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.

Set Apart – Not All Set

Jesus People 1970’s

 

“Quench not the Spirit.” 1 Thessalonians 5:19

Sanctification: 1. to set apart to a sacred purpose: Consecrate 2:to free from sin: Purify

This word popped into my mind as I made my way through the woods this morning, lifting my concerns before God. “Sanctified.” But then what God spoke next was disturbing. “They will not be sanctified.” Specifically, believers – I was praying for one in particular who I see as a bit adrift.  I’ve tried to call her in, to reason with her and she hears me, but she does not “heed.”  I don’t think she sees it as obstinacy or rebellion.  She is surrounded by a cloud of other compromised Christians and a group-think of postmodern plurality and half-truths.

        I’ve been making my way through the Bible over the last six months and I’m now in 2nd Kings. After several chapters, you pick up a pattern. Two kingdoms, Israel and Judah with two kings, their reigns overlapping throughout the course of each nation’s chaotic history. Some kings were flat-out evil, laughing at a God they assumed was blind.  Then there were the good kings. They usually had to tear down what the bad kings built. They wanted to please God, but I noticed a disturbing trend with these kings. The Bible states,  “but they did not remove the high places.”

        The “high places” refers to altars that were built to worship strange pagan gods. Solomon’s compromise, as he tried to appease way too many women, led to building pagan altars, a split kingdom and two nations veering off track. An occasional king would tear these places down in order to restore his people back to God, but then the next king would build it again.

        I thought of this as I circled the pond this morning. Sanctified means “set apart.” Not set on a fence, straddling two worlds. If I had to define what disturbs me most about many millennial Christians I meet is a disregard for what is holy. They won’t tear down the High Places.  They want to dine at the King’s banquet wearing flip-flops and pajamas.

Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the LORD your God. Leviticus 20:17

        I know what you’re thinking. Doesn’t Jesus love me just the way I am? Well, it depends. Any wretched sinner, no matter how filthy, who is repentant, is welcome to eat at His table. Come as you are! But when I should know better, when I should be eating meat and I’m still on the bottle, when I know the Truth but fail to speak or live it… I better get it right. “Quench not the spirit.” If I just ate a box of bavarian creme donuts (I did that once when I was slightly impaired) I will pass on an invitation to dinner. All set.

       Dietrrich Bonhoeffer said, “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

        When you get as old as I am, you begin to see cycles. As Solomon lamented, there truly is nothing new under the sun, including the “postmodern” philosophy. As a child of the 60’s, our mantra was  “if it feels good do it.” Why not? We weren’t hurting anyone! But unlike today, we would’ve proudly admitted our rebellion and rejection of all things holy. We built the altars ourselves and partied into the looming darkness. The hangover was immense and the whole nation suffered. Strange that the Jesus People Movement was born out of the midst of this depravity, yet so just-like-Jesus.  

        “A false scale is an abomination to the Lord.” Proverbs 11:1. I read this today, and I know it is talking about a literal scale, but I sensed the Holy Spirit highlighting it before me. What is my false scale? How am I weighing in on sanctification, holiness and the standard that God expects of me? A false scale is a deceptive scale. Do we also think our God is blind?

Much will be required of everyone who has been given much. And even more will be expected of the one who has been entrusted with more. Luke 12:48

         I have been given much – much more than I ever deserved or could even ask for. I want to tear down any lurking High Places and come to His holy altar –repentant, hungry for more of Jesus, abandoning all.  Oswald Chambers says, “Am I prepared to let God grip me by His power and do a work in me that is worthy of Himself?”

        This is the cost of sanctification. It is not cheap. But I want to be set apart for my Master’s use, so that when He needs me, He can joyfully reach for me.

        Perhaps the “Postmodern age” will signal a new revival, a resurgence of the Truth the Way and the Life.  If God is looking for some Jesus People, will we be ready? Worshippers in Spirit and in truth or worshipping before strange gods? Let’s demolish the High Places and return to our first love. There is a fountain of grace at the altar of repentance.

 

” but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.”1 Peter 1:15-17 (NKJV)

 

 

O Come to the Altar – beautiful song!

 

And A Lot of Patience

Waiting…

 

If you are really a Cape Codder, you will never admit that the weather is good – at least without adding a disclaimer like, “What a beautiful day! But tomorrow it’s supposed to rain/snow/hail…” True to my 40 years of being what is called a “wash-a-shore” on this sand bar, I will declare that this winter was really…not bad. We had a couple of slushy snowfalls and dustings, some frigid days but hey, it is New England. However, the spring seems to be stuck in March, reluctantly edging over the 40’s, maybe popping into the 50’s on a rare occasion. This IS the Cape, where the icy Atlantic grips 100 miles of shore, stalling out the release of new life from trees and flowers that are clamped down, waiting.

            Forty years ago almost to this day, a young woman left New Jersey, which had exploded in vibrant color and life, and chugged north in a rusted out Volkswagen bus. A steamer trunk with all she owned was shoved into the back with some peacock feathers thrown on top. A down sleeping bag that had been well used for several years was tossed in last minute, just in case.

            She had only been to Cape Cod once, a few weeks earlier in March, and it was cold, sleeting. “Sea frost” someone called it and it sounded mystical and poetic which drew her even more. She crossed the bridge over the canal somewhere in the afternoon and drove until she could find the ocean, then parked overlooking the gray green palette of sea, dotted with whitecaps, stretching into the empty horizon and she felt like she had arrived. She took out her notebook and wrote. But she became aware of a chilling wet cold, much colder than New Jersey and beyond the shelter that the old bus and sleeping bag would provide, so she pushed on – to Wellfleet. There, kismet led her to a tiny cottage near the bay. There was no heat or hot water, but a small wood stove would warm up the little room quickly and the stove could heat up a pan of water for bathing. As the sky turned dark, the peepers rang out across the marsh. Spring is here, they said. Close, anyway. Close enough, I thought, as I pulled the dirty sleeping bag over my head.

            Forty years. I am 63 now, and as I look back to that strange girl, I can hear the peepers and smell the salt mixed with pine on the breeze coming up over the marsh. I can remember how my heart needed to run, to keep looking, and the temporary peace I found next to the ocean, with the world and all of it’s confusion behind me. I don’t remember feeling cold, or dirty or worried at all – I had enough money for beer and cigarettes. I had no phone so I would rely on the mail and that was sufficient for someone who really just wanted to be left alone. Yet I craved more than I had. I craved a higher place than survival, a wider purpose – to be filled with more than anger, doubt and a prevailing sense of brokenness.  Maybe it’s here, I would think, looking out over the bay.  Something that could grow and thrive. I wanted to trust in Hope, but Jack Daniels was safer, easier.

            Seven years later, I ran into Jesus. I’d like to say that He wrapped His arms around me and gave me a big bear hug, but that’s not at all how it went. First, I had to die. And since I was literally almost dead from doing things my way, it wasn’t a big stretch to surrender my will, my pride and my mess.

“Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal. John 12:24-25 (MSG)  

              It takes some time for things to grow. At the jail every week I talk to the ladies in green or yellow jumpsuits. Sometimes I get a room full of silence. The expressions can run from bland civility to deadpan to rolling eyes, smirking or smoldering contempt. But the best part of it all is the day I see a spark – so small, you would miss it if you weren’t paying attention. It’s in the eyes and it’s called Hope. And I know once I see the spark, God can build a fire.

            “The cross,” I said, “is a place that represents death and the darkest despair yet also leads the way to hope and freedom and new life.” When I asked for their thoughts, one young woman leaned back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling.

            “This is really deep,” she said and a low rumble of acknowledgement went around the room. She was so right. This truth must penetrate right to the core of our soul. There it will take root, and if we are patient, something wondrous will begin to grow.

            My grandson Eli discovered this first hand after I gave him a terrarium for Christmas. On the cover, you see a tropical paradise bursting from a transparent vase. What you get is a bag a dirt and a small plastic container. A four-year-old has faith to move mountains, but it’s also short-lived. After a few days, he forgot about the dirt. Then a couple of weeks later I got a Facetime call.

“Ama! ” he shouted, his little body trembling with excitement, “LOOK!”

And there it was – well, not exactly paradise, more like ordinary grass, but it was green and growing and so amazing he could barely speak. When I asked him what the secret was, he told me proudly, “A little light, a little water, and a LOT of patience!” Ah, patience!

            Funny that I chose a Cape Cod April as my season to land here. I was as cold and unfriendly as the unforgiving earth. But there was promise just below the surface. I wonder…does Jesus see the small seed of Hope beneath the crusted heart? Maybe He put it there long ago, and is just waiting. Sometimes I think he calls us right to the crossroads of Nowhere-Left-To-Go and Nothing-To-Lose. Let it go – the life that is mine to begin with. Give it to me and I will breathe on it and you will really live.

            I heard the peepers last week, and something in my heart leapt. The young woman I can still see in my mind is an old woman now with joints that are failing and silver strands through my hair. Someone asked me if I was in remission last week, and it took me a moment to realize she meant from cancer. “Well, I’m still here!” I answered. But I thought of another Remission – the forgiveness of my sins, the cancelled debt that was paid for in blood. As I walk through a life that flourishes with the beauty of a heavenly hope, may I never forget the cross, and the deep, unsearchable Love that gave me life, real life.  And the best is yet to come.

Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us.  This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls.It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary. Hebrews 6:18-19

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQy4NUZKIeM

 

 

 

The Way to Wellness

 

             The pain awakened me. My feet were throbbing, and the ache reached up to the back of my knees. I lay still trying to figure this out, then realized as I readjusted my body that my back, neck and head hurt too. I remembered swimming in Nantucket Sound a few days earlier. God am I that old? I sighed and lifted my pounding head from the pillow, slid out of bed, and limped into the bathroom. I can find the Tylenol and open the child-proof cap without even being conscious.

            It wasn’t until that evening, when my clothes felt like they were on fire that I realized I was sick, not just sore. Then the shaking chills. I fumbled around for a thermometer. 101.7. I gulped some more Tylenol and went to bed. It was a restless night but I awoke free from fever, although not from the pain. I called my doctor.

            “Hold on,” the secretary said flatly after hearing my story, punctuated by, I have never had a fever that high! for dramatic effect. When she came back on the line she said, “The doctor said, ‘You’re a nurse. You know if you’re sick.'”

            I do? This was my first thought. Because historically I am pathetically unaware of my physical well-being, until my body just drops and quits. I’m a great nurse for you but like most nurses, detached from the signals and sirens going off inside my own body.

            Someone had to tell me when I was pregnant, when I was turning yellow from eating bad shellfish, when I should consider that I might have a concussion. I don’t like to spend time inside of myself. It just never seems beneficial.

            There’s a plus side to my ignorance. My husband marvels at my ability to deflect “vain imaginations,” my resilience under pressure and a forward drive that prevents a morbid preoccupation with inward scrutiny. I stunk at meditating in the 70’s. At a yoga class I took a few years ago, I started giggling then had to leave when the instructor told us to be “mindful.” It sounded like Dali Lama meets Miss Manners.

            But there’s also the flip side. A lack of self-awareness can lead to self-deception; perhaps nothing evil or even un-Godly, but I can easily slide into my old comfy self-reliant shoes – the ones with well-worn scriptures and broken-in prayers.

            Then he said to them, “You like to appear righteous in public, but God knows your hearts. What this world honors is detestable in the sight of God.” Luke 16:15

            Yikes! Detestable? Let me look at another translation… how about “abominable?”

            I recovered from my sickness of unknown origin after six days and felt like I was coming out of general anesthesia. I had lost time, so my natural course of action was to catch-up and get busy. Then one morning early in prayer, I heard God speak to me very clearly. He said this:

            “Don’t take Me lightly.”

            It startled me – it was a warning, just short of a rebuke, and I knew I had to spend some time looking inside, and at how the inside was manifesting outside. I had to take my spiritual temperature.

            Charles Finney wrote in the 1850’s about negative morality – how Christians are inclined to settle for just being good people. We don’t curse, don’t smoke, don’t hurt others. We are nice Christians, assimilating into the mainstream of life, but if we are just good, not sanctified, we stink like last week’s garbage. We become hollow trophies, relics of dead religion and social injustice programs – applauded by mankind and the devil. Detestable to God.

            What was my remedy? Repentance first. I had been “esteeming the things of God lightly” – foremost, my relationship with Him. I had been rushed, distracted, malnourished from “lite” prayer, lazy grazing in His word, genuflecting before His throne room of grace. I felt ashamed. My temperature was lukewarm at best, but in the public eye I spoke eloquently, laughed easily and even loved well. But was it His love, or mine? Could I have loved if they hated me or my Jesus? Or if I speak Truth, not just what someone wanted to hear? Can I rejoice in suffering, when what I think is rightly mine, is taken by a just and sovereign God? I knew all this, but I had begun to take it lightly. We are pulled from the flames of hell, redeemed and set free by a brutal death on a cross and clothed in heavenly righteousness. How can I ever take that lightly? A Love far greater than anything I could return? Yet I was treading softly down the well-worn path of neutral Christianity.

            My worship was indeed sick; not dying or dead but just sick enough to make me useless, just like the fever that haunted me for six days, wearing me out, weakening my reserve. I still functioned, but I was hollow and ineffective. Salt without saltiness, a flame without warmth.

“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,…” ― C.S. Lewis,  The Screwtape Letters           

            I thank God for His warning, that He loves us enough to say, “STOP!” Since that day, I’ve noticed all the places where I can worship Him “in spirit and in truth,” not just in lip-service and the “dont’s”. At work, when a patient’s call light is on again, at home, when my husband who never asks needs to know how much I love him, or looking at the night sky studded with every star my God has named. Funny – once I started looking for places to worship Him, my joy returned. Playing the piano, walking the dog, talking to Jesus before I close my eyes at night. I feel renewed, and so very loved. Thanks, Lord, for pulling me back in, close to You.

Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips shall praise You.
 Thus I will bless You while I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name.
When I remember You on my bed,
I meditate on You in the night watches.
 Because You have been my help,
Therefore in the shadow of Your wings I will rejoice. Psalm 63:3-7

 

 

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.