Three letters.
I’m in South Korea presently.
Last week I was in Nepal.
Next week I’ll be in South Africa.
These current travels come on the heels of an 8-month period of time during which I travelled to Hawaii, England, Wales, South Africa (the first time), South Korea (the first of two trips in one year), Cambodia, and Thailand.
…
I realize my life at the moment probably sounds a bit “over-the-top” – as if I’m trotting across the planet enjoying an extravagantly and impractically adventurous existence.
Or something.
But I’d like to share the reality of the situation with you…
In the previous 8 months, one word has gripped me, compelled me, and arrested my attention. It’s the word I’ve whispered amidst the pain and shuddering of my own failure. It’s the word I’ve wrapped my heart around when the only thing of which I felt capable was its opposite. It’s the word punctuating the moment of my most vulnerable surrender to the Father. And it’s the word that launched me into this present wild season of adventure and ministry.
The word is three letters long… Ready for it?
It’s yes.
y – e – s.
I’ve honestly had to stop quite often over these past several days in order to wrap my head around my life at the moment. The question bouncing around my brain is this: how did I get here? I mean literally how??
How the heck did I get to South Korea? And Nepal before that? And South Africa one week from now?
Because the obvious truth is: I’m not some impressive darling of the faith – a woman with Esther’s magnificent courage or Ruth’s immovable commitment. I regularly feel weak – like clockwork – beset with recurring doubts and fears. Oh! If you only knew my inner world! You’d see a woman in her mid-twenties with two and a half million lessons yet to learn, a soul full of hunger, a few tender roots of vulnerable hope, a handful of untamed weaknesses, and several staggering failures under my belt. I’m enjoying these present adventures not because I somehow deserve them or have proven myself worthy of them. Goodness gracious, no. I deserve anything but the faithfulness and provision of God.
But He is faithful and extravagant in giving me His provision and Presence anyway.
And here’s where this word – yes – enters my narrative. The most transformative lesson I’ve learned this past year is this: I don’t need to become someone “better,” more “impressive” or more “fixed” than I am right now in order to experience the fullness of the Father’s love and abundance; I don’t have to do anything remarkable to “turn my life around” and become someone impossibly more “put together” than this present me. No, the only thing – the one thing – I must do is say yes to Him. Right now. As I am.
Yes.
Please don’t miss this. I know it might sound like a tired cliche (the idea of giving God our “yes”), but I guarantee you it’s anything but tired. Yes is the one word that has woken up every fiber of my being and liberated me from the chains of my own limitations into the glory of his limitlessness. Too much of my life was spent giving lip service to the indwelling grace and power of Christ while subconsciously assuming I had to first rise to a certain level of faith and discipline before I could actually and immediately experience the reality of Christ’s miraculous power and transformation. It felt for too long like I was on the wrong side of some impossibly wide chasm, staring across the divide at the “impressive Christians” (the ones who have books written about their lives)… those who watch God utterly transform and liberate them, set them ablaze with His love, and work astoundingly through them.
I wanted a life like that. I wanted it badly.
But I assumed the only way of experiencing such a life with Jesus was to “prove myself” in the faith, to put my head down and “get over” all my ever-present flaws, sins, and weaknesses – as if I had to “arrive” at some mythical point of maturity before enjoying a liberated, healed, abundant, and fruitful life with God.
But last fall, in the midst of one of the most broken seasons of my life, that delusion was (thankfully) shattered.
I came to understand in my soul (not merely in an intellectual way, but in a gut-level way), that the cross of Jesus Christ – His death and resurrection – means I never have to waste my energy trying to “arrive” anywhere. The fact is, I’ve already “arrived.” I don’t have to cross that chasm to the other side (where the “impressive” Christians live) because I’m already there, and being there (here!) has nothing to do with how impressive I am. The fact is, Jesus carried me over the divide when He carried the cross and left the grave vacant. Every remarkable and astounding promise of God is – in this moment – a “YES” for me in Christ Jesus, and all I must do is respond to His yes with my yes.
I only have to say yes to Him.
I’m not trying to be simplistic; I’m just being honest.
My life drastically changed when I realized that rather than the Bible being full of truths I had to somehow work hard to incorporate into my life (disciplining myself in order to eventually “live up to them”), it is instead an honest description of my present and immediate reality with God. I just have to agree. I just have to say yes.
But it’s even more personal than that… God is knocking relentlessly and longingly at the door of my heart (and your’s!), whispering over and over that all He wants is to come inside and prepare a feast to enjoy with me, to be with me, to wrap me up in His love. Even in my ugliest, and most unimpressive moments He knocks, intent on coming inside.
And there’s only one little word He’s waiting to hear from me…
I began to grasp this truth in earnest last October, and seven or eight “yes’s” later, I’m here in South Korea speaking to a large group of young people about my miraculous journey to Nepal to share the Love of the Father with the unreached people groups in the Himalayas (fully funded!) when – three weeks before flying out – I had only $20 to my name. Several more “yes’s” and I’m praying with courageous and beautiful cancer patients here in Korea, meeting with Korean missions pastors over lunch to discuss the heart of God for the nations of the world, and listening as my Korean friend earnestly articulates her longing to give her life to God in missions.
Another yes later, and I’ll soon be on my way to South Africa, a nation I assumed I wouldn’t be able to return to until years down the road.
“Yes” has altered my very existence.
Saying yes to God won’t mean the same thing for every one of us – God delights in us each too uniquely for that. And it won’t mean that all of the challenges simply evaporate from our lives. But saying yes will mean that our limits no longer enslave us. It will mean that we no longer have to doggedly chase a foolish and elusive point of “arrival.” It will mean we no longer have to alienate ourselves from the present and immediate power and tenderness of God.
And it will mean that right now we can begin to live the sorts of lives with God about which books will be written…
Whether those books are penned in heaven or here on earth in this age, right now the Father has His hand outstretched towards you and me… He’s not looking for the “impressive” ones, nor the ones who’ve “arrived.” He’s not looking for the “elite.” He’s looking at us – the ones who feel weak and ordinary and hungry – and with smiling eyes and His Voice dripping with the anticipation of Heaven, He’s saying, “Will you let me in? Will you take my hand? There are no more obstacles. I’ve removed them all. There’s nothing you have to prove. I’ve already proven it. There’s no chasm for you to cross. I’ve already carried you to the other side. Will you let me in?”
We need only to say a single word.
Three letters.
My ordinary, flawed life has happily turned upside down with the utterance of that little word.
Now it’s your turn.
I promise you it’s worth it. Better yet, He promises it’s worth it.
Will you say yes?
Oh, people.
As I prepare to leave for Nepal and India in a few short days, I’ve been freshly astonished by the love of friends and family. I mean, really. My heart can’t stop aching with bittersweet joy and tenderness, affection and vulnerability.
I love people.
And I’d like to learn to do so more extravagantly – tossing selfishness to the wind and gladly offering myself to others with clear eyes, pure intentions, and a heart trembling, breaking, and bursting with the love of the Father.
That is what I want to do. That is who I want to be.
In the meantime, my jaw drops and I’m humbled to my knees with gratitude at the love of those around me.
I am in the company of some extraordinarily gracious and selfless people.
God knows I have so much to learn from them.
I have been blessed with life-infusing relationships.
And I dearly hope to become a woman who can offer the same to others.
Further up and further in, friends…
Cover of “Tonight You Belong to Me”
Cover of “Tonight You Belong to Me”
Jamie is one of my closest and dearest friends.
And she happens to be a darlingly talented singer.
Watch this video – click the highlighted title above to view. Enjoy the fine-tuned skill of my friend.
Jamie is on the left, her equally talented friend Katie is on the right with glasses.
Dive.
I wrote the following words 35,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean, en route from Los Angeles to South Korea two months ago. I’d like to share them here because something new and entirely course-altering has been happening inside of me these past several weeks, and these words were the foreshadowing of this current transformation. I can’t easily describe this revolution inside of me, except to say that the cobwebs of drowsy years are being swept from my eyes, and my spirit is coming awake with an electricity and sobriety I’ve never yet known.
I feel that for some time I’ve been standing on the lip of an enormous ledge overlooking the bluest, wildest, most desirable sea… and now – this very moment – I’ve finally jumped off the ledge.
Here are the words I wrote that January day – overcome with awareness that I was writing down the truest part of my own soul – on the back cover of my journal while 7 miles above the Pacific Ocean:
I know to whom I belong. I know what He says of Himself and of me. And frankly, I could care less what any other voice calls me. I am not my reputation, nor my exterior, nor my accomplishments, and I will not live any longer as if I am. I’d rather make what some would call a fool of myself by living with exorbitant trust in my Father – trust that many might find impractical, perhaps even irresponsible. I know no other reality. I’ve asked Him to make me a torch and set me on fire, and I expect Him to do just that. I cannot simply exist. I was made to tremble and dance with the flame and flood of the Living God. I am what I am, and body and soul I am His.
It’s happening. It’s real. And I’m pierced magnificently with the realization that I have sprinted clear through a point of no return.
May it be so for you too, friends.
This Jesus we love is requiring of us our breath, our essence, all that we possess and call our own, our very souls. To surrender all this is to dive headlong into Life and thunder and sea and sky and a Kingdom that has swallowed up death for all time. It means diving into the arms of the Living God.
Body and soul may you find yourself enfolded in those arms today.
Further up and further in.
A brief addendum: Have a listen to the following song, you might find it as stirring as I do:
This little book.
I’m writing a book.
… which probably sounds way cooler than it is.
I’m not trying to climb any best-sellers lists, and – realistically – the finished product will likely never be formally published. In fact, publication is not at all my goal.
Of goals I have two:
1. Honesty
2. Obedience
This “book” (I’d prefer to call it a ‘thesis’ or a ‘story’) is about me. I know that sounds vain, but I don’t mean for it to be. What I do mean for it to be is an honest account of my nearly decade long struggle with an eating disorder, all the lies and fears that birthed it, and the inscrutable Mercy of the Living God who saved me from myself. He is the One who has compelled me to write it all down; and because I feel the breath of His Passion as I write, I want to obey Him by putting my fingers to the keys and typing – as honestly as I can – the narrative of His redemption in my life.
And tonight I have a feeling that I need to share an excerpt. Here. On my blog.
I didn’t think I would do this. I envisioned writing this book and keeping it very much to myself throughout the process; but I have the sense that someone reading this post – perhaps you – will find in these few paragraphs a renewed depth of trust in God, a rekindled certainty that in every hour and in every way He is Good to His children.
I do hope that person is you.
Here it is, friend, an excerpt from my little-writing-project-book-thing:
(This excerpt is written about my life when I was 15 years old – two years into both my eating disorder and high school.)
I wrote in my journal often that year. I wrote out detailed descriptions of my daily exercise regimen. I wrote lists of “acceptable” foods which I was “allowed” to eat. But mostly I wrote to God. I told him often that I knew there was something I was keeping back from Him. Something I was keeping in shadow, something I was clinging to and wouldn’t dare let go of. And all the while – in the deepest deeps within me – I knew that He would ultimately require it of me. He would take from me that thing I was gripping with white knuckles. The shouting majority of me did not want to see that day come, but the whispering sliver of me – the part that was both willing and courageous – insisted that it would be my great deliverance. I mistakenly thought at the time that the “thing” I was holding onto – the thing God was wanting to take from me – was the entirety of my dreams for significance and attention. Filtered down farther, I came to feel on some level that God was primarily wanting to “humble me” by making me lose control of my weight, stop exercising so much, and give up on being different or extraordinary.
I wrestled painfully in my heart with this conclusion. I knew that He would at some point have His way, and that I could not ultimately have mine. But, oh how I wanted it. I was so enormously thirsty for the satisfaction of that gaping need within me – that empty cavern of worth and value and specialness – that I kept plowing along my own path, all the while quite aware that it wasn’t His path, and all the while trying unsuccessfully to forget that fact by plunging into the minutia of my self-made world. What I see now – after years and pain and liberation and unveiling – is that the “thing” I was clinging to and the thing which God wanted to take from me was not all my thirsty desires for worth and significance and value. It was always and only my fear.
There in the heart of my high school years I was confined in a cage of fear. I was ruled by it, compelled by it, chased by it, and coerced by it. Fear was the pair of glasses through which I viewed the world and my own place in it. I was so much like a naked man and woman in a garden long ago who doubted the goodness of their loving Father, supposing that He was withholding the best from them and intending to barricade them from having it. In their fear and pride, they seized their own destinies, and in so doing found a darkness and a torn reality that shredded the paradise of their existence. They became afraid. They hid. They took matters into their own hands. And at fifteen years old, I was reliving the very same plot. I too had experienced the joy of His nearness and expansive hope in my childhood – just as they had in the youth of their days – and I too had traded in that simple trust and outward gaze for the tendrils of fear and its resultant self-absorbed ambitions. Just as they did, I hid from Him, the One who wooed me at the horizon, and I determined that I had to do it all on my own.
My fear told me to resist His plans and interventions in my life – fear told me to avoid a complete surrender to Him because He might just take from me the things I thought I needed most. But it was a ruse and a deception – just like that first deception in Eden. In reality, He came to me not like a cosmic police officer stripping me of my license and issuing me a ticket in an effort to slap me into humility; but rather as a love-sick Father sprinting down the road after me, calling my name, scanning left and right, searching tirelessly to find me in the pit I’d wandered into, all so that He could speak tenderly to me and wipe away the memory of my fears with the river of His love. He only ever wanted to remove my fear and replace it with a Love made perfect; but I wrestled and cried and squirmed under the deception that He was intending to “teach me a lesson” by taking from me the things I wanted most dearly.
I thought I was nursing and cradling and protecting all of my dearest hopes. But I was actually nursing and cradling the poison of fear, unwilling to let it go because I couldn’t yet fathom what might replace it. Here, perhaps, the battle within me raged most evidently: I wanted so desperately to be vulnerable before the Love of God, but I was so very afraid of letting Him love me because of what it might mean, how it might change everything, how it might make me lose control. What I didn’t yet understand is that “losing control” would, in fact, become the most beautiful and delightful liberation of my lifetime.
Dear reader, He comes like a warrior in full strength not to “discipline us into our proper place” nor to punish us in a “Fatherly” way for our shortcomings. No. He comes blazing with furious love, arms outstretched, eyes locked on ours, aching to unleash His torrent of fear-dispelling tenderness over top of us.
That is our God. And that is why I shared from my little book.
Courageous friend, will you believe Him?
May He ever draw you further up and further in.
“I Breathe You in, God”
(click the link above)
It’s nearly 1am in the earliest glimpse of a Sunday morning, and I am loving this song. Hopefully you might as well.
Give it your attention just for a few moments; it’s well worth it.
This is personal.
This is rare. In fact, I’ve never before shared something like this… but today I thought, “Why not give it a go?”
I am about to share a segment from my personal journal – the journal in which all of my uncensored and most honest thoughts are recorded. I’m sharing the following excerpt (written several months ago) because I think someone might relate and hopefully find a bit of encouragement. Even if it is just one person – just you – then the sharing was worth it.
So here it is, from my journal entry on January 6, 2013:
“I’ve had new insights about self-rejection and self-hatred… Both are actually ploys of the enemy to get me to hide from the Presence of God, while tricking me into thinking I am feeling some sort of ‘religious piety’ by being so harshly angry and disappointed with myself for my shortcomings. You see that?! When I fume and mope and self-flagellate and give up and stay away from the Presence of God, I do so because I simply cannot accept that I am so flawed, that I am so inept at fixing myself, that I am so far from the “me” I think I should be… and so I alienate myself from God because I can’t stand to move forward with Him as this present version of me. I end up, in fact, alienating myself from reality, from peace. I choose instead to unleash graceless judgement, animosity, and pessimism upon myself, refusing and shoving aside the tenderness of Christ. I try to hide my shortcomings; I try to beat them out of myself; I try to talk myself out of them; I try to plan and organize and schedule myself away from them; I even try drowning in hopelessness over them. And all the while, I keep my distance from God until I either have my flaws “somewhat under control” or else am so exhausted and desperate in my attempts to control them that I feel on the verge of despair. It is a constant war with myself. And it is an endless closed loop to nowhere. I have spent a decade of my life waging war with myself, hoping desperately to erase the unseemly or “shameful” parts of myself. Consequently, I’ve lived too often in a state of self-rejection and distancing myself from God (because I couldn’t stand my failures and weaknesses, and I assumed He must feel the same way about me)… and round and round the carousel I went: firmly fixing my attention on overcoming some flaw or sin issue, wallowing in self-pity and anger when I felt I was failing at it, triumphantly pleased with myself when I’d seemed to finally “fix” myself, then crushed with fear and anxiety the moment an old issue (one I’d thought I’d fixed) seemed to crop up again… I’d then doubt and begin to think that I was about to spiral into an oblivion of all my former struggles, so I’d try to calm myself down again and set about firmly fixing my attention on overcoming some flaw or sin issue (and so the cycle would repeat). All these machinations, self-improvement efforts, and earnest attempts to fix myself are useless, and God wants none of them for me or from me! I don’t have to wage war with myself any longer! I don’t have to exhaust myself by my efforts to cover, hide, or fix myself! I don’t have to alienate and abuse the parts of me that I’m ashamed of! I don’t have to separated myself from reality! I don’t have to cower before and serve a delusion of what I “should be”! I don’t have to hide from God in my moments of disgust! NO. What God has always wanted and wants is simply for me to come home to Him, precisely as I now am – flaws and all, compulsions and all, insecurities and all. Just like the prodigal, He just wants me home. He wants me, honest and vulnerable and uncovered before Him. And coming to Him in that way means being at peace with myself, accepting the reality of what and who I am at this very moment. When I lay down my weapons of torture and punishment against myself and simply learn to be in vulnerability before Him, it is then that I hear Him call me His beloved daughter. It is then that I am pierced with the tender and costly and gracious love spilled all over the cross of Christ. It is then that I am me before God so that He may be Himself in me; and I no longer shrink back from Him, distracted from His Presence by the smoke and mirrors of my own efforts at self-improvement. I am filled with my truest sense of purpose and the fullest measure of God when I cease warring with myself, accept myself as I am, and offer myself as such to Him. He wants me, not my efforts.“
And there it is. My journal.
Further up and further in.
Hear the quote.
Hello after several weeks, little blog.
Hello, 2013.
And hello, dear friends.
Can you feel that? The electricity, the tremble, the whispering breeze?
He’s real. He’s here. He’s active.
God is in this moment setting about doing the very thing you thought impossible. He is accomplishing the one desire you secretly utter with tears and pleadings. He is stoking your few simmering coals. He is bidding your weary, dry bones to rise and receive life. He is opening His arms to you, safe as a fortress and big as the universe.
Aslan is on the move.
Of nothing else am I so sure.
And tonight I’d like to share something with you, something I’ve not yet shared on my blog…
I’m quite a fan of reading aloud. I enjoy both being read to and reading for others – it seems to make words come alive with a pulse and a glorious weightiness. So I decided that rather than just copying and pasting the text of a certain quote into this entry, I would record myself reading it. Maybe when you hear the words audibly they’ll carry a fresh spark for you, maybe they’ll resonate a little more deeply. I certainly hope so. The excerpt I’ve chosen to read was written by Mike Yaconelli, and every word of it describes to a tee my own journey these past three months. I’ve taken the liberty of inserting my own name where Mike originally placed his, and I’d encourage you to listen to the words in an equally personal way. You might just relate.
If you do relate, may another Voice overtake mine as you listen… May the voice of God speak quieter than silence and louder than all of the noise and clamor in your life. And may you hear Him calling you His beloved.
Here’s the link for the audio: https://soundcloud.com/emily-timmer/a-quote-from-mike-yaconelli
…
A brief note: In 4 short days I fly to Southern California – the beginning of another whirlwind adventure with Jesus and a few good friends. During this six week trip, our little team will minister in a variety of ways (teaching, prayer, discipleship, etc.) in California, South Korea, Thailand, and Cambodia. If you’re reading this, and you’re stirred to pray for us, I’d be delighted to have your support before the Father. We need it. And I deeply appreciate it. Your prayers for open doors, Spirit-infused transformation in each place we stay, and the unleashing of God’s love and presence are a mighty thing.
Lastly, thank you. For reading. For loving. For your friendship. Each of you.
Let’s look to the horizon. Let’s venture further up and further in.
Much love to you all.
-e
Secret Threads.
The. following. quote.
Tell me you relate to it. Tell me it makes you nod your head and exhale a glad and earnest “That’s me!”
Give it a read:
You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw — but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of — something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat’s side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it — tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest — if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself — you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for”. We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.
Yes.
Yes times a dozen dozens.
Thank you once again, Clive Staples Lewis. Your words describe the hidden parts of me I haven’t been able to articulate.
That indefinable thing we so desire – that secret thread – is the signature of God written uniquely with flame and breath upon each of our hearts. Sometimes sparks fly and hearts knit when we meet another who is stabbed with the same peculiar version of desire that so possesses us, and sometimes we feel it alone. Either way, it weaves itself through the very epicenter of our existence.
As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
(Psalm 42:1-2)
May your thread lead straight to Him, and may you have the privilege of sharing its secret with a few others whose yearnings resemble your own.
Further up and further in, friends…
Quotes and Nutcrackers.
Consider the following quote, found in the opening pages of “Abba’s Child,” by Brennan Manning. If you get a chance: read the book. Read it. Just do.
Brennan pens these words as if they are spoken from the lips of Christ directly to my heart, to your heart:
Acknowledge and accept who I want to be for you: a Savior of boundless compassion, infinite patience, unbearable forgiveness, and Love that keeps no score of wrongs. Quit projecting onto Me your own feelings about yourself. At this moment your life is a bruised reed and I will not crush it, a smoldering wick and I will not quench it. You are in a safe place.
Now read that quote again. I certainly had to.
… And maybe once (or thrice) more for good measure.
I must allow those words to steep inside of me for a good long while… Because: He really is saying such things to us right here and right now.
Acknowledge and accept who I want to be for you: a Savior of boundless compassion, infinite patience, unbearable forgiveness, and Love that keeps no score of wrongs. Quit projecting onto Me your own feelings about yourself. At this moment your life is a bruised reed and I will not crush it, a smoldering wick and I will not quench it. You are in a safe place.
(See what I did there? I was sneaky. I made you read it one more time… heh heh.)
________________________________________________________________
Also… Merry Christmas (a few hours late)! I spent my day running in the frigid rain, eating homemade fondue with adorable miniature forks, being pelted with Nerf darts by my two married brothers (and my dad), watching my niece twirl in her glitter-blinged princess gown, eating a wee little bit of prime rib (while eating a huge massive portion of soft bread and roasted potatoes), singing my family’s favorite song (about an Aloha Turtle… seriously), reminiscing about that one time I suddenly threw up in the middle of choir class in grade 7 (…… and swallowed it), and also (obviously) relaxing on the ground with my Nutcracker friends – as the following photo testifies:
Now that you’ve seen that strange and unsettling photo, I’d like to move on to the next order of business…
There’s a quote I’d like to share with you. An excellent one:
Acknowledge and accept who I want to be for you: a Savior of boundless compassion, infinite patience, unbearable forgiveness, and Love that keeps no score of wrongs. Quit projecting onto Me your own feelings about yourself. At this moment your life is a bruised reed and I will not crush it, a smoldering wick and I will not quench it. You are in a safe place.
…… gotcha!!! 😉 It’s so abundantly worth half a dozen reads.
Merry Christmas, dear friends.
May His love sweep into your heart like the fresh breath of spring.
Further up and Further in.
Grief, love, and faces.
“The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.
But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands love is now
mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps the greater.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Love and grief have mingled deeply in my life this year. Perhaps for you also.
I know, too, that love and grief linger heavily in Connecticut this Christmas. In the aftermath of the unthinkable crime committed in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, the following poem was written by Cameo Smith (in the style of “Twas the Night before Christmas”). When I first read it, I wept. The Newtown school shooting shocked all of us… I remember hearing the initial reports and collapsing in tears as the reality of loss and horror washed over me. I cried, too, for the families whose pain was unimaginably intense: 20 of the 26 victims were only 6 or 7 years old. Read the following poem. Let your grief be girded with the love of the Father, and pray the same for every heart immediately impacted by this tragedy – for “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” (Ps. 34:18)
Twas’ 11 days before Christmas, around 9:38,
when 20 beautiful children stormed through heaven’s gate.
Their smiles were contagious, their laughter filled the air.
They could hardly believe all the beauty they saw there.
They were filled with such joy, they didn’t know what to say.
They remembered nothing of what had happened earlier that day.
“Where are we?” asked a little girl, as quiet as a mouse.
“This is heaven.” declared a small boy. “We’re spending Christmas at God’s house.”
When what to their wondering eyes did appear,
but Jesus, their savior, the children gathered near.
He looked at them and smiled, and they smiled just the same.
Then He opened His arms and He called them by name.
And in that moment was joy, that only heaven can bring.
Those children all flew into the arms of their King.
And as they lingered in the warmth of His embrace,
one small girl turned and looked at Jesus’ face.
And as if He could read all the questions she had,
He gently whispered to her, “I’ll take care of mom and dad.”
Then He looked down on earth, the world far below,
He saw all of the hurt, the sorrow, and woe.
He closed His eyes and He outstretched His hand,
“Let My power and presence re-enter this land!”
“May this country be delivered from the hands of fools”
“I’m taking back my nation. I’m taking back my schools!”
Then He and the children stood up without a sound.
“Come now my children, let me show you around.”
Excitement filled the space, some skipped and some ran,
all displaying enthusiasm that only a small child can.
And I heard Him proclaim as He walked out of sight,
“In the midst of this darkness, I AM STILL THE LIGHT.”
AMEN.
In the shadow of such a monstrous tragedy, I am reminded that people matter more than any idea or thing or possession or object on this planet. Jesus certainly thinks so.
And as this year draws to a close, I agree with Tolkien: “though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps the greater.” Love has the stubborn ability to grow even in tragedy and pain.
This year I have at times loved others well, and at other times I’ve used the name “love” for what was really only my selfishness and compulsion… wounding those who had loved me so well. God, help me – I want to love more deeply and selflessly next year. Like my Father. Like His Son.
I pray that God mercifully heals our wounds as this year comes to an end.
I pray that He rescues us from the selfishness we at times plunged into during these previous 12 months.
I pray that He redeems and renews the injured relationships in our lives.
I pray that He allows the ever-increasing tenderness of His love to grow up out of our grief.
I pray that “He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:16-19).
Further up and further in.
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2012… Friends, faces, and memories from this previous year of my life:
At 2am, I forgot.
I sat on a couch last night at 2am, and had the extraordinary privilege of forgetting myself. Those are my favorite times, honestly. I think we really and truly become ourselves – our best selves – in the moments we are least concerned with ourselves. God seems to have given us this divinely mysterious tic as human beings: the beauty within us grows exponentially the less we care about being beautiful and the more we lose ourselves in His beauty.
We were made to reflect the thing we stare at longest and hardest. If that things is myself, the reflection will be full of frustration, stagnancy, inadequacy, and dissatisfaction. Eventually I will shrivel. It might take years, but inevitably I will run dry and all the capacity for God and glory that was carved into my spirit at my creation will be left barren. I will be a shell with no fullness. I will be myself without God, which is no self at all. But if I lock eyes with Him, if I look at the very One for whom my eyes were blessed with sight, the story is altogether different. I explode. I breathe. I radiate. I dance. I am most myself because I have left off obsessing over myself.
It is the realest of realities that “Whoever seeks to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” (Luke 17:33).
Which brings me back to last night… The couch… 2am.
Jamie, Kristina, and I decided that nothing sounded more appealing at 2am than sitting in Jamie’s TV room (in the dark) with a guitar, our voices, and a few songs. These women are two incredible friends – and that’s a certified understatement. We’d just spent some time praying for several serious matters and decided worship was the only option for us in the wee hours of the morning. Sleep would have to wait.
So Jamie’s guitar accompanied the three of us into the TV room, and we sat in the dark with our few songs. I wasn’t familiar with one of the first songs they chose to sing. Thank God I wasn’t. Instead of joining them, I listened.
And as I listened my heart began to swell with an unswerving awareness – God was among us. More accurately, God was within us spilling into every corner of the room. Within a few moments, the two voices of my friends seemed to shake and shift the air itself. I forgot the insecurity that crept over me earlier in the evening. I forgot my nagging fears. I forgot my dissatisfaction with certain circumstances. I forgot my little list of expectations. And I remembered something… In the subtlest storm of inspiration, I remembered that this world – this universe – revolves around Jesus Christ. Not me.
Not me. Not ever.
The honesty and the longing for God in those two voices – Jamie and Kristina’s – was an irresistible invitation to lose myself in order that I might find the treasure for which I was formed. The Lion. The King. The Man.
Jesus.
It’s simple, really. And complex, completely. It comes down to one crux: will I fix my eyes on me or on Him? My answer to that question works itself out over a thousand little moments and choices in my lifetime – it expresses itself a million different ways over my various seasons of life. But in the midst of the complexities of my daily existence, the staggering simplicity of this foundational question cannot be moved: will I have me or will I have Him?
At 2am last night, the choice became easy. I forgot about me, and dove straight into the great and endless ocean of Him.
I pray earnestly that you and I can have those moments of self-forgetfulness more often… perhaps one day often enough that the moments string themselves into days, and the days become years.
Because a life of forgetting me is a life of genuinely becoming myself.
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Jamie and Kristina don’t know I’m sharing the following sound clip, but I decided that I simply had to. I left my phone on last night, recording some of the worship. The clip here is the very one that moved me to write this blog post. I’ve listened to it a dozen times today already. It might not speak to you in precisely the same way, but I’m sharing it nonetheless. May its unrehearsed and spontaneous gravity, beauty, and vulnerability fill you up with more of God Himself (it is so worth listening to all 4 minutes as their voices build into the song):
All the little pieces.
I remember the plane banking a little to the right, affording me a breathtaking view of the Big Island. I clutched my iPod in my right hand and finished the last several words in my journal with my left. Setting my pen down, I pondered the date: the 7th of March. A smile stole over my lips… I’d returned. Almost a year to the date that I had departed, I was back again. In Hawaii.
I remember opening my eyes and shivering in the damp chill. Condensation hung on the canvas above me, and my air mattress was flat – like flat flat. Two spiders made their leggy way across my sleeping bag – way too close to my face – and I could hear the wind outside as it whistled and whipped around my tent. Three minutes later – after escaping my flat-mattress cocoon and donning one of three sweatshirts I’d packed – I slipped my head out of my tent and emerged. Into the rain. Onto a mud-riddled field. In England.
I remember running because I wanted to, even though the grade of the slope was something steeper than steep. The rocky, treeless vista to my right dipped down and away, into the deep blue of the sea. I could see the snakelike curve of the breakwater far below me, carving itself through the water and reaching its end at the white sentinel – the lighthouse. To my left the mountain layered itself up and up until it reached it’s final crest, it’s respectable summit. I kept running up. Towards that summit overlooking the sea and the horizon and the harbor. In Wales.
I remember resting my chin on my hand and leaning my forehead into the Volkswagen window. Some mood-specific song (I think it was Coldplay’s Paradise) was turned up to a heart-churning volume as we sped like an arrow through the desert. The sinking sun bathed the valley around us with its final flame of the day – fire and gold – and it seemed like the whole world was contained within that one blazing and bold sunset. In the desert. In South Africa.
Hawaii. England. Wales. South Africa.
A year of chasing the horizon.
2012 whisked me around the globe, grew me up in a dozen ways, slapped some sense into me, saw me take an enormous tumble, and smoothed out a few more jagged edges of my pride.
I remember the bright flashes of this passing year, the illuminated memories that jump like sparks – the exotic travels, the searing stabs, the poignant moments, the hilarity, the wildness, the thrills. And when silence plays its soundtrack – when my heart is as still as it can be – I remember other things too. Up through the sparks of a hundred flashier memories come all the little pieces of God that have dropped like seeds of glory into my open hands this year.
2012 was not merely another marker in a dreary slog towards figuring out my “career” or trying to “accomplish something successful” in my life. No, in fact I’m learning that I could care less what noteworthy and socially-expected things I check off some to-do list.
I am not my achievements. I am not my reputation. I am not my successes, nor my failures. I am not what other people’s opinions label me.
I am a woman with a thousand unique pieces of glory in my hands – ready like flaming arrows to pierce the darkness around me – and with a God inside of me who has defined me not by what I do or don’t do, but by How He feels for me.
God loves me. He loves me. He even likes me. Crazier still, he enjoys me.
If I had done some astounding and incredible things to earn or win His love, I’d be pretty focused right now on anxiously redoubling my efforts to stay loveable, to keep Him interested and happy, to keep His affections.
But no such thing is necessary. Heck no. He loves me because He wants to, because it’s who He is, because it’s why He gave me breath. And He won’t ever stop.
He sent me on a plane ride to Hawaii, to a tent in England, to a mountain in Wales, and to a South African desert because in each new place and season He had another little piece of glory – a piece of Himself – waiting there for me like a treasure.
I used to think God was more or less like a divine businessman: carrying out the transaction of the cross in order to cancel my debt and unleash blessings through a measured program of trials, testing, and obedience.
But now I’m learning that God is nothing like that. He is the tender and fiercely loving Father with a whimsical glint in His eye and a passionate eagerness to surprise me with His creativity and loving-kindness. He has pieces of Himself waiting for me all over this planet, I think. And He wants nothing more than to go out and discover them with me. Every time I hear His voice and respond, I’m lifting open hands to receive a new and fresh bit of glory and wonder from Him.
Friend, it’s true for you too. God has tucked away a thousand unique little pieces of Himself all over this planet. And they are meant for you. You don’t exist to carry out bland religious transactions with a business-like, formally-polite God. You exist to hold onto your Father’s hand as He whisks you away into the powerful and surprising adventure of His explosive goodness. You exist for a treasure hunt.
And whether you find yourself in Hawaii, England, Wales, South Africa, or any other place on this planet, you were made to be filled up with all these little pieces… pieces of glory and of God Himself.
2013 is just around the corner. I dare you to live, to really live. I dare you to toss your fear out the window, take the hand of God, and go find all those little pieces.
This voice.
I talk so much. Inside of my own head I speak ten thousand words – the constant procession of my thoughts. Sometimes the words I speak to myself carry in them little deposits of Truth, of Christ, of His words. Other times, my thoughts are guilt-ridden or unnerving or harsh or lethargically pessimistic.
And sometimes the thoughts in my head aren’t mine. Sometimes they are so startlingly un-me that I burst into tears because I know God is cupping my face in His hands and talking to me directly, right down deep into my mind and spirit.
I often cry when this happens because the things He says are precisely what I wanted most desperately to hear, without having a clue I so needed to hear them. He says things to me that come out of left field to pierce me clean through with their slender and severe gentleness.
And before I can even process these startling words from Him, I melt into an instant reaction of tears – an emotional responsiveness to Him that feels almost involuntary. I think His words touch places within me that I have never been willing or able to expose, they uncover me before His gaze, and my vulnerability feels at once delightful and painful.
These are the best and most real moments I’ve had on this earth – the moments the Father speaks to me with clear and intimate precision, with words that flood into my innermost being and linger there like a whispering hurricane.
I am so vulnerable in those moments. I am so uncovered. All of my self-made garments of shame, doubt, guilt, performance, and pessimism slip off my shoulders, and I exist before God as the truest Emily – the Emily who isn’t hiding or proving something or trying to convince or impress.
And so come the tears.
I am painfully and beautifully and thankfully laid bare of my dozen props, masks, and suits of suffocating armor.
… Vulnerable before the Father.
And His words dive into the center of my being, living and crackling with His energetic and overwhelming love.
God talks, and everything changes.
Today, I want nothing so much as for me and for you – for each of us – to hear His voice.
Here is a place to begin:
Three.
A deer, a dear, and a miracle..
Tonight, I’m reflecting on a dozen facets of God’s faithfulness to me. And I’m sharing three of them…
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The deer.
Two years ago these elegant creatures became extraordinarily precious to me through an intricate series of events – painful and redemptive… Miraculous even. In a wrenching season of life, God chose to speak to me through these gentle animals. And 8 weeks ago, He revived the sign of the deer for me. It’s a good story. A great one, in fact. Perhaps one day I’ll share it.
For now, my heart jumps at the sight of these beauties, and the secret poignancy of the deer exists like a whisper between my heart and God’s.
He is so very near to us, drawing close to speak softly into our ears of the lavish redemption and grace He has in store.
Be eager for your future, friend. In Christ, it carries extraordinary joy.
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Next, a dear 😉
I have a friend named Kristina. She is the sort of friend everyone needs, but few have. I can look her square in the eyes and tell her all of my ugliest mistakes and failures in a jumbled mess of raw, vulnerable honesty. And in those eyes – looking steadily back into mine – I see a smile and an unequivocal embrace. It’s as if her eyes say, “That’s it?” This woman has received me a dozen times (after some failure or flounder) with the warmest, sincerest, most guileless love I’ve yet seen on this planet.
She is worth knowing. I wish I could introduce her to every one of you.
But in lieu of direct introductions, I’ll share her blog – well worth some lingering: http://krisashby.wordpress.com/
(Kristina and I on our way to a friend’s wedding yesterday… clearly being unfairly cool 😉 )
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I read through a few of my old journals tonight.
Journals written in the thick of an eating disorder.
Journals written out of the pain of compulsion.
Journals written with an unbearable ache to be free.
And I sat on the floor of my room thinking that I am living a miracle. God knows I’m living a miracle. I should not be free like this. I should not have peace like this. I should not be so at rest. Not after years of drilling a thousand compulsions into my own brain. Not after weaving my own suffocating cocoon of fear and insecurity.
But here I am. I am free. I look at my own reflection in the mirror, and I see what was missing for ten years: I see peace.
I could cry over this reality. Right now. While I type.
There is nothing so sweet – so intimate – as realizing you were never left to yourself. Not ever. Not even in the moments you doggedly ran from everything that God wanted for you.
He is more stubborn than we could dream of being, and He will give us what our hearts yearn for most ravenously: He will give us Himself and all the glorious freedom that is found in His arms.
My face is no longer sunken and hollowed from an eating disorder… It is no longer etched with creases of constant anxiety and fear.
This peace is my miracle. And God will not stop until you find your’s, however impossible you now think it.
Further up and further in, friends.
These lyrics.
Tonight.
One song describes with eerie and precise accuracy what I am feeling.
Listen to it, to the words – written as if God Himself is speaking them over us. I’ve included the portion of the lyrics that resonates with me so deeply tonight; I’ve then included the audio of the song itself…
This chest is full of memories
Of gold and silver tears
I’ll give you more to own than all of this
I’ll give you more than years
For you were once a child of innocence
And I see you just the same
Your burdens couldn’t win or lose a thing
Oh, I’d tell you once again
But you’re always on the run
Slow your breath down
Just take it slow
Find your heart now, oh
You can trust and love again
Slow your breath down
Just take it slow
Find your smile now, oh
You can trust and love again
Come memories – painful though they may be – come burdens, come lost innocence, come racing heart, or come loneliness… Redemption has won me, and His grace cannot – and will not ever – be undone. I can relax my grip on this pain inside of me, and I can release it to Him – open hands, eager gaze. I am not alone. With my face to the floor, His presence enfolds me. And I can breathe.
Goodnight, friends. Slow your breath down; You are not alone.
Step Up, and applaud.
Last night I watched “Step Up Revolution.”
Yes, I did. Really.
The Step Up film franchise (this was the 4th and latest installment) will never – ever – win awards. The dialogue and the acting are… sub-par (and that’s kind). Consider these juicy quotes from “Step Up Revolution” –
Emily: “I wish I could just break the rules.”
Sean: “Then break the rules.”Emily: “You dance?”
Sean: “Don’t you know how this works? I hold a drink in my hand, you dance around me, make me look good…”
You know a film’s script has … um, problems… when a Google search for “memorable quotes from Step Up Revolution” turns up those two gems.
Ok, so the actors deliver their lines with a painful lack of skill at times. So the script feels like it was recycled from a grade 6 drama class. So the plot has holes the size of Oklahoma. Clearly.
But the dancing… Mm yes, the dancing.
That is cool. Very cool.
Which brings me to the reason I’ve included “Step Up Revolution” in a blog entry…
“Aha!” moments often come to us in unpredictable forms, and as I watched the movie last night, I had one such moment. In the end, my revelation had little to do with the actual substance of the film (which only served as a spark for the thought) and so much more to do with life – real life. My life.
God can speak to us in the most curious ways. My revelation occurred as follows:
The flash mob dance scenes in the film are eye-popping. So much talent is on display in each sequence that I felt the need to rewind and re-watch more than a few times. If you enjoy dancing (and can laugh your way through mechanical acting and dialogue), this movie will indeed entertain you. But beyond entertainment, I found myself reminiscing as I watched the film. I remembered a time in my life when such a movie would have made me want nothing so much as to dance like that... to be that talented… to be that good at something so cool and riveting and impressive. In that season of my life – a long season actually – my appreciation of the dancers in the film would have been mingled with a streak of envy, with a disappointed reflection on my own inferiority, with a desire for that kind of impressive and noteworthy talent. Perhaps you can relate. Perhaps not.
But as I reflected on that portion of my life – the years between 12 and 22 – I felt something fresh and strong and free enfold me. I watched the dance sequences in the film and a delight grew in me – I was having a moment with God right in the middle of Step Up Revolution.
It dawned on me that receiving the applause – in the long run – is not nearly so beautiful nor enjoyable nor delightfully satisfying as giving the applause. What I mean is that as a human being, I was fundamentally made to lose myself in the glorious-ness of something bigger than me, greater than me, something outside of me. There have been a few moments in my life when I’ve been widely noticed or admired or praised. But always at the back end of those moments – or at the corner of them – the page curls up to reveal the actual scene behind the thin veneer of self-exaltation and self-importance; and that actual scene is the queasy, center-of-the-heart awareness that things are dangerously off-kilter with me at the center, perhaps off-kilter enough to fly into chaos at any moment and wreck the universe of my existence. Human praise in that sense is perilous. I was not formed to receive highest praise. I was formed to give it.
Everything inside of me is wired to experience ultimate delight through worshiping rather than being worshiped.
This liberating realization began to wash over my mind, and I understood afresh that the most excellent and winsome trait in a human being is self-forgetful adoration of that which is ultimately beautiful – God Himself.
In my finest moments of success – my greatest triumphs and my most soaring achievements – I have never failed to feel the inevitable post-success let-down that leaves me withered and fatigued in spirit. The praise is never loud nor long enough to satisfy me. The compliments are never profuse nor sincere enough to stockpile. The attention always dissipates before my heart is remotely satisfied. In the center of the very most and best that that this world has to offer me, I find myself invariably turning my gaze, with a soul-deep ache, towards the horizon – the burning line of sea and sky that represents everything beyond and outside of my tired sphere of self-obsession. This world’s finest moments of fame and glory ultimately only hollow me out with desire for blissful, self-forgetful adoration of Christ. It is the perfect definition of anticlimax – my yearning for all the world has to offer soars to incalculable heights the more I inch towards it, step towards it, run towards it, then sprint towards it. But the moment I catch my breath in its center, it is only a hamster’s wheel to nowhere, and round and round I run. Empty. Exhausted.
But the horizon, ah – it whispers, soft and faint and light. And in turning from myself to Him, I find myself.
Only in the moments when I’m caught up in the tidal wave of His worthiness do my shackles fall completely, leaving me to run and jump and dance and laugh and smile and sprint… all the things I’m happiest doing.
I’ll say it again: receiving the applause – in the long run – is not nearly so beautiful nor enjoyable nor delightfully satisfying as giving the applause.
So I watched the rest of “Step Up Revolution” and thoroughly enjoyed the talent of its dancers. But more importantly, I felt another layer of self-obsession gently carved away by the Father. There’s much more carving yet to do – I’ve still got so much me in me – but during a poorly acted dance film I reveled in the glory that on this day there is more of Him and less of me than ever before.
I’m learning how to lift my eyes to that horizon.
I’m learning how to applaud.
And I can thank “Step Up Revolution” for giving me something to clap about…. sort of.
😉
That one “top ten” thing.
January arrives in 21 days… which means everyone and their nephew will soon begin posting “top ten” lists. You know those lists. Examples include: “top ten new Indie-pop-reggae-metal-fusion bands of 2012,” or “top 10 restaurants of 2012 serving bacon maple fruit loop ice cream,” or “top 10 five-foot-six, boy singers of 2012 not named Justin Beiber” … etc.
The point is: top ten lists are popular. And I can see why. They are concise, loaded, intriguing, and they evoke strong reactions of agreement/disagreement from us. So I’m hopping onto the bandwagon. I’m listing my tens this year, for God and glory (or… perhaps just for intrigue and pleasure).
Shall we begin with music? Yes, let’s.
Compiled here – and unveiled for the first time everrrrr – is my super personal (does that make you more eager to read it?) list of…
TOP 10 SONGS THAT DEFINED MY EXPERIENCE OF 2012
(the following songs – whether they are excellent or mediocre – cause the strongest evocations of this past year’s memories for me)…
10. “King and Lionheart” by Of Monsters and Men
This song makes me think of sweaty, satisfying midday runs into the hillsides of Kona – upward slopes to my left and green coast dipping down into endless turqoise sea to my right.
9. “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons
Listen to it. Tell me if it doesn’t raise your pulse and your courage level just a little. Maybe it won’t. But for me? It evokes all the risk and adventure of my 2012.
8. “Anna Sun” by Walk the Moon
I can’t really explain the effect that this song has on me. At 25 seconds, when the drums come in, I feel the pulse of my 2012… the pulse of the unknown.
7. “Just a Dream” by Nelly
…. Don’t ask. 😉 It’s not all that explainable.
6. “Tightrope” by Walk the Moon
South Africa overtakes my thoughts every time the driving rhythm of this little number gets rolling. I think of road-trips, game reserves, the Wild Coast, Cadbury cashew and coconut chocolate bars, sunsets in the Karoo, and Horlicks shakes at Wimpy (the South African equivalent of Denny’s).
5. “Hold Me Together” by Loud Harp
Press play, and I’m instantly back inside my tent (alone) on a dark and soggy English field with rain pouring over the canvas above me and spiders spinning webs in its corners, while 3 dozen existential questions swirl in my mind.
4. “Storm All Around You” by IHOP KC Worship & Jon Thurlow
This song represents my 2 month obsession with climbing Welsh mountains. I left it on repeat – hike after hike – as I stood on some bluff of Holyhead Mountain (in North Wales) this past summer, staring into the blue mist of the West and lifting my arms to feel the fierce summer winds blow through me.
3. “Fill Me Up” – Jesus Culture Awakening: Live from Chicago
Every year needs its worship anthem. This was mine in 2012. Pumps me every time.
2. “Coming Home” by Diddy
This makes me chuckle. What doesn’t fit on this list (other than Nelly)? Oh duh – the song by Sean Combs (“P Diddy” or “Puff Daddy” … whatever). But, curious as it may seem, this song rides in all the way at #2. Yessir. I can’t necessarily choose which songs carry the most memories for me. It just … happens. And this one is LOADED with memories. I’ll leave it at that. Trust me… and congratulations, Puff P Diddy Daddy Papa… whatever.
1. “Hide Me Away” by Loud Harp
200 memories storm to mind in the melodies here. But I’ll suffice it to say this song was my fortress of 2012… I returned to it often in darker, sadder moments… finding in it the comfort of the Father. I’ll be honest and tell you that some (or many) tears were shed in the company of this song.
p.s. Because I really stink at limiting myself to 10 songs, here are my 3 “Honorable Mentions” that barely missed the cut:
- “Paper Planes” by M.I.A. (Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack)
- “Girl on Fire” by Alicia Keys
- “Paradise” by Coldplay
Thank you, and goodnight.
This hope.
I’ve been feeling tugged these past few days towards a dim perspective… that slow, shadowy creep of pessimism: the expectation that certain things will never be restored, renewed, or returned. It feels so realistic. It feels rational. It feels a bit obvious even.
This shade of pessimism is a safe place in which to hunker down – safe because the risk of being wrong, the risk of disappointment, is not so frightening. If I expect the worst, anything even incrementally better is a bonus, right? Expecting the worst isn’t risky, it isn’t dicey. I can theoretically protect my heart from disappointment by disappointing it myself with my own expectations before anything beyond my control can disappoint it (if that makes sense).
But there’s a doggedly persistent part of my brain that just won’t have it. This part of my brain – or perhaps my heart – knows (and it knows well) that all these gloomy self-protective mechanisms have nothing to do with Truth or Christ. This part of me knows that whether it’s risky or not, I am made – created as a new creation in Jesus – to hope.
Hope is my new language. Hope is my currency. Hope is my sustenance.
And no matter how willfully (with self-protective intentions) I try to snuff out my hope in a few key areas – while keeping it alive in others – the flicker of that flame will not be dimmed. Hope is the heartiest and least quenchable flame I’ve ever encountered. It won’t go out. It simply won’t.
So I play little mind games… I say to myself, “Em, don’t ever expect that to happen, don’t look for that to be restored… You blew it. You ruined it. And, while God can make you new, He can’t restore that.” I think I’m being so reasonable and practical when I think such things. I think I’m building a little padded room around my heart to protect it from the risk of disappointment… the risk of hope.
But the flame licks at that padded cell, and hope blazes once more within me – unquenchable.
And my heart jumps with longing for all the redemption, healing, restoration, wholeness, and beauty that seems downright impractical, illogical, and undeserved. I know very well the risk of expecting very certain and specific situations to unfold in very certain and specific ways – that risk (of disappointment and disillusionment when things turn out differently) is the very thing that repels me from hoping for particular outcomes. That risk is what drives me under the shadow of pessimism.
But, in Christ, it is not an “either, or.” My options are not either sink yourself into pessimism to protect your heart from the sting of disappointment, or set all your hopes upon a specific and particular set of outcomes. No. Both of those paths are dead-ends, and neither nurtures the true and blazing flame of hope. The one is a refusal to let the optimism of God permeate my heart, and the other is a prideful posturing that says I must have this exactly as I want it or I will be crushed.
Hope is neither of these.
Real, sturdy, red-hot hope is something far less predictable and far more exhilarating. True hope – the hope born of God – looks at my tomorrow and has the guts to be honest, to pour out – with tears perhaps – my desires before the Lord. It doesn’t shy away from telling Him that I so deeply want this relationship healed and restored or that long-held dream revived and fulfilled. Honesty becomes this hope. But so, too, does surrender. Indeed, this hope is clear-headed enough to know that I am often very short-sighted in my knowledge of what is best for me. The hope born of God has open and lifted hands – lifting up to Him every dearly held desire and tenderly nursed dream, and waiting with palms spread for whatever Good and generous gift He will give.
And friends, His gifts will always be Good and generous. That is the foundation of our very existence upon this earth – the overabundant and self-sacrificing Love of God: the Father who killed His Son on our behalf… the Father who runs out to embrace the prodigal, placing a robe on his back, shoes on his feet, and a ring on his finger.
Hope knows this about God.
Hope expects nothing less from Him than the deepest and purest satisfaction and delight.
But hope also knows things might look differently than I now prefer or expect them to look.
That is the unpredictable nature of hope; we are not in control. Our hearts leap with certain longings, with desires, with expectations… and we hand those longings, desires, and expectations right up to the Father, as expectant children. He tenderly allows us to whisper into His ear what we’d like, how we’d prefer things to go, and then He sweeps us up into His arms and does the thing that is very best for us.
Our lives are secure in His arms, but they are not predictable. We are safe, our specific dreams are not. But the Father will not allow us to crawl under the shadow of pessimism – our hope blazes on.
So I conclude with this thought… for myself and for whoever might relate…
Let’s stop expecting the worst. But let’s stop, too, setting all our hopes on one particular outcome. Instead, let’s courageously step out into the warm light of the Father’s optimism – with full awareness that we don’t know the specifics of our tomorrows. I want to be honest with Him about my deepest desires for restoration and redemption and healing. I want to offer Him a vulnerable heart – stripped of its self-protective strategies – that throbs with desire for His good plans for me, whatever they might look like. Do you want the same?
Friend, let’s nurture this flame of hope. In Christ, the end is always better than the beginning; tomorrow always bears a few more shades of glory than today. Of that we can be sure…
Father, I will not dwell in the dim shadows of pessimism any longer. Take me by the hand and draw me out into Your warm rays.
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
For hope, for life, for Christ.
Clive in tiny font.
This morning I woke up and thought to myself as I avoided the transition from my bed to the chilliness outside of it, “What could be more enjoyable than looking up C.S. Lewis quotes and reading them in -1 font (seriously so tiny) on my iPhone screen?”
I decided that nothing seemed as enjoyable as that. Not even breakfast… yet.
So I spent an hour squinting at, and scrolling through, the world’s itty bittiest font. Here are the beloved fruits of my labor – a few choice quotes from the mind of Clive Staples Lewis. They are well worth mulling over:
Mr. Bonhoeffer.
I’ve just begun reading Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian and passionate disciple of Christ who was executed by the Nazi regime in 1945, at only 39 years of age.
Within the first hour of reading Life Together, Bonhoeffer’s words plucked a nerve in me (in other words: convicted me). His clear and precise division between spiritual love (a love that finds its origin and existence in God alone) and human love (a strong impulse or affection that originates and remains within our own selves) was a splash of cold, clean water to my face. I sat on my bed for twelve minutes and thought “Woah. DUH.” Then I proceeded to copy down page after page of his quotes into my journal.
I hope the following words prove to be just as precise and real – sobering and enlightening – for you as they are for me.
From the pen of Dietrich:
“Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ’s sake. Therefore, human love seeks direct contact with the other person; it loves him not as a free person but as one whom it binds to itself. It wants to gain, to capture by every means… Human love has little regard for truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person. Human love desires the other person, his company, his answering love, but it does not serve him. On the contrary, it continues to desire even when it seems to be serving… Human love makes itself an end in itself. It creates of itself an end, an idol which it worships, to which it must subject everything. It nurses and cultivates an ideal, it loves itself and nothing else in the world. Spiritual love, however, comes from Jesus Christ, it serves him alone; it knows that it has no immediate access to other persons. Jesus Christ stands between the lover and the others he loves… Because Christ stands between me and others, I dare not have direct fellowship with them. As only Christ can speak to me in such a way that I may be saved, so others, too, can be saved only by Christ Himself. This means that I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love. The other person needs to retain his independence of me; to be loved for what he is, as one for whom Christ became man, died, and rose again, for whom Christ bought forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Because Christ has long since acted decisively for my brother, before I could begin to act, I must leave him his freedom to be Christ’s; I must meet him only as the person that he already is in Christ’s eyes… Therefore, spiritual love proves itself in that everything it says and does commends Christ. It will not seek to move others by all too personal, direct influence, by impure interference in the life of another… It will not take pleasure in human fervor and excitement. It will rather meet the other person with the clear Word of God and be ready to leave him alone with this Word for a long time, willing to release him again in order that Christ may deal with him. It will respect the line that has been drawn between him and us by Christ, and it will find full fellowship with him in the Christ who alone binds us together. Thus this spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ and that love of others is wholly dependent upon the truth of Christ… Human love lives by uncontrolled and uncontrollable desires; spiritual love lives in the clear light of service ordered by the truth. Human love produces human subjection, dependence, constraint; spiritual love creates freedom of the brethren under the Word.”
Gosh. I want to get every word of that down deep into my mind, into my heart, into my relational interactions – with every friend, acquaintance, and loved one.
Jesus, enable me to love in such a way. I simply must.
This momentary fear.
I’ve spent a significant chunk of my 25 years cowering under the shadow of fear.
Friend, I’ll be honest…
I’ve feared that those I love most will “move on” from me before I’m remotely ready to “move on” from them.
I’ve feared that the recurring struggles of my past will keep recurring in my future – leaving me to spin round and round on a hamster wheel to nowhere, exhausted but unable to step out of the maddening cycle.
I’ve feared that I will never look the way I’ve envisioned my “ideal” self to look, leaving the “real” me to live as only a fraction of the me I’ve fantasized into mental existence.
I’ve feared that people will misrepresent my actions, misunderstand my words, and mistrust my choices.
I’ve feared that some of my fondest dreams will be sifted right out of the sands of my future.
I’ve feared loss – of friends, of reputation, of comfort, of attention.
I’ve feared conflict – the sort of conflict that I cannot “fix,” no matter how earnestly and sincerely I attempt to do so.
I’ve feared my own shortcomings cropping up with ferocity at all the wrong moments, when I would much prefer to be “doing great.”
I’ve feared gaining weight.
I’ve feared being alone.
I’ve feared being forgotten, unneeded, unwanted.
I have feared.
And do you know what? Many of the fears I’ve listed above have become reality in my life. I have been misunderstood and misrepresented. I have lost friends I counted dear. I have faced conflicts too convoluted for me to fix. I have gained weight. I have been alone. I have watched as some of my dearest dreams and ambitions were laid to rest in graves from which I could not resurrect them.
I have trembled and sobbed and clenched my fists, begging God to let me please just have this or that, to please just spare me this or that… to please keep this or that from happening to me.
And sometimes – at key moments of my panic and fervent begging – He has said “No.”
I am not trying to be depressing. Please understand me… I am in fact speaking of the greatest instances of liberation my heart has ever known. The hardest gifts of God – the answers that momentarily feel far more like a gash than grace – are the very things over which I now rejoice with the most intimate of celebrations in my heart.
What I am saying is this: in the moments when my “worst” fears have been realized I cry and writhe and squirm and moan in panic and anguish… until eventually I exhaust myself and fall silent. And friends, in that silence … in that silence comes the sunrise. When the dust settles and I look around expecting to see my life in ruin, preparing to lament the destruction of my hopes, I find instead something diametrically different… I find the freedom for which I’ve so long yearned.
God is wiser than we are … entirely wiser. He knows that the things/persons to which we cling most tightly – with a death grip and with a lump in our throat that screams “If I lose this I’ll fall apart!” – are the very things which are a malignant cancer to our liberty, to our very lives. God is in the business of rescuing, redeeming, transforming, and saving. He carries out no other kind of business with His children. He is no kill-joy. He is no bully. He is not – not ever – an impulsive vengeance taker.
If we walk through the realization of a certain fear, then we walk through it with the absolute promise of Christ – backed by the full measure of the glorious faithfulness of God – that we are shedding a decaying, enslaving skin for a life-soaked, eternally satisfying, and unquestionably liberating garment of Grace.
Whether it feels like that immediately or not, that is the Truth.
It’s the Truth.
Consider the following segment from C.S. Lewis’ book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (the third of his Chronicles of Narnia stories). For the full context of this excerpt, you must read the book. But here I’ll suffice it to say that Eustace is a boy who was greedy for treasure as well as self-centered (without entirely realizing it), and in his single-minded craving for the enchanted/forbidden gold, he is turned into a dragon (quite unfortunate for him because the gold bracelet he had put on his arm as a boy now cuts deeply and painfully into his much larger dragon arm). This of course makes him miserable, but his freedom comes – thanks to Aslan the Christlike Lion – in a way that I think many of us can find applicable…
“I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly toward me… it came nearer and nearer. I was terribly afraid of it. You may think that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough. But it wasn’t that kind of fear. I wasn’t afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it — if you can understand. Well, it came close up to me and looked straight into my eyes. And I shut my eyes tight. But that wasn’t any good because it told me to follow it.”
“You mean it spoke?”
“I don’t know. Now that you mention it, I don’t think it did. But it told me all the same. And I knew I’d have to do what it told me, so I got up and followed it. And it led me a long way into the mountains. And there was always this moonlight over and round the lion wherever we went. So at last when we came to the top of a mountain I’d never seen before and on the top of this mountain there was a garden – trees and fruit and everything. In the middle of it there was a well. . . .
“Then the lion said — but I don’t know if it spoke — ‘You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt…
“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off — just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt — and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me — I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on — and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again.”
That has so often been me: getting myself into obsessions and fixations and situations that are harmful or enslaving to my heart and emotions and mind… and then fearing so terribly the one thing that can set me free. Yes, pain is involved, and I must face that pain. I have to let the fear, in its own way, be realized. But before me stands the great Lion, Jesus Himself, ready and eager to tear through the dead skin that suffocates and blinds me. And once the moment has passed, once the smarting stab has eased, I find that I am liberated. I am like Eustace, swimming and splashing in perfectly delicious water.
Just as I have had – and still have – fears, I’m fairly certain you might now have them as well… the kind of fears that keep you up some nights, and haunt you some afternoons. And if any part of this brief entry I’ve written sticks with you, may it be the courage to trust the Intimate Goodness of God in the face of your fears.
If you take Him at His word, you will discover your own painful and priceless liberation – difficult in the moments you walk through it, but eternally and enormously worth it for all time afterwards.
Friend, don’t cower in fear. See, I’m right here next to you – in the same struggle… Together, let’s stand up and see the tender deliverance of our God. He will never fail us, come fear or pain or piercing.
The sun is rising, and we will be free.
In images.
Last year in December, I published a reflective entry that represented my internal experience of the year that was 2011 – the post was entirely photos and brief thoughts. I meticulously chose each photo (not my own photos, but rather ones for which I’d searched) to represent a poignant moment/feeling within the year for me, and I placed a date with each photo – creating a bit of a timeline of my experiences throughout the year that was drawing to an end. I didn’t do much explaining – it was, after all, a very personal almost journal-like expression – but the result was supremely satisfying. It was like a vivid map of my internal world throughout one year.
This year I’ll do the same… Right here and now, specifically. I realize it is one month early, but I can’t help myself. So – away we go:
JANUARY 1, 2012
JANUARY 17, 2012
FEBRUARY 28, 2012
MARCH 7, 2012
MARCH 22, 2012
APRIL 7, 2012
APRIL 20, 2012
MAY 12, 2012
MAY 24, 2012
JUNE 9, 2012
JUNE 26, 2012
JULY 9, 2012
JULY 14, 2012
JULY 16, 2012
AUGUST 1, 2012
AUGUST 11, 2012
AUGUST 24, 2012
AUGUST 29, 2012
SEPTEMBER 2, 2012
SEPTEMBER 4, 2012
SEPTEMBER 17, 2012
OCTOBER 10, 2012
OCTOBER 21, 2012
OCTOBER 22, 2012
NOVEMBER 5, 2012
NOVEMBER 13, 2012
NOVEMBER 16, 2012
NOVEMBER 23, 2012
Such was the year – 2012 – and so approaches another.
May it find us humbler, gentler, braver, and wiser. And may it carry us deeper into the ocean of God’s love.
Further up and further in.
Sometimes.
Sometimes I listen to particularly enthralling songs and I want to climb inside of them – right down into their music.
Sometimes I look at boats resting on a canvas of sea, and I want to leap aboard and set sail for somewhere that doesn’t exist on this planet.
Sometimes I run along suburban streets in the evening mist – while lamps flicker to life and the wind settles and stirs – and I want to run forever, disappearing into the solemn and sacred quiet of the falling rain and the pale gray horizon.
Sometimes I stand by my window at dawn, watching the tips of the Evergreens catch fire with the ascent of the morning sun, and I want to fly right up to those treetops and drink every ounce of that sunlight down to the last drop, until I am part of it and it is part of me.
Sometimes I look at a photograph, and I want to dive headfirst into it – the feeling, the beauty, the composition.
And sometimes my heart feels as though it might burst with emotions and achings and appetites I can neither articulate nor comprehend.
I am always looking, whether in waking consciousness or in subconscious slumber, for the further up and further in – for love, for beauty, for glory, for vastness, for sea and sky and stars and shores that are ten thousand times the proportions of those on this earth.
God, help me. I was not made for here. Neither were you.
We can have our finest day of triumph and attention and fame and thrill and glory… And yet we lay our heads on our pillows to sleep and find that the very same hunger pangs sit in our gut, perhaps sharper than ever. One leaf of lettuce cannot feed an appetite for steak. Our hunger is for heaven, not earth.
That is why our deepest longings always and eventually seem to pierce clean through the objects on this planet to which we attach them – like an arrow through parchment paper. Our desires devour every temporal treasure at which we aim them, and we are none the fuller for feasting at the table of this world.
Oh, that I could get this Truth through my slow and muddy brain.
I want God. I want His Presence. I want Jesus.
I want Jesus.
I have wounded and crippled and confused and erred too often because I have attached my wants to objects never meant to carry such a weight of desire. Only the shoulders that have carried the Cross of Calvary can carry – and satisfy – these eternal longings etched upon my soul.
Sometimes I am so unbearably hungry, and I scour the rubbish bins for a morsel to eat.
God, help me lift these weary limbs and take the seat you have saved for me at Your lavish table.
Sometimes I forget that You alone are the most marvelous and poignant satisfaction.
Remind me, my God.
“You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.” -Psalm 16:11
the unknown Joy 