Freeing

This past summer I read a book called, "She's Got Issues" by Nicole Unice with some
"mommy" friends in the neighborhood. We all agreed the book took us to a new level of awareness of our personal barriers to living a more free life with Jesus as the center. This book did something no self-help book had ever done, change me. I guess it's a little different when Jesus is the one actually helping us rather than ourselves.

A new assignment had begun in my heart, which I must admit was not completely welcome. Who wants to admit they have anger issues, fear issues, control issues... Acknowledging these uncomfortable and disturbing parts of myself seemed a little freeing. I wondered where else I could go.

Later in the summer I was reading Caleb a story about the famous biblical character Joseph. I love Joseph's story of God's preservation and redemption in his life. Oddly though the story took a twist for me when I got to the part where Joseph's brothers, desperate to find food during a famine, make a journey to Egypt. Joseph, who unbeknowest to them was now in charge of Pharoah's land, tells them they will be given what they need after they bring their youngest brother, Ben, back to him. They return to their father Jacob, requesting that Jacob allow them to take his beloved son back to Egypt to prove their identity and credibility. The brothers were left in the dark that Joseph was their long, presumed dead brother they sold into slavery many years before. They had hated Joseph but God used their plan for evil for good. Such good was now going to save their sorry lives.

The twisty part happened when I started to feel deep in my gut the pain of Jacob, the aged father of all these boys. Jacob was paralyzed at the prospect of letting Ben go. The emotions of fear and control over-took him in such a way it was as though it had just been the week prior that he lost Joseph forever. Joseph's brothers act of selling Joseph into slavery had remained an evil secret from Jacob. He had been told his son was viciously attacked and killed by wild animals. So when asked to release his baby boy out into the scary unknown, he acted out of un-resolved anger. And his failure to re-new trust in God from an incident thirty years ago was out in the open. Here he was now confronted with all of the "stuff" he stuffed for thirty years. I wonder how everyone in Jacob's life treated his tendency toward mistrust. Did they grant him permission to be like this because after all his son Joseph died? Did his other sons accept this in their father due to their own issues of guilt and lies? Once Jacob released his grip on Ben, he experienced the redeeming power of a gracious God by being reunited with his presumed dead son Joseph. Freeing.

So at this point I almost froze. There it was. My choice. Years of anger, fear, control and lack of trust issues or life free to be in the moment, to offer my trust even if it's wobbly, and to embrace God. I know I do not want to live an entire life of these issues! It is all too easy to give permission when circumstances have shaken our world. When externals, out of our control move us from a place of cozy to a place of vulnerability and even assault us, it is easy to give ourselves permission to stay guarded. Controlling. Safe. Angry.

Eventually life has a way of causing us to come back to the unaddressed, open wounds in our hearts. It might take thirty years but all the fear, all the pain, all the misery re-surface to reveal the thing we've tried too hard on our own to control, to conceal. The trust issue. And when it all comes up and out, the whispers are not "I give you permission to remain fearful, in false control, anxiety-ridden". No, the whisper is "This is not good for you. You are not well. I know how you got here but you can have a better life. Please let me."

The first step was awareness which I visited many years ago, "I know it makes sense that I have anxiety when my kids get sick, but it is not good for me." The next step I took years later was, "God I believe, help my unbelief." And the place I am in now is "Everyday I take what comes and then hand it over to let Him". Little bits of my heart at a time.

Perfection is not the result. Sometimes I squeeze extra long and extra tight before I let Him. Other times I stay with my back to Him while I configure the outcome before I turn and let Him. Moving toward trust is still the desire because I want to experience the next thirty years tasting what He offers not what I offer.

Holding back our trust from Him says we are still angry. We still live in false-control. We are still not well. Straining. Gripping. Restless.Tireless work. When I willingly "let Him" my yoke becomes easy, my burden light. Release. Rest. Ready. It is not work at all to trust. Freeing.

From My Heart

Many of you know one of the things that I have a heart for is grieving people. I am drawn to their pain and great need for hope. But just as fervently I am drawn to opportunity to teach others about that pain. The former passion comes from my own deep waters and the latter from a place of frustration.

Today my frustration mounted stirring me to share some important thoughts. I hope what I am doing is using my frustration to give birth to creativity. Enlightenment. Perspective. Writing for me is how I create. So I'll share...

A friend told me this morning how disturbed she was to hear another church-goer talking the most ugly words one can hear about a young person they both knew. The words would be ugly enough if this young person was living, able to be the receiver of such cruelty. But they are not. They are dead.

The grotesque words implied the parents had not done enough to ensure their child developed healthy. They implied the worst accusation a person can make, this family lost their child by their own actions or lack thereof.

Anger bubbled up in me when I heard this. How does someone say they follow Christ, the most compassionate being who ever lived, and miss His glaring example of love and compassion?

I think I partly know. For one, people think they're more in control then they are. If we think for a second that we can arrange our lives to be insulated from bad things than we live as fools. Jesus did not blame the blind man or his parents for his blindness. What He did instead was explain all suffering can have purpose. Suffering, imperfections, crisis, are permitted to give us an invitation to lean on and in and sometimes under the grace of God.

Secondly, people deflect pain away from themselves because it takes risk, becoming vulnerable and doing some self-examination. When we refuse to meet a broken-up human being in their nakedness it is because we are the problem not them and their brokenness. Being still in the presence of pain is very difficult for us prideful, self-reliant humans. We would rather work at fixing, disappearing or in this extreme case deflecting hate-filled lies.

People who dig their heels in to resist such a sacred place do not see Jesus as I do. Jesus showed up at the grave of Lazarus and simply wept. He made space to meet Mary and Martha in their pain and He, who would actually restore their brother did not rush them past the pain to the place of healing. That my friends says that meeting people in their pain matters. Something of great worth happens in that place. We would be wise to stop and take notice.