Five little words

Funny how God will confirm things, multiple times and in ordinary little ways, in areas that He’s recently working on in our lives. At least, He does this with me and I have a hunch I’m not alone. Take these sentences, for instance, that I read this morning from a book by Beth Moore, echoing things I’ve heard lately in the counseling office and through mesages at church:

I used to think that the essence of trusting God was trusting that He wouldn’t allow my fears to become realities. Without realizing it, I mostly trusted God to do what I told Him.

I’m growing convinced that the root of my struggle to turn the page in this season of life lies in the need to address and redefine what trusting God really looks like. I’ll be honest, the thought of trusting the God who’s allowed what I hoped He wouldn’t allow is more than a tad unnerving. It shines a glowering light on my inability to deeply, completely, truthfully, faithfully trust Him. It exposes my misperception and my fear. It invites me to lay down a flimsy masquerade of trust for genuine faith, a false sense of security for the real deal; to believe that whatever risk may come attached with that trust is, in the end, no real risk at all if I truly believe God is trustworthy.

There’s a couple verses in a certain psalm in the Bible that I really want to own. They could be pivotal for me, really, if I take them to heart daily, until they are a part of me. How they would challenge and transform any sense of dread or fear about the past or future, or even today.

[She] will have no fear of bad news; [her] heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord. [Her] heart is secure, [she] will have no fear; in the end [she] will look in triumph on [her] foes. ~ Psalm 112:7-8

Is my definition of trust big enough where I can say, “I trust You, God. Period.” ? I’m not there, not even close. But it’s where I’m headed, and I won’t give up. Period.

Home

I feel I’ve been on the road for a long time, trying to find my way home. Some time ago, what I called home appeared to pick up and move to a different neighborhood or city or country - whatever the case, its address changed. Or maybe it got a different paint job, went through some cosmetic remodels, and I’m unable to recognize it anymore, except when flipping through pictures from the past, a walk down nostalgia lane. Ohhhhh, that’s my home. I remember now...

Or maybe, home is right where it’s always been, but my eyes have changed and I can’t see it the way I used to. It’s blurry to me, feeling so close I could reach out and touch it, but not quite at the tips of my fingers. What exactly is home? Is it a person, a place, a community, a building, a state of being? Maybe it's some of these things but also something more, something greater, something, well, mysterious?

At church today, I was overcome by many sensations as I observed and participated in the worship. First, I’ve never been part of a “liturgical” church, and coming from a more charismatic background, I never expected one such church to feel so alive (just being honest). I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m a writer, so of course I’ll try. When I’m surrounded by this particular community of people, immersed in the worship and listening to the teaching, it’s like my heartbeat, so long slightly out-of-sync, finally blends in to add its unique rhythm to the beautiful beats around me. It just.... fits. Like my heart and mind and soul breathe a collective sigh of relief as I sink further into the pew, I’m home. Almost.

When I went forward to take communion, having only been to this congregation three times, I felt a pang in my heart as I tore a piece of bread from the loaf held out to me by one of the pastors, whom I’d just met that morning. Looking me gently in the eyes, he said quietly, “Christ’s body broken for you, Amber.” I moved to take the cup of wine, and the man holding the tray, whom I’d also just met that morning, said to me, “Christ’s blood shed for you, Amber.” Tears filled my eyes as I walked back to my seat, scanning the crowded room of people from all over the city, all walks of life, most of them I have never met. And I didn’t feel like just a face in the crowd. I was known. Not just because some pastors knew my name, but it felt to me like a sweet reminder that I was part of a family dearly loved by God, my Father, and even in the largeness of this family, He knows my name. He knows I long for home, for community, for belonging and purpose.

We sang a song in closing. Normally this song wouldn’t move my emotions the way it did, but today, I couldn’t make it through without crying. Holding the bulletin up to my face, I let the tears fall behind the paper, soaking in the words of hope and joy that I couldn’t actually get out of my mouth but were belting out from my heart as I listened to the voices around me.

On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand, and cast a wishful eye

To Canaan’s fair and happy land, where my possessions lie

O’er all those wide extended plains, shines one eternal day

There God the Son forever reigns, and scatters night away

I am bound, I am bound, I am bound for the promised land

I am bound, I am bound, I am bound for the promised land

No chilling winds nor poisonous breath, can reach that healthful shore

Sickness and sorrow, pain and death, are felt and feared no more

I am bound, I am bound, I am bound for the promised land

I am bound, I am bound, I am bound for the promised land

When I shall reach that happy place, I’ll be forever blest

For I shall see my Father’s face, and in His bosom rest

I am bound, I am bound, I am bound for the promised land

I am bound, I am bound, I am bound for the promised land

For I shall see my Father's face, and in His bosom rest... sigh. What could be a better home than that, than resting against my Father's chest (not literally, of course, but figuratively it's a beautiful image)? The hope of a home that will never move or crumble. It’s almost within reach, but not quite yet. A reminder that, close as I may come at times to finding "home" here in this life, it's meant to be illusive, unattainable. I won't fully unpack my bags until I reach the promised land and run into my Father's arms.

Morning exercise

It's still dark outside. But instead of watching the morning unfold from my usual perch behind the counter at work, I'm propped up against a pillow on a window bench at my favorite cafe in Ballard, observing the quietness of the usually bustling street as it wakes up. The rain falls steadily outside, painting drizzly streaks of polka dots down the window. Rap music fills the cozy, hip French cafe, an odd juxtaposition to a dark and drizzly morning. I don't work until later this morning, and tempting as it was to stay curled up in bed, I wanted to seize a rare opportunity to enjoy the morning from the other side of the coffee counter. I figured I could use the reflection time to set the course for this day, something that's gotten lost in my early morning work schedule. It's much harder to be intentional about starting the day out right when very little stands between waking up and starting work.

Hmm, intentionality, it seems I have lost you at some little juncture on the road. And I wonder why, when I hit the ground running each day, it becomes harder and harder to live out of a full reservoir. The "fruit of the Spirit", which I memorized long ago in Sunday school, may not be as evident in my life as I'd like to believe they are. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Just reading this list is an exercise in humility for me. If these qualities are hallmarks of the work of the Holy Spirit in my life, then friends, I confess I'm sorely lacking. And it comes back to that weighty little word, intentionality.

I've been thinking a lot lately about gratitude. About how easy it is not to notice God throughout the day, and in that lack of intentionality, that lack of seeing and hearing and touching and tasting and sensing, how hard it is to cultivate a daily perspective of gratitude. I hate to oversimplify life, to reduce things to a formula or a "key" to unlocking something profound. I'm not going to do that. But I've been thinking, if there were a key to living each day fully, what if it began with gratitude? Gratitude, like love, is a continual choice. I make the choice every day to live from a place of gratitude, even some days in spite of the challenges that are present, whether physically or in circumstance or emotion. I can choose to respond out of gratitude or react out of my unrestrained self. I can make the choice to speak kindly and gently, to be quick to listen and slow to anger, every bit as much as I can make the choice to speak quickly and sharply out of irritation.

I'm beginning to appreciate that gratitude and the fruit of the Spirit are exercises, developing spiritual muscles that don't just show up without intentionality and hard work. I may not like that, but I've got to admit, it appears to be true. Like physical fitness and toned muscles, these desired qualities and attitudes do not magically appear on their own. I've got to go after them, every day, relentlessly cultivating them in my life. No, actually, relentlessly coming to God and admitting that I cannot cultivate them on my own. I need the help of the Spirit. And herein lies the difference between self-help and God-help. Living out of gratitude and the fruit of the Spirit is not ultimately something I can achieve by simply having the right strategies, reading the right books and trying hard enough. It takes commitment on my part, but God does a lot of the work if I can be humble enough to admit I need his help. Every day.

The question is, if all I can ever be certain of is that I have been given this moment, what will I choose to live out of - gratitude or forgetfulness?

Thankfulness

What opening line could I begin my new chapter with? What would set the tone of the story to unfold? Today God clearly penned the first sentence on my heart: Thankfulness. It's too common to lose sight of God during the activities of the day, of the week, to take for granted that some things just happen because they should and to get frustrated or disappointed when things don't happen as (I think) they should. I take the gifts that God has given me and think, perhaps not deliberately but in my heart, that they are expected of Him. Such pride, softly disguised, seeping in, when everything is actually a gift graciously given. Even my very life is a gift sustained by the will of God as long as He chooses.

So I ask myself the question the pastor posed today at church: How much feast does God have to spread for us before we think, "Wow!" ? What has happened to the wonder, to my capacity to be thankful for both the pleasant and the unpleasant, because at the very least, I still have Christ? And I dare say I would never utter that He is not enough; yet that is how I tend to live.

I'm at a point in my story where it calls for the development of a new kind of faith. My "old" faith, the one I lived with up until my Papa died, was real and served me well through many things. But it all but crumbled in the wake of that disaster. It has taken me quite a while to see that my old faith was based on the principle of, "Live as if my dreams must come true and my fears not come near me." After nearly a decade of those dreams not coming true and my fears pounding down my door, I withdrew from God, as if He were suddenly a stranger, no longer safe.

I could write much more on that, and likely will as I go, but for now I will capture what is to be central to the foundation of my new faith. Simply put, if I cannot learn to be thankful for Christ through whatever comes along in the plot of my life, I cannot be thankful for anything. I've said it before, and it is time to remind myself again, that God owes me nothing. It is time for a faith that learns to truly hold my life and everything in it with open hands, an open heart.

Chapter one

I remember hating to lose as a kid. Not always because I couldn't stand the thought of someone else being better than me, as much as I couldn't stand the thought of my best effort not being good enough. Falling short was failure, and failure was bad; I obviously wasn't trying hard enough. So, I grew up being very competitive - with myself mostly. And it appears this mindset, threaded throughout my story, has prevailed throughout my life.

Maybe that's how I ended up sitting in a counselor's office recently, complaining of feeling stuck in life. My story seemed to come to a grinding halt over two years ago, when my Papa died, and the only story that I continue to tell is one of loss, marked by that tragic moment when my world as I knew it collided. My faith, my identity, my sense of purpose and direction in life, all seemed to crash and burn, and I haven't known how to pick up those pieces again. So miserable as it can be, I have continued to live and relive in that story, reading and writing the same page over and over again, hoping to make some sense of it enough to turn the page. I wrote months ago of being in a place of needing to turn the page and not knowing how. Even then, I finally admitted it was likely due to fear, but I still fought taking complete ownership of it.

Like a little girl losing at a card game, I decided I didn't like this losing business and set my cards down, walking away. I don't want to play this game anymore, I suck at it. In other words, this story isn't working out for me, not the way I planned. I began to sink into a funk, a bit of a depression, looking alright on the outside but full of anxiety, fear and failing hope on the inside. Funny how clearly this screams "control freak" and I thought I'd dealt with that already. As my counselor described, I've been frustrated that God isn't driving my car like I've asked him to, and yet I won't get out of the driver's seat. Last time I checked, two people can't drive a car. Oops, there's that "C" word again.

And then, the epitome moment came. That "aha" moment in the counseling office when I realized what needs to change. Not my circumstances per se, but me. Beginning with my beliefs. How easy, and yes, sometimes convenient, it can be to hide behind pain. To call myself a failure, to believe nothing good lies ahead for me in life, that my story has failed and now I'm stuck with what I've got, oddly enough there's something I benefit from with these beliefs. A false sense of security. If I'm a failure and I can't do much about it, I'm exempt from taking a risk that might lead to more failure. The familiarity of my failed story, painful as it is, can feel more comfortable than turning the page and beginning to write a new story. A new story whose ending I don't know, let alone what unfolds in the first chapter.

It requires laying down my illusion of control, as I like to call it (since, let's face it, none of us really have control), and deeper, choosing to believe God's character. There's a difference I'm well aware of between believing in God and believing God. One is more an intellectual acknowledgement, and the other, comprised completely of faith. And I'm thankful right now for my counselor, who having read some of my writings, is strong and wise enough to hold them up in front of my face and ask me, essentially, are these just words? Or do you intend to act on them?

It can be deceptively easy to put words on paper (or on a screen), sending theological and philosophical questions out into the stratosphere, and call that good enough. Sure, the questions in life seem to far outnumber the answers, but that doesn't mean there aren't answers. It's easy to ask questions, to feel helpless in the silence, but it's a hell of a lot harder to say, I may not know why my story is turning out this way and I certainly didn't choose all of this, but I can choose how I will respond to it and what I will believe about God, myself and life. I can choose to believe that a different story is not necessarily a bad story. And what I've deemed as failure isn't necessarily a failure at all, as much as a change of plot.

I've never wanted to be someone who writes what they cannot live out, so here I am, committing to the drafting of a new chapter with the true Author. Let the pages turn, I'm ready to be unstuck.

Songs of deliverance

I wait for You

Beside the bubbling fountain waters

Just to hear Your song in the night.

I wait.

I cry to You

Here upon this rain soaked rock

To feel Your touch again upon my heart

I cry.

And Father, You surround me

You surround me

You surround me with songs of deliverance.

The waters sing,

Calling out to my heart

Now is the time

Return, every broken piece that was scattered

You are whole. You are pure. You are renewed. You are lovely.

Return.

My heart leaps,

My fingers open

And the key that has no power over me

Slips down into the the waters.

And from the waters rise

You are free -

Free to love,

Free to be loved -

You are free, My child.

Be free.

The ground beneath us

I never used to notice the ground beneath my feet. Never appreciated how firm and dependable it felt, just took for granted that it was a solid mass. I’ve taken science classes and read the news stories of how the earth moves, of how it devastates when in one ordinary day what seemed immovable begins to falter. When those plates that are out of sight, out of mind below the earth’s surface shift, everything above begins to rumble and shake and tumble. Solid ground is no longer a casual assumption.

It’s difficult to know the scope of how such a rumbling and shaking changes you. How it shakes, not only your family and your memories, your present and your future, your physical and your emotional health, your friendships and relationships, but also your identity and personality. Your beliefs about God and life and meaning. It dangles truth in your face like a tattered question mark.

It often frustrates me that I am not as resilient as I used to be. No longer am I a fan of change, so flexible and adaptable, bending gracefully with each twist and turn and gust of wind. Towards life, I feel more like a pioneer in the race for a plot of land on the new frontier, staking my claim and hunkering down with vulnerability cloaked in weary determination. Change feels threatening, and I wish I understood why. Why sometimes the small things shake me, to the point of producing tears from a place much deeper than the prick that provoked these tears.

“After my dad died.” I wish this phrase weren’t so often the preface to understanding and explaining my reactions to life now. But it shook me, violently, and like a region that has experienced a significant natural disaster, where the recovery period extends for years after the tragedy, I am still rebuilding in the recognizable but highly altered landscape that is my life.

Growing up with God, though I was not sheltered from our own family pains and tragedies, I never questioned that he was solid. My rock. When things shook, he was immovable. But when my Papa died, so unexpectedly, so traumatically, everything shifted beneath my feet. I lost my bearings. God no longer felt safe, nor did life. I was introduced to the unsettling feeling that millions of others share because of what they’ve experienced: that tragedy can strike anyone at any time, unannounced. When the boy I loved broke my heart a year later, I again felt someone, something, I loved yanked from my hands unexpectedly. And while I’ve healed a lot from these losses, grown immensely through these losses, I feel the pain of the unfinished healing process whenever change is thrust upon me, whether big or small.

Change triggers fear. Fear springs from a lie I began to believe, beginning with my Papa’s death and deepening with the loss of relationship with the boy I loved. God is not safe, and not safe in a way that places his goodness in question. I am alone, left to face things that are once again beyond my control, and all I yearn for is a safe place. Solid ground. A place where I can settle in and rest, unmoved, unafraid that the people and things about life that I love will be jerked away. I want to catch my breath, to not be looking over my shoulder for the next bad thing to happen, to trust that some things are in fact real, albeit imperfect, even new love. But especially, to find that place of peace in God where I am settled in on the solid mass that is him, where all around me can shake but he doesn’t move.

I want to lay this lie to rest, this lie that I have no safe place, that nothing good in life will ever last, because it haunts me. Because it robs me of living life fully, of hoping for good things instead of fearing that bad things will always be lurking in the shadows. In the dark, this lie is huge and imposing, but there comes a day when it's time to face it squarely and flip the light switch on, to see it exposed for the wimpy, cowering creature it is in the daylight. Learning to trust again is a process; to know in the furthest corners of my heart that God may not be safe in all the ways I define the word, but he is forever good. That is the only unshakable ground.