Of Atchafalaya and Oxford

I feel like sometimes we live in two worlds.

One is the world of details and deadlines, of traffic and trivialities, of small talk and sleeping patterns. The other is unseen, deeper, the realm of the soul, of our thoughts and dreams and fears and hopes. Both are real, both are vital, and both are incessant. Every day we interact in the in-betweeness of these two worlds, hoping to merge them into a coherent whole life, a life real and tangible, of beauty and truth.

I sometimes don't know how to do this.

1 Thessalonians 4: 10-12 says "But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live a quiet life, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one." There's something about this that deeply resonates with me. To live a quiet life, to work with my hands, to dwell in simplicity. To harvest righteousness in season, to commune with creation, to go into the wild, into the great silence.

But then Hebrews 10: 21-25 reads, "And since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching." Because we are justified unto God and united in one Body through the sacrifice of Christ, we are instructed to gather together for encouragement and edification, that we might indeed call one another to live in the light. We are to meet with one another, bear each others' burdens and share each others' joys. We are to be intimately involved with the details of our friends' lives.

I still don't really know what these two passages mean.

There are, however, two examples that have impacted me recently and may begin to help decipher that age-old question--'how then shall we live?'

The first is the story of Gwen Roland.

In 1970, Gwen had just turned 24 and finished up a master's degree in art or art history or something and was all set to begin her PhD. (Ahem, sound familiar?). But she couldn't take it. She just wanted wonder and delight and to do something real. So she left school and, with maybe the great love of her life (more on that later), Calvin, she went to the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana. As a young child, Gwen had heard her grandmother tell stories about people who lived in the basin, connected with one another only by waterways. These swamp residents lived in a naturally insulated community, only reaching the outside world by taking ferries through the swamp. At the age of 24, Gwen remembered these stories and went to the Basin, looking for that mystic community she'd envisioned. But it had been largely abandoned. So she and Calvin went by themselves. They built a house, kept a garden, lived off the land, explored the wilderness, and lived together in this amazing hippie home. No running water, no heat or AC, no need for money, no need for anything except adventure and love. Though the basin was predominately empty, there were two old single men and one elderly couple whom they befriended. In the evenings, Gwen and Calvin would paddle down and cook and share stories at a big kitchen table with them. It was so simple and joyous. The only reason we really even know about it is a national geographic photographer went down there and took this one really iconic photograph of their ideal hippie life and it gained national attention.

But, time is relentless and refuses to let us remain.

After a few years, one of Calvin and Gwen's dogs got sick. Seeing as being cool doesn't exactly pay well (don't we all wish it did!), Gwen had to take a job on a tugboat to get money for the dog's treatment. While working on the tugboat, she fell in love with another man. After this affair, she went back to Calvin and the swamp for a year, but it wasn't the same, she said, and eventually they left and she married the other guy from the boat. At first, this part of the story really bothered me. 'But Calvin was her great love!' I opined, 'The one who shared her adventure!' But life is unpredictable and they weren't married and the romance had its season. Obviously, this is not what I want. This is where Gwen's story breaks down for me. I'm a Christian and that's honestly the only really important thing about me. And as a follower of Christ, there are certain differences about my life. Covenants being one. The Church being another. I need to walk with others, to share life together to enter into rich and abiding church community.

That's where I get to the second story.

In his book A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken describes his and his wife's life in Oxford, a bustling city of great intellectual and cultural importance, during the early 1950s. They were both recent converts to Christianity and were beginning to understand the role of the Church and of community in the Christian life. They had a small studio apartment in the middle of the city and "in one week, taken at random, twenty-four people came, six of them twice, so that there were thirty times the brass knocker sounded and one of us leapt down the narrow stairway. For nearly two years," he continues, "there was hardly a day or night that people did not come, both Christians and non-Christians...and there were literally hundreds of absorbing conversations." Vanauken describes a beautiful community of both evangelism and common edification, saying, "All our friends and acquaintances, Christian or otherwise, came by, sometimes bringing others--sometimes only for a few minutes, sometimes for hours. There were conversations on every imaginable subject, yet sooner or later, it seemed, the talk would drift round to ultimate things and Christianity."

That is something so precious, to be able to commune together, to talk about poetry and music and the bible and hope and struggle and heaven, all of us driftless fellow pilgrims, to rest with one another and meet God. I want to cultivate that in my life as they did and welcome awkward, lonely, lively people that I would and wouldn't ever be friends with in as brothers and sisters.

So how are we to live?

Do we do life together? Praying for the welfare of the city? Engaging the culture and living in the world? Or do we go into nature? Rest in God's creation? Live a quiet life where we are dependent on no one? Both?

My friend McKenzie wisely says, "I believe that we are always called to be in community with one another-whether it's in the urban slums of Jakarta, Indonesia or the Kentrucky countryside, God always calls us to be in community wherever we are; we cannot do life without it... I know God places us in different places for different seasons of our lives and I think it's a question of asking God where he wants us so that we can carry out his kingdom work..." I know she's right, so I suppose that wherever we find ourselves is where we are. He Himself has placed us there in divine and sovereign grace. And anywhere we are, we must be kingdom-builders and Spirit bearers.

Maybe we should live a quiet life where the doorbell rings a lot.

"It’s a love story, baby, just say yes."

I love it when people fall in love.

Like any good girl, I love a good love story, real or imagined.

I squeal with delight when my friends describe their dates. I listen to their engagement stories over and over. I sigh adoringly at their weddings. I especially love to hear what people in love say about one another--the traits they treasure, the characteristics they cherish, the beauty they behold.

And today, while reading about (of all things) the Great Awakening in the colonies, I came across one of the most riveting and sweet descriptions of love I’ve ever encountered. Jonathan Edwards, the great preacher and teacher of the eighteenth century, wrote these words of Sarah Pierrepont, four years before marrying her:

“They say there is a young lady in [New Haven] who is beloved of that Great Being, who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight; and that she hardly cares for any thing, except to meditate on him— that she expects after a while to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven; being assured that he loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from him always. There she is to dwell with him, and to be ravished with his love and delight for ever. Therefore, if you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she disregards it and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in her affections; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct; and you could not persuade her to do any thing wrong or sinful, if you would give her all the world, lest she should offend this Great Being. She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence of mind; especially after this Great God has manifested himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place, singing sweetly; and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure; and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible always conversing with her." (Written in 1723; from The Works of President Edwards, vol. I)

What words to speak of someone! To know, principally, that the beloved is beloved by God, that it is He who “fills her mind with exceedingly sweet delight.” To know that her main preoccupation is with things eternal, that she “hardly cares for anything else,” that she will endure any pain or affliction assured by God’s great love. To say that she has “a strange sweetness,” cares for justice, “is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence of mind.” That she sometimes wanders around smiling to herself “singing sweetly; and seems always to be full of joy and pleasure; and no one knows for what.” She simply enjoys the presence of the Lord.

Edwards loves Sarah because she is already loved by God. He admires her constant joy and her childlike sweetness because he knows it is derived from her assurance of the gospel. This is a love sustained not by feelings or emotional connection or shared goals, but by the True Hope and True Love of Christ.

Jonathan and Sarah Edwards were married for 31 years, from 1727 until Edwards’ death in 1758. As he lay dying in Princeton with his wife away in Northhampton, Edwards asked for those with him to “Tell her that the uncommon union which has so long subsisted between us, has been of such a nature as I trust is spiritual, and therefore will continue forever."

Yep, one of the best love stories I’ve heard in a while.

Forgetfulness, Idolatry, and the Great Love of God

"There can be only two basic loves, the love of God unto the forgetfulness of self, or the love of self unto the forgetfulness of God"

-Saint Augustine

This baby dagger of a quote appeared as a reflection on my church bulletin last night. If you know me, you know that I am quite forgetful, especially unto God. I sometimes like to flippantly dismiss this as the result of spacey-ness or extrovertedness or some other innocuous and even whimisical character trait. But, as Tim Keller pointedly reminds, this is not a quirk or a foible. It is the very presence of idolatry. My thoughts and daydreams drift towards the things of this world, the things that I esteem, and away from my Creator and Savior. Forgetfulness indicates a sickening love of self and a brazen ignorance of the One "who is before all things" and in whom "all things hold together." (Colossians 1: 17).

I've been thinking more lately about my forgetfulness as sin lately. Patty Griffin EmmyLou Harris sing a song called "Little Fire" in which they delicately croon, "My friend, you know me and my family; you've seen us wandering through these times. You've seen us in weakness and in power, you've seen us forgetful and unkind."

Forgetful and unkind. Have mercy, Oh Lord.

Later in the evening, as I held the church bulletin with Augustine's words printed on it, I sang with my brothers and sisters a hymn:

"Hast thou not heard Him, seen Him, known Him?

Is not thine a captured heart?

Chief among then thousand own him;

Joyful choose the better part

Captivated by His beauty

Worthy tribute haste to bring

Let His peerless worth constrain thee

Crown Him now unrivaled King.

What can strip the seeming beauty

From the idols of the earth?

Not a sense of right or duty

But the sight of peerless worth

'Tis the look that melted Peter

'Tis the face that Stephen saw

'Tis the heart that wept with Mary

Can alone from idols draw."

(Ora Rowan, Kevin Twit)

Certainly it is only the great love of God, the perfect beauty of the risen Savior, the hope of forgiveness that can draw my ravished eyes from the trinkets of this wasting world to the eternal God. It is, as Thomas Chalmers said and Craig often reminds, "the expulsive power of a new affection." May the Lord reveal himself to us all, in all His irresistible grace and dazzling splendor. And may we become so enraptured with Him that we forget all else.

On children

I used to think I didn’t want kids.

In college, having children seems like a painfully boring, bourgeois, uncreative thing to do. Plus, you never see any real kids, so ‘children’ becomes equated with an abstract hassle that takes money and time, steals your energy, and resents you later in life.

One time, when I was still at Furman, I told my friends, casually, of course, that I didn’t want kids. I wanted to travel, and serve the poor, and kick it with my husband alone.

“But you love kids,” one of them coolly noted. And everyone agreed.

I do?

I started to notice that maybe I do. I always smile at other people’s kids in the grocery store. Then I walk over and talk to them and their parents and sometimes even plant a kiss or two or on their sweet head of curls. It seems I do love kids.

And since moving to Nashville and getting involved with a church that turns out several offspring a week, I’ve gotten to know some children more personally. And they are absolutely hilarious. And really cute. They say absurd things like “you crack me out,” and they laugh until they make themselves cough.

They also ask you to help them and hold them and love them and teach them. It makes me realize why Jesus tells us to come to Him like the little children, helpless and adoring.

A kernel of my imagination

A few weeks ago, in the middle of the night, I jolted awake, unable to breathe. I clutched at my throat, as sleep’s sweet unconsciousness relinquished its clutches on me. Something was obstructing the passage of air through my windpipe and I could feel it.

You never think about breathing until you can’t. Years of asthma taught me that.

While other kids could run and laugh and play without worry, I carried around a bag in the shape of a tropical fish containing my inhalers, the spectre of attack always imminent. Years later, when I changed asthma doctors, I took a breathing test and was told I had a 30% breathing function, comparable, my sweet new doctor told me, to breathing through a straw. My brothers and sisters still tease me about that.

So, wheezing and oxygen deprivation are feelings I’m familiar with, but this midnight attack was slightly different. I mean, what could possibly be choking me at two in the morning as I lay serenely in my bed? I tried to stay calm as I jolted up, but I felt the fear rising. So I prayed. If He wanted to, God could easily take this away. Easily. ‘C’mon, Lord, I pleaded. Please. Please help me.” Nothing. “Okay, Thy will be done. Just teach me and help me.” Then I made a deal with God and with myself. If, in an hour, I’m still struggling to breathe, I will admit my own inadequacy, accept that I am a ridiculous burden to those around me, and wake up my roommate. I gargled salt water, tried to cough, dry heaving with desperate attempts to coax the foreign object out of my body and into the night. Slowly, two turned to three, I was increasingly agitated, and my throat increasingly raw.

“Hey, uh, Leslie,” I murmured into the deep of slumber, “I need you to take me to the emergency room.” Dutifully and diligently, she got up and dressed and we headed out into the December darkness.

When we arrived in the ER, I was feeling increasingly silly. “What seems to be the trouble?” the receptionist inquired. “Well, this is totally not a big deal, and I don’t know if this was even the right place for me to come, but I feel something in my throat blocking my air passages.” I suddenly felt like I was going to cry. She was tired and looked a bit beaten by life, and, maybe because of this, she was incredibly gracious. “This is the right place for you to come. It’s scary when you can’t breathe,” she nodded. “Have a seat, there, honey, and we’ll get right to you.”

So I sat down, Leslie kindly joined me, and we listened to newscasters prattle on and on about what cocktails to serve at your New Years Eve party tonight. An ER waiting room is a fascinating place. We watched two young men ignore a sleeping toddler and text and wonder if the cops were in the hospital and find their drugs. As the precious child’s cornrows uncomfortably slumped against the fake wood armrest, it was all I could do not to sweep her into my arms, and kiss her darling face. There were some Vandy undergrads, incredibly affectionate and upbeat for a 3am Emergency Room visit, and, of course, the ubiquitous unwashed man in the corner exclaiming gibberish at random intervals.

Finally, they call some mispronounced version of my name. “That’s me!” “Don’t worry,” I confidently tell Leslie, “you don’t need to come back with me. This will literally take five seconds. Heimlich maneuver or popsicle sticks or whatever.” (Yes, I’m very keen on medical terms.)

I’m directed to a room to wait for my doctor, “who should be in any minute,” and I sit on the edge of the hospital bed with expectant eyes and rising panic. After an interminable no more than five minutes, not one but two doctors enter my room. We’ll call them Real Doctor and Kid Doctor. “What’s up?” Real Doctor asks, with a certain compassion and competency. After some incoherent apology about taking up his time for something so minor when there are gunshot wounds and strokes in the world, I tell him. “There’s something in my throat. I can feel it moving and can’t get it out and it’s obstructing my clear breathing.” Oh, okay, let’s have a look. “They can’t see anything,” he tells me (what?), and so that means it’s probably a little deeper than I thought. “Can we do a chest x-ray?”

“They’ll come for you in a minute,” Kid Doctor chirps in, “in the mean time try to lay down and rest.” If I could just lay down and rest, Kid Doctor, I wouldn’t be here, I think. Instead, I look at Real Doctor and tell him I’m afraid to lay down because I’ll choke again. He tells me it’ll be okay and, “hey, if you do choke, you’re in the right place.” Good point.

After a little while, I’m wheeled (yes, wheeled, people) to the x-ray room, which, incidentally, is exactly why I don’t like The Future. Darkness, radiation, and weird outfits. But, I digress. At this point, I feel like a four-year old (which, turns out, I am) as the x-ray technician lady gently moves my arms and neck and face into the proper position. I put back on my fleece and am wheeled back to my (hopefully not final) resting place. (Hey now, everything’s dramatic at now four in the morning.)

My doctors return, bearing news. “We want to put a camera down your throat,” they tell me. At this point, I’m like, whatever you need to do to end this nightmare, do it. They numb my throat with some spray and prepare to take a look. (The spray is in a syringe looking thing, so at first I thought it was a needle and, terrified, asked Real Doctor if I had to get a shot?!? I think this was the moment he realized what a frail creature he had on his hands. “Oh, no, Sweetheart, but it does look like that.” Okay, I bravely nod, and we proceed.) All numbed up, Kid Doctor is preparing his camera for the big unveiling of whatever has brought me to the hospital on this cold night.

Putting a camera down your throat at first sounded a little cool to me. A hidden camera, for a spy or Christiane Amanpour. It’s really not. About one second after Kid Doctor begins what may have been his maiden voyage into the human windpipe, I start crying.

This is an embarrassing fault of my character, probably, but I have never not cried at the doctor. Even if I have a minor cold, when I hear my own small voice say, “I just don’t feel good,” there will be abundant tears. This was no exception.

“Tell me what you feel,” Kid Doctor implores, “what’s going on?” “I don’t know,” I awkwardly sob, “I’ve never had a camera in my throat before- I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like.” It was legitimately painful and the nurse’s empathy assured me that it was fine for me to be so hysterical. We proceed and, as the tears roll down my face, I realize I’m probably hurting the Kid Doctor’s feelings, or at least his ego. “It’s not your fault,” I tell him with big, weepy eyes, “I have a really low pain tolerance and am terrible at going to the doctor. You’re doing a really good job.” He looks grateful. Not long after, Real Doctor steps in. The camera mercifully goes down and sees…nothing.

Nothing.

But my windpipe is now clear. “It could have been anything,” Real Doctor explains, “the camera probably pushed it down.” “Maybe some popcorn,” he offers. I did have popcorn earlier, I say, and he assures me that was probably the culprit. Real Doctor leaves for a minute to get my x-ray results, leaving me and the Kid alone.

“Sometimes, “ he begins, with all earnestness and medical school knowledge, “people legitimately think that something is choking them. But there’s never really anything there.” (I’m sorry… what??) “You think it was a figment of my imagination?” I ask, absolutely incredulous. “Maybe.” “But I could feel it. Really feel it.” “That’s not uncommon,” he replies. A figment of my imagination? Could I possibly be so delusional to have imagined that I was being choked, woken up myself and my roommate, and been essentially tortured for hours for no real reason?

Real Doctor returns and I ask him about that, he shakes his head at the Kid’s proposal, and assures me that there was assuredly something that was obstructing my breathing, not to worry. We talk a little, he asks me about the study of history, and tells me about his family’s story. I apologize again for crying, we shake hands, and I walk out into the coming morning. Into the cold air. Which I can breathe clearly.

I still sometimes wonder if I could have possibly imagined the entire event. Our imaginations are extremely powerful. Every person fashions their own version of reality, in some ways. They imagine that they’ve kissed the object of their affections. They envision finally telling off their boss. They pretend to confront a nagging mother-in-law. I guess I’ll never know for sure what happened, but in the meantime, I’m chewing popcorn very carefully.

Telling stories

Most mornings when the alarm goes off, I’m awoken to the sound of NPR droning on about the day’s headlines, the progression of the Wars in the Middle East, or the latest Brad Pitt flick. It’s a nice way to wake up (even given the sometimes depressing nature of the news), infinitely preferable to the panic-inducing buzzer that causes my first morning sentiment to be confused anger. On Fridays, my NPR mornings are especially nice, since they include a segment called StoryCorps, where regular people from around the country interview each other and tell just a bit of their stories. These stories range from sweet to sorrowful, unnerving to uplifting, as they touchingly reveal the complexity and fragility of family, of love, of friendship. They are achingly human.

I remember one story about a math teacher from Michigan who took in and raised his fifteen year old student and that student’s newborn son. This teacher just saw potential in his student and, moved with compassion, became his father and a grandfather to his child. As adults, they went on StoryCorps and thanked one another in simple gratitude for the sacrifice and care only fully known years later. One woman, whose husband was suffering with Alzheimers and could hardly recall her name, recorded the story of how they met. As she described the glance across the jazz club and the handsome soldier who approached her, you could hear the emotion choking her shaking voice. You could hear it all—a lifetime of love and the richness of memory, tinged with the reality that that they would never dance again.

These are stories of loss, of charity, of endurance, of comedy, of providence.

What is it about stories that so moves us as people? Why do we each think we have a story? And why is an encouragement to both hear these stories and to tell them?

Edward Said, the famous literary critic, once commented, “the novel is a specifically Christian form of writing. It presupposes a world that is incomplete, that is yearning toward salvation and moving towards it.” Said recognizes that the very form of the story is an expression of expectation, for the good ending, no matter how many conflicts emerge in the course of the novel.

The foremost historian of African American religion Albert Raboteau puts it this way in his work A Fire in the Bones: “History and religious faith coalesce for me in their mutual admission of the necessity of plot. Both present narrative constructions of reality. Both answer to the human drive for order. Both lead us to search for the ‘hidden wholeness’ of life, the connectedness of apparently fragmented and chaotic bits of experience and knowledge.” He persists, “Historical narrative places a mythic structure upon events by the very act of arranging them in a sequence of meaning, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Instead of viewing time as random acts of atomistic experience, history assumes that the past has structure, meaning, consequence. Christian faith also asserts that the events of human experience have meaning, a coherent pattern, a telos. But the source of that meaning for the believer ultimately lies outside history in the will and providence of God.”

Raboteau and Said are exactly right. For a Christian, the details of the story may be a mystery but the Divine storyteller is known. He is the Author and Perfector, He is sovereign and ordains all tings in His mercy and love. The Scriptures remind us that “…in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.” (Psalm 139:16) Before the dawn of time, our Father knew every moment of our lives, he had written the beginning, middle and end of the story. This divine providence may seem impossible or even infuriating as we traverse through deserts, face brokenness in our families and ourselves, hear cancer diagnoses. But the promise of good is as sure as the goodness of the Storyteller: “All things work for the good of those who love Him who have been called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28). The story may be unknown, but the goodness of the ending is sure. “It is finished,” evil has been defeated, “Death has begun working backwards.”

So as I wake up tomorrow and hear the voices of America telling their stories from across the radio waves, I must remember that these stories do not exist in isolation as a random arrangement of events both happy and heartbreaking. Rather, they are decidedly meaningful, part of an incomprehensibly complex yet beautiful story of redemption and goodness that we will all understand someday.

Ms. Griffin and Me

On Sunday afternoon, I met Patty Griffin at a coffee shop in town.

I remember listening to "Rain" as a sophomore with MaryBeth and Katie in Geer Hall. I remember sprinting in sympathy to "Tony" as I ran through the streets of Santiago. I remember swaying to "When it don't come easy" with the Tridelts my senior year. I remember staring in wide-eyed amazement as Patty sang at the Ryman in June. I remember gratefully singing "All Creatures of our God and King" with my friend Meg in my car on Shelby Avenue looking at a Nashville skyline illuminated by the setting sun. In fact, I had been listening to Downtown Church that very Sunday, probably even humming "Wade in the Water" as I waited on my latte.

All of a sudden, that same friend Meg came rushing towards my corner table in Ugly Mugs and, before I could even look up, she frantically whispered in my ear, "Ansley, do NOT make a scene, but Patty Griffin is right there. We absolutely HAVE to meet her." I gasped, looked, made a terribly unflattering facial expression, and then talked myself in out and back in to this desperately uncool mission. We stealthily walked to the cream/sugar table, verified that it was actually Patty Griffin standing three feet away and then made our way towards her. She is awesome. So pretty and tiny with a turquoise necklace and a soulful stare.

"Uh, Ms. Griffin," I stammered. She looked up and I suddenly forgot how to speak the english language. Silence.

"I'm Meg, and this is Ansley," my friend intervened. I nodded.

"Nice to meet you," sweet Patty replied, expectantly.

"We were just listening to your song yesterday and watching the sunset over Nashville," I effused (my verbal faculties had momentarily returned), "and I just wanted to tell you how much I love your music and how it ministers to our souls."

Forget the lameness of that phrase for a second. Forget also the awkward and sudden use of the plural pronoun 'our.' Just remember this: Patty Griffin is and was so gracious as she smiled, nodded, thanked us, and reached out to touch our hands.

Anxiety and Prayer

I sometimes think of anxiety as a genetic trait I don’t possess.

My paternal grandmother was terrified of bridges, to the point that she would assume the fetal position in the backseat when crossing the Cooper River Bridge in Charleston. Three minutes of absolute terror for a normally fearless southern woman.

My mom consistently thinks she has a brain tumor. Anxious thoughts will consume her usually rational mind, convincing her that every pain, every headache is a sure sign of fatal disease.

My sister Courtney can hardly even ride in a car on the highway-- the loss of control and memory of a bad accident nearly debilitating. Carting her around Atlanta is an exercise in patience, willful ignorance of the frequent gasps and frantic clutching of the door.

But me, nah, I’m totally relaxed. Sure, I’m afraid of heights and can’t ride roller coasters, but on the whole, I don’t consider myself an anxious person. I sleep soundly, like to relinquish control, and don’t keep a calendar.

What self-righteous self-delusion. This week, I learned powerfully that it doesn’t take much to expose the suppressed anxiety of my heart. Change paralyzes me. When I find out I may have to move, I immediately picture myself destitute, homeless, abandoned and alone, with only the trash bins and the Incarnate God my friends. My jittery heartbeat and furrowed brow reveal a fundamental doubt that God is good and sovereign, that He really cares for His children, that He really cares for me. Oh, but He does.

The Scriptures gently, sweetly, and consistently call us to rest, to trust, not in ourselves or some vague sense that ‘things will work out,’ but in the deep knowledge that we have a Father in heaven who lovingly ordains all things. The psalmist proclaims, "The Lord will keep you from all evil; the Lord will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore." (Psalm 112:7-8) God knows the sum of our days, the hair on our heads, the sorrows in the recesses of our hearts. Because the Lord lives, and we know that He is for us, we don’t have to fear. As the psalmist continues, the believer “is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord. His heart is steady, he will not be afraid." (Psalm 112:8).

Though I am thoroughly ambivalent about change in my life and worried about the days to come, I have been helped by the reminder in the Word that the Lord is sovereign and good all the time, that He Himself keeps my life. He is my refuge and trust. Our hearts can rest without fear. Jesus tells us that we can lay our burdens before our Father, we can tell him in panicky prayers of the trials we face, of unpaid rent checks and sick parents and uncertain futures. He already knows. Indeed, he knew before the foundation of the world, and yet still, in infinite love and compassion, he draws near to us as His children, comforting us with Himself.

“The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

If you ever ride a plane with me and see my lips moving in silent incantations, it’s probably this verse.

Mandolin Strumming (It's all about the follow-through...)

Last Christmas, my brother Conrad gave me a mandolin.

For months, I’d been rhapsodizing about learning to play, how I loved bluegrass music, how beneficial music is for one’s general wellbeing. I’d excitedly told friends and strangers that I was going to learn to play, daydreamed about what kind of pick I would buy (got to go with the ever-classy and ever-so preppy tortoise shell), imagined that holding the thing would suddenly improve my singing voice. This mandolin obsession could have very easily been relegated to my “list of great ideas that never made it into reality” accompanied by tennis, gardening, my all-girl band, starting a union, discovering the secret societies at Furman, having a Christmas tree forest in my living room, and founding a settlement house. I enthusiastically plucked away for most of the Christmas break of 2009, annoying my sisters and infuriating my musically inclined mother for whom errant sounds can cause real internal strife. I could play “Amazing Grace” and “She’ll be Coming Around the Mountain,” happily, but with the sinking realization that boredom and forgetfulness would catch up, that I would be derailed by school and life, and that my gleaming mandolin would soon be collecting dust and disappointment.

For a while that’s exactly what happened.

But then, in the midst of one of the most difficult summers of my life, a friend unexpectedly gave me a gift to match my brothers’. My friend Matt, who is one of the most dependable and faithful people in the world, told me that he played the mandolin (well, in fact) and that he’d be happy to teach me. Elation! Again. So he began to give me lessons and songs to play. He also told me to practice. He tuned that mandolin a couple thousand times. He fixed it when I dropped it. He took me to the music store because I was too self-conscious to go alone. In short, he followed up with me, and, because there was another actual human being involved, my people-pleasing tendencies refused to let me forsake the music this time. At first I could play three chords. Then five. It wasn’t easy. My hands felt awkward and I got unladylike callouses. Also, I constantly felt embarrassed at both my lack of skill and at my exertion of effort. In Nashville, people who have never even seen a mandolin can play it better than me. But, those five chords, clumsily combined, have brought me real enjoyment in creativity. I’ve made up some silly little songs and a few not-silly ones.

I read a line in a history book about southern evangelists who traveled around “armed with guitar and bible, accompanied perhaps by a mandolin strumming or tambourine shaking wife.” I may or may not have begun envisioning myself as a mandolin strumming wife…

In December, a full year since Conrad gave me that fateful Christmas gift, I invited some dear people over for a “Mandolin Concert.” I missed chords, Matt and Fletcher played guitars, and everyone sang, loudly, triumphantly, of Emmanuel, of Hope, of Light in a manger. I was overwhelmed with gratitude for music, for friendship, for the voices of people in my community, for faithful teachers who won’t let you quit something, for melody. Really, it was not a concert, but simply a time to remember and to sing about the real gift of Christmas.

Pride is like an apple seed

I eat a lot of granny smith apples. When they’re in season, I average at least two a day, sometimes three. Crunchy, delicious, tart and slightly sweet, granny smiths are almost perfect. Like the Indians, full of respect for the buffalo, and eating every part, I’ve taken to eating the entire wonderful apple. “The core is edible!” I’d gush, “And the seeds taste like vanilla!” (Very true, by the way).

Honestly and secretly, I was proud of my apple addiction, my healthy eating habits and my green inclinations. “I’m so responsible” the insidious, prideful Self would whisper, “so environmentally aware, and so healthy.” And so I smiled as I swallowed the seeds.

Some time after I began this apple obsession, I was telling a friend about the glories of grannies and the greatness of the seeds like an addict, trying to convince him to try one, when I was interrupted. “You know those are poisonous,” thundered the voice of harsh truth.

Now, I have a tendency toward naivete and people love to exacerbate this trait by frequently telling me untrue things to see me astoundingly believe. I was not to be fooled this time. “No, they’re not, I protested.” Then, these amazing words rushed out of my seed-consuming mouth, “Nothing from nature is poisonous.” Wrong. Into the Wild, anyone?

Sure enough, according to this new thing called the world wide web, apple seeds contain cynaide. One website claims, “Apple seeds contain cyanogenic acids…Symptoms of mild poisoning include headache, dizziness, confusion, anxiety, and vomiting. Larger doses can lead to difficulty breathing, increased blood pressure and heart rate, and kidney failure.” Another site declares ominously, “There are not enough seeds in one apple to kill, but it is absolutely possible to eat enough to die.” Great.

It occurred to me that apple seeds are much like my pride. It starts with a small satisfaction and my own self-righteousness, accompanied by a faint sweetness like vanilla. But there’s poison in those seeds and in my prideful thoughts. Both lead to death.

Snow and Wonder

I adore snow.

It’s delicate and beautiful and free floating through the cold air and transforming dull winter earth into an enchanted, mystical landscape. Snow means childhood and Christmas and falling in love. It’s twirling and ice and coziness. It’s mittens and peering excitedly out the window in the morning and peppermint coffee.

The day after Thanksgiving in 1958 the poet Anne Sexton wrote a letter saying, “I was just looking out the window…and it was, yes, it was, snowing. I am young. I am younger each year at the first snow. When I see it, suddenly, in the air, all little and white and moving; then I am in love again and very young and I believe in everything. Christ is in his manger and Santa in heaven.”

Another one of my favorite characters, Lorelai Gilmore, feels similarly about snow. She explains her love affair with snow thusly, “When I was five, I had a really bad ear infection and I had been home in bed for a week and I was very sad. So I wished really hard that something wonderful would happen to me, and I woke up the next morning and it had snowed. And I was sure that some fairy godmother had done it just for me. It was my little present.” To which, her best friend and, later, the love of her life, Luke, responds, “Your parents never explained the concept of weather to you?”

I actually had a remarkably similar conversation the other day. Nashville was anticipating a snowstorm and, giddy with excitement, I was beginning to elucidate snow’s awesomeness. “It’s so pretty and white and floaty! Good things always happen when it snows!” “Sure, Ans,” my friend quipped with a faintly sweet smile, “people freeze to death, there are car accidents, but for you, it’s a winter wonderland.”

Point taken. As a (sometimes) rational grown-up, I understand that inclement weather reduces economic productivity, causes traffic hazards, prevents children from being educated, and causes real crowding in homeless shelters.

But it’s not really about snow. I get it. Snow is precipitation. Frozen water. (Forget its miraculous unique flakes for a moment…) But truly what’s amazing about snow is the wonder that it produces within my soul. In my daily life, there are few things that make me pause, overwhelmed by the undeniable beauty of something much bigger than me. Tim Keller calls a sense of wonder the “acid test” of Christianity, what distinguishes a Christian from a religious person. Keller astutely says, “If you are a Christian you have a spirit of wonder that permeates your life. You are always saying ‘how miraculous,’ ‘how interplanetary,’ ‘how unreal.’ You are always looking at yourself and saying, ‘me a Christian … incredible, miraculous, unbelievable, a joke!’ But a person who is trying to put God in their debt – there is none of that spirit of wonder at all. For example, when you show up to get your paycheck, (I am assuming that most of you work hard for your money)…When you show up for your paycheck do you say ‘Ah, BEHOLD!, you’ve paid me, you’ve given me money!?’ No, you don’t do that, you say ‘of course you paid me, I worked.’ If you ask a religious person who does not understand the grace of God, you say, ‘Are you a Christian?’ They say, ‘Of course I am a Christian, I have always been a Christian. Sure I am a Christian.’ My friends, if you are a Christian there is no ‘sure’ about it and there is no ‘of courseness’ about it, not a bit.” Keller continues, “A Christian may say ‘my career has not gone too well, my love life has not gone too well, it’s astonishing… it’s amazing that God is as good as He is to me. It’s all grace. It’s all grace. That spirit of wonder. That sense of being a miracle. That everything that comes to you being an absolute mercy.”

When snow comes, I am reminded of the larger reality that I am as utterly helpless in the world to do good or earn God’s favor as I am to control the weather. And when those perfect snowflakes inhabit the skies and dance in the wind, I should remember the common grace of God, that He gives abundantly to His children simply in steadfast love. I do not deserve grace any more than I deserve snow. But He gives both. I must wonder in this always: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow…”