Awakening

This post logs a long journal entry.  I'll refrain from much commentary other than to say it references my oldest son's attendance at a grace-focused teen retreat called Awakening.  It is the teen version of The Great Banquet, which is similar to Emmaus, Cursillo, etc. if you are familiar with these.  I got his permission to share my reflections on his wonderful weekend!

June 27, 2004
We took M. to his Awakening this weekend, and it was everything we'd hoped it would be for him.  I am proud and happy for him, and I am awed to be raising Godly children.  The weekend was just as wonderful for us, too.  We served the Saturday night dinner and attended the evening surprise.  I saw a boy there I knew.  He was serving as an assistant table leader.  He was a kid who had previously been in so much trouble at our school that he was basically told, "find a new school or be expelled."  His parents enrolled him in a Christian school, and I hadn't seen him in all the time since.  Amazing how God works.  I'd felt the unction to pray for this kid a few times over the last year, but didn't sense why specifically.  M. told me more about him.  This boy's "talk" to the group was one of the most powerful of all the talks give.  He talked about what he went through--powerful enough it brought tears to M.'s eyes to remember it.  What a reminder that we serve a God who is in the business of changing lives!  You hear people talk about how God has changed them, but I guess eventually you get old enough to see both sides of that "change" in a particular individual, and it is stunning.  This boy hugged me at one point and whispered in my ear, "I bet you never expected to see me here!"  And he was right.  He was also thrilled to be able to show himself to me, and to see me receive the hug with open arms.

M. had the chance to speak before the families about how the weekend affected him.  He commented that he started the weekend listing three areas in which he wanted God's guidance:  study, prayer, and service.  Then he said amazingly the first three "talks" were on these very things...and in that order.  Boom, boom, boom.  His voice shook a bit as he shared the wonder of that God-coincidence, the sense of divine leading and confirmation He felt from it.  It gave him chills.  Sort of does me, too!

I'm beginning a faith study and found I had my own God-coincidence.  I went to look up the word faith in the concordance, but found my eyes quickly land on the word discouragement instead.  Discouragement as a topic led me to look at reference verses in Hebrews 11, which is, of course, the "pinnacle" chapter on faith--clever irony there, eh, God?  God was feeding me a related word I hadn't thought to consider.  Then, as I read about discouragement I realized I did indeed need to consider it before I started reviewing faith, for as my Bible's side note in Hebrews 11 states:  "Faith is the foundation for the Christian life and the means by which all unseen things are tested."  Discouragement must be dealt with before such testing of the unseen can produce anything eternally good!

So...here are some thoughts on faith now that I am pairing it with a study on discouragement:

First thought, Sarah gets mentioned in the "faith hall of fame" as it is called there in Hebrews.  I've been thinking about her a lot lately.  I sat at the Table of Sarah--a table chosen for me by faithful saints--when I went to my own Emmaus walk.  I had to state my table assignment when I served dinner at M.'s retreat, and that's what brought my own "assignment" to mind.  Is my God-coincidence saying that I too will "birth" a ministry later in life? 
Second, Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith, and apart from Him, we can do nothing, so my question is: to what degree is my faithfulness dependent on Him?  Sounds like totally dependent--yet I retain the power to turn away, and there's the fact that Jesus told the woman who bathed His feet in her tears that her faith saved her.  Just what was her faith apart from whatever He made it?  And was it a faith in what He was about to do because he'd not faced the cross yet?  I know I have the power to turn away from the "heavenly hope" of Hebrews 12, but to what degree am I responsible for turning toward it?  His prevenient grace draws me--that is a huge part of the message of all these retreats that grew out of the Cursillo.  If Jesus is author and finisher of my faith, and if I can't do anything without Him, then what exactly is my part in this faith thing?  

After some study on this, I have come to the following conclusion.  God led me to read on both discouragement and faith in Hebrews 11 and 12 to bring me to this image:
Faith is like a beautiful plant--with each of us being empowered to tend such faith-flowers in a garden God loves to stroll, where He takes pleasure and remembers the beautiful days of Eden.  But a powerful weed attempts to choke out this faith plant, and that weed is bitterness--it chokes out the growth of faith and spreads itself across the ground.  Discouragement seeps into the soil from that bitter root.  We may not always have control of the circumstances that fertilize our live, but we can control how we react as garden-tenders.  We can choose whether to take that weed seriously enough to hoe it out and burn it, or we can fool ourselves into minimizing its effect on the garden and just let it grow.  Sarah came around from derisive laughing when God told her she'd bear a child to having the faith to indeed bear Isaac.  The weed, even somewhat grown, can be pulled! 

I shall  keep these verses in my heart.  Circumstances of late have given plenty of opportunity for bitterness to grow and faith to wilt, but I can choose to tend faith and let bitterness wilt instead.  For now, I understand this much:  He starts a faith-thing; I make a faith vs. discouragement choice about it; and then He finishes based on the outcomes of my choice.  Could that be right?  Could that define our "part" in the thing?

Habakkuk 3 speaks to me here.

When I wrote this, I didn't quote the Habakkuk reference.  Here it is, and it is beautifully apropos for the idea of making the choice of faith in the enigmatic middle of a start to finish faith journey engineered by the hand of God:
 Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither [shall] fruit [be] in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and [there shall be] no herd in the stalls:  Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The LORD God [is] my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' [feet], and he will make me to walk upon mine high places. (vs. 17-19) 

These Aren't the Quotes You're Looking for...

Sometimes I read a quote and want to share it because I know someone who "really needs to see this!"  It's not a kindness on my part.  I fiercely avoid sharing those, and I reprimand myself.

Sometimes I read a quote and have to share it because it puts into words an ache that needed words in my mind but did not yet have them.  I share those quotes with an enthusiasm no one understands.

Sometimes I read a quote, and I ache. I don't want to share it because while I think I've come along in its ways, I'm not completely sure about that.  Those are the ones that whisper, "Do you really want to grow?" because I know I'm not finished with them yet.

These are some of  those quotes:

• The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior.  Suddenly, I discover that I am ministering to AIDS victims to enhance my resume.  I find I renounced ice cream for Lent to lose five excess pounds.  I drop hints about the absolute priority of meditation and contemplation to create the impression that I am a man of prayer.  I have lost the connection between internal purity of heart and external works of piety...I have fallen victim to what T.S. Eliot calls the greatest sin:  to do the right thing for the wrong reason. (p.135)
• Caiaphas...is dedicated to "the people" so individual flesh and blood men are expendable.  Caiaphas is dedicated to the nation...The choice usually presented to Christians is not between Jesus and Barabbas.  No one wants to appear an obvious murderer.  The choice to be careful about is between Jesus and Caiaphas.  And Caiaphas can fool us.  He is a very "religious" man. (p.140)
• For most of us, it takes a long time for the spirit of freedom to cleanse us of the subtle urges to be admired for our studied goodness.  It requires a strong sense of our redeemed selves to pass up the opportunity to appear graceful and good to other people. ( p.153)  (The Ragamuffin Gospel, by Brennan Manning.)

As Gerald May says, "Who can escape watching oneself do good?"

June 21
What an amazing thing.  I'm looking forward to things again.  M. [my oldest son--the topic of another post] attends his Awakening retreat soon.  We are all settled into the new apartment, so the element of dread is behind us.  What is, is; and I am beginning to anticipate what is coming instead of reviewing mournfully what I'm losing.  And, last week we got to go on a business trip with S.  We went to Norfolk, VA and stayed at a high-rise hotel with windows overlooking the harbor.  The kids and I went to the beach as S. worked.  We rested and enjoyed each other in the evenings!

I prayed a few weeks ago for security.  Actually, lately I've prayed a lot for security, but this one time it seemed God answered, "No one really has thae security you mean, you know.  Anyone can die any time."
To which I said, "You're right.  I want the same illusion of security that everyone else has."  We had a good laugh together.  But now that He's given me a measure of that security-illusion, I must take care not to grow complacent.

I don't quite know yet how the juxtaposition of the tension in Manning's words and the tension I feel in journal review fit together.  I know somehow they will complement each other; I'm just not sure how that's going to play out yet.  I believe it isn't random.  But I still wait.
Maybe I'm waiting for the next quote to resonate. 

Why _______?

A childish faith cries, "Why me?"  A mature one whispers, "Why this?"  I was learning the light year's distance of difference between these two questions.

April 25, 2003
We're letting the house go to foreclosure.  Yesterday, we signed a lease on an apartment.  I cried a couple of times as we made the arrangements/drove around to see it/ etc.  There's not much I can do to decorate it.  Can't have a garden.  Scott got a job, but he'll be gone 4 days every week--flies out to different places each time, hence the reason we need to move closer to the city and its airport.  Even with a local job,we'd have lost the house up here anyway.  

How big is this field of brown grass you've got this bird sitting in, God?   Scott's finally coming to terms with God having a hand in all this.  After he got this job offer he got another offer and three inquiries about his availability all right together, a sign that this long career "dry spell" was surely orchestrated.  But now it's my turn...
When I lose my home, a thing that has in a large part defined me and the way I live life, how am I to see myself?  Do I slip into comparing myself to others who appear to be doing better than we are?  Do I allow myself to get bitter over yet another loss in life?  Or, do I keep trying to be joyful, and thankful in all circumstances?  I keep clinging to that quote as a mantra:  "God wants you to understand that it is a life of faith, not a life of sentimental enjoyment of his blessings."
At least today, I will fight the good fight, fight to remain faithful and ward off bitterness.

Why this instead of why me and then patience would lead me to learn:

• My oldest son's whole college choice and career future would turn on the change of school our move afforded him.
• I would meet someone who would become one of my dearest friends, who would "randomly" be my next door neighbor and future baby-sitter at that apartment complex.
• My husband's job (that required the move) would launch him into a new, more satisfying and promising career path.
• I would take a job at a Christian school that would bring many influential people across my path and the paths of my children.

Why this?  Certainly the more hopeful question, and one that I was only just learning to ask.

It's All About Me

Every day a new "reason" pops up to NOT do this public sharing of 10 years of my prayer journal thing anymore.  Today, the voice sent to whisper in my ear says, "You're making it all about you, when it should be about God.  You're too self-preoccupied."  I read Brennan Manning say "Preoccupation with self is always a a major component of unhealthy guilt and recrimination."  Got it.  Very true. As he also said, "conversion by concussion" is not productive, and I have attained quite a few lumps on the head over the last few years.  I have been gathering a quilt pile that is monstrously tall with these years of accumulation.  Why not just go embrace my gardening blog again--not so personal.
Then again, maybe the reason I don't want to share here is because I'm realizing I spent an awful lot of my time sounding like St. Teresa of Avila when she said, "Lord, if this is the way you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few!"  But mostly, I remember this was a commissioning...and if David wasn't too good to get self-preoccupied when he wrote all those Psalms of his who am I to think I should be "above such things."

I guess I'll just have good chuckle and get on with things.
For the post-title's inspiration and to share the chuckle, see this:
http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=KKWK67NX


Between that December camp-out on spiritual skid row and the March epiphany came 3 months of looking deeply at the concept of suffering.  This is a synopsis of those studies.


Studies on Suffering--ranging from Dec. 2003 through March 2004

"You can't drink grapes!"  Oswald Chambers says this.  If you're to be used as sacramental wine, you must first be crushed.  How many of us "count the cost" as Jesus told us to when we consider venturing into ministry?  How might this crushing appear?  Moses started toward Egypt with God wanting to kill him and his wife throwing their son's foreskin at him, from the circumcision she had to perform--presumably because he wouldn't?--and calling him a husband of blood (What?  Who preaches from that story?) from there to leaving Egypt, trapped at the Red Sea saying, "Do not be afraid.  Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord,which He will accomplish for you today."  From Exodus 4 to Exodus 14, a lot of cost-counting happened!  A lot of wine was produced! 
What are my grapes of ministry?
What is the Solomon baby for me?  Is there some church program, some ministry that blesses me even as I nurture it?  Would I give it up rather than see it be cut in half?  How many church splits have I seen where a "mother" wouldn't allow another to have the baby even if it meant the baby dies? Wouldn't put the baby's life above issues of fairness? (Oh, but we have walked living representation of this facet of Your love intimately, You know, God!) It's a cost...

What is the perfume I'd pour on Your hair at any cost, O Lord?  Would I take what could bless so many and instead use it only to bless You?  Would I do this even if drew much criticism for its neglect of social justice, criticism so logical that I, too, could be convinced to doubt my motivation, that I could be guilted into believing this  leap of passionate devotion should draw condemnation?  Could I be  a blessing just to You and an offense to all others, if such were fitting? It's a cost...

What is the circle of companions to Job for me, O Lord?  What kicks the dog that is already down in my spiritual life?  Who or what, albeit well-meaning, repeats all the recriminations, the condemnations, and the bitterness that I struggle so valiantly to require get behind me?  Who or what takes my darkest, most enigmatic humiliation and tries to make me own it for the wrong reasons?  Who am I most expected to bless nonetheless?  It is a cost...


The last one, I think as I look back now, is the most recent of the costs counted...

Clarifying Character, Part 2

Today, I'll make little commentary on these past journal entries, other than to say it is similar to yesterday's post, detailing another time God did a major clarification of my understanding of His character and the nature of my relationship with Him. 

December 1, 2003
It has been a very trying time these past few months.  Despite working two different insurance jobs recently, my husband is jobless again.  My thyroid developed a growth quickly, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease and had to have the thyroid removed, all this while trying to work full-time.  My oldest son developed ITP and had to spend some time at Riley Children's Hospital.  He's ok now, but the 6 weeks of dealing with it were frightening.

We began working to increase our giving.  We'd heard a sermon recently in which we were told to "Test God.  Look and see.  Try Him and know that He is good."  Test Him and see if He won't replenish your storehouse.  Our storehouse has many types of empty shelves.  We've been giving the 10% and while we are managing to keep ourselves at a teeter on the edge of financial collapse, we haven't fallen over the cliff's edge.  Is this the replenishment he means?

Psalm 145 says, "You open Your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.  The Lord is near all who call on Him, all who call on Him in truth.  He fulfills the desires of those who fear Him; He hears their cry and saves them." 

How do I equate my personal experience with such language?  My first thought is:  God is unjust.  No, my first thought is I am doing something wrong, but this time I really believe (like my good old buddy, Job) I've walked blameless before the Lord.  Can I call God a liar?  No.  So I am silent.  I just won't speak to Him.  (That lasted all of about a day.)  But, I'd rather stop looking for Him to come through for me than to have His honor called into question over every circumstance. 

Scott and I talked about it.  He believes less in an intervening God than I do, so God "raining on the just and the unjust" kind of works both directions for him--good or bad, all the same.  I thought about this, and it does get God off the hook, but it also diminishes personal relationship.  I've experienced too much evidence of personal relationship to embrace that philosophy so I wait for further light, tithe again, and refine my prayer, "God, now I do this because it is right, and not because I expect replenishment." 

And straightaway, we are robbed!  Someone breaks into our car, steals my husband's wallet and our digital camera.  I pray I'll have a Job-like finish at the end of all this!

I spent the next 3 months and 20 journal pages exploring the idea of suffering.  Then in early March, I had my epiphany:

March 4, 2004
Quoting My Utmost for His Highest again.  October 31--

God wants you to understand that it is a life of faith, not a life of sentimental enjoyment of His blessings.  God has frequently to knock the bottom board out of your experience...you are worth far more to Him now than you were in your days of conscious delight and thrilling testimony...Faith by its very nature must be tried, and the real trial of faith is not that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God's character has to be cleared in our minds...Faith in the Bible is faith in God against everything that contradicts Him--I will remain true to God's character whatever He may do."

Scott and I both realized about a week ago that this is the "project" God has been working on for the past several years with us.  He removed everything that might complicate the question:  "Do you love Me?"  Unconditional love would be all that was left, if anything was to be left at all.  And there it was!  We loved Him back!
What a profound risk He took, it seems to me.  How amazing the way He worked our lives in counterpoint to bring us both to this same faith peak.  His next statement after He asked this same question of Peter was, "Then feed my sheep."

He gave me affirming imagery to go with this idea, too.  Driving along just the other day, I saw a glowing red cardinal sitting near the road in a sea of dead brown grass.  Had the cardinal been sitting in that field in spring, surrounded by the sheen of fresh grass and the brilliance of wildflowers, its color would have had competition and I might never have seen it.  But perched in that expanse of drabness, his colors were startling.  So it is with a child of God if she waits patiently despite the fields of dead grass.

Ever since that time, the cardinal has been my ever faithful sign of encouragement in times of winter...a gift from the God who proved abundantly faithful after all!

Clarifying Character Pt. 1

I laughed out loud, because I so easily saw myself in him.  Brennan Manning, in The Ragamuffin Gospel, reassured me, reminded me not to panic over my foibles:

Distracted by a disturbing phone call, I left home to give a lecture to the inmates of Trenton State Penitentiary and began with the outrageous greeting, "Well, it's nice to see so many of you here."...And so it goes. p.83

We all mess up.  But what do You do with that, God?

Today, I do not look back at the old journal.  For just this one entry, I stay with the Now.  But it is as preface to a mountaintop post from the old journal; one I'll post next.  Twice in the last decade, God has given me a startling shake to the end that His character was clarified for me.  Tomorrow, I'll share the earlier one that related to a call to suffering; today I look at what I've forgotten about Your grace.

The epiphany came shortly after that request I made a few days ago--when I tried to ask so eloquently, so poetically for God to teach me about His wrath. 
"I can handle it!" I breathed, as I wafted incense toward my nose and hugged my prayer shawl close.  And He said, "Teaching you about my wrath would be like putting a loaded gun in the hand of a 3-year-old!" My mystical moment, my shoulder brush with the Gnostic--all ground to a quick halt.

"Oh, ok..."  Soberly, I reached for the Manning book.  It wasn't long before I began to see what Almighty God meant.  Manning speaks of the grace-hugging Christian, the one who:

utterly rejecting the God who catches people by surprise in a moment of weakness--the God incapable of smiling at our awkward mistakes, the God who does not accept a seat at our human festivities, the God who says "You will pay for that," the God incapable of understanding that children will always get dirty and be forgetful, the God always snooping after sinners. p.38-9

And I realize I have drifted into "seeing" that God as The One and Only, the One I'm supposed to love with all my heart and soul and mind.  No wonder I'm conflicted!  Good grief, I'M a better dispenser of grace than the God I've been trying to accept as the Reality. 
Repent. Repent. Repent. 
And then I read this:

Imagine a little boy trying to help his father with some household work, or making his mother a gift.  The help may be nothing more than getting in the way, and the gift may be totally useless, but the love behind it is simple and pure, and the loving response it evokes is virtually uncontrollable.  I am sure it is this way between our Abba and us.

I hate to admit it, but I think in actual practice, my perceived One and Only would look down on my own paltry attempts at gifting toward Him and say something like, "You didn't cut that edge quite straight there, did you?  And does that grass really look realistic, that shade of green?"

The thing is, times past I knew You to be a God like Manning describes.  Good grief, I literally used the same example when it showed up in my own everyday life: 
http://sdmen.blogspot.com/2006/03/and-gift-goes-on.html

How did I forget You? How did I lose You?
What Pied Piper took me wandering down a road where human love is able to outshine divine?
Thank You for helping me remember.

Who Do You Think You Are?

Depression has struck a venomous blow to me today--largely it is hormonal as I change some meds hopefully for the better, but to some extent it involves an identity crisis finally coming to a head.

When I was young, sharp-witted, driven, focused, enthusiastic, and goal-oriented, there were certain people I hardly tossed a passing glance.  People I'd roll my eyes at as I zoomed by them, my to-do list flapping in my self-generated breeze. 

They were the woebegone.  The chronically ill with a smorgasbord of symptoms.  The whiners.  The excuse-makers.  The wallflowers, and not because they couldn't find a dance partner, but because they really just wanted to stand and mumble into the wall.

But God, with His ironic sense of humor and His ruggedly chastening hand, has permitted me over these last 5 or 6 years to become one of their number. 
She who would not touch a leper has leprosy.
I've joined their ranks.  While I don't have people treating me with the same lack of grace and dignity I once afforded the chronically weak and puny; I make up for it by mercilessly canceling their compassion.  I heap disgust on myself like a self-flagellating monk lays stripes on his own back!
 
God teaches some people compassion by putting someone in their path who requires patience and compassion--like a special needs child or a senility-drifting, aging parent. I had steeled myself for the likes of such, should God ever lay such a demand upon the stony ground of my heart. Somewhere deep inside I knew it was stony in this respect. 

I was NOT, however, prepared for that "special needs case" to be me.  I was NOT prepared to have to give myself those encouraging words again and again and again, to repeat the grace and mercy and patience and comfort day in day out--toward myself.  For others, fine.  I'd work it up.  For myself, it's get out the whip, beat the body into action, you lazy lout!

Nope, I was NOT prepared to stop rolling my eyes and look on the woebegone with pity when it involved using a mirror.  You can take breaks, vacations from people who bring you down.  You can't take a vacation from yourself.  You're with you all the time!  So I was thinking I might suffocate with this new knowledge.

Read the book.

Are you kidding!?!  The book seems to be one of the triggers in all this bleakness. 

Read the book anyway.

I'm reading the book...

June 14, 2003
I read something worth meditation and reflection.  " 'Ask God for the Holy Spirit on the word of Jesus Christ.'(Luke 10:13) The Holy Spirit is the one who makes real in you all that Jesus did for you."  (My Utmost for His Highest, p. 161.) 

Chambers speaks of asking God for spiritual things out of poverty--blessed are the poor in spirit, as the Beatitudes say.  If we ask out of lust, we're still seeing some desirable end; if we ask out of poverty we're just desiring escape from desperation.  But many of us won't do this. 

I had the thought occur to me, that old cliche-quote, "Living lives of quiet desperation."  Lately, I haven't lived in quiet desperation.  I've lived very vocal, loud desperation.  You know, God!  But I can relate to the idea of not being willing to ask out of abject poverty.  Sometimes, it is easier to skip asking out of deep need, because then you don't have to deal with the bitterness of not receiving. 

If I'm honest, I'll admit there have been times when I've felt I asked out of desperation, out of poverty, only to be ignored and left to sort out the dregs of bitterness on my own.  Does this mean I never really hit "pauper" status?  Did the bitterness mean I thought I "deserved" better?  Maybe my feeling that You don't care enough to make a difference shows I'm not a total pauper yet.  I can still turn away.  I make the potential of Your care and concern serve as a measure of whether I'm willing to beg.  If You disdain me, I'll turn away.  A true beggar would hang on Your robe, even if you were to drag me along as You continued to walk away from me, I'd cling anyway. 
Help me to be like the woman who would beg crumbs under the table even after You basically called her a dog.
Bless me, O God.

Youth wait impatiently for sunset.
The aged rise early and await the dawn.
But I stand with the noon day sun beating on my head;
wondering which way I turn
for relief.

I wrote this post and this poem long ago, but it speaks to me again now.  No wonder You told me to go to it and read.  It very much fits my need today. Again with the measuring stick; and I see what I have learned in the harder, narrower passes of life.  I no longer stand in that noonday sun of life, and while I'm not exactly old, I do know what it is to wake hours before dawn, tired but too sore to sleep any longer so I rise and await the day with a cup of joe, a cat on my lap, and a Bible. 

I think I'm watching last vestigial limbs of pride wither away and fall off.  If leprosy it is, then it is a leprosy that takes away things that should be gone anyway.
Now I am the lost lamb, lying in the ditch--wishing but not presuming You'd actually leave the 99 to come find me. 
Now I'm ready for crumbs.
What does it say again about the poor in spirit?
Oh yes...theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Those are pretty good crumbs, God.
Pretty good crumbs.