I Need You

I need you. 

Really.

And I think you might need me. I'll explain.

Julia and I had neighbors over for dinner a few weeks ago. They're new to Pittsburgh. They talked with us about how hard they had tried to connect to people where they lived before. They wanted to be in relationship with other people. To share their lives with other people and to have those people share their lives with them. It didn't happen and now they're hoping to find connections and relationships here in Pittsburgh. They're hoping to commit their lives to a community of people who will, in return, commit to them.

I had dinner with a friend a few days later. He had applied for a job at his church and his church selected another candidate. He spoke of feeling disappointed and rejected. But, he kept referring to his church as his "family." Even though he felt rejected, he still claimed his church as his "family." He told me about how his church is imperfect because the people are imperfect, and because the structures that define the practices of his church are imperfect. Through the application and interviewing process he got to see his church in a way that he never had before. I think he saw something that disillusioned him. Something that could be fixed. And yet, he didn't see himself as the one who could fix it. He told me, "The Christian story only has one Hero in it and it isn't me."

John 17 is known as the High Priestly Prayer. Jesus gives an account of His earthly mission to His Heavenly Father while praying for Himself (vv. 1-5), His disciples (vv. 6-19), and then every person who, after His death, would believe Him to be the Son of God and the promised Messiah (vv. 20-26).

In verses 20-23 (ESV) Jesus prays: "I do not ask for these [His disciples] only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word [every person who, after His death, will believe Him to be the Son of God and Messiah], that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me." 

That we may be one with one another just as Jesus is one with God? That we might be one in the way that God is in Jesus and that Jesus is in God? That we might become perfectly one? That our oneness with one another would be a witness to the world?

Jesus is praying that His followers would become an interdependent, interconnected, interrelated community of people in the same way that Jesus, God, and the Spirit are interdependent, interconnected, and interrelated.

Christians speak and write the word "community" frequently. I know that I do. I wonder if we've unintentionally diminished the kind of community we're supposed to be seeking, creating, and experiencing. I wonder if we've unintentionally missed the depth of oneness that Jesus prayed for us to know and experience.

What if my community of people is a necessary component of my spiritual journey and formation? 

What if my community is integral to my knowing Jesus as fully and honestly as I'm supposed to?

What if my community is an essential component of my being able to live out my faith in love?

About two weeks ago a neighbor saw the police arresting a teenager in our neighborhood. She was riding her bike and stopped to watch the arrest. She was approached by a police officer. He yelled at her. He screamed at her. If you're unfamiliar with this story you can click this sentence to read a recent Post-Gazette article written by another neighbor about what happened. 

I read our neighbor's account of what happened. And it changed me. Her experience has made me more and made me different than I was before I read her words. 

When we gather at church we risk missing the blessing of community. We mistakenly believe that we come to church as independent, disconnected, and unrelated people. And maybe that's what we are today. But it isn't what we're supposed to be. It isn't what we have to be. 

I want to go to church and be surrounded by people who I'm committed to and who are committed to me. I want to go to church and be in relationship with people who are integral, necessary even, to my spiritual development and formation. I want to go to church and praise God with my brothers and sisters, my family. I want to go to church and stand and look around and see a connected collection of broken and battered spiritual brothers and sisters living under the banner of Jesus' love for each one of us.

Because without my family I'm not able to fully know myself or my God. 

Without my family I might forget who I am and who God really is.

Without my family I risk feeling alone, isolated, vulnerable, insecure, adrift.

When we seek to become an interdependent, interconnected, interrelated spiritual family we position ourselves to be a witness to a fractured community, city, and world. When we seek to become a spiritual family we begin to understand the value of being patient, long-suffering, bearing one another's burdens, clinging as tightly to one another as we can, and loving others the way we want to be loved. When we seek to become a spiritual family we connect to one another and to God in ways that are deep and real and we become more.

I need you. And maybe you need me. We all need to be connected to a specific people in a specific place. When we are we can become more.

Unwanted Anniversaries

Today marks three years since the shocking phone call that changed our lives. Our strong, healthy daddy had been running on his lunch break, as he'd done every day for 30 years, but on this day his heart stopped. And he fell. And suddenly, our lives would never be the same. 

I wrote this blog post as the one-year anniversary of saying goodbye to him approached, and it's startling how very much the same I feel today as I did then. I realize now that grief is a nonlinear process, with deep valleys and ragged peaks, and much rough ground along the twisted path between. Some days healing washes over me in a wave of joy and gratitude for all that's been revealed, all I've come to understand, and all the growth I've seen birthed out of the pain. And some days, it feels like I'm walking in circles, down the same aching paths I've trudged down so many times before. 

My hope in sharing this again is that those of you who have received the dreaded phone call, or the sickening diagnosis, or who mourn the loss of one you love, may be reminded today that you are not alone, that we are carried on by a Great Grace, and that my heart and prayers are with you today. 

-Julia-

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This is a month of anniversaries.

Not the kind of anniversaries you anticipate with joy or pride.

Not the kind of anniversaries you celebrate with special meals and gifts and loving glances.

But dates that are burned into my memory nonetheless.  Markers of days of great significance.  Turning points, from which life moved on differently than it ever had before.

One year ago this Monday was the last day I saw my daddy's gentle eyes look back into mine with love and pride.  The last time he buried me in his strong, warm embrace.  The last time he held my sweet little girl in his burly arms as she wrapped her tiny ones around his neck.  The last time I told him "I love you", and heard him speak the words back.

One year ago tomorrow, we got the phone call that forever changed our lives.  The phone call everyone dreads, and either prays they never receive, or shoves the thought of deep into the recesses of their subconscious, so as not to even deal with the horrible potential reality.

And one year ago next Thursday, March 28th, was the day my daddy went Home.  The day we told him goodbye, after days of singing and praying and reading words of scripture over him, hoping against hope that it wasn't yet his time to be called into eternity.  The day we gathered around his hospital bed and watched him fight with labored, ragged breaths for hours until we whispered words of release in his ears, and he drew his last breath in the world we can see, and we sang one of his favorite old songs...

"Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home..."

These anniversaries are one year old.  And yet somehow they mark days that simultaneously feel as though they happened ten minutes and ten years ago.

Ten minutes because the memories are burned so vividly into my mind.  My heart still races and my stomach still goes into knots when my thoughts go to the car ride to the hospital, and the first time my husband and I stepped into that emergency room and saw him laying there, broken.  I can still feel his once strong hands turned limp and unresponsive, hands that I held for hours upon hours praying for just a hint of tightening in his grip, to let me know he was coming back to us.  I can still hear the voices of my mom and sisters and husband and brother-in-law and aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and friends as they lifted up the cries of their hearts in prayer to the only One who could heal and restore this man we all loved so deeply, and who we could not imagine carrying on without.

Ten years because our lives have changed so drastically.  Because I feel that much older.  Because so  much of life and death has been lived in this last year. Because the work of transforming and persevering is so very exhausting some days.  Most days.  Because I have a precious son who feels like he's been a part of our family forever, but who has never met his Papa on this side of eternity.

This has been a year filled with grieving and suffering.  Internally as we've wrestled with the torturous "what ifs" and "whys" and "if onlys".  Externally as we've fought back tears brought forth by memories that came to mind at inopportune times.  Publicly as we've stumbled through trying to live genuinely, if somewhat messily, before the people in our lives and those who read our words, acknowledging the pain while still experiencing the joys and gifts and provision of a Father who has never left us.  Who has only drawn us closer.

And this year has also been a year of hope, of gratitude, of wonder, and of grace.  We have been overwhelmed by the goodness of our God, demonstrated tangibly through His people's love and prayers and care and presence in our lives.  We have been in awe of the ways He has truly brought beauty from ashes, and hope from despair.  We have been amazed by the grace that never fails, that is always sufficient, that is made perfect in our moments of greatest weakness.

And hope?  What a remarkable thing it is.

Hope isn't afraid to acknowledge the ugliness of the current reality.  It doesn't hide from the mess.  It overcomes fear.  It lifts our heads.  It allows us to walk forth in joy while still feeling the ache, to smile while tears stream down our faces.

"...we rejoice  in hope of the glory of God.  Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." (Rom 5:2-4)

Because of the One who makes us more than we are, we are able to rejoice... not in spite of our sufferings, but in them.

And because of the grace-filled reality that transcends our tangible experience, we live in eager expectation of the day when we are once again united with our beloved daddy.  We don't have to wrestle with doubt, or the question of if that day will ever truly arrive.  We can experience peace knowing that he has been made whole and complete, in the presence of his loving Creator, who is Himself the fullness of all we desire or imagine.

I can smile knowing that my daddy's days are full of unending joy.

I can worship in truth from the depths of my being, knowing that in those moments, I can almost feel my daddy's presence doing the very same, right along side me, close but far away, consumed only by the love of our great Rescuer.

And I can face these unwanted anniversaries.  With honesty.  With tears.  With gut-wrenching sobs, even.  But also with peace, and joy, and hope.

Because what I can see is only the beginning of the story.

Mission Trip in Review

Christine Law, one of our team members, captured video throughout our week in Nicaragua. Here's a look at our week and what we did.