Day 5: An Expansive Engagement

You can smell it in the air.  The cool sharpness of coming rain.   Grey armadas marching across open skies, pulling deep, charcoal walls in their wake. Blades of grass strain; leaves shiver, flowers shy with anticipation.  The wind blows heavy and damp, bringing with it wetted expectation.

The clouds bristle with a fulfillment of what is yet to be; but somehow, somewhere, already is.  A vow written in the sky.  Like another, written on a heart.   A promise that though it may not be felt now, may not be immediate and present, it is; and it will be.  A proposal has been made:

Love me, above all others, the beloved asks.  My heart is free to say no.  I may turn and leave.  But how could I?  My beloved knows me.  The beloved cherishes me, for who I am.  At 3am and at 5pm, when I need healing and when I am well, when I have nothing and when I am rich in His love.

Wait for me, He says.  He promises to return, yet He will be with me, in every breath.  He leaves with me a part of Him; and goes to make plans for our forever after.  There is thunder in His embrace, lightening in His gaze, and tender drops of rain to kiss my face, and wash away my tears that are borne from His absence.  He holds me with His breath, and brushes my hair back with the winds.  I close my eyes and know that I am His.      

This is my awesome for today: I have been asked.  And I will keep saying yes.  Though it may not feel in the right here, all the time, right now; it both is and is yet to be.  This is the mystery of Christ in me.  Both fulfillment and continually opening up to greater completion; in anticipation of the day, in which this promise of hope and awesome wed.  A day in which love will fully come to pass.

I can feel His love for me, here in the quiet of my room.  I do not doubt.  My awesome unfolding in my heart, hesitant, fragile.  And I can see it coming like the clouds, heavy with rain to fall on my cheeks, wash away the un-awesome.  To refresh a barren landscape and call forth the life underneath.  His Love creates my Awesome.



My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.”

~Song of Solomon 2:10

Joining us for our 21 Days of Awesome?  Click on the links below to catch up, or refresh your memory :

Day 1: Awesome

Day 2: It’s Who I Am

Day 3: What Awesome Is Not

Day 4: Quieting the Shadow Voices

Day 4: Quieting the Shadow Voices

I was going to…

Do you have those days?  The days of grandiose plans.  The moments of world-conquering clarity and vision; sweeping in their scope and magnitude of motivation.  They’re heady.  Some days are full of the “going to’s.”  Each idea stacked upon another, a glorious tower of possibilities. 

     

Today didn’t start with a clear vision of my awesome.  But, I did awake with at least an awareness of its presence.  I’m starting to notice that it’s always there.  And as I rushed through the morning (yes, I got up late and yes, I was exhausted still), I wondered what I could say about the awesome today.  I had ideas, half-formed and neglected in the frenzied foreign-language quiz review.  During my to-and-fro commute, I began to plan; words spilling out of my grey matter, with nothing to catch them.  Verses like children on a trampoline, popping in and out of my conscience…but the day wore on, responsibilities crowding out my intellectual garden party.  And when I turned around again to sit at my computer and flesh some of these ideas out, it was 11 o’clock p.m.  Hardly time for adequate research.  Not even enough time for a coherent thought to gather itself together in my very weary brain.        

Today ended up being an “I was going to” kind of day. 

And sometimes, the feeling of failure tucks me in at night.  Mocking whispers in the shadows.  “You’ll never…you won’t…you can’t…”  These lies that tarnish the awesome, make my eyes blurry to it.  I do my best to respond, vehemently at first, “I’ll start _____.”/“Tomorrow, I’ll do _____ better.”/“If I _____, then I’ll be good enough at _____.”

And I get up, the very next morning, determined to do my absolute utmost to keep these promises to myself.  As if the awesome depends on it. 

But you know what the rest of that pattern is?  The other consistency?  I invariably fail.  Partly because I’m human and that’s what we do.  It’s who we are (in a fallen world).  And partly because I expect too much from myself; because in my own strength I can’t maintain the awesome. 

So today, at the end of yet another “I was going to” day, I’ll let the awesome answer the shadow-voices.  I’m going to simply rest in the awesome.  It’s not going to creep away in the night.  I can’t fail so much that it’s going to abandon me to the darkness.  No more “starting-tomorrow” promises.  Just the awesome, expanding in my chest, seeping through my veins, and filling up me. 

The awesome says I am loved; I am delighted in; and I am enough.

And I know this to be truth; because the awesome says so.    

Joining us for our 21 Days of Awesome?  Click on the links below to catch up, or refresh your memory :

Day 1: Awesome

Day 2: It’s Who I Am

Day 3: What Awesome Is Not

 

Day 3: What Awesome Is Not...

 

Speak so that you are not misunderstood.

          

This quote, the origins unknown to me, though I first heard it from a pastor of a mega-church somewhere in the Sandias, came to mind unexpectedly today.  My head was underwater (literally).  As I moved the liquid past me, pulling the air into my lungs at patterned intervals, I was quieted.  My movements were second nature.  Ingrained.  Muscle memory so strong, formed decades ago.  I realized a few years ago that I shouldn’t try to teach someone how to swim.  I dear friend was training for her first triathlon and wanted to work on the swim portion.  She knew I was a swimmer, so she asked for help.  But after weeks in the pool, I realized I can’t mentally break down the mechanics of the individual movements: when to kick, which arm to move in what way at what time, how to breathe and when.  I just get in the water and do it.  I swim because I don’t have to think about it.  And when I try, I lose my rhythm.  Eventually, I was reduced to googling instructional videos and showing them to her; not because my stroke looked different than those featured in the images, but because I simply could not offer anything more articulate than, "just get in the water and do it." 

For me, swimming requires no thought, aside from counting laps.  And when I say, "the awesome," I know exactly what I mean.  Yet, I wonder if it calls to mind the same meaning for you, as it does for me.  Perhaps “The Awesome” is something that requires an adequate definition so that it is not mistaken.  So that anyone who happens upon these 21 Days cannot mistake what I intend for something sprung out of a Western, individualized, self-glorifying culture.  Maybe, from this frame of reference, it is easier to begin with what awesome is not in order to build to what it is.     

Awesome is not pride.[1]  It’s not getting up in the morning and saying, "I am awesome, completely and utterly unto myself.  I identify myself as awesome; I make myself awesome; and I maintain my awesome.”  I.  I.  I.  Pride is pride, not awesome.  And pride is unattractive, self-gratifying, and empty.  Awesome is radiant.  Awesome edifies others, as well as self.  And awesome embodies meaning.[2]** 

Awesome is also not a fake-it-till-you-make-it endeavor.  Awesome can’t be faked.   You can fake feeling awesome, for a while.  But that is so strained and requires so much effort that even the most carefully constructed façade of awesome will eventually crumble.  And the ruin, particularly of this type, is what the world trades in. 

Awesome is not something you can strive toward; there is no goal designated, “awesome enough.”  Awesome is inherent.  Awesome is palpable.  Awesome takes up the space inside you, like water; while still allowing other things (identities, dreams, hopes, loves, memories, life) inside of it.  Awesome is a vast ocean of meaning, a deep well of whom you are and who you’re designed to be.**

And like the mirrored surface of water, awesome reflects the heavens; or rather, the Maker of the Heavens.  In you. 

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[1] See:  Leviticus 26:18-20, Job 20:5-7, Proverbs 16:17-19, Isaiah 2:16-18, Galatians 6:3-8, 1 John 2:15-17

[2] **Don’t worry, we’ll dig deeper into each of these in posts to come.

Photos (in order of appearance) from: www.line-a-pool.com and http://www.huntpoetgather.blogspot.com/. 

Joining us for our 21 Days of Awesome?  Click on the links below to catch up, or refresh your memory :

Day 1: Awesome

Day 2: It’s Who I Am

 

Day 2: It's who I am.

Today doesn’t feel so awesome.  It did, when I woke up; and when the caffeine was flowing, my day neatly ordered and my music on the radio.  But that was hours ago.  Having literally only a few hours of sleep, coupled with some difficult and so-close-to-home-they-live-in-the-fridge discussions in a particular class, and I’m all the way out of awesome.  I mean, call a girl-friend, break out the chocolate, huddle under a blanket till the rain stops, empty.

But before I don the pity-party hat, I have to remember: awesome isn’t a feeling.  It’s a state of being.  It’s inherent in becoming a child of the Living and Almighty God.  I don’t get to pick, based on my emotive state, or my circumstantial mode, whether I’m awesome right now or not.  I simply am. 



The God of the universe, the one who breathed every star into existence, and who knows their very names, calls me His.  His name will be written on me for eternity[1] (a God tattoo ~ awesome!); He will be mine and I will be His.  And because of this, awesome is who I am.  More than Jen, more than wife; more, even, than mother.  I am a child of God.

And believe me, that is Awesome.  As I write these words, the truth is liberating and expansive, as the sky that holds the orbs of nighttime lights, fills my chest.  My awesome, though it never left me, is sounding.  It’s there, where it was deposited.  I just misplaced it, for an awfully long while. 

I will hold tight to it now.  I will not let it go.  I will not forfeit it to the liars who seek to steal it from me.  It is mine.  Paid for, deposited into my heart, by my Father, Whisperer of Stars. 

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[1] Revelation 22:4 NIV reads, “They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.”  ~ I’m not literally saying that believers will have a tattoo in the afterlife. 

Joining us for our 21 Days of Awesome?  Click on the links below to catch up, or refresh your memory :

Day 1: Awesome

 

21 Days of Awesome

I read a blog this week that talked about being awesome; truly inhabiting it, knowing that awesome resides in your skin.  It was so timely that I’ve been ruminating over it this past week.  I’ve even taken to reminding myself that I shouldn’t let go of my awesome.  It’s been rather empowering (though not in an cocky, arrogant way; instead it’s been a remaindered to seek truth, as I’ll explain in a moment.)  But it took a chance encounter for this idea to really take shape…

I was at a local massage “spot” this weekend with a girlfriend, and overheard an older woman apologizing to her therapist for her appearance (“don’t worry about my bosoms, dear,” she said, “they’re just old and flop all over the place.”), her extra skin because she’d lost so much weight, even her, *ahem*, odor.  She flippantly told the therapist, “ignore the smell; it’s just Tiger Balm, for all my aches.” 

At first, I thought this entire conversation was comical.  And I wondered how old, exactly, one has to be when you can unabashedly dismiss your bosoms and eau du Tiger Balm.  But then, I wondered, if she was really unconcerned with them, why apologize?  It occurred to me that these seemingly dismissive excuses were hiding embarrassment, a self-consciousness I thought was reserved for women my age (not a perky 20-something anymore, but not old enough to not care).  I had to wonder further, when did she lose her awesome?    

And more to the point, when did I lose mine? 

I know I handed it over, incrementally, over the years.  Until one day, I turned around and it was gone.  I woke up without my awesome. 

After much meditation I have decided, nay, pledged to reclaim my awesome.  I know it’s mine, because, as Genesis says, I am made in the image of God (1:27).   Psalm 139 also tells me that I am fearfully and wonderfully made (v. 14); and for that I am to praise God!  Hence, this quest isn’t intended to glorify me or my awesome, but rediscover what God has already given (and subsequently restored/is restoring, through Jesus’s death on the cross); that I may rightly glorify Him.  

I look at the picture above and can pick it apart with my eyes closed (hair, body, clothes, etc…).  But guess what?  I’m going to stop doing that.  It’s an awesome slayer.  Instead, I’m going to say (with the appropriate reverence to my Maker and humility at the work of His hands):

“Awesome!”

You know something else?  You are awesome, too!

And so, for the next 21 Days, I'll be seeking Awesome.  I am going to faithfully search in the only place it can be found: God’s heart.  And where my earthly ideas and plans fall short, I will let Jesus fill in the gaps.* 

Please, share your stories with me; let me know how your awesome is doing.  Whether it resides squarely in your chest each morning; or if, like me, you will have to seek it out again.  Because as we look for our true identities, we have to draw closer to the Author of our lives, the One who saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in [His] book before one of them came to be (Psalm 139:16).  And through this, God will be glorified!  

*don’t worry, this won’t be an exercise in sitting in front of a mirror, a la SNL, repeating: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”  I’ll be seeking true identity, the one found only in Christ. 

Listen. Listen quickly

He says,

“Be still, and know that I am God;

I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

Psalm 46:10

 

To be heard lends validity to our lives.  Knowing someone is inherent in listening to them.  Being known requires being heard.  We all, at times, are so intent on ourselves that we forget to really listen to one another.  We are a society that defines itself in status updates, tweets, and very reflexive forms of communication.  It is all give, and no take.  And along the way, we are slowly losing the ability to know other people, to truly know them.  And in that, we are also letting go of the possibility of being truly known. 

I am grateful for the words constantly bestowed on me: “Mommy, let me tell you…”  “Mommy, listen to this…”  Because, I fear, they won’t always be so open.  The hours of lectures, decades, eons of knowledge laid before me as a feast; one of which so few like me are privileged to partake.  The stories cautiously handed to me, delicate and shuddering, wrapped in layers of hesitancy, precious and encumbering.  Narratives too weighty too foul, to pick up, lest they leave their residue on me.  Advice, ladled onto my soul with love; warmth for what’s been out in the cold too long.

But there are times when I just need to be heard.  To speak the words pent up in my spirit.  Unfetter my heart and invite someone in; to hand them the ugly parts, the pieces of me that need help, healing, and even gentle rebuke.  The need arises, molten and overtaking, to tell someone my dreams, my hopes, the deepest desires of my heart, of which only Jesus has been privy to.  In essence, to let someone really know me.  To give a testament of how God is moving in my life, smoothing the rough edges and sharpening the facets, – Right Now.

I just needed to speak the words; they were trying so desperately to escape me.  I needed to tell someone what I was feeling, what I’d been experiencing.   She heard me.  She knew me, in those words.  She allowed me to be known; and, as always, she pointed me to Christ.  She is radiant because He shines through her.  He has taught her to listen, because she has heard Him.  She listens, invoking my existence; so I may return to my quiet witness of other lives.  I am known, because she is willing to listen.

She listened, though not quickly.  And she didn’t judge.  She won’t even mind that this blog is about her, the title coming from a cartoon butterfly…

I pray you have someone like this in your life; that you are someone like this.  Listen.  Really listen, and find a kindred spirit.

Faith like a child

People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them.  When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.  Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them.

~Mark 10:13-16

In our house, theological discussions often include the phrase, “what does Blomberg say?”  My husband and I enjoy mulling over theology, turning scripture over in our minds and processing it out loud.  Because we own a few Blomberg texts (and the bibliographies therein are great jumping off points), we like to start there.  Dr. Blomberg has done more research than either us will (undoubtedly) be able to in what remains of both our lifetimes.  Thus, for the sake of expediency, we generally start (after reading the scripture up for discussion) by “getting the Blomberg.”

Our kids are privy to these discussions; sometimes originating at the dinner table (“what’s God showing you today?”), sometimes in the car (“this week I was reading…”).  While they’re not always attentive, the kids are aware.  This is evidenced by a question posed by the 5 year old at the end of one such drive.  Sighing deeply, he asked, “Mom do grown-ups think talking is fun?”

“Yes,” I replied.  “Why?”

“Because you do it so much!”  Obviously, for the 5 year old, a robust theological discussion of the discipline of God, in the context of Hebrews 12, is not on par with an epic battle of small, plastic army men. 

The 8 year old rolled her eyes, and informed her brother, “Of course they like to talk.  It’s all they do.”  Again, our conversation not as riveting as the original Nancy Drew series. 

And sponges that they are, they can ignore us to a point and still soak up what’s being said.  There was the day when Mommy had to get her reading done, and the 5 year old wanted nothing to do with his daily, quiet reading time in his room.  “Alright,” I bargained, “you can sit in my lap and I’ll read my book to you.”  He clammered up, delighted at having won his way.  I smirked, opening the Blomberg text, knowing that within a few moments, he’d head off to his room to find something more entertaining.  I started reading.  The assignment had to do with a passage in the New Testament regarding baptism; certainly not dry, but far enough, I assumed, over the 5 year old’s head that he wouldn’t last long. 

The 5 year old stayed.  He held still.  He listened.  And at the end of the passage, he said, “Mom, I think I should get baptized.” 

The youngest, baptized by the former Bible Man [then pastor] in August of 2012

 

I was mute with surprise.  He’d absorbed what I just read; he hadn’t been absently turning the wheels of his motorcycle?  “Can you tell me why,” I asked when my faculties rebooted enough for a response.

He proceeded to give me a rundown of the points listed in the Blomberg text regarding baptism.  The 5 year old said, though it wouldn’t forgive his sins, it was what he wanted to do because he wanted to follow Jesus with his whole life.  He wanted the whole world to know that he never wants to turn away from Jesus.  Because Jesus died on the cross for the 5 year old’s bad choices, so the 5 year old could be forgiven. 

“And because,” he concluded, rather importantly, “I already asked Jesus to live in my heart.”

What argument could I offer?  That our church says you have to be at least 8?  That I’ve heard and digested valid arguments for believer’s baptism, and have been generally warned against baptizing one so young?  Yet, his was one of the most efficient and straightforward presentations of the gospel I’d heard in a long time. 

Though I shouldn’t have been surprised, coming from the kid, who less than 3 years ago heard that in order to get into Heaven, Jesus has to live in your heart.  So he daily prayed that Jesus come into his heart; usually from his carseat, which begs to question my driving...  One day, during this phase, when he asked me if dogs can go to Heaven, I hesitated, not wanting to be wrong, but not wanting to give a false answer.  “Well, buddy,” I started, “the Bible doesn’t really say…”

Hoping up from his chair, he bent over the supine Huskador on our kitchen floor, and said, “Oso, do you want Jesus to live in your heart?”

The dog lifted his head and licked the boy’s nose. 

“Okay, buddy,” the then-3 year old held a paw, “Jesus, please come and live in Oso’s heart so he can live with you when he dies, because You forgive all the bad things in the world.  And Oso needs his bad things taken away, too.”  Lifting his head, the boy beamed and declared, “Now Oso can get into Heaven.  Jesus lives in his heart!”  He proceeded to evangelize our Labrador and pray for her salvation as well.

There was never a question in his mind: Jesus, as far as his 3 year old understanding held, would live in your heart and forgive your “bad things” if you asked Him to.  And then, when you die, you get to be with Him forever.  Faith.

And to this 5 year old, the Bible says if you claim to be a follower of Christ, you need to be baptized.  So, he asks, in the black-and-white mindset of 5 year olds, why shouldn’t he be baptized?  Jesus said to do it; therefore I should do it.  Faith.  Obedience. 

My mind still turning over why he could/couldn’t be baptized, he looked at me.  His gaze was firm, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say almost condescending.  Sighing, he added, “Mom, Dr. Blomberg says so, too.”

There it was, the truth: I was relying too much on the wisdom of humanity.  I have to engage theology intellectually.  I have to hear the arguments for and against; I have to weigh the evidence.  I need to know that someone smarter than I has put their mind to this topic and come to a well thought out conclusion.   I don’t have the easy faith of a child.

It’s what Jesus cautioned his disciples against.  It’s what adults do: reason our way to confusion.  Muddy the waters.  Complicate simple truth until we don’t know which way is up anymore.* 

What I need to do, is complicate things less.  Scripture says that if you want to follow Jesus, repent and be baptized.  Who I am to prevent anyone (5 or 95 years old) from this?  God created the world with dogs in it; and God promises both a new Heaven and a new Earth.  Who says there won’t be dogs there?  (Though if you only see a black Huskador and Lab, you’ll know how they made it.) 

What if I approach the Bible with the faith and innocence of a child?  What if I simply believed that God is who He says He is; and He will do what He says He will do?  What if, like my little boy, I simply took God at His word, instead of looking to humanity to make the call for me?

What if I had the faith to trust God enough to let him outside of my box, without prior expert handling?      

Our eldest, being baptized by the Officer and me in 2011.

* Now, I’m not saying that we should take everything on what some would consider blind faith.  Faith, in order to be genuine, has to be reasoned out.  It has to be compelling.  We are admonished to test everything, hold all teachings (both inside and outside the Church) up to scripture and ensure their trustworthiness.  And everyone needs to express their faith within the context of a responsible, scripture-based community; so that we are protected from being misled, and can correct misleading that we see in others.  But I believe that each Christ follower can do this, while engaging God on a personal and abandoned level.