Bubbles of Hope

I'm thinking about hope these days, how it bubbles up out of nowhere and catches me off guard...and then disappears again.  I'm reading Paul's letter to the Romans, which has crazy promises scrawled all through its pages about how God cultivates and works with hope.  So now I'm imagining it like water: up in the clouds, sometimes raining down, soaked up by thirsty ground, stored down deep for us to draw on later when we need it.

And we need it.

I look for hope in books. My friend Kelly sent me a great one yesterday. (Seriously, Kelly has been the source of so many of my favorite books lately. If you're looking for recommendations, follow Kelly Hughes on Twitter. You'll be glad you did.) It's called Love & Salt: A Spiritual Friendship Shared in Letters. I opened the package, scanned the back cover, then pushed a bunch of stuff from Target off to the corner of the table so I could sit down to read.  What a gift to see the friendship of the authors, two women who met in a creative writing program, develop through letters they wrote to one another about their questions--life, relationships, failures, spirituality, how to be the people they want to be, what to do with disappointments--all the big stuff.  They don't give one another advice, exactly, but wisdom seeps out from these letters, and hope...it's as if each is of them spurs the other to think and write about things they might not have the chance to sort out otherwise. I'm excited to read more later today.

I also look for hope in Spring. I'm sooooo happy it's March. This is the toughest month here in New England. March is like detention, or being grounded (I was going to say it's like a prison sentence, but that would be a bit much): It's inevitable, so we might as well get started so we can get it over with.  March is the price we pay for April and May, and when I think about it that way, it's worth it.  So today, let the March begin.  Eventually, it will take us somewhere warm and filled with flowers :)

And finally, I find hope in small, silly things.  Princess Peach had a playdate last weekend, and in the ensuing joy & wonder, her little toy Belle lost her head.  No one is sure how it happened, but Beast was seen fleeing the scene so we all agreed to blame him, and put Belle in the ICU (read: up on the high shelf, away from THAT DOG) until some surgical superglue could be procured.  Last night Steve reattached Belle's head. I'm happy to report that Belle is recovering nicely, and will be ready to return to play at the end of the day when we pick up the Peach.

May your weekend have hope raining down and bubbling up all over. And even if it seems like everything is dry, don't believe it.  The hope is down there underneath, and it will find it's way up to you, to each of us.

And Yet...complete with ukulele!

I apologize for the lame finish on the Advent blogs...one would think they'd run all the way through (or at least up to) Christmas, right?  I certainly thought so.  But the days right before and immediately after Christmas were such a nonstop mashup of horrific developments, followed by beautiful moments (a full-on battle between good and evil), I could barely keep up with it in real time.  I had no shot at forming coherent blog posts.  Sorry about that.  Thanks for understanding.

Let's talk about this new year.  2013.  Finally.

Steve and I (and Princess Peach) spent a much-needed laughter and prayer-filled day with friends to usher in this new year.  If you've read He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, this was a gathering of many of the people you met on those pages. We ate chowder, drank mimosas, watched small children play in the snow and caught up on life. Then in the afternoon we sang worship songs with our friends Paul and Andy accompanying us on a ukulele (Yes, you read that right, and yes it was as hilarious and awesome as it sounds, with Paul searching for chord translations on his iPhone. When you find a crowd where someone travels with a ukulele in the middle of the Boston winter - stick with them. It won't be dull.)

Part of what made this gathering so special was that it was a homecoming of sorts. We've drifted apart over the past two years, since the church where we did life together started a long collapse.  We've all been scattered, searching for new church homes and struggling with God to make sense of so many things.  It has been painful.  And yet...

(This is my New Year's realization, by the way: how humanity's walk with God can be summed up in variations on this theme:  We've been scattered...searching for home and struggling with God to make sense of so many things. It has been painful.  And yet...)

Let's talk about And Yet.  I saw it yesterday, in a living room filled with friends who have shared years of a journey together.  We've missed a lot of the day-to-day lately, but we hold each other's "big pictures"-- the larger narrative arc.  We know enough history of what God has done in each of our lives to say, "I remember when God was talking to you about this...and then this happened...and now you're here and doing this...I wonder if maybe...?"  and then pray together, helping one anther hold on and hope and trust. It was good to be reminded that our spiritual "home" isn't a specific place; it's wherever we're together, looking for God.

My hope for 2013 is to point my eyes (ears, heart, mind) to the And yet.  To look for it.  To expect.  To know that I know that I know that God's plan is a good one, and it's unfolding (albeit with some unexpected plot-twists).  To enjoy it when it arrives, adding every miraculous turn-around and breakthrough to the stories we tell and re-tell, reminding ourselves of the stunning ways God comes through.

Today as you pray, ask God to put And yet on the parts of life where you feel like you're stuck or just limping along. Wherever reality seems dismal and there's no reasonable hope, God has an And yet.  Let's ask for it.

Here's to a Happy New Year :)

Whatever

That Harry Connick Jr. movie insists that Hope Floats, and for the most part, I agree. But there are seasons in life where no matter how stubbornly buoyant my hope has been in the past, a sharp pointy object comes along and punctures it. Then hope is in pieces all over the pond, floating away.

On most spiritual paths I've walked, there is the belief (sometimes spoken, often not) that my hope is my responsibility. If it gets stabbed, shot, or stepped on, it's my fault for not taking better care of it. And it's up to me to find all the pieces and cobble it back together, STAT.

This is especially difficult in church settings, where my failure as hope's babysitter doesn't just let down some vague force or the universe, but God Himself.  Yikes. Better get that special hope glue, or rush to the hope store and ask for a new line of credit...  Because the only think worse than being hopeless is being hopeless and disappointing God.

And yet with all that, there's one thing worse.  I call it Whatever.  Meaning, I'm so numb that I've reverted to neutral, waiting to see what happens, dealing with life as it comes at me, reacting rather than acting (and yes, I think hope is an action).

Whatever feels safe, but it's not.  It's evil, hidden in a Slanket, or Pajama Jeans.

The antidote to Whatever's poison is asking God for help. Prayer. Not in certain special words, but honest ones.  One of my favorite grim passages in the Bible is this letter the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians, where he admits how flat-out lousy life has been:

"We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia.  We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself.  Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.  He has delivered us from such deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many."  (2 Corinthians 1:8-11.  Read the full chapter here.)

Jesus is the answer to our despair. I don't get it, but I believe it is true. We reach out to Jesus via prayer. Prayer is the alternative to Whatever.

When I can't pray, I ask someone else to pray for me. I wonder if there isn't power in this act of asking...even if the person wanders off and forgets all about me, I suspect that God treats the asking someone else just as if I'd gone ahead and asked Him.  (But that's just my theory.)

Today, instead of hiding under yards of fleece on the sofa, I'm going to pray:  Dear Jesus, please repair my hope. Make it float. And then steer it, so it lands somewhere good and solid and true.  Thank You. Amen.

I Was Hoping For More...

I've felt this strange compulsion to blog during Advent this year. I ignored it, figuring the urge would pass.  But here I am in the final hours of Day 1, figuring out what to say.

I'll start with a confession:

For several years now, I've hated Advent. There's nothing like the holidays to highlight the gap between where you are in life and where you'd hoped to be.

As some of you know, this has been a particularly wild year for us, as we've become foster parents to a little girl.  She is wonderful. The system is not.  And so the gap we're facing now isn't even a stretch  between what we'd hoped for and what is.  It's just a giant hole labeled, "We have no idea how this is going to turn out."  (Who knew our lives could get LESS suitable for inclusion in a holiday card?)

Now, I handle this gap pretty well for most of the year.  But when my faith tells me this is the season to celebrate the birth of baby Jesus because he came to save the world and make everything right (I remember one sermon that insisted, without caveat, "EVERYTHING YOU'VE EVER WANTED IS FOUND IN THE BIRTH OF JESUS!"), the analytical side of me kicks in and asks, Really? Because I've read the book, and what happens is that in thirty-three years he gets murdered, then comes back to life and ascends into heaven, after which we spend the next two thousand  years trying to figure out what to make of it all.  It's a fabulous story, but I've been unable to see how Jesus' birthday gives me everything I've ever wanted today. (In fact, isn't that the experience most of us have with Christmas? That once all the presents are opened, it's all very nice...but somehow we'd hoped for more?)

BUT...even as this year has been particularly difficult, we've seen God working. Everywhere.  It's no exaggeration to say that in the midst of this sea of impossibility, we are astonished on a regular basis.

Because of this, I realized that I don't want to slink through Advent this year.  I've had enough of the tight-lipped smile, pretending everything is okay. So when I went to church this morning, I didn't cringe when I saw the Advent wreath.  Instead, I asked God for a new way to see this season.  And wow, did He come through.

The pastor said this about his life:  "I am so incredibly blessed...and yet I'd hoped for more." He went on to say that this tension between the blessings we have and the disappointment we feel is our human condition.  No matter what is going on, there is always more we'd hoped for.  In some seasons, this tension is more unbearable than others. But the feeling is consistent. He talked about how the message of Advent isn't "Hooray, Jesus has come! Everything will be fine now!"  But rather, "The rescue is underway...and Jesus is coming back to complete it." (Here's a link to the full sermon.)

That is something I can celebrate.

So I'll be doing a little of that here each day, sharing thoughts about living in this tension between what I hope for and what is, looking for what God is doing and anticipating the rescue.  I hope you'll join me. We'll see what God does.