I love period costumes. Anything from the 1700 or 1800s I just adore. I wish that people dressed like that today. We would look so sophisticated. While I love the clothing from that era, my real passion lies in the undergarments. I recently took a history of fashion class and my final project and paper was on the evolution of undergarments. I love underwear. But, my favorite kind of underwear is the corset. It fascinates me. I think it is just genius. An instant waist shrinker. For those of a not-so-delicate build, like me, you would have to appreciate the implications of this contraption. Imagine going from a size 22 to a 12, or a 16 to an 8? And all you have to do get dressed in the morning. I love corsets so much that I own two and I have patterns for three different kinds.
While the romantic ideals of the corset are wonderful, the fact is that they destroyed women’s bodies and made it impossible for women to do the simplest things. In the Victorian era women were cinched in, sometimes, 15 inches. Most corsets were constructed out of stiffened cloth and whalebone. During the French Revolution in the 1800s society took a break from the all-constricting undergarment and instead of women celebrating their new freedom they started dieing. You see, a lady of breeding wore a corset from about the age of twelve or thirteen. Women never learned to use their lungs to their full capacity and never developed core muscles, so that holding their own backs up was physically impossible. Because they didn’t know how to use their lungs properly women got sick from being over oxygenated and were more prone to diseases such as pneumonia. The only option was to be bound up again in a corset.
Throughout history we see women returning to the restrictive garment and molding their bodies into a shape that doesn’t tend to occur naturally. I think it is the same spiritually. There was a time in my life when I went through a fundamentalist “holier than thou” phase in my life. Everything that had even a hint of this earth was beneath me, people weren’t allowed to make mistakes and no one, and I mean absolutely no one was allowed to tell me how live my life regardless of how I was acting or behaving. What does all of this have to do with underwear you may ask? Well, here it is.
As I grew deeper and deeper into my holier than thou phase it was almost like I was tightening the corset that was around my waist. I couldn’t go to parties, what if people were going to be having fun? Where would that lead? I couldn’t go out with my friends, they might have problems--- and besides how would it look if Jesus showed up to take us all to heaven and I was caught with people who weren’t saved? I even had a problem with Church. You see my Church (as all Churches should be) was open to anyone who wanted to worship. To a pretentious, pompous, self-righteous, uhhhh…cow that is a definite no-no. You see I was trying to live as Jesus, perfect, pure and holy. I just forgot one simple component. Jesus lived with and loved the people of this earth.
With everyday I got more and more uptight and at every turn my corset got a little bit tighter. I got so caught up in presenting a God-like portrait to the world that during worship, instead opf falling on my knees before God all I could think about was that part of the song that the worship team played wrong. Praying no longer held any joy for me because part of me felt that God was beneath me. And reading my Bible—forget it, I wasn’t in the mood to be humble enough to accept God’s word. I knew that I was a sinner, but somehow I was convinced that my sins weren’t as bad as those around me and with just a little bit more discipline I could get rid of my own sin (my own sin!! Can you believe the implications of this statement?). I acted as though somehow I had been granted the privilege of being able to stand in front of God and expose my friends as the wretched sinners that they were.
My lowest moment was when I heard that my friend had slept with her boyfriend and was afraid that she might be pregnant. Upon the advent of hearing this news my mind was not full of thoughts for my friend, it was full of thoughts of how I would never be caught in a situation like that and how sexually pure and moral my current relationship was. I was so blinded by my attitude that I did not see that if my boyfriend and I kept carrying on the way we were we could have just as easily ended up in that very situation. Looking back it shocks me to see how mean I was. Instead of walking her through the vastness of God’s grace, my boyfriend and I threatened to squeal to the youth pastor if they didn’t come clean to him within the next week. It was done under the guise of helping them get counseling, but I’m sure that if you were there with me that day you could plainly see that it was done so that I could feed my false sense of security and so that I could deflect attention away from me and my crumbling spiritual walk onto some one who had “real problems”.
This corset was great because it hid my faults from the world. No one had to know about the lie I told or the guy that I looked at, as long as I was pretending to be Miss Super Christian 2005. However, as the months dragged on my corset started to have a mind of its own and began to take complete and total control. Like a Boa Constrictor it began to squeeze the life out of me. As the air was being squeezed from my lungs it became harder and harder to mask the pain that now consumed my chest and abdomen. I was cinched in at every corner, and every time that I thought that the corset could not get any tighter it did. My act fooled everybody, people came to me for advice, they came to learn from my wisdom and to hear what God had been teaching me, they came to me for prayer but the sad thing is that I had nothing to offer them because inside I was dying from hunger and thirst. My soul was literally starved for love and grace, but I was the only thing stopping me from receiving it.
It took God a long time to untangle the mess that I had created and there were many dark and silent days as I learned the gravity of my actions, but God pulled me through it nonetheless. He guided me through dark deep valleys and cold gloomy winters and in the end set me on the highest hill so that I may never walk without Him again. God stripped me bare and the process was harder than pretending to be fine but it had to be done. He bound up my wounds and healed me to my full capacity. When I look back on those days I shudder and mourn, but I also realize that it wouldn’t be difficult to step back into that again. God doesn’t want that for me and He for sure doesn’t want that you. Maybe you spend time with Him everyday and maybe for some of you your Bible and prayer journal are being held captive by the dust bunnies under your bed. Whatever it is break them free and crack them open, get active in His grace and swim in His love. Anything less than that is only damaging. For someone who has been there, run now. Run back to His arms, He will untie that corset and allow you to breathe in His majesty. Don’t put it off, no amount of pretending will or ever could save you. His love is too precious not to be a part of.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
My nana and Barry Manilow
My Nana is a spry old woman. Just to give you an example- she quit down hill skiing at the age of 78. She knows how to be tough. I think she gets that from her mother. My great-grandma had a lot of spitfire. She was such a troublemaker. There is a story of my great-grandma and my nana that my mother just loves. When my nana had finished nursing school and had secured a job she bought a lovely brown suit and a pair of low pumps. She spent the sum of her first paycheck on this ensemble and was very proud. Somehow my nana’s family ended up moving and after the move my nana had not been able to find her precious brown suit and the pumps that she had bought. She looked and looked and it never turned up. Years went by and my nana had forgotten about the suit. Thirty years after this incident when my nana was visiting a distant cousin in England her and her cousin got to talking about family and about my great-grandma who had long time passed. As the conversation progressed and memories were starting to be shared her cousin shared her favorite memory of my grandmother. About the time that my nana and her family moved her cousin’s family had stumbled on a bit of difficulty and my great-grandmother, in all kindness, sent my nana’s suit to her because she hated it and didn’t want it in her house!
That was my great-grandma for you. The moral of the story? I’m not too sure but that is the kind of women that are from my bloodline. Do you see what I have to live up to?
Well getting back my nana, there are times when I completely admire her strength. She is 82 has lived through the depression of the thirties, seen friends and lovers go to war, survived two husbands and a heart attack. Who couldn’t admire that? My nana’s first husband died when my mom was in her twenties and she remarried when I was just 8-weeks old.
Her second husband, my Grandpa Al, was a train conductor for CN Rail. He died when I was in grade six, from lung cancer. My grandpa Al was a fine man. He was the kind of guy who was always in the details and never wanted the spot light- you needed something done, he was your man. He spoiled us grand kids, pony rides at the local farmer’s fair, trips to the island and notes in our lunches when he came to visit. He chose to retire ten years late so that my nana could live a comfortable life incase he left this world before she did. He took very good care of my nana and treated my mom and my uncles, even though they were grown with their own kids, like they were his own. The last thing he did minutes before He left this world was make sure that my nana had a place to sit and a decent cup of tea. Our family lost a precious man the day he died.
I still think about him, about what he was in my life and the legacy of caring he left behind. I can usually do it without tearing up, but there is one thing that always stops me in my tracks. My nana and grandpa Al loved to go dancing…they went dancing once a week. After my grandpa died my nana used to crank up Barry Manilow- I never really understood it, I mean why Barry? But one time while Barry was playing I walked into the kitchen and the sight made me cry. There was my nana with her eyes closed and her arms around an imaginary figure of my grandpa, she was swirling around the kitchen dancing with the man of her dreams, listening to the music that they listened to when they danced together. I tiptoed away and cried in my room for a while.
(Supposedly) I am a grown woman these days and that scene still tugs at my heart, not because of Barry Manilow but because just like my nana I long to be in the arms of the man of my dreams. I long to dance the night away lost in the movement of two bodies swirling on the dance floor. I think it is because I am a girl, I think that we are wired like that. I’m pretty sure that guys don’t feel this way, but if you are a guy and I am dead wrong please let me know.
We were wired for love, for that electric charge that ignites whenever we touch and for women we long passion. The thing is that earthly love can’t bring this- I know I’ve tried. It always leaves you empty, wanting more but God’s love is eternal and ever constant. Girls want to be noticed we aren’t content with hiding our beauty or dancing with an imaginary figure- we want the real thing. We want Jesus. And Jesus wants us too. So crank up the Barry Manilow and start dancing, let Jesus take you and hold you close. Twirl the night away and rest in the knowledge that this can and will last forever. In John Hiatt’s song Have a Little Faith in Me, it goes “Time is our friend, because for us there is no end.” So keep dancing and let the God that controls all time and space hold you in His arms for eternity.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Tired
I have spent most of my life being tired. Physically, emotionally and spiritually. Today I feel exceptionally tired, I don’t know why, I don’t know how but I just do. And in this I know that I am not alone. I think that all of humanity is tired. From the ninety year olds to the toddlers, we are all tired. Whether we are tired of eating broccoli, our relationships or even tired of living a life that none of us will survive. We are simply tired. That is one thing that we all have in common from Canada to Calcutta.
You see life just drains us. A million things a day demand our attention. It’s the human condition. Some of us have gotten so tired that we have fallen asleep at the wheel. Our lives spin out of control and crash, leaving us broken, stunned and disoriented. We end up wondering how it all went wrong and how things could have gotten this bad and we always fail to realize that it started because we weren’t paying attention and got a little too close to the fire.
In this day and age who wouldn’t be tired? No wonder we are all tired. We spend 20 hours a day fighting. Fighting with the mirror because everyday it seems to betray us. Combating the morning commute. Laying siege on the checkbook because it won’t balance. And, finally, battling the business of our minds when it comes time to return to our dreamlands. Fight, fight, fight. Resist, resist, resist. That is what we are getting from the world.
Teenagers do it. I had a friend in high school who fought and fought with her boyfriend until she was too tired to say no to his demands for sex. Now she is too tired to have enough self-respect to say no to any guy who asks. Parents do it. They fight to make the mortgage and tuition costs that at the end of the day they are too tired for each other and eventually grow into strangers. Children do it. They fight the stigma of being a loser and end up leaving their true friends behind. I do it. I fight my pride and earthy nature and every night crawl into bed too tired to offer a prayer to the One who pulled me through the day.
There was a point in my life where I didn’t want to fight anymore. I turned to things I shouldn’t have in pursuit of ending the fight and ended up in this twisted web of dependency and addiction. I remember feeling a hundred years old and like I was fighting world war three all by myself. I would hide in my room, behind my scars hoping to evade the depression that stalked me. I felt like a prisoner in my own skin. My soul was ravaged by the enemy’s constant bombings and attacks that it was hardly recognizable- even to me.
I would look into the mirror and wonder who was looking back at me. I would sit and think about how I got this way and I wouldn’t be able to think of anything. “Surely I haven’t always been this way”, I would tell myself. What went wrong I would wonder. It wasn’t until months later that I had it figured out. I had fallen asleep at the wheel. I had carelessly given my heart away to anything that offered love and distraction. I hadn’t even noticed but somehow the enemy had moved into my territory and has set up camp. Slowly I watched as my life went into self-destruct mode and I was powerless to stop it. The enemy had caught me and I didn’t even know it. I dropped out, of faith, church, friends and life.
I lived with defeat and exhaustion for the better part of a year before God released it. It was then that I learned, truly, for the first time that God carries our burdens. One of the songs that my friend Simon wrote goes something like this, “Arrest me. Let this tired heart be captured.” And that is exactly what God did for me. He released my exhaustion and exchanged it for joy. He captured my heart back from the enemy’s clutches and breathed life into me. He fought the battles for me and won.
He longs to do the same for you. That checkbook? God can balance it. Your children? God can take them for a weekend while you catch your breath. Your need for rest? You haven’t slept until you have fallen asleep in His arms. Your heart? It hasn’t been loved until it has felt the warm love a savior.
God wants your struggles. There are things that we just aren’t meant to carry the brunt of. God’s plan isn’t so that you spend your days tired and barely scraping by. His plan is for you to spend your life praising Him. He wants your all and that includes your hopes, exhaustion and failures. Give it all to God. Offer Him up a simple prayer; He’ll take your guilt and fatigue. Don’t believe me? Then ask yourself why He went to the Cross in the first place.
You see life just drains us. A million things a day demand our attention. It’s the human condition. Some of us have gotten so tired that we have fallen asleep at the wheel. Our lives spin out of control and crash, leaving us broken, stunned and disoriented. We end up wondering how it all went wrong and how things could have gotten this bad and we always fail to realize that it started because we weren’t paying attention and got a little too close to the fire.
In this day and age who wouldn’t be tired? No wonder we are all tired. We spend 20 hours a day fighting. Fighting with the mirror because everyday it seems to betray us. Combating the morning commute. Laying siege on the checkbook because it won’t balance. And, finally, battling the business of our minds when it comes time to return to our dreamlands. Fight, fight, fight. Resist, resist, resist. That is what we are getting from the world.
Teenagers do it. I had a friend in high school who fought and fought with her boyfriend until she was too tired to say no to his demands for sex. Now she is too tired to have enough self-respect to say no to any guy who asks. Parents do it. They fight to make the mortgage and tuition costs that at the end of the day they are too tired for each other and eventually grow into strangers. Children do it. They fight the stigma of being a loser and end up leaving their true friends behind. I do it. I fight my pride and earthy nature and every night crawl into bed too tired to offer a prayer to the One who pulled me through the day.
There was a point in my life where I didn’t want to fight anymore. I turned to things I shouldn’t have in pursuit of ending the fight and ended up in this twisted web of dependency and addiction. I remember feeling a hundred years old and like I was fighting world war three all by myself. I would hide in my room, behind my scars hoping to evade the depression that stalked me. I felt like a prisoner in my own skin. My soul was ravaged by the enemy’s constant bombings and attacks that it was hardly recognizable- even to me.
I would look into the mirror and wonder who was looking back at me. I would sit and think about how I got this way and I wouldn’t be able to think of anything. “Surely I haven’t always been this way”, I would tell myself. What went wrong I would wonder. It wasn’t until months later that I had it figured out. I had fallen asleep at the wheel. I had carelessly given my heart away to anything that offered love and distraction. I hadn’t even noticed but somehow the enemy had moved into my territory and has set up camp. Slowly I watched as my life went into self-destruct mode and I was powerless to stop it. The enemy had caught me and I didn’t even know it. I dropped out, of faith, church, friends and life.
I lived with defeat and exhaustion for the better part of a year before God released it. It was then that I learned, truly, for the first time that God carries our burdens. One of the songs that my friend Simon wrote goes something like this, “Arrest me. Let this tired heart be captured.” And that is exactly what God did for me. He released my exhaustion and exchanged it for joy. He captured my heart back from the enemy’s clutches and breathed life into me. He fought the battles for me and won.
He longs to do the same for you. That checkbook? God can balance it. Your children? God can take them for a weekend while you catch your breath. Your need for rest? You haven’t slept until you have fallen asleep in His arms. Your heart? It hasn’t been loved until it has felt the warm love a savior.
God wants your struggles. There are things that we just aren’t meant to carry the brunt of. God’s plan isn’t so that you spend your days tired and barely scraping by. His plan is for you to spend your life praising Him. He wants your all and that includes your hopes, exhaustion and failures. Give it all to God. Offer Him up a simple prayer; He’ll take your guilt and fatigue. Don’t believe me? Then ask yourself why He went to the Cross in the first place.
Feeling White
Today I was watching Oprah, I hardly ever watch Oprah. I think that I have mixed feelings about the TV empress. Granted she does speak on behalf of many who would otherwise not be heard. But sometimes I feel like she offers us another way to look at the world and feel all white and safe. Regardless of my feelings for her, I must say that after watching her show today I started thinking.
All my life I have wanted to go to Africa. It wasn’t until high school that I figured out which part of Africa that I wanted to go to. Uganda. You see the boy that I was sort of seeing wanted to go there and we planned to ditch North America after high school and go work somewhere in Uganda. Well that never happened. Neither he nor I have made it off of this continent.
I want to go there because of the tragedies that are ensuing in the wake of the raids of the LRA (the Lord’s Resistance Army). And this is exactly what was on Oprah today. A man named Joseph Kony runs the LRA. And like Rasputin, believes he is a messenger of god. The LRA raids villages, wiping out complete families from great-grandparents to grandchildren. They kidnap teenagers and children and force them to be soldiers and sex slaves. Boys who are not yet thirteen are forced to kill family members, friends and strangers. Girls are forced to marry soldiers or are used as concubines. They keep the children there by driving fear into their souls. They tell them not to think of home, their families or their friends because if they do and the LRA finds out, they say they will kill them. They mean it. Another way that they keep the children from running away is by beating them. They beat them and keep them within inches of death, that way they aren’t strong enough to make a full escape.
The ones that get away are left with horrible physical reminders of the cruelty and malice of their former captors. They arrive at rescue camps missing lips and noses and limbs, you name it. Women arrive 9 months pregnant or with babies fathered by one of the men that gang-raped her when her village was raided. They have scars all over their bodies from being cut with glass and from the extensive beatings. A generation is being ruined right before our eyes and we don’t care.
I finished watching Oprah and then I cried all the way through “Gilmore Girls”. I went upstairs and tried to forget the statistics and the horror that I had known for ages. I went upstairs feeling with part of me feeling so righteous and white, you see one day I was going to go to Uganda and help fix the problem. I had supported one or two missionaries in my day, and all I wanted to do was pat myself on the back. I sat down at the dinner table and started to feel sick, I had become like them—I had become the very person that I hated. I became the person who watched TV, agrees that something has to be done and leaves someone else to do it. I felt so hypocritical, so white. For dinner I ate my white chicken with my white French fries, my white salad dressing and chased it all down with white ice cream. I felt sick!
My thoughts are filled with the mission that God gives all of humanity. We are called to speak for the unheard, to give to the least of these. God calls us to a purpose beyond ourselves, and it is within my own self that I have been living. My thoughts flooded toward heaven. When I see God on judgment day will I be faced with my chosen blindness? I was faced with my humanity and did not want to be on this earth, simply because it was filled with people like me. I truly believe that God does not want us to sit in silence while His children and our brothers and sisters face horror. Ignorance is not bliss.
I think that Satan’s greatest tool is to make us self-absorbed so that we cannot see beyond our own pathetic existence. He twists us and manipulates us so that every way we turn we only see ourselves. God wants to do the opposite he wants to let us crawl outside of ourselves in a world that desperately needs Him. When you go to bed tonight, pray that you would be removed from yourself and that God would let you see the world through His eyes. Then take action.
All my life I have wanted to go to Africa. It wasn’t until high school that I figured out which part of Africa that I wanted to go to. Uganda. You see the boy that I was sort of seeing wanted to go there and we planned to ditch North America after high school and go work somewhere in Uganda. Well that never happened. Neither he nor I have made it off of this continent.
I want to go there because of the tragedies that are ensuing in the wake of the raids of the LRA (the Lord’s Resistance Army). And this is exactly what was on Oprah today. A man named Joseph Kony runs the LRA. And like Rasputin, believes he is a messenger of god. The LRA raids villages, wiping out complete families from great-grandparents to grandchildren. They kidnap teenagers and children and force them to be soldiers and sex slaves. Boys who are not yet thirteen are forced to kill family members, friends and strangers. Girls are forced to marry soldiers or are used as concubines. They keep the children there by driving fear into their souls. They tell them not to think of home, their families or their friends because if they do and the LRA finds out, they say they will kill them. They mean it. Another way that they keep the children from running away is by beating them. They beat them and keep them within inches of death, that way they aren’t strong enough to make a full escape.
The ones that get away are left with horrible physical reminders of the cruelty and malice of their former captors. They arrive at rescue camps missing lips and noses and limbs, you name it. Women arrive 9 months pregnant or with babies fathered by one of the men that gang-raped her when her village was raided. They have scars all over their bodies from being cut with glass and from the extensive beatings. A generation is being ruined right before our eyes and we don’t care.
I finished watching Oprah and then I cried all the way through “Gilmore Girls”. I went upstairs and tried to forget the statistics and the horror that I had known for ages. I went upstairs feeling with part of me feeling so righteous and white, you see one day I was going to go to Uganda and help fix the problem. I had supported one or two missionaries in my day, and all I wanted to do was pat myself on the back. I sat down at the dinner table and started to feel sick, I had become like them—I had become the very person that I hated. I became the person who watched TV, agrees that something has to be done and leaves someone else to do it. I felt so hypocritical, so white. For dinner I ate my white chicken with my white French fries, my white salad dressing and chased it all down with white ice cream. I felt sick!
My thoughts are filled with the mission that God gives all of humanity. We are called to speak for the unheard, to give to the least of these. God calls us to a purpose beyond ourselves, and it is within my own self that I have been living. My thoughts flooded toward heaven. When I see God on judgment day will I be faced with my chosen blindness? I was faced with my humanity and did not want to be on this earth, simply because it was filled with people like me. I truly believe that God does not want us to sit in silence while His children and our brothers and sisters face horror. Ignorance is not bliss.
I think that Satan’s greatest tool is to make us self-absorbed so that we cannot see beyond our own pathetic existence. He twists us and manipulates us so that every way we turn we only see ourselves. God wants to do the opposite he wants to let us crawl outside of ourselves in a world that desperately needs Him. When you go to bed tonight, pray that you would be removed from yourself and that God would let you see the world through His eyes. Then take action.
Sacrifice
The night that Sarah died, my community was sick with grief. All the parents held their children a little tighter that night and made a point of tucking them in safely. Everyone breathed a selfish sigh of relief except for two parents. The moment those words fell from the surgeon’s lips two hearts shattered like crystal on the concrete. Dreams were brought to a screaming halt, and the world got a little darker for that family. It’s odd because even being so young I can still remember the presence of God that night. I remember an odd blanket that came a sheltered our little community.
Years later a little girl was playing in her front yard and she ran into the street to chase after her ball. She was too little to be seen and her little memorial garden is still full of flowers and it sits just in front of the fence in her yard. Somebody built a memorial playground for her and I used to go and sit there as a teenager watching the kids I babysat play and think about the sorrow her parents must have felt as they watched their daughter leave this earth.
In late October 1999, my father got a call. A couple that he knew from Bible school had lost their two sons in a horrible car accident. The authorities have no idea what happened to the boys. Just like that a family was torn to pieces. All of these parents were forced to deal with the unthinkable, the loss of a child. I am a Lord Of The Rings fan and there is one scene in the second movie that always gets me. It’s the scene where King Theoden turns to his niece, Eowyn, and tells her that a father should never have to bury his son. My thoughts always turn to those parents that have had to surrender their children and all the hopes and dreams that a parents keeps for their future.
There is someone else who went through the events that I have just described. The difference? He sent His son willingly. When God put His son on this earth, He willingly wrote Jesus’ death sentence, with His own hands. God Almighty knew what would happen to Jesus the moment that He claimed to be God.
God knew that the only way that He could ever look on the world was by sacrificing His son. I don’t know why He did it, and I’ll never understand the kind of love that possessed Him to do it in the first place. Can you imagine the moments leading to the crucifixion? God sees Judas talking to the officials; His heart must have been racing. Can you imagine sending your son to be sacrificed and then having to watch all of the events unfold?
Your son is betrayed by one of His closest friends. Then denied by another. He is humiliated, tortured, degraded. He is stripped naked for all the world to see. The very people that you are sending Him to die for chose a known criminal to be set free, instead of your son- the only person to ever walk the earth and lead a sinless life. As He is paraded through the streets, forced to carry the object of His own demise, He is laughed at, mocked and people are throwing things at Him. You watched Him stumble and fall to the place of His death, all for your own cause. You watch as they drive nails into His hands and feet, stick a spear in His side and mocking crown on His head. As you sit there looking down, you watch your son take on all that you hate. You watch Him take the place of rapists, murderers and credit card thieves. You can hear His screams but can’t help Him.
Multiply that by a million and you have barely scratched the surface of what God did that day. You want to hear the bone chilling part? He did it all in your name. God isn’t some twisted sadistic Father who gets pleasure out of the sacrifice of the Cross. He is a loving, self-sacrificing Father who sent His son in your name. Imagine the grief of a parent who has just lost their child; now find out that they sent them to die so that you could be free.
Years later a little girl was playing in her front yard and she ran into the street to chase after her ball. She was too little to be seen and her little memorial garden is still full of flowers and it sits just in front of the fence in her yard. Somebody built a memorial playground for her and I used to go and sit there as a teenager watching the kids I babysat play and think about the sorrow her parents must have felt as they watched their daughter leave this earth.
In late October 1999, my father got a call. A couple that he knew from Bible school had lost their two sons in a horrible car accident. The authorities have no idea what happened to the boys. Just like that a family was torn to pieces. All of these parents were forced to deal with the unthinkable, the loss of a child. I am a Lord Of The Rings fan and there is one scene in the second movie that always gets me. It’s the scene where King Theoden turns to his niece, Eowyn, and tells her that a father should never have to bury his son. My thoughts always turn to those parents that have had to surrender their children and all the hopes and dreams that a parents keeps for their future.
There is someone else who went through the events that I have just described. The difference? He sent His son willingly. When God put His son on this earth, He willingly wrote Jesus’ death sentence, with His own hands. God Almighty knew what would happen to Jesus the moment that He claimed to be God.
God knew that the only way that He could ever look on the world was by sacrificing His son. I don’t know why He did it, and I’ll never understand the kind of love that possessed Him to do it in the first place. Can you imagine the moments leading to the crucifixion? God sees Judas talking to the officials; His heart must have been racing. Can you imagine sending your son to be sacrificed and then having to watch all of the events unfold?
Your son is betrayed by one of His closest friends. Then denied by another. He is humiliated, tortured, degraded. He is stripped naked for all the world to see. The very people that you are sending Him to die for chose a known criminal to be set free, instead of your son- the only person to ever walk the earth and lead a sinless life. As He is paraded through the streets, forced to carry the object of His own demise, He is laughed at, mocked and people are throwing things at Him. You watched Him stumble and fall to the place of His death, all for your own cause. You watch as they drive nails into His hands and feet, stick a spear in His side and mocking crown on His head. As you sit there looking down, you watch your son take on all that you hate. You watch Him take the place of rapists, murderers and credit card thieves. You can hear His screams but can’t help Him.
Multiply that by a million and you have barely scratched the surface of what God did that day. You want to hear the bone chilling part? He did it all in your name. God isn’t some twisted sadistic Father who gets pleasure out of the sacrifice of the Cross. He is a loving, self-sacrificing Father who sent His son in your name. Imagine the grief of a parent who has just lost their child; now find out that they sent them to die so that you could be free.
Guilt
My first friend in elementary school was Sarah. As two magnets are drawn to each other, so are outcasts because the playground is one place that a child dare not stand alone. Sarah and I became quick friends. I never really understood why she was an outcast like me, because she seemed so perfectly normal. As our friendship grew so did my confidence and I started to make other friends. As most elementary school friendships do, Sarah and I got caught up in the vicious cycle of being best friends, “breaking up”, spreading cooties and being best friends again all within the course of a week. During one of the “cootie spreading” days, Sarah and I had a fight. The fight was astronomical (well at least for someone in the primary grades) and it ended in a “Fine!” “Fine!” and I watched her walk away.
That night little Sarah was walking to catechism and was hit by a drunk driver, her brothers watched on powerless to help her. She died shortly after in surgery, her little body just couldn’t handle the injuries. I don’t even want to think about the surgeon who had to deliver the news to her awaiting parents. I can’t even imagine the words that fell to the floor that night or the cries of pain that were lifted into the heavens as the news circulated our tight-knit community. That is the first time I remember feeling a sense of guilt. It was hard not having Sarah at school the next day. I crawled underneath my bed and asked Jesus if He would let her come back just like He did, but He didn’t and I had to go to school and listen to all the school bullies and people that I had called my “friends” talk about how glad they were that she was dead.
I was angry and confused, mad at my friends and mad at Jesus for taking her away. But most of all I was angry with myself for not remaining true to my best friend. I felt horrible. Guilt has this way of gnawing away at your innards. It’s like the Ebola virus. At first you don’t notice it, but it creeps up on you and tears apart your insides and there is no cure. While I sat at her funeral I wondered if people could see right through my shallowness. I felt like Lenin on the judging block for all the world to see. I wondered if everyone around me could smell the guilt as it seeped from my pores.
You would think that I would have learned my lesson, that I would embrace Jesus and not care about what people said or how they acted. Instead, I am ashamed to say that the opposite is true. I carried on in my ways of “cootie spreading” and deceiving all the while I feeling the guilt of what happened with Sarah eat me from the inside out.
It wasn’t until years later that I was able to grasp the concept of God’s grace and how He released me from carrying around guilt the moment He sent His son to the Cross. The fact is that His grace covers all…even fights in the playground. Could you imagine all the free time we would have if we just embraced the grace of the Father? God’s grace is a mystery that even the most intellectual human being could only hope to grasp. His grace acts as a Sherpa, carrying our baggage and leading us to our destination. His grace allows us to be weak because we cannot accept help when we are proud.
God is funny in the way that He relentlessly pursues us. After all we have done and all that we do, He still stands there calling us home. At the end of the day it is Him that whispers in our hearts “Come back to me, my child. I love you.” Sometimes we don’t hear the whispers and sometimes we do. Nevertheless they are there and it doesn’t take much to slow down and let the whispers fall from the sky and cradle us bringing us back to the loving arms of God.
That night little Sarah was walking to catechism and was hit by a drunk driver, her brothers watched on powerless to help her. She died shortly after in surgery, her little body just couldn’t handle the injuries. I don’t even want to think about the surgeon who had to deliver the news to her awaiting parents. I can’t even imagine the words that fell to the floor that night or the cries of pain that were lifted into the heavens as the news circulated our tight-knit community. That is the first time I remember feeling a sense of guilt. It was hard not having Sarah at school the next day. I crawled underneath my bed and asked Jesus if He would let her come back just like He did, but He didn’t and I had to go to school and listen to all the school bullies and people that I had called my “friends” talk about how glad they were that she was dead.
I was angry and confused, mad at my friends and mad at Jesus for taking her away. But most of all I was angry with myself for not remaining true to my best friend. I felt horrible. Guilt has this way of gnawing away at your innards. It’s like the Ebola virus. At first you don’t notice it, but it creeps up on you and tears apart your insides and there is no cure. While I sat at her funeral I wondered if people could see right through my shallowness. I felt like Lenin on the judging block for all the world to see. I wondered if everyone around me could smell the guilt as it seeped from my pores.
You would think that I would have learned my lesson, that I would embrace Jesus and not care about what people said or how they acted. Instead, I am ashamed to say that the opposite is true. I carried on in my ways of “cootie spreading” and deceiving all the while I feeling the guilt of what happened with Sarah eat me from the inside out.
It wasn’t until years later that I was able to grasp the concept of God’s grace and how He released me from carrying around guilt the moment He sent His son to the Cross. The fact is that His grace covers all…even fights in the playground. Could you imagine all the free time we would have if we just embraced the grace of the Father? God’s grace is a mystery that even the most intellectual human being could only hope to grasp. His grace acts as a Sherpa, carrying our baggage and leading us to our destination. His grace allows us to be weak because we cannot accept help when we are proud.
God is funny in the way that He relentlessly pursues us. After all we have done and all that we do, He still stands there calling us home. At the end of the day it is Him that whispers in our hearts “Come back to me, my child. I love you.” Sometimes we don’t hear the whispers and sometimes we do. Nevertheless they are there and it doesn’t take much to slow down and let the whispers fall from the sky and cradle us bringing us back to the loving arms of God.
T-Shirts
You know the feeling you get when you walk into a second hand shop and find the perfect shirt? If you are a Value Village fan like I am you’ll know what I am talking about. The shirt fits just right, it is some outrageous color and the design on it pays homage to Mr. T or to some company’s opening day 24-hour uberpalooza extravaganza. Well, that is how I came across Christianity.
I have been blessed with two amazing parents who, each on their own and as a couple, have incredible faith. If it weren’t for them, their guidance (and sometimes force) I wouldn’t have the walk with God that I have today.
I have been attending Church since before I could even hope to remember. However, my first memory of Church is hearing the Easter story. I don’t remember actually being able to grasp the concept of the greatness of Jesus’ sacrifice but I remember being enthralled in fact that He rose from the dead. No one I had ever known who had died did that, so I decided right then and there that Jesus was cool and if He could defy the clutches of death then I would be His girl.
I had, lets just say, a (way) less than normal childhood. About a year or so before my little brother was born my dad fell in love with a little community called “Queensborough”. When he proposed we move there, my mother put her foot down, she refused to even set foot in a community with the name Queensborough. “Think of the kind of people that live there, Rodd”, she would say. “I’m not leaving this wonderful neighborhood for some dumpy shack in Queensborough!” I can only imagine the persuading my father must have done to actually get her to go there and I can only imagine the persuading my mom must have done to get him to move there within three months.
Queensborough was, at that point, a tiny community. Affectionately called the “armpit” of New Westminster, it was there that I spent a great deal of my childhood and grew up. The school that I attended was named after Queen Elizabeth and the students were truly diverse. I remember from day one that I was different from the other students. School was never one of those places that I found friends easily. I remember lying awake in my bed at night wondering what made me so different from the other students.
I quickly learned that it was this man named Jesus that separated me from the other students and it was my perfect attendance at Church that left others puzzled and confused. Whenever I was lucky enough to have a sleepover with someone I was always the first one to leave Sunday morning because I had an obligation to fulfill.
Once I got this figured out I realized that if Jesus was as cool as I thought He was He wouldn’t mind it if I pretended that we weren’t friends during school hours. I was sure He would understand if we could just catch up on the way home from school. To a child in elementary school, you have to understand that this plan was utter brilliance. I got the best of both worlds, Jesus on the way to and from school (on the weekends too, if there wasn’t a sleepover) and my school friends during class and recess. So it was there in my elementary years that I first learned and perfected the art of deception.
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