Extend Grace

Grace is an art form, and we're losing it.

I am blessed to come from a line of women who I would consider gracious.  They are quiet women, flexible, willing to let you be just as you are and love you anyway.  There's just this great energy around them because everyone is comfortably at ease and not trying to prove anything.

God has given me a pretty fair amount of that kind of grace, and He's giving more every day.  The truth is that when you can quiet and still yourself, take a deep breath, and conclude that this - whatever this is at any given moment - is ok, it's fairly easy to embrace grace.  It's a passive grace, a grace that simply lets things be.

But not all grace is passive.  And it's in the active that it's easy to lose grace.

I'm a mutterer.  It's very frustrating to be infinitely better at something than the person whose mess you are criticizing or cleaning up.  (This is mock narcissism, a little tongue-in-cheek.)  So I mutter.

It's when you're already muttering that you have to make a conscious move toward grace.  Because you know at this point, you're not going to be quiet.

The opposite of grace is conceit.  It is this haughty attitude that's out to show itself, to prove it's something.  To prove we are something.  Seeking affirmation about ourselves.  It's the hand-on-the-hip, foot-tapping supervisor of the world that's waiting for that precise second to storm over, take the tool in its own hands, and show everybody a thing or two about how it's done...gaining a little respect in the process.

To move toward grace, you have to put aside that place in your heart that isn't into it.  That place that's fighting it.  That place that's wounded against it.  That is our biggest obstacle to grace - the wounded place within our hearts that's still looking for approval.  That's feels like it's got something to prove.

It proves something, alright.  But you probably wouldn't like what it says about you.

What if we could prove grace?

If we want to do that, we have to give our seeking heart to the only One who can answer it.  We have to set aside our notion that we have to prove ourselves and invite Him to confirm us.  To tell us we are more than enough.  To tell us we are simply this.  To tell us that this is better than ok, this is 'good."  We are good, for He created us and determined we are good.

When we can do this, we get a little more grace in our hearts, and we find it easier to extend that to others.  It's a grace that isn't quiet, but uses few words nonetheless.  Instead of muttering, we're mentoring.  Instead of gossiping, we're gathering.  Instead of judging, we're justifying.  Instead of lecturing, we're leading.  It's an active grace, a grace that speaks and responds and interacts with the world and labors to love and change it.  It's a grace that allows us to be still even when we're not quiet.

And it's an unassuming grace.

Un-assuming we have anything to prove but grace itself.

Love Hard

You know I believe in loving hard; I keep that no secret.  Love with every ounce of your being and give yourself over to be love.

But what about when love...is hard?

There are, at any given point in our lives, at least a handful of people we've crossed off our love list for one reason or another.  There are opportunities that come up, and something about them pings us in the heart and it drains us until we feel like we've got nothing at all to give, least of all love.  We can look around us and conclude, "I don't even like all these people.  Today is not a day for love."

Yet, love is His greatest command.  It is how people come to see Jesus with skin on, when we choose to love.  You want to be Jesus, don't you?  (I know, right up until Golgotha...or the pet peeve of a person across the room...and then you're out.  Right?)

People need love.  At the precise moment that you don't feel like you've got any to give them, that is when you both need it most.  As much as we feel otherwise, the problem with love is never the unlovable; what makes love a problem is the unloving.

Certain people are just plain tough to deal with.  We all have them.  Friends.  Family.  Enemies.  Frenemies.  It's easy to excuse ourselves, to find some reason why we shouldn't owe them love.  We grumble and mumble and fume within ourselves about the way they just get under our skin, and we decide we can't - and don't want to and don't have to - love them.  To cover it with holy words and coat it in a lesson, we smugly proclaim, "You reap what you sow."

Let's quote another verse, instead: Love.  Love your God.  Love your neighbor.  Love your enemies.

And love is rarely easy.  Jesus said we could all love those who love us, but how would that be anything at all?  Even the heathens do that.  If we profess to know Jesus, then we love everybody.  And it's hard.  And sometimes, it's so hard that it looks like work.  

It is work.  When we choose to love, love is working.  Not only in the lives of those we choose to love, but in the lives of we who choose to be loving.

Listen, the only reason we get so protective of our love is because we've all been stung.  Something in the love-needing stings something in us, some hurt that hasn't healed.  Maybe you feel like they are ungrateful or just using you.  That's merely touching a place in your heart that's hungry or that fears being emptied.  It's stinging that place that feels like it's giving everything it's got and not getting any return.  Maybe it's someone who, in a time when the tables were turned, had no love for you.  That's just opening a wound of loneliness or abandonment that hasn't been healed.  Maybe it's someone who has never given anything to anyone and never even uttered a simple thank you.  That's touching that place in you that longs for recognition, for someone to notice what you're giving and acknowledge your contribution to the world.

Every tough choice to love can be traced back to the wounded heart of he or she who must choose to be loving.  That's all that's stopping us.

How, then, do we love?

We choose to love and let love work in us.  We open our hearts to the pain and the hurt and the grief they must experience at love lost, love abandoned in a less-than-love world.  We find a way to take our lovesick hearts to the well of the holy remedy: to Love itself.  Because if we're waiting around for the world to sufficiently love us before we give any back, it's going to be a long wait in a loveless world with a naked Jesus running around looking for some skin to put on.  And soon, nobody's gonna know what love is.

We have to go back to Love itself, to Love personified in this Man, Jesus, and in our Creator God.  We have to lay our wounded hearts before them and let them answer the emptiness that pains our love.  We have to know that when we fear being emptied, He is the one to fill us up.  When we felt alone or abandoned, He still was here.  When nobody seems to notice what our love means anyway, He does.  Whatever woundedness the mirror of the unlovable reveals to us, it is our responsibility to take that to Love and place that in Him so that we can choose to be loving.

When we do, it's hard to believe what happens.  Love. changes. everything.  And everyone.  It softens the heart of the unlovable.  It heals the wounds of the loving.  It gives Jesus some skin in the world, lets them know what He looks like in flesh and blood.  And lets you - the loving - know what it's like to get Jesus under your skin.  It's a win-win-win-win proposition.

Love wins.

Life gives each of us countless opportunities to make a tough love decision.  Choose to love hard...even when love is hard. 

Who needs your love today?

Football Folly

Sorry, I will not be posting random videos of football players tripping and falling down.  That's another (hilarious) show.

But the new season kicks off tonight!  And I'm not sure that I'm ready.

Preseason never prepares me for the real gridiron grit, and until earlier this week, I thought I was alone.  I'd been thinking that there's a key element missing in the theory of preseason, and that is this: since the big-name, first-team guys start (usually) every game but only play a limited number of downs or series, they never learn how to finish.  And I just don't think you can go into the regular season - as a player or as a fan - not knowing how your team finishes.

Our world is full of half-finished projects.  Subdivisions with one or two houses, blindsided by the economic crash that put construction on hold.  Newly-built strip malls sitting vacant on the sides of our highways.  There's a road in my town where the street crews have not, in several months, determined to fix the giant hole in the road but have instead put a thick metal sheet on top and several cones all around it and there it sits.  Projects in various stages of completion that started most likely with vision but fell apart somewhere in the middle because people didn't plan on how to finish.  Not once they started taking the hard hits.

My generation is full of a go-getter spirit and half-finished projects.  Drop-outs.  Run-aways.  Quitters. Resigners.  Divorces.  Because there's not a strong enough emphasis any more on finishing.

Rookie tight end Coby Fleener (Indianapolis Colts) did an interview with the local news media about the team's upcoming first game against the Chicago Bears.  Everyone is waiting to watch how the new-look Colts stack up against a good team in a regular season, when the guys have to go the distance.  Fleener articulated precisely what I'd been thinking about.

Of course, now that I'd like to give the guy credit and quote him verbatim, that story is nowhere to be found on the channel's website.  So I'll do as best I can:

"I think we're ready.  We haven't really been in there to play a full four quarters, but from what I've seen, we're on the right track.  I think we're ready."  (Because football players always seem to repeat themselves.  And oh, by the way, this football player is also very cute and remarkably articulate; he looks kind of like Bob (Scott Foley) from The Unit.)

Anyway, he has no clue.  He thinks they are probably ready, but he admitted they haven't played a full game.  So finishing will be a new experience for these first-stringers.

And no, it's not just doing what you've done until it's over.  Finishing is an entirely different journey all in itself; it is its own art.

Ask Jesus.

Finishing wasn't more barefoot-walkin', boat-hoppin', bread-breakin', leper-touchin', authority-preachin'.  Finishing wasn't another three years or thirty years or sixty years of the same stuff He'd done to get Himself to the Sanhedrin.  What He knew, what He'd been doing, every moment leading up to this one wouldn't cut it.  Finishing...was a burdened walk up a shallow hill, three nails, two thieves, and one moment.  Three days later.

Finishing always culminates in a moment.

That's what makes it unlike the rest of the game.  It's not just doing what you've been doing, keeping up your energies.  It's about knowing how to seize that defining moment, that last second.  Making a statement.  It's not about running out of time; finishing is about something timeless.

Finishing well takes more than reaching that point where you say, "Ok, that's over."  It's about capturing that one chance, that one moment - on a scoreboard, on a project, on a mission, on a cross - to put it away.  It's about reaching that place with strength, with integrity, with purpose, and with finality where you can say with certainty,

It is finished.

And that's when it matters.  Because it's nice to watch your team play and play well, but it's more than a little hollow if they fail to finish and walk away with a win.  And because it's nice to have a Son of God to challenge the law and turn love on its head, but it's more than a little hollow if He fails to finish and walk away from that grave.

Heristics

You either read that as 'heuristics' or 'heretics,' and that's ok because maybe it's a little mix of both.

Heuristics is a method or set of rules for solving problems other than by algorithm.  (That is, without math.)  It's how you figure things out.  These days, what I'm trying to figure out is how to be her.  Hence, heristics.

Her.  The woman God created in me.  The woman I am when it's just me and God, when the pressures of the world aren't one me.  The woman I am when I'm thinking back over a moment and wishing for second chances because it's clear in hindsight how she would have handled it.  The woman I am when I'm humble enough to apologize, quiet enough to hear, and courageous enough to fail big.  How do I be her?

Our preacher asked us this past Sunday: how many of you wake up every morning thinking about how you're going to be Jesus today?  Anyone?

My heart resigned.  Not me, I thought.  But I go to bed most nights thinking about how I should have been.

I'm tired of having that relationship with Jesus in me.  And Jesus in me is somehow her.  That woman, that one I long to be, that one who makes such perfect sense in isolation but hasn't figured out how to interact outside of this heart (for many different reasons, which I will shortly confess).  She is Jesus in me, and she is how Jesus is bringing Himself to the world through me.  Now, I have to get out of the way.

It starts with unapologizing.  So I hereby unapologize.  I'm not sorry for not being whatever it is that you (yes, you) have thought I ought to be over the years.  I'm not sorry I didn't live up to some standard or some expectation you might have had of me.  I'm not sorry that I've let you down, messed up your plans, or otherwise fallen short of that place in your life you were trying to put me.  I'm not sorry that I never fit in your box.  Even though you convinced me I ought to be and often, I said I was, I'm just not sorry.  Because I never owed my life to you, and I should never have let you convince me that I did.  Thus, I unapologize.

And I'm sorry.  I'm sorry that I haven't been myself lately.  Or ever.  I'm sorry that when you've looked at me, you haven't seen something more than skin-deep.  I'm sorry that my faith and my confidence and my grace hasn't shown.  I'm sorry that somehow, I lost touch with the woman in me designed to be Jesus for you.  Because you're missing out on some of the most beautiful things that Jesus is - that Jesus can be, with skin on - and that's my fault for letting too much else get in the way and failing to be her, who is Him.  Thus, I'm sorry.

And I'm sorry to my God.  I'm sorry, Lord, that I've been afraid.  I'm sorry that I've let myself be both timid and intimidated, and at times, of course, intimidating.  I'm sorry that I let myself think it was enough to have You simply here in my heart where I've been willing to sit on You and hide You under my darkness - which is disobedience, fearfulness, and a profound lack of grace.  I'm sorry that I've turned my face away and held myself back.  Because You created something beautiful in me, and You called me to use that.  Sorry, Lord...to be that.  Thus, I'm sorry to my God.

And finally, I don't care.  I don't care whether what I'm about to do will make you cock an eyebrow or look down on me.  I don't care if I fit your definition or any definition.  I don't care if I look foolish (or if I really am foolish).  I don't care if I'm broken, crazy, sweaty, dirty or a mix of any other things.  I don't care if I'm socially-acceptable or politically-correct.  I don't care if you approve or if you disapprove; I don't care if I have permission for every little thing.  Because I'm going after her, hard-core.

Her.  The woman God created in me.  The woman I am when it's just me and God, when the pressures of the world aren't one me.  The woman I am when I'm thinking back over a moment and wishing for second chances because it's clear in hindsight how she would have handled it.  The woman I am when I'm humble enough to apologize, quiet enough to hear, and courageous enough to fail big.  I'm going after her.

I feel like I've spent too much of my life holding her back.  Submitting her to the definitions and the plausibilities and expectations of the world in which I live, a world that by my own making probably wouldn't expect her out of me any more.  Asking for permission on her behalf before letting loose and living abandoned, asking...whether it would be ok if I would be her today.  Right now.  Asking, sometimes, if I could really do that or not.  Hesitating.  Hemming and hawing.  Holding back.  But I'm done.  I can't do that any more.

I'm going after her.

She is now what I measure my life by, this definition of God in me.  This invitation of God...in me.  This woman in me through whom this everything makes sense.  This Jesus in me who is trying to bring Himself to the world.  I measure my life by her, and I'm getting out of the way.  Maybe, yes, it's a little heretical, but this is how it has to be.  This is how it's going to be.  This is how I am choosing - today - in the perfect tense (and I am the perfect tense right about now) - it to be.  And I'm planning to be unapologizing about it.  Planning to be humble enough to be sorry when I need to be, gracious enough to be forgiving, even to be forgiven, and quiet enough to be heard.

I'm setting my life by heristics and diving into Him.

Talkin' to Me

Three days.  I have missed three days of regularly-scheduled blogging in two weeks full of excuses - from out-of-town family staying with me to persistent computer troubles and a handful of other little things that would sound nice as an explanation but would just be an excuse.  And if you know me, you know I've declared an end to excuses.  Who's got room for those any more?

So here's a dose of the truth: I haven't been able to get my heart and my head wrapped around the same thing at the same time here lately, and most of that is a heart issue.

Now, I've also told you that I believe in living out loud, that hopefully my authenticity can be an example to whatever might be rolling around in your heart and somehow be an encouragement.  In that vein, it's been tempting to make a mess of this place and blurt out the littlest and biggest things that have wrapped around my heart, then let you sort out what maybe that all means.

I admire authors that do this well, this balance of enough detail about their life that you can connect with them on a personal level but without changing the story so that you don't walk away knowing all about them and nothing about God or a great deal about them and very little about yourself.  It's easy to fall into that trap, and for many years, I did so.

Which is why I would never want to turn this blog into a diary.

Confused yet?  Good, me too.

But this is what it is:  the real reason that my words have been blocked is because what I need to say is simply not for this audience.  As much as I love writing, as much as I'm honored that He's chosen to put this unique gift in me, there are some words for which this gift of language simply will not do.  Those some words are words that belong between me and my Father.

It's easy when you talk for a living, when you write and tell stories, to lose your story and get all wrapped up in these other words you're using until it just seems natural to pour everything onto a page instead of into a prayer and then, I don't know - everything just gets jumbled.  The gift included.

Then your heart gets heavy with the words you need to say, but your hands and your mind won't cooperate and you just get frustrated because these are important words - you know they are - and they won't come spilling out of you all for this little whisper in your heart that tells you...

God is waiting for these words.

He's waiting because He knows that when you tell Him, you will hear them, too.  Not polished, refined words meant to sound holy but the raw bleeding of a heart that's thirsty to touch its own story again, that is saddened by having been caught up in the gift to the point of forsaking the Giver, and that is suddenly, keenly, profoundly aware of having completely lost it and needing to talk...not to an audience today, but to a Father.  To a Creator.  To a Man named Love who can answer those words from that heart in a way that no comments, no 'likes', no subscribers or followers can do.

Which is why I will not ramble and sputter and stumble here when who I really need to talk to is God.

It's common in these days.  We see it on Facebook and Twitter and all around us.  (My friends and I call them "emo" messages; maybe you have another name for it.)  People who hint that they need to talk, hint that something's going on, leave these cryptic sentences and one-liners so that you have to ask.  I'm guilty of it, as well (though I catch myself these days and rather just say what I mean).  And the truth is...when you're waiting on someone to ask, when your heart is begging for someone to take notice...whatever words are built up inside of you are words meant for your Father.  Try praying, not posting and see where that takes you.  

All that said, my current book project (Prayse) is all about prayer.  Not some "Dear Lord, here I am with my hands folded and head bowed" conversation about some socially-acceptable pulpit prayer, but an invitation to reconnect with the power of an honest prayer prayed from a raw heart.  And not because I'm some fashion of expert on the subject (I'm not.) but because in the way He's disciplining my gift and dividing my language is teaching me just these beautiful lessons on what prayer really is.  Hint: it rarely starts with a "Heavenly Father" and ends with an "Amen."

There are some days, I would love to share with you and maybe even include in Prayse some of the ridiculously unconventional, indescribably powerful, God shows up right now prayers He's taught my heart to compose...and maybe one day, I will.  But for now, He's teaching me to never confuse words between the two of us with words for the gift.  Because if I do, then I let God simply pass through me instead of settling in my heart.  Then how can I ever know this Man whose story He has entrusted me to tell?

I'm putting new energies into Prayse (shooting for maybe an Easter release?  I hope you'll get into this project with me) - and into several other things.  I'm going to be writing about some of those in the upcoming days.  Perhaps even later again today, since I owe you a few entries.  There's this mess and yet, this dance, in my heart and it's got me in a mood.