Giving Thanks

Last Sunday I asked my first grade class what they were thankful for.

"Nothing," came the first smirky response.

"Nothing," I said. "You have absolutely nothing in your life that you enjoy."

"Ice cream!" he said.

One boy ran through a list of all the kids in class he liked, starting with his best friend, continuing through most of the other boys in the class, and ending with, "...and even the teacher." Which was actually kind of sweet coming from that particular kid.

Some of the kids broke out their Sunday School answers: "God and Jesus!" said one boy.

"Good," I said. "What about them?"

The boy looked panicked, then came up with, "Well, they're Christians...and they're the same person...."

We attempted a small bit of theology adjusting on the "they're Christians" score, but it was a good start. Because it's sure a lot easier to rattle off God and/or Jesus in a list of things you're thankful for than it is to think about why you're thankful for either/both.

Thankfulness is something that takes mental effort, sometimes. It's a choice of focus. I could choose to dwell on all the things I want that I still don't have, and all the reasons I might not have them. Or I could think about how I always, always get what I need, and how what I want and what I need are intersecting more and more frequently.

The first choice spirals me down towards depression, and the second brings a smile to my face and peace to my heart. (Why, then, is that choice sometimes hard? Doesn't it seem ludicrously simple?)

I have so much to be thankful for this year. I know you do, too. If it doesn't seem like it right now, just search for it. You'll find it.

Things old and new

I am a writer. And I should write more fiction, in whatever form presents itself, because if I don't have that kind of outlet I tend to write my life. "I will say this, and then so-and-so will say that, and then I will reply...." I can get very invested in these shadow extensions of people with familiar faces. More than once I've mourned when reality dissolved them. More than once I've held back from people out of the fear of simply inventing them to my liking.

I am a reader. Maybe I should have read less, because somewhere along the line I got the idea that I could read real people as easily as fictional people. It turns out that real people are far more independent than fictional people, and I've read them wrongly with enough frequency that I no longer put full confidence in my ability to read them at all.

I am an analyzer, a pattern-finder. I should remember, in an "active remembering" sort of way, that things as they were do not equal things as they are, or vice versa. I am not doomed to repeat all the same patterns I've fallen into so often before. No matter how much it feels like I am stuck in a time loop in which only external details change (underneath, the same emotions; the same thought patterns; the same sins).

I am becoming a fighter. Even if it means struggling uphill all the way, I won't let my worst tendencies master me. I will not pretend to know what you're going to do. I won't presume to know what you're thinking and will trust what you tell me. I will have faith in a God who can break patterns, interrupt cycles, turn the very sun back in its path. And if I've prayed all these times for these thorns to be removed and they have not been, I will not have the arrogance to assume that I can thwart the power of God by not believing in just the right way. His grace is sufficient. His power is perfected in weakness.

No matter how I feel from day to day, I am new. (2 Cor. 5:7)

Anybody...

...want one of these?

It's kind of hilarious to me that they exist.

Spiritual Warfare

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm." (Ephesians 6:10-13)

Somehow in growing up I got the idea that the spiritual forces thing was kind of over. No more miracles, no more demons after you. That was all from the Bible, and since the Bible was now complete, God handed the world over to science. Which was kind of nice, because I like when things are visible and in my face. I've not been very good at picking up on subtlety. I've read the wrong things into just about everything I could.

Then I had a good friend, Jolene, who talked about the spiritual realm as though it were as real as anything she could see. She would pray earnestly for deliverance from oppressive spiritual forces. She didn't leave the house without praying on the armor of God.

Personally, I was afraid that I would confuse oppressive spiritual forces with stuff that makes me uncomfortable, or things my senses tricked me into. I didn't want to be praying away a demon that was really only a piece of undigested bit of beef.

Lately I've been thinking that God doesn't mind me praying away the undigested bit of beef, either. But I've also been noticing a trend. It seems that when I promise God I will do my best for Him in a particular area, or when I make a public proclamation of a truth I cling to, clutter starts accumulating. Someone tells me news I didn't want to hear. Traffic lights are all red when I get to them. I forget to put something I needed on my grocery list. Old worries rattle around with new ones. Thorns grow up around the new plant sprung from seeds of the Gospel. 

I am starting to realize that my weapons are divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses (2 Cor. 10:4). And I am beginning to see you, invisible foes. 

You shall not pass.

Asking, seeking, knocking, expecting

Whenever I go to visit my grandmother, she's always trying to give me things. She will buy extra food so that I can take it home. She will rummage through closets for a sweater I can wear and then tell me I can keep that, too. She pays for lunches and dinners and show tickets and whatnot.

Her daughter, my mom, is like this as well. My mom likes to shop at Goodwill (or Kohl's, or most anywhere there's a bargain advertised), and she's constantly picking up things that remind her of me. She rarely comes to visit without a bag full of things she has for me to look at or a basket of laundry she's done for me. She'll send me home with food almost every time I go visit my parents.

I used to brush these things off. "No, Grandma, I don't need that pudding." "Mom, I can't think of anything I could possibly ever want from that store." Why should I make them spend their money on me when I didn't even need anything? But eventually one day I realized from their disappointed expressions that what they wanted me to say was something more like, "Thank you for thinking of me. I will accept the food/clothing/random gift you are offering me because what it is to you is not just a thing, it's a way of showing love. And if accepting graciously is me loving you and not me taking advantage of you, that's what I will do." (Okay, they didn't really want me to say all that. But that's the gist of it, I think.)

This last time I visited my grandmother, it hit me: God is like her and my mom. He doesn't want me to stand back saying I have everything I need and couldn't possibly want anything else, thanks anyway. He wants me coming to him like a child. And one of the things children do is ask you for things without thinking about if it's proper for them to do so, or if you have the time, or the resources, or the desire to grant the request. 

God's not like me. He doesn't worry about whether or not our relationship is balanced, whether or not we're giving equally or loving each other equally (and all praise to Him for that!). He is not hesitant about blessing me beyond all I could ask or imagine, whether I ask for it or not. But I think He wants me to imagine good things, the best things I can, and to ask for those; and to wait with my eyes closed and my hands held out, expecting to get what I asked for or better.

He's not the God of second-best or of disappointing results. It's high time I stopped living like He was.

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!" (Matthew 7:7-11)

Random Fact

I used to hate static electricity a lot more before Elle was introduced in the second season of Heroes. Now I often run my hand purposefully along metallic surfaces and approach file cabinet corners palm first.

It's fun in my world.

Dangerous Prayers

I may have mentioned this before, but I prayed one of those dangerous prayers again. About this time last year, I prayed for God to give me peace in unusual situations I'd never dealt with before, and within about a month my brother began dating the woman who will soon become his wife (shout-out to Dorothy, in case she's reading this: way to be an answer to prayer; I'm sure it won't be the last time).

About a month ago, I prayed for God to protect my heart, to take away my useless dragon scales I try so hard to pull back around me, to take my controlling hands away from my life, and to bring me to full recognition of His control (all clauses of the same prayer). Since then, God has brought a bunch of issues up in a roiling boil. 

A few weeks ago, it was the election. How much trust was I putting in laws written on paper by humans instead of laws written on hearts by God? How much confidence was I putting in God's sovereignty over all things? How hard was I willing to fight for harmony with fellow citizens of a kingdom far greater than any on earth? 

Post-election, there's the youth group banquet. This has been "my" thing for about five or six years and it has been my major theatrical outlet. This year, somebody else not only came up with the main idea but wants to be involved in its execution. Also, two people sometimes more popular and almost entirely always more laid back and thus possibly more inherently likable than I am are competing for the leader spotlight.

This afternoon, I pondered how tightly my identity had gotten wrapped up in this annual church youth group event, how much prouder I was of it than I thought, how much I liked basking in the affection of any youth group kids willing to offer it, how supplanted I felt. I was still thinking about this when I got to church tonight...and found the guest pastor had changed his sermon from "Godly Grief" to "Godly Boasting."

He said boasting in the Lord means...

...we praise God for whatever He does through us.

...we don't boast based on comparison with others.

...we don't exaggerate our strengths.

...we don't take credit for what we didn't accomplish.

...we value the Lord's opinion above any others.

God is the only one worth impressing, he said. God is the only one who gives you worth, he said. We can have peace with ourselves through peace with God...it will never come from the adulation of others.

Again with the timing of God.

This banquet is not (should not be) about how awesome Suzanne is. Or how awesome the other leaders are. Or the performers, or the cooks, or whoever. We're doing this to raise funds for ministry, not fuel our egos.

Also, thinking that people only have room in their hearts for one person, and that if they care about somebody else they can't also care about me, is pretty shallow. Especially considering I've been increasingly experiencing the reverse: that the more deeply my love is based on God's love for me, the more people I can love deeply.

And what if some focus is being taken off this creative outlet because it's time for me to stretch my creative self in other ways? 

I don't know what else the Holy Spirit is going to be doing in my life this year, but what I do know is this: it's going to be something amazing.

Timing is everything

Yesterday I went out to the company warehouse to organize boxes. I was feeling very sorry for myself about current events in my life, and then suddenly I heard the receiving foreman saying to the truck driver who had just come by to pick up a truckload of foam: "Jesus Christ was in the tomb for three days and He rose again."

My heart jumped. Immediately I was tuned into their conversation. They talked about trusting God and praising God at all times: in good health and bad, strong economic situations and shaky ones.

"It is not by accident that I am in the warehouse right now," I thought, and I almost cried at the encouragement that was pouring over my soul as I was reminded (again): God's timing is right. God knows where I will be, and for what reason, and He leads me along where I need to go. I barely see the next footstep, but He sees the whole path...and gives light for one step at a time because that's all I can take, anyway. And He uses people even when they don't know it.

"Keep that church on wheels moving!" the foreman called out cheerfully as the driver left, then turned to me. "Did you see his truck?"

We went to the door and looked out at the semi parked at the dock. "JESUS IS LORD," it proclaimed in big red letters.

"Amen!" I said. 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort.

For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, he on whom we have set our hope. 

And he will yet deliver us, you also joining in helping us through your prayers, that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed upon us through the prayers of many.

~~ I Corinthians 1:3-11

My heart is burdened beyond my strength, and I don't want to keep people unaware of it until it starts crushing me again, like it did before when I was relying so heavily on my own strength. I am faced with things I am not and things I want to be and everything is swirling around in my head faster and faster and I am fighting for perspective to see past this moment.

He will yet deliver me; please join in helping me through your prayers to the glory of God.

I'm pretending that Brittany tagged me for this one-word meme. Because these sorts of things cheer me up somehow, and lately I take what I can get in that department.

Where is your mobile phone? Desk
Where is your significant other? Dawdling
Your hair colour? Brown
Your mother? Smiles
Your father? Laughs
Your favorite thing? Many
Your dream last night? Unremembered
Your dream goal? Write
The room you’re in? Messy
Your hobby? Nerdy
Your fear? Failure
Where do you want to be in 6 years? Beyond
Where were you last night? Jen's
What you’re not? Telepathic
One of your wish-list items? Tower
Where you grew up? East
The last thing you did? When?
What are you wearing? Red
Your TV? Old
Your pets? Gorgeous
Your computer? Shiny
Your mood? Drained
Missing someone? Yes
Your car? Honda!
Something you’re not wearing? Monocle
Favorite shop? Pet
Your summer? *woosh*
Love someone? Improving
Your favourite colour? Blue
When is the last time you laughed? Tonight
When is the last time you cried? *sigh*

Well, that was fun. Even though it ended on a crying note. Come on, meme-writers, you're supposed to be cheering people up.

My Shtick (or part of it, anyway)

I am hyper-concerned about image and I hate it. It is a constant struggle for me to place God at the center of my striving and let people feel the outpourings of that love that I want to surpass all other loves, especially the self-love that comes so easily.

Crazy example? Okay.

Tonight we auditioned a bunch of youth group kids for roles in the annual fundraising banquet. One of the roles was "the ugly girl." And I got my back up because I'm very sensitive about ugly girls. I don't think we should be so concerned about image. Why? Partly because, as mentioned, I'm hyper-concerned about image, and when people talk about physical appearance a lot I feel all shrivelly and gross. (This is not a bid for compliments on my appearance, it's a confession of self-idolatry, which is the most insatiable form I've ever encountered.)

And then I have to be at least twice as funny to make up for my perceived lack of gorgeousness. Which is good because "funny" is one of the power plays I have down so people will like me. In my interview for church membership, I was hilarious.

Am I always funny to make people like me? I hope not. I hope that more and more often I'm simply exercising a gift to bring enjoyment to self and others. Do I actually think I'm ugly? Parts of me, sometimes, and certainly not as infrequently as I should. (Oh, but sometimes I think I'm all that and then some.)

Seriously? I am a ridiculous human being. I think we probably all have this part in common. My goal is to be a more and more sincere human being...and that includes being sincere about my ridiculous bits. 

Someday all of me--physical appearance and humor and skill sets and all--all of me will be focused on the right things, the right Person, and then it will bring joy to others and to me in ways I can't even imagine now.

Today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and until that someday--I fight.

So my brother's getting married this month....

I thought I would be married by now. As a kid, I mean, that's what I thought. If you had told me that my little brother would be getting married before I'd ever dated, and that even he would be nearing 28 by the time this happened.... Well, that just wasn't possible. Because you grew up, started dating, got married, had kids. That is how life worked. 

Except not really. Really, life worked (works) like this: God sets the schedule, not me. God sets the agenda. 

And God let me fall on my face where my original agenda was concerned (a lot). He let me try out different angles and adjust my paradigm based on past experience and attempt to work out a nice safe scientific theory that covered all the variables and eliminated all potential problems. Then he knocked that one over and let me start again. And again. And again.

He let this happen until I was thoroughly content with being unmarried forever, and then he brought my future sister-in-law into the picture and showed me how big of a liar I can be, even to myself. He let me see contentment in all circumstances wasn't about feeling perfectly fulfilled in all circumstances. He let me think about where I expected that perfect fulfillment to come from, anyway, and when.

He let me ponder the myriad ways other people could let me down, the myriad ways I could let myself and others down, and led me into pondering why I was so concerned about the harm any of us could do to each other, why I was clinging to my dragon scale armor when he gave me his own and sized it to fit me (or perhaps me to fit it).

He let me make my lists, back in the college days, of what I was looking for in a guy (how tall/smart/funny/etc. he should be), so I could see from here how thoroughly worthless most of the list was, how impossible it is for a human to fill my needs, how harmful to myself and others to lean on them so hard.

He let me rush in like a fool so I would appreciate the virtue and wisdom of being still, of waiting.

He made "I give up" and "I don't know" important and precious sayings in my life, inasmuch as they relate to giving up the hurtful things and not presuming to know all things.

For instance, I don't know whether or not I'll ever be married. But I give up on making marital status an indication of extra-special blessing I haven't earned yet, and also on making it something that I can't even think about until I've reached some mystical goal point in my spiritual life. 

Am I free of all my fears about commitment? No. Am I going to start introducing myself to every unattached male I see? No. Am I attracted to the idea of marriage?

If it looks like this, I am.

Election day thoughts

The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD;

he turns it wherever he will.

~~ Proverbs 21:1

Nothing takes God by surprise.

No differences of opinion confuse him.

No political zealot sways him from his intended purpose, but the prayers of his people are effective and accomplish much...more by far than you can ask or imagine.

In a time of rising political unrest, with all eyes on Rome, Christ came to be born in a small town to politically insignificant parents. He was the most important event in history, and the only savior of any country. (When ticker-tape parades are over, every elected official eventually becomes human.)

He cares about national politics, but he's more concerned about individual hearts.

And when you ask him to show you your heart and to take guarding it out of your hands, he can be amazingly quick to respond. (He is dangerous.)

So get some sleep, Suzanne. He doesn't need your worrying to save the world. He is already using you in ways you may never know (and some that you may), and there are greater things to come. Know your place, and know that it is under his protection and care.

Peace. Be still.

A different kingdom

When the Israelites asked for a king "like all the nations," God told Samuel he'd give them one. But he told him to warn them: that kind of king wouldn't be what they thought he'd be. 

Sure, Saul was tall and charismatic and popular. So were a lot of Israel's kings, no doubt. But God warned the people that their kings would look out for themselves first and their friends second; that they would raise taxes higher and higher; that their administrations would balloon out of control.

Sound familiar? It should.  This is what happens with human rulers. Even now, even here in the United States, where our form of government is far more free than that of other nations. This is what happens.

I haven't been watching political ads much this year. They used to make me angry, but this year they make my heart ache. Every ad promises that a better life hinges on which candidate you vote for. Every ad promises change. Every ad promises more than any human being has a right to promise, let alone the ability to follow through on.

Every ad sounds like offering cosmetic surgery to cancer patients.

John McCain may be able to keep the troops in Iraq, but he will not be able to stop terrorism. Barack Obama may be able to change your health care plan, but he will not be able to keep you healthy. They are right: we need change. They are wrong about the kind of change we need most.

No matter who is elected on Tuesday, on Wednesday morning there will be people who wake up hating each other. There will be people who wake up with physical illnesses, people who wake up apathetic about their jobs, concerned about their relationships, afraid of what will happen to them in this economy. People with, at the ground level, the same concerns that people had back in the founding days of the United States. Or in the founding days of the nation of Israel, for that matter.

Who is going to protect us? Who is going to look out for us? Who is going to make us look good to everybody else?

Two thousand years ago, along came this blue collar worker from a backwoods town, with no ad campaign to speak of except for some guy dressed in camel skins. He didn't address the problems people brought to him, he told them they only really had one problem.

Our problem isn't that we don't look good enough. We don't need nose jobs or tummy tucks. Our problem is that we are not good enough. Like cancer, which turns the body's cells against themselves, our very selves are operating at odds to the way they are meant to operate. (It is said that, when asked to write an essay on what was wrong with the world, G.K. Chesterton replied, "I am.")

We stand guilty before God of violating our purposes. Our hearts need to be changed.  And only God can do it...so it's a good thing he's already offered: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh" (Exodus 36:26).

There is only one physician capable of this kind of heart transplant, and of cleansing us of the cancer of self-righteousness. The only conditions? That we acknowledge that we can't do it ourselves and that we ask him to do it for us. That we stop trying on our own and do it his way. It isn't painless; no surgery is. But there's no other cure.

If you'd rather opt for cosmetic change, there is no end to your options. Two men and their running mates have been throwing some of those at you for months now.

"The kingdom of God has come to you," the blue collar worker named Jesus said (Luke 11:20). And this kingdom is about power, not fancy speeches (I Cor. 4:20).

I'm so tired of fancy speeches.