Good God.
Religion isn’t everyone’s bag, but I have felt so incredibly moved lately, I’m just going to share it.
And how.
Some of you know how hellish the past week or so has been. Between Brad passing away, my mom’s continual emotional deterioration, the news about Neiman’s dad, rushing my paper while prepping for my Intersession exam and other conflicts that seem to just go on, I swear it’s by the skin of my teeth that I’m hanging on to sanity here.
(Please, no snickering from the peanut gallery -- *ahem*, LAUREN -- about how I may already have lost it. Possibly years ago.)
STILL. I am. Smiling. I am!
I thank God that there is still joy in every day, and I am so grateful that He brought someone into my life who was able to remind me that I should always be looking for it.
June’s been a funny month. I can’t remember the last time my life was full of so much pain and worry at once. At the same time, I don’t think I’ve ever felt the presence of God moving to this degree. I’ve had a lot of time to think about God’s timing and to be honest, in the past it has been nothing but confusion for me. Most of it has been because of my own insistence at putting what I think is important above everything that He could be trying to turn me towards. Seeing how things are starting to line up, though, I’m amazed at the intricacies of His plan for... everything.
I haven’t really been a part of church and what identity I had as a Christian, I thought I lost a long time ago. Irony of ironies: Me -- the pastor’s daughter -- saying that she doesn’t really get it sometimes. If I’m brutally honest, I’d have to say that I just didn’t want to get it for a long, long time. Didn’t want to think that maybe I was wrong, maybe I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing, maybe I really needed to sit down and admit that my pride was standing in the way of me growing as a person.
The timing thing gets me again, here. Just because… If you were to ask me six months ago whether I was ready to start going back to church, whether I was even considering the possibility of my heart thawing out again after so many years away from God, I would have looked at you blankly. Seriously, though, I found that living as an agnostic is no fun. I found myself too cowardly to say that I didn’t believe in God because deep down, I knew that I did. But, I was too proud to say that I did, because it would call into question all the bravado that I’d built up for myself. Either He exists or He doesn’t, but at the very least, I had to pick a side. I picked belief. I couldn’t deny it any more. How do you deny your Maker? You can’t.
Then God brought someone unexpected into my life. For a while, I’ve sort of floated along with so many other people that I knew. Oh, that religion ‘thing.’ Apathy, it seemed, was endemic; but people were waking up. And then, God said, “Here. Someone who believes and wants to figure it out. You can deny Me and My prompting, but you can’t deny his.” He asked the sort of questions that nobody has asked me in a long, long time. And those questions demanded answers. No matter how much I can stumble in my own walk with Him, I can’t stand in the way of someone else’s faith. So, when he and I talked about the story of Noah-it was like a slap in the face.
God cued His megaphone: RACHEL. I FORGIVE.
Where humanity had sunken to the lowest possible depths, God said, “Well, you lot are FUCKED beyond all recognition.” So He wiped us clean off the face of the earth, except for that one righteous man, Noah. And then, when everything was said and done, He promised that He would never destroy humanity in such a way again. Covenant of love in a rainbow, the extension of divine grace and forgiveness, and… Still we live, and He sent Jesus to save our pathetic, undeserving selves.
Petty as humans may be, can we deny that this is a lesson that He wants us to learn? Grace. Forgiveness. Love, despite all these things that our human natures scream at us to hold against others. Holding on to that hurt and anger, insisting on being blind to our own behaviour, the inability to let it all go, I’ve been so guilty of doing all of this it disgusts me.
So, I tried listening to the prompting, for once. If God can hit a person over the head, I feel like He’s done that. With everything that June has brought me, the lesson has been anything but subtle. Particularly with what happened to Brad, I realize something: Death is not the time to ask for or to grant forgiveness. How dare we assume that we have all the time in the world? Are we so stubborn as to hold on to things that we should leave to His divine guidance? Who are we to hold someone else’s actions as an affront to ourselves when they are actions that offend God as much as they do us? And who has the greater claim to indignation? Certainly not I.
I hate, hate, hate being in control. I am not a person who willingly picks it up. But anger and hurt, it's so easy to hold on to them. To sit there feeling sorry for yourself, and to feel vindicated in thinking that everything they did was wrong, while everything you do was right, it's so tempting just to cling to that. The temptation for self-pity is enormous. Letting go of all of that has been hard. And yet, the more I realize this world is not about hanging on to everything, the more that I'm able to trust. My own life, after all, is the only thing that I have responsibility for. My reactions, my words, my attitudes, I can only live in such a way that these things are examples that I would want others to follow. Of course I will stumble and probably fall flat on my face numerous times in my life. I'm not called to perfection, after all. :) But, at the same time, I'm starting to understand. I don't think I'll ever get it completely, because really, nobody can fathom the depths of God's wisdom. He's not impossible to comprehend, though. Just... Patient. Waiting for us to get it, a bit at a time.
And how.
Some of you know how hellish the past week or so has been. Between Brad passing away, my mom’s continual emotional deterioration, the news about Neiman’s dad, rushing my paper while prepping for my Intersession exam and other conflicts that seem to just go on, I swear it’s by the skin of my teeth that I’m hanging on to sanity here.
(Please, no snickering from the peanut gallery -- *ahem*, LAUREN -- about how I may already have lost it. Possibly years ago.)
STILL. I am. Smiling. I am!
I thank God that there is still joy in every day, and I am so grateful that He brought someone into my life who was able to remind me that I should always be looking for it.
June’s been a funny month. I can’t remember the last time my life was full of so much pain and worry at once. At the same time, I don’t think I’ve ever felt the presence of God moving to this degree. I’ve had a lot of time to think about God’s timing and to be honest, in the past it has been nothing but confusion for me. Most of it has been because of my own insistence at putting what I think is important above everything that He could be trying to turn me towards. Seeing how things are starting to line up, though, I’m amazed at the intricacies of His plan for... everything.
I haven’t really been a part of church and what identity I had as a Christian, I thought I lost a long time ago. Irony of ironies: Me -- the pastor’s daughter -- saying that she doesn’t really get it sometimes. If I’m brutally honest, I’d have to say that I just didn’t want to get it for a long, long time. Didn’t want to think that maybe I was wrong, maybe I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing, maybe I really needed to sit down and admit that my pride was standing in the way of me growing as a person.
The timing thing gets me again, here. Just because… If you were to ask me six months ago whether I was ready to start going back to church, whether I was even considering the possibility of my heart thawing out again after so many years away from God, I would have looked at you blankly. Seriously, though, I found that living as an agnostic is no fun. I found myself too cowardly to say that I didn’t believe in God because deep down, I knew that I did. But, I was too proud to say that I did, because it would call into question all the bravado that I’d built up for myself. Either He exists or He doesn’t, but at the very least, I had to pick a side. I picked belief. I couldn’t deny it any more. How do you deny your Maker? You can’t.
Then God brought someone unexpected into my life. For a while, I’ve sort of floated along with so many other people that I knew. Oh, that religion ‘thing.’ Apathy, it seemed, was endemic; but people were waking up. And then, God said, “Here. Someone who believes and wants to figure it out. You can deny Me and My prompting, but you can’t deny his.” He asked the sort of questions that nobody has asked me in a long, long time. And those questions demanded answers. No matter how much I can stumble in my own walk with Him, I can’t stand in the way of someone else’s faith. So, when he and I talked about the story of Noah-it was like a slap in the face.
God cued His megaphone: RACHEL. I FORGIVE.
Where humanity had sunken to the lowest possible depths, God said, “Well, you lot are FUCKED beyond all recognition.” So He wiped us clean off the face of the earth, except for that one righteous man, Noah. And then, when everything was said and done, He promised that He would never destroy humanity in such a way again. Covenant of love in a rainbow, the extension of divine grace and forgiveness, and… Still we live, and He sent Jesus to save our pathetic, undeserving selves.
Petty as humans may be, can we deny that this is a lesson that He wants us to learn? Grace. Forgiveness. Love, despite all these things that our human natures scream at us to hold against others. Holding on to that hurt and anger, insisting on being blind to our own behaviour, the inability to let it all go, I’ve been so guilty of doing all of this it disgusts me.
So, I tried listening to the prompting, for once. If God can hit a person over the head, I feel like He’s done that. With everything that June has brought me, the lesson has been anything but subtle. Particularly with what happened to Brad, I realize something: Death is not the time to ask for or to grant forgiveness. How dare we assume that we have all the time in the world? Are we so stubborn as to hold on to things that we should leave to His divine guidance? Who are we to hold someone else’s actions as an affront to ourselves when they are actions that offend God as much as they do us? And who has the greater claim to indignation? Certainly not I.
I hate, hate, hate being in control. I am not a person who willingly picks it up. But anger and hurt, it's so easy to hold on to them. To sit there feeling sorry for yourself, and to feel vindicated in thinking that everything they did was wrong, while everything you do was right, it's so tempting just to cling to that. The temptation for self-pity is enormous. Letting go of all of that has been hard. And yet, the more I realize this world is not about hanging on to everything, the more that I'm able to trust. My own life, after all, is the only thing that I have responsibility for. My reactions, my words, my attitudes, I can only live in such a way that these things are examples that I would want others to follow. Of course I will stumble and probably fall flat on my face numerous times in my life. I'm not called to perfection, after all. :) But, at the same time, I'm starting to understand. I don't think I'll ever get it completely, because really, nobody can fathom the depths of God's wisdom. He's not impossible to comprehend, though. Just... Patient. Waiting for us to get it, a bit at a time.