honest mess

When Emmett got sick a few years ago and I started blogging, I largely gave up writing in my journal that I've kept since seventh grade because it seemed redundant.  Every now and then, though, I pull it back out because I can't bring myself to open my computer and be completely honest.  I haven't pulled that journal out in over a year, but this morning I was halfway through an entry when I thought, "oh, crap, you're going to make me post this aren't you?"  So here is what I wrote in all its honest mess....

...This morning I find I need to tuck myself away in a closet of private confession. Oh Lord, I have cherished sin in my heart.  I - who professes to love you, who rejoices in praising your name among your people, who delights in your tender, compassionate love - I have been secretly feeding a thousand cherished lusts and self-indulgences.

I have lusted after relationships and food and material things.  I have indulged in spending, eating, and gossip.  I have been impatient, ungracious, boastful and malicious.  Even when these sins were unnoticed or comparatively small, I enjoyed them, welcomed them, planned them, and sought to continue in them like I was the whore of Babylon.  I can list specific instances where you hemmed me in or pinned me down to keep me from sin, and I responded by squirming and trying to get around you.

Yet you have laid your hand upon me.  You have brought me into the sanctuary and shown me truth.  I know better, and still I have let sin wriggle into my heart and chain up my soul.  I have driven nail upon nail into the heart of Christ every day and dragged others down with me in my sin.

I have been tempted to compensate for my sin by setting up rigorous laws, an elaborate series of self-deprivations and self-imposed humiliations.  I am tempted to make myself feel better by some elaborate and rigid system of ordering my life to impose the outward appearance of holiness to compensate for the inward decay of my heart.  There was a time when I would have done these things with a desperate desire to earn your love, frantic to bribe you to love me, eager to make myself worthy.

But this time is different, I weep because I am confident that you love me, despite my sin.  I never expected to have this kind of confidence, to have no desire to cover my self-indulgent sinful nature with a more self-righteous version.  I no longer want rules to take away my freedom because I'm not strong enough to walk rightly.  I don't want to give up indulging in sinful pleasures merely so I can indulge in self-righteous condescension.

I want your Spirit that sets me free to run in the paths of your commands.  I want to get a little angry with you because that Spirit is so hard to hear and then have you laugh at me because my sinful nature fabricates that excuse to trick me into sinning.  I want to wrestle with you and lose.  I want to live in freedom, knowing and accepting the risks of falling down.  I want to teach these crippled legs to run instead of confining them to a wheelchair because I'm afraid of being found out as a sinner.

But today my soul is weary with the sorrow of my own sin, so strengthen me according to your word, not according to mine.

sucking chest wound

In high school some friends and I got to be part of a disaster preparedness drill for a local children's hospital.  We were each assigned a trauma injury, rolled in on gurneys, and the doctors had to deal with all of us at once.  I had the "sucking chest wound," you know, the kid they're supposed to give up on because she has minutes to live anyway, and they're more likely to save someone else.  So a lot of doctors came by and left quickly, but I thoroughly milked every moment of gurgling and gasping like the quintessential melodramatic teenage hollywood wannabe who got to replay her death scene over and over.  It was fabulous.

nerd moment.

So when a tornado passes over your house, it isn't that the wind is so strong that it sucks your roof off.  The speed of the wind causes the pressure to drop and difference in pressure causes the air inside your house to push upwards on the roof.  It's more like the air inside the house is trying to rush out to fill the void outside.

the synthesis?

I have these moments where I tangibly feel that same sucking chest wound. The difference in pressure between my outside and inside is so intense I feel like I have my mouth stuck on the suction end of a vacuum hose and and I'm being turned inside out because of the negative pressure.

I had one of these moments recently and all I could do was sit in my car and sob.  At some point though, I've come to realize that the fundamental nature of these moments is longing.  The anticipation of something like marriage, or heaven, or children, or spring, or anything good is so arousing that if you  drift away from or even lose the focus of your longing, then the void left is overwhelming.  I'm not being trite when I say that I completely understand why people drink or have sex or do drugs or become workaholics - anything to feed the black hole created by the longing.

I love cooking, and no, I'm not changing the subject.  Someone once asked me if I were a good cook.  I find that a strange question.  I love to eat what I make, but I suspect I'm a terrible cook.  What I love about cooking, though is how much it teaches me about the art of waiting on God.  Emmett's grandfather taught me how to make jam, and I spent hours in his kitchen learning how to wait for just the right moment.  Too soon and it never gels, too long and turns out unpleasantly firm.    I'm a rusher though, and without proper training (sometimes even despite my proper training), all my jams would be a runny mess.

I have the same problem in life.  If I have a question, then I want an answer and then the conversation is over.  It isn't that I don't care about people, so much as I don't know how to go about the art of building relationship.  Emmett was wonderful at this.  We would have a question we needed answered, something as simple as 'when are you arriving.'  Emmett would make a call and an hour later we would have our answer.  I would get so frustrated, and he would look at me like I was nuts because for him, you can't just ask a question.  It has to be just right.

In cooking, as in life, I'm really bad at sensing the 'just rights.'  Too many plans here, too little self-control there, a little over-indulgnece here, a smattering of conceit just then, a missed social cue, or a preoccupation with my own agenda, and before you know it, my longings have become so blurry that the same old sucking chest wound appears out of nowhere.  A gradual buildup of missed cues and 'just rights' becomes a landslide of unfulfilled longing set loose by a single pebble.  Not enough time to wash my hair or being tired or feeling inadequate next to someone more beautiful/talented/hip/funny/etc - any of these pebbles can trigger an overwhelming rush of emotion.

I find myself learning the art of longing, of waiting, of seeing the 'just rights.'  Balancing the promise of a new creation with the reality of sin is an art that escapes me.  How to live in the tangible joy of the promises of Christ without feeding that insatiable sucking chest wound is not an art I've mastered.

champagne for breakfast again - well of course!

Part of getting used to living in the post-Easter world -- part of getting used to letting Easter change your life, your attitudes, your thinking, your behavior -- is getting used to the cosmology that is now unveiled.  Heaven and earth, I repeat, are made for each other, and at certain points they intersect and interlock.  Jesus is the ultimate such point.  We as Christians are meant to be such points, derived from him. The Spirit, the sacraments, and the scriptures are given so that the double life of Jesus, both heavenly and earthly, can become ours as well, already in the present...

...The message of Easter, then, is neither that God once did a spectacular miracle but then decided not to do many others nor that there is a blissful life after death to look forward to.  The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it.  And precisely because the resurrection was and is bodily, albeit with a transformed body, the power of Easter to transform and heal the present world must be put into effect both at the macrolevel, in applying the gospel to the major problems of the world... and to the intimate details of our daily lives.  Christian holiness consists not of trying as hard as we can to be good but of learning to live in the new world created by Easter, the new world we publicly entered in our baptism.  There are many parts of this world we can't do anything about except pray.  But there is one part of the world, one part of physical reality, that we can do something about, and that is the creature each of us calls "myself." Personal holiness and global holiness belong together.  Those who wake up to the one may well find themselves called to wake up to the other as well...     Surprised by Hope N.T. Wright

Two currents of thought are radically changing my life right now; a deeper understanding of the inner workings of my sinful nature thanks to the writings of John Owen that I have often quoted on this blog, and a radical shift in my understanding of the resurrection, thanks to the book quoted above.  It is no coincidence that I have come across these books and find myself working through them concurrently.  Owen says that proportionate to our understanding of sin will be our desire for grace, and I find that my desire for grace creates a desperate need to rightly understand the resurrection of Christ.

I have, like most other Christians these past few months, been overwhelmed by the sins of the world coming to light in stories of murder, blindness, and manipulation.  I mostly marvel, though, that we are surprised by these stories.  Because apart from Christ, I could justify any one of these actions.  In grieving the world I've noticed a terrible temptation to judge myself in comparison to the the world only, without respect to Christ.  To lash out in judgement, thinly veiled as righteous horror, is my first impulse, but the deeper I go into Christ the more I am aware of my own sinful nature and need for grace, and the more I realize that apart from grace I would do these exact same things.  Then I find myself caught up in grief and prayer in strange new ways and I find answers I never quite expected.  Consider this:

But Easter week itself ought not to be the time when all the clergy sigh with relief and go on holiday.  It ought to be an eight-day festival, with champagne served after morning prayer or even before, with lots of alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems.  Is it any wonder people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we can't throw our hats in the air?  Is it any wonder we find it hard to live the resurrection if we don't do it exuberantly in our liturgies? Is it any wonder the world doesn't take much notice if Easter is celebrated as simply the one-day happy ending tacked on to forty days of fasting and gloom?  It's long overdue that we took a hard look at how we keep Easter in the church, at home, in our personal lives, right through the system. And if it means rethinking some cherished habits, well, maybe it's time to wake up.  That always comes as a surprise...

...But we should be taking steps to celebrate Easter in creative new ways: in art, literature, children's games, poetry, music, dance, festivals, bells, special concerts, anything that comes to mind.  This is our greatest festival.  Take away Christmas, and in biblical terms you lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke, nothing else.  Take Easter away, and you don't have a New Testament; you don't have a Christianity; as Paul says, you are still in your sins....

...In particular, if Lent is a time to give things up, Easter ought to be a time to take things up.  Champagne for breakfast again -- well, of course. Christian holiness was never meant to be merely negative.... Easter is the time to sow new seeds and to plant out a few cuttings.  If Calvary means putting to death things in your life that need killing off if you are to flourish as a Christian and as a truly human being, then Easter should mean planting, watering, and training up things in your life (personal and corporate) that ought to be blooming, filling the garden with color and perfume, and in due course, bearing fruit...

I was tempted to quote the whole book, but I'll stop there.  Do you get it?  Do you get that the deep griefs of this world are answered completely by the resurrection, the promise of forgiveness and a new creation.  Therein lies a deep, hopeful, and wildly joyful cause for dancing and kissing and champagne for breakfast!

I have tried these past few years to travel my own road of grief with an open hand.  The temptation to bury grief under activities or false idols or work or alcohol or sex or any other distraction is overwhelming at times.  But I have found that real grief, rightly experienced with Christ, coexists with a joy beyond my ability to express in words.

As I walked the Ganier trail at Radnor lake yesterday, I was met at the top by a furious barrage of wind that nearly blew me over. I laughed and wanted to shout hallelujahs and shake my fist and say, "do your worst because I know who made you and he loves me!"

But of all the things in Wright's book, one small side note haunts me more than any other.  In his discussion on how the resurrection works itself into our pursuit of justice, he mentions offhandedly that at the center of the peaceful dismantling of apartheid was a black African archbishop who spent the first three hours every day in devout, fervent prayer.  Thirty years prior, no one could imagine the peaceful dismantling of apartheid, and yet it happened.  I'm not sure why this example stood out among so many other examples he gave, but I am convicted that as believers we don't shout hallelujahs and raise our fist to the wind and go on our way in personal triumph, otherwise unchanged.

Deep grief and wild joy are made for each other.  Because I shake my fist at that same wind by bowing my knees in prayer and asking him to change me and bring healing to this broken world.  I cannot meet the brokenness of the world until I've deeply reveled in the knowledge of my redemption and new life.  So this morning I'm raising a toast to the creator and bowing my head in grief all at the same time, all while gaping in wonder at the mystery of this whole crazy mess.

groaning

I don't visit my backyard very frequently in winter, so this time of year, I'm often surprised by the difference a few days can make.  Walking out to the compost this evening I saw the peach tree in full bloom, and my breath caught in my chest.  Spring has been a long time coming this year, and I am keenly aware of its delay in both body and spirit.  The explosion of blossoms caught me off guard, and I finally felt the promises of Easter stirring in my heart.

Recently I've been bogged down in the twenty-something-eth chapters of Leviticus.  Just imagine that sucking sound your galoshes make when you pull out of the mud.  Yup.  That's where I am.  But there mired in the directions on which animal to use and which parts of it to burn and who can eat it and who you're not supposed to sleep with and how many years you're not supposed to eat the fruit from a tree you just planted (I'm totally not making that one up!), there when you least expect it God says over and over to be holy because I am holy or because I am the one who makes them holy.

And then I'm reminded by John Owen that holiness is not just an action, but it's also the intention and thought underlying the action, as well as the manner in which we carry out the action.  Seriously.  I'm already drowning just trying to do the right things sometimes.  If I have to analyze my attitude, then I just might as well sit in a corner and give up.

This morning I read in Romans 8 about all creation groaning as in the pains of childbirth along with us, longing for the new creation.  I think I've groaned with longing for that new creation so much these past few years some people might mistake me for a zombie.  I get stuck in the great mystery of Romans 7, being caught up in the middle of that epic struggle between the old creation and the new creation, the reason for so much of the groaning mentioned in Romans 8.  I get so stuck in that struggle that I forget the promise of Easter and a new creation.  I forget that my groaning is a sign of Christ's victory.  I forget that the promises are real.

And all my forgetting is why I need spring so desperately this year, to remember the promise that all things will be made new, that the present creation is groaning with me in similar anticipation of being made new, and that this kind of groaning is the song of the redeemed right now.  But groaning won't be our song forever.  One day I'll step outside of this body and into a new creation, and my breath will catch in my chest because everything will be exploding with new life.  I will find that I have a new song that was somehow mysteriously forged through all this groaning.  That will be a glorious day indeed, and I'm thankful for that reminder from the peach blossoms this evening.

tiny shoots

The first day in February that's warm enough to tolerate being outside for more than a few minutes, I dart out and plant my snap pea seeds.  Usually by mid March tiny little buds are popping out everywhere.  This year though the cold weather has been unusually tenacious, punctuated only here and there by the shameless teasing of a wonderfully warm day.  With one lonely exception, the little seeds are still hiding in the ground.  Quinn no longer goes to check them and has already forgotten he helped me plant them.  I still go out in fair weather to check their progress and stare at the bare ground wondering if the grackles found and ate all the seeds when I wasn't looking.

Just the other day I was out watering when I saw the tiniest green shoot coming up from the ground.  Sheltered by the leafy compost, it was almost impossible to see.  My heart leapt with joy as it always does with the first stirrings of life in spring, but there was a deeper level to my joy this year.  I see the same tiny green shoots poking through the soil of my heart, opening fragile buds to the sun after a long, cold winter.

Parenting, working, and life mean that my gardening becomes more of a haphazard adventure in survival than an intentional, thoughtful process.  I'm never quite sure what will come up (partially because Quinn helps me plant the seeds), what will live long enough to bear fruit, and exactly how to keep the ravenous wildlife away. Thankfully God is a patient and thorough gardener, cultivating my heart with a skill beyond imagining.  And though I've spent this winter wondering whether there was any life hidden in the soil, I am beginning to see tiny shoots poking cautiously out of the soil of my heart.

That's the kind of hope I've needed lately.

anointing

I have a rock from Emmett's graveside.  Stained red from the Georgia clay, it leaves a rusty trail even now almost two years later as it bounces around my purse, makes it way to my gym bag, and then finds its way to my bathroom counter before repeating its endless cycle.  This little rock has nothing to recommend itself.  In fact it's rather ugly and dirty, with no happy memories in its favor. Yet it keeps following me around, and I find this little token of death strangely comforting.

I'm sitting at work. The time change means the sunrise coming through my window is spilling over my desk and blinding me if I look up.  I left the light off in my room to soak up this anointing and bask in a moment of unexpected wonder and holiness.

Reading John Owen's work on indwelling sin has equipped me in ways to fight sin that I've never imagined.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not suddenly holy.  Indeed it is quite the opposite.  I'm learning that sin includes so much more of my life than I ever thought possible.  Lately I have felt my sinful nature raging out of control, but I think my eyes have just been opened to depths of sin I never knew were sin.

Still, this morning I'm remembering Hinds Feet on High Places, with little Much Afraid and her collection of rocks.  This anointing, this path through death of self, though I've prayed for years to make my way here, is much less glamorous than I thought.  There is much more dying and much less victory than I'd imagined.

And yet...

I often feel my sinful nature rattling around in it's cage, raging that it can't get out because God himself is restraining it, since it's quite obvious I'm powerless to do so.  There is great comfort in knowing that stronger arms than mine hold sin at bay.  There are times, more rare than I'd like, when I laugh because I really know that all manner of things shall be well; when I can almost feel the other side of the veil, and the wonder of the new creation ushered in by Christ comes crashing down around me in overwhelming waves of mystery.  Times when my soul flexes like a runner at the starting block, and I'm eager for the fight because I know it has already been won for me.  There are moments when I palpably feel the victory beyond death, and I know that nothing, absolutely nothing is wasted.  Even in the moments where I grieve deeply, I grieve with a longing so deep that I wonder how even God can fill and satisfy it, and I weep out of an overwhelming desire to go further up and further in.

So I find myself bouncing around in my endless daily cycles, leaving my own trail of Georgia clay, with nothing particular to recommend me to the world.  At this moment, my anointing is death, and I find that also to be strangely comforting.

lower

A friend sent me this quote a few days ago:

Jesus' compassion is characterized by a downward pull. That is what disturbs us. We cannot even think about ourselves in terms other than those of an upward pull, an upward mobility in which we strive for better lives, higher salaries and more prestigious positions. Thus, we are deeply disturbed by a God who embodies a downward movement. Instead of striving for a higher position, more power and more influence, Jesus moves, as Karl Barth says, from "the heights to the depths, from victory to defeat, from riches to poverty, from triumph to suffering, from life to death."  Henri Nowen, et al. The Downward Pull

It's perfect.  Only I don't want it to be perfect. I want it to be wrong.  Completely wrong.  But Jesus himself says it over and over; a kernel of wheat has to die, you must take up your cross, etc.

Only here's the catch.  I can't even trust myself on what it means to die.

God, who searches the hearts of men, knows that most of the things that are done with other pretenses in the world are nothing but the actings of men mad and furious in the pursuit of their lusts.  John Owen, The Power and Efficacy of Indwelling Sin

We can all point to other people who have gone on holy crusades of entering ministry, working with the poor, or going crazy with each and every particular religious trend in an attempt to get closer to God.  Even the best of intentions become an idol of self-worship.  Although I find it easy to point out in others, the real trick is rooting it out in my own heart.  I mean, I can't even set out to go lower without getting all caught up in how awesome I am and how much God must love me for being so willing to die to self.  I may set out with the best of intentions, but this festering heart of sin transforms my desire to die to self into a crusade for my own self-exaltation.

ACK!

What is a girl to do?

Sheesh.  If I had the answer to that question, I'd go on TV and sell it for a lot of money.  Well, not really, but I'm sure I'd do something equally ridiculous.

I suspect the answer has something to do with loving your neighbor.  Another thing I don't want to hear about, by the way, because I'm particularly lousy at it.  I was at a study this weekend where we were talking about love.  And the discussion opened up with brainstorming a time when someone had loved you well.  From there we teased out characteristics of real love, and the words self-less and humble kept coming up.  Turns out, according to 1 John, I can actually know how well I'm loving God by how well I'm loving my brothers and sisters in Christ.  But even loving and serving those around me can become an agenda to make myself feel better, and then I'm back where I started.  As it turns out, people aren't very cooperative when you're trying to serve them from your own agenda, and suddenly I end up wondering why I ever thought I liked people to begin with.  Then God asks if that's how I feel about him, and I'm caught.

Conviction.

My new answer is starting with prayer.  I'm 24 hours into a prayer I hope will last the rest of my life, a prayer to "go lower."  If I knew what that meant, I wouldn't have to pray it.  Honestly, I'm not all that excited about finding out.  But I suspect God is waiting there for me, and having once tasted his love and mercy, there's nothing else I could ever find satisfying.