Lately, I find myself itching for something. Rather, aching for something. Something beyond me and something that is more than just flesh and bones. Some kind of unquenchable thirst for something that satisfies everything I want and need. The fact that I long for it led C.S. Lewis to believe that it exists. He says that the longings for satisfaction and contentment and eternity come because such a thing exists that will fully meet all those longings.
I long for a place, or maybe a person who is utterly and wholly ‘other.’ I am unable to put my finger on exactly what I am looking for, but I know I need it.
Colorado was a glimpse of this. I remember wanting BEAUTY, a place where I could get lost in creation, where I could breathe fresh air and completely slip away from the hustle and bustle of life; in a word, a place of peace. The Rocky Mountains gave me the sense of that for a fleeting instant, and yet even in the middle of the great outdoors…something is still missing. I am unable to fully articulate it, and my listeners are much less able to understand and feel it with me fully. The gap. The ever expanding gap in the space between. My heart seems to know exactly what I am looking for, but is keeping it a secret from my head. I long for something that is just outside of my experience, but it seems that my soul knows it’s there. Just beyond my grasp. My longing propels me to search, with the hope that when I arrive at the destination, my heart will exclaim “Yes! This is exactly what I was looking for.”
Today I am forever tied with C.S. Lewis, to heaven. The idea of being fully content and fully satisfied and wholly rid of this skin that makes me unable to experience any of it. Today I feel the eternity that was set in my heart by my beloved Jesus.
“If a transtemporal, transfinite good is our real destiny, then any other good on which our desire fixes must be in some degree fallacious, must bear at best only a symbolical relation to what will truly satisfy. …The secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name.
These things – the beauty, the memory of our own past – are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
We remain conscious of a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy.…For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance.
The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory meant good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last. Perhaps it seems rather crude to describe glory as the fact of being “noticed” by God.”
-C.S. Lewis
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Psalm 91
Some days, and I take great lengths to remember and drink deeply of the joys of life, I feel like dancing and singing and shouting. I twirl and laugh for no reason. I drive with the windows down. I feel happiness to an infinite degree and everything is beautiful and magnificent and life seems breezy. Days when the sun is out, it's warm and I am eating fresh pineapple. Days when things seem right and good in the world. Like a sunset at the park. Or a night with old friends playing games around a fire.
And then, gravity sometimes sets in and some days feel more like life has woken you up abruptly and you are frazzled and your hair looks a hot mess. And you're always late. Days when you are sick and tired and outside in the cold with inadequate clothing. Times when nothing seems worth it and everyone is against you. When you feel attacked or threatened or like you are being pulled in a million directions for a million reasons when all you want is solitude or to be in your bed. And yet we drink deeply of these too. The fight. The dark night of the soul.
One minute it’s sunny, and the next minute it’s hailing.
I want to confess that I have been wrestling. I have been blatantly disobedient to the call and stirrings of Christ and I have felt guilt and shame over it, and even still a resistance remains in my heart towards the things of God. Why? I know truth after truth about the goodness and mercy of God. And yet my fleshly heart is against Him. There is a resounding terror in the idea of my surrender to Christ, of being out of control. Of being led to a place of discomfort by a God who (in my head) is ready to crush me.
I have seen my struggle and these lies I believe accidently spill into other relationships and rear their heads as anything from insecurity to jealousy. Amidst my wrestle with God, I have let myself be covered in lies. And worse, I believe them. Isn’t that how it goes? We get away from our life source in Christ, and we just start making our messes messier. Lately, I have been all kinds of crazy and two shades of irritable. I think the key to my distress is my lack of intimacy with Christ. My very skewed version of who God really is, and what he thinks of me. And so, with eyes to the ground, tear stained cheeks, and feeble/wobbly knees I am taking steps back towards what is true.
And true is this:
"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty...He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge, His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart...a thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come near you. If you make the Most High your dwelling--even the LORD, who is my refuge then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone." -Psalm 91
"The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” -Zephaniah 3:17
There are a lot of things that I want to be. That I think I am. Things that define me and things that are true of me. I could make a long list of words that I think define me or at least the ones that I want to define me. And my motivation behind having this definition, this persona that is all that I am and all that I want to be, is at some deep level I need to feel wanted. Against all my rational and known truths, I believe that I must perform a certain way in order that God will actually want me.
Despite my best attempts at fierce independence and nonchalance, I honestly want approval. I want to know that I am doing okay, that I am on track, that I am going in the right direction. I want justification and affirmation and acceptance. I think it’s the result of my human nature, a fallen world and the burden that all of us (at some level) bear. And so at the depths of my very fragile heart, my life is constantly being set beside a measuring stick. Am I funny? Am I pretty? Am I good? Am I right? Am I okay? Am I wanted?
In this single moment, though, I am met with the challenge to stop trying so hard to be the girl I think I am supposed to be. To instead, “dwell in the shelter of the Most High, and find rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” To yield to the God unseen, and to just be. To just exist in the sweet surrender of breathing in the breath that He has given me for this one hour. It’s a bitter pill for my pride to swallow to give up any and all expectations that I have set for myself.
Still, I feel begged, right now, to just be Ally. Nothing more, nothing less. Defined by nothing other than Christ’s love for me. Maybe today I could just sit in the magnitude of His adoration for me. Maybe I could just revel in how He recklessly loves me. To the depths of my soul. Without any performance from me. He wants me. Adores me. And this love drenches me when I am not funny. When I am disobedient. When I am clumsy and emotional and frustrated and wildly out of control crazy. It is then that he whispers “You are mine.” He knows me more fully than I know myself, the depths and the heights of every crevice of my soul and he responds “I want you.”
And in that, my weary soul finds rest.
And then, gravity sometimes sets in and some days feel more like life has woken you up abruptly and you are frazzled and your hair looks a hot mess. And you're always late. Days when you are sick and tired and outside in the cold with inadequate clothing. Times when nothing seems worth it and everyone is against you. When you feel attacked or threatened or like you are being pulled in a million directions for a million reasons when all you want is solitude or to be in your bed. And yet we drink deeply of these too. The fight. The dark night of the soul.
One minute it’s sunny, and the next minute it’s hailing.
I want to confess that I have been wrestling. I have been blatantly disobedient to the call and stirrings of Christ and I have felt guilt and shame over it, and even still a resistance remains in my heart towards the things of God. Why? I know truth after truth about the goodness and mercy of God. And yet my fleshly heart is against Him. There is a resounding terror in the idea of my surrender to Christ, of being out of control. Of being led to a place of discomfort by a God who (in my head) is ready to crush me.
I have seen my struggle and these lies I believe accidently spill into other relationships and rear their heads as anything from insecurity to jealousy. Amidst my wrestle with God, I have let myself be covered in lies. And worse, I believe them. Isn’t that how it goes? We get away from our life source in Christ, and we just start making our messes messier. Lately, I have been all kinds of crazy and two shades of irritable. I think the key to my distress is my lack of intimacy with Christ. My very skewed version of who God really is, and what he thinks of me. And so, with eyes to the ground, tear stained cheeks, and feeble/wobbly knees I am taking steps back towards what is true.
And true is this:
"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty...He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge, His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart...a thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come near you. If you make the Most High your dwelling--even the LORD, who is my refuge then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone." -Psalm 91
"The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” -Zephaniah 3:17
There are a lot of things that I want to be. That I think I am. Things that define me and things that are true of me. I could make a long list of words that I think define me or at least the ones that I want to define me. And my motivation behind having this definition, this persona that is all that I am and all that I want to be, is at some deep level I need to feel wanted. Against all my rational and known truths, I believe that I must perform a certain way in order that God will actually want me.
Despite my best attempts at fierce independence and nonchalance, I honestly want approval. I want to know that I am doing okay, that I am on track, that I am going in the right direction. I want justification and affirmation and acceptance. I think it’s the result of my human nature, a fallen world and the burden that all of us (at some level) bear. And so at the depths of my very fragile heart, my life is constantly being set beside a measuring stick. Am I funny? Am I pretty? Am I good? Am I right? Am I okay? Am I wanted?
In this single moment, though, I am met with the challenge to stop trying so hard to be the girl I think I am supposed to be. To instead, “dwell in the shelter of the Most High, and find rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” To yield to the God unseen, and to just be. To just exist in the sweet surrender of breathing in the breath that He has given me for this one hour. It’s a bitter pill for my pride to swallow to give up any and all expectations that I have set for myself.
Still, I feel begged, right now, to just be Ally. Nothing more, nothing less. Defined by nothing other than Christ’s love for me. Maybe today I could just sit in the magnitude of His adoration for me. Maybe I could just revel in how He recklessly loves me. To the depths of my soul. Without any performance from me. He wants me. Adores me. And this love drenches me when I am not funny. When I am disobedient. When I am clumsy and emotional and frustrated and wildly out of control crazy. It is then that he whispers “You are mine.” He knows me more fully than I know myself, the depths and the heights of every crevice of my soul and he responds “I want you.”
And in that, my weary soul finds rest.
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