Stone Catchers
I watched her standing in my room looking at the blanket and pillow on the floor where I slept. Our entire apartment was unfurnished, in fact, and I was nervous about how my friend would react. I'd been to her two story farm house in the country with a play set outside and chickens pecking around the yard. When you're just freshly into the years of adolescence anything can make you feel awkward. But I knew that this could be a "deal", this could mean losing my friendship with Heather. The regular oddity of my childhood makes me smile when I think about it now. So many things didn't fit - like the fact that I was in a private school for a semester of my seventh grade, but lived in an unfurnished apartment. There's no wonder I'm a little "odd" and used to not fitting in with most people. That day I knew my friend would have to make a choice about me, about our friendship because clearly being my friend was going to be challenging to say the least.
When you're thirteen and hormones are raging and boys suddenly seem so interesting and friends are everything, vulnerable doesn't even begin to touch what you feel...about everything. I don't know many people who would want to go back to junior high, I know I wouldn't. My friend, Heather though, she took it all in that day - I still remember the plaid shirt she had on while she stood there looking around my room as I held my breath. "Wow, you don't have any furniture here..." she observed. "Yeah...it's kinda weird..." I replied in a tight voice. "Yeah it is...but it's okay! How about we go outside and take a walk?" I remember the relief, the feeling accepted, feeling known and loved. I still cry every single time that memory comes floating back through my mind.
We bought our baked goods and got into the car where my youngest daughter sighed, "Mom...why do you always have to cry when someone tells you their kid was killed." That girl - she just says what she thinks. Love her so much. We talked about why it's important to grieve with others in pain, but then we also talked about what Miss Sana had said before we left. I'd asked, "Is it okay with they call you Miss Sana?" "Of course, but it's okay if they call me Auntie Sana...I would love that, I have many nieces and nephews." Auntie Sana had just dispelled what my children hear on the news about how refugees are terrorist...that's what a child hears when we lump Muslims together with extremist.
When you're thirteen and hormones are raging and boys suddenly seem so interesting and friends are everything, vulnerable doesn't even begin to touch what you feel...about everything. I don't know many people who would want to go back to junior high, I know I wouldn't. My friend, Heather though, she took it all in that day - I still remember the plaid shirt she had on while she stood there looking around my room as I held my breath. "Wow, you don't have any furniture here..." she observed. "Yeah...it's kinda weird..." I replied in a tight voice. "Yeah it is...but it's okay! How about we go outside and take a walk?" I remember the relief, the feeling accepted, feeling known and loved. I still cry every single time that memory comes floating back through my mind.
When you talk to people long enough, hear their story in depth enough, you'll hear them talk about friends. Friends and family shape us, encourage us and pull us closer when life gets hard. They're the ones who choose to say, "You belong no matter." Belonging is so important to this living - we're hard wired for it. As a Jesus follower, I believe we were made out of the joy of the Fellowship of the Trinity. Made in their Image and called good. Being together with others is something of the Divine. Being known, loved, wanted and understood ~ it's a part of our biological and spiritual DNA. It's better together.
Our country is a mess these days. I don't think anyone knows how to fix it, especially the government. But Jesus never talked about government being an answer, He just talked about loving people in a way that is upside down from the world and even often upside down from religion. For sure it's hidden and seemingly unimportant if you're doing it the way He showed us...like the woman with the Two Mites.
I have friends who are across the spectrum of beliefs - our friendship is not based on religious affiliation; but on loving each other and others. We talk honestly about what we believe and where we are at on this journey, even disagreeing sometimes; but we all unite on loving people sacrificially. It's really beautiful. My friends remind me that being a Christian means nothing actually if your best love remains inside your Christian community. Building up the walls so high that you and your children stay "safely" inside - it's not what He died on the cross for that stormy day. I think it's the point He was trying to make to the religious when He told the story of the Good Samaritan...our "right" beliefs mean nothing if we're too busy doing the "right' things with no time to love people.
I can't remember what time of year it was even - the days are all one big fluid mess back then. What I do remember was being busy, busy with what the Lawman and I call "our church careers". He worked fifty plus hours a week in the marketplace and we spent close to thirty hours a week serving our local church. Plus six kids. Plus renovating a hundred year old house. Plus a marriage. Plus. Plus. Plus. #UNhealthylifestyle
I might have been working in the yard or maybe she came to my door that day, I can't remember; but she and I standing on our porch is seared on my mind. Her beautiful ginger hair and striking smile set the happy tone as she told me that she and her family were moving from the house catacorner to ours back to the southeast where she'd grown up. Standing there I remembered the day they'd moved into the house on our street and I was sad they were leaving. We had watched her belly grow with life and seen the pink things going into the house after the birth of their daughter. Watched her son so proudly carry his little sister around on their front porch.
We talked for awhile about their plans and she mentioned losing their daughter. I stood there shocked. What was she be talking about? The pieces came together and I recalled that she had been pregnant. The baby was lost in her third trimester and I had no idea. I had lost a baby that year too and with all we had going on inside our church community and large family, I'd just simply not realized her belly was flat again and yet there had been no pink balloons outside.
The tears started making their way down my face...I'd missed something so important and right outside my front door. Casey hugged me and said, "It's okay...it really is okay." I told her nothing about it was OK and that I was so sorry for not knowing that part of her story - for not knowing her precious daughter had died. God help me. It was as if the subterranean plates of my spirit shifted there on my front porch. They shifted and I knew that everything was about to change forever in my spiritual walk. I'd been so busy doing all the "right" things that I'd not been with my friend, my very literal neighbor, at the time when nothing was right - a parent should never have to bury their own child. I'd tried to love my neighbor in the church way - trying to get them into my small group and then church - but what I was beginning to see was that loving people meant they could no longer be my project...in fact loving people would be mostly hidden and not something I would later share with my Christian friends so that they could hear about my "outreach". Loving my neighbor was not just a metaphor...it was a very real way of living He talked about...and it started with my neighbor loving me.
When I asked her forgiveness for being too busy to be present in her suffering she completely forgave me - unconditional love. It was so similar to the time Heather pulled me closer when she could have walked off and I would have completely understood. Like Heather, Casey shaped my heart that day - like nothing in my Bible studying or church work ever had shaped me. Love shapes us when it's given unconditionally.
The Lawman and I are watching our older children stretch out their long, strong wings and fly into their futures. In the quiet of the morning over coffee we laugh and sometimes cry because we are just so very proud of them. They're in relationships with people we think are incredible, they're choosing careers that focus on the care of the marginalized and their communities and closest friends are racially, socially and economically diverse. They're going beyond every desire and heart longing we had for them even though our shoddy attempts at patterning all of the above was almost absent in their childhoods. I wonder if that's how God feels when we love unconditionally? Wonder if the Trinity sits together over coffee and laughs and cries about how proud they are of all of us when we love each other outside of our own good.
This last bit of living has left the Lawman and I with more questions than answers. That's alright now, but used to that only brought shame and guilt. Those feelings would come when we believed that we were too much for people. Now days we know we are too much, especially for most Christians who think going to church and making it bigger is the crux of Christianity; but people out here loving ~ we're not too much for them because they're used to loving the ones hard to love.
Like the story in the book, Just Mercy, Heather and Casey caught stones being thrown my way by Darkness those long ago days. The stones that would leave me believing that I was too much if it found impact on my heart. They caught them that day and they're still catching them today. Heather and I talk often, even now over thirty years later; but asking her if she remembers that day never comes to mind as we try to stay caught up on our collective eleven children and lives in general. I'll always remember that late fall day as the day someone chose me over my circumstances or abilities and how the unconditional love she showed me shaped me and how I see people even now. Casey found me on social media recently and I cried again - excitedly hoping to have her and her family up to the farm and share some wine and laughter.
Our country is a mess these days. I don't think anyone knows how to fix it, especially the government. But Jesus never talked about government being an answer, He just talked about loving people in a way that is upside down from the world and even often upside down from religion. For sure it's hidden and seemingly unimportant if you're doing it the way He showed us...like the woman with the Two Mites.
I have friends who are across the spectrum of beliefs - our friendship is not based on religious affiliation; but on loving each other and others. We talk honestly about what we believe and where we are at on this journey, even disagreeing sometimes; but we all unite on loving people sacrificially. It's really beautiful. My friends remind me that being a Christian means nothing actually if your best love remains inside your Christian community. Building up the walls so high that you and your children stay "safely" inside - it's not what He died on the cross for that stormy day. I think it's the point He was trying to make to the religious when He told the story of the Good Samaritan...our "right" beliefs mean nothing if we're too busy doing the "right' things with no time to love people.
I can't remember what time of year it was even - the days are all one big fluid mess back then. What I do remember was being busy, busy with what the Lawman and I call "our church careers". He worked fifty plus hours a week in the marketplace and we spent close to thirty hours a week serving our local church. Plus six kids. Plus renovating a hundred year old house. Plus a marriage. Plus. Plus. Plus. #UNhealthylifestyle
I might have been working in the yard or maybe she came to my door that day, I can't remember; but she and I standing on our porch is seared on my mind. Her beautiful ginger hair and striking smile set the happy tone as she told me that she and her family were moving from the house catacorner to ours back to the southeast where she'd grown up. Standing there I remembered the day they'd moved into the house on our street and I was sad they were leaving. We had watched her belly grow with life and seen the pink things going into the house after the birth of their daughter. Watched her son so proudly carry his little sister around on their front porch.
We talked for awhile about their plans and she mentioned losing their daughter. I stood there shocked. What was she be talking about? The pieces came together and I recalled that she had been pregnant. The baby was lost in her third trimester and I had no idea. I had lost a baby that year too and with all we had going on inside our church community and large family, I'd just simply not realized her belly was flat again and yet there had been no pink balloons outside.
The tears started making their way down my face...I'd missed something so important and right outside my front door. Casey hugged me and said, "It's okay...it really is okay." I told her nothing about it was OK and that I was so sorry for not knowing that part of her story - for not knowing her precious daughter had died. God help me. It was as if the subterranean plates of my spirit shifted there on my front porch. They shifted and I knew that everything was about to change forever in my spiritual walk. I'd been so busy doing all the "right" things that I'd not been with my friend, my very literal neighbor, at the time when nothing was right - a parent should never have to bury their own child. I'd tried to love my neighbor in the church way - trying to get them into my small group and then church - but what I was beginning to see was that loving people meant they could no longer be my project...in fact loving people would be mostly hidden and not something I would later share with my Christian friends so that they could hear about my "outreach". Loving my neighbor was not just a metaphor...it was a very real way of living He talked about...and it started with my neighbor loving me.
When I asked her forgiveness for being too busy to be present in her suffering she completely forgave me - unconditional love. It was so similar to the time Heather pulled me closer when she could have walked off and I would have completely understood. Like Heather, Casey shaped my heart that day - like nothing in my Bible studying or church work ever had shaped me. Love shapes us when it's given unconditionally.
The Lawman and I are watching our older children stretch out their long, strong wings and fly into their futures. In the quiet of the morning over coffee we laugh and sometimes cry because we are just so very proud of them. They're in relationships with people we think are incredible, they're choosing careers that focus on the care of the marginalized and their communities and closest friends are racially, socially and economically diverse. They're going beyond every desire and heart longing we had for them even though our shoddy attempts at patterning all of the above was almost absent in their childhoods. I wonder if that's how God feels when we love unconditionally? Wonder if the Trinity sits together over coffee and laughs and cries about how proud they are of all of us when we love each other outside of our own good.
This last bit of living has left the Lawman and I with more questions than answers. That's alright now, but used to that only brought shame and guilt. Those feelings would come when we believed that we were too much for people. Now days we know we are too much, especially for most Christians who think going to church and making it bigger is the crux of Christianity; but people out here loving ~ we're not too much for them because they're used to loving the ones hard to love.
Like the story in the book, Just Mercy, Heather and Casey caught stones being thrown my way by Darkness those long ago days. The stones that would leave me believing that I was too much if it found impact on my heart. They caught them that day and they're still catching them today. Heather and I talk often, even now over thirty years later; but asking her if she remembers that day never comes to mind as we try to stay caught up on our collective eleven children and lives in general. I'll always remember that late fall day as the day someone chose me over my circumstances or abilities and how the unconditional love she showed me shaped me and how I see people even now. Casey found me on social media recently and I cried again - excitedly hoping to have her and her family up to the farm and share some wine and laughter.
It's what we're all hoping for, right? Hoping to be seen and known outside of our surroundings or contributions. It's what we have to teach our children too. It's something that we and our children can't do, love unconditionally, as long as the marginalized remain outside of our community. It's what Jesus came and offered us and so we killed Him. Killed Him because we much prefer the list to check off with our good deeds and moral living.
Yesterday we stopped at a local Middle Eastern bakery. Two refugee women from the Middle East welcomed us with beautiful smiles, covered heads and long dresses. We talked a while and one shared that her son had been shot in Iraq. We held each other and cried - unconditional love from Muslim refugees does not care if my head is uncovered, if I have a tattoo and jeans on, unconditional love knows mothers can hold and comfort each other no matter when the pain takes your breath away.
We bought our baked goods and got into the car where my youngest daughter sighed, "Mom...why do you always have to cry when someone tells you their kid was killed." That girl - she just says what she thinks. Love her so much. We talked about why it's important to grieve with others in pain, but then we also talked about what Miss Sana had said before we left. I'd asked, "Is it okay with they call you Miss Sana?" "Of course, but it's okay if they call me Auntie Sana...I would love that, I have many nieces and nephews." Auntie Sana had just dispelled what my children hear on the news about how refugees are terrorist...that's what a child hears when we lump Muslims together with extremist.
Unconditional love, stone catchers...that's what we're here for and what I want to spend the rest of my life doing. Glasses raised today in the Burr casa for all the unconditional lovers out there...you're beautiful to us!
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