Law as mirror

The real reason to dress modestly is not to smother another's lust, which is impossible, but to cover one's own pride. That's why the notion makes ladies angry.  

Name it and claim it

I spent the first seventeen years of my life meeting only three people with my name. Then in my first week at Seward I met about 35 other Rebekahs and Rebeccas, in addition to a huge surplus of Rachels and Sarahs. Apparently the matriarchs were the baby girl names to be had among families with a heavy investment in LCMS culture from 1975-1985.

I bring this up because if families with a heavy investment in LCMS culture are still sending their kids to Concordias 10 years from now, I think the places will be overrun by Anastasias, Marys, Evangelines, and Lilys.

A is A

Thinking is not praying.

Caring is not praying.

Rejoicing is not praying. 

Marveling is not praying. 

Loving is not praying. 

Worrying is not praying.

Crying is not praying.

Only praying is praying.

Trumpet needed

A friend was telling me about the disapproving glances she gets from certain older women at her church whenever her kids get a bit rambunctious in the pew. She exclaimed, I don’t want to be one of those old ladies—the fussy frowny type! I want to be the wise kind, the kind that just rolls with everything, the kind that has deep joy. She paused, and then she added, But I’m afraid—do I really want to go through what it takes to get there?

                                            

That, in my humble opinion, is an entirely reasonable fear.

Once upon a time, I thought (or perhaps merely hoped) that simply having a statistically above-average number of children would be a sort of automatic piety-booster for me, a jump-start to personal sanctification. I mean, how could I spend most of my waking (and some of my would-be-sleeping) hours tending to the pressing needs of others, and not end up less selfish for it? Well…quite easily, actually. Rebekah touched on the topic in this ye olde (but goode) poste.

The terrible truth that I understand more fully than I care to admit is that I can all too easily feel this crowd of children pushing me, not toward a more pious dependence on the giver and sustainer of life, not toward a life of selfless good deeds, but toward the Other Edge instead.

I should have known better, even all those years ago. Doing what has to be done, simply because it has to be done, is not a magic formula for personal piety. If I’m not careful, in fact, the hodgepodge of daily duties combined with periodic crises (of childrearing and of life in general) becomes the perfect recipe for resentment and even despair. And too often, I’m not careful.  

Yet I’m afraid—do I really want to go through what it takes to get there? goes even deeper than  the constant war that must be waged against crankiness. It goes down deep, to the basement closet of a mother-heart—the door that we daily hurry past, shuddering, never opening because we’re ashamed of the horrid things that lurk there. I’m afraid—what would happen to our family if we got another kid like the complicated one (to say nothing of the potential for more complicated complications)? I’m afraid—because after a miscarriage, there’s no such thing, ever again, as a blithely-contemplated possibility of pregnancy. I’m afraid—because as my children grow, I realize anew just how little control I have over Outcomes. I’m afraid—because I go through long dark stretches where it seems like every day, my head sinks just a bit lower under the waves, and how many times can I reasonably expect to add more ballast and go under and yet come up again? 

I’m afraid—because I forget that what it takes to get there is, after all, never anything more or less than the cross. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. Perfected for all time—safe in the Shepherd’s hand; while yet being sanctified—treading this via dolorosa. To wish for an easier way is only human; even our Lord himself did mention it wistfully once.The answer, however, remains the same.

What it takes to get there may prove to be every miserable thing in that basement closet of mine. And more. But through it all, I will yet remember to sing, even shout, that greatest of triumphant rallying cries: Killed all the day long--More than conquerors!

Find me a trumpet, someone; I’m going to learn to blast out that anthem til the quivering closet slitheries cower and realize the pitiful limits of their wretched reach.

Martha, Martha, even more than last time.

Hate writing about this; hate saying I can't stop myself.

We had a rotten fall here this past year. We lost two beloved sisters in Christ. Both losses were suffocatingly difficult, although in different ways. Both sisters had cancer.

As the day was surely drawing nigh for each, and with cruel proximity to each other, I found myself begging our Lord with even greater than usual fervor that He would come with clouds descending; that Bonnie and Jen would be raised from their sickbeds and gaze with us on His glorious scars.

Why? Why did I keep praying this? I was embarrassed to admit the answer. I didn't want either of them to die. O death, where is thy sting? And yet, 

at some point it is realized or admitted that a sick person just can't get well outside of extremely miraculous intervention. Anyone who has seen someone travel this awful road knows that although God can certainly bring about any miracle, He has made no such promise. In the absence of the miracle, the main thing we want for the suffering person is peace in Christ, comfort, and freedom from pain. Though we pray for the miracle, we must also pray as those who know that miracle is not promised.

I didn't want my sisters to have to die. I did not want them to pass into that black and stinking maw. I wanted the ultimate Deus ex machina for them and all of us.

"Lord, if you hadst been here, my brother had not died."

"Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world. "

Awkward

Explaining to someone, "I don't like your friend because she's so uncharitable." :P

Laetare. Mom's orders.

I, for all practical purposes, do not have a mother church. The church where I grew up is no longer a place where I can go on Easter to sing "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" with each verse rising a half-step to a thundering, golden finale of impossible height. It breaks my heart, for there is a sense in which there is no church like one's home church. I want that glorious Easter back. It's not just that I personally can't get there. It doesn't exist.

That's not good, but it has helped me understand the obvious fact that part of growing up is being able to leave Mom. I have to be able to love someone else's pie if I'm ever going to be happy eating pie again. Is my stubborn insistence that only my mom can make a good pie worth never enjoying ANY pie? Of course I will always love my own dear Mom's own dear pie, but she would be the first to tell me I was an idiot to mope every time someone else's dear mom put a piece of pie in front of me. The truth is, lots of moms are really good at making pie. Mom would also be completely disgusted with me if I didn't know it was beyond rude to mope if someone is kind enough to make a pie and give me a piece, even if it's not the world's best pie.

So as I approach another Laetare feeling a bit orphanish, I am glad that the place that was my mother church was not really my mother. I haven't even had my real mother's pie yet. One parish is not the Church. One building is not Jerusalem. One hymn is not the Song. One pastor is not the Shepherd. Each little Easter, wherever I happen to be for it, brings me closer in every way to the big one. God grant me the grace to receive what I am given, however modest, with thanks and rejoicing.

Invoke a bit

A Christian lives his days with Christ and in contemplation of Him.

His days pass in remembering the sufferings of Jesus. When the clock strikes eleven, he knows that the bells are ringing in the noon hour of his Redeemer, when thick darkness overshadowed him. In the afternoon at three o'clock, he breathes a grateful prayer of joy, for the Lord has finished. Every stroke of the clock calls upon him to consider what Christ did and suffered in that hour.

Seed-Grains of Prayer, Wilhelm Loehe

Infelix ego

Maybe you've heard I'm a legalist. I know I have. It's an easy term to use: simply throw it at anyone who does or defends something you can't see doing or defending. Lutherans say Baptists are because they won't drink. Baptists say Lutherans are because they say you have to confess your sins to a pastor and be absolved. Everybody's got a prooftext.

Well, my accusers are right. I am a legalist, as my college roommate could tell you (no, the other one). She'd start with my dish towel dogmas, and she'd probably end, like many other people, with my Pharisaical insistence that the church's catholic and historic teaching on [insert your horsey hob here] is right.

But they're also wrong, because what I am more than anything is a vile and perverse sinner. Seriously, I am BAD. I love evil things. My conscience is in charge of the nastiest, most stinking hunk of rotting flesh in creation. The poor dear is in way over her head. So the best she can do is hold up a three-inch leash and say, "You! You're on this! You can't run away!"

O darkest woe, my teeth are sharp. I take every opportunity to chew through that thing. The Gospel is a joke to me. I am not a tragic victim of illness and sadness and pain and death. I made those things happen. I looked at suffering and cruelty and the ruination of all that is good and holy and said, Yes, I wish to cause that, where do I sign? I'm a hardened criminal, I'm a psychopath, I'm Barabbas. And best of all, I don't think I'm that bad. I'd choose them again if you gave me a chance. I chose them all day yesterday and my history of recidivism is, you know, unreassuring.

I know why Psalm 119 is out there. Please let me delight myself in thy statutes. Make me upright and good, because I am SO NOT. Make me so I won't trample on your Gospel, spit and mock and tell you to prophesy who hit you.

Here's the takeaway lesson: first, that nothing on earth is below me; and second, that there is not a thing on earth to which I am entitled. Ten solid years (and counting) of waxing, waning, and diapering? Yeah, not that bad, considering. Taking time for me? Well, did Barabbas deserve time for Barabbas?

No, but he got it anyway. He got it as a gift, not as a right.

I don't expect anyone who isn't a psychopath to get this. Just thank God that you aren't me and spare yourself the trouble of commenting. You can't help me, only Jesus can. And that is why (DV) I will have ashes on my head by the end of this day and why I will abstain and such for the next six weeks and why my life looks the way it looks. Not because it makes me better. Not as a witnessing tool. Not because it makes me a member of some club. Not because my husband does. But because if you could know my heart, "you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls," and, meine Gott, I need Jesus to save me. All those laughably paltry "legalisms" help me know and feel how much I need him to save me, because there is nothing I love more than thinking that I am the poor, pitiable  victim and not the abhorrent, damnable perp.

My body is lazy. It needs resistance. My soul is putrescent. It needs purgation. My life is forfeit. I need Jesus.

"I want to believe."

I will hope

As a certain husband of mine has had occasion to remind me, there is a difference between Hard and Hopeless.

Are God’s promises true? Of course that husband is right. Hope is always ours, objectively. And yet, and yet... As I have had occasion to remind a certain husband, things can sure get to feeling Hopeless.

Hard is when one knows the right path, and must press through the wearying chances and changes along the way. Hard is when Mom has to be cool and consistent in disciplining, in discipling, when the infraction is egregious and repeated and what she really really desperately needs is a nap, or just five minutes with no one clamoring about her knees. Hard is when everyone’s fighting and crying and the baby won’t nap and there’s nothing in the freezer for supper. Hard is when everyone’s sick but the laundry still has to be done and someone has to get to the pharmacy and the grocery store. That is Hard, and every person who’s found her way here can supply a zillion everyday examples. (Every day is a large part of why Hard is Hard.)

Hopeless is when everything has been tried, repeatedly, and nothing seems to be working—even accounting for the long-range perspective of results in this grand childrearing project not being immediate. Hopeless is when one can’t seem to get the household, the education, the discipline, into anything resembling functional order, and not for lack of trying. Hopeless is when it seems that solutions simply don’t exist, no matter how much effort is expended. From Hopeless, Hard looks easy (though it is not). Hard is Hard, but solutions can be found and applied, through gritted teeth and various degrees of travailing.

There are many roads to Hopeless, and I’ve been down a couple of them myself. I daresay that most of us have traveled at least partway there, however briefly, at some point. What do you do when you are gifted with a Challenging Child? What do you do when all the crises—health, family, church—crash in at once? When you try to squash the sadness and the lostness into a corner of your throat because you feel like there’s no point in talk-treading over and over the same ground, when there are no new solutions in sight? When it gets to the point that you dread going to bed because there’s no peace in sleep, only—at best—a temporary oblivion overlaid with the crushing burden of having to get up in the morning and face everything all over again?

More’s the victory for the enemy, if he can get us to dread the bright dawn, to believe that its fresh rays can never illumine dark Hopeless. Recognize this attack for what it is, and remember: What do I know, even when I do not feel it? The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 

No, everything may not look brighter in the morning, but “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in Him." It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

So eager am I to depart Hopeless that I forget: It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
So eager am I to deaden the pain, to protect myself from the anguish of Hopeless, that I forget: what is such self-protection, after all, but the hardening of my heart against the only One can rescue me, who even now is at work in my life? For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief—though He cause grief!—he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love. 

The enemy hisses that Hopeless is Reality. That dawn brings only drear. That hardening your heart against hope is your only protection, so shove your feelings back down your gut, because numb is the best you can hope for.

Hearken to a different voice: Today, as you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. Oh! How many rebellions have there been, in this foolish little shriveled-raisin heart of mine! Thrice in short span, the writer to the Hebrews echoes this exhortation, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” Today, today, today—this very moment! Thrice-repudiated is the insidious accusation of never and too little and too late. Even amid the darkness, this is the moment of grace—of the shockingly free grace whose dreadfully priceless purchase makes all the difference, now and forevermore, between Hard and Hopeless.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Though he slay me with blessings beyond what I can bear, I will hope in Him.

Humans

I know I've read Are Women Human? by Dorothy Sayers, but I don't own it and Google suffices to turn up the generally favored bits. Dorothy is obviously much more gifted than I in such matters, but now I can't remember if her essays contained what I think is simplest answer to her quasi-rhetorical question: it is certain that women are human because Jesus is a man. The saving of our fallen race did not require sex-specific incarnations, much less experiences. Male and female he created them, male and female he redeemed them. "That which he has not assumed he has not healed," and he himself has said, "Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague."

Strong enough to be gentle

I attended Concordia-Seward while Pastor Greg Mech (now of Joplin, Mo.) was chaplain. Once in chapel he told the story of bringing home their second baby. The older child was very young and wanted to hold the baby. "He wasn't strong enough to be gentle," said the chaplain, so he took the older child in his lap first, then took the baby and held them both together.

Strong enough to be gentle, that is a rarity. The mother who snaps, the sister who snipes, the daughter who gripes, the yokefellow who knifes, the wife who torpedoes, the pot-shotter and the grenade-lobber and the bulldozer (I speak, I think it is obvious, of myself)--she is weak. She cannot control her anger, envy, cruelty, or malice.

But the fruit of the Spirit is gentleness. Cunning, tyranny, provocation, humiliation, and wounding are works of the weak flesh. The one who is able to be gentle, whose words turn away wrath rather than being drawn into it or inflaming it, is the one whom He hath made mighty, and stronger than the strong.

Verily, verily

Babies are a syntactically backwards race. They remember the last word of a familiar phrase or sentence and that word comes to function as a sort of synecdoche for the whole meaning. A small child's Lord's Prayer sounds like: "Father. Heaven. Name. Come. Done. Heaven. Bread." Etc. But a very small child's prayer is always, actually and effectively, "Amen."

Book, recommended

If you haven’t already read Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts, I think you might want to—if for no other reason than because, as she says in the afterword, “Every breath’s a battle between grudgery and gratitude and we must keep thanks on the lips so we can sip from the holy grail of joy.”

My curiosity about all the Thousand Gifts buzz was fueled when a friend of similar lifestyle and sound literary taste recommended it, overcoming my initial (and totally uninformed) skepticism that this would be the latest chick-sensation in feel-good pop psycholo-theology.

I hereby publicly repent of those suspicions. The first three pages cured me of any fears that One Thousand Gifts would be a “count your blessings and be grateful for what you have, dear,” kind of book. So what kind of book is it? It’s a theology-of-the-cross kind of book, in the skin-life of laundry, of mother-love and loss: “That suffering nourishes grace, and pain and joy are arteries of the same heart—and mourning and dancing are but movements in His unfinished symphony of beauty. Can I believe the gospel, that God is patiently transfiguring all the notes of my life into the song of His Son?” (100).

It’s been awhile now since I finished the book, and I’m still gnawing on it. I had to read it slowly, chewing all the while. Voskamp quotes everyone from Augustine to C.S. Lewis to G.K Chesterton to Annie Dilliard to Teresa of Avila… Her writing is lovely, lyrical, even haunting at times as she writes her way through the life that becomes her book (or is it vice versa?).

I’ve only hopped over to her blog a few times as yet (that trip is worth it for her photos alone). I’m not really a joiner, but I will admit that I’ve started my own List—and it’s made a difference in my life. Because there is deep truth in what Voskamp writes: “All gratitude is ultimately gratitude for Christ, all remembering a remembrance of Him. For in Him all things were created, are sustained, have their being. Thus Christ is all there is to give thanks for; Christ is all there is to remember. To know how we count on God, we count graces, but ultimately there is really only One” (155).

Yes, I think you might want to read this book.

Ex corde

I recently received as a gift a very old copy of H. J. Wotherspoon's Kyrie Eleison, A Manual of Private Prayers, copyright 1904. This is not a Lutheran prayerbook. I think Mr. Wotherspoon was Presbyterian? Yes, I think so. However, I have found his little book to be of great value as an annex to the beautiful, deeply Scriptural prayers found in Starck's prayer book, and in Loehe's. 

For instance, consider this, from Wotherspoon: 

Most merciful God, who hast wonderfully made the tie of parent and child in the likeness of Thine own Divine Fatherhood: I beseech Thee for help in regard to those whom Thou hast given me. Enable me so to be with them that it may be possible for them to obey Thy commandment, and to honour fatherhood in me. Give me a wise spirit of rule, and them a holy spirit of obedience. Make me just as well as kind, patient as well as strong. Teach me to understand them, that I may teach them, and to love them in Christ as well as with natural affection. 

Save me from dealing with them as if they were mine for pleasure. Save me from injustice to their ignorance, from cruelty to their weakness, from impatience with their faults. Save me from slothfulness to teach them, and from selfish unwillingness to correct their errors. Save me from growing worldly for them. I fear the temptation to seek their advantage as I would not have sought my own. Help me to trust Thee in what concerns them, as I have trusted Thee for myself. And may Thy Holy Spirit incline their hearts to good: to obey what is right, and to believe what is true, and to see what is excellent. For without Thee I can do nothing. 

O God, be merciful to me in them, and suffer not that my sins rise up to judge me, or my faults to rebuke me, in these the offspring of my body and my soul. For Thy pity which is in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

For an ePub or Kindle-ready version of Kyrie Eleison, see here. 

Thou shalt not, and why wouldst thou anyway?

A lady of my acquaintance once told me that any time she started thinking she'd be happier with someone else's husband, she just reminded herself that he (whoever the "he" may have been at her moment of temptation) left his dirty socks all over the place.

Get you a pastor

OK, here's something I'm going to get full-on preachy about. Every human needs a pastor. Theology professors need pastors. Sextons need pastors. Pastors' kids need pastors. Pastors' in-laws need pastors. Pastors' widowed mothers need pastors. Pastors' maiden uncles need pastors. Pastors need pastors. Popes--they who believe, teach, and confess themselves to be the Vicars of Christ on earth by divine right!--need and have pastors. See where I'm going with this?

That's right, the pastor's wife needs a pastor. For all the boo-hooing spent on this pseudo-conundrum, I am mystified that the totally obvious provision our Lord normingly and our Confessions normedly make for it is endlessly overlooked. Which is to say, "And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." What? No special asterisk here for that extra-special person, the pastor's wife? As usual, Bob Dylan said it best: "Everybody must get loosed*" (*or bound).

I have not set out to say here that the pastor's wife's husband cannot be her pastor. Most of the time it is he who brings her God's Word of Law and Gospel, baptizes her children, and feeds her from our Lord's Altar. That's fairly straightforward most of the time. The place the pastor/husband thing is most likely to get tricky is the confessional. After all, against whom does the pastor's wife sin most? Whose sins are the second closest to the pastor, and therefore the second easiest and hardest for the pastor to judge?

Even yet I will not say that her husband cannot be her Father Confessor, for the complications I have cited are merely practical. He can be. Sometimes he should be or has to be. Sometimes she asks him to be. But often, he doesn't have to be, and often, this benefits both man and wife. Furthermore, the pastor needs a pastor, and here's where things really start coming together: the pastor and his wife and their kids can have the same pastor. They can go to confession as a family. Although it is still private, it is a pilgrimage of discipline they can make together, a blessed humility they can share, a divine comfort in which they can be united. And when the pastor's family needs someone to meet them at the hospital, to pray for them in their distress, they know whom to call: their dear pastor. Not just the guy at the next closest church or Dad's buddy or the circuit counselor no one else in the family knows. They can call a man who is Father to all of them.

If this doesn't sound right; if a Father Confessor isn't what the pastor's wife is looking for, then she's not looking for a pastor. She's looking for a therapist or a friend or a cheerleader. Any of those may be something she needs, and she would do well to secure them. But she definitely needs an ear to swallow her sins up in death and a voice to breath forgiveness and life into her, whether or not she feels she needs it or is comfortable with it. She definitely needs to make confession and hear her sins absolved, whether or not she perceives that confession will help her with her perceived problems. For her true problem is always sin, and the true cure is always Holy Absolution.

So, pastors' wives, get a pastor. Make sure your kids have a pastor. Your husband also needs a pastor.

Expect only good from God in every situation

During a recent meeting, my Father Confessor made available to me the "Preparation for Confession" questions based on the Ten Commandments. Although such a sophisticated Christian as myself knows her sins well, it had been a while since I'd looked over the questions. Shockingly, I ran into this: Do I expect only good from God in every situation?

Ahem. No. Well, yes, in some very pious, spiritual way. But not when it comes to this rotten afternoon and the grinding noise from the dishwasher and my achin' back. Not when it comes to thinking about what an EPT with two lines would mean (less the immeasurable gift--that old thing). Not when it comes to my fear of something much worse than the normal wear of a pregnancy. Not when it comes to my worldly-wise impulse to quit while I'm ahead, to take my five healthy kids and still functional body and tragedy-free procreative history and run.

So there it was, another sin to confess, another infidelity of which to repent. Expect only good from God in every situation--no matter what has happened to me before, no matter what I've heard about happening to other people, no matter that as a Lutheran of Lutherans I am an excellent theologian of the cross and know better than to think God will conjure me a sparkly pink Panzer if I trust him enough. The theology of the cross does not mean that I should cry all night about the mud pie I'm going to make myself for breakfast. What sick freak eats mud pies when she hasn't even bothered to check the pantry for Cheerios?

Day's end

At the end of the day, I’m never quite sure whether I am depressed by how little, or impressed by how much, I’ve managed to accomplish. Whether I’m down about the mess in the kitchen or congratulating myself on the homemade loaf on the counter, I return again and again to the richness of Starck’s parents’ prayer. Some dark days, some long nights, my weary petitioning gets no farther than “O Lord, Lord, in all my efforts, do Thou perform the most efficient part.”

In no area of my stumbling efforts is this petition—this promise-- more desperate, more crucial, and more comforting than when I consider the End of the Day.

O Lord, Lord, in all my efforts, do Thou perform the most efficient part! Regardless of what has or hasn’t been crossed off the to-do list; even if I get no farther in my devotions-- Satis est, and Soli Deo gloria.

Live liturgically, or else!

Or else you'll be bored. Thanks to Katy for helping us out at her new blog, The Church Year In the Home.