a poem for good friday {2009}

Good Friday


I remember.
Thick spikes,
wooden crossbeams.
A circle of thorns.
Agony. Blood.

I have nothing to add
that you have not heard;
my voice harmonizes
with the chorus of remembrance:

my sin
your love
my hate
your love
my pride
your love
my rejection
your love

And I forget.
My skin is too thick
and I over fond of my calluses,
numb and hard and yellow.

I pray:
like the heavy curtain,
rend my heart in two
let your blood flood the crevices,
and proclaim:
“It is finished.”

Enter
my holy of holies.

exposed

I do not like who I see sometimes when I get a full look at her.

The person you see is fairly tame and in these online spaces is mostly well-behaved. She's rational about the things that trouble her deeply and though you hear her heart ache from time to time, she's mostly able to keep it together.

As these layers are burned away, I see someone else entirely. Skin and muscle peeled back, nerve endings exposed and raw, I have been coming to see who she really is -- the red and throbbing life underneath it all.

She knows trials and troubles are promised, and she knows she should endure these things as discipline. A move away from family, friends, and familiarity and mysterious health issues are refining her soul. She knows she's being taught to trust deeply in the Giver and not in the gifts themselves. She observes what she perceives to be the ease and happiness of others and thanks God for how He's blessing them.

Truth is, she loves the gifts more than the One who gives them. Trials, tedious and prolonged, have worn her down like water over a rock and make her doubt what she knows: not that He exists, but if He is good. She pouts and pines away in the hopes that she will somehow get her way. She wonders what she has done to get here (is it punishment? does she inhabit God's blind spot?) and what she could do to escape. She has considered that if it meant her circumstances would improve, she would turn her back, give it all up and try something new. She wonders what kind of God has the power to heal, but withholds it from her. She knows that He counts her tears, but protests that she'd rather not have a reason to cry them in the first place.

She is not as devoted and faith-filled as she thought she was. She is selfish and proud, desiring above all else her own comfort and happiness. She fears that this is all there is, that this is as good as it's going to get, and that she had just better get used to it.

Every time she thinks the last layer has been pulled away, He finds another, peeling it back easily as the skin of an onion. It seems to her that there is nothing left, no covering for her nakedness. And so her insides are turned out and her raw nerve-endings are exposed, unprotected. She is totally exposed, entirely vulnerable even to the most infinitesimal threat. She is afraid. He is, after all, the One who burned away her layers of protection. Will He protect her now?

She does not know what He will do next, or how He will be with her, but she knows for sure that she is something truer now than she was before. It burns and it stings, but it occurs to her: this is what changing feels like; this is the business of being made new.

reflections on job: part 5 {an answer, of sorts}

The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power;
in his justice and great righteousness, he does not oppress.
Elihu (37:23)

In the last chapter of Job, our hearts are eased as we see him restored: God tells the friends how wrong they were in their continued claims that God was punishing Job for a wrong commited. His wealth is restored. He has a new family and dies old and full of years. In my heart, I sigh relief not only to see his suffering end, but to see that he is able to enjoy the remaining years of his earthly life in peace and prosperity.

But something still niggles. Something is not quite right. In the school of knowing God, I sit in my desk and look around me shyly, tentatively. Should I just shrink back, fold my hands piously, nod and smile as the story draws to a close? I bend my elbow, drawing it in close toward my side. I raise my hand cautiously, simultaneously hoping for and dreading the prospect of the instructor calling my name. Yes? he asks, already knowing my question.

But ... um ... well ...

Yes? he asks again.

Well, I say, Job never really got an answer. I mean, he went through all this suffering. He lost everything, he got really sick, was in massive amounts of pain, and on top of that, he had to endure arguments with so called "friends" who supposedly came to comfort him, but only go eighty-seven rounds with him to tell him he's going through all this pain because he must have done something terribly wrong to offend God. I mean, he doesn't even get the assurance that it all had a purpose or meaning or anything. Everything is okay in the end, but still. He went through all that, and for what?

My instructor folds his arms, looks at the floor, and nods knowingly.

With the momentum of pent-up emotion finally being released, I continue: And what's all this business about a leviathan and the behemoth? What kind of good does that do for a man who has quite literally been through hell and has no one at all to comfort him?

My instructor stands silently, displaying a calm and collectedness that I find even more unsettling than the question I've just asked. I know that the only answer I'll receive is the same one Job received: an assertion of God as sovereign and eternal, as creator and sustainer of the universe, as master and tamer of massive beasts. He set the constellations in place and whispers to the birds when it's time to migrate. No, I was not there at creation. No, I can't tell a bird when it's time to move south. I get it.

But ... I know I have nothing to say. His answer, while not satisfying, puts me in my place. God does not answer to me. I have no case to make before him. The classroom is silent and I bow my head, looking at my folded hands through a stream of tears.

He looks me full in the face and extends a hand forward toward me, lifting a tear off my cheek with his finger.

And at once I know that His assertions of sovereignty, while they serve to show me my proper place in the scheme of things, are not to whip me into fright, nor are they a showy display of divine machismo, showing off how much bigger He is than I am. He is infinitely bigger and more powerful than I am, but every facet of his potency and his bigness is for me. He knows infinitely more than I know and sees infinitely more than I see. And even when everything I can see and feel causes me to call this relationship into question, He asks me to trust Him.

Yes, He will allow awful things to happen -- bad things, painful things, evil things, unjust things. When Satan enters the heavenly court and asks permission to have his way with us, God will permit him to afflict us. And perhaps we will never receive a satisying answer as to why. Maybe we will never see how God might redeem the pain and evil we experience, how He will work good out of something so terrible. We're asked not only to trust that He will -- we're asked to trust Him: to trust He is good and sovereign, to trust He is the first to defend our righteousness, to trust that His love for us is fierce, that He has not lost sight of us, and that we are safe in the palm of His hand. This is no small feat when the losses are compounding and there is no relief in sight.

Trust me, He says. Know me. I am good. I am for you. Look to me. I am in control of all of this. I am infinitely bigger than everything you're facing. You are safe. Even when all you can see and know and feel would tell you that it's crazy to believe it. Know me. I am good. I am for you. Look to me.

Trust me.

And that is the answer.

renewing my mind

I'm not quite done with our friend Job just yet, but I wanted interrupt our regularly scheduled posting to share with you a class that Kaari and I are taking at our church right now called The Truth Project.

The Truth Project is a 13-week video/discussion series which looks at some of the biggest and most basic questions facing us as human beings living in a world of competing philosophies and worldviews, a world that is increasingly antagonistic to God. The course is led by Del Tackett, an engaging, intelligent, and gracious instructor.

This series asks some big questions: What is truth? What do I believe? How do I know that what I believe is really real?

Here's a teaser:

What I love about this course is that it's not about rote memorization or learning the answers to get a good grade on a test. It's about inviting the kind of inner transformation that can only come about by the renewing of the mind.

reflections on job: part 4 {the mystery of God in the shadows}

I'll admit it: once upon a time, I thought Job just needed to suck it up. You know, why couldn't he basically pull himself up by his bootstraps and take it like a man? Yeah Job, I know it stinks, but it's temporary and you know this. Just trust God. I mean, how hard is that?

Add a few years, a dash of experience, a lot of tears and bake it all in the ovens of humility (fired by a few less-than-pleasant experiences of my own) and I think better of him now. Measuring sticks of suffering aside, he experienced several profound personal losses, one succeeding the other with scarcely a breath in between. After bearing the losses of his wealth, children, and property, after being afflicted with sores from his scalp to his heels, after bearing with the words of a wife who wants to see his suffering end even at the cost of rejecting God, he still offers praise. I don't know if I could do that. I think I could be pious about it all for maybe a minute, but when the reality of the loss and the pain set in, I am not sure that praise is what would rise to the surface of my soul.

In reading the text, we have the distinct advantage of having more of a bird's eye view than he did. We see God and Lucifer in conversation, the accuser bartering with God for how he might tempt Job to defy God altogether. We see and know the enemy. And we see that God really isn't at all worried about how it will turn out.

I'm no expert, but I'm guessing Job was knowledgeable about the stories of the creation and the fall of man. I'm fairly certain he knew about Adam and Eve, the deception and temptation, and how man was cut off from God with just one little bite of fruit. He must have known there was an enemy. But still, if Job's friends are any indicator, popular theology of the time sought to explain the dilemma of human suffering by stating that if you're good, God blesses you and if you sin, God punishes you. Therefore (conclude his friends), Job must have done something offensive of which he needs to repent. Nowhere in their explanation is the enemy mentioned.

It's amazing how quickly I forget what is true when my feet are to the fire. And maybe Job also lost sight of the fact that God is good and just and has our best in mind; that He is our defender and rescuer and redeemer and His eye is always upon us; that nothing that happens to us happens apart from His permission and that we are more protected and safe than we realize. And it also seems he lost sight of the fact that there's an enemy who takes the best possible advantage of the fact that we so easily forget about him.

The enemy operates in darkness and deception and trickery. He is good at averting our gazes from where they should be. He wants us to forget that there is something more true than anything else. The enemy wants us to call God into question and to place Him on the witness stand. He wants us to think God caused our pain and maybe even enjoys watching us suffer. He wants us to think that if God really loved us, He wouldn't let this happen. And if God really doesn't love us, then we may as well give up and go home. He wants us to direct our anger at God, to accuse Him of causing, allowing, and perpetuating our pain. He wants us to wonder if our lives of faith and devotion are an elaborate sham. He wants us to abandon our faith not in a quiet, unassuming way, but in a fist-shaking, screaming-match, throat-scraping, very public, broadcast-on-the-5-o'clock-news, there's-no-doubt-about-it way.

The enemy's design is to hem us in, to shorten the range of our vision until we cannot see beyond the boundaries of our own pain. In drawing our attention away from God, he takes us captive and makes us his hostages. It's like Stockholm syndrome in a way: we align ourselves with our captor, agreeing with the deceptions and doubts he drives into our hearts. Unable to retaliate in any other way, desiring to protect ourselves, we turn those doubts and deceptions into weapons and direct them at God. He's supposed to be our protector and rescuer, right? If He's so good and our pain is so bad, why does He not come and save us? And when God does not answer, our agreements with the enemy begin to take root even more deeply. It is a dark and lonely place to be and the questions and doubts continue to cut off our souls from the light of day.

I am certain that not even God would dare minimize or make light of anyone's pain. And while this may sound ridiculous at first, I believe that the only thing to do is the one thing the enemy doesn't want us to do and fix our gaze on the face of God, to know and affirm:

The LORD is righteous in all his ways
and loving toward all he has made.
The LORD is near to all who call on him,
to all who call on him in truth.

Psalm 145:17-18


Without knowing why and without being trite or overly pious about it, without intending to be the least bit dismissive, I believe the greatest act of defiance against our enemy is to worship our God.

Even so, a number of weighty questions remain.

God is unbearably quiet in most of the text of Job. And as I sit in my own pile of ashes in a way, I'm wondering about what I can learn from Job by turning his story over and over in my heart. I wonder what He is doing in the shadows as He listens to Job's friends all but accuse him of some vile sin time and again. I wonder what was in His heart as He watched Job scrape at his sores with bits of broken pottery. I wonder what He was thinking as Job and asked why?, over and over again. I wonder how He held himself in silence when Job requested an audience with God so Job could make his case. I wonder how His heart felt as He counted and collected Job's tears.

But He is there. He is present, hidden by the shadows. And He is not done with Job ... not yet. Not even close.

reflections on job: part 2 {the unseen intruder}

When I read Job this time around, I did something I don't usually do when I read my Bible: I read the commentary first. I have nothing against commentators and generally trust that they are well-trained in their field of study, knowing a good deal more than me about the historical context, the intended audience, and literary devices employed in a particular text. It's just that I don't want to be told how to think of the book I'm about to read. I don't want to approach the text with a particular bias before I've even encountered it. After all, it is the Scripture that is God-breathed, not the commentary preceding it.

But like I said, I read the commentary before approaching the story of Job this time around. I'm glad I did, because the commentator reminded me of something -- and it's something that I can read and notice and comprehend on my own, but something that's easy to forget when pain is pressing in hard against your soul, shrouding it in darkness and doubt. He reminded me that it's not just God and Job at play in this story. There is an enemy, the great anti-hero: Satan himself.

In the earliest chapters, he is ushered into the throne room of heaven with the angels and has a tête-à-tête with God. God asks Satan where he's been (as if He doesn't know).

Roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it, Satan replies (1:7).

Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil, God says (1:8).

Now hold the phone: Satan is in heaven having an audience with God. Satan tells God that he's been roaming the earth looking for someone to mess with and God in turn offers up Job. Hey Lucifer. Have you thought about Job? He's a great guy. He and I are pretty tight.

Wanna bet? Satan retorts. You've given him the sweet life: he's got it so easy. I bet you that if you took away all the good things you've given him, he'd spit in your face in a minute.

Alrighty, God says. Go for it. Everything I've given him is in your hands, but just don't touch him. Deal?

Satan agrees and in a matter of a few sentences, everything Job once possessed is gone: his livestock, his servants, and his children. All his wealth and his family are gone in a breath. Job still gives glory to God despite his grief. Satan comes back to God with a new challenge in chapter two, having new ideas of how he can get Job to slap God in the face. God offers up Job a second time:

Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason (2:3). Satan couldn't have liked hearing that.

And so God gives the enemy permission to strike Job's body. Satan thinks he has God here; he will surely curse you to your face. And so Job is afflicted with terrible sores from his scalp to the soles of his feet. He is left mourning in the ashes, scraping his skin with shards of broken pottery.

There are a few things that stick out to me about this exchange.

Aside from the initial surprise that Lucifer is making a return appearance in heaven, I'm struck by the fact that God is not the least bit threatened by Satan's presence or by the challenge he presents. Of course He's not; He is God, after all. But seriously, He's not worried about how Job will respond; He already knows what will happen. He is, after all, the one who suggests that Lucifer take on Job.

This brings me to my second point. God declares Job to be a righteous man: in the text God affirms that Job is blameless and upright. We all know that while no one in the history of the world but Christ has lived a truly blameless life, God still counts Job as a righteous man. Before there is even a chance for the shock of God's first assertion to wear off, He declares it a second time: He really means it when He proclaims that Job is a righteous man, and He knows that Job won't turn his back on Him.

I'm also struck by the fact that the enemy is on a leash. God holds the other end of it and determines its length. God determines the parameters within which Satan might wreak havoc on Job's life, and Satan cannot go beyond those lines. I know we would all prefer that he were chained tightly to a wall in hell, that he were given no permission to roam at all, but it is something, isn't it? Satan only moves and strikes within the allowance God Himself permits.

Examining the same thought from a different angle, I notice also that Job's suffering does not occur apart from God's permission. God does not instigate, nor does He cause it, but He does allow it to occur. The myriad of questions this thought alone raises aside, this truth makes me wildly uncomfortable, especially when I consider that Satan might be making a similar wager with God concerning me. And God answers him, have you considered my servant Kirsten?

What I can also see is that the enemy's tactics have not changed. This is where the commentary shed some light for me, reminding me that since he was cast out of heaven, he's been trying to drive a wedge between God and man; he's trying to disrupt and sever relationship. He causes all sorts of trouble and hopes we'll blame God, that we'll curse Him. Our enemy hopes that we'll forget him; that we'll blame God for our suffering. That we'll question Him and doubt Him. Lose faith in Him altogether. Think of Him as cruel, sadistic, or worse, apathetic. Shake our fists at Him and curse Him. Since first going after Adam and Eve in the garden, the enemy has applied to same tactic throughout the history of the church: divide and conquer.

Any one of these observations gives rise to a hundred questions, all of which I am sure have been asked since there have been people around to ask them. Job is the oldest book of the Bible and people much smarter than myself have studied and written about it over the thousands of years it's existed as a text; I don't expect to add anything new or profound to the discussion, but I do expect it will give me a new lens through which to view my current experience.

And for now it is good for me to remember these things: that there is an enemy who is against me and seeks to divide me from my God. As for my God, He is for me and declares me as righteous before enemy and angels alike.

{stay tuned for part 3}

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.

the psalms of david

Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in the miry depths,
where there is no foothold.
I have come into the deep waters;
the floods engulf me.
I am worn out calling for help;
my throat is parched.
My eyes fail,
looking for my God.
[69:1-3]


I’ve been spending some time in the Psalms lately. David’s songs are potent, earthy, and raw; the words heavy-laden with anger and fear and sin and confession and blood and tears on the one hand, and ecstatic, elated with praise and joy and dancing on the other.

In his darker moments, I can imagine David on his hands and knees, digging up earth with his fingernails, chest heaving with sobs that threaten to make his sternum collapse, thick threads of spittle hanging from his mouth; he grips and tears at his hair; he presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, he scratches at his face. His throat becomes raw, his lips gummy. His cries come from a depth he cannot plumb and are swallowed by the emptiness around him.

For troubles without number surround me;
my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see.
They are more than the hairs of my head,
and my heart fails within me.
[40:12]

We all know the story of the boy-turned-king, the warrior, the one God had hand-picked. We know the story of how he slew the giant with a rock and sling; we are familiar with his dalliance with Bathsheba. We’ve read of his enemies and how madly they pursued him, thirsty for blood.

Too often I’ve lost the heart of the man in the stories I’ve heard a hundred times; the flesh and blood human being is reduced to a caricature, a mere stick-figure. Familiarity turns those words ripped from his chest and dripping with his tears and blood into dead things, dry and stale, scattered on the wind like dust. But seasoned with my own tears, I find his songs new and fresh with a kind of life. David’s songs give me permission to be desolate, weary, tired, and questioning. Even the man after God’s own heart found himself wading in mire, his heart failing. He found himself overtaken and drowning, shackled to his sins and failures, weighted with grief. There were times he couldn’t see God at all.

Yet from this same heart, he was also able to say:

I will exalt you, my God the King;
I will praise your name for ever and ever.
Every day I will praise you
and extol your name for ever and ever.
Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
his greatness no one can fathom.
[145:1-2]

While the depths of his grief might seem to contrast sharply with his ecstatic exclamations of joy and praise, both were poured out of the same heart. David permitted himself to experience fully both bottomless despair and ecstatic, effusive rejoicing. He did not hide any of it from God or attempt to sanctify his experience, but allowed the truth of his heart gush forth whether it came out of a chest that was ready to cave in, or from one that felt weightless and winged.

And I find myself wondering if I can do the same: not simply to trust in his presence and goodness when my eyes are red and puffy, when my blood boils underneath my skin, when I’m clawing at the earth with my fingernails, but also to explode in praise, to commend His goodness when I feel as though I'm being crushed.

I do not know whether we need to experience the infinity of grief in order to know its counterpart in joy, but I do know this: David’s heart held the breadth of it and did not seek to contain it, this heart that was said to be like God’s own.

And that is truth I can grab onto.

point vierge: being before doing

From this weekend's sermon:
The biblical call of what we do is always superseded by the challenge of who we are.

Other notes:
Be like Jesus.

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. [Psalm 103:8]

Unless the Lord builds the house,
its builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the watchmen stand guard in vain.
In vain you rise early and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat--
for he grants sleep to those he loves.
[Psalm 127:1-2]

Maybe that's why I feel as though not much is going on. There's not a whole lot of doing as I find myself in the midst of my own point vierge, waiting in a place that is the cusp between sleeping and waking, between darkness and light. It is a threshold, a doorway between who I was and who God has designed me to be.

Doing is not the point. Perhaps right now, obedience means sitting still. Waiting.

And so I will sit and wait, hands open: surrendering the old, ready to receive the new.

darkness & dawn photo by kirsten.michelle

holy defiance

I am now officially obsessed with the virgin martyrs.

I have been making a meandering sort of progress through Kathleen Norris’s The Cloister Walk. It is my habit to pick up a chapter here and there, waiting sometimes days or even a week or two between readings.

Yesterday morning I picked up the text and found myself at a chapter about the virgin martyrs. I was madly underlining, bracketing, and starring the text, making copious notes in the margins with blue ink. I was so inspired and while I wasn't quite sure why at the time, I wanted to stand up and cheer in response to what I was reading. Norris’s narrative of the virgin martyrs and her own observations and conclusions about their choices and behavior gave shape to thoughts and feelings to which I have been utterly unable to encapsulate with my own words: thoughts about beauty and womanhood, thoughts about identity and purpose, thoughts about the world and God’s place for me in it, thoughts about death to self and surrender to Christ, not to mention all the feelings I have about this crazy and unexpected path I find myself walking.

Over the last several weeks, there has been a lot of internal juggling going on (hence the silence): this whole amazing business of claiming my identity as a writer and attending a writer’s conference, of writing a thorough confession to my body: it all happened after I came to God with an attitude of complete surrender. His work in me is not primarily about the writing and yet, that's how a lot of this is being made manifest right now. I wrote on one blog about how frustrated I was with my single status, and came to God in prayer. Instead of asking Him to satisfy me with someone else, I told Him, Okay. For now, your answer to my request for a partner is either ‘no’ or ‘not yet’. If you’re not going to fill this empty space with someone, what do you want to fill it with instead?

He wasted no time in responding.

That is when the most amazing things started happening. I prayed that prayer on February 15. Just eight days later, I woke up earlier than normal on a Saturday morning with the compelling directive in my heart and soul: I need to confess my sins toward my body. I couldn’t say for sure at the time that I knew it was God prompting me; I didn't know where the injunction was coming from. All I knew at the time was that piece of writing was not one I ever intended to write. It was not coming from me. But write it I did, and posted it with the smallest measure of faith that doing so was an act of obedience.

And now I'm watching all sorts of unimaginable blessings spring forth. One of those blessings is that I've found a substantive piece of God’s design for me, which is in short to bring forth this confession, to invite and give permission to others to do the same, to be witness to what God does in the wake of affirming these truths, taking them out of darkness and bringing them into the light, and to surrender this wholly unexpected place in my heart through which God desires to minister to others in a very particular way. Whew! I receive confirmation from Him almost daily (sometimes multiple times daily) that I’m on the right path, that he intends me for this particular and not wholly formed ministry. I don't have the opportunity to lose momentum, so often is He putting wind in my sails.

One of the many unexpected byproducts of this is that the space in my heart that felt so empty and dried out is no longer vacant, but bursting with fullness, lush and verdant and teeming with new life. God has filled it to overflowing; the heart He's given me in exchange for the one I surrendered to Him is one that has eyes only for Him. His design for my life in the context of His grander scheme is unfolding before me and I find myself utterly caught up in it, unwilling to allow that anything or anyone should take me away from it.

I am open to new friendships, but where relationships of the dating/courtship variety (or whatever you want to call it) are concerned, I feel a clear and resounding “no” rising up within me whenever it is offered. It feels incredibly empowering to declare truly and with utmost conviction that I’m just not all that interested in that right now, period. I cannot knowingly declare that this is the way it's always going to be; but I can affirm that this is the way it is now.

I make no apologies for this.

While I understand some women are in the habit of saying things they don’t really mean, it is irritating when I’m not taken at my word. Remember when Elizabeth in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice refuses Mr. Collins’s offer of marriage? He repeatedly attempts to counter her refusals of his proposal by accusing her of playing coy and of trying to incite greater passion from him. She keeps reaffirming her refusal with noticeable and increasing annoyance. While my circumstances are different than Elizabeth's, I can appreciate her frustration in that moment: her "no" is not being heard, but is being taken for something else entirely.

A couple months ago, I told a certain would-be pursuer three times over the course of two days quite explicitly that I wasn’t interested in dating him (I actually said three times: I don’t want to date you). Just seconds after I said this a fourth time, he accused me of being "unclear". I wish I was kidding.

I realize that this is one of those rare instances where my feelings and decisions are counter-cultural both in a popular sense and where the culture of the church is concerned as well. Most everyone desires companionship and to pair off with another. It is expected that single Christian adults are in pursuit of a marriage partner. It would not surprise me in the least to find that there might again be a time in my life where finding a spouse will be more important to me than it is at present. But it’s not now. I am satisfied and filled with contentment in the relationships with those I consider to be my community. I do not lack for human connection.

So what does any of this have to do with virgin martyrs? I'm so glad you asked!

Depending on the historical context from which they are being evaluated, virgin martyrs have been accused of being “unchristian” in their refusal to marry, and as an impossible ideal of Christian womanhood. It would seem then, that married Christian women and “those who do not suffer enough, would seem doomed to be imperfect models of Christian faith” (Norris, p. 187).

What makes the virgin martyrs such powerful examples is that they refused to marry pagan men or to worship idols and false gods as required by Roman law. It wasn’t merely popular culture they were defying: aligning themselves with Christ as they did was to openly resist the authorities and invite a vicious and brutal death. It was to blatantly defy every accepted standard of female behavior. They weren't going to marry pagan husbands in order to produce children who would also be required to worship false gods.

It wasn’t only in their behavior that they defied the laws of the time. Many virgin martyrs lucidly vocalized their dissent, which only incited more vehement responses from the prevailing male authorities. One such martyr, Mahya, after being publicly stripped naked at the command of the king declared, “‘It is to your shame … that you have done this; I am not ashamed of myself … for I am a woman – such as created by God.’ Had she finished her scriptural allusion,’ the authors note, ‘Mahya would have added, ‘created by God in his own image, male and female.’ Typically, such speech angers male rulers … the more the martyrs talk back, the more they mock those in power by their allegiance to Christ and his invincible power” (Norris, p. 194).

And what about their virginity? Typically, virginity is thought of as referring to someone who has not experienced sexual intercourse; in this sense, it is seen as a passive state of being, one that precedes knowing and experience. But the virginity that the martyrs embodied had more to do with embracing and affirming their identities in and alignment with Christ. One Benedictine sister described virginity as having its center in the heart, such that it could be named “singleness of heart”. The same sister continues, “Virginity is a state that returns to God in wholeness. This wholeness is not that of having experienced all experiences, but of something reserved, preserved, or reclaimed for what it was made for. Virginity is the ability to stay centered, with oneness of purpose” (qtd. in Norris, pp. 200-201).

Norris makes the point that physical virginity of the martyrs is not the issue, “and it never was. Reading between the lines of the tortures the virgin martyrs endured, it seems obvious that they were raped. Scholars of the early church now confirm this. The real issue is that these unprotected women dare to make an outrageous claim – that as Christians, they have been made in the image of God – and are thus greatly feared by governing authorities and punished to the full extent of the law.”

She continues, “In reclaiming our virginity, women can reclaim our first selves. We can allow the fierce, holy little girls we were to cast judgment on the ways our adult lives do and do not reflect what we were made for” (Norris, p. 203). In this sense, virginity is for the married woman or the single woman; it is available to all women. At these words I want to stand up, raise my arms, and cheer!!

For the first time in my life, I can affirm I am as single-hearted in my devotion to God as I’ve ever been. I don't know how else to say it: I am enamored of Him and desire in my depths to honor Him with my obedience by being true to that for which He has called me. Right now, in this moment, I’m doing what I was made for. At last, I can affirm without a doubt and know deeply without tangible proof that I am exactly where He wants me to be, that I am conforming exactly to that “fierce, holy little girl” He always intended me to be. Finally, after years of donning masks and acting a part, I am learning what it means to be me.

Though I really do understand when incredulity is the primary response to this declaration, that like Mr. Collins, some might think I’m just trying to put would-be pursuers in suspense, it is frustrating not to be taken at my word. I understand that it might seem ridiculous for me to be complaining that someone wants to pursue a relationship with me. What a terrible problem to have, some might say (and have said). I’m aware of how this sounds, which is why it’s difficult for me to articulate and why even now, I’m hesitating at posting this at all.

But I here affirm that I am a whole being, created in God’s image. Jesus Christ has filled me with Himself and I want only to be filled with Him. I am wholly at His disposal; I am caught up in Him. He is the only one on whom I set my sights. While declaring this publicly won't put me in any danger of suffering sadistic tortures or dying a brutal death, I understand that what I'm saying puts me in an overwhelming minority. But the testimony of the unswerving and undivided devotion of these virgin martyrs speaks volumes to me these thousands of years later; their stories aid me in understanding my own heart better: that theirs was a defiance not for the sake of defiance. Their defiance of the laws and accepted standards of the times in which they lived was a natural byproduct of the single-hearted love and devotion they bore toward their Creator.

It’s outrageous to claim this, I know. I can't claim that I understand it fully. But I’m not going to stop surrendering to Him now, not when I've opened my hands to Him and have begun to receive my true self from Him. This is not defiance for its own sake: it is just too wonderful finally to begin to understand and embody His design and purpose for me. I'm willing to fight for and defend this, even if it means turning aside from every accepted convention of faith and femininity.

Martyrdom of Saint Agatha

Sebastiano del Piombo (1485-1547)

walking on water

Remember my dream -- that one in which I was getting bounced off the walls of my bedroom? It should hardly be surprising that I haven't forgotten it; it hovers very near the surface of my consciousness, especially as I'm going to bed.

Even in the midst of that dream, and especially in the day or two that followed, the word buffeted stuck out to me. I knew it was important that it was buffeted and not another word, and I wasn't immediately sure why. It's not a word that comprises a regular part of my vocabulary, nor is it one I normally think to use. So I did a search for it in Scripture; it is used just once in the Bible and only in one translation:

Matthew 14: 22-33 (NIV)

Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.

During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. "It's a ghost," they said, and cried out in fear.

But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid."

"Lord, if it's you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water."

"Come," he said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!"

Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?"

And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."

Whoa.

Having had some time to reflect on any number of possible implications, a few things stand out to me about this story:

Walking on water is impossible.
Peter walked out to Jesus from the boat on the water. Um yeah ... we can't do that. Have you ever tried? Peter got out of the boat in the middle of the frickin' lake! It strikes me that on the same night I had this dream, I voiced some concerns of mine to a friend about what I understood the Lord was asking of me; I confessed to her that I was overwhelmed and wondered aloud how any of it could be done. It seems impossible.

When Jesus shows up, the disciples are afraid.
The disciples' first response it is fear ("it's a ghost!") when they see Jesus out for a stroll on the choppy lake. He tells them, "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid." Doing impossible things is scary and overwhelming and yet sometimes, that is precisely what obedience entails: to trust that the impossible is possible when Christ commands it and when our eyes are on Him. I know what Christ is asking of me; I asked Him to show up and He did. And it freaked me out; it continues to freak me out.

It is the boat that is buffeted.
If you've got to be out on a choppy lake and the wind is against you, my bet is that you'd prefer the boat to bobbing around the lake alone without a boat, a life preserver, or water wings. Between the two, the boat is safer and more certain. When you've told the Lord you will and then He says, "Come", you cannot unhear that word. You step out from scary to scarier in order to get closer to where He is.

I suppose I could shrink back into the distance and pretend none of this ever happened, pretend that I didn't know precisely what He's called me toward. Pretend that that howling wind and the slapping water against the boat drowned out His words, like He never said that word at all.

But I did ask and He did say it. So it's time to get out of the boat.

Peter sinks when he pays attention to those things that aren't Jesus.
This is the point I often hear when this particular passage is exegeted. When Peter pays attention to the wind and the waves, he starts to sink and cries out for rescue. And Jesus rescues Him, asking Peter why he ever doubted. Perhaps it sounds pithy and trite to say keep your eyes on Jesus, but that's what it boils down to at the end of the day, doesn't it? Don't pay attention to the distractions, the things that oppose you, or even the work itself; pay attention to Jesus: lock His gaze and keep walking toward Him.

I cannot let myself focus on the work or those things that would pull me away from it. He asked and He's waiting, not moving, a point of stillness and silence amidst the cacophony (what will you say? how will you say it? what gives you authority to speak to this? how will you ever get published?). It is I who must move toward Him. His eyes lock with mine and I walk toward the gaze I am beginning to know and trust while the wind blows against me and the waves crash around me; knowing that I can only walk this impossible ground because He said Come.

What truth do you see in this passage, friends? Anything in particular stand out to you?

buffeted

I tend to have a rich and colorful dream life. Once the lights are out and I'm warm under the covers, a new life begins after I surrender to that deep and restful state of unconsciousness. I only occasionally remember what happens when I wake up. But I can't shake last night's dream. It was too real, still covering me like an invisible cloak.

Yesterday, I left work about halfway through my day because I was profoundly and deeply tired. My limbs were heavy and my head felt as though it was a bowling ball balancing precariously on a broomstick. I slumped in my chair, unable to concentrate. I was supposed to conduct a training session, but couldn't even contemplate how I was going to make it through the day feeling like this. I had consumed a latte already and was on my second cup of black tea. So deigning to practice what I preach, I decided to take myself home and rest.

I lay in bed for two hours, but didn't really sleep. It was restful though; I felt well as long as I was hidden from the shafts light penetrating my bedroom blinds, wrapped in the darkness and warmth of the bed coverings.

After about two hours, I went downstairs and did some work on my book project; the words are coming naturally and easily; even I am surprised with how much there is to tell. Later on, I had a healthy dinner and made my way to bed early.

I slipped into unconsciousness easily. And then came the dream.

In my dream I was in my bed, but unable to sleep. I was being tossed about, gusts of air pushing me, moving me from where I lay, enveloping me; they were lifting me inches off the bed, spinning me about in the air, tossing me back over and over again. I cried out for Jesus, over and over again. I screamed His name. I screamed until my throat was raw with it. The room was filled with a taunting and demonic laughter. Before long I felt a hand was clasped tightly over my mouth. Suddenly I was unable to breathe or scream. I continued to cry out in my spirit for Jesus.

In the name of Jesus!! I shouted in my spirit. In the name of Jesus!!

Inside this dream, I remembered another dream from several months ago. I was secretly pregnant, having managed to keep it hidden from everyone around me. For months, I carried the growing child with me secretly. I had taken myself to the hospital when the labor pains came on. As I lay in the hospital bed breathing, pushing, giving birth, a familiar face was beside me, holding my hand. The face was my mom's, but I knew in my soul it was Jesus. I looked away after the child was out of me, a squealing little girl who was the embodiment of my shame, something I had kept hidden and secret, now squealing and alive and outside of me. Not hidden anymore. I clenched my eyes and kept my face turned. I knew she was safe as she was carried away, though I did not know where she was taken.

In my dream, I couldn't remember if this had actually happened to me, or if I was remembering another dream inside this dream. I felt the shame as fresh as if it were yesterday, as real as if had actually happened, as if I had actually given birth to an infant, looking away from her, not giving her a name. I was unable to distinguish between the dream and my waking life.

As this dream came to the front of my memory, I was still tossed and thrown about as if I were no more than a leaf on the wind, being bounced off the four walls, the ceiling, and the floor. My muffled screaming was swallowed in the escalating and cackling laughter around me. Like a pinball, my body continued to bounce off the walls and back again as they pushed and threw me. I felt bruised and battered, I could feel myself going limp. I was suffocating, feeling the winds rush tightly around my body, closing in on me, unrelenting. My arms and legs were bound, I was frozen. A heavy weight rested on my chest like a boulder, pinning me to the bed.

I could not move, nor could I cry out.

Then in my dream, the door opened and light spilled in. The hand disappeared from my mouth and the cackling laughter was silenced. I lay still and the rushing around me slowed until all was still. In the guise of a face both intensely familiar and deeply comforting, Jesus came and sat beside me on my bed. He looked just like my mom again. My hand reached out for him, grabbing at his calf, the most reachable piece of him from where I lay.

What's wrong? he asked softly, his gentle gaze holding my own.

I am buffeted, I choked. I could barely speak, still gasping for air.

Let me help you breathe, he said.

And slowly I woke up, taking in slow, deep lungfulls of air. I looked at my clock, reasoning that it must be close to morning. I was surprised to learn it had not yet been an hour since I first went to bed.

I looked about the same dark room, seeing the faint outlines of the walls against which I had been tossed, as though to check for damage. The room was intact. No visible evidence existed of what I had experienced so vividly in my dream.

And I was breathing. In and out, in and out, deeply. With relief. Safe. Rescued. Breathing.

I returned to sleep easily, sleeping deeply and soundly the remainder of the night. In my body today, I am still deeply tired; I am keenly aware I will need to be deliberate about getting enough sleep over the next few days. But inside that fatigue, deep inside my body rests a bone-deep knowledge that this pervading tiredness comes from having fought hard, from being rescued from an enemy; my body was battered and tossed, but I am alive and well and breathing, having been carried to the right side of victory by Jehovah, the God who rescues.

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.

inexorable trust

I have had such deep and abiding joy since I surrendered both my heart and my mind to God over the past few weeks. In some ways it feels strange not to be in a continual state of struggle, to have prayers composed of tears and beating fists. In many of my prayers over the last several weeks and months, I have asked to be brought to a place of peace and rest. Now that I am there, it feels somewhat strange and foreign. I am by no means inactive, but I am resting. It is a sweet and blessed place to be.

I am continually in awe at how God can use whatever choices we make, whatever we offer to Him in order to mold and shape us into the fullness of who He created us to be. I have no idea whether or not He intended me to explore a traditional and ancient mode of faith, or whether that direction was one of my own choosing. But I really don't think it matters, nor do I feel a compelling or pressing need to figure it out. No matter the choice, Yahweh can bring about blessed and beautiful fruits from it.

He knew my heart was not fully His, nor was it ever fully mine. I was so selective about engaging my heart not only in my faith, but in my relationships with others and with myself as well. I can see the beginnings of my stoic tendencies back to my earliest days, denying forgiveness for playground offenses, steeling myself against the pain of childhood betrayals. When teased and taunted in middle school, I drew inward, becoming cold and numb. This carried through to high school and eventually to college where, in a moment of despair, I told a friend maybe some of us just aren't meant to be loved. It was my way of numbing myself against the pain of rejection and betrayal; what I did not realize is that I was likewise numbing myself to goodness and joy. How this must have grieved the heart of God!

There were times throughout my personal history where I allowed myself to receive and to feel, to experience both joy and grief in all their fullness. But I was so selective. My heart was on a leash and the moment I sensed the slightest risk, I called for a retreat, stuffing it quickly behind a thick and prickly armor.

As I walked through the catechism and experienced the traditional Catholic mode of worship, it appealed to that very stoic and guarded part of me. There was something that was intellectually appealing about prescribed prayers and proper forms, of calculated motions and genuflections, of consistency and historical rooting. But the more I began to intellectually assent to these things, the more stifled and distant my heart became. I felt the chasm deepen and widen; I started to feel as though I was choking.

Anyone who has followed here knows the rest of the story: how I struggled and faltered, how I cried and plead and beat my fists on the floor; how I eventually leaned away from my own understanding and threw myself heart first into the arms of Jehovah-Shalom; how in that moment of surrender I began to trust without a doubt that I have been, am now, and will be sheltered safely in His arms and in the center of His heart; how in that place of childlike abandon and utter trust, two parallel lines intersected inside me; how I returned to a church home ready to welcome me back; how my heart and I danced and still dance in worship, singing, shouting, raising hands to heaven without even a twinge of self-consciousness. My body, my voice, and my mind are responding to a faith that is heart-first. I dance like a prisoner set free of her chains, sing like someone who has long been denied her own voice. If I could, I would defy the laws of gravity and fly; and it is so very good that it does. My heart's tethers have disappeared altogether.

I would have not chosen on my own to struggle, fight, and suffer as I did, but neither would I trade any of it for what I have now. I am more His than I ever was; I am more the child as an adult than I was on the playground. I am His, and it is good, it is true, it is so indescribably beautiful.

I know the day will come when I will talk to the priest, when he will ask me why I have not returned to the parish. And I know by what he taught me that when he learns of my return to my church home, of how I will not be converting, that he will think I have fallen out of God's good graces, that I am apostate, that I will most certainly not be welcome in heaven. Even now I pray for the grace to respond in truth and with love, to explain that I belong to Yahweh; that my return to my faith home came as an act of complete and utter childlike surrender to God; that I am at the center of Jehovah's heart, and that He is at the center of mine.

Blessings and peace.

playing with light photo by kirsten.michelle

a new kind of clarity

Words are stirring inside me and have been for some time now, but they are spoken in a heavenly language for which the translation I offer will be woefully inadequate. Perhaps my understanding of them and their significance will improve with time and perspective, but I know that however poor my rendering, this point in my journey should be marked. Like the ancients often did, these words are my way of stopping to set up an altar in recognition of Yahweh's faithfulness and tender mercies. These words are my pile of stones in the wilderness.

Unable to bear with my intellectual pretenses any longer (not having realized until recently that that is what they were), I finally unlocked my heart. I allowed myself to feel, to trust beyond reason, and to take a step back from the intellectual and rational explanations I've absorbed and reiterated here. While studying the Catholic faith, I unconsciously put my heart on a very short leash, allowing my intellect to leap at new information and giving it precedence. It was an easy habit to relearn, having only journeyed deeper into my heart's territory over the past year or so; it is a tender and tenuous path to walk, being less than certain or defined. I admit that I have been overfond of leaning on my own understanding.

It is tempting at times to think that we can define and understand God, how He works and moves in His people. When offered definites and explanations and formulas, I was eager to clutch them and hold them close, to have mysteries demystified, to have God and faith more neatly packaged for my use. Most of these explanations and arguments seemed perfectly rational to me; since much of it was so in line with what I thought to be logical, it was hard to dispute even though my heart quietly protested. I barrelled forward, and the chasm between my mind and heart deepened and grew wider. I intuitively recognized the disconnect, but continued to move forward in spite of it, believing that is what I needed to do.

One of the lessons of the catechism is about and how human beings were designed by God. Human beings, I was told, are comprised of intellect and will, spirit and soul. There was such an emphasis on the intellect and the will. Our intellect teaches us what is true and it is by our wills that we follow it. No mention at all of the heart. It was only a week ago that its omission drew my notice.

I suppose some would hear "heart" and equate it with emotion. In my understanding, it includes emotion but is so much more. It is where belief abides. Solomon cautioned that as "the wellspring of life", it should be guarded above all else. Christ advises that the law will be written on our hearts, which I take to mean that it is not simply our compliance with the law that matters, but the heart from which our obedience springs. He is not after our performance: He wants our hearts, a reformation from the inside out.

[I think it's important to emphasize here that I speak only from my own experience; I was only a catechumen where the Catholic faith was concerned and it is a path on which I did not cover much distance. From those I've met, I know it is a mode of faith in which many are engaged with their whole selves. It would be categorically unfair and untrue to extrapolate from my experience that the Catholic faithful do not engage their hearts.]

As I continued in my lessons with the priest, a few things struck me as completely foreign. There seems to be a continual fear and concern about making it into heaven. Even the most pious and faithful followers seem to have no small measure of trepidation when it comes to "getting in". This was a foreign concept to me, having been raised to believe that once covered with the blood of Christ, always covered. The passage in 1 John came to mind more than once: ... love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. But the explanation I was offered about dying with mortal sin on your soul depriving you of heaven seemed to make some kind of sense at the time.

Another piece that did not resonate with me was the matter of strict adherence to prescribed modes of acting and speaking. This first drew my attention when I discussed baptism with the priest. I was baptized at the age of fourteen and intially, was happy to learn that though not a Catholic baptism, it was still considered valid. But then I was asked what were the exact words of baptism that were spoken. I recalled them to the best of my knowledge, and then was advised that it would be best to perform a conditional baptism in case the correct words were not spoken those many years ago. It was better not to risk the loss of heaven based on an invalid baptism.

This was so alien to my way of thinking. The Christ I have come to know is One who weighs the heart, who looks beyond the exterior and beyond our formulas. I have a hard time believing that our Yahweh is One who would deny mercy to a soul earnest in pursuit of Him because a very specific set of words were not spoken or because prescribed prayers were not prayed. This is not to say that I do not value liturgy or find it beautiful, reverent, and inspired; oftentimes, it has moved me to tears and given words when I have none. I would never say that our obedience is not important, or that God is a cosmic teddy bear who will condone our aberrant behaviors. But God knows our hearts: He is best in a position to weigh our intentions and actions, our contrition for a sin, our desire for holiness and for union with Him. He knows whether or not we trust Him. I am more certain than ever that my salvation and sanctification rest not on following prescribed words or actions, but in God alone: in inviting Him to have His way with me, to follow His lead even when it seems to defy logic, to trust His goodness and bless His name even in the midst of profound ambiguity and pain.

These words fall short of what I mean to convey, but I'll trust that anyone reading this knows my heart well enough to look to the deeper meaning of what is written here.

I have come full circle; I am hardly the same as when I embarked upon this path, but somehow I find myself where I started. And it's not because what I found along the way is anything I necessarily thought to be blatantly incorrect. I have a greater appreciation for how my sin grieves the God I love. I understand better now that the Christian faith is logical, ordered, and rational. I have a better understanding of how spiritual disciplines teach us to deny ourselves and choose Christ. These things have added to my understanding of God and deepened my faith.

These things are right and good and important, but are no substitute for a faith that is lived from the heart. It was only when I tried to edge out my heart completely that I was most driven to hearken to her voice and heed her wisdom. It was only when the chasm between my heart and my mind widened beyond bearing that I learned to trust beyond reason and beyond logical explanation and to place my heart in His hands, to trust that I know Him, that I belong to Him, period.

My understanding is a gift from God, but ultimately is insufficient to lead me down this path of faith. I am more certain that I worship best in spirit and in truth when heart, mind, body, and soul are united in the worship of the Yahweh I know and love. I do not understand Him, but I know Him in my depths. I am His, in all this complex and mysterious comingling of mind, heart, body, soul. I trust in the truth He has revealed. Having known the tension of a mind and heart divided, I know the deep pain that can cause. Had I continued so insistently that I follow my head in spite of my heart, I am fairly certain I would find myself resentful and disillusioned later on. Once I began to know that they were not at odds with one another, doors were unlocked and flung open. And that is where God has a chance to step in, roll up His sleeves and really get to work.

So I abandon my dichotomies, offering myself to Christ again as wholly as I ever have. I return with joy to the Church body I've called home and for the first time in months, raise my hands and sing at the top of my lungs, dance and shout for joy to God in heaven above. It is the same, but somehow different, as He has made me new. He has set me free. He has brought me home.

There is so much more I could say, but even were I to write a thousand more words, I don't know that I could explain this any better. I bring back much with me and know that this is only the beginning of more adventures in faith to come. He has prepared me and is preparing me to live as one who trusts Him ruthlessly, who walks in mystery, who flings herself into His arms, knowing my heart is already His.

The Heart of the Matter

Oh, how my heart loves to breathe! No longer requiring her to be silent, I am enjoying her presence and voice through my days. She is not as shy or tentative as I might have thought.

Last week's revelations have meant that I've encountered this week peacefully. My body is still tired and I still walk amidst ambiguity and mystery. I still have many questions and doubts continue to rise to the surface. But I know my heart is playing catch up, having not been invited until now to join me on this journey. I don't need to have a list of the answers neatly tucked away, and I don't have to be in possession of perfect clarity.

And so I find that this is a good time to pause on my path, remove the rucksack and stop for sustenance and rest. All journeys require rest along the way, a warm, hearty meal and a night at an inn under warm covers. Without it, the wayfarer becomes exhausted and depleted, her bones cold and her muscles stiff. Without rest, she is more likely to be disillusioned with her path and give up altogether.

I am less certain than ever about where this exploration will lead. My intellect continues to trust the knowledge it has obtained, but my heart is less certain about embracing this strange new thing. I need time to know if this is because her lack of engagement in this process means she needs time to catch up, or if she has her own reasons for holding back. I'm pausing to listen to her and honor her wisdom, knowing she is not opposed to my intellect, but just operates differently.

So I feel my chest rise with deep breathing, stretching and flexing this muscle that has gone too long without use. Don't hurry. Rest. Take in your surroundings.

I am typically someone who is more interested in destinations than in journeys, more invested in answers than the questions that lead to them. I will pay lip service to the process, but am really after the result. It could be argued that the result is the point, after all.

After this week I say, maybe not. Maybe the journey is just as much the point as the destination is. Even should you end where you started, you come back an explorer. You come back having seen new lands, experienced new things. You come home changed.

I don't know if that's what will happen. The truest thing I can say right now is that I just don't know. Put up your feet awhile dear heart, and unlace your boots. Stay awhile under this roof and get your bearings. Take in a good meal and sleep as long as you need.

Breathe.

That is my heart speaking. It's good to have her with me again.

Surrender

I've been so exhausted this week; I'm certain at least some of it has to do with the consecutive weeks of overtime I've been working. Those long weeks cannot help, but really, I've known all along the root of my fatigue goes much deeper.

I've written on both blogs now about my exhaustion and anger at God. About how much I don't want to be in this place right now. About how I feel like God pulled a fast one on me: I go looking for love, but God has other plans. So I waltz along happy to have found it, then that rug gets pulled out from under me. In the process, my convictions get turned upside-down and inside-out and I'm on a path I was never looking for.

Perhaps my response to all this was delayed; but I've written about that too. I was so busy arguing with my heart that I never heard its cries. Shhh, shhh, I would tell my heart. You shouldn't be feeling this way. But then those cries pressed up against the walls of my heart; I was both pricked and squeezed. Then at last that most tender and wounded organ saw the light of day and was permitted to breathe.

As much as I didn't want to be angry at God, my denial of that reality inhibited my ability to approach Him with any integrity. So I let the anger out. Perhaps it was because of being denied expression for so long, but once the anger was unleashed, I fixated on it. My prayers became about nothing else besides what I had most wanted but been denied; what I had sought and God had used to turn my faith upside-down. I won't lie: I felt tricked, duped, and deceived. Sometimes I even felt like the butt of His joke. So I beat my fists on God's chest, feeling myself to be a victim of divine trickery. I wanted desperately to abandon this whole process, to return to the old way of doing things. To surround myself in a warm blanket of familiarity, to be comforted and unchallenged. To find what I had set out for in the first place. To be in the midst of the known.

I lay in bed this morning, wide awake but still utterly exhausted. I've shared with others that the words "tired" or "exhausted" are woefully inadequate for describing whatever this state is. Adding hours to sleep could not and did not meet my need.

It was still so early. Not wanting to be awake but unable to return to sleep, I poured my limp body out of bed and as I often do, gazed at my bookshelves. I fixated on the thin green spine of one I had started several months ago, but put down. Not understanding but obeying the impulse, I picked it up and took it to the living room with me. The Critical Journey is about faith and faith journeys, it's about encountering walls and crises. It's about feeling stuck and cultivating an awareness that will help us both to become unstuck and to hedge ourselves against getting caught in the mire again. It compared the stages in a life of faith to a spiral "and we experience more depth each time we recycle through the stages at a higher place in the sprial" (p. 9). Where I was unmotivated to continue my reading before, I couldn't stop turning the pages now.

I saw myself in these introductory paragraphs and I let the words pour over me:

"Faith is a verb, action, the dynamic that drives or gives life to the relationship between us and God. Our response called faith is the human recognition, on the one hand, that God is God, and, on the other hand, that each of us is special. It is the recognition that we are most fully human when we acknowledge and accept God is God in or lives. ... Therefore, faith as a verb is neither static, an object to be dissected, nor a qualifier that either puts us on God's side or distinguishes us religiously from one another. Faith with reference to the journey is simply the process by which we let God direct our lives or let God be God." (p. 4)

"Getting stuck occurs sometimes from our fear of facing the unknown. Other times it results from personal or work crises that we cannot control. ... It may even be that we are simply afraid to face the fact that we are loved unconditionally by God. Accepting that means admitting we cannot control God or our destiny. Whatever the cause, becoming caged at a stage is real. If we are aware of it, we will have less likelihood of staying stuck." (p. 10)

"A crisis can knock us off balance, making us afraid, vulnerable, and ripe for change. This also happens in our spiritual journey. We have a crisis in our faith that causes us to reconsider. It might frighten us, at least make us vulnerable. If we become bitter or too resistant, we can get very stuck. But if we let the change or crisis touch us, if we live with it and embrace it as difficult as that is, we are more likely to grown and to move eventually to another stage or spiral in our journey. When we are most vulnerable, we have the best chance to learn and move along the way. In the midst of pain there is promise." (p. 13)

I saw myself so clearly. I was letting myself be caged, protesting the loss of a control that was strictly illusory to begin with. I resisted walking into the endless stretch of unknown before me. I fought the crisis instead of pressing my weight against God in the midst of it. And worst of all, I was dissecting myself in two: my head and my heart were at war with one another. It is no wonder my reserves were depleted.

Closing the book, I cloistered myself in my room. Sitting on the floor, I picked up the rosary beads for the first time in a week. They still feel foreign and strange to me, the words still come awkwardly, like marbles out of my mouth. As I moved through the decades of Our Fathers and Hail Marys and contemplated the joyful mysteries, I wept. I no longer suppressed the tears that rose to the surface: I let myself feel loss for the warmth and comfort I leave behind for a way of faith that is alien to me. I let myself feel the pain of a love that slipped through my fingers. And then I thought of Christ who left the comfort and warmth of heaven for an earth that must have been a cold, dank, and uncomfortable place for Him. I let my mind turn to Mary at the moment of the Annunciation, who neither resisted nor protested, who did not rationalize or justify, who took the words of the angel and let them be. I am the Lord's handmaiden. Let it be to me as you have said. And so I let the rosary and its mysteries wash over me.

Once those five decades were completed, I continued to let the tears come. I raised up my palms and held them open, quietly. I said little to God and if He spoke to me, I'm not sure I could provide an adequate translation. But if I had to try to articulate His message, I think He wants me to be more gracious with myself, to allow Him to carry me along this difficult path. He understands my anger and He understands that I'm hurting right now in a way no words can describe. He knows me and my frustration with the ambiguity in this process better than I do myself. He knows that it the midst of all this hurt and confusion, it is tempting to revert to what I've been called to leave behind.

Before today, I understood that He's been there too. But this morning, it was wholly different. Today I stopped fighting Him, coming instead with open hands. I unclenched my fists and opened my palms to the sky. I held them to heaven silently. The tears still came, but a heaven-sent peace and calm washed over me as I gave up on my idea of how this all should be. I breathed in and out more deeply and without trying to understand or explain it, simply let the peace He offered permeate the most hidden and unvisited corners of my soul. The war between my mind and heart slowed and ceased in those minutes, the wall I erected between the two dissolved. I don't feel so exhausted now.

It was not so much an answer He provided or a promise the path ahead would be smooth. It was simple surrender; it was a step toward resigning the control I was fighting to maintain. It was me moving toward God, allowing Him to be God. It was giving Him the things that are wholly inadequate in themselves to propel me forward in my journey. My own efforts at digging out of my stuckness were only putting me deeper in the mire that hindered me; today I rested my weary arms and put down the shovel.

He met me in this place of my giving up. The fighting now over, I bury my head in His chest and wrap my arms around His neck, letting Him carry me. Sometimes I think that's the most difficult thing: to stop our legs from walking, carrying ourselves down what paths we will and instead like a small child, to stretch forth our arms in a simple gesture that says, carry me. And then to let Him bear our weight and do the walking.

Mysteries

photos by kirsten.michelle

The Unknown

... never doubt in the dark what God has told you in the light.

Victoria Christopher Murray

I must confess that I'm not as certain and sure-footed as what I write here might indicate. I have my fair share of questions and doubts, moments where it seems like the most prudent thing would be to turn my back on the whole endeavor and return to what I know best.

I talked to the priest about this earlier this week; I was telling him how when I am there in the thick of my learning, surrounded by the faithful, I am so very certain. My intellect readily assents and my will is eager to follow. When I come home, I am no longer surrounded in the same way, I am no longer engaged in dialogue about the faith. I am in relationships where boundaries have been necessarily drawn so I may protect this infant thing that is so precious and still taking root in me.

He told me with sadness of how he's known many who have turned back from embracing the Catholic faith to keep the peace in relationships with family and friends. I told him that given the strain I've experienced in many of my relationships, I could understand the sentiment and empathize with those who were forced to forsake one for the other, but that I had no intention of abandoning what was so clear in front of me (while there is some relational strain and a gap in understanding where one did not exist before, I am not -- thank God -- in the unfortunate position of entirely forsaking one for the other). As I noted in a previous post, Christ made it clear that we have to love Him more, that we cannot allow even family relationships to be a cause of hesitation or of turning back. I've never before had to make that distinction; I've always had my family and many friends along the way with me. The fact that there is a measure of difficulty in making the separation does not give me a pass where obedience is concerned. The truth is that I'm scared to obey. But I'm more scared not to.

... to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.

James 4:17

No exceptions. No caveats.

I can't reverse this process, I can't unknow what I've learned. There are times where this would be a tempting option were it a viable one. And I know that it won't be a giving up just for the present; I know there will be sacrifices to be made down the road. It's no great secret I would love to get married; by embracing the traditional Catholic faith, I'm effectually cutting myself off from the overwhelming majority of single men who call themselves "Christian". Am I forfeiting this dream? I cannot know; I only know I must love Christ more and love Him first. I must deposit at the altar all those things I have now and all those things I dream of having (even those dreams God Himself has given), trusting that like Abraham received Isaac back from the dead, so may I receive back those things I sacrifice.

I know what I need to do, I know the direction in which I must continue. But so often in my heart there is a pulling back. This is really all I have to offer up to Him: obedience in spite of my feelings, moving forward when I feel most like staying put.