Mining the Dark

A gifted teacher, friend, and fellow Hope*writer, Mara Eller, (@mara.eller) recently posted about being willing to look into the darkness of our lives as a source for deep creativity. She closed with: 

"God invites each one of us to join in the eternal dance of transformation—of creation—and we have powerful tools at our fingertips, whether with paint or flowers or food or words. 

So the question becomes, are you brave enough to venture into the dark? 

I cannot wait to see what you create."

It is true that creatives often delve into struggle, their own and that if others, to bring the truth of both pain and redemption.

In my own journey, having finally dared to acknowledge hints of light after a relentlessly bleak season, I flipped her question and responded:

“The question used to be: am I brave enough to come out of the dark?

After flinching at relentless life for so long, it's been a struggle to dare to hope that light or joy could be trusted. To risk disappointment. To grind through to caring enough to reach for anything good. To try my voice again.

I've been willing to hold space for myself in the dark. To not look away or hurry. Right now others are calling out the new light they see in me and I'm leaning into that one day at a time—God's deep, healing, creative work on the inside—to inform new courage.

So, am I brave enough to mine what the dark taught me? To believe that it's wrought anything good? And to believe that I can paint with words in a way that speaks presence, compassion, hope, and redemption into another's darkness?”

Where are you in the journey, fellow creatives? Fellow travelers?

We can respond to hard events and seasons by running or by turning to face them—to receive them—being present to our own pain and acknowledging the need for comfort, help, and rest. For time to breathe, understand, and grow up, up, up through the crust of the crushing. Our hearts expanded in true empathy. 

We can be the ones who don’t rush in to save or paste a platitude for the sake of our own comfort. But can instead linger, unafraid to sit with another’s lament, to listen deeply, to use words sparingly . . . so sparingly. To know what will be balm, and if we don’t, to gently ask or perhaps, bravely, say nothing at all.

And if we fashion stories, poems, paintings, songs . . . ?

With broken, gentle, weathered hands, we can touch souls with prayers of color, texture and melody, with light, allegory and humor. We can remind the weary that both joy and sorrow are the way of all travelers, but the joy . . . oh, the joy!

We hold God's creative grace, a life-gift to be shared. 

Oh, that we would bravely dig deep of our sufferings, where the seeds of our redemption awaited their spring, and now testify to tenacious life and hope, scarred and beautiful.

Navigating Pandemic Disagreement

Spent the morning with a dear one today. Amidst fresh air and coffee, we talked of many things… including how hard it is to live in the tension of disagreeing with those we love in this long season of pandemic.

We don’t always agree, but we hugged when we parted, because that was the most needful thing to say.

Feeling I’d left loose ends, I sent what I hadn’t said. Perhaps a piece will resonate if you’re battling the tension, too.

Grace upon grace, my friends.

“Know that as I express what I think and feel deeply, I am always leaving space for knowing I’m not God and I don’t know the beginning from the end. I’m just making my way like everyone else. And even if I’m disconcerted or downright exasperated with others, I always know that’s not the end of the story or the relationship. I’m committed to that; to wading through the hard and the mystery of Body [of Christ] life.

All from without that’s creating commotion in all our lives, thoughts, motivations, and actions surely is not outside God’s sovereignty. So I ask Him how to sit in and with all this seeming chaos in a way that can somehow cultivate quiet and rest; in a way where bearing with and suffering-long brings redemption and victory.

I am not blind to my own failings—even if I cannot name or see them all.

Of all the crusading for the big and loud things of our time, I have an inkling that our carefulness toward our own hearts and relationships are most needful to turn the tide.

A tested and healed heart ripples. It’s the quieter work that beats beneath, yet moves the life-blood to transform. It does not coerce, but woos and fills by a mysterious grace.

This is the work the the enemy would steal, and he often does in my life. But this is the work that I reach up through the mire to reclaim. At the end of the day, it is only my heart that I can change and let be changed. And when that happens collectively? Well, who wouldn’t wonder and wander after a parade of butterflies?”

On Dates at the Duck Pond

 

Sometimes this northsider escapes to the south hill’s Manito Park... alone in my car, latte in hand, sunshine’s warmth on my left, duck pond on my right.

It started last year as a winter, Covid-closed ritual when weighty home responsibilities cried out for respite. Now every time I journey alone to an appointment, I honor another appointment here... a date with solitude and permission to just be.

I am thankful we’re moving beyond Covid-closed, but I’m not giving up my rituals of quiet. After going hard for a decade, I found a silver lining in community shutdown - the time, space, and slower pace to emerge from internal shutdown.

Quiet and solitude can be grace not loneliness when we’re willing to sit with ourselves and ask hard questions, pray hard prayers, receive answers - both kind and challenging, and determine to move on from duck ponds in baby steps of new decision.

Like many, I don’t crave a return to the old normal. I’m savoring a slow layering back of only what fits best for an inflow of grace to overflow in Spirit to those I love and serve, instead of finite strength that hits walls and resent responsibilities.

I don’t want to frantically achieve, but to deliberately - with intentional choices - set a sustainable pace for a life that breaths freely in good times and bad, for a healing heart to sow healing.

So I weigh what serves God and serves the life He’s called me to. These I will pick up and put back on; not searching for normal, but leaning into the sleeves of grace-filled, redemptive, and transformational.

Slow-growing an abundant life.

How is your life opening up? Are you savoring any pieces of slow or places of quiet?

This Place

This place.

If you knew what it speaks every time my gaze hits these blue chairs. This place, these chairs, simple potted plants...

• They say that after several years of heaviness, fog, and fear — I want to live, not just survive.

• That I care enough to make a place of rest and uncluttered beauty.

• That I’m pushing back against hopelessness and life-sucking soundtracks.

• Finding my way back to the roads and rhythms of faith.

• Believing whispers that my Creator made me creative and it honors Him when I paint with colors and words and prayers.

• That in this world of trouble there are still delightful things to delight in — like blue adirondacks, coral geraniums, and loved ones to share them with.

I didn’t hear or see any of this while I arranged and planted — that my healing heart was spilling out in chairs and blooms and potting soil to celebrate finding breath again in the journey.

It’s still a lovely surprise.

And, even now, I remember Jesus is preparing a perfect and eternal place of beauty, rest, and peace.

This is barely a glimpse... but, til then, it’s my place.

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Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. ~ Words of Jesus, John 14: 1-3, ESV

He will wipe away every tear form their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, the the former things have passed away. ~ Revelation 21:4

Angie's Tree

Some events cut in many directions. This one happened a month ago. Words tumbled to the page...

It started with the chainsaws. A buzzing in the back of my head as I climbed out of bed and made my way to the kitchen. I wasn’t even curious. Just neighborhood noise. Another tree going down, as many have since several brutal windstorms. 

I wandered down to my husband’s office area to check in. 

 

“They’re taking down Angie’s tree,” he said. 

 

“Oh, wow…”

 

Looking out from our daylight basement window, up loomed a boom bucket holding chainsaw-man and, like a knife through butter, limbs fell away.  

 

I texted my daughters, receiving their sadness and surprise within minutes. 

 

“My childhood is disappearing!” said Monica. 

 

“There goes your shade,” from Jillian. 

 

“Oh gosh, I never thought of that.” 

 

All our shade. And our view changed yet again. A few years ago, another neighbor took out a diseased evergreen and opened our view to the bluff. A bit of privacy gone. Now, even more, we are exposed.

 

I liked my closed in yard with its closed in view from the west. No privacy on either side of us, but you could hunker down on the covered patio and feel a bit of sanctuary and solitude. I will miss that… just like I miss so many things. 

 

And here I am, getting choked up over a tree. 

 

But so much has changed and been torn down around us. Monica was right. Much of her childhood has disappeared. 

 

So much of all my children’s landscape is gone. Just a few blocks away, their low profile, flat-roofed, 60s era grade school was razed to make way for a neo-mid-century brick two-story. A couple miles west, the sprawling middle-aged middle school was replaced by a business-like edifice, two stories of brick and glass. 

The trees of their childhood, also gone. A Mountain Ash to a utility company chop and the need for a play area. The scraggly Hawthorne to Ice Storm 1996. A weakened Ponderosa pine got the axe over a decade ago. And lastly… our iconic double birch. Ever the landmark for directions and shade for the driveway of sidewalk chalk and basketball, it succumbed to disease and came down a year ago last fall.

 

Oh, that birch… 

Black-scored, white trunks V-ing up to tall, drapey canopy. The kids climbed her back in the day and had pictures taken in her shade. Without fail, the grands ran up the slope to hide behind her instead of getting “right in the van” for home. 

Always the first to show the season change, her leaves turned to golden stars every fall and rained down like cornflakes on the still-green grass. Sure, she left a constant barrage of stringy branches littering the yard and driveway and street, but she was so graceful with swaying branches and dappled shade. 

I don’t miss the mess of that old birch, but Lord, the sight of her… and the memories.

And now another loss. 

After years of standing impervious, several limbs broke off that stately Canadian maple during the last winter windstorm. Dangerous-sized limbs, landing on Angie’s roof and yard, thankfully, injuring no one. Angie declared then that the tree would have to go. 

Today was the day. 

I wonder if Angie will miss the shade of her maple. A lush, 60-year-old tree, it towered behind our aged arborvitae hedge for decades, home to squirrels and birds, alike. Now she’s gone and nothing will ever shade the same in our views out the window. 

Only memories of shade. Of a life spent here. Of badminton, playing catch, whiffle ball, BBQs, graduation and birthday parties in her shade. Respite from harsh summer sun, a place for our long-ago swing set, the bottom half of the slip n slide slope... 

I took a photo toward the end. A tall center branch with a few stunted arms was all that remained. A climber with claw boots cutting huge hunks that landed with a tremble and thud. I pictured giant divots in Angie’s yard. Signs of battle. Pock marks, chunks of trunk and tree flesh the only remains of her grandeur. 

The mangy arborvitaes now stand alone, long past their prime. 

Will they be next? 

 

The generations pass… 

We lost my mom-in-law a year ago, matriarch of my kids’ childhood landscape. The first of their grandparents to die. 

And in the past twelve months, hundreds of thousands gone to the scourge of a pandemic in the US alone. Many of them also beloved grandparents. 

 

Too many losses. Changes. 

Can’t everything stand forever?

 

But the maple is gone, and all that remains of the birch is a scab of dirt set to be regraded and sodded. Their absence, a void. 

And I wonder... do I see barren or clean slate? 

 

Today it feels barren. 

Perhaps we’ll get to clean slate. 

Or perhaps the next owners will plant the new landscape. 

 

But generations to come will never know the beauty of these trees. 

 

We often fail to grasp the transitory nature of life. It’s only as the decades pass, a parade of loss and change, that these days and the buzz of a saw bring tears.

Life sometimes feels as brutal and decisive as that chainsaw. 

Pieces of your heart and soul crashing to the ground leaving divots... wounds eventually filled by earth and wind, falling leaves and time. 

Signs of healing in the moment, yes, but once fully felled, will anyone remember your life at all? 

 

It all began with morning chainsaws, and I am undone.

 

Putting On My Face

I met myself in the mirror with half an eyebrow on.

Oh, the joys of one main floor bathroom - with the best lighting - when a higher need arises.

For the record, eye brow brush is an easier pause than mascara. Mascara doesn't wait. Mascara means someone's either going to hold it, or share space with me and my mascara.

If that shocks you, you never grew up with one bathroom and six family members. Or one good bathroom and three kids.

And if my makeup requirement makes your eyes roll, too bad. Get in line... outside the door.

A master bathroom is still on my bucket list. But one recently remodeled main bath beats a bucket and no plumbing, so I mostly don't grumble.


Back to half an eyebrow...

Most of my life I've thought of my daily makeup ritual as putting on my face. I confess: I like the process. I like the colors. It's the only drawing and painting I do consistently. And I like those genetic, life-deepened, dark circles concealed, thank you very much. Tired on the inside is bad enough.

I like to look as put together as I choose on any given day. So, I put on my face.

But on too many days in this recent season of life, my philosophical inner dialogue takes the phrase and runs amok.

Putting on my face. The obvious metaphor can zing.

I spent years hiding behind my face. Painting on some pretty, adding a smile, and all is well with the well-worn facade. That's the downside of it... or perhaps just the mis-use. But it happens. As do the harsh accusations on those days when I need my best, but I'm all leaky eyes, smudged concealer, and liner that won't line. And irony hits as I watch myself persist. Broken must not win... on the outside. These days meet me in the mirror hissing, "What's the point of makeup - or your life? Why even try? You're just a fake!"

Nothing faintly pretty about that. Nasty gut punches aiming to negate the recent years I've spent working to live more honestly - with myself and others.

Today, however, as I finished filling in that thinned, blond brow and it's partner, added shell pink and warm gray to my eyelids, lined and coated invisible lashes into a "classic black" frame, then dusted my cheekbones with rose, I pondered a hidden strength in this ritual.

Vision-casting and choices.

I can see myself as hiding or I can see this as a time of creativity. Instead of facade, it can be a time for filling in the cracks left by fear, disappointment, exhaustion, and... life. Of outwardly hinting at the part of me that has or will find victory over these obstacles.

I am not wholly into the affirmation craze, but I do believe in speaking truth.

Truth is: I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I was created for divine purpose, even if I'm still knocking around in the dark over that one some days. I fail often, but I succeed, too. I don't want to get out of bed many days, but do it anyway. I'm afraid and anxious, but am learning to push back. I'm often overwhelmed by circumstances, but I find breath to do the next thing.

And in it all, my God sustains me.

He also knows my heart, my frailties, and loves me anyway.

So now, perhaps when I put on my face, I can look into those eyes that mirror my heart, my hurt, my longings, and imagine more than the moment... how I feel, or don't feel...  the life I hope for, but don't have... the person I wish I was, but am still becoming.

Perhaps I can see all the lines and lacks of a life-worn face transformed to order, character, polish, confidence, and courage. Not hidden... 

Adorned. 

I can remember those who say they find beauty and value in the woman behind the face, despite her struggles. I can smile at her and choose to believe them.

This may seem just vanity, but today I reframed a part of my day - a part of myself - that I've often nipped at with cynicism, to my own harm.

Today, I put on my face,
eyebrows and all,
looked more deeply,
and came out of hiding.


What do you see when you meet yourself in the mirror? 

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Lest anyone take a tangent, let me clarify: I believe outer beauty is nothing without inner; that of the two, inner has the power to change what we truly see. And though we may never fully escape the vanity in outward beautification, it's not wrong to take something raw and try to add beauty. Created, we are inherently creative, and pride can flow equally in doing or not doing. Anything good can be taken to a bad end, but this doesn't mean we never strive for good or beauty. And my point goes beyond that anyway. We often think and say horrid things about ourselves and our lives, forgetting our Creator - the author of hope, faith, love, and beauty - who fashioned us for good, for purpose, for His glory. ... His words speak life.