A Nail in the Wall

There are things I read as I research for my dissertation that will stick with me, even if it is unrelated to the topic I’m researching. And it’s not the type of sticking that’s “oh, hey, that’s really fascinating; let me mentally ruminate on that some more…” It’s the type of sticking that is more reminiscent of a good kick to the gut, the type that steals the very breath from you, leaving you curled up on the floor. It’s the type of sticking that’s akin to someone throwing cold-water on your face, and you find yourself all too alert to your current situation; really alert, like, “holy crap…this is really my life” and the reeling sets in because the stark reality is burdening your balance.

This punishment, too, springs from original sin; and the woman bears it just as unwillingly as she bears those pains and inconveniences that have been placed up her flesh. The rule remains with the husband, and the wife is compelled to obey him by God’s command. He rules the home and the state, wages wars, defends his possessions, tills the soil, builds, plants, etc. The woman, on the other hand, is like a nail driven into the wall. She sits at home…so the wife should stay at home and look after the affairs of the household, as one who has been deprived of the ability of administering those affairs that are outside and that concern the state. She does not go beyond her most personal duties. (LW, Lectures on Genesis, 202-3)

Luther is articulating the consequences for the woman as it is laid out in the curses articulated to Adam and Eve by God in Genesis 3. He’s specifically expounding here on the “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Gen 3:16b-c) portion. I don’t typically lie awake at night thinking about and spend very little emotional energy on Genesis 3. I spend way more of my time thinking about the reality of the event of justification in my everyday life than I do the curses proclaimed to Eve on that miserable day in the Garden. Like any other human being, I prefer good news to bad news.

But, on Monday, when my eyes crossed over Luther’s words, “The woman, on the other hand, is like a nail driven into the wall”–on the heels of falling to my knees, after an atrocious potty-training experience with my toddler, feeling generally poured out from an already long day, and uttering the words, “This, this is my life; this is all I’ll ever do…change diapers and make lunches…”–I felt that gut-punch, I felt that cold-water drench me. I was feeling stuck and frustrated and Luther’s nail imagery described what I was feeling: the effects of the remnants of the curse spoken long ago, a curse with lengthy tentacles reaching all the way into 2016. I was a nail hammered so deep into a wall that the only hope to recover the nail would be to tear down the wall; the only other recourse would be to just admit the nail was lost for ever.

But over the past couple of days, I’ve come to realize that Luther’s imagery, while very apt to my situation as a stay-at-home-mom/wife and specifically articulated about womanhood in light of the curse, was actually an image that could be broadened to all of humanity. Whether you are male or female, feeling stuck, feeling like a nail in a wall is a reality. It could be anything: being so financially strained that you can’t leave a dead-end job; existing in a marriage that has ceased to function like a marriage; strained relationships with your children; suffering under the weight of loss, grief, anxiety and fear; the general malaise of the day-in and day-out because nothing ever changes; that unrelenting thorn in your side that you can do nothing about and just bear and tolerate, and the list could go on. Feeling stuck, really feeling like a nail in the wall is not only a curse that affects womankind, it affects all of humankind; it’s a human problem, none escape it.

But it’s not the final word; it’s not the final nail in the coffin.

There’s hope for us nails in walls, and His name is Jesus Christ. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans,

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (18-25)

Because Jesus Christ–fully God and fully man–climbed upon the hardwood of the cross and bore nails in his hands and feet, we who are stuck and suffering pain and frustration in this life have hope. By faith in Jesus Christ and by being united to Him through faith in Him, we–you and I–have hope, we have abundant hope. This life, this body is not all there is; there is more, abundantly more for those who are in Christ Jesus. Even in the midst of our very present and difficult realities, our faces are turned upward and bronzed by the glorious hope we have in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit because we know that our God is not only the one who promises but also fulfills His promises, and He has told us: it will not always be so.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev 21:1-4)

And we have hope, even now…hope.

Posted on August 3, 2016August 3, 2016 by laurenlarkin 2

John Donne on Fridays

Holy Sonnets

Father, part of his double interest

Unto thy kingdom, thy Son gives to me,

He jointure in the knotty Trinity

He keeps, and gives me his death’s conquest.

This Lamb, whose death with life the world hath blessed,

Was from the world’s beginning slain, and he

Hat made two wills, which with the legacy

Of his and thy kingdom, do thy sons invest.

Yet such are thy laws, that men argue yet

Whether a man those statutes can fulfil;

None doth, but thy all-healing grace and Spirit

Revive again what law and letter kill.

Thy law’s abridgement, and thy last command

Is all but love; oh let that last will stand!

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works, edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

Posted on July 29, 2016May 27, 2019 by laurenlarkin 0

The Art of Law and Gospel in Back to School

This morning I walked my boys to their first day of school for the 2016/17 school year. I all but skipped the whole way; my step was full of spring, theirs was a bit more shuffled. Yes, I am glad that school is back in session. But before you cast me that oh-great-another-ungrateful-mom-is-happy-that-she’s-rid-of-her-kids side-ways glare or mumble under your breath that I should be more grateful for the miracles and blessings that are my children, let me assure you: I am in fact very grateful for their lives and do see them as the blessings they are, so much so that I’ve set my occupational aspirations to super slo-mo to serve them to the best I can.

So, if I’m not happy that school is in session because I’m ungrateful or lack an understanding about my children being blessings, then why am I happy to have two-thirds of my children out of the house? Is it because having just one kid to care for all day is easier than all three? Yes, but that’s not the ultimate answer. Is it because I get more stuff done with the dearth of bodies lying about? Sure; but, again, that’s not the ultimate reason.

So what is the ultimate reason why?

Because, I get to be the voice of the Gospel.

Let me explain. Parenting requires parents to be both the voice of the law and of the gospel. In terms of the law, parents uphold the rule of the household and teach general expectations of civil respect (following Luther: the Civic Use of the law); however, when these laws and structures are broken, there is a requirement to deliver consequences. These consequences–without fail, in my experience, no matter how tenderly I deliver them–are oft interpreted by the child in the Theological Use of the law (again, following Luther). There is often weeping, gnashing of teeth, and the rending of garments at which point they are sent to their outer-darkness (aka: their bedroom). Into this real feeling of condemnation, we enter into their outer-darkness with them, embrace them, and speak those words that bring life to their young hearts and alleviate the condemnation in their young minds: I love you so much and nothing you do will ever, ever, ever stop me from loving you; this is the voice of the gospel.

Prior to being school-age, parents are often the sole voice distributing law and gospel equally (on a good day; on a bad day the scales tip, and for me it’s always in the direction of too much Law). Being the primary care giver, the stay-at-home-mom that I am, I’m often the primary disciplinarian and the source of comfort, specifically when my boys were too young for school and now during summer break. And this brings me to why I’m happy that the boys are back in school: there’s another outlet for the law to be spoken, and I get to (I’m honored to) take the helm as the word of comfort. And, by the time summer break has run it’s course, I’m exhausted from shouldering the weight of upholding the law and distributing consequences; good Lord, I’m crushed, too.

The oldest enters 4th grade and the younger enters 3rd this year. No longer in preschool where everyone laughs when you mistake a “d” for a “b” or you wear your shirt inside-out and backwards, the demands and expectations come roaring in, like a tsunami, out of nowhere. Whether from peers, teachers, and other school officials, my boys spend eight hours a day under pressure to perform, to do well, to hold their tongue, to act right, to play well, and when they don’t there’s consequences (rightly so). When that eight hour day ends, they come home exhausted, bad day and all, to me, and I get down eye level with them and say, “Boy, am I glad you’re home; I really missed you all day” and give them that unconditional embrace. When my oldest got in trouble for dropping the F-word (yes…THAT one) in school, and I was notified by email, I had all the fixings for root-beer floats ready when he got home. When the youngest got in trouble for tying his shoelaces to his desk during a reading lesson, and I was notified by email, I asked him what knot he was practicing. And I did those things not because I don’t think that they need consequences for their bad behavior, because they certainly do; it’s because I know full well that those necessary consequences were already delivered and adding more to their little shoulders will only prove to crush them beyond recognition. The voice of the law has sounded (sometimes all day), and when they come home, it’s time for the voice of the gospel, and, man, do I love being that voice.

And sometimes being that voice of the gospel is creating the space they need: space to be alone, “It’s fine, take your time walking home; I’ll be waiting for you with a snack”; space to be free to cry or to be angry, “You’ve kept that in all day…feel free to let it out”; or, on the good days, “Yes, I would love to hear about the test you rocked…again.” Space is created by the word of the gospel for them to be heard and for them to be silent, to run about and to rest and watch TV, to throw something across their bedroom and to squeal with delight as loud as they can.

None of this occurs in a vacuum; none of this happens because somehow I’m just that well adjusted (because I’m not). All of this happens because this has been the encounter I’ve had with God Himself through Jesus Christ, our Savior, by the power of the Holy Spirit. I’ve heard (repeatedly) that Jesus Christ died for my sins and was raised for my justification, that by faith in this man Christ Jesus–who is God–I am fully justified and accounted righteous in Him, that God so love the world–that includes us–He sent His only Son to be the perfect propitiation for sins and to redeem us. And in hearing this gospel proclamation I have been impacted by an immeasurable, insurmountable unconditional love that has the power not only to undo me (because it certainly does do that) but also to move me toward others, my neighbors, specifically my children. And in this movement towards them, I get to be the voice of proclamation, I get to be a tangible experience–a mere taste–of that great, great Love of God for them. “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

School is back in session; Glory be to God.

Posted on July 25, 2016July 25, 2016 by laurenlarkin 0

John Donne on Friday

Holy Sonnets

10.

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for, you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurped town, to another due,

Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end,

Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captived, and proves weak or untrue,

Yet dearly’I love you, and would be loved fain,

But am betrothed unto your enemy,

Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I

Except you enthral me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works, edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

Posted on July 15, 2016May 27, 2019 by laurenlarkin 1

My Body Broken

One of the hardest things I’ve ever done is become a mother, specifically a stay-at-home-mom. When I found out I was pregnant with my first son, I knew that I wanted to be the one to stay home. My husband had a wonderful full-time job that provided for me to do just that–plus, I wasn’t pulling in anything substantial being a seminarian with a part-time job working with the Doctor of Ministry Department. I have to tell you now, still holding that positive pregnancy test and knowing I would stay home with my future baby, I was naive, a bit taken with the rose-colored glasses of new, budding motherhood. It would take just a few days to realize that this entire endeavor would be hard.

Between battling morning sickness, hoping that my fellow classmates wouldn’t notice my new diet of seltzer and jolly ranchers, and suppressing fear that my body was (again) rejecting because I was spotting over half-way through the first trimester, I was tossed back and forth on the waves of reality setting in: I was not my own, my body was not my own, I was being broken.

As I grew bigger and more uncomfortable, as I pressed through exhaustion and discomfort to finish up my second to last semester of seminary, and this finally giving way to going into labor on the morning of the 5th of December. My son was born at 9:42pm on the 6th of December; yes, that’s about two days of trying to give birth to my son. I couldn’t do it. The unique thing my body was gifted to do, I couldn’t do. I was rushed to the ER after a contraction left my son’s heart rate too low. A week later I sat on the floor of our bathroom holding my just bathed 9lbs of baby boy in my lap. My husband looked at me, “Why are you crying?” he asked. “Because…I’m a failure,” I was able to articulate while crying. “How can you call yourself a failure while holding our son?” I didn’t have a good answer. What I knew was that a reality was being hammered home: I was not my own, my body was not my own, I was being broken.

This reality would be made more clear, in a physical way, as I embarked on nursing and raising not just this new born baby boy, but his little brother 21 months later, and their little sister born just about three years ago.

But looking back and looking at my current situation (a stay-at-home-mom to a toddler), I realize that it’s not merely my physical body that has been broken, time and time again. For the past decade I’ve sat on the academic and occupational side-lines. I’ve watched class-mates and peers graduate years after me in seminary, get ordained, get doctorates, move to other countries and back to the states and (in one case) back to another country. I’m here. In deciding to be embark on the parenting that I wanted for my children, I had to push all my other dreams and desires aside. My research is painfully slow, my writing interrupted, my attention divided. I wrestle internally with envy of my friends who have far surpassed me academically; I struggle with frustration with myself for being unable to do everything in the pace I want to do everything. As I wrangle my toddler into her room to finish her i’m-gonna-scream-so-loud-so-every-neighbor-in-the-neighborhood-hears tantrum, another peer wrestles with an editor/publisher over another book. In the fullness that is my mind and soul: I am not my own, my body is not my own, I am being broken.

I’m not saying any of this to garner sympathy or pity; I willingly volunteered my whole person to this vocation, to this process of being broken over and over and over again. I gave myself–body, mind, strength, soul–to be broken; to be broken for these children of mine. IMG_20160621_113610055 For these, my children, I lay aside myself, my dreams, my desires, daily, and give them as much of me as I can. For these, my children, I close Luther and open the screen door to go outside and blow bubbles for my daughter because she asked me to. I can’t do anything else, because I love them.

And in this I understand God’s love for us, his beloved children. In this, I understand why Mark records in his Gospel that when all the men ran when Jesus was crucified, the women who followed him looked on from a distance (Mk 15:40-41). I know they didn’t run because they were of low stature and had nothing to lose; but I also think that love that drives to the breaking of one’s own body made innate sense to them. To look upon the crucified Christ, to see the blood shed because of love made sense on a visceral level to a bunch of women whose whole life was devoted to bearing and raising children through the breaking of their own bodies. It makes sense to me and it blows me away: He gave himself fully and completely for us in ways that I’ll never understand or be able to do because of my frail and faulty human flesh. His “I love you, my beloved child” is more heartfelt than mine to my own children.

And as they were eating, [Jesus] took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, ‘Take; this is my body.’ And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many’ (Mark 14:22-24)

More than a mother loves her very own Children does God love us.

And I am undone, I am broken.

Posted on June 22, 2016June 28, 2016 by laurenlarkin 5

John Donne on Friday

La Carona

7. Ascension

Salute the last and everlasting day,

Joy at the uprising of this sun, and son,

Ye whose just tears, or tribulation

Have purely washed, or burnt your drossy clay;

Behold the Highest, parting hence away,

Lightens the dark clouds, which he treads upon,

Nor doth he by ascending, show alone,

But first he, and he first enters the way.

O strong ram, which has battered heaven for me,

Mild lamb, which with thy blood, hast marked the path;

Bright torch, which shin’st, that I the way may see,

Oh, with thine own blood quench thine own just wrath,

And if thy holy Spirit, my Muse did raise,

Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise.

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works, edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

Posted on June 17, 2016May 27, 2019 by laurenlarkin 0

John Donne on Friday

La Carona

6. Resurrection

Moist with one drop of thy blood, my dry soul

Shall (though she now be in extreme degree

Too stony hard, and yet too fleshly,) be

Freed by that drop, from being starved, hard, or foul,

And life, by this death abled, shall control

Death, whom thy death slew; nor shall to me

Fear of first or last death, bring misery,

If in thy little book my name thou enrol,

Flesh in that long sleep is not putrefied,

But made that there, of which, and for which ’twas;

Nor can by other means be glorified.

May then sin’s sleep, and death’s soon from me pass,

That waked from both, I again risen may

Salute the last, and everlasting day.

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works, edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

Posted on June 10, 2016May 27, 2019 by laurenlarkin 1

John Donne on Friday

La Carona

5. Crucifying

By miracles exceeding power of man,

He faith in some, envy in some begat,

For, what weak spirits admire, ambitious hate;

In both affections many to him ran,

But oh! the worst are most, they will and can,

Alas, and do, unto the immaculate,

Whose creature Fate is, now prescribe a fate,

Measuring self-life’s infinity to a span,

Nay to an inch. Lo, where condemned he

Bears his own cross, with pain, yet by and by

When it bears him, he must bear more and die.

Now thou art lifted up, draw me to thee,

And at thy death giving such a liberal dole,

Moist, with one drop of thy blood, my dry soul.

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works, edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

Posted on May 20, 2016May 27, 2019 by laurenlarkin 1

Daddy, daddy…

Daddy, daddy don’t you see?

I’m just a little bundle on your knee.

All wrapped up in a blanket of pink;

A little girl to hold, did you ever think?

Daddy, daddy don’t you see?

I’m just a little bundle on your knee.

Daddy, daddy don’t you see?

A little girl on your lap at the age of three.

Full blown toddler: proud and bold;

Daddy’s little girl, so I’m told.

Daddy, don’t you see?