A Happy Marriage

I’ve had time for rest and reflection on my two marriages that lasted over 18 years. Both of my ex-husbands are gone now; for the most part they were happy marriages.

In both instances we had fun together and initially had common goals wanting to share a house, vacation together, and take care of family. We were perfectly compatible until the very end when the relationships fell apart quickly.

In looking back, I realized that my motivation to get married was my longing to start a family. I’d dated a lot but didn’t marry until I was 31. I didn’t pray about it much; it seemed like the right time to settle down. It just didn’t work out at all like I’d planned. But we had a great time together, playing an occasional round of golf and sailing in the local boat club. It was a life that most would dream of until we parted ways over the topic of having children. It was my life-long dream, but after five years of marriage, he admitted that it wasn’t his.

My second marriage took on the role of savior in my life. I was lonely and desperate for a family. With Curtis came five brothers and sister and their offspring. Even though we tried and could never have children, I still felt like I was part of a family. We vacationed together, enjoyed music and sporting events. Our lives were full raising his children and adjusting to a new city when we moved to San Antonio.

Our human relationships were happy; there was always someone to see a movie with and we didn’t ever fight. But when tragedy struck like the death of a parent or a serious illness, instead of turning to each other, we both turned elsewhere.

My approach when facing controversy or grief has always been solitary prayer. I now see that although I was turning to God, it was interpreted as a “turning away” from another human.  Although unintentional, my relationship with God started competing with my human relationship. There is nothing but sadness that can come from that competition.

I’m encountering people through my blog who are sharing similar stories. They’ve been married for years, raised children together, travel and spend holidays with family. But something is missing in their lives. I am hearing from the spouse who has deepened their faith in God, and for various reasons, their spouse has not traveled the same path. Their spouse is still a “nice person” and a good husband and father, but they are longing for a relationship where they both have a personal relationship with God and where both hearts are on fire to serve. Having a shared God takes the pressure from the messiness of human intimacy when grief strikes or things in life start going wrong.

In most cases, my friends are not planning on leaving their husbands or wives; they are dedicated Christians who know that divorce is displeasing to God. So they continue to pray that the Holy Spirit will intervene so that they can serve God together.

In a few cases, the spouse is contemplating divorce and my heart breaks for them. It is not because there is another human involved, but their marriage has stagnated in the “happy” phase.

I pray that everyone who is married or is contemplating marriage will not settle for the “happy marriage” that the world promotes and idolizes, but instead that they will find a “holy marriage” where God is at the center and honored through the union of two becoming one.

Blessings, my friend,

Agatha

(click below for MP3 file)​

Close Friendship

I’ll be closely studying the Gospel of John, his letters and the Book of Revelation for the next six months as I reflect on the teachings of the Rule of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist. Each week I’ll be studying two chapters of the Rule and reading Scripture verses that show the close friendship that Jesus had with the disciple John.

“A Rule of Life is a covenant that we enter into with God and ourselves. This rule is not a law to follow, but a pattern of practice and discipline that helps us commit ourselves to living a full and balanced life, as well as a measure to help us gauge our progress.”

I’ve studied Scripture for over 45 years and there are still verses and stories that I don’t understand. I’m hopeful that reflecting on this Rule will show me how to live a “full and balanced” life. I want to stop just reading about it and fully experience a life molded in Jesus Christ.

In each chapter, I’ll be looking for a few words or phrases that are particularly meaningful to me and I’ll share them with you here.

Chapter Two is titled:  Our Dedication to the Disciple Whom Jesus Loved

These are the passages that are particularly meaningful to me:

“The image of the trusted friend lying close to the breast of Jesus is an icon of the relationship we enjoy with the Son of God through prayer. It is by being close to him that we are reunited with the Father, for Jesus is “God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart.”

“Love will open our eyes to the Spirit’s power in the sacraments, in prayer, in action and service.”

“Love will make us men of faith who know God’s power to bring life out of death. The beloved disciple recognized the Lord in the stranger by the shore. Love will expand our ability to know him in all persons, in all things, and in all places.”

May your eyes be open to the Spirit’s power.

Blessings,

Agatha

(Click below for MP3 file)

Community

I participated in my first bike ride this past Saturday: The Tour de Nash in the 30-mile division. We started at Vanderbilt and wound 30 miles through downtown and East Nashville, ending where we started. I’d never ridden more than 15 miles and that was over fairly flat terrain, so I knew this was going to be a challenge. But I wanted to try.

It was exciting to see all the bikes at the start and I saw others wearing the same “HCA bike team” shirt. They were riding with other groups or spouses so I went up to the start line alone.

I was amazed at how friendly strangers were for the entire three-hour ride. When I was walking my bike up a hill at the 20-mile mark, one lady said, “Are you okay? Do you need some water?”

“No, I’m fine! I just ran out of gears, but thanks! I have plenty of water.”

At mile marker 27 I pulled over and leaped off my bike to walk out the cramp I’d developed in my right knee. Two gentlemen pulled up beside me, “Are you okay? Are you going to make it? We only have a little over 2 miles left.”

“Yes, I’m okay. Just a cramp in my knee; I’m walking it out. Thank you.”

Previously, I’d ridden in my neighborhood, and when I got tired, I stopped. I could plan my ride and decide how far I’d go, without any help from anyone. But this 30-mile ride was different. I’d never ridden in hills before, and never ridden 30 miles. But my biking community encouraged me when I faced the hills and the torture of burning hamstrings. They wouldn’t let me quit, but offered to care for me when I encountered difficulties.

Just like my new bike community encourages my physical fitness, my church community encourages me when I face hills in my spiritual and emotional life. They are my constant companions who allow me to travel more miles and overcome more hills in my life than I ever thought possible.

My new biking community inspires my physical health. My church community inspires my spiritual and emotional health. I need both.

Blessings,

Agatha

​(click below for MP3 file)

Grace and Politics

An interesting question started the discussion with a friend: “With the recent election of Mark Sanford to a Congressional seat in South Carolina, how much time has to elapse before a politician caught in a sex scandal can receive grace from the voters? Some politicians never see the light of day, where others recover fairly quickly. Sanford’s fall from grace was in 2009 and recently he’s been accused of violating his divorce decree, yet he gets elected again. Is 4 years enough time for grace to kick-in for politicians?

Needless to say it was an enlightening conversation as we explored “grace.”

Phil Yancey writes in What’s so Amazing About Grace? “Grace does not excuse wrong, but it treasures the wrongdoer. True grace is shocking, scandalous. It shakes our conventions with insistence on getting close to evil and touching it with mercy and hope. It forgives the unfaithful spouse, the racist, the child abuser. It loves today’s AIDS-ridden addict as much as the tax collector of Jesus’ day.”

It is comforting that grace emanates from God as a free gift: "...by grace are ye saved through faith; and that 
not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. " 
(Ephesians 2:8). Grace is God's unmerited favor and represents His goodness toward those who have no claim on, nor reason to expect, divine favor.

We can’t earn grace and there is nothing we can do that can take it away. God offers grace as his free gift to us, over and over again.

The conversation with my friend returned to grace and politics. I commented that I believe that grace is a spiritual condition and it wasn’t grace that got Sanford elected. As judgmental humans it is almost impossible for us to fully impart grace to others. We can try very hard to forgive and reconcile, but we usually expect that our forgiveness will be earned only through repentance and transformation.

Although God has given Mark Sanford grace, it wasn’t because he deserved it or earned it. It was the same gift of unlimited grace that God gives freely to us. As humans the voters measure their support with different yardsticks. Can he raise campaign money? Can he help other candidates? Does he still have the ability to influence powerful people in the political process? It’s not about grace, it’s about influence in the voters’ minds.

It’s hard to predict in politics if a politician can ever recover from a fall from grace; they are at the mercy of voter fickleness. It’s comforting to know that God doesn’t play favorites, never measuring our worth by how many people we know or how much influence we have. Instead everyone receives God’s grace without even asking, even fallen politicians.

May you rest in God’s grace today.

Blessings,

Agatha

​(Click below for MP3 file)

Betrayed

I’ve been stuck on some verses all week from Psalm 55 (13-15):

        For it is not an enemy who taunts me---​

               then I could bear it;​

        It is not an adversary who deals insolently with me --​

               then I could hide from him.

       But it is you, a man, my equal,

               my companion, my familiar friend.

       We used to take sweet counsel together;

               within God’s house we walked in the throng. 

Matthew Henry in his Concise Commentary says, “No wickedness so distresses the believer, as that which he witnesses in those who profess to be of the church of God.” Henry counsels that we should not be surprised by corruptions and disorders of the church on earth and that God often destroys the enemies of the church by dividing them.

As I’ve been meditating on this Psalm, I’ve remembered a time many years ago when I was new to a church and relied on a dating relationship to rekindle my faith. When the relationship wasn’t honored, I blamed God.  This “Christian” professed to be a believer, but didn’t act at all in his personal relationships like the Jesus I was reading about in the Bible. I retreated into feeling that church was a place you went to out of obligation, or when you had nothing better to do, not a place where you could trust people and grow.

Just because someone says they are a “Christian” and “saved” doesn’t mean they lead a Christ-like life. As our Psalmist reminds us, if you were an adversary I would know to protect myself and hide from you, but I trusted you as a friend

and you have betrayed me. Only observing quiet actions over a period of time distinguishes those who boast of their Christianity from those you quietly live it.

Encountering these false Christians derailed my faith for more than 20 years. I’m grateful that I regained my ability to trust and love, but it was only after I met people who say they are Christians and really are. I wonder how many people no longer attend a church or want to be part of a community because of their encounter with a false Christian. We may never get another chance to show them Christ’s love.

When we see people approach others in anger or try to shame them into going to church, we can be sure that it is a false Christian speaking. Just like 2000 years ago, a real Christian loves God and his neighbor. And we can rest in assurance that God will destroy His enemies.

I pray that we all encounter a real Christian today. Maybe it is you.

Blessings, my friend,

Agatha

​(click below for MP3 file)

Humble Learning

Author and Episcopal Priest Ian Cron introduced me to the concept of “beginner’s mind” at a conference last week in Franklin, TN.  Shunryu Suzuki says: “If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”

Jesus healed Mary Magdalene when he cast out her seven demons, but instead of exclaiming, “healer”, she recognized Him as “Rabboni” (or teacher in Aramaic) as he appeared to her outside the tomb (John 20:16).

The friends that I value the most are those who are willing to take the time to teach me, sometimes by their words but more often by their actions. I approach them with a beginner’s mind, not knowing the answers, but eager to explore the questions. They don’t pretend to be experts by lecturing me with Scripture or putting me down because of my questions. Instead they help me to explore my faith and my purpose in serving God by honoring my willingness to approach them with a “beginner’s mind”.

Some of my past relationships have existed in a complicated dance where we weren’t open and honest and everything became a competition to prove who knew more. Only when two people learn from each other can a real relationship foster and grow.

“When my mind is empty, it is ready for anything and open to everything.”

The expert’s mind is cluttered with facts and superiority; there is no room for anything else. It is when our mind is empty and open to everything that God comes to dwell within us and teach us in His ways.

My most precious friends are those who are willing to share our journey together with “beginners’ minds”.

Blessings, my friend,

Agatha

(click below for MP3 file)​

Evil

This week, “evil” has been suggested as the cause of the Boston Marathon bombings. There were many sermons yesterday throughout the country calling for forgiveness with Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley preaching at a packed Mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston, “Forgiveness does not mean that we do not realize the heinousness of the crime,” he told reporters afterward. “But, in our hearts, when we are unable to forgive, we make ourselves a victim of our own hatred.”

In his book, The Art of Forgiveness, Lewis Smedes, says, “When we forgive evil we do not excuse it, we do not tolerate it, we do not smother it. We look the evil full in the face, call it what it is, let its horror shock and stun and enrage us, and only then do we forgive it.”

I’ve just finished an interesting book by John A. Sanford, Evil: The Shadow Side of Reality.

Sanford states: “…there is an inevitable dark side to our nature that refuses to be assimilated into our lofty ideals of goodness, morality, and ideal human behavior…If we go beyond the bounds of our natural capacity for love and kindness, we build up an opposing amount of anger and cruelty within us.”

“Moreover, if we strive to be only good and perfect, we become hateful, for too much of the vital energy within us is being denied…the important thing is that we recognize the Shadow side of ourselves. This recognition alone produces a powerful and beneficial change in consciousness. For one thing, it greatly aids our humility, our sense of humor, and our capacity to be less judgmental of others. The Shadow cannot be denied, but must be dealt with in the light of a higher authority.”

The Rev. Malone Gilliam commented in yesterday’s sermon at The Table at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Nashville, “There is a huge gap between our human capacity to forgive and God’s capacity. If we acknowledge that God forgives all sinners, no one is exempt. The problem becomes that if we draw the line between those forgiven and those not forgiven, we may find ourselves, or our loved ones, on the wrong side of the line. It is only because of the power of our Savior Jesus Christ that we can ever hope to close that gap. It is only because God has forgiven us and sent His Son to us that we can forgive the unimaginable, too.”

As a nation, we will wrestle with this need to forgive for a long time.

Blessings, my friend,

Agatha

April 2013

(click below for an MP3 file)​

Faith Inferiority

The Rev. Malone Gilliam preached yesterday on the New Testament reading from Acts 9:1-20 for the Third Sunday of Easter. It’s the story of how Jesus visited Saul and asked him, “Why do you persecute me?” The light from heaven caused Saul to lose his vision for three days. Jesus sent a messenger, Ananias to restore Saul’s sight and Saul was transformed, no longer persecuting Christians, but instead immediately proclaiming Jesus in the synagogues. We know the converted Saul as the great disciple, “Paul”.

Malone shared that his faith story wasn’t nearly as dramatic; he grew up going to church each Sunday and reading the Bible throughout the week. I grew up in a different denomination, but I also went to church each Sunday; I can’t remember a time when I didn’t consider myself a Christian.

Malone continued that we can develop a “faith inferiority complex” when our story isn’t as dramatic as the one we read about Paul. Certainly losing your sight for three days and having it restored by a healing stranger is pretty dramatic and we may think our conversion doesn’t “measure up”.

It’s important to note the drama of what happened to Saul was important because it was NOT typical of how people usually became converts. Flannery O’Connor writes, “I reckon the Lord knew that the only way to make a Christian out of that one was to knock him off his horse.” But O’Connor goes on to point out that the main character in the story isn’t Paul; it’s God. Saul’s conversion was not something he decided to do on his own; it was God’s doing.

This passage in Acts rests in a series of conversion stories involving Samaritans and an Ethiopian. Following the story about Paul, Luke goes on to write about the conversion of a Roman centurion. When all are read together, it is more obvious that God touches the lives of unlikely people from diverse backgrounds in a variety of ways, but all for one purpose: to spread the Gospel to the ends of the Earth. There is no one religious experience that fits all.

In Confirmation Class this Spring, we’ve had people share a brief story about their faith each Sunday. It is amazing that no two stories are the same. William Muehl commented, “The roads to Christian faith are as varied as the people who profess it.”

Let’s pray that God gives us the ability to see Him through our own story and that we are bold enough to share our story with others.

Blessings, my friend,

Agatha

​(click below for MP3 file)

Discerning Thomas

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The Rev. Chris Bowhay started his sermon this past Sunday saying that Thomas gets a bad rap as a “doubter”.

“Why do people doubt miracles like a risen Christ?” Chris asked. He told a story of a woman in the 70’s who’d gotten caught up in a life of drugs and the debauchery of the times. But through grace she wanted to change. Her therapist asked, “How did you get mixed up in the lifestyle to begin with?” “That’s an easy answer,” she replied, “I believed in the lies because I wanted to.”

Chris said, “the problem in today’s world isn’t so much that people doubt something, but instead that they believe in everything. We believe in lies because we want to.”

Chris suggested that we ask ourselves, “What do we want to believe in?” or “Why do we doubt?” or even more to the point, “What has happened to us that makes us doubt God?”

It was Thomas who was the bold one. When Jesus announced that He was going back to Jerusalem, the other disciples protested, reminding Jesus that Jerusalem was where he was almost stoned. Why would he want to go back there and face the wrath of the crowds?”

But it was Thomas who said, “Let’s go with Him, so that we may die with Him.” (John 11:16). Thomas loved Jesus so much that he did not want to survive his savior! These are certainly not the words of a weak follower of Christ!

Rev. Bowhay continued, “A cynic is a disappointed idealist who refuses to believe anything is true.”

Instead of asking Thomas to give up his unbelief, Jesus was really asking Thomas to give up his despair over losing Jesus in the crucifixion. It wasn’t that Thomas didn’t want to believe that Christ had risen, but Thomas was disappointed that all their dreams and desires hadn’t come to pass. There wasn’t going to be a new kingdom of riches with Jesus as the king. Instead his King had died.

But here was Jesus, asking Thomas to get over his grief and despair at all the disappointments that life had brought him, offering instead a new life of love and wonder, and asking Thomas to believe in Him again.

If we want to love again, we have to let Jesus take away our despair over disappointments in our life over failed relationships, crushing addictions, betrayals by family and friends and failing bodies. It is only when we can believe in Him again that we can love again.

It is up to us to show the world the wounds in the palms of our hands, let others examine the wounds and then demonstrate how our wounds have been transformed into badges of glory.

When we let Christ love us again, we will be like Thomas, proclaiming, “My Lord and my God!”

Believe that Christ is risen today and He will take away your despair in disappointment and replace them with His love.

Blessings,

Agatha

​Discerning Thomas- (click below for MP3 file)