Introspection: Until the Ending Is Written

I share these thoughts, hoping they are of help to someone else.

Until the Ending Is Written

Scripture:

Actually, I don't have a sense of needing anything personally. I've learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I'm just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I've found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am.

Philippians 4:11-13 (The Message)

Now the story's played out like this

Just like a paperback novel

Let's rewrite an ending that fits

Instead of a Hollywood horror

From "Someday" by Nickelback

Sometimes our lives do not turn out the way we want, and sometimes even the best laid plans need to be abandoned.

In the early hours of New Year's Day, after I published my first blog post of 2012, my thoughts turned to the year ahead. As I pondered what I would write in the coming year, missing the vulnerability of my early days of blogging, a story came to mind. This is a story I was, at one time, hesitant to publish, but, as I lay in bed, unable to sleep, I decided that it might be time to put this story into writing and to share it with the world.

I wanted very much to share this story, but I had some serious reservations. Not long afterward, I met with my pastor and asked her for advice about the matter. She advised me to go ahead and write the story regardless of whether or not I decided to publish it. Immediately after our meeting, I began writing, and I continued writing late into the night. I finished my story and decided that I would publish it in early February.

I sent the story to my pastor, and she expressed some concerns about it. Taking her concerns into consideration, I decided to make some edits, still intending to publish the story when I had planned. When the day came for me to publish the story, she called me, having read my second draft, and strongly urged me to reconsider. She didn't think it was a bad story to share: she just didn't think I should share it with everybody at that time. I told her that I respected her opinion but that my mind was made up. I had spent hours and hours writing and polishing the story, and I had my heart set on sharing it. I proceeded to publish the story on this blog just as I had planned.

A few hours later, I decided to pull the story.

I finally realized why my pastor had concerns. The problem lay within the last paragraph: I was so eager to share this story with the world, I did not take the time to write a proper ending.

And therein lies the problem.

Let me backtrack a little to explain what I mean.

Last year, on the day before Valentine's Day, I experienced what I believe was a small miracle. I wanted to share this miracle with others, but, to capture what this happening truly meant to me, I had to share a much larger story. This story details a particular part of my life.

In Blue Like Jazz, writer Donald Miller discusses the four elements of a good story: setting, conflict, climax, and resolution. The setting and the conflict are self-explanatory. The climax is the moment in the story when a decisive action is taken that determines how the story will end. The resolution is the ending of the conflict, for better or for worse.¹ In the story I had written, the setting was my life, and the conflict was within my heart. I understood the climax to be the supposed miracle I experienced, a sign that God was acting decisively on my behalf. Unfortunately the last paragraph of the story betrayed the fact that the conflict within my heart has not yet been resolved.

Because there was no resolution to the conflict, the story I had written was not a good story. I cannot simply write a resolution because I am still living out the story in my life.

And that really sucks.

I intended to publish my story a few days before Valentine's Day because the miracle coincided with Valentine's Day the year before. Sadly, my ambitious schedule did not allow enough time for a true ending to be written. Ironically, Valentine's Day, for many people like myself, serves as a bitter reminder that our stories are not written to the extent we would like. While lovers give chocolates to their beloved ones, many of the rest of us find our teeth set on edge from sour grapes. Some of us would even like to rename the holiday "Singleness Awareness Day." For many of us, chronic singleness is one of those conflicts in our stories we wish was resolved.

When St. Paul was a young man, I doubt he would have been happy to know that some of his story would take place in prison; after he was imprisoned, however, he wrote a surprisingly joyful letter to the church in Philippi. In this letter, Paul stated that he had found the secret to contentment regardless of his circumstances. He had learned to simply live in his story whatever it was like at the time, whether he was rich or poor, filled or hungry, free or imprisoned. Paul knew that he was not living his story by himself: he knew that God was with him, strengthening him every step of the way.

There are a lot of things in my life that I wish were resolved, my seemingly interminable singleness included. I have been told in the past that singleness is a gift and that it should be enjoyed. I am now starting to understand what that means. I am learning that I have to live in my story right were it is right now. I cannot force the endings of the stories of my life to be written. I have to patiently let these stories write themselves, and I must trust in God to lead me to positive resolutions to the conflicts in my life.

As King Solomon wrote, "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven."² I believe there will someday be a time for me to share with the world the story I am still writing, but that time is not now.³ Time is a funny thing: we aren't given enough to waste, but we are, I believe, given enough time to do what we need to do without rushing through life. Life is a journey, not a race or a destination. Wherever you are right now, whatever your circumstances, may you learn to live in your story right where it is with patience, contentment, and faith.


Notes:
1 - Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. 2003, Thomas Nelson. Ch 3
2 - Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NRSV)
3 - If you want a very vague idea of what the story was about, see my introspection "God's Gift to Someone."

The photograph featured in this introspection is public domain.


If you have any feedback, thoughts, stories, or even arguments to contribute, please leave comments.

Introspection: Strive Less, Dance More

I share these thoughts, hoping they are of help to someone else.

Strive Less, Dance More

Scripture:

But when I surveyed all that my hands had done, and what I had worked so hard to achieve, I realized that it was pointless - a chasing after wind. Nothing is to be gained under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 2:11 (CEB)

So I commend enjoyment because there's nothing better for people to do under the sun but to eat, drink, and be glad. This is what will accompany them in their hard work, during the lifetime that God gives under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 8:15 (CEB)

I don't know what's worth fighting for
Or why I have to scream
I don't know why I instigate
And say what I don't mean
I don't know how I got this way
I know it's not alright
So I'm breaking the habit
I'm breaking the habit tonight

From "Breaking the Habit" by Linkin Park

Over the past three years, my pastor and I have become good friends. She has been what Leonard Sweet might call my "butt-kicker,"¹ always pushing me and challenging me, particularly in regards to my involvement in the church. A number of times she has also found herself to be somewhat of a counselor for me. The poor woman has probably heard more than she wanted about my insecurities and my personal drama.

Recently, I emailed my pastor, fretting about how a text message I sent might have come across to its recipient. She responded, encouraging me to just be myself, as she always advises me. She went on to tell me that we all desire what one of her seminary professors calls the "Three A's": affirmation, approval, and acceptance. She reminded me that God accepts me, approves of me, and affirms me more than any human being ever could.

If you have read my introspections in the past, you know that I often have trouble simply being myself. In the past, I have written about my struggles with self-image, perfectionism, and anger. What my pastor told me about the "Three A's" helped to shed some light on the root of these problems, particularly my perfectionism. I desperately want affirmation, approval, and acceptance from other people. At the same time, I know that I am very flawed, so I feel that I cannot simply be myself. I have to be better than myself: I must cover up all my flaws, and I must say and do all the right things so that I can receive validation from others.

I am a perfectionist, so I am always painfully aware that I am not perfect. I realize that I can never be perfect, no matter how hard I strive to be. This realization along with my desperate desire to be accepted by others leads to a sense of futility, to frustration with myself, and ultimately to rage toward myself.

The inherent problem with the desire for the "Three A's" is the fact that these things cannot be obtained or earned on one's own: they must be given by another person. Someone else must do the affirming, the approving, and the accepting. If one person does not receive the "Three A's" from another person, it is not necessarily the first person's fault. If a person was one-hundred-percent perfect, it would still be the prerogative of another person to withhold their affirmation, their approval, and their acceptance. It is utterly impossible for us to manipulate or force people to react in the way we want them to react to us, no matter how "good" we are.

I believe that my perfectionist complex is rooted in the fact that I grew up exposed to a lot of negativity and criticism. Sometimes this came from the people closest to me, people whom I felt, because of the nature of their relationship to me, were contractually obligated to give me the "Three A's" unconditionally. Instead of feeling affirmed, approved, and accepted, I ended up feeling as though I needed to guard myself and to watch my actions carefully, lest someone become angry with me or whisper about me behind my back. If the people closest to me could not affirm me, approve of me, or accept me, how could anyone else in the world? I once wrote about my own inner dialogue, saying, "It is as if I have a legion of voices in my head, and none of them have anything nice to say about me."² Sometimes, these voices sound like these particular people in my life.

One such person was my grandfather. My grandfather was always there for me when I needed him, but he was not, by any definition, an easy man to be around. He was often grumpy and irritable, and he would express his disapproval toward any flaw he saw in me. Sometimes he would yell at me, but what hurt the most was his shaking his head and sighing as if to say, "You're hopeless!" Every day, I told my grandfather that I loved him, but I actually resented him. He died a number of years ago, but sometimes I feel as though his ghost is still watching over me, shaking his head and sighing about every mistake I make.

The truth is that I probably always had the affirmation, the approval, and the acceptance of the people closest to me, though I usually felt like I did not. Also, it probably didn't help that, for eleven years, I went to a religious school that had extremely strict rules and faculty who loved to remind the students that they were sinners. Any approval, affirmation, and acceptance I was offered growing up was drowned out by the sea of negativity surrounding me. Let's face it, our feelings do not always reflect reality, and criticism always comes through much louder than praise.

A strange thing happened to me this year on Ash Wednesday. I was on my way to work that morning when I realized that I had left my lunch at home. I make this trivial mistake every now and then, but this time, for some reason, I became very angry with myself. For some reason I remembered my grandfather and how he derided me when I made mistakes. I thought about the others in my life who I felt expected more from me than I could deliver. I snapped. There, alone in the car, in the middle of traffic, I screamed out at the top of my lungs,

"IT'S NOT ME - IT'S YOU!!!"

It is truly ironic that this happened on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Lent is a season on the Christian liturgical calendar marked by repentance, introspection, and self-denial. Sometimes people give up something for the duration of Lent as a spiritual discipline - caffeine or chocolate, for example. I had planned to give up all meat for Lent, but, in this loud, beautiful, liberating moment, I also gave up my perfectionism and my hopes of ever earning the affirmation, the approval, and the acceptance of other people. Since that day, I have been less uptight, less demanding of myself, and generally less angry.

In the Book of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon calls all human achievements and all human ambitions pointless and a chasing after the wind.³ He says that all that is really worth doing is to eat, to drink, and to enjoy life.⁴ Similarly, I have realized the utter pointlessness of trying to please people. I had tried to put my best foot forward and to hide all my flaws in order to earn approval, affirmation, and acceptance from other people. What did I get from it? Nothing but loneliness, heartache, stress, anger, and digestive problems. I have decided to give up trying to please people, and I have decided instead to simply enjoy my life.

I was introduced to contra dancing when I was in college, but it is only recently that I started dancing regularly. The contra dance is a folk dance similar to the square dance in that a caller directs the dance by calling out dance steps which include the swing, the do-si-do, the allemande, and the promenade. Dancers start out completely dependent on the caller, and the sequence of dance steps might, at first, seem like utter chaos. As the dance goes on, the steps are absorbed into the dancers' muscle memory and the dancers will begin to feel the momentum of one step leading them beautifully into the next.


I have tried to go dancing every week when dances are held. These dances have given me the chance to put my cares aside, to simply enjoy life, and to interact with other people, particularly members of the opposite sex. Dancing has given me a new outlook on life. There are times when I mess up the dance steps. There are times when a girl does not want to dance with me and I have to ask someone else. There are times when I accidentally step on someone's foot. There was even one time when the caller had to come down from the stage to show me what I was doing wrong. If I focus on these things, then the dance is no longer fun, and, if dancing isn't fun, why do it?

It is only natural for us to desire affirmation, approval, and acceptance from other people, but it is utterly impossible for us to earn these things from people, no matter how hard we try. On the other hand, it is completely possible for each of us offer these things to each other unconditionally, with no strings attached. Never strive to be loved; strive only to love. Life is a dance: if it is not enjoyed, then it is wasted. Life is a precious gift from God, so stop the pointless striving, and just enjoy the dance!


Notes:
1 - Leonard Sweet, 11: Indispensable Relationships You Can't Be Without. 2008, David C. Cook. Ch. 3
2 - See my Introspection: "A Legion of Voices"
3 - This is a theme throughout the entire book, but see the first two chapters in particular.
4 - Ecclesiastes 2:24, 8:15

The photograph featured in this introspection was taken by J. Peidle and is public domain.


If you have any feedback, thoughts, stories, or even arguments to contribute, please leave comments.

Good Friday Perspective: God, Forsaken

I share these thoughts, hoping they are of help to someone else.

God, Forsaken

Scripture:

My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?
Why are You so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer;
and by night, but find no rest.

Psalm 22:1-2 (NRSV)

I was sure by now
God, You would have reached down
And wiped our tears away
Stepped in and saved the day
But once again
I say "Amen"
And it's still raining

From "Praise You in this Storm" by Casting Crowns

On a Thursday night, while praying in a garden, Jesus is sold out by one of his closest friends into the hands of people who hate him and want him out of the way. He is abandoned by His disciples and taken to the religious leaders to be tried for His supposed crimes against the faith. He is judged to be deserving of death and is mocked and beaten. On Friday morning, Jesus is taken by the angry mob to the governor, who, by popular demand, sentences Him to death by crucifixion. He is mocked and beaten further, and, at nine o'clock in the morning, He is nailed to a cross and hanged up to die.

The hours slowly pass as Jesus languishes on the cross. At noon, the sky turns dark. At three o'clock in the afternoon, just before dying, Jesus cries out those familiar but blood-chilling words,

"My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"¹

Reading about the suffering and death of Jesus Christ, one cannot help but wonder if God would really forsake His own Son. The Crucifixion of Christ is sometimes understood to be a sacrifice of atonement in which the sin of humanity was placed on Jesus. This would mean that, on the cross, Jesus essentially took the punishment that humans deserve because of their sins. One might then understand Jesus' cry to mean that God could no longer even look at Jesus because of the sin He was carrying. In this perspective, I will not argue for or against this idea of atonement. Personally, I doubt we will ever fully understand exactly what happened on the cross that Friday.

I do not believe that God actually forsook Jesus that day. At the same time, though, I believe that Jesus cried out what He did - "Why have You forsaken Me?" - because He genuinely felt as though He was forsaken by God.

In the book Insurrection, philosopher Peter Rollins points to the cross as the site where Jesus Christ, the Son of God, became an atheist. This is not to say that Jesus stopped believing in God. The atheism Jesus experienced on the cross was not an intellectual atheism: rather, it was an experiential atheism. On the cross, Jesus experienced a type of divine absence: He felt as though God was no longer there for Him.² When Christ prayed in the garden, "Not what I want, but what You want," He gave up everything for God. On the cross, He, in a sense, lost everything including God.³

There are times in our lives when we find ourselves shaken to the very core. Sometimes, through our own fault or through the fault of someone else, we face circumstances that can only be described as godforsaken. These are times when we are no longer sure about what we believe, times when everything we ever heard in church no longer makes any sense to us. These are times in our lives when we wonder if there really is a God or wonder if God actually loves us or even cares about us. Perhaps we even find ourselves uttering, "God hates me."

I do not believe that God actually forsook Jesus on the cross, nor do I think God forsakes us during our own "dark nights of the soul." I believe that God always extends love to us, but there are times in our lives when we are unable to sense God's presence or God's love for us.

A few years ago, my mother switched from cable television to satellite television, so sometimes, during heavy rainstorms, she is unable to watch television. This does not mean that television broadcasts cease during heavy storms. Rather, it means that the satellite dish is unable to receive a signal due to interference from the wind and the rain. Sometimes a person can be like a satellite dish. Like the satellite signal, God is present with us despite our circumstances, but we may have trouble sensing God's presence when we are blown about and tossed by the storms of our lives.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews writes, "We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are."⁴ At Christmas, we celebrate the Incarnation, the idea that God the Son left the heavenly realms to be embodied in human flesh. In the Incarnation, God, in Jesus Christ, joined us in the human experience: laughter, tears, trials, temptations, friendships, conflicts, parties, meals. On Good Friday, we remember the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. At the crucifixion, God, in Jesus Christ, joined us in our godforsakenness.

In the Christian faith, we believe in a God who is able to empathize with us because God became human for us. Even when we feel as though God has forsaken us, God still understands how we feel, because God has experienced that feeling as well through Christ.

According to writer Anne Lamott, one of the most powerful things a person can say to someone else is "Me too." Rob Bell writes, "When you're struggling, when you are hurting, wounded, limping, doubting, questioning, barely hanging on, moments away from another relapse, and somebody can identify with you - someone knows the temptations that are at your door, somebody has felt the pain that you are feeling, when someone can look you in the eyes and say, 'Me too,' and they actually mean it - it can save you."⁵

I believe that the cross was, among other things, God's way of saying, "I understand how you feel - you are not alone." When Christ cried out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" He said, "Me too," to a broken, hurting humanity.

On Good Friday, we remember the suffering and death of Jesus Christ on the cross. On Easter Sunday, we remember that Christ left behind an empty tomb. Over the course of these three days, we are reminded that, though we suffer, the crosses we bear are not the end of the story. We remember, as the Psalmist penned, "Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning."⁶ Wherever you find yourself right now, whether you are weeping or laughing, whether you are suffering or celebrating, whether it is "Friday" or "Sunday" for you, realize that you are not alone.


Notes:
1 - Mark 14:31-15:41
2 - Peter Rollins, Insurrection. 2011, Howard Books. pp. 20-21
3 - Rollins, p. 27
4 - Hebrews 4:15 (NRSV)
5 - Rob Bell and Don Golden, Jesus Wants to Save Christians. 2008, Zondervan. p. 151
6 - Psalm 30:5 (NRSV)

The photograph featured in this perspective is believed to be public domain.


If you have any feedback, thoughts, stories, or even arguments to contribute, please leave comments.