Coming To a Close

One month left.  Three long, exciting, difficult, intense years in a graduate counseling/marriage and family therapy program has come down to one month.  Hard to believe.

I find it ironic somehow that I’m sitting in the same seat as I was four years ago.  Not much external has changed over the past three years.  My job, certainly.  The work I do during the day.  But the shift, the movement, has been largely an inward one.  As I thought of that, I got the picture of William Wallace coming back home to the place of his youth early in the Braveheart film.  Same homestead.  Same people around him.  He was the same person… sort of.  But a different man, a different kind of man than he had been a boy.  Had he stayed, the trajectory of his life would have led him to a different spot.  He’d been disciplined.  Trained.  Honed.  He had been primed as a warrior.  His desire was still for peace, a reflection that his heart had not become hard or wicked; rather, he had developed skill and cunning for battle.

And battle it is, each day where I work.  My office is Stirling, and every counseling session is a taking of the field.  A movement either more toward freedom from tyranny — if only a single step — or a retreat toward it.  I don’t battle alone; I can’t.  I don’t mean only that the Lord God goes before more, for surely He does, and I don’t mean in this case that, like Wallace, I am a part of a band that knows their place in the story, for certainly I am.  What I mean here is that the war we’re fighting is for “the sons and daughters of Scotland,” for the freedom and life of all these precious ones sitting on my couch.  They must advance.  I spend much of my time preparing the advance, or instilling hope and courage into their hearts to pursue the vision of victory in the dreaded battle they find themselves facing, as much as I “go to pick a fight.”

But, unlike for Wallace’s  men, this is where the battle lines are drawn — is it not? — right through the hearts of us all.  It was Alexander Solzhenitsyn who said that “the universal dividing line between good and evil runs not between countries, not between nations, not between parties, not between classes, not even between good and bad men: the dividing line cuts… [through] the heart of every man.”  This is where the Enemy has set up camp.  And this is where we are called to fight, if we are to fight at all.  And fight we must.  This is where we experience either the joy of ground retaken, or the bondage of captivity and allegiance to the false king in our midst, to the wicked prince of a foreign territory.

I have come to see that my life, though not only about battle, must be about the battle for truth and life.  If only we had those given to us on silver platters.  We don’t.  Instead, we are in a war where it is just as often our own heads that find their way onto silver platters.  But we are given the strength and resources to fight that these things advance within us and among us.  And we have a kind and quality of life guaranteed us if we are willing to give our lives up to have it.

My own training is far from over; in some ways, I’ve only just begun to recognize the meaning and need of it.  And Jesus always seems to be about growing us more into His image as men and women pursuing hard after His kind of life, and willing to fight through hell and back for others to enjoy it with us.  (What else could God have meant by telling husbands to “love your wives, just as Christ loved the church” [Eph. 5:25]  How does He love the church?  By “giving Himself up for her” on the field of battle.)  But I’m nearing the end of one phase of my journey, entering more fully into the next.  I long for peace for these friends whom I meet — in their homes, in their marriages, in their work.  But, in the words again of Wallace, “it’s all for nothing if you don’t have freedom.”  And freedom is hard-won.  Maybe that’s the only way we come to appreciate it for what it is.

 

Apprentice Training

When we moved into our home a few years ago, we turned one of the spare bedrooms into an office.  Bookshelves line the far wall of the room, and sandwiched between two of them, right in the middle of the wall, sits a large desk.  It’s a simple one, with only a flat writing surface and some shelves beneath, nothing to block the view from the window right above it that looks out onto the street.  So not the best view in the world, but it does, at least allow for natural light and the view of an occasional bird or two and a small bit of the weeping willow in the front yard.

It used to, anyway.  The desk is now overflowing with scribbled notes, used manila folders, piles of books and notepads and journals.  Even the office chair will, on occasion, serve as an overflow, and more often than not now we’ll have to move stacks off of it to the floor in order to sit down to the computer, which also has as its residence the overpopulated desk.

When I started grad school two and a half years ago, I did pretty well keeping organized.  Everything had its place.  After each semester, I would place papers, folders, books, notes, and the like in a particular location, usually in a reserved spot on a bookshelf.  And my brain, too, would feel nicely organized.  Categorized, even.  Statistics and Research here.  Family Therapy there.  Human Growth and Development in another spot.  Marital Therapy in yet another.  None of that lasted long, though, and several spaces in my life are now simply flooding over.

Let me say something at this point about my field.  Marriage and Family Therapy is a really unique profession for several reasons.  For one, there are an endless number of problems folks can be having internally or in relationship to someone else for which they are seeking help.  Second, there are an endless number of  approaches to helping folks with these problems.  Third, how the problem manifests itself or seems to exist for one person may be totally different than for someone else, based on their unique personhood and experiences.  Many therapists will work in one of (you guessed it) an endless number of specializations.  Fourth, there are a seemingly endless supply of helpful resources, some of them written by wise and experienced healers and helpers, from which a therapist fresh in the field like myself can glean.  Fifth…. well, you get the picture.  Lots of possibilities.

One of the most exciting things about my present situations is that as an intern I am exploring these possibilities by working with a large number of different issues, and exploring a few different tried-and-true approaches to treating some of these unique problems.  (Even focusing on “problems” reveals a kind of approach, and not every approach focuses on problems.)  It’s been nearly a year now that I’ve been seeing patients, and I can still say that at least once a week I encounter something I have never seen before.  That’s another unique aspect of the profession.  I am constantly kept on my toes and forced to be not only humble in learning and creative in trying, but also deeply dependent upon walking with God.

Now maybe my stacks of books and mile-long Amazon wish list make a bit more sense.  I find myself often living out of the urgent: I must learn about this; I must be ready for that; I must be able to work well with this… It can be quite exhausting.  By the end of a work week my brain often feels like Malt-O-Meal: mushy and expanding, running out of my ears.

I’ve been searching for awhile for another perspective on all of this, a way to understand both what I am doing and what I need to do as I prepare, as my hands are “trained for battle,” as David put it in the Psalms (18:34).  This morning, I finally got a glimpse of a picture simple enough to work for me (and so simple that it was easily missed).

It’s from Jesus.  I mean, of course it is — God gave this picture to me this morning — but I mean that the words come right from His mouth, in Matthew 13:52.  He says this: “Then you see how every student well-trained in God’s kingdom is like the owner of a general store who can put his hands on anything you need, old or new, exactly when you need it” (The Message).

There it is.  It’s a simple thought, really, but there’s a lot there.  We get to be students of Jesus, trained in living life that is truly life, and who has these treasures stored up within our deep hearts, able to pull out what’s needed when it’s needed.  These treasures may be encouragement, exortation, caution, teaching, compassion, empathy, direction, clarity, meaning, joining with someone in the mess of their life — all these things.  More importantly, though, and more to the point of life in the Kingdom, I think these treasures have to do with presence, with the weight of our lives impacting someone else.  I think the treasures are, simply put, our hearts, and the grace to join in relationship with someone else from the heart.

One of the pitfalls of my graduate training is that, in focusing on theories of counseling and techniques of therapy developed over the decades by hundreds (literally) of practicioners, we begin to think, even subtly, that for every person, every issue, every broken place, every event, we have to have an answer, a fix, a solution.  Especially in the culture we’re in, where microwavable meals are ready in minutes, technology changes quickly, and medical advances allow for restoration of physical injuries and illnesses that would have spelled disaster even just a few years ago.

But that’s not the invitation of Jesus.  That’s not His way.  Think of it.  He could have handed us a playbook on day one, a set of principles and techniques to live out in every circumstance of life (though, admittedly, it would be quite a thick volume).  He chose instead of give us one, and leave out libraries worth (John the Beloved may have been expressing some of the frustration at leaving out so much — see John 21:25).  And the book He left us with is chock full of one repeating, alluring, frightening intrigue:  relationship.  Covenant.  Friendship.  Intimacy.  Connection.  Like it or not, that’s His desire with us.

And it makes sense.  I can’t imagine how disappoined we’d be if when we were young our father handed us some notes and said, “Son (or daughter), here is everything I know concerning anything you’ll run into over the next 10 years.  Inside are all the instructions that I want you to carry out and everything I want you to do, including where you are to be 10 years from now when I’ll come back and see how you’ve done.”  Forget that.  No way.  That’s slavery, not intimacy.  Rather, for those of us who had good fathers (and for those of us who didn’t, think of what you would’ve wanted with your father), we were invited into relationship… he taught us how to bait a hook, how to ride a bike, how to count money, what to do when you like a girl (or, for daughters, how boys only “want one thing” at that age), and how much he delights in us, how proud he is of how we’re doing.  We need counsel — we go to him.  We get hurt, we need his affection.  We get an applause at our school play, and we look for his face in the crowd.  With him we learn to walk, we wrestle, we feel his strong protection, we grow up to be like him.  Eventually, we share a beer and a steak with him and talk about politics and local happenings.  We share life together.  That’s the ideal, anyway.

That’s a picture of what we’re invited into with God.  He wants that with us, and more.

Jesus’ mission is one of healing and restoration, right?  It’s a ministry He laid out in Isaiah 61, that He announced in Luke 4:18-19, and that He comissioned for us to carry on — see Luke 10:19, Mark 16:15-18, John 16:8-15, Matthew 28:18-20.  He isn’t interested only in this work getting done; He’s interested also in joining us while we do it — or us joining Him while He does, as it’s probably better said.  This is the kind of work happening in the Christian counseling office.  He in no way intends to give us every technique we need.  That would rip us off from the relationship.  Instead, we get to walk with Him, hear Him, let Him lead and teach us — like a good father would!

In the context of that relationship, and the relationship-of-the-heart we offer one another, there will necessarily be healing and restoration taking place.  But it’s always, always, in that context.  That’s the way the Kingdom works.  It is a partnership — us with God and (because of His generosity), us with one another.  Understanding human nature, its corruption and disconnection, processes of restoring it back to health and wholeness, and techniques that lead to that — these are important, and crucial, in my opinion, for the Christian therapist to understand and implement in constantly growing clarity and skill.  But they are not a replacement for that really scary invitation to walk with the Lord Jesus, move with the Spirit of God, and know the heart of the Father.

I’ve got a few more months of grad school to complete.  There’s more to learn — more books to read, people to glean wisdom from, notes to take, documents and articles and ideas to work through.  I suspect there always will be — and I certainly hope that to be the case.  I’m sure I’ll be moving more piles around and trying to organize all the information.  But the important thing is not on the theory.  It’s not on the principles.  It’s not the formulaic approach to life.  The treasure is God, relationship with Him, and our hearts restored to the capacity to enjoy Him.  Forever.  To the extent that we can live in and offer that, whatever our profession, then we are learning to live well and easy in the Kingdom come.  Most of my core training in the Kindom comes from learning to hear the voice of the Lord God, to submit to Him, to allow Him to work in me, to join Him from the heart, and to be transformed.  Only from that Center will any of the rest find its rightful place.

 

A Daring Reach

Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
-John 20:27

In moments of duress we respond with either “fight or flight.”  How many times have we heard that adage?  It’s become so commonplace, we often take for granted that it is simply true.  We have only these two choices whenever we’re anxious, right?  We either fight or flee.  A centipede will do that.  As will a barn swallow.  And so will a cow.  Maybe that’s the point, that in our evolutionary-minded culture we just assume that we came from the same amoebic slime and have these responses as hold-overs to our ape-ish great-(to the n-th degree)-grandparents.  An article found on msn.com’s homepage today echoes this assumed reality: “The famous fight or flight response mechanism—yep, the same one that helped our ancestors outrun saber-toothed tigers…”

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I guess, I’ve always felt like these were pretty limited options and somehow pretty animalistic.  Maybe as a weary, worn-out people, this is what we often do.  Much of what I see in my counseling office is people anxiously combating or fearfully avoiding relationship or situations — and that seems to fit the bill.  What other options can there be?

Recently I was challenged to consider a baby’s response to his environment.  Raised in a healthy environment, whenever hungry and needing his mother’s breast, the baby reaches.  Whenever frightened and wanting comfort, he again reaches for his mother.  Whenever exposed to new things or people and uncertain about them, he reaches for security from mom.  There is no fight or flight in him.  Not yet.  It is all reach.

It is only as that baby grows and experiences the fallen world, repeatedly exposed to fearful and painful events where he reaches and finds no one, that he learns to defend or hide.  As an adult, then, he has learned to “live out all the other selves,” as Frederich Buechner put it, “which [he is] constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather.”  The original innocence is all but lost.  Accessibility, vulnerability, authenticity, strength — gone, or buried.  Buechener continues, “The original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all.”

From my experience, when Buechener says, “most of us,” he is speaking literally.  It is extremely rare to encounter anyone able to live out some deep and true and good heart.  It is the stuff of fairytales and legends.  When we see it, we are stirred and even captivated.  We want to be like that, or be reached by someone who is like that.  Think of heroes in Hollywood blockbusters.  Or maybe the occasional firefighter running up the stairs of the collapsing Twin Towers to rescue bleeding and burning victims.  The reason we write books and make movies depicting such a character is not because we see it around us (or within us), but exactly because we often don’t.  Our souls are buried by demands, imprisoned by pain, blinded by fear.  Broken and lost to us.

The loss of this treasured “original, shimmering self” is one of the greatest tragedies of the Fall.  A tragedy so great, in fact, that it was for rescue and restoration of it that God launched the greatest invasion the world has even known.  It is for want of this back that Jesus came “to seek and save what was lost” Luke 19:10.  His mission in his own words is to, “bind up the brokenhearted… to comfort… to proclaim freedom for the prisoners… recover sight for the blind… release the oppressed…” (see Isaiah 61:1 and Luke 4:18).

One of the ways Jesus does this is by reaching.  When Jesus “reached out his hand and touched” the leper (Matthew 8:3) and “reached out his hand and caught” Peter (Matthew 14:31), he was both saving them (from death) and modeling for them the courageous act of reaching.  He reached the man at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-15) and the woman at the well (John 4:1-26) in a similar way (just more indirect, though no less subtle).  The gospels are filled with stories of Jesus reaching out to us, of God stooping to face us and call us friends and bringing us up to His level.  My own life is filled with stories of the same.  So intent is He, in fact, to reach for and save the “original, shimmering self” that He obstinately refuses the false self, the coats and hats we wear.  And His refusal to acknowledge or be in relationship with the false self can often cause confusion over His intent and motive. (Consider how confusing it must have been for the Pharisees that Jesus chastized and offended.  In his offensive way with them, Jesus was still reaching for the buried self, even in refusing to address the pretense.  Whenever one of them responded to Jesus with authenticity, Jesus would address him in kind [see, for example, John 3:1-21]). His reaching is such that St. Theresa of Avila says He not only reaches by giving Himself for us, but He also gives Himself to us in a reach of rescue.

In reaching for and toward us (and how far He comes to do that!), Jesus invites us to reach back.  Even when we are living out of the cynicism and despair and unbelief we’ve learned in this world.  This was His approach to Thomas, who refused even to acknowledge Him at all.  Jesus simply offered, “Reach out your hand and put it to my side.  Stop doubting and believe” (John 20:27).

I am constantly amazed at the courage of my clients that, after all the pain of living they have experienced, after all the encounters of reaching out and finding no one, that they are still reaching for something, demonstrated by the very act of coming to see me.  Something in them balks at and refuses to completely embrace in existential despair that they are totally alone in the universe.  Maybe it’s not the original expectations that someone would be there to offer the comfort and protection they needed, but the very act of stepping into my office and opening their hearts and lives to me is in itself a courageous reaching.

The reach response of an infant who hasn’t yet learned to fight in desperation or flee in fear, and the subtle and trepidatious reach found in some of us still hoping for someone or something on the other end, is an image of God in us.  Maybe the most glorious part of that image in us, that part of “eternity set in the heart of man,” as Ecclesiastes puts it.  In a way that is brutal and even demanding, Jesus still invites us to reach toward Him, out of the deepest love for us and desire that in the reaching, “we may have life, and have it to the full,” that in the seeking, we may both find and be found.

 

On Methods and Mystery

Recently I was counseling a young lady who by external standards had everything in life figured out.  On her way to getting her Master’s degree, she has been sought out by a prestigious company offering her a nice bonus for signing on with them.  She was dating a star athlete at her college.  And she had enough cash and friends to keep her evenings and weekends full and exciting.  She had everything in place.  The world was her playground.  Life was hers for the taking.

Except that she didn’t feel very much alive.  In fact, she discovered that all of the focus on these externals kept her spinning and dizzy with busy activity, but left her weary and full of anxiety whenever it stopped for just a brief moment.  It was like a marry-go-round for her.  As long as it was spinning fast, she had a blast.  But the bell had rung, recess was over.  She looked up to see a lot of the people she really cared about going on toward better things.  And her?  She only felt abandoned and seasick.

As you can guess by the neglected state of her internal life, her relationship with God was practically nill.  In fact, she wasn’t even sure that he was real.  After all, she’d never really felt him.  It was easier, she decided, to hope that God didn’t exist than to deal with a God who existed and yet she didn’t feel Him near her.  That would mean either He’s not interested or she’s doing something wrong.  Either scenario would be more painful to deal with than if He didn’t exist at all.  Agnosticism was a safer choice than facing the pain of the alternative.

Several silent minutes went by while she processed some of this reality and slowly gave herself over to this truth.  With her head in her hands, stated simply, “I’ve always lived my life like it were a formula.  Everything was a problem that could be solved with the right steps and procedures.  The right method.  The right answer.  But this totally breaks down with God, doesn’t it?”

And so the unknown beckons.  It is a safe life that demands to be formulaic.  It is only the bold and adventerous ones that have had to, at some point and with some things, throw caution to the wind.

We prayed together, and she invited Jesus to move and speak into places in her that had been left cold and desolate by the demands she’d placed on herself.  Her heart, you see, could not follow suit with her life lived only in the mind.  Somewhere along the way, she had bound it up and dragged it along behind her, kicking and screaming.  Now it’s snagged, and refuses to go along any longer.  It must be addressed.

To enter into the kind of life worthy of our living means that we will enter into the deep mystery of the human delimma.  There is simply no way around it.  The questions of our existence will surface, and so will the question of God’s involvement — or seeming lack of it — in our lives.  Where is He?  Where was He?  Where is He now?  There are no formulas for these questions.  No quick answers.  The only thing we have to go on is the hope that He’ll meet us in the asking, and give us His heart for the taking as we slowly open ours to Him along the way.

There was a subtle change in this lady’s life on this day.  Not dramatic, perhaps, nothing anyone else could identify.  But some quiet notion that life is to be had, and it is not easily won.  How much does she want it?

And that is where we must begin.  How much do any of us really want it?

 

This World: Battleground

A. W. Tozer has given one of his books a great title, “This World: Playground or Battleground?“  It’s an insightful book, and Tozer spends page after page unpacking that one question he asks with the title.  We’ve heard not to judge a book by its cover.  I think this one judges me, waiting for my response to that question.  What do I think the world is?

In my life, I’ve come to see it as a battleground.  Now, seeing clients as a part of my counseling training, I come face-to-face yet again with the question.  How do I see the lives of these folks that come to see me?  How do they see it?  More, how do I see what I am doing alongside them?  What is counseling like?

It is a battleground.

It’s an amazing gift, this ability to step into someone’s journey and walk with them awhile.  There are, of course, as many reasons for someone coming to counseling as there are people who do, but all of them have one common, central theme: battle.  In a sense, what we think about our lives is not as important as what really is. Of course, a important goal is to begin to see things as they really are, to align our perception of things with reality.  That’s a good definition of sanity, and a prerequisite to living well.  But, bottom line, we live in the midst of a life-and-death struggle between powers infinitely stronger than we, and we truly are caught in the middle.  In fact, we are the reason for it, and our lives are often the context in which this battle plays out.

Back to counseling.  It is a grave mistake to believe that our only difficulties as people are depression or anxiety or relationship struggles.  Yes, these are problems.  Yes, we need relief from them.  But we must see them in context of the battle we face every day of our lives, because we need healing.  And to join someone even for a moment on their journey is to join in the battle with them.  It is a great joy and honor to do so; it is also a weighty thing, an invitation fraught with peril if we are not well-prepared.

To prepare means a few things: First, that we recognize the battleground we are walking onto; Second, that we recognize the Warrior who is come to rescue us and with whom we fight alongside in this person’s life; Third, that we know the enemy we are facing, even if our brother or sister does not; Fourth, that we enter in the battle with armor well-fitted and well trained in the use of our weapons; And finally, that we walk closely shoulder-to-shoulder with others who are seasoned in battle.

We enter into the battleground as warriors.  To do any less is a perilous venture.

 

A Surprising Encounter

I’m big on journaling. It’s a discipline I discovered some years back that helps me process through what God is showing me, that helps me express desires or fears that may be buried beneath the busyness of the day, that helps me engage in prayer with the Lord when the noise outside is too loud.

Lately He is leading me into a more profound and disciplined experience of the Kingdom through a more intense and intentional style of journaling. I’m reading through Leanne Payne’s Listening Prayer, in which the author describes a system of keeping hold of the things God reveals and ways of exploring the depths of His word.

It’s not tips or techniques that I am after; it is a broader experience of the life of God through the spiritual disciplines. I’ve become rutted a bit as of late, and I sense Christ leading me into more.

Take this morning’s prayer time, for example…

I usually make the most of my 40-minute commute to work in the morning by praying. My sort of “first prayer” or “waking prayer” of my day is fairly liturgical; I have a list of what I know I need to bring to God, including myself and my family and then friends, coworkers, and my students, in consecration, petition, intercession, resistance against the Evil One, and the like. It’s critical for me to come to Christ this way as early in my morning as possible and receive His counsel for what He will lead me into through the day. As important as it is, it has lately become a bit… stagnant. It’s routine, which doesn’t necessarily in itself mean dry, except that it is beginning to feel pretty stuffy. It’s not very enlivening or surprising or even conversational anymore, at least not this first prayer of the day.

I’ve been trying to figure out lately what to do about this. There are things on my heart I know I need to pray through. Not knowing what needed to change, I’ve continued in the routine but hoping for something fresh, like working through a hot day waiting for a cloud or a cool breeze.

This morning the Lord God brought me something different, something more beautiful than I could have expected, and something I could not have planned for. It was all His initiative. It came by way of a song.

“Be Thou My Vision” is my favorite hymn, and in fact may well be my favorite piece of literature and liturgy ever written. I used to hold it close and pray it often, but somehow the words got lost in the shuffle of my life. A contemporary artist a few years back released an album containing this song, complete with contemplative music accompanying the lyrics. I can’t say what brought me to listen to it, but I found it on my iPod and started listening.

By the time I left for work, I knew that I needed to begin praying through my day, but something kept drawing me back to the song. It felt like the tug of a little child on your shirt asking for your attention. I couldn’t step away from it. I replayed it. Again. Then again. When I started feeling the pressure to turn it off, I heard the voice of the Spirit in my heart say, “No, listen to it. Play it again. This will serve as your prayer to me this morning. Sing along with the full expression of passion within you.”

On the same album, I found a rendition of the Keith Green song, “Lord You’re Beautiful,” and echoed with the words praise to God. For forty minutes I let these two songs carry me into a worship and prayer with this Lover and Life-giver that blew the dust off of my morning liturgies and opened me up again to beauty and the joy of surprise and delight I find in expressing myself to the Lord, and of hearing Him respond.

I pulled up to work, parked the truck, and sang aloud, “Lord You’re beautiful, Your face is all I seek, for when Your eyes are on this child, Your grace abounds to me…” Shutting the truck off, I looked up and noticed the car parked across from had written on the windshield in white shoepolish the words, “You’re beautiful.” Yeah! I was singing this to God and here even inanimate objects were joining with me! And immediately then I recognized that this was God speaking back to me. I heard, “You are beautiful, my son. Nothing is more compelling than your delight in me. You conquer me with your love.”

I could not have made all of this happen. I can’t even say for sure why now. I mean, why was it this morning that I was able to have such an intimate time with the Lord when weeks have gone where our interactions have felt stifled? Perhaps I was desperate enough to hear Him. Maybe I was just quiet enough to hear Him, “my house now being still” and all of that. Or, maybe He was just ready to speak, to bring something new and fresh to me.

Whatever the reason, it was beautiful, and I am taken all over again by this brush with the Living One. He disciplines us, and we take our place in the relationship by offering Him our hearts and minds and lives as timber, but it is the Presence we must encounter if we are to have the Fire. This is His part, His promise, to “be with us” (John 14:16, Romans 16:20, 2 Corinthians 3:11, 2 Thessalonians 3:18, Hebrews 13:25). I am getting the feeling that when Jesus says He will be with us, He really means to be with us, in ways that newlyweds on their wedding night are “with” one another, only moreso. He means to have us.

 

Taking Up My Cross

What does it look like to love? It looks like Jesus. Period. He is Love, and as such is the perfect picture of it. And to model it, not only do I need grace in godly measure, I also must model Jesus in His life, even as He is in me — not only in the “spotlight” moments when He is interacting with someone, but (or rather) those where He is away in solitude and prayer with His Father, where He is fasting in the wilderness, where He is being baptized by His cousin. The sleepless nights where He poured His heart out to God, the reception He gave to the angels who attended to his hungry frame, His resistance — His persistent resistance — to the pressures and demands of the world’s kingdoms, its demands and rigors.

In short, to love is to follow Jesus in all of these things, the small, unannounced times of discipline and testing, as well as the grand on-the-spot moments of profound love and wisdom. I cannot expect to enjoy the latter if I do not maintain a consistent lifestyle in the former.

This all comes this week because of a friend of mine, and because by way of my broken-heartedness for him and even for the limited and fallible ways I have handled his heart and our relationship.

He’s a mess, this friend of mine. His life is defined in his struggle to run as fast as he can through his day, shoving through everyone in his path who slows him down, so that he does not have to stop and face the devastation he has left in the wake of his destructive living. To face reality for him would feel like his undoing — which ironically enough would be his undoing, yet the only true way to enter into something better. He would have to recognize the wounds he has inflicted upon those he wants to love, and he would have to recognize the wounds of his own soul inflicted by those who were supposed to love him, especially his family.

But instead of addressing the wounds, he has formed a life around them. It reminds me a bit of the Black Night in The Search for the Holy Grail. King Arthur chops his arms and legs off, yet he still hobbles around declaring victory against him instead of surrender. He is dismembered, bleeding, unable to walk — and certainly unable to love and protect those who have been entrusted to him — and yet he dismisses these as “mere flesh wounds.” My friend ends up wielding a sword that he is not equipped or well enough to handle, and as a result he slices and dices into the meat of his children, his wife, his family, his friends, and on and on. (More can be read of my friend here.)

The “In-Tension” of Love

I have tried to be faithful to what the Lord has spoken to my heart, and to act toward him in authentic love — love that calls him out to become the man he was born to be, while embracing in felt affection the man he sees each day in the mirror. But these two actions feel almost contradictory to each other. Paradoxes of love. I’ve heard that God “loves us where we are but loves us too much to keep us there.” How? I know that to be true, and yet to live in the tension of that love is to expose your heart to forces fierce enough to break it. If Jesus goes there, I want to as well, whatever the consequences, for this is true life. There is life to be found in following Him — even in this — and nowhere else. Like Thomas when Jesus announced He was going back to Judea (straight into the den of lions, so-to-speak) out of this love for His friend Lazarus, and chose to go with Jesus even if it meant his death (John 11:7-16), so I too choose to go with Him here in the Way of Love for my friend. (Jesus’ love of Lazarus was a similar kind of tension. Lazarus was dead, and Jesus came to him and wept for the loss. Yet He didn’t leave Lazarus there. His love for him brought him out of the tomb.)

So, where now, my King and Commander? Where now do we place our feet? In which direction are You walking? How — how, Jesus — How do I love [my friend] in this as You do? And how do I love him as You have called me to?

Be bigger than his sins and wounds. Be greater than all those who enable him and all who reject him. Be better than my failure to love him well — at least well enough to bring healing to him. Be his Savior, as You have been mine. In Your lovingkindness, deliver him from the shadow of death. Make him thirst ever more for You (Psalm 107) until he finds You through dry and desperate seeking!

And teach me to get out of Your way, that You may be his Counselor and Friend, even as You are his Redeemer and Suitor.

And come to my heart and bring me Your comfort. I put it to rest in You, broken, humbled, hurting, longing, and trusting. Ever hopeful in your boundless and endless love. Your wisdom. your grace. Your purposes. Master In the Ways of Living, teach me to live well in this.

Amen.