The Chunnel Train (part one)

Dec 27th, 2011 by

Last December, my friend Susan gave me a little black book. On the first page, in her beautiful handwriting, she’d written “Kimberlee’s Ephesians Memory Book.” On each subsequent page, she’d pasted in six to ten verses from the book of Ephesians.

I’m not sure what prompted me to ask her to make me this book, other than that I saw she had one. Call it mimetic desire, if you want. That’s surely part of it.

I expect that another part of it was that in my sleep-deprived state, I felt brain-numb and fuzzy, and I wanted some concrete way to fire my tired neurons and get them moving and shaking, get the blood circulating in my brain again.

But perhaps the biggest part of it was sheer desperation. I was so scared last year, and the root of my fear was that God felt absent, even non-existent. So perhaps I thought that if I could just internalize enough of the Bible, I’d be able to feel God again. I’d be able to believe without doubting, without fearing.

Each page in Susan’s little book represented a week’s worth of memory work. If I stuck to the schedule, I’d have the whole of Ephesians memorized in 24 weeks. I’d have a whole book of the Bible wired into my brain, running on smooth little tracks like the Chunnel train, and come hell or high water, I’d be okay because I would know God was real.

But it didn’t quite work out like that. For one thing, I just couldn’t keep up such an aggressive schedule – more than one verse every day. Nope. Not in my intensely lactating and sleep-deprived life.

For another, after a month of memory work, my fear was worse than before, with panic attacks rather than the words of Scripture rolling through my body like that Chunnel train.

Oddly enough, I didn’t give up. I’m not sure why. Call it God’s grace. Call it stubbornness. Call it pride. Whatever. It doesn’t really matter.

What matters is that week after week, I memorized a verse or two, until I’d memorized the whole book. All six chapters. Every last word.

It took me almost a whole year to commit Ephesians to memory. But you know what? That doesn’t matter, either.

What matters is that at the beginning of December last year, I knew three verses from Ephesians (because I say them to Jack every night as his bedtime blessing); at the beginning of December this year, I knew 155 verses: not bad for a sleep-deprived woman with four kids, two cats, and an endless pile of laundry to fold.

And that’s really my point: if I can do this, anyone can. It’s just a matter of wanting it enough to actually do the work.

Today is the feast day of St. John the Evangelist, author of a Gospel, three epistles, and the book of Revelation. How fitting, then, that today is also the day I invite you to consider joining me as I memorize 1, 2, and 3 John in 2012.

In mid-January, I’ll reiterate this invitation and include a template for you to download and print. After that, I hope to send an email each month to encourage those of you who decide you’d like to join me.

For now, I’m asking you to prayerfully consider over the next few weeks whether this is something to which God may be inviting you. A strong sense of yes! I want to do that is a pretty good indication. But a strong aversion or resistance is probably also something you’ll want to pay attention to.

next time: 3 things I learned while memorizing Ephesians (or, why you, too, can memorize an entire book of the Bible)

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Death Canyon: Secret of the Zombies

Dec 23rd, 2011 by

A friend tells me her girls have decided not to give or receive Christmas presents this year. “They want to take the money we planned to spend on gifts for each other and use it to help people who really need it,” she says.

So one afternoon, they pored over catalogs from Compassion Intenational and World Vision. Her youngest wanted to give mosquito nets and bees. Her oldest sidled up to her after they’d chosen their gifts and said, “Mom, can we do this again next year?”

My friend smiles as she recounts this. “I think we just created a new Christmas traditon. I don’t think we’re ever going to go back to giving each other gifts.”

I smile, but weakly. I want to be happy for my friend, glad that her children are so generous, so joyful in their giving, so spiritually sensitive.

But the ugly truth is, I’m jealous. My kids didn’t decide to forego gifts in order to celebrate Jesus’ birthday with the least of these.

No, while my friends’ kids were busy studying gift catalogs for the needy, Jack and Jane were huddled together working on Jane’s book, a bit of pulp fiction called “Death Canyon: Secret of the Zombies.”

I don’t know where she gets this stuff. It’s not like we watch a lot of Day of the Undead around here. Apparently, we don’t need to. My kids come up with the undead on their own. I suppose that’s spiritual sensitivity, of a sort.

Just not the sort I want.

*****

A morning later in the week, I see the moon from the dining room window, a crescent hanging between fig branches, pillowed on the deep velvet blue of dawning sky. And I think, how lovely.

Then I read Ann Voskamp’s words about the moon and stars, and my heart squeezes tight with longing.

With, let’s face it, envy.

When I looked at the moon, I saw, well, the moon. I did not see the wise men or the wonder of Christ. But Ann Voskamp did. She always does, her sacramental eyes seeking – and seeing – Emmanuel everywhere she looks.

The green-eyed monster that lurks in my belly raises its Hydra-head once more, and hisses in my ear, “You don’t see as deeply as she does. You don’t write as beautifully. It’s no wonder her book is a New York Times bestseller and yours is out of print.”

The words echo. Out of print out of print out of print.

It is hard to stop the onslaught because the monster speaks truth, hard to remember that it is a twisted, coiled truth designed to accuse and demean and divide. And even when I tell it to Shut UP, still its ugly words ripple in my mind.

It is hard these days to look at my life and not wish certain things were different. I wish my book were still in print. I wish I had another book contract. I wish I had more time to write, to practice writing, to work at becoming a better writer.

I wish I already were a better writer.

I wish I didn’t have endless piles of laundry to fold, that my dishes didn’t pile up in the sink like some food-encrusted tower of Babel, that I had an au pair to watch my kids so I could take a nap or run to the grocery store without four kids in tow, that I had a full-time housekeeper, that my parents didn’t live so far away.

But such wishing only encourages the green-eyed monster to hiss louder in my ears, to take up residence in my eyes and distort my vision until I see the people I love with loathing because they have something I don’t, something I want, or because they’re not who I wish they were.

This is not who I want to be.

*****

In the dark of our bedroom, before we fall asleep, I tell Doug that I’m struggling, that right now, other people’s lives look so much better than mine, richer, easier, more meaningful, more organized, more energized, more whatever-it-is-I’m-not.

He nods in the dark and spoons me close. “I’m sorry it’s hard,” he says. We lie curled together in silence a moment. Then, softly, he says, “Is there anything about your life that you’re grateful for?”

I sigh, loudly. He’s right, of course. There’s much I’m grateful for. “Our kids,” I say. “Their health. You. Our house. Lighting the Advent wreath at dinner tonight. Getting to see Lynne today. Bed. Sleep.”

The list goes on, and on, this list of gifts, of grace in the life I have. I fall asleep counting my blessings.

It’s so White Christmas.

****

After dinner, we’re cleaning up the kitchen, Jack and I. He’s telling me about his writer’s block. “I’m just not sure how I’m going to get John and Sara out of the giant’s fist, Mama, and I can’t write anything until I figure that out.”

We toss around a few ideas until Jack lights on one he thinks will work. “You know, Mama,” he says as he puts away a serving bowl, “sometimes you should work on your novel that you haven’t worked on in a long time.”

I nod and rinse off a plate. “You’re right. I should.” I slide the plate into the dishwasher. “But I’m not sure when I would. You and Jane and the boys take up a lot of my time.”

“We should have a mother-son writing date,” he says. “We could go to a coffee shop, and I can work on my book, and you can work on yours.”

I grin at him. “That’s a great idea.”

“And when Jane is old enough to work on her book without us having to spell all the words for her, she can come, too.”

It’s not a gift for Jesus, exactly, this writing date. It doesn’t matter. It’s a gift to me, that he thought of it, that he knew I would enjoy it, that he’s even willing to let his sister come (when she can spell, of course). It’s yet another gift in the life I have.

I wipe crumbs off the counter. The granite glistens in the glow from the overhead lamps, and I smile.

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Christmas at the Solstice

Dec 20th, 2011 by

Last year on the solstice, as soon as daylight dawned, my friend Charlie called. The darkness had weighed heavily upon us both last fall, and we’d been counting down the days till the return of the light.

“We made it,” he said. “180 days of pure joy lie before us.”

I smiled into the phone.

Charlie’s call was a flicker of light in the darkness that engulfed me. It was a glimmer of the joy that he proclaimed.

This is why I love Christmas in the northern hemisphere: the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

And though the days of Christmas last year were still dark, Charlie was right: after the solstice, the days did lengthen. The light slowly, so slowly, returned. But it did return.

And with it, joy.

That is what we wait for in Advent. That is the promise of Christmas: not 180 days of pure joy, but endless days of pure joy.

 

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with people… He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore… And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and … its gates will never be shut by day – and there will be no night there.

Revelation 21:3-4, 23-25

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