Chocolate-Stuffed Worrier

I tend to be a worrier. Often I am deep in thought about some problem I can't solve, some part of myself I want to fix, something I desperately want to control but can't. I think if I could just wrap my hands around that thing that is just outside of my grip I'd have peace and be ok.

I overestimate the size of my hands.

And I underestimate the volume of worry. Trying to wrap my hands around it is a losing game no matter how I play it. If you have ever seen the Lucy episode where she stands in front of a conveyer belt stuffing chocolate down her shirt and in her mouth and anywhere else she can stuff it, you understand what I mean. Worry is just like those pieces of chocolate. You pick one up, think you can breathe easily for a moment, then you look down and see a handful more in its place. It never stops.

So what's a chocolate-stuffed worrier to do?

Walk away. Lay them down and walk away. Instead of trying to hold it all together with my insufficient hands, I can find hands that are bigger and settle mine there, in His.

Hunger

I was heading east on the 10 this morning, nearing my exit. Ahead of me, all over the sky as far as I could safely see was beauty that touched the place in me where words are scarce. The place where longing feels like the size and pressure of a fist on a chest. I have known God most of my life and loved Him just as long. But on my way to work this morning, looking at the way the sun broke through the clouds, lighting up a stream of sideways sunlight in a storm-swollen sky, I wanted to love Him more. I wanted to know Him more than I do, more than I ever have. He was as big and fierce and beautiful to me as the expanse of the sky in front of me, and I caught just a glimpse. Just a glimpse was enough to stir my heart from apathy of another day to hunger.

The Brave Unfamiliar - Final Installment

One of these days I'm going to see all the ways He has led me. In the dark, in the hurt, in the dreams, in all of these ways, He has led me. He has taken care of me just like He said He would. One of these days I will finally realize that I never had to be afraid. I will finally understand the most important thing I could ever do is just simply rest in His love. That truth will set me free, just like He said it would.

And that truth will let me see Him, finally. Him, in His glory and protectiveness and fierce affection. As soon as I see Him, I won't be able to look at anything the same way again, because He will be there. He will be there at the job that makes me almost lose heart so often, walking beside me in those hallways whispering words of courage in my ears and molding my hand exactly to His own. He will be there in the lonely days, when I want what I don't have so badly that it hurts like a real ache, gently nudging me forward in the path He forged for me because He knows it's the best way. He will be there in the silence, letting me squirm and sweat beneath my barbell of effort, the ways I try to reach Him.

So many years of silence. So many years of squirming and sweating. He will be there, here, where He has been all along. The truth will let me see Him and it will lift the weight of the struggle off of me. Whether little by little or all at once, I will be free. And I will know that He has led me to that freedom from the very start.

This is the brave unfamiliar. It is happening already. It is happening now.

The Brave Unfamiliar...Continued

I've been thinking about what it means to face the brave unfamiliar. How does a person who has had only one way of approaching God for most of her life walk away from what she knows? It's not the God I know that I am walking away from. It's those old ways, the nerveous ways, of being in relationship with Him that I want to lay to rest. I've been thinking about how best to do that.

So I have been praying a couple of specific things daily: Holy Spirit, please lead me to truth. Holy Spirit, please reveal to me the love of the Father. Then I say out loud so I can hear myself say it: I rely on you to lead me to truth and I rely on you to reveal the love of the Father to me. I've never said that kind of thing about relying on Him before. I guess that makes it an unfamiliar idea. Ok. Progress.

I've also been thinking about how much fear motivates me. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of losing love and affection. Fear of messing up. Fear of time running out. Fear of my own shame. The list goes on. In my walk with God these past twenty years, fear has been as present and as strong a motivator as love. I hate to admit, but it's true. I studied the Bible for hours every day as a kid because I wanted to know Him more, yes, but also because I wanted to stay on His good side. I traded in relationship for performance. And the thing that kills me is that I knew what I was doing. I have known all along, but I couldn't let go of the fear because I couldn't let go of control because I could never accept that He made me good enough. So I made up my own rules for my own game and I measured my worth by how well I played. And I pushed Him away.

I have had this longing, deep and all-consuming, for as long as I can remember: To know the love of God in freedom and without fear. The problem is that there is only one way to freedom: Truth. And truth doesn't play by my rules.

The truth is fear is a waste of time. I know I've let it waste a lot of mine. Thank God tomorrow is a new day and His mercy will be waiting for me when I wake up.

My Two Favorite Places Besides Belgium

Ever since I was a kid, I have had this dream, a Big Dream, to live in Franklin, Tennessee and Canada. For those of you who have sort of grown used to having me around, you may blame my love of these distant lands on contemporary Christian music and Anne of Green Gables. As a young girl of ten or elven, being the innocent dreamer that I was, I was pretty sure that if I moved to Tennessee, I'd move in next to Amy Grant on one of the neighboring rolling hills of good old Franklin. And I was just as sure that I would be just as spellbound by the Lake of Shining Waters as Anne was on Prince Edward Island (and maybe I'd even meet my Gilbert there, too). So, I set my sights on the great beyond to the East and North. By the time I turned thirteen, I was a goner. My heart had flown away to far off places. My dream was no longer the silly musings a child. Somewhere along the way, it turned into a Plan--The Great Someday. And as for all of this Southern California business, I knew deep down in my soul that, just like Dolly Parton, I was only Travellin' Through.

I know that some of you would like me to take this opportunity to convey that I have grown out of my foolish childhood fancies, but this I cannot do. I have a feeling, a feeling born of a dream, that I was made to roam the roads between Highway 40 and Highway 65 and to breathe in the fresh, Canadian air. Lord willing, The Great Someday will happen...someday. In the meantime, I supppose I will bide my time while lounging at the beach this weekend.

The Brave Unfamiliar

I wish I knew what it was that keeps me nerveous around the God of the universe after so many years. I have walked with Him a long time, but still so often I feel like a shy, timid child desperate for a mother's skirt to hide behind when He is near. My prayers are monologues I continually tweak for the listening pleasure of my audience of One. Sometimes I tire of hearing my own quiet voice in the car praying through my list of items, like rosary beads, each one. I yearn for intimacy and tell Him so when I am feeling brave, but I retreat back into my nerveous familiar as quickly as I can. I guess I'm safe there. My rigid routines are well-established there. I can get along just fine there. Only I wish I didn't have to. Because I believe that the God of the universe is a God of wild and tender love for me. And for you. I believe that He moved Heaven and Earth to get our attention. He gently, kindly shakes our shoulders with images of the Cross, begging us to open our eyes and see. Pleading with us to lay down all of the things we do to try to reach Him and realize that He has already taken care of it. He doesn't need our help. His shed blood needs no reinforcements. I know this is true and yet so often I try to give Him what I think He wants from me. Even when I know He isn't interested in those works of my hands, I offer them to Him anyways because it's what I know. What I know is safe and it keeps Him at arm's length.

That's just not good enough anymore. I've been playing in puddles in the mud while He stands off in the distance, where the water meets the shore, waiting for me to join Him. I see Him waiting and hope catches in my throat. Its time I leave behind the nerveous familiar, my mud puddles, go to Him and face the brave unfamiliar.

Love in the Dark

I want to be brave. Brave like the girl who glows love from her face. Who doesn't shy away from new things or new people or things that come up that change her plans and foil her carefully laid schedule. Brave like the girl who opens her arms wide to dissappoinment when it comes because love from the Father's hand is love in any form, even the form that speaks of dying before living. Dying so that the living can come. Sometimes the dying of one or two dreams lay ashes down that form the foundation, the very bottom layer, of suprises too good for guessing. Suprises that eternity keeps secret even thought it knows and is bursting to tell but for the look on the Great Surpriser's face. He sees what the girl cannot and He urges her to hope. He wills her to be brave. Not only because He knows how much she wants to be called by that name, but because He knows that what lies ahead of her will break her heart for love and build it again for love and for love, one must be brave. For now, love is in the waiting and the hoping and the silence. For now, love is in the dark. It will not always be so, but while it is there, so will I be. And He with me.

Here is the Battle Again

Here is the battle again. Here is that old opponent of mine, Hopelessness, with its boxing gloves on in the corner of the ring. Its over there on one side and I'm here on the other, wondering in this brief moment of calm how much longer we'll last. And wondering which one of us will fall first. We've been at it now more rounds than I can count. My face shows the marks of its punches, well-executed and well-positioned. I'm covered with the red stain of dried blood from past rounds and fresh blood from the latest banter back and forth. I look over there to see what damage I've done. Hoping to see some evidence that there is more than my own tenacity (or foolishness) to account for the fact that I'm still standing. Hoping to see signs of defeat on the face of my foe. It catches my eye. For a moment, the two of us are the only ones in the room. The voices around my adversary are silent. The noise of the crowd and the words of the people I have in my corner are muted by the lock of our eyes on each other. Then, with evil lighting up its face like a match when it catches fire, it smirks at me, as if daring me to come back for more. I return the smirk with gritted teeth and clenched fists. This time the fire is mine and it begins to boil beneath the surface of my skin. All of a sudden, I can remember every punch, every jab of every round we've fought. I see them for what they are. Lies. Fears. Perfect pictures of people who have what I want. Doubts about God. Questions about His heart towards me. ls He really all that interested in me? Does He really care about the desires of my heart? Can I really trust Him? Low blows from skilled hands. And just as clearly, I can see the next round and the one after that and the one after that. I can see my battered body, barely standing, staggering back to the center of the ring over and over again, regaining just enough strength in the in between to keep up the fight. What is worse, I can see that sinister smirk always on its face. In all the battles behind us and all the ones we have yet to fight. That taunting, arrogant expression it tried to mask until now, to keep me in the dark. To keep up the facade. But now that I've seen it, I know. I know that for my foe, this battle was never one to win. It was only one to fight. For my foe, the victory came every time I stepped back in to center ring for another round. And here I was thinking that I was getting somewhere. I was just playing into its hand. That smirk gave away my adversary's secret. And it gave me the upper hand. Here is the battle again. But this time it will play out differently. Because here I am, laying down my fighting gloves and walking away. I walk away knowing with certainty that my enemy, that old Hopelessness with a smirk on its face, never stood a chance and never will. Hope is mine. I will take it with me as I go.

Timidity

I think I understand. I live inside of my head the majority of the time. What I mean is that I process, feel, think, look at life, look at myself, look at people, from inside. Introspection. Introversion. It is like I am never fully present in the outside moment. There is always at least a part of me disengaged. I don't yet know how to control this or how to make it a workable system.

The other part of it is that I am one of those timid types. Whether from childhood or from the way i'm wired, I have taken the one-down approach with myself in relation to everyone else and God for as long as I can remember. I am in my head all the time and in my head there is a critic. I want to be proud of myself. I want to be free. But this is not going to happen as long I let the critic remain.

In writing, I feel this desperate need to pull from the deepest place and produce something from there. This is the only honest way. I can never seem to do it, though. I think its because the honesty has to go through the filter of the critic before it comes out.

So as long as I let the critic remain, I will be unable to produce honest writing, I will never be proud of myself, never content with who I am or satisfied with where I am. Unless I change my default from timidity to something more in line with the truth, I will probably not see very much change in the way that I do life. I will not see much change in the way that I relate to people or God and certainly not in the way that I live and breathe in my own skin.

At the same time, I find myself in a bit of a predicament in a practical, tangible sort of way. I thought my life, at this point, would be about marriage and babies and the things that coincide with marriage and babies like house-cleaning and cooking and doctors appointments and visits to the in-laws. But, as it turns out, I was wrong. And I forgot to make a contingency plan. So here I am, wondering what to do now. Not proud of myself, except that I play the drums in a band. I am always in my head and I am always at war with myself in my head. These circumstances don't help. Its probably for the best that I'm not married with babies yet, because I would have assumed that they would have silenced the critic and they wouldn't have. This critic is in me. It is mine. And it is mine to send packing.

I don't know what to do next. There is the external what do I do and the internal what do I do. And unfortunately niether of them are flashing a solution to me in bright lights. I think sometimes its ok not to know. Sometimes not knowing can be what is best for us because it makes us dependent on the One who knows. But that dependence can turn into a cop-out in lazy hands, too.

This is what I know. Timidity is what makes me so anxious. Its what keeps me from trusting God. Whether or not I forget all about this five minutes from now or tomorrow or next week, this is the truth. Timidity keeps me in the confines of a child needing permission before love. It keeps me ever wrestling the giant that won't ever go away. Because the giant is me.

The Bible

Lately, I have been in some sort of funk. A rough spot. I could try to explain, but I can't make sense of it, even to myself. It is unfamiliar and unpleasant and I have been unfamiliar and unpleasant in it. Hopefully it will go away soon.

Because of the funk, or maybe to defy it, I have been spending a lot of time memorizing Scripture. I used to do this a lot when I was younger, but haven't as much in recent years. I'm making my way through Psalm 119 because it is all about God's word. The law of the Lord. Longing for it. Needing it. Walking in its ways. I figure if I get this Word and keep it inside of my head, then it will trickle down to the rest of me and I will be ok. In Psalm 1, David talks about how the person who delights in the law of the Lord is like a tree planted by rivers of water. And in Jeremiah 17, there is another tree analogy. It says a man who trusts and hopes in the Lord will be like a tree planted by rivers of water that spreads out its roots by the river. It isn't afraid of heat or anxious about drought because it is so connected to the river. I want to be like that tree. I want my roots to be in Him and in His Word so that I will be grounded, not fragile. Those roots will make this funk trivial.

I first stumbled upon those verses in Jeremiah (17:7,8) a couple of years ago. They made a mark on me. I started the lines below then. I guess its sort of a prayer.

A Tree By the River

Make me like a tree by the river
whose leaves of green will ever grow
make me like a tree by the river
who finds its strength in the river's flow

Make me like a tree by the river
who fears no loneliness or shame
make me like a tree by the river
who calls itself by the river's name

Make me like a tree by the river
who worries not about its need
make me like a tree by the river
whose roots reach down to the river's deep

Make me like a tree by the river
that stands strong in drought, wind, and rain
make me like a tree by the river
whose life began when the river came

Make me like a tree by the river
who knows from where it's glory comes
make me like a tree by the river
who shows the world what the river's done

Prayer

I have struggled with prayer for as long as I have been a pray-er. Every day, thousands of days, I have prayed and trudged through the minutes until the amen. I used to pray with worship music as my backdrop. I would pray and pace the for floor every day and most of the time I think I enjoyed it because the music helped me to feel close to God and it helped to sort of stir the passion for the subjects of my prayers. For the past several years, I have ceased with the accompaniment and more often than not, I start my day, after having spent a brief chunk of time with God, more dry and frustrated than when I woke up. Last week, as I was parking my car at work, I had a thought that I think may solve 20 years worth of problems. It's so simple.

I don't pray so that I can feel close to God. I pray because the Bible says to pray. I don't pray so that I can feel connected to Him. I pray to be obedient. I have looked at prayer as a chance to have an emotional encounter with God. The better and stronger the emotion, the more validated would be the closeness of my relationship with Him. I do think that God wants to have close and intimate relationship with us, and I'm sure there are times when that intimacy will be expressed through strong feelings, but I bet our obedience matters more to Him than our emotion.

Sometimes, the feelings may follow the prayers. Probably, they won't more than they do. This takes some pressure off. I don't need to create times of intimate connection with God every day, at least not in the way that I have been trying to. My job is to pray with an obedient and humble heart. That is all. If the close feelings come, great. If they don't, they don't. My relationship with God will not be so fragile as to fall apart in the dry or quiet days. I guess I have been going about this all wrong for most of my life. How did I miss something that was right in front of me?

Sadness

When I look at my life, and the girl at center stage, I see sadness there. I see a kid who carried a heavy load and who hoped, like all kids do, in spite of it. Eventually, the weight of the load grew too heavy for the weight of the hope and one of them had to go. Sadly, it was hope that dropped to the ground as she went on her way. As proof of the heaviness that won, she didn't even notice when hope was gone. This girl didn't always make the best choices. She preferred to walk alone as much as she could. She developed the habit of hiding her face, her feelings, and her deepest, truest self from everyone, even from herself. For years, she went on this way and she opened her heart to only two things: the pages that she wrote on and the music that she played. They knew her when she wept. They were there when she was lost. They offered friendship that was safe and comfort without cost. So she wrote and she wrote and she played and she played. The music gave hope and the pages, escape. They made her load lighter, but they could never remove it. It wasn't their job. What she really needed was something that scared her. Something she feared would make the weight of the load too heavy for her and what would she do then? How would she manage? She had found a way that seemed to work. She felt joy and hope sometimes and hardly even noticed the bricks on her back anymore. That old Truth would come and make her face the sorrow of her heart. It would tell her she was meant to stand straighter, not burdened as she was. It would tell her she was made to be brave and free and loved. It would ruin everything. So she pushed away what frightened her and she convinced herself that her way was the best way. She was wrong. What she really needed was honesty and truth from her head to her toes. From the light in her eyes to the marrow in her bones. She needed them because they would have made room for hope. They would have told her its ok to be sad. And then the sadness would have passed. And in its place, somewhere deeper than the weight of the load could reach, would have been hope that lasts. She thought she knew what was best, but she was wrong. The sadness snuck in and it latched on. Now the girl is a woman and she's fighting for a way to be free. I know she's going to find a way, because finding it is everything.

The Sun Comes Up in Riverside

Some nights its a hit or a miss. So far, this one has been a miss. Its 5:45am right now and I have yet to sleep a minute. Not for lack of trying. I have imagined myself asleep, willed myself to sleep, tried to trick myself into sleeping. No such luck. This night comes to me a few days post-wisdom teeth removal surgery, which afforded me the opportunity of being at the mercy first of my dentist and nitris oxide, then of swollen cheeks and pain pills. Throw in some heart matters of deep magnitude and exhaustion down to my bones, and there you have my story of late.

There is a quote from a book I read several years ago that really kind of hit me square in the face when I read it and it has been in the back of my mind all this time. I've been thinking about it lately. Its by Andrew Murray from a book called Waiting on God.

"He stirs up your nest. He disappoints your hope. He brings down your confidence. He makes you fear and tremble, as all your strength fails and you feel utterly weary and helpless. And all the while, He is spreading His strong wings for you to rest your weakness on and offering His everlasting Creator-strength to work in you. And all He asks is that you sink down in your weariness and wait on Him. Allow Him in His Jehovah strength to carry you as you ride upon the wings of His omnipotence."

For me, all of this is about coming to the end of myself and my grasp at control. Its about relying on God more than I rely on myself. This kind of thing doesn't come easily to me. Never has, but I'm determined to learn. I'm determined not to stay in this old self-reliant fortress any longer, where no one can reach me. Sleepless nights are out of my control. Pain in my mouth is out of my control. Knowing how things will end is out of my control. There is a special kind of freedom that comes with letting your hands hang limp and looking to God with more questions than answers, more sadness than hope. This is an honest place to be. And what better chance to really see the strength of God come through for me, than when my reserves are depleted? The Bible says in my weakness, He is strong. I think I'd like to take Him up on the offer.

Fighting Words

I've got my fighting gloves on, folks. Me against the mattresses. Me against 27 years of being afraid and being afraid and trying really hard not to be afraid...and being afraid again.

I feel it - the fear - slithering across my skin like a giant snake, weaving in and out and around until I can hardly stand beneath the weight of it. Crippling, paralyzing, fear, going in for the kill. I hate it. I hate it enough to do something about it.

But why would this time be different from any other time, all those millions of times, that I resolved to trust God and succeeded for about 10 minutes before pushing Him away again? (I am trying to come up with a really great answer to this question.)

Maybe I just gave up too quickly and too easily. Going to the mattresses is about not taking no for an answer. It's about putting on the fiercest fighting face you've got. It's about going after the thing you want so hard that either you win it or you die trying. I can do that. I will do that.

I will trust and not be afraid. These are my fighting words.