Retrieve Lament: a mourning story from Brian Murphy

Each year during Holy Week, I ask friends to share a mourning story from their own life as a way to help us see Christ in the midst of suffering. My husband Brian tells today's story. For twenty-five years I've been lucky enough to walk with him in his journey to become more like Christ and more like his true self. One of the things I love most about him is the way he pursues and savors friendship.  I've learned so much from him about the vulnerability it takes to keep loving people - even after loss.  I hope you will be encouraged, too.

Kansas City, October 2011

I have said too many goodbyes for my liking. Too many people who were important to me have died. Too many friend and family relationships are carried along over too far a distance. Goodbyes feel like lament to me. Lament over something that I have never really experienced in full, but long to know deeply, richly.

We moved to Austin almost five years ago. We left the hometown where we were born, met, married, made friends, and lived in beautiful closeness to almost all of our family, grandparents, parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. Most of our drives for Thanksgiving dinner, family celebrations, and ad hoc backyard bonfires were less than 28 minutes. Now most are over 28 hours.

When I think about friendships in Austin, I always think of two of my first Texas friends: Trey Sellstrom and Dick Chote. Before we barely knew each other, these men joined me in serving other men who were walking through emotional, sexual, or relational wounds and brokenness. Together we prayed regularly for men to be healed and made whole.

You need good friends when you walk with people through their most tender and hard places. Trey, Dick, and I became good friends, brothers really.

Then they died.

“Passed away”, “entered into their rest” we pastors say, but death doesn’t feel so kind. It felt to me like they were torn away, here one day and gone the next -- figuratively and literally.

Shortly after we arrived in Austin, Trey and Cheryl, Dick and Eleanor, and Tamara and I attended an eight-day training in Kansas City. The request went something like this, “Trey and Cheryl, I’d like you to travel to a place you’ve never been with a guy you’ve barely met to help start a ministry that you’ve never heard of. What do you think?”

The Sellstroms and the Chotes came with us to Kansas City.

One night at the training, I asked Trey if he’d like to take a ride with me to the local convenience store. He asked if he could get Cheryl. I got Tamara, and we all piled into a car like four freedom-drunk teenagers sneaking out after curfew. We laughed until we cried, got lost several times and became friends. I’ll never forget that night for two reasons. 

It was the first time that I saw how much Trey loved Cheryl. He knew that we were about to have a memorable moment, and he wanted to share it with her.

The second thing is that when I was new to Austin – lonely, unsure and in desperate need of some friends - Trey jumped on a plane, flew to Kansas City, and became my friend.

For two years Trey and I enjoyed life together.  We played poker, prayed, and worried over our kids together. I was supposed to play golf with Trey on a Monday. He had a heart attack on the Saturday before that, and I said goodbye for the last time in his hospital room on a Friday night one week later.

Dick, Eleanor and Cheryl praying for some of our visiting NY friends

Dick was older than me. He had recently retired when he and Eleanor came to Kansas City with us. I have many fond memories of Dick from that week. The most vivid is, after Tamara had prayed through a particularly shameful wound, she returned to her seat, weeping. I was praying with people on the other side of the room but had noticed that she was in pain, and I felt trapped and unable to help. I glanced around the room to see where she had gone, and saw that that Dick and Eleanor were ministering to Tamara.  They embraced her, extending the sort of tenderness and kindness that is like salve to a sore. In that moment, we knew we had become family.

The other memory is of all of us - Trey and Cheryl and their daughters, Dick and Eleanor, Tamara and me – floating down the Blanco River on inner tubes. We had so much fun, laughing as we twisted and turned through June sunlight. Dick looked so young and full of life.

A couple of months later, Dick told us he had cancer. We were gathered together in the church office after another evening of listening and praying together for wounded and broken people.  Looking back, sometimes it feels ironic, that while we were praying together for people to come back to life - emotionally and spiritually - Dick was actually dying, physically.  

Dick continued to help lead those small groups of wounded men up until a few months before he died.  I’ll never forget the night the people he had been praying for became the ones praying for Dick.  He stood in the center of the room, while men and women placed their hands on his shoulders and his head, now bald from chemo.  We had hoped he would be healed, but instead he died.

It’s not easy for us pastors, especially me, to make close friends. Trey and Dick always encouraged me to be myself. They had no trouble respecting and loving me as a pastor, a brother, and a friend. I’ll always love them for it.

I have often reminded people who have lost loved ones that we are lucky to have had any time with them. I suppose that’s true at some level, but sometimes I wonder. Sometimes it feels like the pain of losing people to death is greater than the joy of friendship, and it’s tempting to guard our hearts from loving again.

Tamara and I are preparing to move once more this summer. It’s a trade - closer to friends and family in one place at the expense of the nearness of family and friends in another.  I wish I didn’t have to choose between one group or the other. I long for an existence when space, time, and death are barriers no more.

I long for resurrection life.

My consolation while I wait is that Jesus understands our loneliness and homesickness and grief. He left his home, became humble unto death, and felt the sting of abandonment in order to prepare a place for us where space, death, and time will no longer be barriers to life. He is preparing a place where I will not only spend forever in closeness to him, but also to all my family and friends.

In a few weeks I will be ordained as a Priest in the Anglican Church. I wish Trey and Dick could see this in person. They prayed regularly for me, encouraged me, and blessed me with words that affirmed my calling and purpose. All of the friends I have made at Christ Church have been instrumental in my ordination process. The parish has prayed for me, discerned with me, and celebrated each step of the journey towards ordination. My new friends in Connecticut at Church of the Apostles have prayed for me, blessed me with kindness, and have honored me by inviting me to serve alongside them as their Rector.

This is also my consolation.

Because of the love we share together in Christ our earthly goodbyes, although painful and hard, also bring with them the reality of a joy that is already here, even though not-yet perfect. We're learning that the sadness of goodbyes is consoled by the happiness of meeting new friends. Friends like Dick and Trey. Friends like those I have made at Christ Church and in Austin. And friends like those I have and will continue to make at Church of the Apostles and in the neighborhoods of Fairfield, Bridgeport, Trumbull and beyond.

Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.  Reconcile all that separates us; restore all the time that has been lost.  Bind us together in spirit until the new heaven and new earth makes every broken circle whole again.

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Brian moved from New York to Austin in 2011 to join Christ Church of Austin as Executive Pastor. In May he will be ordained as a priest within the Anglican Church of North America, and will become the Rector at Church of the Apostles in Fairfield, CT. In the meantime, Brian enjoys every good thing that Austin has to offer.

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I count it a high privilege to know -- at least in small part -- the mourning stories of the dear ones who will share here for seven days. Their lives walk the path between celebration, yes, but also suffering -- illness, relational disillusionment, anxiety, joblessness, death of loved ones, death of dearly-held dreams. Their stories have helped form me in my understanding of suffering and I believe they could also encourage you too. The philosopher Blaise Pascal said that Christ suffers until the end of the world. As we welcome each other's stories, we welcome the Suffering Servant himself.

......

(See all of the Retrieve Lament stories from previous years here)

{pretty, happy, funny, real} - fall is for leaves, football and parrots (?!?)

| a weekly capturing the contentment in everyday life |

It's been a frustrating week, weather-wise.  Otherwise, things are moving pretty gently around here.  This week I wrote out a list of the next 12 weekends just to help me gear up which prompted me to schedule a nap for January 10th.  It'll be a very happy sort of busy, so I am not complaining!
Since I kind of spilled out my heart in yesterday's post (last week's, too, I suppose), how about we just move on with the pretty, happy, funny and real?

A few photos to practice contentment this week

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morning leaf hunts

I've enjoyed the recent cooler morning weather with some lovely walks around the neighborhood.  This park is a gem just a few blocks away, and perfect for cutting through to return home.  I've been lucky to find a few gorgeous leaves here and there.  Just enough to feel like my leaf-peeping post aren't just some form of twisted self-torture! 

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Thursday Night Lights

High school football games are the best place ever for people watching.  I suppose some people (like my husband) attend to watch the game. Even though I wish the games were at Natalie's actual school, House Park is a pretty sweet location.  I mean how many Texas football fans get to watch their kids' school play within sight of the capitol dome?  Sadly, McCallum had a terrible game so we left a bit early.  After watching an impressive half time show, we rode away from the stadium on the scooter and got a great view of an earnest little couple making out under the bleachers. 

Like I said: people watching.    

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wild parrots

On one of the morning walks last week I spotted these feral parrots a block away from our house. At first I thought: Wow, how do they keep their pet birds in the yard?  (I guess I was envisioning some sort of invisible fence like you get for your dog, but then quickly realized it'd have to be as high as the trees, and well, then I felt pretty dumb.) Feral parrots are a thing, and that's news to me.  When I looked it up, I decided these are probably actually Monk Parakeets.  Apparently, they can be found a few places around the US: Brooklyn, Austin, Chicago and Miami.  A strange grouping of cities, I'm thinking.  Who knows?

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re-reading a verse of comfort this week

This past week, Brian took a prayer day at a Catholic retreat center north of Austin.  I took my lunch hour to fast and pray for him and with him from home.  I'd been praying Isaiah 30 (in addition to a few other passages) for the newly-formed Church of the Cross that is being planted by Christ Church (and led by our dear friend Father Peter Coelho).  Anyway, sometimes you're praying Scripture for someone else and realize that you are also -- deeply, deeply -- praying those words for yourself as well.  Isaiah 30:18 is just one snippet of challenging and comforting words.  I made this little reminder .jpg for myself and for Brian to remember our great hope and great call to be the lucky ones in Christ.

Have YOU captured any contentment this week? 

 I'd love to hear about it!

| Join in at P,H,F,R to see other wonderful people practicing contentment. |

Waiting for our next step

I've been re-reading Eugene Peterson's memoir, The Pastor.  I first read it in spring of 2011 when Brian and I were restless and uncertain about our future, and knowing for certain only about one thing:  God had called Brian to be a pastor.  I read much of the book out loud to him at that time, while we sat kind of befuddled in the in-betweenness of knowing one thing and knowing nothing else.  We're in a similar place again.  Thankfully, we have a bit more confidence and a bit more understanding, but once again, not much else.  I needed to listen to the comforting story of Pastor Pete's journey into clarity of vocation, his motto from the Denise Levertov poem about vocation : every step an arrival.

We were ready for a congregation. But where?

When we read the book in 2011, chapter 25 "Presbycostal" didn't stand out too much to me.  In the chapter Eugene Peterson -- raised in a deeply Pentecostal church culture --  shares his story of discovering Presbyterianism (or, rather, he'd probably say Presbyterianism finding him).  At that time, how would I have known that within a few months we'd be moving our family across the country to join in the life of an Anglican church?  Not only that, but to begin Brian's ordination process within the Anglican communion.

I couldn't have known.  I might have been able to articulate that April in 2011, just after Easter, that we considered ourselves "closet Anglicans".  My friends could have told you how tired they were of hearing the word "liturgy" and "historical church".  Now, we look back and it's fairly plain, each step an arrival.

I've tried to articulate our confirmation in the Anglican church as a way to embrace all that was good and true and beautiful from our Baptist and non-denominational roots.  Rather than throwing overboard everything we'd learned and received from our first 40 years,  we only desired to move ourselves and our family into a larger, sturdier ecclesial ship. One that still leaks and still rocks in the waves stirred up by the world, the flesh and the devil, but rocks much less violently than had been our experience in churches that create vision and mission and liturgy from scratch.  In comparison, that had felt like sitting in the middle of the ocean in a creaky rowboat with every man rowing in a different direction.

Anyway, I still seem to only be able to speak our Anglican confirmation in metaphor.  That's, perhaps, why chapter 25 in The Pastor caught my attention in a fresh way with this re-reading.  Pastor Pete has arrived ahead of us in articulating with far more eloquence.  

Here's a few excerpts:

"And now ten years later I was not only a Presbyterian but, of all things, a Presbyterian pastor. The move from Pentecostal to Presbyterian didn't seem like a big thing at the time. It still doesn't. Certainly nothing that could be called a crisis. I was not aware that I was changing any part of what I believed, and certainly not how I lived . But was I still Pentecostal? 

I assumed I was. I hadn't renounced anything that I had grown up believing. I wasn't aware that my Christian identity had eroded in any way. 

[...] I was not aware of choosing to be a Presbyterian. I didn't go over the options available to me, study them, interview representative men and women, assess the pros and cons, pray for discernment, and then apply for membership. The Presbyterians needed a coach for their basketball team. I knew how to do that and did it. But as the months added up to years, I kept being assigned to Presbyterian churches for seminary fieldwork. I was never self-consciously a Presbyterian. I am still not. But something was goin on, incrementally, that formed an identity that vocationally fused Pentecostal and Presbyterian. Later I learned that there was a name for it: presbycostal. 

What I needed, but didn't know that I needed, the Presbyterians offered me: the gift of a living tradition. I grew up in the West in a town that was only forty-three years old when I was born. Pentecostalism as a denomination was even younger than that. I was a child of the first generation of Pentecostalism in America. Growing up, I had almost no knowledge or awareness, maybe none,t hat anything of Christian significance had taken place between the Day of Pentecost in Jerusalem ten days after Jesus had ascended into heaven and the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles in 1903 that marked the birth of Pentecostalism in America. My church history consisted of the names of half a dozen evangelists holding tent revivals in the Northwest. 

[...] As an adolescent, I much preferred [evangelist] Jimmy McGinnis - I knew his son [from playing each other in high school basketball] - to Martin Luther, who had been dead five hundred years. As a Pentecostal, church history was a current event. I felt sorry for my Lutheran friends who had to dig out their stories from the cemeteries. But now as a Presbyterian adult, I was discovering that my Christian family tree had roots all over the world and through twenty centuries. Presbyterianism grafted me into immense continuities of prayer and worship, of saints and artists, of countries and continents. I begant to relish the sense of stability, of continuity, of being on speaking terms with personal names that held stories that touched my own and extended it. There was texture and depth to be explored, intricacy and complexity. There was far more to learn and assimilate about the Christian way than the latest stories, wonderful as they were, of Jimmy McGinnis and his ilk. ... 

[...] I wasn't about to give up any of my Pentecostal identity -- but I also realized that I could never be a pastor worth his salt if I couldn't integrate it into my Presbyterianism, a tradition that puts me into a comprehensive speaking relation with all my brothers and sisters in all forms that the church takes across the country and through the centuries... 

Pentecostalism and Presbyterianism were for me both irreplaceable gifts, polarities that made a continuum, not opposites in tension."

I add my yes.  Now, we wait in the tension for the next step, and the next arrival.

Reading The Pastor with Brian, April 2011

Reading The Pastor with Brian (and Leo), September 2015

Anyone want to read stories about staying married? (I'm asking for a friend....)

I've been thinking a lot about marriage lately.  Not for the fervent headline reasons you might expect, either.  More because we're approaching a big anniversary (25 is still silver, right?) and our son is getting married in less than 4 months.  These sorts of events make you take stock of your experiences and beliefs on a subject.  

And I've toyed with throwing caution to the wind and writing a blog series on marriage.  Sort of like the parenting one I undertook a couple years back.  I feel more trepidation to broach this subject of love and intimacy and sex and procreation and covenant and sacrament.  Maybe that's wise.  I don't know.

I cooled to the idea.  Probably these weeks of fighting with Brian made me rethink my ability to contribute anything meaningful to the already saturated newsfeeds of my friends and family.

Then -- today, actually -- I read a book about a husband and wife who loved Jesus and loved each other and discovered that wasn't enough.  They're still married.  Admirably so, considering what they've been through.  It was a good story.  An important story.  But it left me a bit cold.  I closed the book, paced the house, collapsed on my bed to think for a bit.  What was troubling me?  I walked to the IGA Mini-max and bought some broccoli for my supper. I walked home.  I ate the broccoli and a tuna-noodle concoction, flipped through a few channels on the TV, paced the house again.

Finally, when Brian returned home from a youth group event, I talked at him for a bit.  "I read this book today...." I told him "It was a fine book.  Good people.  Hard story.  True love.  But I just feel sort of 'meh' about it."

Why?  

"Maybe," I said. "Maybe it bothers me that the author doesn't ever use the word 'sin'?  She used some synonym-type words like 'wrong choices'. 'Lust', even. But she never says sin."  I left the room sort of mid-sentence, feeling a bit badly that my biggest critique of this woman's courageous life story is that she didn't use old-fashioned Bible language.

I brushed my teeth, poured the requisite glass of water for my  nightstand, pulled my pajamas out of the top middle drawer of the dresser we've owned for approximately 15 of our 25 years sharing a bedroom.  My pajamas always go in that drawer. Everyone knows the top middle drawer of a bureau is prime real estate.  True to form this past quarter century of living together, Brian kindly places his clothing in the hardest-to-reach locations so that I can retrieve my clothing with ease.

I walked back toward the living room where he -- bless him -- was trying to watch some college football.  "You know what else she didn't say?"  I pop my head into the room.  "She doesn't use the word 'forgiveness'."

The couple in the book are worthy of respect for their commitment to each other.  Never once in the middle of all sorts of upheaval do they consider leaving each other.  At least not that the reader is told.  I say this to Brian.  "Clearly they love each other well.  They come together and work out the problems, but she never talks about forgiveness.  Without sin, I guess there's no need for forgiveness."

I walk back to our bedroom.  I feel relieved, like I've solved a considerable puzzle and can now sleep in peace.  No sin, no forgiveness needed, just a sort of egalitarian tolerance of each other's foibles and screw ups.  Each making right with God and each other in their own way.  

 Maybe those words got edited out of the book and I'm reading this story of marriage all wrong.  I think that must be it because I can't imagine a love story without either of those elements -- sin and forgiveness.  Can you?

It's tricky to tell the story of a marriage when the most good and the most evil things that take place between a husband and wife become the most sacred of all moments between them.  I am not convinced Brian and I need to put those moments in black and white, else we profane these treasures we've been storing up.  

Still, I think what the world needs now is love -- sweet love. And not schmaltzy, song-lyric love.  Not all-caps, hashtag love. Not reality TV show love. Not even Hallmark or Christian movie love.  I think we need each other's stories.  How can we better encourage each other to persevere in love -- married or otherwise -- than with our own hard-won, grace-given stories?

I still think the best place to hear these stories is face to face, sitting in a room together.  I think stories are best shared with people we know and can see up close for lots of days and years, in all sorts of situations.  

So I shelved the idea for a blog series.  Then I read that book today and can barely fall asleep because of the omission of those two cornerstone words, "sin" and "forgiveness".  I got thinking that maybe a few more stories in print might not be a bad idea, after all. 

What do you think?  I mean -- hypothetically speaking --  If you were to read some stories about married love on a blog, what sort of stories would you hope to hear?  Would you even want stories? (Maybe you'd prefer a list of tips and techniques?  Lord help us...) 

I'll wait to hear back from you.  In the meantime, I'll turn off the light on my nightstand and pray for good Love for us all.

{pretty, happy, funny, real} daily bread

| a weekly capturing the contentment in everyday life |

I'm still not sleeping well, but Brian and I aren't fighting much at all any more.  We even like each other again and think we might make it to our 25th anniversary in November. Even though we don't know much of our future yet, there is a hope that it will be together.  As the Seder song teaches us to pray: "it would be enough". 

I am intending before the Father, Son and Spirit, before my tribe, and before you, dear reader, to take each glimpse of what and who and where our future becomes as a morsel of manna.  To receive it as enough, resist the urge to hoard up piles of glimpses and plans that will surely spoil just as that sweet bread did in the wilderness.  I will receive the daily provision of the Father as enough.  And trust that tomorrow there will be enough again. Because our Father is good and does not give his children stones when they ask for bread.  He gives enough in the right time.   

So we are not feasting on dreams and plans here, but we are fed with hope and little glimmers of ideas and sweet encouragement from God's people. 

I walked through a few puddles around the neighborhood today after last night's rain (blessed, blessed returning rain!) and it struck me as I pondered manna and long-awaited rainfall that this is probably the essence of Ordinary Time. We are fed with our daily bread. It's one of the first great lessons we learned and newlyweds, and it's been our theme for almost 25 years, thanks be to God.

It is good and it is enough.

Here's a few snapshots of contentment the past week.

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gift eggs

Brian brought this goodness home from work on Tuesday.  A sweet woman dropped them off during Ladies' Bible Study.  Almost too pretty for breakfast -- but not quite.

| happy |

a few happy gifts during a disappointing week

While we get our bearings in the middle of some uncertainty, I'm so grateful for sweet gifts.  
1.  Friday night candle-lit Scrabble, antipasto and wine
2.  Saturday morning coffee on the patio at Thunderbird Cafe
3.  Reading nursery rhymes to my niece and nephew on Google hangout.  It was basically an excuse to look at Richard Scarry illustrations.

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office pranks

So I have this mug I purchased at Goodwill.  It sits on my desk and makes me happy with it's sunshiny yellow.  I was gone for a bit and came back to the scene of a coffee mug hostage crisis thanks to a couple of rather clever pranksters.  Honestly, I might have sat at my desk for a whole week or more without ever realizing that thing was actually hanging over my head. Well played, friends.  Well played.

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Texas unfiltered

This is kind of funny, too.  On Saturday, with a whole day free, I got it in my head that we should drive to San Marcos to the mega, gigantic, infamous retail outlet complex I'd heard so much about.  Now, it's taken me four years to even consider this sort of endeavour, but on a recent trip through the Austin airport some kind soul welcomed us back home by stealing our extra-large, crammed-full-of-most-of-our-worldly-possesions suitcase.  We're not exactly closet wealthy, so a week's trip means the majority of our good clothing and personal items were in that suitcase.  Anyway, long story short, outlet shopping seemed a proper way to see the sights and replenish our wardrobes.  Long story shorter:  we drove in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-35 for close to an hour in 100+-degree heat with the sputtering air conditioning in our secondary vehicle (since our daughter had our better vehicle on a road trip to visit her sister).  We crawled inch by inch through the chaotic parking lot of the outlet arcade finding no parking, no shade and, unbelievably unhappy people.  Well, we did the only natural thing to do in that sort of situation and headed right back out the exit to the nearest country route we could find.  We ended up discovering an off-off road thrift sale in a 75-year-old deaf man's yard.  His name was Ernie, and he told us he felt it was time to start letting go of his life-long habit of collecting old things.  We stood and sweated in his yard and his garage, looking through his things.  Then I took this picture, and we ran back to our air conditioning and sped on down the road.  This, my friends, is my kind of shopping day.  I'll have to figure out another way to clothe ourselves.  

Have you captured any contentment this week? 

 I'd love to hear about it!

| Join in at P,H,F,R to see other wonderful people practicing contentment. |