Hallowed Ground

This reflection on visiting the George Floyd memorial in Minneapolis was written at the request of my pastor and distributed to our church this week. It feels fitting to share it here as well.

I’ve started and stopped writing this a handful of times. There isn’t a way to gloss over, to tie up with a bow, this simple truth: we brought our children to the scene of a Black man’s murder. I mulled over my reasons but the pull to bring them wouldn’t leave me alone. It felt important. I felt the weight of it down to my bones. Surely that was reason enough.

Of course, it wasn’t the scene of any murder, but that of George Floyd’s. (Say his name.) The man whose death at the hands of Minneapolis police kicked off protests around the globe.

There was a hush over the intersection of 38th and Chicago the morning we visited. The sun was bright and glaring over the lifeless bodies of flowers (so many flowers), long since dried.  Everyone was masked as they milled around the memorials: candles, signs, graffiti. The intersection felt more holy than church. “This feels sacred,” Tyson said as we drove, still a few blocks away. I nodded. It was what I was feeling myself. This was hallowed ground. 

The kids carried homemade signs. “Remember George Floyd” said Brooklyn’s. “Honor! George! Floyd!” read Caden’s. (The exclamation points, he informed me, were important.)

“I’m so glad they brought their signs,” an older woman said to me, nodding to the kids as we passed her on the sidewalk as she took slow, shuffling footsteps.

“I thought it was important,” I told her. I smiled underneath my mask before remembering she couldn’t see. She and her companions continued to make their way slowly up the road. The pull to the intersection was magnetic.

We’d dropped off a load of donations on the way, to a Baptist church on the outskirts of downtown. It was the third time we’d done this, so at least that part seemed routine.

Outside of Cup Foods, however, was anything but routine. The kids took everything in with big eyes. We’d briefed them, as much as we could, about why we were here, who George Floyd was, why we were paying our respects. They also acted as you might expect from two six-year-olds and a four-year-old. They whined. Said they were bored. Asked to go home. Said they were hungry. The usual.

“Why’d he die?” Nolan asked loudly, so loudly, as he sat on top of Tyson’s shoulders looking where George Floyd’s body had lain, which someone had outlined on the ground in white. I winced and hoped no one minded; we’d explained several times. Then again, it’s hard to take in, even for someone who’s much, much older than four. Why did he die, anyway? It’s unfathomable. Also: all too familiar.

Anne Lamott writes of bringing her young son Sam to see a friend’s baby who died at five months old. She says, “I couldn’t explain why I thought it was right, except that I was taught to be terrified of sickness and death...and I believe this greatly compromised my life. Of course I want better for Sam.”

I think that feeling, deep in our bones, of feeling something is right, of the weight of its importance, of feeling the sacredness and holiness of a thing, is enough. Some might call this deep down gut-level nudge the Spirit herself.

Of course we want better for our children. That’s why we were there that morning, so we could show them how the worst in this world goes hand-in-hand with the best, like the outpouring of love we saw in a donated box of diapers, a pile of flowers, the childish handwriting on posterboard of the name of a man who should have never, ever died. Not like that.

If they ever ask, maybe, someday, about 2020, if they ask, “What did we do?”, I can show them photos and tell them, “Look, we were there.” Because we wanted more and better for our world. I can tell them how we showed up and bore witness to the pain. I can tell them that we voted, that we protested, that we donated, that we read books and processed our privilege, both on our own and with them, and that we did what we could to work towards social justice. Because the Spirit told us to. Because we felt it in our bones. Because it’s just that important.

2019: At the Edge of Something

Ten years ago, I was finishing up the interior design degree I was sure I wanted, at a university smack-dab in the middle of Iowa

I was engaged and had a date set (for the following October), a dress picked out (in a beautiful champagne color), and a groom that lived a state away (smack-dab in the middle of Madison, Wisconsin).

I had recently switched churches and found myself loving some parts of my newfound “non-denominational” surroundings: the amazing music, the free-flowing prayer, the coffee! in! church! And found myself questioning other things: the pressure to evangelize, the idea that some were “in” while others were “out”, the way “submission” was taught.

I knew I was on the precipice of something big: mere months away from college graduation, a few more until I was married, a move to join Tyson in Madison. I was on the edge of the future and I knew it, full of outlines but with nothing yet colored in.

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In some ways, this year, 2019, was a culmination of this entire decade, of coming into myself. I hear that happens in your thirties. (I hear it happens even more in your forties and look forward to losing the rest of my f***s in the next decade.)

I spent half this decade in the design world in some capacity; first finishing up a degree, then graduating into a recession, desperate for a job. I found a job, 70+ resumes later (thanks, recession). I lost that job (thanks again, recession), and found another. I discovered some things I loved about interior design as a career and others not so much.

Then I found out I was pregnant with twins and chose to put that path on hold.

That’s when I found writing again. Those early days of blogging when the babies were sleeping - it could have been 2 pm or 2 am, it didn’t really matter. I discovered reading again, too, and lost myself in words; something I’d done voraciously as a child but had shoved to the side while I instead pulled all-nighters to pursue a design degree. I took a year-long creativity course and began to pursue writing seriously, as a craft, as a potential career even, whatever that might mean. And through this I found the most beautiful group of friends.

Those children came, two of them literally one right after the other, the third not far behind, and I spent my days covered in milk and spit-up and spilled Cheerios and we headed to parks and playdates and Target and everything revolved around naptime.

The 2016 election happened and I began to question even more seriously the religious spaces I found myself in - spent literal entire months at a time where I couldn’t think of anything else. I was lost and flailing, sent spiraling deeper and deeper into the wilderness with books and writers (Sarah Bessey, Jen Hatmaker, Rachel Held Evans, Richard Rohr, Glennon Doyle) as my guides.

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This year, two of those kids started Kindergarten while the third runs off to preschool a few hours a week. There is some time and space now, a little bit, in a way I didn’t have even just a year ago. Tyson and I celebrated nine years of marriage in October and tried to figure out how we’d ended up in a blue house in the suburbs of Minneapolis with two five-year-olds and a three-year-old.

This year, I followed that writing bug all the way into that memoir class I mentioned to Tyson once and he said I should obviously, totally, absolutely take. I sat one morning and clicked “register” and paid the fee which seemed like so much but I took the plunge anyway and found another part of myself.

This year, I dove even deeper into books and theology and clawed my way out from the suffocating religious pit I found myself in. I left that “non-denominational” (read: evangelical) space and we made the switch to an open, affirming, beautiful, welcoming church home. It’s a religious space I’ve never experienced before.

I’ve found my own voice. It’s been there all along, but I didn’t always trust it before. Or, to be more precise, I didn’t know how to get it to speak before, to say and verbalize the true things it had to say. I do now.

I didn’t realize, until I sat down to write this, what a year 2019 has been for me. Where I stepped out, and stepped up, and took charge of my life. In part because the kids are growing just that much older - things are possible in a way they weren’t when naptime and nursing dictated my schedule.

2019, again, feels like I’m again on the precipice of...something. It’s not as obvious from the outside, not as conspicuous as an engagement ring or a full belly, a moving van in front of a house or the wearing of a cap and gown. It’s nothing so straightforward as all that.

It feels almost bigger though, as though it were the year - the first in awhile - where I was really true to myself. It feels like a new beginning. So much of what was fuzzy a decade ago has been detailed out now - into photos and people and full-fledged memories - and here I find myself again, with some blurry-edged outlines just waiting to be colored in.

Image by @phoenixfeatherscalligraphy for C+C, 2019

This post was written as part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to read the next post in this series “2019”.

Mary Knew

“In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, ‘Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.’

Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.’

‘How will this be,’ Mary asked the angel, ‘since I am a virgin?’

The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.’

‘I am the Lord’s servant,’ Mary answered. ‘May your word to me be fulfilled.’ Then the angel left her.”

Luke 1:26-38 (NLT)

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As the opening bars of the song fill my car, I bristle and make a face at the radio, hitting my turn signal with more force than is necessary. “Mary did you know…” the song asks, as it does too many times, sung by a guy who sounds like he’s over-doing the vocal theatrics. I hit the button to turn the radio off. I’d rather listen to silence. I shake my head, as though that action could clear my brain of the words.

Did you know your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Did you know he has walked where angels trod?
Did you know he will deliver you?
Mary did you know? It asks, over and over and over again.

She knew, I think, fiercely. I think Mary knew more than anyone.

These lyrics annoy me. The Bible plainly tells us she did know. The angel Gabriel in those verses above says specifically that he “will be born holy”, that he “will be called the Son of God”.

It was she, after all, no more than a teenager, whom an angel appeared to. No one asked her father or her betrothed for their (male) permission. Gabriel came directly to her. He told her the details - quite clearly - and waited for her response.

In The Message version of this story, Mary responds to Gabriel by saying, “Yes, I see it all now.” It’s impossible to know if she really responded in such a way. I’d like to think she did.

I don’t know how anyone can read those verses and then dare to ask if she knew. It sounds so condescending. (“Mary did you know?” “I don’t know, Clay Aiken, did you?”) I’m tired of having Mary’s intelligence questioned.

Is it any surprise these lyrics were written by a man?

She knew enough to be the one who prompted Jesus’ first miracle. At a wedding, to turn water into wine, of all things. (I could make a tired joke about moms needing wine here, but I’ll restrain myself.)

Even after Jesus refused her, she ignored him like only a mother can. “Do whatever he tells you,” she says to the servants in response to his protest. This interaction reminds me of tiffs with my own children. (“But mo-om I don’t want to take a shower.” “Yup. Take off your clothes and get in.”)

And it was Mary again who was there along with the other women on the day of Jesus’ death. She was there to bear witness to what was unfolding just as Gabriel had told her it would.

Maybe then, through tears, she said once more, “Yes, I see it all now.”

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To give the song some credit, there’s no way Mary could work out all of the details.

Those verses in Luke tell us she was “greatly troubled” by what the angel says. I’m sure she was bothered on many levels: that she was unwed and pregnant chief among them. As her baby, this Son of God called Jesus, grew older, I’m sure she turned Gabriel’s words in her brain over and over again.

In Luke’s second chapter, Mary brings Jesus to be dedicated at the temple in Jerusalem, where she meets a devout man called Simeon. He tells her, “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

Luke doesn’t tell us Mary’s reaction. I would imagine Simeon’s words greatly troubled her, too.

As a mother, there is plenty enough to puzzle out. Will this baby ever sleep? Is this the right kind of diaper/swaddle/pacifier? Will they eat broccoli or carrots today? Is this school the right fit? If I feed them organic macaroni and cheese does that count as health food for today? Why are they sick/crying/moody? Will this season ever end?

There’s enough to think about without being told you’ve given birth to the Savior of the world. And surely she couldn’t know that this babe lying in a manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes would one day meet his end on a Roman cross.

Luke chapter two is also when the shepherds enter the Christmas story. They were told, by a heavenly host of angels, that a Savior was born, that he is the Messiah, the Lord. They rush to Bethlehem to find him and spread the word to everyone about what they’ve been told. It says after the shepherds came that “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart”. It’s one of my favorite uses of language in the entire Bible. I like to think she treasured things up in her heart and pondered them often. How else could she survive parenting a boy she’d been told was the actual Son of God?

I think of one of the only stories in the Bible about Jesus’ youth. When he disappears at the age of 12 - when he stays in Jerusalem yet his parents travel on and they can’t find him for days - did Mary wonder then if this was it? Did she remember Simeon’s words and was a sword piercing her own soul then as she frantically searched for her oldest son? What was her heart pondering then?

After they find him teaching in the temple, after Jesus tells his earthly parents that of course he was in his Father’s house, the Bible tells us plainly they didn’t understand what he was saying to them then. But it also says, after they find him and return home, that once again Mary treasured these things in her heart.

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Still, the radio and even our own churches persist in asking Mary if she knew. Can you imagine such a song being written about a man in the Bible? Asking if Abraham knew what it meant for him to be a father of nations or if the disciples knew what they were doing in giving up their lives to follow Jesus? How dare we sing this to celebrate the birth of Jesus - his birth which was brought forth by the very human pain and suffering of Mary.

Mary herself gave us a far greater song to sing during the Christmas season. It’s almost an insult that a pop ballad questioning her understanding has climbed the charts when her own beautiful words, the Magnificat, are right there for us in Luke, not long after an angel has told her the most astounding news. It reads, in part:

“From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.

His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.

He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.”

What if we sang those verses on Christmas Eve, verses not only praising Mary but also of revolution. It’s an anthem that’s a testament to her own place in the world as well as the role her son will play in it.

Mary was a human woman who was blessed by angels, who saw the entirety of Jesus’ life play out, who sang a song both of triumph and of social transformation while she carried that child in her womb. She was a mother who nursed and wiped tears and comforted and grew frustrated and treasured things up in her heart.

I want those words to fill my car - words of liberation and redemption. Words sung by a woman claiming her own life story.

Signs of Life

Saturday morning I begged Brooklyn to eat her yogurt faster, resigned myself to braiding her hair (“Anna braids, mommy”) at the breakfast table, and packed snacks in the monkey backpack while sucking down iced coffee. Tyson and I hustled everyone into the car, buckled a crying Nolan into his carseat (“But I want to get in the car from the other door!”) and left at 7:52 to make the six-minute drive to the ballpark so the twins could play the first game of the day.

Their games are usually on Wednesdays, but this Saturday was Player Appreciation Day so every team had a game. It felt like a parenting level-up to be up and out of the house for an 8:15 ball game on a Saturday. Saturday morning sports definitely seem like big-kid territory. Except our kids are still small enough they chased balls around the field (three or four of them after the same one) and practiced holding their back elbows up when it was their turn to bat. I chatted with a grandma behind me in the stands (“I’m so jealous you have twins!”) and she told me stories from when her kids were young; how happy she was to see so many kids out playing ball in our town.

Later I took my volunteer shift in the concession stand. I collected crumpled dollar bills from dirty fingers and heard a whispered order from a girl whose curly head barely reached the counter. I passed out Big League Chew to boys with freckles across their faces who weren’t much older than Caden and Brooklyn. I mixed slushies and wrapped hot dogs in foil and fished ice cream Snickers bars from the freezer.

After my shift ended we made our way to the “big” field so the kids could line up to be announced for Player Appreciation Day. I looked at all the kids gathered on the field, noted that the t-ball kids were just versions of the teenage little leaguers in miniature. The coaches each called their own players names and gave out high-fives as they ran across home plate.

Caden, Brooklyn, and Nolan sat and ate candy afterwards in the shade of a tree: their reward for a long morning (and consolation prize for being given some warmed-over root beer floats). I looked around and wondered how many of our memories might take place here at this very ballpark over the next decade or so. Boys and girls ran around in their MLB logo-ed jerseys, backpacks slung over shoulders, chasing each other with water bottles and tennis balls and freezees.

And I was saddened by the thought that Rachel Held Evans will never get to see her children run the bases in oversized batting helmets and brightly-colored jerseys on a bright, blue, cloudless summer day.

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Her funeral took place later that day. I hoped to get home from the ballpark in time to watch the livestream online.

We did make it home with a few minutes to spare. The twins threw batting helmets and gloves on the floor of the mud room and raced off to the backyard while I went upstairs to my room, to watch a funeral on my computer, which seemed like a strange thing to do on a beautiful Saturday afternoon but there we were through the miracle of technology.

I couldn’t sit still. I was fidgety, the computer was too hot to set on my legs comfortably. I set it down to paint my nails (“Orchid-ing Aside”). I briefly wondered if this was this an appropriate thing to do while watching a real, live, actual funeral. I knew Rachel would forgive any heresy in my actions.

The sun streamed in through the wood blinds in my room. I kind of hate them; they’re always dusty, though they look nice if you don’t peer too closely. The light is almost always perfect in our master bedroom, no matter the time of day. I thought of what a perfect day it was and yet somewhere in Chattanooga a husband was having one of the absolute worst days of his life. (Along with two small children, too small to even know it was supposed to be one of the worst days of their lives.)

I answered a quick email and deleted a few others. I noted the Post-it note on my laptop that’s been reminding me for a month that I need to find a nightstand for Caden and Brooklyn’s room. My mind wandered to thoughts of what to make for dinner and things I needed from the store. I put the clothes away that somehow always end up in a pile on the floor in front of the dresser.

I sat and folded Nolan’s laundry as I listened to Sarah Bessey tear up while she gave the most beautiful reading of Mary Magdalene and the disciples arriving at Jesus’ tomb. I smoothed out plaid shorts and wondered why half of Caden’s underwear ended up in Nolan’s laundry basket while Nadia Bolz-Weber trembled in her patterned glasses and salt-and-pepper curls. She spoke of the male disciples who looked in the tomb only to see a pile of folded laundry inside, where Mary Magdalene saw angels.

The doorbell rang and I ran downstairs to find a neighbor girl looking for the kids to play. I chatted with her and her dad for a minute as she told me about her own softball game that morning, how she saw Caden and Brooklyn on the field. I also discovered a package I had ordered on the steps. New sandals (brown with thick straps and a heel); brought them upstairs to try on (keepers).

I mentally planned my outfit for church the next day (to incorporate the new sandals, of course) while adding my own silent “amen”s to Nadia Bolz-Weber’s benediction blessing the preschoolers who cut in line at communion and the closeted and those who can’t fall apart because they needed to keep it together for everyone else.

As the funeral ended (“It is well, it is well with my soul”) I fielded a phone call from my mom. We talked about the progress on the playset my dad is building for the kids. We talked about future plans, weighed the pros and cons of dates and timing. We said good-bye.

The livestream ended and I clicked the tab closed, somewhat hesitantly, as though putting death aside were a thing that could be done so easily.

And I went back out to rejoin my own bright, living world.

My Own Search for Sunday

The last day at our old church, not one month ago, I left the group of volunteers I led with these words from Rachel Held Evans’ blog:

“When writing about her troubled marriage, author Glennon Melton wisely avoids telling other women what to do, and instead puts the choice this way:

‘Does a Love Warrior Go? YES. If that’s what her deepest wisdom tells her to do. Does a Love Warrior Stay? YES. If that’s what her deepest wisdom tells her to do. Both roads are hard. And both roads can lead to redemption.’

The same is true for church. There is no single road to redemption.  And there is certainly not a straight one. As novelist Marilynne Robinson has said, ‘grace is not so poor a thing that it cannot present itself in any number of ways.’”

As excited as I was to find our new church, this volunteer position - these volunteers - were the reason I stayed for so long. I spoke these words with a slight catch in my voice as I told everyone I was leaving, that we had found a new church. These words helped reassure me, helped give me the strength to leave.

Just five days later, I learned that Rachel Held Evans was admitted to the hospital and had been put in a medically-induced coma.

This past Saturday, my social media feeds became plastered with her image after she passed away.

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At our “old” (read: just two months ago) church, I was in charge of the 30 or so volunteers in the birth-Kindergarten children’s ministry area. I filled snack cups, checked nametags, paged parents, sent out reminder emails, and led huddle for our group, filling them in on announcements and coming up with some sort of inspiration for the hour.

The night before my last day, I sat with my laptop and a notebook, searching for the words to tell my group I was leaving. How did I tell them we’d found a different church? How did I tell them I just couldn’t stay here anymore? It didn’t take long for me to search Rachel Held Evans’ blog, to scroll through the archives and find the one titled “Life After Evangelicalism”. It was there I found her (and Glennon’s, and Marilynne’s) words to sum up my decision.

It was Rachel’s words I so often turned to when I couldn’t find words of my own. When my own brain was in tumult, she projected clarity. She was a writers’ writer and a thinker’s thinker; someone who could harness into words what felt trapped in my own head.

I’d read Searching for Sunday a couple years ago, about her own journey through and with and out of the evangelical church. Of course she had the words to sum up my decision to leave.

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Maybe I should back up to the whole “we left our church and found a new one” part. It’s a decision that may seem sudden to those on the outside. To me, it’s a long-overdue change. It’s a decision I’ve been wrestling with for at least two years, if not longer. To say it has consumed my thoughts is an understatement.

It was a whole host of factors; far more than I can go into detail with here. It was the lack of acceptance of the LGBTQ community. It was not seeing women in the highest positions of leadership, or even quoted from the stage. Along those lines, it was the realization that the faith leaders I turned to (Glennon Doyle, Anne Lamott, Rob Bell, Jen Hatmaker, Richard Rohr) were never mentioned; it was always men (James Dobson, Henry Cloud, John Piper). It was never discussing social justice, or really anything out in the great, wide world outside the church walls. (Refugees? Immigrants? Hurricane victims? Anything? Nothing.) It was the fact that the messages had gotten so repetitive - literally the same exact stories repeated two, three, four times, so often I knew the punchlines and could repeat them myself - that I got virtually nothing out of going to church. And by the way, do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? (Yes. Next. Can we talk about something else, please?)

Then there was the 2016 election. To learn that over 80% of white, evangelical Christians in this country had deemed Donald Trump worthy of the presidency felt like the ultimate betrayal. To go to church and feel like a stranger. To feel like the church had completely abandoned everything I thought it stood for. To wonder where all the people were who felt the way I did - surely they were out there, weren’t they?

I talked it over with Tyson for more hours than either he or I can count. Bless him for listening to my constant dialogue of “do we stay or do we go”. I’d thought about and written out pros and cons lists over and over and over again.

I became hostile to church. Volunteering was the only thing I enjoyed anymore. More often we sat towards the back, me with my arms crossed, eyes narrowed, ready to pounce and critique anything and everything the pastor said.

I knew enough to realize this was an extremely unhealthy posture towards a church I tithed to, a church where I led other volunteers, a place I had called my own.

In March of this year, finally, I decided it was time.

“We have nothing going on this weekend. Let’s check out this other church,” I told Tyson. He was game, along for my existential faith-crisis journey. He was probably relieved.

So we did.

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To walk into a new church (a UCC denomination) that first Sunday was a little like stepping into my past. It was much smaller, sure, but the pews, the hymnals, the altar were all familiar from my Catholic upbringing. I was hopeful but guarded, running through the checklist of requirements in my head.

The pastor kicked off with an announcement about helping the flood victims in Nebraska and Iowa. (Acknowledging the world outside this church: check.) He talked about caring for refugees and our broken immigration system in his sermon. (Social justice: check.) The Lord’s Prayer, printed in the bulletin, allowed us to call God a name of our own choosing, whether Father, Mother, or God. (LGBTQ/allowing for other genders: check.) The choir sang “You Will Be Found” from Dear Evan Hansen. (Broadway music: BONUS!)

Tyson turned to me with a smile on his face when the service was over, “They couldn’t have put together a church service that would have resonated with you more.”

And just like that, we’d found our new church home.

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This church change is now tangled up with Rachel Held Evans’ death in my head. Her death lends a sadness to this time, a time where I’ve been feeling alive again, energized (maybe like never before) by the church. I needed her words to transition me out of the evangelical church world. I needed her encouragement - her own “searching for Sunday” journey to help me along in my own.

(Of note: the pastor at my new church acknowledged her death this past weekend. I’m certain our old church did not.)

Rachel Held Evans ended her post, “Life After Evangelicalism”, with these words:

“You are not alone.

There is life after this. There is faith after this.

Hold on.”

That seems as good a way as any to close out my tangled emotions on her death and our own church change.

There is life after this. There is faith after this. Amen.