Consumers or contributers

The Lord gave me a dream the other night that I’m going to share with you. It’s a fairly intense dream, but it holds both caution and exhortation, so even though it is personal and actually fairly emotional for me to share, I’m going to do it anyway.

The dream had two parts.

First, my family and I were on vacation in the mountains, and while we were there, we bumped into a whole bunch of tourists who were raving about tours you could go on where you could visit bears in their caves; guides would bring you through a series of caves where you could stand in the middle of mama bears and their cubs and interact with the cubs. To enter the tours, you had to go to the other side of the mountain, but there was a cave nearby, so I ventured in to see what it was all about. Inside there were mama bears and cubs of various sizes, the guides would have everyone walk quietly and move slowly, and the cubs walked among the people and let them stroke their fur. The mama bears mostly slept and laid nearby while these interactions took place, and the guides were on the lookout with bear spray and other tools to ensure that they didn’t hurt anyone if they rose up to protect their young. Both the mama bears and the cubs were not growing or functioning as bears should; they weren’t allowed to leave the cave and experience the world, nor were they allowed to interact with each other naturally. The bears were reduced to a tourist attraction, a spectacle to be consumed by the curiosities of humans.

In the second part of the dream, we arrived back at our rental home, it was tucked up in the forest and everything was covered in a blanket of pure white snow. As I was getting out of the car, I looked up and saw Nathan standing in awe with his hand on the back of a beautiful baby animal. It looked like it was glowing slightly, as it stood out against the white snow. It had just recently been born, and a short distance past it, not yet standing, was its twin. Jane and Sia was so excited, they ran up to the standing animal and began playing too roughly with it in their toddler joy. I looked around and saw the mother a few trees away; she had just given birth and was laying in a pool of blood, resting and trying to recover from a hard labor. I was moved with compassion for this weary mama, and was also suddenly struck by the danger of the situation: Not only was the baby too young to be handled, but a mother protects her young, and what if the mama woke up? I called for Jane and Sia to step back, and Nathan, recognizing what was going on, tried to help. In spite of our best efforts, the mama woke up. She snorted and lunged toward her baby, and Nathan sprinted to get Jane and Sia. But the mama was too weak; she lurched forward, staggering…and suddenly, in the chaos of this moment, a large crowd of people burst out of the woods beyond them excited to see the new baby animals. There were tourists, a photographer wanting to get the perfect shot, and guides telling the people to move quietly and stay back. The weak mother began to panic, staggering between the trees and babies like a trapped animal. I begged the photograph to leave and to make everyone go away; I told him that the babies weren’t ready to be handled, that the mama hadn’t healed yet and she hadn’t been able to tend to them as they needed to be tended to so they could grow into what they had the potential to be. And finally, as he reluctantly agreed to leave, I looked around at the pure white snow and saw that it was stained with bright red blood; pools and streaks and splatters covered the ground. And in the emotional pain of the moment, I woke up.

When I woke up and considered this vivid, detailed dream, I realized that I had been thinking that these animals were deer (a doe and two fawns), but I realized as I looked at them that they were not deer, they were camels. The mom had a hump and a long neck, and the baby stood taller than Nathan. This startled me, because camels don’t live in snowy mountains, they live in deserts. These were unique and different creatures to be found in this place; they were not the usual bears that the people were used to seeing and using for their own pleasure and purposes. These babies were not to be used, not touched or even looked upon until the right time: first, the one who birthed them needed to heal, to adjust to her new environment, and to take the time necessary to raise up the babies to their full beauty and strength. Until then, they were all much too vulnerable.

There are many things in this dream that were just for me, but here is the caution and the exhortation for others:

The tourists in this dream are those in the Body of Christ who walk out their faith as consumers. They go from person to person, place to place, soaking in and taking part in the work that God does in other people’s lives. They observe and delight in the faith journeys of others, hunting down the thoughts and efforts of other believers so as to take what they can for their own pleasure and encouragement. They are like the 5 foolish virgins in Matthew 25, wanting to borrow the hard-earned oil from their neighbors’ lamps.

But here is the thing, you can’t borrow another’s faith and think you can stand on it when you face the righteous Judge…while there is nothing wrong with delighting in and finding encouragement in the work of God in each other’s lives—we SHOULD be testifying, bearing witness to and encouraging each other, that is the mandate of walking in fellowship—we must be very careful to ensure that we aren’t ONLY consuming the fruit of the faithful lives around us.

Are you bringing what God has given you to share with others? I’m not talking necessarily about service…I am talking about contributions of your faith journey. All that any of us really have to bring to the Body is whatever the Lord places in our hands…but it is our responsibility to seek Him, to wrestle with Him for blessing, to taste and see and declare, to contribute what He has given us to hold, to speak the truth of who He is and what He has done in and for us in love…to bring to the table a basket full of the spiritual fruit of our labor of faith. The Body needs these individual baskets so that it can be completely edified and come to full fruition.

Are you contributing? Because when we walk in fellowship as mere consumers, we actually threaten the well-being of those who are growing around us, because we are taking from their spiritual lives continually without replenishing them with our own.

Ordinary

Sometimes it helps to say it out loud
to confront it as it is;
to look it in the eyes and stare it down
thus proving that it is not more powerful
than the decision I get to make in light of it.

I realized recently that I say these words
frequently
“I’m not really good at anything.”
I usually follow it up with encouragement,
“but I’m just going to do my best.”
It doesn’t necessarily feel degrading,
but it doesn’t feel healthy either.
It reeks of a tool that trains me to accept
as it seeks
to cover my pain with contentment.

I can trace it back,
to the event where this phrase was birthed:
When asked directly,
the one person I ever wanted
to be proud of me searched
but could find nothing nice to say of me.
I didn’t even realize there was someone
I wanted to make proud,
until I didn’t.

I don’t blame them, really,
I’ve never been the kind of person
who catches the light…
I’m the kind you have to unbury.

As I looked my declaration in the eye today
I could see that though it started somewhere
it was reaffirmed again and again
in the safe place of the past.
Rejection had a way of following me…
unacceptable and unwanted were sentiments that plagued
me from childhood,
but there was one place that made it bearable—
one place of belonging
one place where I believed I stood
in desirable light;
where others chose to see me and
to believe I was worth loving,
and it put the averted eyes in their place.

It’s no one’s fault, really,
I was born into a field of extraordinary beauty
but didn’t add to it…
because some people were made to behold
not to be beheld,
and I'm the lucky one.

It’s not that I don’t find joy in
my ordinary,
it is just that I find myself sad
that my safe place has lost
its desire for it.

Mother's Day Morning

Worship washes
©5-14-2023 Hannah McLean

I stand in Your presence
unable to get away for a moment
of quiet worship;
hands tug at me,
little voices cast their requests
into the air
as the music plays.

I feel like the widow
wishing I had more
than the small, corroded pennies
to bring You,
and for every time my eyes
are pulled down,
I lift them up.

I know that even as my lips sing
“Your grace has found me just as I am
empty handed
but alive in Your hands,”
so You will graciously accept
my woefully inadequate worship
and count it a joy.

So I sing
with all that my heart and my life
can afford and allow
and I feel the
worship of the Holy One
wash away the worship of self.

For such has motherhood
taught me
to die to self
to live to Christ;
my outstretched hands lifted also
amidst the outstretched hands
beneath me.

His face is mine

Habakkuk 3:17–19a "Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fail and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, He enables me to tread on the heights."

worship of the weary
©4-26-23 hannah mclean

on valley floor
with eyes swollen
from bawling
voice a whisper
from endless calling
the whimper of the weary
dissolves in worship

lament of faith too small
looks up into Your face
to find not disappointment
but pleasure that
the downcast eyes have
searched for Yours

inside the heap of rubble
broken bits of heart and circumstance
the air fills
with worship of the only One worthy

for when prayer
goes unanswered
worship still satisfies
for Holy face is more than
what flows from Holy hand

deepest desire meets
deepest need
and finds no lack

His face is mine

The Beauty of Lament

In my BSF study this week, the very first question says, "What does it mean to Lament?" Every once in a while, I land on a question and realize that I have an entire theology surrounding a topic that I didn't realize existed. This one I couldn't get past it without writing:

To lament is to linger in the sorrow of
a moment that is not as it should be;
to sit down in the heap of rubble of
what had once been built
and weep.

Lament is a Holy gift for the human heart
to help us process and move through suffering;
a necessary stop on the journey of grief
that allows for us to persevere with wellbeing.

Lament is the tool that draws the human soul
into the depths of God;
it is the place where our deep calls out to His
and allows for the comfort not of changed circumstances
but of Holy presence.

Lament is the helping hand that reaches for us
when we find ourselves upon the ground of
sin-broken battlefields,
and stirs within us
a longing for the One who redeems.

Lament is the deeper ache that causes our hearts
to search for the One who makes all things new;
and though we often face sorrow as
skillful evaders of painful things,
lament is the bridge on which we walk
reaching for purpose to be gained
from the realities that wound the human heart.

And though it pushes against reason,
the willingness to lament keeps soft
the heart that suffering threatens to harden.

Give voice to your lament
and find the bended ear of the One who
draws near the ashes
ready to bring forth beauty where we find none.

Psalm 42 | Ecclesiastes 3:1–11a | Lamentations 3:31–33 | Job 1:20

A Testimony: A Dignified Woman

I wrote the testimony below sometime last year; at the time, it was the gathering of words articulating where I stood in my journey of healing my wounded femininity. I sat on it for a long time, careful which hands I placed it in as the Lord faithfully brought it to completion. But yesterday I had an interaction that struck me in a way that opened the door to share it with you: I had a woman I am acquainted with take me aside and sweetly affirm and encourage me in my giftings and my walk.

This might seem simple and small, but it was sort of the cherry on the top of a heap of kind and affirming words that women have offered me over the last few years. I want you to understand that I have spent the majority of my walk with Jesus with my eyes forward and my hands extended; I have received from the Lord and offered to anyone who cared to accept whatever He placed in them. I had no doubts of the worth of His work in me, and yet, no expectations that anyone wanted what I held out…because, as you will read below, I was taught not only did I have nothing to offer the Body of Christ, but anything I DID have the audacity to bring would inevitably cause it damage because I am a woman. The majority of the time I have followed Jesus, I mostly have just quietly fixed my eyes on Him and done whatever He told me to do, setting my obedience and His faithfulness to me as the only desired outcome I could perceive.

At the beginning of this year, I printed a prayer booklet for the women at my church. I almost didn’t do it; I set the call down on a heaped up table to wait another’s direction and time. But the Lord picked it back up and set it back into my hands with the firm reminder that it was between us. So I completed the work and looking down into the box of bound booklets, I felt a wave of freedom wash over me.

Do you remember when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead? He came out of the tomb, fully alive but wrapped in grave cloths; the living being hidden beneath the bands of death. And Jesus said to his family, “Unbind him, and let him go.” It was the family that had wrapped him up, and it was the family that took part in the unbinding. I spent 17 years undergoing spiritual abuse of those who claimed the name of Jesus, they bound me up in clothes that were meant for the dead. But as the Lord has brought about deep healing in me over the last 6 years, He has brought along side me those who carry the name of Jesus to unbind me so that the life that the Lord has borne in me can be seen and known and bear witness to the redeeming power of our Savior.

If you have been among those voices, who have championed me forward, helped wipe the dirt off my face, stilled the shaking of my hands, tipped up my chin to speak encouragement, cheered me as I stumbled along, taken the time to speak worth over my walk…thank you. Thank you for affirming the healing work the Lord has done in me, for taking part in the redeeming of this broken woman and ensuring that what the enemy has sought to keep hidden is drawn fully into the light. I don’t know what all the Lord has in store for me, but He has restored my ability to dream, and I know that the testimony He has given me will roll out before me as I take each step of faith.
 
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Growing up, I did not know I had dignity.
It was whipped out of me with skewed teachings on scripture,
it was stripped off of me with the glares and disdain that grew as my body did,
it was erased from my personhood as effectively as my humanity was dismissed,
and it evaded me as surely as my womanhood did not.
I was taught to fear myself,
that the depravity of nature that came along with my femininity
was to be hated
and, if i knew what was good for me,
should cause me to tremble my way
right under the superior moral covering of angry men.

Growing up, I did not have a voice.
It was silenced when I questioned,
rebuked when I expressed thoughts that did not align with those over me,
dismissed because I was female.
I remember wanting to be heard;
for someone to believe that the ponderings that swirled behind
my peace-keeping eyes had value,
for someone to tell me that the brain I was given
had a greater use than knowing recipes and storing shopping lists,
for someone to allow my hopes, dreams and imaginings
to contribute to the living that was happening around me.
I wanted someone to let me speak
and to affirm my right to use my voice by taking the time to listen to it.

Growing up, I was taught to loathe the fullness of my femininity;
I was taught to minimize myself
to the tidy boxes of convenience and usefulness,
and to discard the rest of me at the door.
In my fullness I was simply too much;
I was to require nothing from the world around me
and to bring to it only what it wanted from me.
And the message was clear:
woman is an object to be used and taken from…
any part of her that pushes back against this message
is rebellious and wicked and should be subdued at all cost,
and every measure taken to ensure this message sinks in
is on the tab of her own conscience.

When I graduated high school at 17, I moved out of my childhood home a week later. I left behind religion and all things related to it in the hopes that I would find a better understanding of who I was and a better box of womanhood to climb into. But all I found was the same degradation in a different suit. Everywhere around me were voices and imagery shouting that dignity, value and purpose were measured by people “qualified” to make such determinations; the boxes I found had only enough room for my usefulness or my ability to offer what was wanted from my body. Everywhere I looked, it was confirmed to me that woman equated with object, not person.

And I accepted my lot.

When I encountered Jesus, I watched Him from a distance. He sat at a beautiful table where He had laid out a feast of wonderful things. There were chairs and people seated around Him, delighting in His presence and His benefits. I saw grace overflowing from the table, the crumbs of which fell onto the floor around His feet where dogs licked them up. My eyes bypassed the people who were seated and watched the dogs. I was struck with hope by the fact that He let them come near Him and I thought, “If He lets the dogs come, surely so can I.” I was fascinated by watching them take the crumbs as their own without being shooed away and I thought, “If I could just have a crumb of His grace, that would be enough.” I mustered up all the courage I had, and making myself as small as I could, I took my place with the dogs and crawled over to His table…but when I reached out my hand for a crumb of grace, it found instead His hand for He had bent down to the ground where I was, and touched my hand when it reached out. He looked into my dumbstruck eyes and drew me up from the floor, pulling out a chair beside Him with the invitation to sit in a seat at His table and partake in the fullness of His feast.

And that wonder…
that wonder at being lifted from floor to table,
from beast to person,
from intruder to invited,
from beggar to beloved…
that wonder has never worn off.

That was 17 years ago and I have spent those years “growing up” in Him.
But unlike the years before it,
THIS upbringing redeems and heals
as it brings about the undoing of the past
because I am accompanied by His Word and by His Spirit.

As I grow up with Him, I have learned that I have dignity.
It was placed into me by the hands that formed me,
it is written onto me by the words of Scripture,
it covers me as surely the blood of Jesus washes me
and the Holy Spirit declares me His own,
it is as certain as the imago Dei that cannot be erased from my being.

As I grow up with Him, I am learning how to use my voice.
A voice that I am not just invited to use, but compelled to use;
a voice that does not merely exist, but has something of value to say;
a voice that carries the power of life and death;
a voice with place, position and purpose in heavenly pursuits;
a voice that carries His authority,
brings forth His word,
gives vision to the treasures hidden in the quiet of His presence.
I have a voice that no longer bends to permission given or denied by man,
but speaks in obedience to the Father.
A voice that seeks not for glory of self,
but for glory of God.
A voice no longer silenced in kingdom purposes.

As I grow up with Him, I am learning to walk in the wholeness
and fullness of a female who bears His image.
Because I have come to believe this Truth:
A good God, in love, created woman in His image for His glory.
And I can stand upright, with an uplifted chin,
as a woman—
redeemed and set apart—
bearing witness by my life of the heart of the Father for humanity.
As a woman,
I am not a hinderance to the gospel,
but a conduit through which it can be more fully known.

I am still in the process of “growing up.”
But if any of this resonated with you, then I want to bear witness to you that in every way we have been broken as women, the broken body of Jesus will surely heal us.

hosannas and hallelujahs

Holy Week ponderings
©4-6-2023 hannah mclean

sometimes we miss the face of flint
for the palm leaves that block our eyes

we forget that the triumph of the final entry into jerusalem
came with suffering the Lord saw fit through which to save

sometimes we see the bread and wine before us
and overlook the traitor’s friendly hand

we forget that the cross that sends us into hiding
is followed by the tomb that calls us boldly forward

for where else has a conquering King declared victory
through dying breath and bloodstained wood
while the sun hid and the earth quaked?

this week let us grieve the shedding of blood
that brought about the forgiveness of sin

let us allow the passing eclipse of the crucifixion
to bring greater delight to the revelation of the stone rolled back

let us linger in the presence of the sorrow
and take part in the fullness of the joy

for our shouts to crucify
were covered in the “finished” cry

may our “hosannas” meet our “hallelujahs”
to the glory of the Father’s heart to save