Love Won’t Cure the Chaos
I often carry around this sense of failure. I often feel that I have failed as a follower of Christ, as a woman, a friend, or simply a human being. If I pray or spend some time with Scripture, I always feels like I could have done both longer. I often catch a glimpse in the mirror and think I have somehow failed as a woman, that there is very little, if any, beauty in the image before me. I will hesitate to call someone when I know they want to talk to me simply because I am tired and don’t feel like chatting; then I feel I am failing them as a friend. Jesus said to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, and to love the worst of humanity but I don’t do much about any of those things. Then I feel as if I am failing on the most basic human level, that I do not care near enough about the person next to me. I have mentioned that I am in the middle of co-leading a book study for the girls in my church’s youth group. I wonder every week as we meet what they could possibly learn from me about God or about the female heart. I so often doubt God and I can count on one hand the number of times I have felt truly captivating.
I have thought about God a lot lately. I have thought about all the things I should be doing but am not. I have thought about how undeserving I am to come before Him with anything. I have felt that all I have to give Him is left over pocket change and that even that has been tainted, simply because my fingers have touched it.
I know God is a gracious God, but for some reason I just can’t seem to accept that. I believe that if Hitler or Stalin or Hussein called out to God at the last moments of their lives, He would have saved them. Yet I have a hard time believing that God does the same for me.
Last night was an event held for the girls in the book study. We arranged six rooms and each had a theme that matched a chapter in the book we’re going through. The church was mostly dark. We had two hundred candles lit, so the mood was very dreamy. In the rooms were interactive things we had the girls go through to simply help them reflect on whatever it was that God was hopefully saying to them. In one room, we had posters hung on the walls with each of the girls’ names on them. We had every girl go through and write down something that they found beautiful about their peers. I took the posters home to give out to the girls later and was looking through them when I got home last night. I was amazed at the level of depth in some of their comments to one another. I was amazed at the love I saw, the patience, and the kindness. I was moved by what they wrote under my name, but one comment struck me more than the others. One girl told me that she had looked up to me for years, ever since I came to the church I am at now. I was amazed that anyone at all could look at me and feel the need to follow my steps. I wanted to call this girl and tell her that she could find much better role models; I could have given her some numbers.
I thought about her words today at work, a day that did not leave me feeling worthy or captivating in any way. But as I thought about what she said, and as I pictured in my mind the people I respect and love the most, I saw a theme: no one, even those I so revere, is anywhere near holy. Those who I place so high above myself, those whose prayers are always so eloquent, those who always show kindness, they are no less flawed than I am. Since that is true, it logically follows that if those people can be used to speak into my life, then I suppose there is a chance for my life to be used in a similar fashion.
There’s a Jars of Clay song that I have been listening to incessantly this week. It says what I am currently thinking about and feeling far better (and far more compact) than I am now…
Shoot a dream in your arm and sleep away
It’s not the stuff that kills you that keeps your life at bay
Every crash pulls you in reach
Of a watershed of signal flares that cover your beach
These are just placebos to make us feel all right
Illusions in our pockets make our feathers float us high
For a second I thought I saw your eyelids rise
A moment, something restless caught you by surprise
Surprise, surprise
We are so beautiful when we sleep
Hearts of gold and eyes so deep, deep, deep
But love won’t cure the chaos
And hope won’t hide the loss
And peace is not the heroine that shouts above the cause
And love is wild for reasons
And hope, though short in sight
Might be the only thing that wakes you by surprise
Consider me slightly woken.
I am just now learning that life’s biggest, most important lessons do not come from a thundrous voice in the heavens, but instead in little snippets of thought we are not capable of thinking on our own.
The Obligatory New Year’s Reflection Post
In these annual reflections, I always say that in the ocean-sized mass of lessons I have learned throughout the course of the past 365 days, one lesson stands out about the rest. But this year, I think it’s been more about a steady stream of smaller lessons, building on each other, lessons I have learned and then quickly forgotten, along with lessons I am not quite comfortable with yet. Overall, 2006 was a good year. I have hope, however, that 2007 will be a slightly better one. Perhaps if I actually apply the truths I’ve been dealing with lately, it can be. So here it is, the things 2006 has taught me through various people, places, songs, movies, silences, etc…
LESSON NUMBER ONE: THE ONLY THING MY FAITH SHOULD BE ABOUT IS JESUS
When I was in middle school, the one thing I craved was drama. I wanted my life to be complicated. I wanted my life to be a mirror image of a WB show, really. I wanted tension, stress, and situations that would challenge me. However, drama did not occur. I did not have huge fights with my friends. No boys fought over me. My parents had a healthy, loving marriage. My life was picture perfect and that should have appeased me, but I wanted a good story. I remember writing in my journal and taking small things and blowing them up into huge things, just for the drama of it. Talking with various friends, I know I am not the only one that has done this at some point. I don’t understand why I wanted drama so badly. I suppose it was because I saw drama in people’s lives I admired at the time, people who were basically just high school students who I thought were the most amazing people to ever grace the planet.
I say all of this because I think this is often what I try to do spiritually. I have certainly never set out to make my relationship with Christ more rocky or tumultuous than it already is on its own, but over time I have made things more cluttered, more complex.
I have sat down with my Bible, and I expected the voice of God to come booming down from the heavens with some divine revelation. I have begun to pray and told God right off the bat I wanted a sign, some sort of burning bush. I have walked into worship giving myself a sort of pep talk. I have forced so much, or at least have tried to. I have pondered ideas of theology, wrestled with certain Scriptures, read a slew of Christian books, and tried to make myself better, cleaner. Yet in most of this, I missed the point. I was so busy trying to be the “good Christian” that I neglected Jesus. To me, Christianity had become synonymous with being good. I figured that if a person was good, they were the real deal, a genuine Christian, a gold-medal winner, so to speak. And if a person was less than good, they were shallow, fake, or misguided. I was judging the hearts of people I didn’t even know. I began comparing myself to others. I would have these conversations in my head that would go something like this:
“Well, I’m certainly doing a better job in this area than this person is, but so-and-so prays more often and better than I do. Gotta work on that. I beat this person in this area, but this guy does this and this and I don’t do either.”
It was completely ridiculous. The only thing that separates true Christianity from every other religion in the world is the concept of grace and that was the one concept I was ignoring completely. I thought I had to get clean before I came to God; I was forgetting that it was only He that could do the cleansing.
Though I know I didn’t have to work in order to earn my salvation, I felt I had to do all these things in order to win God’s favor. I felt like such a screw up in certain moments that it felt like the only option. I was forgetting that God loves as a father does.
I learned this year that my spirituality is not about lists and laws and obligations. It is not about being good or being bad. It is not about anything other than Jesus. My whole pursuit should be Jesus. What is the point of pursuing goodness without pursuing the only One who is good? I realized that true, genuine Christianity, the Christianity of the Bible, the Christianity that changes lives and causes people to fall in love with Christ, is all about knowing Jesus, becoming enthralled by Him, then imitating Him to a world full of people who are desperate for some grace, of which He is an expert.
LESSON NUMBER TWO: I HAVE TO RISK MYSELF ON PEOPLE
One of my favorite books is Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. God has used that book in enormous ways to speak into my life. There is a certain chapter that contains part of a play that Miller had written called Polaroids. The excerpt in the book was of a husband kneeling at the bedside of his sleeping wife, confessing and apologizing, and also making new promises. The words at the end struck me most:
“God risked Himself on me. I will risk myself on you. And together, we will learn to love, and perhaps then, and only then, understand the gravity that drew Him, unto us.”
I have struggled with loneliness in immense amounts this year. It has broken my heart at times. I know in my head that I am loved by family and friends, that I have people who enjoy my company. Yet there has often been this haunting feeling that I am essentially on my own in things.
I think that I was expecting everyone in my life to pour themselves out for me before I poured myself out to them. I wanted to be invited into people’s lives, yet I was hesitant to do the inviting for fear of being rejected. I wanted deep, meaningful relationships yet I was sitting back waiting for someone else to initiate them. I refused to risk myself on anyone at all because risk often ends badly, I thought, hurting the risk-taker. I am learning, however, that in order for any relationship in my life to mean something, I must risk myself on the people I love. I must serve them. I must listen to them. I must invite them into something. I must accept them as Jesus would. I must show them grace, even when I feel they might not deserve it.
LESSON NUMBER THREE: GOD LOVES ME
I have been told my entire life that I am loved by God. I have sung “Jesus Loves Me” countless times, as all good Baptists do. I have known of God’s love, at times felt it, often endorsed it, and sometimes even tried to share it. But it was not until this year, my 19th year of life, that I realized for the first time God loved me. I know that God loves the world, but this realization of God loving me, the quirky, singular me, was somewhat shocking. Another new concept that came along with this was the notion that God not only loved me, but that He actually likes me. I realized that God enjoyed it when I was giddy about the bouquet of daisies I bought myself this summer. I realized that His heart is blessed when I smile or laugh. I realized that God does indeed have a heart that hurts with mine and often for mine, a heart that breaks when mine does, a heart that yearns so badly to fix my own.
I cannot do anything to make God think less of me. And I cannot do anything to make God think more of me. His love is constant and His grace is a concept I cannot fathom for the life of me. Perhaps it is best the way.
LESSON NUMBER FOUR: THE BIBLE IS FULL OF FAILURES
When I was in the habit of comparing myself to others spiritually, men and women in Scripture would often come into my mind. I looked at people like Mary and Paul, people like Peter and David. But then I realized that Mary was just an average teenager when she was chosen to carry the Messiah. She was simply willing to obey. She was listening for the voice of God and heard Him when He spoke. She was brave and strong, yet vulnerable enough to carry a son who would amaze her, scare her, and eventually who would save her. She was an ordinary person who was simply listening.
Paul, Peter and David were also men who were not all that remarkable. Paul had a great hatred for Christians, so much so then he murdered them yet God chose Paul to be one of the best evangelists the world has ever seen. Peter served God faithfully and with love, yet He eventually denied the Jesus He followed. Though He truly did love Jesus, He failed Him. David is the most amazing of the bunch to me. The man lusted, slept with a woman that wasn’t his wife but someone else’s, got her pregnant, then killed the husband. It sounds like a soap opera, really. In spite of David’s many sins, God called him a man after His own heart. David’s Psalms are beautiful and the perfect example of what an honest relationship with God should look like.
God loved the ordinary and the less than ordinary. He reached out to society’s worst. He reached out to prostitutues, to the diseased, to the tax collectors. He called uneducated fisherman to be His best friends, His disciples. I realized this year that God is the God of the losers and the sick, the depraved and the defiled. He came to heal and capture once again the heart of His Bride.
Out of the myriad of lessons learned this year, these four have been the most vital, I think. I am grateful to have learned them and am grateful for the blessings which have been so lavishly poured upon my head. I am hopeful about this coming year. I have faith it will be a good one.
