Closure :)

We left Tennessee for Waco, TX last week. Made it halfway, somewhere in Mississippi, around midnight, and left the hotel at 8:45 am the next morning. We stopped four times before 9:30 – nothing like road tripping with a large family. ;) We were on the way to our oldest daughters’ graduation and I can’t believe how fast time has flown by. Last week I was pregnant with her, right? One year past her age today, in fact is when I held her five days old tiny frame cheering her dad across the stage at SMU where he received his degree. But me, my mom, her mom and her mom and all the way back to Scotland – Catherine is the first to gain a higher education and I’m way past proud… transitions all the way around the Burr clan.

Riding in the car I’ve had time to do some thinking and writing. While I was typing on the Lawman’s laptop somewhere in Louisiana when he says, “I want to stop at Duck Dynasty.” I smile while I enter in the location on my phone’s maps. He’s in his Chacos and yoga pants, but OK ~ he does have a beard. :) 

So much has changed about us that I don’t even know anymore. Even our prejudice about these southern bearded men and their primal and often offensive ways seemed familiar when we were in Asia for a summer. Everything there was unfamiliar, in a way that made the 20 minute episodes from Louisiana feel like a piece of home. Parts of southern culture, our culture, goes against so much of what we believe and practice regarding race, things we find important and our world view; but we are white and it is past time we realize we have a culture – with dark parts as well as beautiful parts too. Embracing the good of our culture while addressing the bad can feel like walking through a mine field in a blizzard wearing snow shoes. So Jesus take all the wheels, we took a selfie in front of Duck Commander’s sign. #whoarewe????

When you’re pushed out of your comfort zone or walk out of your own choosing, walls come down…you can keep walking or you can build new ones. It seems like we’ve watched the walls of our fortified religious ideology crumble in so many ways since we got back from that trip to Asia four years ago…and the view is, well ~ it’s beautiful and full of possibilities, terribly dangerous ones and lovely ones too.

Rebuilding walls is the last thing we want to do by now. While it would be easier to regret our years in the fortified city of our sect of Christianity, I’m grateful. I’m grateful that we gave ourselves to something and to some ones so completely even though it did not turn out like we all thought it would. I’m not disappointed in our “all or nothing” approach to living. I’m glad we don’t play it safe, making sure to measure out love like it’s a falling commodity. The joy is great as is the pain when you live like this, but it pushes you closer to Him if you let it. Like one of my older kids jokingly said, “Yall need Jesus…a lot.” And he’s right – we need Him a whole lot because we’re a mess and we’re a lot of everything. We even wear ourselves out. :) 

We bought a house and like every one we’ve ever bought, it is a fixer upper. We hadn’t planned on buying a home, but renting in Chattanooga until we build on the farm. Rentals in this area are crazy expensive so we bought this one owner, 70 year old home and did what we know how to do – restore it. Last week I found a guy named Robert who paints homes along with his wife, Susan. He came out and spent a week doing just that – painting rooms and the exterior of our home so we’ll be ready to list it for sale in June. He’s a country guy named Robert who talks with an accent much like a character from the Andy Griffith show. We talked about paint after I met his wife who works with him, who I think may have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.  

Robert told me that his brother Ray would be helping him paint too. “He got mixed up in life and came on down to live with me, so I been helpin’ him out and such since he got out of prison…we think they done some pretty bad things to him in there so we just let him live with us and I bring him to work with me.” I think he told me all that he did to prepare me for when I met Ray the next day. I told him that I looked forward to meeting Ray and to make themselves at home as I quickly walked back inside before the tears came.

I went to bed that night thinking about the story Jesus told in Matthew. The one about the sheep and goats and how the goats would be the most surprised that all of the things they had done in His name and for Him were only going to get them nothing – that He wouldn’t even know them. He goes on to tell how the sheep would be shocked that what they did for others, out of love, would be recognized by Him – reading the story it sounds like they’re surprised that He even knows them. 

Falling asleep I realized that I had lived a lot of my life like the goats…thinking all I did was for Him, but so much of it was for me and my own goals and great need to be a part of something “for Him” and make certain my life “counted” – and safe, me and my family safe from harm, secure inside something bigger with large walls of standard and creed around it so I could comfortably turn off my brain and spirit and live inside with others like me, enjoying false peace. Even though I knew we really did just love people, so much had gotten mixed up in that loving that it looked more like hustling for our worthiness.

Ray came the next day. He had hair down to the middle of his back, dressed in dirty clothes, looked to have lost quite a few teeth and wouldn’t hold a gaze when I tried to talk with him. Whether it’s explosive anger or severe insecurity, a life of rugged terrain leaves the soul scared. The way he interacted with his half-brother, Robert, told me that he felt safe with him. Felt like he mattered, was wanted and even needed. This was not an act of charity offered by Robert and his wife, but a bonafide inclusion into their life and their work.

The week went by and we had only talked about painting, their love of the beach and how their boat sank the week before. So when Robert brought up the topic of church one day during one of their breaks, I was rather shocked. I promise, your calling will find you…even if it’s the one you never wanted. ;) Listening to them, I took a deep breath and readied myself to hear another story about why someone finds it hard to do what we call "church" in the West.

“We love Jesus and all, we pray and we try to do right, but we cain’t go to church regular like…it’s just hard to go with our schedule and all…and to hear most of what they really want is money. One preacher told me that God was gonna make me die of cancer if I didn’t stop smoking and go to church. I just don’t think God’s like that myself.” he puffed out between the smokes he shared with his wife on our back porch. I looked at the ground and didn’t know what to say next. Used to I would have tried to gently tell them that we do what we find important – how we spend our time and money is a measure of how we follow God. But instead I sighed and told him I was so sorry – that Jesus never went to church and could have had the biggest one anyone ever saw, but He didn’t…He just touched people in their pain and loved them, created community and told the religious people that all of their morality and cleanliness and building of religious empires and networks meant nothing to God because their hearts were full of importance and “calling” and self-serving to reach their goals, albeit religious. I started crying //again// and shared how much I loved Jesus and that it was taking me awhile to separate following Him from the institution.

Like the Lawman reminds me, “When the disciples pointed out how beautiful the temple was Jesus told them ‘Those stones will all fall down. All of them.” He kept reminding us that it’s not about what we build, but who and how we love. Because the temple and who worked in it and their positions had become more important than Him and the ones He came to love.  Jesus was consistent to remind those following Him that love blooms most vibrantly in the places we are sure everything good must be dead.

I spent the rest of the day laying tile in our bathroom and dreaming about having a company one day that restores old farm houses and farms. As I mixed grout and asked my daughter to make lunch for everyone, I thought about Robert. I thought about how he would’ve never been up front preaching in our days as Christian "key leaders", not even leading a small group…he’s not the “rock star” they’re looking for because nobody wants to be like him. What’s funny is that I don’t know of any pastors who would’ve taken Robert’s brother, Ray to work with them because he smokes and sometimes that smoking isn’t tobacco;  but Jesus – that’s exactly what He did and who He called to come to work with Him.

He came to build community…a community of love, acceptance and healing where the poor and the least are elevated like it says in 1 Corinthians 12:22-28:

“On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, and less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may h ave the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.”

I don’t know, but I feel different in a biological kind of way after all of this mess of a journey. I don’t know how people feel who have survived a life threatening illness, but I’ve heard that everything is more vivid – like you see what matters and what doesn’t and what used to be so inconsequential is now sacred. I feel that way when I pour my coffee each morning or read a text from one of my kids or walk across our land and breathe prayers of gratitude, all is holy and sacred and I see that now. No more rushing past life to do the “important things”, but a slow journey to see Him in the ordinary.

Really what we wrestled with was leaving that sense of belonging – and all it means to not at least be a part of something important. We all share a cultural lust to be a part of something important, impactful and invaluable. But we’re just ordinary folks, like we always have been, and it’s just really beautiful to not hustle for our worthiness to be a part anymore. Really beautiful. Even though it’s meant that we no longer “belong”, we know that serving Him in the hidden ways He told us to…well it’s more beautiful than belonging to a movement or church ever was.

We stopped in Lousiana on our way to Bear Country and had some BBQ for lunch last week. It was amazing. If you ever find yourself in Shreveport go enjoy Real BBQ and More – blows the rest out of the water. We ate and headed toward the door when the owner walked across the dining room. He pulled us aside and stood tall all 6’8 of his African American height. He looked at our children and blessed them and then turned to me and the Lawman, “I want you to never forget something…never forget that there are blessings in every storm, you just have to look for them. They’re there, ask Him to show you…that’s why He rose up out of that grave to prove there is blessing in the dying.” I stood there and cried and wrapped my arms around him and said, “Thank you so much, you’ll never know.” We hadn’t said a thing about our story to him, but he chose to be an elder prophet for that moment in our lives and I’ll never forget it and the value it holds in my journey. 

Yesterday we stopped by our old neighbor’s to pick up the chicken coop we couldn’t fit on the moving van last June. We have a trailer half full of the graduates’ things she is bringing east. Leaving her and our oldest in Waco last weekend was bitter sweet. Bitter because we know a really beautiful season is over for them as friends move away and they move away, but sweet too because we also know an even more beautiful season is headed their way. Beautiful endings bring beautiful beginnings.

I was talking on the phone in our parked truck in front of our neighbors’ house when the Lawman tapped on the window, “It won’t fit, baby….” he said after he and our son had realized what I hopped wasn’t true. We tried and sure enough the chicken coop wasn’t going to fit in the trailer. The tears came as I watched them carry the coop back to our neighbor’s backyard. Urban farming had been a respite and one small way I felt like I actually lived in my skin for the almost fifteen years of working for my salvation in the city we loved and I wanted to take that small part back to Tennessee with me. Leaving the coop was more symbolic than anything, but I knew it was for a reason. Everything is for a reason.

We spent the night with my brother and his wife that night. He asked to hear about the journey we've been on for the last four years and so we shared with him that it had been a deconstruction of our hearts and ideology of how the Bride gathers and why the Lawman and I are here. He heard us share that we had been performing for a long time, not so much to get accolades or like folks thought - to get an eldership - but for impact and to be a part of something, a part of community that changed a city and the nations. 

When I typed up a blog last year about hustling for our worthiness and getting mad like the older brother "at the loser over there" I was actually thinking about the pastor of the large church in south Texas known for his smile. How could he do all of the shady things he did and have "impact" and we just couldn't seem to keep up the 30 hours of church service and still not see people coming to church like we hoped? Leaders at our church chose to believe I was talking about an elder intern they had chosen - that he was the "loser" I was referencing and that my husband was upset that he wasn't chosen, which couldn't be further from the truth. But it started a whole story line that I actually think drew the group of men together - doing "Kingdom work" and "being attacked", it can bring a cohesion for sure. 

I don't regret what I wrote, what I regret is that they didn't come to me like leaders should when they sense something wrong. I never dreamed they'd think what they did and choose to fill in the blank with what worked for them. In fact, I didn't know they thought the things they did until months later when someone stopped me in Target and told me everything, and others who had been in meetings to hear it shared first hand told us what was being said by these leaders.

For us that lie along with others and the propagation of them turned friends away from us and at the end of the day leaders chose to believe what they wanted to believe rather than what's true and the people that followed them would chose to believe them. It's been a long journey of trying to practice Matthew 5:11 - even today I cannot "jump for joy" when people lie about us, but I can ask for mercy for us all.

We ended our story and my brother, who has always made me feel safe even when he shoots straight, said "When you leave here tomorrow you're going to leave the lie that you've lived your life performing. I've watched yall for years and you've never been performers, you just love people. I know yall and whatever those people said to make you the scape goat, that's not who yall are...never has been and never will be. Even though yall are weird." :) Gotta love a big brother's love. I fought the tears as my sister in love shared that she heard pain, betrayal and grief...it is so good to be safe and hear people you respect speak truth into your life. So good to leave those lies there with them the next morning as we pulled away. Knowing that we were not the reason or common denominator for the twenty-five year revolving door or other issues there at the church we loved - we could move on and find closure. We could let people think what they needed to think and know that He knows the truth. 

We’re in the car as I type this last part and we're ready to get back to the mountains…ready to get back and sell the Chatt house and start building our home on Poplar Farms. Maybe I’ll get to restore old farmhouses one day, restore old walls that saw births and deaths and weddings and mother’s nursing babies in the middle of the night while they prayed for their husbands to come home from war. There's something really fulfilling about restoration no matter where you see it happening. 

And we’ll keep looking for the blessings He has for us after this one helluva storm and we’ll keep seeing people like Robert, my brother, his wife and the owner of the BBQ place as teachers and pastors and elders. And we’ll for sure never see His Bride the same way ~ she is absolutely radiant, even – and maybe especially – when she can’t make herself sit through a modern day church service. ;)

I’m looking at chicken coop plans online as the endless miles pass under us…thankful for the past, thankful for the journey and thankful that the coop didn’t fit…we’re gonna need a bigger one for the Lawman’s poultry plans anyways. ;) Time to close the door on the last season...thank the season for what it taught us and time to move on. Time for restoration.