Crushed, Beaten and Threshed

Dill is beaten out with a stick and cumin with a rod.  Grain is crushed for bread; he will surely thresh it, but not forever. (Isaiah 28:27b - 28 ESV)

My family loves to drink homemade chai. Loose leaf tea, water, lots of milk boil happily together on the stove, with one other key ingredient, cardamom. We take a few grains of the cardamom throw them in the mortar and crush them firmly with a pestle. Not much different, I imagine, than the way people have been preparing this spice for thousands of years. As the spicy aroma fills the air we toss the crushed grains into the pot and their delicious flavor infuses the whole brew.

Isaiah 28 uses spices and grains as an extended metaphor of God's work in our lives. Can't you just smell the dusty scent as it describes dill, cumin and wheat being prepared for use? In a couple of poetic verses, Isaiah outlines the ancient processes for preparing spices. Each spice or grain demands unique handling. Each spice or grain must be crushed, ground, beaten or threshed. For some, the process of taking it from raw grain to a substance ready to fill a kitchen with nourishing flavors, requires much patience.

I would like to say that the relational aroma of my chai spiced kitchen is always warm and spicy, enticing and delicious, but it is not. Now several years into our life as a step family we have yet to become the beautiful unified family I envisioned before the wedding. The day each week when my step kids transition from their mother's home to ours is almost always tense and difficult. They are cold, angry, rejecting, and distant. Hurt wells up in me unbidden, like some toxic waste of the soul. Conflicts are frequent and not always constructive.

I long for a perfect home where geraniums bloom, blue birds sing on the windowsills,  and honest warmth abounds. But although am am married to a terrific man, the perfect home of my imagination is still in the realm of myth. Life on this side of heaven involves hard times, conflict, and crushing pain. I often feel like I am the cardamom in the mortar and pestle. Crushed.

During such times, when hope is illusive. It helps me to remember two things: 1. the process of crushing doesn't last forever, and 2. the crushing is happening for a good purpose under the hand of my gracious God. He is releasing the flavor and aroma he planted deep in my being, preparing me for the delicious future he has planned from the beginning for me.

When I remember that, I can rest, sipping my chai, and waiting for the day when my time in the mortar and pestle will be complete.

To Be Like a Raindrop

For eight straight afternoons and evenings violent thunderstorms have possessed the sky over my house with terrifying beauty. The rain falls sometimes soft and silent, sometimes hard and gushing, singing a melody as it falls from the black clouds to nourish then disappear. The lightning bursts forth with pulsating power in its own time, unpredictable, always shocking the senses, nearly always followed by deafening thunder which shakes the very foundations. I watch these storms, letting all my senses absorb the show of power until the clouds move on to the east to expend themselves there.

I am reminded that my call in life is to be like one of those raindrops, always moving lower to nourish, then mysteriously to be invisibly lifted up by the son to do it again. Often I am called to move lower as relational electrical storms rage around me. Jesus said, "...whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must by your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Matt. 20:25)

Most often I fail in this call to give myself. I lack both the courage and the power to continually seek the low place the way a raindrop does.

Just last weekend I had a particularly bad time with one of my step kids and spent the next day busying myself as a way of avoiding him. It was at the end of that day that my stepdaughter sought me out to ask "How do you be so nice to B-- when he is so mean to you?" I almost laughed out loud at the irony of her timing. After a moment I mumbled, "I pray- a lot." I think God was trying to get my attention, again. The words that I heard come out of my mouth were to instruct me more than to answer her. I was reminded of a section in Hannah Hurnard's  wonderful feast of a book, Hinds Feet on High Places.

"Come, oh come! let us away--/Lower and lower every day, Oh what joy it is to race/ Down to find the lowest place ...it is only up on the High Places of Love that anyone can receive the power to pour themselves down in an utter abandonment of self-giving."

I pray that God will help me, and you too, climb to the "High Places of Love" with him and give us the "power to pour ourselves down in an utter abandonment of self-giving."

Mister Twister

These past two months have been a roller coaster ride of highs and lows, the death of a close family member on one hand, a two week long escape with my husband on the other. There have been more mundane, yet emotional twists and turns too. My high school daughter sat on a plane on the tarmac in Guatemala for hours while she missed her connecting flights and her chance to attend her own high school graduation the next morning seemed to slip away. Fortunately, the flight eventually took off, she was able to slide into one of the last 2 seats back that night, and even caught a few hours of sleep before donning her cap and gown.  My older daughter graduated from college the same month my youngest finished high school. Like a rider on the jerky old wooden "Mister Twister" ride at our local amusement park,  my emotions jerk back and forth from effervescent joy over the great accomplishments of my daughters, to a feeling of loss because of the inevitable changes ahead as they each begin a new stage of life farther away.

My step kids take turns swinging, without warning, from friendly to hostile and back again. My level of frustration climbs and falls wildly along with them. I feel a bit shaky after these crazy weeks, the way I feel when I get off a roller coaster somewhat exhilarated, but also a bit dizzy and nauseous.

Thank you for your patience as I have been away living my crazy life instead of thinking and writing about it. I hope to post on this blog biweekly through the rest of the summer. 

For now, I am here, firmly buckled into my seat in life, the twistiest, wildest, ride ever.

"Life shouldn't be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather, to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly shouting, 'Wow! What a ride! Thank You, Lord!'" --Beth Moore