Unintentional

Every once in a while I still write poetry. This poem was inspired by all the land for sale between Leesburg and Albany, GA. Pecan orchards, open fields, planted pines and untouched forests sport commercial real estate signage all along the way. When I looked up the properties online, I found all sorts of promises that this is one of the “fastest-growing counties in the state!” Meanwhile, there are new commercial buildings next door to these lots that are already vacated and for lease or for sale.

As more and more farm land is divided into lots by private developers, I wonder who is growing the food that will be sold in all these shiny new grocery stores. I wonder how they will pay the utility bills in the summer time, as the asphalt around the buildings absorbs the sweltering sunshine and the puny ornamental trees that will never provide shade struggle to survive their first season. I wonder if the jobs created by the “blossoming” industry will actually improve anybody’s quality of life. Will the single mothers get to pick up their children from school, or will they have to work nights in the name of survival while someone else tucks their babies into bed? Will the immigrant workers who came to the U.S. for a better life have money left to send home? Was the produce they sold grown in their country of origin, shipped thousands of miles just so Americans could have “fresh” grapes in the middle of winter?

I don’t think real estate agents and commercial developers intend to do harm to the land and the people. I think they must believe they are doing good, at least on some level. But over and over again small family-owned businesses are pushed out of rural communities by big box chain stores, and residents have to find transportation farther and farther away just to meet basic needs for employment and sustenance. To keep this sort of culture going…well, I’ll get down off my soap box before this becomes a full-blown rant and let my poem tell the rest of the story.

And so I give you:

Highway 19 South of Leesburg, GA
January 2010

For sale
Second hand
Development
Commercial land

Farm to school
Farm to church
Farm to hospital
Farm in the lurch

Profit margins
Forest bargains
Will divide
You decide

Pecan grove
Muscadine
Crape myrtle
Planted pine

Open pasture
Closing day
Invest in progress
Widen the highway

Eminent domain
Impending disaster
Goes up fast
Comes down faster

Fast food
Big box
New, cheap shoes over
Old, dirty socks

Fast-growing
Land of opportunity
Unintentional destruction
Of another small-town community

An Unexpected Gift

There’s far more to this life than trusting in Christ. There’s also suffering for him. And the suffering is as much a gift as the trusting.
–Philippians 1:29

You know how it is when someone says something to you that you already know, but you’ve never heard it put quite that way? That’s how I felt when I was reading Philippians earlier tonight. I’ve been mulling this over for quite some time now. The call to suffering as a Christian is an idea that always bothered me before, but as I see it come to fruition I’m coming to accept it as part of God’s grace.

As an alcoholic, suffering is something I’m not fond of. A friend of mine used to say that, for an alcoholic, the antidote to a bad feeling is a good feeling. I have an innate need to replace discomfort with something that seems more comfortable. My response to suffering used to be a nice stiff drink. Now I indulge in all sorts of other things to escape dealing with my problems: work, obsessive cleaning, computer games, shopping…but at some point I realize that none of these things is going to take the sting away and so I’m learning a new set of responses.

On Monday last week I wanted to complain all day long. Everyone was doing everything wrong! I was preparing the community lunch with a couple of brand new visitors as helpers. Wouldn’t it have been a tremendous orientation to life in community if I had complained about the other Koinonians all morning long? By God’s grace, not a single complaint made its way from my brain to my lips. Each time I wanted to complain, I prayed instead. I gave the issue over to Jesus, let him have the whole mess, and I went about my business with as much joy as I could muster.

I’d like to say that my week got much better because of that experience. But the truth is that I stayed grumpy all week long. My head was filled with self-righteous, judgmental thoughts. And I didn’t always manage to exercise as much restraint as I did that Monday morning.

For the past six months or so I’ve felt drawn to the story of Job. He suffered terribly, but always turned to the Lord for solutions. Even when others attacked his faith, he returned to God with his complaints.

Did you know that God actually longs for us to bring our complaints to him? I always think I need to figure it out on my own, then just run things by him in a quick prayer so that my brilliant plans can be verified. But Philippians 1:29 tells me that the world will not always think I’m brilliant. In fact, the people of the world are going to persecute me, and they’ll do it even more so when I declare that I’m living for Jesus. The persecution will be so great that at some times I won’t be able to figure out a solution.

And so here is where the gift comes in: in those times when I have nothing left, when everything I do turns out to be one big disappointment after another, in order for the spirit to survive in me I must rely on God. I must leave all my troubles at the foot of the cross, and when I release it all to Jesus’ grace, I can receive the gift of salvation. Here and now, he rescues me from the troubles of this world, and I can live in peace.

Even as I write this, I wonder if I’m completely losing my mind…but it’s true and so I’ll say it. Bring on the suffering, Lord! I will endure as much as you want me to have, because I’m not alone and I’m not afraid.

The suffering in my life may not sound like such a big deal: People blame me for all sorts of things that aren’t actually my fault. Others expect too much of me. I expect too much of myself. I don’t get to see my kids enough and when I finally make time for us to be together they do nothing but whine and fight with me and each other. My husband vents his frustrations on me instead of going to the people he needs to talk with. I am a work coordinator here at Koinonia, and the people I work with refuse or forget to do what I ask.

Love is…

I’m trying something new on this blog tonight.

I like to write. But I also like to make art. Collages mostly. I have some rules for myself about my collages: The materials cannot be new, other than paintbrushes and glue and fasteners of other sorts (like screws or wire…I’ll share photos of some of my metal collages some time soon). The only place I will buy materials is at the thrift store, and generally the items cannot cost more than $2. Every once in a while I allow myself a splurge. Otherwise, all materials are strictly free.

And so, I wind up making art out of things that most people would throw away, or objects that would be left laying on the ground in a parking lot, on a sidewalk, or along the dirt roads of southern GA. One day I was standing outside of Koinonia’s laundry room talking with Sally Ann. We both noticed a scrap of metal laying on the ground. I picked it up and she offered to throw it away for me. “Oh no,” I responded. “I’ll save it for my art.” She shook her head and waved her hands at me in exasperation. “Good Lord, Sarah!” Some of the folks from around here don’t know what to make of my fascination with other people’s trash.

The piece that follows is a gift for my friend Elizabeth. She is struggling with depression right now, and so as I worked I prayed for healing for her spirit. She also spends lots of time with my kids, and so I love the way that the word childhood played into the piece. It started with a poem from a little booklet I found in some things a former Koinonia member left behind. The book was filled with cliched poems about God and cheesy little prayers. The one I used was entitled “Love is…” and was inspired by 1 Corinthians 13. I also have a mini Gideon Bible that has a torn cover (my girls nearly destroyed it while playing with some friends one day) and so I like to use passages from this damaged volume. I find it interesting that the Gideons decided to use the word “charity” instead of “love” in their translation. The frames were half price at Goodwill, and the images came from a second-hand book about exotic goldfish.

So, without further ado, here are some photos of my handiwork. You can click on the images to see the detail in greater focus.

Remember that God is love, and Love is…all you need! I hope in this new year that you are filled with inspiration and wonder. Happy 2010!

Resurrection

I was going to title this post “The Awakening” and fill it with stories of how once I was dreaming, but now I’m fully awake. I was going to reference really cool things like tattoos that I have on my feet, stories about drug-induced awareness and quotes from A Course in Miracles.

But then I looked up the word “awaken” in The Message translation on BibleGateway, and I was floored by the results. Only one passage showed up:

1 Corinthians 15:34 Think straight. Awaken to the holiness of life. No more playing fast and loose with resurrection facts. Ignorance of God is a luxury you can’t afford in times like these. Aren’t you embarrassed that you’ve let this kind of thing go on as long as you have?

I’ve tried to compose a blog post several times this month, but the words for my experiences would not come together. Now I recognize that I’m living through a new kind of spiritual awakening. A few weeks ago I invited the Holy Spirit to guide my words and actions. It sounds like a small deal, but it’s still uncomfortable for me to say that. I mean, growing up in Lutheran Sunday school classes, we giggled nervously at the idea of people actually having visions or speaking in tongues, and by the time I had decided to leave the church as a young adult the whole concept seemed like a bunch of bull to me. So to be sitting here with half of my mind occupied on what Jesus and the Holy Spirit want me to do with each situation makes me feel slightly more insane than all the drugs I did in college.

1 Corinthians 15, in The Message translation, is titled “Resurrection.” What I wanted to say about tattoos and New-Age literature does not hold a candle to the wonder of the resurrection. Jesus’ life in and of itself is astonishing, because in spite of all the temptation that surrounded him every single day, he always listened and chose God’s way. He lived with former prostitutes, corrupt government officials, zealots, beggars and thieves, and continued to love and nurture them even when he wanted to throw up his hands, or maybe even wanted to join them in their surrender to earthly pleasures. And then to think that, as God and man, he would willingly suffer alongside of us and allow himself to writhe with temptation and desires that would have foiled God’s entire plan had he given into Satan’s urgings, to feel the pain of torture and still extend love and forgiveness to his captors, to experience total separation from God himself by descending into hell…well, it’s just beyond my scope of comprehension. Resurrection is simply a miracle.

A friend of mine who was at Koinonia two summers ago used to ask me to pray for her when she was “under attack.” I never fully understood what she meant by that phrase until now. She would sometimes have visions of demons leaving her body, sometimes have nightmares of being carried off by ill-intentioned souls. I’m so grateful that she trusted me enough to share these experiences with me, because always there was something to learn about the way we interact in everyday life. The demons were manifestations of childhood trauma that had not healed, or of arguments with loved ones, or of deep self-loathing…of anything that might separate us from the love of Christ. I learned that I could either look at my own conflicts and wounds at surface value, as events to be cataloged and pushed aside once I (with all my genius) had figured out a way through them; or I could invite God in and allow him to heal me from the inside out.

Since I started to live in this state of inspiration (by that I mean being filled with the Holy Spirit), I’ve also found myself more vulnerable than ever to spiritual attacks. Spiritual warfare, for me, takes place mostly in my head. The things that people say and do around me are multiplied into a thousand accusing voices that reverberate inside my skull. I walk around with a look like a deer in headlights, and any little thing can send me off into a fit of rage and weeping. Or I get caught up in what others think of me, in daydreams, in things that have not yet been said or done, and the feelings of guilt and shame overwhelm me to the point that I can’t look you in the face. But even when symptoms manifest in outward ugliness, the battle is within.

And so 1 Corinthians 15:34 has all the more impact. I cannot afford ignorance in times like these. I cannot give into temptation to be viewed as “cool” by quoting New-Agers to make my point when it’s scripture that feeds my soul. It’s time I conceded to holiness and straight thinking. Yes, I’m embarrassed it’s taken me so long to take the plunge into a truly Godly life. But I’m willing to do it openly and honestly, because I believe God wants me to share this with anyone who needs it. And so I hope that my rambling tonight is helpful to some of you.

The war is on, and it’s a battle to the end. Pray with me that it ends in resurrection.

What Does Love Require?

A friend of mine posted the following thoughts on his facebook earlier this evening: “What does love require? What if the week after the Samaritan picked up the wounded man, he came again down the same road toward Jericho and found another victim? Then it happened a third, fourth and fifth time. Don’t you think that after taking care of the victims he would have gone to the authorities with suggestions on how the road could be made safer?”

To which another friend responded with the following quote from Martin Luther King Jr.: “One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

As grace should have it, I had been pondering just such a topic all day. See, I agree with my friends’ thoughts that the system is screwed up, and that it’s going to take change on the system level to bring about the transformation our society desperately needs. But as I observe the socio-political workings of our American culture, it seems that the system we have is plagued by Type 1 Error status. Bill Mollison, co-founder of the permaculture movement, describes it thus: “One of the great rules of design is do something basic right. Then everything gets much more right of itself. But if you do something basic wrong – if you make what I call a Type 1 Error – you can get nothing else right.”

Human notions on how to “fix” society seem to fall under the Type 1 Error category far too often. Because whenever we look at a group of humans and try to come up with a blanket solution for all of them, we inevitably short-change the individual. Humans are walking contradictions, and if we were to get really honest about who we are, I bet none of us would fit neatly into the demographics to which most structural solutions require us to conform.

Why is this? Well, I have myself as an example. I’m one of the leaders in the Koinonia community. I’ve had many different “job” roles, and most of the time my work involves coordinating other people. Whenever someone isn’t living up to my expectations, it’s so tempting to tell them to do things the way I do them, with the assumption that the way I do things is right. To make this less confusing, here’s an actual example of how this sort of thinking has backfired on me in the past:

Two years ago I was helping to oversee our mail- and internet-based business during the busy holiday season. Order processing can get pretty hectic, and if we don’t stay organized then orders printouts and payments could get lost. One of our order-entering community members was less than tidy, and one evening someone found a customer’s check on the floor under his desk. I was charged with the task of asking him to clean up his act, and my approach was to explain to him that even though my desk was also a cluttered mass of papers that looked much like his own, I didn’t lose other people’s checks or other important items and neither should he. He shrugged at my self-righteous admonishment, and I uncomfortably returned to my work.

Not ten minutes later, I discovered a week-old phone message for someone else in a pile of papers on my desk, and then looked down only to find a check on the floor under my chair. Humiliation is sometimes the only way to humility. And I learned that the way to give direction is not to be perfect and then demand perfection from others. Now when I am challenged to mentor another community member I’m quick to remember my own shortcomings first, and forgiveness (both for myself and the other person) is the rule. Whenever I think I know the right way of doing things, I first take a look around to see if my own house is in order. And always, there is room on my side of the street for improvement.

When talking with a friend about what to do in the face of a seemingly irreconcilable disagreement I was having with another community member, we wondered whether the Godly path would be for me to empathize or reprimand. Should I go to work alongside my sister, offering to do with her the tasks she hates the most in a gesture of solidarity and compassion? Or should I tell her to suck it up and behave like a mature adult? My friend surmised that Jesus probably would have done both. The story of Zaccheus comes to mind. Jesus called out to the little man to come down from the tree and stop sulking, then invited himself to a party at Zaccheus’ house. He both demanded that Zaccheus display generosity and offered the friendship that he desperately needed in a totally non-judgmental fashion. And the tax-collector’s entire life was transformed.

Too often we get things backwards. American culture has taught us to earn our living, that we get rewarded only when we deserve it. But the gospel of grace thwarts this notion, because grace is extended over and over again to sinners who deserve nothing but punishment. This story of a pious monk illustrates it the conundrum beautifully:

A brother told a hermit, “I will not invite anyone who is known to be guilty of sin into my cell. A good person is always welcomed.”

The hermit replied, “If you do good for a good person that makes no difference to him. Give the sinner twice as much love, because he is sick.”

I’m not suggesting this is particularly easy to put into action. Sometimes acting in love means saying no when it would have been easier to say yes. Sometimes acting in love means I’m embarrassed in front of my friends as I become humble enough to reveal my shortcomings. Sometimes acting in love means risking my reputation or my rights so that a total stranger may witness the good news of Christ.

For me, the story answers the initial question: What does love require? It requires twice as much love. It requires growth and expansion…even more compassion than we think we need, even more care. And it requires that our human hearts open up to the infinite source of God’s love, so that when our social systems and earthly kingdoms fail yet again we will have strength to welcome each other home (for like Zaccheus, we are all sinners) as Christ would have us do, with open hearts and open arms.

Beyond Reason

Today was a rough day at Koinonia. I believe in Clarence Jordan’s assessment of the devil as “the great confuser,” and there was some pretty serious confusion among the folk at the farm this morning. People were arguing, grumbling for no apparent reason, complaining, wallowing, and falling prey to self-righteousness and judgmentalism. Meanwhile, pipes were leaking, water heaters were failing, neighbors called needing a place to stay because their house burned down last week, someone called looking for a place to bury their impoverished friend who had suddenly died…the requests couldn’t have been more random or poorly timed. All the while, the storm named Ida (which is my 5-year-old’s name) was encroaching, and so the pecan harvest will face another setback this week.

With all the opportunity for ill-will and bad behavior, of course most (if not all) of us succumbed to the temptation to sin at one point or another. A friend of mine said he felt as though “the weight of evil had descended” on his shoulders. I, for one, fell into complaining in front of visitors, spreading rumors, and generally behaving like a total nag powered by self-righteous zeal to get everyone else straightened out in their thinking.

Just about every night before I log off of my computer, I click over to Bible Gateway to see what the verse of the day is. And just about every time I do that, the verse is exactly what I need that day. Today was no exception. The verse of the day always shows up in the New International Version, which is not my favorite translation. But tonight the good ol’ NIV did the trick.

Isaiah 1:18

“Come now, let us reason together,”
says the LORD.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.

What strikes me is the nature of God’s invitation to reason. In the Message translation it says, “Let’s argue this out.” The New Living Translation reads, “Let’s settle this.” But NIV calls for reason. My trusty online dictionary defines reason as “a rational motive for a belief or action.” It also uses words like logic and justification. So when God calls for reason, you might expect a logical, rational solution to the problems that his followers are facing.

Yet, as we read on, the very next sentence shows that God’s reason says sins will be washed away, that blood-stains will be made white as freshly fallen snow, as the wool of a lamb. Where’s the logic or rationality in that? It’s totally beyond reason.

This is why I’ve come to love this crazy God, father of all creation. No matter how tarnished I appear, regardless of how impossibly stained I am by the sins of my past, I can bring everything I have and everything I am to God. No need to hide anything, after all God sees all and knows all. And even with all the ugliness of sin, he loves me just as I am, so much that he’ll take on all my burdens and give me a fresh start every time.

Enough Is Enough

I had one of those comforting, completely terrifying realizations last week: Whatever I do in life, it’s never going to be enough. What I mean is, that I’m never going to “finish” that there will never be a point where things get perfect and remain that way. There will always be someone who disagrees with me, always the potential that someone could be unintentionally (or worse, intentionally) harmed by my actions.

How, you might be wondering, could this sort of discovery ever be considered comforting?

Well, as most people who know me quickly figure out, I am a perfectionist. And I like to be right about things. This creates untold anxiety, far too many sleepless nights, and an unhealthy obsession with minutiae. I get energized when I get a chance to tidy things up. Mind you, I am far from a neat freak in my own living space…you don’t even want to know how infrequently I finish washing the dishes. But when it comes to a cluttered file cabinet at the office, a garden full of weeds, or a mailing list full of duplicates, I get obsessed with straightening and making things right.

Fortunately, my perfectionist bent has a sunny side. I also love to laugh and tell stories that make other people laugh. I love to network, to introduce people to that new idea they’ve been longing for, if only they knew it existed. I want to be everyone’s friend, want everyone to have  a great time at the party, want to hear about everyone’s hopes and dreams and am delighted when I have the chance to watch as those dreams are realized.

So when there is a mess I can’t clean up, or a person who doesn’t want to be my friend no matter how hard I try, it crushes my spirit. Here at Koinonia I’ve encountered situation after situation where the mess is carried over from generations ago, and the scars cover wounds too deep to be healed in my lifetime. Koinonia’s history mingles with our personal stories, and while sometimes the melody is soft and sweet or dancey and catchy, in other moments the cacophony would make a deaf person wince at the dissonance.

Sometimes this manifests in a physical disaster, like broken machinery, leaking roofs, and missing records. But there is a steady stream of emotional wreckage as the members of our little community open up our baggage (the kind that we’ve been carrying since childhood) and attempt to deal with the moldy, moth-eaten disaster of the past. Worse yet is when one of us needs to let go of our baggage, but won’t let anyone help carry the load. It brings me great discomfort when I see someone in pain and I’m unable to do anything to ease the suffering. No matter how clever or funny I can be, no matter how well I listen and reflect back what I heard, nothing I can say or do will be enough to fix the situation and make everything right.

For the past few weeks I’ve been walking around with Ani DiFranco’s song What If No One’s Watching stuck in my head. In my atheist days it was an anthem of self-reliance. I took comfort in the joyful pessimism of it all, in the freedom that came through admission of defeat. Ironically, now that I’m a practicing Christian, the song still brings me a great deal of assurance. The full lyrics can be found by clicking on the song title, but I’ll quote a few lines:

if my life were a movie…
everything i do would be interesting
i’d play the good guy
in every scene
but i always feel i have to
take a stand
and there’s always someone on hand
to hate me for standing there
i always feel i have to open my mouth
and every time i do
i offend someone somewhere

(refrain)i think what
what if no one’s watching
what if when we’re dead
we are just dead
i mean what
what if god ain’t looking down
what if he’s looking up instead

Ani Difranco’s music played a tremendous role in the shaping of my adult life. She was one of the first voices I really heard giving me freedom to try things a little differently, to mess up really badly sometimes, and to still somehow learn to love life.

So, what? What if it’s never enough? What if things never get better? What if no one’s watching? What if no one reads what I write, what if no one ever applauds me or laughs at any of my jokes? What then?

Perhaps Ani was right, maybe God is looking up. All the time I forget the command to build faith on a strong foundation. In the upside-down kingdom, the Lord of all is the servant of all. The God I know today is more than even a foundation; as it turns out, Jesus’ life and death was and is enough to free me. If I get really quiet, even when I’m feeling neurotic and obsessive, I can hear his still, small voice cheering me onward. And comfort comes. I don’t need all the answers today. In fact, if I never find out any of the answers, that would be all right with me. If it never gets any better than this…well, perhaps enough is enough after all.

It’s Already Perfect

I found strange comfort this week in the realization that I’m just a run-of-the-mill perfectionist, workaholic alcoholic. Honestly, saying those words out loud freed me to get over it and carry on with my life. A couple of nights ago I was obsessing, yet again, over simple mistakes and perceived grievances that others must have been holding against me. It had taken me to tears, into that space where I was riding the downward spiral, and there was nothing keeping me from descending into the darkness of fear.

Thankfully, I have the most wonderful sponsor who has taught me so much about what it means to serve others. I can call her literally any time of the day or night. She always answers, and even if I’ve woken her from deep sleep she tells me she’s glad I called. So I called her at a reasonable hour with all my woes, and she listened as they compounded. And then she did this amazing thing where she made me feel terribly small and fully valid all in the same breath.

She simply called me out where I stood in that moment. I was nothing but an alcoholic, overcome by a tendency towards perfectionism, in the throes of a workaholic binge. It might sound strange to those of you who have never been addicted to anything. She was not being self-righteous or preachy. In fact, she delivered this diagnosis with love and understanding.

It takes me back to a horrible week when I lived in New Orleans and I was in the process of breaking a relationship with the first man I ever truly loved. I was beginning what became my last big alcoholic binge, and things were extra-messy. I had no close friends in the city, and so every day I would call my dear friend Jessa. In between my heaving sobs, I would listen to her wise words, and they would give me the strength to finish out the day. At one point Jessa said to me, “Everything is already perfect.” It seemed like nonsense at the time because I was so consumed by pain, but somehow I knew she was right, even as I was about to hit my lowest low, and I believed her. Everything was happening for a reason, there was some sort of grand design that I couldn’t comprehend.

At that point in my life, I was completely alienated from God. In fact, it’s amazing to me that I could have bought into the idea of a universal plan, because I think I had chosen atheism as my belief system du jour. But that’s how miracles work…there’s not much sense in them, yet nothing else could be more real.

When I became a Christian many years later, I struggled with the idea of perfection. If God is perfect, and I’m doomed to a life of sin, but then Jesus redeems me, then what happens to my life after I accept that? I didn’t want to hear that things would be perfect in heaven, I wanted an answer about all this suffering on Earth. The first time I discovered the answer in scripture, I wanted to shout it from the rooftops.

^{Galatians 5:22-23}But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

Note that it doesn’t say “some things are holy, some not.” It says that a basic holiness permeates. In other words, creation is infused with holiness. It cannot be contained!

This past week I’ve found myself stuck in Romans chapter 14. The whole chapter is amazing, filled with literal food for thought, and instruction on action. But again, there is that blessed assurance that the perfect God is everywhere, in everything.

^{Romans 14:13-14}Forget about deciding what’s right for each other. Here’s what you need to be concerned about: that you don’t get in the way of someone else, making life more difficult than it already is. I’m convinced—Jesus convinced me!—that everything as it is in itself is holy. We, of course, by the way we treat it or talk about it, can contaminate it.

“Everything as it is in itself is holy.” This is the message Jesus brings. Even with my obsessive thoughts, with all of my -isms, I am holy. Not because of anything I have done to deserve this status, but because God loved me enough to allow me to exist.

It’s not always my first thought, but I’m remembering a little quicker these days: It’s already perfect. I don’t have to alter, manipulate, manage or convince anyone of anything. God’s got it all under control. I can always choose to reject God, but when I allow myself to be called back to true perfection, the kingdom of God seems pretty close at hand.

It feels a little hokey saying this, but I’ll put my ego aside to reveal what’s in my heart. My prayer for tonight is that God would reveal his perfect plan to each of us, and that we might learn to share it with one another until the day the kingdom comes to stay, right here on Earth.

Which Would You Rather Be?

This is going to read a little weird, because my original post disappeared when I tried to publish it. I guess it’s a lesson in the verse I was reflecting upon. Colossians chapter 3:

^12-14So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.

^15-17Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.

The initial question to my post was: “Would you rather be right or happy?” I had masterfully explained that I concluded it’s not important to be either, and that I’ve found the most important things are to walk with Jesus and be eternally grateful even when things aren’t going your way.

And then my blog post disappeared. God has an interesting sense of humor. And he’s definitely giving me some practice lessons in humility these days. Let’s just put it this way: Once one has committed her life to Jesus, she walks with him in everything. Absolutely everything, from the mundane to the sublime, from the grotesque to the glorious. Jesus is there in every stinking detail! Right down to my petty thoughts and judgments, even in the moments where I’m obsessing over minutiae. Jesus is there, loving me and supporting me, laughing with me, crying with me, shouldering my burdens and multiplying my joys.

Pretty darn wonderful if you ask me. So wonderful I’m be willing to give up both being right and happy just to live in the assurance of such a blessed and eternal grace.

So, tonight you’re lacking my original brilliance and you’re getting yet another glimpse at my folly. I guess God had better plans for us today…

Thoughts on the Eve of My 31st Birthday

How often do you think God doesn’t know what he’s doing? If you’re like me, it can sometimes become a daily struggle. I like to problem-solve. I love untangling, re-organizing, weaving back together using worn fabric to make something beautiful. And sometimes I think it’s my job to do that not only for me, but for you and all your friends.

People in my family like to give unsolicited advice. It happens less in my adult life, but when I was a kid I was told what I should do all the time. I hated it growing up, and in fact it still ruffles my feathers when I call home to tell how I’m doing and I hang up with a head full of “shoulds.” But that doesn’t stop me from should-ing other people. I daresay I verge on being a busybody when I get really out of control, even giving advice to random strangers.

So what gives? Why is it so hard to trust God? I have no answers to these questions. I only have experience in yielding, again and again, to the will of a power much bigger than me who has much better intentions and much bigger vision than I have. Usually I wait to give over control to God until I’m beat down and bedraggled, and there seem to be no other options. But the other day I wrote to a friend of mine asking for prayer around a particular situation where I was trying too hard to be right, and she sent back Jeremiah 29:11-14:

“I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for. When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I’ll listen. When you come looking for me, you’ll find me. Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I’ll make sure you won’t be disappointed.” God’s Decree. “I’ll turn things around for you.”

I’m serious about finding God, and I want it more than anything else. Temptation to fall into the old pattern is strong, but releasing myself to the compassion and care of God, who is made of love…it just makes so much more sense than any strategy I’ve ever tried. I’m not sure what this new way of living has in store for me, and experience shows me that life in God’s care is never boring or dull. No matter what happens as I embark on the next year of my life’s, I’m sure the promise will be fulfilled and I won’t be disappointed.