Faith

What good is faith if you live as the faithless live? And where is God when you look beyond right next to you, beyond His very presence, and cannot seem to find Him way out there on the horizon?

It’s tough to admit, but I’ve been living probably more faithlessly since God has decided to work powerfully beyond measure in my life. Since He showed up in undeniable ways and His presence pursues me, something in me has shut off. Rather, something has run for the hills in absolute terror that He could be here, that He could be doing this.

In all my life, I have never stopped running. That doesn’t come as a surprise to just about everyone who has ever known me. There’s always been something that seemingly deserved running from. This fear, this fight through flight response, has been my inspiration. It has been my driving force. My life has been driven by panic. By never being able to be caught. By anything. At any time. For any reason.

With fear, there has been struggle. Struggle that has defined me, at least as far as I have let other people see. It has been perhaps a way to be noticed, a way to find something I thought my life might be lacking. People watching, waiting to see how long I could stand. Watching with the same eyes that watch a car accident, thinking the impact was impressive and arguing with yourself whether you want to see them walk away or if at least an ambulance run would be more satisfying.

I have been very good over the years of talking about the struggle. Whatever it has been at any given point in time, it has been easy to get myself sucked in and take it on as my story, as the very definition of who I have been in any moment.

I’ve been afraid, I suppose, that if my story wasn’t so powerful, if the fight wasn’t so obvious, if every second of every day was not a struggle – and oh a very public one at that – if my story did not trump everything you could ever possibly think about, you would never notice I existed.

Maybe I would never notice I existed.

Yet it has been this mentality that has led to my most silent secret – how very lonely this life has been. How lonely it continues to be. I don’t know that there is any place I could go where a single person would even know me. Truly know me. Not for the trouble I put before them. Not for the striving and the effort to prove myself. Not for the demanding cries that yearn to be acknowledged. Just truly known.

I don’t know that there’s anywhere I could go where I would encounter my truest self. It seems so stuck behind this wall of habit and this deep fear of being nothing and being something at the same time. This fear that is powered by wanting to be noticed, afraid that perhaps I’ll never matter. And this fear that it doesn’t matter anyway and everything is truly as beautiful as it seems.

So I’m an ass. I know it. I’m kind of stuck there, and it absolutely kills me.

So I run into the arms of my God, who has come and answered so many questions of my heart and burns with the aching for me to live it.

And I live the life of the faithless. Listening to God, hearing His promises, understanding His word that is just for me. And oh, the beautiful words He has whispered to me over the past several months, years, perhaps even a lifetime had I been listening. Falling asleep in buoyant hope, telling Him I understand, that I trust what He is doing. Knowing in the depths of my heart that what He says is Truth, knowing life could never be the same, that a new day dawns with the morning and then being impatient for morning and demanding a new day in the dusk. Pushing myself, yearning out of my heart for that authentic existence that is so powerfully present in those quiet, down moments with just me and Him.

Then waking to the same world and having that same depth of flight in my heart, living the faithless life and waiting on God to move then standing in His way so He couldn’t possibly answer. Telling Him I trust Him on the one hand and turning away with the other, making contingency plans in case it just isn’t meant to be. Always having a way out. Refusing to close the door behind me. Just in case.

Just in case…

In case God is a liar? In case the forces that long for my captivity are stronger than the call of my freedom? In case the burden of that freedom is more crushing ever than any struggle?

In case I am not worthy? In case I am not beautiful? In case I am nothing? In case I come face-to-face with something in me beyond what I could handle?

I have found that. I stand face-to-face with that heart of me every day. That piece of me that is absolutely unbearable, and I find it an ass even within myself. That part of me that can’t give up fighting. That can’t relax. That can’t rest. That can’t embrace what God is so longing to give me – and what my heart so painfully longs for.

That part of me that’s…less. And living faithless.

Knowing what God is doing, knowing what He is calling in me, knowing my freedom, knowing His presence…and then when the moment comes and it’s time to trust in a big way in a big moment in a big time, backing out and tucking tail and saying I’m just not feeling it right now and something must have gotten crossed in translation because I don’t sense that He’s done it yet. It comes time for that moment, that test of faith and that instance where His power is promised to show up…and I start to wonder if I could really do it, how long it would last, how long I would last, and what unexpected event I haven’t foreseen that will throw the whole thing into turmoil.

Then understanding, as I write and as a heavy weight settles on my heart, that He has completely done it. Only my lack of faith holds me back.

It’s not that I believe He isn’t capable. It’s not that I believe He’d lie or that He’d sit and watch me suffer, that He’d let these things continue to hold me. After all He’s done, all He’s healed, all He’s been in me…it’s not possible that He could be any other than that purity. It’s that…I don’t know.

I want to say maybe the struggle is stronger, but I wonder if it’s the fight in me that has its hold on my heart.

The struggle itself can’t be stronger. That mocks the presence of God and even His word; it would be foolish to think there was some darkness where His light could never reach. And I know this to be true. For in the darkest of nights in the refuge of His arms, where I encounter that authenticity I have so been longing for, I have prayed many earnest prayers. Particularly lately. And with each prayer, each understanding, each admission and confession and plea, He has answered. Undeniably. Powerfully. Perfectly. Answered. There’s no denying there is Power where He is.

And He is here.

Then where am I? I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. I am torn between what was and what is. Not even what will be, for what will be is what is now if only I was setting myself free to experience it. I haven’t the power to create any of it, but I have the power to pull the weeds from around what God is growing, to make new decisions, to choose to live by the heart He is given me. That’s my job – to set myself free, pull the weeds, and live by Him.

I just can’t seem to do it.

There’s a point where all these words are meaningless. I’m way beyond that point. They are words I have rolled over and over again in my mind as I have fallen asleep praying for night after night. They are words that have been so confident, so sure in those moments between just He and I when everything makes sense and it all seems so pure and simple. It really does seem simple.

Unless I’m in it. Then, it’s the furthest thing from my mind until it drives a stake through my heart later that there was another missed moment, another missed presence because I was too busy, too worried, too afraid to even have a passing thought as to His perfect Presence there.

I’m tired of living with God just at night. Just locked away.

Interesting...as I write that, I know that I am locked away only when I am removed from God. During the day, when those moments and those chances come, when I know He is calling me to something more, and when I know what I’m about to do, say, not do, excuse, procrastinate, or mess up is not authentically me, not authentically His child. That is when I am most locked away.

Alone with Him, though…life is beautiful. It makes sense.

I’ve said He is steadily bringing me about to the place where I make sense. That is true. He is revealing those pieces of false self that have perhaps always been, that continue to rear their ugly head, but He is also blessing me with glimpses of what should have been, what should be now, and what will be. What is, actually, I understand. If only I got out of my own way.

That is perhaps the most painful tearing of my heart. It’s not that God is showing me what will be. Or what could have been. Or what the redemption would have looked like in this or that moment of my past. It’s that He is showing and inviting me to what IS. What is NOW. What is HERE. What is HE. What is HE in ME.

That’s the part I have trouble swallowing. That it is HE in ME. It doesn’t blow my mind that He could be who He is, that He could do what He’s doing, even that He could speak the words He whispers to my heart. It leaves me absolutely speechless that He could…no, that’s not right. It’s not that He could do it in me. It’s that He chooses to.

That’s what blows my mind. That’s what keeps me hesitant. Afraid.

Afraid because I guess I don’t feel worthy. Afraid because I guess I don’t think it’s possible. Not that it’s not possible to live without the pain…I feel like I’m starting to almost get a handle on beginning to process the concept of that. Just that…I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I can ever give up fighting.

Then I look at what He’s done.

I look at a body once racked with pain and illness, a mysterious attack that doctors could not even identify for more than five years. I look at a body that laid in a bed, alone and afraid, yet for some reason refusing to die in the same breath it prayed for an end. I look at a body that could do nothing but tell the story of its sickness, a cry for companionship and for that noticing that we all so long for. A body that believed somehow the sickness kept it relevant, kept people remembering it even existed, even as it laid wasting away.

I look at that body today…that runs ten minutes every morning, about a mile. Well, five mornings a week. And has been for months. Slowly building strength. …that works hard, throwing itself into long-dormant but much-needed projects like hanging drywall, painting, tending the garden, cleaning the house. …that understands its sickness now, diagnosed two years ago, and knows the balance of tenderness and trust required to take care of itself.

…a body that hasn’t been telling that story. That has spent precious little, almost no time at all, telling of its healing. By word or by deed. Because it continues cursing itself in its weakness, shadowing its power. For the power is the real fear.

And oh, there are days its curses are loud. There are days it’s too easy to look at this “healing” and wonder if it’s been anything at all. Days sitting next to other candidates for jobs, watching this body twitch and feeling like Michael J. Fox from the toxicity of medications that never helped anyway. Days where strength vanishes somewhere between the parking lot and the front door, then panics to think it could fall into its weakness anywhere, crying and begging and pleading with God to not bear illness in front of others. Days where these hands shake and there’s not a clear thought in this mind. Days where that tickle of remembrance catches this throat and interrupts the clarity of speech this body so once depended on.

Yet as I force myself to think about it, to look through the eyes of His grace and with a little mercy toward myself, this is beautiful healing. This body should not curse itself for the lingering effects of what was beyond its control and what remains to this day just out of reach. Jacob hobbled the rest of his life after one powerful night with God; should I walk away clean from years of wrestling? Then it makes me smile. Because even through the things that other people look at – people who are meeting me for the first time and those who knew what I was like before – through those things that seem to erect a barrier between us, that for too long have caused me to continue cursing myself and to drive myself to put more effort into fixing what is obviously beyond my control, it is through and in spite of that…that God just makes me smile. This body…is healed.

And I keep looking at what He’s done.

I look at a heart tormented by its brokenness, silent in shame and heavy with burden for years. I look at the way that heart locked itself away, shut out the world, accepted its role as something less. I look at the way it continually degraded itself, echoing the words it had heard too many times. I look at the way it cried out through anger, hatred, even manipulation, looking for someone to know it and then turning its back on any who tried. I look at a heart that could tell only one story – that there’s nothing here to see, nothing here worth noticing, nothing here worth saving. I look at that heart that longed to tell its story to keep itself somewhere connected to a world it would never dare touch…but at the same time hid in fear that the answer might be the confirmation that those echoes were right all along. That there was nothing there worth anything.

I look at that heart today…that embraces its vulnerability but finds more in its strength. That holds more praise than it can handle and longs to dance in the rain. That is broken not by its own brokenness but by the stories all around it where too little is being done. That loves with the fullness of its capability. That seeks relationship. That sings and speaks with a new tone, casting out its desperation and neediness in favor of just being.

…a heart that hasn’t been telling its story of healing, either. By word or by deed. Because the words fall short, and the deeds seem hollow when the heart realizes the pain it has wrought in this world and the lingering questions of whether it can ever be forgiven remain.

Yet I look at that heart and I know that it is still. It is quieted. There is peace. There is this understanding that was never there before, that knows God draws near and even nearer and that there is beauty even in the brokenness. It dares, in the quiet of night, to forgive itself for a few moments and breathe in that freedom, and it yearns for the courage to forgive itself by day. It longs to be known, to find relationship, to build something new on its foundation of unshakenness. This heart…is healed.

And I keep looking at what He’s done.

I look at a woman too afraid to look at herself. Who would never have admitted looking in the mirror but who couldn’t look away, horrified by what she saw and wondering if she was ever to be loved. Who questioned everything about herself but cried deep tears when anyone suggested there was anything there but ugliness. Who dreamt big dreams but never held a flicker of hope for her own capabilities. Who turned away every kind word, every gentle touch, and every encounter for fear that someone only wanted something in return. Who told the story of her unworthiness as often as she could, begging those to come who might have a powerful enough word to break its hold on her and in the meantime knowing that at the least, her words were loud enough to be heard, if never answered.

I look at that woman today…who stands in front of the mirror and cries at the beauty before her. Who holds dear to herself the little girl she neglected, the one she tried to kill off, who was stronger and more striking than either of them had ever imagined. Who knows she is loved, maybe not by the world as a whole but by the Father who created her and whispers in her ear. Who believes in herself not in the arrogant, know-it-all, better-than-everybody way that protected her fragile ego for two decades but in the grounded humility of believing in the gift of God within her, which He continues to reveal each moment. Who speaks to herself, and longs to with others, in a soft and gentle voice, one of mercy and tenderness, knowing the promise and the presence of God.

…a woman who hasn’t been telling her story of healing, either. By word or by deed. Because she lacks the words for understanding it all, drawing on a hallowed vocabulary still forming in a once-hostile environment, and trying perhaps too hard to force the grace of womanhood that somehow might define it all.

Yet I look at that woman, and I know what she’s still hiding. Those moments she dares to stand up straight, to look into the world boldly and feels that sense of power rise up within herself. Those times she senses that dignity and refuses to spend one more moment beating herself up. Those times she still falls short and wonders if things will ever change only to hear that quiet voice that tells her they already have. Those times she forgives herself for not being perfect, then laughs off whatever it is because she knows God would be laughing, too. Those times that she hits the ground hard and bounces instead of breaks. Those little smiles that cross her face just because. Just because. This woman…is healed.

All healed, all the power of God. But not living it as powerfully as I would like. Then, what stands between us?

It is fear. Fear of falling apart. Fear of being more than I ever imagined. Fear of losing control and living in surrender. Fear of…I don’t know. Fear of…freedom.

It’s the fear of not having to run any more. It’s the fear of finding rest. I have said to a few close friends in the past month or two, that I am exhausted. I absolutely am exhausted. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally – I am exhausted. There was a job I really wanted, that I felt like I had a good shot at. I wore my interview shirt inside-out. Two days later, I wore a different shirt backward. I have forgotten my watch, my cell phone. Just left them at home. I’m so exhausted that I just can’t think. And I am not getting much rest. There are moments when it all seems so simple, so wonderful, and I know it’s going well…only to find myself falling in His arms yet again and realizing how much I have still been running, how hard I’ve been pushing, and how weary I still am.

I don’t know how to live without the fighting. I don’t know how to live without the running and the struggle, without something to battle against. Oddly right now, I’ve replaced everything He’s healed in me…with a battle against myself. Just for the sake of the battle. Because I wouldn’t know what to do without it.

Yet the more I struggle, the more I curse it. I don’t want to live that way any more. I don’t need to, for He has redeemed me. His presence, His power is more real than any struggle I have ever known, and the fight just isn’t worth it. It is nothing; it is chaff.

He’s been calling me to give up a lot of myself, too. More chaff. To let some things die, even some longstanding dreams, hard-held beliefs. Many things. Just dying. Because they aren’t authentic. They aren’t me. They aren’t Him in me. A few weeks ago, I wrote out a prayer in my blog and published it, even though I’m the only one who reads my blog. I look at it every morning. The first words are this: “Lord, I humble my competence and my exceptionality before you…” Truer words have never been written. And every morning as I read them, they hit my heart again and again. It is just one more thing He’s calling me to let go of, something that has to die. If you know me at all or have ever thought you’ve known me, you know that I’ve tried to thrive on being able to do anything and being the exception to the rule. Those are hard to give up.

But they aren’t me. They aren’t authentic. What I’m longing for is the freedom to live authentic, a freedom Christ has granted me that I now must learn to give myself. I am a body, a heart, and a woman healed and beautiful, capable but not proud, honest and humbled, tender and loving…with praise on my heart, a song in my voice, and a furious longing for God and an authentic life. That is how I yearn to live. That is the story I long to tell – by word and by deed. Because His power is incredible, His presence undeniable, and His mercy…

How could I live another story? How could I let habit hold me down? How can I hold His presence and assurance so dear in my heart and yet continue to live as the faithless live? How could I ever continue to question…?

God is not a liar. He is faithful, and He is true. He is merciful and loving. His power is beyond anything I could ever have imagined or dared to pray for. He has come. He has brought the fullness of Himself, the fullness of His promise. He is come. He is here.

Why…would I ever tell a story other than this one?

It pains me to write this, as I have written similar words for what seems like so long, longing to hear them and for them to be heard. They are just words. They mean something, of course, but they are worthless if I cannot let my heart live them out. So it pains me to write them because I know as true as they are in the solitude of my dwelling, in the silence of night when it is just my God and myself, they mean little to the world that still sees me as I longed for them to see me.

Do they see me at all? The authentic me?

Do I see me at all?

Prayer

Lord, I humble my competence and exceptionality before you as one who has always attempted to use these things to justify my worth. You have shown me where this has stood between us and continues to interfere with the calling You have for me, with the way You can impact (or not) my heart. And I’m pretty much fed up with that, so either I have to change or You do. I choose me.

It’s hard to do that right now. I notice the way my thoughts obsess over this competence, and even over the gifts You have put in me. I can hardly have a thought without mulling it over and over and over and over again, reworking and rewording it to make it just right and as beautiful and provocative as it can be. It is the curse of an artist, whose heart You have given me, but when the gift becomes so controlling, it is no gift at all. And it has been a way to buffer my lingering questions about whether I am good enough. Probably also a few about whether You are good enough.

Are You who You say You are? Are You good and do You love me? Have You made me in Your image and called me “daughter” for Your glory? Because I’ve been living like that ought to be for my glory. Like You called me to make me something here, but that’s not the case at all. You have called me to make Your name known. Your presence. And You have been right here with me through moments of ecstasy and heartbreak both. Are You who You say You are?

You are. I am watching You work, and I know that You are. I know that You are good. There is so much healing and so much transformation taking shape here, in me. There are gifts and blessings poured out on my life that I could hardly have imagined and would never have dared to dream. You have given me Your promise, and I believe it. But I don’t know who I am any more.

I don’t know what I would be if I couldn’t be competent. Does the world take notice? Does anyone know whether I live or die, show up or fail? Does anyone care? I am…stuck here trying to figure out who You are making me or have made me to be, and yet…all I can know right now is that it is not this. It is not behind this mask of intelligence and competence and hard work, though these are all things that I enjoy. The torture that living by these facades has put in my life has made me weary and diminished me to merely a shadow, something intangible that moves about but has no presence nor purpose in this world. That’s no way to live, and I cannot do it anymore.

Every moment, I must surrender the moment. And not just the moment but so many things of myself. My hopes and dreams, my attitude and words, my spirit and glory – they are changing. Perhaps they changed a long time ago and I just didn’t notice until the pain of living a divided life started eating away at me. I haven’t felt rested. I haven’t felt satiated. I haven’t felt valued or worthy or purposeful in awhile, it seems. You have taunted me with tastes of what You have and yet something has held me back. And I realize it is myself, the only me I have ever known and the one who is scared to consider that there might be something more.

Because it is all death. Every bit of it at this moment is death. It is pulling weeds and dying to pretty much everything I have always relied on. When an opportunity arises, I know there are some I would have always jumped on, taken on my shoulders as another show of my dominance, competence, strength, will, whatever it is that would prove me as something. Yet now, I sit idle. Knowing You have not called me to that or at least knowing that my heart is not in the right place to serve in that way. Not right now. When it’s still about me, then it’s not what You have.

I just feel like I’m lost. I know I’m so lost. It’s…I don’t know. I don’t even know. I know that I don’t want to try to be what has held me back for too long. I know that I don’t want to give away my power to darkness or to self, but only to You, God. I want You to take my life and transform it, and to do that, I have to get out of Your way. I have to set myself free from expectation – the world’s and my own. I have to believe I can live a different way. I have to believe that it will be better. I have to trust that I can be faithful even though I know without Your help, I cannot. I have to turn everything over to You and let You answer the nagging questions of my heart.

What I believe about You is what You have said. You are good. You are worthy. You are glorious. And You do a tremendous job of kicking my ass. You humble me and break me and crush my heart under the weight of something higher, something more beautiful and more daring than I could even identify.

What I struggle with is what You say about me. Am I worthy? Am I loved? Am I good? Am I anything? And to that, You say always the same – I am Yours. I am daughter. And I am so loved.

Why can’t my heart believe that? Because it is blocked by my own attempts to confirm or deserve that. It is blocked by the way I try to control everything down to the minutest detail and refuse to be simply normal. Refuse to relax and rest. Refuse to just be. Refuse to give up what I have so long held onto that now tries to keep a hold on me because what You plead with my heart to accept is so foreign. So foreign that I do not know it by name or word yet. Only that feeling that there is something more. Something so much more.

And about holding on – am I holding on to these things of my own fear or are they holding onto me? For much of my life, I felt they were holding onto me. They had firm claws in my heart and would not let me go, for the darkness needed me. It always has. Lately, though, as I sit up through the nights and cry and pray and my body begs for rest, but there is none there for my mind cannot stop racing and my heart cannot stop crying out, I have begun to see that it is still me that is holding onto the darkness. And if all that it is is my holding on, then it is time for me to let go. I do not need the darkness any longer; I want to live boldly in the light.

Lord, I surrender and humble myself before you – darkness and light, faith and doubt, hope and despair, questions without answers, self-indulgent and self-satisfying habits that control my every thought, my feeble attempts to validate myself, the way my heart rests on other things beside what You have said, even the deep stabbing pain of Your word ‘daughter’ that does something in me I still have not deciphered as joy or heartache – all of me, Lord, I surrender and humble before you. Free me from the death grip that has such strong hold of me. Restore to me Your peace. Your call. Your presence. Your perfect plan for me. Let me live naked before You, before the world, and before the mirror that I may see what You see in me, that I may believe what You say about me, that I may know without proving it the worth of my heart and that I may stop obsessing about anything otherwise.

I am Yours, let me live as Yours. Every moment, let me surrender every moment. Let me hold my head high even as I bow my knees before you.

Let me be normal. Let me be Yours. Let me be “daughter.” Let me be light.

Cry of a Heavy Heart

One of the hardest things we ever do is try to be something more than we ever were. It’s a process I find playing out in my life over and over again…and you probably do, too. We are none of us as we should be, but it is still a tough pill to swallow.

It’s a painful experience. Humbling. It really takes a chip out of me and makes me just stop and say “whoa!” for what seems like forever. It is a question without a lot of answers because, as I am finding, becoming something more than you ever were is not a hungry pursuit. It is rather…a fast.

That is to say, I don’t find myself running toward anything in particular. Instead, I am quietly (though inwardly tumultuously) aware of being something less. I am aware of what I am that I should not be, and the process of changing that is not so much replacing it with something greater as it is simply giving up what should never take hold in my heart. I mentioned that last week with a status update when I said that often we cultivate best what God is growing in us simply by pulling the weeds. I don’t know where God is leading me or exactly what He is trying to call out of me. I have hints and enough to only make me thirstier to see it come to fruition, but He’s not telling me all of the details right now. All I know is that I am falling way short. Over…and over…and over again.

I’m finding it every day as my life, and the way I live it, runs right up against that nagging, gnawing knowing in my heart that this is not how it is meant to be. It is watching my life unfold and knowing there is a deeper, truer, story in my heart but recognizing plainly that it is not being shown anywhere that anyone else could ever see it. It is tucked away in the midst of all of these indescribable little things – a million little things – that God keeps doing in me that wouldn’t mean a hill of beans to anyone but means the world to me.

I’m still talking, telling stories. And they are true stories, but even as I speak words these days, I know that even in truth they are not Truth. There is something bigger going on, and I feel like I betray it every time I try to fill the void with something else. Void is hard. Emptiness is draining. But trying to fill it up with something less than what God has for me in this place is worse. It is dishonoring to Him, degrading to me, and a heavy burden that my heart is crushing under the weight of.

I hate myself for it. If I let it get the better of me, I even curse myself. That only increases the burden. When all feels as it should, with its due weight and worthy of the contemplation, quiet, and even grief…it is still a heavy burden but God takes away the hate. Somehow. He replaces it with stillness and a loss for words that has PLAGUED me for months as I have wrestled around in this. It still does, actually. This? This is just rambling. A heart pouring out because it has nowhere to go being both filled to overflowing and empty all at the same time.

It really is a beautiful place.

But it’s also a place where it’s tempting to be pissed. Yes, I said it. I look around and see so many familiar things and know that I don’t relate to them the same way, but I haven’t figured out how that’s changed yet. I mean, I don’t know what to do with things. Emptiness and wandering. Or lostness. It is not the content of my life that has changed – it is the content of my heart. That’s a tough pole to wrap around when your days are pretty much the same.

It’s easy to think there’s a problem with the world. If it knew what was going on in me, it would change somehow. If it knew the content of my heart, it would be different. It's that wanting to run away and be somewhere different so you can just start over. As it is, I see myself stuck in this place in-between. Where I am not what I used to be, but not sure what I’m going to be and hoping that I can find something to be in the meantime but understanding that the world still expects the same of me. The world wants what it wants, and it interprets everything I do with one eye toward the past. The world runs me ragged trying to convince me to catch up to my past. What a phrase! Catch up…by going back. By returning like a dog to its vomit. That’s no way to live, and I refuse to turn back.

And there are relationships, too. Oh, how I long for the coming day when my relationships change. When I can be seen for what is in me and not what darkened my soul for so long. It is human nature to judge a person’s words by what you know of them, and that is why two people can say exactly the same thing and be taken two different ways. It is why I am watching my words lately; I know they will be held to my past though they come from somewhere foreign to all that.

It’s always been this way. This is nothing new. It is tough to overcome a former reputation. I’ve been in this situation before. I grew up a liar and a manipulator. For good reason, probably, but the closer my heart draws to God, the more I wonder how things would have turned out if there had been more Truth and less fear. That’s neither here nor there at this point. The story is that this is how I was known – by family, by friends, by peers, by teachers, by acquaintances, by professionals. Everyone took what I said with a grain of salt, knowing it might or might not be some version of the truth.

I haven’t been a liar or a manipulator in many years. God has been working hard on the part of my heart that was so wounded by the vulnerability of truth, and He has done wonders. This pissed me off then, too – waiting for the world to see that I was honest, that I could be trusted, that the words out of my mouth were more than a means to an end. It was many, many years in coming and in a few holdouts, still a day to wait for. But lately, I have seen how people’s reactions have finally changed toward me. How I have the credibility and the reputation for honesty that I have been seeking since this change started taking hold.

I’m not pissed anymore; I am humbled.

So I’m waiting on the current situation to humble me because there are a lot of stories out there that have been told through my life for many years that I’m waiting to get out from underneath. In my heart, they have no hold (or perhaps only a little one because it still comes close to pissing me off); but the world still sees them in play. The world wants to still judge by that, wants to keep me running to catch up to my past. I can’t do it. I won’t do it. But it sucks being stuck in the middle and wanting to be so angry with everyone and everything for not seeing this beautiful, dramatic, and yet quieting shift that is going on.

Then, just when it is all about to break and I could either lash out or fall into self-hatred, never expecting better of myself…I find that the fault is in me. The new story, the one taking hold and taking shape in my heart, the one that runs so counter to what I never should have been but too often was, is disappearing under the old story that I continue to tell out of…habit? Intimidation? Both. It is looking at my life and saying, “That’s not what’s in my heart” and in the same breath looking at my heart and saying, “That’s not what’s in my life.”

Habit of course, is hard to break. So is intimidation. And this emptiness is intimidating. It is hard. It is heavy. It requires a strength and courage that I would not have were God not constantly here giving it to me. To shrug my shoulders and say, “I just don’t know” (Yes, ME! Not knowing!) but to have such a clear and heavy, too, understanding in the depth of my heart. To be thirsting and crying out for whatever it is God is calling me to but knowing only what to never turn back to. What to never be again. And grieving that ever it was.

For many years, I have prayed and cried and yearned to figure out what it is that has been missing from life. From my life. God has shown me – it has been authenticity. That is what has changed in me that has set this work in motion. That is what He has called me to and cried out. But it’s nothing I gain by waking up one morning and deciding to be authentic.

It is about pulling weeds. Waiting patiently. Responding to the new story. Embracing the emptiness. Trusting in His plan. Raising a hand in worship. Letting tears fall – both of grief and of joy. Humbling myself. Simply being.

I simply am. Humbled. Broken. On the verge of being pissed. Lost. Wandering. Empty. Quiet. Stilled. Filled to overflowing. Deeply grateful, honored even by it all. Intimidated. Scared. Anxious for what lies ahead. Confident that it’s going to be awesome.

I simply am.

Wander in Wonder

The Israelites. God’s chosen people. All they had was His promise, a beautifully crafted promise with the images of milk and honey, expanses of land to call their home, and an unhindered relationship with their Maker.

I wonder if they thought this Promised Land was the beginning of their journey…or the end.

Were they waiting until those first drops of milk and honey touched their tongues to start earnestly worshipping and seeking God in a new way? Did they believe they would find something invigorating in that place that would set in motion a beautiful harmony, a perfect existence that would only draw them closer to their God? Were they standing in Egypt worshipping an empty deity they believed would not be a real and vital part of their lives until Canaan?

Or were they holding on to that promise as their final destination, as that place where everything would just stop and become bliss? Where they would have earned their reward and be placed in honor as God’s people, without another care or worry to haunt the remainder of their days?

Did the Israelites believe they were a people created for Canaan…or that Canaan was created for them?

They were a people who felt lost, a bitter people after awhile. And why shouldn’t they be? Back in Egypt, they knew what life was like. They knew how to worship their God, where to find Him amidst their trouble. They held on to the hope of His promise, of that land flowing with milk and honey. It was a stark contrast to the life they knew, but they could picture it.

Forty years in the desert will change a people. Forty years wandering in the wilderness. Where you swear that you have passed that rock before, probably a dozen times. Where the heat beats down on you day after day until you can’t tell if the sun is rising or setting, or perhaps neither at all. Where beads of sweat pour down your brow and cloud your eyes. Where you don’t know whether you’re coming or going, from where or to where or why. Where God is nothing more than a figment of your imagination because you can hardly hear His promise any more, can hardly imagine a taste of any milk or honey, though there’s plenty of manna and quail to go around. Where you’re so sick of manna and quail that you could puke.

The desert sucks. It is…nowhere. How can you ever hold out hope for a promise of the future when you’re nowhere, stuck in the middle of nothing, and just wandering? Making a nick in the rock every time you pass it to make sure you’re not crazy the next time around, that the hot sun is not playing tricks on your mind.

Yup. It’s the same rock.

We have all been there. Walking in circles, not knowing why. Struggling under the weight of things. Searching for direction. Thinking back to the place we left and longing for its stability. We know in our hearts that it was not what we were created for, that there is nothing back there for us. But we can barely remember the promise we left it all for. We hardly know what it was we thought was out there. We only remember feeling like we had to move, then striking out with purpose only to grow weary and lose it as we pass that same rock, that same bush, that same tree. Watch the same sunset, the same sunrise, the same expanse as nothing seems to change and whatever promise we thought was out there fades into a mirage somewhere between the manna and the quail.

We know the desert. We know the wilderness. We know the wandering.

But were they wandering at all?

Were they not following God, whose constant presence led them in cloud by day and fire by night? Did He not show them the next step, the way to move, how to walk? Did He not feed and care for them?

They were not alone. They were not lost. They simply felt that way. Because they had given up everything they’d known for a promise. That’s all – just a promise. A dream of something better, a deep conviction in their hearts that God would bless them with that milk and honey. They had nothing to go on but His word and that unignorable feeling in their hearts that they were made for something more, that something better awaited them.

They said they were wandering and we believed them. Because we have known that feeling ourselves. But not for a moment were they lost.

They were merely unsettled. A people without a place, but only for a time. A people knowing they could not turn back, knowing that nothing waited in Egypt for them. Nothing valuable, anyway, except perhaps the stability they had come to depend on. The predictability. The routine. Knowing that they heard the faint echoes of the promise, still deep in their hearts, even when they couldn’t remember the exact words or what had been so enticing about it. They were just unsettled – not where they used to be but not yet where they were going. Called, but not fulfilled. Journeying, but not yet arriving.

They felt like they were nowhere, and getting there fast. Or perhaps endlessly dragging out the journey, getting nowhere never.

But they were being led, so they were never wandering. They were simply following, responding as they had been called, going out in pursuit of the promise. Holding onto something unseen. Being hallowed and holied by the journey itself, shaped in the wilderness on the way to Canaan.

Following the Lord by cloud and by fire, forsaking all for the promise – just the promise – of more.

Reading the Bible

Nearly two thousand years after the last words were penned, after the ink has dried. Two thousand years after Christ walked this earth as God made Man for our benefit. Two thousand years…and we’re just now starting to feel like we might have this Bible He left us all figured out.

But we are way off. Tragically so.

We have invested a great deal of resources into proving the historical accuracy of His Word, and our discoveries make us feel like we’re closer to proving the existence of a God that no one in our generation has seen. There is a mountain where He told us there was a mountain. Evidence of a great flood. A still-missing ark that we swear we are close to unearthing. We have even found the shroud of cloth, so we say, wrapped around Christ’s face for three days in the grave. From this, we hope to one day know what He looked like.

Looked like here. Once upon a time. Then, we will rejoice and say that the Bible is true, that at least in the historical sense, these events really happened. These stories took place. They are about real people in a real time, and we have the evidence to prove it.

It doesn’t tell us a great deal, if anything, about our God, though. Except perhaps that He’s better than any high school history teacher because He actually got most of us to open the text. We don’t read history to change our lives.

And we have thrown ourselves into the stories of the pages of the Bible, looking for ourselves in this or that parable, this or that account of faithfulness or faithlessness. We have tried to define ourselves by its standards, by the things God has said about the men and women who went before us. We want to be the repentant tax collector, not the Pharisee. We want to give all we have like the poor widow and not just a tenth like the wealthier elite. We want to pray with the heart of David, whose raw honesty with God still touches something inside of us today. We want to walk the streets with Paul, rock the prisons, and refuse to escape. We want to heed the words about the dangers of pride, somehow humbling ourselves and sacrificing all we have for something greater than we could dream of. We want to be bold enough to put our most precious firstborn on the rock of sacrifice, to build an ark when people think we are crazy, to go into the dangerous street corners where people are not looking for God’s word, to bring hope to the hopeless, to watch our words and our drinking and our sexual morality (or lack thereof). Heaven forbid, we gasp, that we could ever love our money or our wealth so much that we couldn’t fit through the eye of a needle – camel or no camel. We see ourselves in these stories, and when our hearts ache, we run to the pages of our Bibles and turn to the places where we know we will see others like us.

Rahab – who stood in the gap between God’s people and His promise. How we long to stand in that gap!

David – naked and prostrate, but beautifully honest. God always seems to answer this man; what is he doing that we cannot grasp?

Isaiah, Elijah, Elisha, a host of other prophets who were bold enough to speak His word, even when it was unpopular.

Job – suffering indescribably yet with that lingering hope that something more must be out there.

Even in the lesser characters, in the more debased, we often find ourselves and see that they, too, had their place in the story of Christ. Perhaps He can redeem even us and put us in His story. History.

It’s not that this is necessarily bad. It shows one dramatic truth that I think we lose even in the present, but through these words, we know it must be eternal: people are basically the same. The fact that at any given moment, no matter the state of our heart, our feelings of worth, our questions or answers – we can find ourselves in these pages.

The problem is…this Bible, this book we look so dearly to for guidance, for instruction on how to live, is NOT ABOUT US.

That strikes a hard blow to a lot of people, and I often find myself included in that. It’s not about us. If it were, it would be a burden too big to bear. We would (and we already are) set ourselves in a cycle of endlessly trying to prove and improve ourselves, to boost our worth, to live right lives according to the stories we find in those pages. It is impossible; these are not the things we can simply do.

For example, and I will only give one though there are many, take the teachings on selflessness and sacrifice. We read those words, and we think, “Yes, Lord! That is so beautiful! To be selfless!” Then we concentrate our efforts on cultivating that absence of self in ourselves, stopping to check every now and then whether or not we’re succeeding. Stopping to think about ourselves to see if we’re thinking about ourselves, even in the hidden parts of ourselves, or if we have truly given up ourselves to be less ourselves…and all of a sudden, all of the questions are about us again. The opposite of selflessness.

This – this Bible – is not about us. This Bible is about God. It is HIS story, and He’s been gracious enough to include us. Because we are half of this relationship. But we are the half of this relationship that we know well, that we know best and most intimately. We know what we are like. In our highs and lows, our darkness and our light, our moments we would boast from the mountaintop and those we’d rather bury in the basement. We know how we are as people.

What the Bible teaches us is WHO GOD IS.

It is His involvement with His people. His plan of redemption. His goal for creation. His love and mercy. His grace. His response to what we already know of ourselves.

When Christ walked the earth, teaching in the cities and followed by hoards of people, some often asked Him about this or that. He did not turn them back to the Scriptures they knew and say, “See how you are kind of like Moses here…or like Job…or like Isaiah?” He wasn’t interested in them finding themselves in the past; what good would that do anybody? Instead, He pointed to the stories – His stories – History – and said, “See how I responded to Moses…or to Job…or to Isaiah? I am STILL a God like that.” It is not that we are copies of the men and women who walked before us.

It is that God is a carbon copy of Himself, perfectly loving and present throughout the stories of all people.

This is why our hearts ache. This is why we never seem to find that which we are thirsting for. And I am guilty of it myself. Opening the Book to read a chapter here, a verse there, or to dive into full study, and winding up either praying for the same answer He gave to a prostitute in a doomed town or else bitter that He doesn’t seem to be giving me just as He gave the prophet on the mountain. I don’t get what they get; that was His gift for them. But for so long, it seems we have been unspokenly taught to read the Bible and find ourselves.

It is better to read it and find God.

To find not the deeds of God, but His character revealed. To pray for His promises instead of the very specific answer He gave someone thousands of years ago. To embrace our relationship with Him, which is the only way to come close to living a right life. We lose ourselves not in trying to lose ourselves, but we lose ourselves in WHO HE IS. We find out about our God, and are encouraged by His people but more by His presence. His absolute, unshakable presence that reveals His promise and fulfills His work in us. Sets us free. Allows us to simply be.

We stop looking for ourselves in His word, and we lighten our burden. We don’t have to hold ourselves down or beat ourselves up because of what we are or are not, because of what He said to someone sorta kinda like us in the remote past.

The one thing we know about the men and women we look to, the ones we identify with in those pages, is that they were simply themselves. They came with no pretense, no comparison of themselves to the past, to someone who lived long ago and they’d never met. They approached their God as they were, individuals with a unique heart but the bold honesty and vulnerability of simply being.

It is that to which God responded – not to Abraham or to Moses or to Job or to Jeremiah or to Paul or to Peter. He responded to man being man, regardless of man’s deeds. He responded to that openness, that thirst, that yearning. That is what the stories of the Bible are meant to show us. That is how we should read it – looking for Him, not for ourselves.

Looking for His presence, His promise, His intervention, His grace, His mercy, His love, His attitude, His posture, His character. Because we are His people, each one of us unique. We will never find anyone, not in all of His stories, just like us.

But if we change our thinking and read in search of Him, we will find Him even now. Because He is STILL a God like that.