My Friend

My own words are not equal to the task I am setting them. How can I say with what comfort I now am looking back on this past year? How can I say that none of the disappointments, frustrations, confusions and worries can outweigh the sense of assurance that overwhelmed me this morning?

I was sitting and thinking about the old year, and how badly I want the new one to be different, only somehow, what God spoke into my heart was not a promise about what will happen, but a reminder about what has happened.

I don't need to explain to Jesus what I am feeling now. I don't need to tell Him about the things that have happened, about the mind games that I play with myself, about the feelings that threaten to pull me into a spiral of nothing, away from the work and fellowship that help.

He was there every day, every hour, every minute of this past year. He shared each moment with me, in all its joys, all its hurts, in every up and down, in all the reverses and unexpected things which I hate so much for their very unexpectedness . . . He has walked with me. He knows my heart.

He will walk with me through this next year as He has with the past one.

But now thus says the Lord,

He who created you, O Jacob,

He who formed you, O Israel:

"Fear not, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name, you are Mine.

When you pass through the waters, I 

    will be with you;

and through the rivers, they shall

    not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire you shall

    not be burned,

and the flame shall not consume you.

Isaiah 43:1-2

He was despised and rejected by men;

a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;

and as one from whom men hide their faces

He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.

Surely He has borne our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed Him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted.

Isaiah 53:3-4

O Lord, You have searched me and known me!

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

You discern my thoughts from afar.

You search out my path and my lying down

and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue,

behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.

You hem me in, behind and before,

and lay Your hand upon me;

it is high; I cannot attain it.

Psalm 139:1-6

2011

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. 
Hebrews 13:8
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
James 1:17


Have I mentioned that I don't like change? (Oh, only every other time I write or so.)


This has been a year of change for me . . . of adjusting and re-adjusting, and changing my mind, and getting caught in weird cycles that don't seem to end, wondering who I'm supposed to be, what I'm supposed to do, and not coming anywhere near figuring it out, because I have a different idea every time I think I might know, or because half my ideas are unlikely and the other half unpleasant . . . or because I don't have any ideas that day.


I feel like I'm not good enough at what I want to be good enough at, or that I don't even know what I want to be good at, or that I will never be good enough at anything. I feel like everything I really want is something I can't have, or something that I am afraid would actually make me miserable--and I can't decide if I'd be more miserable with it or without it--


I feel like my dreams got taken away and haven't been replaced yet.


I feel like I must be a terrible, ungrateful, jealous person or I would not feel all these things.


And yet somehow, I know that God is good and that He loves me. And that even amidst all this change within and around me, He has remained constant.


I don't normally care for the practice of posting big chunks of song lyrics divorced from the music, but I want to end on this note. I wrote this song in late October of this year:


To You I bring
my longing heart
To You I bring
my desire


To You I bring
my aching heart
The questions I
cannot answer


You see me whole
in all my secrets
You hold my world
inside Your hands


And yet You love
me through it all
I trust in You
to be steadfast


You know what I
cannot yet know
Please guide me through
This confusion


You see me whole
in all my secrets
You hold my world
inside Your hands

Too Good to be True

As they were talking about these things, Jesus Himself stood among them, and said to them, "Peace to you!" But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. And He said to them, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch Me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, He said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave Him a piece of broiled fish, and He took it and ate before them.

Luke 24:36-43

I am often tempted to take a rather dark view of the world. I am often inclined to take my sorrows more seriously than my joys, as if the one were the real thing, the tangible reality, and the other were ephemeral and incorporeal.

But does sorrow actually have more real substance than joy? 

In this scene following the resurrection of Jesus, the disciples were incredulous. Was Jesus really standing before them? Was He a spirit? Should they be worried instead of rejoicing? And His response was: Touch Me. I am flesh and bone. I am real.

I read all the stories of His betrayal and suffering and crucifixion in each Gospel one after the other, and appreciated them for the real Sorrow and the real Pain that they show, because it is a comfort to me to see these parts of what it is to be human acknowledged by God and shared by Christ. Which is a good and right comfort. But then I read all the stories of His resurrection, and I was convicted about my tendency to focus on those parts of life and forget the others--forget how much I have to be thankful for.

Mind you, I am not saying that sorrow is not also real and tangible, only that Joy is quite as real. That, in a sense, there's no such thing as too good to be true. Because of the Good that is True and gives Joy. Because God.

Plans

Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"--yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

James 4:13-16

I like making plans. I prefer to have a plan whenever possible, and I prefer things to go according to that plan. Obviously, it doesn't always work out that way.

I am currently approaching a big shift in my life, a major lifestyle change, the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. It's not actually happening for six months, but I'm thinking about it a lot and trying to figure out what exactly it is that I'm going to do next. At first, I was really terrified, because I was drifting without ideas. Now, I'm still nervous about the change, and I still have a lot of thinking to do, but I have some ideas, at least, which is nice. Interestingly enough, the having of the ideas was chronologically preceded by being more at peace with not being sure yet, with not knowing, with not having a plan.

During all this thinking and planning, I had a birthday that sounded like a significant number to me. It sounded so grown up, and I'm pretty sure that I used to think that by the time I reached the age I am now I would have things a lot more figured out than I actually do yet. That made it even harder to be OK with being confused and planless, but I've started being OK with it.

See, I used to think that by the age I am now I would need to be "set" on some particular path that I would then just Follow For the Rest of My Life. Well, I'm not set. And that's making me think that I actually have more time to figure things out than I thought I did, or that maybe I'm not ever going to figure it all out, that it's always going to be a journey, an experiment, an adventure.

It's OK if I don't know what the Big Plan is. I just need to find the next step, and keep asking God to show me where His will is for me right now. Not ten years from now or two years from now, but right now.

How Not to Accomplish Goals

Ít is better to try and fail epically than to not try at all.


Or at least, so I say. This is one of the things I believe that it is hard for me to actually put into practice. I want something, but I'm afraid I can't have it, so I pretend I don't want it. I work at something, but I'm afraid I won't succeed, so I don't try very hard. Then I realize what I'm doing and what its result inevitably will be.


If I distract myself from the things most important to me by putting more effort into somewhat less important things, I'm always going to be stuck wondering why it is I'm doing better at the less important things while disappointing myself in those most important things.


If I spend my time running away from my own goals, I'm never going to reach them! If I run towards them, I might fail--I might fail badly--but it's still the only way I'm going to have any chance at success.


Another element is the unexpected. I fear the unexpected because if I'm not prepared for something, if I didn't know it was coming, I don't think I'm going to be able to handle it well. If I don't know what's going to happen then I'd rather nothing did. The bad part is that this goes for unexpected opportunities. Sometimes I say no (or run the other way) to an opportunity that I really want, just because I wasn't expecting it, or don't know what the outcome will be, so it scares me.


But what if the path of daily happenstance is actually trying to lead me somewhere that I really want to go? Am I going to miss it because I was scared to take a detour?


I'm trying to learn to be more scared of not trying than I am of failing. Or, better yet, not to be motivated by any fear, but to actually be positively motivated by the desires that God has placed in me and by the trust that He knows what He is doing, whether I was "prepared" or not.

A Confession

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Romans 8:18-25, ESV

I have a confession to make. Like so many things, this confession has a good side and a bad side. The good side is this: I care about the issues of the world. I care about violence and injustice and starvation and exploitation. Ever since when I was 12 I read this one book that mentioned some of these things that happen in the world, I have cared, and I have wanted to do something.

Another good thing is that I have always known that this is something that God cares about, too. There are so many verses about releasing the captives and caring for the poor and doing what is just by our neighbors; it is clearly important to Him.

So, I care, and I recognize that He has called me to care, and not  only to feel something, but also to do something. What's the bad side of my confession?

Well, thinking about the things that are wrong in the world is painful, and I am kind of a wimp. Knowing that I am supposed to do something, and not knowing what to do about it, is hard. For years I have been actively avoiding and putting off the subject. My reasoning was, that I didn't know what I specifically was supposed to do, and until I knew that, why not just not think about it at all? It was much easier that way, so I put that part of my heart to the side, and I didn't talk about it or seek it. Until quite recently, that is.

More recently, I have been thinking about the fact that knowing God's will in an area of one's life comes from actively spending time listening to Him in that area, both in prayer and in His word. I have also been thinking about the fact that most things for me work out to be a slow and gradual process, not a sudden realization. Putting those two things together means that, unless I start seeking these issues, thinking about them, praying about them, reading about them, talking about them, then I am never going to know what it is I am called to do, and it is going to be a small and guilty secret for the rest of my life that there was something I was supposed to do, and I was never brave enough to find out what it was.

No Pressure!

I have a new motto.

It is a promise to myself about what my motivations and attitudes will be, and what they will not be.

It is a promise that this year will be different. That I will not waste time in feeling guilty when I take a break, or in hanging around half-working just because I don't feel entitled to a break. That I will, in fact, take breaks when I need them for mental or physical health and that I will NOT feel guilty about being a finite human being with a certain temperament that comes with its limitations.

It is a promise that I will never again use my own personal version of the carrot-and-the-stick method of motivation--my own personal method being all stick and no carrot. It is a promise that avoidance of guilt, or obligation to match what someone else is doing, or fear of failure, will NOT be the reason that I do what I do.

It is a promise that I will find a true and proper motivation to work, in personal enjoyment of the material, in a genuine desire to do well, in a healthy non-pressurized desire to please and serve others, in a sense that what I am doing I am doing because I am called of God to do it and not because it is required by an institution or an organization.

It is a promise that I will make time alone with God seeking Him in my own quiet, creative, introverted ways a priority, because otherwise I will never find the energy to do the work He has called me to, or the guidance to know what that work is.

And most of all, it is a commitment to focus on the process rather than the destination, to focus on direction rather than measuring where I am as if it is supposed to be the end result, and to find satisfaction in the process of becoming the person that God has called me to be, in patience and in trust, without fear, without apology, and without the need to compare myself to others.