courting youth

sorry if I encroach but you smell like youth
so I want to lean in and
keep moving in to breathe you in
to catch it through contagion as you speak

and breathe on me

as your dreams all spill out

over laughter and meals and your green ideals

though I know I can’t stay

but maybe just for today I’ll pretend so

I can spend this hour

letting you get under my skin

you should know this may hurt
but I need you to bleed
a little hope onto me and a little carefree
a little reckless spontaneity
just a drop or two of what I used to be before
this compulsory vaccine called life
got to me

Reflections at a Wedding

I miss the beauty of unblemished hope

where fewer slowing shoulds interrupted

the fast flow of could

and all was youth

drifting

drowning

in forever

where we played and planned

lifetimes of lying together
even in fabled fields of trouble
together
days of white and spring and cherry blossoms
that would never die

never

until they did
when all the why's came one day
and took it all away
replaced by something more profound
but less hope and less white
where cherry blossoms die
and love is tempered in
calming seas of good and right

and where I wonder if I’ll ever drown again

The Loss of Living Here

We lose a lot of who we are when we learn to live in this world.

We can’t fully be who we were designed to be here. We teach little ones the ways of the world, and they learn quickly which parts of who they are will not be acceptable here. A lot of it is necessary, but there’s no doubt we all get squashed in order to live here. The truly free will have a hard time here.

We all start off quirky. Some adapt better than others. Some, like me, bow to the gods of status quo and become very likeable to nearly everyone by sacrificing distinctiveness. Lately I’ve been watching my three-year-old niece, who is a lot like me in nearly every way, and wondering what I’ve lost—what she’ll lose.

She is so full of life and energy and excitement. It’s a lot to handle sometimes. So we tell her the rules of living in the world. You can’t be like that, have to be more this, less that. Granted, the manipulative and depraved nature that I know in myself comes out in her and needs to be squelched—in all of us. But so much of our original design gets lost in the fray as we learn to fit, to be accepted, to remain sane, to not get hurt, to pay our bills, to be responsible, to not annoy our aunt.

I mean, I have to tell her the rules. You know, ones like “no excited, non-stop talking before 8 am.” It’s a necessary rule (to protect us both), but I feel a little bit of who she is slipping away when her big smile fades. I don’t know how long she stands by my bed waiting for me to wake up when she stays overnight with me, but when I open my eyes that big smile is there and she’s ready to explode all of who she is on me before I’m quite awake.

But to live here, in this world, we have to tell them who they can and cannot be. We all learned it. Your animated displays of emotion are not going to work out here. The face you make when you’re thinking is going to make your life difficult. Your fondness for incessant hugging is not going to be appreciated here...

The Human World has some universal rules, but there are also different rules for different worlds. Church World. American World. Suburbia World. Disney World. Sometimes it’s hard to know which rules to follow. Which status quo am I aiming for? Weird Portlander? Or proper southerner? Nice church girl? Or unconventional revolutionary? So, we end up just trying to create an identity based on the cues we’ve been given in the world we're in.

Won’t it be beautiful when we’re all finally free of the rules of this world? Free to be who we were created to be without concern for the rules of living far from home? I am moving closer to a taste of that freedom now, but I look forward to the day when I arrive and find out who I am really. And who you are.

That We May Live

My mother Ease
My father Fear
      they coddle me
      in their bed
      and shower me
      with promises

There, I hover just above life
      Watching, but not living
            and not growing
            and not hurting
            and not loving

Like surfing on the madding crowd
      moving but unmoved
      as they pass me around
But the one who loves me will drop me
      and let me break
      and walk away
      and wait (and ache)
      until I can only crawl to him
      and lay
      prostrate on my face
      alive

This is the one who loves
This is the one who loves
       Oh True Father
       I am your daughter

Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence. Hosea 6:1-2

The Call of the Wild One

Something fierce and untamed,
It calls out my name—
A lure that is stifled
By what I conceive.

By details and triflings,
The worries of life,
By lovers and leavers,
And all that seems right,

Religion and duty
And all our designs—
The towers of Babel
I raise day and night—

All drown out His ardor,
The sound of His voice,
So even His keening
Just seems like more noise.

Still the wild One pursues,
Disdaining restraint,
And all my feigned order
He’ll raze in the fight—

The one that He’s fighting
So that I can hear
His savage wail calling
For me to come near.

"He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion." - C.S. Lewis

Blessed Frustration

I am learning again the importance of frustration—the importance of failure and disappointment. It is the way God pursues us.

In one of my classes last week, my professor was discussing the curses in Genesis 3 after the fall. He spoke about how ultimately the curses are God’s way of bringing us back to Himself by frustrating our desires and pursuits. He explained that as corrupted people, without that frustration, we would continue in our corruption without ever turning to God. He pointed us to Romans 8:20-21, “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but BY THE WILL OF THE ONE WHO SUBJECTED IT, IN HOPE that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” Our freedom comes through surrender to God, and our surrender comes through frustration.

I play games with God just like I play games in my human relationship—trying to manipulate people to get what I want. I recently realized that I tend to withdraw from relationships when I don’t get what I want—not because I don’t want to engage in the relationship or be known by the other person, since that is usually what I most want, but it is my game to incite them to draw me out or pursue me my way. It didn’t work recently. Very frustrating.

See, a mentor of mine, who has the ability to draw me out to do work before I even know what he’s up to (if you’ve watched The Mentalist you know what I mean), respected my decision to withdraw and said he would not force me to engage if I didn’t want to. Well, of course, that revealed to me that I did want to. My game didn’t work. My attempts to get what I wanted my way were frustrated. I had to invite him in.

I began to wonder if God is this way. He won’t force us into relationship, but He draws us to invite Him in by allowing our frustration. He has the ability to change and transform and work in me without me even knowing what He’s up to, but He waits for my invitation. I withdraw from Him to get what I want my way. But then I get frustrated trying to do things my way. It doesn’t work. Thanks to the curses.

Isaiah 28:20 describes the frustration of my desires and pursuits well. It always rings in my ears in those times, “The bed is too short to stretch out on, the blanket too narrow to wrap around you.” There is no rest in frustration. And so frustration draws me to Him. Then I invite Him to work.

And then it begins—what I could not do on my own, what I really wanted. When I invite Him in, through our fellowship, He enables surrender, repentance, holiness, and rest—a taste of the glorious freedom of the children of God. And it is all a result of blessed frustration—the way of God’s pursuit. His way.



“Spirit-filled surrender means that it is the Holy Spirit who enables and empowers us to yield or surrender to God, and as we surrender, the Spirit fills us and empowers us even more! It is a blessed cycle, ever deepening, of Spirit-filled surrender!” Siang-Yang Tan (Rest: Experiencing God’s Peace in a Restless World)

the place for faith

Is doubting what God will do the same as doubting what God can do or who He is? I got the impression growing up in church that doubt is the unforgiveable sin—that God can’t (or won’t) accomplish anything if we doubt—that I have to believe God will answer my prayers, or he won’t (like if you don't believe in Santa Claus, you won't get gifts). It seemed faith was the key to answered prayer because my degree of faith determines the degree of favor I have with God which determines whether He will answer my prayers. If people weren’t getting healed or whatever it was they were praying for, it was a lack of faith. So, I couldn’t express anything negative in prayer because it might be perceived as doubt.

Several years ago at church I was given permission to doubt, to voice my struggles with God to God, and it has created an intimacy with God that I’ve never known. It created space for honesty in my relationship with God. It has allowed me to accept suffering and disappointment more and more without thinking there is something wrong with me—like my faith is not enough, or I am not enough. It allowed me to grieve and recognize that the path of suffering is often God’s good will for us.

Yet, there is a place for faith prayers, for claiming God’s promises, for praying with the authority we have in Christ, for healing prayer, for prophecy.

One of my professors recently said that what we get from a fall is a lack of balance. We are fallen, so balance is hard for us. I struggle with swinging between knowing that God’s agenda is not always mine (so not asking for anything) or standing in faith on God’s word (and then asking for everything I want as if it’s a promise). I guess that’s why it’s so important to know God’s Word. But what about claiming promises that we were never given in Scripture? Like ones based on vision or prophecy or what God has done for others?

My friend who has been unable to conceive said she always has people trying to encourage her with stories of how God enabled them to get pregnant after many years of trying. People always want to tell me about how God brought them a spouse after their divorce. Lately, I’ve heard numerous stories of people getting healed from or surviving terminal cancer. All of these stories are told as if to say, it could happen for you. If you have faith. Like it’s a promise to stand on. Like it’s where our hope lies. I think that we mistakenly tell our stories of how God brought healing or provided for a need, thinking it will increase others’ faith. But the fact is, God doesn’t always bring healing, he doesn’t always come through the way we think he should. Maybe our stories just produce more questions of "why not me?" Misplaced faith can be devastating.

A story of God’s work in one person’s life does not denote a promise from God for someone else. We can praise God for his works, but it doesn’t mean God is any less faithful when we don’t get the outcome we want. It doesn’t mean the person lacks faith.

So, what can we legitimately claim as a promise? Not that we won’t suffer. What do we hold to? What do we trust in? God’s character, God’s goodness, faithfulness, His work in spite of our suffering. We can have faith in who He is and still express our struggle with the fact that He may not give the outcome we want. We can grieve—and be full of faith.

I Doubt, He Draws?

Doubt and faith exist side by side. I often struggle with evangelism when I struggle with God. I feel I should have this all worked out by now. But after a lifetime of Christian teaching, I still have my own questions, so I don’t feel I can answer anyone else’s. Maybe that’s the problem with my view of evangelism—thinking I have to have all the answers. I don’t want to give trite answers. I don’t want to say what’s been said before. I want to be authentic about my own struggles with God. Maybe that is more meaningful than saying the right things? But instead, I keep it all to myself. I don’t say anything for fear that all my doubts about God will shout louder than my faith.

Sometimes I can’t shake the feeling that if God is real, he would have rescued us by now. Shouldn’t there be no more death, no more pain, no more recession, no more evil? Shouldn’t people be fed, abuse be ended, children be cared for? I know the right answers. Do I believe them? Do I want to? My nephew brought my struggles to light yesterday when he asked me if the people who died in the movie we were watching would go to hell. I didn’t want them to. My answer was lame—they often are because there’s a gap between what I want to believe and what I do believe. I see things upside down. What I want to believe makes more sense, humanly speaking. All people go to heaven (except the REALLY bad ones and the ones who are mean to me), all sickness gets healed, all relationships get restored, all bills get paid. That’s what God should do. If he were real.

I’ve been spending a lot of time at the hospital with my dad who has terminal cancer. Meanwhile, my mom is trying to help out a lady who has two kids, no money, and an abusive boyfriend. Then there's her neighbor who has custody of a baby who will have burn scars all over his body from when his father tried to kill him when he was four months old. There's my friends who want children but are barren. And you can’t go in the grocery store without reading about John and Kate’s divorce.

I want to offer more than clichés. I want a better story.

God should have rescued us by now. But if I stop seeing things upside down, I see that Christ did rescue us. How do I look beyond what I think people need in order to offer the hope that Christ gives? It’s now but not yet. Lately, it feels more like not yet.

I want to offer what people want—happiness, comfort, ease, success, money, good relationship, health. That’s our idea of rescue. That’s what I want from God. It’s difficult to see through this world’s values to see the Kingdom that is counter-cultural, to see that something greater is offered, to see that losing is winning and dying is life, that suffering is part of the abundant life. Rescue is offered freely, but with a cost. Some people don’t want that kind of rescue. Like the rich young ruler. Not a great sales-pitch.

Maybe evangelism isn’t a matter of enticing. Maybe it’s a matter of being honest about struggles. Maybe that’s a more authentic picture of who Christ is and why he came. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not what we thought rescue should be. Only God can reveal the living water. It is a miracle only he can do. Even when I doubt.

Belief Detox

I’m convinced that most of my journey to spiritual maturity now days has more to do with detoxing from things I’ve picked up in church along the way so far than with learning brand new things. I’ve been unlearning a lot of things over the past few years. And I always feel so slow—like I should’ve gotten this a long time ago.

Right now it’s belief. Faith. What is belief? An encounter with a couple of Christian women a few months ago triggered all sorts of thoughts on this topic. They told me God wants me to have a husband if that’s what I want. Hmm. And they told me that if I didn’t believe that, I would never get one. Because God only gives us things when we believe Him for them. I mentioned this in a post in February after the conversation – wrestling with the issue that God gives us the desires of our hearts and all that… I told them that I want a new car too, and I asked them if I started believing God for that if he would give it to me. They weren’t as certain on that one. To be honest, this really confronted me with what I think belief is. What they said had an all-too-familiar ring to me. But it went against everything God had been teaching me recently. I challenged them in a defensive and befuddled way, but I actually had a hard time refuting their theology in the moment, so I’ve been thinking about it in one way or another since then.

This crisis counseling class I just took has me thinking about it again. People suffer. Life sucks at times. Does our faith or belief change that? No. (I feel like I’m blaspheming by saying no… Detox in action.) Why was I led to believe that it does? On my way to class the other day, I heard a guy on the radio say, “Faith does not affect the outcome of our situation,” and I was like, “Yeah! Wait… is that right? Hold up. I thought faith did affect outcome.”

It made me think about belief in Santa Claus. A few years back, my oldest nephew suspected he wasn’t real, but he was so afraid that if he stopped believing, he would stop getting presents. Is that the kind of belief God requires? If we believe he’ll give us presents, if we believe he’ll give us what we want, then he’ll come through. Is that what belief is all about? Really?

God is winking at me right now because I prayed for a digital camera last week. I can’t afford one. I just told God I’d like to have one—but no pressure. Someone just gave me one. (But I’ve been asking for an IPod now for months… nothing. Maybe I don’t have enough faith for that one?)

God does ask for our faith, our belief. When Jesus performed miracles, he often commented on the faith of those he healed. But what kind of faith? What kind of belief? Belief in the outcome I want? Or belief in who Christ is? He’s asking us to believe in who he says he is. To trust in his character. Our faith is not in believing he will give us what we want—our faith is in believing that he is enough. We believe that even if we don’t get the healing we want, the financial miracle we want, the situation we want, God is on our side, He is good and merciful, He is powerful and able. This is faith. Our faith grows in suffering as much as in miracles and answered prayers. Maybe more. We are asking for bread, and he is telling us he is the bread. We have to trust that. That is belief.

Poetry

Some poems I wrote last year, but never posted...

Chisel and Pour

10/2008

Soon after this heart of stone shattered,
with pieces still scattered and strewn,
I poured fresh cement, resolved to rebuild.
And then I invited you in.

I let you swim here in my center,
I let you make waves in my heart,
until the stone set, and there you were trapped
with only one way of release.

Defenseless, I knelt at His chisel,
relinquishing my right to pour.
This breaking in me, it’s setting you free,
leaving cracks that need to be sealed.

He fills, pouring pure living liquid.
It floods and it cleanses debris,
inviting all in, with freedom to swim,
swim here in my heart in His blood.

Image

2/2008

I raise my hands for you
While I push God aside

I spend my cash for you
While the least of these get by

I wear my best for you
While I cover up my heart

I learn more facts for you
While God becomes a chart

I serve the church for you
While I should light the dark

I weigh my words for you
While I don’t speak to God

I choose my path for you
While in reality, I’m lost

Hey Man

2/2008

Tell me I’m pretty
Tell me I’m smart
Don’t make me beg
Or give up a lot
Teach me a lesson
Give me a word
Don’t leave me groping
Alone in the dark
Say that I please you
Say that you care
At least let me think it
Even if it’s not there
Without you I am nothing
Without you I am spent
Now that you’ve gone
I’m empty again

Redemptive Disappointment

Over the past few days, I’ve been contemplating the beautiful result of tragedy. I spent this past weekend with four incredible women in the mountains of North Carolina. This is the second year I’ve gotten together with my childhood friends for a weekend, and both times I’ve found it to be a healing and restorative experience. Some of the girls I’ve known since we were in the nursery together. Until last year, we hadn’t seen each other for nearly ten years. What I’m struck by as we share our stories and catch up on life, is that, for each of us, life is not what we thought it would be ten years ago. We’ve each experienced loss in different ways and suffered in different ways. We’ve each been in a place we didn’t expect to be. Grief and tragedy has plagued each of us. At least for me, my idealistic romantic notions of the way the world is supposed to work did not do me any favors in coping with the realities of life.

As I started a class on crisis counseling yesterday, my professor spoke about how we need to teach children to fail. We need to teach them to suffer. Otherwise, we grow up with this expectation that things should always go well for us—that things are supposed to go right and well all the time. I remember thinking in my twenties that life was fun and easy and perfect, and wondering if I could manage to get through my life without pain. I thought I was probably due for a tragedy, but I was pretty sure I could avoid it by living right and being good. Only people who make bad choices should have to suffer. Not me.

This translates into expectations of God. Like Job’s friends, I thought God owes me something because I’ve been good or faithful. I followed the rules. He would not allow me to suffer. A sense of entitlement is created because we don’t expect to have to suffer or feel bad. I thought that only a cynical view of life says that life will inevitably disappoint you, that people will always eventually let you down, that failure and suffering are a fact of life. I guess nobody wants to believe that when they’re young and full of hope for life.

But isn’t that part of the gospel really? It’s not cynical—it’s the givens of life in a fallen world. Perhaps it takes suffering, it takes failure for us to really understand the gospel, to be able to receive grace. We misunderstand the abundant life until we’ve been frustrated with life as it is. Only then do we really understand true hope. Until then, we’re satisfied with what C. S. Lewis refers to as mud pies in a slum because we can’t conceive of a holiday at the sea. I’m reminded of my high school students saying they didn’t want to go to heaven yet because they hadn’t had sex. But the pleasures of this life aren’t as good as it gets. Maybe we have to be disappointed by them before we realize the reality of that truth.

This weekend, each of my friends painted for me a beautiful picture of hope and faith—of trusting God through the unexpected tragedies of life in a fallen world. For a long time, I thought that faith meant believing God for what we want. Now I think it is about believing God is good and faithful when we don’t get what we want. Though he slay me, yet will I trust him. There is no question of whether we will suffer—it is only a question of how and when. And yet, we experience abundant life in a way unexpected. And we’re not done. What we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we will be like him, for we shall see him as he is. This is our hope.

Out of the Boat

How eagerly I jump out
Full of faith devout
Yet when my feet hit the sea
Doubt provokes my panicked plea

How quickly confidence fades
Inviting all these waves
So suddenly you shrink
Eclipsed by my uncertainty

How promptly I fall asleep
When the watch I need keep
Prayer vows are so easy to break
When my desires are at stake

How hastily I lop off ears
When to me your plan is not clear
I create a bloody mess
Instead of entering your rest

How swiftly I flee in fear
I deny you when they sneer
Refuse to call you my friend
Though I swore fealty to the end

How exhausted you must be
With this fickle fool that is me
I can’t seem to hit it half the time
But that work is not mine

How patiently you repeat
You invite to feed your sheep
From broken vessels made of clay
You build your Church for your display

So I believe that you’re not done
That the work of the Son
Is alive so I will see
All you’ve made me to be

Significance or Safety?

"Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?" I hadn’t considered before that John the Baptist asks this question from prison after he has already professed that Christ is indeed the awaited Lamb of God. Yet, he asked the question. Like John, I ask this question. “Hey, are you gonna come through for me? I thought you were the Son of God. Should I find somebody else?” Jesus didn't come through. Later, when John was beheaded, Jesus was around. I guess no one told him how the game works.

I was just reading about this in Erwin McManus’s book The Barbarian Way. He writes, “The civilized view of Jesus is that he always comes through for us. Like Superman, he always shows up just in time to protect us and save us from disaster. His purpose is to ensure our safety, our convenience, and our comfort.” I guess somewhere along the way, I became civilized. If I’m faithful to him, he’ll come through for me, right? As I read this account in Luke 7, I realized I’m a lot like the people Jesus described,

“They are like children playing a game in the public square. They complain to their friends,
‘We played wedding songs,
and you didn’t dance,
so we played funeral songs,
and you didn’t weep.’”

Jesus wasn’t playing their games. He won’t play mine. He doesn’t respond the way I think he should. I’m coming to terms with my own tendencies to exploit and manipulate God and others to get what I want or think I need. I start with pleasing. If that doesn’t work, I rely on pity. I’ll resort to complaining and even tantrums if I have to. “Hey, are you gonna come through for me? Should I find somebody else?” But God has another purpose that is beyond me and my plans. It’s not about me.

McManus says, “Even then Jesus understood his purpose was to save us not from pain and suffering, but from meaninglessness. For Jesus, John was exactly where he needed to be, fulfilling God’s purpose for his life. Why would he save John from that? … God’s will for us is less about our comfort than it is about our contribution. God would never choose for us safety at the cost of significance.” God invites us to enter his grand epic. But he didn’t say it wouldn’t cost us. So why am I insolent when it does?

My pastor, Eric, said on Sunday that he’d give up everything else— friends, possessions, status— as long as he had Christ. Bold. I mean, what if God heard? I guess that’s what is meant by surrender. “He wants us to surrender our lives to Him and follow Him into the unknown. And if it means a life of suffering, hardship, and disappointment, it will be worth it because following Jesus Christ is more powerful and more fulfilling than living with everything in the world minus Him.”

Do I believe it? If I do, if I want to enter the story, I think it means I have to stop writing my own subplot with a script full of insolence and ease. Gotta surrender my pen.

Honesty

So now we come to it
The really deep-seated shit
The stuff I can’t quit
The me that I hate
My native state
So much for truth that dazzles
This truth just unravels
All my facade

Then there’s Your blood

You say that’s what it’s for
Still I treat it with scorn
A last resort
I don’t want to need
I prefer to sit here and bleed
Just get it together so I won’t have to ask
So I can keep on the mask
But behind my back
I secretly pray

Please don’t leave me this way

Then my dam breaks
I’ll do whatever it takes
That’s when Love falls
Because You see it all
And You stay with me still
So do what You will
My desire is for You
Only Love can undo
The me I won’t miss

You died for this

Far From Home

Only a remnant of our royalty remains.
Now daughters of the King
roam like desperate beggars
in a foreign land.
Homesick—
forgetting who we are.
Searching for sustenance
in a wasteland.
Impatient in hope
for the palace prepared.
Frustrated from futility
brought by the bondage of decay.
Drawn to doubt the glorious freedom
the King’s children receive.
Wait, O daughters!
Persist, you sisters in slavery!
For our betrothed nears,
and he will cleanse the stains of vagrancy.
He will clothe us anew
with splendor profound.
We will feast with him,
feast from the guarded tree
on the day of our new song,
the day of completion.

Hosea 6:3 "Let us acknowledge the LORD; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth."