Category: faith

The Waiting Spaces

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Unbelief in the Waiting Spaces

I battle against moments of unbelief when I find myself in the waiting rooms of daily life. These waiting rooms are the seasons I find myself waiting in the transitional and unknown places.

Will I find reconciliation in a relationship with a long time friend over a recent disagreement?

Will I get the position I have been waiting for?

Will my scans come back clean?

These are only a few of the waiting spaces I have found myself in over the past five years and these waiting spaces have been challenging for me to cling to faith and belief, even when I cannot see.

All too often I have noticed I am not the only one who lives this way. In our humanity, we desire for God to answer prayers like He is a tiny man inside a vending machine. An impatient heart may desire control and immediate answers instead of resting in God’s sovereign control and supernatural time-table. In unbelief and distorted desires, the human heart is prone to wander over to the instant gratification of faith in a microwave, instead of the slow unraveling of learning patience and trust in a God who is good even when we cannot see.

Life’s Temporary Waiting Spaces and Eyes that See

Not all waiting spaces are bothersome. In a restaurant, I am personally more irritated by those who ask the hostess every five minutes if their table is ready than I am irritated by my own forty-to-fifty minute wait. This comes from my short time and experience as a hostess. I know hostesses want to seat people in a restaurant as fast as they can.

When seated at my table, I am usually not bothered to wait for drinks, food, or a server. I identify with the process of waiting in a restaurant because I have experienced the life of a server too. In the life of a server, the tables seem to turn all at once and the needs of the customers sometimes seem outnumber the minutes in the hour.

I don’t mind waiting because I know behind the scenes there is so much more going on that I cannot see. In a restaurant there are servers, line cooks, expos, dishwashers, food runners, and every server has ongoing side work throughout the night. There are important front of the house needs, but what goes on behind the scenes, the things which our eyes can’t see, are all significant parts of the food to customer process.

While waiting at  my doctor, I think of this waiting room just the same way I wait on my glass of water in a restaurant. The waiting space is a piece of the puzzle in the bigger picture of going to the doctor. I value the time and attention my doctor gives to my own family, I can visualize what is going on behind the scenes while I am waiting for the doctor. I know I am waiting because my doctor is giving that same care to someone else in the next exam room, and when my turn comes I will receive the excellent, personal care I received just like the last time I was in for a check up.

I seem to be able to remember in life’s temporary waiting spaces.

Heart Issues in the Difficult Waiting Spaces 

When I first began reading the Bible in my early twenties, my husband was in seminary. As we traveled back and forth between seminary and home, we would read the Old Testament out loud to one another. I remember reading Old Testament passages like Exodus 16, when the Israelites have been brought out of slavery in Egypt, but still they are complaining about God’s provision for them in the desert. The Israelites all too easily forgot that God had delivered them from slavery, and He was bringing them to the Promised Land.

I used to ask Michael, “Why do the Israelites whine all the time? Why do they so easily forget?”

Well, now I know. Because I too am just like the Israelites in my own personal waiting spaces. I fail to wait patiently on the Lord and His timing.

In the waiting room of my own life, when I fail to see God working behind the scenes, I find myself checking in at the counter too often asking impatiently, Lord, when will my wait be over? When it comes to daily life and answers I need right now, I’m a constant bell-ringer, toe-tapper, and heavy-sigh huffer.

This comes from a desire to control. Control creeps up in my heart all too often. I toe-tap in my prayer life instead of sitting in the waiting spaces of life with hopefulness. With belief in the assurance that God is working behind the scenes, and trust that He is giving me the specific care my heart needs even while I wait.

Truth for the Fight to Believe in the Waiting Spaces

Slowly I am learning to fight to believe in the waiting spaces. It is in the waiting spaces that God is working in my heart in ways I cannot see. He is teaching me to lean into His Promises and remember that He is before all things and in Him all things hold together. It is in the waiting space where I see my distorted desire to control.

A few pages later in the Old Testament, the book of Deuteronomy is a call for the Israelites to remember. Remember what God has done before, and remember what God has Promised He will do in the future. When we feel impatient in the waiting spaces we need to soak our hearts in gospel truth. We need to remember that God is always working even when we cannot see.

Verses to Memorize and Use as a Balm for your Heart in the Waiting Spaces:

Exodus 14:14 The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 He makes everything beautiful in its time.

Psalm 27:14 When I wait you strengthen my heart.

Isaiah 40:31 But those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength.

Isaiah 41:10 Do not fear, I am with you.

Psalm 121:4 He who watches over Israel will never sleep or slumber.

Lamentations 3:22 The Lord’s lovingkindness will never cease, His compassions never fail, they are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness.

Philippians 1:6 He who began a good work in you, will bring it to completion.

Colossians 1:27 He is before all things and in Him all things hold together.

2 Corinthians 4:18 We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Behold, He is making all things new. Even when we cannot see in the waiting spaces.

Unraveling Cynicism

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Cynicism is Rooted in Woundedness

I am barely a teenager sitting in the front bedroom of my childhood home, a two-story brick house with green shutters. As I look out the window I am scared, depressed, uncertain. From a very young age I learn this world is not the way it is supposed to be. In 1991 my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. By the time I reach eighth grade in the fall of 1997, my mother is getting sicker instead of getting better.

At thirteen I want to be numb to everything around me. To feel the emotional pain raging within me and interact with the sad reality surrounding me is too much  for my barely teenage brain to bear. I learn how to disengage. I learn how to be numb to life’s difficulties.  My numbness pushes true friends away. In crowds I find myself surrounded by many people but somehow I always feel alone.

This disengagement and numbness eventually buds into cynicism and as an adult, I grow into a woman who engages the world as a full-blown cynic. Cynicism is one of the distorted ways in which I view the world.

“Cynicism creates a numbness toward life. Cynicism begins with a wry assurance that everyone has an angle. Behind every silver lining is a cloud. The cynic is always observing, critiquing, but never engaging, loving, and hoping…To be cynical is to be distant. While offering a false intimacy of being ‘in the know,’ cynicism actually destroys intimacy. It leads to bitterness that can deaden and even destroy the spirit.” Paul Miller, A Praying Life

The Tension Between Cynicism and The Gospel

My cynicism became a problem when I became a Christian at the age of twenty-one.

My new life in Christ and my old life built upon the foundation of cynicism in juxtaposition with one another. I find myself unable to fully engage with others within the church because of how deeply I am tangled up in my own cynicism.

Cynicism becomes deeply rooted and takes hold of how people grow to engage the world.

Cynicism sees the pretty girl walk into the room and assumes she is stupid or worse, assumes you don’t like her. The cynic sees the Christian who is always smiling as a person who lacks emotional depth. Tangled up in cynicism, we can’t see the greater redemptive story in ourselves, others, and the whole world because cynicism distorts hope.

Deeply rooted cynicism leads down the path of critiquing, over-thinking, never hoping and never fully trusting. A cynic may look friendly on the outside while the inner self of a cynic questions motives of others.

I like this definition of cynicism I found in an article on Desiring God:

Cynicism is the emotional disposition of distrust or rejection toward a particular idea, person, or group as a result of negative experiences (either directly or indirectly).

New life in Christ brings tension between the old and the new self. There is tension between the desires of the way you have always lived, and the way you are called to live in the gospel of Christ.

The unraveling of the old pattern of cynicism is necessary in the Christian life so Christians can live in the community we have been called to live with one another, the community founded on the gospel, where Jesus is the cornerstone. The community of the Church. This is a community call to love one another with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. (Ephesians 4:2)

So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. (Galatians 5:16-17)

Robert Robinson is an 18th century pastor, hymnodist, and writer of the hymn: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. My favorite part of this hymn illustrates my above point. This hymn was written in the 1700s and describes the same tension I feel in my daily life between my cynicism and call to love others fully the gospel in 2018, three hundred years later.

O to grace how great a debtor Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let they goodness, like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart to thee
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love.
Here’s my heart. O take and seal it; Seal it for thy courts above.

We live in the now and the not yet. We have foretasted heaven in our own redemption, but the world is not yet fully redeemed. In the now and the not yet as those who claim the name of Jesus, we wait and we dance with our prone to wandering hearts.

How to Unravel Deeply Rooted Cynicism 

First, self-awareness is the most basic step to unraveling cynicism. A person cannot be unraveled from cynicism if the person is are unaware he or she has the plaguing problem of cynicism. Step one is self-awareness of the problem, the gospel, and our wandering hearts

Second, embrace the process. The healing from cynicism does not happen overnight. We live in a microwave world. Books are delivered to our fingertips, groceries are amazon primed in two hours. Sanctification does not happen in a microwave. It is the slow unraveling of the old self and faith to embrace the new self.

Third, the gospel invites us into freedom from our old unhealthy patterns. In the gospel, we can be free from the heavy yoke of slavery to cynicism. You have to see the heavy yoke of cynicism in the way you see the world and desire to be free from that heavy burden upon your shoulders.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. (Galatians 5: 1,13)

Fourth, recognize cynical patterns, memorize scriptures to replace those cynical patterns, and ask God to change you from the inside out.

Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:22-24)

It is critical to begin to recognize the cynical bend in your thought life toward cynicism. It is also critical to be transformed in your mind to the patterns of cynicism. Nothing spiritual is happening without the step of being renewed from the inside out, through the renewing of your mind. This renewal happens by knowing the Word of God and asking you knowledge of the Word to change the way you live. Without the middle step of renewal and transformation, our battles against cynicism will only be surface deep.

When I look back and see freedom from the yoke of slavery of cynicism, I see hope for the teenager standing in her bedroom. I see a life much bigger than she could have ever dreamed up for herself. A life where she eventually learned to show up, be vulnerable, and allowed herself to be seen. A life where cynicism didn’t distort her view of others, but love rooted in the gospel helped her see others, and even herself with the eyes of Jesus.

“Courage starts with showing up and allowing ourselves to be seen.” Brene Brown

What Kind of Mother Are You?

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For some reason, when I think of my mother being alongside me during this season of motherhood, I sometimes imagine her shoulder-length red hair, her social boldness, and I imagine her asking me the question, “What kind of mother are you?”

From what I can remember of my mother, this question comes from a story passed down in my family or passed around amongst her friends. These stories mostly about the times the women before me have screwed something up during this season of motherhood, picked themselves back up, and then dusted themselves off to learn from their mistakes. What kind of mother are you, feels more like the punch line in all the ironies of motherhood, much more than deeply rooted criticism.

When my first child was an infant I had dreams of being the perfect mother. Perfection is always the longing of my heart when it comes to most things. However, in God’s goodness, these threads of perfectionism are slowly being unraveled away as I learn to embrace there are no perfect mothers in this world, there are only weak and broken mothers holding fast to the only one who is perfect, Jesus.

He must increase, but I must decrease. (John 3:30) I need this verse not just in small doses every day, sometimes I need to be walloped upside the head by this truth.

I do not hold up the world when it comes to my children, or my parenting, it is God, the Maker and Sustainer of the universe using our family as a microscopic part in the greater redemptive story of the whole world.

Cue my scary, humbling, story … it has taken me eight months to get to a place where I felt like I could write about this humbling place in motherhood. As you are reading this, visualize me as the clenched teeth emoji.

Last summer I was walloped upside the head with the truth that He must increase, but I must decrease. I am not called to be a superwoman, but I am called to be a super-dependent woman, upheld by the strength of the gospel.

It was Fourth of July Week and my oldest son was experiencing some severe stomach pains. I was certain he had a kidney stone, or his appendix was about to rupture. My son and I spent two back to back nights in the emergency room, I was a walking zombie by the third day. I had slept less than 2 hours at a time in 60 hours. Normally, when my kids are awake, I am awake. Even the slightest inkling of a movement or the onset of vomiting, I jolt awake. Motherhood has given me ninja-like reflexes, even in my deepest of sleeps.

Once my oldest was on the mend, I was able to experiece my first full night of rest. I was beyond exhausted and when my three year old arose for the day at 6am, I walked her down to the television, turned on Bubble Guppies, gave her and her five year old brother who had joined us by this point their morning warm milk, (warming morning milk for my three a five year old is still a crazy thing I do) and told them I’d be back downstairs at seven-zero-zero. In the age of digital time, this is how I communicate seven o’clock to my young children.

The next thing I know, it is eight-thirty and my husband is waking me. God has knitted me together to be an early riser, my husband NEVER has to wake me. As he wakes me he says something like, “Well, the police just rang the doorbell. They asked me if I knew where my children were.”

To my (at the moment) extreme surprise, shock, anger, and shame I discovered my children, while I was sleeping, had opened the front door at seven-zero-zero in the morning, my less than one year old puppy ran out the front door of our home, and my three and five year old chased after our dog to find themselves in a completely different neighborhood. My babies were lost in this big world.

And crying.

My three-year old still in her soaked and droopy to her knees overnight diaper.

A sweet hero woman, called 911 when she found them.

What kind of mother am I? It is so easy to see this question through the damaging lens of shame in this moment. That I am a very bad mother.

Then it is easy to self-justify.

You all. I am a good member of our community. My husband is a good pastor of a Bible believing church. I am a good school teacher. I serve in our local schools as a decent substitute teacher. I lead a very good women’s ministry team at our church. I bring meals to people when they are in need. My resume is neat and tidy.

But none of these good things mattered in this moment. In this moment, the only thing that mattered was: What kind of mother I am. A mother, doing the best she can, one day at a time, firmly clinging to Jesus. When shame creeps in, I need not to think about what I am, but what I believe in.

I believe in a good God, redeeming me and my family, even when the police are at the front door of my very good and clean home because I don’t know where my children are.

He must increase, but I must decrease. This is a small thread in the unraveling of my unbelief.

What kind of mother am I?

Shame says, you are a very bad mother. What kind of mother loses her children? Don’t ever share this memory, keep it in the dark. Let it fester, and cluster to all the other lies you believe.

The gospel says, when you are weak I am strong.

And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.  Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9-11)

He must increase, but I must decrease.

Can you imagine all of the horrible things that could have happened to my precious three year old daughter and five year old son? Believe me, I have imagined them all.

Can you see how God protected them? How He sustained them? How He brought them back home to me when I was weak? How He used His community of neighbors, police officers, and grace to display His strength and goodness to my family?

If my mom was still here, alongside me in this season of motherhood and this question came up between us… What kind of mother am I? I would answer, I’m an okay mother with a very Good God.

It is only by His grace. As perfection unravels, and I decrease, He increases. His power is perfectly displayed.

What kind of mother are you?

My Pregnancy and Infant Loss Story

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I Am The Girl Slicing and Serving the Wedding Cake

I am twenty-six years old in a banquet room celebrating the marriage of two new friends. I am cutting the wedding cake for their guests, placing the small slices of cake on the plates before me. My husband and nine month old son among the crowd beyond the table.

I am eight weeks pregnant behind the banquet hall table. Feeling excited, scared, and overwhelmed about adding another baby to our tribe. The baby I’m carrying and my son in the crowd beyond the table will only be fifteen months apart.

I am new at motherhood and at the same time motherless myself. My mother has been gone for twelve years at this point. The point in my story where I find myself behind a table in a banquet hall, the girl slicing and serving the wedding cake.

My mother lost her battle to breast cancer when I was young. The combination of newness and motherlessness heavy on my heart during this vulnerable season of holding one baby in my arms while carrying another.

As I slice the pieces of cake and place them on plates suddenly, I can feel emotionally in my heart and physically in my body, something is not right slicing cake behind the table. Suddenly I realize, I am miscarrying this baby while I am slicing and serving wedding cakes in a banquet hall.

I panic. I am in a room filled with people, but immediately I feel alone.

I cannot rush to the privacy of a bathroom stall quickly enough. I cannot sprint although I want to, I am afraid to make a scene. Once I enter the hallway, I cannot even find where the bathroom is located, I am trying to politely ask strangers where to find the restroom behind a false smile on the outside, but inside I am chaotic. Inside, I know I am miscarrying my child.

The immediate heartbreak of loss settling in as I find the public bathroom stall. My thought life chanting ugliness, what is wrong with me lies and I did something wrong anthems. I didn’t eat well enough, I lifted something too heavy, my heart rate was too high at my last workout. The scroll of every single thing I could have done wrong, rolling out before me in the privacy of a public bathroom stall.

Blame and shame both working together to bring my down into the trenches of despair. I feel the shame, there is something wrong with me. And in this bathroom stall, after blame and shame have given me a good beating, I lead myself to believe I am incredibly alone. I lead myself to believe, I am the only one. I lead myself to believe no one else in this world can bear this burden with me.

When my husband comes to me with our nine month old son from the crowd beyond the table, I am already so ashamed of what I feel like I have done. In the few moments in the bathroom stall, I have built walls of self-protection around my heart. I can’t even let my husband come to me. I sit in the car next to him on the long drive back from the wedding. Physically we are inches a part, but emotionally I am light years away.

Loss is familiar to me. I have lost my mother. I have experienced loss, heartache, and pain. At twenty-six years old, in the trenches of despair, the unhealed places in my heart remind me that in my life, people die. In the despair, I cling to my learned behaviors of both apathy and cynicism. In the car, I don’t even know how to cry. I just stare coldly out the window on a gray September day.  My thought life untamed and free to continue the severe beating it started hours before in the bathroom stall.

Once I find myself in an ultrasound room, my doctor confirms, the baby I once carried no longer has a heartbeat. My husband is visibly upset. I now, emotionally comatose.

The pain and loss of my miscarriage very real. But the pain and hurt of years past and learned behaviors enable me to be numb to the pain.

I barely scratch the surface of my pain over this life, precious to me, lost. I pull up my bootstraps and carry on, looking for silver linings but always wondering about the child I lost while I was the girl slicing and serving wedding cake. Always, even in a room full of people, feeling alone in this part of my story. Always wondering what it would have been like to have held that baby in the spring of the following year.

To The Girl Slicing and Serving the Wedding Cake:

Eight years have passed since I lost that baby behind a banquet hall table while slicing and serving wedding cake. Eight years, a second miscarriage, and then three healthy babies born. Babies I have held, four total, if you add that baby with my husband in the crowd beyond the table on that day. Four babies I have nursed, disciplined, potty trained, and walked to the bus stop on gray September days.

My heart still breaks when I think about that September day eight years ago when I was behind a banquet hall table, the girl slicing and serving the wedding cake. How I not only lost a baby that day, but also in that loss how my rote behavior was to retreat to a dark stall, a place where all I felt was loneliness.

Loss does that to you, I know that too well now. Loss is a shame breeding ground for I am alone in this lies. Loss, a shame breeding ground for no one else will understand anthems.

As I think about this moment, and prayerfully consider this painful moment in the life of a woman, there are three things I know now in hindsight that I wish I would have known then as the girl slicing and serving wedding cake behind the table in the room of a banquet hall.

1.) You are not alone in your loss. 

Satan wants you to feel alone. Satan wants us to feel disconnected from the ones who breathe life back into our souls. In loneliness, Satan’s power over my own patterns of self-destruction were at work. In my loneliness, I heard the lies I believe loud and clear, and the hope of the gospel was a faint whisper.

Statistically, one in four women will experience pregnancy and infant loss in some form or another. The more I stepped out of my dark bathroom stall of shame and entered into conversations with my husband and other women who have lost babies as well, the more I was able to identify the threads of pain in my story. I was not able to heal from my pain after my two miscarriages until I could identify the threads which were causing pain in the first place.

I blamed myself for that baby being lost behind that table. I carried the weight of that burden for so long. For weeks, months, and even years I let my mind wonder, what if I would have not eaten that slice of deli meat, or what if I had not forgotten my vitamin that day. What if I was sitting instead of standing. All these things were too much for my heart to bear alone.

I needed others to speak truth to me when truth was a faint whisper behind the loud clamoring of my own patterns of self-destruction. I needed others to remind me, the loss of this baby was not because of anything I did or did not do. When I was the girl behind the table slicing and serving wedding cakes, I needed the courage to step out of the bathroom stall where I took a harsh blame and shame beating, and into the arms of others alongside me.

Although I felt alone, I was never alone at all.

2.) Just because you are not alone in your loss, does not mean you are merely a statistic. 

Just because other women have experienced pregnancy and infant loss does not mean you are merely a statistic. Your story is unique. Your baby was unique. Your pain and your grief journey will be unique. Other women may have shared a similar experience, but other women and their experiences alone, cannot remedy your unique pain. Other women can simply sit in the darkness of pregnancy and infant loss alongside you, while you wait to walk through the stages of grief in God’s healing time table made uniquely for you.

It is normal to experience shock, denial, anger, and sadness in the wake of pregnancy and infant loss. It is emotionally healthy to let yourself grieve. Vulnerability is strength. Tears are strength. Holding fast to the hope of the cross is strength, especially when the answers to the why and what if questions of life seem to go unanswered.

3.) I know a God Who knows suffering understands the pain of loss.

When the truth of the gospel is no longer a faint whisper, I can remember I know a God Who knows suffering and loss. I know a God Who sent His own Son to die on the cross. I know a God Who experienced separation from His own Son.

This is how I ultimately find true healing, by drawing near to the One Who knows suffering. This healing doesn’t come at the snap of a finger, nor at the pulling up of a bootstrap. This healing is a slow unraveling of my unbelief as I draw near to God in prayer, and read His promises to me in His Word. This unraveling is messy, jagged, and unorganized. This is the kind of healing that comes from brokenness, when I have no clean and clear answers, but simply open and needy hands.

God is near to the brokenhearted. Psalm 38:14

Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Matthew 5:4

One day, God will wipe every tear from our eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, because God is going to make everything new. Revelation 21:4

I don’t need to know all the answers to why this happened. I simply need to trust God, even when I cannot see. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5

I can rest freely in Jesus. Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Jesus is gentle and humble in heart. Jesus is where we can find rest for our souls. Matthew 11:28-30

This is a sliver of my pregnancy and infant loss story. There are pieces here I still have yet to uncover as I walk in this life. But I truly believe there are deep healing powers in the gift of opening up the chapters of our lives and letting others truly see us. There is healing power as we share our story and healing power as we listen to the unique stories of others. The more we open ourselves up and let ourselves be seen, the more we realize we are never alone.

To The Woman In The Target Parking Lot

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Today, I saw you in the Target parking lot. I was pulling into Costco in my regular Tasmanian Devil like, chaotic fashion. Swirling around to complete the things which I had signed up to do in love.

I am coming off a hot argument with my husband before he left for a long day of regional travel, a healthy, but hot tension between lovers. Not to mention, a morning of battling a washer which blows the breaker every time is spins, and picking up the itty-bitty pieces of paper off the floor from my developing three and five year old scissor users.

I’m like the Tasmanian Devil flying into Costco today. Mostly because I’m still hot with anger from the previously mentioned tension between lovers… and also, picking up anything tiny off of the floor gives me hives.

Partially I’m all Tasmainian Devilish because I signed up to bring a new mama, to a tribe of now six, a meal. This meal, the thing I signed up to do in love. This meal, intensely important. As a mama to four, I know this meal,  is survival to this sweet mama. This meal must get to her. I am also her tribe. She needs food, Costco-sized and because I know how important this meal is, I will fight through the battles of my tension between lovers and itty-bitty pieces of paper to get it to her. Lord knows, a new mama needs Costco-sized food.

I know my Tasmanian Devil behavior is only external. Within my own heart, despite the outward things happening, inwardly I am feeling shame over bringing this new mama a pre-made meal from Costco instead of the homemade chicken enchilada casserole I had initially planned to bring her when I first signed up. A battle I felt tension over, every moment until I saw you in the Target parking lot.

As I pulled into Costco with crazy eyes, I, by the grace of God, spotted you. You were wrapping a present on the hood of your car. I loved you at first sight. Truly. I even took a second and third glance your way while smiling with my lips as well as with my inner being.

You quite possibly could have been wrapping a present for Christmas 2020. But by the grace of God, I saw you. I saw you wrapping a present on the hood of your car and this was a sweet reminder to me of humanity.

Your wrapping the present on the hood of your car, a simple reminder. We are all facing battles. Spoken and unspoken. Macro things and micro things. On a macro level, we are all feeling the weight of politics, race, Puerto Rico, and Las Vegas. We are all feeling the tension of gun laws, hurricane relief, and who should stand or kneel for what reason while the National Anthem is sung. We are all feeling these macro-tensions within our hearts.

On a micro level, most of us experience the hot arguments, the tension between lovers, and can hardly keep the itty-bitty pieces of paper from accumulating on our household floors.

You could have been advance planning. You were radiant, put together. Your car was immaculate. You could have been wrapping for an event far off in the future.

Your presence in the parking lot of Target today, soothed my Tasmanian Devil like behavior. Seeing you wrap a present on the hood of your car, glacing back twice and thrice,  quieted the battles of my heart. This act in the parking lot of Target, quieted the battles I had over my own expectations for this meal.

Homemade, pre-made. We are all human, and we are all trying to love one another amidst the macro and micro battles going on in our hearts. We are all wrapping presents on the hoods of our cars. We are all trying to love despite our Tasmanian Devil like chaos.

To love in the Tasmanian Devil like chaos is better than to stick to appearing perfect and to not love at all.

To the woman in the Target parking lot, thank you for wrapping a present on the hood of your car. It was medicine for my own heart. When I saw you, I saw myself wrapping presents on the hood of cars and this simple thing quieted my soul.