What Is Your One Thing?

1. Look at the "one thing" catalog. Which of these has tended to hook you? How has that shaped what you do and say? (Sorry, I'm not retyping that whole page. If you wish to peruse the whole list, it's on p. 39.)


There are a couple on the list that tend to trip me up on a regular basis.
1. Approval: If I am loved and respected by certain others.
2. Control: If I am able to have mastery over a particular area of my life.
3. Suffering (this one surprised me a little, but if we're going for honesty here, it does seem to fit): If I am hurting or having a problem, only then do I feel worthy of love or free of guilt.

Yes, we've clearly established my need of approval. But I truly am getting better at looking to God as my center rather than basing my self-worth on what the Cryders or my community group think of me. In all honesty, that's one of the things that upset me yesterday when I asked Christian to pray a psalm with me. My perspective has come a long way in the short time that the Cryder's were out of town, but the assumption from the outside is still that I am in exactly the same place, so my motivations are immediately held suspect. Honestly, I just wanted to pray. Out loud. With a friend. There was no ulterior motive.

That control thing is harder to overcome. It seems hard-wired into me, part of the very fiber of my personality. It's REALLY HARD to believe that I don't have to be the one to figure out what happens in three months, where I'm supposed to go from here. I feel my heart climbing into my throat just thinking about it, which is most decidedly not a sign of trusting God to have my back. That most definitely shapes my words and actions on a daily basis. I lay in bed at night (every night, of late), trying desperately to give all these indeterminate circumstances over to God and let him be in charge of them, but as the day progresses, I find my grip tightening once again. If insomnia is good for nothing else, it has definitely been improving my prayer life, and helping me get back on track after failing to trust during the day.

Suffering. You've all asked me if I think depression is part of my identity. I have said, and continue to believe, that the answer is no. But honestly, suffering does make me feel more... visible. And I feel so invisible so much of the time. I also have come to believe that this suffering that I feel is a part of God's plan, his way of breaking me down so he can build me back up again, so this seems to fall into a slightly different category than the first two – because my journey through the wilderness may be the plan, my path to actually finding the ONE THING I'm supposed to be latching on to.



2. Where do you see a daily war taking place for the control of your heart?


This question plays into Sunday's sermon. How does real change take place? I know what I want: Christ in me. Me in Christ. Abiding in, dwelling with, crawling inside. But "daily war" is a good way to put it – how to take the practical, mundane details of my life, all that crap I can't control, all the self-destructive things I know I shouldn't do and yet keep getting urged by some perverse corner of my being to give in to, and let Jesus have them. To hand him my desperately imperfect self and let him start to change me from the inside out. I know it's already happening. I know I am more stable, more focused, more pointed in the right direction, than I was even just two weeks ago. I know this, but it's hard to see, both because it's so slow and unimpressive on the outside, and because there are so many inevitable detours as I continue to screw it up.

I guess we all experience the daily war. The past few days I find myself in need of folks to talk to about some of the things swirling around inside my head, to make sense of some of this progress that I've seen of late. You're all so busy, but I hope to find time to touch base with each of you, at least briefly, and tell you what's been going on. There's been much less crying – not that that's a goal in and of itself, but I think it's a good sign. I just want to get to a place where I can call any of you up "to connect over coffee, lunch, or a beer" without it being spurred on by, or resulting in, a major meltdown. I have enjoyed feeling like a person again lately. And I thank God for it, hour by hour. I want Him to be my ONE THING!

Sight Problems

1. Which of the four insights from George's life are particularly needful for you?


A little background: this is a meditation about George, who is blind, and the things his blindness has taught him about how to live a better story. Here are the 4 insights:

1. There is no more important set of eyes than the eyes of the heart.
2. How important it is to humbly accept your blindness.
3. You always deal with your blindness in community with others.
4. Long for 20/20 vision.

For me, it's most decidedly the community thing. I am unaware of (blind to) so much of my sin, and I need others to (a) point it out to me and (b) help me live with more awareness and insight.

2. How could you make greater use of the community of insight that God has placed around you in the body of Christ?


I hate the phraseology of this question. I fear that I have done too much "using"of my community as it is. My needs and questions seem to have become repetitive. I think the better question would be, How can we as a community help one another live more fully? I know I have been greatly helped by friends pointing out my flaws to me in love... but when I have attempted to do the same for others, it hasn't gone over so well. It seems that what many people want is not deeper community, but just more fun people to hang with. Now that I have proven myself repeatedly to not always be entertaining company (for lack of a better gross understatement), there are those who now avoid me. I'm learning to live with that. But it doesn't make me eager to reach out again, that's for certain.

So I guess my answer to this question is, I just don't know. I continue to attempt to reach out and find ways to get more involved in our community, but without much forward progress. I'm afraid this one has me stumped. I know I need community; I don't know how to get it in a way where it's not just me being needy. I long for a community where we can help each other, where one person's strengths can help bolster another person's weaknesses. At this point it seems unattainable. But I refuse to give up hope.

Repentance

(Draft #1, until I get Marilyn's list and can work from that as well. Final draft to be worked on with Kelly and then shared with my community group.)

What is repentance? It is being broken and sorry for the ways in which i have hurt God and others. It is turning from my self-destructive ways and turning toward Jesus. It is believing that God has forgiven and will continue to forgive my failings and my faithfulness because of Jesus. This is the part that I continue to struggle with. I can't forgive myself, can't live up to my own standards, can't believe that other imperfect humans could possibly be able to not hold my sins against me, and not understanding how a perfect God could love someone as blatantly imperfect, as consistently sinful as me.

I am supposed to make a list of the ways I have wronged people and sinned against Jesus. It's a comprehensive list, and the goal is not to rehash a bunch of ugly facts and make me feel even worse about myself than I already do (which is a difficult feat to imagine), but to get it all out on the table and see if, with the help of my friends who have promised to love me no matter what and walk through this with me, we can start to “unpack” the deeper motivations of why I have been doing these things, so I can move forward and not continue falling into the same traps over and over again.

1. I am a sinner. Yes, I know that's a given, that we all are, that that's the whole point of Christ's sacrifice and this crazy journey we're on, but if I don't start there and acknowledge the obvious, this is just a pointless exercise in self-flagellation. I have hurt Jesus, and I have hurt those around me.

2. I have been drinking too much. Not all the time, but enough to matter. Why? There are the surface answers: because it always seems to be around, because (at least at first) it helps get me out of my shell and actually able to talk to people... Then there are the much deeper reasons: it keeps the sadness (the depression, the barrage of feelings that often accompany it, the panic attacks) at bay, helps soften the edges of the disaster I see as my life.

How is this sin? Because I am trying to be the one in control. I see my life as being entirely out of control, and I do not trust or believe that God has me exactly where he wants me. I am afraid, all the time, but especially right now, as the Cryder's on whom I have relied too much are not going to be there to pick up the pieces in the coming weeks when I anticipate inevitably dissolving into a puddle on the floor. Probably more than once. I do not trust my community group to come through for me (a point that will come up again later in the list). And I don't trust that Jesus is enough to get me through the sadness and the panic. I feel like I have to do it myself.

3. I am a thief. More than once in the past weeks (seemingly as a direct result of drinking too much, losing my inhibitions, desperately needing the feelings to STOP), I have taken beer that did not belong to me out of Christian's fridge when I have left the house, and continued drinking at my place. It is an impulse I do not understand when I am sober, but it has not been a one time event. I have somehow managed to justify it in the moment, knowing that I have provided tons of beer and wine to these functions myself, but that is a crappy excuse and nothing more. It is stealing, and it is wrong. It has hurt Christian, it has hurt Marilyn, it has dragged Kelly into this mess (which may turn out to be a blessing when all is said and done), it has torn me up inside, and it has revealed, in yet another way, how much I desperately seek control of my situation and don't trust God to be enough for me. So I have taken what is not mine to take and tried to make the feelings stop under my own power, rather than trusting that this suffering that I feel is part of God's plan for me, and maybe he wants me to live through it, to bring me closer to Him.

4. I am a liar. Again, more than once, and again, in conjunction with drinking too much, I have lied – to Christian (saying I hadn't been drinking), to Kelly (saying I was too busy to get together when I was really just too drunk and sad), and almost certainly to others whom I can't even remember. I have been struggling to remember things. Obviously memory is clouded and distorted when too much alcohol is involved, but I have been forgetting things in many other contexts as well, which is one of the reasons they are having me write everything down. I believe that part of that is genuinely part of the chemical imbalance of depression; but even if you don't buy that, part of it is also that when I start to melt down, to focus on myself and all my problems that I can't seem to control, I spiral into despair, and I can't see beyond the mess. So I forget. It's a coping mechanism, but a very counter-productive one.

5. I am angry. I feel that promises were made in the past months, before and after I moved into my new place where I still struggle to believe that God wants me, and that my community has dropped the ball. Please don't hear this as an accusation: what I am saying is that I have had unrealistic expectations, I have felt like I was practically screaming for help, and I have felt like I have been abandoned by the people who were supposed to become my “larger family.” I have not reached out the way I should, I have been insanely needy and have allowed myself to become increasingly bitter about something most of my group has not even recognized as an issue. I have repented to God again and again, but the hurt is still there, and I need to (a) ask your forgiveness for holding accounts against you and (b) ask for help and accountability as I continue to struggle and feel so alone.

I have hurt Christian and Marilyn in this way as well. I have been selfish in my demands on their time (justifying it by trying to earn my way into their family by helping in any way I can think of, rationalizing that this is making their lives “easier,” when really I just suck their time to an unreasonable extent). I have found myself desperately desiring Christian's approval, rather than being content with the approval of the One I should be desiring, Jesus. Or even believing that I ever have Jesus' approval. I don't really believe that He can love me, so I reach desperately for the love I get from the people I can actually see. I see these flaws in me – hell, I read an entire book about it (Ed Welch's When People Are Big and God Is Small, all about fear of man over fear-of-the-Lord), but failed to find practical ways to turn what is clearly truth into reality in my life.

I am failing. I am hurting the people around me, I am engaging in self-destructive behaviors, and I'm losing heart. Each time I feel rejected by someone in our community (even when it's not true – when people are busy or hurting in their own lives or simply unaware), the shell around me gets a little thicker. It gets harder for me to reach out again. I am so easily wounded, because I don't have that foundation of faith to stand on that is supposed to be enough for me. I can't find that freedom that is supposed to come with trusting Jesus. Which means that I'm not trusting. I'm repenting, but repentance without real belief that can withstand the storms of life just leads to despair.

So I'm trying to move from that self-focus (that leads to despair) to self-awareness (that is supposed to lead to true repentance and hope in the God who gave His life for me). In spite of all my sins. In spite of the fact that even as I repent, I know that I will fail Him again.

I need your prayers. I need your forgiveness, for the ways I have failed you passively, for the ways I have held things against you, for the ways I have hurt some of you actively. Please pray for me. Please don't give up on me.

On Christ the Solid Rock

1. Be honest as you examine the way you live. What do you look to as your "solid rock"?

This is a difficult question from where I sit right at this moment. I want the answer to be Jesus, I am striving daily for the answer to be Jesus, but let's face it – the foundations of my life are still pretty sandy. Perspectives shift around like slippery river rocks under my feet, and I find myself falling. I look at the waves instead of at Jesus, and I start to sink. It's a regular occurrence. I don't think that makes me unique in any way – it's the common lot of fallen humanity – but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. I still look to myself for control of my circumstances... but I am trying to look to Jesus when things feel like they are falling apart. And to thank Him when things go well. And to repent for my seemingly incurable need to rescue myself from my own mistakes (and sins) and to control my life when the world seems set against me.

2. How would your living be different if Christ really were your "solid rock"?

Here are two verses I've been meditating on lately:

"Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer." 

 ~ Psalm 19:14

"For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock." ~ Psalm 27:5

Christ beneath me. Part of St. Patrick's Breastplate. Standing on the rock. David doesn't say, "I will find the rock and climb up onto it." He clearly says, "He will lift me high upon a rock." God will raise me up to stand firmly on the promises and reality of Jesus. He's dwelling in me, He's reaching out to me, He's around me, and He's beneath me. How can I sink if I'm standing on the Rock? 

On a concrete level, how does this truth make my living different? Slowly, haltingly, stumblingly. How did I put it in the worship guide last week? I "keep calling out, persistently believing, faithfully listening, actively seeking" his presence in my life. It's a journey, with Jesus beside me, a trek through the wilderness, together. It's waiting for the Lord, listening for his voice and responding with prayer, even when I feel abandoned or cut off. It's asking the other people in my life to pray with me and for me (I'm pretty sparse on the "praying with me" part, but I want it; I just need to learn how to ask), so that we can encourage one another when the trek seems endless, when we're up to our knees in the mire of our circumstances, so we can run and not grow weary and catch each other when we start to fall. That's what I want. I'm remembering to start and end each day with prayer. That's a start. I'm intentionally examining the "words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart" and trying to keep my focus in the right direction. Because the journey is pointless if I'm just going around in circles. I have to be headed toward the destination God has designed for me.

Waiting is hard. I don't know what's supposed to come next. I don't know what I'm supposed to be when I grow up. I feel like He must have a plan – a big one, a major change, one that's going to make all this suffering and all this profound change in my life make sense. I feel like I'm in limbo, unsure whether to forge ahead, to "kick against the goads", to be proactive, or whether to wait patiently for God to open doors, to trust that He's got it all under control and will work things out in His timing. 

I'm still trying to figure out how repentance works into every corner of my life. All of you have said, at one time or another (and not far in the distant past) that you don't hear enough repentance from me. Last week Christian preached on how the "way of repentance" can make you miss God. I admit confusion on just how the whole repentance thing plays out in the real world. If the gospel is "Repent and believe," I think I'm still missing it a little. I ask for forgiveness for my sins and stupidity, but still have trouble believing that God can forgive me when I know that I'm going to fail Him again. And again. I can't live up to my own standards. Which brings me back to the Rock. I have to learn to trust that my identity is in Jesus, and that He is with me – above me, around me, beneath me, within me – and that He loves me, Jeni Adams, world without end, Amen.

The World's Best Security System

1. Where do you tend to look for security? What gives you your inner sense of well-being?


Tripp makes this set of questions easy for me. He's got me pegged. He lists a bunch of typical places people seek security (relationships, careers, and the like), and then says this:
"Or maybe you have no security system at all. Maybe your days are a cycle of concern, fear, and dread. Perhaps you hyper-analyze every decision you make, and you brutalize yourself with doubt after you make them. Perhaps you look with regret at past decisions. Perhaps you give yourself way too much credit for the development of your story."

That about covers me, don't you think? Where do I tend to look for security? For many years, I looked to myself. It had been pretty clearly established inside my head that I couldn't count on others – others betray, others abandon, others die – but I made a plan for my life and seemed to be doing pretty well at pulling it off. I saw my need for predictability, for control, but intentionally picked a life path that would make that nearly impossible to attain: a life with no job stability, because it also meant a life with no consistent relationships. If I needed a break, I could fall off the radar and come back at my convenience. I could reinvent myself with every tour.

But then I failed me, and I didn't know where to look. So I started to self-destruct. Yes, I looked to God, repeatedly but never consistently. It was too hard to keep eye contact. And I continued to slide down. The Cryders broke my fall, and inevitably I started looking to them to some extent for my security as well.

I'm not sure I remember what an inner sense of well-being feels like. I still don't really feel Christ, or the Holy Spirit, or whatever, in me, although sometimes I feel Him near me. I still mostly feel lost, although my seeking has become more persistent. Usually, the silence is deafening.


2. What are the things that you need to say to yourself when life seems unpredictable and/or dangerous?


"You are not secure because you have control or understanding." Once again, Tripp says it for me. Because those are the two things I want: control and understanding. We usually think of understanding as a good thing, but it keeps tripping me up in my walk with God, because I confuse understanding with faith. I get tangled up in trying to comprehend it all instead of starting where Jesus says to start: "Repent and believe." All the understanding in the world isn't going to save me. It's only by God's grace that I have any hope.

My need for control... it seems practically hard-wired into my personality, and I don't know how to fix it.  Let's be honest: I can't fix it. So what do I do with it? Offer it up to God, repent of it, and give control to Him. That sounds right, but in practical application, no matter how many times I try to set it down before Him, I always seem to snatch it right back up again. It makes my brain hurt. It makes my heart hurt. Trapped in this box of an apartment on the second consecutive day of rain, I feel trapped not only by my geography but by my circumstances. I do overanalyze every decision I've made, brutalize myself over my mistakes, wonder how this can possibly be God's plan and not something else I screwed up. How else could I have landed here? And how can I fix it? And we're back at the start.

So now I have to go confess again, repent again, offer this life that I don't understand and can't control up to God again, knowing that I'm going to fail. It all makes me feel tired, and trapped. Don't get me wrong – this is a good day, a good week, but answering these questions brings out the ugly truth, that I remain trapped inside myself, feeling like I'm slowly disappearing; that I still haven't found this freedom that Jesus promises to those who follow him. I just have to believe that when I fail (again and again!), God does and will forgive. Again. And again.

Feeling Loved

Where do you actually FEEL most loved during the week - by God, by others?

Christian asked me this question over the weekend. I keep reflecting on it, but am not sure what to do with it. It ought to be obvious... but it's not. I feel loved in the Cryder household, just by being included. Because I know you all accept me just as I am (although I still perversely feel the need to earn it... but I'm working on that). I'm happy just to not feel like I'm in the way, to not be incessantly self-conscious. For me, the "feeling" of being loved is just being able to be myself and not have to prove anything.

Where does that fit it in on the God level? I think this ties in with the sermon on Sunday about missing God through trying to be good. If I can't even measure up to my own standards, how can God ever accept me just as I am?

I have seen grace in action in the past weeks on the human level, and I'm trying to translate that into a clearer comprehension of it in my relationship with God. But I don't honestly know where I feel loved by God during the week. I still mostly feel like He's trying to break me. And maybe that's exactly what He's doing. Love doesn't always feel like love. And I'm certainly no expert on what it's supposed to feel like, even if I could trust my feelings. And we've been over that part...

Bible Reading and Prayer

Christian, thank you for calling me yesterday morning to come help Malachi. I'm sorry I couldn't stay at the shop. I was already on the edge – it has been week of sadness emotionally, a lot of which is easily explained just by hormones, although some of it is more complicated than that – but when you asked me if I'd taken the advice you'd given me... twice... (to re-read my "Spiritual Breakthroughs" blog), and I realized that it had once again never occurred to me as soon as I left your house... it pushed me over the edge, and I didn't want to take the chance of crying at the boat shop. I just felt like such a loser, for failing to do such a simple, clearly constructive thing. I don't know what's wrong with me. How can anyone help me if I can't remember what they say? 

I don't know where to read in my Bible, and I don't know what  to pray. I keep trying to read the Old Testament stories as Marilyn suggested, but keep getting bogged down, and am not understanding what I'm supposed to learn from them. I have that Bible-reading insert with the highlighted parts, but it just seems daunting, and I can't seem to get started and concentrate. 

As for prayer, I keep trying the A C T S formula, and I get lost before I ever get 30 seconds in. My prayer life has never been particularly good; I got really encouraged last summer when I started learning to pray with someone else, however pathetic my attempts may have appeared, but without that support, I'm back to a standstill. I think that needs to become a priority in my life; I don't know who to do it with, but I think I need someone, at least occasionally, to try to pray with, as well as pointers on how to start conversations with God on my own.

On a positive note, my reading and prayer haven't just "fallen by the wayside" – before I got involved with you guys, these things just never crossed my mind. Now I really want them in my life... but wanting doesn't seem to be enough. In fact, since my "gospel epiphany" a month or so ago, I've wanted it even more, which may be why my lack of success, my spinning my wheels, feels particularly frustrating just now.

I need support in my reading and prayer, and I don't know what questions to ask, how to ask for help. I should have asked sooner. But to be honest about how my brain still works, I didn't want to admit how much I was still struggling, in light of the fact that God really is working. I didn't want you to be disappointed in me or think that my breakthrough wasn't really real. It was. It is. Which is why I need your help to keep moving forward. Advice? Please?