Pain, joy and endurance

I will probably sound stark raving mad right now b/c all of this is floating around in my head and I jumped outta the tub to get it down on paper.  Yikes!  It was after I read this:  "Everyday we're both wasting away and being renewed. PAIN IS REAL, BUT SO IS JOY." (re: 2 Cor 4:16) in a Steven James book.

Ok, imagine your face and on one eye, put PAIN, on the other JOY.  When you look through both of your eyes and pain and joy are focused together looking in the same direction, you see hope.  But, if you close one, 2 things could happen.

CLOSE JOY:  You just have pain.  Pain is all you see and all you feel and the only thing you can see for the future.  I can see how suicide happens. You'd think, ok this is the world, but NO, we see it all the time in believers.  Weeping and waiting and "trusting" and waiting and waiting meanwhile hurting and in pain, thinking this is spiritual?  THE WORLD SEES THIS!  It's not what Jesus showed us.

Now.. open joy and 

CLOSE PAIN:  You are 100 percent joyful all of the time, plastic happy that has no need for hope.  And what kind of a life are you living if you don't need hope????  And then if you have 100 percent joy, is that His joy?  That's not Jesus.  There's something there about pain being his road to joy.  

ONLY joy can't be the right way and here is why.  When Jesus walked to the cross he was in pain, total agony.  And he felt it 100 percent.  He didn't get a pass, but it was worth it because of the joy set before him.  He didn't feel happy, but he knew joy.  And he was looking toward ultimate joy.  He saw the cross (hope) through the focus of joy and pain.   

Steven James:  "to enjoy pain isn't Christianity; it's masochism.  But to willingly endure suffering because you love something more than your own comfort level, well, that's getting closer to the heart of the divine."  

So endure the pain, know it has a purpose.  It doesn't lead you to joy, you should already have His joy.    The joy makes us capable of enduring the pain.  

Paul said don't "lose heart" and maybe when we close both of our eyes that's what we lose sight of.    We lose it all.  Close off joy and close off pain and you are numb, which is worse than anything (lukewarm, not hot or cold and God can't work with that).  Ok, probably not a lot of this makes total sense, but I wanted to get it out.  I'm exhausted haha

The joy of the Lord is my...wall

Steven James, my favorite poet, wrote a book called Sailing Between the Stars: Musings on the Mysteries of Faith and I read something last night that ROCKED my world.  I couldn't sleep afterward, I just kept thinking about it, so I'm going to type it out here and that's it.  I don't/can't add anything, I just want you to know it and have your thoughts on it.  Everything below (minus my underlining of the things that most got to me) is Steven James:


There's a story in the Old Testament about a guy named Nehemiah who travels to Jerusalem to oversee the rebuilding of the walls surrounding the city, which have been demolished for years.  After a series of misadventures and setbacks, sabotage attempts and death threats, the walls are finally completed.  (It's a great story, actually.  Worth checking out if you've never read it.  It's found in Nehemiah 2-6).

Then the people of the city gather together to hear Ezra the priest read from the Book of the Law.  As they listen to him explain the commands and promises of God, the Israelites begin to weep.  At that point, Nehemiah stands up and says, "Don't weep on such a day as this!  For today is a sacred day before the Lord your God...Go and celebrate with a feast of choice foods and sweet drinks, and share gifts of food with people who have nothing prepared.  This is a sacred day before our Lord. Don't be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength."  (Nehemiah 8:9-10)

I like how, in Nehemiah's eyes, a sacred day meant one of selfless celebration, with "choice food and sweet drinks."  To Nehemiah, sad, heavy hearts clashed with sacredness.  According to him, it's sacred to party.  That's such a healthy, refreshing view of holiness.  And then he closes by telling the people that the joy of the Lord is their strength.

I used to read that and wonder why it didn't say, "The strength of the Lord is your joy."  I thought that would have made more sense.  I mean, the people were weeping and needed to find joy again and in their relationship with God.  I would've thought Nehemiah would emphasize how powerful God is and that his power can give them joy once again.  That would seem sensible.  

But nope.  Instead Nehemiah said, "The joy of the Lord is your strength."

I asked a pastor about this verse one time, and he looked it up in the Hebrew.  "The word that's translated 'strength' here is the same word that's translated throughout the rest of the book as 'wall' he told me.  It literally means, ' the joy of the Lord is your wall.'"

"So it's a play on words?" I said.
"Sort of.  The point is, it's a wall."
"It's a pun!" I said.  As a writer, I'm way too easily impressed by literary devices.
"No, it's a wall."
"Right, and a pun!"

He sighed and walked away.  I tend to have that effect on people.  I did thank him, however, even though I wasn't exactly sure I understood the subtle significance of his translation.  I had to think about it for a while.  


Don't be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your wall.  


The people were celebrating the completion of their city walls, walls built to hold out their enemies and provide them with protection and security.  So all around them stood these walls they could see, that they'd helped to build.  And here comes Nehemiah pointing out a different wall, one they couldn't see, especially through their tears.  This was a wall built out of sacred joy rather than sweat and rocks and mortar and time.  

I think I finally get it:  a wall built out of God's joy can hold back the greatest enemies of all.  

Iron Man and God

Today, I was in the bathtub with the door open, so that I could hear Asher.  He isn't allowed in daddy's bat cave (man room) and as soon as I let my head drop the the back of the tub in relaxation, I heard him exit the room.  Wait!  I didn't even hear him go in!  He's a crafty little one.

He comes to the tub with an Iron Man DVD (one of daddy's nice ones) and I just KNOW he is going to rip the box over it wide open and Isaac will kill us both.  An aside:  Isaac cares so much about cases and keeping them in pristine condition, so it's hard to have a child like Asher who likes to rip things just to hear the sound it makes...

I can't jump out of the tub all wet, so I'm trying to put all my persuasiveness and forcefulness in my words (which ALWAYS works with toddlers, right?).  "Asher, if you don't put that movie down right now, you will not get to watch it."  He doesn't care because watching it is in the future and he's ONLY about the immediate RIGHT NOW.  He's still not a kid that can reason what may or may not happen in the future based on his actions right now.  It's frustrating...

"Asher, can't you see you have to let the DVD drop from your grubby little hands before you're allowed to have it????  In a minute, I'll get out and open it so that you can watch it.  There's a reason for it you don't understand yet, but just trust me so I don't have to punish you and then you won't have it at all." 

DING DING DING.  Yep.  Light bulb above the old head.  I bet that's how God feels sometimes.  I'm walking along, ripping up pieces of things just to hear the sound of destruction meanwhile, He's screaming:

"Courtney!!!!!!  Stop!!!!!  If you just obey me and put that piece of your life down and wait a minute, I'll give it back to you.  In the right time.  There's a reason for it you don't understand yet, but just trust me or you won't have it at all!"

Man, I very much like to hold onto things like a toddler whose grubby little hands clutch a sucker with lint and hair and dirt all over it.  Mommy wants to take it, clean it off and give it back but all the toddler can think is "she's taking it away she's taking it away."  Even though she tells her child she'll give it back clean, the child can't think past the moment she takes it from him.   So what's he going to do, keep it dirty?  Is that better than losing it for a minute?  

NO.  But toddler mindsets are hard to break.  What does God want from me?  Love, obedience, trust, to serve, to seek Him are a few...

This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome 

1 John 5:3

And it's not because He's a puppet master God, it's because He wants more for us than we can give to ourselves.   We were born dirty into a dirty world that, if given the chance, will throw mud in our eyes and trip us with its mounds.   The only thing I can do is trust Him enough to obey Him.  Which just happens to be love.  

If he tells me to go left, I want to trust Him enough to go left even when it looks like I'm walking off of a cliff.   Because looks can be deceiving and that cliff just may lead me to a clean body of water that removes all of the dirt.  Is the drop scary?  Heck yes.  Does the water sting when I first hit it?  Maybe.  

But none of that compares to the feeling underneath the water and the thrill I have when I jump up from it, CLEAN!  So try to hear Him today.  Then, obey the words or feeling He's giving you.  See what happens and then for the love, LET ME KNOW!  

Spaces

I was writing today and I was thinking of submission requirements for poems. Ex: 60 lines only.  Long thought pattern short, I was wondering if that meant spaces.  I thought of sending in a poem of mine with no spaces and it just didn't feel right.  I would rather take out a section to gain the flow of those lines with nothing on them.  It's the silence in the poem.  The length of the words in between the silence tells a story itself.  


It made me think of a section in a book I love called Story by Steven James.  In fact, I just now went back and read the blog I wrote and I think I'll share it again right here:

So, I was reading Story by Steven James (again) and this part especially jumped out at me and I wanted to share it :)

God's silence offers us the choice--faith or sight.  We can either abandon our faith or learn to trust in the dark.  God leaves that choice up to us.  And all the while he's more interested in our faith in him than our ability to decipher his silences.  The poet Coleman Barks wrote, "The only way we know the play of destiny and free will is to dance the mystery and die inside it."  


When you listen to a song, you only hear the harmony because of the emptiness between the notes.  If the song is too full of notes, it becomes nothing but noise.  To hear the harmony you have to let the silences have their place in the song.  

It's like each note is a pearl upon a necklace and the silences are what strings them all together.

Maybe God knows that without his silences in our lives, we will never hear the melody of faith.


I think in every person's life a day comes when faith becomes a choice.  You can either give up on the silence of God or choose to trust him in the dark as Jesus did while he was dying on the cross.  


In the end, most of the Israelites gave up on God.


And at last, God stopped sending his prophets.  He stopped speaking to his people.  The Old Testament ends with the word curse.  And that terrible word echoed in the hearts of his people for four more centuries.  


While God remained silent.  As silent as the sky.




I had to fight to not put quotes around the word SILENT.  I feel like what we think of God being silent isn't what He thinks silence really is.  But, maybe He is silent.  And maybe silence is all of that...what we both think.   


I've been thinking a lot about how crazy the story of creation and everything from there to here sounds.  Pastor Steve spoke about that today, I was talking to Jen on the phone and she touched on it today, I was reading Story and that was the part I came to...  Now, I could say "that's coincidence, like so many things in my life"  or I could say "Cool God, thanks for putting it all together for me."  I choose the latter because I believe in God.  BUT when it's hard to swallow, but I know I believe my Father, then I just trust Him and believe it.  I would rather just have faith and believe than try to explain it all away.  I love how Steven James put it here, too:


It's so absurd, this king of the galaxies lying in a feed box for animals, this Creator crying in the stable.  Anyone can see at this point that this story isn't man-made.  Who would ever believe it?  If I were making up a religion that I wanted people to believe in, I'd never insert stuff like this.  Only God could tell a story this ludicrous and then claim that it is true.  



Also, I can't explain a feeling.  I just know inside of me that I have yearnings for something bigger than the here and now and life would be too hard to accept without a Creator who made us with a purpose in mind (to reflect him in love).  


It's so cool to think about God and time.  I won't get into it here, but OH EM GEE, right? We have time and everything is governed by it.  God doesn't, so my right now is the same as my conception and the same as Zoe's college graduation.  It's happens simultaneously...or no, that's a time word.  Everything that WILL happen to us, HAS ALREADY happened.  Wild!  I could talk about it for hours and discuss and debate, but I shant here.  


I think I'm in a time of wonderment and enjoying Jesus as a hippie would and as a fist pumping lunatic would .  I'm all "oooh, pretty Jesus" while simultaneously all "POWERFUL GOD, SEND ME! SEND ME!  I WILL GO FOR YOU, JUST TEACH ME HOW!  I WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD AND SHOW THEM YOU ARE LOVE AND THEY CAN BE LOVED"  


But then, the flesh side comes in and I'm afraid I'm offending someone.  But, we're all adults right?  You can take what I say, like it or toss it.  Wow, how did I get here in this blog?  Haha, my mind is a hot crazy mess all hopped on the Holy Spirit (and i love it).   That's what I get for going to Celebration Church... ;)   I just didn't know it could be like this.

Randomness

This is the first time I've ever sat down to blog with no theme or idea in mind.  I want to just write because I'm in the mood to type, so I'm a little scared of what will come outta this brain, yo.

So, I'm now a woman who has been married for EIGHT years.  We've been together for TEN and honestly, I can't believe it's been that long.  I think back to when we dated and it doesn't seem that long ago.  It was also months after I accepted Jesus and started to learn about spiritual matters, so I had a heck of a lot going on.  AND IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!

Now, we have babies and I don't work, I'm not using my degree (except writing for fun) and I'm happy.  We aren't poor or rich, we're just content and it's what I've always strived for.  (Sssssss, ended a sentence with a preposition...ok, ok, I can do this.  Let it go, C)

Honestly, I have a little bit of a hard time parenting Zoe.  Asher is easy.  He's just this BOY that is very intense and honestly, hard to deal with, but SO predictable.  Now, Zoe.  Zoe. Zoe. Zoe.  My daughter.  My emotional, never-get-the-same-reaction-to-the-same-thing daughter.  My sweet, jealous, comparative, spiritual daughter.   Did I say she was emotional?  Did ya get that part?  Geez... How do you parent a personality that is exactly like yours????  Moody to the extreme and if there is a mood in the room, she's gonna catch it.  Dear sweet Jesus, go before me and prepare my 40ish self for a hormonal, pre-/teen daughter who will have PMS.  Do I want it at the same time as me, so it's only one time a month?  Or space it out a little?   Poor Isaac and Ash is all I GOTSTA say.

I am completely dependent upon coffee.  One time, I realized we were out of Starbucks before I got out of bed and I thought about NOT sending the kids to school, so I wouldn't have to get up and get them ready.  Seriously.  That's pathetic, right?  Nah, not pathetic, but it's maybe indicative of a problem haha.  And I only drink one cup a day, so it's not necessarily the caffeine but the idea of that steaming cup of goodness that makes my brain come alive, ALIVE I TELL YA!

 (i'm a drinking a BIG mug now, can ya tell?)

Ok, ok, what else?  For the past year, I've been writing poetry every single day and I have hundreds that are saved on my computer and I have no idea what to do with them.  I don't want anyone to read them (ok, that hinders me alot), I don't need them published, I just like playing around with them and making them as perfect as I can.  That's been enough until recently and now I feel this need to do something with them.  I just struggle with putting them out there because I don't want people to think I think they're good.  Make sense?  I don't want people to tell me they're good or not because they are my heart and it doesn't matter if they're "good."  They just are.  Any ideas, people?

I just read the Hunger Games Trilogy and I'M SO GLAD I DID!  I usually shy away from anything that looks like I'm hopping onto any type of bandwagon (not the best trait of mine because I miss out on a lot) but Jamie Davidson convinced me.  Now, I can't wait for the movie.  Isaac is going to take me to see it in Columbus at an IMAX theater so we can have a whole Hunger Games/shopping weekend next month.

Ok, I feel finished writing.  I always enjoy a little randomness...

Beautiful class and what I learned

What I am about to share isn't what you'd imagine would be the biggest thing I take away from this class, but I feel like the whole "lacking nothing" thing has impacted us each in such vastly different way.  It's given me confidence and hopefully eventually will lead to loving boldness.  

I felt messy.   Especially before sharing the letter to my 15 year old self and talking it all out, which was the hardest thing I've ever done.   I just felt completely inept and messed up, I very much connected with the line in the song Beautiful Things:

All this pain I wonder if I’ll ever find my way I wonder if my life could really change at all All this earth Could all that is lost ever be found Could a garden come up from this ground at all

In other words, can God use this body that i've defiled so much and this mind that is so messed up?  But like Jen told me in the pick up line at school, "honey, we're all messed up."  I knew that, but when she said it, it softened something within me.  And I'm sorry that your mess has made me feel better, but it has.  Knowing we're all a little…or a lot messy, makes me feel like God can use this ground.  

Something unexpected this class has taught me has been about finding my purpose and living it…on purpose.  Do it afraid, just start.  Don't become stagnant, trying to get the best start possible, that's a trick of the enemy to stop you.  He hates momentum.  Even if that momentum is taking you slightly off course, it's easier to turn around running that it is to start from a stopped position.  What will stop momentum? Thinking you don't have all you need and that you aren't good enough.  

I've been thinking  about my first Pastor and his story.  He stuttered, and as the asst. pastor to a church, it didn't matter too much, but when he was called to LEAD the congregation, a stutter would have been a great reason to think he'd heard wrong.  Preaching as a living was not his purpose. (I hope I have that story right)

But as soon as he began to walk in his purpose, leading the church WITH the stutter, the stutter went away. He just began DOING IT.  With this type of thinking, it should feel so good when we get that urge to do something and we know it's from God.  Instead, I get nervous I'll fail Him, when He doesn't care about all that, He just wants me to start because He can see the potential within me and even more than that, who I can show Him to.  Even with this knowledge, i haven't yet moved.  I'm really good at having revelations, just not so good at living them out.  

 I was thinking that, I don't feel that God gave him that stutter so that he would later have this testimony.  It's a good testimony, and surely one of the things that He works together to make it all good, but sometimes the testimony isn't what we should strive for.  I think the stutter is a product of this messy, unclean world in which we live.  Everyone has an issue to hold them back.  Period.  His purpose has always been fixed, all the things that hold us back have not been.  

We need to take our natural..or supernatural talents and USE THEM!  If we feel called to do something and it's so obviously our purpose, start doing it.  In any capacity you can.  

Whatever the passion is in our lives, it's on purpose.  We need to get out of the mindset that if we like it, it can't be what God has for us.  Christianity doesn't always have to be a martyr experience where if it hurts, you're doing it right.  Is it like that sometimes?  YES!!!!  But that's not necessarily the norm.  God knows you have a passion for whatever it is because HE PUT IT THERE.  God takes what you feel led to anyway, to fulfill what He needs…b/c He loves you.  Most of the time, He wants us to love what we are already doing because He knows the outcome of that type of living, he just wants to take our passion and use it for His kingdom.

That's what I've most gotten out of this class.  I LACK NOTHING, so if I'm called to do something, and especially if it's obvious, I NEED TO DO IT and am fully ABLE to do it, in Him!  

ONLY THEN, will the things that hold me back fall away.  Example:  If Pastor Chuck had NOT been called to preach and tried to do it anyway, the stutter wouldn't have fallen away.  But because that was his given purpose, the stutter became irrelevant.  If he had done it the other way, the message would have been irrelevant.   The point of it all:  When you do what you're called to do, the things that hold you back become irrelevant.  They don't even matter, God only needs our obedience in order for us to walk His perfect path and to be His hands and feet.