Blogging Break, Take 2

I don’t think I’m ready.  I’ve been thinking about it over the last few days, and I’m just not ready to blog again. 

In fact, I’m not even sure that I like blogging anymore. 

The truth is this: I haven’t really needed to blog because I’ve been talking to so many people lately who are listening, really listening, to what God is doing in my heart.  The blog was a way for me to get my thoughts out of my system…sometimes I felt that I just had to blog or I’d burst.  But I don’t feel like that anymore.

So here goes another break…indefinitely.

Support Groups

Since my blogging break, I’ve been able to recognize and identify a few major themes that God seems to be writing onto my heart.  One of those themes is about community and relationships.  I’ve been realizing more and more, that God designed us to live in relationship with one another, and that failing to value deep, honest, and safe friendships with other believers stunts my spiritual growth. 

For a long time, I adopted what I now call the “Lone Ranger Mentality.”  My motto was: “it’s just me and God.”  I honestly couldn’t see the importance of relying on others for encouragement, guidance, and wisdom.  Some of this tunnel vision has roots in past pain, and I had to admit that I really struggle with trusting others–with allowing them to see the “real me”, and feeling secure enough to risk rejection or judgement. 

One of the biggest helps with these insecurities has been my “support group.”  I mentioned it in my blogging break post, and we’re still meeting once a week.  The women in the group are showing me what it feels like to be accepted, loved, and supported just as I am–without hiding my warts, anomalies, and deep struggles.  They are God “with skin on” to me.  We are getting a taste of what relationships were meant to be, before sin entered the picture.  We need each other, and admitting our need is so liberating.

For me, admitting that I need the consistent and wise support of others (multiple others) was one step to becoming more honest about who I really am–that I live in a state of spiritual poverty.  I’ve been reading “How People Grow” by Henry Cloud and John Townsend, and it has really opened my eyes to the whole concept of needing others.  One chapter is titled, “Water from a Deeper Well: Spiritual Poverty.”  The caption under the title reads: Spiritual poverty is experiencing the reality of our condition.  The chapter opens with this:

“Henry and I were meeting with a large Christian organization, and the topic of small groups in the church came up.  We strongly support and see much value in small groups.  We were discussing the needs that groups meet, how they operate, and so on.  One of the executives of the organization, who is a friend of mine, asked, “What difference do you see between groups for people with problems and groups for normal people?”

Henry and I looked at each other and said, “There is just one kind of group.”

This story illustrates a lingering problem in the church’s view of spiritual growth.  Just about everyone would agree that we all need to grow spiritually.  We need to be close to God, love each other, read the Bible, and apply its truths.  But many do not believe that a major reason to grow is that we are in a deep and severe state of neediness and incompleteness.”

I will admit, that when I first read the executive’s question, some anger stirred within me.  I thought, “How arrogant!”  But then I realized that, I would’ve asked the same question if God hadn’t graciously shown me that “normal” is a subjective term, and that everyone has problems because of suffering and sin.  I have learned this because of God’s grace, not because of my own intelligence, wisdom, or inherent knowledge.  It’s a lesson that I will continue to learn as I grow.

God continues to open my eyes in new ways, to break down walls that I’ve erected around my heart becuase of pride and pain, and mostly, He continues to show me again and again that He is good, that He loves me in ways that I cannot comprehend, and that He has chosen to bless me through the love of other messy, hurting, broken, and beautiful people.

Untitled

I’ve recently felt twinges of wanting to blog again.  But usually, I’d rather take a nap or read.  It’s getting more and more difficult for me to formulate posts in my head.  I’ll get an idea, but I haven’t a clue about where to go with the idea.  So I push it to the back of my brain, and hope that it will either A) float away, or B) (if it’s worth anyting) stick around until I can dust the cobwebs out of the back of my brain.

I’ve been reading good books lately–books I wouldn’t normally read, unless highly recommended by a friend.  Honestly, I’m afraid to state authors and titles, because I’m almost positive that some of my readers will think that I’m way off in left field.  But I’ve really enjoyed the books.  In fact, I like them a lot, and I want to be able to like them without apology. 

I feel like God is morphing my worldview yet again.  He’s asking me to think about things from different angles, from differing perspectives.  He’s asking me to step outside of the box into which I’ve attempted to stuff myself (and most likely, everyone else) for a long time.

Many of the experiences in my life, especially within the “land of Christianity,” have taught me that there are two, and only two, categories for everything: A) right and B) wrong.  You could also tweak the categories a bit, and rename them A) good/righteous and B) evil/sinful.  I’m beginning to find, however, that life is messy.  It’s much messier than I ever hoped or imagined it could be, and messes don’t fall easily into pre-marked boxes. 

I’ve also learned that most Christians are fairly comfortable with the well-marked boxes and simplistic categories.  If you only have two options for filing something, then your  job isn’t that difficult, and you don’t have to use your brain or take a risk, or exercise faith, or admit that you are totally weak, dependent, and lacking in your ablility to do the job at all.  In short, we don’t like messes, and we don’t like things that won’t readily and neatly fit into our filing system.

For the first time since childhood, I feel like I’m ready to throw away the filing system.  As I stated to a friend recently, “I’m tired of trying to organize life.  Sometimes it’s just unorganizable!”  Sometimes God calls us to trust–and that is all.  He gives us circumstances and people and situations we have no idea how to handle.  It’s the only way He can teach us to have a relationship with Him.  Sometimes the “right” answer is, “I just don’t know.”  And sometimes the answer God has given me is completely different than the answer He gives to someone else.  And shouldn’t that be possible?  Allowable?  Even, dare I say, wise?  If we are all on our own, individual journeys, and we have a God who delights in creating unique people, wouldn’t it make sense that any “filing system” we create would fall short, and would break down at some point?

Lately, I’ve been intrigued by Jesus’s shock value in the New Testament.  I’ve been devouring passages like John 4 (The Woman at the Well, or, Jesus Talks to a Samaritan Woman).  I love verse 9:

⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

Don’t you just love the parenthetical rule: “For Jews do not associate with Samaritans”?

Who made that rule?  Where did it come from?  It must have been from people, because Jesus didn’t respect that rule at all.  He (a Jew) opened his mouth and started speaking…to a Samaritan…woman.

Why did he do it?  Why did he break all the rules with which the people seemed so comfortable?  Why didn’t he “tone it down” a bit?

I suspect it had something to do with his response to the disciples in verse 32:

³²But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

Wow.

I love Jesus’s one-liners.  This post is already too long, so I’ll just end with that:  Jesus had food to eat that we knew nothing about. 

Perhaps that’s why we find such comfort in rules and filing systems and neat categories for life, and it’s the same reason why Jesus was able to shock people with his utter disregard for their rules.  He was being fed from a Source that the disciples didn’t know or understand, and He came to show them…to teach them what a relationship with that Source feels like.

Blogging Break

I’m taking an indefinite blogging break.  I haven’t had the desire to blog much lately.  And I haven’t had much time for it either.  Truth be told, real life has been taking up my time, and though I’ve had much on my mind, I simply don’t think about sitting down to blog about it.  I’ve recently joined a small group of women–we’re meeting once a week.  And I sense that God is going to bring about some deep healing in my heart.  My emotional life has been turbulent lately, but it’s been a good and productive kind of turbulent.  As one of the ladies said in my group, God is allowing some deeply buried pain to “float to the surface.”  I think He’s lancing some long-forgotten wounds.  It is beautiful, terrifying, and painful all at the same time.  I would appreciate your prayers as I journey through the coming months.  I hope that, in the future, I will be able to share a bit about what God is showing me.  Until then, thanks for reading…

Level Ground

A pastor in Toronto writes…

“I pray for the day when transvestites [and other gay people] can walk through our church doors and be greeted with genuinely warm smiles and Christian love. But before that day is likely to happen, they will need a Christian friend whom they have grown to trust; a person they know would never invite them to a place where they are going to be hurt or embarrassed publicly; a place where everyone is on level ground before the cross of Christ because all are sinners; a place where no one person’s sin is made out to be more repugnant than another’s; a place where all sinners can sit under the uncompromised preaching of holy Scripture and hear of the world’s only Savior and salvation in his name alone.”

HT: Tim Challies

Resting in God’s Sovereignty

I’m reading Paul Tripp’s brand new book: Broken-Down House: Living Productively In a World Gone Bad.

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 4.  Paul writes about reassuring his own children:

“I would kneel down in front of them at eye level and say: ‘Please look at Daddy’s face.  Do you know how much I love you?  Do you know that your Daddy is not a mean, bad man?  Do you know that I would never ask you to do anything that would hurt you or make you sick?  I am sorry that you can’t understand why Daddy is asking you to do this.  I wish I could explain it to you, but you are too young to understand.  So I am going to ask you to do something–trust Daddy.’

God does the same thing with you, over and over again.  He meets you in one of the difficult hallways of your life, kneels down before you in condescending love, and asks you to trust his loving and wise rule, even though you don’t have a clue what he is doing.  He knows there are many times when your life doesn’t looke like there is anyone ruling it, let alone someone wise and good.  He knows there will be times when you will wish you could write your own story.  He knows that at times you will be overwhelmed by what is on your plate.  He knows that His plan will confuse and confound you.  And he knows that real rest cannot be found in understanding.  Real rest is found in trust.”

 

Too Far?

To the individual who found my blog by searching the phrase: “Can we go too far from the reach of God?”

The answer, my dear friend, is a resounding and definite, “Never.”

Are you better than Johnny Cash?

This was the question I asked my poor husband as we watched “Walk the Line” on network TV the other night. 

He’s used to my weird questions. 

In fact, a really great discussion followed.  We talked about things like depravity, sin, addiction, humility, and pride.  That discussion tipped off an interest in Johnny Cash: his life, his music, and his spiritual journey.  I just placed a hold on his autobiography at the local library, and I recently finished reading his first wife’s (Vivian Cash) autobiography, “I Walked The Line.”

I don’t know exactly why I’m so intrigued with Johnny Cash right now.  But I think it has something to do with the fact that he struggled a lot.  Apparently, Ray Ortlund (Christ Is Deeper Still) likes Johnny too.  He posted this Youtube video about Johnny’s life and testimony.  I especially liked Ray’s choice of title for the post: “Less polished, more honest”…

Ray also posted this quote:

“Your danger and mine is not that we become criminals, but rather that we become respectable, decent, commonplace, mediocre Christians. The twentieth-century temptations that really sap our spiritual power are the television, banana cream pie, the easy chair and the credit card.”

So true, so true.

Think Pink

Yup, it’s a GIRL!

We’re so excited! 

Bubba kept referring to the baby as, “she” and “her.”  I guess he knew all along! 

Apparently, she likes to suck her thumb.  It looked like she was sucking her thumb during the 10 week ultrasound, and this one confirmed what we had suspected…she definitely loves her thumb!  It’s amazing how we can see such intricate details in a little baby who weighs only 10 ounces!

Lavish Grace

Today’s RZIM e-devotion (Slice of Infinity) is about the prodigal sons–that’s right, there are two.  We often tend to think that the younger brother was the prodigal, but the older one was prodigal too.  Neither brother is a great example of a good Christian. 

Is there such thing as a “good” Christian? 

I guess the older brother thought that he qualified, but he was jealous and self-righteous.  The more I think about it, I don’t really think that “good” and Christian can coexist.  The moment we begin thinking that we are “good,” is the moment we stop needing a Father.

Here are some of my favorite lines from the Slice of Infinity for June 3, 2009, which you can find here:

“The older son is the one who stays, who looks after the father, who works in his fields, and is disturbed by the younger son’s blatant disregard for the life their father has given them. He is angered by the celebration of his brother’s return, jealous of the father’s attention and forgiveness.”

It’s ironic how I can be jealous of the lavish grace that God gives to others, yet I feel that He doesn’t give me enough.

“Neither son is a clear example of the kind of person God calls us to be. Yet, both sons, in all of their major failings and minor virtues, are clearly sought by the father.”

I feel like I should understand this by now, but functionally, in every day life, I don’t get it.  I still think that my “virtues” are what make me appealing and attractive to the Father.  I still think that I can get extra points and demerits–that God has a chart in heaven somewhere labeled: “Emily,” and he rewards me with stickers or penalizes me based on my behaviors, actions, and attitudes.  And when I’m having a bad day, I think that He’s disappointed in me–that He expected better from me, and I let Him down.  I’m slowly developing an aversion to that phrase: “I’m disappointed in you.”  I’m not really sure what it means, exactly–or what good could come from using it.

“When we are the older children of the Father, his grace is jarring and disruptive, even as God reminds us that all God has is ours. God’s invitation to the feast is both awkward and demanding, a call to overlook the harm our brothers cause and their potential to cause it again. But the Father stands beside us with this request and his grace, though we are equally undeserving!”

This quote has huge implications regarding forgiveness and peacemaking.  Whenever we have a hard time forgiving, we are acting as the older brother–standing in a place of judgement–not only of the younger brothers in our lives, but the Father as well.  We are effectively saying to the Father, “You are wrong to extend grace to _____.”  And we are also forgetting that we need just as much grace as _____.

Bubba wants to read a truck book with me, so I’d better wrap this up.  Happy Wednesday to y’all.