour Some Sugar on Me” (Shaun’s favorite). Inexplicably, “Gone to Carolina in My Mind” made it into the Valentine’s Day rotation. I am thankful for that. Actually, I am thankful for any time a James Taylor song makes it into the rotation. He’s one of my favorites. Someone once told me they met him and he was actually quite strange. I don’t think I liked hearing that at the time but it makes sense to me now. I think creativity requires a certain measure of insanity. Anyway, hearing James Taylor made me think of George Harrison and that made me think of what I consider his finest work, “Something.” So I indulged in a little YouTube whilst preparing my taxes; that is to say, I played the video several times while shuffling papers around. I am replaying it even now - for inspiration, and also because it is a really beautiful song. One of my favorite Beatles tunes – and that’s saying a lot.

Hearing this song, and thinking about how much I like it, I started wondering how incredible it would be if Shaun and I could somehow work it into our 25th anniversary ceremony or something. I know it’s a few years down the road but a girl can dream, can’t she? Suddenly reality crept in - the reality that Shaun has no idea that this is one of my favorite songs…the reality that if, in fact, he does know that it is one of my favorite songs he would probably not remember it on such an occasion…and the ultimate reality that (gasp!) he probably doesn’t like ANY Beatles songs anyway!

I came away from my sudden awakening thinking once again, “How could I have married someone so different!” But then I had to laugh. I laugh because the supreme reality is that I simply could not navigate life without my Shaun, my wonderful, responsible, Type A, fun-loving, bill-paying, fearless, confrontation-handling Shaun, who would, if given the opportunity, choose Def Leppard over The Beatles in a heartbeat. Yes, we are different but oh, how I love him!

Now, it’s time to do some taxes.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

statement of faith

I find it odd that my first blog here would be a statement of faith but it seems that is what this will become in the end. Odd because my blogs as of late have been rather light-hearted, generally consisting of my random thoughts about purses or playgrounds or other issues (not necessarily beginning with the letter p).

My inspiration? An article I found flipping through Real Simple. When I glanced at the title, "After God Left" I was afraid to read it - a bad habit I picked up in my earlier years when I refused to read anything with a hint of doubt about the Christian faith. Later that night I sat down to read, not some scathing commentary, but the story of a young Catholic girl and the faith she lost after the death of her older brother. As I read the author's description of her feelings of loneliess and her longing for faith, I understood her perfectly.

Some would call it the problem of pain - that seems a gross underestimation but for simplicity's sake it must do. My world, my faith, my understanding, came crashing down around me just after my nephew was diagnosed with Leukemia in 2005. He celebrated his third birthday hooked up to an I.V. in a hospital bed. I remember the feelings - intense anger, confusion, overwhelming sadness. I was scared but I allowed myself to ask questions that I had been too afraid to ask before. How do I know that God is real? How can anyone know? Is Christianity like other religions - man's attempt to cope with essential pain and frailty of life? I had no answers. I tried to talk to others about it but that left me only with a persistent and profound sense of loneliness. So I read a great deal. I cried a lot too. It was a mournful time and the most desperate time I have ever experienced. I had lost something very dear to me. I remember yearning for the security I had once found in my very comfortable, very naive set of beliefs . Sometimes I still yearn for that kind of knowing.

In the article, the author remarked that "...(doubt) is the great agitator. It breaks things open. It pushes you into the world. It makes you ask why." I'm inclined to agree. In the end, we arrived at different conclusions. She wrote that she doesn't talk to Jesus anymore, she talks with her brother instead. I remember settling the issue irrevocably the day I decided that I simply didn't possess the faith not to believe. I remember a strange yet peaceful understanding settling into my spirit when I realized that there are certain things that simply can't be known, that can only be believed. And that is how I discovered faith.