Made for peace

in

Our home is a quiet one tonight. The baby (her words, not mine) of our family has gone home to New York for a week, the mature one has gone to bed (or to study for grad-school), the world-traveler is sleeping on the couch in front of me, and I am sitting here, in our collective favorite chair. The silver spoon turned wind-chimes sound outside and the heater hums intermittently.

I was born for quiet nights.

A year ago at this time I was still working from home, making tangible, touchable art every day, creeping by on pennies and coffee, and loving life more than ever before. Peace was everywhere I looked and I felt alive, so alive. I was born for peace.

I know this about myself.

And yet.

I let the commitments, the pro-bono work, the meetings, the small-groups, the good-bye parties and welcome home greetings, I let them crowd in until I am suffocating under the weight of a blocked out calendar. Three weeks ago I suffocated. I went down, down hard.

Unless you're the Baby, the Mature, or the World-traveler, you might not know that because I kept a smiling can-do face on until Saturday night. But Saturday night I came home and crashed hard.

A combination of leftover pneumonia and a sinus infection are good excuses as anything to lay low for four days, and so I take them. I tell myself, "After Christmas, you will get things in order. You will sit down. You will think about life. You will think about what went wrong this fall. You will ask for grace. And you will walk in the Spirit." And perhaps that's true. Maybe that will happen after Christmas.

But tonight I'm grateful for a quiet house. For peace.

I am no stranger to asking God why He made me the way He did. Why this gift? Why this talent? Why this personality? Why this prone? Why? I ask it of Him more than any question perhaps. And it's mostly because I'm so desperate to be faithful with what he's given me. I want to be faithful with that measure of faith. But why does He pile on the responsibility, the weight of knowledge and the drive to do more than I'm capable of in the end?

Why has He borne me for quiet nights and peace, if my life is most faithfully used in the middle of chaos and need?

I don't have an answer to that tonight.

I'm thinking a lot about Mary and why God chooses us on the merit of the miracle, but also gives us responsibilities that look less miraculous and just mundane.

That's all, friends. That's all.

 Just me. And our favorite chair.

I meant to do a lot of things...

in

I meant to write about how grateful I am for parents who grew us up on whole foods, where the term "made from scratch" confused me because I never had a boxed meal until a sixth grade run-in with Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

I meant to write about a hero-friend of mine who's fighting cancer and doing it prettily and genuinely and gospel-centeredly, who I can't be around for more than ten minutes without the full gamut of emotions rising up inside of me.

I meant to write about how when your friends are getting married and getting loved and getting all sorts of things you want out of life, that the original call on both of you doesn't change--bear the image of God.

I meant to write through the lyrics of Joy to the World before Christmas.

I meant to write about how I'm taking some of January off from blogging, but how I'd love it if some of you wanted to write for me instead.

I meant to write about how we've been working our way through a pomegranate all week in the office I share with her, and how every gem of juice in my mouth reminds me of one of my favorite conversations in life.

But instead I caught my fifth bout of sick in the head and lungs of the year and I really, really, really got nothin' for you. So enjoy photos instead (especially you NYers who want to see our little nest).

Christmas Dinner with the Mates. 
My favorite people to be with. 
 
The pomegranate
of pomegranate fame. 
 
My niece. You get a peek of her for free.
You're welcome. 

Our home. 
Where we live and love and work it all out. 
The soup I just made. From scratch. 
Just like my mama taught me. 

walk on

in , ,

It's the rhythms of grace that are the hardest for me. I think. The finished work of grace, this I understand. The unfinished work of grace, the kind we have to wait for until heaven, this I understand.

It's the rhythms. The ebb and the flow. The here, so strongly and tangible one day, and gone, so hard and difficult the next. It's not the grace that changes, I know this. It's the inbetweens.

This morning my boss read the end of Matthew 11 aloud in our staff meeting and I felt my heart choke, my eyes well up:

"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it.

Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.

Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly."

This year has been a lot of just learning grace, sitting in it, basking in it, letting the fullness of what it implies wash over me. Bathe me in comfort, love, joy, fullness.

But this passage about rest is full of active verbs and this is what I feel my heart catch on this morning.

Get away with me. Take a real rest. Walk with me. Work with me. Learn the rhythms. Keep company with me.

This seems like an awful lot of work to do rest.

And there's a strange comfort in that. The comfort is this: rest is intentional too. It means saying no to being busy, choosing to be busy being unbusy. It means not answering my phone. It means letting the text messages build up. It means sitting with my roommates when I could be doing other things. It means lighting a candle, laughing, choosing rest.

The thing about rhythm is that the beat doesn't change, it is grace, grace, always grace. But the melody does. And I am learning to fill in life around the steady tempo of grace.

How do I balance?

in ,

When I was small, still playing on playgrounds and wearing pink overalls, my favorite playground apparatus was the seesaw. A friend and I would try any number of tricks to try to defeat balance and gravity, but no matter how long we could keep that solid board parallel to the ground below us, inevitably it would begin tipping one way or the other. Perfect balance was impossible.

For years the concept of balance has irked me. When I would stand on one of my certain soapboxes and someone older and wiser, or younger and more naive, than me would begin to laud the importantance of balance, I would check out. Balance is sissy to me.

I like the idea of zen, order, some sort of divine knowledge that the universe can be steadied by my efforts and meditations.

But the truth?

The truth is that nothing about the faith I've been adopted into is balanced.

What we're saying when we say we need to be balanced is that we need to not offend, or not be radical, or not be too much of any one thing, that everything must taste good, feel good, and not be irksome in order to keep balance in the world. What we're saying is we've got to keep that seesaw parallel to the ground beneath us, or we'll come crashing down with a pounding thud.

Like the hill at Golgotha, when a broken, bleeding man dropped his head and the sky went dark, the veil tore in two. A pounding thud.

Quiet.

Because balance was broken.

One man took the wrath for a limitless number of us.

Complete imbalance.

So when we ask that question "where is the balance?" I'll tell you where it is:

Nowhere.

It doesn't exist. Balance was broken. And what you're searching for is not a parallel board, hovering peacefully above the earth and all its brokenness, what you're searching for is Jesus.

Perfectly imbalanced Jesus.

in , ,

Well. It has been a month.

It didn't seem like much to you, I'm sure. In fact, that was probably the most regularly this blog has every been updated (Thank God for post scheduling!), but to me it was restful. I had high hopes for a month of no writing and I really meant it to be no writing at all, but it was helpful for me to remember a voice I once had that was lost.

I wanted to get it back, but I'm afraid it's still lost.

But I think I'm okay with that. More on that later. Or not. We'll see.

During this month:

My roommate Jenna headed to Africa for two months.
My best friend got engaged (to an amazing, astounding, wonderful man who treasures, adores, and loves her to pieces).
My other best friends had a baby, Gideon Archer.
My brother and sister-in-law had a baby, Iliana Mae.


I booked tickets home to NY for two weeks in October.
My friend Liz Boss moved to Texas, to our home, and got a job at Starbucks (you'd better believe we'll be taking advantage of that little perk there)
It has been over 100 degrees every day of this month, plus a few days more.

I read some good reading.

I've gotten to know some people from church a bit more and I feel like my desire for community is both being refined, blessed, and challenged. All good.
I went to Echo Conference and ohmygoodness, I'll be thinking about some of the things I learned there for a long, long time.

I discovered 1. A farmer's market, 2. A used bookstore, 3. That I love the town they're both in and hope to move there soon.
I was surprised with a brand new iMac at work that makes my life so happy and my work so fast every day.

I repotted all of my houseplants and watched them finally flourish for the first time in Texas.
I practically killed all of our outdoor plants because I cannot figure out how Texas does plants.
I celebrated the 4th of July on a lake with friends and felt myself breathe at the space found there.


Our campus pastor preached a four-part sermon series from the book of Haggai, which is a feat because there aren't even four chapters in that book.
I gathered with a group of single leaders and brainstormed how to foster authentic communal living and deep biblical fellowship among the 3000+ singles at The Village Church.

I was very, very, very homesick.
I was very, very, very home.

I got my hair cut short.

I put Texas plates on my car and felt a bit of me die. A bit of NYer in me die.

I was challenged, rebuked, forgiven, blessed, joy-filled, surprised, sore, full, sad, heard, and so much more. It has been a staycation for my soul.

Thank you to those who stuck it out with me. I know I lost a few readers (the archives were too namby-pamby for them, I guess!), but thanks to the rest of you for letting me shut down the comments, for enduring a bunch of wistful melancholy and posts about home, for skipping over posts in your reader when they piled up, but thanks, mostly, for this:

Almost a decade of writing is piled up here on this page and it has been the most healthy outlet for my brain to absorb what the Lord has been gracious (and long-suffering) to teach me. But more than that, it has been a place where you have let me grow very publicly. You have let my theology fumble and my questions remain unanswered. You have let me sort out death, divorce, loneliness, homesickness, doubt, fear, sin, decisions, faith, redemption, and life. You, if you're reading this, you have been a faithful friend to me.

And I appreciated that.

This month, more than anything else, I have appreciated you.

Thank you for July.

PS. Comments are back open!

in , ,

Dear Friends,

Ever since I learned the ten commandments it was the Sabbath keeping one that always shook me in my soul. Murder seemed an impossibility for me and lying was too hard to not do, but the Sabbath one--this seems foreign and impossible. How do you keep a day holy? A few years ago one of my heroes in the faith taught a class on sustainability and theology at my church and he talked about the year of Jubilee--again, a fascinating and near impossible feat: how do you shut down your livelihood, return your servants, rest your land and still live?

The idea is so fascinating to me. It seems to me the most tangible gift we can receive from God while still here on earth. The gift of rest, of nothing, really, emptiness, giving up and giving over.

The entire premise of the gospel is that we are set free, resting in His goodness alone and relying on Him for our complete provision.

And yet we are still spinning every wheel, sometimes double time, desperately trying to complete the work that only He can complete. Isaiah says this:

In repentance and rest is your salvation
In quietness and trust is your strength.

I'm declaring from now until the end of July a Sabbath rest for this blog and a few other things. I've scheduled blogs from the dusty archives for the month, nothing too heady or deep. Just some simple stuff to peruse and help me to feel less inclined to be present there.

So that's it. That's all. Thanks for reading. I appreciate you more than you'll ever know.

Really.

All the love in the world,
Me

P.S. I'll also be a little less present on facebook and twitter, if you keep up with me there. If you need to get a hold of me, email me here: loreferguson@gmail.com.