Getting messy

It's taking a lot of emotional energy to post today, and yet here I am. This is a horrible time of year for me - lots of unhappy anniversaries and associations. I have a lot of things in my past that I struggle with, and sometimes those struggles can get pretty ugly. It's hard to see God and His Kingdom when my face is in the muck.

Did you know that 1 in 4 people struggle with serious mental illness at some point in their lives? Did you know that the statistics for Christians are just about identical with the rest of the world? And that 2/3 of people who suffer from mental illness - especially Christians - don't seek any kind of help?

Care to wonder why?

Christians are really good at shooting their wounded. When it comes to the mind, suffering is seen as a personal failure... a spiritual failure. So the church turns it's back on people who can't pull themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps and just get over it already. "If you're suffering, you're sinning."

And let's face it, mental illness is messy business. There's crying and yelling. There's weird behavior and Lord knows there's plenty of sin. There's hideous stories of abuse and neglect. Mucky, messy, stinking midden piles of YUCK. And who likes to get dirty? We like to insulate ourselves from the realities of life in a fallen world and we love to put things in a nice, tidy, proper order that has no room for mess.

Don't talk about the voices you hear inside your head. Don't mention the drugs you turn to to deaden the emotional pain. Don't speak about the violent rape you endured as a child and the resulting paranoia and rage. Don't tell anyone you take a prescription drug cocktail that makes you fat and numb and uninterested in the world. Don't you dare show anyone the scars that lace up and down your arms and legs. And please, please, please don't you ever, ever mention that you're thinking about ending your life. It just isn't proper.

3,000 people in the world killed themselves today. Another 6,000 tried. 9/11 was a national tragedy, but that same loss of life plays itself out every single day because people are broken and lost and some people are too appalled to get their hands dirty.

Where is the church in these people's lives? People commit suicide because they've lost hope - or they never had it. They look at their lives and see something utterly irredeemable - even Christians fall for that lie sometimes. I nearly did. Where is our answer for the hope that we have?

What if being Kingdom-minded meant getting right in the middle of human despair? What if it meant letting someone snotty-cry all over you? What if it meant cleaning up vomit for a teenager going through withdrawal? What if it meant bandaging up a bleeding wrist, or sitting next to someone as they cut on themselves? What if it meant hearing the horrific stories, confronting the hallucinations and getting screamed at or hit because you're the closest target? What if being Kingdom-minded meant you would have to get down in the muck and get filthy dirty and oh-so-improper to offer hope to  someone who is hurting?

Could you do it?

Unexpected

Today didn't quite go as planned.
It kind of strikes me that Kingdom matters are rarely what we expect them to be either. They never really have been.
God keeps His promises, but He sure enjoys the unexpected.

Just look at history.
The second son who tricked his way into an inheritance - and became Israel.

The stuttering man raised by the daughter of a pagan king - who led God's people out of Egypt.
The prostitute who entertained spies - and joined a holy bloodline.
The foreigner woman who slept at the feet of a relative - and became great-grandmother to a king.
The scrawny boy child who tended his father's sheep - and killed a giant.
Drunken prophets, angry kings... seducers, beggars, whiners, liars, betrayers, deniers, doubters, murderers...
God used the messiest people that man had to offer.

And most unexpected of all?
A squalling infant, born among animals to an unwed mother - one who grew up to be a simple carpenter in the good-for-nothing town of Nazareth... who ate with sinners, walked on water, walked with lepers, knocked over tables, cherished children... and died for creation.

Being Kingdom minded means embracing the unexpected. Kingdom thinking means seeing through God's eyes rather than filtering His will through our own expectations.

We want to be in charge, but we aren't
We want to determine what is best, but we don't.
We want to write the rules, but we can't.
We want to make the plans, but we aren't even remotely qualified.

And yet... He's entrusted His Church to us, and His Word.
So what are we going to do about it?

Let's do the unexpected.

The price of Kingdom thinking

Going back to this weekend, Tim Brown told a story about a woman in his church who approached him after a particularly moving service. She said, "Pastor, I would do anything, give up my life even, if my children and grandchildren would just come to church!" Fresh out of a confrontation with an angry church lady about new people sitting in "her pew", Tim asked this grandmother a series of questions kind of like these:

• Are you willing to give up your pew so your children and grandchildren have a place to sit?
• Are you willing to give up your parking space by the door so your children and grandchildren have a place to park?
• Are you willing to give up your music preferences so your children and grandchildren can learn to worship Jesus in a style that is relevant to them?
• Are you willing to give up your "program" and it's leaders so your children and grandchildren can have someone to lead them to Christ?
• Are you willing to give up your translation of the Bible so your children and grandchildren can hear the Good News in language they can understand?
• Are you willing to work in the children's department or youth department or young adult department so your children and grandchildren can learn about God's Word in a way that is age-appropriate?

;Do you want to guess what this woman's answers were? That wasn't what she meant when she said she'd do "anything." All too often we are willing to "give up our life!" but are unwilling to give up those things that make us comfortable. Show me what you won't change to further the Kingdom and I'll show you who or what you truly worship.

How much time during an average day do you spend:

• Reading a novel?
• Watching TV?
• Searching the internet?
• Finding an app for that?
• Lying in bed?
• Talking about work?
• Serving yourself?

If you're anything like me, the answers to those questions are distressingly uncomfortable.
And it gets better.

How much time during an average day do you spend:

• Reading a novel the Bible?
• Watching TV for open doors?
• Searching the internet Scriptures?
• Finding an app for that a way to apply God’s Word?
• Lying in bed on your face in prayer?
• Talking about work how God is working in your life?
• Serving yourself God and your community?

How many of us spend time doing something to escape from the world when we should be doing something to help the world escape from hell?

This would be what I (not-always-lovingly) call one of God's 2x4s being swung soundly at my backside. How about you? What if you and I did something radical? What if we chose just one of those things on the list above and replaced it with the work God has for us?

Kingdom thinking.

What we think about God

This weekend I attended a conference led by Tim Brown, a pastor who heads a congregation in Clovis, CA. To say that I received a healthy dose of spiritual discipline would be an understatement akin to calling the Biblical flood a rain shower. It was powerful.

What we think about God fuels how we feel about God, which determines what we do for God.

And what we do (or don't do) for God shows the world what we truly think about Him. Scary thought, isn't it?

Two years or so ago, I wrote this post about surrender. It was all about how my thoughts about God effected my actions toward God. They were pretty disturbing thoughts... but I wasn't always aware of them. I lived them every day, reacted to them every day, but I couldn't recognize them. Or I didn't want to.

I tried and tried and tried to trust God, to be obedient to Him, to spend time with Him and give Him my all. I tried to stop cutting, stop lying, stop cursing, stop envying, stop resenting, stop stop sinning... I tried to change my behavior without ever addressing the thoughts that led to those behaviors. I didn't "take captive every thought," instead my thoughts made a captive out of me.

My God is in the business of renewing minds. Changing thoughts. Revolutionizing belief so His people can do His will and build His Kingdom.

Behavior flows out of belief, not the other way around.

Lord, today I'm asking You to renew me. Show me the thoughts that keep me inward-focused instead of Kingdom-minded and help me take them captive. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

The dimly lit path

I have a friend who has always considered faith as her chief spiritual gift - near-boasted on it, honestly. She has always gone merrily on her way through life saying, "I'm not worried, God has it under control!" Fabulous stuff. Blessed stuff. She has always felt God; seen Him moving and found joy and peace in it.

But...
Some of us don't - can't - live life that way.
Glimpses, sure. But we don't live in that all the time.
Some of us never will.

For some of us, faith isn't - can't be - a feeling.
Faith is knowing even though you don't feel it.
Faith is walking, even when the path isn't visible before you.
Faith is leaping blindly into the arms you know are there, even though all of your emotions say you are utterly alone.

For some of us.

Because some of us never feel it.
We just do. And hope - in the Biblical sense - that things will turn out exactly as God means for them to be.

Maybe it's my disorder - a function of the trauma and depression that has clouded my life. Or maybe, it's what God has planned for me. This life can prosper me too.

Some of us never have that pre-fall-like feeling of walking with God in a figurative Garden.
The Word is a lamp to our feet, barely one step ahead.
The path is lit, inch by frightening, painful inch.
And we still walk it.
We walk with Him because we know He's there - because we've stopped needing to feel Him to know Him.

For those of us who don't feel it, it can be a little annoying to listen to those who do - as they talk about life as they know it and wonder why we just can't get it in gear. Because they have Faith. It's their spiritual gift and it feels great!

Until the day comes when they don't feel God.

I imagine it's devastating - to feel something all the time, and then lose that feeling.
I imagine it's confusing, in a world where "I'm not worried, God has it under control!" is modus operandi for life.

Human nature would lead to some sort of smugness.
Human nature would revel in those people getting a taste of our experience.
"You thought you were so superior in your wonderful, emotional faith. Bet you don't feel so wonderful now."

But Christ-nature is different. Radically.

My Jesus knows what it feels like to walk in the deepest possible intimacy with God-the-Father. He is God after all.
My Jesus also knows what it's like to feel utterly alone - "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"
My Jesus knows what it's like to have the world go black and feel a void where God should be.
But He stayed on the Cross. He obeyed His Father. He yielded to His Father's will - His own will.
Because He knows God without feeling Him.

My friend is in the midst of a season of feeling bereft.
I can't tell her I know what it's like to feel lost - to lose something so deep and intimate and wonderful.

Because I don't life that life.

But I can tell her I know what it's like to not feel God.
I can tell her I know what it's like to just do without feeling.
I can remind her that if the very BEST humanity has to offer - in the person of Jesus, a carpenter of Nazareth - can feel alone, it's okay for her to feel alone too.

Walk the dimly lit path, my friend.
It isn't so bad.
It isn't so scary.
It just is.
One step ahead or a dozen, the One who lights the way is still lighting the way.

It isn't a bad way to live, it's just different.

10 years

"Where were you when...?" is the question on everyone's lips right now. It's one of those surreal moments in life where I can hear the echoes of my own voice in the questions of my children.

I remember asking my mom where she was when JFK was assassinated. I remember asking my dad what he was doing when, as a 9 year old in Podunkville eastern Oregon, he heard the news about Pearl Harbor over the radio.

I never expected to hear my children ask me the same question.

Moments in history are moments of life. A nursing baby, two toddlers in diapers, laundry to do, a kitchen to clean... just plain, ordinary moments until four planes and nearly 3,000 deaths changed history forever. All of a sudden those completely unmemorable moments are burned into your mind and become the stuff of history - the answer to "where were you?"

Life has to go on though, you know? The baby still needs nursing, the diapers still need changing, the laundry still needs doing and the house still needs cleaning. Life still has ordinary moments in the midst of great tragedy, but somehow, for a while at least, they don't seem so ordinary.

You kiss your baby's head a little longer, because his future isn't as certain as it was a few hours ago. You walk out to the trash with the full diaper pail and look at the sky, just wondering what comes next. For the first time, it crosses your mind that the meal you're about to make could be the last. Even though 99.9% of life is exactly the same, everything feels different.

Until it doesn't.

Security slowly creeps its way back in. The "new normal" is just normal. And you know what? That's ok. The best way to honor those who lost their lives is to live our own.

"Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)

It's been a while...

Hi.

I feel kind of like the wayward child returning home unannounced to Sunday dinner - only it isn't Sunday and there's no dinner to be seen.

And I'm thinkin' the resounding silence of the last 9 months means the house is empty and there isn't anyone sitting at the table either.

That's ok. Really.

I started blogging for me - because I wanted to have a voice that was public, even if I was speaking to an audience of one. I stopped blogging for me too - because I needed to find a different kind of voice; one that doesn't hide behind a computer screen or a piece of paper to speak the truth about my life.

I needed to find a way to say things while looking someone in the eye. Happy things. Hard things. Hopeful things. Hellish things. Heavenly things. I needed to say them. To acknowledge them and to see them reflected back at me without judgment, shame or (heaven forbid) pity.

I'm learning to do that. I'm learning to trust people enough to do that.

So here I am, back at my keyboard, back at my blog... for me.
God alone knows where this is going.