A New Kind of Resolution

I have another end of the year tradition that I believe started around the same time as my Christmas List tradition.  I never really got into making New Years resolutions.  People make these plans and promises that they think will make them better people somehow.  But what ends up happening is that they never follow through and end up feeling terrible about themselves.  It is a yearly torture ritual, and I don’t want any part of it.  It’s hard enough to see our value through the eyes of God.  We don’t need to make it any harder on ourselves.

So, every year, I make a different kind of resolution.  As the year comes to a close and I think back on all that has happened, a passage of scripture usually comes to mind.  It is either one that has come up a lot throughout the year, or one that is “discovered” in the last few weeks before one year fades into the next.  It is always a passage (or passages) that somehow describes what I want to see happen in the next year.  And more often than not, they’re not really things that I could accomplish on my own, therefore shielding me from the inevitable shame of failure. 

To give a couple of examples, for 2007, my resolution was to be ruined.  I referenced the passage from Isaiah 6 where the prophet sees God and declares, “Woe to me!  I am ruined!  I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”  I wanted to see God, and to be ruined by the experience forever.  I wanted to be truly changed.  And I can say that in that year, I experienced the presence of God in a way that I never had before.  I also became painfully aware of my brokenness and depravity.  It wasn’t exactly what I had signed up for.  I imagined something a little more glamorous.  But on some level, my resolution became reality.

Another example, for 2008, my resolution was to be rescued; to move from darkness to light.  I used 1 John 1:5-7 and Colossians 1:13-14.  I wanted to be free from the lies that I had believed, and to be free from the darkness they had banished me to.  It went along well with my Christmas list from that year.  And now, here at the end of 2008, I can say with confidence that this resolution is also becoming reality.  It certainly isn’t complete, and it may never be.  I believe that my entire life, however long it may be, is destined to be a journey from darkness to light which will not be complete until I leave this wretched earth. 

And so, with no further ado, the unveiling of my New Years Resolution for this the year of our Lord two thousand and nine…

To go through the sun. 

A new friend said to me recently: “If I were to give you my theology in a nut shell, it would be centered on the experiences of pain and consummate joy.  The necessity of “going through the sun” and coming out “on the other side.”  And the insistence that to try to circumnavigate the pain, go around the sun, finds you floating in a realm of infinite darkness, detached from everything that makes you truly human.”

That really resonated with me and with what I was already thinking about for my 2009 resolution.  So here it is in a nutshell: I want to engage the pain in my life.  But I want to engage it in a way that is healthy and life-giving, rather than allowing it to consume and define me.  Simply acknowledging pain is a very new thing for me, and actually engaging it is a whole new ballgame.  But I am becoming convinced that engaging it is the only way to find life.  I can’t go over it, I can’t go under it, I can’t go around it.  I have to go through it.  I have to dive into the darkness and pain, wrestle with God there, and come out with Him on the other side.  I want to understand pain as a part of life.  And I want to understand God in the midst of this paradox:

 

Psalm 23

Lamentations 3

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

I am the one who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.

He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quite waters.  

He has driven me away

and made me walk in darkness rather than light;

indeed he has turned his hand against me

again and again, all day long. 

He restores my soul.  He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

He has made my skin and my flesh grow old and has broken my bones.  

He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship.  

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil, for you are with me;

your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

He has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead.  

He has walled me in so I cannot escape;

he has weighed me down with chains.  

Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer.  

He has barred my way with blocks of stone;

he has made my paths crooked.  

Like a bear lying in wait, like a lion in hiding

he dragged me from the path

and mangled me and left me without help.  

He drew his bow and made me the target for his arrows.  

He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver. 

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.  

You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.  

I became the laughingstock of all my people; they mock me all day long.  

He has filled me with bitter herbs and sated me with gall.  

He has broken my teeth with gravel; he has trampled me in the dust.  

Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is.  

So I say, “My splendor is gone and all that I hoped from the LORD.”

And to do that, to live in the midst of that paradox, I have to invite God into the darkness with me, instead of just blaming Him for it.  Blaming is getting me nowhere. 

Isaiah 40 is a passage of scripture that I’ve come across recently that I feel really captures what I’m going for here.  Verse 3 sums it up nicely, but I would definitely encourage you to go and read the whole chapter:

 3 A voice of one calling:
       “In the desert prepare
       the way for the LORD;
       make straight in the wilderness
       a highway for our God.

This is what I want to do this year.  I want to prepare the way for the LORD.  I want to make a straight highway for Him in my wilderness.  I don’t want to avoid pain.  I want to go through the sun, I want to walk through the desert, and I want to invite God to go through sun and desert with me.  I want to prepare room for Him to enter my heart again.

Happy New Year

Almost a new year

I’ve changed the title and theme of my blog.  I like to do that at the beginning of the year.  It usually has something to do with my new years resolution.  But since it’s only the 27th, I’ll wait to share that resolution with you.  

Until then…

Welcome to Our World

I’m not generally a fan of Michael W. Smith, but I like the lyrics of this song.  Happy Christmas.  

 

Tears are falling, hearts are breaking 
How we need to hear from God 
You’ve been promised, we’ve been waiting 
Welcome Holy Child 
Welcome Holy Child 

Hope that you don’t mind our manger 
How I wish we would have known 
But long awaited Holy Stranger 
Make yourself at home 
Please make yourself at home 

Bring your peace into our violence 
Bid our hungry souls be filled 
Word now breaking Heaven’s silence 
Welcome to our world 
Welcome to our world 

Fragile fingers sent to heal us 
Tender brow prepared for thorns 
Tiny heart whose blood will save us 
Unto us is born 
Unto us is born 

So wrap our injured flesh around You 
Breathe our air and walk our sod 
Rob our sin and make us holy 
Perfect Son of God 
Perfect Son of God 
Welcome to our world

Seven Pounds

I write on this thing way too much.

Spoiler alert – I won’t be giving away the ending, but I will elude to what happens.  just so you know.

I just got back from watching Seven Pounds.  There are no words.  After it was over, I just wanted to sit.  Just sit… and think.  Not even think, really.  Just feel.  To just feel the emotions that the movie was trying to evoke in us.  But my family wants to talk.  They want to try and figure it out.  They want to discuss the details.  Screw the details.  Whenever I do get around to talking about a movie like this, I don’t want to talk about details.  The details aren’t important to me.  I want to talk about the emotions.  I want to talk about people, about story, about the bigger messages about human nature and the human condition and human relationship.  I want to talk about why the movie has meaning to me, how it speaks to my story, and how it names me.

This is a story about an unfortunate twist of fate.  It is a story about deep, numbing, paralyzing, heart-wrenching pain (and even all of those words don’t adequately describe it).  It is a story about loneliness and isolation, but also meaningful relationship and connection.  It is a story about tragedy, love, and sacrifice.  Tragedy, love, and sacrifice that many would call horrible, but I call beautiful.

It is a story about life.  It is a story about Us.

The Power of Presence

I was listening to the podcast from a couple weeks ago at Emmaus Way, and the speaker said something that really has me thinking:

“Defining our experiences in light of God’s presence in those ways rather than the reverse, of taking our experiences and defining God’s presence, I think is really critical because going in the reverse gets us into a lot of trouble.  Then you just have a lot of people saying “Well, if God would heal me, then I would know that He is here.”  But a lot of times we don’t always know how God is trying to show his presence.  In the 4^th text of this week in 2 Peter, Peter exhorts people saying that instead of saying that God is late in fulfilling His promise, rather they begin to understand that God is showing His power through His patience, and that His point is salvation.  So if we’re experiencing trouble with our friends and family, with our health, with stuff at work, we could really misunderstand where God is trying to show up there, and be present with us.  Often times, immediate healing of those areas, or immediate getting rid of those problems, is not what we need.  And God being with us, this idea of Emmanuel, is really part of God expressing His power to us.”

This really speaks to the process that I’m going through right now.  And it probably speaks to a lot of our circumstances.  I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve grown up believing in a kind of genie-God.  All I had to do was rub His lamp the right way, and He would appear and grant me whatever it was that I was asking for.  I never would have described it that way, of course.  I would always describe what I had with God as a “relationship.”  But now that I’ve taken a little bit of a step back from that relationship, and I look back on the way that I used to pray, my prayers were almost always request-driven.  God, please help me with this.  God, please do this in this person’s life.  God, please let us win (a common prayer back when I used to play softball).  God, please help me feel like this, or stop feeling like this.  God, please don’t let him get angry about this.  There was a laundry list of things that I wanted God to do.  Praising God consisted of thanking Him for the ways that He had answered those prayers and made my wishes come true.  And I was okay with that, because I knew that asking for those things meant that I had faith, that I believed that God had the power to do them.  And that’s a good thing, right?  

But now I’m beginning to see the downfall of relating to God this way.  When we base our relationship with God on our requests and His response, what happens when He doesn’t answer our prayers the way we want Him to?  What happens when our three wishes don’t come true, or when He doesn’t seem to come out of the lamp at all?  Whenever my softball team lost in spite of all of my impassioned entreaties to the God of the universe, I was crushed of course.  But I bounced back quickly… probably by the time I got home and the sugar from the post-game snow cone settled in.  What happens, though, when much more important things are at stake?  What happens when a family member dies while you’re thousands of miles away?  What happens when your teenage son commits suicide?  What happens when a 22 year old girl is sent home from the hospital to wait on the test results, and then dies in her sleep that night?  What happens when you wake up one day and realize that your entire life has been destroyed by the hurtful words and actions of someone that you love?  When the God of the universe is nothing more than an 8 ball that tells you yes, no, or don’t count on it, one unfortunate event can turn your whole world upside down.  When that God doesn’t act in the way you wanted Him to, you begin to question His power, or worse, His loving character.  

What happens next can be incredibly scary.  Suddenly questioning the power and character of the God that you’ve been crying out to your entire life is a very disruptive thing.  But maybe it can be a good kind of disruption.  And the disruption looks different for different people and circumstances.  For me, the events that have turned my world upside down and the questions that have followed, have completely obliterated the image of God that I have clung to in the past.  I no longer meet God the way that I used to.  I rarely ever meet Him in an organized religious setting anymore (although I don’t think that will always be the case).  And my prayer life has completely changed.  I don’t really pray at all the way that I used to (and many people might not even call what I do prayer).  Really, I’m in a constant state of prayer.  A constant state of acknowledging God’s existence and His presence.  I rarely ever talk to Him.  And I’m not always happy with Him.  Actually, I’m usually not.  But somehow, He’s there, and I know He’s there.  I just don’t have a good handle on who exactly He is yet.  I’m a tad bit suspicious of Him.  But I respond to Him in “prayer” in a lot of new ways, and only sometimes with words.  I’ve found that art has been a big way that I’ve been communicating with God lately.  The pastor of Emmaus Way actually suggested to me that painting could be prayer, and honestly, I thought he was a little crazy.  Ha ha.  But I’ve come around.  And this change in how I relate to God is scary, and incredibly disruptive.  But I see it as a good disruption.  The view of God that I had before was easy and comfortable, but 100% inaccurate.  Asking hard questions and shifting my relationship with God is allowing me to find out who He really is.  It’s a painful, but worthwhile disruption.  

More on the subject of the Emmaus Way podcast, my process over the last 6 months has involved me doing the reverse.  I have been looking at my experiences and defining God’s presence in light of them.  And that has made me deeply question God’s character and His love for me.  I have looked deeply into my story in a way that I never have before, and instead of looking for ways that He was present with me in the darkest parts of my story, I viewed my experiences as evidence of His absence.  And I’ve found myself asking God why He didn’t show up?  Why didn’t He use His power to change my circumstances?  If He cared about me, why did He allow me to experience so much pain?

And I think those are good questions.  They are questions that needed to be asked, even if they are never answered.  They are part of my process.  But I feel like I am on the verge of a big transition.  I’m beginning to realize that I just might be asking the wrong questions.  The questions are starting to change.

What if a change in circumstance and immediate healing of the broken places wasn’t what I needed? What if He really was there, and I just don’t have the eyes to see it?  What if God’s presence with me was an expression of His power?  What if His presence really is all that I need?  It sounds like my Christmas List this year is right on track:  ”More than answers, more than justice, more than healing, I want Emmanuel.  I want God with Us.”

Me, Charlie Brown, and an Unlikely Story

I didn’t used to like the Peanuts cartoons.  I always thought Charlie Brown was such a baby.  But I guess in the midst of depression, you see Charlie Brown in a much different way.  

As I was watching A Charlie Brown Christmas last night, I realized that me and Charlie really aren’t that different.  The commercialization of Christmas aside, I identified deeply with his feelings of being misunderstood, and even more with his confusion over being sad at a time when he is “supposed” to be happy.  And much to my surprise, I found myself understanding well his perception that everyone hated him and that he didn’t have any friends.  I definitely have friends.  I’m not saying that I don’t.  But I do feel like there are these huge parts of who I am that no one understands, and that make people run the other way when they encounter them.  

I’m an intense person.  I just am.  I could have a 3-4 hour deep conversation with a friend, watch 1 or 2 of the most depressing movies ever made, blog about how depressing they were, do a couple hours of research on psychotherapy for women who have been trafficked, and then have another 3-4 hour deep conversation… all without thinking twice.  I’m not saying that these things wouldn’t phase me.  They certainly would.  But spending my day like that wouldn’t really bother me.  I probably wouldn’t feel the need to go do something mindless and fun to recuperate.  But chances are, I wouldn’t have someone to share all of that with.  It seems to me that for most people (and I’m not saying this is a bad thing), they would only be able to handle one or two of those things in a span of 24 hours.  And, as silly as it sounds, that makes me feel a little bit like a freak.  Sometimes it feels like there isn’t another person on the planet that even remotely matches my level of intensity, and that’s a lonely feeling.  I constantly feel like I have to sensor myself so that I don’t overwhelm people.  I generally feel like my true self is too much for people to handle.  

I’m sure people would be quick to tell me that it’s not true, and I would really like to believe them.  But honestly, a lot of my experiences are speaking louder than people’s objections.  I’ve had “friends” tell me that all of our interactions are serious and negative and that they can only take me in small amounts, others who cut me out of their life completely because they felt pressured to be more for me than they could be, and others who didn’t engage the more intense parts of my personality at all.  And I don’t know what to do wit that.  I can’t help but wonder if there is something that I’m doing wrong.  Do I open up to people to quickly?  Am I too honest?  Should I “hide” the depth of my intensity until I know that the person can handle it?  Should I just be less intense?  

On a mostly unrelated note, I had a kind of religious experience while watching “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”  I was really touched by the part where Charlie Brown picks out the sad little Christmas tree.  I never thought much about it before, but last night it held a lot of meaning for me.  ”I think it needs me.”  

And when everyone gets upset about the tree, and Linus takes the stage to remind us of what Christmas is all about, I felt like I was hearing the Christmas story for the first time.  As I listened to this unlikely story teller with his old baby blanket, I felt like he was speaking directly to my heart:

 

“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.  And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.  And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,  Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” — Luke 2: 8-14

I felt a deep need for this savior that the angel was announcing.  I felt a sense of curiosity about this savior who was to be for all people.  And I felt the whisper of hope that these words might be true.  

 

An unlikely little boy.  An unlikely tree.  An unlikely story.  An unlikely savior.

Faith, Art, Pain and the Whisper of Redemption

Recently, I had someone tell me that I had become really “artsy.”  I was a little taken aback by the comment, because in my mind, I have always been more on the artsy side.  What does “artsy” mean anyway? 

My roommate, the beautiful Liz Hundley, recently let me borrow a book of hers entitled, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, by Madeleine L’engle.  I started reading it this morning, and have come to this conclusion:  I am an artist. 

I thought I might wait until I finished the book, and then write a blog post about my overall impressions.  But there are too many wonderful things in just the first 30 pages for me to wait until I’m finished to share my impressions with you.  So I want to start off with a few quotes that really have me thinking:

“I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, ‘Here I am.  Enflesh me.  Give birth to me.’  And the artist either says, ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord,’ and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses.”

This quote reminds me of what is officially my favorite painting that I’ve done.  This puts into words exactly what happened when this painting came into being.  I painted it the morning after I found out about Mars Hill, and somehow it is an expression of both the darkness of my story and the hope for resurrection that I felt after spending hours on the Mars Hill website.  I didn’t paint it… not really.  It may sound crazy, but I really feel like it already existed, and was just waiting to be exposed.  I didn’t plan it or draw it out first.  I didn’t have an end goal in mind.  I just put the brush to the canvas, and this is what happened:

Title:  Begin to hope

And the next quote I wanted to share, which I think can also be tied to this painting very nicely:

“In art, either as creators or participators, we are helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we are asked to endure, we who are children of God by adoption and grace.”

The last one, which I think will take a little more effort for me to reflect on, is this:

“In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”  — Aeschylus

Pain seems to have been a theme in my life for about the past 6 months, and it has been a very interesting journey.  There was a question that was asked during my admissions interview at Mars Hill that sums up what I’ve been processing these past few months:  What is the connection between the gospel and grief?  I was able to answer that question honestly by saying that I really don’t know.  I don’t know what the gospel has to say about grief.  I don’t know the answer that the gospel has to give when we ask that fundamental question – why?  If the gospel is true, then why is there so much pain in the world and in our lives?  If the gospel is good news, then why does it so often feel like God is watching from the sidelines as our lives fall apart?  If God truly is a good Father, then why does He allow our hearts to be broken again and again and again…?

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been considering the possibility that this question doesn’t have an answer, or at least not one that most of us would be satisfied with.  That maybe the point of the gospel isn’t to rid our lives of pain and suffering.  That somehow, the pain of brokenness and the joy of the gospel can coexist.  That maybe the pain doesn’t need to be redeemed, but is actually itself a tool of redemption.  Maybe what makes the Good News good isn’t that it takes away our suffering, or even that it makes our suffering make sense, but that it instead offers us hope and peace in the midst of our suffering.  That we are able to share in the sufferings of Christ… or that He was able to share in ours.  What would life look like if this was what I believed?  What would a relationship with God look like if it were based on these ideas?  And are these thoughts anywhere close to reality?

The Story Project

Bah!  I can’t believe I did this!!!  I HATE watching myself on camera…  :(

The Story Project

It’s my party…

I don’t know if I’ve met too many people who would say that they cried for more than 30 minutes and were really happy about it.  

Last night I was watching Finding Neverland while “studying.”  A different part of that movie gets to me every time I watch it.  And that  still holds true.  I was fine for most of the movie, until the very last scene.  Peter is looking off into the distance, saying that he can see his mother in Neverland.  Then he buries his face in Johnny Dep’s chest and sobs.  And I joined him.  I completely lost it.  Since going to therapy, I’ve realized that I really don’t like crying in front of people, and that really, there isn’t anyone that I feel comfortable really weeping with.  And I thought, your parents are the people you should be able to do that with, if no one else.  Growing up, I thought that either my dad didn’t care, or he did a really good job of hiding it.  And I grew up believing that my mom, who I knew cared about me, was too fragile to handle my tears.  I had to protect her, to be strong for her, to be strong the way that she was trying to be strong.  And that realization made me incredibly sad.

 But believe it or not, that was a breakthrough.  I’ve had several moments like that recently, where I’ve been able to just be sad about my story, to both acknowledge and grieve the pain in my past.  And why is that a good thing?  Because grieving my story means that I actually believe (or am starting to believe) that I deserve more.  I’ve realized that it is very hard for me to hold on to any feelings of sadness or anger for very long, because honestly, I’ve spent most of my life believing that I don’t deserve any better than the shit I’ve been handed.  It was just what I had to put up with, as the one who slipped through.  So actually, crying over the brokenness in my life for 30+ minutes, acknowledging that, somehow, this was not the way things were supposed to be, having my heart broken over what might just break God’s heart, was kind of a big accomplishment.  

This is my story… and I’ll cry if I want to.

Walls

I ran across this quote today, and I’m trying to decide if I agree with it:

“Sometimes you have to put up walls, not to keep people out but to see who really cares enough to break them down.”

I’ll come back to this later, maybe after I fail my two exams tomorrow.  :)