by Chanda Singleton Griesë
The way forward is the way back
Car lines snaking around the park
To bring life and light to death and black
Waiting for their turn to toe the mark
Car lines snaking around the park
Searching for ways to stop the spread
Waiting for their turn to toe the mark
To not be counted among the dead
Searching for ways to stop the spread
We all took sides, our family and friends
To not be counted among the dead
Whatever precautions, it all depends
We all took sides, our family and friends
On differing points, we didn’t meet
Whatever precautions, it all depends
To reconcile was no small feat
On differing points, we didn’t meet
Some of our dearest friends were lost
To reconcile was no small feat
And we are still counting the cost
Some of our dearest friends were lost
After restrictions were lifted
And we’re still counting the cost
Our community had shifted...
My heart goes out to teens who feel lonely and overwhelmingly confused, not knowing how to find their place in this world. At age 13, I only cared about school—making good grades, trying to make cool friends, and avoiding being bullied. Apparently, teens nowadays struggle with the same things but have exponentially more mental health issues. I wonder if it has something to do with our culture’s complete removal of the guardrails for identity (Sy Rogers speaks to this here and here). When I was in middle school, everyone was trying to figure out their identity by finding a sport, or a club, or a friend group they wanted to join. I wasn’t sporty, didn’t have transportation for afterschool clubs, and had trouble making friends. I felt pretty lost and alone.
In middle school, in my utter loneliness, one of my few friends shared with me something I’d never heard before—the gospel. She said that I needed to believe in Jesus to be saved. Her statement left me bewildered and confused. I did not have even the faintest clue what she was talking about.
I owned a Bible, but didn’t know how to read it. My grandmother at times, brought me to church with her, but I didn’t understand why Jesus was so special. I viewed the picture on the church wall of Jesus with a shepherd’s staff in one hand and a lamb on his shoulders. Why did people worship this Shepherd God? Why did they pray to Him?
On the night that my friend shared the gospel with me, the fear of God hit me. I couldn’t sleep. I was afraid of God’s immensity, his power, his holiness. Somehow I knew that if we missed up even once, we sinned and deserved to be punished for our sins. I didn’t want to be punished by a holy and powerful God. But at the same time, Jesus was the Shepherd God. He was gentle and welcomed children. How could Jesus, who is God, love me if I had sinned?
Jesus was gentle and welcoming but also holy and powerful. He never sinned. He calmed a storm with just his command. He healed people. He brought the dead to life. I didn’t know if Jesus would accept me, but if he did, I wanted to identify myself as a Christian. I found Bethany Baptist Church in the yellow pages who sent someone to pick up unchurched kids and teens in a little bus and brought them to Sunday School.
Every Sunday, I attended church, but the fear of God kept me from ever praying. I thought he would strike me dead for my sins if I tried to enter his presence in prayer. I was granted a scholarship to go to the church summer camp and the gospel was explained more clearly to me during the time of teaching. Jesus was the Lamb of God. He was the perfect sacrifice for the world’s sins. When he died on the cross, he died to pay for our sins. His resurrection proves that he was God and he was victorious. All I needed to do was trust in him.
My fears were alleviated. There was a way for me to be saved. Trust in Jesus. The last day of camp, I decided to pray for the first time in my life. I pictured the Shepherd God, Jesus, when he died on the cross for all the bad things that I had ever done or ever will do. He was my sacrifice and He lives forevermore. I identified with His death and resurrection for the payment of my sins and my new life in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).
I identified as a Christian.
My loneliness was replaced with the felt presence of the ever-watchful Shepherd God who promises that He will never leave me nor forsake me (Hebrews 13:5).
My journey of knowing God and following Him has consisted of learning to study the Bible with with older, wiser brothers and sisters in Christ who have discipled me. Attending church in a large assembly has also been important. It is a picture of how life will be in eternity with the unity in diversity of worshipping Jesus.
Over the years, I’ve learned that Jesus is indeed the Shepherd God, but He has so many more names. He is God the Son. For our God is a triune God—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Jesus brings us to the Father and we have received adoption through Him. The Holy Spirit awakened us to faith in God, dwells in our heart, and helps us to live as Christians (Ephesians 1:3-14).
Knowing the names of God helps me to know and understand who He is. Knowing His names helps me to envision His invisible attributes, to know what I can ask for in prayer, and to conceive how deserving Christ Jesus is of all my worship and devotion. He is God.
Last week, I shared 31 names that we’ve been given as followers of Christ. Today, I will share with you, dear readers, 31 Names of God in the Old Testament Hebrew and the New Testament Greek that I also meditate on and pray through each day of each month. I know that I am never alone and that a holy and powerful God has had mercy on me and called me His own.
Feel free to copy and print your own and meditate and contemplate the wonderful names of God.
A Fine Magpie
by Chanda Singleton Griesë
Some things are gray, others are pied
How comforting to know there is such a thing
as black-and-white—an objective "notion" that
doesn’t change like shifting shadows in culture wars
Art is good if it is beautiful, ordered, sublime
Good is true if it does what is right all the time
Truth is beautiful, for on its bars hangs the universe
not like the random throw of Yahtzee dice
nor the mimicry of the shiny magpie
whose pert words, cocks her head side-wise
while she parrots all she hears without
the knowledge that holds water
Now, there’s a fine kind of magpie
who knows enough to name
exactly what she sees
For my birthday this year, I wanted to do some things that stretched me. The first challenge presented itself at the county spelling bee for adults at my local library. Tragically (yes!), I only progressed to the second round. Apparently, quandary has two a's, not one.
Somehow the idea sprung into my head to contribute an audio-recording to librivox.org, a free online depository of audiobooks in the public domain. I had been reading through the Brontë sisters' classic novels, including Jane Eyre by the eldest sister, Charlotte, Wuthering Heights by Emily, the middle sister, and the lesser known, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by the youngest sister, Anne. I knew the sisters also composed poetry, so what better way to break into the audiobook scene by selecting a short poem to read? It just so happens that Anne Brontë's birthday is only a day away from mine, and her complete set of poems was in development. I chose a good-sized poem and learned the in's and out's of Audacity's software before submitting my best rendering, which you can find in the Librivox recording of Anne Brontë's Complete Poems collection here.
Stanzas
by Anne Brontë
Oh, weep not, love! each tear that springs
In those dear eyes of thine,
To me a keener suffering brings
Than if they flowed from mine.
And do not droop! however drear
The fate awaiting thee;
For MY sake combat pain and care,
And cherish life for me!
I do not fear thy love will fail;
Thy faith is true, I know;
But, oh, my love! thy strength is frail
For such a life of woe.
Were 't not for this, I well could trace
(Though banished long from thee)
Life's rugged path, and boldly face
The storms that threaten me.
Fear not for me—I've steeled my mind
Sorrow and strife to greet;
Joy with my love I leave behind,
Care with my friends I meet.
A mother's sad reproachful eye,
A father's scowling brow—
But he may frown and she may sigh:
I will not break my vow!
I love my mother, I revere
My sire, but fear not me—
Believe that Death alone can tear
This faithful heart from thee.
Zerona, October 1, 1845
Monday, July 15, 2024
Sonnet I: Spring Lilies in Summer
by Chanda Singelton Griesë
Bursting light of summer, belated bloom,
In Sheer dawning brightness—
wild in hello,
Sprung from flat plains of weeds that overgrow—
Chosen among thorns and thistles, you loom
Unfurled overnight,
in wind and thunder boom
Forgotten seed, whose roots stretched far below
Lily of the rain, which stuns like a doe
Only those whose empty hearts
which make room
Delight at such a sight as a dead thing
Come to life to mock at ruin and blight
Pale pink purity, turning out to sing
Songs to broken paupers
or kings resigned,
Bowed and trusting, without a care, welcoming
Joy in faith and destiny intertwined.
My husband and I stepping on “Kilometre Zero” - the geographical center of Spain
To be a woman is to be afraid. In our collective stories, deeply imbedded in our psyche, the world is unsafe and we must find a way to rest secure. Many of us who have secured a husband, find we automatically relinquish responsibility for our safety to him. Generally speaking, men seem to desire to want to care for their women, so this paradigm naturally falls into place. I unconsciously accepted this idea for a good deal of the first-half of my marriage. Consequentially, my anxiety ran wild and my relational problems only grew worse.
In the second-half of our marriage, I'm learning that I need to work hard in taking responsibility for my own wellbeing—to further develop self-agency. On our twenty-fourth anniversary trip to Spain, a tour guide wanted to to take a picture of himself with me. He proceeded to ask not me, but my husband for permission to do so, as if I had no say over it. Don't get me wrong, I actually wasn't offended. This man didn't want to overstep with my husband or me in a country where this patriarchal system is clearly spelled out. He only did what his traditional society required. More modern cultures supposedly have less tolerance for such traditions, but despite the denial, they are still there.
On this side of Paradise, as far as the curse is found, men being more primed to be in charge has always been a thing. But, the thing is, something happens to married women when we relinquish all responsibility for our safety to our husbands. Succumbing to this pervasive relational system doesn’t give us the peace it's promised. We have lost something in return—our passivity has kept us from maturity.
The world is a scary place, but its challenges give rise to opportunities for growth. I'll admit that my fail-safe, my default is to let my husband take over, to be the man. It's easier, and he loves to do so. It can even be a noble thing, to lay down his life for me. But what if always taking a step back keeps me from moving forward in developing my own God-given gifts and abilities? To learn to navigate in a new place and boldly explore unknown territory despite danger and opposition takes grit and develops resilience, qualities I don't want to miss out on.
In Spain, the perfect opportunity was afforded for me to grow when I had no other choice but to face a difficult challenge alone. When my husband fell ill before the end of our trip, I needed to “woman-up” and obtain the natural remedies (Spain is big on these) and other essentials that we needed to survive. My mission was to navigate the streets of a foreign country on foot alone. Did I fear being accosted? You bet. Did I hurry? I prayed and ran as fast as my little legs could carry me before the sun set over the harbor.
Without thinking, on the way back from la farmacia (the pharmacy), I ended up alone in a broom-closet-sized elevator at our hotel with a young, suave local, his shirt buttoned up to the navel, which revealed ample chest hair. The door shut and my anxiety rose. The man stood there, pressing the number for his floor, but the elevator did not budge.
I squeezed my travel forward-facing pack, the only barrier against me and a possible assailant. “Try your room card … um … tarjeta,” I suggested.
“Oh … muchos gracias.” He whipped out his card and swiped it against the keypad. The elevator lurched to the next floor and the doors couldn't open fast enough for me to high-tail it out of there. I don't want to think that I might be an adult victim of a sex crime, but it happens far too often. One reason I struggle so much from this fear is because I was a child victim of sexual abuse. Another reason is the real statistic that 1 in 6 women will, at some point in their life, become victimized. Personally, I know more than a handful of women who have admitted to being raped. As I said before, to be a woman is to be afraid.
When I returned to our hotel room, I dropped off the herbal remedy, but I needed to make one more trip because we were out of food and water. To avoid the expense of room service, I hurriedly ran to the market 15 minutes away in half the time the GPS guessed it would take me. By the grace of God, I made it back right before sundown. Because I faced my fears, now I know that I could do it again. My anxiety is slowly being chiseled away through learned experiences.
Most would agree that a good marriage requires both husband and wife to learn to “adult” equally. How can women develop the skills of grit and resilience in marriage when the present (though underlying) systems drive men to take the helm when the going gets tough?
Women don't want to remain emotionally stunted. It will feel counter-intuitive at first, but bringing our own ideas to the table and pulling our own weight to solve complex problems will give us a voice and a place right beside our husband, instead of two steps behind him. This will play out in all aspects of marriage—sexual intimacy, finances, raising children.
Throne room of Alcazar in Segovia, Spain - home of Queen Isabel I from ages 10-22
In a perfect world (as we Christians believe it was in the beginning), women and men were meant to be co-regents, working side-by-side to bring forth truth, goodness, and beauty—the light of the knowledge of God. Since the fall of man, our world and its systems have behaved in a very broken way. Our promised Savior, Christ Jesus, through His life and sacrifice, brought about the redemption of our souls and a new way to live based on loving God and our neighbor.
A perfect example of an early Christian couple with this kind of relationship is shared in the Book of Acts, written by Luke, an early follower of Jesus. Priscilla and her husband Aquila worked together as a Christian married couple to disciple Apollos, a future Christian leader (Acts 18:18-28). They are both given credit for their faithful service. This exemplary couple exercised a healthy balance of selflessness and supportiveness. They worked out what works in their relationship to pursue a higher, Christ-honoring goal.
During our excursion in mainland Spain, my husband and I worked together to walk a single gal to her hotel after our tapas tour in Madrid had ended way past midnight. We both worried over this young woman's safety and stayed with her until she saw some familiar sights and felt comfortable navigating the rest of the journey to her hotel alone. She had confessed to me that she had a spiritual experience while visiting a cathedral but claimed to have no religious affiliation, so I gave her a simple book that would walk her through the gospel.
Part of being a light in the world is pushing against the darkness and learning for ourselves through our own experiences the knowledge of God—that He is our helper. In turn, we can help others with the strength we have developed through facing our fears in faith.
"So we say with confidence,
'The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?'” (Hebrews 13:6)
Going forward into the second-half of our marriage, I want to bring the skills of hard-won grit and resilience to the table. Together in our one shared life as a married couple, I want to exercise my God-given capacity to bring light into the world and realize the way the Lord has enabled me to truly love my neighbors, doing them good all the days of my life.
Read my poem "Cami de Cavalls" about hiking on Spain's island of Menorca here.
