“Therefore
I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will
drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and
the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither
sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a
single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider
the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I
tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of
these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today
and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of
little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will
we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all
these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these
things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and
all these things will be given to you as well."
-Matthew 6: 25-33 (NRSV)
“Admitting
you’ve been wrong is hard. Especially when you’ve been wrong for a long time.”
This
quote from Fredrick Backman’s book, “A Man Called Ove,” has stuck with me
throughout our “Simple Summer” sermon series. At the core of this series is a
challenge to the foundation of the lives we have created. It’s one thing to
become aware of the ways in which hypersensitive, habitual worry motivates us
to create complex systems ensuring our own worth and relevancy in culture. It’s
another thing to deconstruct these systems to soak in the grace of simplicity and
re-center our daily rhythms in a way to allow us to maintain awareness of its
presence.
Over
the past seven years serving as a pastor at Hope UMC, I have begun to identify
a direct correlation between my personal anxiety level and the days counting
down to our Annual Easter Egg Hunt. While I have yet to find the coveted golden
egg hidden every year at the Easter Egg Hunt, and while, technically, per the
opinions of some program staff members and disgruntled parents, I am not even
supposed to be looking for the golden egg, I nevertheless find myself growing
in restless anticipation as the event nears.
I
currently have two golden egg finding fantasies. In the first, I find the egg
and break out into uncontrollable loud sobbing as I fall to my knees cradling
the precious egg and pushing children away as they gather around me wondering
what bone I have broken. The second, I find the egg and without losing my poker
face continue to walk around the property with a knowing grimace reflective of
the well-earned sense of superiority I now feel over all the silly children who
remain unable to locate the golden egg I may or may not have put in my pocket. Although
neither of these scenarios are likely to occur, both remain healthy alternatives
to a running-start tackle to knock the golden egg out of a joyful child’s hand;
an option that I have never even considered due to my innate holiness and lack
of interest in material possessions.
I
am not sure why successfully finding this golden egg is beyond my capabilities.
In my house, I seem to be the only one who can find anything. Mom, where is my
piano book? Look on the piano, honey.
Babe, where are my car key’s? Check your
pocket, sweetie. Pastor Stephanie, where is the golden egg? Stop picking on me children! Every year
I risk my life, navigating through a tornado of sugar-drunk children, looking
in every reasonable and unreasonable hiding place and still I remain unable to find
this golden egg. Have I gone my whole life with an undiagnosed case of
color-blindness limited to the color gold? Am I not looking the right way or
using enough positive visualization techniques? Should I fire the year-round
Easter egg hunter coach I have hired? Am I seriously not smarter than a 5th
grader?
Four
years ago, in what was probably a grace-filled alternative to mailing me a
restraining order, I was invited to serve on the planning committee for the
Emerging Leaders Institute. The planning committee was made up of two past retreat
participants and three senior clergy professionals from across the county. We
were tasked with planning a three-day retreat for twenty-five young, innovative
clergy who would be selected through an application process. Throughout the
planning process, I found myself self-identifying as the chubby kid with braces
and a stutter wearing clothes from the Goodwill, welcomed yet still feeling
less than worthy of belonging. Surely, I told myself, my presence was the
emotional equivalent of a tax-deductible charitable donation.
At
our second meeting, the planning committee gathered in Minneapolis, Minnesota,
settling into the senior pastor’s spacious office to begin the selection
process for the retreat. Application after application – clergy younger than
myself - earning multiple PhD’s, leading large, vibrant congregations, writing
books and publishing curriculum, speaking fluent mandarin, investing in
bringing peace to the most politically conflicted countries. Young clergy I
could only assume had at some point in their lives been on the cover of Time
Magazine or the front of a Wheaties box.
I
remember putting the applications down, looking up, and confessing to everyone
sitting around me that I had gotten on the wrong plane on my way to this
planning retreat and that a very nice stewardess had escorted me off the plan
and then called a “passenger helper” to make sure that this time I made it to
my correct destination. What the heck am
I doing here? I was the kid who almost didn’t graduate because I could not
manage to get a C or above in Basic Geometry as a Senior in High School. I was
accepted to the University of Northern Colorado on academic probation and still
have regular nightmares that I get a phone call informing me that I never completed
my course requirements and therefore my degree from The Iliff School of
Theology is no longer valid. I can only assume, since this is a nightmare, that
the student loans still are.
After
the self-deprecating portion of my lifelong independent study course in
comparative achievements, I like to move on to the exegetical technique I refer
to as “examining the other with wonder.” Assuming there is nothing wrong with
me, and they have done all these wonderful things that I have not, then the
only reasonable hypothesis is that something must be wrong with them. Have
these people evolved in such a way that they no longer require time to sleep,
eat, or use the bathroom? Did they change their legal name of Doogie Houser to
maintain anonymity but were childhood geniuses? Are they big, fat liars who
found and stole resumes from past presidential candidates?
Worry
is fear after drinking a red bull and while our scripture cautions us against
the practice it’s difficult to pull over to the side of the road when we are
accelerating at eighty-miles an hour trying pass the jerk driving a farm
tractor in the left-hand lane on the highway. Pull over, dude, there’s a Ferrari up ahead I need to run off the road!
I like to imagine in this scenario that the man driving the tractor is
Jesus and we only realize this after offering a regrettable hand gesture.
My
prayer life takes many twists and turns depending on the car I find myself
driving and the road I have ended up driving down. In this season of my prayer
life, I hear God most often responding to me with a soft hand pulling my chin up
accompanied with a kind, “Oh sweet girl,” as my face is absorbed into a grace
beyond my perpetual self-judgement. Most of my life I have been driving a
turbo-charged Maserati. I am just old enough now to realize that my car has two
flat tires and I have worn out the rims. I like to round up, so when I turned
thirty-six years old last October I figured, for all intensive purposes, I turned
forty. Forty has been the year I decided - against my will - that I needed to
pull over, get out of the car, and figure out why I wasn’t getting anywhere
despite access to a powerful engine and a wide-open highway. Forty has me
standing on the side of the road with my hands flailing like an unemployed air
traffic controller yelling, Oh, great,
two flat tires. Now what am I
supposed to do?!
Two
Flat Tires. The first: What if this is all there is? The second: What if this
is all I will ever be?
It
is disappointing to get out of the car and realize that I will never be Anne
Lammot or Mary Oliver, writing words that birth beauty into the world as I
wander with my pure breed dogs throughout the desolate trails of spirit-filled
mountains. That I will never be Brene Brown or Nadia Boltz-Weber giving
life-inspiring, ground-breaking talks to hundreds of people who follow me all
over the country. That I will never be Martha Stewart or Jane Goodall or Reese
Witherspoon or Mary Poppins.
At
forty-years-old-rounded-up, simplicity is the truth that all I will ever be is
Stephanie Price. No accomplishment, no mistake, no job title or new
relationship will change that. I am totally and utterly stuck with myself.
I
like to think that one day we realize that Jesus is driving that annoying, slow
tractor in the left-hand lane of the highway because any day now he might find
us pulled over on the side of the road, broken and alone, and he wants to be
able to offer us a tow home. Jesus may never deliver us a golden egg but he
will always show up to return us to the home we have been running from when we
realize that’s the exact place we are called to be.
The
greatest obstacle to accepting the grace of simplicity is overcoming the fear
that binds our lips from admitting out loud that we have been wrong. For so
very long, Oh God, we have been wrong. And in our most broken moments, when we
wake up exhausted with our foot on the pedal to realize that despite all that
time in the car, the tires were flat and we never made it anywhere, we break
open to prayer; raw, honest, brutal, heart-breaking prayer.
Hey…I think I messed up. I know I
messed up but I guess you might already know that. I looked for the golden egg
and I wanted it so bad and I planned and I saved and I did everything they told
me to do. I ran from place tor place searching and my hands are empty and I’m
out of gas and I have these two stupid flat tires and I may have had a glass of
wine or two, and God, I’m sorry but I need a ride home. Amen.
After
the ride home, when the tires are fixed and I’m back out on the road, I’ll
notice momentary relapses. Cravings to shelter my own ego under the shell of
some metaphorical golden egg; a new certificate, a second degree, a pristine
appearance, a respectable bank account. In between relapses I’ll release the
pressure on the gas pedal and set the car to cruise control just behind that
tractor I passed while flipping off the day before. I may not be able to see
around the tractor enough to know what is coming next but whatever I run into
it won’t be a direct impact crash.
In
this lane, my existence is not defined as being lesser or greater than another
through some delusional equation imposed upon me. In this lane, I rest in the
slow evolution of my own story placed in the infinite context of God’s greater narrative.
There is a quicker truce resulting when one wrestles with their own shadow, a
more powerful rebuttal when it is our own inner voice we find ourselves beating
up on. Without competition as my default, I create space for integrity sculpted
out of the spiritual bones we call grace.
In
her book, Help
Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, Anne Lamott writes, “We learn from pain that some of
the things we thought were castles turn out to be prisons, and we desperately
want out, but even though we built them, we can't find the door. Yet maybe if
you ask God for help in knowing which direction to face, you'll have a moment
of intuition. Maybe you'll see at least one next right step you can
take.”
We
believe that creating a life of simplicity is all on us and so we create a DIY
Simplicity Board on our Pinterest account. We hold out hope that we have the
capability to properly construct lives of simplicity in a way that the world
would compliantly adjust to. We are addicted to finding it on our own, earning
it by ourselves, and our relationship to simplicity feeds right into our
addictive personality. I’ll get it right this
time, God, don’t worry about me. We resist giving up on and walking away
from our pretty prisons of productivity because, surely, one day we will find
that golden egg and then everything will change. In actuality, it is our
openness to simplicity that transforms us
while the world remains the same, and here we are, left with the utterly
overwhelming task of relearning how to live our lives all over again.
It
is culturally counterintuitive and terrifying to consider that perhaps God is
waiting for us to give up; to pull over, assess our situation, and wait by the
side of the road for a ride home. No spare, no car jack, and no triple A; how
utterly irresponsible.
The
tractor pulls over, a large, calloused hand reaches out, pulls us up -for a second we wonder if all the times we weren’t giving up on a car
that drove us nowhere, we were giving up on a God who was waiting to drive us
home – still, there is a thick residue of regret and shame for our current dependency,
for our visible failure…that golden egg would’ve been nice, wouldn’t it?
The
tractor has one seat. I’m swallowed up in a warm lap, head resting against a
heartbeat wrapped in the same worn flannel my aunt used when sewing together
the elephant pillows I couldn’t sleep without as a child. The air smells like my
mother’s hugs and stars pierce through the dark night like miniature
flashlights having just received fresh batteries. I am safe and loved but this
knowing doesn’t override the deep sorrow for a car I couldn’t fix and a golden
egg I never found. What the heck am I even
doing here? I start to grow anxious thinking of how soon this ride will end
and how I’ll be left to try to do again what I could never do before. “Do I
have to go home?” I wonder without words.
And
then the voice retuning, familiar beyond the boundaries of memories, asking
rhetorically,
“Oh, sweet girl, where do you think
you are?”
