It is that time of year again. The holiday music, the twinkling lights, and the massive amounts of guilt that I am not doing it right. The house is not pretty enough, the activities are not festive enough, the gifts are not good enough. I’m not enough to turn the holiday into The Holidays, even though I am the mom and that is my job. The “not enoughs” is the holiday song that runs through my head, and frankly it is less welcome than a loop of “all I want for Christmas is you” as sung by Alvin and the Chipmunks. So I am writing a new holiday manifesto and it goes a little something like this.

In this house, we will celebrate. Our savior came, a perfect gift to an imperfect world, and we will trust that in our imperfection the Lord can work miracles of love, and joy, and peace and hope and laughter. Maybe even a Christmas miracle or two.

In the midst of my crazy house and this crazy season, my soul will commune with Mary the Mother of God, who gave birth in a stable and allowed so many to come worship. She perhaps, was hoping for a moment of peace after pushing out her baby boy in a barn with neither a midwife or her mom to help her, but she chose to embrace the strangers, the foreigners, the animals wandering in and out. I will join her in taking my crazy circumstances and pondering all these things in my heart, because the Lord gives good, good gifts, all year long.

I will not trade in my blessings for perfectionism that can only be found on Pinterest and in Lands End catalogs. I will reject the lie that the people around me are disappointed in me and proudly give the gift of home-made baked goods. Because they are made in love, and they are delicious (if just a little wonky).

When the Toddler takes the carefully crafted hand-made wreath and uses it as a hula-hoop, we will laugh. When the dinosaur gets added to the nativity scene, we will laugh. When the baby takes a header down the stairs and ends up looking like Rudolph, we will slap the reindeer antlers on and take the holiday picture anyway. We will laugh, and we will invite all our relatives to laugh with us. The third candle in the advent wreath is joy after all.

We will recognize that now is not the season for perfectly placed white twinkle lights and candle-lit advent readings. The lights take too long to put up and would likely never come down, and even if the girls don’t burn themselves on open flames, both have been known to take large bites out of things made of wax. We will decide that this is okay, plug in the snowman inflatable and give that man a hug on the way out the door even if we are already running late for church, because sometimes the two-year-old should get to make the rules. Merry Christmas.

We will delight in the repetition of the exclamation over the lights, and the snowman, and the penguin, and the baby Jesus. We will not be annoyed, because it is all really neat, that is why we do it.

What we lack in elegance we will make up for in exuberance and we will stop apologizing for that, because Christ came, and is coming again and this is to be celebrated!

I’ve been thinking some more about My Body Being a Temple. I’ve been wondering about the implications of the temple verses I know so well. Not the ones with cubits and gold bricks. I, like most evangelicals, post evangelicals, emergents, Jesus lovers, hang out in the new testament, and only occasionally visit the old.

Among the things I   never remember reading but somehow learned about Jesus and the temple is this: on Good Friday, when Jesus died the current that separated the place where God dwelled with the rest of the space was ripped top to bottom. I also picked up the bit about how only Jewish dudes were allowed in the temple, and only the Levites allowed behind the current. When someone did go behind the current the other folk tied a rope around his ankle so in case you dropped dead from the Glory of the Lord. That way, they could retrieve your body without having to face God themselves.

I’ve been thinking about my body as a temple, the space where the Holy Spirit dwells. I’ve been thinking about how the life and death of Jesus granted everyone access to the deepest parts of the temple. I’ve been thinking about the curtains I put up in my heart, the places where I say “that is far enough” “you can only enter the outer courts” “oh, you, yes proceed, come close.”

I can feel the curtains lately. I can feel myself pulling that curtain around my heart. “You don’t belong here.” I stoop around my heart, clutching the curtain, in an attempt to protect it a little. Instead it all makes me feel a little numb, this posture is difficult and uncomfortable, it stops the blood flow both ways.

I can see myself as I walk through my day, assigning how close exactly everyone can get to this temple of the Lord most high. You, come here, close as you want, experience this love that the Lord gives through me. You, you may only come so far, maybe tie a rope around your ankle, we aren’t sure you belong here…but we can try. You, you may not even come into the temple square.  I don’t have time to show you God’s love.

Sometimes my boundaries and courts are drawn nobly, but most of the time it has everything to do with me. I don’t want someone who is not like me. Or more likely, I do not want someone who mirrors something ugly in me to come that close. I do not want someone who has hurt me allowed back into the deepest places.

But that isn’t the way this is supposed to work. The Lord tore the curtain with His great sacrifice, and I am not supposed to go around re-constructing them.

Your body is a temple.

I grew up in the church, I’ve been told that before. Sometimes in reference to how tight a girl should wear her clothes, where hands do and do not belong before marriage, in defense of refusing my 16 year old request for a belly ring.

Your Body is a temple.

I have heard it as a reason to by that expensive coat, skip the Sunday service and instead hit the gym. I have heard it used to shame the overweight, the inked, the sickly.

Your body is a temple.

This seems to be a part of the Bible that even my atheist friends believe, as they by the organic groceries and scold me for handing my daughters french fries. “You know Abby, your body is a temple.” Yes, I think, one of the Holy Spirit…but you don’t believe in Him, so why should you care?

But this Sunday, when Jesus cleansing the temple was preached, and the stuff in Isaiah and  the stuff in first Corinthians were suddenly holding hands. Suddenly the shame in that verse melted away.

Because my body is a temple, the dwelling of the most high God.

As a woman, a gentile woman at that, I would not have been good enough for the outer courts even. But now, my body, the same one that would have called for me to be called un-pure and unequal, it is a temple, a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.

I would have never been allowed to set foot into the furthest of inner-courts of that temple. My body, as female, would have denied me access to the place where glory dwelled. But Christ changed all of that, and now I am the place where Glory dwells.

My body is a temple, and it isn’t a cause of shame or a reason to be guilty. It is a miracle. Proof that the Lord can redeem all things.

Alleluia

She stopped by on her way out-of-town to kiss the girls and pick up some odds and ends she had left here. She came bearing gifts, books I should read and one I lent her, and a handbag she had no use for. She travels light these days, easier to go where she’s called. Someone had given this bag to her and she thought maybe I could use it somehow. We hugged and looked at each other until we were both sure our tears would not well over. I wished her well, and meant it.

Last week I could not find the canvas flowered bag I bought for $16.99 when I was attempting to cloth diaper two butts. So, the handbag came out of its silky pillow case protector bag and my stuff got tossed in so I could make it out of the house on time.

I liked this bag more than I thought I would. It is the perfect size and the zippers on the sides change the size when I miss judge the amount of space I have and am desperate need of just a few more inches of space. (I have some serious spacial awareness issues.) It is a solid color and doesn’t have a logo splashed all over it. It fits my netbook perfectly. It makes me feel like a lady and not like a mommy.

The mistake I made was googling it. I had never heard of this particular brand (it wasn’t Coach or Gucci) and I was curious. Apparently, the bag that was sitting on the floor of my classroom could cover half my mortgage if sold on eBay. And I wondered if it was ethical to keep it, this gift that is now twice owned but still looked brand new. How much good could I do if I sold it? With bloggers I read building schools in Haiti and friends running marathons for She’s the First, to raise money for 26 girls to go be educated in India, was it okay to keep an expensive gift?

I took the kids to the mall on Saturday. I wanted to wander around Kohl’s in the hopes that inspiration would strike and I would find gifts for those impossible to buy gifts for. The Peanut was not having it. She had her own agenda from how we should stop at every single Christmas tree so that she could touch all the ornaments to which direction the stroller should be pushed. When she refused to go upstairs to look at kitchen appliances I gave up and headed for the inner-belly of the mall. After looking at Santa (but do NOT broach the subject of talking to Santa) both before and after he “went to go feed the reindeer” and came back a different race, the train came by. The Peanut was mesmerized and the Rooster was shouting out “Yeah!” “Wee!” “Yeah!” Follow that train! We went speeding after it, me and the double stroller and found the place where it parks. The man selling tickets even let me take the Rooster on for free.

We (read: the Peanut) selected the green train car and we hopped in. As I squished against the bench I asked the Peanut if this made her happy. “Yeah!” she cried, “We ride the train!” She did not deserve this ride, this thing that made her happy. This was not a reward for being patient while mommy shopped.  I suppose I could have spent those five dollars on one of the projects listed above. But, when I bent down to look in those shining brown eyes I saw the wonder of the moment. “I am so glad this makes you happy,” I told her, “I love you and I like to give you things that bring you joy.”

This is not to say that I value happiness over all else. This Sunday singing “Lord prepare her, to be a sanctuary,” over Rilla’s head made me aware of the depth of this prayer. There will be pain and grief, but the Lord desire to give us good things, things that give us joy. The trick is learning to hold them with an open hand.

I stumbled across the website of a literary agent I deeply respect. She is taking submissions for the kind of book I want to write. I just need a proposal and a query letter. I could do that I think. I have about the first five chapters written. But I’m scared, this the lie I am believing: I don’t deserve this. And maybe I do, and maybe I don’t, and maybe that isn’t the point. Maybe doing it is the point, walking it out with the Lord.

I have exactly zero idea whether this will amount to anything or not. I am well aware an expensive handbag isn’t really something that anyone “deserves.” But I am learning to let my head rest in the hands of the giver, let Him look into my eyes and smile softly into my life, hear the whisper that is meant for me, “I am so glad you like this,  I am glad it gives you joy.”

This perspective was partially shaped by Margaret Fienberg’s new book Wonderstruck being released Christmas day. I read the first few chapters and it is going to be good! Pre-order here.

I’ve been a little tough on the church lately. I suppose, for me, the church is a lot like my family, and thus I treat them like so. It is a difficult thing to love something, some people, so much you see the things that God wants for them. Sometimes you end up seeing the could be as the should be and then judge the space in between as failure. Failure of the person, failure of the belief, sometimes even failure of your God. It is a difficult thing sometimes to pray and live “as earth as it is in heaven.” The should be, the could be, the one day will be, it is sometimes difficult to tell what is what and what is your responsibility to be worried about.

Late this summer the Hughes family started going to our church that can only be described as “good people.” The first women’s Bible study Sarah (the mom of the Hughes clan) attended she asked how my week had been and I burst into tears. She immediately offered to bring me a meal that week and then started laughing. “Hi, I’m your Baptist friend Sarah, and I can make you a chicken.” Is there a faster way to my heart than self deprecation?

When they invited our church to come serve the homeless for Thanksgiving, I decided it sounded like a worthy way to spend Thanksgiving morning. Last year Christian had to write all morning, so I thought it sounded like a good way to burn the morning while leaving him a quiet house to write.

Christian was able to join us this year and we all took off to drive through the Dunkin’ Donuts for breakfast before heading downtown. Did you know that crazy people run half marathons on Thanksgiving day? We do because it took about twenty minutes to find a way around them and to our destination.

The day was beautiful and the volunteers abundant. More than one to one volunteer to homeless person means that every person had someone to talk to them, look them in the face, say and mean “I am glad you are here. I hope you have a good holiday.” Christian manned the mashed potatoes while I wrangled the girls. I may have gotten yelled at by a homeless man to get my baby out of the dirt and wash her hands! I may have scooped her up only until he had his backed turned.

The day was wrapping up and we were all putting away the folding chairs when I heard someone calling for women’s shoes. Some of the people from the Hughes’ other church had brought some things to give away, and Gina had come and eaten and had no shoes. She needed a nine or nine and a half. I wear a nine.

Moments later I was one of the women surrounding Gina in some sort of inverse Cinderella scene. One by one these women took of their shoes to see which one would fit this woman’s foot best. Suburban southern women, with their lipstick, just so hair and “bless her hearts” were peeling off their shoes in the middle of a parking lot downtown hoping that they could give away the shoes off their feet. I heard one women demanding to know the shoe size of her teenage girl’s Ugg boots. Gina walked away in a new pair of tennis shoes, and a pair of sparkly ballet flats that had an impressive name written across the sole.

Tonight, I am thankful for the brokeness, for my brokeness, for the way God uses broken people to mend brokeness in the world. I am thankful for the church, for what God calls it to be, and that this Thanksgiving morning I saw the church in all her glory, taking off their shoes on holy ground.

This past weekend we went to Orlando. Christian was presenting at a conference and I thought hanging out by the pool all day with the kids sounded like fun. I also remember the four days Christian was in New Orleans last year as being very long and very hard. So, family vay-cay it was.

When we got there we realized that the pool was only outdoors and the forecast was for rain the next day. The thought of keeping the girls in a hotel room where the internet was out all day long by myself made me want to turn around and drive home, so I did what anybody would do.

I took two kids one and two to Disney World. By myself. It was mostly successful. We may have spent our entire time in fantasy land, riding Dumbo three separate times. The truth of the matter is that Disney is the most magical place on earth because it is chock full of parents who understand that you just payed 85 bucks a person to have a magical day and they are going to help you out. They are going to ask you do your kids want their extra cookies or lug your stroller on and off the tram. They are not going to give you the evil eye for the fit that your toddler is throwing because how in the name of Walt himself are you supposed to explain to a two-year-old that you are actually closer to riding the elephant by walking inside a tent away from the elephant, and then again explain that the playground you went to was really just a time suck and now it is  her turn to ride the elephant (remember the fit you had twenty minutes ago? Nope, just this new fit? greeeaaaattt) They will tell you that it is okay and let you know as kindly as possible that your one-year-old is escaping out the back while you were dealing with the fit. Oooops.

Mostly, Disney was magic for me because it reminded me that I am good at this academic wife thing. I am the girl who will take two kids to Disney world by herself. And right now, that is who God is calling me to be. I’ve been praying for pixie dust, and what better place is there to get it than Disney world? I received pixie dust in the form of being reminded that with grace I am capable of manning the fort while Christian gets his academic on. Pixie dust came when there was always a dad to pull my stroller on and off the train. I got a huge sprinkling when Christian’s professor told me in the lobby of the hotel that he recognized the sacrifices I was making so that Christian could get this degree.

I expected the time and money sacrifices, but I don’t think I realized how lonely this stage in my life was going to be. Christian and I will go entire weeks where we essentially don’t see each other. He often finds out about my emotional state by reading my blog. It isn’t that he is being inattentive, it is simply that we have no time to talk after the did everyone poop okay today, are we out of diapers or milk sort of conversations are had. We are always tired. If you count my writing and his writing and my extra class at work and the whole parenting thing we have about 4 jobs between the two of us.

I don’t mean for this to be a list of complaints. I am sure, absolutely positive, that this is where God has our family right now. I know Christian belongs in grad school now, I know I am called to my work. I know these two crazy sisters we are raising are for this time and certainly for each other. I know this. But the leaning into it, the accepting of it, is just so hard sometimes.

It is so easy for me to look at the unmatched socks and the laundry piling up, the number of times we eat out, the toys strewn all over at the end of the day that no one has the energy to pick up, and proclaim that I am failing. That this thing is just too hard and I am not good enough. But the pixie dust showed me that maybe I am looking at the wrong things. If I looked at the smiling healthy girls, the papers of my students, my husband’s successes, my devotion to my friends, I would see that I am in fact doing this thing.

After all, I took two kids to Disney world. And not only did we survive, everyone came out smiling.

I teach freshmen. I am into the tough love. Once, at the inner-city school of my teaching youth, I saw a teacher interrupt a student bragging that they had never once got a whoopin’ with a roll of the eyes, a point of the finger and a “see that’s your problem.” And it was. Not the lack of corporal punishment at home, but certainly the lack of boundaries.

I remember when my dad used to spank me. I would, in his words, get my back up about something and there was nothing else left to do. I don’t remember the spankings, but I do remember when he would come back into my bedroom after I had calmed down. He would cry too. “I’m really sorry I had to do that,” he would explain, “but people who hit people go to jail.” It is the parents job to teach that. Both of my girls have inherited my penchant for the tantrum. I know how hard it is to enforce those boundaries and I pray that the love is as evident in me as it was in my dad. Even when I was getting punished I never doubted his love for me. That love was tough for both of us.

The Bible has a lot to say about tough love but not like we talk about it.

²⁷ “But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸ bless those who curse you, pray for those who ^[o]mistreat you.

I am 14 and I don’t like her. She is rich, popular, blonde, and mean. Looking back I wonder if I was just a little too sensitive. I may be still working on that. I was comfortable in the group of gifted kids who I joined in the fourth grade and I am unsure of why they added some to this eighth grade English class, but there she is. She is mean and I don’t like her. She makes me feel even more insecure than I already am.

I go to a conference where they tell me to choose three people to pray for every day. The speaker tells me to pick my enemy. I pick her. I write the three names down, hers included in blue paint marker on orange construction paper. I put Jesus fish in the corners. I hang it on the inside of the hoosier cabinet that was once my changing table and now holds my sweaters. I pray those names on and off for the entirety of my high school career.

4 years later, second semester senior year we are lab partners. I still don’t know how it happened. She has her varsity letter in track, some sort of sprint. I have mine in speech and marching band. She admits to me as we are dissecting worms, that she is a little jealous of the easy camaraderie of the nerd-gang I run with. She longs for the safety of my friendships. My friends seem to actually like each other. We strike up an unlikely if not close friendship. I find myself genuinely rooting for her, a little sad we weren’t better friends.

²⁹ Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your ^[p]coat, do not withhold your ^[q]shirt from him either.

I am driving through town distracted. I took the baby to the doctor in the morning and we are supposed to drive to Orlando in the morning. We are headed to the perpetually necessary pre-trip Target run and I am making the list in my head. I don’t see the pedestrian and her two kids waiting patiently at the cross walk. The law says I should stop, and I do. But a little too close to the line.

“You’re supposed to stop!” she yells at me from the street, a little hand clasped in each one of hers. She is right, but her anger stings. I am doing the best I can. That just isn’t very good right now. I take a deep breath and roll down my window. “M’am” I call, “You are right. I should have stopped.” I mean to say I am sorry, but her eye roll cuts me off. I feel like I have been smacked all over again. Tears spring to my eyes. From the back seat I hear a very serious voice, “Mommy,” the peanut tells me eyebrows furrowed, “that’s not you business.” Out of the mouths of babes indeed. I continue on.

³⁰ Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back.

I know I am not supposed to keep score, but my estimation is that I am way ahead. I am still waiting on the loan to be returned and trying not to be mad when I find out that I am eating ramen while she is dining out. I am furious. That money belongs to me. I would have told you that our friendship was worth more than a couple hundred bucks. I would have been wrong. It never recovered. A decade later I am not even positive we are Facebook friends. I wonder for the first time what part of the rift do I own.

The Bible has a lot to say about love, how tough it is. Turn the other cheek, give what is taken, forgiveness multiplied. But lately, when hearing about tough love, those aren’t the things we say.

I read about the Rolling Jubilee the other day. Essentially the Occupy Wall Street people are taking advantage of the fact that fancy financial people buy and sell debt for pennies on the dollar in order to make a profit and are raising money to buy debt at this rock bottom price, and then forgiving it.

This news from the twitter-verse left me equal parts excited, and sad. I think the idea is brilliant. $25 buys $500 in debt and they are going to change people’s lives forever. This is awesome. But I couldn’t help being sad. Why had the church not thought of this sooner? Aren’t we supposed to be in charge of the Jubilee? Isn’t Jesus described as the ultimate Jubilee? Isn’t buying people’s debt and then forgiving it forever the most obvious metaphor for the cross we have?

Somehow I think people would like getting a note in the mail explaining to them that the debt they thought they would die under has been permanently forgiven and an explanation of how much greater Jesus’ gift to them is a little better than receiving a tract in place of a tip at the end of a Sunday shift.

I spent much of my teen years learning about how to be “counter-cultural for Christ.” One of the only times I was disrespectful to a teacher was when I was “defending Genesis.” The only time a teacher held me after class was when I did not think abstinence had been adequately represented as a viable birth control option in my health class and I said as much. (It wasn’t and I think I was right, but still that isn’t the point.) What a fool I was. What a fool I was taught to be.

I’ve been taught that as the bride of Christ, the church must stand out from the world, we must make sure that the differences are stark. But that isn’t what the Bible says about it. The Bible says that the church is different than the world, like red is different from blue and sea is different from land. When doing what it is called to do the church is different because the world has no interest in being that radical. Radically gracious, radically giving, radically forgiven, the world doesn’t want in on all that self-sacrifice.

When I was learning about the ways to defend my faith and wearing my “Heaven Yes, Hell No” t-shirt to school, we used to sing a song adapted from a psalm.

Ain’t no rock, gonna stand in my place. As long as I’m alive I’ll glorify His holy name.

Psalm 118 tells us that the rocks and the trees will cry out if we don’t and sometimes I wonder if that isn’t true for more than just praising the name of Jesus. Debt forgiveness, orphan care, taking care of the least of these. These things are the legacy of the church, what the church was originally known for.

In college I was a registered libertarian. I thought that the government should get the heck out of social welfare. That was the churches job. Now, I suppose I am a theoretical libertarian. I just don’t trust it in practice. I don’t trust the church to step up.

I worry that the church gave its legacy away, traded the chance to care for the least of these for the opportunity to explain why Biblical principals are superior. Neglected defending the defenseless for being right. We have spent generations praying “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” and never once have we corporately attempted to forgive debts.

If rocks and trees cry out when we neglect to praise our God, does the Lord hand out pieces of the churches legacy? Does He find ways for his face to be shown, even when we aren’t showing it? Because there is a secular group rolling out a Jubilee, and I am sad that the people who believe in the ultimate Jubilee didn’t think of it first.

Accidental Communion.

I recently started reading the blog of Preston Yancey. He always gives me something to think about. Sometimes his theological musings put words to the practical I have been trying to wrap my heart around. He hosts a series called Conversations with Myself. So I had one, a conversation with myself. And here it is.

I step into the cabin I know she will be. She is alone, sleeping. This is what happens when a teen with a middle-aged ladies disease goes to church camp. She needed a nap in the middle of the day and she is about to sleep through dinner.  It is her sister that will come get her.

I am not worried about waking her. I remember that furious and deep sleep her body used to fall into. She has just completed her first year of high school, had her heart broken truly for someone very trivial, had her first kiss in the high school gym during the homecoming dance. She has been serious about God for three years already.

Abby, I call softly. Abby honey, I need to talk to you for a minute. She blinks at me slowly, trying to discern the time of day. I sound exactly like her mother, and look almost the same too. I had forgotten how confusing a deep sleep like that could be. She looks at me and blinks two long slow blinks. She rubs her eyes and scrunches up her face so that her tears leak behind her dry contact lenses.

“You aren’t….” She catches her breath. There is enough youth left in her longing to believe in the mystery of making this possible.

“I know,” I assure her. “I think it is really weird too.”

She sits up quickly. “What do you need to tell me? Is everything okay?”

I smile at her and wonder if there were ever a day where I would not ask that. “Yes love, everything is okay. It is more than okay. We are good. I just came here to tell you that you are enough.”

She looks at me questioning. It is only now that I look deeply into her face. Her big brown eyes are so steady and bold. “Enough for what?” She does not have to speak the rest of her wondering aloud. What things are coming? What might she not be enough for? Surely this means something grand, something BIG is in her future. She knows that she is set apart. At twelve she heard God speak to her.

“Just that you are enough, right as you are. In the great, the trying, the working on it. I need you to remember that you are enough, even when things don’t go the way we thought they would, it isn’t because you aren’t good enough.”

“So that thing God told me about my voice…….”

“You heard him all right. It just isn’t going to pan out the way we thought it would. That doesn’t make it any less true.” I get up to go and she almost lets me. I hear her big breath, and the question she is almost too afraid to ask.

“Will I ever be healed?”

Her tears spill over as she looks at me fearfully. She asks the question even when she is afraid to hear the answer. She is braver than I am. I take her worn broken body into my arms as I sit back down next to her on the bottom bunk. I know that my chest feels just like the comfort of her mother’s. My two girls have shaped it so.

I let her cry the fear, and the weariness into me as I rock her. I know how much she values honesty.   I take a deep breath and, holding her head to my chest, I say to her, “It is going to get better, and then it is going to get much, much worse, and if there were any way to save you from it, I would. I promise you.”  I whisper, “Not a single second of suffering will be wasted. God will count every tear, and He will be there through this and in this, and you will know Him because of this pain. It isn’t as soon as you want and it isn’t in a way you expect, but eventually, by the time you look like this, God will have healed you, set you free.”

She pulls away to look at me and nod. It is not what she wants to hear, but she accepts it. “Go back to sleep,” I tell her. “Your sister will be here in a moment.”

I decide to sneak off to the vespers spot and hope I don’t interrupt any couples who were looking for a place to be alone. I want to sit on the bench once more, the place where I first heard God speak so clearly. There was less static then.

I am staring at the cross and the altar, remembering what it feels like to be a teenager in love with Jesus, when I hear someone come up behind me.

“I thought I might find you here.”

I turn around to the sound. She sounds and looks so much like my mother. She smiles knowingly. She knows there is enough youth left in me longing to believe in the mystery of making this possible. “I know,”  she laughs. “I think it is really weird too. But…” she shrugs, “here I am.”

I can’t help myself, the worry springs from my lips. “Is everything okay?” She gives me a sad smile. I return it. “We don’t ever break that habit, huh?”

She laughs again. “No, but we learn to embrace it.”

“The girls?” I ask.

“Still the loves of my life.”

She knows I need to still hear the answer spoken aloud. “Everything is okay. It is more than okay. We are good. I just came here to tell you that you are enough.”

All the breath escapes from my lungs and I look up at her, now standing in front of me, knowingly. It is only now I look deeply into her face. I find the lines around her mouth strangely beautiful. Her eyes are lighter, warm and familiar. She knows that I have spent the last two years wondering if I was good enough, deeply afraid that when the time came, I would not be. Afraid that the time had come and gone, and I was already not enough, so I was already passed over. I hope that I am still set apart, that the voice I know I heard is still good.

She stands me up in front of the altar of my youth. “Abby, you are enough. I promise. He has made you enough.”

I stand trembling before her, my future self. “I want so badly to believe that is true,” I whisper to her, head down, ashamed of the ways I have not yet embraced the truth I freely dispense.

“This is our life’s great work,” she tells me, looking earnestly into my face. “Learning to love yourself as Christ loves you.” I nod my head and we both sit down on the smooth wooden benches, silent in the weight of that truth.

Emboldened by my younger self, and weary from the battle I have waged this school year I look straight ahead and say, “So….. the depression; will I ever be healed?”

She takes my scared and weeping head to her chest. It feels just like my mother’s. I wonder how many babies have shaped this comfort.  She says the answer out loud as I recite it silently to myself. “It is going to get better, and it is going to get worse, and if there were anyway to save you from it, I would. I promise you,” she whispers. “Not a single second of suffering will be wasted. God will count every tear, and He will be there through this and in this, and you will know Him because of this pain. And it won’t be as soon as you want and it won’t be in a way you expect, but eventually, God will heal you, set you free.”

We sit there for a minute breathing together, staring at the cross. Simultaneously we stand up and walk out together. I stop half way down the aisle. “The twins…,” I gasp, “the ones that God promised me.”

She raises her eyebrows.

“I did here from God.” I answer.

She smiles.

“It will not pan out the way I thought it would.” I continue.

She nods.

Together we finish, “that doesn’t make it any less true.”