my pink toes

I wrote another essay for my church's eNewsletter. You may recognize some bits and pieces of it from two previous posts. As always, what I ended up writing is not necessarily what I sat down to write. That is the amazing thing about the writing process. I truly feel the Spirit working through me. I am blessed and honored to have a venue in which to share this writing.

Love, Chronic Pain, and Toothpaste

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 3:34-35 NIV)

I have fibromyalgia. This is a fancy-schmancy medical-ese way of saying that on any given day, I hurt all over. Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, but every day I’m in some sort of pain. It is mainly concentrated around my hips, but spreads throughout my entire body and is frequently accompanied by overwhelming fatigue. One current theory is that although FM is not necessarily caused by a traumatic injury or motor vehicle accident, such events can bring out FM. I was in a serious car accident in 1991. The lap belt saved my life, but did lifelong tissue damage and since then I have been in pain every day.

I am in the midst of deep processing about how much this chronic pain affects my life. For years, I would just push on through and catch up on the weekends by sleeping constantly. I convinced myself I had no life because I was a teacher, and teachers' work never ends (poor me). I told myself I was overwhelmed because starting up a new church was Hard Work, and I had to do so much to make myself feel valuable. I would snap at my husband, screaming under the weight of everything I had to do.

The reality was that I was pushing my body to the limit and beyond each and every day. Instead of feeling these limitations, embracing them, and learning from them, I continued to destroy my body and relationships by living in denial and lashing out at myself and those closest to me. I was screaming under the weight of trying to appear perfect and therefore prove there was nothing wrong with me (or with my faith).
Somehow I bought into the idea that I had to appear to have it all together in order to show (prove?) my faith. I thought the only way I had value to anyone was to be perfect.

But Jesus doesn’t say “You’ll show everyone how great I am by how great and put-together YOU are.” He says, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 3:34-35)

Keith Ferrin sent me a link to a webpage of great quotes from the late Mike Yaconelli. Two of the quotes have particularly resonated with me as I have been wrestling with the realities of my pain issues:

“We're attempting to convince the world how good Jesus is by how great we are. This is precisely how Madison Avenue sells toothpaste, automobiles, and underwear. People don't need any more images of success, wealth, and power; they're surrounded already. What they need are their sins forgiven. What they need is healing. What they need is love.”

“I am beginning to understand that faith is not the way around pain, it is the way through pain. Faith doesn't get rid of the opposition, it invites it over for dinner. Faith doesn't give you the winning point at the last second, it ties the game and sends you into overtime. Faith doesn't give you the solution, it forces you to find it.”

I have spent my life trying to be Superwoman and then Supermom and sometimes SuperChristian. Why? Because I bought into the lie that if I'm a Christian, things should always be going right. I'm not sure where we got that idea. Certainly not from the book of 1st Peter (“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you.” 1 Peter 4:12)

I think this has also been a big factor in processing my pain issues. If I'm a Christian, I shouldn't be in pain, right? This has been said to me as directly as "Your pain is a result of some unrepented sin in your life" and as subtly as "If you had faith, you would be healed” (implying that “healing prayer” hadn’t worked because of some deficiency in me.) These statements roll around in my head, wearing their familiar grooves along my long-traveled pathways of thought.

I believe God can do miracles - I believe he can heal.
He has not healed my physical body.
How can both statements be true? I don't know - I may spend a lifetime "finding the solution" to this dilemma. Jesus has healed and changed many painful things in my life. I have seen and felt Him at work in me, softening my rough edges, gently showing me things I need to change, and redeeming my heart - making me believe - slowly, slowly - that He loves me so fully. The more I feel the love, the more entranced I am by Him. I have come to believe that I may actually be lovable after all. Perhaps I could never come to know this if I were able to be "Superwoman" and sell Jesus like he were toothpaste. Only by being broken could I know how powerful the Healer is.

Life is a struggle. My life may be messier than most, but honestly, I doubt it. We each have our own basket of expectations, disappointments, struggles, and challenges. I have pain, frustrations, difficult babies, and financial realities. Following Jesus doesn't make all these things go away. Instead, I am learning how to forge forward, slogging through the muck of my life, holding firmly to Grace. This is Real. This is where I meet Jesus and where I find love and purpose and hope in the journey.

They will know we are Christians by our Love, not our so-called Got-It-Together-ness. The world sees through our façade. People want to see God’s love. That’s what each one of us needs most of all.

Filed Under "Essays, Faith, Journey" on July 03, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

[This is an essay I wrote a couple years ago. My friend Jenny's post reminded me of the importance of the hard work of repair. I realized I wrote this before I started blogging, so I'm posting it now. It's one of my favorites.]

All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We're Christ's representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God's work of making things right between them.
1 Corinthians 5:18-20 (Msg)

Scarred for life. It’s a phrase we toss around casually, jokingly. “Hey, don’t put tape on the cat – she’ll be scarred for life!” It’s also a phrase that lurks around the corners of a parent’s mind, at least on mine. When I lose my patience and snap at my 4 year-old for putting his socks in the peanut butter again, I fear it. “Oh, I hope he won’t be scarred for life”. Will he remember me as an impatient harpy? Or as the loving mother that I try to be? I worry.

My counselor assures me that I don’t need to worry that I’m scarring Henry for life. She tells me that it’s all about repair. When we mess up in a relationship, it’s not the messing up itself that causes pain - it’s whether or not there is repair. Apologizing, listening, owning our mistakes, seeking to deepen the relationship even though it is painful – that is repair.

On a visit to the Science Center when Henry was two, I was overstimulated by all the zinging and whistling and the raucous zeal of small children. I was hungry and tired and could feel the tightening band of a tension headache wrapping around my skull. Finally, it was naptime – time to head home. I needed to go to the bathroom before I navigated the long walk back to the car and the drive back to Redmond.

While in the stall with me, Henry kept playing with a small trash receptacle. Open, closed. “Please don’t, Honey”, I said. Open, closed. “No!” I said. Open, closed. “Dirty!” I shouted. Open, closed. Open, closed. “Stop it!” I yelled. He continued to play. I snapped. I grabbed his hand and slapped it. Hard. I was so tired and frustrated and part of me wanted to hurt him as badly as I was hurting. He took his hand back, stared at it and began to cry. I washed my hands, still fuming, but now feeling empty and depleted. I buckled him in his stroller, still whimpering, and marched toward the exit. Once out of the building, the fresh air hit me like a blast. My emotions bubbled up and I started weeping. I had hit my child. Hard. On purpose. Because I was angry. I had done what I had vowed never to do.

When we got to the car, I lifted Henry out of the stroller and cradled him to my tear-covered face. “I am so sorry, Henry”, I told him. “Mommy never ever should have hurt your hand. It was very wrong and I shouldn’t have done it. I’m very very sorry.” He squirmed out of my arms and sulked in the carseat. It was a long ride home.

Later that day, Henry crawled up into my empty lap, looked into my sad eyes, and patted my head. “Mommy very sorry hurt-a-hand. Mommy very sorry.” He patted me again and snuggled in to my chest. Tears flowed down my face as we sat together. Repair.

As long as we are humans in relationship, we will mess up. Being human is messy, messy business. The hard, worthwhile work is in repair. Not in “fixing everything” or “trying to be perfect all the time”, but in repairing. It takes time and effort and can be very painful at first. I know some people who will actually end a relationship because they don’t want to work on the repair - it’s easier for them to move on than to apologize, listen to the pain they’ve caused, and work toward trust and understanding. I have been guilty of ignoring pain in a relationship, pretending that it wasn’t there – my unwillingness to engage in repair slowly rotted these relationships from the inside out.

Just as often as I mess up my relationship with my son, I mess up my relationship with God. Thankfully, God knows how messy we are – he created us! His plan for confession and forgiveness are a picture of divine repair. We do it over and over again, creating a pattern of repair, of deepening relationship. It is a model we can use in our human relationships as well.

Reconciliation and repair - it’s a good pattern to get into. It takes a lot of hard, deliberate work, but it is worth it. I’m convinced that only through the hard work of repair can relationships fully deepen and grow into what God wants them to be – a slice of our relationship with Him. None of us has to be scarred for life except Jesus.

Filed Under "Essays, Faith" on May 04, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I have the privilege of writing for my church's enewsletter from time to time. Below is my latest effot.

John 10:10 I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

Romans 5:3-5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

An Abundance of Bathwater
By Leah Smith

Do you know what the overflow valve is in your bathtub? It’s a little hole that drains the extra water out of your tub if it rises above a certain level - like when you leave the faucet on too long, or swish around in the tub. The overflow valve is a safety mechanism, built right in. You put the water in, and if it gets too high – no worries! – the extra goes right down the drain and not over the edge of your tub. It’s nice. It creates a sense of balance – you can put so much in, but not too much – so your bets are hedged against a forgetful mind or a wayward knee.

I have found I don’t actually like to take baths – they are just not comfortable for me. I’m very tall, quite overweight, and have serious chronic pain problems. Sitting in a half-full, hard porcelain box is not soothing or relaxing. It is safe, but not rejuvenating in any way. It’s a difficult dance - deciding which body parts will be bare and cold, and which ones will be covered with warm water at any particular moment. It’s too exhausting.

Guess what I found out about bathtubs? For about 5 bucks, you can buy a plastic disc called a ‘drain subverter’ that covers up the overflow valve in your bathtub. As a result, you can fill your bathtub all the way up – enough to cover long limbs and ample bellies. Enough to enable you to have a full-fledged SOAK.

I have spent a lot of time trying to replicate an overflow-valve-type of mechanism for my life – I wanted to be able to exert just the right amount of energy, to not make waves, to not make a mess, so that things would feel safe and consistent. I thought I was searching for balance. I thought it would bring me peace. Instead, I have felt empty and restless in this pursuit.

In my search for this overflow drain-like “balance” in my life, I have discovered that God’s love and God’s Spirit in its true form can’t be contained, either. Living the abundant life, full of Jesus’s love, is like bathing in a tub with one of those plastic drain subverters. His love keeps flowing and flowing and can’t be contained. It spills out of us, leaking from our weakest places, splashing up and over the top of our hearts.

We often try to invent our own “overflow valves”, consciously or unconsciously, to avoid dealing with the dangerous thrill of God’s abundant love. We try to box God into a specific time period (like Sundays, or during our quiet times, or just during a formal prayer), or into a particular personality (wrathful, or judgmental, or benignly detached from the details of our lives).

Sometimes we create these ‘overflow valves’ out of fear. I’ve lived with a mediocre ‘bathtub’ experience for far too long because I’ve been afraid of letting the Spirit overflow in me. What will happen when I can’t contain it? When I can’t have control over what’s happening next?

The answers have been surprising for me: letting God’s love over flow into my life has been so healing. Yes, it’s messy – but it is glorious.

I’m no longer serving out of duty – meting out my ‘bathwater’, as it were, for the various things that I want to do or feel I need to do - seeking that elusive balance. Instead, I am discovering - and believing for the first time - that God created me with specific talents and passions that He WANTS me to discover, develop, and use. These passions I have bubbling up inside are from HIM and are part of this abundant life. They come from being filled to overflowing with the love of Jesus.

With the regular bathtub overflow valve, I can leave the bathroom and forget I left the water on. I can move however I want to in the tub and be sure I won’t make a mess. But I’m missing out on the amazing pleasure of reveling in a full tub of water.

With the drain subverter on, I have to pay attention. I have to be near the flowing water, watching where it is going. If I move in the tub, I AM going to make waves. The water IS going to spill over. There is no way around it. Subverting the overflow on your bathtub is NOT safe. You’re likely to end up with a mess all over the bathroom. But what a glorious, warm, bubbly mess!

What will I choose? To play it safe with the overflow valves? Or to go for it in the full tub – to go for the abundant life?

It’s still a battle to keep that drain subverter on. Some days I feel like I don’t deserve this luxury – that I’m kidding myself that God actually loves me this much and wants to pour himself into me. Some days I have to make a conscious choice to keep that subverter on. Some days I lose the battle and take it off. But I keep coming back to the amazing experience of the abundant life. Now that I have tasted it, I can’t go back to my old life of contained bathwater with safe and artificial balance.

I pray for you that you will find the courage to find God in the glorious mess that is created when you put a ‘drain subverter’ on. Bathe in the wonder of God’s abundant love for you. May you feel awash in the Spirit. May you feel secure in the amazing love of Jesus.

Filed Under "Essays, Faith" on April 19, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

My five-year old son and I made cookies today. Henry loves to help me cook and bake. He runs the mixer for me, dumps in ingredients, and cracks eggs. Snickerdoodles are Henry’s very favorite kind of cookie and I needed something to serve my bible study, so that’s what we made. We finished creaming the butter and sugar, added the flour, and moved on to shaping the cookies into balls and rolling them in cinnamon-sugar. Henry proudly created balls with his little hands, rolled them in sugar and placed them on the cookie sheet.

I put a couple bowls in the sink and turned around to look at his work. The pan was crammed full of a motley assortment of cookie shapes in a mishmash of sizes. There were giant snickerdoodles, baby snickerdoodles, microscopic snickerdoodles, and lopsided snickerdoodles. There were snickerdoodles precariously close to the edge of the pan. There were snickerdoodles with pointy tips, flat snickerdoodles, and a couple that actually looked as if they’d missed the cinnamon-sugar dip altogether.

For a moment, I was frustrated. I wanted him to go watch a video so I could “fix” all his snickerdoodles – to make them uniform, spherical, and evenly coated. I was planning to serve these to my bible study, for heaven’s sake – I wanted them to look perfect. I thought about how much easier the whole process would be if I could just do it myself and not be bothered. Thankfully, God brought my focus back to Henry. I paused, took a deep breath, and saw how proud he was of his cookies. I put the pan in the oven and smiled at him. “You’re such a great big help,” I said. He beamed and did his “happy puppy wiggle”. I gave him a hug and set him loose on filling up another pan.

When the timer went off, Henry crowded me at the oven in anticipation. “It’s smelling yummy in here!” he said. We opened the door and pulled out our creations. The tiny snickerdoodles were burnt and the giant ones were still raw in the middle. One had oozed over the edge of the pan and seared onto the oven rack. Some had hardly any cinnamon-sugar on them. There was maybe one that looked the way I thought a snickerdoodle “should” look. But Henry was thrilled. “Can I eat one? Can I eat one? Can I eat one?” he asked while jumping up and down. We gave the cookies a token minute to cool before he plunged in, loving every bite. I was caught up in Henry’s joy and those snickerdoodles started to look just perfect to me.

I got to thinking that Henry’s pan of snickerdoodles must look an awful lot like the work I do for God. By his very nature, God is perfect – he created the world! How much easier it would have been for him to do everything himself – to reconcile his people back to him entirely through his own doing. Instead, his master plan was to include his children in his kingdom work. Each one of us is “God’s workmanship, created to do good works in Christ” (Eph 2:10). God has work for me to do: encouraging others, creating safe community for the women in my bible study, coming alongside friends who are struggling, reaching out to friends who do not yet know Jesus, raising my kids, being a nurturing wife, writing articles about my faith journey… And each thing I do, I do badly. I don’t return phone calls like I should, I sometimes snap at my children, I say things unthinkingly to friends, I procrastinate with my writing, and I let opportunities to discuss Christ slip through my grasp. My “snickerdoodles” are misshaped and lopsided too.

Thankfully, God doesn’t send me off to watch a video while he makes things “perfect”. He lets me get messy, he lets me make mistakes, and he continually refines my skills. I wonder if he chuckles sometimes at how proud I am of the things I do. Thankfully, he loves me like a parent and thinks my “snickerdoodles” are delicious, even when they’re burnt.

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10 (NIV)

** I occasionally write articles for my church's eNewsletter. The entry above was my latest effort**

Filed Under "Essays, Faith" on October 04, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)