Tears in Heaven

My great grandmother on my mom's side was a devout Free Will Baptist preacher's wife. I can't speak to what all Free Will Baptists believe, but some of the things my great grandmother held tightly to were her belief that women should not cut their hair because it was their "Crowning Glory" nor should women wear pants or God forbid shorts! (only long dresses). She didn't believe in drinking alcohol, working on Sundays, or owning a television. She was far too complicated (and wonderful) a person to sum up in a few paragraphs, so I'm not even going to try.

What I want you to learn about her was that she got really emotional at church. Long after my great-grandpa had a church where he was the main pastor, he was invited to guest preach for area congregations. And my family would sometimes go to whatever church he happened to be guest preaching at. Side note: Sometimes he'd direct me to bring my portable tape player, complete with the required six D batteries it needed to work, and sing a song or two.

I don't remember ever going to church with my great-grandparents, whether my grandfather was preaching or not, that my grandmother didn't have a wadded up tattered Kleenex in her balled fist. She'd get emotional and start to cry, or shout, or repeat loudly, "Well, praise the lord." If I close my eyes, I can see this scene as clear as anything. I can imagine the way she'd kind of hop back and forth, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, all the while crying and shaking her Kleenex around.

As a little kid, it scared me somewhat. I wasn't really scared that anything bad was going to happen, but maybe anxious from the uncertainty of what she might do. However, it didn't bother me because I knew that even though some of my grandmother's ways were different than our norm, it was all genuine. I'll never believe for one minute that it was put on or contrived, or anything other than authentic. She cried during church because it meant so much to her.

While I was growing up, my parents took my brother and me to a big, traditional First Baptist church. Where ladies that spoke in a southern drawl wore beige suits and matching hats. We sat straight up in the pews and weren't even allowed to draw or play tic-tac-toe on the back of the offering envelopes. I don't remember anybody crying, EVER. Except maybe a random child whose parents opted not to send them to the children's nursery.

The contrast between the church we regularly attended and the churches we attended with my great grandparents was stark. And even though I have always believed in God, I can't say that big emotional outpourings have ever been something I did at church.

My husband and I have been visiting a Lutheran church for about a year. I had no prior experience with Lutherans nor had I ever been to that type of church before this one. We go to the early service, which probably averages about 35-40 attendees. We're two of the youngest people by about 20 years. It's pretty low-key and we sit in the back, but I feel something different than I've ever felt at church. I love the quiet, simplicity of the services. I love the ebb and flow of the liturgy. Many Sundays, I am moved to tears by one small thing or another in the service and find myself trying to control my weeping, because it means so much to me.

Tonight I attended a mid-week Advent service, that started out with soup in the fellowship hall. Sometimes Emmanuel God With Us looks like split pea soup with big hunks of ham in it. I went back for seconds and just pushed the ham to one side, not wanting anyone to feel weird because I'm a vegetarian.

When we got to the sanctuary, the service started with recognizing and singing Happy Birthday to a member in the congregation who just turned 99. The rattle of her oxygen machine was a bit distracting at first, but after a few minutes, it became part of the experience.

At the end, the pastor asked everyone to gather around in a circle at the front for Communion. I stood by the 99 year-old who is deaf and partially blind, waiting to receive our elements. I thought of my great grandmother, who would be 105 years old were she still alive today.

I can't say for sure, but I bet she never attended a Lutheran church service. I don't know how she'd feel about them using real wine or having a lady preacher.

But when the ministers came around with the wafers and the cup, and looked into each person's eyes, saying "This is the body and blood, broken and shed for you," I did the big ole ugly cry, complete with snot dripping from my nose. I think my grandma would have understood that. Now I need to remember my Kleenex the next time.

This is not the end.

Last summer, my husband planted a tree in our yard. My birthday had come around in March and when he asked me what I might like to have as a gift, I asked him for some landscaping. Specifically, a tree. We only have a few trees in our yard as it is, and some of them seem to be on their last leg. Last limb?

So after careful consideration, I chose a fig tree. A beautiful, bushy fig tree with big broad leaves.

We did the research about where was the best place to plant such a tree and watched a bunch of YouTube videos on hole digging and soil prep, planting techniques and fig tree care.

Then, on a sunny day at the beginning of last summer, my husband planted our new tree in the front yard. He bought special organic soil and fertilizer. He painstakingly weeded and applied mulch around the tree. We christened it Miss Figgins and began trying to care for our newest addition.

Summer 2016 was a scorcher in East Tennessee. We experienced a drought that stretched on and on, creating the dry conditions that ultimately helped the November wildfires spread quickly through the Smokies.

All summer long and into fall, my husband and I took turns watering Miss Figgins. We saw her droop and drop a few leaves but through it all I held out hope that she'd make it. We never stopped believing that one day, we'd have a ginormous fig tree in our yard that we planted during the first full summer we lived in our first house together.

A few weeks ago, I was walking around our yard taking inventory of different things. Our handful of buttercups along the back fence had already bloomed and withered, but our monkey grass by the basement door was coming in. As I rounded the corner of our backyard to come up the hill toward the front, I spotted the fig tree. From a distance, it looked brown and small. There were no leaves at all and upon closer inspection, I saw no buds forming either. I broke off the end of a small branch and instead of it being springy and green inside, it was brown and brittle.

I knew right away that Miss Figgins had not survived. Later that night, I broke the news to my husband. He said that he already knew, but was trying to figure out a way to tell me. We both said it was a shame, but life goes on.

Today is Good Friday. My husband had the day off so he decided to mow our yard. After he had finished, we were eating some lunch when he mentioned offhandedly that he had gone ahead and mowed down what was left of the fig tree.

This news hit me square in the feels and out of nowhere I burst into tears. I don't know if it was because of the finality of it or the fact that holidays can sometimes bring deeply buried issues bubbling to the surface. But I wept and wept for Miss Figgins.

Even now as I type this a few hours later, I could still just bawl. I know it's just a tree. It's not really the tree I'm sad about.

Easter is a special day for Christians. It's a day that symbolizes a hope we have in the possibility of new life. And as a believer, I hold firmly to that possibility. It's not just a nice idea, but something that has truly become real to me because of my belief.

But not everything gets to live. Not every relationship gets to thrive, no matter how much painstaking effort we might pour into it. All the tending in the world might not have kept our fig tree alive. There were other conditions and factors totally out of our control that played a big part in her demise. It's a helpless feeling though. And if you've ever felt this way about a person you love or a relationship you treasured, you  know that it's leagues beyond how one might feel about a tree.

Sometimes, no matter how hard we try to keep it away, death still comes. The death of an identity you had always clung to. The death of a relationship you thought completely defined you. The death of an idea or a belief system that you had always marched under the banner of.

Letting go is hard. Admitting defeat even more so. There's part of me that would have enjoyed trying to bring Miss Figgins back. But how long could that have gone on? And how frustrating might it have been? Sometimes we just have to admit that a loss has occurred and try to move pas it.

And in the meantime, those of us who want to can keep holding tight to the belief that death is not always the end, but just a new beginning.

The Sunday Night Blues Club

What is it about Sundays that makes the day start off so great, with so much possibility, and then end with such a feeling of dread? Apparently I'm not alone. One recent study found that more than 75% of the people who responded feel it too. Are you one of them?

I can see how Sundays might hold a certain amount of stress and anxiety for people who hate their job and the idea of returning to it on Monday morning. I happen to really enjoy the work I get to do, so it's not that for me.

There's just something unsettling about Sunday night.

I think some of it has to do with my Sunday experiences from childhood.

Some Sundays were spent with my entire family, gathering for a big meal after church. We'd eat til our bellies were full and then the adults would nap or talk while the kids played. These Sundays didn't fill me with any sort of dread, except that I hated for all the fun to come to an end.

Then there were other Sundays on the weekends I spent with my biological dad. Most of the time, we'd spend Sunday lunch and some of the afternoon with my great grandma, which I enjoyed a lot. But when our visit came to an end, I knew it was only a matter of time before he took me back home, and back to my regular life.

Don't get me wrong...my regular life was good. But sometimes it was tough to try and straddle the fence between both worlds. It was almost like I saw myself as two different people...playing two different parts.

I think that's the toughest thing about divorce. As a kid, you want to feel a certain level of security from your surroundings and part of that comes from having all the people you love most gathered together, interacting. As strange as it sounds, I think it has to do with this feeling that there is strength in numbers. That there are enough people around who love you and won't let anything bad happen to you. Isn't that what family is all about?

Of course this isn't always possible.

I worried a lot as a kid. About a host of different things. Bizarre things. Things you probably wouldn't believe even if I told you.

For example, when I was really little, some teacher in a church Sunday school class told us that one day Jesus would come back to earth to save everyone. And she told us that he'd be riding on a majestic white horse. What's more, he'd be bringing an army of horses with him and when he snatched up all the Christians into the sky, we'd each ride on our own horse back to Heaven.

I don't know about you, but the thought of this scared the $hi# out of me. I had ridden horses before with my grandpa, but not by myself. I didn't even know how to ride a horse by myself across a pasture, let alone ACROSS THE SKY.

So naturally I added this to the top of my list of things to worry about, and spent lots of time and energy being concerned about it.

In many ways, my propensity to worry has helped me get where I am in life. It has driven me to do more, to be better, to achieve things. But I don't always get to enjoy these achievements as much as I'd like because it can feel like I'm always worried about the next thing.

And thus, here I sit, on a Sunday night, feeling those little persistent worries creep in.

I have no idea why I'm sharing any of this malarky. For real. But I guess I was thinking that maybe if someone else out there feels this way, you might realize you aren't alone.

So how do you combat these feelings? I'm sure there are plenty of solutions. I have no idea what might work for you. Here's what helps me:

- Marry a funny guy. Or girl. Or if you opt not to be married, at least choose a partner who can make you laugh. It goes a long way in helping me with feelings of anxiety and the blues.

- Adopt a shelter pet. Or two. My dogs make a huge difference contributing to my feelings of peace and calm. Even the dearly departed ones.

- Find a spiritual community. Maybe this is a church. Or a group of other like-minded folks. It helps to be part of something where you're united in the common good.

- Consider getting some counseling. If you have issues to work through (and don't we all?), having someone to talk to really helps.

If you stumbled on this post, and anything I've written resonates with you, I hope you feel a little bit less alone. And I hope you don't spend any of your precious energy worrying about silly stuff like I have. I mean, here I am, thirty years later, and I still haven't had the chance to ride my sky horse.

Just a Closer Walk with Jesus

I have lived in Knoxville for going on 16 years. For the first five of them I lived on campus while attending the University of Tennessee. Then I moved to a condo just one mile away from campus and stayed there ten more years. Where I used to live, there were lots of trees all around and I hardly ever got a great view of the sky.

Since moving to our house last summer I feel like we have gotten a new taste of our city. This is kind of funny because we only moved about five miles away.

There's a spot where we top a hill as we're driving towards downtown and you can see a wide expanse of the beautiful mountains and the sky. The other morning, my husband and I were headed somewhere pretty early. We came to that spot and were presented with the most beautiful view. The sun was still coming up and the sky was all shades of pink and red and yellow and gold.

And I said to my husband, "This must have been what it looked like on Easter morning because all was right with the world again."

Easter has significance for me for many different reasons. First, because of my faith....believing that we were once without hope, without a future, and knowing that because of Easter our hope is restored. Our peace with God. Our eternal life. Just knowing that everything is going to be okay.

Easter holds other significance for me because it is the day my sweet dog Leon crossed over the Rainbow Bridge. It's really hard to believe that an entire year has passed since he died.

I guess I should give you some back story. My husband is very playful and loves to do all sorts of funny voices. Each dog that we have had has been given its own unique voice that was created by my husband based on what he felt its personality was. My Leon had the sweetest personality, and his "voice" matched him perfectly. I am forever grateful to my husband for bringing that to life.

If this sounds crazy to you, you are not alone. We have started seeing a marriage counselor and when we shared this with him, I immediately sensed that he might have been writing down "whole new level of crazy." 

But the thing about it is, crazy or not, we loved our dog.

And even though a year has passed, sometimes it doesn't feel any easier that he isn't with us. So on those days, when I'm missing him really bad, it helps that my husband can still bring his voice to life.

Okay, so here's where we take things to the next generation level of crazy...in our minds, Leon is in heaven. With Jesus. And we imagine them having all sorts of adventures. Like playing Scrabble, visiting Saturn, and eating pizza together. And in our little wacky world, my husband even does a voice for Jesus that sounds very much like Hank from King of the Hill.

But here's the thing...I thought doing this would help me feel more peace about Leon. But instead, it has helped me feel more peace about Jesus. Not that I ever didn't feel peace about Him, but growing up, seeing him as that long-haired, bearded guy in a robe on the Sunday school lesson, Jesus always seemed like this stranger that I didn't really know.

Picturing him traipsing around heaven with our dog in tow has made him real to me in a new way.

Recently, I thanked my husband for making up this little fantasy because of how it had helped me deal with my grief. He said that it wasn't just a fantasy to him...that he really did believe Leon was with Jesus. And all our other friends and loved ones who have gone on before us.

Heaven is a real place. It's not just something we've created to make ourselves feel better. I know it's real and I know my loved ones are there. And because of Easter, I can one day see them again.

Even though faith is something many of us share, it's also very personal. When I was young, I had a book called "Little Talks Between God & You." It made it seem so easy to talk to God, and now, three decades later, I still see him as someone I can have little talks with.

I don't want God and Jesus to be something I only "experience" in a church building. And I hope you don't think you have to go to a church building to experience them. Sunday, we will celebrate Easter with family at church. And I'm sure I'll be sad because it will mark the anniversary of my boy's passing. But if my husband really believes we'll see him again, playing his trumpet in heaven, I can believe it too.

Competency is not calling.

Have you ever been really good at something? Maybe you've always known you were good. Like it was part of your awareness of who you were from a young age. Or maybe you spent your whole life totally oblivious, until an opportunity came for you to demonstrate a certain task or participate in a hobby and you were like, dang, "I'm really good at that." 

When I was a kid, my dad made me take piano lessons for several years. The problem was I never learned to read music. I didn't practice enough and my teacher totally called me out on it, but when it was time for our quarterly recitals, I memorized my pieces and played them like a champ. To my family who saw me play that big grand piano on the stage of the Bryan Fine Arts Building, I was totally competent. Except I wasn't...it was sort of a sham.

Playing piano was not my calling.

Once this was apparent, my folks let me take voice lessons instead. But things got dangerous when they realized I had a decent singing voice. This would usher in a period of my childhood that I remember as "The family is gathered, and my mom is forcing me to put on a performance for them."

She was a stage mom, minus the stage...unless you count the raised platform of our living room fireplace and my humble boombox, with its six D batteries.

I enjoyed singing to a degree, but I didn't live for it. I wasn't one of those kids who would grow up to be a Lee Ann Rimes or a Taylor Swift (as if you didn't know this). Just like piano, singing would become yet another thing that wasn't my calling.

Except the difference between singing and piano was my singing was pretty good. It's possible people were just being polite, but strangers always paid me nice compliments after each performance and I was invited back to sing for various events (mostly church, but also weddings). And, like I said before, I enjoyed it for awhile.

Then when I didn't really want to do it anymore, it was confusing. I missed the compliments, but not really that much. Singing became something I quit doing for an audience and mainly did only in the car with my best friend, when our favorite Backstreet Boys song came on the radio.

This was probably the first time in my life that I was faced with this fact:

Competency is not the same thing as calling.

On up through high school and even college, I would go on to display competency in all sorts of other things (just not soccer...I was terrible at soccer).

But none of the things I was competent at ever felt like my calling.

What is a calling? The dictionary defines it as "a strong urge toward a particular way of life or career; a vocation." 

I'm much more keen on the first part of the definition than the second. I like thinking of a calling as a strong urge toward a way of life, but when you throw the word 'career' in there, it messes with my head.

See, what if your career isn't exactly your calling? This is particularly hard to make sense of if you are good at your career.

I think some people end up in careers that align with their calling. Maybe you're one of them. But there are also people who just happen to be good at something and end up getting paid to do it. We can't confuse this with calling, because it isn't the same thing.

It's kind of like saying I was good at playing piano because I memorized two songs and could play them with my eyes closed. I was competent, but it wasn't what I was put on earth to do.

That's my personal definition of calling, by the way.

To me, a calling is something you were put here to do. What's more, if you couldn't do it anymore, you would feel like you were dead. It's that life-giving thing that the more you do it, the more you want to do it. And alternatively, if you can't do it or just don't do it, you feel like the life is sucked out of you.

Let's play a game. Fill in the blank below to reveal something you may or may not want to know:

If I couldn't _____________________, I'd feel like the light (and life) inside me was snuffed out. 

Maybe your blank contains your current career or vocation. You're one of the lucky ones.

Or, maybe it's something a bit less specific. No matter what, I totally believe there is a calling for each of us.

But whether or not that calling is directly related to our paycheck, those waters are a bit murkier.

Just don't believe the lie that competency or even quality is the same thing as calling. I mean, it's awesome to have gifts and talents. Be so glad that you do.

But know that being really good at something does not make it your calling. Even if you have found yourself in a position or role that you're getting a lot of praise for or getting paid a nice salary to do it.

Remember It's a Wonderful Life, when George Bailey's little brother Harry went on to become the war hero? You know where I'm going with this. If not for George who saved him from the icy water, Harry would not have gone on to do those brave things. It sounds so cheesy, but there's a hole in the world in the shape of you. We all need what each other has to give. And I think most of the people who are living really joyful, productive lives have figured this out.

God, seeing a need, uniquely, exquisitely created and crafted you, as a way to fill what was missing in the world. And each of the world's needs is different. Some fall under a more practical category. It's not my passion to work in the medical profession, but thank goodness we have doctors and nurses who do have this calling. The ones whose calling it is to get up every day and provide those kinds of services and care to people.

I've never felt called to be a teacher. But I'm so grateful to all the wonderful teachers who have touched my life through the years.

I've never felt called to be in politics, but I'm so glad we have people (although not all of them) who are passionate about changing our world for the better and who will work tirelessly to create policies and laws.

And then the world has other needs, for beautiful things like art and music and incredible delicious foods. Things that can revive our crushed spirits and souls, sometimes at just the moment we think it isn't worth going on anymore.

I think it's so important we find out what our calling is and find ways to pursue it. It doesn't mean that our calling gives us the paycheck we want. But it also doesn't mean that just because it doesn't, we should quit trying to pursue our calling in other ways. Other doesn't have to be lesser. Just different.

This blog gives me a place to work out my calling. If I couldn't write and tell my stories and tell your stories, I'd feel like the light inside me was snuffed out. And when I can do those things, I feel like there's a new life force within. It's like a renewing sense of life that only grows, pushing me to do it more and more and more.

My hope is that one day your calling is what you can spend most of your time doing. And until then, I hope you can feel encouraged that you aren't the only one struggling. You're not the only one wondering what the right answer is. You're not the only one afraid you are missing out on something more.