Lies Meet the Truth Part 2, What the Truth Did

The Truth is not a collection of ideas. It is far too big to simply pass through my mind or to be tainted by lies. I’ve been trying to make it in the image of the lies I’ve known. But a lie isn’t the opposite of Truth any more than a cat is the opposite of a dog. They are different breeds entirely.

Just as I’ve tried to shove the lies out; I’ve tried to drag the truth in. It doesn’t work. It’s like trying to push water aside; it will make you move, but you’ll never move it.

No, the Truth is not a collection of beliefs or the opposite of lies. He is a person; He is love embodied.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I wake in a clean bed, in a cool room. Calm, but a bit confused. Where am I? Wasn’t I in my filthy house overrun by disgusting lies? Wasn’t I cowering in a corner helpless, wounded, afraid and angry? Where am I?

I slowly realize. Reality begins to separate from dream. Because it was a dream. I mean, it wasn’t all a dream. No, I really lived through it, I see the scars on myself as proof. The lies were real and so was the pain. But so was the Hero. He did come for me, and He took me away immediately. I was safe the moment He was there. The lies never touched me after He arrived.

I had been delirious. I couldn’t tell the difference between today, yesterday, and tomorrow. I didn’t know that the pain I was feeling was no longer from abuse, but from painful wounds being healed. I knew that He had come but I didn’t remember Him taking me away. I knew that He promised to save me, promised I would always be safe, but in my feverish tossing as He cared for me, I didn’t know that He was still here.

But He was. He is.

I am still weak. Still content to lay in bed and try to get used to these new surroundings. I’m still trying to think through what has happened to me. A lot has happened. But I’m awake. I know the difference between yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I’m sane again. The past is gone, and so are the continual nightmares of it. Tonight, when I go to bed, there is no guarantee that I won’t have bad dreams. But dreams will stay dreams, and no longer masquerade as reality.

I am scarcely involved in, much less responsible for my own healing. Unless you count accepting rest and care. Unless you count accepting Him. I’ll lie here, with nothing to do but watch the Healer as He cares for me. Nothing to do but consider the fact that He must, actually, love me.

Lies Meet the Truth Part 1, How the Lies Came

When I was young and naïve they came to me, these lies. Only one at first. It promised to help, to fill the emptiness, calm the fears, and bring order in my chaos. It never mentioned any price it only wanted to be a friend to me. So I accepted.

As soon as I let it in it made itself at home and I found we weren’t just friends, we were friends with benefits, or else. Somehow, I never considered tossing it out. Once you give yourself to something it’s hard to throw it out and far from alleviating my fears it magnified them. No, I didn’t try to get rid of it, I protected it. But this lie wasn’t being helpful as it promised at all. It was abusing me and now I was more desperate than ever.

So more came knocking on my door. Like salesmen with the latest model. “We’ve heard your screams and we have the answer to your misery.” They would help, they didn’t require anything in return. They only wanted to be friends. So in desperation I let one in after the other. Until I was less than a slave in my own heart.

Each one made themselves at home. They formed relationships with one another. Some hated each other and fought all the time, I was always collateral damage. Others worked together to make my misery worse.

And they all, separately, required their benefits. Intimacy, forced, whenever they wanted, however they liked. I still hoped naively that each new one would be the hero to deliver me from the last ones. But it never worked like that.

Each one fed on the ones before it, more of a monster, more abusive, more controlling, and always requiring more of me.

Then there came a time when I quit looking for a hero. I quit answering the door. I was too busy cowering exhausted and naked in my corner hoping none of them would notice me. But it didn’t help. They were only too happy to answer it for me and invite their relatives in.

But all this was only in my head. So I learned two defenses. Try not to think, because my head was full of only lies that I no longer wanted any part of, or plot revolt and revenge. I wouldn’t be too surprised if the lies themselves taught me these defenses. Little help have they ever been to me.

But a Hero has come. I don’t really know what He is up to or how He got in. I wonder sometimes, why He doesn’t throw them all out immediately. I think maybe they are in too deep for a quick fix. He won’t yank them away, He will care for me until I throw them out myself. Sometimes I hate Him for this.

I haven’t tasted much of His Peace, but sometimes I smell it, like fresh baked bread. To be hungry and smell food without tasting it. Well, I hate Him for this too sometimes.

I know that some of them have gone. I know it’s because of Him. I think I might have had something to do with it as well, but I don’t know what. Sometimes I look for Him and can’t seem to find Him. As though He left me to them again for a while.

I get the idea that I am supposed to have power over them myself, but I don’t understand that either. Sometimes it seems like I have, sometimes not. So I keep plotting my escape, often in despair, or I try not to think.

I know that the Truth is laying around here somewhere but why does it seem so laid back? Why does it seem that I have to prod it into action but lies are animated on their own? Isn’t Truth supposed to have a life of its own?

I want easy answers. I want quick relief.

Even here I see the influence of the lies. They seep out of everything I say and do. Nothing is clear of them. This is what I hate the most. This is why I try not to think. Because every little idea is marred by them. I recognize their mark but I don’t know how to remove it.

I determine to meditate on the truth, I determine to ignore the lies at least for a moment without the escape of not thinking. And I find even the Truth is not unstained once it has passed through my mind. When will I be free?

One of my earliest memories is of looking out across our back yard. I would guess that it was between one and two acres but there was also a pasture behind it, so it seemed to go on much bigger. In the spring the whole yard, as well as the pasture, was covered in small white sweet smelling flowers.

I remember looking across the huge expanse (I couldn’t have been more than four, an acre alone was a huge expanse) and it taking my breath. It was like a sweet royal carpet of gently waving white. It was magical to me.

“Everyone on board was filled with joy and excitement, but not an excitement that made one talk. . .Whiteness, shot with faintest color of gold spread round them on every side. . .There seemed no end to the lilies. Day after day from all those miles and leagues of flowers there rose a smell which Lucy found it very hard to describe; sweet--yes, but not at all sleepy or overpowering, a fresh, wild, lonely smell that seemed to get into your brain and make you feel that you could go up mountains at a run or wrestle with an Elephant. She and Caspian said to one another, ‘I feel that I can’t stand much more of this, yet I don’t want it to stop.’” -C. S. Lewis The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I have this picture on my desktop right now. I took it myself so I know the actual events surrounding it. I hadn't seen it for a few months though, and running across it the other day it wrote a new story in my mind. It reminds me at the same time of distant shores and of coming home. The water and the sky are grey and troubled. The rain may be coming or going. Somehow, it still speaks peace to me. It's beautiful and hope clearly shines on the horizon.

Grace, Love & Fireflies

It was moving day. Actually, it was the last day of moving week, or moving month. At the age of six I wasn’t very good at knowing how long it had been, I was only old enough to know it had been long enough. Finally, we would be living at our new home.

As any moving day, it was busy and long. There were lots of family and friends helping. Lots of people asking, “Where does this go? Can you grab the other end of this? Be careful with that! Has anyone found the ___?”A six-year-old wasn’t much help, so I spent most of the day being kindly shuffled out of the way by one person or another. It was an eternally long day to me.

When things quieted down, the friends left, and all the boxes were stacked high at the new house, I became aware that my two older sisters got bay windows in their new rooms but I didn’t. I just hadn’t really thought about it until then, but those windows were beautiful and perfect for reading in. If I could have one I’d be just like a girl in a story with my own little cubby to sit in. But I didn’t have one.

My little sister and I had the big room up front, with two boring floor to ceiling windows that had window ledges too small to even fit a knick knack in. It was the last straw of a long, tiring day at the end of a long, tiring week and I burst into tears. My family was a bit flabbergasted. What were they to do? They were sorry, but they couldn’t just give me a bay window! They tried to explain to me how wonderful my own room was. It was much bigger, I got two windows instead of just one bay window, and it would have all my things in it. But I was inconsolable.

Then Mom talked to Dad and they came up with a plan. Dad took me for a walk, just him and me. I remember feeling a little sorry for my other sisters that they weren’t coming too, but still grateful it was just him and me. I was relieved to have Dad time after that embarrassing teary outburst, but I also wasn’t going to be talked out of the wonders of bay windows if that was his next plan.

Dad didn’t try to talk me out of bay windows. I don’t remember if we really talked at all. We walked a short way down our new street to the empty corner that was woods with a little foot path. It was dusk out and the day was cooling off; it was beautiful and calm. Just a little way into the woods, it happened. A flicker here, another a short way off. In moments we were surrounded by fireflies.

Fireflies are always beautiful. But that evening, with a long, disappointing day behind me, and my Dad’s hand holding mine, fireflies weren’t just beautiful. They were heart-healingly magical. We stood there and soaked it up together for a few moments.

“There’s one!”

“Did you see that one?”

“There’s two at once!”

Then Dad caught one to show me up close. It was so tiny in his hand, struggling to get away, but still lighting up. He carefully held it between his fingers so as not to hurt it and turned it upside down to show me. I was filled with wonder. It was just a bug! Yet, it was so much more than a bug; it was a beautiful mystery.

That night, I slept in my new room that didn’t have a bay window. I was still tired. It had still been a long and disappointing day. I never got a bay window, and I still want one. But somehow none of that mattered anymore. I had shared fireflies with Dad. A short half hour of shared love and beauty changed that whole long day into one of the most precious memories of my life.

To Those Who Know Me

Friend ... that loaded word.

I love people. I adore them actually. When I people watch, I sometimes literally feel sorry for myself that I can’t get to know them. I know it’s terribly sappy and ridiculous, but I’m trying to be honest here.

The even weirder thing is that in spite of this wish to know every interesting person in the world. (Okay, there might be a few exceptions.) I am often afraid to get to know my own friends. There is always one question looming over me. “What if I fail them?” This comes in a few varieties, including but not limited to, “What if I end up being that one person that they learned to count on and then isn’t there at the critical moment? What if I don’t talk to them very often? What if I do something that makes them feel judged? What if I hurt them?”

With my weird and bad health thrown in, some of these questions felt even more pressing. What if this person knew that all I can think about when I talk to them is how tired I am? How would that person be able to trust me again if they ever found out that for a few moments I absolutely could not remember who they were? How could I ever explain that even my love can’t overcome my physical weakness?

I’ve even gone so far as to tell people, “I love you, but I can’t promise to be there for you. I’m simply not reliable.” I’ve explained to people, “You can call me, but don’t be surprised if I don’t return your calls. You can write me, but I’ll probably forget to write you back.”

I said these things because I thought they were true, I wanted to be honest, I didn’t want to disappoint. I said these things because I wanted to be perfect for you and I knew I would fail. I thought I was breaking it gently, but the truth is that I wasn’t trusting God.

I thought that you needed me to be there all the time, preferably in the same town, or even the same house with you. I thought you needed me to be able to have hours and hours of phone conversations and encouraging letters every month at least, and regular Friday night hangouts, too. I thought you needed me to never be awkward or just plain wrong. I thought you needed me to never disappoint you. Now I realize, I thought you needed me to be God.

The strange thing is that none of you ever asked this of me. I’m the only one who decided what kind of friend I should be. I’m the only one who let friendships die, not from lack of communication, because some of the people I communicate the least frequently with are some of my closest friends. Instead, I let fear starve my friendships. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to be there all the time, so I eventually wasn’t there at all.

I’m writing this to tell you that I am so sorry.

I’m writing this to tell you that I’ve missed you. I’m sorry that I convinced you that I’d never return your phone calls. I still might be terrible at it, but I’m grateful for every chance you give me. I’m sorry my health sometimes makes me boring, forgetful, moody, and airheaded. But if you can put up with a friend that is all those things, I am so willing. I’m sorry that I’ve wasted so much time wishing I could be God to you, but if you want a friend who struggles with a God complex then I’m the person you’re looking for.

I’m sorry I don’t have all the time in the world but if you’re willing to work with whatever God gives us, then I am more than willing to treasure the moments He gives us to share. I’m sorry if I’ve ever communicated that we can’t be friends because we believe differently. Believing differently had nothing to do with it; we couldn’t be friends because I was too afraid.

I’m especially sorry for those of you in the past that I judged and condemned. I was playing God then too, and I’m terrible at the part.

If you are willing to remind me that you don’t need me to be perfect, then I want to be there for you during those times when you do need me. I don’t want fear to steal any more of the lovely relationships I could be sharing. Thanks for being patient with me and giving me more grace than I was even capable of accepting.

Lauren the Omniscient (and a bit about trust)

Everyone prefers knowledge to stupidity. Almost everyone gets frustrated when they can’t understand. No one likes to be in a situation they feel unqualified for. Humans like to feel in control, and when you don’t know the ropes, you are most certainly not in control. Practically, you simply cannot make informed decisions if you cannot find or cannot trust the information.

Some of us are more aware of everything we don’t know than others of us are. Some of us make information and understanding our god. We simply will not make a decision without perfect understanding and, therefore, never make decisions. We are the people who will study and study and study a subject and feel our paper on the subject is dribble because it is not exhaustive. We are the ones who can’t form an opinion because it might be the wrong opinion.

How do I know that these silly people exist? Simply, I am one.

I would prefer that I know and have perfect comprehension of everything. This is nice in some ways. There is nothing I am not interested in learning. On the other hand, it’s hard for me to pick any one thing to learn because I cannot learn it perfectly, and I don’t know enough about it to know whether it’s what I want to learn most.

It also becomes quite a problem when I’m not talking about learning a subject, but rather a person. It gets downright horrible when it comes to knowing God.

I have recently felt that I had to keep my mind so open about God and people that my brains simply must be dribbling out. Don’t get me wrong. There are some things I am very closed minded about. It’s just that they are very few. I don’t want to ever believe something about God again that He did not personally verify to me.

Being open-minded is not all bad. It is reasonable to understand that I don’t know everything and that lots of things I do know, I don’t understand. It is also part of humility to know that I don’t know everything, that in fact, I don’t know much. Unfortunately, it is pride to refuse to make a decision because I can’t make The Perfect One with my limited comprehension

So, there I am stuck. It turns out that I have to trust God with my imperfect knowledge, whether it’s about where I live, buying something, or even knowing Him. Basically, I have to learn to live without being omniscient. You would think I’d be used to living limited to a human brain, but I tell you it comes as a blow to find God reserves the right to be the only Omniscient Being. I must trust even what I don’t see and will never know of God. I must trust that if I forget, misinterpret, never find or even misunderstand the information, I can still make a good decision.

I used to scorn people who ‘blindly trusted’. Now I suspect that trust at its core is blind. I trust a light switch to turn on the light without shocking me or burning the house down. I could say this is well-informed trust, because I have a history with that light switch and it has always behaved reliably in the past. Or I could realize that no matter how many times it has worked in the past, my trust of it has always been blind. I certainly have never followed the wires between the walls. I have never checked to see if any are melting, eroding, chewed on, or badly connected. I’m not even sure that those are the things that would need to be checked.

So I’m giving up my right to control, my right to understand, and even my dream of omniscience. I’m admitting I’m blind, and I’m choosing to trust.

What do you think? Can trust be trust without an element of blindness?

Emotions & Reality part 2

Once, when I was raving to God about how unfair and stupid it was that I had to deal with this ‘evil’ emotional part of myself, He kindly reminded me that He was the first one with emotions. After that, all sorts of my ideas about emotions had to change. First to go was the idea that emotions were stupid, embarrassing, or weak. They’re not. In fact, they are godly.

“Okay, okay,” I reasoned, “They aren’t all stupid, embarrassing or weak, just most of them.” God momentarily complied with me for the sake of argument, but then He brought up this question, “Who decides which ones are good and which ones are bad?” You may think it’s obvious, as I did. Joy, excitement, happiness . . . these are good. Anger, sadness, anxiety . . . these are bad.

The problem is that God and/or Jesus have been described as having all of those, the ones I called good and the ones I called bad. If you think Jesus never felt anxious, read about the night in Gethsemane. I think it’s safe to define “sweating drops of blood” as ‘anxious.’ God reserves the title as “Judge of Emotions” for Himself. Anytime I try it, I have to stop and choose to trust Him instead. I will not be fooled into letting another person judge my emotions, either.

I have also learned that no matter how silly I feel my emotions to be, they are all valid. (Do you ever notice that you feel all sorts of things about your feelings? So confusing.) This means I am not allowed to pretend that any of them don’t exist. The sooner I am honest with myself and God about what I’m feeling, the better. My emotions cannot and will never change the Truth. This is very relieving for me to realize. Just because I feel unlovable doesn’t mean that I am unlovable. Sometimes I must trust the Truth in spite of what I feel. However, even when I don’t trust the Truth, it still doesn’t change.

As I practice trusting God with my emotions instead of controlling them myself, He is actually convincing me that they are more useful than I ever believed possible. He uses them to show His own feelings to me. Have you ever had a certain feeling, perhaps joy or protection while watching a child, and heard God whisper to you, “That’s exactly how I feel about watching you.” Nothing compares to feeling the emotions of God.

Other times He has used them to delicately and gently bring up places in me that He wants to heal. Many times these were places that I was so used to being broken, I didn’t know they could or should be healed. Trusting Him always brings healing.

Sometimes my emotions are simply a sign pointing to a physical need. When I don’t get enough sleep I may feel like everyone around me is a selfish jerk. They probably feel the same thing about me. When I need to eat, I sometimes feel depressed and that life is just too much to handle. When I have a cold and I feel weak, I am much more likely to cry. These are the emotions that really annoy me. I don’t want my body to have that much control over my soul, but it’s better to grudgingly admit it than to ignore the truth. These too, I can trust God with. Also, because I’m able to be honest about it with my family, they don’t take my moods so personally, but can remind me that maybe I just need something to eat. I don’t know about you but it’s always a relief to me to remember that I’m not a jerk; I just have low blood sugar.

There are only a few emotions that God has tagged with “These are not from Me” signs for me. Also, these are three emotions that you will never catch God having. They are guilt, shame, and fear. Don’t get me wrong, there is a healthy fear. If a gun is pointed at you and you don’t feel the flight or fight fear response, something is probably very wrong. (Since Jesus had as human a body as I do, I’m assuming he felt the flight or fight sort of fear a few times.) However, most of the fear in my life is not this sort of fear. Most of the fear in my life is the kind that perfect Love wants to cast out. This kind of fear can be defined as “A lack of trust towards God.”

He wants me to understand that I am totally safe in my relationship with Him. He wants to smooth away all my fears because He is big enough and kind enough to handle whatever it is I’m afraid of. He loves my fear away. When fear of this sort comes up it is a chance for me to understand His love in a new way. It’s a chance to ask, “Who are You that I shouldn’t be afraid of this?” I promise His answers are worth it.

Guilt can also be a good thing, if I had never felt my guilt I might never have felt my need for God. But now that Jesus work is completed my guilt is eternally removed and to return to it is to disbelieve that Jesus work is final. Since I acknowledged my need for God, He has never used guilt again. This is not to say that I have never technically been guilty again. With Jesus’ completed work, guilt is no longer an issue because I am eternally forgiven. At this point the memory of my guilt only serves to make me think that I am somehow cut off from God which will never be true again.

I don’t remember any time that shame was from God. In my experience it has only had one terrible function, to keep me hiding from the One who could heal my guilt.

My emotions are still annoyingly messy. I still usually feel that I would be better off without them. I regularly tell God that if I’m not allowed to control them then I should at least be allowed to give Him pointers about how He should be controlling them. But I’ve been without emotion, and I don’t ever want to go back. The trust being built out the mess of my emotions is more than worth it.

Emotions & Reality part 1

I believe that humans are made of three parts: spirit (the breath of God), soul (mind, will, emotions) and body. These three things are both united and separate much like the organs of a body are united and separate simultaneously. If you study human anatomy for any reason you will find that teachers and text books immediately start breaking it down into systems and organs and pieces that they will identify and separate and then separate what they separated. At the same time, people usually study human anatomy to learn how to keep it going, working, functioning, and surviving, as a human. They don’t study it to dissect it; they dissect it to understand the whole.

So I, too, am going to do a bit of dissecting, but only so I can understand the whole. These things can be mentally separated for ease of understanding, but they will never actually be separate in experience.

I’ll start with the most basic one, the body. I think you should know what this is, your physical existence, the one that gets colds, and headaches, and the thing everyone looks at in pictures and recognizes as you.

Then there’s your soul. Your soul is the part of you that comprises your likes and dislikes. This is the part of you that you get to share with other people as you choose to. This is the part of you that makes you really, really, uniquely only you and no one else. Your body and soul combine somewhere between your brain and your hormones. Your soul is the part of you that has thoughts, emotions, and makes choices. Your mind, will, and emotions comprise your soul.

Then spirit. This is the part of you that has life like God does. This is what separates you from the animals, what makes you particularly ‘in the image of God’. This is the life in you that doesn’t end when your body does. Your spirit makes your soul eternal.

I think the easiest and most honest way to explain better what I’m thinking will be to stick with what I’ve learned and know about myself.

I know that as far back as I can remember my spirit was broken. There was a time when as far down as I could look into myself there was only darkness. I don’t mean depression, I don’t mean evil, I mean emptiness. Like an empty room, but worse. More like when you see something dead and it makes you remember that there could be, and should be, life in that body, but there simply isn’t.

I believe that this emptiness is a human condition passed down all the way from Adam as a result of his and Eve’s choice that they, too, should have the right to judge what is good and evil. That’s when their spirits went empty, died. Because it is spirit, it doesn’t pass away like a body does; it continues sitting there, empty. It’s like a lung without air. I believe that every person is born with their spirit in this condition -- empty existence.

In me, this emptiness produced all sorts of conflict in my soul. I wanted to choose what was right, I wanted to be selfless, I wanted to give love, but my emptiness always dragged me down. I wanted to make other people’s needs more important than mine, but I simply couldn’t. I needed perfect love so bad that I would find myself trying to take it from others. I needed respect so bad that I would find myself demanding it of others. I needed to survive so bad that sooner or later I would take what I needed which caused me to hurt those around me who were also trying to survive. I hated myself for this.

My soul was full of confusion and conflict because my mind knew what was right. I knew I shouldn’t be selfish. My emotions would fluctuate wildly between guilt because I should be doing better, pride because I was doing better than others, depression because I’d never get better, and elation because I finally got something right. My will would sometimes follow my mind, and sometimes follow my emotions. I had nothing stable within myself.

My body was full of stress. I was regularly tired and after 11 years of living like this, I was chronically exhausted even though I was only 19 years old. Of course, body, soul, and spirit work in many directions, much like the old question, which came first the chicken or the egg? I believe that my body was unhealthy anyway, but the stress of my soul in turmoil certainly didn’t help. I believe that both were involved in the depression I’ve been through, and I can’t point to either as the cause or either as the relief. My body needed relief from my soul and my soul needed relief from my body. My empty spirit had no relief to offer to either.

This was all before I understood the completed work of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Jesus came to deal with broken humans from the inside out. He came to fill our empty spirits, which frees our conflicted souls, which gives our broken and dying bodies relief from the inside until He gives us new ones in the future.

In accepting Jesus’ completed work, my spirit for the first time was filled with life. I had a consistent and flowing source of life in my deepest place. I had an eternal source of love, acceptance, and respect. I no longer had to grab for these things or suck them out of other people. For the first time I was copiously full. I was satisfied. I also knew who I was. I was Loved.

My spirit was immediately and forever totally altered. My soul took much longer. My mind is still getting used to new thinking habits; my will is still learning to live out of my spirit’s fullness. My emotions . . . well, they are still emotional but they are learning not to despair.

The fact is that my emotions seem to be the most unstable part of my soul, and maddeningly, my mind and will follow my emotions more often than not. Thankfully, this is not a problem for God. My mind can be convinced with reason, my will can follow the reason my mind produces but the only control I have over my emotions is an on or off switch. When I have tried to protect myself from my negative emotions, I stop feeling any emotion.

What do I do with emotions then? If I deny them, I lose a part of myself. If I follow them, I will go everywhere and end up nowhere. Is there another option? Yes, there is another option; it is simple, but not easy. I can trust God with them. As I have done this, God has taught me a few things about my emotions and a few things about Himself.