Waiting

I am a person who is content to wait. That is, if waiting is what we're doing. 

We live in a world that doesn't have to wait any more. A world that has everything at it's fingertips. I am always stunned to be sitting in a waiting room - a room designed for the purpose of waiting - only to look around and see everyone, young and old, glued to some kind of screen or device. 

Did you notice they stopped putting magazines in waiting rooms? Nobody uses them any more. Everybody's brought their own content with them. 

Perhaps it's because we've been so convinced that we can be more productive with our devices in our hands, that we can get more done in the time that we used to just "waste" waiting. But are you really accomplishing anything when you check that email, read that headline, crush that candy? Or are you just pushing aside a bit of your own existential dread by filling the time and space with what feels like something? 

I'm that rare person. I don't keep apps on my phone. I don't take social media with me. I don't even leave my data on. I have to make an intentional choice to engage with my device and most often, I simply don't. 

I am content...to wait. 

To sit there with nothing to do to pass the time. With nothing to distract me from whatever I might be feeling. With nothing pulling on me to do more. With nothing trying to convince me that I'm being somehow productive when I know...I'm really not. That YouTube clip you're watching isn't anything. It's mindless. It's meaningless. 

Waiting is neither. 

Waiting is mindful. It gives you a chance to reflect on whatever you're doing. Sure, you're not doing it right now, but you're anticipating doing it...or anticipating it happening, and it's the waiting that helps you begin to engage it. And while you're engaging whatever it is, you're also engaging the actual world around you. The sights, the sounds, the smells. The other humans beings who, I have to add, are not simply waiting; they're idling. 

Maybe that's it. 

When this world is waiting, it feels like they're sitting in idle. At a stoplight with the gas running, the air blowing, the radio playing, but no movement happening. Anticipating something happening, maybe. On edge, always looking for the light to change. Always ready to go, to move, to get on to the next thing. 

But for me, when I'm waiting, I'm parked. This is the next thing. This is what I'm doing. I'm not antsy, not anxious, not on edge. Not always looking for the next signal of movement. The absence of movement is the motion. I am fully engaged in something. 

It only looks like nothing to the untrained eye. 

I wonder what our lives would look like if we engaged the waiting again instead of trying to fill all the space. I wonder what they would look like if we could embrace the space we've been given, which sometimes - yes - turns into more than we bargained for, but isn't that part of the blessing of it? 

I wonder if there's anyone else out there who is content simply to wait. Hands free. Eyes open. Mind engaged. Simply...waiting. 

Ryan

I was not what you would have called a popular kid. I'm not a popular adult. I have never been the kind of person who has a lot of friends, but I've been blessed to have some good ones. Most of the time, my friendships come through adoption - someone clicks with me for some strange reason, then adopts me into their friend group, and I just end up tagging along for awhile. 

That was the definition of my high school social experience. And it put me with a group of mostly boys who sat together at lunch, got together for gaming, and generally just "hung out." Which was okay with me. It was completely platonic - none of these guys were interested in me, and I wasn't fawning over them. It would have been nice, but it wasn't something I was pushing for or expecting; I was content to just be friends. 

One of these friends was a kid named Ryan. He was a constant presence in the group with a great personality that really rounded us out. I sensed a greater depth in Ryan than he ever let us onto, but I never pushed him on it. We were all just co-existing, trying to get through high school, navigating our own traumas, growing into our own persons. But I always really liked Ryan. Something about his presence was reassuring. He really just made our group feel complete. 

We lost touch after graduation because, honestly, I didn't think Ryan thought much of me. Not that he thought little of me, but that he thought of my little. I was not Ryan's tagalong. He was not my entry point into the group. And I always kind of felt like the group just let me exist with them, neither welcoming nor unwelcoming, but just...reality. Just things as it was. Because one of the other guys brought me in, I just kind of hung around, but I never really sensed that anyone was ever much connected to me. 

Then, almost two decades later, I ran into Ryan in the grocery store, of all places, and I think we hugged. 

We talked for a minute, catching up on our lives, talking about what we were up to. We talked about his wife and the family he was forming. And then, out of that brief, happenstance encounter, Ryan apologized to me. 

He apologized for the way he treated me in high school. For not being friendlier, I guess, or...honestly, I'm not really sure. There were a lot of kids who were extremely mean to me in school, but I wouldn't have said that Ryan was one of them. I wasn't sure how deeply we were connected, but I knew we weren't adversaries. And yet, here he was, twenty years later, carrying some kind of burden about our relationship - what it was or what it wasn't or what it should have been or...I never really understood - and apologizing the first time he had the chance. 

It's a strange thing about being human. At least, in my experience, it's true, and I have many friends who have confessed to the same thing. We see the memes on social media all the time, too, so there must be something universal about it. Memes that say things like, "Just remember that if I was weird to you once, I will remember it for the next thirty years and think about it often." Right now, I could tell you a handful of single sentences, momentary encounters, brief moments in my life in which I feel like I failed someone. Or offended them. Or hurt them. Moments I can't seem to forget, no matter how hard I try. 

Moments that, I'm sure, the other persons in those encounters do not remember nearly as profoundly as I do, if they even remember them at all. 

But when I think about Ryan, and that chance meeting we had, and the way he seemed to have this burden for apologizing (which, by the way, I accepted, even though I did not understand why it was necessary), I think about what it means to apologize. To confess our burdens. To offer our reconciliation. To ask for forgiveness. 

I am learning to be a person who apologizes. And that has become just one of the many things that Ryan has taught me.  

Song of My Heart

It's nice to feel like I have a place to worship again. It still messes with my head a bit that this is a place that I wouldn't have even considered if God hadn't ordained circumstances to lead me there. I still wonder sometimes if this is home for another long haul, or if it's just for a season, but I'm excited about the opportunities...today and tomorrow. 

I'm excited about the ways that it's shaping my faith and giving me back my love for the Lord. I'm excited about the ways that it's reminding me of how much He loves me. I'm excited about the opportunities that this church has for service - I will definitely find something that is close to my heart and exactly what God designed me for. 

But I'm most excited, perhaps, that the music is back. 

My former church, when I entered it, was a singing church. A capella. The sounds of our voices. I spent a lot of time in my formative years singing, and that shaped my faith and my day-to-day living in a dramatic way. For years, it felt like there was always a song on my heart. Always some lyric on the tip of my tongue. Something that would pop up without me even knowing it and just fill me from the inside out. 

I love music. 

Then, of course, we went instrumental, but I became part of the worship team, so those songs were running through my head a lot of the time, as well. Key changes, chord changes, harmonies..it was all there. 

When I separated from my former church, the music stayed around for awhile. I woke up with a song in my head, carried it in my heart, sang in the shower, hummed throughout the day. 

As time went on, the number of songs I could draw on started to dwindle. It came to where there were just a couple, two or three maybe, that would come readily to mind. Mostly stuff I was hearing on my Christian radio station, which was keeping me connected to musical worship as best as I could in my wilderness season. 

And then it came that I started waking up to silence. No more music. No more songs in my heart. I started really having to work to remember anything, and sometimes, even that was failing me. Something profound was happening in my heart without the music, and it's honestly the thing that made me want to be back in church. More than anything else, I wanted the music in my life back. 

The worship at my new church is very different from the worship at my former church. I don't know all of the songs. Yet. I hesitate sometimes to sing along. Are we a singing church? Not in the way that the church I came of age in was, but there's still a place to lift our voices. Again, I guess, it goes back to what I said yesterday - I'm getting the chance to choose how I engage. 

I've only been to this church three times. Just three. But it only took one. After that Easter Sunday, the music came back. I started waking up with a song in my heart again. With a sway in my step. With a rhythm in my soul. 

And oh, how I have missed that.  

Faceless

The new church I started attending this year, on Easter Sunday of all days, is everything I was afraid that it would be. 

I attend the 8 a.m. service, and I don't know anyone there. A couple of acquaintances have come in, but I haven't really talked to them. I show up, I walk in, I sit by myself, I worship, and I walk out. 

And yet, when I walk in, I am greeted heartily by no fewer than four persons before I even get in the front door. I am acknowledged, rejoiced with, and welcomed. There is nothing inside the church that feels like it is off-limits; I do not feel like a visitor, but like someone they were expecting all along. Someone who is free to engage in whatever I want to inside the building - at my own pace, by my own choosing. 

One of the things I quickly noticed was that there is nothing for me to do there. I had been worried about that, too. At my former church, I was involved in everything. I have done mission trips, building maintenance, benevolence ministries. I have operated the a/v equipment, passed plates, greeted at the door, sung on the praise team, played the piano, offered devotionals, prayed, and even preached once. I helped coordinate VBS, taught Sunday school, staffed the nursery. I even painted the bathrooms and fixed a plumbing leak. One of the things that scared me about finding a new church was losing my ministry - losing my opportunity to serve. I wondered if I would ever find another place that would give me the opportunities that my former church had given me over the years.

The truth is, I had lost my ability to be in a church; I had become a person who could only do in a church. 

But I walked into this new church, and nobody was looking for me. Nobody was needing anything from me. Nobody expected me to serve in any capacity. None at all. There was no last-minute absence from the praise team, no desperate plea for an extra usher. I wasn't even expected to hold the door open for the person behind me...because there was already a team of persons holding the door open. 

What do you do in church when you've been a do-er for so long? What do you do when your biggest fears are coming true and there is, in fact, nothing for you to do here? 

You worship. 

I sat in that church, and for the first time in more than 20 years, I simply worshipped. That's it. I engaged with the service in a way that I haven't in such a very long time, and it was amazingly refreshing. 

Of course, there will come a time when I will begin looking for ways to serve with my new brothers and sisters. God has called us to that, and He's certainly wired me that way. But I already sense that it will be a healthier balance for me when I do. I will find a way to serve that will not diminish my worship the way I previously let it. And I'm looking forward to both of those things - serving and continuing to worship. 

I worried when I found a new church that I wouldn't have any friends there. I mourned the loss of my connections from my former church. I want connection. I want relationship. God made us for that, and it's important. But right now, I don't have that. Everyone waves and smiles and greets me and is friendly, but we haven't really connected yet; not in a meaningful way. 

And yet, I'm really enjoying being faceless for a bit, too. What I'm finding is that it puts the burden on me to create my own experience. To engage in the ways that I choose to engage and want to engage. To make the opportunities that I want. To choose what I do and when I do it and how I do it. It has put me back in control of my spiritual life of worship and community, and that...is a beautiful gift that I didn't expect. 

So my new church..it's everything I was afraid it would be. It's a place where I am not known, where I am not connected, and where there's nothing for me to do. And yet, I'm loving it anyway. 

God has a strange way of doing things. 

Finding a New Place

When I started looking for a new church, there were a couple of churches in town that were completely off the list. Not even going to consider them. There were things about them that just didn't gel with what I thought I wanted in a church, or they were too intimidating for one reason or another, so when I started thinking about where I might visit, they were off the radar. 

And honestly, I've been thinking about visiting churches for longer than I was actually doing it. In fact, the church that I now regularly attend is the first church I even visited...and it took me almost a full two years to do that. What I wanted was to be able to heal and go back to my former fellowship; it was what I was planning on. But it just wasn't the right way for me. 

Wouldn't you know it, though? The church I visited first, the one I now regularly attend, is one of the churches that for months of searching, I never would have considered. 

In hindsight, it was kind of a dumb reason. Maybe. But I had a friend from a recent season in my life who told me she attends that church. (And, it turns out, she not only attends that church, but is a ministry leader.) But when that season of my life changed and I tried to maintain the relationship, she ghosted me. I texted her a cheerful message of encouragement after my season ended, and it's more than two years later, and I still haven't gotten a response. 

In a world in which we hurt one another so often - and I know that I am guilty of this myself - I wasn't sure about joining a fellowship with that kind of person in it. I was seeking real connection. I wanted to have a family again. How can we be family if you ghost me when I'm just trying to be nice? When nothing has changed for me in our relationship just because I have moved in a new direction, but everything seems to have changed for you? 

It definitely weighed heavy on my heart.

But then, my boss agreed to let me attend Easter Sunday services this year. It was supposed to be my Sunday off, but we lost one of our employees due to a sudden move out of state, and I picked it up. I told him, though, that I'd been ready to get back into church for awhile and had planned on finding an Easter service, and he told me to definitely do that. Go to church. Worship. Come in later...or come in and leave and come back. Whatever I needed to do. 

I had a plan for my Easter Sunday. I knew where I wanted to go. I'd received an invitation from an acquaintance, and it looked interesting. But that service was later in the morning, which meant I would have to leave work to go, which meant I would be in scrubs. And when I looked at the church's facebook page, I saw everyone in their Sunday best - suits, ties, button-downs, dresses. I wasn't sure I could show up in scrubs and feel welcome. So I kept looking for a different service. 

I didn't have to commit to anything. I just wanted a place to be for Easter. 

Then, I found out this church that wasn't even on my list, this one I wanted nothing to do with, this one that didn't sit well in my heart for such weird, broken human reasons, has an 8 a.m. service. It was close to home. The service lasted about an hour. I could be at work by 9:30. 

So I went. 

And I fell in love with it. 

But not for the reasons you might think.  

Wilderness

God has a funny way of doing things. 

It's been a few years since I separated from my church - my home of 20+ years, where I learned the language and the love of God. It was a rough breakup for me; I honestly never thought I would leave that fellowship. But...we are fallen humans in a broken world and things happen that we cannot foresee. 

Little did I know that God was using this season to make my faith stronger. 

If you know me, you know that I love consistency. Because of the way that my life has gone, I crave stability. I crave that thing that is rock solid, the same all the way through, a firm foundation, something I can count on. I have even gone so far as to say that one of my running goals is to have splits that are perfectly the same, a pace graph that is just a straight line. (After years of trying, I don't think it's possible.) 

Being in the same place for more than 20 years, with many of the same persons, with the same format of worship, with the predictability of connections and relationships (or so I thought)...there's something comforting in that. There's something in that that makes you feel like maybe you're building a good life, a solid life. Maybe you finally have something that will not sink. 

My former church has been through a lot in the time since I joined her. Three lead pastors, three associate pastors, a major building remodel and several smaller ones, a rotation of elders and teachers and brothers and sisters. We had some rough patches, during which times, I somehow became a go-to for many in my congregation. They would confide in me that they were thinking about leaving, and I would encourage them to stay - because I believe that you commit to a body. Not a building, not a leadership, not a sermon series or a program or an opportunity, but a body. And I believe that when that body breaks, you stay and fix it. You become the piece that wasn't there when you needed it. And the whole body grows stronger that way. 

I believe we are blessed by the presence of others. By the consistent showing up of others around us. By knowing who will be there. By developing those relationships with one another and connecting and knowing who is praying for you...and who you should be praying for. 

I believe so much in the fellowship, and I believe in its ability to be that bedrock that so many of us are looking for in a chaotic world. 

I never would have imagined I would have spent years alone in the wilderness. 

But here we are. 

And in the wilderness, my faith has grown stronger than I ever thought that it could. 

In the wilderness, I have rediscovered my love for Jesus. In the wilderness, I have rebuilt my connection with the Lord of my life. In the wilderness, I have learned to re-center my faith on Him, not on the fellowship, and I have learned that that consistency that I've been longing for is never going to be found in persons, but in one Person - Christ Himself. I have shifted my expectations of what the church can be...and of what the church should be. It has been a wholly refreshing season for me. 

Mostly. 

Then, in the past few weeks, I have been committing myself to a new fellowship. It's a story and a place that I never thought would be mine, and yet, it is quickly becoming just that. I want to share with you some of the wild twists and turns of this tale...because it's the kind of thing only God is doing.  

Sharon

All this year, if you haven't noticed, I've been sharing stories of real persons who have touched my life in a powerful way and shaped the way that I want to live in the world by their example. Most of these have been positive - I think it's important to focus on the things we want to be more of in the world; it helps us to grow in the right directions by knowing where the light is. 

But not every interaction we have in the world is positive...not every interaction we make in the world is positive, and we have to be honest about our lesser moments, too, and willing to learn from them. 

And so, Sharon makes this list because she holds the title for the dumbest thing anyone ever said to me that I just can't get out of my head. Seriously. It pops into my head at the most random times, and it's so stupid and yet... 

Sharon was a friend of my mom's at a time when I was still tagging along with my mom to various places. She considered herself a kind of spiritual guru, perhaps a prophet, and she was always speaking in tongues and talking about the insights that she had into the persons and the world around her. Things God was telling her that He wasn't telling anyone else. 

She made me uncomfortable, but I don't think she intended any malice. She just gave my spiritual heart the heebie-jeebies. We were not on the same wavelength (which, by the way, she also knew, but this was some kind of deficit in me, according to her). 

Anyway, fairly early on in the time that I knew her, we were sitting in her more public space and she stopped what she was doing and looked at me for a second and said, completely out of nowhere, "You are a very selfish person." 

I was totally taken aback. I'm a what? I was just sitting here. Petting your dog. Minding my own business. And suddenly, I'm a very selfish person? 

She went on to explain. "Your earlobes turn in very close to your head and there's not a lot of space there. That means you're a very selfish person." Then, she just went back about her business like that was the most natural thing she could have said to anyone and nothing weird just happened. 

I don't know whether I'm selfish. I know that I try not to be. I think there are a lot of folks in this world who would tell you very matter-of-factly that I will go out of my way to help anyone, any time. (Almost. I mean, I'm human.) And yet, every time I'm wrestling with generosity, thinking about where to send my funds or wondering if I should volunteer to do this or that thing or thinking about helping out in this or that way, I randomly think to myself what a selfish person I am and sometimes even catch myself in the mirror and wonder if my earlobes are still too close to themselves or whatever. 

Yes, really. It's singlehandedly the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my life, but for some reason, it keeps popping into my head every time I wonder whether I'm giving enough in this world. 

So Sharon makes this list because I realize there are persons in this world I have completely misjudged. Persons I have spoken inappropriately to. Persons to whom I have said absolutely stupid things who will always remember me for saying those stupid things and, sadly, who might be living their life right now wondering if the stupid things I said had any truth to them at all. There might be persons in this world who have spent more time looking at their earlobes than makes any earthly sense because of something stupid I said to them once - probably in self-righteous arrogance that I was absolutely right about them. 

And if you're one of those persons and you're out there, I want to use today's reflection to tell you I'm sorry. To tell you that I have grown to understand that my perspective, even when I seem so certain of it, is limited. To tell you that I don't know as much about earlobes - or about the human heart - as I once thought I did. And to ask for your forgiveness. 

If there's any good thing at all that has come out of my earlobes that apparently turn in very close to my head and leave not a lot of space there, it's that I have somehow come to use that not-a-lot-of-space to create room to consider what I say before I say it and the impact my words might have on someone who was just sitting there. 

God of You

Most of us live with a certain fear about God's potential calling on our lives. It seems like the persons of faith held up in the highest regard are the ones who gave up everything to follow Him to some distant land where they felt lost, didn't know the language, feared the people, faced persecution. Every time we are introduced the idea of God's calling on our life, we seem to somehow get the idea that God's calling will always take us away from home. 

He'll ask us to move somewhere. He'll ask us to leave our current connections and relationships. He'll ask us to leave a job we love. He'll take all the things that make us satisfied and content and unafraid in the world, and He'll shake them until all we have left is Him...until we don't even know where we are any more, but we're strangers here. 

And we're not sure we're up to the task. 

Most of us don't relish the idea of leaving our lives. Most of us tremble (at least) at the thought of moving to some foreign land. Most of us worry that God will ask something of us that will make us miserable forever. (By the way, overwhelmingly, the foreign missionaries I've actually talked to are very happy with their lives; they are built for the kind of mission God called them to, and they love it.) Most of us are scared to death that God will have any calling at all on our life. 

But we don't need to be. 

See, the truth is that God has the same calling on all of our lives. And no, that doesn't mean what you think it means. That doesn't mean He's calling all of us to the very thing we're afraid of most. That doesn't mean that if we're not on the foreign mission field, we're missing it completely. That doesn't mean that God is moving us all around like pieces on a chess board, putting us here or there or somewhere or nowhere for a season at His own whim. 

The calling that God has on our lives is not a calling of mission. No matter what all the church camps and retreats you've been to (or your deepest fears) might suggest. 

The calling that God has on our lives is a calling of being. 

Specifically, God has called us - you, me, all of us - to be His. (Isaiah 54:6)

That's it. He calls us to be His. 

He calls us to be persons who belong to Him. Persons who are formed in His image. Persons who reflect His glory. Persons whose lives are clothed in His love, His grace, His mercy, His compassion, His goodness. Persons who love and are loved by Him. Persons who can't imagine a single day outside of His presence. Persons who seek Him. Persons eternally connected to Him by the very sacred breath that flows through our very being. 

What we do with that, where we go, how our lives play out in the details, what church we belong to, what version of the Bible we read, what community has our heart...none of that matters. None of that is the point. The greatest - no, the only - calling on our lives is that we are His. Period. 

And you can do that from anywhere. 

God of the Free

You are not for sale. 

With the commercialization of our world and all of the targeted ads that we are bombarded by every day, it may be difficult for you to believe this. After all, all you have to do these days is think about something that might make your life better, and the world will offer it to you through ads, electronic assistants, spam in your inbox, text messages...however it can get in contact with you. I recently saw something about a program where you just give AI your credit card information, and it will make purchases for you and have them shipped to your house. 

Social pressures in and from the marketplace are huge. Everything has a value attached to it, and that value is not necessarily the price tag. What you wear, what you eat, how you decorate your home, what you like, your favorite color palate, your pets, all of these things and more define who you are and you spend your whole life sometimes trying to consume the "right" things to become the person you want to be...or at least, the person you want to project to the world. 

We always feel like we're one good sale away from becoming our best selves. 

Contrast that with a God who doesn't believe you're a commodity. A God who doesn't believe you need to be bought or sold. 

Isaiah 52:3 tells us that God will never buy or sell us.  Well, specifically, it says that the exchange rate for us is "nothing." Nothing. Not a thing. He's not interested in what He can get for us; He's more interested in just having us as His own. We always say that we've been "bought" with the blood, but the truth is we've been redeemed by the Cross, and there's a very big difference there. 

God's not using you to get ahead. He's not using you for what you're worth. You're worth everything to Him, no matter what you do with your life; He already proved that by dying for you so that you might live. Nothing you can acquire will change the value of your life; nothing you lose will diminish it.

You're not worth more to God as a commodity; you're worth the most to God as a wonderful creation. Made in His image. Uniquely reflecting His glory. Whether the delivery guy knows your house by heart or you've never ordered a single thing from the marketplace. 

It's tough to find this kind of love in the world - a love that doesn't have a price tag on it. A love that's not interested in how much you cost or how much you're worth. A love that already declares you are worth it all, worth the very breath of life that He breathed into you at the start and the last breath He took in agony to bring you home. 

But such is the love of God. 

In a world that spends so much energy trying to convince you how important the marketplace is, always remember that the Artist who made you has said one thing very, very clearly: 

You are not for sale. 

Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever. 

God Teaches

I have a teenager in my life. It was not that long ago that I had many teenagers in my life, as I spent several years working for the local school corporation. So hear me when I say that I have had many lectures in my life about how the world works - how things in the world work, how people think, how relationships manifest, everything - from persons who do not have the lived experience to know how things actually work. 

The thing about teenagers is that they are past their curiosity stage, for the most part. Little kids ask questions because they honestly want the answers; teenagers ask questions because they want to demonstrate to you how smart they are. They are at that age where they are looking for mastery of their world, where they are longing to grow into adulthood and show themselves competent and capable. And so, they will spin these incredibly long tales about how things work.

Even long after you've told them they're wrong. 

No, no. They aren't wrong. You just don't understand. Here, let them explain it again...oh, this is so exasperating for them. Why can't you just comprehend how the world works? Aren't you supposed to be the adult? 

If you have teenagers, if you know teenagers, if you love teenagers, then you know what I'm talking about. Maybe. Maybe I need to explain it to you again. (Sorry - couldn't help myself.) 

But now that we have a vague understanding of the common ground on which we stand, I'll just say what I want to say: 

Too many of us are spiritual teenagers. 

We love to lecture God about the way the world works. We love to spin tales and go off on long tangents, then sigh exasperatedly and start to explain it all again until He understands. Doesn't He know? Isn't He supposed to be God?

Isaiah tells us that God will help us learn (and indeed, Jesus was called "Teacher" for a reason), but the key to our learning from God is the thing that teenagers do least well: we have to listen. 

If we would listen to God, we'd learn all kinds of things that we thought we already knew. And guess what? They're different than we thought we understood them. If we would listen to God, He would tell us things we haven't encountered yet, things we cannot know except through Him. If we would listen to God, we would gain another perspective on this world and the way it works - a perspective that might challenge our lived experience of it a little bit and open our eyes to the fact that there's more to this world than we know of it right now. 

If we would stop trying to prove our mastery and go back to our curiosity, God would help us learn. He's always speaking, always teaching, always pointing out the things we're missing. 

But we have to be willing to listen. 

If you have a teenager in your life, you know how frustrating it can be that they are so cocksure, so certain, so completely uncorrectable when they think that they know better than us. 

Imagine, then, how God feels.... 

God of Hidden Riches

A friend recently posted that she was having a difficult day at work, then reached for her lunch and found a heart-shaped potato chip in her bag and was reminded of how much God loves her. 

I told her that was sweet and that I have a similar relationship with God. There's this chink in the floor at work, right as I'm getting near my unit, that is heart-shaped, and it catches my eye every time, and I remember the goodness of God. 

At my desk, which I share with other coworkers when I am not on duty, there's a recessed area behind the computer screen, and at a time when I knew one of my coworkers needed some encouragement, I plastered that little recessed wall with blue paper and stuck affirmation stickers all over it so she would see positive messages when she came in. You can only see these affirmations when you're physically sitting at our desk. 

As I was walking past the chaplain's office and the chapel in the hospital one day a few months ago, I suddenly noticed for the first time that the number code above the door is 144 and 145; my life has been filled with 4s and 44s for almost forever; it's a number that holds a special meaning for me. So now, I smile every time I walk by those doors because I believe that one day, God will give me those doors for my ministry...for His ministry. In His timing, of course. 

Everyone seems to have something. Don't we? We all have that thing that shows up in secret, quietly sneaking into our consciousness in the place we least expect to find it. Maybe we're the only ones who see it. Maybe no one else understands the significance. Maybe no one else would ever "get it," even if we explained it a thousand times. But we all have that thing. That thing that sneaks in and reminds us that God loves us, that He's with us, that He's working in and for and through us. 

And...of course we do. 

Isaiah 45:3 says, "I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name."

In other words, God's always been tucking away secret treasures for you - little things nobody else would see, things that lighten your heart and make you remember how much He loves you, how good He is, how much He cares for you, that He's working in and for and through you. That in the course of a no good, very rotten day, He is still right there with you. That on your best days, He's rejoicing with you. That in the times and places where you maybe least expect Him, there He still is. With you. Knowing you, loving you, calling you by name. Just you. 

That potato chip was an act of God's love. Whatever happened to the floor at work to take that specific chink out of it in that specific place was an act of God's love. It might have felt like an accident at the time. Sometimes, it feels like circumstance or happenstance. But it's not. 

It's love. God just loves you. 

What secret things is He tucking away in hidden places to remind you of that? 

Cheryl

A few years ago, I was working for the local school corporation, and I had spent a couple of years at the high school, a couple of years at the middle school, a few days at some of the elementary schools here and there filling in for Covid, and it came time that I needed to make another transition. This time, I was moving permanently to the intermediate school. And urgently. 

Literally, HR called and told me to report to the new building the next morning. That was at about 3 in the afternoon, just as the school I was working at was letting out for the day. I had just a few minutes to send a mass email, thanking everyone for their friendship and announcing my departure, and to find some folks I wanted to say goodbye to in person. 

The next morning, I showed up at the intermediate school, where I knew literally no one. Not a single soul. Not even the principal or the assistant principal, not my new boss, nothing. They greeted me with joy, welcomed me, set me up with all of the things I would need to succeed, showed me around the building, everything you would expect on Day One of a new gig, and then I went to it...floating around and trying to find my bearings. 

Around lunch, I found an empty teacher workroom with a table in it and sat down by myself to eat. Honestly, I was crying. I was missing my friends at the middle school, and I felt lost in this new place. I had yet to actually meet any of the other staff I would be working with on a daily basis (except for one guy who I knew from somewhere else, and we picked back up immediately...after he ribbed me on the tour, he told the principal he was just joking and that we were lucky to have me). 

All of a sudden, a teacher came in to make some copies and saw me sitting there...and greeted me by name. 

"You must be....! So happy to have you here! We are all looking forward to it." 

Uhm...what? 

She introduced me around to a few of her friends, and by the end of the day, I was starting to feel like there was a place for me there. In fact, everyone already seemed to know me and to appreciate me and to want me there. 

It would take a few more months before I realized what had happened. Cheryl, the principal, had a staff meeting every morning with the building staff. During this meeting, among other things, she made everyone aware of staffing changes - who was coming, who was going, who was out, who was doing whatever. The morning of my arrival, on no notice at all and having not even met me herself, Cheryl introduced me to the staff. Just like that. 

She opened a door I would walk through just a short bit later. 

Oh, how I want to be a person who opens doors. I want others to have the experience in the world that I had at the intermediate school from my very first day - not having to introduce yourself, not having to make an impression, not having to establish a place. Already having a place. Already being known, by name. Already having the good favor of others just by virtue of being there and coming onto the team. 

I want to be a Cheryl. For all the folks who feel like pawns in this world, being shuffled around, wondering if there's a place, wanting a place, I want to be a Cheryl...who makes that place for them before they even get there. 

Thanks, Cheryl. (For that, and for everything.) 

God of Wisdom

"Hey, Genius!"

I turned to look because of course, she was trying to get my attention. I have a bit of a reputation for being smart, but also for being a problem solver - someone who can fix just about anything and knows who to turn it over to if I can't. 

I've had this reputation for most of my life. I was the smart kid. I was the gifted student. I was the one the teachers had to go out of their way to find assignments for because I finished the other ones in less than half the time it took anyone else. My whole life, I have listened to other persons tell me how smart I am; I have listened to them recommend me to others who have problems that need solving; I have heard them tell me I can do anything I put my mind to. 

But I cannot for the life of me (literally?) figure out God. 

I have some good ideas. There are some things that I know for certain. There are some things that I am absolutely sure of. There are some things He has shown me and proven to me over the years, some things He has whispered in my ear, some things He has laid on my heart. I have enough knowledge - bolstered by enough faith - to get me through most of the time. 

But every time I think I have Him figured out, He proves to me that I don't. 

As soon as I feel confident in saying that I know how God is working, one door closes and the curtains on the window start blowing a little bit. As soon as I know that everything is trending in a Godward direction, all of a sudden, we make a hard turn toward something else...even though I might know that God is still leading. 

Isaiah tells us that God confuses even the wise (44:25), and what's funny about that is that it doesn't matter how smart or wise I am, as soon as I think I might be one of those wise men, God confuses me, and all of a sudden, I know how unwise I truly am. 

(Is that a sign of true wisdom?) 

Yet, this is what faith is. It's a way of living that requires knowing enough to believe, enough to trust, but not knowing enough to predict or to expect or to be arrogant about anything. It requires enough knowledge to abide and to rest and to love and to be loved, to be certain of some things, but never really to know. Faith requires trust; otherwise, it is confidence. (And not confident assurance.) 

Without an element of trust, faith rests on itself. It rests on its own understanding. It puts itself in the position of authority because it knows - it just knows, and it is so certain about it that it no longer even requires God at all. It might still give Him credit, if there's love in the person's heart, but it doesn't really depend on Him. 

Trust keeps us depending on Him. And we can only trust, in faith, what we cannot know by wisdom. 

So He keeps us guessing, at least a little. 

Even us geniuses. 

God Eternal

One of the best ways to believe in the promises of God is to look back at the ones He's already kept. 

We say this as Christians, and we turn to our Bibles and we read about the way He gave Abraham a son late in life, He kept Noah safe in the boat, He protected Joseph in Egypt, He led Israel across the Red Sea and the Jordan River...and on and on and on we go, all the way through the life of Christ Himself. Promise. Kept. 

But I think that can be discouraging for some of us. Especially for those of us who live here and now. 

It's been 2,000 years since Jesus. Two. thousand. (And some change.) The rest of that stuff? That all happened hundreds to thousands of years before that. So I think it's easy for us to sometimes think of God's time frame as just too big. Sure, He did it once, but we don't have thousands of years to wait for Him to do it again. 

Then, we look at the bookends of the Bible, and that's not much more encouraging. In the beginning, God...and in the end, God... and we are supposed to be encouraged by that, we think, but friends, I'm broken now. I don't want to have to wait until the end of my life to be healed. I don't believe God calls us to live a broken life of misery so that one day, we can be restored; I believe God is restoring us now. 

(Wow, I am using a lot of italics in this post.) 

Isaiah tells us that God was here at the beginning and He'll be here at the end (41:4), but that doesn't keep me from struggling with now. With today. With this broken moment and this confident hope and this longing in my heart. 

So I think it's important that we keep track of the things God is doing in our life. However that works for you. Some folks like to keep a journal of answered prayer. Some folks just journal, forget the prayer. Some folks build altars or take snapshots or create mementos. Some of us like to post things on Facebook so that on this date sometime in the future, Facebook will pop up a reminder for us. Whatever it is for you. 

Because you need to know that God was here in the beginning and God will be here in the end, but you need to also know that God has been here all the way through. He didn't just start things, then go away and plan to show up again later. He's not just hanging out waiting for the next chapter in His story to be written. He's writing that chapter right now, and you're in it. 

And you need to see how He's doing it. You need to see how the pieces start taking shape. You need to see how it's all coming together. 

While it's all well and good for Abraham and Moses and David and Jesus and all those folks (and yes, their stories are important), I need to know that God is working in my story. Right now. The days I'm actually living. The chapter I'm actually writing. I need to know that God is not thousands of years removed, but that He's in the whisper and the wind and the stillness and the noise right now. I need to know not just where He's been or where He will be, but where He is, and that is right here with me and you. 

All the way through. 

Isaiah meant that, by the way, when he wrote those words. They're just too easy, sometimes, for us to misunderstand. 

God Alone

I spent several years as a graduate teaching assistant, primarily in the Christian philosophy department, primarily responsible for "Intro to Worldviews - Philosophy 101." This was an introductory class aimed at helping first-year college students start to consider the ways that persons think in the world, what shapes their thoughts and perspectives, how different ideologies are played out all around us. 

One of the challenges of teaching such a course on a Christian campus is that most of the students come in with a church background that has taught them that they just have to tell everyone what the Bible says and get them to believe in God and...problem solved. All problems. Solved. Just like that. 

Of course, those of us who live in the real world know it's simply not that easy. 

But the Bible tells us it wouldn't be. 

See, the thing I had to keep explaining to students was that they couldn't simply quote the Bible or make a claim about God because the secular humanist or Muslim or nihilist or Hindu they were talking to did not believe the Bible or God to be authoritative. The words wouldn't mean anything to them because they didn't have a frame of reference that said that these words were any more true than any other words; perhaps they were even more false. 

And this is the trouble we run up against whenever we are trying to talk about God with an unbeliever of any walk of life. God is so far beyond their frame of reference that it's hard to give them a sufficient grasp of the goodness and nature of God with nothing for it to be planted on, no foundation for understanding. 

Isaiah tells us that God cannot be compared to anyone or anything (40:18, 25), and that's the very heart of this whole thing. 

We can't tell them what God is like because God isn't like anything. As soon as we start to say what He's like and try to make a comparison, we have to introduce all of these various caveats to that, all these little ways in which He is actually not like that until the person we're talking with comes to understand that that thing we are saying God is like? Yeah, He's not actually like that at all. And they can't come up in their mind with what it might look like because they have this image of this thing, but it's not sufficient, and there's no understanding to fill in the gaps to create anything. 

So God cannot be grasped because there is simply no way to describe Him to anyone who does not have a reference of faith to understand. 

By faith, however, we get a glimpse. By lived experience, we start to understand. By at least accepting and embracing the stories that the Bible tells us are true, we can start to have some kind of a frame of reference, but we have to accept them without understanding. Without understanding how it is possible. Without comprehending a God who is beyond our comprehension. 

It's a tough task, something extremely difficult to do. But then, the Bible told us it would be. 

There's simply nothing we can compare God to - not anyone or anything. We can only understand by living and loving in faith. 

God Heals

There are miracles of modern medicine. There are plain ol' miracles. And then, there are nights lying awake in bed, pleading with God just to hear you, just to acknowledge that He knows you're still here, just to give you a glimpse of some kind of hope of healing. 

For all that science has given us, for all that we've come to understand about our human condition - and even our human condition as persons of faith - there is still not a thing in this world that we can do about our soul sickness. 

Only God can heal that. 

We spend our whole lives wrestling with it. We do. We stay up late, we moan, we groan in our spirit, we cry our tears, we let our emotions drip down our faces, we bow our heads, we fold our hands, we cry out...and we still don't really know what we're doing. We feel the tension in our souls, this tearing, this torn-between. Torn between infinite love and...whatever this is. Whatever this broken, messed-up, falling apart, can't sleep, knocked down, worn out life we're living is. 

The more broken we are, the more we feel so deeply in our souls that it wasn't supposed to be this way. The closer we hear God's footsteps, the more our hearts just start to beat in sync with His. The more we dream about the garden, the more real it becomes. This is what we were made for. 

Then, what is all this mess?

Isaiah says that those who dwell in God's land won't be able to say any more that they are sick - that they are soul-sick, that they are sin-laden, that they are beaten down, broken up, downtrodden, hurting. The people of God won't be able to say any of that because the Lord their God, the only One who can, has heard them and will heal them and will take away all of their sickness. All of it. 

Even the sin-sick, messed up, twisted around, broken down, fallen over, can't sleep sickness that plagues our existence in the fallen creation, in the already-but-not-yet, in the shadow of the Cross. 

It won't be a pill. It won't be a transfusion. It won't be a transplant or a gene splice or a miracle of modern medicine. Hey, it won't even be a miracle. 

It will be simple grace, born out of steadfast love. The mercy of God poured out on us, crying out from the side of the road, crying, simply, in our beds, in the darkness, in the angst, in the hurt, in the sorrow. 

God heals all the sickness with one breath of His incredible love and we, the people of God, will no longer get to say that we're broken. 

Rather, we will shout the glory of God and rejoice that we are healed. 

Maggie

To be honest with you, I don't remember this woman's real name. Even if I did, I wouldn't tell you. But I'm pretty sure it's not Maggie, so let's call her Maggie. 

I was a chaplain at a large hospital, and I was working part of my shift on the acute neurology floor. I peeked my head into one of the darkened "continuous EEG" rooms - a room where they were monitoring brain signals from the patients 24/7, so as much external stimuli as possible had been eliminated. I peeked in to see how the patient was handling the intensive testing, and that's when I saw her crying in the bed. 

I walked in. 

As we talked, Maggie told me that she had some kind of undiagnosed seizure disorder that was rapidly getting worse. She couldn't seem to get through a single hour of her life without having these catastrophic seizures. The doctors had told her it would only be a matter of time - a short matter of time - before the seizures killed her. 

"That sounds really scary," I said, reaching out my hand to hold hers. As she eagerly took my hand, I continued. "What do they suggest doing about it?"

She told me the doctors were talking about doing a radical surgery in which they would sever some of the nerves in her brain and hopefully stop them from sending signals to one another. Basically, they were talking about a type of hemispherectomy. The seizures would stop, they believed, instantly. 

But the surgery was not without its risks and side effects. Most distressing for Maggie was that she was all but guaranteed to lose her short term memory as a result of the procedure. She wept as she told me that she could not fathom the idea of going through life never being able to enjoy another movie - a favorite interest of hers. How can you enjoy a movie, how can you even watch one, if you don't remember what happened five minutes ago? 

She went on, of course, to mention the social struggles of not having a short term memory. Not being able to make new connections with others. Not being able to participate in meaningful conversations. Struggling to make day-to-day decisions, even as simple as planning out a meal or doing the grocery shopping or remembering why she got in the car in the first place. 

I did not envy the spot that Maggie was in. 

We talked for more than an hour as Maggie wavered back and forth between doing nothing - a choice that would ultimately kill her, sooner rather than later - and having this radical surgery - which would make her life, in her understanding, not worth living. We talked about the pros and cons. We weighed the inevitable outcomes of both options. As soon as she would feel herself leaning in one direction, she'd do a complete 180 and come back the other way. How do you even make such an impossible choice? 

After our long back-and-forth, Maggie wiped a tear from her eye and admitted there was a potential third option. The doctor had told her that it was possible that if she could eliminate some stress from her life, if she could learn to slow down and take periods of rest, then the seizures would possibly lessen on their own. 

She could very potentially make a dramatic impact on her life - and free herself from this impossible decision - if she could just learn to rest sometimes. (Maggie was a very driven individual, very Type A.) 

"But that's not really an option," she said after she acknowledged it, dismissing it immediately. "I don't know how to stop, and I don't want to." Then she went back to wrestling with her impossible choice. 

I don't know what happened to Maggie. I don't know what choice she made. I don't know how things turned out. But I have never forgotten that conversation. Because I can be like that sometimes. It can be hard for me to slow down, to rest. 

I wonder how many impossible situations I've put myself in because of that.  

True Faith

That's the thing, I guess, about real faith - about what a real faith looks like in the real world. 

When I wear a cross necklace, the world knows what that means. Or thinks it does. The world understands this as a sign that I belong to Jesus, that I believe in Him, that I probably worship Him, and that I may even belong to a church. 

When I demonstrate peace in the face of adversity, the world doesn't know what to do with this. 

The world mistakes it for calm. For some kind of mastery that I must have over my very normal human anxiety. The world mistakes it for indifference, as if maybe I just don't even care what happens to me. Very close to indifference is depression; maybe I'm just already defeated, and I've given up. The world tries to put peace into its framework, but it doesn't fit. So the world doesn't know what to do with it and can't understand it. 

The same is true with joy. Joy is another one of those things I have fought hard for in my life, one of those gifts that comes out of my close relationship with God. I have been called happy, but happy isn't it. I have been called happy-go-lucky, but that isn't it, either. I have been accused of being naive, like maybe I just don't understand what is happening, so of course, it doesn't affect me like it does everyone else. But no, that's joy. True joy. 

The same is true with forgiveness. Folks have heard my life story, even recent chapters of it, and they assume I must be harboring some kind of secret vendettas against some folks. They apologize when they accidentally mention someone in front of me, someone they know I haven't had a positive experience with. They apologize when they mention anything positive about that person, like it's somehow wounding for me. They don't believe me when I say that I have forgiven someone, that I want the best for them, that I'm okay seeing them do good things and succeed in life. The world doesn't know how to let go of its grudges, and it kind of relishes wishing ill on broken persons who have wounded them, but faith doesn't work like that. I can truly forgive and wish someone the best. Why would I want someone to be a thoroughly horrible person who goes around wounding others all the time? What kind of sick satisfaction is that supposed to give me? But the world doesn't understand forgiveness. 

The same is true with gentleness. The world doesn't understand why I don't go to the mat for myself, why I don't fly off into a rage, why I am not inconvenienced by the slowness of others to catch on. The world doesn't understand patience, how I can afford to wait for someone else to "get it" on their own. Why I'm not pressed by the tyranny of the urgent like everyone else seems to be. 

Friends, faith shapes us. It gives us all these things that the world sees, but it doesn't understand. That it witnesses, but it doesn't process. It can't conceptualize of the things of faith without the framework of the cross to guide it. So it misinterprets. It mislabels. It questions. It asks us, how is that even possible? 

It's possible because I am already the thing I very most need to be in all the world - deeply loved. And that love, the love of God, gives me the opportunity to see the world through a lens not of scarcity and want, but of abundance and grace. 

It doesn't mean I'm not affected by the things that happen here. I have the same anxieties, the same fears, the same questions that anyone else would have in my situation, whatever that situation happens to be at the time. I am very, very human, and if you spend five minutes talking to me, you can't miss that. 

But I am also very, very loved. And that love changes everything. 

That's not calm, my friends; it's peace. It's not happiness; it's joy. It's not indifference; it's grace. 

It's faith. Lived out to the best of my ability, no matter what page of my story we're on. 

Calm

Life has been throwing yet another challenge at me lately, and at this point, a lot of folks think my life is just one trial after another after another. It's not really, but I understand how it can look that way sometimes. But for me, it's just my story, and I just keep turning one page after another and seeing what happens next. 

I have had some really good seasons. I mean, really good ones. Even lately. When I turned 40 a few months ago, I was on top of the world. I felt good. I looked good. I believed good. I was in a really good place. Things weren't perfectly, but the good overshadowed everything. The love of God, my friends, is real. 

And even though my life took a turn I wasn't quite expecting, the love of God is still real. 

One of the things I've heard frequently in the past few weeks is how "calm" I am. Words that would scare someone else, paths filled with thorns, darkness lurking just around the corner, things that would shake just about anyone else, and I can just state them as fact and not be shaken. "You're so calm when you say that," others have said. As if...what?

As if I'm supposed to lose myself over the stresses of a fallen life in a broken world? As if I would handle things oh so much better if I was a mess? As if anxiety would actually help me at all right now? As if I'm "supposed" to keep myself up at night, pace a rut into my floor, dig my nails into the backs of my hands, and rip my hair out? What on earth for? 

The people of God used to do this, but never over stress. They always did it over grief. And it's taken me a long time, but what exactly do I have to grieve in the hard seasons? 

Am I supposed to grieve that my life isn't going the way I would have dreamed that it would? Am I supposed to grieve that bad things happen to persons who are doing their best to be good? Am I supposed to grieve that what I have been certain is God's plan has experienced yet another delay? 

These would be losses of ego. These would be losses of self. These would be losses from my finite human perspective, losses that can only see what I think I see, losses focused only on me, me, me. 

But while there have been some significant losses in this season of challenge, there have also been some incredible blessings. I am learning, growing, and loving so much. I am seeing things that I wouldn't have seen if the shadows hadn't started playing with each other. I am feeling God's presence in a new way. 

And so, what you actually hear when I am able to simply speak about what is happening right now - without fear, without anxiety, without stress - isn't "calm." 

It's peace. 

Because at the end of the day and at the dawn of the next, God still loves me. God still strengthens me. God still gives me hope. God still has a call on my life. God has still filled my life with the richest of blessings, the greatest of which is His everlasting presence. He is the Prince of Peace. 

And nothing gets to take that peace away. 

Least of all, these momentary troubles.  

Stripped

I took the necklace off. Sometime that afternoon, or maybe that night, I don't remember, but I took it off. I laid it on my desk, where I always do when I take it off for safe keeping, and...I didn't feel as naked as I thought I would. 

I had already been thinking in my head about what it meant to have a naked faith - a faith that is known by my actions, by my heart, by my character, and not by my jewelry. Something in me had been drawn to the idea, although I confess there was still a little hesitation in my heart. Would my faith hold up?

My cross has never been for show; it's been for me. It's been to remind me that I am loved and that I am called to be loving. Most days, most of the time, nobody sees it; I'm the only one who knows it's there. I can feel it when I lie down to go to sleep. I know that it's there, and it reminds me to remember. 

But the narrative of not having it had already gotten so deeply into my heart...can I tell you? I think I thought more intentionally about my faith after I took that necklace off than I ever had while wearing it. 

And wasn't that the goal? 

Wasn't the Lord asking me to think about my faith? Wasn't He wanting me to reflect on it - on how it really looks and what it really feels like, which is so much more than the way that the silver feels running through my fingers? Wasn't God asking me to think more about the expression of my faith than the adornment of it - the way it feels deep in my bones more than the way it feels hanging around my neck? 

That was really the challenge of this moment. When I went to work the next morning - naked - I was thinking more intentionally about my faith and what it actually looks like than I had in a long time. 

A day or two later, that same small voice that told me to take my necklace off told me I could put it back on. Eventually, I did, but it feels different to me now. 

This was my Mt. Moriah moment. 

In Genesis, God called Abraham to go to the mountain and sacrifice his son, his promised son, the son that represented what God was going to do with Abraham's life. Abraham took young Isaac with him, went up the mountain, and even went so far as to bind the child with ropes while building the altar fire that would, in just moments, consume him - screaming, crying, yelling, suffering. That fire would first hurt the boy beyond all recognition until the whole promise went up in smoke and came to rest in ashes. 

I felt the same sort of thing when God called me to take my cross off. It was this laying down of something that was important to me, but had become important for all of the wrong reasons. I think it was easy for Abraham to look at Isaac and see the promise of God, but not feel it in quite the same way. I think it was easy for me to look at my cross and see the promise of God, but not feel it in quite the same way. 

So the question was: can you hold onto the promise, the real promise, and not its idolatrous substitutes? Do you have a faith that can return to God as its foundation, its source? Do you have a faith that lives on its own breath and not on rituals or relics? 

As in Abraham's life, it isn't always about forever; it's about the willingness in this moment to obey. 

I have worn that cross - or something like it - for over 20 years, maybe almost 30 by this point. But those couple of days without it told me more about my faith than that sterling silver ever has. 

And now, my goal is to live naked whether I'm wearing my adornments or not.  

Naked Faith

For as long as I have been a Christian, perhaps even longer, I have worn a necklace to remind me of my Lord - most often, a cross, but for a season, the tree of life. I have a ring that says, "Blessed," that I have worn for many years, so that in a stressful moment, I can look down on it and remember that I am, above all other things, loved. 

The jewelry has been kind of high maintenance - I have to take it off when I run so that the sweat doesn't corrode the metals (I learned that lesson the hard way), so these are items that I touch at least 2-3 times every day to remove, put back on, untangle, etc. This has just been part of my existence, and it's honestly not been something I have given much of a second thought to for quite awhile. 

Until last Sunday. 

Last Sunday, I was sitting in church, just worshiping for one of the first times in a long time. I'm in a new church right now; nobody knows me there. I don't have a favorite seat. I'm still feeling things out and figuring out all of the new sensory inputs. The songs are familiar, but they sound brand new. The Communion is offered, but it feels like it is freshly poured. 

I get to decide who I want to be to a people who don't know me yet. How I want to present myself. What stories I want to tell about myself. 

But I look around, and I realize - I don't know them, either. I don't know this woman sitting three chairs down in this row. I don't know this family whose heads I'm staring at the back of. I look around, and I don't know them. 

But I know they love Jesus. 

I don't know what came over me in that moment, having a whole heart full of thoughts but no real conscious ones - nothing I was deliberately thinking about, nothing I was obsessing over, no questions I was asking, nothing really running through my head. And yet, out of nowhere, I heard and felt distinctly in my heart - 

Take off your cross. 

Take off your necklace. Set it aside. There was part of me that wanted to throw it, but I realized that was probably a little dramatic. 

How could I take off my necklace? It had been with me for so long. It was an important part of who I am. It reminds me of things I am prone too easily to forget. Take it off? Just take it off? 

I wrestled with this for a long time. And, of course, being the practical person that I am, I was not simply going to take my necklace off in a darkened church auditorium. Where would I put it? What if I lost it? What if I wanted it back later? What if it was some emotional defect based on some physical state I hadn't yet figured out that was trying to dupe me into doing something I would never do? What if the devil himself was trying to separate me from my faith, right here in a new season of life, and this was his gimmick? No, I was not just going to take it off. 

But what my heart was figuring out was that...I needed to. What my heart was feeling was not a rejection of Christ or the cross or the jewelry itself, but what it had come to represent to me. It felt too easy. Of course I'm a Christian; see my cross? 

What my heart was feeling was a pull toward a more naked faith - one that demonstrates itself by living. 

And the question becomes: if my jewelry doesn't give me away, would my life still tell you I love - and am loved by - the Lord?