I Woke Up Today

I woke up today in the arms of someone who loves me, someone who sang a quiet little birthday song in my ear.

I woke up today in a house that feels like home,
walked out the door and took a walk near a lake under a Carolina blue sky.

I woke up today and did work that I love,
supporting people who love what they do,
meaningful work that makes the world a better place.

I woke up today feeling comfortable in my own skin,
head over heels in love with the authentic version of me,
someone I worked so hard to find.

I woke up today grateful for the life I have cultivated,
a life that feels so real, so filled with love, so honest and authentic,
filled to the brim and overflowing with people who love me
just as I am.

I woke up today.
And that is more than enough.

Here

                          

Today, you said, “How was your day?”

You kissed me goodbye

and hello

and more than a few times in between

 

You fixed my coffee

just the way I like it

You turned down the bed

and fixed that broken door

again

 

Today, you looked at me

You saw me, and you listened

when I rambled on about

something

 

Today, you planted lavender in the yard

at our house on the lake,

where deer make themselves at home

and cranes croak out their goodbyes as they fly away,

where geese start their families,

where we live—just live—together

 

It is these moments—

packed full with so much grace and gift,

such kindness and beauty and gentleness,

so much that I don’t know where to put it all

in my heart and my head and spilling over the edges

of my eyes, where I try to see each one,

to soak up every little extra-ordinary moment,

partly out of fear that they will disappear

in a blink

 

And partly out of unimagined joy,

stunned

that such simple moments can even happen in the first place,

in this life, our life

here—

 

It is these small moments:

this is where joy lives,

where deep peace grows deep roots

in the ordinary order of things,

in moments that go by so fast

I could miss them if I wasn’t really paying attention

 

To the love that lives

here

Defining Family

When I was young, my family was my mom and dad, two sets of grandparents, two sets of aunts and uncles, and five cousins—the people who were related to me either by blood or by marriage. Along the way, I added step-parents, a husband, his family, and children of my own. As time when on, I lost a few, including all of my grandparents and, after some deeply painful untangling, my husband, too. Each one had a role in creating me and shaping me into who I am today.

But the older I get, the broader my definition of family becomes. Here's what I know now about my family: It is so much larger than I ever imagined. Over the past 48 years, God has been weaving a beautiful tapestry with the people who have come into my life—each one leaving behind a unique thread in the fabric of my life.



We're not perfect, but we're faltering forward together, sometimes two steps forward and one step back, but onward nonetheless. We fall down, but we get back up, over and over again.

We don't have all the answers, but we're looking with inquiring minds and discerning hearts. We realize that doubt is part of faith and certainty stagnates growth.

We're broken, and we leak, but we gather together to fill ourselves back up so we can share more and more from our cups.

We tell our stories time and time again because in the telling we discover we aren't alone. God is revealed in the mysterious interweaving of our journeys.

My tribe, my clan, my gang, my coven ... my family

A Lesson from a Quartz

An amethyst is formed when a liquid on the surface of the earth squeezes its way into the crack of a rock. When the liquid interacts with the rock, parts of the rock dissolve. And when the mixture cools, translucent crystals appear. Waves of energy and traces of iron bring color to the crystals by removing one electron from the iron. The color is most intense in the area where the crystal is growing the most.

In other words, something goes wrong. Under a great amount of pressure, perhaps over a long period of time or perhaps all of the sudden, something breaks, and through this brokenness—this imperfection—something new gets inside. Eventually, conditions change, as they always do. The pressure lets off for a while, but now, there’s a new creation—new growth. Light and strength transform this new creation, taking away tiny bits to make space for something new. The result is beautiful, unique, and impossible to duplicate.

So, maybe what you think is broken is really part of a transformation. Maybe your imperfections are what allow the light to get in. Maybe pressure is necessary. Maybe our most beautiful, brightest, and most intense selves emerge when we are growing the most.

On Beauty

Kintsugi, meaning  "to repair with gold,"
is the Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold or silver
with the understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.

Cute. When I was a teenager, that’s the word I usually heard when I got compliments. And in my struggle to accept them, I was OK with that one. (Is that a universal struggle? Do we all have a hard time accepting compliments?) Cute is a word that fit my self-image, I suppose. Cute, like a button. Or a bug. Something small that you might miss if you weren’t paying attention.

Pretty was a bit harder. I didn’t feel pretty. Pretty awkward maybe. And pretty uncomfortable. I suppose most middle-schoolers feel that way at some point, and for me, it was somewhat magnified. The summer before sixth grade, at the early stages of adolescence, my mom, dad, and I moved from the northwestern tip of Michigan to upper South Carolina. I had a Yankee accent, giant early-1980s glasses, shiny silver braces, a Dorothy Hamill bowl cut, and boobs that were so big that my closest friends called me Stuff because I had so much of it. Nothing seemed to fit, not even my name. In the north, everyone pronounced my name Share-un. Now, on my first day in sixth grade, my art teacher kept calling out a name that wasn’t mine: SHAY-run. She kept saying it over and over again, until she said my last name and I realized she was talking to me. (Eventually, most of my friends called me Shay because I never really did get used to answering to Shay-Run or the occasional Shern.) I felt uncomfortable in my own skin, and I felt way too visible. I felt seen when what I really wanted was to be unseen, to fade into the background, to go unnoticed. And I most certainly did not feel pretty.

So I introverted—a natural tendency, I suppose, for an only child. And the trait lingered as traits tend to do when you acquire them during your formative years. Eventually, I grew into my own skin, of course, becoming more and more comfortable with who I am. Even though I still tend to hide the big boobs as much as possible, I embraced my inner dork a long time ago. I’ve never really lost the Yankee accent, and I am just fine with that. And I’ve gotten much better at accepting compliments.

But there is one that I really struggle with: beautiful. It feels huge. And heavy. And meant for someone else. 

Here’s the real problem: I’ve been hearing it a lot lately. Every night, in fact. For months now, my boyfriend ends every day—every single day—with a text message: “Sweet dreams, beautiful.” At first, I laughed it off. “Me? Beautiful? Right.” It just didn’t seem to fit. But after hearing it countless times, I realized the person saying it is one of the most authentic people I’ve ever met. I didn’t doubt other things he said, so why was I doubting this one word? So, word dork that I am, I wrestled with it. And I began to wonder why I couldn’t embrace it. Why didn’t I think I was beautiful?

At this point in my life, I am proud of who I am—proud of the hard work I have put into uncovering authentic Sharon, proud of how I am moving closer to becoming who God made me to be, proud of the way I have unbecome what others think I should be and taken off a whole lot of hats that didn’t fit, proud of the way I have finally moved into my own skin. I love me, and arriving at a place where I can say that required walking a long, hard road—sometimes alone but most often with worthy companions who saw me more clearly than I saw myself.

And yet, I struggled with this word. Beautiful. Why? For me, cute and pretty feel like they are mostly about external aspects. “You have such a cute smile.” “Your eyes are pretty.” But beautiful? I felt exposed. Like someone had actually seen me, and I don’t mean my smile or my eyes or any other external attribute. I mean seen, like Avatar “I see you” seen. (In the movie, the Na'vi greeting “I see you” has a deeper meaning—something along the lines of “I understand who you are.”) Was I really ready to be seen?

As I wrestled with this, I recalled one of my favorite quotes, which I first read about 10 years ago. I swear, this is one of the best things I’ve ever read. I think I just about have it memorized:

“You meet a girl: shy, unassuming. If you tell her she’s beautiful, she’ll think you’re sweet, but she won’t believe you. She knows that beauty lies in your beholding. And sometimes that is enough. But there’s a better way. You show her she is beautiful. You make mirrors of your eyes, prayers of your hands. It is hard, very hard, but when she truly believes you .... suddenly the story she tells herself in her own head changes. She transforms. She isn’t seen as beautiful. She is beautiful, seen.” Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

A few years ago, I started to hope for that. I longed to feel that way, to become something more than the mess I was on the inside. And I thought that kind of beauty would come from the outside—that I would need someone to mirror it back to me, that it required someone seeing me as beautiful in order for me to be beautiful. And I suppose I thought that beauty was, for the most part, external.

But then, as I started out on an intentional journey to find authentic Sharon, I didn’t want how I felt about myself to come from anyone other than myself and the God who dwells within me. I needed—I mean really needed—to be whole, to not feel so broken and empty, to be able to hold my head high and be proud of who I am, to really love me. And I did that, which, again, is a story for a different day (or probably several different days).

And then a couple weeks ago, I read this quote. Maybe you know that already. You might have actually heard my head explode:

“You will meet plenty of people who are pretty but haven’t yet learned to be beautiful. … Beautiful women glow. When you are with a beautiful woman, you might not notice her hair or skin or body or clothes because you’ll be distracted by the way she makes you feel. She will be so full of beauty that you will feel some of it overflow onto you. You’ll feel warm and safe and curious around her. Her eyes will twinkle a little, and she’ll look at you really closely—because beautiful, wise women know that the quickest way to fill up with beauty is to soak in another human being. Other people are beauty, beauty, beauty. The most beautiful women take their time with other people. They are filling up. Women who are concerned with being pretty think about what they look like, but women who are concerned with being beautiful think about what they’re looking at. They are taking it all in. They are taking in the whole beautiful world and making all that beauty theirs to give away to others.” Glennon Doyle, LoveWarrior

When I read that, I thought: I want to be that person! I want to glow and be filled with so much love that it spills out of me. I want others to feel safe with me. I want my eyes to twinkle because my heart is full of so much joy that it’s leaking. I want to take my time with other people and fill up my own cup with relationships that have deep meaning and create real, honest, and lasting connections. I want to be surrounded by genuine people who are walking their own journeys with great intention and in hot pursuit of authenticity. I want to really pay attention, to be present, to be right here right now.

And then, out of the blue, I realized something: I think I did that. That’s where the journey to authentic Sharon took me. I filled up the empty inside, and now it’s spilling out all over the place. And I think—now I’m speaking for someone else here, and I’m taking a wild leap— that is exactly what my boyfriend sees: “Look! Right there! You are beautiful. I see you.”

I know now that beauty doesn’t lie in someone else’s beholding. It doesn’t lie in the Yankee accent or the giant glasses, the braces, or the Dorothy Hamill bowl cut. It’s not in all the stuff, including the big boobs. It was in me all along. I just needed someone to name it, to point it out, to say “I see you. Great job. Keep being you!” And I know that I am not beautiful because I am seen. I am beautiful because I am paying attention. I am beautiful not because of what I look like, but because of what I am looking at. This whole beautiful, messy, painful, brilliant world? I am soaking it all in—every last bit and so much of it that it is spilling out and I have to give it away.

You see, the story I tell myself has changed, with the help of some beautiful people who helped me rewrite it. I have surrounded myself with authentic people, and I take time to tend to these relationships. And when I inevitably start to re-read the old story, I turn to them—my tribe that is so full of beauty that it overflows. I feel warm and safe and curious around them. And their eyes twinkle a bit. They look at me really closely, and they see me. Even on my most awkward of days, even when I mess up, when I feel like a misfit, and even when I am broken—perhaps even because I am broken—I am beautiful.

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.” ~Khalil Gibran  

“If you're pretty, you're pretty; but the only way to be beautiful is to be loving. Otherwise, it's just 'congratulations about your face.'” ~John Mayer

Note to Self

This is a letter I gave to my daughter when she left for college in August 2015. I suppose I also wrote it to myself, and I re-read it every now and again when I feel frustrated, discouraged, afraid, lonely, or just generally messy.

Never forget how very proud I am of you. You are a beautiful woman, inside and out. You have always had a strong will and can do whatever you set out to do. You’ve never let anything stand in your way, so if you feel frustrated or discouraged, remember that God doesn’t make junk. You are intelligent and driven, so put lofty, worthy goals in front of you, and then go after those goals with all you’ve got. Of course, you will make mistakes. We all do. But each of us also has the power to create a beautiful life with the choices that we make.

“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”  Frederick Buechner

Never forget it is OK to be afraid. Everyone feels afraid sometimes. Those who succeed are the ones who push forward, despite the fear. Have confidence in the gifts and talents God gave you, and know that you are capable of doing great things—but great things require hard work.

“Don't be afraid of being scared. To be afraid is a sign of common sense. Only complete idiots are not afraid of anything.” Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Never forget that it is OK to feel lonely, even when you are surrounded by your suite-mates and classmates and countless random strangers. It’s normal to feel lonely, isolated, secluded. But remember you are never alone. God is always with you, and if you pay attention, you will see God’s loving presence all around you: in the small gesture of a friend or even a stranger, in the way the sun shines just right when you need a ray of hope, in the way a butterfly appears to remind you that new life involves times when you can’t quite imagine what’s next. You have friends who are always there for you, even when they might not be in the same town. Reach out to them. You have a family who cherishes you more than you will ever know. We are only a phone call away. Never hesitate to call on any one of us.

Never be afraid to share your story, to confess your fears, to admit your shortcomings. Never be afraid to be exactly who you are. There is power in telling our stories.

“My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours…. It is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us more powerfully and personally.” Frederick Buechner

Never forget that your successes and your failures are what have gotten you to where you are today. You have a lot to be proud of. You’ve made good choices and worked hard to be right where you are today. Remember why you are there. A life well-lived is about balance. Know when to say yes and when to say no, keeping in mind your end goal of who you want Savannah to be.

Never try to be anyone other than yourself. Be the very best You you can be. When you fall down, get back up and try again. God doesn’t count how many times we fall down but how many times we get back up.

“When you fall, you have two options: You either stay down, or you get back up and work harder.” Will Smith

“Fall seven times. Stand up eight.” Japanese proverb

And above all, never forget I love you right up to the moon—and back.

True Story

All good writers know that stories are supposed to follow the same format. We call this dramatic structure, or Freytag's pyramid:

• Exposition: The writer sets the scene, introducing the characters and the setting. (A peddler is walking down the street, balancing a colorful and very tall stack of caps on his head. As he walks, he calls out "Caps for sale! Fifty cents a cap!")
• An inciting incident: Something happens: a conflict or a complication. (He wanders out into the country, sits down under a tree to rest, and falls asleep. When he wakes up, every cap is gone except for his own checked cap.) 
• Rising action: The story builds, and things get more exciting. (The peddler looks up and sees that the tree is full of monkeys. "Give me back my caps," he yells. The monkeys sit back and mock him in typical monkey fashion.)
• Climax: This is the moment of greatest tension—the most exciting event, for better or worse. (The peddler gets foot-stomping mad, he pulls off his last cap, throws it on the ground, and begins to walk away.)
• Falling action: Then, more things happen as a result of the climax, and those who are following the story realize it will end soon. (Those darn monkeys start raining down caps all over the place.)
• Resolution: The character solves the conflict or, sometimes, someone else solves it for her. (The peddler picks up his caps and puts them all back on his head—first his own checked cap, then the gray caps, then the brown ones and the blue caps, then the red caps on the very top.)
• Dénouement: This is the end. Any remaining questions and mysteries are solved. (He walks back to town calling, "Caps for sale! Fifty cents a cap!")

As a writer, I want to cram my stories into this pyramid, with one event naturally following another, with conflicts happening only when they come with resolutions that tidy things up and endings that put all things back in order, where everything is crystal clear and I am once again back on my way with all of my caps teetering on top of my poised little head.

Yeah. Life doesn't work like that, does it? My story—our stories—are messy. Dramatic, yes, but not necessarily structured. And they're complicated, filled with winding roads and potholes, more than a few wrong turns, not nearly enough trees that we choose to rest under, and when we do, way too many monkeys. Sometimes, our conflicts disappear, but rarely are they truly resolved. And the questions and mysteries never really do get solved.

I've come to realize this is good news. I've learned to embrace life outside Freytag's pyramid. It wasn't easy for the perfectionist me to break out of those lines. I still long for structure and order, for logical explanations, for cause and effect, for question and answer. For resolution.

I suppose there was a point in my story when I thought I had it all together, with all the caps balanced neatly on my head—first my own checked cap, then the gray caps, then the brown caps, then the blue caps, then the red caps on the very top—a good daughter, never much of a troublemaker, always a bit of a perfectionist, two-time college graduate, a reliable friend, a good wife, a responsible go-getter, a mom doing the very best she could with the two beautiful gifts she'd been given, a rational idealist who is principled and purposeful and self-controlled. (Yes, if you know the Enneagram, I am the epitome of a Type One.) I wore all the hats, and I wore them well. And from the outside, I suppose it looked that way too.

The problem is they got heavy.

And the heavier they got, the more I looked around and wondered how everyone else was balancing so many hats on top of their perfect little heads. Well, I'll let you in on a little secret: they're not. All those people who seem to have it all together? Underneath it all, they're just as awkward and uncoordinated as you and I are.

Your hats might have different shapes and sizes, but my guess is you're wearing quite a few too. So let's just admit it. It's OK if your hat is crumpled, if it has a hole in it, if it's ugly or torn or even if it's been run over by a Mack Truck a few times. Maybe you dropped one only to pick up another. Maybe you like someone else's hat better than your own. Perhaps you're wearing a plain little cap when what you really want is a giant Kentucky-Derby-worthy hat or a fascinator that sparkles and shines, one with feathers and some crazy bird perched on top. Maybe you long to wear only your own checked cap.

And maybe, if you take a moment to sit down and rest under a tree somewhere, a wild bunch of monkeys will take every last one of your caps. And then what will you be left with?

That, I suppose, is the real question. What are we underneath that towering stack of hats?

One World Under God

Let’s start off with an inflammatory bang: I don’t want the U.S. flag inside the sanctuary of my church. I know. I hear the resounding gasp.

I hope you will stick around long enough for me to explain, but just in case you don’t, please know that I respect your opinion too. I respect your inherent freedom to believe whatever you want. I mean, illogical opinions drive me a little batty, but fact-based opinions? I’m a big fan—even when I don’t agree. And I pride myself on being a peacemaker. Truly, I really do. I love being able to see and understand both sides of an issue, so before you jump all over me, hang in there long enough to see how I formed this relatively recent opinion.

“One nation under God” does not mean “one God for one nation.” One nation under God clearly puts God in charge, above the nation. But that does not mean God is American. Christianity is not American. Even my beloved Episcopal Church is not American. The Episcopal Church has churches way beyond the borders of the United States and on into Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Venezuela, Curacao, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Haiti, Honduras, Micronesia, and Taiwan. And my church family is even bigger than that. We Episcopalians are part of the Anglican Communion. You know how many countries are in that Anglican Communion? More than 160. You know the most beautiful thing about my church? When I go to church, there are countless throngs of other people around the world using the same prayer book, the same prayers, the same worship service, the same Bible readings on the same day. I think that’s pretty great.

I live in the Unites States of America, a country formed by man-made borders. But God sees no borders, no nationality, no limits. God sees one body, one people, one human race. Galatians 3:28 tells us, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” And I love that my church reaches out around the world and blurs those man-made borders we call nations. Heck, we North Americans aren’t even the only Americans. My Ecuadorean friends are American too—South American, but American nonetheless. See how the lines start to get fuzzy?

“A Christian church has absolutely no business displaying a national flag in the sanctuary, at least not as it is commonly done,” said Douglas Wilson, a pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. “The church born at Pentecost was a reversal of Babel, not a doubling down on the fragmentation of Babel.”

I can hear many of you mumbling, “But you live in a country founded on Christian values.” Well, not really. According to the Preamble of the Constitution, our country was created to “form a more perfect union.” Our colonists crossed an ocean to gain religious freedom. However, it was about more than that. They wanted to protect their rights. They wanted to live in a country that would allow them to freely practice their faith. For them, “a more perfect union” meant a limited government created for the people and by the people.

“Our nation’s separation of church and state did not intend to keep the church out of the state but rather to keep the state out of the church,” says Robert Williamson, chairman of the House of Flags Museum in Columbus, NC. (Disclaimer: He’s my dad.) “The Church of England drove the multitudes to our shores with the hope of being able to worship in the church of their choice, not that of the state’s choice—or to not worship any god at all if that be their choice.”

You see, the United States was founded on human rights, not on the right to be a Christian. Even President John Adams agreed way back in 1797: “The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” Put on a set of fresh eyes and look at our Declaration of Independence. It tells us certain things are indisputable (“self-evident”) and impossible to take away (“unalienable”): “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Those indisputable, untakeawayable rights, freely given by our creator, are for all humans—all of us, not just United States of Americans and not just Christians. Our country’s founders knew that basic human rights are not given by government, and they are not acquired by force. Our lives, our freedoms, and our right to pursue a happy journey in our short time here are inherent gifts given to us by our Creator. And despite what some people might read between the lines, our country’s founding documents do not say those rights came from Jesus Christ. It says “endowed by their Creator.” I’m guessing most people would agree—Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs .... These are human rights, not Christian rights.

By not much more than a stroke of luck, I was born in the United States, and until ... oh, maybe mid-2016, I was proud of this country. Here, we are promised religious and many other freedoms. Countless people around the world have those freedoms taken away from them every single day. In the United States, we are all—every last Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, atheist, agnostic one of us—free to worship the god of our own understanding or, if we so choose, to not worship at all. That’s how liberty is defined: “the state or condition of people who are able to act and speak freely.”

“There is nothing wrong with not having our nation’s flag in a church. It is clearly a personal—and sometimes an emotional—choice,” Williamson says. Yes, as I have explored this topic, I have learned that it is a very emotional choice. And like I said at the beginning, I respect your choice to believe whatever you want.

Underneath all of this lies one question, and it’s not about the purpose of our flag. The question is what is the purpose of a Christian church? To answer that question, look at the founding document of the faith. According to the Bible, the purpose of the church is to worship God (Luke 4:8 and John 4:23), study God’s word (2 Timothy 2:15 and 1 Corinthians 4:6), pray (Acts 2:42), love one another (John 13:35 and Philippians 1:1-4), help each other (Galatians 6:2), learn how to live as godly people (Titus 2:11-12), and to equip ourselves to show the world that God is pretty darn great (Ephesians 4:12 and Matthew 28:18-20).

So, given that definition, what is the purpose of displaying a U.S. flag in church? I don’t go to church to think about being American. I don’t go to think about us United States of Americans versus all you other people. I go to worship God, study the Bible, pray, love, offer my support, learn how to be a better person, and become a better disciple. I go to surround myself with people who not only love our creator but love me and my family. Heck, they are my family, not only here but all around the world. A few years ago when I first set foot in Cristo Liberador, an Episcopal church in Quito, Ecuador, I might not have spoken Spanish, but I knew the words they were saying. I know that prayer book, and I know that Bible. And I knew they loved me from the moment I walked in the door on that narrow alley on the other half of the world. You see, we are all one family. One world, under one God, with liberty and justice for all.

Stay tuned for more inflammatory ramblings from The Book I'll Never Write.

i wished

 

i wished i wasn’t

so broken

so crisscrossed with scars

left behind like disjointed railroad tracks to nowhere

 

i wished i didn’t need

so many repairs

so much restoration to fill in cracks

that lingered like ragged wounds that won’t heal

 

i wished i didn’t have

so much baggage

so many boxes filled with things i no longer need

with garments that don’t fit

and cloaks that hide

and shiny masks that cover up

 

but I

was under those scars

within those cracks

inside that baggage

sheltered and solitary and secluded

 

and You

You found me hiding there

 

and they don’t need to be fixed

instead transformed

merged into something new

not taken away, but added to

 

with golden gestures that reveal scars

to be gilded rivers carrying lessons and now wisdom

 

with silver words that expose cracks

to be joints fusing broken bits into a particular whole

 

with bronzed actions that kindly, patiently peek inside boxes

to unpack heavy things, keeping what’s valuable and leaving the rest behind

 

i wished

to erase

to eradicate

to eliminate

 

when what I needed was

to make a new mark

to create a new opening

to build a new vessel

anew, anew, anew