I committed to 40 days of writing, and then coronavirus crawled across the globe.

This is how life happens. Plans are made and circumstances chart their own course. Unexpected things, incomprehensible things, things we never heard of become our new normal: social distancing, global pandemic and thus, shutdown.

My professional life tripled overnight. I began working 50 hour weeks, and writing and life as we knew it went the way of the past.

But the fasting for Lent? My Lent, as in Lent-ish?  It has quietly continued, even without me, because we, as a society, have been fasting in some magnificent ways.

1. The Church is fasting from buildings and programs and has been living as sent, rather than gathered. We've retreated to neighborhoods and the internet. Spontaneous worship on social media, from the recognizable to the unknown girl with the messy bun, leggings, and a beat up guitar becomes a cathedral for the world on a screen.

2. Gone are the soapboxes and judgy posts on social media of those who have an opinion of everything and are happy to share it with you.

3. Families have fasted from extra-curricular everything and are eating home-cooked meals at the table together. It's like a Norman Rockwell painting with all the puzzles and games and togetherness while sideways rays from the sunset slant through the window, turning everything golden.

2. The women in my neighborhood walk with chalk and fill driveways with pastel scripture verses. They now "prayer walk" several nights a week, praying for protection and neighborly kindness and provision.

3. I've walked at dawn in my neighborhood before work because my statehouse walks at lunch are no longer possible. With the overload in my office, I'm fasting my lunch hour and working straight through. But a boss has generously brought lunch in for two weeks for good measure, morale, and in support of local small business. He has quietly led with generosity and grace. He has fed us, literally and figuratively.

4. In 10 days it will be Easter. We will celebrate a resurrection that interrupted life as everyone on earth knew it. It was a fast from mortality that will hold us in everlasting hope until he comes again.

People have been sick. People have died. We suffer from loneliness, isolation, and fear. The economy has suffered. But there are some good things if we are brave enough to see them.

Just maybe there is life behind a stone that was rolled in front of a grave that gives us something to look forward to, something with which to tenaciously stand up against the fear and the dire situation it stems from.

On the other side of death is resurrection. Until then, I will keep looking for light, finding the good, and discovering the beautiful surprises that come when things don't happen as you expected.

Jesus will be with us now, and there on the other side, too. There may be a measure of discomfort, uncertainty, grief, and loss for a time, but good and hope shine through in the midst of the suffering.

And maybe that's exactly what fasting is for in the first place. That we might go without the things we know so well that comfort us, in order to see the world with new eyes and hunger for that instead.


Photo Credit: ST, my neighbor

I opened the mailbox on Saturday and saw a name from the past pushing up through the stack of mail from the return address corner. An old acquaintance I haven't thought of in a lifetime.

He mailed me grainy pictures taken by a disposable camera circa 1986. Pictures of teenagers at Ship Island, one of whom was Jeff.

I don't think of him so much anymore. Until he died, it was the hardest thing I had ever faced. Since then there's been cancer, Alzheimer's, divorce, Hurricane Katrina, the unthinkable. So many people and beautiful things are simply gone.

Ru looked through the pictures and was struck by the one that was the ancestor of today's selfie. Jeff's face filled the lens with a clear image. He's sandy and salty, and I had forgotten his hair was a little curly like mine if it was humid. She said, "Look at him. I've never been able to make out his face in all the old photographs. And, now, there he is." She touched his dimple with her index finger, I think because she has one of her own.

I marvel every time I see my children's affinity for an uncle they never met. So I re-read all the posts I've written about him here over the years and allowed myself to think of him.

So much of life doesn't make sense. We always say that about the bad parts, but never do we say it about the good.

I remember leaning onto his casket, letting him hold me up one last time, and promising him I would think of him every day for the rest of my life. That was 26 years ago, when I was 25. I don't even know when I failed that vow, I'm just glad I did.

The sky has been heavy with overcast clouds the last few days. The whole world is thinking about sickness and death in the face of COVID-19 crawling its way around the globe. I don't remember a time when we've been in one accord globally like this.

I've seen panic, kindness, fear, greed, and love. People have receded with fear and with caution. The earth seems eerily abandoned by those who are shutting themselves in against the unknown and a foe much bigger than the frail human body. It makes us compliant, and rightly so.

But it also makes me want to live. In the face of threat from virus and the reminder of loss in my mailbox, I want to live.

Sometimes you have to let the dead things go so you can really live.

I want to love and show kindness and generosity in the face of fear, isolation, sickness, and horror. I want to be beauty and light to a dying world.

I choose hope in the face of sorrow. I choose words that rise, and I choose to trust in tomorrow. I choose to embrace the broken and the redeemed and the ache, and walk with a limp for all life has dealt me.

The world is slowing and it hurts because I've been trying to outrun pain. I need to go fast right now, and even that is being taken from me in the shutting down and shutting in against pandemic.

We are asked to withdraw from each other and activity, so I must learn to live with fear and death and distance, not outrun them. I must relearn to be quiet and at ease in the stillness and slowness.

On this earth, we find we must fast the things we long for, things that are scarce right now: togetherness. love, fellowship, communion. But these are the things we will see and know in their fullness and feast on forever in heaven.

Dear Future Self,

Man, what I'd give to be where you are. Before you even read this letter, look around you. Take a minute to take in your life. And don't take a single thing you see, feel, and know for granted.

Even if it's broken and scarred, I hope you see that it's beautiful.

I'm working so hard to be sure you end up safe, loved, and respected. I'm pretty sure you have these things from some amazing humans because you had them back then when you were me.

But I hope by now you are much better at giving these things to yourself. You used to be terrible at it.

You are where you are today because of me, your past self, at least in part.

I hope you look around your life and find health, peace, and joy. I hope you find Jesus, and family and friends.

I hope you find a bountiful dinner table and still find joy in feeding the ones you love. I hope laughter and deep conversations find you and yours lingering long over engaging ideas and wrestled faith, while a glass of good wine swirls in your hand, the dishwasher whirs in the background, and the night grows long.

I hope you talk about the books you're reading and never stop learning and growing. I hope you still run and have finally learned how to build a fire in the backyard without a starter log.

I hope you always say yes when someone asks you to go for a walk with them. How many healing miles did we walk? Only God knows.

May you be kinder, gentler, and present for people when they are devastated, because you learned the hard way what kind of healing salve that is, and how those things have actual super powers to bring a person back to life.

May you carry yourself with dignity and not take yourself too seriously, both at the same time.

May you never stop having fun.

I hope you are proud of your life, and are mostly happy.

I hope you know intimately who you are and confidently accept — no, approve — of the woman you became. You know better than I do what finding yourself cost us both. And I hope and pray it was worth the price.

You were small for far too long.

Don't ever forget you owe a debt to words. There were so many words.

There were mantras and confessions. There were revelations and declarations shouted and whispered.

You filled journals with handwriting. You read stacks of books and articles.

There were countless counseling sessions with a compassionate and wise therapist, who either rattled you or rallied you in fifty minute segments, and was discerning enough to know which to employ when.

You spent hours texting and typing, and on phone calls that added up to months of your life.

You said so many words, so many times, to a small trusted circle you couldn't keep track of what you said to whom.

I hope all of those friends are still with you and are deeply trusted. I hope they have been with you for years now and that you've had a chance to return the exquisite gift of listening.

I hope there's an army of new friends, too. You were lonely for so long.

God's word and prayer served you so well. These were the best words. I'm sure your knees are worn because you can no longer live without either.

They fed you when food could not, and they became the only way you knew to process this fallen-down life on earth.

You still have problems, I know. But you are better equipped for them than I was. That came to you as a gift from the years between you and me.

Life is never without its problems. But I worked hard for you to have a sense of rest in your soul that anchors you because you survived a dark time and you didn't give up on yourself. I pray the wisdom you gained became a grace you now give to others.

Don't ever forget the tears you cried, the sleepless nights, or how proud you became of who your children grew up to be. I hope they still inspire you, teach you, challenge you, and are dear, dear friends. I can't imagine how proud you are of them based on how proud I already am now.

Don't ever forget any of these things. I suspect that, from your vantage point, they are the redeemed parts of the journey.

I love you so very much, Dawn. Don't ever lose track of that love ever again, you hear me?

You are the reason I do all the hard things these days. You are beautiful inside and out. We all are. You are strong, wise, and have a purpose.

Don't ever take for granted where you are, and all you have, including your challenges. Much of it was learned and earned the hard way, and some came as a gift of grace. But everything about who you are was forged in the fire, and if it lasted it's precious metal.

So you better be chasing your dreams hard, and not wasting a minute of your life. You better be wild and free, with equal measures of abandon and reverence in all you do. It better be freaking beautiful!

Man, what I'd give to be where you are, and know you in your fullness.

But I have a sneaking suspicion that as beautiful as it is where you are, getting there is going to be worth the journey and will be something you wouldn't have wanted to miss in the end. So I'll stay in the here and now, and work towards getting us there, even though I've asked God a million times, "Please, let's skip ahead to better days."

I promise I'll get up every morning and keep fighting for you. I won't let you down, because you're worth it.

I hope you know that you're worth it in your bones up there in our future together, because, right now, you're still learning that glorious truth, and you don't know it very well yet.

I can make you that promise to keep fighting for you, because when I get weary, I have a body of friends and family that love me, and carry me when I can't go on, and don't, won't, leave me.

I could never do this alone. I'm convinced we need people in our lives, a generous handful of beautiful, broken people who love unflinchingly. I have a hunch you became that kind of person.

Never discount the power of love, Dawn. And don't grow cynical.

Someday, if you find yourself in the middle of something you have no idea how to get through, stay there. Don't rush it. Relax into the hard middle and feel your way through. Stumble in awkward stammers if that's all you can manage in order to get to the other side. You already know from the past it's worth it. Keep going and never give up.

Until then, please know I can't wait to meet you. I'm pretty sure you're an amazing person. And I hope you smile ... a lot.

My all,
Your Former Self

In light of the fact that all the heaven, the moon, and stars are just a little something you did with your fingers one day, God, who are we, that you would notice or care for us?

{Fear :: Part 1 can be found here.}

Sunday, our pastor had us in Isaiah 44. His main points were:

1. God is worthy.
2. Idols are worthless.
3. Worship the worthy.

Sounds so simple, unless you have a fraught history with fear, which I do.

When we read verses 19-20, they brought me back to my mental tracing of biblical fire from Genesis to Revelation.

"They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand. No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, "Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?" He feeds on the ashes, a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, "Is there not a lie in my right hand?"

Fear is an idol. I cling to it with my right hand, which holds me back from full surrender to all God has for me, my life, and future. I will not let fear hold me back. I must walk on. I am determined to unfurl my fingers from dead wood. God has been trying me by fire and I want Fear to burn. I want it burned to ash to float away in the wind of the Spirit that washes me clean. I want both hands free to serve God with my whole heart and life and future.

I knelt, all by myself in a church that doesn't kneel, with palms open for dust to fly, and proclaimed the true things with our local body's rendition of Andrew Peterson's "He Is Worthy." It was a contemporary liturgy in the modern worship service.

Then, I stood to my feet and named my idol. I wrote "Fear" on a small note card. I wrote it really big because Fear is big to me. I pinned it to the cross. It felt a little bit "old-school youth ministry retro," but there is something about physically engaging in letting something go from your life. Clinging to anything in my own right hand is no match for the God who made both the wood and me and can hold both and then some in his mighty right hand. So I went through the physical and metaphorical motions.

I am certain I will wrestle with Fear again. This exercise was not a miracle cure. It was a reminder. And I will burn the idol and let the ash fly as often as it takes to free my hands to be open only to God and his fullness for me.

Then the benediction: always a scripture reading to send the body into the world, with the words, "You are sent." I don't know what idols everyone else had pinned on the cross, but  yesterday's benediction passage, Psalm 46:1-3 from The Passion translation, seemed to be hand selected just for me. It's about our true relationship with fear in light of God.

"God, you're such a safe and powerful place to find refuge! You're a proven help in time of trouble— more than enough and always available whenever I need you. Se we will never fear even if every structure of support were to crumble away. We will not fear even when the earth quakes and shakes, moving mountains and casting them into the sea. For the raging roar of stormy winds and crashing waves cannot erode our faith in you. Pause in his presence."

The idols we hold are worthless, but the One who holds us is worthy.



K

I hate fear. I'm giving it up for Lent and hopefully for life, but I'm wired that way. Fear and I go way back. I'm an Enneagram Six.

///

God has had me in the book of Isaiah for a long while, at least since last May. It started with chapter 55 and began spreading into neighboring chapters like an epidemic. Then a nine-month sermon series from Isaiah started last fall. By November, I had decided I was full-on doing Isaiah. I scoured the house for all my resources: an abandoned bible study I started 15 years ago, Wiersbe's Old Testament commentary, one of my study bibles with its own commentary. I planned to track down every cross-reference listed to every verse before I left a chapter. I had built Isaiah Mountain on my kitchen counter.

And then? Christmas shopping. And December in general.

Isaiah Mountain was never climbed. About three weeks later, I dismantled it, overwhelmed by the sight. But the sermon series had been amazing so far. I was learning so much, and Isaiah kept showing up in my life in serendipitous ways. I couldn't help but want more.

I stumbled upon a bible study series that moved a little faster than the exhaustive, unabridged version I had planned for myself. This one delved into one chapter a day. It was deeper than a devotional, but lighter than a graduate course in Isaiah, and so I began.

It pairs nicely with our Isaiah series at church, which is a wonderful mix of topical and expository approach.

///

Last week was a bear for me. I worked overtime, even though I was out of the office for:
--a car accident (fender bender, but still)
--court
--a doctor's visit with my daughter who had a viscous stomach virus for six day. SIX DAYS!
--a mother who needed a little extra time and attention
--a counseling session

Each one of these things brought with them a trail of extra weight, plus I had some unusual work-related emergencies. I didn't eat or sleep well, though I tried.

My bible and study laid dormant since last Monday. And Fear was sticking closer than a brother. Again. Because I was so stressed out, I didn't even recognized his presence.

I characterize him as male, because he feels stronger than me, like men are physically stronger. I recognize this is setting myself up for defeat from the beginning, but I have a long history here, and if you fact check it, you'll find it to be true. Fear usually wins when he picks a fight, at least with me.


I often struggle to see this verse prove true because of my longstanding battle with fear. But I won't ever give up fighting for this truth to be revealed in me.

{This essay concludes here in Fear :: Part 2.}

Today I stand tall
Hold my face high
I will feel love and
the weight of loss
Alone today I stand

Today I stand tall
Solemnly, with dignity
And a measure of grace
Which wrecks me and how
you know it’s grace

Today I stand tall
Proud of who I was
who I am now
I have cowered
My knees have wobbled
So I can stand tall

Today I stand tall
after bending low
After heart dissolved
And  life grows slow
Before I knew nothing

Today I stand tall
On the right in
purple dignity
But also sackcloth
With courage and fear
And a God who let (led?) us here

I stand tall.

These are the day of sick babes and mothers.
These are the days of heartaches and troubles.
These are the days of dry bones walking.
These are the days of prophets, psalms, friends, and what ifs.
These are the days of crashing and shaking, hurting and waiting.
These are the days of responsibility and futility.
These are the days of chaos, confusion, disillusion, dissolution.
These are the days committed.

These are the days of  falling: short, behind, out, in.
These are the days of not enough and less than, fragile and beautiful both.
These are the days you wish you never lived, but find life and love's growth
                                                                                  — the soil fertile because it laid fallow.

These are the days to pine and put behind.
These are the days of trusting, of stumbling and rising, of ruin, repair, and pioneer.

These are the days of fighting, resigning, and resisting.
These are the days to be quiet and hopeful and want wisdom.
These are the days to breathe in and breathe out, and rest heavy head full of doubt.
These are the days of hope for I don't know what.
These are the days to steer who knows where.
These are the gray days of cold rain, of winter into spring.
These are the days of iron gate, an early friend, and holding horror.
These are the days committed
                                                                                                            — against tomorrow.





Photo by Keith McElroy

The Ash Wednesday service I attended was my third. I went alone this year and slipped into the back pew a few minutes late.

This Anglican church is beautiful. I love being in this sanctuary. The floors are red brick with gritty mortar. There are paneless, clear glass windows letting in lots of natural light that bounces off white walls to high vaulted ceilings with exposed beams. It is not ostentatious like an ornate cathedral can be, nor practical like the auditoriums of modern day megachurches (not that either is bad). Instead, both its beauty and purpose are derived from and defined by its tranquil, understated sense of it being a place of unapologetic importance. It's a simple, earthy dwelling place for God and us that is deliberate but without pretense.

The acoustics are amazing, and I love its transepts that flank the nave, molding its congregants cruciform. The terms transept and nave sound too fanciful for this primitive-feeling place, but to speak of its parts without dignified language feels equally wrong. This sanctuary strikes the balance of holy and human so well.

There was no music, except for the a cappella congregational chant of Psalm 51 that sounded ancient and sorrowful, making me think I heard King David's voice sing-chanting with us. ... Yes, Lord. May his confession be mine, also, as I contemplate my sin and its resulting death. Make me always this desperate for your forgiveness.

There was time to think and reflect and be alone with my thoughts and my God in the soft, rhythmic spaces between each steady, intentional event in the order of worship. I always get the sense that God comes close in the slowness and our simply "being present" instead of all the doing we moderns are used to. There was no awkwardness in the moments of silence. Love's presence is the only thing that can create a comfortable lack of awkwardness.

This worship is opposite of the loud, contemporary, demonstrative kind I am accustomed to. When I go to this room and atmosphere, I realize I'm starving to slow down and breathe deeply, unencumbered, in God's presence. I feel his dignity and holiness about me, and I can't drink in enough of it. Everything else falls away.

Worshiping this way reminds me how big he is and how small I am. I'm not saying small is unimportant. But if my modern worship likens me to an exuberant child, then this liturgical worship makes me an infant. I am no less human, no less alive, no less daughter to my father, no less in love relationship.

The difference is the absence of desire to perform for him or the need to seek his approval (Hey, Dad, watch this! Dad, watch. Dad. Dad! ... Watch this!!). An infant need only be held by strong arms. Being together in this room, holding one another, God and me, and me and God, is all that's needed.

I don't know if I would like to worship this way every Sunday, but from time to time, I crave the stripping of 21st century trappings like flesh-toned microphones hung over the ear of dynamic preachers, stages with professional lighting, and shiny over-sized screens. The robes, a real altar, lit candles ensconced in ironwork, the kneeling, and the reciting in unison the thoughtfully prepared words are reminders that God is ginormous, mysterious, and dangerous. It behooves us to be respectful, careful, and tread lightly.

He is God.

And, yes, he's also my father who laughs and loves. He striped the zebra, paints the sky red and purple every evening and morning, and made our bodies to pass their gases so we don't explode. Everything about us is both disgusting and magnificent at the same time. It's all equally flesh and spirit. All the earth sings his holy praise! But I digress...or is breaking into spontaneous praise progress?

Hmmmm.

Anyway, back to my point. Certainly he laughs. He loves to smile and delight in all his creation and skip and dance with us, the apples of his eye, all. He wants this communion so badly he will send his Son at great sacrifice to bring us home to him.

That's my daddy.

I love that I have a personal relationship with him. He draws me near, and I am not afraid. I run unabashed right up into his enthroned lap like the entitled daughter I am.

But he's also the Maker of the universe. I need to meet with him in solemn dignity sometimes to remember he is that too, because that aspect of him can be just as needful and comforting. While there is familiarity between us, he's not one to be trifled with. It does my heart good to remember anew his power and authority.

He could fling me away from him with a flick of his ear without a thought (Dad-Dad-Dad-Dad— flick.). But he never does. Never. This emboldens me most of the time to run wild and free in his temple, excused for my lack of decorum for being the Maker's heir. I'm grateful I can live in that uninhibited self-expression with him, dance naked before him like David did, and it not be disrespectful. To be wild and free and royal is a beautiful thing, indeed.

But I'm also grateful for this Anglican church to which I am drawn every Ash Wednesday, where he woos me with silent moments pregnant with intimate love. Somehow intimacy is found in both approaches to God and are true worship.

This glorious space, however, is the place where I am invited to hold the truths of both his holiness and mine in the balance of my humanity. I participate every year in this Ash Wednesday service because it reminds me of the exquisite tension yet intertwining cacophony of all these timeless truths:

He is God.
I am not.
But I am his.
And he loves me,
even though he knows me.
                                   

 


Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash            

The ashes smeared onto my forehead were to represent dust, but I couldn't help wondering what exact "thing" burned to provide the ashes for us to wear dust for a day.

I rehearsed all the biblical fire that came to mind as I returned to my pew to kneel, head ashed:

• The angel touching Isaiah with the burning coal before the vision of Jesus' throne.
• Moses' fascination with a bush that burned but wasn't consumed, inviting him closer.
• Sodom. And Gomorrah.
• The bright, shining descriptions of Jesus as he will be when he returns to finish what he started.
• The heaping of burning coals on their heads which is the very kindness of feeding of your enemy simply because he's hungry.
• A pillar of fire by night. (God led them in circles for 40 years?!)
• Burnt offerings.
• The various lamp stands scattered throughout from Genesis to Revelation.
• Four in the fiery furnace.
• The tongues of fire resting above 120 believers on the Day Jesus told them to wait for, the ones who didn't give up the waiting.
• Hell and Holy Spirit both.

What can all this fire in scripture mean? Is there a trail of ashes (and no ashes) that tells a unified story of the flame somehow?

I felt humbled yesterday behind my ash-stained forehead thinking of my frailty in comparison to fire in all its varieties. The ashes are the ruin, what's left after fire's deadly fury. They speak of finality and complete consumption. I am defenseless. Fire wins every time. Like I said — humbled.

Feeling exposed, I leaned into the One who made both the earth and the heavens, the sun-fire and the moon, the fire that destroys and the fire that purifies, the fires he inflicts and the fires from which he delivers, fires so dangerous they are my potential undoing in every form and context.

I utterly need him because, without him, I am and will only ever be burnt dust.

And then one more biblical fire came to mind:  the flame of our giftings we are to fan. I realize suddenly that all the fire that was and is and is to come breathes. Every fire is full of life, and God is the one who breathes life. Every fire serves his purpose then, even if it appears to destroy and reduce to ash. And even if we never understand why so many things have to burn, may we be reminded that we are frail, and He is a consuming fire.

I have not written much here in the last year and a half. And writing is not like riding a bike. Art skills languish when left un-exercised, and I feel very out of shape as a writer.

But chasing my unfinished faith and writing are things that used to bring me life and joy. I'm currently in need of both. And I've been challenged by several close and wise friends to begin writing again. And I think I found a way.

I read "Lent ish" by Megan Westra yesterday.

The faith tradition I came from does not observe the Church calendar, and I have only ever approached Lent in very small ways.

Megan's life has been hard lately, and she wants to approach Lent this year with authenticity and from the context of her circumstances.

Lent is traditionally a solemn time (40 days from Ash Wednesday through Good Friday) of reminding ourselves of death and the frailty of life. It is not a setting aside of our salvation and rejoicing in it. Rather, it's a time of remembering how desperate we once were apart from the saving work of Christ. Lent is a time to remember we were once dead in our sin and that we still are but dust.

Let's full stop there for a season and feel the weight of it again by reacquainting ourselves with our desperate hopelessness and neediness.

Many people approach Lent with sacrifice or with fasting from something — meat, chocolate, social media, for instance.

I want to approach these days leading to a celebration of the resurrection with an eye to sin's destructive forces on my life and thus my utter need of deliverance. I want to lean into the tension of living in an age when Christ has already come, but not yet in a way that sets all things aright.

This is the age of sin's rule over the earth. We endure the effects of a fallen creation, our sin nature's presence, and the consequences of resulting sin. But we do it with the hope of his second coming to finish redemption's good work.

I want to not only live, but thrive, in this age of sin's continued presence. I want to participate in this solemn season when we focus on death so we can fully appreciate and celebrate the precious, costly gift of eternal life. I want to sacrifice. I want to fast (relinquish) something that will honor God as worship. I want to embrace death for a season.

So I am choosing to write through Lent.

I am sacrificing the safety that comes from withdrawing in painful circumstances.
I am fasting hopelessness, despair, and fear.
I am offering (giving up for Lent) the audacity to find hope and a future in Christ that is healed and whole and lacking in nothing as a living sacrifice
I will work out my salvation with fear and trembling, and with pain and desire.

Choosing hope is a a courageous act of defiance. It is an act of worship I will offer in faith, because right now I don't have even one day's worth of hope or grace or joy in me to offer. I have no words whatsoever worth sharing right now as I commit to public words for 40 days.

These 40 days of writing sacrificially will be faith — the assurance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen.

I am certain that writing publicly words I don't currently possess for 40 consecutive days after a long season of no writing at all will result in some pretty poor writing. (You've been warned.) But it will be good exercise for my soul. So I will publish daily, no matter how worthy or unworthy of readership. I want to show up here every day, persistent and relentless in pursuit of God from the dark unrest.

And maybe you'll find your faith here, too, through the lens of your own doubt and uncertainty through my words being wrangled to the altar of sacrifice.

The words will come from both life's storm(s) and the defiance against it(them).

Peter did this when he walked on water. He boldly looked to Jesus who called him onto the water while he lacked the discipline to not look at the dangerous waves beneath him. What he was doing made no earthly sense, but he did it anyway. He walked, he sank, and Jesus, who walked in the storm with him, lifted.

I hope he will do the same for me if I put one word in front of the other.

I am choosing to tenaciously practice hope in this season of darkness before resurrection.

Join me?

Since I married a Cuban-American and we had three children together, my life story became somewhat Cuban. I married into an existing story, and then my three children carried that story into my future. So Cuba is forever a part of my identity. I don't speak the language, but it is the background noise of the last 33 years of my life. The food, the culture, the music, the people, they all infiltrated who I am slowly over time and changed me.

So when I listened to the podcast Scattered, it was like hearing a part of our family story unknown until now. Chris Garcia is an American-born child of Cuban refugee parents. Theirs is a story of;

-- the blending of two nations,
-- a proud, heartbreaking patriotism,
-- the letting go of the past in favor of the promise of a future,
-- American prosperity in the face of unseen and unheard from family languishing in the homeland.

It's all so familiar to me because it's part of my own life story by marriage and by birth (of my children).

It's a refugee story.

It's a love story.

It's a beauty from ashes story.

It's complicated.

It's a story of family, survival, and devotion.

You don't need to have a personal connection to Cuba or the plight of Cuban refugees to be moved by this compelling story of Chris Garcia's learning about his late father's past.

His story will break your heart but cause your spirit to rise up. It will make you proud and grateful to be an American. It will make you desperately want to not squander your opportunity and freedom and affluence. This story will make you a more compassionate human being. It will remind you that there are people you come into contact with every day who have suffered unspeakable atrocity, tragedy, and sorrow. This story will encourage you to be kinder, gentler, and more patient. 

Listen to Scattered: One dead dad, a box of ashes, and a mysterious past, and be a better human for having invested three hours in this particular someone else's story. Then remember, everyone has a story.

Find out more here.

Scattered's Instagram.