Birth-mothers' Day

I understand today is Birth-mothers' Day, so I thought I would post my thoughts about the four biological mothers of my four sons.

One of you we have met.

One of you we know only from a tiny picture taken my son's lifetime--half your lifetime--ago.

One of you has passed away.

One of you was lost to the same darkness now clouding our shared son.

But all of you, each of you, lost a son when I gained mine.

And I don't know how to thank you.

I'm not sure I've been a better mother than you would have been, so I guess it's not about better.

You gave them life, and I gave them a place to call home.

Which is more important?

There is no "more important."

It is simply how things happened.

As far as I know, you don't know the God I know, so to tell you it was his plan would likely be an offense to you.

You may have been scared, brave, in pain, or not even in your right mind.

I am sorry that you don't know the young men I know.

And I'm sorry that they don't really know you.

If you're wondering, we think about you, we talk about you, we pray for you.

And I'm trying to get it right for both of us.

ErinRMS 5-13-17

Life is Rich

The richness of life is that certain thing. 

--a kitten's purr breath

--a puppy's pepper feet

--April lilacs nowhere yesterday and everywhere today

--hot fudge sauce you almost can't swallow

--tiny fabric softener jammies hugged and folded and waiting

--the smell of the space between your little boy's ear and neck

--the way he mispronounces that one word you secretly hope he never figures out

--a worn out bedtime story

--a grass and blood stained victory

--a cap and gown in a package on the dining room table

--laughter memories that bubble up out of your belly years later

--sweaty-headed summer evenings running with neighbors in new-mown grass

--the ghost of the scent of your grandma's kitchen

--that first sip of coffee

--the ocean depth of an old friendship

--inside jokes that aren't even funny

--mutual laugh lines and shared softness

--the sweetness of being seen and known

--the gold mine of a new friendship

--that moment of knowing

--the realness of the Father

--the fierceness of the Son

--the closeness of the Spirit

--right words in right places at right times

--the swell of a harmony that zings from your heart right to your tear ducts

--finding home and then going there and then finding your way back again

The richness of life is a certain thing.

The richness of life is a thousand things.

erinrms 4/29/2017

Where God is Not

Where God is Not

"'I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.'" --John 16:33

"'My Father's house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.'" --John 14:2-3

"They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might." --2 Thessalonians 1:9

We often envision hell as a red-black cavern licked by flames, a network of underground tunnels echoing with the sinister laugh of a pitch-forked, life-of-the-party cartoon devil, a lake of unquenchable fire. Perhaps these descriptions are true--but only partially. 

Hell is the absence of God. Hell is the utter absence of anything--anything--good.

We speak of hell on earth. Surely we know from experience that in this world we will have trouble. Floods and earthquakes ravage. Disease descends at random. Powerful people prosper. Innocent men die at the hands of others, and vengeful men extract their pound of flesh.

Yet we speak of heaven on earth because we know joy and we know goodness. We have the delight of rainbows, the smell of coffee, the squish of chubby baby cheeks, and the tumbling warmth of golden retriever puppies. We have heroes, first responders, defenders, and givers. We have blue skies to which we lift our eyes and breathe. We have deep, black, diamond-studded skies under which we stand in silent awe. We have oceans to lap away our stress. We have the strength and companionship of friends with hands held out to uplift, arms wrapped around to sustain, smiles and tears to share our human experience. We have places to go, escapes, options, and lifelines. We have the restraining hand of God and the presence of good alive in the souls of men to bring us protection, joy, healing, relief. We have love. We have Christ, a choice in a fraction of a breath, a mere eye-blink away.

I have joked that my personal hell would be an eternal February, or an infinite series of photocopier jams, or an endless day trapped inside a Wal-Mart. . . .

Some know, no joke, that the worst sort of personal hell would be an eternal war zone, or an infinite moment of unspeakable silence in a dark bedroom, or an endless loop of that time the phone rang. . . .

Hell is all lying. All cheating. All perversion. All getting away with it. All violence unchecked.

Hell is innocent bystanders mowed down in cold blood but with no one around sensitive enough to be horrified.

Hell is more oppressive than a thousand middle-school bullies and lonelier than a car running in a sealed-up garage.

Hell is colder than blue-black February and hotter than asphalt on bare feet in August.

Hell is only bad and only more and more of it.

Hell is the absence of God.

Hell is the utter absence of anything--anything--good.

There is no cartoon H. E. Double Hockey Sticks.

And as bad as this world is, it is not hell.

There is no filter in hell.

No restraint.

No relief.

But heaven? Heaven is here, an undercurrent, a swell, a bright vein of eternity tucked deep in dark pockets and glimmering up on the heights.  Heaven is always in reach amidst the happiness and horrors of this life. It is within reach because Jesus Christ, God as a human, came here and extended his hand to us.

Hell is where God is not.

But I have entrusted my soul to the One who has gone to prepare a place for me where the Great I Am is.

ErinRMS 7/8/16

Ho Hoan Kiem image

Thoughts on Viet Nam from Viet Nam.

What makes home

Home?

It's the people, of course. 

And it's the feel of a place,

The smell I can't name,

And the sounds and the air and the taste,

And the way my soul, skittering

So often off track,

Settles in

At home. 

Is it any wonder, then,

Why this place feels like home

Even when I clearly don't belong?

Even when I don't look right,

Talk right,

Walk right,

Laugh right,

Eat right?

I am awkward and big and white 

And tongue-tied and wide-eyed--

All knees and nose and hips and teeth. 

Words in my ears 

Mean no more and no less 

Than music.

Words off my tongue drop dumb 

Like silly broken bricks.

So I am clearly not at home. 

But there are people here who know me.

There are people here

Who know my name,

Just like home. 

There is a past, a future,

And a precious, precious present,

Just like home. 

When I am home (my real home)

My heart hurts and my brain connives

To find my way back here.

When the wheels touch down,

When my feet stand grounded again,

Every time,

Though I know I am

A strange stranger

Who will never really belong,

I am home. 

ErinRMS 3/2016

Created Space

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God,who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.  And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  

--2 Corinthians 5:16-20

Last week one of the vocabulary words my high school students learned was reconciliation. The word means to mend a relationship, to bring two unlike things into agreement, or to come to terms with something.  Again, this week, as the boys were studying the World War I era in U.S. History, the term irreconcilable came up. The irreconcilables were those who absolutely refused to agree to the stipulations set forth in the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. And then this morning I read in 2 Corinthians 5:19 that "God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation" (italics mine).

So now I'm wondering: What exactly does it mean to be reconciled to God in Christ? What is the message of reconciliation? Is anyone truly irreconcilable?

There are those whose version of the message of reconciliation grabs its hearers in a chokehold and yanks them toward the end result without considering the means. There are those who have been nearly irreparably wounded by this distortion of the message and have limped away from this perversion of God, never to return.  Reconciliation is not merely conforming to a lifestyle or adapting to a new set of beliefs.

As believers reconciled to God in Christ and given in turn the message of reconciliation to the world, we are not here to force anything. We are not here to break people so that we can splint their brokenness with our own rigidity. We are here to shout our joy from the rooftops:

Our sins are not being counted against us!

You who snapped at your son this morning and still hear your words ringing in the air between you. . .

You who sit mute next to your friend and can't shape wordsaround the truth you wish would ring in her heart. . .

You who struggle with perfection. . .

You who struggle with addiction. . .

You who cheated on your wife last week. . .

You who cheated on a test in fifth grade. . .

You who are plagued with guilt for sneaking a cookie. . .
You who won't look yourself in the mirror because you don't want to feel any guilt at all. . .

God knows.

And he knew.

And he is not counting people's sins against them!

We're getting out of jail free!

It's a grace day.

A grace day. 

Reconciliation is not about becoming a Christian. Reconciliation is about your grace day--the day Christ climbed to the cross carrying the full knowledge of the pain to which he would subject himself and the full weight of what he was accomplishing for humankind.

On the cross, the Father broke from the Son so that we--you and I--could be reconciled to Him. The rending of Father from Son in that moment opened a gap, and the gap is now filled with the souls of the ones who will claim their grace day. Where his blood poured out, his children pour in. You are invited into the created space--the created grace--between the Father and the Son.

This is reconciliation. It is so far beyond morals, lifestyles, music styles, and dress codes that it leaves those things completely shriveled and powerless in the dust on the hill at the foot of the ancient cross.

From the cross, Jesus makes his appeal: "Be reconciled to God."

Believe. 
Place your hand into the hole in my side.
Be reconciled. 
Place yourself into the space I created, here next to the heart of God. 

This is where new creations are born. This is reconciliation.

ErinRMS 2/26/16

He Will Stand

He Will Stand

"Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand."  --Romans 14:4

I may be taking this verse out of context, but perhaps not. The 14^th and 15^th chapters of Romans urge us to accept the believer whose faith is weak, to refuse to be an obstacle between a brother and the Lord, and to bear with others in order to demonstrate the grace of Jesus Christ extended to both us and them. 

Funny how these truths make sense to me in light of mothering teenage sons. These days I am surprised often by the subtle-sharp shock of the reality of their separateness. At times I have found myself strung with tension, death-gripping seasons recent and past, mourning a phase of life that is passing, fearing the changes that are already turning the color of our days like the overnight blush on October leaves. The irony is that I'll wake tomorrow and it will be winter unless I grasp the truth about letting go. The truth is that this winter has chilled my soul once, and I would hurl myself, heave my fear, and leave my children at the cross of Christ a thousand times before subjecting myself to it again.

I have three sons who openly claim the Lord Jesus as their authority and the rescuer of their souls. They stand alongside me in worship, and they take part in prayer with their dad, with me, and with others as equals. They do their best to stand with their peers in strength and loyalty. They are not naïve to struggle. They are not naïve to temptation. They are not naïve to some of the worst that human beings have to offer. They are not naïve to their own weaknesses. They are not naïve to the limitless warm swell of the very grace of God.

Not that long ago their Bibles needed pictures of epic heroes and wind-whipped waves. Not that long ago I molded their hands into little clasped fists and gently pressed their sweaty heads into a reverent bow. Not that long ago I elbowed their squirmy sides on Sunday mornings. Not that long ago I had to explain. I had to remind. I had to wonder.

As both their mother and a spiritual leader, I was and am flawed, fearful, and too-often failing. But God is gracious. It was by his grace that he gave me a season to press and mold and model and hold. Yes, God is gracious, because these young men stand. The same rescuer of my own soul will go to any length to defend theirs. If in any sense they were ever mine, it has always been under his authority. They are his servants, and who am I? I see now that I have never been their master. I am their mother, but to their own master they stand and fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

God is gracious. 

We will stand.      

ErinRMS 8/5/15