To Hell and Back

I awoke before five this morning, my soul jarred by a dream. 

My husband, unaccustomed to my rising early, stirred and asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I just had a very troubling dream,” I said, pulling on my pants and sweatshirt.

“About?” he asked groggily.

“Do you really want to know?” I responded.

“Later,” he said, falling back to sleep.

In my kitchen, heading to the coffee maker, I was overcome with emotion as I thought about my dream, and I wept. Pouring myself a cup of coffee, I sat down and wrote.

If you choose to journey further with me, I want to warn you:  it’s not a pretty dream. In fact, it’s downright ugly. But it ends with a dance.

How did I get in this apartment in this dark city? I’m on the rougher side of the city, being held captive in an upper apartment by two strong men. No one knows I'm here and I’m terrified. I’m being held against my will, locked away.  

They have plans for me, these “men.” I don’t believe they were always this wicked, but in my inner spirit I understand that this evil came from their choices of long ago and it has become the only nature they know. 

What are they doing? They are busy making preparations and I know it’s for me, for my pain and demise. I’m frightened and feel small in this apartment. They are talking between themselves, reveling in their planning, getting excited for themselves and the evil they will be dividing between them as they plunge into their hellish scheme with me. 

They are in a small room, outside the bathroom and are organizing instruments of torture and storing them away in cabinets and drawers to use on me later. Oh God, how did I get here? I’m so scared, God. My body breaks out in a chill and a light sweat covers my forehead and spreads beneath my arms. I feel like a small child again, backed into a corner, but this time, the monsters are real. 

They call me over so I can see into the open drawers. They taunt me by showing tools, instruments they will use to torture me and, strangely, several clear plastic bags filled with differently colored salts. I imagine that there are metal handcuffs or shackles somewhere in their drawers, and I wonder if the salt will eventually be used to rub into the open wounds I will surely have from being shackled for days. 

My heart pounds as I anticipate the terrific pain, the sheer humiliation of nakedness before wicked men and the assaults awaiting me.

They are so bent on their insidious plan and so taken with themselves that they are completely void of any care for my fear, my humanity, and my personhood.

What are they doing now? Oh God, they're preparing a dish for me-- “food”. There is a pile on a plate that looks as if it were birthed in the bowels of hell. It’s an unidentifiable pile of dark, bloody, wormy looking mash, and they are preparing this horrific meal for me. I retch at the sight of it. 

The fiends are so busy with their planning that they lose track of me for a few moments. I see there is a large room off the vanity closet where they work, and I manage to slip into it and close the door behind me. I scan the large room and spot a telephone on the floor. My heart leaps with hope, the hope of rescue. Could it be? Could I possibly be rescued from this nightmare? I pick up the receiver and pray for a dial tone. It’s there! I quickly dial “0” and a woman answers. 

“Help me”, I whisper. “I'm in an apartment being held hostage for  bondage and torture! Please send help!” 

“Okay”, she responds, “I'll try to get help to you right away!”

A man has entered the apartment and comes into the vanity closet where the sordid plan is about to be executed. He could be a slick talk show host. He has well manicured hair and is dressed nicely.  He is slight of frame and has a cheesy smile. He seems to think his winning smile alone will turn this situation around. I begin to despair again knowing this pretty man isn’t going to save me. He is not powerful enough and he is not able. He’s simply not qualified for the task of rescuing me from these two, strong men.

Just at my moment of despair, three large, vigorous men storm into this ranking, putrid place. They are a curious trio.  Two older men who I intuit to be brothers, in their 50’s or 60’s, are joined by the young adult son of one of the brothers. One of the older men has a scarred face. They storm in with confidence and an aura of command that shows they are clearly familiar with these sorts of operations. All my fear has melted away. Their bodies and their faces show that they have done this before, that this is no problem for them. These are the Seal Team 6 of rescuers, the elite of the elite.

The one with the scarred face looks at me with a generous smile and kindness in his eyes, and says with gusto, “Didn’t you believe Us when we said we’d come? We ALWAYS keep our word!”

I am amazed at how quickly they got here. I just called moments ago.

The fiendish men begin to stammer and cover up their schemes and point to the plate of  “food”. 

“We were merely making her a meal,” they lie. 

I begin to open drawers and expose their evil plans to my trio of  rescuers. I point out the instruments, the handcuffs, and the multi-colored salts they were preparing for me.

My rescuers bind them up and take them away. When those three men stormed through that door into my living hell, I went from a slave to a free woman in an instant. They did it all! I am free!

And now I am at a festal occasion, a wedding perhaps. The men who rescued me are here and they are dancing in celebration with other people, both adults and children. I feel myself being invited into the dance, and just before I wake up I walk onto the dance floor.

And there it is. I opened the door a crack and invited you into my dreams last night. But why?

When I woke this morning and walked downstairs, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude and fantastic relief that I was rescued from the horrors. My heart was light because I was granted freedom and release from captivity. I had been spared from torture, humiliation, and, ultimately, from death. But when I approached the coffeemaker I was overwhelmed when I saw my dream from a different perspective; Jesus wasn’t rescued from the torture. He went to the torture chambers of hell and endured every foul, vile assault that could only have been imagined and created by hell’s curator. And that is when I wept.

His open wounds were made more excruciating by the salt of fiendish taunts, the salt of betrayal by the very ones who shouted his praises a week earlier, and the salt of the humiliation of being utterly and completely forsaken. Alone.

I weep in a new way for my precious Savior’s pain.

We’ve heard it before, how they drove a crown of thorns into His scalp with their clubs, how they tore His clothes from Him, covered His bruised face in their wretched spittle, tore out the hair in His beard, mocked Him, cursed Him, laughed derisively at His nakedness, physically abused Him, beating Him to the point that He was unrecognizable as a human being.

They used cruel instruments against Him, designed for torture, for tearing, slicing, and disfiguring. They drove cold, ugly, metallic nails into His wrists and feet. Oh, the agony of Jesus of Nazareth.

Our gracious, kind Abba, our Daddy-God, paid the price. He came to ransom us from our captors and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ALWAYS keep their promises. The scars testify of all He went through for us. 

The coming of Jesus was foretold over and over again in the Old Testament. Hundreds of prophecies pointed to His coming. The prophet Isaiah tells us of the “Suffering Servant” in Isaiah 53. 

Jesus’s torture, execution, and resurrection accomplished for us what we could never accomplish on our own.

We, like the milquetoast talk show host in my dream, don't have the capability to save ourselves. Our “good works” may look slick and polished, but like an inappropriate, cheesy smile at the wrong time, they won’t save us in the end. 

On this Good Friday, as we reflect on Jesus’ betrayal and suffering, I’m thankful we also remember that Sunday is coming. 

And I will dance. Will you?

  

A New Wine

I sat across from a wise woman ten years ago. 

 I was aching and feeling disconnected from myself. Mothering three young children, busy at church and in the community, and striving to be a modern day Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way, I was suffocating my heart. I found myself checking out at night with a couple glasses of wine, dulling the ache of my locked- up heart.  

I've discovered that hearts are funny things. Seemingly docile and well behaved, hearts won't act out until you try to silence them and lock them away. Then they will stomp around and demand you honor their truth. And if you don't, if you pretend not to hear, you had better be careful- things can and usually will get ugly.

Parker Palmer, in his book Let Your Life Speak said, "True self, when violated, will always resist us, sometimes at great cost, holding our lives in check until we honor its truth."

Ten years ago, looking into my eyes, the wise woman asked me, "When you were a little girl, what did you love? What made your heart leap?"

It didn't take long for me to answer. "Books. Poetry books. Any books. Words. Writing words."

"Are you reading books now and writing?" she asked.

"No", I sheepishly responded, "I've been too busy."

"When did that become okay?" she pressed, "Why did you send the words away?  It's no wonder you self- medicate at night. Your heart is dying to be let out and you are denying it."

Her words, both welcome and frightening, were like a stream of light through a crack in a closet door, penetrating a dark place. I reasoned that I could not possibly have denied my heart. Surely I was using my heart to raise my beautiful children, to be the stellar wife I thought I was, to minister to hurting people? I fought against her words. I felt she was mistaken.

She continued to probe and poke, and her words, like a rare bird singing me a new song, a song of hope, invited my hidden heart out of the dark corner to a new place.

The wise woman then emphatically said, "You need to read books- and not just any books, but difficult books, books for which you'll need a dictionary nearby. And you need to write poetry and invite trusted writer friends to read your poetry and tear it apart."

And then she said something that I will never forget. Looking into my eyes, a Wise Spirit shining there, she spoke: "The world as well as the Enemy of your soul will rail against the very thing God made you for, because your soul's passion, the thing that makes your heart sing, is the very way God will be most magnified in your life."

Walking out her door, I knew all this would take courage.  I went home and found paper and a pen and began to write. It felt like a new wine, a refined, aged wine, not one that poured into me, but that poured out of me, and it left me dizzy.

I'm not poet laureate material.  I often use rhyming in my poetry.  But that's okay. My heart is out and breathing and growing.

This was the first poem I wrote after the conversation with my wise friend:

March 22, 2005

I stand on a cliff
Wind blown

Bully whispers to me, frightened,
"You don't belong in this place,
Go home, it's not safe."

Abandonment beckons me
Through Wind's call

I step to the edge
and
jump

Kind-Wind makes me buoyant
In this vastness

Don't know where I'm going
But it's sure fun to fly.

 
August 2009

The birds inside my garden
Are funny little things
For they like to sit a perched
Upon my sunflower's leaves like kings

I imagine that they revel
In the swaying breeze
And would rather cling to flimsy leaf
Than to a sturdy tree

How oft I choose the sturdy limb
O'er risky feeble leaf
But miss the riches of the ride
Hid in my safety tree.

Upside-Down Life

I sit on an icy bench amid a cathedral of white- frosted evergreens. Leaning into God, into the practice of solitude, I steel my will to be still, to silence my jabbering thoughts. My phone shouts at me with texts from my kids and friends and with notifications of new emails. I reach into my pocket and silence the little pest.

Earlier this morning I cross-country skied on five miles of trails through Hartman’s Creek State Park in Waupaca, Wisconsin. I shared the trails with no other company but a few birds and a couple of squirrels. I felt warmed by creation, as a playful breeze blew snow from a nearby pine and covered my cheek with a cold, snowy kiss.

Now I sit on a chilly bench and stare out at the white landscape, a snow-covered lake in the foreground, a bridge crossing a dam, and a simple playground feature equipped with two toddler swings, turned upside down. 

As I continue to quiet my thoughts, my attention settles on the two swings.  I stare for a while, and in the quietness of my spirit I muse, “Those upside-down swings in a sea of snow perfectly reflect my life right now- upside down and wintry."  I feel turned upside-down at times with the loss of my childrens' youth, the impending loss of my own youth, and the cold, barren loneliness I feel at times. 

I thought of my children as squealing toddlers, with me pushing them high and higher on swings in parks.  I couldn't help but squeeze their chubby legs as I navigated them through the openings in the swings. I could hear their squeals of delight as I pushed them high and higher, sensing their trust as they reveled in the thrill.  I recalled endless games of “Gonna get your toes, gonna get your belly, gonna get your chin” as they swung towards me, my hands reaching out to carefully tickle them as they swung through the air, their screams of wild delight making me grin.

I sat on the numbing bench and I cried. Life feels upside-down and wintry in my soul. My toddlers are teenagers with messy rooms.  I miss nuzzling their necks and singing silly songs and reading Dr. Seuss.  I miss a time when they found me hysterically funny.   I miss my three-year-old daughter Lily turning my predictable lunch of a peanut-butter sandwich with a side of sliced pears into a pear and peanut butter sandwich and devouring it.  I miss the peculiar dance my daughter Emma used to do around the house, bopping her fists together.  I miss rocking Asher and singing him made-up blues songs.   And I miss parks,  high swinging, impossibly blue skies, the smell of sunscreen, and the tickling of all available toddler parts.  

As I was feeling perfectly sorry for myself, my phone buzzed again on vibrate, and my middle child, Lily, a sophomore in high school, asked me to bring her a fast food burger for her lunch break. I chuckled to myself as I texted back, “I’m 90 minutes away, in Waupaca, skiing.” I also had to laugh when, my nineteen-year-old daughter, Emma,  announced she was simply “starving”  and my son, Asher, begged me to make more homemade ham and potato soup after we finished it off tonight. 

These days of my mid-forties feel barren and wintry at times.  The house is quiet and empty for much of the day, the girls do their own laundry, and the kids are beholden to their own social schedules.  It seems the landscape of my heart is wintry lately with a dying of sorts taking place.  Yet I know the memory seeds  are resting in this season under the blanket of our hearts.  I know they haven’t died, and though the memories we make are different now, and parks and training wheels and bandaids on boo-boos are mostly things of the past, I wait for new life and growth to spring from those seeds. And I know that they will, for spring, like winter, always comes. 

Abishai

Make me an Abishai
Descending into the camp
of the enemy
of my friend's soul.

Give me an Abishai.
One who will say,
"To the enemy's camp,
with you, I will go."

1 Samuel 26:6

 6-25-13

Soulful Sojourns

In my travels across Turkey last spring, Topkapi Palace seared itself into my heart and remains the climax of my time there.  The lush gardens dripping with roses, crimson velvet cushioned bay windows overlooking the Bosphorus, and rococo styled hidden chambers were like an overindulged dream.  The myriad golden fireplaces with gilded hoods, cabinetry embedded with emerald, ruby and nacre gems, ornately carved wooden doors imbued with golden latches and hinges and Iznik tiles saturated in blues, ivories and coral reds sang in unparalleled extravagance. Domed ceilings adorned with azure and gold laced mosaics, stained glass of peacock’s colors, decorative stone pathways, and marble sinks with echoes of watery songs were mind stretching.

As enraptured as I am by Topkapi Palace, I'm equally enthralled by the gazelle.  With her gentle demeanor, endless legs, sculpted ringed horns and prominent black and white torso, it’s no wonder that her name is taken from the Arabic word “ghazalah”, meaning “a lyrical poem”. Though not always capable of outrunning her predators, she has been known to leap over her enemies with grand jetes’ of graceful agility.  Even in escape she is lovely. 

The gazelle, revered as she was by the Persians, was permitted to roam and graze in the sultan’s private gardens along with the peacock. She grazed in the lavish Topkapi palace safe from predators and surrounded by extravagance.

In my sojourns in Turkey I felt like a gazelle permitted to roam in exotic places.   From the tantalizing tastes of the seductive malta plum and the impossibly tender lamb kebab, to the soul stirring ancient wonders, from the mouth watering aromas of street vendors’ toasted chestnuts, to the Turkish tea which flowed freely on the streets, from the sonorous calls to prayer to the beautiful Turks themselves and their willingness to indulge my need to practice their language, something in me was awakened.  My sojourn in Turkey called out the colors of my heart.

I read once that to be sensuous is to be present to your own soul.  How I long to awaken to my soul on a daily basis, to be a lyrical poem that tells His greater story, to dance in the way God has crafted me to dance, to be graceful, dignified and gentle, to graze in His gardens with springs that never run dry,  and to learn how to leap over my predators with grace and agility.

Father, thank You that You are  the author of all that is lush, extravagant and precious.  You are the color Creator and You reside in the Light. You created cinnamon and calamus, cumin and cloves.  Lion of Judah, I’m so thankful You are stronger than my strongest predator, yet You browse among the lilies and long to be with me.  Ancient of Days, write Your story through me and make sure it's colorful!

Don't Miss the Hoot!

     Last night I missed the hoot.  
     It was eleven o'clock and Asher, my fourteen-year-old son, called my husband Shawn and me into his room.  
    "I'm hearing some rad bird activity outside," he said. 
     We all looked at each other quizzically and strained our necks toward his window, willing ourselves to hear some "rad bird activity." 
     My still warm bed was beckoning me back, so I dared my men to go outside and discover the mystery, and adding, with a dash of playfulness, "Maybe you will see an owl",  moseyed back to bed.
     Within moments my husband yelled upstairs, "Kim, come down here, quick!" 
     Clad in my nightgown I quickly stepped into Asher's clunky boots and, as gingerly as one can rush in clunky boots, headed out to the back door of the garage where Asher was waiting.  
     "Now look up high in the shag-bark hickory," said Shawn in a hushed voice. 
     With our breath marking the night air we craned our necks. 
     "He's gone," Shawn said.
     I missed it.  I knew going to bed was a mistake.
     Asher had first heard the hoots and had been the one to spot the beauty high up in a tree.  I'm proud of him for having ears to hear the unusual, for having the heart to invite us into the mystery, and for having eyes to discern where the elusive bird might be.  

     Tolkien wrote "It's a dangerous business going out your door…there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." 

      I missed being swept off my feet to a dance under winter's star-pocked sky.  I missed the silhouette of a majestic bird residing high over the white-blanketed earth.  I missed the hushed "Look Dad! There it is!" of my son.  
     I chose my bed over going out my door last night.  
     My friends, your beds will always be there.  Don't miss the adventure.  It might be a real hoot!