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!
Me: So we read together [Kimberly and I]. Rohr said that the only way we can connect with what is outside of us is if there is some correspondence inside us. So God planted all his goodness in us in unique ways. We are not originally evil. Evil is an accretion. I always thought good was something to acquire and impose on my bad self, but this idea invites us to embrace all the goodness within us and foster its growth. It is not about bringing the good in from outside, but finding resonance within us to that good. So what do you think about that?
God: Yes, creation, all of creation, reflects me. How could it not if it sprang from me? I made you. I made you good. I made you to show my goodness in your own unique way. That goodness in you can never be killed, but is eternally beyond your ability to destroy. It is the diamond that might be covered in mud or rock or ocean, but is still a beauty beyond expression. Were I to write down all the unique good that is in you, it would be larger than the encyclopedia… it would take a lifetime to read. Eternity will be spent discovering and growing all the beauty within you. I want you to see your own beauty as much as you see the beauty of nature, of dogs, of all that you take joy in. I want you to see your beauty as much as I see your beauty.
Me: I wish I could too! The barnacles that block my good from expressing itself also block my view of my good. I see the barnacles and think they are a reflection of the true me. I also see all that I am designed to express and realize how far I have to go, how immature I am.
God: But I hope you understand that your growth in beauty is something that will unfold through all of eternity. There is this false sense that “mature” is some stage that everyone should aim for and eventually “arrive” and that immature is somehow inadequate or something to get passed. Imagine a sapling being upset that it is not a tree. Growth is just a continual process that never ends, and varies dramatically for many reasons (note the rings on a tree!), and the growth of one cannot be compared to the growth of another. A sapling in the desert will take a very long time to grow. Softwood grows fast, but hardwood is stronger, and cactus is resilient, and … everyone is unique and beautiful in their own way. When you use future beauty to shame present beauty, the whole concept of unfolding beauty is turned on its head.
ME: More mornings than before are like this morning, I seem to wake to an unhappiness and talking to you while lying in bed does not seem to get me to a better space, so here I am again, completely unmotivated and unable to enjoy the morning, which is unfortunate. I find myself touched by some FB posts or pictures, but I don’t really know what to do with that. Perhaps coming here to sit with you about it would help. I so need to connect to my true self and the good of life. There is so much good to lean into even in the worst of times. Wendell Berry and Mary Oliver invite me into nature in this way. Nature is a lifeline to good because it has prevailed through all and will continue to do so because life is irrepressible regardless of the evil humanity does to itself and the world. It is a bigger story like You and eternity (but more easily accessible sometimes). Connecting to what is true in others through poetry, music, and art can help also. Too often the good feels like little pockets or bubbles that are immersed in the greater reality of the bad. After all, if good were greater, we would make constant progress as humanity when instead we seem to simply repeat cycles of self-destructiveness with recovery, and I’m not even sure the recovery comes from goodness. It may just be a counter force that is merely a lesser evil. The world is ruled by force so that our goodness does not shape the context, but is within the darker context. It influences the context, naturally, and keeps it from becoming even darker, but power always controls, and perhaps that is what Jesus came to teach us—that goodness shines clearer in the contrasting darkness and is strengthened within us by that challenge. “The kingdom of God is within.” Perhaps I am measuring the wrong thing, the context or container instead of the life within, just as the earth is a speck in the dark, lifeless universe and yet the earth is the center of what matters. But when I start to think of my response as the key instead of the dark situation, I see how defective my responses are. Do I have more light in me than darkness—darkness of fear, ignorance, reactivity, self-loathing? I am healing, but the journey is long and I have trouble seeing that the importance lies in the direction rather than the attainment. I should also take note that the context heavily impacts the inner life. It is always “uphill both ways.” The surrounding darkness is full of traps, obstacles, vortexes, deceptions and the like. The good in me is tangled and complex. But then I remember that grace is key not only as the target but also as the means. Grace above all, especially towards myself. I stumble often, but this does not define me. Grace defines me. If I succeed in giving myself grace, true, deep grace, I am living from the good into the good.
GOD: I’m so glad you finally landed back in grace! That is the whole of good. There is no true virtue except it springs from grace and grace heals all. Darkness that ends in grace is transformed, the wrong into good, and virtue that is outside of grace is a deceptive undoing of the good. Grace is all. This is my heart and to live in grace is to live in me. Of course it is a powerful and rich grace, not the cheap imitation that minimizes the impact of the darkness–but no darkness is beyond redemption, which turns it into a source of light. That is the real purpose of shame as it awakens you to the harm and invites you into the only remedy, which is grace, not greater effort. I love how you keep growing in this and coming back to it. The fact that you make your way back here clearly shows that it is at heart what you ground your life in, however distracted you may become at times. This dance between you and me is wonderful, joining our hearts in the one bond that holds against all, which is grace. I welcome you back here! So glad to see you here again! You are a joy to me!
6) I thought some feelings like anger and fear were wrong and God judged me for them. I believed I must override those emotions, talk myself out of them, and stop feeling them. I discovered that all feelings were created by God and were good, as vital to listen to and pay attention to as the gauges on the dashboard of my car. I don’t “like” that my gas gauge is near empty, but I’m really grateful that it is telling me so. They are the royal road to self-understanding and relational bonding.
7) I thought some feelings like love, joy, and peace were commanded by God and a sign of spirituality. After all, these were the first three “fruits of the Spirit,” not considering that fruit is an organic result not an intentional effort. I worked hard at pumping up these feelings with self-talk, worship songs, inspiring readings, and prayer. I discovered that God does not command feelings, he animates feelings by loving us inordinately. Our feelings are just responses to the good he pours into us. I am invited to just sit under that sun and soak it in, bury myself in that embrace, fill my heart with that sweetness. My goal now is not loving God, but receiving God’s love for me. Then loving God is as natural and spontaneous as laughing at a good joke or saying “mmmm!” over a good dessert.
8) I was taught that love is not a feeling but an action, so it was measured by behavior. If I did what was good for someone, I was acting in love regardless of how I felt towards them. I could be angry and critical of them, but if my words were kind, I was being loving, perhaps even heroically loving. But kind words, for instance, might come from pride or fear or manipulation, which are contrary to love. Seemingly caring actions might come with resentment or disdain. This shaped in me a fear that God might say loving things through clenched teeth, undermining my trust in Bible verses expressing his love. He might bless me even if he were angry enough to slap me. I’d rather he just slap me and get it over with. His self-control seemed a very poor substitute for love. I wanted his loving acceptance far more than his good words and actions towards me. I now believe that love is a motivation, the reason why we do what we do, and that God is always and wholly motivated by love, the kind of love a mother experiences when looking into the eyes of her newborn. There is complete coherence between his heart, his feelings, and his words. He is enthralled with me.
Every year I discover how very different God is than I thought growing up, different in the best ways. Each year I learn new aspects to his gracious self that I had misunderstood from my upbringing. I thought I would begin a random list of those grace-transforming views. Feel free to add your own discoveries in the comments!
1) I thought God wanted to “use” me. In fact, I begged him to use me. I felt he valued me commensurate with how much I accomplished for him. I wanted to be one of his heroes. I found that God instead wants to love me… extravagantly. I am not a tool for his love, I am the object of his love.
2) Similarly, I thought God’s goal on earth was his “mission” that he wanted me to focus all my energy away from myself and towards his mission only to discover that God’s mission is me. His end goal is an ever deepening relationship with me. I am not a means to an end, but I am the end in myself and in my relationships.
3) I thought God’s will was opposed to my will, that my will was selfish and I was called to reject my own desires and ignore my own feelings in order to meet his plan for me, only to discover that God’s whole heart was in fulfilling my heart’s deepest desires, and he was fully attuned and validating of my feelings.
4) I thought God directed my life by telling me what to do, and I was to do it. If I was confused or unsure, it was my fault for not listening better, and I should fast and pray until I got “guidance.” I’ve discovered that God cares way more about being with me whatever direction I take. He’s not worried about my taking the “wrong” direction, that there really is no wrong direction (even the harmful is redemptive), and just being with him in my genuine self is life’s fulfillment.
5) I thought shame was God’s way of prodding me to do better, the “conviction of the Holy Spirit” was to push me to better myself, get on the right track. Shame was pressure to bring compliance since I would stop feeling shame if I just worked harder at being good. I see now that such a mindset cripples grace. Shame, like physical pain, is a cry not to work harder but to rest and restore. Something has gone wrong, and what has slipped is not my behavior, but my grasp of God’s love. I believe shame is God’s invitation to stop trying to earn his love and to simply rest in it as an accomplished, unalterable fact. True goodness springs from being loved, not from being shamed.
ME: Here we are half way through May. I slept well as my body was catching up on the previous night’s short sleep. I woke up in a better frame of mind also and the sun is shining. I wanted to touch base before I did billing (which is 2 days late on my schedule). I feel apprehension, partly because the billing is “late,” partly because I am not sure about insurance codes for my clients, but also a vague anxiety that often hovers around me… ah, Mitts just jumped up in my lap… that helps!
Maybe the anxiety arises from fear of not doing enough or getting overwhelmed. From that angle, it feels like maybe trusting you to care for me might be an answer. That has always been hard for me because I was taught that I have to “be responsible” and do my part or things won’t work out, and that flop will be my fault. I was taught that you are “not going to do for me what I can do for myself.” But I can never be assured that I am doing all I can because I was always “encouraged” how to do everything better. It was never quite good enough and could always be improved. I so want to just relax into trusting you fully. Please help me with that because I really struggle.
GOD: I hate that your dad had such a weak grip on my grace that he undercut your own faith in me. I hate to see you suffer like this, but I understand why you would. How could you not fear your own inadequacy and my insufficient grace after his influence on your soft, sensitive heart. I just want to keep sitting with you in genuineness so that we can slowly get to know one another and trust one another more deeply. It’s a lot to overcome! I am always sitting here waiting for you with my heart full of love. It is impossible for you to get it all right, and demanding that of yourself is torture. It’s tragic that my grace feels to you so dependent on you getting it right. If anything my grace flows bigger when you get it wrong. That’s the whole point of grace! It’s for those who screw up! You can’t come short of my love. My love is always deeper than that, infinitely deeper. Some of your stumbles might limit our bond, and that is sad to me because I miss you and because it hurts you, but that could never limit my love. And when you get it “wrong” as you suppose, my love grows even bigger, I care more for you because of the difficulty and hurt this brings you, I want to pull you even closer to myself. Mitts is the symbol of my love for you.
ME: I want to just embrace the moment, but I still feel anxious.
GOD: Of course you do! How could you not! I’m so sorry that you have to go through this. I’m here to talk when you need me. I love you!
I continue here sharing some of my interactions with God
5/22/24 ME: So I was more relaxed this morning, lying in bed for a bit before getting up and starting the morning reading Facebook…. I can see also how relaxing can be “artificial” when it is disconnection or distraction rather than soul refreshing, but being too intentional and making relaxation a task is also problematic. Even evaluating relaxation too closely is likely to turn it towards duty and away from joy or peace: “Am I really relaxing in a beneficial way?”… maybe the better question is “Does this really feel good?” which focuses on my wellbeing not the target outcome. Any input here God?
GOD: I trust you more than you trust yourself. You really work to be honest with yourself and lean into healthy living, which is great. Healthy living, like healthy eating, is not finding the exact right proportion, but living in freedom while generally leaning toward what seems good. It is not a science or mathematical equation, but an experimental, intuitive dance with yourself… and with me—I like to watch you, whether you notice me or not, and also to join you (again, whether you notice me or not). Just lean and notice, that’s all. Don’t stress over “getting it right,” there is no “right.” It’s an improvisational dance! When you think about it, that’s kind of what “flow” means—sometimes in the middle of the churning current, sometimes eddying near the bank. You are not responsible for the flow. I am the river. Your part is more play than work for sure.
ME: Okay, but it often doesn’t feel like play and I can feel a reluctance to trust you on this, like maybe it’s too good to be true.
GOD: I know it’s hard for you. For two-thirds of your life you were deeply formed into a drudge-worker or more like a slave. How terrible that you saw me as a slave-master! What deeply corrupting teaching that was! I wish you could believe that all I want is to hang out with you, talk, be friends, enjoy one another, watch you express your beauty in the world. You really are beautiful just as you are! You are my delight apart from anything you do or don’t do. Come sit with me on this swing and just enjoy being together!
ME: Thank you. I so need to be reminded of what is so basic and simple and what is the only thing that matters—that you are with me and I am with you. My worry of getting the dance steps “wrong” lessened a bit as you shared your heart with me. Let me be “wrong” as long as I’m wrong with you. Help me trust that you will keep the dance going. I even feel a little joy sneaking in… to think that I am dancing with the God of the universe!
I was raised in an environment of revivalism. My grandfather taught a spirituality called “the victorious Christian life” which asserted that a Christian could surrender so fully to God that they would stop sinning. He died well before I was born, but my father carried on that legacy, shaping all of my childhood environment through his presidency at the Christian college campus where we lived as well as the all-summer camp and private high school we attended. My father, who was more aware of his shortcomings, could not live up to his father’s standards and trimmed the spiritual expectations down to match his own sense of moral accomplishment: living without intentional sinning. He continued to call it “the victorious Christian life” and constantly challenged others to recommitment to this higher level at his college and summer conference center (similar spiritualities were labled “higher life,” “deeper life,” and “Spirit-filled living”) His reimagined theology commonly resulted in followers either doubting often their status as a victorious Christian or downplaying their failures as unintentional (so it didn’t “count,” and they did not lose their status or need a life recommitment). Dad had various ways to label a failure as unintentional. So if he were wrongfully angry, he marked it unintentional until he recognized it as sinful, then he could choose to stop being angry and keep the status of “victorious Christian.” He could snap at his children unintentionally (“in the heat of the moment”), but then “come to himself” and make it right and so not lose his standing as a victorious Christian. Lack of self-awareness in this framework became subconsciously a bonus rather than a flaw. Making right choices was naturally core to this theology as was the laser focus on right behavior rather than the underlying causes over which one had little direct control.
My father was quite limited in his self-reflection, both by temperament and by choice–I expect that was necessary for maintaining his sense of spiritual success. However, I was born with a reflective temperament. I had no means of escaping deep self-awareness. Knowing all that went on below the surface, I had no way to separate “intentional” from “unintentional.” When I was angry, I was fully aware from the start that I was angry. Respecting my own feelings would have required me to regularly choose for myself, which was called “selfishness.” I therefore had to learn to ignore, minimize and override my feelings, to basically learn to reject and hate who I was. God who created my feelings judged me for having those feelings–fear was a lack of faith, sadness was ingratitude, anger had to be “righteous.” This was terribly dis-integrating for me, but with many years of intense effort, I finally pulled it off, successfully outrunning my shame… until it finally caught up with me. The fake god who shamed me overplayed his hand, crushing me, and so drove me into the arms of the God of all grace. I finally realized that “growing in grace” was not about meeting higher standards, but about embracing unmerited love.
But one’s childhood is not so easily outgrown. I know this from the judgments that still claw at my heart after 25 years of opening myself to grace. Naturally my temperament (what the old Greeks would call melancholy) inclines me towards this. It is a long journey of learning to foster the unique beauty that springs from this DNA, to embrace what troubles me until it rises into the glory of its creation. I wish us all hope on this difficult, rewarding journey and may whatever spirituality you embrace be a sail and not an anchor.
God: “Who made dogs to have such intense joy in their owners? Who made them to bond so deeply that even a few minutes separation is cause for dancing delight at the owners return? I just molded my heart for you into a creative expression so that you could see me reflected in my creation. You are my delight! I watch you with delight as you sleep as any mother of a newborn, and my heart jumps when you awake, longing for you to find the good in the day that hides like little Easter eggs all around.
“I ache with you with every fear and burden you face. I feel more pained by your pain than even you feel. I agonize with you and long for the day when I can take it all away. I hate that your healing and growth requires so much suffering. I know you are doing your best even if you doubt and judge yourself. And really there is no “best,” no perfect response to life, no path that is better than all other paths. It is like an art gallery that can be explored at any pace in any direction. Each path has its own experiences that offer its goodness and pain. I wish you could worry less and trust more, but that cannot be “fixed” any more than spring can skip to fall without passing through summer. It is a long, twisting journey and I only hope you can find me along the way to walk it with you.”
The Author’s love story of me is beautiful, but there is still an inner resistance to that narrative. My brain accepts it, but my feelings cannot. I believe enough to choose grace, but I cannot relax and rest into it as something settled, reliable, and safe. Why is my own narrative so much stronger than God’s? Because it is not my narrative, I suddenly realize. This storyline I have always believed is so deeply rooted because it did not spring from me as I supposed but was handed to me fully developed, like an owner’s manual. I see now my trust in an overriding love is not so much thwarted by the harm I did (see my last two posts) but the harm done to me, the disapproval stamped on my heart, the disappointment leveraged against me in childhood and beyond.
My identity was fashioned by my parents as surely as my language was. My mother tongue is English. I was not given an option to speak in Chinese. I did not know Spanish existed. A tree was “tree.” It was not up for debate or question. It was so settled that doubting it would only show my ignorance. My parents knew language and I simply had to learn it from them. As everyone agreed on “tree,” it was a universal reality. In the same unconscious, inescapable way, I absorbed my sense of myself from my parents. I was who they said I was. It was no more up for question or doubt than my being a son, but it was rooted more deeply than language because their beliefs about me were handed down by God, they said, and how could I ever question Absolute, Eternal Truth?
My parents actively judged themselves and ran from their own shame, so they were poorly placed to teach anything else to their children. They believed about God what they were raised to believe just as surely as I did, and it shaped their whole view not only of themselves, but of me. When I disobeyed, my father grew stiff and cold. Even after I showed my shame and remorse, he slow-walked warmth and affection, as though acceptance shown too quickly would undermine his pressure of disapproval. He was suspicious my shame was not deep enough to make a change. This created the meaning for me of “repentance” towards a God who was often disappointed and aloof because of my behavior. My mother’s response was not cold, but hot, quick anger. And so I grew up believing that love and acceptance is a reward for good behavior and that I often was unworthy of it.
How incredibly difficult, after this molding, to grasp a grace that is never conditional. How could I even begin to construct such an imaginary world? No one I knew spoke the language of grace fluently. How can I now settle peacefully into a life built on grace when I am surrounded by a world of people who see unlimited grace as dangerous and delusional if not incomprehensible? The religious in particular persuade me to distrust grace. Seeing the universe through the eyes of grace changes everything. It not only fundamentally changes my perception of myself and everyone else and God… it changes my perception of “tree”… of “spider,” “comedy,” “hot,” and “superfluous” since it changes at core how I am present in the world and how I see the world.
It is a slow work to learn to see myself as graciously as God sees me, but he is the true Father who declares me precious beyond all counting. My work to redefine myself must begin where it first got derailed as a child, to challenge that origin story with a new way of being fathered, almost like an adolescent suddenly discovering they were adopted and needing to rethink their whole history. May I let go of my allotted image given by shame-reactive parents and see myself as beloved beyond all comprehension.
Janathan Grace Reflections 