reflections on job: part 1 {the measure of suffering}

About a week ago, I read the book of Job in one sitting: the entire book, from start to finish. I've never read it that way prior to that day and now I'm convinced that it's a narrative that needs and begs to be read as such. Perhaps it's because I had eyes to see it and because I had the time to absorb it all in one sitting, but now I see things there that I've missed before.

I am always reluctant to draw any comparisons between myself and Job. It's a tough act to follow, isn't it? The man loses all his material wealth, property, his family, and his servants in a matter of sentences and barely a breath later, is afflicted from boils and sores from head to toe. His life is utterly devastated within the first two of forty-two chapters. And yet he famously praises God in the midst of his profound losses (The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised, 1:20). When his wife tells him to curse God and die, Job holds fast and replies, Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble? (2:10). All this while scraping sores from his body with a piece of broken pottery.

Lord, have mercy.

Anything I relegate to the category of "suffering" in my life hardly measures up to what this man experienced in such a short amount of time. But maybe that's where I need to stop myself: the minute I start quantifying suffering and deem my experience smaller or less significant, I cut off a pathway by which the wisdom offered in those forty-two chapters might gain admittance to my heart. I risk missing the point entirely. I may put a roadblock on the path by which I might gain to insight or find a specific and fitting grace for my soul.

Suffering cannot be quantified or compared; I cannot measure with any objectivity the loss and grief I experience against that of another -- even Job. When I try to measure suffering, I make it less than it is. And we all know that when you're in the thick of it, weighted down by worries and grief and darkness and loss and impossible questions, there is no bottom to the grief. You can never find the end of it.

Perhaps it's a tool of the enemy to have us thinking that our suffering is worthless, or that we are simply too weak and that is why it's so hard for us. We're really not all that righteous, are we? Aren't we just getting what we deserve? If God really loved us, He would have stopped any of this from happening.

And so on, and so on.

Truth is, regardless of how much I'm going through or how bad it is, I'm asking some of the same questions Job did. Offering some of the same defenses. Wondering what God is up to when it seems like the losses are compounding and will never end. Hurting like crazy and finding no salve in sight. Wondering if this is my life forever, if this is what the faithful can expect from a loving God. Sitting in the ashes, picking at my wounds with broken things.

So I ignored the enemy's voice, and I opened the book of Job.

a heart more his

Here I am, God; I sit before you again with open hands. Sometimes they are all I have to offer you when the words just don't come, when they bubble out of my heart and get stuck in my throat. I've been choking on them again. I know you know these words even when my mouth is unable to put a shape around them, to put air behind them and let them out. So here I sit, cross-legged on the bedroom floor, Indian style. Open hands resting on my knees. Tears come freely.

This is all I have sometimes.

Just a few weeks ago, I brought you my heart and held it in these same open hands, feeling as though it was something tattered and dripping, not a little bit shredded. I wondered aloud what you might have for this place that has been empty so long, this place I have prayed so many times to be filled. You always told me no, not now and I confess I felt punished at times, wondered if you were playing a joke. I had grown weary of your no, at the stratum of your no's over the years and I found myself unable to pretend with you. I wondered if you always intended it to feel this dry and empty, if you intended for my heart to collapse in upon itself. And then for the first time, I asked you: what might you have instead?

You wasted no time in answering.

And poetry happened, and then the writer's conference; every day was something new. I won't forget when I woke up with your words in me and I let them come, feeling possessed by you, being overcome in mind and in body; you infused yourself in my fingers and the confession poured out. You are inviting me to step out into the open air daily: nothing around me or under me, just your voice whispering: go. And so I go, stepping out into the air. I can't comprehend the adventure before me.

And then something flitted before my eyes that I thought I wanted; I extended my hand and let it rest on my finger. I turned my hand and contemplated it from different angles. And then the most amazing thing happened: I said no. And I was able to say it with clarity and conviction as your yes takes root in me, but not without some tears. I am new at this. Unexpected. That word is on my lips frequently these days.

So I let it go and let the wind carry it away, my heart too entirely full of you for regret, unfolding and letting you in. Old things are dying and new things sprouting to life, blooming and fluorishing, deeply rooted in a freshly churned soil. Vibrant, alive; unexpected. Doubt is edged out, water is flowing through the desert.

Open hands, resting on my knees. The tears still come. But there is joy too, effervescent and bubbling up uncontainable. There is some death in this becoming: things familiar and comfortable are lifted from these open hands, things deeply molded to the shape of my grip. I turn over this new thing you've placed in my palms, wondering. Marvelling, receiving myself from you.

This heart is more yours.

tulip photo by kirsten.michelle

penetrating layers of memory

Perhaps I shouldn't be, but I'm continually surprised at how God is leading me down this new path: the things He points out, the places at which He has me pause and look and take in the landscape before me, the detail He points out, the stones He turns over. I'm closely examining places I've become accustomed to overlooking, finding myself drawn to examine memories of myself that were on dusty shelves of forgetting: memories that at first glance, have no apparent connection to what drove me to this path in the first place.

I'm studying memories of myself that I haven't thought of since I passed through them. I find myself curious in my remembering: not quite afraid, often tenatively comprehending the view. Making notes of what I observe there.

I'm surprised at what reveals itself when pen passes over paper, at the truth once buried so deeply in my consciousness coming so easily to the surface now. One memory leads to another, and to one before that. And so the layers of memory peel back like an onion, revealing the truth beneath. I hand each layer to God, sometimes tentatively, sometimes with eyes squeezed tight and face turned away. But each time His hand comes to my face, and I open my eyes. He gaze locks with mine and peers deeply into to the heart I am still coming to know. There is no reason to be afraid. There is no shame. Just grace and understanding. Love. And so I open my hands and hand these things over to His care.

Really? You want this? You can redeem even this?

I can trust Him with these things.

I can trust Him to lead to the next layer and the next, knowing that only He understands what needs to be uncovered and recovered, acknowledged and surrendered.

As I'm drawn deeper, I wonder what I'll find when the next layer peels away, and where all of this might lead: this journey deeper into knowing myself, this pulling off the white sheets that have been covering and hiding these spaces in my heart.

One day, it will be important for me to share what these things are with you; I know this. I can trust you with these things, too. But for now this path is sacred, the time for revelations still in the realm of not yet.

journal photo by kirsten.michelle

kingdom math

God and I have been at work in those heartspaces I mentioned in my previous post. he is good to me: gentle and precise, just like the Master Surgeon He is.

as i've braved the journey into my heart's inner recesses, to those dark and hidden places, i've called them out as precisely as i'm able: here is the lie i've held onto so tightly, that has held on to me. offer me your truth. rip out the lie by the roots without removing chunks of my heart if You can, allow your truth to take root in that place. bind up the wound.

to be sure, it is a gasping, choking, sobbing business and there is more work ahead of me. but He has met and continues to meet me in those places. he meets me with tender grace, and i can already see evidences of His truth taking root there.

i was talking to christianne tonight, trying to tell her about these things. trying to put words around the movements of God in my heart. i was telling her how it seemed to me that the heights of joy seem higher, the freedom of our hearts more unbounded when we are willing to go into the darkness and the depths of ourselves, letting God meet us in those places. when we do this, we come out on the other side and see that it is good and new and better than anything we've had before. the heights are higher, the joy more joyful, the freedom even freer.

i mentioned once how i dance at church now. how i can't help it. how those are the most unselfconscious moments of my week. my dancing, my arms raised and extended, my singing at the top of my lungs, are the most natural and uncontained outpourings my heart has to offer. how i dance because my heart does. how i dance because my shackles are gone.

and so when i went to church today, it was much the same: having known God was meeting me in my dark and hurting places this week, i danced wildly for joy when the music started. i really couldn't contain it. i sang, i raise my hands, i moved in union with the music. and He met me there too: in this dancing, joyful place.

with the music was over and the sermon about to start, we were invited to turn around and shake hands with people. turning around, i noticed a man behind me. he was sobbing, his hair shaggy and unkempt. he cried into his hands uncontrollably; i could not see his face. a woman in the row behind him kept her hand on his shoulder, comforting him.

we all sat into our seats and i could hear one of the ushers speaking to the man behind me. he said yes, i'm okay. it's been so many years since i've been in church. many years. the usher handed him a box of tissue, asked if he wanted to speak to someone. the man replied, i will talk to you after the service, i just need to sit here and be here now.

when the sermon was over, we sang a closing song, one that had lyrics about heart singing to God, a heart that cannot help but sing. i thought about how appropriate and fitting the lyrics were, how well it expressed where my heart was at not only that day, but where it was at over the last few months as well. i thought of the man behind me and wondered at his story: why he had left church and why he was back today, what it was that moved him to such deep tears. what had him so broken and hurting so deeply.

when i turned around, the man was looking up. he wasn't sobbing anymore, but obviously transfixed and moved. eyes and cheeks still wet. he stayed in his seat as everyone else cleared the aisles.

compelled, i turned to him and reached for his hand, grabbing his with both of my own, meeting his gaze intently. bless you for being here, i said. bless you.

he began to choke again, and the tears began to flow. you're so beautiful, he told me [said in a way that i knew it had nothing to do with my appearance]. your worship ... the way you worshipped ... so, so beautiful. and he began to weep freely again.

i have been set free of so many things, i replied.

i tightened my grip around his hands and let him be in that space, still and transfixed and in awe of the God who met him there: exactly as he was, in whatever brokenness he carried in his heart.

i wondered of all the places a hurting man could have seated himself that day in that great big church building, the most likely place would be in the corner at the back. but today he sat in a row toward the front and at the center, right behind where i was sitting. and part of how God met him and moved in him that day had something to do with the crazy dancing arm-waving girl in front of him, singing at the top of her lungs [and probably off-key half the time].

i thought back to the sermon i heard. how it struck me about what our pastor said about giving: giving back to God in an act of trust a portion of what He's given us. how God multiplies what we offer him, however small, oftentimes in ways we never see: loaves and fishes, and all that.

i thought of the worship i offered up this day, how i really didn't understand what had transpired in the heart of the man in the row behind me. but how i knew that God took what i gave him this morning and multiplied it. somehow it was offered as food to a soul hungry and starving.

kingdom math at work, multiplication that doesn't make sense on any human scale.

how blessed i was to see God meet him there. and it hit me: the worship he witnessed would not have been possible unless God had walked with me through the darkness of many prior months, met me in the thick of mystery, carried me through the fire, and met me on the other side in a place that was boundless, joyful, and completely free. how it would not have happened at all unless i invited Him, unless i let myself learn to trust Him in the dark.

it struck me that as blessed as i am to know the joy of being set free, none of it is for me. none of it. which i've always known, but the knowledge today came in the way of a human soul, real and raw in his need, tears and sobs and wet crumpled tissues.

beyond our journeys and our pain and our trials and the times where darkness presses in around us is God's intent that those things will serve a greater purpose. our lives are meant to bear testimony to the truth of God's faithfulness, of His crazy deep reckless raging love for us, of how that love can heal a broken soul, set a prisoner free, and give us unimaginable, uncontained joy.

i told christianne that having so fresh a memory of God meeting me in the darkness has given me the faith that He would do the same here, meet me in the dark and mysterious place that i walk through now. and today was added inspiration, fuel to invite Him to continue the work He's about in me, knowing that if my pain remains my own, if i don't allow God to redeem it, it is pointless.

but when i ask Him to come along, when i allow Him to meet me there, God will show up. brilliantly and unexpectedly. in the dark in hurting places within me and in the row behind me, in the dark and hurting places of another.

that thursday

I've been sitting here quietly, staring down those words she said, holding them at arm's length. I circle them suspiciously. I simultaneously dread them and long for them. I put them in my mouth, wanting both to spit them out and to ingest them. In truth, they scare me.

So here I am. Sitting across from the truth, holding the raw shredded heart tissue that found its way out of me that day. It had been in hiding so long, protected behind thick steel doors, secured with locks that had long been rusted over.

But now it is here in the light of day, demanding a reckoning. I hold it in my hands, and it's a terrible mess. It's pulpy and tattered and dripping. I can't put it back together. I can't bring any sense or semblance of meaning out of it. There's a reason it remained hidden for so long.

By now most of you have a sense of something happening for both Christianne and I on a day we've both come to call "that Thursday". On that Thursday we were together, we were both startled to the core. For completely different reasons, we saw separate truths emerge that had been hidden and stuffed within us, crammed into dusty corners of forgetting without any conscious knowledge on our parts that they were about to make themselves known.

Christianne has written about beginning the journey deeper into what God revealed to her that day; and now I am doing the same.

I don't want to go there.

Going there means revisiting old wounds, splitting open old scar tissue and permitting God to poke about my insides.

It means resurrecting the memories of relationships long past, bringing to the surface that which I had gagged, bound, weighted with lead, and made to drown. It means not merely being present for the autopsy, but wielding the knife that will open these dead things.

It means looking at the past fifteen years of my life and relationships through a microscope. It means identifying where and how the seedlings of lies were planted, watered, and permitted to grow.

It means putting my finger on sore oozing places and letting God do the same.

It means identifying the lies that have tangled their long, sinewy roots around and throughout my insides, roots that have firmly embedded themselves in my flesh. It means acknowledging that I have held on to them as much as they have held on to me. It means asking God to pull these out by the roots.

It will mean learning to believe the truth.

The truth: the truth of those words that she prayed over me. The words that I keep at a distance, staring them down and eyeing surreptitiously. The words that I walk circles around to examine from every angle, looking for leaks, cracks, flaws, exceptions. Words that are foreign to my heart, that feel like rocks in my mouth. These words I must learn to believe.

And so I fear what is being asked of me: of being called again to walk a path that is dark, where my feet are the only ones that can do the walking.