what anger teaches me

Anger is a strange and unruly emotion. Sometimes it hits us right away; something happens and bam! we're fuming. Sometimes it sneaks up on you, like it did for me today; you've made it for months after an incident without really feeling much anger, and suddenly, in the middle of your ordinary Tuesday afternoon, you are ready to give the tongue lashing of the century. And of course we all deal with it different ways--some by stuffing it, others by lashing out, others by offering an icy cold shoulder. However it comes and however we deal with it, none of us escapes it. Anger, it seems, it just part of life.

Some Christians have responded to the threat of such a disorderly emotion by declaring that no godly person should ever be angry. That ridiculous proposal doesn't even deserve another sentence here. Others have found the more balanced approach of saying that anger itself isn't so bad, it's what you do with it that makes the difference. A much better starting place, for sure, but the message is left woefully incomplete. We offer the wise advice to handle anger well, and then fail to mention what exactly it is we should do with it. Success in being angry is left defined (as are many things in faith) by what we manage not to do.

That isn't enough. I managed not to drive over and offer a vicious tongue lashing today. Excellent. But what should I do with the anger that threatened to ruin my afternoon? If God created us with a beautiful array of emotions, what are we to do with anger? How do we open our eyes to the places where God may have looked at that emotion and called it good?

Carter and Minirth define anger as "an intent to preserve 1) personal worth, 2) essential needs, and 3) basic convictions." It's a protective measure, a tool for guarding the saftey of the things most important to us. If that's true, then anger has a lot to teach us. Ever since I read that definition of anger a couple years ago, I have tried to ask myself in the midst of my anger, "What am I angry about? What do I feel like is being violated?" Doing so has taught me volumes about my own values and convictions. On the flip side of my rage, you can usually find the things I am most passionate about. If it weren't true, why would I care at all if anyone violated them?

I want to see anger continually redeemed in my life. I don't want to define my success with it in terms of the things I managed to grit my teeth and avoid doing. I want to use it to bring life, to let God use it to help me see truths about who I am and about who he is. In the long run, facing anger head on and actively using it for growth is the only thing that will ever really make it disappear. Everything else is just saving it for a rainy day.

theology is beautiful sometimes...

Since I am such a huge proponent of authenticity and raw honesty, this was definitely the best part of my homework for the day:

"Light at the sensory level is that which opens the world to us, that which removes the closedness, the hiddenness, the inaccessibility of things. Whatever stands in the dark remains alien and estranged from us. Jesus is spoken of as the light of the world (John 8:12) whom the darkness cannot overcome (ch. 1:5). These references suggest how, through Jesus, men are gathered into a realm of unobstructed openness at every level, a realm where all hiding, all estrangement, and therefore all fear are removed. For instance, it is not necessary in this realm for a person to conceal some bit of himself from others, in order to have a secure identity which they will not take and abuse. He does not have to hide behind pretensions and self-justifications. Christ reveals God to be light as well as life, and to be for us...the light as well as the life. And because he is unreservedly open both in himself and toward us, those who live in relation to him may be unreservedly open to one another. They may put aside all lying, all hypocrisy, all desperate secrecy and deception. In Christ they find not only the principle of life that abolishes all death but also a principle of openness that dispels all darkness and closedness, all distrust and alienation."

Arthur C. McGill- Suffering: A Test of Theological Method

Hindsight: Esau's tips on hunger control

Hebrews just keeps messing with me. That's what makes the Bible so beautiful. It gets inside and does its thing, and if we let it have its way, it brings life and light to all our dead, dark places. This book is no exception--chapter after chapter, it bowls me over. I love it.

Case in point. My journey into chapter 12 on Thursday morning followed a Wednesday of great struggle with temptation. It was the kind of temptation that is most discouraging because you are keenly aware of how little you really want to do the right thing, of how much you are believing sin's promises to meet a need or to satiate an often intense hunger. Ease the ache just this once, right? When the hunger is overwhelming, that seems perfectly sensible. But here's what I read that morning.

"See that no one is...godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. He could bring about no change of mind, though he sought the blessing with tears." (12:16-17)

A single meal. If you look back at the scene of the crime, found way back in Genesis 25, you'll find Esau exclaiming, "Look, I am about to die! What good is the birthright to me?" I'm sure he wasn't at death's door, but nonetheless the guy was clearly overcome by his hunger. He could see nothing else. So when his brother offered the ludicrous trade of birthright for stew, he took it. And that was the end of it. No matter how many tears of regret were to follow, all the rights of the firstborn were lost forever to his decieving little brother.

A single meal. Makes us want to shake our heads at Esau's stupidity. But that's where Hebrews messes with me. It demands that I ask myself (and the Bible should always be demanding questions of us) what my own overwhelming hungers are. What are the cravings in me that overcome me to the point of tunnel vision? What are the things that leave me crying, "I am about to die! What good is anything else to me?"

If I take an honest look at this verse as a whole, I have to admit that this is a crucial question for me. It should be for any of us, because of what Esau lost. It is crucial because, even though we may not have a weasely brother named Jacob, we do have a nasty deceiver that is ever so glad to suggest that we trade our inheritance as children of God for a bag of cheetos to tide us over until dinner. He wants us to trade our birthright of purity and true love for a single moment of sexual fulfillment. He wants us to trade in the inheritance of trusting relationships for the tension-easing lie that gets us out of a momentary squeeze. He wants us to trade a body free from addictions for a cocktail of relief.

Our enemy knows exactly when to meet us coming in the door, exactly when we are feeling so hungry we think we just might die. Unless we, too, have taken an honest look at those hungers and can escape the tunnel vision that accompanies ignorance, we are going to be surrendering our inheritance left and right. And though God delights in making things new, there are just some things we can't quite get back, no matter how many tears are shed.

I think this idea will be messing with me for a while. It leaves me asking questions about what my appetites are, and what truths might lie behind them. About how I can learn to distinguish my real desire from the easy-fix facade the enemy presents to me as a counterfiet. And about how much I have really taken in the awesome wonder of all that is my birthright as a child of God. If I really grasped that gift, I have a feeling I'd find myself saying a little more often, "Screw the cheetos--I stand to inherit a banquet hall!"

Vincent's Blues (Seeing Vincent)

(written for a young man named Vincent whom I met at the teen center I helped run in college)

Vincent Van Gogh would have tinted his oils blue,
a thousand shades of sadness,
before he laid his lines thick in the shadows of your face.
Yours are the shadows of
your alcoholic father,
as if a shadow were something genetic,
inherited.
As if the shades of his hopelessness
were inscribed on your newborn face.

In my mind, I watch Vincent lay down his layers.
I wonder how deep they are,
how long the paint will be wet.
I see another deep, blue line
and want to ask him where his highlights fall.

The paintbrush will not capture
your fifteen-year-old frame,
nor the styrofoam Sonic cup
and the smell of liquor it left on your breath.
There will be no canvas portrayal
of my awkward attempts to touch gently on your harsh realities.
Neither will Mr. Van Gogh be painting your mother's portrait,
though I wonder if she misses you tonight.

It would be easier for me to sit here
and hang your present condition like a sorrowful painting
on the walls of my wandering thoughts.
But I am no Vincent Van Gogh.
So I will throw away your empty Sonic cup
and gather the courage to sit down beside your
fifteen-year-old frame,
talk about the stories behind your shades of blue,
maybe even catch a glimpse
of where your highlights fall.

Mr. Van Gogh can keep his midnight blues
for the sky of some starry night.

think not of the old country...

The eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews has got to one of most inspiring passages in the Bible. It reads like a hall of fame list for the faithful among the ancients, for those who followed God past every “even though” in light of a strong enough “because”. A quote I have on my wall reads: “If you have a strong enough why, you can endure almost any how.” The men and women of Hebrews knew this well.

Take Abraham. Even though he did not know where he was going, Abraham went, because he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. Even though he was way too old to have a son, he became a father, because he considered him faithful who had made the promise. Even though it seemed God was breaking his earlier promise, Abraham laid down Isaac on the altar, because reasoned that God could raise the dead.

Or consider Moses. Even though he could have enjoyed the pleasures of the court of Pharaoh, he chose to be mistreated along with the people of God, because he was looking forward to his reward. Even though he faced the Pharaoh’s anger, Moses pressed on toward freedom for his people, because he saw him who is invisible.

On and on through the lives of our ancestors, God asks the impossible, he commands the strange and nutty and sometimes seemingly unkind. Yet even though they didn’t always receive what was promised, his people of faith saw those promises and welcomed them from a distance. It was because they knew that this place was not their home-- they were looking forward to a better land, a heavenly country.

In the midst of all this, perhaps the most challenging verse to me was this: “If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.”

Out of destitution and slavery, out of all our messes and hurts, and through many an “even though”, God calls us ever heavenward. Our “why”, our “because”, must be so strong that we never turn back. It is when we dwell on those places we’ve come from, just as the Israelites began to wish for the slavery of Egypt rather than the long journey through the desert, that we find ourselves turning back. We forsake what is better for what is reasonable and familiar and easy. Even now in my own life, I am having the hardest time pressing on through obedience because I keep letting my thoughts wander back to the land he’s called me out of, to the country from which I have recently come.

These heroes of our faith refused to dwell there. They laid aside any thought of their old country and pressed on toward the one God was preparing for them. And thousands of years later, what do we read about them? “God is not ashamed to be called their God” and “the world was not worthy of them.”

May we follow God in faith, whatever the odds, and may we consider his love all the reason we need to never look back.

V-Dub

My parents own a VW camper van,
a real beater (brown, with a hand-painted yellow stripe down the side)
the kind you usually see propped up on cinderblocks
in some overgrown, midwest junkyard.
It is the child of my mother’s mid-life crisis,
purchased without consulting my father,
whose irritation quickly dissolved during their first camping trip.
I’m not sure how,
but that automobile has become a meeting place
for two people who,
all my life
have seemed painfully separate.

It takes them all kinds of crazy places,
that common ground on four wheels-
it sets up house in the high mountains they love,
putters across long stretches of desert highway,
drives them to small town diners
and into quirky encounters with other traveling eccentrics.
The thing breaks down all the time, of course,
and being a foreign car, and old,
it’s a pain in the rear to find both parts and an able mechanic.
The rest of practical America would cave in and buy a sedan,
to save the money, if nothing else.
But not my parents.
Unlike many other things in life,
they seem to believe, without question,
that the van is worth it.

In some small way,
that nasty brown van gives me hope,
suggests the existence of a promising principle.
In so many ways, I, too, feel a bit like a beater-
like I break down easily and am hard to fix,
like I fall apart all too often.
I imagine myself the kind of heart that should be propped up on blocks,
alone in some weed-infested junkyard
reserved for the relationally inept.
I spend most of my time
convinced that I live in a world that would much prefer
a Taurus-
more economic, stylish, and reliable-
a lot less putter and clank and exhaust.

But maybe, just maybe,
I have the hidden value of my parent’s van-
that secret treasure, that diamond in the rust.
Perhaps the Father has made me to be
a safe place for broken people,
an open door to shared adventure.
Yes, maybe I, despite the toil and cost and roadside fixes
will someday, by someone,
been seen as totally,
unquestionably
worth it.

truth and song

Days like this, I come to my time with Jesus with mainly questions on my mind. I have a lot of decisions to make, lots of concerns rolling around in my head, and like any human, I'd love some guidance. Still, I cannot help but come with an awareness that he is worthy of more than my panicked need for direction. He is not some sort of celestial mapquest to consult when I am feeling lost. He is my Maker, and relationship with him is about so much more than marching orders.

So this morning, instead of launching immediately into a prayer for answers to my questions, I sat there on my knees and began to sing some hymns: How Great Thou Art, Be Thou My Vision, Come Thou Fount... When I ran out of the ones that came to mind, I picked up the hymnal sitting on our newly delivered piano, and I flipped through the pages and continued to sing: The Wonderful Cross, What Wondrous Love is This... on and on.

It was wonderful, full of so many reminders of truth. In one of my favorite books (Hinds Feet on High Places), the protagonist, Much-Afraid, spends many chapters walking through trials and facing the discouraging lies thrown at her by her enemies. On one of these difficult roads when she cries to the Shepherd for help, he teaches her a simple but powerful defense against trial and discouragement and lie: he tells her to sing. And when she does, the lies are silenced and her heart is strengthened. This same principle has been so true in my own life. When I am much afraid, songs of truth keep my head above the flood waters.

One of the songs that spoke to me most this morning was "How Firm a Foundation", which includes these words:
___________________________________________________

When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
the rivers of sorrow shall not overflow;
For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
and sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.

When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
my grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply.
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.

The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to his foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I'll never, no never, no never forsake.
____________________________________________________

When I come to spend time with God, I come to a God who walks with me through flood and fire, and who will never desert me to my foes. Sometimes I just can't see that until I lay aside my questions and lift my voice to sing.

God and butterflies

The Grand Canyon is just plain huge. I mean it’s vast, enormous, massive, colossal… whatever string of adjectives relating to grandness might finally get you to the sum of its immensity. It just kind of takes your breath away when you walk up to the edge for the first time. The Grand Canyon redefines everything you knew about what a canyon could be.

Being the adventurous, outdoorsy type, I will never be content standing behind a railing when looking at such things. I don’t want to peak over the edge from behind bars and chain-link fencing, designed to protect kids and camera happy tourists who might fall off the cliff. So I wander away from the designated, safe overlooks and find the natural edge. I want to sit there on the threshold of chasm to take in the Canyon

But then there is that something in me that says that sitting there still isn’t enough. It still retains some timidity and tameness, and this Canyon is neither timid nor tame in its grandeur. To really experience it as I desire to demands something more of me: courage and risk. So I dangle my legs over the edge of the precipice. Butterflies fill my stomach and all my feelings of security are stolen away. This is scary.

And unsafe, really (my mother would kill me). But do I want to be safe? Is that what I want more than anything when I approach such places of wonder? Or do I want to force myself not only to view the Canyon’s vastness, but also to face its depth? Yes. Something in my heart wants to not only see its beauty, but also sense its danger. Safety and distant observation are not all I want to know of this Canyon. I do not just want to appreciate it. I want to fear it.

I’ve been thinking about it ever since returning from that gargantuan hole in the ground, and I am realizing that I want to approach God the same way. No matter how numb I sometimes get to it, God is much like the Canyon he carved- vast, deep, awe-inspiring, beautiful and dangerous. We forget sometimes that, without Jesus, we wouldn’t be able to approach God’s throne at all. I mean, Moses asked to see God’s face and had to accept that if he really looked straight into it, the sheer glory would kill him. Kind of like a freefall into the Canyon would. God is gracious and loving and kind, but he is also “terrible in splendor”. He is holy and powerful and…well, no string of adjectives will ever quite sum it up.

Despite that, God has been inviting his people into relationship with him since the beginning of time. He allows us to walk right up to the edge and glimpse something of his powerful glory. He lets us look into the vastness that is his character, the way an awestruck visitor stares out at a Canyon whose breadth and depth they will never quite be able to take in. I fear, though, that we do a lot of this from behind railings and protective fences. We want to appreciate God, to praise his beauty, but we aren’t sure we want to sense his danger.

Looking back, I know that I would have missed something had I not sat there on the edge half-terrified. I would have known the Canyon’s greatness only in part, only as a safe spectator. I do not want to make such a mistake with God, either. There is something of his greatness, his awe-inspiring is-ness, that I will only know if I walk right up to the edge and dangle my legs over his glory. Only then will I feel the weight of that glory, like I felt gravity pressing on my feet as they hung over the chasm. I want to know God in his danger.

I want to know him with butterflies.

ah, the lengths you'll go to...

I am stubborn.

Really stubborn.

If it can be fixed, accomplished, recovered...if it is at all possible, I will not be content leaving it undone. Like the broken cabinet in our kitchen tonight. I would have been up all night if need be, unable to rest until the darn thing was fixed. Thankfully, it took me about five minutes. The storm drain, however, was a different story.

It was dark when Karen and I decided to play catch with the football in our friend's cul de sac. As Murphy would have willed it, the very first missed catch (which accompanied the very first throw) left us watching the ball slide through the one open space under the curb and into the storm drain. A deep, concrete storm drain running a couple hundred yards to a nearby pond. Most people would have thought, "Well, I'll be buying Brent a new ball tomorrow."

But I am stubborn. And so is Karen.

We tried the rescue first from the pond side, crawling deep into the concrete tunnel, until something flew in Karen's face and we retreated as quickly as one can retreat on hands and knees in a cramped tube of concrete. We tried that a few times, actually, hunkering down and trying to avoid the narrow stream of slime left over from recent rains. It was adventurous and hilarious, but less than successful.


In the end, it was Karen who showed us that someone really can crawl through the side of a curb. She slid into the drain from the street side, rescued the ball, and was pulled back out alive.



Honestly, I was relieved by this, as I really wasn't looking forward to crawling back up that tube for a hundred yards- which I would have done if necessary, but probably would have hated.

Main lesson learned from the day: Don't drop your football in a storm drain. But if you do, don't go buy a new one. Because in the end, crawling up a storm drain (a relatively dry one, at least)for a little way is pretty fun. Stupid, but fun.

life is too short...

...to not try and make the Grand Canyon a weekend trip, just because the drive is a-really, a-really long.

...to sit on the edge of the Canyon without actually dangling your legs over it and feeling the butterflies rise in your stomach when you do.

...to out-grow stupid accents and bad puns that I hope are as funny to me when I'm 80 as they are now.

...to miss opportunities to affirm the people you love for all of their precious qualities, and to not take the time to ask and answer the deep questions of the heart.

...to back out on road trip plans because you feel like you are too weary to have anything to offer.

...to turn down a bratwurst for fear of stinking up a three-man tent:)

...to skip a really good detour for the sake of making good time.

...to not make the kinds of healthy goals and resolutions that get us out of our boxes and motivate us to explore life, just because we're afraid we won't be able to keep them.

In other words, my weekend road trip to the Grand Canyon taught me a lot about the precious things in life. More to come on our rockin' jaunt to that really big hole in the ground!

my therapist is a mountain bike

There is something about exhausting the body that is good for the frustrated soul. When life gets a little too big to handle on the inside, I just need to get dirty and worn out. Mud, sweat, dust, blood...whatever reeks of adventure and challenge.

Ergo, my bike ride today (the pic is actually from a different ride). I did not go out there for a little mundane exercise, a lap around the park. I wanted to be sucking wind like a hoover on some impossible incline, dodging branches and sliding in the dirt. This is a frustration ride, folks. It has nothing to do with fitness and everything to do with exertion.

I immediately chose a trail I had never tried before (those I have sampled have not been worthy of a frustration ride), and it turned out to be a gem. Up and up and up and up...the sucking wind part was taken care of pretty quickly. As it turned out, the trail also provided a wonderful opportunity to employ the This-Is-Nuts-O-Meter. With the sucking of the wind came the "What am I Doing?" reading, followed by a "This Might Not be a Good Idea" when the ruts got really big. When the rocks began, the meter eased into "Nope, Definitely not a Good Idea." Finally, when the rocks got bigger, were situated on a steep slope, and the trail was a bit loose, things topped out at a reading of, "Maybe I Should Have Written a Will Before Leaving the House." That was where frustration encountered reason, and I finally turned back.

On the way back down that glorious trail, I stopped and sat on one of the huge rock formations surrounding me. Perched high on a sandstone ridge, looking out at a snow-capped Pike's Peak, I read my Bible in the fall sun. The exhaustion had done the trick. For the first time in a while, I was tired enough to rest, worn out enough to just sit and listen. And that's what the Father wants from me: "In repentance and rest is your salvation; in quietness and trust is your strength."

Right now, I need to sit before him in restful repentance, and in quiet trust. I need to make that the posture of my heart and life. Sometimes it just a takes a mountain bike and little wind-sucking to get me there.

how sweet, the song of suffering

"How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts,
and every day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, O God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;
my enemy will say, "I have overcome [her],"
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.
(Psalm 13)

We often speak of the Bible as an instruction manual for life, which it is in many ways. God offers us all kinds of wisdom on how to navigate the world we are walking through. He also offers us promises, like the one I was reading in Hebrews today about how Jesus' sacrifice not only cleanses our sins outwardly, but cleanses our consciences as well. And we all know that the guilty conscience is the worst part of sin struggles anyway. Thank God for telling us he'll give us peace, for saying he'll help us overcome. Thank God for all those incredible promises.

But we are not always ready for instructions, and promises sometimes feel almost trite when life is pressing in around us and it is all we can do to breathe. It is in those times when I am thankful for the part in the Word where he is gracious enough to give us words for the times when we can't muster them on our own. Not only does he promise a Holy Spirit that interecedes for with groans that words cannot express when we just don't know how to pray (Romans 8:26). Sometimes he just gives us the prayers themselves.

God knew that sometimes we would feel praise that our own words can't quite capture, and he gave us songs of praise. He also knew that life would knock the wind out of us once in a while, rendering us speechless when we most need to ask for help. And so he gave us songs of suffering as well. Songs that say "Who will rise up for me? My foot is slipping." In a time when Psalm 13 says all that I find myself unable to put into words, I consider that gift- the song of suffering- to be one of the most gracious gifts of all.

love stains

I've faced a lot of sadness lately. It's the kind that is natural after big losses and will pass with time, but you know how that can flavor everything for a while. On days like this, you just don't need to spill something on your only clean pair of pants.

But it always seems to happen anyway. My own pants are currently slathered in spicy garlic sauce from Buffalo Wild Wings. The truth is, though, that the stain was sustained during a late night outing with great friends, one of whom shared the over-sauced chicken legs with a hungry but budgeted me. We all laughed when I dropped the thing...and I really needed to laugh. And I needed to know, even if it was in a silly way, that my friends love me even in my clumsy messes.

God promises to get us through sad times like these. In the meantime, he shows us his goodness in so many ways. Some are conventional, some a little strange. But they are all signs of his love, from the unexpected note from a friend to the scent of spicy garlic on my once-clean corduroy.

playing through the pain

My day of shivering against frigid winds on Pike’s Peak wasn’t planned as such (for full story, see previous post). We didn’t drive up there to get cold and windblown, and I didn’t start joyfully out on that trail through the trees already knowing about the miserable conditions that awaited us above timberline. It’s just what the day handed us, and we were far enough up when we encountered it that we didn’t want to turn back. So we pressed on, sure that the other end of the trail would bring relief and a ride back out. But none of that was to be found at the summit, only the sobering realization that we would have to go back out the same way that we came in.

Up there at the top, my face was wind-chapped, and I was cold and tired. But much to my already intense discouragement, the way down only brought new pain. Now, anyone knows that leg joints get a little weary on the way back down a mountain. But COLD leg joints get downright painful. Mine soon became so painful that I was stumbling and wincing with every step. So, needing to just focus my way through it, I hiked on ahead of the others, and I started repeating, over and over, something that I have heard from many a coach in my lifetime: “play through the pain”. I was saying it, singing it, whatever it took to keep me focused as I kept moving, aiming first for the shelter of timberline and then for the warmth of the car.

I was in the middle of my descent when I heard him say it, heard God say, so clearly, “Yes. Play through the pain.” It stopped me in my tracks for a moment. I was pretty sure he wasn’t just giving me a pep talk for my aching knees, and he wasn’t. He was offering me a clear picture where only confusion has reigned for the last few months.

Thing is, we were already in a pretty bad situation up there. And it irked me that, in order to get out of it all, I had to face even more pain, pain that wasn’t there until we started back down. “You could end at least some of this pain right now,” I heard him say. “You could just sit down and stop hiking. Your knees wouldn’t hurt anymore. Then again, you’d never get off this mountain, and there’s a decent chance that you’d freeze to death tonight. But if you press through it, if you play through the pain, I will get you down and back home. And even if it takes some time, your legs will heal and the pain will end.”

I knew right there that his point was this: nasty hike aren’t the only messes we find ourselves in. We may not even go into them knowingly, but we are deep enough in when the weather hits that we just keep going, even if others say it’s wise to turn back. We are convinced that there is relief and an easier way out at the other end. But most of the time there isn’t, and we are suddenly faced with the sobering realization that, in order to obey the God we love, the only way out is the hard way.

The worst part is that the journey out often adds pain, rather than easing it. The choice of obedience, of walking away from our messes, can hurt even more than just sitting there in the freezing wind. So we often decide we want to lessen the hurt, and we plop ourselves down and refuse to go the rest of the way out. Sometimes it does the trick for a while. But in the end, the choice to alleviate the pain of obedience is a choice to remain in a place of suffering and death. It’s choosing immediate and partial relief over real safety and full healing.

As I pick my way through the rocks and down the mountains in my life right now, trying to make my way out of the freezing wilderness I wandered into, I have that choice before me. The enemy wants me to plop down for that quick relief, because he knows what it will bring in time. But my loving Father, the ultimate coach, just asks me to play through the pain. He asks me to keep walking, trusting him to bring me out of harm’s way and back to a place where my legs can heal.

I’m so grateful for a God who is willing to speak to me in the pain of my physical journey. And I am grateful for a God who wants me to hear and believe that he loves me, and that he’ll hold me up as long as it takes if I’ll just let him lead me home.

well, at least the air was fresh

After just a little over a year here in Colorado Springs, I finally summited Pike’s Peak today. Relationally (which is the factor that can redeem just about anything), it was a great day. I loved hanging out with Carrie and Ruth. On a practical level, however, it was perhaps the most miserable hiking experience I’ve ever had. And this from a girl who, just last year, was chased off of a summit by a lightning storm.

There was certainly a chill in the air when we hit the trail today. But it’s September in Colorado, so it wasn’t really a shocker. On the way up, a man coming back down told us (rather emphatically) that we would encounter high winds on the ridge. Ok mister, thanks for the nice warning. Later, we were told by another hiker that he had yet to encounter anyone who had not turned back early. These people, we are thinking, must just be wimps.

So, as you can clearly see, it wasn’t like we could have seen it coming or anything.

Holy friggin’ crap! We spent almost the entire hike (most of it is above timberline) shivering against below-freezing wind-chills, compliments of a 50+ mph wind (can we say up to 70 mph gusts?). It literally took me off my feet at several points. Perhaps those turner-backers were not wimps, after all. Perhaps they were wise, and we were stubborn…err…stupid? (No…I’m going to stick with wimps- it makes our stupidity sound nobler somehow.) Either way, we spent at least five of our eight hours freezing our little (insert favorite plural term for anterior region) off. To make it worse, the hoped-for warming lodge at the top is closed for the season, as is the road, crushing any hope we had of getting out of the wind or calling for a ride down. I was shivering uncontrollably as I ate my semi-frozen sandwich, and I wanted to cry.

As we turned back toward the bottom and back into the wind, and as the joints in my legs transitioned (courtesy of the cold) from painful to excruciating (post coming about incredible lesson learned through leg pain), I was reminded of the choices we have in those situations. I could not choose to be out of the wind. I could not choose to be warm, or to call a ride. Being ticked off about those things is pretty futile. So I began to sing, to joke with my comrades, and to give myself the pep talks I often use- little mantras that keep me focused through challenges.

When singing a song about a Savior who is “firm through the fiercest…storm”, and when laughing about how high winds make stinky farts much less conspicuous, things start looking up. No less cold. Still being blown over by winds. Knees still screaming at me. Snot still pouring out of my frozen nose. But really, looking up.

Thing is, life is going to stick us on frigid mountains once in a while. Might as well see how far we can lean into the wind without falling, and laugh when it clears the smells away.

delayed development

Delayed development of film, I mean. Yes folks, it's true. It took me over a month to develop the shots from our Crested Butte adventure.Better late than never!

grieving the good half

I'm not sure why, but something in me expects sacrifice to be a lot more black and white than it really is. Giving things up should make for pretty predictable emotional reponses, right? You give up something good, you earn the right to claim it as at least a little unfair, and you are grieve it like any normal person would. But what about when you have to leave behind a situation that is hurtful or generally bad for you? The response should be a sigh of relief and a joyous moving on, of course. So why does the abused child still cry for his mother when he is taken away from her? Why does the battered woman still grieve the loss of a seriously dysfunctional marriage? Because it's just not that black and white.

It has been said that most of the lies the enemy feeds us are really half truths. I mean, humans are stupid and all, but (with some exceptions) we are not generally stupid enough to embrace something that is blaringly, unquestionably going to do nothing but hurt us. If someone tells me to give up a nest of rattlesnakes under my porch, I'll be happy to. Don't expect much grieving there. But most of the time there's a little good in what we're seduced into and later asked to give up, a little hint of what is true and right in the midst of it. But we don't always consider this when we evaluate sacrifice. We look at that battered woman and say, "You're SAD? What's wrong with you? The guy was a jerk! You're being weak and ridiculous." But we weren't there when he first wooed her, when he brought her flowers, when he danced with her and told her she was beautiful. And we weren't with that kid when his mom took him to the park, or read him a story, or made his favorite cookies. Essentially, we weren't there for the truth half of the situation, for the few shining moments in between the storms.

I just had to give up something which contained a lot of harm and nasty lies. And even though it's probably my own perception, I feel like people expect me to be doing the sigh of relief and joyful acceptance deal. But the truth is that, though I am glad to be out of harm's way, I am so sad for the little truths that had to be sacrificed along with the lie. I'm sad for the many good moments in between storms. I guess I am understanding why it seems that people grieve even the ugly things in life. And I am definitely being shown that I need to show a little more grace to those who have had to give them up.

naked

Honesty is difficult and humbling. We think of this mainly in regards to the fact that we have to actually share the facts as they are, no matter how nasty they seem to us. The humbling part is admitting the struggle, in choosing to tell it like it is, right?

Yep, that's humbling stuff. It takes a lot of intentional practice for it to seem less daunting, and even then it is never quite easy. Still, passing on the dirty details, though it still leaves me trembling for a little while, doesn't faze me the way it once did. What I am finding to be the difficult and hugely humbling part of honesty right now is not admitting the facts- it's admitting how incredibly long the struggle and grief can take sometimes. It is having someone ask how I am doing and choosing to say, "I'm having a hard time" for what feels like the bazillionth time. It is choosing to admit that I am STILL struggling, STILL hurting, even though I feel like I sound like a broken record. It's a lot like how I felt during my almost three years of being intensely sick on seizure medications- there is a point where you are feeling ill for like the 500th day in row, and you are pretty sure no one wants to hear it anymore. It seems that your options have been narrowed to either being lonely or feeling annoying, and it's tough to decide which is the lesser evil.

I took a class last spring called "grief and loss, death and dying". One of the things we talked about is how our culture has placed a kind of unspoken quota on grief; we set up a timetable of sorts, and at the end we draw the line of "shouldn't you be over that by now?" Unfortunately, this is like many cultural norms for me; no matter how much I tell myself that it's not true, I still feel it- I still feel that unspoken quota breathing down my neck and whispering in my ear, "Sorry, time's up.".

I guess there will always be new strides to take in learning to live an authentic life. Step one: talking about the hard stuff with complete, naked honesty. Step two: choosing to stay in that place of nakedness, even when there is a chill in the air, and even when the enemy tells me that he's pretty sure people are wishing I'd put my clothes back on. Can't you see him there, offering us some knock-off attire, some counterfeit garments (humanity's hand-me-downs) to clothe ourselves with?

Thanks but no thanks, Satan. It's true that I'm sick of this. But I heard something about a white robe of righteousness made by a kingly tailor, and I'm gonna hold out for that one no matter how long it takes.

life in the tension

Desire is a scary thing. I don't mean those little desires- the ones for cheese sticks or a new shirt or season tickets. I'm talking about the deep desires, the ones that have the potential to rend your heart and knock the wind out of you. The kind that dominate your thoughts and direct your actions. To really feel that kind of desire opens us to a deep vulnerability, which is the scary part. A lot of people, and especially Christians, figure that makes it a bad thing and basically try to pretend it doesn't exist. That tactic never works, of course, because desire is just a part of how we were created.

When it comes to dealing with this inevitable desire, it seems to me that we have three options. The first is to try and shove it, which seems to be the most popular Christian approach. But as I mentioned above, this never works. It will fester inside us, and eventually it will rise to the surface and demand attention. Our second option is to try and fix it on our own. This is the situation where we grasp at any counterfeit we can find (whether a lesser desire or an easy solution) in the hopes that it will ease the ache. This approach is equally futile, because counterfeits never really fill the void.

The third option is the scary one, but the approach that I believe we were created for; it is, as a mentor used to tell me, to "live in the tension". There is a great inner tension when we allow ourselves to really feel desire- the deep and aching kind- even when there is no immediate guarantee that it will ever be satiated. So why tough it out, why live in the tension? Because there is life in it. When I am deeply desiring something, be it love or the fulfillment of a life-long dream, a part of my heart is open that is not open at any other time. That means that there is an opportunity for God to reveal himself to a part of me that is only accessible in that place of longing. The most life-giving intimacy we will ever experience with Jesus is found in the midst of deep and vulnerable desire.

I think of the Old Testament characters Hannah and Moses. Both went to God with deep and aching desires, one for a child and the other for a chance to see the long-awaited promised land. One recieved what she hungered for, the other was not granted what he asked. But both Hannah and Moses found a deep intimacy with and knowledge of the Father in the process, as evidenced by two of the most powerful passages of praise to be found in the Bible (1 Samuel 2:1-10, Deuteronomy 31:30-32:43).

All the good that we desire in this life is just a shadow of the greater reality that is our God. If we never allow ourselves to desire the shadow- to mourn its absence and learn to hope for its fulfillment- then we shut off any chance me might have had to glimpse the great reality of God's love. Our desires and longings are meant to be placed in the hands of the one who created us to feel them. There is life in that tension, if only we will make the difficult and courageous choice to live there.

it's really not about perfection at all...

One of the character traits I desire most is integrity. I want to succeed with integrity, fail with integrity, struggle with integrity, learn with integrity... I just want my whole life to scream it.

Dictionary listings for the word integrity include such definitions as "adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty" and "the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished". It seems to me that the church had used a sort of selective defining process on this one. To a good deal of Christians, being a person integrity involves only the "moral and ethical principles" part, with the unwritten addition that such principles must be adhered to with perfection. But I think that the other words here -soundness and wholeness, and especially honesty- are vitally important. In my life, I hunger for an integrity that is defined as consistently being who I say I am, having my words and actions agree. I want to be someone who is whole and sound- no hidden seams or cracks. The opposite of this kind of integrity is hypocrisy, which is the essence of a divided life. There is no wholeness when words and actions contradict and all of life is pretense.

So why do we find ourselves having so much trouble getting from hypocrisy to integrity? I think it has everything to do with that limited definition of integrity, with clinging to the idea that the leap is from a life of pretense to one of moral perfection; we continue to present ourselves as perfect, and put everything we've got into making our actions line up. That's a recipe for failure if I've ever heard one. If having integrity means perfection, we might as well just throw in the towel right now and keep on being hypocrites! So what needs to happen? There still needs to be a change, but we've got it backwards. Instead of making our actions more perfect, we need to make our presentation- our words- more authentic and honest. Being who you say you are becomes a lot easier when what you are saying becomes a little more realistic.

My last couple months have been a mess. I have battled and struggled and spent a serious amount of time walking the razor's edge of moral disaster. Thankfully, I have managed to fall on the right side, but I sure have cut my feet and bled all over the place in the process. My victories have been peppered with mistakes. Some might call it a season where I lacked integrity. And if it's all about moral perfection, then I'd have to agree. But of all the things I have compromised (and there have been many), I do not think my integrity is among them.

How can I say that? Because through the whole mess, I have still tried to be who I say I am. Not because my actions have been perfect- no, I've just been trying to stay afloat. But even in those times of imperfection, we have the choice to make our words authentic, to present ourselves as the fallible humans we are. Then, even if there are cracks, at least they aren't hidden ones, and no one can accuse us of pretending they aren't there.

What would happen if the church stopped putting all its effort into attaining moral perfection (disclaimer: I am NOT saying that we should entirely give up striving for strong moral character- that is a huge part of discipleship)? What if, instead, we decided to offer a more authentic presentation of who we are? What if we said: "We are followers of Jesus, and we really do love him and want to be like him. But we are also people that struggle with addictions and lust, with dishonesty and greed,with insecurity and homosexuality and hatred. And we're not afraid or ashamed to admit it, because we really do believe in a God who loved us right in the midst of it. We're striving for holiness with everything we've got, but we aren't going to get it right every time, because living like the Bible tells us to is downright hard sometimes. It's an imperfect journey, but it's more worth it than any words could adaquately explain." And what if, as individuals, we were willing to go ahead and say, "I love Jesus, but I sure am having a rough go of it right now." ?

It would be in that place of honest weakness that hypocrisy would die and integrity would thrive. The world would see a body of Christ whose words and actions agree, whose members can say, "We are who we say we are, warts and all." Weakness ceases being hypocrisy when we're willing to go ahead and admit being weak.

Integrity does involve remembering to line our actions up with what we've spoken. But a huge part of it means painting an honest picture of ourselves. That's the kind of integrity I want, the kind where I am seeking holiness with everything I've got, but even when I'm knee deep in muck, well...at least I'm willing to walk into the church with muddy feet and ask for a towel to clean off with.