“Be where you’re at,” Part 1

                Almost three years ago, a very dear friend of mine used to shake her head at me and urge “just be where you’re at.” I didn’t know then that when she urged me to “be where I am at” that she urged me toward the core of love. For love, often posed as sacrificially giving rests in a matter of the heart as well as the will and seems to linger on two very big points: presence and acceptance.

           Being present means fully immersing myself in the moments of my life where I am now and the moments of those around me. It is enjoying the rain that is falling on the ground outside the house where I am babysitting. It means actually reading the messages from my friends when I’m skyping and responding first to what they say, stepping into their world, not making a commentary on or demand of their hearts. (Sometimes lessons get learned the hard way.) 

           It means seeing the rain in their hearts, or the sun, and rejoicing with those who rejoice, and weeping with those who weep. We don’t necessarily stay in their weather of emotions and thoughts, but if we never step into the world as far as they let us, we will never really understand. How can we sacrificially love and meet needs if we don’t see them?

      Sometimes this is hard for me. I like my world and all the interesting twists and turns often sing with familiarity. I’d rather judge your weather from a window, and not step in, be it to rain or sunshine. Or, I try to push a new lesson, new words, new clouds into another’s life. I’m missing it. I’m missing that my friend might be going hungry and does not need emotional support, but help to find food. I’m missing that a different friend is graduating and just needs space and grace to adjust. I’m missing that I am pressuring myself to be better and my own emotions and reactions may need attention and maybe I just need to spend a long time talking with God, or talk with a close friend after I talk with God, not before.

       I miss it all because I try to pretend and become something I’m not. I am not talking about growth, or change itself, but a pressure to have grown and have changed.  To be where I am not.

     If I don’t recognize that I am a finite unique human and accept that, how can I let you be one who acts and thinks differently than me? If I am not where I am at, hanging somewhere in a strange mix of Redemption and Fall, then how do I accept that we are both enough and not enough; both good, loving and kind, and selfish and wanting the world to be the way we long to demand; both feeling loved and unloved.

Maybe together we can be where we are at, on this earth, in this moment, be it struggling against sin and its effects or rejoicing in promise, or more likely a strange combination of both.  God is where we are at, and where we have grown. He does not necessarily ask for our performance in the future beyond commitment, nor actually expect us to fix the people around us, but to be where He is at, with His heart that sees and fixes, hands dug into His work, standing beside Him, leaning into Him. In that point where He works in our lives, He asks us to work now, commit now.

 He knows the future, and He is there too, but since we can’t get there, I wonder if being where we are at might help, even as “being here” sometimes gives space for dreaming and preparing for "there" without pressure to pretend to be somewhere else.  

Loss, Loneliness and Looking

The idea of following God is perfect.  A treasure glitters at the end of his path, eternity with Him, eternal security, life everlasting. It’s really the first that delights, but the cost of following the narrow path was higher than many wanted.  I started on this path and ran into red pain. Then loss glittering blue, an ocean of salty tears until finally I found myself buried in a grey loneliness, hating these colors worse than I might have because I had tasted the fresh green of life. The fresh green of life could be many shades,

 love,

happiness,

joy.

The essence of being surrounded by a God who loves me completely.

 But grey? I did not bargain for grey.

In fact, I had thought that God promised that we would never, ever encounter loneliness because He would always be with us. Yet I found myself, standing in the middle of a grey lonely cloud, sinking in a blue ocean. And I said, “God, this is not what I asked for.”

I tried to run, jump off the path into the briers, but I was too buried in the path, I was all in or all out and I knew it. I tried to turn and stop, but really, stopping never did anyone any good. No one stops in the middle of a path. And I tried to close my eyes and keep walking. Peeking them open occasionally for green. There was nothing. Still, steps were taken. One more. One more again. I step out of grey. Then back in. Then out again. Bright colors appear in grey and I fix my eyes on them, laugh at their sparkles. The greyness started to fade away.

Then the sparkles dance moved, these sparkle’s path did not follow mine, and they but call from a distance.

And if I’m not careful, I could allow the grey to consume me, to seep through my skin to all that I am. These grey clouds have so little swirls.  The grey becomes thick so I can barely see just when I start searching for how I can give green to others. It is thick, I cannot see. One minute to the next takes an hour. I keep moving, head held high, one step in front of another. Still, the storm cloud does not pass.

But this time, this time I realize. The promise of presence is not the promise of green because the Fall tainted all colors. The promise of hope is not the promise of sunny skies because I still live in the battle. The promise that I would never ever be alone did not say that grey’s loneliness would not surround me.

It is time I stop running from grey but look into it.

As I squirm to leave it I miss the peaches and blues you can only see in a grey sky. I see that I am not alone, though loneliness lingers. I feel the tears beneath my feet as I walk, and I cry more into them. Loneliness hurts. Loss aches. There are hands I wish to hold, colorful smiles I want to see dance, stories I want to hear.

The tears swish.

We disobeyed.

I don’t know whether or not separation would hurt quite so much without the Fall, but I have been made two promises. I will never be alone, but I will also taste the effects of the Fall. He walks with me, but to where they will call me names. He walks with me but He does not stop them from judging. He walks with me, but He does not keep all special paths together.

            “Will you follow my path?” He asks in the grey. “You have made you commitment once, and again and again. Will you lay down your fists?  At the risk of work you hate the idea of? Into the risk of red pain? Into the promise of it?”

The thing about following this God is that you have to love Him. Because He asks the best, and hardest thing. “Open your eyes to the pain.” The pain He causes so we will put Him first.

Forgive. Let it hurt  more deeply by not pushing the pain into revenge. Accept that you have been pained and surrender to the fact that I made, love and give justice.  

Trust. Risk that the red of pain will return from the ones you forgive, and others, and My path.

Mourn. Open your heart to the loss, cry tears so that you will not drown in them inside.

Make peace. Put yourself in the way of other’s shots.

Give Compassion. Open your eyes to the pain of another. When you really see, then maybe you can really act.

Face persecution. Do you believe in your cause to the point of torture and death? I let the Fall live, will you live with the consequences even I face?

Across continents, or at home, financially, or emotionally, with the risk that you may be called to leave, will we be His followers? With the risk that He may take what you most love and with eyes open to the pain when or if He does, will we walk? The gift He will give is the one for which every human longs, to know true intimacy. But the way in which He will give it, and the pain we will receive differs. I must face the grey clouds without dancing colors because it touches on the ache and grey within, the grey that must turn not to bright colors of friends, nor the black ink of my pen, but to God first and alone. To your deepest love He may very well ask, "Do you love this more than me?"

 For what purpose does He lead us through pain? Whether it be the loneliness of a Sovereign act of friends moving on or the sharp edge of a knife questioning if you will follow Him, He works all things together for our good, not our pleasure, so  that We will become like Him (Rom 8:28ff).

Pure and True Image-bearers.   

We would be like the One who is, who became image, so we could see what we are meant to be. What a Christ follower is already: that he/she, we, will slowly start to become in reality.

Clichés, Beauty, and the Gospel

                I looked out over the sparkling water. The sun shone brightly, but with the exception of the daytime moon, I found myself rather unimpressed despite the knowledge that I should love this beauty. Countless people on my college campus would probably be commenting on the sunny day, but there is nothing mysterious about a sunny day. It’s like the volcano out my front window growing up. It was a snow top mountain, somewhat isolated, and everyone thought it was pretty. So what? I used to ask. It was big, it had its pretty moments, but it looked nothing like the ridges. The ridges held mystery for I could not know if what lay behind them. Sunny days, sunny days ask very few questions. They are the cliché-beautiful. And I realized, in all my ability to find beauty in the ugly: a cloudy day, rain, a hall way with very few pictures, I have lost the specialness of beauty. Yes, there is a bounce in my step as I walk around the pond, watching ducks dunk their heads into the water. Yes, there are smiles on the people around me. Yes, the sky is vast—but it’s almost too bright for me to look up. Now don’t get me wrong, it was incredibly nice to walk outside and not be so cold my head hurt. It was incredibly nice to feel a warm breeze and have a bounce in my step. But it was still too easy.

The assignment in class earlier was simple, in fifteen minutes go out and ask people how they would share the gospel. I asked two poor people who were recruiting on our camps (It’s not just any day someone walks up and says, “if you were sharing the gospel what would you say?”) The Gospel. Words that are about fifteen years cliché for me: “Jesus died for your sins.” Even when I taught it as a young Sunday school teacher I realized the five year olds had eyes glazing. 

What is wrong with them? It always sickened me that I could watch movies, read books, and listen to Adventures in Odyssey countless times over, but the gospel fell dead on my ears. Was not the gospel the most important thing in my life? But even as my brother commented that “All I have is Christ” is a good song, and I agreed with him, I still had a love/hate relationship with it. It was the same words over again. Except, that Jonathan was right. The words are complete. Almost. Countless times we don’t start with the right picture.

So where do we start? At the beginning. In the beginning God. I think it might be good to start there. Do you know God? How do you see Him? Do you know that He is both wrath and grace? Justice and mercy? How? Well let me tell you a story...

Once upon a time, God was the perfect good King. He decided He wanted to make the world. So He made one. He spoke everything into being. The sun and stars, the earth, water, fishes and giraffes, elephants and ostriches.  Everything. Similar Cinderella’s godmother only nothing existed before.  God said “this is good.” And then He decided that He wanted someone to care for these animals of His—so He created images of His. These creatures were different than the others because of the image bearing. And He gave them a few jobs. Adam named the animals. Adam and Eve were supposed to take care of the earth, do things (maybe invent some stuff), and have kids. There was one other thing: they weren’t supposed to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But then, someone asked them why they shouldn’t and eventually they did. Enter problem. They got kicked out of the garden, to protect them from another tree. When they ate the fruit, they started the process of death. Sin , anything that isn’t good and obedient to God, was passed from person to person. No one was born without it.

Over and over again, God reached out to people in a new way and offered them ways to be close to Him. He gave them sacrifices, but finally, He took another step.  He came Himself. (Enter Trinity Explanation: God is one divine essence in three persons, in other words, God is one and three at the same time. And no, I don’t get it. They are distinct, and the same at the exact same time and it makes no sense in my mind and any more explanation will lead me to heresy.) So, Jesus, the second person of the God-head, came to earth and became a man. He was even born. He lived the perfect life—like perfect, without any sin at all. He loved God first. He was righteous, and loving, and just.

Then He died. For God to be just, someone had to pay the death penalty. Sin was still in the middle of us and God. He had set up a system of killing animals, but it was an over and over again process for each thing that is lost. So Jesus paid the death penalty and God infused all his wrath on what we did wrong (all the inability not to sin we inherited from Satan). End of story right? My sins are paid for. Wrong!

Time passed slowly. Friday night. Saturday. Imagine the memories running through people’s minds. Imagine the tears His mom cried. Did the man who authorized His execution approve of his actiosn still?  Sunday morning. A friend and follower of the God-man went to do traditional burial practices. His tomb was empty. An angel appeared and told her that Jesus was alive. Alive! Jesus had died. No recitation, people had made sure of that. And then He was alive. This has been something I heard so much it sounds cliché. But really, how many people have died completely and come back to life. And how many of these people have already been buried. His disciples saw it. He appeared to a lot of people. Sin is NOW concurred. It was paid for, and it’s control was taken away.

Here’s the really strange thing: when we come to Him and commit to submitting to God as king like we are supposed to, repent (change our mind about doing things that are wrong), we also inherit His righteousness and justice and love. God sees us like that. We become alive at some point in that process. And then, when Jesus left, He sent the third person of the God-head, the Holy Spirit, to come into us and seal us. Now we are in the process of becoming in nature what we are in name. And even while the process is in progress, what Jesus did, and the acceptance of those who choose to recognize that God is well, God, and King, both over the world and individual lives, we get the privilege of being family. And as we are God’s family, we are also each other’s family and we need to love each other, because that’s what Jesus does: we are his followers.

There’s an ending too. And ending that hasn’t happened yet. Jesus is coming back. To reign like He is supposed to. And the world will be remade. All the people who committed to being re-imaged will get rewarded, all the people who didn’t and thus still lived with the guilt of sin on their heads will be punished—forever. How can a loving God do this, you ask? Simple. He’s just. And not He has justice, He is justice. He can’t not be just and punish the wrong things we do. The problem is not God, but our fallen view of sin. Because we do have a messed up view of it: even when we are being re-imaged. God did love them. He let the Trinity be separated and the Son bore the worst punishment in History.

So what does this mean? How is this less cliché to me?

                Sometimes it’s not. But... that might be because it is indeed beautiful. Even with all its brokenness involved, God’s story is perfect. God is perfect, how can He made anything less? It is clear, like sunny day. We’re talking  awesome King, terrible problem, and a hero who dies to save those He loves, climaxed with him coming back to life—only unlike the rest of the stories, it’s not that He didn’t really die.

There is mystery—how can there be trinity—how can a person both fully choose to follow Christ and God choose and elect them at the same time—why in the world would God try again when His perfect humans fell, again and again. What in the world would instill Him with the notion of re-imaging at such a high cost? People die for this around the world. 

Repeated may not always be cliché. God loves you, can be some very cliché words. Jesus died for you probably are too. But  His death and resurrection were anything but. Just like Michigan’s sun, it’s a very abnormal idea. Who do you know who made the world, died in it, came alive again and is gonna come back and rule over the entire world? And you, IF you have or do accept Christ, you get to know this King, personally. 

To Matter...

I have always had a very deep longing. It has shaped how I interacted with people, the choices I made, what I decided to become, how I reacted to anything in life. I have wanted to matter. I have longed to know what it is to be valuable and I have sought it: in thousands of unhealthy methods I have sought to be noticed, to be seen, to be needed...all so that I would matter.

Give me attention, I ask. But it is not attention I seek, it is to know that I am important to you. That I matter to you.

And that is the extravert in me, the person who deep down believed my value must be people-based and not based on accomplishments. Because people matter. People are valuable.

Over Spring Break, someone showed me I mattered to her. In the midst of a world that was already fallen, it spiraled further. That love touched the ache deep in my heart, love from one who might be a little too high on the list of people I want to matter to, love that came offered freely even though in my mind I was messing up. Or it was just because of the pain. It could not have been me.

I believed the need to matter was wrong after so many fallen habits that sprung out of that longing... from keeping long hair to overdependence, from writing because it was unique and no one else had tried it to jealousy, the need to “matter” has practically guided my life. The fear that someday I would wake up and discover that the world would be better without me. And then the day I believed it.

After it hurt people for too long, I crushed the need. I can be accepted by my friends, but it is selfish of me to need to matter. I wrote blogposts and heard no response. I realized there are thousands of books and I said to myself that I write not because it matters, but because I love it.

 But when I tried to crush the longing, I tried to crush myself. Unlike my sister and Emily Dickenson, the idea of being nobody sickens me.. I do not need to stand out at the crowded party anymore, but I do need to know that if I leave it makes a difference to someone in the room. I do need to know that without my story someone’s imagination would be a little bit less rich. I want to be as influential to someone as Gail Carson Levine and Laura Ingles Wilder were to my life. I do need to know that as I withdraw to my room to disappear, or I leave you alone because it is best, that I will still matter to you, that my value won’t simply disappear.

It is not necessarily that you see me, I have been seen by too many people. It is that I matter to you. That me gone would make a difference. That me here makes a difference. This is a longing of my heart. A longing I have tried to suppress. A longing that refuses to be silent. 

No = I love you

No sea malita—don’t be bad. Big brown eyes. A whining tone. Don’t tell me “no.”

I can’t say how many times I’ve heard those words. No, I can’t buy candy from you (I want to, but how do I know it is you it will help, and not some guy who’s beating you up?) I’m not being bad when I say no.

How many times have I wanted to hear the word yes when someone says no?

How many times have I said yes, when I needed to say no? Sure—I can’t tell you that I can’t talk now, that’s unloving. Sure—I can’t tell you I can’t work an extra hour, you really have no solutions. Sure…but I don’t want to, I’m doing it because I have to. Sure, but it’s not really me choosing to love you.

People say that the first word children learn is “no.” (Or “mine” but we’re not dealing with that word today.) And yet, it’s somehow the word we least know how to use, or accept.

                I was eighteen when boundaries in close friendships formed. A dear, dear friend of mine told me I could ask—but only if she could tell me no. No, I can’t read your writing right now, I’ll read it later. No, I can’t come pray. No, you can’t keep saying things like that. No, you can’t do that.

No. No. No.

But then she said yes. Yes, let’s eat breakfast, and when we ate breakfast we both wanted to be there.

Yes, let me hear what you wrote.

Yes, I can pray for you, what for?

Yes, you can text me when you need something.

No… because I want to give you something real.

No—but I still care. No—I think you’re capable and kind enough to respect my boundaries. No— I don’t like hugs; don’t hug me all the time, but when I hug you, it will be a real one.

I love you too much to give you what I can’t.

You are...

When you wake up in the morning and everything is gone, you are loved. When you fall asleep at night and smile at the good day that passed, you are loved. When normality drills a hole into your skull because you are bored, you are loved. You are loved. The cross stands permanently accepting you as you are. If you are like me, if you have heard the story all of your life, it can feel old. Yes, I know, Christ died for me but what about NOW?

Will you step back with me a moment, into a vortex of time, or into a vortex that takes you out of this current reality?

Imagine that you can see God in creation. Do you see, there: Man was made in God’s image with the ability to feel, reason, a sense of morality. There are Adam’s arms, his legs, his full body. Good. No, very good. Then woman appeared, so that man might not be alone. Good.

You are loved, personally, for you. If God is going to hold you personally accountable for your actions does it not make sense that He will also love you and want you personally? Why else would He care?

He made you. He made you finite, with limitations and skin and energy levels. He made you with a unique bent in personality; be that towards art, towards children, towards laughter, or quiet. He made you with the ways that you react and respond to life.

And then they were distorted.

When Adam and Eve sinned, distortions came in and messed up your completeness; your sense of wholeness. You were covered in guilt (be it when you first sinned, or by inheritance, you were covered in guilt and there wasn’t anything you could do about it). But still, you were loved. God did not abandon humans but over and over again as a race He has pursued us, from accepting Abel’s sacrifice to pursuing the Israelites, to the god-man on a cross.

And when the grave became empty, then you became whole and when earth was left without it’s human likeness of God, His spirit  came inside. If you have accepted Christ, you are a new creation. Your name is redeemed, holy, righteous. While you are still sinner, you are only sinner because you sin. And yes, you do still sin. Don’t  just stop when you see it and say “I’ll do better” because sometimes even morality can simply be a disguise of our disgrace. You are loved. You are loved, even when you hit God’s gag-reflex in sin.

You are loved as you are. Distorted image and redeemed image. You were created, distorted, and are accepted. And there is a side of you, an ideal picture of what could have been, and what will be. The perfect image of God. Pieces of it still sneak out on occasion, and in the process of sanctification those occasions grow in frequency. You are loved, not “when,” not “if,” but “now.” Why? Because God made you like He wanted, and He’s not about to desert you. You may be overly talkative, but God gave you words. You may be quiet and withdrawn, but God gave you a sense of hesitancy and caution. You may find yourself in the same sin, the same addiction over and over again. Change may not feel possible. You are accepted. Period. After the period, after that truth, change may be possible but sometimes I think we miss the point. Growth does not give value. Even seeking growth won’t. You are loved. 

Good Writing

The mistake of strong writing is this: it is good. Too good. Constantly good. The mistake of good writing is that it causes you to ask questions, thousands of questions, without trusting any answers. In other words, the problem with good writing is that it is constantly causing a writer to doubt. The problem with good writing is that it is revised over and over and over again until the heart has been removed. Or maybe not the heart, but without a doubt any of the flaws, leaving the reader in awe of the person who can “just write.” And if you can just write, and have no mistakes then you teach me nothing about life because in life I make a million mistakes every day and people have to sort through all the typos and through all of the contradictions in a person’s live to see his or her heart. You see, I just contradicted myself. Good writing, strong logic, doesn't do that, but I just did. I did, and probably before I’m done pushing buttons on my computer I will do it again. It’s not unlikely. That’s another thing life is that good writing is not: repetitive. Most humans are not Anne Shirley, I cannot tell you the number of times that I have made the same mistake, faced the same dilemmas, heard the same words from friends. Life is full of repetition, but good writing eliminates repeated words (unless we repeat the words on purpose, like a prayer said every morning). Or, good writing is often free of parentheticals and yet life seems to be full of them: life and time itself is a parenthetical sitting in the middle of eternity. Eternity, that is another reason why life doesn't quite fit under the mold of good writing. Life, even in time, sits inside of something eternal: good writing begins clearly and ends clearly. A good chapter has a good beginning and yet we rarely seem to look big enough to see the book of time in eternity, and look at the continuity between the creation of the world and the re-creation.

Re-creation, writing is re-creation, perhaps that is why even when you write drafts over and over to show a broken world, it still romanticizes it: because writing is a recreation. If I really wanted you to understand why I am writing I will go back and revise it, at least once, rewording a sentence so that it will stick in your head like a photograph of a sunrise. Which is another reminder of beginning and endings: did you ever notice how we do have book markers to the day but we never stop to see them, or mark them or we rarely stop to see both of them, and so we complain that the days go on and on in a single stream with the same repeats without seeing the repetitions that were meant to be there, meant to be said again.

Writing is re-writing: trying again, and yet when you write in life the first mistake you made will not disappear. But at the same time: grace is revision. No matter how many times you write it, grace will come back to it, and give the words another chance to say it another way as it brushes through the words just the way they are.