Gathering Stories

I’m behind the times.  I’ve only recently started using Pandora, and I just got around to watching the delightful movie We Bought a Zoo, which chronicles the true story of a man and his two children as they breathe new life into a dilapidated zoo property.  When it seems like all hope is lost, the man realizes his deceased wife has left him a substantial amount of money—circus money, as they called it—to pursue dreams and adventure as life writes this family’s story.

At one point of the movie, Rosie asks her dad why he doesn’t tell stories anymore and asks if their mom—deceased six months—knows about the current adventure they are living.  Memories of their mother permeate their thoughts, yet at the same time all three battle losing pieces of their brilliancy—I can’t remember her voice.  What did her smile feel like?

In English, my tattoo means, “treasure”, as in “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).  Or, as The Message puts it, “Mary kept all these things to herself, holding them dear, deep within herself.”  Privy to events beyond comprehension, Mary knew the experience was beyond her and—I imagine—tucked the memories away to continually be treasured. 

While we may not be first hand witnesses to the birth of the Messiah, we are engaged in an adventurous life filled with moments of trials, splendor, adventure, and tears.  Often throughout the year, the calendar tells us to stop and remember certain people, places, or events of our past—all of which is good and right.

More often than not, the events of every day get glossed over—a point illustrated in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.  After realizing she has the power to relieve any day she desires, the deceased Emily Webb chooses to go back to her 13^th birthday.  Before making this decision, her mother-in-law--also deceased--warns her to choose any day, as it will be special enough.  Grieved by what she sees in her return, Emily asks the stage manager, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?” He responds, "Saints and poets, maybe." 

We have the opportunity to gather stories in our daily lives.  Little fragments of what seem to be merely mundane activities pieced together, creating a glorious story to be remembered and treasured.  

An eye for tenacity

Movie marketing sucked me in years ago when I saw the Tom Cruise film Vanilla Sky.  I don’t remember much except realizing two hours of my life vanished at the expense of a lackluster film, yet the tagline “Abre los ojos” (open your eyes) remained tucked in my brain.  Perhaps it’s the Taylor Swift song “Eyes Wide Open” that has jostled the Spanish tagline to the forefront of my mind. 

I had coffee with a new friend this morning, and this idea—opened eyes—became the third guest at our table, as did the words of Rob Bell.  (Yes, that Rob Bell.)  I recalled a three year old message on Matthew 7—specifically verses 13-14.  It’s what Bell stated in his closing prayer that remains with me—Wake us up to this dangerous and compelling life you have called us to. 

In Strong Women, Soft Hearts, Paula Rinehart provides this answer to the question of life:

Will you really grab hold of life in whatever shape God has given it and live as though you didn’t go around twice? As simple as it sounds, I find the temptation to shut down on the inside and settle for the crumbs under the table is one that every woman faces…We can so easily sleepwalk through our days—out of touch, disconnected, half-alive.  We can die before our time, really.  On the inside, we can die long before there are any visible signs…We must have access to the inside stuff—the longings and desires and dreams and vulnerabilities that make us who we are. 

Wow.  How hard and dangerous it is to really live there—in that place where your eyes are opened, your heart is awakened to life and desire yet confronted with the disappointments of this world.

Abundant life—this way of life that requires vigor—has seemed a bit of a paradox.  In many ways, it’s brought more sadness and sorrow than I bargained for or imagined.  Having my eyes opened to the depths of my heart—the desires God planted there—is a delight, but the ache that accompanies those unfulfilled desires brings much sorrow.  How easy it is to numb that feeling, to be dead to those desires, to stuff them—yet, that’s not what God desires for me. 

Rinehart writes, “Going straight to the messy and broken places in you is the way God frees your heart to love, to risk, to grab hold of life for the joy that’s there.”  Ironic, isn’t it?  A few weeks ago in response to a conversation about the longings of my heart, my supervisor said “Sorrow carves out a vessel for joy”.  The fruit of wrestling with the bitter sweetness of life. 

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes:

Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise.

What do you do with longings that persistently ache and demand unanswerable questions and Kleenex?

I ended my last counseling session by telling my counselor that in these past eight months I’ve realized there’s a tenacious streak in me I’d never previously acknowledged.  He curiously asked what a softened version of that looked like in me.  Driving home, I mulled it over.  To be tenacious means to keep a firm hold of principles, life; to be persistent, resolute. 

Perhaps being tenacious even now means holding fast to the life resurrected in my heart, moving closer to a phenomenally feminine version of me.  And, in doing so brazenly letting hope reside there, despite the silence and the ache of longing.  It’s a dangerous gamble, but it’s where the life is; and there’s no going back once your eyes have been opened.  

Our Own Bildungsroman

           Therapy often conjures up stereotypical images of lying on a couch or casting aspersions on one’s family of origin.  While therapy no doubt involves examination of family and other formative events in one’s life, I’m struck by how unconsciously people pick up styles of relating as means of coping in various stages of their lives, often in some of the youngest years of existence. 

In a recent film adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, the enigmatic Rochester sarcastically asks his new governess, Jane Eyre, to share her “tale of woe”.  Confused, the young Eyre states she simply has no tale of woe.  Unrelenting, Rochester presses Eyre for information about her upbringing claiming everyone possesses a tale of woe, especially governesses and remarks that she has within her a look and countenance that speaks of another world—as if she has been created for more than the world has given her.

Jane Eyre falls under a literary genre called a bildungsroman, or more simply a formation or coming-of-age novel, which details the life of the protagonist but more specifically important changes within the character—emotionally, intellectually, and perhaps even spiritually.  Perhaps, the lyrics to Coldplay’s recent hit, “Paradise”, help explain Eyre’s emotional story and even more so our own.  It begins with a sad realization:

                                When she was just a girl, she expected the world
                                But it flew away from her reach, so she ran away in her sleep
                                And dreamed of paradise, every time she closed her eyes

From her time with her Aunt Reed to the uncaring and abusive headmaster Mr. Brocklehurst, Eyre frequently found herself under the oppressive gaze of another and consistently received the message she was unlovable and worthless.  Simply put, she walked through childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood with baggage.  Baggage that inhibited relationships with others and understanding herself, and coping mechanisms which allowed her to run away and dream of her own version of paradise. 

How we respond to baggage—hurts and scars—ultimately relates to how we will respond and relate to others, and more specifically, how we will respond and relate to God. 

In his article “What is Wrong With Us”, Allender (1996) writes, “It is pain that inflames our suspicion that God is not good—at least not good enough to protect us and provide for us—that causes us to turn away from loving him and others, resulting in psychic torment.”  Pain, as C.S. Lewis called “God’s megaphone”, forces us to wrestle with what we really believe about God, but also what we really believe about our identity in God.  Hurt runs deep when our expectations quickly give way to disappointment. 

                When she was just a girl, she expected the world

                But it flew away from her reach, and the bullets catch in her teeth

                Life goes on, it gets so heavy

                The wheel breaks the butterfly

                Every tear a waterfall

                In the night, the stormy night she’ll close her eyes

                In the night, the stormy night away she’d fly

                And dream of paradise (“Paradise”, Coldplay)

In the face of pain, hurt, rejection, and other "stormy nights", we often seek to “fly away” to our own created paradise—a world of addictions—things of our own creation which will ameliorate the wounds we bear.  Curtis (1997), in his article “Less Wild Lovers”, writes, “Our heart will either carry us to God or to addiction” and Allender states, “we turn our hunger for God’s glory to created things.  Our passion for God is exchanged for idols that are under our control.” 

In his book Leaving Egypt, Chuck DeGroat quotes Buechner’s view of battling through the past.  He writes:

We cannot undo our old mistakes or their consequences any more than we can erase old wounds that we have both suffered and inflicted, but through the power that memory gives us of thinking, feeling, imagining our way back through time, we can at long last finally finish with the past in the sense of removing its power to hurt us and other people and to stunt our growth as human beings. 

Buechner’s words illustrate that though wounds exist, we can journey to those wounds and do the work to reclaim them, ultimately removing their power over us.  Yet, it is that work which may once again lead us to the wilderness.  In his description of the wilderness, DeGroat writes:

    God meets us in our moments of profound doubt, hopelessness, and uncertainty and invites us to believe that our best selves are shaped in the wilderness.  In the wilderness, our selfish ambition is carved away so that we can love more faithfully.  Our carefully constructed masks are torn off so that we can relate authentically and give freely.  Our trauma is acknowledged and healed so that we can become healers to others.  Eden’s initial promise bursts into the pain of the present.

Coldplay’s “Paradise” ends with a similar message, “Lying underneath those stormy skies, she’d say, ‘Oh, I know the sun must set to rise.”  Darkness before dawn.  Death leading to life.  Our stormy tales of woe transforming us through the depths of the wilderness.  Our own “bildungsroman” in which the protagonists rise to embrace their brokenness and allow it to restore them to the people their Creator intended from the start, those created for more than the world offers them.  

Lazy Saturdays in the Sun

It's the last week of the semester, and I should be finishing up school reading and finalizing my couples counseling blog article among other things.  But, I decided a literary treat would be better for my spirits.  So, Gatsby and company joined me by the pool, and I realized just how nerdy I am--my English teacher brain feasted on Fitzgerald's writing style and longed to be back in a classroom talking about what Gatsby's story stirred in the hearts and minds of my students.  I suppose at heart I really am a lover of story, and at this stage of life I'm coming to an even richer appreciation of the literature I love and how art--whether it be in written, visual or musical form--really does reflect the many nuances of life, relationships, and the wounds both create within our hearts.

Knowing vs. Understanding

My friend's heart beats for orphans.  She's been furiously trying to ensure a little boy received the medical care he so desperately needed; unfortunately, his little life came to an early end.

His story stirs anger in me and my automatic response becomes, "God, you aren't good."

You aren't good in that you let a little boy die, you let little innocent children be abused by sexual predators, disease destroy bodies of healthy people, war destroy nations and families, governments say one gender is better than another, and the list goes on and on.

And even in the midst of this, I do know He is good. And sovereign.  

Yet, knowing and understanding in these instances feel like magnetic ends repelling each other.  They just don't connect.

Can a Proverbs 31 woman be provocative?

For a variety of reasons, the content of Couples Counseling—biblical masculinity and femininity—has been a thorn in my side all semester.  The more I sit in lectures and read the material, the more I realize our vocabulary needs to be redeemed if we are to truly embrace these traits. 

Society bristles at words like “meek, humility, submission, gentleness, tenderness”.  Truth be told, I do, too. 

As I learn what it means to reclaim a fully feminine version of myself and draw it out in those I counsel, I feel I must also see redemption come to words deemed dangerous.  This leads me to a curious question: can a Proverbs 31 woman be provocative or alluring?   

Just as "meek and humble" project negative connotations in the world, "provocative and alluring" elicit somewhat scandalous undertones, especially in a church setting.  Where do we—women—go from here? 

I’m reminded of the poetry of William Blake, a British poet from the 18^th century, and his works "The Lamb" and “The Tyger”.  Though the two poems appeared in separate collections—Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience—together they  address the question of how two completely opposite animals could find themselves fashioned by the same creator. 

How could a creator who made a lamb with “such a tender voice” create an animal with “fearful symmetry”?

For a class last fall, I had to participate in a “mock” counseling session and my client compared herself to a lion, insinuating she was dangerous.  As we talked through her metaphor, I asked her to tell me more about a “lioness” and what she does.  My ‘client’ shared how the lioness hunts and cares for her young—ultimately revealing a tender and protective side of this fierce animal.  The more we talked, I shared with my ‘client’ how I saw the lioness running fast and gracefully through the serengeti—further illustrating the duplicitous nature of the creature.  A tender, strong, graceful protector. 

If we go back to Blake’s works, we see gentleness and tenderness and strength and passion coursing through the veins of two animals, and we see both traits fully alive in the lioness.  So if we—women—are unique creations fashioned in the image of God don’t we also have the ability to display two contrasting traits? 

Humble, submissive, provocative, alluring. 

Sugar and spice.   

Not an either/or, but a both/and. 

Just as creation waits and groans for redemption, perhaps these words do, too.  

A Peculiar Place for a Wedding

An orange red sun ready to start a new day. Spanish moss slowly swaying in the trees. A small cottage flanked by blooming hanging baskets. Tiki torches and candles lighting the grounds. 

“This would be a great place for a wedding,” I thought.  Yet, the idea was rather absurd.  Sitting in a cemetery, waiting to receive communion at an Easter sunrise service, the setting mimicked something reminiscent of an Emily Dickinson poem.  Sure, I had forgotten about the gravestones I passed on the way in—it was dark, after all.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it’s not so peculiar. 

In her essay, “The Essence of Femininity: A Personal Perspective”, Elisabeth Elliott writes about God’s own display of what masculinity and femininity should entail: “In His inexorable love He demonstrated exactly what He had had in mind by calling Himself a Bridegroom—the Initiator, Protector, Provider, Lover—and Israel His bride, His beloved.  He rescued her, called her by name, wooed and won her, grieved when she went whoring after other gods.” 

A fight for my heart on the cross, a wedding feast promised, a Bridegroom who will never get cold feet. 

Sounds like an incredible romance.