Tammy Boyd Perlmutter's Blog, page 2

Branded by Love

This kicks off a series of pieces in which I pray the Scripture through writing as a cast member of the story. These were assignments for a spiritual formation course called Transformation Intensive: An Adaptation of the 19th Annotation of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. TI was created by Valerie McIntyre, Pastor of Pastoral Care and Healing, Church of the Resurrection.

Based on Matthew 3:13-17

I’ve walked a long way to be here. I approach the Jordan and there are crowds of people lining the banks on both sides of the river. Some seem confused, some watching with a focused intensity. People are sliding down the banks to line up behind John. As I come closer the milling groups part slightly to let me through like they know John has been waiting for me. Like they know I am the one wearing the sandals he is not worthy to untie. I see the Sadducees and Pharisees above and to the left, whispering and pointing, making the people nervous and skittish.

I slide down the bank barefooted, feeling the reeds run sharply against my skin. The water is already muddy from the churning of feet. I watch a number of fish swim by, herding one another to safety downstream.

I wade over to John and he sees me. Goes still and quiet. He’s not wearing the camel-hair coat he is famous for, it’s discarded on the opposite bank. His skin is rough from the sun, his hair long and tangled and wild. John. My cousin who I haven’t seen for so long. He grabs the back of my neck and pulls my head to his. He greets me with a kiss, a rough embrace.

He lowers himself to a bow, telling me he needs to be baptized by me. I catch his elbow and lift him up to say, “This is the way it needs to be for now.” He clutches my shoulders, then turns me to put his arm behind my back, lowering me into the cold, rushing water. The current is strong, pulling at my feet, my fingers. My face goes under and I catch my breath, the water stinging with its chill. I can’t hear John’s prayer with the river crashing in my ears. He pulls me out of the water and I inhale quickly, deeply, and open my eyes.

I hear a thrashing of wings and feel a gust of wind like my Father’s breath on my face. A dove has landed on my shoulder. It feels heavier than it should, like gravity pressing down on me. The dove spreads its wings like the cherubim on the ark, shadowing my ear as it coos at me.

A ray of warm light spreads across me as I hear my Father’s voice. The dove seems to get even heavier, like a mantle, and my shoulder lowers with the weight. My father speaks aloud, in the hearing of all the people. Even the Sadducees and Pharisees are struck mute on their rock outcrop over the river. The clouds parted and even more sunlight draped on them. A breeze came upon them all, ruffling the surface of the water. I felt something like the crackling energy of lightning flow through my veins as of my father spoke: “You are my beloved Son.” I feel live sparks should be flying off me as my body trembles. This mantle, this call, heavy and weightless, as my father’s voice makes the air quiver with possibility. “With you I am well pleased.” My heart is racing, my body grows hot, and I feel the Spirit rushing through me like a river.

The voice receded, the heavens closed again, but brighter than before. My fingertips are on fire as the energy seems to flow up for my feet. I remember, suddenly, that there are others present and I look around at each face to see if they’ve heard it too. Their eyes are wide, mouths open, looking at me or looking away. I grabbed John and held him. I don’t even remember climbing up the bank to get my clothes. I’m still thrumming with power, my heart swelling enough to feel like it will burst out of my chest.

The hair on the back of my neck is still standing up, and the hair on my arms, heavy with water, is quivering upward. I am filled with deep, strong love, tripled in intensity, expanding my rib cage, prickling my eyes with tears as I absorb it. I am struck still by the weight of this love descending on me. My knees threaten to buckle as pure joy wells up within me, almost uncontainable. My breathing is labored as a permeates my body. My father loves me, approves of me, and is pleased with me. The truth of those words are emblazoned on my heart, I am branded by love.

Image: Flickr: by Waiting for the Word,  Baptism of Christ 10 ,  Creative Commons License , some changes made

Girlchild

She walks away from the trailer parkThe Nobility double-wide,turning into spark and smokeroaring and cracklinglighting her waycasting shadows that hover and slink.She passes the pondthat mixes county water with her grandma's ashes,leaving behind the greenhouse with the windows as jagged and broken as her mama's teeth. The house no longer greennor a housebut only a slanting steel skeleton obscured by vegetationonce cultivatednow consuming.She is walking awayGirl-Scout style,a compass on the inside kind of girlwho knows that true north is as elusive as luck,as far away as her own heart.But she walks anywayawaypast truck stops,hardware stores,dive bars.This girlchild is goinggoingalready gone to the lowest bidder.And when he is goneher heart shakes loose a littlein her ribcage,like shrapnel emerging,sharp like memory,rattling so loudshe wraps her arms around her kneesto keep the sound in and the eyes away.Two more pieces rattle looseand it is the third onethat brings her to,The third one that sets her outthat bears her rescue.The third in a line of womenWho wear scars like badges.This girl is going placessuitcase full of letters tied up in stringlike the twine that holds her heart in place.Letters full of sentences that anchor herto her lineage,sentences full of words imploring her,as only one woman to another woman can,to cut anchor and go.These are the words making her more than an address on an envelope,more than recipientbut voyager, traveler,brave pioneer leaving township,county, state.Getting out,going forth,she precedes the smokeand keeps ahead of the sparks,Leaving embers to waneunseen and unsnuffedlike the girl, like the child, one spark escaped,the one that got away."Girlchild" is a response to Tupelo Hassman's novel of the same name.

New Jersey

We were standing on the shoreAs the Atlantic tide hypnotized meAnd I leaned forward andBackward with the tide.How long will the sea live?I asked my sister, squintingacross the waves asThey crested over and over.She peered down at me as ILooked up and with nofurrowing of brow orstuttering of tongue she answered,As long as fish need a place to live.

The Good Catastrophe

[image error]

This was originally presented at Jesus People USA Covenant Church on Good Friday in 2013.

And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the entrance of the tomb and went away. And Mary Magdalene was there, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the grave.

Matthew 27:59b-61

The two Marys. They had just watched Joseph place Jesus in his own grave. Sitting opposite the grave. In some translations it says that this was a garden. So when we picture this, our minds naturally imagine two women on a park bench surrounded by flora waiting for Jesus to come back to life.

Mark tells us the women were looking on to see where Jesus is laid. Luke writes that the women returned and prepared spices and perfumes. Matthew is the one who tells us the women are just sitting there.

I’m sure from the writer’s perspective it may have appeared as if they were doing nothing. But they weren’t. Mary Magdalene and Mary were most likely crumpled on the ground, holding one another, as they wept. They were sitting there because there was nothing else they could do. They did not have the strength to stand, let alone walk bravely home, while Jesus’s tomb disappeared in the distance behind them.

They weren’t waiting there, expectant with faith, for a front-row seat to the Resurrection. They were waiting there to finish the burial ceremony before the Sabbath passed. It was over. The Son of God was dead.

Jesus spent hundreds of years preparing his followers for his death. In prophecy and parable, he told them. He warned them. But no amount of words prepared them for this. They had given years of their lives to this man, this hope of the world. Jesus had died. Was buried. Betrayed them by his leaving. Their hearts went dark.

This image won’t leave me. These two broken women sitting outside the tomb. It’s too close to reality, too familiar to me. I feel a connection with these women, paralyzed by their grief, with no room in their hearts for hope.

I have lived for months at a time, years even, sitting outside the tomb. My life had come crashing down on me like Atlantic Ocean waves, the deadly rip current pulling me beneath the water, as I thrashed and panicked, thinking, This is it. This is the end. And almost wishing that it was.

I spent two years battling a despondency that threatened to consume me. The last six months of it I spent asking God, ”“Where are you?” “What are you doing? You promised me that all things worked together for good, but this? This is too much. I was collapsed and crumpled outside the tomb, grieving, weary of living in a brutal, pain-wracked, sin-sick world.

All of us have felt that ache of emptiness or loneliness or lostness that forces us to ask, “Why are you not here?”

For some of us, it’s long years of surviving abuse and yet living every day with the damage done.

For others, it’s an addiction, secret and shaming, that leaves us despairing of ever being free.

The death of a friend, a parent, a child.

Job loss. Financial hardship. Failure.

Marriages on the brink, infidelity, separation, and divorce.

A child who lives in your home and yet feels lost to you.

Parenting a special needs child.

The ravages of chronic illness.

The suffocating shadow of depression.

How many of us here are living in this wilderness of waiting? None of us expect to end up sitting outside a tomb believing that our story is over and there is no happy ending for us.

But the tomb has to be there. And we all have to spend some time sitting outside it. It’s where repentance finds us. Where we finally, reluctantly reveal our brokenness. It’s where healing happens.

It’s the place where waiting and wisdom collide.

Without the tomb, none of us would be hurled onto the shore, rescued. Without the tomb, the story would be incomplete and worthless. Without the tomb, we would have no need for a God who overcomes the grave. Without the tomb, there would be no place or reason for resurrection.

Life doesn’t end at the tomb, or even inside the tomb.

The tomb is the pinnacle of the most unlikely of fantasy stories—a man who comes back from the dead because he loves his family so much, he couldn’t bear for them to believe that he would abandon them. He wanted his children to believe that they were worth dying for, and even more, worth defeating death for.

The tomb is a gift that leaves our hearts so desolate that only the resurrection can heal them.

J. R. R. Tolkien created a literary term for this: eucatastrophe, from the Greek meaning good destruction. Destruction with a purpose, a meaning, that brings about an eventual good. He describes eucatastrophe as “ the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears. . . .because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth. The Resurrection was the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest Fairy Story.

“But the ‘consolation’ of fairy-tales has another aspect . . .  the Consolation of the Happy Ending. . . . or more correctly of the good catastrophe. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies universal final defeat. ”

Tolkien’s eucatastrophe is at the heart of the Gospel story, and Jesus gives his followers a rare opportunity to experience the “sudden and miraculous grace” of prophecy fulfilled by the Son of God.

He himself is the good that comes from the catastrophe.

And we have the rare opportunity of living in the aftermath of that good destruction, of living in this grace that is permanent and unchanging, personal and eternal, a story we have been written into, for even though we ourselves experience loss and despair in all our stories, He has overcome the world for us, and He will make our joy complete.

The post The Good Catastrophe appeared first on Tammy Perlmutter.

Whatever Tomb You’re In

Originally presented at Jesus People USA Covenant Church.

John opens Chapter 11 as the distant narrator, telling us that a certain man, Lazarus of Bethany, was ill. We, the readers, are then introduced to this man’s sister Mary, who is known for the extravagant display of anointing the feet of Jesus with oil.

Lazarus has another sister, and the action in this story starts with the sisters sending for Jesus, informing him that the one he loves is ill. To keep the energy flowing, as all good stories must, we are now expecting a deadline, a countdown, a race against time, maybe some sand storms, speeding camels, and shifty nomads to evade.

Jesus brings the narrative to a halt by telling his followers nonchalantly, “This illness does not lead to death.” We breathe a little easier, and the disciples are relieved because they did not have to go back to Judea where certain death awaited them.

Jesus stays two more days and then decides they are going to Judea after all. Apparently, in the prequel to John 11, Jesus was nearly stoned by an angry mob for claiming to be one with God. The disciples are looking at each other like he is delirious with heatstroke. Jesus goes on to say a bunch of stuff about shadows and light and stumbling and sleeping, which I doubt any of the disciples actually heard since they were busy planning their own funerals in their heads.

There’s a location change, a scene change, and probably a costume change since they had been sweating a lot and in close proximity to camels and donkeys and shifty nomads.

Jesus and his entourage show up in Bethany and the greeting is not a pleasant one. Martha meets him before he enters the town to tell him none of this would have happened if he had just come when they asked him to. But, she also tells him, “even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” Jesus answers, “I am the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in me though he die, yet shall he live. Do you believe this?”

Mary enters stage left, and she brings with her a crowd of Jews who had been grieving with them. Mary falls at Jesus’ feet, and she makes the same statement Martha did, “If you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.” There was weeping and disappointment and despair.

They arrive at the tomb together and he tells them to remove the stone. Jesus prays loud enough for everyone to hear him, letting the people know he is doing it for their benefit, not his own, or even Lazarus’. Jesus then calls Lazarus out and the dead man staggers out of his tomb.

His rescue was already in play, before he fell ill, before he died, before he was buried, before he was brought from death to life. His rescue had always been in play.

It is tempting for us to consider Lazarus the protagonist of this story, after all, it is his death that brought them all together and gave him is own chapter in the Bible. But he is not.

This story, this feature, this epic saga is not about Mary and Martha and Lazarus, Thomas the Twin, and tag-along Jews. The lead character will always be God. The rest of them, and the rest of us, merely have supporting roles. We are walk-ons, extras, doing hair and lighting, setting the stage. This does not diminish our involvement or importance in the slightest. Without these elements, these roles, the story could not be told in its magnificent fullness.

It is always about Jesus, in his sovereignty, casting, directing, and producing this larger-than-life drama that we are bit players in.

This story of Lazarus is just like fifty others in the Bible with their tragedy and flawed humanity, tales of love won and love lost, reputations made and reputations ruined, kingdoms built and kingdoms conquered, walls built up and walls brought down.

These stories parallel every aspect of our own lives, mirrors for us to peer into for a glimpse of ourselves. Jesus appears and says, “It’s not about you. It’s about Christ in you, the hope of glory. With every story, we are asked, like Martha was, Do you believe this?

The Israelites spent forty years in the desert crying out for rescue, Joseph endured 13 years as a slave, a victim of devastating betrayal, Daniel in captivity, fasted and mourned for 3 weeks, grieving over the sin of his people, Lazarus died and lay in his tomb for four days.

None of these circumstances were accidents. There was no arbitrary randomness. Although they occurred at fixed points in time and space, these events were in motion for ages before they ever came to pass. The rescue was already in play, for all of them, in every situation. Do you believe this?

We all have those times in our lives when our faith is crushed, and we tell God, “If you had been there, none of this would have happened.” For myself, in the span of seven years I’d lost a pregnancy, a mother, a brother, an uncle, a grandmother, an aunt, a cousin, a church community, friends I trusted, health insurance, and a job, which culminated in an avalanche of bad experiences that threatened to bury me alive.

After C. S. Lewis’s wife, Joy, had died of cancer, he wrote in A Grief Observed, “Not that I am in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about him.”

For me, the sovereignty of God became something to be feared. Since God allowed these terrible things to happen to me, what else would he allow? During this time the one thing I found comfort in was a constant reminder of God’s attributes.

God is good, can never be anything but good, and will only ever be a good God, regardless of the circumstances.

With every loss, setback, and betrayal, when I was believing that sovereignty means cold detachment, I was being asked, “Do you believe? Do you believe that God’s sovereignty is to be rested in and trusted?” Do you believe that God is good, regardless of the circumstances?

Do you believe that he can redeem, rescue, and restore even your situation?

Even you?

Do you believe that he can find you in the desert, deliver you from slavery, restore your nation, raise you from the dead?

Resurrection requires a tomb. There can be no rescue without peril. Restoration without loss would hold no meaning. Redemption requires captivity. Your rescue is already in play and has been since before time began.

God can turn the hearts of kings, cause the sun to stand still, seas to part, water to come out of rocks, pillars of fire to lead people in the desert. Can he not part your seas? Can he not redeem what you have lost? Will he not rescue you from your lions, your Pharaohs, your Philistines, your Potiphar’s wife, your Pharisees, your Pontius Pilates? From faithless friends and watchful enemies?

Does he not heal twisted limbs, bring sight to the blind, lift up little girls from their deathbeds? Does he not restore what the locusts have eaten, empty tombs, and resurrect the dead?

Has he not been planning your rescue from before you were born?

Jesus weeps for you as he wept for Lazarus. His heart is broken for your broken heart. He sees you, in your confusion, your lostness, your anger, your despair.

Whatever tomb you are in right now, he holds it in his own hands and lets that darkness pierce his own heart so that light will shine through his own wounds, and bring you back to life.

He is the provider of loaves and fishes, teller of parables and maker of miracles, the giver of overflowing nets, creator of feet that walk on water and hearts with doors that can be knocked on.

He is your God, your Rescuer, your Redeemer, your Restorer, the One who gives you new names, new lives, new hope.

In Isaiah 58:11-12 we are given a promise:

And the LORD will guide you continually

and satisfy your desire in scorched places

and make your bones strong;

and you shall be like a watered garden,

like a spring of water,

whose waters do not fail.

And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;

you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

you shall be called the repairer of the breach,

the restorer of streets to dwell in. (ESV)

Even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.

Do you believe this?

Is God’s sovereignty a comfort to you?

When have you had trouble believing God is good?

What do you need to believe today?

The post Whatever Tomb You’re In appeared first on Tammy Perlmutter.

Prayer and the Cross of Jesus

This was first presented as a sermon at Jesus People USA Covenant Church.

When Neil asked me to speak on one of the chapters in Michael Casey’s book on prayer, Toward God, I checked out the choices given to me, which came down to two. “The Cross of Jesus Christ,” or “Contemplation.” I didn’t want to be the one to pull the sermon series together for the last chapter, so I was stuck with The Cross. Other, lighter chapters in this book include: “The Gift of Time,” “Pondering the Word,” and “Creating Space for Meditation.” I got the Cross.

One thing I found interesting is the placement of this chapter. It wasn’t the first one. Typically in the evangelical world, difficulty in prayer equals unconfessed sin in your life. That must be the reason you are having trouble connecting with God, why you can’t hear him or feel him or see him moving in your life. What if you don’t yet have a developed sense of sin or conscience or know the definition of integrity? What if you are young in age, or in belief, and haven’t yet been given the gift of discernment? Does that mean you will have a lackluster, ineffective, distant prayer life until you are aware of every area of your life and heart where sin is hidden? Does acute awareness of sin always equal a rich prayer experience?

The Cross for us represents death and grief and suffering and sacrifice. We find ourselves kneeling in the dust, grieving at the foot of it like Mary, we find our own arms shaking with exertion as we pound the nails in with the Roman soldiers, we find our voices a whisper that shudders pain through our body, asking along with the thief, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.” What does this mean for us in prayer?

1. Denial is blindness to danger, not freedom. As human creatures, we have a tendency toward extremes. This is revealed to us in the way we handle our own sin. Picture the cross. On one arm of the cross is Denial. Humans are incredibly susceptible to denial. We have been well-trained in our culture to avoid unpleasantness. We distract ourselves endlessly and often with screens and noise and busyness. Our ability to justify and rationalize our behaviors is second only to our ability to judge and expect the worse of others and their behavior. Regarding sin, Michael Casey wrote: “Denial merely renders its destructive effects invisible to me; this is blindness to danger, not freedom.”

We distract ourselves endlessly and often with screens and noise and busyness.

In Genesis 4:7, God appears to Cain when he is bitter over the fact that his sacrifice did not find favor with God. “The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

The author writes that “Spiritual growth is hastened considerably by our becoming more aware of the reality of sin in our life.” Are you blind to the danger of your sin? Are you avoiding transparency and confession and accountability? Are you driving yourself into a mind- and heart-numbing state of distraction? What sin is crouching at your door right now, scratching at your heart, begging to be let in?

2. Despair destroys, awareness restores. Like a pendulum swinging, we are going all the way out on the other arm of the cross to Despair. This is the opposite extreme of denial. The definition is “to lose all hope or confidence.” You may be so hyper-aware of your sin and shortcomings that you despair of healing and freedom. This is not only a loss of confidence in yourself, but it’s also a loss of confidence in God as a deliverer and rescuer and healer. Despair is self-pity put into action. You are stuck on yourself, your past, your weaknesses, and are rendered ineffective by your need to punish yourself. This is the place in the conversation where the all-too-familiar line “But you don’t know what I’ve done,” is thrown out as a deflection. I don’t need to know what you’ve done. If you have confessed, repented, asked forgiveness, then you are FORGIVEN. End of story. I don’t need to know what you’ve done, because I already know who you are–loved by God.

Despair is self-pity put into action.

“Awareness of sin serves as a generator of prayer.” The despair that comes from the weight of sin you can’t let go of is just another form of pride. The fear and shame and heaviness you feel from past or present sin puts a barrier between you and God. God draws near, we shrink back. Knowledge of our sinfulness is the first stage in our restoration. It’s not despair. It’s knowledge, awareness, conviction. James 5:16: “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”

“My failures do not separate me from God. What causes the breach is my unwillingness to bring my failures into God’s presence. God’s attitude toward my sin is pity, not blame. The awareness of sin does not drive out prayer, but renders it imperative. In exposing our resourcelessness, God draws us toward prayer, and so toward a boundless outpouring of mercy.” Michael Casey

That exposure is not a punishment; it’s an invitation, drawing us toward prayer, toward mercy, toward God. There is more to effective prayer than knowing your sin. Michael Casey sums it up in his title, Toward God. The secret to rich prayer is always moving toward God, sometimes at a run, and sometimes at a crawl, it doesn’t matter if you are leaping over hurdles or struggling on crutches, as long as your direction is toward Him. You can be aware of your sin without giving in to despair over it. Despair disintegrates but awareness generates. Despair pushes away and awareness draws in.

3. Discover delight. If we pull in a little on denial and pull in a little on despair, we come to the center. The perfect balance, right in the middle, in the crux, in the heart, that’s where we’re supposed to live. That meeting place between denial and despair is delight. Our delighting in God and God delighting in us. It’s choosing to believe, and living like you believe, that you are forgiven, restored, loved, and yes, even delighted in. You are rejoiced over with singing. You are celebrated, exulted over. Delighting in God allows you to abide in, dwell in the truth, of who you are in God and who God is for you. The sin is going to be there, but now it’s filtered–by grace–through the heart of Christ. We can’t hear this enough, and we can’t tell this to ourselves enough. This is the truth we need to be living from. The concept of God “delighting” in us can be a hard one to grasp, but Zephaniah said it, so it’s true.

Zephaniah 3:17 (ESV) says: 17 The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

The Lord is in your midst. Not just in the middle of all of you, but right here, in the middle of you. Most of you know my daughter, Phoenix. She’s 11 and she’s on the autism spectrum. [This is the point in the sermon where Phoenix yelled, “I’m also on the iPhone!”] She is exuberant and mischievous, curious and fearless, clever and loud, fast and driven and energetic. [image error]

That meeting place between denial and despair is delight.

That fearlessness and curiosity gets her into a lot of trouble. She has started fires in the microwave, licked things that should not be licked, like silkworms and moss, she has made huge messes on our floor that have still not been removed from the rug in our hallway, knocked on people’s doors at ungodly hours, “reappropriated” things that were not hers, like our next-door neighbor’s welcome mat. She took it from their door and put it in front of her own. Twelve feet away. No fear.

These are only things that happen in our house, the things that happen at school are another story, like the time last year she and a friend sneaked out of line in the hallway while the whole class went up to another room on the 2nd floor. It was a testing week, so the teachers couldn’t use the intercom to locate them. Nobody knew where they were. Phoenix and Jada sauntered back into class TWENTY minutes later like nothing had happened. Where had they been? In the basement. One of their friends told them that there was an auditorium in the basement where the seats were backwards and it was haunted. Phoenix had been talking about it for weeks. She saw her chance and she took it. There was no auditorium and there were no ghosts, but there were a lot of heart palpitations that day.

Phoenix especially liked to visit our friends The Browns who lived down the hall. And by visiting I mean walking into their room, mostly unannounced, and asking them if they’d had any strange dreams recently because she had read on the internet that a lot of people had seen this one guy in their dreams and it was really weird. I was, of course, mortified, by her uncivilized behavior, but it didn’t even faze them. All I have to do is look at Ron with my hands held out in front of me in defeat, shaking my head, and say, “Phoenix . . .” And he will smile and give me that deep chuckle of his and say, “What did my girl do now?“

They don’t care that Phoenix was suspended in the first grade, or puts bugs down her friends’ shirts, or gets really frustrated with her video games. They delight in her. She is equal parts exasperating and endearing, and she is absolutely delighted in. In spite of all these ridiculous, creative, dangerous, quirks, Phoenix is delighted in. Nothing has shown me more clearly or more powerfully what it looks like to be delighted in than the crazy love my friends and neighbors have for my daughter. I have never understood what being delighted in by God truly meant until I had Phoenix.

There are many mornings when I am like, “Please, go to school, and let someone else try to keep you from putting your tongue in a socket for a day.” But when she’s gone I miss her and I sometimes get a little giddy when I go to pick her up because I never know what’s going to happen. One day a few years ago I was despairing of myself and any hope of ever being good enough to really be loved by God, and he shut me down and I will never forget it. He said to me, “See Phoenix? Remember how crazy she made you this morning when she would not listen or sit still or do what you said? Look at her now. She is fascinating and unpredictable and unbelievably lovable. And so are you. That is how I feel about you. I delight in you the way you delight in Phoenix.“

My challenge for you is this: Let yourself believe you are delightful and delighted in. What would your life look like if you believed this and lived from that place?

The post Prayer and the Cross of Jesus appeared first on Tammy Perlmutter.

Create a Tumult in Our Hearts

Years ago I was on an email list for the Bruderhof community. It was mostly a daily devotional from writers like Johann Christoph Arnold. One day there was a poem. But it wasn’t just a poem. It was a prayer. It has become my yearly spring wake-up call. The words wrote themselves onto my heart like scripture, startling me from hibernation with a shiver, reminding me that new life is putting down roots even now. Even now. When the bitter wind took my breath away this morning and ice is still hiding in the shadows of the alleys. Somewhere, the sun is penetrating the soil and the roots are digging deep, so slow it seems like they’ll give up before they make it out. Even now. Some of you are longing for the light. Desperate for a breeze that doesn’t cut and sting. Afraid your timid roots aren’t strong enough to push aside the dirt and debris blocking you from the sun. This is for you.

To Jesus in the Spring

Oh, break the chrysalis of doubt!

Plough up the clods of thick despair

And split the buds of ignorance,

And cleanse the winter-heavy air.

Create a tumult in our hearts!

Drive us to seek what we have lost,

Until the flame of faith again

Has seared us with Thy Pentecost.

Jane Tyson Clement

Tomorrow will be the 19th anniversary of Jane’s death, but she lives on in her poetry and brings life to me every spring.

“As a writer and poet, Clement has been compared with Denise Levertov, Wendell Berry, and Jane Kenyon. Her poems are collected in The Heart’s Necessities, No One Can Stem the Tide, and some of her best short stories in The Secret Flower.” Plough

The post Create a Tumult in Our Hearts appeared first on Tammy Perlmutter.

Sexual Redemption in Community

Nobody can find strength to resist temptation, perseverance in purity, and lasting forgiveness without community. Shepherds, teachers, mentors, leaders: You have people under your care who are engaging in self harm to externalize pain and contemplating suicide to end pain because they are being crushed beneath suffering and sin.

Female sexuality has historically made spiritual communities nervous, and women are now more sexually vulnerable than ever before. Besides exploitation, trafficking, abuse, violence, and rape, women also have an increased exposure to and use of pornography, erotica, sexting, and questionable dating apps. Add all of that to a partner’s absolutely unrealistic expectations of sexual prowess and you end up with a population of women who are confused, ashamed, broken, and addicted.

These same women experience acute loneliness because they’re too embarrassed and afraid to share their struggles with anyone, including (especially) friends and leaders in their churches.

Change the way you talk about sex.

We are further isolated by pastors who bring up pornography in sermons with a caveat: “This is geared more to the men here,” or “Guys, I’m talking to you,” or “Men are naturally visually stimulated so this applies more to them.” I have heard sermons like this all my life. And each time it would push the struggling girls and women a little deeper into the darkness, because obviously, there must be something horribly wrong with a woman who is engaging in sexual sin that is relegated only to men.

Men in churches are given time, space, and resources to confess their failures and victories, to hold one another accountable, and feel supported in their weakness. Women are not. It is a rare church or ministry that offers the same companionship and hope to women who are in bondage and shamed into secrecy.

How can we change the narrative? By starting a new one. One that invites women to be present, known, and loved. Where better to start than in the church? Women are craving judgment-free, compassionate, and empathetic relationships where they can be fully themselves and find sisters who will carry their burden with them as they’re limping toward freedom.

Click the link below to read the rest!!

Sexual Redemption in Community

The post Sexual Redemption in Community appeared first on Tammy Perlmutter.

Navigating the Wilderness: Transformation Through Brokenness

This piece was originally presented as a breakout session at The Upside Down Podcast Gathering in Chicago, September 21-22, 2018. It has more of a talking feel than a reading feel, so please forgive the lack of polish.
 
Identifying the Wilderness


 
When I was 4 I was placed in foster care because my dad had left before I was born and my mom was an alcoholic. There was abuse, loss, trauma, and acute loneliness. I felt lost and abandoned and so, so small. My entire life was a wilderness until I was in my early twenties. I didn’t know how to navigate the desert of my existence. It was invisible to most people around me and I didn’t know any other way to live until I found a home in the church and people began to show me what the wilderness was teaching me, how God was meeting me there, and how he would show me the way out when he was ready to. 
 
I am NOT saying that God makes us suffer so we learn lessons. Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t believe that God takes people from you or gives you a disease so you can draw closer to him. I believe that God is present in the suffering and he will redeem it for your healing and his glory. 
 
We are living in a fallen world which makes it a wilderness in itself. We suffer the effects of that original betrayal every day. There are wildernesses and deserts of our own making through defiant disobedience and lingering sin patterns we refuse to repent of. In the Bible God did use the wilderness and desert as a punishment for disobedience, but he was there with them, giving them sustenance, protection, and direction. 




Some wildernesses are circumstantial. It may be a family crisis. A relationship seemingly broken beyond repair. It could be years of shame oppressing and isolating you. It could be a secret struggle you are terrified to confess. It could be a desert of mental illness and chronic pain. 

The Wilderness As Invitation

Wildernesses abound. They may differ in size and location, but chances are, you will come across one sooner or later. At times it feels like forty years of punishment, but what is important to remember is that God speaks in the wilderness. He has led many people into it for a variety of reasons. The desert, even in its emptiness, can be a place of intimacy, a place of prayer, a place of temptation, and victory. 

Jenny Phillips writes, “The wilderness has many functions. It serves as a place of barrenness and hunger, source of nourishment from God, a location for God’s testing and revelation, and a context for the transformation for God’s people.” Maybe some of us hear him better in the desert. 

Read the rest over at The Mudroom!

The post Navigating the Wilderness: Transformation Through Brokenness appeared first on Tammy Perlmutter.

Deeply Rooted is Coming Up!

[image error]
Friday, November 9 ~ Saturday, November 10
Wilson Abbey
Chicago

In 2015 my friend Joy Williams and I started Deeply Rooted: A Gathering in Chicago. It’s a worship experience for women that includes spoken-word poetry, teaching, and workshops in 3 tracks: Social Justice, Faith, and Art. We invite local women to speak who are pastors, activists, writers, professors, poets. This November 9-10 will our SEVENTH gathering!!! 

We bring women together because we need the fellowship, challenge, and encouragement, and suspect other women are longing for that too. Women’s conferences charge exorbitant amounts for registration, and that doesn’t include food and housing. Many of us don’t have the money or the time to take off work to travel. We wanted something local and affordable so we created it ourselves. 

We even have a pay-what-you-can option and scholarships for those experiencing financial hardships. We want everyone who wants to come to be able to. We’re sponsored by Wilson Abbey who offer the space and Jesus People USA Covenant Church who provide the people who do sound, photography, registration, social media, event design, video, lights, worship, graphic design, and of course, the food!

Most of us have been acquainted with emptiness at some point. It may be from a breakup, a severed friendship, grief over a loved one’s death, despair brought on by depression, job loss, chronic pain, physical or emotional trauma, and major disappointments. None of us are alone in these experiences but, in the moment, we feel certain we are.
 
Some of us may even long for emptiness when our hearts and minds are fragmented and exhausted, when our lives are crowded by expectation, need, fear, and anxiety. We can’t shut our thoughts down, can’t quiet them, can’t escape them. We feel imprisoned by our own brains. Our dreams shrivel.
 
That empty ache can be a warning that God is being squeezed out of us, that the Holy Spirit in us is being crushed under care and worry. Driven to distraction, we can’t quiet ourselves enough to hear Jesus speaking to our hearts, inviting us to surrender, inviting us to meet him in a place apart.
 
What if the emptiness is an invitation?
 
When I think of the word empty, the image that comes to mind is open hands. There are times when we feel like we have nothing to offer God, our friends, our boss, our family, our ministry. It’s a glass half empty/half full situation. What if those empty hands are telling us that we can empty ourselves of comparison, shame, anger, envy, guilt? What if Jesus is calling us to empty ourselves in order to fit in more of him?
 
Augustine put it like this, “My soul is like a house, small for you to enter, but I pray you to enlarge it. It is in ruins, but I ask you to remake it. It contains much that you will not be pleased to see: this I know and do not hide. But who is to rid it of these things? There is no one but you.”

Augustine also said, “God gives where he finds empty hands.”
 
We’re gathering women together to acknowledge and talk about the emptiness we have in common and to challenge one another to dig deep and empty ourselves so that Christ has more room in our hearts. There must be more of him and less of us. Let’s learn how to receive. Let’s get empty for Jesus.


























 
Join us in Chicago for spoken-word poetry, workshops, worship, teaching, art, and fellowship!

Friday night: Poet Sarah Giove and speaker Chi Chi Okwu, worship, dessert reception.

Saturday: Itohan Omolere will be our spoken-word poet and Tracey Bianchi  will be speaking. Diana Shiflett will be leading a workshop on spiritual formation. We will be having 3 workshop tracks: Social Justice, Faith, and Art. (The Illustrated Faith workshop has a $10 supply fee.)

Registration is $50 or pay what you can. Scholarships will be available as well.

The ticket price includes 3 speaker sessions, 2 workshops, and the dessert reception on Friday night. The catered lunch with speakers is $12.

The post Deeply Rooted is Coming Up! appeared first on Tammy Perlmutter.