PTSD and the swings

I'm up and down quite a bit.

Some days I feel great.  By great, I mean normal.  You wake up, handle the normal disappointments and joys of everyday life, eat your vegetables, tickle your kids, say your prayers and hug those you love.  I feel balanced.

Other days not so much.  I wake up off-kilter.  Showering pisses me off, breakfast annoys me, brushing teeth takes a toll on me, and putting clothes on feels like a chore, and don't even ask how I feel about prayer and reading the Bible -- and all of that is before 8am.  The day just feels lost.  I'm often tempted to just pack it in, cancel everything, lay in bed, and try to relax.  Sometimes that's exactly what I do.  Other times I fight through the malaise.

I'm finding that all of this is ok.  I feel what I feel and that is just fine.  Feelings are not good or bad, they just are.  They are reactions to some sort of stimuli, and they are the very things that help give our lives beauty and majesty and grief and suspense.

I mean, imagine watching a movie with literally zero emotion.  Talk about a bore-fest.

These ups and downs are pretty common to anyone with PTSD.  They are just a part of the process.  You can fight it, and twist yourself into flinging better.  You can tough it out, rub some dirt on it, get up and get on with your day if you like.  I've tried it, believe me.  It led me to explosions of rage at ridiculously random moments.  It led me to irritability, loneliness, and perpetual anxiety and hyper-vigilence.  I was never able to react because I was always ready to fight -- both my disorder and anyone who would mess with me.

This morning I feel great.  I know tomorrow I may not.  That is just fine.  Life will come, and I will process.  I will trust, and I will hope.  Fighting it will help no-one.

But putting down my boxing gloves to my PTSD, and opening my arms for an embrace will help.  I'm learning to feel safe in my wife's arms.  I'm learning to open myself up and be vulnerable again.  I'm learning to calm down, open my eyes to the safety around me, and laying down the sword I use to slash up my insides when things feel off-kilter.  Embrace must be my first step.  Both an inner embrace of myself -- "I'm ok, I'm safe, I'm loved, I'm a good man, I am capable of love and hope and..." -- and an outer embrace of others.

God's tender pursuit of me has led me to both of those places.  His embrace gives shape to my inner embrace, and his presence gives shape to my openness to embrace the world.

This moved me tears this morning.  I wonder if, even thought you may not have PTSD, if you could relate to this?  I wonder if you can relate to the brokenness within?  To pain and hurt?

Lightning struck,
Hit, destroyed,
Blackened, to nothingness,
Nerves, receptors, neurons,
The cells, the transmitters, the receptors
Of feelings, of life,
So that a part of me, parts
Died, were left
Blackened, ashes.

And now, quietly, softly, gently,
Persisting, steady, continuous,
Quietly, I perceive you working,
Sometimes, quietly I come upon you, working
Slowly, steady, steadily
At the things inside,
At the darkness, death, black
Destruction wrought inside
When the fire coursed, through my innards,
When the darkness passed through my veins.
So there he is, quietly, persistently, inside
Fixing the tendrils, receptors, neurons,
Nerve endings, connecting life, cells, again,
Tending and attaching receptors,
Countering gentling tending
Remaking the path of life coursing
That had once been destroyed.
Sometimes, rounding a corner, I come upon him
Quietly working,
And he is always, steadily, there.
Quietly, reconnecting.

Try an exercise today?

When I was praying this morning I felt my heart strangely warmed, and my compassion growing.  To my shame, it was for my wife, for whom I haven't been exuding tons of empathy and compassion for lately.  We've just been in a tough spot with both of us seeming to be perpetually working through the deeper aches of our souls.

When you're hurting, in any way, it's only normal to be self-centered.  I believe this is actually a good thing; after all, when you're physically injured it's probably best that you tend to your injury rather than ignoring it, otherwise though we have a more other-centered caring society it would probably be full of hemorrhaging amputees.

Anyway, I read this from Christena Cleveland in Disunity in Christ this morning,

"Several research studies show that the simple exercise of taking the perspective of an outgroup member can powerfully break down the division constructed. Perspective taking involves attempting to imagine oneself in another person's shoes, thinking from the other person's point of view, envisioning oneself in the other person's circumstances and feeling what the other person is feeling.  One study asked white students to listen to a black student describe how he, as a black man, experienced problems adjusting to college life.  The students who were asked to take the black student's perspective by 'looking at the world through his eyes and walking through the world in his shoes' expressed more empathy for the specific student and more positive attitudes toward black students in general compared to students who were not asked to take the perspective of the black student.  Other studies have shown that perspective-taking increases empathy for and positive attitudes toward a wide variety of groups, including elderly people, individuals who are HIV positive and individuals who speak English as a second language."

This struck me as common sense, yet I also realized how difficult this was to do.

So I prayed, and as I prayed I tried to picture what my wife has been going through lately.  I was sad. I was moved.  I found compassion growing.

So I did the same for my kids.  Then my friends.

Not only did I find empathy growing, but I felt full.  I wanted to give hugs.  I wanted to do nice things, and I wanted to care for these people I hold dear but often find myself too self-absorbed to think about what they've been experiencing recently.

This is a simple exercise, but I found it worthwhile.  Would you be willing to give it a shot today?  Perhaps particularly for someone you've been struggling with lately?

I love that my kids complain - And you should too

We've all been there:  Your kid is going bananas (or your husband or wife or mother or sister though it may look different).  They are MAD.  I mean, throwing themselves down, going all limp-arm, screaming so much theres spit flying mad.

They wanted that toy.  Or to play the game their way.  Or not to be told what to do.

Our daughter Leah does this super cute arms folded pouty thing.

Melissa hates that face.  I mean hates it.  I love it and think it's super cute.  Melissa hates that too:)  She loses her cool every time Leah pulls that look.  I can't remember Melissa ever saying this, but her face reads "Listen girl!  I brought you into this world and I can take you out!"

Of course, Melissa's response internally may be a little more R-rated as well, I'll let her comment on that if she likes ;)

Emotions are funny things.  They point out the truth of our internal world far more than the words we say.  You may say "I love you" or "I hate you" or "I miss you" but you always know, when you hear those words, if they really mean it.

How do you know?  You know intuitively based on their emotion.  If the words they're saying are coming from the depths of the soul, you know it.  You can see it in their emotion.

This is what makes some people good lovers and others poor.  Some people just are loving people, and their emotions adhere to that reality.  Others are not.  Now obviously, that is a ridiculously loaded blanket statement, but it's more or less true.

Kids?  Well kids are little people without emotional filters.  They just let out what they feel.  They haven't been stifled or stunted or squelched or proprietized or gotten their little minds around what are our culturally acceptable or unacceptable emotional responses.

They just let loose.  And it's awesome.  Why?

Kids are living truly and authentically out of the core of their being (this is where our emotional responses come from).  They are sincerely being themselves.

They want things.  They desire things.  They envy.  They dream.  They grow infuriated when the world is not working out the way they think it should.  They scream "that's not fair!" or "that's not right!" or even better "you suck!"

And they are truly being themselves.

Which would you rather have, honestly?  A child that is sincerely and authentically living in this world as their true self, or a child that has learned appropriate and acceptable cultural emotional responses?  In other words, would you rather have a kid that never throws tantrums, never gets angry, and is generally dead inside, or a kid that lives out their emotional life to the fullest and sincerest reality of themselves, forgetting what is acceptable?

Seriously though, which would you rather have?

Now, I'm not saying that only a tantrum throwing kid can be authentically living out their emotional world.  There is a correct way to deal with big emotions; namely, for a Christian, it is to bring those BIG emotions into both a vertical direction as a rage against God, and in a horizontal direction in a relationally safe area.  The Psalms give tons of help in walking through this.

Walter Brueggemann says of the lament Psalms that they "are refusals to settle for the way things are.  They are acts of relentless hope that believes no situation falls outside Yahweh's capacity for transformation.  No situation falls outside of Yahweh's responsibility."

How about that.  You kid is living out a relentless hope when he/she is throwing that tantrum.  The world is not working the way they think it should work.  Some correction for their incorrect picture of what the world should be may be needed, but a normal "Be quiet!" or "Calm down!" or "Stop whining!" or the myriad of other natural parental response is just not a very helpful response.

I think the way to really nurture a healthy emotional world in my kids, or friends or whoever, is not to squelch their big emotions, but to see them as a hopeful cry for the way the world could be.  These tantrums are cries of hope.  They are dreams.  Let's dream along with em.  Let's cry alongside em at the injustice of the world.

Maybe our kids can teach us a thing or two about hoping for a better world -- rather than just going along living culturally acceptable proper lives?

And ironically, Melissa's response (and our normal response) to our kids tantrums is a hopeful one as well.  "I want a world void of strife and pain and hurting and chaos.  I want just one day of peace from a screaming child!"  So, the ultimate twist is that Melissa is the relentless hope-er as well.  She wants the world to be different than it is.  Her emotional outburst shows her inner desire.

I say let's just bring all our hope and dream-fullness together to the One who could ultimately do something about it.  Rather then seeing these outbursts as problems, let's view them properly: cries of the soul for a better world.

How would you answer Charles Darwin?

Melissa and I are currently taking a class on Christian apologetics.  This week we're discussing the problem of evil/pain.  The following is a class discussion prompt, followed by my answer:

Many people believe like Charles Darwin.  His beloved daughter Annie, died at an early age and something broke inside of him.  He determined to have nothing to do with a so-called God who would allow his Annie to die.  If you were to sit down with Darwin over coffee, what are some questions you might ask that would surface some of the underlying issues?  How would you evaluate Darwin's feelings?  How would you analyze the logic of his argument?  How is you response to Darwin different than your response to someone who has doubts about the possibility of God and suffering both existing in the world?

My answer:

How would I answer Darwin?  I wouldn't, honestly.

I would ask questions and listen.  I would esteem his pain.  I'd weep with him and affirm his emotional place.  I'd ask if there was anything I could do to help.  How can I serve his family?  How can I listen?  Is there anything he needs?

The incoherent logic of his argument for disbelieving in God is irrelevant in that context.  Ultimately, a time may come when we could visit his logic, but that could be a long way away, if it ever comes.

Communicating, even things such as the gospel, demand that we first understand and plow the soil in order for people to even be able to hear what we are saying.  Otherwise, we're throwing pearls to swine.  Theres a reason Jesus didn't preach in certain towns and a reason he only explained certain parables to his disciples.

To that end, honestly, I have a hard time believing anybody can just be in the "intellectual argument" side wholly and be void of the emotional argument to the problem of pain.  We have a lot of tilling to do in people's lives if we're to bring them to a place in which they're willing to listen to logical arguments regarding the problem of evil/pain.

Then, and only then, can we begin to present our answer to the problem of pain/evil -- but we'll find that we've been incarnation-ally presenting it all along.  

God's answer to the problem of pain was to enter himself into it.  It was to stoop down and embrace it headfirst, finding that it meant his own death.  His answer to pain was to let it do its worst to him, and then find it crushed 3 days later.

As Albert Schweitzer once put it, Jesus was called to throw himself on the wheel of world history, so that, even though it crushed him, it might start to turn in the opposite direction.

What it means to be people that follow Christ is to be a people that would enter into the pain of a hurting world and embrace it.  Let you pain do it's worst to us.  We know that the victory of Christ can not only stem the tide of evil, but reshape it into a beautiful new creation.

Revisiting the pain

This morning I've dedicated some time to revisiting one of the more painful experiences of my life.  Yay!

Revisiting is an interesting word for me to use.  Dwelling in, or sitting with, or reliving would be apt terms as well.

One immediate hurdle I have is to even give these past experiences the time of day.  "Don't be such a wimp," I hear within.  Or, "It wasn't such a big deal, get over it."  Or "other people have it much worse."

But regardless of the pull of inner-Bart's voice (or is it someone else's voice?), I deeply hold the belief that in order to begin to be a whole, functioning, helpful and healthy part of this world it requires that I revisit the pain.  I see only one future destination if I do not: a grumpy, embittered, whiny old man.  Or, at the very least, a man that holds wounds within that can and will cause harm to others and himself.

Ignoring pain is never a wise choice physically, so why should I do so emotionally?

So I opened my journal and began to process.  I do so with an awareness that this is something God is asking me to do.  His presence seems hovering over this whole time.

I'm surprised at the things I can remember.  The smells.  The exact place I was sitting.  I remember the morning before.  I remember my insides boiling.  I remember my hands shaking.  I can feel my eyes darting around, trying to grab hold of anything that could anchor my heart.  I remember how I felt.  Betrayed.  Abandoned.  Like an animal caged and trapped.  I felt my personhood slipping away. I felt dehumanized.  I was bewildered and lost.  How could this be happening?!

...

...

I sit there, in process, for a while.  I sit there now with a heavy heart as I write.

And yet.  Something is different this time.  I've invited someone else along into the past.

He is there.  He takes my hand as the betrayal sets in my heart.  I notice that his hands shake along with mine, he is going through the exact thing I am.  He enters the cage and is animalized along with me.  He sets aside his humanity to be present.  And there, in the cage, he weeps with me.  His eyes glistening and knowing the depths of the hurt.  He doesn't wipe the tears away, but just weeps with me.  He is present.  He wishes this were not my story, nor his.

And there, in the cage together, I know once again that this man is my best friend and the love of my life.

And maybe, just maybe, my best friend can heal these wounds and bring healing to my heart.

"No one can ever go so low that God in Jesus has not gone lower.  What other faith has at its heart a writhing body, torn flesh, shameful desertion and disgrace, anguished desolation, and a darkness that can be felt?  God liberates not by removing suffering from us, but by sharing it with us.  Jesus is 'God-who-suffers-with-us.'" -- Os Guiness, philosopher, survivor of the Henan famine in China, 1943

Where am I, really?

This morning I went on sort've a bender.  No, not that sort of bender.  An angry-depressive-don'ttalktome and leavemealone kind of bender.

It was all because my kids' elementary school gym teacher was enforcing the rules.

It was raining pretty hard this morning, so we thought we would just drive the kids to school instead of making them stand in the rain at the bus stop.  We had fun little giggles and a small dance party in the car on the way (these are not uncommon in our car).  As we pulled up to the school we realized that the carpool lane was horribly long and slow, so, breaking the rules, we decided to pull into the bus lane.

We pulled around the empty lane.  No buses to be seen.  No kids either.  Totally empty.  We just thought, let's throw em out real quick, no biggie.  So the kids start unbuckling and begin to give hugs and kisses.  Then the gyn teacher walks up as they're getting out.

"You can't drop them off here," he says as our kids are already hanging out the door.  "This is a bus lane.  You have to pull around to the other lane."  Our kids get back into the car; and my inner world gets dark.  Melissa begins to pull away.

I mean, if I shared the things I was thinking in that moment it'd make a sailor blush.  I'm glad Melissa rolled up the windows cause I may have hung out the window and yelled things that would've gotten our kids thrown out of school.  I'm not joking; that's how dark I got.

This is not the first time something like that has happened to me recently.  Last week I was rebuked for grabbing too many M&M's out of the  community pot here at work and I wanted to go on a killing spree.  Really.  I was so mad about it I could barely function the rest of the day.  And these two events are not isolated, believe me.  This keeps happening to me.

A quick addendum at this point may be necessary for me to say that I now completely understand neither the gym teacher nor the M&M police were doing anything wrong.

Here's what I'm gathering, finally.  Call me inordinately slow for taking this long to realize it, but these reactions are not normal.  Something in me is broken.  I am really messed up.

Each of the last three days I've begun reading a portion of a book I started on seeking healing amidst PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).  And each time I've broken down in tears.  Like snotty, red eyed tears.

I hesitate to say it like this publicly, but I have had, and currently still am processing through PTSD.  I have virtually all the symptoms.  Outbursts of anger are definitely a symptom.

I'm already at 500 words here, and this could go in a multitude of different directions, some of which I'm hoping to discuss in coming posts.  But I'll get to the heart of what has been so hard for me:

I have trouble admitting reality about myself.  Especially when that reality is difficult or painful or broken.

I always want to feel good, and I deny feeling bad.  I grew up in a culture in which you "throw some dirt on it" or "walk it off" when you're wounded, weak, troubled or sad and grieved.  Compound that culture with the Christian culture's emphasis on the victorious Christian life and I began to believe that I should always feel good.  I should be joyful and loving and peaceful; I should not be sad or angry or hurt.  I should be growing in trust and peace in Jesus, not distress and outbursts of anger.

So I denied it.  I didn't deny it in a ridiculously caricatured way, please don't misunderstand me.  I would admit my pain and hurt and trouble.  But I did not want to stay there.  I hated it there.  That place was death to me.  Only weaklings dwell there.

I have a lot more to say about this.  Hopefully I'll write more about it.  But denial is real, and my suspicion is that it's not just real for me.

I wanted to pause here to pose a question for the reader.  Where are you, really?  If you had nobodies' opinion of you to weigh, no-one to impress, and no "right" emotion -- how are you doing?  When you sit quietly and allow yourself to truly answer, what would you say?

Or, to put it another way, if your feelings were all neutral--as in, there are no "good" or "preferred" feelings, there are no things you should be feeling-- how would you describe where you are?

A follow up question may be: why do you think it is that you tend to always put off a sunny disposition?  Is it suspicious to you that your answer to the common "How are you?" is always "good"?

"Slowly, slowly"

Some things in life just stick with you: memories, joys, pains, milestones.  Sometimes rather random things just seem stapled to your brain, for only God knows what reason.  One phrase that has stuck with me ever since our STINT year in Azerbiajan has been the Azeri phrase “yavash yavash.”  The phrase is really a bit nonsensical but can loosely be translated “slowly, slowly.”  For whatever reason, this phrase has always had a special connotation for me. 

I’m finding that, much to my surprise, I’m a rather driven guy.  I want things done, and I want them done well.  I want to succeed, to accomplish big things, to, literally, change the world.  This has been a huge impetus to our mission and ministry.  This is usually a good thing.  But in the midst of hurt or disorientation, being deeply driven to head somewhere or do something can be somewhat destructive.  Consider yourself in a fog: should you choose to just run off wildly in one direction or another, there is no telling the danger you may run into.  That’s my tendency. 

What I have needed—and here is why yavash, yavash has always appealed to me—is a calming force.  A present sign of the slowness of the spiritual life.  A gentle reminder that though crazy things aren’t happening every day, God is indeed moving.  A nudge to remain faithful in the midst of the process.

Perhaps you need to hear the Lord whisper the same thing to you?  Perhaps you could benefit from instead of seeing all the ebbs and flows of the day-to-day grind as distractions and little annoying interruptions, you could see them as God-given gifts of change in a turn-style world?  To slow down and breathe deeply in the reality of God’s pace and His presence is beginning to open new doors for me in my relationship with Him, His people, and His world.  This is a world that, I believe, most assuredly does not need more Christian rat-racers, but more people walking in the peace, comfort, and joy of a meditative spirituality led by Christ.

This has been a rather fun lesson to learn.  We look forward to sharing with you more of the fruit that we feel God has been graciously giving us as a result of this mindset change.

The Risk of Honest Exploration

Nouwen writes, in Intimacy:

"The man who never has any religious doubts… probably walks around blindfolded; he who has never experimented with his traditional values and ideas has probably been more afraid than free; he who has never put to a test any of dad's and mom's advice probably has never developed a critical mind and he who has never become irritated by the many ambiguities, ambivalences, and hypocrisies in his religious milieu probably has never been satisfied with anything either.  But he who does, takes a risk.  The risk of embarrassing not only his parents but also his friends, the risk of feeling alienated from his past and of becoming irritated by everything religious, even the word 'God.'  The risk even of the searing loneliness which Jesus Christ suffered when he cried, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'…
We can often discover, with pain and frustration, that a mature religious man is very close to the agnostic, and often we have difficulty in deciding which name expresses better our state of mind: agnostic or searching believer.  Perhaps they are closer than we tend to think."

I love this.

From Children to Maturity

I'm reading Intimacy by Henri Nouwen currently.  He said something I read this morning that really jumped out at me:

"When Sigmund Freud wrote his Future of an Illusion, he irritated and deeply disturbed the faithful, by saying that religion is the continuation of infantile life and that God is the projection of the ever-present desire for shelter.
Freud's task was to cure people, that is, to make them become more mature.  And looking at the many people in his office in Vienna who suffered from their religion more than they were saved by it, he tried to unmask their projections.  The psychiatrist Rumke summarizes Freud's position when he writes: 'When man matures completely he realizes that his God image, often a father-God image, is a reincarnation of the infantile worldly father, loved and feared.  God is apparently no more than a projection.  If that which blocks his growth is taken away, the image fades.  Man distinguishes good from evil according to his own standards.  He has conquered the remainder of his neurosis, which was all that his religion was.'  What is important in this context is that Freud was not altogether wrong.  We often stay in this magical and infantile world in which God is as nice to have around as the comforting blanket of Linus in 'Peanuts.'  For many, religion is really not very much more than Freud found it to be, and for all of us, so many of our religious experiences are clothed in images of childhood that it is often very difficult to say where our infantilism ends and our religion begins."

He then follows with a challenge:

"In one way we have to agree with Freud: in so far as our God is a pure surrogate for our conscience and a  preventative to the development of a rational mind, a mature self and an autonomous individual, it is only a sign of good health and insight to throw God out as a disease called neurosis.  It is even sad to notice how few have the courage to do this."

Would you allow me to attempt to say what Nouwen has said in that last paragraph in my own words?

Dear Self-Proclaimed Christian, if God is merely a figure that makes you feel better about yourself -- if God is merely your comforting binky, if God is merely a loving figure that makes you feel warm and fuzzy, if God is merely a crutch, if your prayers are tools to manipulate God in your direction, if God is an excuse for you to deny the hardships of life -- than perhaps you should have the courage to consider getting rid of this God.

It is so easy for those of us in self-identified Christian circles to fail to obtain true faith and maturity, and instead we settle into a childish, stunted one.  So many of us have settled for a life based on "Biblical principles" and "Truth" (with a capital T!) and completely forgotten that the God we proclaim to worship is living and mysterious and present and free.

We self-identifying Christians become completely flustered at new scientific or historical discoveries and theories and lack any autonomy and/or ability to revise our positions or integrate new insights into our life of faith.

We religious people tend to identify ourselves with cleanliness and purity and the perfect life, and then find that within we find desires so base that they would make other people's mothers blush -- strange sexual urges, cruel fantasies, and aggressive desires, hatred and envy in spades.  We tell ourselves, "No!"  And then we walk through life like we have a colloquial stick up our rear-end, rigid and straight.  Yet we're always afraid that these desires will get out of hand.
Maturity would require us, I think, to say: "Sure, I have some base, crooked, horrible desires.  I'm filled with hate and envy and rage and jealousy.  But that does not make me a crooked horrible person!  It makes me human.  My ugly thoughts do not make me ugly."

I find myself drawn to Freud's desire to cure people, I just think he went about it the wrong way.  He said, in essence, "Your religion is making you miserable.  Your need for shelter and safety is causing you to create a God."

I think it's the other way around.  We are created, by our creator, as beings needing comfort and safety and shelter and relationship.  We were created to need and want and desire Him, rather than He being created because of our needs and desires.

And this creator is alive and free.  He is loving and life-giving.  It is in intimate relationship with Him that we find our true home.

Maturity is living with open eyes to this reality.

Runaway Radical review

Runaway Radical: A Young Man's Reckless Journey to Save the World Paperback – February 24, 2015

by Amy Hollingsworth  (Author), Jonathan Hollingsworth  (Author)

This book is coming out soon.  I'd thought I'd review it here for you.  I'm not very experienced with book reviews, and no two book-reviews are the same, but I'll just jot down some of the many things I was thinking as I was processing this gem.

Quick synopsis: When Jonathan began to get serious about his faith, it encompassed all of his life.  He was the radical -- giving to the poor, helping the poor, serving kids in the area, helping at church, going on missions, loving deeply etc.  His life gave all the signs of someone living passionately for Christ.  Ultimately he decides to spend a year in Africa serving the underprivileged and hurting.  His faith and passion for people is honorable.

But the year wrecks him.  He is spiritually abused by power-wielding leaders, both by those present with him in Africa and by those in America.  It's heartbreaking.  Numerous times I just wanted to leap into the story and rescue this soft-hearted young man from the grips of idiot pastors and missionaries.  To them, Jonathan was a chess piece to move as they willed.  He was completely under their control.

In the midst of this abuse (which lasts the time he is in Africa, which ends up being shorter than intended), Jonathan's understanding of his faith crumbles.  Depression sets.  The abuse is made complete.  The end reads as really a series of journal entries, blog posts, and thoughts of both Jonathan and his mother throughout their grieving process.  It is really great stuff.  He eventually finds his faith again, albeit a bit changed.

If that were the entire book, I would heartily recommend it to anyone.  But it is the motive-level wrestling that the reader is invited into that really makes the book shine in my opinion.  What was it that drove Jonathan to Africa to care for orphans?  Why did he care for the poor?  What made him want to take these radical steps?

I work for a missions organization.  I ask or send lots of students on these missions trips every year.  The one thoughts I kept having was, "I'd really like to pass this book out to those considering one-year missions trips."  It would serve as both a caution and a sort of litmus test of the heart.

You can accomplish great things for God for many reasons.  Yet the faithful way, the Christian way, is a drive to serve and love passionately and radically because you've just been enraptured in the love and life of your King Jesus.  No other motive will work.  No other motive will last.  And every other motive will end up in disappointment, disillusionment, and/or despair.

Not "I need to tell people about Jesus so they don't go to Hell!"  Not "The poor have nothing, let's help them!"  Not "What it means to be a seriously real Christian is to be a missionary!"  Not "I need to do God pleasing things!"  Not "I'm going to be radical for Jesus!"

But instead say, "Jesus you are the best thing that has ever happened to me."  Like watching a movie, and just being so in love with what you've seen you can't help but share it with others.  Not out of duty, but out of sheer delight in what you've seen.

Every missionary should check their motives regularly.  Jonathan leads us here, and for that I'm grateful.  He invites us deep into his reasons for being the way he was, and doing the things he did.  What he found deep in his heart was perhaps not as great as he would've liked, yet he had the courage to go there nonetheless.

I think if we all had the courage to dig as deeply, we'd be pretty disillusioned and despairing of what we've found as well.  I hope Jonathan's story will encourage others to check their "Radical" Christianity in favor of a more faithful, loving one.

When Oceans Rise

My soul will rest in Your embrace
For I am Yours
And You are mine

Such a good song.  It was incredibly hard to sing this song when we came back from Venezuela.  In fact, it's probably only been within the last month that I've been able to sing it at all without getting choked up and/or frustrated.

You see, some of the other parts of the song are what gets me:
Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever you would call me
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Savior

Do I really want to go where my trust is without borders?  That may require a pretty big step of faith.  One I'm maybe not willing to take right now.  Is that ok?  Maybe I don't want to go wherever he would call me.  Because that can be really scary.  I'd have to put my money where my mouth is.  And that's terrifying at times.

Here in the next month we'll come up on one year since we've left Venezuela.  A decision that impacted our future, our hearts, our faith, our family.  What do I do with that?  How do I sing this song with honesty?  Well, it depends on the day.  And I put stipulations on where my feet could wander.  See, I'll only go as far as I'm comfortable with.  I need an adjustment period.  That's ok, right?  The average person would say so.  The problem is, I'm not married to the average person.

So tonight I sit and listen to this song, tears rolling.  I want to sing this song honestly, but I'm terrified too.  What does it mean for our family, our marriage, our walks with the Lord to truly follow God WHEREVER he would call me?  It might just be incredibly painful.  Do I trust that I'm in the presence of my Savior?  Whether I take big steps of faith or itsy bitsy teeny tiny ones?

One thing is for sure.  Romans 8 states:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?  As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;

we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 

No, in all these things we are more than yconquerors through zhim who loved us.  For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

In a lot of ways, I prefer the kids' Storybook Bible version from Paul.  

"God loves us!" he wrote from prison.  "Nothing can ever - no, not ever! - separate us from the Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love of God he showed us in Jesus!"

There's just something reassuring and calming about those words.  It's so simple.  I can wrap my heart around this.  And maybe, just maybe follow that God.  Because he sure does seem like a really great guy.  Perhaps sometimes it's just a matter of having a childlike faith and knowing that no matter what, God has it all under control.  And he loves me.  And the best is yet to come.  And a lot like the Storybook Bible's ending, our story is to be continued...

Am I too Grumpy?

I've been wrestling quite a bit lately with what seems like my general state of grumpiness.

It hasn't been an overt, or even excessively visible, grumpiness, but anyone that's been close with me over the last year or so would tell you that I've been a bit of a grump.

Here's something that I've read recently, and it put quite a bit into perspective for me:

"A person has to be thoroughly disgusted with the way things are to find the motivation to set out on the Christian way.  As long as we think the next election might eliminate crime and establish justice or another scientific breakthrough might save the environment or another pay raise might push us over the edge of anxiety into a life of tranquility, we are not likely to risk the arduous uncertainties of the life of faith.  A person has to get fed up with the ways of the world before he, before she, acquires an appetite for the world of grace." - Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant

Peterson nailed me here.  I am, and have been, "fed up with the ways of the world."  I am "thoroughly disgusted with the way things are" and have no hope in elections, scientific breakthroughs, or pay raises.

So what, then?

Well, I've realized I'm just sad -- and that is ok.  To be sad is a doorway, not a destination.  To be sad is to be in a place where hope can bloom.

I've been sad that life hasn't worked out the way I've wanted.  I've been sad that my relationship with God, and even the Christian Life hasn't worked out the way I've wanted.  I've wanted and yearned for what we were all created for -- a life of peace and joy and beauty and deep intimacy.  I've wanted a life void of stress and pain and hurt and disappointment.

But the hard things have come in spades and the good things have come far too sporadically.

So I'm coming to embrace my grumpiness.  My grumpiness is sadness disguised.  And my disguised sadness is actually a pathway to hope.

All this is to admonish you to embrace your grumpiness.  Be the Grump.  And recognize that it stems from a deep sadness and from broken hopes and dreams.

Then take the sadness before a merciful and loving Father, one who proved his care by taking on flesh to bear the weight of all the world's sadness.  And let's praise together when 3 days later that sadness is broken and hope restored.