Me: …Anxiety is not a failure. It is just informing me of what needs attention and care…. I think anxiety is inviting me to notice my inner trouble and encouraging me to then lean into grace which has somehow gotten away from me, and to trust your grace to come through for me whether my anxiety is lessened or not. Oh “come through for me” can be confused with fixing. Really the form of grace I need most is compassion, to believe you care deeply for my pain. Like a little kid who would run to his supportive mom, not mostly to fix the problem, but to receive that understanding, validation, and comfort. I used to think quite [strongly] that you were primarily into my character building, making me a better person. That looks similar enough to be confused with grace, but it is the opposite. Now I believe you only wish for me to grow into all the beauty that is seeded in my soul. I thought I was the gardener and now see I am the garden!
God: What a wonderful way of seeing my love and delight in your unique beauty! And it is truly the responsibility of the gardener to foster the natural beauty of the garden. I love that you trust me for that. I know that is a struggle and has been your whole life, but look how much you have grown! You have overcome major challenges to trust, and really it is all about the direction, not the speed or attainment. In fact, looking at it as attainment pulls you away from my grace and turns our relationship into legalism. The key to close connection is in walking the journey together, not achieving some goal. I love that you are walking the journey with me. How delightful!
For months we have been preparing for the big celebration, putting regular life on pause, pumping up our happy expectations. We cranked up cheery music, hung lights and ornaments, filled our stockings and fridges, piled presents under the tree. And now it’s over. Regular life comes flooding back with its anxieties and stresses, dullness and duties, and the only thing left to do is box up all our happiness for the long winter trudge. Some of us hold onto the decorations a little longer, maybe till New Year’s, clinging to the feelings that are quickly slipping away. Ordinary life feels so bereft in comparison, cold and heartless.
When I was a kid, the after-Christmas-slump was eased by the school holiday. As an adult, the after-party is a hangover of postponed tasks to catch up on. I want some fun to anticipate as an antidote for the disappointment of everyday life. But as I make the transition to reality, I sense the hollowness of my over-hyped Christmas. We tried to make it meaningful and rich with various spiritual practices, but for me, the oversold glitz from past decades sucked me in at last… or maybe sucked out the core of good we tried to foster, leaving it an empty make-believe.
Thankfully that good is not too far away for me to pull back in to reorient myself on solid ground, the rich goodness that lies in the gritty reality of a broken world. I feel myself stabilizing and getting my bearings. Life is rich in ways fantasy never is. It has weight and substance, meaning and direction, and a hope that does not disappoint because it is a grounded hope, not a Disneyland hope. Sobriety is so underrated!
Today marks the winter solstice when darkness reaches its full power, chasing daylight into retreat. This looming darkness and cold is SAD for many (an apt acronym for Seasonal Affective Disorder), especially after the holiday season blinks out, especially in the dreary Northwest, overcast from September to May. In the past I put my head down and trudged through the darkness, holding my breath until spring buds. I have seen winter darkness as a killjoy, sucking the life out of all the earth. Last week Kimberly told me hope highlights the misery of the present. We hope for the good that we now lack. I have often used hope to give me stamina in the dark, as though the goal is simply to hang on until something better comes. But what if the dark is full of its own unique blessing, like dark chocolate, then I miss it by wishing it gone and pushing it away.
Please don’t equate my new perspective with the toxic forced happiness which tries to shout down misery. That is just another way of rejecting the darkness rather than receiving it. Telling myself “this isn’t so bad” or “others have it worse” or “be grateful for what you do have” is just another way to stifle and reject the blessing of winter. Sadly I have been blind to the goodness that darkness brings. Darkness is a safe womb, a quiet rest after tough days, a calming from excess stimulation, an invitation to turn inward. Darkness is an invitation to self-care and inner growth.
I was raised to believe work was the good, so rest curtailed the good–it was necessary, like pooping, but just as useless. Resting was unproductive and usually a sign of self-indulgence or weakness that should be overcome as much as possible. It was cousin to laziness. But what if rest, like the space between musical notes, was an equal partner in creating good? What if rest was just as blessed? “Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work.” The one day that was blessed and sanctified was the rest day!
Darkness was part of creation itself, part of what God called “very good,” and not only because it invited rejuvenating rest. I think of the many ways I might welcome the blessing of the cold, dark, wet, drab months ahead, possibilities start churning. I want to partner with the winter, not fight it. Instead of trying to create color out of greyish hues, I want to find the unique beauty in black-and-white. Instead of just sheltering against the cold, I want to lean into the delights of coziness–hot drinks, fuzzy pajamas and cuddling up are so pleasurable in winter. I want my indoor life in winter to be as rich as my outdoor life in summer and to enjoy the outdoors in ways that embrace the season. If you don’t have a ball you can’t play soccer, but you could play tag… or invent a new game entirely. In fact the absence of a ball stimulates greater creativity! Winter is not a season of deprivation, but of new possibilities.
Kimberly and I sat chatting this morning about Mary, the mother of Jesus. I said, “Imagine God coming to you and saying, ‘I want you to raise my son.'” It’s intimidating enough to be an adequate mother who doesn’t mess up a child: just the right balance of affection and discipline, limits and freedom, patience and prodding, while adjusting to each child’s uniqueness. Now imagine the Savior of the world is plopped in your lap as an infant and you are responsible to nurture, discipline, and give spiritual guidance to God’s child. It’s not just your kid you’re worried about, but the whole world is depending on you… and so is God! Talk about impossible expectations!
I know what it’s like to feel the weight of the world on my shoulders, to feel that I have to make all the right decisions and give every ounce of my energy and attention. I know the fear of failing God and screwing up his plans. And even though I once thought I was responsible to save hundreds of thousands of people by my efforts, I’ve found that trying to simply get my own life straightened out is just as big an emotional burden, just as sure to scare me with potential failure and the shame that will flood in.
But what if Mary didn’t take on all that responsibility? What if instead of being responsible for God, she believed that God was responsible for her. Suppose instead of saying, “Yes, I will do it. I will perform this God-sized task,” Mary said to the angel, “I’m the Lord’s servant; let it be done to me according to your word.” From the very beginning God was announcing what he would do for Mary rather than what Mary must do for God. All the responsibility was on God’s shoulders and Mary was simply a recipient by grace. Which is exactly what the angel told Mary–calling her not “highly favored” but “highly graced” (the Greek word is rooted in charis, which is “grace”). It was not like a talented sports team that is “highly favored” to win, as though God were impressed with Mary (the harmful idea behind the “immaculate conception” of a sinless Mary). Rather Mary was one on whom great grace was poured, and grace by definition is undeserved. God said in essence, “I am catching you up in this awesome plan I am carrying out. Come watch me do this amazing thing… and I’m using you!”
What if that is true for me too? What if I am greatly graced? What if God is inviting me into watching him do for me and through me all the good that he has planned? It seems too good to be true, to let down that burden of responsibility and just “be” with God, to receive goodness rather than construct goodness, to be God’s showpiece of grace, God’s artwork of beauty and redemption. Joy to the world!
Yesterday I texted Kimberly, “almost a perfect hike. 45 minutes of good cardio in the sun, a stroll along a beautiful mountain view, adventure on a new trail, and then overcast to be a perfect ambience for meditation.” Then I texted her this picture.
We get gorgeous views when it’s not cloudy, a rarity in the Pacific Northwest winters. And when the sunshine falls on my day off, even for a couple of hours, I consider myself lucky. I said it was an “almost” perfect hike because instead of being simply overcast, it rained the last 30 minutes down the mountain, which made me hurry to finish rather than calmly meditate. I finished texting Kimberly, “Near the end I laughed, thinking, Yeah God always has to add that little dose of ‘reality.’ Life never seems to come neatly gift-wrapped with a bow, but always manages to throw us off-kilter as though it fears we will settle down too easily into comfortable stagnation. There’s always something that doesn’t quite fit in the box, that leaves a sense of dis-ease challenging our neat organization of the world. Sometimes we flounder desperately trying to make sense of it all. Living genuinely is scary and confusing and painful, but it leaves us open to new directions we may never have considered. It’s a very messy affair wobbling courageously down a trail with no clear markings. Faith is given not so much to make us stalwart in our certainty, but to make us stalwart through our uncertainty.
Kimberly has been struggling for months with her job at an Asheville animal shelter. The physical labor is too strenuous for her, and the lack of structural support forces her to constantly fight for resources that should simply be allotted to her–and that is directly contrary to her nature. She has been looking for a new job and saw an ad for an admin assistant at a Presbyterian church. Wanting a better look, we went to visit this last Sunday. We both liked it a lot, and she applied for the job on Monday. She would be great at it. Unfortunately, 50 people have already applied for that opening through only one job website, which was posted just 5 days ago.
What should we hope for, plan for, invest in? Which is the best path to take through this jungle of life? Sometimes discernment feels more like reading tea leaves than weighing pros and cons and finding a clear way ahead. The confluence of situations at times seems to suggest the way forward, but that has often led me into deadends–jobs I had to quit for my own sanity, relationships that ended up worse instead of better, decisions that lost time and money with no benefit. When two people’s dreams and fears, gifts and weaknesses must be accounted for, it makes that process so much more difficult. So we pray and leap… and sometimes end up in the ditch. At that point we can either decide that God wanted us in the ditch (we made the right choice) or that he’s teaching us a lesson about making better decisions (we made the wrong choice). Which is it? Hindsight is rarely 20/20. Sometimes it’s straight-up blind.
Our approach to guidance feels very haphazard to me, and I haven’t found a solution for that. Looking back on past choices and their results gives me very little confidence in my ability to find the best way through this tangle called life. If we eventually stumble out of the jungle near the right spot, I will be as surprised as anyone. In the meantime, if we go in circles because we can’t read a map, let me at least be a good travel companion. A good friend in the swamp is better than a bad friend in the penthouse suite.
I started this blog to share about my own personal journey. Recently I have taken to writing reflections on Scripture, and it threatened to take over this blog, so I moved it to its own page, but making the page longer and longer became cumbersome (pages are not designed to have multiple entries, archives, etc. like blogs), so I have started another blog for just my Scripture reflections. You can find it at scripturegrace.wordpress.com I hope you can draw a blessing from those readings as I find a blessing in thinking and writing them. (you can also sign up for email updates if you wish). Sorry for the administrative confusion!
I continue to write my reflections on Genesis because it is a personal blessing to me to keep mulling over these thoughts, and I’m happy to share them if it blesses others, but I realized it was filling up my blog with these daily posts, which was rather intended to be about my own experiences, so I have transferred them to a separate page (as you can see above). Let me know if you find them beneficial.
Today between the rows of stoves in Home Depot’s appliance department, I asked a couple if I could help them. They told me they had just moved from out of town, were buying a new house, and needed appliances. I soon discovered he had jumped mid-life from the business world into repairing musical instruments, which is his first love. They had moved here two weeks ago, and he had a fully functioning business up and running. I was astonished—how did he build up a clientele so quickly?
“Oh,” he replied, “a local man was retiring, and I saw his ad—a full shop of tools and a full client list of customers. That’s why we moved here. I didn’t even have to pay for the business. The man was retiring and just handed it over to me!”
He had been looking all over the country, but this shop just happened to be in the town where his wife grew up, so the couple was staying with her father until they could buy a house. I asked if it was hard to get a loan for the house since he was self-employed in a new business in a new location, which might seem risky to a bank.
“No,” he said, “my wife has been working an internet job for 15 years (which she can do from anywhere) so the bank gave her the loan.”
Having recently moved here myself, our contrast was sharp. I have a part-time job for which I have no love, which doesn’t pay enough, and which can’t possibly support a bank loan for a house. Everything fell into place magically for this couple while Kimberly and I struggle to make ends meet in jobs neither of us want, making do with an over-priced, under-sized rental in a bad neighborhood, and without friends or family with whom to connect. Where’s our magic?
Such sharp contrasts do not make me angry or bitter, but they often make me hopeless and depressed. I don’t know how to make life work for us. But this time I knew God was punking me. He’d set me up for this by giving me just the insight I needed this morning to trust him in what he was dragging me through. I knew that our tough road was creating a unique work of God in my soul. His magic wand was out, not pointed at my circumstances but at me. I was the magic he was making, and sometimes a magic brew calls for frog toenails and lizard poop.
I grew up with a father who believed in systems, in order and method. It’s an effective approach to face this world as the modern industrial movement has proven. This pragmatic and efficient outlook found a perfect petri dish in American society, leading to a remarkable level of productivity. My dad’s books all reflect this approach: a system for Bible study, a system for ethics, even a system for living the Christian life.
Dad was drawn to this approach because of his personality. He felt most comfortable and safe here, and his sense of value was deeply rewarded as a choleric: someone who thrives on activity, goal setting, and accomplishments. He transfused this outlook into me, and it helps me organize and plan, to feel some sense of security by means of order and control. But since I am not a choleric–the personality that fits so well with this approach–his emphasis led me to a great deal of internal conflict and turmoil. Order and action works well for minds already tame, but they could not corral the forceful questions that galloped through my heart and mind. I tried repeatedly to make his solutions fit, and felt myself a failure when they didn’t “take,” only to slowly realize that his sums were not for the problems in my book.
As an example, a key to his view of the spiritual life was to separate sins into intentional and unintentional so that he could clearly delineate between “defeated” and “victorious” Christians. If a fellow knew something was wrong and chose to do it anyway; he was sinning intentionally, while the unintentional sins were those he did not “choose” such as a reflexive emotional reaction, a lack of insight, dispositional sins like pride and so on. Of course, such a neat distinction can only be made by those who are outward rather than inward focused. For instance, when pride is recognized, it becomes an intentional sin, but cholerics may not notice themselves bragging or posing or pontificating unless it is quite blatant. We who are sharply and constantly aware of our own pride are, based on dad’s system, defeated Christians living in sin. I beat myself with his sin chart for 20 painful years before trading it for a spiritual path that worked better for me.
Hidden inside each of our strengths are our hidden weaknesses, blindspots, and distortions. Our default is to offer everyone the solutions that have worked for us. Dad offered everyone alike his well thought out action steps just as I tried to solve everyone’s issues with introspection and analysis. But Sue may not need his strategy or my interpretation. Perhaps she just needs a hug or a sounding board or a push. We must constantly work to embrace the perspective of those who differ from us–to understand who they are, where they come from, and what works for them–or we will cause more pain and harm by the very help we give. Even if the goal is the right one, we may take very different paths to reach it. In this give-and-take, we may well discover their views challenging and correcting ours, a painful truth I have often realized.
Janathan Grace Reflections 