I'm struggling to catch Oswald's overarching theme today.
Trust -- not in man, not in the law, not in sacrifices -- but in God's grace. Is that it? I know I cannot trust in me. Yesterday, I was deeply discouraged with everything -- me, church, my husband, all my relationships, the weight of my responsibilities, the impossibility of getting it right. I was ready to throw in the towel.
Today, while I am still tired and discouraged, I sense God's grace all around me. I woke early with a headache, took two ibuprofen, and went back to bed. A day off -- grace. Medicine -- grace. I listened to the rain streaming and running off the roof -- grace. My girls came inside from the tent they had set up the night before with bundles of wet blankets and pillows. Giggles -- grace. My husband made us fried egg sandwiches and coffee -- grace. I went shopping for new glasses -- grace in the science that gives clear vision to my failing eyes; grace that I can afford to buy the cure. My son returned home safely from a trip -- grace. I read the sad and profound thoughts on a good friend's blog -- grace. We sat down to dinner together as a family and talked and laughed as we ate -- grace. And then there are the hundreds of people who have poured into my life, people I don't even know who have sacrificed for my safety, my freedom -- grace.
I know I'm just scratching the surface, and these are simply his blessings -- not the true gift of himself -- but the point is that yesterday I could not see them. And today I can.
I'm not big on common sense, so what I fear is not that God wants me to go against common sense and do something crazy but that he wants me to do the dutiful, commonsensical, delayed-gratification thing right in front of me. I would like to quit my job, pursue an MFA in creative non-fiction and try to write a book -- all of which flies in the face of the common-sense reminders that 1) I can barely handle what is currently on my plate; 2) I have two boys in college and mounting debt; 3) my two girls need a mother whose already compromised brain is still fractionally present with them and their needs; and 4) my husband has been bearing the burden of supporting this family on his own for the majority of our marriage. No, abandoning common sense is not the challenge; facing it is.
In this my 50th year, where my entire future no longer stretches before me rich with time and possibilities, I would very much like to hear God calling me to pursue my dreams. Honestly though, I'm not sure I do.
The title is probably a misnomer because it implies that I don't pray on purpose or that I don't believe in prayer or that I'm defending my decision not to pray. None of which is true. Rather, my case is one of roughly thirty years attempting to be a person of prayer and failing and wondering why. If I understand why I have failed, perhaps I'll be in a better position to start afresh. Perhaps. (You can read part 1 here.)
I'm convinced that at least part of my problem with prayer lies in my theology. I believe staunchly in the sovereignty of God; that is, I believe God is absolutely in control. Webster uses the phrase "freedom from external control" and the synonym "autonomous."
I do not believe that my prayers are going to change God's mind, and on top of that, I'm convinced that's for the best. God is all-knowing. He sees the Big Picture in the most literal of senses. I am not and do not. My prayers are often self-centered, and if he answered all my prayers in the positive, who knows what kind of havoc might be set loose on the world at large.
You begin to see the problem. I'm not a philosopher, but I fear my belief in sovereignty, election and predestination borders on fatalism and defeatism. (Probably a good assignment for me in the definitions and implications of those terms.) If God's gonna do what God's gonna do . . . why pray?
Nevertheless, I do sporadically engage in fervent prayer -- most notably with regard to my children. Yesterday morning I prayed that my daughter Nora would have peace as she took her driver's test. I prayed that she would have a clear mind and not make stupid mistakes. I had been praying for approximately 10 minutes when Nora called. She was passing going into her last turn when she made a stupid mistake. She turned left from the curb lane when a left-hand turn lane was present. She failed.
This morning I prayed and walked for approximately an hour while my son Carter was throwing the discus at the Division 3 National track & field competition. I prayed that he, too, would have a clear mind -- void of distractions. I thought of how Eric Liddell said, "When I run, I feel His pleasure," and how Carter told me that when he really connects with a throw, he feels God's blessing. I prayed that Carter would really connect with one of his throws. I prayed that he would do his best. When I came home from my walk, my husband told me Carter had blown out his shoe during warm-ups. He had borrowed a shoe from a teammate, and he had thrown 10 feet under his personal record.
These are just two examples, and I know they are not of "world peace" caliber. I have not been lifted into the heavenly places as Oswald describes, and I do not know the Father's heart and mind.
I have feet of clay, and Oswald's words today seem far, far away from me and my life.
This blog is the journey of my 50th year. It is also the record of my mental state without anti-depressants for the first time in over a decade. Finally and primarily, it is my pilgrimage in pursuit of God. I have been at this writing and pondering and following Oswald for almost six months now, and I'm afraid I still have lots of questions, including the most basic: Is God real? Is he personal and what do the ancient church fathers mean by a "personal God"? What do I mean? What does a relationship with him look like? Do I have it? What is realistic to expect? How often do I live my life and make my decisions out of fear? fear of hell, fear of judgment, fear of rejection, fear of not measuring up? Do I ever make my decisions out of love for God, sheer devotion?
Perhaps that is all too much to expect from one blog, one year, one woman's mid-life ponderings.
Today Oswald depresses me. Well, I may have been depressed when I started reading, but his words brought no comfort. Today he seems to be writing about a state of perfection unachievable this side of heaven. No questions? No doubts? No misgivings? I have known a few people who have spoken with this kind of certainty, but their lives have not matched their claims. I have watched someone who professed this absolute peace turn first insecure, then sullen, then spiteful when confronted with a single problem relationship. So I am skeptical at best.
"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God. Trust also in me." It sounds marvelous, and I do desire an untroubled heart . . . but I am not there. I woke at 4:30 a.m. obsessing over a fairly innocuous mistake I made. I let my oldest son take the van when my 16-year-old had a driving test scheduled. I could not let it go. I could not go back to sleep. My heart was indeed troubled. My mistake had consequences. Consequences that, though I tried, I couldn't really fix. In the scheme of world affairs, one driver's test is certainly not a big deal, but it was a big deal to her and therefore to me . . . and I messed it up.
If I lose sleep over my innocent mistakes, you can imagine the state of my mind over my major screw-ups. No doubt, the trouble stems, as Oswald states, from my disposition, but I'm a little unclear on how to bring that disposition into submission.
Begin. How many times do I want to reach the end before I've even begun? I seem to hate process. I look at my garden and all I can see is how far it is from what I have envisioned in my head -- the end result. My 12-year-old daughter, however, looked at the wild, overgrown, weed-filled corner of my backyard the other day and said, "Wow! It's like a fairy garden." That's exactly, exactly what I want -- a place of beauty and imagination and discovery. She could see it. I could not.
Begin. I want to have written. I hate to write. It is a painstaking, risk-filled endeavor for me. I avoid it and struggle over it and despise (as much as I try to be a good sport and keep my chin up) the editing/critiquing process. I like to read a well-written piece and realize, somewhat surprisingly, that I wrote it.
Begin. I want to know God, to walk with him in the garden -- to laugh and exchange ideas and be absolutely enveloped by his unmistakable love -- but this relationship-building process is hard and fraught with both frustration and confusion.
Luke 24:45, a few verses before the one attached to today's reading on being infused with power, states: "Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures."
The disciples had been with Jesus for three years. They had seen him perform miracles. Peter, James and John had seen him transfigured. They had heard him teach the truth on a daily basis. They ate with him, walked beside him, questioned him. They saw him die -- water and blood flowing from his side -- and now, in this passage, they saw him standing before them eating grilled fish. And still, he had to open their minds.
I cannot expect to skip over the entire evolution and reach the end. Love the process, Barb. The messy, sometimes joyful, sometimes maddening and always real process.
It's not exactly true that I don't pray at all, but I don't pray much; I don't pray well; and when I do pray, it feels nothing like Oswald describes: "the breath from our lungs and the blood from our hearts." The closest thing I have experienced to that description is the practice I learned from Kathy Bruner: "Breathe in grace. Breathe out confession of sin. Breathe in grace." And occasionally, I remember Kathy's suggestion, especially when I'm stressed.
Most of the time, however, I think my failure to pray is directly connected to my ambivalence about what it means to have a relationship with God. Relationship certainly entails conversation, at least in my book, and I value conversation quite highly. Part of what I value, however, has to do with the opportunity to interject my personal perspective, my insight on a subject. This isn't really necessary with God. He doesn't need my perspective. I really have nothing to offer in a conversation with him. He knows not only my thoughts, my history of experiences, my take on things, but every thought of every human being, the wealth of human experience from every possible angle, and more importantly, he has the omniscient, omnipotent perspective covered as well. What point is there in my saying anything? I can listen, yes, but that is not really conversation.
I took Oswald's thoughts with me as I walked this morning, and I wrestled through all my objections to prayer on the way up the hill. On the way down, quite near the end actually, this thought came to me: Perhaps he enjoys listening to me.
I'm not sure I can really explain how foreign that idea is to me. It's very foreignness suggests that it might be an idea from outside my own head. Part, in fact, of a conversation.
"We go through life mishearing and misseeing and misunderstanding so that the stories we tell ourselves will add up" -- from an article on a murder trial by Janet Malcolm in The New Yorker.
Here's a story that would be easy for me to tell myself: It's your time. You spent 16 years as a stay-at-home mom, ten plus homeschooling. You have gone without, scrimped and saved, sacrificed your career. You have been peed on, sucked on, drawn on, and pooped on. You taught four children how to read, add, subtract, and multiply fractions, and when you were done memorizing the sequence of events from the start of the Minoan culture through the fate of Henry VIII's wives, you re-emerged into a hostile work environment where employers regarded you with a mixture of pity and disdain -- as though the hole in your resume could mean only one thing: your brain had turned to mush. So you proved yourself through menial assignments under career-minded men and women who gave lip service to your choice on the one hand and regarded your abilities, your drive, your priorities as suspect on the other. You've logged innumerable hours at sporting events and recitals. You've sacrificed new outfits and sleep. . . . It's your time.
Only the story doesn't quite add up. The children were a gift. The staying home was a gift. I sacrificed, yes. It cost me, yes, but the children and the experiences I've had with them have given back tenfold. If I gain nothing else ever -- no satisfying career, no disposable income -- I would not change a thing. It has been a rich, rewarding life.
God has done right by me. I will trust him with the next stage of my life. I will let him choose.
"I can only imagine What my eyes will see When your face Is before me I can only imagine.
"Surrounded by your glory, what will my heart feel? Will I dance for you, Jesus, or in honor of you be still? Will I stand in your presence or to my knees will I fall? Will I sing hallelujah, will I be able to speak at all? I can only imagine.
"I can only imagine When that day comes When I find myself Standing in the Son.
"I can only imagine When all I will do Is forever Forever worship you I can only imagine."
Lyrics from "I Can Only Imagine," by Mercy Me.
When John saw Jesus, he "fell at his feet as though dead" Revelation 1:17, but the verse continues: "Then (Jesus) placed his right hand on me and said, 'Do not be afraid.'" Oswald described this touch as "the right hand not of restraint nor of correction nor of chastisement, but the right hand of the Everlasting Father. Whenever his hand is laid upon you, it is ineffable peace and comfort, the sense that 'underneath are the everlasting arms,' full of sustaining comfort and strength."
Does your heart long for that touch as much as mine? Webster defines ineffable as "incapable of being expressed in words; indescribable." Oswald mentions comfort twice, along with peace and strength -- the indescribably beautiful attributes for which my heart cries out nearly every moment of every day.
Oswald writes that all of this results from a certain kind of despair -- not the despair of surveying my life and circumstances but the despair of looking into the face of Jesus and knowing that I am unworthy to stand or dance or sing hallelujah.
I have heard it said that worrying is practical atheism. I get that. If God is all-loving, all-good and all-powerful, then what do I have to worry about? I should trust him wholeheartedly with the affairs of my life.
But I always come back to this -- what about my screw-ups? Sin has consequences, and if lack of discipline is a sin, then believe me, I've racked up a lot of consequences. I have eaten what I love for over two decades without serious regard for the health benefits or lack thereof. I have not exercised with any regularity. I have given my children what I thought was reasonable and right whether or not I could afford it. These are the things I worry about. Mostly the last one. I worry about money.
Why do we have books (even the Christian bookstore is full of them) on the right way to manage your money, the right way to raise your children, the right way to plan your future, the right way to care for your body, the right way to choose a career, the right way to buy a house -- unless there is also a wrong way? Presumably doing those things the wrong way has consequences. I worry about the consequences.
I believe God can take care of the practical details of my life. I guess the unbelief comes in with regard to me. Can God -- will God -- keep me from screwing up my life? I have seen some Christians' lives in pretty big messes. He seems to let us do quite a bit of damage before intervening.
Worry equals infidelity. I have to trust God with me. I have to trust him to mold me and change me and give me the practical wisdom I need to live my life. I have to trust that he is big enough for my mistakes. I have to trust that there is redemption. I have to trust God with me.
My friend wrote a blog recently entitled, "When Failure Is the Only Option." Her first few lines: "I have failed this month at many things in my life. At most things. I have completely and utterly failed."
I've got to tell you, I find that honesty incredibly refreshing. I undertook last December to write a blog post every day for a year. I have failed. Utterly and completely. I love the idea of discipline, but I can never quite rise to the occasion. What to do when Oswald doesn't move me. When I am obtuse or he is indecipherable or maybe both. What to do when I just bloody don't feel like it. When God seems distant or life seems overwhelming. When I question whether I have anything worth saying -- whether I have ever had anything worth saying.
We generally speak of failure in abstract terms: If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Failure is part of life. If you don't try, you can't fail. But in the concrete, it is much less palatable. I spent my day yesterday reading The New Yorker. I did not get the dishes done. I did not weed the garden. I did not walk, and I did not do the shoulder complex my son created to tone my upper arms. I forgot that I was supposed to go to a friend's house. And, I did not write this blog. Failure, in concrete terms, does not generally look like the bold mountain climber who cannot quite reach the summit. In my life, it more often looks like laziness or selfishness or conceit or sin.
I wish God had explicitly stated that our own failures cannot separate us from His love.
My "other end," Oswald, is to be something other than a complete failure. Is it up to me or not? Some days, you seem to say, "Yes, it's up to you, and you need to get off your lazy butt, buck up and get your confounded act together." Other days, you seem to be saying, "Not by your might nor by your power."
"Jesus has prayed nothing less for us than absolute oneness with Himself as He was one with the Father" -- Oswald.
Jesus, if it's up to me, up to my ability to discipline myself to your will, I will never be one with you. I'll probably be sitting on the couch, reading The New Yorker.
It's not that nothing else matters. Quite the contrary. It all matters. Because life is worship. But, if I don't get this one thing -- if I don't grasp onto God and hold on with every ounce of my strength -- then nothing else matters. Then it's like the fine chandeliers on the Titanic. Then it's like choosing brushed nickel knobs for the pine cabinets of a state-of-the-art kitchen in a house built on a seismic fault.
"For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" Mark 8:36.
I can afford to be careless about all the rest if I am taking exceeding care to seek Him and His righteousness.
"There are certain things we must not pray about -- moods, for instance" -- Oswald.
Wow! Seriously, Oswald? I totally -- 100 percent -- disagree. I don't think there is anything we shouldn't pray about. I might have it totally wrong. I might be whiny and petulant. I might be trying to coerce God into my way of thinking, my plan. I might be blaming God for that which my own sin created. I might be angry and cursing my brother. I still think it better to go to God with all of that. He is here. He knows me. How can it be better not to talk to him about it.
Admittedly, a kick in the pants might work, too. Mowing the lawn or digging in the ground -- the jobs to which I am headed right after this -- often work wonders for my blue moods. While I push that mower back and forth, however, I plan on praying at the same time.
I don't think prayer could ever be the wrong thing to do.
"Rightly or wrongly, we are where we are, exactly in the condition we are in" -- Oswald.
And sometimes -- oftentimes -- that condition is of our own making.
This is true (90 percent of the time) for the homeless men and women in the Mission's shelters where I work. Generally speaking, people do not become homeless because they lose employment in the midst of otherwise put-together lives. They become homeless because they run from what they cannot face. They choose drugs or alcohol or toxic relationships over the hard thing bearing down on them, the hard thing that makes life seem pointless or too excruciatingly painful to endure, and in the process, they neglect first one responsibility -- a job -- and then another -- bills, health, children . . .
But the point is, the same is true for me. I choose to escape into food or movies or books -- particularly anything romantic. (Let me be Elizabeth Bennett for the afternoon -- hotly pursued by a wealthy, handsome man who simply cannot live without her.) My condition is not as bad as it could be because I have a multi-layered support system. Homeless people do not. And I was raised in a stable, two-parent home -- not perfect -- but absent of abuse and complete with food, clothing, shelter and all the love of which my parents were capable. Most homeless people were not.
I was forced to come to terms with the essential similarities between myself and the people about whom I write for work in March of this year. I interviewed Patricia. Of her four children, she had custody of one. She had five felony convictions for organized retail theft. Her former boyfriend had been convicted of murder, and she was held as a material witness in his trial. Apparently, she had cleaned the blood out of his car for $20. She chose to stay in jail for a year -- not really certain how her son was being cared for or by whom -- rather than risk betraying dangerous people.
As I attempted to write about her fresh start, I found myself struggling with whether or not she deserved it, whether or not I believed her, whether or not I could forgive her enough to write about her. And, in the middle of one sleepless night, God seemed to be saying, "If there is to be grace and forgiveness for you, you must allow grace and forgiveness for Patricia."
". . . the odds are all against God's character." I find that an intriguing phrase. And this one, "Logic is silenced."
Isn't a big part of my problem trying to define God's character on my terms? Trying to use human logic to measure God's plans? Trying to be good enough for God . . . and knowing -- KNOWING -- that I am not.
Rightly or wrongly -- mostly wrongly -- I am where I am, exactly in the condition I am in. Save me, God.
Forget about me. Forget about what I said or didn't say, what I did or didn't do. Forget about trying to get it right. Forget about my sin and my talents. Forget about them both equally. Who cares? Forget about who likes me and who doesn't. Forget about what I wrote or might write. Forget about how closely I'm walking the line or how much I'm missing it by. Forget about all the measurements of my success or failure.
Focus on God. What he said. What he did. His nature. His attributes. His mind.
Be like the lilies of the field who neither toil nor strive. Be. Just be. And in my being, I will enjoy him.
Forget about me. Focus on God. And let him take care of the rest.
How silly it is to describe Jesus as "a good man." He is defined by the supernatural: a virgin birth; the heavens opening and the voice of God speaking, "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased"; water turned into wine; demons cast out; food multiplied; the dead raised to new life; standing on a mountaintop in a brilliant, glorified state with two men long ago dead; a tomb that cannot hold him; appearing after his death, not as a ghost, but as a resurrected being who could eat fish and enter locked rooms; ascending into heaven. As C.S. Lewis so clearly articulated, there is no possibility of Jesus having been merely a good man. God's own account does not leave that lukewarm assessment as a possibility.
"The ascension," Oswald writes, "is the consummation of the transfiguration." Peter, James and John saw Jesus in his glorified state at the transfiguration. They heard God's pronouncement. Elijah and Moses signified by their presence the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.
Webster Online defines transfiguration as "a change in form or appearance: metamorphosis; an exalting, glorifying or spiritual change."
A good man might have gone to heaven right then -- at the height of his success foregoing Gethsemane, persecution, torture and crucifixion. A good man, one who wasn't God incarnate, who didn't have the power to save the world, would certainly not have walked knowingly off that mountaintop experience into the valley of an excruciating death.
"We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death when we were of no use whatever to him," Romans 5:7-8, The Message.
Jesus was not merely a good and noble man. He was, is, God, and he calls me to relationship. The work of my life -- worth the investment of every gift he has given me -- is to figure out what that means.
A counselor told me once that gratitude is the means by which we turn our cups right side up. Without gratitude, it doesn't matter how many blessings flow into our lives, our cups -- upside down as they are -- remain empty. Through the practice of gratitude, our cups fill and overflow into other people's lives.
I say I believe God's goodness is without limit. Yet, when I envy the good things that happen to others, I reveal a very different view of God -- one where his supply of blessings is limited and he himself is capricious in how he bestows them. Without gratitude, our lives become as Oswald described, "craving spiritual sponges . . . (with) nothing lovely or generous about them."
This may be the clearest example to me of free will: I can choose not to see -- or taste, touch, smell and hear, for that matter -- the wonders of God displayed boldly all about me. I can choose to see my world as small and impoverished -- to compare it constantly to some unattainable American dream -- or I can practice gratitude and grow daily in my appreciation of all that God has done.
"His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness . . ." 2 Peter 1:3.
"He will tax the last grain of sand and the remotest star to bless us if we will obey Him" -- Oswald.
"Are you working it out with your tongue and your brain and your nerves?" -- Oswald.
This morning I made my family's favorite pancakes with oatmeal added for extra fiber. The egg whites have to be whipped separately to make the batter light and fluffy. I served them with butter, warm maple syrup and Jimmy Dean's sausages. Afterward, my son and I lingered at the table, chatting about college.
This afternoon, I subdued a three-foot square patch of my unruly garden -- pulling out the grass and weeds, loosening the dirt, watering. My friend brought me some tomato plants, and we sat down over Diet Cokes, talking about my children and hers. I tended the cut on my daughter's toe, helped my other son make up his waterbed, cut up some strawberries to go with the steaks my husband grilled for dinner . . . nothing major.
I would like very much to make a big impact on my world -- to write something beautiful that speaks to people's souls. Today wasn't like that at all, but still, I did have the sense that as I lived my very ordinary life, I was manifesting my salvation -- working it out through my tongue and my fingers and my brain.
Habits. I'm really bad at breaking bad ones -- eating when I'm bored or depressed, picking at the dead skin on my heels -- and even worse at forming good ones -- Bible reading and memorization, prayer, exercise . . . so I don't think I'm really in a position to criticize anyone for mistaking a love of her habit for a love of God. Still, I do love Oswald's picture of a relationship where the habits are no longer visible -- where the Bible reading, the prayer, the memorization are all part of a genuine desire to be with him, to know him, to share my life with him. I want that.
"The knowledge that God has loved me to the uttermost, to the end of all my sin and meanness and selfishness and wrong, will send me forth into the world to love in the same way" -- Oswald.
When I comprehend my own sin, gratitude for God's grace is produced in my soul, and I am enabled (again, only by God's Spirit) to extend that grace to others. When I am unforgiving toward others, I manifest a devaluing of God's grace brought on (at least in part) by my failure to appreciate the extent of my own sinfulness.
Gratitude is key. The two greatest commandments might be re-phrased like this: Open your eyes, Barb, to see how truly wonderful God is and how he has personally touched your life with that goodness. Now, show him your heart of gratitude by extending that goodness to others.
And, so, in my pursuit of God, I must begin to practice gratitude.
A beginning: Thank you, God, for the man lying next to me in bed this morning. Thank you that, in the midst of my fear and sadness and misdirected pursuits of acceptance, he stands firm as a mini-reflection of your unwavering love. For over 27 years, he has said in word and deed, "You have value, Barb." I am so very grateful.
May my gratitude stay at the forefront of my mind and shape my life today.
Oswald used 2 Peter 1:5 today, but skip back to verses 3 and 4: "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires."
The same verses from The Message: "Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received! We were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you -- your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on a world corrupted by lust."
My problem is that too often I start with Oswald's words for today: "Take the initiative." I start with verse 5 -- "make every effort" -- when I need to start with verse 3 -- "getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God." And, in this case, getting the cart before the horse is not just ineffective, it's disastrous. I've heard sermons that exhorted believers not to focus too much on this personal relationship with God. Christianity is not just a "me and God" kind of thing. Right. It's not. He saved us for a purpose -- that we might glorify him and perform good works -- and the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbor.
But here's the thing, and I guess I can only speak for myself. I have fast-forwarded through the relationship part, the loving God with all my heart, mind and soul part, to get to the working out my salvation with fear and trembling part. I am making every effort at holiness, but it is frustrating and futile without the "knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness."
In a static world, which doesn't exist, I could focus on getting to know God, and I'm convinced that the knowledge itself would be life-changing, moving me into action. Unfortunately (and I really mean unfortunately), I am smack dab in the middle of a busy 50-year-old woman's life with lots of responsibilities. I cannot drop everything to focus on my relationship with God and wait for the motivation toward good deeds to kick in. I have children who need my love and concern and wisdom and discipline right now. I have a job and problematic relationships that demand every ounce of my creativity and compassion. I am the member of a church in the middle of transition, and I have all the usual, everyday demands of survival . . . so this cannot be a linear journey. It cannot be anything but a mess.
So here's the truth as I know it: My life is a mess. I hurt and I long for wholeness. I long to fully comprehend the nature of God's love for me, and I long to live my life out of that comprehension. But I am not there yet. I am trying to get to know God, trying to believe that he loves me apart from my performance. But I am not there yet. And still, I must live my life -- working, writing, caring for my children, dealing with people who have hurt me and will likely hurt me again, accepting that I have also hurt them -- influenced by the imperfect knowledge I hold at any given moment.
"Are we expecting God to do greater things than He has ever done? Is there a freshness and vigor in our spiritual outlook?" -- Oswald.
I get knocked down, but I get up again. And I think the only thing that enables me to get up again is a belief that God will intervene. Some way. Somehow. I will laugh again. I will work again. I will share of myself again. Tortured relationships will become less so. I will string words together with confidence again. But I am afraid to hope that God will do greater things than he has ever done. I fear that it is wrong to expect it.
I read a book several years ago with the subtitle: A Journey through Madness to Meaning. This blog feels a little like that lately, only I'm stuck in the madness bit, and I am growing impatient. I'm embarrassed to have made my stumbling, fumbling journey so public -- is it possible to be too transparent? -- but it seems a little late to hold back now, so . . .
I've had a really wretched 72 hours. I feel naked, exposed and humiliated. I would like to run away from everyone who has seen my vulnerability or, better yet, turn back time and try to keep all my clothes on -- buttoned right up to my chinny chin chin and topped with a thick overcoat. Finding both of those options cruelly unavailable, I turned to food -- Big Cheese-Its, pasta, Mexican TV dinners, nachos with guacamole, Haagen-Dazs ice cream, raisin toast with fig spread, tres-leche cake, all washed down with excellent coffee and Diet Coke -- and British television ("Larkrise to Candleford" is a great series. I should know. I watched six episodes in one day).
I am a bow in the hands of a skilled archer, but it feels as though the bow string snapped a couple days ago, leaving behind a useless piece of wood. Only this archer is intimately acquainted with the weakness of his instrument, and he promises not to exert more pressure than I can bear.
Over the years, I have repeatedly upbraided myself for not counting the costs. I did not really think about the cost of putting half a continent between me and my extended family when my husband and I were raising young children. I did not think about the long-term costs of being a stay-at-home mom for sixteen plus years. I wouldn't do the mom thing differently if I had, but still, I never imagined the cost would be so high. I was completely unprepared for the lack of respect I would encounter in the working world, and I thought I'd be OK with leaving my children to finance college on their own -- the price of my being home all those years -- but when the time came, I wasn't OK with it at all.
Oswald's first line came as a huge relief to me: "Our Lord refers not to a cost we have to count, but to a cost He has counted." I'm not sure I could always bear the weight of the costs upfront. Thankfully, I don't have to because he already has.
"Freedom Bound" is the name of the men's recovery program at the Mission where I work. I have heard the director of the program speak again and again about how freedom is the goal of every aspect of the program. Why is that so clear for the men in the program and so muddy for me? Christ brings freedom, but I feel anything but free.
"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened by a yoke of slavery," Galatians 5:1.
Here are a few of the following verses from The Message: "I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ's hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. I repeat my warning: The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law.
"I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. "
Here I am waiting for a satisfying relationship but living a graceless, rule-bound existence. Please, God, set me free, and don't let me go crazy in the process.
"Every element of self-reliance must be slain by the power of God. Complete weakness and dependence will always be the occasion for the Spirit of God to manifest His power" -- Oswald.
Just before I read Oswald today, one of my co-workers came into my office and shared this same basic thought with me. I have found that when God really wants to make sure I get something, he shares the same message in several different ways or maybe he's always doing that, and I'm just catching on some of the time. At any rate, I'm going to be meditating on this idea today. I'll be back . . .
7 p.m. Wow! I didn't see that coming. It's so nice when things can just stay theoretical, but nope. This lesson hit me full force and rolled right over me. No question, I am feeling completely weak and desperately dependent. I've got nothin'.
9 p.m. I called a friend for help in getting perspective. We discussed a few things: 1) How Aslan peels the dragon's skin from Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: "The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt." 2) The difference between realizing your weakness and self-pity. How self-pity is like a thread spiraling downward and inward, but humility causes you to fly like a lark up to God for nourishment and protection. 3) The need for confidence and resilience and where they come from: "My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever," Psalm 73:26. He is my Mediator, my Defender. I can turn to him when I've been wounded, and he will make me whole.
Stodge: a dull person or idea. One whose thick head cannot be penetrated.
By all means, Barb, come boldly into the holy presence of God. Come with your laughter and your tears. Come with your interminable questions and internal striving, but always remember that you come only by the blood of Jesus. Do not imagine that there is a piece of you that would get through without him. You could stay on the land and labor all your days, never leaving, never squandering, never celebrating, but that would not earn your entrance. Hence, when you come -- even when you are angry and distraught, confused and disappointed, or excited and full of good news -- it must always be with genuine humility. You can scream and shout, but remember, you are here by grace alone.
This pilgrimage is possible only by his grace, his longsuffering. When you come, the goal -- no matter how messy the process -- is to bring your thoughts into line with his, not the other way around. Come, Barbara, come.
"Discernment is God's call to intercession, never to fault finding." Oswald has made that point before, but it bears repeating.
Here's the thought that struck me most profoundly today: "It is not likely that sin will interfere with our relationship with God, but sympathy will, sympathy with ourselves or with others which makes us say, 'I will not allow that thing to happen.'" Interesting that Oswald would say sympathy was a bigger danger to our relationship with God than sin. I'm trying to understand what he means by sympathy, and I think it is the same kind of sentiment that would lead us to say, "I deserve it," akin perhaps to self-pity. I have an idea of how life should go -- for me and for the people I love -- and when it detours from my sense of an acceptable plan or takes drastic, terrible turns, I start scrambling either to make sense of things or to make things make sense.
I have two friends who are simultaneously going through periods of intense, prolonged suffering. Both have asked me for advice. I have, after what constitutes for me some serious prayer, given it, and they have, for the most part, ignored it. So. I am left with a feeling of impotence. Here's what I'm getting from Oswald today: I care about them. Good. I cannot fix their problems. Good. I think they should be taking some actions which they are not. Fine. I sense that there is trouble ahead. Fine. My job is to pray and pray and pray and pray. Not to grow exasperated. Not to re-state the previous advice. They heard me. Not to fix or attempt to orchestrate a different outcome. I can't anyway, and that's God's job. When I pray, my confidence in him will grow, and I will be able to trust him with my friends' lives. My job is not to shape the future, and when I assume that kind of ridiculous responsibility, it is both an affront to God and a serious hindrance to any kind of relationship with him.
At church this morning, Pastor Don quoted Bishop William Temple, a priest in the Church of England during the first half of the 20th century: "A person's responsibility and opportunity is to commit as much of himself as he knows to as much of Christ as he knows." That might not be the exact quote. I tried to find it online to gain some kind of context but to no avail. Still, I found the concept encouraging -- not in a lift-me-out-of-my-seat kind of way, but in a slow, steady, "yeah, yeah, that makes sense" kind of way.
I may not have a complete vision of God. I may, in fact, have only a very small sliver of a vision, but no matter how small, I have it, and when I focus on that sliver, I find beauty there. Likewise, I do not have a very complete picture of myself. I have pieces of a picture -- my love for ideas and the written word, my sometimes frustrating need to be authentic, my strong sense of motherhood and longing for connection -- and I can commit those pieces to that sliver of a God vision.
I was doing a little reading about Mother Teresa and her dark night of the soul which apparently lasted throughout her entire ministry to the poorest of the poor in India. Commentary on her private letters, which were made public as part of the sainthood process and expressed her despair at God's seeming absence from her life, ran the gamut from calling her a hypocrite to admiring her perseverance. An atheist said, See, she was faking all along, whereas others, obviously, hold her up as a model for us all on living the faith without the feeling.
I feel like there is a similar conversation going on inside my own heart and mind:
The Doubter: You're a fool. You pretend to believe something of which you have no evidence. Relationship?! What does that mean? Christians throw this language around about Christ living in your heart or being filled with the Spirit or having a relationship with God. What relationship? Does he talk to you? Can you hear him? What evidence do you have that he is listening?
The Believer: Faith is not a feeling. You can know the Truth without having to have experiential evidence.
The Doubter: It's a crutch. You're scared to walk away from what you have claimed to believe for your whole life.
The Believer: Can you imagine a world without a Creator? Does it make sense that this all happened by chance? If you chuck it all, what will be your standard of goodness?
Dear God, I will not throw a temper tantrum or lay down and refuse to move until you reveal yourself to me. I will continue to act based on what I have always believed. I will, however, be like Gideon and ask for a sign. I have heard that his example was not set down as one to be followed, but I'm not so sure. When I am not in danger of being led away by it, as Oswald suggests, please, Lord, give me a sign. Encourage me on the road.
