Grateful Introspection

Sometimes when a person is expressing gratitude, others call their words a "humble brag". Ty explained this to me. The person is actually bragging but contriving to make it appear as simple, and humble, gratitude. 

This phrase, "humble-brag", while it may be accurate, has a negative effect on other people. One cannot be truly grateful for something and express that joy without fearing how it might appear. This, in turn, leads to much less gratitude in the world. FOMO (another word from my children meaning "Fear of Missing Out") paralyses gratitude. Or at the very least, the expression thereof. 

There are moments in life (mine, at least, I cannot speak for others), when the thankfulness wells up and spills over. My friend, Quinn, told me these are moments of Shalom, when things are as they should be. 

I stood outside tonight as the sun was setting. I stood under the Party Tree, now well over twenty feet tall. I stood under this oak tree where the birds were flitting from branch to branch, where the shade was just so, where the small iron chairs from Uncle Don are positioned, and let the peacefulness of the moment soak into my heart. This is the tree I ordered from the Arbor Day Foundation and Chris planted when it was 12 inches tall. This is the tree that started growing when there were no other trees in the man-made hilltop of our front yard. This is the tree my kids used as their pivot point when riding their bikes. This is the tree we hung lights in for Brendan and Rhema's reception. This tree marks the starting point of our life in this house; a measurable, significant, assessable gauge of time. 

My childhood was chaotic and lonely with moments of tranquility. This is probably because my mother was chaotic and, I suspect, lonely, but with moments of tranquility. As I near my 49th birthday next week, I am introspective. I can't help but draw comparisons between my life and my mother's life. I cannot say what she felt on her 49th birthday, but I know it was only three years before she died in a way that gave me PTSD. I know she was mentally ill and angry and almost destitute. I know she exhibited a frantic obsession with leaving us a legacy. 

Today as I stood under our tree I looked at my house. The house Chris, with the help of others, built with his sweat and exhaustion. The house that is now over twenty years old. The house that Maggie said the front of was "#goals". And as I stood and looked around me, I couldn't stop my words.

Thank you, Father, for this house. Thank you for the gift of a home for my family.

Thank you for the flowers that you taught me to grow.

Thank you for the tree that towers over me and gives shelter to the birds.

Thank you for Uncle Don and the generosity of his heart in giving us these sweet chairs. 

Thank you for the cats and the dog who want to be near me.

Thank you for the grass that grows without prickles and is soft under my feet.

Thank you for the woods that surround me and shelter me from the world.

Thank you for the gift of family close by, volitional and other.

Thank you for the sidewalk that my grandchildren will one day draw on with chalk.

Thank you for stillness of the air and the blueness of the sky.

Thank you for this... life. This sweet, precious, peaceful life. This life that I could have never envisioned when I was young and lonely and confused. This life that is also filled with worries and cares and fears and opportunities to trust You.

Thank you, Father, for this taste of heaven until I can be with you in the true and complete Shalom. 

I am so grateful.

Faithlessness and Faithfulness

I've been thinking a lot during this quarantine about faithfulness...

What faithfulness means and what it looks like. The faithfulness of God and the faithfulness of friends.

I think faithfulness and loyalty often get muddled up together. Someone can be disloyal with a single action or careless word, but it takes time to determine if they are no longer faithful. (I'm referring to friendship and not marriage - I can be disloyal to Chris without being unfaithful.) We all have broken, fallen moments of unkindness, of turning away from someone's pain for whatever reason, of saying something thoughtlessly. But those moments do not have to define the relationship. Not necessarily. The true test is if you ever go back, ever re-enter into the mess, whether it's of your own making or not.

Some of the synonyms for faithful are: dependable, devoted, loving, constant, resolute, steadfast, true...

The faithfulness of God is mixed up with loyalty as well. But God is never going to be loyal to me. He is loyal to himself and his own glory. It's the only thing in the universe worth being loyal to. BUT he is always, always, always faithful to me. He will always love me and resolutely, steadfastly lead me onto a path that leads me to himself.

What this looks like most of the time is that my heart gets broken, my knuckles get bruised, my faith gets shaken... because I think I know what is going to happen and then it doesn't. Or I think I'm trusting God, but then he takes something away that feels vital and I don't know what to do. I recognize his disloyalty to my desires and it's so confusing. Until I realize that his disloyalty IS his faithfulness.

Confusing, right?

I still don't understand why people I love and respect are the ones to break my heart. Maybe it's their sin, or just their weakness. Maybe they weren't intentionally trying to be evil. But God uses evil for my good and his glory. So what have I to fear, really? As God wounds, he also heals.

More than ever before I do not understand the Father. I don't understand his path or his means. I don't understand why it hurts SO MUCH, but I suspect I was trusting in the wrong thing all along. I also don't understand where my own fault may lie. Evil whispers in my ear through the harsh words of others, and sometimes by their silence and averted eyes, that I am useless and I've brought it on myself. But the words of Scripture, and faithful friends, and a wise therapist say otherwise. Christ bore the brunt. Their reproaches have fallen on Christ (PS 69:9). There is no condemnation for me (Rom 8:1). When others, people, friends, treat me faithlessly He will never forsake me (Heb 13:5). Others will fail me, my own strength will betray me, but I have a faithful High Priest who never cease advocating for me (Heb 2:17).

One thing I do understand as never before: my weakness. My faithlessness and unbelief. My fear. I am afflicted. I am perplexed. I am struck down. But I am not, and will never be, crushed, despairing, forsaken, or destroyed (2 Cor 4:8). I have never felt more unsure of myself, except maybe when I was about eleven and my whole world had fallen apart. I don't know how to talk. What to say. What to do. How to relate. How to return to a normal that no longer exists.

But one thing I do know: Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Cor 2:2-3).

He took my sins and pride and unbelief and failings on himself on the cross. And there, my sins died with him (Rom 6:11). I am no longer identified by them. I have a new spiritual DNA. No matter the condemnation and accusations thrown at me, it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me (Gal 2:20). It doesn't matter who tells me otherwise, Paul says "whether angel from heaven", they're wrong. 

The Father is steadfast in the midst of the storm. He is my hiding place (Ps 32:7). My flesh and heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever (Ps 73:26). And even though I am faithless, to him and to others, He is always faithful.

"if we are faithless, he remains faithful - for he cannot deny himself." 2 Timothy 2:13 - that's beautiful.

It is because of this that "we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed" (Heb 10:39). Immediately following that verse is a chapter on faith, more specifically, the faith of our forefathers. It is because of God's great love, loving-kindness, faithfulness, that we are not afraid or destroyed or put down. We see only his kind face, only his approval, only his delight in us (Zeph 3:17). No matter what is happening around us or to us.

In the end, my prayer is that I can more quickly distinguish between God's faithfulness and loyalty. And that I will accept whatever comes from his hand. And that I will forgive others faithlessness to me as He forgives my faithlessness to him. I pray that my heart will be tender for the right reasons and not for selfish ones. I am so glad he never gives up on me and that he pursues me relentlessly. What a mercy.

Prayer

"And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints." - Rev 5:8

For a long time I struggled with the idea of prayer. For me, it was either a way to manipulate God, or a means of setting myself up for disappointment. My response was to give up. Hide behind the providence, omnipotence, and sovereignty of the Lord. I mean, He can do what He wants, right? What does he need MY prayers for? And if I can change his mind? Well that scares me. I'm too fallible, changeable and fickle.

So where did that leave me?

The Lord sent a dear, dear friend to me. Mrs Karen is an older woman who attends the Springville church. Her suggestion to me was that we just... pray. Sounds simple. But shouldn't I know the point of it? The reason behind it?

Nope. She said, let's just pray. So we did. Every week. For years. We still pray. Not as often as I wish though.

Through this simple exercise of faith-  these stuttering, flailing, confused, contradictory prayers - something mysterious happened. No mountains were moved and it's difficult to even quantify it, but I  think it's that I changed. I stopped viewing God as a far off, disinterested being and began to see him as a Father with Personhood, interested and involved in my life. He told me to pray in  scripture. It's a command. But he WANTS me to pray.

As the verse above illustrates, He values and treasures my prayers. He breathes them in like incense. My prayers. My confused mutterings. That can only mean that he really, truly, ACTUALLY loves me. Why else would he care? He doesn't need me in order for him to be perfect and complete, but he desires relationship with me.

It also shows his glory. He is worthy of my prayers. He alone should be worshipped. My prayers should be to him alone. When I set my hopes in money to rescue me, when I depend on other humans to answer the longings of my heart, it's like giving them the incense that should be in those golden bowls. That's what idolatry actually looks like.

I love this beautiful picture in Revelations. I love the other passages, too. Ones that tell us we have a Great High Priest who identifies with us in our sufferings. So when I'm crying out, he's not rolling his eyes or pushing me away. Or like in Zephaniah where he says that he will quiet us with his love and rejoice over us with gladness and sing over us. So when I'm praying my heart out because of my failures and fears, he's got that big golden bowl of prayers and his love pours over our hearts.

The more I meditate on these things the more I WANT to pray and the less I feel the need to intellectually figure it all out. It's enough to simply pray and add more incense to the bowl.