Slipping

I feel myself slipping down again.  It's not a good feeling, but something I've grown used to.  It feels like a dark cloud forming.  I'm more on edge, quicker to burst out angry, more likely to take offence at things, less likely to be as busy as I usually am. 

Normally I keep the demons at bay through constant occupation.  Even rest is occupation.  Sometimes I welcome getting sick, even though I fight like mad to NOT get sick.  Once I am, I can just let go and rest.  But in these times, the lack of doing is more just because it all seems futile and worthless.

People always say, "Let me know if you feel that way."  But that's just the problem isn't it?  I'm never going to...If I could I wouldn't need the help.  And when I feel good enough to let someone know, they don't believe it, don't remember it, don't notice it, or aren't around to be able to.  We'll see if this post ever makes it onto the blog.  I'm going to try hard to let it stand.

I don't even know what help would be.  No amount of talking it through will do anything about it.  I've read enough on CBT and tried it to know it won't stick.  That stuff all requires a willing participant.  Sure there's probably a good deal I don't know about that stuff, but the effort to sift through the crap with someone to get to the good stuff just makes it seem like more of a burden.

But I know it will pass.  It always does.  I surround myself with precautions when I feel it coming enough to avoid serious consequences.  I'll still go to work, look the same as always, joke, etc.  I know from seeing it in others that if you know what to look for, you can tell the difference.  But most people can't or don't bother.  It's truly a closed world.  If you haven't been there, you don't understand.  You can't.

So what helps?  I don't know.  Time.  Prayer. I always delve deeper into those regions during these times.  Someone seeing it for what it is and piercing the cloud.  It happens on rare occasions and those people are instantly locked in my heart forever.

But like I said, I know it will pass and the only way past is through.  We'll see how it goes this time.

Poured

"Christians devour each other."  This is a quote I once read in an article by a Christian who was quoting his athiest friend who was observing why he isn't a Christian.  It's very true.

I feel poured out.  Stretched at every point.  People want things and they want more and more and more.  Like my cup is draining faster than filling.  And then some people ask for things they don't really want you to give them.

I do public work.  So what I do isn't just inconsequential money-making tasks.  It's things that enable most of you do your inconsequential money-making tasks, and I do them at a level that is involved in the decisions and planning.  So it is not boasting to say that what I do affects all of you who live in the same area and has lasting impacts into the future.  It's just so invisible to your daily lives that you don't even know it's going on.  But I digress.

My point is that even in this, a coworker was saying today, "It's as if they ask us to make something better because they have to, but they really just want to keep doing the same old thing, so they make it something super difficult to actually accomplish with little resources, and when we figure out a way to do it anyway, they say, 'oh s***!, we never thought they'd actually do it!' So they have to make it artificially difficult."

So I get it from all sides.  And in the place I should find rest and comfort, I find people saying, "well if your joy isn't complete you just have to..."  It's all on my effort.  Even if that effort is simply believing something, or thinking something, or seeing something differently.  I don't know if these people are well-meaning candy-eyed types who have never really known darkness, or if they're just clones spitting whatever script they can access from a motivational poster, or if they are just as screwed up and think they need to mask it by saying the 'right' thing.

Well, I'm stepping out and saying that for some of us, it isn't that easy.  If I were to hound you about running and tell you that you just need to run faster.  You just need stronger muscles, a better heart, more endurance!  You'd look at me and say, "easy for you to say."  Well why is it any different with a mental or emotional condition.  I can't help it!  I know all the stuff you're saying.  I just can't make it any different!  Don't you think I've tried?  I promise you I'm not one of those people who just want to play the victim.  and even if I was, maybe I couldn't help that either!

Why are you so quick to explain and categorize and answer?  You obviously don't get it, or you're a liar.  Either way, you make it abundantly clear that I can't reveal this part of me to you.  So you rob from me a place to find rest.  You force a tired soul out into the night again because there's obviously no room in your inn for the likes of me.

Even still, for your sake, I hope God doesn't lay my blood on your hands because I don't think you know what you do.  And I've been to hell, just went back for a visit actually.  Trust me, you don't want to go.

Safe

I want to say something very serious...well I'm usually serious, so more serious than usual.  This post is for anyone who finds it and needs it.  I want you to know that this will always be a safe place for you.  I will always be a safe place for you.

I am like you.  I know depression.  I know the taste of a gun barrel and the feel of a blade on my wrists.  I have carved my pain in my arms and chest.  I know about the masks.  I know about good days and bad.  I know decades...literally decades of only nightmares at night.  I know the hollowness.  I know the terror of lonely places, dark corners.  I know the desire to simply cease being.

I know trances and psychic attack.  I know the evil that can make you forget your own name.  I know what it is to have my senses coopted by things that feed on pain and fear, to lose touch with reality for a time, to approach the gates of hell.

I know rage.  I know the overwhelming desire to kill and destroy.  I know what it is to look out of burning eyes and calculate the animal rending of someone before me.

I know rejection.  I know false acceptance.  I know the taunts and insults.  I know the subtle but clear lack of understanding from people who want to care.  I know how that look of alienation cuts more deeply because it comes from those who obviously don't want to wound.  It just tells us how strange we are.

So if you understand this.  If you know me or if you stumble across this late one night.  Know that I am here and you are there.  And you are not alone.  Look at my picture.  Read my words.  Do I not seem like someone who knows?

You don't need to be anything other than what you are around me.  And if you need me, I will be there in whatever way I can.  This is my promise.  Test me and see if I don't mean it.  I don't come with programs and easy answers.  But I come.  I am the living dead, sent for the dead living.  I gave up my life and it has been given back for you.

I am Cavvvp.  I am real.  And I am here.

Answer?

Last night, I was thinking about how churches often drive for participation.  I've discussed that on this blog at length.  But as I've alluded, I rarely jump to conclusions.  So even though I am staunchly opposed to coercive participation, when faced with yet another instance of it, I still find myself stepping back, and thinking, "Am I the one who's wrong?"

It's always a possibility.  Especially when one finds the same message occurring repeatedly, it's wise to take note and analyze again.  So, I found myself mulling this over as I went to bed.  Remembrance of times when I've tried to buy in and go with it, only to end in disaster.  Debate amongst messages I've received, verses I know, Truths I hold.

And so, as I tried to turn off, I asked God to show me the answer.  And I fell asleep.

So this morning I awoke with two vivid dreams in my mind.  As always, some details are fuzzy, but the important part of any dream is what isn't fuzzy.  In the first, I was going about some business or other when a highly contagious disease began to be noticed among people.  It was subtle, really, starting with few symptoms that were easily misinterpreted.  Tiny red spots, etc.  But if untreated, it ended in death.  It quickly became an epidemic and was still spreading.  I found myself trying to spot people with the disease and help them in any way I could.  At one point, I ended up with a sort of clinic that was set up like a pizza delivery.  Drivers were going out on calls to provide aid, or bring in patients while the doctor and office staff kept calls coming in and treated patients.  I stepped in as a driver and spent the dream taking errands to bring aid, help the sick, bring them in.  I remember being slightly concerned that I may be infected, but didn't have time to be concerned.  I might be infected anyway and these people certainly were.  They needed help.

In the second dream, I was volunteering at a church camp.  I went to sign up and was explaining my experience with education, even coordination, and program development.  The staff seemed too busy to be interested, but when I mentioned education, they started jargoning about educational theories, statistics, etc.  I realized I couldn't possibly keep up with that, since I wasn't a classically trained educator.  But I knew how to work with kids.  So I stepped in and began to relate to some waiting kids.  Then we were ushered into a big room where activities were underway.  I tried to hang on and be useful with no idea what was happening or what I was needed to do, as I've done many times in church ministry.  And that's when I started looking for the red spots again.  I knew some of these kids must be sick.  I needed to find them.  To help them.  I woke up from this.

It was soft morning and I immediately began to think about the dreams while they were fresh.  They didn't feel like my normal dreams...not fueled by my health condition (which produces a characteristic type of dreaming), not the usual amalgam of recent experiences.  It wouldn't be the first time a dream had directly answered a prayer for me.  But any dream could also be my own thoughts.  So I searched for confirmation.

That's when the words of Jesus came to memory, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." and "I came to seek and save that which was lost."  Could that be right?  Did this really apply here?  Was it my imagination pulling together relevant information?  I felt moisture drip down my cheek.  I touched my eyes.  They were wet.  This is often confirmation for me.

I thanked God for answering my prayer.

Then I woke my wife to tell her and see if she confirmed it as well.  In conversation, I became more certain.  This was a reminder of what I had known.  I know my mission, and it is not in vane.  Religious organizations and ministries will churn and that is not my concern.  The secular world will churn and that is not my concern.  Both are equally irrelevant to the task.  The sick are among us.  The disease is rampant.  Symptoms are slow but definitive.  But I am to look for them, and aid where I can.  This is it.

The aid will take various forms: comfort, support, steering toward healing, taking to the Doctor, bringing medicine to the sick.  I don't have to think about being infected.  I just have to help.  I don't even need to cure the disease.  And I'm not alone.  There are many doing the same.  We know each other when we see, but keep at our work.  It compliments each other and we know what to do in this effort.

And if by chance the pizza delivery has a physical manifestation, I'll keep my eyes open.  But the context doesn't matter.  The disease doesn't respect persons or status.  So the cure can't either.

God, help me.

Christians talk of love.  We're told to overlook, forgive, bear with, no one is perfect, don't judge.  And yet, in so many cases, this is entirely the duty of the listener and not at all reflected by the speaker or his organization.

It starts to sound hollow after awhile.  So I'm supposed to be eternally forgiving offences against me, some of which are grossly wrong...morally, ethically, personally wrong...and yet the person/people preaching this are the very offenders who then refuse to show it to me, to bear with me, to overlook, forgive, withhold judgement of my faults.

Now the moralist in me is screaming that two wrongs don't make a right and that one must do right regardless of how one is treated.  OK.  I know this.  But it doesn't change the bitterness and anger that rise up at it again and again.  And it isn't everyone.  I know many people who do live out their faith and have shown me great love, even when I don't deserve it.  So again, I blame the institution for creating the paradigm in which a man can stand over anonymous heads and orate without having to answer to the eyes and mouths of those he speaks to.  Where he doesn't have to feel the full and immediate effect of his words.  There has to be a better way.

I feel like I know that way too.  I have glimpsed it, smelled it, but can't quite apprehend it.  I'm not planning anything.  I'm over trying to work my own will in these cases.  I just don't have the energy any more.  But I want to understand, to walk in it, to help it grow where it sprouts.

Am I missing something?  I find myself cringing from certain aspects of the faith.  Embarrassed by them.  I don't want to be caught listening to Christian radio.  I don't even like the music.  I just need some uplifting, faithful, stilling presence and commercial radio (at least the genres I can tolerate) is all about degradation and glory in low things.  I hate to pray over meals in public, though I do it at home with a will and a desire to instill it in my son.

Am I embarrassed by the faith?  No.  I'm not.  I'll easily tell someone I'm Christian, that I go to church, that I believe in universal Truth and live morally, etc.  I'll discuss my faith at length and detail in certain contexts, not just amongst other Christians.  So I am not embarrassed by the faith.  So what is it?

If it was just hokey contrivances, I would not do them myself.  So I see value in them.  This means the issue must be deeper.  Perhaps a fear of seeming naive or backward.  Perhaps of being misunderstood.  I can't tell what it is.  My Evangelical background steps forward at this point and begins condemning me that those who are ashamed of Christ, he will be ashamed of.  Words from his own mouth!  And my heart quails.  But yet I find the same reactions persisting.

I am fickle and inconsistent.  And then I am reminded quietly of Peter who denied Christ three times after just proclaiming his allegiance and even using a blade against an armed troop of men to defend Jesus.  I am reminded of Paul who could not do the good he wanted to do, though he knew what it was.

And so this Sunday, when I was sitting in church, at odds with the place and myself, the pastor, whom I don't even know if I like and certainly don't yet trust, calls us to take Communion in a way that does not put me off.  Not single serving plastic wrapped.  Not greatly orated.  Simply saying that we will serve ourselves because, "you need no one coming between you and your God."  And so I go forward, looking into my own heart, wondering what I will say to Him in the moment, though I feel something must be said.  At the same time, I dred that my heart may burst out my eyes in front of everyone, as too often happens when I encounter God.  I take the wafer, dip it in the cup, and at that second, my heart cries out, "God, help me."

I don't even know where it came from...well I do really.  But I was not planning it, I promise you.  I felt my eyes well, clenched my teeth to stop it, and rushed back to my seat.  Then it came to me that this simple line is the essence of my faith, of all faith.  I don't know.  I can't do.  God, help me.

And on this rock, I can stand.  Nothing more, nothing less.  God, help me.  God, help me.

Afterburn

My last post was a rant.  I won't apologize for it.  It needed to be said.  But know that nothing on this blog is for show.  I post what I am wrestling with.  And I've continued to think about this.  Many points came out in the last post that I think could bear further explanation...Or rather, I want to talk about my history to help create understanding...see a previous post on that...perhaps then I will make more sense to those who don't get it and those who might think they get it can see how my ideas might differ or align with theirs.  Not that anyone is really reading this anyway, so who cares either way.  (Sidebar: thanks to the fanbase, I know both of you are reading.)

Where to start?  If you say you used to be a Christian, then you never were...or you still are.  It's not the kind of thing that can be undone.  It's not a system of beliefs.  It's not a culture.  It's not a bunch of fables and moralisms.  It's not a vague idea of the cosmic good.  It's not a magic hat that makes life good.  It isn't even to simply follow Jesus' teachings.  If you left it, then you never really understood it or if you really truly had hope in it and left over some disappointment, then you still are a Christian. 

You see, you can call yourself anything.  But when a person truly encounters the living God it changes things.  Things inside are different.  I'm not going to theologize and give you "3 signs you know you're saved" or any nonsense you might have heard before.  When you feel that Love call you and recognize who you are hearing, feeling, whatever, you know it.  There's no going back.  The job of the Church, which is people, not place or organization, is to stand beside you until you do know it.  Period.

I was raised in the typical modern Evangelical church.  I was fortunate to receive a good deal of training in the Bible.  I know it well.  I can argue the apologetics.  I was actually trained in persuading someone with the gospel...Literally, "if they say this, you counter with this."  It wasn't evil.  It was simply schooling in the classic sense.  I studied the arguments of great theologians and could cite the verses they used to answer heresies, etc.  The goal wasn't to brow beat people.  We never did that.  Just a principle that prudent study and in-depth knowledge of the Bible were weapons for life and salvation.  Think Allistair Begg, Bill Bright, Chuck Colson.  It's a whole world that you'd have to be in to understand.  I still have great respect for these people.

But I was also a depressive kid.  Serious for my age, with difficulty understanding the stupid kids around me.  Part of it I now know was due to a rare physical condition that was undiscovered then.  But part is simply my nature.  I began to see the fruitlessness of our shallow cushy lives.  I sank slowly into nihilism.  I knew that in the end, nothing we did mattered.  What would happen would happen.  Bad to good people, good to bad people.  Indifference to most.  Nothing made sense, so there was no meaning.  Read Camus' The Stranger to see what life is like from a purely nihilistic perspective.  It's terrifying.  I lived there.  Too apathetic to kill myself.  Pointless to strive.  Just waiting for something to kill me.  I drove my Jeep without doors and no seatbelts.  I laid on the double yellow lines of a bend in the road just hoping.  I sliced my arms and chest up just to feel anything.  I worked at a nursery and dug my arms into rose bushes, carried cactuses with bare arms so the needles would drive in.  This was a double benefit.  It woke up some sensation in me, and hid the knife slices.  I remember once, hanging from the rafters of the stockroom "to clean them".  I had swung out about 20 feet and dangled there two stories up with a broom in one hand.  I didn't care.  I even almost broke a kids neck for cutting in the lunch line.  I don't mean we got in a fight.  I mean he did it, didn't pay any attention to me, but was standing right in front of me where the line doubled back with back turned.  The adrenlaine flowed, my hands clenched and I was reaching for him when I realized what I was about to do and bolted out of there.    I ran out of the school and shivered in cold sweats for 20 minutes.  I used to smash my head into bathroom mirrors hoping they'd break and bleed my skull.  A school custodian caught me once.  He didn't know whether to pray for me or run me off.  Of course to everyone else, I was the perfect responsible kid.  Few saw it, few knew what to do, and few cared as long as I functioned in some fashion.

Somewhere in there I started having spiritual experiences, which you can read about elsewhere on the internet.  Just google cavvvp...all you'll get is me.  I didn't understand these things and it wrecked me.  I could barely hold together.  But in that world, Jesus found me.  He revealed himself as real in a way that was undeniable.  Either I had experienced what I did, or I was psychotic.

I learned that there were other people like me.  I met a bunch of the craziest punk people you could ever meet because the guitarist at my church also played music there.  In fact, that guitarist had a huge impact on me that I'm sure he doesn't even know.  He was one of the few people in that time who didn't judge.  Didn't put on a face.  He was a former drug addict from a rock band.  His wife was a drug addicted stripper.  He told me once that he'd seen our Elders' record collections, "and man they got all the same stuff we do." said even as they condemned me for being loose and rebellious.  So I began to distinguish the real from the hypocritical.  I saw those punk Christians ostracized when they came around.  I was told by the church next door to ours that "they didn't dispute my salvation, but only associated with churches of like faith and order" when I asked if their kids wanted to come to a party I was having for our kids.

I began to see that so-called Christians were the bulk of the problem!  We were the Pharisees!  So I left mainstream churches and joined the punks.  We packed the house.  Drug addicts, prostitutes, gay, gutter punks, homeless, hippies, new age, transgender, and just plain mentally disturbed.  We even had a church meeting in which we decided that someone was always going to bring a jacket just in case one of the strippers or prostitutes showed up in her work clothes!  I'm not kidding!  The pastor there became a friend and mentor.  He was a wreck of a person.  God love him and so do I.  His warts were apparent and he didn't shy from it. He was saved by grace and openly said what good was in him was from God.  And even now I will stand beside him at the Judgement and claim his as a friend, many of whom are there because of him. 

We invaded dark and sinister places.  We have seen God part crowds in Ybor, open dance floors in clubs.  I once sat in a wiccan coffee house that was run by not the nice kind of wiccan.  I have not experienced more spiritual warfare than in that place.  I could feel the oppression as we prayed for protection of my friends and others in the place...and this wizard was fighting us hard to drive us out and claim these people.  I could see it in his face.  He knew we were opposing him and neither of us said a word or gave an overt sign.  Just sat there silently praying while drinking some cheap brew.

But things change.  People are flawed.  Things run their course.  And this did.  People were lost.  Schisms happened.  Eventually we joined a friend's church.  I hit it off with this pastor who is still my mentor and spiritual director.  But I watched as several iterations of forcing two very different types of people together failed, leaving pain in their wake.  It wasn't for lack of trying.  The "normal" people just weren't comfortable with the grittiness of the others.  They couldn't see us as partners.  We were always projects.  The punks cloistered and refused to integrate because they knew they weren't wanted.  No one likes to be looked at like that, even unintentionally! And emotionally damaged people like many of these can't actually even handle it.  It crushes them, so they drive away good intentions and close the circle even tighter.

Time and time again, I've seen it.  Mainstreamers get some idea that they're edgy or cool and try to step into a world they don't get.  I have seen some notable exceptions.  But they are few and far between.


And not all of this type look weird on the outside.  Many would fit right in.  You eat, shop, and work right beside them.  I've even seen relatively normal people who are starting to discover this real, honest, classless faith continually wounded and turned away by churches.  The churches seek the majority in the "war for souls" and don't have time for the complaints, the dissenters, the ones who fall through the cracks.  Acceptable losses.  I emphatically stand up and defy that mindset.  No, never is one lost, not any are acceptable.  The Good Shepherd leaves the 99 to find the one.  I say the 99 should be looking too!  People will conflict.  But resources are probably there if you'd open your mind to look for them and step aside when it isn't you.  Why not partner instead of compete?  There's churches on every corner and they all act like they're the only one in the wilderness of lost people.  Here's an example of what I mean:

A wiccan couple came in to a mainstream church I worked at and introduced themselves as such.  Now why would they do that?  If they were just checking it out, they would simple come in like anyone else.  No one need know.  The reason they did it is because they were testing.  They wanted something and wanted to see how they were received.  I told people, come get me when they get here.  I'll talk to them.  I know what they believe and can welcome them.  I even pulled a little Paul and cited my qualifications to do so.  Of course, I wasn't worthy to do that.  Instead some "better qualified" pastor talked to them and they never came back.  No doubt he comforts himself that you can't win them all and they just must not have been ready.  Wow!  You sound like me.  I thought you were Evangelical?  If there's a tool in your tool box you have to make use of it!  That's being a good steward, dude!  Leverage everything, remember that sermon?  I even told you I was there so there's no excuse.  You just blew it, they could be going to hell because of it.

Thankfully, I don't believe it is up to us to save anyone.  So I can easily forgive this man and know that God is far greater than our feebleness.  He doesn't depend on us.  He doesn't.  But by the standard you mete, it is meted to you.  This man's own theology condemns him!

So where does this long ramble leave us?  I am a bridge.  I am an interpreter.  I can communicate across boundaries.  This is my gift.  I am pitbull, donkey stubborn and will not back down from what is right.  This is my gift.  I can love and forgive, but will not participate in what is not right.  I speak for my flock of black sheep.  I'm not the shepherd.  That's Jesus.  I'm just a sheepdog, and I'm not alone.  If anyone comes after my sheep, I'll bite.  If anyone inadvertently hurts my sheep, you'll hear me bark.  And if you're sitting out there lost, hurt, fending off the wild beasts, or being pushed around by the prettier sheep, just make what noise you can...I'm coming...and I won't leave until the Shepherd finds you.

Through the Roof

In common usage, this phrase means something other than what I mean.  I'm talking down not up.

I was recently reading the story of the friends who lowered the paralysed man through the roof to see Jesus.  In the story, they tried to get him in to see Jesus in hopes that Jesus would heal their friend.  But they couldn't get through the crowd.  So they went up on the roof, and it says they actually dug a hole in the roof to lower the man down.  When Jesus saw their faith, he said the man's sins were forgiven.  This of course sparked controversy with the religious leaders who questioned Jesus, so he healed the man to demonstrate his authority to also forgive sins.

What struck me in this story is the friends.  First they took a friend there.  Imagine the scenario.  In this time, handicapped people were considered to have sinned or to be bearing the punishment for the sins of their parents.  It didn't just happen to people in their minds.  So to be friends with this person was a thing in itself, but not outside of reasonable understanding.  We see this today in similar forms.

Healers in that day were also fairly common.  Historic records talk of this thing periodically, so it wouldn't have been all that strange for a healer to pass through town and draw a crowd.  In days before modern medicine, this was a significant hope for people.

But what really gets me is the ingenuity of these friends.  This is where I resonate with them so strongly.  They could have just waited their turn and hoped patiently to see Jesus, but they weren't content with that.  The need of their friend took precedence over everyone else's needs in their mind.  Wow.  No one teaches that!  I'm not saying they would deny everyone else their chance, but they weren't going to be content to passively sit back.  They had a hope of helping their friend and they were going to make it happen to the greatest of their ability.  Their attitude was not to sit back and patiently wait on God.  They were pushing in and when they couldn't get in, they came up with something else.

I wonder which one had the idea.  They're looking at each other.  The paralysed friends is probably speechless or consoling them that it's ok...they tried.  But one of them looks over up at the roof.  Maybe there were stairs to a flat deck, maybe it was just a thatched roof that they had to climb up on.  But one of them says, "what about up there?"  Were they all in agreement, or did they have to argue it.  Was one the driving force that had the great idea or was it a group of mischievous friends?  Were they scrappy working men who built houses and knew what to do or did they figure it out as they went?  However it happened, they ended up on the roof.

There they found the spot where Jesus was and then began to tear out someone's roof!  Was this an easy repair or something that would take work?  Did they have a plan to fix it later or did they just act and leave the consequences for later?  Mark says they actually dug through the roof, which makes it seem like it wasn't simply removing a few palm fronds.  It could have been abode or dob.  This would be making a serious hole!  Even if it was thatched, you don't just pull off some leaves.  To make thatch water-tight it has to be thick and well hung.  It's also no easy thing to repair, since you have to layer the thatch from bottom to top up the roof slope.  So either way, these guys did some property damage.

Imagine the owner's reaction when he sees his roof torn out and this hole opening up in it!  How would you react?  These guys could have been arrested or charged with criminal activity.  Surely they knew this to some degree.  But it didn't stop them.

And their action was rewarded.  Jesus was impressed with their faith.  I have never been encouraged to act the same way.  No one has ever taught me to help a friend at all costs.  The closest I've ever encountered is teaching about sacrificial giving, but that is even watered down into simply giving more than we would like to a ministry.

But these friends demonstrate real human faith.  We don't even know how they felt about Jesus.  But if there was a chance their friend could be healed, they did everything they could think of to make that happen regardless of what happened to them.

This is the faith I want to live.  This is the faith I am living.  God has called me to it and I have committed.  These hands, this mind, these dreams, ingenuity, creativity, blood, breath, words, money, materials; everything in my power is given to this.  I will tear out roofs, make roads, and go to my death in this cause, God help me.  Try me and see.

Woof

My new life is amazing.  I mean that literally.  I am so often amazed now.  But I have also never been more aware of my gross inadequacy to comprehend.  The metaphor of sheepdog has never felt more apt.

In this new life I am more keenly aware of joys and pains, but I am powerless to understand them.  In the joys I wag uncontrollably so that every fiber trembles with it.  In the pains, I want to help but am not capable.  These paws just won't grasp and I can't understand all the words.  And so I slink down and lay at your feet, unable to do more, but waiting for any sign that I can understand.  At one of those words I will jump to action.  I start at every sound, rife with anticipation.  If a bite would help I would bite.  If my head on your knee would help, I would place it.

I am sitting.  Waiting for the command. For the opening.  I will spring to whatever action is required.  In the meantime, I can't even determine if you can understand me.  Do you know what I am saying to you?  Do you know that my greatest joy is to be a part of yours?

The hardest thing for me is the waiting.  I am doing my best.  I must sit.  Stay.  Hold.  The Master knows what he's doing.  I am just the sheepdog.

Down and Down

This rabbit hole seems unending.  It's very difficult to right oneself when everything is moving.  As soon as I seem to become oriented, I realize that I haven't actually hit the bottom yet.  Perhaps it only feels that I've righted because everything around me is falling at the same rate for a bit.  But pretty soon it all lists oddly in the air and disorientation ensues.

I have long believed that we could only find what we need in God.  I have even come to know it through many circumstances that have forced me to rely only on Him alone.  He's even shown me that He will not only keep his word to provide, but does so quite literally "exceedingly, abundantly more" than I could, would, or even ask.  I have even begun to live in this confidence in a real way.

But no sooner do I realize I have progressed than a chair tilts and the rug flutters and the whole room disengages in the freefall.  I guess I should just stop arranging the furniture.

But that's just it: I don't intend to arrange anything.  I just find a chair nearby and decide to pull it under me because falling is tiring.  And then a glass of water floats by and I'm kind of thirsty.  But then a table floats up and I conveniently place the glass on it, snatch the lamp from the air for some better lighting, and before you know it, there's another falling room.

Even though I've been learning all these things I recently realized there was yet another level to it all and I was finding validation in something other than God.  It was innocent enough but sinuous and sneaky nonetheless.  You see, in doing the things God has for me to do, I become first agitated and then irritated and approaching angry when people don't allow it.  Not because I want what I want, but because I see how this or that person could so benefit but won't.  It's like delivering a really great present to someone from a rich relative.  I know what's in the box and know how perfect it is for them.  I've even got a similar one from this same relative.  But they won't open it.  I tell them how great it is and they still just sit it in the corner.  So I tell them what's in it and they smile and ohh about it, but say they'll get to it.  And this can go on far more than you would imagine.  It would be easier if they openly rejected it, but to keep piling up unopened presents is pert near insane to me.

So I go back to God confused and uncertain.  Did I screw up?  Did I miss something?  And that's when I realized recently that I am finding validation in helping others, even anonymously.  I am hinging my joy on other's actions...on their acceptance of these gifts...on their good.  Rather, I should be secure and stable enough in God's dealings with me that others' actions, even actions toward God, do not create anxiety in me.  And there goes the room again.

I have to come to fully trust God to meet their needs as he meets mine.  My eagerness for their good, my sadness at their pain is not to go away, but to be absorbed in God's full provision for us all.  And this is something I truly do not know how to do.  I can't even imagine how I could be content having the power to ease loved ones' burdens and not being allowed to do so.  Which means I will as usual, have to totally rely on God to do it.

Can't

This is one of those words. You hear people say things like, "Can't isn't part of my vocabulary." and other quippy phrases that have been recycled ad nauseum by every dumb jock that ends up in front of a camera. It's popular to think positively, and that is not totally invaluable, as cleche as it has become.

Even Christians have absorbed that mentality. It isn't unfounded. "I can do all things..." and so forth. But we shouldn't ignore the other side of can't. It's an essential side that is so unpopular that Christians very rarely ever bring it up.

The truth is that Christianity starts at can't. It is the genesis of the Christian. Before the power of the saving faith can be realized, we first have to give up. The seed has to fall to the ground and die before the tree grows. To follow Christ is to understand our need for Him; to know that we can't make it on our own. Make it to heaven...sure. But I mean more practically than that. We can't get by well in life without Him.

Recently someone debated against my assertion that every Christian must first be broken. They raised good points and I realize how they got to their conclusions, but I think our disagreement was more semantic. However, I do admit that we can't judge. I am not saying that those who have had a seemingly middle-class Christianity aren't really Christians. How could I know? What I know is what I have experienced...what I have witnessed, to reclaim the term the Evangelicals have destroyed. To wit, that the moment of deepest power comes to me and many others I know and have known at the moment when we give up.

Often, for someone like me, that realization comes far too late or far too early. Far to late because I am apt to drive myself into the ground before letting go of a stubborn idea. And far too early because, in other circumstances, I am apt to not even try. But in that moment when I truly realize my inadequacy and step aside...there is the amazing reality of God.

I have been practising it lately. Radically giving over to God, that is; consciously opening a space to let Him do what He will. The awesome thing is He has not yet even once failed to do something. It's as if He's been standing there listening to me talk about Him and what I would like Him to do, and just waiting on me to finally ask Him directly. I'm not going to build some theorum or process out of it. It's a living relationship that I am grossly undercapable of understanding. But this is what I'm seeing.

Next for me is to learn how to give credit where it's due. Not vague assents, not euphemisms that could imply God without offending those who choose not to see it that way. Not luck. Not "these things happen." Not "clean living", or a "charmed life." If God has done something I should say just that. How did it happen? Because God did it. Not because I'm special, but because I surrendered to Him and let Him work what He said He would work.

I'm going to keep trying this as long as I can hold onto it in my head. God keep me from distractions that squeeze it out.

As a friend and mentor (whom God incidently used in spite of himself...only proving my point even further) once said, "I think I can, I think I can. No! I don't think I can. In fact, I think I probably can't! But God can."