Carley

I met Carley back in late May of this year. It was a chance meeting, and an even chance-r conversation. She was one of the physical therapists filling in on my unit in the hospital, picking up a weekend shift as a very part-time employee. I overheard her speaking with one of the patients near my desk about vertigo and dizziness and balance. 

When she came out, I asked, "Do you do some vestibular therapy, too?" 

I haven't really had many conversations with our part-time therapists. Almost none, actually. And for the most part, I tend to keep my personal medical needs out of my work relationships. Yes, I work in medicine; no, that doesn't mean I get to cash in for free. (Most of my coworkers know the battles I'm fighting, but I'm not soliciting them for help.) 

I wasn't really soliciting Carley, either. I had done vestibular therapy a few years prior, and it wasn't the best experience for me. That is, it was the one round of physical therapy that I'd had that hadn't seemed to have done anything. But I was trying to establish connections with my coworkers, to be more diligent about reaching across departments (something that had come up in a recent conversation with my manager), and I thought...here's something we can talk about. 

I told her I'd done some vestibular therapy myself. It hadn't really worked for me, but I understood it as a very neat specialty, and it was cool that she was into that. 

As it turns out, not only was she into that; it was her job. Like, her regular job. She worked at a specialty neurological/vestibular therapy center, so this was the kind of patient she saw all day, every day. She was more than happy to give me her contact info and tell me to try it again, to come see her, to check out the advanced stuff they had there that I might not have had in my previous experience. 

I kept that post-it note on my desk for months. 

But I never made it to see Carley. A week or two later, I met the surgeon who was supposed to fix my vertigo; a few weeks after that, had surgery; a few weeks after that, was doing amazing and was learning to drive again. I always appreciated that she had reached back out to me, but things were finally seeming to turn and it looked like I wasn't going to need her. 

Until things turned again and I ended up more crippled than I'd ever been by my vestibular issues. 

By that point, my hospital had hired Carley. She had begun seeing patients at our outpatient center. And when I followed up with my surgeon and he suggested more therapy to help me get back on track, I mentioned that we'd actually just hired one of the therapists that used to work closely with his patients. 

"You have Carley!" he exclaimed. "You've got to go see Carley." 

So I went to see Carley, who I had not seen, not even once, since that one shift when I had tried to be better about reaching across departments, and Carley remembered everything about our one conversation. Not only that, but she brought her amazingly specialized set of skills to bear on my situation, and now, we're working together toward all the things that seemed like only a dream just a few months ago. 

It reminds me that no encounter in our world is random. God puts the right persons in your life at the right time, and you may not even know it. 

And not only that, but He puts you in the lives of others at just the right time. Have you ever stopped to consider that? 

Who would have thought that one chance encounter on one weekend shift with one new person I had never met would turn into the hope that I so desperately needed just a short breath later? 

I don't know if Carley knows that she is that one new person for me in this season. But then, I don't know who I am that one new person for in this season, either. Whose life has God put me into for such a moment as this? 

Because of one seemingly-random conversation before I even knew what was happening, I am living with eyes wide open to that possibility. For perhaps we are all somebody's Esther.  

Embrace It

Getting honest about what's broken in your life and what it's taken from you...and threatening to take...is the first step toward healing, but to be honest, there's another very important step that is closely related to that. 

You have to embrace it. 

You have to embrace what's broken in your life. You have to let it be broken. You have to live to the best of your ability within your limitations and let yourself feel what it's like to have those restrictions around you. 

That seems defeatist. That seems silly, perhaps. It definitely runs counter to the "I'm fine" culture that tells us to put on a brave face, wipe our tears, live our lives, and not let anything be any less than everything we want out of it. 

But here's the thing: most of us can't swim upstream. Not for very long. We're throwing our energies away and leaving ourselves with nothing left to fight with, and we're losing not just our battles, but the war. 

And I think there's a certain value in being able to simply say, this is what I can do right now. This is what I'm capable of and this is what I'm not capable of. There's value in learning to say no to the things that are beyond your capabilities. There's value in learning what it's like to be a person of limited abilities. 

That value is (at least) two-fold. First, it gives you an appreciation for the life that you have. You learn to like things more. You learn to savor them, to enjoy them. 

Second, it tells you what you want. It helps you figure out what's important to you. It's like figuring out all the empty places in front of you and getting to decide what you want to fill them up with...if anything. 

Maybe you discover that your brokenness creates spaces in your life that you really like. That you suddenly have margin for the first time, margin that you would never have recognized if you had still been using all of that space to try to fight. To try to get back what used to be there. 

Maybe, as it turns out, you like having that space and it becomes precious, if not sacred, to you. Suddenly, it becomes part of the shape of your new life and you find that you're willing to do a lot of things to protect it. Like...maybe not even want to get back some of what you lost. Maybe you're okay simply losing it. 

You don't know what your life is or what it can be or what it feels like unless you're truly living it, and you aren't truly living it unless you embrace it. All of it. The good and the bad. The successes and the failures. The triumphs and the troubles. The well places and the broken places. 

Oh, we should talk about the wells. (Maybe later...) 

The point is...get honest about your brokenness and then, embrace it. It's the best way to figure out where your life is really at and where you want it to go from here. 

Only then can you begin the true work of real healing. 

With the help of the Lord, of course. 

Getting Honest

We are good at compensating for our brokenness, but often, we're doing more damage to ourselves than we understand, even when our compensations are subconscious.  

We are also good at pretending. 

We are good at pretending that we're not ask broken as we are. We are good at pretending that we understand what's happening to us, that we've planned for every contingency, that we're "fine." We're good at pretending that we're making it. 

But pretending isn't helping us, either. 

What pretending does is it puts one more thing on your plate. One more draw on your energy. One more task on your weary soul. It requires more than you really have to give, and one of the reasons you're not getting better is because you're using all of your energies to cover yourself up, so you don't have anything left to tackle the actual problem. You don't have anything left to fight the actual fight. Your tank is perpetually empty because you're pouring it out on the grass that everyone can see, trying to make it greener, all the while really wishing you were growing flowers just a few feet away. 

We've all been there. We've all done it. Some of us are doing it right now. We're broken, and in response to our brokenness, we're breaking ourselves down. 

We don't start healing until we start getting honest. Until we acknowledge our limitations. Until we learn to say that right now, we just can't. 

Can't do that. Can't manage that. Can't add that to our schedule. Can't keep pushing through. Can't do this on our own. Can't overcome. Can't whatever.

We have to be real about the toll that our brokenness is taking on our lives and be real about the ways that it is shaping whatever season we're in. 

Only then can we be honest about the problem. Only then can we be real about what's going on.

Only then can we start to heal. 

I believe you have to let yourself feel the losses in your life. You have to let yourself feel the limitations. You have to let yourself be burdened by your brokenness so that you understand exactly what kind of box it's putting you in, how it is restricting you, how it's keeping you from what you want to do, all the things it's already taken away and the things it's threatening to add to its list. You have to let yourself feel the full weight of what it's like to be broken so that you know what you're facing. 

And when you do, you start to see how your life is built. You start to see how you want to build it. You start to understand the pieces that are important to you, the ones you want to get back, the ones that are the foundation for other things you want to build and to have and to grow in your life. 

You can't start healing until you know these things. Until you can name them. If you can't name them, how do you know what healing even looks like? How will you know when you get there? 

Healing starts when you're honest about what you're missing...and what it means to you. 

The Path Forward

There is a brokenness where you can step in early and kind of put the pieces back together before they fall completely apart, and there is a brokenness that you have to let crumble before you can even find a place to begin, but the one thing that they both have in common is that there is no path forward other than through it. 

We spend our lives trying to compensate for our brokenness. Sometimes, we do this subconsciously - we aren't even aware of the ways in which we are compensating; we just do it. Sometimes, we know exactly what we're doing. 

For example, if you have a weak leg, you'll automatically be shifting your body weight toward your stronger leg, without even realizing it. Or maybe you know you have a weakness for certain social situations, so you set up a rescue phone call with a friend before you attend an event - so you have an excuse to leave when you need it. 

The problem is that these compensations do not actually fix our brokenness. They do not solve our problems. They make us more functional in the world, for a short while, but eventually, they create greater weaknesses and more problems. 

Shifting your weight may work for awhile...until your good knee and hip and ankle start to ache. Until your back starts to curve. Until your shoulders start to slope. And all of a sudden, years have passed, and you're entirely bent out of shape and you didn't even know it. 

Having a friend give you a rescue call works for awhile. Until you need to stay longer. Until your friend is busy. Until your phone battery dies. And now, you're stuck, with no skills for navigating the social situation, no clue what to do except beg for someone - anyone - to rescue you, and now, you're vulnerable to take any ol' way out of the situation because you don't know how to fend for yourself. 

Our compensations don't make us stronger; they make us weaker. 

The only real way to overcome brokenness is through it. 

It's through putting in the work. It's through being honest with ourselves. It's through recognizing our compensations and noticing the places where we're prone to cheat - not just to cheat our weaknesses, but to ultimately cheat ourselves. 

It's through intentionally working our weak places, building them up, finding true strength. Not ways to work around it, but ways to use it to our advantage. It's through being honest with others and asking for accountability. It's about confessing our weakness, and our weak moments, apologizing when truly necessary (not apologizing when it's not - we owe no one an apology for being broken), accepting temporary limitations, trusting in the God who makes all things new, and becoming new. 

Fruit doesn't form on a vine that tries to grow beside itself. It grows on the vine that keeps poking through, millimeter by millimeter by millimeter, in a single direction and slowly becoming bigger, stronger, more robust, and ready to bear fruit. 

That's how we get through brokenness. Millimeter by millimeter by millimeter, slowly becoming, growing through, until we're bigger, stronger, more robust and ready to bear fruit. Fruit that our once-weak knees and tired hands (Hebrews) are strong enough to support.  

Broken Things

This world is falling apart. We know that. 

We see it every day in the headlines, in our feeds, in our mirrors. We feel it in our hearts. Science tells us that things are always devolving into chaos unless some force is acting on them to keep them moving in a different direction. 

Those of us who have faith believe that our falling-apart world is also slowly being made new again, but it can be hard to reconcile these ideas. Especially when they impact our own hearts. 

I've been thinking about broken things lately...for obvious reasons and for some that are not so obvious. And one of the things that I'm coming to understand is that how we handle broken things depends on what's broken and how broken it is. 

There are some things that can break a little bit and you can put them back together right then and there before the break gets any worse. You can save these things fairly early on and get good life out of them for a good long while afterward, just by stepping in when you see the fracture starting to happen. At the same time, if you let these things go for too long, you'd lose them entirely. They wouldn't be able to be put back together. So you have to get to them early...or forsake them forever. 

On the other hand, there are things that have to completely fall apart before you can even start to mend them. Things that have to reach rock bottom, that have to become a pile of rubble. Things that have to have almost nothing left to them at all before they can be made new. If you try to step in too early, these things are too fragile at their fractures, and you end up breaking them worse than they were when you got them. These are the things that we look at and decide, "I will do something about that when it falls completely off." Because you just know it will be easiest - and strongest - at that point if you put it back together in that way. 

The same is true for us. 

There are times in our lives when we can be put back together fairly early on, seal the cracks, tighten up the loose bits, and get a good long life out of it. There are times when our cracks start to show and one good hug would put them all back together for us, one act of love, one moment of true connection. At the same time, in these situations, if you let us go too far, there's no getting us back. We're broken forever. (This is, in part and very roughly, how trauma breaks us...sometimes.) 

There are other times when you have to just let us fall completely apart, lose everything, hit rock bottom. We have to understand how helpless we are before we can accept the help that will put us back together. And sometimes, just breaking completely down like that lets all the crud and the junk fall through the breaks and into the sewers where it belongs. Then, we're left with good pieces to pick back up and put back together. (This is, in part and very roughly, how addiction breaks us...sometimes.) 

None of us wants to be broken, but this world is falling apart. Us included. And one of the best things we can do for ourselves and others is to understand how we're breaking so that we know what it has to look like to put us back together again. 

And one thing better than that is to have faith that our falling-apart world is also slowly being made new again...including us. 

Even when it's hard to understand how that's even possible.  

Sister Mary Thunder

On Fridays all year, I have been sharing stories about humans and human encounters that have changed my life and help me put the way that I relate with others into perspective. This past week, I've been sharing the story of how faith intermingled with my last few days with my beloved husky companion - Sister Mary Thunder. So of course, on this Friday, I would be remiss if I did not share how 11.75 years with this amazing dog changed my life...and me. 

I spent a lot of my younger years wrestling with this broken world, and many of my young adult years trying to manage the aftermath. By the time I was nearing 30, I was extremely insecure. Scared of the world. Unable to break out of deeply ingrained patterns of hypervigilance and self-hatred. (Yes, two extremes.) 

I spent many years existing in this world while at the same time, trying not to take up too much space. Not to be too loud. Not to be too needy. Not to interject myself in spaces where I wasn't wanted, which, in my mind, was all of them. I did very little outside of the house, and even littler in it. Mostly, I sat around trying not to be overcome by the overwhelming stuff inside of me, walking on eggshells in front of my own psyche, and being alive but not really living. 

On the off chance that I tried to do anything outside of my box, I spent so much time regretting it and apologizing for it that it quickly became completely not worth it to even try. 

Enter: Sister Mary Thunder puppy. 

From the moment I got her, I promised myself that she was not going to suffer from my insecurities. We were going to get out in the world and we were going to do things and we were going to have life together.  Not a life, but life. 

On our very first day together, we started going out. I was too scared to walk her more than a block; I wasn't used to going even that far away from home by myself. But then, we walked over to the local ice cream place for "dog day." Turns out, she loved ice cream. So we started trying to do that as often as we could. 

I made excuses to take her to Tractor Supply, the only local business that would let her in. She went and met the neighbors. Everywhere we went, everyone wanted to pet her and love on her. "She's so beautiful." And she was, always. Right up until the day she died. 

She loved the vet more than anyone, maybe because she was born there, and they always commented what a happy girl she was. She made friends with the mail delivery persons...three of them by the end of her life. How many dog owners in the world have to notify the mailman when their dog dies, only to have that mailman come cry with them? She was a good girl, through and through. The best.

I started making a lot of my social media feed about her, and folks were loving it. I was learning to be open about something in my life, to share authentically, to be real. To have a cool dog and let people love her. And as they loved her, I was learning to let them love me. There were times that I wondered whether anyone really liked me or if they were just dog lovers, but the outpouring of love that I have felt in the past couple of weeks as we faced our last days together...folks were really loving me. And somehow, over the course of 11+ years, I had learned to let them. 

I'm not as scared of the world as I was 12 years ago. I'm not as insecure about myself. I don't feel as isolated in the world, though I am still lonely quite a bit. (I am still praying for God to give me a family of my own someday.) I am more outgoing, both in action and in speech, and I have learned to truly engage the world around me. I have wondered what happens to all of that now that she's gone; I have already sensed how easy it would be to go backward, to become scared again. 

I have already wondered if I've really changed at all or if it was all her. 

But then I look at pictures of her, and I feel brave all over again. I feel joy all over again. I feel love all over again. And I don't want to lose that. 

Because I never wanted her to be limited by my insecurities and now, I don't want to feel like everything we had was a lie. I wasn't pretending to be a better human with her; I was a better human with her. 

And if there's anything I can take forward from here, it has to be that. I have to keep being a better human because of her. 

By the grace of God, I will be. 

The Fallout

God seemed to have answered my prayer. We were on our way to a new lease on life. The vet had told me that no less than three times. And I'd gotten the opportunity in the first place. 

Remember my prayer? If there's a chance, let me have it. If there's not....

And I got that chance, so what happened? 

You would think that in the aftermath of a week like this, I would be mad. That I would be angry with God. That I would be screaming into the universe, hoping He hears me, cheesed off at the bait and switch. 

But I haven't had that thought. Not even for a second. 

Honestly, it surprises even me. 

I mean, I know me. And even I would think that right now, I'd be (forgive the language) pissed. (Also, God isn't so concerned about our language like this. You should study some of the Hebrew and see the things folks have dared say to and about God.) 

But I'm not angry. 

I'm sad. 

The truth is - I got more meaningful time with her. I got two days. Two days that were full of hope and love and life. Two days where she was happy to see me, where I could see that little spark in her eyes that I hadn't seen in so very long. Two days where she was willing and eager to get up with me, to go outside, to walk around, to come back in.

Two days that I had convinced myself to use PTO and take time off work and spend the whole day with my best friend. 

Two days of trusting that everything went well. Two days of believing God. Two days of being thankful. Two days of taking it easy and loving each other. 

You can't tell me that wasn't meaningful time. 

And if my future self is ever reading this, I guarantee that you've forgotten by now how much money those two days cost us...and if you haven't forgotten, please know that the me who is writing this right now knows it was worth every penny. 

Those two days were priceless. 

I am grieving. She came to me in a dream that first night, and I got to say goodbye. I woke up thinking that that day would be a little easier, but I started crying as soon as I woke up, and I never stopped. And I think that's okay. What Sister Mary Thunder and I had for 11+ years was pure love. 

The kind of love that faces the challenges of life together...and beats them. The kind of love that keeps on keeping on. The kind of love that comes to know what the other is thinking. Our love had our lives intertwined to a deeply intimate degree, and it doesn't matter that she was a dog; she was God's tremendous blessing to me, and I will always love her. My grief is simply a reflection of that. 

And my prayer? God answered it. I didn't get the years I was hoping for, but I can't remember asking for years. I asked for time, and I got it. And maybe they weren't our best two days together in more than 11 years, but they were precious days together and, as God guided, so very meaningful.

Today, I am right back where this story started - trying to figure out how to pray again in a season in which I don't know how to go on. In which I don't know what to pray for. In which I feel the frailties of my faith and I'm not sure how to overcome them. 

In which I'm not sure how to trust God or what to trust Him for. 

Except that I know that I'm still asking those questions. And that's at least something.... 

The Crash

My girl was home, and God seemed to have answered my prayer. The surgery went perfect, the cancer was gone, and I was going to have more meaningful time with her. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that she already looked better than she had the day before (and honestly, for a long time). There was more life in her eyes, even though she was clearly in pain. 

I mean, they just cut through her stomach and took a big chunk of her guts out. Of course she was in pain. 

But pain gets better over time. So I made it a point to get her up, take her outside, walk her around. You have to move to get your body used to moving again, and little by little, the pain gets more tolerable until you don't notice it any more. 

She was still breathing hard, still tired. It was obviously a struggle to get up, but she was getting better at it. And more than that, she seemed eager to do it. She was happy to be back with me, and you could see it in her eyes. There was my girl I had been missing. A few more days, and we'd be living up that new lease on life the surgeon told us about. 

Except...

Except she wouldn't eat for me. They told me she'd licked her bowl clean twice for them, but she hadn't licked anything for me...except my face a few times. 

Except the pain medication didn't seem to be helping. In fact, it seemed to be making her worse for some reason. 

Except as the second day went on, even though she seemed to have more will in her heart, she seemed to have less strength in her body, until her gums started to turn pale and, in a hurry, I rushed her back to the vet. 

By the time we got there, I had to carry her in. Because of her surgical incision, I had to lift her in and out of the car anyway, but she had just kind of sunken into my arms, and her legs were so weak that it didn't seem right to put her down. They took her out of my arms and rushed her right to the back. A few minutes later, the vet came out to talk with us. 

Her blood pressure was dangerously low. In the 50s. For reference, he said, it should be in the 120s, just like ours. Her blood work and xrays looked perfect; they couldn't see any complications. Maybe, he said, the pain medication had sparked an adverse reaction and tanked her blood pressure. It was the only thing we could seem to come up with. 

So we planned for her to stay another night with them. Get some IV fluids. Build her volume back up. Try to correct her blood pressure. One more night, then she could come home again, and we would get on with living our new lease on life. That one I'd been praying for. The one that God seemed to have given us. 

Until just before 4 a.m. when my phone rang. 

After having some kind of strange episode the previous evening, my big, sweet girl had gone into cardiac arrest around 3:30 a.m. They had managed to get her back, but shortly after, she arrested again, and they were unable to save her. 

My best friend. My confidant. My gift from God. My blessing. My whole world, my everything, was gone. Just like that. 

Not 60 hours after beating cancer. Not 60 hours after our "new lease on life." Not three days after God seemed to have answered my prayer. 

I wept. 

What else was I supposed to do?  

The Prayer

I have spent many long nights in the past few weeks trying to remember how to pray. If we are friends, you know the troubles that have beset me in the past few weeks - a major stumbling block in my own health, an unexpected setback, the loss of a beloved little dog, followed by a sudden illness and now, the loss, of my big dog and best friend. It's been...a season. 

Last Monday night, I came home from work to find what I was certain to be my best friend's last night on this planet. She could hardly stand up. She stumbled down the stairs. She hadn't eaten in nearly three weeks, and she wasn't drinking much any more. When I took her out into the yard, she refused to come back into the house. Twice, she turned away from me and walked into the grass to lie down. Twice, she looked at me with sad eyes that she could barely hold open at all, telling me, it seemed, that this was the end. 

I'm not ready for the end. I'm not. But I determined that if it was the end, I was going to be there for it. I stayed up all night with my girl, telling her how much I loved her. Thanking her for everything she's given me. Telling her that if it has to be this way, that it will somehow be okay. That I love her. 

At the same time, praying to God. Trying to figure out how to pray to God for something that meant the entire world to me - what would happen next with my girl. With me. 

The prayer that I prayed that whole night was this: "Lord, if there is something I can do to help her, something that would give her more meaningful time with me, then get her to morning. Give me that chance. Whatever the cost, I will take that opportunity."

But in the very same breath, also this: "But if, Lord, there's nothing I can do for her, if I can't get her back, if I can't make her days better or give her more meaningful time, then take her tonight. Take her with peace. And let me somehow be okay." 

A few hours later, my girl...my girl who always fought so hard out of her love for me...rolled over on her back, belly in the air, and put her paw behind her head. I petted that belly so hard, then went and got a syringe full of water, which she happily drank. Then, I filled that syringe with chicken broth, which she happily drank again. Then, I filled a water bottle with broth, and she drank all that, so I brought in a tupperware container and poured it full of broth three times, and she drank it all. 

God was answering my prayer right before my eyes, and before I knew it, the sun was up and both of us had made it through the night. 

I called the vet first thing in the morning and made her an emergency appointment. 

The vet thought, like I did, that my girl was wrestling with grief. Having just lost our other dog three weeks ago, the timing seemed right, but we did our diligence and took an xray anyway...and found a mass. A mass that could be something, a mass that could be nothing. She had to stay in the hospital for a few days anyway, to help rehydrate and re-nutrient her so that maybe she would perk up, so they decided to investigate the mass a little more. 

A couple of hours later, they called and said it was definitely a tumor, but it was in a great spot and both vets on the case were fairly certain they could get it. I agreed to the surgery immediately, without a single thought - I had prayed this prayer. If there is anything I can do...and here it was, my opportunity. Of course, I was taking it. 

A few hours after that, the surgical vet called and said the procedure could not have gone better. Couldn't have even scripted it that good. The entire tumor was successfully removed, she was stable, and this was "definitely going to be a new lease on life for her." The plan was to keep her still a couple of days to manage the malnutrition from three weeks of not eating and send her home on Thursday. 

On Wednesday morning, they called and said actually, she's ready to go home now. Her blood sugars are steady, she's licked her bowl clean twice already, and there's no reason to keep her any longer. I clocked out of work and went home to go get my girl, remembering every second the prayer that I had prayed. 

God was giving me more meaningful time with her. I had prayed the prayer, gotten the opportunity, taken it, and we were walking out victorious. My girl just beat bowel cancer, for crying out loud. 

What more could you ask for?  

Trusting God

There is a prayer that you pray when you trust in God...and one that you pray when you don't. 

I learned that lesson the hard way (again) this past week, as I found myself awake in pure agony, trying to remember how to pray at all. 

Some days, the prayers come easy. Honestly, there doesn't feel like there's a lot at stake with them. It's just you and God, talking about things, confident in what's going to happen next, Nothing life-changing is on the line; just a basic, daily affirmation that you still love God and most important, He still loves you. And life seems certain and tomorrow seems promised and the whole of creation seems "very good." 

And then, suddenly, it's not very good, and the prayers don't come as easy any more.

Because you start to understand your own weakness, your own frailty. You start to question whether you know God at all. You know in your heart that He can, but all of a sudden in these moments, you start to wonder if He will, and the even hint of a possibility that He won't is absolutely paralyzing. 

How can you pray when you're paralyzed? You can hope only that the Spirit is groaning on your behalf.

Hope...because in that moment, it feels like you no longer trust. 

The longer I think about whether or not I trust God in the moments that aren't easy, the more I realize that I do. I do still trust Him. It's me that I don't trust. 

I don't trust me to know what God is thinking. I don't trust me to know how to pray. I don't trust me to know what the outcome should be. 

I don't trust me to know God well enough to be God myself, to know that I am in agreement with Him because I know what I would do, but I suddenly understand that what I would do may not be what He would do. 

I don't trust me enough to know that I would keep trusting God. 

And that's what nearly paralyzes me. 

But at the end of the day, here's where I settle: I come to understand that the fact that I even have these questions, the fact that I have this inner dialogue with myself at all, the fact that I am concerned about this...means that I still trust Him. 

If I didn't, it wouldn't matter to me that I seem to have forgotten how to pray. 

If I am still seeking God, even when He seems impossible to find, then there's something inside of me that still loves Him, even when I don't understand. 

Some days, friends, that's what faith looks like.  

Strangers

To this day, I don't know her name. 

Or his. 

But I have been blessed in my life many times over by the kindness of strangers, and these two come to mind. 

Several years ago when I was in seminary, I made a trip the next state over to attend a retreat class. The weather was rough when it was getting time to go home, and my car got blown off the road several times in a 30-mile stretch: -18 degree windchill, 70 mph winds (gusts over 80). Near white-out conditions. I had gotten permission to leave the retreat a few hours early so that I wasn't navigating this in the dark, but it wasn't much help. I had no control over my car, and I knew it. 

I pulled off at the rest area. 40 miles in either direction from anywhere. No maps with me. An old, "dumb" phone that couldn't help me. Actually, I was still counting my minutes at that time, trying to balance calling for help and racking up extra charges. 

One of the state employees happened to come into the area at the time I was there, and he found me crying on the single little bench in the tiniest of little spaces inside this small shelter - barely warmer than outside, but warmer nonetheless. And he took the time to talk with me. Even offered me half of his lunch. 

An hour or so later, I had found a ride through the family of a new friend from the retreat. They were going to be able to get me the 40 miles to the next town, where my mom and her friend were already on their way to help me get home. I was just too rattled to get back behind the wheel. I just couldn't do it. 

So a couple of hours after that, I found myself at a Cracker Barrel in a somewhat-busy city. Out by the interstate. Waiting another few hours after that for my ride. 

I quietly explained to the staff what was going on, what the circumstances were, and they found me a quiet corner where I could plug my phone in to charge. I spent those couple of hours wandering around the old country store and sitting quietly in my corner, reading a book, passing the time, until my mom called to let me know she was close...and she was hungry. So I asked the staff for a table for three. 

They sat me at a decent-sized table by myself, but it was taking a bit longer for my rescue to arrive than previously discussed, and at some point, a woman at a small table by herself looked over and struck up a conversation. She explained that she was alone tonight, too, and I told her I had been alone all day, but I was looking forward to not being alone any minute now. I told her about my day, about the storm, about just being too shaken to do much else. 

And she invited me over to her table. 

By the time my mom and her friend arrived, I was sitting at a small table with a complete stranger, talking about life and getting my heart steadied. I stopped shaking for the first time in hours and relaxed a little bit. This complete stranger, who knew nothing at all about me, was somehow able to use her presence to convince me that things were going to be okay. To reassure me that I was going to be okay. 

With one simple invite from an empty table to a full one. 

So for the second time in one day, a stranger had offered to feed me. And that day, that day that I knew I would never forget because of the storm, became a day I will never forget for an entirely different reason. 

And it became the day I understood the gift of inviting someone to my table, no matter how small it sometimes feels. 

Because with the two of us here, this little table is somehow completely full.  

God's Standards

A sin is a sin is a sin. There's no sin that is greater than any other sin, nothing you can do that breaks God's law only a little bit. If you break God's law, you've broken all of it. On this point, the Bible is clear.

And we are all sinners. 

But while there is no degree of sin - all sin is equal - there are differences in the circumstances of sin. 

Remember when the Bible tells us that sin is sin is sin, but woe be to the man who causes one of these little children to fall away? Woe be to the man who causes someone else to sin? 

It's one thing to break God's law; it's another thing to get someone else to break God's law. It's one thing to fall away on your own; it's another thing to cause someone else to fall away. 

Ezekiel says it this way: God has a higher standard for the shepherds than the sheep (34:7-10). That is, if you're the person in the situation who is absolutely supposed to know better, God holds you more accountable for whatever happens next. 

If you're the one with the faith, the experience, the voice, the reason, the power, the ability, the responsibility to keep this train on the tracks, if you're the one in the driver's seat when this thing goes off the rails, God holds you more accountable than He does the person who simply got on the train to take a ride. 

You're both guilty of sin, but your sin is compounded by the fact that you were responsible for guiding the whole enterprise. 

Now, this sounds like good news to a lot of folk. Because most of us are what we'd like to call "common." We live regular lives in regular houses with regular families without a lot of major responsibility. We aren't leaders. We aren't CEOs. We aren't pastors. We aren't elders. We aren't Sunday School teachers. So...we aren't shepherds. 

There's not a lot in this world that we're responsible for driving. Nobody's hopping on our train. It's not up to us to keep very many things on the rails. So those "shepherds" that God is holding to a higher standard? That's them, not us. 

Except...the moment you become a follower of Christ, you become a shepherd. 

The moment you give your life to Him, you're supposed to know better. Or at least, you're supposed to be trying to know better. The moment you give your life to Him, you have a knowledge and a power that can guide this whole world, if you'll just use it. If you'll just live it. If you'll just let others see it. 

And you never know who is watching. You never know who is following your example. You never know who is trying to come to follow Christ only to see the way you're doing it and decide that it must be okay because you are doing it. Face it. You're a shepherd, whether you know the names of all of your sheep yet or not. 

And that means you're being held to that higher standard. Right now. 

Sin is sin is sin. But woe be to the man who doesn't realize he's a shepherd...and is leading a flock, however big or small, astray. 

God's Song

At a few key moments in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, we are introduced to the idea of a "funeral song." The Bible says plainly, "And they sang the following funeral song...." 

What follows does not look like a song to us. 

They say that if you understand the original Hebrew, you can see how poetic these passages truly are. You can glean the rhythms from them and understand how they were mournful, lyrical compositions. And as someone who has studied Hebrew, I have to tell you - I still don't always get it. Probably because it's still nowhere near a native tongue for me. 

But music doesn't have to be a native tongue; music is universal. If we could hear the instruments, the intonation in the voices, the spoken rhythms, I'm sure we would understand better what is meant by these "songs." 

Thankfully, what we do see in these songs is the stories, and stories are also universal. We understand what it means to tell the story of someone's life, and that's what these songs do best. They remember the good times, the hard times, the victories, the graces, the fullness of a person. 

And God has one of these songs for each of us. 

That's what Ezekiel says (32:2). God sings a funeral song for everyone. For all of His people. For every single in all of His creation. 

He knows your story. Individually. He knows your life. He remembers the good times, the hard times, the victories, the graces. He celebrates the fullness of who you are - who you've been, who you've become, who you're becoming. 

How deeply you are loved. 

That's what His song does. It celebrates our story. In His tongue. 

Now, I'll be honest and tell you that it doesn't always sound like a song to me. I don't always understand the rhythms. I don't understand the lyrical composition of it. I don't always hear the melody. 

Sometimes, I hear the harmony. Sometimes, I hear the dissonance. Sometimes, it throws me off. But what I do recognize is the story, and it puts my entire experience into perspective. 

God is singing my story over me. In His own voice. 

God is singing your story over you. 

Isn't that something beautiful? 

God is Known

There is no shortage of stories in the world about what God has done for His people. 

We have, of course, the Bible, which is the Word of God. The things He wants us to know about the things that He's done. And it's important for us to read our Bible, to know these stories, to understand the way that God lives and loves in our world. There is no substitute for this; it's the only record we have of "In the beginning" to "It is finished" and into the already, but not yet. The Bible is absolutely essential. 

We also have our communities of fellowship. Together, we worship the Lord, pray for His goodness to us, and celebrate what He has done for us. Our fellowships are filled with testimonies - stories about what God is still doing in the world. There's nothing quite like hearing the words from the mouth of someone who shouldn't be talking to us right now, but here they are, by the grace of God. Nothing like hearing the gratefulness in the inflection of someone who knows exactly what God has done for them and how big of a thing it really is. Our fellowship is absolutely essential. 

But the greatest story you will ever hear about who God is is the one He is writing in your own life. 

Here's the challenge for most of us: we have read the Bible, and we know the stories. We have heard the testimonies, and we are encouraged by them. But if we're being honest with ourselves and with each other, so many of these stories that we hear and know make us go home into our quiet spaces at night and cry our eyes out. 

We know God is good, but why isn't He good to me? We know that our God is a healing God, but why am I still so broken? We know that God so loved the world, but why does it feel like He doesn't love me? 

As long as we only have the stories of God through other lives, we will never understand the love of God the way that we need to. 

We need a God who loves us. 

And this isn't blasphemy. It's not. All the way back in the book of the prophet Ezekiel, we see this truth playing out. In fact, the prophet himself speaks it (Ezekiel 28:25-26). God is doing all of these things in the world, all of these things to the peoples and the nations, all of these things for the peoples and the nations, and the prophet says that it will be when God brings His people home and restores them and redeems them that they will truly understand. 

His people will live in safety and will have homes and plant vineyards and be well while they see Him passing down His judgment on those around them (those sinners we talked about yesterday), and then they will know who He is. 

When they are living the kind of loved life they dream of, when God is providing for them, when they are safe and secure in a fallen and broken world. 

See, even if you're Israel, there's simply no substitute for experiencing first-hand the love of God. Even when you have the whole history of your people, the whole testimony of your ancestors, the whole witness of the not-His-people world, something changes when you are living safely in your own home with your growing vineyard and a hedge of protection around you. 

Something changes when God's story is your story. 

So open your eyes and find your story. Find His story. Figure out what He's doing in your life, and rejoice. 

For the Lord your God loves you. 

God's Cup

When you read the Old Testament, you see a number of cities that face God's justice - cities that were sinful through and through, cities that refused to turn back to Him, cities that lived in opposition to the love and mercy and goodness that God desired for His entire creation since the very beginning. 

Sodom and Gomorrah. Tyre and Sidon. Nineveh was set to experience that kind of judgment. And then, even when the nation of Israel split and Judah became her own people, we saw Israel herself facing this justice. She had turned her back, and God was going to let her reap the consequences of that. 

Judah...thought she was safe. 

She thought she was safe because she was God's people. She wasn't perfect, and she knew it, but she wasn't like those other nations. Not like those other peoples. Not like those other sinners. 

Then, in Ezekiel, God tells Judah the very thing that she doesn't want to hear - she's guilty, too. 

She's guilty of the same things that the other nations are guilty of. In fact, she's done exactly the same things that Samaria has done. (And we know how much Judah dislikes Samaria. Those sinners.)

And as a result of her sin, Judah is going to drink the exact same cup of God's judgment as Samaria has. (Ezekiel 23:32)

Exactly the same. 

You can still hear them protesting thousands of years in the future. But we're Your people. We're not perfect, but we're not that bad. We're not Samaria bad. We've made some mistakes, but You can't possibly make us drink from the same cup as those sinners.

And yet.... 

And yet, that's exactly what God does. Because God doesn't discriminate between sinners. In God's eyes, one sin is as much broken as any other. The smallest transgression goes as much against His design as the biggest one, and every single one contributes to the fallenness of the whole enterprise. 

We are not today much different than Judah was back then. We consider ourselves God's people, God's chosen people. After all, we chose Him, right? We have given ourselves over to Him. So the mistakes that we make, the errors we commit, the sins that beset us in this fallen world...they aren't like the mistakes, errors, and sins of those other sinners. 

We're supposed to be special. We're supposed to be loved. We're supposed to be the chosen ones, the ones through whom God is making His name in this world. And if we're out here doing our best to live for His name, why would He make us drink from the cup of His judgment?

Because we're guilty of the same sin. That's why. 

Because at the end of the day, we're sinners. That's why. 

Because when we do things that aren't consistent with who He is, it doesn't matter what kind of jewelry we're wearing around our neck, what we're doing on a Sunday morning, where we're giving our money, or anything else. We are sinners. 

And there is but one cup for all sinners.

Whether we think we're Samaria bad or not. 

Thank God that at least, we're living in a time when that cup has been poured out for us by the grace of Christ on the Cross. 

I hear it's a bitter cup, should we have to actually drink it. 

Diane

I am someone who likes to relate to others through story. And, as is typical for so many of us atypicals, I feel an immense pressure to always have a story ready...to demonstrate exactly how it is that I relate exactly to you because I have had a story in my life that uses similar words and themes as the one you're telling me. 

Can you please finish your story quickly so that I can share mine and we can appropriately bond over our similar experiences? 

Someone has said (perhaps many someones) that we don't listen to hear any more; we listen to respond. Sadly, that is too often true. But I confess that I am also trying to hear you, and I'm one of those folks that remembers the little things you didn't think I was even paying attention to. 

Anyway...

I once had a friend who lived nearby. A neighbor. I once had a neighbor. And she was very much like me in that she loved to swap stories, not facts, and we spent a good deal of time learning each others' stories over the years. 

On the summer that I first learned that I was allergic to bee stings, after being stung for the first time ever in my life (and the second, and the third, and the fourth...it was a hard summer, okay?), I was walking into Diane's house and a hornet actually followed me. I explained to her that I had been stung an uncharacteristic number of times that summer by bees, wasps, hornets, whatever, and that I had found out that I was allergic, but these things were literally following me around for some reason.

I pointed to the hornet, and we both laughed. It was definitely following me around. 

(Sidebar: we would later discover an acid-base imbalance in my body that was attracting these insects, as it gave off the same pH levels as the stuff they seek out for food.) 

Without missing a beat, Diane chimes in with her story. She tells me about someone she knew - a friend, a friend's kid, a cousin, I can't remember - who had never been stung by a bee before, didn't know whether they were allergic or not, but died almost instantly because the insect had stung this young man in the neck and the venom had injected straight into his carotid artery, traveled almost directly to his heart via the venous return system, and paralyzed it. 

Thanks, Diane. 

This week, I got stung by a bee for the first time in many years. And do you know one of the first things that popped into my head? Thank God it didn't get me in the neck. And then that horrible story of a young man who tragically lost his life by the pure randomness of where a bee decided to sting. 

As I've thought about that, I've thought about how quick I am to try to share a story, to try to relate, to try to establish a connection with someone, but I wonder how many of my stories - as applicable as they may seem in the moment - are actually horror stories and come back to haunt someone else in the most terrible of times. 

It makes me consider carefully the ways that I try to relate and whether or not I'm actually being helpful or if I'm planting a rotten seed. 

For what it's worth, I thoroughly enjoyed my friendship with Diane. We got along swimmingly. I miss her quite a bit and think of her often, and I have even seen her once since she moved away. But this week, I'm thinking about that story and realizing I'm still learning lessons from Diane. 

So no, really. Thanks, Diane. 

And thanks, bee. For avoiding the neck region.  

God's Name

Most of us know, or have known, the pain of gossip. Gossip in the workplace, gossip in the church, gossip in the family. Eventually, it makes its way around to you, and your natural response is often, "Wait...I did what?" 

But by then, there's a whole trail of damage in the wake. Relationships lost, trust broken, goodwill gone. Forgiveness is off the table because folks have already decided that if you don't apologize, they're done with you, but you didn't even know you were supposed to apologize or for what, and you're certainly not going to apologize for something someone else made up and spread about you that's not true. 

Gossip is hard. Rumors are hard. False rumors are even harder. 

An old piece of wisdom says something to the effect that you should live your life in such a way that if anyone hears the rumors, they won't believe them. 

That means being consistently you, all the time. 

Most of us aren't very good at this. I'm not very good at this. I am sometimes too prone to getting sucked into the drama. As a listening ear, sometimes, I get pegged as being in agreement even when I'm not because my primary goal in any moment is to be actively engaged and listening to the person I'm with...even if they're being ridiculous. If I have the relationship and the grace to speak truth, I will, but I'm listening. Some folks take that as an affirmation. It isn't always. 

But then, all of a sudden, my name gets sucked into things, and I don't love how that turns out. Mostly, I don't like how it turns out because I realize in those moments that I haven't always lived the way I want to. Sometimes, I am guilty of breaking a confidence or a trust or a connection. Not because I wanted to, but because I thoughtlessly did it in a moment in which I was swayed and was not thinking about the reputation I was building. 

God is not like this. 

See, God acts - always - for the sake of His name. Ezekiel tells us that (20:9); it is told to us many times over in the Bible. And it is not just told to us; it is shown to us, over and over and over again. 

The people don't always like it. The other nations don't always like it. It doesn't always seem pretty. It doesn't always seem nice. Sometimes, it seems hard to swallow and definitely hard to defend when others ask us questions about why God is the way He is. 

But the answer to that is actually quite simple - God always acts for the sake of His name. He always acts consistent with His character. He always moves consistent with His heart. When you see God move, hear Him speak, watch Him heal, listen to His voice, you get one consistent message - God is. 

And then, when you hear the rumors, there's no way you can believe them because look, He has shown you exactly who He is, and He has never wavered. 

And when you have that, it's just so easy to love Him. Because we know Him. Because He always is. Because He is so consistent. Because He isn't wavering, isn't shaky, doesn't change, it's easy to put our trust in Him, to know what we're getting, to treasure Him. To love Him. 

And to want to live our lives the same way - for the sake of His name.

If we can do that - consistently - then we'll have what we needed all along. Anyone who hears the rumors couldn't possibly believe them. 

God of Life

I hope lightning doesn't come out of sky and strike me for saying this... 

God ought to smite me. 

God ought to smite you. 

In fact, the greatest thing we are afraid of when it comes to God is His smiting power and His apparent willingness to use it. 

We have been taught, usually in churches, that God wants to take sinners like us and throw us into the pit of eternal fire, out in the darkness where there is "weeping and gnashing of teeth." We have been taught to fear God's fury, and this has been used as a motivator toward obedience...because fear can never lead to the greater things God wants for us like love, grace, mercy, or justice; fear can only lead to obedience. 

So we have developed this faith where we are supposed to be obedient above all other things, and only that so that we don't end up on the wrong end of God's smite-y hand. 

Here's the thing, though. If you actually read the Bible, especially the New Testament, there's not a lot of smiting. Where you do see it, primarily in the Old Testament, God often shows a lot of remorse. And where you do see it, it's not God destroying His people who sorta kinda still got it wrong; it's the other peoples, who don't care a hill of beans about the Lord or His ways who are reduced to a pile of rubble and ashes. 

There's not a single character in all of the Bible who was trying to follow God, who wanted to do right, who was seeking the right way, and was smitten by the Lord. 

Because for as afraid of it as we are, God doesn't really want to smite anyone. He doesn't want anyone to die. 

He just wants us to stop sinning. (Ezekiel 18:23)

God disciplines His people far more than He smites them. 

God teaches His people far more than He disciplines them. 

God guides His people far more than He teaches them. 

God rescues His people far more than He abandons them. 

God loves His people. Period. 

So if you, like so many others, are afraid of God's smite-y hand (which was such a beautiful play on God's mighty hand that I simply had to use it again), rest easy, my friend. God doesn't want you to die. He just wants you to stop sinning. 

And don't you want that, too? 

God of Vision

Do you ever wake up screaming? Fuming? Crying? Do you ever wake up angry with someone you know in real life because of something they just did to you in a dream? 

You run into them in the office or in the grocery store or maybe in the kitchen while you're making breakfast, and you try to laugh it off, but there's still a little part of you that can't quite forget the experience you just sorta-kinda had with them. 

Maybe they really would do that. Maybe they want to. Maybe that's why you dreamed it. 

There's no shortage of false visions in this world, false dreams, false prophets. There's no shortage of made-up stories that get inside our heads one way or another - through our dreams, through our fears, through gossip, through propaganda and manipulation. It's hard sometimes to tell what the truth is any more. Especially in a society that tries to have you all but convinced that there's no such thing even as truth any more. 

Thankfully, we have a God who is truth, and He has told us plainly that He puts a stop to this. 

Ezekiel was a prophet, a man of God. In fact, the book that bears his name calls him that quite often - man of God. But as far as men of God go, they were a dime a dozen in Ezekiel's day (as they so often are in many days, including our own). There were plenty of men walking around claiming to have messages from God, claiming to speak truth to the people, claiming to bear a message of hope. 

And people loved that message of hope. It was certainly a welcome relief from the judgment Ezekiel was proclaiming. And, honestly, probably a bit easier to swallow. I mean, what do you make of a man who lays on his side for more than a year, nibbling from a small stash of food that is barely enough to sustain him? 

When you're the guy called to do the crazy things in a culture that's listening to the false voices just because they are more pleasant, it's easy to wonder if anyone even cares. 

But God cares. 

And God says that He will stop all the false visions. (Ezekiel 13:23)

He will stop letting the false prophets speak. He will make sure they don't have anything left to speak about. He will make it so that the people aren't listening to them any more and aren't confused, that the people can't be confused. 

Because He's going to act. 

God is going to do something so God-like, so indisputably good and gracious and loving and powerful that there won't be any false vision left that can hold even a small flicker of light because this world is going to be so lit up with God Himself, with the fullness of truth, that there won't be any room left for the lies. He puts a stop to it all. 

Kind of like how, eventually, your friend, your spouse, your sibling, whoever, loves you so thoroughly well while acting so normal and natural that it's the most obvious thing in the world that whatever you were afraid of from that false vision you had, that dream, it just vanishes. You're not mad at them any more. You're not suspicious. You remember they love you, and all is well. 

That's how it will be when God acts. All of the anger, the suspicion, the worry, the fear, the whatever...it all just goes away. Because He loves us so thoroughly, so normally, so naturally, and we recognize that love. 

And all is well. 

God of Flesh

I have some news for you, and it may be hard for some of you to accept: 

You were made to be human. 

The longer we live in these fragile bodies, the more that frustrates some of us. The more we are trapped by the things we keep trying to get away from, the more we are limited by the things we keep trying to grow out of, the more we are troubled by the things we keep trying to fix but can't, the more frustrated we become with our flesh and we start dreaming of the day when we can leave these bodies behind and just be done with it. 

But God's design for you - for us, for me - was for us to be human. He intended for us to be flesh. 

That's means there's something special and beautiful and "very good" about it. (Remember Genesis? God saw it and said it was "very good.")

Ezekiel was a prophet during a time when Israel was, to say the least, disobedient. Their love for God had fallen away, and they were turning in their own direction, and their lives and their nation were in turmoil. Babylon was a breath away. Defeat. Loss. Curse. Ezekiel spoke the truth about all of it to them. 

But he also spoke hope. And in one of his messages of hope, he promises that God is going to restore them. When God restores them, the prophet says, He will "replace your heart of stone with a heart of flesh" (11:19).

Not a heart of spirit. Not a heart of fire. Not a heart of holiness. Not an eternal heart. Not any of the things that we think about when we think about finally being restored to the way God desires us to be. 

No, when God restores His people, He puts in them a heart of flesh, the very same way He made them in the very beginning. 

But, you say, my flesh is so weak. My spirit...that's where it's at. His Spirit, even better. But the flesh? 

There are denominations of Christians who have spent their entire existence waging war against the flesh. Even if you don't belong to one of these denominations, you've probably heard at least a sermon or two in your own church about the spirit vs. the flesh. You've probably been hinted at enough that you've developed a theology that understand that the flesh is bad. 

Friend, the flesh is not bad. The flesh is God's great, beautiful design for you. 

The flesh is tender; it feels things deeply. It is strong, but fragile - able to stand up to this world, but definitely affected by it. It is constantly regenerating, always becoming new, just as God intended us to do. It is enveloping; it wraps our whole being in its embrace. It is the flesh into which God first breathed life, and it is the flesh, then, that holds that life.

Yet what happens over the course of our living that life is that we become hardened. We become rigid. We become something less than we were meant to be, and we ache for the day that God restores us. 

And He will. 

But when He does, don't be surprised. He's going to make us flesh again. 

After all, that was the plan in the first place...wasn't it? 

Katherine

Last week, I got a phone call. I think she said her name was Katherine. 

A few weeks ago, I went to a local event that is one of my favorite events of the year. In it, local businesses set up and promote themselves and give away a bunch of promotional items, plus the chance to win raffle baskets. I've been going to this event for years, and I enter to win everything. Because...why not? 

Nobody has ever called me. Nobody has ever sent me an email. Nobody has ever harassed me because I provided my information at this event for the sole purpose of possibly winning something. 

But this year, I used a stack of old business cards instead of filling out slips of paper. 

And this year, I got a call. 

Katherine was a representative of a local business, and they were planning on holding a fully-catered networking event in the near future. She saw my business, which presents me as an author, speaker, and artist, and she wanted to know if I would be interested in coming and connecting with other persons in the community? 

I told her now was not a good time. I was having some challenges, and now was simply not a good time to commit myself to anything else. 

If you know me, you know what these challenges are. At least, some of them. If you don't, it's not important. Katherine, who has never met me and never even spoken to me before that phone call, had no idea what my challenges are in this season. 

But immediately, she said, "I'm sorry to hear that."

Then, she continued, "I mean, I don't know what's going on, but if I can be of any help at all, just let me know. I know I'm just a (insert her profession), but I know a lot of people, and if I can make some contacts that would be helpful to you, I'm willing to do that. Call me back on this number any time. Stop in and ask for me. Whatever you need, I'll do my best to help." 

This kind of wraps into a neat little package a couple of the other folks that I have talked about in the past few weeks in this space. I wonder if it might be that God is trying to shape my heart in this direction in a more profound way than even I realize. 

See, I want to be this person. I want to be this person who puts other humans first. Who is quick to set aside business and get down to humanity. Who is willing to use my connections and my resources for the good of others. Who is present. Who can shift on a dime and start a response with, "I'm sorry to hear that," and be willing to spin off in an entirely different direction, just like that. 

Some days, I'm really good at this. Some days, I'm still working on it. Some days, I feel bound by organizational structures - the "rules" about being in certain places that I am in, belonging to certain organizations I belong to (professional or community-based or faith-based or whatever), and I feel that tug about whether "the man" would approve if I stepped out of my sandals and made a little holy ground. The last thing I want to do sometimes is create a liability. 

But here was Katherine, calling me from her office, making a business contact that turned into a human connection, and if I'm being honest - I'm in places in my life right now where this is not only welcome; it's encouraged. Those structures around me that I worry so much about operating within? They are people-centered. Just like I want to be. 

So some days, I'm really good at this. Some days, I'm still working on it. And some days, I am blessed to be the recipient of it in a random phone call from an old business card that reminds me how wonderful it is to be a human being first and have someone recognize that not all engagements have to be transactions. 

Some are just love.  

 

Reading the Bible

These past few days in Mark have been a reminder of what reading the Bible is supposed to be for those of us who are seeking to become more like Christ. 

It's easy for us to read as spectators, as outsiders to the events unfolding within the pages. We bring our own faith and understanding to the stories, and we judge the characters...sometimes, rather harshly. I would never do that, we think. I can't believe they did that. 

If only they knew what I knew. 

But most of the folks in the Bible knew more than I even think I know, which is sometimes saying a lot. I mean, who am I to sit here as a person who has read the Bible and gone to church for 25-ish years and somehow think that I have the upper hand on someone like, say, Peter, who walked with the actual Jesus for three years and saw the miracles first-hand and heard His voice and knew what He smelled like? Pretty bold of me, I think. 

Who am I to sit here and make snide remarks in my heart about the disciples somehow forgetting to take seven baskets of miraculous bread with them, like they weren't going to get hungry later? 

I mean, even as I sit here and write this post, reflecting on what I have learned from the book of Mark this week, and most recently, the trial of Jesus and Peter's denial, someone in the room next to me forgot to turn their alarm off for this day that they don't even have to get up, and I promise you all - I just heard a rooster crow. 

Forgive me, Lord. 

What it all reminds me is that when we read our Bibles, as persons who are trying to become more like Jesus, the very best thing that can happen is that our Bible begins reading us. That we hear our own hearts in the stories. That we become the characters in its pages. That we recognize ourselves in the Scriptures. 

Because this isn't just a story about Noah and David and Hannah and Peter and James and a eunuch and a demon-possessed slave girl; this is a story about us. 

It's a story about me. 

It's a story about my failures, lived out through other characters. It's a story about my doubts, spoken by other tongues. It's a story about my weaknesses, made strong by the Lord. It's a story about who I really am, whether that's everything I want to be or not. It's a story that reminds me not to be so quick to judge because, now that I think about it, I can actually see how stuff like that happens. 

I can see it in the mirror. 

I read my Bible every day. But sometimes, I'm fortunate enough that my Bible reads me. And when it does, I recognize it's time to start asking myself the hard questions. 

Have I forgotten the bread? Have I forgotten the miracle? Am I prone to start a riot? Why now and not tomorrow?

They are questions worth asking.

Causing a Riot

As I continue reading in the book of Mark, the Word just keeps working on my heart. Convicting me, helping me recognize things I haven't really noticed before. It's amazing how you can read the same story over and over and over again and always find something new, but that's the way that our eternal God works. 

So as I keep reading, I come to the point where the religious elite are starting to talk seriously about how they need to stop Jesus. Arrest Him. Eliminate Him. Eliminate the threat to their power and status and whatever else they were hoping to protect. 

"But not during the Passover, or the people might riot." 

That's what they decided, just a few pages before they actually go and arrest Jesus during the Passover. And as far as we know, there wasn't a huge riot. In fact, even Peter abandoned the Lord in those dark hours. 

But they were afraid of a riot. Because how do you expect that you can just arrest the leader of a religious movement on their most holy day and the people will be okay with it? It's a well-founded fear. If you arrest Jesus during the Passover, the people might riot. 

The question that my convicted heart asks in response to this is: what if you arrest Jesus on any other day? 

Honestly. 

We saw this recently in our Covid-era restrictions. There was a greater outcry about churches being shut down around Easter and Christmas than any other Sunday, and the question that we have to ask ourselves is...why?

Is Jesus greater on our holy days? Is there something more special about these days than any other days? What does it say about our faith if we are more likely to riot on a holy day than on a regular one? 

Let's ask it another way - what is different in my relationship with Jesus at Christmas or Easter (or Passover) than on any other Sunday? What is different about it on a so-called "holy day" than on any other regular day of the year? 

Do I love Jesus enough that I would riot no matter when they arrested Him? Or are the Pharisees right, and they only have to worry about me on the Passover? 

And, as it turns out, do they even have to worry about me on the Passover? Because there's nothing in the story that told us there were even any small riots at all. The only scene that was being made was the one being made with torches and clubs on the Mount of Olives by the folks who were kind of afraid of a riot...and ended up making the ruckus. 

It's a good question to ask ourselves. The Pharisees only feared the people on the Passover. 

As followers of Jesus, when does the world fear us? 

Or do they even have to?