I am not sure if I was always this way, but passionate is a word that seems to carry with it the weight of my fiery Italian roots and stubborn persistence. In our courtship, and even those first few years of marriage, Jordan would assume my intensity to be frustration. I assured him that my voice was raised out of passion, not anger. Well, that is, most of the time. When I feel an emotion I feel it to the core of my being, which is necessary as an artist but a bit catastrophic in all other realms, as feelings have the capacity to betray truth and wisdom. I began this writing with a bit of what I felt to be anger, but it became an emotion desperate for redirection. A rerouting towards compassion and longing for something better than relationally confused families and hurried angst.
I came across a song on Sunday while tuning into Elevation church called “The Blessing” that pulls simply and beautifully from Scripture, followed then by this hope:
“May his favor be upon you and a thousand generations, and your family, and your children. And their children and their children.”
Music is deep and powerful to me, making what is already profound and weighted come to life with melody and rhythm. A line so simple and yet I was enveloped by the enormous breadth of God to transcend generation upon generation upon generation. My children danced there in our family room with the full extent of themselves, not recognizing the weight of the words being sung.
As I have listened and mused over the words of this song, rather than a personal outpouring of love over God’s people, all those that have claimed their sonship, I felt a sort of desperation. We seek God’s favor, and we have it without any effort on our own behalf, from generation to generation to generation. Yet we have done so while adopting our own ways and the ways of those around us with little effort to teach our children the deep, exuberant nearness of God. We incite his favor but forget His presence. Perhaps not because we don’t want it – although that might certainly be the case in part, for His presence changes us and we would rather not – but because we are too cluttered with busyness and bigger-ness and better-ness that we don’t know how to experience Him, let alone teach that to our children. We don’t even know how to experience each other.
For the last three weeks we have been confined to our homes. The change for some has been drastic. Working out of the home. Homeschooling children. Consistent access to our spouse. Overwhelming is perhaps an understatement when you have otherwise been accustomed to the house to yourself or work away at the office or school with peers rather than siblings. So to expect to simply ease into such a transition would be unfair of me to assume and unfair of you to expect.
Yet I can’t help but wonder how we got ourselves here. How did being with our children become such a burden? How did seeing our spouses throughout the day become such a weight? How did work get to a place where it demands nothing less than our full attention when we have lovers to love and children to raise? When did the expectation become to partition all of our responsibilities, particularly relational, to certain segments of the day? That when a family must stay in their home together there is more burden than joy, more tension than contentedness, more dismissing than embracing.
I have seen posts fly around social media that speak to shifted perspective, sharing meals, and a slowed pace, all with the intent of helping you navigate the newness of what we have been forced into, yet with an air of transience. Communicating that this was not made to last. Naturally nor should it- this virus needs to stop claiming lives and release us from our four walls. Yet the implication is far more than taking leave of social isolation. We will go back to all that was. Regularly late nights at the office where we forego the essentialness of the dinner table. Dismissing conversations with our children so that we can rush them to their third practice or tend to our all-consuming side hustle. Scoff at rest and celebrate hurry. Reminisce over creativity and repress contentment. Too busy to be bored and longing for too much to be satisfied. Keeping the peace with our spouse means leaving would be better, and engaging our children seen as probably best left to others. We will have forgotten the need to bring God into our home, since church services will again resume, and so go back to finding Him in experiencing only the most talented of musicians and dynamic of speakers, where our children are not there to distract us. The church will hold its place in the perpetuation of mountaintop spirituality, certainly a valuable piece in our communal walk, but dismissive of understanding how to experience God when all ages are gathered simultaneously. Of course why bother, for our everyday has us intentionally scattered in different directions for the sake of accomplishment, so what need would the church be serving in helping us experience God together?
Our littlest love has been waking me in the night for the last handful of months. Molars, snuggles, whatever has her awake had me needing to accept this consistently interrupted sleep. So I resolved to use those moments in the still and quiet to start reading through the stories of kings of the Old Testament. I have read through quite a bit- so you can imagine that means she has been up quite often. Perhaps this blitz of stories through the generations has me particularly fixated on God over the ages and not just the God over now. King after king after king was either described as having done right in the eyes of the Lord or doing evil in the eyes of the Lord. Pretty matter of fact. Though I was particularly struck in 2 Kings 17 how the reason for people’s turning away from God was described:
“[vs. 13] The Lord warned Israel and Judah:.. ‘Turn from your evil ways. Observe my commands and decrees… [vs. 14] But they would not listen and were as stiff-necked as their ancestors, who did not trust in the Lord their God… [vs. 15] They imitated the nations around them although the Lord had ordered them, ‘Do not do as they do… [vs. 19] even Judah did not keep the commands of the Lord their God. They followed the practices Israel had introduced.”
Did you catch that? Here you have God’s people, Israel and Judah, blatantly disregarding God by mistrust and disobedience. How did they get to this place? By imitating the nations around them. Judah specifically, though more often led by kings who fit into the “having done right in the eyes of the Lord” category, was led astray not solely by other nations, but by Israel herself. God’s people influencing God’s people to live like everyone else, in turn forfeiting the presence of God.
“[vs. 18] So the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them from his presence.”
This moment most likely needs a disclaimer, for I am by no means suggesting that we all need to home school, work out of the home, host in home church services, or ditch the babysitter.
Though here’s what I am saying- perhaps we have been more influenced by those around us than we care to recognize. Perhaps the way we scatter our households is more the result of what we have been taught by our segmented church gatherings and fellow neighbors.
Who told us that a 90 minute, one way commute is needed in order to listen to our podcasts? Who told us that to experience God, or for our children to learn about God, a stellar church service is required? Who said that a household’s income should be left to one parent and child-rearing to the other? Who said that being under the same roof with family inevitably means mass amounts of stress, feasible only for super parents, of which we have come to simultaneously hate and covet?
I wonder what might happen if we chose to eliminate hurry by cutting our outlandish standard of productivity in half, if we were willing to get creative with how to pursue our distracted passions, if we dismissed our devices long enough to discover our spouse, or if we brought our kids into our daily rhythms as a way to teach them what a life in step with God looks like, rather than being forced to because of a pandemic.
But let’s get real- we’re not going to tell each other to do that, because it would come at a cost. A cost to our employer, who wouldn’t be able to demand our souls, and we’d have to trust God far more with our finances. A cost to our desire, requiring more of ourselves than celebrated selfish ambition. A cost to our addiction, putting intentional conversation ahead of numbing entertainment. A cost to our mediocre walk with Jesus for the sake of generations to come.
When it comes down to it, I just wonder if family was meant to do more of life together than apart. Of course that would mean sacrificing so much of what we know. Maybe we simply can’t have it all.
EXPOSITION: It’s okay that these last couple of weeks have been stressful to you. Our lives are influenced greatly by our cultural norms. Though consider for yourself if the life we’ve been told is living truly feels to be just that.
RISE: Before we go back to life as we once knew it, what of being with your family by force will you intentionally bring into your normal by choice? Here’s the thing- it will probably cost you something.
This writing casts a rather large net, and I feel the need to reiterate again that this is not a plug for homeschooling or a shame on asking for help. So to convince you of that, here are just three ways we can reclaim the beauty of a deeply present family that doesn’t require being under one roof all the time:
- Say No: To your boss, your side-hustle, your consumerism, your materialism, your friends, even your church. Notice “no” isn’t “never.” You should work diligently at your job, channel your gifts and let them flourish, buy groceries and clothe your children, be [relatively] okay with stuff, invest in deep relationships, and serve your church family. No also doesn’t mean creating more space for Netflix binge watching, social isolationism, and thumb scrolling. It means limiting one thing to make intentional space for another- those you have chosen and those you have made.
- Put down your device: Our nonstop phone usage, thumbs up dopamine hits, and marathon episodes have made it very clear that our culture has made device addiction socially acceptable. We are advised to stop smoking, stop looking at porn, stop drinking, but you won’t hear “Stop using your phone.” Devices are the one addiction we are simply told to use responsibly if we have a a problem – and I think it’s safe to assume that we all have a problem. So if the antidote to this addiction is app time limits and scheduled downtime, we would be wise to take that seriously. Especially in those moments when your focus is family. This will look different for every schedule, but your intentionality is needed and I can guarantee you your children, even your spouse, will notice.
- Reclaim the Dinner Table [Daily!]: Meals were meant for sharing. A quick Google search and you will find numerous studies have been done that prove psychological, social, and even biological benefits of eating a meal together. For our family, it’s the breakfast table, and we know that breakfast comes every day, generally around the same time, and so do the hunger pings and drooling over coffee. You are going to eat. Do so together, free of distraction (this would be a good time to put your addiction, eh-hem, phone in a closet), around the table, and feel the investment of being with and hearing from one another. At first you may feel tension, angst, and a desire to escape to the television. That probably means it’s working, because to be with the ones you love actually takes an incredible amount of yourself, but eventually you will know each other again.
- Practice Sabbath: An ancient practice. From the beginning of time actually, but one we have forgotten in our strivings towards anything but stillness and rest. To pull from Comer’s book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, which you just might love by the way, he says this:
“The Word Sabbath comes to us from the Hebrew Shabbat. The word literally means ‘to stop.’ The Sabbath is simply a day to stop: stop working, stop wanting, stop worrying, just stop.” If I could summarize an opposite of that it would read ‘to be’. Be present. Be content. Be still. Be with God. Be with each other. Just be.
I would really love to sit with you more on this one. Actually, I’d love to share a bit of myself in it as well and journey with you into the practice of Sabbath. So before we bid farewell for this weeks writing, I penned a part II for you this week, dedicated to the practice of weekly Shabbat. (And bonus, I kept it much shorter than this writing!) My longing for a consistent day of rest in my own life and that of my family has me wanting to bring you along with us. Seeing as we must remain in our homes these next several weeks, this just might be the perfect time to recreate space, embrace the nearness of family, and celebrate rest.
Game on.
DENOUEMENT: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (to the people of Israel in the book of Deuteronomy)
♥