Grace

Tonight God woke me up with a specific memory: my father singing. Because He Lives to be exact. I sang the song in my head and I knew I needed to get up and write this.

God sent his son, they called him Jesus
He came to love, heal, and forgive
He lived and died to buy my pardon
An empty grave is there to prove my Savior Lives

Because he lives I can face tomorrow
Because he lives all fear is gone
Because I knooow he holds the future
And life is worth the living just because he lives

My dad used to sing that in front of the church I grew up in. I used to squirm in my seat from a young age because I was nervous for him to get up in front of so many people and be vulnerable. Yet at the same time, his singing poured peace all over me. I felt the realness of God in his melody and his tears. I loved him for that. Everyone got to witness this true picture of devotion. It was a stamp of authenticity on his relationship with God.

I wanted that. I wanted to know this love affair with a God who seemed so far beyond me. I think that's why I carried my bible to school and I didn't go to parties and I didn't curse and I wore a promise ring, which meant I would wait until marriage to have sex and I respected my parents the way I thought I should and I didn't hang out with the "bad crowd" and I memorized bible verses and wrote them on my folders and I memorized the song Jesus Freak and I admired martyrs and I hoped someday I could find what true believers had found - like my Dad and my Mom and Corrie ten Boom and Pastor Davis and dctalk. I would spend hours in my bedroom writing in my journal and praying for God to forgive me and reading my Bible. But that was all wrong. As they used to say at church camp and youth conventions, I was "missing the mark".

You see, I believed in something which I found out later is called a works philosophy. I believed that if I behaved myself and was a good little girl, teenager, woman, that God would forgive me and bless me. I believed that I was right and so many others were just WRONG. I passed judgment on everyone - I mean everyone - except myself. I despised anyone who wasn't trying to be this perfect little person like me. I thought that God must be so proud of me except for all the times I screwed up, in which case I would pray fervantly for forgiveness and I feared Hell in such a real way.

I was missing the mark.

It wasn't until I was 19 that I heard not just with my head, oh but with my heart, the truth of grace. Pastor Brad at Two Rivers preached a series called the Relentless Pursuit and the day I truly "got it" he preached about the prodigal son. He preached it differently than I'd ever heard it. He said the son who stayed home and kept his responsibility by his father and didn't spend his inheritance on whores and cheap pleasures didn't realize that he was just as sinful and needy as his irreverent brother. He said that son thought he was protected or even promoted to higher standing because of all his good deeds, but he couldn't see his own forever need for grace. Pow. The word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword and man, sometimes God can cut through you like a chef butterflying a steak. And it's so beautiful.

I can't portray to you the power of God's grace. I cannot give him the praise and honor and glory he deserves. But I will try! Today at 3:44 am on Christmas day, God reminded me of his relentless pursuit of me and the world. He reminded me of how he brought me to my knees over and over again to show me my desperate need for him. He reminded me of how he tore my life apart - every perfectly laid out plan - and made me reach out to him in trust. He held me in my lowest moments when I hated myself and wished I were dead and he whispered to me that He will never leave me or forsake me and that He was going to give me strength and dignity so that I could laugh at the days to come. He showed me the rainy day I sat in my cabin when all my cabinmates just happened to be at work and it rained and rained and rained as I cried while writing a letter - and it felt like he cried with me. He put a picture in my head of all the friends who led me to grace. He showed me what the family of God looks like through my young life family. He put me in ministry and let me talk and listen to girls about their hurts, their mistakes, their failures, their fears - and I got to share mine and relate with them. He watched me make really bad decisions and party with people who need him just like me. He allowed me to reunite with the man I always loved most and forgive him and forgive myself and he even let me marry him. He taught me that He doesn't want me to be perfect - He wants me to be real. And that entails acknowledging I need him more than anyone or anything and letting him change me. He showed me the difference between having to carry my Bible everywhere to make sure everyone knows I'm a Christian and actually wearing the love of God in my actions and my words. He changed me and He's still changing me. I've found the fire that burns in the sinning saints. And I will never be the same.

This is my story. This is my song.

You cannot hear about this man they called Jesus and believe he was just a good prophet. As C.S. Lewis said (paraphrasing) you have to believe Jesus was either a freaking lunatic or the actual God of the Universe in the flesh. I don't know which one you pick, but please don't pick the post-modern crap of tolerance and believing there's truth in every religion and Jesus must have just been a really good guy. Call him a lunatic or call him God. Historically, those are the only two conclusions you can draw.

This day is more than just a day for giving presents to each other and putting up Christmas trees and lights. It's more than egg nog and Christmas carols. It's more than the Grinch who Stole Christmas, A Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation, and Elf. It's the most importanct annual communion we take other than Easter, metaphorically speaking. This is the day we remember that God sent his son and they called him Jesus. We remember he came to love, heal, and forgive - not judge, condemn, and scoff at people who don't live as perfectly. We remember he lived and died to buy our pardon - not sit on a throne and overthrow the government. We remember an empty grave is there to prove He still lives. My friends, what a gift we have. God's grace is overwhelming. This is the day we celebrate God's relentless pursuit of us and remember the hope he has deposited in our hearts that we will one day trade in for reality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qtcqwYO2E4 - Because He Lives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEhSk7bfbK8 - Cornerstone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy9nwe9_xzw - Oceans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGgX_oqdib4 - Revelation Song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WlRt8z5bHA - In the Light

Thank you thank you thank you, my Lord and my God.

Merry Christmas!

The I in Me

Devotion Today read:
"At every moment you choose yourself. But do you choose your self? Body and soul contain a thousand possibilities out of which you can build many I's. But in only one of them is there a congruence of the elector and the elected. Only one--which you will never find until you have excluded all those superficial and fleeting possibilities of being and doing with which you toy, out of curiosity or wonder or greed, and which hinder you from casting anchor in the experience of mystery of life, and the consciousness of the talent entrusted to you which is your I." (Markings by Dag Hammarskjold)

Starting college, I had no idea who I wanted to be. My advisor, Dave Powell, would laugh every time I came into his office because my major changed so frequently and so diversely (Kindergarten Teacher to Outdoor Recreation major to English to Nursing to Sociology to International Studies to ...). I loved the thought that I could be anyone I wanted. I could imagine myself in all these different roles. What I didn't love was choosing just one "me" to be. That was the part that was painful.

To this day I still grasp on to something my advisor told me. He said the beautiful part is that our calling will change throughout life. We don't have to pick one career path and stick to it until the day we die, unless of course we find that is exactly what we were made to be.

And that person I am made to be - well she will change too.

This made it easier to pick my major when I realized my major wouldn't chisel my life into stone. I wish so badly I could go back even now and let myself know how much that major didn't matter for my life now. I wish I could go back and tell her to take more art classes and to actually muster up the guts to join choir and sing for the fun of it. Not that I regret my college experience - it probably happened exactly like it was supposed to happen. In fact, I know it did. I just wish I could have told myself how much my God-given interests, hopes, and dreams would have driven me in my real life.

Fast forward to now. I live in Arizona with my husband in a sweet little apartment. We just moved here a little over a month ago (that's enough for a whole other blog post), and I don't have a job yet. On the one hand, I'm bored out of my mind. On the other hand, I'm thinking this is the time I get to dig deep and ask God who I'm supposed to be right now. Not what. Who.

Soon we will have kids (Lord willing) and I will probably have a job (hopefully one that makes me feel fulfilled), and I won't have time to sit and ask myself, "Who am I?" But now I have loads of it. I have time to find I. Like the quote above says, I toy with who I am out of so many different places but I never have truly stopped to ask who I am.

So here goes. I will ask myself questions. I will try new things. I will take classes and read books and join a gym. I will pray and read the word and will look deep within. And I will find myself...for now.

Eat This Book

I attend Two Rivers Church regularly (and have for around three years now), and the church has committed to an entire year of reading and preaching through the Bible from cover to cover. The "movement" is so cleverly named Eat This Book. As of today, collectively and individually, most of us are up to Numbers Chapter 17. 

And let me tell you, it's been rough.

I'm not some sort of religious go-getter. Even though I grew up in church, I feel like sometimes Christians - like the ones who sing hallelujah and point out their neighbors' wrongs and look in the mirror and say, "aren't I wonderful? - completely miss the forest for the trees. Do you catch my drift? It just doesn't seem real. There's something missing. Namely, Jesus. When this whole Eat This Book thing started at Two Rivers, I have to admit, I was a little skeptical. I mean what about the spontaneous movement of God through spontaneous scriptural readings (like I was doing much of those anyway) or the fact that you have to read a certain amount EVERYDAY or you will get sorely behind (a big leap from a couple of verses a day) or how am I supposed to hear the voice of God in relation to my modern walk with Christ through the genealogy of Jacob and such and such and what's his face (I mean my daily sometimes walk, sometimes stumble, sometimes crawl, sometimes turn around and say "Screw this"). Let's just say God grabbed me and shook me up a bit and said, "Listen to me. I want you to do this."

I cannot explain what God has been teaching me through this. Even the most ridiculous things that I would have yawned through before are speaking to me. For instance, in Leviticus when God gives all of the instructions for how to build his holy tabernacle and the ark of the covenant, he says to bring the most skilled artists and spinsters and weavers. And I saw for the first time how completely divine an artist's talent is and how it pleases the God of the Universe. How beauty is essential when speaking of God. When it says that Moses was the humblest man on earth, tears welled up in my eyes because it showed me how proud I am. When God sent the quail to the Israelites because they complained about not having meat (so that each person took away more than a ton of quail to him/herself), I saw how much I complain about what I do not have and felt gratitude for God's discipline. Today I read that the earth swallowed up Korah and his followers and they fell into the depths of Sheol. Alive. And I did not feel anger at God like I may have before in my ignorance. Instead I felt thankfulness that his goodness always prevails and NOTHING stands in the way of his divine plan. 

I can't wait to see what he speaks to me next. I've been like a forest whose streams had nearly dried up. And I must confess that these words, this book, is like a wild storm that has brought me to my knees with fear and trembling. But it is bringing the rain. I will be restored. 

Christmas Eves Gone, Christmas Eves Coming

Blanket pallets strewn across my sister's floor. Sweet whispered prayers to Jesus in the dark, each individual, each unique. That certain anticipation and excitement about the coming morning dancing in our eyes. This one tradition we treasured. This one tradition understood. 

I still remember the sound of my brother's baby boy, boy, teenage, man whispers on this special night. I close my eyes and hear my sister excitedly asking us what we thought would be waiting for us under the tree. We looked to her for affirmation in our prayer requests and our childish hopes. She affirmed us the way an oldest sister only can. No matter what stage of life we found ourselves, what age we were, what trends we tried to follow, what friends we tried to impress, all pretense ran away from us on that night each year. We came just as we were and prayed just as we could. And nobody laughed at the other. Each word hid away in our hearts with reverence. 

I sit here as a twenty three-year-old woman on Christmas morning at 11:00am. This year, the first year, that neither my brother or sister are home with me to pray and to anticipate. No one home this year to wake up and run down the stairs trembling with curiosity and happy hopes. Yet, I am happy. I swell with the memories of that one kept tradition that never got old. That one kept tradition that we never regretted keeping. 

I thank God. My heart sings full. 

In transition we are. In continuation we are. New families starting, new futures awaiting, new additions coming. Tears do not quite seem appropriate when thinking of days gone and memories past. All I have is joy. Pure, unspeakable joy.

Selflessness and Slobber

A couple of weeks ago, I was driving down the road with my Hillsong blasting and the beautiful sunshine gracing through my window while on the way to church.. As I drove along, I noticed something that made my heart just melt.

Let me paint you the picture.

A shiny, newish, black Mercedes (probably complete with leather seats) with a sun-roof. Nothing so out of the ordinary with this scene until I noticed what was sticking up out of the sun-roof. There, with ears floppin' and slobber droppin', was one of the biggest dogs I have ever seen in my life. I mean, this dog was huge. With total amusement, I pulled up beside the guy thinking, "This guy is going to have the biggest frown on his face and is going to look so uptight." But to my amazement, he was smiling as if he were exactly where he wanted to be, doing exactly what he wanted to be doing in that moment with his big, slobbery dog sitting in the passenger seat next to him with his head stuck out the sun-roof for fun.

I died laughing. It was such a beautiful picture of love to me.

At Two Rivers, the series has been about dying to yourself in order to be a true follower of Christ. After hearing these fulfilling sermons and then seeing that sweet little spectacle a couple of weeks ago, I feel as though God is whispering to me, "Serve those you love and even those you don't. Make exceptions for them. Let them slobber all over your seats in your car and eat your food and take up your time and spend your money. Give yourself to the least of these. Give yourself to me...because I gave myself to you while you were still nothing."

Lord knows, I am that slobbery dog having way too much fun in the passenger seat. I think it's time I drive for once and learn how to smile at the beautiful, diverse quirks that make us all the individuals God made us to be.

Abandoned

Behind my parents’ house stood a small abandoned building, with peeling paint that bore the burden of its weight and age. My brother and I sometimes rode our bikes up to that place while the crisp autumn wind blew the scent of the house’s rotting wood through our hair. Most days we only loitered outside and shuddered at its brazen audacity to so blatantly be forsaken and somehow still be standing. Other days I ventured inside with a pulsed feeling in my stomach, the same feeling that comes when my feet leave a ledge into the depths of something deep and dark below. Except instead of a cushion of water breaking my fall, the depths of that house engulfed me with boxes of moldy books and ripped gingham dresses still hanging in a closeted tomb. Rarely did my brother dare follow me in. He kept reason in those haphazard moments of bravery and fool-hearty leaps I took into the unknown. I can still hear his voice from outside yelling, “Carly, come on! We’re going to get in trouble.” And even now I smile at his caution and innocence. Unlike my brother, I felt that house call to me at the most unlikely of moments. It haunted me. I became obsessed with it, with its genuine character and utter lack of attention. I wanted to go to it more than my brother or any of our friends who dared venture there with us. Eventually I even went alone, relishing in the solitude. I stood outside and looked upon it in wonder. I can close my eyes now and still see the unruly weeds encompassing its parameter, locking arms and holding its mystery back from me. 

I cannot recall why it was that I so desperately needed to visit that house as much as I did. Perhaps I held the conviction that if I did not visit it, who would? Maybe I felt that the secrets of a house once lived in and left to rot offered so much more to my growth as a human being than the houses still cared for and lived in. Or most likely of all, I probably felt in the depths of myself, the old boxes of unsaid thoughts and wasted energy and love, looked similar to that old house’s old contents. I knew its loneliness. I understood it.

There’s just something about old, abandoned houses that speaks of the human condition. Their closed windows muffle the hush of the stagnant dust that clings to all its contents, dust heavy with skin particles of lovers, laughing children, and bitter men in rocking chairs. Wipe a finger across the top of a white-washed curio cabinet laden with the dust of forty years and possess the remnants of breath once breathed in vibrant lungs. 

For some reason, a reason I will never pretend to know, these houses are left behind. I don’t know what catastrophes or circumstances lead a person or family to leave behind their home and never returned. Honestly, it’s not the question of “why” that bothers me. It’s the statement of “I don’t want you.” The idea that a person can so easily throw off and forsake something with such ease, without even a backward glance. Years of a life accumulate in a home, filling our bookshelves, our drawers, and our comfy nooks with possessions that define us in a lot of ways. How does a person decide what is most valuable out of these knick-knacks and comforts? What is it that influences a person to decide, “These things do not make the cut”? What of those possessions left behind? What of that life forgotten? It’s left to age in a dilapidated structure, never more to be appreciated except by the maggots and spiders who creep through the cracks.

Trembling Fists

When I first started this blog, I named it "Fists Give Way to Open Hands." The title came from some of my favorite writings by Henri J. M. Nouwen in With Open Hands. I had completely forgotten about these passages until I read them again today for the first time in a very long time.

Praying is no easy matter. It demands a relationship in which you allow someone other than yourself to enter into the very center of your being, to see there what you would rather leave in darkness, and to touch there what you would rather leave untouched. Why would you really want to do that?...

The resistance to praying is like the resistance of tightly clenched fists. The image shows a tension, a desire to cling tightly to yourself, a greediness which betrays fear. A story about an elderly woman brought to a psychiatric center exemplifies this attitude. She was wild, swinging at everything in sight, and scaring everyone so much that the doctor had to take everything away from her. But there was one small coin which she gripped in her fist and would not give up. In fact, it took two people to pry open that squeezed hand. It was as though she would lose her very self along with the coin. If they deprived her of that last possession, she would have nothing more and be nothing more. That was her fear.

When you are invited to pray you are asked to open your tightly clenched fists and give up your last coin. But who wants to do that? A first prayer, therefore, is often a painful prayer, because you discover you don't want to let go. You hold fast to what is familiar, even if you aren't proud of it. 

I asked myself today if I was like that elderly woman who clung to her coin with all of her might. To her, that coin symbolized control. As long as she held that coin, she was in control of something, even if it may be small. What she couldn't see was that she was in a place where a doctor could help her, could put her mind at rest, could give her the attention and care she needed. But along with her coin, she fought for her madness.

It's true that whenever I am challenged to give up a part of myself, I clench my fists in defense, and I swing wildly to keep it. But why? Why do I want to hold on the darkest parts of me, the parts of me that I hate? Why do I want to cling to my doubts, my selfishness, my lust, my pride, my over-ambition, my fear? What is it that makes me hurt when I give up some dreadful part of me to God?

I believe part of the answer lies in the fact that we are called to share in Christ's suffering. My dear friend Brittany Mizell touched on this point in her last blog post, and it got me thinking about those implications. In Philippians 2:5-8 it says, "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to death--even death on a cross."

I think it's easy to read through that scripture and not really think about the implications of those statements. Our God made himself NOTHING for us. Nothing. He opened his trembling hands to the father in the Garden while sweating drops of blood, and said, "Yet not my will but thy will be done." And then he died the most brutal of deaths and bore the weight of our sin on his shoulders.

And we are called to take up our own cross and follow him.

If we choose to clench our fists in fear and hold on to our last coins, we are not allowing the father to humble us. We are not allowing him to make us nothing just as he did his own son. And we will miss out on his divine plan.

But just as we follow Christ in his suffering and his "letting go/unclenching of fists," we follow him into glory. Philippians goes on to say, "Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." ...And he calls us to be co-heirs to the throne with him.

So I say this, brothers and sisters. Let go. Whatever it is. Just let go.

"And what strange breezes makes a sailor come to this, with lines untied, slipping through my fists."