2010 World Series Singer Mollie Corbett Sings God Bless America in Game 5

A Night to Remember

Press Release

Strange Fruit

What Are You Really Hungry For?

I received an email from Oprah this morning.

She wants to know what I'm really hungry for. Usually it's cheese, but I sense Mama O is after something deeper. I have to be honest; it made me roll my eyes for a tenth of a second and then a serious response, subconscious and surprising, bubbled to the surface and spoke itself outloud through my inner voice's sarcasm.

Community. Anchored in faithfulness. To each other. To our children. To our neighbor. To our environment and its inhabitants. To social justice. To God.

I had this. It was beautiful. My heart breaks at the memory because the truth is--no matter how I may seem--I miss it like a lost lover in a violent storm.

I'm told it's not the same. They no longer meet together. Some have moved. Some have moved on. Whatever.

We had the closest I've ever been to authentic community. And apart from miles, we still do. I believe it was born partly from the seed of bitter adversity and pain. We came together after a disastrous "church" thing blew up in our faces. That was good, too, because it was us and we were good and not crazy. We thought we were all that way but we were wrong about that. That's okay. We did our best, and for about a week in the eye of a shitstorm it was really, really good, just like S/He said when S/He looked out over the handiwork of splendorous creation.

So we battered few set to meeting together in a favorite home where love and children dwell. We brought chicken and wine and bibles in a postmodern tongue. We talked and prayed and grew close and tight. We struggled with unanswered questions and resolved to love each other even when no answer came. We moved our location a couple times but wherever we were was home so it didn't matter.

Cement, I'm telling you. These bonds are rock solid. And the bitch of it is that I now live 18 hours away in a place where that kind of connection eludes me save for one family of four (well, six, if you count fur babies, which I do). That bond is growing, too, and we faithfully tend it--all of us together. We're like two kids out on first dates, glad and excited to be there, hopeful for the future (!), wary only from past hurt, and too close to the real thing to back away out of fear. Two years of interaction nurtured the seedling and a friendship sprouted up among us in a rather delightfully surprising way. We carefully check on one another and allow our words to venture into the spiritual. I can feel something calling out from the deep in a low tremor.

And it's about time. I'm starving.

We went for a drive at dusk, and I rediscovered a familiar old love.

Take to the highway won’t you lend me your name
Your way and my way seem to be one and the same

Mamma don’t understand it
She wants to know where I’ve been
I’d have to be some kind of natural born fool
To want to pass that way again
But I could feel it
On a country road

Sail on home to Jesus won’t you good girls and boys
I’m all in pieces, you can have your own choice
But I can hear a heavenly band full of angels
And they’re coming to set me free
I don’t know nothing ’bout the why or when
But I can tell that it’s bound to be
Because I could feel it, child, yeah
On a country road

I guess my feet know where they want me to go
Walking on a country road

Take to the highway won’t you lend me your name
Your way and my way seem to be one and the same, child
Mamma don’t understand it
She wants to know where I’ve been
I’d have to be some kind of natural born fool
To want to pass that way again
But I could feel it
On a country road

Rollback

As far as inner-alarm systems go, mine’s pretty dag on sensitive. I’m a natural people watcher but sometimes the radar registers a freak alert and I get a physical reaction—usually nausea.

I wish y'all could have seen the skeez in front of me at the lawn and garden check out in Wal-Mart yesterday afternoon at about 4 o’clock CST. I had a cart full of lawn and garden plants and supplies (and Jackson). Mister Skeez was a palming a trial size KY and looking shifty. This guy had past-the-shoulder yellow blonde hair with a receding hairline rendering his coif mullet-adjacent. Too-short khaki pants with white socks revealed generic black tennis shoes. A yellow t-shirt with too-short sleeves accented his red and knobby elbows. He was what my siblings and I used to call “sharp white.” I swear I stared this guy up and down, because I just KNOW I am gonna be reading about someone who escaped from his basement dungeon sometime in the near future. Then I thought about the Kmart cashier quoted in People Magazine’s expose on the rescued Jaycee Dugard and the captured Phillip Garrido (her abductor) back in September 2009:

“Others who encountered Jaycee and her daughters say something seemed off about them. Garrido would bring the younger girls with him to the local Kmart. When shopping alone, ‘he'd buy sex things like vibrator cream,’ says cashier Survitrius Honeycutt. ‘The older girl was very clingy with him, and neither one would say anything. They didn't have any expression’”(read the People magazine article here).

I watched the cashier as she checked out Mister Skeez who turned back to those of us in line and gave a half-smile in our general direction. When he finally left with his, ahem, purchase, I asked the cashier what she thinks of sights like that. She said she didn’t even notice what he had bought. Guess I’m nosey. Whatev.

The thing is, if we look at the scenario with Garrido and Mr. Honeycutt at the K-Mart, there really isn’t anything Honeycutt could have done. Frustrating. Fortunately, some campus police officers took their hunches seriously and acted on them in what amounted to the first episode of good police work associated with this multiple sex-offender.

A couple in line behind me heard me talking about the Dugard case and we laughed nervously about paranoia while at the same time needing to keep our kids safe. Needing to believe that they are. I said to the man, “This guy may be as pure as the driven snow…” We both just looked at each other and shook our heads.

Yesterday

In 1996, I was a freshly minted TWA flight attendant living with two roommates in a townhouse-style apartment in St. Charles, Missouri. One of my roommates, Kelly, had a cat named Sunny, a healthy orange tabby who had gotten into my heart a little bit and made me want a cat of my own to love and keep me company. I had a boyfriend at the time, so one wonders about the need for company.

Anyway.

I put the word out to my friends that I was on the lookout for a new kitten to call my own, with the operative word being “kitten.” Not much later, I received a phone call my St. Louis mama, Sandi Stafford. Sandi had a good friend nearby named Carol. In a recent snowfall, a cat with no identification had wandered up onto Carol’s lawn. She’d asked around in the neighborhood and been unable to find its owner. Sandi knew I was on the hunt for a cat, so she called me to go take a look.

I was unimpressed for the simple fact that I was not looking for a cat. I was very specific. I was looking for a kitten. I said as much to Kelly, on our way to Carol’s house. She just smiled.

Carol ushered us into the garage where she was keeping her foundling. Apparently, the cat was in hiding, because I couldn’t see anything. Knowing cats, though, I sat down on the welcome mat and waited. The cat would eventually get curious, I figured, and come sniff me out.

I was right. In a few minutes, as we casually conversed about the storm that brought her to Carol’s home, a slight-framed, long-haired cat slid stealthily out from under Carol’s car and stepped delicately across the concrete floor in my direction. She was gray, with a faint tortoise shell pattern, and—in the light of that moment—there was a pink hue to her coat. Carol’s favorite color is pink. She was ecstatic about that.

It was uncanny how the cat walked straight to me, without hesitation, crawled over my leg, planted herself into my lap, raised her face to mine, and then made the same chirping-style meow that would become her signature and a point of delight to all her knew her well. No, she wasn’t a kitten.

“Carol, this cat is mine.”

Sandi and Carol smiled like proud mamas who’d mid-wived a successful birth. Kelly was delighted to have a playmate for Sunny. I was quietly cleaning out a large space in my heart for its new inhabitant. I hugged my little fur-girl to my chest and off we went to gather supplies and get her home.

Rosie. I named her Rosie for the pink of her coat. At times, we also called her Miss Rose, because there was a certain regal quality to her demeanor.

Eventually, TWA would issue a furlough and many of us who were hired in ’96 would find ourselves in need of a job. I was only in St. Louis for work, and now, with no more work, I had no reason to stay. Kelly and I packed up our cars and headed back East to Virginia—she to Woodbridge in the north and I to Virginia Beach, the southern coast. I left Rosie in our apartment under the care of my then ex-boyfriend who checked on her and made sure she had food and a clean litter box for about a week until my father and I could fly back for her, make arrangement for some of my belongings, and bring Rosie to Virginia with us.

Rosie didn’t fly well, and she was plenty disgruntled after our trip, but after a day, she relaxed into her new home with my parents and me in the same house where my parents live today. They loved her as their own and laughed at her idiosyncrasies, like doing the “tuna dance,” as my parents coined it, whenever she heard the sound of a can opener. Rosie could be a finicky eater, so Mom took to calling her Picky Eunice (I have no idea where this comes from), which always made us laugh. Rosie’s long fur tapered sharply at the crook of her legs, as though she were dressed in jodhpurs, another of Mom’s observations— along with the plume-like curve of her long-haired tail. “Plume!” my mother would exclaim in admiration as Rosie would pass her by.

I worked odd jobs, tried on a few more boyfriends, and made a disastrous choice of one, but Rosie remained a pleasant constant through that time. Eventually, I would enroll in graduate school and have to shoo her away from my books and laptop so I could write my papers and study my exams. In my final year of grad school, I met and married my husband, Charlie, and Rosie made her second move with me as we made our home a mile down the road from my parents.

Rosie loved to sneak through the door in our passing through and smell the plants and grass around the house, the breeze lightly lifting the long strands of her fur and making her appear even softer, almost airbrushed. She was never nervous or erratic. Her disposition was serene and her presence calming. She was a cat built for love and lounging, the perfect companion for loss and loneliness. She was made just for me.

About two and a half years ago, we received word that we would have to make another move, this time far away from our loved ones. In order to prevent a desert deployment, Charlie, a brand new father, travelled to recruiter school to keep his family together. I stayed home with our darling baby boy, and—as ever before—Rosie kept me company and played mama herself to her two little kitten siblings, Norman and Pansy, named for my precious grandparents. For my family, pets were always bonafide family members. They still are.

Once more, Rosie and I would make a move, this time as a family of six. We loaded up the FJ Cruiser and trucked down to Bossier City, Louisiana. It took four days, one heart-stop in Atlanta to see my best friend Leigh Anne, three cat carriers, and a bottle of prescription tranquilizers (for the fur-babies) to get it done. Charlie drove and I paved the lonesome highways with tears that might one day lead me back to the place that will always be “home.”

We made it safely and carved out our new home. Rosie crept the floor boards and gave tentative assent. She liked the thick carpet and the large window in the living room that gave her gracious sunlight all day long in which to stretch and lounge. Occasionally, I would let her explore the back patio, but only on her leash. Grudgingly, she would deign to step into its tethers and bear its restraint for the promise of rolling on hot concrete and chewing the green grasses that sprouted at the edge of the stoop.

Once more, Miss Rose was put upon to relocate, this time to a home with a larger yard and more spacious rooms just a mile down the road, fittingly, on Rosemead. She found solace in a sun-bathed breakfast nook, stolen trips through the garage to the shrubs around the water spigot where the earth was dark and cool from shade and moisture from the dripping faucet. Summer gave way to autumn and winter thawed into spring. Change and age settled into her bones, stunting her gait and dimming the pink light of her fur. She slept more, ate less, and stayed very close to my side. One day, loud noises brought no flinch or turn of her head. She could no longer hear my kissing call; her face flashed no recognition at the sound of her own name.

Yesterday, we Corbetts took to the Air Show to see the Air Force Thunderbirds. It was the day I took two thousand shots of magnificent airplanes performing masterful feats of gravity-defying aeronautics. It was the day I played paparazza, running down the flight line to catch Nicholas Cage greeting the Thunderbird Crew with his four year old little boy, Kal-El, who hid playfully from the crowd under the back of his father’s bright yellow shirt. It was the kind of day that wears you out completely and leaves you glad for the experience and pining for your bed.

Back at home, we dragged our bags in from the van and stumbled around the house, putting things away and putting on more comfortable clothes. Charlie drew Jackson a bath, and I walked through the house trying to decide where to begin with straightening and preparing for the coming week. Every step, Rosie followed me. She had been feeling sickly and only drinking a little water. She weighed heavy on my heart all week, and I made a mental note to get her to the vet. But yesterday afternoon, her shadowing was unrelenting. She would stand before me and summon a pitiful meow, without any hint of her signature chirping. She no longer had it in her. And I knew intuitively what I did not want to know. I made some calls, talked with Charlie about dinner without me, and kissed Jackson who was splashing about in the tub. Charlie brought down a carrier from the attic for us.

One more time, Rosie and I travelled together in the car. We rode in silence, and I opened the door of her carrier so I could keep my hand near her for comfort, hers and mine. I didn’t know what was wrong, but she’d lost so much weight that I knew it wouldn’t be good news from the emergency vet. After a little while, I spoke softly to her of the day we met and the trip to Virginia and the days of heartache she helped me through. I spoke to Love and asked for presence, for help that Rosie could no longer give. My heart tore open and spilled through my face and I was unable to find composure as we stepped into the waiting room and found a chair to somehow fill out the papers on the clipboard I didn’t remember picking up.

Date. I couldn’t catch hold of it in my mind. I looked to one of the other waiters and asked for the date, recognizing faces as those of new friends from a board on which we serve together, their little precocious Vivian, and an ailing puppy named Blue. I offered through a broken sob that I thought I knew them. Yes. We thought so, too. I’m sorry I’m so grieved. I don’t usually make it so public but, but, but…
The distraction was welcome, and their kindness was warm and genuine. My strength recovered a little and our conversation was light and careful. I managed to laugh and forget, if only for a little while.

Our turn. The doctor. Blood work. Leave her with us, go eat. Come back and we’ll talk about our options. I drove to a drive-thru joint and ate fried food in a cold dining room empty of customers but crowded with memories and fears. So lonesome.
Twisting knob. Somber expression. A sheet of paper with red marks and too-high numbers. Costs and chronic care. It’s true. It’s true. It’s true. This is it. Make ready. My heart bleeds fire and screams from my chest.

Do you want to be present? Sunlit naps and green grasses. Yes. Sign here please. Do you want us to handle the body. Rental house. Someone else’s ground. Yes. Initial here. You’re doing the right thing. You gave her a good life. Jesus is an overweight, menopausal blonde with compassion radiating from her arms and eyes. She hugged me hard and long and left me alone. I want you to be here.

The towel was soft from wear and splotched from many washings in bleach and antiseptic detergent. She lay listless, spent. The door closed respectfully, and I dropped to me knees and met her glazed-over gaze. I prayed for hearing, and whispered of love and longing and loss, private things that are too painful to recount. I can’t give you health, but I can give you rest, Rose.

The gentle doctor, my mourning companion, came bearing a syringe to fill a catheter and bring rest. The fluid was pink. We stroked her fur together and I held my face so close to hers, whispering I love you over and over and over and too soon no heart beat. Is she gone? Stethoscope and a heavy nod.

I left the last room she ever saw and found her vacant carrier waiting for me at the front desk, an unintentional stab into the fresh wound of my grief. Three hundred thirty-seven dollars is the clinical cost of goodbye. Blonde Jesus gave me a cup of cool water. I realized it was still in my left hand as I walked through our garage door.

Food bowls of uneaten tuna. Water flecked with two strands of her fur. The pillow by the window still depressed from the weight of her last nap there. Blankets that were never completely free from the evidence that she’d slept on them, by my side. Voicemails left for cancellations. My only appointment would be with my grief. I left messages for my parents, and my father called me right back. They buried Gotti just two months ago. We wept together softly on the phone at midnight, for the loss of my little love and the distance that separated us in our grieving.

Life is relentless. It insists on pressing forward, when I so wish it would go easy on me. The phone rings. The mail beckons. The coffee brews. On it goes. My head hasn’t caught up with my heart. I’m still looking for her in her favorite places, finding her unexpectedly on fabric I forgot to brush free of fur. It will be that way for some time, I am sure.

Over the next few days, I will pull together some photos I’ve taken of Rosie over the years and choose one to have printed for a wall in our home. That’s how I want to remember her.

Healthy. Vibrant. Soaking up the sunlight in a warm window. Chirping back brightly at the sound of her name.

Rosie Walton Corbett
1996-April 25, 2010
Gone to rest

A Man of No Reputation

I have grown up listening to Rich Mullins. My father has a storyteller's heart, and so the great storytelling songwriters were among his favorites. I spent hours riding around in my dad's Olds 442 with 8 tracks, cassettes, and then cds of Don Williams, Waylon Jennings, and Rich.

The kid brother of St. Frank died too young in a car accident on a road to or from a show--can't remember which--where he probably played barefoot to the crowd and poured his heart out in every note. I used to joke in seminary that God killed my husband. Of course, that was before I met my actual husband. Love you, honey!

The song you are hearing is "A Man of No Reputation," from The Jesus Record, a studio-produced album of fellow Ragamuffin band members and industry colleagues honoring the life and work of their friend. The project also included a raw demo disk of Rich singing and playing.

The Jesus Record is Easter for me, and this particular song tells the story of the Savior so heartbreakingly and reminds me that I am loved with relentless affection, just as I am.

A Man of No Reputation

It was said this man was of no reputation
Yet He could stop the rising storm
With a gesture of His hand
But He chose to use
His hands to heal
Hearts of darkness, hearts of stone
Just like mine would be revealed

He was a man of no reputation
And by the wise, considered a fool
When He spoke about faith and forgiveness
In a time when the strongest arms ruled
But this man of no reputation
Loved the weak with relentless affection
And He loved all those poor in spirit
Just as they were
He was a man of no reputation

It was said this man brought only confusion
That He'd achieve his ends by any means
And the truth that it brings revolution
And for once they were right
The truth set us free
The hearts of the captive were his only concern
And the powerful knew their days were ending

He was a man of no reputation
And by the wise, considered a fool
When He spoke about faith and forgiveness
In a time when the strongest arms ruled
But this man of no reputation
Loved the weak with relentless affection
And He loved all those poor in spirit
Just as they were
He was a man of no reputation

One day soon the gates of heaven will open wide
And the Prince of Peace will come back for His bride

But for now we live on these streets
Forbidding and tough
Where push always comes to shove
And it's said love's never enough
Where a prophet in rags gives hope to a fearful world
No injustice, no heart of darkness
Will keep this voice from being heard

He was a man of no reputation
And by the wise, considered a fool
When He spoke about faith and forgiveness
In a time when the strongest arms ruled
But this man of no reputation
Loves us all with relentless affection
And He loves all those poor in spirit,
Come as you are
To the man of no reputation

(Copyright 1998 - Rick Elias)

Hunting for...

So we just got home from what was to have been Jackson’s first Easter Egg hunt, at the church where he attends the Mom’s Day Out program.

He’s two.

The hunt was divided into age groups. The third- through fifth-graders went first. Jackon’s age group wouldn’t start until 11am. We arrived just after 10.

He’s two.

There were activity areas set up for kids to color, have an egg-on-a-spoon race, get face-painted, decorate cupcakes, and make various crafts. We made the rounds in 10 minutes flat.

Now what?

Now comes the meltdown, that’s what. We made it through ten months of age two without the violent body spasms I remember from watching other beleaguered parents attempting to calm and control their own toddlers. They always seemed very sad and dejected to me, completely bereft of energy.

That was me today.

I know Jackson’s a toddler. He’s a fledgling communicator who doesn’t understand the subtle nuances of mingling among strangers in a new place. He doesn’t get that Momma would really appreciate it if he didn’t throw himself on the linoleum floor in the middle of the fellowship hall of a church full of people who find that interesting to watch.

I shot my husband a look and exclaimed that I was leaving. He scooped Jackson up and out the door we all went, still ten minutes away from that very elusive Easter Egg hunt.

Moments like these, it’s hard for me not to feel sad. We live 18 hours from family and what I will always consider home. Holidays and special occasions—those are all on me to make the magic that I felt when I was a little one throwing tantrums of my own. It feels about as awkward as those colts learning to walk for the very first time—leggy and fumbling for bearing. I’m glad that Jackson is only two. This means I’ve got time to get it right before he starts to remember.

I have a dozen hard-boiled eggs in my fridge waiting to be decorated. We have an Easter basket full of stuff for him to open in the morning. We have a Fedex box from Mimi and GrandBob for him to open as well. This afternoon, I will put on my mental bunny suit and dutifully hide those eggs in our own yard and watch him delight in finding them and placing them in his Easter basket.

Come to think of it, that seems to be the way our special days work best. Homegrown. Close to the heart. And a very selective guest list.
Momma, Daddy, and Jackson. Perfect, just the way we are.

Reflecting on Easter

I came across this post last year. It was originally posted here, on a lovely blog entitled At Home With the Farmer's Wife. I was deeply moved by her reflections and those of Loren Eiseley, whom she quotes and credits. See if your heart is not stirred as well.

Sunday, April 12, 2009
Easter Sunday - the Lesson of the Birds

My neighbor introduced me to the writing of scientist and native Nebraskan, Loren Eiseley. He didn't write or think like any scientist I'd ever encountered. He was an archaeologist, anthropologist and naturalist who spent much of his time in reflection upon his scientific observations and was able to maintain a high sense of wonder about the universe.

Shortly after reading Willa Cather's, O Pioneers, I launched into one of Eiseley's book of essays. It was the dead of winter and I was battling brochitis, clutching my newfound friend the heating pad. This passage called "The Immense Journey" stunned me with it's eloquence.

In three paragraphs I was transported to a springtime meadow, the warmth of the heating pad translated in my mind to that of the afternoon sun. In my mind he has captured the essence of the story of Easter. I was so moved by the story that when spring finally arrrived, I drove around the countryside looking for an open glade that mirrored the image he'd created in my mind's eye.


The Leafy Glade

THE IMMENSE JOURNEY

“I leaned against a stump at the edge of a small glade and fell asleep. When I awoke, dimly aware of some commotion and outcry in the clearing, the light was slanting down through the pines in such a way that the glade was lit like some vast cathedral. I could see the dust motes of wood pollen in the long shaft of light, and there on the extended branch sat an enormous raven with a red and squirming nestling in his beak. The sound that awoke me was the outraged cries of the nestling’s parents, who flew helplessly in circles about the clearing.

“The sleek black monster was indifferent to them. He gulped, whetted his beak on the dead branch a moment and sat still. Up to that point the little tragedy had followed the usual pattern. But suddenly, out of all that area of woodland, a soft sound of complaint began to rise. Into the glade fluttered small birds of half a dozen varieties drawn by the anguished outcries of the tiny parents. No one dared to attack the raven. But they cried there in some instinctive common misery. The bereaved and the unbereaved. The glade filled with their soft rustling and their cries. They fluttered as though to point their wings at the murderer. There was a dim intangible ethic he had violated, that they knew. He was a bird of death. And he, the murderer, the black bird at the heart of life, sat on there, glistening in the common light, formidable, unmoving, unperturbed, untouchable.”

“There the black bird sat, formidable, unmoving, unperturbed. The sighing of the little birds died. It was then I saw the judgment. It was the judgment of life against death. I will never see it again so forcefully presented. I will never hear it again in notes so poignantly prolonged. For in the midst of protest, they forgot the violence. There, in that clearing, the crystal note of a song sparrow lifted hesitantly in the hush. And finally, after painful fluttering, another took the song, and then another, the song passing from one bird to another, doubtfully at first, as though some evil things were being slowly forgotten. Till suddenly they took heart and sang from many throats, joyously together as birds are known to sing. They sang because life is sweet and sunlight beautiful. They sang under the brooding shadow of the raven. In simple truth they had forgotten the raven for they were the singers of life, and not of death.”

- Loren Eiseley (New York Vintage Book: 1957) 174-175

No Whining (?)

So I forgot that Jackson’s preschool was out today. I went to bed last night, high on Nyquil, mumbling to my husband about getting Jackson off to school without me in the morning.

He’s so sweet, so—of course—he complied.

I got up just for the few minutes he needed to be in the shower and packed Jackson’s lunch. Off they went and back to bed for me.

I have no suitable words to tell you how absolutely decadent it is to be able to crawl back into bed knowing that no husbands and children will be neglected by it. I was feeling so crummy and stopped up, breathing like a Dyson, but slipping back under still-warm covers was heaven.

A mere ninety minutes later, I feel an unwelcome tugging on my covers accompanied by the words, “Jackson’s school is out today, he’s in the living room watching a video.”

Oh, GOD, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

“Okay.”

So Mollie crawled out of her sick bed, stumbled toward the kitchen and poured herself a big mug of strong coffee. She swallowed a tab of Loratadine, took two hits of nasal spray, and stepped into what she likes to call her big-girl pants.

No time for whining. No time for sinusitis.

I’ve done some laundry, had a shower, and got my little man down for his nap. Maybe I’ll do some menu planning and finish up clipping those coupons from last week. Just a few hours ago I was struggling for motivation.

I’m really glad I have the ability to make my day better. It doesn’t always work, but I am grateful that it did today.

Excerpt from Jon at Stuff Christians Like via my real friend Monica.

One Easter I got into a bit of a yelling match with a guy in a visor at an Easter egg hunt. The whole thing was exactly how Jesus imagined us honoring that day.


We were at my in-laws country club, which always makes me feel a little weird. We’re certainly rich in a global way, but I kind of think that they can all tell that I’m just a visitor. I feel like the real members can smell middle class on me. (Which kind of smells like sun ripened raspberry and feet by the way.)

So after I pointed to where a golden egg was hidden to my 5 year old daughter, he yelled at me for cheating. I told him that his white visor made him look like a financial planner who was wearing his “casual uniform.” Whole thing got very out of hand. (I didn’t say that, but I thought it later when we were driving home, which is where most of my comebacks occur.)

The entire incident was gross. My daughter, who lost a golden egg last year has actually asked not to participate in the Easter egg hunt this year. That’s how messed up and tangled we’ve made this season of our lives.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize that one of the things Easter is all about is actually pretty simple. I’ve written about it before and I hope to write about it again.

I’m talking about the “comma of grace.”

I found it in Luke 22. In that chapter, Jesus is being led away. He is headed to the cross. A million prophecies are coming true and chaos is breaking out a little amongst disciples that up to this point have sworn to serve until death. In the midst of that, he pulls Simon aside because he knows that Simon will soon betray him.

He says to Simon in Luke 22:31-32:

“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.”

And then, he drops the 9 words that I can’t write about enough. The 9 words that I often turn to when I’ve failed and messed up again and feel hopelessly undeserving of hope.

Jesus tells Simon:

“And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

Do you see what Jesus is saying in that first half of the sentence, And when you have turned back? He’s saying:

You are going to fail.

You are going to fall.

You are going to lose it.

You are going to make commitments and break them.

You are not going to always be the man you family needs.

You are going to sin.

But, but, but, you will turn back.

You will come back. You will know redemption. You will know return. You will know a God that not only allows the “comeback” but actually celebrates it.

When I read the phrase “And when you have turned back,” I read a loud, wild picture of what grace really looks like.

And then, if you go too fast, you’ll miss the comma. You’ll miss the gap that sits quietly between the next thought. You’ll miss it because like me, you might misread the second half of that sentence.

Here’s what it says:

“And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

But here’s how we write it sometimes:

“And when you have turned back, repent for a long time and stay a long way from me until you are clean enough to return to my presence.”

“And when you have turned back, please stay far away from any ministry opportunities. You are too broken to help other people. How can you minister to others when your own life is so messed up?

“And when you have turned back, here are the 57 things you need to do in order to earn back my good favor.”

But Christ doesn’t do that! He drops a comma like a grenade.

He gives us the gift of the comma and then asks us to strengthen our brothers. Not beat ourselves with emotional whips. Or lay in a hole of shame. Or stay to the shadows of church afraid to be seen.

He wants you. In his arms. By his side. Surrendered and free in his presence.

Not because you deserve it or have earned it or are perfect.

Because of Easter.

That’s it.

We all get the comma of grace.

INSPI(RED)

I fought for health care reform because I know who my neighbor is.

 Just then a religion scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus. "Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?"

 He answered, "What's written in God's Law? How do you interpret it?"

 He said, "That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence—and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself."

 "Good answer!" said Jesus. "Do it and you'll live."

 Looking for a loophole, he asked, "And just how would you define 'neighbor'?"

 Jesus answered by telling a story. "There was once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he was attacked by robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead. Luckily, a priest was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he angled across to the other side. Then a Levite religious man showed up; he also avoided the injured man.

 "A Samaritan traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man's condition, his heart went out to him. He gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then he lifted him onto his donkey, led him to an inn, and made him comfortable. In the morning he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take good care of him. If it costs any more, put it on my bill—I'll pay you on my way back.'

 "What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?"

 "The one who treated him kindly," the religion scholar responded.

   Jesus said, "Go and do the same." (Luke 10:25-37, The Message)