When Santa Sat in My Section

Jim's concerns were broader than mine when it became necessary for me to start working nights; I fretted only in anticipation of missing Cade (who attends school during the day) and certain nighttime events, especially holiday ones. I prayed about these concerns and tried my best to trust that whatever was meant to work out, would.

Halloween rolled around, first, and I love halloween. One year when Cade was small, I taught a composition class three times in order to accommodate all the students in a class I'd cancelled: a class I'd been scheduled to teach on halloween night. It was worth it, too, to take Cade trick-or-treating.

I tried to get halloween off, this year, but got scheduled to work. Rachel suggested that we trick-or-treat with her family (and many others from our small group) at Bethpage Camp-Resort the Saturday before halloween, and upon hire at the restaurant, I had requested that night off...but only because I'd been paid generously to take some family photos. To further complicate matters, I was hoping to catch Cade's band performance (which I hadn't yet seen) at the Fall Classic.

In the end (and I can still scarcely believe it all worked out), the family asked to be photographed in the morning as opposed to the oft-requested afternoon; Jim, the little kids, and I enjoyed Bethpage to the fullest; and I made it to the late (10 pm) band performance.

I worked halloween night joyfully and met a customer for whom I pray often. He's an older gentleman and was alone on a slow night, so I did a rare thing: I sat down with him. He told me his wife had just died.

Next, Thanksgiving. Travel was impossible given that I had to work the days before and after, but the restaurant was closed, Thanksgiving day, and Cade and I spent hours hiking together.

After all this, I wish I could tell you I had no trepidation about Christmas, but I wondered about Christmas eve; I did. The restaurant is closed on Christmas day, but Cade spends Christmas day with his dad, Christmas eve with me. This is how we all prefer it; Cade's other family has a big meal on Christmas day, while this family attends candlelight service on Christmas eve. Amazingly, management granted not only my request to have Christmas eve off, but also lunch, today, to attend Jesus's birthday party at church.

Friday night, I walked into my section at work only to realize that Santa and Mrs. Claus were seated in one of my booths. When I introduced myself, Santa said: "I already know your name. And furthermore, I know you've been a very good girl this year." I burst into tears right there at the table.

Later, I said to a friend: "I was way too emotionally disregulated to serve Santa Claus!"

He shook his head, laughed, and said: "You were the perfect person! No one else would've cared as much as you. You got the full effect of what he was trying to do. I think it's awesome!" And, yes. Awesome. Because there's something no one--neither Santa nor my friend--knew.

My recent prayers have included my asking God to help me trust Him with my little-girl self, and I received Santa's visit as a response, from God, to that prayer. It was as if God were saying: I hear you (all of you, including the little-girl you), and I care about you, and I care very much about your Christmas. I couldn't wonder if God had sent Santa for my children because my children weren't present. I was alone. But I am never alone.

The further I journey, the more fully I believe that a relationship with God is just that: a relationship. It requires faith on my part (and sometimes, the suspension of disbelief). It requires my seeking with expectancy. I could chalk everything I've just shared and more! up to coincidence, luck, serendipity, fortune, or---I don't know--an alien spark? But I find it so much more thrilling to believe I am blessed...that God is using all things to my good: even (especially?) the hard things. Because if that's true, I have nothing to fear and everything to anticipate with joy. Bad is good if He is with me, and He is. His very name tells it. He is Immanuel.

The front of the card Santa left me.

The back of the card Santa left me.

The Most Outrageous Story I Have to Tell

I was driving my best friend and her daughter to the airport, this summer, when her daughter (almost six, at the time) asked when she'd first met us. I answered that my daughter Clementine and I had flown to Chicago to meet her when she was three months old and Clementine nine months old. I proceeded to explain: the plan had always been for me to attend her birth, but life got in the way. Maybe one of my daughters will allow me to attend a birth one day, I said, I sure hope so.

The very next day, my friend Sharon called and asked if I'd like to ride with her to the hospital; one of her grandchildren was about to be born. I'd never met either Sharon's son or her daughter-in-law but love my time with Sharon and agreed to go. I imagined I'd be doing some waiting and packed a novel, also--with a fleeting thought of newborn photos--my camera.

At the hospital, Sharon's son came out to greet us. He and Sharon left me to enter the room where the mother was laboring. Within just a few minutes, though, Sharon returned to invite me into the room with my camera. One day after I'd said aloud, in my minivan, that I'd hoped to attend a birth.

This is the most outrageous story I have to tell: that I found myself photographing the birth of a baby one day after expressing, aloud, my desire to attend the birth of a baby. I hadn't discussed this desire with Sharon. There had been no plan for me to meet her son and daughter-in-law that day or in that way, but there I was--in that most sacred space, chillbumps running up and down my arms--watching a baby enter the world.

This is an example of why I believe in God.

I believe in God because I couldn't make up a story like that if I tried. I've had permission to blog about this experience for almost four months and have spent the entire time trying to wrap my head around it. The most logical explanation I can offer is that my Heavenly Father wishes to delight me. And He did. He does.

Relinquishment

I'm not going to pretend I know how to speak into your pain. I trust that you have it. Maybe your body hurts. Your heart almost certainly does, even if just in one corner, because you miss or long for someone. Perhaps that someone is yourself: someone you used to be, or someone you hope to become. It seems likely to me that things are imperfect in your world, but even if I'm wrong, things are imperfect in the world. We both know that.

Life is painful in this broken place, and I don't have the answers. I don't have even one answer related to one source of my own, personal pain. But in the event that someone may find this helpful, I want to offer: I have started practicing relinquishment. I read an article about it--a reprint by Catherine Marshall--in a recent Guideposts. Then I read it again. And again. I rarely reread like that, but the premise intrigued me and still does.

"Gradually," Marshall writes in the Guideposts article, "I saw that a demanding spirit, with self-will as its rudder, blocks prayer. I understood that the reason for this is that God absolutely refuses to violate our free will; that, therefore, unless self-will is voluntarily given up, even God cannot move to answer prayer." She goes on to explain that Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, becomes our example; He doesn't want to die but--with His own free will, regarding His very life--submits to the will of His Father. 

To relinquish something, or someone, to God is to accept that I am not in control and that I may not see or experience the outcome I think I desire. It is to trust, however, that God is in control; that He knows best; and that He will work all things to my good. It is to remember that He is more concerned with my holiness than my happiness, that I tend to grow more in hard times than in easy ones. (Click here to read an example of Marshall's Relinquishment Prayer.) 

When I look (and read) back, I see clearly that I've tended to relinquish things and people to God only out of utter exhaustion. (See, for example, this post related to my brother's illness, or this post related to my miscarriage.) This, what I'm trying to do now, involves letting go earlier, before I spend all of my emotional energy. 

I almost always pray on my drive to work, and I've been challenging myself with the question: what can I turn over, today? I've offered to God (among other things/people) the spiritual condition of my children, my marriage, my husband, my husband's joblessness, my job situation, my creativity, and various sources of my pain. And I've experienced some manner of peace. I've experienced Immanuel (God with us: me!) in ways that I find personally irrefutable. In seeking Him, I've found Him, and isn't He good for never hiding from us? Isn't He good for working even in our details?

Chip Turns 3

Dear Super Chip,

Happy third birthday. Over and over again, your sisters have been a sharp intake of my breath, but you have been my exhale. You are my everything-makes-sense and everything-is-okay-in-the-world. You are fairly predictable and almost always content.

You are my full circle. You are home to me. You remind me of my grandma, my mom, my brother, your brother Cade. You remind me of myself. (Finally, I have a child who pretend plays like I did. Fisher-Price Little People: hooray!)

You are my fellow night owl, and when I walk in the door from the restaurant, you always greet me with: "Mama! You came back! You always come back! I love you!" You still sleep best in my arms, and that's (mostly) okay. Thank you for waiting for me. I waited for you for so long. We belong to one another; I feel that every day, and

I love you. I loved your "Blue Birthday" party. I love your red sword. I love your laugh, your kisses. I love every one of your sweet teeth. I love it that you think we should trick-or-treat every night; I think so, too. I love it that, in the dark, no other story works for you but "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." I love it that you're nice to pretty much everyone but Cade's girlfriend. (I understand why you pull her hair. She's a nice girl, but her hair is straight out of "The Goose Girl"; Conrad would've tried to pull it, too.)

You're my very favorite super hero. I believe in every single one of your powers. You hold my heart in your hands.

Mama

What I'm Learning about Jesus

I don't have time to blog; I really don't. I have seven photo sessions to edit, and I'm off to take more photos in three hours.

I'm behind with my Bible study and struggling to keep up with homeschooling. I don't have time to blog,

and yet. I'm thinking of my friend from the restaurant: the one who advised me to slow my pace when I'm in the weeds. I'm thinking of his saying that, if I slow down, I'll remember everything I need to remember, and one thing I need to remember comes out of my Bible study.

This Bible study. There have been moments that I've felt as though God were speaking directly to me. And He was. He does that. His Word is so relevant to our daily lives. When I don't have time to read the Bible, when I don't want to read the Bible, I need to read it, most. I don't know why I have to learn this lesson over and over.

The Bible study is on Isaiah and took me, recently, into the fourth chapter of Luke. Jesus had entered His hometown of Nazereth after spending forty days in the wilderness. He had eaten nothing for those forty days and had resisted the aggressive temptation of the devil. Scripture says the devil departed from Jesus for a season. Jesus entered Galilee in the power of the Spirit. In Nazereth, He stood up to read in the synagogue on the Sabbath day. He read this from the book of Isaiah (Chapter 61):

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke 4:18-19).

Before Jesus closed the book, gave it to the minister, and sat down, He said: "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears" (Luke 4:21b).

Up until that moment in my Bible study, if someone had asked me what Jesus's purpose was, or is, I would've said He died to save us from our sins. Maybe, if pressed, I would've referred to Him as the Creator. And I wouldn't have been wrong, but I wouldn't have been entirely right, either, because I wouldn't have presented these verses. I wouldn't have offered that Jesus's purpose was, in part, to heal the brokenhearted. I wouldn't have suggested that His purpose was to give sight or release captives.

I knew He does those things, but it's different--isn't it?--to say someone does something and to say his or her purpose is to do something. It would be one thing, for example, for someone to say of me: she bakes a good cookie, another for her to say that I was put here on earth to bake cookies.

More than seven hundred years before Jesus was born, Isaiah prophesied that Jesus was coming to heal broken hearts, free captives, and so many other things, besides. Jesus didn't just do those things; He came to do those things. I'm having a hard time articulating why I find this distinction so meaningful for the same reasons I've found blogging so challenging, recently: there are things I can't write in this space.

But. My heart hurts. I am grieving. I have blind spots. I am in a prison (or two) of my own making. And it matters to me that not only can Jesus help me, but my life is in the hands of the One who was sent to address these specific concerns.

The Weeds

My head is swimming with all the things I want to tell you and can't. What I want to tell you and can is that I'd forgotten so many things in the twelve years or so since I'd waited tables. I'd forgotten, for one thing, about being in the weeds: those moments when you've been "triple sat" (gotten three tables all at once) and it feels like you're stuck in place, spinning your wheels.

It doesn't help that I'm still learning the locations of all the menu items on the computers. The more frazzled I get, the more mistakes I make. It's nothing for me to push the wrong button three times in a row. Another server was standing behind me, last week, watching. "Chill out," he said. "Damn." Then: "Calm down. Shit."

This is the way most all of them talk. I'd forgotten about that. They mean no harm, mosttimes, and this particular server has been especially helpful. He came up to me later and said: "A guy at another restaurant told me, once, that the best thing to do when you're in the weeds is to slow your pace. Just slow down, and you'll remember all the things you need to do and know in which order you need to do them. Just slow down. It works."

I'm going to try and keep this in mind. The truth is that it had been a long time since I'd been busy in that way. The closest I'd come in years and years was getting all the children out the door for church, Sunday mornings. Trust me: it's not the same.

It's good to be physically active: to remember the strength of my arms, back, and legs; to fall weary into bed at night; to sleep so deeply that, if I have dreams, I don't remember upon waking. The children slip into my arms without my knowing; I never know whom I will be holding when I open my eyes.

It's good to be seen, even by strangers, as someone apart from those with whom I live. It's good to miss my family, sometimes, and it's especially good to appreciate my time with them. It's good to feed cash into the ATM at the end of the night.

I don't know how long this particular season will last, but interestingly, I'm experiencing less anxiety than I had for a while, including before Jim lost his job. I have the sense that God wanted to wake me up, to help me recognize how blessed I was to stay home with the children, to remind me that I can function when apart from them. I'm thankful for my job, also for work as a photographer. I'm thankful for those friends who've been friends during this time. I'm thankful for my Bible study on Isaiah and for the ways in which God keeps leading me into Romans. I'm praying and asking Him to fill my needs and voids, to help me put one foot in front of the other, to lead me not into temptation,

to lead me safely through the weeds.

Book Review: Every Little Thing

It was a beautiful, exciting thing to read the nonfiction words of a real-life friend, someone in whom I believe wholeheartedly. I didn't need to read Every Little Thing to stand behind it; I know the heart of the author. I have rifled through her kitchen cabinets and slept--after she turned down my bed with her own hands, praying for my rest--on her pull-out sofa.

I could tell you a lot of things (all of them gorgeous) about Deidra Riggs, but my favorite thing about her is this: she really just wants to leave you further along than she found you. She's too wise to think she can carry you or fix you, and in fact, she seems to have a healthy detachment from how your story will end. If you spend a moment with her, you'll inevitably feel it: she's fully present and thinking about how she can illuminate your path with the one moment she has. She'd like to see you take your next step. For now, one step (in Christ) is plenty enough.

I found Every Little Thing to be a beautiful reflection of and from the heart of my friend. If you're feeling short or shy of a calling from God, or if you think you know how God is calling you but feel inadequate, fearful, or overwhelmed, this book is for you...not because it includes a detailed plan, but because it will help you take your next step. For now, one is enough.

Every Little Thing will help you believe that you are loved, that God has created you to love Him and other people. If you're willing, He can and will do amazing things through you...and "amazing" has little to no relationship to size. I do recommend this book, but more than that, I recommend this writer. If you're unfamiliar with Deidra Riggs' blog Jumping Tandem, you're missing out. She's hosting important conversations there, and she's doing it with almost unimaginable kindness and grace.