my mom's human too.

This was the present I gave my mom for Mother's Day this year (and yes, I asked for her permission before posting it).

* * *

I had a rather shocking epiphany this morning, pondering about the sparse hours ticking away before Mother’s Day, the day society demands we call our moms up (no matter how long it’s been since we’ve last talked), tell them ‘I love you’ (no matter if we really mean it or not), and maybe buy them some flowers or a pretty card with a mother’s hand holding a baby’s hand on the front (but only if we’re feeling like extra nice children). And here’s what I realized: we love to glamorize our mothers. Like that air-brushed model that looks just a tad too skinny to be human, we stick our moms up on plastic billboards and surround them with words such as, ‘perfect,’ ‘angel,’ or ‘superhero.’ We elevate them to this alien pedestal on Mother’s Day, praising the fact that they raised us without resorting to suicide, and then often times go on to forget about them the rest of the year.  

So, here’s my thought: my mother’s not perfect. She’s not an angel, not a fashion model, not some inhuman Super Mom. And no, she doesn’t save the world (trust me, I’ve looked into it). She’s my mom.

Most cards like to highlight a mother’s instruction, the numerous things she teaches her children with her words. And yet, I feel like I’ve learned so much from what my mom hasn’t said.

I’ll never forget the time I caustically said to her face that I wished she had never married Dad. I spit those words out like venom, my mind warped into believing that it would actually bring about my victory. But my mom? At the least, a spanking with the wooden spoon and a firm yelling were warranted. But she just looked at me. She looked at me with sadness in her eyes, seeing right through my brave mask that tried to conceal the fact that I didn’t actually mean it. She sat me in my room and left me to stare out the window, all without saying a single word. We eventually talked about it later on that night, and I’m sure I sobbed and sobbed, assuring her that I didn’t mean it (one of my incredibly dramatic attempts to avoid a spanking or no Disney movies for a week), but I will never forget the way she looked at me. At a time when she could’ve so easily raised her voice and let her emotions drive her discipline, she was silent. She didn’t need words, her eyes had the depth of a star field, seeping underneath the outer skin with its white light and saturating my little-kid-angry-heart.

Moms aren’t supposed to sweat either. No, they’re mostly advertised as ones to stay inside, teach kids how to read, and maybe get a little warm making dinner that night. But my mom sweat. I remember one weekend where Dad was out of town, and both our lawn and my grandparents’ lawn needed mowing. Seeing that my mom suffers from pretty aggressive back pain, my Dad’s usually the one to do the outside work. But that didn’t stop her. She cranked that mower up and got to work, finishing all four yards that day. I’m sure her back killed for weeks after that, but she did what she needed to do, even when she sweat like crazy and her hair got messy and her makeup rubbed off.

My mom uses the word ‘honey’ like normal people use the word ‘the’ or ‘and.’ It doesn’t matter if you’re a three-year-old girl or a forty-year-old grown man, if my mom talks to you for more than five minutes, she’s bound to call you ‘honey’ at some point in the conversation. We love to poke fun at her, she gets teased so many times, and yet she just keeps going. It’s super annoying and really embarrassing at times, but for every ‘honey’ she throws out, it’s just one more reminder that she views you as an actual person. I get tired of people who like to treat other people like robots, like their own personal machines to get them food or give them money or help them buy a house. We are not scrap iron parts that can be rearranged to fit other people’s standards. We are human beings that live and breathe, molded in the image of God for his glory. My mom gets that. She sees that as she talks with someone, hears their point of view, looks them in the eyes and compares them to the sweet nectar that bees throw up.

In light of that, she understands that humans are imperfect beings who slip up. Despite phrases like ‘the golden child,’ reaffirming this delusional idea of a perfect child, my mom is always the first to say that she gets I’m not perfect, and that that’s normal. She pushes me to do my very best, but if that ends up falling short of perfection, that’s okay. I don’t ever have to feel like I’m striving to reach some impossible standard, dancing around the edges of who I really am, because my mom sees that I’m not just her son. I’m human.

I love the rare occasions when my mom says words like ‘shit’ or ‘damn,’ because it’s always followed by this never-ending remorse that is absolutely restless until one of her kids calms her down and assure her that they’ve forgiven her and they still love her. I lose track of how many times she apologizes, as if her Mom-Badge has just been tainted and she’ll never be able to shine it up again. So, after I’m done laughing, I’ll nod my head and inform her that she’s still my mom and I’m still her son. But it humanizes her, and I think that’s scary. Because it means that she’s sorta messy, which isn’t a word you normally throw about with the woman who spends years and years cleaning up other people’s messes.          

Speaking of messes, I really, really hate it when my parents cry. I’m sort of a hypocrite in that respect, seeing that I just talked about humanizing my mother in the paragraph above. Because that’s what crying does. For most of my childhood, I did view my mom as this inhuman parental being whose sole purpose was to serve me. Someone who would hold me when I cried and kiss me when I fell down, but never actually cry or fall down herself. So, when my mom and I were talking a few years ago, and she started tearing up for one reason or the other, I didn’t quite know how to react. All I knew was that I didn’t like it and I needed to get out of the room as soon as possible. But I think something beautiful happens when your parents feel comfortable enough to cry in front of you. As much as I tried (and probably still try) to push away any instance that may or may not result in tears, there’s no denying the fact that it brings parents and children a little closer together, connecting them on an emotional level that’s deeper and not as much of a one-way street. Yes, my mom is my mother and she raised me and she’s very wise and stronger than me in a lot of ways. But she’s also human, and she cries sometimes, and it’s awkward and painful and gorgeous all at the same time.

On the other side of the spectrum, Mom’s not afraid to laugh. Anyone who’s been around her for a few minutes will know that she has one of the most distinct laughs on the face of the planet, one that will find you when you’re lost or searching, one that will lead you from one end of Wal-Mart to the other. I’ve seen many families that love each other deeply, they care for one another and are always very kind, but they just don’t laugh enough. And sometimes, that’s really all you need. My mom laughs until she farts, cries or sometimes (on rare, horribly hilarious occasions) pees her pants. Because for all of the messes that we make and all of the messes that we are, there’s something incredibly healing about laughter. Just the sound of it alone is like an internal hug to the heart. Every time she laughs, it’s just one more of the unrealized ways she says, ‘I love you.’

I know Mom worries that she raised us wrong, that she didn’t teach us enough or tell us enough bumper sticker mottos to follow when we’re struggling. But I’ve learned more from her than she’ll ever know, partially from the many ways she doesn’t even realize, the ways that are too human to stick on the front of a greeting card.

From all of those indelible moments when she held her tongue and didn’t say a word, I saw a love so deep and a grace so extensive, I had to come to grips with the fact that she would always care for me, and that her eyes would always reflect forgiveness.

I saw her sweat and strain her back over and over again, teaching me to give my all, even through the pain and ugliness that would sometimes unfold.

For the simple, often annoying names she calls people, I saw them as exactly that. People.

And for reaffirming the beauty in those people, despite their imperfections, helping me to find gold not in crazy-golden-child standards, but in the intricate, often bloody complexities of the heart.

From the cuss words that accidentally slip out, to the tears that are shed, my mother has shown me that people don’t come in stark black and white, but that we’re poignant watercolors that bleed various hues of yellow, green and blue.

And from her rambunctious laugh, the North Star that always reminds me I’m home, alive with the presence of joy and life and my mom’s constant shout: I love you.

I love you too, Mom. And I mean it.

“There’s no way to be a perfect parent, but a million ways to be a really good one.” –Cheaper by the Dozen 2

the missing cross meets my cardboard-component-efforts.

I quit both of my jobs.

Fiscally speaking, was it the most responsible option to choose? No, I don't think so. But spiritually speaking, I'm feeling pretty assured that I'm exactly where God wants me to be.

Starting a few months ago, I began to feel a greater and greater disconnect with God. There was just this icy distance between us that I couldn't understand. So, the first thing I assumed was that I obviously wasn't trying hard enough. If I just put forth a little bit more effort for God, he'd eventually come back and we could be tight again. So, I tried to get more involved in church, I tried even harder to get up early to read the Bible and I really, really tried to be more consistent in my prayer life.

Tried, tried, and tried.

It didn't take long for me to realize how futile that approach was. The following Matt Chandler quote pretty much sums it up perfectly: "All your church attendance, all your religious activities, your Sunday school attendance medals, your journals, having a "quiet time," reading the Scriptures - it's all in vain if you don't have Christ... We are saved, sanctified, and sustained by what Jesus did for us on the cross and through the power of his resurrection. If you add to or subtract from the cross, even if it is to factor in biblically mandated religious practices like prayer and evangelism, you rob God of his glory and Christ of his sufficiency."*

And that was it. All of the components were there. All of the components except for the one who truly makes them worthwhile and beautiful: Christ. I kept trying to rely on my own works, my own cardboard-component-efforts to be a better Christian, thinking that God might see something bright there and decide to give me a nice feeling in my stomach once again (see my stuffed in the trunk post for a further discussion on that).

I think I grasped then that I didn't really understand God. Or the cross. Or the beautiful, constant, ever present power of Christ's sufficiency, not because of me or what I do or how long I have quiet time, but because God is the GREAT I AM. So, realizing that I would soon be whisked off to another amazing, yet crazy busy summer of working at camp, I turned in my two-weeks notices and am currently in the midst of taking a month to refocus on Christ. And no, I'm not bashing prayer, Bible reading, quiet time or journaling (these are all an essential part of my work break). But I've realized that they mean nothing without Christ, are purposeless without the cross, and are just downright boring and obnoxious to stay on top of when their core is buried in all of our self-reliant, last-ditch attempts to get close to God.

It's hard to admit that sometimes we just need to slow down. It's hard to sit still and breathe in the quiet presence of God. And it's hard not to feel like our standing with him fluctuates like the wind, always changing with how we rate on the 'good' or 'bad' scale of the day. But God's not the one who moves. He doesn't change our status as saved-by-grace-sinners, heirs of God, children of the Most High, a royal priesthood. And while I'm definitely not advising everyone to go out and quit their jobs, I want this post to serve as a reminder of the powerful core truth of the cross, and how we will always feel distant from God if that's not at the very center of everything we do. Whether it's taking an extended period of time to be alone with God, or working overtime seven days a week in a high-intensity job, it's still the same. God's still the same. The cross is still the same. His truth is still the same. And that's not ever going to change.

*Chandler, Matt. The Explicit Gospel. Crossway Publishing. 2012.

empty castle time bombs.

This blog post stemmed out of all the times I’ve heard guys talking about how reluctant they are to ask a girl out, and all of the times I’ve heard girls talking about how much they like a guy, but are going to wait until he comes to them and initiates. Both of these situations result in the same exact thing...

Nothing.

So, this is my probably controversial attempt to turn nothing into something. Here we go.

We’re all so shy, it’s scary to open up that bottle with truth and feelings, where the vulnerability aches so badly it screams and the glitter falls off your heart to reveal the gooey shades of black underneath. We’re all so scared, it’s easier to stitch on our cardboard masks and smile as we sink deeper and deeper into the dirty quicksand our idleness soon becomes. At the same time, we’re all so loud that our hearts practically jump out of our chests to beat on our arms, staining the sleeves and crying out for someone to hear them and notice them and love them. We’re all so bold, we can march right on into the storm and laugh at the darkness, completely oblivious to the raging lightning until it strikes us with an electric pulse.

For those of you who aren’t catching my drift yet, we are messy.

But a lot of us (myself included) like to think we aren’t. We like to think we’ve got everything under control and that it’s only a matter of time before the right person comes along and cleans all of our messes up for us. Men are princes and women are princesses. That’s the fairy tale girl's dream, right? To twirl around in her satin dress, watching the fabric as it dances and spins around her snow white body, just waiting for her Prince Charming to come galloping to her tower where he’ll hold her and kiss her and assure her that she’s the most perfect, beautiful young lady to ever walk the earth. Meanwhile, his shining armor will still glisten, completely unscathed by the winding path he’s journeyed, slaying the dragon with the flick of his sword and reaching his true love right before she loses hope. He can carry her on the back of his valiant steed, dashing off to his castle of sparkling silver, glowing like the miles and miles of stars he passed underneath to reach her side. Happily ever after can begin. 

But we aren’t princes and princesses, and we don’t hold onto the promise of a castle as a future home. We work in dimly lit offices on crowded city streets, sneaking out of the cubicle five minutes early so we can have a slightly extended lunch break at that greasy diner down the road.

Men are not knights; our armor isn’t pure, like silver, but chipped, like the paint on your old neighbor’s house, and rusted over with dents and holes and plenty of places where a knife has come in a little too close. We aren’t superhumans with space on the back of our horses. Superman only flies on paper.

And women are not princesses; their ripped up, scarred dresses aren’t tailored by the fairy godmother. The door to leave their tower is swinging wide open in the wind, all they need to do is walk through it to feel the grass. And happily ever after does not exist; happiness is a state of mind, as fleeting and fading as the stroke of midnight.

So far, we’ve established that we’re human. Not superhuman, and not sketches out of a dusty book of fairy tales. Now it’s time for the gritty details. Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. Boy likes girl. Girl likes boy (I hope you caught the differences in “like”). What is the next step? 

As a common relationship metaphor goes, men are the hunters and women are the prey. It is the man’s duty to be on the lookout, scanning the area for any signs of movement and then going after it. He initiates. Meanwhile, the woman gets to bat her eyes and send out slight hints that she’s there, cracking twigs and rustling leaves. Eventually, the man will find her and ask her out. The best formula for happily ever after (tick tock tick tock).

But what if the man isn’t hunting? What if he’s just taking a quiet stroll through the forest, completely unaware of the snapping of branches and crunching of dead leaves around him? He doesn’t have a gun and he’s not on the lookout. He just closes his eyes and lets the summer fill his lungs as the leaves continue to fall. If this is the case, it doesn’t matter how many times the woman bats her blue eyes or cracks down on those twigs. She’ll just keep dancing circles around his tracks, floating like a gray haze over his invisible rifle. Yet we are assured this is the best path to happily ever after (tick tock tick tock).

So now, girl still likes boy. But she’s also mad, infuriated that he hasn’t caught onto the plethora of glass slipper hints she’s dropped like bombs in front of his face. They’ve exploded and the dynamite’s sent debris flying all around, but he’s sleepwalking; every bit of rubble seems to hurtle just a smidgen of an inch above his head. So we blame it on the man, for it's obviously always his responsibility to initiate. And just like that, the woman’s problem, something she should be assuming complete responsibility over, has suddenly become the man’s problem, weighing down on his shoulders like a little glass house. But he doesn’t cave and he doesn’t break, he just keeps walking, oblivious as this eye-batting, twig-snapping, leaf-rustling girl carries on in the whirlpool of limbo she’s created for herself. Don’t worry, she thinks. Eventually, she’ll find a sandy shore that leads to her silver castle of starlight, where happily ever after twirls around in the main ballroom (tick tock tick tock).

At the same time, there are also many men out there dawdling along, trying their best to conceal their so-called "hunting" with a vague trail of flirty hints and clues that do nothing but lead the girl on. He's too reluctant to actually make the first move and put his heart out there, and so, once again, the limbo whirlpool continues. And why not? It's so much easier to sit back, play hard-to-get and find comfort in the freedom from responsibility and commitment the whirlpool so generously provides. 

We are shy, scared, loud and shockingly bold people; we’re not looking for a human savior, just another rough and jagged soul that doesn’t walk away when we bleed all over the place. And sometimes the truth can make us so jarringly vulnerable that saying it and letting it hang to dry in the open seems absolutely unfathomable. But not everyone can see the whole truth. In fact, most of the time, we’re holding onto a split-second-shard that just barely scrapes the surface before curling back up in its safe straw house.

When one of my close friends liked me, she didn’t wait around for me to initiate. If she had, she would’ve been waiting for pigs to fly, as I didn’t feel the same way about her and had no idea how she really felt about me. Instead, she put her heart out there, slipping it out of the pent-up cage we all construct for ourselves and letting it stain her sleeve. It must’ve been painful, but she knew that it would’ve been even more painful if she hadn’t, if she had kept quiet and played damsel, like so many girls are taught to do. Because of her boldness, she was able to pull herself out of the limbo whirlpool and open my unarmed, oblivious eyes, bringing us both a little closer together, even though the feelings weren’t reciprocated. We are now best friends, a thing that would have been impossible had she decided to sit in the quicksand and wait for a rescue that would never come.

If you still aren’t following anything I’m saying, at least leave with this: if you like someone and are interested in pursuing a relationship, don’t wait for them to come to you. Ask them out. Tell them how you feel. If you’re a man reading this, stop hesitating. Step up and ask her out. And if you’re a woman reading this, stop waiting. Step up and tell him how you feel. Even if a relationship doesn’t follow, at least you’ll know the truth and feel free to move on. Stop wasting time dancing around the edges, playing Ring-Around-The-Rosie, talking about a potential partner with everyone except the actual person of interest and waiting on some obscure vision of happily ever after (tick tock tick tock).

Oh, look. It’s midnight. The masquerade’s coming to an end. Now it’s up to you.

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Click here to check out the first chapter of my work-in-progress novel, Yellowtree!

big-cardboard-whinefest prayer.

I am such a whiner.

A couple weekends ago, I had the opportunity to head up north for my church's young adult retreat. The topic of the weekend was prayer. And seeing that my prayer life usually happens in short, sporadic bursts, I was pretty excited to fix that. I waltzed on in expecting to learn how to really 'pray' so that God would swoop down and take away all of the burdens I had been piling on him. I wanted him to give me some jaw-dropping revelation that would just help make everything better and easier.

But then we had some quiet time, and I was given the opportunity to spend two hours in prayer, walking around to different prayer stations with different tools to help us pray. While all of them were rich and incredibly beneficial, the one that really hit me hard was the 'Names of God' station. It was very simple, with just several pieces of paper plastered to the wall. Each paper had a different name for God, what it meant, and where it was found in the Bible. I took down the verses and went back to my seat, looking up these holy, sacred names that attempted to capture just a shred of God's glorious majesty.

And that's when it hit me. Here I was, going all this time thinking that prayer was solely about me. That it was just this beautiful time of humble surrender, pouring out my heart and my complaints and my thoughts and my struggles, bare before the Lord in all of my vulnerability. And don't get me wrong, that is definitely an important aspect of prayer. But it's also about God. I would just go and go and go, whining to God about all that was wrong in my life and how much I needed him to fix it. I took prayer, this beautiful privilege that God has graciously allowed us, and turned it into a big-cardboard-whinefest that revolved completely around me.

Reading the names and just breathing in the vast hugeness of God was incredibly humbling in refocusing my attention on what was really important. I could almost hear God as I fell before him in worship, patting me on the back and whispering, "There, there. You just forgot what was really important. Come back to me. I'm right here, I haven't moved, I'm still just the same as I was before." It wasn't this gigantic, life changing revelation, and I certainly didn't resolve all of my problems right then and there.

But for a few moments, I stopped whining and started breathing, started breathing in the sound of stillness, of just sitting in the splendor of God and beholding his Love, his Might, his Glory, his Peace. From the way he saves us, to the way he consumes us and is continually sanctifying us - he was there and I was there. That's all there was to it. God is so incredibly magnificent if we just take a second to slow down, take our eyes off of ourselves and our own problems, and just look to him. He never gets old. He never gets less exciting or jaw-droppingly gorgeous or awe-inspiring. He is the same constant, perfect God that desperately wants to hear us.

Sometimes that includes our complaints and our whining and our frustrations and our requests. Other times, it's just as simple as saying his names. "Jehovah Sabaoth. King of Kings. Qanna. El Shaddai. The Everlasting God. Jehovah-Jireh. Living Water."

Amen.

***

I have included some of the names of God and their verses that I was able to look up during the retreat. Hopefully you will find them as awe-inspiring and humbling as I did.

Jehovah Sabaoth: "The Lord of Hosts" (Psalm 24:9-10, 1 Samuel 17:45, Jeremiah 11:20, Psalm 80:19, Isaiah 1:24, Haggai 2:6)

Qanna: "Jealous, Zealous" (Exodus 20:5, Exodust 43:14, Deuteronomy 4:24, 5:9, 6:15)

Jehovah Mekoddishkem: "The Lord Who Sanctifies You" (Exodus 31:13, Leviticus 20:8)

Jehovah-Jireh: "The Lord Will Provide" (Genesis 22:1-14)

Jehovah-Rapha: "The Lord That Heals" (Exodust 15:26, Isaiah 30:26, 61:1, Jeremiah 30:17, Psalm 103:3)

El Olam: "The Everlasting God" (Genesis 21:3, Isaiah 26:4)

El Elyon: "The Most High God" (Genesis 14:18-22, Psalm 18;13, 57:2, 78:35)

El Shaddai: "All Sufficient One, Lord Almighty" (Genesis 17:1-2)