A Bunch of Wasted-Space Ramblings

I apologize for not keeping this as updated as some of you may have wished. I go back to my Neurologist tomorrow (er, today) for an EMG and to discuss what life looks like from here on out. I have a few good updates: 1) I’m walking with a cane. That wheelchair is gone, and God is to be praised! 2) My blood tests came back negative, meaning I actually do have Bilateral Saphenous Nerve Impingement, and God is to be praised! 3) Pain is no longer constant. I experience maybe a wave of pain about once a day, and God is to be praised!

Unfortunately, due to the physical deterioration of my left leg, I have been unable to focus on my emotional or spiritual health, of which have sparked monologues that so frequented this blog in its “early” life. I apologize for that, both to myself and to those who read this site. In light of this lack of reflection, I have decided to waste space by rambling. Beware! Rabbit-trails up ahead:

Just prior to writing this post, I read (er, stalked) a post from a xanga site I try to keep up on. It was about a lost love and the fight to “get her back.” I chuckled a little when I read this line:

WAIT! How can love wait? … Yet, I welcome this slavery [to waiting for her].

OK. Allow me to explain. It was by mere chance that I witnessed this blogger’s breakup. I was literally on the other side of the street honestly minding my own business when I realized what the devil was actually going on across the way. I knew this person was a writer, so I found his weblog (hence the “er, stalked”) and, voilà, here we are. What’s more ironic is that our connection has a closer proximity than the typical six degrees of separation. Yada-yada-yada, I digress. Do we really wait? Does true, honest-to-goodness, can’t-sleep-at-night-but-welcome-the-insomnia love drive us to wait? Or is love a drug that creates in us a hope that isn’t healthy to which to hold on?

Back in the day (which was a Wednesday), I wrote that “memories last only as long as you want them to. You can erase the bad ones. The question is, do you really want to? What would your life be like without even the worst of times?” If one hasn’t noticed, I value the storms that life throws at us. What is there to look forward to if every day’s yesterday was perfect in memory?

I value words. I know that actions speak louder than words, but words have their place. They exist. Words and language must be a valuable tool if God Himself saw that the best way to prohibit the building of Babel was to confuse the words of those building that tower. (Please note, God didn’t go to the drawing boards and guess which way would be best. I don’t mean to infer that by using the word, “saw.” God knew. God foreknew. Period.) I guess that’s why I value this quote from The Interpreter:

The gunfire around us makes it hard to hear. But the human voice is different from other sounds. It can be heard over noises that bury everything else. Even when it’s not shouting. Even when it’s just a whisper. Even the lowest whisper can be heard over armies… when it’s telling the truth.

It’s 2:40A and I just needed to talk. I’m sorry for wasting your time. One of these three thoughts (love, memory, or words) will be expounded upon soon. The two others may be lost in this waste of space forever, or I may jump on them as well. Just know I haven’t forgotten this site. I just haven’t had time to sit down and funnel out a coherent thought. Case-in-point: the aforementioned.

The Spirituality of “Wait and See”

For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.

A while back, I wrote a short post entitled “Give Up, Give In.” In this post, I wrote of giving God the reigns of life. In a similar post, I wrote concerning the necessity of giving of our sense of lordship over our own lives to God, for it is rightfully His. I feel burdened to continue on that discussion (or, reword what has already been written…twice now, as some might say).

I worry too much. That statement alone proves such a thing because worry itself is too much; there is no measurement of “worry.” The reason I have struggled with worry is because I have battled it poorly (or, incorrectly). You see, I can recite verse after verse that talk about God’s authority, Christ’s sovereignty, and the promise of good for those who love Providence. Each of those verses, however, require something more than memorization. They require a discipline that is foreign to the human will.

Trusting in God is not pragmatic. So many times, though, we champion our “trust in God” after the ordeal is over and the blessings have arrived. Have we really trusted in God? Are the blessings really “good and perfect gifts…from the Father of lights” or are they simply “treasures on earth” that do nothing more than make us feel good for a short while, erode away, and once again create in us the desire to chase those ever-elusive happiness triggers? It depresses me to recall how often my discourse post-storm had been sprinkled with “…only by God…” or “God knew what He was doing,” when my prayers during-storm had been “What are you doing God… and why?!”

As is evident by the latter statement, so often in my life I have been anxious to get the storm over with and learn the lesson that waited for me on the blue horizon. That, that is why worry has been a struggle for me. You see, I have come to the belief that part of trusting God is a simple waiting on Him. Psalm 46.10: “Be still and know that I am God.” Isaiah 40.31: “But those who wait upon the Lord…” Psalm 62.1: “Truly my soul silently waits for God.”

I, if you will, defined this belief while reading Passion and Purity by Elisabeth Elliot. In that book she quotes Addison Leitch:

When the will of God crosses the will of man, somebody has to die.

As much as I know that that is a reference to the crucifixion first and foremost, and following it is a reference to the casting off of the old self Paul writes about, I believe it has another implication as well. Maybe (and I’m still working through this but am confident enough to assert this), maybe the waiting part of trusting God is the death–or crucifixion–of my own biased desires. I do not believe it to be an untruth to view the “waiting” as the death of my will and the triumph (or granted Lordship) of His.

Giving God the reigns means not only do I seek His will, I also must conform how I seek His will. This is why waiting and trusting is so hard! I can blame it on the fact that I am a guy and, as a genetic rule, guys view problems in terms of solutions. Therefore, I view storms in terms of lessons I can learn from them. I can pass the buck to the fact that I am a perfectionist, and if I’m not involved in doing it, it won’t be done properly. But the bottom line is, I am to blame because I fear when my Savior cries out, “Fear not.”

Resting on that command requires a life change. I must realize that the best I can do when I am in control is mess everything up. For as Thomas a Kempis wrote:

What hindereth thee more than thine affections not fully mortified to the will of God?

God: Life’s Greatest Surgeon; Pain: Life’s Greatest Curriculum

My heart has been broken. Sounds like the first line of a(n) country song/teen poem/emo rock group’s title track, and for that, I apologize. But it is true. And the hardest part? She left me for another guy…

The end. I’m not here to write about the woe’s of my life. I’m here to let you know I learned something from it. After she left me, my away messages tended to focus on the “over-you-moving-on” aspect that comes with a breakup. One of those aforementioned away messages said this:

But in the end, the most important thing to accept is that no matter how alone you feel, how painful it may be, with the help of those around you, you’ll get through this too.

Fast-forward a few days and I find myself talking to a good friend about the use of pain in lessons from God. At that exact moment, I have one of those “AH HA!” moments that so often frequent my life. Despite my away messages, despite the songs I played that were filled with either anger or hope of having an entire day absent of the thought of my heartache, I had yet to experience closure. The reason I had yet to even begin to emotionally heal was that I had yet to even begin to grasp why this was going on in my life.

Pain. Doesn’t it seem that life’s best lessons are learned by pain? Stick a wet finger into a socket and see what happens. I’m gonna bet you aren’t going to do that again. Better yet, get two dogs of the exact same breed, potty-train one by simply saying “no” every time (s)he has an accident. Potty-train the other by giving it a swat on its backside each time it has an accident. Which one will learn faster? I believe that it will be the latter canine.

You see? God doesn’t say “no” to us in order to teach us a lesson (at least not very often). He says “no” to close doors on mistakes He just doesn’t want us to make; but when it comes to learning from a mistake or learning how to correct ungodly habits, I firmly believe that God uses pain. I believe that we retain the most amount of knowledge if pain is incorporated into the lesson being taught. It’s like what George Campbell said about the use of pain in teaching a lesson:

Pain of every kind generally makes a deeper impression on the imagination than pleasure does, and it is retained longer in the memory.

J.R. Miller says:

The sweetest things in this world have come to us through tears and pain.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that if little Johnny gets an F on his first math test, you beat the mathematical table into him. Nor am I saying that if your child or significant other hurts your feelings or does something just downright stupid that you should beat them into obedience. I’m not saying that at all. What I am saying is that I have learned more about Who God is, what He wants from my life, and who I am in His eyes during life’s rough patches than when times are good.

Back to my “ah ha” moment: The above quote that kept frequenting my away messages was the lesson I needed to learn. As I grew closer and closer to H.R., I grew further and further away from the family of friends that loved me unconditionally. Not only that, I began to divorce my own blood-family. I was losing my life’s supporting players, and without them…there is no life. And no matter how many times my brother asked me to hang around after church on Sunday, no matter how often my mother’s voice was seasoned with sadness as she said, “Sure, you can go see her,” I never realized what I was doing. Therefore, I honestly believe that God stepped in. God took away the 6-month-old gift in order for my focus to be on the gifts that are years old and needed my attention in order to perpetuate their longevity. The Fray says it like this:

We’d never know what’s wrong without the pain!

The human nervous system is designed to only allow the brain to recognize one form of pain at a time. Consequently, if you have a paper-cut and a gunshot wound, it will only register the gunshot wound. It’s called “The Gateway Principle.” In the exact same manner, God calls attention to the things in our lives that need immediate care by giving us hard times.

What I’m trying to say is what my dad taught me a long time ago: God acts like a surgeon who has a cancer patient on His table. He is going to have to cut the patient’s body open, and that’s gonna hurt when the patient wakes up. But that pain is necessary in removing the cancerous tumor that will cost the patient his life if it is not taken care of. God causes initial pain (cutting open the body) in order to prevent us from experiencing greater pain down the road (suffering from the cancerous tumor).

In an argument between Dr. Perry Cox and Nurse Laverne Roberts in an episode of Scrubs, my point is summed up by Laverne’s response:

Cox: Are you really trying to tell me that things like New Orleans, AIDS, sugar-free ice cream, crack-babies, Hugh Jackman, and cancer all happen for a reason?
Laverne: ‘God works all things for good.’ Romans, 8:28.

A broken heart sucks. Not learning the lesson is even worse. I am beginning to believe that I wouldn’t have had any “help of those around me” had this happened at a later date. It took pain for me to realize that.

We’d never know what’s wrong without the pain…

The Folly of Backseat Driving

There are some things that I just don’t understand. What’s crazy-ironic is that most of the things I don’t understand…I’m afraid of the explanation behind them. I can’t really give a “for instance,” but think of the last time you asked yourself: “Why is this happening?” and the response to your discovery was: “I shouldn’t have asked.” I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. But my life is full of these types of paradoxes.

This was the essence of my previous post. I don’t want an answer as to why certain things in my life just don’t make sense, so I don’t ask “WHY?” out loud. But at the exact same time, I’m dying to figure things out. I want to ask “WHY?”, and I want an answer to that. I just don’t want to hear the answer. I don’t know if I even understand what I’m saying, but I know that this is basically how I feel inside.

I feel this way because I want to be in control of my life.
But the more control I seem to have, the more out-of-control I feel.

I feel this way because I want everything and everyone in my life to be happy, to be good.
Welcome to Humanity. Our motto: “nothing is every perfect.”

I feel this way because I’m scared of not being needed. I love being needed. I thrive on being the ear and the shoulder to others when they just need to talk to someone or have a person to lean on.
Sometimes, the best way to help someone is to let them be.

What’s crazy-ironic is that everything I want to be is exactly Who God should be in my life. It doesn’t matter how messed up everything is. He wants it. He wants everything. The Sick Puppies, secular they may be, sing two lines in their song “All the Same” that absolutely nail Who God is and what He wants:

And I’ll take you for who you are
If you take Me for everything

Things don’t have to make sense to me. I don’t need the answer all the time. I just need to trust Him. I need to believe that my life won’t be any better than when it’s in God’s hands. David Crowder puts it this way:

Letting go gives a better grip
I’m finding everything I’ll ever need
By giving up gaining everything
Falling for You for eternity
Right here at Your feet
Where I wanna be

So in the end, their is an answer to “WHY?”. It goes something like this: “Because right now, this is what is best for you. Believe Me. I’ve seen what comes next. This is what’s best for you.”

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. –Jesus, in John 14.1

An Echo; or Life After Dark

Picture for me darkness. I mean, darkness that can be weighed. Darkness that can be felt. Darkness that is so thick it is impossible to walk through. Do you see it? Then go darker.

I was saved in second grade from the sins of forgetting to clean my room and not turning in homework on time. However, as the years progressed and life actually became…life, I found myself not actively living that ‘salvation experience’ that I incurred during my second grade year. I found myself away from God. Then I attended a retreat entitled West Ohio Boy’s Chrysalis. It was a three-day retreat where nothing was told to you ahead of time. “Don’t anticipate, participate,” was the motto for the weekend. Each hour I found myself moving closer and closer to God. The following is the retelling of what I call my Daily Living Salvation.

Give Up, Give In

“I’m so tired of it being of it being about me.” This is a line from Bebo Norman’s song “Disappear.” If there is anything that more accurately depicts the consequence of man controlling his own life, I would love to hear about it. When we take control from God, we fail and eventually burn out (no pun intended). Now, it may not happen the second we take things into our own hands, but it will happen. If I could summarize Ecclesiastes, it would be these lyrics.

This short post is simply saying this: “Give up and give in.” God has this crazy idea that He wants to be the leader of our lives. He wants to guide and direct us to where He wants. Why not let Him? He created you. He died for you. He loves you–probably more than you love yourself. Give Him the wheel (I despise that song; I don’t care if it is a “metaphor,” it’s still not a good song) and you won’t be “tired” anymore, because, as the Bible says, there is something about giving Him my life that has produces a peace that makes no sense.

Are you tired? Give up. God knows what He’s doing.

An Extension on “Strike Three?”

The Mets lost their chance to go to the World Series when one of their players struck out…looking. The Tigers lost the World Series when one of their players struck out…looking. I am beginning to believe that we should swing for the fences, because missing the opportunity to do something is worse than actually attempting it but failing. You see, I have been struggling with living a life that isn’t afraid of consequence, but consequence that isn’t necessarily bad or sinful.

I am a creature of habit. I tend not to wander outside my norms very often. I don’t go rock climbing because I have an intense fear of falling. I don’t do things on a whim. I don’t attempt much unless it is planned and unless I can control the outcome. But, ever since the lecture we had in Old Testament Literature on Ecclesiastes, I have been wondering how much I really am missing out on—not attempting much, not trying, not swinging for the fences. And it hit me: even if I miss the ball when I swing, at least I don’t have to live with the, “What if I would’ve swung?”. And that has made all the difference in the world.

God, in His rich grace and mercy, love us so much that, although we are living under/in a curse, He still wants us to enjoy the mortal life we have been given. He wants us to swing for the fences, He wants us to glorify Him by enjoying life, by living life. It is one thing to not want to do something because it is morally or biblically wrong, and those consequences should be taken to heart. But doing other things that aren’t biblically, morally, or culturally unacceptable…WHY NOT? What do you have to lose?

Ever since that lecture, my mind has been running a million miles a second. There are things that may hurt us emotionally or physically if we attempt, but with every chance bad, there is an equal chance of the outcome being “good.” And the question I have wrestled with is, “Does the opportunity for the good (let’s call it a homerun) outweigh the negative consequence that has an equal chance of occurring (let’s call it striking out)?”. I have to come to the conclusion that I will strike out every once-in-a-while—everybody does—but unless I chance it, I will not ever see a homerun.

God, I believe, wants us to swing for the fences. Abide by His Word and walk in the Spirit, but live life. Obey His commands, but enjoy life. Ecclesiastes 9.7 says, “Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do.” Its time I start living that command.

I’ll close with my favorite line from one of my favorite songs: “I’m gonna muster every ounce of confidence I have and cannonball into the water.” Swing for the fences, because missing the opportunity is far worse than trying and failing.

Strike Three?

Don’t strike out looking. Swing for the fences, because missing the opportunity is worse than trying and failing.

The Irony of Autumn

I went hiking today as the sun began to set. I thought I would have plenty of time to do what I wanted to do and be able to get back before the sun actually set. But, I was wrong. You see, I got lost and behind in my time. At about the point where that grayness exists, (you know that time, it’s too light for the moon to illuminate but too dark to be able to utilize the sun’s rays) right before the sun actually sets, I began getting worried. I began getting scared. I caught myself wondering what I would do if it got too dark to see. How would I get back? Who would I call? What would I do?

At that very moment, I told myself that I wasn’t enjoying the autumn season like I had come there to do. I wanted to escape from society and just revel in the beauty of autumn, and because of the time constraint, because of the loss of light, I was losing that possibility. I was no longer enjoying myself, and the more I realized that, the less I was actually enjoying being outside in autumn. Then, as if almost on cue, my mind wandered to the question, “Why do I want to enjoy autumn?” The obvious answer was because of the trees changing colors, the leaves falling on the ground, the brisk atmosphere that autumn brings. I love that stuff. I love autumn.

After I answered that question, another popped into my mind: “Do I really understand what autumn is?” It was then I realized the irony of my favorite season. You see, more than half of the American population will list Fall as their favorite season without thinking of the ramifications of that. Autumn is nothing more than the death of nature. The leaves don’t change colors and fall because they think, “Hey, I haven’t done this in a while. Let’s be pretty for a change.” NO! They change colors and fall because the life is sucked out of them and they eventually die. The near extinction of all insect life isn’t because they want to play an elongated version of hide-and-seek; it’s because they are freezing to their deaths. The coldness in the air is not some mystical beauty of nature; it is the Earth moving itself away from its source of light and heat. Autumn is not beautiful, it’s morbid.

Once I had come to grips with that very last sentence, I asked myself if God enjoys the “Autumn” of human nature like we enjoy the Autumn of nature. Does God see all the colors of murder, death, and evil and say, “Wow! That’s really cool!”? Certainly not! He hates it. He hates the “Autumn” of humanity. He weeps when he sees death. He cries and agonizes and hurts when he sees humans suffer, when he sees mankind have the life sucked out of it because of sin and The Evil One. He does not enjoy it. Not in the least of bit. You see, however, God just didn’t sit back and hate “Autumn.” He did something about it. God came and experienced “Autumn” just like you and I experience it every day. He suffered, agonized, and had the life sucked out of him while others enjoyed it, not knowing what they were reveling in. Sound familiar? Yes it does. Most people enjoy the Autumn of nature without realizing what they are reveling in. But the God-Man did come and encompass Himself in the “Autumn” of mankind for thirty-three years. At the end of that time, He became “Winter” for 3 days. Then, and now, He is “Spring” immortal, never suffering and dying again.

You see. We can enjoy the Autumn of nature. God has given us that. However, we must realize that we are living in an “Autumn” of mankind, and that is everything but enjoyable. God has given us the ability to no longer be stuck in that death, that suffering, that life-sucking habit we call sin. We can become “Spring” just as God is “Spring.” The question is, are you too caught up in the beautiful facade that the colors and the leaves and the cold have put up, or do you realize that reveling in suffering and death? Only you can decide that.

Enjoy Autumn, but hate “Autumn.” “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

hand in HAND; or With Whom Do You Walk?

I have noticed something. When a person loves another, they will frequently go out of their way to spend time (“love on”) that other person. They will schedule around that person, they will cancel plans, they will do almost anything to be able to see that significant other every once in a while. Why is that? The obvious answer is because they love that person. If you love someone, you will attempt to be with that person and “love on” that person as often as you can.

My question is, why do we as Christians (which can be defined as lovers of Jesus) struggle with spending time with God? Why is it that we will rearrange our personal lives to be able to go on a walk or eat dinner with our mortal lover but we find it hard to go to chapel or wake up for church? Why is it that we have to work extra hard to be sure we are “loving on” God, but when it comes to “loving on” our significant other, no questions asked…we are there!?

Maybe I’m being cynical. Maybe I’m being pessimistic. But in all honesty, I struggle with spending time with God. I struggle with “loving on” God, which brings me to my next question: “Do I really love Him?” (AGH! What a terrible thing to admit.) Seriously, why am I struggling with this? John writes in His first epistle that “By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God…” I don’t know what else to say to that. I had a whole dialogue I wanted to share, but I just can’t get it out.

On a totally different note, I heard from my brother (best friend) today. I miss him so. I wish we were as close to each other as we were back in high school. I don’t know if I really wanted to hear from him because now I consciously miss him. Sadness…

“See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God!” Maybe, just maybe, once I start living that verse, my shadow dance will be a bravura performance.