And Now for Some (Crass) Humor: A Haiku on The Affects of Aging

well, this is humbling
what's this I see? a grey pube
staring back at me?

Time Will Tell: An Open Letter to Harold Camping Regarding the Church and May 21, 2011

You can find my post on the Tapestry blog today.

raw

So this year, Mother’s Day just feels…raw. Not because I’m not a mom (I proudly bear that title). Not because I didn’t get breakfast in bed (I didn’t, but that’s another blog altogether). But because of a conversation I had yesterday with someone incredibly close to my heart, who would love to be “mom” to somebody, but for too many different reasons, isn’t.

She told me that last week in church, they had Baby Dedications. She unexpectedly found herself sobbing. Because she’s married to one of the sweetest guys I know, as soon as he saw her tears, he joined her. I warned her that Mother’s Day might be tricky, because churches aren’t always super-sensitive about the whole “I’d love to be a mom but I’m not” issue. She just said she’d bring extra tissues.

*sigh*

So today, I’m just feeling sad. I don’t understand why some who would love to be married and have children still find themselves single. I don’t understand why some whose arms long to cradle their own sweet-smelling babies find their bodies repeatedly betraying their hearts. All I know to do is cry, and pray. Because He knows our heartaches, and even though right now it feels really disconnected to today’s reality, one day those tears will be wiped dry.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."

And he who was seated on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new. Also he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true."

Revelation 21:1-5

SO stupid

Started innocently enough… I heard 3 big sneezes in a row come from the bathroom, so I peeked in on my way to the kitchen, and saw a big nasty trail of yellow coming from Kitty’s nose. “Go clean up your face with a tissue, and BLOW, pumpkin!” 5 seconds later, I breezed back by, and peeked in again. Kitty still standing in the same place, no tissues anywhere around, and the yellow was GONE.

(Here my stomach lurched the first time).

“Kitty, did you blow your nose like I asked you to?”

Kitty squirmed. Her arms, fingers, legs and feet started to twist into knots, along with her mouth.

“Kitty, answer me.”

Tiny little face looked up imploringly, every gesture saying “PLEASE don’t make me say it, mom.”

“Kitty… did you eat that?”

Lip started to quiver. Tiny “yes” escaped the knotty mouth. Stomach lurched the 2^nd time, and I grabbed the edge of the tub to stay upright (never have been good with little kid gross stuff, if you can’t tell).

“To your room, pumpkin. We need to talk.”

I gave myself a few minutes to settle the stomach down, and find composure. Then, the discussion. First point, “Gross, baby!! So germy & bad for you!!” Second (and most important), “Baby, you flat out disobeyed me.” At this point, she started screaming “I’m SO stupid!!” over and over and over again. All I could do was gather her up in my arms, and tell her over and over and over, “Pumpkin, you are NOT stupid. You were wrong. You were disobedient. But not stupid.”

And I looked into her big blue eyes, and I saw my reaction EVERY single time I disobey, every time I am blatantly wrong. It’s easy to say “I’m stupid.” So hard to say “I’m wrong. Please forgive me.” Not sure if there’s a Divine equivalent of the stomach lurch, but if there is, I can only imagine the gross things I’ve done that have given Him cause to feel one

So it’s a big deal, and super-hard, to learn to be wrong in a healthy way. I know I don’t have it down. In our home we use the following paradigm to ask forgiveness: “I was wrong to _____. Will you please forgive me?” Those are extremely difficult words to say. I’m BAD at saying them, even when they need to be said. “I’m so stupid” is so much easier. But thankfully there are people in my life who give me grace so I can ask for forgiveness safely. And they don’t rub it in when I do it badly…

…but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us…

 Romans 5:8

Not Mourning

I used to ride the PATH from Jersey to the station underneath the Twin Towers. I celebrated my 22^nd birthday at Windows on the World. When I got lost somewhere in Manhattan, I could just look up, and the World Trade Center’s skyscrapers assured me of which way was south.

When I moved to Dallas, I would still fly back to New York City often. I knew I was home when the plane would coast over the tip of Manhattan, and I caught the rare bird's-eye view of the World Trade Center.

The first time I flew home, just two weeks post-9/11, I was wanded by security. (I would be constantly called out for frisking or “random” baggage checks for the next three years. My name is, after all, Arabic.) People sat frozen in their seats, white-knuckled, eyes closed. We did not fly over the site of the Twin Towers.

I felt disoriented. I worked my way down to the southern tip of Manhattan – but this time, I could tell where south was because of the smoke. The site continued to smolder. Surrounding skyscrapers, covered with ash, the gates, bus stops, windows, draped with American flags and scores of pictures of the disappeared. Brazen hawkers sold postcards of the Towers in flames. I wonder if anyone bought them.
I held my breath for as long as I could. I distinctly remember thinking that the air was too sacred to inhale because the dust and ash were all the remains of people. I talked to a local merchant who had been in the area for years; he was going out of business, but that wasn’t his chief concern. “I’ve seen things. Things no one should ever see.” His eyes looked watery. Glazed. Terrified.

Osama bin Laden is dead, and I am not mourning. I am relieved. I do not believe that it is against the tenets of Jesus for me to feel relief, just as I do not believe that it is suitable to mimic the mob-like post-murderous glee that I have seen modeled by Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

According to statistics, 3000 people perished on September 11, 2001, and 47,000 troops have been killed or injured in the subsequent war on terrorism. It’s Christian to talk about bin Laden’s soul, and he was made in the image of God. So were the 50,000 Americans that he infected through terrorism. So are the many thousands of people who every day must live with bin Laden’s Al Qaeda legacy like a foot on their backs.

I’m still struggling with the Christian response to hearing of bin Laden’s death. I certainly don’t feel like justice was done, because his death won’t bring back the many lives lost and damaged in the mission to squelch his movement. And hearing Christians openly relish his eternity in hell – eternity – just cheapens the gospel and the grave consequences sin holds for any of us. Hell is not a punchline, nor does it make for a clever status update. Sorry, friends. Don’t mock the sacrifice of Jesus for me, for you, for humanity, by making light of a man’s damnation.
But…I am not mourning. I know someone is missing Osama bin Laden today; but it isn’t me.