Tag: disappointment

Waiting in Wilderness: An Impossible Womb

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God called Abram to leave the familiar and go,
go on a road he would make by going,
to a place he would know by finding.

Jesus led Nicodemus to the threshold of a birth,
a newness he could only know by going through it.

Only what’s behind us, not ahead, keeps us from going on,
from entering the impossible womb of starting new.

The stones of disappointment in your pockets,
the grave marker of the old life, they can’t come with you.

The path is not a test. It’s our freedom.
Many a prisoner has looked into the tunnel,
the Beloved waiting in the light, and said no.

Where is the Spirit calling you, the wind blowing?
Where is the thin place between your habits and a new birth?

These pangs, this heavy breathing:
the Beloved is trying to birth you.
Let it happen.
~Steve Garnaass-Holmes “A new birth”

Like most people, I cling fast to the safe and familiar, sometimes wishing to retreat back to what feels most secure and safest. Yet, it is an impossible womb that would allow me back – it is clear I am meant to be fully launched, for better or worse. So carrying my checkered history stuffed deeply in my pockets, I embark on this life’s journey led by the Spirit and blown by His breath, uncertain where it will take me or how long it takes to get there.

There is an unsurpassed freedom in the path from womb to tomb; if I let His breath carry me, I’ll go so far beyond the place where my bones someday are laid.

Waiting in Wilderness: A Personal Invitation

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Are Job’s successes — even his holy successes — his treasure?
Or is God his treasure?
That’s the question everyone of us must ask.
And there is no reason to believe
that God will not test any one of us just as he did Job.
When he takes it all away, will we love him more than things,
more than health, more than family, and more than life?
That’s the question.
That’s the warning.
That’s the wonderful invitation.
~John Piper in “I Was Warned By Job This Morning”

For I know that my Redeemer lives,
    and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
 And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
    yet in my flesh I shall see God.
Job 19: 25-26

The warning of the Book of Job is that it could happen to us too -– everything we have strived for, cared about, loved and valued — taken away. If we are stripped bare naked, nothing left but our love for God and His sovereign power over our lives, will we still worship His Name, inhale His Word like air itself, submit ourselves to His plan over our plan?

I know I have fallen far short of the mark. It takes only small obstacles or losses to trip me up so I stagger in my faith, trying futilely to not lose my balance, falling flat-faced and immobilized.

This past year, in particular, I’ve seen people lose almost everything in the pandemic: their health, their loved ones, their financial security, their home, their worship community. I’ve looked hard at myself and asked if I could sustain such loss in my life and still turn myself over to the will of God. I would surely plead for reprieve and ask the horribly desperate question, “why me?”, girding myself for the response: “and why not you?”

The invitation, scary and radical as it is, is from God straight to my heart, asking that I trust His plan for my life and death, no matter what happens, no matter how much suffering, no matter how much, like Christ in the garden, I plead that it work out differently, that it be closer to something I would choose to do, somehow that it not hurt so much.

His plan for my life was written before I was born, personally carried to me via His Son, and placed in my hands. It is up to me to open it, read it carefully, and with deep gratitude, respond with an emphatic RSVP:
“I’ll be there! Nothing could keep me away from your invitation to me.”

Or I could leave it unopened, hesitant and fearful to reveal its contents.
Or even toss it away altogether, believing it really wasn’t meant for me.

Even if, in my heart, I absolutely know it is meant for me.

There are only two kinds of people in the end:
those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’
and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’
~C. S. Lewis from The Great Divorce

An Ordinary Life

barnstormingblog12 Comments

No doubt she’s disappointed.

Such a disgrace I turned out to be.

Not a policy-maker
Or tech-savvy entrepreneur.
Nothing of note.

I gave birth three times
and sent three
tall, kind people 
into the world

I offered words of consolation
I planted sunflowers
I listened

Elected official?
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist?
Cutting-edge thought-leader?
MD, PhD, CEO?
Oscar, Emmy, Tony? 
Nobel? 
Anything?

I closed my mother’s eyes
when she died
and again, my father’s

I made no fortune
no headlines
nothing went viral

I sang and danced
for no one

I remembered
I noticed
I breathed

Just an ordinary life
filled with extraordinary love.

How disappointing.
~Mary Poindexter McLaughlin “Alma Mater”

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is a way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples, and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.
~William Martin from The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents

Parents can hold expectations of success for their children
that reflect their own deficiencies or failures.
After all, we want the world to be a better place for them than for us.

Yet no academic degree, no bank account, no notoriety or award
can match living an ordinary life filled with extraordinary love.

I did disappoint my parents despite checking off all the boxes they hoped I would achieve in my younger years, because in retrospect, I disappointed myself.

I tended to cling to old grievances and resentments, withholding myself emotionally from them. I could have been more compassionate in their failing years, more available even though physically present. That is something I cannot undo except to pray now for forgiveness for my own deficiencies and failures.

Giving birth to three tall kind people who we have sent into the world, I hope for them what I wish I had understood when I was sent into the world by my parents: living an ordinary life of extraordinary love is more important than anything else they set out to do.

I rejoice as I see them foster such love with their spouses and their children and their communities: remembering, noticing and breathing life into each new day.

Seeing that, I can let go of my own disgrace and disappointment in myself.



Going to Pieces

barnstormingblog3 Comments
appleeat
fallenapple
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
~Martin Luther
appleseeds
 …as the land around turns rocky and hollow…
I’d never suspected: every day,
Although the nation is done for,
I find new flowers.
~Donald Revell from “Election Year”
pansy1

…the heart of this country does not beat in Washington, DC, nor does its soul lie in a seat of power, nor does its destiny lie in which party occupies which section of government.

No, those things all lie with… people like you and me, people who get up and go to work and love their tiny plot of Earth and whose hands are rough and hardened by loving and giving.
~Billy Coffey from “The Heart of this Land”

 

octevening292

 

 

There is Meaning

barnstormingblog5 Comments

sunrise222152

sunrise10915

Of course, in life there are moments of darkness.
There are periods of discouragement.
There are times when we lose sight of the beauty of the sky for all the clouds.
You may have to bear severe sickness,
or deal with tremendous pain,
or you may be disappointed in this or that.
But remember, whatever difficulty you have to face,
it will not last.
It is only a cloud.
For God has made each of us with a purpose.

We are made for joy.
But this joy can never be fully experienced here on earth.
God’s joy is ultimately realized in eternity.
To be a Christian is to understand that the cross,
and the suffering of the cross, has meaning,
and that suffering is part of our state on this earth.
Don’t expect paradise on earth.
Don’t.
But there is meaning,
and this meaning is the love of God
and gratitude for life on this earth.
Whatever your state,
whatever your situation,
whatever your purpose,
always remember that you are made for joy.
~Alice Von Hildebrand

sunrise97143

It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo.
The ones that really mattered.
Full of darkness and danger they were.
And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end…
because how could the end be happy?
How could the world go back to the way it was
when so much bad had happened?
But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow.
Even darkness must pass.”
~J.R.Tolkien

sunrise1111

When we feel overwhelmed and discouraged,
when it seems all is in shadow,
we know we are part of a great story and the plot progression is a mystery.

We are promised light and joy at the end, no question about it.
We pass through the shadows, the clouds clear
and the darkness will pass through us.

sunrise10126

When to be Glad

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embrace

gardengrass

Well I know now the feel of dirt under the nails,
I know now the rhythm of furrowed ground under foot,
I have learned the sounds to listen for in the dusk,
the dawning and the noon.

I have held cornfields in the palm of my hand,
I have let the swaying wheat and rye run through my fingers,
I have learned when to be glad for sunlight and for sudden
thaw and for rain.

I know now what weariness is when the mind stops
and night is a dark blanket of peace and forgetting
and the morning breaks to the same ritual and the same
demands and the silence.
~Jane Tyson Clement from No One Can Stem the Tide

sunset98163

Soon to arrive, a wave of 15,000 young people
with such potential to grow,
their health needs entrusted to us
as if we tend them as gardeners:
most thriving and flourishing,
yet some already withering,
their roots thirsting.

As the winds of time bring
new thousands to our care,
blown in from places unknown,
I weary weep for those who may not bloom,
wondering if I will fail to water or care enough~

or is it me with thirst unceasing,
my roots drying from each new morning’s
same ritual and same demands unceasing,
as if I’ve forgotten how to be glad for this work,
being met with the silence
of my own gardeners.

rainyleaf7

dillweb

 

Bitter Sweet

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redcurrant611151

begonia622154

Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world

except the way I stumbled through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving

someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.

I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn’t leave a stain,
no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet.

Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don’t care

where it’s been, or what bitter road
it’s traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.
~Stephen Dunn from “Sweetness”

 

Even when the softness of a lovely day lingers long,
reminding me to “remember this, this moment, this feeling”
I realize that it will be lost, slipping away from me
in mere moments, its sweetness fading into the fog of time
and daily distractions so quickly
that I barely remember the taste,
all that’s left is the bitterness of its loss.

Walking this path,
sometimes guessing,
more often not knowing where it leads,
I ponder the sweetness,
treasure it up,
knowing I would never miss it
if I didn’t taste it to begin with.

photo by Joel DeWaard
photo by Joel DeWaard

 

wwuoakleaf5

wwupacplaza

Dust to Dust

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Over the last several weeks on the farm we have been running low on wood shavings, the absorbent bedding we use to cover the horse stall floors in the barns. In the winter, the animals, due to the cold and rainy weather, spend a significant part of the week indoors, so their bedding is important for their comfort and for the ease of cleaning every night after we get home from work. The large truck load of shavings we had delivered into our shavings shed last summer was rapidly diminishing to the last few wheelbarrow loads so I called the shavings company we’ve happily dealt with for twenty years to request a new delivery. As is the case when local sawmills are slow in the winter due to less demand for lumber, I knew there would be a wait but it is worth it to get the perfect load: large fluffy shavings with no dust for a feather light and cushiony bed for our horses.

It arrived today while we were at work and I hurried outside in the dark after dinner to admire the shavings shed once again filled to the brim. As I got closer and turned on the barnyard vapor light, my heart sank. This was no load of shavings–typically aromatic curly remnant wood flakes. This was a building full of sawdust powder–way too fine, heavy in the shovel and extremely dusty. In short, it was several tons of a mess that I could not undo or send back and now have to deal with. What the sawmill had cast off as leftover waste product has become my ten foot high mountain of recycled regret.

This pulverized stuff is not fit for man nor beast. It gets into noses and lungs, irritates eyes and gets swallowed down with hay. I’m sick with disappointment. It was all I could do to haul it into the barn and watch the dust clouds go airborne as I spread it in the stalls. My poor horses wonder why I’ve condemned them to eat from a dust bowl. It is bitter irony that I’m paying good money for something that was to help me keep things clean when the reality is that it will make things so much harder to keep clean.

After shoveling a few hundred pounds of dust, I came back to the house covered in a veil of powder, my eyes itchy, my nose running, my throat burning. I can look forward to six months of this daily aggravation, but at least I won’t have to sleep in it like my animals. I can climb in the bathtub with water up to my ears and soak it off, at least until tomorrow’s chores.

Like times in my life when I must cope with being let down, sometimes those I have always depended on just don’t come through. Disappointment may cover me like a shroud, but I must wear it gently, not angrily. I’ll try not to stir up clouds of it wherever I go, eating and breathing disillusionment so much it hurts others as well. I can be perpetually grimy and disgruntled from wallowing in the stuff but that is not who I want to be.

Instead, I can seek out fresh air, breathe deeply, put on protective equipment and dive back in to do what needs to be done. Someday the mountain of misery will be made miniscule.

There will always be a bath to look forward to at the end of the day.