Embracing the chaos…

A few mornings ago, Julia went with me on my walk. She woke up early and asked to go. As we were walking out of the driveway, she said to me, “Mom, I bet the boys will wonder where I am.” She said it again a few minutes later. Now, some may view this as childish self-absorption, but I see it as what is in the heart of every little girl and also every grown up woman. It’s a heart that says, “Please, please notice me. Please tell me you miss me when I’m gone. Please tell me I’m important and beautiful and loved.” I don’t think this is a princess complex. I believe this is part of what it means to be a little girl, to be a woman. Ways of expressing it may become different as a little girl grows into womanhood, but it’s still the same heart.

I’m coming to realize that no one is ever going to be able to connect with me enough, father, husband or friends, and this doesn’t make me feel sorry for myself in a way that it once did. It makes me want to connect that much more with my Abba Father who cuts through the all the junk and knows all about me and likes me as I am. I just recently wrote the verse Psalm 45:11 on my bathroom mirror, The King is enthralled by your beauty.  I like that a lot. Abba also says, I have loved you with an everlasting love. That too is lipsticked on my mirror…pretty soon I’m not going to be able to see my own face in the mirror. But these verses are a constant reminder to me that He is the only One who can love me as I need, as I desire, as I long to be loved.

I think for so long I’ve placed unrealistic expectations on relationships that I should be enjoying, instead of trying to suck the life out of. I found a quote out of The Shack that says,  “When we (friends) see each other or are apart, there is expectancy of being together, of laughing and talking…But what happens if I change that ‘expectancy’ to an ‘expectation’—spoken or unspoken? Suddenly law has entered into our relationship. You are now expected to perform in a way that meets my expectations. Our living friendship rapidly deteriorates into a dead thing with rules and requirements. It is no longer about you and me, but about what friends are supposed to do, or the responsibilities of a good friend.” (205) When I was in college, Jeff would come to intramural soccer games where I was cheering and bring a book. This hurt my feelings because I think I expected him to watch me cheer and stand in awe of the woman he was going to marry…I was in essence saying, “Please notice me and validate me.” But when I embrace Christ in the way I’m supposed to, it lets everyone around me off the hook, and I can enjoy relationships as they’re meant to be enjoyed.

So, Julia’s brothers probably didn’t notice her absence, but she has an Abba who knows every hair on her head, knows all her thoughts, and enjoys her, even when no one else does. My job is to point her to the only One who can satisfy and love her as she needs to be loved. I hope she comes to realize she’s being “courted by her Creator.” When we girls accept the love our Abba has for us, we no longer have to go looking for love…we realize it’s already found us.

Yesterday, Jeff and I celebrated our 16th anniversary. Sixteen years…5 kids later…it seems a little surreal. Sixteen years ago, we honeymooned at Hilton Head for a week, and then we worked at a camp as Staff Directors for the summer, where we slept on a mattress on the floor in an old kitchen and had to use the bathhouse along with everyone else. I believe when we agreed to take on this adventure, I was thinking it was going to be like some kind of an extended honeymoon, which it was not. I wouldn’t recommend newly married couples working at camp, but as I review back over our journey it was where we needed to be…where we were supposed to be…I can spend endless hours reviewing all the things I wished I had done or should have done or could have done, but it’s really all very pointless, and dwelling on that stuff just doesn’t help me live in the here and now. Real life is happening all around me, and I miss it if I’m stuck in the past or consumed by the future.

Jeff and I had an argument the day before our anniversary…well, it wasn’t actually an argument…it was more like I got mad and just didn’t talk to him, and when I finally did talk, after slamming things around in my kitchen for a while, I was just mean. What I said to him that he couldn’t refute was my use of the word typical. I don’t think I’ve ever used that word in an argument before. But once I threw out that particular word, he knew he couldn’t argue about the 16 years of his “typical” behavior. When I assigned the word typical to him, I was dredging up everything wrong that he had ever done in the past, and the poor boy didn’t have a chance, and he knew it. He said to me later that I don’t forgive easily, and he’s right. I never really let things go…it might seem like I forgive at the time, but it just means I’ve filed it away for later use.

We’ve had 16 years together…that’s a long time to grow and to learn about another person. Some years have gone relatively smoothly, and some years we’ve struggled and limped along…that’s just the way it is. In the book Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity, Winner says this about married life, “We will argue, and feel broken, and wonder why we ever married in the first place-and it is God who will sustain us in those spells.” I think I personally signed on for the fairy tale marriage which I found out rather quickly doesn’t exist.

But this is the man…this is my man, and I’m learning how to love him little by little…and once again, I’m also learning that it’s really not about my feelings or my perceptions at the time…they’re not trustworthy, and they change. There have been times when I’ve thought Abba must have made a mistake when he gave me this man. But I’ve come to the conclusion that Abba always knows what He’s doing, and it’s always good, whether or not I choose to see it that way at the time. And my heart is filled with gratitude for an Abba Father who sustains me at all times…and who has gifted me with Jeff for this lifetime.<

Today, I’m wondering once again if Abba was even in our move to Nashville…I look at the stuff going on around us, and I’m confused why He would choose this for us. But when I start to doubt that Abba is sovereign and that He ordained all my days for me before one of them came to be (Psalm 139:16), that’s when I review my story. I look at the details and think, only Abba could have done that. This time, I think He made it so obvious that when I begin to question how I got here, there is little room for doubt that He is in control. I think He usually makes it obvious, but sometimes in my striving, I lose sight of Him, and my actions distract me from what He’s already in the process of doing.

Our pastor is doing a series called “Plan B: What to do when your dreams are shattered.” In other words, what do you do when life doesn’t turn out the way you wanted it to? I’ve come to realize my Plan B, or C, or D has always been God’s plan A. But just because I know He’s in control, and I can see that He is at work doesn’t mean it’s going to be an easy path or one that I necessarily like all that well. I guess that’s the part where trusting comes in. I have to trust that He absolutely knows what’s best for me, and eventually at some point surrender…

I guess these days I’ve been looking back a lot. I’ve been doing a lot of comparing, comparing the way my life used to be to the way it is now. In looking back, it’s funny how you forget the bad and glorify the good.  When I was in high school, a new girl came to my school. All she could talk about was her old school and how much better it was than mine, and it got really annoying after a while…right now, I’m that girl…and just like her, I don’t really think my wallowing in the past has actually been doing me any good. Abba didn’t give me a song this time, not yet anyway; he gave me a book, a fiction book, in fact. The character in the book described me well, painfully so. It was hard to see myself as I truly am, and it also woke me up to my lack of honestly about the past.

I know why the children of Israel had memorials, so that when they began to look back they could remember the things God had done for them. An honest look back at the past and a true gratefulness about what Abba has done can be beneficial. I think I’m going to write a memorial of the things Abba has done in my life in the past year…it has been an amazing, wild, terrifying ride…I didn’t always surrender and trust, and along the way I ignored a few danger signs about being too close to the waterfall and came close to plunging over a few times…but I’m still here…and Abba’s still leading me…

I just read the book The Shack, and although I am not one to jump on the bandwagon for reading what mainstream Christianity is interested in, this one is good. It’s a little odd, and some might regard it as sacrilegious because it absolutely calls into question our view of God. The theology behind this book is thick, but it’s also “jump up and down, I’m free” kind of good.  It calls into question institutions, religion, politics, and economics, basically our whole heirarchy system in America and in many American churches. It deals with relationships primarily, relationship with God, spouse, children, friends. But it touches on many different themes.  I didn’t embrace everything the author had to say because I am reformed, and he didn’t appear to be. By reformed I mean, I absolutely believe God is in control of everything, and not that God just had foreknowledge concerning the beings He created. In other words, I believe that man can do nothing to thwart God’s purpose or plan; if we could, man would ultimately be stronger than God. I don’t really get into the whole “God’s will, God’s permissive will, or out of God’s will.”  I just believe that God is more powerful than me, my sin and all my mistakes.  These things are fuzzy in my head, but I have to believe God is in control and loves me, and He’s good and only wants what is absolutely best for me.

I practically highlighted half the book, so I will be blogging on this for months to come, I’m sure.  So here goes… “Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?”  This is the part in the book where I began highlighting.  This made me laugh because I grew up with all the guilt and fear and “can I ever do enough?” perspective. If revival came to town, I was down at the altar every night, because the evangelist said that if I had any other thing that could separate me from God that I needed to make it right. Like I could possibly ever “make it right;” Christ made it right on the cross, end of story. I didn’t know that at the time, so I worried for many years about being in a car accident because I wasn’t reading my Bible or listening to the right kind of music; these were legitimate fears for me. Legalists always use rules to keep people in line.  As a legalist, you don’t talk about your own sin, because you’re always talking about your neighbors’ sins. It always makes me feel good when I can pass judgment on others and still pretend I have it together. That’s why we’re so shocked when pastors get caught using pornography or any kind of sexual sin, because they obviously feel that they can never talk with anyone about these things; that would be admitting weakness, and that’s part of the heirarchy and facade they feel they have to keep up.  I really believe Satan gets glee out believers keeping up their facade.  I think back to college…if I had been able to open up to my best friend and confess to her what my real issues were, I would have given her the opportunity to reach out to me, love me, and encourage me in my struggles. Instead I bottled it up, put on my “I’ve got it all together” face and continued to struggle for almost 2 decades with the same issues. This is where Satan likes to keep me, by myself, isolated, thinking that I am the only one with these struggles.  He convinces me that either my struggle isn’t really that big of a deal, or that it’s best to keep quiet about it because people wouldn’t understand, and I would be looked down on.  I have actually found that the opposite happens.  I was talking to a friend of mine, and Abba told me to tell her about my struggle; after I finished telling her my stuff, she immediately told me that she had been struggling with the same thing for many years and had only shared it with a couple of people. Last spring, I gave my testimony to some women, and I shared with them one very particular struggle that I had been having. One woman literally slumped down in her chair like she’d been smacked in the face. I honestly believe that the Holy Spirit used that testimony to have that one woman face her own same struggle. The last thing Satan wants is for me to bring my struggles and sin to the light; it exposes them for what they are and takes them out of my imagination, which can not only be dangerous but very destructive. Eventually, sin makes its way out of imagination into action that no one ever saw coming.

I have several friends that I have shared my struggles with, and they are there to love on me, ask me how I’m doing, encourage me, and point me to Christ and who I am in Christ. I’ve repeatedly exposed Satan’s lies for over a year now, and they don’t have the same power over me that they used to. I can tell when I start to struggle in my imagination again because I try to isolate myself from these friends. Satan wants my sin to stay hidden in the dark within myself; exposing it to the light (and ultimately to the Light) takes away much of its power and also its fascination.

So, is my Abba in a box or in a book? Absolutely not, He wrote the Book for crying out loud. He’s all around, in me, right here with me, in the absolutely glorious sunset I can’t wait to see this afternoon (and no, I’m not a Deist). I saw the first bud on our dogwood tree in the front yard; it made me smile as I walked to the mailbox. I’m looking forward to seeing the bright, green teenage leaves that will come shortly.  I’m embracing this spring and this Easter with child-like faith and a renewed sense of wonder in my amazing, wild Abba.  ”No guilt in life, no fear in death/This is the power of Christ in me/From life’s first cry to final breath/Jesus commands my destiny…WHOOHOO!

Even though I am not much of a science fiction/fantasy kind of chick, I really enjoyed reading The Hobbit. I’m not one to get into dwarves or elves or hobbits or things like that.  But Tolkien is such an incredible writer that he draws you into his world of goblins, dwarves, hobbits, and dragons. I must admit, I don’t follow all the destinations and directions, but my husband informed me that there is a map in the back and explained that for a boy to be able to follow exactly where the hobbit and his friends were going is really cool. I have yet to turn to the end of the book and follow the map…I have a hard time following maps in real life.  Aside from that, I have found many applications in regard to my Christian walk, like being at an impossible place and always being rescued from impending doom.  Just like people today or the children of Israel in the OT,  the dwarves  couldn’t rest and realize that the next to impossible really could happen (ie. Red Sea, manna, water out of rocks, just to name a few).

There was a passage that really struck me on page 233. “Going on from there was the bravest thing he (Bilbo) ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterwards were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone…” WOW…I fight battles within myself all the time, and they are by far the toughest.  Fear creeps in and paralyzes me…all those “what if’s.” Bilbo becomes more confident as the story proceeds and realizes he can actually do more than he thought. In fact, in my walk with Christ,  I’m becoming more confident in Him and what He is doing in and through me…I see Him at work, and I’m grateful I’m not alone.   

The dragon Smaug was fascinating to me. The hobbit “was in grievous danger of coming under the dragon-spell. ” ” Now a nasty suspicion began to grow in his (Bilbo) mind…That is the effect that dragon-talk has on the inexperienced. Bilbo of course ought to have been on his guard; but Smaug had rather an overwhelming personality.” To me, Satan has an overwhelming personality and combined with our weak flesh, it looks like I don’t stand a chance. But, the end of the story has already been written; Satan’s already been defeated; my victory came when Christ died on the cross and crushed Satan’s head.  Thankfully, Abba is revealing Satan’s lies to me, and I’m becoming more experienced in taking up the shield of faith which quenches those fiery darts that Satan tries to pierce me with.

The story is also about greed, and I find myself acting like Thorin does. Even though there is an immense amount of treasure, he’s willing to part with none of it and willing to risk his life as well as the other dwarves’ lives in order to keep all of it.  I am in the process of learning that relationships are what Jesus is concerned about, relationship with Him, relationships with others; nothing else really matters.

The story ends at it should; evil is once again defeated by a surprising rescue; or is it that surprising?  The elves, dwarves, and people are reconciled to each other, and the land is peaceful for quite some time.

I absolutely loved the ending where Gandalf and Bilbo are talking and Bilbo says, “Then the prophecies of the old songs have turned out to be true, after a fashion!” “Of course!” said Gandalf. “And why should not they prove true? Surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don’t really supposed, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!” “Thank goodness!” said Bilbo laughing.  I cannot say it any better.  Abba’s already planned and ordained the days for me before one of them came to be (Ps. 139: 16).  And I like Bilbo say, “Thank goodness!”

I have the whole house to myself.  And what am I doing? I’m messing around on the computer, but I walked through the whole house trying to figure out what I was going to do with this time…I could watch a movie, or read a book, or just sit and watch the sun set. I think I may do the last one; however, the sun is not setting yet.  It snowed last night…God showing His love for me…it snowed alot (for Tennessee).  Of course, there are many ways that God shows His love for me. He always gives me a tree…the one that’s mine right now is the one in the middle of the field behind our house…I think it’s dead, actually. It’s all broken, and several huge limbs have fallen off.  It looks like lightning has hit it more than once.  I’m broken and torn and just ragamuffiny in general.  I don’t know why God gives me trees to remind me of his love; He just does.  It reminds me of the passage in the Bible where Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. There are lots of trees in our backyard, and they seem to have been planted in twos…they remind me of my relationship with Jeff and ultimately God…some are growing away from each other…some are closer together, and some look like they’re entwined.  I want mine to be entwined, but it isn’t much of the time…I get in the way…my self-centeredness, my stubborness, just wanting my own way.

I feel a restlessness in my heart. I was reading Sex, Food, and God and was reminded of who I am in Christ and the victory I have in Him…many times I forget this and just wallow in my own stuff. Enter the restlessness…but God always brings me back to Himself…

My sun is getting ready to set…