The Thrift Store, With God (What I Gave Up & What God Holds)

Photo by Artificial Photography on Unsplash

God and I went to the thrift store last week. 

It’s was the first day my kids were back in school.  Although I often go thrifting with the aim of stocking my kids’ closets, I breezed right through the children’s section of the giant store with barely a glance.  The image of them each boarding the bus that morning in new shoes, shorts and sneakers was still fresh in my mind.  

The day before, I had been struck by an unexpected wave of resentment at the wealth of new clothes they had and their apparent lack of appreciation for it.  It wasn’t just the clothes I resented, though, it was the time, the sheer amount of resources, I sent their way this summer, particularly during the last grueling weeks of August.  You see, this summer, I gave up.

I fought hard, in the beginning, to make room for my writing and working life to continue.  Hard, like, wearing ear muffs in my office while my kids mimicked the rooster by my window and practiced playing the recorder outside my office door.  When working with them at home failed, I took them to a free day camp program the next town over, freeing up two precious hours, three mornings a week.  But it wasn’t enough.  The pressure to drop them off, drive home, and dive into writing with little to no transition proved unwieldy. 

By early August the impact of my evening and weekend work schedule at the library became clear.  In summers past, those were times I could steal away to my office write.  This summer, I traded those hours for a small but much-needed paycheck.

Then came August, with two birthdays (twins!), several days of single-parenting while my husband wrestled the engine in and out (and in and out again) of his rattle-trap pick-up truck, then several days more of single parenting while he traveled for work.  All of this, right around the time the day camp ended. 

I gave up.  I let go of even pretending to keep the semblance of a writing life together. 

At first it sucked and I was sad and mad and had All The Feels.  But then acceptance came along like a breath of fresh air and it felt so good to not be swimming upstream, to accept that there was neither time nor energy for more.  I lived in the reality of the last weeks of summer with four kids.

I cut hair. 

I bought shoes. 

I participated in a round-robin of back-to-school night events and organized a mounting pile of supply lists and schedules. 

I took them to the pool and praised every new trick they learned. 

I washed load after load of towels.  

It was what it was.  

But, after I loaded them onto their buses, when I went to post the traditional first day pictures online, I felt, again, the loss that accompanies ‘giving up.’  I scrolled through images of friends releasing new books into the world.  I read updates of others heading off to new jobs teaching in local schools.  I had nothing to post except for a few candid shots of my kids decked out in new gear, ready to face a new year.  “This is what I did this summer,” I wanted to write.  “This is what I’ve been working on.”

It seemed both sad, to me, and simply, remarkably, true.

In the post-bus quietude, I messaged a friend, “I’m trying to process what I lost/gave up this summer.”  Then, I shut up the house, pulled on my sunglasses, and headed to the thrift store with God. 

Like an awkward parent and teen tackling difficult subjects on a shared commute, God and I find it easier to talk at the thrift store.  Something about strolling the aisles of color-sorted clothes quiets and opens me, creating a place of listening and attention, which God and I both recognize as prayer.

That’s how God and I found ourselves sifting through hangers of winter coats and blazers, discussing ‘what I lost’ this summer.  It occurred to me, as I perused tan corduroy coats from the nineties and multi-colored ski jackets from the eighties, maybe I was being a bit melodramatic.  I paused, with my hand on the shoulder of a pea coat and considered the possibility.

Was I being melodramatic? 

Yes, perhaps I was. 

I turned to God, then, for an opinion. 

God said, without skipping a beat, “Yeah, you get that way sometimes.”

I stifled a snort of laughter.  Of course, God knows me.

With acknowledgement came acceptance.  I felt free to feel the loss – both real and exaggerated - and to trust that it too would pass.

God reminded me, then, of how it works between the two of us.  “All the things you give up, I hold,” God said.  “There is no part of who you are that ever has been or ever can be lost.”

How could I have forgotten that simple truth?  With it comes incredible freedom – freedom to hold on when the time and space are right; freedom, even, to fight for what I want.  But, freedom also for letting go when time and circumstances demand it.   

I felt lighter as I moved on to rows of skirts and blouses.  God wandered off into the aisles of handbags and shoes (God does that sometimes).  We said we’d meet up in the car on the way home, we find that’s a good place for talking, too.        

  

Slow Down (an invitation)

(I call this picture "Converse in the Wild")

slow down,
just be

be still
be present

listen to, and dwell in, what is
here, now, this moment

what love?
what fear?
and what possible doorway
between the two?

(grace, always, is the door)

Ignored, Dismissed, Insulted

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.  Matthew 15:21-28, NRSV

(I preached on this passage yesterday in church and continued learning about the passage during and after our service.)

A man approached me after church while I was tucking my sermon notes back into a folder. 

“There were three words you used that really struck me," he said,  "Can you remind me what they were?”

I looked at him, a solid man, my height and balding, a good ten years older, perhaps.  He was one of the few in the congregation I didn’t know well and while I spoke he had alternated between lowering his head, eyes fix on a spot on the carpet in front of him, and looking at me with grave concern.  It was easy for the anxious, insecure preacher in me to imagine him disagreeing with the entirety of the sermon or, more simply, disapproving of a woman in the pulpit. 

“You said three things that happened to the woman,” he said, “real succinct.”

Lowering his reading glasses from where they were perched on top of his head, he peered over my shoulder while I rifled through my notes looking for the line I guessed he had in mind.  Finding it in my bare bones notes I pointed and he nodded and read aloud, “Ignored, dismissed, and insulted.  That’s really all there is, isn’t it?”

At first I thought he was referring to my sparse notes, then I realized he meant that the woman in the passage pretty much experienced the sum of what we humans can do to each other. 

“Thanks,” he said, raising his reading glasses again and shaking his head as he walked away.

//

I started the sermon portion of the service by reading the passage three times, pausing for a brief silence between each reading.  “Try listening with your eyes closed,” I said.  “All you have to do is pay attention.”

After the reading, I invited the congregation to share their impressions of the passage – what did they notice, who did they relate to, and what were they curious about?  Every time I start a sermon this way, the congregation identifies almost every single one of the relevant issues in the text, often outlining the relevant points of my sermon for me with hardly any effort at all.  I guess maybe that speaks to the power of crowd-sourcing, but I also take it as a sign that people are much more capable of reading the bible than they think and that every good reading of a passage begins with a lot of questions and a little confusion. 

During our discussion, one man in the back mentioned how struck he was by Jesus’ response to the situation – that Jesus seemed to allow the situation to unfold in front of him and waited before making a definitive judgment. 

This is one of the things I would identify as a positive later in the sermon too – Jesus listened to the woman despite seeming to be pretty clear about wanting nothing to do with her.  Because Jesus listens, the Canaanite woman is able to insert a new perspective into the conversation, one that makes room for Jesus to recognize and respond to her faith.

//

I thought about all of this as my husband drove us home with the kids squabbling in the back of the van and my head pounding from sinus pressure.  “Ignored, dismissed, insulted.”  I thought about the Canaanite woman’s vision, the way she shifted the conversation away from the position of those at or beneath the table to the meal itself which was so abundant it couldn’t help but overflow beyond the table’s borders. 

Riding home I thought about the people in our world who possess a greater vision, those who are willing to push against status quo and shift the level of conversation into a wider more productive space.  These people are, most often, outsiders, people who for one reason or another have been relegated to the outskirts of society.  But their exclusion, painful as it is, often comes with the gift of perspective – positioned on the outside looking in, they often see beyond what is to the possibilities of what might be.  Lacking the benefits of insider status, outsiders like the Canaanite woman are often willing to risk more in order to attain a more inclusive vision and they’re not the only ones to benefit from it.

People like that are often ignored, often dismissed, often insulted.  But I wonder what it would be like if we were to be a bit more like Jesus; if we were to pause a little more and listen more often to an outsider perspective, if we were to refrain from ignoring, dismissing and insulting.

When Jesus listens to the Canaanite woman he discovers ‘great faith’ in a place where no one would have thought to look.  I hope I can learn to listen more to people with outside perspectives and I also hope I’ll continue to push beyond the risks to share what vision I’ve been given.  At times like this, when people are so divided and arguing over a place at the table, we need a broader vision more than ever.   

Tender: Showing Gentleness and Kindness

(image credit)

Tender adjective

1. Showing gentleness and concern or sympathy

2. (of food) easy to cut or chew, not tough

    (of the body) sensitive to pain

Tenderness noun

1. gentleness and kindness

2. sensitivity to pain

A quick Google search tells me that the word tender, in all of its various forms, has fallen out of use steadily and dramatically since the 1800's.  Maybe that’s why, early in my tenure at Physical Therapy, I noticed it as it drifted gently across the far side of the large, open room.  I lay on my own table alone, staring at the ceiling and exercising my abs, when my ears caught wind of the word floating softly like a butterfly on a summer breeze. 

I listened as a young therapist asked, in a gentle, rolling central Pennsylvanian accent, “Is that tender?”  Although I couldn't see the other patient, I imagined the therapist gently moving his or her arm through a slow stretch, palpitating the muscle with deep attention and focus. 

The beauty of the word moved me as did the concern and care evident in the therapist's voice.  The fluttering word landed inside my chest, opening and closing its gentle wings and I gazed upon its intricate beauty as I continued my own careful stretching, flexing and bending.

Later that night I told my husband, “I heard the word ‘tender’ today.  It’s not something you hear very often, is it?  I was so struck by its beauty.”

Noodling around online, observing the forms and uses of the word, I notice the breadth of its application.  Tenderness might describe a concrete physical reality, like a perfectly cooked pork loin or bruised muscle, but it also refers to an inward stance, a posture of the heart, if you will. 

For me, moments of tenderness, feel like a softening, a movement of openness toward the other that, inherently, leaves me vulnerable to pain – either the awareness of another's pain or the personal pain I might face if someone responds to my openness with attack.  It is often our most tender places that root us most deeply in the reality of our human vulnerabilities and, in that way, my own tenderness points beyond itself to yours, to the truth of our shared humanity.  

I don’t know if the decline of the use of the word signifies a hardening of the heart among English language speakers, but I do find it interesting that the phrase’s demise parallels the advent of industrialization and the movement from tactile and interdependent agrarian life to more isolated and automated ways of life.  The less I depend on the natural world and my neighbor for my own well-being, the less I need to worry about your places of tenderness, the less I need to risk telling you about mine, in order to ensure survival.

Of course, we lose something when we lose awareness of our tender places - in the physical realm we might compensate with a limping gait or inactivity.  In ignoring the tender places, we shut ourselves off from the possibility of their healing and become less tolerant of the tenderness of others.  Our current culture, here in the United States, is one in which it is often unsafe to either reveal or respond in tenderness.  In such an environment we lose not only connection and companionship, but also a fundamental truth about who we are and how we were created to live in relationship others and with the natural world in which we live. 

I’d wager too, that when we lose the ability to be treat one another with tenderness, we also lose the ability to recognize tenderness as a key attribute of God.  Even without checking a concordance or delving into Greek and Hebrew word studies, I’m prone to accept Brennen Manning’s affirmation that “Scripture suggests that the essence of divine nature is compassion and that the heart of God is defined by tenderness.” 

Signs of this – the tenderheartedness of God – are all over scripture.  The willingness of God to be moved on our behalf, even at the risk of pain, is evident in the thread of love that weaves its way throughout the entirety of the Old Testament all the way through to that fundamental verse of the New Testament that declares, “God so loved the world that he sent . . .”

Maybe this is a bit much to be making of a word that drifted into the focus of my attention one afternoon.  But maybe it's also possible that simple words and postures like tenderness and kindness hold the key to our future as a human race.  And if that's the case, then I'd like to suggest that we might start a return to tenderness by simply paying attention to the tender places that reveal themselves right in the middle of our daily lives.  

The next time you feel the impulse to lash out at your spouse or that faceless troll online, it might be worth it to pause a moment or two to palpitate around in the depths of your being.  Gently ask yourself, "Is that tender?"  Or maybe, simply begin by paying attention to the way the people around you limp - emotionally, spiritually, physically - and spend some time daydreaming about what it would take to create a space where tenderness births an environment where real healing and recovery can begin.  

A Word May Come

If you’re lucky enough to be listening,

a word may come in the night while you

wrestle with tangled sheets and

the window unit AC throbs. 

When you’re wide awake 

past your bedtime, 
you might remember 

a line you used to know 
by heart.  

Whether it rises or descends, 

I cannot say, only you will know 

its arrival by a quiet hum

of recognition that strikes 

like heat lightening,

quiet and bright.  

Then you must go

to sleep and in the morning 

the word will still be there

running straight through 

the heart of you, 
like the needle

of a compass.  

You will know, again, the way. 

All that remains is to walk in it.   

When Speaking Life Requires Silence

I met Kimberly Ann Coyle though an online (in) courage discussion group for writers.  She and a host of other writers are in the long haul of blogging for 31 days straight through the month of October.  Every blogger chooses a topic of focus and digs in.  This year, Kimberly is writing on the topic of Speaking Life. 

I've grown to appreciate Kimberly's writing for its honesty and humor.  Although painfully honest writing is en vogue right now, Kimberly's writing draws me because her honesty is not merely for the thrill of self-revelation; within, beneath and behind her honesty I get the sense of a heart that is drawn toward and always seeking the more.  This is what keeps me coming back to her posts.  I was grateful when Kimberly asked me to help fill some space in her 31 day journey by writing about the practice of Speaking Life from the perspective of Spiritual Direction.  You can start reading the post here and then pop over to Kimberly's blog to read the rest.  To learn more about the ministry of spiritual companioning, click on the Spiritual Direction tab at the top of this page. 
 

 * * *

After a few simple pleasantries, the offering of a cup of hot tea or cool water, we begin, almost always, with silence. Sitting in chairs not quite facing each other, we sit quietly waiting, shedding the many moments, worries and demands of the day until a space opens within and around us and we are together at home in ourselves, in the moment, in God.

Then the sharing begins and I listen and work hard to continue to hold open the space between words, between questions and answers, to hold open the silence that surrounds. This is quiet work, gentle and slow, drawing out the many questions that lead, most often, to a deeper place of longing and need. When, at last, that place is reached and the question of one’s heart’s desire rises, I have a choice – what now?

Too often the temptation arises in me to play the expert, advice-giver, wise counsel, or to speak conspiratorially of my own similar experiences, in order to draw an allegiance between the directee and myself. Often there’s pressure (spoken or unspoken) to do just that – the directee arrives in need, wanting answers and too often I’m tempted to give them.

But here’s the truth . . . 

Won't you follow me over to  Kimberly Ann Coyle's place. to continue reading?  And, while you're there, check out some other other posts in her 31 days series and, if you have a moment, leave me a little comment love (it's awfully quiet over there!) . . .