[belovedpilgrim]

it’s not a resolution.

As I my Nike’s hit the floor at the gym on January 2, I looked around wondering how many people were there to fulfill a New Year’s Resolution. The treadmills were whirring and weights clanked as people grunted.

I was there for the first time, but not to fulfill a resolution. I was there to obey God.

A few evenings prior, I had a meltdown of historic proportions. It involved whipping laundry into the washer at full force and slamming stock pots against the stainless steel sink at 1 AM. There was a lot of crying, too.

Probably the second-most epic meltdown was the Target Parking Lot Meltdown of 2014. I felt my husband was a little too concerned about my parking job. I gave him the cold shoulder for 45 minutes, yelled at him in the car on the way home (I made him drive since he is clearly the expert), and then slammed cabinets dramatically while I selflessly made HIS dinner like the martyr I am. I won’t try to justify this behavior, but those of you who are married know it’s never about the thing that just happened. It’s always a culmination of a bunch of tiny moments. Nonetheless, no excuse. Oh, and we were there buying bedding for some missionaries who were coming to stay with us, so...there’s that.

The meltdown a few weeks ago had the same root cause as the Target Parking Lot Meltdown. In case you’re wondering, I believe I have had 5 meltdowns of historic proportions in our 3 years of marriage. Some had nothing to do with my blue eyed husband. One involved a rotisserie chicken. Another involved dessert empanadas. And I’ll tell you about another one in a moment. This is to say nothing of the Mini-Meltdowns Greatest Hits Album I’m working on.

The root cause is of course perfectionism. Not the useful kind that makes people into CEO’s and presidents and Olympic athletes. The kind that makes you implode or explode when someone important to you points out one of your flaws or short-comings. The kind that is actually a hugely debilitating insecurity to makes you avoid any situation that may lead to failure, or worse, criticism. This is the kind that makes you give long winded explanations for every mistake you make to ensure that people know you realize your error and it’s not typical of your nature (even if it is). You are better than what you look like in that moment (or maybe you just wish you were).

What lead to this particular meltdown was an off-handed comment by a tired and grumpy husband that he wished dinner had gotten on the table earlier. This is not a blog post about Michael, so withhold all judgement based on that snippet. Just like my parking lot meltdown wasn’t really ABOUT the parking, his comment wasn’t really ABOUT what time he ate.

Somehow that comment had the power to send me into a 2 hour crying and slamming fit. I knew it shouldn’t (having learned from the Target Parking Lot Meltdown of 2014), so I waited until Michael was asleep before I let this raging river of emotion loose.

As I was crying out to the Lord, I was saying over and over, “I can’t do this. I can’t live or die based on how Michael acts.” I have a wonderful husband who is completely above and beyond anything I ever would have dreamed of, but I always want more. If he waits too long to tell me I look beautiful when we are going to an event, I start wondering if he doesn’t find me attractive anymore (even if he has said otherwise within the last 12 hours). If he puts pepper on his dinner, I wonder if he thinks I’m not a good cook (even though he has two helpings). I could go on.

I felt the Lord urge me to ask Michael to be my personal trainer. You have no idea how much this went against my flesh.

Probably number 3 in the line-up of historic meltdowns happened the first year we were married. We were jogging around our neighborhood. Michael is an athlete. He craves physical exertion on a daily basis. I am not. Period. While Michael was cheering me on and smiling, reminding me that I was only getting stronger with every step, I started to panic.

I started wondering: does Michael wish he married someone more athletic? I started imagining all of these trim, bronze-skinned blonde (and virtuous!) Christian marathon runners that were possibly out there that he could have chosen instead of me. I wondered if I gained weight after having a baby if he would think I was fat and lazy and ultimately undesirable.

That’s when I had the first panic attack of my life. Right there on the sidewalk on Elmwood Avenue. While my husband was smiling and cheering me on. My imagination took the reigns and I was gripped with a type of anxiety I have never experienced before. I was hyperventilating, overwhelmed with swirling thoughts of potential rejection at some later date in some imagined situation.

I have not allowed Michael to talk to me about exercise since then. And I want to be very clear: he wasn’t expecting me to do what he does or what imaginary Christian marathon runner girl can do. He just wanted to help me.

As the dishes stacked up in the drainer on meltdown night, the reality of how crippling my inability to take criticism has been in my life hit me with its full weight. I felt like God was telling me I will never do anything great with my life until I conquer this all-consuming fear I have of disapproval. I will never be able to do the things I long to do if I need everyone around me pretend they think I’m perfect.

To have your husband design work-outs for you and hold you accountable to going to the gym may seem simple to someone else. For me, this was something I had to pray about for a week before even bringing it up to my husband.

It became more clear over time, though, that everything balanced on this particular point: does my marriage reflect the relationship between Christ and the church as the Bible says it should?

“Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be subject to their own husbands in everything.” Ephesians 5:24

I am not going to spend a lot of time defending the merits of this design for marriage. Google it if you are offended and many good Bible teachers have explained what this means.

What got me is “in everything.” If I have this ONE area of my life in which I am completely unwilling to listen to my husband, I am conditioning my heart to behave the same way towards Christ. “Jesus, you can tell me how much you love me, but I’m not interested in hearing what you have to say about my attitude today. Or my money. Or how I spend my time.”

If I have walls up in my relationship with my husband, who is so tangibly present and loving, how will I ever fully trust Christ?

If I can’t receive it when my husband urges me with a smile to try a little harder for my own good, how will I ever endure difficulty in obeying God?

If I choose over and over again to believe the craven delusions of my own imagination over what I can plainly see in my husband’s demeanor and actions, how will I ever believe the word of God and live a meaningful life?

I am actually embarrassed by how obvious this all sounds. I am telling you, this is a revelation for me. It seems like I should have understood this years ago. But I didn’t. And now a light has been shone on my path.

So, when I get my heart rate up and pick up weights, I am actually pursuing Christ through my marriage. As I fend off these swarming, buzzing, light afflictions of self-doubt  and insecurity, every crunch and bicep curl is working for me an eternal weight of glory.  

“For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.” 1 Timothy 4:8

[belovedpilgrim]

thoughts on beauty, part I

My husband was not blown away by my beauty the moment he saw me. There was no James Blunt moment of awestruck admiration on public mass transit. In fact, he thought I dressed really strangely.

Looking back, I wore a lot of cheaply made, ill-fitting things from second-hand stores. Almost all of my jewelry was plastic.  I wore absolutely no makeup and styled my hair by brushing it once for the entire day and moving on with life. There’s nothing wrong with any of that, but it’s not surprising that my husband didn’t start following me around drooling within the hour.

In fact, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t tempted to take a second look until almost two years later when I wore yoga pants to Bible study one time. I think he would have preferred them to what I wore on our first date: a wrap dress from the Salvation Army that he’d already decided didn’t flatter me long before we started dating.

Now, before you start thinking my husband is really shallow, let me tell you what one of the first things I remember him saying to me was: “I can tell you spend a lot of time with the Lord. You exude it.” I had never before felt like someone I had just met was able to look right into my soul.

At that point, he was not trying to woo me or impress me with flowery language. He was just making an observation and from there, he went off to his dorm at the conference and nothing else was said. His words echoed in my mind constantly for about a month. I even told my mom about it. I was stunned that he was basically a stranger and had said something that personal to me. It also told me a lot about what he looked for and noticed in other people.

The thing was, I purposely spent as little time and money on my appearance as I could get away with socially because I was in a season of deep repentance, scratching and clawing for a new identity after years of living with a conflicted spirit. I did not want to ever use my beauty as a woman to dishonor God again. During my teenage years, I had no regard for what God wanted me to do with my body and placed my identity in how devoted my boyfriends were to me. My body was a bargaining chip for acceptance and affirmation, which I desperately wanted.

The battle started when I had a powerful encounter with the Spirit of God during a season of grief when I was mourning the death of a young friend. I slowly became aware that I had a Holy Audience in every moment of my life. As time went on and I surrendered my life to Jesus, I was no longer comfortable sleeping with my boyfriend and broke up with him.

In the years that followed before I started dating my husband, I questioned every choice I made about my appearance and the way I interacted with men. I thought often of the proverb, “like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion,” (Proverbs 11:22).  I had a friend of mine go through my entire wardrobe with me to weed out anything immodest. She told me almost nothing I owned was immodest and couldn’t see what I was worried about. It was obvious that I was most concerned about my heart. I had grown a deep personal relationship with Jesus and I did not want to throw it away for anyone or anything. I knew I had the potential to completely abandon my God for the attentions of a young man and I did not want to risk it again.

It was during this long searching for a pure heart that I met my blue-eyed husband. Sometimes I mourn the fact that my girlish notions of romance were never realized. I did not overwhelm his senses with my radiant beauty upon meeting, and I had always hoped that would happen somewhere, sometime, with someone.

What actually happened was that he noticed more and more over time how much I feared the Lord. He saw that when I showed up to a worship night, I hadn’t spent an hour straightening my hair but I had a prophetic word to share. He saw that I had a hunger for prayer even when I was wearing a sweatshirt with a knee-length jean skirt (?!). He could hear the ache in my voice when I asked questions at Bible study and found me fascinating without any eyeliner, cute shoes or nailpolish.

When he left for a Christian school in Colorado, I actually said, “Have a nice life,” because I was sure he would meet some beautiful little blonde who could stand by his side while he saved the world.

It turned out that he compared every girl he met that spring to me. Many of them were beautiful, wonderful girls, but he found himself wondering if any of them were able to challenge him in the special way that I did. In the end, he found himself looking forward to coming home to me, the girl in sloppy clearance rack jeans with dollar store earrings.

Throughout my college years, I had prayed to marry someone who saw the image of God in me. I wanted someone to look at me and not compliment how well I accented my eye color with my eye shadow or how beautifully I had done my hair (what kind of man notices that stuff anyway?). I wanted someone to look at me and praise God.

Sometimes I’m still shocked that it really happened. It really was true that “charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised,” (Proverbs 31:30). My husband started calling me Bella right away when we started dating even though nothing about my appearance changed. He suddenly found me intensely attractive and could not wait to marry me. Multiple times a day now, I hear my husband say, “Thank you Lord, for my beautiful wife.” Every time he picks up the phone, he says, “Hey Beautiful.”

As my husband pursued me through dating and engagement, I became more comfortable with my femininity and started dressing in a more flattering way and paying more attention to my appearance. My heart was healed and I was no longer concerned about dishonoring God by looking attractive. It was so freeing to finally feel  beautiful and to be celebrated as such.

This is really a fraction of everything I have to say on the subject of beauty, especially after going through pregnancy and having a post-partum body. I am still learning to take my insecurities to the Lord and not to rely on my husband or anyone else for affirmation. I have seen God lead me and carry my heart through many “dangers, toils and snares,” and I trust he will do it again and again.

[belovedpilgrim]

Word buzz.

In November of 2005, after spending 11 years sitting in a pew in a Baptist church with my family, I asked my mom to help me buy my own Bible. Well, I had one, but it was that kids one with purple line drawings of ancient world tools and the cool rainbow Ten Commandments page (anyone else?). Once I had secured a more sensible, mature binding of the scriptures, I started reading it in my bedroom.

Somewhere in the Corinthian epistles, while stretched out on my stomach with my Spongebob Squarepants pillow (remember, mature and sensible), I became a Christian. All of a sudden, after 11 years of listening to preaching and answering Sunday School questions, my heart started burning within me as my eyes traveled across the thin, crinkly pages and I believed. In the years that followed, my spirit seemed to have a life of its own and at times I swore I could physically feel it growing stronger within me.

I certainly had cares in those days. Being 17 is not easy. At all. But many things were arranged for me without any effort on my part, mainly food, clothing and shelter.

Now, 11 years later, I have a much better understanding of what Jesus meant when he spoke of “the desires for other things” (ESV), or “the distractions of this age” (AMP), or “all the things they have to do and all the things they want to get” (MSG) in the Parable of the Sower. 

He spoke about these things as thorns or weeds that can choke or strangle the Word or the Truth and make it “unfruitful” (ESV) or make sure “nothing comes of it” (MSG). When I read this, that familiar burning started in my heart. Yes, Jesus, I know.

It doesn’t take me long to produce a list of “other things,” “distractions,” or “all the things I have to do or things I want to get.” Here is the short version:

Is my husband going to lose his job in December?

Do I have to homeschool my daughter (who is only 2 months old right now)?

How can I lose 8 pounds without giving up ice cream?

What else is going to go on the Camry?

When can I get a haircut?

Why don’t the exact black leather boots I see in my mind exist anywhere for me to buy?

Do I really have to do dishes again?

Am I ever going to be anything great?

I know all too well that feeling of being constantly busy with a whirring mind and yet feeling time is passing without anything to show for it. Every day distractions can keep me from sowing anything into eternity and there can be a very wearying uneasiness about knowing the Word and yet feeling unfruitful.

Thirst for understanding drove me to study the word choke. The Strong’s definition of the Greek word was “to strangle completely, (literally) to drown, or (figuratively) to crowd, choke or throng.”Knowing that the Word is living and active (Hebrews 4:12) makes the whole idea of choking it, strangling it or drowning it seem very violent, but violence seems to be the best explanation for the resulting death of its living properties.

I can’t say I use the word throng regularly, so I looked that up too. It kind of chilled me to read that it means “to fill or be present in.” Isn’t that what the Holy Spirit is supposed to do? 

How often have I sat in church and been filled with “desires for other things”? I have literally missed entire worship songs while trying to find money in my budget to get a new dress or thinking about how someone slighted me that week or how the plot of The Age of Adeline could have been improved.

Jesus said his yoke (the Word) is easy and his burden is light (Matthew 11:28): light, I would think, like the life-animating air we breathe. I imagine the distractions of the age to be like the heaviness of water filling our lungs and drowning us.

When the Word is choked out, the Truth it speaks of is choked out. The Truth is, we were made for God (Colossians 1:16), not for fashion trends, vacations, jobs, or even for our families.

What is the answer, then? One of the things you do in CPR for someone who isn’t breathing is to tilt their chin up to open their airway. Probably the best thing to do when I’m distracted is to tilt my face upward and look at the Lord, even when I don’t have anything spiritual on my mind at all. I’m sure He’d rather hear about my concerns than to be completely ignored.

I have been thinking about something Misty Edwards said: keep the conversation going. Keep talking to the Lord. Don’t go silent when you are distracted or even lukewarm. Open your airway. Take a breath. Say something. Refusing to be choked or drowned may mean I have some chatting to do about black leather boots and salted caramel gelato.

[belovedpilgrim]

the voice.

The thing I have craved most in the past few years has been a voice. As a teenager and an early twenty-something, I was celebrated by most as one who could issue a clarion call in any number of situations. I was a mover and shaker and had all of the character flaws that came with it: impatience, superiority, lack of empathy, etc. Not to say I was a monster, but I could certainly not be described as “mature, complete, not lacking anything,” (James 1:4) and I know I never will be on this side of time.

However, as my early twenties have stretched into my late twenties (I will be 27 tomorrow), most of my answers have turned into questions. At age 20, I actually set up a table with friends in the student union and had a banner custom made that said Just Ask. We were literally crazy enough to have anyone on the entire college campus come up and ask us any question about our faith during designated hours 5 days a week. We believed The Answers would just come flowing out of us. The thing is, they did.  

Since then, though, career, marriage, church and family have put that simplistically bold and fierce young lady into a blender and caused her to question many of her basic instincts and wonder if The Answers are really so simple. Staring at mental illness, ubiquitous unbelief, the widowhood of a friend, and the inherent struggles of daily faithfulness over the past couple of years has added to the deep fog in my pilgrimage.  I still love Jesus. I still believe the Bible is true. I still find my primary identity in my relationship with God, but everything just seems so...weird.

As a young lady, I was fueled by impulsivity and boldness, throwing myself into situations after only a casual glance and trusting the Lord to make up for any miscalculation on my part. This was such a thrill. Living like this was like being an animal acting on instinct. Just act and enjoy the delicious results.

Time has passed and I’ve been literally disillusioned: freed from the illusion that constant action without forethought is the highest form of faith.  In realizing the shortcomings of instinct, I have engaged in the challenging pursuit of discernment and vision.  Yes, we need to be ready to act in faith even when we cannot see how we will be affected by what God is calling us to do. After all, don’t the righteous “live by faith, not by sight,” (2 Corinthians 5:7)? But sometimes faith is waiting for the Lord to show you what to do, and trusting that it isn’t a waste of time to do so.

The Word also says, “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil,” (Hebrews 5:12 ESV). And “Where there is no revelation (prophetic vision), people cast off restraint; but blessed is the one who heeds wisdom’s instruction,” (Proverbs 29:18 NIV/ESV).

For years I was drawn to a Christianity that emphasized and exalted people like me who would leap before looking and could only see as far as the next moment. Having this imbedded in my personality made me feel that I had a leg-up on other Christians. To be bare-faced honest, I mostly regarded other Christians as timid and weak. This false belief was fed by the constant awarding of leadership positions. Position was very much synonymous with identity for me because my basic way of being was given a title and respect.

Because of this, the slow realization that it’s not always best to be impulsive and act on instinct has been the deepest death to self I have ever experienced. What does it mean to have a quiet spirit the Bible talks about (1 Peter 3:4)  when you feel like a lioness ready to pounce on the inside?

With all of this swirling inside of me, I find myself unsure of what to say. What is the message of my life. What am I standing for. How can I be sure of what I am saying? My voice, though still far more forceful than many, feels like endless muttering compared to the power I know is within me by the Holy Spirit to proclaim truth, mobilize the Body of Christ and call out to valleys of dry bones to come alive.

Why am I saying this? I don’t know. Maybe because a few of you out there have the same subcutaneous awareness as I do: the prophets are not all dead. They are living and breathing among us. Some of us are those who can and will speak on behalf of the Lord to wake up a sleeping world. There is a fire shut up in our bones, and we are weary of holding it in.

To find that voice, though, is to hear the voice of God. We must be quiet before we can be loud.

[belovedpilgrim]

battlefield

“I gave in to Jesus, admitted that I’d been fighting with him all these years the way you fight with someone you love.” (Laura Winner, Girl Meets God)

I have never read this book, but I read this quote in an excerpt online about 6 years ago and it has never left me. I knew exactly what she meant.

I love Jesus. And I fight with him constantly.

How do you fight with someone you love? With all the fierceness and tenderness you can muster.

The people I have contended with most dramatically have been my husband and my father. They are a part of me and therefore I must be reconciled by any painful means or risk the more devastating reality of separation (emotionally or spiritually). There may be tears and offense but in the end there is peace. There must be.

When I think my husband is in error, I sometimes wrestle with him and pin him using painful pressure points to get him to succumb to what we both know to be true. I surprise myself at the ire that rises within me when I feel he is cheating me or himself out of some good thing: understanding, closeness, strength, wisdom. A warrior is awoken.

Surely my anger is not totally righteous and sometimes my words can be cuttingly selfish, but in my heart is a flaming desire to be united and completely unselfish. There is a wild, roaring instinct to burn away all that is untrue, all that separates us unnecessarily. My soul seeks to be lashed to his inexorably.

And yet in this is a submissive, pleading cry for mercy. Please reconcile with me. I need you. Please soothe my overwhelming fears and doubts. Tell me you love me, too.

My desperation, my pointed questions, even my anger, is not a slammed door. It is a wide open floodgate of vulnerability. This is the real me. This is the real woman that needs you. I would never expose myself to an enemy in this way. There would be armor, tanks and artillery.

Instead, there is this hand to hand, unarmed combat. There is nakedness. There is every opportunity to be crushed. I fling myself headlong into these battles out of trust and respect. I may get wounded and bruised in the process but there will be victory, not just for me but for both of us. I will not avoid conflict with my beloved because I believe the war against solitude is being won. We are one and will remain so until death.

And such is my relationship with the Lord. One Spanish philosopher called it “la lucha eterna,” (Miguel de Unamuno), to know the Eternal Being. I disagree that la lucha, the struggle, will be eternal. I believe we will delight in knowing him more and more every day in eternity. It will not be a sweaty clash of flesh and spirit. But it is certainly that now. Here. In this body. On this earth.

How many times have I received puzzled looks from brothers and sisters in Christ when through tears I express an agonizing doubt or frustration with a mystery.

When I say things like, “Doesn’t it bother you that that good, moral Muslims go to hell?” or “Why are we charged with evangelism? Don’t you think we’ll fail...that we are failing?” or “I have a hard time praying for miracles ever since Jake drowned” or “The falling away of other Christians I know makes me question the Lord’s keeping power,” there is something that smells like panic that enters the conversation.

Brother or Sister Christian feeds me a trite line from Christian radio or a C. S. Lewis quote, seeking to immediately quell my raging seas of searching. My search is seen as a fool’s errand. I am implicitly told my deep desire to know and love the Lord completely is an impossibility. Brother and Sister silently hope I will let the subject drop. At worst this makes me feel rejected as a lunatic. At best it makes me feel alone.  

And I am alone. I am alone with the Lord. I learned long ago that my fight is with Jesus Himself. I have to say to him, “I will not let go until you bless me,” wrestling with all my might.

Why wrestle? Why not just accept the prepackaged theology at my fingertips in modern evangelical media? Why not just adopt all of my pastor’s convictions?

Because I know Jesus is stronger than me. If I fight with him, he will win. If anyone can kill my flesh, assail my doubts, rebuke my sin, correct my deceptions...it is him. And I love him for it.

Why do I fight with Jesus?

“...to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. ” Colossians 2:3-4

[belovedpilgrim]

weak

“We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves.” Romans 15:1

This scripture has been a constant companion for weeks now. The Holy Spirit seems to whisper it again and again whenever I am impatient (which is often). There is particular emphasis on the word OBLIGATION.

Instead of crushing me, the pressure this word puts on me is a comforting form of compression. It reigns me in. My racing mind comes back to me. My wild heart curls and settles in front of the fire. It is the firm hand of a Father.

I’ll be honest: sometimes I feel like I am lowering myself to tolerate other people.

I find people with few social graces and limited understanding of things that are important to me difficult to be around. I see it as an affliction sometimes. And no, I’m not referring to the intellectually disabled people I work with professionally.

One of my favorite songs as a teenager contained a line that wistfully admitted, “I’d walk with my people if I could find them.” This was at times a poignant description of the lonely identity crisis of adolescence. As it still echoes in my mind as an adult, it can have a pungent odor of pride. Instead of a longing for companionship, I can find in myself an elitist desire for uniformity.

People should be more like me. Smart. In control. Well adjusted. Enlightened.

That sentence looks like vomit spelled out on the screen, doesn’t it? I don’t think I’m alone though. There are more snobs like me out there. And a lot of us are Christians.

Ouch.

When the Lord puts a boundary on me--or obligates me--I usually buck against it at first. Until I understand it. Because I’m smart and my mind is an idol.

Ouch.

However in this particular scripture He has graced me. Revelation came instantly. We who are strong are obligated to bear with the failings of the weak, yes. It is not a baffling snag the fabric of God’s perfect plans to find myself around ill-mannered, neurotic or otherwise unappealing personalities. It is where I should be if I am strong because my strengths are not for me. We are not to please ourselves.

The next verse says, “Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up,” (Romans 15:2).  Neighbors are the people who happen to be in my life. Neighbors are not my hand-selected inner circle. They just show up uninvited by circumstance. Or providence. Funny how providence is so positional.

Position is interesting because it is relative. I have no strength unless I am compared to someone weaker. I am actually very weak compared to others. Just a few people come to mind.  

In certain contexts, in certain positions, I seem brilliant, patient and spiritual by comparison. In other contexts, I seem ill-mannered, neurotic and unappealing. Yet I am quick to judge when my position is one of strength. I go so far as to feel my time is being wasted.

The Lord has been showing me that there aren’t two categories for people: strong or weak. Doesn’t the scripture say, “For He knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust,” (Psalm 103:14)? Our common origin gives us a common characteristic. We are all weak.

Positionally, I may be strong. Someone else may be weak by comparison.

They may be sick when I am well.

They may be abused when I am loved.

They may be discouraged when I am celebrated.

They may be stuck in sin while I am being graced with self control.

They may be unemployed while I am being promoted.

They may be doubting when my faith is reaching new heights.

They may be traumatized when I am overjoyed.

They may be limited when I am liberated.

The truth is everything could be reversed at any time and the plug would be pulled on my strength, sending it swirling down the drain. And then I’d be the weak one needing someone to be strong for me. Someone would need to be willing to waste their time and build me up. 

Drinking this Word in is medicine. It eases my aches of frustration and the oppressive nausea of dissatisfaction that overtakes me when I would rather have different neighbors. It reminds me of my own weakness and extracts a “Thank you Jesus” from my heart. 

Yes, I want to share my life with people who inspire me and drive me forward with common vision. But hanging out with the weak ones God puts in my life and lending some of my strength will never hold me back.

[belovedpilgrim]

nothing

I was washing my hands in the bathroom when it came into my spirit.

“It’s a lie.”

Awareness came immediately. It’s a lie that I cannot be close to Jesus. Relationally close. Sharing secrets close. Beloved close.

There was a prayer meeting going on in another dimly lit space and yet this revelation came as I opened the faucet under the mirror. Strumming guitars and burning incense filled the next room--and yet my heart was awakened to truth within inches of the toilet.

I knew immediately that I needed to read through Romans 8. With my soap-scented hands I opened my Bible.

“Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing. shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:37-38

It’s a lie.

It’s a lie that I cannot break through the spiritual, physical, relational, circumstantial and emotional things that hinder my pursuit of intimacy with God. I assign blame to others, myself and the world around me for the distance I feel between myself and my Creator. But I can only blame someone or something for what I believe they have done. Blame empowers dead things to rule over me.

Like the Apostle Paul, I need to be persuaded, convinced that I cannot be separated from God’s love.

Neither life nor death...

The sudden death of a friend in August continues to stir a quiet undercurrent of discouragement. In ways, it has disillusioned me from prayer. More than anything, it has shocked me with the limitations of human life. It’s not just that we can (will) die, but what our lives can be like. We can be left in difficult circumstances with no escape in this present life. His wife and children will always in some way feel loss. Someone will always be missing. Permanence asserts its own cruel authority. However, it is an authority under the authority of God. He is still able to say, “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” (Deuteronomy 31:6; Hebrews 13:5) He is not forced out by our grief, anger or confusion.

Nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers...

I often blame the unbelief of people around me, my community and my nation for my own diminished faith. How can God be so real to me and so unknown to others? Is He really as close as I thought? I don’t fear that God is imaginary, but perhaps that my notions of my personal relationship with Him could be seated in delusion. My psyche is contorted somehow to believe that society’s ever- growing altar of unbelief overshadows my small frame as a believer,  though I am a temple of the Holy Spirit. Is their doubt more powerful than my personal experience with the Living God? What happened to “Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world,” (1 John 4:4)?

Nor things present nor things to come...

This is probably what I have given the most power to in moments of unbelief and distance.  While busying myself with things present and preparing for things to come, I use a common Christian phrase, “It’s just a season.” Just a season to give circumstances power to push me out of the inner courts of my God. Just a season to be anxious. Just a season to be prayerless. Just a season to spiritually smell like death and blame it on baking I needed to do for a birthday party.

Nor height nor depth nor any other created thing...

My money, my job, my home, my car, my laundry, even the created people in my life cannot separate me from the love of the Creator. No matter what needs to be paid, listened to, visited or folded...none of it has the power to sever my connection with the Lord. I can choose His presence in all things.

None of these things have any power whatsoever to separate me from the love of God---unless I give it power by blaming it. He will still love me when I blame the dirty socks for my spiritual shallowness, but I cannot experience or know His love when I am in agreement with a lie that a created thing can separate me from the love of God. And I am deceived, blind and grasping.

I have to remember...

“He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being” Acts 17:26-28

All of these things, the life and death, the principalities and powers, the things present and to come, the heights and depths, they are all preappointed to urge me to search for and even blindly grope for the Lord. By design, everything in my life is meant to push me into His arms.

So, yes, these things do have power. In the mind of God, each and every thing I encounter spiritually, mentally, emotionally or physically is purposed and intended to grow my intimacy with Him. There is power in the laundry to humble me. Power in the principalities to urge me to pray. Power in grief to cause me to seek refuge in my Father.

I remember, too, that there was one forsaken. There was one who  was separated from the love of the Father. He cried out in agony on the cross as He bore the consequences of my sin. His racked and beaten frame was abandoned by the Father as He “gave up the ghost.” Because He bore this on His own soul I will never have to.

He defeated sin, swallowing all unrighteousness with His blazing holiness. He was restored to the Father, His own heart filled with the love of God again. This is where I find that love: in Christ Jesus our Lord, who is with me always, even to the end of the age.

[belovedpilgrim]

them in us and us in them. He in us and we in Him.

It’s a 2.5 mile drive every morning to this building. It’s next to the hardware store. About 30 minutes later, a door opens and they spill in--shoes on the wrong feet, glasses crooked, greeting the unfamiliar black man pleasantly, “Hi! You’re a rapper?” 

My heart rejoices. One flings his arms around me, growls and says, “I’ll kill you!” before he pats me on the belly, laughs and walks away. Another plays air guitar, pointing at me to ask, “When is your husband coming to sing to us?” 

A coworker needed to talk to me. One runs up and smothers her in a hug. I say, “It can wait. These are the moments.” 

These are the things highlighted in Focus on the Family segments about God’s love for all people--disabled and not. 

No one ever films the aggression, the flailing arms and legs and howling struggle for control in a mind that is failing, unable to perceive reality or reign in emotion. Seeing them overwhelmed, angry and trembling, there are moments that break my rejoicing heart. Moments that frustrate my best efforts. Moments that haunt me. 

But I am paid. I clock in, clock out, a punctuating beep at the end of the day.

But it’s not real. It is not contained in one building. The disease and suffering permeates every part of my life. 

At home in my soul, I know the truth. This is not us-them. The Disabled and The Typical. Typically, human beings are frail. And the Lord “knows how we are formed, He remembers that we are dust,” (Psalm 103:14).

There are people with their shoes on the right feet and their glasses on straight who can do more than grunt, more than pantomime their thoughts. Their intelligence is normal and yet their minds betray them. 

There is no hydrocephaly, no lack of oxygen in birthing, just inexplicable madness. 

My mother said all of a sudden while I was peeling an orange, “She was schizophrenic. She was treated with electro-shock therapy as a young woman and it was never again addressed.” Everything came into focus. Everything made more sense---and yet made no sense at all. This form of suffering seems especially cruel, and especially unfit for someone with movie-star beauty. 

It offended me to add another to the list of my beloved who battled the lonely war of instability and wild inward experience. 

I knew about my mother’s sister who used to hear voices so loud she didn’t know traffic was coming right at her on Delaware Avenue. I faced the inner walls of the emergency psych ward after one of our own attempted suicide. I’ve seen irrational panic in our home. I’ve measured the cresting waves of mood disorders in the older one. I know about the great uncle throwing himself out of a window. 

But I didn’t know there was more.  

All in a season when chemical imbalance in a dear one of mine has made closeness excrutiating if not impossible. 

Knowing this--this old news of a beautiful young woman who had no help--simultaneously crushes my spirit and ignites a fire in me again.

I have laid hands on the hallucinating, commanding demonic forces to leave. I have listened for brother to come home alive. I have taken knives out of hands, held people to the ground, looked into angry autistic eyes and pushed PTSD away with jokes. 

See, this isn’t us and them. This is just plain us. I may not have cerebral deformities, arrested development or traumatic brain injury and who knows how I evaded genetic chemical imbalances, but Jesus still looks into my eyes and says, “Do not let your heart be troubled,”  (John 14:1). He knows troubling will crush my dust heart. 

James still tells me my lack of faith causes me to be “double-minded and unstable in all of my ways,” (James 1:8).

I have intrusive thoughts (read: unfounded anger at husband). I lack orientation to space and time (read: impatience). I lay on the couch of God’s throne room and say, “Search me, God, and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts,” (Psalm 139:23). 

I am often desperate for control of my own mind. Not to stop myself from hallucinating or to keep my self from screaming irrationally---but to know the Truth. To rise to the surface when lost in my own mind and see The Real Thing. God’s design laid bare. My Creator at my side. The illusion of meaninglessness and aloneness shattered. Peace. 

You see, they are me and I am them. I do not have elarged fluid ventricles or a dopamine deficiency. My limbic system is in tact. But I am desperate for redemption. In my soul, the command drives me on, 

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:1). 

Praise God Jesus said to me, “you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” (John 14:20). I am not alone and neither are they. Us. We. 

[belovedpilgrim]

80.

There was time this morning to lay in bed. I desperately need this kind of time, to let thoughts wander with no particular destination. No problem solving, just simple awareness of all that has weighed in on me. 

I thought of the past year. The first thoughts were of Jacob. A bold friend with hairy arms and an insatiable thirst for The Real Thing. I thought of his wife, raising his infant son who is his exact image. There is wistfulness. There is longing. There is death. 

There is disappointment. 

I thought of a variety of my failures and a host of my frustrations. Unbelief all around me, lurking in the souls of people I love. Friendship shattered inexplicably. Coworker murdered. Disability and mental illness in every moment. Young father drowned. My own gasping struggle to understand Christian community, ministry, church, calling...

Ultimately the question is about identity.

Am I beloved by God? Does He like me? 

A thousand explosions happened as I read Psalm 80 this morning. 

“Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, You who lead Joseph like a flock; You who dwell between the cherubim, shine forth!”  

I know I am one of many. Millions of people call upon the name of the Lord. I am part of a flock. A flock that so often is doing little more than milling about in a general direction and grazing mindlessly along the way. The Lord is a shepherd. He has a rod and staff and walks on the grass with us, but He also dwells between the cherubim with unyeilding glory. 

I want to shout at the Lord, “SHINE FORTH!” I know you lead me. I know You are somehow present in this pack of wooly, blank-staring sheep. But I want to KNOW and SEE you. 

Do You want to be known by someone like me? By people like us? 

“Cause Your face to shine and we will be saved.” 

This giant void in my soul can only be filled by You, Jesus. I know You can cause Your face to shine. You can make Yourself visible in this fog.  You have asked me “Who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15) 

I want to ask You the same thing. I will never be whole until I lock eyes with You. I need to see You seeing me.

“You have brought a vine out of Egypt; You have cast out the nations and planted it. You prepared room for it, and caused it to take deep root, and it filled the land. The hills were covered with its shadow, and the mighty cedars with its boughs. She sent out her boughs to the Sea, and her branches to the River.” 

My heart screams in recognition, leaping like John the Baptist in the womb. I know who I am when You walk into a room. I am ransomed from slavery. I am planted in a place prepared for me. My roots are deep. And yet there is a question in my heart, “Where is that spiritual broadness? Why don’t I have the strength to stretch to the sea, upholding my arms lengthened in worship?” 

I am like John again years later, sending delegates from my prison cell, asking Jesus, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?”  (Luke 7:20)

These words in Psalm 80 echo in my soul, “Look down from heaven and see, and visit this vine.”   

Please come. 

It is a cry, loud and soft, demanding and tender. See me. Visit me. Come. 

An Edenic and unquenchable longing anchors and rattles my soul at all times. And as I read these holy words there is such gratitude. Such relief. Such exhalation. 

You must see. You must know, because Your word is the language of my soul. The etchings of my deepest desires blazing on the page. 

You have seen me. You have visited me.  

“We will not turn back from You.” 

[belovedpilgrim]

reclaiming YES

Cleaning out the basement a few weeks ago, I found a stash of old t-shirts and clothing from high school I once planned to use in a quilt. As I looked through the drama club t-shirts and Salvation Army favorites, I wondered to myself, “Why would I ever invest time in memorializing this part of my life?” 

My past, while by no means bloody or torrid, is uncomfortable for me. My teenage years were characterized by selfish pursuit of pleasure, experience and popularity. Some call this a developmental phase. I call it what it is: sin. 

Still, many of the fabrics are interesting and something in me cannot purge these relics of my teenagehood. 

Today, I set about turning one of my favorite skirts from high school into an infinity scarf. As I laid it out, I looked at it with reserved suspicion. Memories of places I’d been and people I’d been with while wearing it brought about resentment for myself and a reminder of my lack of loveliness. 

Sin hides the face of God from us (Isaiah 59:2). If that is so, how could I value a time in my life characterized by intentional rebellion and contrived ignorance of God’s best? If blessing is associated with the “light of His countenance [shining] on [us]” (Numbers 6:25), how can a time in my life when God’s face was obscured by my disrespect for Him be acknowledged as a blessing? 

I laughed as I rediscovered the safety pins that held together part of the skirt. I wore it until it wore out. As I considered the starry material, I thought of all the Lord has shown me in the years since I stopped wearing it. I met fellow pilgrims in college: 20-somethings dying to know the peace, love and power of Christ in the midst of term papers and the constant searching of singleness. They partnered with me in “laying hold of that for which Christ laid hold of me,” (Philippians 3:12). 

Redemption came in tangible ways. Victories over sin and clarity of conviction came quickly, though painfully at times. 

Late in collge I met my husband, a blue-eyed farmer with a spiritual gravitas that dizzied and even intimidated me. His sparkling eyes and gentle manner invited me in. Christ used him to beckon me deeper into the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit. Of course I fell in love with him. 

My life is different now, married to this man of metered words and careful decision-making. In fact, it is almost unrecognizable from my past filled with theiving fornication, angry rebellion and vain self-seeking. My husband celebrates and appreciates my redemptive story, but can by no means relate. 

Sure, Christ saved him from himself. But Blue Eyes felt the call to become a pastor at age seven and prayed diligently for a wife for a dozen or more years before discovering me. Now we are one. And yet we have two separate pasts. 

Finding meaning in those years is challenging. But when I reject them, attempting to erase what is true of my life, I turn away from Jesus in a way. I ignore his forebearance, mercy and consuming love for me “while I was yet a sinner.” 

I fail to acknowledge his presence in my life as a teenager. He was there. His spirit was alive in my dad as I sat next to him at church every Sunday, fuming and refusing to believe. His presence encouraged my parents as they laid in bed praying for me. He tugged at me continually, never allowing me to be comfortable in my sin. 

It was His presence that flooded my bedroom and my soul with peace in my darkest hours and waited patiently for me to surrender to him months later. 

When I acknowledge his grace in my yesterday, I find there is grace for today. Grace for the sarcasm, grace for the lack of discipline, grace for the frustration, grace for the confusion, grace for all that I continue to struggle against. 

As I cut and stitched this skirt today, I said yes to the work of Christ in my life. Yes to the Potter’s hands. Yes to who He has been and always will be.