A Radical Thing and a Fork in the Road
Wow. These weeks. These amazing days of these amazing weeks.
This is a season in my life and my family’s that marks an incredible new beginning. Beginnings of all kinds. More than just a move west.
On September 3rd my husband adopted my son. What was once just a single mom’s hopes and dreams and prayers that her baby might grow up with a legal father in his life, now actually is now. With the words of the judge- “It is as if it has always been, you are now the official father of this boy, as if you were there the day he was born,” Lucca had a dad and my husband had “his first heir” (as he likes to say). Amazing.
On September 5th, we helped throw a party for the city. This summer my husband and I got the honor of being on the marketing team for a concert my church puts on every year. Our job was simply to help get the word out. On that Sunday we stood back in awe of over 10,000 people that showed up.
On September 6th, 7th and 8th I was at the Abbey of Gethsamani, the trappist monastery were Thomas Merton called home. The days were multiplied for me in ways I can’t explain. It felt like 3 years or maybe even 3 decades of compounded spiritual growth happened in the short time I was away. But what I left with wasn’t complicated- it was the simplest and most grounding of truths: God is with us and He is good.
Yesterday, September 12th, my baby turned 4. And our little man who is now part superhero, had an amazing birthday. We celebrated him and his adoption with a big party at our tiny house last night. Never had I seen so much love and joy in our backyard.
To top all of this off, I am being baptised Wednesday. And this is way different than the first time. The first time it was in desperate hope that there was actually something magic in the water. The first time was in fact, 4 years and 9 months ago, and I got pregnant out of wedlock 12 days later. There was nothing, obviously, in the water that could save me from myself. This time I’m not getting dunked in hopes of an encounter with God that would change my life. This time, instead, I’m getting dunked in celebration of an encounter and a transformation that has already happened, and continues to happen, in me.
In all that has lead up to these events and during the events themselves, I have heard whispers from God. He is in the Big and the Little of our life. What I’m going to say next, most of you will probably just skim over, and some of you might even be offended. And then there will be the smallest group of you: those that feel something stir in your heart. You might feel the stirrings of joy in that what I am saying you already know to be true. Or you might feel the stirrings of hope, in that what I am saying might actually be true for you too.
Life is romance and adventure. It is love and it is obstacle. It is intimacy and it is adrenalin rushes. We search for a life of romance and adventure and it is here before us every morning we wake up. The greatest spring of “how-to’s” on what it means to actually embrace and live-out this life, is in your faith. And the most significant tip I have for you on falling more in love with your life is to believe in a God who knows and loves you and to believe in Him and to love Him with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your soul. (Luke 10:27)
I cannot give you a greater tip than that.
But what does it mean to live your life from that place of belief and love?
Here is what Father Damine told me when I was at the abbey:
“True belief in God is a radical thing.”
I agree with him. It is a radical thing and I would say that even here, in the Bible Belt, it is a rare thing.
From here on on I think I’ll be sharing my faith with you more. Because, I don’t know how to talk about falling in love with life without it anymore. I can’t. It would be like my husband said to me once– like showing someone all the cards in your hand but keeping the one card you are actually playing with behind your back. I don’t want to do that to you. That’s bunk.
But what this means for me is that I know I can expect to lose some of you. When someone starts sharing their faith, that’s the point at the party people start bowing out. I know that because I was one of those “nice-knowing-yous” who packed up her things (or at least her heart) when someone started sharing about Jesus. And if that’s you right now, that’s okay. You never know what unbelievable thing God might do in you. I couldn’t have prepared for this, but here I am. About to become one of the foolish ones. About to unbutton my heart for all who might see the Jesus inside.
If you got to bail, I get it. If the mention of the J word sends sirens and red lights blaring and flaring in your soul, I totally get it. But I don’t want you to leave feeling like we broke up or that i’m disappointed in you, so I want to tell you what Father Damien told us at the monastery:
“When you leave here, leave happy. Leave knowing your process is perfect, because God is perfect. And if this is as far as He has gotten with you, say thanks. Be grateful. Nobody is better or holier than anybody else. When you choose heaven, you will get heaven and if you don’t know what that means yet, that’s okay… Just give it a chance. You are on a great adventure.”
For however long you’ve traveled with me on this path, if this is our fork in the road, where I go one way and you go there other, I wish you a great adventure. And, hope we meet each other again one day. I would like to be able to tell you what you’ve meant to me and I’d like to be able to know how you are…how you truly are. For now all I can do is steal these words from Merton, for this is how I feel:
“I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
