This is the part I’m not sure how to talk about.
This is the part I have wrestled with for thirty something years.
This is the question I can no longer put off finding an answer for, now that I have a daughter…
How does a gentle, quiet spirit fit together with strength and dignity?
As I celebrated my 39th birthday this week, holding my daughter not even a year old yet, reflecting on the decades behind me and all the news is saturated with – there is one truth that I have heard echoing within…
As a woman, as far as it is up to me, I will choose when I am vulnerable.
And I will teach my daughter it is her power to do the same.
In the Facebook group where we are learning and living out this call to gentle and quiet, the question has been raised, “Is an exuberant woman outside of God’s will? Is the Biblical, feminine ideal soft spoken and seldom heard?”
I know I grew up within a culture that, purposefully or not, conditioned me to feel that I was less than pleasing to my Maker because life was bursting at my seams. I was Anne Shirley and my words, daydreams and mistakes could not be contained. Aside from my mama, and a few friends I’m not sure I ever won anyone over as Anne did. Instead I fell beneath the shame of not being what I thought Christ expected from me. I lashed out, and pushed back.
My personal experience has been as Jane Eyre said, “I know no medium; I never in my life have known any medium in my dealing with positive hard characters, antagonistic to my own, between absolute submission and determined revolt. I have always faithfully observed the one, up to the very moment of bursting, sometimes with volcanic vehemence, into the other.”
I have been sharing about lessons learned from a gentler, quieter way of parenting, but that is not where this struggle was born for me. I began to raise my voice against the influence and authority of men in my life.
And this is where it gets tricky… My dad never abused me, however early on I fell hook line and sinker for the lie that I needed a man to complete me, and that led to seeking love apart from my Heavenly Father.
As I grew into a young woman I was in and put myself in positions where I was vulnerable. This wasn’t healthy physically, emotionally or spiritually although now I look back and thank God that the worst never happened.
At the same time I raised barriers of defense to keep the most vulnerable part of me sheltered, to keep my heart from others, from the males who seemed to only want to control and use me, and in the end I made myself so impenetrable that there was a rift between my Savior and I, between even myself and my own heart.
I listened to the newsstands, media, movies, high school conversation, condemnation from supposed followers of Christ, my own shame and insecurities, and everything other than the One who loves me. It is my pattern to try to submit to the pressures all around about my worth and who I should be, until I burst with “volcanic vehemence,” feeling weaker than ever after revolting in desperation instead of standing in strength.
And then I married a wonderful and broken man, a fellow sinner and brother in Christ, and I carried all this baggage right into our marriage.
This is not what I want for my daughter.
So as I sit with the quiet, as I am gentle with my own heart, truly listening as one can only do when the door is barred against a raging wind – this is what I hear…
I am no less worthy or desirous of respect than a man. I must speak with respect to the men in my life – husband, father, brothers in the human race – because they deserve respect as image bearers of God and I myself as a fellow image bearer only speak in strength when I speak truth with respect and love.
When I take my emotions to Christ instead of letting them escalate out of control or fester unseen, I am choosing dignity instead of a broken vulnerability.
When I let Christ purify my thoughts, desires, and needs and am open about them, I am choosing a strong vulnerability.
There are times when the fiercest word we can say as women is no word at all, and times when we are called to speak love and forgiveness seventy times seven million it seems, all because Christ first loved us.
As a Jesus follower I have been called to love long, suffer injustice and seek goodness. That doesn’t mean allowing another to harm, but us Jesus people, we will not always get our way. His way is one of sacrifice, but in a culture where they were invisible Christ came to the women. He drew women in and heard their hearts, making them an indispensable part of the drama. I believe He wants no less for me and my daughter.
How will I hear what Christ has to say to me if I do not draw near at the well, in the quiet garden, calling out for Him alone? How will I hear him if I am disrespecting his sons, his brothers, and demeaning myself, his sister, his daughter?
It is hard to know any medium – a way of balance. There is an enemy of my soul that would love nothing more than for me to listen to any voice other than the still small one speaking within – the voice of the First and the Last, the voice I can only hear because Jesus.
Often in this world we do not get to choose our vulnerability – cancer strikes, pregnancies are lost, marriages break, people and circumstances harm, children lay bare our hearts…
But as a woman whenever it is up to me, I will choose my vulnerability.
I’m tired of swinging from submission to revolt and back again. I choose now a journey of gentleness and quiet, to speak and act with strength and dignity.
I grew up in a culture filled with supposed Biblical mandates for men and women, and now I’m raising a daughter in a culture of “I am woman hear me roar.” Yet I hope for her the happiness that Jane Eyre eventually found. Young and old, single or married I hope that she will dance as a daughter of God always with this song in her heart…
“I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth.”
. . .
Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.
– Proverbs 31:25 about the “virtuous woman”
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If you’re reading this and want to join me, or would just like to listen and glean encouragement from others, please feel welcome to join us in the Gently + Quietly FB group!
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photos by the amazing Sidney Morgan
  
After a month of living in what felt like victorious grace, I yelled at my firstborn son.
It began as these things normally do, an unforeseen wrench in the day, but I should have known… As my frustration built, my tone rose and I realized I had broken my commitment. I should have known, putting things on top of cars seem to be his and my kryptonite.
He is a young man with so many dreams, an insatiable appetite for adventure, he needs more from me than I can give. I try to help him take on the world, but for whatever reason transporting the gear is hard for us.
There was the time I was round with pregnancy, and he wanted to take the big plastic kayak to the cove. I let him, but he was just a child and it came crashing down as he tried to load it back on top of our van. I stood by too swollen with child to help. He gave up and I yelled – how else would we get home?
Then just a few days before I began this Gently + Quietly project, there was a ridiculous impetus. A moment when I was yelling in another parking lot, while my son yet again strapped a kayak to our roof, and I realized this has to stop. This time he was strong and sweaty, hoisting the craft upon our van while I tried to warn him before he walked home that that I had seen coyotes in the area. He was informing me of the necessity of coyotes in the food chain, and I ridiculous, hot and tired yelled back about how I knew they were important, I wasn’t debating their importance, I was the one who had taught him all that biology – I just wanted to warn him, to try to safeguard. That’s why I began this yearlong commitment to not raise my voice, because I turned from the van and wondered who had heard me yelling about food chains in the middle of a parking lot – my son had, and God. It is ridiculous, comical even, and definitely not the only time I yell, but when putting things on top of cars, my son and I seem to be at our worst.
So I should have known when I pulled up to pick him up from surf practice that strapping the longboard on top of our van would not be an innocuos event. He wouldn’t, and I wouldn’t because it was his responsibility and there we were – at an impasse. He is a wonderful young man, striving to serve the Lord, knowing his Creator deeply through time spent with Him in nature, but we are all a work in progress with our unexplainable moments of frustration.
Eventually we made it home, he apologized, even saying I shouldn’t have to start my year of not yelling over because he had been difficult, and thanking me for the month of not yelling. Maturity blossoming in a young man, I wanted to honor that by examining my own heart.
Why?
Why for a month had I been able to deal with bad attitudes, disobedience, disrespect and unexpected frustrations with quietness, but this moment at the beach was too much for me?
I realized that most often when I yell it is a matter of identity and wounds.
As my voice has quieted this month, I have heard clearly the cries of my heart. Some hurt so badly that I have been afraid I might split right open. When wounded howls rise within my soul, it’s easy to see why I would rather command a circumstance to stop than hear all the heartbreak I keep inside.
Normally after such an experience with my child I would have been anxious and snappish for the rest of the day. This time I sought forgiveness and quieted myself, listening… Immediately I heard within what had upended me…
I am tired of the beach. I feel trapped even, and I cannot say this because it would be considered ungrateful. I live in paradise, but for me fourteen years living in a world with no Octobers has worn my soul raw. I stood there on a hot sunny “autumn” day, sea-spray and sand in my face, wanting to go home, but I couldn’t just as I can’t find my way back to the rhythm of four seasons. I don’t want to change my childrens’ lives, but when I actually listen to my spirit’s cry I hear that I am trying hard to live as a foreigner, and I don’t know how to heal that hurt.
The second thing I heard is that…
I am tired of my worth being judged on how well I chauffeur. I have a bachelor’s in art education. I excelled in school and in every job I have every held. I homeschool my children, and I write, photograph and teach others in my few hours spare time. We keep a simple schedule, but for my three full-energy boys opting out of all activities outside the home is not an option. We have tried so many things and they need coaches and leaders other than just myself to help train their bodies and guide their minds. So in this modern age, with over seventeen years of education under my belt, I spend a great deal of my time and am most often judged by my ability to get everyone to where they need to be safely and on time. I say no to so many things, but my kids are always being presented with another opportunity that they ask me to take them to. I know my time in the car can also be a blessing, and I try to make it so. Moby Dick, Hemmingway, Tolkien and Narnia are just a few of the treasures that have filled our hours sitting side by side in our mini-van. But daily I stifle the cry, “Am I not made to be more than a taxi driver?”
These are the ugly truths. Maybe this is a beautiful awakening.
So I turned to the Spirit. What do I do with these gaping wounds, these questions churning inside?
First there was gratitude, for a mouth quieted so that I can hear my own heart.
Then there was surrender – again, always again. Whatever I do, I do as to the Lord. There are treasures hidden in the most mundane. I know this, I have built my life on this.
But then there were new steps clear as if a dark path had been lit.
I need to be gentle with the tender part of my heart that my children do not know, the part that grew up in trees plucking brilliant autumn leaves, just as they are growing up on long sandy beaches collecting sea shells. I need to honor this longing as tenderly as I would if they ever have to move away from the waves they call their home.
And…
I want to earn my Masters degree. I don’t know how or when or in what. But I need to do this. Not now, probably not soon, because this is a time for cradling babies. However, my husband’s job pushes him on to continuing education, traveling the world and constant testing and evaluation. Being a Christian woman, cultivating a gentle, quiet spirit does not mean my mind or dreams should fall silent.
These wounds and realizations may look very different for each of us, but I promise that if you grow quiet enough to bravely listen to your heart’s cry, you will hear questions and truth, that you’ve been afraid to acknowledge to anyone, even yourself.
Friends, take these to our Good Father so that He can purify. It won’t always feel like He heals quickly, but Christ will light the way one moment, one step at a time.
Our Maker doesn’t work in spite of our brokenness, He can work because of our weakness.
So I restarted my year at 7:33 in the evening on Sunday October 15th, 2017. I’m not back at square one though, I’m far from it with a month of gentle + quiet growth, lessons, and unexpected joy in my soul, and I am thankful.
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If you’re reading this and want to join me, or would just like to listen and glean encouragement from others, please feel welcome to join us in the Gently + Quietly FB group!
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“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” – Corinthians 12:9 ESV
One month ago I made a commitment that I wouldn’t raise my voice for one year, and my children are the people it is most difficult to honor this with.
Tender little ones, entrusted to my care are who push my buttons to breaking, they are the ones who see my harshest realities. And it’s not just me, as others have joined this project in our private group, I hear that it is mainly because they want to break the cycle so their children will remember a different type of parenting.
My one caveat when I posted this commitment publicly on this blog, was that in matters of safety I could raise my voice to safeguard my children without having to start the year over… However, I have become very aware that these times are few and far between, and my tone needs to be calm even if I must elevate the volume to find them on a crowded playground or keep them from stepping in front of a moving car.
When in our home I walk room to room to give instructions or call children for dinner so that I do not have to raise my voice in the house. This has dramatically shifted the energy and tone of everyone in our home.
However, this weekend I realized something that is changing my world. We have spent the past few weekends at sporting events, and I can not always walk to where my child is on a cross-country course or be heard over ocean waves and cheering crowds. In those times I have spoken more loudly, but made sure to infuse my tone with love. This is what I have learned…
The gift of volume in our voice is meant to close the distance, but most often we use it to create distance.
Our vocal chords, like all the rest of these fantastic bodies of ours are finely tuned instruments that can convey meaning and be raised in joyous laughter and rich melody. We can convey sarcasm, we can impart meaning. We can whisper, we can yell.
When a child is walking back from a race well run, trying to find my face amidst the crowd, I raise my hand waving, but he does not see me. I raise my voice, call his name, and instantly he knows he is found, still connected.
Our voices are gifts given to close the distance. He runs to me, secure amidst the thronging masses and we celebrate.
A child is running, I can not run alongside. They enter the water, I can not paddle out or calm the nerves I know are rising in their throat. But I can sing out with encouragement, filling my lungs and pressing all my love through the air as I shout their name in applause.
But how often do we use these same voices, and yell out tones and condemnations that push our children away, creating distance instead of connection?
For most of my life I have recoiled when I hear my voice grow loud, because I know that no matter how I try to rationalize it, I am creating a chasm between myself and my hearer.
These weeks, walking track courses and beaches while my boys pour their hearts and bodies out in sport… Now I am awed by the power my voice holds when only raised to connect, to close the distance. I call and they know I am there.
I am there with what they need. I am there to hold them when they stumble back from an event discouraged. I am there to hug and dance with each little victory. I am there with water bottles and a change of shoes. I am there to make sure they don’t lose track of the team and can find their way back home.
My voice was never meant to force them. It is most often powerful in quiet, but when the world rises up large all around, I can rise too with the wild power of a mama calling her cubs by name.
I offer them their name, when the world would overwhelm or drown it out.
Raising our voice has always been meant to close the distance, instead of create distance.
By God’s grace we can choose how we use our words, and I’m finding if I am not deeply quiet first I will never know. I have to hear my Father teaching me, calling my name loud and long , if I am too learn how to use the instrument He has given me.
Our Creator’s voice is still and small, whispering deep within our soul, respectful of our personhood, waiting for our answer. And His voice is deep and powerful, spoken above the ravages of time, the thunder of centuries. He speaks more loudly than fear and doubt, rising high as mountains, louder than the roar of generations. His words do not pass away, they close the distance, and so can ours.
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If you’re reading this and want to join me, or would just like to listen and glean encouragement from others, please feel welcome to join us in the Gently + Quietly FB group!
- photos by the best Dad ever, Jesse McKeeman
Daughter,
You were just a hope last October.
You were curled up inside me, dancing unseen, and your hiccups were my favorite.
Last October your heart could have stopped beating, I know these things can happen because I have lived them.
A year ago you spoke to me through rhythmic taps, sharp turns, early morning wiggles to wake me up, sleepy afternoon naps as I chased your brothers, and tumbling evenings while I snuggled with your Dad. I saw you grainy on the ultrasound machine and placed my hand awestruck when a foot or knee appeared beneath my skin.
A year ago, you still needed to stay inside me another month and survive the adventure that is birth.
You were a wish, a dream, a prayer. I think I’m wise enough to know you weren’t a promise. Better mamas than I have felt more babies wash from their wombs or had to lay them in graves with aching arms.
You were not a promise – nothing is. No story is ever promised to us except life everlasting, and joy right now in all this crazy beautiful mess.
Somehow I held hands wide open and caught that joy. Grace pried my hands apart so I could scoop you up and savor every moment. Grace held my fearful soul until it stopped shaking. And still we waited uncertain, last October.
Eugene Peterson reminds us that we all share a “narrative hunger,” almost as strong as our hunger for physical nourishment, stronger even than the need for shelter and love, saying “Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives.
Together, we long for a good story, a story with dark and light and power to it. My darling girl, you are a very good story, one of the best I know.
So why do we distance ourselves from the rest narrative holds? Why are we always grasping for steps, plans, formulas and strategies? These are for winning and losing, and we are meant for living and loving. Why when the story holds pain do we not take a moment to sit and weep? Always striving to understand and fix, we miss the song as it rises and falls, heartbreakingly beautiful. The story is what gives us strength to fight, to find the light.
As a new believer, poet Christian Wiman wondered, ” I begin to think that anything that abstracts us from the physical world is ‘of the devil’… Christ speaks in stories as a way of preparing his followers to stake their lives on a story, because existence is not a puzzle to be solved but a narrative to be inherited and undergone and transformed person by person.”
That is why my hands will find these keys and fumble for words whispering what you mean to me.
Telling you that you are gospel story.
Helping you on your way to living truth.
Showing you that you are ever only a beloved daughter even when this world will tell you otherwise.
I don’t know if anyone else will care, but if I could engrave your story for all the centuries I would, so I will type… to begin this October telling of what has been, and what is – and to dream with you. To recount age old stories of grace and joy, singing of the One who overcomes darkness.
– photos by my love, Jesse McKeeman with the Hasseblad
Before I made this commitment to not raise my voice for one year, I was not living a life of congruence, and I still have many more steps to take.
I had given up and I didn’t even realize it. I had given up on the hopeful dream that I exist because I have something unique and beautiful to give, instead of just being here to endure and minimize the pain.
“Sixty years ago I found myself distracted,” Eugene Peterson writes. “A chasm had developed between the way I was preaching from the pulpit and my deepest convictions on what it meant to be a pastor.
I could paraphrase this quote from him and make it my own…
“I find myself distracted. A chasm has developed between what I profess and what I live, between what I believe and what I portray.”
In the collection of his sermons titled, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Peterson (creator of the Message) writes, “The Christian life is the lifelong practice of attending to the details of congruence – congruence between ends and means, congruence between what we do and the way we do it, congruence between what is written in Scripture and our living out what is written, congruence between a ship and its prow, congruence between preaching and living, congruence between the sermon and what is lived in both preacher and congregation, the congruence of the Word made flesh in Jesus with what is lived in our flesh.”
Friend will you take minute and read the beautiful, short poem As Kingfishers Catch Fire that Peterson took as the inspiration for the greater part of his life? You can access it by clicking HERE.
Speaking of this poem, Peterson says the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins “piles up a dazzling assemblage of images to fix our attention on this sense of rightness, of wholeness, that comes together when we realize the utter congruence between what a thing is and what it does: kingfisher and dragonfly catching and reflecting sun brightness, a stone tumbling over the rim of a well, a plucked violin string, the clapper of a bell sounding. What happens and the way it happens are seamless.” He expounds to say that the dragonfly, the plucked string do what they do because they are determined by biology and physics. We do what we do either because of, or in the absence of Christ. Christ is congruence, “both the means and the end playing through our limbs and eyes to the Father through the features of our faces so that we find ourselves living, almost in spite of ourselves, the Christ life in the Christ way.”
Am I?
Am I living the Christ life in the Christ way?
I read that first quote, that awakening and understanding from Peterson. “Sixty years ago” Do I have a sixty years ago in me? Doubtful. Maybe I have a fourty years ago left in me. Do I want to waste it?
Victor Frankl says the power to live a meaningful life, to get it right the first time, even amidst intense suffering or mind-numbing drudgery is to…
“Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now.”
These wrong acts of mine are a denial of Hopkins words, “What I do is me, for that I came.” These wrongdoings are my disbelief that Christ can really as the poet says “play in ten thousand places,” including me. I disbelieve and forget my destiny, and in this I act wrongly because it feels as if there is no longer anything at stake and my hope fades.
Sometimes those wrong acts are a hurtful word, an angry tone. Sometimes they are my true feelings hidden away so discreet that not even I can find them anymore. Sometimes they are saying yes when I am too tired, sometimes they are saying no when I need to show up and serve. How will I know? How do I know?
Congruence.
Christ in me, in spite of me, because of me, making me who I truly am.
It is time to live congruent. I have watched life birthed from my womb for the last time. Husband, children, love, community, church – I am full and still I tread the verge of emptiness so many days. I walk resentful between everything I have to do, and what I had hoped for as a girl.
My infant daughter will be a girl soon, and she will dream. It is time to believe in dreams again so that I can go with her to where they live. It is time to choose joy in the everyday so I can show her its sanctity.
It is time to believe the dream that I can be who I was made to be.
It is time to experience the Word made flesh, Christ playing. Playing.
To say I am here, willing to drive to another practice, to gather the groceries and read lessons aloud. I am here, and this is my joy – in this moment.
To say that I must go now for a little while – to stare at butterfly wings and think my own thoughts, to remember the dreams that used to nourish me. To walk with my Father so I will know who I am, and what He has to give through me.
To stop saying loudly what I do not mean, and send truth straight and quiet as an arrow – to the heart of things.
To never be afraid of living congruent, not hiding essence behind a mask.
I hope decades from now, I can say that this late summer merging into autumn I saw my distraction. Slowed by a year of newborn days and watching her grow I awoke to the chasm between Word and flesh.
I decided to allow God to mend – to stitch belief right back into this earthly body life. Real as her in my arms, magic as the days running into sunsets and moonrise, kingfishers, dragonflies and the new being she is each morning.
Real as Christ in me. Congruence.
. . .
If you’re reading this and want to join me, or would just like to listen and glean encouragement from others, please feel welcome to join us in the Gently + Quietly FB group!
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Jeana Saeedi - Thanks for sharing. My husband and I don’t have children yet, so raising my voice is not a struggle I have currently. But I do remember yelling at my younger siblings, and my loving parents also yelling at me growing up. I remember the way it impacted the whole tone of our home.
The Lord has recently been working on breaking the unhealthy systems of my childhood family as He establishes a new foundation for my marriage and home. It’s been really great to read along your journey, I feel like I’m taking notes for when I have children of my own.
You’re a great mother. Thank you for taking on this challenge; you’re sort of a pioneer for those of us who haven’t started the journey just yet.
sharon - Thank you so much for sharing your story, Im glad I can be an encouragement!
Karen - As a Mom of 4 boys I say yes to all of this. Your reflections, your commitment, your triggers. Yes. Sounds like our big boys are two peas in a pod! But I gently wonder, is your goal realistic? Are you setting yourself up for failure and discouragement? As Moms we already expect a lot of ourselves without adding timelines and a goal of perfection. Your children see that you are trying and I’m sure that already means a lot to them. And the verse about Christ’s strength being made perfect acknowledges that we do have weaknesses and that is part of our earthly journey. These are early-morning ramblings so I may be off. Either way, your effort and what you are learning through this goal shows your desire to be the best Mom ever (and I suspect that can include yelling and reconciliation). Hugs.