Meet the Buttrams

O God, You are good.

O God, You are present.

O God, You are able.

Even as we meet with You and dwell on Your Word and fall in Your presence, how little we must really know of You, God.

You are doing great and beautiful things in the lives of Your people; You have done the greatest and most beautiful thing for the redemption of Your people. Your grace is excessive. You pour out and down and through, and woven within our grief and our suffering and our confusion is hope and mercy and the divine.

You are big. You command angels, You create time and space, You breathe life.

You are here, and You are interested, and Your heart breaks over what breaks us. You bid us Come; come and see that I am good. You invite us Seek; seek and you shall find Me. You promise us Ask; ask and you shall receive.

You are good.

You weep when we weep, You hope while we hope, You delight in us. God, this mighty and good and holy God of the ages, this big and breathtaking God is captivated right now, right here, by us.

And oh, how You long for us to trust You, to trust Your plans, to trust that You are God, a good and holy God. Not to glorify Yourself, not to affirm Your Godhood, but to open our eyes to You, to receive You.

This pocket of the earth, this hallowed ground united right now in prayer for one so-sweet family, we do, right now, trust You. We trust in Your goodness. We trust in Your righteousness. We trust You are present and moving among us. We trust in Your invitation to come, to seek, to ask.

So we come. We seek only You. We ask for mercy, God, for healing, for Your glory revealed. We ask with boldness, as daughters and sons of the Most Holy God. We hope with purpose and with faith, knowing that You are able, asking that You may be willing.

Our prayers turn to pleas, rumblings in our chests and aches in our bones, as we call down Heaven, the fire in our bellies begging that Your good and perfect plan would look a lot like ours. You watch us join hands and turn our hearts heavenward, and even as You break over our brokenness, You are pleased. Pleased because this…this…is good and it is perfect. Your people calling upon You for deliverance. Looking nowhere else but to You for deliverance. Knowing, however briefly we may know, trusting, however briefly we may trust, in the One who is able.

You have already promised us Heaven. You grant us redemption, reconciliation, the inheritance of Your son Jesus Christ. Yet You long to meet us here and now, You long to heal us, to deliver us, to pour Your excess over us now, as we are broken now, as we are bound now, as we are starving now. You long for us to fall for You, as wholly as You have fallen for us.

May we ask as Your beloveds for that healing, for that deliverance, for that miracle.

This week has been oh, so heavy, hasn’t it?

I can’t help but feel like the global brokenness that echoes all around us has gotten louder, closer. But maybe that’s just a sign of my slow but steady growth, this fragile empathy that stakes my own wellbeing to that of another’s.

There have been far too many front-page tragedies, and then there are the countless quieter ones; a stunned, sudden sort of grief and a seasoned one; a corporate mourning and times so private you can’t help but feel bled bone-dry.

I guess my point is that we are all in pieces. Where once there might have been wholeness, there is now just a brokenness. There is no almost broken or very nearly broken, there is just the breaking, and then it is done.

What a sad story we all are, we all have.

And it is this awareness of the things that are broken that has snuck up on me. All around me, amongst my friends, blips on the radar and across somber headlines. We are all and everywhere a broken people. The very least I can do to try and mend the cracks feels inadequate; the very most I dare to do feels dangerous.

This is where I am right now: I am sifting through the pieces of my fellow man, all the while knowing  the mortar to my own cracks is the thing I am most afraid to share. I cover up my cowardice with sympathy, fearful that my fickle faith might not be sufficient for another. I am silent, because how can I dare to glorify the Ever After, if I am not invested — or even just interested — in the healing of the wounds here, now? Quietly and with shame, I worry that this world of brokenness is bigger than the God who is watching.

It is then I realize just how little I know of this God, the God who bled so thoroughly over us, His blood even still overflowing within the crevices we cling to. I realize how forgetful I am of the truth that He is less interested in fixing our brokenness in favor of remaking us into wholeness. Not just later, or eternally, but even as we stumble along.

Over and over and within my own heartache over what is broken and tragic, I fail to really understand that this brokenness is only a shadow of our broken relationship with God, that this grief is but an echo of His grieving our loss, that our bleeding is shallow as the whole world swims in His blood.

It may be a sad story, but maybe I can share with you the very best parts.

Some days I might say to my daughter, “Hey there, pretty girl.” And often she will correct me, “No, Mommy, I’m beautiful.”

Some days my daughter will barge into my unlocked bathroom to find me half made-up, the flaws and wrinkles not quite covered and smoothed away, and she will proclaim, “Mommy, you’re beautiful!”

And I am surprised every time.

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There is a conversation going on, a conversation among our women and girls, a conversation desperate to be had. It is the conversation of our hearts, whether or not we are alert enough to hear it, the question we are asking and the answer we are afraid to find.

Am I beautiful?

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My daughter is the word delicate. She is tiny and precise, fashioned together in the most intricate of detail. She is breathtaking. This little marvel, this vision of loveliness, stands at my side and copies my every move. She is a girl in awe of grace and royalty, of fairies and princesses, yet wants nothing more than to be most like me.

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The conversation is ongoing.

Somewhere along the lines, my daughter will doubt that she is beautiful. Despite hearing it from the moment she was born, despite it being truth, she will pinch her waist, cringe at her complexion, wish herself anything but.

Our girls are under attack. The conversation is being distorted, just enough to slip through the cracks in our wondering hearts. The question is becoming Am I beautiful enough?, as if beauty were something to achieve.

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I will tell her she is beautiful, even when the day comes when she will not believe me. I will whisper it while she sleeps, tuck it behind her ear when she is least aware. When she asks the question, with wounds in her eyes and uncertainty in her heart, Am I beautiful?, I will teach her to listen to God the King when He says, I am enthralled by your beauty; honor Me, for I am your Lord.

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It is the conversation of our lives. It is a yearning to return to the day when we were created and called, woven and designed with beauty in mind. It is more than just a question of enough. It is the need we have to step back into the image God has always intended for us. It is the ache for our very identity. It is the truth, and we need our daughters to know it.

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Please join us on March 16 at Fountain City United Methodist Church for our second annual Beautiful event (all the details if you click the link). We will be having this conversation with our girls grades 3rd-6th, and their mothers and/or mentors. It will be a day to answer the question Am I beautiful? with a resounding Yes!

It’s only been recently that Lent has had any profound significance to me as a Christian. Oh, but I’ve observed it, for years and years actually. Once, when I was young and foolish, I actually gave up chocolate for Lent. BUT YOU GUYS. Cadbury eggs are only available during this time of year. I KNOW. I was ridiculous. (But not anymore, right, you guys?)

So during these forty days each year (give or take), I make myself keenly aware (here and there) of the occurrence of the crucifixion, that awareness heightened when I get an itch for whatever thing I have sacrificed to remind me.

Forty days. Out of 365. That’s 10.96% of my year, because I majored in math.

You’re welcome, Jesus.

And even then, how easy it is for me to forget that the time leading up to Good Friday is such a sacred one. I mean, it’s a full forty days long and I have a short attention span. Also? My kids are PHENOMENAL at demanding my undivided attention. It’s a skill, really.

But every now and then, and with precision and inconsistency, I can focus on the cross. (It’s a skill, really.)

It is then that I can only imagine how electric those days must have been, the days leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion, the days he had to wrap up his earthly ministry. I believe he knew his timeframe, knew what he was working with, knew the magnitude of Heaven had to be condensed into a tiny pocket of time.

The days leading up to the grand finale.

I can only imagine the weight of those final days, every sunrise edging him closer to his death march, every village filled to breaking with souls in need of saving, everything hanging on common men who just didn’t get it yet.

The heaviness he must have experienced, most likely every day of his human life, knowing what was coming, knowing his mission, knowing, despite the passion and the purpose, that he would still be mocked, ridiculed, ignored, and brushed aside, knowing his sacrifice, even his existence, would be questioned and discredited, knowing his Father would be disregarded, mistrusted, labeled a virtual reality. In life, in death, in resurrection.

What a time. What time. And oh, how I waste my time all the while haphazardly focusing on his.

But maybe for fractions of these forty days I can — I will — be more purposeful about remembering.

Maybe I will be deliberate when I flip open my Bible and fill that hunger with more of God, and maybe I will catch just a faint shadow of the enormity of Jesus’ mission. Maybe I will get a taste of the weight of his desperation, not even for himself, but for his Bride. Maybe I will dip a toe in the eternity of Heaven and hear the hum of the infinite message of Life — true, unblemished, meaningful Life.

Certainly, from the corner of my eye, I will glimpse God.

I was early to church on Sunday, which for me really just means I was on time. It was also my morning to serve at the Welcome Center, to stand there with a smile. To, well, welcome everyone bustling past, to greet familiar faces with warmth and brand new faces with certainty and directions.

The hallways were empty when I arrived, the early service still in session, those arriving for the Sunday School hour trickling in from the parking lot.

It was still quiet. I rooted through the drawers so I would know which ones held registration forms and which ones stashed the extra pens. I tried not to topple over in my heels. I checked my pockets to make sure I had my car keys. I ignored the buzz of my phone, because what if a first-time visitor walked up right at that moment and I was texting?

I should have checked my phone.

It was an update from a sweet friend about her miraculous son Drew who was suddenly and dangerously spiraling downward. It was a brokenhearted plea urging us to pray for another miracle.

The hallway began to fill with people, some from the early service, some hurrying in from the cold with children in tow, many of us somber with the news, many in tears. It was a moment of uncertainty, a moment pregnant with fear, a moment when we as a church held our breath, if only we could give little Drew ours. It was a moment when prayer hummed heavy in the air.

It was a moment when I caught a divine glimpse of the way church was always designed to be.

During that early service, our pastors were notified of Drew’s desperate condition. The final hymn was cut short to pray and to pray in earnest and with boldness. Many Sunday School classes spent their time praying specifically for this amazing family. A few left church early to make the drive to Nashville just to be present.

It was frightening; it was beautiful.

It’s so easy (and maybe even a little trendy) to see the church in a harsh light, especially these days. We are noisy. We are arrogant. We are certain we are right, aren’t we? We tend to waste our voices on petty issues, we forget the grand picture, we fight amongst ourselves, we categorize, we judge, we pick, we point.

And I get frustrated often when the still, quiet voices are being drowned out by those who can shout the loudest. I get tired when our God is told to step back and take a seat in favor of politics and prejudice. It is easy to lose faith in those who claim to be the faithful. It is easier still to misplace that faith in the first place.

But Sunday morning, from my post behind my church’s Welcome Center, I saw God stretch out and down and through the arms and prayers and voices and tears of a church family moving together toward wholeness, toward holiness.

I saw a common brokenness, a chorus of desperate pleas for God to Come!, and the salve as He responded, as He pressed His grace between the cracks, as He answered, on this day, Yes, My children.

I saw the church the way God meant for her to be, and for that Sunday morning, the Bride of Christ was glorious.