He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.

The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”

John 11:32 – When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

What do you do when the sky itself turns against you?

You spent your childhood naming those clouds. (That one looks like a dog, Mama. Or, Look, a turtle with a telephone!) You’ve lazed in the damp evening grass at night, and the whole thing was so big and beautiful, spread with stars you could never count.

What do you do when, all at once, it screws itself up into Category 4 Tornado? When it betrays you with its fierceness, its indiscriminate violence?

The wind whips itself into something terrible, and it comes, and it breaks apart everything you’ve built, believed, loved. And what are you supposed to do?

*

In the morning dark, I’m looking through the photos of the Oklahoma tornado, like everyone else in America: the twisted steel, the overturned cars, that desolate pile of rubble that was once an elementary school.

Today I was going to write about Dane’s 4^th birthday. It was Thursday, and it was beautiful.

He is the last birthday in our little cluster of friends. He has waited patiently through three other parties for his turn, helping me finally decide on a frog-and-lizard birthday party, hearing over and over of every toy he sees, “Let’s wait and see what you get for your birthday.”

And then it was here, and when the kids in our Mommy-and-Me class sang “Happy Birthday” to him, he sat there like a sparkler, grinning and blazing. When they were done, he said, Thank you! And it was so damn sweet and sincere that I almost burst into tears, because when does that end?

When do we stop believing that people mean it? When do we stop counting down the days, running to the end of the driveway, waving to our friends who are pulling in: Welcome to my birthday party! I’m so glad you are here!

When do we stop believing that life is worth being celebrated?

And maybe it’s a slow crumbling, over time. Our soaring expectations are left unmet, and the people we love let us down. We start to learn, slowly, that living in this broken world is painful – sometimes for no good reason at all.

Or maybe it happens all at once when the sky comes violently down. Maybe our innocence and joy is pulled out from under us like a rug on a day that we don’t see coming.

You grow up, and you find yourself in a world that’s more questions than answers, and it feels like nothing will ever be okay again.

*

In the mornings, I sit at this chair, turned toward the big window, waiting for words, waiting for God.

I was here the morning after the theatre shooting in Colorado and the morning after Hurricane Sandy. On the mornings after Sandy Hook I forced myself to look at the photos of each of those children, weeping and saying their names out loud in the silence. For myself. For their Mamas. Saying it all to a God who often feels so far away from it all.

On the morning after the Boston Marathon shooting, I thought a lot about my sister and her husband, there at the race just a few hours before. About how close we all are to tragedy. I stared at a picture from the factory collapse in Bangladesh, a couple frozen in a dust-covered embrace, and none of it is okay.

These are the moments before the whirlwind of articles. The “Open Letters,” the petitions for gun control or better safety policies, the calls to action. In the early morning moments after a tragedy, there is only the photographs and the bare facts, stripped of detail, uniting and separating us at once.

And if you pay attention to these early morning moments, the questions are always the same. Always, Why? And Where were you God?

And all the canned answers will be right in their own way. Yes, God is in the rubble. Yes, God is in the hallways, covering those babies like a Mama Bird. He is in it too, dirt-streaked and weeping. He knows every name, every lost bit of it, every broken heart bleeding out in pain.

But also, he is the God who speaks to storms, who rebukes winds. He is powerful enough to stop all this, and sometimes he doesn’t. Tragedy comes, and it seems like he’s taking his sweet time showing up, and you can’t shake the feeling that if he had just Been There, this would all be different.

And there’s no rushing through that. These question, they matters, and it’s okay if it makes you doubt. It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay, even, to wonder if this whole thing is real at all.

In the end, I think that the clichés are more damaging to faith than the hard questions. And if we keep just putting band-aids and quick-fix phrases over top the whole thing, we’ll never really heal. There will always be doubt festering like an infection beneath, unspoken questions that we are too afraid to ask.

*

It is early morning, and my boy is four. He is sleeping upstairs, sprawled across his bottom bunk, clutching his bear. My baby is two, drinking juice, his thumb poked through the corner of his crocheted blanket.

I am sitting in the same chair I always sit in, and I’m trying to hold it all: My own children, safe and warm. Others lost in the rubble. A God who I feel here in the quiet. A God who did not stop the tornado, did not stop the gunmen or the bombers or that factory from falling in.

He is the one who always Saves but sometimes does not save. The one calls himself Our Refuge but sometimes does not protect that which we love the most.

And these are not questions that can be quickly sorted out in a 20 minute sermon or a fortune-cookie phrase. They are the ones that you have to breathe alone in the silence. They are the questions that force you to press into this whole faith thing harder or to turn away altogether.

In the morning quiet, people I don’t know are picking through the rubble of their lives, and I am drinking coffee, and we are all holding still, waiting for answers. Waiting for The Answer to make himself known, clear like the sun, warm like love.

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I’m over at my dear friend Micha Boyett’s place today for her beautiful series “One Good Phrase.” I love the idea of this — that you don’t have to have All The Answers when it comes to parenting. Just a couple of really good phrases that you say over and over again.

(When you go over there, read some of the older posts in the series. It’s a wealth of great ideas, and I’ve shamelessly stolen many of them over the past few months.)

I was a little hesitant to contribute because I don’t feel like I have a lot of good phrases. Mostly I say things like, Mommy is getting frustrated, followed by, Mommy is getting angry right now, followed by MOMMY IS LOSING HER EVER-LOVING MIND!

I wish I were kidding.

But the phrase I wrote about — God is here – has been important to me as I navigate the tricky landscape of faith with my kids — my own fragmented one, their new-growing ones.

I hope you’ll hop over and read it. Here’s how it starts:

By the time I was my son’s age, I knew about Moses and the Red Sea, and I knew about David and Goliath and that infamous sling shot. At four, I knew that Father Abraham had many sons – many sons had Father Abraham.

It was the late eighties, and the Christian culture was becoming its own new thing, exploding with a thousand new products to help teach your kids about God: Music. Books. Coloring books.  A television channel with its own set of Bible-based animations. Cassette tapes that played Bible lessons as I fell asleep.

Outside, the world was unstable and quaking with tragedy and violence, but suddenly, there was an “inside,” and it glowed soft with the light of God, and this is where I lived my preschool years… (Read the rest here.)

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You don’t have to read through your Bible in a year. You don’t have to keep a journal or attend the all-church prayer meeting or help in the nursery two Sundays a month.

There is no continuum of holiness here. You can’t be “more” of a Christian, or “less” of a Christian.

There are no faith giants or super-heroes. There are no perfect Christians, and no one has it entirely all together. In the end, we’re just a hundred thousand beating hearts, torn and broken and made perfect by his Love.

You take grace like a garment, and it’s not like putting on a Girl Scouts vest. There are no patches to earn. Nothing to add.

You take it, and it is a clean white t-shirt. It requires no embellishment, no accessories, no scarves. You don’t have to dress it up or upcycle it or tie-dye it in the backyard. It is enough, all by itself, to cover your shame, your fear, your cold.

You don’t have to like Christian music or read Christian fiction or answer all the questions in your fill-in-the-blank Bible study.

You don’t have to eat organically or buy fair trade or go on mission trips to the other end of the world. You don’t have to sponsor a child in Ecuador.

You don’t have to listen to sermons on your ipod or read the “right” blogs or support the “right” political candidates. You don’t need a Jesus fish sticker on your car.

If you pray, do it because your heart is drawn to the heart of God. But there is no script here. No magic words. You don’t have to get up in the early morning and kneel on the floor. This is not a formula, and you cannot pray yourself into God’s good graces.

Listen, you are already there.

This is the only place in your whole world where there are no expectations; this is the one person you cannot disappoint. There is no test. God is not waiting for you to do some certain thing or to say some particular combination of words to give you Good Things.

Get up and pray if you can, because there is something here for you in this quiet. But if you can’t — if you are bone-tired, if you push the snooze button again this morning — you are not less beloved. There is no great, cosmic head-shaking going on in the sky.

God is as near as your sheets pulled up around you.

He is covering you with the quiet of his love.

You step into the Light, and then you are there, and you can’t darken it with your failure. You can’t diminish it with your disobedience or diffuse it with your doubt.

If you never read another Bible verse in your whole life, you will be loved just as endlessly, just as wildly, just as inexhaustibly.

If you never find your way back to church, if you never join another Bible study, if you never sing another worship chorus…you are still enough. Because he is Enough. Because nothing can separate us from the love of God – not even our own broken hearts.

There might be a time when you feel led forward out of your own cynicism or your own fear, and Lord, I hope you go.

But maybe you don’t. Maybe you take the long way around. Maybe you get on a boat headed in the other direction. Even still, you can’t outrun His love and grace. It is bigger than the sky, closer than your ragged breath.

And what I’m trying to say is that this is not some cosmic equation – good behavior + prayer = God’s love or God’s blessing or God’s presence.

In the end, the Gospel story is a shattering of all the formulas. It is a God who walks through the dirt, whose Love is big enough to cover the broken, empty places of the whole wide world. Whose Goodness is strong enough to cover our failures.

It is a God who died to make us enough and who defeated death to give us Life, and you don’t have to be good. You just have to step into it.

The day breaks, and it is grace, and you can’t earn it at all.

You are already here.

Stand in the middle of it and look up.

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I counted 93 commenters when I excluded Dave and I. (Literally. I wrote all of your names down on my grocery list notepad to make sure I didn’t miss anyone. I’m sure there’s a plugin for that but I don’t have the technical savvy to figure it out.)

And the Random Generator of Awesomeness has spoken. The winner is Number 85 – Abi! Congratulations! Expect an email from me soon!

If you didn’t win, I’d still urge you to go pick up a copy of this beautiful workbook from Seedbed.

If you’re doing it with a group, there are bulk discounts that you can take advantage of over there as well. It’s such a great alternative for those of us who have done the fill-in-the-blank stuff too many times and just need something different.

I’d like to leave you with this beautiful thought from the book.

” [...] To come close to saying what can’t be said or being what we can’t fully be, we have to choose to set aside time to meet this becoming, to respond to God’s incarnate invitation of full awareness. We need solitude in a world that wants to visit, quiet from a world that wants idle chit-chat, and steadfastness in a world where everything’s changing and transient. We need time to gather the little pieces of ourselves that scatter. We need time to write down our little lives.

The good news: your life is already poemia — a living breathing work of words. So with a little time and practice each day your bit of energy will become worship you make, not worship made for you. [...] You can best worship God by accepting your words and giving them life, by owning them, and then giving them back; or, as Romans 12:1 says, to present them as part of your reasonable sacrifice — offering your words as part of offering yourself.”

May you find solitude, quiet and so much beauty this weekend.

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We had been in China for a year teaching English. The town we lived in was far enough away from the Big City to make our foreign faces new and jarring to the local community.

Wherever I walked, people gawked or took pictures or grabbed my grocery list to examine my sloppy cursive.

It was an entire year of halting small talk in broken, simple phrases – a strange cocktail party where I was both dignitary and circus performer. Always talking, never connecting. Unable to disappear but never really seen at that soul level that I craved.

The whole thing had left me a little gray-tinged and hollow.

But we were back in the country now, new to town, still unpacking the boxes in our cute one-bedroom apartment.

We were starting over, starting out, and I felt a little bit like if I could just get to the right church, everything would be okay.

I’d been lonely like this before, after all. Once upon a time, I’d walked into the church youth group alone and awkward and 13 years old, and they’d taken me straight in. This kind of instant love leaves a mark, subtle and powerful, and you find yourself searching subconsciously for that kind of belonging all the rest of your days.

*

We go to the little white church for the first time one sunny fall morning, and the light streaks in as we stand there singing and then turn to greet our neighbors.

We say hello and smile. People shake our hands warmly but do not ask our names.

The room quiets, and a woman comes to the front to tell a bit of her story. A little pre-sermon thought. An anecdote. An antidote.

It’s a story about loneliness and friendship. It’s the story of how she and her husband struggled so mightily to connect at church, how they joined things, how they “plugged in,” how they never seemed to be able to cultivate the friendships they really wanted.

I don’t remember the details of her story. But I remember the conclusion. The metaphor. The epiphany.

“What I discovered,” she says, “is that people are like Lego blocks. Some of us have lots of connector spots, and some of us are those little square ones with only four spots, and it’s not personal. You just only have a certain amount of space for friendship.”

The whole place seems to be nodding in tandem, and she says, “I discovered that people weren’t intentionally trying to exclude me. It’s just that all their Lego connector spots were full.”

And of course, it made all the sense in the world.

But I was lonely. I was waiting for the church people to take us straight in like they did all those years before. I needed love and belonging and an invitation to lunch.

But they were Lego blocks filled up, connected and connecting, already built into what they wanted to be.

*

I’ve always been an introvert. From my earliest childhood, I was a one-best-friend kind of person…which I suppose makes me even worse than one of those four-pronged square Legos. I’m like a Lego dot.

I am acutely aware of my own limitations when it comes to friendship and connection. Too many dinner/coffee/drinks dates in a row, and I get crabby and claustrophobic. Too many toddlers up in my business, and I turn into Wacko Yelling Mom.

I believe that God did not build us to be BFFs with every person to cross our paths. We are limited. We are meant to be limited.

And yet, at the heart of the gospel is this idea of more than enough – more than enough love to cover our hate, more than enough grace to cover our brokenness, more than enough Light to dispel our darkness.

There is a story in the Bible about a boy who gives what he has – a couple of fish, a few loaves of bread. And Jesus takes it and blesses it, and somehow, it feeds a whole hungry crowd of five thousand.

What is clearly not enough becomes enough. Becomes more than enough.

And I think about this when I think about relationships and church and plugging in. When I think about the lonely ones who are in between homes. Who are in transition, who are looking for their people, who are not sure they’ll ever find them.

If we believe we are Lego blocks, plastic and unyielding with no spaces available, we will end up living that way.

We’ll exclude one another unintentionally; we’ll live blind to the need around us, to the new face that appears and disappears before we can ever learn a name. We become cliquey and ingrown and sharp at the edges.

We can’t be everything to everyone. But we will be something to everyone. We can choose to live in the generosity of God’s love or in the poverty of our limitations, and it matters what we choose.

So what if you can’t go out to coffee with her every week?

That’s fine.

Go once. Listen. Ask questions.

Maybe you won’t end up sharing your deepest, darkest secrets with that couple in the lobby, but ask them about their kids. Remember their names. Write them down if you have to.

Look at the prom photos of her grandkids that she carries in her purse. Ask about his job and really listen when he talks about it. These small moments matter too.

In the end, there is a difference between nice and kind, and more and more I am convinced that “community” is not formed by telling everything to everybody but by these simple, strong threads of love.

And it’s both: we are limited, and we are not.

We are not Lego blocks, plastic and immovable. We give the last crust we have and trust God to make it enough.

We grow. We expand. We choose to take each other in.

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It was dark when I drove there and dark when I left, and in between, there was a fill-in-the-blank Bible study on the book of John.

There was homework that we were supposed to be doing. There were small spaces for answering leading questions, all of it meant to guide the reader toward a deeper understanding of the Bible.

Like most studies, it was pragmatic. It was meant to help you learn, and in that learning, to grow stronger in your faith.

But it was my very hardest year. I was in the deep winter of Depression and didn’t know it yet. But what I did know was the answers to questions 1-10 in Chapter 1. After years of Sunday School and AWANA Clubs, after high school Bible study and youth group retreats and four years at Bible College, those questions were so insultingly simple that I resented them.

The questions I was battling through in my own heart during those months had to do with loneliness and sadness and feeling like God was nowhere. Like he had up and left my life.

I tried to write the complex questions in the margins and in the spaces, but there was no room for them. It was a fill-in-the-blank Bible study, and it wasn’t about the questions. It was about finding the exact right answers.

*

Here is what I am not saying. I am not saying that fill-in-the-blank Bible studies are bad. I am not saying that you are simple or stupid if you love them, if they speak to you, if you are being changed by one right now.

We are all in different places of learning and growing, and sometimes that word – the one you write in the small, blank space – is the word you needed to find. The one that will change everything.

What I’m saying is that during that time in my life, it was just not doing it for me, and maybe you’re there.

Maybe you’re desperately trying to interact with God or with your faith community, but it all feels dried out and stale – a very old crust instead of Bread of Life.

*

I met Dave Harrity at the Festival of Faith and Writing last April. We’d connected online a bit, but at the conference, he handed me a postcard about his forthcoming book.

I wanted it to be available immediately, right then, because it is the book I needed so desperately that very hard winter.

It’s the one I need now.

In his introduction, he describes Making Manifest as a “28-day devotional book grounded in the acts of writing, creativity, imagination, solitude, and community building, all designed to help you ‘re-vision’ the way you understand and interact with the kingdom of God.”

It’s a totally different kind of “devotional” – a workbook filled with meditations and writing prompts. It asks that you make space for quiet. It asks that you write freely and that you pay attention to your life. That you value the words you write in the quiet space of this book, not because they are perfect, but because they are holy.

I’m not all the way through it yet. It’s meant to be a 28-day devotional, but I’m ambling. I’m taking my time with each prompt, feeling my soul get a little wider in the reading and writing.

Making Manifest doesn’t ask you to read large swaths of Scripture. Instead, it incorporates small bits and goes deep into the complex, life-giving truth about who God is. It would have been perfect for my cynical, winter-bare 24-year-old heart. The one that could not take one more fill-in-the-blank study of John. The one that could barely open the Bible without feeling inexplicably angry.

In the back of the book, there are discussion questions, workshops and exercises that allow you to use this book in a group context, and I’d like to start a group at some point. I’d like to try it in community.

I think it’s the kind of book that you can work through again and again and find it entirely different and uniquely beautiful every time.

*

I’m excited about this book because in the end, it was a series of writing prompts that helped me find my way back to God – not in a devotional book, but in grad school. It was hundreds of free-writes that were eventually refined into essays that turned into chapters that turned into the book I’ll publish with Convergent this fall.

But in the beginning, it was just prompts.

Just a notebook and a pen. Just me and the God I couldn’t seem to get to in the traditional, evangelical ways.

And somewhere in all of that messy cursive, something happened: I found him again. Somewhere in all of those imperfect, holy pages, He met me, and I was Found.

*

I’m so excited to have one copy of this beautiful workbook to give away, but really, I think it’s worth every penny. (It’s available from Seedbed here.)

You know the drill – leave a comment (Any comment! No brilliant insights necessary!), and you’ll be entered into the Random Generator of Awesomeness. I’ll announce the winner this Friday (the 10^th).

In the meantime, stop by antler, Dave’s organization that’s committed to helping people engage in creativity as a devotional practice for spiritual formation. These are some seriously cool people bringing something that we desperately need to the faith conversation. Check it out!

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My first instinct here is to say that April was a blur, but it wasn’t really.

It was a pummeling.

It was Big Events (a 2^nd birthday party, a close friend’s bridal shower). It was Big Victories (book contract!) and Big Projects (spring cleaning!) and Big Mistakes (that moment you look away at the wrong moment and rear-end someone at a stop light).

It was a week-long trip to Chicago (and a 6.5 hour drive that actually took us 9), and it was an overnight stop in the Wisconsin Dells.

In April, I took on too many freelancing projects. The line edits for my book were due, along with suggestions for a new title and subtitle. One day I spent 7 hours at Panera while my Mom watched the kids. When I left the manager shook his head at me and smiled and said, “I think you win for the day.”

April was three snowstorms and our first 80 degree day. It was sledding and it was playground sliding and all of it was entirely too much.

Frankly, I’m glad it’s over.

Books:

Here’s the terrible truth: I finished 0 books this April.

ZERO.

I am in the middle of four. I am one chapter away from the end of another. My May book count will be awesome. But this month…yeah. Zero.

Currently Reading: Shauna Niequist’s Bittersweet (a sweet gift from a friend), Terry Tempest Williams’ When Women Were Birds (so beautiful, you guys. Will likely be one of my favorites of the year), and Parenting with Love and Logic (because Age 2 and Almost Age 4. Enough said.)

I got P.D.  James’ Death Comes to Pemberley on CD from the library for the drive to Chicago. It’s a mystery that begins after the close of Pride and Prejudice, and it’s good (so far)…but I underestimated the effect of mixing Austen-ian writing style with the monotony of I-94. It was not a great choice, given the circumstances.

Luckily, I also John Green’s young adult novel Will Grayson, Will Grayson, which is compelling and easy to listen to. But it also makes liberal use of the f-bomb. This doesn’t usually bother me in books, but with the kids right behind me in the minivan bucket seats, it felt a little wrong. So I had to limit my Will Grayson time to the couple of random hours when the kids dozed off.

Music:

Another April fail. I haven’t even had a chance to look for anything new this month…and since it just keeps snowing, I just keep replaying my Winter 2013 playlist on iTunes — that melancholy mish-mash of stuff that I’ve already mostly told you about.

Watching:

Keeping up on Grey’s Anatomy and Vampire Diaries and, of course, Nashville (my favorite!)

Nashville’s erratic new- schedule has me a little worried. They’ll air one new episode, wait several weeks, air another, and so on. This seems to be the death march of new television shows, and I’ll be a little heartbroken if this one doesn’t come back for another season.

Also: Bachelorette starts on May 27, so get ready to see the full extent of my shallowness once again.

Spring Cleaning Week:

I took a week off from the blog in order to clean like a rock star. I always get antsy for organization! Deep cleaning! Purging! at this time of year.

It didn’t go great.

It was on the way home from my big Target cleaning-supply-and-organizational-bin shopping excursion that I rear-ended that SUV. I spent many afternoons that week holed up at the chiropractor, trying to get my whiplash taken care of.

(Related: You haven’t known true humiliation until your children have run into someone else’s exam room — while that person is lying half-clothed on a massage table. Yeah.)

I cleaned the front closet and the bench and at least half of the kitchen cabinets. But while I was dusting the bedroom ceiling fan, one of the blades cracked clean off, and now the whole apparatus looks a little lopsided and sad.

I did do a super-amazing re-do of our playroom. Partly for Liam’s birthday, partly for an excuse to purge toys. Before I started, it looked like this:

I created a “grocery store” in the corner, since that’s their favorite thing to play, and I made a “campsite” in the other corner, since it’s almost summer. It looked pretty sweet.

The kids loved it for about two days and then got bored with it.

As I write this, it’s totally trashed again. Sigh.

I thought that spring cleaning could somehow allow me to get a handle on things. I thought that maybe getting in front of the mess would make me feel like I had everything else under control too. It didn’t. I don’t. So much of life is learning to make peace with that.

A Few Other Things That Happened in April:

1. Liam turned 2. (I wrote about it here.)

2. My kids got to spend a lot of really good time with my parents, their Grandma and Papi. Since my parents live in Chicago, and we live in Minnesota, I’m so aware of how precious these moments are and so thankful for them when they happen.

3. I got to help throw a bridal shower for one of my best friends of all time. On the way there, I realized I’ve known her for 18 years, and then I almost had a coronary, because in my head, I’m still only 23.

The shower was held at a wine bar. I may or may not have spilled an entire glass of red wine down the front of my dress. But we’re not going to talk about that.

4. On the way home from our trip to Chicago, we stopped for a night in the Dells to do one of the smaller water parks with my Mama Friend and her kids. We won’t talk about how many times Liam almost drowned. (OK. Twice. After that, he was stuffed into his floaty thing for the rest of the weekend.)

It was the first time I’ve taken the kids to a hotel by myself. Here’s a question: do you ever stop having those moments where all of the sudden, you feel like such a grown-up?

5. The ducks came back! They started flying in one or two at a time, and I’ve been waiting for them to come back ever since they flew away on Thanksgiving Day.

I know that they ducks are not really everyone’s favorite, but I love them. Our neighbor raises them in his garage, and we’ve spent much of this week trying to coach these four new ducklings into the pond.

Also? We caught our first salamander and our first batch of turtles. Spring is coming. And we are thankful.

On the Blog:

I wrote over at Deeper Story about the misconceptions of an “equally yoked” marriage. It was hard to write…but also really good to write. I think we need more transparency about how hard this whole thing can be. I also wrote about my Christian concert baggage and confessed that I went to see Chris Tomlin with my church.

I finally got to announce my 2-book deal with Convergent, and you guys made my day with all of your excitement, your encouragement and your kind comments. Thank you.

Joining up, as always, with the fabulous Leigh Kramer for the “What I’m Into” linkup.

How about you? Has your April been as insane as mine?

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The Random Number Generator has spoken…and the winner is Comment Number 12, Sarah Shapiro.

I clicked over her blog this morning, and I think it’s entirely appropriate that she won, because she’s a beautiful poet too.

In her most recent post, she said this lovely thing, and I wanted to share it:

God is like poetry, I think. I am not trying to explain it- I do not want to try to comfort myself with religion, but if the mist and friends and poetry count as religion, than maybe I am comforted by God. [Read more here.]

Congratulations Sarah!

*

They say that it will snow here again. Today. Tomorrow.

We’ve had four beautiful days in a row, and the lilac buds are just inching out of the bare branches, and the Minnesotans on Facebook are filled with dread and frustration.

And I know. I know.

But also. If it snows, we will be okay.

I say this without any irony or snark because sometimes you feel like you have finally come out of whatever brittle winter you’ve been in. And then it snows. And it feels like you won’t survive it. Like it’s too much. Like if you go back one more time, you won’t come out.

You will.

Look at the grass, a little greener today than it was yesterday. The water is open, the ducks are out. Every 20-something in Uptown is out in their Spandex, jogging around Lake Calhoun, and spring is winning. It might snow. It might be terrible. But it won’t last.

This is what Christianity is about, really. When we say things like resurrection and born again and new creation, what we’re really trying to say is that Life and Love are winning… even when it doesn’t seem like it.

May you feel God  like poetry today and be comforted.

May you know Him in the unexpected sharp places. In the Mad Season and the Cold Season and on the First Warm Day.

And even in the May 1st snow.

PS: They were right. It is now actually snowing. God help us.

When the first April snowstorm hit, I took disbelieving pictures and posted them on Facebook along with every other person in Minnesota.

There was such a sense of injustice, of needing others to see this snow-crusted abomination. It was one collective, frustrated can-you-believe-this? And status update after status update was all about the snow.

When the second April snowstorm hit, I took zero pictures and I refused to leave the house all day. Instead, we watched PBS and ate animal crackers by the bowlful.

It was snowing last Friday when I drove down to Chicago with my kids, and then it snowed one more time in Minnesota while we were gone. Andrew sent me photo and a desolate text. It’s a good thing we were away. I might not have actually survived the Third April Snowstorm.

In November or January or March, the snow comes, and I am steeled for it. I don’t love the cold season, but I understand that it’s part of it. I live in the Northern Midwest, and that means 10,000 lakes and that special Northwoods kind of beauty. It means the Stone Arch Bridge and wood ducks and lilacs…and a long, mean winter.

But once a teacher told me that March might come in like a lion, but it goes out like a lamb. We colored in Xeroxed copies of umbrellas and memorized that little adage, April showers bring May flowers, and I absorbed it as truth.

And while the “official” First Day of Winter and summer and spring might be marked down in some calendar somewhere, our sense of them is deeper. We know in our gut when one has gone on for too long, when another is too short.

We know that there is something fundamentally wrong about snow in April.

*

Much has been made of “faith seasons.” It’s an analogy that has been so overused that now it teeters on the edge of cliché and anecdote – things that I tend to really hate.

But the snow keeps coming when it ought to be done, and I can’t help thinking that’s exactly how The Mad Season goes.

The nature of Depression is that it keeps up when a normal bout with the Blues would have eased into something warmer, something greener, something lighter.

Doubt and cynicism and anger are a cold wind that keeps on beating against your heart, and I remember the powerlessness of it. I remember that feeling of wanting to get better and not being able to…and it was like being stuck in some endless winter.

Like the whole world is Instagramming barbeques and tree-climbing and new, budding trees, and all you see is snow.

But we have learned to do seasons by the calendar, by the book, and we seem to have little patience for one another’s sprawling Mad Seasons. We are kind and understanding…for a while…and then we get frustrated. Really? Still? And this is where we tend to give up – disappear into our own sunny worlds, closing the doors behind us.

And maybe in some instances these things are self-inflicted. Sometimes it’s a matter of getting the courage to stand up and put on your boots and go for a walk anyway. But sometimes, you can’t. The snow keeps coming, and you are hunkered down in it, and you feel entirely alone.

And either way, we need each other. We need understanding and patience. Kindness and goodness and so much grace.

*

The first warm day comes only four days after that Third Snowstorm. In the span of half a week, we move from boots to sandals, from winter coats to pale toddler tummies bare in the backyard.

The trees are still stripped bare and there are no buds anywhere that I can see. The grass is patchy and snow-burned and sharp.

I’m amazed that it can look so much like winter and so much like spring at the same time. And at the same time, there’s something that feels profoundly true about that to me.

So much of the time, it overlaps. We are healing; we are sick. We are half-dead, coming to life. The sun is shining and the warmth comes like grace, and still, the whole world looks dried out and broken.

The sun is starting to rise now at 5:48, and the ducks are shaking off water at the edge of the pond. And you can see only Spring if you choose to. Or you can see only the remains of Winter. But the truth lies in choosing to see both at the same time.

In the end, all of this takes time. The lightening, the growing, the softening. It will come. It always comes. But there is nothing you can do to hasten the change. You can’t wish it green or force the warmth. It is where it is.

On the first warm day, you sit on the deck, and you are warm and chilled all at once. And, really, all you can do is take someone’s hand. Sit together. Watch for it.

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She was the first person to ever ask me to read and blurb a book and I remember thinking, Are you sure you don’t have me confused with someone else? 

I still think she might have, but I’m glad either way, because her poetry chapbook, what it is is beautiful is so wonderful.

The book is a lot about the beautiful chaos of mothering, and I’m so drawn to writers who can write with honesty and grace about this hard-wonderful-heartbreaking-breathtaking thing that is parenthood. Her poems are so accessible and relatable, and they read like a shot of pure grace.

Sarah’s book goes on Amazon — officially — today, and it’s such a worthwhile read. (Also, it’s a huge bargain. It’s on sale right now for $4.38. I feel compelled to tell you that this is less than a value meal at McDonald’s in Chicago…which I know because I’ve had it twice this week. Oh vacation…)

I also have an opportunity to give away one copy! You know the drill — leave a quick comment below, and you’ll be eligible to win!

The poem below isn’t from what it is is beautiful, but it fits so well with what we talk about here. It felt perfect for this week — a seamless follow-up to Tuesday’s post on the Chris Tomlin concert I attended and that fractured-found middle-place that so many of us find ourselves in.

Take a breath, get another cup of coffee, and read it slowly. That’s the way beautiful poems are meant to be read.

Sunday Morning

We turn off the pavement,
crunch down the gravel drive—
the group of us,
in a range of moods,
together in our car.

We are welcomed in
with a warm squeeze
and a How are you, dear?
while the children are forming
a fast clump—

they whiz past the women
bearing hot dishes
of mac and cheese
or fried chicken,

twirl under the farm arms
of men slugging coffee
from tiny plastic cups,

disappear
out the porch door,
leaving sudden quiet
in their wake—

until the bell clangs
over our low chatter,
and slowly we all begin
to shuffle in
for church:

All people that on earth do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice,

as we find our seats,
clasp a friend’s hand,
and shush the little ones:

Him serve with fear, His praise forth tell,
Come ye before Him and rejoice!

We sit to listen to the holy words;
some of us exhale and yawn,
others, caffeinated, jitter one leg
up and down, up and down—

“The body is a unit,
though it is made up of many parts;
and though all its parts are many,
they form one body.”

We, who now form jagged rows
of builder and soldier,
student and doctor,
all stand to sing:

Let us love our God supremely,
let us love each other, too;

each still feebly grasping
an object of anger,
or shame,
or fear—

let us love and pray
for sinners, till our God makes
all things new.

Sometimes our longing
to be made new
is palpable;
the air beats
with the wanting
as we sing our hearts out
and, from the back, Jay shouts
HALLELUJAH!

“Once you were not a people,
but now you are the people of God;
once you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy.”

We lean into
this remembering—
we are hungry,
but had forgotten:

He will give to all
the faithful
His own self for
heavenly
food.

So we eat up,
of bread and wine,
brownies and sweet tea,
tuna noodle casserole
and catching-up—
on another week gone by,
full of missteps
and small mercies.

And then we go away
to begin the next week,
to do it all over
till all the ransomed
church of God
be saved,
to sin no more.

Be saved to sin no more,
be saved to sin no more,

Till all the ransomed church of God
be saved, to sin no more.

© 2012 Sarah Dunning Park

(So good, right? Buy Sarah’s book here, and enter to win another one by leaving a comment below!)

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