Listening

On the long drive back from North Carolina this Memorial Day weekend, my husband and I sat in a morbid silence as we listened to the audio recording of the book "Tuesdays with Morrie". If you have never read (or listened) to it, I highly recommend you do so. But this was our first time and we were spellbound by the last thesis of a dieing man. Morrie was a sociology professor dieing of Lou Gehrig's and as he slowly wasted away, he decided to chronicle his thoughts of life and death in order to make the most of it and send its message out into the world. Morrie said many profound and wonderful expansions on life and culture, but one in particular echoed through me: "People do not know how to live, because we do not know how to die. If we knew how to die, we would then know how to live."
Now, Morrie is not talking about our methods of dieing; he is talking about our attitude and approach to the reality of our own death. I had never soaked in the correlation with the two but its miracle went deep into me. Morrie was meditating on death because he was staring into it's face and he wanted others to benefit. I, myself, have always had a haunting problem with death. I am not afraid of it, in fact, through much of my life it has been an obsession. I used to meditate on it endlessly; not just for myself but projected onto others and their deaths. I have always been painfully aware of the finality that is in store for us all. I have never cried at funerals, and I have spent an unhealthy amount of free time in graveyards alone. To top the cake, (and I can't believe I am sending this into cyberspace) but I have attempted several forms of death known to us. Fortunately, I was (obviously) unsuccessful. But I was a very different person back then. I was very dark and I embraced my darkness with sick fascination. It was only recently when I began experiencing a renewed obsession with death. It shook me up to be experiencing my old thoughts. The good news is that none of them are suicidal, just sickly dark and twisted. I have always abhorred my secret obsession and I am mortified to find it resurrecting after such a long absence. It was things like this that led me to realize that God is taking me back. He is taking me back to places I have not been for oh so long.
So here I am listening to Morrie and on the edge of my seat. Our project for this week was listening. We were asked to listen to the groaning's of creation, God, others and ourselves. So all week I have been exceptionally attuned to wonder what I would hear. I have heard many things this week, but the most profound message came from Morrie. Morrie meditated on death and showed me that a courageous dialogue with death is actually a large piece of experiencing life. Especially as a Christian, my attitude toward death and my own finality are a key into my eternal, spiritual reality. And my understanding of this, puts life and living into perspective. Its an eternal, Godly perspective that hovers above time and space.
Are you starting to see?
Do you realize what it is that I got when I discovered this?
I hate my past and have ran from everything that was. I see nothing but sickness, insanity and death. I have striven to be a normal, functioning human being. Now God leads me back into the darkness because He calls it light. I say 'bullshit'. But here I am. I listen to the words of Morrie, realize that God has higher purpose for my obsession than just a dangerous, sick hobby. He cracked an old door and showed me a glow behind it, not the void that I had remembered. My sickness can be turned around for good. My darkness can lead me to revelations that will enhance my ability to live! And as I stared into the vast dessert of my past, behold . . . one small white flower trembles out of the sand.

Seeing

I was asked by my husband just a few nights ago, "If you could have any one question answered, what would you ask?"
There are SOOOOOOOO many that fall into this category, but after a few minutes of sorting through them, I came up with this one on the top: "What am I missing, Lord?"
After answering, it occurred to me that there is nothing stopping me from asking this question in reality. Imagine my surprise when I was faced with a similar challenge in the next weeks lesson of our workbook.
This week is important for two reasons. One is, I have been having bad days. Not the kind where stuff goes wrong, but the kind where I can't seem to handle anything, even if it goes right. My emotions have been way close to the surface. I find myself in fits of extreme anger and anxiety. I then look for any available place to spew them. This is an occurrence that used to be quite common in my life, but has not been for many years. Imagine my alarm.
Day after day, I felt more and more afraid of myself because i was unable to control the intense, irrational, outbursts of my emotions. It has been embarrassing and frustrating beyond measure. So i come upon this first exercise which asks us to contemplate the nearness of God throughout our day. So I did, and no shit; it worked.
The only thing that has centered me for days was the challenge to look beyond myself and feel Him when I was on the brink of explosion. And I felt Him. I felt Him and He was bigger than everything I was feeling besides Him.
It reminded me of college. I went through some very intense emotional healing during those years, and I recall now that when I was losing control of my mind, i used to drive out to the enormous fields that filled our campus. I would go lay on the hood of my car and stare at the infinite. I did this because it was very healing to be reminded how small I am really. It put things back in perspective. It allowed me to share a moment with something very constant and large. It was wonderful, until campus police found you and told you to get off the grass.
I am trying to become aware of Him. I am trying to do what I have so long preach at others to do. I am trying to pray without ceasing and resurrect the voice of God in my life. Now, what He has to say is another matter entirely.

Identity and Contradictions

I am thankful to God that this weeks lesson seems to be much more up-beat and more manageable to consume. I am reading about finding our identity in Christ; a sermon topic I have heard my whole life. And I am somewhat embarrassed to find that I still am eager to hear it told.
I used to think that the Gospel was something you needed to hear just to "get saved" and once you were, the whole "invitation" time in the service seemed redundant and unimportant to a "saved" person such as me. The Gospel was for non-Christians to hear. I had already gotten my ticket for the train. So I abandoned the Gospel message (save for certain evangelical endeavors) in order to pursue topical theology outside of that minor league message of the Gospel. That was a beginning course for amateurs. And I was way to advanced for that.
You can see where this is going. No one ever found their solid identity in non-Gospel centric religiosity. It took years before I realized that
a) I needed to hear the Gospel every day; several times a day and
b) that I could spend a lifetime just studying the verses from Matthew where Christ outlines the Greatest commandment and "the second just like it". Loving God with all of me (and being loved by Him) and then going out and doing the same for others, is enough to keep me busy for a very long time. All those other interesting topics did not seem nearly as important.
So how does one do this?
I am still answering that question. When I look for the loving message of God, I look for Him in music, conversation, nature, scripture and silence. The problem is not that I don't hear the message; the problem is getting to a point in my day when I am looking for it. Luckily, a few of these channels deliver the message bluntly to me without my necessary effort. (This is why it is important to choose wisely the friends you have and the music you listen to).
I need desperately to be reminded everyday Who I Am. And here's the kicker: if I really did get it sometimes, I know I could be living out my identity in profound ways. I keep getting this very sinking feeling that I am on the verge of something. I see myself skating across the top of this something but never venturing in.
I guess what I am trying to say (more specifically) is that I know in my heart that I am not drinking deeply of my Lord. I shy from my own indwelt, spiritual power. I live on the fringes of an intense spiritual reality. And as I read this article on Knowing Who We Are, I hear a voice inside telling me that if I would let myself receive the message of Who I Am, I would be changed. I hold this message at arms length always. I know all the academic answers and I cherish them, but something deep inside of me refuses the whole truth of the Gospel and what it means to my identity. If I am filthy, you cannot convince me that I am clean. I know how hard I am to love, because I have such a hard time with it. I know my darkness, and it is not light.
Sometimes it feels like the Gospel message is just throwing roses on my trash heap. I know that the Gospel is truth, but I just can't seem to really embrace it as my identity. But I know that if I did . . .
And this might be what this time in life is all about for me. Moving on from what has been holding me back. Becoming new, for good. No reservations. This lesson on identity has uncovered for me some of my biggest spiritual cowardliness. I know what is right, but the reality of myself seems beyond redemption, and I don't want to believe a lie just so I can feel warm and fuzzy.

Dark and Light

Today I had lunch with three friends. We do it every week. Its been something we've done for over a year now and I still have a few things to admit to myself.
We started this new Bible study together and I had to spend this morning reflecting on my own story about how I became a Christian. I found an old picture of me from my 9th grade year. Its a horrible picture of me and everyone else, but I keep it around because its one of the few photos I have from that period that caught me. You can see my emptiness. I stared into that picture this morning and remembered.
This experience has clouded me all day. Even when I went to lunch and shared a brief of my story to (at least) two girls who already know many details of my past, I still got sick to my stomach as I tried to relate the brief synopsis of my journey. And I knew this was coming. He told me weeks ago that this new transformation was going to have a new element to it. I would turn around and face the darkness. I would have to run my mind back through it. I would have to remember it, to the very depths of my soul.
This revelation has scared me more than anything has scared me in a very long time. This morning was a piece of that.
This is my take on all of this:
For years I lived in the darkness. I lived there and drank it until I became it and saw only it ever. I felt nothing. I lived for nothing. I was dead and hollow and sub-human. "I was a brute beast before you". But then I felt. I felt something that has never left me. From that moment, I turned and saw light. I did not run to it at first, but then, I began to run to it. Eventually, as I ran more and more I began to see more and more light and less and less darkness. I did not always want the light. The darkness, even though I despised it, was familiar and a strange comfort to me. In darkness, i knew who I was. No secrets. But I did not know what I would look like in the light. So there would be moments when I would stop running and just stand there and feel the darkness and let it comfort and haunt me. But then I learned to run faster, and now as I run, i run only in light. i see only light. But the darkness has not left me. I remains always at my back. i feel it always. i know it is there. What was done cannot be undone and so it lives on. My choices remain frozen forever in time and no amount of light will undo them. So here I am, in light, but not free of darkness.
So until now, i have contented myself with this. I understand that even the most powerful forgiveness will not undo consequences. I figure that this remnant of my past is my burden to bear forever. My reasoning has pacified my situation, and I have not suspected or expected and new stage of healing. But I was wrong.
Now i am in it. A wrecking ball of change. God has delivered His message: There is another level of healing". "But God", I say, "Even you in all your power do not come and erase the choices you allow us to make through free will. You gave us this will, even if we use it to destroy ourselves. So how can you say to me that there is more healing? You will not obliterate the chaos of my own making. You will not stop the haunting of what was, because it is what it is. You allow time its memory. You will not erase the darkness."
"No." He said. "I will turn it into light."
My deserts will be gardens.
But I don't believe any of this, because all I remember is sand. There is not one flower that exists in that place I ran from. But even when I tell God that I remember no flowers, He only instructs me to turn around and return to the desert to see what He will do there.
(Even as i type this, I feel my own tears because in my lowest gut I know that this is true.)
I have to go back there. I have to remember. I have to go back.
Oh God, why do ask the impossible of me!
I cannot go back to somewhere that I have worked so hard to run from. I have not even looked over my shoulder in years. Help me forget the darkness. Wipe it from my memory, but don't ask me to remember. Don't take me there where there is nothing but sand. To remember would be to bleed with such hurt, that I would surely die and suppress all those who would try to comfort me.
On top of all of this, it impossible for darkness to be light. The existence of one is the absence of another. The do not coexist. They fight each other for existence. This is the reality that I have lived in for years. I run from one because I cannot mix them. I fight them dually. So how can this be?
"Darkness is not dark to me, and night shines light the day."