Diary of a Restless 4-year Old

I substitute taught for a pre-school class today. And as you might remember, at the height of the day, right after lunch time, the pinnacle of pre-school experience begins: Nap time. You remember it well; laying down on your mat with your favorite disney blanket, laying your head on the small pillow while the teacher puts on meditative music that sound like waves gently hitting the shore, and it all happens next to your favorite stuffed animal. Perfection.

Well, this nap time, I got to see it from the other end. The kids laid on their mats and I suddenly saw the anxiety, the restlessness, the inability to hold still. Nap time was not so restful for some. Being the newbie teacher, I decided to watch what the aids did to quell the agitation in the room. They sat down next to one child, put their hand on the child's back or chest and simply stayed. Within 5 minutes, the child was asleep. Incredible! I wanted to try, so I chose Brian, the kid who was causing me problems all day long. I went and sat right next to him, put my hand on his chest and just gazed into his little brown eyes. He looked back with the resolve of a soldier. As we gazed at each other I could see in his eyes the questions, the fears, the "please don't leave me's." He was starving for attention, starving for someone to be with him, starving for someone to show him how to rest. He didn't flinch, he didn't try to get away, he wanted me with him. He wanted someone, anyone to absorb all of his energy so that he could let go.

And he did. After about 10 minutes Brian let go. Because someone was with him, he could rest.

I wonder if there is a restless four-year old within me. Sometimes I am certain there is. When I anxiously go from task to task to task, when I wander from friendship to friendship, hoping for a different result, when I can't sleep at night because I am so consumed by the future or so haunted by the past; all of these are indications of a restless four-year old. All these are indications that I need someone with me. All of these signal aimless desire for someone to gaze into my eyes and wordlessly communicate that it is ok to rest. How often do I live my life in anxious doing because I fail to recognize the Father's gaze. He is always gazing, but unlike Brian, most of the time I fail to gaze back.

Gospel in a Box

So a few weeks ago I was bummed to realize that I was bringing un-Christian friends to church to "hear the Gospel." I know that sounds weird, but I was honestly disappointed. You know why? Becasue I started beleiveing the lie that I have to take people to a place, a building, essentially a box with four walls and a professional speaker in order to deliver the gospel message. Since when did the Gospel happen only in a box?

The reality is that the Gospel is a story. Stories are so much bigger than places. Stories can be told whether you're in a building or in your neighbor's front yard. As soon as you start beleiveing that you have to bring your un-Christian friends to "church" to hear the Gospel is the instant you have an anorexic view of the God who is everywhere. If you want to share the Gospel, simply live out your story. I promise you, people will experience the gospel, but it will not be bound by a time or a location.

I play volleyball with a bunch of un-Christians on Saturday mornings. One thing I've noticed is how bold they are when they talk about their sexual escapades and how amazingly stupid drunk they got the night before. One time, a dude named Ty I was playing with turned around in between plays and said, "Hey beautiful, I wanna lick your pussy"' to a random girl walking by. I finally spoke up! "If you ever fucking say shit like that on my fucking court, you're not gonna play Ty. That is so fucking disrespectful." Unbelievably, the guy apologized to me.

Why did it take me that long to speak up for what I believe? Because somewhere deep inside, I am not convinced that God and his story is something that people actually need. The walls of unbelief inside us all, keep us from living the Gospel. If I have not experienced the whole gospel as a freeing, life-changing, counter-cultural gift from the loving God, I will share it with a half-passion or no passion at all. So here's my challenge: If you are not living the gospel, check and see if you actually have experienced the full gospel.

What do I mean the full gospel? I mean the gospel where people get healed of their diseases, emotional wounds are turned to scars that no longer hurt, demons are being exposed and cast out, and your life is one big adventure that cannot be explained apart from a risk-taking God. If you have expereinced this, you will not hesitate to share it. The Gospel will be like a baby that you have actually given birth to, with all it's joy and pain, and now all you want to do is show it off, tell how much it weighs and let people hold it. If you are like me, I have miles on the journey to go in experiencing that kind of gospel. But as I experience more and more, I am further convinced that the gospel is not simply told, it is experienced, lived, and given away. My life is becoming exposed, outside the walls of a building, my story is becoming living, breathing, and transformative because I am experiencing the transformative God. Sharing the gospel is becoming a lifestyle that happens when I'm at the bar, in my home, surfing, watching a movie, reading, getting coffee, and laughing. My story, swallowed whole by the story of Jesus, is the Gospel. My "Gospel in a Box" just became the "Gospel that is Everywhere and Anytime."

Pastor This

A couple years ago I used to lead a small group. We had one girl named Ru who was an amazing evangelist. She brought new people almost every week. After a while though, she started going out with a Buddhist guy she was trying to convert. Also during this time, she began to question parts of her faith that she had taken for granted before. She also began sleeping with her Buddhist boyfriend and I think she was a little ashamed of her lifestyle. Instead of coming to the people who she should have been able to trust the most, however, she ran. Our evangelist eventually stopped coming to group all together. As I've reflected on this and other incidents, it seems to me that people do not see the Church as a safe place to air their dirty laundry. People do not feel accepted if they really let people into their messy, doubting lives. And like Ru, they feel that they must leave the Church to explore their freedom! Why, is this the case?

You know why? Because the Church can't handle messy, searching, questioning people. The Church is threatened by doubters and question askers and intelligently searching people. And I think we're threatened because we just might not have asked that question and the foundation of our own faith may be rocked and split in half from the foundation if we do. So what do we do with doubters? We tell them to doubt outside the Church! We tell them to search elsewhere. And when young people asking questions get shut down, "elsewhere" is exactly where they go.

So here's what I say. Let people be messy in the Church. Allow people who've never felt ok cussing to cuss a little, let people figure out how far the purity line is. Let people drink. Let people mess up. Let people fail. Let people explore, question, search, and be messy, and let them do it in the Church!

The Christian life is not about keeping sin out of Christians. When we focus on getting rid of sin, we ultimately focus on getting rid of sinners. And unfortunately we unknowingly send the message, "Don't come back til you're done asking your questions. You can come back when you don't challenge the status quo."

This is exactly why our churches are filled with people who are dull and boring because they are people that never felt inwardly strong enough to ask the hard questions about God and life. If we want alive people, we need to be a Church that invites people who push the line. We need to be ready to pastor people on the edge of failure and unbelief. If we don't, we will not have sin in the Church, but we will also not have many people. So pastors, if you want alive Christians, then pastor the people who make life challenging. Pastor people who with hands in your face are screaming, "Don't come any closer," because underneath is a heart that says, "I'm so afraid to be loved." Pastor this.

Weeds Grow Naturally

Weeds grow naturally. You don't have to cultivate weeds. You don't have to loosen up the soil or make sure you water them, they simply are a fact of life. Why is that?

Part of the Fall was simply the fact that weeds happen when cultivation doesn't. It's that simple. The Fall ensured that if we allow nature to take it's course, we won't get tomato plants and apple trees, you get weeds.

It's the same with our lives, if we let life just takes it's course, we will not get amazing fruit, we will get weeds. Character and growing in the Spirt does not happen by accident. It's a choice. It is a choice to cultivate those things that really bring us life. The reality is that things will grow if we let the garden of your hearts go unkept, but the soil, the water and the nutrients that those plants consume will crowd out any space for fruitful plants. In other words, letting your garden go unkept will get you living plants, they just won't be plants that give you life. These kind of plants are the weeds, the things that take from you. Good plants don't just use up soil and nutrients, they produce a crop.

Friends, let us be people that live life cultivating those kinds of plants that give us life. If we do, there is no telling how many will benefit from our garden.

Relevant to Who?

I've been bothered by the word 'relevant' when it comes to how Christians are to engage culture. It seems like lots of my friends and I myself have been tempted to jump on the relevant bandwagon without even knowing what damage we are doing. The question must be asked, "what is the 'matter' to which we are trying to be relevant as Christians?" Are we trying to be relevant to culture, or are we trying to be relevant to the human heart? If we are trying to be relevant to the human heart, then we would offer what the human heart really needs- God himself. I think we have missed what we are trying to be relevant to. Our desire to be relevant has been focused on the wrong thing. We have been trying to be relevant to culture, but we have missed the absolutely relevant heart of Jesus for the world, and inso doing we have ceased to be relevant to the human heart.

I am worried that we spend so much time trying to stay current with our culture that we miss the relevance that would be ours in Jesus. The same people that are trying so hard to be relevant to culture are the ones who have come to me in secret confessing just how non-existent their prayer lives are. Could it be that we are so focused on being relevant that we have lost touch with the very Source of relevance?

Jesus is the most relevant man alive. He knows exactly what people need. If you are reading more from Dan Brown than Scripture, and are watching more movies than gazing at the beauty of God, then I think you may just have as much to offer culture as culture itself. The world does not need more experts on culture!!! The world needs a dynamic, vibrant encounter with Jesus himself, and if we are spending more time trying to figure out culture than being passionately in love with Jesus, then we have absolutely missed the meaning of relevance.

Friends! Please hear me! The world is not looking for more cool people. They are looking for substance. They are looking for people whose lives are so radically different than anything the world can produce that they have to ask the question, "Why do you live like that?"

If I am at all honest with myself, trying to be relevant is simply a cover-up for having nothing original to say. I really don't think we become more relevant as Christians by being more concerned with what the world has to say about itself. We become more relevant by being more concerned about what Jesus has to say to us about the world. We become more relevant as we encounter more of Jesus. And when we encounter Jesus, the world will encounter Jesus because there is no one more relevant than him. He knows the latest news, and he knows the deep secrets of people's hearts.

If you want to impact someone in a relevant way, try asking God what they need to hear or experience that day and then deliver the message. I can't tell you how many times I have delivered a relevant message from God to a complete stranger simply because I spent time asking what God's heart was for the person. I guarantee you that those kind of encounters would not have happened if I spent my morning catching up on the latest LOST episode. Jesus' words to a person are infinitely more powerful than anything I will ever have to say.

Let's be relevant friends. But let's do it by spending our time with the most relevant Person alive and giving what we have received from him, to the world.

The Fragrance of Thorns

There's a rose called the David Austin Rose. In the early 60's, it was bred specifially to sell at flower shops who were tired of dethorning their roses. Scientists found a way to alter a particular gene that produced the rose's thorns. This wonder rose quickly became a flower shop favorite until patrons began to complain that the roses had no fragrance.

Scientists decided to investigate why. Their conclusion: the gene that produces a rose's thorns is the same gene that gives it its fragrance. To this day if you buy a genetically enhanced, thornless rose, you will smell nothing. There is no way to separate the fragrance from the thorns.

I think the same is true of life. If you get rid of the thorns of life, you also lose the fragrance. In this lifetime, there is no such thing as bliss without pain, love without hate, or life without death. The same gene that produces pain is the one that slows us down to what is. Pain forces us to take deep breaths and to smell the fragrance we may well have missed. So, let's embrace life with all of it's thorns and we will once again begin to smell it's fragrance.

Busy

What is it about busyness that makes life feel so exciting? When I rush from event to event I feel important, needed, wanted. When I have friends around me I feel like I belong. When there are emails in my inbox, messages on my voicemail and mail in my mailbox I don't have to feel how lonely I am.

But the reality is that all this busyness is lifeless. It holds the appearance of life, but it is not life. True life cannot be felt at the speed of an open freeway, it cannot be felt when I am consumed so much by the next moment that I cannot enjoy the one I am in. So, I slow down. I wait. I enjoy. When I can slow down enough to feel what I really need, and not just what I want, I can feel life emerging. So much of my busyness is driven by what I want: I want to feel apart of five different groups of people. I want to be wanted. I want to be needed. I want to feel important and popular. I want to feel excitement.

What I want though, is not always what I need. Sometimes I need to experience how unimportant I really feel. Maybe I simply need to be reminded that I belong to God and not to any one group. What if what I need is to be stopped?

Passion

I've noticed that I am attracted to passionate people. I've also noticed that some of the most passionate people are pursuing passions that leave them empty and wanting. This especially happens in Christian circles where service seems to be the place where most passionate people pour their passion into. Helping the poor, saving orphans, rescuing sex slaves, showing mercy to the homeless- these are all good things to pour our passions into, but it is not the ultimate passion.

The ultimate passion is God himself. I really beleive that those who are seeking God the most are on the front lines of service, but I also think that they are two steps to the left of their true passion. Jesus is the only person that can define us and I find that so often those invloved in service tend to define themselves by their good deeds. I say this becasue I am one of those passionate people. I spent years and years traveling to different countries, serving the poor, helping the needy, hanging with the homeless, but I was empty. I still needed God myself. In fact being with the poor forced me to consider my own need. They forced me to articulate my own need for a Savior. My passion has since turned. I am passionate about service. But more than that, I am passionate about being loved by God. I have been on a path to pour all of my passion into being loved. From this place, my passionate heart can be filled with the passion from above. I feel lighter, less inclined to define myself by how many people I help. My passion to be with Jesus leads me to compassion towards others.

Posture

Learning to live a new way is like learning to walk around with new posture. It hurts. I have lived 25 years of my life slouching. Shoulders slumped and chest concaved... but I've been learning to walk with my head high, my chest out and my shoulders back. It feels good, but walking with new posture is painful too. I feel more erect and alert, but my back hurts, my neck cracks and my abs feel like i've done 40 crunches.

Just like my old posture, the "self" I thought was me dies hard. It hurts to live out of who I really am. It's unfamiliar and awkward. It's painful to give up the ways of relating and living life that have become so apart of who I am. But I'm finding that there is another me. There is a true me that is beginning to shine forth. Just like good posture, it feels good to live out of who I truly am, but it's painful too. No wonder Jesus' statements about following him seem so paradoxical. "you must deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me?... He who loses his life will find it?" What does that mean?

I think Jesus just means that to "die" is to give up everything you are not! To lose the life you thought was life is the only way to find the life that is hidden behind it. So that's my journey, to lose all the parts of myself that keep me from who I truly am. Saying "No" is painful, cause it forces me to reject a way of living that has worked for me. It takes time to reject the old ways of relating, but it feels so good when I live out of who I really am. New posture is worth the pain.

The Divinely Beautiful Woman

My mom hosts international students in her home, mostly girls from Germany, Switzerland, and the more 'beautiful' parts of Europe. About two weeks ago I spent the day at my mom's house and just so happened to be very attracted to one of the German girls. Honestly, as a guy, something instinctually powerful overtook me as I spent the day with her. I was drawn to her beauty. I was captivated. I longed for intimacy. Connection. Depth. Love.

Throughout the day, I noticed two extremes in myself. One extreme was my tendency to sexualize beauty. I objectified. I made her beauty into an object to be consumed. Because we were both free that night, I asked her to hang out and truthfully, my intention was to be lip-to-lip and face-to-face by the end of the night, (a Christian one-night stand). Even as my feelings raged, I was aware that more than making out, what I really desired was intimacy. Apart from all of my sexualization, I wanted connection, depth and love.

As the night went on, and I knew that we would have an empty house to go back to, I could not handle how easy it would be to simply sexualize my feelings and consume this girls beauty. This is where the other extreme comes in. The other extreme was to completely cut off my desire for beauty. This was to shut my feelings down and to fail to confront and feel how deeply I longed for intimacy. In this extreme, I distanced myself from this woman and her beauty. I didn't allow her beauty to evoke in me my deep desire for connection and my deep desire for love. I began to fear that I was not mature enough to handle my feelings without acting out physically. And because of my inappropriate management of my desire for intimacy, the only other thing I knew to do was run.

And that's exactly what I did. A friend of mine called earlier to see if I wanted to smoke hooka and in the middle of the date I start texting him because I knew that if I got back to the house with no options, I would have made out with her. So, I planned it just right. Within 30 minutes of our arrival back at the house my buddy picked me up and I was FREE! I didn't make out with her! I avoided temptation! VICTORY! YEAH ME! WHAT A STRONG CHRISTIAN AND MATURE THING TO DO!

Now if you are a typical Christian, you would probably praise me for my Joseph-like self-control and my temptation-avoiding fast on my feet thinking. But I did not feel "praise-worthy" when I left that night. In fact, I felt very disappointed and even angry. At first I thought I was angry because I passed up the opportunity to make out with a beautiful girl.

But as I sat through my anger, I realized I was angry that i could not appropriately hold my desire for beauty and translate that into appropriate behaviors of connection and intimacy. I was angry that I am still not integrated enough, still so broken that I had to split between two extremes. I only saw two options: either I stay with her and make out or to run and avoid 'temptation.' I did not see a third option.

But what if a third option existed? What if I could stay with her, hold my desire for intimacy without sexualizing it and yet engage her in appropriate ways? What if I didn't have to shut down my desire for intimacy by running, but I could actually feel it in her presence and move toward her, even showing her a bit of God's love at the same time? What if I was strong enough to see beauty not as an object to be consumed or a temptation to be avoided, but as a impetus to intimately connect with a woman and ultimately with God?

The reality is that a woman's beauty is not bad! It is not something to consume or something to fear, it is something to reflect the beauty of God. Beauty is something that I desire because I was created to desire it. Guys, have you ever just let yourself feel how much you want a woman? Not in a sexual way, but in a desire for beauty way. It actually hurts in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes I'll just let the feeling linger. It feels so alive. So passionate. Every guy has had the urge to tell a beautiful woman just how beautiful she is. It's like we're built to detect it, like a radar. You know why? Because we were created to name the beautiful.

Adam was stoked on Eve because God put in him a desire for beauty. He named all the animals, but none was as beautiful as Eve. And in Eve he named what was beautiful. And guess what Eve means: "Life." I've noticed that if I direct that same powerfully intense desire for a woman towards God, that the same alive-ness and same passion results.

God is the ultimate Beauty. When we gaze at him, and allow our hearts to feel how deeply beautiful he is, we will be captivated by him. His beauty actually gives us life. A woman is captivating because her beauty actually gives life. She is a beauty formed from the beauty of God. She is a representation, a reflection of our Beautiful God who gives life. When I want to feel alive, I open my heart to the Beautiful One. Unlike my desire for beauty in a woman however, my desire for God does not leave me wanting. A woman's beauty is something that I cannot always have as a single man, but the beauty I find in God is something I have access to all the time. So I allow a woman's beauty to direct me to the Beauty that I can possess in God. In God, I find that my desire for beauty is fulfilled. I don't have to split. I don't have to desecrate a woman's beauty or avoid it, I can use it to direct me toward intimacy with God and with her as a woman.

A Journey Home

Peter did not want to leave the Mount of Transfiguration (Luke 9). When up on that hill, experiencing probably the most magnificent sight he had ever seen, he asked if they could stay. This is human nature, to want to stay where the glory is, where the magnificent is happening. But Peter did not understand that Jesus was on a journey. He did not understand that Jesus was not there to camp, or to make his home, but that he was on his way to die. Even on the mountaintop, in Jesus time of transfiguration and glory, his conversation with Moses and Elijah was not about heaven or good things, but they were talking about his eventual death at Jerusalem (Luke 9:31). jesus knew that home was not on the mountaintop, home was when all came to rest on the cross… home was in the deep dark stillness of the cross. For where in human life is there a lower place than death. Where is there greater stillness than in a cross. jesus knew that the most progress, the greatest accomplishment of his life was not in his movements, not in his healings, not in his doings, but in his still, dark, cold death. This is where home is found. Home is when we finally and fully embrace our death. When we finally and fully come to stillness. Home is at the bottom of the ocean when our ship is fully sunk and it comes to rest on the sandy shore. This is where God is. God is in the ecstatic experiences, God is on the mountaintop, but he is also at the bottom of the ocean. Home is not heaven, home is right here. God is not up there, he is right here. Home is where God is and God is where our true home is. God’s plan is not to take us out, not to help us escape, not to fly away from, flee, or avoid this world… His goal is to bring home to us. The goal of our lives is not heaven, it is God himself.

High Expectations

I want to live in unreality. Everything in me beleives that I can live at a pace that is faster than I am designed for. I want to cram it all in, experience everything life has to offer, and live like there's no tommorrow. I want to squeeze as much out of life as it will give. And yet I find myself wanting. I find myself exhausted, chasing and running from true life. The demands of reality catch up with me sooner or later. I have high expectations.

What's worse though is that I want everyone else to live up to the same unrealistic expectations. And I judge those who do not live up to the speed of life that I project to the world that i can maintain. Inside I am lonely, exhausted, and spent. I cannot keep up with the expectations I hold myself to, and I know this! But I still go on judging. And those who cannot live up to my expectations, I condemn and treat them in my heart with contempt because they sing a song that my heart wants to rebel against. They sing a song that says, "I am not God! I cannot meet everyone's needs or even my own. I am limited!!!

This is what I absolutely hate to admit, "I am limited." And yet something inside me comes to rest when I say that. Something in me slows down. Reality has hit its mark. I am not omnipresent. I am here, and nowhere else. And when I let go of my high expectations for myself, I can let go of all the judgment I heap on other limited people

Daniel's Story

Today was all about Daniel. It was a half-day sub job and I walked into a sixth grade class that was already out of control. I introduced myself, layed down my rules, and let the period begin. Within the first 10 minutes of beginning class, a child who was only a face with no name stood out in the crowd. In the first two minutes he threw a paper wad at another student. After a warning and two minutes later he was crawling around the classroom on his hands and knees. Warning two!! By minute seven Daniel was interrupting the class so much that I got angry and sent him outside. I left him there for 5 minutes before I went out to get him. After hearing him and speaking with him, I let him back into the classroom. “One more time,” I said, “and I’m sending you to the office.” By this point, I still hadn’t thought to ask for his name.

Within five minutes of reentry into class, Daniel was out of his chair and bothering another student. “Sit down!” I said in anger. “What is your name?” “David,” he said. The other students around him confirmed that he was lying within seconds of his mischevious game. “What’s your real name?” I said. “David.” “Ok, I’m going to give you one last chance to tell me your real name, or you are going to the office!” “David” again. Ra! I was so angry. “Leave.” I said. “Go to the office!” And with that, Daniel left and the class was peaceful.

Two periods later, the day ended and I was heading to the office to go home. As soon as I entered the office I heard
screaming from the Principle’s office. “Give me the phone,” a woman said. “I don’t have it!” someone said. I waited around knowing that I was the only male in the office to see if they needed help with whoever this kid was. The argument escalated. “Ii know you have it… give me the phone!!...” At this point I was looking through the glass door just in time to see the principle try to grab someone’s flailing arm, and then an anonymous elbow come flying from the other end and land square on the priniple’s chin! In an instant, Daniel ran out of the office screaming “Get the fuck off me bitch!”

I couldn’t believe what just happened. I ran after Daniel as he ran out of the office and ran into the boy’s bathroom. By the time I got to the door he had securely locked himself in one of the stalls. The assistant principle came running in and I motioned for her to let me handle it. “I had him 4th period,” I said.

So here I was, alone in the bathroom with Daniel. Silence. I sat there for 3 minutes before I said anything. “Daniel, I’m sorry,” I admitted, breaking the silence. “I’m sorry for being angry with you today. I lost my temper at you and you did not deserve that. I know you’ve had a rough day today, but I just want to ask for your forgiveness.” Nothing. I looked under the stall door and saw Daniel in the far back corner, as far away as he could be from me. “It sucks when everyone blames you for the bad stuff, doesn’t it? It sucks to get yelled at. It sucks to be hurt by the people who are supposed to love you doesn’t it?” It’s a monologue at this point, but I noticed his feet inching closer to the door of the stall. “You probably just want to be loved Daniel, and it sucks that you haven’t found that. I’m sorry that people haven’t shown you love. That hurts.”

After 30 seconds of silence, I heard the latch on the door slide slowly open. I waited. Within a couple seconds, Daniel opened the door just enough for his eye to show. “WHAM!” he slammed it shut. A couple seconds later, the same thing, only this time he opened it just a little wider, and “SLAM!” Then a little wider and slam, until he was swinging the door back and forth. I could see how much he wanted to come out, how much he wanted to be loved, but he was just straight up scared to death. He was scared that he wouldn’t really be loved, that if he really trusted me he’d just get hurt. So he kept the walls up, he chose to stay inside.

Isn't this what we do? All of us are just like Daniel. We open the doors of our hearts slowly and only enough for us to peek out, but when it looks dangerous outside, we slam the doors of our hearts shut. I do this all the time! I long so desperately to be known, but everything in me is scared to death to be seen for who I really am. If you saw the anxious, frightened, indecisive, manipulative, 'when-no-one-is-looking' Steve, you wouldn't see a pretty picture. And that is the Steve that I hide behind the doors of my locked stall. All the goofiness, vague attempts at vulnerability, and the show-you-my-good-side tactics- these are the walls of my heart. Daniel may have felt a little love that day in the bathroom, but I know that more than ever before, God gave me a picture of myself. He reflected back to me my terrified desire for love.

Focus

I always thought I was a leader. But this past year has proved me wrong. I have been a follower. My leading was only an ascent to a lonely summit. I realize now that all my life I have lived in the shadows of someone else's desires. I have not known my own vision, and followed it. I have waited for others to give me a vision, or I have crafted a vision to impress and to persuade others that I was a leader. Today, I became a leader. Not because I am leading anything, but because I know what I am about. I do not have a position, but I do have a passion. And finally, yes, finally I can say with confidence that I am ready to step out and pursue my vision whether the people I want to follow do so or not. I have focus. I am looking myself in the mirror and look deep into my own eyes. I finally see confidence. I finally see someone who I believe in.

Reflections on a Watermelon

Of all the metaphors for life, I think a watermelon gets it the best. A watermelon has both red, watery flesh and hardened, black seeds. Both are good, both are useful. The red, watery flesh can be eaten and it is sweet. Just like life, the sweetness may vary depending on how ripe the watermelon is, when it is cut and how it was grown. But no matter how sweet or tart the whole is, there are still those darn seeds. Usually, the seeds are seen as an impediment to the good stuff. You don’t eat the seeds, you don’t crack them open and find a delicious nut inside like sunflower seeds; watermelon seeds are just useless. In fact, they are so useless that most people spit them out. Wilder than that, we now have ‘seedless watermelons,’ really pain free watermelons. We see the seeds as so useless, so undesirable, so expendable that we either spit them out or discard them altogether. What a sad indictment of how we live our lives. If this is how we treat our watermelons, how much more do we avoid, spit out, and discard of the “dark spots” in our lives. We enjoy the sweet fleshy fruit and we try as hard as we can to get as much as we can out of life, but we so often see the dark spots as undesirable.

What if, we saw the potential and the power locked inside the seeds? What if the pain, the darkness, the depression, the death of our lives was the very thing that gave us life? I agree that the pain of our lives need not stay in the pit of our stomachs, pain needs to be expelled just as a watermelon seed is, but not in disgust. Expelling the pain simply means experiencing it for what it really is. When we experience our pain, we find that the darkness of those times is not an indication of death, but deep inside those nuggets of pain, life is awaiting to spring forth. The power of the seed is the power of life. When we get our pain outside of ourselves, when we experience our pain through letting out our most feared emotions: anger, sadness, loneliness, we find that therein lies life.

Just as seeds that spit onto ready soil spring up into life-filled watermelons, so pain that is felt and accepted as reality delivers life. My clearest and most present moments are right after I have experienced the deepest sadness, anger, and loneliness. Life seems crisp, like I’ve broken through a layer of ice that drops me into chilly, eye-opening water. Pain opens my eyes to reality. Recently after I experienced one of these painful moments and let out a deep sadness that was hidden within me, I walked outside and saw a bed of flowers. Without even realizing it then, I sat and gazed at those flowers for probably 20 minutes. I was so enraptured in the beauty that lay just before me. I was so slowed down to reality, to the moment, to what was. I don’t think I would have seen the depth of beauty in those flowers if I had just finished laughing at a joke or hurried past them after a shallow conversation. There is something about experiencing pain that brings life, meaning and reality.

So let’s embrace the seeds that our watermelon lives give us. Let us spit them out only for the purpose of seeing them for what they really are. And let us spit our painful moments not in undesirable disgust, but in honest and redemptive hope that when they land in the space we inhabit, those black seeds, those painful moments, will one day spring forth life. And the more painful moments I experience in the context of such a hope, the more my pain becomes a garden around me from which I can continue to live from and invite others to do the same. So, I will glory in my pain, not because it is painful, but because life awaits me.

Picture Perfect Loneliness

I substitute taught for a disciplinary class at Artesia High School today. To give you an idea of the kind of kid’s these were, the regular “teacher” told me that every time she walks in that room “I put on my bitch face.” In other words, the only way to survive with these kids was to be as mean as hell to them, intimidate them, and show them who’s really in control. She told me to make sure they chose a prompt on the board and that everyone had to write an essay.

Obviously, I was intrigued and intimidated by what my day might look like. So the other teacher left and my job was to wait for security, who are actually cops, to drop off students as they were caught.

Because it might be a while I took out a book for a class I’m taking called, “Counseling
Troubled Families.” Within 10 minutes the first and only batch of six students walked in with a cop right behind them. I signed them in and instructed them that they had to write a mandatory essay on one of the topics the teacher left on the board. After some complaining, I thought about it for a second and said, “Ok, you have an option! You can either write an essay, or you can draw a picture of your family and show it to me one-by-one.” At once all six students (5 boys, and 1 girl) laughed and started making fun of the idea of drawing a picture of their family. “what are we in kindergarden” one of them said. “Well you can write an essay then.” I said.

After a minute of silence, I noticed that one-by-one, every student started to draw a picture, and one-by-one, they came up and showed me their family. Of all the pictures I can remember, the one that stood out to me the most was the picture the 2nd to last kid brought up. He handed me the paper, and all that was on it was a stick figure that had the word “Me” above it. Immediately, I knew this was a holy moment. I gently looked at him and asked where his parents were. After looking back at his classmates to make sure no one was listening, he said, “in prison.” “You must feel really alone,” I said. I could see his eyes watering. He felt completely alone. He had no sisters or brothers, and his parents were in prison. I asked him who he lived with. “My grandparents,” he said. “My grandma has mental breakdowns and my grandpa is never around… I don’t know where he goes.” My heart melted for this guy. He truly felt alone in the world and his only family was himself. I was pissed at his situation. Why? Why does a 16-year old have to deal with such deep loneliness. This will never go away. He will deal with that loneliness and his pursuit to fill it for the rest of his life. No wonder he was ditching class, no wonder he was getting bad grades, no wonder he was messing up. He was hurting, lost, and alone.

Unspoken Suffering

I’ve been taking this class on human suffering the last couple of weeks. Today, each of us in the class had a couple of minutes to share our personal stories of suffering/pain. As I listened, I noticed gaps, silent spots, and grimaces with no explanation. I heard people minimize their pain. I heard people spiritualize, triumphalize, justify, redemptify and straight up deny their pain. I heard a lot of words like, “not that bad” and “could have been worse” and “I’ve been blessed.” These are all good things to say, but the fact of the matter is that pain is pain. It does not help us to disguise our pain with silence or to keep it locked up in the unreality of Christian cliché. Pain hurts, and it hurts deep. As I listened, I started to think about all the unspoken suffering. I started to think about all the stories upon stories, details upon details that weren’t being shared. I started to think about all the internal turmoil and battles that have been fought in each person as they wrestled with the implications of inflicted harm and harm inflicted. It is the inner world, the world of the unseen thoughts, emotions, and perspectives that we will never see, even when we "share our stories." No matter how vivid I paint the picture, no one will ever fully know the struggle and the continued heart ache those pains have casued.

After we were done sharing, a couple people realized that they had experienced similar things that others had shared. They had unspoken suffering. And in my heart too, I knew that there were things that I had not shared, there were gaps, stories left untold, experiences unspoken. There were things that were too painful, there were parts of my story that i had forgotten, repressed, denied. I just wonder how often we allow the gaps to exist. How often is what people share just the manufactured conclusion of a messy, unprocessed hurt? How often is pain disguised, minimized, and denied? When is it appropriate to step into the gaps? When is it appropriate to put volume to the silent spots? When is it appropriate to step into the unspoken suffering? I don't know, but as I listened to myself and others, the silence spoke louder than our speech.

If you have the gift of mercy, use it on yourself!

I have the gift of mercy. The crazy thing about the gift of mercy is that with it I have the power to extend grace or judgment. Inherent in this gift is an attraction towards those who need mercy. This plays out very practically. When I walk into a room full of people, I do not see the cool people, the in crowd, the put-together. I see those on the outside, the outcasts, the ones that don’t belong. I can feel their need. It’s like I have a radar for it and it is deadly accurate. I am immediately attracted to those people that need mercy the most- the downcast, the hurting, the hopeless. And with this gift comes a tremendous responsibility- the responsibility to accept, to love, to show compassion. But what I find myself so often doing is using my gift of seeing the outcast as a way to build a hierarchy. I see myself as superior and I feel empowered by that feeling. I use needy others to build my own needy ego. I judge. I condemn. I reject. Even though my exterior is loving and affirming, on the inside I am looking with scorn. I am not loving from a whole place, I am looking for needs to meet and mercy to extend to serve my own selfish desires, my need to be important and looked upon as pious and merciful and caring in the eyes of others. In some respects, I am a Pharisee. Mercy doesn’t look so merciful when you’re looking at my heart.

So how do I deal with this unmerciful-mercy problem/gift? Here’s the deal- as with any gift, God has given it to be shared, but before it can be shared with others, it must be personally experienced. One of the great things about mercy is it is not just for others- it’s for me. Jesus said, “Love God and love others as yourself.” he doesn’t say love others more than you love yourself. He says, to the extent that you know how to love yourself- love other people. So what is he calling us to? He is calling us to self-love. It is in the expereince of self-love that we will exhibit radical love towards others. I will only love others to the extent that I love myself. So, I must take aim at loving myself well. I must take aim to bless myself. I must take aim to love my body, my past, my emotions, my failures, my limitations, my weaknesses, my strengths, my gifts, those things I am not gifted in, my regrets, all that I am, I must look to embrace myself. It is when I love myself that I will truly love others. It is when I extend mercy to myself that I will most authentically extend mercy to others.

So, if you have the gift of mercy, use it on yourself!