Joining Lives

I am thinking this morning about the joining of lives. About how true the statement made by sixteenth century poet and minister John Donne is. Donne wrote while struggling to recover from a long and debilitating illness which he had originally thought was the Black Plague. Each day he would lie in his bed and listen to the tolling of the church bells nearby, signaling the death of yet another person from plague. His words are potent, the entire Meditation XVII worth reading for it's power and strength (you can find the whole thing here), but I will quote for you just a tiny portion, the most famous portion:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

My life is inherently tied to the lives of those around me. I am only beginning to realize the depth of what this means. I am only beginning to understand how to walk out life as an individual, but as an individual who is tied to others with varying degrees of closeness and strength. On November 1st, 2005, God healed me from depression that had plagued me for over five years. On that same day, as one of the things that led up to the prayer time where I later realized I was healed, I began to have flashes of a vision. The same thing over and over again. Two small feet, looking like they had been slashed with a razor blade. (the word razor was very strongly associated in my head with what I was seeing.) The wounds weren't bleeding, they were more like scratches, or healing wounds, but they were fairly fresh and raw. Later, I discovered that God was using that moment of healing to tie my life to another person. The feet were those of a friend who struggles with self-mutilation, and on the day that I was so oddly "seeing" feet all day, she was using a razor blade on her own feet and ankles, expressing the pain in her life in the manor that I had been viewing all day long.

I am only now, six months later, beginning to fully understand that moment. God asked me to serve a couple of very broken women within days of healing part of my own brokenness. And I poured myself into that service with abandon. I had little wisdom to offer, little experience of deeper spiritual things, but I understood what it was to be broken and to desire wholeness. Fast forward six months. There have been ups and downs. This week was particularly down. I had seen little progress in the lives of one of the women in particular. In fact, it seemed she was further away from emotional and spiritual health rather than closer to it. I am involved in another situation that has also drained a great deal of my emotional and spiritual energy. This week I screamed at God because I know deep within me that He has not released me from the ties that bind me to these situations. That He is still calling me to be present in these situations, to continue to offer myself. I had lost all perspective. I was carrying to some extent the burden on my own, rather than allowing Christ to carry it, and simply being obedient to His calling.

I am regaining perspective today. I woke and read this post at Kirk's blog. He describes a vision of a wounded Jesus. The way He describes the wounds of Christ was an accurate description of the wounds I saw on those feet all those months ago. Not just the feet of my friend, but the wounded feet of a Savior who bears all of our wounds...

I was already thinking about the joining of lives because I am going to a wedding this afternoon to watch two very dear friends make the deepest joining of their lives possible. I am so excited for these people that God has already brought together, to watch them stand before their family and friends and God and commit themselves to each other for the rest of their breathing moments.

I am thinking about a situation I heard about this week where it was discovered that a little girl was being sexually abused. I am thinking about how, when the situation was shared with a group of us, our cries to Jesus on behalf of this child and her family were passionate - we knew inherently the evil, that it diminished us, though we would have never known to use those words, and we fought against it on behalf of this child and her family.

I come back, as I draw this post to a close to another portion of Donne's meditation. He is again talking about death, but I find his thoughts so applicable to a life of faith...

...all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another...

May all the situations of our lives, the wounds and brokenness, the joyous moments such as weddings, and the realization of our ties to those around us serve to begin the translation process. May we be translated in small portions each day into a "better language". May the events of our lives be translators employed by the hands of God, and in that moment of final translation may His hand truly bind up all our scattered pages.

You HAVE to see this!

No, really. You have to go to this site. I mean, it's the Bible, only in Lego. Slightly wild and crazy at times, and you have to wonder who has this kind of time on their hands, but so funny!

God at Work?

It's funny how we can talk about not confining where God will work, but we don't really ever expect Him to show up in certain arenas of our lives. My work place is like that. While I have enjoyed being a "gift registry consultant" for the last year, I'm tired of the job, and ready to move into something full time that won't require me to work evenings and weekends all the time anymore. My coworkers are a big part of the reason I'm ready to move on - and one in particular. I had a nasty (on her part not mine - I think I managed to hold my tongue quite admirably since I was ready to quit on the spot!) encounter with her on Wednesday evening during my shift, and wasn't looking forward at all to going into work yesterday because I knew I would be with her for six of the eight hours I was working.

In fact, as I headed into work, I was angry, I was dreading being there, I was tempted to be sick and stay home - anything to avoid having to spend time with this one woman. But I'm kind of responsible that way, so sick was out.

I arrived at work and immediately began working on a task that I complete on my own. While I was working I decided to work on my attitude, and began humming or whistling some worship songs. I really wasn't looking for any kind of God encounter, I mostly wanted to focus on the lyrics playing through my head, and was hoping that thinking about something "happy" or "good" like God would improve my mood.

So I'm humming away, stuffing packages for brides, and answering the occasional question from my coworkers or from clients, and suddenly God starts talking. Nothing super profound. The coworker I was struggling with came into the room I was working in to make a phone call and God tells me to pray. Nothing specific, just pray, so I pray a few sentences and go back to the song. This happened a couple different times - God directing me to pray, or pointing out certain lyrics in the songs I was humming.

What caught me as I thought about it after I got home last night was that God honored my desire for a changed attitude, and showed up. It's hard to pray, even a few sentences for someone in your head, when you're totally angry at them. I'm not saying I've fallen in love with this woman - in fact, I'm glad that today at work will be relatively stress free because she has the day off, but my attitude changed and the shift went smoothly. I focused on God, and He showed up, and that surprised me more than anything.

And, as I think about it, my job does provide an awful lot of opportunities to pray. Because every couple we meet with is about to embark on marriage in a society that tells them that it's an outdated institution, or one that is not necessarily permanent. Or there's the lesbian couple we got the email from yesterday who were upset because the cards in which we write messages from the wedding guests to the couple have a man and a woman on the front, and they'd like them to be gender neutral. There's the single mom (about my age) with a five year old son who's a coworker. There's the coworker who lives with her long-time, expects to marry him someday, boyfriend, who's been having problems and fighting with him lately. And so many more. Maybe if I approach my workplace as a place that God might actually want to hang out at it'll make the time I have left until I find a new position more bearable?

Receiving and Giving

I wrote this last night, during house church.

Luke 6:38 (NLT) - Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full - pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and pouring into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.

There has been a shift in my life in the last month or so. Not necessarily a good shift. I have begun to resent God's call on my life to give - especially to such broken people. He has given me such a heart for the broken, but in the last while I have lost a bit of that. The heart is there, but I have begun to resent what it represents, what it calls me to. I have begun to ask God why I'm not receiving in return - when I will get my payback for what I have poured out, rather than simply being willing to obey and give. "Why aren't you seeing MY brokenness God? How come you're sending me to pour out my life for others and you're not sending someone to pour out their life for me?"

It's a very selfish sort of obedience. A grumpy following rather than a following with joy. A sense of "when am I going to get my just rewards?"

Father, I confess my selfish heart. I just want You. Soften my heart again. Restore within me Your heart. Let me see those to whom You ask me to give with Your eyes and not my own. Give me Your heart for the brokenness in their lives, Your desire for their healing. Forgive my selfish desires. Abba, I belong to You. I'm Yours. Wherever you want, wherever you say, that's where I want to be. I love You.

Day Off

Today was my day off. I worked the last six straight days, and today was my one day off. I'm off again on Saturday, because I took the day off to attend a good friend's wedding.

I love lazy days off with no particular agenda. I did a couple errands by myself this morning, and a couple more with my mom. I spent a half hour or so reading in my back yard, soaking up the sun. I would have spent longer, but I have this ridiculously pale skin that is slightly pink after only thirty minutes and would be painfully red after any greater length of time. I did some reading in the bathtub, and some cleaning in my bedroom. I helped chop vegetables to be grilled with our supper. This is the best kind of day in my opinion.

Lots of time to just be, and lots of time to simply think.

Here's what I've been thinking about today. It seems that the new things God is doing in my life would require a completely different personality than my own. I keep asking Him if He meant to pick someone different for the things He's asking of me.

I got an email today that challenged me. A new friend was responding to some questions and concerns I'd sent to him last week. He suggested once again that I speak of my concerns in a corporate setting, that I speak clearly about the things on my heart and see what God does. I really think that God meant for someone else to do this. Yes, I've been stepping out in a lot of new ways this last while. But I've got to be honest - I don't like tension or confrontation all that much. In fact, I'd much rather avoid them completely. And I definitely don't like anything that draws attention to myself. I feel inadequate - uncertain that the things that I am experiencing as concerns, the things I feel that God has revealed to me are things that I am qualified to speak to. Or even things that are acceptable to be feeling. Maybe they aren't God?

The Holy Spirit confuses me. I don't understand at all the things He seems to be doing in my life. I don't understand this place I find myself in. I'm not necessarily all that upset about a lack of understanding - more that there seems to be so little clarity - so many shades of gray. I find myself begging for Him to release me from certain situations - to give me the freedom to move on to new things alongside some friends, and yet, He hasn't released me. And so I continue to live in this place of tension. I'm not so good at discerning His voice. It confuses me that my dream life is open to both the Spirit of God, and to attack from the enemy. It confuses me that this following God thing seems so easy for some, and so conflict ridden for me. I wonder how to scripturally defend the new things I have experienced with God over the last months. More importantly, I'm wondering how or if I even should explain them to my parents and brothers. I feel at times very alone. I don't know who to ask these questions about the Spirit of God, who to wrestle through my struggles with my church with. I need to process verbally - I am very auditory, and yet I don't know who would be safe to sit and have these sorts of conversations with.

But, despite what would seem to be very angst ridden thoughts, this has been a relaxing day off. Tonight is house church, and that always increases the angst for a while, but I fully intend to go, to look to receive from Christ, and then to come home, to sleep, and to start the rest of my week off tomorrow.