Grumbling. I think there's a verse saying not to do that somewhere...

I'll be honest, I'm simply exhausted. I loathe that I wake up so many Monday mornings apprehensive of the day ahead or of the news I'll receive in the briefing room at work. I hate questioning my ability to work for an agency that I've grown to love or ever truly understanding my future career path.

...Whew, now that that's off my chest...

What's worse is I can't find a way to make myself figure out what I'm meant to be striving toward in the long run.
...Oh, no, worse is that I know what I should be doing RIGHT NOW and that I've been shifting that responsibility away from myself.

I know I should be working with diligence, praying even harder than I work and asking for direction as I go about life. But I'm oh-so-terrible at that.

I once believed I had a plan, I had a set path, and then not-so-unlike other moments it seems a supernatural force interrupted my certainty and pushed me into the void of ambiguity. If His purpose was to push me into trusting that force, well, unfortunately my ability to trust disappeared when I couldn't seem to know myself. Apparently that's all I've been counting on.

I frequently thrust myself into frantic questioning and research, only to realize I still lack direction.

Chris will ask me here if I've prayed for it, and no I haven't. I'm still a little p-o'd that it's gone.

I guess I had to get that off my chest too.

Our apartment is cluttered with his school-books and theology texts, and I'm honestly a little jealous. I love to study but no longer have the faintest idea what it is I should be studying. I have grand visions for what our future will be years down the road but no idea where to begin.

Hmph. Well I suppose this is my beginning. I guess eventually I'll need to quit my grumbling and get to that prayer part.

Meanwhile, as I get all of this griping out of my system, you can pray too.

The Shifting Shadows of Stars Long Gone

I'm listening to some worship song I added a year ago to my worship playlist, whilst sitting in a little office that I now feel far removed from. Now there is an engagement ring on my left hand and I'm fifteen days from marrying the man who once worked across the room from where I sat.

A year ago today, ironically the day I agreed to the relationship, I wouldn't have predicted this. I couldn't be more ready for that now, but I also couldn't feel more worn from the change.

Since then I've moved churches twice, graduated college, started a master's program and quit, started two new jobs and an internship, one full-time, and have been released from all of them. I've been in a dating relationship and an engagement and now planned a wedding. All the while I've remained living in the same apartment and projected living with and doing ministry for two different organizations, neither of which have come to pass in the Lord's plan.

I'm now fifteen days out from living in a new place with a permanent new roommate, without any accurate picture of what our income will be in the next month.

So, am I excited? Yes. I'm also a little bit terrified. And I feel kind of lost.

It should be mentioned that all the while I've remained in the same hand of the same God who I've been in relationship with for the last fifteen years of my life, "with whom there is no shadow due to change" (James 1:17). Surely if my emotions reflected this absolute truth, while all else is shifting reality, I should feel anchored.

Well I've moved my little faux anchor, if you will, around a few times now, and let me tell you, I've worn myself out from expending all that useless energy. I'm completely exhausted from casting and projecting visions of the future only to see them quickly fall away to something not yet seen. I'm tired of grieving the dust of stars who were never truly in the sky, only their shifting shadows from where I looked up on my little ship's deck.

Somebody else is steering, and I no longer count myself understanding enough to write the conclusion to this journey.

Rain Sprinklings, Prayer Inklings and Light Thoughts on Lent.

My car engine hummed, but I waited. Pensively I lifted my phone and resorted to Facebook to distract me from some irksome sense of dissatisfaction. Never a good idea; as if Facebook ever made anyone feel more satisfied with their lives.

At the top of my feed, I read that a friend had gotten a new job. A really GOOD new job. Surprise! Facebook did not make me happier. The unsettledness inside of me escalated.

What am I doing with my life?

Ever have those moments? I sure hope I'm not the only one...

My car was unhappy too, and she didn't seem to feel like waiting on me to figure out my whole life's direction before taking me home on this cold night. The engine began to sputter. I panicked, thought of calling Chris, but then felt an urgency to at least try to reverse and move out into the parking lot. She continued to sputter, but I backed out, and once I had the space cleared before me I drove ahead, revving her up.

I felt a little like that car in that moment. I felt like someone sitting and waiting for things to begin, but waiting a little too long before moving forward.

I couldn't hear my Daddy anymore either. The car, the Facebook post, and warning signs in the sky of coming rain all seemed to tell me I needed to move somehow. I needed to go find God again. I had been sitting complacently and cozily, parked in one place, missing Him completely.

As I drove, I'm not sure if I prayed more for a safe drive home, or for God to tell me what on earth I needed to be doing. It was probably some odd combination of the both of these in an awakening beggar's prayer.

I have known days where I was so lonely it hurt, and Christ was my only comfort. There were times when I didn't know how I would make it from one day to the next, and despite all my worry, God blessed me time and time again with just what I needed, and still joys beyond this.

Yet, I know Him to do this in spite of me. Too often I have had one need filled, thanked him silently, and then moved forward independent of Him. Oh, I counted myself lucky, but had I secretly been crediting it all to myself?

However, the idea that I should only seek the Lord when I have unmet, physical needs seems absurd. Surely we are always commanded to pursue God, no matter where we are.

I was stagnant, just like my little car. Rain drops gently began to drift over her. Perhaps it was a way to cause me to more carefully examine speeding limits and the highway. I prayed.

I remember years past asking the Lord for a way to draw me nearer to Him when my need had grown too great to be handled by anyone but Him any longer; the next day, I knew I was supposed to train to run a half-marathon. My entire training was devoted to Him in prayer, utterly dependent as I roamed the same running tracks alone, night after night.

In the Old Testament, He granted His people a way to draw nearer, to remember their need and turn to Him, year after year, through His law, before their Savior--their relief--appeared.

I committed to trusting that He would, in all His faithfulness through the ages, show me how to draw close again if I fervently sought a word from Him. I know I will hear Him and that I will be given a sign.

As I pulled into the parking lot, I knew I would not be given a spot so near my building. They had filled up quickly tonight, and the rain shower continued. I pulled into a spot I knew was just for me. The walk caused me to continue in prayer and thought. How many times had I forgone prayer in taking steps forward in my life?

I lack understanding of my calling; I used to feel so sure, but recently I've begun to question whether these plans were constructed by myself or if I were drawn to them by the Lord. One thing I feel sure I'm called to do is to write, and it's the thing that I've been missing the most.

In my times of need, writing has been a way to draw nearer to God when I could be heard by no one else. Recently, though, I had lost my discipline.

So this evening, I've committed to writing this one piece. This is my admission of need, once more, of loss of direction, uncertainty, and bewilderment. I'm afraid that my prayer for the discomfort needed to seek God out again will be further revealed. If the Lord wills it, though, these writings and pleas on paper will become one medium through which I draw nearer and find my way in Christ again. I'll seek His will if this will be an appropriate Lenten devotion in order to find my way back to His feet in adoration at the foot of the cross.

I have not a choice; I must choose Life.

I believe that I know very little, but if I know one thing at this time in my life, it’s that I must begin to remember who I am or I will lose myself and lose a much larger battle.

It isn't about me—and that’s just it. Selfishly I want to possess myself but in order to do that, I have to completely forget my own definition of who I am and sacrifice it for the identity of Whose I am.

Christ died to give me His name, to write me in the book of life, and yet time after time I go back to that book and say “no. I will forget that life. I will selfishly hang onto my own self-definitive. I will cling to death.”

I forget that years ago I looked over the history of where God has brought myself and my family and chose His truth. In that decision, I said that I would literally forget myself and the flesh of my heritage and believe what He has said about me and radically apply it to my heart and let it change my being and very way of life.

But I've forgotten that. I've chosen the crummy-old-me. How ironic, that, such lack of confidence in who I really am now—a person who is now hidden in Christ—can be such an ungodly act? It is wrong and sinful to look upon the definition of my identity and say that it is not enough.

So, selflessly, I must refuse my feelings of low self-esteem and say that because Jesus gave me His life to live, it’s not what I think about myself anymore but what He thinks about me, and to choose differently from that would be to choose death and to refuse Christ.

The Christian life cannot be lived out it in the rags of a peasant, but walked out in the riches of the King. I must choose His life or I will not survive this world, fulfill the new dictum He gave me, or pass unto the Kingdom of the next life with Him.

I have not a choice; I must choose Life.

Unleashed

It was like staring into the face of a younger, angrier version of me.

The other day I found a research paper I’d written about two-and-a-half years earlier. I had somehow managed to use a sociology prompt as a platform from which to emotionally mouth-off about every bad experience I’d had with the institution of the church. I was cynical, hurt and wrecked with anger.

If you’re reading this and you’re surprised, I’m thankful. If you’re not, then you’ve known me well.
Not everything about that girl is gone. Admittedly I was surprised, reading back, that I’d actually managed a fairly well-researched rant for eight pages...

And yet some things have changed. Today I don’t sit in the church and cower in the pews all morning…I greet for one service on Sundays, involve myself in the discipleship process, and bubble over with excitement for everyone I get to see at Sunday school. While I am mentioning outward changes limited to the sphere of church activities, I hope this is only the sign of an inward change.

Because I remember when I once felt unworthy to come forth just to sing in worship.

I grew up in a minister’s home where my mother, siblings and I were regularly verbally battered and abused. I felt soiled.

The church home I attended most of my childhood was usually not equipped to encourage someone in my unique, and often awkward, situation. Hence, in my heart the church as a whole had reason to grieve for their mistakes and the burdens they cast on others.

Today my parents have been divorced for about the same amount of time it’s been since I wrote that report. Coming away to a new community for school and getting distance from so much of my hurt seems to have been God’s ticket to deliver me from some of the pain. Granted, I carried it with me for some time and it can still be a struggle to shed its burden.

Since then I’ve wrestled with my Heavenly Daddy for a new identity repeatedly, like Jacob wrestled with the Lord (Genesis 32). I’ve fought to regain the space within my heart to grant forgiveness to those who’ve hurt me and release them for their faults against me, while in turn releasing myself from the same standard. I’ve learned that I can know and accept the pieces of my family, the church, and myself that are confusing and imperfect. And after four years of my undergraduate I’ve learned that my daily security and provision rest entirely in Christ.

The relationships within my family are still often filled with tension, and it is a discipline to try walk into my home in a different manner.  I fail a lot. My relationships with my brother and sister are not as close as I wish they were, and I’m admittedly still at a loss as to how to change that. Sometimes speaking with my mother I mirror a person whose flesh I thought I shed a long time ago. And the significant role of Daddy in my life has been replaced by the Holy Spirit during prayer. Truthfully, the thing I most look forward to in Heaven is re-meeting my father, without all of our bondage.

Fortunately, church is now a place I call home. I couldn’t have asked for better support from the brothers and sisters I’ve known over the last several years. Without the help of good friends, the hours of their time that they gave, and even the tears they were willing to shed with me, I would not be the same person I am today. Praise be to God, the role of the church and its members has been redeemed in my life, and I regularly look forward to seeing it continually transformed into a place of healing, where the broken need not hide.

I share this because I believe that I’ve attended church with many at First Baptist Arlington over the years who’ve never heard my story. I also know that within any church there are those that do still hide, or those outside of it who just don’t feel “clean” enough to come in.

Or we’re hurt and need healing, like that girl in my paper that I still wrestle with from time to time. Wherever we are in life, each of us needs someone to help redirect our perspective and point us to the cross.

Thank you to my church home for letting me in, along with the close friends that regularly welcome me into their hearts. I hope my heart will be continually renewed as a place to make others feel just as welcome.

Dependence

Our gentleman was lifted out of his wheelchair, the pad beneath him assisting the lifters in shifting him to his bed without disturbing the position held by his thin frame. His arms and legs stayed in fairly the same position once he was laid on his back and a plain, white bed sheet retrieved to provide him with some warmth. The bruises and cuts on his arms were checked and redressed by the RN, and after she checked his vitals she left me to have my time with him.

I was a hospice volunteer on my first ride along with a nurse this Friday morning, visiting this particular patient (who will remain unnamed) at a nursing home facility. Ironically, I felt helpless next to this man. I also felt disgusted with my desire to keep a distance, either out of this helplessness or fear. Perhaps it unnerved me to see my own mortality reflected in his.

Regardless, once the RN left and I was able to warm up to the man on my own terms, I pulled up a chair next to him and checked his stack of books. The RN had lovingly mentioned that he loved being read to and would quickly fall to sleep not ten minutes into the reading. I found a Bible on the bottom of the stack, a couple of other Christian books, and at the top what I assumed was a devotional brought more recently by one of his children--Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young.

I could tell Mr. “S” was very sweet, though only able to utter small phrases and requests through his teeth and lips since his jaw moved little. I did the only thing I figured I should and opened his devotional to that day’s date, February 22ndd, and my voice trembled at the reading:

You need Me every moment. Your awareness of your constant need for Me is your greatest strength. Your neediness, properly handled, is a link to My Presence. However, there are pitfalls that you must be on guard against: self-pity, self-preoccupation, giving up. Your inadequacy presents you with a continual choice—deep dependence on Me or despair…

My eyes watered as I worked to hold myself in for the sake of Mr. S...as if that mattered. As I continued through devotional’s pages over the next few minutes, his breathing fell into rhythm and grew louder. His eyes fluttered closed and then opened again several times between my pauses in the reading. He politely let me know that after the next page he might go to sleep—if it was all right with me. I replied “of course”, and he let me know “it was good to know you” and some other kind compliments. He had asked my name twice in about the same ten-minute span.

Dependence is a word that keeps coming to mind in my spiritual walk in the last couple of years. In a season where I’m now examining some of my most basic dependencies, I realize that without understanding our fundamental dependence on a “Higher Being”, we have nothing by which to gage our other acts of dependence. Caffeine, relationships, financial stability, or even busyness all take advantage of our mind’s reward system to increase our reliance on whatever object grants us that fulfillment.

Amidst it all, I realize how needy I really can be and my craving for that sense of wholeness. Visiting that particular hospice client that day, in that hour, gave me a vivid image to match the level of need we each have, no matter how far we attempt to stuff it down sometimes.

And in Sarah Young’s words, our “greatest strength” is when we come to terms with our weakness, approaching the Lord’s throne for a depth of grace we cannot comprehend, and a moment-by-moment supply we often take for granted.

On Faith and Doubt: Mystery

Last month I reflected on the unavoidable questions that have arisen in my mind concerning faith and doubt. Here is some of what I have discovered since:

 - Questions are important
- If you have questions, then you should be actively seeking answers and soaking in observations
- Questions may lead to a firmer faith
- God delights in your intellectual and holistic pursuit of truth
- The questions will never stop

I believe it’s possible to be on a continual, intellectual pursuit of truth all along your walk with Jesus, but I’ve also concluded that eventually you must realize that you will never have all the knowledge needed to prove the validity of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and all that the Christian faith promises about God. One thing I have certainly discovered about faith; if there were no question about the truth of Christianity, then there would be no opportunity to faithfully trust in Christ. If all of the answers were set before us as fact, then there would be no choice and faith would not be needed. I also don’t believe that if we knew all things as certainly as we would like that it would make living according to God’s way any easier, or that it would prevent man from choosing other paths less wise.

Albert Schweitzer once said:

“But the truth is, it is not Jesus as historically known, but Jesus as spiritually arisen within men, who is significant for our time... And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.”

I then choose to believe that the Holy Spirit’s stirring in me of such questions and thoughts has set me about on a new leg in my journey of faith, during which I am weighing everything I learn according to a different standard and seeing with a renewed lens. Just like is the habit of the Spirit, just when there is the chance of becoming complacent in our walk with Christ, He comes to stir things up and disturb the image before us. Like a reflection in a pool, the Spirit has stirred the waters, and to find the greatest treasure requires a deeper, more careful look into the pool and the faith to reach in and take it.

And to reach in to take hold of such faith takes courage. If I believe in the Bible and in Christ, if I even give Him an inch, then He will take a mile. In other words, if it’s true, then this stuff is serious, and I better take God’s word seriously for my life. I had wondered why some of the books on the topic of faith and doubt I had read nudged me closer to God’s word rather requiring me to distance from it, or why one friend of mine recommended the Bible over all other materials to study. Now I understand why. There is such weight to what is said about who God is, who we are, and who Jesus Christ is as man and deity that it transforms the way I think and gives purpose to how I live.

Still, it is not the certainty of Scripture that influences me the most towards greater faith, but the great mystery of it that captures me.

“…Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” –Matthew 17:20