Category Archives: Invitations to Spiritual Intimacy

Brain Be Quiet, Let The Heart Speak

Reflections – week 7a

Welcome to week seven of reflections inspired by my current small groups. Together with some of my favorite women, I’m exploring these books: Father’s House: The Path That Leads Home, and The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness. I’ll be referencing material from Session Seven for two weeks (7a and 7b). And then Session Eight will conclude this series.
I’m finding joy here, and I’m pleased you’re with me on this journey.

Mostly I have believed that my head should rule my heart. Doesn’t information come to me via my head? Then what I know will inform my feelings and impulses, my way of being in the world. There’s just a tiny little problem. This trickle-down effect hasn’t happened. When I first noticed, I figured it must be a matter of management—I need to take a strong hand. My heart may or may not agree with what’s in my head, but my God-given will allows me to choose how I behave in the world, based on what I know to be true. Except this never worked either. So how the hell does my software work?

Karen McAdams, in this week’s Father’s House video, says, “If there’s a battle between your head and your heart, your heart is gonna win every time.”¹ So I’ve had it backward the whole time?! This clears up a litany of questions I’ve had over the years: Why do I pray for patience and then try hard to be patient? What makes it so difficult to truly love another person, especially when I’m spread thin and they’re a hundred pounds of trouble? When will my beliefs about God start impacting the way I interact with Him and with people? Why am I always at war with myself, exhausted by listening to the arguing factions and trying to reach a conclusion?

Answer: “If there’s a battle between your head and your heart, your heart is gonna win every time.”

Karen McAdams suggests it’s critical that I give my heart permission to speak.² So I opened my heart room and started picking things up and asking questions. I spent a long time learning how my heart pictures God. I refused the right answers, and listened for the felt answers. The honest truth is shocking, sometimes sacrilegious, always insightful.

God,
I don’t trust You. I want to be in charge of my own self, my day, my time, my family.
You don’t want me to be kind to myself because that would be selfish and sinful. I was made to think of others and do for others.
I’m angry at You for not changing me the way You said you would.
You’d rather be with me when I’m in a good mood.
You’d prefer I figure things out on my own; and also, get them right the first time.
You want me to be dependent so You can control me.
No matter what I do, You’re gonna be volatile, unpredictable. I never know if you’re gonna show up.
When I get lost in myself, You look the other way and wait for me to find myself again.
You like to watch me fail because it reminds me that I need You.
No matter how hard I try, I will fall short. The standards are always changing, just enough to keep me ashamed and aware of my sinfulness.
Your so-called perfection is made perfect in apathy. You are neither warm nor cold, loving nor angry, approachable nor distant, kind nor harsh. This middle ground protects You from criticism, and also from getting too close to me.
I’m furious at You for promising abundance and then giving me stale trail mix.
You’ve really fucked me up by promising You love me and then forgetting to hug me, ever.
The only reason I still believe in You is that my daft head tells me to, and keeps cramming stuff at me until I can’t breathe.
When things get hard, it’s my fault, so I ought not to expect a handout from You.
You’re actually an alcoholic because looking at me and the rest of this world is so damn overwhelming You need to numb it however You can.
You’re so sick and tired of my slow transformation that You can’t stand to look at me, and You’d rather not talk again until I get my act together.
I’m supposed to just let You do whatever the heck You feel like and be okay with it because You’re God.
I’m invisible to You unless I’m useful.

Lonely heart, I hear your pain.

My heart was at capacity, but I didn’t know it. It was full, full, full. Whatever my head sent to my heart, my heart sent right back, unopened. Return to sender. I foolishly thought my heart had unlimited capacity. It never occurred to me I might need to do a good old-fashioned purge and let a couple of boxes go to the second-hand store.

Oh my heart, I’m sorry I have rendered you voiceless, and therefore powerless. But now that you have some room again, and we’re talking, what do you think about some new things? Not too heavy, not too many things. Pick a few. Leave space to breathe.

God,
You don’t mind that I curse at You more than anyone else.
I have Your undivided attention and unmetered affection.
You want to give to me more than you want to take from me.
You see how often I run on empty, and You notice my weary body.
You don’t expect me to change because You love me.
You are more interested in being present with me than You are in molding my character.
You favor me and bless me when I reject You.
You don’t expect me to figure things out on my own, but neither do You expect me to rely on Your advice.
You like to laugh and joke with me, read books together, write together, sit together and look out the window.
You feel the pain I feel, and You bless it.
I am important to You. When You’re dancing with me, You don’t let anyone cut in.
You like to hug me, and You’re always up for a celebration.
You are such a God that I cannot permanently mess even one thing up.
You are not politely neutral toward me. This is a love story, not an agreement to shake hands and keep the peace.
You come find me when I’m curled up in fear and self-loathing, holding a sign that says, “Fuck Off.” You are not fooled, and You’re not offended. You come close enough to feel the tension and see my eyes flashing, and You stay, gently.
You always see the real me, the truest me, the me You made in Your image, unshakably good. You are disinterested in my performance or mistakes and fully aware of who I am as Your daughter.

“Homegirl Inez says, ‘At Homeboy, we don’t check boxes, we check pulses.’ And if one of our trainees misses, we don’t ask, ‘Where you been at?’ but ‘How ya doin’?’”³Imagine a God who doesn’t ask, “Where have you been?” but “How are you doing?” That’s the God we actually have. The too-good-to-be-true Father, who can witness everything in our hearts and still want to hold hands.

Homeboy Ricky said, “I’ve come to realize that I never need to drown in the shallow end of my own beliefs ever again. Been standin’ up ever since.”⁴ After living in the fetal position so long, standing up is like becoming a whole new person, unfurled, alive, looking around in wonder at all the beauty.

I will keep giving my heart a voice. I will engage with hope by letting God encourage me. Boyle writes, “… we are meant to both feel encouraged by God and be a source of endless, hopeful encouragement for the downhearted.”⁵ Dialoging with my own heart will teach me how to dialogue with other beautiful hearts. And I will keep the conversation open. I will be tender with myself when I find more pain in my heart, and I will pray:

Okay Father, I’m gonna talk directly to You. I have a hard time picturing a Father who delights in me, whose countenance toward me does not change based on my performance. But I know that being kind to myself is a way to remember Your kindness, and that remembering Your kindness is a way to be kind to myself. We are in this together. Your authority is my authority—not standing over me, but always backing me up. You like to have fun with me. You always have time for me. You do not hand me a to-do list in the morning and check it over in the evening. You invite me to be with You, creating or enjoying. Just by being You and being my Dad, You remind me who I am when I forget. I belong in Your house. I receive You as my Father, Jesus as my brother, and Spirit as my truest self, my center. Thank You for hearing my heart, and for giving me courage to hear it too.

Endnotes:
¹Father’s House, Session Seven video teaching
²Father’s House, Session Seven video teaching
³The Whole Language, page 103
⁴The Whole Language, page 118
⁵The Whole Language, page 116

Mess to Meadow

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Mess to Meadow

Reflections – week 6

Welcome to week six of reflections inspired by my current small groups. Together with some of my favorite women, I’m exploring these books: Father’s House: The Path That Leads Home, and The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness. This is week six of eight.
I’m finding joy here, and I’m pleased you’re with me on this journey.

“Messy.” This word resonated with me as a descriptor of my inner world for most of the past ten years. Also, “Complicated” and “Untrustworthy.” Being at home with a newborn baby introduced me to my inner world, and brought to light a toxic relationship with myself that had been flying under the radar most of my life. Twenty-one months after quitting work to stay at home, my second daughter was born, and in between cuddling warm, squishy babies and washing loads of laundry that left only pink lint in the dryer screen, I learned to hate myself.

Self-hate is like having the world’s worst roommate, and reading only bad news in the paper. On some level it feels normal, but there is always the hope that things will improve. I had no idea what would be involved in learning kindness to myself. Mercifully, it was not a journey I took alone, but in the company of my husband, favorite authors, music, and God.

I didn’t know it, but I needed to learn what parts of my inner world are truest. What parts can influence or control other parts? Why did I feel powerless so much of the time, and why did I increasingly try to control myself, my children, and my husband to combat those feelings of powerlessness?

One aspect of learning to be friends with myself was practicing acceptance of all the parts. This has been a vital key in finding peace. But I still want to know, when different parts are at war, what is the most real part? In a broader sense, who am I?

Gregory Boyle writes, “When the homies arrive, they have not been properly introduced to themselves.”¹ I can relate. While caring for two little ones, I was introduced to myself, but it wasn’t a proper introduction. I got acquainted with what Father’s House calls my soul—made up of mind, will and emotions.² These always seemed at war with one another. I thought my will was the control center, the part of me that could call the shots for everything else. But it didn’t work. My emotions jumped into control, my mind spent most of its time cowering in fear, and my will unceremoniously shoved me through the duties of each day. After a few years of getting to know myself, I was thoroughly done with being me, and I was madder than hell at whoever said my will was supposed to control my mind and emotions. I was also angry with myself. So angry, from trying to control my emotions with my will, and my will with my mind, and failing. Always failing. Defeated, lying on the ground, exhausted, dirty.

In the video teaching for Father’s House Session Six, Rachel Faulkner Brown introduces the idea of a spirit center.³ The soul (mind, will, emotions) is around the spirit center, and is informed by the spirit center. In other words, everything moves outward from my spirit center. This means I don’t rule myself with willpower. I cannot tell you what a relief this is. Willpower is an unfaithful partner, an accident waiting to happen. I either wield it to the detriment of the soft parts of myself and my children, or I don’t use it, also to the detriment of our most tender parts.

A spirit center changes everything. There is a whole and holy part of me, a quiet place, a finished place. After being properly introduced to myself, the haggling between my will, mind, and emotions took its proper place outside my spirit. The authors of Father’s House write, “In the Kingdom, who you are releases what you do. The enemy tries to convince you what you do determines who you are. That’s why Satan attacks what you believe about yourself the hardest.”⁴I have been caught in a vortex of doing, not knowing that being comes first. Spirit is my center, and my center is Spirit. I don’t need to control my spirit.

So, the truest—by which I mean the most unwavering—part of me is my spirit center, around which all the other parts find their places, and the whole becomes a residence of freedom and meaning.

Rachel Faulkner Brown suggests that I ask God, “What do You call me?”⁵This is Papa’s response: “Meadow. You are now a place of beauty, stillness, rest, wonder, creative activity. Seasons may change the blooms or the flow of water, but you will always be these things.”

Mess to Meadow.

Wrestling to resting.

Despicable to divine.

The coming hours of this day are not a treacherous trudge over land mines, but an adventurous afternoon in a meadow.

Endnotes:
¹The Whole Language, page 94
²Father’s House, page 100
³Father’s House, Session Six video teaching
⁴Father’s House, page 99
⁵Father’s House, Session Six video teaching

Taste and Swallow

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Taste and Swallow

Reflections – week 5b

Welcome to the second half of week-five reflections inspired by my current small groups. Together with some of my favorite women, I’m exploring these books: Father’s House: The Path That Leads Home, and The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness. This is week five of eight.
I’m finding joy here, and I’m pleased you’re with me on this journey.

Communion as Helplessness

Babies get spoon-fed. Adults with declining health get spoon-fed. Those who can feed themselves, feed themselves. Except at wedding receptions. Bride and groom hold out thin slices of cake for each other, while family and friends hold their breath—will it be romantically delicate, or smash-in-your-face fun? If they’re really brave, a couple will do the same with drinks. God bless them if they stain the wedding dress.

Holding a drink to another person’s mouth, or putting a bite of food on their tongue, is an intimate interaction. You’re participating in the entrance of a substance into another person’s body. The muscles in your hand and arm are ultra-focused, working in awkward tandem with another’s lips and tongue and throat.

In the Father’s House week 5 visualization, I’m invited to see myself at the table in Papa’s house, receiving communion from His hands.¹ Imagine God Himself putting food in my mouth, holding drink to my lips, intimate, connected. This involves so much receiving, which I have never been good at. It involves not doing it on my own. Does God have time for such shenanigans?

As I swallow bread and drink, it occurs to me that tasting and swallowing are nearly the only bodily sensations I will experience with this food. After esophageal muscles carry the food to my stomach, it travels through my body unnoticed by me, yet is giving of itself for hours, sustaining my well-being. But over all this I have no control and very little awareness.

I wonder if my goodness—God’s gift to me—is this way. I hunger for belonging, rest, wholeness, so I open myself to receive. After tasting and swallowing, my mouth may return to neutral—no sensations—but a hundred things are happening inside me, producing life. Resting my hands in my lap and allowing God to feed me, trusting that I was made to receive, and trusting receiving to be life-giving and ongoing—maybe this will calm the hustle and quiet the perfectionism. Maybe being dependent will feel like peace, not prison. Maybe receiving as if I am helpless to do it myself will usher me in to abundance.

When I receive, I’m not generating something new. I’m depending on what already is. Swallowing is a surrender. I have invited something into my body, to become part of me. In the same way, receiving God’s goodness—my goodness—is a surrender to life. It’s not a structure I build brick by brick, but rather a piece of toast with butter and honey, sweet to the tongue, trusted to enter my body and do me good.

As Gregory Boyle says, “Then we stop being ‘spiritual,’ moving from here to there. Instead, we want to move from there to here.”²God is inviting me to take up residence in myself and to taste my real life and allow it to nourish me. I am not trying to get somewhere so much as I am opening my mouth to partake.

I Declare

Father’s House encourages declarations—statements we can write down and speak aloud in order to internalize new ways of thinking. I’m not much for formulas, and I haven’t been practicing my declarations with any regularity, but writing them even once can be impactful. I had fun this week re-writing in my own words some of the scripture-based declarations from the book.

I am innocent.

I am powerful in my own self.

I live within the walled city of God’s love, my refuge and place of peace.

The greatest power in the universe is for me. All powers against me are lesser.

I am an abider.

I am whole, because this is Jesus’ gift to me.

I am alive. Good things flow through me.

I am an enjoyer of abundance.

God is never on the other side.

Jesus’ faith is my doorway out of law prison.

Slavery to the law falls off me like water off a duck’s back.

I am spirit-inhabited, married into the trinity.

My Papa is compassionate with me. Always.

Let Him Sing

Every week of Father’s House closes with a letter from Papa God, fresh with edibles for my hungry spirit. Excerpts from this week’s letter:

I am singing My promises over your soul. Let them wash over you and fill your mind and body with confidence.
I am putting opportunities in your life to grow your trust and faith in Me. How do I do this? By giving you endless encounters with My goodness.
The prize of My promises is a relationship with me.
… practice the language of possibility! You’re learning to be content using a new muscle – the muscle of rest and trust.
As you wait on My response with a carefree heart… I am holding you in my perfect embrace.
All My Love, Abba Daddy.³

Here’s to endless encounters with God’s goodness—bread and drink—and bulging muscles of rest and trust.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto: https://www.pexels.com/photo/girl-feeding-her-father-with-a-cake-4815325/

Endnotes:
¹Father’s House, Session Five video visualization
²The Whole Language, page 84
³Father’s House, page 94

“Holiness is a contact sport”

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“Holiness is a contact sport”

Reflections – week 5a

Welcome to week five of reflections inspired by my current small groups. Together with some of my favorite women, I’m exploring these books: Father’s House: The Path That Leads Home, and The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness. This is week five of eight. (Next week’s post will also be based on material from week 5—hence, this is 5a and next week will be 5b).
I’m finding joy here, and I’m pleased you’re with me on this journey.

As a good Millennial, I’m not much for limits. Limits feel like judgements. They make life smaller; make me smaller. Any good proponent of limits would tell you that healthy limits actually open up possibilities. Could be. I’m not there yet. I’m still shedding layers of limits that have gripped me too tight. When I come across this question in Father’s House, it triggers my limit-aversion: “Do you think you can ‘fall from Grace’? Read Galatians 5:1-4.”¹ Falling from grace definitely does not fit in my paradigm of an expansive God, a Love big enough to hold everything. But okay, I’ll read Galatians 5:1-4.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.

“Falling from grace” makes it sound like there’s a limit on grace. I look for a different angle, a way forward that’s not triggering. I have trouble finding an analogy I like. What if grace is air and not-grace is water? I’m breathing air naturally and it sustains me. But if I stick my nose in water and breath in, things go haywire. Breathing in water compromises the flow of air. In the same way, grace is abundantly available and sustaining, but if I stick my nose in performance and good behavior, I’ll no longer be breathing in grace.

Perhaps I’m not able to partake of grace at the same time I am trying to be good enough, get it right, obey the rules. This “fall from grace” is actually a loss of intimacy, a feeling of disconnect that is inevitable when I try to be good.

Oddly, I’m often “good” in order to connect, not realizing it has the opposite effect. I have settled for false, transactional “intimacy.” When I show up as a performer, it’s the wrong currency for connection. No experience has taught me this more than marriage. There is no way to “get it right.” The only way to connect is to show up as me. Damn, I hate that. The curated, filtered, controlled version of me seems so much better than actual me.

Father’s House puts it this way: “Jesus and Father God only relate to you based on the Covenant that you are in, and that is the New Covenant based on His matchless grace and mercy.”² I can perform all I want, but when I do I’m not occupying relational space with God. Also, “Grace is not a superpower to fulfill the old covenant.”³ Say what? I thought that was the whole point. Faith and grace and Spirit enable me to do what I’m not able to do on my own, and that is to be good! Or not.

I’m not super clear on what I’m supposed to do, if not try to be “good.” But Gregory Boyle seems to have an idea:

What if holiness is a contact sport and we are meant to bump into things?

If we allow ourselves to “bump into things,” then we quit measuring. We cease to Bubble-Wrap ourselves against reality. We stop trying to “homeschool” our way through the world so that the world won’t touch us.

A homie told me once, “It’s taken me all these years to see the real world. And once ya see it—there’s only God there.”

With any luck, we don’t protectively encase ourselves from surprising tenderness. We announce to each other that we are alive and kicking, ready to be bumped into.

We don’t want to distance the secular but always bring it closer. It’s only then that ordinary things and moments become epiphanies of God’s presence.

God holds out wholeness to us. Let’s not settle for just spiritual. We are sacramental to our core when we think that everything is holy. The holy not just found in the supernatural but in the Incarnational here and now.
– The Whole Language, excerpts from pages 81-82

This view of life is about as limitless as it gets. Bump into things. See God everywhere, including in me, sacramental to the core.

So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
– Romans 8:12-14, MSG

Okay Papa God, I’m ready to shake hands on this. I’ll accept Your deal that self-righteousness and good behavior are a no-connection zone, but everything else is on the table: bad behavior, the moment I’m in, my body, the life of each person I know, the tree outside my window.

Maybe “they” are right after all—a healthy limit is freedom.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
– Galatians 5:1

Endnotes:
¹Father’s House, page 89
²Father’s House, page 83
³Father’s House, Session Five video teaching

Fierce Presence

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I’m beyond excited to be across the country at a writing conference, so I won’t write this week on Father’s House and The Whole Language. Instead I’m sharing an invitation to spiritual intimacy.

Fierce Presence

I have separation anxiety with God. I’m sure He’s in this for the long haul, but faith in my ability to mess up often outpaces faith in Him to keep showing up. Somehow I got the idea that Jesus’s faithfulness is contingent on mine. Or at the very least, my salvation is contingent on my faithfulness.

It’s possible I reversed good news and heard bad news. I got gravel in my filter. When “Perfect love casts out fear” goes through my filter, it comes out, “If you fear, God is not in you.” When “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you” goes through my filter, I hear, “If you could only master an awareness of God, you’d have perfect peace.” Verse after verse mocks me, standing sentry to the heart of God, announcing that if I have fear or discontent I don’t belong there.

Who spread the lie that God is available only in goodness? That He is best found in happy marriages and productive members of society? If that is true, then every time I have a bad day—or worse, a week or a month or a year—I am no longer a vessel. I’m on the naughty list. I sleep in the attic with the others who don’t get it.

Love that heals is weaponized against me, suggesting that when I am not healing it is because I am not in Love. Rather than an invitation to healing, I hear condemnation for not being good enough at getting healed.

But what if I don’t have to faithfully choose Love? Maybe it chooses me. Maybe it gives me the room with an ocean view, extra fuzzy blankets, and a hot tub. It includes breakfast in bed and free parking, pool access and complimentary snacks. Love always embraces first. And second. And third. It is welcoming, and it is gentle with my insecurities.

Yet Love is as fierce as it is gentle. It knows how to walk through death and divorce, addiction and abuse, scarcity and loneliness, depression and anxiety. This Love that has tenderly pried my white-knuckled hands free and taught me to rest is the same Love that hung naked on a cross. It is not afraid of anything, yet it is not offended or repelled by the presence of fear.

I’m beginning to be persuaded, along with Paul, that nothing can separate me from the love of God.

“For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:38-39 NKJV

Powerful words. But I get thrown off when I realize I don’t know what a principality is, and I’m not sure how height or depth are interfering with Love. I’ve also not had a lot of angels trying to come between me and God. Rather, I get jumpy when I make mistakes or feel depressed or snap too much at the people I love. So I wrote a personalized version of Romans 8:38-39:

I am persuaded that neither anxiety nor depression, nor anger nor arrogance nor mistakes, nor ignorance nor knowledge, nor tantrums nor passivity, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus my Lord.

The voice whispering that anxiety or fear will separate me from Love is the voice of a specter, of that which seemed real to me before I became real. Maybe Love sees fear and anxiety and depression and says, “I embrace you in this,” and it says, “This isn’t the final word.” Maybe that’s what the verses are for. Love is not afraid to hold the tension of hope—the space between what is and what will be—and it holds that tension both peacefully and fiercely.

This fierce presence provides the faithfulness I thought I had to come up with on my own. God’s ability to show up always outpaces my ability to mess up. I am faithfully and fiercely loved, separation anxiety and all.

Photo by Josh Willink: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-carrying-a-baby-286625/

Righteous Rest

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Righteous Rest

Reflections – week 4

Welcome to the fourth week of reflections inspired by my current small groups. Together with some of my favorite women, I’m exploring these books: Father’s House, and The Whole Language. Gregory Boyle, author of The Whole Language, founded Homeboy Industries, the largest gang intervention and rehab program in the world. The Whole Language is his third book, and my favorite. Boyle frequently refers to “mysticism,” and if—like me—you’re not sure what that is, I invite you to just roll with it. Thank you for journeying with me.

Dead

I have a tenuous relationship with metaphors around the cross of Jesus—bridge, sacrifice, torn veil. I’m also unsure why we’re excited about a symbol of brutal, torturous death. We don’t wear miniature gold guillotines or electric chairs on delicate chains around our necks. But even if I can get past crucifixion pedantry, I still have questions. Did Jesus die as me or for me? Did He take punishment, or natural consequences, or did He simply enter into human suffering? Did He free all humanity, or only those who confess His name? Do I reap the reward of what He accomplished today, or only in the afterlife?

The authors of Father’s House believe that Jesus died as me, and while I don’t share their certainty, I love where they go from there: “The old you, the you that is still trying to measure up, died.”¹ Now that is good news. Performing me is dead. Striving me is dead. Ashamed me is dead. The apostle Paul believed we were crucified with Christ, and exclaimed, “Could it be any clearer that our former identity is now and forever deprived of its power!”² Having spent the last decade imprisoned by my own self, the possibility of leaving that behind is tremendously appealing.

The New Testament talks about the “old” and the “new” person. I like to think of them as a fake self and a real self. I was a facade. Now I am genuine. This moving into righteousness is not a move from bad to good, but a move from fragmented to whole, death to life. Behavior is always and only a side note. Good behavior centers me on shaky ground; bad behavior centers me on shaky ground. When I mess up, and when I have it all together, I need to be reminded that it’s not about behavior. “Righteous” is not a tally sheet, it’s a birth certificate.

Righteousness is Mysticism is Connectedness

Week #4 in Father’s House is all about righteousness, and the belief that “I am as righteous as Jesus Christ.”³ I want to short-circuit the voice in my heart and head that believes it’s all about behavior. I want to confuse, divert, or undermine my pesky inner parole officer. I have been imprisoned by my humanness, convinced I can only get out on good behavior, so each reminder in the Lesson Four video teaching is hope:

– Righteousness is not a verb, it’s a noun

– Righteousness is simply received, not achieved

– Righteousness is not dependent on my obedience

– Righteousness is about who I trust, not what I do

– Righteousness is received by faith, not by feeling

Righteousness ushers in a whole new way of seeing. Gregory Boyle writes, “The world will focus on outcomes or behavior or success. Mysticism glances just above what the world has in its sights. It puts judgment on check. It develops a warmth for everything that comes its way and rests in the center of it. When we are whole, that’s what we see in others.”⁴ Then we all warm up around the radiant heat of connectedness.

Boyle continues, “This culture of mystical tenderness holds every soul in high regard. …high performance is not the goal, but rather, a surrender to healing is. Then everyone finds this gentle road and practices, with each other, the pathway home.”⁵

Papa God is relentless in His passionate devotion to my wholeness and healing. When I soak in this—in the crazy truth that I am righteous—transformation is loosed, I live from a seat of rest, and I begin tapping into my heart’s desires instead of listening to my inner parole officer. I become confident in God’s presence to do the impossible with and through me, to invite everyone home.⁶

Righteous Conviction

In John 16:8, Jesus says the Spirit “will convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment” (NKJV). Day Two reading in Father’s House shocks me: “This [John 16:8] is the only time in the entire New Testament that there is mention of the Holy Spirit convicting of sin… and it is in response to those who do not believe in Him! As a believer, this says He wants to convict you of something completely different: your righteousness. Holy Spirit knows that reminding you of who you are, the righteousness of God in Christ, empowers you…”⁷

So the voice inside of me that points out how much I fall short is NOT the Holy Spirit, or any part of God? Why am I listening to it? Instead, I may hear a voice that convicts me of righteousness, a voice that notices all the beautiful things in me and says that is who I truly am. This voice looks for goodness and finds it. This voice spends its time bringing to light righteousness (not sin).

Embodied Healing

Another analogy I’m not fond of is the “robe of righteousness.” Robes are not attractive, they don’t keep my feet warm, and they are not all-day wear (except when it’s cold in the house and I wear my robe over my clothes). It’s quite possible royal robes were more common than bath robes in Jesus’ day, but having no experience with royal robes I’m not sure how to relate. Also, a robe can be taken on and off, and I’m not keen on transient righteousness. But, because I’m just a wee bit compelled to follow directions, I explored my thoughts about a robe of righteousness, as instructed in Father’s House. To my surprise, I found a thought that fits me.Skin is the largest organ of the human body. Clothing is intimate. It makes sense that God would draw near to me in a way that touches my skin. Touch keeps me present. It draws me out of my head and into my body, and God knows I need all the help I can get to stay present in my body.

Our bodies carry pain, and sometimes we divorce ourselves to get away from the pain. We do a thousand things to survive, many of which we don’t even realize we’re doing. It takes time to sort this out and let love into the picture. The folks Gregory Boyle connects with carry unimaginable amounts of pain and trauma. Extravagant tenderness creates space for that pain to be seen. “When you enter the program,” a homie said, “you need to bring your pain with you.”⁸ Connection and healing happen when we allow our wound to be seen, and then to be touched. Boyle suggests that “Healing takes a lifetime but surrender to this moment can carry you.”⁹ Love creates the space to surrender to this moment, to stay present to ourselves. “To be nurtured is to be reverent for what is happening to you.”¹⁰ Grace is reverence for pain.

Rest and Love

Striving to be “good” takes a boatload of energy. I remember when my oldest daughter began full-time schooling in first grade. She came home from school each day totally spent, and often spiraled into tantrums, tears, and yelling matches with me (I’m a superb yeller). She spent every ounce of her energy to behave well, learn well, and get along with others at school, and when she came home there was nothing left. I, too, have “melted down” over and over because I empty myself in my attempts to perform well, and to be “good.”

Papa God, Jesus, and Spirit are a whole new paradigm—a home where behavior is beside the point, a distraction from the real deal. Trying to become whole is a tiring pursuit. Knowing I’m already whole is energizing. Resting in righteousness creates a foundation for love. “The mystic’s quest is to be on the lookout for the hidden wholeness in everyone,”¹¹ including me.

Endnotes:
¹Father’s House, page 65
²Romans 6:6 TPT
³Father’s House, page 66
⁴The Whole Language, page 51
⁵The Whole Language, page 53
⁶Father’s House, Session Four video teaching and activation, pages 66-68
⁷Father’s House, page 71
⁸The Whole Language, page 54
⁹Father’s House, page 53
¹⁰Father’s House, page 50
¹¹The Whole Language, page 55

The Light Between Us

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I’m taking a break this week from Father’s House and The Whole Language, to write about a different small group I’m in. There are four of us, meeting via Zoom to share our experiences through a compassion and wholeness workbook. The author of this workbook is my beloved sister, Dr. Jody Washburn. “Dr. Washburn” doesn’t roll off my tongue right, so at the risk of being an impudent younger sister, I’ll refer to her as “Jody.”

The full title of the workbook is, “Compassion & Wholeness: Engaging with Care and Curiosity on the Healing Journey.” This makes me smile. I love every beautiful word strung together into an invitation. Compassion… my invitation to care for another. Wholeness… my invitation to care for myself. And each of these spaces explored with curiosity, which is the antidote for judgement and shame—a healing journey indeed.

Jody writes about two barriers to belonging: 1) feeling “we have to hide or downplay who we are in order to belong,” or 2) feeling like belonging will come when we can “fix” others so they are more like us. Is there a space in which we can maintain our individuality, allow others to maintain theirs, and experience intimacy, belonging?

I have often felt this tension between hiding me or fixing you. I’m certain I will only be accepted if I meet expectations—not just in the workplace, but in friendship and at home as well. Therefore much of my energy goes into meeting expectations (real or imagined). Yet I know from painful experience that performance does not breed intimacy. People may “like” me, but they don’t know me. They know my performing self, or my “representative,” as Glennon Doyle would say. My real self suspects that if she were known, she would be rejected. Each time I allow my tired or confused or sad self show, there is a real possibility of shame-reinforcing rejection. People need me to make sense, to show up consistently, and to manage my own emotions. I suppose the most awful thing about this is that there is some truth to it. But this truth no longer has my loyalty. I have left it behind for something else.

I suppose my “something else” could be described as discomfort, but it is a discomfort leading to delicious comfort, to an internal wholeness I didn’t know was possible, and an intimacy with others I could not imagine. The discomfort is in losing control (or the illusion of control), receiving my own impossible-to-understand internal experiences, and receiving the experiences of others. No fixing. This is a terrifying freedom and a portal to a new dimension, a tangled and beautiful garden of love.

“Connection with [myself] and connection with others,” Jody writes. Yes, I respond. Yes.

Jody illustrates these two connections with pairs of words from various authors and speakers:
individuation and intimacy
authenticity and attachment
individuality and belonging
and my personal favorite, from Maya Angelou: “I belong to everyone. I belong to no one.”

Jody is a Hebrew scholar (I know, my sister is super cool). She describes the Hebrew word “Shalom,” which we often equate with peace, as “the harmonious working of a complex system”—another way to imagine this space we occupy of belonging both to ourselves and to others. Shalom makes an outrageous suggestion, that the complexities of ourselves and our world are somehow beautifully compatible. My own existence and the existence of each person I know, is an invitation to dance. I am invited to dance with myself, and I am invited to dance with you. Together we find a balance we could not find alone. This balance requires authenticity—a willingness to see and share my own insides, and to see and receive your insides. This seeing shines a lights into the shared spaces we occupy and allows us to dance the dance of intimacy, a miraculous, harmonious duet emerging from what seemed like incompatible notes and unwilling instruments.

As my friends and I talk on Zoom about all these ideas, we are drawn repeatedly to our own desire for an increased capacity to show compassion. As mothers, we lament our bitterness, anger, and attempts to control our children. Yet it is clear that compassion is not a “fake-it-till-you-make-it” prospect, nor is it achieved by trying harder or learning more. How are we to cultivate something that cannot be wrestled or prayed or shamed into being? How do I move from desiring compassion to a real response of curiosity and care when my children are battling for the upper hand in an insult war, or waking me up for the fifth time in one night? I am certain compassion must come from my core, yet I know I cannot surgically place it there. Oh, how I wish for a compassion pace-maker to fill in my glitches and keep me alive.

My sister’s workbook holds hints about what it looks like to move into compassionate space. One hint is embodiment. Hillary McBride writes, “Embodiment is a coming home, a remembering of our wholeness, and a reunion with the fullness of ourselves.” This remembering is the beginning of creating. Before I create, I need to make friends with my body. I answer Jody’s workbook questions. “What messages have you received, growing up and at other times in your life, about your body?” My answer surprises me. I had not put this into words until now: “My body is useful apart from my spirit/emotions/mind. It is useful for showing up where I don’t want to be, doing what I don’t want to do, accomplishing things for other people.” It makes sudden sense that I have felt divided against myself, ill with chronic internal bickering. I have used my body, and allowed others to use it. I didn’t know my body was me. I think this is what “dis-integration” means. Resentment and a lack of agency follow disintegration, and all at once it makes sense that I have been mired in a stinking swamp of resentment.

Another hint about compassionate space is “compassionate witnessing,” which includes the ability to hold space for what feel like mutually exclusive experiences. How can I feel comforted and fearful at the same time in my husband’s arms? How can I desire time alone and long for connection in one moment? How can my friends be both graceful and judgmental? How can my world be crammed so full of pain and beauty that I find the two squashed together in uncomfortable proximity? Jody talks about expanding circles of compassionate witnessing, encompassing self and others. She closes her workbook with these words from Stephanie Foo.

So this is healing, then, the opposite of ambiguous dread: fullness. I am full of anger, pain, peace, love, of horrible shards and exquisite beauty, and the lifelong challenge will be to balance all of those things, while keeping them in the circle. Healing is never final. It is never perfection. But along with the losses are the triumphs.

Little by little, I find the spaces inside me where compassion resides, and I step into those spaces more often. Compassion lives in my awareness of my body. It comes to life in my imagination and springs forth from my inherent creativity. I am shocked to discover that as I occupy these spaces, I walk out of fear into love. I see without squinting and I touch without recoiling. My life appears before me as a patch of wildflowers to enjoy rather than a blotch of weeds to destroy. An invitation to compassion is ultimately an invitation to joy and pain. It is the wonder of occupying what at one time seemed untouchable—the space between two people. Jody shares the words of Orland Bishop: “Future is the space between two or more human beings.” God invites me into that future, into what Jody describes as an emerging, co-created, relational space, and what I like to call, “the light between us.”

Dr. Jody Washburn’s “Compassion & Wholeness” workbook is available here. All quotes in this post are from her material.

Photo by Ray Bilcliff: https://www.pexels.com/photo/antelope-canyon-arizona-1533512/

Tell My Body I’m Innocent

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Tell My Body I’m Innocent

Reflections – week 3

Welcome to the third week of reflections inspired by my current small groups. Together with some of my favorite women, I’m exploring these books: Father’s House: The Path That Leads Home, and The Whole Language. This is week three of eight. I’m finding joy here, and I’m pleased you’re with me on this journey.

Forgiven Future

“I am fully forgiven forever.”¹ This is key #3 in Father’s House.

The exercises in the workbook are designed to walk me through past grievances, but I find myself feeling more guilt and shame for my potential to mess up, than for past behaviors. I feel like a walking liability, a mistake waiting to happen, impatience and selfishness and bitterness piled up on an over-filled plate, waiting to get bumped and spill everywhere.

I believe that forgiveness from God is complete. It doesn’t happen when or because I ask for it. It’s done for all people for all time, and my invitation is simply to accept awareness of it. But I realize I have not allowed this to permeate my present and my future. I see everything in front of me through the filter of my imperfection. And I believe my capacity to act without love means I deserve a diminished life. Father’s House declares, “In Papa’s House your past doesn’t stand a chance.”² Could I believe that in Papa’s house my future doesn’t stand a chance?

The ability to walk forward is not only dependent on being untied from the past, but also on a clear way ahead. Papa doesn’t expect me to walk embarrassed, afraid, tentative—advancing slowly to improve the chance of catching myself when I trip. I have believed I must hold back because getting things right is more important than anything else. But if my future is forgiven and I am “innocent and pure forever,”³ I can’t possibly make things any more “right” than they already are.

I can walk with confidence, run with abandon, knowing that tripping is expected. God isn’t surprised when I make mistakes or protect my ego or forget to love. All of this is understood and received into His expansiveness. He is not keeping track. He is not expecting perfection. He is not asking me to go back to the starting line and try again. He is not putting his hand up and requiring me to kneel and beg forgiveness before I go on.

I have tried to avoid forgiveness by getting things right. I have believed that if I need to think about forgiveness, something has gone wrong. But Jesus didn’t shy away from forgiveness. He gave it out left and right, and not because people were asking for it. He never suggested we should be trying to not need to be forgiven. Perfection—“rightness”—is a distraction, a black hole, handcuffs.

Tension

A few months ago I began to notice tension in my body. The tension wasn’t new, but my notice was. I first became aware of it when I was lying in bed. I noticed I could allow my scalp and forehead and cheeks and shoulders and arms and back and legs and feet to relax. Five minutes later, I would become aware of the tension again, and again I could relax. After a day or two, I realized the tension was always there, but when I took notice of it I could release it. I don’t know what prompted this awareness, but it became an ongoing invitation to rest. Perhaps it was a result of internalizing freedom in Father’s House, knowing “It is finished”—what Jesus completed is my starting point and my resting place. I belong in Papa’s house. I’m exactly where I need to be. I sit in Papa’s house calm and light, because I’m no longer juggling while climbing stairs and holding my breath.

Holding

Children who have been abused often speak of a moment in their healing when they realize that the abuse was not their fault, not their destiny, not normal, not what they deserved. It becomes something that happened to them, but it is no longer their secret identity, the truth of who they are, or the predictor of who they will be.

Gregory Boyle tells the story of a kid named Sharky, whose father continued to find and terrorize the family, despite restraining orders. One day Sharky came home to find his father hiding there, waiting to interrogate him. When he couldn’t take any more, he ran to a neighbor’s house and called his mom, who arranged a meeting place. When they both arrive, “She just holds him there, in the gym bleachers, as he sobs all the more and her only message is this: ‘I’m so sorry you had to go through that.’” Many years later, Sharky is alone in a prison cell, and “comes a message from God… a singular expression of tenderness. God holding a sobbing Sharky and saying only this: ‘I’m so sorry you had to go through that.’ Sharky tells me later that this has become the notion of God that holds him still. It fills him enough to say finally to his own father, ‘I’m so sorry you had to go through all that.’ The Tender One… is sorry that we go through what we do.”⁴ He is holding us in the bleachers. He is speaking the truth that neither “abuser” nor “abused” is our identity, releasing us to healing and wholeness.

Innocent

“Father God doesn’t just consider you forgiven,” write the authors of Father’s House, “but He sees you as completely innocent—as though you had never sinned.”⁵ I don’t know what this means. It can’t mean I’m perfect. It can’t mean I’m not human. It can’t mean I don’t need to heal. Surely God sees my wounds, because He touches them and restores health. Ultimately, I think innocence is about intimacy. Innocence is, “There is nothing between you and Father God, for He sees you as holy, flawless, and restored,”⁶—forever. Innocence is an invitation to uncouple from shame. “Shame and intimacy will never share a seat at the same table. You have to let go of one to have the other.”⁷

Gregory Boyle writes, “Unshakeable goodness is our royal nature.” When we see this, he says, “We then undertake the search for innocence in the other. We cease to find the guilty party. We no longer divide into camps: Heroes and Villains. We end up only seeing heroes. We look for the unchangeable goodness that’s always there in the other… In this, we find the unbearable beauty of our own life.”⁸

Intimacy seems fragile to me, a rare treasure—not something that can be promised forever. But God Of The Impossible is promising infinite intimacy, and He is suggesting that innocence and intimacy are inextricably connected. Nothing between us.

Rest

My innocence, and the innocence of every human being, is an invitation to rest. Boyle writes, “It will always be less exhausting to love than to find fault. When we see fault, we immediately believe that something has to be done about it. But love knows that nothing is ever needed.”⁹ I no longer need to find fault. Instead, I find goodness. There is nothing left to fix, and my muscles relax in gratitude. I am not a tripping hazard. I am forgiven, innocent, whole. I breathe this in and release “fixing” so I can see love. Everywhere, and in everyone, love.

Endnotes:
¹Father’s House, page 46
²Father’s House, activation #3
³Ibid
⁴The Whole Language, pages 23, 24
⁵Father’s House, page 46
⁶Colossians 1:22 TPT, emphasis mine
⁷Father’s House, page 50
⁸The Whole Language, pages 40, 41
⁹The Whole Language, page 41

It’s Me! Run!

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It’s Me! Run!

Reflections – week 2

Welcome to the second week of reflections inspired by my current small groups. Together with some of my favorite women, I’m exploring these books: Father’s House: The Path That Leads Home, and The Whole Language.

This is week two of eight. I’m finding joy here, and I’m pleased you’re with me on this journey.

The Paddle

When I was a child, a wooden spatula was the “paddle” at our house—used for spankings. I chuckle now, remembering the occasional days when my mother would carry the paddle in her back pocket. How well I know those kinds of days now that I have kids of my own.

I have two specific memories of spankings, one of which must have happened when I was quite young, I’m guessing preschool age. I don’t know what brought it on, but I had a meltdown of epic proportions, involving kicking, screaming, and the works. My parents put me on my bed to spank me, but I was kicking so violently they couldn’t paddle me. To solve this conundrum, one of them sat on my legs and the other spanked me.

As this memory accompanied my growth and development, it grew into a belief: the proper way to handle big feelings is to punish myself for them. Or better yet, try not to have them at all. I’m certain that’s not the lesson my parents intended. They probably figured they were enabling me to grow up and behave like an adult. (No one appreciates a 30-year-old who still throws epic tantrums.)

Fear of Self

Week two in Father’s House is about being lavishly loved. The authors write, “To live as a fully loved and accepted daughter in your Father’s House, He’s inviting you to let go of your former identity. You are no longer bound to your past, what anyone else has spoken over you or even what you say about yourself. As you journey Home, saturate yourself in who your Father says you are.”¹ (emphasis added)

As I read and wrote through each day of the study last week, fear of myself emerged as a common theme. Starting as a young child I learned to fear myself, to fear my emotions and desires, my imperfections, my capacity to make mistakes. The religious community further intensified this fear by teaching me that I was sinful and needed constant spiritual supervision to avoid indulging the unforgivable person that I was. I became afraid of turning away from God. I figured He’s pretty nice—you know, amazing grace and all that—but if I intentionally, or unintentionally, turn my back on Him, He will be pissed off.

So there I was, internalizing my parents’ responses to me, into a belief that my emotional experiences are unacceptable; internalizing the religious community’s sin-message into the belief that I am a walking liability; and what did all that do? For twenty years, nothing. I was so good at being good that these fears lay dormant. It was unnecessary to face them when I managed myself exceptionally and performed well for every person in my life who expected something from me.

If you’re familiar with my story, you know when the upheaval began: stay-at-home momming. Suddenly, with loss of sleep and the demands of parenting, I was reacquainted with my emotional self in the most savage way. My best efforts to control and punish myself weren’t working. Anger, frustration, fear, and emptiness consumed me, and—given my beliefs about emotions and mistakes—it’s not surprising that a dark shame enveloped me.

Temper Tantrum

A few months ago when I went through Father’s House for the first time, during the activation exercise (meditative visualizing and listening), I had a (visualized) temper tantrum. It was just as I remember from childhood, heels hitting the floor so hard it hurt, as I lay on the ground screaming and sobbing out of control. Papa God lay beside me. I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t engage with Him. I could not receive comfort or accept reason or respond to reprimand. Mercifully, He didn’t expect anything from me. When the waves of emotion began to subside, I rolled into Papa’s arms. I was ready to receive comfort, and He was waiting to comfort me.

Papa God suggests there is no distance between Him and me. He is not cooled by the things that chill the people in my life: turning away, having needs, being impolite, tired, sick, stressed, confused, emotional, forgetful. God is warmly present with me when I am out of control. All of me and my experiences are folded right in, received without question or critique or hesitation. No part of me is a liability.

Holy Imagination

“Visualizing your future as a lavishly loved daughter is critical to your life,” I read in Father’s House. “In fact, it helps engage your heart with your head when you involve your divine imagination. Describe what that life would look like in as much detail as possible. What would you be doing, thinking, or feeling?”² Here’s what comes to mind:

My insides will be still (not agitated). I will be at peace with myself, not warring against myself.
I will have energy to create and to love (not compulsion).
I will take more risks.
Forgiveness will come as naturally as breathing.
Suffering will fall into my embrace rather than being held at arms length. It may hurt like hell, but it won’t be fragmenting.
Pain, anxiety, depression, fear and anger will be experienced with God, rather than as separating or isolating experiences.
I will be whole, not fragmented, not always looking for parts that have been forgotten.

Not As Scary As I Thought

I assumed God was in on the idea that I cannot be trusted with myself. I am shocked to discover God trusts me with me. The shame is lifting. The fear is shrinking.

Lie: I am loved and accepted if I reject myself so I can be what I “ought” to be.

Truth: I couldn’t be better. I am loved entirely independent of my level of responsibility and emotional control. Papa received me first, to clear the way for me to receive myself. He invites me to love myself as He loves me. Now that’s crazy!

Gregory Boyle writes, “Ensuring, then, that we are never strangers to ourselves will give us access to our deepest longing.” I have been a stranger to myself, but I am learning to roll out the welcome mat, receive myself with open arms, and explore my deepest longings.

Endnotes:
¹Father’s House, page 29
²Father’s House, page 34
³The Whole Language, page 18

Emmanuel Mystery

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On school picture day I was at the private Christian school my girls attend, waiting with my youngest daughter to get her school picture taken. Friday chapel happened to be at that time, so I sat in on it. The guest speaker told the story of a family committed to Sabbath-keeping who was experiencing a plague of grasshoppers that would devour their fields. They stood to lose tens of thousands of dollars because the company spraying for grasshoppers refused to spray their field when asked to work around Sabbath hours. Amazingly, the power lines the length of their property were covered with solid rows of birds Sabbath morning, which descended and ate all the grasshoppers, saving their fields and fortunes.

Stories like this trouble me. Especially when we share them with elementary school children. What exactly are we trying to say? That if we trust God He will make sure everything works out in our favor? That we can pray and expect Him to take care of things in a way that preserves us? What about all the things that don’t work out? And why would God save a field of grain but not save little girls from brothels, or a wife from her husband’s affair, or a Christian from torture and death?

Often my reaction to my inability to see and understand the ways of God is to reduce God’s provision to a cosmic “everything will be alright in the end” platitude. Clearly He’s not making everything alright now, so He must mean that His care and protection are for the race as a whole over the arc of history, and not really for individuals. He must mean that my soul is safe – not my body, or my possessions, or my relationships. He has redeemed me and I trust in Him for my eternal provision, so at least if I am tortured to death, I know my soul is safe with Him. (Unfortunately, I happen to like my body and my life, and I don’t like the idea of being a pawn in a cosmic game.)

But this really feels like a cop-out to me. How can I possibly enjoy an intimate relationship with a Being who I believe doesn’t care for my well-being today? And how do I explain my own experience, that He does care for things as minute as my to-do list and whether I have time to take a shower? How do I explain the times He has provided perfectly the intimacy I was missing in my marriage, or the words to connect with my distraught child? The longer I respond to Him, the more I am convinced that He desires to be present in every moment of my day, every cell of my being, every thought, every need. But while He does provide for me often, He seems more interested in being with me than in fixing everything. This is puzzling to me, because I place high value on things being fixed. In fact, God and I have had some serious altercations about why He has not made me good yet.

So where does this leave me? Certainly I have not answered the questions that millions have been asking for thousands of years. Truthfully, I think God is beyond understanding. His goodness is beyond understanding and I’m certain He is a little crazy for loving me. And when I think about all the badness that is beyond understanding, I just don’t get it. I explain to my kids the story of Satan’s fall, our own fall, and the importance of humans having the power of choice even though it hurts us. But still the evil in the world is unsettling.

For me, in this season, there are two beliefs that comfort me when I think about pain. The first I have already touched on, and that is God’s desire – and His promise – to be with us. I want to be crystal clear that pain is real, and sometimes so deep and raw it threatens to destroy us. It cannot be spoken away, “faithed” away, hidden away. It is part of our experience, and we will feel it, and we will know that we cannot escape it. Sitting in pain, the most comforting, affirming, burden-lightening experience is to have someone sit in it with us. Most of us have a friend or friends who are quick to offer advice, solutions, and fixes for everything in our lives, and we quickly learn not to share struggles and pain with those people. The times I have felt the most safe in my own emotional skin are the times when I was allowed to be in pain, when my experience was affirmed and I knew someone was with me. This is a rare gift.

God is Emmanuel: God with us. He has an incredible capacity for feeling, and He enters into our feelings as an intimate friend. One of my favorite authors, Ty Gibson, calls Him omnipassionate. He is able to feel deeply with each of us. He is present in our pain. There is no pain outside of His desire to be in it with us. He sits with us in deep sorrows, and He is present in the passion of misplacing my phone for the seventh time today. I’m starting to wonder if this is actually better than Him fixing everything. It irritates me just a little to even say that, but my spirit says yes to a God who is with me just to be with me. A God who holds my pain with tenderness and affirmation, and holy presence. A God who is not immune to my pain, but actually feels it with me because He is one with me by His grace. A God who became human so He actually knows what it is like to feel pain as a human.

The second belief that comforts me is that God can somehow undo our pain in the future. If believing God’s presence in pain is hard for me to grasp, trying to understand His ability to work backwards and “undo” pain is even more of a mystery. In the book “The Great Divorce” by C.S. Lewis, one of the characters says, “That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.” I believe that God’s redemption is for all time. His sacrifice on the cross saved the first humans who breathed, just as it saves us. And if the cross can reach backwards and forwards, maybe heaven can, too.

Consider this passage from Ephesians: “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins. He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding. God has now revealed to us his mysterious will regarding Christ—which is to fulfill his own good plan. And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan.” (Eph. 1:4-11, NLT)

I am ignorant, sinful, selfish and blind, observing an infinite God through a finite lens. My understanding is weak, but I am drawn by Holy Mystery – a God who is here right now, desiring the intimacy of knowing my own feelings as they emerge naked and timid from my heart; a God who desires to extend His love and grace, passion and power to us in order to bring all things and all times under the healing power of His love. We are not left empty handed, holding only a promise, and neither are we held in the moment with no anticipation of future healing. It’s just like Him to offer comfort right now, and hope for the future.

Maybe I feel unsettled about the farmer and the grasshopper-eating birds because I’m focused on the wheat. I assume God is placing value on the wheat and the money, when in fact He is placing value on His child. He is present in the experience of the farmer. His presence could be birds, peace, wisdom, money. It doesn’t really matter how He shows up. It matters that He shows up. Because He loves you. Emmanuel Mystery.