Mercy's Fool

This post has been in the makings for a LONG time....in my head.  Recent events have only convinced me that now is the time to write it - probably in a series as my thoughts are SO numerous.  This process is completely indicative of what I want HeatherInTheMaking to be, a safe place to reflect, grow, and revise as needed.

She was cold, trembling with shame as the telltale signs of her chill were exposed, visible through the thin linen underdress, the customary sadhin, that she wore.  "Will they punish me and call me a harlot for this as well?" she wondered.  She crossed her arm over her breasts to conceal the evidence of her discomfort.  The men had taken her without allowing her to put her outer robes back on.  Her thin, almost threadbare, sadhin was a woefully inadequate grasp at any remaining shred of modesty she could claim, and offered no protection from their eyes.

Though she suffered the painful awareness of every carnal need her body was crying out for - warmth, food, drink, and sleep - she remained quietly aloof.  She knew the risk of her actions…that she had willfully sinned against the law.  To become hysterical and beg for undeserved mercy would do nothing for her but subject her to further judgment and cruelty.  She was exhausted, but death was certain, and despite her captors' own periodic dozing, she resisted to sleep, reliving the all-too-few memories she had of feeling loved, safe, protected in her life before it would all be taken from her.

Clearly these 'men of God' had no interest in following the letter of Moses' law, or else Nachum would be here with her, he just as guilty as she.  Nachum, her beloved, who had loved her their whole lives, and mourned the day her parents married her off to that horrid old man she now called husband. Nachum, who had tenderly kissed away the bruises left by Jubal.  Nachum, whose scent still lingered on her skin.  Did he know of her plight, and despair, realizing death was unavoidable?  Or, the more cynical side of her wondered, was he sated to have finally known her, relieved to face no consequence?  That thought stole her breath away, striking her heart with a searing pain far more excruciating than any of Jubal's beatings. "No," she pleaded silently with herself, "Nachum is an honorable man."  He had told her that first night that he was prepared to face death with her if they were ever found out, that he would rather die in the sin of loving her than live a righteous life, without her love.  Hot tears slid down her face at the memory leaving wet trails in the dusty floor as they fell.

Yeshua.  Throughout the night, she heard the elders who were awake talking, most of it unintelligible, frantic whispering.  But that name kept presenting itself in their discussions.  "Who is this Yeshua?" she wondered.  "No matter," she eventually decided. "Dawn is approaching and my fate will be sealed soon enough."  As the men were selectively following the law, she wondered if she would even be given the requisite trial before they executed her for her sin....

The story of the woman caught in adultery has been on my mind a lot in recent months.  As illustrated above, I've imagined many different scenarios that could be the back-story to what we read in John 7:53-8:11.  In addition, I've done quite a bit of reading regarding the story's authenticity, as my Bible has a disclaimer above this passage: [The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53—8:11. A few manuscripts include these verses, wholly or in part, after John 7:36, John 21:25, Luke 21:38 or Luke 24:53.]  I believe to my core that this passage is authentic because it rings true with Jesus' reactions to the Samaritan woman at the well and that of the sinful woman's washing of his feet with her hair, tears and perfume.  It is a story of love and mercy, which is what Jesus is all about, and has been a go-to passage for me throughout my faith journey because it resonates with me so loudly.

Last quarter, my church had an amazing, thought-provoking, and controversial class highlighting the book UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity and Why it Matters  - which talked, among other things, largely about how in America, Christianity has become too political, too judgmental, and too homophobic, in the eyes of many outside and inside the church.  It spoke to my liberal-leaning heart and really caused me to stop and think, "Just what do I really believe and how do I live [or not] out those beliefs every day?"  Then we covered another book by the same author, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church ... and Rethinking Faith, in which I saw myself described when the author described a group of people he called Exiles:

…let’s define exiles as those who grew up in the church* and are now physically or emotionally disconnected in some way, but who also remain energized to pursue God-honoring lives. They feel the loss, in many ways, of the familiar church environment in which they once found meaning, identity, and purpose. They feel lost, yet hopeful. (75)
…many of today’s exiles…feel isolated and alienated from the Christian community — caught between the church as it is and what they believe it is called to be. (77)

*I did not grow up in the church, but have walked with Christ {or let Him drag me, kicking and screaming at times} for almost half my life now.  

Huge plug for my church - we are asking the tough questions and testing the spirits rather than complacently regurgitating platitudes that often don't even have a scriptural root.  Though I sometimes feel lost and that my personal understanding of God is too different from many of theirs, I know that they love me, will love me, no matter what.  And that, friends, is no small potato.  I mean, I know this is true of God, but my fellow human beings whose hearts can harden with flawed understanding?

How do I know, like really know, deep within my bones, that these people have my back, and will always have my back?  Will always pray for me and love me even if my doctrine differs from theirs, even if I admit to doing heinous things?

I know this because last Wednesday over 100 of us, roughly 1/3 of our body, took time off work and drove 80ish miles round-trip to sit for hours in a courtroom to show our love and beg mercy for a brother who was admittedly guilty of a grievous sin.  It is easy for anyone to stand up for someone who has been wronged, but to stand up for someone who has done wrong, repeatedly and intentionally?  The prosecutor alleged that our brother had "bamboozled" us, and that was tough to swallow, but here is the fact of the matter:  For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Our brother did wrong, and he deserved the full punishment of the law, just as the woman from John's story was guilty of adultery in the eyes of the Law.  But we as Christians serve a God who says, "Let any one of you who is without sinful desires* be the first to throw a stone..."  * Yes, the original language apparently translates to sinful desires, as in wants and thoughts of the heart and is not necessarily limited to sinful things someone has actually done.  And mercy, like grace, is not earned or deserved, it is a granting of favor.  The difference is that mercy mitigates a punishment while grace is a gift.  The two are often co-mingled, especially in Christian theology.

Over the past year, we'd watched our brother work to right his wrongs, paying back as much as he could through the sale of his home, retirement account, and humble wages as a janitor.  We'd seen him atrophy and waste away with grief over the devastation his sin had caused for all involved parties, his employer, his family, and his community.  We'd seen him repent.  Those things are all bonus - as the woman in the story does not indicate remorse or changed behavior.  But, Jesus didn't require it from her before granting mercy, either.  He offered mercy to her where she was at, guilty, and then admonishes her to walk the straight and narrow.  He teaches us to first and foremost, examine ourselves and show mercy to others in response.  

That, my friends, is why we all showed up at court last week - not because we felt jail was undeserved, not because in all other aspects our brother was a good man, not because we wished to minimize his actions, not because he 'bamboozled' us into thinking a lesser punishment was warranted.  We showed up because we love him, will continue to love on him and his family during his imprisonment, and love always hopes, even when it is foolish to do so.  I've never been prouder to be part of my church than I was that day, because we embodied Love, the kind of Love that defies conventional understanding and seems radical to people on the outside.  It made me feel like less of an exile and more of a member, for sure.

I believe that God did hear our prayers and sway the judge to a merciful ruling, lessening it from what it could have been.  It was not absolute mercy, the lightest sentence available, but it was also not the maximum and there is something to be said for that.  Now, I'm just praying for beauty from ashes.

The Big Existential Comeback

You know how in life you have friends in school, college, work, etc. that are your best friends during the time you're together, but then life events like moving, graduating, new jobs, new kids, new homes, etc., etc., take you away from each other and you drift apart?  But then somehow you cross paths again?  Whether it's a bump in to each other at Target with a college friend who just happens to live in the same town still, or it's the culmination of an obsessive hey-I-wonder-what-happened-to-so-n-so dig on Facebook, you reconnect and you pick up right where you left off {barring the fact that you now have new/different kids, spouses, careers, etc} and have the same relational vibe you always did before.

That's kinda what the blogosphere is to me - this space, these posts and the comments in them.  Problem is, so many of the peeps I loved seven years ago have either 1.) like me, left their blogs to fallow, hoping for a return to what blogging once was for them or 2.) gotten mad successful and wouldn't even know me, the blogger who changed her username and url a minimum of 5 times in the past seven years, if I did happen to comment on their posts again.

Unlike many blogging friends who've reinvented over the years, I've imported all of the early stuff to keep with me.  Good, bad, ugly.  Sweet, sad, and celebratory.  I've kept it, and I'm glad I have.  Oh yeah, the older, wiser me went through and weeded out the unwise posts I may or may not have made, but the general sense of what was going on and who I was through that?  I kept that as a reminder of both the progress I've made and a chronicle of the things that plague me year after year.

How could I know what a great mirror this place would be?  What a great place for me to come and SEE myself for real? But I looked back here and saw the shaping that God has done in me in the last seven years...saw that He has a plan for me and that I just need to keep on keeping on and He will bring it to me what I was made to do.  Waiting is hard - see the above reference about the things that plague me year after year?  Patience is one of those things.  It don't come easy, that's for sure.  {It pained me to write that b/c it's grammatically incorrect, but saying it properly didn't sound very poetic...soo....}

I recently realized, at the funeral of my husband's great-aunt, that I am NOT the one to take pictures at family events - that I'm not the one who captures evidence of family gatherings and later edits them into slideshows or scrapbooks.  But I have and can still capture the events, the emotions, the day to day {which is beginning to run together too easily into an amorphous blob of a memory that I can't quite grasp} happenings of my family.  So, I need to keep coming back, keep writing, and preserve something of the present for my children.

I'm ba-aack!  So I'ma gonna try and write more, and comment more and get this place back into what it was before.  Will y'all help me kickstart again?

 

riding the wave

So I closed 2012 out here on the blog with a lot of.....

Nothing.

Silence.

But it wasn't for lack of anything to say.

I got the job.  And waited to start until the week after Thanksgiving, which was for the best, really, but it made December kind of crazy, not to mention financially tight given that 1.) we were already behind on money, 2.) uh, Christmas, and 3.) because I'd neglected to ask about pay frequency, I soon discovered my new gig pays MONTHLY, and I'd started right at the beginning of the pay period.  Any working mom knows the trouble that presents with childcare being due in advance, but we made it, PHEW!  God has been so good to us in providing just what we need when we need it - not gonna lie and say I haven't gained new gray hairs over it, but when His providence appears on the horizon and I know we can abide in it, the joy and peace that comes is truly indescribable.

Additionally, we found ourselves smack in the midst of a new schedule that has Mom waking at 5:30 to get things rolling at casa del Meyer, working from 9-6, Dad picking up Christopher from his Montessori school, and a crazy evening routine of family dinner, cleanup, and residual homework all before bedtime at 8:30.  There've been some transition pains, yes, but overall, it's been good.  Thus, regarding the holiday, gifts were haphazardly purchased with mere days to spare, we got to spend a few hours with my side of the family, and we hosted Christmas for the Meyer side of family.  That said, I didn't get things together enough to make my homemade items for teachers, coordinate a Christmas letter/picture to send out to friends and family, or make goodies for the neighbors, per usual.

So, today, this last day of Christmas break, I'm finally going to take some time to breathe and do our family's  year in review for 2012 and try to bring y'all current.

2012 was a year of busy, hard work and lots of great times as a family for casa del Meyer.  We had lots of firsts in 2012, too.

At the beginning of the year, Seth was in the second half of his first year as Cub Master for Colton's Cub Scouts pack, and Heather was a novice coach for Kelsey's 5th grade Odyssey of the Mind team.  {Kelsey and Colton had both done OM in 2011 and this was their second year, but a first for Mom as coach.}  The spring was highlighted with the Pinewood Derby and the OM Regional Tournament where Kelsey and Heather were shocked {and thrilled} as their team placed 2nd and advanced to the State tournament in May!  We didn't place further at State, but what a great time we had and how inspiring it was to see a team of kids be creative together.

This year marked the year archery became a hobby for the entire family, when Heather got her first bow in the spring and we purchased a membership to our local archery range.  We've spent many hours over the weekend there learning the craft.

In April, Keith Lancaster came to our church to provide a singing workshop, and lit the fire in three of our men to attend his Worship Leader Institute in Tulsa that summer.  Come July, Seth boarded his first airplane and spent a full week at the Worship Leader Institute, learning how to really engage our congregation into giving our best to God in worship.  He had a wonderful time and the impacts of the instruction he received have been dramatically noticeable each time he steps up to lead worship at church.  At the same time Seth was coming home, Heather and the kids were leaving for a week of camp, making this summer the first time Seth and Heather have spent more than a week away from each other.  Camp was great, and we enjoyed a few more weeks of summer before school started.

This fall marked the first year that Kelsey and Colton didn't go to the same school, the end of one era as they began another when Kelsey started middle school.  She did her first organized sport, running with the cross country team, and has been learning to play her first instrument, the trumpet her daddy once played.  She continues to be a star student, if on the quiet side per all her teachers at conferences this fall.  Colton is in 4th grade and has been a busy bee with Colorado State history projects like his Mesa Verde diorama.  His teacher this year is wonderful and has really inspired Colton in the classroom.  He is in OM again {and Heather is coaching again - despite her hope to take a year off} and still very active in Cub Scouting.  Christopher is a joy, constantly hamming it up with his silly faces and voices to get the ready attention of those around him.  And not just that of our family; he has an attractive force about him, making teens at church, other Cub Scouts and students from the older kids' schools flock to him and see what new trick he has to show them.  He continues to speak in the vowel-heavy pattern he's long adopted where inflection changes "ou" from shoe to soup, which seems to add to his charm rather than raise any concern about impediments.  He started "heehaw coow" {horse school}, his first experience with full-time daycare, at a local Montessori school in November when Heather began her new job and likes to do his block work, take naps, and ride the horses.

While Heather enjoyed the balance of being home with the kids and working as a free-lance grant writer this past year, the feast or famine nature of self-employment did little to stabilize the financial struggles we've had shortly after Christopher was born.  In November, she returned to social work with an organization that serves youth demonstrating risky behaviors.  She is three-quarter time and thus enjoys Mondays off and half-day Fridays.

Seth spent a few weekends hunting with his dad during archery season again this year; and brought home a deer that has been so mild and tasty, it has gone very quickly!  He signed up to do his work's small-scale version of The Biggest Loser and put his heart {and soles} into his efforts as a new runner.  The more conscientious eating plan and 60+ miles he ran over 6 weeks paid off, as he dropped 20+lbs and claimed the highest percentage lost of his co-workers.  In a follow-up weigh in at the end of the year, he had lost another 5-6 lbs and still claimed first place, so we are all very proud of his efforts.

As we begin 2013, we pray for a year with fewer tragedies than the one we've just closed.  Between all of the shootings, fires and the tragic story of Jessica Ridgeway, we've held on to the hope that Jesus provides us.  We pray that God will use us to be comforters, teachers, and servants to those in need this year, that blessings abound to those whom we love, and that we get to share in them with you.

  

time to call a spade a spade...

So, uh, the Photo Challenge?  A nice thought, but I don't do routine/habit so well, duh.  Even when I've put myself out there in hopes of accountability, when it comes to bailing, I seem to have no qualms doing so, and I positively hate that about myself.

So add that to the ever-increasing pile of empty commitments and undone tasks I have going for me, add to it that I'm looking down the barrel of depression again, and I'm a pretty sad mess right now.

Call it a self-fulfilling prophecy or just keen awareness of my broken mind, but I knew it was coming.  About a month ago, I bought a bottle of St. John's Wort, wrote out a daily regimen that involved sunshine and physical activity, and told myself, "I will warrior on through this and get by.  It will be different this time."

But I've done exactly none of the things on my preventive checklist, my St. John's wort only got consumed regularly for a week and then haphazardly afterwards.  I'm sleeping an average of 6 hrs/night because I want to get up and get Kelsey off with a good breakfast in her belly, yet Christopher is wired like me and stays up way too late leaving me with less than 30 minutes of self-time each day*.

*Except that I've been so checked out lately that one could say I'm getting plenty of self-time while my kid watches umpteen million episodes of Handy Manny each day.  Cognitive dissonance only exacerbates the whole seasonal affective situation and yet I'm just so good at feeding into it.

In a misguided hopeful attempt to steer the fam toward more order and structure, I've recently made up some chore charts, a ticket system for the kids' allowance, and have tried to be more consistent with meal planning.  Each day they have the opportunity to do all of their chores, and if they do, they get a blue ticket, worth $0.50; orange and green tickets are awarded at random and are also worth $0.50 each.  Screen time tickets are given each day {barring any loss of privilege incurred for bad behavior} and can be banked or used within the same day.  The result has been a mixed bag, probably due in large part to my miserable lack of consistency in years past.  Some days it has been a great tool, and others, the cause for sullenness and attitude.  I know that behavior charts and the like do not get the heart of the matter; a person's desires, and am not so naive to think that this will make my kids into the people I wish for them to be in the future.  But, from a practical standpoint, it is helping to get things done more frequently than they were.  We are having lots of good talks to talk about helping each other carry the domestic burdens for the family, and hopefully someday that will take root.  For now, this is helping me keep my head above water {most days, anyway}.

Anyway, so the other night I talked with my mom, after a lengthy and unintended hiatus, and it felt really good to have someone who understood my personal crazy that is this time of year.  She knew about the checklist, the not accomplishing any of the items, because she does it too.

I didn't tell her that sometimes, sometimes the self-talk is so deafeningly loud that it's incredibly hard to tune into the things that are True. the One who is True.  That increasingly I am having to refute so much of what I tell myself, rationalize how those negative feelings are simply Not All There Is to Me.  Those days are so hard, and they sometimes scare me because what if there comes a day when the inner voice is simply too loud, too persuasive?  Of course, and I'm not trying to minimize this here, the worst days often tend to coincide with the beginning of my cycle....like clockwork, and yet I fail to recognize it until the day after the Terrible Horrible Days, when there is an ache in my wombish area, followed by that telltale gush of warmth that announces its arrival.

I didn't tell her all of that, but somehow, I'm pretty sure she knows.

Yesterday I saw this Note to Self on Facebook and knew it was totally for me:

day 17: fruit

Funny that today was fruit, as I just replenished the fruit bowl yesterday.  The light in the kitchen was very shadowy, thanks to the wild gyrations of the willow tree outside the kitchen door.  It is gusty outside.

{actual post to come}

Day 16: Something you wrote

I wrote this out for my two older kids this past winter.  

Days 10-15

It was bound to happen eventually, this falling off the wagon thing whenever it comes to me doing anything that is supposed to become a daily habit.

Borne of chaos, I am NOT a creature of habit and am constantly, {more often than not, fruitlessly}, striving towards routine and structure, only to abandon any purposeful or intentional endeavors for a more reactive, in-the-moment existence...that usually bites me hard, too.

Preamble aside, I'm behind in my pictures, so without further ado, here they are:

day 9: red

Red (ahem, Maroon) and Gold are the new school colors, and I couldn't be prouder of the new athlete in our family.

Kelsey began running cross country in August, and tomorrow is her final meet of the season.  She didn't run all summer, and yet, she started with a 10:14 mile base (a time for which I had to train for months!), and she cut that down to 9:42/mile for 2.5 miles in her last couple of races, which is excellent!  What's even more mind-boggling is that sub-10 minute pace is with her having walked some of the courses!  

Last week, she was proud of herself (and I was too) because she ran the entire course.  We don't have her time yet, but what an accomplishment!  She told me after school today that she ran Friday's race in 22:07, exactly 2 minutes less than her previous personal best!  We were so proud together.  We celebrated.  8:53 pace, maintained over distance - WOW!  

It's been busy, but well worth it.  I wanted her to have a sense of belonging at a new school, a crew of kids with whom she could fit and we have found it.  The encouragement of the kids on the teams for EVERY teammate is really special and I know we made the right choice to put her in this sport. 

 

day 8: angle

From our hiking trip in Rocky Mtn. Nat'l Park a couple of weeks ago, I love me a little bit of leaning trees ;)

 

day 7: light

The sunrise outside my east facing back door is seen more often now than ever before in my life, due to the whole middle school schedule.  {what brainiac determined that it was a stellar idea to get adolescents up at dawn to begin their days, anyway?}

I thought the street lamp looked lovely in the midst of the blue and orange sky {which, btw, was quite something this morning...the sunrises tend to be much rosier in hue around here - these colors are often reserved for what we call Broncos sunsets} and snapped a pic.

Nothing hugely insightful today ;)

 

day 6: i'm thankful for....edited to add

 {Whoopsie, I totally winged this and did "Something that makes me happy," instead of "I'm thankful for..."  In either case, I limited it to my time-constrained answer, and today, I'm realizing there is a hell of a lot more to put in this post than that which was originally here.  Updated words are in teal.}

My family. {makes me happy.  See also, I'm thankful for....}

In the Colorado mountains (pictured here, Rocky Mtn. Nat'l Park, Cub Lake).

Yeah, we have a lot of drama.  Yeah, family is hard work.  {and so is hiking to the real treasures of the Colorado mountains.  Worth it?  ABSOLUTELY!}

But at the end of the day, nothing makes me feel better than a big bear hug from Kelsey, the latest pop song being echoed by Colton, Christopher's goofy antics or Seth's never-failing humor.

This magical combination of: them + the outdoors = my personal nirvana.

I'm thankful for God's unfailing love for me, especially when I'm clinging to the fear that He's not really there or that He doesn't really care for me.  Yeah, I've had a season of doubt and desert wandering.  It's been intense.  And Satan, that expert manipulator, used someone in the church's good intentions to hurt me and catapult me further into this questioning.

And then God, used the kindness of someone I barely know to raise me up and remind me, bad things happen to good people and life sucks that way, but we can choose to let it keep us down or we can choose to help others going through similar hardships.  I needed that as much as I needed this prompt in things for which I'm thankful.

I'm thankful that despite some rough at-home behavior, the overall product of our family is kids who are loving and kind and thoughtful.  I'm thankful for check-ins with teachers that validate the work is paying off with them, even if I'm one of the last ones to see it.  {we had Kelsey's Advanced Learning Plan meeting Monday, followed by Parent-Teacher conferences the rest of the week}

I'm also thankful that the week of crazy meetings is over and we are back to our regularly scheduled program.  :)  {oh middle school, you and your 8 teacher schedules...}

I'm thankful for Fall in Colorado and the beauty that greets me every day.

I'm thankful that after some slipping up with health and wellness, my two best buds, Seth and Sarah, are taking their on steps to fitness journeys.  It is inspiring, motivating and has helped me get off my duff and make sure I'm eating thoughtfully again.

I'm thankful for my spiritual family and the tremendous strength I am able to draw from them, even without them knowing it.