Coffee Klatch

Last week a friend and I were talking and praying together and she pulled out a bible and started to read Lamentations 3. As she read some things struck me about this chapter that I had never fully noticed before even though they are fairly obvious. I guess most of the time when I’ve heard these verses I’ve heard and read verses 21-33 disconnected from the rest of the chapter, but it was the verses that came before 21 that really struck me this time.

There is such raw pain and grief and anger in these verses. The author doesn’t try and hid it or excuse it or cover over it, instead he directs his raw anger and grief directly at God saying…
“He has made me dwell in darkness…”
“He has walled me in…”
“He has barred my way…”
“He pierced my heart…”
etc. etc.
And yet it’s amidst this honest pain and anger and even amidst these accusations against God that he writes:
“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him’… It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”

This picture of honest grief mixed with honest hope being held together at the same time is so beautiful. But, it got me thinking how often do we allow ourselves and each other to feel both? To express both of these feelings together in our pain? I mean I think that most of us would feel uncomfortable if someone came up to us and said “The Lord has turned his hand against me again and again, all day long.” Or some of the other sentiments expressed in the first part of this chapter. I mean I think most of us wouldn’t know what to do if someone expressed that kind of raw pain and anger to us. We would probably try to steer the conversation quickly to the hope side of things saying contrived things and giving shallow answers. We wouldn’t feel comfortable with someone accusing God like that and we would quickly try to get them to stop and instead say things like, “The Lord’s compassions never fail.”

But, it struck me maybe the healthiest way to deal with pain and suffering and loss is to enter both sides of this chapter. If we run straight to verses 21 we miss out on part of the process and we bury grief and anger that will eventually resurface. We need to give ourselves and those around us the freedom to feel grief, to feel pain, to feel anger and, I think, the freedom to direct all that grief and anger at God. And yet, we also can’t get stuck there and stay there forever, we need to experience both grief and hope. We can’t rush to hope without experiencing the pain, but we also don’t want to get stuck in the pain and accusations and never move forward to “waiting quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” Maybe if we gave ourselves and others more freedom to experience the first part of the chapter we would all be more likely to move forward to the second part?

So, those were my thoughts – anyone have any other thoughts on this?

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany

On top of today being the 4^th of July it is also a special day for some very dear friends of ours. Today our friend’s hostel, Sir Toby’s Hostel, celebrates its 10^th birthday.  We love hanging out at Sir Toby’s and feel so proud to know the people who started it all. If you ever visit Prague and would like a great place to stay I highly recommend this cozy, warm, fun hostel. And even if you live in Prague it’s a great place to hang out – their pub down stairs sells tasty vegetarian food and amazing cookies. Happy Birthday Sir Toby’s!

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany

Recently Christine Sine at Godspace asked the question “What is a Spiritual Practice?” This and another post “Reimagining our Spiritual Practices” lead to her inviting people to join her in talking and writing about Spiritual practices and ways that we connect with God in everyday life. I was intrigued by the thoughts she shared and have been thinking about what are ways that I personally sense God’s presence and engage in a spiritual practice?

I think I grew up thinking that the only real way to connect with God and the only real spiritual practices where reading your Bible and praying, maybe I would have also considered going to church (and listening to a sermon) and Bible study with other believers to be spiritual practices as well, but that was pretty much the extent of it. As I got a little older my repertoire of spiritual practices expanded just a little to include some other classic standards like solitude/silence and fasting. But, I think deep down I knew that I also encountered and experienced God in numerous other ways that didn’t fit into the box of traditional spiritual practices. And it wasn’t until I got even a bit older that I felt free enough to allow myself to engage in spiritual activities and spiritual practices that didn’t fit the normal model I’d grown up with.

Here’s how Christine Sine defines Spiritual practices for her: “for me a spiritual practice is any routine I perform on a regular basis that connects me more intimately with God and God’s purposes.”

I like that. It got me thinking about what things in my regular, everyday kind of life connect me more intimately with God and God’s purposes. There are quite a few things that have come to mind and maybe I’ll write about some of the other one’s in the weeks to come, but for today I want to talk about crying.

For me crying is a spiritual practice, a spiritual experience that changes me and takes me closer to the heart of my Father. Allow me to explain and expand a little… To start with, understand that I’m not really the type who cries at the drop of a hat. You have to be a pretty close friend to have seen me cry as I usually only cry around people I feel really comfortable with. But, I do cry fairly regularly and when I cry I really cry. It usually starts with some little trigger and then grows until I’m crying about everything that I possibly could cry about.

But, there’s something that almost always happens at some point during my crying which I’m not sure is normal or not, maybe it shows my own weakness of faith, but almost always at some point my crying escalates and get’s turned on God. Suddenly it isn’t just about whatever it is I’m crying about, suddenly it’s about me and God and all my insecurities in my relationship with God. Suddenly, all of my doubt, distrust and fear, and all of my anger and accusations come out to play. Suddenly I’m face to face with all my ugliness, all the ugly deep thoughts and feelings I have towards God. Suddenly my sense of God’s sovereignty comes into play and it’s all His fault. Sometimes this moment leads to more tears and sadness, sometimes it leads to guilt and my disappointment in myself for my own distrust of God (which also leads to more tears), sometimes it leads to anger and outright yelling at God (again more tears).

The answer to these moments is always silence. In these moments God has never once defended himself. He hasn’t defended himself through someone else who was with me, or through bringing to mind scripture that I know, or in any other way. It’s always silence. But, I can feel him there, sometimes it’s so heavy that I feel like he’s standing right in front of me just silently looking at me, absorbing all of my accusations and confusion and doubt and just waiting.

But, just as surely as my crying sessions lead to that moment they also lead to another moment. Eventually I get to a place where I’ve cried it all out, where there is no fight left in me. I eventually get to a place where the sadness and anger and fear have run their course and I’m left feeling completely empty and vulnerable. My tantrum has run its course. My tears have done their job and have cleansed out of me all that ugliness and I sit there with it all exposed before me and God. There isn’t anywhere to hide anymore. It’s in this moment that God really comes close. Again he doesn’t answer my questions, ease my fears, or defend against my accusations. He just comes close and holds me in all my vulnerability. And in that moment I feel peace.

That is why crying is a spiritual practice for me. We all need moments like that. Moments that expose our ugliness. Moments that break down our defenses and leave us vulnerable. Moments that cleanse us and bring us to a new place of surrender to a God that we don’t understand. For me those moments happen when I really let myself fall apart and cry.

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany

Right when I think I’m finally figuring out this trusting and waiting on God thing, something totally silly happens which opens up the flood gates of doubt and discontent and I find myself once again face-to-face with my own frail faith. Through tears and hyperventilating this morning a song came to mind that I used to listen to a lot. The lyrics being:

“My faith is like shifting sand,
changed by every wave.
My faith is like shifting sand,
So, I’ll stand on grace.”

Today that is exactly where I’m at. I feel thankful for God’s grace, which doesn’t hold my worry and fear against me, but reaches down to me exactly where I’m at and wraps loving arms around me. He doesn’t promise that it’s all going to be ok. He doesn’t answer my many questions or uncertainties. He doesn’t change my situations. But, He holds me. And he promises to never leave me or forsake me. I don’t always believe him, but that doesn’t change the fact that He will be faithful.

That’s where I’m at today.

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany

Alright, so today for something light and more fun, here are some links that I wanted to share:

First off I never enter contests or giveaways, I am not sure why, but I just never do, but I really think that these camera bags are just too cool! So, I’m entered and you should too – all you have to do is leave a comment (and tell others about it for an added chance to win) Check out the rest of Natalie’s blog and pictures while you are there, she’s a great photographer and I have enjoyed reading her blog for quite some time.

Speaking of cool bags I have decided that I would love this messenger bag from Moop to use as mine and Bryan’s diaper bag – it’s so simple and cute and totally unisex… too bad it’s so expensive… maybe with the next child. I also love this giant market bag from Moop – seriously so cute! I’ve never been into shopping and really never been into bags/purses – I literally have one purse at a time and I use it until it completely falls apart before getting a new one – but sometimes it’s fun to just pretend I am a “purse girl” and if I ever was these are the types of bags I’d love.

This week Bryan and I found this fun recipe, “Five Minutes a Day for Fresh-Baked Bread.” So, cool and it really does produce great bread in very little time. Basically you make a big batch of very wet dough which you NO NOT KNEAD, then you stick it in the fridge and whenever you want fresh bread you just take a little out, let it sit for about 40 minutes and then bake it. Again, NO kneading. The dough lasts in the fridge for up to two weeks.

Today, Christine Sine at Godspace posted this prayer. I was drawn in with the first line “O Breath of God, you moved on the face of the waters and created order out of chaos…Calm our hearts that we may hear you!” And after reading the rest I was convinced that this is my prayer for today. Hope it touches you as much as it touched me today.

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

The last few days I’ve been reading (semi-skimming) Save the Children’s State of the World’s Mothers 2009 Report. It’s a 62 page document comparing different countries in terms of care for Children and Mothers. It’s been a really interesting read so I thought I’d share just a few facts from the research that I found surprising and/or interesting:

-          “Four decades ago, America had the best high school graduation rate in the world, but by 2006 it had slipped to 18^th out of 24 industrialized countries. As recently as 1995, the U.S. was still tied for first place in the proportion of young adults with a college degree, but by 2000 it had slipped to 9^th and by 2006 to 14^th. According to the latest OECD figures, the United States has one of the highest college dropout rates in the industrialized world – 53 percent of Americans who enter college do not finish. Only Italy has a higher college dropout rate (55 percent).”

-          “Worldwide, 75 million children fail to complete primary school, either because they drop out in the early grades or because they never got the change to attend school at all.”

-          “In the United States, nearly 2.5 million – or 68 percent – of all American fourth graders are not reading at grade level.”

-          New Mexico, Nevada, Mississippi, Arizona and Alabama are the five lowest-ranked states in the School Success Index. Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine are the highest scoring.

-          The Complete Mothers’ Index ranks countries based on a number of factors to determine “where mothers fare best and where they face the greatest hardships… The contrast between the top-ranked country, Sweden, and the lowest-ranked country, Niger, is striking. Skilled health personnel are present at virtually every birth in Sweden, while only 33 percent of births are attended in Niger. A typical Swedish woman has nearly 17 years of formal education and will live to be 83 years old, 65 percent are using some modern method of contraception, and only one in 185 will lose a child before his or her fifth birthday. At the opposite end of the spectrum, in Niger, a typical woman has little over 3 years of education and will live to be 56. Only 5 percent of women are using modern contraception, and 1 child in 6 dies before his or her fifth birthday. At this rate, every mother in Niger is likely to suffer the loss of a child.”

-          The United States ranked 27^th on the Complete Mothers’ Index. “One of the key indicators used to calculate well-being for mothers is lifetime risk of maternal mortality. The United States’ rate for maternal mortality is 1 in 4,800 – one of the highest in the developed world. Thirty-five out of 43 countries performed better than the United States on this indicator, including all the Western, Northern and Southern European countries (save Estonia and Albania) as well as Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Hungary, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine. A woman in the United States is more than 5 times as likely as a woman in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece or Italy to die from pregnancy-related causes and her risk of maternal death is nearly 10-fold that of a woman in Ireland.”

There’s a lot more info in the report, but those were just a few little things that stood out to me.

These facts are sobering and personally make me wonder what can I and others like me do to change the living conditions of so many women and children around the world…?

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

So, I haven’t been sleeping very well since being pregnant. In fact I think in the past 23+ weeks that I’ve been pregnant I’ve only slept through the night without waking up once. Honestly, I’m very tired of that. But, last night during one of my many fits of wakefulness I was doing some thinking, or maybe feeling is a better word for it.

It seemed that suddenly I was flooded with all the many things that are currently going on in my life and the lives of those around me that I could worry about. As the many potential worries came at my mind and heart, waves of anxiety started to build. I rolled over trying to shut the thoughts out of my head. I tried to pray for myself and those I love, but it seemed everything came at me so fast and I didn’t know where to even beginning. Soon I was sitting up staring into the darkness, feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. In that moment some words came to me, “Which of you by worrying can add a single hair to your head?… Oh, you of little faith.”

What does it mean to trust God in the midst of deep uncertainties and potential devastations? What does it look like to really have faith? How do we stop from spending our days in needless worry that gets us nowhere and does us no good?

I clearly don’t know the answers to these questions as my experience last night shows. But, as I lay there I started to see how truly pointless my worrying was. What did it gain me? It gained me nothing but more worry and anxiety. Then I began to think through each of the situations that were causing me stress. Not a single one of them was something that was in my control or something I could do anything about. I guess that’s why they caused me to worry so much in the first place - if I felt that I could do something about them then I would feel some release of anxiety because I would feel in control over them. But, the truly scary things in life are those things that we have absolutely no control over. So, maybe the act of trusting, the act of letting go of our worries and anxieties is really the act of acknowledging and accepting and surrendering to our ultimate lack of control.

That’s what I worked on last night… letting go. Recognizing my lack of control and accepting that someone far more gracious and loving than me is in control and I could rest in that. I didn’t totally figure it out, but I’m trying.

This morning I opened the Celtic Book of Daily Prayer and came across this section which seemed very applicable:

“Christ of the mysteries, can I trust You
to be stronger than each storm in me?

… I determine amidst all uncertainty
always to trust.

I believe You will make a way for me
and provide for me,
if only I trust You
and obey.

I will trust in the darkness and know
that my times are still in Your hand.”

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

Today I realized that I had over 1,000 unread blogs in my google reader. Ridiculous, I know. But, life has been such lately that not only has my blog writing suffered, but my blog reading has been pretty much none existent. But, after a few days of feeling ready to re-enter the blogosphere I think I can now officially say, yes, I’m back. Maybe not for good, and it might still be a little sporadic, but I miss blogging and reading blogs and I’m ready to come back to it. So, I marked all my unread blogs as read and I’m starting fresh, jumping back in starting today and looking forward to it. Smile.

So, expect more posts in the days and weeks to come, there are a few bouncing around in my head already. But, for now I leave you with this quote from the book He Leadeth Me by Walter J. Ciszek, S.J.:

“Now, with sudden and almost blinding clarity and simplicity, I realized I had been trying to do something with my own will and intellect that was at once too much and mostly all wrong. God’s will was not hidden somewhere ‘out there’ in the situations in which I found myself; the situations themselves were his will for me. What he wanted was for me to accept these situations as from his hands, to let go of the reins and place myself entirely at his disposal. He was asking of me an act of total trust, allowing for no interference or restless striving on my part, no reservations, no exceptions, no areas where I could set conditions or seem to hesitate. He was asking a complete gift of self, nothing held back. It demanded absolute faith: faith in God’s existence, in his providence, in his concern for the minutest detail, in his power to sustain me, and in his love protecting me. It meant losing the last hidden doubt, the ultimate fear that God will not be there to bear you up. It was something like that awful eternity between anxiety and belief when a child first leans back and lets go of all support whatever – only to find that the water truly holds him up and he can float motionless and totally relaxed. Once understood, it seemed so simple. I was amazed it had taken me so long in terms of time and of suffering to learn this truth. Of course we believe that we depend on God, that his will sustains us in every moment of our life. But we are afraid to put it to the test. There remains deep down in each of us a little nagging doubt, a little knot of fear which we refuse to face or admit even to ourselves, that says, ‘Suppose it isn’t so.’ We are afraid to abandon ourselves totally into God’s hands for fear he will not catch us as we fall. It is the ultimate criterion, the final test of all faith and all belief, and it is present in each of us, lurking unvoiced in a closet of our mind we are afraid to open. It is not really a question of trust in god at all, for we want very much to trust him; it is really a question of our ultimate belief in his existence and his providence, and it demands the purest act of faith.”

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

Here are a few really little things that have made me happy this week:

1. The beautiful fresh cut roses my friend gave me when we got in from the states.

2. The orchids in our bathroom are in full bloom.

3. Isaiah eating sauted onions by the forkfull and loving them.

4. Carrie’s homemade salsa and making pizza with friends.

5. Bryan, Mathias and Isaiah doing “cheers” with their bottles.

6. My new set up for my desk.

7. The plants on our balcony. Especially the one little chili pepper.

8. Our neighbors laundry hanging in the sun.

9. My belly getting bigger.

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany

pictures by Beth Stedman and Bryan Stedman

Here is a litergy that I wrote for a friend a little while ago, but lately it has felt very appropriate for not only her life, but also mine and many others in my circle so I wanted to share it.

*Lord, God you are Alpha and Omega,
 beginning and the end

You are God of our beginnings
You are God of our endings

*God of the ending

*God who causes the sun to set
And the leaves to fall from the trees

*God who inspires the caterpillar to crawl into the cocoon
And the tides to rise and recede

You are in the endings

*May we be a people who end well

*This is a day of ending

We mourn together for that which will not be again.

(silence)

*We say goodbye to the years that have past,
And thank you for the years gone by

*We thank you for your presence

*We thank you for your guidance and provision

*We thank you for your love

We thank you for the work of your spirit

*We thank you for the mystery of cocooning,

*The darkness of uncertainty,

*The tears of yesterday.

*We thank you for the beauty of the setting sun,
the wonder of your presence in our midst,
the laughter that has been.

*May we never forget where we’ve been and where we come from

*May we honor the past that has been,

But move forward in power and freedom

*God of endings, break clean the ties that hold us down,
tear loose the chains that bind us

And set us free to fly into new beginnings

*God of the beginning

*God who causes the sun to rise
And flowers to blossom in new life

*God who inspires butterflies to burst forth into the sky
And the tides to rise and recede

You are in the beginnings

*May we be a people who begin well

*This is a day of beginning

We sing together for that which is yet to come

(silence)

*Together we welcome the coming tide of change
and look forward to the years to come

*We look forward to your presence with us

*We look forward to your guidance and provision

*We look forward to your love

We look forward to the work of your spirit.

*We thank you for the mystery of new birth,

*The lightness of your presence,

*The freedom of tomorrow.

*We thank you for the beauty of the new dawn,
the wonder of your presence in our midst,
the laughter which is to come.

*May we move forward in strength into that which is yet to be

*May we lean into your leading in our lives,

Move us forward in power and freedom

*God of beginnings, break clean the ties that hold us down,
tear loose the chains that bind us

And set us free to fly into new beginnings

*Alpha and Omega, you are God of All

*Be God of this new season. Amen. 

* change readers
Bold read in unison

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman