Sunday, November 25, 2012

Looking for the lilies.

My hopes for this site are always so high. I'm holding onto them, for if I don't, there's no chance for fulfillment. But in the meantime, this remains a place for me to indulge in sharing my stories.


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"Girl, that's what you've been doing, you've been dying. I'm gonna buy you some lilies to put on your grave, I think you're almost there."



I've been ruminating over death. Excuse me for sounding like Moaning Myrtle. I don't mean to, but these things happen.

Death was once a subject I avoided as much as I could. When I let my thoughts get close to it, it kept me up at night, and even clouded my emotions in the presence of daylight. In all transparency, it was also one of the biggest reasons I sought out Jesus. I heard very young that people died. All people died. Which meant that I, a person, was going to die too. That was frightening. I also heard that asking Jesus to "come into your heart" would save you from hell and eternal death, and allow you to live forever in heaven with God. I wasn't sure how it worked, but I wanted that. Unable to bear the thought of dying, at the tender age of four I asked Jesus to come in and save me. That's all being a Christian was to me then: not dying. And as much security as I found in my position with Jesus, anxiety still plagued me to the point that I asked Jesus to come into my heart several times over, just in case.

When I made this big life choice at the age of four, I was too young and ignorant to see the irony in my motivations leading me to the particular action I found myself taking. I hadn't read much of the New Testament yet, so I hadn't come across "you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God," or "those who want to save their life will lose it." When I did become aware of them, I was more than a little unsettled. I didn't lose my faith, but I wasn't sure what to make of all that. Dying was still terrifying, now suddenly I found out I had to die. There was no way of getting around it.

So I left that alone for a while and tried to ignore it. I don't want to advocate that passivity and neglect is the best way to deal with all problems, but in this case I do think it was what was needed. I wasn't prepared for such understanding, so it was best to leave it alone. When I was ready, it was right there waiting for me.

I've only recently been ready, sometime in the past year and a half.

The longer I live the less materialistic I am becoming. Moving will do that to you. Poverty will do that to you. Being jobless and forced out of your home will do that to you. Since I moved into this house, I've been reevaluating my relationship with the physical world, and I'm finding more and more that I'm not very attached to it. I never thought I'd say it, but that goes for my own body too. I'm not looking to actively get rid of it. On the contrary, since I've started letting go of myself, I've started taking better care of myself. But I know the day of my body's demise is coming and I dread it less every day.

This turn away from physical matters has led me to spiritual ones, so now when I read "those who want to save their life will lose it," I think about it in the latter context. This is a good thing, because that's as it was intended. I'm no longer distracted from the point by fear.

And I think coming to this has been the point of the last year and a half of my life. I've been dying. Not physically, but in ways more mysterious than that. I graduated, so the student in me died. As grateful as I was to no longer be beholden to an educational system, I had been her for 18 years. Loss is never easy. My ambition was to replace her with a new identity as a worker for financial gain, but instead I lost even more than I bargained for. I lost the use of my car. I lost my Internet connection. I lost my phone. I lost my computer. I lost my home. I lost my independence. With these things came the loss of ability to go anywhere, the loss of ability to make money at home, the loss of discovering new music and listening to any music at all, the loss of having the ability to learn anything I wanted to at my fingertips, the loss of the most stability I had ever known, the loss of interacting with family and friends.  And just when I thought I couldn't lose anything else, I lost my voice. I lost almost everything I treasured and with which I had aligned myself. I was isolated with no inspiration. That lack of inspiration was the key to my sorrow. Being alone in itself doesn't make an introvert like me sad. But my creativity died. My imagination became dim. My will to drink deeply of life to its dregs disappeared. I lost myself, and then I was truly alone. I had never really known what it was like to so longingly want company before.

Jesus was it at that point. I didn't have anything else. I've been without most things at one time or another the majority of my life, but I've never been without myself.

Spending so much undivided time with God himself helped me get to know him better, and my fondness for him has grown in ways I never would have imagined. I mean that with all sincerity. It's overwhelming sometimes.

Therefore, my breath caught one day when I read this:

"So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory." (Colossians 3:1-4, emphasis mine)

So I'm losing my life to find Jesus, and then he's giving it to me better than it was before, because it comes from him, and he is true goodness. Wow.

In this light, death has become a great source of beauty. I don't hear the word and panic anymore. I actually often get an odd sort of comfort from it. Just yesterday a friend started talking about this very subject, and at the mention of dying I started crying for sheer joy. I know what that's like now, how painful it can be, and what wonderful things can come from it.

My epigram came from a brief bit of a conversation I heard someone having with my mother in recent weeks. While both intended for and relevant to her, when I heard it I felt like they were words for me as well. I'm eager to see those lilies. They're a lot prettier than the fear I've been dragging around.

I leave you with a song.


Sunday, November 4, 2012

Because even I can find it difficult to keep quiet...

There are innumerable things I don't talk about much, if ever. This is one of them. Thus I can tell you with a sizable bit of confidence that you shouldn't expect to see a string of posts from me on this subject.

Also, the timing of this post has not been overlooked in either the writing or publishing. As separated from this subject as I do try to be, I'm not quite that willfully ignorant.

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I dance near the edge of being un-American. So closely, in fact, I probably wouldn't argue with you if you said my steps, even the most practiced and calculated of them, crossed the line more often than I realize.

Had I been born in, say, Ecuador this wouldn't be too noteworthy. I haven't ever met anyone from Ecuador, but I'm supposing it wouldn't be a surprise for an Ecuadorian, or anyone else not born in the fifty states, to prize their own country over a foreign one. But, alas, I wasn't. I was born smack dab in the middle of Arkansas, about as home grown as one can be, and to this day have not even left the country for travel. A small, shallow spot in the Gulf of Mexico is the most exoticism my short, sheltered life has seen.

One thing I do prize about my country is I have the right to not like it. I can post this confession for the world to see and still be just as American as the stars and stripes flying atop the White House. (But don't expect me to start flying any stars and stripes atop my own house.) It seems odd to cherish this, yes, but the right to be discontent and dissatisfied publicly is one I don't take for granted. I'm like a self-aware Ebenezer Scrooge. An American self-aware Ebenezer Scrooge.

What is there to be discontent about? Waste. Entitlement. Selfishness. Blinding nationalism. I heard this phrase spoken recently in reference to my homeland, "We are the hope of the world," and I wanted to react. I'm not sure how I wanted to react, because I'm not the reactionary type, but I sure felt like doing something. Shout, maybe? Turn the TV off in huffy offense? Pace the floor? I'm pretty sure I did roll my eyes, and for me that's something. You know I'm seriously perturbed when I roll my eyes.

After working through the initial emotion I experience when encountering these things, I do begin to wonder if, in my worldly ignorance, I don't see them as prevalent in other parts of the world even though they may be there, and my ethnocentric worldview has only been convinced that Americans are particularly susceptible to such offending attitudes and behaviors more so than the rest of our planetary neighbors. Maybe Ecuadorians throw things away just as much as we do. I don't know. My only reference is what I hear from people who know what it's like in other parts of the world. Thus I can't speak from my own experience, and therefore try to be careful when making judgments. The impression I get, though, does not reflect well on my country.

As I mentioned above, I do pay attention to what others have to say of what they know about the rest of the world, and in doing so try to imagine myself living in other places and cultures. What would that look like? How is any given culture different than my own? Most importantly, I wonder how I would feel living in a different place, with a different people group, under a different government, with a different worldview. Through all my wonderings, I'm formulating an interesting conclusion.

Due to my own worldview, I doubt I would be content in any country or with any government. Not any that exists on this planet.

To an American mind, it seems obvious why I have fundamental issues with dictatorship, or monarchy. Placing all the power in one person's hands is never a good idea. Foul moods, selfishness, ignorance, any number of things can lead a person to make bad decisions, and it's scary to think that the well-being of a whole group of people could be upheld or destroyed by one all-powerful (human) leader.

But bad decisions are not limited to individuals. There is no magic that grants a group infallible wisdom, or the infallible ability to heed infallible wisdom when they come across it. It's for these reasons I'm not really keen on democracy either. This is where the United States of America, the "government of the people, by the people, for the people," and I part ways. In my experience, the people don't know what they're talking about. I don't even know what I'm talking about, except for this, the conviction that we're all inept. That I do know, and believe.

It's this conviction that makes it hard for me to get involved with government and politics. I genuinely can't do it. Call me a fatalist if you will, but I believe so strongly that none of us will ever get it right that my conscience won't let me. I don't talk politics with my friends. I don't follow the latest news from the campaign trail. I haven't even ever voted for anything, and unless my convictions change it doesn't seem likely that I ever will.

I believe that infallible wisdom is only found in God. In deciding how to live my life, he's the source to which I look. I can't make everybody do that, though. God doesn't even make everybody do that. Therefore, our human governments can't dictate that God be considered when decisions are made. But when we don't chaos follows accordingly.

For those familiar with biblical history, you may remember God warned his people, the nation of Israel, that would happen to them. In case you need a refresher, or your biblical history knowledge is lacking on the whole, they didn't believe it. They begged to be given a human king. Other peoples had kings, and the last thing Israel wanted was to be left out. As a nation, they wanted to be taken seriously as a peer to the rest of the world, so when God told them he was the only king they needed, they rejected the idea. God gave them a king, then, and they quickly fell into ruin. The first three kings left sordid stories behind them, and by the time the fourth one came around, the nation split into two. If God's own chosen can't fare any better than that, it doesn't look good for the rest of us.

I guess, then, I'm not purely un-American. Un-Earthly is a better description. If any person presumes to make decisions for a people, whether they be autonomous in their decision-making or working with others, and they do it apart from God, I can't jump in and participate.

The reality which can't be overlooked, though, is that I am living on the earth under earthly rule. As long as I'm here I can't escape it. And I think out of all the nationalities available, being an American isn't so bad. It's great, actually. I'm safer here than I would be in many places around the world. I have opportunities that wouldn't be as readily available elsewhere. I also don't have people threatening to break down my door, or worse, because I follow and talk about Jesus. For all these things and more I am grateful. I could have been born anywhere, but I was born here, in privilege and blessing. Glory to God.

So I follow the rules, like a good citizen. And I don't grumble about taxes. One thing I feel I need to make clear is even though I am a discontent citizen, that does not mean I am a rebellious one. I seek to neither defy nor overturn any governments, least of all my own, and although I do not feel released to continually assert my voice in how the government should be run, I do not project my convictions on anyone else. To the contrary, I think it's important for people like me who value God's direction and still feel freedom to exercise their rights in full to do so. By all means, vote. Run for public office. Become president. I do not mean to suggest in anything I have written that all people who care anything about God should pull out of government and politics. Like every messy thing in life, governance requires grace. I have not been given the grace for such things. If you have, live in that grace. I have been given grace to do other things that I notice are not common in all people, so it's those things in which I strive and hope to live wholeheartedly, and it's also those things which I am not surprised to find people avoiding like their lives are dependent on it. In a way they are.

I'm sure it goes without saying, but I have not voted early for the impending presidential election like so many have, nor will I be queuing up in front of a polling booth on Tuesday. (Side note: in the six years I've been eligible, I have never registered to vote. As an almost chronic gypsy, having these particular convictions has been convenient; no registration transferring!) Whoever wins the election, I wish them the best. And I pray for it, too. I wouldn't wish the job of American President on my enemy. That's probably because my lack of grace in that area has rendered me unable to imagine how anyone could bear up under it. I sincerely hope the guy who wins over the Electoral College on Tuesday can.