My friends in Haiti are isolated from the world again after the gangs fired on a commercial plane and the airport was closed this week. They were ousted from their homes for over a year while fighting raged around them and they went into hiding. They have shown up for teen and preteen kids who are watching their friends die, and who are still healing from their pasts. I am so blown away by their faithfulness.
I speak to several woman who are raising kids while dealing with debilitating illness and chronic pain in themselves. They show up for their families in the ways they can while desperately surviving their own health journeys. I know they often feel like they are failing, like they can’t do what other moms can do. But I stand in awe of their faithfulness to keep showing up.
Several years ago, my husband and I were camping in Moab, Utah with our one-year-old son. Camping is probably a generous term—we did have a pop-up camper and weren’t really roughing it. We did, however, drive about half an hour outside of town on a dirt road to the middle of nowhere, and then parked the camper at the top of a rocky hill. The views were spectacular, and we would only see another car on the dirt road about once every few hours. It was a little taste of the wilderness, with only us and our little camper. No cell service, no toilets, and no other people around.
This seemed like a fantastic experience until we decided the next day to head back into town to get a few groceries. After piling in the truck, my husband tried to start the vehicle, but it wouldn’t start. The truck’s battery was dead. And the wilderness experience that seemed like a lot of fun became quite scary.
I started to panic, wondering how we would ever get out of there. No cars came by on the road, and it was at least a day’s walk to get back into town with a one-year-old and only so much food for camping. Finally after a bit of worry, my husband brilliantly figured out that he could use the camper batteries to jump the truck battery, and we were finally moving again.
But what about the figurative wildernesses in which we find ourselves where we can’t figure a way out, and we sit and wait with no resources and no hope? Wildernesses are a real experience in life, and one which often catches us by surprise. I’m not sure why, as so many of the people in the Bible went through years and years of wilderness, sometimes figurative and sometimes quite literal. There are stories of prison, hardships, desert-living, wandering, frustration, hopelessness, disbursement and aching for home.
I get questions a lot of times about why I love and serve God even when He doesn’t always give me what I want. A lot of people wonder why I continue to pursue relationship with Jesus, and consider it old-fashioned or burdensome. So, I wanted to write a post about why I choose Jesus.
It’s definitely not because of the people who call themselves Christians—although some are a wonderful gift to me and I’m so grateful for them. But the people in the Church are messy just like everyone else, and when we expect them to be perfect or to never hurt or reject us, we will be disappointed. I know, though, that people who believe in Jesus recognize they need something other than themselves to do life. So, as they are dependent on Him, they love people well. When they are relying on their own self-righteousness or rule-following, they end up in a place of religion which is toxic and downright abusive sometimes. The word religion means to bind over and over again. When we bind ourselves up in trying to please God without the power He has given us to do so, we are in a bigger mess than if we deny Him entirely.
I also don’t pursue relationship with God because I was raised to believe Him and brainwashed into doing so. In fact, I have had many reason NOT to pursue relationship with Him over the years, and it would actually be easier for me and make more sense to drop the whole thing! I could make more money, have easier relationships and not experience nearly as much rejection.
Instead, I love Jesus because He loved me first, not when I met His standard or expectation. He reached out to me in love with no strings attached. I don’t have to accept His love, and He experiences rejection more than any other person I know as many refuse Him.
There’s a little boy I see every morning when I’m dropping my daughter off at school. He comes to help drop off his older brother, and always shows up in his Superman pajamas complete with cape. The thing that always strikes me as hilarious is how he walks next to his dad. He’s this tiny little man, but walks like he is 10 feet tall—he definitely has the superhero walk down. His cape flows behind him, and he takes large, commanding steps no matter where he is going.
I love watching him and it makes me giggle a little to watch him stride through the parking lot. This morning, though, God spoke and asked me how I would walk if I knew and believed the super power that dwells within me? That caught me off guard. You see, I used to always walk with my eyes on my shoes (which might explain some of my clumsiness). I didn’t feel that I had worth, and I walked like it. I didn’t understand Who I had, or who I was.
You see, when you have Christ’s Life within you, you have the power of the Living God walking around with you. He says He will be everything you need, and we have all of Him to meet all of our problems, dilemmas and circumstances. I think when I realize that I am the chosen dwelling place of God Himself (1 Corinthians 6:19), and that makes me His.
We cry out from a broken heart,
Shards lying all around us on the ground.
Our tears pour out—
It feels like they will never end.
The pain explodes from within us,
Our chests feeling like they will break apart.
Lying face down on the ground,
Our desperate plea for help and rescue escaping our lips.
Our Kind Shepherd is here,
Never leaving, never abandoning us in grief.
A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief Himself,
He will not turn away.
Well, this is one of those posts that I don’t want to write because it (more than usual) exposes all my flaws and issues and doesn’t make me feel good. But one of the things I’ve learned over these past 10 years in counseling is that raw vulnerability in my own problems is often a way to pulling down walls in others.
I was reading this Psalm this morning and it jumped out at me in my usual rush to accomplish everything on my to-do list:Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to retire late, to eat the bread of painful labors; for He gives to His beloved even in his sleep. Psalm 127:1-2
“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you; but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation.” 1 Peter 4:12-13
When you are in the midst of suffering or the problems the world is facing or even frustration with the mundane details of life, some days can seem dark the minute you wake up. You focus on whatever you are struggling with or all the same things you have to do and it can make the day seem pointless and without hope.
Sometimes it feels like someone is trying to break down everything that makes you who you are and everything you have tried to build. Some days the rejection is so fierce that it feels like an all-consuming fire that you can’t fight. You just want to crawl in a hole and hide, licking your wounds like a hurting animal. What do you do when you are mistreated and rejected?
Often when I am doing discipleship and pastoral counseling, I have people who admit to me that they think something they did in their past has screwed them up beyond God’s love. They married the wrong person, committed the wrong sin, experienced a divorce, didn’t resolve something with a person who has died, waited too long to get married, etc.
There’s a kid who lives in my cul-de-sac who has the loudest car on the planet. And he speeds out of the neighborhood making as much noise as he possibly can in that blasted car. This is usually at about 6 AM when he’s on his way to school. Oh, and sometimes at about 2 AM when he’s hanging out with his friends who have equally loud cars.
Last night as I was wrapping gifts for my kids, I realized how excited I was for them to open some of the particular presents I had found them that I knew they would enjoy. I tell my son all the time about how giving can be more fun than receiving (not sure he believes me yet!) and I really mean it.
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you; but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation. 1 Peter 4:12, 13
“Love is not a victory march. It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.” Leonard Cohen I realize this isn’t exactly Scripture, but it spoke to me about the darkness we experience sometimes in our souls. I think so often as Christians, we feel as though we are supposed to always be up, happy and hopeful.
