12 weeks, 10 inches square

I have officially reached my twelfth week of pregnancy. What is normally a celebrated milestone is, for me, somewhat like crossing the point of no return. Most babies are not miscarried after 12 weeks. Or so they say. Of course there are always exceptions, but I have found that I tend to think of myself as the exception to the rule. Not something I'm fond of; in fact, this thinking is the voice that fuels whatever cynicism and pessimism I happen to hold onto. The voice that says, "Good things come to those who... aren't you." So, every day thus far has been about deciding not to listen to that voice. Sometimes I am weary and it takes too much out of me. But what I've found is that in listening, the weariness becomes absolute terror and fear. I'd rather be tired and trying to believe than without a glimmer of hope on the horizon.

Hope, our pastor said, is a gamble. I don't like this idea.

When I was in college, there was a man who stood on a box outside the main building on campus and shouted at the students and faculty walking by, screaming that the end was near and that they should repent of their sins. I was always curious: why did he think that approach would work? What made him feel like evangelizing in such an annoying manner would ever have any positive impact? Now, I didn't do any follow-up on that guy, so I don't know for sure if, indeed, he was without a single convert. But it still begged the question: wasn't he uncomfortable up on that box, yelling at the top of his lungs? Even just a little embarrassed?

The truth is, maybe he wasn't uncomfortable. Maybe he stood up on that box and felt quite right in what he was doing. Maybe he believed that because he'd been baptized or said the Sinner's Prayer or went to church or whatever, he had something on the rest of us. Not in a malevolent or self-righteous way. Just in a way that's misguided. It occurred to me one day that if the box this man was standing on was a good six or so inches bigger than his feet, each way, then he might've actually had a pretty comfortable perch. The more room one has to shift and manuever, the more one feels a little less compelled to think about how they're going to remain atop. There's no reason not to start yelling. What more do you have to do?

Perhaps this can be said about our ideologies. The more room to wiggle we give ourselves, the safer we feel - the more we can decide what feels good to believe. What I have learned recently about God is that the box we get to stand on - and we have to stand on a box, we're called to - isn't comfy. It's not twenty inches square. We're lucky if it's 10. Someone - another pastor, Louie Giglio - recently said in a video I watched on YouTube (and to be frank, I don't know who Louie Giglio is, but I have to say, the man can speak) that no matter what I go through - no matter what you go through - God promises to carry me. What? That's the promise? Wait. I want the promise to go like this: "Remember all that crap you just endured? Well, you passed the test. No more. Now, sit back and enjoy the ride." See what I mean about 10 inches? There's not a lot of wiggle room here. If all I'm really promised when it comes to life is that God will see me through any and every situation that arises, then guess what? I have, by way of accepting this God and asking Him to be in my life, a built-in capability to go through just about anything and actually make it. It's like being one of those all-terrain vehicles when you'd really rather be vase on someone's mantle. We're designed to endure. We're made to experience life at a greater velocity, in more rigorous conditions. We're not supposed to get to stand on our box - where we're supposed to live and reflect Jesus in whatever capacity He's called us - and relax. Not that we can't know joy or peace. But they're not really joy or peace, not the true kinds anyway, if we've got some cushy set up. The minute that happens, we become like that man on my college campus: more interested in our box and what we can do to remind other people to get one, too, than constantly asking God just to keep us sturdy.

Now, don't get me wrong: sometimes, life is cushy. Sometimes things do go great. And I'm all for that. Believe me! But what I know now that I didn't know before is that the minute my understanding of God - not my circumstances - gets too comfortable, the minute I believe He's at all predictable, I better get ready. The box is about to become a great deal smaller. I'd better prepare to plant my feet firmly on whatever ground I've got beneath me. And that ground isn't always going to be what I wish it were. God's promises and God's Word aren't always what warm and fuzzy are made of. Just ask any regular man or woman who wants to know and love Jesus but who also happens to have a human nature. Not the easiest combination in the world. Remember when Jesus said we needed to hate our own family in order to follow Him (Luke 14:26)? Most of us know that simply means that following Christ - really following - is equivalent to one life-altering concept: sacrifice. The box just got a whole lot smaller.

But what I also know to be true now is that, just as we're designed for intensity and struggle, we're in the same breath made for adventure. To have our belief not only challenged but vindicated. I sincerely believe God will not only stand beside us in our darkest hours, He will make sure we know He's there. They're two different things. And the latter makes the former somehow not only easier to embrace, it makes it worth having. Adventure isn't something most of us look for in life these days. Perhaps it's stress or exhaustion, perhaps its apathy or ignorance. Perhaps it's a sense that adventure, in the whole, isn't to be had anymore. A notion for times gone by. The reality, I think, is that adventure - the true realization of what one feels in the deepest part of their heart, the actualization of what we're born knowing to be true - waits for those who are willing to stand on that box, no matter the dimensions, and look up. To expect that, at any moment, there might be more fullness to what we now know in part (1 Corinthians 13:12). That tomorrow, we might know more about this bewildering God than we do today.

So this is, for me, an adventure. Half because it is risky. A gamble. That's what hope is, after all (regrettably or not). And half because the box I'm standing on is outrageously uncomfortable for the moment. I'm hoping it'll expand a bit with time. But for now, all I can do is accept what room I've been given and keep looking up. Never stop looking up.

a fine line

In the fall of 2005, Conor and I sat in a doctor's office and looked with wild eyes at a new, frightening chapter of life: we had miscarried our second child and were now facing a trial greater than one we'd ever expected. The pregnancy had actually caused something pre-cancerous to grow within me and I began chemotherapy shortly before Halloween.

A year later, after receiving permission to begin thinking about having another child, we were thrilled to learn I was pregnant again. Ten weeks in, at a routine ultrasound, we saw the baby on the screen - without a heartbeat.

A few months after that, we learned we were pregnant again. This was early 2007. That sweet baby was Copeland.

I don't write any of this to say that my story is unique, special. I write it for two reasons. One, because I want to remember. There's a loss in the forgetting. And, two, because instead of being unique, it's universal. And it's not just the idea of suffering. Suffering is a part of life, and we hear its refrain from the time we are young. But it is repeat suffering - loss after loss, sorrow after sorrow - that takes us by the scruff of the neck and demands we decide: will we fall on our knees or rise to our feet? Will we bow before a God who allows us to come to blows - again and again and again - or will we stand and walk away, convinced that it's impossible for such a god to exist?

I learned, tonight, of parents who recently lost their second child to a genetic disease that robbed their first of life only a year before. A disease that didn't show up in their eldest until she was nearing two and wouldn't appear in their youngest until after his older sister had been buried. Another mother lost a set of twin girls last summer at 20-odd weeks of pregnancy; just a few weeks ago, she and her husband learned they were pregnant again. "Redemption! Here's the plan God had all along!" This is the common Christian cry. Why shouldn't it be? But just a few days ago, that same young mother faced yet another heartbreak: miscarriage. Again.

We are such wonderful, beautiful creations. We look for redemption in everything around us. We can't help it. We look for the reason, the purpose, the story. The turning point. Every good writer knows that each story has to have two things to make it "work" - a climactic point where everything suddenly becomes something different, often something better, and a character who changes and becomes something different, often someone better. We like better. In fact, sometimes we don't mind trading in our present mediocrity for future elation, even if suffering is often strewn along the path. But we want the future elation to come soon. Now. Because the mediocrity doesn't look like mediocrity until it's eclipsed by elation. Until then, mediocrity looks like happiness. Let's be honest: it is happiness! We just begin, in the hour of suffering, to convince ourselves that what we believed would make us happy - the thing suffering took away - was really a trick, or a trap, or something we'd begun to make into an idol. That, eventually - soon, now - we'll see how that happy wasn't happy at all. What's really happiness is to come. It's better.

But what if better doesn't come? What if better just keeps taking its time or never even shows up? What if what everyone says is going to be the "blessing around the bend" keeps evading me? Why did I have to let go of my past joy to stand in present sorrow? When's the future going to make it feel worthwhile? What's the sense in all of it? Where's the redemption?

I heard a pastor say once, in a sermon I doubt I listened to at all, that "history is going somewhere". I doubt I listened because most of what he said was beyond my comprehension. But I caught that line. I like karma. I'm sort of built to like karma. We want to know that "what goes around, comes around". Strangely, this is the breath of the Gospel. Jesus came. He died. And good won. But we don't see the manifestation of that win in its entirety yet. Our life story isn't circular. It's not "do-good-get-good, do-bad-get-bad". David laments the prosperity of the wicked time and time again in the Psalms. Our story - God's story - is linear. It's a fine line going directly, pointedly, toward one end. And that end is His glory. In Jesus, "our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18). Do we compare them? Of course. We wouldn't be human - and God's great love - if we didn't. But one day, we'll laugh. We'll realize in full that He was right. They weren't worth comparing.

As Conor and I sat in the ultrasound room last week, watching the little heartbeat of this, our fifth child, flutter on the screen, all I could think was, "How senseless. Why in the world am I lying here, seven months after I delivered a beautiful little girl, looking at the same screen that revealed her tiny heartbeat a little more than a year ago? Why isn't she here?" Suffering, in our most basic - and most understandable - estimation is senseless. Even though I know thousands of lives were impacted by Copeland's life, I still grieve her loss. Nothing, nothing will redeem that loss for me. Not even another baby. Nothing. And yet, I look for it everywhere - the redemption. I crave it, I need it, I reach out for it. And thus I reveal within me the great, gaping void that can only be filled with the truth of Christ. He makes sense of the senseless. The fine line - my story, and yours - began and will end with Him. Every moment is Him. He is Redemption. He's the only Redemption.

I don't know what is around the bend. I know God has something good. But something good is not promised to be something perfect. Or something happy. Copeland was the best thing that ever happened to me. And the worst. How can such contradictory statements be true? Only in Christ. We know that road to Heaven is narrow. Perhaps this doesn't just mean man will find the world enticing, its ways distracting. Perhaps it means that the road is certain, and set and unwavering. That it doesn't meander about. The road is a line, a delicate but unaltered course taking us Somewhere - to see Someone - certain and set and unwavering. On our knees or on our feet, may He lead us Home.

all is well

Good news... we went in and were able to see our precious new little life flickering away on the screen, heartbeat and all. Everything is measuring right on "schedule" and we left feeling a load lifted. I prayed specifically on the way there that the Lord would anoint our time, drape it in His peace, and surround us with angels. I prayed we would radiate something 'different', something that would reveal a glimpse of Him to all who spoke with us. Thank you for praying with us today. What might have been an extremely traumatic appointment was actually quite wonderful; the only tears I cried this morning were tears of hope.
More to come...

pray

Just wanted to let everyone know that we have our first sonogram and OB appointment tomorrow morning at 11:00 CST. We'd love your prayers. Obviously there's a great deal of hope and anxiety and joy and trepidation filling our hearts at this point. We are praying for peace as we enter the office and the ultrasound room - especially since both played a role in Copeland's life - and of course good news to bring home and share with all of you.

Thank you for continuing to lift us up. We will have word as soon as we can get to the computer tomorrow!

zechariah 9:12

It has been weeks since I've sat in front of this computer to write. I can't say exactly why. Somehow, the words just stopped coming. Life got busy, things felt lighter - somehow I didn't need to say anything. I found the response to the last post interesting, certainly broader than I'd expected. Oh, I get dramatic sometimes. Caught in a whirlwind of emotion and fervor and I find I can't really slow my own thoughts down to consider what I'm actually saying. What I'm putting out there, for whomever to read. But, looking back, I suppose that's how it should be. Unaltered and totally raw. Truthfully, nothing has changed. I think and feel just as I did that night, over a month ago. But I am quieter this evening. Something has stilled me and I'd really rather not fight it.

This video was put together by the incredibly creative and visionary team at our church here in Nashville. All I will say is that, after six months of walking here, in this place, away from my precious girl, it felt surreal to tell our story again. It felt cathartic, and healing, and also a little sad. The sadness doesn't go anywhere. It seeps into cracks away from the places we most obviously feel during our busied, frantic days, but it's there - it remains. I had thought that once we learned we'd be expecting another baby, I'd feel less of it. That the sharpness of it would wear off. And now, as I sit in my sixth week of pregnancy - something really splendid, something I celebrate almost incessantly - I find that my heart is often heavier in missing her, in wishing it were she, again, inside, waiting to breathe life. And wishing that life would be long. I am filled with joy and anticipation, dread and suspense, apprehension and anxiety, hope and expectation as I sit only a few weeks into this wild, wondrous adventure. It is weird to share the news with so many at so early a stage, but I suppose it's fitting. Nothing in this journey for us has been off-limits - no depths, no heights. So somehow, despite the typical 'don't-tell-until-it's-safe' rhetoric most of us buy into these days, I have to tell. Is there really a 'safe'? Other than in the grips of Jesus, I think not.

What would it look like for each of us to live not just knowing about Heaven but wanting it? Longing for it? I don't think any of us can until it's more than either eternal choir-singing or a state of mind. Neither appeal very much to me, nor should they. No, I want a Heaven that looks like home. Only brighter, and richer, and fuller, and sweeter. I want a Heaven that, when I get there, makes me realize I've only been breathing what seemed like air. I've only tasted what seemed like food. And laughed what seemed like a real laugh. I want a Heaven where everything I love now is better. I think that's what I will find. Because everything good here is just a glimpse of what is to come.

I beseech your prayers. I don't think I can ask God to bless me because of what I've been through. I don't know if that's because I believe it's unbiblical; no, rather, I don't think that at all. I'm asking for blessing, though - and I suppose if I had to give a reason, I'd simply say it's because I believe He loves me. Nothing I've done or gone through deserves any extra heap of goodness. And of course He doesn't love me any more than He did before. I just understand His love a little more.

So I ask. I ask for health, and for life that is brimming over with fullness and hope and promise. I've even asked for more than one life! We shall see. It's a bit like asking for the proverbial Christmas BB gun. Perhaps a bit daring. But I happen to believe God likes to do things that make us smile. Here's to seeing what's up His sleeve.

creed

I am tired. I really had no intention of writing anything tonight, but circumstances beg me to shift my agenda. Sleep can wait.

I recently received an e-mail regarding a new program that Oprah and her friends are advocating via her XM radio show. The program is called "A Course in Miracles." Apparently, the material for this course was delivered via an "inner voice" to a female professor several decades ago. It was published in the seventies, but only now is gaining a worldwide popularity. Some have claimed it to be the "new age Bible," though I'm not quite sure what that means.

I will first say that I like Oprah. I like her because I believe she is a woman who feels a compulsion to do good, to change others' lives, and to make wise choices. I am not, as I wrote in an e-mail earlier, one to "throw out the sinner with the sin" - or, at least I hope not to be. Therefore, what I write in the next few paragraphs is not an indictment against Oprah or any of her colleagues. I will say, however, that I believe her to be sorely - and, for the moment, treacherously - misguided.

In the Old Testament, God chooses a woman named Esther to be a part of the king's harem. She's Hebrew; the king, in turn, is not. Esther is beautiful - a characteristic that, obviously, was God-given. Her beauty is such that she is highly favored - and given the crown. Shortly after becoming queen, it is brought to Esther's attention that someone close to the king has planned a mass extermination of the Jews. Leaning on the godly wisdom of her uncle, Mordecai, Esther chooses to do something that could very well have elicited her death: she reports the possible annihilation to her husband and ends up saving her people. Of course, as Mordecai explains to her, this is no act of her own but rather, an act of Almighty God, who appoints leaders and those in positions of power to accomplish great things, to make differences, and to bring Him glory. "Esther," Mordecai essentially tells her, "you have perhaps been named queen for such a time as this."

Oprah is a woman, like most of the readers on this blog, who is trying to understand a God who loves her. But she is not walking toward truth. To be sure, she's seeking something. I am not that different from her. But my filter is guarded by the truths of Scripture. What "A Course in Miracles" teaches is derived, not from Scriptural truth, but from what I would wager is the exact opposite. As Paul wrote, we do not "struggle... against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Ephesians 6:!2). Let there be no doubt that the teachings in this "Course in Miracles" are Satanic. I do not mean to dramatize. It is not in my nature to overreact to things of a spiritual matter. But I stand firm in my belief that anything that does not point us to a Christ who is resurrected, and upon whom alone we can depend for salvation, is a work of the enemy.

I am so flustered, my fingers so hurried as I type, my heart pounding in my chest, that I find it hard to ignore the compulsion I feel. perhaps out of the love I have for my Lord, my Savior, my Rock, my Love, my Truest Friend, to consider writing on the Nicene Creed. It seems to me that, if God has allowed Oprah a position of authority, a voice of influence, it is because we - women - are under attack. Open your eyes! This is not a time for dillydallying. Oprah's realm of influence is primarily female. Perhaps we live in an era where women are a threat like they never were before. Or. perhaps we live in an era where they are easier targets, unsure of their security in Christ. Who could doubt it? But, whether either is true, we know that, if we are under attack, we must plant our feet firmly in the truth. We must choose a veritable call to arms. This isn't about persecution or boycott. Not self-help, not religion, not church, not Bible-beating. It's about Jesus. Let us all cry out, "Give me Jesus!" and be done. It was finished, two thousand years ago. Let us not add or subtract from that one, great, critical Work.

I encourage you to visit Oprah's website. Search for the XM radio schedule and, consequently, the "Course in Miracles." It is being taught by an attractive young woman named Marianne Williamson. She looks delightful. Oh, how my heart is hurting for the women who are already under the sway of something so deceptive! And how my blood boils thinking of those whom Satan is plotting, even now, to lure into its grip.

I am led to share with you the words of the Nicene Creed - http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/creeds/nicene.htm - because it strikes me that many, many women who claim to be Christians will somehow feel a comfort or a sense of homecoming when hearing Wiliamson's interpretation of these teachings. I pray that, as women in all different places of life, with burdens and heartaches totally unique and particularly gut-wrenching, God will, in His providence and mercy, give you a check in your Spirit - in effect, the wooing of the Holy Spirit, or the very Spirit of Christ - to know that these teachings are deceptive. In sharing this information with others, take heart in remembering that God ordained the king of Persia, Cyrus - who certainly did not know Yahweh - to accomplish His purposes (2 Chronicles 36). It is not beneath nor beyond our creative God to use unbelievers.

Do not be afraid. Though we, too, have been called "for such a time as this," we have also been called to great joy, great compassion and great hope because of this Man, Jesus. He has promised that He is able to keep us from stumbling - and also, that Satan Himself is a "stumbling block, [who does] not have in mind the things of God, but the things of man" (Matthew 16:23). Let us rest - and proclaim truth! - in knowing that, though we will have troubles - and sorrows, and heartaches, and insecurities, and calamities and tragedies - in this world, we can hope! For He has overcome the world.

the mystery of truth

Someone, a girl I don't know, but one who is a mother and who is grieving the loss of her own child, said something to me today. "It's been two months. What am I supposed to feel? What am I supposed to say? Am I normal?" Oh, the great creeping notion of normalcy. It slinks around us and encircles itself about our feet and convinces us our calling is to fit into a category, or a box, or a statistic, or a quota. We love the idea of being corporate. And not that we shouldn't. But it's usually about following a crowd so that we can be loved instead of folding in just as we are because we are loved. We've bought into the idea that if we don't make sense to everyone else we must not make sense at all.

Someone else asked me tonight if I thought praying really did any good. If God already has this whole thing mapped out, then why pray? What's the point? I remember hearing once that prayer isn't about changing God; it's about changing us. I like that, it sounds pretty - and believe me, I know it to be true. Partly. But if prayer doesn't at least affect God then somehow, our relationship doesn't feel much like a relationship. It feels more like me talking to myself. When the Israelites built their golden calf out in the desert, after God had parted the Red Sea and shown them He was serious about delivering them from the Egyptians, I don't think He was angry because that was protocol. People doing naughty things? Check. God mad? Check. I think He was angry in the righteous sense - which means the kind of anger that comes from love. And love comes from a heart that's affected. It has to. Otherwise it's not love at all.

Here are a few of my favorite things: the smell of horses, the sound of the word 'indefatigable', Jane Austen, Hans Zimmer, going out to dinner with my husband, grapefruit for breakfast, hyacinths, gold earrings, the feel of cool grass on my feet in summertime, amaretto sours, chasing Sellers around the house... all these are things I'd call 'good.' I like them. They make me happy, or they make me smile, or they bring back fond memories of something special or a time I felt closer to something I want to be close to all the time. David once wrote that "apart from You, God, I have no good thing." So, for me, if I take that literally - and I love to take the Bible literally - that means apart from God, I can basically nix the grapefruit and "Pride and Prejudice." I believe a God who can give me these things is a God who's affected... who loves me. And so I'm going to keep on praying because I've got an in. The God of the universe gets me. I make sense to Him. My normal is the normal He made.

I don't really know where I'm going with this other than to say that I hope, tonight, or today, or whatever hour it may be when you read this, you feel like where you are is okay. Christians are obsessed with finding the formula, with making everything fit into a mold. When we talk about the Word of God being "inerrant" we want it to mean more than simply "total truth" - we want it to mean no one can debate or discuss or ponder or question or shout out to God in frustration. It is what it is - or is it? Everything that's true is a mystery.

Fight for your joy. Not your happiness, but your joy - whatever gives you the sense that you're closer to something that feels like Home. Loving God is like catching a scent on a breeze - it captivates, but it's untraceable. It cannot be created - it must be received. Let Him teach you to love Him. After all, we love Him only because He loves us. It's like the man in Mark said to Jesus as his son was seized by the demon: "Lord, I believe!" And in the next breath - "Help me believe!" Basically, "I get it! I believe it! I love You!" And then, "Okay, not really. But I think if You helped me, I could!" The complexity of the human heart! A great American thinker once urged his countrymen to "simplify." How? We are creatures woven in secrecy, fashioned after majesty, and filled with divine curiosity. Oh, that we would never shake these truths for ones less compelling!