Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
Hello world!
3
Author Archives: admin
It's Enough: Paying Bills and Finding Jesus
This photo was taken almost exactly one year ago as Vancouver got its first snowfall of the season. India, who loves the snow, ran to the window and sat there in her own little world admiring the beautiful falling snow. As she sat there we heard her murmur to herself “It’s enough” only to then later exclaim to mom and dad “It is, it’s enough!”
Tonight I was blessed to worship with the Renovatus Church community. They’re an amazing crew in general and for a period of time are spending their Sunday evenings reading and listening to the words of Jesus. Tonight the dialog was built off of Jesus’ words and this photograph of India.
For all of time humanity has been looking for answers, most often for easy answers. Generally our questions are about wants, needs, necessities, and preferences. How can I get what I want, why don’t I get what I want, why did I receive what I did not want? The way the narrative of Scripture was written (at least the portion read tonight) was such that the crowds of people were dying for tangible signs of God’s reality, they (like their ancestors) wanted God to meet their needs. So Jesus met their needs with bread and meat. Quite a few thousand people ate bread and meat till their stomachs were filled. But bread and meat were not primary on Jesus’ mind.
Later as he continues to dialog Jesus makes a strange point by saying that HE is in fact the bread/sustenance that they’re looking for–that satisfaction, that their needs and wants are not going to be met by bread and meat (whether it falls miraculously from the sky, is handed over by the hand of Jesus himself, or is found through hard work or labor). Jesus makes the audacious claim that he is enough. If you’re looking for bread and meat that’ll actually satisfy you’ve got to look at him. Oddly, though, it wasn’t that he was inviting people to look TO him for provision but instead to look to him AS the provision itself.
Needs Met
Over the last eight months my family’s needs have been in amazing ways. Financially speaking we are in a strange place. Major medical bills aside, if we were to make enough money to make our budget and pay our monthly co-pays/medicines/non-insurance covered visits/etc. we would make too much to qualify for our partially subsidized health insurance. So our options are: keep insurance and don’t pay for medicine or be uninsured with my prescriptions. Quite the pickle! (I could go into more detail, but that’s not the point) What has allowed us to make it is that there has always been a small amount of money trickling into our savings account through family and friends generosity. That extra non-salary income has allowed us to make ends meet. Here’s the cool part though, at least on four occasions our savings account has gone down to zero only to be replenished with varying amounts within at least 48 hours. Each time we scrape the bottom of the barrel there seems to be another shovel full of flour to be used for baking.*
And while that’s all awesome and I’m overwhelmed by the beautiful reality of it…it’s not the point. Not everyone who goes through our situation is taken care of by friends and family so effectively…and who’s to say that if this doesn’t drag on that eventually bankruptcy or something financially painful isn’t a part of our future?! The point is not that God has promised to provide us enough bread and meat!
Is He Enough?
The question that Jesus invites us to ask and answer is…is he enough? Am I satisfied with finding my hope in a resurrected Jesus? Am I satisfied in the invitation to follow him, to live with him, to die with him? Is Jesus enough? If everything else in my life fails is Jesus still enough? Is there hope beyond life being tidy, beyond things working out (as I think they should), beyond getting better? I think there is. I think that’s part of what made Jesus so radical–he was wholly connected to the pain and reality of this world while completely transcending it. He provided bread and meat but he invited people into a deeper reality–a more real reality (good grammar right?).
When India was staring out that window there wasn’t all that much snow on the ground. But it was enough for her. Even if it melted that afternoon she was willing and ready to take joy in what was given. I too want to take joy in what’s given, to find satisfaction in what I receive. Even if it all melts away before I’m ready I want to choose to be disappointed by hope than to never hope at all. But hope, true hope, is not founded in what we receive but in who we are given to or who gives themselves to us.
* (Late Addition) Let me clarify some by saying that through it all we are still working as employees of Renovatus as one of their daughter church plants. While things are moving slower than intended due to my health we have continued the work and continued drawing a part-time salary. Some have questioned where our income comes from and if it will ‘mess insurance things up’ if they send the church money. The answer is no, we are always in need of new financial partners to support Grassroots Conspiracy. If you’d like to join you can do so here: http://su.pr/1VwRyQ . Hope that clarifies!
The Last Month…
It’s funny, depending on the day or the hour you catch me my answer as to how I’m doing or how things are going will be vastly different. The last month has been a whirlwind–at some points a whirlwind of nothingness and at other points a whirlwind of excessive catch up. Let me start off with the tough stuff and end with the goodies…
- Back pain is a pretty normal thing for me (duh). It usually comes and goes, gets bad for a short period of time and then goes away. But the back pain that flared up about a month ago did seem to want to go away. Instead it slowly grew worse causing sharp pains in my back and abdomen. It got so bad that anything that created pressure (coughing, sneezing, laughing, etc.) would cause such intense pain it would occasionally bring me to tears. Needless to say it sucked. We tried Oxycodone, Vicodin, alcohol (just kidding) but nothing worked. The only thing that brought reprieve was laying down in bed.
- Right as the back pain got to its worst it was time for a new round of chemo. I started that round on a Tuesday night and by Thursday I started feeling the effects.
- Lastly I’ve been fighting a gnarly little infection in one of my toes. Simultaneously as I started chemo the infection took a turn for the worst and the doctors saw fit to give me some iv antibiotics and two other pill form antibiotics. What was most miserable about these antibiotics was that they made my stomach incredibly sick. So between taking two different antibiotics four times daily and taking chemo pills once daily I was pretty much constantly taking a medicine that was making my stomach sick. No fun.
- As I’m fighting all this crap and sleeping eighteen hours a day Christmas was barreling down upon us and I was no help! Jess was frantically trying to take care of me, take care of the kids, work, AND get ready for the holidays. It was an intense time and we weren’t making much headway.
So that’s all the tough stuff. Let me now share with you some of the good stuff!
- After being into the ER twice I was finally able to meet with both my oncologist and my naturopath on Wednesday afternoon a few days before Christmas. Between those two visits and the stuff they did to/gave me by Thursday morning I was a new person. The back pain was completely gone (turns out it wasn’t back pain but actual nerve pain from my tumor pressing on my spinal cord) and I was up and moving again…just in time to get ready for Christmas!
- We were able to spend a whole day with my dad’s side of the family out in beautiful Yamhill County. It was amazing. We hung out, cut down a tree, sang carols, and drank tea. Many of the family skimped on gifts for themselves in order to show more generosity to my family. They showered us with notes and letters and written down scriptures of hope. Like I said, it was amazing.
- Christmas this year was going to be at our house…but if you didn’t already put two and two together our house wasn’t all that clean at the time. One of the greatest Christmas presents we received this year was my mother-in-law and sister-in-law coming to our house and cleaning it top to bottom. This gift allowed us to focus our pre-Christmas time on being together as a family, making snowflakes together, Christmas shopping, etc. It was a wonderful gift that truly allowed us to enjoy the Christmas season.
Man, I could go on and on concerning the generosity we’ve experienced in the last month. People have flooded us with meals, thoughtful notes, and more. Our Christmas Eve and Christmas morning times were calm and fun and memorable. Since that Thursday (when I started feeling better) I still have not left the house much because it’s been a time for our family to be together. I’ve missed seeing many of you but am glad to miss out on seeing y’all if it means that I get to be with my wife and kids more.
I know this update was a bit scattered but it’s been an intense month (an intense year!!) of changes, of really really good times and of really really rough times…that’s life though I guess!
Bastards, two dads, unplanned pregnancies: the Birth story of Jesus
What a crock! Have any of you paid attention to the lyrics to “Away in a Manger”? Really? Jesus didn’t cry as a baby? Have you ever bucked hay before? Try sleeping in it! You ever see a baby that never cries? That song is just one example of how we have romanticized and thus taken away some of the power of Jesus’ birth story.
How cool is it that Jesus was the bastard child of an unwed teen mom? How cool is it that Jesus has two daddies? How strange is it that Jesus was poor? That he grew up as an illegal alien? That he spent his formative years in the ghetto? That he pooped his pants as a baby. That Jesus had to be potty trained. Potty trained!
The story of Jesus’ birth is not a romantic pretty story of God coming to meet his subjects. No, it is a story that completely captures the experience of humanity in so many ways. When we dull it over we ruin the reality of the story. We miss the beauty of the gift.
Here’s the Christian birth narrative–
A divorced God* decides the only way to bring hope and restoration back to humanity is to work within it. So he sends himself in Jesus as an unplanned pregnancy to a poor teenage mom. He was a child who had to not only hold the tension of having that stigma but he also held the tension of having two dads, one was Joseph and the other was Yahweh–both fathers, both real, both belonging to him. He was born in a barn ’cause apparently daddy number two wasn’t on good speaking terms with his family in Bethlehem. Their impoverished family soon had to flee to Egypt where he grew up as an illegal alien until he was able to return back home to Nazareth–a place that you NEVER want to live and always want to be leaving. It’s the ghetto, it’s Detroit (sorry Detroit).
We’ve missed the story and I think we’ve missed out because of it. Christmas season should propel us to reorient our lives not only around the ideals of the Kingdom of God but around the manner in which that Kingdom was brought to earth. Single moms in our neighborhoods must be cared for! We can’t give them the ugly eye when their kids act up with the store, we must extend grace! The ghetto can’t be avoided as a place too dangerous for us in the burbs (or wherever you live) because Jesus grew up there. That’s his hood…and I if I were you I’d try to go where Jesus goes ’cause I think he was on to something. Whatever we think about gay marriage maybe we should have space to honor any two individuals regardless of gender who want to love on a child–Jesus seemed to do alright. Maybe we should be gentle with those who come across our border because like Jesus it’s quite possible they’re running from hell on the other side. Maybe the Christmas story is even more than just a season of giving (though that’s pretty frickin’ important and totally fits the story too) but it’s also a season of reorienting our view of humanity because of how Jesus chose to redeem all of it…even Detroit.
* All throughout the Bible a metaphor is used referring to God as a jilted lover. As someone who has given his bride (us) everything only to have us turn our backs on him and demand a divorce. Even though he repeatedly says that he hates divorce (’cause divorce so often sucks. We know that) he, in fact, within the metaphor (and everything when talking about God is in fact a metaphor isn’t it?) is a divorced and hurt groom still waiting for things to be made right. God totally gets divorce and thinks that it sucks.
The Scars of Humanity
To be human is to be wounded–it is to have scars. Scars are just mile-markers in a story and to be human is to have an active part in the telling of yours and others’ stories.
The massive scar on my back is an often hidden testimony to my surgery over the last month. My limp is a memorial to my fight against cancer. In the Jewish scriptures their ancestor Jacob walked with a limp and it reminded him (and everyone else) of his struggle with God. Jesus has scars on his wrists and his side that bear testimony of his being human. Gandhi’s physique told a story. Mother Teresa’s crippled feet capture that she always gave away the best shoes to others while keeping the worst for herself. Her feet (and her shoes) told a story about her life. Scars. Markers. Memorials.
I’m not placing myself as an example next to Jesus, Mo T, Gandhi, and Jacob as if I’m anywhere near their level of sacrifice. That’s not the point. No, I’m actually placing all of us next to that lineup because like those icons we all bear the scars of being human. We carry with us baggage from how our mom or dad parented us, from how a family member inappropriately touched us, from the death of a friend, from depression, from an epic fight with God, or from an innumerable list of things that scar our bodies, our hearts, our selves.
We are scared people and we need not be ashamed of them. They are a part of us but they do not define who we are. Think about scars. What do you do with a cool scar? You show it off right? You’re proud of it. You’re not proud of a scar because you’re proud of the fact that you don’t use proper knife safety; no you’re proud of it because its in the past, because you’ve moved past it (though its not left behind), you’ve overcome it (though it has left a mark).
I like the term coined by the late Henri Nouwen–we all have opportunity to function as wounded healers. We’ve got scars and scratches of many kinds–but we proudly own those stories as a part of our past, as a part of who we are. We are all wounded. Some of us are being defined by our wounds, we’re living out of the story that caused those cars and thus are dying from them. Some of us try to pretend like we aren’t scared and thus live in awkward ignorance and have little story at all. All of us, however, are invited to live as wounded healers.