Author: sarahswandell

writer, reader, songwriter, pastor, newlywed

Everything Happens for a Reason (again)

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Last week, I came into church and was immediately hugged by a woman who’d just heard of our miscarriage.

“I know you know this,” she said, “but, God has a reason. We just don’t always know what it is.”

It was, of course, her way of trying to offer comfort. It was her way of making sense of the senseless. It was her single lifeline, and as a wise pediatric oncologist once said, “Don’t take away someone’s lifeline.”

So I didn’t say, “No, I don’t ‘know’ that. I don’t believe that. In fact, I have preached against that. Or were you not here that Sunday?”

Instead I said, “Thank you,” and meant it. Because her hug was the more important thing. Her broken heart, displayed on her face, was the real comfort. And we all just take our lifelines where we can.

currently reading: What Was Lost

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What Was Lost

On questioning what happens to your baby when you miscarry:

We can say, then, that an unborn child is a person, not based on biological development, but because we believe that he is loved by the ground of all reality, the Being whose love creates being and grants it to others. Your lost little one was indeed a person, known intimately, loved deeply by our personal God. It doesn’t matter how early or how late we die:

“If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord;
so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.
For to this end Christ died and lived again,
so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.”

Romans 14:8-9

At a funeral, a community of believers gathers to remember a life, to mourn its close, and to proclaim their common hope and trust that whatever life looks like on the other side of that deep river separating life from death, it is life lived in the presence of God. This is the posture we take toward those we have lost early to miscarriage. We remember their lives, our hopes and dreams for them, the ways in which their short existence changed us. We mourn their deaths, the deaths that happened in secret places, in the dark of our wombs. And we proclaim our common hope and trust that although we can’t wrap our imaginations around the details, the God who holds the span of life and death in God’s very hands and even in God’s very body, the God who stands beyond the edges of the universe and who dwells within the heart of the atom — this God holds even tiny lost lives in the hollow of the divine hand, calling them by name, knowing them intimately, making them whole and lovely at last.

pp. 63-64

“If you just trust God…”

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trust

“If you just trust God, everything will work out.”

Is that true?

            Earlier this year, we learned we were expecting our first child. I floated around the house singing “I Get to Be the One.” We thanked God for the new life we got to nurture, and I trusted everything would work out. In fact, I just “knew” it would.

Only a few weeks later I sat bleeding in the ER, as a dear brother in Christ (and doctor) sat beside me, looked at me with sadness, and said, “You may be losing this baby.”

…But I had trusted God!

___________

            All my life I wanted to get married and live happily ever after. The years ticked by, with no relationship The One. Age 27, 28, then 29 – it sounds young, but when you come from Christian circles where everyone’s committed to abstinence until marriage, that’s old! Pastors and friends told me God would give me my heart’s desire – that this romance would happen for me someday.

     But part of me stopped believing it would. I could no longer “know” for sure.

            Then one summer, at a community garden workday, I met a man who thoroughly impressed me: When we met, he stood to shake my hand. (Thank you, U.S. military, for teaching your service members signs of respect.) This man became more than I could have asked for, calling me to be better, calling me to be humbler – and holding me when life brought us pain that couldn’t find words.

…But I hadn’t trusted God!

___________

Trusting God and having things “work out” is not a guarantee. There is no formula.

What I’m trying to trust, instead, is: God is here. I hope all of us can take comfort in a God who is present in any season, both the ones we couldn’t have wished for, and the ones we wouldn’t wish on anyone.

8 types of toxic parenting

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  1. helicopter parents – hover too close
  2. karaoke parents – try too hard to be cool
  3. dry-cleaner parents – drop their kids off for others to raise
  4. volcano parents – erupt over minor issues
  5. drop-out parents – let their kids down
  6. bullied parents – don’t stand up to their kids
  7. groupie parents – treat their kids like rock stars
  8. commando parents – let rules rule over the relationship

I have seen 1, 4, 6, and 8 in person. Mean Girls showed #2. The Nanny Diaries featured #3. I think I’ll be most tempted by 4 & 8.

courtesy of Tim Elmore

Parenting is like driving a car.

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I remember when I first got my driver’s license, I couldn’t imagine how anyone ever falls asleep at the wheel — or, for that matter, eats/texts/fiddles with the radio while driving. There was so much to worry about! So much to keep track of! I would hunch over the wheel, back tense, and give it my undivided attention.

Then I got used to driving and became as drowsy as the rest of them. (A horrible game to play with yourself is to look at the faces of other drivers as you pass them on the other side of the road. They are invariably a) half-asleep, b) actually asleep, or c) looking down at their phone.)

When I imagine staying at home with a newborn and toddler, I imagine it to be full of endless stimuli. How could I ever get bored? There is so much to worry about! So much to keep track of! Parenting is such a new concept — to me, anyway — that I doubt I’ll ever lack for distraction or something to do.

Am I wrong?

anger on the altar

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DSCN3213

Last Sunday in worship, we wrote down what we needed to leave behind, let go of, before we could take the next step Jesus is calling us to. I wrote “anger.” There has been resentment wearing away at my heart, for a couple months, and I know I can’t keep letting it rot in there.

Of course, several times this week — while thinking, while cooking, while showering, while driving — I picked the anger back up again. I told myself, “You left that on the altar. Don’t pick it back up.” But old habits die hard, and thought grooves get worn down in our brain, ’til those neural pathways are hardened arteries.

One thing that helps is doing a breath prayer, which I started right around the time the resentment began. I breathe the word “mer-cy,” one syllable per inhale, the other for ex. So when I tense up in anger, I remember I’ve already left it behind, and breathe through the prayer word instead.

I have about an 8% success rate.