Tag Archives: faith

Oct10

For the Record

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Several years ago, I was watching the news and as usual, I made my opinion known. Loudly. My son Alex, who was probably nine at the time, pulled his headphone off one ear and asked, “are you yelling at us or the tv?” I answered, “the tv.” He nodded and let the headphone drop back onto his ear. All that to say, my four children know where I stand on most political issues. They understand that I appreciate discussion, debate, and nuance. Even though I haven’t practiced law in eighteen years, the attorney in me still exists, and one of my favorite phrases is “for the record.” In this year of 2024, when I feel like our country is at an inflection point that could affect our lives for generations to come and the world at large, I need to express at least some of what I think and feel so that my future grandchildren that I hope will exist someday know where I stood at this moment in history. I am a suburban, white, married mother of four, Christian homemaker in Texas, and in this fall’s election, I am voting for the Democratic ticket of Vice-President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz.

I know that many Christians believe that they must vote Republican in order to be faithful. But I am here to let you know that there are many progressive Christians who vote for Democrats. Progressive Christians who are welcoming and affirming, concerned with social justice, and want people to know that God loves them no matter what. Often, abortion is the main issue that Christians say dictates their vote. Let me be clear, I don’t want any woman to ever face the difficult decision of whether to have an abortion. I want them to have low cost or no cost birth control pills available over the counter so they can access them without seeing a doctor and without letting their partners dictate whether or not they use birth control. I want them to know that the government will help support them and their children when they are in dire straits economically and in other ways. But I am terrified for the women who have nonviable pregnancies who cannot get the healthcare they need. I had two miscarriages. One at 8 weeks. One at 16 weeks. I was heartbroken and grief stricken. In both circumstances, I had to undergo a D&C. The second miscarriage occurred after I’d made it through the first trimester and the accompanying morning sickness. Everything was fine until it wasn’t. I remember pouring my words onto the pages of my journal telling God how I was crushed in spirit. In the couple of days before I had my procedure, I felt like a walking graveyard because my belly protruded like a mound and my baby was dead. If I’d had to wait until I became physically ill, or worse on death’s door, or had my case go before a hospital board to obtain the procedure my doctor knew I needed, I cannot imagine how my mind, body, and soul would’ve suffered or been wrecked. Or how my older children would’ve been scarred if their mother didn’t survive. I don’t want my daughter or my sons’ future mates to face death or infertility because they can’t get the healthcare they need if they face similar circumstances. 

But I’m not just worried about my kids when they grow up and are making decisions about their families. I’m concerned everyday about their safety out in the world, and especially at school, a place where they should be the safest. I know that the first graders who were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary should be freshman in college. My son Jed is a freshman in college – he was in first grade when the Sandy Hook children were killed. The list of school shootings in the United States is long. Long and filled with the names of children whose lives were cut short, whose parents are devastated. The number one killer of children is guns. That is unfathomable to me. Yet, we do nothing. Absolutely nothing to protect the children who already exist in our world. Many gun rights advocates and the judges they’ve helped appoint have twisted the meaning of the Constitution to support their view that they should have unfettered access to any gun or as many guns as they might ever want. I’m disgusted by the Republicans who will not vote to enact reasonable gun laws even when the majority of Americans, both conservative and progressive, want them to do so. That is not pro-life. 

I also need to say that if Donald Trump is elected again, I am desperately concerned that our democracy could be at stake. When I went to Rome in September of 2016 before he was first elected and heard about the 400-year Roman Empire that fell, I realized that we still are a baby nation in many ways. If we allow Trump to ascend to the highest office in the land again, I’m afraid we won’t have a democracy left in four years. That he won’t give up power. That our government institutions will be ravaged. That our diversity will be destroyed. That we will become an autocracy whose leader is amoral, unethical, willfully uninformed, uninterested in serving the least of our society, vindictive, and downright mean. The Republican Party should have abandoned him on January 6, 2021, when he tried to foment a coup. I’ve read Liz Cheney’s book “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning” about January 6th, and Trump did much more than give a speech. It is truly frightening that we came that close to the destruction of our country’s system of government. 

The United States is not immune from being ruined by people who claim that God loves us more than God loves the rest of the world. Some Christians think they are ensuring we are a godly nation while casting aspersions on the very people God loves who are poor and downtrodden, who may believe in God through a different path, or may have a different skin color or way of being in the world than themselves. To be clear, they do not speak for all Christians. In fact, many of us see Christian Nationalism as an abomination that God does not condone or celebrate. When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matt. 22:37-39). I for one believe that Jesus meant those words. 

I will demonstrate both my love of God and my love for neighbor by voting for the Democratic ticket this fall. I pray other Christians will do the same. So, for my grandbabies who will not exist for years to come, this is what was on your grandmother’s heart and mind less than a month before the election of 2024. I hope you’re reading this at a time in the future when the United States is still a beacon of freedom and justice in the world. I just wanted to let you know where I stood – for the record.   

Apr7

The Spiritual Journey

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Do I have enough journals to serve me for years in advance? Yes. Do I still love to get journals from friends as gifts? Yes. Do I still look at journals when I’m out shopping? Yes. And do I still buy journals for myself? Yes, I do. So, now that I’ve confessed all that, I’ll tell you about my latest journal shopping. I was in Walgreens to pick up meds, and they actually have a pretty good journal section. I came face to face with one that said, “My Spiritual Journey.” My immediate thought was “my spiritual journey won’t fit inside that journal.” While the inside of the journal itself contained a useful guide for daily scripture reading, thoughts, and prayers, I remained stuck on how our spiritual journeys are anything but simple. 

As is often the case, my focus on a word led me to look up the definition. Journey is defined as “something suggesting travel or passage from one place to another” or “an act or instance of traveling from one place to another” (merriam-webster.com). Perhaps it’s the phrase, “from one place to another” that sometimes throws us off kilter when it comes to a spiritual journey. We are so concerned about progress and goals and success in our world that we try to apply those standards to our spiritual lives as well. But measuring progress in spiritual terms is not easy, if not impossible. 

All of the classic travel metaphors apply. At times, we find ourselves in the spiritual wilderness, feeling scared and lost, unable to find our way out of the struggle. Sometimes, in the desert, feeling far from God and abandoned, thirsting for spiritual replenishment but finding none. We may feel like we’re drowning in doubts or that God is not helping us through life’s storms. Occasionally, we may find ourselves on a mountaintop when we feel we’ve had an aha spiritual moment.

Yet, we spend most of our time living in the ordinary, everyday. We can find contentment in the normal rhythms of life. We can make steady progress in our spiritual journey when we pray, worship, and gather in communities. But that can feel stagnant at times too. We may feel as though we’re doing nothing because nothing is “happening.” It’s not like we arrive at a destination so that we can say our journey is complete. We don’t get a promotion or a raise to show our faith has increased. We don’t even get gold stars. 

Many years ago, I struggled with the fact that I did not fully trust God. I just kept thinking if I could only trust God with all my heart and mind, everything would be okay. I thought if I could trust God completely then all would be well, and I would escape worry and anxiety. Then one day, I realized I’m never going to trust God completely without doubt. It just wasn’t going to happen, particularly given my personality. All of a sudden, I knew that my goal was to trust God more and more every day as I matured in my faith, but that I would never feel like I’d completely made it and accomplished my goal. In that moment though, I felt such relief. My spiritual journey was not something to check off a list when complete. It would never end. It would always be ongoing. And there would be good and bad times. 

I’ve filled many journals with prayers and joys and anxieties and anguish. I’ll continue to write my thoughts and feelings down in the journals I have and the ones I will acquire later. Our spiritual journeys are long and winding and can fill volumes, and God is with us the entire way. 

Feb5

Trust Me?

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In the book “One Word That Will Change Your Life,” authors Jon Gordon, Dan Britton, and Jimmy Page promote the strategy of choosing one word that becomes the focus of a person’s year instead of creating a bunch of wordy resolutions that we’ll forget by the end of January. My friend Lanna is dedicated to discovering a word of the year that frames her mindset for the upcoming year. So, when I decided that the youth group should engage in this one-word project, I asked Lanna to lead the discussion. She agreed and then asked, “what’s your word?” I hadn’t picked a word at that point even though the new year had already started, but now I needed to go through the process of finding my word if I was asking the youth to do the same. I read the above-mentioned book – the copy that Lanna gave me last year – and set out to find my word. 

I admit I was a bit skeptical because while I’d picked words in some years past, I hadn’t gone through the process of looking in, looking up, and looking out described in the book. The authors noted that sometimes the word will come to you quickly and at other times the word reveals itself with a bit of time. I thought my word would emerge gently and slowly. But suddenly, the word “trust” came to me like a bolt of lightning. My next thought was no thank you. 

I didn’t want trust to be my word because I have some trust issues. Whenever I see a tv show or movie in which one character asks another, “do you trust me?” my automatic thought is no. Obviously the question is not intended for me, the viewer, but no is what I think. On the Enneagram personality type, I’m a six. After the word trust came to mind, I saw a social media post by an Enneagram expert (@enneagramexplained) that had each of the nine types’ responses to “Driving in the Snow.” When confronted with driving in the snow, a type six says, “Nope, I either don’t trust myself or I don’t trust everyone else!”  Another Enneagram social media post (enneagramwithhjb) says sixes are “looking for someone they can trust.” We sixes are loyal once we trust someone. It’s just hard for us to get there. I don’t trust the process or the journey easily. I don’t trust myself, and I struggle to trust God too. 

To me, trust implies lack of control and that scares me. But when I looked up the definition of trust, I read “assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something” (merriam-webster.com). Trust isn’t based on blind faith but built on a strong foundation that I already have with someone or something. I don’t have to trust everyone (not that that would ever happen), and if I have trusted someone, I can change my mind if they prove themselves untrustworthy. I can trust myself more than I have in the past because I know how much time and effort I put into making decisions. I can trust God more because I can rely on God’s character.    

Perhaps instead of letting the word trust terrify me, I can view it as becoming more content with who and where I am. Now that I have my word, I’ll spend this year learning about trust and about myself in the process. Trust me.