Tag Archives: safety with God

Storms, and Other S-Words

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Storms, and Other S-Words

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for sex.
I am drawn by passion
or a desire for passion.
I am drawn to celebrate the joy
and relief of belonging.

Blessed are You
for storms,
set to kill, or thrill,
or water the earth.
Thunderstorms ground me—
flashes of light,
beating of great sky-gongs,
loud but gentle fall of rain.
The smell of washed earth
says I belong here.

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for the safety of You—
a safety that embraces
mystery and madness,
skepticism and silence,
and humankind’s violent and dark
underbelly—human trafficking,
and other tragedies.

When there is not a wisp of cloud
over endless, hellish desert,
there is a whisper that you belong
in yourself and in the heart of God.

A Need to Need

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A Need to Need

Reflections – week 7b

Welcome to week seven (part two) 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. Next Wednesday’s post for week 8 will conclude this series.

I’m finding joy here, and I’m pleased you’re with me on this journey.

Father’s House. Lesson seven. Myth #41: God turns His back on me when I have needs—especially needs that are annoying or ongoing.

Having needs is a no-go for me, for many reasons. Needing is vulnerable. If I need, I’m giving another person the opportunity to help or ignore me, and that’s way too far out of my control. Needing is weak; it happens because I didn’t plan right, or I made a mistake. In short, needing is never safe. Never. If I’m not strong, I’m worthless. Needs are more likely to create distance than bring connection. I don’t feel safe within my own self to have a need; heaven forbid I need something from my husband or friends, or from God Himself.

Father’s House points out that, “Everywhere Jesus went we encounter His immeasurable goodness—healing ALL who came to Him, delivering people from demonic torment, raising the dead, forgiving sinners, loving the unlovely and dining with the disreputable.”2 Yes, but this is all about doing, and I get hung up there. It sounds like Jesus went around fixing things, but my spiritual experience tells me that’s a mis-read. God hasn’t been much into fixing me. I think the Bible, the way people talk about the Bible, and the way I understand Jesus have given me the wrong idea of Father.

There is a God I know and trust, a Father I have encountered in my anger and fear and self-loathing; in music and friends and words and quietness. I have found His abiding presence in my knotted heartstrings, and in the cadence of my day. But there is also a Father who isn’t going to help me live my life, who is okay with me running on empty and doing only what I can do in my humanness. I am terrified to approach Him with deeply felt needs. Does God actually respond to a person’s real, tangible needs? What about the intangible needs I don’t even have words for? How often will God “meet” my needs, whatever that means? If it’s one time out of ten, I’d rather not ask.

I want a loving Father’s help, but the stakes feel high. I always end up angry at Him, at me, or at both of us—probably because I have expectations. I want a contract. In fact, a prenuptial agreement would be nice. I’d like to know what I get out of this when God stops showing up.

But I also want to know what it’s like to be cared for. I want to trust, to settle into what is better than a contract.

Father’s House. Day Two. Page 125: “Now climb up in [Papa’s] lap in His big chair and tell Him what you need from Him. Lay it all out.”3 I’m terrified to admit that I need to be lavishly loved, that I want to be celebrated. But I know I will settle for less if I keep clutching my needs, unwilling to hold them out, to allow someone else to see them. So I follow directions. I make a list of what I need from Papa.

I need You to bless me.
I need You to see me.
I need Your seeing to precipitate action on my behalf.
I need You to remind me it’s okay not to be useful.
I need You to move toward me with interest and intention.
I need You to want to hear from me as much when I’m doing poorly as when I’m doing well.
I need You to like being with me.
I need You to behave extravagantly toward me.
I need to be wedded to You—a forever kind of togetherness.
I need “enough” to be out of the equation—no evaluating.
I need to order takeout and waste time with You, in my pajamas.
I need to hold hands with You.
I need You to ask how I’m doing and listen without an agenda.

My list surprises me. It seems I’m more interested in being seen and loved than being served or dealt a fair hand. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I know relationship is better than rules, but sometimes I want God to follow the rules. Sometimes predictable feels safe.

Maybe predicting is rather like weather forecasting. You end up with a mix of everything, undefined no matter how hard you try to define it. But, every day we know there will be weather. I don’t know how God is going to show up today, but I know He’s going to show up. It might not be the sunshine I prayed for, but I need never fear I’ll wake up to a day with no weather at all. God is alive and I am alive, and there are days when all that aliveness is unpredictable, stormy, maybe even disastrous. But no one will wonder if anything happened that day. We’ll know. So I don’t need God to run my life, or predict my life, or change the forecast to be in my favor. I just need Him to like me and see me and bless me, and keep showing up.

It is safe to have needs in Papa’s house.

Gregory Boyle writes that when we are “held by a no-matter-what-ness” we can “reidentify and accept [ourselves] with a mystical wholeness. You can then discard all those things that previously you held back. The places where you used to get stuck. … After that, it’s not so much smooth sailing as it is resilient and integrated enough to deepen the sense of your own truth.”4 My truth is that God’s Spirit joins with my mine to affirm that I am His child (Romans 8:16). I hear His affirmation, and I make another list.

God says,
I’m so glad you’re here.
I love holding you.
I love being with you.
I am and I have all that you need.
Together, let’s rest in what is finished. Let’s rest for a long time.
Let’s be together with no distractions. Let’s have fun together.
Let’s go for a walk, get ice cream, love every person we see.
Let’s enjoy and create.
Let’s take everything that burdens and stresses you and put it on my docket. You’re free.
Let’s do relationships together. Let’s parent together.
Let me spoil you. Let me do more than you “deserve.”
Let me warm you and feed you and provide a feast of beauty for your eyes.
Let’s be alive together. I release you from the identity of responsible servant-child and name you sparkling heiress. I’m your Daddy. I made this world and the people in it. You can’t break anything or anyone in a way that I can’t re-make.
I always have your back (and your front and sides).
I know you. You don’t ever need to hide, or explain yourself to me. You make perfect sense.
You’re exactly where you need to be. Every moment.
You are not bound or caged. You are wild and free and alive.
You cannot lose my favor. I would never think to say that, because it seems silly to me, so thank you for letting me know what you need to hear.
“I’ll love you forever. I’ll like you for always. As long as I’m living [which will be a long time], my [daughter] you’ll be.”5

I have believed I am worthy of having what God perceives as my needs met, but not worthy of having what I perceive as my needs met. Now I’m less sure that’s an important distinction. God is listening and loving. He is not measuring and monitoring. That’s about as safe as it gets. So I will practice bringing my needs to the table, and I will take comfort in being “held by a no-matter-what-ness.” In Papa’s house, needs are a point of connection. They are a meeting place for intimate friends. They are safe.

Endnotes:
1See Father’s House, page 120
2Father’s House,page 127
3Father’s House,page 125
4The Whole Language, page 110
5Love You Forever, by Robert Munsch

Is It Really Safe?, Part 3

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I was listening to a sermon by one of my favorite speaker-authors, Ty Gibson, when an innocent-appearing statement sent me someplace I hadn’t been intending to go. He said, “To know God, as God really is, vaccinates the soul against violence.” I looked at those words bold across my screen, and I wanted to believe them, but my knowledge of the Old Testament stopped me cold. I began thinking of Bible stories I hadn’t thought about for years, and as I much as I wanted to believe knowing God moves me away from violence, I wasn’t at all sure the Bible supports that. I say I know a loving God, but does a loving God encourage violence? Suddenly I felt betrayed.

Is My Friend A Murderer?

There’s this Guy named Jesus, who is also Father and Spirit, and I love Him. And He loves me. All the time. Even when it makes no sense. We talk, we listen, we sit together. Jesus is beautiful. And Jesus is changing my life. He gets close to me and He speaks healing over wounds and truth over lies. He is generous and graceful and kind, and He holds me. He surprises me with grace. But He refuses to get me all fixed up perfect because He knows I would say, “Ha! I knew what was most important to You all along was for me to be good.” And that’s not what’s most important to Him at all. We’re friends. Not because we’re even remotely of the same status or on the same plane of existence, but because He wants to be friends with me. (John 15:15)

For reasons unknown to me, I had never stopped to think about whether my Friend is a murderer. Whether He asks His human friends to kill. Whether He punishes, sometimes with death. Despite being familiar with violence in the Bible, I had never engaged with it in the context of my friendship with Jesus. All of a sudden I had a lot of questions about my Friend. What’s going on? Am I seeing things wrong? Is the Bible seeing things wrong? If my Friend is both loving and violent, why does everything in me want it to be different than that?

Biblical Violence

I read the entire Bible several times between the ages of eight and twenty. I have been exposed many times to the stories of the Old Testament. As a child and youth, I don’t recall that I ever felt any sadness, concern, or horror. Now I’m circling back to these stories from a place of relationship – the place of loving God – and I feel betrayed. It’s like I thought I knew someone and then come to find out they are a mass murderer. I am shocked. Hurt. I don’t know what to do next. Have I been duped? Did God have a change of heart? Is He both loving Father and mass murderer? If so, will there come a day when God asks me to murder?

Consider this passage:

Moses saw that Aaron had let the people get completely out of control, much to the amusement of their enemies. So he stood at the entrance to the camp and shouted, “All of you who are on the Lord’s side, come here and join me.” And all the Levites gathered around him. Moses told them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Each of you, take your swords and go back and forth from one end of the camp to the other. Kill everyone—even your brothers, friends, and neighbors.” The Levites obeyed Moses’ command, and about 3,000 people died that day. Then Moses told the Levites, “Today you have ordained yourselves for the service of the Lord, for you obeyed him even though it meant killing your own sons and brothers. Today you have earned a blessing.”

Exodus 32:25-29, NLT

That’s heavy.

I am not drawn toward God in this story, but rather repulsed. I recoil. And then I dismiss. Yes, the Bible says that, but in recent years I have chosen not to think about it. Not on purpose – I just began reading religious books more than the Bible, and my Bible reading centered more in the New Testament. This is fine and good unless my life bears evidence of what I believe about God. If that is true, I cannot sweep this under the rug. For if in some corner of my heart I believe God is violent, then when my world changes, might I be convinced to be violent? Might I become the person killing in the name of God? Oh, I know it feels so far away from my safe and comfortable middle class American life. But I’m guessing it was far from the minds of many who joined Hitler’s army. Is it possible that if I don’t think about this now, it will think for me later?

Ahhh, yes. This is a good question. But I cannot let fear lead this discussion. Scrambling for certainty does me no favors. Trying to eliminate all uncomfortable answers seems an equally wretched path. So what is left? History isn’t much help. It’s full of stories of people killing in God’s name, and being killed in God’s name. Who is right? Some people say every word of the Bible is to be taken at face value, and some say it’s not. Who is right? Must I hold God at arm’s length until I figure out what’s going on?

Still Friends

As I experience this confusion and feelings of betrayal, within 48 hours of the I-don’t-know-if-I-can-believe-this-non-violence-statement upheaval, I have conversations with four people who listen and affirm my struggle. Not one glosses over it or tries to fix it. They listen. They share their own struggles. They sit with me in the not-knowing. When I realize what has happened, I weep with gratitude and relief. I may feel lost, but the God who loves me is watching over me. He doesn’t come out of the sky with an answer to quiet all my questions. He doesn’t tell me not to question. He sends me four friends to walk with me. He walks with me.

I don’t have the theological answers to my questions. Perhaps God is misrepresented by Biblical authors. Perhaps violence is at times an act of mercy. Perhaps God gets blood on His hands when He reaches down into this bloody, human mess, and I don’t see the whole picture. My heart, my eyes and ears, are open. I desire understanding. But I don’t have to have an answer now. Answers are not as satisfying as they seem. I could be safe with answers. But I am safer with God. And so, while I regret to inform you that you have read this far only to discover I have no answers, I am delighted to tell you that Jesus and I are still friends.

Safe With You

Lord, I’m safe with You. Nothing I can say would make You feel guarded or put up defenses. You look at me with an open face and posture. You want me to know You, and You are vulnerable enough to care what I think about You, because You love me. And yet You’ve been misunderstood for thousands of years. You’re used to Your own children spouting off nonsense about You. You are safe. Oh how I need a safe place, a safe Person! A place where I can get things wrong and I’m not rejected. May I always take refuge in You. And may Your love be a big enough refuge to bear all things.