When Love Comes to Town

I love the mystery of God incarnate moving from spirit to flesh and taking a tiny step into our world as a baby. God could have arrived in any form yet chose to show up as one of us in our most vulnerable form. Just as vulnerable and open as love when it comes into our lives in its truest form. A baby is probably as close as we can get to uncomplicated love – vulnerable, fragile and yet a powerful force to reckon with.

I’ve been thinking about how we look at the birth of Christ as the arrival of love. I just can’t seem to settle for that narrow of a story. I think it needs to be stretched much, much further. God is love – for all time. Forgive me for stating the obvious but God has always been with us even before we could sense the mystery of something more. Love was breaking through long before the birth of Christ and will continue to pierce our barriers. Why does this matter to me so much? It matters to me terribly because the Christmas story can easily become a story about anything but love. We can claim this story as our own and before we know it find ourselves believing that God loves only Christians. That is why we must remind ourselves that the son of God has always been present in God. That love, the same love that spurred the incarnation, was available long before the notion of Christianity. Christ himself didn’t bring the notion of Christianity with him but the hope of new life. New life is birthed out of love – real love.

I hope this Christmas you can look into the eyes of those people who are very different from you and remember that God loves them. The Spirit of Christmas is a Spirit of Love that transcends time and even the Christmas story itself. This Spirit of Christmas gives us reason to never consider war as an option. As the bumper sticker says to be "against the next war before it even gets started.” Love is not limited to a religion, an ideology, or race. U2 has a song titled, “When Love Comes to Town” which describes the transformation that takes place when love moves in. If only, in the Spirit of Christmas, we can let love come into our town and our hearts.

By the way, the image is artwork by Jeff Nabors.

Year 54

Year 54 and counting. As I get older I am more aware of the tension - the tension between finding my own voice and the need for community and relationships. I say that I couldn't care less about what others think but I don't know if that's true or not. I suspect I care very deeply. I have seen so many people come and go in my life for one reason or another and now I have so few good friends. At this point, I'm trying to learn how to hold onto these relationships with a healthy grip.

I took some time this morning on the day of my birth to reflect on where I stand on relationships after 54 years. I am still so insecure on where I stand with people and I find that pattern so frustrating. I know it's a pattern. This morning I was recalling my relationships with my parents and how that formed this pattern of insecurity over the first 18 years. I was never really certain where I stood with them. My parents fought as if my sister and I were not present, not really there. We could be going down the road at 60 miles an hour and mom would threaten to jump out of the car. My sister and I sitting in the back seat trapped and stunned. So many thoughts going through our young minds regarding our mother and our future. We saw enough violence that we learned relationships can turn on a dime.

Fifty four years and I am still trying to change this pattern. I am healthier in the sense that I have little or no tolerance for being treated as if I'm not present. At 54 I don't have time to be treated as if I don't exist. I am still working on finding ways to accept relationships for what they are and trying to have realistic expectations. I will be working on this the rest of my life because the old pattern is so embedded in my thoughts. The awareness of this pattern is a gift and allows me to step back and examine my responses to people. The biggest hurdle for me is accepting the fact that people are okay spending time with me. I know I have some attributes that people don't necessarily want to be around like sounding like a "know it all". I know it can also be very difficult being around a person dealing with depression and low energy. Some fun! At the same time, I know we are always extending grace to each other in one way or another. Grace allows us to truly be present in the life of each other.

Community and relationships are our most valued possessions as we get older - our most difficult and precious gifts. I still have some time and I hope some day that I will know how to receive and give these gifts.

Twenty Six and Counting

Twenty six years ago we were married at 2:30 in the afternoon at College Hill Presbyterian by three pastors: Ron Rand, Jerry Kirk, and Chuck's father, Branson C. Wiggins. Just a bit overkill but no one could doubt that we are really married. It was slightly rainy and a little bit warmer than it is today. There was a Thanksgiving Day parade in College Hill in which Chuck was stuck for a few minutes trying to get Graeter's ice cream for the reception in order to surprise me. He continues to be thoughtful and full of surprises to this day.

I don't know why I'm so blessed with a friend, a partner, and a soulmate. Not everyone gets that privilege in this life. He has been patient with my career choice to step out of teaching. He has been sensitive to my journey with depression. He is the most talented person I know. He quietly reads and continues to expand his knowledge base. Not only is he intelligent but he is also wise which is a wonderful combination. I have the utmost respect for him. He has made me laugh until I cry. His beliefs are based in the hope that we will evolve into the better versions of ourselves. He's a geek and an artist. He is a quiet man who plays a fierce accordion.

I don't know why this good fortune has been bestowed on me. There is no apparent reason for it. But I'll gladly take it and hope for many more years with the one I love.

Chuck rocks on "Stairway to Heaven"

This is Chuck

Jeanie with the Cool Glasses

I attended a counseling conference this week at the invitation of my friend, Jeanie. Jeanie and I have much in common but our most exciting commonality is our passion for helping people move toward healing and wholeness. It floats our boats, charges our batteries, and blows our dresses up. Jeanie is an excellent counselor and she has walked me through many trying times in my life. Let's just say if she were charging me by the hour then I would have to ask the government for some of that financial bailout money.

At this conference I was able to find sessions where counseling and spirituality were linked. Interestingly enough, the speakers of these sessions spoke from the premise that you cannot separate counseling the person from their spiritual/religious stance. The emotional, psychological and spiritual are intertwined and getting to the root of an issue can often lie in the spiritual/religious realm. Of course, I was very excited to see a secular conference acknowledge the connection in their effort to move people toward psychological health.

I was able to attend sessions such as "Using Biblical Principles to Move Clients from Fear to Forgiveness", "Empowering Clients by Using Spirituality in Counseling", "Counseling Issues with Clients from Mainline Christian Denominations", and "Wired for Joy or Wired for Stress." Of course, I am not a counselor nor would I ever pretend to be. But I have been trained in Spiritual Direction and this renewed my passion for coming alongside people on their own spiritual journey.

I have three main reasons for my passion for Spiritual Direction. First, this is what I am gifted to do. I am a listener, an empathizer, and I love to see people move toward wholeness. I have my own life experiences with depression and loss so I know the struggle of moving from the pit to standing on my own two feet. Of course, I am still moving toward wholeness and I have far to go. I believe my woundedness is the gift that I bring to others. Second, I have worked as an Adult Discipleship Coordinator in a local church. I spent much time finding and developing programs to help people in the area of spiritual transformation. Of course, some of it was very helpful to others as well as myself. I don't totally discount programming. At the same time, I firmly believe that transformation cannot be programmed. I don't believe that Bible knowledge or reading a Christian book generally changes a person. I have seen people who know much about the Bible show the least love to others and there have been times that I can include myself in the category. I do believe that Spiritual Direction forces you to identify where you are with God and what is happening in your spiritual life right now. The goal of Spiritual Direction is to help you identify the desires of your heart and to do the work that helps you move toward those goals. Spiritual Direction is about your spiritual ideology, not mine. I am there to keep the focus on that point that the Holy Spirit is moving you toward. My job is to help you find answers to questions by drawing those answers from you. You are the only one who truly knows the answers and I dance the dance of listening and asking questions and then stepping out of the way of what is happening between you and God. This is truly spiritual transforming work because you are no longer in the knowledge realm but facing the reality of where you are spiritually and how it plays out in your life. It is the joy of being actively involved with your God in the healthiest way possible. The third reason I am passionate about Spiritual Direction is because I have been on a church staff and I have been in that place where I needed a truly safe and confidential place. The reality is that this place is very difficult to find in your own church. So my heart goes out to all the people on a church staff from the custodian to the pastor(s). Most church staffs consist of wonderful people trying to do an impossible job. Their need for support is immense and absolutely necessary. I know Spiritual Direction can be that place that recharges their batteries and helps them to return to an impossible task. Of course, you don't have to be on a church staff to need Spiritual Direction. Anyone can need it at any point in their life.

I am grateful to Jeanie for asking me to go with her. I just hope I have the energy and courage to pound the pavement to make myself available as a Spiritual Director. Just email me if you are interested, what to know more, or know of someone who might be interested. And if it's counseling that you need then I'll just refer you to my friend, Jeanie.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Every October I brace myself for the networks dragging out the experts to talk on the subject. They share old and new insights (if they have any) and then end with the same bottom line - early detection. I brace myself for the pink merchandise with a percentage of the sales going to cancer research. Seriously, how many pink toasters do we have to buy before cancer is cured? If someone could tell me, I would do whatever it takes to buy that number of them. And I seriously hate the color pink.

On Sunday, October 15, 1995 Chuck and I headed for the Tall Stacks event along the Cincinnati riverfront. Chuck was in a Cajun band at the time called "Lagniappe" and they were scheduled to play on the Covington side of the river. The weather was perfect. The steamboats and period costumes transformed the riverfront to a different time as all that the city skyline represented seemed to move further and further into the background. The music and dancing celebrated the memory of a slower pace of life. I can still remember the relaxed and quiet atmosphere that made us want every Sunday afternoon to be such a peaceful escape.

I stopped by the store on the way home from Tall Stacks for a few things and picked up cans of Healthy Choice soup for my mom. Yes, ironically, Healthy Choice was the brand and nothing from that moment on had anything to do with healthy choices. She had been getting weaker and had a chronic cough. She told us that the doctor had been treating her for pneumonia. I thought hot soup would certainly help with fighting an infection. I went in her house with no idea what I was walking into. I gave her the soup and then she told me what she should have told me months ago. She was certain that she had breast cancer. I asked her how she knew and she said she had a lump that had changed. Changed? I would find out later that the lump had ulcerated clear through her skin. I asked, really begged her to take her to the hospital. My mother did things her way and so I had to wait three days to take her to a doctor's appointment that she had made. Three days. Three of the longest days of my life when all I could think of was my mother and deal with the anger because I could not get the help she needed any sooner. When I finally got her to the doctor she was in the room with him not more than five minutes when he came out and told me to get her to the hospital. In a way, I was relieved just to be able to get her to a place where she had less control which is exactly why she didn't want to go to the hospital.

She survived three months because the cancer had metastasized from head to toe. Chemo slowed the killer down but couldn't stop it. She actually died from a heart attack because the chemo had damaged her heart. The only reason early detection works is because you don't need as much chemo and radiation to kill the cancer. Less chemo means less damage to the good cells. It's that simple.

My mother lived her life with the simple goal of making people laugh and found moments to make that happen even through her treatment. I admired her strength and courage in light of such a ruthless enemy. I will always be so proud of the way she lived out her last three months of life. She had a inner energy that few people have and yet she was still no match for cancer. She did it her way. She let us in on her secret battle when she was ready but her timing was off and the battle had already been lost.

Every year I am painfully aware that it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I hate the word, "Awareness", because it is such a pitiful word and so far from the word or words that would give us hope. Pink is much too mild a color for all the grieving cancer has wrought. I'm sorry. I know full well that I'm wrong for feeling this way but all the pink ribbons, marathons, and Oprahesque talk show experts are about as effective as a pink toaster. The only hope I have is that I know my mother's spirit could not be conquered by cancer. She lives on in the hearts of many people and in another dimension that cancer cannot reach.