Recently in Falling Sparrows Category

I stabbed the edge of the shovel into the ground and pulled back a corner of the earth. The rich dark, soil had a vine of pink flowers clinging to the top of it. Snapping off big clovers by the fistful I lined the hole left behind, leaving no soil showing through the layers of green. It still looked cold and damp. I gently lifted her and laid her down on the blanket of clovers. Her paralyzed legs pulled her to the side, but she lifted her head and looked at me every time I got nearer. I pulled back and she let her body fall as it willed. For a moment I thought she had died and felt relief, but when I leaned in closer she perked up. “Of course not” I thought.

She had said that it would be most humane to hit the spot on the back of her head just above her neck. I found a rock and gently repositioned her so I could see where to aim. She kept listing to the side. Taking deep breaths I repositioned her again, and then brought the rock down hard. The earth beneath her head sank in and I hit her again. Terrified that she might still have even a hint of life and therefore of her pain, I hit her one more time. Her bladder gave up and she wet herself. It was then that I knew she was dead. There was a life and a light, and then it was gone. It was then that I knew the death of this mouse would not be unlike my own physical death. The difference being only in the details, and the question only being “when”.

Peeping through my keyhole I see within the range of only about thirty percent of the light that comes from the sun; the rest is infrared and some little ultraviolet, perfectly apparent to many animals, but invisible to me. A nightmare network of ganglia, charged and firing without my knowledge, cuts and splices what I do see, editing it for my brain. Donald E. Carr points out that the sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain: "This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is."
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Annie Dillard

We are on the verge of drastic life changes. At this point they are potential, but they are big potentials. I find myself wanting to hold back for fear. How much sacrifice do we make when it feels as though God is calling us?

My soul is warring with what is right and what the world has taught me. The parts of me that want to say no, say no for purely financial, and comfort reasons. Then I think about perspective, and wonder how little I see. I see so well the materialistic things in my life. I like the idea of having a house to grow old in. What if God calls me to give it up? Can I? even in the midst of losing a huge comfort in my life? Every part of me that wants to say yes knows that it is a chance for my husband and me to better use our gifts, to better serve, and to start something that has been brewing for years. Something we believe in. I sit and realize that ‘Yes, God can use the moneyless just as easily as the rich.’

I listen in silence as my inner being tries to shake the world off, desperately trying to see what my perspective won't let me. And I think that, perhaps God will call us to do crazy things and the people whom we love will smile, shake their heads and call us crazy. I will take risk over comfort knowing that my vision is always worlds too small to know what God’s plans are. I don’t want to end my life saying, ‘I played it safe’.

Last week I took my life to Labri and dismantled it. I have been sorting through the bullshit and throwing it out. My husband says: ‘Do you know why I am here? To hold your pieces while you put them back together.’ I feel as though I am under a spell. In a cocoon. The smallest things cause me fear that it will break me open prematurely and dissipate the spell. So, for now I ignore the phone and the life that buzzes past my door. I cuddle babies and kiss chubby faces that press themselves against my lips, begging for more. I sleep sixteen hours and spoon with my husband when he joins me. We postpone sex for the sake of a different kind of closeness.

My head is so full of the things that I read, listened to, and discussed with various people. My sense of how small the safe bubble of Chattanooga Christian circles is, is dominating. It was the week before I left that we went across the street to greet a new neighbor. She was drinking wine with a friend and we discussed various favorites and the fact that the only wine that “gladdens” Shauns heart is hot sake. We laughed and joked and eventually the talk turned to coffee. Shaun and I are one hundred percent coffee snobs. We told our new neighbors about Greyfriars and the discovery of such an incredible coffee that it was ruining us for all other coffees. We don’t mind, some things in life just can’t be compromised, if you are going to drink coffee, than drink it RIGHT! The one woman immediately piped in “Greyfriars is Christian affiliated isn’t it?!?” She didn’t seem too excited about the prospect. We were a little surprised and said, ‘well, the owners are Christian, if that’s what you mean, you know we’re Christians, too.’
‘Well, no, Greyfriars is owned by Covenant college!’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘no..’
‘Yes, it is.’
At this point we were beginning to feel a little silly arguing like school children, and tried to explain to her that we are close friends with the owners and that Covenant does not own even a piece of Greyfriars. Then we cracked a joke to kind of dissipate the tension, by saying ‘Were you scared that if you went in there, they would force you to read a tract?’
We’re tempted to buy her a bag of coffee and write Jesus Saves on it before giving it to her.
It has taken me a long time to know how to process, knowing that people outside of the Chattanooga Christian bubbles are also aware of the bubble. All I can feel is sadness over this.

Dorothy Sayers wrote: “What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class, and not as an individual person.” I do not want to be clumped into a group because I am a mother, wife, or Christian. Surely these each are part of my calling, but I am a unique individual for whom these roles will be played out in an unrepeatable way according to my gifts, needs, and how the other pieces of my calling fit in. I also don’t want to lump people into an outside group, because they don’t believe what I do.

My hope is that we will stop living this way. That we will live in such a way that no matter what a persons, color, faith, sex, vocation, or background may be, that we will love them as individuals and not what we assume about them.

Live dangerously, and break free from your bubble.

The following excerpt is from the book “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd. The group of women are at the wake of a dear friend named May.

Mabelee said, “She looks so good-doesn’t she look good?”
Queenie snorted. “If she looks that good, maybe we ought to put her on display in the drive-by window at the funeral home.”
“Oh, Queenie!” cried Mabelee.
Cressie noticed Rosaleen and me sitting there in the dark and said, “The funeral home in town has a drive-by window. It used to be a bank.”
“Nowadays they put the casket right up in the window where we used to drive through and get our checks cashed,” said Queenie. “People can drive through and pay their respects without having to get out. They even send the guest book out in the drawer for you to sign.”
“You ain’t serious,” said Rosaleen.
“Oh, yeah,” Queenie said. “We’re serious.”
They might’ve been speaking the truth, but they didn’t look serious. They were falling on each other laughing, and there was May, dead.
Lunelle said, “I drove in there one time to see Mrs. Lamar after she passed, since I used to work for her way back when. The woman who sat in the window beside her casket used to be the bank teller there, and when I drove off, she said, ‘You have a nice day now.’”
I turned to August, who was wiping her eyes from tears of hilarity. I said, “You won’t let them put May in the bank window, will you?”
“Honey, don’t worry about it,” said Sugar-Girl. “The drive-by window is at the white people’s funeral home. They’re the only ones with enough money to fix up something that ridiculous.”
They all broke down again with hysterics, and I could not help laughing, too, partly with relief that people would not be joyriding through the funeral home to see May and partly because you could not help laughing at the sight of all the Daughters laughing.
But I will tell you this secret thing, which not one of them saw, not even August, the thing that brought me the most cause for gladness. It was how Sugar-Girl said what she did, like I was truly one of them. Not one person in the room said, Sugar-Girl, really, talking about white people like that and we have a white person present. They didn’t even think of me being different.
Up until then I’d thought that white people and colored people getting along was the big aim, but after that I decided everybody being colorless together was a better plan. I thought of that policeman, Eddie Hazelwurst, saying I’d lowered myself to be in this house of colored women, and for the very life of me I couldn’t understand how it had turned out this way, how colored women had become the lowest ones on the totem pole. You only had to look at them to see how special they were, like hidden royalty among us. Eddie Hazelwurst. What a shitbucket.

One can tell from reading some of my last entries that playing God isn’t working out for me. As my dad says, ‘I suppose you fell pretty short.’ Yes, that is true. I crashed and burned and the world said ‘Thank goodness she isn’t God!’

My fourteen-year-old friend and her boyfriend came by to see me. The rumors have turned out to be true: she is pregnant and married as of two weeks ago. They explain to me patiently, as though I am three years old, that of course the marriage is legal, the boyfriend had to sell his Play station in order to pay for the marriage certificate. I know that God came and sat with us on the back porch as we talked about their plans. The peace and confidence I felt, could not have come from within myself. I asked if I could pray over them; they responded with a quick yes, closed their eyes, and bowed their heads. For so long I have thought about how to keep her from getting pregnant, how to keep her in school, how to get her to listen about Jesus, and worst of all how to save her soul. And here she was. And I knew in that moment that all I could do, and all God wanted me to do, was to meet her there exactly where I was and exactly where she was. And then I prayed. And that’s it. After all that work, that little prayer was the most that I have ever done for her.

There is freedom in knowing that God will use me, but He doesn’t need me.

I read this post on the Red Clay Girls BLOG. It was beautiful and I love how at times I find random things that apply to where I am at.

I have always been one to ask forbidden questions in any context, but answers are few and I am confused. The little things blow my mind. I was present when someone talked about their new mattress and my first response was one of complete longing for my own brand new, comfortable, pillow-topped, say goodbye to all backaches mattress of my own. Then I wondered how I should think about a new mattress when so many in the world don’t even have a mattress to begin with.
Perhaps I should not want a new mattress.
Or is it that I should only want a new one when the old one that I do have has springs poking all the way through?
Should I have a mattress at all?
Should the mattress be okay, as long as I am not spoiled about it and don’t spend this much time obsessing about a material possession?
I sat in my yard the other day and was utterly astounded that we own a van. How amazing is that? I am the owner of a huge vehicle with which I can go practically anywhere! Yet, in some dark recessed place within myself I think that I need it and well, frankly, that I deserve it.
So, is the van okay as long as I don’t take it for granted?
I know that giving it all up is not the answer, but I fear that I do not know the extent of my slavery to possessions.
Is it okay for me to spend a majority of my time, energy, and brain space on financial security? Someone told me once that I try too hard. But I see too much complacency around me and within me not to. To be honest I don’t want money to be my focus.
In Africa the tribal language I was exposed to had no word for future tense. The children would dig in our garbage pit pulling out all the valuable tins, which we had thrown out, to use for hauling water. When shown how to collect rain water, they just walked away in disbelief to wash their hair in the well, no thought on tomorrow when they would have to drink it; soap and all. I wonder how they would feel if they joined my prayer group as I bemoaned not having any money. (Oh, by the way, we don’t have any money.) How would they react when they saw my lovely mattress and my huge van?
It takes faith.
How far do we take faith?
Faith I am not sure that I possess. Faith that says I can leave a job, because it is solely a source of money and not a source of using my gifts. Faith to leave my kids with my husband so that I can get a job that uses my gifts (even though it will pay nothing compared to what we need). Faith that says my husband can leave a secure job to make much less because he is neglecting his family for the sake of a paycheck.
What is need?
Faith perhaps to live in a smaller house, so we are not living above our means. I’m not sure that our big house is a gift in the way that we think. Perhaps it is here to break me. Break me into living in a two-bedroom house with my family of six to lift some of the financial burdens. That in of its self is not the answer, but would I in faith be willing to or only if forced to and then how much would I complain?!
In Joshua people were terrified when commanded to go into the promised land and KILL all the men, women, and children! They were afraid of the large men there. What did they do? They complained, and God struck them DOWN! The ones who started it immediately and the ones who followed died over time without ever seeing the promised land. I would have been STRUCK down. I am far to secure and busy to go and kill a city full of men bigger than I, let alone do my dishes without bitching!
Not using my talents in leu of a pretty paycheck is to me burying them in a field for safe keeping. For, say, when the Lord returns and makes the world right, so that then I can use them. Perhaps he will say, “I am glad that you did not try too hard.”
I know that my husband and I could live far below our current means and still be far richer than a majority of the world. And here in America, we are far below poverty level.

When I was girl I spent most summers participating at a summer camp in northern Minnesota called Story Book Lodge. First as a camper, then a worker, and later on as a junior counselor (being a little too rebelious I never quite made it to counselor). One of the more vivid memories I have of the many Bible lessons we received is one that was during my summer as a worker. We were all gathered in the counselors lodge. The speaker was talking about the verse in Romans 8 'and we know that all things work together for good....' He was defining what needs would be met in order for all things to 'work together for good.' He stated that needs refers to all our immediate needs: food, water, housing, clothing. "After all," He argued "How many Christians do you know that are starving?" I asked him how many non-Christians he knew that were starving. Good point he said as he quickly moved on to other topics.

So, here we are, broke. Not only did we manage to misplace close to four hundred dollars, unbeknownst to us we also managed to take out a bank loan for two dollars and twenty one cents with nearly two hundred percent interest per day. The morning after this financial crisis we woke up to a surreal peace in our home and hearts. Everything had slowed to a restful pace. Two people that are used to running around in control of ther lives were forced to slow and reevaluate their "grasp" on control. So often my husband feels enormous pressure to provide every need his family has. So often to my shame I reiterate this lie. I help him believe that he needs to take care of everything, but worst of all that he needs to always reassure me that everything is okay, and that he is full of hope, strength, and answers.

Joshua 1:9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and couregous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
Proverbs 31:17 She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms srtong.
Proverbs 31:25 Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the days to come.
(Emphasis mine.)

God does not promise to provide what I think He should provide. Perhaps being broke is just what I 'need'. But He does promise to take care of me and give me peace that passes all understanding. Because of this covenant I too hope to laugh at the time to come.

June is the month my life changed. The Y in the road that got me where I am now. We packed up everthing and moved cross country: furniture, clothes, two trucks, a van, three children, a husband, and me great with child. Faithfulness for us was to move away from a prosperous business, family, and friends in order for Shaun to go back to school for fine arts. An established artist already he can paint a killer faux finish and any kind of mural. But God created Shaun as an 'artist'. Not a Faux finisher.

So, here we are attempting to take steps more towards the studio and less towards the business end of paint. This blog is my feeble attempt at getting out some of my creative angst and to stay connected to those loved ones left behind as I stay home with three children under the age of two.

Eric Liddle a missionary, much to everyone's criticism, left his mission to run. When pushed he said that God made him fast and when he ran he felt God's pleasure. When Shaun paints our household feels God's pleasure.