Tag Archives: hope

On the threshold

Posted on by under Season & Place

I was born on the threshold of spring—at that moment when winter could just as easily dig in her heels as bow graciously and take her leave.

Over the years, the second day of March has skipped, tip-toed, sloshed, or trudged onto the scene of my life, accompanied by a wide variety of backdrops. Some years, the snow completely melts by then, inviting me to joyfully lace up new sneakers in place of clunky boots, and to take my coffee out to the porch.

I remember one spring-like childhood birthday in particular, because it was nice enough outside to go for a spin on my new birthday bike—a yellow banana seat Huffy with orange and white accents, called “Texas Rose” (bikes came with names back then, written in a suitable font across the chain guard). I still remember the clichéd-but-very-real freedom I felt as I pushed hard on the pedals to pick up speed, the wind lifting my bangs off my forehead and the handlebar streamers blowing back, tickling my arms. Even the puddles, spraying a mist of grimey specks onto my pants, were a joy to whiz through: The sound of bike tires cutting through puddles was the music of spring. Back in our driveway I engaged the kickstand, my Michigan winter legs trembling in response to the sudden demand placed on spring-and-summer muscles.

photo (8)Other years (like this year, for instance), heaps of snow have cruelly set my birthday scene. By early March everyone, of course, is longing for spring, but I tend to take its coy absence personally. I would gladly exchange all my birthday presents for an early departure of winter—for a walk on non-treacherous sidewalks in the sunshine, hat- and mitten-free, with the first signs of daffodils poking up through dead leaves. What could be a better gift than a promise that temperatures won’t fall below 50 again until fall?

unnamed-2Instead, the likely reality in early March is something in between—neither here nor there, winter nor spring. In March you can often find me walking on the north side of the street, where the longer days of south-sweeping sunshine have melted the snow into slushy puddles and coaxed snowdrops, aconites, and crocuses out of hiding.

Soggy grass and brave flowers on one side of the street, dirty piles of snow and icy sidewalks on the other; I walk through March balanced in an awareness of what has been and what is to come.

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As if taking a cue from the month of my birth, I tend to live my life at the intersection of realism and optimism—with an acute awareness of what is, but also a vivid understanding of what could be. The truth of the matter, as well as the hope. The now and the not yet. The lion and the lamb.

I grudgingly see the dirty piles of snow for what they are, but I know they’ll eventually become water to nourish flowers and lush green grass. The messy pile of boots by my front door, and the puddles and salt deposits they leave on the wood floor, will undoubtedly be replaced by sneakers and flip-flops, grass clippings and leaves.

unnamed-3And the weight I feel—whether from so many layers of clothing and gear, or from built-up deposits of worries and regrets—will melt away, just as surely as the clouds will disperse and warmer streams of air will travel my direction, crowding out the chill. Suddenly, one bright morning, I will be able to see again who I am under all those layers of down and wool, and wondering and longing. I will see that I am a new creation, in process, again and again.

Hunting

Posted on by under Home & Place

We were armed, of course—with a very rational checklist, like all house-hunters are.

It looked something like this:

– Four bedrooms (we have three daughters and lots of house guests)

– At least two full bathrooms, including one of the main floor (did I mention three daughters?)

– A spacious kitchen with lots of counter space (Jason and I usually cook together—there’s often a daughter and a dog in the mix, too)

– A dedicated space for me to work (I work from home, which had always meant carving out a cramped corner of the living room)

– Closets! (Closets, closets, closets! Our current house had not a single closet or pantry on the entire first floor—and did I mention three daughters? And backpacks, soccer shin guards, volleyballs, a cello, and more pairs of shoes, boots, and muddy cleats than I could count?)

– A hang-out space of some sort (as our daughters grew into teenagers, we wanted to be sure they regularly invited friends)

– A fireplace (for those cozy, picturesque evenings together as a family)

– A front porch (I have always considered this a must for a house)

– A location in our current neighborhood (walking distance to the girls’ schools, cafes, the library, the farmers’ market, etc.)

Oh, and there was one must-not-have: NO black walnut tree. We’d had enough of the squirrel colony that congregated in the backyard of our current house, and enough of the curses we uttered each time our current tree dropped its ample harvest on our roof, cars, and patio furniture.

In general, we thought our checklist was perfectly reasonable. And we weren’t in a huge hurry to find something—we had already survived two years as a newly-formed family of five in the house I had purchased for three (as a single mom, just months before I met Jason). We were just “keeping our eyes out.”

Each year, for about three years, we went to see a handful of houses. Some met the requirements on our checklist, but were just too expensive. Others had a significant flaw (or two)—a visible bulging in the foundation; a tiny, unworkable living room (but lots of space everywhere else); terrible kitchens (without any hope for feasible remodel plans); a shared driveway or no garage.

There were also a couple of houses that could have worked, but were somehow just “off.” I began to differentiate “house-hunting,” which requires being armed with a list and a realtor, from “home-hunting,” which calls for a fully-loaded gut (and a refusal to buy into the optimism gushing from the realtor’s mouth).

With each visit to a new listing, the hope that buoyed us as the realtor unlocked the front door, quickly deflated. And with each disappointment, we returned to our cozy home determined to find ways to make it work. Trips to IKEA resulted in more storage, and a remodel of the basement added a second bathroom and a fourth bedroom, so two of our girls no longer had to share. After three years of “keeping an eye out” for houses, we simply stopped.

house4saleAnd then, one February day in 2013, I was walking the dog and saw a new For Sale sign. Even from the sidewalk, something about the house spoke to me—to my gut, as cheesy as that sounds.

As it turns out, it was The One—even though it didn’t meet all of the requirements on our ever-so-rational checklist. There were two full bathrooms, but no bathroom of any sort of the first floor (this is apparently a cost of loving 100-year-old houses). There was a beautiful sunroom with built-in bookshelves and three walls of windows, which has become my dream office, but no front porch. The kitchen was workable, but not nearly as spacious as we had hoped for during our house hunting. And there was a wood-burning fireplace, as advertised in the listing, but during the inspection we discovered that it wasn’t a working fireplace and couldn’t actually be fixed to become one, short of completely rebuilding the chimney.

homecomingdinner2013Yes, there are four bedrooms and plenty of beautiful closets, and the location is perfect. Even more importantly, much of what we envisioned for our new home has become a reality—less clutter, more space for family and friends to be together, the ability to host big meals (that first fall we did a Homecoming dinner for our daughter and 22 of her friends and a chili cook-off for 50+). And as a family, we’ve enjoyed two cozy winters of together time, gathered by the fire—the people we bought the house from installed a gas fireplace (not our original ideal, but it sure has made it easy to light a fire every evening rather than just every-so-often).

In short, this is our home and it has been just right from the beginning, regardless what our list said. Even that first summer, when we realized that big tree in the backyard was—you guessed it—a black walnut (this is a danger of buying a house in February and not being an expert in tree bark identification), we had to laugh as we grumbled. After all, we had been home-hunting, not house-hunting.

 

A Passage Home in a Passing World

Posted on by under Home & Place

The morning rose as promise quickly succumbed to the extravagance of the mounting sun. Five of my best friends and I were headed west through the high plains near Lubbock under the cracking brilliance of a Texas summer morning. This was the fulfillment of our pact made almost a year before to drive to San Diego and back after we graduated from High School. The road and its rushing welcome beckoned us westward into the long journey that would echo through our lives for the next ten years as we would return again and again to the road together every following summer.

We passed into New Mexico in the early afternoon and found ourselves in the middle of nothingness. Clouds like clots stood against the oppressing light casting shadows onto the speckled desert. Our car passed as a breath through the dry cavity, and in it, the green roots of deep friendships were growing deeper.

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    I often wonder if my home is the road. Upon Texas highways I have experienced more beauty and joy than anywhere else.

The countless sunset drives where every sunset original in its peculiar quality grabs the deepest pieces of me and puts them together. Nights under stars uttering mystery in the tongues of ancient light. Late shadows cast sidelong by trees only glimpsed but caught in my memory forever. Middle of May wildflowers, Bluebonnets and Indian Blankets, painting a canvass of glory just outside a middle-of-nowhere Texas town. The rushing surprise of spring bursting forth in a shade of green I had almost forgotten in the winter. All of these are visions of the road, hints of home in a passing  world, and the passing only makes it sweeter.

Nothing awakens in me the poetic sense of experience more than the road. The road as an archetype signals a new hope, and when I drive, I hope for home.

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    Somewhere along our first day’s drive in New Mexico, we stopped and ran around naked through a boy scout campsite for a while acting as if the world were really all here for us to romp through. This led to a speedy getaway back into the summer evening. When we finally caught our breath and reminded each other what we had actually done, we smiled and began to speak to one another in a new way. The night took us as I drove us west, and each of us conversed with the other slower and deeper.

Night closed and there were no lights. Nothing before us, nothing behind us. There was only blackness and our meagre headlights. Our car was a mere passenger clinging to the two lane road. The space of the car and the 20 feet our headlights pierced in front of us were all we had, yet we twisted through the dark world with joy.

Each head in the car slowly nodded off, and I drove on alone. The deepest darkness I had ever known enshrouded our now seemingly miniature vessel as it forged deeper into the nights mystery. I had never been so alone with others around me. After ten minutes of driving silently and looking around at the void on all sides, I stuck my head out of the driver’s side window and caught a glimpse of the high, moonless, New Mexico sky.

The sky was softly illuminated with a million stars buried on top of one another in the deep ocean of space. Their light was far away, but the stars tangled the entire sky with their white shimmer. I rolled the window all the way down and climbed out of my seat keeping one hand on the wheel as I sat on the window with most of my torso out of the car and my face free.

I drove this way for a moment before climbing back into my seat. The widow rolled back up and the space within was still and silent once again. I looked down at the glowing green clock reading 11:54 P.M., and I felt a wave of exhaustion creep up the back of my neck. The road passed in twenty foot increments as I drove wearily on, and I turned inward to my own deeper thoughts for the first time all day. I was alone, and my mind recalled the weeping nights I had spent on my bed the past year feeling the caving in of my own heart.

We rolled on westwardly weaving our way as a narrow passage of light through the darkness. Above, we were being watched by the infinitely interwoven stars.

Out of Place

Posted on by under Out of Place

For me, it was a moment of confirmation.

We were huddled, one last time, around a table. The conference was almost over, but before we left New Mexico, we had a few decisions to make. First order of business: choose the monthly themes.

We were friends, and we were about to become colleagues. Our joint blog, You Are Here (ever heard of it?), was about our diverse places, but it was also about what we had in common. We brainstormed a list.

Food and Place. Family and Place. Work and Place. Nature and Place. Out of Place. Home and Place. Justice and Place. And many, many others… let’s just say that writers like words.

We chose six, and began assigning months to the themes. November was easy. Food and Place was a good fit for Thanksgiving stories. We moved to December, and I waited for the inevitable suggestions: Home and Place, Family and Place, Warm and Fuzzy in Place (okay, that wasn’t on the list).

There was a long pause.

“How about ‘Out of Place’?” someone asked, and there were murmurs of agreement around the table. Yes, December was the perfect month for Out of Place. It was obvious, unanimous. Mary typed it into her laptop. Without further discussion, we moved on to January.

But for a moment I stopped, surprised. I looked around the group, these writers with whom I was about to throw in my lot. No one had even suggested the more traditional themes. Out of Place for the holiday season. Perfect. I grinned and nodded, re-joining the conversation.

These were my kind of people.

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It’s a good thing there wasn’t much discussion about December’s theme because I couldn’t have explained why Out of Place seemed so natural, so right. It was more intuitive, a sense in my gut that this theme would give us an authentic way to share during a month that is, oftentimes, full of heightened contradictions and unresolved longings.

And it has.

Scrolling through the stories I see Lisa sitting primly on her new mother-in-law’s couch, pining for the joyous festivities of her own family. I walk through the halls of the nursing home with Kristin “where nothing smells right, sounds right, or feels at peace.” I sit in an unfamiliar pew with Abby, yearning for a sense of belonging that is now past, and keep vigil with Jonathan as he cares for his sick child and tries “to navigate the terrain of single parenthood” without familiar landmarks.

And away from my computer I encounter the same tensions amid the twinkling lights and inflatable snowmen. Our housemates barely sleep, trying to finish up renovations on their almost-home down the street. Another friend, brilliant and talented, endures a seemingly-endless job search. Two of the wisest parents I know struggle to care for a six year old with an auto-immune disease. And many, many others, like Julia in her mourning house, ache for departed loved ones, “trying to find our way to another kind of home where we can co-exist with what is here and what is not.”

What is it about the month of December that makes this tension between what is here and what is not so poignant?

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I am not one for figurines, but today I bought one that I have been thinking about for a month. Just after Thanksgiving I discovered Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus, perched on the roof of a bus, in our local Ten Thousand Villages store.

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When I saw it I remembered the longest bus ride of my life. It was 1997 and I was in Haiti, traveling from Port-au-Prince to a town seven hours to the north. We were packed into seats that belonged in a school bus for kindergartners, six grown-ups across each row, the two middle passengers barely on the seats but so tightly squeezed together that they stayed upright.

These were the good seats. On the roof were those who couldn’t afford to sit inside the bus, clinging to the roof racks amid suitcases and baskets of live poultry. They were, quite literally, hanging on for dear life.

Just like Mary and Joseph with a baby.

Whatever the month of December has become in our culture, the Christian version of the season begins with poor peasants on a journey. Christmas is, at its root, an Out of Place holiday. When I look at the holy family perched on the roof I remember: it is not strange to live amid unresolved tension in the month of December.

And I remember this as well: if they keep hanging on, if they just keep going, they will find joy-and even miracles-along the way.

The Pain and Beauty in Goodbye

Posted on by under Guest, Out of Place

Now far removed from the 9th floor Korean apartment I called home for nearly two years, I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve taken away from my time in South Korea. I’ve come up with quite a list.

I’ve learned about graciousness, and about understanding. I’ve learned patience and learned to wait for the full story before casting my final judgment- there is always a reason behind even the strangest cultural customs. It’s proven true that living in another culture has become one of my life’s great teachers.

The more I worked through lessons learned, (and trust me, there were many) there was one particular lesson that separated itself from the others; my changing understanding of the beauty and importance of saying “good-bye.”

suitcaseWhile living in foreign countries, expats make friends with natives and other foreigners alike. It’s possible, or probable, that as foreigners we will become friends with people soon to leave us, and so, we say “good-bye.”

Eventually, our time will come. Whether that time is after 30 years or 30 days, we inevitably will leave and call a new place “home.”  Maybe we’re really heading home (the place of our birth), or maybe we’re starting a new chapter filled with new scenery and with new people. No matter the situation, it all ends the same way, with us saying, “good-bye.”

I, like most people, hate good-byes. Separating oneself from those who learned and grew with you is a difficult and painful event. When we leave, we are leaving behind part of our self, and with us we take a unique mark; a mark penned by the culture that took us in.

But, since my journey back west, I’ve come to a few realizations.

Good-byes force us to start a new chapter. 

Life often will take the form of a story. We live our lives in phases, or chapters. We grow during chapter 5, we fail during chapter 7, and find hard fought redemption in chapter 14. During our story we live, breathe, love and cry. The chapters of our lives are different lengths and they are filled with a wide range of emotion.

It’s important to remember one thing, though. Like the chapters in a book, our life’s chapters never last forever. We are not defined by the mistake we made in chapter 3. What defines a person is what he chose to do with the number of chapters he or she was blessed with. Do we choose to accept what happens and allow chapter 3 to propel us  into chapter 4?

Since my time in Korea, I’m learning that “good-bye” is often the final period on that final page of whatever chapter we are currently writing. The act of saying “good-bye” lets us start again. It allows us to grow. It allows us to leave unhealthy situations in search of healthy ones, or it allows us to leave healthy situations in pursuit of a dream.

Good-byes help us to realize what we had, and to appreciate it. 

I’ve got a confession. I don’t think I ever fully appreciate people or places when they are part of my life. I take them for granted. But, as soon as I am about to leave a place, the ordinary, everyday buildings that inhabited my world (buildings that I’ve passed hundreds of times without notice) are filled with color and I find them remarkable. The people are revealed for who they are, which are friends that I am going to deeply miss and who had a lasting impression on me. I think this is human nature, though. We rarely appreciate the things right in front of us. “Good-bye,” though, forces people and places back into their proper place; their place of high honor and importance. The act of saying farewell is the great equalizer.

Good-byes help us to hope that beauty is possible again. 

The fact that saying “good-bye” is so incredibly difficult speaks to what our experiences were: beautiful and important. This pain is the living proof that we cared and that we loved. It is the frame work that defines the art that was created during our time. It’s not easy to end something of eternal importance. It’s not easy to leave friendships that altered the course of your life.

It’s important to remember that the pain, the memories, the beauty, the lessons learned all come down to this: As bad as it hurts, our act of leaving is a statement of faith (for without faith, we’d never leave) that in our act of going, there is a belief that there is more art to be created and that there is more beauty to be discovered. There is justice to be done, and lessons to be learned. There is hope to be given and there is love to be given.

“Good-bye” is a hopeful sending, and in our going, we are granted permission to go find and create again.

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Michael“The Pain and Beauty of Goodbye” was written by Michael Palmer. Michael is a Midwest transplant residing in Northern California, a pastor, proud father of two little ones, an avid St. Louis Cardinals Fan, and a lover of cultures, travel, food, and theology. He’s published numerous articles on theology, art, and life, and is a contributor to Renovating Holiness (SacraSage Press, January 2015), a theological re-imaging of holiness. You can also find him at michaelrpalmer.com and on Twitter: @michaelrpalmer.

 (Suitcase photo by Elitatt.)

Where I Am: Four Houses, Four Turning Points

Posted on by under Welcome to You Are Here

I live in Urbana, Illinois, a city I didn’t want to move to in the first place. My opinion on the matter was weakly based on the handful of times I had driven by the Champaign-Urbana exit on Interstate 57. From that vantage point it was just another flat, cornfield-edged town with predictable, treeless suburbs and chain restaurants.

But in 2001, when my youngest daughter was still in diapers and I was finally admitting to myself that my marriage was falling apart, it felt like God was urging us to move. More precisely, I thought that moving—and my husband’s new job—would somehow save our marriage.

In the 13 years since moving to Urbana, four houses have been home. I don’t know if it’s by design or coincidence, but it seems that each significant Act in my life here has demanded a new stage, as if the inner transitions couldn’t be complete without the leaving of one tangible place and the arrival at another.

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Our first Urbana house caught my eye because—if you could see beyond the birdhouse and ivy wallpaper—it reminded me of the beloved house we sold in Michigan before moving here. Both were 1920s-era Mission style, with sturdy stucco exteriors, generous wood mouldings inside, and plenty of tall windows paned with thick, wavy, antique glass that creates mottled patterns of light when the sun shines through.

During the three years we lived in that house, our toddler and pre-school-aged daughters were at that kill-you-with-cuteness stage of life, busy choreographing dances, creating elaborate plastic feasts in their play kitchen, and layering on the most unlikely costume combinations.

But in spite of those bright moments, I think of that first house the House of Pain. Yes, I know it’s overly dramatic (and also the name of a nineties hip-hop band), but for me, the house was the scene of much yelling and crying and despair. Ultimately, it was the place where I gave up—not just on marriage, but also on my long-held childhood belief that God had plans to prosper me, not to harm me.

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If I was drawn to my first Urbana house because it reminded me of a house in my past, I was drawn to the second Urbana house for the opposite reason: It was nothing like the House of Pain. It was one-story not two; 1960s not 1920s; brick not stucco; and straight-forward, not “full of charm and character.” Most importantly, I was bound to it only by a 12-month lease, not a mortgage. I signed the lease after my divorce was final—after the House of Pain was sold and our marital collections of books, CDs, artwork, and kitchen appliances had undergone a necessary but unnatural process of division.

This second home can best be described as the House of Rebellion (clearly a perfect name for an angry metal band). Just like music that serves to numb the mind, the House of Rebellion provided an escape hatch from the life my ex-husband and I had shared. It played into my desire to be tied to nothing: not a marriage certificate, a church membership, or a mortgage. I devoted myself to my daughters when they were with me, and on the weekends they weren’t, I did whatever I pleased.

Like many rebellions, however, this one led to rock bottom, not freedom or enlightenment. One day about a year after moving into the rental, I knew it was time to stop feeling sorry for myself and start claiming my place. Maybe if I chose to live here—decided to put down roots on my own, in a house of my own—that whole sob story about “following my husband to save a marriage that couldn’t be saved” would lose its power over me.

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Buying house number three happened amidst a flurry of change: I ended a bad relationship, decided to try church again, went to a new counselor, and generally began figuring out who I really was.

This was my House of Healing (yep, cue the cheesy eighties CCM band). It’s the house where I learned to sit and just be in the moment, and where I learned that God wants me to find myself, not fix myself.

I worked in my garden, pulling out weeds with deep roots and planting perennials, and I invited new friends to sit around my table and share the meals I cooked. My daughters grew in those sunny rooms, writing stories, learning to play my grandmother’s piano, and forging great “wilderness” adventures with friends in our large, tree-filled yard. Along the way, as I mowed, painted, baked, and parented, I recognized this truth: I have more power to shape my place than it has to shape me.

And then I met Jason. We eventually got married, blending our families in that House of Healing, all five of us crowded in, watching and learning in awe (or at least the grownups were in awe) as redemption was worked out in one surprising way after another.

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Finally, last spring, as our three girls (and their groups of friends) grew bigger, Jason and I sold “my” house and bought “our” house: The House of Hope (or Truth)? The House of Second (and Third and Fourth) Chances? The House of New Creations? I’m not quite sure yet, but that’s OK—I don’t feel the need to pin down the life that’s unfolding here or the God who works in so many places, in so many ways.