Learning grace

**First published on the Ministry and Motherhood blog on 3/9/16**

As a preacher, I often write the sermons I most need to hear.  But as a mom, I rarely practice what I preach.  My toughest "congregants" are my children, who have the misfortune of having two ordained ministers for parents.  I can joke about the stereotypes of PKs (preachers' kids) and their misbehavior, but I worry that story of the cobbler's children having no shoes might one day apply to us.  

Is it possible that two parents who have devoted their hearts and lives to following Christ may raise children who don't value religion?

In the evangelical church of my childhood, we held tightly to the King James Version promise of Proverbs 22:6-- "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it."  But we are living in a time where church commitment is shifting.  More and more of the college students I serve, even those who profess an active faith, see no need in belonging to a church community or don't make it a priority to find one.  Others have left the church with scars or have been excluded for their sexual identity or beliefs.  As former church employees, my husband and I bear our own bruises and we have left broken churches feeling more broken ourselves.

As we find healing in a different church and tradition, I watch my kids to see how faith is taking root in their lives, how they are growing through worship.  How much do they understand about why we go to church?  How much do they remember about why we left?  Are they even listening?

One of this past Sunday's lectionary passages was on the prodigal son, and it happened to be a week I was scheduled to teach my son's Sunday School class.  The third through fifth graders had a great time acting out the story, particularly relishing the killing of the fatted calf.  They empathized with the older son's anger at the “unfair” treatment his brother received in being rewarded for his foolish behavior, and shared plenty of personal anecdotes of their own. 

Then we shifted to talking about grace.  In this story, the father is gracious to his wasteful son, accepting and loving him, mistakes and all.  He warmly welcomes him back home even though the son had left his father without a second thought. He shows unconditional love and forgiveness, celebrating his beloved child.

As a parent, I long to offer that grace to my children and to myself.  I don't want to hang on to the frustrations and disappointments of our daily battles.  I don't want to judge them for not being who I expect them to be and miss the goodness of who they truly are.  

Instead of measuring out things in terms of what is fair, I want to love them as God loves us, extravagantly and without measure.  I want to embrace them fully as they are, while also encouraging the potential I see in them.  

I was not in this graceful frame of mind when we returned home from church, however.  In my haste to get the kids in bed, I was frustrated and short with them.  My son was quick to reprimand me for not showing the grace I had just been teaching.  It was a powerful lesson that he had heard, but even more, he was learning through my actions.  Likewise, I learned from him and realized how often he shows me grace in my failures.  I see it in his trust that each day is a new beginning. 

“God’s mercies are new every morning.  Great is your faithfulness.”

Part of this journey of grace for me is trusting the work of God in their lives, seen and unseen.  It is having faith in God’s presence that is always with us, wherever we may roam.  Grace shows up in forgiving past hurts and starting each day with a new hope.  Grace is teaching through our words and actions, but ultimately trusting in the power of God’s truth and love to transform all our lives.

I know that it must begin with me.  I pray for God’s grace to transform my anxious heart.  I seek God’s grace in my failings and in helping me to forgive myself and others as I have been forgiven.  May my children see God’s grace in me.

I pray that one day, when we send them out to make their own way in the world, that grace will always guide them back home to find God's love.

A Graceful 2016

*This was originally posted on the A Divine Duet: Ministry and Motherhood blog on January 4, 2016*

‘Tis the season…
to survey (and contemplate cleaning up) all the mess generated by holiday festivities,
to think about getting back to healthier habits (thanks to the holiday festivities),

to remind the kids to be grateful for all the gifts they have received,

and in reality…
to give up on all chores and resolutions and instead binge on Netflix while the kids fight over their gifts.

According to Target, tis the season to prepare for Valentine’s Day and Easter.  As I write this, we are still in Christmastide (following the church calendar), but when I went to the store two days after Christmas in search of a good deal on a tree for next year, the Christmas merchandise had been wiped clean with just a single aisle of reduced price wrapping paper and two shopping carts full of assorted goods.  In the place where the trees once stood were racks of candy for Valentine’s Day and Easter. 

We are nothing if not forward-looking (at least when it comes to consumerism).

I don’t want to rush to February 14^th, though, and overlook the New Year’s holiday as I always appreciate the chance for introspection and reflection.  The problem comes, though, when I’m quick to remember all the negative things and forget about all the good. 

I’m a recovering perfectionist, and the visions of how things “should” be play on an endless loop in my mind.  Advent and Christmas are the “perfect” times for me to confront my obsessive tendencies with how things “ought” to be, but I usually pursue my unrealistic expectations, which more often than not, end in bitterness and disappointment. 

And I wonder why my kids can’t learn to be more grateful.

I preached about grace this Sunday as I tend to speak on what I most need to hear.  In case I wasn’t getting the message, an unfortunate series of events on Saturday night resulted in my computer’s blue screen of death, losing all of my files (including my sermon), and the complete removal of Microsoft Word. 

It was tragic, and yet also a lesson in what is not within my control.  I went back to my text and felt anew the hope of John chapter one:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (vv. 1-5)

It is both humbling and a relief that God is the Word.  It is not my words that make a difference, but I have the privilege to point to the Word, the Logos.  Just as John was a witness to the light, my job is to testify to what I have seen and received.  That takes me to my favorite line:

“From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”  (v. 16)

Grace.  I can’t think of anything I need more in my life. 

My head is full of the deafening noise of judgments, rules, and guilt about what I could have done better as a person, mom, and minister.  And God whispers into the chaos, “Grace”. 

And not just simple grace, but an abundance--grace upon grace.  Surely I have fully received that again and again, and this gift of God is a promise that I can count on receiving forever.

Grace will be my word for 2016. 

I want to share it in my ministry, my speaking, and my writing.  I long to show it more to my family: to my aging mother and grandmother, to my devoted husband, and to the two kids that demand it the most (and yet share it freely with me). 

But first I must receive grace myself.  As I accept my failures and am still able to see myself as God’s beloved, may I be less critical and judgmental with those I love. 

May 2016 be the year of grace and graciousness for all of us.

Grace Upon Grace

Of the many words that could be used to describe me, “graceful” would not be at the top of the list. 

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the most common usage is a way of moving or behaving that is controlled, smooth, and attractive.  This is not my gift.  I have often bemoaned the fact that I didn’t take dance lessons as a child, which surely is to blame for my clumsiness and poor posture.  But perhaps it’s innate as years of (somewhat sporadic) yoga practice and chiropractic visits have not remedied the problem.

I’m also not so good at showing grace (in terms of offering mercy) in my family life.  I’m quick to judge and find fault and can hold on to a small slight for years (just ask my husband).  It is difficult for me to accept things as they are in reality when I have already envisioned how it “should” be in my head.  I’ve held on to scars from spiritual hurts as well.  There’s the church were we worshipped for some time whose tagline “a place of grace” makes me cringe.  I’m still healing from some of the wounds that were inflicted there.

But grace keeps inserting itself into my life.  First it was a friend, a spiritual sister from Jamaica, who I met last summer in my D.Min. cohort.  Grace is not her given name, but is the perfect chosen name for one who is so full of spirit, and so full of God’s hope.  Her words and the way she carries herself are such pictures of God’s favor.  She is a reminder to me to trust in God to be my strength and salvation.

Then there’s the new “member” of our family, an American Girl doll named Grace Thomas, who reminds me of how my daughter is learning this virtue of grace as she navigates her way through relationships and becoming who she was created to be.  While I see dollar signs and more clutter when I look at this Grace, the doll is a companion that my Maryn favors, one that enlivens her imagination and allows her to dream about who she will be.  Maryn loves nothing more than when we are drawing pictures of Grace Thomas together, or creating recipes like the ones that Grace would make in her bakery (sold separately, $500).  Styling the doll’s hair gives us time to sit together and just be, to talk about whatever is on our minds.  That is a grace that I don’t indulge as often as I would like.  

Read more of this post at the A Divine Duet: Ministry and Motherhood blog....

Sacramental Grace

During the church service, my children appeared to be off in their own worlds.  My son was reading a Geronimo Stilton book while my daughter filled out all the pew membership cards with information on the American Girl doll she hopes to receive for Christmas.  Sometimes getting them to sit quietly and still wins the battle over fighting them to pay attention, as I hope that I might take something away from worship for myself.  But as a minister, I often feel guilty that I’m not more intentional about the faith formation of my children. 

We’ve recently joined an Episcopal church, which came as a bit of a surprise for us lifelong Baptists.  But there is something about the liturgy and the evening service of this particular church that drew us in.  I love that communion is the heart of the service and that it takes place weekly (instead of monthly or quarterly like the churches in which I grew up).  And instead of ushers passing golden trays of stale wafers and plastic cups of grape juice to those saved and baptized members of the congregation, in this church we all come forward to receive the elements and share a common cup.  It is open to all, and there is a special joy in watching tiny children toddle up to the priest or stretch out their hands from their perch in a parent’s arms to take a wafer.  There is a welcome in seeing smiling faces as they pass by and in hearing the words of blessing, “The body of Christ”, “The cup of salvation” shared again and again.  The kids want to sit in the front so that they can be first in line, and even though I’m more of a “back row Baptist”, I’m just glad they are eager to be part of the service. 

This week, as we filed back into our pew, Maryn showed me the wafer that she had not yet eaten.  She held it up, broke it, and whispered to me, “The body of Christ,” and I knew that God was there, in that moment, in that bread, in the grace of a child who is learning faith through imitation.  The mystery of faith can’t be any more real than this. 

After the church family shared a meal and the children and adults separated for Christian education programs, I joined other adults back in the sanctuary to talk about the primary meal that connects us as Christians: Eucharist, the Great Thanksgiving.  The priest, who is as new to this church as we are, shared his thoughts on the sacrament of communion, saying that in our gathering around the communion table, we “are given a model of how all other meals should function, as an opportunity of grace.”  I had to smile as he started off saying, “Whether Baptists, Catholics, anything in between, or nothing, we are naturally sacramentalists.”  While I’ve been struggling to reconcile a new conversion of sorts, it was a reminder that it may not be as big of a shift as I make it out to be.  We are all branches of the family of God, and all humans seek meaning in the ordinariness and mysteries of our lives. 

I took notes so I could continue to ruminate on the sacramental theology that was shared by Rev. Eric Long (quotes are reconstructed to the best of my memory and notes):

“In the sacraments, God uses the stuff of life to bless our lives.  God breaks in and shows us the depth and possibility of life.  God gets our attention and offers [God]self.”  I learned that communion is based on the Emmaus story, when Jesus’ disciples are walking on the road to Emmaus after his crucifixion and a man joins them and asks why they are troubled.  They tell him what has happened, not knowing that it is the resurrected Christ that walks with them until they stop to eat and he gives thanks and breaks bread, just as he had done at his last meal with them, when he had told them his body would also be broken for them.  They remembered and they knew him in the breaking of the bread.  Just as my child, who shows little interest in church, still knows Jesus in the breaking of the communion bread.

“God uses the physical to touch and bless us.  This is what we refer to as sacraments.  Jesus is the greatest example…God became a physical being and entered our world, our stories.  He took his body, gave thanks for it, and broke it.  He did not hoard the gift, but shared it with us.  In communion, we literally take Jesus into us, receiving him, and trusting that he will help us to become who God says we are.”  We trust that we can be full in our empty and broken places and that grace can transform us into who we were created to be.  “The act of communion becomes a sacrament only as we join together in community, remembering who we are (not self-made, disjointed individuals, but made one in our baptism).”  In the brokenness of our world reflected in the bad news shared in the media, in the division of hatred and polarization, we are sorely in need of this reminder, this challenge to gather together like a dysfunctional family around the Thanksgiving dinner table.  We may not ever agree, but we can learn to listen to one another as we seek to live together in peace and work together for justice.

On a smaller and more personal level, I couldn’t help but think about how often family meals are a great frustration in our house, yet communion, the model for all meals, is the highlight of the church service for my children.  How can I shift from the stress and frustration of my own expectations and provide space for God to be present and offer grace?  What if in saying grace (when I remember to do so), I actually expected Grace to show up?  What if I invited Jesus to be present and believed that he was with us in the breaking of bread together?

What if I could see all of my struggles, my joys, my daily endeavors (parenthood, career, relationships) as sacraments and give thanks for them, offer them up for God to transform, and give them away instead of holding on tightly in fear? 

What if we treated all of life as a sacrament, an opportunity to let grace enter our lives and transform us? 

This Thanksgiving, I offer thanks for unexpected grace and pray that it continues to show up in beautiful, mysterious, transforming ways.  Come, Lord Jesus.  May it be so.