Epiphany Is Not for the Faint of Heart
(2014) Yesterday, as we do every year on the Sunday closest to January 6th, the gathered body of Christ celebrated Epiphany. In Sunday School Brennan joined in a search for baby Jesus. Conveniently his arrival meant there were three boys available to make the trek and re-enact the legend of the three kings -- a tale derived from Matthew's account of wise men bringing three kinds of gifts to the infant king. The boys found the swaddled baby beneath a hanging star, interestingly back in the same classroom where they had begun their search. If you know the story, then you know that the wise men are warned in a dream not to return home the way they had come. Matthew says they left for their own country by a different road.
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I have tended to think of Epiphany as a sudden shining moment, illuminating what has been hidden, making clear what has been murky. Some truth exists in this, but I have come to realize that epiphany only becomes such when preceded by preparation and followed by transformation. Otherwise, it is just a missed opportunity or another stop along the same old road. This is both the rub and the gift.
(2009) An epiphany moment came for me five years ago as I resigned from what had been my dream job. I was the chaplain of an inpatient hospice home and a student in supervisory education, a dream that would not let me go until I had uprooted our family and moved us four hours away from the home we'd come to love in Winston-Salem. There is much I could say about that period. None of it is cut and dried regarding motives and reasons for going or leaving; however, there is that one epiphany moment I continue to look to as a hinge moment...a fork in the road that led a different way home. I remember standing in the small reception area between the doorways of my two supervisors, telling the director through my tears, "if I am going to walk away from this, then I will do things differently. I cannot go back home and do things the same way."
And I didn't. With my return home, I left full-time work for the first time in my adult life. I quit trying to control everything in my life. (A process. Always a process.) My family wasn't just important anymore -- it became central. I set boundaries around the time that I did work in a way that I never had before, and I protected my home life fiercely. I got pregnant and all those messy parts of labor and nursing that I thought I would hate...well, I didn't. At the same time, I struggled to reconcile my (still) strong feminism, vocational ambition and calling to ministry, and need for intellectual stimulation and challenge with my new life. That is a conversation for a different post, but it is one in which I know I am most certainly not alone. None of this was in a controlled environment, of course, because epiphany and life don't happen that way. Transforming light comes in the midst of whatever life brings, and in my family's life, it came in the midst of Brian finishing grad school and beginning a demanding job 160 miles round trip from home, a new baby who cried constantly from 5 pm until daybreak for the first few months due to a colicky tummy, and a daughter who began having heart-stopping episodes of passing out and falling to the floor from undiagnosed epilepsy -- all at the same time.
***
(2005-07) The work of CPE (clinical pastoral education) is an inner and outer work. Outwardly, I learned and practiced pastoral skills of showing up, being present, engaging with another in his or her story in the service of transformation and integration for that person, offering timeless rituals of baptism, communion, prayer, and more for meaning and connection to the Holy, and advocating and speaking forth truth when needed. Inwardly, I faced some of my worst demons -- my perfectionism, my pride, my fears, my insecurities. I did it -- as folks often do in CPE -- in all the messiness of relationship with colleagues and authority figures. The greatest take-away for me was learning that the more we hate the dark parts of ourselves and try to run from such darkness, the greater the darkness and brokenness. The more we embrace our brokenness and all the parts we disdain and hate, the more we befriend these pieces of ourselves, the more whole we become.
It is amazing to read the gospels with this lens. Jesus preaches to these points more often than not through both his words and life. If I were ever to make a case for why I believe Jesus is more than a teacher, why he is the incarnational light of the world, I would rest my case on the way such brokenness and wholeness shows up in Jesus. He is willing to be vulnerable to others to the point of death even as he fiercely resists those who would imprison the body and spirit with human made fences. He accepts his strengths and limitations. He wrestles with the darkness - he asks the tough questions - "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" -- and moves through it to resurrection light.Wholeness comes in transformation, and transformation happens when light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. Epiphany.
***
(2004) Epiphany happened when I read her profile in the scant few sentences of mass-sent email appearing in my mailbox that September afternoon. Our particularized interest and questions were emailed back, and within 24 hours we sat looking at 30-some pages of referral. The excitement I felt when the light first rushed into my soul got pushed aside for awhile by a gnawing fear in my gut. The fear was all mine. What if I couldn't be the mother this child needed? What if, what if, what if... It was all pretty much about me. I knew that our answer would change the path of our lives forever. The weird thing about adoption is that you are given so many choices that would never be part of a typical pregnancy. You are asked to determine what special needs you are willing to accept -- literally asked to place check marks on a double-sided list. Other questions appear on other forms -- What gender? Which country? Which agency? It gives a false sense of control and destiny and a terrible sense of weightiness. All of it is quite ridiculous, of course. Except...except it really is life-changing. Thank God. And thank God for friends who listened and helped me trust my heart. I look back and know the moment as epiphany because we will never be the same.
(2014) The kids have wanted to watch videos of themselves this past week of Christmas vacation. Brennan kept asking to see the ultrasound video. Upon finally seeing it, he was more than a little unimpressed. "How do you know that is my hand? my knee? Why am I orange?" They both watched with rapt attention to Brian and I holding Morgan and playing with her for that first week of family as we traveled across India. "You were loving on me, mommy?! You were feeding me, daddy?! You guys were taking care of me?!" Yes, yes, yes. We were mesmerized by your smiles, hypnotized by your squeals of delight, worried by your lack of eating and drinking, in love with every square inch of you that I was determined to kiss before the sun set on that long-awaited day when we finally held you.
***
(2008) Epiphany is both fast work and slow work, our preacher said yesterday. Yes. In the midst of counseling/therapy in which everyone undertaking CPE is advised to participate, I dreamed that I was fixated on a particular mundane task that was urgent to me nonetheless, and all the while an older, wiser, and very patient woman kept speaking to me saying, "this is not what you really want. What you really want is here." Smiling, she opened a window. The light was so bright and the image so close that I could not make out much except hands resting lovingly and loosely atop one another. Relationship. Family. Connection...not clingy but present.
***
(Present) Morgan is the gift I could never have asked for...I would have been too afraid. I wouldn't have known what to ask for. She is in the moment. She teaches me to let go and be in the moment. I will never believe God desires her to have to struggle so to learn or that her epilepsy and other issues are anything but a part of the brokenness we all share in within this world, but in her brokenness, God has taught me that I cannot cling. I can be there. I can hold her when she is on the floor, her heart not beating as it did repeatedly several years ago. I can love her and sit down alongside her and try to see as she sees so that we can learn together. And I fail and fail and fail again. But grace and light prevail. Morgan is joy. If you know Morgan, you know this. What she wants most in the world is to connect with people, and she is the greatest success of anyone I know at this. She is brilliant at it actually.
I could write more...of Brennan...of Brian....all surprises of joy and of light and life. I could write more of the questions I alluded to earlier both here and in another post about work and vocation and how those two fit together in the midst of all this learning. But I've said enough, and my dear girl is hungry. May you have a blessed Epiphany! Don't be afraid of a different way home. There is heartache for sure -- the Herods of both our own making and of the world beyond our control will see to that -- but you never know what joy you will find on the journey. The light still shines, and the darkness can never overcome it. Thanks be to God.
***
I have tended to think of Epiphany as a sudden shining moment, illuminating what has been hidden, making clear what has been murky. Some truth exists in this, but I have come to realize that epiphany only becomes such when preceded by preparation and followed by transformation. Otherwise, it is just a missed opportunity or another stop along the same old road. This is both the rub and the gift.
(2009) An epiphany moment came for me five years ago as I resigned from what had been my dream job. I was the chaplain of an inpatient hospice home and a student in supervisory education, a dream that would not let me go until I had uprooted our family and moved us four hours away from the home we'd come to love in Winston-Salem. There is much I could say about that period. None of it is cut and dried regarding motives and reasons for going or leaving; however, there is that one epiphany moment I continue to look to as a hinge moment...a fork in the road that led a different way home. I remember standing in the small reception area between the doorways of my two supervisors, telling the director through my tears, "if I am going to walk away from this, then I will do things differently. I cannot go back home and do things the same way."
And I didn't. With my return home, I left full-time work for the first time in my adult life. I quit trying to control everything in my life. (A process. Always a process.) My family wasn't just important anymore -- it became central. I set boundaries around the time that I did work in a way that I never had before, and I protected my home life fiercely. I got pregnant and all those messy parts of labor and nursing that I thought I would hate...well, I didn't. At the same time, I struggled to reconcile my (still) strong feminism, vocational ambition and calling to ministry, and need for intellectual stimulation and challenge with my new life. That is a conversation for a different post, but it is one in which I know I am most certainly not alone. None of this was in a controlled environment, of course, because epiphany and life don't happen that way. Transforming light comes in the midst of whatever life brings, and in my family's life, it came in the midst of Brian finishing grad school and beginning a demanding job 160 miles round trip from home, a new baby who cried constantly from 5 pm until daybreak for the first few months due to a colicky tummy, and a daughter who began having heart-stopping episodes of passing out and falling to the floor from undiagnosed epilepsy -- all at the same time.
***
(2005-07) The work of CPE (clinical pastoral education) is an inner and outer work. Outwardly, I learned and practiced pastoral skills of showing up, being present, engaging with another in his or her story in the service of transformation and integration for that person, offering timeless rituals of baptism, communion, prayer, and more for meaning and connection to the Holy, and advocating and speaking forth truth when needed. Inwardly, I faced some of my worst demons -- my perfectionism, my pride, my fears, my insecurities. I did it -- as folks often do in CPE -- in all the messiness of relationship with colleagues and authority figures. The greatest take-away for me was learning that the more we hate the dark parts of ourselves and try to run from such darkness, the greater the darkness and brokenness. The more we embrace our brokenness and all the parts we disdain and hate, the more we befriend these pieces of ourselves, the more whole we become.
It is amazing to read the gospels with this lens. Jesus preaches to these points more often than not through both his words and life. If I were ever to make a case for why I believe Jesus is more than a teacher, why he is the incarnational light of the world, I would rest my case on the way such brokenness and wholeness shows up in Jesus. He is willing to be vulnerable to others to the point of death even as he fiercely resists those who would imprison the body and spirit with human made fences. He accepts his strengths and limitations. He wrestles with the darkness - he asks the tough questions - "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" -- and moves through it to resurrection light.Wholeness comes in transformation, and transformation happens when light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. Epiphany.
***
(2004) Epiphany happened when I read her profile in the scant few sentences of mass-sent email appearing in my mailbox that September afternoon. Our particularized interest and questions were emailed back, and within 24 hours we sat looking at 30-some pages of referral. The excitement I felt when the light first rushed into my soul got pushed aside for awhile by a gnawing fear in my gut. The fear was all mine. What if I couldn't be the mother this child needed? What if, what if, what if... It was all pretty much about me. I knew that our answer would change the path of our lives forever. The weird thing about adoption is that you are given so many choices that would never be part of a typical pregnancy. You are asked to determine what special needs you are willing to accept -- literally asked to place check marks on a double-sided list. Other questions appear on other forms -- What gender? Which country? Which agency? It gives a false sense of control and destiny and a terrible sense of weightiness. All of it is quite ridiculous, of course. Except...except it really is life-changing. Thank God. And thank God for friends who listened and helped me trust my heart. I look back and know the moment as epiphany because we will never be the same.
(2014) The kids have wanted to watch videos of themselves this past week of Christmas vacation. Brennan kept asking to see the ultrasound video. Upon finally seeing it, he was more than a little unimpressed. "How do you know that is my hand? my knee? Why am I orange?" They both watched with rapt attention to Brian and I holding Morgan and playing with her for that first week of family as we traveled across India. "You were loving on me, mommy?! You were feeding me, daddy?! You guys were taking care of me?!" Yes, yes, yes. We were mesmerized by your smiles, hypnotized by your squeals of delight, worried by your lack of eating and drinking, in love with every square inch of you that I was determined to kiss before the sun set on that long-awaited day when we finally held you.
***
(2008) Epiphany is both fast work and slow work, our preacher said yesterday. Yes. In the midst of counseling/therapy in which everyone undertaking CPE is advised to participate, I dreamed that I was fixated on a particular mundane task that was urgent to me nonetheless, and all the while an older, wiser, and very patient woman kept speaking to me saying, "this is not what you really want. What you really want is here." Smiling, she opened a window. The light was so bright and the image so close that I could not make out much except hands resting lovingly and loosely atop one another. Relationship. Family. Connection...not clingy but present.
***
(Present) Morgan is the gift I could never have asked for...I would have been too afraid. I wouldn't have known what to ask for. She is in the moment. She teaches me to let go and be in the moment. I will never believe God desires her to have to struggle so to learn or that her epilepsy and other issues are anything but a part of the brokenness we all share in within this world, but in her brokenness, God has taught me that I cannot cling. I can be there. I can hold her when she is on the floor, her heart not beating as it did repeatedly several years ago. I can love her and sit down alongside her and try to see as she sees so that we can learn together. And I fail and fail and fail again. But grace and light prevail. Morgan is joy. If you know Morgan, you know this. What she wants most in the world is to connect with people, and she is the greatest success of anyone I know at this. She is brilliant at it actually.
I could write more...of Brennan...of Brian....all surprises of joy and of light and life. I could write more of the questions I alluded to earlier both here and in another post about work and vocation and how those two fit together in the midst of all this learning. But I've said enough, and my dear girl is hungry. May you have a blessed Epiphany! Don't be afraid of a different way home. There is heartache for sure -- the Herods of both our own making and of the world beyond our control will see to that -- but you never know what joy you will find on the journey. The light still shines, and the darkness can never overcome it. Thanks be to God.
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