Costa Rican (new) birds

 

While in Costa Rica, John realized that he can relax more at a place where he has already been ... because ... wait for it ... he has already seen all those birds. 

This was not a birding trip, however, on one of our hikes, he was greeted by five birds that he had never seen before. Just the fact that we were taking the trip a few weeks later than our last trip, meant that there were some birds he didn't get to see the first time. 

He was most excited about the Southern Lapwing as Sidge and Abigail had spotted that the previous trip but despite John's attempts, it never happened.

New roof!

They say you need one every 25 years. We were past due. But then a hurricane came thru TN and we got 2/3 of it covered by insurance!! 

I love this farm. I have even started to kind of love this house … I love the life we have here. 

I’ll die on this farm. 

May I always remember

APRIL 12X12 #1: "Introduction: What If You Explored Your Story with God?"

This is part 1 of a Saturday-long Conference I attended with Adam Young and a guest speaker: RICH VILLODAS for the month of APRIL. The Conference was entitled "How to Engage God About Your Story." Session 1 was entitled: "What If You Explored Your Story with God?" This talk was by Adam Young. 

At the core of your heart is the story of how you have interacted with God about your desires and your disappointments. You may not be fond of certain portions of your life story. Surely, there are parts of your story, perhaps entire seasons of your life, which you are just not fond of. Why did God let THAT happen? How could God have watched my father treat me like that? How could God have stood by why the church hurt me so deeply? If you take your heart and story and wounds seriously then sooner or later, you will find yourself disoriented by the heartaches and betrays that have happened to you. And the very fact that those stories of harm exist for you, implicates God. 

Job in the Bible is the Biblical example of someone whose life was turned upside down by tragedy and heartache. Another example is Joseph. Jeremiah. Jonah. These people have stories that are in the narrative of scripture that are stories of heartache and tragedy and betrayal. How did Job respond when his story took a massive turn for the worse. Job responded in two primary ways: 

1. Lament

2. Anger

1. LAMENT

Job's life was going along swimmingly when tragedy struck. He lost his wealth, health, and children. And Job 3:1-4 and 24-26 recounts the first words that Joseph spoke after his world shatters. 

After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job said: "Let the day perish on which I was born and the night that said, "A man is conceived." Let that day be darkness! Why did I not die at birth? ... For my sighing comes instead of my bread, and my groaning are poured out like water. For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me." 

Perhaps the most astonishing words are found in the very first verse. Job opened his mouth. After his friends come and sit in silence with him for seven days, after the shock of the pain, as the horror of the reality of his life is sinking in, Job opens his mouth and speaks. 

Job didn't have to open his mouth. He didn't have to speak about his pain. He didn't have to engage with God. He could have just killed himself literally or just numbed himself to the pain. He could have pushed his pain into the basement of his heart and disconnected from the reality of his life. But Job chose not to deny his pain. He chose not to ignore his story as awful as it was. He put words to his emotional turmoil. He found language to express what was going on in his body. This is what it means to engage your story with God!

When your world is falling apart (in big or small ways), will you open your mouth? Will you express to God what you are truly feeling on the inside? If it feels too overwhelming to actually speak to God about your pain or pray on a particular day, what would it be like to take a notebook and write out a prayer? You don't even have to pray it. Just write it!

It is an act of holy defiance to put words to the devastation and anguish in your heart.

It is rebellion against the evil in our world that seeks to keep your pain hidden and to keep you isolated and silent. Apart from the community. What comes out of Job's mouth is a lament. Lament is a passionate expression of sorrow, sadness, grief. Lament is what comes out of you. It might be words, screams, groans, sobs. It is what comes out of you when your dreams and hopes are shattered. 

Job's lament brings him to curse the day of his birth. And then he asks the rhetorical question: "Why did I not die at birth?" Job's story is so full of pain that the only thing that brings him comfort is wishing he had never been born. 

When pain enters your life, whether big or small, what is the Christian response to that pain? In other words, what is your attitude when you are suffering? It is very common to think: 

I should ask God to increase my faith in Him during this time.

The ultimate reason I am in such pain is because I have made something more important than God and therefore I should repent. 

I should be grateful for what I still DO have. 

Job does NONE of those three things. Each of those responses can be a way to avoid engaging your story. Each can be a way to avoid being honest with God about your heartache and pain. God doesn't say any of those things. Job doesn't even repent of valuing his possessions or family more than God. He wishes he was dead. He wishes he had never been born because his sorrow and pain is overwhelming. 

Do you feel that it is ungodly that you wish you had never been born or wish that you would die? Does that feel wrong or inappropriate? The problem is that there is no shortage of Biblical heroes who wish that they were dead. Rebecca, Moses, Elijah and Jonah all do this in the Bible. If it were wrong, then why are those stories shared in the scriptures?

Are these people self-indulgent whiners who are drowning in their own self-pity? According to the Bible, it doesn't appear so. For many people, wishing you were dead because you are overwhelmed with pain, is a part of life with God. There is nothing unChristian about it. Wanting to die at times is often part of the stories of people who deeply love God.

The laments which fill the book of Job, give us permission to feel. And if you are a Christian, chances are you need permission to feel your feelings. You need permission to feel negative emotions like sadness, anger, fear. However,  if you are going to explore your story, you need permission to feel ANGER and FEAR and SADNESS. 

What is keeping you from feeling these feelings? Not only does Job give us permission to feel, he gives us permission to talk with God, candidly, honestly, authentically, about our feelings! Job gives us permission to talk freely with God about our feelings! Job invites us to pray our feelings. 

What does that mean? 

To pray your feelings is to pre-reflectively pray your feelings to God. 

This means you pour your feelings out to God before editing your words! When was the last time you just poured out your feelings to God before making them "appropriate" for expression to a holy God or before making them consistent with a theological framework? When was the last time you poured out your sorrow to God? If you are not, with some regularity, pouring out fear and anger and sadness to God, then there is a good reason that is the case. 

Nothing, neurobiologically, is more hard-wired into the human heart and body than the tendency to run to someone bigger and stronger when you are in need and when you are not well. If you have stopped running toward someone stronger than you and stopped expressing how you are feeling, your story, particularly in your family of origin, will help you understand why you have stopped going to God with those raw emotions. Your story holds the clues and the reason. 

Maybe your primary caretakers weren't responsive to you when you ran to them for help. If that is the case, why in the world would you turn to God, a heavenly parent, when you are in need?! 

What do you need today to begin or to return or to continue running back to God and pouring out your feelings? You did this automatically as a five-year-old with your parents or you would have if they were available to you. When did you stop doing this with God?

In Job 3, we meet a man in a state of disorientation. Many of us think we are living in a just-world. A fair world. A safe world. And at some point in your life, it will come crashing down. God's invitation to you in that moment is to lament. Your story takes you down a path that you don't wish to travel. What if you expressed yourself to God authentically in those moments? What if you risked? 

Lament consists of:

1. Allowing yourself for feel your sorrow and grief and sadness. 

2. Expressing that sorrow and grief and sadness. 

If you have risked pouring out your sorrow and grief to God, you may have felt this nagging question along with the practice of lament. What is the point? What is the goal? Doesn't lament just lead to more despair? If you are not wrestling with God about your story, it may be that you lack confidence that any good will come of the wrestle? 

The path of lament need not lead to despair. Despair results when we lament without hope. Genesis 12 God says to Abram to leave his land and that he will become a great nation. However, in Genesis 11 we read that Sarah was barren. 

You can't become a great nation without a child! The story of Israel, right at the beginning, begins with utter and complete hopelessness. Sarah is barren. 

"Barrenness is the way of human history. It is an effective metaphor for hopelessness. [But] the marvel of Biblical faith is that barrenness is the arena of God's life-giving action ... After Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Hannah were barren." Walter Brueggemann

It even says Israel is barren is Isaiah 54. Wouldn't we expect God to give Sarah what she longs for immediately? But because the Bible is so relentlessly true to real life, Chapters 12-14 in Genesis come and go, and Sarah is still not pregnant. The promise of God delays. Delay is hard for our hearts. Especially if you have a history of trauma. For Abraham and Sarah, they enter a season of doubt. 

"It is part of the destiny of our common faith that those who believe the promise and hope against barrenness nevertheless must live with the barrenness. Why and how does one continue to trust solely in the promise when the evidence against the promise is all around? ... Can the closed womb of the present be broken open to give birth to a new future? ... The utter impossibility of the promise becomes evident. Abraham knows what is possible. He lives in restless torment." Brueggemann

And can you not relate to that? You may be at a point in your story that the closed womb of the present may be all you can see. It's all you have lived. Maybe for years. What would it feel like to let this be truth?

Can the closed womb of the present be broken open to give birth to a new future? 

Can you risk letting yourself hope for a moment? Your body will naturally begin to engage God about the heartache of your present story or something that happened in the past. You will find, in time, SomeONE (Jesus!) in the fire with you -- in the heat of the circumstances of your life. And more than wanting a particular circumstance to change, more than that, we want to feel the presence of God in the fire with us. We want to know at an experiential, embodied level that we are not alone. God is in it with us! That's what we want to feel.

It is not pain that we fear. It is aloneness and meaningless in the pain.  

Lamenting alone, by yourself, is what leads to despair.  

Lament poured out to God can lead to something else. Eventually it leads to some version of connection with God and some meaning in the pain -- which of course, in no way makes your pain worth it. Your tears are a form of confession. They are the ultimate acknowledgement of what has been true in your life. They are the break-thru of the sometimes very long denial of reality: that your life is worth of lament. That it is worthy of tears. There are tragedies and betrayals and sufferings and heartaches that you are enduring that merit tears. Or even dry grief! (You don't have to cry! :)You know the sensation in your body when you give yourself over to sorrow and grief and sadness. 

Have you stuffed your real feelings because you don't believe those feelings are consistent with a life of faith -- with the feelings of a real Christian? You may not even know why you are sad but you think, I must Rejoice in the Lord Always. Most of us are deeply uncomfortable with our big feelings. But feelings are a window to the passionate desires of your heart. Your feelings tell me something about who you are and what you want in life. Your feelings expose the rumblings of the deepest parts of your soul. 

Neuroscience has demonstrated that you are powerless to control your feelings. Feelings happen in a fraction of a second. (And that's not a metaphorical phrase.) They occur in less than a second, before the executive control center of your brain (the part that makes choices) even comes on line. God knows this. As the creator of both your limbic system and your prefrontal cortex, He knows that you cannot control the initial twinge of sadness or the spike of anger. These reactions are automatic and unconsicous. God does not call you to get rid of your sorrow, as if you could do that in the first place. He doesn't call you to eliminate your fear or anger. He calls you to honesty about your sadness or anger or fear. We all have them. 

To deny sorrow is a rather odd inclination to those that value the Bible. There are massive chunks of text in your Bible where people are pouring out their sorrow to God. "My soul is in anguish. How long, how long? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble. How long O Lord? Will you forget me forever? My eyes fail looking for your promise, and I say, 'When will you comfort me?"

We people with trauma need comfort. Why would God have put these in the scripture? Perhaps God wants YOU to give yourself permission to feel these kind of feelings. Perhaps God is inviting you to pour out those feelings to Him in the speech that is called lament. What if you brought your lament to God? What might happen? What might transpire in the few seconds and minutes or days following your heart-felt, tear-filled speech to God.

Lament can be difficult. When you risk connecting to your sorrow and you risk putting words to it, you will begin to feel even more of the sadness in your heart. You have neurons. Our present experiences are always linked to our past experiences. Our stories are linked. That is how neurons worked. So when you take the risk as a 48-year-old woman to feel sorrow, it will likely connect you to sorrow from your teens and 20's and 30's. That is how God helps you integrate your brain. 

2. ANGER

Okay so that is lament. Let's transition to Anger. You may not feel anger at God. You may not have memories of feeling anger at God. Perhaps your Christian culture told you it was wrong to be mad at God. As a result, if you find yourself feeling even a little bit of disappointment or anger at God, you immediately nip that feeling in the bud. If you risk talking candidly with God about your story, there will be times that you may feel abandoned by God or disappointed by God. Maybe there is a moment in your story that you feel like God did not come through for you. How could you have let me be sexually abused dear God? Why didn't you prevent it? Why did you let me move into that neighborhood? Would that have been so hard God? Or you might feel abandoned by God in the present as you try to heal from your wounds and your efforts aren't working or aren't working fast enough. 

If you are emotionally honest, sooner or later, you will also feel some anger at God. What does your anger at God tell you about YOU? More often than not, your anger of God is a result of how important God is to you. It is evidence of your holiness and faithfulness to him. Your anger God says "God matters to me!"

Let's return to Job's story. He begins to fill anger at the one who could have prevented the tragedy. Check this out from Job 9-10:

This is just a short tour of rage. Directed, unapologetically at the one who could have prevented all of it. What is Job so angry about? Job is angry that God is not responsive to his plea for help. Job is angry about God's unresponsiveness. I can say 1,000 complaints to you God, and you won't respond to a single one of them. I bring complaints, and I hear nothing back. And it is the deafening silence that is so infuriating. In the unlikely event that God actually answers me, He won't address the cause of my upset. And this is the crux of Job's pain. He wants God to respond to Him. Who of us cannot relate to that longing? 

But this isn't just in these chapters. It goes on and on after chapters 9-10. However, just because people express anger at God doesn't mean it is right to do it, does it? Well, at the end of the book of Job, God speaks. He talks about the rightness of God's words. Look at what God says in response:
 

God says, twice, that Job spoke rightly of Him. It means that it was right for Job to express his anger at God. It was right for Job to bring his truest heart in speech before God. It was right for him to speak unedited before his God. He could have said, "God isn't going to listen to me, so I am not going to waste my time yelling at Him?" In the very moments when I most need God, we can often feel like he is the least responsive. 

Is God unaware of our deep anger until we speak it aloud? Of course not. He knows it is in there! God can handle your anger. He is neither surprised by it nor afraid of it. When you feel like God has let you down, will you allow yourself to feel your anger. It isn't just Job who expresses his anger to God. The Psalmists do it. The author of Lamentations does it. 

Do you think the Psalmists are quietly speaking their anger? These people are yelling at God! God has put these expressions of anger at God into the scripture. Yes, some of these people in the Bible end up also expressing trust in God. But, how much time do you think passes between 13:1 and 13:5 where God moves from anger to trust? We think that David or the Psalmists sat down and wrote these in one sitting. Rarely are these things authored in one sitting. What if the place David found himself in Psalm 13:1 for years "How long O Lord would you forget me forever" before David was able to say "But I trust in your unfailing love?"

Anger is a very difficult emotion for many people -- especially people with a history of trauma. If most of the anger you witnessed as a child was dangerous, you may feel very reluctant to feel the anger inside. Many people say "I'm scared of what I would do if I felt my anger." Others say "Whenever I feel my anger, I end up hurting the people around me." But the dilemma is, you can't quarantine your anger. If you have it (and we all do), it is leaking out in ways you aren't aware of unless you know how to metabolize it and handle it appropriately and express it to God and others well. The best way to make sure that your anger doesn't harm those you love is to welcome it, to get to know it, and to learn how to express it well. 

Acknowledging your anger will introduce you to deeper layers of your heart. It will introduce you to yourself.

C.S. Lewis wrote a book called Till We Have Faces. The main character feels wronged by the Gods. She expresses it to the Gods. And then she goes through it a second time. And then she says this: 

Lewis is getting at something very important. The idea was that a human being must become real before it can expect to receive any message from God. You must express your actual desires. 

Do you know what you are really angry with God about deep down? What is the speech that is lain at the center of your soul for years? What is your real complaint against God? Maybe one of the reasons you are reluctant to look at the heartache in your story is because you are afraid of what it is going to do in your relationship with God. How can God meet you face-to-face until you have a face? Until you are speaking genuinely about your heartaches and sufferings? How can God respond to the deepest cry of your soul until you have become clear about what that cry is in your story? Where are the moments in your story that there was a cry? How did that cry come to be? 

Post-Lecture Notes:

"I want everyone on this call to begin to develop some compassion for yourself about why your relationship with God looks and feels the way it does. Why has your relationship been fraught or difficult? All of us have a filter (mainly our neurons). If that filter has been influenced by trauma or harm, especially from primary care takers, then it is going to be difficult for you to experientially feel the safety and benevolence of God. We all have a filter through which we experience God. I want those of you listening to this to increase your compassion for why it may be hard for you to relate to God. A feeling of Ohhhh, that makes sense. I can see that that is difficult for me because of my story." 

Much of the tradition in the church is for explanation for the things that God has done. The church doesn't focus on lamentation.

 

Today was a beast

Some days are just HARD days. 

It probably has to do with reacclimating to life back in America ... back to life as a Mom, with a farm, and responsibilities, and kids with a lot of questions. 

I'm going to guess that a non-homeschooling Mom answers about five questions a day per child. I think homeschool Mamas answer closer to 15. The questions that would be asked at school, are asked at home. And this means that times 4 kids, I am answering 60 questions a day. 

And that doesn't count the other things that come up.

For example, today, the guests in "The Bonnie Blue Farmhouse" AirB&B that I manage, left the water running in a sink, accidentally. And the sink did runneth over. And there was water, everywhere. 

I have a lovely 23-year-old Mom of a new baby named Connie who is helping clean the AirB&B and she handled most of it, but still. Now I've got to find a time to figure out what was damaged and go back over and get all that figured out. 

I don't want to!

The day was busy. All of these things were wonderful albeit they contributed to my very full day. 

Jacob stopped over today. And it's always wonderful to see him. 

And my Aunt Jan stopped over, and it's great to see her too.

And little Pomegranate was cooking stuff for a bake sale and so I needed to her with those things. 

And there was church of course. 

And I left a laptop at a friend's house and had to go back and retrieve it. (That part wasn't so wonderful, but I got to see my friend which was wonderful!)

And I needed to figure out dinner. 

All of these things are normal, awesome, wonderful parts of life, but they just add up. 

And my friend Erin did something AMAZZzzzzzing. She stumbled upon a HUGE HUGE HUGE sale on dog food at a Petsmart in Johnson City and she bought the whole lot for me. What an amazing friend. 

I also just miss JB. I'm not used to him being gone after getting to spend almost a week just with him in the Rain forest. 

He texted me, and it was a very hard day at work for him emotionally. I sometimes can't fathom what he does for a living and how hard things are. 

Tomorrow is a co-op day which is always exhausting. But also wonderful. 

So much hard and busy and BIG in the midst of so much wonderful!

Oh, and did I mention that I have TONS of laundry on my bed that's got to be put away.

Our vacation buddies

It's rare to find people you like enough to vacation with ... multiple times. But this makes a third vacay with the Shraders. We went to Costa Rica together a year ago with our kiddos, we went to Belize this year, and then we did JUST the adults back in Costa Rica again this year. 

Just glorious.

Meredith has become one of my very dearest friends. We met through ballet originally although they aren't at dance anymore, but most recently, our lives have intersected through Heritage Home Scholars. Meredith is going to be the President of our homeschool Board this coming school year. We served together on the Board before I had to step off about a year ago for my mental health. But God is allowing me to return so we will do the Board together again. 

The Shraders have three children: Lily (14 almost 15), Hosea (11), and Janessa (6). I've made many friends here in Greeneville but introverted Meredith has secured herself at the top of my list of awesome people. I love her. In addition, Daniel is an outdoorsman like John. In fact, he attended one of the first permaculture conferences we had on our farm. They have some similar interests which is also good although introverted JB doesn't really "need" many friends. 

Daniel and Meredith run an amazing wedding venue on the other side of town. Check out their Wedding Venue here. 

We Bought a Farm: MORE Stitches

#26 goes to Hosea S. Good old Hosea was hit be an electric boat on their pond driven by six-year-old sister. 

Today we do #23

Honestly, stitches around these parts are pretty much just "par for the course." 

To be fair, this time Gabe actually cut his finger at Anni's house. But here is JB, minutes from heading into the ER, doing the thing he does with a needle and thread on our dining room table.

A look at all of our previous stitches on my kiddos and here at the farm:

Stitches #1 (Isaac)

Stitches #2 (Isaac)

Stitches #3 (Sidge)

Stitches #4 (Sidge)

Stitches #5 (Abigail)

Stitches #6 (JB on Himself)

Stitches #7 (Sidge at the ER by JB)

Stitches #8 (Abigail)

Stitches #9 (Hannah)

Stitches #10 (Ana)

Stitches #11 (Gabe)

Stitches #17 (Anonymous Grandparent)

Stitches #18 (Anni ... again!)

Stitches #19 Neighboring Farm Friend Barry

Stitches #20 Gabe has piece of metal fly into leg while mowing at Shane and Linda's

Stitches #21 (Skin glue) Hannah

#22 Eddie's foot

#23 Eoin's face (hit his chin on a chair during ballet)

#24 Zoey's hand (got in the middle of a dog fight :(

#25 Hannah Bowlin in deli-meat fight at little shop

#26 Hosea cuts his ear in a Janessa-boat mishap

Also stitched: 

12. Youth Group farm volunteer [chin] (no picture)

13. Karen's husband [head] (no picture)

14. Mr. Jacob [lip] (no picture)

15. Anni [thumb] (no picture)

16. Molly's husband Luke [thumb] (no picture)

Abigail (our future medical gal) got to help take out Anni's stitches. I love that Anni was okay with this! I would have been scared!