Waiting. That's what most of my life has been.
I wonder if people in general can be divided into two types: the kind who strive and the kind who wait. It seems you hear more about those who strive, because they're the ones actually getting things done.
But how foolish. Many strive quietly, anonymously, with a calm sense of drive. And many who strive have learned to be wise enough to know when to wait. People cannot be divided so evenly between those two things. Or, if they can, they are probably not fully mature.
I'm not really sure where this post is going. I'm not sure what the point will be, or even if there is a point. I'm sure there will be in the end. These posts tend to write themselves. Or, rather, it seems I pour out my feelings, and then end up reminding myself of the truth. I just voice all the questions in my heart, and I feel as though I'm expanding in every direction, falling apart, crying out for answers. And then, I have to remind myself of the only Answer. It's not a thing, it's a Person. God is the Answer.
It struck me this evening that each Christmas that comes, I'm always longing for something more than what I have. My desires differ each year. Perhaps one year I long for more adventure. Perhaps one year I just want my life to change. Perhaps one year I wish that I was a different person, or a character in a very different story. Or maybe I wish for more fun in my life. Or maybe I wish for more memories. Well, not just more memories, but for different kinds of memories than the kind I end up making. And the list goes on. For some years now the things I've wanted for Christmas are the kinds of things you can't put on a list.
I remember those days when I began making my Christmas list as early as I dared, and labored long over it in secret. Days when I thought that things would make me happy. Or would satisfy me.
But now...I wish for things that are very different. Today, without even realizing I was going to, I commented to a coworker that sometimes I almost wished I believed in Santa Claus. I suppose it makes sense. The idea of an easily-swayed grandfather figure with endless resources at his disposal swooping in and making dreams come true is a very appealing one. It's sort of like a God-figure, only he's a god that you can control. Well, bargain with, wheedle with, win over.
It unmasked very selfish desires in my heart. It's a lot harder to continually trust in an Everlasting and Untamed King of the Universe than it is to try to be good and plead with a soft-hearted grandpa figure.
In the Bible, there is a prophecy about Jesus, saying that He will be called the Wonderful Counselor. I've always been fascinated by that title. The Wonderful Counselor. It's funny, because somewhere else in Scripture, it asks the rhetorical question, "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor?" No one, of course. God the Cosmic Ruler of the Sky, takes counsel from no one. He is the King.
And yet you see in Scripture that He advises His creatures. And through His Son giving His life in payment for mankind's sin, He gives an open invitation: "Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest."
One pastor said it like this: "In the Garden of Eden, God told mankind, 'Go away.' And Jesus tells us, 'Come back.' "
Jesus paid the price for all of us. He absorbed all of God's just anger at our sins. He paid the debt, and He rose victorious over death itself. Death was the punishment for sin. Once He paid the price of all our sin, Death was stripped of its power. Of its authority. Jesus, the Conqueror, offers shelter in Himself. He tells us, "Come back!"
God is the King, and it's true that no one can sway Him, control Him. But He stoops to give us counsel. And who better to tell us what we must do?
Lately, I haven't known how to pray to Him. My new job has been great, as I knew it would. And yet, the drama has come. I knew it would, too. I thought I was prepared. I knew that there would be drama wherever I worked. But I didn't know the drama would be quite so close to home as it is now. When it came, it was a very different kind of drama than I was expecting. Understatement of the year.
I expected...well, never mind what I expected. What I didn't expect was to be caught up in a drama going on within my own family and among my close friends. I didn't expect stories to collide in quite this manner. It's the kind of drama that is written about in books and seen in movies. Of jealousy and fascination. Of fierce fire and cold loneliness. Of secrets. Of intrigue. I had thought this would be familiar ground for me, if anything. After all, I have spent most of my life with my head and heart in those kinds of stories. And yet what can I do?
What ever am I to do? Wait? Just like everything else in my life? Wait? Sit tight and let everything blow over, just like I've always done? I don't hear the cavalry yet. But what can I do? Am I to do nothing? No, I must act in it. I must play my part, because it is my part. That's all there is to it. An actor, perhaps, can drop out if he doesn't like the part he's assigned to. But in the story of each person's life, you can't just stop because the world doesn't stop. I must muddle through. In a mystery, I'm both playing my part, and making my own decisions. I still have to put on my shoes and my name tag, drive to work, stay there all day every day. I have to do what needs to be done.
It's not that I believe God isn't here. I know He's here. What's more, I know He's active in what's going on. I guess my little comment about Santa Claus shows me that I doubt that He cares.
I mean, I know He cares, to some extent. I'm His child, I know He cares. And yet, I'm bewildered. I'm caught up in this story, and I---I'm actually playing a part in it---I can affect or mess up things going on around me, I'm not just watching from the sidelines.
But I can't seem to find any motivation to pray. Because in my heart I'm feeling, "Well, He put me here. Why should I ask Him to change anything? He won't, because He's put me here for a reason. Now all I can do is muddle through and hope I end up doing whatever I'm supposed to do."
My heart cries out, silently, a little every day. A formless, wordless kind of cry. Some days it's only a hoarse croak of pain. Sometimes it's a silent kind of scream. Sometimes its just a moan of helplessness. I don't know what to do, and I don't know how to pray.
I always wanted my life to be a discernible story. And yet now that I see it, and what's more, now that the risk and the pain is real and tangible, I'm afraid, because I don't know the ending. I don't know how it will turn out. Happy, good, or sad. Happy is the, "Happily ever after," idea. A Good ending is a strong, satisfying, well-done ending, even if it isn't entirely happy. I like Good endings. I don't like sad ones. Ones that make you wonder if it was even worth it to slog through the story. And there are bad endings that make you angry at the author. What was the point of a story that doesn't even resolve? (Side note, that's the main reason I won't watch horror movies. There's no ending, that's what makes them scary. And what makes them pointless. Plus, I don't like the feeling of being petrified when I'm alone or in the dark.)
I don't tend to watch movies or read books if I don't think I'll like the story. Each time I do, I'm putting myself into the author's power. I don't like to do that unless I think they can be trusted. I recently finished J.K. Rowling's, "Harry Potter," series. I had faith in her. My faith wavered two-thirds of the way through the Deathly Hallows. I was just not sure how she could possibly work this mess out. But she did. And it was masterfully and beautifully done. Which I saw when I finally worked up the courage to finish the book.
C.S. Lewis' "Till We Have Faces," is like that, too. I have much more trust in C.S. Lewis, due to long experience, but I doubted him in that book. "There is just no way that this can resolve." I thought to myself. "There is just no possible way." And yet---yet it is one of my top favorite works of fiction. I will say no more.
I doubted J.R.R. Tolkien in "The Return of the King." After all the chapters of doom, of shadows, of despair, and after all the weakness and sadness and dark omens, I wondered how it could ever resolve. How could the ending actually be happy? I couldn't see it. And yet I laugh and sometimes cry for joy when I reread that book.
I know in my head that the Author of every story is writing mine in His great Work. I know that everything---somehow---will end in my good, and for the good of all His children. I know it will be grander than Tolkien's story, more piercing and joyus than Lewis' story, and more human than J.K. Rowling's books. I know that, and yet I cannot see it.
I suppose that to feel this kind of pain is part of what makes me human. To feel pain, to feel love, to feel doubt. To be loyal, to trust, and to be afraid. To go on when you don't think you can. To risk everything and be willing to lose everything. To do the right thing even when you aren't sure it is the right thing. Those are lovely ideas. But it's so---different somehow when it's your story. When it's your life. When you can't skim down the page to peek at what happens. When you can't ask someone if it actually is going to be all right in the end...
Or can I? Ask Someone, I mean. Obviously I can't skim down the page.
Oh, but of course, I can ask. I can ask, but He won't tell me.
But I know that He has promised that it will come right in the end.
I just have to trust Him.
I have to do what I think is right. To let Him steer me. And just trust in Him that He will write it better than I ever could.
I have been longing for something for five years now. A desire so poignant and so painful that sometimes I can hardly bear it. It's like a wound that will not heal. It won't heal because it was a wound of Hope. And I cannot and/or will not put it to sleep unless---or until---there is no hope left. So the wound is a living thing inside me. Its pain waxes and wanes just like everything else in my life, (C.S. Lewis called it The Law of Undulation.) But it lives inside me. It rears its head at the smallest things, and it fills me with pain when I least expect it to. I have no real reason to hope now. It was a fool's hope, and all along I knew that this might cost me dearly. But I made that choice because I wanted to hope.
Perhaps the worst of it is that I don't know how it will resolve. Sure the pain is bad, but if I knew there was no hope, I could go about getting over it. The wound would heal in time, and it would no longer live inside me. If it resolves---that is to say, if it blossoms and bursts open in light and beauty, than I will be beside myself with joy, and the pain would leave. But now---here in the fog and the uncertainty...in the winter, this drowsing hope will not let me rest for long. Will I have to slay it one day as a dragon, or will it be a sweet bloom of maturity? I have no idea. No way of knowing. Right now in the mist of Now I can only wait. Yes. Just wait. Not pursuing, not scheming. Not even trying to find out. Just waiting for who knows how much longer? And every day I have to get up and firmly put it inside a box and focus on other things.
What's more, I'm watching other people go through that now, too. I'm watching them agonize and cry out in pain. And what can I do? Dear friends in the trenches with me. All of us writhing in our uncertainty and in our pain and in our waiting, and we don't know what's going to happen.
I don't know how to pray to God about any of this. Every request that I could cry out to Him sounds infantile and childish. But...supposing my every request actually sounds like that anyway? I can cry out for mercy, for grace, for strength. But inside my heart a voice keeps saying, "How much longer? How much longer will I have to deal with this? When can I know? I want to know!" I can cry and pour my heart out to Him on my hands and knees, and I have done so a few times. But there's no answer. He is the answer.
I can cry out for wisdom, sometimes, for discretion. I beg Him to show me what I must do. What the best decision is for right now. And He does give those things to me.
And there are those times when all I can do is cry. When I have no words, no requests, just pain, pain, pain, filling my heart. I can't even kick and scream like a spoiled child. I can only lie limp and still and try to weep silently so no one else will know. When that happens, the only prayer that I can voice is one word, two words, over and over again: "Help. Please help."
Just like the cry of a raven.
And God hears the cries of the ravens.
He sees every sparrow.
He designs every snowflake.
He commands where the lightning bolts must fall.
He calls every star out there in the universe by its Name.
He sees every secret.
He knows every heart. Each name. Each story.
He knows the pain because He once lived as one of us. He shared in our grief, our pain, our suffering. He was a man. He is Human. Fully God. Fully Man.
The Bible says He is a sympathetic High Priest. Not like the priests were to Judas Iscariot, when he came to them, full of remorse over his hideous betrayal. They said to him, "What is that to us? Your conscience is your responsibility." I've always thought that was one of the saddest---and one of the most chilling sentences in the Bible.
Just as I know how to pray for someone when I've been through something similar, Jesus knows how to pray for me, because He was a Human on this sin-cursed earth. He is called a Man of Sorrows...and acquainted with grief. He knows what it is to grieve. He knows all about loss, about risk, about terror, and about anguish and death. He went through it. He conquered it.
And He's promised to be there for me. To love me unconditionally. To see me through my life and to---wonder of wonders---welcome me into His joy one day.
I have to trust. I have to hold on. Perhaps if I just keep looking at Him, I won't be so afraid.
"Trust the heart of your Father when the answer goes beyond what you can see.
When you don't understand the purpose of His plan
In the presence of the King
Bow the knee."
Even when there are no words. Especially when there are no words.
"Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace."
"Are we weak and heavy-laden?
Cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge,
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
In His arms He'll take and shield thee,
Thou wilt find a solace there."
~Cadenza
I wonder if people in general can be divided into two types: the kind who strive and the kind who wait. It seems you hear more about those who strive, because they're the ones actually getting things done.
But how foolish. Many strive quietly, anonymously, with a calm sense of drive. And many who strive have learned to be wise enough to know when to wait. People cannot be divided so evenly between those two things. Or, if they can, they are probably not fully mature.
I'm not really sure where this post is going. I'm not sure what the point will be, or even if there is a point. I'm sure there will be in the end. These posts tend to write themselves. Or, rather, it seems I pour out my feelings, and then end up reminding myself of the truth. I just voice all the questions in my heart, and I feel as though I'm expanding in every direction, falling apart, crying out for answers. And then, I have to remind myself of the only Answer. It's not a thing, it's a Person. God is the Answer.
It struck me this evening that each Christmas that comes, I'm always longing for something more than what I have. My desires differ each year. Perhaps one year I long for more adventure. Perhaps one year I just want my life to change. Perhaps one year I wish that I was a different person, or a character in a very different story. Or maybe I wish for more fun in my life. Or maybe I wish for more memories. Well, not just more memories, but for different kinds of memories than the kind I end up making. And the list goes on. For some years now the things I've wanted for Christmas are the kinds of things you can't put on a list.
I remember those days when I began making my Christmas list as early as I dared, and labored long over it in secret. Days when I thought that things would make me happy. Or would satisfy me.
But now...I wish for things that are very different. Today, without even realizing I was going to, I commented to a coworker that sometimes I almost wished I believed in Santa Claus. I suppose it makes sense. The idea of an easily-swayed grandfather figure with endless resources at his disposal swooping in and making dreams come true is a very appealing one. It's sort of like a God-figure, only he's a god that you can control. Well, bargain with, wheedle with, win over.
It unmasked very selfish desires in my heart. It's a lot harder to continually trust in an Everlasting and Untamed King of the Universe than it is to try to be good and plead with a soft-hearted grandpa figure.
In the Bible, there is a prophecy about Jesus, saying that He will be called the Wonderful Counselor. I've always been fascinated by that title. The Wonderful Counselor. It's funny, because somewhere else in Scripture, it asks the rhetorical question, "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor?" No one, of course. God the Cosmic Ruler of the Sky, takes counsel from no one. He is the King.
And yet you see in Scripture that He advises His creatures. And through His Son giving His life in payment for mankind's sin, He gives an open invitation: "Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest."
One pastor said it like this: "In the Garden of Eden, God told mankind, 'Go away.' And Jesus tells us, 'Come back.' "
Jesus paid the price for all of us. He absorbed all of God's just anger at our sins. He paid the debt, and He rose victorious over death itself. Death was the punishment for sin. Once He paid the price of all our sin, Death was stripped of its power. Of its authority. Jesus, the Conqueror, offers shelter in Himself. He tells us, "Come back!"
God is the King, and it's true that no one can sway Him, control Him. But He stoops to give us counsel. And who better to tell us what we must do?
Lately, I haven't known how to pray to Him. My new job has been great, as I knew it would. And yet, the drama has come. I knew it would, too. I thought I was prepared. I knew that there would be drama wherever I worked. But I didn't know the drama would be quite so close to home as it is now. When it came, it was a very different kind of drama than I was expecting. Understatement of the year.
I expected...well, never mind what I expected. What I didn't expect was to be caught up in a drama going on within my own family and among my close friends. I didn't expect stories to collide in quite this manner. It's the kind of drama that is written about in books and seen in movies. Of jealousy and fascination. Of fierce fire and cold loneliness. Of secrets. Of intrigue. I had thought this would be familiar ground for me, if anything. After all, I have spent most of my life with my head and heart in those kinds of stories. And yet what can I do?
What ever am I to do? Wait? Just like everything else in my life? Wait? Sit tight and let everything blow over, just like I've always done? I don't hear the cavalry yet. But what can I do? Am I to do nothing? No, I must act in it. I must play my part, because it is my part. That's all there is to it. An actor, perhaps, can drop out if he doesn't like the part he's assigned to. But in the story of each person's life, you can't just stop because the world doesn't stop. I must muddle through. In a mystery, I'm both playing my part, and making my own decisions. I still have to put on my shoes and my name tag, drive to work, stay there all day every day. I have to do what needs to be done.
It's not that I believe God isn't here. I know He's here. What's more, I know He's active in what's going on. I guess my little comment about Santa Claus shows me that I doubt that He cares.
I mean, I know He cares, to some extent. I'm His child, I know He cares. And yet, I'm bewildered. I'm caught up in this story, and I---I'm actually playing a part in it---I can affect or mess up things going on around me, I'm not just watching from the sidelines.
But I can't seem to find any motivation to pray. Because in my heart I'm feeling, "Well, He put me here. Why should I ask Him to change anything? He won't, because He's put me here for a reason. Now all I can do is muddle through and hope I end up doing whatever I'm supposed to do."
My heart cries out, silently, a little every day. A formless, wordless kind of cry. Some days it's only a hoarse croak of pain. Sometimes it's a silent kind of scream. Sometimes its just a moan of helplessness. I don't know what to do, and I don't know how to pray.
I always wanted my life to be a discernible story. And yet now that I see it, and what's more, now that the risk and the pain is real and tangible, I'm afraid, because I don't know the ending. I don't know how it will turn out. Happy, good, or sad. Happy is the, "Happily ever after," idea. A Good ending is a strong, satisfying, well-done ending, even if it isn't entirely happy. I like Good endings. I don't like sad ones. Ones that make you wonder if it was even worth it to slog through the story. And there are bad endings that make you angry at the author. What was the point of a story that doesn't even resolve? (Side note, that's the main reason I won't watch horror movies. There's no ending, that's what makes them scary. And what makes them pointless. Plus, I don't like the feeling of being petrified when I'm alone or in the dark.)
I don't tend to watch movies or read books if I don't think I'll like the story. Each time I do, I'm putting myself into the author's power. I don't like to do that unless I think they can be trusted. I recently finished J.K. Rowling's, "Harry Potter," series. I had faith in her. My faith wavered two-thirds of the way through the Deathly Hallows. I was just not sure how she could possibly work this mess out. But she did. And it was masterfully and beautifully done. Which I saw when I finally worked up the courage to finish the book.
C.S. Lewis' "Till We Have Faces," is like that, too. I have much more trust in C.S. Lewis, due to long experience, but I doubted him in that book. "There is just no way that this can resolve." I thought to myself. "There is just no possible way." And yet---yet it is one of my top favorite works of fiction. I will say no more.
I doubted J.R.R. Tolkien in "The Return of the King." After all the chapters of doom, of shadows, of despair, and after all the weakness and sadness and dark omens, I wondered how it could ever resolve. How could the ending actually be happy? I couldn't see it. And yet I laugh and sometimes cry for joy when I reread that book.
I know in my head that the Author of every story is writing mine in His great Work. I know that everything---somehow---will end in my good, and for the good of all His children. I know it will be grander than Tolkien's story, more piercing and joyus than Lewis' story, and more human than J.K. Rowling's books. I know that, and yet I cannot see it.
I suppose that to feel this kind of pain is part of what makes me human. To feel pain, to feel love, to feel doubt. To be loyal, to trust, and to be afraid. To go on when you don't think you can. To risk everything and be willing to lose everything. To do the right thing even when you aren't sure it is the right thing. Those are lovely ideas. But it's so---different somehow when it's your story. When it's your life. When you can't skim down the page to peek at what happens. When you can't ask someone if it actually is going to be all right in the end...
Or can I? Ask Someone, I mean. Obviously I can't skim down the page.
Oh, but of course, I can ask. I can ask, but He won't tell me.
But I know that He has promised that it will come right in the end.
I just have to trust Him.
I have to do what I think is right. To let Him steer me. And just trust in Him that He will write it better than I ever could.
I have been longing for something for five years now. A desire so poignant and so painful that sometimes I can hardly bear it. It's like a wound that will not heal. It won't heal because it was a wound of Hope. And I cannot and/or will not put it to sleep unless---or until---there is no hope left. So the wound is a living thing inside me. Its pain waxes and wanes just like everything else in my life, (C.S. Lewis called it The Law of Undulation.) But it lives inside me. It rears its head at the smallest things, and it fills me with pain when I least expect it to. I have no real reason to hope now. It was a fool's hope, and all along I knew that this might cost me dearly. But I made that choice because I wanted to hope.
Perhaps the worst of it is that I don't know how it will resolve. Sure the pain is bad, but if I knew there was no hope, I could go about getting over it. The wound would heal in time, and it would no longer live inside me. If it resolves---that is to say, if it blossoms and bursts open in light and beauty, than I will be beside myself with joy, and the pain would leave. But now---here in the fog and the uncertainty...in the winter, this drowsing hope will not let me rest for long. Will I have to slay it one day as a dragon, or will it be a sweet bloom of maturity? I have no idea. No way of knowing. Right now in the mist of Now I can only wait. Yes. Just wait. Not pursuing, not scheming. Not even trying to find out. Just waiting for who knows how much longer? And every day I have to get up and firmly put it inside a box and focus on other things.
What's more, I'm watching other people go through that now, too. I'm watching them agonize and cry out in pain. And what can I do? Dear friends in the trenches with me. All of us writhing in our uncertainty and in our pain and in our waiting, and we don't know what's going to happen.
I don't know how to pray to God about any of this. Every request that I could cry out to Him sounds infantile and childish. But...supposing my every request actually sounds like that anyway? I can cry out for mercy, for grace, for strength. But inside my heart a voice keeps saying, "How much longer? How much longer will I have to deal with this? When can I know? I want to know!" I can cry and pour my heart out to Him on my hands and knees, and I have done so a few times. But there's no answer. He is the answer.
I can cry out for wisdom, sometimes, for discretion. I beg Him to show me what I must do. What the best decision is for right now. And He does give those things to me.
And there are those times when all I can do is cry. When I have no words, no requests, just pain, pain, pain, filling my heart. I can't even kick and scream like a spoiled child. I can only lie limp and still and try to weep silently so no one else will know. When that happens, the only prayer that I can voice is one word, two words, over and over again: "Help. Please help."
Just like the cry of a raven.
And God hears the cries of the ravens.
He sees every sparrow.
He designs every snowflake.
He commands where the lightning bolts must fall.
He calls every star out there in the universe by its Name.
He sees every secret.
He knows every heart. Each name. Each story.
He knows the pain because He once lived as one of us. He shared in our grief, our pain, our suffering. He was a man. He is Human. Fully God. Fully Man.
The Bible says He is a sympathetic High Priest. Not like the priests were to Judas Iscariot, when he came to them, full of remorse over his hideous betrayal. They said to him, "What is that to us? Your conscience is your responsibility." I've always thought that was one of the saddest---and one of the most chilling sentences in the Bible.
Just as I know how to pray for someone when I've been through something similar, Jesus knows how to pray for me, because He was a Human on this sin-cursed earth. He is called a Man of Sorrows...and acquainted with grief. He knows what it is to grieve. He knows all about loss, about risk, about terror, and about anguish and death. He went through it. He conquered it.
And He's promised to be there for me. To love me unconditionally. To see me through my life and to---wonder of wonders---welcome me into His joy one day.
I have to trust. I have to hold on. Perhaps if I just keep looking at Him, I won't be so afraid.
"Trust the heart of your Father when the answer goes beyond what you can see.
When you don't understand the purpose of His plan
In the presence of the King
Bow the knee."
Even when there are no words. Especially when there are no words.
"Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace."
"Are we weak and heavy-laden?
Cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge,
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
In His arms He'll take and shield thee,
Thou wilt find a solace there."
~Cadenza
