Blog : Give Me Grace

Give Me Grace: on Courage, Pride and a Proposal

Posted on August 27, 2016August 28, 2016 by lisha epperson

“You are on the eve of a complete victory. You can’t go wrong. The world is behind you.” – Josephine Baker

“You can fall, but you can rise also.” – Angelique Kidjo

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely,[a] and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us – Hebrews 1:12

On Monday I’ll submit my first book proposal. Quickly stated it’s an encouragement to midlife believers to rediscover or reclaim faith – to open their hearts to a faith that moves. I write about midlife as a series of thresholds.

Here’s the back story. Last fall a publisher contacted me about a series on my blog. The Church Door Series was a collection of poems, reflections, and prayers featuring images of church doors. The practice of bringing myself to those spaces was transformative. In a season of midlife struggle, I’d say more than anything the conversations I had with God, on the steps, in the pews, at the doors were a lifeline to the faith I cherish. God spoke. I listened. What poured out became the beginnings of that series and now the heartbeat of my first book proposal.

I wanted to talk about it. You’ve been my cloud of witnesses. You’ve liked and shared my posts, you’ve linked up on the blog and engaged my mid-life longings. Whether I succeed or fail I know my writing will have changed. In the doing – I will be different . How could I not talk about it?

Here are a few of my reasons and the truth I use to dispel their power …

Writers and writing. Well, let me be clear. I want to write and want people to read my words but with a fair amount of false humility, tell myself I’m not a writer. I’m still learning to trust my voice and words. I know the imperfection of my work. Saying I’m writing a proposal feels like I’m putting myself in a category with people who are – writers. For me, Toni Morrison is a writer. Terry Tempest Williams is a writer. Me? I’m a believer. I set the standard so high I’m surprised I have the courage to post weekly. Yet, the truth is – I am a writer. I write spiritual non-fiction for the ordinary believer.
Academia. I spend part of the week during the school year with some of the most brilliant theological minds. For the better part of the year, I sat silently in class – unable to process my thoughts fast enough to engage in discussions. I’ve been afraid my classmates would read my blog posts and think less of me. I’m growing and working on this, yet the truth is, I am becoming more of myself and the stretching process that happens in seminary only adds to my growth as a writer. I don’t have to be a perfectly finished version of myself to make an effort. Perfection will never come so … on with the work. Yes?
Pride. I don’t like to ask for help. I consider myself a jack of all trades and I’ll work hard to learn anything that interests me. I’ll usually do that alone. I’ve lived by this unwritten code that says help is something other people ask for, help is something other people need. I’ve searched within myself all summer for the source of this belief because I’d never discourage anyone from asking for help. I appreciate vulnerability and am a living witness to grace. Where did I get the idea that help is something I can’t use? I’m still not sure. Also, sharing this next chapter with you meant I’d have to be vulnerable enough to if it happens, admit failure. I was afraid to do that, but the truth is whether I succeed or fail (and those terms are subjective), my writing will have changed. In the doing – I will be different. How could I not share it?

I learned to accept help twice in the past 2 years. At the Jumping Tandem retreat and again in seminary last year. Twice, walking into the arms of an angel made me cry. In the moment I knew it as what I was supposed to do – to accept the shoulder – to lean into grace. Even though I didn’t ask for it and especially because I needed it. I learned it yesterday when a friend offered what I call the Tupac sermon. ‘Keep ya head up, she said. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness.’ I live it now in the gift of my b-girl flashback.

Keep ya head up, ooh, child, things are gonna get easier
Keep ya head up, ooh, child, things’ll get brighter

If nothing else this part of the writing journey has taught me that I need help. Whether for words of encouragement, advice or another set of eyes. I need help. I enlisted the help of Ed Cyzewski to work through the details of my proposal. I got the idea from the Hope Writers summit. I don’t know that I would have worked through the details as thoroughly without Ed’s help. Having someone to walk and talk me through the process is something I’d definitely do again. Sharing my little secret with friends who’ve travelled the same road helped tremednously. Our prayer and brainstorming sessions were and will continue to be a gift.

I keep seeing the other side. I feel the nudge of an ancient power pressing me into, over and across a threshold. I see the other side. No matter what happens after submission – I’ve done the work. I asked for help. I learned a lot.

On the eve of submission, victory looks like having the courage to trust God with the outcome. You are part of the world behind me and I believe your grace carries me.

I spent part of the summer collecting quotes to inspire me on the day I submit my proposal. I’m sharing a few of them here and praying they’ll inspire you to do something you think you can’t do, inspire you to run with perseverance the race set before you – to believe for the other side.

Let your handmaiden find grace in your sight … #GiveMeGrace

♥

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Give Me Grace: Accepting the Invitation

Posted on August 20, 2016August 21, 2016 by lisha epperson

Nursing a years long infatuation with church architecture, I’ve enjoyed a spiritual pilgrimage of sorts. Scraping at the layer of questions beneath the surface of my midlife heart, questions I couldn’t deny, unearthed a series of personal reflections on faith. From how God shows up in my daily life, to questions about justice and love and space (designated, liminal, sacred), I’ve accepted a quiet invitation to explore what bringing my whole body to these spaces means. In entering each space I take a conscious stance and capture what I see through the lens of a camera. Each image is holy. Filtering it all through an Immanuel inspired lens is my differential advantage. The presence of God is the invitation to find the words.

This summer I chose one of those reflections and sent it in for consideration as a guest post at Sojourners. It went live in June but I didn’t use it as an invitation to bring you all along for the ride. I didn’t get to link the site to my blog, or share it the way we’re supposed to do in the blogging world. It happened so fast.

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Is this a blog repost? Am I cheating? I’m all about reclaiming your archives so let’s call it that.

I’m taking the rest of the week to put a little icing on my first movement series offering. This is content I’ll only share with subscribers so make sure you sign up.

So, about that article – here goes. Enjoy.

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is one of the most beautiful churches in New York City, a worldly structure in the Gothic tradition created more than one hundred years ago. People from all walks of life stop to gaze in wonder at the splendor of its architecture. It is the largest cathedral in the country, a church whose size and grandeur help us to know the meaning of the word “opulence.”

Thank god opulence isn’t the only language spoken at this church. The deliberately meditative call from spirit to spirit is undeniable. Churches like this span whole city blocks as celestial sculptures, centering touchstones in a city whose inhabitants need grounding — desperately.

The heartbeat of the church should be a preferential option that favors the poor. Theologians of every race and creed have wrestled with clergy to make this so, and this church, as with many like it, does the good work of caring for those in need. What happens here each night is part of that.

One of the most meaningful ministries at the cathedral is with the regular gathering of homeless people, who call the doorsteps around the corner from the main entrance home. It is a ministry for which I’m sure they did not ask, and I’m not sure if they ever stand in line for the weekly or monthly offerings of help. But I see them as a holy inscription, living epistles with a clear message.

The geography of poverty and its proximity to such opulence is one of the oddities of the city. Juxtaposed against the seeming wealth of the church, a community has formed — they live, literally, on the margins of this great structure. The church allows it. That the city frowns upon it is another story.

By day, the people living on the doorsteps are shooed away by city officials trying to keep homeless people off the street. But at night, a walk along this path at sunset reveals the set-up for what will soon take place: They gather, a few at a time, just talking. They appear like passersby, striking up conversation, sharing information. As it gets darker, the three doorways along the corner of 110th Street and Amsterdam Avenue fill quietly with blankets and cardboard boxes. A shopping cart or a few large trash bags rest nearby. This space is occupied — private, even.

Nowhere do I see the presence of God more clearly. It is the daily bread of theophany, a revelation and witness of God moving in and on the earth. But this marginal grouping is essentially ignored. Balancing coffee cups and fresh bagels, our children and packages — zoned out on smartphones and head phones, on our way to wherever — we accept their presence as part of the landscape. An inner witness tells me that a daily pilgrimage past this gathering of organic intellectuals is an invitation to sit in the wisdom of their stories. I’m convinced the light of God shines within these stories, and I don’t want to miss it. I don’t want to miss the daily, sacred epiphanies. It is a word from God, never random but wholly intentional.

The gathering I see marks a very real Jesus in a very broken world and I wonder if we’re missing it.
It is often in the things we don’t want to see that we are faced with the most profound confrontation. God shows up looking like a homeless man and we turn away. He shows up as a person who looks or believes differently from us and we suddenly lose the ability to engage in healthy dialogue. We imagine a great gulf exists between us and them, that they should be more like us. Or worse — we don’t see that at all.

Do you love me? Feed my sheep. Jesus came for the least of these, the broken these, the hurting these — Jesus is for the shunned these.

They’re here in the strength and vulnerability of the city, where questions of faith and justice force the wild rhythms of this world to align themselves with grace. Where invisible vigilantes curate hope on city sidewalks and keepers of the faith pray for enlightenment — eyes to notice, eyes to see.

Let’s pray we don’t miss it — the rich liturgical composition of chapter and verse on a human heart, the Holy Spirit sent to help us decipher its letter of love.

This post appeared first at Sojourners. And take my experience as an inspired invitation to find homes for your words. Get to work on a guest post or article.

Let your handmaiden find grace in your sight … #GiveMeGrace

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Give Me Grace: Real Love

Posted on August 13, 2016August 14, 2016 by lisha epperson

NBC sports commentator Al Trautwigs’ flippantly disrespectful comment about Simone Biles’ familial connections got under my skin this week.

Mine is a family formed through marriage, adoption and birth. I’m an infertility warrior and by grace – mama of many. I can tell you the truth behind comments like this and the harm they cause. Comments like this discount the pilgrimage my family, and families like ours, take to find each other. They leave out the truth of soul-ties formed through adoption.

My first memories of motherhood are wrapped in the bittersweet miracle of adoption. Love, real love, I learned was bigger and wider than I imagined. A journey that began in the wilderness of infertility brought me the long way around the broken path of love and trust. Adoption is nothing if not a lesson in love, a lesson in becoming. When I was a ‘would-be’, adoption made me real.

I’d add that my feelings about this don’t deny the important role played by the women who gave my children life. They too, in my eyes – mother. The broader scope I allude to leaves room for a deep sisterly love between myself and the women I met through adoption. But that’s another post for another time. I write this knowing I have the support of the women who carried my children when I could not. Those women believe in me. They know … I’m real.

So …. when people insensitively or ignorantly imply that adoptive families aren’t real all I think of is the tears I cried dreaming of my children. Spiritual conception is a real thing. My spirit babies grew in my heart as if in a womb. At first in secret, when I dared not tell a soul and then openly when I couldn’t keep myself away from the baby aisle in any store that had one. Then, I could no longer hide my conception. We were having a baby.

I also think of the women who offered the fruit of their wombs in the most difficult exchange. Please don’t assume you know anything about them. Please don’t disrespect them by calling the families they entrust their children to – unreal. Please extend this grace to all birth mothers, regardless of circumstance.

I’ve shared some of the conversations we have around here as my children process out loud, their understanding of family. They’re fun and real and have everything to do with the way we’ve celebrated our family’s beginnings.

Here’s a sampling …

‘Too bad Ade’, you only have one mommy.’

From Ade’ – ‘Mommy, you’re my birthmother.’

From my teens, ‘How much do you think it’ll cost us to do ancestry.com? Our family is so big and we each have to do separate tests.’
(They understand the genetics are different but still allude to the bond of family beyond science.)

Because of love we’re Burundian, Jamaican, and Nigerian. We’ve got roots in Kansas too. All through love.

Our family is our family.

My children know they have birth parents, a biological set of parents who participated in the holy work of giving them life. They also know that my husband and I are their real parents. Real as in take me to skating, sit up with me at night when I’m ill, can I have money for the movies real. Real as in, rolling their eyes while washing the dishes because mama said I have to … real. Real as in helping me discover my gifts and loving and supporting the me, God made me to be. Real.

And for my husband and I, real as in the weight and responsibility of setting an example, and sometimes, failing miserably. But even in that, and maybe especially that … real.

Yesterday, I overheard Chailah (8) talking to Ade (5). He sat crouched low, face pressed to the door while he waited for her to come out of the bathroom.

Chailah: You know Ila’s birthmother…the one that had the baby?

Ade’: Yeah.

Chailah: She’s Ila’s sister. She’s our sister too.

There you have it … from the heart and mind of a child who gets it. No biology, no questions. Just the love we’ve modeled as a family formed through marriage, adoption and birth. The love is love, is love kind.

so … family, in 8 words?

Here’s Simone’s gold medal response.
“My parents are my parent and that’s it.”

Amen.

Trautwig apologized after a serious Twitter lashing. I don’t think he should be fired (I offer grace for him as well), but I do think of this as the perfect opportunity for a national conversation on adoption friendly language and how we define family.

Let your handmaiden find grace in your sight … #GiveMeGrace

♥

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Give Me Grace: Walk It Out

Posted on August 6, 2016August 6, 2016 by lisha epperson

for we walk by faith, not by sight. 2 Corinthians 5:7

We’re all a little disappointed about our summer vacation this year. We hoped to get away for a week but a handful of things conspired against us and there you have it – another epic vacation fail. It just couldn’t happen. I made the mistake of dreaming about it out loud months ago and when it fell through – they took it hard. Especially my teens. They’re at the age where the smoke and mirrors of childhood are over. They see through the filters we set up to shield them. We couldn’t go because we didn’t have the money. There wasn’t anything I could do to shield them from that.

One of the most challenging things about parenting is holding your children’s happiness in your hands. Or feeling like you do. There are some dreams you can’t make come true. There are some things we just can’t do.

I know it won’t always be this way but this week the disappointment reached its peak. It was the week we should have been on vacation. My teens are at that stage where they compare their lives to their many friends. We have friends on both sides and in the middle of any financial continuum, but they know enough to know where we fall as a family.

We can’t compete with many of their friends in the summer vacation category. It’s hard enough to fill the weeks with activities to keep them busy in the city. Actual leisurely travel, for the most part, has been out of reach. There’s a whole lot of truth to not being able to afford summer vacation.

So …

This isn’t a complaint. Just a little parenting truth and how we’re working through it. We’re all healthy and have family and community that love us. We’ve built our family on faith. We lack no good thing – (except the good thing of vacation.) Womp. Womp. Womp.

Anyway …

To ease a little of our funk I decided to make the summer count in the only way I can. Keep us close, keep us together, stay local but enjoy the many things about our city that we absolutely adore. The many things that make the Big Apple the greatest city in the world.

On this summer’s agenda – the family version of a classic – the old ‘lemonade out of lemons, life is what you make it’ seminar.

So far we’ve enjoyed almost every museum on 5th Avenue and made good use of our membership at the Bronx Botanical Garden. The girls have enjoyed figure skating all summer (thanks to a very flexible payment plan) and LiChai kept busy with his commitment to the Lang Science program and impromptu soccer games with friends. Pokémon Go has also been a fun distraction with some of our favorite places being hot spots on the app. I’ve also stressed the physical and emotional benefits of walking. Most places we go, we walk.

We’re living the truth of love don’t cost a thing. We’re figuring it out.

This week I did something I’ve always wanted to do. And I took my family with me. Native New Yorker’s ourselves, neither me or my husband had ever experienced the famed landmark quite this way. It’s been on my list of things to do with the kids since I started my parenting journey. I don’t know why it’s taken so long.

We took a walk. We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Completed in 1883, it’s one of the oldest cable-stayed suspension bridges in the country. Crossing the East River, it connects Manhattan and Brooklyn. A walk along its crowded footpath is a major tourist attraction. It’s free. Really, why did it take me so long to do this?

We walked the expanse of the 1,595-foot bridge and enjoyed a playground near Brooklyn Bridge Park. We took a break on a bench at Pebble Beach and a sweet ride on Jane’s Carousel. Ice cream at the waterfront location of the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory marked the end of our adventure. My sister-in-law Gail and her daughter Sidney joined us.

*******

I’ve thought a lot lately about getting from one place to the next, the bridges we have to cross and the anxiety we may feel about what happens on the other side. I’m thinking about how we step out in faith to trust a life of free-falling grace. I’m looking at life from the hopeful side and I’m taking my family with me on this journey of finding joy in the midst. It is my holy resistance to a handful of things that threaten the promise of peace in our home.

Yesterday’s walk was part of a physical pilgrimage I’m taking to train myself in faith. I know I should have it together by now, but it’s something I have to practice. This going with God thing is real for me. It is a sacred, spiritual practice.

Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you. – Jeremiah 7:23

I’m not quite sure what happens on the other side of the door, not sure what awaits on the other side of the path but with God, I don’t have to fear the journey. I know we’ll be alright.

Let your handmaiden find grace in your sight … #GiveMeGrace

♥

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