2:19 and the battery on my craptop is nearly dead, so this has to be short.
Today, I listened to a sermon in which Mark Driscoll said something along the lines of there is no way we can be born good because we're born of corrupt seed. I won't quote it because I haven't checked the wording exactly.
The problem that so many people here, including my former self, have with religion, Catholicism in particular, is that people are evil and sin all the time. It's a problem because we think we're good people. I mean, we're better than that guy over there, right? *points to a guy littering* It's also a problem because we don't think we're sinners either.
What's a sinner? A sinner, to a non-believer (in my experience as one), is somebody who doesn't abide by a strict set of rules, a list of do's and don'ts. All the things we enjoy are on said list, and so religion becomes this thing of deprivation. Its goal is to control people and take away all of their freedoms. The end result is they pretend to be happy because their imaginary friend (Jesus) is "there" for them.
We believe this and then we go out in the world and struggle constantly to retain any shred of faith in humanity until we get home and collapse onto the sofa, defeated. We turn on the tv and watch actors pretend to be good people conquering the bad people, and somehow, we go to bed feeling lighter. The good guy wins in the movies. In real life, maybe not, but as long as we hold onto the hope that the good guy wins, either by manipulating ourselves with delusions or by believing in things like Karma, then we're ok. Then we're not the only person in the world who cares.
But I think deep down, we all know people aren't all that great. We really, really want to believe they are and we have a few of our favorites, but those of us who are more cynical see the betrayal coming. It has to come. Eventually, maybe, but it will come regardless. We always get hurt by those we love. We always get broken by those we sacrifice the most for. We spend our lives rebuilding ourselves after being broken and hurt over and over and over again. We patch up the scars, paint over the memories, pick up our bags and pretend to move on.
What if we really are from corrupt seed? Even if Adam is a metaphor, and the metaphorical Adam ate of the fruit when God told him not to, and by doing so, chose himself over God and alienated himself from God, the metaphor is not all that far fetched. Even if Genesis was written a few thousand years ago or so, we choose ourselves over God every day. We choose independence over submission every minute of every day. We are wired for it. We are wired to only look out for number one, sometimes even if we have a family. We hurt each other because we're too busy protecting ourselves and our own interests to bother to empathize before we act, speak or do. Our first consideration is ourselves, our comfort, our enjoyment, and our benefit. And if you should deviate from this mold, you catch people off guard.
I often ask people how they are doing out completely of the blue. I ask, they answer something generic, like, "I'm doing ok. You?" and if I prod a little more by asking, "Are you happy? How are things these days? Are you really alright?" the reaction turns to defensiveness. "Why do you ask? Did somebody say something?" There has to be some sort of ulterior motive. There has to be a reason other than love itself. We can't just care with no strings attached anymore.
I say "anymore" as though we used to. But we never did. Our idealistic hindsight might make us believe that at some point in our life, caring was the norm. And yet, we never tend to feel that way in the moment, in any moment, as it happens.
What if we are born of corrupt seed? What if we are born bad and have to fight constantly to be good people? What if it's against our nature to be caring, sacrificial and serving?
Honestly, that's the world I live in. I don't know it any other way. One day, for whatever reason, I decided I didn't want to be a terrible person. I decided that there are so many broken and lonely and needy people who are just completely alone and that was just not right. I decided that if people say volunteering makes you feel good, why not live that kind of life? A kind of life wherein when you are needed, you go. The kind of life where when you are asked for help, you do whatever it is, regardless of what it costs you and regardless of the effort, time and energy it requires of you.
And frankly, I've been abused a ton in the process. I've been sucked dry to the point of nearly losing every last ounce of faith in humanity I had left. I've been betrayed so badly simply because I was generous with my love.
But that's human nature, right? Taking what you need and then taking some more just because you can.
Yes, I'm about as cynical as it gets. But you know, there was a study done fairly recently that showed that anorexics, bulemics and people suffering from depression had a more accurate self image and image of the world than those who were "normal". The media interpreted the results as showing that in order to maintain a "normal", "healthy" lifestyle, people need a certain level of delusion. They need a little bit of false self-esteem and a slight rose-colored fog to settle in over the world.
But if an atheist proclaims to be enlightened, more so than any religious person, then how can they possibly argue that people are born good? How can they look at a two year old punch its parent in the face out of nowhere and say we are born without malice?
My aunt knew somebody who adopted a baby, and at a family party, this person and the baby were there. The baby had a feeding tube, and me being young and curious, I asked what it was for and I remember it so clearly. The baby had been really badly neglected and decided to commit suicide. It just stopped eating. That was its coping mechanism. And so, it needed a feeding tube in order to survive. And I remember putting that whole idea away in the back of my mind for later, when I was strong enough to look at it.
We all do that. We all die in some way when we don't get what we need. Whether it's losing our idealism, losing our faith in humanity or losing our spirit, we all lose something that kills us a little bit.
A lot of people lose God. A lot of people lose Him before they even know Him at all. It's just easier that way. It's easier to team up with our fellow humans and say, "What a rotten world we live in," when those same humans are the cause of so much of this rottenness. It's far easier to blame God than it is to look at ourselves.
Why is that? We can easily point out the rapists and murderers and molesters and say they're evil and they contribute to this world being so horrible, but do we ever look at ourselves? Do we ever wonder how many of our habits and gestures cause a negative ripple effect in the world?
If we look at them, then we have no control over this situation. We believe few people ruin it for the masses. But what if we ruin it for the masses? What if our impression on the world causes a cascade effect of darkness?
When I was betrayed, without a doubt it was horrible for me. But I live my life fairly openly, and without realizing it, I led a whole bunch of people to betrayal too. Granted, they were witnessing rather than experiencing it first hand, but to watch somebody get so broken broke them a little bit. The betrayal could have stopped with me, but it didn't. I transmitted it to others and affected their perception of the world. Their world is a little bit darker after knowing this kind of person exists and this kind of thing can happen and I introduced that into their lives.
That's not to say I should have stayed silent and kept everything to myself. That's a path straight towards self-destruction. It's just to point out the ripple effect. Our outlook on the world changes the people we share it with.
If by nature, being born of corruptible seed, we emit terrible things innately, then maybe we do need rules, if only to make us realize how hard it is to follow them.
Jesus said love your enemies. Love those who are the hardest to love. And you know, I can write out a list of those who are the hardest to love in my life right now, and I can say, "But for the grace of God will I be saved because I can't. I choose to stay angry, resentful and bitter towards these people because I am just not strong enough to love those who have been so terrible to me."
I'm not. It's in my nature to hold a spiteful grudge against those who have abused me, abused my trust and abused my generosity. It's not in my nature to love those who have scarred my soul.
How can we say people are generally good? How can we say most people have good intentions? We ourselves fail at that.
My intentions are good. My intentions are as good as I can make them. My intentions are good as long as I trust that the people to whom I direct my attention have good intentions.
That post I wrote last weekend and then deleted was the truth. It was the series of events leading up to the worst betrayal of my life. And I wrote it with mixed intentions. I'm terrified that somebody who might be sweet and loving might get brutalized and broken. With that in mind, my intentions were good. But the part of me that is still angry wants to make sure my betrayer doesn't get to have somebody else sacrifice their entire life for him because he doesn't deserve it. With that in mind, my intentions are vengeful. Even if my good intentions far outweigh the bad simply because I feel them a lot more strongly in this case (I pray for her even though she was a very significant part of the worst pain of my life), the bad intentions can't be denied.
When we are hurt, we retaliate. We always do. We react. We might not always react in revenge or anger. Sometimes we react in self-destruction and self-hatred. Sometimes we react externally and others internally, but whatever the defense mechanisms are, they are not meant to cause positive ripples in the universe.
Last week, as part of my job, I had to partake in terrible events and when I left work that particular day when everything went down, I drove in the opposite direction of home and even though I can barely afford to eat these days, I bought my sister-in-law a soy mochaccino from a really awesome cafe near her work and I drove it over to her. Somehow, I had to balance out the ripples a little bit. Somehow, even cynical, broken, busted up me knew that that day, the energy in the world was just way, way, way too dark. I had to do something, however minor, just to balance it out.
While it did make her smile, it didn't change what happened earlier that day. We can't balance it out, just like we can't depend on Karma to balance it out either. We can't fix what we break because we're broken. We can't repair in the world that which is broken in ourselves too.
And that's what sin is really about. That's why we need God to send His Son to right our wrongs. That's why we need somebody who is not broken and who knows us better than we know ourselves to fix what we broke.
Without Him, we can't. Without Him, we will always be delusional about the state of our hearts and continue to break those around us for our own gain and be ok with it. Without Him, we spread ripples of darkness while telling ourselves we are good. Without Him, we are nothing but good acts to make up for the world's darkness.
With Him, we are the light of the world.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
The Gift.
So in my last post, I described how when I pray for stuff, it seems to work because I believe what I'm praying, but the thing about all that is it scares me. The stuff of my prayers keeps happening, and not in the horoscopey, vague, "maybe this is the answer" way, but through very explicit and clear means. And I've been told by a few Christians that it's a gift, and they tend to start making me use it. :D
But for a girl who grew up in such a conditionally loving environment, where everything had an equal and opposite reaction, this "gift" scares me.
What does it depend on? Why do my prayers get answered? Why me? What makes me different? What if whatever it is changes somehow and the prayers stop getting answered? What if people start to rely on me for prayer and my gift is gone? What then? How will I know when it is gone?
When I first started praying, I was worried about praying wrong. Maybe worried is not the word. Terrified.
Last winter, I thought I was broke (I really had no idea what was to come) and so I prayed that God might provide me whatever I needed that day, and every day, I kept getting it. But then I was betrayed by the person I thought I loved, and I remember telling him after I'd lost him, "All this time, I was praying for food and I forgot to pray to keep you."
Terrified.
But I kind of believe that if your heart is really into prayer, you do get moved by the Holy Spirit a little. I didn't pray to keep him because I was listening to God. I was feeling God. And we all know that particular person was not meant to, say, marry me and betray me over and over until my soul gave up entirely. We know that now. But back then, I was devastated because I thought I must have prayed wrong.
Even earlier than that, I needed a prayer mediator. I didn't feel God, and so I asked this person who would betray me to pray for my people because in my head at the time, before I really started learning, he had a bond with God that I didn't. Turns out he didn't either, but that's another story for another day.
But like the widow who bothers the judge over and over and over in The Parable of the Persistent Widow in Luke 18, so were my prayers this spring when I was broken. Please God, help me to not feel so nauseous all the time. Please God, open this pastor's heart. Please God, make my betrayer feel what he did to me. Those were my three basic things on my prayer list that got me through the worst time I can remember ever having. I couldn't eat because I felt so taken advantage of and I couldn't imagine living in a world where my betrayer would not understand the gravity of what he did to me. And the pastor, well, I just cared about him, even though he couldn't really care less about me. He led a congregation down south and he was one of the first pastors I'd ever listened to online, and some of his message was interlaced with hate, and my betrayer grew up in that church. So I prayed and I prayed and I prayed, every night. Every moment of peace, I would pray.
And then shortly after my birthday trip down to my favorite church, I was home and decided to look up that church where the pastor I prayed for preached. I was so far behind in the sermons, so I just picked my birthday sermon. And this pastor was all powerfully evangelical and never afraid to proclaim the gospel but also maybe throw in a couple of threats of hell in there with his voice on "full scare mode"- he is a passionate preacher.
And so he was in this sermon, and about three quarters of the way through, he just broke down. He said he was just doing the best he could, and people may think he's arrogant, but he's doing all he can for the kingdom of God in the only ways he knows how. He talked about how hard it was to be away from his family, but that this was where God called him to be and so he went. He broke. This pastor, whose heart I'd been praying for for months and months, suddenly shattered. He suddenly became humble and human and open. On my birthday. Just like that.
It was humbling to me also. I wrote to him and shared my awe for God and for the way He'd answered my prayers for this pastor.
By then, my prayers had already changed. My list got longer and became far less about survival and more about helping those around me and glorifying God in the process. But stuff kept happening.
One night, a friend's small dog got hit by a car. She was devastated and preliminary xrays showed the dog was just shattered. His hips, his jaw- he was just a broken little guy. So I prayed for him that night, as he lay in the doggy ER, waiting for the morning staff to come in to run more comprehensive tests on him. The next day, the new xrays showed he hadn't had any breaks at all. Within a couple of days, he was running around again. And while the first instinct in reaction to that is either disbelief or awe, for me, it was kind of intertwined with a panic.
What would the equal and opposite reaction be?
There had to be one. Right? It scares me still. For every prayer that is answered, I somehow feel like something terrible has to happen.
And so I neglected my list. I started to resent it even more because I'd look at it and realize that one by one, I was losing the people on that list. They'd get what I was praying for, but they wouldn't be in my life anymore either. It kind of bothered me to pray for people who had either shut me down or just walked out on me, just because it kept happening. Maybe that was the other shoe dropping, I thought. Maybe they get what I pray for, but in turn, I lose them?
But all that implies that there is a balance of good and evil in God as there is in the world. Well, we'd like to think there's a balance in the world, but I'm not so sure. But in God? There's no turning in God- He won't "turn" evil suddenly. God doesn't give so He can take away. That's not a loving God at all.
What if the only condition in which God gives is that whatever He gives has to glorify Him? What if what you pray for comes true only because it glorifies God in the clearest way possible?
What if what you pray for only happens because you become a vessel of glorification for others?
When I drive home from the country late at night at peak roadkill hour, I always ask God to take care of His animals. "Please God, take care of Your animals," I ask over and over, whenever it occurs to me. And then I always have this internal dialog wherein I decide that even if I hit something, God is still taking care of his animals in a way that I just don't understand yet. And I know if any atheists are reading this, they'd think that's absurd. "What kind of God would put an animal under your tires and have it be a good thing?" But the point is not that He would or not; the point is that if it did happen, my faith would not be shaken. My faith in God does not depend on my requests being answered in the way I expect, but instead on a trust in God and a trust that He will always do what is best and right, even if it might not seem that way at first.
Do I pray to save the animals, to save my car from potential damage, or do I pray because God is good? Because God is good, and if He can show us that good to draw us closer to Him, He will. He always will.
And yet, the way my prayers are answered scares me. Like I said in my post earlier, I really do have to try to learn the good side of God, the loving and gracious side, the side that doesn't need me to constantly suffer, and actually does want me to be ok, so long as it glorifies Him and draws me closer to Him.
Maybe for a girl like me, who is so adapted to conditional love, that's the condition- that there are no conditions at all. Maybe that's something I have to learn to His glory.
Maybe.
But in the meantime, it still terrifies me.
But for a girl who grew up in such a conditionally loving environment, where everything had an equal and opposite reaction, this "gift" scares me.
What does it depend on? Why do my prayers get answered? Why me? What makes me different? What if whatever it is changes somehow and the prayers stop getting answered? What if people start to rely on me for prayer and my gift is gone? What then? How will I know when it is gone?
When I first started praying, I was worried about praying wrong. Maybe worried is not the word. Terrified.
Last winter, I thought I was broke (I really had no idea what was to come) and so I prayed that God might provide me whatever I needed that day, and every day, I kept getting it. But then I was betrayed by the person I thought I loved, and I remember telling him after I'd lost him, "All this time, I was praying for food and I forgot to pray to keep you."
Terrified.
But I kind of believe that if your heart is really into prayer, you do get moved by the Holy Spirit a little. I didn't pray to keep him because I was listening to God. I was feeling God. And we all know that particular person was not meant to, say, marry me and betray me over and over until my soul gave up entirely. We know that now. But back then, I was devastated because I thought I must have prayed wrong.
Even earlier than that, I needed a prayer mediator. I didn't feel God, and so I asked this person who would betray me to pray for my people because in my head at the time, before I really started learning, he had a bond with God that I didn't. Turns out he didn't either, but that's another story for another day.
But like the widow who bothers the judge over and over and over in The Parable of the Persistent Widow in Luke 18, so were my prayers this spring when I was broken. Please God, help me to not feel so nauseous all the time. Please God, open this pastor's heart. Please God, make my betrayer feel what he did to me. Those were my three basic things on my prayer list that got me through the worst time I can remember ever having. I couldn't eat because I felt so taken advantage of and I couldn't imagine living in a world where my betrayer would not understand the gravity of what he did to me. And the pastor, well, I just cared about him, even though he couldn't really care less about me. He led a congregation down south and he was one of the first pastors I'd ever listened to online, and some of his message was interlaced with hate, and my betrayer grew up in that church. So I prayed and I prayed and I prayed, every night. Every moment of peace, I would pray.
And then shortly after my birthday trip down to my favorite church, I was home and decided to look up that church where the pastor I prayed for preached. I was so far behind in the sermons, so I just picked my birthday sermon. And this pastor was all powerfully evangelical and never afraid to proclaim the gospel but also maybe throw in a couple of threats of hell in there with his voice on "full scare mode"- he is a passionate preacher.
And so he was in this sermon, and about three quarters of the way through, he just broke down. He said he was just doing the best he could, and people may think he's arrogant, but he's doing all he can for the kingdom of God in the only ways he knows how. He talked about how hard it was to be away from his family, but that this was where God called him to be and so he went. He broke. This pastor, whose heart I'd been praying for for months and months, suddenly shattered. He suddenly became humble and human and open. On my birthday. Just like that.
It was humbling to me also. I wrote to him and shared my awe for God and for the way He'd answered my prayers for this pastor.
By then, my prayers had already changed. My list got longer and became far less about survival and more about helping those around me and glorifying God in the process. But stuff kept happening.
One night, a friend's small dog got hit by a car. She was devastated and preliminary xrays showed the dog was just shattered. His hips, his jaw- he was just a broken little guy. So I prayed for him that night, as he lay in the doggy ER, waiting for the morning staff to come in to run more comprehensive tests on him. The next day, the new xrays showed he hadn't had any breaks at all. Within a couple of days, he was running around again. And while the first instinct in reaction to that is either disbelief or awe, for me, it was kind of intertwined with a panic.
What would the equal and opposite reaction be?
There had to be one. Right? It scares me still. For every prayer that is answered, I somehow feel like something terrible has to happen.
And so I neglected my list. I started to resent it even more because I'd look at it and realize that one by one, I was losing the people on that list. They'd get what I was praying for, but they wouldn't be in my life anymore either. It kind of bothered me to pray for people who had either shut me down or just walked out on me, just because it kept happening. Maybe that was the other shoe dropping, I thought. Maybe they get what I pray for, but in turn, I lose them?
But all that implies that there is a balance of good and evil in God as there is in the world. Well, we'd like to think there's a balance in the world, but I'm not so sure. But in God? There's no turning in God- He won't "turn" evil suddenly. God doesn't give so He can take away. That's not a loving God at all.
What if the only condition in which God gives is that whatever He gives has to glorify Him? What if what you pray for comes true only because it glorifies God in the clearest way possible?
What if what you pray for only happens because you become a vessel of glorification for others?
When I drive home from the country late at night at peak roadkill hour, I always ask God to take care of His animals. "Please God, take care of Your animals," I ask over and over, whenever it occurs to me. And then I always have this internal dialog wherein I decide that even if I hit something, God is still taking care of his animals in a way that I just don't understand yet. And I know if any atheists are reading this, they'd think that's absurd. "What kind of God would put an animal under your tires and have it be a good thing?" But the point is not that He would or not; the point is that if it did happen, my faith would not be shaken. My faith in God does not depend on my requests being answered in the way I expect, but instead on a trust in God and a trust that He will always do what is best and right, even if it might not seem that way at first.
Do I pray to save the animals, to save my car from potential damage, or do I pray because God is good? Because God is good, and if He can show us that good to draw us closer to Him, He will. He always will.
And yet, the way my prayers are answered scares me. Like I said in my post earlier, I really do have to try to learn the good side of God, the loving and gracious side, the side that doesn't need me to constantly suffer, and actually does want me to be ok, so long as it glorifies Him and draws me closer to Him.
Maybe for a girl like me, who is so adapted to conditional love, that's the condition- that there are no conditions at all. Maybe that's something I have to learn to His glory.
Maybe.
But in the meantime, it still terrifies me.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
On praying, doubting, suffering and trusting.
Staring out my front window at the weeds below, I wondered how many of our prayers don't get answered because we don't expect them to be.
In my baptism story below, I wrote about joking with the pastor afterwards that I had hoped that in my baptism my eyesight would be healed. Of course, it didn't happen.
But why "of course"?
In 2001, I had a traumatic brain injury that took away a lot of my visual clarity. Somehow, I damaged my optic nerve and the repeated impacts probably damaged my eyes themselves also. Now I wear glasses. They're not all that strong, but to go from having perfect vision one day to not being able to see past about three feet without everything being suddenly smeared was a really difficult thing to come to terms with.
Even now, eight or so years later, I still get into my car and start driving down my street without my glasses on. Eight years of wearing them and they still haven't become a habit. Eight years and I'm still angry at myself for taking my body for granted, even though I still do it every day.
Today, I woke up with the migraine to end all migraines. I've had migraines for over two years now. I mean, ever since my concussion, I've had migraines off and on, but for the past two years, they've been nearly every day. In April, I went to a neurologist who said that because I tough out the pain, I'm potentially inflaming my brain, the inflammation being the cause of the constant low level migraines.
But I pray for people in pain. I have two friends in particular whom I have been praying for every time I pray, hoping to relieve them of pain. And both of them, after years of 7-9 level daily pain on a scale of ten, have felt a dramatic reduction in pain in the past few weeks. One was driven into soul searching, and the other into physical development and improvement, but both have had relief as a result after having suffered for so many years.
I believed my prayers. I prayed and I believed that God would take care of them. I believed that by asking Him, He'd nod sagely and work His magic.
But then I have two other friends in crazy pain due to genetic arthritis, and while I do pray for them, I don't feel God has the power, or as much power, to overcome such horrible terribleness. I don't believe that he can heal them and so my prayers fail.
I didn't believe my eyes would be healed. I hoped, but hope in prayer is actually a terrible thing. While prayer can give us hope, we should not hope while we pray.
Saying "I hope you can heal my eyes, God" or "I hope you can reduce my migraine pain somehow, God" or "I hope you can help my arthritic friends cope with their disease," underestimates the power and sovereignty of God. If God wants to heal anything, He can and He will. If God wants to make anybody well, He will. It's not a question of things of this world being too complicated for Him to resolve. He can. He is.
But if we pray with doubt, we pray with an independence that doesn't glorify God.
When I prayed for my friends to be without pain, I told them so. And I told them my prayers seem to work, because they do. So when my prayers are answered so openly, it glorifies God. When the people around me see the work of my prayers happening, stirs up their soul in a way that might not have been stirred otherwise. When God uses me and my passion for prayer to glorify Him to those around me, my prayers get answered. When I have faith and I trust that God is doing whatever He deems to be best for us, my prayers work.
In a sermon from a few years ago, a pastor said, "God is famous for His answers." And we read His answers all through the Bible. And yet, when we pray, we enter into it with this skepticism and doubt.
I don't pray for me all that much. Somehow, my prayers for others are constantly and consistently answered, but I have doubts about the prayers for myself. I have doubts about relieving this suffering because I feel it has to serve a purpose. If suffering is a way of bringing us closer to God, I feel I need it all the time.
A while ago, after dealing with multiple betrayals in a row, I had written a list of definitions on another blog:
Lost: seeing things for the first time
Alone: in good company
Misfit: independent spirit
Break up: fresh start
Irrational: spontaneous, overstepping personal boundaries and comfort zones
Sick: learning to appreciate health
Tragedy: learning to appreciate everything
Controversial: mind-opening
Naive: easily taught
Bored: in a moment of peace
Obstacle: opportunity for accomplishment
Debt: trying to build a life and home
Routine: security
Worry: the ability to care about somebody or something
Crisis: chance to grow, learn and be stronger
Betrayal: opportunity to learn forgiveness
Vulnerable: allowing a deeper friendship and bond to form
Broken: work in progress
Annoyed: affected
Exposed: honest
Hurt: loving
Suffering: challenged
Heartbroken: gaining a better understanding of the intensity and power of love
Pain: to be fully aware of being alive
By those definitions, there is good in all brokenness. There is growth in all brokenness. Because of that perspective, I find it hard to ask God to take mine away.
Most people seem to grow through tragedy and the subsequent healing. I deny myself the healing. I don't know why. Maybe I don't feel worthy. Maybe I don't feel I deserve it. Maybe I feel so broken that mending the pieces would just be creating this façade that I can't maintain for very long before I'm shattered all over again.
A lot of people have told me that the purpose of life is to find happiness. I have never agreed with that philosophy. The purpose of my life has been to experience as much as I can. But, by living with the definitions above, I may not be experiencing the "best" parts of life.
When I love, it tends to be the genre of love that Jeff Buckley sings about in "Hallelujah" (which was originally written by Leonard Cohen), whereby, "It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah." It's passionate, it's unconditional and it hurts, but through that pain, I really do feel alive. And I grow immensely.
I'm in the ninth month since I was betrayed so brutally, and I realized last night that I'm still affected by him. We had a dark and intimate bond of the souls that I still can't envision ever having again. He broke me repeatedly in the absolute worst ways, and I fought so hard to keep getting back up again and trying to heal him so he wouldn't do it again. But I lost, and in losing, I lost my soulmate. And people keep telling me he's not my soulmate not only because he left but because he morphed into my soulmate just to take advantage of me in the worst ways possible. Still, I could feel him. He was three thousand miles away, and I could feel when he thought about me. I could easily hook into another relationship, but somehow every prospect seems to lack the soul-changing depth that I had with this imaginary person this person who so brutally betrayed me created.
But he brought me to God, ultimately. And it's likely that God yanked him out of my life at the exact moment that was optimal for cementing my relationship with Him. Every bit of suffering in my life led me to that point. The abundance of betrayals and abuse led me to a point of loving people so intensely in spite of their brokenness. Everybody is broken, I thought. So why stop loving them when they betray you as a result of that brokenness? Without that pattern of thought emerging from my sordid past, I wouldn't have stayed with him as long as I did, and I might not have found God yet.
Over the past little while, I've developed a belief that God not only chooses you, but also chooses how close He gets to you. We all seem to have epiphanies that draw us closer to God. Those of us who believe reach a certain comfortable level of belief, and start to take for granted the sovereignty and majesty of God. We achieve a certain level of relationship with Him and then we start to coast. And I believe that depending on your heart and its openness, God might choose you repeatedly.
The clearest example is that it's like telling a staunch atheist about God. They shut down almost immediately. But Christians do too. So many dwell in this certainty they have about God, when God wants nothing more, I believe, than for us to understand we can't be certain. By being certain in anything about ourselves, we choose independence over Him every time. If we are certain of our worthiness of God's mercy or are certain of our works, we suddenly find ourselves very much apart from God.
The moment we are comfortable with God is the exact moment we know Him the least.
And so I believe that some of us get chosen. Some of us can handle the suffering that comes with knowing God a little more maybe because we can see the beauty in the pain or maybe because we're just wired for growth in spirit.
That's why it's hard for me to pray for my own suffering to end. It's kind of like, "Ok, God, what are you showing me now?" or "Alright God, I need You in this moment more than I've ever needed You before." It's like every time I fall down or get hurt by this world and by the brokenness around me and within me, I find a new level of submission and a new level of love for and from God. Why would I want that to stop?
But today, when I woke up with this migraine, this complete disaster of brain matter, I realized the potential significance of its beginning, both today and two years ago.
The past few weeks have been devastating on me. I've been stricken with this sort of poverty I've never known before. I also got ripped to shreds by a family member in such a horrible, personal way that it broke me. And in the process, I shut down and disappeared when an old friend needed me, and she ripped me apart for it and stormed out of my life entirely. Then the phone rang, and it was another friend's husband asking me if I was ok with him confronting the person who held me hostage and tried to rape me nine years ago. He wanted to know how I felt because the person had somehow reentered their musical community and he wasn't comfortable pretending he was ok with that, but he also wanted to know in greater detail what happened so I also had to confront it a little more openly. Add to that the instability and hurt that comes with layoffs at work, my job being spared only because I'm the only one who knows the procedures for firing people. So I have to watch everybody leave, when I am by far the least deserving of an income. It's been a difficult few weeks, and I found myself praying for mercy and maybe a laugh. I miss laughing.
And so I put God on pause a little in search of some sort of drug just to keep me from collapsing entirely. Instead of listening to sermons in the car, I listened to music. Instead of reading and learning, I watched movies. And I know that those aren't horrible things, and I also know that if I bind myself to my "duties" as a Christian, I'm being a legalist and not doing it for my heart and my love of God. I know that. But this felt like a vacation from God, a vacation from the intensity of learning about Him and His desires for me. A vacation from the suffering. I just had to stop and trust that even when God isn't beating me into closeness with Him, I still am getting close to Him. I had to stop and take a break from the hard side of God and feel the soft, merciful, loving side of God that everybody else seems to get to enjoy but me.
I've been trying to figure out what changed two years ago in September when the migraines started. The only thing I could think of was that that's when I started to really love that Christian boy who would betray me so badly. "Maybe he scarred my brain forever right from the start," I joked. But what if it was God? The beginning of that relationship was also the beginning of my eyes opening to God. What if God's asking me to pray for what I feel is impossible? What if God is not only asking me to pray for myself but also for Him to heal something I doubt He'd be able to heal? What if all this time, He's been trying to get me to trust Him? What if all this time, He's been showing me that my pain is my idol? This pain is independent from God, just as my eyesight is. I damaged myself, and therefore, my eyes are messed up and for whatever reason, I have migraines all the time. I did this to me. I made my bed and I have to lie in it.
But God's saying no. God's saying the world is broken, my child. Don't just turn to me for your brokenness in sin. Turn to me for all of it. Your body is broken. Let me heal it. You let me love your soul, let me love your body too. Let me be a part of all of your life. You are my child. Let me take away the pains that separate you from me.
And you know, just as when the diagnosis is too terrible to overcome, so it is when the doctors fail and the CT scans show nothing, and sometimes a girl has to realize healing just may be in God's hands and God's hands alone.
Sometimes, a girl needs a little more trust that God really is God and can do whatever we ask of Him to His glory. Sometimes, a girl has to doubt her doubts, give up her independence and submit to God as a child to a parent, seeking comfort and healing. Sometimes, being strong means asking for help when things seem impossible.
Because if God is really God, nothing is impossible.
In my baptism story below, I wrote about joking with the pastor afterwards that I had hoped that in my baptism my eyesight would be healed. Of course, it didn't happen.
But why "of course"?
In 2001, I had a traumatic brain injury that took away a lot of my visual clarity. Somehow, I damaged my optic nerve and the repeated impacts probably damaged my eyes themselves also. Now I wear glasses. They're not all that strong, but to go from having perfect vision one day to not being able to see past about three feet without everything being suddenly smeared was a really difficult thing to come to terms with.
Even now, eight or so years later, I still get into my car and start driving down my street without my glasses on. Eight years of wearing them and they still haven't become a habit. Eight years and I'm still angry at myself for taking my body for granted, even though I still do it every day.
Today, I woke up with the migraine to end all migraines. I've had migraines for over two years now. I mean, ever since my concussion, I've had migraines off and on, but for the past two years, they've been nearly every day. In April, I went to a neurologist who said that because I tough out the pain, I'm potentially inflaming my brain, the inflammation being the cause of the constant low level migraines.
But I pray for people in pain. I have two friends in particular whom I have been praying for every time I pray, hoping to relieve them of pain. And both of them, after years of 7-9 level daily pain on a scale of ten, have felt a dramatic reduction in pain in the past few weeks. One was driven into soul searching, and the other into physical development and improvement, but both have had relief as a result after having suffered for so many years.
I believed my prayers. I prayed and I believed that God would take care of them. I believed that by asking Him, He'd nod sagely and work His magic.
But then I have two other friends in crazy pain due to genetic arthritis, and while I do pray for them, I don't feel God has the power, or as much power, to overcome such horrible terribleness. I don't believe that he can heal them and so my prayers fail.
I didn't believe my eyes would be healed. I hoped, but hope in prayer is actually a terrible thing. While prayer can give us hope, we should not hope while we pray.
Saying "I hope you can heal my eyes, God" or "I hope you can reduce my migraine pain somehow, God" or "I hope you can help my arthritic friends cope with their disease," underestimates the power and sovereignty of God. If God wants to heal anything, He can and He will. If God wants to make anybody well, He will. It's not a question of things of this world being too complicated for Him to resolve. He can. He is.
But if we pray with doubt, we pray with an independence that doesn't glorify God.
When I prayed for my friends to be without pain, I told them so. And I told them my prayers seem to work, because they do. So when my prayers are answered so openly, it glorifies God. When the people around me see the work of my prayers happening, stirs up their soul in a way that might not have been stirred otherwise. When God uses me and my passion for prayer to glorify Him to those around me, my prayers get answered. When I have faith and I trust that God is doing whatever He deems to be best for us, my prayers work.
In a sermon from a few years ago, a pastor said, "God is famous for His answers." And we read His answers all through the Bible. And yet, when we pray, we enter into it with this skepticism and doubt.
I don't pray for me all that much. Somehow, my prayers for others are constantly and consistently answered, but I have doubts about the prayers for myself. I have doubts about relieving this suffering because I feel it has to serve a purpose. If suffering is a way of bringing us closer to God, I feel I need it all the time.
A while ago, after dealing with multiple betrayals in a row, I had written a list of definitions on another blog:
Lost: seeing things for the first time
Alone: in good company
Misfit: independent spirit
Break up: fresh start
Irrational: spontaneous, overstepping personal boundaries and comfort zones
Sick: learning to appreciate health
Tragedy: learning to appreciate everything
Controversial: mind-opening
Naive: easily taught
Bored: in a moment of peace
Obstacle: opportunity for accomplishment
Debt: trying to build a life and home
Routine: security
Worry: the ability to care about somebody or something
Crisis: chance to grow, learn and be stronger
Betrayal: opportunity to learn forgiveness
Vulnerable: allowing a deeper friendship and bond to form
Broken: work in progress
Annoyed: affected
Exposed: honest
Hurt: loving
Suffering: challenged
Heartbroken: gaining a better understanding of the intensity and power of love
Pain: to be fully aware of being alive
By those definitions, there is good in all brokenness. There is growth in all brokenness. Because of that perspective, I find it hard to ask God to take mine away.
Most people seem to grow through tragedy and the subsequent healing. I deny myself the healing. I don't know why. Maybe I don't feel worthy. Maybe I don't feel I deserve it. Maybe I feel so broken that mending the pieces would just be creating this façade that I can't maintain for very long before I'm shattered all over again.
A lot of people have told me that the purpose of life is to find happiness. I have never agreed with that philosophy. The purpose of my life has been to experience as much as I can. But, by living with the definitions above, I may not be experiencing the "best" parts of life.
When I love, it tends to be the genre of love that Jeff Buckley sings about in "Hallelujah" (which was originally written by Leonard Cohen), whereby, "It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah." It's passionate, it's unconditional and it hurts, but through that pain, I really do feel alive. And I grow immensely.
I'm in the ninth month since I was betrayed so brutally, and I realized last night that I'm still affected by him. We had a dark and intimate bond of the souls that I still can't envision ever having again. He broke me repeatedly in the absolute worst ways, and I fought so hard to keep getting back up again and trying to heal him so he wouldn't do it again. But I lost, and in losing, I lost my soulmate. And people keep telling me he's not my soulmate not only because he left but because he morphed into my soulmate just to take advantage of me in the worst ways possible. Still, I could feel him. He was three thousand miles away, and I could feel when he thought about me. I could easily hook into another relationship, but somehow every prospect seems to lack the soul-changing depth that I had with this imaginary person this person who so brutally betrayed me created.
But he brought me to God, ultimately. And it's likely that God yanked him out of my life at the exact moment that was optimal for cementing my relationship with Him. Every bit of suffering in my life led me to that point. The abundance of betrayals and abuse led me to a point of loving people so intensely in spite of their brokenness. Everybody is broken, I thought. So why stop loving them when they betray you as a result of that brokenness? Without that pattern of thought emerging from my sordid past, I wouldn't have stayed with him as long as I did, and I might not have found God yet.
Over the past little while, I've developed a belief that God not only chooses you, but also chooses how close He gets to you. We all seem to have epiphanies that draw us closer to God. Those of us who believe reach a certain comfortable level of belief, and start to take for granted the sovereignty and majesty of God. We achieve a certain level of relationship with Him and then we start to coast. And I believe that depending on your heart and its openness, God might choose you repeatedly.
The clearest example is that it's like telling a staunch atheist about God. They shut down almost immediately. But Christians do too. So many dwell in this certainty they have about God, when God wants nothing more, I believe, than for us to understand we can't be certain. By being certain in anything about ourselves, we choose independence over Him every time. If we are certain of our worthiness of God's mercy or are certain of our works, we suddenly find ourselves very much apart from God.
The moment we are comfortable with God is the exact moment we know Him the least.
And so I believe that some of us get chosen. Some of us can handle the suffering that comes with knowing God a little more maybe because we can see the beauty in the pain or maybe because we're just wired for growth in spirit.
That's why it's hard for me to pray for my own suffering to end. It's kind of like, "Ok, God, what are you showing me now?" or "Alright God, I need You in this moment more than I've ever needed You before." It's like every time I fall down or get hurt by this world and by the brokenness around me and within me, I find a new level of submission and a new level of love for and from God. Why would I want that to stop?
But today, when I woke up with this migraine, this complete disaster of brain matter, I realized the potential significance of its beginning, both today and two years ago.
The past few weeks have been devastating on me. I've been stricken with this sort of poverty I've never known before. I also got ripped to shreds by a family member in such a horrible, personal way that it broke me. And in the process, I shut down and disappeared when an old friend needed me, and she ripped me apart for it and stormed out of my life entirely. Then the phone rang, and it was another friend's husband asking me if I was ok with him confronting the person who held me hostage and tried to rape me nine years ago. He wanted to know how I felt because the person had somehow reentered their musical community and he wasn't comfortable pretending he was ok with that, but he also wanted to know in greater detail what happened so I also had to confront it a little more openly. Add to that the instability and hurt that comes with layoffs at work, my job being spared only because I'm the only one who knows the procedures for firing people. So I have to watch everybody leave, when I am by far the least deserving of an income. It's been a difficult few weeks, and I found myself praying for mercy and maybe a laugh. I miss laughing.
And so I put God on pause a little in search of some sort of drug just to keep me from collapsing entirely. Instead of listening to sermons in the car, I listened to music. Instead of reading and learning, I watched movies. And I know that those aren't horrible things, and I also know that if I bind myself to my "duties" as a Christian, I'm being a legalist and not doing it for my heart and my love of God. I know that. But this felt like a vacation from God, a vacation from the intensity of learning about Him and His desires for me. A vacation from the suffering. I just had to stop and trust that even when God isn't beating me into closeness with Him, I still am getting close to Him. I had to stop and take a break from the hard side of God and feel the soft, merciful, loving side of God that everybody else seems to get to enjoy but me.
I've been trying to figure out what changed two years ago in September when the migraines started. The only thing I could think of was that that's when I started to really love that Christian boy who would betray me so badly. "Maybe he scarred my brain forever right from the start," I joked. But what if it was God? The beginning of that relationship was also the beginning of my eyes opening to God. What if God's asking me to pray for what I feel is impossible? What if God is not only asking me to pray for myself but also for Him to heal something I doubt He'd be able to heal? What if all this time, He's been trying to get me to trust Him? What if all this time, He's been showing me that my pain is my idol? This pain is independent from God, just as my eyesight is. I damaged myself, and therefore, my eyes are messed up and for whatever reason, I have migraines all the time. I did this to me. I made my bed and I have to lie in it.
But God's saying no. God's saying the world is broken, my child. Don't just turn to me for your brokenness in sin. Turn to me for all of it. Your body is broken. Let me heal it. You let me love your soul, let me love your body too. Let me be a part of all of your life. You are my child. Let me take away the pains that separate you from me.
And you know, just as when the diagnosis is too terrible to overcome, so it is when the doctors fail and the CT scans show nothing, and sometimes a girl has to realize healing just may be in God's hands and God's hands alone.
Sometimes, a girl needs a little more trust that God really is God and can do whatever we ask of Him to His glory. Sometimes, a girl has to doubt her doubts, give up her independence and submit to God as a child to a parent, seeking comfort and healing. Sometimes, being strong means asking for help when things seem impossible.
Because if God is really God, nothing is impossible.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
August 23rd, 2009: My Baptism.
I meant to post about my baptism in more detail, but things happened and I didn't want to blog with the wrong state of mind, so I put it off repeatedly, until now, when I should be asleep.
I blogged in detail about what happened on my other blog (private blog), so instead of repeating all that, I'll post what I wrote on my teeny tiny laptop in my tent the evening after my baptism.
Alone in the campground on a hot summer Sunday night... Really, really alone. There aren't any other campers in my area. My campground is on a corner of a loop, and my tent is flanked by a pond on one side and forest on the other, with a path leading down to Lake Jordan. [Or at least, I think it is...]
I got baptized today. It was my grandmother's birthday, and my favorite church was having a big barbecue baptism thingy and considering where John the Baptist did his baptizing, I figured if there was ever a completion to this perfect multidimensional symbol, it was that I'd get dunked in the Jordan also, albeit the lake version.
The sun is barely setting out the window of my tent and my doggies are a little angry at me for cutting the day short after a short yet long swim. Short because of the amount of time they spent in the car today [and yesterday...], long because it actually was long and they were both tired, or so I thought. We got back up from the lake and they started running around my car like puppies. I like it when my eight year olds are puppies... You know, interspersed between long periods of perfect behavior.
I went to the church this morning, after the 14 hour car ride landed me in Raleigh at around 2 or 3 AM and after having slept a few hours in the car with the hot doggies. I saw the pastor whom I had asked on twitter, "Can far away people come too?" to which he replied, "of course,"” and so I introduced myself and he was shocked.
"Well, I said I'd come..."
"Lots of people say lots of things..."
[There are lots of birds and things in the trees above me throwing stuff at my tent....]
Still in shock, he told me there was somebody I had to talk to about it, but said person was busy, so he said to wait till later, till after the sermon.
Music was awesome, sermon was awesome, and standing next to a guy so passionately worshiping was awesome also. One of these days, I'm going to have to risk looking ridiculous and start to let go a little in worship.
Anyway, after the sermon, I waited for a guy to finish his greetingly duties to basically have a "chat" [interrogation] as to why I thought I was ready for baptism. I don't know how long later, but a long, long while later, we got booted out of the office and moved into a classroom thingy to finish up. It was a hard conversation- challenging because of the content, but also because after nearly no sleep and no meal [and no tea] coupled with my mounting nerves, I was a little dysfunctional [probably still am].
Baptism is the death and resurrection of Jesus. As you go under, you die and as you come up, you're alive again. It's also the symbol of your repentance of sin, acknowledging that while Adam brought sin onto us, Jesus was the sacrifice to redeem it. Until we acknowledge that, we're liable to the wrathy part, and when we do, we're entitled to the forgivey part.
The number of people who showed up... Oh, my God. lol So, so many people were there. It was crazy. I actually stepped out of my anti-social box and introduced myself to people I wasn't sure were the people I knew already from the internet. A handful took care of me all day. They were awesome.
As the food distributed, I couldn't eat. No way. It might have been the lack of sleep, or it might have been the emotions, or maybe just the fear, but whatever it was, it was strongly messing me up.
Too late to back out now, I thought, knowing if I did, my reasons could have been ridiculous.
I don't remember the questions...
Do you repent of your sins?
Do you believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus?
Will you live your life as a reflection of that?
I think those were them. I remember my answers:
As much as I am able to.
Yes.
I hope so.
It was time... The crowd was all gathered, the pastor [one of two, Will] gave an explanation and a prayer and asked if anybody wanted to say some words. One girl did, and told her story, and I thought about sharing mine, but I was too messy, teetering between nervousness and tears.
If I had, I'd have said this:
"I just wanted to say thank you to all the V21 staff and members who have helped me over the past year and a half. I deliberately disburse myself among a few people so as to not worry about overwhelming anybody in particular with my questions and comments and misunderstandings and lack of technique for learning how to learn the Bible. You all were so patient with me, and took the time to explain things and not only that but explain how you got the explanations. You also took the time out to counsel me, to guide me and to show me what it meant to be a child of God.
I was mostly agnostic with a little bit of atheist mixed in and God chose me, and when I was good and ready, beat me with a sledgehammer to make Himself known to me, and without you guys, without my far away team of spiritual guides, I might not have seen the God in the beating I had received. I might have given up before I really started.
So that's why I'm here today, that's why I drove 14 hours with my two dogs when it was the most fiscally illogical thing to do: if there was any time to be baptized, it was now [a theology pastor from another church discussed it with me and that's what was decided because waiting until I was as all in as I expected to be (see the baptism post further down this page somewhere, called "On Baptism") was going to be an exercise of futility because the more you know Jesus, the more broken and unworthy you feel of His redemption and forgiveness], and between getting baptized with a bunch of strangers locally just to have the personal symbol between God and I versus sharing the moment with the dozen or so people from V21 without whom I probably would have lost my faith ages and ages ago if I had ever found it at all, there was no doubt that you deserved to see the far, far away fruits of your labor, albeit maybe the relatively accidental or indirect ones. You, who strive for community and to live out the Gospel, deserve to share in the small victory that is my salvation. It took God and a team to get me into this water, and to have you all here to witness it means a lot to me, on top of the symbolism that this particular date holds for me and the immeasurable symbolism of the baptism itself. So that's why I'm here. I'm here because baptism probably wouldn't even be on the table if it weren't for you guys and the Holy Spirit working within you all. So thanks."
But there was no way I'd get all that out without weeping my eyeballs out, and/or going on and on with the TMI.
Anyway, after a quick chat, we headed down to the beach where the masses of people were waiting. I'd given my camera to my interrogator and told him to click until his finger went numb, and so he did, capturing my somber mood as I walked down to the beach. It was all I could do not to cry. I was so overwhelmed by the sheer number of people, all so supportive and cheering everybody on. It was crazy. Somehow, I don't think any baptism at home would have reached that scale of magnitude nor of passion. It was really hard not to cry.
I waited, watching each person getting dunked trying to figure out if watching made it more or less scary. Finally, it was my turn next. The non-prin-dunking pastor [still Will] stood beside me on the beach absolutely gleaming and reassured me like crazy. He was so undoubtedly sure that this was a great thing that I started to believe it. :D
When it was my turn, I made my way out slowly, as fast as I could against the strong current. At one point, I decided to jog because I just wasn't getting anywhere. It was funny... For me [always diffusing the nerves with humor]. The pastor, Taylor, told me to cross my arms and I said no. :D I told him I was holding my nose with one hand and was going to hold onto him for dear life with the other because I had drowning issues and trust issues. He said that was fine and laughed a little and I answered the questions and he put me under.
The water was warm. The way it washed over me so smoothly and the way it all happened in one fluid motion... Symbol or not, when I got out, I felt a lot lighter, even though my hands were visibly shaking. Maybe it was the whole confronting fears thing, or maybe it was the way I put my comfort on the line to proclaim Jesus and actually followed through... Whatever it was, as I walked out of the water wiping my eyes, I didn't see anybody even though there were hundreds cheering me on. [Whether it was hundreds or not, it felt like it.] As I got closer to the shore, I finally came back to the living and my guy in the orange shirt who was taking the pictures for me was crouched on the beach. I hadn't even seen him shooting me the whole time. I was in such a far off place. I'm so grateful for the pictures though because I get to see what I missed, frame by frame.
I'll never forget the feelings and emotions involved, but I don't remember a thing about anything around me, really. :D It was me, the two pastors, the water and God.
When I got out, the guy in the orange shirt hugged me and gave me my camera. My hands were visibly shaking, but I wasn't nervous or scared anymore, just totally overwhelmed. And so, I was invited to a couple afterparties, but I felt I had to decline and be alone with my babies and Jesus tonight. [And apparently thousands upon thousands of really loud animals....] I just needed Jesus to help me figure out what happened today and what this all means.
Repent of my sins, I agreed before the dunking. But what does that mean?
Before I became a Christian, I wasn't all that bad. I didn't drink, I didn't party, I tried to be as selfless as I could be, and I gave generously of my time, resources and effort. I was Jesusier than most but without the Jesus. But there is one thing. The sex before marriage thing. On the one hand, after learning about the intertwining of souls and such, I do regret not waiting till marriage. On the other hand, my brain has been so firmly wired towards sex not being a big deal. What the result is is that when I'm immersed in God, I'm 100% certain that the next guy who has access to me will be the guy who has gone all in for eternity, but then a charming, sweet, flattering guy comes along and the conversation quickly becomes far, far less innocent than I would have allowed ten minutes prior while I was still immersed in God.
There is no doubt that when I step out of my new [chosen] Christian boundaries, I'm breaking my bond with God temporarily [from my end, of course]. There's no doubt. I can't do both at the same time, and that alone says something about how godly the behavior is.
But what am I supposed to do? Cut myself off from the opposite sex completely? Some people would say yes, especially here down south, apparently. Down here, if your left arm sins, you cut it off completely. But that doesn't work for me. I can't say that because things with men develop into things they shouldn't so quickly, I should stay away from guys forever. Where is the growth in that? Where is the accountability in my actions? How is that not running away? I know what I have to do and if I'm too weak to do it, then I have to grow. In order to grow and let go of hard-wired or innate feelings and perceptions, I have to pray that Jesus might change my heart.
So maybe that's the repentance part. Maybe it's not being sinless so much as turning to Jesus in moments of weakness. But how accountable are we? Jesus tells the adulteress woman who had been brought to Him to get stoned to go in peace. Peace, not regret. But if a girl like me, who thinks things through endlessly, knowingly sins, knowingly lets go and puts any will in the closet temporarily (emphasis on the "knowing"), what then? If I deliberately go against the word of God and what God has asked of me, He'll forgive me, but will I really be a Christian? Will I really be a Christian if I say, "I know that's what you want for me, Jesus, and I know your reasons are infinitely more powerful than mine, but I'm going to go this way instead"?
The other thing I realized this weekend is the godly man I crave probably doesn't exist. After being surrounded by a multitude of Christians yesterday, I realized that Christian or not, they all have exactly the same baggage and doubts and fears and even the selfishness and lack of self-awareness that non-believers have. So does it really make a difference if the guy I chose is not a Christian? If he's open to learning and discussing without tiring [hehe] and he's a good person whose priorities are straight, then I'm not sure.
Ideally though, I'd still want a godly man. :D
Please, God, invent one? :D
After the crowd disbursed, I wandered over to Taylor, the pastor who dunked me, to thank him. "I just wanted to say thanks."
"My pleasure," he answered with a smile.
"I gotta say though. I'm a little disappointed that I still have to wear glasses. I was hopin'."
:D
And the pics... (I think they all click bigger.)
The barbecue (Eric, this is the closest I have to a pic of you. :D It's like a "Where's Eric?" game. :D)
The path.
The descent.
The encouragement.
The walk.
The trek. :D
The negotiation.
The questions.
The grip [his].
The grip [mine].
Death.
Life.
After I got my camera back, I realized I had left it in black and white, so I took a couple of the guy after me to keep the colors of the day.
And that is the absolute best way to get baptized.
I blogged in detail about what happened on my other blog (private blog), so instead of repeating all that, I'll post what I wrote on my teeny tiny laptop in my tent the evening after my baptism.
.......
Alone in the campground on a hot summer Sunday night... Really, really alone. There aren't any other campers in my area. My campground is on a corner of a loop, and my tent is flanked by a pond on one side and forest on the other, with a path leading down to Lake Jordan. [Or at least, I think it is...]
I got baptized today. It was my grandmother's birthday, and my favorite church was having a big barbecue baptism thingy and considering where John the Baptist did his baptizing, I figured if there was ever a completion to this perfect multidimensional symbol, it was that I'd get dunked in the Jordan also, albeit the lake version.
The sun is barely setting out the window of my tent and my doggies are a little angry at me for cutting the day short after a short yet long swim. Short because of the amount of time they spent in the car today [and yesterday...], long because it actually was long and they were both tired, or so I thought. We got back up from the lake and they started running around my car like puppies. I like it when my eight year olds are puppies... You know, interspersed between long periods of perfect behavior.
I went to the church this morning, after the 14 hour car ride landed me in Raleigh at around 2 or 3 AM and after having slept a few hours in the car with the hot doggies. I saw the pastor whom I had asked on twitter, "Can far away people come too?" to which he replied, "of course,"” and so I introduced myself and he was shocked.
"Well, I said I'd come..."
"Lots of people say lots of things..."
[There are lots of birds and things in the trees above me throwing stuff at my tent....]
Still in shock, he told me there was somebody I had to talk to about it, but said person was busy, so he said to wait till later, till after the sermon.
Music was awesome, sermon was awesome, and standing next to a guy so passionately worshiping was awesome also. One of these days, I'm going to have to risk looking ridiculous and start to let go a little in worship.
Anyway, after the sermon, I waited for a guy to finish his greetingly duties to basically have a "chat" [interrogation] as to why I thought I was ready for baptism. I don't know how long later, but a long, long while later, we got booted out of the office and moved into a classroom thingy to finish up. It was a hard conversation- challenging because of the content, but also because after nearly no sleep and no meal [and no tea] coupled with my mounting nerves, I was a little dysfunctional [probably still am].
Baptism is the death and resurrection of Jesus. As you go under, you die and as you come up, you're alive again. It's also the symbol of your repentance of sin, acknowledging that while Adam brought sin onto us, Jesus was the sacrifice to redeem it. Until we acknowledge that, we're liable to the wrathy part, and when we do, we're entitled to the forgivey part.
The number of people who showed up... Oh, my God. lol So, so many people were there. It was crazy. I actually stepped out of my anti-social box and introduced myself to people I wasn't sure were the people I knew already from the internet. A handful took care of me all day. They were awesome.
As the food distributed, I couldn't eat. No way. It might have been the lack of sleep, or it might have been the emotions, or maybe just the fear, but whatever it was, it was strongly messing me up.
Too late to back out now, I thought, knowing if I did, my reasons could have been ridiculous.
I don't remember the questions...
Do you repent of your sins?
Do you believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus?
Will you live your life as a reflection of that?
I think those were them. I remember my answers:
As much as I am able to.
Yes.
I hope so.
It was time... The crowd was all gathered, the pastor [one of two, Will] gave an explanation and a prayer and asked if anybody wanted to say some words. One girl did, and told her story, and I thought about sharing mine, but I was too messy, teetering between nervousness and tears.
If I had, I'd have said this:
"I just wanted to say thank you to all the V21 staff and members who have helped me over the past year and a half. I deliberately disburse myself among a few people so as to not worry about overwhelming anybody in particular with my questions and comments and misunderstandings and lack of technique for learning how to learn the Bible. You all were so patient with me, and took the time to explain things and not only that but explain how you got the explanations. You also took the time out to counsel me, to guide me and to show me what it meant to be a child of God.
I was mostly agnostic with a little bit of atheist mixed in and God chose me, and when I was good and ready, beat me with a sledgehammer to make Himself known to me, and without you guys, without my far away team of spiritual guides, I might not have seen the God in the beating I had received. I might have given up before I really started.
So that's why I'm here today, that's why I drove 14 hours with my two dogs when it was the most fiscally illogical thing to do: if there was any time to be baptized, it was now [a theology pastor from another church discussed it with me and that's what was decided because waiting until I was as all in as I expected to be (see the baptism post further down this page somewhere, called "On Baptism") was going to be an exercise of futility because the more you know Jesus, the more broken and unworthy you feel of His redemption and forgiveness], and between getting baptized with a bunch of strangers locally just to have the personal symbol between God and I versus sharing the moment with the dozen or so people from V21 without whom I probably would have lost my faith ages and ages ago if I had ever found it at all, there was no doubt that you deserved to see the far, far away fruits of your labor, albeit maybe the relatively accidental or indirect ones. You, who strive for community and to live out the Gospel, deserve to share in the small victory that is my salvation. It took God and a team to get me into this water, and to have you all here to witness it means a lot to me, on top of the symbolism that this particular date holds for me and the immeasurable symbolism of the baptism itself. So that's why I'm here. I'm here because baptism probably wouldn't even be on the table if it weren't for you guys and the Holy Spirit working within you all. So thanks."
But there was no way I'd get all that out without weeping my eyeballs out, and/or going on and on with the TMI.
Anyway, after a quick chat, we headed down to the beach where the masses of people were waiting. I'd given my camera to my interrogator and told him to click until his finger went numb, and so he did, capturing my somber mood as I walked down to the beach. It was all I could do not to cry. I was so overwhelmed by the sheer number of people, all so supportive and cheering everybody on. It was crazy. Somehow, I don't think any baptism at home would have reached that scale of magnitude nor of passion. It was really hard not to cry.
I waited, watching each person getting dunked trying to figure out if watching made it more or less scary. Finally, it was my turn next. The non-prin-dunking pastor [still Will] stood beside me on the beach absolutely gleaming and reassured me like crazy. He was so undoubtedly sure that this was a great thing that I started to believe it. :D
When it was my turn, I made my way out slowly, as fast as I could against the strong current. At one point, I decided to jog because I just wasn't getting anywhere. It was funny... For me [always diffusing the nerves with humor]. The pastor, Taylor, told me to cross my arms and I said no. :D I told him I was holding my nose with one hand and was going to hold onto him for dear life with the other because I had drowning issues and trust issues. He said that was fine and laughed a little and I answered the questions and he put me under.
The water was warm. The way it washed over me so smoothly and the way it all happened in one fluid motion... Symbol or not, when I got out, I felt a lot lighter, even though my hands were visibly shaking. Maybe it was the whole confronting fears thing, or maybe it was the way I put my comfort on the line to proclaim Jesus and actually followed through... Whatever it was, as I walked out of the water wiping my eyes, I didn't see anybody even though there were hundreds cheering me on. [Whether it was hundreds or not, it felt like it.] As I got closer to the shore, I finally came back to the living and my guy in the orange shirt who was taking the pictures for me was crouched on the beach. I hadn't even seen him shooting me the whole time. I was in such a far off place. I'm so grateful for the pictures though because I get to see what I missed, frame by frame.
I'll never forget the feelings and emotions involved, but I don't remember a thing about anything around me, really. :D It was me, the two pastors, the water and God.
When I got out, the guy in the orange shirt hugged me and gave me my camera. My hands were visibly shaking, but I wasn't nervous or scared anymore, just totally overwhelmed. And so, I was invited to a couple afterparties, but I felt I had to decline and be alone with my babies and Jesus tonight. [And apparently thousands upon thousands of really loud animals....] I just needed Jesus to help me figure out what happened today and what this all means.
Repent of my sins, I agreed before the dunking. But what does that mean?
Before I became a Christian, I wasn't all that bad. I didn't drink, I didn't party, I tried to be as selfless as I could be, and I gave generously of my time, resources and effort. I was Jesusier than most but without the Jesus. But there is one thing. The sex before marriage thing. On the one hand, after learning about the intertwining of souls and such, I do regret not waiting till marriage. On the other hand, my brain has been so firmly wired towards sex not being a big deal. What the result is is that when I'm immersed in God, I'm 100% certain that the next guy who has access to me will be the guy who has gone all in for eternity, but then a charming, sweet, flattering guy comes along and the conversation quickly becomes far, far less innocent than I would have allowed ten minutes prior while I was still immersed in God.
There is no doubt that when I step out of my new [chosen] Christian boundaries, I'm breaking my bond with God temporarily [from my end, of course]. There's no doubt. I can't do both at the same time, and that alone says something about how godly the behavior is.
But what am I supposed to do? Cut myself off from the opposite sex completely? Some people would say yes, especially here down south, apparently. Down here, if your left arm sins, you cut it off completely. But that doesn't work for me. I can't say that because things with men develop into things they shouldn't so quickly, I should stay away from guys forever. Where is the growth in that? Where is the accountability in my actions? How is that not running away? I know what I have to do and if I'm too weak to do it, then I have to grow. In order to grow and let go of hard-wired or innate feelings and perceptions, I have to pray that Jesus might change my heart.
So maybe that's the repentance part. Maybe it's not being sinless so much as turning to Jesus in moments of weakness. But how accountable are we? Jesus tells the adulteress woman who had been brought to Him to get stoned to go in peace. Peace, not regret. But if a girl like me, who thinks things through endlessly, knowingly sins, knowingly lets go and puts any will in the closet temporarily (emphasis on the "knowing"), what then? If I deliberately go against the word of God and what God has asked of me, He'll forgive me, but will I really be a Christian? Will I really be a Christian if I say, "I know that's what you want for me, Jesus, and I know your reasons are infinitely more powerful than mine, but I'm going to go this way instead"?
The other thing I realized this weekend is the godly man I crave probably doesn't exist. After being surrounded by a multitude of Christians yesterday, I realized that Christian or not, they all have exactly the same baggage and doubts and fears and even the selfishness and lack of self-awareness that non-believers have. So does it really make a difference if the guy I chose is not a Christian? If he's open to learning and discussing without tiring [hehe] and he's a good person whose priorities are straight, then I'm not sure.
Ideally though, I'd still want a godly man. :D
Please, God, invent one? :D
After the crowd disbursed, I wandered over to Taylor, the pastor who dunked me, to thank him. "I just wanted to say thanks."
"My pleasure," he answered with a smile.
"I gotta say though. I'm a little disappointed that I still have to wear glasses. I was hopin'."
:D
.......
And the pics... (I think they all click bigger.)
The barbecue (Eric, this is the closest I have to a pic of you. :D It's like a "Where's Eric?" game. :D)
The path.
The descent.
The encouragement.
The walk.
The trek. :D
The negotiation.
The questions.
The grip [his].
The grip [mine].
Death.
Life.
After I got my camera back, I realized I had left it in black and white, so I took a couple of the guy after me to keep the colors of the day.
And that is the absolute best way to get baptized.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Maybe it's just not fair.
Reading the Prodical God by Tim Keller, I came across this part (on page 50) about the "elder brother" type of person:
The elder brother assumes that because he's been good and held fast to all the rules he was supposed to adhere to, God owes him. He was good, therefore his life should be good in consequence. And when it's not good, he blames God for not holding up his part of the bargain. Or, as in the case of the quote above, if the brother feels he wasn't good enough, falls into self-loathing when the bad occurs.
I've never hated God for the bad things that happened. But what I failed to realize was I was doing the opposite. Instead of my sufferings just being sufferings and just being stuff that happens in this brutal world, I did attribute it to my lack of goodness, or more accurately, my worthlessness.
Even though I would say, "Life's just not fair," in my heart, I felt, "Life's just not fair but that makes sense because I'm not good enough to deserve anything good."
My failures are only mine. The injustice that occurs against me is my fault. The wrongdoings and betrayals I've brought upon myself simply because I am not worth more than that. Friends will leave, potential jobs won't call, and I will fall asleep on migraine meds and fill my house with the smoke of potatoes overcooking on the stove not because life is hard sometimes but because I fail as a person.
But life is hard. Our lives fall apart. Yes, we play a substantial role, but even if we were to devote ourselves to being perfect, we'd still fail, fall, and break. That's life. Life really is not fair. But in being unfair, not only does it not reward for good, it doesn't punish for bad either. It doesn't withhold happiness because you are less talented than the next person. It doesn't withhold laughter because you aren't as ambitious as your brother. And most of all, it doesn't withhold love simply because you aren't perfect.
So just as we can't hate God for giving us a life we feel we don't deserve, we probably shouldn't loathe ourselves into believing this is the life we do.
And if evil circumstances overtake you, and you are not sure whether your life has been good enough or not, you may swing miserably back and forth between the poles of "I hate Thee!" and "I hate me."
The elder brother assumes that because he's been good and held fast to all the rules he was supposed to adhere to, God owes him. He was good, therefore his life should be good in consequence. And when it's not good, he blames God for not holding up his part of the bargain. Or, as in the case of the quote above, if the brother feels he wasn't good enough, falls into self-loathing when the bad occurs.
I've never hated God for the bad things that happened. But what I failed to realize was I was doing the opposite. Instead of my sufferings just being sufferings and just being stuff that happens in this brutal world, I did attribute it to my lack of goodness, or more accurately, my worthlessness.
Even though I would say, "Life's just not fair," in my heart, I felt, "Life's just not fair but that makes sense because I'm not good enough to deserve anything good."
My failures are only mine. The injustice that occurs against me is my fault. The wrongdoings and betrayals I've brought upon myself simply because I am not worth more than that. Friends will leave, potential jobs won't call, and I will fall asleep on migraine meds and fill my house with the smoke of potatoes overcooking on the stove not because life is hard sometimes but because I fail as a person.
But life is hard. Our lives fall apart. Yes, we play a substantial role, but even if we were to devote ourselves to being perfect, we'd still fail, fall, and break. That's life. Life really is not fair. But in being unfair, not only does it not reward for good, it doesn't punish for bad either. It doesn't withhold happiness because you are less talented than the next person. It doesn't withhold laughter because you aren't as ambitious as your brother. And most of all, it doesn't withhold love simply because you aren't perfect.
So just as we can't hate God for giving us a life we feel we don't deserve, we probably shouldn't loathe ourselves into believing this is the life we do.
Why me? Why now? Why this soul? Why this body? Why this place? Why this time? What is all this for?
In traffic, I thought of a question I'd read in the comments of a blog (and also probably asked at some point):
If God is real and wants us to believe in him, why doesn't he just show himself?
And I wondered what God might reply.
Jesus might say, "I was right there. I healed you. I've showed you miracle after miracle and still you don't believe. Even my own brother, who walked alongside me, did not believe. What else do you expect me to do?"
But God? While he might say something like, "I created mountains for you to stand in awe of me. I created the atmosphere and caused the sun to rise and set through it in a beautiful expression of color every day to blow you away in glory of me. I created the sea to stir your soul into a longing of eternity with me. I created love and beauty for you to know me. I created justice so you might hear my heart. I created the universe and arranged everything just so such that Earth can have warmth and life. And finally, I breathed air into your soul to cause you to exist while always being a part of me as my child. I sent my Son to die to show you me and to bring you to me because I love you and want you to be with me. I did all that to show you who I am and still you don't see. What else do you expect me to do?" I also somehow picture him using examples that are so profoundly ingrained into us that we don't even realize they're God.
If God is the truth and science is the truth, then we might be able to explain each side by using the other. We can explain scientific phenomenon with God, and we can explain this tiny part of God's universe with science. The fact is, if we require constants for survival, then eventually, we will be able to figure out what all those constants are. One day, we expect to have gradually become so advanced in our scientific research that we'll get deeper and deeper into our reasoning of the universe, hopefully leaving us feeling satiated enough with answers that we stop asking the real questions.
While science can figure out all the natural constants and distract us from the deep-rooted, unanswered bothers of our soul, what does it do for our heart?
If you think about it, it's kind of like marrying somebody based on the facts about them. It's marrying somebody and giving your life to a person who looks perfect on paper. Isn't believing in only science just that? Isn't it saying, "We exist because of this list of facts," while we know our heart says otherwise?
As an agnostic, my heart did have questions and I didn't have any answers and I was ok with that. I thought God was for people who needed reasons so badly that they made some up. But what is so weak about believing in something so huge? What is so weak about believing in something so difficult to reason away? Or about believing this isn't all for nothing? Or even that life doesn't revolve around the self, the immediate and the temporary?
I've already blogged a while ago about how as an agnostic, I thought believing was the easy way out. It is for some people. But for agnostics and atheists, it might be the hardest thing you'll ever do. While you might get answers to some of the why questions, you also pick up all this responsibility and at the same time, this powerlessness. It answers the questions in a way that both satisfies the heart and shatters it at the same time.
Science is far, far less confrontational to deal with. Why? Is it because it gives us control over our existence? Or is it because it doesn't provoke our soul the way God does?
And I'm not talking about the moving stories we hear sometimes that are science-related. I'm talking about at the end of a regular day when you stare at your ceiling knowing all the scientific things you've already collected regarding what life is about, do you really feel as though your soul has been transformed by that knowledge? Does that knowledge fulfill you? Does knowing we evolved from random strings of random amino acids answer the deep questions of your heart as to why you are here?
That's the thing- God is a heart thing. And judging by the world we've created for ourselves, heart things don't sit well with us, do they?
Instead of waiting for God to become a science, why not get uncomfortable? Why not explore the things that you feel are impossible? Why not challenge your soul and seek out the answers you'd be otherwise ok not knowing?
Why not?
What else is life for?
If God is real and wants us to believe in him, why doesn't he just show himself?
And I wondered what God might reply.
Jesus might say, "I was right there. I healed you. I've showed you miracle after miracle and still you don't believe. Even my own brother, who walked alongside me, did not believe. What else do you expect me to do?"
But God? While he might say something like, "I created mountains for you to stand in awe of me. I created the atmosphere and caused the sun to rise and set through it in a beautiful expression of color every day to blow you away in glory of me. I created the sea to stir your soul into a longing of eternity with me. I created love and beauty for you to know me. I created justice so you might hear my heart. I created the universe and arranged everything just so such that Earth can have warmth and life. And finally, I breathed air into your soul to cause you to exist while always being a part of me as my child. I sent my Son to die to show you me and to bring you to me because I love you and want you to be with me. I did all that to show you who I am and still you don't see. What else do you expect me to do?" I also somehow picture him using examples that are so profoundly ingrained into us that we don't even realize they're God.
If God is the truth and science is the truth, then we might be able to explain each side by using the other. We can explain scientific phenomenon with God, and we can explain this tiny part of God's universe with science. The fact is, if we require constants for survival, then eventually, we will be able to figure out what all those constants are. One day, we expect to have gradually become so advanced in our scientific research that we'll get deeper and deeper into our reasoning of the universe, hopefully leaving us feeling satiated enough with answers that we stop asking the real questions.
While science can figure out all the natural constants and distract us from the deep-rooted, unanswered bothers of our soul, what does it do for our heart?
If you think about it, it's kind of like marrying somebody based on the facts about them. It's marrying somebody and giving your life to a person who looks perfect on paper. Isn't believing in only science just that? Isn't it saying, "We exist because of this list of facts," while we know our heart says otherwise?
As an agnostic, my heart did have questions and I didn't have any answers and I was ok with that. I thought God was for people who needed reasons so badly that they made some up. But what is so weak about believing in something so huge? What is so weak about believing in something so difficult to reason away? Or about believing this isn't all for nothing? Or even that life doesn't revolve around the self, the immediate and the temporary?
I've already blogged a while ago about how as an agnostic, I thought believing was the easy way out. It is for some people. But for agnostics and atheists, it might be the hardest thing you'll ever do. While you might get answers to some of the why questions, you also pick up all this responsibility and at the same time, this powerlessness. It answers the questions in a way that both satisfies the heart and shatters it at the same time.
Science is far, far less confrontational to deal with. Why? Is it because it gives us control over our existence? Or is it because it doesn't provoke our soul the way God does?
And I'm not talking about the moving stories we hear sometimes that are science-related. I'm talking about at the end of a regular day when you stare at your ceiling knowing all the scientific things you've already collected regarding what life is about, do you really feel as though your soul has been transformed by that knowledge? Does that knowledge fulfill you? Does knowing we evolved from random strings of random amino acids answer the deep questions of your heart as to why you are here?
That's the thing- God is a heart thing. And judging by the world we've created for ourselves, heart things don't sit well with us, do they?
Instead of waiting for God to become a science, why not get uncomfortable? Why not explore the things that you feel are impossible? Why not challenge your soul and seek out the answers you'd be otherwise ok not knowing?
Why not?
What else is life for?
Monday, September 28, 2009
And redemption is suddenly a double-edged sword...
If Jesus redeems all the sin in my life caused both by other people and by my role in the interaction with other people, does that mean the sin He will redeem in others' lives might be me?
Am I something somebody else's life has to be washed clean of?
Am I something somebody else's life has to be washed clean of?
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