I've been posting some intense material in the last few weeks, which I think is hard to understand- sometimes it's hard for me to understand! So I want to give more background, which hopefully will allow for a broader perspective.
In the process of learning from Jesus, He pointed out to me something about His time on earth. There were times when Jesus was persecuted, but it wasn't His time to suffer, so He slipped away. For example, when those in His village were so incensed at Him that they tried to push Him off a cliff. It wasn't His time, so He slipped away through the crowd.
However, when it was time for His Passion, He set His face toward Jerusalem and walked toward it and through it. His disciples might well have asked themselves how could their Master who had calmed the very waves of the storm and who had before escaped, allow Himself to be taken, to suffer and to die? It wouldn't make sense.
But Jesus knew because He was following the Holy Spirit and Abba's instructions. Jesus knew when the time was to escape and when the time was to go through. No one else could have told Him this. This knowledge must come out of deep communion and trust with God.
In the same way, Jesus told me, there would be times when I would step aside from suffering and there would be times when I would go through it. I would not be able, on my own, to discern when those times were, but instead, I would have to trust Jesus entirely and follow Him trustingly. If I tried on my own, I would tend to either go to one extreme or the other- either accepting all suffering as my due, or trying and expecting to escape it all.
Looking back on my life, I can easily see how I have moved from one side to the other. In between, there is a narrow path. This path is the one that Jesus, as my Good Shepherd, leads me down and I am growing in my ability to trust Jesus and follow that path. Sometimes He is leading me beside the still waters and making me to lie down in the green pastures, and there He restores my soul.
But sometimes this path leads down through the dark valleys. He does not lead me around or over them- He leads me through them. In those times, I fear no evil- not because I have limitless faith or limitless strength- I have no fear because Jesus is with me. My faith and my strength is not in my self, it's in Him.
This is where His rod and His staff are especially comforting to me, because by them He keeps me closely be His side and I know that I am putting each step where I should. It is in this very place of suffering where Jesus provides a feast of Himself. He does this in the presence of my enemies.
This is similar to what Paul was saying here:
"The God who spoke light into existence, saying, “Let light shine from the darkness,” is the very One who sets our hearts ablaze to shed light on the knowledge of God’s glory revealed in the face of Jesus, the Anointed One.
But this beautiful treasure is contained in us—cracked pots made of earth and clay—so that the transcendent character of this power will be clearly seen as coming from God and not from us. We are cracked and chipped from our afflictions on all sides, but we are not crushed by them. We are bewildered at times, but we do not give in to despair. We are persecuted, but we have not been abandoned. We have been knocked down, but we are not destroyed. We always carry around in our bodies the reality of the brutal death and suffering of Jesus. As a result, His resurrection life rises and reveals its wondrous power in our bodies as well. For while we live, we are constantly handed over to death on account of Jesus so that His life may be revealed even in our mortal bodies of flesh."
-II Corinthians 4:6-11
In the midst of suffering and death, greater life is revealed. This is the work of Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit in our lives as we trust Him. We do not seek out suffering and we do not assume that every turn in the road will lead there- sometimes we will walk away from it and sometimes Abba will calm the storm.
Other times, we must set our face to go through, casting all our cares on God and trusting Him implicitly and completely with each step that we take as He guides us closely. When that time comes, we know that whatever we suffer, Jesus will bring great life and glory from it, and afterward He will anoint our heads with oil and fill our cup to overflowing. Goodness and mercy shall hunt us down to comfort and heal us and we will dwell in the God's house forever. So we are not afraid.
Perhaps because of my history, I've had to come to terms with suffering at an early and intense way, and I learned early on that after each time, I gained a treasure of insight, wisdom and compassion and so I began to ask Jesus please to send me hard things so I could continue to grow.
I began asking Him this from the time I was seventeen years old. At that age, I also began to hear the call of Jesus on my heart, and to understand His heart toward me. I wrote about this in my journal. How I understood this, I do not know, but I knew even then that if I stepped into that calling without deep spiritual maturity, disaster would loom, so I asked Jesus to humble and refine me as deeply and completely as possible so that I would never take spiritual pride over His calling on my life.
It is quite obvious that Jesus has been faithful and loving in answering that prayer. He continues to answer it and Jesus will be faithful to finish His work in my life and in yours as well, wherever He is leading you as He teaches you, loves you and guides you, whether it be in the green pastures or the dark valleys.
*
The Eternal is my shepherd, He cares for me always.
He provides me rest in rich, green fields
beside streams of refreshing water.
He soothes my fears;
He makes me whole again,
steering me off worn, hard paths
to roads where truth and righteousness echo His name.
Even in the unending shadows of death’s darkness,
I am not overcome by fear.
Because You are with me in those dark moments,
near with Your protection and guidance,
I am comforted.
You spread out a table before me,
provisions in the midst of attack from my enemies;
You care for all my needs, anointing my head with soothing, fragrant oil,
filling my cup again and again with Your grace.
Certainly Your faithful protection and loving provision will pursue me
where I go, always, everywhere.
I will always be with the Eternal,
in Your house forever.
Psalm 23, The Voice
Showing posts with label Musing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Musing. Show all posts
Saturday, April 18, 2015
Friday, January 2, 2015
January 2nd
Hello!
I know lately and for quite a long time now I have been writing here in an indirect kind of way as I share things already written, but this time I wanted to post directly, for a couple of reasons.
First, as I was thinking back to the last few sections of my journal that I shared here, I worried that I might have communicated something unintentionally, and that something would be the idea that emotional or psychological suffering, such as anxiety or depression, needs a spiritual cure requiring only faith, while physical suffering, such as a broken leg, requires only a doctor.
I have run into this kind of thinking myself on several occasions. It's not usually spoken out loud, it's more like an unspoken assumption.
For example, when I was eighteen years old, I returned from a summer in England where I had become quite deeply depressed. I was supposed to be enjoying myself over there while living with a cousin of mine and his family- he was a pilot in the air force and was stationed there- but I found myself sinking deeper and deeper into depression.
This was because considering my future was overwhelming and fear inducing. At the time, I did not have my driver's license and simply using the telephone was such an anxiety-laded ordeal that I had to write out a script on a piece of paper in order to prepare myself for the coming conversation.
In light of this, considering collage, even a state or technical college, seemed as far out of reach for me as the moon. I had been raised for seventeen years in a sheltered, exclusive, legalistic church with a focus on apocalyptic doctrines, and so I had prepared myself only for a future that included attending the Bible collage that was an institution of that particular church, and then getting married immediately upon graduation, and then raising children and being a godly mother and wife.
Anything other than that seemed so terrifying that I could hardly consider it, let alone pursue it. I was a failure in the eyes of all my friends and a great deal of my family and all my mentors, because most of them were in the church I had left. But I was also a failure in the eyes of the society in general, because everyone else my age was going to college with bright hopes and dreams, and I was floundering and could not even drive.
On top of this, of course I was carrying around the buried memories and wounds of abuse that had yet to be addressed. So I was deeply depressed that summer. At the time, our new church was a Charismatic/Pentecostal church.
The people at this church were loving and caring people with good intentions, just as had been the people in the church I had grown up in. But they were operating out of a certain set of beliefs, and this determined their behavior and approach- as they had for me, when I had been a member of that church. In fact, I had been very successful at behaving in all the right ways, and I had treated those that left in the same way that I was now experiencing in person, from the other side.
In the charismatic church we were attending, one of the beliefs they held was that depression was not the result of a chemical imbalance in the brain, produced as a result of trauma or grief, but instead was an evil spirit attacking a person.
So when I returned from England, the church gathered around me, put their hands on me, and began to rebuke the evil spirit of depression that they felt was opposing and attacking me. If this did not work, I knew it was my fault- I either lacked faith or was harboring a secret sin and should search my heart to find it, confess it and hopefully be healed. Otherwise, I believed this evil spirit would be following me around indefinitely.
I am certain that depression, like everything else in life, has a spiritual component, and I appreciated being cared for and prayed over. But the result of that experience was not healing. Depression has a spiritual component, but it is also like pain- it is a way that the body tells us we have been hurt, and need help.
For example, when we are hiking or jogging and fall and sprain an ankle, even the most devout generally do not rebuke the spirit of pain and then get up and try and continue to jog on the sprain, and then label themselves a spiritual failure because the injury and the pain remain.
Instead, we know we have an injury because of the pain, are forced by the pain to stop and exam the injury, and then go and find care. In this way, pain is a gift. If we didn't feel it, we wouldn't know anything was wrong, and would continue on and the injury would become compounded. When we finally got healing, it would be a longer and more complicated process, and if we never got care for the injury, we would probably end up with a permanent limp, and may not be able to jog again.
I say all this because if you, like me, have struggled or are struggling with depression or anxiety, I do not want to leave you with the erroneous impression that I am attempting to heal or address this solely through spiritual measures.
Of course I expect and have experienced Jesus' profound and spiritual healing work in my life, and that is precious to me. But I have also been to therapy and have been on depression medication, and am going to therapy still, about once a month, and to me, this is another and powerful way that Jesus is working to heal me.
There has been, and there still lingers, a burden of shame associated with emotional and psychological injuries and conditions. This exists in society in general, but also in a specific way within the Christian community. I do not want to add to this shame, even inadvertently. I want to do the opposite.
I feel that my testimony of the way Jesus moves in my life puts me in a unique position to help remove some of the shame. Because look! Look at how He is with me, and yet see how I struggle also with these things that in some circles or in an unspoken way, are considered failures or shameful or a bad testimony.
If you are struggling with these things, please do not be ashamed. You are not a failure, or less than, or falling short. Your body, and most certainly your mind, is a marvel and depression and anxiety is telling you something helpful for you to know. Lean into Jesus, pray as He directs you to pray and lean into your community, but do not feel ashamed of needing therapy, attending therapy, or of taking medication. No one is ashamed of taking an aspirin when they get a fever.
Fortunately for me, my parents had the courage to attend therapy and to begin healing, and this gave me the support needed for me to begin at a fairly early age- when I was twenty six. It was much harder for my parents, because they had several decades of pain to work through.
But at the right time, Jesus led me to the perfect therapist and through her training and compassion, I began to be free of the horrible beliefs that I had formed about myself and the world as a result of the abuse. It took three years, the first time.
I had to go back to therapy the same year that I was diagnosed with infertility, as the shame around infertility compounded the shame of abuse, and I couldn't work through all that on my own. At that time also, I found a wonderful, experienced and compassionate therapist who helped me untangle the damaging beliefs.
Going to therapy the first time was absolutely the hardest thing that I have ever done, and many times during those three years I thought I had reached the limit of what I could take, but Jesus was most certainly present and helping and guiding me along.
In fact, it was in one of those sessions, as I was trying to face a certain memory of abuse, that I suddenly saw that Jesus had always been with me and that I had never been alone in the terrible, shameful and painful dark. Never once had I been abandoned. In fact, Jesus had taken on my suffering as His own. I cannot express how deeply this makes me love Him- Jesus did not have to do that, He could have remained aloof. He did not. This is love beyond description.
No one knows the courage it takes to begin therapy of that kind unless they have been through it- to face the thing which is so terrible and so unthinkable that for years massive amounts of energy have been dedicated to denying it ever happened.
There is a certain idea that healing should take only this amount of time and then be done with, but anyone who has suffered abuse or trauma can tell you that this belief is not true and not helpful. Healing is a life long process, but one that is not without hope or success or sudden moments of wonderful freedom and clarity.
God does sometimes demonstrate His glory by a sudden transformation in people's lives and those testimonies are powerful and beautiful. But many other times, He demonstrates His glory by leading us to healing one slow step at a time, teaching us patience, courage, mercy and compassion along the way.
This is the way Jesus has healed me, so it is what I can talk about, even if in an anecdotal way, and what I have learned by this slow process of healing is so beautiful and precious and personal, and has revealed the heart of Jesus to me in such intimate ways that to be honest, I would not want Him to work in any other way with me. To know Jesus in His suffering is a gift.
This does not mean that I try to prolong the suffering or that I want to glorify the suffering, or that I do not get help, or that I feel ashamed of needing help. It just means that I get to know His heart as I walk along beside Him, growing up into Him through the healing process, which has been a long road for me, and continues still.
That's one thing I wanted to say. The other thing I want to say is that the next few sections of my journal that I will be sharing are going to be more intense than the previous ones. They are what is sometimes called "strong meat."
I just wanted to give my readers a bit of a head's up. I'm in the process of preparing them before posting them, and I don't know how long the process will take. The last few blogs that I have posted have been like stepping stones, though they are valuable in their own way.
I am committed, by the grace of God, to being as transparent and honest in sharing these experiences as I possibly can, so that I do not attempt to make them more or less than what they were, but to simply let my words frame them as best I can, as a witness to something beautiful and holy, something that illustrates, in a limited way of course, the love, grace and glory of God.
I cannot do this on my own, but I am trusting Jesus to guide me in this process. In the end, I must hand myself and my words over to Him with an open and transparent heart. He has never failed to guide me by inner and outer confirmations, in the most generous, specific and comforting way and if He were not doing that, I simply would not be able to share these things- even the things that I have already shared.
So I am trusting Him with this also. What I will be sharing is as much a mystery to me as they will be to others, so I am simply offering them freely, with faith, hope and love, first to Jesus, who gave them to me, and then to anyone else who comes along and reads them.
*
I know lately and for quite a long time now I have been writing here in an indirect kind of way as I share things already written, but this time I wanted to post directly, for a couple of reasons.
First, as I was thinking back to the last few sections of my journal that I shared here, I worried that I might have communicated something unintentionally, and that something would be the idea that emotional or psychological suffering, such as anxiety or depression, needs a spiritual cure requiring only faith, while physical suffering, such as a broken leg, requires only a doctor.
I have run into this kind of thinking myself on several occasions. It's not usually spoken out loud, it's more like an unspoken assumption.
For example, when I was eighteen years old, I returned from a summer in England where I had become quite deeply depressed. I was supposed to be enjoying myself over there while living with a cousin of mine and his family- he was a pilot in the air force and was stationed there- but I found myself sinking deeper and deeper into depression.
This was because considering my future was overwhelming and fear inducing. At the time, I did not have my driver's license and simply using the telephone was such an anxiety-laded ordeal that I had to write out a script on a piece of paper in order to prepare myself for the coming conversation.
In light of this, considering collage, even a state or technical college, seemed as far out of reach for me as the moon. I had been raised for seventeen years in a sheltered, exclusive, legalistic church with a focus on apocalyptic doctrines, and so I had prepared myself only for a future that included attending the Bible collage that was an institution of that particular church, and then getting married immediately upon graduation, and then raising children and being a godly mother and wife.
Anything other than that seemed so terrifying that I could hardly consider it, let alone pursue it. I was a failure in the eyes of all my friends and a great deal of my family and all my mentors, because most of them were in the church I had left. But I was also a failure in the eyes of the society in general, because everyone else my age was going to college with bright hopes and dreams, and I was floundering and could not even drive.
On top of this, of course I was carrying around the buried memories and wounds of abuse that had yet to be addressed. So I was deeply depressed that summer. At the time, our new church was a Charismatic/Pentecostal church.
The people at this church were loving and caring people with good intentions, just as had been the people in the church I had grown up in. But they were operating out of a certain set of beliefs, and this determined their behavior and approach- as they had for me, when I had been a member of that church. In fact, I had been very successful at behaving in all the right ways, and I had treated those that left in the same way that I was now experiencing in person, from the other side.
In the charismatic church we were attending, one of the beliefs they held was that depression was not the result of a chemical imbalance in the brain, produced as a result of trauma or grief, but instead was an evil spirit attacking a person.
So when I returned from England, the church gathered around me, put their hands on me, and began to rebuke the evil spirit of depression that they felt was opposing and attacking me. If this did not work, I knew it was my fault- I either lacked faith or was harboring a secret sin and should search my heart to find it, confess it and hopefully be healed. Otherwise, I believed this evil spirit would be following me around indefinitely.
I am certain that depression, like everything else in life, has a spiritual component, and I appreciated being cared for and prayed over. But the result of that experience was not healing. Depression has a spiritual component, but it is also like pain- it is a way that the body tells us we have been hurt, and need help.
For example, when we are hiking or jogging and fall and sprain an ankle, even the most devout generally do not rebuke the spirit of pain and then get up and try and continue to jog on the sprain, and then label themselves a spiritual failure because the injury and the pain remain.
Instead, we know we have an injury because of the pain, are forced by the pain to stop and exam the injury, and then go and find care. In this way, pain is a gift. If we didn't feel it, we wouldn't know anything was wrong, and would continue on and the injury would become compounded. When we finally got healing, it would be a longer and more complicated process, and if we never got care for the injury, we would probably end up with a permanent limp, and may not be able to jog again.
I say all this because if you, like me, have struggled or are struggling with depression or anxiety, I do not want to leave you with the erroneous impression that I am attempting to heal or address this solely through spiritual measures.
Of course I expect and have experienced Jesus' profound and spiritual healing work in my life, and that is precious to me. But I have also been to therapy and have been on depression medication, and am going to therapy still, about once a month, and to me, this is another and powerful way that Jesus is working to heal me.
There has been, and there still lingers, a burden of shame associated with emotional and psychological injuries and conditions. This exists in society in general, but also in a specific way within the Christian community. I do not want to add to this shame, even inadvertently. I want to do the opposite.
I feel that my testimony of the way Jesus moves in my life puts me in a unique position to help remove some of the shame. Because look! Look at how He is with me, and yet see how I struggle also with these things that in some circles or in an unspoken way, are considered failures or shameful or a bad testimony.
If you are struggling with these things, please do not be ashamed. You are not a failure, or less than, or falling short. Your body, and most certainly your mind, is a marvel and depression and anxiety is telling you something helpful for you to know. Lean into Jesus, pray as He directs you to pray and lean into your community, but do not feel ashamed of needing therapy, attending therapy, or of taking medication. No one is ashamed of taking an aspirin when they get a fever.
Fortunately for me, my parents had the courage to attend therapy and to begin healing, and this gave me the support needed for me to begin at a fairly early age- when I was twenty six. It was much harder for my parents, because they had several decades of pain to work through.
But at the right time, Jesus led me to the perfect therapist and through her training and compassion, I began to be free of the horrible beliefs that I had formed about myself and the world as a result of the abuse. It took three years, the first time.
I had to go back to therapy the same year that I was diagnosed with infertility, as the shame around infertility compounded the shame of abuse, and I couldn't work through all that on my own. At that time also, I found a wonderful, experienced and compassionate therapist who helped me untangle the damaging beliefs.
Going to therapy the first time was absolutely the hardest thing that I have ever done, and many times during those three years I thought I had reached the limit of what I could take, but Jesus was most certainly present and helping and guiding me along.
In fact, it was in one of those sessions, as I was trying to face a certain memory of abuse, that I suddenly saw that Jesus had always been with me and that I had never been alone in the terrible, shameful and painful dark. Never once had I been abandoned. In fact, Jesus had taken on my suffering as His own. I cannot express how deeply this makes me love Him- Jesus did not have to do that, He could have remained aloof. He did not. This is love beyond description.
No one knows the courage it takes to begin therapy of that kind unless they have been through it- to face the thing which is so terrible and so unthinkable that for years massive amounts of energy have been dedicated to denying it ever happened.
There is a certain idea that healing should take only this amount of time and then be done with, but anyone who has suffered abuse or trauma can tell you that this belief is not true and not helpful. Healing is a life long process, but one that is not without hope or success or sudden moments of wonderful freedom and clarity.
God does sometimes demonstrate His glory by a sudden transformation in people's lives and those testimonies are powerful and beautiful. But many other times, He demonstrates His glory by leading us to healing one slow step at a time, teaching us patience, courage, mercy and compassion along the way.
This is the way Jesus has healed me, so it is what I can talk about, even if in an anecdotal way, and what I have learned by this slow process of healing is so beautiful and precious and personal, and has revealed the heart of Jesus to me in such intimate ways that to be honest, I would not want Him to work in any other way with me. To know Jesus in His suffering is a gift.
This does not mean that I try to prolong the suffering or that I want to glorify the suffering, or that I do not get help, or that I feel ashamed of needing help. It just means that I get to know His heart as I walk along beside Him, growing up into Him through the healing process, which has been a long road for me, and continues still.
That's one thing I wanted to say. The other thing I want to say is that the next few sections of my journal that I will be sharing are going to be more intense than the previous ones. They are what is sometimes called "strong meat."
I just wanted to give my readers a bit of a head's up. I'm in the process of preparing them before posting them, and I don't know how long the process will take. The last few blogs that I have posted have been like stepping stones, though they are valuable in their own way.
I am committed, by the grace of God, to being as transparent and honest in sharing these experiences as I possibly can, so that I do not attempt to make them more or less than what they were, but to simply let my words frame them as best I can, as a witness to something beautiful and holy, something that illustrates, in a limited way of course, the love, grace and glory of God.
I cannot do this on my own, but I am trusting Jesus to guide me in this process. In the end, I must hand myself and my words over to Him with an open and transparent heart. He has never failed to guide me by inner and outer confirmations, in the most generous, specific and comforting way and if He were not doing that, I simply would not be able to share these things- even the things that I have already shared.
So I am trusting Him with this also. What I will be sharing is as much a mystery to me as they will be to others, so I am simply offering them freely, with faith, hope and love, first to Jesus, who gave them to me, and then to anyone else who comes along and reads them.
*
Now to Him Who, by (in consequence of) the [action of His] power that is at work within us, is able to [carry out His purpose and] do superabundantly, far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think [infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams]—
To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen (so be it).
Ephesians 3:20-21, Amplified
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
September 23rd
The window is open. They've been open all day, to let in the cool air that has finally arrived with autumn. I sit on the carpet, leaning my arms on the windowsill. Outside, there is a restless energy. I hear the revving of an engine on the darkened roads, a snatch of radio caught as another car passes.
"Is it Friday night?" I ask Jesus, idly wondering.
All around me, people are getting ready to leave their houses and head out in the pursuit of something- some bright, dazzling adventure, some wordless hunger.
I remember the glittering bulk of an airport at night, pools of yellowed light and moving sound roaring over head and lanes of light and streams of people. I think of myself waiting there, in line for Japanese Air ticket counter, or already in Japan and ready to go out, uncomfortable in my too-tight clothing, confused by the foreign chatter of the radio- always rushing away, being lost and found in airport terminals and pushing my life away until tomorrow so I wouldn't have to come to terms with it.
"It is Friday night and the world is restless," I tell Jesus, my eyes as much on my memories as they are on the back yard.
But not you, He replies, His voice gentle.
Reminded, I become aware of the solidity of the house around me, the peace of the lamp lit bedroom with the sleigh bed and battered, comfortable pillows and the dried palm branch tucked into the mirror.
"No, not me," I agree. "Because I have You." Our joy in this is mutual and full of delight.
Earlier in the evening, there had been a cloud tumbling higher and higher into the eastern sky, scalloped curves golden with the sun setting behind me. White and gold, cut crisp against the saturated blue, it towered over the trees and the stop light.
For you, Jesus had said, with almost playful generosity, as if He had whipped that cloud up to such sweet heights simply for the pleasure of giving it away like a meringue.
"Thank you, I love it," I reply promptly, happy to join in this particular game. "I love my cloud gift. It's a beautiful cloud."
Now the evening has mellowed and the light has left the sky. I wash the rest of the dishes and wander upstairs, thinking I might read, but I can't read. I can only rest there, the book beside me, the room filled with the presence of Jesus. Our conversations come and go with no regularity.
I am thinking of the book, The Little Notebook, by Nicole Gausseron, a French woman who had a relationship with Jesus much like mine. I have ordered the books, three of them. Her description of Jesus has filled me with joy and delight in Him all over again.
Do you see how the love I give one person causes others to be drawn to Me, so they come to Me anew and with deeper longing? Jesus asks. I also do that through you.
"Yes, I can see that," I acknowledge, because Jesus has been telling me this a long time, ever since I first started writing about Him.
Do I light a lamp just to put it under a basket? He has asked me, reasonably.
I am sitting on the bed and my hand is itching. Ever since I fell by the pool two years ago, the skin there sometimes bothers me. I wish that I could remove something from it, as if it were a splinter, but it's not a splinter and it never seems completely to heal and it's frustrating.
It's not your hand that really bothers you, Jesus points out in the quietness between us. It is as though He is turning my face gently toward something I don't want to see. What you really long to do is to draw out of you all the brokenness and pain from your childhood.
I sit there, motionless. Of course He is right. The rightness of what He is saying is opening up layers of my heart, and I can see right down through. This fills me a resigned, childlike grief, heavy and simple, because there is nothing I can do. I cannot pull those memories out once and for all. I cannot make it so it didn't happen.
"Yes," I admit, sadly. "But I can't."
Jesus is filled with grief with me, so much that my grief is not only my own, but also His. I have been speaking to Him with no particular sense of where He is in the room, but now I see Him enter the room and come to me swiftly and bend down over me and gather me up in His arms. He presses His cheek tenderly to mine as He holds me in His arms.
But I bear them with you, He whispers, and the love and the grief in His voice are strong and mingled.
Jesus is so present that it seems almost inevitable that at any moment, He will actually come around the corner of the open door and walk toward me. I find that I'm holding my breath, waiting in the stillness for the physical sound of His footsteps on the carpet.
I am not the only one waiting on the edge of that moment. Do you need even that? Jesus asks, quietly into my heart.
For a moment, I'm torn between several layers of motives, longings and doubts, until I am released into the simplicity of the best answer. I remember the kind of faith that delights Him.
"No, because I already know You are right here with me," I confess, giving myself completely over to this knowledge by faith.
This does delight Jesus. Joy flares up through Him and kindles my spirit; we are luminous with joy and love.
You are My heart, He says.
I think about this, what that might mean. I think about how His love for us makes Him vulnerable to pain and suffering through us. It shocks me, when I grasp it.
"How much You must suffer!" I tell Jesus, in amazement.
You also will suffer this, He says quietly.
And I think of Merissa, how right now she is small and safe in the house. But she will grow and go out into the rest of the world, the whole time as though she is my unprotected heart, freely walking around, bumping up against the world and getting sometimes bruised, disappointed, rejected and growing up through it all and I will suffer it all with her, because no matter where she goes or what she does, my love is a living connection to her.
But for Jesus, this is multiplied to such a degree that I can't grasp it. I am moved to pity, to compassion. I throw my arms around Jesus and it is as though our hearts are beating in time to this pain of loving- His love vast, incomprehensible, full of grief and hope and sure and certain faith like a bedrock beneath, and mine small but still beating in time with His.
"We will suffer together," I whisper to Jesus, because my love for Him is fierce, even if it is only human, and because I can't manage it without Him.
I could see His face close to mine in the hush of the room. I could see the scars from the thorns. Those scars always draw me in. The story of love they tell me is personal, because I never knew they existed until I began to see His face.
The scars seem to open and I'm not seeing them, but I'm seeing Jesus bound and bloodied under a hot sun, in a crowd of hate and noise. This has happened before, so I am not taken unaware. Sometimes I see slivers of His Passion and whenever I do, Jesus hides His agony from me. Often, I do not know what He is feeling; He won't let me share it with Him.
This time He does, I see the crown of thorns violently shoved over His head, scraping the skin clean open and I hear Him cry out and then I am shut away from that scene, the inner and the outer pain and I see again the closed scars at His forehead. His face is gentle and kind, full of peace, His eyes are warm with love.
That crown was meant to mock Him; a crown of pain, of dead and dried vines twisted into an instrument of cruelty, but Jesus humbly accepted it and wore it out of incomprehensible love, love so vast we can hardly understand it, and just like any of His scars, the scars left by those long thorns only serve to make Him that much more beautiful.
*
Look at me. Look at my face. I know that the road is rocky. Do not look down at your feet. I am a companion. I walk ahead of you, but I slow down in order to walk with you. Follow me. I am the road.
-Believe That I Am Here: The Notebooks of Nicole Gausseron, Book One, January 30
"Is it Friday night?" I ask Jesus, idly wondering.
All around me, people are getting ready to leave their houses and head out in the pursuit of something- some bright, dazzling adventure, some wordless hunger.
I remember the glittering bulk of an airport at night, pools of yellowed light and moving sound roaring over head and lanes of light and streams of people. I think of myself waiting there, in line for Japanese Air ticket counter, or already in Japan and ready to go out, uncomfortable in my too-tight clothing, confused by the foreign chatter of the radio- always rushing away, being lost and found in airport terminals and pushing my life away until tomorrow so I wouldn't have to come to terms with it.
"It is Friday night and the world is restless," I tell Jesus, my eyes as much on my memories as they are on the back yard.
But not you, He replies, His voice gentle.
Reminded, I become aware of the solidity of the house around me, the peace of the lamp lit bedroom with the sleigh bed and battered, comfortable pillows and the dried palm branch tucked into the mirror.
"No, not me," I agree. "Because I have You." Our joy in this is mutual and full of delight.
Earlier in the evening, there had been a cloud tumbling higher and higher into the eastern sky, scalloped curves golden with the sun setting behind me. White and gold, cut crisp against the saturated blue, it towered over the trees and the stop light.
For you, Jesus had said, with almost playful generosity, as if He had whipped that cloud up to such sweet heights simply for the pleasure of giving it away like a meringue.
"Thank you, I love it," I reply promptly, happy to join in this particular game. "I love my cloud gift. It's a beautiful cloud."
Now the evening has mellowed and the light has left the sky. I wash the rest of the dishes and wander upstairs, thinking I might read, but I can't read. I can only rest there, the book beside me, the room filled with the presence of Jesus. Our conversations come and go with no regularity.
I am thinking of the book, The Little Notebook, by Nicole Gausseron, a French woman who had a relationship with Jesus much like mine. I have ordered the books, three of them. Her description of Jesus has filled me with joy and delight in Him all over again.
Do you see how the love I give one person causes others to be drawn to Me, so they come to Me anew and with deeper longing? Jesus asks. I also do that through you.
"Yes, I can see that," I acknowledge, because Jesus has been telling me this a long time, ever since I first started writing about Him.
Do I light a lamp just to put it under a basket? He has asked me, reasonably.
I am sitting on the bed and my hand is itching. Ever since I fell by the pool two years ago, the skin there sometimes bothers me. I wish that I could remove something from it, as if it were a splinter, but it's not a splinter and it never seems completely to heal and it's frustrating.
It's not your hand that really bothers you, Jesus points out in the quietness between us. It is as though He is turning my face gently toward something I don't want to see. What you really long to do is to draw out of you all the brokenness and pain from your childhood.
I sit there, motionless. Of course He is right. The rightness of what He is saying is opening up layers of my heart, and I can see right down through. This fills me a resigned, childlike grief, heavy and simple, because there is nothing I can do. I cannot pull those memories out once and for all. I cannot make it so it didn't happen.
"Yes," I admit, sadly. "But I can't."
Jesus is filled with grief with me, so much that my grief is not only my own, but also His. I have been speaking to Him with no particular sense of where He is in the room, but now I see Him enter the room and come to me swiftly and bend down over me and gather me up in His arms. He presses His cheek tenderly to mine as He holds me in His arms.
But I bear them with you, He whispers, and the love and the grief in His voice are strong and mingled.
Jesus is so present that it seems almost inevitable that at any moment, He will actually come around the corner of the open door and walk toward me. I find that I'm holding my breath, waiting in the stillness for the physical sound of His footsteps on the carpet.
I am not the only one waiting on the edge of that moment. Do you need even that? Jesus asks, quietly into my heart.
For a moment, I'm torn between several layers of motives, longings and doubts, until I am released into the simplicity of the best answer. I remember the kind of faith that delights Him.
"No, because I already know You are right here with me," I confess, giving myself completely over to this knowledge by faith.
This does delight Jesus. Joy flares up through Him and kindles my spirit; we are luminous with joy and love.
You are My heart, He says.
I think about this, what that might mean. I think about how His love for us makes Him vulnerable to pain and suffering through us. It shocks me, when I grasp it.
"How much You must suffer!" I tell Jesus, in amazement.
You also will suffer this, He says quietly.
And I think of Merissa, how right now she is small and safe in the house. But she will grow and go out into the rest of the world, the whole time as though she is my unprotected heart, freely walking around, bumping up against the world and getting sometimes bruised, disappointed, rejected and growing up through it all and I will suffer it all with her, because no matter where she goes or what she does, my love is a living connection to her.
But for Jesus, this is multiplied to such a degree that I can't grasp it. I am moved to pity, to compassion. I throw my arms around Jesus and it is as though our hearts are beating in time to this pain of loving- His love vast, incomprehensible, full of grief and hope and sure and certain faith like a bedrock beneath, and mine small but still beating in time with His.
"We will suffer together," I whisper to Jesus, because my love for Him is fierce, even if it is only human, and because I can't manage it without Him.
I could see His face close to mine in the hush of the room. I could see the scars from the thorns. Those scars always draw me in. The story of love they tell me is personal, because I never knew they existed until I began to see His face.
The scars seem to open and I'm not seeing them, but I'm seeing Jesus bound and bloodied under a hot sun, in a crowd of hate and noise. This has happened before, so I am not taken unaware. Sometimes I see slivers of His Passion and whenever I do, Jesus hides His agony from me. Often, I do not know what He is feeling; He won't let me share it with Him.
This time He does, I see the crown of thorns violently shoved over His head, scraping the skin clean open and I hear Him cry out and then I am shut away from that scene, the inner and the outer pain and I see again the closed scars at His forehead. His face is gentle and kind, full of peace, His eyes are warm with love.
That crown was meant to mock Him; a crown of pain, of dead and dried vines twisted into an instrument of cruelty, but Jesus humbly accepted it and wore it out of incomprehensible love, love so vast we can hardly understand it, and just like any of His scars, the scars left by those long thorns only serve to make Him that much more beautiful.
*
Look at me. Look at my face. I know that the road is rocky. Do not look down at your feet. I am a companion. I walk ahead of you, but I slow down in order to walk with you. Follow me. I am the road.
-Believe That I Am Here: The Notebooks of Nicole Gausseron, Book One, January 30
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
September 17th
We've been taking Merissa up for communion lately. We did this last Sunday. The first time, she shared the host with me, but this time, she received her own thin wafer and immediately took a no-nonsense bite out of it. She is hungry and here is food shaped the perfect size.
I dipped mine in the communion cup and gave her the edge, so she could taste the wine. She did so, with a thoughtful look. Our faces were close together, bent toward one another. Joy flew through me as a sparrow darts up from the grass toward the bluing sky, all flutter into expanse of quiet. I am compelled by joy to kiss her cheek; we don't have to use words. We stand, she still clutches some of her host in one chubby hand and we retire from the rail.
By pre-arrangement, I gave her to her father and he took her out into the foyer to crawl around on the patterned rug and be happy. Left to myself, I let down the padded rail and closed my eyes, let the present close over me, the weight of my body held on my knees, the murmur of companionable voices, the organ above and behind me in the choir loft.
There was the pleasure of being alone, one person not a wife and not a mother and not a daughter, just myself, this inner person, ageless and delighted and with no particular need to speak anything at all to Jesus because He was right there.
I could see Jesus close and bending down, His face above me. He had no need to speak because I can understand the things His heart is saying just in the beating, and without moving at all, I could throw my arms around Him in warm recognition and nestle my head on His shoulder and take joy in Him.
No one would see anything but myself on the pew now, my hands clasped in my lap, but I remember where my life really lies, where I'm forever hidden and one day- no more veil.
But at the end of that day, the rain drums on the asphalt roof just above my head and Merissa's, as she lies in my nap, bottle in her hands. Her face is like porcelain turned rosy pink at the cheeks and nose. Her round belly rises easily with each breath. The thunder does not bother her.
We sit in the room is swallowed up in blue grey haze, cradled in the sound of the rain, the running of it down the windows.
Friday, September 12, 2014
September 12th
Last night Merissa stood at the window, tippy toes sunk into the carpet, both hands on the sill for balance. She was wearing flowered cotton jammies with elastic cuffs. Her back was to me as she stared raptly out the window, the light reflected from the glass turning her curls pewter pale.
Past her silhouette, was the neighbor's roofline only eight feet away and beyond that, the pines, their tops lit with the sun. Between the pines glowed the brick of the brand new middle school, now a luminous orange red, full in the light of the setting sun.
My daughter was looking in the other direction, where I could not see. I knew she must be seeing the front lawns of the housing neighborhood, rectangular plots of green with young trees, one to each house, and the glittering glass and paint of cars waiting in the driveway and the windows looking across the road at each other, and the road itself, curving toward a gully still green with trees that hadn't been cut down.
It was the Outside, alive with enchantment and invitation. Merissa knew the function of nothing at all, only the shapes, the colors, the movements. She could sense the distance in each direction from her incredible height at the second story window. To her, the spinning vent on the neighbor's roof was just as lovely, as breathless in beauty as the lucid evening sky. There it was, the world laid out for her.
Merissa turned to me and smiled widely in delight, as if remembering all over again that I was there. She attempted to sit down, but lost her balance at the last minute and plopped down suddenly, her expression one of mild astonishment. Then she smiled again and lunged forward into a cheerful crawl toward me.
I know what it is like to stand at a window and look out at enchantment expansive and beautiful, something beyond description but full of invitation.
I was reading in Luke recently and came across this passage:
“So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
"If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone?
Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish?
Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?
If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”
Luke 11:9-13
I used to read this passage and assume it was talking about getting various things- clothing, vehicles, that sort of thing. Then I saw that in Luke, Jesus says that He is talking about requests for the Holy Spirit- our Comforter, our Guide, the One who proceeds from Abba and testifies of Jesus.
Jesus is saying that if we earnestly, persistently ask God for God, we will receive God, not a scary or empty counterfeit.
We are not going to receive a stone, which cannot satisfy our hunger. We are not going to receive a serpent or a scorpion, that could sting and hurt us.
This is a "how much more" parable. This means that even if we imperfect parents know enough to give our children gifts that are good and nourishing, how much more so will our Heavenly Father do this for us- Abba being perfectly good, being Love.
We can have faith to know that when we ask for God, we will receive God- not because we are good, but because Abba is.
*
The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside the still waters.
He restores my soul;
He leads me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake.
-Psalm 23:1-3
Past her silhouette, was the neighbor's roofline only eight feet away and beyond that, the pines, their tops lit with the sun. Between the pines glowed the brick of the brand new middle school, now a luminous orange red, full in the light of the setting sun.
My daughter was looking in the other direction, where I could not see. I knew she must be seeing the front lawns of the housing neighborhood, rectangular plots of green with young trees, one to each house, and the glittering glass and paint of cars waiting in the driveway and the windows looking across the road at each other, and the road itself, curving toward a gully still green with trees that hadn't been cut down.
It was the Outside, alive with enchantment and invitation. Merissa knew the function of nothing at all, only the shapes, the colors, the movements. She could sense the distance in each direction from her incredible height at the second story window. To her, the spinning vent on the neighbor's roof was just as lovely, as breathless in beauty as the lucid evening sky. There it was, the world laid out for her.
Merissa turned to me and smiled widely in delight, as if remembering all over again that I was there. She attempted to sit down, but lost her balance at the last minute and plopped down suddenly, her expression one of mild astonishment. Then she smiled again and lunged forward into a cheerful crawl toward me.
I know what it is like to stand at a window and look out at enchantment expansive and beautiful, something beyond description but full of invitation.
I was reading in Luke recently and came across this passage:
“So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
"If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone?
Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish?
Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?
If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”
Luke 11:9-13
I used to read this passage and assume it was talking about getting various things- clothing, vehicles, that sort of thing. Then I saw that in Luke, Jesus says that He is talking about requests for the Holy Spirit- our Comforter, our Guide, the One who proceeds from Abba and testifies of Jesus.
Jesus is saying that if we earnestly, persistently ask God for God, we will receive God, not a scary or empty counterfeit.
We are not going to receive a stone, which cannot satisfy our hunger. We are not going to receive a serpent or a scorpion, that could sting and hurt us.
This is a "how much more" parable. This means that even if we imperfect parents know enough to give our children gifts that are good and nourishing, how much more so will our Heavenly Father do this for us- Abba being perfectly good, being Love.
We can have faith to know that when we ask for God, we will receive God- not because we are good, but because Abba is.
*
The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside the still waters.
He restores my soul;
He leads me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake.
-Psalm 23:1-3
Thursday, July 17, 2014
July 17th
I
read about Blind Bartimaeus on the road into Jericho, how he called out to
Jesus- “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
And Jesus kept walking, and the others told him to hush, and how he couldn’t see. He didn’t know what Jesus looked like. He couldn’t see His face, but he heard the sound of the crowd all around him, the excitement, the anticipation and asked, and his heart must have leaped at the answer.
Where was Jesus, exactly in that crowd? The blind begger didn’t know. He didn’t care. He lifted up his voice and shouted. He shouted out into the sightless confusion, the babbling noise. Somewhere in there was Jesus.
Jesus, hidden amid the swirling people, flanked by His disciples, kept walking.
The blind man, determined, called the louder. He is on the side of the road, rocking back and forth in desperation, crying out in his blindness to God, stretching out his hands into the dark, piercing the crowd with his cries- “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
And Jesus stood still.
Why did He wait until then? Sometimes He waits to refine our desires, to let the silence whittle them down to their barest essentials.
He does this sometimes- waits, holds back the gift. The weight of the need presses down through the first things into the real things. Sometimes they are the same things, and they rise to the surface, one pressing need and we cry out with renewed and focused passion. That’s as much as I know.
Jesus stood still and commanded them to call him to Himself. I saw Him bend His head, speak to Peter or John, the phrase spoken in Aramaic. They know Him so well, they can understand Him even in the noise of the crowd just by catching His eye, the compassion in it.
They go their way through the crowd. Someone sees them coming, speaks comfortingly to the blind man, to him to rise, that Jesus is calling for him. Bartimaeus throws off his cloak and stands, half stepping forward, reaching for the hands that are taking his. It seems almost quiet, after. Everyone waits to see.
Jesus stands still, composed in the crowd, the center of so much speculation, excitement, apprehension, but He is perfectly at ease in His own skin, in the bones and muscles aching from the journey, His shoulders back slightly so He can take a long, slow breath, knowing He will rest soon that evening. He doesn’t know where yet, but that doesn’t matter. He’s doing the one thing He must do then, the next will come later.
They lead the blind man through the crowd to Him. Bartimaeus’ heart must have been pounding, each step taking him closer through the dark. He can feel the people around him, hear their murmuring, their breathing, their shuffling feet.
Does he know, somewhere in him, just before they reach Jesus, by some quality of that atmosphere, or does he know merely when they stop? He is standing before Jesus in flesh and blood, and still can’t see Him. But He’s right there, Jesus is present and available, having stood still to pay attention to him, to hear him.
“What do you want Me to do for you?” Jesus asks him.
This question is so direct, no preamble, no chit chat. For Bartimaeus, the question comes out of the darkness.
“Rabboni,” Bartimaeus calls Him. In the Bible I read by the side of the bed, the note explains that this means “my great one.” In this Bible, it's the same word Mary uses in the garden. It’s a word that sounds like it could be spoken in one long breath.
“Rabboni, that I might receive my sight.”
I’m reading this propped up in bed, reading it slowly, going over and over the lines. This Bible I’m using used to be my mother in law’s. It’s heavy with floppy leather covers and a whole concordance in the back, a red letter edition.
She’s marked it up quite a bit, and I wonder sometimes what secret stories those lines and highlights are hiding, but I don’t pry. It’s not for me to know.
I wish that it wasn’t a New King James version- I’d prefer the New Jerusalem Bible or the Amplified, but they’re expensive and anyway, when once I asked Jesus which version I should use, He said it didn’t matter. He could speak to me, teach me and guide me regardless.
And it is true, He is with me as I read. I’ve always loved this passage. He’s spoken through it to me through it before and He’s speaking to me through it again. I am Bartimaeus. I want to receive my sight. I want this because I want to see Him.
Jesus is both revealed and hidden from me in the things of this life, the things I see and hear, touch and smell. They are all around me, a murmuring, an evidence. Sometimes I wait there. Sometimes I can't; my heart cries out and I can’t keep silent.
Jesus is passing by and I know He is there, at the heart and I want to see Him. I want Him alone. I am willing to throw off my outer layers, to cry out ardently, to persist in bothering Him, to knock at the door; my request refined by waiting.
And Jesus kept walking, and the others told him to hush, and how he couldn’t see. He didn’t know what Jesus looked like. He couldn’t see His face, but he heard the sound of the crowd all around him, the excitement, the anticipation and asked, and his heart must have leaped at the answer.
Where was Jesus, exactly in that crowd? The blind begger didn’t know. He didn’t care. He lifted up his voice and shouted. He shouted out into the sightless confusion, the babbling noise. Somewhere in there was Jesus.
Jesus, hidden amid the swirling people, flanked by His disciples, kept walking.
The blind man, determined, called the louder. He is on the side of the road, rocking back and forth in desperation, crying out in his blindness to God, stretching out his hands into the dark, piercing the crowd with his cries- “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
And Jesus stood still.
Why did He wait until then? Sometimes He waits to refine our desires, to let the silence whittle them down to their barest essentials.
He does this sometimes- waits, holds back the gift. The weight of the need presses down through the first things into the real things. Sometimes they are the same things, and they rise to the surface, one pressing need and we cry out with renewed and focused passion. That’s as much as I know.
Jesus stood still and commanded them to call him to Himself. I saw Him bend His head, speak to Peter or John, the phrase spoken in Aramaic. They know Him so well, they can understand Him even in the noise of the crowd just by catching His eye, the compassion in it.
They go their way through the crowd. Someone sees them coming, speaks comfortingly to the blind man, to him to rise, that Jesus is calling for him. Bartimaeus throws off his cloak and stands, half stepping forward, reaching for the hands that are taking his. It seems almost quiet, after. Everyone waits to see.
Jesus stands still, composed in the crowd, the center of so much speculation, excitement, apprehension, but He is perfectly at ease in His own skin, in the bones and muscles aching from the journey, His shoulders back slightly so He can take a long, slow breath, knowing He will rest soon that evening. He doesn’t know where yet, but that doesn’t matter. He’s doing the one thing He must do then, the next will come later.
They lead the blind man through the crowd to Him. Bartimaeus’ heart must have been pounding, each step taking him closer through the dark. He can feel the people around him, hear their murmuring, their breathing, their shuffling feet.
Does he know, somewhere in him, just before they reach Jesus, by some quality of that atmosphere, or does he know merely when they stop? He is standing before Jesus in flesh and blood, and still can’t see Him. But He’s right there, Jesus is present and available, having stood still to pay attention to him, to hear him.
“What do you want Me to do for you?” Jesus asks him.
This question is so direct, no preamble, no chit chat. For Bartimaeus, the question comes out of the darkness.
“Rabboni,” Bartimaeus calls Him. In the Bible I read by the side of the bed, the note explains that this means “my great one.” In this Bible, it's the same word Mary uses in the garden. It’s a word that sounds like it could be spoken in one long breath.
“Rabboni, that I might receive my sight.”
I’m reading this propped up in bed, reading it slowly, going over and over the lines. This Bible I’m using used to be my mother in law’s. It’s heavy with floppy leather covers and a whole concordance in the back, a red letter edition.
She’s marked it up quite a bit, and I wonder sometimes what secret stories those lines and highlights are hiding, but I don’t pry. It’s not for me to know.
I wish that it wasn’t a New King James version- I’d prefer the New Jerusalem Bible or the Amplified, but they’re expensive and anyway, when once I asked Jesus which version I should use, He said it didn’t matter. He could speak to me, teach me and guide me regardless.
And it is true, He is with me as I read. I’ve always loved this passage. He’s spoken through it to me through it before and He’s speaking to me through it again. I am Bartimaeus. I want to receive my sight. I want this because I want to see Him.
Jesus is both revealed and hidden from me in the things of this life, the things I see and hear, touch and smell. They are all around me, a murmuring, an evidence. Sometimes I wait there. Sometimes I can't; my heart cries out and I can’t keep silent.
Jesus is passing by and I know He is there, at the heart and I want to see Him. I want Him alone. I am willing to throw off my outer layers, to cry out ardently, to persist in bothering Him, to knock at the door; my request refined by waiting.
“Go your way, your faith has made you well,” Jesus tells
him. To see by faith is to be made well, that is what Jesus is saying to me. It is wholeness and life to my spirit.
I sometimes think Jesus is saying these things with a sense
of humor hidden just under the surface. After all, Bartimaeus’ way was His. Bartimaeus
just followed after. So with me. I’m going nowhere, unless Jesus is going there
too.
Friday, July 11, 2014
July 11th
The mornings are growing slowly darker. I wake up and think maybe it's going to rain, but it's only that the light is starting to shrink back. It comes eventually and turns the fence gold and then, reflected, it shines through the glass door and across the surface of the coffee table.
Not this morning, though. This morning, mist is clinging to the ground, softening the view and diffusing the light. We stood at the back door, Merissa and I, and stared thoughtfully out at the damp back yard.
Last night I had to admit that Merissa had outgrown her usual bath- a blue plastic container with reassuring rubber edges, so I set it aside and filled the regular tub with three or four inches and set the baby therein. She looked much more at home there, sitting amid bubbles and bright, chewy letters and numbers that bobbed on the surface around her.
Worried that she would slip, I hovered close, but she kept her balance perfectly well. A few times she miscalculated when reaching for a toy and almost tipped, but she caught herself before I could and then watched the water ripple out in wonder.
I was kneeling on the bathmat with my arms folded on the tub, my thoughts pleasantly drifting. There was something about the light shining off the water and the white tub and the sound of the splashing that was soothing.
I knew there was a lot I had yet to do downstairs, but it didn't matter because I felt as though I had all the time in the world. I felt as though I were doing the one thing necessary for me to do in that moment- to peacefully watch over my daughter while she happily played in the bubbles.
I've been able to rest in that place more and more often in the last week or so, and that is unusual for me. Usually when I go about my day, I am haunted by the anxious thought that I am not doing enough, that my life should be filled with doing "hard things for God," though I'm not sure what that means.
Before we had Merissa, I felt as though I were wasting my time, not having a child to nurture and care for. There was this sense of futility about my life, that I was simply spinning my wheels, not giving anything back to God, who was at that time pouring His love and presence out on me in a way I had never known before.
Now we have Merissa and my days are full of caring for and nurturing her and guess what? That thought pattern is still right there! I can still come to the conclusion that I am not doing enough "hard things for God," and that I am spinning my wheels.
A while back, I decided to try practicing the presence of God as Brother Lawrence outlined it- by doing everything for love of God. It sounded easy, but I found it quite hard. It's like learning to ride a bike- I keep losing my balance and fall off to one side or the other. I can't seem to go smoothly forward for any amount distance.
Inevitably, I'd end up doing things in a rote way, one task after another, saying to Jesus dutifully, "for the love of You..." and then look around tiredly for the next thing I could do, until one day Jesus had to say to me, Jenny, I am not a checklist. I thought it interesting He put it like that- I had been unconsciously assuming that I could only love Him and connect to Him if I was doing something. Such is my ingrained legalistic bent.
Then I would give up entirely and not go through my day with any sense of consecration at all, just slogging through the mire of anxious feelings about past, present and future events, worries about money, about my writing, how I am never blogging enough or the right things and how I never measure up as a good mother.
I'd wake in the morning and this whole rush of worries and insecurities would seem to reattach to me, as soon as my head cleared enough to remember them. It would seem like such a heavy weight, I had to throw my hands out to Jesus, as though I needed help just to sit up, and He would be there, and He would whisper, remember.
It's such hard work to remember, sometimes!
Trust, Jesus reminded me- does remind me, nearly every morning. Trust that He is there, that He loves me, that He is expressing His life through me and that I live my life in Him. That I am loved, completely, steady, unconditionally and that I am in my life- this very particular, very small life- for a good reason- His reason.
Believe this, Jesus has been saying to me lately. He says it like an invitation. Stop putting yourself to the test and simply trust Me, He says.
That's what He's been wanting me to remember, and I have been remembering it. That's the thing that surprises me; I have been remembering.
Last night, I remembered. It was one of those moments when my eyes were opened to the richness and the goodness of my life. I had a beautiful, healthy baby girl grinning at me while she chewed on an alphabet letter in this incredible, large, comfortable house and downstairs was my healthy, loving husband whose hard work paid all the bills on time. And there was dinner and bed time and peaceful sleep and all was suffused by God's presence, lit up by it, surrounded and upheld by Him.
And furthermore, I was thinking about the possibility of another child, however that might happen, and it dawned on me, in this undeniably clear way, that I would love that child with all my heart, for exactly who they were and that this love would in no way diminish my love for Merissa, who also has all my heart.
For the first time, I had a glimpse of how Jesus gives Himself entirely to each of us. I saw how natural, how inevitable it was. There is no lack of love; love multiplies without effort. It's what love does.
In a deeper way than ever before, I opened my heart to the knowledge that Jesus loves me with all of Himself- that I delight Him, that His love for me is endless, I can trust it completely. I can abandon myself to His love without second thought, without hesitation, with joy. There is no lack.
I was caught up in a current of gratitude. It was like a state of being, peaceful, still, kneeling on the bathmat, caught up in the light amid the objects of my every day life, doing nothing more than being a mother to my daughter and a wife to my husband, and through all and always the beloved of God.
Isn't it good? Jesus whispered to me.
He meant life itself- to be alive, to grow, to love, to be in this creation that He set us in. How life goes on, how suffering and death cannot stand against it, are so small and powerless in the light of this life- how nothing can separate us from His love. We came from Him and we will return to Him. It's like a river that just keeps on getting deeper, a river that can't be measured and that no ships can sail on.
"It's so good," I agreed.
Not this morning, though. This morning, mist is clinging to the ground, softening the view and diffusing the light. We stood at the back door, Merissa and I, and stared thoughtfully out at the damp back yard.
Last night I had to admit that Merissa had outgrown her usual bath- a blue plastic container with reassuring rubber edges, so I set it aside and filled the regular tub with three or four inches and set the baby therein. She looked much more at home there, sitting amid bubbles and bright, chewy letters and numbers that bobbed on the surface around her.
Worried that she would slip, I hovered close, but she kept her balance perfectly well. A few times she miscalculated when reaching for a toy and almost tipped, but she caught herself before I could and then watched the water ripple out in wonder.
I was kneeling on the bathmat with my arms folded on the tub, my thoughts pleasantly drifting. There was something about the light shining off the water and the white tub and the sound of the splashing that was soothing.
I knew there was a lot I had yet to do downstairs, but it didn't matter because I felt as though I had all the time in the world. I felt as though I were doing the one thing necessary for me to do in that moment- to peacefully watch over my daughter while she happily played in the bubbles.
I've been able to rest in that place more and more often in the last week or so, and that is unusual for me. Usually when I go about my day, I am haunted by the anxious thought that I am not doing enough, that my life should be filled with doing "hard things for God," though I'm not sure what that means.
Before we had Merissa, I felt as though I were wasting my time, not having a child to nurture and care for. There was this sense of futility about my life, that I was simply spinning my wheels, not giving anything back to God, who was at that time pouring His love and presence out on me in a way I had never known before.
Now we have Merissa and my days are full of caring for and nurturing her and guess what? That thought pattern is still right there! I can still come to the conclusion that I am not doing enough "hard things for God," and that I am spinning my wheels.
A while back, I decided to try practicing the presence of God as Brother Lawrence outlined it- by doing everything for love of God. It sounded easy, but I found it quite hard. It's like learning to ride a bike- I keep losing my balance and fall off to one side or the other. I can't seem to go smoothly forward for any amount distance.
Inevitably, I'd end up doing things in a rote way, one task after another, saying to Jesus dutifully, "for the love of You..." and then look around tiredly for the next thing I could do, until one day Jesus had to say to me, Jenny, I am not a checklist. I thought it interesting He put it like that- I had been unconsciously assuming that I could only love Him and connect to Him if I was doing something. Such is my ingrained legalistic bent.
Then I would give up entirely and not go through my day with any sense of consecration at all, just slogging through the mire of anxious feelings about past, present and future events, worries about money, about my writing, how I am never blogging enough or the right things and how I never measure up as a good mother.
I'd wake in the morning and this whole rush of worries and insecurities would seem to reattach to me, as soon as my head cleared enough to remember them. It would seem like such a heavy weight, I had to throw my hands out to Jesus, as though I needed help just to sit up, and He would be there, and He would whisper, remember.
It's such hard work to remember, sometimes!
Trust, Jesus reminded me- does remind me, nearly every morning. Trust that He is there, that He loves me, that He is expressing His life through me and that I live my life in Him. That I am loved, completely, steady, unconditionally and that I am in my life- this very particular, very small life- for a good reason- His reason.
Believe this, Jesus has been saying to me lately. He says it like an invitation. Stop putting yourself to the test and simply trust Me, He says.
That's what He's been wanting me to remember, and I have been remembering it. That's the thing that surprises me; I have been remembering.
Last night, I remembered. It was one of those moments when my eyes were opened to the richness and the goodness of my life. I had a beautiful, healthy baby girl grinning at me while she chewed on an alphabet letter in this incredible, large, comfortable house and downstairs was my healthy, loving husband whose hard work paid all the bills on time. And there was dinner and bed time and peaceful sleep and all was suffused by God's presence, lit up by it, surrounded and upheld by Him.
And furthermore, I was thinking about the possibility of another child, however that might happen, and it dawned on me, in this undeniably clear way, that I would love that child with all my heart, for exactly who they were and that this love would in no way diminish my love for Merissa, who also has all my heart.
For the first time, I had a glimpse of how Jesus gives Himself entirely to each of us. I saw how natural, how inevitable it was. There is no lack of love; love multiplies without effort. It's what love does.
In a deeper way than ever before, I opened my heart to the knowledge that Jesus loves me with all of Himself- that I delight Him, that His love for me is endless, I can trust it completely. I can abandon myself to His love without second thought, without hesitation, with joy. There is no lack.
I was caught up in a current of gratitude. It was like a state of being, peaceful, still, kneeling on the bathmat, caught up in the light amid the objects of my every day life, doing nothing more than being a mother to my daughter and a wife to my husband, and through all and always the beloved of God.
Isn't it good? Jesus whispered to me.
He meant life itself- to be alive, to grow, to love, to be in this creation that He set us in. How life goes on, how suffering and death cannot stand against it, are so small and powerless in the light of this life- how nothing can separate us from His love. We came from Him and we will return to Him. It's like a river that just keeps on getting deeper, a river that can't be measured and that no ships can sail on.
"It's so good," I agreed.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
July 3rd
I'm down here at five thirty in the morning, hoping that in the quietness, I might be able to write. I want to write because it's July. Next month, my baby will be a year old.
Sometimes I feel like I'm already looking at this period of my life from a great distance, as if I know the shape the memories will take. They'll be centered around this house- the side of the master bedroom that was completely taken over by the glider, the crib, the suitcase with baby clothes and the boxes of diapers bought wholesale. There's the scalloped sink in the master bedroom where she was bathed and the downstairs window where her playpen was placed.
I remember last July in the rental house, everything overgrown and bugs in the kitchen, the dampness seeping through the windowsills. The landlords raised the rent by fifteen dollars and that was enough to send my husband on a house search.
He came home with pictures, realtor agents' telephone numbers and quotes from the bank. He'd been to see a few houses. He even called the adoption agency to ask about getting our address changed on the myriad places where it was officially written.
I didn't know what to do, everything was spinning too fast, but I heard Jesus whisper that He had a good plan and Keith was hard at work tracking it down. After that, I tried to step away from the fear, mostly, and paid attention instead of digging my heels in.
Of course, it was after we'd signed the papers on a house yet to be built that we were matched with Merissa's birth parents. We waited in the rental house while the boxes piled up around us, on a collision course between the house's building schedule and Merissa's projected birthday, each one getting closer and closer together and there was simply nothing we could do about it but wait.
The stroller and car seat came in the mail and we set them up right then and there. We took pictures. Our faces are filled with joy, a tender joy, but one that was fragile- because how would it end? Those boxes were pushed underneath the kitchen counter when we finally arrived at the new house with Merissa in tow, dizzy with exhaustion and light headed with relief.
On the way, we'd stopped at this two bit town, at a gas station with cracked pavement and leaning gas pumps. The air was muggy and full of the sound of local traffic heading home for dinner and a beer. Merissa was like a warm rag doll with dark eyes and a shock of dark hair. The new born sized pants gaped at her waist and fell down over her arched, helpless feet. I rode in the back with her the entire way, leaning over to watch her breathing.
The dogs were wild underfoot when we arrived and the soldier who'd been house sitting for us had set up a few things on the wide expanse of dusty counter. Outside the windows, everything was green, just like it is now, almost a full year later.
Yesterday, I took Merissa to Goodwill to do some shopping. She needed play clothes, things she could crawl around in. At the parking lot, I leaned into the back seat and lifted her from the car seat. She's heavy, compact and warm, full of strength and energy, her skin a light golden color.
Her chubby legs are getting longer and her knees and elbows and the back of her hands are dimpled. She's stretching out to run, but for right now, she still clings to me like a monkey, her hands grasping my tee shirt, looking around her with interest. She's a willing and cooperative little back seat rider, happy to get in and buckled up and happy to get unbuckled and out, stretching her arms up, intently looking at me.
Sometimes it comes over me, the goodness of my life like a wave and I have to pause and let the wave break over me. Then I must break into ridiculous baby talk and refer to myself in the third person.
"Mommy loves you!" I must whisper to her, in delight. "Who is Mommy's little baby buddy? Who is Mommy's little companion? Mommy loves to spend all day with you! Mommy loves your company. You are the joy of the Mommy!"
Inside the store, I went carefully up and down the isles with the small blue cart. I searched through the racks, sliding one hanger after another, hearing my mother's voice in my head- her you have to be patient and persistent to find the good stuff- a find! I missed her, that cheerful veteran of garage sales and second hand shops.
Merissa, however, was not convinced about this slow and steady pace of shopping, especially after she was discouraged from attempting to eat the merchandise. She prefers grocery shopping, where every isle is a new adventure and the atmosphere is cool and brisk and store clerks coo at her.
When her father gets home, she stares up at him, her mouth dropped open in delight, starry eyed. When that broad shouldered soldier in uniform leans in to kiss her, her eyes get wider and wider. She hangs out with him on the couch while I get dinner and I see the back of their two heads, one shaved close per Army regulation, one soft and downy.
Even then, when I am exhausted and stressed by the noise of the television and the growing mess in the kitchen and the fact that I still have the home stretch of the evening before me, the sight of those two heads fills me with fondness.
It's July and the heat is oppressive. Long after sunset, the air remains humid, heavy with the scent of warm earth, pine needles and green growing things. The sky holds a dusky blue color, like the bottom of a glass bottle, thick and glowing faintly. Birds flit through the shadows, darting over the grass in pursuit of insects.
My baby still sleeps on her belly with her head pillowed on her arms, her knees curled up, but in the day, she is lifting off, pushing with her hands and straightening her sturdy legs, reaching forward to grasp anything, finding sounds and linking them together and intently tracking cheerios across the tray of her high chair.
I knew I couldn't hold onto this year and I knew it would go quickly, but I knew those things in theory. Now I know it in practice. I know the rest of her childhood will pass by like this; the rest of my life will pass by like this. This one year has given me a greater understanding of the brevity and beauty of life than anything else I've even known.
When I was younger, I assumed that I would have a whole brood, that being a mother would be my most basic identity. I assumed this even when I was thirty years old, when I married Keith and waited during his deployment for him to return and our family to begin, the happy chaos, the flotsam and jetsam of many children.
I assumed this until we moved to Kentucky, and then that dream began to ebb slowly away. That was five years ago, I think. Almost five years now. I lost that dream slowly, pushing myself to walk and then jog along the golf paths in winter and early spring, making my body do at least one thing I could control.
Now that dream seems foreign to me. I am surprised to remember it. I don't think it was ever real to me; it was a kind of mirage. I would have stepped into it and made it real, if I could have, but the reality would have been something completely different.
The same now too, when I consider the future, what it holds. What will it mean and what will it look like? I don't know. I can hold to a mirage and run toward it, if I want, if I choose to do that. But I don't want to, because I don't want to lose what's real right now, the precious and imperfect life that is given to me right now.
So I must swoop my almost one year old daughter up in my arms and kiss her and love on her while she is here, as she is passing through, one of the greatest gifts I ever received and so different from my first expectations.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
May 20th
I stood watching Merissa as she tried to reach for a toy. She was lying on her stomach on the thick carpet of her room; I was down the hallway, leaning against the open door to the master bedroom. Her world was nothing but the warmth of the carpet and the fall of light and the hum of someone's lawn mower- and this toy, just out of reach.
I saw her try again and again to grab the toy, her hand sometimes making contact only to send it rolling further away. She would pause and retract her arms, as though to regroup before reaching out again, fingers groping, straining forward, toes digging into the carpet.
I wondered if she wasn't merely reaching for the toy, but for herself, aware of nothing but the need to stretch out into who she was becoming. Everything around her supported this growing into self, everything was focused into this one moment reaching into the next. It must be tantalizing, just at the tip of her fingers, who she knew she could be, must be, was going to be.
She doesn't remember who she was and she can't see so far ahead as to be worried about the shape she will eventually take- she lives always on the liminal space. Her life is a perfect sphere moving just beyond her current ability, rolling her into the next.
This work she does is full of urgency, frustration and joy. On one reach she finally clamped the toy between her finger and thumb in a secure grip. Aware of this, she snagged the toy immediately to her mouth and bit it, proprietarily. It was hers; she had reached forward into herself and taken hold and now she would enjoy it for all it was worth. She made no sound, but her whole little body was filled with the intensity with triumph, both hands now firmly around the block.
It sounds strange, perhaps, but I felt as though I'd been allowed to see something sacred. I feel this way, sometimes, watching her grow.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
May 7th
Sometimes I am asleep, sometimes I am dreaming and sometimes I am in the inner place, breathing with Him. My dreams are like memories; yellow walls, a wooden floor, a chest of drawers looming out of proportion. Some feeling of dread filled me as I sank further into sleep, into the memory; I am propelled away from the dream by my fear. I go inward, where it seems I just was, before sleep overtook me.
"I don't want to!" I whispered to Jesus, alarmed, "I don't want to remember." Whatever it is, I don't want to fall any further into it. Memories are embedded in me like shrapnel, but on the edge of sleep, sometimes I roll into the hard edge of one, previously undiscovered.
Get up, He says kindly, get up and make yourself some tea.
So I throw the covers back and get up, leave the feeling of being smothered. I wish I could throw the windows open, I wish I could sit and write for hours, but I go downstairs. The shadows of the trees are cast against the bright white stones of the landscaping, moving in the wind.
The downstairs is quiet and sterile, the green everywhere outside trapped behind the window glass. I take Merissa outside as much as possible, in the morning to water the flowers and in the early afternoon to play in her swing and in the late afternoon to sit in the open garage to wait for Keith.
Still, I feel trapped in the house, closed down for the summer. I sit down at the computer and I wait for the water to heat. Sometimes in the afternoon, I turn on the television to see how the world sees itself, but what I want is to write and write and write, with the windows open.
At my desk, the verse on my flip calendar says,
"I long, yes, I faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord. With my whole being, body and soul, I will shout joyfully to the Living God." Psalm 84:3NT
I feel that kind of dull, throbbing hunger in me and I try to push it away. I have too much to do to get caught up in that ache that can leave each day burst open and empty, my heart bruised, even when I'm in His arms in the inner place.
I've spent the morning writing about Jesus and it's not enough. It's glorious at first and intoxicating, to write and then all at once, it is not enough. Seeing Him through the writing becomes flat, a dead end. I knew this would happen. Still, each time I can't help the swell of joy as I am caught up in a creation born of love, and then the collapse later, when it falls short of the living thing.
Seeing through the veil is not enough. I throw myself into HIs arms and breathe, but it falls short of pure sight. I feel guilty about this, this insatiable hunger that waits in me. "Search my heart and know all my thoughts," I whisper to Him, laying my soul, my heart, open, wanting to be sorted through, sorted out and put right.
Jenny, I know your heart, He assures me.
He knows my heart and He loves me; I hear it all through His voice. He knows I'm the field sown with wheat and yet heavy with tares all tangled up in it, waiting, waiting, to be sorted out and lifted free, all that chaff shaken off and blown away by the wind.
But now I'm sunk down into the tangle of this present life, the pain sown into it. Right now, if I am to regain my peace, I must take up again my practice of the presence of God here and now, and do the one thing that I must do, with love for Him, with Him, and then the next thing and the next thing and let the longing fall back deep within me.
This longing is stretching me out thin and fine, it's burnishing me to a heavy gloss. It reaches so far that it stretches my faith out by necessity. I can try and escape the pressure of this burnishing, but in the end, I don't have the strength for it. I must wait and yield the moment over, where He is with me.
*
Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colours
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,
leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so helplessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs —-
leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.
Sunset, by Rainer Maria Rilke
English version by Robert Bly
Original Language German
"I don't want to!" I whispered to Jesus, alarmed, "I don't want to remember." Whatever it is, I don't want to fall any further into it. Memories are embedded in me like shrapnel, but on the edge of sleep, sometimes I roll into the hard edge of one, previously undiscovered.
Get up, He says kindly, get up and make yourself some tea.
So I throw the covers back and get up, leave the feeling of being smothered. I wish I could throw the windows open, I wish I could sit and write for hours, but I go downstairs. The shadows of the trees are cast against the bright white stones of the landscaping, moving in the wind.
The downstairs is quiet and sterile, the green everywhere outside trapped behind the window glass. I take Merissa outside as much as possible, in the morning to water the flowers and in the early afternoon to play in her swing and in the late afternoon to sit in the open garage to wait for Keith.
Still, I feel trapped in the house, closed down for the summer. I sit down at the computer and I wait for the water to heat. Sometimes in the afternoon, I turn on the television to see how the world sees itself, but what I want is to write and write and write, with the windows open.
At my desk, the verse on my flip calendar says,
"I long, yes, I faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord. With my whole being, body and soul, I will shout joyfully to the Living God." Psalm 84:3NT
I feel that kind of dull, throbbing hunger in me and I try to push it away. I have too much to do to get caught up in that ache that can leave each day burst open and empty, my heart bruised, even when I'm in His arms in the inner place.
I've spent the morning writing about Jesus and it's not enough. It's glorious at first and intoxicating, to write and then all at once, it is not enough. Seeing Him through the writing becomes flat, a dead end. I knew this would happen. Still, each time I can't help the swell of joy as I am caught up in a creation born of love, and then the collapse later, when it falls short of the living thing.
Seeing through the veil is not enough. I throw myself into HIs arms and breathe, but it falls short of pure sight. I feel guilty about this, this insatiable hunger that waits in me. "Search my heart and know all my thoughts," I whisper to Him, laying my soul, my heart, open, wanting to be sorted through, sorted out and put right.
Jenny, I know your heart, He assures me.
He knows my heart and He loves me; I hear it all through His voice. He knows I'm the field sown with wheat and yet heavy with tares all tangled up in it, waiting, waiting, to be sorted out and lifted free, all that chaff shaken off and blown away by the wind.
But now I'm sunk down into the tangle of this present life, the pain sown into it. Right now, if I am to regain my peace, I must take up again my practice of the presence of God here and now, and do the one thing that I must do, with love for Him, with Him, and then the next thing and the next thing and let the longing fall back deep within me.
This longing is stretching me out thin and fine, it's burnishing me to a heavy gloss. It reaches so far that it stretches my faith out by necessity. I can try and escape the pressure of this burnishing, but in the end, I don't have the strength for it. I must wait and yield the moment over, where He is with me.
*
Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colours
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,
leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so helplessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs —-
leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.
Sunset, by Rainer Maria Rilke
English version by Robert Bly
Original Language German
Monday, May 5, 2014
May 5th
This week we closed the windows for the summer. There might come a day or two in the next five months when we can open them again, but for the most part, they will remain shut and locked while the A/C runs its little heart out and I wilt slowly away until the middle of October, when they can be flung open again.
In May, Merissa will be nine months old. Each morning her face looks a little more like an adorable toddler and less like a tiny baby, with her large, perfectly molded head, creamy skin, round cheeks and large eyes that move swiftly, full of intention, focused, taking in as much as possible before zeroing in an targets and then lunging toward them, damn the torpedoes.
When placed on the hardwood floor, she slowly turns in ever widening circles, viewing the kitchen from first this angle and then that one, but mostly being fascinated with the wood grain. She also moves slowly backward.
Her feet touch the floor when in her walker, and she propels herself backward when in that as well. She will appear slowly, in segments, from around the corner of the kitchen bar, one finger in the corner of her mouth, smiling hugely at this leisurely form of locomotion, and also at the fact that she has discovered my whereabouts.
One pearly tooth has emerged from her lower gums and it shows sometimes when she is grinning or laughing. This adds some indefinable something to her adorableness, which I thought could not be added to, until I saw this tooth.
I think right now is the most delicious stage, but I have thought that about every stage since she turned three months. Before that, my memory is vague with misery. I was anxious about everything- how much she was eating, sleeping, pooping. She was so helpless that I felt like I could never relax and just enjoy her, and not much of her personality showed through, though I could see glimpses of it.
Besides, I was so sleep deprived I could barely enjoy anything. I felt as if I were constantly short of something, not just sleep, but time and perception and ability and serenity. I was constantly running short and desperately wanting more of those things.
Recently, I realized I had still been living out of that feeling of scarcity- still feeling desperate for just some more of something- usually time. But it was more than just a loss of time, it was this feeling that there wasn't enough, period. I felt as if I was constantly scrambling, heckled by this persistent, vague anxiety, but I didn't understand it.
I don't remember how I made the connection, but a month or so ago, I reached a different and deeper acceptance that there is never going to be enough time. Children are quite effective teaching aids for this lesson. Time is constantly running out, running between my fingers and I can't hold on to it and I can't get it back. It just flows through. In accepting this, I feel much more at peace.
I think we live in a culture that doesn't want to let go of anything. It refuses to age, let alone die. Choices can never be diminished, they must be expanded! They must be bewildering in their variety. Everyone must be distracted, dazed by the overhead light of the store, by the rapidly flashing commercials rolling by in triumphant procession. Ability to purchase must expand, money can be printed over night, the future must be spent for the present.
Anyway. Lately, I've been consciously letting go of things. Not things, necessarily, but embracing the sense that I can't have or keep everything, and that is okay.
For example, I can be caught up in writing and my daughter can wake up, and I can be faced with the sudden realization that I have run out of time to write. So I let the thought that I was composing fall away. I might never be able to capture it in just the way that I was on the verge of, but that is increasingly okay with me. If it was something well thought out, it will come back to me. If not, probably I need to grow into it more.
I'm moving slowly from one moment to the next, putting down one thing, taking up the next. The things that I'm doing aren't important or visible to the outside world. I am not productive or efficient and my course is frequently altering depending on what I am asked to do in that moment.
But I generally feel so peaceful; much more peaceful than I ever felt before. I also feel an increasing sense of gratitude welling up in me, gratitude for just those things that I have. When I start to feel anxious or frustrated, I now realize that this is probably because I am trying to hold onto something that I need to let go of, or I am bracing for something anticipated in the future. Either way, I must let go in order to be peaceful in the present.
This morning, I stood still in the kitchen, breathing in the scent of Merissa's downy hair and letting that moment open up as it was- she with her tiny tooth, dimpled elbows, wearing her white onesie, slightly soiled at the neck with spilled formula. It is the most delicious stage, it was the most perfect moment, and I'm so grateful for it, even as it is passing me by.
In May, Merissa will be nine months old. Each morning her face looks a little more like an adorable toddler and less like a tiny baby, with her large, perfectly molded head, creamy skin, round cheeks and large eyes that move swiftly, full of intention, focused, taking in as much as possible before zeroing in an targets and then lunging toward them, damn the torpedoes.
When placed on the hardwood floor, she slowly turns in ever widening circles, viewing the kitchen from first this angle and then that one, but mostly being fascinated with the wood grain. She also moves slowly backward.
Her feet touch the floor when in her walker, and she propels herself backward when in that as well. She will appear slowly, in segments, from around the corner of the kitchen bar, one finger in the corner of her mouth, smiling hugely at this leisurely form of locomotion, and also at the fact that she has discovered my whereabouts.
One pearly tooth has emerged from her lower gums and it shows sometimes when she is grinning or laughing. This adds some indefinable something to her adorableness, which I thought could not be added to, until I saw this tooth.
I think right now is the most delicious stage, but I have thought that about every stage since she turned three months. Before that, my memory is vague with misery. I was anxious about everything- how much she was eating, sleeping, pooping. She was so helpless that I felt like I could never relax and just enjoy her, and not much of her personality showed through, though I could see glimpses of it.
Besides, I was so sleep deprived I could barely enjoy anything. I felt as if I were constantly short of something, not just sleep, but time and perception and ability and serenity. I was constantly running short and desperately wanting more of those things.
Recently, I realized I had still been living out of that feeling of scarcity- still feeling desperate for just some more of something- usually time. But it was more than just a loss of time, it was this feeling that there wasn't enough, period. I felt as if I was constantly scrambling, heckled by this persistent, vague anxiety, but I didn't understand it.
I don't remember how I made the connection, but a month or so ago, I reached a different and deeper acceptance that there is never going to be enough time. Children are quite effective teaching aids for this lesson. Time is constantly running out, running between my fingers and I can't hold on to it and I can't get it back. It just flows through. In accepting this, I feel much more at peace.
I think we live in a culture that doesn't want to let go of anything. It refuses to age, let alone die. Choices can never be diminished, they must be expanded! They must be bewildering in their variety. Everyone must be distracted, dazed by the overhead light of the store, by the rapidly flashing commercials rolling by in triumphant procession. Ability to purchase must expand, money can be printed over night, the future must be spent for the present.
Anyway. Lately, I've been consciously letting go of things. Not things, necessarily, but embracing the sense that I can't have or keep everything, and that is okay.
For example, I can be caught up in writing and my daughter can wake up, and I can be faced with the sudden realization that I have run out of time to write. So I let the thought that I was composing fall away. I might never be able to capture it in just the way that I was on the verge of, but that is increasingly okay with me. If it was something well thought out, it will come back to me. If not, probably I need to grow into it more.
I'm moving slowly from one moment to the next, putting down one thing, taking up the next. The things that I'm doing aren't important or visible to the outside world. I am not productive or efficient and my course is frequently altering depending on what I am asked to do in that moment.
But I generally feel so peaceful; much more peaceful than I ever felt before. I also feel an increasing sense of gratitude welling up in me, gratitude for just those things that I have. When I start to feel anxious or frustrated, I now realize that this is probably because I am trying to hold onto something that I need to let go of, or I am bracing for something anticipated in the future. Either way, I must let go in order to be peaceful in the present.
This morning, I stood still in the kitchen, breathing in the scent of Merissa's downy hair and letting that moment open up as it was- she with her tiny tooth, dimpled elbows, wearing her white onesie, slightly soiled at the neck with spilled formula. It is the most delicious stage, it was the most perfect moment, and I'm so grateful for it, even as it is passing me by.
Friday, May 2, 2014
May 2nd
I
keep thinking about what Jesus said- that it was the will that was wanting to be like God- to
be god. And I keep thinking, is the will itself bad?
I don’t know how to answer this question, but some things occurred to me.
Self-control is both self-generated and a fruit of the Spirit. It’s the last one listed and comes after gentleness, but it is certainly there. Self-control is not bad, but I’ll bet that self-generated control and the control that grows from the Spirit look different and have different results.
Which makes me think of Paul. Paul, as Saul, was perhaps the epitome of the self-controlled religious person. He had to exert a great deal of self-control in order to achieve that level of religious perfection. One of the results of this was that he ended up persecuting God.
Paul obviously still had a great deal of self-control in his ministry, or he could not have stayed such a difficult course, but this self-control- and every other miracle and action- came through the power and energy of Christ working through him, and most perfectly through his weakness.
Perhaps the legalistic mind set is somewhere at heart about a love of self and therefore the self is groomed, educated, and disciplined in order to come as close to God as possible- to be like God.
Which makes me think of what the serpent said to Eve:
"For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:4)
This lie is powerful, I can’t help thinking, because it is such a subtle mix of the truth and lie.
Eve was already like God, because she was created in the likeness of God. So, for her to desire the thing which she was already by design was not evil, it was natural. She was naturally going to be attracted to the expression of her own design. But the way Eve was like God was not in absolute knowledge.
I remember the first time I read that story and realized that God was actually withholding the knowledge of good and evil from mankind. If one doesn’t know good and evil, wouldn’t one be depraved? How could one know how to be good if one doesn’t know what good or evil is?
When I thought about it that way, I thought it was a terrible and weird thing that God should have given that commandment. It didn’t make any sense.
I asked Jesus, “Why couldn’t they have knowledge of good and evil?”
They had Me, Jesus replied.
They didn’t have knowledge, they had relationship. Jesus naturally modeled what good was. They didn’t know good in the abstract, they knew it in Person. In close, present relationship with Him, they would grow into being like Him, because they walked with Him and talked with Him and loved Him and received His love. They saw Him.
We weren’t created in the image of God’s absolute knowledge- which He does have; I think we were created in the image of how God relates.
And therein lies the will- are we going to will to be like God through moral knowledge leading to moral perfection through our efforts, or are we going to surrender ourselves to Him in loving relationship and let His life be expressed through us in the unique and beloved ways that we are created?
Because I think that the expression of God is love. This love is defined by the giving up of God’s self to God. Abba is expressed and made manifest through His Son. He willed not to be expressed only from Himself, but through His Son. The Son lives only through Abba and does only His will. The Spirit comes from Abba and reveals the Son. They give completely to each other and receive each other completely, continuously, in love, surrendering who They are to each other.
I don’t know how to answer this question, but some things occurred to me.
Self-control is both self-generated and a fruit of the Spirit. It’s the last one listed and comes after gentleness, but it is certainly there. Self-control is not bad, but I’ll bet that self-generated control and the control that grows from the Spirit look different and have different results.
Which makes me think of Paul. Paul, as Saul, was perhaps the epitome of the self-controlled religious person. He had to exert a great deal of self-control in order to achieve that level of religious perfection. One of the results of this was that he ended up persecuting God.
Paul obviously still had a great deal of self-control in his ministry, or he could not have stayed such a difficult course, but this self-control- and every other miracle and action- came through the power and energy of Christ working through him, and most perfectly through his weakness.
Perhaps the legalistic mind set is somewhere at heart about a love of self and therefore the self is groomed, educated, and disciplined in order to come as close to God as possible- to be like God.
Which makes me think of what the serpent said to Eve:
"For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:4)
This lie is powerful, I can’t help thinking, because it is such a subtle mix of the truth and lie.
Eve was already like God, because she was created in the likeness of God. So, for her to desire the thing which she was already by design was not evil, it was natural. She was naturally going to be attracted to the expression of her own design. But the way Eve was like God was not in absolute knowledge.
I remember the first time I read that story and realized that God was actually withholding the knowledge of good and evil from mankind. If one doesn’t know good and evil, wouldn’t one be depraved? How could one know how to be good if one doesn’t know what good or evil is?
When I thought about it that way, I thought it was a terrible and weird thing that God should have given that commandment. It didn’t make any sense.
I asked Jesus, “Why couldn’t they have knowledge of good and evil?”
They had Me, Jesus replied.
They didn’t have knowledge, they had relationship. Jesus naturally modeled what good was. They didn’t know good in the abstract, they knew it in Person. In close, present relationship with Him, they would grow into being like Him, because they walked with Him and talked with Him and loved Him and received His love. They saw Him.
We weren’t created in the image of God’s absolute knowledge- which He does have; I think we were created in the image of how God relates.
And therein lies the will- are we going to will to be like God through moral knowledge leading to moral perfection through our efforts, or are we going to surrender ourselves to Him in loving relationship and let His life be expressed through us in the unique and beloved ways that we are created?
Because I think that the expression of God is love. This love is defined by the giving up of God’s self to God. Abba is expressed and made manifest through His Son. He willed not to be expressed only from Himself, but through His Son. The Son lives only through Abba and does only His will. The Spirit comes from Abba and reveals the Son. They give completely to each other and receive each other completely, continuously, in love, surrendering who They are to each other.
This is beyond head knowledge, it's relating. It’s seeing.
It’s not that good isn’t good or that bad isn’t bad, it’s that we can either try to make ourselves like God through knowledge and the application of our will to the task of moral perfection and control, or we can be like God as we surrender ourselves to God in complete love, receiving His self-sacrificing love and allowing that love and life to be expressed through us.
This does require self-control- or the application of the will- but this self-control is a fruit of the Spirit, one that arises up through us by the life of God within us, as we are abiding in the Vine.
Perhaps there is always this choice and I wonder if this is in some way connected to idolatry. I wonder if the legalistic pursuit of private perfection is not one of the most potent disguises for idolatry, as it enables one to worship oneself in the name of God- that is, to give oneself constant attention and regard, to feel satisfied in oneself when one achieves something and to punish oneself when one fails and through these things, to feel in control- to save oneself.
The fruits of these two kinds of self-control are almost completely opposite. If we use self-will within ourselves to be like God and achieve any kind of success at all, eventually I fear we will run the risk of crucifying God Himself in the protection of our godly interests and position.
On the other hand, if we choose to surrender our will to God in love and allow His life to be expressed through us in intimate relationship- in the giving up of ourselves for the other- it is very likely that we ourselves will be crucified.
*
Being a child of grace does not merely mean being one who experiences the forbearance of God and who is forgiven by Him. All the works of God in man’s heart are works of grace. Grace means that it is done by God and not by man. A person who receives more grace is one who allows God to work on him more, while a person who receives less grace is the one who allows God to work on him less. God has the grace, but man will not necessarily allow God to do all the works in him. Everything that is done of the self belongs to the law, and everything that is of God belongs to grace. The church is full of children of grace, yet only a very small number of people will allow grace to work on them to the point of perfection. Being the only child of grace does not mean that the child is the only one... (The meaning of the only child is that there is an absolute union with the Lord, and that everything is the Lord’s. She has reached a complete union with the Lord.)
-The Song of Songs, by Watchman Nee, A Life Within the Veil (6:4-13)
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