Dead Grass

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by Jonathan

It was a weird shape outside my childhood bedroom window. A trapezoidal spot of dead grass that appeared during a terribly hot stretch of a long August, drawing unwanted attention in an otherwise green yard.

My parents had built their dream home several years prior, and they had taken particular care to tend the lawn. My parents had done well, which made this blight of death even more odd.

I remember digging with my dad.

I remember the smell of dirt, of mystery being unearthed.

And I remember striking plywood, oddly shaped, a few inches below the surface. Apparent detritus from the building process, it had somehow gotten buried under two or three inches of dirt. The grass had grown well there, for a time. But the roots weren’t deep enough for the long haul. The grass had withered.

For many in this season of pandemic and politics, of race and abuse, the grass has withered. It’s been a long season in our country and in our churches, and some things have wilted in weird ways. Blades that were once virile are burned, and we’re scared of digging. We’re scared of what we might find if we start overturning sod.

For some, the digging has already commenced. It’s terrifying, for sure, but the mess of unearthing the blockage is paving the way for a reseeding. Maybe.

And you?

Have you found yourself wondering where the life has gone? Have you felt the scorch of disappointment and confusion, like you’ve been bearing witness to the scouring of the Shire?

Perhaps it’s time to grab a shovel, not to destroy or annihilate, but to exhume. Perhaps there’s some piece of plywood that’s been neglected a season too long.

But remember, shovels are useful for planting, too.

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Scot McKnight spent a few newsletters talking about these ideas, so if these musings resonate at all, continue your excavation here:

  1. Beyond Deconstruction: Start Here
  2. Beyond Deconstruction: Second Term
  3. Beyond Deconstruction: Third Term

Marriage as confinement or freedom: notes from a wedding

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by Jonathan

I’ve had the privilege recently to officiate a couple of weddings. It’s one of those roles where people really won’t remember anything you say or do unless you mess up. THEN people remember. Anyways, I thought I’d share some of my notes from a recent wedding.

[Condensed and slightly edited speaking notes]

I just want to do two things today: Remind you of the beauty of marriage (Hint: it’s even better than the wedding), and offer a blessing for your union.

First: The Beauty of Marriage

Marriage is for intimacy.

The sharing of souls and dreams and flesh.

The first taste of summer.

Remember, marriage, the joining together of two unique persons, predates sin and exists beyond it. Marriage is NOT simply two wicked sinners scratching to eek out an existence together. That’s WAY TOO SMALL! It’s way too POST-fall and not enough POST-resurrection.

Marriage satisfied Adam and Eve. Marriage excites Jesus. The first marriage was designed by a loving Father, for joy and companionship. Closeness. It was good. The last marriage is a proclamation of Love’s victory and our salvation that echoes in eternal joy and companionship and glory.

The wedding supper of the LAMB.

A celebration such as the world has never seen.

“Happy are those who have been invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb!” (Rev 19:9)

Your marriage is an echo of that! That’s fantastic! In his book, Reversed Thunder, Eugene Peterson says this about salvation:

“The root meaning in Hebrew of ‘salvation’ is to be broad, to become spacious, to enlarge. It carries the sense of deliverance from an existence that has become compressed, confined, and cramped.”

Salvation allows for an ever-expanding vision. Salvation is not just a get out of jail free card. Marriage doesn’t save you. Of course it doesn’t. That’d be heretical and I’m too tired for that. I’m NOT saying marriage can save you. I AM saying that marriage can be a raw, earthy reminder of a fantastical, cosmic truth.

Two people, in a faithful and loving marriage, can show an existence and an intimacy that broadens over time, that becomes spacious, roomy, and secure. Marriage is the mysterious coming together of two people; the blending of heart and vessel and marrow. The tearing of the veil. Intimate.

Your marriage does NOT have to be a place where you become compressed, confined, and cramped. It can in fact become a place where you become more deeply known than you can even fathom. Deeply known. Fully loved. AND FREE. Show the world THAT.

Marriage is a beautiful thing. Marriage is a great gift, and we honor the Giver when we accept the gift with joy and excitement (AND A PARTY!). We honor him when we treasure each other, respect each other, serve each other, know each other. Yes, marriage is sometimes hard, and life is not all peaches and cream, but it really can be beautiful.

And number two, I’d like to offer a simple marriage blessing.

May your marriage be beautiful. May it remind you often that God gives good gifts. Very good gifts.

May you remember that God didn’t put Adam and Eve together to give them holiness, but a companion, a comrade, confidant, and friend.

May people look at your love and see that there is a God and he is awesome.

May you show the world – and the Church – that it’s not about submission or obedience or “who’s in charge.” That in your love and mutual submission, you will race each other to the bottom. And when you get to the bottom, may you find love, wholeness, joy, peace, and life. In other words, Jesus.

May you laugh often. At each other, with each other, because of each other.

And if and when God fills your home with children, may you sit around the table and laugh and laugh and laugh.

May you taste heaven when you taste each other.

And when you walk through the shadowlands, and you will walk through the shadowlands, may the One who led you together continue to lead you together.

He is the Creator of the soaring mountaintops and the scary valleys. May he sustain you and remind you.

May 2021 be the best year of your marriage. Until 2022. And may 2022 be the best year of your marriage. Until 2023.

May you experience the intense joy of being known, deeply, and the great honor of knowing another.

May your love, promised and given on this day, echo into eternity. May people hear your stories, witness your love, and say from now until forever, “Look at what the Lord has done!”

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A Marriage Blessing originally appeared here.

Click here for more resources on Marriage.

To listen to part one of our three-part podcast on marriage, click here.

The initial quote about marriage being for intimacy comes from this article.

Rose of Sharon | Postcards from Re-entry

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by Elizabeth

We moved into our new home in December. The days were frigid, the nights were long, and the trees wore the mid-winter appearance of death. The maples, we recognized. But there were several other tree-like shrubs planted throughout the yard whose identity we had no knowledge of. They grew warped, woody stems, and their trunks often jutted out from the ground at an angle. To my eyes at the time, they were ugly.

Later in the spring we met the sellers, who told us the name for these tree-bushes: Rose of Sharon. I had heard the name, but I wasn’t familiar with its personality. The former owner said she loved them and planted them in pairs throughout the yard, which is supposed to encourage their growth. They were planted in lines along the outside edge of the fence and in pairs by my office and by the firepit. At that point in time, I had no emotional investment in them.

Throughout the spring the petunias and daylilies bloomed, along with the maples and the other potted plants we’d purchased. The daylilies in particular were the highlight of our day. Situated straight across the yard from my desk window, the bulbs produced new orange blooms every day till the last day of spring. We were sad that the life of the daylily was coming to an end for this year.

The very next day was the first day of summer. That was the day the Rose of Sharon bushes started blooming. I hadn’t bothered to look up any information about the plant and didn’t know what to expect, so their beauty surprised me. In some ways, they reminded me of our favorite tropical flower, the frangipani. (Americans call these flowering trees “plumeria.”)

Now I was intrigued, so I searched for information about the Rose of Sharon. Turns out, it is not a rose but a hibiscus, and it’s Asian in origin (mainly from India and China). That would be why it reminded me so much of home. In fact, Rose of Sharon is often recommended to people who want a tropical feel in a temperate climate, as it’s fairly hardy.

Our Rose of Sharon trees bloomed in four different colors: pink, purple, light pink, and white. The pink and purple grew by my office; the purple stood by the firepit, still visible from my office window; and light pink and white ones were scattered between the road and the fence. Purple is generally a favorite color of mine, but for some reason I fell in love with the white Rose of Sharon. I think it was because, from a distance, they reminded me of an actual white rosebush.

For me it is a precious thought that the previous owners planted something all over the yard that would remind me, a future owner, of my old home in Asia. I already knew this house was a perfect fit for us, but this summer I was reminded that God takes care of even the little things in life, like flowers.

After blooming daily for two months, they precipitously dropped off in August. The branches were weighed down with buds full to bursting, unable to flower during the dry season. And of course, winter is coming. The lovely Rose of Sharon will shrivel back into crooked little stems, and for a while they will look barren.

But next summer they will come back to life again, brimming with the colors of Cambodia.

Our Rose of Sharon at summer’s end.

Postcards from Re-entry {a new series}

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by Elizabeth

For a while now, I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell the stories of re-entry. There are the big stories, of course. The ones that can take pages and pages and still feel unfinished. But there are ever so many little stories. Short little vignettes that capture fleeting feelings and everyday experiences. They are what I want to focus on in this series.

I’m calling it “Postcards from Re-entry” to designate the briefer and less meditative nature of these stories. They’ll capture my life, but not in a way that feels overwhelming for me to write or that takes too much of a time investment from my readers. I like to think of my blog posts as letters to my friends. So I’ll still be sending you letters, but they’ll (hopefully!) be shorter than my usual ones.

So look for the first installment soon!

My Sex Life Died on the Field {Velvet Ashes}

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This week I’m at Velvet Ashes. The title kind of says it all, I guess. It’s a brand new story I’ve never told. But if you’ve been following my journey the past few years, I think this post will weave together a lot of the strands of things I *have* written about: anxiety, depression, dance, PMS, being underweight, etc.

As scary as it is to talk about, Jonathan and I decided together that it was time to start being more open about this difficult season in our life and to maybe, just maybe, be able to offer hope to others in dark seasons of their own.

I don’t know where you are today, but wherever that is, I hope that you will be as gentle with your own story as you are with mine. And if healing is what you need today, what I want you to know is that God wants to walk with you into healing, whatever that journey might look like for you.

Grace and peace, Elizabeth