One Year Ago

I walked out of the sanctuary and Wendy reached out for me.  I burst into tears, overcome by so many emotions at once, not knowing what to think or feel.  The woman who had spoken to us about freedom seemed to fly down the church length to fold me up and speak directly to my heart.
"That was one of the most beautiful, open, vulnerable, stirring testimonies I have ever been privileged to witness." Her hands cupped my tear stained face firmly and she looked boldly into my eyes, daring lies to try to take me now.
"You are a beautiful picture of redemption," she told me, into my years of aching heart, "you take one of my cards and stay in touch with me."  I had a ministry and a gift of communication that God was going to use, she said, as the tears would come and I didn't even try to stop the sobbing.  There was a freedom in not holding myself in.  This woman I respected held me close and prayed for me and spoke the dark away and I could not speak because my heart was too full and my voice could not be found after its loud confessed proclamation.

It has been a year since I stood in front of a church of women and told them the truth I had concealed so well all my life.  People knew before that I was a sinner, but I had to tell them just how much of a sinner stood in their midst, opening her heart and giving them a target for their arrows of judgment and hostility.  But grace always surprises me.  My smallness was made big and I heard chains breaking and felt lives shaking and not only was I blessed to witness the changes, but I was overwhelmingly blessed to be part of their freedom stories.

All those years of deep pain and inability to feel closeness--and fear, always fear, of people knowing me.  Suddenly all of it took on meaning I could never have dreamed.

And all this time later I ask God why the heartache and hurt of the now, and He reminds me of His past works and even my sin is sovereignly declared from the beginning.  So much changes, always changes, but He is the same.  Into His sameness of reality I will walk, ever closer to a Truth more true even than myself.  I take those deliberate steps through trembling, and He always knows what He has prepared for me.

Thinking of Doing

Some people know how much I have been thinking lately about everything offered to me.  Some people know how my life has lately had occasion to change, flip upside down, and do rapid back handstands.  I don’t even know how to do back handstands, so imagine my bewilderment! 

Some of these thoughts have concerned doing.  I see people who do, simply because it needs to be done.  I see them move to Africa, and adopt children, and write books, and begin organizations, and live out loud for the whole world to hear.  I see them mocked and scorned by the world, and don’t I wish I was so brave!  I see great things being done by Christ’s servants, and don’t I wish I knew how to do them as well, but I tell myself that I can just keep loving God and seeking righteousness, and that is what I am called to do and it will be enough.  

But the Truth that I keep seeking is making me question, and continues upsetting my peaceful world.  She suggests that perhaps I am called to great things, because I am called.  And whom He called, these He also justified, and whom he justified, these He also glorified.  And am I loving God as I could, and what do I call great, and am I seeking the approval of God or man?  So I wonder, and do as I am prone to do when I wonder: I read.  I read many things, but always more questions arise and I have to give up things that I used to love, because Truth is hurting me and I need to think.

I seek God’s presence, because I know that there I will have fullness of joy.  But His presence is holy, and I am a sinner, and He has to prepare me for His face.  So as I seek Him, He keeps breaking my heart and my dreams and my dependence on all else, and there is so much pain, the further into Him that I go.  Everything, joy and pain alike, is more.  I read Chesterton about extremes, and I see it in Truth, this Lion laying down with the Lamb without one becoming more like the other.  I see the rightness in living, doing, all unto Christ.  And I want to live, fearsomely and boldly, with the freedom I have been granted.  I want great things to be accomplished, and I don’t care whether I lead them or serve them quietly, because quietness in Christ is the loudest in the Kingdom of heaven, is it not?

I read Martyn Lloyd Jones and realize the power of Christ in me accomplishing the "greater things," that Jesus foresaw.  I memorize Romans 8 and see everything through its lens, because the verses become so deeply rooted in my mind that everything relates to them and clears my mind often when I don't understand.  I count blessings in a craft-project composition book and reach 464 when I feel the need to write out what I am thinking, because there is so much I seem able to think that I absorb Chesterton and Lloyd-Jones and Voskamp and Metaxas as if I have nothing else to think of anymore, but still I know that there is more and I want to do it, to live this Gospel that I read.

But I look around me and I don’t know where to begin.  How do I live out God’s commands in such a way as to impact and not to yield?  I ask the always asked question, “What can I do?”

There are people walking down the street every Friday, looking to fill themselves at the broken cisterns of alcohol and parties.  There are girls crying alone in their bathroom stalls, hopeless on the floor, sick with what they have done.  And nineteen year old me walks by, wishing I had the words to say, but letting fear control my actions because I am weak and broken myself, and what will they think if I do what I so wish to do?  What would happen if I stopped and asked what was wrong, and took them in my arms and loved them, because the mother-girl in me wants to give them comfort, but I never know what would happen because I let fear speak louder, and I walk by and hurt inside, but not enough to do. 

There are broken families in nearby complexes, very much alive, and we don’t look because our minds speak what our mouths can’t form for shame.  “White trash,” we don’t say, loud and frightening to our middle class sensibilities.  Better to ignore their existence, and say patronizing things about their music and their vulgarity, when their lives interrupt our own parties.  And I writhe a little at myself and the others, because something is wrong and we just don’t see the Gospel, trying to make itself heard above the noise of our sin and willful ignorance. 

Nearby there are always bitter women, growing away from young, disillusioned by their broken hearts and dreams, carrying on out of disinterested habit and seeking satisfaction in men, or work, or causes that they think good.  And there are church girls, afraid of their shame and never becoming what Jesus promises that they could become in Him, lying to themselves and each other to satisfy their desire to be accepted and loved, because if people knew what they really were, surely no one would love them truly.  

And how I wish I could blast those Hellish lies to forever damnation and throw myself around all of these broken women and broken lives and broken families, and protect them with my own life.  Everything around me is broken and hurting and I gnash my teeth at that Fall that killed us all and sent Creation itself to Hell.  Romans 8 once again speaks to me, and I know that Creation itself will be set free one day from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God, and that is a promise and a hope that I can surely hope for with perseverance, all the more because I do not see it, for hope that is seen is not hope.

And still the homeless and destitute track down the street, buying each other $1 burgers for their birthdays and hobbling by on feet that hurt on cold days.  And still I smell cigarettes and worse things on my musicians, hopeless and searching for what they think will bring them fulfillment and I wish I could tell them what it is they really need, but would they listen?  Lies always win me, and fear always controls my lips from speaking Truth. I see the boys hold hands and trying to find love and don’t I wish I could voice my fears for them!  And I see girls walking back to dorm rooms after nights away, and I avoid their eyes because I feel their shame as they do, but don’t know the words to make it better.  And always, always, why would anyone listen to me and wouldn’t I hurt His cause when I most wish to serve it?  And wretched woman that I am, am I not the worst sinner of them all?

And still, friends need me to be a friend, and to love them and encourage them as the church is called to do for one another, and where can I possibly start, and how do I prioritize people like just so many tasks in my planner?

Not twenty miles away, Toledo is the fourth leading center in the United States for sex-trafficking, and girls—just children yet—are forced every day into work that turns the stomachs of grown men, but we shield our clean cultured eyes from the horror and can’t even remember to pray the evil away, let alone face it ourselves.  Across the globe, Egyptian Christians face more and more persecution and horror of their own, and I read their stories and I weep for the hurting, but forget in the next moment as life drags me away to the next appointment.

What is the use of a broken heart for others, when no one benefits from my pain?  Is this Great Commission to be spoken of lightly and dismissed when it calls us to do the uncomfortable?  How do we carry the light into the darkest places that surround us, and name the Gospel to those who desperately need a Savior?  Don’t we all need Him?  How do I love my neighbor when I don't even know who he is?  Where do I start?  So many hurting ones!  

I pray one night that God may break my heart for His children, and I walk through a yard marked by crosses, and I am broken inside by their deaths in a country we claim to be so free.  I weep for the lives that killed them, who yet live in such misery of sin and hopelessness that they themselves are dead even while they live.  God grants my prayer to feel, but oh, don’t I regret the prayer when I hurt deep inside at all the pain around me, and sometimes I stop my ears because the crying of His children is too loud.

And after all this time, when I begin to be most overwhelmed by a world of fallenness, my question begins to change.  Not in essentials, but in emphasis.  No longer do I ask “What can I do?” but “What can I do?”

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength,” says our Lord, “and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Love, He says.  Just as in any service or labor or relationship.  “Love,” He says, “is my commandment to you.  Do not be troubled, but believe in God and believe in Me.”  

Am I letting fear rule my actions?  Am I acting out of obligation to these my neighbors and friends, or responding out of that most powerful God gift?  Does God call us to action beyond love, or does He know that when we really start loving, we will really start acting?  

Sometimes I wonder if God smiles at our feeble protests and distrusting hearts, or if He raises His eyebrows as at Job and asks us where we were when He laid the foundation of the earth.  Do I believe my own heart to be more broken by sin than His own is?  Do I imagine that sin will become less, that I can make His kingdom on earth, before Jesus returns?  Dr. Lloyd-Jones asks me where I can find that to be true, and I am freed by the sudden remembering.  It isn't. "If we hope for what we do not see," says Paul, "with perseverance we wait eagerly for it."  

Love God and obey His commandments, says the Prophet, and I feel the burden lifted.  What can I do?  I will start there.

I will love.