Every bottle of perfume always ends up on the floor in a mess… May 9, 2009

I don’t know how to start this… It will be a year this weekend since I graduated from dental school.  Since I left that geographic stronghold of Satan they call Indiana University School of Dentistry… Praise Jesus!  I say that some in jest and some quite seriously. 

I was at a concert tonight thinking about how far away that time seems.  The year itself flew by, but who I am now, compared to who I was then— I really don’t know where to start. 

I am close to my family.  I am in a beautiful city.  I am no longer taking medication to keep me functional.  I have a group of wonderful friends. My job is secure and provides more than I need.  I’m healthier than I’ve been in years.  I attend a church where people take Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit more seriously than they do themselves.  My life a year ago didn’t look a thing like it does now.  My circumstances are far better.

But best of all- and I think more importantly, more than I realize- my heart is healing.  I haven’t arrived.  That’s why I don’t say its “healed.”  But it is on the mend.  From what? you ask.  I’m not completely sure.  There are people, things, circumstances that over the past 8 years or so really injured me.  Deep wounds were inflicted- some by my own bad decisions.. okay okay– most. 

But I stood there listening to John Mark McMillan sing, “…the love of God is stronger than the power of death…”  “…all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory…” “World, I have overcome you, World I have overcome by my song and the blood of a Son.”  And I just wanted to yell out- AMEN! HALLELUIAH!   And really- I wouldn’t peg me as a pentacostal.  But there is this overwhelming thing inside me that understands what he is singing about.

This is not to say I won’t have bad days, that I don’t worry unneccesarily, that I have got everything figured out.  Seriously, read my last post-  I so ain’t got it together.  But Jesus does.  And He doesn’t care that I’m a neurotic mess.  He never has.  He’ll never hold it against me.  I don’t have to measure up.  I don’t have to hide.  I don’t have to carry shame.  Who the Son has set free- He is free indeed.  And I’m only starting to comprehend that freedom.

I wish I could muster some big words, something eloquent.  But words are failing me now.  I just know, that  I know, that I know… Jesus loves me.  Somewhere and time in this past year that idea and the reality of it intersected with my life.  And I’m learning to trust the promise, “that He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.”

If you don’t have some nice to say… March 29, 2009

Most would finish that sentence with the well-known: “then don’t say anything at all.”  Which is kinda what I’ve been doing the last week or so on this blog.  I started it and then got bummed out about a bunch of stuff.  And when I’d sit down to write stuff nothing sounded very nice.  It was just a bunch of my complaints, being confused and hurt.  And I decided I just wouldn’t post anything.  If I didn’t have something neat, nice, and tidy to wrap up all my messed up feelings I just wouldn’t put those feelings on display. 

And I find this funny/humbling because in my first post I wrote “I don’t foresee frankness as a problem.”  Well- obviously my forsight is impaired.  I’m becoming keenly aware of how full of crap I am sometimes.  (Perhaps you’ve known it for awhile.  Have grace for me- I’m learning, albeit slowly.)

I haven’t really gotten past the funky, bad mood thing.  I’m still not sure I have something “nice” to say.  But I’m thinking that idiom needs a makeover.  A little explaination as to why…

Adrienne, my older sister, has been listening to me whine the last few days.   She told me to read Psalm 42.  She’s a smart lady.  In the Psalm David is crying out to God.  He feels alone, depressed, and put upon.   And at the end of the Psalm- he still does.  But in between his crying out he remembers God is God.  He states what is true.  When David doesn’t have anything nice to say, he states what is true.  In the midst of his whining (Granted, David was king of a nation- it may not qualify as whining.  He probably had legit concerns) David still recognizes the soveriegnty of God.  His emotions are doing one thing and his soul knows another truth.  The Psalm is his struggle to line his emotions up with truth.  But if David is quiet, if he “doesn’t say anything at all,” then he misses/ we miss truth.  And more than we need nice things to hear- we desperately need truth.

So I’m gonna try, with a big side of grace, to do this:  When I don’t have something nice to say, say something true.  So here it is… a litte truth bookended with hurt…

Psalm 42

As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my food
day and night,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”
These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
a multitude keeping festival.

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.

My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
I say to God, my rock:
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning
because of the oppression of the enemy?”
As with a deadly wound in my bones,
my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.

Object Permanence March 23, 2009

Object permanence defined by Wikipedia (THE  most reliable internet source of all) is:  a developmental milestone children reach when he or she realizes that the object exists even when it can’t be seen.  Jean Piaget was the psychologist who coined the phrase and it is believed that children aquire this level of cognition when they are about 8-9 months old.   It’s why we can play peek-a-boo with a baby and everytime Mom’s face “reappears” the baby is happy, relieved and excited.  The baby doesn’t realize Mom was never really gone behind her hands.

This got me thinking… I’m about as developed as a 6 month baby when it comes to Jesus.  I forget about Him before the blanket has even settled over the life situation requiring my faith in Him.  I show signs of distress, confusion and sadness when God is not in my face.  And frankly, He is still really in my face. 

Its really no better than the Mom whose face is hidden behind her own hands.  The baby can see its mom’s hands, but still doubts the mom is there, doubts that her presence will return.  But the whole time– Mom is right there!

I read Psalm 22 last night.  David apparently had object permanence issues too.  He starts out the Psalm with, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  He continues on, prophetically, speaking about Christ’s crucifixtion.  In the midst of David’s inability to see God he was speaking of the very act that would ensure our relationship with God eternally!    By the end of the Psalm David comes around.  He is praising God for His permanence, that generations to come will realize The Lord’s  might and praise Him as well.  

But I would guess even as David wrote those words he didn’t realize how close the Father’s face really was.  David could see The Lord’s hand working in his life.  I wonder if he guessed that God would put on human flesh and quite literally face us. 

And still I  doubt.  I so quickly accuse God of leaving me.  I see His hands at work in my life and still question if He is really there, if He is really good. 

Solution?   Remember.  Not just remember that He is there, but remember what He has done.  I’d venture to guess (without any real fact to back me up here) God told the people of Israel to remember Him  more than any other commandment.  Constantly, they set up altars, had meals, days set aside to remember what God had done when He brought them out of Egypt, supplied for them in the desert, or cleared the Promised Land for them.  

In the hymn, “Come Thou Fount” a line reads… “Here I raise my ebeneazer.”  An ebeneazer is more than a cheap guy from a Charles Dickens novel.  Its a pile of stones set up to remind its viewer of what happpened- a kind of memorial. 

So here I go… the solution to my underdeveloped faith-little piles of stone…  What’s yours look like?