Longing In Absence

Last night, Dave shared a list he had written. He had gone away for a few hours and put some thought into what he wanted, generating a specific list with time goals. I was stunned by the whole thing, because it was so unlike him, and I realized, such a good thing for him. He puts his desires aside so often for the clamoring needs of the family that it was good for him to reflect and focus.

It stunned me just as much how alien such a list had become for me. I lived most of my earlier life going from station to station. I lived off lists like that. My whole life was a list (while single, I listed a goal of having “four to five kids by age 35”—check). By all accounts, I have arrived: gotten into schools, finished degrees, married great guy, bought starter house, acquired permanent house, finished having kids, good job gig, have a pet, in great school district, physically fit—by whatever metric you want to use, I’m there. 

But somehow, I have arrived a totally different person. I used to go from station to station without thinking much beyond what our meritocratic culture, combined with my goal-oriented stubbornness, told me to do. But even if you go somewhere just to achieve more, you can’t divorce yourself from the culture of the place, from becoming the kind of person who works there, even if it’s not what you fully intended or even understood beforehand. I caught this happening early enough to decide to stop. That was at the end of residency, and that was the last time I made a list like Dave’s.

Then began a strange and curious process. Not much happened anymore on an external level—well, kids and moves, but nowhere near the kind of external intensity and pressure I lived in before. All the movement was in my interior landscape. It was a process of inner transformation that came through relationships, and time, and encountering myself and God in many different, deeper, and truer ways than I ever had before. I never knew what to say when people asked how I was doing: nothing much different externally, but always something happening internally.

I read recently about a man who, on moving from India to the U.S., “missed being surrounded by people who felt the vertical spiritual dimension in everyday life.” He missed being in a place that perceived reality through a sacred lens, where people felt that there are “spiritual realities in physical, imminent things.” He began to call the U.S. a “flatland,” a thinner realm. The reverse is how this process of transformation feels for me: like going from the flatlands to a world where everything has spiritual topography.

The irony is that I have “arrived,” only to find that arriving is a construct of the flatlands. And therefore something I note with detachment, but find functionally useless. I have a lot to be thankful for: just as I always have. And there is nothing, nothing that can satisfy the longings of my heart outside of God and sitting in his presence. I have just as many longings, struggle just as much with discontentment, as I ever have, but the longings are deeper, rawer. I kept myself too busy, too focused on the list, to really understand them before.

I find myself not really wanting to make a list. My longings are not of the sort that can be enumerated upon with time goals. I find lately that I experience them like waves, of color or feeling; they are something I am immersed in, something I must walk through, something I cannot entirely shake off but must rather sit with. I went in the last few months from a place of extremely productive spiritual discipline, to a place of acedia, detachment and what one writer calls “a sluggishness of the soul,” and I found that the only language that appealed to me was the language of longing. I read a lot of Ruth Haley Barton. I asked myself what it was I desired. And in the end, the response I encountered was always the same: sit with the desire, unmet. Go out and stand on the mountain, like Elijah, and wait.

In the flatlands, everything was achieved by individual effort. In the vertical dimension, I come again and again to a place where my longings are not pointing me to achieve more (on the contrary, I am acutely aware I should not try to), but inviting me to sit more with God. He understands and sees all the layers of longing in my being; I am sure of that. I don’t know where things will go. But apparently it was never about external arrival to begin with.

Knowing God

"How shall we learn to enjoy God? How obtain such an all-sufficient soul-satisfying portion in him as shall enable us to let go the things of this world as vain and worthless in comparison? I answer, This happiness is to be obtained through the study of the Holy Scriptures... The more we know of God, the happier we are... What will make us so exceedingly happy in heaven? It will be the fuller knowledge of God... It is absolutely needful in order that happiness in the Lord may continue, that the Scriptures be regularly read... Especially we should read regularly through the Scriptures, consecutively, and not pick out here and there a chapter. If we do, we remain spiritual dwarfs. I tell you so affectionately. For the first four years of my conversion I made no progress, because I neglected the Bible. But when I regularly read on through the whole with reference to my own heart and soul, I directly made progress. Then my peace and joy continued more and more. Now I have been doing this for 47 years. I have read through the whole Bible about 100 times and I always find it fresh when I begin again. Thus my peace and joy have increased more and more.” – George Mueller

It’s strange how popular Christian culture can have nothing to do with knowing God. We sing, “I want to know you” on a Sunday and go back to lives that don’t carry any real evidence that we mean that. We go to church to be entertained or feel self-helped, without a consciousness of the weightiness of God. The gospel becomes advice, not news—it helps us without transforming us. We want to know God’s will because we want knowledge about what to do, not wisdom about who to be. We want to be spoon-fed spiritual food in a palatable manner rather than learn to feed ourselves. We ask more than we listen in our prayers. 

Recently I heard this quote from A.W. Tozier: “The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of him. It begins in the mind and may be present where no overt act of worship has taken place… The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.” It is probably inevitable that our culture seeps into our faith, but the dangerous thing is when we don’t see it—and I don’t know any other way to see it than to step outside of myself and my culture and my history by reading the Bible. 

Dave asked me what it’s like now that I’ve finished memorizing Ephesians—what I think it’s really done is taught me how to meditate. I’m in the long-term consolidation part of the process, where I recite the book once a day for one hundred days: what that feels like is stepping into an alternate reality. It helps me see how deep the roots of my culture and selfishness go, and how shocking, how beautiful and powerful, reality is. Meditation is marination, stepping out of our cultural river and sinking into the pool of the Word, sitting with it and letting it surround me.

Lately I’ve discovered a way of doing daily Bible reading that for once seems to stick. It takes reading beyond just the ticking off of a box, that I may or may not get to; beyond the words just glossing over me without entering into me. The technique, from Cordiero’s book The Divine Mentor, is pretty simple. I pick a regular time of day (no judgment, he says, if it’s not the morning: mine never is). I associate it with something good (a cup of tea always, often chocolate or a nice snack). I read the section of the Bible listed for that day in my reading plan (if one misses, he says, forget about the missed day and resume on-schedule). During the reading, I ask that the Holy Spirit speaks to me about one verse, or two verses in a row—many things may jump out, but I pick one. If something I read confuses me, I don’t bother about it. Then I journal using S.O.A.P. (not, as we were taught in med school, Subjective, Objective, Assessment and Plan): I write out the scripture (S), write one paragraph of observation about it (O), write out how it changes my day or any other applications to my life (A), and write out a short prayer (P). Whole thing under one page. Then I think of a brief title, write that at the top, and index that page (listing title, page number, scripture reference, and date). Whole process happens in thirty minutes.

I could write on about all the things I am learning about God—I wish this was something we talked about more, our communion with God, something we asked each other about more—but I do think Mueller’s right. The result of it all is satisfaction in God. I’ve found that’s what I feel like saying to all the problems my friends have: find your satisfaction in God! Let him be your joy! Know him! Will the rest even matter? Much less so. Who is it that we love and worship, anyway? How well do we know Him? Are we pressing in to do so?

Christmas Tree Lights

Eighteen months. That’s how long one of my best friends in Virginia says it takes before a place starts to feel like home.

She might be right. I paused for a moment tonight in our dark living area, looking at the lights on the tree, petting Rosemary as she sat on her favorite spot on top of one of the couches. Dave had taken all the kids out, the older two to swim and the younger two to a date, giving me a rare, quiet moment in the house alone. We got a particularly good tree this year, taller and fuller than any tree I remember having before—it just has presence. The kids wanted to name it.

Holidays always make me nostalgic. Maybe that’s why I like tradition so much. I remember growing up with the rainbow lights on our artificial Christmas tree, lying under it peeking underneath the wrapping paper at my presents. I’d take off my glasses, watch the lights fuzz and blur together, and think, people with perfect vision don’t get to see the lights like this. I remember walking back to my Lawn room in college after a long day out, seeing the Rotunda and colonnades all lit up. I remember coming home Christmas breaks and sitting by the tree in the dark, thinking about what it was Christmas meant to me that particular year.

Having the holidays here feels right this year. That’s what I was thinking, looking at the lights tonight. Last year felt like going through the motions; my parents visited, which was great but triggered several months of depressive loneliness after. I don’t feel so disjointed or jarred anymore; I feel content to be here. This past Thanksgiving was one of the best I remember having, with family but also many friends squeezed around our huge table. We came up with a list of Christmas traditions we wanted to keep and they’ve all felt enjoyable—putting notes in stockings, letting the kids pick out secret gifts for their siblings at the dollar store, making the annual ornaments, converting the thanksgiving tree into an advent tree, listening to Christmas music, picking out and decorating the tree, even getting our photos taken. I’m upgrading some of our holiday décor and that feels fun too. 

Sometimes the holidays feel like they exist in relief, defined by whatever events are going on in life or whoever we’re with as we’re celebrating them—and what strikes me this year is that, for the first time, it’s just us, here on our own as a family, where we will probably be forever, and it feels okay. I feel like I have the mental and emotional space to enjoy it. I suppose I have recovered enough from the move to be okay being who I am, where I am.  

Spiritual Discipline

“A baseball player who expects to excel in the game without adequate exercise of his body is no more ridiculous than the Christian who hopes to be able to act in the manner of Christ when put to the test without the appropriate exercise in godly living.” -Dallas Willard, Spirit of the Disciplines

I’ve been thinking about spiritual disciplines for some time. For much of my past, that concept was associated with guilt more than action, with repeated, vague readings of Richard Foster’s classic and feeling like I ought to be getting up for morning devotions but never being able to do so for more than a few months at a time. It was all too easy to become subsumed by external pressures and internal torpor and distraction. The last decade has been a kind of spiritual renaissance, though, and one anchor during the adjustment to the move has been pressing more into the Word in various ways, which has lately only made me realize how much more I am missing. How much more there is for me. 

That’s the point of spiritual disciplines—they are not for the earning of grace, but the fuller experience of it. They posture us to more fully receive and be transformed by the grace we have already been given. Pastor Ryan Paulson, at a seminar during Mt. Hermon family camp this past summer, said what it feels like to him is drinking from a well he never realized was there, or positioning his sails to catch the wind. 

Disciplines are surely just as much about training as receiving, or maybe receiving through training. We all know we can’t sit down on stage without preparation and play a Chopin ballade—we could sit there and try and try, but we’d fail. What it takes to play in that moment are not attempts while on stage, but hours and years of prior practice: scales, learning parts hands-separately, then hands-together, then slowly, then up-to-tempo, then with dynamics, then with personal expression, then memorizing the score, listening to recordings of other players along the way for context, receiving coaching from a private teacher.

Yet spiritually, we are forever trying but rarely training. We want to know God’s will when faced with a decision, to be able to forgive when hurt, to control an angry impulse when provoked, but we aren’t engaging in practices that help us listen to, know, and experience God and the workings of the Holy Spirit on a consistent basis, during the millions of moments when it doesn’t urgently matter. Wisdom and character are not acquired in a moment. Do I really desire after the best things?

What is so difficult, of course, is how easily we slip back into our old selves and ways of thinking, into the cultural river in which we are all immersed. Wayne Cordeiro, in his book The Divine Mentor, shares the story of Polish pianist Ignace Jan Paderewsky, who when asked to play for government concerts only agreed to if they allowed him to play three hours of scales a day. “If I skip one day of scales,” he explained, “when I play in concert, I notice it. If I skip two days of scales, my coach will notice. And if I skip three days, the world will notice.” It’s the same with our daily devotions, Cordeiro says: skip one day, and we notice. Two days, and our spouse and kids notice. Three days, and the world notices. It’s that easy to slip back into worldly wisdom, into cranky moods, to lose perspective.

Practically, it comes down to experimenting and experiencing, seeing which work, keeping in mind some have more primacy while others may be for certain seasons. The list that Dallas Willard gives includes disciplines of abstinence (silence and solitude, simplicity, fasting, sabbath, secrecy, submission) and engagement (bible reading and memorization, worship, prayer, soul friendship, personal reflection, and service), but there may be many others. I like how Willard says we need to look at Jesus’ whole life, not just his public ministry but the lifestyle and disciplines that prepared him for that—the same could be said of Paul, Daniel, David, Elijah, and many others—those seem like a good place to start.

I’ve been memorizing the book of Ephesians, using Davis’ technique from An Approach to the Extended Memorization of Scripture (which I highly recommend). Most of the time, it feels like working out. I drag myself to it each day, but afterwards, I feel great. Sometimes phrases get repeated to the point where I see something new in it, or in entire chapters in context, that I’d never seen before. Sometimes the very first time I learn a verse it convicts me. Sometimes nothing happens. Either way, there is surely no better way to meditate on scripture: I’ve never experienced anything like it before, this feeling of the word inside me, all the time, popping to mind during moments of temptation or in response to something I see, seeing how the words underlie or enhance other parts of scripture I encounter. In that sense, it really is like tapping into something that was there for me, all the time, but I had never fully taken advantage of. I think of Jesus, how words from the scriptures sprang to his lips at the most stressful times of his life, when tempted, when dying, and this whole venture becomes a glimpse into his interior life and mind. The daily grind seems a small price to pay for that.

Halloween and Loving the Little Years

I have mixed feelings about Halloween these days. I don’t understand the point of Halloween parades, where parents make a disproportionately large effort, missing work or dragging along siblings, to watch their kid walk in a circle in costume. The overload of candy is understandably exciting (Eric claims it’s his favorite holiday after Christmas), but seems excessive, requiring increasingly complicated negotiations as the kids get older to reasonably manage (this year each kid got five pieces, then the rest were combined and quarantined). I’m always ambivalent about costumes—part of me hates shelling out for premade costumes of commercialized characters on amazon, but I also find myself without the energy to hand-make four costumes or coordinate family costume themes, like I used to. I like the sense of community trick-or-treating in the neighborhood brings, but I also hear about folks increasingly flocking to lucrative, entertaining destination neighborhoods like the Steve Jobs house, and I’m not sure what to make of all that.

The main thing I was struck by this year, though, was how cute the kids were as we walked through the neighborhood: Eric rushing up to every door that had a light. All of them saying “trick-or-treat!” and “thank you” and Elijah taking forever to decide what pieces to pick. Esme putting pieces back if she felt she got too many. The older kids asking how many they were allowed to take. Esme’s costume sliding around to obstruct her vision half the time. Holding hands in the dark. Everyone talking about how heavy their pumpkin buckets were getting.

More than any other holiday, Halloween seems made for kids, and I’m reminded that one day when they grow up, it will make me miss them. People are always telling you, “the days are long but the years are short”—and really, catching the true preciousness of each stage, enjoying them as something that will not be forever, can be so hard to do. Tonight as I was opening my nightstand drawer for something, I saw a piece of paper—it was another one of Esme’s drawings. She’s always covering paper with scribbles, declaring it’s a gift for me, then secretly leaving them on my nightstand or in my nightstand drawer. I felt slightly annoyed at first (more paper I will have to walk over to the recycling bin), but now I’m sitting down to look at it. It has a lot of scribbles, and one little stick figure. It has eight different colors, which means she had to uncap and recap eight different markers. It’s an unused medical billing sheet, her favorite scrap paper to use because the hospital logo has figures which she likes to color in.

One day, I will miss being constantly gifted pieces of art-slash-recycling. I’ll probably miss the knee-level smudges on our glass doors and the treasures-slash-trash (old stickers, cheap prizes, rocks, used toilet paper rolls, empty mint boxes and the like) that gets hoarded. I’ll miss the half-books that Ellie is always starting and leaving around, folding little socks and shirts, having kid-sized utensils and cups in our kitchen drawers. I might miss going everywhere with the double stroller. I’ll miss Esme coming in to snuggle in bed with me in the mornings (a few minutes after 7AM, which is when Ellie lets her leave their room, as instructed—who knows when they actually wake up). I’ll miss seeing Elijah rolled up in his security blanket like a burrito, Eric walking across the school field for pickup every afternoon in his baseball cap while holding his bento lunch box in one hand and eating out of it with the other (apparently he doesn’t actually eat during lunch hour). I’ll miss Ellie’s eagerness to go on dates with me and jumping rope all the way to church. I’ll miss how being held can make everything okay when they’re mad or hurt.

There is so much change in these little years. The person they are right now will be gone next year. I suppose it’s the unrelenting immersion of caregiving that obscures that fact, the living in constant streams of multi-tasking. A piece of paper in a nightstand drawer becomes one more task to deal with—when in reality, it’s a time capsule of this moment, a memento of a little girl’s imagination and heart and devotion. It’s good to pause and see that.