Posts Tagged → life

12 Years and Why Are We Married Again?

There once was this man who bent himself over our married-feet and prophesied that thousands and thousands would gather around our married-love, but we didn’t have much time to reflect on his seer-like vision because shorter then a month later our love shattered into a million little shard-sharp pieces. Oh. Well . . . we didn’t see that coming. And our married-eyes still look back and marvel that we decided—in spite of ourselves and our choices and our circumstances—that neither of us was “going” anywhere. Man, this girl could re-write the definition of “miracle” off the broken back of our story and here we are 12 years later, 6 years since we began to “fix” ourselves and the best part? I don’t rightly know. Because there truly are too many “best parts” to itemize or rank, but I will offer you the best visual I can to describe our “right-now” married-souls: Just like the river we live on and where we feast our gazes day after night . . . Austin and I? We just flow. We flow back. And forth. In and out. Up and down. The moon rises and wanes and we go low and we go high – moving with the rhythm of the life-tides and season-cycles. We’ve got it down and we know what to do when the water is thin and when it is thick, when it is calm and when it’s a torrent. Also like our river—and equally so—we know how subject we are to pollution. We’ll sit on our dock and watch the litter float by and this I see: We are “bound” together in the most vulnerable and fragile constitution under the sun. We have to be so careful with our eggshell-state and we try real good to clean ourselves in Christ every night before we sleep and additionally practicing every practice we can think of to protect our crackability.

But all the cracks we already have? Oh, the Light beams through ‘em real bright – so we’ll just keep those and let our married-love shine. Eh? And AMEN.

Two years ago I wrote a story about our 10 year anniversary vow renewal and other reflections on “why marriage?”. I would share it with you again as Austin and I just celebrated our 12th and it always puts me in mind of why we belong to each other.

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It was a holy night when Austin and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary with a vow renewal ceremony – oh, holy sacrament and our heads bent in holy wonder and the tears, even, were salted with the holy emotion. Holy emotion that we had “made it” this far. And if ever a voice quiver can be holy, it was in this time when vow-words written in black, scrolled on white paper, were strongly spoken into the grey shades of our reality.

That holy night we stood in the middle of an arm-to-arm ring of our 20 dearest friends and spoke our re-pledges to each other and would you know that heaven’s holy hush soaked our air and stretched our senses to inhale Spirit as He whorled around and between all our limbs and over our skin in that sacred, brushing whisper of His? We felt transported to another world; gently placed inside a shielding bubble where no evil things could penetrate – not on this holy night, not on His holy watch.

Our second ceremony was different then the untried joining of our youth. This time, we knew. Oh God, we knew. We knew what cards life could deal and we knew that our own humanity could cheat with the hands we are dealt. We knew that vows are meant to be kept, but instead—and often—get torn a hundred ways to Sunday. We knew all this and beyond and because of our knowing, our vow words meant more and the definition is ten years long and ten years deep and ten years burned through holy fire. We knew, and we still stood on our holy legs of flesh to say “yes” to each other again.

We said “yes” again because we didn’t go through holy fire without being refined, restored, redeemed, resurrected.  And we said “yes” because our intentions for marriage had evolved alongside our purification and went beyond the answers that come skimmed off the top: “I want to wake up every day with my best friend” or “Two are better then one and he/she completes me” or “I’m loved unconditionally by my spouse”. After being affixed to someone for a decade, these reasons cannot stand alone any longer. The rigors of reality demand that you have an exceptional reason for being joined and and an exceptional reason for staying joined.

On the eve of our commitment renewal, with the quiet and Spirit-air for company, I gently asked my question again, “why marriage?” I had hoped to grasp an answer that every other answer could find it’s roots in, longing for something I could hook my entire heart on when the day is done and the deeds are dark. And where my imagination took me, was not where I expected to go, but how would you like to crash a wedding in Cana?

“…The story of the wedding at Cana has a curious luminousness about it, the quality of almost a dream where every gesture, every detail, suggests the presence of meaning beneath meaning, where people move with a kind of ritual stateliness, faces melting into other faces, voices speaking of elusive, but inexhaustible significance.” – Frederick Buechner

I have this vision of a strange and stern guest with his big, drinking eyes. He’s inhaling wine and breathing sacramental symbolism into the air around him. He is at a wedding and how can he not think of why he was born all this way? Contracted and pushed into time to marry himself to the whole world. So while he laughs and feasts and merry-makes with the rest of them, his Spirit is stretching and reaching with fanciful wreaths of invisible God-fingers, touching every which way and throughout, soaking the deeper meaning inside every wedding ritual. His entire purpose as a Groom coming to love his bride is being played out on the micro stage of this Cana wedding. He’s dreaming of the intimate mysteries of vows and rings, clasping of hands and sacrifice, of feasting and ultimate Love. Maybe just a small sigh and his eye-lids fall as he envisions another marriage . . .

His mama breaks into his waking reflection because she just overheard the servants talking about a beverage deficiency and she petitions her son for help because the party planner didn’t order enough wine, of all things. And while he’s telling his mama about time not arriving and don’t put the cart before the donkey, the mother caresses her knowing fingers along the son’s face and tells the servants to do whatever he says. Before he can issue any orders, he hears a familiar whisper, the Father speaks to the Son’s soul, “I’ve arranged a marriage for You. It’s time . . .”

Without any added ado, the Son says to the servants, do this and do that and the miracle was heard around the whole thirsty world – never again would refreshment be lacking and with this, the bride was born and the Groom set out from Cana, anticipating his own wedding after what he knew would be a 3-year-long wild and audacious wooing.

And three years later, with dust in all the cracks of His sturdy, peasant feet, He walked a long and rocky trail to the top of death hill. Because that is where His chapel was and He was going to get married. But His vows of love needed to be written in blood; red ribbons of split-wide sacrifice. Cross-eyed and crossed-out and criss-crossed in pain, six-ways-damned till Sunday, He said, “I take you . . . to have and to hold . . . from this day forward, in sickness and in health, in riches and in poverty . . . as long as we both shall live” – which is nothing short of eternity.

Right after Austin were pronounced “man and wife” the first time, these words were spoken over us, “You Austin, and you Erika, together, represent the image of Christ.”

The image of Christ.

You mean the one I just detailed? This was and is the answer my soul was desparate for hearing. “Why marriage?” Because I would give my living and dying breath to reflect an image like that – an image of a marriage declaring an insurmountable love.

When Austin and I re-fastened ourselves one to the other it was with the intention that we, together, are a mirror of the risen Son on His wedding day.

how to know your heart

("Will you take a picture of me with my arms like this?" Because that's how being in creation makes him feel.)

Let me tell you something about our boy, Gabriel. He harbors so much wilderness in his heart, it pours right over his aorta walls and floods through all his veins. I think he’s part feral beast. Everyday he eats the rustic and all-things-nature like it’s his final feast. This kid could live in the woods with nothing more then a hatchet and a bearskin and his fierce native cry. Dirt is his very favorite thing to wear and he actually swallows worms and grubs in preparation for any situation where he might need to “survive”. I’m not making this up and I try real hard not to twist my face in distaste whenever I’m told of his latest “food” consumption.

Gabe: “MOM! I just roasted three grubs and ate them!”

Mom: “You did what?!?! Oh, that is SO Gross!!! Grody!!! Blech!!! Disgusting!!! I just threw up in my mouth!!!!”

Gabe: “Bear Grylls says they’re high in protein.”

Mom: ”Bear Grylls also drinks camel poo juice!!! Does that sound like someone who’s in their right mind? And that you should be taking advice from?!?!”

Anyhew.

Gabriel has also been begging us for YEARS to move out to the country so he could have more space to roam and explore and chop deadwood and do other things boys like him do when *wild* hijacks their anatomy. His legs are scraped and bruised and gouged from bow to stern because he approaches the great outdoors at one speed: “CHARGE!!! FULL SPEED AHEAD!!! MAN DOWN!!! MAN DOWN!!! THE REST OF YOU REINFORCE THE BORDERS!!! WE’VE GOT THE ENEMY FLANKING FROM BOTH SIDES!!!”

I swear he acts like he’s always being filmed for some action/adventure movie.

I digress.

Yesterday he happened to be showing me all these wounds running full-length up and down his 10-year-old legs and explaining where each one came from: “I got this bruise when . . . My left knee was gouged on that rock at Mill River Park . . . This scrape on my thigh was from when I tripped over that fallen tree trunk . . .”  Around each limb he went, telling tales of his adventures and mishaps until he arrived to the last damaged spot and looked reflectively at me and said, “Hey Mama, my legs tell my story . . . don’t you think?”

And that statement really gave me the mama-pause because I immediately felt like a teachable moment was presenting itself – not just for him, but for me as well and in slow, thought-out response I said this: ”Yes, Gabe, I think your legs do tell some of your story, of places you have already been and where your heart has left deposits on the earth. But more importantly, you can always look to your legs to tell you what your heart is doing right now because that is the direction your legs will take you. Do your legs take you to the wilds of nature? To the face of the poor? To adventures with your friends? Do your legs take you to a quiet corner in prayer? The direction your legs travel will always tell—more largely—the story of what’s happening in your deepest parts.”

So when this born-for-the-rural boy tells his legs to carry his heart to the dinner table and he sits down to address the family with all this purpose-fire floating off his skin, we dropped our forks and conversation for a good, intent listen . . . to hear how his overflowing heart would cause his mouth to speak.

And what came from his lips was a passion-full and firmly spoken expression: “I don’t want to move to the country anymore. We CAN’T move to the country. We have too much to do in this city, too many people to help and I want to be a part of it.”

With tears coming softly for what we were witnessing in real time . . . Austin and I realized then and there, that at some point—and of his very own volition—Gabe’s young-boy-legs had travelled his heart right up to the foot of the Cross where he took the blood-pumping flesh-muscle out of his chest and laid that bare thing down to die before Jesus, along with all his own well-supplied desires. And what he found was his TRUE self, resurrected in Christ.

That night when the kids were all tucked-up in their beds and Austin and I were debriefing on the couch, our parent-emotions were so overcome from what was just declared by our son. We couldn’t believe it and like a pull-string doll I kept saying over and over: “Honey, do you realize what we just witnessed? We saw our 10-year-old son die to himself and be resurrected in Christ. For the first time. My God.”

And I just used a lot of words to tell you about it. But, there really aren’t words.

Love,

Erika

{Linking with EMILY for IMPERFECT PROSE}

On Being Hijacked

Oh my goodness!!! Oh my goodness!!! HI!!! HI!!! HI!!! Just short of three weeks since I’ve been here and did you miss me?! :)

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Listen . . .

I have so much to tell you and the fire I feel inside is burning a hole straight through my chest, trying to get out before the whole of me goes up in flame.

It’s just that the challenge will be in the delivery because not in a very long time have I felt so utterly engulfed by the presence of the Holy Spirit and when a body is this full with THE unspeakable energy, how do you write about it?! God, even now it feels like Someone is drifting up the back of my throat, whorling and floating in and around this flesh-vessel like fanciful wreaths of smoke or curling wisps of fog, or both. My friends – near and far, cyber and otherwise – something is happening over here. This family, for lack of a better word, is experiencing a revival and strange things are happening to all of us.

Amen, I tell you. Amen.

And if I were to imaginatively travel backwards to pinpoint a beginning to this phenomenon, I would tell you that the thread of whatever this is started a few months ago, for no apparent reason. But if someone were to pointedly ask me what really catalyzed it, I would have to say that it was you. And you. And you. And all of you who poured your hearts and prayers so fervently over our heads—a great waterfall if I’ve ever been under one. I am {we are} still residually flooded by the cascading torrent of God’s goodness being expressed for us by His {and our} people. Thank-you. Because maybe, just maybe something more then the specifics of our prayer request was being responded to. I do believe that YOU ALL ushered in the beginning of a movement for us—Austin, Erika, Gabe, Seth and Jude—and nothing has ever been the same since, or, I am quite certain, will ever be the same again. In fact, 200 million light years from now, we will still look over our celestial-dusted shoulders and remember a season when this “number 5 family” was completely hijacked by the Spirit of the ever-living God.

In keeping with this prayer-induced momentum, we are on our knees praying and on our backs praying and on our faces praying and quite often on our feet praying and we just can’t help it. Evening prayers with Austin are too profound for words, a torrent of belly-deep emotion and tears. Morning meditation with the boys turns into the most sacred and powerful supplication services I’ve ever been a part of—all of us weeping and shouting and fighting and believing and putting our God-believing stakes in the spiritual fabric of a New Kingdom. Last wednesday our meditation of almost two hours felt like 2 minutes and my young guys, who usually max-out with 25 minutes of devotion, couldn’t believe how fast the clock ticked by. I’m telling you: revival. When “real time” ceases to exist? REVIVAL. And Gabriel tells me that when I pray he feels like “Jesus is spilling out of my mouth and it makes his heart leap”. Seth tells me, too, that when he hears me pray, “it touches something inside him and makes him want to pray too”. Little Jude writes an unprompted thank-you for our wall of gratitude and it says this: “My mom’s holy prayers”. My 7 year old says he’s thankful for “holy prayers”. GAAAAAAAH!!!!!

On top of that, they are learning how to pray in the Spirit. Oh my heart, you should hear them shouting their little hearts out and believing God for things, dreaming alongside heavenly beings and determining that they “WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!!” And it’s not me telling them to say or do anything, these boys are RESPONDING to something happening around them and inside them.

I would swear to you (though I doubt I need to) that I can see the dumbfounded, scratch-your-skull look on the faces of all the dark things.

And during the night watch when everyone else is sleeping, I’m kneeling on the living room couch, facing the window and looking out over our street-lit section of this New Haven city and whispering the, “My God, my God . . . what is happening?! To what end? Towards what Master plan?” We do not have all the answers, but we’re picking little pieces of purpose out of the air and weaving them together and this tapestry coming together at our fingertips? Is colored full of ideas and dreams and imaginings . . . Dare I say that we have a concept that could become a movement? Oh, and that’s just ONE part of what’s cooking in our collective hearts.

I can’t wait to tell you about it!!! I’ll be back as soon as I can!!!

Love,

Erika

{Image Source :: Pinterest}

 

Storms . . . And We Need You?

:: storm ::

There is a man I know and I would tell you first that he is mine and I am his. We all dance around to the profound life-music he makes and he is the completer of our family circle and there is no one, no one on this green and blue earthen-orb who could love me the way he does. If you were privy to our thirteen+ years of relationship history, it would be proof enough that there is a God. Because He gave us to each other. {The end.}

These past weeks, this guy-o-mine has been a man bound to great, big converging and competing waves of work-schedules and customer demands, crashing high-up and over his head. He’s trying to ride the rolling water and not get sunk-under, but when he crawls into bed at 4:30 in the morning after scrubbing the concrete dust off his skin, only to peel his body from the mattress two hours later, what else can he say but, “I’m under water here”. And I feel real physical pain just watching him and counting the emerging cluster of grey at his stress-highlighting temples . . . And yet, and yet . . . for some unspeakable reason our lips are un-buttoned with mountains of thanksgiving prayers: WE HAVE WORK! In this economy, such things are not to be taken for granted. Because we lost our home to foreclosure from teetering on the other end of the spectrum. And there was a bold Grace to greet us during that time of our lives and there is a bold Grace for right now, too.

And we are beseeching for even more Grace in the coming days . . . We need it for the sliver of bad news that came in the mail on Monday, a piece of communication from our mortgage company’s law office and there were words of mortal-dread in an envelope waiting for our reaction. THEY are coming after us for the deficiency of our loan and it would seem our only action is to get a lawyer and possibly declare bankruptcy. You know? The literal kind. So we stop loading the dishwasher because even that small, mundane task feels like it’s taking our breath and we clasp our hands together with just this strong, clinging-kind of fervency and before the panic gets a chance to steal our heartbeats, we pray. Standing over the dirty dishes, we cast our cares into a body of infinite Love.

Oh, this sure is a crazy, wave-tossed and stormy world, where nothing stays in one place for long among this crashing of circumstance and choice. We’ve weathered some serious stuff and because of—and in spite of—it all, this is my chosen posture: I’m the girl with the wind against her face, who yells an invitation into the gale, “TAKE ME CLOSER TO GOD!!!”. I’m the girl who stands at the bow of this pitching life-ship waiting for the dove to come back and perch in my up-turned palm, the olive branch between her beak—a sprout of hope held up against all our burdens, against every uttered “this. is. so. hard.“. God made me for tempests and dark, burgeoning clouds. God made me to steward pressure, to be a beacon for redemption’s magic, to blow my prayers against the four walls of a seemingly sinking ship to the wide-eyed stares of our children, because sometimes they are the only two or three available to gather when things need to be declared and belief needs to be fought for and they, too, need to know how to respond when harsh realities press in.

So, in saying, we do not seek to be relieved—necessarily—from this burden. No, we would ask for any prayers you might have to beat on our drum with us and that dark things would not get much credit here. And for wisdom and strength and however else the Prayer-leader might lead you to pray?

Thank-you and Love,

Erika

:: UPDATE!!!! :: There are no words better then these: We were overwhelmed by the prayer and support response we received from all over the globe – here, at my site, on facebook, private emails and messages and from our own community. Y’all POURED yourselves over our family. We learned today from our mortgage company’s attorney that the correspondence they sent us was a “mistake”. Whaaaaaaaaaa!?!? We all know what really happened. And in the words of Anna Ricketts Llanos: “With hearts like yours and a God like ours the shit don’t stick, girl.” Amen and the end.

 

The Always Sky

It never gets old: the always sky, life’s everyday-different backdrop.

With a double rainbow behind our backs and this cloud creation before our front, we drove into the burgeoning weather to greet our camping destination, to greet our weekend memory-making.

We assembled our outdoor pop-up homes in torrential sky-waters, laughing at the irony, embracing the adventure, watching five young dudes running as mad as their legs could propel them and yelling their barbarian lungs heavenward to bring the rain down harder. Oh, the whooping and the hollering from their pure place inside was like watching God-worship at it’s pinnacle. Spread those arms, boys, drink the drops through your skin, it’s Living Water and it’s free.

Who needs dry when you witness the unbridled in your children?

Who needs dry when you know that if you were small again in your heart, you wouldn’t have a care for all the soggy things and how drenched makes everything more difficult.

 We woke up with the sun-sky and a side of crisp, smell-good air – the kind that freezes your soul into noticing it’s audaciously-simple perfection as it slides cool past your cheek for the early morning kiss. I felt beckoned, felt the breeze calling to me before I moved two steps toward the fire-pit, as if to say, “If you mark this moment, you’ll mark the whole day . . . ” And I did, inhale and pause.

With no thought for food, the y-chromosone pentagon, armed with pocket-knives and little-manliness, went foraging and exploring for hours in the woods where they promptly claimed all land and streams in their own names and came back taller and older and wiser for the experience. Oh, do grow up my lads, but not too fast.

This city-living-girl with the country-born-heart spent that sacred time quietly by the fire with a few cups of Yorkshire Gold. The grown-up men cooked breakfast sandwiches without rush, I long-breathed inward to lose myself in calming thought and the feeling of each one of my molecules moving like a slow, swaying hymn.

And the always sky is present with us, the greatest cathedral . . . where our God sits on the rim of the visible world, enrobed in veils of cloud and sun and rain . . . we exist, wrapped on all sides, by this beautiful backdrop – a sacred setting for all the ways we live.