Crazy?

Turns out I may be crazy. Of course I suspect that those who know me best already knew. Have I been in denial? Or did I know, too? I certainly didn't realize I was so far gone that my physical being was now affected. Anxiety is a funny thing. It seems to have attacked me when my back was turned, when I thought I was choosing the path of greatest security. And least resistance. The greatest resistance has become myself. A roadblock to my own dreams. Choices I have made to move me further away from who I am and closer into who I "should" be. But what if who I think I should be is not who I should be at all? What if I should have just lived my favorite line from Hamlet and to my own self been true? Instead I selected to be true to my own vision of who my own self should be. To the detriment of all of me! Not only spirit but body, too? God created me as me not as someone else. Have I denied Him, too, in this denial of self? How do I dig myself out of the hole I've spent so many years creating? I'm not crazy. Or even anxious. I'm just not myself anymore.

Or maybe I am. Maybe my seemingly aimless wanderings have led me to a place where I can finally feel the freedom to be myself. Maybe what seems like a mess to me makes sense to God. Will I understand someday? Does it matter if I understand? Life is not meant to be understood. At least not to us. At least not while we're living it. Vainly we try to make sense. To fit our stories into neatly bound books. But what if there is no order? All random. All chaos. And the hole that is impossible for me to get out of alone could be exactly where God wants me. It is here where He proves His mastery of the impossible (Matthew 19:26). It is here where He takes my choices and even my mistakes and works them for good (Romans 8:28). Anxiety followed me here. Six feet deep. Six feet under where it will stay, where it could stay. Resting until it finds me again. In another hole. Further down the path.

Adventure Avoidance

So, if it's as easy as I wrote yesterday to live a life of adventure, then we aren't we all dropping our own wills and plans at the door and following Him for the excitement that He promises? I think the main reason is fear. We are scared of losing control. At least on a roller coaster we know how long our adrenaline rush will last and when it will be over. We are scared that we won't like His call on our lives. We may be bored with our lives now, but at least our routines are safer than the unknown. We don't trust God when He says He has good plans for us (Jeremiah 29:11). We may believe Satan's lie that we can create better lives apart from God and that God's plans for us really aren't all that exciting. We cling to our mundane lives because we like the security of routine and we're scared to let go of what we know, but we're missing out on the immeasurably better way.

I challenge anyone struggling with fear of God's plans to take a closer look at the lives of some of the great people in the Bible. Moses followed God's call, and he spent 40 years wandering in a desert. Boring? Not at all. He got to play a major role in the history of the Jewish people AND he got to witness some major miracles first hand. He heard God call to him from a burning bush (Exodus 3:4), he watched as God turned the staff in his hand into a snake (Exodus 4:4), he watched God send plagues on the Egyptians (Exodus 7-10), he watched as God parted the Red Sea for his people to cross (Exodus 14:21-22), he ate manna that God rained down from heaven (Exodus 16:4), and he held stone tablets in his hand that God had inscribed with the ten commandments (Exodus 31:18), and this is only a taste of the wonders that God worked in Moses's great adventure. The Bible is filled with stories of other men and women whom God blessed with amazing lives. As a small boy, David slew a giant no one else could kill with a single shot from his sling (1 Samuel 17:49). He later became king over all of Israel. Mary had the privilege of giving birth to Jesus, raising Him, and witnessing His ministry. Peter left his fishing boat to follow Jesus, and he saw Jesus heal countless people and feed thousands (Matthew 14:19). He got to walk on water with his Lord (Matthew 14:29) and he felt his Lord lift him up when he began to sink (Matthew 14:31). These are just four examples of many, many people in the Bible who lived the kind of lives of adventure that God has planned for His people.

God has great adventure unlike anything you can imagine in store for each of us. Yes, following Him can be scary, but isn't that the same reason people jump out of planes and ride roller coasters? Something in us craves the thrill of adventure. God created us like this on purpose. He is the source of the true and lasting adventure. And the best part is that because He knows us so intimately (Psalm 139:13), He knows exactly how to thrill us. God calls us to give Him all of our heart, soul, and mind (Matthew 22:37) because following Him on the adventure He's got for us requires all that we are. This large call on us is scary, but the good news is that when we give God all of us, He gives us back even more. The adventure He gives us is bigger than us and bigger than what we can imagine (Ephesians 3:20). It's difficult and frightening, but living a life of coninuous adventure, a life that demands your all and requires that you cannot sleepwalk through it, is worth the highest price.

Adventure Seeking

I don't like roller coasters. I don't like having my body jerked around violently, and I don't like to feel like I'm staring death in the face. Blame it on my fear of heights or blame it on the one very bad experience I had on a carnival ride growing up, but I will not get on one of those crazy rides unless I'm dragged kicking and screaming, and even then I can only get through it by squeezing my eyes tightly shut and praying forcefully for protection and survival. In spite of my deep loathing for wild rides, I realize that I am in the minority. Look at how long people will wait in lines at amusement parks to try out the latest death trap ride. Look at how much amusement parks charge for a day of adventure and how many people willingly cough up the money for the freedom to take a few roller coster rides and wait in a few 2-3 hour long lines in the blazing hot sun. Most people like the thrill. And for some people, the adrenaline rush of a fast roller coaster is not enough. These are the people who go sky diving and base jumping in between amusement park visits.

While I certainly don't find fault with all the adventure seekers out there, and I even married one of them, I do sometimes wonder if there would be such widespread thrill seeking behavior if we were living more exciting lives. For some people, base jumping and roller coaster riding is fun because it's the only time they feel their pulse quicken and they long for more of that rush. When I look around, I see people sleep walking through life. We are bored with our jobs and our routines and our relationships so much that we seek escape from our doldrums in the extreme.

If we were living our lives by the Holy Spirit's leading, our lives would be anything but dull. Ask Paul or ask any of the apostles if following God's call on his life was boring or if they were ever at such a shortage for adventure that they had to create it artificially through a wild amusement park ride. Friends, walking with God His way is a far more wild ride than any steel loop-de-loop adventure you may seek for a quick and fleeing rush. If we sought His power and His will for our lives with the same enthusiasm as we seek man-made adventure, amusement parks may have to start lowering their admissions fees because we wouldn't need them as often. In following hard after God, we would get our adrenaline fixes in our daily lives.

In Ephesians 5:18-20 Paul writes:

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In other words, getting high the way the world gets high is not going to do you any good nor is it doing any good for the Kingdom. If you want to lead a less boring life, let the Holy Spirit fill you and lead you and then you will truly find a reason to sing and praise His name. We can still go to amusement parks and base jump as often as we want, but we will no longer go to fill an excitement void in our lives because we will already have enough excitement to spare if we are walking closely with God and obeying His call.

BFF?

In contemplating friendship, I cannot help but think about my best friend growing up. My family had moved to a new area, and I was painfully shy. She reached out to me and made me feel welcome and important. As we progressed into the self-conscious adolescent years, she taught me that it was OK to pubically acknowledge my faith. She encouraged me to read the Bible, and she prayed for me without ceasing. She is the first person I prayed with in a public place (the food court at the mall!) and the first person to introduce me to contemporary Christian music. In high school, we were inseparable. We had most of our classes together, we participated in many of the same extracurricular activities, and we ate lunch together every day. Each night, we spent hours on the phone gossiping, sharing secrets, and swooning over Joey McIntyre from the New Kids on the Block. We were always together for social activities on the weekend, never going to a party without the other in tow. At school, we passed notes about our latest crushes and spinned down the halls bent over in laughter from our many inside jokes. As I later learned, even most of our teachers thought we would be best friends forever (BFF).

Then came college.

She went off to school in Boston, and I stayed in Maryland to further my education. We sporadically kept in touch over email, but with each passing month, the space between us grew. We were living separate lives, and neither of us had room for the other. I do not know how the distance between two hearts that had once beat so closely together impacted her because I never asked. I know that it hurt me. I heard from her a few days after my father passed away. She was living in New York City and would not be able to come be with me during the funeral, but she sent beautiful flowers and a prayerful card. Six years before she, would have flown from anywhere in the world to be by my side. Now our friendship was reduced to a sympathy card. If my heart had not already been broken by my father's sudden death, I would have felt the sting of her absence in my life much more deeply.

I never heard from her again. Not even a Christmas card or an engagement announcement. I never tried to contact her either. Our lives had taken separate paths, and neither of us saw the point in forcing a connection that did not occur naturally anymore. When I got the announcement about our ten-year high school reunion this year, I wondered if she would come and whether or not I would go. Part of me would rather remember us as we were without the inevitable awkwardness that I'm sure we would feel now after years apart. Another part of me still loves her and wants to see how she is and who she is today. Even though we don't know each other anymore, I still feel connected to her by the mere fact that she played such an integral role in my life during my formative teenage years. I would not be who I am today without so much of her positive influence. She is not my hero because heroes are idealistic images of people who never disappear. She is, however, my former BFF who knows all of the dreams I once held and all of the boys who once made me giddy. If she still remembers, she knows who I was, and who I still am at my core, before life carried us away.

Friendship

Even my close friend, whom I trusted, he who shared my bread, has lifted up his heel against me. --Psalm 41:9

One of the most important lessons I've learned since college has nothing to do with a career skill or financial tip. The lesson that has probably most impacted my life since college is that friends should be chosen wisely. There are some people who are fun to hang out with, but I've found that they aren't always the ones I should open up my heart to because they may not be able to handle it when I do. In college and before, I had many people who I called friends who came and went through my life. Since then, I've learned that friends are not the ones who turn their backs on me when life gets tough, they aren't the ones who love to party with me but shy away from real conversations, nor are they the ones who call only when they need something from me. Certainly value can be found in having fun acquaintances to enjoy the company of, but I've learned to distinguish them from the people who walk with me through the valleys and pray for me when I cry. Real friends don't just send flowers, they come to hold my hand when my life is filled with pain, and they encourage me with truth when all I hear is lies. Real friends are hard to come by in a world of users and takers and false smilers. I've learned to recognize them because they are the ones still standing by me years after they first entered my life. They are the ones who remember and celebrate with me the important events in my life. I know my friends by the way they go out of their way for me without a second thought about the inconvenience to themselves, and they know me by the same. I know them as well as I do close family members, and I can say without reserve who they are that deserve the title of "friend" in my life. I've learned by being hurt and betrayed that I must be careful not to freely bestow the title of friend on just anyone whose path crosses mine. Some people do not understand friendship and are not skilled at handling the honor. Others embrace the role of friend as a calling which they handle with grace, love, and care.

Peace

Finally, brothers, good-bye. Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. --2 Corinthians 13:11

God has called us to lives of peace. That doesn't mean that in our fallen world there is never a reason to go to battle. The Bible is full of examples of war waged for holy reasons and we are mostly certainly called into battle every day on the spiritual level. What living in peace means is that as much as possible, we are to walk in harmony with one another, particularly with our brothers and sisters in church. Sadly, animosity and division often seem more prevelant in the church than peace and unity. This is not God's plan. God's plan is for peace among His people. Without thinking, we Christians hurt our witness to the world far more than cynics and atheists do when we walk with hostilty and agitation in our hearts instead of God's peace, love, and joy. We have to pick our battles, yes, but even more importantly, we have to remember who the enemy is. Our brothers and sisters are not the enemy, the lost are not our enemy, the guy who cut you off on the way to work this morning is not the enemy. Our enemy is Satan (1 Peter 5:8). He is crafty, he is a liar, and he is out for the destruction of God's people. He wants to use us against God, and he has no qualms about entering the church body to do so. In order to find the peace that God intends for us, we must be able to recognize the enemy and wage war against him rather than against each other. One of the key benefits of staying in the word and in prayer is that we can learn to recognize the voice of God and distinguish His voice from the voice of our enemy. Once we learn to recognize the truth, we find ourselves walking in it more often, and peace and unity become the natural side effects.

One Year

"You said this would be OK!"

"Of course I said yes. I love you, and I thought this would make you happy. How could I have possibly said no?"

"You're a good man."

*smiling* "So what does that make you for doing this to me?"

*blank stare* "Will our marriage survive this?"

"I think we can handle it."

No matter how quick I am to note his flaws, I'm in awe of how far out of the way he goes to make me smile. Saturday, July 8 marked one year as one flesh (Ephesians 5:31). A year that seemed to last a lifetime, yet somehow a lifetime seems too short even with all the years to come.

Sensate and Spiritual

In a recent post on the topic of human boredom, Jeff Blazer proposes, "Humans are sensate, visceral, palpable. I believe that means life isn't really THAT philosophically abstract, rather more about how we feel in a given moment. If you don't get it or don't believe me, think of it this way: do we really care if god is good if we feel like shit? Get it now?" It's been awhile since I've taken issue with what someone else has blogged about, and I guess you could say that my boredom has driven me to it today. I'm certainly not arguing with Blazer's point that boredom is strictly human issue like rational thinking and addiction, nor am I arguing that most of what we do is designed to combat boredom, I do, however, take issue with the idea that life is all "about how we feel in a given a moment." I think it is certainly possible for us to make life all about how we feel in a given moment, but I do not think that is what life is meant to be or even how it has to be. In fact, I think we are the only species blessed with rational thinking so that we can overcome our natural drive to act and live on nothing more than how we feel. The Bible is clear that we cannot trust our feelings. Jesus states in Matthew 15:19, "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander." None of these are good, but they are what can develop in hearts that are left to themselves. If we always choose to make life about how we feel in a given moment, we will consistently act in ways detrimental to ourselves, to those in our immediate presence, and to society as a whole. Beyond that, we would render ourselves no greater than wild animals who are creatures of instinct rather than thought. Making our life's purpose a series of attempts to overome our natural state of boredom and believing that acting to appease our feelings is what life is all about makes us infants who haven't fully developed mentally, spiritually, or physically rather than mature adults capable of willing ourselves to do the right thing even if it's not what we feel like doing and to seek out ways to help each other rather than only helping ourselves.

Blazer's concluding question of "Do we really care if God is good if we feel like shit?" does not resonate with me. Actually, it's when I'm most depressed or uncomfortable that I most care about God's goodness. If I do not have the belief in God's goodness to hold fast to when I'm most miserable, I have no hope or reason for resolve. I am personally quite familiar with feeling crappy, and often the only thing that keeps me going during those times is faith in God's goodness and the conviction that His word is true. God promises me in Romans 8:28 that "in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (emphasis mine). Even when everything around me seems to be falling apart, I can trust in God's goodness and believe He will bring good out of even the most seemingly hopeless of circumstances. In bleak circumstances, I can look to His word in Jeremiah 29:11, "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." God chose humankind to be the species entrusted with emotion, rational thinking, and the capacity to have a personal relationship with Him. With these capabilities comes a critical choice. We can choose either to be ruled by our feelings and let our lives be governed by seeking ways to fill the boredom, or we can choose the path of faith and let our lives be governed by a higher purpose and higher calling. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can become more than merely sensate, visceral, and palpable, we can become spiritual beings who are capable of enjoying the sensate, visceral, and palpable without living for those things.

Wealth and Salvation

Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?" "Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments." "Which ones?" the man inquired. Jesus replied, "'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,' and 'love your neighbor as yourself.'" "All these I have kept," the young man said. "What do I still lack?" Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

--Matthew 19:16-24

Friday night after we finished watching a movie, John began to channel surf and landed on VH1 where they were airing "The Fabulous Life Of: Insane Celebrity Real Estate '06". My first reaction was jealousy. I want a huge mansion with a spa and a water view! But then I realized that this reaction is exactly the problem with American materilism. The media pushes these images on us as "fabulous" to inspire our consumer lust and greed. Actually, Satan can use these images of exorbitant wealth to inspire in us all of the "seven deadly sins:" pride, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. I certainly saw all seven over the few minutes that John lingered on the channel. Pride: what are these massive properties if not displays of pride? They scream out, look at what I'm worth, as if a person's value can only be measured by what can be seen. Lust: when people like me develop a burning desire to have what these celebrities have and when the money that paid for the property was bought by capitalizing on sexual lust, such as with the huge spread owned by the creator of Girls Gone Wild. Envy: certainly the first thing I felt and most people raised in America probaby feel when taking in these outrageous images. Gluttony: never having enough. And specifically connected to food, one celebrity has a cook on call 24/7 in case he or his guests get a 3am craving. Wrath: the anger that great displyas of wealth often inspire in the poor--the anger that drives them to rob and kill each other in the streets. Sloth: needing to have some on staff to pop your popcorn for you because you're too lazy to go to the microwave yourself, not to mention the constant physical pampering. And all of these sins wrap in pretty gold plated packages with the deluded belief that a person of wealth and stature is somehow entitled to indulge in these sins as often as his/her pampered heart desires because they've "earned" it or simply because they deserve it. Much to Satan's delight, we Americans eagerly feed right into this philosophy hoping that one day we will be the "lucky ones."

But Jesus doesn't consider these displays of wealth lucky at all. Yes, God can choose to bless people materially. Wealth in and of itself is not a sin. The since comes when wealth is misplaced on a person's priority list. The problem with the rich man in the parable Jesus tells is not that he has money; the problem is that his money is more important to him than anything else. Jesus does not deny that this man has steered clear of much temptation or that he has obeyed all of God's commandments. Jesus calls the man on what is number one in his heart. Even though an outsider may look at the man and think he's lived a righteous life, Jesus looks deeper. This man's heart is with his possessions first and foremost and with his Lord second. He may worship God with his actions, but the grief he feels at having to surrender his possessions shows that his heart does not line up with God's calling. True worship is an offering, a sacrifice for the One who gives all and to whom all returns. This man could follow the letter of the law, but not the heart of the law. The man asks Jesus what he lacks. His lack is not in material poverty, but in the poverty of a heart that clings more to this world than the next. Wealth itself is not a sin, but the hold that wealth tends to take on a person's heart and life is what destroys. The death grip of wealth is one of Satan's favorite tools to use on unassuming hearts in our culture. We see it in the daily rat race and no-holds-barred struggle to get to the top of the ladder, the billboards we pass on the way home, and in the entertainment we enjoy that takes us into a fantasy world of excess. Our country is full of the "Haves" from the world's perspective, but our empty hearts are counted has "Have Nots" from God's perspective. So that we are not consumed by the society that sometimes whispers and sometimes shouts "more...MORE!" at us, we must keep a firmer grasp on God's truth and His grace than we do on what we've built for ourselves. Keeping Him at the foundation and the pinnacle of our hearts is the only way for us to withstand the blows that Satan has so deeply embedded into our culture of materialism.

Be Still

This time last week John and I were riding bikes through Chincoteague with his parents. His parents were on their nice hybrid bikes that they brought with them from home; John and I were on cheesy one-speed former-rental bikes that we found underneath the house that John's parents had rented. Mine was hot pink with the words "Chinoteague Island Cruiser" imprinted on the frame next to a white sillouette of a pony. I kid you not. Fortunately, I fit right in with all the other tourists, including the surprising number of Amish people who were riding similar bikes with their traditional attire. While I've taken cycling classes at my gym quite recently, it's been a long while since I've actually been on a bike in the great outdoors. I forgot how much fun and freedom there is in having the wind in your face and the world wide open in front of you. I forgot the simple pleasure of movement for no purpose other than fun. As I was contemplating the lost days of carefree childhood, I started to wonder if life only became more complicated because I made it that way. Maybe I don't have to struggle so much to keep my head above water, maybe I can just lie on top of the waves and float. Maybe I don't have to fight against myself and everyone else. Maybe I don't have to be miserable all the time wondering what my purpose is. Maybe my purpose is just to be a child of the Creator of the wind and the waves and let go of my worries and frets about all the other whys and hows of life.

"Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." --Psalm 46:10