Mommy Brain

Tiger Lillie by Lisa Samson. I don’t know how to describe this book except to say that it is beautiful and haunting and painful. Any words I have are inadequate, so I will give you some of Lisa’s from Tiger Lillie.

“I appreciate the physical body of human beings. Hence my fascination with skeletons and the like, I suppose. But it’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? The way the muscles flow like mountain ranges, each bump and sway making utter sense, each mound anchored to a certain point on a bone creating a system of levers and pulleys. What magnificence of planning. And due to this love, this appreciation, I’ve come to respect Jesus in a way that may be unusual to some. See, He inhabited a body. A body just like mine, minus the female parts and the extra fifty pounds, and He chose to sacrifice it.

If the Incarnation doesn’t wow you, nothing will.

Imagine, that cat-’o-nine tails ripped into those gorgeous mounds of muscle, those perfectly formed, scarlet wads of tissue. Imagine the pain, the very real agony born of very real nerve endings tucked into a neurological network, synapses firing away, firing, firing, blasting sensation of such horrific proportion not many of us can begin to understand.

Imagine the blood spattering like popping oil, wads of flesh flying through the air. I try to picture it, at times, just to appreciate His sacrifice, just to try and not forget and throw around His love and pain like it doesn’t really matter in the day-to-day. And I imagine the feeling of a deep scab being ripped away, only that scab covers my entire body and the ripping takes hours.

And even then, am I going far enough? Probably not. Nails into wrists and feet? Dear God. How did You not come down from that cross? How did You stay? What kind of wonderful love is this?”

“Uncle Istvan is dead now. I remember his funeral two years ago on the eastern shore of Maryland. He followed in his father’s footsteps as a professor of agriculture at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. I remember thinking of all he had survived only to die of an aneurysm.

He died a free man. That is what he would say if you could ask him about it. Not that we can really comment on our deaths. Can you imagine what one might say?…

…How about my father? He’d say, “Well, naturally, beyond the obvious rewards of a life of faith, I gambled on the value of a good marriage and it paid off. Yes, I’m dead now, but Kathy was right there, holding my hand as I left, kissing my lips as I drew my final breath. And maybe I didn’t save the world, maybe I only really helped a handful of people see things more clearly, but in the end, I died in love.”

Me? What will I say? Well, let’s face it. It’s always easier to project for someone else. All I know is this: I’m not ready to talk about my death, because I don’t know what this life is really about yet. Oh yeah, glorify God and enjoy Him forever and all. Sure. But how to do that? That’s the biggie, isn’t it? And sometimes, it’s the “enjoy” part that really trips me up. Who am I to enjoy the almighty Creator of heaven and earth? Huh? Tell me that.”

“It’s lunchtime now and we’re onto eschatology — end-times stuff. Rapture or not. Figurative or literal. Good grief. Now this is the stuff I stopped caring about a long time ago. What’s going to happen at the end of the world as we know it? Well, it’s going to happen the way God has planned it, and either I’ll be right or I’ll be wrong, but what I thought will not have changed a thing. Not one single thing.

And I feel fine.

So there.

This whole theological debate is why I gave up on Christian radio, although they’re probably onto something else these days. Should I care more about this stuff? Probably. But mostly now I need to go back to Jesus. These people here, they just love Jesus and seem to know Him better than I do. Even Peach, who’s now sitting with us, smiling and scratching his belly. I can imagine what he’s thinking: “It’s just good to hear people talk about God.”

And I have to say amen.”

These quotes are just part of an incredible novel. Thank God for Christian authors who are brave enough to write about authentic, alive, flawed people who are passionately in love with their Lord — and yet still flawed. It makes me ashamed of the times that I am still unwilling to truly be me. I need to work on that.

To authenticity,
Carrie