the journey through pain pt. 3: two steps back two steps forward

Last Thursday at missional community we talked about the parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl. Here it is:

‘“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field.

“Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant on the lookout for choice pearls. When he discovered a pearl of great value, he sold everything he owned and bought it!’

-- Matthew 13:44-46

Among other things we were examining what the cost is to follow Jesus, and how ultimately we have to be willing to sacrifice everything for living in his story. This is a hard negotiation, because on the one hand we have the things we want, the dreams we’ve been given, things that aren’t necessarily bad, but on the other hand we know and are promised that life inside his story will make us the happiest. In both of the stories there is a period where the man and the merchant leave what they have found and go back to their old life. They only go back to sell everything, but they still have to go back. They negotiate the terms and sell every last thing. Sometimes I think in a life of following Christ we think we’ve given everything up to him, but then we discover something we forgot, or neglected. I think we will always be finding these things that we need to let go of.

I’ve had these stories on my heart the last few days because there are many things I haven’t sold yet. I’m not going to say that the pain of getting broken up with was what God wanted, or that that relationship was only given to me so that he could teach me things when he took it away. I’m not sure he works like that, I’m not really sure of how He works at all, but I know he does. In losing this relationship, oddly enough I was taken back to issues I thought I’d gotten over. It makes me think, in an estate sale, which is what these men had to do, you have to sell everything. You’ve even got to sell all of that junk in the basement that is unusable, outdated or broken. So I’ve been realizing that I haven’t sold this one piece of junk in my basement.

I’m the kind of person who is cognitive enough to live out of the knowledge of the love of God, this allows me to hold on to blame for years without feeling his forgiveness. This kind of living neglects the heart knowledge, the feeling loved, and genuinely feeling forgiven. I’ve been carrying this blame from a previous relationship. I haven’t let him forgive me. I haven’t sold that. Like Ben Myers said last Sunday at the Gathering Network “everything flows out of identity.” If we aren’t confident in our identity in him, our obedience isn’t out of love but duty, and our actions, however sincere, to make wrong things right aren’t urgent but obligatory. In our stories there are things we want to happen, and will happen, but to be ready there are these little places of pause, of waiting, of resting in who we are in Jesus, so that we can know how to be what we will become. So rest.

the journey through pain pt. 2: listening to good stories

So we know that we need to listen to his story, the story he's been telling since the dawn of time. Sometimes it's hard to listen, to see past the bend in the road of our own story. We're headed down a path and it's come to a dead end, or we're in the middle of a hairpin turn and can only imagine where we are going next. During these times we take it on faith that because he tells good stories he will continue to tell a good story in our life. We can’t stand it when we can’t see what’s next, it drives us nuts, especially when we thought we had a handle on things.

Sometimes when we are in the middle of a season of dryness we see our friends that are happy and we get jealous. I know I am guilty of this and have even expressed my resentment to them at times. What I’m trying to do, instead, is to look at their stories as evidence of his goodness, instead of a picture of something I don’t have. My friends just got engaged yesterday and it's such a good story. I celebrate it and remind myself that he has that for me too. Or even if he doesn’t have marriage for me, what he does have will be just as good as the happiness he’s given them.

We also need to feed ourselves with the beauty of the gospel story. Remind ourselves that the conquerer of death is madly in love with us. Remind ourselves of that lonely Sabbath day the disciples must’ve spent shut up somewhere miserable with despair. Their Lord, the person they had dropped everything for had met a bloody horrific death right before them. They must’ve asked how this could fit into the Kingdom. What possible purpose could God have for killing his son. What about the whole bringing his kingdom to earth, how could he do that if he was dead. If he had just been killed, was he even who he said he was? Theres no way they could’ve seen past that moment, and even if they’d been allowed to, they wouldn’t have understood. Looking back, that day of mourning for their Lord was a small price to pay. I think that’s how he tells our stories. I try to think of this time as a long Sabbath day, where nothing makes sense, where no possible series of explanations will make my feelings seem okay. But comfort is here because the day before Easter was a day of mourning, and it’s darkest just before dawn. He is a master author and he knows what he’s doing. If we allow him to he will write us the most beautiful stories.

the journey through pain pt. 1

Let me preface this with the fact that the relationship I’ve been in for the past six months was not at a standard six month point. To me, anyway, it was very serious, I mean making big plans serious. That said, about a week ago my girlfriend broke up with me, it was rather sudden, but in hindsight makes sense. There are a lot of things going on in her life right now and this entry isn’t about the break up. It’s about the pain.

I don’t think anyone has a very good practice of dealing with pain. Some of us may understand better how to mentally relate to deep pain. Explanations for pain, reasons to push on through pain. As my good friend keeps telling me, “It gets better, but that consolation doesn’t mean anything until you don’t need it anymore.” The pain doesn’t cease until it’s done its work on you, and as long as you resist it, it will not cease. The more you try to escape, the harder it stares you in the face. For example during a night with my friends talking about the difficulties of the break up, a night spent dwelling on it, it eases up, I actually relax for the first time in three days. A few days later I get pretty drunk, ride around westport alone on my bike smoking cigarettes, and it hurts more than ever. The more you run away the faster the thing chases you.

There is a mewithoutYou song that begins “the cure for pain, is in the pain, so it’s there that you’ll find me.” This rings true. So do I just sit in it, dwell on it, wait for it to pass? Merely holding it close only seems to intensify and refresh the injury, sending us back to the initial reaction of denial, or pushing us further under into the despair of surrender. Surrender to the story that this is the end. That none of our dreams will come true, that what I had was the best thing ever and nothing will ever be as good. Merely remaining in the pain will not bring about healing. Later in the song it says “let yourself...dissolve into the Love who revealed himself quietly to me.” Let yourself.

Just earlier today my incredibly wise friend reminded me that it’s not easy to let God meet you in the pain, but that it’s a fight. You have to fight the thousands of stories that are railing against you. The story that she doesn’t want you because she saw that darkness in you, and just like the last girl she ran. The story that this is the beginning of an unbroken line of heartbreak. The story that not only have you not changed after so many attempts, but that you can’t, that there is something unfixable deep inside you and no one can love it. All of these stories are not true, they are lies from the enemy. These are the things you have to fight against. You have to fight the cynicism that says that either you're not worth it, or God isn’t good enough to give you happiness.

Healing isn’t passive, we must participate or we will never be well. We must enter the healing like a patient in a hospital educating themselves about their illness and pushing themselves through grueling physical therapy workouts so that they will walk again. If a physical injury or disease is ignored it will worsen until it destroys you. Emotional pain is just like physical pain, steps must be taken and there is much work to be done.

At the end of the work day today I walked outside and just as I opened the door it started to rain. As I sat there and watched the rain cover the pavement bit by tiny bit. The storm signified something to me. This weather that God made was not benign, it was terrifying, it was thunder cracking and water pouring down from heaven. He was showing me a different side of him, a side that isn’t safe. Showing me that when he works sometimes shit happens. Sometimes he lets us get hurt. He’s there. He will pick us up. He won’t always take us back in the direction we thought we were going. Our hearts will be broken. He will heal us, but we must listen to his story, not ours, not cultures, His.

And here tonight while the stars are blacking out

with every hope and dream I’ve ever had in doubt

I’ve spent ten years trying to sing these doubts away

But the water keeps on falling from my eyes

And heaven knows I tried to find a cure for the pain

Oh my lord to suffer like you do

It would be a lie to run away

--Jon Foreman “The Cure for Pain”

Only One Thing Remains

Sometimes in life we are met with cold seasons. We are asked to endure a time of fasting. I can respond in one of two ways. The first and default is to meet the change with resistance; futilely clinging to the past, searching for any refuge and comfort from the strange situation into which I’ve been hurled. I don’t know what’s coming next so I choose to react, I choose to live out of the insecurity I am faced with. The result is constant anxiety and stress, it produces warped thoughts and irrational actions. As long as you feed the monster you will be paralyzed in fear.

The anxiety is fueled by fear that because uncomfortable change has come things will not and cannot be the same, happiness is gone, normalcy will have to be slowly and painfully redefined. Living like this it takes forever to return to homeostasis. So you can feed the monster...

...or you can choose to tell the monster to eat shit and die. You can choose to define your reality not by familiar comforts, not by status or routine, not even by your closest loved ones feelings for you, but define reality and identity by the one thing that remains. The constant of the universe, the unchanging character of God. The promise that he gives good gifts. This produces faith, instead of fear, faith that whatever is going on he is in control. Faith that whatever is coming next is worth the cost of what was lost. If nothing else this change is an opportunity to root your identity deeper in the love of Christ. That what he thinks of us is more important than anyone else’s opinion. This is the path I’m choosing to take.

sometimes

when you lose something

big

you wanna begin

you want to start again

with another thing

another life's work

another dramatic tail of people

who lost themselves

found each other

and God

and lived happily

for their rest of their lives

but

some-

times

it's...

it is better

not to

better to wait

denied

to labor

to lose once

to find

to search

to be lost in the getting there

this is not THE time.

this is the time

of waiting

wanting, searching, soft lamenting

hoping half drunk

half sober half-hope

half despair

someday it will

someday

i will sing

"at last..."

and we will be

we

I'm glad you are my family

I was listening to The Khrusty Brothers (a side project of Don Chaffer of Waterdeep) a record written as a catharsis for the emotional turmoil that followed his parents passing, and I thought of my family. Most notably I thought of something my dad used to tell me and my brothers when we would fight. He would say "You need to treat each other with respect and love, because when we are gone all you will have will be each other." I think maybe my dad said this in reflection of his rough childhood, how he and his siblings were often at odds with each other, and maybe his parents didn't do a lot to stop it. Maybe he feels their longterm relationships have suffered, all of them battling with the alcoholism that my grandfather taught them, none of them staying terribly close to the others. At times I stop and think of how he got out of that dysfunctional family, that kind of family that maybe didn't teach you how to be a family and made this family that has taught me how to be a family. It's rather marvelous!

At the time it sounded weird to me, as a kid you never think your parents will die, cause then who would make supper, but it was haunting, it was like, you mean when you're gone my older and younger brother are just gonna gang up and tease me for the rest of my life. Years, later after the passing of my grandmother and one of my uncles, mortality seems a bit more real. A third of my life has probably passed, and my birthdays are starting to sting a little. I'm 25 next saturday and I may only have another twenty five years or so with my parents, which would make our time on earth together near half over. That's scary. I'm not trying to focus on the negative, but it is true that relationships with our siblings need to be strong so that we can whether the passing of our parents together whenever the time comes we can support, love, correct and cherish one another after that. I think of my brothers and sister and how it's easy to stay disconnected and distant sometimes. It's less sticky, the drama and responsibility that comes with people who know you better than anyone on earth isn't always easy. So let's plunge back into family, when it's very uncool, but very needed. I'll write it in digital stone, Brett, Rose, and Zachary I love you and I always will. Also in digital stone, Mom and Dad, Brenda and Bill, I'm glad it was you.

a cautionary tale or get your lights

It all started, one cold december evening, with my bad habit of not keeping my proof of insurance in my vehicle at all times. It had been a long night at work, paper work had kept me there until 2:00 in the morning. I got pulled over for having a headlight out, and of course got a ticket for not having current proof of insurance. I could have stopped this all from happening by simply showing up at the courthouse the next day to show my proof of insurance, but I sleep late and am lazy and ignore things that are hassles until they become huge hassles. So as any self respecting state government does when a driver can't produce proof of insurance in a timely manner Kansas revoked my license.

Well, this ended up leading to my arrest. Probably one of the more irresponsible moments of my life. Well I showed up in court in late January and cleared myself of charges that is with the City of Prairie Village. I then had my insurance company fax proof that I was insured, and I thought this would reinstate my license. Well recently my right tail light went out, and a Lenexa cop happened to notice this at 2:00 a.m. tuesday night. Lenexa cops don't let anything slide so he proceeded to write me a ticket, well apparently Kansas never got the fax or some other clerical error and not only was my license suspended but also my tags on my car, so it got towed. Well after calling the State of Kansas about thirty times, and Geico twice I am in the clear. So, tonight after work I went to the local Wal-Mart Super Center to grab myself a tail light. As I go to replace it I find that it was out of its socket, the contraption that locks the light into the reflector was ajar. There was no burnt out light.

While it was good to find out that my license was revoked, and to take the steps to reinstate myself, it was not nice to watch my car get hauled off on a tow truck as I stood stranded at two in the morning on 87th street (props to Jessie Chesley for the ride). The divulging of these legal affairs probably makes me look pretty stupid, and I was, but lesson learned, I guess, even though I should've known it. Don't procrastinate and get your lights.