Life Hurts When Your Friends Dine At The Louvre

Life hurts.

There is no way to get around that truth, and yet, how many countless hours do we spend trying to get around it? We cut people out of our lives. We avoid those hard conversations. We do the right things and say the right words trying to ward off some type of karmic debt to the universe that we all know we owe. We try to convince ourselves that if we follow the rules and try to be good the bad things will slide past us, leaving us untouched and unscathed.

For me it was never the big storms that shook me, but rather those small, little goads that seem to make a mockery of all the good you ever tried to do.

Sometimes it doesn’t seem like the battle is worth it, but if you are like me, you keep telling yourself to hang in there, fight the good fight, don’t give up, sorrow may last for a night but joy comes in the morning. So you grit your teeth, take a deep breath, and square your shoulders. You can do this, all you need is to dig a little deeper and everything will be okay.

Then the phone rings – it’s that friend. You know the one who screw up a one car funeral? The one who when given a good, better, and best option will go out of their way to find a bad one?

She’s all bubbly and happy, and you could tell all that from just the “hello”. She breezes by the formalities of polite conversation and you do your best to feign some enthusiasm as your dog vomits on the carpet. Reaching over the pile of past due notices on the kitchen counter, you discover you are out of paper towels and go to search for toilet paper, praying there is some on the house, while cooing one syllable responses only catching half of what she is telling you about her latest adventure.

The kids start screaming over something that sounds apocalyptic, but you are holding on to some desperate hope that it will only rise to Word War III levels. You scrub the vomit, trying to ignore the rage pouring from their bedroom, and manage an, “I’m so happy for you” into the phone.

The resounding sound of someone getting slapped sends you running towards the fray, and you give the kids that mean mama look and point them to opposing corners. Never missing a beat, you smile into the phone, “Isn’t that great?”

“I am going to get off here now. I am having lunch at the Louvre, and the noise is making it hard to hear.” She gushes and as she disconnects you realize what you have just heard…she is on a two month tour of Europe, having an amazing little romance with some French man, and she is having lunch AT THE FREAKING LOUVRE!

The world stops as your mind flashes through each and every bad decision she has made, every time she has been crappy friend, and how she has taken advantage of all your attempts to be a good person. The children notice the change, the freeze in terrified silence, and cringing at what they fear will come.

But you are a good mom, and you offer them a reassuring smile, blink back the tears of frustration and rage you feel forming in your eyes. “Are you two good?” you ask sweetly with just enough of an edge on your voice to let them know there is only one proper answer in this moment. They nod, but never blink.

Deep breath, shoulders squared, and that smile frozen so hard on your face, you feel like it could shatter, you stride to your bedroom close the door with soft deliberateness, lean against it, and slide to the floor. The smile turns to a grimace and you feel the tears splash down angry and hot, while you send vague accusations towards heaven about the unfairness of it all, even as you realize how incredibly petty you are being  - which only makes it all indescribably worse.

Wiping your eyes, a funny smell catches your attention, and you realize that you never dropped the toilet paper you had been using on the dog’s vomit.
I suppose that it wouldn’t seem strange that in that moment none of it seems worth the struggle, but then something amazing happens. There is a little knock at the door, and a timid voice asks, “Mama, are you all right?”

Then you remember why you do it all. It isn’t about you. It is about those little faces watching and wondering how you are going to handle this thing called life. It is about teaching them that life can be lived with integrity and grace. It is about showing them that you can rise above and thrive in the midst of craziness and chaos.  It is about living in such a way that they can see God’s grace and provision in the hard times, and putting action to that abstract thing we call faith. Life hurts and that is a reality that we must prepare them to face, but you can teach them that even in the pain and disappointment of it all they will never have to face it alone – or if you can quiet your heart enough to receive, they will teach you that great and beautiful truth.

My Apologies To A Friend And Brother

My apologies to all my friends who have ever been hurt by the Church.

My apologies to everyone who has believed in false doctrines and teachings that raised your expectations and then dashed them to the ground.

My apologies for a Church that is more concerned about being politically correct, their next building program, or the number of people they can pack in the pews than the people who sat in them.

My apologies for the lies we used to lure you into our buildings, only to tell you later that they were lies and it was not our fault you misunderstood.

My apologies for preachers who sell God’s grace like snake oil or the magic cure for all that ails you only to be trapped in wheelchair, the chemo clinic, or the darkness inside your head.

My apologies for those who blamed you for not having enough faith to receive healing when only you and God know how many times you cried out to him in the night.

My apologies for all the people who surrounded you in prayer when there was an audience and then never picked up the phone to call when no one was around.

My apologies to all of you have had your faith shattered and no one offered to walk through that dark time with you.

My apologies for spineless congregations who never stood up to corrupt leadership, and for the abuses that leadership doled as if it were their divine right.

My apologies for all for all the secrets you felt you had to keep hidden so that you could have friends within the community of faith.

My apologies for the way we have failed to teach the hard lessons of faith so that we might grow through adversity and not be demolished by it.

My apologies for presenting Jesus as weakling with no right to your trust to see you through devastation of this life.

My apologies for not showing you a God big enough to dream great dreams with and to dare great things for.

My apologies for every voice that was silent when protest should have been made.

My apologies for every hand that was closed when it should have been opened to give and to receive.

But most of all, I apologize for those who believed they could not love you when you failed to measure up to their idea of faith, who left you there alone when they should have been by your side – when they promised they would be until life got to real for their faith to weather. And I make one request of you, and that is to remember. Remember the God who loves you, the God who became flesh to suffer for you and to know what the pain of life on this earth truly is so that he you would never be alone in your suffering. He still want you and is waiting for the day that you remember and not all the people who hurt you in his name.

I can't erase all those things in your past, or even the things that you may live with for the rest of your life, but I can promise that I will do my best to never betray your heart as so many others have. I hope you remember, I can't imagine a world, this one or the next, without you.

Hannah - The Story Of A Brazen Woman

The women of the Bible will never cease to fascinate me. Living in a time and culture of total male domination, one would think that only the meek and the docile would be deemed worthy or remembrance, but with few exceptions, we find the women most celebrated to be those whose actions pushed the boundaries of societal constraints and refused to be silent in the face of injustice. One such woman was Hannah of I Samuel chapters one and two.

Too often we read this story at the mercy of our modern conditioning. We fail to see the historical and religious significance of her actions, and as usual present her as a pious soul who meekly turned to God in her hour of need. However, a closer reading of the text coupled with an understanding of the times reveals a bold and daring woman who was not just going to shut up and take what life, or God, had given her.

Her story opens with the introduction of her husband, a man with an impressive family tree, and her inclusion in a family where she was one of two wives. Unlike the second wife, Hannah was barren and like so many women the first wife was catty, constantly rubbing it in Hannah’s face that she was a failure as a woman. Despite this Hannah managed to be her husband’s favorite, meriting special treatment and receiving his feeble (and, oh, so male) attempts at comfort. This is our first tip off that Hannah was something special for in this day a woman’s value was often calculated based on the number of sons she presented to her husband. Love matches were a rarity, and marriage was more of business agreement between families than a romantic venture.

From this stand point it would be easy to say that Hannah was far more blessed than many other women of her time. For not only did her husband keep her as a wife, showing affection and consideration of her situation, he further blessed her with a double portion during the time for sacrifices to made.

To understand the emotional ramifications of what Hannah was experiencing we need to understand that barrenness was not considered a simple medical malfunction. Barrenness was a curse from God, often viewed as a judgement for wrong doing, and as Hannah was the only wife barren the judgement would have been seen as failing on her alone. This would have made her suspect among the other women and possibly held social consequence such as being ostracized and topic of small town gossip. Wrapping our modern minds around what she must have experienced is difficult at best.

The story unfolds as the family celebrates together, eating and drinking, while I can only imagine Hannah watching her husband blessing his children by his other wife and fending off the smug attitude of the other woman vying for her husband’s attention. The pain she must have felt knowing that all those present considered her to be a failure and a shame to their family was probably what pushed her over the edge.

For in verse nine we find that Hannah arose, leaving the festivities behind to go and pray at the Tabernacle.

I want you to really think about this for a moment – a woman, unescorted, goes to the Tabernacle! This is where the men gathered to make plans, to discuss battle strategies, to determine how to govern the people, and to do the bloody work of sacrifice. Women went there, but they went as a family to make the appropriate offerings together with their husbands or fathers. Just making that walk was an exercise in courage.

Or was it something else?

Verse ten literally said she was “marat nefesh” or “bitter of soul” - not the typical attitude we are encouraged to have when seeking an audience with God. But could you blame her? God was the one who opens and closes the womb. He was the cause of her disappointment and pain, and she knew this.

The writer of Samuel records her prayer:
“O LORD of Hosts, if you will look upon the suffering of your maidservant and remember me and not forget the sufferings of your maidservant, and if you will grant your maidservant a male child, I will dedicated him to the LORD for all the days of his life; and no razor shall ever touch his head.”

And with those words, she changed the nature of prayer forever – so much so that we do not even recognize them as radical as this has been the way we have been taught to pray since we were children, but to the fledgling nation of Israel, they are unprecedented.

The first words, the title of LORD of Hosts, had never been uttered until they fall from Hannah’s lips, here was a woman who recognized God’s sovereignty not only in her own life but in all the machinations of the universe.  Her prayer simultaneously exalts God beyond previous words spoken to him while declaring her need and right to be remembered as his handmaiden. The demand and glorification stand at odds with each other, presenting the divine tension between humanity and deity in stark contrast to the humility deemed fitting for a woman. Perhaps it takes one who has experienced such agonies to know that if God is too be great, he must be bigger than any pain we experience, and who knows pain better than one whose hopes and dreams have been ripped to shreds?

The Rabbis call her words insolent even as they laud her example as one who dared to speak their heart to the Creator. So impressive was this bold feat that the prescribed methodology for prayer was modeled not after the patriarchs of the Jewish faith, but upon the heartfelt cries of a woman. Daring to be this impassioned before God was a level of bravery that no man had dared to attempt, the fear and trembling of awe struck wonder had been erased as heartache compelled her to brazenness.

If her story had ended there, she would have been mocked and ridiculed as the drunken woman who dared to defile the sacred environment of the Tabernacle with profanity, but thankfully for us all, it did not. Eli confronts her, scandalized by her hysterics, demanding that she be proper before the Lord and in this holy place. Most women would have been cowed and accepted the harsh rebuke in silence, but not our Hannah!

She fires back him with both barrels, “No, my lord, I am a woman troubled in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for all along I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation.”

Now, read this as a woman who has been wrongfully accused, not as simpering milksop. Take her prompts for the proper tone and voice for her words. Remember that Hebrew is a very limited language in comparison to ours and know that words often have more than one related definition. She isn’t just saying she was slightly vexed. She deliberately chose a word that also means anger. She wasn’t just dealing with anxiety, once again she chose a word that can mean complain, as in legal complaint. She is letting Eli know that she is beyond just hurt she is MAD and with a just cause. Now plug in all that new knowledge and read her reply again.

Go back and read Eli’s response. Does it sound familiar? It reminds me of my husband when he knows that he had better not argue with me because I am going to go psycho crazy on him for even questioning my right to be upset. It’s the cautious pat on the head before hitting the door to avoid the fallout. It’s the placation in an attempt to defuse the ticking time bomb, but Hannah grabs on to it. You can almost hear her skipping away as she says, “Let your servant find favor in your eyes.”

In Hannah we find far more than an abstraction of piety and humility. We find a woman with a voice, a backbone, and fiery spirit who will not be silenced or dismissed. She rejects cultural norms that would threaten to remove her from the provision of her God, and declares that her identity is ultimately found in him and her relationship to him as his servant. She reveals the true object of her faith as her Lord and Creator, not the men who appeared to have authority over her and recognizes God’s sovereignty to act on her behalf and her right to request it – even when it meant rebuking the spiritual leadership of a nation.

Women should read her story not as rebuke to pray silently and in humility, but rather, that we take our requests boldly to our King. We should not see her as proper, because she wasn’t, and should learn when to disregard propriety for the sake of honesty. From her we should draw inspiration to cast aside societal constraints when they stand between us and our need to have the Father act on our behalf, and most of all, we should be reminded that God remembers us and all the things that have wounded our hearts. He is there, waiting in those holy moments to respond with blessings beyond our imagination if we are brave enough to take even bitter souls before his throne in prayer.

Should I Have Been Nice? - An Emily Rant

I am supposed to act like this.

The other day I got a phone call from someone who wanted to comment on my one of my posts. His words were sweet and encouraging, full of praise and support for “dealing with life’s harder issues.” You would think that this sort of thing would make me happy, but the truth is the longer he prattled on the more irritated I became. He explained to me why he never commented, liked or shared any of my writings. He didn’t want to give people the wrong idea about him or that he might be dealing with any of the issues I address in my posts, but he sure did want to bless and encourage me, just not publicly.

I think it was about the eighth time he said, “thank you for being brave enough to take on these issues” that my unruly mouth slipped its leash, and I heard myself say, “I’m glad one of is.” Needless to say, the conversation was soon over.

When I feel like this!

I know. I know. I was more than just a bit rude, and I shouldn’t have been. There were far more tactful ways to deal with what his words were stirring up inside of me. My problem is I usually only remember that after I have spouted off something less than kind. Believe me, I am working on it, but give me a little grace because it is a work in progress. And if I want to be real honest, I will admit that it probably always will be.

I have been thinking about the conversation a lot, wondering why it made me mad and wondering how I could have handled it better. So far this is what I have come up with:

I started dealing with “life’s harder issues” at time when my marriage was imploding. My ex-husband’s addiction to pornography had reached epic levels, leaving him unable to hold down a job as it interfered with his viewing schedule. I had ceased to exist as woman in his eyes and was considered to be just another obstacle between him and what he really desired. The verbal and emotional abuse was escalating to physical and sexual, and death fantasies became my favorite escape – his or mine, I didn’t care.

The great thing about reaching this level is other people’s opinions no longer matter. Societal constraints become nothing more than spider webs to be slapped aside.

So I started asking questions, contradicting statements, and generally being rude. I would be lying if I said I didn’t find a certain amount of entertainment in people’s shock, but the truth is I wasn’t doing it for that. There were so many truths I need to know if I was ever to return to the land of the living as something other than a shell of a person, and even though I thought I was ready to check out of this world there has always been some part of me ready for a fight. And it soon became apparent that I was in the fight of my life.

The funny thing about questions is that if you want to know the answer there is a pretty good chance that half the people you know want to know the same thing, but just haven’t worked up the nerve to say the words out loud.  It didn’t take long before women started approaching me off to the side, with nervous glance to make sure that no one could overhear. They told me about how their husbands used porn, how there had been violence in their homes, how they had been given the same “stay married and pray” advice I had received, and how they felt like there was no one willing to talk about these things because it was all just too uncomfortable in the church setting.

However, it didn’t make everyone happy with me. I learned from a friend that when she started attending the church I was that she had been warned about me. I learned from another friend that it was thought I had drug problem, and I heard from a third that I caused my husband’s addiction to porn because I had emasculated him with my sharp mouth. Christians can be so sweet.

Every day now, I receive emails, text, and messages over social media from women and men who are facing the same issues I did. They have the same questions I asked and they are facing the same stony faced silence or that condescending “we will just pray for you, dear” attitude I got. I hear from people whose faith is being eroded by Christians who are misrepresenting God and how he responds to our problems. I talk to abuse victims who are terrified of the shame and stigma that comes with divorce. I talk to women who are experts at hiding bruises and men who are terrified of losing everything if the truth comes out so they never seek the help they need except through a stranger who happened to write a book.

Guys and gals, I do not have this covered! There is only one of me and so many of you! The conversations are icky and uncomfortable – you try talking to a 70+ year old man about his chronic masturbation problem, I know!  I have been there. You have try having a pastor contact you on how to deal with a woman in his church who has shown up multiple times with a black eye or swollen lip, or answer a 12 year old’s question about anal sex. I do it all the time, but not because I am an expert. The only thing I have going for me is the fact I lived through my hell and came out the other side scrapping for answers.

I get frustrated and angry that we have become so ashamed of this gift of sexuality that God has given us. My blood pressure boils when I hear some pat and cliché answer proffered to someone who is real need, and I get so tired of being shushed by those who are embarrassed to speak truth into other’s lives. God never did that to anyone! He was bold and truthful. Jesus didn’t look at the lepers or the man at the pool, pat their heads and say, “I’ll pray for you.” He acted and he acted in truth and love – and love without truth is no better than a dollar sympathy card.

Pawning off our responsibility to follow in Jesus’ example is crock and a coward’s way out of what we have been called to be. Expecting someone else to deal with the harder issues of life so we can avoid them is laziness, and the next time you feel tempted to avoid a few words that make you uncomfortable, I hope you remember the cross and humiliation washes over you until you choke.

Could I be a little nicer? Should I have been a little nicer to the man on the phone? Maybe, but maybe too many of us are worshipping “nice” when we should have been worshipping God.

Readers' Question: "How Do You Do It?" The Short and Long Answer Of How I Write

“Okay, Em...I have a book that I need to write, and I have had many false starts, always scrapping nearly everything. How do you do it??”

“How would you feel about helping me tell my story? I've been in therapy and I'm ready to share. NOTICE: This pertains to your path of sex Ed.
This also pertains to things I never told you or anyone but it might help someone.”

“Hey you should write my life story. It’s better than syfi.”

I received these three messages in the past week, and far more just like them since I released Scandalous. Since I know that if three are asking, there are far more of you who are wondering the same thing, but just haven’t said the words out loud, so I decided to respond to all in one fell swoop.

Let’s begin with whether or not I will help someone else tell their story – the answer is yes and no.

Yes – I will be more than happy to be a support and encouragement. I will also be thrilled to share with you the tools I used to make my book happen. Depending on the demands on my time, I might even read over what you have written and offer some suggestions.

And this is where the “no” comes in – this is your story not mine, and I currently have twenty of my own books in various stages of completion. They were given to me and I need to honor that gift by taking care of them first. I am not trying to be mean here, but I only have so many hours in a day, and my life is demanding.

Secondly, it’s YOUR story. It was given to you and you need to honor it by investing your time and energy into making it into something that the world can know. Plus, no one, not even me can, can tell your story the way you can. It needs your words, not mine, or will not be your story any longer. If you are truly passionate about sharing it you will find the words because the story will not let you rest until you do.

This leads to the first question – how do you do it?

First off, know that I never thought I would be a writer. I always kinda thought of writing as one of those things that only truly lucky or blessed got to do, and I never envisioned myself as one of those people. It was not until I was twenty seven years old that a teacher approached me with an assignment and asked me, “What have you written?”

I was completely baffled and scared to death that I had botched the entire project. Flustered, I demanded to know what was wrong with the paper he was holding in his hand, but he assured me that I had not done anything wrong. He just wanted to know what I had written for publication because “it’s that good.” I was shocked! No one had ever said that to me before, and I have been writing consistently since I was twelve for my own pleasure and sanity.

It is important that you know this for two reasons:

            1. I have no formal training in writing other than a few composition classes, so my approach                   isn’t textbook. (For instance, I hate outlines and refuse to make one.)

            2. If I can write without formal training, you can too.

So, how do I do it?

The short answer is I write. Every day, I write. I write piles of garbage and stuff you will never see. I write things I burn and things I tear up, and I write some stuff that I am sufficiently unashamed enough to put out there for the world to read.

The long answer is a bit more complicated. (Imagine that.)

I work really hard at thinking like a writer. For me that means that I am always looking for the right words to describe something I see, hear, or experience. It doesn’t mean I always write it down, but I am always playing with the words – always. If I see a pile of leaves, I wonder how many different ways I can describe it so that you will want to find that particular pile and jump in. If I see deer picking her way through my front yard, I am trying to figure out how you can experience the delicate way she lifts those elegant but powerful legs. People in the mall? I am constantly “writing” back stories for them all.

See, the work at the keyboard is only a fraction of what I am doing. The words you read are what made it through the winnowing process. A process that happens a lot as I am driving down the road describing what I see to a very disinterested and patient dog.

And that is another huge part of what I do. I am always talking it out. My furniture knows more about Genesis 1:1, a favorite passage of mine to teach, than most seminary students. I want to know how the words sound out loud. I want to know if they feel right, not just to the eyes but to the ears.

I also have people in my life who are great listeners. I tell them about what I am working on, and they challenge me to defend my views or ask questions concerning points that I need to clarify. An added bonus, I get really excited about my writing projects and sometimes I will blurt out the right phrase in the middle of a conversation. More often than not, it is the surprising stuff that falls out of my mouth that serves as the catalyst from idea to written word.

The biggest obstacles to writing that I have found to be true in my life and confirmed by other would be writers is that obnoxious internal editor we are all born with. He won’t catch a typo or the misuse of a homonym, but he is quick to tell you that everything you have just written is junk. (Mine uses stronger language, but I am trying to be respectful of my audience here.) This means the most useful skill you can learn as a writer is to shut down that mean little guy and keep writing. All first drafts are awful, or at least, you should believe them to be.

Give yourself permission to write junk. Go on and just get it on paper. Are you going to scrap it? Sure, you are, but scrapping it means just that – scrap it, don’t delete it. I have a file on my computer called just that “Scraps” and I keep all those false starts and things that have to be cut often for the sake of brevity there. I have learned it is a gold mine for future ideas, because once you step away from an idea for a while, you often go back to it and find it wasn’t so terrible after all.

Another major thing I do is to surrender to the words. This means that I often have an idea, sentence, or phrase that I cannot quit writing but have no idea where it is going. An example:

“Some stories are too painful to write, but you know that already, don’t you Charles?”

When I wrote that I had two major questions:

            1. What story is that painful?
         
            2. Who in the world is Charles?

So I kept writing just so I could answer those questions, and I am thrilled with where the story is going. Hopefully, you will get to read it soon.

However, just to be honest, Charles and Jaden (the characters of the book) have started becoming unruly and refusing to talk to me at this particular date. Instead of fighting with them, I have put them on hold and went to work on other projects. Sometimes you can’t force a story and you just have to set it aside for a bit. In a month or two, I will go back to what I have written and things will click. In the meantime, I am writing for the blog and bouncing between editing my first novel, writing two pop theology books, a revised edition of Scandalous, and seventeen fictional works.

Bouncing back and forth between tasks keeps me excited because I am always seeing progress, and I always have a reason to feel like I am accomplishing something. And it has the added benefit of letting me get some distance from the story for a better perspective. Not to mention, stories that I have set aside for a while tend to bubble up in my subconscious, often hitting me out of the blue with a great new plot twist or a revelation of something obvious I had missed that now needs to be addressed. I return to them with renewed energy and excitement that makes writing fun.

Nonfiction is a bit trickier. There are so many things you have to get right if you are going to remain true to the message you are trying to convey. These works go much slower for me and I don’t feel as “inspired” when working on them. Here is where that nasty internal editor plays havoc with my emotions and thoughts, but once again, it is a matter of writing in a steady, disciplined way. Don’t get caught up in trying to make it polished, just write and them after a few months break, go back and edit. Books aren’t typically written overnight, they can take years to hammer into shape and that is exactly what it feels like – hammering at an unyielding stone to get all extraneous stuff out while still maintaining the necessary points. But you can’t hammer on what you don’t have, so it is vital you give yourself something to hammer on and that means you keep writing.

Writing nonfiction is the closest I get to breaking my “no outline” rule, but instead of writing an outline (which I would just lose), I write my ideas on a mirror or sticky notes. I write out my sections in no particular order, print them off and then hang them on the wall. This way I can arrange and rearrange at random until I find the configuration that works. If I tried to stick to an outline, instead of writing what appealed to me in the moment, I would get so frustrated I would never finish what I started. Once I get the big chunks written and ordered, I then go back and fill in with my transition pieces so it doesn’t feel like it has been cut and pasted together – which it totally was.

Doing it this way keeps my big ideas in front of me, which I need because anything I can’t see doesn’t exist in my mind (just check my cabinets that need to be organized but I only remember that when I am digging for something for something I need to finish dinner and have no time). Also, it helps me to not be so repetitive, which I am horribly guilty of just check out Scandalous. I could have really cut some pieces of it for that reason, but oh well, too late now and I will fix it in the next edition. This was my first published book, so it was only practice, right?

I know this is starting to sound redundant, but that is what this whole process is – redundancy repeated ad nauseam. Keep in mind that all this is practice, this blog post, my rough drafts, the first editing, all of it practice, and you must give yourself permission to practice your art or you will never get better.

In the arts, there is a horrible myth that you are either born with it or you are not, and it has stopped so many people from even trying. When I was teaching oil painting classes almost everyday someone told me that “I wish I could paint, but I don’t have the skill.” As if they were supposed to wake up magically knowing how hold a palette knife, what reflected light was, or how to properly portray perspective, but with a little encouragement many of these people went on to paint pictures they now display in their homes with pride. Now, I hear the same thing from would-be writers as they fall prey to the same mentality.

The truth is writing takes practice just like any skill and if you are bad when you start, so what? I was, and I really hope Steinbeck was too, or I will just drown in depression because who doesn’t want to right like that? So stop trying to write a Nobel worthy piece, just write!

The good news is like any skill that is practiced writing gets easier with the repetition, and if you go at long enough there will be a day when someone asks you a question and writing out the answer isn’t work, it is like breathing.

If this is helpful, be sure to let me know. If you have further questions, ask those too and I will try to answer. If you have a great writing tip, please, share in the comments! Writers can always use another great idea.

"Jesus" Isn't A Trivia Answer

If you have ever played trivia games, you have probably experienced that one beautiful moment where your opponent stumbles over what you consider to be an elementary question. They fumble and stumble for the answer as that smug smile on your face grows wider and wider, waiting for the chance to crush them with your superior knowledge. Perhaps you even indulge in a taunt or two, throw them a vague hint, or just sit in arrogant silence, all the while glorying in their ignorance, because not only does it feel good to win – it feels amazing to have proof that you are the smartest person in the room.

We live in a world where so much of life is a game. We collect our tokens, we roll the dice, and we play every free pass we get hoping that we win this round. The world is full of winners and losers, and how you define that is by how much you earn, who you know, what you have, and who knows the right answers.

Unfortunately, this is also how many of us approach this thing called faith. Those of us who identify ourselves as Christians have no doubt that we have the answer – his name is Jesus. And even more unfortunately, we have treated this like the ultimate free pass. We win. We know we win, our Bibles tell us so, and so what is the point of anymore questions? Why bother with another go around the board when anyone with any sense can plainly see that we have already won?

But you see there are still questions, valid and necessary questions that need to be answered.

Somewhere along the lines we got confused. We started dividing up this world into winners and losers. We stopped looking at other people as teammates and friends, and we began seeing them as opponents and losers. We started keeping score and feeling smug about our victory. We taunt and even treat others with scorn when they are not as smart as we think we are. And we flat out despise anyone who dares to ask another question, because we are convinced they should just accept the answer we have to offer.

And this means that we stop asking questions. We stop seeking answers and understanding, hiding behind our free pass and using Jesus as our favorite excuse to remain in ignorance.

After all, questions can become rather risky. They threaten to expose how little we do know and if our identity is wrapped up having the right answer the very fabric of who we believe we are just might come unraveled if someone asks the wrong thing. People have this unnerving tendency to ask about things we don’t like to think about like sex, heartbreak, death, poverty, and where was God when my world fell apart? And they won’t accept “Jesus” as an answer. They want more.

They want to hear how Jesus became real to you. They want to know how he showed up when your life was in shambles. They want to know what he said when you asked that difficult question in your life. They want see if you are really know what you are talking about or are you just spouting off something you read on a cheat sheet.

And if we got honest – I mean down and dirty, scary honest – that is exactly what most of us are doing. We don't ask why we think he is the right answer. We just know that someone told us that he is, and by accepting it, we hoped that we could bypass all those awful and terrifying questions that world poses to us each day.

The thing is relationships don’t work that way. You don’t get to just pull out a free pass and say I won. You can’t do with people, and you can’t do it with Jesus. He has no interest in simply being your “get out of hell free” card.  He want you to know him and he wants others to know him through you. And how do you get to know someone? It’s when you have the guts to work through the questions together, when you trust someone so deeply that you can take them all the doubts and fears of this world with the assurance that you have someone at your side who will never leave. It is when you can freely ask him the hard questions about all the things no one wants to think about knowing that he will guide you to a true answer, not a cliché.

True faith grows through the questions, not through avoiding them, and as we seek the answers that strengthen our faith, we learn that questions keep us humble and in awe of our Lord. We learn humility in our being while still being able to claim victory in his. We stop seeing people as winners and losers, and learn to appreciate the questions of others as a valuable part of their journey to faith.

A Defense For Scandalous Conversations - Ruth

Ever wonder how dirty were those feet?

Of all the things that Christians like, apart from Veggie Tales and pastel home décor, our absolute favorite thing in the world is a clear cut good guy – or gal, as is the case for the story of Ruth. We like simple and uncomplicated Biblical figures that we can point to as models morality and piousness, and ones without any messy parts to dodge in our flannel graph presentations of the Bible. For years, Ruth has filled the bill. Her story is sweet, simple and without all the blood, sex, and violence found in so many other passages of the Old Testament. This uncomplicated tale of humility, loyalty, and hard work has made her the ideal heroine for our daughters to learn how to be the proper Christian woman – or is it?

Too often it seems the first step in making the Bible proper enough to be shared in church is to edit out all the humanity. We don’t really want men and woman of flesh and blood. What we want are spiritual giants who manage to rise above the demands and pitfalls of mere humanity. It is easier that way and has the added bonus of not raising too many uncomfortable questions or possibly causing someone to see those all too human moments recorded in the Bible as appropriate. Most certainly we have done this with the men of the Bible, brushing by David’s murder of Uriah, glossing over Samson’s love of prostitutes, Noah’s affinity for wine, and Job’s tendencies to whine, but even bigger victims of this need for perfection are the women of the Bible. There are many, but today, let’s just consider Ruth.

To say that Ruth is a deep text with layers of subtext is an understatement, the foreshadowing of Jesus, humanity's need for a kinsmen redeemer, the famine in the House of Bread (Bethlehem), and arrival of a child whose descendants will sit upon the throne of Israel! We could get lost in this book for weeks and still have barely scratched the surface, but I am going to skip all that and jump to chapter 3. As always, grab your Bible and check me.

In chapter two, we have already been introduced to a very bold side of Ruth – oh, you missed that? Blame the flannel graphs. Ruth is gleaning, but she isn’t just following after the paid workers, she is up among the sheaves, a place she had no business being as she was essentially a beggar. This little fact was included for a reason, we needed to know that Ruth is no shrinking violet. She knows what she wants and she not afraid to ask for it, and that is going to be important in chapter three.

Definitely not a flower for Ruth

(I am tempted to break off this point and discuss how we have completely ignored how bold Ruth is so that we can glean a lesson of humility that would teach our girls their proper places in the Christian community and how easily we manipulate the Scriptures to support our personal agendas, but I am trying to stay on point.)

Now, Naomi is not a patient woman nor is she the type of gal who leaves things to fate, or God for that matter, and she decides that while Boaz’s favor towards Ruth is all fine and dandy, it needs a nudge in the right direction. And she knows what it takes to get a man’s attention – smell good, look nice, wait until his belly is full, and put yourself in place where he can’t ignore you…and if he happens to be a little drunk, so much the better. (Which he was, verse seven, “and his heart was merry.”)

Ruth did exactly what Naomi told her to do, and I don’t think we recognize just how scandalous all of this was. First off, we have an attractive woman going to meet a rich man alone, at night, after he’s been drinking, and she is going to uncover his feet………his feet, hmm.

Boys and girls, pause for a moment and try to consider this scene, not as one in a sacred text, but simply as a story of a man and woman. Don’t try to make them holy, spiritual giants, just let them be people for a moment. Don’t try to be too spiritual yourself, just be a human being for second and consider just the facts that have been presented.

Having a hard time with that? Consider these passages: Isaiah 7:20, does your Bible say “hair of the feet”? Is this man a hobbit or could it be referring to some other bodily hair? Ezekiel 16:20, that little phrase “offering yourself” literally reads in Hebrew as “spreading your feet.” II Samuel 11:8, says “wash your feet” but in verse 11, Uriah lets us know that he knew exactly what David meant. And while clean feet is a good start, Uriah seems to have no difficulty grasping that a little more attention to personal hygiene was being suggested. Exodus 4:25, ever wonder what circumcision has to do with Moses’ feet?

I could go on, but I think you are beginning to catch my drift. If you aren’t, go to your nearest teenager and ask them to explain it to you. They won’t miss it.

Boaz wakes up, startled by Ruth’s presence, and Ruth takes it to whole new level. She makes a gutsy move that would make any good Christian woman blush, “Spread your robe over your servant, for you are my redeemer.”

Now, we have softened this and made it pretty. Ruth is asking for his protection, right? Maybe not, there is reason to think she is asking for little more. Turn with me now to Ezekiel 16:6-14, pay special attention to verse 8. Is there any doubt that this is a description of a sexual encounter? The words are almost identical and there is no reason to believe that they mean something different in Ruth than they do here. Ruth was asking for protection, but was also making it plain that she wanted him to see her as more than hardworking field hand. She wanted him to see her as desirable woman.

And evidently he did, because after he get done praising God for her advances and explaining the legalities of their situation, he tells her to stay the night (verse 13).

The chapter ends with wily Naomi resting confidently in her knowledge of men. She had deliberately sent Ruth to arouse Boaz from his slumber, both literally and figuratively, knowing the power of a beautiful woman to inspire a man to action.

Now, I would be remiss if I did not note that there is strong resistance to this reading of Ruth. Many people flat out reject it as implausible, that godly men and women would never do anything sexually inappropriate, but a quick perusal of the Old Testament shows a number of holes in that argument. Others claim that only the perverse would see such a thing in the text as it is not specifically stated that Ruth and Boaz had sex.

And maybe, they didn’t. We may never know for certain, and that is not what is important. What is important is the fact that we cannot deny the sexual tension both in action and speech. Whether or not they had sex is beside the point, because there is no way to explain away the fact that that Ruth’s deeds were inappropriate and could have ended with her being labeled a harlot. Boaz could have publicly renounced her, a foreigner of a scorned country, who had dared to be lewd – where would that have left her? It was a risk and a big one.

What I love about considering this passage with its sexuality intact is what it teaches us about Ruth, as a woman and how she inhabits her sexuality. She is not afraid of her body and she is not afraid to take a risk to claim all the promises of protection that offered to her in this covenant land. Should she have done it? Probably not, God was more than capable of getting a message to Boaz, but the Bible isn’t big on recording what should have happened and offers stories of what did happen.

And what a message of hope here for women who have made mistakes with their sexuality, who have abused it for advancement and gain. All it takes to return to community is a Redeemer, and we aren’t having to wait for a man to complete all the legal steps, we have him - in the person of Jesus, we have him! He is ours, all we have to do is ask that he spread his robe over us and he will do it. No hesitation, no reluctance, or fear to do so because he has done it so many times past and he wants to do it again so that we have a chance to participate in his plan of salvation to the world, just like Ruth, but we miss this message when we deny the people of the Bible their humanity, their sexuality, and even their mistakes.

So let's start sharing their stories with all the elements intact. Let's stop trying to edit God's words as if we knew better than  what should and should not be communicated to the world. He gave us a great gift with his honesty, and we should be sharing it with the honor and integrity it deserves.