babble on

There have been only a handful of times in my life where I have felt the Holy Spirit.

I don't even know if that makes sense to any of you... or me actually. But, having felt what I have felt, and having the vocabulary that I have... that's the only way I know to describe the happening that sometimes takes place when I am in prayer.

Yesterday, sharing a devotion with one of the staff, that is what happened.

I felt completely filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit. And, like every other time in my life when this is happpened, a huge part of me panics.

It is so overwhelming. I can't tell if I'm going to float, going to fly, going to melt, or going to disappear... but I feel like something is trying to happen.

And I just don't let it.

I've never invited this to happen successfully. There isn't a trend to my prayers which evokes it. It's not something I have control over happening or not happening. It's up to God.

And yesterday, as I was praying... I felt so strongly that God was trying to pull something out of my mouth. Physically. I felt as though I were on the verge of speaking something that I had no idea meant. I felt like I didn't have control over my own mouth... but that God did.

But I didn't surrender to it.

I have never spoken in tongues. I have heard it once, and I totally believe that it's a legitimate form of worship and is from God.

I just never believed it was something I would do. Or could do. Or that God would choose to do through me.

Oh, me of little faith.

And so, whatever message was supposed to come out yesterday, I didn't allow it to.

This was awesome and terrifying at the same time.

And PS- I'm not crazy. But I guess that doesn't matter either because some people will crucify me for saying this anyway.

to the pain

Last weekend our pastor gave a sermon about this clip from The Princess Bride... and I haven't stopped thinking about it since.




To the pain.

A unique turn of phrase. We've all heard of the Prince's counter, "to the death" or "till death do us part." One in every three love songs is about a love worth dying for. Hollywood cashes in on the concept of death being the epitome of sacrifice from one person to the other (Titanic comes to mind... why didn't they just SHARE that stupid door Rose was floating on?).

But..."to the pain" is different.

Prince Humperdink is prepared to give his life in the duel; however, he is not prepared to fight to the pain... to suffer, to be disfigured, to be an outcast.

Death is an end. It's a scary end, most of the time... but still, if he dies, there is no further earthly consequence. It's his out.

But to the pain... that's terrifying.

And I feel like that's how a lot of us live our lives...

Marriage... Our vows say "till death" but we really mean until the death of the marriage... until it gets tough... until it's "to the pain..." Then we want out.

Children...same deal. We want babies... but somewhere along the line, when parenting becomes "to the pain"... we give up on them. Teachers do this, too. A lot of teachers do this especially. I know that as a high school teacher, a lot of times, it was easy to only stick with kids to the death and write them off before to the pain.

Relationships... I've lost lots of valuable friendships to the pain. Pride, fear, and insecurity kept me from pushing through the hard times and misunderstandings.

I don't want to live like that anymore.

I want to live life "to the pain."

I want to value people enough to not write them off. I want to persevere through the rough patches in marriage. I want Lilah to know that NO. MATTER. WHAT. her mother is in her corner... fighting with her to the pain.

Jesus lived this way.

Literally.

He still does.

My brain hurts from how much this makes me think.

confessions

The further I walk in my faith, the longer the road seems to be.

And I find comfort in this... in the size of God, and the room I have to grow in him.

What discourages me though, is how often I feel myself walking backwards.

I have such little confidence in myself. I have such doubt in my ability to execute my callings.

Rejection paralyzes me.

I struggle with pride.

I take things way too personally.

These admissions don't release me, but instead I fear that they label me.

And I hide behind them.

Because when it all comes down to it, I'm the biggest bully myself has ever known.

And if I can't stand up to my own persecution, I don't have a chance against the world's.

Sigh.

to suffer

Today I heard an interview with an author of a new book that discusses the idea of suffering vs. a benevolent God.

I listened to him talk about his life in the Catholic church and his life removed from Catholicism as a believer. And then I listened as he discussed that through becoming a biblical historian, he came to believe that there is no God.

To him, the accounts of the gospels are contradictions. He stated that to see them any other way is to take away from the perspective of each of the writers of them.

Also, through his research of the history of the world, he concluded that the amount of suffering that has existed since the beginning of time completely negates the proposition that there could be a God.

I heard all of this immediately after sharing a conversation with a woman at work about the very same subject.

This woman was talking about a book she was reading written by a Christian in communist Romania. The author's faith was only strengthened by the horrors he endured and the peace he felt in the midst of it. He wrote this book in three days, the first three days after he had been released from prison, only after he had sought out his torturer to forgive him face-to-face.

This woman shared with me conversations she had had with missionaries in Communist countries, places where the belief in God is forbidden. She talked about the eyes of the people, how empty they are, and what a joyless culture it is.

So... in my mind... I recapped...

One man, who presumably didn't suffer because of his faith but rather enjoyed the freedom of studying it at the greatest of lengths, concludes that because of the suffering he that he has read accounts of (and possibly seen first hand, I'm not sure), there is no God.

The other man suffered horrible atrocities for his faith in God for years, day in and day out. He also had an eye-witnessed account to others suffering as well, many who did not survive. And what he took away from the experience was an unbreakable faith.

What's the difference? How can two people draw such opposite conclusions about the same God? How can one man, who many of us would not blame for denying God, choose him, while the other with no tangible reason to do so reject him?

Something tells me that the answer is something more simple than I'd think possible.

It's experience.

The first author was a very knowledgable man. I'm sure he knows more about the bible than someone like myself. He probably has every last detail memorized, especially the ones needed to back his position on his faith (or lack there of). But, in his entire interview, I didn't hear him mention anything about experiencing God. About being tested. About God being tested in his life and failing. It just seemed like he did a lot of reading and reasoning within himself, and then he concluded what he did based on thought.

The second author may or may not be a biblical scholar. I don't know. But he lived under conditions which I couldn't be able to comprehend. He absolutely had to rely on God for every breath that he took, for his sanity, and for the ability to forgive his torturer. I'm sure throughout the years it wasn't ever easy to believe in an all loving God in heaven, but something sustained it in him. And does it make sense? Is it rational to think that through suffering unspeakable atrocities day after day for years that there is a Creator out there who truly loves you? No, it's not logical at all.

But this man still believed. He still loved after all that.

He had to have experienced something beyond himself, his own thoughts, while in that prison.

He had to have experienced God.

I'd like to think that I'm a seasoned Christian, but really, I'm not. This faith is so grand that I feel as though I'm only beginning the babysteps of the journey. And the more my understanding grows, the longer than path seems to be.

But here's something I've learned.

When I truly seek God out, the real God, not the one I make him to be (you know, the one who is supposed to answer all my prayers, give me what I want, and not expect me to pursue His will for my life, and not let me suffer at all) I find Him. I feel Him. I hear His quiet voice. He speaks to me through trusted friends. I am confirmed.

When I make demands of Him, when I ask Him to change others, when I expect Him to connect to me when I refuse to read His word, fill my mind with junk, abstain from relationships with other believers who will hold me accountable, ignore His convictions, I can't find Him. Because that god- the god of my demands- doesn't exist.

And those times that I experience Him the most are also those times when I'm suffering the most.

I guess then, when left alone with my own thoughts, I reconcile suffering as almost a necessary component for us humans to get to know God. For without it, many of us wouldn't ever reach out to Him.

We'd never have the opportunity to experience Him.

radical

What does it mean to live simply?

To go without?

To sacrifice?

What does it look like, today, for a middle-class family in the suburbs of a suffering city, to be obedient?

Where is the line between protecting my family, and loving others as Jesus called me to?

What does it actually mean to love like Jesus does? Even those who hate me. Especially those who reject it.

What is the currency rate for time? How can I equate these commodities to the best of my ability?

How do I attain the confidence to go and do?

Am I just making this harder than it has to be?

punctuation marks from hell

Sometimes, I like to blame things on my period.

It's easier that admitting that sometimes I just want what I want and then folding my arms, sticking out my bottom lip, and pouting in the corner.

My mom was supposed to come up this weekend for the first time since Lilah was born. Instead, she's going three hours further away from me to see my nephew be born.

Knowing she isn't going to be here, and knowing that I'm not going to be with my sister makes me cry like a baby.

It will never stop hurting that I don't get to live near my family. No matter if I understand it or not.

sometimes it makes sense

Four and a half years ago when I moved to Metro Detroit, it was very begrudgingly.

I made a deal with God that Jon and I would move back to Indiana in one year, at most.

I didn't even change my cell phone number.

Year one came and went, and the opportunity to return home didn't present itself. No matter how hard we tried to force it.

By the end of year two, we had Lilah, and we were still fighting tooth-and-nail to get back to the Hoosier state. Jon had three companies interview him, fall in love with him, promise him the world, and then slowly disappear from the radar. It was almost science fiction the way that each company independent of one another simply cut off all conversations with us, one even after paying Jon close to five hundred dollars in traveling expenses.

We (I) reluctantly (kicking, screaming, and cursing) gave up and made our home here.

But Jon wasn't happy with his job. It constantly took him away from Lilah and me, sometimes a month at a time. He kept talking with his company about transferring departments, but there was no place for him to go.

Two years later...

Elkhart, the place we were trying so hard to return to, has the highest unemployment rate in the country. It is the RV capital of the entire world, and for a trillion reasons, no one is buying mobile homes at the moment. The scene in my home town is pretty dismal. Obama has been there twice in mere months to address its economy.

Also...

Jon, although in the auto industry, has been mostly spared from all of the fallout in recent months. He was promoted from his former position and placed into a new one... One which as of a few weeks ago has absorbed so much work into it that they will have to hire more help.

At the same time...

We have always rented apartments since we got married. We talked about buying a condo a few years ago, but we wanted to mobility if ever we got to go back to Indiana. When our lease is up this year, we will have enough to put down on a house. A house, which thanks to the current financial situation in America, we could have never afforded before.

I don't know why we have been spared extreme hardship during this bleak time. It is most certainly not because we have deserved it, earned it, or been faithful enough to "achieve" it.

It is so completely fall-on-my-knees humbling though, that most times, I can hardly take it.

I think back to all those tearful nights when I poured my heart out to God about why I didn't understand why he wouldn't let me go back home. I remember the pain, the mourning I went through (and still do to some extent) in being away from my family, my home.

And all that time, I couldn't hear God's small voice telling me to trust Him. That His plan was better than mine. That someday, I might see that he was protecting my new little family from great hardship.

Not that hardship is only a consequence of disobedience - no! I would say, more often, it's a natural wordly consequence of being obedient. But in this case, when I reflect upon all that has transpired in the past few years... I see God's fingerprints all over all of it.

And I just simply couldn't have before. I knew they were there, but I couldn't see them amidst all of my anger, pain, and sadness.

I know that many people are currently in the thick of where we were a few years ago. I hope that my little story might encourage them to be faithful in these times.

He knows what He's doing.