Archive for the ‘grace’ Tag
My constant refrain this year past, muttered or sighed or groaned: “I am SO tired!” Many times every day and out loud to myself–in the kitchen, on walks, at work, and even in my mind as I spot tasks that stare grumpily at me, like the window air-conditioner sitting on our coffee table that I brought up from the basement two days back. I’ve barely managed to keep up with life: washing clothes and then leaving them in the laundry basket to fish out for work, while I dump dirty clothes on the floor next to it; watering plants just before they die, or not; cooking raw meat just before it rots. I’ve dropped other things after dragging them around mentally like a ball and chain, such as the $8 rebate from Ace Hardware that expired… well I actually didn’t give up on that, it just ran out before I mailed it in. Unfortunately, I never give up on things. I just accumulate them like sandburrs on bare feet.
I could sit here on the living room sofa and write a discouraging list of tasks that I can literally see from here: A dvd player to take to Goodwill–it’s been sitting accusingly at the end of the loveseat for two weeks; an old external hard drive to process, walnuts in a coffee container that need shelling, now practically buried behind accumulating paperwork, books, and other stuff that needs to be sorted and resolved; a briefcase full of files and lists neglected for many months; a dime-sized food stain on the sofa arm under my wrist that needs cleaning–it has been there for two months; and the latest addition–insulation that arrived yesterday, now propped against the wall, that needs to be hung in the attic. I’m not even mentioning the things that are in the room but just out of sight–I am fully aware of them–out of sight out of mind is a laughable proverb for those with a mind like my own. I haven’t even touched on the cars, yard, basement, shed, office–a thousand obligations wrap like Lilliputian threads around me. I could cut off the least important hundred tasks and make no difference to the overall affect.
Mind you, I go to work every day, pay my bills and mortgage on time, walk the dogs, take out the trash, shop and cook enough to keep us fed adequately, mow the lawn, exercise, wash my clothes. In other words, I am a normally functioning human, which seems enough for most folks. I’m amazed at the ability others have to simply ignore their overflowing in-boxes. Something needs to change in my outlook on life, somehow to live under the flow of grace in a way that releases me from this constant weight of obligation. For all the work I have put into grasping this principle over many years, one would think I would have found freedom by now. Even learning grace seems to be such an arduous, long-term effort–my thoughts, my habits, my feelings slide so easily back into my old ways. That sounds so wrong-headed even in saying it… shouldn’t grace be easy by definition? Law is so deeply engrained in my soul. It stains every thought to the roots. Well, let me celebrate each baby step and not add insult to injury by condemning my lack of growth in grace. It will come, it will take time, and this post is one more reminder to myself to re-orient my soul in line with God’s unconditional acceptance.
For five years I have worked in Lynchburg College Library as a circulation supervisor at night (8 pm to 2 am). It has been a vital part of my emotional survival because it is low stress, but I get furloughed at Christmas for a month and 3 months for summer, so it has put a strain on us financially. Last fall I finally landed a second part-time job, selling fridges at Home Depot for $9.25 an hour. My career has been a slow but inexorable descent by demotion. From respected missionary to struggling pastor to harried social worker, and finally out of ministry of any sort into secular, unskilled labor. From minister’s collar to blue-collar… to no-collar. From meaningful work to trivial, from salaried to part-time poverty wages, from insured to Obamacare. And as long as I’m confessing my low-status, I also have a job as substitute janitor in junior high school: even on the toilet-swabbing team I’m a bench-warmer.
As a 54-year-old with two Master’s degrees, I felt humiliated with my entry level job for teenagers, and it took me two months to work through the shame enough to admit it to my fellow librarians. It is quite possible that some student I have supervised in the library will be the junior high teacher next fall who is spitting his gum into the trash can as I pick it up to empty. I’ve acclimated enough to my new roles that I think I could handle it without chagrin… or maybe I’m kidding myself. Like coming out of the closet, any closet, the initial shock of exposure is the hard part, and after that it is just a matter of learning a new level of humility and the grace to remember that my worth has no connection with my occupation. It is freedom and growth through downward mobility.
It’d be a lot easier to wash dirty feet if I could take up the towel of my free will instead of being handed the towel and told to wipe down. A leader who volunteers for menial labor can earn high praise for his humility, augment rather than diminish his reputation, and so ironically can undermine his growth in grace. Being humble contrasts with being humiliated precisely because the latter is out of our control, like being nailed to a cross. It is a rich person choosing to wear rags in contrast to a person who only has rags to wear. In my experience, actual poverty, though it is more scary and painful, has more power than voluntary poverty to open me to grace. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
I have always been a highly disciplined person. This has been unfortunate from so many angles. It has made me arrogant and judgmental towards those with less “will-power” or commitment. It has made me focus excessively on behavior and choice and see them as the foundations for goodness rather than its fruit. It has made me self-abusive, both in driving myself past any reasonable limits, resulting in self harm, and in condemning myself for my shortcomings (because of the unbridgeable gap between highly disciplined and perfectly disciplined). Like all coping mechanisms, it played to my natural strengths and inclinations and offered me protection from the fears that snarled and snapped inside, but like a protection racket it kept me permanently bound to those same fears.
So here is the wretched conundrum of every coping mechanism: the very thing that protects us blocks us from a real resolution. We cannot give up suddenly and entirely on our coping mechanisms or we will be unable to cope, trampled by our fears and dragged away from the grace that comes to save us. Except for miracles–and by definition those happen rarely–we must grow into grace, beginning with small steps. We speak of a “leap of faith,” but that is best seen as a change in direction rather than a sudden and complete transformation of our psyche. We make a deliberate commitment to a new vision, a new allegiance, a new God of grace instead of the old god of legalism, but learning to live out that commitment is a long, slow process, full of missteps, confusion, and doubt–ask any newlyweds… or oldy-weds. Trust is a tree that matures from a sapling, not a full-grown log dropped at our feet.
Coping mechanisms are both necessary and limiting, helpful and ensnaring. They cannot be shaken off in one go, cold-turkey, like one might give up alcohol or drugs, because they sustain us in a vital way. The struggle for health is more aptly compared to an eating disorder, since we all must eat daily, so the solution cannot lie in abandonment (which seems much simpler and easier to me), but in rehabilitation. That is, I cannot simply chuck discipline, since some discipline is necessary for life and growth. I can certainly moderate self-discipline, but that does not resolve the root of the problem, which is not the amount of the discipline, but its role and purpose. “Why?” is the all important question to snag our inner gremlins. “Why is self-discipline so important to me?” Because it is the gauge by which I measure my worth, it is my source of validation. As long as I do the right thing, I think, I am in good standing with God… which is the quintessence of legalism.
I’ve been at this for years, rethinking my knee-jerk criticisms of the “lazy and irresponsible” and trying to be a little more “lazy and irresponsible” myself as a means of practicing grace towards others and myself. I’ve worked hard for over a decade to recognize my real reasons for doing good and avoiding evil and to realign those with the gracious God I serve. I’ve been focused on this, disciplined. Oh, snap! Yes, it’s true, I can even drive myself to grace or shame my lack of it, trying to force grace to grow but ending up frustrated and impatient, which helps neither me nor my relationships. Old habits die hard, and often rise up in new guises. But I recognize it, take apart my viewpoint and reorganize it. Wash, rinse, repeat. By God’s grace I am not who I once was, and by God’s grace I will not be who I am now.
Good Friday was the triumph of grace over law. Law was unmasked, over-ruled, dethroned. Forgiveness triumphed over judgment, love and mercy over just desserts. Do your worst to God, torture and kill his own son, and he will love you still, he will reach out to you, offer you a way out of your lostness, bitterness, hatred, and misery. God will never stop loving you with all his heart… or your neighbor… or your enemy, which is the hard part for us. He does not love us more than them… he does not even see them as more wicked and deserving of damnation than he sees us. That is the tough news of grace–it embraces everyone or it succumbs to the law, loses its whole nature of undeserved love. Once any small degree of deserving enters, grace disappears. The amazing, wonderful news is that grace is not partial, it covers every evil we have done or will do without flinching. No act, no person is beyond its reach… which is also the hard news. It means the world is not divided between a good us and a bad them. There is no them, just us fallen human beings. We’re all in this together, broken and in desperate need of grace.
But the tough news is the good news, because we finally have a solution to our fractured and destructive relationships. Our resolution to the anger, hatred and aggression of others is not to overpower it with our own righteous judgment and coercive power–for when we try to stand on our own righteousness, we ultimately judge ourselves. The law condemns all equally. The only resolution to hatred, whether self-directed or other-directed, is more love. In other words the true solution, the only solution, the only possible way out of our lostness, is grace. And that grace is ultimately, finally, completely poured out in the life and death of God’s only Son. Grace has come and triumphed over all, breathing life into death, flashing hope into despair, filling our crushed hearts with love unconquerable.
Obituaries bring out the best in people, both the writers and the subjects. Hearing a genuine and discerning appreciation of someone, even someone I don’t know, draws my soul down into grace. It breaks through the clouds of an otherwise mean and turbulent world to shine down kindness and love and acceptance, reminding me that deep goodness still threads its way between hearts that open to it. When I hear it, I want to be part of that spirit of generosity, to appreciate the good in others without restraint or caveat. So those eulogies not only bring out the best in writer and subject, but in listeners as well, a spreading contagion of grace.
But I am reluctant to make any commitments (like “memorial Mondays”) because I am a master at turning opportunity into burden, love into law. Grace which is forced is just legalism in a tux trying to push its way into the party–it looks good till it takes over and puts all the guests in straight-jackets. So it is just a hope that I can share some stories of folks, dead or alive, who have blessed me. I’d love for readers to share stories of their own here as well, a column of living obituaries. There is a lot of good out there for us to notice and appreciate.
So, yes, I did sort of blandly confess yesterday that my life is a useless dead-end. If my dispassion came from fatalism or apathy, it would likely be a sign of spiritual stagnation, but instead, my sharing it with such ease and openness (not stuffed with caveats or apologies or explanations) is a very real sign of spiritual growth for me. It has taken years for me to slowly come out of the closet as a failure, a nobody, and grow into the faith that God is in control and loves me with an unfettered grace. He is famous for using asses (both the donkey variety and the human kind) to accomplish good on this earth, even those totally resistant to his purposes, like Jonah at Ninevah and Peter with the Ethiopian eunuch, so he can surely use someone like me who, though deeply flawed, is eager to be his instrument.
I no longer cower under the withering suspicion that my flaws keep me on the bench, but It is not easy to feel useless, to feel as though my gifts fall to the ground like rotting apples in a starving country. It requires faith and patience in the mystery of God’s will and work in the world. I’m getting better at that… I have to get better at it because the longer I live, the more clearly I see the wreckage around me. As I told Kimberly yesterday, this wretched world gives no rational proof of a good God. The balance sheets of justice (let alone beauty and goodness) cannot be reconciled on earth. As Paul said, “If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable.” Forget the world around me, the world inside my chest is so slow in growing towards God that death will catch me long before I’ve lived into half the truth I’ve come to see.
God has a lot of explaining to do to justify his creating this muck-up since he knew the disaster that would come, but I expect one glimpse of his beauty will obliterate all our questions and doubts and captivate our hearts. Until then, we live by faith in a beauty we cannot see, in a grace we cannot well absorb, and in a love that guides us through the dark and home to his heart. May we all find our way by grace and en-courage one another with compassion.
My memory is like cellphone reception in the sticks–very iffy. I am a full-spectrum forgetter, from the trivial pen to the crucial time sheet submission, and everything in-between. I’m so good at misplacing things that I’m surprised to find them where they belong–the cupboard is the last place I look for my coffee cup. I have a whole strategy for dealing with my incompetence–jotting myself reminders and propping them in key places (my computer keyboard, my Honda dashboard) or leaning things against the door so I can’t leave without them. I am totally prepped for the onset of Alzheimer’s!
Along with my other inveterate shortcomings, It is my wild forgetfulness that wakens my memory, that keeps me aware of my own inadequacy. Some folks are so successful or competent or busy or distracted that their memory needs to be elbowed into recalling their own failings. They get good grades at work and church and family and pick up extra credit volunteering at the mission downtown. Their lives, unlike mine, constantly point to their virtues and accomplishments, and it is their failings that they forget. They need reminders, blacked out calendar days, time set aside to reflect on the noxious embers that still smolder in their bones. They need Ash Wednesday.
But I need Resurrection Sunday. I live in the ash heap of my own failures, reflecting back on them not for 40 days, but 40 years. I don’t need reminding, I need rescuing. What I need to remember, always remember, is Easter, the joy of forgiveness. My hope cannot be in outgrowing my faults or in forgetting them, but in living my present messy life in the full embrace of God, the God who not only accepts me in spite of my past failures, but also in expectation of my future ones, who is not put off by my need, but is drawn to me because of it. We all fall down, constantly fall down, but may we land in His grace, not in our own self-loathing. And may the ashes on our foreheads be the sign of our mutual poverty as we hold one another’s hands and dance together in the glorious light of His redemptive love.
Assumptions, like fire, are dangerous necessities. I assume the sun will rise, my wife will speak English, my car will start, my office will still be standing, my digestion will work, my dogs will not tear up our furniture, and I will be paid at the end of the month. It’s not possible to live on a contingency basis, always second-guessing, third-guessing, infinity-guessing. I need assumptions, but they can destroy me.
Some false assumptions are self-correcting, whacking me with reality till I admit I’m wrong: if it stinks don’t eat it; get it wet and it will break. But some wrong assumptions are self-perpetuating because they’re in a groove of constant and unchallenged repetition, winning legitimacy by default, like squatter’s rights. These free-loading assumptions can blindside a marriage undetected, and I’ve caught one of the traitors on my own lips: the condemning adverb “just“: “Can’t it just wait till tomorrow?” “I wish you’d just finish it.” “It’s just one phone call!” That 4-letter word assumes that my expectations of Kimberly are simple and easy and so her refusal would be uncaring, irresponsible, or even contemptible. I’m asking so little that denying me is shameful.
But what an arrogant assumption! By what scale can I possibly measure the emotional cost to another person. It seems simple enough–I imagine myself in her position and tally how much it would cost me: a trifling. The obvious failure in this method is that, after walking a mile in her shoes (or rather imagining it), I still end up measuring myself, not her. Every person reacts very differently to a given situation based on their history, perception, experience, energy level, knowledge, calculations, vulnerabilities and strengths (to name only a handful of factors). Guessing how I would respond to a scolding from my boss or my father’s sickness has little to do with how she would respond. In fact, my own responses change from day to day. What is easy or hard for me is no prediction of what is easy or hard for her. I think, “the average person would feel…” but where is this average person, this stereotypical amalgamation of median scores from across the spectrum of society? In fact the “average” person is strikingly unique. My imagination will always fail me. I can only understand her as I hear and accept her self revelations.
Pushing her to ignore her inner voice in order to bend to my will is insensitive, selfish, and destructive, and those hens will come home to roost. That “just” trigger can target me as well. I’m equally vulnerable to the heavy sighs or raised eyebrows or the hundred other ways this attitude can leak out. Kimberly could easily shoot down my failings to meet her expectations… only she doesn’t because she is more understanding and accepting of others’ limitations than I am. She suffers under my judgments without striking back, kind of like Jesus.
“Just do it” is the motto of those who wish to simply override objections rather than understand our hesitations and accommodate our limitations, usually assuming that finishing the job is more important than hearing the heart. But in Jesus’ mind, the person always comes first, the task can wait. Sometimes we must choose to act in spite of conflicted, unresolved, or resistant feelings, but we do so while we acknowledge, validate, and support those feelings, not by belittling and ignoring them. “This is hard, this is really hard, but I am going to do it anyway” is a sentiment that refuses the insinuations of “just.” Such acts are brave and selfless and should be acknowledged as such, they should be admired and appreciated, not dismissed and forgotten. If I could just remember that!
The year has passed. Each day has died with the setting sun never to rise again, but the steps we took each day have brought us to this place. The New Year may be fresh with potential, calling us to look back on the road we have come and consider re-directing our steps, but we rose today at the same spot we left off last night. Flipping the page of our calendars does not create some magic door to Narnia. We may renew our resolve, but we rose today with the same mental and physical and emotional energy that we had yesterday. Be gentle with yourself. Each year is a marathon, not a sprint, and coming too quickly out of the gate is sure to backfire, leaving you exhausted, discouraged, and shamed.
If this is your time for an annual audit, and you find you have come short of your own expectations and goals, perhaps the fault lies with unrealistic goals, not weak efforts. Perhaps the voices inside your head demanded too much of you. In that case, rather than redoubling your efforts, you might consider trimming down your goals. But even if you did lose your way last year, you cannot “make up for it” now without straining your soul. Leave those failings in the gracious hands of God to redeem, to re-touch with His masterful skills. You cannot get back in God’s favor by redoubling your efforts because you never lost His favor, for His grace is unshaken by our failings. Use those failings to call you back to His grace, to stop trusting in your own goodness and to trust more fully in the goodness of God, who loves you regardless of your shortcomings. Perhaps this year resolve to settle more deeply into God’s grace, to be more accepted rather than more acceptable.
Let grace set the course ahead for this year. Resolve to live more fully in the consciousness of God’s love. Instead of harnessing your spirit to unwanted demands like a bull dragging a sledge, pursue those things that will lighten your journey, give you wings instead of weights, release your spirit to truly live. What puts a smile on your face, bounce in your step, peace in your soul? Perhaps those are the new year’s plans that will energize you to find delight in God. Perhaps it is not resolutions you need–a call to the will to override your desires–so much as New Year’s Joys–a call to the heart to fulfill your deepest desires. “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
The day before Christmas, having slept 4 hours because of pushy dogs, I stood on a cement floor all day at work, feeling upset by a conflict with a fellow employee. When I got home I was greeted by a mess of chicken grease that had overflowed the crockpot, pooled on the counter, and spilled down the cabinets, the footstool, and across the floor. I cleaned it up and flopped down exhausted, ready to veg out in front of the TV for a while before dragging myself to our Christmas eve communion service. Kimberly had a different plan.
She wanted to have family prayer with singing, reading, and sharing before we went to church. I was okay with religion at our house or God’s house, but was too tired for both. I needed some down time, but she needed to prepare her soul for the service. What kind of man would block his wife’s spiritual needs? So I yielded. After supper, she lit the candles, turned off the lights, and cued up the music, and like a good husband, I sat and pouted. After the music and reading, Kimberly shared personally while I tried to stay awake in the dark, which was the least I could do… I mean, it was literally the least I could do (huffing would have taken extra effort).
I was very generous with my silence during prayer and on the way to church, rounding off the corners of quiet with a few words to keep her at bay so I could stew in peace. Nothing messes up a good case of resentment so much as having to explain it to someone else, especially someone reasonable. In the pew I quietly complained my way through the boring homily, the artless choruses, and the tiresome liturgy. Then communion. Go meet God, ready or not. Suddenly the sermon and songs seemed to complain about me–the question after all is not about a sophisticated form, but a sincere heart–and by that measure, the artless always win.
God does not force Himself on us–He comes as a suckling baby and ends up nailed to a cross, living his life as a penniless wanderer. He does not wow us with splendor or scare us into submission, but opens His heart to us with gentleness and vulnerability. Instead of overriding our weakness, He comes to share our weakness, to be one of us, to understand and empathize and breath grace into our brokenness.
Most of my life I used the Lord’s Supper to torment my soul into compliance, using the death of Jesus as a bludgeon rather than a salve, as though communion were a celebration of the giving of the law rather than the giving of His life. But tonight, instead of telling me, “Your resentment is bad, stop it!” God says, “your resentment is a sign of pain, let’s try to love and listen to that hurting heart of yours.”
Together we rewind the evening’s tape. I am tired. I need rest. Kimberly needs prayer.
“Stop right there,” He says. “What happens next?”
“My needs are less important, so I have to deny my own needs,” I answer. I think about it for a minute. “Actually, that is the cruel message I have heard all my life–that my needs are not important enough to matter, and if my needs don’t matter, then I don’t matter. No wonder I feel hurt when I’m forced to deny my needs.”
“Were you actually forced?” He asked.
“No, but I know it’s what you want, so I have to do it.”
“So you feel that I care more about Kimberly’s needs than yours? Actually, you feel as though I consider everyone’s needs as more important than yours, that you are last in line, and that I therefore care least about you and your feelings. That is heart-breaking! I want you to know that I care more about you and your needs than you could ever imagine. You are precious to me, uncountably precious. The resentment you feel right now is just your heart standing up for you against those lies that say you don’t matter. And I’m here to tell you that you do matter, that you matter supremely to me. That is what the cross really means which you celebrate now in communion. I welcome you, resentment and all. Come, Let me hold you!”
After that it was easy to slip my arm around Kimberly as we knelt together at the communion rail. In the deep affirmation of God’s love, peace flows into our hearts and relationships. We are loved. That is all that matters.
Janathan Grace Reflections 