New Love

I was sitting in service last weekend and I had this thought. We are still going through the series, Words I Wish Jesus Never Said, and this last week was Making Disciples.

We discussed the difference between the Roman way and the Celtic way of making disciples. As I was sitting there listening to Tim teach I came to this short realization.

For centuries the Christian church has preached the Gospel of Hell. They have preached a Gospel that is meant to prepare the soul in the last breaths of a life. This preaching has influenced the lifestyle of what a Christian has been for years. This reality is a mundane and immature stalk of Jesus. The one great thing that came out of this was an urgency to spread this kind of Gospel. The church became urgent because it so desperately wanted to save the souls of those whom she loved.

Then the church went through a tolerant stage. We started loving everyone. Now this is a great thing, but not at the expense of the Kingdom of God. Our love was not overflowing from God it was a worldly love. A love that has shattered the church in a million different ways. A destructive and selfish love. A love that is far to afraid to speak the name of Jesus. And the urgency of the Gospel slowed down. It was no longer needed to talk about Jesus as long as we were loving people. Don't dare speak the name of Jesus because, God forbid, we truly might offend someone. Jesus never did this while he was alive.

Now we are preaching the Kingdom of God. The church has slowly, and I mean slowly, realized that the Kingdom of God is something that Jesus was inherently all about. This Kingdom living, learning, and loving was something that he truly envisioned the church to be. This involved love that the church wanted to, so desperately give out, but it was a different kind of love. It was a love that met a person where they were at but loved them to much to let them stay there. This love is no longer afraid to speak the name of Jesus because that is where this love was born.

And their is a definite urgency to this love. The church has realized that this love is the only thing that is worth truly living for. This God is the only thing truly living for, and the ones who do not know and feel this are truly feeling and living in an earthly Hell. There is an urgency because the ones we care about are experiencing a pain greater than should ever be conceived. It's the pain of an unreleased life. A life still chained by sin.

A life that isn't truly free in this new love.

Fascinating

I was listening to a sermon today and the preacher was telling a story of a young Vietnamese teenage girl. He stated that she became a Christian and wanted to be the first Christian Communist Secretary General of Vietnam.

She believes that Communist is closer to Communism than Capitalism. What are your thoughts?

Is big bad Communist more similar to Christianity that Capitalism?

Christians will love again.

Everything has a different feel to it now.

Whereas I only felt the dark things and knew about the light things, I now feel the light things as well.

I have been refreshed and redeemed in this community called the church.

This church looks like a formed and functional identity that is about to burst into a reforming reality.

I can feel something that is to become.

The love of Christ is to be found in Christians again.

Expectations suck.(sorry for the lack of creativity)

I think I have come to a breaking point in my life. A point of confusion. I don't tend to blog out real thoughts about my full life because I know the readers of my blog wouldn't truly appreciate it, but I couldn't help but write out this one.

I guess I have become tired of people's expectations. There are some expectations that I do truly appreciate. There are some however, that I do not.

It's not even about high expectations anymore. It's also about low expectations. People thinking that I need to do it this way or feel this way or act this way. They develop low expectations of me because they don't think that I will truly do anything great or even worth reading.

People make comments on my writing, my living, the way I do small group, the way I interpret the Bible, the way I ask questions, the way I see things, and I have gotten to the edge of frustration.

Stop asking me to be something that you have created. Stop giving me more or less of what you want me to do or be.

Let me be who I was created to be.

Don't create something in your mind about me or the way I will react, because in all reality you probably will be surprised.

People corner me in every aspect, especially in the relational sphere. People think I will react a certain way, or feel a certain way or befriend certain people. I have even come to believe these things myself.

I'm tired of these tiring expectations. These expectations have tied me down to a boat named predictability.

Stop expecting so much.

Stop expecting so little.

Live in the moment with the identity you see and truly feel. I will try to do the same.

The dreams have started again. The dreams that keep me up at night. The ones that lure me to sleep but reveal a graver side of my being.

I can't stop them.

So, I must conclude that it has started again.

I guess I'm just along for the ride.

The pain had lurched into my stomach.

The pain that was an emotional stir suddenly clashed into my physical sense. My body became a wet damp sheet, and my stomach forced my body to rush to a place where I could expel everything. All of the memories, all of the words, and all of the actions.

My body so desperately wanted to release everything that I had experienced in the last 18 years. Everything that I felt, and everything I knew. After my body had expelled the physical sense of those memories I still was in a shock. I couldn’t control the shaking and air couldn’t come fast enough into my lungs. It was like breathing through a straw.

The tears could not heal this. Running seemed the only logical plan.
And so I did.

I displaced myself. I became a shell, a shell of the emptiness and darkness that had surrounded me. The tears no longer came and the pain became a numb reminder that I was in complete desperation.

Sitting in that room. It was the reality that I had wanted to be an illusion. Every time that I sat in that room I wanted to run. Every time that I heard that voice I wanted to find an escape. So I created a wall. A wall that was higher and thicker than any other man made object.

After I created that wall I entered that room and was hidden behind my wall.
Every time he grabbed my neck, I wasn’t there.
Every time he poked me, I wasn’t there.
Every time he cornered me, I wasn’t there.

I perfected this life of hiding. I learned how to control my relationships and how to leave my emotions at the door step.

After learning how to hide I actually left. I moved away. I moved to Chicago. Being on the west coast had taught me to love the softness of the ocean and the beauty of the sun. Now the skyscrapers took the sun away. Everything that I knew, had become a distant fantasy of things yet to come. The faces of city goers in Millennium Park had softened the city that I had decided to find my place in.

But the reality of this place was something that could not allude me. I knew how to hide, and I continued to hide until I was only a body. A body that wandered around the busy streets of this windy city and was lost in it’s depth and structure.

I got a job at a small business answering phones. This riveting job introduced new characters into my realm.

There was Steve, the sandwich guy. Now I still don’t know exactly what Steve did for the business that I worked for but I did know this. When I walked into the door in the morning and when I left at 5 Steve always seemed to have a sandwich. I never knew if it was the same sandwich all day or if he ate multiple sandwiches during the nine hour work day. I also wondered if that was all he ate.

Then there was Mary, who was a nice girl but had the tendency to always be chewing gum. She also came to work consistently 15 minutes late and had a small tick that effected her only when she was nervous or excited. I still remember when we made her sing happy birthday to herself in front of everyone in the office. Her eye twitched in such away that I thought it actually lived and breathed on it’s own.

Joe was the funny jerk in the office. I think that everyone knows someone like Joe. He is funny as long as he is not making fun of you.

And then there was my boss, Victoria. Her closest friends called her Tory, a name I never uttered from my lips. Victoria was a narcissist. I don’t feel like there is any more to say about her.

There were a plethora of other co-workers but none of much importance. These were the three people that I worked with on a daily basis. These were the people that thought they knew something about me.

Unfortunately they never had the chance.

It’s not that they never knew me. I was truthful in some of what I told them but if they were to look at the big picture now they would have been baffled.

All they knew was that I was a sweet girl whose life was gone to fast. Who left to soon. Lucky for them, they still have a chance. I never did.

I will never forget how it happened.

I was just sitting there, and he came in. I thought I had gotten away, but he found me. In one moment it was all over. My facade was ripped away in an instant.

"If I can’t have you know one can," he screeched, just to get his point across. Then he pulled out a gun and I was gone. It wasn’t really painful, and my life didn’t flash before my eyes.
It just happened. The idea that death had occupied now became the reality of my identity. And in an instant he was gone. How I wished he had lived. How I wish he had lived out his days in the miserable state in where he sent me.

But he’s here with me. And we are in that same room. However, he is no longer in control and I am no longer the victim.

There is something different here. Something unknown. Something hidden. I guess I never had a picture of what the ‘afterlife’ would be like. I would never had expected it to look like this.
It was the same room that we had both lived in for the entirety of our relationship. This room had the memories of our broken marriage, and our broken souls. The blood stain was still on the wall.

That night was the night that I decided to run, and yet I am still in the same place. I ran away from the memories and from the darkness and yet I still am wrapped in them.
Is this Hell? Or just a state of being?

He is wondering around the room like he never left. Like he never came and found me and ended both of us. Eventually he just ends up flopping on the bed. The sheets raveled around him like he was still physically existent.

I wanted to scream. To scream at him and tell him that he ended it for both of us. To throw my pain at him. If I could only open my mouth and let my angry petitions out. Then I would feel the healing of this emptiness in my soul. I went over but I felt a black tar cover my mouth. I could no longer speak my thoughts. I stood over him in a way that felt like forever, and tried to get to him, but nothing came of it. So I sat down in our old rocking chair.

And the memories that I had thrown up had re-entered into my mind. The memory of holding my child in this rocking chair. That warm small body that was an interrupting event in my life. I had never loved someone the way I loved that body.

I remember giving that body away.

Secretly, before I ran.

35 days.

I have a bad habit of counting down. I do it with my birthday right after Christmas. I have always done it in school.

I was one of those kids in high school that had the small numbers in her assignment book to show how many days are left.

It's not that I am trying to get out of the situation that I am in. I really enjoy what I am doing this summer and I really enjoy who I get to work with everyday but their is something in me that counts down.

I think it's my need for consistant change. I have never had the dream of settling down in a house with a white pickett fence. I want to travel and meet people and experience the reality of God in this world through different cultures.

I have a bad habit on counting down.

I was in Holland, MI all of last week. If you know me well you know that I have traveled to Holland in a frequent manner to see my best friend who attends Hope College.

I was actually there with 100 high school students and leaders attending a Christ and Youth conference. It was a great week.

While the week was serious and life changing there were moments of complete hilarity, as there should be when you are surrounded by 100 high school students and leaders.

One of these hilarious moments actually was self inflicted. My best friend was leading about 65 of us to a private beach to go swimming. She was on the phone and was trying to figure out how to get through all the different trails to get to the beach.

My friend Shelley, who also was an adult leader on the trip, thought that we would help Kelly and go on our own to try and find the beach. We headed out on the trail and actually spent a good forty five minutes walking and then running on hot sand looking for the beach. We finally got to a four hundred foot dune and had just seen a couple of young looking guys at the top. We thought, "Well those must be our students, so I guess this is the only way back up".

Now let me pause this moment and let you know that, unfortunately, I am not in the best physical shape in the world. I do not have that going for me. Just think of that while imagining the rest of the story.

So Shelley and I are looking at this dune and I am in shock. "I can't climb this" Is all that was running in my mind. Shelley actually tried to pump me up by telling me a story of how she lost her shoe in the mud but it didn't really help.

So we started up in and five feet up I stood there and said, "Umm...Shelley I can't do this..."

She encouraged me and we took twenty....okay maybe fifteen steps up the hill at a time. While she was encouraging me, I was cussing under my breath.

Every time I got tired I actually sat down, which probably caused me more energy because every time I sat down I had to get up.

We ended up at the top of this massive dune and took a deep breath. The beauty was incredible and I was so glad that I did it, but then I had to figure out how I was going to get down. Normally one would just walk down the dune but the sand that day was hotter than hot tamales. You would take five or six steps and then your feet would start burning.

I actually started walking down the hill, but then the sand was to overbearing. I then put my towel down and stepped on it and was going to slide down the hill that way. Again it didn't really work out.

I finally decided to roll down the dune. That's right. I started rolling down the hill and sad got everywhere. I finally just stood up and rand the rest of the way and into the lake.

All I know is that if I am ever sent to Hell, my punishment will be to climb dunes for eternity bare foot and wearing winter clothes.

I started following Jesus.

I started following Jesus last week.

I would call my life a constant conversion. The reality is that I have never been saved. I can not pin point a moment in my life where I can look back and say,

"This is it, this is the day I have turned my life around."

However, God has given me opportunities to follow him. There have been four or five opportunities where God has brought my life to it's knees.

"It's either me or it's not"

This constant conversion has marked everything in my life and has created a sense of an unknowing reality.

I was sitting in a night service at the Christ in Youth conference that I was helping with last week and the speaker communicated this idea very clearly. He had a clear box with the name Jesus written boldly in black. He was holding a small green ball and had started his message with where he found his identity when he was younger. At first it was his older brother, then it was sports, then it was his girlfriend, then it was being a pastor's kid. His identity was masked in something other than Christ. He came to find his identity in Christ and when he came to that he threw his little green ball in the big bin that had Jesus' name on it.

He paralleled this idea with Simon from the New Testament. The idea that Simon had been following Jesus around for two years. He had been following his principles, his advice, his conversation. Simon had listened to the parables and had seen the miracles performed. He watched Jesus walk on water and sit with the prostitutes at dinner. He watched this man overcome all of humanities natural abilities.

But there was a moment where Simon stopped following Jesus around and started following Jesus, Himself. It was a moment when Jesus asked the disciples "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"

They answered, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets,"

Then Jesus asks the question that transforms Simon forever,

"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God."

After this answer Jesus gave Peter a new name and a new identity because he had stopped following Jesus around and became hidden in Jesus' identity.

Nothing revolutionary happens when you just follow Jesus' principles or when you just hang around with Christians.
Nothing revolutionary happens when you just hang out at church.
Nothing revolutionary happens when you are a 'good' and 'moral' person.

Something happens when your identity is hidden in Christ. A new identity, a new fresh start, a new name, and a new community are the reality of your new life.

Don't be obsessed with Christ.

Don't replace your flesh addiction with a Christ addiction.

Hide your life in Christ.

If you play hide and seek with the world and you hide in Christ the world will lose the game.

CIY was AWesome....


stories to follow soon.