Fearless Forever

1. Where is your living limited or diverted by fear?

That's a pretty broad question. Fear of failure would be one of the big ones, I suppose – not living up to expectations, missing the mark. That certainly limits and often diverts my ability to live a better story. It shows that my faith – my belief that God will be there to catch me when I fall – isn't as strong as it ought to be. Good thing that “it is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you.” (Thanks, Dr. Keller.) 

2. When you are tempted to give way to fear, what truths about God do you need to remember?

Maybe this is just not my day. It's tough to think/write about fear when you've been trying to swallow down a panic attack since the early hours of the morning. I'm fighting hard, but it's slowly gaining on me.

On the other hand, perhaps this is the perfect time to contemplate it. Fear and anxiety are, after all, closely connected. What truths about God do I need to remember right now? 

That He's not standing on the sidelines watching me struggle. He is active, He knows exactly what it feels like, and even though it doesn't make any sense to me, it makes perfect sense to Him. There is purpose in the suffering. I don't need to understand it (which is good, since I don't know where the stress is coming from); I just need to trust that He's with me in it. 

I believe that I will look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. So there.

Breakthroughs

There are a million thoughts swirling in my head this morning, like lightning bugs on a summer evening. Rather than trying to catch them in a jar (trying to organize them, make sense of them, get them under my control), I'm just going to try to get down some impressions, to enjoy the moment while not taking it for granted. 

Something happened yesterday, and I can't explain it. It began before official “worship” ever even started, although it continued throughout the service. It almost entirely overwhelmed me (which is not new), it was a good thing (also not strictly new, although far more rare and precious), but it doesn't feel like it's going to slip through my fingers and beyond my grasp this time. I don't have that fear that it's just going to disappear as fast as it appeared...again. I am choosing to trust that it won't.

First, I was “convicted” (I never use that word; it sounds strange coming from me, but it's the only one that seems to cover it) of some things, and we can get into details in person when there's a chance, but here's the gist: I had already fully grasped that I was undeserving of all the grace I have been given in the past year. But yesterday I also saw how blind, how selfish, how ultimately ungrateful I have been, although I thought I had been grateful all over the place. It just isn't true. I have taken advantage, I have felt sorry for myself, I have actively contributed to my own problems – in short, I'm way worse than I had ever clearly seen before.

But for once, that realization didn't lead to self-loathing, “beating myself up,” despair. I'm not saying this very well, but you know the moment in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, when “the Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day”? A silly analogy, but the best I can come up with while just throwing impressions out there. (This may be some of the worst writing I've ever done, but I don't even care! That's how important it is for me to get this down.) I finally understood – with my heart – that God doesn't love me any less for all the ugliness. I've spent so long trying to find the right steps, the right knowledge to force that information from my head to my heart, and suddenly, without any initiative or accomplishment on my part, there it was. I got it. It didn't stop the crying (if anything, it amped it up!), so on the outside I looked like the same disaster I have been at worship every week. 

 But I am certain that I am now a different disaster. :-) Even as I type this (yes, still crying), I know that I am seeing God, and the world around me, differently. I have been so empty, and nothing I could do, nothing you could do, could get me past the emptiness, no matter how hard any of us tried. No matter how good my efforts or intentions, I kept falling (or jumping headfirst) into the traps. (Please don't hear me saying that all that you've poured out for me hasn't made a difference; I never would have gotten here without everything you've done for me!) I just mean what you've been telling me all along – that I need Jesus more, which was just frustrating...until God let me see it for myself.

Somehow yesterday I found myself out of the center (see Peterson quote under “We Ask Jesus to Help Us Worship”). I want to live differently. To plagiarize Donald Miller, I want to live a better story. And for once I don't just desperately desire it, but I believe that God is right here, giving me the strength to do it already, doing it already in me. Sure, I'm going to fail – repeatedly! – but it's not going to change the fact that Jesus is at the center, and that I want to live for Him. 

 This doesn't sound like me, like the way I talk, does it? I'm not making this up, trying to say the right things. I really believe it. I want to tell people. I want to pour myself out. You know why? Because I don't feel empty any more. When Christian got to 1 Colossians 2:9-10, it was already clicking into place, and that seemed to cement (or should I say epoxy?) it. I never saw it before. The “fullness” of Jesus, coming down and touching humanity, that we have been filled in Him. Again, I don't know how to say it, but there was a revelation there.

 I still can't quite articulate it. I could use some help putting the pieces together. I don't know how this change in perspective is going to play out in my day-to-day life. But I need you to know that something is fundamentally different, that God really is working in me, and that I believe He loves me on a whole new level than what I've been comprehending. 

The English language needs a better word than “feel” – because while I don't “feel” any different this morning (my problems have not magically disappeared), I “feel” like a totally different person – because Jesus is actually making the difference. Does that make any sense at all?

Realistic Expectations

1. Where have you been caught up short because you have failed to live with realistic expectations?

This is going to be a tough one to answer. Because some of the answer is so obvious, but the obvious only deals with what has happened in the past two months. And that's not where things started to fall apart; it's just the most recent adventure.

So talking about the obvious (unexpectedly having to move out of the Cryders without my home to move back into) seems pointless. We've talked the subject to death, and the only resolution is that somehow, God's good and in control. Let's not beat it with a stick. Because if I had managed to answer these questions my first time through the book, that wouldn't even have been true yet.

There must be a deeper, more fundamental answer, or more answers in general. I definitely have issues with realistic expectations. I am very careful not to make promises I'm not sure I'll be able to keep, because I know that I have always gotten desperately disappointed when people have failed to live up to theirs. Especially people I love. You've seen it up close and personal of late; I don't really have to explain that part.

But I don't really know how to get deeper into the question. I've spent most of my adult life with virtually no expectations – intentionally designing a world in which everything was up in the air, itinerant, adventuresome, living on the edge and never knowing what tomorrow would bring... and having no real relationships. Pretty sure those two things go together. No one can fail you if you don't trust anyone but yourself.

Until you fail you. I'm betting it's hard to believe, but for all those years of traveling, I really felt happy. Not “I'm pretending to be happy while covering up all this crap beneath the surface” but genuinely, honestly reveling in everyday life. God was there, but I didn't particularly need Him. I was healthy, successful, alone but not lonely, one of those people their friends look at and say, “Wow, that person really knows how to enjoy life, every minute of it.” (Hard to believe today, I understand.)

And I guess that life I created probably initiated in the shattering of my expectations of what life ought to be like, when I lost Toni, and so much else, back in 1990. Aren't unrealistic expectations part and parcel of the adolescent/college experience? So I engineered a world where it wouldn't happen again. And I thought I had succeeded. For a long time. Until the depression overtook me. 

But that still doesn't really answer the question. Because I don't know how or if unrealistic expectations were what kept getting me into trouble in the years between when my body started to fail me in my early thirties and when you guys found me at 40. I just kept sliding downhill, still unable to let anyone get close to me, as the joy slowly drained out of my existence. I tried to turn to God, more than once, but couldn't see past my own failures to His grace. I'm not sure this question was particularly relevant to me until I started trusting people again. It sure as hell is now.

2. What must you do every day to be both realistic and hopeful at the same time?

Wow, I wish I knew the answer to this one. It's a big trap for me, because I spent so long relying on myself, and I have failed myself so spectacularly. Is this like the “point 3 of the sermon is always Jesus” rule of preaching? The answer is always “trust that God is good and that He is in control”? That seems too easy (while at the same time frustratingly difficult). Believe that God's love actually is perfect, that expectations in Him are never unrealistic, because He can and will live up to all of them. So when people fail me, I should look to God as my hope. And when I fail me, I can know that He loves me just as much as if I had done everything right. Is that “realistic and hopeful”? Is it something I can actually manage to do "every day"? 

More to the point, is this even what Tripp is trying to get at?

"Clinging to Christ"

What does it mean to "cling to Christ"? It's a common phrase that all of you use, but rarely "unpack" (another common one, right up there with "preaching the gospel to yourself"). I asked Christian about it the other day, and now I'm going to take a stab at putting it into my own words, to see if I really have any sort of grasp of what you're all talking about.

I gave it a quick shot in the worship guide, saying, "He promises that if we submit ourselves to him, trust in him, grab hold of him as the one thing we can't live without, he will take care of the rest. He knows what he's doing. He will not fail us." Is that it? Grabbing hold of him as the one thing we can't live without? And then everything else starts to fall into place...


How do you grab hold of (or cling) to someone who seems so far away? I know Jesus is a person, that he's as real as you and I are, but like Thomas, I have a hard time getting a grip on it without the "My Lord and my God!" moment. Also, it's hard not to try to do it just so that things will start to fall into place. We're back to the motivations thing again.

He has to reveal himself to me. That's the bottom line, right? And I just have to keep asking, and looking for the answers, however unlikely or unexpected they may appear to me. But I can't do it by myself. He has to step in and change my heart. Isn't that right? I can't just "cling to Christ" because I feel like it, or because that's what people tell me is the key to my moving forward in my faith. The ball's in his court. I just have to keep waiting, keep asking, keep trusting, looking, listening, repenting, submitting... And one morning the light will come on, and I'll understand what you've been talking about all this time.

Is it a process, or a transformative moment? Or different for everybody? Will I know it when I see it? Will it slip away just like all the other moments God has shown up and then vanished again? When I find it, how do I hang onto it? Is every day going to be this hard? I know that faith is a daily thing, that (like love, supposedly) it's a decision you make each morning. But does it ever get easier? Maybe a better way to say it is, does it get more natural? More like breathing and less like beating your head against the wall?

That's a lot of questions, and they don't all require answers. I just need someone to bounce all these ideas off of before my head explodes.

Breathing Violence

Questions of the day:

1. How are you dealing with the low-grade or high-intensity anger of those around you?


I don't really see anger in those around me, at least not directed at me. Yes, I get yelled out, but it seems to flow mostly from frustration and disappointment, that I either just don't get it or am refusing to see what's right in front of me. The problem is that I do see it, and I can't figure out what to do with it.

Yesterday, I broke before worship. Everyone was just trying to be kind, but it had taken everything I had just to be there, and I broke under the pressure. Being sociable was beyond me. Every time anyone talked to or touched me I burst into tears. So I pulled away, just trying to hold together. How is that me rejecting God's answer to my prayers? I was trying to see the answer in just being given the strength to get out of bed and make it through worship, but I guess that's not good enough.


2. Is there a place where God is calling you to face your own anger, and as you do, what new things is he calling you to do?


Well, you started to see the anger leaking out in the above response. Yes, I'm facing my anger, and repenting of it. It keeps coming back, because the people who love me get so frustrated that I can't seem to function on their timetable. I'm not keeping up, and they get frustrated, and I feel like a failure, and that leads me to despair... And the cycle starts all over again.

I don't think it's anything "new" that God's calling me to do. He's calling me to trust – that he's good, and that he's in control. That doesn't sound like actively "doing" very much, but it's a tough one for me, and I keep getting sidetracked by my circumstances. And actively rebelling against them. So right now it's all I can do to wake up each morning and say, "Lord, it's another day – please help me to live as if these things are true. Please protect me from my own stupidity, and please help me to rest in where you have me right now, today."

I spent a week on the other hateful depression drug, Pristiq, but think I have to go back off that as well. The side effects haven't been too bad – except (and yes, this is, ironically, an official side effect of this drug) that it seems to be making the suicidal thoughts way worse. I know that at least Christian gets mad when I even mention such things, and I don't say it to get attention or make anyone any more worried than you already are, but they're there and they're real and the drugs are making it worse. So once again, it's back to just me and God... and you guys, when you have time to lend a hand.

That's all I've got. Thanks for listening.

Life as a Student

So I'm starting back at the beginning of Paul Tripp's book, A Shelter in the Time of Storm: Meditations on God and Trouble. Starting from scratch. Answering the questions, however haltingly, stumblingly, and ineptly.

1. If you were to live as a student, what changes would you need to make in the way that you approach your daily life?


I feel like that's exactly what I'm doing right now – living life as a student. Trying to understand. Every day is about God-discovery and self-discovery. My days are spent reading, thinking, writing, processing... That one's pretty straightforward.


2. What, in your knowledge of God's truth, do you need to investigate further and understand more fully?


"My knowledge of God's truth"? That seems like a really strange phraseology. My knowledge of who God is? My understanding of the truth of the gospel?

I know I need to grasp the fact that God really loves me, that Jesus died not just for mankind in general but for me in particular. I need to grasp that God actually forgives me, and that the fact that I can never seem to forgive myself for my failures and stupidity is somehow sin in and of itself, in as much as it reveals my lack of trust in Him. I need to understand what it means to "cling to Christ," to have that be more than just a catchphrase that sounds good but that I don't really comprehend.

I'm not certain that all the "further investigation" in the world will lead me to those truths. I don't know that lack of knowledge is my real problem. It's in making that connection between understanding with my head and believing with my heart. Life as a student is useful for me, as far as it goes. It keeps adding pieces to the puzzle, and (to use the puzzle analogy) as I find the edges, it gets easier to see how the pieces fit together. But I can't see the big picture. At least not yet.

There. Actual answers to actual questions. At least I tried.