Spencer's Mom

Except a kernel of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

Go Again

Hello friends!

I am delighted to post a guest blog from one of my favorite people on earth – my son, Miles Macleod. This is a beautiful, timely message that really resonated with some of the deep stirrings that God is bringing to the surface in my own life. I know you will enjoy it too! 

Miles starting out in Ghana, 2004.

Go Again

Several months ago, my pastor preached from the Book of Hosea. The story goes something like this: Hosea, a respected prophet, is told by God to marry the neighborhood prostitute, Gomer. Despite Hosea’s best efforts to change her behavior through love and mercy, Gomer remains unrepentant. She repeatedly runs away to the homes of other men, leaving Hosea humiliated. His humiliation only grows, I imagine, when God tells him to go and retrieve his disgraceful wife in the opening lines of chapter 3: “And the LORD said to me, “Go again…’”

The story is meant to represent the relationship between God and Israel. Through a Christian lens, the story also embodies Jesus’ relationship with his church. We run. He retrieves. Repeat.

The sermon made me uncomfortable. My own story of salvation, 20 years of running and returning, shares many similarities with the story’s foil. I am Gomer with a better name. But that’s not what made me uneasy. I am well aware of my Gomer-like faith and my tendency to worship at the altar of my own agenda. Sadly, I am even comfortable in this role. I, the sinner. God, the redeemer. What made me uncomfortable, then, was something else. I wasn’t sure at the time, but I know it now: it was the redemptive call of Christ. Whereas God of the Old Testament pleads with the people of Israel to stop being a bunch of Gomers, Christ demands that His people become a bunch of Hoseas:

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:22-24).

___________

Teaching is a great profession. I really mean it. I have been doing it for nearly a decade, and there is a lot I love about it. It is especially great for masochists and Christians. In addition to all the benefits, like summers off and working with teens, there is ample opportunity to answer God’s command to “Go again.” On normal days, students want to fall asleep whenever I talk. On the more memorable ones, they might swear at me, flip over a desk at me, or tell their parents on me. Two of them even wanted me dead; I know because they told me so.

If you don’t teach, don’t worry. There are probably still people that hate you. If not, there are certainly those that mock you, that make you look bad, that find pleasure in your pain, or just like to see you wrong. No? Well certainly, there has to be someone that makes you feel awkward, that gives you the heebie-jeebies, or someone whose company you just can’t stand to keep. Or maybe you have children? If they are like mine, they are sometimes ungrateful and rude and selfish and loud and ungrateful and petty and lazy and ungrateful and mean. Did I mention they can be ungrateful?

Here’s my point. We are constantly sinned against. And if you are like me – stubborn and prideful – you do what I do – refuse to be made the fool. Seven years ago, when my principal observed my class for the first time, he gave me two words of advice: less sarcasm. Thanks Sherlock.

Seven years later, I still get defensive when I am wronged. And seven years later, God is still waiting for me stop being such a Gomer.

___________

I’m not the one who said those awful things. He crossed the line. I will be the bigger person and treat him fairly – that is what I am paid to do – but I am not gonna go out of my way to help him.

Go again.

I hold the door open for every person, I clean up their trash, I take time out of my weekends just to serve them, and I can’t even get a single thank you. Not even the pastor says thank you.

Go again.

I don’t mind being nice to her. I will even watch her dog if she needs me to. But she smells like an ashtray and cusses like a sailor; I can’t have her over for dinner around my kids.

Go again.

He was only supposed to stay a night, and it’s been three weeks, and he doesn’t do anything to help out. He’s putting a strain on my marriage. God, please give me the courage to ask him to leave.

Go again.

No one ever recognizes all the sacrifices that I make around here!

Go again.

It would be one thing if God asked Hosea to forgive his unfaithful wife or to be the bigger person in their broken marriage. Even that would be radical enough, right? But he doesn’t. He asks Hosea to pursue her. To leave himself vulnerable to humiliation and rejection. This type of love is the most selfless of all. God’s love. It gives nothing in return. There are no conditions or Plan Bs based on the initial response. There is just one plan, repeated over and over and over until God declares that it is finished: Go again.

And this is what made me uneasy as I listened to the sermon and understood God’s call. Hosea made me uneasy: his unflinching obedience, his humiliation, his devotion, his perfectly good name dragged into the gutter; his perfectly intact pride assaulted by man and by God. It made me so uneasy that I couldn’t forget it, and it stayed with me for the next few months. It was there when I walked into my school each morning: Go again. It was there when I wanted to yell at my children: Go again. And it was there when I was too scared to make myself vulnerable and offer a stranger some help: Go again.

At the end of last school year, in early June, it was there when my department chair asked the English teachers to write a letter to ourselves. The letter would be sealed and delivered to us at the end of the summer. The purpose, I suppose, was to remind ourselves of something important that we might forget once removed from the refining furnace of public education. Most teachers wrote practical reminders about resources or planning techniques. Others wrote something like a pep talk.

A few weeks ago I found the letter on my desk in room 1511 as I was setting up for the new school year. It was still in the envelope as promised, placed there by the department chair. I didn’t need to read it. I already knew what it said, so I picked it up, threw it in the trash, and began arranging desks, anticipating the new groups of students that would be coming any day.

“Go again.”

 

 

Temporarily A Monster

Confession: I was going to just put a big Temporarily Out of Business sign on this blog. I am in the final steps of completing a book I have been working on forever, and my focus has shifted. The book calls me constantly– when I’m cooking, driving, working, even sleeping– or trying to. Last night I got up after flipping around like a fish on a deck for an hour and reached for a scrap of paper and pen, hoping my scrawl would make sense in the morning. It did, to me only. It’s consuming, especially now that I can see the finish line, I can see an actual book with a cover and pages inside.

So there is some truth to that. Blogging has been edged out of my field of vision, for now. But the bigger truth is the book turns me into a Monster and I’m afraid to come out, to let people see me. Of course, my husband gets to see the Monster. You can ask him, but I’m sure he doesn’t see it as a privilege. I scare myself, then I’m on my knees asking God, “What is wrong with me?”

In Mary Carr’s book, The Art of Memoir,  she notes,

“In some ways, writing memoir is like knocking yourself out with your own fist.” Yep, in a lot of ways. Then you wake up on the floor and have to climb back to your feet, back to the past that calls you.

“I’m not done with you yet!”

It’s made me think a lot about reconciliation, or how I can be friends with my own ghosts.

I go down to the county jail every week and sit around a table with a group of women in colored jumpsuits and we talk about this often. They are literally wearing their past mistakes, at least one of them, so it’s an easy subject to approach. So is a sleeping monster. As I sit there with my Bible in hand, I realize I often wear a colored jumpsuit too. I am captive to my past.

Forgive. I say it a lot. It’s a prickly subject to tackle with a group of people who have experienced immeasurable pain at the hands of people they should’ve been able to trust. Or the girl whose brother died in her arms from a gunshot wound. Forgive. If we don’t, we are chained to the past, a short, thick chain. I have experienced the phenomenal freedom and healing that comes from this simple act of obedience. I forgave my father, I forgave my son’s murderers. Why can’t I forgive myself for good and slay the Monster that keeps arising from the smoking ashes of my past?

For the accuser of our brothers and sisters

    has been thrown down to earth—

the one who accuses them

    before our God day and night. Revelation 12:10 NLT

This Enemy is activated every time a soul says Yes to Jesus. Sure, non-Christians wrestle with the past too. But the Enemy knows we are forgiven and that our pardon is forever. His job is to keep us from realizing we are free, that the door has been unlocked all along.

“God’s most powerful revelation is of His grace.”

I found this quote in the midst of my son, Spencer’s papers. It was just like him to jot down thoughts, often profound ones, in the midst of lists of things to do. Prayer lists in between “oil change” and “taxes.” This statement was easy to pass by, but it caught me, like God was saying Pay attention here!

Grace. The word all on its own brings a sense of freedom and relief, like you want to breathe it. Inhale Grace, exhale Redemption. Maybe it’s that simple. Powerfully and profoundly simple.

It takes guts to look back and be honest. It takes the mercy of God to not let it kill you. And it takes the boundless grace of God to turn it into something beautiful. But the Beautiful is His – His righteousness, His glory along with all of the praise. I still have to look in the mirror every day and say, “You again.” I don’t see beauty or honor, but maybe I can at least see a woman who is free. I don’t have to befriend the ghosts – I can leave them where they are, behind me – with the colored jumpsuit. And then I can show the same grace to others.

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have laid hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize of God’s heavenly calling in Christ Jesus.   Philippians 3:13-14

…and finish the book.

 

 

 

A Father’s Perfect Love

My dad —circa 1962

Pawwwwwt Chestah!!

I can still hear the conductor holler over the clack and rattle of the train and the steady kachuk kachuk kachuk of the wheels on the rails. Port Chester, Rye, Harrison. Back then, in the 60’s, it wasn’t an odd thing for a little girl to ride the train alone. The conductors that strode like drunk men up and down the swaying cars knew my dad, knew that he worked in New York City like most men from Riverside, Connecticut and that he would be there, at Grand Central Station, watching for the wave of the conductor as he would signal me to go.

“There he is!” they would call out, as I ran from the train to my father.

New Rochelle! These places didn’t look much different to me until we reached Harlem.

“One hundred and twenty fifth Street!” I learned that was the final call before the last stop. The station was filled with people that were strange to me, dark-skinned with ragged clothes. But it was more than the way they looked, or didn’t look. They moved slower, like they had no where to get to, like trains and time didn’t matter much, not like my town, where men in crisp suits and new briefcases often ran to catch the train..

The seats were soft blue velvet and smelled like my dad, cigarettes and shaving cream. I liked to pull up the window so I could feel the air rush in and hear the tracks beat out their rhythm…kachuk, kachuk, faster and faster as we pulled away from each station. I could smell the air change as we pressed forward, farther and farther from the salt air of Long Island Sound and the heavy perfume of tall maple and elm trees, into the colorless exhaust of Harlem. It was different in so many ways.

My father took me to Radio City Music Hall several times — Nutcracker Suite, the Rockettes — all the things he knew a girl would love. I remember gawking at the bare legs flying up in the air in unison, because these women must be the “chorus girls” my mother made reference to when I behaved in a coarse way, like belching or chewing gum. But what I loved the best was going to his office, high above Manhattan, being “Bob’s little girl” and the pride he showed as he smiled down at me while people filtered through. I knew that I, his big desk and the view over New York City, made him feel special, like he did something right, and I loved sharing that moment.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

I never thought of this Father too much growing up, the one in church. For one, heaven seemed very far away, so this Father must be too. My sister thought they were saying, Harold be thy name instead of Hallowed which made more sense because we had an Uncle Harold. Who ever heard of someone named Hallowed? Anyway, I had a father, right here and he was the daddy of the big desk and the Rockettes and whisky breath, the bedtime stories that would take you to castles with swords and knights and knaves, the scratchy kiss good-night from the thick stubble on his nighttime face. I can still see him waiting for me, outside the train, smiling like a big kid waiting for a friend to come out to play.

The visits changed. One day my mother called me outside, to the porch where she shook a glass filled with ice and bourbon.

“Your father lost his job,” she said. I was 12, I couldn’t grasp the full meaning of what that meant, nor did she try to explain. But I knew that things had changed, just like when my brother died four years before. The wind was turning around again. I looked at my feet and turned away.

The next time I met my dad at Grand Central station, he took me to a bar. Everyone there knew him, just like when he took me to his office.

He ordered a drink, and took out his cigarettes, shaking the pack and offering me one.

“I know you smoke. You steal my cigarettes all the time, so I’m giving you one now.”

I took it and put it between my lips.

“Always wait for a man to give you a light,” he instructed me, as he pulled his lighter out of his jacket and flipped it open with a swift shake. He reached across the table and waited for me to draw smoke, then lit his own. I don’t remember if we ate.

There was no Radio City Music Hall that night. We got on a subway beneath Grand Central Station, sitting in the front, near the conductor, so we could see the tracks ahead, the stations appearing bleak and dirty as we stopped along the way, the doors sliding open to swallow the rancid air. Finally the subway reached the end, then jerked backwards, sending us back again. We stayed in our seats, watching the tracks disappear into the dark, not saying much.

Even after I met Jesus, at age 31, years after the subway ride and watching the daddy I loved slide into a deep pit of failure and despair, I still didn’t trust this new Father. I was grateful though. I knew He had rescued me from the same snare that caught my dad, I knew He had had somehow fixed what was broken. The mess that teachers and cops and therapists had just scratched their heads at, God reached down into my heart and in a flash – it was like new. But love? I doubted it.

My father died at age 56, when I was pregnant with my second son. He had been sober for seven years and in an awkward dance of reconciliation, we tried to build a bridge over years of my pain and his shame. I wrote letters because it was safer, describing the raw beauty of the lower Cape, and he lived within the fierce gales and the unrestrained sea. He liked that the gulls kept flying, even though they couldn’t get ahead. Cancer took him away from me for good in 1981.

Forgive your father, my new Father spoke to me. I argued a bit — we had made amends. He’s dead anyway.

Forgive your father, He insisted. So I did. And a strange thing happened. I could love again. My old dad, and my new Dad too.

This Father’s day, love your father if you can. And if you can’t, I suggest you meet the new One. And forgive.

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6 NIV

No one. That seems a little exclusive, I know, but you are all invited.

It’s funny — when I remember my dad, I remember the dad who loved me, the dad who sat through the Nutcracker Suite, smiling, who showed me off to his friends. He was a good dad. But I am even more grateful to my real Father, the one who gave me life, who poured His love out into my heart – a heart that quit love, quit hope, like those people a little girl on a train looked out at in Harlem 50 years ago. I couldn’t name it Despair then, but I would come to know it well.

Thank you, Father, for your love that is pure and boundless and never fails. And for Jesus, who made a way for me to find you. Your name is not Harold, it is Love. Perfect love.

 

 

The Good Dirt

Behind the house, within the backyard, is another yard enclosed in a chain link fence. When I first saw it, I thought the other yard was an odd cutout of the neighbors yard. Why else would you run a chain link fence through a nice looking yard? But the fence had been there for some time. Now I figure the previous owners, the only other owners, had put it up to protect their garden, probably when deer roamed through.

That garden had vanished when we moved in. Old Mr. and Mrs. Drew had also. He built the house in 1951, just in time to start a family, grow some more kids, bump out the attic for room sake and tack on a sunroom and a shed in the back. He could walk to work, to the Steamship Authority, where he ran the parking lot like it was his own front yard. Then he retired. The wife taught swimming I heard and raised the best tomatoes around. They grew old together, following each other closely into nursing homes and then the grave. In the linen closet upstairs I left the peeling masking tape that the woman’s diligent hands had taped to the pine shelves. “Twin sheets”, “washcloths”. I like to think of her hanging out diapers between the two thick posts in the back, then checking the tomatoes.

“One plants, one waters but God gives the increase.” 1 Corinthians 3:6

I try to remember this when I do anything for Jesus. When I sit in a little classroom at the county jail with 12 poker face women, when I play “Amazing Grace” for the hundredth time, when I ask a dying man if he knows where he’s going. Chances are, others have gone before me and I’m not sure if I’m carrying a spade or a watering can. Or maybe I’m dropping a tiny seed into the darkness. It doesn’t matter though. Only God makes it grow, makes a tomato turn red, makes anything break through the sandy crust of my herb garden

Last week I caught my husband leaning over the chain link fence, staring into the garden. We dug it up three years ago, the ground still rich and dark from the Drews. Living on a sand bar, you appreciate real dirt and we laughed and hollered like we had struck gold. But C.B. knew it could be even better, so we trucked in dirt from a lost farm outside of Bridgewater State Hospital, an ancient manure pile that only insiders knew of, and the dirt, when my husband had finished screening it, looked like Italian espresso. I knew he was looking at the dirt.

When I look at the garden, I see tomatoes, little gold ones and fat red ones, and cucumbers twisting off vines, and I see some squash and jalapeños. So he lets me plant after he prepares. Right beside the garden is a small patch of rocky sand that I call my herb garden. The Dirt Man doesn’t notice it, on purpose, and it becomes a wild tangle of basil with a thyme bush that grows ever larger each year, choking out the oregano and wrestling with the mint. It’s a study in adversity for me because I have no patience for preparing or weeding or even moving rocks. No sissy herbs in my garden.

So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters , but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. 1 Corinthians 3:7 NKJV

 The Dirt Man gets ready, and I dream a lot. God made us for each other I think because you need both just to hope. And sometimes you can hope and pray with all your might and you’re still left with just dirt.

“And each one will receive his own reward according to his labor.”

Not how big your tomatoes are or how many peppers you pick, but how hard you work – digging, sweating and praying for rain. This gives me peace when I have a hard night at the jail. Sometimes they just stare at me like I just climbed down a ladder from my spaceship.

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” I asked last week, just so I could stop talking.

They laughed, but it was a sweet laugh, like they were grateful to me just for that.

“Good crazy,” one of them said. And that was enough.

Way in the back, behind the old shed, where the dark forest is overtaking the outer edge of the Drew’s boundary markers, stands a tree. I keep meaning to look it up, but it’s a pretty tree and I know he planted it there, years ago when there was no forest and it was just a sapling. Now no one ever sees that tree, not even the neighbors and even I forget it’s there until I happen upon it when I’m dumping leaves in the compost heap or moving one of the fourteen garbage cans around that my husband thinks we will need someday.

Right now, that tree will take your breath away, like you walked into another world. It’s covered in soft white blossoms, each with a whisper of pink around the center—majestic and lovely like it’s Queen of the forest. No one sees it except for squirrels and angels but it’s no less pretty for them than me.

I think that’s how God’s kingdom works. We plant, then water, then wait. We might wait a long time. Maybe I will follow the Dirt Man into a nursing home and a young woman with a bushel of babies will run her fingers over the old masking tape in the linen closet and smile. Maybe her husband likes dirt. Seasons change.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. Hebrews 11:39

Sometimes when I am having a sad day, when I just want to go home, my husband will smile and say,

One day closer to glory! The reward.

But until then, he will get the dirt ready and I will dream and God will send the rain. There is joy in the going, there is rest in the labors of all who have gone before us and there is a God who loves to plant hidden treasure along the way, a taste of glory here on earth — maybe when you play Amazing Grace 101 times or maybe right in your very own back yard.

 

Waiting with the Robins

 

March did not start with a roar this year; it came in more like a wet dog than a lion. I was born in March, so I’ve always been a defender of the month that most New Englanders despise. It is, after all, a gloomy, raw, merciless month. Wind, rain, sometimes snow and frost, pummel the soggy earth while we anxiously flip over another day, panting towards the elusive Spring, the vernal equinox when daylight squares with the darkness.

“What spring?” the Cape Codder snarls. And indeed, as I write this, snow covers the ground.

The first time I ever laid eyes on Cape Cod, it was March. I admit, driving along Route 6 in the late 70’s, there was little to draw you in. Gray was all I remember seeing or thinking. Gray sky, houses, trees, ocean. Rain, then snow, then rain again. Or maybe it was sleet. It was the first time I heard the term “sea frost”. I thought that was beautiful – sea frost – enough to make a drunken poet pack up her VW bus and peacock feathers and head towards the sea. You had to be courageous and crazy both to live here in the winter back then. But spring was coming – wasn’t it?

I landed in April, early April, not understanding that the cold Atlantic kept Cape Cod at least ten degrees colder than the inland in the spring, like a wet blanket slapping against the stubby pines, the wind slipping through your walls and your skin like brain freeze.

We all drank a lot. But you got so you noticed the little things; the way the wind smelled when it shifted and came up from the south, the pungency of the melting marsh, the salt air slightly sweeter. Then the peeper frogs, at first just s few then a full choir as the days stretched out and the sun lingered over the bay at sunset. Ospreys circled. And the smell of wood smoke at night and oyster shells thawing out in the sun – these things you noticed because you had something like hope or you would die. Some people did. A painter that lived downstairs from me hung himself. Another neighbor got drunk playing cards on a boat and fell overboard during a brawl. His body was found washed up on the beach in the morning. It was a shame but not a surprise.

I read recently that the height of the suicide season is March, not the holidays like most people think. It made sense to me. Hope deferred makes the heart sick, it says in Proverbs. Like terminally ill.

My parents named me Robin because a robin, at least up north, is the first sign of spring. But not really. The truth is they might head south if they run out of food, but most robins tough it out, staying out of sight, staying warm and mostly quiet. Just like people. It’s funny to watch the hysteria when the temperature bumps sixty degrees. Tee shirts are yanked from plastic bags in the closet, Christmas Tree shop is gridlocked with shopping carts stuffed with clay pots, seed starter kits and spades. And the robins start to swarm the lawns and low branches of trees. They also start to sing.

I guess it’s this bipolar side of March that draws me. Life defying death – or maybe just showing up like it said it would, like it does every year, but we are just getting used to the dark, to staying quiet like the robins and sleeping a lot.

Yesterday at work I heard a cry, then a wail and turned to see an elderly woman collapsing into another woman’s arms. Her husband was dying. It was likely not the first cry of loss she would bear. That kind of cry is soulish, a tearing of the heart; it bleeds and doesn’t stop for a long time. I took a deep breath and turned back to my work, then heard the faint melody of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” coming in through the overhead speakers, the same speakers that call for codes, or security, or stat-someone or something all day long. I looked up and smiled, then heard a few Awwww’s and soft laughter from coworkers nearby. A baby had just been born. Just a few walls past the dying husband, life let out its first holler. “I’m here! And it’s so stinking bright!!!”

Ebb and flow. It’s not always as neat and predictable as we’d like. My daffodils, probably 100 of them, have pushed about 6 inches through the ground. Now they are covered in snow, the frozen earth squeezing the frail life out of them. But they’re tough, like robins. They know March. And they know spring will come.

And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance;  and perseverance, character; and character, hope.  Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. Romans 5:3-5 NKJV

I guess that’s one thing that drew me to Jesus. Real Christians are gutsy. They know that real life comes through dying first. They know love never fails and sometimes they are gutsy enough to walk on water, crazy enough to try.

Hope never disappoints even when it makes us wait and wait. The Maker of all things can bring life with just one breath, and with one word flood the darkness with light. March has nothing on Him. One day the snow will melt, the daffodils will shake off the frost and the robins will sing. And the crazy old poet who was born in March will sing along, will sing praise to the One who brings new life.

The Real Valentine (it’s not at CVS)

Woodside Cemetery

Like most Hallmark holidays, Valentine’s Day, a day that supposedly promotes love, has a high probability of doing the opposite. Ok maybe not promoting “hate” – how about just plain old anxiety/depression?

   I’ve noticed a trend in health care over the last few years. When I review a patient’s history, there is frequently a diagnosis of “Anxiety/Depression”. I see it so often I shorten it to “Anx/Dep”. If it’s a trend in health care, then it’s worth noting. The world, at least in these parts, is unhappy.

   Happiness is an unalienable right, or at least the pursuit of it. But it can be elusive, the Golden Carrot that we are all running the race for, right? Happiness may be tied to a promotion, our children, a trip to the Caribbean. But it’s here, then gone, like stardust. Like Valentine’s Day.

   I am old enough to remember Valentine’s Day before the PC Squad took it over. You could actually go to school and get zero Valentine’s Day cards while your classmates were showered with love and Snoopy Valentines. I’m not saying that ever happened to me. I think I got one or two anyway.

   This time of year is dark for me. The shadow of my son’s birthday looms just ahead, February 19th, a silent day that I still don’t know what to do with, so I walk around in a fog, disoriented and moody. Years ago, the pain was crushing and I would gasp for breath. Nowadays it’s a familiar ache that reaches way down into the Mom place. I think it’s behind my heart. I could cry, but I’d rather do something Spence would like – tell someone about Jesus, love someone that needs it.

   St. Valentine, so the story goes, had it kind of rough. Claudius, the emperor of Rome, felt that unmarried men would fight better, die better, if they weren’t tethered to sweethearts and those pesky kids so he decreed a ban on marriage. Valentine intervened, converting soldiers to Christianity before secretly marrying them. No box of chocolates – he was beaten, stoned then beheaded, on February 14th ,273 AD. And we pout if we get 6 roses instead of 12.

   I’ve been trying to prepare a Bible study on Love for a group of female prisoners. I imagine “Anx/Dep” is pandemic in prisons. Love is a confusing concept, and so many have been abused, used and rejected under its banner. The problem is we can’t survive without it. God made us to love as much as we need breath.

   I’m no expert on this topic. I am 60 and I still have to really focus on loving people the way Jesus wants me to. It’s just not natural – I want to step back and gently shut the door on them, turn and make some tea and be left alone with a good book. Spence had this uncanny sense of drawing towards those who were the most rejected. It was like Jesus was holding his hand and pointing the way to go, often obscure places no one else saw. It was not easy for him, a kid who was unbearably shy around people he really wished he could trust. When he was alone, he prayed for those he couldn’t get to personally. He didn’t get to see those prayers answered and he often mistook God’s silence for displeasure. Did I tell you he was stubborn too? That no matter how many times a mother tried to tell him he was loved, he argued. He got that from me. Maybe the stubborn part too. When I get to see him someday, I’d like to say, I told you so, but I doubt it will even come up.

   When I look for Love, I look at Jesus. His love wasn’t some philosophical formula, or a flowery “Why can’t we all get along?” sermon. His love was sharp as a sword, His love made men put down their stones, His love was nailed to a cross. It was gritty, it was truth. His love was a glorious empty tomb.

   Next to my son’s grave is a heart shaped stone, with a young woman buried beneath. On the stone is inscribed:

Do not stand by my grave and cry

I am not here, I did not die

I live with the risen Lord.

   I love that, in fact it’s why I buried my son next to her, so I could read that as I stood looking at my son’s grave, trying to absorb the truth, that he was gone. Yes, he died and is no longer here, but he lives with the risen Lord. And out of the dust and disappointment of our lives, our failures, the Lord lives. He breathes life into death. He unwraps His children from the grave clothes of “Anxiety/ Depression”. He is Love eternal, unfailing, unchanging.

   I’m going to make a Valentine’s Day pie for my Valentine, and tell my husband the same thing I tell him everyday – that I love him. He’s probably in the card aisle at CVS, like right now, grumbling that all the “good” cards are gone. Tomorrow, we will be a day older, and the country will be filled with half-eaten boxes of chocolates, mostly cream –filled. But no matter what you’re facing, Jesus has been there too. And He’s calling you to Him, “Come.” Come to a love that is unshakeable, unmovable.

   The Apostle Paul, who lived long before Valentine, knew this love beyond what we can imagine; in prison, through shipwreck and beatings and being left for dead. It was a love he eventually gave his very life for, because he knew that true love is more than just a feeling, a poem or even a treasure chest of jewels. He said this:

 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.  No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

Now I know what I’ll say to the girls in jail tonight. That Love is here, with us right now. And nothing, not even prison bars, can keep Him from us. I know they will really love that. It may be the happiest Valentines Day ever!

 

 

I counted – there’s 12!