$120,000 and 4 Years Later...

The curse of introspection and self-awareness is that the self becomes that which consumes the entire field of vision. There are certainly times where the ability for macro focus is helpful. But the thing with macro is that foreground detail comes at the cost of background clarity. This is problematic if we believe that we are not the end all be all to life. Indeed, this is problematic as Christians, since Christ has come, among other things, to take the center of the universe off ourselves and place it back on God. We are no longer singular amoebas, amorphous in purpose and identity, but grafted into something bigger than ourselves, which includes everything around us that Christ desires to redeem and heal, ironically, through near-sighted closed-minded broken people like ourselves.

It is not that we lose our individuality, nor that God no longer cares about our struggles. On the contrary, we are affirmed that He indeed knows every hair on our head and has the best for us. However, our lives, identity, growth, and purposes are now fed, nourished, and tied with this new Kingdom we are adopted into. As children of God, the common theme that threads itself through every decision and action is how our lives are in line with what the Father is doing with redemption, both in and around us.

I have long neglected, with a few exceptions, fostering a sensitivity and awareness to the way the Spirit moves outside of myself. If I were to paint my current understanding of God, I would have myself in the middle squeezing most everything else off the canvas. This hardly makes sense, given that His work in my life is not in isolation from His work in the world. My purpose and direction cannot be found outside of learning to first see Him, and to secondly see the world around me as He sees it, both of which take my eyes off myself.

Speaking of worship and the other disciplines that draw us to the heart of God, Mark Labberton in “The Dangerous Act of Worship” says, “This means living a vision of life in which we are not at the center. God is. It means turning away from a vision in which we and our issues are the primary focus of the day. God is. In a life of faithful worship, our life is not about us. It’s about God.”

The new paradigm for me is actually living in a way that reflects the reality of losing my life to actually gain it. In a time where we are all scrambling around trying to figure out why we spent $120,000 over 4 years, it would do us well to understand that we cannot find its course by looking for it. In the field of psychology built upon analyzing behavior, determining problems and providing solutions, it is sometimes difficult to remember that our lives are more than what we can plan or fix. Rather, we can only find it by seeking the heart of God, having our passions resonate with what He cares about, and losing ourselves in the process, trusting that His love and promises for our wellbeing are true. Seek first His kingdom and His heart, and I have a hunch that the healing, growth, love and provision He knows we need will be given to us as well, along with immeasurably more than we can ask for or imagine.

Perhaps our futures and lives fall under that strange category of phenomena that cannot be found by looking for it, but will be given to us in fullness and abundance if we learn to seek something else. What is left to be done is living the process and disciplines that bring us to a place where our eyes can be pried open, where we can be roused from our complacent sleep and our dreams can be bigger than ourselves. The disciplines are merely tools that bring us into the throne room of the living God. It is in meeting the living Christ that our faces are also transformed to shine with glory, and our hearts enlarged and aligned with His.

This is the goal as much as it is the process for the rest of our lives, as we learn to live the ways in which the Spirit blows.

Indeed, everything will be alright, if He becomes our vision.

Thinking of ya’ll.

Here's to Giving Up

Giving up well is like trying to gracefully eat spaghetti while wearing a white shirt; …one wonders if it’s ever been done successfully.

When the sour sting of bitterness starts lingering in the mouth after the teeth are brushed at night… when anger is found systematically speckling your blurred consciousness in the mornings, all is not right. Moving forward should not be independent of Agape, and true healing cannot take root in hatred.

Mending, at the cost of love, is not mending at all.

Embracing the Silence

Silence is frightening. It’s frightening when it reveals how unsettled I am when I’m surrounded by it. Like a crack fiend’s craving, I’m looking for my fix of lyrics and music. Withdrawal is difficult. LSD users have flashbacks. Musicholics have earworms… an auditory itch that yearns to be scratched in the form of sound waves. But instead, there is silence.

I decided that for some people music is just a pastime. It’s something fun to move to, something you belt out with friends when you’re cruising down the highway with your windows down. For others though, it’s like psychological cutting… the emotions that are squeezed out of the blank spaces between the black dots on lined paper and the insinuation of experiences in the lyrics are the razors that remind us of our existence. The bleeding that ensues confirms that we can still feel, for better or worse. We breathe a sigh of relief after our depths are stirred, even if we know nothing has changed after having the last three minutes and fifty three seconds light up our auditory cortex.

For the last five days, I haven’t listened to music. Like an addict, all I’ve wanted to do is to take an injection of iTunes. I cooked and I cleaned without the normal hiphop. I walked around in my boxers, while the gravity of the piano called to me like a black hole. “Just a few chords,” I thought. “Just one or two times through the Damien Rice and Over the Rhine songs I’ve been learning.” Being forced under the lulling non-noise of the ceiling fan and air conditioner, I realized that the frightening roar I heard was my own emptiness.

This is the very emptiness I sought to inundate with music. From Scr-pture, I get the vague sense that G-d isn’t a fan of artificial opiates. When I sat there in silence and kept the professionally recorded melancholy from using my heart as a treadmill, I could no longer ride over this chasm on the borrowed wings of someone else’s talent.

The process of addiction is often perpetuated by the fear of facing reality on the road to sobering up. A temporary escape becomes a desire to remain in a state of ignorance. (Insert Homer Simpson here, toasting, “Here’s to alcohol: The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems!”) I’ve always prided myself in being a realist. And I’m too proud to turn my back on that claim now. So here I am, simultaneously acknowledging my idolatry and confessing the unexpected emptiness left by a masked but shriveling spirituality.

I take great comfort that J-sus is “G-d with us.” I’m relieved that we are indwelt by the Holy Sp-rit. I’m grateful for a love that casts our fear and grounds my identity as a child of the Father. I think sometimes, we can worsh-p in silence. I look forward to when this naked emptiness will be filled again.

But not with music or lyrics.

"Eels are like women...

... if you try to hold them down, they'll just get away."

It's a quote from an obscure show called Samurai Champloo. I don't suppose too many of you have caught Eels before... I won't bore you with the details. But that idea is a manifestation of something that I'm learning, namely, living life with open hands.

Job says, "The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. May the name of the Lord be praised." And later, when his wife tells him to curse God and die in his misery, he responds, " Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?"

Perhaps it was Richard Foster who first brought this notion of praying with open hands as a reminder to how we are to live our lives. If we live with open hands, we are free to receive from God and free to give others what we have received. We are also free to give up the things in our lives, even the good things, that threaten to tweak God's will with our plans little by little until it hardly looks like His calling for us any more. By then, what we are clasping tightly to our chest will be a dull watered down rationalized selfish version of something that used to be Christ-centered and glorious.

I'm selfish and I'm sentimental. Blame it on Adam, blame it on culture, blame it on me, the fact remains. But with open hands... when we are faithful, it frees us from having remorse over the things and people we missed out on and allows to live fully in what He has given. It helps us recognize that we, being very broken little people in the world, cannot possibly control all that happens to and around us, but that we can with faith, hold out our open hands receiving from God what He has ordained and letting go of ourselves in the process. It inevitably teaches us to let go of our miserly dreams and habits.

It allows us, in a world full of problems that overwhelm us and pain that threatens to numb us, to listen and obey what the Lord has called us to, where He has called us to it, in the timing He has called us to, and in the strength He supplies, no matter how small or how large of a task it might be.

There is freedom in that to finally breath deeply. I don't suppose something like that comes overnight. It's not so much a single act as it is a way of life.

Thank God for grace.