Brave, Anyway

Tag: prayer

  • Dads and Dogs and Peace

    Dads and Dogs and Peace

    At least a thousand times in years 1-21, I heard my Dad say If you hang around with dogs, you’ll start barking like a dog. Even now at 46 years of age it sort of makes me want to roll my eyes.

    I hadn’t thought about that line in years until I recently heard this gem:

    You catch what you’re close to.

    It’s true for children and it’s true for adults. It’s true in our personal lives and in our professional lives. It’s true with the virus the world is watching right now. It’s true spiritually, regardless of what faith you practice. It’s true with belief systems and morals – the tendency to follow the belief systems of our families in our youth. You catch what you’re close to.

    Dozens of studies tell us that if we surround ourselves with people who focus on positivity, we’re more likely to find ourselves focused on the positive. If we surround ourselves with people who are committed to living with certain principles we are more likely to maintain commitment to principles. If our close friends commit crimes we are more likely to commit a crime.

    So it turns out, the old southern “you can’t waller with pigs and not get dirty” and “you can’t sleep with the dogs and not get fleas” are based on some science and more than just naggy parentisms. (The latter sleeping with dogs and fleas example makes me laugh more than it should for a variety of reasons.)

    Father’s Day has me thinking about the things that make my Dad my Dad, and the most important things I have learned from him. In contrast to evidence that you’re likely to hold the same belief systems as your parents, I do not think John Wayne is one of the greatest actors of all time.

    However, even though we tend to vote differently, on most of the really big things we agree. And it’s his example and his words that have been a lighthouse on every day with rough seas.

    One of my earliest memories of my Dad is of us kneeling in prayer. It’s so funny now to think about him in that environment, surrounded by Barbies and next to a frilly Holly Hobby canopy bed. He was showing me what is most important while also showing me that location isn’t important – we can spend time together and with God in the tiniest or the messiest of places. On a beach, in a car, in a fast food restaurant, in a parking lot, in a small apartment, in a church, on the steps at school…anywhere and everywhere my Dad has always made the most of his time with me.

    More than three decades later, when Audrey was about 3 months old, we received some concerning news about the cancer she was battling. One of my favorite moments with my Dad, which is also one of the biggest moments of learning from him, happened as I rocked her to sleep in her nursery. He stood next to me, again in a place surrounded by pink little girl things, with his hand on my shoulder, praying for me as I prayed for her. I was praying test results would show Audrey was cancer-free, while he was praying that I would have joy and peace.

    The job title parent doesn’t end when our children reach adulthood. That day I learned from my Dad what I had read about dozens of times but never really grasped – that peace is what guards our hearts and minds when we are struggling, that peace is how we are not alone, that peace is the path to authority and control, and that peace is the path to victory.

    Peace is what my Dad has passed to me over and over and over again. In his actions. In his words. In his prayers.

    You catch what you’re close to. Thanks, Dad, for Peace and peace. In my life, and in the lives of your granddaughters.

    My Dad. Fierce protector of teenage daughters, and even today at almost 80, questioning his teenage granddaughter about boys.
    This is the look that my Dad has when he thinks I’ve lost my mind, as I tried to explain that this was a way to get us both in the picture while standing apart for social distancing.
  • Cloud-Clearing

    Cloud-Clearing

    A handful of realizations, some new and some just reminders, changed how the world looked on this cloudy day.

    This morning I listened as a third-grade teacher made Audrey feel incredibly special in a one-on-one call, scheduled on her own time just to encourage Audrey in her reading and acknowledge her hard work and progress. Distance learning is hard, and it’s especially hard for children that don’t love school. I could hear Audrey’s smile as they talked – about guinea pig names and video updates in flip grid and synonyms – and it brought tears to my eyes and just made my heart want to burst with happiness and gratitude.

    I also remembered, and it really solidified in my brain as I listened to them, that I’m not an educator. Ms. J is an educator, and I’m an emergency substitute. I’m not failing; I wasn’t designed to be an educator and I have no experience at being an educator. It takes a village of caring people of all different strengths and gifts to raise a child, and I’m just one part of that village. I am not the whole village, I cannot be the whole village, and I should not be the whole village.

    In my last meeting of the day one of my colleagues expressed this gratitude and even more dots connected for me: working from home is such a blessing because my children have a whole different Momma. This is true in so many ways. Of course I have time to cook more, but we also have time for daily walks or bike rides together. We work in the yard. We watch shows together. My girls are seeing a me that is less relaxed in a couple of ways, but ridiculously more relaxed overall. I can’t help but think of all my female colleagues who have children, especially little girls. Those children are all seeing for the first time how hard their moms work all day before they do all the Mom-stuff at night. What an opportunity we have in this unique time to show our children and talk to our children about realistic expectations they should have of us, and realistic expectations and boundaries they should have for their grown-up selves and their future partners.

    Which brings me to this gem: As parents, our job is to walk the talk, not just walk what’s convenient. We can’t expect our children to set realistic expectations of themselves and others if we don’t teach them how to do it and show them how we do it. We can’t expect our children to work hard if the example they see in us is laziness. We can’t expect them to know what’s right if we can’t do what’s right. We can’t expect them to do what’s right if we can’t do what’s right.

    I have a tendency to want to manage or fix things all by myself and then turn to God when I’m all out of information or tries or patience. I have a tendency to think I can juggle all the village responsibilities and then turn to God when I’m exhausted. I have a tendency to expect people to do the right thing because it’s the right thing, and then I turn to God when I’m exasperated and disappointed in people in whom I never should have had any faith. I pray, but I don’t always pray first. When I pray isn’t when God enters the scene – it’s when I’ve finally decided to stop and pay attention and remember He’s on the scene. It’s when I realize His presence that always was and is. That presence that is the game-changer and the peace-bringer and the cloud-clearer.

    Maybe a prayer isn’t where God shows up. God’s always there. Maybe a prayer is where I show up.

    It’s dark now, but only because it’s late not because it’s cloudy. The clouds cleared several hours ago, when I took a moment to show up.

    P.S. Krispy Kreme now delivers. To your doorstep. In under an hour. Proving that God really does listen to all of our prayers, no matter how ridiculous they may be.

  • Closet Space

    Closet Space

    One of the best experiences in the days when your house becomes just yours is that moment when you realize that the closet belongs wholly to you. No sharing. No things hanging haphazardly and with no real organization. Tie racks become scarf organizers. Purses and shoes reside just above their corresponding clothes.

    The closet is all yours.

    All. Yours.

    You hear a little hallelujah chorus, and that chorus grows into full-on thank you, Jesus, worship.

    There’s been only one thing hanging in my closet that doesn’t belong there: my old wedding dress. Almost two years ago now, I pulled it out to throw it away only to discover that others were not quite ready for that step. Since then it’s just been hanging way in the back, taking up space.

    Over time we’ve talked more about the dress, and my firm belief that the girls should never wear it or even use the fabric. I’m a faith person, but I’m also a bit of a superstitious person – and if they ever decide to get married I want everything associated with their day and their union to have positive energy.

    Over time we’ve all become more comfortable with the idea of that dress not hanging in my closet for all of eternity. Over that same time I’ve become significantly more light-hearted, and laughed about the variety of things people do with their old dresses – everything from playing paintball in them to having a bonfire with them to mailing them to an ex’s office (now how funny would that be?).

    Until recently, I had every intention of simply throwing it in a dumpster. But I happened to catch a bit of a news story last week about brides who can’t afford gowns, and I was struck by their faces when they encountered dresses they never would have been able to get otherwise.

    And that made me think again about my dress, purchased from Karen Eagle on Laskin Road more than 20 years ago. A dress stored following exact instructions, and likely a dress in perfect condition.

    It seemed wrong to donate a dress that was worn on the first day of a marriage that was filled with lies and ended in complete disaster. It seemed like some poor girl would start off her marriage by wearing a dress that had really bad juju, and her marriage would subsequently be destined for disaster.

    And yet, what if a dress is just a dress? What if it’s just fabric, and the energy associated with it has nothing to do with its history? What if something good came from it? What if God could make something beautiful from ashes?

    My late night musings became a prayer over the dress. A prayer for the next girl who will wear it. A prayer specifically for her marriage.

    • May you decide each day to choose happy.
    • May your partner actually be your partner, with the same values and focus on family.
    • May you both keep and honor your vows, to God and one another.
    • May every I love you that you speak and hear be heartfelt and full of truth.
    • May you know deep in your heart that you are not a person in relation to someone else – you are whole and beloved and perfect all on your own, and in marriage you’re a whole person alongside another whole person.
    • May all the dreams that are good for you come true.
    • May God save you from dreams and hopes that you don’t know aren’t right for you. And then may you have the wisdom and courage to not chase that which God has saved you from.
    • When dark days come, and they inevitably will, may you and your partner always look to the Light together.
    • May your marriage last until death do you part.

    This morning on the way to work, I stopped at Goodwill and I laughed with the young man at the center about whether or not I should take the tax deduction receipt. It felt really, really good to make that donation, to get rid of that baggage, and to free up that space in my closet and in my spirit. And yet just a few minutes up the road I started to have second thoughts about whether or not a prayer for some unknown girl unknowingly wearing my cursed dress will really make everything work out okay for her.

    I know God has to be so tired of me asking for signs. I am the worst kid, always demanding: show me a sign, I just need a sign. How do I know this was the right thing?! Was this the wrong thing?

    And then I looked up as the traffic light turned green and noticed the car in front of me. It’s license tag, my sign: G Is Good.

    God is good.

    God is good, so I can trust that the girl who ends up with that dress will be just fine.

    She might be a young bride; she might be an old bride. She might be a formal wedding bride; she might be a JOP bride. She might be a first-time bride; she might be a second-time bride. Or she might just be a girl who needs a Halloween costume – and that’s a pretty fitting ending in this case, too.

    To whoever ends up with the dress, may blessings chase you down.

  • It Is Well

    The Emergency Broadcasting System alarm message is the absolute last thing you want to hear when you’re on a long drive with two children, and one of them has just asked to stop somewhere because she has to go to the bathroom.

    Tornado warning.

    Tornado immediately takes my mind down a path of images of an F5 that tears up towns all around Helen Hunt. Warning tells me conditions aren’t just conducive, but that something has been spotted.

    I knew the weather report called for rain, but that rain was scheduled for at least a couple hours later. It was dusk and not raining, but the sky did look a little odd. I found myself in the position of wanting not to alarm the girls while also wanting more info so I could make the best decision about what to do. Should I stop somewhere and hope that our luck was a little better than that of Cary Elwes, or keep moving to hopefully put distance between us and the storms?

    I asked Ella to Google the area and see what she could find out. The answer: three funnels, although pretty far away. That made the decision to keep driving very easy – we could add some distance between us and those storms and keep making progress toward home. And I had about 10 minutes of pleasant driving, feeling good about my decision, before the sky became dark and the rain began to pound onto the windshield.

    And when I say dark with pounding rain, I mean I and the other drivers around me turned on hazard lights and moved slowly over to the far right of I64. The rain hitting the car was intense and visibility was bad, and Audrey became frightened. I’m not sure what I said, but I found my “everything’s fine” Mommy voice and produced words to encourage her and assure her we were fine. The special lights the triangle button makes tell people where we are, and we’re all together, and the other cars are in it with us, and this is part of our adventure, and even though the rain is noisy the really bad part of the storms is far away, and this rain is going to make sure great flowers grow soon, and we’re fine.

    I had no idea if she really believed my complete load of crap. I didn’t have the luxury of turning around to make eye contact. I had to be mindful that my body language was in line with my voice and did not show unease, I had to focus my external attention on the road, and I had to focus my internal attention on prayer.

    And when I say prayer, I don’t mean Dear God It’s me Beth and it would be nice if this storm calmed down a bit. I was praying hard. More like, This is awful. Get us out of this. Please. Quickly. How did Jesus sleep through storms? And calm me down, too. I need help to stay calm because this is awful and the girls don’t need to know how awful it is. How could this happen at the end of our awesome spring break? Please. Please. Please. Keep us safe. Keep us calm. Are you there?! This is so bad.

    The noise from the rain on the car seemed angry, and was adding to our tension. So I hit the button to switch from radio to ipod to try to put a soothing sound in the car. A recent addition to our song library came on, It Is Well – a worship song that samples the old hymn It Is Well With My Soul. The song’s beginning is quiet, with little instrumentation, and the singer almost seems like she’s praying quietly to herself, so you have to kind-of focus on her soft voice to hear the words.

    And at the exact same moment, a couple minutes into the song, Ella and I started singing: “Through it all, through it all, my eyes are on you. Through it all, through it all, it is well…the waves and wind still know His name.”

    Click here, and at about 1:45 is the moment.

    Just a few weeks ago, I learned the story of the man who penned It Is Well With My Soul, Horatio Spafford. He wrote the words during a time of personal tragedy, just after the loss of his children. I cried when I heard my friend Anne tell the story, and again later when relating it to Ella. It really is *that* moving. How can someone, anyone, have so much faith during a time of such profound darkness and despair?

    Click Here for the It Is Well With My Soul history

    As Ella and I were singing the song, peace filled me. In part because I needed something besides the storm to focus my brain on. In part because the song itself is quiet and calming. And in part because I had this sudden realization about a needed shift in my life, specifically as it relates to faith and prayer.

    I talk to my girls about God and faith and prayer, and I take them to church and we say prayers before bed and we sometimes even pray that we’ll find the missing book we need before we leave in the morning. But there’s a big part of me that I have not shared with them yet, and that’s how I pray and how often I pray. And a dark truth – that sometimes I don’t have total faith in my prayers.

    I have always been alone with my prayers. In my own head. In my own space. I typically don’t share them or talk about them, out of habit more than anything else. At home I didn’t talk about my prayers because I wasn’t surrounded by people who take faith seriously or because it seemed like the girls were too little for that big stuff, and at work it’s not always appropriate to share that kind of thing.

    I talk to God all the time, all throughout the day. It’s more like an ongoing conversation where I sometimes get louder if I think God isn’t listening. It’s what you might call cerebral prayer – a mixture of my nature to rely on facts and data, with faith in a God that doesn’t always need my facts and data, with my impatience in a God that doesn’t always move as quickly as I’d like. If you charted my faith, it hasn’t grown in the nice upward lines we like to see in financial documents. It’s up and down, sometimes all in one day.

    My faith isn’t perfect. I don’t always believe everything will work out the way we want and pray for. Sometimes when I hear about a horrible diagnosis, my initial reaction is not for a miracle but that some people get their healing in heaven instead of here. I wish I could say that I have the kind of faith that moves mountains, but I don’t. But what I’ve realized is that my girls don’t need to see my faith or prayer perfection, which is not real. I don’t want them to think that perfection is the standard and that if they don’t have 100% faith they are a failure, or there’s no reason to have any faith if they can’t have full faith. They need to see my work in progress faith, because that’s real. And seeing what’s real is in part what will enable them to embrace work in progress faith in their own lives.

    It’s OK to pray when I don’t know what to say or how to say it or have doubts. It’s OK to pray without the formalities of intros like Dear Heavenly Father and for me to speak like I’m talking to my friend in Colorado. It’s OK to pray and admit to God and everyone that I am afraid even though I’m praying. It’s OK to offer a song as a prayer, showing my daughter that sometimes – many times – I don’t have words, and other peoples words are the best words.

    Within just a few minutes, the rain seemed less ominous around the car. The sky was a little lighter. Cars were spreading back out across all the lanes of the highway, and started moving more quickly. Our storm had actually passed pretty quickly. Ella and I talked a little about the scary few minutes and the song and our singing the waves and wind verse at the same time – one of the most memorable moments from the trip. And then I turned around to check on Audrey, wondering at how quiet she had been, and found that she was fast asleep. While I had been fearful during the worst part of the storm, struggling in my cerebral prayer, Audrey had fallen asleep…childlike faith at 100%.