I'm having a grand love affair. I had read about this kind of love on countless books about grace, discipleship and finding your heart. I had listened to the testimonies of others and grew envious of their God stories. For the first time in five years, I was in love with Jesus.
The story this weekend (I've put this blog away for a week, so really it's been two weeks ago) and one I've been blogging about in the last few days, has been stories of transformation. Part of the God story I share (mainly with other Christians, in a safe environment) was my Emmaus walk almost six years ago. It was a time of priority challenges and awakenings. Until then, my answer to the question posed this weekend, "When was the first time you fell in love with Jesus?" was brought back to that Saturday night sitting in a Reynoldsburg church wondering what the feeling was that coarsed through my very bones.
The new heart that's been beating within me was not a love affair of my own doing. I felt love, I witnessed loving acts, I've felt the presence of love amongst friends. My own self doubts and persistent past always left doubt in my mind. When I left the Emmaus walk, I was under the spell of the realization that God has been pursuing me long before I could remember. He had this grand plan for my life that up until now had been unknown. I was able to look in the mirror for the first time knowing that I was deeply loved and there was nothing I could do about it.
My past would seep into the cracks on a consistent basis. I fought back with Bible studies, fellowship, serving on missions and praying. It wasn't necessarily the guilt of my past sin, but it was the routines and lazy habits one builds up over a lifetime of conscious disregard that it became difficult to make the changes needed to live that life fulfilled. I struggled with pornography, and worse, I couldn't make daily devotions and prayer part of my everyday life. I had seasons (a favorite Christian comment) where I was on fire, followed by the murmurings of a lukewarm heart. My life looked like an EKG of faithfulness.
When I went to Oklahoma last year, it became another seminal moment in my love affair with the Lord. However, it answered the burning question of doubt that always seems to arise when bad things happened, when events beyond my control could not be explained. Does God allow bad things to happen?
Standing on ground zero, it became apparent that God doesn't need bad things to happen to us to force us closer to him. If that were the case then the good things in our life would bring us closer to him as well. But we give credit to luck, karma, friends, chance, destiny and fate. Bad things, disasters, sicknesses, deaths, it can happen to anyone and everyone. There's no lottery on bad events. While cancer might not ravage my body now, those that I love who suffer from it provide me a chance to love on them and to walk alongside them. If I don't get the job I want, but a friend does, you celebrate with them as if it were your own. To walk into the life we're meant to live, we must do so in everything. Even the mundane ritual of ordering food through a drive-through is a chance. Someone is always watching us.
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Is it okay to be thankful for the failures in your life? Perhaps failures are what reminds you that we aren't perfect. Perhaps it's a reminder that we do need intervention in our lives.
Back when I was in Houston in community college, I met regularly with a writer's group. We ate Chinese food every week and dissected poetry. There was a trust involved in that circle. I trusted that what criticisms came from that eclectic group--a gay man, a Native American woman, a homemaker, a college student and future professor of literature--weren't personal. Any edits and suggestions were for the good of the work. Getting published was a goal for each of us. We wanted to write words that mattered, that spoke for our emotions in ways we couldn't do face to face.
Now every Wednesday I sit among a group of Christian men. We challenge one another, we laugh, we criticize constructively. The trust involved is much the same. We had a guys event the last weekend. Today was a meeting to discuss what we need to work on to become better. Failures were listed, but feelings weren't. In some way those meetings at that Chinese restaurant paved the way for these small groups. Who knows the great tapestry of our lives? Every instance and experience matters in the long run.
I forget this when I'm struggling to get my son dressed each morning. For my son, each moment is magnified to hyperbolic degrees. I raise my voice, he hears a scream. He strikes out in a baseball game, he suddenly feels he's never going to get a hit. This newfound resilience I've found in me is seemingly absent, or at least untapped in him. I use my words carefully. I grew up in a time when sarcastic barbs and pokes about my physical failings were targets for mockery. I heard how big my nose was, how fat or lazy I was, how bad my attitude was. But that's what made us tough. Was it better? Many adults I know all seem to have been raised in similar families where teasing and toughing up were part of their everyday lives. How many have heard, "toughen up," "shake it off," or "get over it.". Sometimes I say the same things to my fifth graders. Perhaps the kids in my life are
more resilient than I give them credit for. Perhaps the struggles they exhibit are manifestations of our wounds we inflict on them.
Perhaps they know, my son included, how many various hat we try to wear with excellence each day. Father, youth volunteer, men's ministry member, Husband, teacher, friend. How does one do each job effectively? Can it even be a realistic goal? We constantly sigh and wonder where the time goes but I know there is waste among the gold. There's not much time to wallow. I'm yawning now. It's late. I have emails to send and thank you cards to pen. It's another chance to use God's immense vocabulary for his glory. I don't think I have enough pens, or blog space, to write them all.
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