Expectations and Hope

In the last week or two I started to notice that a joy leak had sprung up in my heart; I had let a sneaky thief in through a back door and I was (still am) paying for it.  A couple of dear friends helped me pinpoint its name in just a few minutes but the eviction process is taking much longer than that.  Expectations.  In my younger years I used to say that if you don't have expectations you can't be disappointed, and in some ways that worked, but in many ways I hadn't actually let go my expectations, I just started expecting the worst.  In more recent years, in my quest to be "more spiritual" I had decided that it was holy to have expectations, and in that way I fell prey to the common confusion between expectations and expectancy (more on that in a moment).

To be real, I hadn't realized just how many expectations had risen up in my life.  They created a landscape of unholy mountains for myself and my loved ones to climb.  And each time that one of these monuments to perfection proved to be insurmountable, my heart was left open to disappointment and bitterness.  Over the course of years, the ruins of these expectations left scars that would send ripples of pain through my soul each time I would think of the situations that led to them.  And what I'm learning is that the only way to overcome these scars is to allow myself to mourn the loss of those dreams.  The dreams of how things could be, of how things "should" be.  Because the pain of a broken dream is a real pain.  But for true healing to occur I can't stay there, and neither can you.  We have to clear the landscape.  Not only of our broken dreams, but of every vision, realized and far off, of what life should be like.  For me, I had to even clear away the things I believe are going to be God things in the future, because anytime I focus my heart on the gift of God rather than God Himself I fall hard.  (There's a tiny story in the Bible about that too, if you want to read about Abraham and Ishmael).

But here's where the beauty and joy begins to make its return.  I can't leave the landscape of my heart empty.  I must fill it.  So instead of expectations I choose to fill it with expectancy, or a word I like better: hope.  I don't hope for the gift of God.  I hope because God is giver.  He is good.  He is faithful.  He will come through.  He has great plans for me.  And I know that not everyone is like me.  Some people God gives extremely specific plans and they see the map of their life and they follow it and their perseverance is rewarded.  I've practically begged God to do this for me.  I've been gently prodded by people to make this map for my life so I can be more godly.  But that isn't how God speaks to me.  He asks me to trust.  To sit quietly and let Him be God and wait on Him to open the doors.  And when I receive that, I feel such a flood of peace and joy.  And when I surrender to God's will, I see those things that I walked in, that didn't work out, truly were places God had led me, He just used them in a different way than I expected.  He used them to make me who I am, to bring me to where I am.  And in that moment, hope brings new hope. 

As always, I am a work in progress.  Every day is a challenge to choose hope over expectations.  Every day I make the wrong choice.  But I'm starting to choose right sometimes.  And God has more than enough grace for me.  What about you?  How does God speak to you?  Does He use long winding maps or does He ask you to take step waiting for the next to be revealed?

Be-You-tiful

At their core, a person, or take it one step further...at your core, you, before the fall or after Christ's redemption, are good. You are created in God's image and were never meant to "lose yourself".  How do those statements make you feel?  To me, those statements feel like heresy.

But it is no heresy, the secret is the tiny phrase "in Christ".  In Christ I am new (2 Cor 5).  In Christ the person I was created to be is the real me.  God created each of us uniquely.  He created us wonderfully (Ps 139).  We were meant to be seen because we, the real us, reflect the glory of Christ (2 Cor 3).  A phrase I've heard over and over again that sounds so godly is: "I don't want people to see me, I want people to see Christ".  But this is a lie.  If you are in Christ then when people see you, they'll see Christ.

After my last blog post, I've been on the journey of learning about how to feel emotions rightly.  Not to shut down but also not to listen to every whim of my heart.  To be healthy and grounded.  And so when my sweet coworker told me about the book study her entire church is doing, "Emotionally Healthy Spirituality", I wanted in.  The questions above were inspired by this book as I wrestled with the chapter, "Finding yourself to find God".  The idea that God doesn't desire us to continually die to ourselves, but that our old self died with Christ already and that our new self, the self created in God's image was meant to be discovered and nurtured was a hard pill for me to swallow.  As usual, I decided to take this up with Holy Spirit and Scripture and what I found surprised me.  While we will lose our lives if we seek them, Scripture did seem to back up this concept of "our new self" rather than the understanding I had of my "self" being lost in Christ and that anytime that "self" popped up it was getting in the way of His glory.  Our new self is created in the image of Christ, it is immersed in the depths of Christ and it is growing into His image.  Would God want to hide something that looks like Him?  Would He want to hide something that brings Him glory?  The answer that I'm finding is no, He wouldn't.

So that begs the question, who are you in Christ?  To answer that question, I'll ask another.  What are your favorite parts of Christ, what is it about Him that draws you?  Because those will give you a clue to who you are.  For me it's these: Always there. Faithful.  Rich in MERCY.  Abounding in steadfast love.  Beautiful, the One who paints the sky in shades of pink, purple and blue.  Delightful. Glorious.  Your personality is from Him.  It isn't something that needs to be changed or overcome.

This journey is far from over (same with the book, I've only read 3 chapters so far!)  But I'm excited to take it, and I hope that you too find the strength and support you need to take on the journey before you.  Feel free to reach out to me to talk about your own journey or with Scriptures you love about this subject!  And thanks for your patience with my thought jumble.

The Journey Back to Self

You probably think this post is going to be about how I lost myself after the birth of my first child, all the work of diaper changes and feedings and the eternal nights, because according to society my son is a terrible sleeper (p.s. according to me he's just a baby who loves his mom and is not so great at the sleeping bit).  That is not what this post is about.  In fact, it is the opposite.  Surprisingly, the Bible is right when it says when you lose your life you will find it.  This is the story of how almost 12 months ago now I began to find myself again. 

You see, about 6 years ago I began facing some formative moments in my life.  They could have made me, but instead I let them break me and I haven't felt like myself ever since.  It began when I had to leave Africa because I just couldn't stop getting sick.  Oh, nothing major or terrible.  But a staph infection here and strep throat there and before I knew it I was missing so much of the work I was there to do to be sequestered in my room trying to recover but the relief just never came.  So I, along with the leadership there, made one of the toughest decisions of my life and I "came home" a couple months early.  It didn't feel like home.  I thought that was going to be the springboard to the rest of my life.  I loved the work so much.  I loved the people so much.  I didn't want to be in America, I wanted to be in Africa.  It felt like a resounding defeat.  And I left it as that.  When I arrived home, I was welcomed with a barrage of rumors.  The most well-meaning, kindest people I know were asking if I'd "left my calling" so that I could be with my boyfriend.  Out of respect for the wonderful people involved I won't belabor this part of the story, except to say that I faced the devastating destruction of relationships over the course of the next few years.  Perhaps the reason it haunted me for so long was because I wasn't an innocent victim in all of it.  I was as much responsible for causing these beautiful people pain as they were responsible to me.  In what I was sure was supposed to be the happiest time in my life, I struggled with deep depression, sobbing on the bathroom floor, begging God to take the pain away, and swearing that inasmuch as it fell to me I would never hurt anyone like that again and I would never be hurt like that again.

And this profoundly emotional and intuitive soul did just that, I didn't hurt like that anymore.  I didn't feel at that level.  I didn't speak my mind at that level.  I restricted myself from judging any action of anyone else and slowly my ability to discern what was happening around me faded away.  I constantly carried with me the weight of shame and failure.  I hadn't been enough for Africa.  I hadn't been enough for the ones I loved.  I failed them and I failed myself.  And no matter how I fought to lose the numbness of it all, I couldn't.  Don't get me wrong.  In the last 6 years, God has been incredibly good and faithful to me.  I married an amazing man, I achieved my goal of finishing my bachelors, I've been surrounded by many friends both new and old, and I experienced the wonders of new cities, beaches, and the majesty of forests and mountains.  But in the midst of it all, I've longed to truly know who I am again.

One of the biggest signals to me that there was something out of place in my personality came a couple of years ago when I took a personality training at work.  The pre-training assessment told me that I was a pure, unwavering analyzer.  According to this, I'm closed off and prefer to focus on problems and solutions than on people.  I would prefer no one talk about themselves to me but instead get to the issue at hand and leave my personal life in the mysterious shadows.  I was shocked.  I have a good dose of German efficiency in my soul, don't get me wrong.  I also like to solve problems, but mostly because problems effect people and I want people to have the best.  I knew something was amiss.  But I still couldn't put my finger on what was going on or how to fix it.

Then came Elijah.  There was something sacred about that immediate post-partum phase.  Maybe it was the extreme exhaustion or the roller-coaster of hormones, but I felt again.  I cried every week at church for a month or two.  I sat in silent wonder at the immense responsibility that Josh and I had taken on.  Suddenly, the things that happened years ago didn't seem to matter anymore, what mattered was the new weight of raising this little baby, whose destiny I can feel on him just as strongly as I can smell those wonderful presents he leaves for me to clean up.  Y'all I'm a mess.  100%.  But I love it.  I love it because life is meant to be messy.  Our emotions were never meant to be bottled up and kept hidden from the world.  Perfection isn't something to be achieved, it's who we already are.  And so I'm taking this next step of raw vulnerability to be more honest with you than I've probably been in years, because we weren't meant to live in the shadows.  We were created, I was created, to shine bright. 

If you feel so bold, please join me in this journey to be who we truly are.  Share with me what's going on in your life.  The people who walked with me during this time in spite of my distance are precious to me and I would love to walk with you as well in the reality of who you are.

Let it go.

I know I'm about a year late getting onto the Frozen blogpost train, so please forgive me.  I have to be honest, I don't get Christians hating on Frozen.  I'll be the first to admit that Elsa doesn't act very heroic in the movie that she is marketed to be a hero in.  But I think that the movie is something that Christians should watch and learn from because I've watched it play out before inside of churches.
Elsa is a beautiful talented young person who has been blessed with an incredible gift.  The problem is that the gift, if used without maturity, can harm those around her.  Those around her have never seen it before, they don't know how to react or how to help her; all they know is that while she uses her gift she is dangerous.  So they teach her to "conceal, don't feel"; to hide her gift, to hide parts of who she is, to shut down to everyone and everything around her.  So she does.  The problem is that she isolates herself because she has been taught that parts of who she is are completely unacceptable, only that doesn't weaken her gift, it's part of who she is so separating herself out cannot remove it.  Enter "Let it go".  Was this reaction to her isolation and fear of hurting others wrong?  Yes.  And no.  *Shocked Silence*  The truth is, it was right for her to let go of other people's opinions of her.  It was right for her to let go of the man-made rules that had been imposed on her.  It was right for her to explore the beauty of the way she was created to be.  It was right for her to finally receive the wonder of who she was.  Incredible.  Beautiful.  Unique.  Strong.
Does this narrative sound familiar?  It did to me.  There are so many beautiful and unique people walking through our church doors and so often we don't know what to do with them.  Perhaps they're so loud that they're disruptive.  Perhaps they border on controlling.  Perhaps their imagination runs away with them.  Perhaps they are just too emotional.  Or perhaps we are meeting future evangelists, administrators, prophets and seers that have not yet learned how to operate in maturity.  Instead of trying to shut down what we see as a problem perhaps we should be celebrating the God-given gifts within them.  Perhaps you have been Elsa.  I have been.
Luckily, running off and wreaking mayhem or isolating submissively for our whole lives are not our only two options.  We have rock trolls (bear with me), people who have lived and experienced many things and can teach us how to navigate what we are experiencing.  These people have the maturity we need; and often to reach a point where we can operate in our gifts in a way that uplifts our whole community we will need to submit ourselves to their guidance.  We also have our family in Christ, brothers and sisters like Anna, who will fight for us and fight with us.  These people will love us through our flaws and failures, many times they will accept us even before we accept ourselves.  They will show us one of the most important things we  will ever need to walk in our giftings and our lives: love.  And we have one more amazing resource that Elsa never had: the Holy Spirit living inside of us, the very voice of God to lead and guide us, teaching the way we should go, creating life for others through our humble movements of obedience.
So be yourself!  Each part of you was fashioned by God.  You were fearfully and wonderfully made.  You are altogether beautiful.  There are good works that were created in advance just for you that you can simply walk in.  Just remember, love is key to walking out your gift.  "Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling" 1 John 2:10.  And the God who created you and your gifts leads you by the hand as you make this incredible journey called life.
...Oh and those things that were holding you back...let them go...

Fire with Fire

Fight fire with fire is a phrase I often hear people say, but I don't think they understand what it means.  You see, in fire prone areas sometimes to prevent a devastating wildfire people use controlled burns to keep flammable brush under tabs so that if wildfire does break out it won't be able to spread since it won't have the fuel necessary.  I personally have never seen a firefighter out at a house fire with a flame thrower trying to tame the flames.  But that's how we use the phrase often.  If you don't believe me just take a look at the body image debate currently occurring.  It saddens me to hear body shaming going on both ways, overweight and underweight, too much make-up and too plain.  Inasmuch as it is true that no matter what your body type you are beautiful, I think that this is still missing the point.  The point is that we cannot defeat body shaming through focus on the body, fighting flesh with flesh.  The only way to defeat it is to look beyond the flesh to the true nature of each person, the God-given, intricately woven beauty in the depths, once you catch sight of that beauty you cannot help but see beauty in every body you see, skin and bones or extra curvy, pimpled, short, tall, mediocre, short hair, frizzy hair, no hair, each one will exude beauty to you and when you catch this beauty you transmit it to others through your words and actions.  Another contemporary example is the ISIS crisis, people who spread fear, anger, and hate so vehemently that it cannot help but touch the depths of our souls.  The response I have seen has sadly often been fighting fire with fire.  Articles posted left and right about the danger of Muslims in America, hate spewed forth against these men and women, fear about how this is the end of time and we will be destroyed gruesomely by them if we do not first destroy them.  Fear, anger, hate.  But we are never told to take an eye for an eye, we are told to forgive as our Father forgave.  We are told to love.  We will never defeat hate by hate, we will only replace it, we will never defeat fear with fear, we only strengthen it, we will never defeat anger with anger, we will only multiply it.  But we can love.  Love is the antithesis of hate and fear.  We can forgive, anger cannot occupy a space that forgiveness inhabits.  We can listen to the words of our Teacher, who prayed "Father forgive them for they know not what they do" even as he died at the hands of evil men, and we can pray for our enemies.  Our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against rulers, principalities and powers of this dark world, so why do we continue to try to fight with fleshly weapons?  Today I challenge you, and I challenge myself, to ask what is the spiritual response to the fleshly circumstances that are rising against you today.  And I challenge you to fight fire with water, with a fire extinguisher, by smothering, by kicking dirt, by whatever means necessary, but for goodness sake, stop trying to fight fire with fire.

Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust

I've been chewing on a thought for a while now and I think it's time to share it with you my friends.  In Song of Solomon it says that "He has brought me to His banqueting table and His banner over me is love" and in Psalm "He prepares a table for me in the presence of my enemies, He anoints my head with oil, my cup overflows".  But to be honest, I don't always feel like I'm at a banqueting table, a lot of times I just feel hungry.  As I pondered this phenomenon one day, I remembered a picture of another banquet table.  In the movie Hook, after Peter has had a long hard day of  trying to remember how to be Peter Pan, he sits down at a huge banqueting table, but to his dismay it is covered from end to end with empty dishes.  Like Peter we are often brought to the banqueting table but see nothing but emptiness.  It is only when we begin to believe in the truths God has spoken, when we begin to trust that He will fill us, when we choose to live in joy and love in the moment in which we are, that we, like Peter, suddenly see a table filled with every delight imaginable, a table filled with enough for everyone at the table with more to spare for whoever we could desire to invite.  And every time we believe, we hear that same sweet voice in our hearts that says proudly "You're doing it, child!"  So don't wait to see the feast set before you to dig in today, take a huge bite of that ribeye or cake or donut and you will find that it is indeed there and that it will fill both your need and your desire.  Oh taste and see that the Lord is good!  A good practical step to start with?  Pray this, "Lord I thank You that Jesus Christ came to be the bread of life, I thank You that He gave His life that I might be filled with the goodness of God.  I believe that You are more than enough for my every need.  I believe that You are good and that You give good gifts to Your children.  I believe that You provide for me and I place myself in alignment with Your word that whoever hungers and thirsts for righteousness will be satisfied and that whoever believes in You and eats Your words will never hunger, and I say that I am hungry for You and Your words and Your righteousness."  Dig in.  This is the best meal you'll ever have.

Two are better

For my first post-wedding blog, I think it is only fitting for me to talk about a lesson learned from marriage.  You see, I haven't been willing to write for a while because I've felt like such a mess.  For the past 5 months or so I've been slowly picking up the pieces of my heart that have fallen around me due to various circumstances and each time I can't help but wonder how I got to a place that circumstances could break me like that.  I consider myself a strong person.  I consider myself a grounded person.  But the past two years have felt like a crushing weight to my soul.  So much loss.  So much fear.  So much loneliness.  So much that didn't go according to plan.
And then I got married.  You see there's this little thing in marriage called proximity.  If you get overwhelmed or peopled-out during the day, you still get to sleep next to a person.  You're around this person 24/7, and the funny thing is you care about them so you don't really want to give them crap just because you feel like crap. The first few months we were married, I was about to be done with myself.  I was trying so hard not to let all these negative emotions out on my husband and my feeble attempts failed.  I tried to deal with everything at once; again fail.  But little by little, day by day, my anguish was washing away.  Each time, I saw where these hurts came from and I asked myself, how did it get so far?  How did I fall like that?
And to be honest, I started to get a little scared.  If I could fall like that once, what was to keep me from falling like that again?  And to be honest, it could happen.  But God is faithful to pick me up and brush me off and set me back on the path of righteousness.  Along with that though, God spoke to me again one of the passages from our wedding vows, "Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.  For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow.  But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!" (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 ESV).  I have found it a lot harder to fall now that I have Josh.  First off, he calls me out when I have something against someone, and I may not acknowledge his call out at first but I do end up dealing with it.  Second, it is a lot easier to tell when something in me is off when I'm constantly around another person and when isolation for the sake of isolation is so glaringly obvious.  Third, I love Josh too much to let him take the brunt of my bad moods because I need to deal with something, so I just deal with it.  Yes, it's a lot more work than I may have bargained for.  But oh yes, two are definitely better than one!