R&R

There's a rainbow and a river outside my door, and the sky is the color I fancy it will be when Jesus comes back. The clouds cover the blue and are so dark they are nearly purple, the living breathing definition of grouchy. But there's light too, coming from somewhere that I can't see, and it's like it's trapped underneath those heavy heavy clouds an it just keeps bouncing and fracturing and shining.

Light never dies, it just goes somewhere else for the time being.

There's a rainbow and river outside my door, and I'm wondering why things are the way they are and why I always wonder why things are the way they are.

We just tried to send my roommates weinerdog down the raging gutter river like baby Moses, but she resisted and flipped us off. It's true, I saw it happen. Then we raced pine cones in the raging gutter river, while our elderly across the street neighbor scowled at us standing at his door in only his short shorts. I waved and he smiled. Sometimes old men aren't angry, their faces just make them look that way. Matt Miller won the pine cone race. Of course.

Mostly, when I think too much or try to withdraw the spiritual symbolism of of standing at my doorstep gazing at a rainbow and a raging river and I remember that God gave Noah a rainbow to show him that He would keep all of His promises after destroying the world, the best thing to do is go run around outside and yell.

Yelling always makes me feel better.

Everything is More Difficult with Mittens On

I ran even though I didn’t need to run. I would make the next train, but I wanted on this one, so I ran. The train was approaching, the whistles were blowing, and the lights were flashing. I was going to make it. I would rush through the door, collapse into a seat and have accomplished something for the day.
That’s not how it worked out. I raced across the tracks and as I did so, the strap on my old school Red Cross medic bag snapped. With the snap of that strap my fate was decided. My bag hung limp at my side, and my dreams for the day were crushed. So, sadden by the fact that my beloved bag was broken, I walked back to my car.
It was a cold gray day. When I reached my office, it was pouring rain outside. Pouring isn’t quite right, the sky was pelting pedestrians with droplets of icy pain. As the rain splashed on my windshield, I laughed out loud, thanking God that He had planned the details of my morning so I would be sheltered when the rain hit.
Even though this isn’t the stuff of miracles, it was important to me. It illustrated something God has taught me lately. And not just lately, I think He’s been teaching me this lesson for the whole of my Christian life: TRUST HIM.
Trusting God is the crux of the entire Christian faith. I trust Him with my salvation. I trust Him for forgiveness of my sins. I trust Him for my everyday providence. I trust Him with my future and I trust Him with my heart.
Trusting Him with my heart sounds easy, but has proven to be complicated beyond measure. Trusting God with my heart means that He has possession of it. I do not. But it’s my heart, right? No, it’s not. I gave my heart to Jesus.
If my heart is God’s to with as He wishes, it means that He is in control of my heart. But giving God control of my heart cannot happen in one prayer, or one pronouncement of faith. There are certain areas where it’s easy to give God control. He can have my future because I don’t know what to do with it. He can have my past because I no longer want to be associated with it.
My heart is a different story. To genuinely give God my heart, to take my name off the deed of ownership and put His in its stead, I must understand what’s inside of my heart. My heart is the core of my flesh. For as much as society celebrates the heart as the source for wisdom and truth, mine is not. Mine is full of base selfishness and a longing to gratify my own desires. I've learned that my heart is manipulative. I will say or do one thing which is pleasing on the outside, while on the inside I am scheming to get my own way, leaving God out of the equation.
I’ve always considered myself to be a straight forward person. That is why I was astounded by my own manipulative nature. I know the “rules” of Christianity pretty well and I what’s expected of a “nice Christian girl.” But it I’ve also learned how to work the system.
Lately, I have been desperate for God’s will in a particular area of my life. I gave this precise matter to God and I prayed that His will be done. I begged God to make Himself evident to me so that I would know how to honor and obey Him. Then I waited, and soon I prayed these sentiments again, more fervently and with deeper passion. Only you Lord. Only your will.
God began to work in me. The more I prayed this prayer, the more apparent it became that my actions and even my thoughts were not coinciding with what I was confessing to God. I was telling God everything I wanted Him to know, but my motives and my actions were not corresponding.
I was working the system. I would pray with desperation for God’s will, then act out of my own will, following the rules, but still desiring control over the situation. My prayers seemed like an effort to get God in my side, and with my actions, I was testing the waters to see if I could get what I wanted. That was the problem.
Even though I had spent all this time in earnest prayer, I was not giving God complete control of my heart. I was not allowing Him to take out of my heart the filth and selfish desires which seem to fill it to the brim. I was masking my intentions with truth, like wearing mittens to hide my hands from the cold. I was using God’s protection to my own advantage and hiding the sores that lay underneath. When God finally showed me this, I realized I had behaved this way for years, showing the world and even God one version of myself and at the core still working to achieve my own means.
When I understood that about myself, I was disgusted. I came face to face with the vileness of my own sin. On the outside, my actions would not seem that horrible, but to me they were wretched because I knew that by seeking this control I wasn’t trusting God. By not trusting God, I was sinning against Him. It’s one thing to recognize your own sin, and it’s another to recognize your own hypocrisy.
But I don’t have to stay that way. The most freeing thing in the world, is to not just coming face to face with my sin, but to come face to face with the unfailing grace of my God. His mercy allows me to live my life unfettered, grasping his unconditional love with naked hands.

The Pre-Me

I lose things. Often. I’ve lost my wallet, my keys and I’m always looking for that other shoe. The old adage is true – no matter what it is that I’ve lost, it’s always in the last place I look. I’ve learned the fastest way to find my lost item is in fact to retrace my steps, to go back to the place where I saw it last.
Except for my faith. When I lose my faith, even if only for a moment, I cannot go back to the last place where I saw it. I cannot retrace my steps to find it lying on the kitchen table.
To say something like “the moment I lost my faith” seems cataclysmic, but it really wasn’t. It was quiet. I was alone, in my car, in my office parking lot the moment I listened to the whisper that God could not be trusted. I had certainly heard that whisper before, but this time, I listened. It was terrifying.
In that split second, my heart busted wide open. That moment in time changed my future. I knew I could not go back to the way that life used to be, but I also knew I could not put one foot in front of the other with out Jesus. I quickly humbled myself before God, but like Peter, in my very heart I could not ignore that I had just denied my Jesus.
This loss of faith was not something that was noticeable on the exterior. I didn’t leave my church, or abandon my principles. I didn’t rebel and decry the notion of a personal God. Instead, I begged God to come to my rescue. I may have lost trust in Him, I won’t deny that, but I still knew of His goodness and His faithfulness to me. I knew that He would not abandon me.
I came to a point when I recognized that so much of what I had been basing my reality on simply was not true. Even the way I had interpreted God’s hand in my life was based on these misassumptions. I had based my life not so much on a lie, but an inaccuracy, and I needed to rebuild. I was living for the storybook ending I thought was coming, but I wasn’t even reading the right story.
God did restore my faith, with one that was greater than ever before. Different most certainly, but greater. What I have now is a faith of quiet confidence. My Father will prevail. I am His child, victory is mine, and I wait patiently for the day when all things hidden in darkness come to light.
I love God and believe He is doing a good work in my life. But this new way of faith is a little bit shaky and the truths that calm my fears now aren’t exactly the same as the truths to which I once clung. I would like to go back because that other faith was easier and my circumstances now are hard. But I can’t, I can’t pretend that I’m the same and I can’t ignore the new place God is taking me.
Each moment of each day, God is using something to change part of me. Maybe He is also doing something else to keep another part of me exactly how it is. Because of this ebb and flow, I understand the truth of the biblical promise that I am a new creation.
For many years, I thought that newness only applied to the tear-filled moment after the 12-year old me prayed to accept Christ into my life. From there on out, I thought the Christian me stayed the same creation until heaven. But the 15-year old me was certainly different that the 19-year old me, just as the 24-year old me was different from the brand new, post loss of faith, 25-year old me. All of these me’s from years past that are so much alike and so much different add up to make the me of now. This me will press forward and learn more and change a little bit and stay the same a little bit.
Tomorrow morning when I wake up I will be a new creation. Tomorrow night when I fall asleep, I will be a new creation. There is no end to this newness. Thus my faith must daily, sometimes even hourly evolve. I cannot remain the same person and pursue God.
I still don’t understand why God allowed me to live in that deluded state, believing and clinging to something that most certainly was not in my future. I do know though that God used me in that time. I know that He changed me and molded me to become more like Him, to gain some of the wisdom that I so desperately desire. My faith at that time was based on an outcome, a promise I believed God had given me, rather than in the actual person of God. It is He who is described as both unchanging and as an all-consuming fire. Upon encountering God, I cannot expect to stay the same. Of course He will change me.
But He doesn’t change me into a different form of the me that already exists. He makes me new, new like the morning sun, new like the whitest snow.