Inspired.

Right now I have some mental clarity! That doesn’t come often for me, so I’m taking full advantage of the moment and writing you all an update. For those who don’t know, I’ve been sick for about a year and a half now with Lyme disease. I don’t want to write about the symptoms or what the past year and a half has been like. Maybe that’s for another time. Today I want to write about something else.

Lately, because of treatment and a fairly long downturn, I have been isolated a little more than usual. I haven’t been able to go to my wonderful church, or see my friends. I sit here in my cave of light blue, with a mirror that was poorly placed right in front of my bed so I can see myself every time I cry (I should really move that thing), and I rarely ever emerge-except on those days that my pain gets below a certain number out of 10, then I take full advantage and get out of the house.  But this past week I’ve met some people that have truly inspired me. And even though “met” means over Facebook, it feels just like we sat over coffee and chatted. They are radiant human beings that haven’t let Lyme disease stop them one bit. I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not one of those people. Aside from the obvious physical symptoms, I’ve been profoundly affected by all this disease can do to your mind, all it can do your spirit and your faith. Plus I walk on concrete as much as possible in order to avoid ticks now. As I call it, I’ve “gone concrete.” I hear re-exposure makes Lyme even more intense the second time around. But these people aren’t like me. Those things aren’t on their mind and they amaze me. They’re still hiking and walking trails, the same trails that likely infected them. They’re still reading their Bible as if the thought of God’s abandonment in their pain has never crossed their mind. Their courage baffles me. There have been moments in this journey, and I predict there will be again, when I didn’t care about learning lessons anymore and I just wanted to be healthy again. Being in pain in those moments eclipses what is happening in the bigger picture. But right now in this moment of clarity, I care about the lesson. I long so much to have the eyes these girls have that are able to see things mine don‘t yet have the ability to see. I long to not be easily moved or affected. I hope I can be as beautiful as these girls are who tough the pain and have become more creative and inspirational and faithful to Jesus through their trials. I’m not good at it yet. But I want to be more than anything. And Jesus knows that’s my heart’s goal and desire. However I don’t desire for this disease to last long enough for me to get good at it!

Anyway, this is a verse that I’ve been thinking about lately. I don’t say that to give the impression I’ve been in the Word a lot through this because I haven’t. I struggle to pick up my Bible and read promises that feel so much like they’ve been broken in the midst of my illness. But deep down I know they haven’t been. I know I’ll look back and realize they were more than fulfilled someday. But this one verse has brought me a lot of comfort recently. It’s Jeremiah 22:16, “He pled the cause of the afflicted and the needy; then it was well. Is that not what it means to know Me?”

Silence.

“Enter the silence.
Bow in prayer. Don’t ask questions:
Wait for hope to appear.” -Lamentations 3:28-29

“There is an appointed time for everything…a time to be silent, and a time to speak.” -Ecclesiastes 3:7

John Locke, Ben Linus and a Suggestion from C.S. Lewis

There’s a scene in Lost that recently brought me to tears. Okay, most episodes have something that brings me to tears because the writers consistently draw such powerful parallels to spirituality and relationships. But this particular scene illustrates how we can all feel toward God when it seems we’ve sought Him with   everything we have yet still have unanswered questions, a lack of peace, or whatever  it is we were searching for. Now, this isn’t a direct parallel, because Lost is the most complicated show in the history of shows, but I’ll tell just enough to get the point across.

Toward the end of the series, two characters, Ben Linus and John Locke, visit Jacob, the island’s leader. Jacob is a divine-like character, and was thought to be invisible throughout most of the show. This was because Ben was embarrassed that he had never seen Jacob’s face, so he lied telling Locke that Jacob didn’t have a physical body. Jacob didn’t show his face to Ben despite his position of leadership on the island and his lifetime of obedience to him. He did, however, show himself to John Locke. This angered Ben very much because of his service to the island and his willingness to do whatever Jacob said. When finally face to face with Jacob he told him,

“So now after all this time you’ve decided to stop ignoring me? Thirty-five years I’ve lived on this island and all I ever heard was your name over and over and I never questioned anything.   I did as I was told. But when I dared to ask to see you myself I was told, ‘You have to wait. You have to be patient.’ But when he (Locke) asks to see you, he gets marched straight up here as if he was Moses.So why him? Hm? What was it that was so wrong with me? What about me?”

I don’t put this quote here to ignite anger toward God; He isn’t deserving of it.  This is just how we feel sometimes. Sometimes it seems like we’ve searched and plead and asked of God and done all He told us to do, but it hasn’t yielded much results. We still haven’t seen Him the way we desire to. What’s wrong with us? And what’s more, why do we have those John Locke’s in our lives, those people that, for whatever reason, seem to be ushered into His presence without effort?

After C.S. Lewis’ wife died of recurring bone cancer, he was a mess who couldn’t understand why he didn’t feel the promise of peace and why he didn’t see the face of God in his time of trial like He promised. His writings during this time became the book “A Grief Observed.” I was reading just a few pages of it the other day in a bookstore. But I think I happened upon the most significant few pages. Lewis was reminding himself of the promise we have that if we knock on God’s door, He will answer. As soon as my mind could say, But I’ve already done that! I have knocked and then I‘ve knocked some more! he had an idea of why it might not be working, why we might not be seeing God’s face the way we desire. And so, as he often does, he kept going right along with my worried train of thought as if to say, It’s okay Lauren, it’s okay, I have another idea that just might work.

He described how Jesus gives us His word, His word, that if we knock He will answer. But Lewis admitted, and I right along with him, that he wasn’t knocking-he was banging down the door like a maniac, kicking and screaming and begging for Him to answer. Perhaps God’s peace cannot penetrate through a heart so flustered and frightened. What if we have only ever been little maniacs? Instead of calmly knocking, throwing ourselves on the promise that the door will be answered, with a greeting warmer than we could ever imagine.

Just Get to Your Grandparents’ House

 

I remember trips to my grandparents’ homes as a young girl. Each of the houses was magical in its own way. The scents of each were distinctive: one smelled of generic, yet still magical, old home mixed with rose-petal potpourri. The other home’s scent was equally pleasant and gave off the same generic-old-home smell mixed with a coffee and paneled wood bouquet. Paneled wood has a heavy sort of fragrance. It’s delightful. Sort of like the inside of an old photo album or the lining of your granddad’s coat.

On one particular trip down to the coffee-and-paneled-wood scented home, there was a terrible thunderstorm brewing. This was the scariest phase of thunderstorms for me: when the clouds were getting darker and darker, but the rain just wouldn’t come. It’s as if the sky was teasing me. To allay my fears, I would find the darkest cloud I could and think of what clever name the people at Crayola would give it. Would they call this thundercloud “Run for cover black”? Or maybe it was just a “Summer shower that will shortly pass gray”, in which case I didn’t have to worry. I don’t know why I put so much stock in Crayola’s opinion.

At any rate, I remember this trip so vividly because I was young and life hadn’t yet become complicated. All we had to do to dodge this “problem” was get to my good-smelling grandparents’ home. Then my family and I would be safe and dinner would be ready. The shutters wouldn’t yet be shut, because that didn’t happen until dark, which meant I could watch Homeward Bound from my Grandpa’s chair and look out the windows at the rain while I ate ice-cream and felt safe again. There was a wonderment to the simplicity of that night. The wonder came not from the fact that our trip was perfect; it was because the one “problem” we did face was one so easily fixable. It was a childhood problem. I crave those kinds of problems. When all you have to do be safe again is get to your grandparents’ house.

We Have All the Faith We Need

In all my introspection over the years, I’ve never come away thinking, “Man. I am impressed with what’s in there!” I’ve also never come away feeling satisfied, happy, whole, joyful, Godly, content, and most of all, never, ever have I come away feeling simplified. Granted, there are those that need to do more soul searching. But I, and a lot of people I’ve met, have analyzed our way out of all God has for us. This is a huge issue for me, so I definitely don‘t claim to be a model for this, but here is what I’ve learned from a man who is (and I promise I’ll get off the 700 Club kick soon!):

The Catch the Fire conference (for those keeping up with the blog) has talked a lot about the Kingdom of God and how entering into it can be easily missed by our lack of child-like faith, or our idea of how to get faith. The striving to bring it down, conjure it up, generate or manufacture it turns all our attention inward, to that totally unimpressive, unproductive place. Gordon Robertson was explaining the simplicity of faith, and how Scripture teaches in Romans 12:3 that God has given us each a “measure of faith.” Since Jesus clearly taught that all that’s required to move mountains is the faith of a child-the faith of a mustard seed-and God has already given each of us, as believers in Christ, a measure of faith, then we have all the faith we need to pray for huge things. There is no striving for faith involved in our petitions. And while we should ask for more faith, Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus Himself is the Author and Perfecter of it, and Philippians promises that He will finish the good work that He started. And it’s a load off our shoulders to know that’s it’s a gift from beginning to end.

In other news, today, I learned that bath towels don’t dry unless you hang them up. The past 3 months I’ve grown a little lazy from not feeling well. Because of this, some days I’d hang my towel up, and some days I wouldn’t. Consequently, some days I’d awake to a dry towel, and some days a very damp one.

What a mystery this is! I’d tell myself. I started doubling my towel usage. Then I told my mom the situation. She stared at me.

“Lauren, that’s what a towel rack is for.”

Such wisdom.

Boll Weevils for Breakfast and Bill Johnson

This morning I woke up and poured myself a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats. I finished out the box and threw it away. As I sat down with my cereal I thought to myself, this bowl looks extra speckled. But I didn’t think too much of it because it’s the raisin version of Honey Bunches of Oats. So, I thought maybe along with the raisins they added some sort of grain that had settled to the bottom so I hadn’t noticed them until the last bowl. Reasonable, right? I kept eating. But things kept getting more strange. So I made a deal with myself. Okay, self. If these mysterious specks start swimming upstream, I’ll stop eating. I could’ve sworn they did. I stopped, went to the trash can and pulled out the box to see if it said anything like, “Honey Bunches of Oats-Now with new specked grains added for optimal nutrition!” It didn’t. And the picture with the loaded spoon looked nothing like my loaded spoon. So I took one of these nutritional, mysterious, speckled grains in my hands only to find what I feared most: the grains had wings. I had ingested at least 50 of them by this point. It’s been hours since, and I feel fine. Plus I’ve more than met my protein intake for the day and was able to make a great alliterated title for my third blog. Perfect! When life hands you Boll Weevils, make a blog.

Onto more serious matters. Yesterday I wrote about the 700 Club. Well, this week just so happens to be the Catch the Fire conference with speakers that I’ve grown to love: Bill Johnson, the Arnotts and Gordon and Pat Robertson (founder and son of the 700 Club). Bill Johnson in particular has sparked a lot of controversy because so much of his ministry seems to be focused on miracles of healing. He was confronted about this by another Christian who said “Bill, miracles aren’t the whole Gospel.” Bill replied “No, but the Gospel isn’t whole without them.” Some smirk at his name, but this conference has revealed him to be even more sound and in love with the things of the Lord than I once believed. Here are just a few things I’ve learned from his teaching, and other’s, at the Catch the Fire conference the past couple days.

Bill‘s ministry has been marked by the miraculous, and by criticisms.

“In an hour when the Lord is raising up a company of people to live in the extreme, I was warned by many saying, ‘Brother, we need to be careful, we need to live balanced.’” Bill’s analogy was perfect: Imagine Jesus turning to the Gentile woman who begged Jesus to heal her demon possessed daughter. At first, the Lord responded by saying he couldn’t give bread to dogs. He said this because he had come to save the Jews, and then the Gentiles. But his answer didn’t deter her, and this awesome woman said “Yes Lord, but even the dogs get the crumbs from the table.” Can you imagine if Jesus turned to her and said “You have chosen to live a well-balanced life. You will be remembered in eternity for your balance.” No! She was desperate, extreme, begging, pleading for a miracle. Jesus was pretty touched by it and healed her daughter that moment.

He told of a story that happened to a member of his church (Bethel) in Redding, California. A college student named Adam got off his shift and had craving for donuts. So he went to his local grocery store. But while in checkout isle #10, he saw a lady with hearing aids. He was in the habit of praying for anyone with an obvious disability, and this time was no different. He politely put his hand on her shoulder and asked if he could pray for her. She said sure. She was 80% deaf in one ear and 90% in the other. He prayed with her as the cashier looked on. He had her take the hearing aids out, and stepped back 10 ft, 25 ft, 50 ft, and said sentences. Her ears were completely opened. She and the cashier were sobbing, and Adam felt the Lord wasn’t done in the grocery store. He asked if he could use the intercom. “Attention all shoppers! Someone here needs a new hip! And someone else needs to be healed of carpal tunnel!” Come to checkout isle #10 if this is you!” A crowd soon gathered around the isle, and a lady wheeled her way to Adam.

“I’m the new hip,” she said.

Adam prayed for her and she got up out of her wheel chair and walked, then jogged, then ran through the isles as shoppers cheered her on, with no knowledge of what was going on. Then, as if it were a scene from the Bible, a man pushed his way through the crowd with his fists up. Adam was ready to defend himself, until the man said, “I’m a piano teacher. It’s how I make my living, but I’ve had carpal tunnel for two years.” Adam prayed for him, and as the pain left the man, he wept. While he had the crowd’s attention, he figured he might as well preach the Gospel. So that’s what he did, and many of them received Christ that night. Adam, however, never did get those donuts.

Voluntarily Watching The 700 Club

What’s the dream vacation for a 13 and 10-year-old you ask? Why, A three night stay at the Christian Broadcasting Network, of course. They have a hotel on the grounds of their studio, and Pat Robertson’s house sits on the same property. I wasn’t happy about this excursion. My brother had a better attitude about it, which was usually the case. We watched a live taping of the show and the staff took the studio audience on a tour of the CBN museum. I remember having an awful headache. That, combined with being at the 700 Club, was enough to cause a noticeable change in my demeanor. One of the staff members asked me what was wrong. I told them my head hurt. The tour was stopped, and we gathered around, joined hands, and prayed for this pill-of-a -girl’s headache to be healed. It wasn’t. But I never blamed God for that one. I don’t know how much God can work with an attitude like that.

Today, the show gets a lot of flack-probably because Pat Robertson is getting older and, well, says things older people say. Or maybe it’s simply because it’s a televised Christian show. Whatever the case, since having a lot of time on my hands, every morning at 9 a.m., the 700 Club is what I watch. At will. And I’m so encouraged the stories of miraculous healings, conversions and visions of Christ throughout the world and right here in America.

This is my favorite story of a precious (and completely healed) man named Lee McDougald.

Three Moves and Memories

Ten years ago, my family and I had just moved for the third time in two years to a small Virginian town. It was called Fredericksburg, and I hated it. I was 12, and the day we moved in, I was a mess. We loaded the boxes into what would be my new room. It had bright floral curtains and that strange, unfamiliar feeling to it. I was supposed to sleep here now? My dad hugged me and said words I’d cling to for the next 365 days, “Between you and me, we’ll be out of here in a year.”

So I did what any logical 12-year-old would do: I stayed inside and refused to make any friends or memories in a place I knew I’d be leaving.

My brother, however, loved this town. He went to a local private school and became the star of his tennis team. I, on the other hand, opted to be home schooled with Bob Jones video tapes that were recorded from the mid 1980s. The teachers wore thick, upside-down looking glasses and never swallowed.

I did do some things during this weird year of life, though…

#1 I watched Home Shopping Network. The ideal Friday night for me was when Suzanne Somers came on with my favorite host (Colleen Lopez) and sold her line of age-defying beauty treatments and leopard print blankets. They captivated me with their business savvy.

#2 I developed an obsession with parakeets (also known as Australian budgies). I read all about them and even rented videos from our local library so I’d be the perfect owner. Then I parakeet sat for a neighbor. I tried to cuddle with it, but it escaped from my 12-year-old grip and flew into our vaulted ceilings. And I mean into our vaulted ceilings. Feathers flew like you’d see in a cartoon. Thankfully it survived, but my desire for an Australian budgie did not.

#3 Every Friday was skate day with our home school group. I brought my Jessica Simpson album and had that guy who sits in a box in roller skating rinks (is he a DJ?) play “Woman in Me” (featuring Destiny’s Child) and “I Think I’m in Love.” It gave me an hour of exercise/week. That’s all they’re saying you need these days, right?

#4 I started playing the violin at a little music shop in historic downtown. That hobby actually had some value to it. This is also when I grew to love country music, and developed my first celebrity crush on George Strait.

#5 At the front of our neighborhood was a beautiful trail. It started off with a steep decline, perfect for a bike ride, and then leveled off with slight hills and bridges along the way. It dropped you off at a cul de sac, but picked back up, as if it were a secret passage way, in another part of the neighborhood. That was the best part of the trail. There was a creek there. And in the midst of our Bob Jones infested days, my mom and I would walk it.

Not only did I pick up these invaluable hobbies, but I also learned about weather systems. One night, for some reason, I was all alone in our house. We lived near a train station, and my mom had always told me that a tornado sounded like a train. I heard a “toot, toot” and my heart started pounding. “Quick! Run for cover!” I shut myself in the safest place I could find- a small bathroom right by our kitchen. I called my mom and explained that a tornado was headed straight for our home, straight for me. She calmly corrected me, explaining it’s the “chugga, chugga” and not the “toot, toot” that warns of an impending tornado. I breathed a sigh of relief, made sure all was clear as I opened the bathroom door, and went back to watching the Home Shopping Network in peace.

And with about as much brevity as a tornado, we were gone. We left Fredericksburg almost a year to the day of our moving in. And while I don’t agree with my middle school decision to not engage life for a year out of fear of making memories, it was all I knew to do at that age. But even that method didn’t work. I cried the day we left the place. I missed the wall the parakeet flew into. I missed the floor I sat on to watch Colleen and Suzanne try and sell me needless products. I even missed the strange carpeted bathroom that was, until that day, just an annoyance.

That year, I learned that you’ll make memories no matter what, and I could have made a lot more with lasting value had I engaged life instead of fear.

“I can walk away or face the emptiest day”

Today was monumental. Monumental, I tell you! It probably won’t seem like much to you reader(s), but it was a huge breakthrough for me. The thing about my breakthroughs, though, is that they always come a little late, after most people my age have already broken through. For example: I never won awards for talents or impressive character traits like a “most outgoing“ superlative or “best sense of humor.” No, the two awards I DID receive were for my improvement in a specific area. In other words, they were “you’ve come a long way” awards. Those two acknowledgements were a “most improved” certificate in the 4^th grade (which the teacher created specifically for me because I fit in no other category) and a “most changed“ superlative senior year of high school. The first merely meant that I managed to get decent grades by the end of the year, and the second was a euphemism from my classmates, as if they were saying as a collective whole, “you finally started caring about your appearance and socializing with people.” It’s been a theme throughout my 22 years, this not catching on until a little later thing. Which is why today’s revelation may not mean much to you quicker-to-catch-on folk. But here it is anyway.

I realized today that I have spent much of my life, since the teen-age years of getting together with friends and actively, independently socializing, living from gig to gig. What I mean is, if I didn’t have something to look forward to, if nothing exciting was going on, I didn’t know what to do with myself. And I sure wasn’t thankful. I was never thankful in my boredom. I would sink into the depths of despair (kidding, but close) because of my restlessness. An afternoon with nothing to do would end up in ungratefulness and a feeling that I’d been forgotten about. Friday or Saturday night would remedy this feeling because I’d go out with friends and be occupied by laughter, fun, food. But I never knew how to handle a plain, old, uneventful Tuesday afternoon alone. Much less a plain, old, uneventful season of life. At least, I didn’t know how to handle those times in a thankful way.

Those bland weekday afternoons always brought out the worst in me. I’d brood over what I didn’t have and what wasn’t happening and what could have been. My mom saw this trait in me at a young age, and always warned me against it. When she was 16, she was sulking, miserable in her boredom. The guy she liked paid her no attention, and life was generally uneventful. Then her mom got sick and nearly died. My mom prayed God would bring things back to boring again. She’d gladly accept the boredom, so long as her mom was healthy. Her mom did get better, and my mom learned her lesson at a young age.

Don’t get me wrong, afternoons are still the most unenjoyable part of the day in my eyes. They’re so non distinct. It’s not morning, it’s not nighttime. It’s just three o’clock. Boring, mundane three o’clock. It’s not time for lunch, not time for dinner, and a snack would ruin my appetite. It’s too hot for a jog, too early for reading (I have a hard time reading unless it’s nighttime) and a nap would make me feel groggy. It’s a boring part of the day-at least in my current schedule-and right now is pretty uneventful season of life, too. But living off the anxious anticipation of the next thing, the next text, phone call, social outing, date, or even the weekend is a confining and exhaustingly restless state of mind to be in. But for some reason, my mind isn’t confined today. Today I’m thankful. And I think I may be thankful again tomorrow, too.  Because this doesn’t feel like a mood, or the stars aligning just right. It doesn’t feel like good circumstances or happy times. It feels like contentment, like trust. And it’s a rather foreign feeing for this doubtful, restless girl, but it sure is a nice one.

True Personality

I spend an embarrassingly large chunk of my time thinking about myself. And when I think about me, I don’t just think about my needs or how to keep myself comfortable or happy, although I think about those things, too. Mainly, I think about what separates me from other people: personality,  preferences, likes and dislikes. What irks me? What makes me happy? How would I react to that situation? What do I enjoy doing and what do I hate doing? I search myself through and through to figure out what makes me an individual, to find my identity. And at the end of the day, the result of all the introspection is that, while I have what the world would call a “sense of myself,” I’ve grounded that “sense” in something other than Jesus. I’ve found myself, found my footing, in character traits, preferences, desires and my stances on various issues. And while our uniqueness and personality is a gift from God, I’ve made such an idol of it.

The worst part of thinking about myself so much, is that I find myself holding onto personality traits that aren’t like Jesus in order to retain my identity. If I gave up my quick temper or my unique position on an issue, who would I be? It’s really uncomfortable to give yourself up to Jesus when your self, in all its fleshly uniqueness, is all you’ve ever known. But if we find our identity in our personality, it’s no lasting identity at all.

After C.S. Lewis’ wife died, he said that no one ever told him grief felt so like fear. I think that’s true in this case, too. Detaching myself from myself feels like fear to me. If I truly surrendered my personality to Christ, making the decisions he would make, I would be found to be something other than an original. What would be left? Just a person trying to be like another Person. And while each one of us is called to that sort of imitation, the surrendering of our personalities goes against everything society says. The desire to be an original is so strong, to establish our uniqueness and our place in this world is so often the goal. But when we decide to follow Jesus, our uniqueness comes second to imitating Him.

In short, I dedicate way too much time trying to be “me,” or to the process of discovering “who I am.” I so often find that I don’t surrender areas of my personality to Christ because I would, in effect, lose part of that selfish identity I hold so tightly to.  But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how I would react to a situation, or what my viewpoint is, or what I like and dislike. If it’s not how Jesus would react, if it’s not what He would like or dislike, if it’s not His viewpoint, then it’s of no consequence at all except that it needs to be altered to fit His character. I want to know that Character more, because when I do, I find I’m more of my true self than I ever was before.

“…what I so proudly call “myself” becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop. What I call “my wishes” become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men’s thoughts or even suggested to me by devils…I like to believe: most of what I call “me” can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.” -C.S. Lewis