Night Walks

Posted on August 26, 2014 by Steph

I started walking at night while I was still sick. I had just returned home from India, battered and broken and relatively lifeless, and had little else to do but walk. Actually, at first anyway, I could do little else. I suppose I could have walked during the day but I never wanted to. I didn’t want to go outside during the day. I spent my days sleeping and staring and writing and playing guitar and crying. But for some reason, when night came small specks of life began to stir in me. I recognized it immediately because I hadn’t felt it in awhile – life, that is. And these specks of life eventually lured me outside into the night air.

Perhaps it was because I hadn’t been able to walk alone in India at night and so walking alone in Canada at night felt special. Perhaps it was because I was depressed and my doctor told me I needed to get exercise if I was going to get better. Or perhaps it was because I heard the voice of God call to me from the thick darkness.

Whatever the case, I began to walk up and down the streets of my neighbourhood, night after night. I established a route. As I walked I looked at the tall trees lining the streets and often stopped to gently run my hand over the bark. It was good to feel something outside of me. I looked at houses and wondered about who lived in them and I observed what kinds of cars people had parked out front. I discovered a retirement home just around the corner from my apartment, and church buildings, and back alleys, and school yards, and homes with lights on and homes with no lights on. I heard people talking through windows, and practicing piano, and yelling at each other. I saw the flicker of late night television through curtain-drawn windows. You know, the kind of simple discoveries you make when you take notice of your surroundings. And when you don’t want to notice anything else.

I would go walking as late as possible. I didn’t want to see anyone and I didn’t want anyone to see me. For the most part, my timing was perfect. I had the place to myself, darkness acting as my comforting sweater and solitude as my map leading me to nowhere in particular. I could hear crickets chirping and rain dripping and the breeze rustling the leaves of the trees and…

I could hear my heart, its pieces rattling around inside – broken, confused, lost, aching.

There was something about walking at night that felt very familiar to me and for many months it was the only time I felt a measure of home and peace. The day held people and conversations and so-called answers and expectations and “light.” People could see me. I could see me. But at night? It was just me at night, no one was watching; I wasn’t watching. The minute I stepped outside and filled my lungs with the humid night air – I could breathe! And these breathes, one at a time, rising and falling, started to fill me with life once again.

It was as if the darkness wasn’t dark at all. It was as if these night walks of mine were the only time I could really see light. Because, finally, I had nothing to prove to anyone or to myself or to God. It was just me. And Him.

I started talking with God. My words mixed with my tears and my tears with my words. Those were messy conversations and the most real conversations I’ve ever had.

I especially loved when it rained while I walked at night because I felt even more safe in the rain. Sometimes I couldn’t tell where the rain stopped and my tears began. We were one – the sky and I, crying together, creation groaning together, begging God to fix things once and for all. In the earth and in its people and in me. We didn’t know it at the time (well, I can’t speak for the sky) but we cried because we knew there was still something, somewhere, worth crying for. It was our act of worship.

Eventually words came, one by one, and then sentences and paragraphs followed. Whispers and yells and passionate pleas and singing. If anyone saw me, surely they thought I was crazy. Maybe I was. A crazy woman, yelling at the sky at 11:30 at night, stumbling down the sidewalk in blind grief. I even laughed on occasion and I’m sure that was the icing on the cake!

But sometimes my words sounded more like gasps – those seconds and minutes when you are filled with so much anguish that you can’t breathe properly. So I would stop talking and just keep walking.

In those moments, my steps became my words, persistent messages to God that I would keep going, that I would not give up, that I believed that I would once again walk in the land of the living. After all that had happened, why did I keep believing this? I still don’t really know except to say that faith is a baffling masterpiece and only ever a gift.

Something remarkable happened on those night walks. I got honest. I mean, really honest. I said things to God that I never said before. I asked questions that I never asked before. Nothing was stopping me now. Besides, what did I have to lose? I was empty – empty enough that there was finally nothing between my heart and me. I saw it for what it was – the redeemed and the yet-to-be redeemed. And I laid it before Jesus, night after night, layer after layer, and we talked about it.

We talked about how broken I was. I didn’t just “confess” or “repent”. No, we were far beyond that now (as necessary as these are as a starting place). This wasn’t church or religion or a to-do list or false-guilt or moral obligation or… this was ME! Me, this little broken human being, standing before my Creator under the night sky, asking for a way out of death. I already knew what Jesus did for me, but this wasn’t about believing something in my head that happened centuries ago, as real and relevant as it was and still is. This was about today, and today was dark, today was broken, today had lost all hope.

JESUS, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT TODAY?

Maybe that’s part of the difference between believing something and following Someone.

God started showing me things – difficult things, beautiful things. He began mining the depths of my heart, gently digging up memories and hurts, unhealthy thought-patterns and crooked beliefs – He show me things I had not seen before and things I had covered up long ago. Where was He going with all of this? And why? How deep can He go until He digs right through to the other side? It was painful. I didn’t recognize who I was any longer. And yet, night after night, I went back for more. Walking, talking, crying… something was happening inside of me. Life was happening! This slow chipping away of my heart was uncovering something invaluable – new soil.

And then, just like that, it was done. I don’t know when exactly, and I can’t say how exactly, but the overhaul was done and He started planting seeds. And He’s been planting seeds ever since.

I still take night walks. I’m in a different season of life now, but, then again, I suppose its not really all that different. I still need to pace the streets in the night air, I still need to talk with Jesus about my brokenness and the brokenness around me, I still need Him to see me as I am and change me, and I still need to worship God with my tears. But now when we walk we also talk about other things – hopes, dreams, and people and situations. Walking at night has become one of my favourite things to do. It’s the time of my day or week when I feel most alive, most like myself, most connected to my Creator, most like God is right there at my side, in my backyard and on my streets – it’s as if I was made to walk and talk with God.

I was. We are.

I guess once you see your heart, forged in the fire of God, you don’t want to look away; you don’t want to go back to how it used to be. Because, what you are actually seeing is a miracle in the making. Stone turning into flesh, the old being made new, the broken being put back together again, and a Redeemer who walks with you every step of the way. Even at night.

Especially at night.

“I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the LORD, the God of Israel, who summons you by name” (Isaiah 45:3).

(P.S. Don’t worry, Mom. I live in a safe neighbourhood!)

(P.P.S. Awhile after I started walking at night, I started running during the day. You can read about that here if you want.)

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© Stephanie Ratcliff and stephanieratcliff.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Stephanie Ratcliff and stephanieratcliff.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Stephanie Ratcliff can’t remember where she got the photo from, but definitely somewhere on the internet. She apologizes to the Photographer. If you took it, let her know, and she’ll definitely give you props. Thanks!

Running Against Depression | Running For Life

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Steph

I hate running with a passion. I love sports, I love sweating, I love competition, but I hate running.

I actually used to hate walking as well, but I’ve matured and now I love walking. My mom tells me that when I was young and we’d go for a family walk, I’d cry all the way. Sometimes I’d even stop to cry, as in I’d just stop walking, sit down on the sidewalk, and cry myself silly. That’s how much I hated walking. But I guess teenagers can be like that. It was a mystery to my parents why I hated walking so much because in general I was a pretty active kid – I was always outside playing with my friends, skipping rope, biking, and building dams with the puddles and sand in the roadway. And in the winter, like a typical northern Ontario kid, I was outside building snow forts, skating on the lake and playing road hockey. I loved being active, but I hated walking.

My parents eventually figured out a solution to the problem of my lazy walking though, smart as they were.

Distraction!

They gave me a ball. Yup, that’s all it took. If while I walked I had a ball to bounce, I was completely fine. Happy even. And then I started learning to walk without a ball in my hand, and then eventually I started enjoying walking for the sake of walking. I think I consider that to be the moment I emerged from adolescence into adulthood. That, or when I started liking horseradish sauce.

I started playing basketball when I was 12, and the same thing happened when I was forced to start running as a result of training for this sport. Give me a basketball to bounce, and I didn’t even notice I was running and could play basketball forever. But during long runs or those drills where all you do is run back and forth, back and forth… I was miserable. Despite this, my love for sports grew and, thankfully, most of the time I had a basket ball or a hockey stick in my hand and running was just a necessary evil on the way to sheer and utter athletic joy!

In my late twenties, when there was little-to-no opportunities for me to play sports but because I was still in need of a healthy heart, I decided to start running. Like, only run. Actually, the real reason is that a co-worker roped me into a 10K race and because our whole office was participating, my pride over-ruled my hatred and I agreed to do it. Oh, the misery! Oh, the pain! Oh, the sheer boredom! But I knew the positive effects of exercise and after the race was over I decided to keep running, now and then, on and off, wanting and willing it to become a way of life. But it never happened. I would run consistently for a couple of months and then I would stop for a year. And then I would start again and… the cycle (and battle) continued. Running was 99% grin-and-bear-it and 1% enjoyment. But I kept trying, hoping that running would eventually become like walking – something I hated becoming something I loved.

When I went to India I stopped running altogether. I think I would have started again eventually (well, probably not), but living in a new country with certain gender role and cultural expectations, I was unsure of how and where to begin. I also had so much culture shock and homesickness to deal with that the last thing I wanted to do was something that was so hard. Life was already hard enough. Whatever the case, after six months in India I got so sick that I had to leave and return home.

I was severely depressed.There are many things people can do to help themselves out of depression and exercise is certainly one of them. The problem was I didn’t have any motivation to exercise. I didn’t have motivation to do much of anything. It’s the nature of depression – the very things you need to do to get better, you have no drive or desire to do. On one level, you can’t. You’re stuck in a hole and you can’t get out, no matter how much you want to. I don’t know about you, but for me it took utter and complete desperation to finally start climbing out.

Over a year into my battle with depression I finally hit rock bottom. I came to a place where my questions and feelings and thoughts went far beyond my experience in India or how I got there in the first place. I began to question God and life. It had been coming for awhile, small hints of my eventual crash showing up here and there, but especially in my mind. I began entertaining thoughts of hopelessness and Godlessness long before I started believing them. The constant pummelling of doubt and fear eventually wore me out.

Truth was becoming slippery in my hands. I couldn’t hold onto it anymore and then, one day, not only was I not holding onto it, I didn’t even recognize it. It was lost. I was lost.

I remember that day clearly. I had gotten home from church and was tired, again, and so I lay down to sleep but instead my mind began wandering. It wandered through the day, past the present, past India, past the steps that led me there, and all the way back to the beginning. And I fell. It wasn’t gradual or graceful, it was an immediate drop off the cliff I had been standing next to for a long time. Was I pushed? Did I jump? I don’t know. But whatever the case, I was falling into hopelessness. Is God good? Can I trust Him? Is my whole life a sham? Is everything I thought I was and He was just a cruel, deceptive joke? Is God even real? Do I want to keep living? I fell not because I asked these questions; I fell because, on that day, I chose to answer them with the wrong kind of evidence.

(In the end, it doesn’t really matter if you fall. It just matters where you land.)

But no. Wait. There was some small hope left after all. I know this because after lying in this terrifying state of being for awhile, I did what only someone with hope would do. I reached out. I texted two friends and asked them to pray. It was the smallest of gestures and the tiniest act of rebellion against the night that I could muster. Small and tiny to me that is. To my Father in Heaven, it was a loud, resounding battle cry!

Hope can easily look like desperation, but it is still hope.

It was all I had left – faith the size of a mustard seed. One of these friends ended up calling me and I sobbed on the phone with her until I was a blubbering, beautiful mess. She made me say out loud what I was thinking; what I was believing. I refused at first because I was incredibly embarrassed and ashamed but then eventually I decided that I had nothing to lose anymore, not even my pride. And so I spoke into the light what I believed in the darkness. And as those ugly words sputtered from my broken heart, they were disarmed.

And then I did something completely uncharacteristic, something I hadn’t done in a long, long time.

I pealed myself off the carpet, changed my clothes, and went for a run.

And did I run! I ran like a mad woman! I ran and I cried and I ran some more. I yelled at God as I ran up hills and I cried at Him as I ran down. Let me tell you – it’s hard to breathe when your crying and running at the same time! I told God what I thought about… everything and everyone, including Him, including me. Somehow I was able to turn my hatred for running into a cry from the depths of my heart. I needed to run.

It was symbolic, mostly. The very thing that was so hard for me to do for so many years, that took so much motivation, determination and endurance was now a symbol of hope, freedom, defiance, and life. In the past, running beat me. I often gave up and just wouldn’t do it at all. But now, if I could make it through a run without giving up – something that was so hard for me to do – maybe I could make it through depression, too? Maybe I would come out alive? I hated both, but it was clear to me that day that I hated depression so much more.

I was running against depression.

I was running against the night and the darkness and the enemy and everything that held me down, stripped me bare and sold me into slavery. I was running with anger; I was running with fight. I was done with just lying there and taking a beating, I was done with believing lies, and I was done with living in the valley of the shadow of death.

For the first time since that crazy depression began, my soul got off the floor, stood up, put on its shoes, tied up its laces, and went for a run.

It was no longer just my family and friends fighting for me – I was fighting for me!

On that day, I planted my little mustard seed of faith in the barren ground before me and asked God to move a mountain. I would not turn away but instead I would follow Him to the end. Even if this was all a big cosmic trick, even if I was being completely deceived by God, I would still follow. And so with nothing before me but some promises I read in an ancient living book, I once again chose Jesus.

(That’s where I landed.)

The next morning I got up and went running again. The morning after that I did the same thing. And I started fighting in all different kinds of ways.

I’ve been fighting ever since.

I have to tell you, I still hate running! But it’s is one of the ways I tell depression it doesn’t get to win. It’s also really healthy for me, of course, and it helps build strength in my whole being. Some days it is anger that fuels my run. Anger against an enemy who has tried so hard to destroy the plans God has for me but who has not and will not succeed. Anger against the ways in which our world remains in darkness, the many people around me still suffering depression and hopelessness. I run for me and for them. Maybe I run for you, too.

There is always hope.

And then I have days when I am not angry. Instead I am simply filled with awe that I am running at all, that I am no longer lying on a couch in a pit but instead I’m sweating outside in the fresh air, feeling the exhilaration of God’s love fill my lungs and heart. As I run, I run towards Him. It is as if I can see Him in the distance and with depression behind me, I run to Him with my worshipping legs. In this way, running has become both an act of rebellion against depression and a declaration of freedom and life in Christ. LIFE! I experience Christ’s defeat over the enemy, sin and death when I’m out pounding the pavement and not lying on my floor or in a grave.

I guess you could say, I run against depression and I run for life.

At the end of the day, I hate depression, oppression and death so much more than I hate running. So I’ll keep running, until I run all the way home.

** Postscript: I wrote these reflections in November 2012, seven months after returning home from India, still in a dark season of life. Running, of course, was not the cure of depression nor can I mark this time as the end of depression. There were more dark days ahead, more battles, and more healing to be had. But the truth found in these reflections remains and I believe this truth today as much as I did then. Though I am only human, with ups and downs along the narrow path of faith paved through wide open spaces, I am coming to understand and accept the things I can and can’t control.

The “cure” for depression is a recipe of simple and purposeful acts mixed with deep and complex mysteries – acts we choose to live out every day and mysteries that hold onto us with faithful, timeless love. But this not a recipe that will make us completely full and satisfied in the here and now. It is only an imperfect appetizer we eat until that day we finally feast in heaven with Jesus. On that day, all things will be made right and brought to wholeness, including us. On that day, we will not have to run anymore.

Running continues to be a mental battle for me. I sat in my workout clothes for over three hours this past Saturday before I went for a run! I still don’t run a lot. I believe exercise should also be enjoyable, and so I’ve found other enjoyable ways to stay in shape. But because running is such a huge mental battle for me, when I do it, once a week or so, it is also a huge victory! It’s a helpful indicator of my mental health. I will not let running defeat me. I will run! That is to say, I will not let depression defeat me. I will live!

There’s no ball in my hand when I run now – no distractions. I look at running square in the eye and I do it. It is no longer just about running.

We are not children anymore, pacified by distraction and humoured by false realities. When it comes to choosing between death and life, these are the tricks and the deceptors; these are the numbing agents that keep us lying on the floor; these are the short-lived bandage solutions that only cover up the long-lived wounds of our hearts. Friends, as the author of Hebrews reminds us, let us strip ourselves of these things, lay ourselves before the only One who can ever truly heal us, and then… let’s go for a run!

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What Do You Need?

Posted on April 24, 2014 by Steph

I worked at a retirement home last year. It was the kind of retirement home in line with the Canadian Dream (aka The American Dream, but Canadian-style, with hockey talk and lots of dry wit) and was affectionately called, “a cruise ship that doesn’t go anywhere”. This retirement home had it all – beautiful suites, three prepared meals a day, planned activities and outings, building security and emergency help with just the push of a button. The irony of my employment there didn’t hit me until I was a few weeks into the job. But when it hit, it hit me square in the heart.

You see, exactly a year before, I was living in New Delhi, India, befriending slum children. I was no longer reading about them or studying them from a distance – I was talking to them and hugging them and thinking and praying intently about how I could help them. These ragamuffin children and their families captured my heart from the beginning. They were poor, hungry, cold (December and January in North India is freezing!) and many were abused and neglected. Their immediate needs were obvious – a growling stomach speaks louder than words – and I was there to help meet their needs, on a variety of different levels, in a variety of different ways. As I walked the streets of New Delhi and even now as I think about it, I knew exactly what I wanted to do and the person I wanted to be. I wanted to serve the orphans and the widows, the “poorest of the poor”, and I was ready to give all I could, to be, as we say, “the hands and feet of Jesus”. I wanted to be that person.

Then life and illness happened and I found myself not in India, but back in Canada where the landscape of people and social problems looked completely different. After an eight-month recovery, there I found myself, working at retirement home in Vancouver, answering questions about what was on the dinner menu or what time the Rummikub tournament started. I was serving people who paid more money for a month of rent than some people in India would have in their entire lifetime. I quickly realized – this was not the person I wanted to be; these were not the people I wanted to serve. I began to resent contributing to a system of so much waste and “first-world problems” when there were people dying on the streets of New Delhi.

If you’ve travelled to a developing country before, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

How short-sighted our hearts can be.

A few weeks after starting my job there, I had an epiphany of sorts when I was getting ready for work one day. I was angrily mulling these things over in my heart once again and telling Jesus about them – telling Him how it was because I wasn’t sure He knew – and suddenly I felt the tug of His Spirit.

“Steph, what do they need?”

“I don’t know what they need! They have everything! They are rich senior citizens living it up in the eleventh hour of their lives!”

“Steph, what do they need?”

“They don’t need anything! Most of them know You and follow You. They’ve got it together!”

“Steph, what do they need?”

And then I stopped responding because suddenly I realized that I was seeing these people with my own two eyes and not the eyes of my Father. Their Father. Our Father. And then our Father graciously and gently gave me a wee peak into my heart and I saw my arrogance, self-righteousness, disappointment and compassion and love, too. It was a messy conglomeration of various parts of me swimming together, so intertwined that I could not separate the redeemed from the yet-to-be-redeemed. So I forgot about the rich and poor people of the world for a moment and instead looked inside at my own rich and poor. The poverty and opulence in my heart, living together side by side as neighbours do, just seconds away from dying of starvation and living in abundance, all at the same time, in the same yard, at the same dinner table. I realized then that my employment situation was not ironic at all – that God had very purposefully placed me at this retirement home to teach me a very important lesson:

Every person has a need.

We’re all little creatures – little creations – who may wear different kinds of clothes and live in different kinds of buildings (or no building at all) and drive different kinds of cars (or no car at all) but, if we can be so liberated to look past the weary, one-dimensional edges of these things for just a moment, or God-willing for much longer, we can see that delicately resting underneath our skin and bones are things that we creatures all share in common – a soul, a spirit, a thirst for knowledge and adventure and wholeness, a voice, a heart, and an insatiable longing to be home – with each other and with our Creator. We make thing too complicated sometimes, as if we need to sophisticate our lives so that we can cover up the fact that we are not sophisticated at all. The truth is, we are breathing next to each other, giving and receiving from each other and, if we so choose, seeing into each other – rich or poor or both at the same time – and reaching out to each other with whatever we can in hand and in heart, hoping desperately it all finds a place to land; we find a place to land.

If it’s true that we’re all on mission no matter where we live in the world, and I believe it is, then I needed to start listening and looking for the needs of the people that lived at the “cruise ship that doesn’t go anywhere.” I started asking Jesus to open up my eyes to see what He saw and to give me courage to act or speak or do nothing. This was my part to play in the story. My part wasn’t to direct my steps to a particular country or people or to define what “the poorest of the poor” meant from my small perspective, but rather to just be where He placed me, and in that place to ask that simple, life-changing question:

“What do they need?”

“What do they need?” I asked while driving to work. “What do they need?” I asked as I listened intently to a woman complaining about how dry and tasteless the chicken at dinner was that evening. “What do they need?” I asked as I plunged toilets and cleaned poop out of the bird cage. “What do they need?” I asked as I listened to dear Mary* tell me the same story over and over again, her beautiful rambling slowly revealing her dementia. “What do they need?” I asked as I played Rummikub with the ladies at night and playfully accused Beverly of cheating (she didn’t, but I was losing.) “What do they need?” I asked as I sat on the floor next to Gwen, a 96 year old woman who had just fallen and broken her hip. “What do they need?” I asked as I prayed with Barbara on her way to the hospital, unsure if I would ever see her again. “What do they need?” I asked as I heard the news that Carl, a man I had finally had my first conversation with the night before, died the morning after (surely I didn’t talk him to death?). “What do they need?” I asked.

What do you need? What do I need?

Why did I listen to someone complaining about dry chicken, especially when there are people in India (and many other places around the world) dying of starvation? Because after the dry chicken complaint was given, we talked about what she used to cook for dinner when she owned her own house, and then conversation turned to stories of her husband and kids and grandkids, and ended with how much she missed her husband, who had passed away ten years prior. Her loneliness reached out to my own and, for just a little while, we became companions on the same road. I listened and hugged her and cried with her and assured her that she would see him again, someday. I told her that there was still purpose for her being here, and that she was still needed by others. She thanked me for taking the time to listen, and I thanked her for sharing her stories with me. As she wheeled her walker away, I thought:

That is what she needed.

That is what I needed, too.

And I went back to cleaning poop out of the bird cage.

I worked at the retirement home for only eight months, but those eight months were so rich, I really couldn’t have asked for anything more. The beautiful mystery of giving and receiving was, in those months, incredibly healing to my fragile state and to their fragile states as well. We welcomed each other in, not because we wore certain clothes or lived in certain houses, but because we all needed something, and we at least understood that much about each other. What that something was, was ours to discover…

It is wherever we are.

* All names have been changed to protect the elderly.

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Tourist Love (and my dislike of cantaloupe)

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Steph

When I go to functions that have fancy food platters and such, I pick and choose, just like everyone else. I love the variety! But the fruit platters make me sad. Not because I don’t love fruit – I do! Fruit platters are such a good idea.

And yet, platter after platter after platter, there they are: cantaloupe and green melon slices. Really, people?

Of all the delicious fruit that could be put on a platter, cantaloupe and green melon make the cut? How? It is forever a mystery to me.The green melon with its pale looking flesh and dull flavour. The cantaloupe with… what is that colour and flavour anyway? Where are the strawberries that smell like summer? Where are the orange slices kissed by the sun and little grapes that splatter cheer all over your mouth when you bite into them? I’ll tell you what I do at these cantaloupe and green melon platters – I take all the pineapple (it seems like wherever you find cantaloupe and green melons, you find pineapple too. Thank the good Lord!). Yes, I’m that person. I’m the reason why when you arrive at the platter, there’s no good fruit left. And I’m not even sorry! I skim off the top, take what I want and leave the rest. I also eat muffins the same way.

I think we live a lot of life in this way.

We’re all kinda like tourists – enjoying the good, staying away from the bad, taking and leaving what we want, and coming and going when we please. We’ve become accustomed to, once a year or so, packing up our bags, flying somewhere exotic, seeing the sights, and falling in love with an idea, with a fragment of reality. And then we leave and go home and post pictures on Facebook and Oh! That trip was good! That party was good! That friendship was good! That fruit was good! I admit, a part of me LOVES being a tourist!

When I went to India the first time, I did not go as a tourist. Even though I was only there for six weeks, from the moment my lungs filled with New Delhi air, I began to think of India not as a place I would spend time exploring and basking in all that is beautiful and magical, but as a place I would soon have to make my home. When you know you eventually will call a certain place “home”, it completely changes your perspective and the way you invest yourself. You want to see different things, you want to understand different layers, you want to have different conversations, and you want to know if you can not only survive in that place but also thrive. So you dive in to a country and a culture and people in a way you do not as a tourist. Suddenly those little cafes you normally would seek out or the grand structure you just have to get your picture with are not as important as knowing if you can, day after day, eat the food and breathe the air and play chicken in the traffic and love the people.

I tried my best to see India for what it was – its beauty and its brokenness all wrapped up together in a way only India could express. I despised parts of it and I loved parts of it. In the end, I chose to move there and, in doing so, to do something extraordinary, something no tourist could ever do, no matter how hard he or she tried. My extraordinary act was this: I chose to not engage this country as a tourist would, keeping it at arms-length, criticizing and praising it with ignorance.

I chose to move in and, by moving in, I chose to give my beauty and my brokenness to India and, in turn, allow India to give her’s to me. It was a beautiful exchange. I suppose when you move in, there is no other way.

I got to know India as she was, warts and all, and I let India know me in the same way. My time there often felt like I was taking two steps back and one step forward but, looking back now, I see that this kind of dance is incredibly worthwhile, as long as you’re doing it with someone you love. I held on to India and she to me and we wept together for six months. We laughed too, but mostly we just wept. Our perspectives shone light on each other’s brokenness and oh, so much beauty. We bared our souls together and only because of this raw honesty did we find hope together. And so much love. (I mostly discovered this after the fact, and am still discovering it to this day.)

Here’s the main point: Before I made the permanent move to India (accepting permanence is necessary to truly move in, whether or not you end up staying for long), I thought a lot about how I would leave my home in Vancouver. I wanted to be present where I was yet found this very difficult to do, knowing I would soon be leaving. With the people in my life I began to discover in myself a tourist – a way to love people that was exciting but shallow; a way to skim over people and only take the bits and pieces I wanted or enjoyed. Why go any deeper when you’re just going to leave soon? But I also began to discover that this is not love at all. Like a tourist sitting at a Parisian cafe, pretending to be one of the locals for a short time but knowing nothing about what it actually means to live there, or like a party-goer leaning over a fruit platter, choosing the best fruit and leaving the rest behind, I found that it was tempting to love others in this way too, especially because I knew I was leaving soon. You have to protect yourself, right?

But from what exactly?

I wrote about this in my journal one day, when I still didn’t know for certain what day or month I would be leaving for India, but knowing it would be soon.

May 2, 2011
“my view of life right now is as a tourist – looking on, dipping in, but not fully investing because i am leaving. i have come to the conclusion that, while i have tried hard, i do not know how to love as i should…my tourist love infects me and infects others. i suppose we are all tourists in some way, exploring the exciting and intriguing parts of each other’s lives but avoiding the back alleys and the reality of each other’s darkness. and if we do dare step in, if only for a moment, we don’t know what to do or say. but it is only here in this place that we truly discover one another and, if we are brave enough to stay, we find a home. not in the sense of a place to live, but in the sense of comfort, familiarity, peace, and knowing, for it is here that we find ourselves, too. we are ourselves together, in all our brokenness and in all our hope.”

I made a decision that day that I would not be a tourist when it came to those I loved. I would love with my whole heart, from start to end, all the way to the tarmac and beyond. It was painful at times, but mostly just beautiful. As it turned out, I left for India much later than I thought I would and I came back much earlier than I thought I would. I was so thankful that when it came to people, I had decided to by-pass tourism and simply make a home.

The thing is,with life and love you never really know when you’re coming or going. So there’s no point in being a tourist – not with people anyway. There’s really no such thing as tourist love.

I’m thinking that’s why Jesus came and “became flesh and took up residence among us” (John 1:14) – to show us, in depth and in detail, how far love will really go and how much love will really cost (right down to the last drop of blood and the first breath after the grave) and He also showed us how to love each other really well. When He came, He didn’t come as a tourist – He moved in, in every way possible.

And because He moved in, He changed the world forever.

________________

Asking for a Sign

Posted on February 11, 2014 by Steph

Sometimes we wait for God to give us a sign before we’re willing to act – a burning bush, the perfect collision of a million events into one loud and clear epiphanous moment, a phone call, an open door, a strike of lightning, a short straw, a dream, or a food-shaped message. It’s legitimate I suppose, and it’s how God has spoken occasionally in the past, and maybe in the future too. But, why in the world do we wait for this?

And sometimes when we wait we tell ourselves that we’re just waiting for God to make it obvious – that we wait because we want to obey and don’t want to be out of His will. And that all may be very right and true. But also, I think what we sometimes actually mean if we’re really honest with ourselves is, “I’m scared, so I’ll just sit here and wait and keep asking God, over and over again, to send me a sign. When He gives me a really clear sign (God can do anything if He wants, right?), then I will act, then I will move.” Or even,“Surely not me, surely that’s for someone else to do – someone better, stronger, smarter, richer. So, when he makes me better, stronger, smarter and richer, then I will act, then I will move.”

What if the most important sign we get in life is not something we receive with our five senses but, rather, it is already nestled in our hearts on the inside, whispering its desires, pushing and pulling through the stubborn, fragile lining of good intentions? Or maybe it’s not even at that stage. Maybe it hasn’t even been born yet. What if anything worth starting actually starts on the inside, in a hollow room waiting to be filled or a dried-up pile of twigs waiting to be lit?

I’ve been thinking about Moses lately, wondering about his calling and the way in which it came about. Maybe for Moses, the branches and thorns that made up that little burning shrub had actually been collecting for decades, piling up in the corners and creases of his heart and home, until one day the pile became so big that he couldn’t contain it anymore. Not in himself anyway. I think the cry of Yahweh, resulting in the call of Moses, goes back to the days when he was much younger – the accumulation of watching, listening, learning, playing, ignoring, crying, killing, running, stumbling, working… loving. That burning bush was merely an echo from a call that had been ringing out for decades in the heart and flesh of human being Moses. In the end, it was love that drove Yahweh to act – to set His people free – and it was love that drove Moses to act on behalf of Yahweh. A seed of love for his own people, planted in Moses as a young boy, finally shot through the soil and sprouted into a bush, and was set ablaze by holy fire. This would be a fire raging with justice and love; a fire of complete and utter transformation. A burning bush? That bush obviously didn’t burn forever, and probably not longer than a day. But a burning heart? Now there’s a fire that will never be extinguished…

Most of the time, no matter what God chooses to use as a signpost in our lives, we get there – to that sign – because we grew there, from the inside-out. I think that inside-out stuff is the real sign after all.

So here’s a crazy idea: What if the sign is love? It’s the most simplest, most powerful, most clear sign we could ever receive. And let’s be honest – most of the time, we need simple and powerful and clear.

And what if this is the sign God has given us all along? Maybe we should stop asking God for a sign, and instead simply ask for the gift of love for another. Where there is love, there is undying perseverance and motivation. Where there is love, it doesn’t matter if you’re not good enough or strong enough or smart enough or rich enough. Love is our sign to act. The greatest act in the history of all the world was accomplished because of love. Because of love, Jesus came. Because of love, Jesus lived and died and, to everyone’s surprise, became undead and made a way for us to become undead too. Because of love for us.

And if that kind of love can call the Christ to the greatest act someone can ever do – to give up life for another – then surely that kind of love can call you and I.

On this day, it is no different, if that kind of love is alive in us. That is to say, if Jesus is alive in us. It is no different at all. When love is the sign that points you to action, you will measure “success” only by love, which really means, only by that which is eternal, that which never fails, that which always wins.

Do you want to rise to action? Then ask for love.

Do you have love? Then rise to action!

There is no other way in the Kingdom of God for where there is love, the Kingdom always grows.

(P.S. The photo above is of children I love in India. For me, that’s one of the ways this post becomes more than words. Who do you love?)

________________

Things to do in a Day

Posted on January 16, 2014 by Steph

Life got small when I was depressed. Really small. It used to be big, filled with all sorts of things to make it full. You probably know the things I mean – a good career, friends, a decent social life, vacations, a church community, ministry and whatnot. And I guess according to some standards, I was quite successful. Life was big, but then suddenly, it started to shrink. And then it got so tiny that I started being able to count my friends on one hand and my acquaintances on two and I stopped going outside and making people laugh and dreaming and planning and caring. My life started shrinking because it had to, because I was sick. Suddenly I couldn’t fulfill the commitments I made and the obligations I had. I couldn’t be the person I had set out to be. When life stopped being big, I could barely get off the couch. That’s a good reason to stop, I think.

But deep down inside I knew that sickness wasn’t the only reason life stopped. One day while I was still in India – still trying so hard to make it, trying to live up to the expectations of others and myself, trying to be successful, trying to serve God to the very best of my ability and with all the gusto I could muster up – I just stopped. I knew I was done. I knew I couldn’t take one more step forward, couldn’t give one more ounce of energy, couldn’t be the person I thought I was – the person I thought God wanted me to be. On this day, God opened up my heart in an unprecedented way. I sat on my apartment porch in New Delhi and watched the squirrels climb the building walls and the pigeons fly around and chase each other. Watching these creatures had become one of my favourite pastimes and as I watched them I thought about how they were existing exactly the way they were supposed to. In their climbing and flying they were praising God, not because they were singing worship songs or raising their paws, but simply because they were being what they were made to be. I began to realize that the squirrels and pigeons had more peace than me and, more than anything, I wanted what they had.

In this deep longing, suddenly I didn’t care what anyone thought of me anymore. I was done. This big life I had been living crumbled before me. All of my experiences and education and connections became stale to me, and as my dreams shattered I wondered if they were really even my dreams anymore. When you don’t know who you are, how can you belong to your dreams? The dreams I once had now seemed so calculated, so impersonal, so distant – I knew I was loosing them but I also knew I wasn’t the person to hang on to them anymore. That person was gone. I didn’t know who I was, but I knew who I wasn’t. On that day it became so clear to me – I needed out. I needed to stop. I needed to leave the life I had and most of what went with it. I needed to start climbing walls and flying.

And with that, my heart finally cracked open.

Because of this, and because I was very sick, I left India. I left not because India didn’t allow me to do those brave things like climbing walls and flying – not at all. I left India because India represented all the things I knew I no longer was and could no longer be. India was the result of the accumulation of pieces in my life that built me up and held me steady. I left India because I became dependent on these things to help define me. I left a country and people I loved dearly because I realized that I could not love them with a heart that was lost. How could I demonstrate to them the abundant life of Christ if there was no abundance in me?

I wrote in my journal that day:

february 23, 2012
“what if i’m just a girl for awhile? what if i just go home and do normal things and not be “the missionary” or be anything unusual or out of the ordinary? maybe that is my next extraordinary step of faith – to believe that i could just be ordinary.”

When I chose to leave India, I chose to leave life how I knew it. Not just in India, but all of life. And with that, to sever, to burn, to hope, and to live again, but differently this time. I chose to let God redefine me; to let God redefine in my life what faith was, what risk-taking was, what extraordinary was.

The problem was, I had no plan after India, after “long-term, overseas missionary”. That was what I had always worked towards and what I always wanted to “be”. Leaving India was leaving the plan. I didn’t cope all that well, to be honest. Like I said, my once big life became so small that I could barely see it. And what I could see, I despised. I couldn’t work any longer, I couldn’t speak in public, I couldn’t hold conversations very well or express myself appropriately. I couldn’t be with people for long periods of time, and I couldn’t really be with myself. All of my vision and dreams for life disappeared and I couldn’t look beyond the day I was in. Even the day I was in felt like too much to handle. My social circle was impossible to maintain and I had no strength or will to maintain it. Confidence was replaced with timidity, hope with fear, joy with anger. I lost my nerve to try anything new or even anything old. Was this God redefining extraordinary? There were days I just wanted to die.

In the middle of my depression, when I was struggling to just make it through a day, I decided to make a list. I called it my “Things to do in a Day” list (see picture above). A few of the things on this list were:

watch a movie
read a chapter in a book
nap
write a song
clean the apartment
recount what/who you are thankful for
learn a new chord
run\walk
call a friend
pray

I looked at this list every day and it helped me make decisions. It helped me feel like I had purpose and could still accomplish things. It was probably the best thing I could have done for myself at that time. Believe me, it felt very satisfying to cross “nap” or “walk” off my list. At least I was doing something. During this time, my only work was what was on my list – my work was to get better. I took on no responsibilities, except the personal responsibility to stay alive. I no longer worked hard at being a Christian or at “ministry”, I ripped off my “Hello my name is Missionary” name tag and threw it in the trash, and I stopped dreaming or even thinking about the day after the day I was in. I stopped thinking about what my heart wanted or who I was or what the future might be like with me in it. I stepped away from friends, people I loved and still love. I could no longer could maintain a social life. I wasn’t funny, I wasn’t interesting, I wasn’t intelligent or witty. I had very little to say to people. But I read books now and then, I phoned a friend here and there, I went walking at night, I talked to my mom, I watched TV, I played my guitar, I cried, I slept, I ate, I prayed, and I worked the hardest I have ever worked in all my life. These were the things I did in a day. These were the things that made up my small life and helped keep me alive.

The amazing thing is, I never stopped loving people during this time. I loved very few people and I certainly didn’t love myself, but I think this love was, in the end, what got me through. When you stop loving people in times of despair, you’re in trouble.The love I had for my family and friends, and the love they had for me, was the only tangible proof I had to hang onto that God was still present. And as He was in the holy act of redefining me, this was where He ended the forest fire of my heart and and where He started to grow something new. All was not lost because I could still love and be loved.

After all that had burned to the ground, love was the ashes that remained.

In ways we don’t ever expect, love keeps us alive. The act of love – the giving and receiving of it in its purest, simplest form – is the most delicious feast we’ll ever eat on this side of heaven. And whether the rest of life has been robbed or even if you intentionally walked away from it for something different, love always remains and never fails. It is the eternal Trinity abiding in you, and if you let Them in, They will make a pauper very, very rich.

As I sat in each day, resting in simple tasks, I began to know God’s love in a way I don’t think I ever had before. I wasn’t doing anything for Him, I wasn’t performing or giving or earning a salary. I had no plans to please God or make Him proud of me, no dreams involving anything to do with His Church, and no desire to make His name known among the nations. And yet it was in this time that I began to embrace a profound mystery that I am still embracing, and one that I will be embracing the rest of my life:

GOD LOVES ME.

I started to heal. And as I healed, I started to enjoy walking and praying and talking to a friend and recounting who and what I was thankful for. Some may say that I started enjoying these things because the chemicals in my body finally told me to, or because I was sleeping again, but I know the truth: joy returned to me because when I knew little else, I knew that my Creator loved me. I didn’t have to do anything for His love. He just loved me. And when you know you’re loved like that, it doesn’t matter how big or small your life may seem to you – your life is actually extraordinary. As I healed, I began to experience a kind of contentment in my life I had never known before. I didn’t have a job or a cool car or a lot of money or a fascinating social life or a husband or children or a house or a picket fence, but I had contentment. And with this contentment, rooted in the love of my Father, life began to get very, very big. In fact, it became so big that no walls could house it, no ruler could measure it, and no bank account could add it up. And it all started so simply – with the things I did in a day.

But I’m only human.

As my body began to feel stronger and my mind clearer and my emotions more stable, I left the list. I started do other things, to think other ways. This wasn’t all bad either. The joy of once again dreaming and planning for the future was exhilarating and necessary. It was part of my healing, and still is. But I also began to stop thinking about the day I was in. I was still in the day, of course, but I began peaking my head through the window, looking longingly toward the future, and in doing so, forgetting to pull myself back into the day. My prayers became prayers of tomorrow. I stopped sitting in the moment and listening to myself breathe just for the sake of knowing that I was alive, and that being alive was enough. I stopped disciplining my mind and body to stay in the present and simply worship. Not worship God because of my excitement for the future or because of what He did in the past, but simply worship God for who He was in the moment – as if there was no yesterday or tomorrow, no past or future. That kind of worship disintegrates the so-called big things of life in a milli-second and places you exactly where you belong – in this day, which is a part of eternity.

I stopped doing these things on my list because I thought I was better. Better as in “feeling well” and better as in better than them. I thought I didn’t need them anymore. I thought I was strong enough to get back on the horse, and to let life get bigger once again in the way it once had. My “Things to do in a Day” list began to have books piled on it because now I could think again. It got lost in the shuffle of an ever-increasing social life and ministry schedule. “Things to do in a Day” were now about bigger things, stronger things, more important and impacting things. Or so I thought.

When I started coming off my medication I became wobbly again, my emotions began to soar and dip, and hope became dull. Old thoughts started circling around my head and the temptation to let them land in my heart became real again.And land they did. That’s when I remembered my list; that’s when God reminded me of my list. What was I doing?

Is there ever anything more we can do in life than what we can do in a day?

I began to understand that anything we do in life always grows from small things, from things we do in a day – loving a friend, eating a good meal, resting. Breathing. Sometimes breathing is enough. Sometimes breathing is the bravest, strongest, most faith-filled, risk-filled thing we will ever do in life. Whatever the case, these small, ordinary things, if we do them in a day, are actually the extraordinary things of life. Who knows what they will grow into – flowers or gardens or forests. But that’s none of our business anyway. What is our business is just today. Dream from this day, plan from this day, but we can’t forget, as we so often do, that this day is actually all we have.

Know you are loved by God, not because of what you do in a day, but because you’ve been given a day to be loved by Him. What a gift! From this place of love and rest and contentment, we just need to figure out what small things we’re going to do in this sacred day. And no matter what, these small things will be extraordinary.

________________

Rumours of God

Posted on January 8, 2014 by Steph

(January 22, 2010 journal entry)
we are on the train going to chandagar. the scenery is astonishing – garbage heap after garbage heap. my stomach is turning and at one point i almost throw up. pigs, dogs, people, children. eating, sorting squatting, staring… it is perhaps the most shocking thing i have ever seen. my eyes are welling with tears. i don’t know what to think about anything. i sip my tea and eat my biscuits that i received because i am traveling first class. i eat and stare through the glass window that separates me from them. pigs are mating next to children picking through garbage. bare bums are seen everywhere as people defecate. one boy washes himself with dirty water. the stream we pass is polluted with a thick layer of scum on the top, as if someone has cooked bacon and left the grease to sit for awhile. there are small fires scattered throughout the garbage heaps – these are burning to keep people warm. dirty laundry is hanging to dry in the polluted air. i grab natasha’s arm and whisper, “you have to see this…” i need to share this experience, not for sharing’s sake, but to make sure what i am seeing is real. it is. i turn away. my stomach can’t take anymore.

God, where are You in this? are You among these people?
_________

My visit to India in 2010 resulted in a move to India in 2011. Like many nations around the world, India is considered to be a “developing nation” but, like many nations around the world, there is still much to be developed. Its easy to read about developing nations as if they are economic experiments, experiments done with money and therefore with the understanding that with enough money in all the proper places, the nation will emerge from being underdeveloped to developed. Its science or math or something. I suppose this is true on some levels – the scene I encountered on my first train ride out of Delhi would lend itself to this theory. But then again, as we know all too well in the West, there are many things that money can’t fix. I discovered that India had problems far out of the reach of money. Its problems go down to its very soul.

I wrote this a few months before I moved to India:

(June 29, 2011 journal entry)
Father, teach me to wait for You. to wait in the uncomfortable silence of inaction on Your part (seemingly, of course). teach me to wait in the yet-to-be redeemed pieces of life. to sit and believe and glorify you even when it is still dark. to learn how to be light in darkness. yet, to pray the darkness away but then to return to where i actually am, and to know how to love in brokenness. to accept my own brokenness in a deeper way, to sit with it and understand it instead of glimpsing it and running or pushing or pulling. deeper understanding will bring deeper change. teach me to sit with grief in silence, but in hope. to not have an answer except that You are the Answer and to be at peace about not knowing what that actually means.
_________

As the saying goes – be careful what you ask God for!

When I moved to India I realized I wasn’t very good at coping with brokenness. Every day when I would walk out my door, I would see it and hear it and touch it all around me. Every nation and every culture has brokenness, don’t get me wrong, but India is the kind of place that doesn’t try to cover it up. It can’t. There are far too many people with far too many problems to even try. And so there it is before you – disease, sickness, depression, sorrow, suffering, poverty, hopelessness, and death, all mixed in with economic development and the worship of thousands of gods promising lies, and beautiful colours and languages and people. Brokenness clothes itself in people. In the heat of the day it wraps itself tight around them, so tight they choke from its hold and sweat from its many layers, gasping for breath and relief. But there is no relief. The rulers and authorities in India whip the backs of their people into perfect submission. There is darkness everywhere. I remember on more than one occasion when walking the streets of New Delhi, I would look around in horror and silently pray, “God, where are You?” So much poverty, so much brokenness, so much darkness. I couldn’t reconcile all this with God’s presence.There were days when I concluded that God was simply not there. How could He be? It seemed impossible to find His presence. He was moving in the world and in people but somehow He must have forgotten India. There was no proof of His existence – His goodness and power and redemptive work could not be seen. It was just too dark. And this realization shook my faith because I had always been taught that God was everywhere and that God loved all people. But these people? They were forgotten or perhaps even abandoned.They were being ravaged by the enemy and left to die alone. In some places and people, there was no light at all.

At the end of the book of Job, Job makes a profound statement – “I had heard rumors about You, but now my eyes have seen You” (42:5). Here was a man who had experienced firsthand a God who gives and takes away but who, in all of his sorrow and loss, would not turn His back on God. Near the end of the story, before God restores to Job all that was taken, and even more so, Job in his rags and poverty encounters, perhaps for the first time, His Creator. I guess sometimes life gets in the way of vision. All his life, he had heard about God and had second-hand experiences of Him and of His provision but finally, with everything but his wife taken from him, He saw God. When you see God the way Job saw Him, you need nothing else. Dare I say, you want nothing else.

I must confess, when it came to darkness and despair, I didn’t ever believe it truly existed. I mean, I’ve seen movies and read books and whatnot, but darkness is not something you can read about and then understand. I guess in my life I just believed that God wouldn’t let it get that far. I didn’t think too much about it either, because after all I was a person of faith and I was trusting and obeying and walking in the Spirit and so even if it seemed dark, it really wasn’t, at least not for long. Storms come but Jesus is always there to calm them, right? These were my rumors of God.

I left India broken. Six months of insomnia slowly (or quickly, depending on one’s perspective) chipped away at my edges until my core cracked open. I moved back to my old hometown, Vancouver, where I thought I would begin to heal but instead I got worse. Despite sleeping pills and anti-depressants, I continued to break. There were certainly signs of improvement at times, but over all I sunk deep into depression, drowning in lost hopes and dreams, overcome with sorrow and grief and confusion and fear. It would be my undoing. And there I sat, day after day, and began to face what I feared the most – my own darkness. I feared it because I didn’t really believe that I would or could find God in it, just like I couldn’t find Him in India’s darkness.There were places in my heart I had not yet explored, never mind let God in to mine. To be honest, I didn’t even know they existed. But when all else was removed from me – my family and friends and home and car and job and dreams and abilities and health and so many things I found life and my identity in – I finally had a chance to just sit with my heart and my God and weep. And then eventually I came to places on this journey that were so desolate and dark that I could no longer even find God in them. All I heard was whispers of despair and all I saw was hopelessness. Will I ever get out alive? Can I ever be healed? Am I too far gone now? I waited and waited but God did not come. Has God abandoned me? Has God forgotten me? Has God left me to be ravaged too? And finally, the question that I had asked in the darkness of India I screamed out in the darkness of my own heart:

GOD, WHERE ARE YOU?

“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, You are there… If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me, and the light around me will become night’ – even the darkness is not dark to You. The night shines like the day; darkness and light are alike to You” (Psalm 139:7-8, 11-12).

He was there. Though I didn’t see Him at the time, or feel Him or hear Him, He was there. How do I know? Because at the end of myself, when I made my bed in hell and no longer believed there was any hope left, I collapsed unconscious in His arms. He met me there in my darkness and He lifted me out.

Even in the pit of despair, even in the darkest night or soul or nation, God is doing a new thing. You may not see it with your eyes, but if you stop and let Him into your own darkness, even the deepest, ugliest parts of who you are, you will know it is true beyond a shadow of a doubt. There is always, always hope. And if you let Him in, He will bring you back to life. And you, like Job, will no longer think you know God because of rumors you had heard about Him, but you will know Him because you have seen Him with the eyes of your soul and you have watched Him resurrect you.

And that is how I know God is in India.

_________