I interrupt this program

…to announce that God is good.  Dave got a job that we’ve been waiting on, for various reasons, for almost 3 months.  Yay.  There are still some steps to go through before he actually signs a contract, but basically the job is his and he’ll start June 1.  Hallelujah!

Formation and Evangelism: Introduction

I’ve honestly never before been told that my interpretation of Scripture was doing violence to the text.

Dave and I went to hear the leader of his denomination speak at his church last night. Since this was sort-of a big deal, they did a nice-ish sit-down dinner beforehand, with the youth group dressed in black and white doing the serving. We sat down with a friend and were joined by two people we didn’t know. It was a little awkward, but everyone was eventually introduced and we made the usual conversation among strangers.

After a few minutes, another man joined us. He needed no introduction as he was perfectly comfortable introducing himself all around the table. Turns out, he was the husband of one of the women we’d been sitting with and the father of the other. He was one of those older gentlemen who make a point to talk to younger people about who they are and what they’re about, and he didn’t waste time asking Dave and I those questions.

When he found out we were graduates of a spiritual formation program, he went on offensive (and, eventually, became offensive).

His point was, basically, “Spiritual formation is well and good, but what are you doing about evangelism?” with the implication that it didn’t matter who we are inside as long as we are converting souls. As Dave and I talked with him more, it became more and more clear that there was no place in his spiritual worldview for someone called primarily to care for the souls of those already saved.

He brought up Bible verses.  We countered with others and argued about which text should take precedence given the greater biblical context.  Eventually, he brought up the parable of the sower, claiming that the grain of wheat that replicates itself indicates that we must produce other Christians.  When I mentioned that his principle of “like producing like” also seemed to apply to Christians with a deeper knowledge of God helping in the production of a deeper knowledge of God in other Christians, he told me I was doing violence to the text.

I can’t explain all of the feelings I felt at that moment and over the next couple of hours as I processed the conversation.  But what came out of it is this:  I want to offer an apologetic for spiritual formation in the context of a lost world full of people who desperately need Jesus.  My thoughts aren’t fully developed yet, so you will see here more a work in progress than a polished treatise, and it may come piecemeal, a bunch of bits here and more later.  But in the end, I hope to be able to pull together something that makes sense, has heart, and addresses the issue from a place of deep understanding and compassion.

Wow…that sounds ambitious after I write it like that.  Ambitious or not, here I come!

I’d love to have your feedback, both on the project and on any questions you’d like to see addressed.

Trying too hard? I

Lately, I feel like I start to get blog ideas, but they slip through my fingers when I try to nail them down.

Actually, that’s sort-of how I feel in a lot of my life–like I’m trying too hard. When I’m dissatisfied, though, that’s what I do–try harder. And right now I’m dissatisfied about quite a lot.

My history of trying goes back pretty far, to the point where, in 3rd or 4th grade I looked at the kids I wanted to be like and decided that I was just going to make myself like them. I didn’t really have another way out of the awful social situation at the time, and that was the only solution I could see. I actually did a pretty good job: I learned to laugh when I felt like crying, to smile even when I didn’t get it, to act like it was the other person who was acting like and idiot and not me. But I never lost the feelings. The pain, the bewilderment, the feeling totally and completely stupid never left. I just carried them around with me, waiting until they either exploded or dissipated.

In all of this, I’m struggling with questions of vocation.  I’m struggling with whether I’m supposed to “go after” the things I want, or wait for God to bring them to me.  This question has been one of my major ones for years–I know I’m supposed to DO things as part of my Christian walk, and that I can DO things there, I’m just never sure if I’m supposed to do them NOW.  I don’t want to usurp God’s place, to get bogged down in things that aren’t actually my calling or to impose my plans on my life without taking his into account, but I also don’t want to miss out on opportunities that could easily have been mine if I’d tried for them.  So I end up confused and either feeling paralyzed because any action could be wrong, or exhausting myself because I feel like I have to make things work.

I think God is taking me somewhere; I’m just not sure how hard I’m supposed to work to get there.

Perspective

Dave and I found out today that the seemingly pesky, annoying problem with our car will cost us the rest of our combined tax return to fix.  We spent the first half on the car last week, so that isn’t exactly exciting news.  At least, I suppose, we have the tax return.

And we still have each other.  I happened on this in my internet-ing today as I was on the phone with Dave about the car, and it made me cry (you know, in case the car problems weren’t…two reasons to weep on sale today, come on down!).   This story stays on my heart; pray for this woman and her family, even though I don’t know them and I’m not sure they would want to be prayed for.

Easter Musings

Holy Week is a hard week for me. Usually, it’s not hard for me to “get into” a story (as a child, I often struggled more to “get out”!). But Holy Week is hard because I know how it ends.

Good Friday? Well, yes, that’s the day we remember that Jesus died. But he came back! Two days later, I’m absolutely positive. Holy Saturday? I’m sure it was difficult beyond words for his friends and family to leave him, along with many of their hopes and dreams, in the tomb. But he came back!

Do you see the pattern here? This is why I struggle with the story of Jesus’ death (and, actually, all of Lent). It’s not that I don’t believe it, or that the emotional impact doesn’t hit me. It’s more that I don’t remember living life without knowing that Jesus came back. Ever since I was very small, since my first Easters, I’ve known that Jesus was the one who came back. That bit of knowledge has been central to who I understand him to be. Other people did their worst, did all of the terrible things to him, but he still came back. The fact that I know he comes back mitigates some of the pain and some of my ability to walk in those desolate places year after year.

As I write, I’m actually struggling with this. On the one hand, walking through some of those dark places seems important, even if all it ever serves to do is highlight Easter morning (and I would guess that it does more than that). On the other hand, my Lord lives. He is alive to me and I struggle to imagine him dead. The fact that I can’t live (even if only for a few days) in a world where he is gone tells me that I truly know him, alive and active. And in that, I rejoice.

In the end, I want to find a way to truly walk through Holy Week without losing the fact that he comes back. I want to honor him by remembering the worst, the hardest, the pain and indignity of it all. But I don’t ever, ever want to forget that the Lord is Risen. Indeed. Alleluia!

Headaches and heartaches

I’m writing this with what is threatening to become a migraine.  When I have a headache, thoughts don’t come well.  I don’t really care about what I’m doing or, at least, I don’t care about it nearly as much as I care about making the pain go away.  I see a problem and walk to the office of the person who can solve it for me, only to forget why I’m there.  I feel blah all over.  It becomes hard for me to focus.  It becomes difficult to relate to people, let alone to want to relate to them.  In other words, a bad headache interferes with my life.  It makes sense that it does; pain is distracting.

It’s hard for me to just let the pain be distracting, to say, “I’m not going to get as much done today because I hurt and there’s not much I can do about that.”  I want to fix it.  I feel like I’m weak because I can’t either make the pain go away or overcome it.  I feel like I should be better.  On the other hand, I am getting better at this.  I’m learning how to pay attention to my body and what a reasonable response is to different sorts of pain and discomfort.

It strikes me, though, that giving my body space to be (and taking care of it, and making choices that are good for it, etc.) is a lot easier (still!) than giving my heart space to be.  It’s still hard for me to know exactly what role my emotions should play in my daily life.  I know that I need to feel them and to learn what they have to teach me, but I’m never quite sure, in the moment, how much credence to give them.

I see this a lot with Dave–I want to be honest with him about how I feel, but sometimes I honestly just need to get over it before I talk to him.  I need to be able to say, “I was angry with you for…” but he doesn’t need to feel the full force of that anger.  I need to be able to say, “It hurt me when you…” but he doesn’t need to feel all of how much I was hurting, particularly when his hurtful action was only hurtful because it touched something else hurtful in me (sheesh–there’s a mouthful!).

I struggle with the fact that, to some extent, this feels like dishonesty.  It feels like I’m protecting him, like I think he can’t take it.  And that’s not true.  I don’t think I am.  He can.  But…I don’t want to make my decisions about how I treat him based solely on how I feel in a moment that can be influenced by so many other things than what is going on right then and there.

This happens in other arenas than with Dave.  It feels like I’m going through the same thing  emotionally and spiritually that I’ve been going through physically–trying to both pay attention and know what’s going on (with my body and my heart) but also to not overreact and give those things more credence than they should have.  Sometimes, I feel like I can overreact or underreact but I can’t respond.

A friend and I once started referring “balance” as “the B-word” and treated anyone who said it like they were swearing.  The older I get, the more convinced I become that maybe that was actually a justifiable reaction.

Easter carnival

Heyall, I wanted to let you know about this cool carnival over at my friend Jess’s site, Homemaking Through the Church Year. I plan to participate. You?

Social Justice in our own country

If you know me, you know that social justice is something I care about, but I do it quietly.  I’m not usually the one out there jumping on bandwagons and convincing others to come with me.  I’m posting this here because  awareness and caring about these sorts of things has been an outgrowth of spiritual maturing for me.

I just finished Fast Food Nation, a book which contains more information than I ever wanted to know about McDonalds.  However, it also contains deeply disturbing information about the status of workers in our own meatpacking industry.  To summarize, they are often illegal and almost always immigrants, mostly from Mexico and other Central American countries.  They work long hours in difficult conditions for less money than workers in other, similar industries.  They face the prospect of injury on a minute-by-minute basis and they do not have good health care (the plant has a vested interest in A) not having workers listed as “injured” and B) not paying to provide decent healthcare).  Sometimes, they are not given the necessary equipment to do their jobs safely, and they are often not given the time to keep their equipment in top shape, which would reduce injuries.

The stories go on.  If I had the book with me, I’d quote you some relevant passages to prove my points, but I don’t.  You can read here, here, here, or here for some recent news articles on the subject.

When I read about these people and heard some of their stories, it was almost enough to make me sick.  Literally, sick.  I didn’t puke, but I did cry.  I also actually thought about not eating meat anymore but decided against it because A) if lots of people did that, then these people wouldn’t have jobs at all and that didn’t seem like a long-term solution and B) I think Dave would die without meat.  But I want to help them.

It bothers me when we go somewhere else and throw our money into some cause overseas when there are people suffering in our midst.  It’s not that the people overseas aren’t people and don’t deserve our care.  In fact, I don’t want us to stop caring for them.  But if we are spending that much time, energy, and money caring for them, how much more should we be investing in our own, in the people living on our soil, some of them citizens of our country but all of them dependent on our business practices and laws for their safety?

I’m not sure how to help these people, but I’m sure that Jesus loves them and wants them to get help.  And I’m also sure that their help should come from the nation they’re living in, the nation they’re dependent on whether they’re “legal” or not.  If anyone has any ideas, let me know.  I’m doing my own research, but haven’t found much that’s promising.

I’m back

Or maybe I was never really gone.

*This is the short version of this post.  The long one got eaten by WordPress.*

I wasn’t planning to be back this quickly, but I am.  This week, though, was important for me.

I’ve been feeling technologically and informationally overwhelmed.  The stems largely from the fact that I spend most of my 40 hours of work every week in front of the computer.  A ding in my email means I need to respond.  A colored bubble with words that pops up on my monitor means I need to solve someone’s problem.  When I don’t have anything else to do or my next meeting isn’t for 10 or 15 minutes, the only way I have to “amuse” myself is to play on the internet.  However, this stopped being amusing and started being stressful.  I felt like all of my email and the blogs I write and the blogs I read and the blogs I comment on and the things I want to research online each were making little demands on me, and I was tired.

I needed to step back.  Externally, I needed to organize things so I could find the information I really wanted quickly and easily and not have to pick through the rest.  Internally, I needed to decide how important all of this is to me.  But I couldn’t do these things and fulfill the demands I felt impinging on me.

I’m tempted to feel silly because I let the internet make demands on me, I gave it that much pull in my life.  I do think, though, that it needs boundaries like everything else in life.  And I needed part of this week to figure out mine.

Hiatus

Can you take a hiatus from a blog that’s as young as this one is?

Lately, my words feel spent.  I start to write a post, and I can’t form it into anything before it all seems to blow away.  I think I’m tired, and I have a lot going on, both internally and externally.  It’s hard work, keeping up with 3 blogs, at least 2 jobs, and my life outside of those things.  So I’ll be back when the words return.  Ultimately, they always do.

Meanwhile, I will be praying Mary’s prayer (“May it be unto me according to your will”) and I will wait to see what the words say when they come back.