Losing Control

"If any would come after me, they must deny themselves, take up their cross daily and follow me."
Mark 8:34

In my last post I talked about fear. Specifically I talked about letting go of that fear to find peace. I think this verse fits that concept perfectly.
I, like many, have spent a lot of time focusing on the second part of this verse, the "pick up your cross" part. But that's not the part that stood out to me the other day. For the first time, my eyes were drawn to "deny yourself," and I began thinking about what exactly that looks like. At first, I thought of what I described in In the Face Of Fear, about how we must turn our fear over to Jesus. But how exactly does that go hand in hand with denying ourselves?

Fear comes from a lot of things. We fear change, we fear death, we fear loss, but largely I think a lot of fear comes from feeling like we no longer have control. Fear comes when something big is happening, something that could mean we have to change the way we live, act, or view the world. Fear comes when something happens that we really have no power to change. So, by surrendering that fear, we are denying ourselves in a sense.
But denying ourselves goes deeper than that. It's not just admitting to God we're afraid so He can eradicate that fear. It's denying ourselves the right we think we have to hang onto any negative and destructive habits and mindsets that we continue to cling to. Things like worry, doubt, anger, and judgment. But really all four of those boil down to fear--fear for ourselves, our loved ones, our comfort. But mostly we fear our loss of control. A dear friend of mine recently put it this way, "Fear makes us choose the easy route, the predictable route. But fear is never a solid foundation. Fear only breeds more fear. We think we're in control until the inevitable storms tear the notion from our hands and we discover we have absolutely no control. Hence, more fear."
When we deny ourselves, we say no to our desire to control our situation and give it back over to the only One who has control in the first place.

Recently I got to first hand experience what denying yourself is really like when God convicted me of holding onto something I knew wasn't mine.
You see, my boyfriend has been going through some health issues recently, and I have this bad habit of taking the pain of others onto myself. I mean, don't get me wrong, being able to empathize or even just sympathize with others is great, but I've always been good at taking everything a step farther than needed. I end up worrying and stressing over a problem in another's life as if it were my own problem. I would work myself into these knots where I could no longer feel God's presence, even though I knew He was there.
Now these aren't life threatening health issues or anything like that, just something that will require him to change the way he does certain things and even maybe give up some stuff neither of us expected he would have to quit this soon. Regardless of whether it's life threatening or not, I know how much pain he's in physically, as well as emotionally and spiritually, I can imagine. Having to face changes like this is never easy, and while I should be trying to offer some peace to him during this, I found myself as threatened by the storm as he was.

It was on a Sunday morning shortly after this all began that God brought to mind a prayer I had said several months before when facing something else that was out of my control.
"Lord," I had said. "I don't really know what to do with this situation, and there's not really anything I can do, so I'm sorry for trying to take over. You're in control, I know you are. So, here, you can have him back. Thanks for letting me have him in my life, but he's not mine anyways. So you do your thing, and if you would still have me be a part of this plan of yours, I would very much like to see how it unfolds."
Sitting there remembering that prayer, I gave this heavy sigh and said, "I know I've said this already, but I'm holding on again, and I shouldn't be because he's not mine anyway. Thanks for letting me borrow him for a while, but ultimately he is yours, and you know what you're doing. So here, you can have him back."

It wasn't until I denied my flesh the right it thought it had to worry and stress over what to do with this storm was I able to understand what to do with my situation. It's truly amazing how the Spirit works, bringing not only the fruit of the Spirit with which you longed for, peace in my case, but also those that will go hand in hand it help you face what is up ahead. For with the peace came a joy that made the clouds less scary and a courage to face the next road blocks.Also came patience to wait out this storm no matter how long it would take and strength to allow the one who's facing the storm to lean on me whenever he has trouble seeing Jesus, who I lean on, at the stern of the boat.
But along with equipping you, the Spirit also brings this inexplicable level of understanding. For when my peace came, so also came this understanding that though I may not know how long this will take or how painful it may be, we would come out of it and there would be something awesome at the end. I knew it like I knew I still breathed, like I knew the earth was still turning and my heart still beating. How I knew, I don't know, but I can't shake this knowing that goes beyond my understanding. Something good is coming, even if we can't see it yet.

But the same way we cannot ignore the first part of Mark 8:34, we shouldn't ignore the other half to focus on it. "Take up your cross daily and follow me."
Daily we must practice this denying our desire for control to follow the only One who knew true peace. Do not get discouraged when you find you've picked back up fears and insecurities that you've already surrendered in the past. Instead, keep in mind a prayer my sister shared with me several years back when she was facing her own storms and fighting her own demons, "I'm sorry, Lord, that I have picked back up what I already laid at your cross."
It is never too late to turn to the Lord and release the white-knuckled hold you have on your need to control that which is out of your grasp.

When Storms Come Raging

After a long day of teaching, Jesus and His disciples get in a boat to set out across the Sea of Galilee. On their journey across, Jesus decides to take a little snooze in the stern of the boat. And all of a sudden, a powerful storm comes up, and the disciples are afraid. They're not afraid because they've never seen a storm before, for if you do any research on the Sea of Galilee, you'll find that its position in this basin, this valley, means it gets storms a lot. Being fishermen, who are used to making their living on these and other waters, this is definitely not the first storm they've faced. But this storm is more powerful than any they've seen before.
According to the fourth chapter of the gospel of Mark, the storm was so furious that the waves broke over the boat and swamped it. So, naturally, the disciples believed they were going to drown. They believed they were going to die. In their panic, they turn to Jesus, who is still sleeping, and they woke him to say, "Teacher, we are going to drown, we are going to die. Don't you care?"

Life is filled with storms that threaten to overtake. Storms that come in the form of illness, doubt, insecurity, and fear. This being life and us being human, we have seen our fair share of these storms just as the disciples had seen their fair share of storms. But again, like the disciples, our experience with surviving through the storms sometimes isn't enough. Because sometimes, life comes in with a doozy.
I'm sure you know the kind I'm talking about. The job lost during a time when money was something you desperately needed. The diagnosis that changes everything. The threat to the one thing you've identified with the most for most of your life. Whatever the storm may be, all the other storms pale in comparison.

It's during these storms that we react exactly as the disciples had, with questions of, "Don't you even care?" It's easy to react this way, even natural sometimes, when our world seems to be crashing down around us. After all, if Jesus is the great protector, shouldn't He keep us from heartaches and loss such as these?
But if there's one thing I've learned from the scripture, it's that some of the best things come from the worst circumstance. Just take a look at any of the stories from the Old or New Testament. Many people faced trials aplenty, having to leave their homes, families, jobs, and comforts behind to follow God to the promise He offered. I could give some examples, but I think Jon Jorgenson of The Anima Series did an amazing job in his spoken word poem called "The Wall."
So allow me to pass the torch to him for a moment:

Jesus never promised there wouldn't be pain, in fact He practically assured us that it would be difficult. "Pick up your cross and follow me," He said, and if I remember correctly, His path of the cross was not an easy one lined with flowers and tea parties in the sun with a herd of passing unicorns. His path was difficult, it was painful, and it lead Him even to death. But from it came the most glorious victory ever seen.
Do you think that victory would ever come to pass, or we would even know a thing about this man, if He had not decided to deny His own comfort to take the sometimes painful road to redemption?

So of course He cares, just as you care when you hear a loved one going through some sort of trial. Because He has been there Himself before. He knows what it's like and is more than willing to help you conquer the storms in your life. I know this because the story of the storm doesn't stop there.

While the men are freaking, sure they are going to die, Jesus calmly gets up and looks out over the wind and waves and He says, "Quiet! Be still!"
If you've ever read the same scripture at different points in your life and gotten something different from it each time because of your life circumstances are different and your perspective has changed, then you understand when I say that sometimes I look at passages and wonder if there's something more there than what I'm just seeing.
Since there's not a lot of context as to what the disciples were thinking and feeling during this moment, it's hard to tell for sure, but I think Jesus was speaking to more than just the wind and waves on that stormy afternoon. I think He was speaking straight to their hearts. I think while He was telling the waves to calm and commanding the wind to be still, He was wishing the same over His followers' troubled spirits.

So next time you find yourself in a tough life situation, remind yourself that while the storm may be scary, we have someone at work on our behalf to either push back the storm itself, or calm the storms of fear and doubt that rage within.

Pits and Valleys

So, it's been a little while since I've written anything. Usually when I have these bouts of not blogging, it is because I am so wrapped up in my novel, or simply because I haven't quite put together a thought on what God's been teaching me that's straight enough to blog about. Or at least not straight enough to blog about in my preferred style, complete with examples, analogies, and stories.
But these last few weeks that has not been the case.

The thing is, I haven't been putting a lot of effort into my novel recently or even my relationship with God. That's not to say I didn't have the desire to do either, because I did. I longed for my creative highs and my peaceful mornings spent in the word. But over the last few weeks, those "peaceful mornings" have been filled with depression, distraction, and stress. While the depression would leave me once I got myself out of bed and moving, the stress and distractions would always linger through much of the day, bringing my focus levels to an all time low. With the desire to move forward, but no attention span, my motivation quickly dwindled. Every morning I would ask God, "Please, show me something. Bring me closer to you this day. I want to know you more." And while each day I found some small rarity in a passage I would never have looked in to find out anything more about my wonderful Creator, that step forward was always accompanied by several tiny steps back. The pattern left me feeling stuck. Like I was making progress, but not enough to get any forward momentum. Like a conveyor belt was moving beneath me, but my feet were strapped with lead and I could do nothing more than shuffle along just fast enough to stay exactly where I was, all while longingly staring at what I most desperately wanted at the end of the belt.

I reached a point where I was getting angry. Somewhat with myself, somewhat with God, but mostly just with this feeling of being stuck that I couldn't seem to shake. This distracted mindset that kept me from doing what I know I must do. I found myself thinking things like, "What's the point? I'm not getting anything out of this," or, "I can help people. I have before, I want to again, but how can I do that when I can't even connect to the One who gave me my heart for others?" or even, "If writing is my calling and I can't get myself to write, what am I?"
But I continued to do what I've been doing since this spring. I continued praying (Or trying to. Apparently it's very hard to pray when your mind can't stay focused on one thing for more than twenty seconds. Who knew.) and continued reading my bible every day. Even when I got to boring chapters Exodus 25, which for those who don't know, is the first of several chapters just about how to build the tabernacle and the sacred objects within it. Even on those chapters, I tried to find something to underline, something to write about, something that showed me more of human nature or God's character. But despite my efforts to find something even in these chapters, I still felt stuck. I was still plodding against the conveyor belt endlessly with no end in sight.

Then, Wednesday evening, after a morning of maximum frustration and extremely low motivation levels that led to me laying on the floor for hours with no will to move, God began showing me things that He's apparently been trying to teach me these last few weeks, but I never noticed.
It started when I went out to dinner with a new friend. I had recently asked him where his faith was in a very silly manner, and he told me it hasn't been that great in a while, but that he thinks it's getting better now. During dinner, he decided to shed a little more light on the picture, and after telling me what caused his faith to plummet in the first place, he said something that surprised me. He told me that before he started to talk to me, his relationship with God and his desire to go to church was a giant shrug. He said that if anyone ever tried to talk to him about Jesus, he would just wave it off and be over all indifferent towards it. Having already noticed some of these patterns and knowing what I had just learned about his past, I was not surprised by this confession. What surprised me was when he said, "Talking to you, things are starting to sink in more. I actually want to try to have a relationship with God again. When you invited me to come to church, instead of my normal habit of making up an excuse for why I couldn't go, I wanted to figure out a way to make it work. I wanted to try again."
I was stunned. For literally most of the time I've known him, I have felt like I was shuffling endlessly on that belt, with no way to take the weights from my feet that were slowing me down and keeping me from sprinting to the end. But despite that, God had still used me to make an impact on his life.
I was stunned, I was happy, I almost didn't believe it, but the inflection in his voice showed that he meant every word he said. I didn't know what to do with the information at first.

It wasn't until later that night, after movie night with friends was over and I was laying alone in my bed did it really settle. God used me, to touch the heart of someone who had long since shrugged Him off. I didn't do anything. How could I have, after all? I was struggling in my pursuit of my dreams and my faith. But that doesn't make a difference in God's kingdom. For God isn't just there in my mountain top experiences, where I feel Him close and see Him everywhere, but he is also in my dark valleys, where I can't see Him beside me or even feel His hand guiding me. But just because I don't feel Him or don't see Him, doesn't mean He isn't there or isn't working.

I would like to take this one step further and remind you that God works in mysterious ways. He doesn't only use those who are trying to follow Him (even those in a spiritual funk, as I have been) to further His kingdom, but even those who either don't realize He's there or don't see Him working.
A good friend of mine has recently been learning what it looks like to love unconditionally. To love someone just for being a person, not because of how they perform, treat you, or meet up to expectations. She's been learning what it means to let go of hurt and act instead out of love, rather than holding onto that hurt and letting it effect the way she treats others.

The other day, she and I had a bit of a dispute about the friend mentioned in my previous story. In a nut shell, she thought I was being too nonjudgmental, while I thought she was being too judgmental. A very unneededly long story short, she texts me after movie night and shares several realizations about how God is with her not only as support in her hard times, but also in her good times. After sharing this epiphany, she says, "I did realize though, that he's a person God loves, and that I haven't been very loving."

We, as people, tend to do whatever we want, but that doesn't mean God can't use us or our circumstances wherever we are and whatever they happen to be to bring about something beautiful.
Hardship doesn't need to be just that. It can be more. God can use it in ways we wouldn't imagine. After all, He used my friend with the decade old, half abandoned faith to teach my bestie what it means to love. If God can use me in my spiritual blah, or him and all the things that went into his turning away from the faith to impact the lives of others, can't He also use the poor circumstances in your life for something bigger, something you never will see coming?

The Spirit's Whispers

Happiness is good, and there's days where I crave it,

But those days are usually dark and lonely 

Where I forget that the root word of happiness is happen 

And that happiness is connected to circumstance and what we can get out of life.
On those days I forget that joy is what I really need.
That joy is a seed planted in my heart by a loving Father,
That no matter how unhappy my circumstances may seem,
That seed of joy will grow into a tree with hope as its roots and peace as its branches.

And somewhere in that growth my heart will learn to love again
And see people despite the sin that plagues them. 

For it plagues me too.
Because aren't we all the same?
Stuck in this disease called humanity that grips our minds
And in time we stop seeing the truth.
Though it affects most things we do, it's not who we are,
For we are more than our actions and scars-- 

We are souls seeking refuge in a stormy sea, 

But despite what we're told and despite what we think, that refuge is never the boat
That teeters and rears and tries to stay afloat atop the waves.
While our bodies want the boat's "safety," our spirits long to be saved.
Through the cries of our flesh, the Spirit whispers underneath,

"Take hold of his reach. Cant you see? 

The creator of your soul has asked you to be not of the storm but above it,
Walking the waves as if it were pavement."