Pansy Watching

At times I can have the weakest composure ever emotionally.  I don’t mean that I breakdown in the middle of Lowe’s Foods when they’ve run out of the lettuce I want, (although I actually had a mini one in Barnes and Noble when I went there specifically to journal, sat down, and realized I didn’t have my journal.  I think I even said, “Seriously?!” aloud.  The people beside me turned to look at me at one point.  Shame– an adult tantrum!) but the slightest perceived obstacle can rip up my confidence and send me into insecurity-induced paralysis.  I’m better now at calling it for what it is, seeing it as something silly that I need to get over– a matter of perception rather than reality.

I always end up crying out to God kind of panic-stricken, saying “AHhhh!  Oh my goodness, what am I doing, what am I supposed to do?”  But I usually can chill out pretty quickly now.  I don’t just wallow in that feeling of helplessness for too long.

It comes and goes, though.  And I realized recently that these freak outs result from my measuring the purposefulness of my life based on whether circumstances in my life are working according to my best calculations.  Further, when events fit into an understandable scheme, I believe God loves me and is working for my good.  When events are not optimally favorable, I feel like He’s fallen asleep temporarily, left His post temporarily.

Think about the craziness of this!  We so have this idea of karma nailed into our brains that when stuff seems crappy, we start to look for a culprit.  If you are uber fundamentalist, you might blame Satan for everything.  Or you might say it’s our bad deeds catching up with us.  I have finally reached the conclusion, via just meditating on it and talking to God and looking at past experience and what scripture says, that life must be lived momentarily based on the assumption that A) God is perfectly loving at all times, and B) God is perfectly wise at all times, if we are to avoid these life freak outs.  Trying to look at the grand scheme in light of our own notions of good and perfect and right can’t help but result in falling into thinking God is out to get us or nonexistent or in some other way of no positive consequence.

That was a mouthful, but basically I am trying to look at every occurrence as having redeeming qualities in and of themselves, as determined by God (who, if perfectly, loving and wise is most qualified to create and orchestrate).  I have whined for so long about how this or that should have gone a different way.  I am trying to take each moment in instead of assuming to know so much about so much.

I was in the car, on my way to Austin, TX to sow my vagabond oats, when my car stopped accelerating outside of Asheville.  Even before that time, I’d felt that God was leading me to stay in Wilmington, and rarely do I think God definitively leads me to anything, but he had made this one pretty clear.  As I drove I prayed for confirmation, so as I pulled to the side of the road and eventually waited for Triple A, looking at the leaves and the drizzle washing the whole scene out, I had a freakish peace.  Almost relief. And mind you, this isn’t a peace that simply resulted from the beautiful fall colors.  A change occurred inside of me.  I don’t even feel the need to explain or justify because it’s a spiritual thing that can only be spiritually discerned.  But basically, it felt like my car breaking down was the best thing in the world that could have happened at that moment because I knew that God was using this sucky outward circumstance to lead me into what He actually wanted me to do, which carries eternal significance.  So, for the first time, back in Wilmington, still without car (or abode for that matter!) I am confident that a purpose compels me forward.  It makes me think of Jonah, when he got on a boat that he KNEW would take him away from Nineveh which is where God WANTED him to go.  The whole whale bit was one of the best things that could have happened to Jonah, to get his attention, get him turned around.  That’s how I felt about my car going kaput.

A friend told me recently that “God speaks to us not from our past, but out of our destiny.”  That hit me like a really strong wind.  The life of a Christ follower makes way more sense backwards than forward, when insignificant or even loathsome circumstances are revealed as building up to some other thing that God was meaning to accomplish or some trait He was trying to nurture in us.  We don’t have to grip the past because our trajectory is always forward.  Fully present in the moment, we can be fully present in the future’s illumination.  That’s so crazy to think about, that the purpose is already there, we are simply living it out, closer and closer to its realization with every moment.

I don’t even remember what this blog was about initially.  Emotional breakdowns?  Books?  Dr. Phil?  Ah well, doesn’t matter.  The point is, however trite ( or sometimes too verbosely) I might express it, I’m lately finding that when my composure is crumbling, rather than continuing to dwell on what’s already said and done and can now make no difference, I am compelled forward simply by engaging in the present, by regarding each moment as for my good, somehow.  And all as part of something I am being called to, rather than something I simply happen upon.

In what feels like a piece of provision, proverbial manna, straight from God’s hand, I may be moving halfway across the country.  Austin, TX to be exact if all pans out.   This isn’t a big deal inherently I suppose, but the kicker is, I was offered a job in this city, a job that was not at all sought after, and the city just so happens to be a fantastic location for my interests.  It feels like a shove out the door, to keep me from waiting around here indefinitely.

So I decided to google churches in the Austin, TX area in order to have an idea of what I’m getting myself in to.  And I was surprised at how little I found that interested me.  It seems that almost all the churches I found fell into one of two categories– ultra conservative ones that obviously plan on doing things in a denominationally faithful fashion no matter how irrelevant they appear to non-indoctrinated passersby, and the second category consists of churches that are so bent on being relevant that their rad websites and mission statements seem like a cry for acceptance, an attempt to get a “cool” stamp of approval from the surrounding culture.  Both had the common problem of seeming to place emphasis on “rules taught by man,” either the rules of the church tradition or the rules of popular culture.

I’ve never really searched for churches cold turkey before, this is the first time, and it is a daunting process.  It made me wonder how the church is supposed to function in truth but also be relevant to people, become all things to all people.  Churches today aren’t simply a matter of fellowshipping with the Christians in your community.  Choice is a factor, distance isn’t a factor, so that is where the feat of attracting people to your church door comes in.

I decided to google my church in Wilmington to see if it gives off that same impression, a feeling that a team of recruiters designed the website.  I tried to let preconceived notions go and my obvious bias.  And honestly, I didn’t get the same slimy feeling exploring the church website that I had when I looked at the other churches in Austin.  There was no cleverly crafted language, no disguising biblical truths in gushy, almost apologetic terminology.

So now I’m blogging about my church search while having a miniature faith crisis.  I’m wondering if most of us are just getting it wrong as far as bringing folks to Christ goes.  What is the point of a church– to simply bring people in, or to be constantly fluxing outward?

Churches almost put a sour taste in my mouth, particularly church advertising (something else my church in Wilmington does not do).  Growing up a pastor’s kid, I’ve seen churches spend countless dollars on the wrong things, with the wrong goals, in an attempt to increase their numbers while having little to no idea of how to actually go about caring for the least of these and loving one’s neighbor as oneself.  Sometimes I wonder how I haven’t thrown in the towel, just giving up on Christ altogether, as often as I’ve seen his name corporately and expensively exploited.  I think it’s because He has enabled me to see and experience Him in a raw fashion, without all the church make up, and also to see people how they are– imperfect, screwing things up since day 1.

I’m excited about moving and I’m praying NOW for a community of believers.  After my church search, I’m a little leery.  And I’m having to ask myself as well, God, what am I supposed to be about?  What are Your people supposed to be about?  How are we supposed to use our time and money and webspace to love our neighbors as ourselves?  Why are so many churches failing so miserably?  And it doesn’t matter how modern a church’s methods and beliefs are, how well they’ve acclimated their ideals to the surrounding thoughts and culture– that too is an unwillingness to let go of simply doing things man’s way.

This thing was scattered, but I hope it made some sense and wasn’t over-confident.

“Then the Lord said, ‘Because this people draw near with their words And honor Me with their lip service, But they remove their hearts far from Me, And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote…’ “– Isaiah 29:13

(from a draft i didn’t publish.  it was amusing so i thought i’d put it up.)

It feels like some collective world honeymoon has ended.

I had this wave of contentment last week right before I wrecked my car, freakish contentment.  I wrote this super-thankful journal entry thanking God for every ion in the universe, it was like floral wall paper in journal form.  Fast forward two days.  I wrote in my journal “My honeymoon phase with the Lord is over.”  I have a breakdown of sincere praise, heck, I’m even inspired to write a song, and then I find myself post-car flipping in a McDonald’s drinking a coffee, my nifty Austronaut pen that my friend Kara gave me (it writes in zero gravity) floating above my Mead composition book, and I have a slight feeling of “What the?!” chewing on my brain and threatening my contentment.  It was the weirdest thing in the world.

Additionally, my small world has been FILLED with a swarm of relationship goings on– people breaking up, people infatuated, people confused, people crushing.  And I have found myself interacting with all of it.  Yesterday I felt filmy, an icky feeling, almost as if I had just broken up with someone myself.  I ran a bathtub of water and just sleep-prayed in it for about 45 minutes, something I haven’t done in a long time (and don’t recommend because you could drown that way)!  Even after I got out, I still felt like something was clinging to my skin, just a weight and exasperation.  But somehow still I have peace.  It’s so weird, I have never been this way before, where I am filled with utter trust even though I have no idea what I am going to be doing a month or even a week from now and even though a lot of problems surround me.

Oddly enough, all of this recession nonsense really hasn’t phased me or my family too much, because we have never had much anyway, heh.  When I was growing up, we were relatively poor.  We only  ever shopped clearance racks.  There used to be a store called Jones in Shallotte that was like a Roses but even lower class.  The floor was straight-up cement– no tile or anything, just cement.  They had a huge wire bin of these $1 shoes with patterns on them, portraying funky eyeglasses or Americana images maybe– just random patterns.  Well I owned a pair of these shoes and I remember wearing them and hoping to God that nobody recognized them as Jones dollar bin shoes.  I remember on one of my first pubescent birthdays begging my mother for a name brand piece of clothing, and beaming with wide eyes when I opened a grey Nike t-shirt.  I think I was even embarrassed at my excitement.  I remember looking around before turning to browse in the clothing section at Wal-Mart, a paranoid habit that I have just recently gotten over.  You see, I have always known who I am but I have not always been comfortable showing it.  I didn’t NOT shop for clothes at Wal-Mart, but I tried to make doggone sure nobody knew it.

And I’m just getting to the point where I can’t care about any of that.

I was sick all day today, yawning and just wanting to sleep on a float in a big sea of chicken noodle soup under a down comforter. So it came time for me to go to sleep and I couldn’t do it. My mind started racing, ironically, about all sorts of things I can’t get to or do anything about at the moment. It wasn’t like, “oh, I need to switch the clothes to the dryer” or anything like that. It was stuff like, “I need to meet this person under these circumstances so we can do this.” Anyway, so I decided to write and kind of explain some things about my life at the moment.

First off, I’ve been praying for contentment for forever. And I think I have finally gotten it. I’m returning to my summer job, the loathing for which has consumed many previous blogs and journal entries. But for no good reason, I’m honestly fine with it. Not only am I fine with it, but I’m optimistic about doing it and confident that my life IS going somewhere and that I’m not running my life into a hole somehow and that God hasn’t fallen asleep until some time in the future when he’ll snap out of it and start doing something amazing in my life. NOW is the time for God’s favor, the Bible says. My mom had done some research on the word “favor” in scripture, and turns out that while it’s used a lot in the Old Testament, it isn’t so much in the New. Wonder what that means. I trust that God is doing stuff– it’s evident in my life, in the life of my friends and family, the way I see people growing and changing– but I’m at a point where I feel like God’s planted a dream in my heart, a desire that he is delaying the gifting of for some reason. And I’m learning to be okay with that, trying not to shake my fist at him or anybody else because that does absolutely no good. But I just wonder why he does what he does, why he heaps on some people the things they want right when they want them and why other ones have to

.

.

.

wait.

That said, I DO have peace and trust and contentment. It’s very selfish to think that God only cares about us when we are getting our way. I guess it’s like a kid who gets accusatory when their mom is giving them vegetables instead of candy at dinner time. The kid doesn’t understand that mom knows best, period. I’m like that little kid but I’m WANTING to trust, and wanting to learn to love veggies because I know that’s what I’m gonna get for awhile!

God really is good. I know a lot of people don’t think so and don’t believe in Him, and the older I get, the more I realize that there’s no hope in coming off as cool and loving God at the same time, because you always end up sounding like a Holy Fool, but it’s just true. This week when God started to give me the peace I’d been begging for, it just served as a reminder that He is real and He doesn’t work off of our way of thinking or system of values. He’s got His own, and it’s the biggest grandest most loving thing ever.
In times like this when the immediate horizon is lackluster, I really thrive off the littlest bit of encouragement. Tiny compliments build me up and the smallest well-intended criticisms nag away at me. It’s strange how that works out. Just Sunday, a friend told me “Glo, life is about to explode for you.” I’ve been clinging to that phrase ever since, EXPLODE. I really internalized that word from her, I took it as genuinely prophetic, that God is going to work in my life in ways I can’t see or imagine right now. Sometimes we really need to hear that from someone else in order to believe it for ourself.

I’m finally getting drowsy, so I guess I’ll wrap this up, but it’s nice to get peaceful. It’s nice to look at the same scene you’ve looked at over and over again to find that the light has changed, that while things are in the same order as always, your perspective is completely refreshed and you have hope where you didn’t before, even if it’s for no warranted reason.

I’d been stuck in a rut of bitterness and self-pity. Per someone’s advice, I prayed, “Search ME, oh God, show me what MY crap is,” rather than shaking my finger at someone else’s.  And oh man.  He did.

If you want to get humble fast, wake up and pray, “Search ME, oh God.”  By nightfall, you’ll most likely have a lot to be asking forgiveness for.

Well today I am wrestling with a huge potentiality: the fact that I am an idealist and idealism simply doesn’t last and isn’t practical.  It fizzles out everytime.  Deflates like an animal balloon at a small child’s birthday.  And see, I have justified my idealism because I’m an “artist.”  I promote art and principle over rote expectation.

And somehow I am broke.

I don’t want to simply think that idealism is stupid and that’s all there is to it.  But I just wonder how to balance idealism and reality, my dreams and practicality.

Today has been crazy, I’ve just been turning the questions over and over of “What do you want, Gloria?  What do you really want?  What do you want to work towards?”  And the problem isn’t that I don’t have any answers– I have a million of them!  I want to see the world, I want to be a missionary, I want to be a song writer, I want to lead worship here, I want to lead worship somewhere else, and on and on and on and on until I was so exasperated it was rediculous.  And I don’t believe that God intends for it to be that way.

Sometimes I’ll beg God for his will for months on something and I still end up unsure of what it is.

So then the rivalries arise between dreams and practicality.  Even now, I am torn between really just diving into the unknown- pursuing opportunities to move- or just buckling down and staying in good ol’ Brunswick County for awhile.

And I know I will be fine either way, ultimately, but I start to freak out– I have always done this– where I invent a time table that doesn’t exist and then consider all the things that I might miss out on if I make decisions out of sync with that timeline.  Rediculous!

I was telling a friend today that I have figured out something: I do not doubt God’s goodness, but I doubt it for ME.  I don’t doubt it for other people but somehow sometimes I live like God is a crotchedy school marm watching me solve a problem on the blackboard and waiting say “I told you so” when the solution is wrong.  My friend said, “Gloria, don’t you see you are giving yourself way too much credit?”  And she was totally right; I am so bent on my own ability to so the right thing that I forget God’s faithfulness and relentless concern for me, God as the loving father versus God as the crotchedy school marm.

So after a day of asking God to show me what I need to do, I thought about what I’d read in Ruth last night, where she followed the grain harvesters getting what they left behind.  Boaz, the owner of the field, noticed her and told the other workers not to bother her and not to make fun of her if she does something incorrectly.  And it just hit me, her willingness to do the task, even though not perfect and even though menial, was what won her favor in the eyes of Boaz.  And I want that from God too.  So if that means me picking up the leftover grain in Brunswick County or anywhere else, waiting for him to move me on to something else, that is fine I suppose.  I want his favor above all else, though.

And as far as worrying about my dreams goes, I believe that he gave them to me and it is He that will bring them to fruition.  There are people in my life who are incredibly gifted who don’t even acknowledge God, and yet I still believe that HE is the one who has given them those capabilities, those passions, and is even showing favor on them.  All around me I see His promise in people and I am just trying to trust that my dreams are likewise not silly or stupid, but a gift FROM Him.  But I know that I have to be willing to be satisfied with the here and now or else I’ll be miserable.  I am just praying to be grounded in a belief that He will grant me favor if I am obedient with little or lots and even give me the desires of my heart.  There are so many parables about this very thing in scripture.

Because I know that we can’t imagine the depth of his love for us or the greatness of his plans.

Selah!

So the last couple weeks have been the sort during which a lot of wee and not so wee things mess up.  My guitar amp, my laptop, and my car all stopped working.  Incidentally, they are three of the most important things I use in a day and they are all out of comission at this very moment.  I must say, though, that I am handling it pretty well.  Particularly given the fact that I am unemployed and not sitting on a lot in savings.  I am broke and so are many of the things that I need.  Hah!  Oh life.  What are the odds that calamity could hit in such a marvelously synchronized fashion?

Today I felt oddly appreciative that I am going through a poor spell, and once I discovered the reason why, it was telling about human nature in general.  Being poor, I don’t have resources or tools to be responsible for.  That weight of freedom and choice is gone.  Once again, my main man Kierkegaard gets a checkmark for saying that freedom produces anguish.  To be sure, figuring out how I will deal with three repairs and secure a job is challenging, but this burden is different than the burden of freedom.  One can somehow sometimes breathe easier dragging this weight from point A to point B instead of being given an endless plane of possibilities to whittle down.

Isn’t that why some people notoriously victimize themselves?  Not only to escape duty, but to escape freedom, the chance to choose wrongly or some other possible gaff?

God help me with the conscript service of freedom.  Assuming freedom even really exists.

But that belongs in a whole other entry.