It’s my birthday 3 days ago and this year I am not going to ask you to donate to a cause that I hold dear. Instead I would ask you to just read this. I would like to offer you the hope of freedom and eternal life, something both within and beyond what the world has to give. Because Jesus Christ saved my life.
I’ve been a Christian since 16 years old, but there has been cynicism and doubt in me. I had faith, but not a whole lot, and a load of intellectual knowledge that helped somewhat but didn’t live up to what salvation and life with Jesus Christ was supposed to offer.
Over the past forty plus years I have lived through episodes of depression and anxiety that would come and go. They were worse at big life transitions like after our oldest son was born, I had a major breakdown and was suicidal, and it happened again five years ago at a challenging time, suicidal and in the hospital. I’ve been through a cesarean section that was unnecessarily forced on me, through ongoing infertility, through other chronic health problems that eat away at your energy and time. And I can tell you all the times I thought God had completely rejected me, I was completely wrong. He was right there with me in all those miserable things. Now I see that without these hard things that happened to me, I would still be insufferably proud and arrogant. If I hadn’t hurt, I wouldn’t have any grace to give to other people. And I wouldn’t be the person I am now, and I would never have been transformed into someone who actually wanted Jesus. I’d still be doing things my own way.
Not only has God practically been in the business of humbling me and changing me so that gradually I am becoming a gentler, loving, strong person, I’ve been freed over the last couple years from the blank in my experience. A relationship with Jesus: Sounds good but what the heck is that? I never knew. He was always out there, over there somewhere. Not speaking with me, not inside of me. That has changed. Now, I am beginning to not only *know* he is always with me but *experience this truth*. And I can tell you, Jesus is at work in my life in my circumstances, in events, in my character and he is actually living inside me—a friend, a companion, a supernatural lover and redeemer. It’s not another accomplishment or a skill to check off. No, this is new life where I am living in peace and joy. I’m not afraid. I’m not hung up in chains any more. Although I know my problems aren’t magically going away, God has had compassion on me by beginning to transform me and live with me every day.
This is fantastic. I can’t not tell you this. On my own, doing things my way it was chains. Now I live in something better– it’s freedom. It’s what you’ve been looking for. Nothing can stop God’s power and his love. Nothing can stop him from taking what was meant for evil here on earth and turning it for good. And because he has promised to make all things new, the best is yet to come.
I was thirsty
But like a desert turning into a field of green
Started breathing
When Heaven’s favor took a hold of me
How could it be I’m living with an infinite worth
And the one I thought I chose had really chosen me first
And every time I think about every time I thought was the end
Oh, I’m caught up in wonder again
Where would I be?
Where would I be if it wasn’t for the love of God?
Of course, there are depths to belief that are beyond logic, but start with what you live each day.
Is God is present in our world and our universe? Is God upholding and sustaining us with his powerful Word? I believe he is. Without his presence and his immanence, what we experience each day of our lives could not be. We don’t live in a cosmos that is void of meaning and purpose; instead, God is working all things for our good.
Look around at what you live each day, the reality you inhabit, the structure of your life, and of your community and your world, and consider.
1. He could have left us to our own devices in a ruined, damaged world, where there are good gifts, but mostly we live with ugliness, problems, suffering and despair. This world has no hope of restoration.
2. He could have left us to our own devices in a ruined world with a possibility of restoration and renewal–but you’re on your own to make it happen.
3. He could have decided to tell us that doing our own thing and choosing our own way is fine. We own our actions and there is no moral frame for them. In this world, there is no right or wrong, good or evil, and we just do what we want to do, to anyone, at any time. And anyone can do what they want to us, at any time. Because it has no value; it does not matter. It’s neither good nor bad. You may not like what someone is doing to you–but you can’t claim that it is wrong.
4. He could have provided a way back to him through giving us everything we want; here we receive the wholeness and happiness every one of us longs for. In this potential reality, we are autonomous. We create our own world, and have complete freedom and the ability to self-actualize. All our choices are met with success and we choose the people we want to be with; they are all we dream they could and should be. At the same time, God rectifies our mistakes, and there are no negative consequences to any choices we or anyone else makes. This world has no natural disasters nor any social unrest. In this reality, no bad things happen to us because bad things are just that—bad. We don’t want them and we should not have to put up with them.
This reality is a mind bending insanity.
In a natural world that operates according to understandable and predictable laws, which is what we agree we have, it’s beyond comprehension how world reality number 4 would allow rational thought, cause and effect, or the ability to create a civilization that was workable.
5. Perhaps there is not any God, and we live in a universe that exists by itself. We don’t know how or why it exists. Matter, light, energy: all of these came out of nowhere, for no reason. There is no reason for it to exist, nor for our civilization to exist, nor for each of us as individuals to exist. But we have made order out of chaos. We made sense of the laws of nature and we make sense of the things we do. Even though there is no larger framework, we have created constructs from buildings to organizations, cultures to societies. Buildings stay up because their construction is based on the laws of physics. There are chemistry and history and geography and astronomy and biology; all of science is a thing. And all of that came out of chaos, but we can grasp it and manipulate it to create our own reality—wait, we can’t.
We don’t make our own reality. We cannot escape from the consequences of our actions. We live in a civilization that has an order. We live on a planet, in a universe that has order and regularity. If you look around, you can see with your own eyes and deduce with your own mind that this reality you inhabit is with other people and not your own imaginary construct. You cannot escape the laws of society, civilization, physical health or natural science any more than you can snap your fingers and magically change night into day or alter your genetic material.
Instead of any of these options, and other potential options I haven’t thought of, we live in a world in which there are natural laws, orderly seasons, concepts that are true and those that are false, so that we can understand what is happening, and so that we can create relationships and a society based on that understanding.
Our life in the cosmos isn’t some mind-bending multiverse where time is circular and realities constantly bifurcate, in which we can’t count on B or C following from A. Instead, we can. We live in a world where we can make choices and where our choices create change–in other words, they have consequences.
We live in a reality where love exists. Many say that it’s just a biological urge for survival that leads people to reproduce and band together to create safe places to live. Yet love exists. Love that makes no logical or biological sense exists. You’ve seen it. And you know it’s good.
There are actions we understand to be morally right, and those we know are morally wrong. Pain happens when something or someone gets broken. Disregarding good, solid advice leads to difficulties. We see death and decay happen around us–and we know it to be wrong. We don’t accept the brokenness of the world as normal.
If the brokenness isn’t normal, then we inherently believe that there is good and a greater good, and not only that, we long for it.
So.
God is present. He is immanent. He is transcendent. He loves us. He sustains everything in the cosmos with his powerful word.
We all use expert advice to make decisions about our choices. From investing and financial planning, to nutrition, educational choices, health care, holistic wellness planning, childhood development milestones, college and career goals to household tips and tricks, decorating, home maintenance and entertaining, we look to the experts in order to decide what to do.
Getting information is clearly important. You can’t decide how to proceed if you don’t know what your options are, and the relative costs, risks and benefits of the options. Obviously you cannot build the tower without planning first. Learning how to complete a task or cook a meal requires input.
But getting instructions for a do-it-yourself process or retrieving information about a disease are not the same thing as just finding an expert opinion on the web.
Experts are knowledgeable. Experts are usually specialists. They may simply be people who have a great deal of experience in their fields. They could be people who have gained a following from their blogs or channels. So it makes sense to keep your own knowledge, priorities and values in your mind while you are seeking information. You are the one who will experience and live with the results of the advice you apply to your decision.
Bigger than that is the truth that experts’ views change over time and not just because the data changes. Some of it is just because “that’s how we do things now.” The public consensus or standard of care has changed.
Beyond that is the broader perspective that while people in general have a tendency to trust authority figures or institutions, which is understandable to maintain stability in societies and as a way of widely sharing information about that way of life and how to navigate it, when you think about the history of human development, especially expansion of humans into new areas where there was no social structure to turn to, many times those people turned to themselves to make final decisions. At other times, people have chosen not to follow the current advice of those in power, for good or ill, of course. In other times, they relied on trusted elders within their people group. This kind of bond in a small community is very different from the current tendency to refer to an authority you haven’t met who doesn’t know you or your actual situation.
I’m not saying that no expert can shed light on your decisions or lifestyle. Far from it. If you have reason to believe the source of your information is reliable, and the advice makes sense, and it fits with who you are and what you believe, then by all means.
But an even bigger picture is the comprehension of a grander way to view the world. It’s possible that your perspective and experience has more effect on your method of making choices than you realize. It’s possible that you have absorbed the world view of your culture and that view may be more modern, but not necessarily more true than other perspectives.
The high level of anxiety and uncertainty experienced over the modern era has been understood as an issue for years. In this society, you learn early on that it is your responsibility to fix the problems you have. That concept is modeled by just about every group and authority we have. Moving into adulthood, we consider options and make choices largely dependent on our own insights and the information we glean from experts. We follow the normal, accepted way of decision making.
The actions of God in the world and by extension in the life of the believer are by definition supernatural.
That’s not a statement that most people are comfortable with. It is in fact a statement many reject out of hand. What we believe we have learned from Darwinism, Freudianism, deconstructionism and postmodernism, is that there is no creator and no God, thus by definition there can be nothing beyond what we see in the natural world; hence, there is nothing supernatural. The latest iteration of mainstream culture and the study of history posits that pretty much everything about our society is not based on positive relationships, purposeful work or faith communities. Instead, everything is a construct created by those in power for the express purpose of keeping their power. Breaking the mold of oppression is the word of the day.
True enough, oppression is a real thing. It needs to be addressed and changed. Respect for other people, their experiences and their views is essential. Hearts and minds need to change.
Respect.
Changed minds.
Changed hearts.
Oppression is wrong, and it grieves God’s heart.
But wait–there is no God. There is no higher power to whom we can turn for justification for our core beliefs and ideologies that posit that there is right and there is wrong. And oppression and racism and hate are wrong. We know this at our cores. We react with justified anger at suffering and wrong. But does that make sense?
If oppression works to get the people with the power what they want, biologically speaking, why shouldn’t it continue?
If racism is an understandable if unfortunate reality due to biological, ecological, and evolutionary conditioning causing preferment of the members of our own tribe, why is that so bad?
If hate is just something everyone deals with to some extent or another, and it occasionally spills out in angry words and ugly scenes, why isn’t that just par for the course, something we have to expect because there are no forces for good that can change our animal natures?
By definition, amongst the biology and chemistry and geology and astronomy and physics that make up this material world, there are phenomena, there are circumstances, there are agreements we make with other human beings that cannot be explained by the processes of the material world alone. Yes, we inhabit a material world with predictable forces. But what we see cannot be all there is.
Not if we acknowledge the effects of natural beauty on the human soul: the sunrise, the sunset, the wind in the grass, the soughing sound of the pine trees near the ocean; what purpose in a world without God?
Not if we acknowledge the ability of one human being to forgive another human who’s done something horrible.
Not if we acknowledge the artistic richness of music in all its variations and its ability to speak to our hearts.
Not if we acknowledge the sadness and rage we know when “senseless violence” occurs, and we are punched in the gut yet again with the wrongness of this kind of horror.
Not if we acknowledge the wisdom and lived knowledge of the millions or more people who have experienced the love of God, and who have placed their trust in that God for eternity. The odds of them all, through centuries of time, maintaining a group illusion are billions to one.
Not if we acknowledge the power of the force of entropy: powerful as it draws our universe and our galaxy farther apart, expanding into distances that entirely dwarf the power of the mind. Entropy means that “all things tend toward disorder.” Perhaps as the theory goes entropy actually allows things to become more complex by providing more options for each particle. But if entropy “sets particles to ‘wiggling,’” how does entropy do so? At times during the past one hundred and three years we have lamented, “Things fall apart: the center cannot hold.” And yet beyond all expectations, beyond all assumption, beyond all possibility, the center still does. We have been given the power to combat entropy with every clean house, every loaf of bread, every drawing together to worship God on a Sunday morning.
What we experience with our senses cannot be all there is if we acknowledge the mystery of a changed life and a changed heart: the addict, the angry, the jealous and greedy and harsh, changed. It happens. How so? Any changed heart in a world like this is a mystery.
The power that made the forces is the greatest force and power there is. We inhabit a reality suffused with the gift and glory of the supernatural.
I always thought that judgment in the Bible, a really difficult and unpleasant topic that nobody wants to address and for good reason, was difficult because it presents a harsh, judgmental God. Nobody wants to hear about a harsh, judgmental God, and that’s understandable. I have always felt that judgment seems incompatible with the truth that God is love. It doesn’t seem to match up. How can he be like this, when we also hear he’s not like this?
Then I heard this passage this morning. It’s not one I remember ever hearing before, and maybe gets overlooked because of the verse just after which is often quoted in sermons about people’s sin nature.
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.
Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” Jeremiah 17:5-8
What’s different about this contrast of curses and blessings from how I always saw God’s judgment? It reads as thought the situation described by Jeremiah is a statement of fact. It is present, current fact, lived reality. Have you not experienced life as a parched place? hasn’t it been an uninhabited salt land for you at some times? have you not seen people around you whose lives shrivel like this? When I choose to focus on myself, when I believe that I my plan is best, when I work hard to make my circumstances what I want, I find that life is like this. Over and over, when I set myself up as the center, this parching is exactly what happens to me.
But what good news follows! The one who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord, is a whole person. He is a resilient, whole person, resting entirely in the sufficient grace of Christ, and in his incredible, mighty power. The water of life rolls over and through this person. Not only that but he still bears fruit. Without anxiety, even in the dry seasons, through no apparent power of her own, the one who trusts the Lord pours blessing on others, sometimes without even trying. She just does the work in front of her that she has been given the ability to do–and fruit happens.
Consider the truth of these verses in your life and the lives of others. If this vision of what happens to people based on their focus, their direction, and their trust is true, these verses aren’t written from the will and heart of a God whose primary goal is judging you. What if God isn’t a God whose primary purpose is to blast people for their wrongdoing?
What if he made us to live with him and to be whole and full and new in him?
What if when we live without him, we are blasting ourselves?
This is the overall message of the Bible, I believe. True, God hates evil and wants no part of it–he can’t be false to his nature and say that evil is good. He is unable to ultimately stand in the same room as evil because that is not who he is. So in that sense, God does discern. He does judge.
But although God hates evil, He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, as Ezekiel 33:11 says. Ezekiel asks the people who rely on their own ways, “Why will you die?” God sent messengers and Wisdom herself throughout history to turn people toward him and away from dryness and death. God speaks reassurance to his children: “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14 shows a God whose heart is healing and restoration.
The old Testament prophets returned repeatedly to the theme of God’s love and his longing to bless, not curse. Micah 7:18 says, “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love.”
Isaiah too is famous for revealing the merciful character of God: “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” Isaiah 1:18 He also urges, “Let the wicked man forsake his own way and the unrighteous man his own thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that He may have compassion, and to our God, for He will freely pardon.” Isaiah 55:7
And consider Jeremiah, often called the weeping prophet for his grief over the stubbornness of the Hebrews to whom he preached, who offers this truth about God in the book of Lamentations, “For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone.”
The New Testament probably needs less explanation as a source of good news, since Jesus said that’s what he came to share, and he focused his most powerful teaching on the subject of love. Few could argue that Jesus came to show mercy and grace. In fact, he even claimed to be the water of life, the source who could keep them from drying up. In Matthew 23:37, Jesus called out to the people of Jerusalem, telling them he longed to love and care for them, like a mother hen gathers her chicks. His grief? The people wouldn’t let him.
The apostle John had this to say in chapter 3, verse 17: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Even Paul’s teaching in 1 Timothy 2:4 acknowledges God as a Father who “wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Second Peter 3:9 says this: “[The Lord] is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
When I make my own flesh my strength, the natural result is my desiccation. When I turn away from God’s love and the good life he offers, I get nothing. I get worse than nothing! But also naturally, when I turn to God and seek my life in the one who made me, knows me and loves me, I get life and life more abundantly. I don’t mean that living in the life of God means I don’t face suffering; far from it. Just, even in the suffering, my roots don’t dry up.
Seen from this view, the curses and blessings given in Deuteronomy 30:15-20 look much different. It is not God’s pleasure to see you dry up and blow away. No, his pleasure is to see you fully alive.
15 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16 For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
17 But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18 I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.
19 This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
I want to thank John Eldredge for his One Minute Pause App, https://www.pauseapp.com/, for the introduction to the verses in Jeremiah 17:5-8 and for his insights about living life in Christ and how we are meant to have resilience. I recommend this app for overcoming fear, anxiety and depression.
I spent too much time staring into the depths of my palantir, and I didn’t even know it. Like Denethor, the Steward of Gondor in Tolkien’s epic The Lord of the Rings, I sought information and knowledge, and I thought I had received it. I never knew that I was not seeing the full picture. I didn’t realize that the particular stone into which I gazed didn’t contain the wisdom about life that I was seeking.
The seeing stones of our day may be appealing, they may grasp our attention, they may show us what we want to see, but they aren’t giving us all of the truth.
You know you can’t believe commercials. When you see the 20 second snatches of beauty, joy, success and self-actualization, you are not seeing the rest of the story. You are not seeing the work and effort it takes to actually earn enough money to buy the product, nor the hassles you will have when you are using the product or taking the trip that was supposed to provide you so much pleasure.
It goes far beyond something as simple as falsehood in advertising, though.
If you don’t chose to dig deep into the information you’re getting, if you don’t deliberately seek out the other point of view just to educate yourself, if you don’t make a point of stepping back, back as far as you can get and asking yourself, “What is the big picture? What will happen if I act on this information, for good or evil?”–you will eventually find that you have made life choices based on less than the truth.
Of course, you’re one person, and you can’t possibly find all the answers to your questions when you look. Nor are you responsible for the outcomes of your choices; that’s in God’s hands. All I’m saying is, seek the truth.
For me, I spent fifty years thinking that I was seeing the truth. I thought certain things and perceived the world to be certain ways. I was a natural cynic–assuming things were destined to go wrong, decay and fade away, because they certainly had historically and in my personal experience.
But what this did is colored my perspective, far more than I realized. While it’s reasonable to be conservative in your expectations, and be wise in trusting your heart to another person, I went beyond that without even knowing it. I didn’t realize that I was teaching my children by both my occasional words and my behavior that life is hard and you can count on people to betray you. All I thought I was doing was saying, keep your distance until you know that person is safe. But I was hurt enough myself by life experiences that I unknowingly communicated far more than I intended.
Yes, people routinely let you down. Yes, life is hard and full of unpleasant surprises.
But that’s not all it is. That’s not the full picture of human relationships.
Protecting myself so thoroughly while thinking I was being realistic and providing my children some solid advice actually was misguided. I took it too far. Now that I’ve lived long enough with the fears I had, and all of those things did. not. happen–I know I was wrong.
I want to spare you, my reader, this truly unfortunate way to live.
And this is just one example. If you gaze into your palantir, whether it’s the news, your social media newsfeed, the music you listen to, the authorities who pronounce, and you do that without asking guidance and do that without listening to sources of truth–you will give in to despair, just as Denethor did when Sauron convinced him to believe, based on the evidence he saw with his own eyes, that any effort he could make to save Middle Earth was hopeless. He believed, based on what he thought was good evidence, that it would really be simpler to just give up. Saruman believed, based on what he thought was good evidence, that he could wield power to bend circumstances to his will, that he could take authority from Sauron and use it for his own purposes to enhance his own greatness, without suffering the consequences.
What lies are you believing that are based on information and ideas that you haven’t actually evaluated?
What truths do you hold to that aren’t actually true?
What if the fears you carry are all or even mostly lies?
When you’re young, and hoping to have a baby, you don’t think about how hard life is. Other than your own current longing, waiting month after month for the good news, you find it hard to see anything else. That’s understandable.
Unless you’re an older potential parent, you may be young enough that this situation is your first unmet longing. It might be the first time you haven’t gotten something you want. You have your dream and you long to live it. It’s a natural biological desire to have children. To see your family go on, to know the joy of a little round head pressed against your chest and to smell the perfume of warm baby. It’s the way it is for mothers who aren’t mothers yet, and it’s what you experience.
Most of the time, you do have children. You love them more than words can say, and you pour yourself into caring for them and keeping them safe and happy.
But sooner or later, the pain you might have experienced waiting for them to be born impresses itself into your child’s life as well. They fall down and hurt themselves. They have to get their vaccinations. They lose a loved family pet.
And it just goes on from there–your children have chronic health problems, they break their arms playing sports, they have learning disabilities, their wishes and dreams are frustrated, their grandparents die, they are betrayed by friends. It’s so hard for them. Life is hard.
If you are like me, you experience misery seeing your children suffer. Then you realize what you have gotten them into.
It seems to be a fact that once you are old and wise enough to have experienced how truly horribly difficult life is, you have already had children of your own. Life goes on, precisely because you had those children.
If you’re like me, you often wonder why you have to go through the things you have to go through. What’s that even about? What is the purpose of suffering? Wouldn’t there be a better or easier way for things to work out? I know intellectually that it’s something that happens, but like most people, I have been less than willing to accept it when it happens to me and the people I love.
But if you’re like me, you may find that the thorn in the flesh actually has a purpose. During the years of difficulty and suffering, it appeared obvious that it was just the shitty way life is sometimes. But you may find that the way you thought things should work out could not have done for you, and in you, what the travail did. Suffering does not necessarily just lead to suffering. It can lead to wisdom. It can allow you to see your circumstances and your life from a different perspective. It can open doors that you wouldn’t even have noticed if your life had gone the way you planned.
I couldn’t love God because of what he did for me, love him because I could finally understand his goodness and faithful love, unless he let me go through what I went through. I couldn’t be transformed without the travail. It would have been impossible. I couldn’t see the bigger picture; without the pain, I would have been content to remain as I was, thinking that was freedom. Like Paul on the road to Damascus, I had to be stopped, confronted, humbled and unblinded. I had to be made miserable before I was willing to seek freedom from the misery, and in the seeking, be provided with the key to the freedom I had needed all along.
Instead of staying the person I was, I was changed. Through the travails I suffered, I was set free from bondage in order to set others free from bondage.
But I had to first see that I was in bondage. And I could never have seen that or believed it if there had been no travail.
Sunday afternoon, were you thinking, where is the time going? Can I afford to sit and visit with my friend or do I need to move on to the project I didn’t get done Saturday? Never mind that I likely still won’t be able to finish it today and would be drawn away from rest without the guarantee of the satisfaction of knowing it’s done.
And I didn’t make that phone call, or get a plumber lined up for next week to install the sink. Well, can’t do that now. But could I get some significant work done on the editorial project since that is also behind? Hmm. I need to assume I will need time tonight to talk with the husband about the week’s plans and probably some time for snuggling plus…don’t want to miss the Zoom call at 8 with my son. I’d better get these bills filed before that.
You see? This is rest in our world–
at least, it is if I choose to make it that.
I’m choosing life, though, instead of bondage. It’s an ongoing choice, because I suspect that if I were living free of the lies that I am responsible for making it all work out, I wouldn’t be writing this blog. I wouldn’t be in the struggle to just be in the day, instead of looking for the next thing I’m supposed to do. I’m not doing it on purpose. It’s my intention to live present. But when I live present, I still find that my mind goes into doing mode. I look around for something to do. I don’t want to do something other than what I’m doing at that moment. But the resting I intend to do, I don’t do. Wretched man that I am, who will rescue me from this body that is taking me to death?
We are obsessed with getting things done. Where did I learn that I must accomplish things? that getting my to-do list shortened is my raison d’etre and the thing I must be married to? that only the labeled and distinct actions others can see are the markers by which I must define my life?
Who says? Who says that what I accomplish is who I am and sums up my worth? What if Sunday is actually for having fun? What if the voices in my head that criticize me for not being productive are wrong?
Recently, I’ve been working through a situation with a family member to restore and strengthen communication and trust. This has been a time intensive process, requiring the commitment to really listen to each other when disagreements and misunderstandings arise. Beyond that has been the need to acknowledge that things I said and did were harmful. My intentions in general were good, but that was not communicated by my actions when I was under stress or experiencing my own problems.
Once I truly saw that I had created problems for my loved one, I felt extremely badly. I had never intended to act in a way that would damage another human being, much less a family member, a person I truly love. But looking at the evidence, it was clear that I had, and I had to admit that I was the person responsible for some of what she was dealing with. Not all of it, certainly, but I had not been helpful in some important areas. In fact, I had created harm.
That was really hard to face; heck, it was hard to even accept. I couldn’t believe that, not meaning to, I had damaged another person.
But the reality of it was in my face. I felt guilt and shame. In this case, that was appropriate. But what could I do with those feelings? I couldn’t outrun them, because there was a reason to feel them. So I faced them. I asked the forgiveness of the person I hurt, not once, but several times, because as we continue down the path of life, circumstances do arise where a new facet of the harm becomes obvious. So it was natural to be aware of the suffering I’d caused, and to ask forgiveness and to show I wanted to be different going forward.
I have had a few people question how bad it really was, how much I was actually responsible for another person’s problems. I know that their goal is good: they want me to feel better. They want me to not be weighed down by unnecessary guilt. They want me to not be forced to grovel in it. And I do appreciate that.
The truth is, Yes. I don’t need to be weighed down by unnecessary guilt. I ask the one I hurt to forgive me. I ask God to forgive me. Avoiding the hurt I caused doesn’t change things. It actually makes it worse. Turning toward the person I hurt and repenting does change things, and does bring relief from the guilt and pain. I live lighter now.
To confess? It’s painful; it’s horrible; it’s awful. But it sets me free.
Joy in the Journey 