Perfect Love...

As Valentine’s Day approaches I’ve been thinking about love.  Shocking right?  Here me out.  You see, I’ve been on this strange journey.  You can read about more of it in my previous posts.  This is another layer of this strange journey.  It’s one that is so unfamiliar it feels like I’m wandering in the wilderness without a map.  The tree tops are blocking out the sun and I have no idea which way is north.  I cannot find my bearings at all.  It’s this whole journey of “love.”  I’ve ALWAYS been the person who wasn’t afraid of it.  I could easily receive it and I could easily give it.  I loved to love.  Lately though... not so much.  God and I have been wrestling... because I’m terribly afraid it.  I’m afraid of it in any form or fashion.  I’m afraid of loving people.  I’m afraid for people to love me.  I’m afraid to love God and yet I know that I cannot escape His love for me which is also partially terrifying at the moment.  

The verse that ‘perfect love casts out all fear’ has been swirling around in my mind the last few days.  And it’s a reminder that I have yet to grasp this perfect love because I’m nothing but afraid of it right now.  When your heart is broken and your spirit is broken... fear “loves” to take advantage of those broken places.  It’s so tempting to put up walls.  We think that walls keep us “safe.”  We think that walls will keep pain out only those same walls serve to keep pain within their confines.  So here I sit.  Fighting with every ounce of weak courage I can muster to keep from putting up walls.  To just go ahead and feel the pain.  Then feeling more pain as I give that pain and fear to the Lord.  Part of this strange journey is that everything hurts.  Everything.  His promises hurt.  His Word hurts.  Praying hurts.  But then again, tearing down walls isn’t a gentle process.  Sledge hammers, battering rams and wrecking balls are designed to have significant impact.  So I have to choose to feel the impact so that when the walls are torn down and all the pain spills out, healing can begin.

I read this quote from Ann Voskamp:

Ridding yourself of self-sufficiency, letting yourself need and opening your hand to receive require vulnerability.  And vulnerability is required to love.  Vulnerability is required to let yourself be loved.  It’s risk.  The tension is funny because on one hand, the broken and shattered you is screaming to be loved.  On the other hand, the broken and shattered you runs from it because the thought of not being loved back is unbearable.  The thought of having an even more broken heart is too much.  That causes more brokenness and pain.

The process I’ve been walking through for the last few months has been incredibly painful.  Painful in a way that it feels debilitating at times.  Painful in a way that if I can make it through the day I count it as a win.  I survived.  I survived the pain one more day.  This is where I have to give up my self-sufficiency, recognize the depth of need I have and open my hand, albeit timidly, to received this perfect love of God.  Somewhere along the way my heart lost the concept.  My mind knows it.  But the 18 inches between my head and my heart may as well be light years apart sometimes.  What I’m thankful for in these times and what I remind myself daily is that His love is never going to change.  It’s never going to waver.  Even in my deepest despair and deepest doubts, His love for me never changes.  It will break in eventually and cast out all this fear.  The places where I doubt him the most are the places I will continue to seek Him the most.  It’s still painful.  But one day it won’t be.  One day I will no longer fear love the way I do now.  One day I will be able to love even stronger than I ever could before this season.  And it’s when you’ve had a broken heart and choose to love that you are at your bravest.  When you can love despite the pain... that’s when you know it’s real.  I continue to love God despite the pain and I continue to love people despite the pain.  When He asks me to love I have to believe that even my weak “yes” is still powerful in His eyes and in His hands.  So is yours.  So take heart.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

A beautiful song to accompany this blog: Killing Me With Mercy

Kintsugi...

So... I’ve been on this journey of total and utter brokenness.  Have you ever been there?  Let’s just be honest... it feels like death.  A dying that happens every... single... day.  And it’s a pain that is so deep that sometimes you don’t know if it will ever end.  I’ve been thinking about this brokenness for the last few days.  I’m trying to allow that scary thing called “hope” re-enter my life (you can read about that Here ).  In the midst of such brokenness it’s hard to see anything else except the walls of the pit where you currently reside.  As I was thinking about all this I was reminded of the art of Kintsugi — a Japanese method of repairing broken pottery that I saw while scrolling through Facebook some time ago.

Kintsugi — It is translated as “golden joinery.”  It is a centuries old method of fixing broken pottery by using a special lacquer that is dusted with gold, silver or platinum.  It creates beautiful seams where the cracks are, giving the piece a uniquely beautiful design.  Then I read this about the method: “This repair method celebrates each artifact’s unique history by emphasizing its fractures and breaks instead of hiding or disguising them.  Kintsugi often makes the repaired piece even more beautiful than the original, revitalizing it with new life.”

Wow...

It seems like we try so hard to hide or disguise our pain.  We have all done it at one point or another.  I get it.  It’s hard to be openly vulnerable.  You risk appearing weak to those around you.  You risk being horribly misunderstood — especially in church circles.  You risk others seeing your brokenness and then grinding those broken pieces into dust.  But... what if we started to see brokenness as a beautiful thing?  What if we started to see brokenness the way God sees it?  That brokenness isn’t a “bad” thing but instead of sign of strength and beauty.

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.”
          ~ Psalm 51:17

“The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”  ~ Psalm 34:18

Kintsugi reminds me of Isaiah 61:3 — He makes beauty for ashes, gives the oil of joy instead of mourning and a garment of praise instead of despair.

God can take the ugly mess of my brokenness, repair it and make it my life even more beautiful than before, revitalizing it with new life.  I mean... this thought is almost too much for me to handle.  First that He does it and second that He WANTS to. He WANTS my mess.  He is the Master Creator who can make all things beautiful... even my mess.

It certainly doesn’t feel like this in the middle of the breaking.  It feels quite the opposite.  Embracing the brokenness is tough.  Tough on a level of tough that I’ve never known before.  But in the midst of this I think I am coming to understand that in the absolute weakest place that I have ever experienced in my life thus far, He sees strength.  When I am hanging on by the thinnest of threads but still get up to bring my mess and weakest “yes” to the Lord... He sees strength.  When everything in you screams to just give up but instead you still choose to say “yes” no matter how weak it comes out, no matter how much your voice trembles as you say it... He sees strength.  And maybe, just maybe, there is more strength in that weak “yes” then when we have yelled it from the mountain tops in times of confidence.  Jesus modeled this perfectly (See Philippians 2:1-8).  His death appeared to be weakness in the sight of many and yet it was His greatest display of strength.  His brokenness, both literal and spiritual, was a sure sign of strength and so much beauty came through His death.

So maybe we should let our brokenness show a bit more (with wisdom of course).  We are after all just broken jars of clay... and He can repair our brokenness in such a way that gold shows as an end result.  The Bible is full of broken people... people who felt the same things I am feeling now centuries later.  That is something I can take a measure of comfort in.  I’d rather see someone’s scars than someone’s perfectly put together self.  Scars are relatable and scars help me to know that this season will end with healing.  Let me see your scars... they are beautiful.

Check out this song from Iron Bell music: My Confidence

Afraid to Hope....

I had this crazy thought today as I was sitting in a coffee shop journaling.  At the start of a new year, many people usually have high hopes and goals.  That's usually me.  However, New Years Eve and New Years was tough for me this time around.  I was in a great place to ring in the New Year.  It just wasn't what I was hoping for.  And I've been fighting for any ounce of hope I can find over the last couple of months...

So today as I was reflecting back on the last 24 hours and the last year, I had the crazy thought... I'm afraid to hope.  This sounded totally ludicrous to me.  It was so out of character I wanted to have an inner dialogue about it to talk myself into how silly this thought is.... how I shouldn't have this thought.  Only, trying to talk myself out of feeling how I feel doesn't usually work.  What works for me, and I suspect much more of us if we will only admit it to ourselves, is to face the feeling.  Face it in all of its ugliness.  Face it in all of its pain.  Face it in all of its untruth.  How do I face it?  I allow myself to feel it.  Then I take it to the Lord.  Eventually, I work through it.  It has taken courage to walk through this process in this way.  Not only is it just plain painful to the core but it means allowing others to see what a hot mess you really are.  None of it is fun.  But all of it somehow seems necessary.  Thank God for those people in my life who have been more than understanding of this season and stood by my side to help walk me through it.

Why am I scared to hope?  Have you ever spent so much time hoping for something that after a long while of not seeing it you are totally worn out?  I am right in the middle of this.  I'm 35 and there are certain things I had envisioned for my life that I thought would have happened by now.  They haven't.  Ever been there?  It's disappointing, right?  These are desires I've brought before the Lord countless times.  They are even desires I've asked Him to take away from me if it isn't His will in an attempt to not be afraid of hoping they will eventually happen.  And yet, the desires remain.

So I start asking the typical questions... Am I putting my hope in the "things" and not in the Lord?  I don't think so.  I know that for these things to transpire in my life I need His help and His guidance.  So I keep looking to Him.  I also believe that these are God given desires.  It's a hard question to ask myself but one I needed to ask myself.

Why am I afraid of hope?  Hope deferred makes the heart sick. This seems like the total opposite reaction I should be having to hope.  Only there's this one word that is wrapped up in this whole "hope" thing and that is "risk."  Hope feels like a risk right now.  Risk is not something I'm too keen on at the moment.  I'm typically the person who isn't afraid of taking a risk and my life choices have proven that many times over.  I may not be able to count the number of people who have thought I was crazy for doing many of the things I've done -- like moving to a new state or country 5 different times.  I have taken the risks in the past because I wasn't afraid of the risk with the hope that God would work out the details I didn't have worked out when I moved.  And He always did.  But when you are afraid to hope, that is a whole new level of broken down I have not experienced and risk is certainly not territory I am going to just run into with abandon.

I know that this post seems like a real downer!  Wow Christina... you really are a hot mess.  Thanks.  I know.  But in the midst of my mess, God has still been injecting glimmers of hope into my life.  They are small and in doses I can handle.  As I continually bring him my mess -- because right now it's all I have to offer -- He gives me a small tidbit of hope.  It comes in the way of a Scripture, or an encouraging word from a friend, or a gesture from someone that has considered me and my feelings.  It's the text from a friend at just the right moment.  It's a phone call from a friend to check on me.  It's gentle.

I know that eventually I will hope again.  Hope will not seem scary.  And once I have walked through this valley my hope will be stronger than it has ever been in my life thus far.  I will have learned a lot as a result.  Until then... I get up everyday and bring my weak "yes" to the Lord once again.  I keep inching forward even when it seems like I've done nothing but move backwards.  All in the hopes that nothing I'm currently facing will go to waste and that someone else will get through it having seen my scars.

Here's a link to an early David Crowder song that is honest and means more to me now than it ever did when I first heard it in Bible college: All I Can Say