hope – Sheila Dougal

I am the riffraff

“The riffraff among them had a strong craving for other food.”
Numbers 11:4

I decided to remove the social media apps from my phone for the Lenten season this year. Ask me how many times I’ve put them back on since Ash Wednesday?

More than that.

I ran across this verse in my daily reading the other day and it hit home. That craving for red dots, hearts and likes and comments is real.

“The riffraff among them had a strong craving for other food. The Israelites wept again and said, “Who will feed us meat? We remember the free fish we ate in Egypt, along with the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. But now our appetite is gone; there’s nothing to look at but this manna!””
Numbers 11:4-6 CSB

Probably like most of you I use social media and I recognize the dangers of it. One of the dangers I see is the strong craving social media creates in me for validation.

We need each other. We’re social beings, even introverts like me. We need communication from other humans to help us be healthier humans. But humans alone cannot fill the insatiable appetite we have for meaning.

There’s this question I’m constantly carrying around, like a growling empty stomach: Is what I’m saying or doing making any good difference?

I want to know that what I say and do matters. That it’s helping someone. That is making life better. And as a Christian, I want to know that I’m honoring Christ and helping others know and love Him.

Those notifications on my phone from what I write in articles or poems or blogs or social media posts is a sort of food that satisfies that craving to make a difference. But it’s satisfaction is short lived and addictive.

Social media likes are white sugar to my craving.

But the word of God, the truth of Christ, the wisdom of the Holy Spirt is a full feast to my soul.

When I check those notifications and feel the spike of sweet followed by the growling craving and keep checking this glass rectangle in my pocket my riff-raffness shows.

But in seasons like this when my soul puts aside the sugar, acknowledging how addicted this riff-raff lady is, and sits with the strange growls in my soul before God, I inevitably find him fulfilling.

Just one look up. One pause to listen. To remember. To hunger. To breathe. To let tears run. To let laughter come too. To remember Jesus.

Here we fast. We crave. We hunger. We taste just a morsel and drink just a sip. For now.

One day this redeemed riff-raff will sit at the table and feast.

2022 like a train

I heard the rumble and shout of a train hastening down the tracks alongside US 60 on my way to work this morning. The train announcing he’s coming through. Make way. Watch out. He’s not stopping.

2022 has been a train barreling down the tracks for me. My baby boys have become men and the empty nest has moved into my world, full steam ahead, whether I’m ready or not.

I told God the other day, “I wasn’t prepared for this! I didn’t pray about this! I don’t know what to do with this!”

Life is passing me by, horns honking, like traffic, while I sit at the light that turned green awhile back.

The good news is, I’m paying attention. God’s got my ears tuned like an owl to the sonar pulse answering his, “Whoo, whoo.” And he’s got my tears- a window display of colored glass bottles full of salty prayers.

The train of time chugs away, and I keep praying, waiting, watching, listening.

Thankful for the man who made room for the scandal- A Christmas Eve reflection

As I sit here on Christmas Eve, trying to carve out space to meditate on the Incarnation, a candle lit on my little desk, my husband is running a power saw on the roof cutting off the excess wood he used to finish our back patio. And I can’t help but think about the parallels in my life with the dynamic between Joseph and Mary.

Mary held within her, literally, the promise of God. And Joseph struggled to believe it. It took the revelation of an angel for him to believe. And I wonder if, as the years passed and Jesus grew, Joseph didn’t start to doubt the promise. Or at least lose the wonder of it amidst the everyday life of raising a child and trying to provide for the needs of his family.

While he worked with wood he lived with scandal, and he saw no great transformation in Israel or even in his and Mary’s own lives. There was no arrival at Shalom once Jesus was born. Surely Mary and Joseph still struggled with the pain that comes with learning to love someone. Mary must have had days of fatigue and longing Joseph failed to fulfill. Joseph must have had days of irritation and frustration with the struggle to provide for his stigmatized family. They probably got on each others nerves and Jesus still needed to be fed and changed and held.

These are all speculations of course. But Joseph and Mary were not super human. They were broken humans, just like my husband and me. Joseph blends into the background in the story of the incarnation. A man who struggled with unbelief, but was willing to accept and care for the woman and child who would bring to his daily life the reminder of what the angel told him, “…he will save his people from their sins.”

The story of Mary and Joseph feels familiar. I too am a woman with the promise of God in me. Christ is in me. And my soul sings with Mary, “…the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” The Holy Spirit is also filling me with new life that I cannot account for through human means. My husband has struggled to accept this in our 30 years together. Yet God has turned his heart time and time again towards caring for his family.

My second son was born eighteen years ago, two days after Christmas. Being pregnant at Christmas is another reason Joseph and Mary’s story resonates with me. The gift of a child. The gift of a man, who though he doesn’t understand, cares and provides and tries to make room for the scandal and accept it.

The fulfillment of the promise of the Child who will save his people from their sins plays out in my everyday life. And in a lifetime of treasuring promises in my heart, building a home, and most days, seeing nothing revolutionary. This is the Christmas story that lights the candle in my darkened soul. This is the mystery and the hope that carries me. Day after day.

Christ is born. Joy to the world. And to the world-weary men and women.

Looking to Jesus with a plank in my eye

So often I catch myself mulling over concerns; wallowing in them like a pig in the mud, rolling over and over the worries I have for my loved ones.

I catch myself and come to my senses like the Prodigal Son and turn my face towards Home.

I remember the King who poured his life out and did not see the fruit of his labors pre-resurrection.

He had to be the loser first.

Yes, we must keep praying!

We must, I must, keep looking to Jesus with this plank in my eye, letting him teach me to remove it and love.

And then I have to get out there and die.

I have to lose.

I have to plant myself, and truth and grace, in the lives of those God has put around me.

And wait.

Cause I’m the farmer. I’m not the King.

And soon, and very soon, we are going to see the King!

And all will be well.

A tribute to my mom’s redemptive story telling

My mom tells great stories. She always has.

On a recent visit I asked her to retell the versions of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Jack and the Beanstalk and the Three Little Pigs she told us as kids. She said she couldn’t because, just like her biscuit or buttermilk pancake recipes, she never wrote them down.

My mom redeemed every childhood story she told. To the best of my recollection my mom redeemed Goldilocks and the Three Bears by turning the three bears into a hospitable foster home for Goldilocks. A safe haven where she could rest, eat and relax, even laugh, while the bears worked to help her find her way home.

Jack and the beanstalk, is a little fuzzy for me. But I think she told it something along the lines of, Jack’s mom was broke and sent him off to sell their beloved cow Betsy in exchange for money to buy food. But Jack was a dreamer and when told about the magic beans he could exchange Betsy for, that would surely lead to a magical bean stalk that grew to heaven, where Jack could get the golden egg laid by that great goose in the sky, he couldn’t resist. That golden egg would guarantee Jack and his mom would be fed and well cared for. All I remember after that is that Jack’s mom was mad that he got duped, so he threw the beans out the window, fell asleep crying and woke up to an enormous beanstalk that ascended as far as the eye could see into heaven. Jack climbed the stalk, in a half dreaming state, and when he arrived at the top, he went looking for the golden egg. He found the egg and instead of stealing it, he told the goose his plight and the goose gladly gave him the egg. When the giant discovered Jack with the egg and began chasing him Jack scrambled down the stalk and I honestly don’t remember what my mom did with the story after that. But I bet she made Jack convert the giant to kindness and they became friends who frequently visited each other and shared the wealth the had with all their neighbors.

She did the same redemptive retelling of the Three Little Pigs. By the end of the tale, the wolf repented of his sins, entered a work program with the pigs and built new homes for everyone.

My mom doesn’t like stories with sad endings. I guess no one does. I recently heard a podcast with Karen Swallow Prior, Jane and Jesus, where the guest was a female scholar of Jewish and Yiddish literature. In the interview she talked about how in Jewish literature, there are no happy endings. Sometimes there are no endings at all…. The story just drops. No resolution. No resolve. No Messiah. No redeemer. No happily ever after. No heaven.

I’ve thought a lot about what that lady said. The idea that there’s someone who will redeem all the bad things and make them come untrue seems too good to be true. A tale that is meant for fairyland, not earth. Not 2022. Not all our wars and murders and lies and greed and abuse and neglect and genocide and hatred and fear. Maybe we think there is no happy ending, no rescuer to make things good and right because we think this is the ending.

To some, my mom’s version of childhood stories seem insulting to real life. Turning all the bad moves these classic characters made into graduates from etiquette school feels unreal…because it is. It isn’t the way of any life, not even animal or plant life.

So should we all be fatalists and stop looking to redeem stories or write stories with characters who do what’s good and right? No, I don’t want to live or write or read like that. But stories with bad endings, unresolved endings that don’t redeem the evil or suffering or pain of the story, also tell a part of the great true story we all draw our stories from.

Listening to The Habit podcast recently, the guest talked about how all the stories we write are ultimately drawn from creation. We don’t make up new stories. We just draw themes and truths from the Great Story that God wrote. Redemption, rescue, repentance, doing good works, learning to love, all spring from God’s story, and feed the river that flows to the oceans full of all our stories.

My mom has long hoped in her Redeemer. She has suffered the pain and evil that make one wonder if anything or anyone can make things right. I love the way she edited the childhood stories she told me to include truth from God’s deep well of redemption. It’s one of the things I love most about my mom. She believes in happily ever after.

What do you do when it all seems to be for nothing?

Fear can strangle you. Lies can put you in real danger. Truth can be a hurricane sweeping through and flattening everything you’ve worked to build. And you can be so overcome with the shadow of death that you stop bagging your tomatoes in the produce section and grind your teeth angry, determined to cut off whoever you must to get back some good, normal, happy life.

And what’s the point anyway?

Why the long days of bending low and praying hard and training the vine to grow the right way, if it’s all gonna just get ripped up at the roots and tossed in the gutter? What are we trying to love these people in our four walls for anyway? Is it a waste?

If the ones we love take our arms-open-wide efforts to be patient and kind, to point them to the truth and hold up life-giving boundaries and look us right in the eye and stab us right in the heart without a blink, was it all for nothing?

Maybe the old saying is true- If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em! But how do you join in destroying the good? How could that possibly be an alternative?

There are no sentences to write in response to these lamenting questions. Just silence. Just sitting with Job in the ashes and pain in silence. Just waiting. Just three dark days of waiting for the stone to be rolled away.

I am the man who has seen affliction
under the rod of God’s wrath.
He has driven me away and forced me to walk
in darkness instead of light.
Yes, he repeatedly turns his hand
against me all day long...
Yet I call this to mind,
and therefore I have hope:


Because of the Lord’s faithful love
we do not perish,
for his mercies never end.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness!
I say, “The Lord is my portion,
therefore I will put my hope in him.”


The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the person who seeks him.
It is good to wait quietly
for salvation from the Lord.
It is good for a man to bear the yoke
while he is still young.

Let him sit alone and be silent,
for God has disciplined him.
Let him put his mouth in the dust—
perhaps there is still hope.
Let him offer his cheek
to the one who would strike him;
let him be filled with disgrace.


For the Lord
will not reject us forever.
Even if he causes suffering,
he will show compassion
according to the abundance of his faithful love.
For he does not enjoy bringing affliction
or suffering on mankind.
- Lamentations 3:1-3, 21-33

“…and he will be mocked, insulted, spit on; and after they flog him, they will kill him, and he will rise on the third day.”
Jesus from Luke 18:32 CSB

Redemption is better than resolution

Every year we resolve to do better. To loose weight. To exercise more. To use less screens and get outside more. And I love this time of year. I love the idea of fresh starts and clean slates, as though magically when the clock strikes 12 on New Year’s Eve, all the pain, and fears, all the conflict, all the scars from 2021 or the entire past forty-seven complicated years will disappear like a shaken etch-a-sketch. But this messy life doesn’t work that way. Scars remain. The unfulfilled desires continue to growl like an empty belly.

Why do we love the idea of starting over so much? Maybe it’s because we think we have the power to save our own lives. I know for me at least, I want a clean surface to start making a mess on again. I want a clean kitchen before I cook, and a tidy, vacuumed living room before I sit to read a book by the light coming through the window. But our inner lives, our habits, our struggles, our brokenness, the ways we fail to love one another as we love ourselves- these can’t be tidied up, put in cupboards and made right with a nice burning candle or resolution list. Better than our resolves to do better, is the redeeming work of Christ.

Instead of going into 2022 with an ideal plan to fix my anything-but ideal life, I’m looking at what Christ has promised me- that he has and is redeeming my whole messy life- and I’m just going to thank him.

I’m going to believe that his unearned favor and love is enough. I’m going to forget and then turn and re-remember his body broken for me a thousand times ten thousand times, by his grace.

The preacher told us yesterday to take the mindset of clinging to Jesus in 2022, in the midst of our pain and brokenness. Instead of a clean slate I want to wrestle with the Lord, like Jacob, and never let go until he blesses, until I can confess who I am and he changes my name.

In 2022 I will set goals, and make plans, and try to replace bad habits with good ones. But I won’t look at 2022 and my efforts like some self-made clean slate. Rather, I’ll take the soil of my life and let the word of Christ get in me, and germinate something new. Something strong. Something stronger than the weeds I have growing everywhere.

He who began a good work in you, and in me, will be faithful to complete it. So, by his amazing grace I’ll keep turning back to him in 2022.

I, the Lord, made you,
and I will not forget you.
I have swept away your sins like a cloud.
I have scattered your offenses like the morning mist.
Oh, return to me,
for I have paid the price to set you free.”
-Isaiah 44:21-22 NLT

Accepting silence

I took a long walk with my German Shephard, Lukas, this evening. The sun is setting earlier. The sky glows with shades of orange and pink and the world seems to cover itself with a honey-kissed filter. I’m drawn out of the house easily on these fall evenings in the Sonoran desert.

Usually I take Lukas down our suburban neighborhood streets, earbuds in, podcast or audio bible or audio book, but tonight, I walked in silence. I listened. I noticed how much I wanted to hear something. Something meaningful. Something insightful. Something I could write or share that might give another struggling soul, courage. But I heard nothing. Nothing but the sound of my steps pressing gravel into the earth. I heard kids playing in the alleyway, hollering to each other working out the rules to the game they were playing. I heard the swoosh and vroom of cars and trucks and motorcycles driving down the main road around the corner. I caught myself reaching for my phone. Wanting to scroll to find some Yoda-like tweet or inspiring instagram story.

As I walked home, noticing the changing colors in the darkening sky, accepting the noises of dusk in Phoenix, Arizona suburbs, I thought about how the daily activities of life fill my days and I very rarely accept silence.

I have no special insight to publish tonight. No word from God. No inspirational quotes.

I don’t like a lot of my circumstances. I long for God to do something new in the lives of those I love, in my own life. But tonight I’ll just quietly wait. And walk. And listen. And pray.

Remember the hope of glory

I’m pretty sure I’m one of the most forgetful people on the planet.

I joke that I think I have early dementia, but it might not be a joke. I forget the names of people I’ve known for a long time. I forget what I was doing when I walk into a room, and have to go back to where I started to try and jog loose some clue that will send me back to the room to do what I set out to do in the first place. And I forget about God.

I have this nagging ache for Jesus to break through in my life in a visible, tangible way. I want so badly to see the evidence that he is alive and changing the hearts and lives of those I love. Even my own life. I want to see that I have an actual desire to love those who I feel unloved by. And I forget that he is here, with me, unseen, and working to transform me. I also forget this means I will actually need to make intentional changes and stop in the parking lot at the grocery store to tell God out loud in my car how angry I am, how frustrated I am, how tired I am, and then thank him for the promise that He won’t leave me or abandon me. I forget that Christ lives in me. In ME.

So tonight, I’m intentionally remembering the miracle that it is in me, even now.

“To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” – Colossians 1:27 ESV

I read somewhere recently, or maybe I listened, I don’t remember, that the meaning of glory in the Bible has to do with substance or weight. Glory isn’t just getting attention or honor or being at your peak in performance or potential. Glory is weight. Glory is substance. (Oh, I remember now, it was the book God Of All Things by Andrew Wilson). As Wilson put it, “To speak of God’s glory, in biblical terms, is not just to speak of his splendor and beauty (though that too) but also to speak of how weighty, heavy and substantial he is.”

The lyrics to the song by Switchfoot come to mind here.

I can feel you reaching
Pushing through the ceiling
‘Til the final healing
I’m looking for you

In my restlessness, in my longing to see God’s substance, his glory in my life, my changed life, and in the lives of those I love, I forget Christ in me.

This is why I need the Church. This is why I need the disciplines of meditating on scripture, praying, all the time. Or like the Bible says, “without ceasing.” This is why I need to remember.

Father, it’s quite miraculous that I wake up still being held by you. Jesus still has hold of me. I still love Him whom I have never seen. It’s a miracle. Please, let me see your glory. Let my children see the weighty substance of your actual life-changing reality. Don’t let me forget you.

Remember the mystery

There’s a handmade wooden sign in the hallway leading to my bedroom with these words in black:

” And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” – Matthew 28:20

I walk by that sign daily and don’t give it a thought, but the other day I stopped and read it over and over. I considered whether I really believed what it said. I mean, Jesus told his followers to go out and tell all kinds of people all over the world about him and what he has done and taught. He told them to baptize them and teach them, make Jesus-followers out of them. And then, he said, “Hey, pay attention (which is what I take “Behold” to mean). I know what you all are thinking. I know this will feel, and is, impossible for you. So get this: I WILL BE WITH YOU. All the way to the end.”

Do I believe that? Do I believe Jesus is with me? The Jesus of the Bible. The Jesus who told a storm to stop after being woke from a nap, and it did. The Jesus who touched untouchables and healed them. The Jesus who suffered the torture of Roman execution and the rejection and abandonment of his friends and came back to life after three days of rigor mortis in the grave. Do I believe this Jesus is with me?

I am surrounded day in and day out with people I love who don’t turn to Jesus as, “…the way, the truth and the life.” And I can’t explain my belief to them. I just know, even in the midst of my own lack of faith, that he’s with me.

In Colossians, Paul wrote that there’s a mystery going on in those who follow Jesus, the mystery is: Christ is in us. I can’t explain this mystery. I can’t even get my own mind around it. But I know, something greater than me and my tired pea-brain compels me to, cry out to a God I’ve never seen but love, reach out to a people who look at me with condescending sighs (because I’m their mom) and constantly seek to love God and love people better. For Jesus’ name’s sake. Because he’s worth it. That is happening in me. And it’s a mystery.

So today, I’m remembering this: The God who said, “All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word,” is the God who said, “Behold, I am with you always. To the very end.”

Christ is with me. In me.

I need to remember.