against the grain
"you need not to find a cure for everything that makes you weak." from "against the grain" by city and colour
i could be surrounded, in a room full of people, and still feel so far from connection. as much as this family of believers, this church, has met my longing for relationships and community, there is still this underlying sense of loneliness. so my tendency is to surround myself with even more people and events and things. i've done this time and time again. yet it still is not enough. why am i never satisfied?
"if you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you." John 15:7 (NKJV)
for several weeks i've been dealing with this kind of heaviness, you know the feeling of "blah" that i cannot seem to get rid of. i explained to my friend, ray, that it feels as though a "healthy" toddler chose to sit right on my chest and has yet to get up. there are all these questions in my mind as to whether i'm doing something wrong or not doing something i am supposed to, as if there is one set formula for peace and a clear mind. we all know very well that there isn't, but why then does the intent and motives of my heart speak otherwise? what am i trying to earn here by trying to save face and have it all figured out?
i'm doing too much. ABIDE - this is the word, the reoccuring theme of the evening and for the rest of my life, really. i've been here before; it's the same trip around the mountain that i've taken these 40 years of wandering the desert. what makes it more difficult is that i've seen the streams of living water and the green pastures that the psalmist describes. i've been there, it's the only place to live. but i am not there now, and my heart is left wanting.
the definition of "abide":
transitive verb - 1: to wait for : await, 2 a: to endure without yielding : withstand b: to bear patiently : tolerate, 3: to accept without objection
intransitive verb - 1: to remain stable or fixed in a state, 2: to continue in a place : sojourn
my roommate, jaci, told me that she's been having one of those "what am i going to do with my life" sorta days today. in my head, i was thinking, "that sounds just like what i'm going through." all these thoughts came to mind - how is there really a difference between me and her? if i'm going through the same thing she is, why would she want to come to me for advice? is there any hope for someone i know to make the change from no belief in God to desiring communion with Him if they look at all of my uncertainties? jaci also mentioned that it always seems as though i have things figured out, which is quite funny to me.
i have come to the conclusion that the difference between someone like jaci and myself has little to do with me and so much more to do with Jesus. maybe this heaviness has to do with the fact that i still live under the law of gravity, that i have yet to transcend beyond my own human boundaries. which sucks because this humanity of mine is so confining. but i do not have to stay in that place by any means. that is the difference, that is why i can still seem to have things together - not because of my own strength, but because Jesus makes the claim that i can experience transcendent life amidst this worldly prison. and i trust His word, so i will do what He says and i'll stick with Him.
often times i've heard, "well, i just don't have enough faith to believe in God, let alone that He would care about my insignificant problems." to believe in God is to trust Him, yes. but for my own peace of mind, being such the woman of faith that i am, i have to constantly look back at the good that has already happened to remind me of the reason WHY i can trust Jesus Christ and the claims He makes in Scripture - new life, health, provision, unexplainable joy, peace that transcends understanding, confidence and security in the fact that i am free to be who i am because i was designed in the image of the Maker.
"i have been young and now i am old, yet i have not seen the righteous forsaken or his descendants begging bread." psalm 37:25 (NASB)
filthy rags
"All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
No one calls on your name
or strives to lay hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us
and made us waste away because of our sins.
Yet, O LORD, you are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand." Isaiah 64:6-8, NIV
today is my store's ops excellence day - the day in which my district manager spends the entire day inside our store going over sales, budgets, cleanliness, partner development, etc. needless to say, it's a big deal for everything to look spotless and for everything to run seamless.
last night i was on my hands and knees in the staircase (my store has a staircase because it has a basement for a storage room - it's cool, but then again it's hard work). the baseboards and the stairs needed a good scrub, and i figure if i wanted it done right, i might as well do it myself. it was no surprise to me that there were drips and stains and spots of coffee on the walls, on the railing of the staircase, behind the door to the staircase hall. coffee was everywhere! and rightfully so, we're a coffee house. it just makes sense.
but as i was on my hands and knees, this little rag that was originally a spotless white color soon became the most grotesque brown. and let's just be honest, coffee is oily and gritty, so all the residue of the coffee i was cleaning up just stuck to the surface of this rag, and ultimately stuck to my hands. i could feel old coffee grinds and oils on my fingertips and between my fingers and under my nails. it's a dirty business this coffee business that i'm involved it.
i stood there for a while and was reminded of the passage found in isaiah where the prophet speaks of our righteousness as filthy rags. funny how the more we strive for right standing with God in our own understanding and our own knowledge, the more our natural, gritty, oily, dirty human imperfections defile what should be spotless. i have a tendency to take things into my own hands when i see that there is a need. i push and i pull and i work hard to fulfill what i sometimes assume the will of God is for my own life. and it gets me nowhere, and it is a messy process that i fall into time and time again.
yet in His loving way, our Father in heaven takes a risk of getting a little dirt underneath His fingernails. He takes us, filthy rags and all, and He soaks us in the blood of Jesus. so we were once brown, and we become a crimson red in order to ultimately return to being the spotless and pure children we were originally meant to be. we are His "workmanship", as ephesians 2 says. (the word "workmanship" there is the greek word "poema" where we get our english word "poem".) we are His masterpiece, His finest work. we are His beloved and He is our love.
man on wire
i'm tired of telling you that you have me
when i know you really don't
i'm tired of telling you i'll follow
when i know i really won't
'cause i'd rather stand here speechless
with no great words to say
when my silence is more truthful
and my ears can hear how to walk in your way
in the silence, you are speaking
in the quiet, i can feel the fire
and it's burning, burning deeply
burning all that it is that you desire
to be silent in me"in the silence" by jason upton
what is faith? if i could hold it in my hands, i would grasp it tightly, run it through my fingertips and memorize its shape. i would smell it and maybe when no one was looking, i would taste it - touch it to my tongue just to see whether it was sweet or sour or bitter. you would have to wrestle me in order to get it out of my hands, because once i got hold of it, i would not want to let it go lest i forget what it looks like to have faith.
unfortunately, faith is not a tangible thing that i can see or feel. to some, it seems so elementary or juvenile or plain foolish to have faith in the existence of God and Jesus Christ, let alone His master plan for the world and the people living in it. years have gone by since i first decided to purposely write my story as one of faith in the Creator of the universe and His design for my life. so much has taken place in between the beginning and now that i have lately felt as if my faith is not really faith at all, but a mere set of past experiences and stories. i tell these stories quite well, and have used them to stir the faith of others. this is something i am happy to do, and i know that this is gives pleasure to Jesus. but at the same time, i am coming back to the sense where i have run just short of allowing the fire of faith in my heart and my life to fizzle into a heap of smoke. i can talk the talk, walk the walk, pray the prayers and sing the worship songs. but there is still something more that is missing.
it has been such a long time to live my story intermingled with God's story - the details have twisted and turned through the stories of many others, all playing significant roles in how i've come to the place i am in now. still it is not the same. there was a time when i had faith and trust so foolish and child-like that i might as well have been physically clenching it with both hands. but lately the best i can do is remind myself of how God has come through in the past - in provision and safety, in guiding my path for the future, in building my faith and growing my knowledge of Him. the remembrance of these things is good, but to me, it is not enough. i know that He is who He says He is, i know that He is God. but i want this knowledge to come alive again, to become revelation and revival of my spirit.
i spent the evening with my friend, sue. we had a very nice fish and chip dinner, each of us slugged down a lager (her much more smooth than mine, unfortunately). and after dinner, we went to see this incredible documentary telling the story of philippe petit, "man on wire". most of the world is probably not familiar with this name, this man did not invent a cure for some horrific disease, he did not mediate any conflict between warring countries. what this man did probably seems insignificant to most people. but on august 7, 1974, after months and months of planning and conspiring, philippe petit (with the help of some faithful colleagues) strung a high wire 200 feet between the north and south towers of the world trade center. philippe described the moments before stepping out on the wire as feeling near death, and yet the wire was also something that he could not resist.
after reaching a certain point going across the wire for the first time, he said something so real and familiar took over. this friend and co-conspirator, jean-louis, said that when this point was reached, philippe's entire countenance and body language changed. it was as if he went from being so uncertain and frightful to stepping into the realm that embodied who he was meant to be. and the rest is history. petit spent 45 minutes out there (a quarter of a mile above manhattan streets), crossing the wire a total of eight times.
i have yet to perform some historical act for all the world to see and stand amazed, that day may never even come. but whether anyone else observes my life and thinks it to be significant means nothing to me (or at least i would like to think that they mean nothing). i may simply be a girl with some wire and an insatiable urge to walk among the clouds, and possibly look foolish to anyone else around. but if it means walking in the fullness of who i am meant to be, then so be it. the only problem is that i am still so uncertain where to begin, or rather where to go from here. in my mind, i have this picturesque idea of how i want to live - this life of faith and abandonment to no one else but Jesus Christ. but then i still get stuck in the waiting process, sometimes getting impatient and trying to fix things with my own hands and my own plans.
wish i had a solution to write, a conclusion to the questions i have been asking myself. all i have is this prayer - that Holy Spirit would come and collide with my sense again, to awake my soul again and stir up the faith in my heart so that His power and authority would flow through my life.
