On Church

I am one of those people who basically spends the equivalent of a part time job doing church stuff – either attending, getting ready for things, doing admin work, meetings, other events, or whatever else that week has. I’m also one of those people who grew up seeing their parents do the same thing – which means I’m one of those annoying people who just don’t understand why you wouldn’t do that and did not realize that it was an abnormal thing until a few years ago…

Conversely, I am also one of those many people who has been hurt very deeply by the church. I have felt betrayed, hurt, ignored, and insignificant within her walls – which is ironic because I have also felt loved, healed, seen, and important within those same walls. I’ve spent all of my 25 years attending various churches and seeing joy and pain in so many ways – seeing the good, the bad, and (sadly) the ugly of what can go on when you throw a whole bunch of messy people together.

So why, if I have been hurt and continue to be hurt by the people of the church, do I keep going and giving of my many resources to see her continue to thrive? Because I love her – and because I have hope for her – hope that as we continue on and persevere, she will achieve her potential and that she will become all that I know she can be.

As Christians, when we talk about marriage we talk about commitment forever, divorce is not really something we go into a marriage considering, and when we talk about conflicts or issues, we emphasize working things out. In fact, we highly recommend marriage counselling BEFORE you get married and we are some of the only people I know of who regularly talk about things like love and sacrificially loving without even breaching the context of a romantic relationship – we are the people who look at the story of David and Jonathan and say wow that was a great friendship where their souls were knitted together. We emphasize vulnerability, sharing your burdens with other people,

Interestingly, in the same passages about marriage and husbands & wives, we get little glimpses of how God views the church — as the bride of Christ. Additionally, the Bible uses similar language when talking about husband-to-wife relations as they when talking about all believers when we are supposed to “submit” to each other. Elsewhere we are told to love our neighbours as ourselves( Mark 12:31), to pray for each other (James 5:16/1 Timothy 2:1), to seek to solve conflicts & correct each other (Matthew 18:15-17/Galatians 6:1), to give what we have so that no one is in need (Acts 2:42-47, ), to encourage/build each other up (1 Thessalonians 5:11/Hebrews 3:13), do all things in love (1 Corinthians 16:14), and, clearly, I could go on.

So if the church is a super important body, and we are supposed to honour and care a lot about the people inside of her, why, when we talk about church today, do we suddenly decide that this relationship is all about me and what I can get, it is one where I should come in with barriers and walls, that there are very small boxes you must fit into to attend and serve in the church, and that only certain people are fit to attend?

One of the most positive experiences I’ve had is starting to go to the gym – and I don’t mean positive in the now I’m more fit than I used to be way or the now endorphins got me high way, I mean in the way that the environment I started putting myself into was open, accepting, and positive towards where I was and where I was going. never once was I made to feel un-fit, un-beautiful, or un-worthy to be there. I was just another person on a journey of fitness and I would get told as such every time I would mention small feelings of doubt. It’s not that no one recognizes the need to lose weight, eat healthy, and drink water – it’s more that the journey we are on involves one thing at a time and we all have “been there” so we support others in their journey, wherever either of us may be.

It’s almost like at church, we become so caught up in what we think we need to be and ought to be and what we “need to do” to reach people with programming that we’ve forgotten the important parts. Crossfit gyms are unique because they’re literally warehouses with barbells. and like a rower. and a bike. but that’s about it. (ok also ropes and a few other weight things but you catch my drift). You go into a Crossfit gym to do a workout, sweat a lot, lift heavy stuff and move fast. Not many people do individual workouts, and there are 0 mirrors in the gym (except for like, the bathroom). So, when did churches become defined by their additional “services” to the public (do you have women, men, children, families, young adult, single older adult, babies, youth, tweens, older women, older men, married couples, newly married, single women, single men, ministries? and a Christmas and Easter kids pageant. And also a kid’s choir. And a hymn service, a modern service, a Gregorian chant service, a fire-and-brimstone message and a contemporary message?) No. No you don’t. Not to say that some of those ministries aren’t important and don’t have their place, but the point of the church was never to actively only serve those inside of it – it was to serve those outside of it. Jesus came to heal the sick not to tend to the already-taking-the-meds-and-on-the-mend ones.

People call it a family. The Crossfit box, I mean. Multi-generational people, you miss your friends when you don’t go for a while, they see you go through life ups and downs. They hold you when you cry after an emotional release after a hard workout. We sometimes call church our family – but usually in a cliché-from-the-front-stage kind of way. We keep lots of people at an arms distance, and we often leave when something doesn’t go the way we think it should or if another place down the street has a sparklier better-spoken pastor/worship leader/building, or when we have a conflict. Not that the auxiliary things aren’t factors, but perhaps they should not be our driving factors. When in doubt, I refer to this article. (I agree there are reasons to leave a church, I just find we often use bad ones)

When I went to Europe last year, one of my favourite things was visiting other churches while I was there. I don’t even know how to explain to you the warmth and joy I had at seeing people on the other side of the world (ok not quite the other side but close enough) worshiping the same God in similar and different ways, and seeing people I don’t even know get baptized into the larger church body. She is beautiful – the global church – and our local expressions get to be a part of that wonderful overarching story that we may never know all the parts of.

As beautiful as the church is, she is not perfect. I think she still needs a lot of work – globally and locally. She is a beautiful piece of art, but she is also a messy glob of wet paint on a canvas that you were trying to paint a landscape on that somehow now has dirt and grass stuck to it even though you did not set out intending for a mixed media piece. Also you did not mean to put that glob on either…

But the only way she gets better and thrives is when all the people within her try. Trying to be open and working towards things when other people aren’t. Being vulnerable knowing that those around you may not receive it well. Working towards what we know God has commanded we do as a group of believers even if other people don’t agree and get hung up on things. Caring for the people we may not really like a ton but we love unconditionally. Choosing to see past our theological differences. Forgiving. Seeking reconciliation. It’s not easy – it takes work just like everything else and every other friendship and every other community we engage in in our lives.

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The Unravelling

The other day, while catching up, my friend asked me what my highlights were over the last 3 months. I had to clarify if he meant good things or just what stuck out because honestly looking back the first thing that comes to my mind is the large number of times I cried/sobbed in my car over the last three months (also, coincidentally, the number of times I thanked the Lord for waterproof makeup & a decent complexion so I don’t have to worry about the real struggle of tear tracks). The reason for all the tears? Well I mean you can read my last post too, but in reflecting it was quite honestly because there was so much change that happened in my personal life, inter personal relationships, and external circumstances that I either had 1. no control over, 2. had no say in, or 3. had turned out not the way I intended, resulting in me being completely overwhelmed and exhausted.

Beyond that, the degree of change in which I have experienced in myself over the last year is huge. The only work I can use to describe myself at this time last year is restless. I as coming out of one of the higher moments of my spiritual walk, I thought I had a lot of shit figured out (and PS why couldn’t everyone else figure theirs out???), I was having very fruitful quiet times, I had a great lent/Easter season, etc. etc. etc. And yet I was restless. I was desperate for change – in fact I wrote blog post after blog post and journal entry after journal entry  about waiting, hoping, expecting, and trying to learn how to rest. I felt like I was sitting in this weird limbo place and just waiting for my life to get started already. It was frustrating – like I was almost trapped in my own life. And then…..it all, very slowly, step by step, began to unravel.

Depending on how often you see me, you may not have noticed. I kept it under wraps for quite a while. If I did happen to share a glimpse into how I was doing under the surface, it was only that – a snapshot in time. I thought I was handling it fine, but the longer time went on the more I realized I didn’t.

Have you ever unraveled a knit piece? There’s almost a satisfying pop with every stitch you pull out, and as you keep pulling, it starts to unravel faster and faster …. just one string will do it, each stitch is connected. Ask anyone who knits and they’ll tell you how one good yank can reverse rows of work – great if you messed up and want to start over, not great if you liked it and a snag ruined hours of good, solid work.

The string that started the unravelling for me was an unobtrusive, small choice to decide to read Genesis after finishing up Hebrews in my quiet times. But something happened when I went back to the beginning — instead of getting a refreshing walk through old stories and God’s faithfulness, I instead found myself filling my journal with questions. I particularly struggled with the character of Abram and the seemingly nonsensical way God kept blessing this terrible (as I read him to be) man.  At the time I jokingly said that existential Christy came to play, but really – she didn’t leave. Questions in my readings bled into questions at other church events which bled into questions about my more fundamental beliefs and values and eventually bled into all areas of my life causing me to question my view points on almost everything, little by little, and then a lot by a lot.

Small things felt like big things, big things felt like bigger things. And they all just kept happening one after another. A week or two might go by and then a new slew of things would pour out and suddenly not knowing how to open the gas tank on a rental car or getting a tiny splash of oil on a shirt would cause uncontrollable tears.

The questioning, as painful as it was, was a key part of my unravelling. I scared myself with some of the things I was asking myself, and I felt adrift. But like a knitter pulls out their stitches to get back to where that missed stitch/count was, God needed to unravel me slowly as I begin to unlearn and let go of the things I held so dear. My questions about EVERYTHING were important because they began to strip away the person I had constructed myself to be. The Christy I thought I needed to be – the right Christy who did everything she thought she was supposed to do/told to do because only silly, irresponsible people make mistakes or do things that way because this way, obviously, is the only right way.

But I am not that Christy that I thought everyone wanted me to be. I am this Christy. I am this crossfit doing, bit of a mess, has a tattoo, really likes tofu and vegetables, has a thing with lipstick and heels, still doesn’t know what she wants to be doing in 5 years, Enneagram 6, binge eats ice cream when stressed, still don’t know everything about myself and what I like or want Christy.

I am in many many ways still a pile of unravelled yarn in a pile on the floor, but as I look at the mess and knots I’m working through, I am constantly reminded of Abram – this dude a year ago who rocked my world – and how I am Abram. I am the same mess of a person who, for no reason I can possibly justify myself with, I still blessed by a God who loves, pursues, and chases her into the dark corners.

With every “thing” that is piled upon me and every stitch that is unravelled, I am more and more convinced that this will work out for good. That the changed person I will finally end up becoming as I am re-knit together will be more the woman God wanted me to be than the girl I was a year ago. Diamonds and other precious gems stones are forged under intense heat and pressure (and very particular circumstances), gold and precious metals are useless without refining in extreme heat and purifying processes. As I tell my piano students — relearning a song after learning it the wrong way is painful, but worth it at the end. How much more worth will this unravelling be once I can turn around and see the knit-together piece at the end?

Strength

I messed up in my last post, or, as a friend in university would have said, I done goofed. The post itself is just fine – I’m not editing it or removing it, but I am reflecting on where I was when I wrote it and how I feel now – 5 months later.

Since then I’ve tried to write a number of posts. I wanted to post once a month this year (clearly I’m not fulfilling that resolution!) among many other goals, but despite the significant upturn I felt like I was taking in January, it didn’t last. I constantly felt like I was sliding backwards. I would fight to inch forward a little bit and then slide back again. It was like one step forward two steps back — I just could not get out of this hole I was in. I can’t even begin to describe the way life has seemingly just beat me down in the last few weeks alone.

Since November I’ve been dealing with a shoulder injury. Through meeting with my athletic therapist we determined I likely had a shoulder impingement and began rehab on it in January. It took about 2 months for me to stop feeling pain when I did a lot of movements, 3 to lift anything over my head, and over 4 months to be able to support my weight hanging on something.

Part of my rehab was seeing my AT on a weekly basis – we would chat about how I was doing, when and where I was feeling pain, and she would massage out the muscles around the injured area to work on keeping them loose and flexible and healing. The other part of my rehab was to do a home exercise routine that was updated over time to use weights and then heavier weights. I have never had upper arm strength. I know everyone says their arms are weak but this is like, a family thing. NONE of us have arm strength – compounded with a car accident that I had and never fully recovered from and you had a very very weak-armed Christy. I couldn’t lift anything and by anything I mean I couldn’t carry a 10kg bag of flour, I couldn’t lift the rolls of paper everyone else at work could lift to refill our proofing printers…carrying milk bags from the car to the house was heavy! I had gotten stronger but no one has ever looked at me and said “hey nice shoulders!”

Enter daily shoulder exercises. It took 4 months, but when I returned to my regular activities, I was better. I don’t mean better as in it didn’t hurt, I mean better as in I could do more. I could hold more. I could carry more. I could lift more weight. Some people would say that I did this myself. And in a way they aren’t wrong. I did get stronger by doing my exercises every day and by putting in the effort and work myself. But I did not do it all on my own by any means! I had someone checking on me weekly, giving me things to do, prescribing weights, massaging out the knots, plus I had a number of coaches helping me sub out movements while working out and making sure I didn’t further injure myself. My arms are still weak noodles but they’re stronger than they used to be!

So when I say I done goofed in my last post …. I say that because when I wrote it, I was reflecting on everything I had done and where I had come to, and I looked ahead relying on my own strength to get me further. Yes, I still stand by what I said that perhaps I needed to go through the heartbreak and falling down that I did – and I think I needed to continue to stumble through that after I wrote the post because I still didn’t learn my lesson. I thought I had! And I did learn part of it – but I hadn’t yet learned just how far the love of God would reach, and just how deeply he needed me to sink so that I would have to realize that I can’t bail myself out on my own strength. I may be stronger than I was before, but I am not and never will be strong enough to do this whole life on my own.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
    and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
    and he will make straight your paths.
Be not wise in your own eyes;
    fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.
It will be healing to your flesh
    and refreshment to your bones.
– Proverbs 3:5-8 (ESV)

***I started writing this a month ago – and since then I still haven’t learned my lesson…but I think I’m starting to. It is truly only in my most broken and needy that I will turn to help in my friends, family, and God. And strangely, being at the bottom is when I feel the most at peace in the middle of chaos and being incredibly busy. It is humbling to be in spaces where you cannot do it on your own, and I am so thankful for the opportunities to grow and learn, particularly after feeling so plateau-ed for so long. The one key difference in the last month is that I have chosen to let people in and to lean on them instead of just relying on myself. They point me forward, remind me of the past, and they point me up to the one who has never left. Who do you have that you can let in and help point you back up? We truly are stronger together.

In the Midst of it All

I so often find myself sinking into what I like to call the “now what” trap. I sit down and think about my life (what’s happened, where I’m at now, etc.)  and then I turn around to God and say “ok buddy (we’re tight) – I see all this stuff we’ve done but….now what are we doing? Where are we going? I’ve done all these things and come this far – what do I do NOW?”

I keep expecting that because I follow God I will be led onto new things or have new opportunities on a regular basis or that my life in general will have this divine direction given to it (which, I know, sounds pretty silly as I type it). I find myself constantly shocked that I’m still in the exact same place as I was a few months ago (talk about a short time frame). I know that part of why I feel like this is because I am a goal oriented person – I really like to know where I’m going and why I’m doing what I’m doing. I can do pretty much any menial task over and over again as long as I can see where it’s getting me. (In fact, I LOVE “chipper” workouts – the obscenely long ones where you just “chip away” at it until you’re done).

However, I’ve come to realize that when I’m impatiently asking the “now what?” question, I’m really saying “Hey God, I don’t think you’re doing anything in my life and I’m kinda feeling like you forgot about me so….if you could like, do something cool that would be great. Even better, if you could do this thing that I think should be the next thing to work out in my life that would be super great.” I am constantly wanting another new thing, another sign, another step. I don’t believe that he could possibly want me to stay here longer – haven’t I done enough, yet? Haven’t I given enough yet? Don’t I deserve a new vision yet?

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
– Psalm 13:1-2a

Fortunately, God doesn’t get swayed by my (probably super annoying) questions because he doesn’t really work that way. In fact, he did a complete 180 last time I was asking these questions (more on that later). I think that instead of being focussed on what we think of as the “next steps” or what we think qualifies as the “next thing” we are supposed to be doing (i.e. all those big things we expect from people’s lives – getting engaged/married, buying a house, having a kid, getting your masters, buying another house, moving, having another kid, renovating, going on a big trip, retiring, etc.), God is focussed on the next piece of us that needs transforming. That could be through one of those things I mentioned, but that can also be through sleepless nights, a stressful job, living at home, staying single, not having a kid yet, etc. He waits for the perfect timing for these things because his end goal isn’t that we have huge things-oriented monumental lives – he wants us to be further shaped into Christ-likeness.

If we could only see what we’re becoming
– To the Dreamers, For King & Country

In the summer I consistently expressed to people (and I even wrote about it on my church’s blog) that I felt like I was just sitting around waiting – as if I was dangling on the precipice of my life’s next step but something was holding me back from moving on. It felt like there were loose ends in my life everywhere I looked, but none of them seemed to be being tied up or even wiggled around a bit. I was desperately asking God what was next – and could he just hurry up about it? I would have accepted pretty much ANYTHING other than “wait” (which was all I kept getting, ironically).

The tail end of 2017 was not the best time of my life. I ended up overcommitted, stressed out in my personal life, and overwhelmed on so many levels – I felt (and still do feel, in a way) broken and incomplete and confused and less than – and for so much of the time I felt like God had just abandoned me because I failed some sort of test. That my failure to do what he wanted/be who he wanted meant that I was suddenly unworthy of his presence and the fact that I was having difficulty understanding and grasping the Bible passages I was reading in my personal studying

I’m a huge journal-er, and one of the things I really like to do (when I’m not so overcommitted that I have time to actually do it properly) is bullet journal. For those of you unfamiliar with the process, it’s basically a journal/planner hybrid system. One of the key things you do, number all the pages to create an index – something I carried over into my actual journal. (Yes, I have multiple journals I carry around on a regular basis. I don’t I have a problem…) While I love the index system, sometimes I forgot to fill in the index after I write. And then I put off filling it in for 2 weeks (or um….3 months) and then I have to go back and fill in the index so my future self can find what I’m looking for later.

As I read back through the last four months (oops) of entries to fill in my index, do you know what I found? I found a woman who was falling apart in many ways. I found a skeptic. I found tears. I found confusion. I found frustration. I found some really hard questions. But through every entry and the Bible passages I was struggling through I started to see a story. My prayer for so long had been that as I wandered and drifted and tried to figure things out that God would never let me go – literally had written the words “hold on to me”.

And in the midst of turmoil and heartbreak and feelings of worthlessness and being overwhelmed and a lot more heartbreak…I saw in the pages of my journal the continual presence of God. In a song lyric I jotted down or a story I reflected on or in poetry as I processed my feelings, there were glimmers of a God guiding me and holding my hand, trying to show me something. And he did. Not only did he remind me that he has never once let me go, he reminded me of who I am.

Part of me wonders if all of this was for a reason – if I had to go through all of this to become the person he wanted me to be. I had been so focussed on the what and the why that I had forgotten the who. As in the “Who does God want me to be?” question – in fact I think I lost myself being so wrapped up in everything else!

I don’t know who I will end up being, but I do know that the person I am now is different than the person I was a year ago, or even 4 months ago. And I am filled with hope that even though the what and the why and the where aren’t being answered quite as timely as I would like, in the midst of it all God is still working and shaping me into who he wants me to be. Trusting that as I am formed he will put me where he wants me to be.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
– Ephesians 2:10

Where you stay I’ll stay

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not a mover and a shaker. I am definitely not the person in a group who gets everyone else jazzed about what we’re going to do, I’m not the person who has the great ideas, and I don’t always see where we want to go. I like repetition and comfort, and I am totally ok with a long haul of living in a space God has called me to.

I just didn’t think that place would be here.

I grew up hearing that joke on mission Sundays that “God would call me to where I least wanted to go.” (you know, if you’re terrified of snakes he calls you to the Amazon, etc). So, naturally, my young, overachiever self decided that the best way to ensure I would be ok wherever God called me was to say I would go anywhere. Even if it had snakes (maybe he would see my willingness and let me go somewhere without them…?). I wanted to be able to go wherever he wanted and move however he was moving. When he said “jump” I would say “how high?” – it was all planned out.

But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.
– Ruth 1:16-17

I read a lot as a kid, and we ran out of kids books in my house to read at one point so I read a lot of my parent’s Biblical fiction for a while … and I loved the tellings of Ruth. She was this amazing woman who just left everything she knew and loved to follow Naomi back to Israel (ok so the fictionalized versions might have made her a little cooler than the Biblical version says but I mean, the woman’s husband died and she followed her also widowed mother in law through the desert when she could have just gone home and remarried another nice guy in town so….). I thought following God would be like that – involving physically leaving a place to serve him elsewhere.

We used to sing this Chris Tomlin song pretty often at my old church that uses the words of what Ruth said for the chorus. I always sang the song thinking I would give up where I was. I never, ever thought he would say “stay”…until I sang it yesterday and that line hit me like a brick wall. It’s like I was standing at the starting line for a marathon and my coach walked over and said “Yea, I know you thought we were training for this race but I don’t know, you must have missed my emails because this isn’t your race…or really even your event. You’re actually competing in standing long jump………” #awkward

I’m not even that even picky at this point. I don’t need to hear Sao Paulo, Cape Town, or Dublin. I don’t need to hear Miami or even Chicago (not that I would say no either….?). Pretty much anything – even just “Hamilton” would be enough for me right now.

Where you go, I’ll go
Where you stay, I’ll stay
When you move, I’ll move
I will follow you
Who you love, I’ll love
How you serve I’ll serve
If this life I lose, I will follow you
I will follow you.
– I will Follow, Chris Tomlin 

I know for a lot of people staying would be the best scenario – the easiest. But it’s one of the hardest things God has made me do (and it’s not like this is new, either. I had to stay for school, stay for a job, etc. I’ve been wanting to go run that race for 6 years now and I’m still being told to stay.) Beyond that, I don’t always feel like I have a ton of roots built up where I am (perfect for moving, right God?) I’m not close friends with anyone I’ve known my whole life (moving halfway across a country at the age of 8 does that to a person), but even beyond that, I’ve been in multiple churches since then, switched school zones, worked at a camp in the US … and instead of “deep roots” in one spot, I feel as though have lots of tiny, shallow ones spread over a huge area (and if you have lots of friends spread all over the place, you know how over time the depth of those collective friendships tends to weaken through no fault of your own, just distance).

All that to say it doesn’t feel like there’s much holding me back…and my desire to go makes me hesitant to begin to put down the roots that will make me want to stay. But I keep hearing stay.

Stay? Stay. Just stay. The one place you don’t want to go – I want you to stay.

He probably thinks he’s funny…and I’ll probably agree in 10 years (or, like, 20). But right now I don’t find it funny. I find it hard. Maybe you have a similar struggle – is he asking you to move? Near or far, moves can be hard when you have things you love that make you want to stay. Maybe you’re like me and all you want is a “GO” and you’ll go. The shoes are on, bags are packed…but the call just doesn’t seem to be coming.

I am trying so hard to be ok with staying. To embrace where I am. To let him work changes in my heart to be ok with being here. To find places to invest in and find fulfillment and a lot of the time I’m fine … and some days (and weeks) I’m not. And in those moments all I ask is that he holds onto me. That he would strengthen my faith and give me hope to rise and trust that this, right here, is the best place I can be. To stop looking at the grass on the other side, and realize that the grass here under my feet is pretty green and luscious too…

 

Romeo & Juliet & Me

Easter is probably my favourite holiday.

There are other holidays pretty high on my list – Christmas is an amazing season of family and joy, July 1/4 is warm and full of barbecues and fireworks, and Thanksgiving is when I get to eat most of my favourite foods in one meal and then take a nap. But Easter…Easter isn’t my favourite foods, we don’t usually see family, half the time it’s snowing, and no one has fireworks.

Easter is my favourite because Easter doesn’t have the bells and whistles other holidays do. I don’t have traditions I fall back on and there really isn’t a ton to look forward to.

And yet there is.

Easter has become a year-marker for me. Sure, January 1 is a new calendar year, February 11 is my birthday, April is when I graduated and got a job…but Easter is a spiritual time marker. For some reason, I seem to figure things out around Easter. In the process of reflecting on the death and resurrection I revisit my faith and my life, and I look back on the past Easters and how I’ve grown or changed since then. Some Easters are big and some are small, but God constantly reminds me just how far I’ve come and how far we still have to go. Easter gives me hope for the fallen world I live in and pushes me forward to love into the next year.

Once, I heard a message at a Good Friday service that struck a deep chord with me. It was about Romeo & Juliet, and I think about it every year on Good Friday. (Don’t worry, you don’t need to know a lot about the play to follow along)

In the most famous scene from the play, Juliet stands on her balcony and laments to the moon with what is one of the most well known soliloquies in Shakespeare’s repertoire:

“Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet
…
Tis but they name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s a Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot.
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without thy title. Romeo, doff thy name
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.”
– Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2

The premise is that Juliet is lamenting that Romeo is a Montague (“wherefore” means “why”, not “where” – crazy, I know). She begs him to deny that which identifies himself (Montague) and be with her instead. Besides, what point is a name but a word we just call ourselves? If he were to strip off his name he could exchange it for all of her. Similarly, God looks at us and loves us, but he sees the things that keep us from him too. He beckons us to himself – deny yourself and follow me!

We easily fit into Romeo’s shoes, too. He loves Juliet, he looks at her and sees unparalleled beauty and grace…but he can’t get to her. We look at God and we see his greatness, his goodness, his faithfulness … we love that. We love the idea of a perfect God who loves us back. It’s why we sing things like this song that’s been stuck in my head lately:

And You oh Lord made the sunshine the moonlight and the night sky
You give me breath and all Your love
I give my heart to You
Because I can’t stop falling in love with You
I’ll never stop falling in love with You
– Better than Life – Hillsong

God takes it a step further than Juliet did, though. He calls us farther than to just deny our names. He calls us to pick up our crosses, too. Yet we’re just like Romeo – but even more helpless – we can’t get to God ourselves. But in his divine love and mercy and grace He saw our plight, so he sent his son to make a way for us. He loved us so much that he gave his son as a sacrifice for us. It’s what makes Good Friday so good.

Now when he calls us and we respond, we undergo the change Romeo did not. We strip off our old selves and put on a new self, becoming the children of light in a dark world. AND, we get to have all of God, participating in his story. When I think about it that way, it seems like what I gain is worth the price I’ll pay.

This Easter season I’m taking moments to stop and think about how far He has called me to get here, and look forward to where he is calling me tomorrow. Trading in my weary, old identity and finding myself instead in the overflow of his mercy and grace. The forgiveness I don’t deserve spurring me forward into the next year.

This is a God who makes old things new. He breathes life into dry bones and he breathes life into you and me. He’s calling us forward with him – will you come with me and follow?

On Hope

If you know me, you probably know that I work shifts. If you know me well, you know that while I like the freedom this gives me to serve in certain ways and see different people. If you talk with me about it for longer than 5 minutes, though, you also probably know that I often struggle with sleep and depression when I hit the middle of a 3-11 week. And lately? Lately it’s been enough that I begin to feel dread sinking into the pit of my stomach by the time Saturday evening rolls around.

I’ve always looked towards the weekend before as a time to fill myself up. See friends, do things with people, talk to as many people at church as possible…but sometimes that doesn’t happen. Sometimes the weekend before is the loneliest and sparse…so waking up Monday morning can be difficult. This week it was bleak – even though I actually had plans for the week – Monday was hard.

I felt (read: feel) so very empty.

How many times do I put my hope where it shouldn’t be? I hope for things yet to come but I hope for the wrong things. I hope for goodness and I hope for peace. I hope for stability and I hope to move out. I build up my own kingdom of hopes and dreams…but when the things I hope for don’t happen when I want them to, when the walls of hope I’ve built to protect me come crashing down, I realize I’ve foolishly built them on my own strength.

And I’ve given up hope on the days I have left,
But I cling to the hope of my life in the next
– Deathbed, Relient K

I’ve not given up hope that the days I have left won’t be God-glorifying or worthwhile, but I have given up the hope that they will ever be everything I need. In my most despairing moments this week I had the above song lyric ring through my mind. I was tired, discouraged, and defeated … but even though hope felt lost it wasn’t. Hope was still available for me. I can cling by a desperate thread to the hope that I’m promised beyond tomorrow – my hope is for more than what I will have next week or next year. My hope is in the lover of my soul. My hope is that someday the suffering that I experience will pass away and I will be home. Home where I belong.

I don’t like feeling this way … but the more I live with crutches in my life – when my vices of fear and loneliness come to play – the more deeply I understand Paul when he said he was ok with his weaknesses.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
– 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

I used to take comfort in this verse thinking my weaknesses were things to be overcome – that they wouldn’t really be weaknesses anymore. But I don’t think that’s what it’s saying. My weaknesses will still be weaknesses. They don’t “go away”. Hardship isn’t any less hard just because Christ is with me. I don’t get to be glorified and look strong when I “accept” my weaknesses. It’s not like job interviews where your weaknesses are actually strengths…it’s still going to suck. Every day. But it’s in those weaknesses that he is there. In my fear he is my courage, in my loneliness my companion, in my doubt my truth.

When I contritely say the words “more of you less of me” I am saying that I want to have Christ shine out from me. He does that in my strengths but he does that in my weaknesses too. He carries me through the fire and the flood – but I still have to go through them.

As I begin to lose myself in him it matters less what my weaknesses or strengths look like to other people and it matters more how close I am to him today. And if I think about it? It is in my weakest moments that I have felt him closest and reflecting on those moments when I have learned the most.

I find hope when I’m let down
Not in me … in You
It’s in you
I hope to lose myself for good
I hope to find it in the end
Not in me … in You
– You, Switchfoot

I keep saying to myself that I want to live in such a way that if I died tomorrow I would be happy. Relieved. Satisfied. Overjoyed. Content that I would get to see my saviour face to face and tell him I tried – and to have him look at me and say that I had done well. The mere existence of love and joy here on earth can give me hope that someday I will be somewhere those are the only things – the things I experience here are merely a glimmer of what is to come!

I belong to a country without borders & politicians, I am a citizen of a kingdom where justice prevails and the weak are made strong. And one day we will be in the presence of love, know it fully in our beings, and be with him forever. But we get to start now. We get to begin to bring the kingdom to those around us on earth.

And today? Today all I can do is cling – cling with desperate hands and feet. I can hang on, clutching at the hope I have. I can breathe in and out, knowing that strength can be getting out of bed before 10:30 tomorrow. The words he speaks are hope – and that hope will get me through tomorrow.

Every word you speak is the air I breathe.
– Air I Breathe, Matt Kearney

 

 

Uncomforting Comfort

I am a creature of comfort.

I love cozying up to a coffee, a fuzzy blanket, and a good book. I enjoy doing the things I like. I like feeling safe and loved. I prefer to do the things I am good at (or at least think I’m good at) instead of the things I’m not as good at. I like feeling at ease – as though my life is wrapped around me like a warm blanket. I will go out of my way to leave my house 10 minutes early so I can buy a coffee on a Friday before I go to work. I would rather talk with people I know than meet people I don’t.

Do you know what brings me the most comfort? Planning. Not just any plan – a well thought-out, itemized, goal oriented, risk-managed plan.

This is how I approach my life. I’m twenty-three and if I could have everything planned out for the next 5 years I would. I mean, ideally I would have at least 10 with a contingency plan but 5 years is me trying to be optimistic. In my head a 3 year plan is realistic. Do you know those people who say “come any time around 8 – we’re flexible”? I’m not that person. If I say 8 I mean 7:55 – earlier if necessary to account for traffic and weather.

I hate change.

I don’t like the idea of leaving. I don’t want to do things outside my “comfort zone”. I would rather not confront someone and just deal with it myself than bring up an issue. I dislike when employees or processes change at work. I really don’t like the idea of having to change how I set up my schedule. I don’t want to let new people into my bubble.

Don’t get me wrong – there are some changes that I didn’t hate!

I liked changing from not owning a car to owning one. I enjoy not having to go to school anymore. I much prefer life after the discovery of coffee…The only times I like change are when it makes me feel more comfortable – I liked buying a new car because it made it more comfortable to get to work, to do what I wanted after work, and to be less dependant on others. No school? Significantly less stress and more time. Coffee? Um, have you tried it?

The only time I like change is when I have control over that change or I know it will bring me more comfort. (and, you know, I’ve spent a few months working it into my life plan) Change scares me at the best of times, and at the worst of times it’s a thing I avoid like the plague.

Lets see what God has to say about my comforting plans:

The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.
– Proverbs 16:9

Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.
– Proverbs 19:21

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
– James 4:13-15

Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.
– Proverbs 27:1

I like the way my life is. I’m comfortable in it. But God doesn’t say I get to live a comfortable, “well-planned-out-by-me” life. He doesn’t say I get to stay where I am. He keeps telling me there’s more to life than what I see now – that he isn’t done with me yet. And every time I decide to believe him and take a step forward I see that he’s right. But do you know what he does next? He whispers “Christy. I’ve still got more.” And he’s always right. Every. Single. Time. Even if I’m not more comfortable, the places he leads me are better. And how I view him and understand him gets richer and deeper.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
– John 10:10

I don’t think a full life doesn’t mean that all of my hours are planned. It doesn’t mean that I know what is going to happen in 10 years. I think maybe it has more to do with walking with God through it all. Less worrying about tomorrow, more living in today. Less heavy contemplation about small little things and more openness to things changing. Less focus on how to organize things so life goes “the right way” and more on how to listen and accept that the road isn’t a straight path forward.

When I am comfortable, that is when I ought to be the least comfortable. It is then when I am leaning less on God and more on myself.

 

Living Redeemed pt II

As 2016 drew to a close I thought I would write a post on how the “Live Redeemed” idea I wrote about in January of 2016 worked out. It was going to be upbeat, encouraging, and all about the greatness that was 2016.

It’s funny the difference a week can have.

2016 ended on a high, 2017 started on a not as big of one. I was fresh off the Christmastime high with seeing far away family, eating delicious food, and enjoying wonderful company of friends. I felt like I had grown in my job, over the year – confidence wise and in knowledge. I was blessed with numerous serving opportunities at church doing what I love and am passionate about. To cap it all off, I paid off my car in less than 2 years (which if you know me you know that that was a huge goal I had set for myself to achieve-and if you don’t you do now!).

Then 2017 started and I realized a couple things I thought were going to be fine and were proceeding correctly were not what I thought. After being depressed for a full 24 hours, it hit me that while I had been working through living my life for Christ, I had found comfort in other things instead of finding it in Him. I was comforted when things were working out and going “my way” because (obviously) that must mean that things are going the way He wants them to go. But when a tiny glitch formed in my plans, I was completely thrown off.

In my afore mentioned post, I talked about not quite knowing how “living redeemed” would work, but I thought it would have to do with A. getting up and actually doing stuff aka living (which, to be fair, I did do this year!) and B. allowing my life (and all the parts of it) to be redeemed from darkness into light (by allowing God to speak into them and considering him in things/decisions).

What I found out is that once you start doing a lot of A it’s kind of hard to remember to keep B in the forefront of your mind. I also found out in (mostly) one crushing blow that while I had been trying to do this, I had slipped into my typical-Christy-ness of over planning and trying to control everything again.

Was I really listening to what God was calling me to do, or was I filling in the awkward moments of my life trying to pretend I knew what was going on?

I think for a while there it was the latter. I was saying the first, but living the second. And it’s got me thinking (shocker, I know) about how I can better listen, be attuned to His callings, and live a God-honouring life. Here’s what I got:

1. Actually spend time with him. How many times do I prioritize other things? How many times have I hit the snooze button instead of just getting up 10 minutes earlier? (I’m not answering that)
2. Build in rhythms to my life that allow me to focus on making God-honouring decisions – like planning my week/month and making time to stop and reflect. Setting intentional time aside to LISTEN and plan
3. Constantly remind myself that I’m following HIS lead, not mine
4. Say yes to when he calls, but remember that doesn’t mean saying yes to everything that happens to come up in life (i.e. God doesn’t call me to burn out, so I shouldn’t do that…and sometimes opportunities aren’t meant to be taken)
5. Keep living! Keep doing things and embracing where he has me. That’s how I started this journey and I don’t want to stop moving forward on it.

What are ways you remain open to God’s promptings in your life? How do you make sure he’s at the centre of all you do? I would love to hear about it!

On His Love for Me (1 Year sans Purity Ring)

Fourteen year old me went through a pure freedom class (like oh so many others) and at the end did what everyone else did and chose to get a purity ring and make the commitment to go along with it. Sixteen year old me recommitted to the promise and bought a new prettier ring.

Eight years of wearing a ring later, 22 year old me decided to take it off.

I don’t hate my purity ring. In fact, I really don’t hold much resentment towards anything I was taught about it all when I was younger – I don’t feel as though I’ve been hurt because of the popular teachings of the day (though I recognize many were). I’m also not going back on the commitment I made, nor am I necessarily saying other people should stop wearing theirs. The literal only reason I took it off is because I was tired of waiting. Tired of the physical reminder of my single-ness, tired of weighing life decisions by “what if I meet someone?”, and tired of feeling like I was watching my life go by as I sat around.

So I’m still waiting but I’m not waiting. Which has got me to thinking – if I go through my whole life single (which we know can’t be a BAD thing because Paul says so in 1 Corinthians 7), am I missing out? Is God depriving me of something that would make me more complete?

No, I can’t believe that. First, because God is good and has set good plans for me to walk in that will bring him glory (Ephesian 2) – if me being married will bring him more glory, then that’s what will happen. Second, because marriage doesn’t make us more complete as humans – we are still the same messy incomplete humans who are unfulfilled and incomplete without God. So if that is true, then I can I not experience all the fullness and love I need to from God? God IS love after all, so don’t all forms of it come from him?

And so I come to this fall, ruminating on a year without a purity ring, and I find myself pondering the love God has for me. All my married friends tell me about how God uses their marriages to draw them closer to him and experience his love in new ways, So I’ve found myself listening to love songs (because lets be honest, like 95% of all songs ever are about this, and somehow they all ended up on my fall playlist…), and instead of lamenting my life (don’t lie, you know what I’m talking about), I’m trying to see if and how they relate to God and my relationship with him.

It’s been wildly different than doing this with worship songs because I find the secular songs sing about slightly more tangible aspects while worship ones stay really abstract. It’s odd – you would think it makes it easier to put God in a box with the tangible, but singing so abstract-ly sometimes makes him seem so much farther off, rather than close.

It sounds a little unorthodox until you realize that generally what people are singing about and looking for is a missing part of them, a person who understands them, a person who loves all of them, someone who encourages them to be a better person…and last I checked God fills all of those boxes. In fact, he does more. He loves with a passionate love, an endless love, a perfect love, he casts out fear, he is a rock when storms come. His love is fierce and it is tender.

I read a book by Greg Paul called Close Enough to Hear God Breath when I was university (he also wrote God in the Alley, both of which I would recommend). In it, he explores the aspects of “divine intimacy”, and one of the pictures I still remember him describing is God holding us close to him as a father holds his child to his chest and we can hear the softness of his breathing and his whispers to us over the noise of the world. (I would quote him here but my friend has had the book for over 3 years and “doesn’t know where it is”).

One of my standout songs from the last month has been Everywhere by Michelle Branch. It challenges me to think about how God is everywhere around me and in everything I see, but it’s the bridge brings it together for me:

And when I touch your hand
It’s then I understand the beauty that’s within
It’s now that we begin
You always light my way
I hope there never comes a day
No matter where I go
I always feel you so

Is there anything more beautiful than the love God has for us? I am thankful to see the reflection of it in relationships here on earth, but everything is only that – a reflection. A still from picture that lacks the vibrancy, nuances, and life that the real thing has. Seeing the glimpses reminds me that there is more to come. That his love is deeper still. It reminds me that the most important thing to do is to live for him and with him beside me everywhere I go.