From the Atheist in My Life

My husband has built a personal aviary outside our living room window.

We sit and watch the birds each morning over a cup of coffee, delighting in the varieties, the habits, and the newcomers we haven’t seen before.

We have a camera set up on a tripod and take pictures upon pictures of woodpeckers, gold finches, dark-eyes juncoes, doves, blue jays...even sparrows. They are a bird too,  no matter how common.

I only post this pic of two doves from my phone because I am too lazy to download all the other pics off the camera.

Honestly, I am too frozen to do much of anything. I woke up today and remembered all the tragedy. There is this giant grackle feeding on all the good thoughts in my mind, leaving nothing for joy or peace.

I sat on the couch and stared at the birds this morning, my unease pouring down my cheeks...and I am not sure if it’s fear, gloom, or just anxiety...but it’s here, just in my peripheral, flapping it’s vulture-wide wings. My husband comes up to me, sits beside me with his coffee, and rubs my back.

And I think what a crappy witness I am to him. What a terrible lack of faith I have right now, when I could stand tall and strong in this spiritually-mismatched marriage amidst this global pandemic. But I can’t pretend. Not with him.

“You know, I read somewhere that even the birds are taken care of. You are too.” He smiled.

“Are you quoting Scripture?” I laughed amidst my tears.

“Hey, I am just saying what’s true. There are things in there that are true.” 

So, my atheist husband ministered to me this morning, digging deep into the Bible-rich foundation that he unanchored himself from years ago.

And I know why he did it. I am not foolish to think that he’s reconsidering anything, I cast that idea off years ago, after the millionth hope crumbled. I know that he spoke it because he loves me, and he wanted to comfort me. 

But he brought up Scripture...for me. I sit in the warmth of that. In the comfort of that.

This pandemic really is turning everything topsy turvy. Isn’t it?

Becoming October

About twenty-one Octobers ago, my husband, then-boyfriend, and I became exclusive--we said we were "together" and we said, "I love you," all in the same month. It was the month of hope, and love, and dreaming.

Now? Sitting in this October and looking back after seventeen years of marriage, and fifteen years of motherhood, I can say that hope has slipped into disappointment more often than not, and love has become entangled with expectation more often than it should. Yet, in this October, while the leaves are falling, something different is budding within me, and I can't hope or love the way I used to anymore.

Forty has been a rough age so far. When you reach these soul-shaking milestone birthdays, people often tell you to shrug it off and age doesn't mean anything. And whether it is just our imagination or the [old] mind playing tricks on us, these kinds of birthdays do change you--even if it's in some weird self-fulfilling mental lapse kind of way.

Needless to say, I've not enjoyed forty-year-old Angie at all.

On the outside looking in, you see a newly published author, a proud mama of four kids, a wife of a super-hero kinda dad, and a woman who really shouldn't complain.

But on the inside...

It's been pretty void. I feel like my insides are a vacuum, and everything in my brain has been screaming, "ME", and everything in my heart has been shouting, "Get OUT".

It's like that commercial where the person unzips their current body and a whole different person is inside. You know what I'm talking about?

Well, if forty year old Angie had a choice, she'd unzip this person and escape the mess inside. How many times have I told my husband that I just want to crawl out of my skin? How many times have I said I just want to run away? How many times have I absorbed my children's bickering and melted into despair? How many times have I taken that sock lying on the floor so personally, that it makes me send the kids to bed without a kiss goodnight? How many times have I fought for something stupid like a clean kitchen and ruined the chance to have family time because Mama ain't happy?

Somewhere along the way, I've fallen for the lie that it's all about me and what I control. Somewhere along the way, I've become a consumer of my family, and my church, and my world.

And the vacuum inside me just sucks up the justification, the proven points, and the reprimands, and I realize that I have nothing but the crappy broken threads that wrap around the vacuum roller and eventually stop the whole thing from working.

Those broken threads are heartstrings that I've shunned, shamed, shut out from tangling with my own. It's all about me, and I'm just too busy trying to clean up messes without stopping and trying to mend what's going to break.

Well, I was the broken one. And I had wanted change for so long, but I just couldn't unwind those stupid messy strings from the roller. I was stuck.

I was the one who was sitting in a dark pit of despair, feeling hopeless and alone in this whole thing we call life.

So, one day at the beginning of October, I started to listen. I thought, "Maybe I should look for something different." When life feels completely stale and not worth trying for anymore, something different seems like a good change. And I took this tiny little step.

And something amazing happened.

That step took me outside of myself. SERIOUSLY. Like, the little step had me sit in a church I'd hardly ever been and listen to a speaker I'd hardly ever heard. And even though the sermon was hardly something to blow me away, a whisper within the sermon knocked the wind out of me.

And that's the beginning.

Over the next few weeks, EVERYWHERE I turn--whether it be my church services, my Bible study, a conference call for work, a parents' gathering for my son's youth group...EVERYWHERE that I am expectant for God's wisdom...about SEVEN DIFFERENT PEOPLE so far...some who are connected, some who don't even know each other...EVERYWHERE I TURNED GOD SAID THE SAME THING TO ME.

For someone who WAS hopeless, and self-centered, and trying to take control to a point of destruction, I was slowly aroused from my darkest slumber by these three concepts that each of the seven encounters have mentioned and centered their messages on:

Humility

Hope

Living Sacrifice

Coincidence? Go ahead, call it that. There's no special liturgical calendar the seven encounters were using to guide their messages to me. But, I am here to tell you, that the mess deep down inside me is so ministered by the resonance of each encounter speaking the SAME wisdom to me, in such a personal way--meeting me where I'm at--that I can't even begin to deconstruct my experiences and find a way to attribute it to my [old] mind playing tricks on me.

Something inside me woke up...and it wasn't a noisy vacuum. It was a flood of sweet repentance for my inward focus, and a swishing revival of faith--smaller than a mustard seed--but a faith that promises hope again.

This October, I am becoming again. I am not finished in this growing up business...forty really is just a number. I am still figuring this all out. And I am seeing myself outside myself again...but I'm not trying to run away. I'm outside looking further outside--at those I love, at this chance I get to commune with a God who put up with me in the mess, and still sits with me there when I inevitably stumble back again. I can actually see hope in the next step, when before, all I could see was the tangled mess.

October. A month I once fell in love--for the final time. And a month I once gave birth to a son. October. A month filled with changing color. And a month of changing me.

***

Here are a few of the people who've spoken God's words to me. By no doing of my own, except saying yes to the environment they met me at. Completely organic. But completely ordained:

James MacDonald (study, Think Differently)
Greg Hawkins (actually heard him on a conference call, then was led to this book--More)
Andy Stanley (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMpj0cXldnk&feature=youtu.be)

(and....sermons on Hope at Lutheran Church of Hope, and on Solitude and Servitude at Meredith Drive Reformed Church...um...and I just realized, I named this post, "Becoming"...and that's the name of the sermon series at my church...BUT IT'S TRUE FOR ME TOO).

That Lasting Kiss

I haven't blogged in f.o.r.e.v.e.r. Here, anyway. You can always catch me at The Writer's Alley. But, life has been a bit overflowing--good for me, but not so good for this space of mine. I'll catch you up soon...very soon. But right now, my heart needs to bleed...and this is my perfect ground for such an outpour.

a kiss from long ago..sans curls

Perhaps my middle-aged hormones are kicking in (I remember a time, not too long ago, where "Middle Age" only pertained to me because of my love of history...now, it's a real aspect of the present me. ACK. A blog post for another time).

Maybe, my over-active imagination is a bit swollen today since I am hunkering down to tackle edits and brainstorms. But, when I dropped my kindergartner off today, about a month into school starting, I nearly wept on the way home. It was a strange feeling because of what triggered it.

It was a kiss.

Ever had a hug or a kiss linger as you walk away? I could still feel her curls on my chin and her forehead on my lips. Her small whimper signaling the bittersweet goodbye echoed in my ears when I was almost a block away, and her hand on my neck left its warmth even as I turned on the highway.

What a blessing.

To leave her in the care of her teacher but take a reminder of my love home with me.

But my mind is a vicious thing, and it taunted me:

What if that's all you have left of her? What if that was the last kiss?

Half of my loves walking the halls

Years ago, those thoughts would have rarely entered the mind of a mother dropping off her kids at
school. Um, I really don't how far back I can go to a time that it never crossed a mama's mind, the morbid thoughts have been a sad reality for nearly my entire adult life.

Fear grips me, and I want to head back to the school and say, "Never mind, World, I am not giving my children to you. I will do this thing myself."

Um...

Been there, done that--didn't go so well. My relationship with my oldest is still on the mends from our brief season of homeschooling (and I am not saying that all homeschool parents choose to educate out of fear. I know they don't. I know some are ten times better than any teacher, and some are given a gift that I, unfortunately, do not possess).

Fear is a crazy voice--it tells me to linger at the school...take my computer and set up shop in the school parking lot so I can keep an eye on the creeps that enter those doors. Hmmm....that would not be so bad...

Fear is never rational, is it?

There is only one thing that can squelch my fear and assure me that there is a last kiss well beyond the future's horizon. And that's my hope.

Hope in things unseen. Hope in a Good Father who cares more for my children than I do. Hope in a school staff who do everything they can to make my children safe. Hope in Love. Hope in Good.

Hope.

Love.

Where would I be if it weren't for Hope? I'd be huddled in a corner waiting for the end of the world to come crashing down. I'd be scared to reach out and love because that is frightening and vulnerable.

Only through Hope can I step into the unknown with confidence and peace.

And so, as I sit here, ready to dive into edits five miles from my children, I realize that my pulse has calmed and the Peace that surpasses all understanding has invaded my heart.

Instead of panic in that last kiss of mine, I can find joy in the lasting kiss that it was, and the next kiss that will last too.

Have a beautiful weekend, and hold close those that you love.

Hope, not just an author's perspective.

This week, I guest posted on The International Christian Fiction Writers' blog thanks to a writer friend, Patricia Beal.

It was a post that poured out from me as I sit in this weird place of limbo, waiting for the final few on my last novel, and brainstorming a new series for my next round of submissions. Honestly, I revert back every other week and think I need a writer's break. Hence, the few blogposts here. It's just been a bit of a soul-searching time of why I want to be on this journey, and how I balance it with life.

SIGH.

It is a vicious cycle, but writing is too ingrained in my heart to abandon it.

Anyway, I wanted share my words from my guest post. Whether you are a writer or not, I think everyone might find something from this post. So, moms, writers, readers, and passerbys, enjoy.

###

Over the past few years, I have understood the nature of hope, especially as an aspiring author. It's a funny thing—hope. It's an energy that might swell like a swollen ocean at one moment, or dissolve into a flimsy fragment that slips between your grasping fingers the next. Hope is ever-changing, and mostly, ever-present. And this ebb and flow is good, because it pushes us toward a dream, or calms us in the midst of a storm. 

During this writing journey, there have been a few times that I have felt hope vanish completely, only to realize it was hiding out around the next bend. It was still there. And the only way I could grasp it again was by moving forward. Taking those steps and finding my way toward it. Getting past the finite disappointment of this journey's pot holes, and remembering hope is infinite, as the good Martin Luther King Jr. once declared, 

It's difficult to accept and get past the disappointment, isn't it? The disappointment overwhelms me after writing that story that just misses the market, the one that I felt sure that God had placed on my heart and knew it was meant to be written. The shadow of a rejection chases my hope around the bend, leaving me breathless and unable to search for it again. 

What is the point of all those words, all that time? I don't want to accept it. 

The finite disappointment arrives in the sting of criticism, the harsh reality that I have a huge amount of work ahead of me, and I'll lose sight of the hope that flickers from beneath the effort needed. I grow weary and defeated. 

What is the point of wasting the energy now, after so much energy has been spent?  

Sometimes, I feel so completely hopeless that I wonder if it's this writing journey has come to an end. But, it's when I look back at all that I've learned, and then step forward toward that next bend, that I discover that pesky hope again, and all is not lost. 

Have you bought into the lie that once hope is out of sight, the journey is over? If this writing journey is truly ours, then our hope is infinite in what the future might hold for our words. 

If you are anything like me, clinging to hope, whether it be a kind word, a contest win, or a coveted request for a full manuscript, keeps me going forward no matter how small a glimmer. 

Hope is infinite. 

I look back on my ten year journey as an author and I don't just see baby steps and lessons, heartaches and rejections, friendships and business ventures, but I see a path chiseled and defined by that infinite hope. It's the fact that I got to that next page, the effort a friend took to critique my work as if it had potential, the agent taking a chance and adding me to her client list. It's the click in my brain when harsh contest feedback actually makes sense and pushes my story to a new level. It's the editor, who had turned down my book, and then decides to pick it up again and give it another chance (true story). 

I may not have arrived to the place where hope turns into that bright shiny future of publication that I expect, but I see hope all around me, and whether it growing bigger and brighter, or slips just around the bend, I am confident it is waiting for me to catch up. 

What more could a writer ask for, than hope? 

* MLK quote photo from Brainyquote.com. 

Hope...pops up.

That word.

Hope.

It's gotta be my word of the season. The season being the past year and a half. I just feel like it is my foundation most of the time.

Hope.

It is what keeps me going most days. And it is exactly what Jen Hatmaker declares-- around for all those who are breathing.

Thank God, for Hope.

"You are 2 Corinthians 4, because although this darkness pressed you so hard, it did not crush you. Perhaps it struck you down, but look at you: You are not destroyed. You see that in the light. You are still standing. If you are still breathing, there is still hope." Jen Hatmaker, For The Love

See 2 Corinthians 4 here.

TBT: 2 years is a lifetime.

I look at the picture taken in 2013 and see those kids through the eyes of a different person:  one untouched by a storm, deeply rooted in her worldview, and expecting much from her own effort to grow these kids.

Now, in 2015, I see these kids through the lens fogged by a storm, with my worldview devastated but growing new, and expecting much from God's Grace to grow these kids His way regardless of my effort.

How can two years seem so far away?

How can so much hurt and heartache happen in 24 months?

And how can HOPE grow so big in a lifetime of two years? Only by Him who gives it freely. 

A Little Hope For E.v.e.r.y.o.n.e.

Three Times a Change.

I am not quite sure why I have been avoiding a post on here.

Perhaps it is because I am in the middle of a writing groove on my current story (which is always nice).

And perhaps it is because my roller-coaster life poured out in blog-post fashion might cause a little reader-whip-lash. It just seems tiresome to write a post that will, inevitably, be in-valid in the near future because of the newest development in my journey.

Yeah, this desert has been anything but flat and uneventful.

But, something I have noticed, that has been pretty consistent, and a desperate oasis amidst the suffocating sand storms, is El Roi.

The God Who Sees... sees me.

And hears me.

I get to places where I never thought my soul would tread, where the heat of skepticism and crushing pain promise to burn my heart to ash, and I sit there in a shocking state of hopelessness.

Never before had I felt anguish like I have this past year...but I do, and now I understand the same feeling David felt when he had been betrayed by the one he'd looked up to for so long. Funny, I took a study about David exactly a year before I journeyed into these similar emotional battlefields as he once had.

Last night, I was in that place again. The burning place of hopelessness. And I cried to God, "Where are you? Will you show up!" Because I honestly thought I could not do this anymore. My heart had nothing left to give.

And I went to bed numb, and lost.

Only to awake to affirmation threefold (as always...God often affirms me or works in me in three different ways during a pivotal moment of my walk).

First, a text from a spiritual sister who I haven't talked to in weeks. She said that she felt a strong urge to pray for me and that she sensed that I needed it badly. She gave me the verses, Ephesians 6:10-13 -

" Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against [a]flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm."

Let's just say, sweet drink of confirmation in my battle...in my thirst for understanding as to what the heck this is all about.

Secondly, as I got ready for church, I dropped to my knees in deep conviction to confess to God. And suddenly, I was given some wisdom on how to move forward in all of this. And it had something to do with remembering that verse above, and mostly, the word God gave me in another enlightening moment long ago when my journey in this desert of spiritually mis-matched marriage began:

L.O.V.E

LOVE!!! Why do I forget the meaning of that word? Why do I forget the perfect model of the perfect Person who perfected Love in such an attainable way? I fall into the trap of conditional love time and time again. No wonder I stumble into hopelessness. That kind of love has no hope in it.

It was at church where God sealed this revelation of my next step in the journey. You know, that perfect sermon that needed to be heard (I even had a close friend who knows my struggle, call me to be sure I was going to church this morning)...Did he write it for me? He talked about that battle above, the Person I had kinda ignored because of the trials before me...and then, of course the sermon reminded me of Hope...and... L.O.V.E. You know, all you need is...
Because He loved us first.

Tonight, I sat across from my husband on a quick date night, and I accepted him and I apologized to him for my resentment and conditional love. It was the weirdest moment because I took the time to form the words, sitting there for minutes in silence...knowing my husband was wondering if the "D" word was going to crush our coffee cups between us...and I spoke. And then I realized all this time, I have not given him the compassion and love he needs...and he needs it, because he is hurt and he is lonely and he is stuck. I think this whole thing is bigger than a proclamation of Atheism on his part. So much bigger than a statement.

It's a heart change.

And it's not just about his heart change to disbelief. It is just as much about mine.

And God keeps telling me, and I listen for a little, then I forget, and I keep roaming this desert ready to die of exhaustion.

Praying that this time, I learn...I don't want this journey to last like it has in the past for those Israelites.

40 years is too long!

My only Hope.

How can we find joy in our burdens? Whether it be rejection in publication or broken relationships, I seldom rejoice like the apostle Paul declares in Romans 5:

³Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

But, I have a taste of the sweetness of this practice. It is in these broken places that I have cast off the childish way of seeking human approval or consolation, and clung desperately to my God. It is each morning that I crave my time with Him, and I cast my broken heart before Him.

And it is then that I realize, not only the perseverance,

not only the character,

But the HOPE.

And while my burdens surely disappoint, my God does not. In fact, He soothes me with an intimate word, a series of nudges that are sewn together with an everlasting thread of hope. I cannot escape His specific message that finds me in every place I turn when my heart bleeds for Him alone. I no longer believe in coincidence. Because this heart salve is too personal, too effective to heal.

As I journey through this casting off of my yoke to His loving shoulders, I savor the treasure He has placed in my heart, that is in Psalm 62:

Yes, my soul, find rest in God;

    my hope comes from him.

6 

Truly he is my rock and my salvation;

    he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.

7 

My salvation and my honor depend on God[c];

    he is my mighty rock, my refuge.

8 

Trust in him at all times, you people;

    pour out your hearts to him,

    for God is our refuge.

When I was younger, I doubted God's care in times of burden. I sought for human answers and human help. But as I grow older, I no longer find comfort in such superficial means. God is my only hope. 

Find Your Hope

If you have no hope, find it for good. A man, who presidents, leaders, nations have held in high esteem over the years, has a message for you on his 95th birthday: