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!

The Better Way

According to our man Jesus, there is a better way to live.  He came to give us life, and yet so many of us live in dead end ways.  We live our lives in obligation, striving, busy, looking for rest, longing for love, hoping for more, miscomprehending grace, with a shortsighted vision of the faith life.  In a very real way, I believe most Christians miss the plentiful life that Jesus came to bring.  

Jesus said, " Enter through the narrow gate.  For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter though it.  But small is the gate and narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." Only a few?  What does that mean?  Just yesterday I heard a statistic that there are 2.2 billion Christians in the world (33% of the world population). That sounds like a lot more than a few are finding the way of life. 

When he made this statement Jesus was talking to his disciples.  He was not just making a statement about eternal life, but real life, life now.  The path to life in this world is hard to find because there are so many things that look like life.  Even for the Christian, the temptation to pursue a path that leads to death is real.  We are not immune to mistaking the wide path for the path to abundant life.  We as a Church are in danger of following the same paths that the world does in our search for life, only we do it in religious clothing.  Just look at the Pharissees. They pursued what they thought was life by "searching the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life... But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life" (John 5:39). Could it be that our Bible studies, our preaching, our evangelistic endeavors, and our church activities are leading us down a wide path?  Could it be that we as a church, just like the Jews, are missing the narrow gate to life?  We substitute activity for rest, obligation for willingness, striving for cooperation, anxious doing for peace, and responsibility for love. Where is the life that Jesus promised?  What is it and why does it seem that so few Christians find it?

The better way is a path to life and that life is found in being with Jesus.  Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, and the life."  Life is found in being with Jesus.  In the presence of Jesus there is no obligation.  There is no striving. There is only rest, there is only love, there is only peace, there is only hope, there is faith, and grace, and all that our hearts long for.  We are creatures who long for rest, for a heavenly country.  We long for a home and a place of love and belonging.  We desire, a place where we are known and loved infinitely deep, where our souls feel the weight of our value.  This is a place where we are wanted and where we experience intimacy.   It is the place where we are at love, staring into Jesus' eyes, laying together, laying in rest, in peace, in love.  Jesus is that way. He wants to take you to the way of love, to the way of belonging and to the way of life.  

This path however, is not valued by our society.  We do not think of being with Jesus as the way to life.  No, the way to life is by getting things done.  The way to life is by doing things for Jesus, not by being with him.  It's interesting that right after Jesus talks about the two paths, he talks about the, "Many (who) will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?'" But Jesus was not interested in their activity, he was not impressed with their doing. "I never knew you; depart from Me," he said.  He classified ambition, getting things done, striving, and doing as paths that lead to death.  Doing things for Jesus is not the path to life. 

Being with Jesus is the path to life.  Why is it so hard to spend time laying in the presence of Jesus? Why is it so hard to share our emotions with Jesus, to sit and cry with him, laugh with him, and be silent with him?  Why do we find it so difficult to slow down and stop our doing so that we can be with Jesus? It's because we really don't beleive that being with Jesus is the path to life.  We really don't believe that Jesus could possibly want to be with us unless we have something to bring him (i.e. prophesying, casting out demons, and doing many wonders).But the exact opposite is true, coming to Jesus with our activity does not make him like us anymore, in fact it keeps us from him.  Intimacy requires two open hands.  Lovers can not truly love if they have their hands full of gifts.  Intimacy is the result of being together.  Jesus can only see me for who I really am when I drop my gifts and take off my religious clothing.  He wants enrapture you in love.  He wants to be close.  When we bring ambition to Jesus, we miss Jesus, we miss life.  

There's this song I've been listening to that is actually called, "The Better Way." I challenge you to take 30 minutes to lay on the carpet and listen to this song.  Just be with Jesus.  Just rest in him.  No striving, doing, obligation, or responsibility.  Just Jesus. Just Life. Jesus is Life. Jesus is the better way. 

Use this link and click on "A Better Way." http://www.rhapsody.com/jason-upton/tracks.html