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Remodeling House and Heart

Category Archives: Faith

Living in The Fog

01 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by Remodeling House and Heart in A Leap of Faith, Blogging 101, Faith, Living Unbound, Personal Growth, Quirky Stories

≈ 2 Comments

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Being Brave, Blogging 101, Faith, Feeling Alone, Feeling Vulnerable, Fog, Ice, Inspiration, Melancholy, On the Journey, Pacific Coast, Road Trip Insights

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Blue skies, soft breezes, mild temperatures, not a cloud in the sky for miles ahead of us- this is how we began our journey.   Kids in the back, sister as co-pilot, armed with the best playlists and snacks- we were ready to cross the great state of Texas.  We got this.  Classic road trip.

Then, there it was.  A wall of clouds stretching from north to south as far as the eye could see.  The wall cloud was so tall that my sister actually thought it was a mountain range.  The ominous wall seemed to be rolling towards us.  It was something out of an apocalyptic movie.  I had never seen anything like it and I have seen my fair share of snowy days after living in Minnesota for four years. It was enormous.  It was dark gray. And we were heading straight for it with my two babies sound asleep in the back.  From the outside there was no way of telling what the driving conditions would be like from within the strange cloud wall.  But if we wanted to get home we were going to have to go through it.  There was just no getting around it.  I mean, we were literally in the middle of the desert.  Nowhere to go but through.

As soon as we entered the cloud wall it was as if someone had waved a magic wand and had frozen everything in sight.  It would appear that queen Elsa had just passed through.  Just seconds before we were looking at sunshiny skies over dusty cacti and suddenly everything was frozen solid.  There was no snow or rain.  It was as if the air was too frigid to mess with moisture and instead everything was thick with white ice.  The scene reminded me of what my freezer looks like if you leave the freezer door open all night- everything coated with a thick layer of white ice.  It was beautiful.  It was quiet.  It was frightening.

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Maybe it was the vulnerable position we were in, two women with small children idling through a sinister mist, but I quickly realized that I felt very alone. It was the kind of alone in which you have this desire to go back home but you are not exactly sure what you mean by “home.” I thought about my beautiful house and my loving family and it was immediately apparent to me that I was being ridiculous. How could I feel alone when in reality I am surrounded by loved ones and I have a beautiful home?

Except that it wasn’t ridiculous.  For the past couple of years my little family has been on a challenging journey of sorts.  We have experienced all manner of frustration and doubt as we continue to pray and have faith that this “thing,” this goal will somehow come to fruition.  We don’t know how this dream will be realized or how long it will take or if we will even live to see it.  Let’s just say that we kind of feel like Noah at times.  Here we are building our ark even though we don’t exactly know why because we have never seen rain.

That is the journey that we had been on when I was fortunate enough to experience the crazy winter weather in the middle of the desert.  My soul was aching with melancholy doubt; I was just trying to hold onto the dream when I first got glimpse of the ice cloud wall.  When I began to feel alone I took a hold of those feelings and harnessed them to make sense of this journey that really feels like a ship lost in the fog.

What I came up with is that on this journey you never really know what is going on in your life.  You really have no control and that fog of not knowing what lies ahead is scary and seems dangerous.  It makes you just want to get back to a place of comfort and security.  And so you try to find that security.  You look for that warm fuzzy blanket or your favorite lovie- something, anything to cling to.  But sometimes there is no way to attain comfort and security in this world.

Sometimes you have nothing to turn to and nowhere to go but through.

Through the journey.

Through the unknown.

That beast of not knowing must be faced and conquered and tamed. And yes, you should feel a little scared and vulnerable.  The vulnerability heightens your senses; it pumps you up with the adrenaline you need to be brave.

You just have to have faith that God will bring you through this journey.

Not long after the drive through the freak polar vortex of Texas, my husband and I took a drive down the Pacific Coast from Seattle to San Francisco.  It has always been on my bucket list to experience the majesty of the great giant Sequoia Redwood trees.  While driving through the redwood forest I felt claustrophobic and insignificant.  I was sick to my stomach from the winding roads and change in air pressure.  At times the forest was so dense that the trees completely blocked out the sun.  It could be a sunshiny day but you would never know that in the redwoods because the trees had conquered the sky.

I had a hard time taking a good picture of the Redwoods because they are just too tall to fit into frame.

I had a hard time taking a good picture of the Redwoods because they are just too tall to fit into frame.  “The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It’s not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.” John Steinbeck

Naturally we drove past huge cliffs and bluffs that dropped into the icy Pacific ocean.  The cliffs were breathtaking and catastrophic looking- an insurance company’s nightmare.  Each wave that crashed upon the black rocks was a warning to stay away.  So of course this meant that we just had to climb down the rocky cliffs despite a rain storm and warning signs that we were entering tsunami hazard zones.  But who could resist getting a closer look at the ocean filled with all manner of mystique?

Here's hoping the tide doesn't come in!

Here’s hoping the tide doesn’t come in!

In places like that, places in which nature demands your attention and announces its strength by simply being there, I am reminded once again that I really have no control of my life.  I could run my day on schedules and events and budgets but an gigantic wall of ice could just go ahead and sweep through my life and commandeer my plans for the day. Or, a tsunami could just come on through and knock all of my kingdom down just as it would knock out all of those stately redwoods. Just like that.  And of course I know this already but I am hard headed and sometimes I have to be reminded.

Those of us who have chosen to be on this journey.  Those of us who have our heads in the clouds. The dreamers.  The crazies.  Those of us who keep the faith and muddle through the unknown focused on a mission.  We have to know that we are not alone.   It’s going to be murky and it’s going to be a windy road and a little scary at times- you might get nauseated- but we can’t be afraid to take that first step into the cloud wall.  We can’t be afraid of climbing into the tsunami hazard zone.  We must trudge on through. Something you have never seen before can be a little scary like the height of the redwood forest or the fluorescent looking moss on the trees in Oregon or like an enormous cloud of ice in the middle of a Texas desert.  We just have to go through it and maybe allow ourselves to get swept up in the mysterious beauty of the unfamiliar .  Perhaps if we take the time to admire the beauty of the unknown we will begin to feel more like we are home.  Maybe we can learn to live within the fog.

I have never seen fluorescent looking moss on trees before.  I don't know what kind of trees these are but they were everywhere in Oregon.

I have never seen fluorescent looking moss on trees before. I don’t know what kind of trees these are but they were everywhere in Oregon.

Yours on the journey,

Elizabeth

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Help Part III: The Heart of the Matter

04 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by Remodeling House and Heart in Faith, For the Love of People, Living Unbound, Love

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Amazing Grace, Ex-Convict, Faith, Les Miserables, love, prayer, prison, Redemption, Texas

 

This is not my image.  But it was so beautiful and I love Les Mis quotes- I just had to share

This is not my image. But it was so beautiful and I love Les Mis quotes- I just had to share

A loaded gun sits on the table.  The argument escalates.  A second later, a man is dead.  And it was all over a waterbed frame and $96.

On April 29, 20 year old Richard was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his friend, Mark*.   Mark worked with Richard out on the oil rigs of Texas.  In the months that preceded  the murder, Mark had stolen money from Richard, had assaulted Richard’s girlfriend, and had written some hot checks.  Tension was building by the time April 15, 1984 came around when Richard was to buy a waterbed frame from Mark.  Mark took the money but did not provide the bed frame.  For the hot-tempered Richard who described himself as a hooligan at that time, it was the last straw.  Mark came over to Richard’s house that night to discuss the situation.  Unfortunately, Richard’s hot temper boiled over and exploded into an untimely death for Mark.

Richard knew he was playing with fire that night.  He had purposely left a loaded gun on the kitchen table as a warning to Mark that he was ” about to get tail- kicked” in Richard’s words.  When I asked Richard if the shot was an accident he was clear to mention that he grew up in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas shooting squirrel straight in the eye. Richard was a good shot, he knew what he was aiming at.

Richard spent his first 8 years or so in and out of solitary confinement due to his rebellious spirit.  He went 6 years without seeing the natural sunlight of day.  Other inmates steered clear of Richard; his hot-tempered nature branded him with a reputation of a man that was not to be reckoned with.  When he was not in solitary confinement Richard was the go to man for your every need.  Weed, cigarettes, money, you name it  Richard could find a way to get it to you.  If he was a hard man before the murder then prison had only made him worse.

In 1992, a prison ministry began 4 day bible retreats for inmates.  Richard participated in these bible studies as a way to break up the norm; it was a way to have a little more freedom.  I imagine Richard sitting in a circle with other hardened inmates, perhaps feeling vulnerable.  He was a man that never turned his back to anyone but in those bible studies he was asked to share the most intimate of ideas- faith.  It must have been difficult for him to break down some of those walls but Richard was tired of his “hard living.”  He was ready for a new start.

When Richard and I sat down together recently to discuss this time in his life, he continuously referred to an illustration in which you feel like you are at a hole at the bottom of a ladder that you just can’t quite reach.  You want to get out but you just can’t get to that ladder.  Richard felt like he was beneath that hole and really needed someone to reach down and pull him up.

During this prison ministry Richard experienced well versed Christians teaching these classes but, in his opinion, it seemed like they were totally missing the point.  It was clear that they knew the bible backwards and forwards but they still came off a bit stand offish and it was hard for some men to relate to the lofty concepts that were being presented.  While these Christians were well meaning, it was the Christians in the group who, in Richard’s words, “fell down a lot” that he could really identify with.  It was the people who were honest and admitted that they were not perfect- these were the people that caught Richard’s attention.  It didn’t matter if they were well versed in theology.  These Christians, you know, “kept it real”.  They made a relationship with Jesus Christ seem attainable even for someone like Richard.

According to Richard, Jesus got a hold of his life and hit him like a bolt of lightning. Inmates would comment that nothing made Richard mad anymore.  Try as they might, other inmates could not ruffle Richard’s feathers.  Richard’s hot- tempered nature had melted into a patient peace, a noticeable difference from his tumultuous prison beginnings.

It was this peace that finally allowed Richard to forgive himself for his crime.  Part of Richard’s sentencing stated that Richard was not to make any contact with the victim’s family.  By the time Richard had repented of his crime, Mark’s family members were all deceased.  Through prayer, Richard apologized to Mark and his family anyways and asked for their forgiveness.  At this point Richard decided to dedicate his life to Mark and his family.

From that moment forward Richard sought an education for himself, learned several trades, and set his mind towards being a light in a dark place- dedicating every action to the life that Mark never got to live.  The way Richard saw it was that both he and Mark were on a path of destruction and now that Richard had changed the course of his own life, he owed it to Mark to live in such a way that it would honor Mark’s life as well.  Richard felt like it was his duty to give Mark a second chance at life in this way.  It would be his life-long burden and pleasure to live a good life for Mark.

That might seem like an undeserved privilege- to live a good life after you have taken someone’s life but it is indeed a cross to be carried.  If it were me, I could see myself crippled with guilt at the thought that I had taken someone’s life.  The guilt would probably weigh me down to the point of no relief.  Burying yourself with guilt is the easy way to deal with a situation like this.  It is much more difficult to receive the free and easy grace of God and forgive yourself.  Richard says, “You have to forgive yourself or you can never deal with the consequences.”  That made a lot of sense to me.  If you don’t forgive yourself then every time you face a consequence for your crime, such as not having a place to sleep at night once you are out of prison,  that debilitating guilt would creep back in and drag you back into darkness.  Then all the work that God had done in your life would be in vain and that little light would be snuffed out completely.  Perhaps the guilt would be so heavy that it would lead you back to another tragedy, another death.  I’ll take forgiveness over darkness any day.

After 29 years and 6 months in prison, Richard was released on parole probably in large part due to health issues.  Richard’s heart was beginning to fail him and it was costing the state too much money to keep him in prison.

Richard thought that he might die in prison because of his heart condition, but his heart condition ended up being his ticket out.  I find that as a kind of poetic justice; Richard’s heart could no longer be confined to a prison cell.  It is especially satisfying to see him on the outside, healthy, receiving proper medication, and always wearing bright colors.  Richard loves to wear shockingly bright colors of the highlighter palette.  Yes, Richard is a neon sign shining through the darkness flashing “mercy,” “grace,” “forgiveness.

“Do I deserve freedom?  NO!”  was Richard’s response to my husband’s questioning about how he felt now that he was out.    “All I can do is live right and follow the letter of the law and be thankful.”  With every blessing, with every lovely thing in life Richard thinks of Mark and strives towards goodness all the while flashing the neon light of his story.

*Denotes that name has been changed.

Again, not my image but Les Mis quotes just go so perfectly with Richard's story.

Again, not my image but Les Mis quotes just go so perfectly with Richard’s story.

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