Kate Merrick's Blog, page 4

Grainy

Four years ago. Four years ago I handed this darling firefly off to be prepared for burial. Four years ago I touched her velvet skin for the last time, kissed her perfect forehead. Four years ago I smoothed each little eyelid with my fingertips, aching to see those hazel eyes spark with life. Four years ago the men dressed respectably in dark suits took her away in the black stillness of a winter's night. Four years ago today.

Generally, when this day rolls around I'm in stark denial. I don't get out of bed. I don't brush my teeth. I don't give the darkest day of the year any effort, because I don't know where to start, what to do. Today the heaviness is just as pressing as ever, but I just need to share. Share a teensy bit of her. It's good and right, I think.

Today is a bit different. I dropped Fifi off at school and now I'm sitting in a chic coffee shop in Santa Barbara, pretending to be chic in checkered vans, blazer, and Jesus Culture baseball cap. I have it on so no one sees me, so I can hide under its cover. Hopefully my ugly reading glasses help. I'm supposed to be working, but find it's hard to think of anything but Daisy, and then I found this grainy picture.

This is Daisy at her best. This is Daisy swinging from a rope at her best friend's house, surely swinging off a 300 foot cliff in her mind. This is Daisy with her unbrushed mermaid hair, her favorite striped shirt, freely charging toward adventure. This is Daisy before disease and suffering took her outer beauty and bravado and let her inner beauty shine through. There's something about this photo that makes me want to stare at it for hours: it's not quite clear enough to see the details and so leaves me longing to see and feel the real her.

The graininess of the photo made me think about this life. It's not always clear, rarely satisfying. We get the gist of the picture, but the details lack clarity. And perhaps sometimes I lack lucidity. And then I remembered it's not just me, and just like my ugly reading glasses help me to see more sharply, so the Apostle Paul encourages the Corinthians (and me) with just the same hope:

"We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!"  1 Corinthians 13:12 MSG

And you know what? Even as I type this, some of the heavy lifts. Even just the thought of fog clearing brings me relief. I hope it brings you some too, as I know we all have our heartbreaks, our stumbling, our unseen hurts. Peer through the grainy with me, friends. We will see clearly soon! 

I'm grateful to remember her with you. There is good in the grainy, sort of an expectant sense; brimming with Christmas Eve excitement.

I guess the courage to get up on the darkest day of the year pays off.

Love,

kate

 

Free Stuff

It's that time... When the gifts come out because the baby comes soon. For eighteen months I have been pregnant with this book baby that has been kicking me in the ribs and causing me to eat more chips, chocolate, and cheese than usual. This book pregnancy has given me a deep desire to cradle it in my arms yet set it down and walk away when it keeps me up at night. Ah, a book. It's complicated.

Anyway, let's get down to the free stuff because I'm sitting here with the flu at 5:00 p.m. and it's the first and last time I'll be up today. I think it's worse this year since I'm book pregnant:)

My fun and amazing publisher Thomas Nelson wants to give you gifts as a preorder incentive! If you've bought the book already, visit my book page and redeem your goods. If you haven't, this is a really fun reason to buy it before launch date (March 7th). Feel free to share this with any friends who might need some free stuff right about now. Actually, it's never a bad time for free stuff.

You'll get a group discussion guide so you can get weepy or snarky with your friends over cupcakes or kale, a Spotify playlist of songs I put together that will drag some tears of sorrow and hopefully some fist pumps out of you on the freeway. You get to read the first four chapters immediately, then we leave you hanging on Chapter 5, because really, that's the anchor of the whole book, and my editor's favorite. And finally, my friend @kellyclause (on instagram, check her calendar out, it's gorgeous) hand painted you all a printable little diddy to gaze at, make notecards of, or paste on your mirror to give you a dose of courage.

Now, back to bed.

Love,

kate

 

Join us!

So, I've always been a fan of Texas...the horses, the ranches, the cowboy hats, and seeing as I'm a part-time cowgirl and all, (ok, the deal with that is that I've had a horse a few different times, most recently a gorgeous Buckskin, half Arabian half Quarter horse named Holly. A total looker who tossed her mane with all sass and frass. She belonged to Daisy, actually, but she became my friend after Daisy left her to me. There's more to that story, perhaps another day.)

Back to Texas. I'm headed there this February to speak at IF: Gathering! Britt and I are speaking together Friday night, the 3rd, and the conference goes through the next day. One of the rad things about IF is that there are local gatherings all over the country, even outside of the country! I encourage you to connect with an IF: Local near you. 

Join me and thousands of others in the simplicity of the gospel, learning about the early church, and ask questions of ourselves and our generation like what are we about? Who are we becoming? What would happen if we truly lived out the values of the first believers?

The conference is simulcasted, so you get the opportunity to hear the teachings, worship and stories from Austin, while getting to go deep with sisters in your area. Win, win!

Click here to learn more. 

Lionhearted Advent

This, friends, is Daisy when she was in preschool with her good buddy Dylan. I couldn't resist using this picture since it's Advent, and their rumpled and homemade costumes just really remind me of the family of God: you, me, and all of human history. Sometimes we feel like we are someone of importance, sparkly garland nestled on our heads, plastic crown tipped at a jaunty angle. And yet we are all just dust. Placed when and where God has chosen. But I've a strong hunch He looks at us like I'm looking at these kids I love; with all affection and pride.

I'm sharing a homily I wrote last year for our church's advent gathering. It's dramatic but fun, and I hope It brings you a bit of refreshment as we close in on the craziness of Christmas. I was working on my book at the same time, so it overlaps a bit into a couple chapters, and I even share a little story about what happened when I was writing my "satisfyingly dramatic homily." It's my prayer we get an opportunity for a little reality check, attitude adjustment, or fresh perspective, Enjoy!

 

Christmas. It is not an isolated event, lone in the universe, standing still for its picture to be snapped and kept safe in plastic. No, it’s the culmination of millennia of plans and prophecies and history and small seemingly insignificant events all working together supernaturally, spinning into a symphony with an increasingly recognizable melody; louder and louder it’s climax blinding with the magical angelic display of adoration, and yet at the same moment is earthy and human and lowly. It’s unsafe and wild and cosmic. It’s a grand dichotomy, Christmas.

And Christmas is not only for the privileged, for the glittery, for the well-fed and perfect. The story of Advent is vast and dramatic and mysterious and yet the Master Planner is found to be humble and kind to weary people along the way. How extravagant it all is on a grand scale and yet how intimate—how personally meaningful it is for each of us, for the plain, the simple. 

The story begins so long ago, really at the beginning of time. A time overshadowed by sorrow and regret: the banishing of the First Two from the Garden.The waiting had begun, the yearning for reconciliation already swelling in broken hearts. 
 
In the epic saga of the Coming, God had chosen to tell his story through people. Because He is kind. An unlikely cast of characters, gently, mercifully he placed them in the midst of this most important of stories. The genealogy of Christ that we read in the beginning of the Gospel according to Matthew is like flipping through a frayed family album; pages cracked with old glue, ancient script entitling sepia toned faces and stern expressions. Our fingers flutter over these family pictures, surprised by the unlikely ancestors of Jesus, the human-ness of it all. 

We see Father Abraham, righteous by faith, yet flawed by flesh. There’s Tamar, taken advantage of by evil men and fighting to survive using methods we deem both shocking and distasteful. We recognize Rahab, the heathen prostitute who showed faith in the God she had only heard whispers of. Our eyes crinkle with warmth when we see Ruth, Gentile widow, caring for her mourning Hebrew mother-in-law selflessly, faithfully. Eyebrows lift with recognition of the renowned King David, handsome warrior, famous royalty, and we softly gasp in surprise when our eyes shift to the tragically beautiful woman, David’s humble and broken wife Bathsheba: woman of sorrow, used and grief-stricken. 

Flipping further through the pages filled with distant relatives we’ve never met, our eyes skim over kings, both good and evil. We point out Uzziah from the time of the Prophet Isaiah, Hezekiah, who pleaded with God for miracles. We shoot looks of approval at the picture of Josiah who unearthed the scripture and honored a return to the Word of God in what had become a godless nation. And then the common, the virtually unknown, the regular, every day, salt of the earth folks.  Men like the carpenter Joseph.  

From Abraham to David, David to the Babylonian Exile, from Babylonian Exile to Messiah, Matthew records all the men and 5 of the women Jesus is descended from, the royalty, the commoners. The good, the bad, the broken, the faithful.  A bit like me. A bit like you.

The family album quietly represents many monumental historical events, as well as many seemingly inconsequential workaday lives all linked together, like fibers spun into thread. Each on their own somewhat weak, but woven together, of great value. Royalty and poverty, sin and obedience, all knit together into this epic story of the coming of Messiah. Christ the King, who hears the humble, who mends the broken, descended from those whom His Father had chosen. A tapestry woven from a pile of loose threads.

Isaiah the prophet, speaking with the authority of Almighty God, quenches dry souls with these words: For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace

A child, born to us.  

A child, born of a virgin.

Who was the lucky one? Who was to carry this child? Mary the virgin engaged to Joseph the carpenter. Mary of a nothing town like Nazareth. Not a sinless baby-blue dress wearing blond haired picture of placid perfection, of serene loveliness, smiling with lips softly closed and head tilted just right. No, not her. The Mary I read of in scripture is the one with guts, true grit, and unwavering faith in her Creator, the Master Storyteller.

Mary. Chosen for perhaps the most mysterious and honorable task a human can do. A task incredibly risky, daunting. A task that laid bare and gave up so much when she said “be it done to me according to your word.”

Mary. Who gave up her reputation, destined to be seen in her community as unfaithful to Joseph.

Mary. Who sacrificed her security, knowing she could potentially be left alone without a husband to support her financially or protect her physically.

Mary. Who relinquished her stability, choosing the unknown of what was to come, aware that she could be stoned for what her neighbors and family thought she had done.

The night she pledged her service to the King of Glory, the night she agreed to the blessed yet rugged life, she was proclaimed favored and blessed. 

Mary, favored, blessed, would be traveling at full term several days journey for a government census. Favored and blessed she would birth her firstborn in a barn with only a trough to lay Him in. Mary, favored and blessed would have strange shepherds visit her sacred birthing room, a room filled with the stench of sweat and dung and wool. Mary, favored and blessed would flee a murderous king in the night to protect her treasure, our treasure. Mary, favored and blessed was willing to be a vital part of the narrative, the grand story culminating in flesh, the newborn Jesus.

Mary was blessed to change holy diapers, honored to wash hummus from Jesus’ precious young face. Mary, favored to hold his small soft brown hand, walked Jesus to Torah school.  Mary was faithful as she watched her grown son work humbly as a carpenter, choosing not to take a wife. Mary pondered truth as she believed God’s word, even after 30 years of waiting for her son to reveal his true kingship.

Mary, blessed, favored, honored, and faithful, witnessing her firstborn son die a common criminal’s death on a common wooden cross: despised, rejected, innocent.

Mary lived a lionhearted Advent. From the harrowing adventure beginning with celestial greetings, to the tedious years of Jesus’ boyhood, to the unthinkable pain of following him to the cross, she fearlessly served God. 

In the family tree of King Jesus, God has chosen the unlovely, the stained and tarnished, the struggling, the broken, the abused, the forgotten, the downtrodden. And he has chosen the plain. He has given ordinary women the gift of belonging, and has made the timorous into warriors.  

Let us not rush through Advent, but stop, open our eyes, listen to the love story. Let us press in with bravery while we await the coming, and with worshipful hearts look Heaven full in the face and proclaim “let it be to me according to your Word.”

Give Thanks

Give thanks for the change in the air, the gently drifting leaves, crunching underfoot. For the salt air hanging thick, spraying off big winter swells. Give thanks for turning of tides, comfortable and anticipated or adventuresome and unnerving. Give thanks for the pilgrimage.

Give thanks for the getting outside of ourselves, for the ways we see through eyes of another, the toothless man on the sidewalk staring into his hands, the toughened teenage group-home girl, both drifting on an invisible thread of prospect. Give thanks for the willingness of another to extend a hand deep into the human heart, reaching out, reaching in. Give thanks for courage.

Give thanks for the family we were born into, or perhaps the one who chose us. For the nephew with the milk mustache, the toddler who shows up at the table only in fire engine skivvies. For the heartsick teen, appearing contemplative and prayerful yet secretly texting the object of her affection under the table. Give thanks for the matriarch, lines ever deepening around the lips which still have hundreds of thousands of kisses left in them. For the teary-eyed uncle who, after a few too many, has an 'I love you, man' moment with every member of the family. Give thanks for the Auntie who says 'pah' when speaking of pie, for the cousin who tips back his head and squirts the whip cream directly down the hatch. Give thanks for a sense of humor.

Give thanks for the way a spilled plate of yams and turkey means the dog can whisk it away and the family will still eat. The way we thumb through glossy magazines, eager to try a new recipe, the fortune to cook with any ingredient we choose. Give thanks that overeating is the struggle, not lack, that light and heat are standard, not luxury. Give thanks for plenty.

Give thanks, for the ones around the table who love your face, or for the solitary candlelit dinner you share with the One who made you, we are not alone even if it feels so at times. Give thanks for memories of those whose faces we miss, for the one who dressed like an Indian with her mama, who made pinecone turkeys with real feathers, who is crossed over into an eternity of giving thanks, looking right into the eyes of the Giver. Give thanks for love.

Give thanks.

Love.

 

Where do I start?

Where do I start? Do I start with the soft curls of this little one, damp on my chest as we read stacks of books after the bath? Do I start with the hilarious boy, turning into a man before my very eyes, teasing me for merely being his mother while tickling his baby sister and consuming every calorie on the premises? Or do I start with the quietness and fierce strength of my man, the one on earth who with me tasted death so closely, so sharply?

Do I write about the way the sun continues to rise, the friends who continue to love? The food that once again has flavor, the spiritual roots dug deeper? Do I write of the lifting of my head, or perhaps the way it dips from time to time, tears of sorrow mingling with the ones of mirth?

I don't know. I don't know where to start... But I do know this: it's good to be back, to be sharing in some life with you. It's a new day, it's a new space. I'm looking forward to the freedom to write and ruminate on whatever becomes us. But for today, meet Pheodora Sunshine. Her name is Greek for 'supreme gift', and she came at just the right time. She chases chickens, wears my jewelry, flies like a maniac on our rope swing, likes her nails polished, prefers chocolate in the morning, and says the exact perfect thing at just the right moment. Fifi whispers that we're mermaids together and annihilates every sea creature clinging to the reef for life at low tide.  She's absolute perfection and would have been the apple of Daisy's eye. Can't wait to introduce those two.

Photo Credit: Emily Turner