Wordless

The article deadline was encroaching, and I didn't have an article.

My topic was "worship." For someone who spent years engaging the word while working in music ministry with my dad, I was coming up short on ideas.

This one was supposed to be an easy write.

I began with a Sunday School definition of worship, something that involved singing, music, and praising God truthfully from the heart. I looked for an illustration from my life, adjusted my approach to the topic accordingly, and sent in a draft.

It wasn't right.

I spent a day or two sighing over my dilemma. I didn't have energy to rewrite. I was fresh out of ideas anyway. I write too much poetry, and often leave the concrete behind, which makes for too-vague writing. But I had volunteered to write the article, and I knew that it would be good for me -- and for my writing -- to see it through.

I'm at Ungrind today. Click on over for the rest of the story.

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MOVING UPDATE: Thank you all for your prayers and sweet comments over the weekend. They are being felt.

We moved most of our stuff over to our new house on Friday and Saturday, thinking that someone would be there to install the sink and finish the wiring that was supposed to be done already. Any minute, I was sure they would show.

By Saturday evening, we decided to call someone to take a look at the water situation, and we discovered that the city had turned the water off completely.

Instead of trying to deal with two kids and two houses and meals and baths, we decided it would be best for me to take the kids to my parents' house in VA. Pete drove us up on Sunday and drove back Sunday night to see to things this week until the house is ready for us to come home and live. This way I have a little more support, and Pete will not be so torn between his priorities at work and for the move.

I may be a bit spotty on the blog this week until we get home to our regular schedule.

Authentic Virtue - A "Becoming"

Part IV of my authentic relationship series.

Part I - The Fact Is, I am Eve Too.
Part II - Owning Truth - From Romantic to Real
Part III - Nothing Hidden - The Breaking

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“God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” (Num. 23:19)

Sometimes, I think of my passage from my first love into God’s love as a becoming. It is as if I did not exist – until I did, until He made me, until His Truth was such a part of me I couldn’t be anything else. No illusion I create for myself can survive His own authentic immutability. God is who He is, and He is God.

My marriage, broken early at His altar because of my Eve-dust, is more real now than I imagined it could be. My love for my husband is not fantasy, patched and stitched and created and recreated to fit my ideals. When I share with Pete, I share myself. I learn not to excuse myself, justify myself.

Though Pete is amused at my self-struggles at times, he loves me gently, trusting the work of God in both of us, choosing trust instead of judgment and wife-improvement. But I am not responsible for his response to me, amazing as it has been. Always, I am reminded that what grace he has for me is given him by the Lord. It is not something I can expect or demand, because it is between Him and God.

It is instead my own response that draws my focus. I can’t present an illusion of me to Pete. Living real with a person removes blinders; he knows me as no one but God knows me. My own blinders are gone. He could reject my heart at any moment; he will fail to lay his life down for me at times; he will inevitably hurt me. This is my cross, the becoming one of my marriage that opens me, gives my whole naked self into Love that already laid down His life for me, Love that walked vulnerable to be crucified so that I might have Life.

I offer him myself and I find grace for him, and love that offers itself in spite of me. And while I face and despise my weaknesses, I know that I would not be anyone else, daughter of Eve that I am. My real has become God, the unchangeable One who is always “I Am.”

“The heart of her husband safely trusts her…”

When my desire to have control of my life fell out and I had no choice but to collapse into mercy, I realized that the virtuous woman of Proverbs was not virtuous because of her many fine qualities. She was virtuous because she feared the Lord in her heart, and He spilled out of her heart in everything she did. She had become. Her husband was unafraid of her secrets, for he knew the God who moved her had promised him “good and not evil all the days” of his life.

I want to walk before God-who-is-Real with fear that is holy and unterrified. I want a pure heart - to be poured out at His feet holding only unkept secrets to share. I want to answer His “how far will you go with me” with ever-deepening intimacy, shedding my fear of vulnerability into Christ-grace.

As the “enter” bell tingles over that coffee-shop door, I gather my courage and listen.

As I have pondered my friends’ stories, I've tried to imagine myself in their places. I wonder what heart-cry led to their choices, what unanswered questions they wanted satisfied. I read their words and see their hearts, broken and healed, taking measures and setting boundaries, yet unsure at times of their new identities, forgiven, covered in Christ.

I learn from them, embrace the grace of which they speak, understanding they know it deeply. They share their failures to love, and I learn to ask for freedom to love without constraint. They share their attempts to find intimacy in secrets, and I learn to ask for intimacy that may share without fear or shame, and for trust that is built on Truth that is a Person.

I hope that my far is far enough to go with them embracing their authenticity with my own vulnerability, hoping they won't reject me because my story is "less" or different.

I know in Jesus, this Eve can find relationship naked and unashamed, with my dust and sin and instinctual desire for control covered by His righteousness as patience has its wait-work in my heart for Spirit change. I am only just learning to receive and offer the grace I have been given, learning that I can answer the “how far will you go” in the knowledge that God has loved me, and really, that is why we love anyway.

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This will be the last "official" post in this series from my unpublished article on authentic relationship. The comments I have received have started some lines of thought I'd like to pursue at some point (perhaps some more on the expectations we had of marriage, and a bit more of what happened in my heart prior to my relationship with Pete). There is so much more I could write, so much more to tell, and the time will come, I know. For now, though, I'm needing to step back and take some time to breathe through the remains of my photography processing.

Related Posts from the Past (for your enjoyment, and a little more of the story):
What is Marriage, Anyway?
Some Wedding Rememberies
Vows
Choosing Canaan
Pete Is a Thief, You Know





(Image © Informal Moments Photography) (credit: Gabe Waddell)

The Fact is, I Am Eve Too

The mood in the shop is welcoming, the air happy-laden with the warm scent of coffee, the light a comforting, cooling dim from the glare of the summer I leave behind me as I enter. I’m not really here for a warm drink on a hot day. I’m here for conversation, here for relationship, two friends learning one another.

We share who we are, and two hearts meet, and I am changed as I know and as I am known. We talk too long, and not long enough; we leave wanting more, because we are the same. Our camaraderie is born of the different and the familiar, the places I have been are not the same and I am fascinated by what I have not seen, newly aware of where I have not been.

We converse and we relate, and we become more real with each true thing that is spoken. Here, we enter into the life of the other. Eventually, the question comes, “how far will you go with me?”

So much hangs on my response.

Recently several “coffee-shop” friends confessed past affairs. They told of brokenness, of selfishness, of redemption and grace, of poor choices and new, wiser boundaries. Two other friends shared fears and fallout because of their parents’ affair-initiated divorces, explaining personal boundaries they own for the mistakes of their elders.

I have listened in aching silence, mostly.

I don’t understand their secrets, but I understand sorrow. I cannot comprehend sleeping with a man who is not my husband, losing a man to another woman, watching my parents separate over such a thing.

For an uncertain moment, I hold my breath over my coffee cup, realizing I am not the same as they, afraid I have nothing to offer, for my experience is so different.

But still they share in the quiet of this friendship coffee shop, and I know my own sin is often birthed deep in fertile heart-ground, wedging me away from the man who stands beside me, holding back the help-meet love he needs when I am tired, when I want to be someone I am not.

So here is the truth, the authentic me: I am dust, woman made from man. I have tasted the same fruit and if I do not dismiss you with the presumption that I am any better, I may grow with you. I may know you.

The fact is, I am Eve too, and I ask the same questions you ask, wondering at each encounter, “how far will you go with me?”

I release my held-breath as I remember the grace that is mine to give, remember why I know that grace.

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Over the course of several upcoming posts, I would like to expand and share this unpublished article on what I have been learning about authentic relationship.

There was so much of my life in this article I had not processed until I began to write it, and I just couldn't ready my thoughts for publication by the time my deadline rolled around. I may spread it out over a couple of weeks, do some regular posting in between, since I'm still focusing my thoughts. If you miss one, you can find the posts by clicking into this labels link.

I'd like to invite you to meet with me in my "coffee shop" either through email or in the comments sections (found in the little speech bubble at the top of my posts now!) on these posts , ask questions, start or join in this conversation. Some of my friends know my story after years of real conversations, some old friends may not know where I have been from where I started, some of my new friends may find opportunity to "know" me more.

*Recommended read: Joy, by Serena Woods





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Parenting on Purpose: My Labor of Love

For months, I'd been dreading this. For weeks, I'd been trying to put it off. But now it was time. Forty weeks and three days and a walk in the warm July sunshine brought contractions fast, coming one on top of another.

I was learning to breathe as I'd never breathed, and my breathing became a moaning song. There was no room for fear, no other goal but passing through these five hours of promised pain. In seven relieving pushes, one beautiful squirming dream emerged into my world with a tiny cry of surprise and I held life in my arms.

I passed into motherhood knowing I would fail sometimes, but I was unprepared for the challenges I would face. Piper found more personality than most babies her age. Too soon, she grasped her own identity and became more than I thought she was, more than I was ready for her to be.

I was advised to set boundaries, to let her cry it out, to force her to concede my authority over her. But Piper wouldn't be controlled. She completely panicked if we tried to make her cry it out. Spankings were irrelevant and counterproductive.

Something was wrong...

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Read more of my most recent article at Ungrind.

Released to Love

By Kelly Langner Sauer

Deep in a dark forest that few dare enter lies a meadow flooded with light. Wildflowers grow there, enticing little white butterflies robed in glory not their own.

In this meadow, there is a girl who is at once both youthful and aged. She is clothed in a white gown that shimmers and moves in the fragrant breeze as she runs free through the wildflowers.

Someone watches her play, smiling at her freedom. She catches sight of Him, and she runs to Him. Their eyes meet. He loves the perfect trust she has for Him as she accepts His outstretched hand, and they run together in the meadow.

It was a beautiful picture I had for myself—total surrender to God. I believed that if I handed my whole life over to Him, I'd be free to run in that lovely meadow under the smile of His love.

For years, I turned my focus inward, trying to reach a place where I desired only God. I walked aisles to dedicate and rededicate my life to Him. I prayed for peace, tried to trust, and hoped that somehow I'd find freedom from the part of myself that kept backing out of my desire to be fully abandoned to Him...

Read More of my most recent article at Ungrind.

a little about free...

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written:


“ For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

- Rom. 8:31-39

Something I'm chewing on today that I thought I'd share. My writer's blocked article is drafted and submitted. I am still in my pajamas. I need a nap. But it is done for now. And I have heard a rumor that Pete may blog this evening.

I am so glad it is Friday.

Oh yes, and when you're pregnant, sick is good. It is important to remember this. Blah. The ironies of my life...

Letter to Sarah

Dear Mother S.:

When A. walked in and said, "Honey, we need to move," did you think he was crazy? I don't know how you could leave the home you knew and loved—your own people—to pack up and go with your husband God-knows-where. Of course, maybe you wanted to start fresh, go somewhere new, and make friends who didn't know about your barren past.

Still, following God by leaving everything behind must have seemed crazy to you at first. I know it felt crazy to me when P. asked me, "What about Charleston?" after eight years of living in a place I chose myself after twenty-some moves with parents and siblings and college and jobs and baby. I didn't want to leave my home. I didn't want to leave the few friends I had or the photography business I had spent several years building....

Read More...

I had another article published at Ungrind this week. See? I promised you deep thoughts soon! Okay, so I wrote them a couple months ago, but come on... It's really just more of the same though, a bit of my struggle and growth through the changes of moving written out in letter form to Sarah of old, who moved a LOT as she followed her husband. It helps to remember those who have gone before.

mirror image

My first published article.
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Mirror Image By Kelly Langner Sauer

About a year ago I took up a self-portrait project in the mirror in an attempt to get a photo for my blog. I didn't want a posed picture with a tight-lipped portrait smile. I wanted to capture some reality to offer my readers a glimpse of who I am.

My self-portrait session began dismally. I'm a photographer and not a naturally photogenic person. I can see the beauty in others and I love capturing it, but I don't usually bother looking for beauty in myself.

But it was me behind the camera looking at me in front of the camera. And I didn't like what I saw through my lens. I couldn't manage a real smile to save my life. I had no trouble capturing my frustration with myself. The angry looks. The annoyance with my subject. The stuck-out tongue....

Read more of this article, and other articles about image this month at Ungrind.