A Mother's Day letter from an aborted child

Facebook posts abound: “Happy mother’s day, Mom!” or “You’re the best mother ever!” Hallmark cards with messages in sparkles and pink, a dozen roses (alive, mostly), out to lunch and ice cream or a picnic at noon.

On Mother’s Day, we honor our mothers, and this is blessed.

But there are thousands of mothers who will never receive the flowers, the cards, the last-minute texts, the breakfast in in bed. They will never feel the hugs around their neck or the kisses on their cheek. They had a child—they had many children, perhaps, of their own bodies and souls—and yet, today will pass with not a single voice wishing them a happy mother’s day.

Why?

Because their children were aborted.

But these blessed women are mothers, too, they carried and they bore, and on this day, they need their child’s love as well.

This is for the forgotten mothers, the secret ones, who are nonetheless known and cherished for eternity.

Dear Mom,

I love you.

I’m all right now; the pain is over; it did not last long. It is beautiful here, where I am now: I am home.

Some hate you for your choice, but Mom, I love you. You held me and thought of me and you gave me a home on this earth, if even for just a little while; I am so sorry you felt you had no other choice but to let me go. So much of your life changed because of me—the tears that burned when no one saw, the endless nights of nightmares and demons mocking, the angry words and the accusations and the fear, the memory of the hour, the minute of my passing—you remember it, when your throat choked and  pitch blackness descended, and you wondered, “Oh my God, what have I done?”

And then, once I was sent to this beautiful place, though the pain was over for me, it had only just begun for you. The physical pain that racked your body, the images of me always in front of your eyes no matter where you turned, the people who you tried to reach out to but who only spat in your face: “Murderer!” 

I am so sorry. I am sorry for the people who told you that you were worthless, that you couldn’t be loved, that what you did—it was unforgivable.

It isn’t, Mom.

I forgive you.

The One here forgives you.

No matter what anyone else says, you are still beautiful, your life has so much purpose, there is so much to live for. There are hundreds you have blessed and touched with your grace, dozens who you have helped redeem out of darkness, so much truth you have spoken and burdens you have lifted with your touch and your love.

And the loss of me only means your life has even more meaning, not less, because of the way your soul was clawed, the way you could no longer see the stars at night, the way you wondered if it had always been like this, the pain.

Perhaps you only dreamed of joy, of innocence, you thought.

But you didn’t dream, Mom. It is real. I know, because there is joy here. You in the Shadowlands can still feel it, in the breath of evening wind, the sound of a mourning dove. It comes and goes, the joy, but don’t be afraid: it will always be sent back to you. It will return again and again until the day you die—the day you come home to me or leave me forever—because it is a message from the One who is here—that you are still beautiful.

There is still joy, there is still faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is your love.

And so, when you see the smiles of a child, how they toddle and trip and smear jelly on their face with dirty hands—please don’t cry. That child isn’t me, but never forget: I am as beautiful as those children, and you are still my mother, and I know you love me.

So today, on Mother’s Day, when you can’t get away from mother—mother—mother—so many children for so many mothers—and loss that feeds on your soul—and you want to escape, forget, die—please make it stop, make this world stop spinning, let me take one breath—and it is too much for you, remember one thing, Mom: there is always love.

Love is the game changer.

And I love you.

And so does the One here.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

Voice of the divine in a bareback ride

Off to the west, thunder and lightning, but try as it might, the clouds could not fill up the sky with gray. In South Dakota, there is always more sky.

Today was the third afternoon of my bridleless experiment, riding without neckrope, sticks, whips, or anything but myself and my horse; I’d committed to ten rides in a row of this to see if bridleless long term is possible or should stay closed in the realm of the dreamers.

Maybe I’d keep the bridle off for a month. Maybe the summer. Maybe forever. I wouldn’t put any limits on what the Lord wanted me to do.

We face the west, watch the lightning, and Maia snorts into rain-wet wind. Why am I here, Lord? Why do I ride? What am I missing that is beyond just reins and saddles, trot and canter, oat hay and brome grass? There is more—I know there is—there is a reason we long to ride, to be united with the power and the beauty and the sound of hoofbeats in summer grass.

There is more than one reason, actually, but today, there is a specific one: I want you to hear My voice, He says.

And so I listen. And Maia and I set off again, and suddenly, thoughts flood through my mind—sit up taller, look ahead now—yes! and breathe and breathe and breathe. Maia loosens, relaxes, and in just a few minutes, we had our breakthrough: long and low at the walk, stretching, forward, softly bent, and utterly, completely bridleless. I haven't been able to reach that state of beauty on my own. Ever.

In itself, this is not new—to walk with God, to converse about my day and yesterday’s breakfast and the e-mail I’m supposed to send by 3 p.m.—but this is different, now, a God-guided horse training. I haven’t read about that in my books.

But do you know what this is?

This is hope.

"She was, for the first few moments, fearful of her own lack of skill [to ride Tsornin bridleless], and of the strength of the big horse, but she found they understood each other… She felt almost uneasy that it was too simple, that she understood too readily. But she was too caught up in the beauty of it to wish to doubt it long."
~The Blue Sword

When I fly above the clouds

Flying above the clouds is, I think, something like heaven. Under the clouds is the gray and the rain and the sleet and the snow, smog and car horns, barking dogs and slamming doors; confusion, tears, and we see only dimly through the fog. That is our lives, right now—sometimes the sun tears through the clouds in ransomed glory and we remember, for a moment, what it is to have the sunlight on our face—but for now, we are under the clouds.

We go through lives clinging to those faded threads of glory that trickle through the clouds, and we seek to gather and weave them into things of beauty, to cover others with their peace and the name of Yahweh that is written on each strand.

That is when I think of when I fly. Hurtling forward through winter gray, the scream of engines and ears popping, blinded by a fog of clouds for seeming eternity—then! Ripped through the top to a sun of beauty that blinds and ground made of clouds bleached white as a wedding dress, blue oceaned sky.

And to think—this was always here, even on the darkest days below. The sun always was here, the clouds that glitter always here, the land we were searching for always here, though we did not always remember. Heaven always sends itself down to the dark kingdom of man, the sun does shine, and someday we will see.

When I die, I am not afraid, not for a moment, because I will break through the clouds and see the Son in heartbreaking glory and whisper yes, I know You, I have already seen Your face, because You shone on me when I was not yet above the clouds.

When you've lost your story

Deep within our hearts is an aching longing and desire. It is sad to me how little such longing is spoken of; somehow, it seems wrong or frivolous, yet it is a crucial part of kingdom redemption. This desire is endless longing for a better land, endless aching that you were not meant for this country—an aching that drives you to redeem it, to change it, and to make it a little more like home. We will never quite get there, never "quite get in," as C.S. Lewis says, for we know that ultimately sin runs too deep in creation and can only be removed by having a new heavens and new earth. But until that time, we keep redeeming the land in beauty and glory and in our war against darkness.

I feel I need to defend desire, and it is devastating to me that I need to do so. We have learned to destroy our desire, to hide our heart, instead of guarding it fiercely as the wellspring of life and remembering that true desire may be one of the strongest pulls of the holy within our soul.

Desire is feeling so much longing—the longing you feel when you are supremely happy and yet then aching for the eternal. It is the perfect longing when you see the total glory of this world and the incredible magic in it and love it a thousand times more than you ever did before, yet simultaneously feel your heart is being ripped out for the truer land, the clearer Narnia, the redeemed land where that magic would be made perfect:

When I attempted, a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends or as the landscape loses the celestial light...You know what I mean. For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. (~C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory)

That desire is the reality behind every storybook and every fairy tale. Where do we get the ideas for those places, those lands, those adventures? The desire for More, for adventure and battle, heroism and beauty, and a depth so deep it moves beyond all words cannot just come from within us; we know it is true, somewhere, in some world. It must be rooted in reality, as the feel of it is far closer to memory than to make believe, and we are searching for it with every breath we take. We find it in our world, though dimly, though one day those who have lived in Christ’s glory will see it face to face.

Once, I was snowshoeing through my grandparents’ woods by myself. The flakes seemed the size of cotton balls, eternally silent falling, catching on my eyelashes; it was quiet and beautiful and Christmas Eve. The beauty was so intense, the longing and desire to be within that life I always longed to live so strong, I couldn't speak or even think, and all I could grasp was that it looked just like what I thought Narnia should.

And then, I realized, it was—it is. This is Narnia. That is what I sense sometimes, and this is why people are so drawn to magic and fairy tales and unicorns and fantasy, for it strikes a part of us we think isn’t “real”; we think magic isn't a part of this world, but it is. That is why we love the fairy tales, and that is why we love Narnia—because it reminds us of us—of home—of the story we left but once we knew. Because there is magic in this world, there is something so much deeper; there are miracles and true love and mountains and sunsets and families and dreams that come true. It is truly magic, it is another dimension, there is storybook adventure here in this world, but we close our minds to the dimension of adventure and magic, and we do not see it.

I love Narnia because I love the Narnian dimension of this world. We do not have to search for Narnia and magic and adventure any longer, for it is here, and in the new heavens and earth, it will be perfected; it will truly be magic. Now I see as in a mirror dimly, but then, face to face. I feel wisps of the magic brushing by me, of what life is supposed to be like and was like before we fell, before we lost our story, and what it will be like at the end of time.

Windchimes in the night

“I’m not ready to die.”

In the glow of my nightstand clock blinking 11:32 p.m., I set down the purple pen and the bedside notepaper kept there to record thoughts and images and prayers that flit at the edges of consciousness, appearing only in the filmy gauze between awake and asleep. I don’t want to forget those words, because they often contain truths I don’t realize when the sun is up and there are friends and bills and books. But just before I fall asleep, I drop my guard for just long enough to, sometimes, hear my spirit like windchimes in the night.

And tonight, I realize I am not ready to die, which means I am not truly living.

An hour later, my flowered sheets are nearly ripped off my bed with continual tossing and my Bible lies open to Psalm 61 and outside, a blizzard sets more snow on top of 7” already fallen.
And if I can rouse myself from the trance of what’s wrong to find something stable in this world, something either awake or asleep and not this place of in between, perhaps I will be all right. The snow is falling harder now, at 12:43 a.m., and as a child on Christmas morning I need to be out in it, within the beauty I see. Or within its war, or pain, or fighting, or longing, I don’t know.
I unlock the sliding door, push back the curtain (soundless, now, with roommates asleep), and without thinking, abandon my socks in a heap on the carpet.

Outside. The purple sky is a halo to the glittered white world; if I am trying to be asleep, I can pretend I’m Alice down the rabbit hole, but if I want to be awake, then it is just city lights on city clouds with smog, sometimes, and sirens.

The patio soaks cold through my bare feet, but just wet, not snow, and in one more step, I am barefoot in the storm. The snow over my feet is not as cold as expected; it wakes me from my fog to focus on one thing: ice, slush, April, and what it is to stand in your pajamas barefoot in the snow in your apartment by County Road D.

I wait to hear from God, in the snow, as if somehow it is more holy to be there. And in a way, perhaps it is: it is more holy because I can hear. In the parking lot are seven lampstands, 23 entombed cars. I feel snow turning to ice water under my toes and wonder how many millions of snowflakes I have just melted by standing there; each one unique, they say, and I have destroyed them. And the wind blows my hair from its braid, and I wait for God’s voice.

Nothing.

And the silence is beautiful.

There is no less of God in silence than there is in words; there is no less beauty in mystery as there is when all is known. The grass withers, the flowers fade, not one sparrow drops apart from Him, and are they not all clothed more beautifully than ye?

And God does speak.

Because as ten trillion million snowflakes pour from the sky in sunbeams of snow and a thousand land in my hair and my hands and on bare feet and I behold infinity, I hear Him say, “This is how much I love you.”

Standing barefoot in the snow is my small act of rebellion against a normal life. Pathetic, vulnerable, alone, and not enough, but tonight, at 12:43 a.m., it’s all I can do.

And at the end of my path from bed to snow perhaps I’ve walked the way of God.

The freedom experiment (and a coconut on the fridge)

I have a coconut sitting on top of my refrigerator right now. I’m not really sure what to do with it. One of my friends told me to hit it with a hammer, and another suggested a saw and screwdriver and drain out the milk.

I was thinking more along the lines of dynamite.

But regardless of how I actually manage to eat the thing, it’s actually indicative of a much larger part of a journey I am on: the quest to find my boundaries, the edge of the box, the brink of heresy, and to move beyond. To discover what rules I live by and to test them to the utmost as to whether they are indeed the Lord’s rules… or if they are my own.

The desire is to cultivate in myself a radical freedom; in a way, it is the freedom experiment. Albert Camus said it best in that, “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” As a follower in the most radical Man who ever lived, I want my existence to be an act of rebellion. A revolution against all that holds us hostage and which we have been set free from, and what He came to do: “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

And it starts with a coconut.

The freedom experiment began small enough: every time I went grocery shopping, I bought a food I’d never bought before and, preferably, had no idea what to do with. I found myself with the most bizarre vegetables you’d ever seen (even the cashier didn’t know what they were), mushrooms with unpronounceable names, and, most recently, a coconut.

I did it because I needed to break out of the box I’d been living in regarding food and my habits therein; there was so much life to be lived even in as forgotten a place as the grocery store aisles, and I was going to find it.

But then, the freedom experiment grew.

Now, I examine everything—not just food, but theology, schedules, conversations, relationships, finances.  When I come upon something from which I shrink back, I ask, “Why? What rule is that, who said that? Is it the Lord? If not, why am I giving it power?” I write down my answer, I write down a way to break that boundary, to push my limits. In every area, I look for the edge of my comfort zone and seek to find the life beyond it. (So that way, when I’m the only girl in a gym with a dozen sweaty men mostly twice my size, and we’re all practicing wrestling and jiu jitsu and kickboxing and how to choke each other until we black out in my quest for me to get beyond my comfort zone—well, I remind myself that the terror is helping me grow.)

This is a kingdom life, for as my dad told me this afternoon: “Risk is overrated.” If I am living a Romans Road gospel—a gospel of John 3:16 and nothing else—then risk is a great enemy. But if instead, I am living in the kingdom of God, risk is overrated; that life has far less to do with sin management than it does with the glory, will, life, battle, and beauty of God Himself and His kingdom—then my life is one of exploration and adventure. This is the kingdom; live in its entirety. Do not be so afraid of sin or error that you never seek truth; never fear being wrong more than you fear not finding what’s right.

Therein was the freedom experiment. Who said I couldn’t learn pole dancing? Where was that in the Bible? An unspoken rule I didn’t need to adhere to. So I took a workshop and met some wonderful women. Why did I not want to watch a horror movie? There were far more graphically evil scenes in my beloved Scripture. I let go of my prejudice. Why didn’t I confront my friend on a serious relationship issue? Because I usually wasn’t that abrupt; another rule of, “Be nice… too nice”—a rule I was clearly not intended to live by. So I confronted my friend and broke it.

And I took martial arts by myself, decided to move halfway across the country, trained horses with previously taboo methods, read books I never would’ve touched, ate raw cookie dough at 11 o’clock at night. I became more confrontational and more reconciliatory, tried beer and alcohol and wine, sought out untraditional spirituality, changed my schedule radically, learned about sex, and told people to their face that they were dead wrong. I went to a bar, changed my wardrobe, prayed with a total stranger, wrote down my dreams from the night before, started my business, wrote this blog post. I have become more angry, more joyful, hate more, love more, pray more… live more.

And every time I find the edge of my comfort zone, I find the rule or fear or belief keeping me there, and I pray over it, and I seek whether or not it is a stronghold that should be broken for me, a rule I was never meant to live under, a burden I was not supposed to bear, or if it is truly a grace to me, my Lord, and others, and should be kept.

The freedom experiment seeks a radical freedom, a radical grace.

But most of all, it seeks a radical God.

Recent encounters forced me to confront my own version of heresy in which I locked Him in a box instead of embodying what one of my friends says: the truth is endless. I was haunted by the C.S. Lewis quote, “Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like.’” If we are finite, and He is infinite; if we never are uncomfortable with who He is, it means we have choked Adonai Elohim down to a small box roughly the size of our comfort zone.

So I listen to preachers I previously dismissed and read theology books I previously tossed aside, studying belief systems I used to scorn and philosophies I’d thought foolish, always seeking out whatever I believe to be wrong about the Lord and His kingdom to ask whether it is truly unscriptural or it is only my own ignorance that rejects it. And far from bringing me further from my Lord, it drives me so much deeper into His love and Word and law.

I don’t do the freedom experiment because I am particularly brave, because I am particularly radical. I do it because I am not. Because above all, I wish to live only by the rules my King has made, and no others, and there is no greater task than for me to seek every corner of His kingdom and the abundant life He created me for, as I will be doing for all eternity.

When airports are better than convents on Pluto

You know it’s going to be an epic day when you actually go to Caribou Coffee like a normal human being. Not as the token “here, I spent $3 so I can use your Internet for the next 7 hours straight while I see 3 shifts of workers come and go and pretend I’m homeless,” but real live, “I woke up at 5 a.m. and am getting coffee like the elite urban socialite I am while drinking it in my snazzy car on my way to my awesome life.”

It’s a truly empowering feeling.

Actually, if I were the Instagraming type, I’d have made my roommate photograph-and-photo-filter the occasion with her plaid-backed iPhone for the world to see, but I don’t really see the point of documenting my eating habits like some sort of exotic zoo animal: “Here sits college graduatus adventurous, thriving in her native habitat on the addictive, mind-altering drink of her people.”

Not something to be proud of.

But we only went to Caribou because we decided an audacious day needed to start with a scandalously expensive coffee, and with a quick hug to my roommate and toss of the empty almond latte container into the garbage, I passed through sliding doors into yet another adventure—the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport on my trip to Orlando. Though my flight didn’t leave until 2:56 p.m., I was walking through the doors at 7:14 in the morning due to my roommate’s work schedule, which meant I was set for one of the best days I could remember in a long while:
Reading. All day. Reading. All. Day.

Seriously, this was going to be incredible.

But first, I had to get to my gate. Happily, my roommate and I couldn’t remember which terminal I was supposed to be in, so we obviously went to the wrong one (in accordance with the 50-50-90 rule: if you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong), which meant I was able to embark on the glorious adventure of wandering about, finding the Light Rail, riding it the wrong way, turning around and riding it back (sneaking about hoping no conductor would ask about the ticket I was then supposed to have by riding the wrong way into the city, while preparing a long defensive speech in my mind in case he did), nearly walking into a glass door (not my fault, obviously, as it wasn’t well marked), going up the wrong escalator, riding it back down, and finally arriving at my correct terminal.

Apparently the coffee hadn’t particularly helped me wake up.

But it didn’t matter, because after the Light Rail I had come to one of the best things an airport has ever invented: the moving sidewalk. Seriously, it’s like having seven league boots. Forget the fact that walking on my own power would be all healthy and good exercise and whatever, because if you have the choice between exercising and being super awesome magical, I’m totally going with super awesome magical. So I pounded along on that sidewalk, the only person on the entire thing, no one to slow down my flight, reveling in the fact that every step whooshed me an extra 10 feet down the hall like a superwoman.

The worst part, of course, was getting off, because I’ve never quite gotten over my little girl 5-year-old fear that I’d get sucked under the conveyer belt or trip or not coordinate all my steps right and fall in a disastrous heap, even despite the helpful disembodied voice shouting overhead, “WARNING! YOU ARE COMING TO THE END OF THE SIDEWALK! WARNING!” I always hated that voice. It was sort of like someone saying, haha, so sad, no more magic for you.

Killjoy.

But even with magical powers stolen from me when I step off (barely), I continue on. At 7:32 a.m., there’s not a single person in the security line, so after I strip off my coat and my shoes and my cell phone and my purse and my one-quart bag of carefully measured liquids and whatever other murderous items I have in my purse, I start a lively chat with all the TSA agents within earshot. How are you? Is it always this quiet? How long have you been here? Isn’t this fun? And we chat and talk and laugh and I proclaim that my flight isn’t leaving for nearly eight hours. Eight hours! I crow. And then another five hours to my final destination! And I brought five books! Five! And my Nook! And my Bible! This is bliss.

The blonde TSA agent who’d brushed the dirt off my jeans a minute earlier stared at me open mouthed, probably considering whether she should shuttle me through the security check again. Clearly something was wrong with me mentally. Don’t you want to look around? Go shopping? You could try the overlook in the other terminal. You couldn’t possibly want to sit in that seat at the gate for the next eight hours.

Oh, yes I could. Just you watch.

And two hours later, I’m doing exactly that. The seat beside me is strewn with the evidence—one teal pen nearly dry and another blue pen not so dry and my Nook turned on to one book of the Bible and my travel Bible opened to another, then the journal lying smashed on its face full of scribbles a few inches away while The Omega Conspiracy lies staring up at me in my lap, and the page protector full of sticky flags used and reused since freshman year of college four years ago with a half-eaten apple on the ground and my feet dangling over the armrest as I sit propped to the side. And no one knew me! No one would talk to me or bother me and my phone is something King Tut would’ve used so no one will text or call and I can’t check Facebook, and it’s basically like living in a convent right in the middle of Minnesota (even better than the one I’d often threatened to start on Pluto).

And there were still 10 hours of reading to go.

One week later, I walked back into the MSP airport, Hubert Humphrey Terminal, not even burned from the Orlando sun, having satisfactorily completed fully four of the five books brought along (all 374 pages of The Hunger Games read in one fell swoop) and plowed well into the fifth. My brain had more information than it could hold, I’d drained two pens dry, and life was very, very good.

And within hours of returning to my apartment, I was tempted to start at least another, oh, three or four books.

Which is why I’ll have to go on another flight sometime soon.