Daily 5 - Day 259

So, as days and weeks go, this one has kind of stunk.  And with that in mind, as I headed out to start my day this morning, I made special note of anything and everything that made me smile, jotting a bunch of the items on a notepad in my purse.  It was a worthwhile exercise I think, and certainly makes writing the daily 5 list tonight far easier.  So, today's daily 5:

1. two beautiful little Eastern European girls on the bus with their mom (aunt?) this morning.  They had infectious and mischievous smiles that brought a smile to my own face.
2. the doctor's appointment I had today went so much better than I was imagining it might.
3. I spent 15 minutes or so chatting with a random stranger at the bus stop, while we both stood in the stormy weather and waited for the bus to arrive.  What made me smile about this was not so much the conversation itself, but the fact that I was open to it, that I wasn't so lost within my self, so internal, that I wasn't aware of the other person, or choosing to ignore her.
4. The tech who drew my blood for the bloodwork my doctor ordered was really good.  I'm not excessively queasy, but I don't love needles, and she was very efficient and didn't hurt me too much.
5. The pharmacy had the meds I needed refilled in stock.  I've learned the hard way that I can't always expect this to be the case.
6. Because of the snow storm, my office got closed for the day.  So, what was going to be a half-day off to go to my medical appointments turned into a full day, and likely won't cost me the half-day of personal time I'd planned on.
7. Because I was in medical offices and a lab, I couldn't have my phone on.  Instead I sat and read "Jesus Freak" and loved what I was reading
8. Candles lit all around my bedroom this afternoon
9. Scented oil burning in the oil burner
10. a really helpful guy at the gas station tonight when I had some trouble with one of my tires
11. Feeling quite sheltered and cushioned by God amidst all the crazy life has thrown my way this week.
12. Finished reading "Jesus Freak".  So good, down to the last words.
13. organic dried apples
14. Just chatting on the phone with T. for a bit tonight.  There's something about talking with family on a really rough day that always helps for me.  (Of course it also almost always means that I cry, but I'm learning that that's not so unhealthy, or something I need to be embarrassed about either.)
15. Tomorrow is Friday.  I'm almost at the end of this goofy week.

Daily 5 - Day 257

Today's Daily 5:

1. Leftover pasta with peas and bacon from supper last night
2. Got an iphone!!! (which means my cell phone company was into customer loyalty and gave me a good plan discount to keep me from switching to a different provider)
3. a good conversation with our receptionist in the midst of a rough afternoon
4. reading "Jesus Freak" by Sara Miles
5. waffles for supper

Asking for Help (Thoughts from "Jesus Freak")

I read this passage from the "Healing" section of Sara Miles' latest book "Jesus Freak: Feeding, Healing, Raising the Dead" last night, and was struck deeply by it.

I was still terrible at asking for help...I was good at dismissing other people's hesitations, the endless cycle of excuses I heard all the time: I don't want to bother you. Nobody would understand. Other people have real troubles; my problems aren't serious enough. My problems are too serious; there's nothing anyone can do. I'm embarrassed. I'm OK. Nobody really listens anyway.


My own excuses were equally dumb. But they were so embedded in my self-image as a capable grown-up that I almost always chose to keep my problems to myself...Asking for attention, comfort, time, listening, prayers - that made my skin crawl.

And yet, when I could force myself to do it, I saw how getting to the point of asking was an essential part of my healing. As much as I might fantasize that my real friends, my most beloved family members, the best priest or teacher or spiritual director would guess just what I wanted and provide it, the fact was I had to ask. I had to put myself in a place of truth, of admitting that I needed help.

"What do you think I should do?" I'd finally say to Paul. I hated being told what to do.

"Honey, I'm worried," I'd finally say to Martha. I always wanted to be the one who told others not to worry.

"I'm afraid," I'd finally say aloud. "I'm upset. Hold me."

And then, usually, I'd discover - no matter whether the person I asked had the perfect response, whether the help disappointed or delighted - that something had changed. I wasn't alone with myself, with my ingrown desires and denials, with the thing that I'd been stewing about in private. I'd given myself over to a relationship.

These words hit me deeply.  I stink at asking for help.  I shared the passage with a dear friend by email late last night and chuckled, when, among other things in her response this morning, I read, "the 'capable grown up' - i actually thought those were your words at first... "

I've cultivated a certain independence.  And a certain pride.  Years of depression created an aversion to asking for help.  I got tired of being the one with problems, the one who just couldn't get it together, who couldn't be "fixed."

About a month ago I sent out a prayer request email to a number of friends, detailing a particularly challenging family and life circumstance that I am embroiled in and asking for their prayers and support as I navigate this difficult situation.  I received a wide variety of encouraging responses, but the one that meant the most was from the same dear friend who I emailed the quote from Sara Miles to last night.  Her response was to thank me for sharing and to acknowledge that she knew just how hard it was for me to break some of the silence that had encompassed this particular situation, and admit that I couldn't walk this journey out alone.

That capable grown up thing stings.  I'm nearly 27 years old, and two months ago I moved into my grandma's basement.  I've been teased by quite a number of people for that move.  At 26 you don't usually move back in with family, you move further away from family.  You definitely don't move in with your incredibly nosy, clingy, overbearing, smothering grandmother.  Especially when you're also lacking your own vehicle and she lives on a very inconvenient city transit route.

I moved in because I felt that was where Jesus was leading (a whole other story, I suppose.)  I moved in because the cheaper rent is allowing me more quickly pay down debts accumulated.  Debts that I have a strong desire to be free from.

And living there has been awful.  Not only for the expected personality conflicts, but for a whole variety of family and personal and spiritual reasons.  Plus, I've had to continually find that place of humility and ask for help.  I needed to ask for rides to and from necessary errands.  For advice in navigating some of the delicate situations that have arisen.  And I had to ask friends, near and far to pray for me and stand with me as I navigate this season of life.

I even had to admit to God that I didn't have it all together.

A few years back, Sara Miles' first book, "Take This Bread" offered language to the journey I was on.  It spoke deeply to the crazy experiences of life and relationship (with God and people) that I was walking through at the time.

I'm finding, two years later, that her newest book is doing the same thing.  The irony of that, the God sense of humor in the timing of my reading of these two books, makes me laugh.

In the meantime, I'm about half-way through "Jesus Freak" and I'd strongly recommend it.

Random Tuesday

These are some of the random things I'm thinking about this morning:

• a passage from Sara Miles' "Jesus Freak" that I read last night (more on that later today, I think)
• q-tips can be a dangerous implement if you're clumsy and not quite awake yet. 
• After three mornings of starting work early, I've made up for the time I was late last week due to my eye appointment.  Thankfully, this week's Thursday morning medical appointment is already covered - I took half a personal day, and don't have to be in to the office until 1:00 that day.
• I had a really bad customer service experience at the Bell Store the other day.  I was trying to price iphone plans (looking at getting an upgrade!) and the guy behind the desk could not have been less interested in answering my questions.  In fact, he had a text book obviously spread open on the counter, and paused, while waiting for the computer as he looked up my account information, to make notes on a cue card.  (Can you say "final that I've not properly studied for tomorrow"?)  He then looked straight at me, punched up his tone with attitude, and said, "It doesn't matter anyway, we don't have any iphones in stock."  Oh, well, excuse me for offering you a sale if you'd just answered my questions.  I've left a message for the manager of the store to call me back.  I just wish I'd remembered to get his name.
• The trouble with reading blogs is that my list of books and music to check out becomes unmanageable.  Because I read blogs with people who have similar interests to me, when they recommend a title or an album, I generally jot the information on a post-it note, which eventually gets transferred to a notebook list of books and music that I keep at home.  I cannot read fast enough.  I'll never get through all of these books.  (Not to mention the nearly 200 titles sitting on my shelves at home that I've purchased and not read at all, or purchased and only partially read.)  I jotted down three more book titles and one album title just this morning.
• I'm wearing the softest scarf ever today.  I wish I had whole outfits made out of this material.

I'm sure there's more, but I'll leave it there.  There is stuff on my desk asking for my attention, and I should probably pay attention to it, since, you know, that's what I get paid for!

Back later, with thoughts on Sara Miles's latest book, and how her words are again giving form to my own journey.

Daily 5 - Day 255

Today's Daily 5:

1. Got my laundry done.  I love the smell of clean laundry.
2. Lit candles around my bedroom
3. A hug from my mom
4. Vietnamese take-out for supper
5. reading Sara Miles' "Jesus Freak"

Do You Want to be Well?

"Jesus brushes all our differences away.  He is, after all, healing us into himself, dragging us alongside all the other damaged, undeserving people into his body.  Healing with Jesus isn't New Age-y and gentle.  It is frequently about pain:  which might explain, I realized, why Jesus often asks the desperate people who come to him, Do you want to be well?  Do you want to be well if getting well hurts?  Do you want to be well if it separates you from your old identity?  Do you want to be well more than you want to stay the same?

Real healing means, more than anything, following the truth: and thus a call to change and conversion."

(Sara Miles, "Jesus Freak")

I read this today, and found her words deeply striking.

I've asked those questions.  Do I want to be well if it hurts?  Do I want to be well if it means I'm totally separate from what I was?

The words continue to grow stronger within me.  I want to be well.

Daily 5 - Day 249

For those who are curious, the background to the daily 5 can be found here.

Today's Daily 5:

1. Watching old episodes of ER on DVD
2. The funny little routines that have come to mark life at Grandma's
3. My dad unexpectedly having time to take my car to the mechanic for me today, instead of tomorrow as we'd planned, and calling me at work to offer to take care of that for me.
4. My "new" car passed the insurance inspection - I just have to fax in the paperwork tomorrow and it's all official.  Now I just need a name for it!
5. A mechanic who is very kind in what he charges me for - because he had done maintenance on the car for the previous owner, he didn't charge me for the inspection, just the oil change he also did today at my request.  I also love that he's really honest - he'll tell me if something is wrong with the car, and then he'll tell me if it needs to be fixed right away, or if it's something that can just be watched for the time-being.  It's so nice as a less than car savvy girl to have a mechanic who I know and trust.  I'd be in so much trouble if I ever move away from Calgary and my mechanic - I'm definitely the biggest target around when it comes to being dumb about car stuff!
6. I made pasta for dinner tonight and froze 4 meals.  It made enough for my supper tonight, lunch tomorrow, and four frozen meals.  Cooking for one is a pain, but if I can store a few favorite meals like this in the freezer, it should help with combating the less than healthy eating habits that have reared their ugly head since my arrival in Grandma's house.  I'm hoping to freeze a few other meals over the coming weeks, sort of cooking a "normal" sized (i.e. not for one person) meal, and then freezing several portions for work lunches or suppers on those nights when cooking is just too time consuming.  I'd specifically like to make some mini lasagna's to take out and pop in the oven.  The freezing thing works well for me, too, since I don't like to eat a ton of leftovers.  If I can pull it out in a couple of weeks, it's so much more likely to not get wasted.
7. I'm still really enjoying the audio book, "Stuff Christians Like" that I've been listening to most recently.  It's brought a lot of smiles as I've been sitting on the train and bus listening.  It's also the free audio book of the month on Christianaudio.com
8. I'm loving the book, "Jesus Freak" by Sara Miles that I've been reading as well.
9. Filtered water for drinking (from a glass bottle)
10. Watching a couple of movies in the background on my laptop in the last day or so, as I've been working on other stuff.

Daily 5 - Day 230

Today's Daily 5:

1. 230 days of making these lists
2. Started the newest book by Sara Miles on the bus ride home tonight
3. Took the bus home again - so nice to have that quiet space.  Tonight I read, and dozed, and listened to an audio book for a while.
4. Updated my budget - love that this is still working so well for me.  And love seeing the results as my debt slowly decreases and my savings slowly grow.
5. Got a phone call from my bank checking on if I had any questions about my accounts - that was great, because I did have a question about my line of credit but definitely haven't been able to find time to call them
6. Productive day at work
7. Got through several "to do's" at home tonight as well
8. Made some tentative Easter weekend plans with my family
9. Have been denying myself chocolate all evening, and promising myself a piece as a treat before bed - totally anticipating that.
10. Think I'll actually be in bed kind of early tonight.  Hopefully that'll give me a better chance at actually getting a bit of rest.

Daily 5 - Day 229

Today's Daily 5:

1. Full moon tonight.
2. Holy Week
3. Took the long way home on the bus tonight, got some much needed quiet and space for reflection.  Thinking I might try it again tomorrow.
4. The quiet space left me free to actually accomplish things when I got home - I love the feeling of checking things off of a list
5. Figuring out how to slice piping hot pizza when the knife options are limited to a dull paring knife with a 2 inch blade or a serrated bread knife that I'm pretty sure is as old as the house (like maybe 40 years).  And being able to laugh at how ridiculous it seems is that a month ago I lived with a roommate in a well-equipped kitchen because we both loved to cook, and now I live in my grandma's house where pizza gets baked on odd pans because there's no pizza pan in sight, and it gets sliced with a dull 2 inch paring knife, because that's more functional than a decades old bread knife!
6. Finished (and wrote the review for) the book it's felt like I've been slogging through for a while now.
7. Anticipating starting to read a book I purchased a few months back.  Looking forward to starting this title, Jesus Freak by Sara Miles, particularly during Holy Week.
8. Trading a few emails with a dear friend
9. Wrote a snail mail card for another friend, ready for mailing tomorrow.  I love sending (and receiving for that matter) real mail.
10. Thinking about the story of Hagar, and the God who sees.  Something profound in that as I walk through some very uncertain moments right now.

Go and do likewise...

I haven't had time to read this book yet, but I got the following quote in an email and loved it:

Jesus is real, and so, praise God, are we. Every single thing the resurrected Jesus does on earth he does through our bodies. You're fed, you're healed, you're forgiven, you're pronounced clean. You are loved ... Go and do likewise.


- Sarah Miles, from her book Jesus Freak

Daily 5 - Day 178

Today's Daily 5:

1. There is a certain sense of accomplishment in the fact that I got behind the wheel of a car on my own again today.  It was hard, and will probably be hard for a while, but I made it.
2. Thankful for my mom, who drove and/or let me use the car for a bit, so that I could get some errands done.
3. Went for lunch with a good friend at "The Lazy Loaf and Kettle" - I haven't been there in years, but the sandwich I had was GREAT!  I don't know what it was that made it so fabulous, maybe just that I got to choose what went on it, so that it wasn't like a typical restaurant or store sandwich with stuff you don't like, but it was a really good sandwich.
4. Got the new Sara Miles book "Jesus Freak" in the mail today.  Can't wait to read it!  Funny timing actually, given the anniversaries of this week.  Her first book was very life-shaping, and I actually finished reading it for the first time about two years ago to the week, on the plane back to Canada from England.
5. A package came from my friend LP/CA today, filled with goodies that made me smile.  It came with my mom this morning, when we were headed out, and I waited all day (I've actually been waiting for several days, since it arrived at my parents' house a few days ago) until I was done all the necessary tasks and could really enjoy sitting and opening it, to crack it open and discover what she'd sent.  (Actually, there are unconfirmed reports that I may have giggled and squealed a little on discovering various things in the package, but they're going to remain unconfirmed, since I was home alone at the time!)
6. Watching Banning Liebscher preach at the Jesus Culture Encounter conference tonight via live stream... loving that I can be part of this conference from a distance.
7. Baked chocolate chip cookies today
8. Got a bunch of errands done.  That feels like a big accomplishment these days, given my current lack of a vehicle.
9. Did a bit of reading of the first book I'm reviewing for booksneeze.com
10. T & L have a wedding date.  On May 16, I officially get a sister!

Things I Liked

This post at Brian's blog was needed encouragement today.  Just hang on.

This post at Marko's blog made me happy.  I loved Sara Miles' first book and can't wait to order this new one and add it to my reading list for the year.

I liked the video in this post at Pete Wilson's blog too.  Fun question: If you could have anything happen by the end of today, what would you choose?

The kind of day...

I've been flipping back and forth for a while now, staring at a blank blogger screen and wondering what to write.

It was the kind of day where I (quite enjoyably) briefly bumped into a friend I hadn't seen since we graduated from high school eight years ago.

It was the kind of day where the last little coincidences that I wanted to encounter where the ones I came face to face with.

It was the kind of day where mid-way through an attempt at a yoga workout I was interrupted, and I never quite made it back to it.

It was the kind of day where there were moments when I felt totally helpless and incompetent at my company, small and petty even.

And the kind of day where there were moments when I knew that I could excel at, and maybe sometimes even love my job.

It was the kind of day where I listened to the audio here (and read the essay) and remembered how life-shaping the essay author's book was. And how that book was the background for a trip that in some ways still has much left unfinished, unsettled, and uncertain.

It was the kind of day where I traded emails with several different people.

The kind of day where I came home from work and did some organizing, sorting and cleaning.

And the kind of day where one memory was just too poignant, and (after a bit of discussion with a friend) I made the decision to tuck the physical reminder of it in a drawer for the time being.

It is the kind of day where I'm sitting in bed before 10 pm, with music softly playing.

Where I'll read a little, and pray a little, and then hopefully sleep.

Adrift in this water.

I've been re-reading and re-experiencing Sara Miles' brilliant book "Take This Bread" this last week. Thinking a lot about food and feeding people and life and faith and all the places that life and faith and food and feeding people seem to intersect.

I've also been thinking a lot about the sacrament of baptism over the course of this last year, and tonight, as I was laying here reading from one of the last chapters of "Take This Bread", some comments on baptism again caught my attention, speaking deeply to my heart.

Miles tells of standing near the baptismal font of her church with a little girl who had come to the food pantry that Miles had started in the church. She writes:

Sasha looked at me, not smiling. "Is this the water God puts on you to make you safe?" she demanded abruptly, in a strangely formal voice.

I put down my boxes. What was she asking for? Was I being asked to baptize her? My mind raced, flashing back to when I'd stood at the font for my own baptism just a few years ago.

Nothing about the water had made me safe. It had pushed me further out from the certainties and habits of my former life...I was no less flawed or frightened or capable of being hurt than I'd been before my conversion, and now, in addition, I was adrift in this water, yoked together with all kinds of other Christians, many of whome I didn't like or trust.

How could I tell this child that a drop of water could make her safe? I had no idea what Sasha was going through at home, but I suspected it was rough. And baptism, if it signified anything, signified the unavoidable reality of the cross at the heart of Christian faith. It wasn't a magic charm but a reminder of God's presence in the midst of unresolved human pain.

I remembered what Lynn Baird had asked me, when I was contemplating baptism.

"Do you want it?" I asked.

Sasha locked her eyes on me. "Yes," she said. "Yes, I want that water."

There was something so serious in her face that it stopped me cold. I dipped my fingers into the font, and Sasha turned her face up to me, concentrating. I made the sign of the cross on her forehead.

(Take This Bread, pg. 236-37)

Welcome each visitor...

Two quotes and a link. My own thoughts are just not fitting for public consumption. I've laid on the couch for nearly a full day. I'm feeling slightly more rested, and but still deeply sad and exhausted. Tomorrow morning I'll go back to work and start again. This is a season of breaking, of shattering, of wondering if wholeness will ever happen again, and do I really want it anyway? Of evaluating the high costs of various decisions. Of questions and elusive future possibilities. Of silence and oftentimes loneliness (even in the midst of crowds). Of fasting. Of thinking and praying and wondering and waiting. Of agonizing and weeping. Of opening my life to the thousand and one sorrows that surround me, and letting them change things in my heart. Of crying out to God in the desperate hope that he will hear and respond and send peace.

I'm going with my best friend to a panel discussion on genocide - in Rwanda and Darfur - in a few hours. We'll eat together first, and then listen, and once again I'm sure my heart will shatter.

So, two quotes and a link. That's all I can manage for public consumption.

Sara Miles describes a conversation soon after she'd become a Christian, with an old friend, where, as he shared the pain in his life, she recommended he pray. She writes:

"When you told me to pray," Jose would remember later, "it was incredibly earnest. You said prayer was like having this intense, profound longing that you just had to be with. That you put the longing in the hands of God, in a certain way. That it was important to be receptive to the unfulfilled, and not fill it or deny it."

I had to be receptive or go crazy - because even as I kept going to church, the questions raised by the experience only multiplied. Conversion was turning out to be quite far from the greeting-card moment promised by televangelists, when Jesus steps into your life, personally saves you, and becomes your lucky charm forever. Instead, it was socially and politically awkward, as well as profoundly confusing. I wasn't struck with any sudden conviction that I now understood the "truth." If anything, I was just crabbier, lonelier, and more destabilized.
(Sara Miles, "Take This Bread", pg. 70)

The poet Rumi writes:

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival

A joy, a depression, a meannness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for
some new delight.

I first came across that poem a few years back, as the inspiration for this story, "The Crowded House".

To be receptive to the unfulfilled spaces and not fill or deny them, and to welcome each visitor, even if they're a crowd of sorrows. This is the space I am working to occupy.

Reading at just the right moments...

This is my 1000th blog post, and it seems fitting to devote it to books that have changed my life or my way of thinking.

Have you ever read a book that came at just the right time in your journey - speaking into the places you are occupying in ways that astonish you with their piercing depths and insights?

It has happened to me a number of times over the years.

The moment I was searching desperately to understand if there really was a Holy Spirit, and what difference that made anyway, and my then pastor sent me to the bookstore on a mission to buy a book titled, "Surprised by the Power of the Holy Spirit". I devoured that book in three days, making notes in bold red pen in the margins. Talking back to the chapters in comments at the end. Underlining, circling, and looking up every scriptural reference that Jack Deere, the author made.

The moment when I opened the pages of Renee Altson's "Stumbling Towards Faith" and couldn't close it until I'd finished. When, in the midst of a severe depression, where I went to bed each night and prayed that the Lord would let me die in my sleep that night, I discovered that I was not in fact nearly as alone as I felt. I discovered that there were others out there who were asking the same deeply intense questions as I was.

It happened again while I was traveling at the beginning of this year.

Before I'd left, on the basis of a recommendation of a blog I read (ysmarko), I'd ordered a book online to take along on my trip.

"Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion" by Sara Miles rocked my world. It spoke to the deep themes I was thinking about and beginning to work through as I traveled. In that way that can only be ordained by God, in just the moment I would be working through a topic or idea, the next words that Miles wrote would speak directly to those thoughts.

I'm presently on my second trip through "Take This Bread" and I'm finding the same thing happening again. The Lord is using a book that few in the circles I grew up in would even consider reading. A book written by a radical left-wing lesbian journalist, who walked into a church one day, took communion, and met Jesus, and now spends her days feeding the poor through a food pantry around the altar of the church where she first took communion.

Tonight, I located online several articles by Miles, all of which are written in the strikingly poignant style of her book, and all of which are speaking to things I'm thinking about these days as well. I'll link to each article and tell you what part of my thoughts they're speaking to.

By Water and By Fire (thoughts on baptism)

Ashes and Dust (thoughts from Ash Wednesday 2007)

Like Lambs Among Wolves (thoughts on violence)

Anatomy of Reconciliation (thoughts on a broken world)

Miles' book begins with the following two paragraphs, and I can't recommend strongly enough that you pick up a copy and make your way through her thoughts on bread and food and war and prayer.

One early, cloudy morning when I was forty-six, I walked into a church, at a piece of bread, took a sip of wine. A routine Sunday activity for tens of millions of Americans - except that up until that moment I'd lead a thoroughly secular life, at best indifferent to religion, more often appalled by its fundamentalist crusades. This was my first communion. It changed everything.

Eating Jesus, as I did that day to my great astonishment, led me against all my expectations to a faith I'd scorned and work I'd never imagined. The mysterious sacrament turned out to be not a symbolic wafer at all but actual food - indeed, the bread of life. In that shocking moment of communion, filled with a deep desire to reach for and become part of a body, I realized that what I'd been doing with my life all along was what I was meant to do: feed people.

And so I did. I took communion, I passed the bread to others, and then I kept going, compelled to find new ways to share what I'd experienced.