Hold Me While it Hurts

If there's one thing that's happened this summer (besides a beautiful trip to Hawaii, Italy, loosing my job, and backpacking the Finger Lakes Trail, ha! Did all that really happen?!) ...it's a deep revelation of God the Father. I have realized my most powerful weapon is intimacy, vulnerability, and a raw nature with God.
This, however, is one of the scariest things we can do. Opening up the most ugly parts of yourself to a God who is not only unimaginably holy and good but who is also the victim of some of your own misunderstandings of His character....is a bit unnerving. But He was patient and relentless....and is beginning to show me where His power is made perfect.

And since I don't have a super great understanding of fathers, this one was tough for me. Are dads a distant and firm presence in your life? Are they monitors of moral behavior? Are they angry at you? Are they uninterested? Do you have to be strong to win their love? Do you have to win their love? Do you have to do things to fight for their attention? Of course the answer to all of these is no.

But the one question I found myself asking Him is,

"Is it possible for me to trust You completely and still cry?"

And the one thing He keeps saying is,

"Let Me hold you while it hurts".

Because, see, trusting God in a transition or tough time doesn't mean you are super strong, without emotions, and totally fine. You can still be sad, still be emotional, still need to be held...while you are still trusting in a God who's perspective is so much bigger and who knows so much more.

The lie is that we have to be strong, brave, courageous, and emotionless if we are really trusting God.

It says that if you were really trusting, you wouldn't need to be held, or hugged, or ball your eyes out on 490E on the way home like some climatic rainstorm/car scene in an indie movie.

But here is what I know to be true:
1-I trust God in this transition but what I have to let go of in order to move to the 'new thing' is painful.
2-I trust God with some desires I have placed before Him, but while I am waiting for those things to come into my life...it can be hard.

And He is saying, for both those things,

"Let me hold you while it's hurting"

So, if you're trying to be strong...just let Him hold you. Just because it hurts doesn't mean you don't trust Him.

xoxo

mp


But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not YET have, we wait for it patiently... (Romans 8:24-25)

Illusions of Control

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"Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered-how fleeting my life is" Psalm 39:4 NLT

As of late, there has been this desire growing in me for a secret get-away. I want to find a mountain top, a place with an entirely different perspective of the everyday; both literally and metaphorically. A place to pray-to really get a perspective shift. Maybe a once a month sort of thing. Jesus had them. I think it's a good idea.

Prayer helps correct myopia, calling to mind a perspective I daily forget. I keep reversing roles, thinking of ways in which God should serve me, rather than vice versa. It's a way to realize my tininess and God's vastness. (Yancey)

I think without this sort of intentional shifting of our everyday, our illusions become more of what we perceive as reality. I begin to forget I don't know best, I start to think I am not so small, I want God to be manipulated by me, and truth becomes harder to identify in the midst of everything else.

More importantly (and more terrifying than anything else), is my illusions of control. Without a perspective shift, a mountain top prayer place, I begin to think I really am in control. I forget God made the moon and the heavens and that if the Milky Way galaxy were the size of the entire continent of North America, our solar system would fit in a coffee cup. (wow!) I start to crown myself queen... God even. And I'm not a good God. I don't really know much past my immediate desires and limited scope of vision. And I certainly have nothing in control. 

Phillip Yancey said it best, "I live in the daily hope of getting my life under control. At home I left a desk covered with to-do lists" study the manual for my balky printer unclog pine needles in the gutter, unstick the toilet, change snow tires, check on my sick neighbor. Maybe if I take a day off, I'll have time... On the mountain one bolt of lightning, splitting a rock on a nearby peak and exploding against my eardrums, exposes any illusion that I am ever in control. I can count on the moment before me, nothing more".

So, as I let go of my illusions I find in place of a false sense of security...a Father.
Who is good and for me.
Who has got it all under control.
Who I can blindly follow and know it will work out.
And who just wants me to be honest and raw about the me that keeps wanting to get in the way.
Because humility, the step down, makes possible God's lifting us up. By trying to be strong, I'm blocking God's power.
So cheers to stepping down (every month).
And here's to hoping I can find that perfect place!

xoxo,
mp

Manipulating God

(Picture by Mary Kate, "Tantrum")
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death" 

Proverbs 14:12

News just in; God is not provoked to change through my apoplectic attacks.  He is not a man who is easily coerced. It doesn't matter how much I don't understand, how many fits I throw, what it is that I think I know better, He will not move. He is unchanging. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And you know what? I'm glad.

Because what I'm learning is just like the verse above says, sometimes there are things I think are right, they feel right, they seem right, I want them to be right, they should be right...but in the end they will lead to heartbreak, pain, running off course, distraction, and a hot mess.

It's not that God wants to hold out on us, either. In fact, He is the giver of every good and perfect gift. He even provides us with a promise that anything we ask for in His name, we will get. But it has to be in His name. It has to be under His will, in alignment with His plan. If we ask for anything that will be good for us and for His ultimate plan to bring Himself the glory He deserves...it's ours. But how many times do we ask for things outside of this course we're on for our life? How many times have we asked for the very thing that is poison for our souls?

I am so relieved that my schemes and manipulation techniques won't work on God.

 

Imagine the disaster that would ensue if that weren't true. Picture the consequences a parent and child face when the stubborn toddler is able to frequently manipulate their parents. How much different, really, are we? God is the best Father, the most wise parent, the most patient caretaker. And He will not be manipulated. No amount of kicking and screaming, yelling and throwing tantrums, will move Him off the course He knows best.

Lately, I am so thankful for this fact.

The picture above is from the bedroom of my friend, Mary Kate. (Who, by the way, inspires me, spurs me on, sharpens me, and who Jesus lives in!) With it, the scripture Psalm 73:21-23. I like it best in the Amplified Version,

"For my heart was grieved, embittered, and in a state of ferment, and I was pricked in my heart. So foolish, stupid, and brutish was I, and ignorant; I was like a beast before You. Nevertheless I am continually with You; You do hold my right hand."

He will wait out our tantrums, He will not give in to our manipulation and fits, He will patiently discipline us and guide us, and even better, when it's all said and done...He will still be there holding our right hand.

I get this great picture in my head when I see the last part of that verse. I invision the moment after the big crying fit, you know, when it's super hard to breathe and you're taking in air at short intervalls. You're just starting to calm down...and you look down at you're right hand to see His still there. It's normally at these moments in life when you give out a sigh of relief and chuckle. You're foolish, He's patient, and you're still together.

Because, really, there is a way that seems right to us in that moment but it leads to death.
Nevertheless.

xoxo,
mp

More Like The Giving Tree

 

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Philippians 2: 3-4 "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others"

I have a lot of friends who love the book The Giving Tree. In fact, one of my girlfriends Jess even has a beautiful tattoo of it on her arm. But I need to confess something; although I realized the book stood for deep, profound, beautiful things...reading it has always infuriated me.

How terrible is that? A book about giving of yourself to the happiness of others made me angry. And you know why? I think it's because I felt sad for the tree. To me, it was weakness. Why didn't the tree stick up for itself? Tell the boy he was being selfish. Explain to the boy what was right to ask for and what was not OK. Tell him that it was one-sided and that he was cut off. And why couldn't the boy have been a better friend?  But I'm wrong.

I was reading in Philippians today and it's clear-to give all of you is right, to hold back is wrong. Self-preservation is wrong. Being closed off is wrong. The whole Bible makes that clear. For goodness sake, Jesus should NOT have given Himself like He did, right?! Imagine if He didn't do for us what we very well deserved to have not done...

It's because I have been in self-preservation mode, because I needed to take care of myself and survive, because I was looking out for me and felt like if I gave too much, everyone would take all of me, leave, and there would be nothing left. But what that's created is selfishness. Holding back from others what God has put in me to give. To hold on to your life, you lose it. To die is to gain. How could I have missed this? It's not that I didn't read it, it's that I didn't believe it. It's that I thought my way was right and that God was confused on this one. But it's the inside, outside, upside Kingdom. He will not let me give more than I am able to give, and He will sustain me.

Now, this isn't to say that you are extreme about this concept. You don't let yourself get walked all over and beaten up. You don't do it to people please or to gain affection. You do it to glorify your Father. You do it because you are to consider others above you. You do it because at the end of your life, if you self-preserved perfectly and always didn't give if someone didn't deserve it or was asking what you thought was too much...it wouldn't mean a thing.

So, God is calling me to be like this giving tree. Even if it's scary.
And to let go of this idea of survival and self-preservation, because it's not Biblical.
God will provided for all of my needs, I don't need to play that role anymore.
And maybe no one noticed, maybe it never seemed like it was like that-but God knows my inner world and heart...
So I wanted to say I'm sorry, to Him and to anyone I have held back from.
I'm sorry if I didn't compliment when I should have, or encouraged you when I should have.
I'm sorry if I didn't let you into my world when you deserved to be in there.
I'm sorry if I only got out of it what I needed and left you without what you needed.
I'm sorry if I didn't extend my forgiveness when you hurt me.
I'm sorry I didn't give.
Because I want to be about the interests of others and not just my own.

Proverbs 17:11, "He who builds a high gate invites destruction".

High gates are there for protection. Sometimes we build up our own city gates around our worlds for the same reason. Although wisdom is important, the battle is for the Lord. More destruction comes from gating everyone else out.

xoxo,
mp