Setting Gratitude Free From Happiness, Pleasantness, And Goodness

An image of an empty bird cage with an open door.

May 11, 2023May 11, 2023 ~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

Alternative title: Gratitude practices for the grieving, ashamed, and stuck

An image of an empty bird cage with an open door. Photo by Deleece Cook on Unsplash

Of course we should be grateful—everyone says so. Literally everyone.

Expressing gratitude to their deity is central to every major religion. Thinkers as diverse as Cicero and Oprah, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Tony Robbins tout not only its benefits, but also its necessity for a well-lived life. A Gratitude Industrial Complex has sprung up to sell us journals, coloring books, posters, wall hangings, online courses, greeting cards, candles, jewelry, and social media memes. They all say that gratitude is the root of happiness, grace, beauty, love, sweetness, abundance, comfort, and success.

That sounds lovely.

But life is not always lovely.

Gratitude experts know this, too, and will remind us that there are always things we can be grateful for, even during difficult times. These are often small things in our lives that make us happy, bring us comfort, or are admirable—a hug from a child, a warm sunbeam, a gift of a meal.

Again, lovely.

But akin to using a chef’s knife only to spread butter on your toast: an underuse of a powerful tool. In relegating gratitude to the realm of the pleasant and admirable, in linking it to happiness and comfort, we weaken its ability to change us for the better, especially when life is difficult.

“Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” G.K. Chesterton

If gratitude is happiness, what am I supposed to do with my gratitude that my cousin Esther died of colon cancer in more pain than a human being should be able to endure at age 39 with a 3-year-old daughter who would have no natural memories of her—but secure in her father’s love for the first time in her life?

Because I’m grateful for that, but I also fervently wish she were still alive to know the daughter who is the spitting image of her yet is also her own glorious person. Being grateful that she died secure in her father’s love does not make me one bit happy. Years later, I still grieve her.

Esther and I were born a month apart in the same city, went to the same tiny school for grades 5-8 where we were the top grade for the last three of those years, lived together for a year in college, and became close as adults after my move to New York City gave her a free place to stay. We both saw the spirit of our Opa (Dutch for grandfather) on the same night when we were 9. I’d thought we were as close as the sisters neither of us had, with the petty rivalries and jealousies and intense confidences.

But she never told me how unhappy her home life was. I didn’t find out until she was dying; some stories I didn’t learn until after she died. Her mother struggled with mental illness and alcohol abuse and their family life often revolved around managing or reacting to those. In addition, the things Esther was interested in and good at weren’t things her parents put much stock in, so she didn’t feel appreciated.

When it was clear that she wouldn’t make it through her cancer, she and her father were discussing her desire to be cared for at home. They went back and forth until Esther plaintively asked, “Don’t you love me enough to take care of me?”

What could my uncle say but, “Yes”?

Because he did. He’d loved her that much all along, of course.

In the months that followed, he took the tenderest round-the-clock care of her, burping her colostomy bag, managing her mountain of medications, hand-feeding her when she became too weak. She died not only secure in the knowledge of her father’s love, but completely wrapped up in the experience of his love for her. I am so grateful for this—not only for her, but also for my uncle.

But happy? No.

“Gratitude paints little smiley faces on everything it touches.”
Richelle E. Goodrich

If gratitude is all about feeling warm and cozy, what am I supposed to do with my gratitude for my friend Bernadette, who called me out on a matter of racial stereotyping? Because I’m grateful to her, but any warmth I felt at the time was due to the heat of shame burning up my neck. There was nothing smiley about it.

Friends and I were talking about poll statistics before the 2016 election and I made a desperate joke about Hispanic people and cell phones and she called me on it. At first, I defended myself, because I knew my intentions, and I knew my love and respect for the people I’d stereotyped. I wasn’t mean-spirited. So I justified my behavior. After we parted it took all of 10 minutes for me to realize that I’d been wrong, that my intentions were not the most important thing in our interaction—that my words were.

I immediately sent her an apology, and by the time I saw her the next day, I was grateful to her for calling me out, and told her so. Because she had the courage to say what she did to my face, I was given the opportunity to hear my words from another’s point of view: I couldn’t hear the stereotyping until she revealed it to me. I asked for her forgiveness, she gave it, and our friendship deepened. I am grateful for this experience because it made me a better, more humble person.

Was it cozy? No. Is there a smiley face on the encounter? No. My gratitude has not made me any less embarrassed by it.

“The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.”
Dalai Lama

If gratitude is all about highlighting things that are admirable, what am I supposed to do with my gratitude that my husband of 21 years was arrested for a sex crime, enabling me to leave a marriage that was good enough, but that was also breaking my heart every day? Because I’m grateful for that, but what he did was not at all praiseworthy, and caused both immediate and ongoing trauma in our family.

My marriage wasn’t horrible. My spouse and I could still have fun together, and we worked well on negotiating the needs of the kids and family life, but there was an essential hollowness to our near-sexless marriage, and there were years of agreements that he didn’t live up to, deals he didn’t keep. I was last in his life, but I decided over and over that I wouldn’t leave him; it was part of my deep value system to stay and I couldn’t imagine explaining why I was leaving to my kids. So I used the practice of gratitude to make my marriage livable for me: focused on what was good about our relationship, worked at being compassionate instead of bitter, and was disciplined about thanking him for every little thing. The day-to-day lived experience was more pleasant, but gratitude didn’t address any of our deep problems, neither did it heal my heartbreak.

I told very few people about this because I didn’t see the point: no matter what I did, he wasn’t changing, and I wasn’t leaving, so why make other people frustrated with him? After all, he was my husband and I loved him. It left me utterly stuck and lonely.

So once he was arrested and the truth (and then more truth) came to light, making sense of years-worth of his behavior, it was a relief: here was a solid reason to leave. I was grateful for that (and that he was caught before anything worse happened), but was there anything praiseworthy to focus on? No.

But that’s also not entirely fair: our marriage produced two wonderful and sometimes infuriating children. It nurtured and encouraged our friends. We supported each other in our artistic pursuits and made it possible for each other to grow in our chosen fields. I can be grateful for that, but it’s a complicated gratitude.

A.J. Jacobs ran into a similar problem when he tried to thank everyone involved in his morning cup of coffee. In Thanks a Thousand, he writes that when he told his friend Brian that he was thanking dockworkers and truck drivers, Brian asked whether he was going to thank the meth dealers for selling drugs to the drivers so they could drive all night. That put Jacobs in a quandary:

“Brian’s comment may be flippant, but it sticks in my mind. It’s brought up an interesting problem. Not everyone who helps get my coffee to me is a good person. Or at least not everyone is acting in a way that is good for the world…. So…does the CEO of Exxon deserve my thanks?”

Jacobs doesn’t answer that question, but thanks the CEO of Exxon anyway, sending what he describes as a passive-aggressive, “Thank you, now please change,” letter.

Gratitude can be more of a mixed bag than theologians, thinkers, and marketers often give it credit for. And I haven’t even gotten to people who are grateful for things other people think are tragic, like people with disabilities being grateful for their disability.

“Attention must be paid.” Linda Loman (Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman)

So what gives these non-pleasant experiences of gratitude their power? At its base, gratitude is about paying attention. The pleasant versions of gratitude have us paying attention to things that make us feel happy, warm, cozy, and positive. The more robust versions can withstand us paying attention to things that are true whether they make us feel sad, uncomfortable, ashamed, or free because the more robust version highlights our connectedness–and we need connection.

“As adults connection nourishes us in a literal, physiological way, regulating our heart rates and respiration rates, influencing the emotional activation in our brains, shifting our immune response to injuries and wounds, changing our exposure to stressors and modulating our stress response.”
Chapter 6, Burnout, Emily Nagorski and Amelia Nagorski

Because of my cousin Esther’s illness and death, I know her better and I know my uncle better—I am connected to both of them in deeper ways than I was before. Because of my friend Bernadette’s forthrightness and her forgiveness, I am better connected to her, and better connected to myself as a person who can be wrong and not be destroyed by it. Because of my now-ex-husband’s arrest after years of lies and neglect I am better connected to myself because I’m no longer trying to convince myself that grievous behavior was loving; I’m better connected to my community because of the help they gave me in the aftermath; I’m better connected to friends whose families have gone through something similar; and I’m better connected to my children because of the intensity of what we went through together. My gratitude for each of those events is rooted in those connections and branches out in my writing, my relationships, and my work with children.

I am both more compassionate and more courageous, with myself and with others, than I was before these events. There’s no need to hide from or to deny sadness, grief, shame, or anger as incompatible with the practice of gratitude, or to expect gratitude to lift me out of those states, because I know I can be grateful for things that have made me feel each of those emotions.

So let’s free gratitude from the cage of loveliness. Practicing gratitude may bring you happiness, beauty, sweetness, and success. But gratitude that rises from situations of grief, shame, and anger may connect you more deeply to yourself and to others.

I’ll take gratitude-fueled connection over unrelenting sweetness any day. The more tightly knit our connections are, the more they’ll sustain us, encourage us, and challenge us to see connections where we’d been blind to them before. That can change the world. And that’s something to be deeply grateful about.

What is your first vivid childhood memory?

Photo by Andrew Castillo on Unsplash of coiled rope on a wooden floor

April 26, 2023 ~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

My earliest memory is of injuring my little brother and being consumed with guilt and worry.

I was 4, my brother 2. We lived in a construction zone. My parents bought a hippie squatter house in Toronto in the early 1970s. Every room was painted differently: black-out, neon splatter, each wall a different color. They got it for $1 down because it was in such rough shape. The first night, they tucked us into bed on mattresses on the floor, went downstairs, picked up sledgehammers and started making the space their own.

They eventually took every wall down to the studs, removed interior walls, smashed the kitchen cabinets and re-built everything themselves according to my dad’s research in home design and efficiency. I loved that house. But on this day, there was nothing: no walls, no cabinets, no furniture.

No barrier at the edge of the first floor and its open drop to the basement.

But there was a big, enticing rope laying about.

While I was generally very well behaved (to the point of goody-two-shoes-edness), I was still a kid. My brother and I picked up either end of the rope and ran around yanking on it. I’m sure we thought we were having the best time ever. I wondered,

“What would happen if I let go?”

I did, and my cute little brother with the big head fell onto the concrete floor of the basement.

I only have a vague memory of the rope and the wondering and the light being diffused by the ever-present construction dust. My vivid memory is of sitting on a sawhorse with a large woman from our church; she comforted me as I cried, guilty that it was all my fault and scared that he had to go to the hospital.

He lived. And thrived. And cracked his skull several other times as a result of his own risk-taking.

It took another 20 years for me to get over my big sister over-protectiveness.

How about you? What is your first vivid childhood memory?
Is it sweet? Silly? Angsty? Who else is there with you?

** My mother’s notes on this story: “I had gone to the basement to put in the wash. You kids were on the 2nd floor. The bottom of the stairs [stairs were L-shaped, and this would be the bottom section of the L, 4-5 steps] had been removed and blocked, so how you guys managed to climb over that obstruction and run around in the first floor construction site is still hard to imagine. We had just spent a couple of weeks with Oma and Opa as your dad tore the first floor and bathroom apart and started to rebuild. He was desperate for us to come home. I never thought you two would be so athletic!” **

When you’re in a goo time

Photo by Dan Cristian Pădureț on Unsplash

April 7, 2023 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@dancristianpaduret?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Dan Cristian Pădureț</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/mAvD5iOVMZE?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a>

We love to talk about caterpillars turning into butterflies. It’s such an encouraging story that we totally make about ourselves:

Even though you may start out crawling on your belly in the dirt, eventually your true colors will emerge and your wings will unfurl and you will fly like you were always meant to.

That’s glamorous.

But that isn’t what happens to caterpillars. They don’t enter chrysalis and curl up in there all cozy growing wings.

They become goo.

Whatever is happening while the caterpillar transforms is not pretty. It digests itself. If it happened without the protection of the chrysalis on our deck or sidewalk, we’d probably think something had decomposed or rotted and we’d spray it away with the hose so we wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.

But the caterpillar is supposed to become goo. Turning into soup is a crucial part of the transformation. We know this, but it’s also mysterious.

Which makes me think of the events my Christian tradition remembers this weekend. Today (Good Friday) we commemorate Jesus’s death and his three days being dead before God makes him alive again (Easter). What happened 2000+ years ago for these three days is a mystery. We get hints from what Jesus said while he was on the cross.

At about three o’clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
Matthew 27:46 (NLT)

So Jesus was alone, abandoned by the father who he always felt in complete oneness with.

But the other criminal protested, “Don’t you fear God even when you have been sentenced to die?We deserve to die for our crimes, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong.”Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”

And Jesus replied, “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
Luke 23:40-43 (NLT)

At some point of time, Jesus would be in paradise.

But the specifics are a mystery.

Whatever happened to Jesus changed him so much that people who had followed him didn’t recognize him. Mary Magdalene sees him when he’s alive again and thinks he’s the gardener; she doesn’t recognize him until he says her name. The men on the road to Emmaus walked and talked with him for hours and didn’t recognize him until he broke bread in front of them.

We don’t know what Jesus was doing during those 3 days, so I like to think of him as in his goo time — in between his ministry on earth and his ministry untethered to the soil, transitioning from his time as fully-human-and-fully-divine to fully divine. What form did he take? Was it painful? Pleasant? When did he return to oneness with the Father?

Maybe I like to think of it as Jesus’s goo time because I experience goo times, too.

I’m going through one right now, when I know what was but I don’t know what will be and I feel all messy and chaotic and anxious but also hopeful.

Both Jesus and the butterfly get through their goo times in similar ways.

There’s no rushing the process. Jesus said it would take 3 days, so it took 3 days. Caterpillars have different chrysalis periods, depending on whether the conditions are right for the caterpillar to feed and reproduce. It might take a few weeks, or it might take a few years. I hate this. Because I have no idea how long my goo time is going to last and a number of steps are not up to me.
Trust that you have what you need. Jesus understood what was going to happen to him. It’s why he didn’t want to do it, and why he also submitted to it. He knew he had what he needed to get through it. A caterpillar has all the genetic material it needs to digest and then transform itself. I hate this slightly less. Because I know that I have the love and the presence of God, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the intercession of Jesus. And people who love me. And a whole lot of actual things that I need. I have worked through goo times before. Still, it’s not exactly fun to be soup.

How do you get through your goo times? Does it annoy you that sometimes you don’t get much of a waiting period between said goo times? Just me?

Do Christians follow their leader or his first followers?

screengrab of Derek Sivers How to Start a Movement

February 16, 2023February 16, 2023 ~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

This short TED Talk (Derek Sivers’s, “How to Start a Movement”) tells the story of a man dancing alone at a music festival, how first one person joined him, and then another, until crowds were running to join the dance. It’s only 3 minutes long and kind of funny.

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I’m always struck by this observation: “New followers emulate the followers, not the leader.” I can’t help but think of Jesus and his first followers, who constantly got him wrong even though they had him right there with them.

They left everything to follow him but didn’t understand who he was

They’d been with Jesus for some time, watching him heal and preach, and argue with religious leaders. One day, when they were sailing across a lake, a dangerous storm came up. The followers wake up the napping Jesus, who tells off the wind and waves, which makes them calm.

The disciples were terrified and amazed. “Who is this man?” they asked each other. “When he gives a command, even the wind and waves obey him!” (Luke 8:25)

Peter is the only one who will say it out loud

In Luke, after they feed the 5,000 with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, Jesus asks them point blank who they think he is, and only one gives the answer:

One day Jesus left the crowds to pray alone. Only his disciples were with him, and he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”

“Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say you are one of the other ancient prophets risen from the dead.”

Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?”

Peter replied, “You are the Messiah sent from God!” (Luke 9:18-20)

I imagine all of them silent and nervous about Jesus’s question, either because they aren’t sure or they’re afraid to get it wrong, and then Peter blurts it out (as he often does).

They are obsessed with greatness

Jesus ate with the despised and rejected, healed people no matter their socio-economic status, and constantly beefed with the authorities, but his first followers were obsessed with greatness. In Matthew 18 they ask Jesus who was the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. In Mark 9 Jesus confronts them about their “who’s the greatest” argument on the road. In Luke 9 they argue about which of them was the greatest. In Luke 22 (at the Last Supper) they argue about who would be the greatest. In each instance, Jesus gives a similar response:

“Whoever wants to be first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else.” Then he put a little child among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, “Anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes not only me but also my Father who sent me.” (Mark 9:35-37)

He even has to correct his first followers for preventing parents from bringing children to him to be blessed: “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children” (Matthew 19:14).

They didn’t get that his theology was so different from what they grew up with

When the followers see a man blind from birth, their question to Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” sounds odd to our ears, but reveals their theological assumption: if you are sick or suffering, it’s a punishment for something you’ve done or something your family has done–you deserve it. But Jesus says something radical:

“It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.” (John 9:2-3)

This was a radical healing all around. By making it so a man born blind could not only see, but understand what he was seeing, Jesus put everyone around this man in a tizzy. He got dragged in front of the Pharisees, some of whom were upset because this healing took place on the Sabbath (when nobody was supposed to work) while others thought the healer must be from God. They hauled in his parents to ask them what they thought of this Jesus who healed him. Kept grilling the man, who could only repeat what his experience was until they threw him out of the synagogue.

They didn’t get that he challenged the status quo on purpose

Jesus has been arguing with the Pharisees about what makes a person “unclean” or “defiled.” The Pharisees ask him about ritual hand cleaning and Jesus ups the ante by talking about how what you say reveals the state of your heart. Jesus draws a crowd to tell them,

“It’s not what goes into your mouth that defiles you; you are defiled by the words that come out of your mouth.”

Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you realize you offended the Pharisees by what you just said?” (v.11-12)

He sure did! He already told the Pharisees, “you cancel the word of God for the sake of your own tradition. You hypocrites!” And goes on to call them the blind leading the blind. The followers’ “do you realize you offended the Pharisees” is kinda sweet, but reveals that they didn’t understand Jesus’s ministry.

One of them betrayed him

Judas has always sounded to me like a disillusioned true believer: Jesus wasn’t who Judas thought he was, so he set Jesus up so the authorities could arrest him. In Matthew, the last straw for Judas seems to be when Jesus allows the woman to anoint his feet with very expensive oil. But whatever it was, he goes to the people plotting to kill Jesus and offers to hand him over. Then he follows through and does it.

Even Jesus seems surprised

At the Last Supper, when Jesus is trying to sum up his entire ministry for the disciples who will be charged with spreading his message, his followers are still confused about who Jesus is.

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”

Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don’t know who I am? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father! So why are you asking me to show him to you? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? (John 14:8-11)

They never understood what the kingdom was

Even at the very end of Jesus’ time on earth, post-resurrection, his closest followers still didn’t get what he was all about:

So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?” (Acts 1:6)

They were with him for 3 years, hearing him speak, able to ask him anything, sharing meals, travelling the country, hanging out with him after he died, and they still didn’t understand that Jesus was not about kicking out the Romans and restoring Israel’s political power.

So what about us?

We’re supposed to be following Jesus, not the first followers. But we’re only human. Like they were. It seems inevitable that we would be like those first followers: not understanding who Jesus is and what he’s about, obsessed with the wrong things, not grasping just how deeply Jesus challenges rules-based religion.

Sivers wants his listeners to embrace the crucial role that first followers play:

“First follower is an underrated form of leadership…. Have the courage to follow and show others how to follow.”

For Christians, I’d change it a little:

“Have the courage to follow the leader (Jesus) and show others how to follow the leader (not you).”

I’m glad we’ve got the example of the disciples and all the ways they get things right and wrong. It means we get to be aware of our human tendencies to get obsessed with the wrong things and to see Jesus through our own cultural lenses. But we are also aware that we are to be Christlike, not disciplelike. We are to be first followers, ourselves, enticing others to join the dance.

What is saving my life right now

A photo of a woman in the snow looking determined and strong. Photo by Hannah Van Houten.

February 2, 2023 ~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

We are halfway between winter and spring. The West Michigan winter has been cloudier than usual: in December we saw 12% of possible sunshine; January gave us less than that. As Barbara Brown Taylor notes in Leaving Church, we know what’s killing us, but it’s harder to recognize what’s saving us. So today I’m joining with Modern Mrs. Darcy and naming what is saving me right now.

That photo of me.

My daughter took it for a portrait assignment for her photography class. Look at this woman. She looks so determined. And so strong. This woman will keep going and not give up. And this woman is me! I love that she captured the steely side of my core.

The coat I’m wearing belonged to my Oma, my Dutch grandmother, who took 5 children through World War II in the Netherlands (two of whom were born during the Occupation). They had to move suddenly when the Nazis commandeered their home. Her husband was in a Resistance Cell, so he was often gone, working to undermine the occupiers; whether he was out or at home, there was a constant sense that the Nazis could come for him at any time. Because they did. The last winter of the war, the Hunger Winter, she walked for 2 days with her husband and 5 young children, one of whom was an infant, to get to her sister’s country home where there was food — if you count ground fish heads and bones as food. The Nazis didn’t; they’d commandeered all the truly edible stuff from the family’s soup factory. But three families survived that winter on the disgusting scraps the Nazis left them.

I see that legacy in this photo. And I love it. (Also, I love that I was right to suggest my daughter take a photography class. #momwin)

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski

When I shared my post last month to Facebook, one of my friends recommended that I read Burnout. I burned through the audiobook in a few days (see what I did there?).

It is already saving my life.

The first tenet of Burnout is that whether or not you are able to change the stressors in you life, you have to complete the stress cycle in order to deal with the stress. The purpose of completing the stress cycle is to tell your body and mind that you are safe, that you have dealt with the adrenaline caused by the stressor, and that you do not need to constantly be in a state of alarm.

There are multiple ways to complete the stress cycle: exercise is the best, conversation with a trusted love one, getting enough sleep, connecting with deeper meaning in your life, doing things with a group that highlight your togetherness, expressing your creativity.

All things I love to do, but all things that I neglect when under stress. When the kids were younger, and not rational, I endeavored to be the soul of patience and not yell — I wasn’t successful, but I tried really, really hard. And I wondered what I could do with all the anger and frustration that I’d pushed down. This book would’ve saved my life back then. Being able to divorce the stress from the stressor, being able to consciously pursue those things as a way to complete that stress cycle, would have been a big help.

It’s a big help to me now.

The second way the Nagorski sisters are saving my life: I realized that it is actively unhealthy and unhelpful for me to constantly hold in my stomach muscles. I’ve been doing it for years. Partially because I thought it was one way to ensure good posture, and partially because I’ve gained weight and I don’t like my tummy. But it also signals to my body and brain that I’m bracing for something. Constantly. Which is a way of being perpetually in an alarm state — unable to complete the stress cycle. It also put constant pressure on my internal organs, and I’d been experiencing some unpleasant urinary symptoms: not being able to hold it in the morning, and frequently feeling like I needed to pee, even when I’d just peed.

Once I let my stomach relax, those unpleasant symptoms went away. Within two days.

And my posture is just as good as it always was. My pants fit differently, but I’m getting used to it.

So there are three things that are saving my life these days.
How about you?

Wherein I am sarcastic to God and God is good to me

An image of the cover of The Giant Slayer by N A Hart with a quote superimposed on top. How long would it take? A few days? Until the new moon? Could Adonai keep him in suspense for a whole season?

January 16, 2023February 3, 2023 ~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

One of my favorite moments in The Giant Slayer is when young David, having just been anointed by Samuel, who won’t tell him why, wonders,

How long would it take? A few days? Until the new moon? Could Adonai keep him in suspense for a whole season?

It’s adorable. His disbelief that God might make him wait a whole season.

Of course, it’s not nearly so cute when God is making me wait.

Back in November 2021 I was at a retreat at The Transforming Center. It was a gift to the staff and church leaders from my boss and pastor who was about to retire. And it truly was a gift. After a year and a half of doing ministry during COVID, I needed a retreat. They actually gave us time to listen to what God might be trying to say to us–like, hours, not just a token 10 minutes before a session.

One of the best things I did there was grieve: grieve what COVID stole from me, from all of us, grieve the upcoming loss of my pastor. I needed a good cry and I got it. The retreat gave me the space and time to get out of management mode so I could recognize what emotions I needed to process, and then begin to process them.

But then I sensed that God was promising me rest–not just rest for that day, but capital-R Rest. My response,

That’s adorable.

Other than those few days, I would get no chance for rest in the near future. In fact, I knew that the near future would be busier than ever. What a hilarious thing for God to promise me.

With the pastor retiring and me on the celebration committee, I’d be going full steam ahead on all the party plans as soon as we got back, and that was on top of my normal 5 part-time jobs. And then once he retired, I’d be on the transition team tasked with searching for and calling a new pastor. And the children were finally coming indoors for ministry so there was extra COVID-planning and -proofing to do. And the middle school youth group was finally going to start up. That was just what I knew. I didn’t anticipate that fewer people would return to church and that even fewer would want to come back to volunteering so finding people to do ministry things would become even more torturous. Or that the worship director and associate worship director would leave the church. That more and more and more responsibility would fall into my hands.

Jim Gaffigan tells a great joke about what it’s like having 5 children: “Imagine you’re drowning. And then someone hands you a baby.” Here’s a church-staff-coming-out-of-COVID version:

Imagine you’re doing everything normal plus extra to try to connect everyone virtually and hold the church together. And then some people come back and are so excited for what you were doing and so glad to be there, but you wind up with more to do and nothing taken away. And the thing is that you love these people. They are your church family. You know they’ve had an exhausting pandemic, too, so you don’t want to burden them or ask too much of them. So you shoulder it yourself.

I began to see that a new job could be part of God’s promised rest. The end of July 2022 I traded one part-time job for a full-time job with benefits. The end of December I left my church, my denomination, and two more of my part-time jobs (the stress of which brought me 10 additional pounds and three vertigo attacks in 6 weeks). I’ll free myself of one more tiny job by the spring, and I’ll keep one that is faith and justice related and only a couple of hours a month.

It took 14 months since God promised me Rest for me to reach the conditions that would make it possible. I am so grateful.

But here’s the thing I’ve realized: I’ve been running on adrenaline, in emergency survival mode, since the three police officers walked up my porch steps to arrest my now-ex-husband for a sex crime. Over 7 years ago. That’s why I managed COVID so well — I was already in a state of emergency, so I could just fold that in.

I know how to escape, chill out, have fun. But capital-R Rest? No idea. I had a tiny taste of it last week on Tuesday evening and I cried.

How long until I re-learn Rest? How long until I step out of the high-alert pathways? Until I no longer constantly clench my jaw, my stomach, my glutes, my legs? Until my left eyelid stops twitching? My heart stops randomly beating hard?

A few days? A month? A whole season?

That’s adorable. I think it’s going to take a long time.

When change really does set you free

October 20, 2022 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

When God communicates with you, does he use sarcasm? Only me?

Here’s the story. I’d been employed at my church as the children’s minister for 6 years and the office administrator for 3 years. I loved the work and I loved the church. Truly. It was powerful and meaningful work, especially when the pandemic hit. My work was making an actual difference for people.

And taking up a ton of mental and emotional space.

I pretty much stopped writing because I was doing so much of it for work and because my out-of-work time was spent researching ways to keep people connected.

As COVID receded, and our staffing shifted and people did not flock back to church, I took on more responsibilities, not less, and still not full-time status, still no benefits. Even with a health care stipend, it was so expensive and so stressful to get my plans through the marketplace.

In the middle of this, my church’s new interim pastor noted my deep love of God’s Word and my gifts in communicating about God’s Word, and suggested that I consider whether I had a call to be a pastor. He’s not the first one to suggest that. Another friend has brought it up repeatedly, telling me I was more pastoral than a lot of ministers they knew.

I’d always brushed off these suggestions, but I decided to at least mention it to God this time.

The Lord responded.

Oh. Really. You’re going to ask me about this when you already aren’t doing what I have called you to?

When Jesus called Peter, John, and James, who were fishermen, he didn’t use his own carpentry lingo. He didn’t say, “Come build a framework for God’s kingdom with me.” No, he said, “Come with me and we’ll fish for people.”

So for me, God was mildly sarcastic. And it worked.

It was finally the thing that got me to seriously look for other work in hopes that a new job, full time with benefits, would give me the security and mental space I’d need to write again.

And it worked.

I got a full-time corporate gig as an office administrator with all the benefits and I really like it. My creative brain is exploding with ideas. I’m writing new blog posts. I’ve started a new novel. I’m following through on ideas and plans I’ve long put on the way-back burner.

This one simple and huge change has set me free to do what God has called me to do: write. I am so grateful.

Is there change that you need to set you free to do something you really want to do? I hope it happens.

Oh to be nourished like a tree by a riverside

The wide, even growth rings of a well nourished tree that grew by a river.

October 11, 2022October 11, 2022 ~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

Oh, the joys of those who … delight in the law of the Lord,
meditating on it day and night.
They are like trees planted along the riverbank,
bearing fruit each season. (Psalm 1:1-2)

I love this image of people fed so consistently by the Word of God that they have a healthy spirituality — strong and flexible, able to withstand adversity, resistant to theological diseases and pests, bearing fruit that makes a difference in their relationships and their world.

Bearing fruit

In the past, I’ve focused on the “bearing fruit in each season” part, making posters with Sunday school kids of a tree by a riverbank that is bearing every kind of fruit we could think of.

This involved a bit of biblical sleight-of-hand. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. Because the singular fruit is many traits, which are all supposed to be growing in and through us, we could illustrate that idea through one tree with many fruits.

Being nourished

But then I saw this tree stump at my parents’ property.

Now I can’t get it out of my head. Every single growth ring is the same, wide size.

This tree grew where a stream flowed into a river. It was constantly nourished, always receiving what it needed for good growth. So it grew steadily.

My own spiritual development has tended to be more like this tree’s, slow and inconsistent:

This tree grew in a crowded forest, near the top of a long hill. The rings are much closer together, and they vary in width, showing the effect of variations in precipitation and light.

Growth is still growth

Both trees have something in common, though: they grew.

Is it terrible to grow slowly and unevenly like the tree in the forest? No. It was well over 100 years old before it was cut down. It provided beauty and shade, sucked in carbon dioxide and pumped out oxygen, and fed countless birds and insects in its lifetime. Those are good fruits.

Is it better to grow quickly? No. One of my cousins still remembers the year he grew 6″ in a year–the aches and pains kept him up at night. And anyone who pays attention to tech news knows of plenty of companies that grew fast with loads of buzz and venture capital and then tanked just as quickly when consumers didn’t respond.

Does it just sound better to be consistently nourished like a tree that grows by the riverside? Yes.

The frustrating part is that it’s on me that I’m not that riverside tree. I don’t meditate on the Word day and night. I don’t regularly choose to rest in God’s presence. Oh, I’ve had those seasons of wide-ring growth, and they were good. Well, the actual season was often horrible, but I remember how my spirit felt–strong and flexible, able to withstand adversity, resistant to theological diseases and pests, bearing fruit that made a difference in my relationships and my world.

I’m going to put the riverside tree photo where I can see it every day to remind myself of the difference consistent nourishment makes.

Do whatever you need to do

An image of red ribbons inscribed with prayers in an Art Prize entry

October 4, 2022October 4, 2022 ~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

“Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

This reminds me of when my children were in middle school and kept not doing assignments:

Write it in your planner when your teacher tells you to. Open your planner as soon as you get home. Keep it out until you’re finished. Check your homework and your backpack every day. Listen to your teacher. Talk to me about what you need. Ask questions if you don’t understand. Do whatever you need to do to so you actually do your homework!

The passage reeks of desperation.

Which makes sense.

The Israelites are gathered on the East bank of the Jordan River. It’s been 40 years since they escaped from slavery in Egypt — 40 years instead of 40ish days because of their repeated disobedience and fear-based decisions. They are getting ready to finally claim the land that God promised them, but first Moses tells them their history from his and God’s perspective.

It’s not a glowing report.

They quarreled, and complained, and rebelled over and over and over. Yes, they took that first step into the Red Sea and watched it part so they could walk through to freedom, but no encouragement to trust God worked after that. Their fear and anxiety got in their own way again and again.

Moses also reminds them of all the ways that God kept showing up–feeding them, guiding them, empowering their leaders, listening to their complaints, displaying his glory, speaking to them, giving them victories in battle.

When Moses retells the story of the giving of the ten commandments he notes that, “The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Mount Sinai. The Lord did not make this covenant with our ancestors, but with all of us who are alive today (Deut. 5:2-3).” God is in relationship with them now, them specifically.

And all God asks is that the people trust him, that they love him, and that they live out love and trust. Moses asks that they remember what God has done for and with them and what he has promised to do for and with them, and that they tell themselves and their children those stories regularly — because that remembering and telling will help them trust and obey God.

The stories we tell ourselves are important.

So let’s feel Moses’ desperation for us to live up to our end of the covenant and do whatever we need to do to remember what God has done for and with us, what God has promised to do for and with us. Download an app, download 5 apps, stack a Bible reading habit with a habit you already have, make a mental list, make a physical list, post the list on your wall, write it on a ribbon, stuff it in a jar, keep it in the notes in your phone, talk it out while on a walk, take photos that remind you.

You are God’s beloved, his child, his treasure. You don’t have to do anything to earn God’s love, but remembering and telling your specific stories will help you trust God, love God, and live out that love and trust.

What do you do to help you remember your history with God?

What if you had what you need?

Parents encourage a child to learn to walk like God encouraged us to follow him.

September 16, 2022September 16, 2022 ~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

This command I am giving you today is not too difficult for you, and it is not beyond your reach. It is not kept in heaven, so distant that you must ask, ‘Who will go up to heaven and bring it down so we can hear it and obey?’ It is not kept beyond the sea, so far away that you must ask, ‘Who will cross the sea to bring it to us so we can hear it and obey?’ No, the message is very close at hand; it is on your lips and in your heart so that you can obey it. (Deuteronomy 30:11-14, NLT)

Sometimes those of us who want to encourage people towards a deep, vibrant faith complicate matters. Pray all the time! (OK, that one’s on Paul.) Pray this way! Pray the Psalms! Pray this other way! Read your Bible every day! Using bullet journaling! Here’s a great devotional! You have to go through this devotional! Do this spiritual practice! And this one! And this other one! Read this book! This book will change your life! Join a small group! And another one! Talk to people about your faith! Listen to people about their faith! Be quiet with God! Be loud for God! Be a leader at home! At school! At work! At church! Tell everyone you know about Jesus! Tithe to your church! Give to this good cause! And this one! And this one! Work for justice in this area! And this one! And this other one! These Christians are in trouble! And these! Help the poor! And the downtrodden! Don’t even think bad thoughts! No swearing! Be generous! Be grateful all the time!

And that’s without the cultural pressures your brand of Christianity puts on you to look, talk, act, and be a certain way.

Complicated. Exhausting. Confusing.

Which is why I always appreciate it when the Bible itself strips all that away. What God wants

isn’t too hard for you.
is close at hand.
is on your lips already.
is in your heart already.

This makes me smile a little, because God recognizes that what God asks of us will be hard at times — but not so hard that we can’t do it.

Imagine a parent with an almost-toddler who is learning to walk: the parent’s wide-open encouraging smile, the “you can do it”s; the child’s drive to learn this new thing, to get to the enticing object, drawn towards those open arms (ready to catch them if they fall). That’s what I see here. God is smiling at us saying, “You can do it. It’s hard, but not too hard. It’s even something you already want to do. I will help you.”

What is the it? The command?

Oh nothing but “loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him” (Deut. 30:20).

I see the middle flowing out of the other two–loving and being committed to the Lord makes us want to obey him, puts the desire to obey him on our lips and in our hearts. Don’t forget: God’s grace covers all our failures of obedience. Many heroes of the faith committed 10 Commandment-level failures to obey, but their commitment to the Lord was firm, their love of the Lord sustained them. And God stayed in relationship (in covenant) with them.

This passage doesn’t mention the Holy Spirit, but it’s also the Spirit’s job to tell us about the love of God, to put the desire to obey God on our lips and in our hearts. So we have an additional helper.

You have what you need to follow God.

So when you feel the complicating pressure of all those voices that tell you what you should do and how you should be, take a breath and remember:

What God wants

isn’t too hard for you.
is close at hand.
is on your lips already.
is in your heart already.