It Is Okay to be Happy

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“Lindsey, is it okay for you to be happy?”

You’d think that would be an easy question to answer my counselor. Of course it is okay for me to be happy! I love being happy! Why’d you even ask that question? Instead, I felt my expression turn doubtful and anxious. A heaviness settled in my heart. I had been accustomed to ignoring a deep desire of my heart for 24 years, and in the past year had wrestled with God in sadness, bitterness, confusion, anger, and resignation – but never happiness. I surely must be doing something wrong. My over-analytical mind frantically searched for the problem.

“I don’t know. It feels wrong,” I finally answered.

We talked of the well-worn path of grief I had walked in for so long, how it didn’t make sense to me that the grief felt more right to me than the happiness did.

But familiarity, however painful, can feel more comfortable than happiness.

And that’s what is so dang confusing. Counter-intuitively, we are all drawn back to unhealthy habits, addictions, relationships, patterns of thinking, etc. not because it brings us joy, but because it feels like “this is just the way it is. This is reality.” We have succumbed to lives of mediocrity and pain because it is easier, safer, and less disappointing.

“You know, happiness is one of the most vulnerable emotions,” my counselor said.

At this point the trashcan was getting very blurry (during our sessions my gaze has an inexplicable tendency to wander to the trashcan instead of my counselor). I hugged a pillow closer to myself and tried not to burst into tears.

“I’m scared,” I whispered.

“Why?”

“Because the more happy I am about something, the sadder I’ll be when its gone.”

“That’s true. They’re linked, aren’t they?”

I thought of the movie Inside Out; of Joy and Sadness becoming inextricably connected by seeing each other’s incalculable worth in the final scenes.

“It’s easier to just stay sad. Then I won’t – ” I choked on a sob and took a moment to take a shaky breath, “be devastated.”

My counselor nodded in understanding. Or at least, I think she did . . . I could only see her through my peripheral vision, as my eyes were still firmly fixed on the trashcan. Finally, I let out a small chuckle.

“What is it?” asked my counselor, curious.

“I was just thinking…its kind of like waiting at the doctor’s office to get a shot.”

This was clearly not enough explanation. “Yeah? Tell me more,” said my counselor expectantly.

“I can’t spend my whole life in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, holding my breath for the next time pain and sadness comes. I’ll miss out on so much of what goes on outside the hospital.”

My therapist is used to me speaking in metaphors and caught on quickly. “So its kind of like in life there will be times when you have to go to the doctor’s office to get a shot . . . when grief and pain will hit you . . . and you’ll have to deal with it then . . . but there’s so much more for you than just anticipating the sadness.”

All my life I continually have had to remind myself that it is okay to be sad. Now, I’m slowly learning that it is also okay to be happy. Happiness is sometimes scarier than sadness, but that does not mean it is any less real.

I have a long way to go. I often run back towards the waiting room in trepidation and doubt. But I’m taking baby steps to dare to trust in the goodness of the Lord. Happiness is a gift from His hand, and I am to hold it with open hands, fully aware of the potential brevity of the emotion and the circumstance; fully aware that my enjoyment of His good gift brings absolute delight to my good God.

Its okay – its truly and blissfully okay – to be happy.

God’s Economy, My Good

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“It seems like you have this concept of God’s economy  . . . that if He gives a good gift . . . a job, a relationship, good health . . . to someone, then He must be taking away something good from someone else. But that’s not the way God works. He is the Giver of good gifts.”

God is the Giver of good gifts. 

God’s economy is goodness, not evil; flourishing, not suffering.

This was my turning point.

For over a year, I had been accusing God for His unfair, even cruel ruling in my life. I wanted something that didn’t seem wrong or unreasonable to ask for, and all I had learned in the past year was that if I followed the path I desired, I would not be following God’s will.

When my turning point materialized in the form of the wise words of my counselor, I was slowly emerging out of my dark night of the soul which sneered in the face of God and said: if I can’t have this, you clearly hate me, and I don’t want You anymore. The festering pool of misery where I’d been standing had risen up to my neck. I had only one choice . . . to try to swim out of my misery in a way that made complete sense to me and that would seem to give me the most happiness . . . or to let the waters rush over my head and see if God really was who He says He is . . . did He really care about this part of my life?

For once, I decided to place my bets on the goodness of God instead of my own wisdom.

I soon realized that God only needs one tiny act of surrender to reveal His goodness. It took me ten years of hiding and one year of intense grief and suffering to surrender my deepest desire and step out in faith that God is not only with me; He is also for me and for my good.

Let me just take a moment here to pause and say that the Enemy is crafty . . . I had to take a break from writing this blog post and go for a walk because I could feel panic and doubt set in . . . whispers of, ‘do you really believe God is good?’ ‘do you really believe He is not holding out on you?’ ‘you’re still struggling and grieving. If God is good why aren’t you completely happy and at peace all the time?’ I’m calling the Enemy out on His lies today. I do believe God is good. And when I don’t believe it, I will choose to try to believe it anyway. My happiness is not a prerequisite to God’s goodness.

The moment I let go of the design I’d drawn up for my life, God dropped me directly into the blueprint I thought I resented. I found myself flustered, bewildered at how quickly God showed me His plans are not arbitrary or cruel. That in fact, He had been on the edge of His seat, waiting for me to give Him a tiny space to show just how good of a Gift-Giver He is.

All these truths I “knew” were suddenly beginning to inexplicably and unexpectedly be experienced.

  • And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)
  • For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11)
  • How much more will our Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9-11)
  • Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. (James 1:17)
  • Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him. (Psalm 34:8)

This is not the prosperity gospel.

Am I happier than I have been in a while? Yes. But happiness is not the point. My struggles have not disappeared. My grief has not been absolved. Life will never be fair and life is often not good. I am not guaranteed ownership of any of the good gifts that God provides. There is no formula to receive God’s goodness. God gives whenever and however He wants to give.

But the memory of this particular gift, however long it lasts, given to me at the pinnacle of my surrender, will help me to lay down my will again, knowing that whatever God asks me to sacrifice, however painful the process, and even if I never see the fruit of my surrender . . . is truly for my good.

~~~

God calls us to risk the stories we want because it’s the only way we’ll live in the story we need – His. – Ben Riggs

There are many things I will never understand on this earth. There are many days I will think that my ways are better than God’s ways. Every day is a new opportunity to surrender. But what a relief it is to surrender into the arms of a God who is sitting on the edge of His throne, eagerly anticipating my participation in His story, in the economy of His goodness, with my ultimate gift the Creator of goodness Himself.

Coming Back to the Heart of Worship

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heart of worshipOne of my earliest memories is singing through the huge binders of worship songs that my mom (who was the keyboardist at the church where I grew up) owned. I would go in my room by myself, shut the door, and flip through the hundreds of pages, singing classic ’90s favorites: “There is None Like You”, “Lord I Lift Your Name on High”, “The Heart of Worship”, “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever” . . . the day I was baptized, one of the worship leaders commented on how I knew the lyrics to more of the songs we sang than anyone else at the church. He was probably right.

Somewhere, there is still a cassette tape of me singing worship songs when I was about four years old. I gave it to my mom, wanting her to give it to my pastor for “Pastor Appreciation Day”. She didn’t end up giving it to him, because it was “too cute” and she wanted to keep it. Every once in a long while, I dig up that cassette tape and listen to my tiny, high-pitched voice sing these praise songs.

When I was four, I didn’t think about the words I was singing. I don’t even remember being cognizant that I was singing these songs to God. But in a way, my childish worship was more honoring to God than the way I sing to Him now. How can that be? Then, I sang out of the pure happiness that music made me feel. I sang because I loved to sing. Now, my mind is clouded with pride and anxiety. I’m trying too hard to be real and vulnerable and sing the words with true desire in my heart, when God just wants me to find the happiness of song again. He wants me to tap back into that childish desire to hum and sing everywhere I go. My former habit of involuntarily humming music at the dinner table was more honoring than the duty-bound drudgery that singing with a congregation every Sunday has become.

To this day at worship gatherings, I’m known as a sort of worship music jukebox: “yeah–Lindsey can play anything!” come the cries of my friends, amazed that I often do not need chord sheets or lyrics for worship songs.

But even though I still remember lyrics and tunes, I’m losing something . . . I’m losing the memory of joy that made me look forward to every worship practice in my living room with my violin-transformed-guitar. I’m losing the desire to lose myself in song for hours and hours. Life and loss has caught up with me, telling me that there is no longer much of a reason to sing except as an expression of groaning desperation for God.

I started to write this blog post with a totally different direction in mind. I was going to talk about the song “Blessed Be Your Name”, particularly the words: “You give and take away, my heart will choose to say: blessed be Your Name”, and what that means and how that is possible.

But a small stirring in my heart caused me to remember a time when analyzing the words to worship songs and doubting everything I am singing and being plagued by pride and my own false images of God I’ve created over the years was not a struggle. That’s not to say I was a constantly happy child. Sometimes I think I must have been born with chronic anxiety. I had lots of silly and fun and wonderful moments as a kid, but I have always had an inexplicable underlying melancholy nature; aware of the immense evil and pain in the world. I don’t ever remember being completely carefree.

But when I sang–whether it was worship songs, Disney melodies, or tunes from Phantom of the Opera– I was free, happy and alive.

i could singI want to feel that way again. I want to sing just because I love the way singing makes me feel. Instead of singing at my circumstances, I want to sing irrespective of my circumstances. I want to be lost in the sense of feeling alive, of bubbling from the inside out with the joy of music.

The delighting in God’s creation of melody and lyric and harmony, is more pleasing to Him than the anxiety and self-absorption and attempts and failures at focusing on what we are singing about, that we all tend to bring to worship.

Matthew 21:16 says,

“Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him. “Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read, “‘From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have called forth your praise’

Kids get it. They get it because they don’t care about “getting into it”. They sing truth without thinking about the consequences of that truth. They sing truth without being concerned about their authenticity, their pride, or their failures. They sing with eyes wide open, taking in the massive glory of God with their minuscule lens of life experience.

God help us all to become children again. Help us to come back to the heart of worship.

 

Whose Line is it Anyway?

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I love comedy. Comedy transforms the ordinary, the absurd, and sometimes even the tragedies of life, into a pleasantly uncontrollable physiological response: laughter. In the TV game show Whose Line is it Anyway?, a few comedians are thrown into various pretend scenarios and games and are asked to improvise. The end result is hit or miss, but when they play off a scenario well, hysterical laughter ensues.

Sometime between the ages of 8 and 12, I wanted to be a comedian. I had always been good at making my family and friends laugh. My best friend and I even had a game we would play, aptly titled: Make Somebody Laugh. We would take turns doing various ridiculous things. The goal was to make the other person laugh ten times (the person would use their fingers to keep track of how many times they laughed). I was always eager to be the comedian, so when I was in the audience, I would often force some laughs so it would be back to my turn in the spotlight.

I was so excited about making people laugh that at eleven or twelve I pushed past my shyness to join an acting class. The first class included an improv game called FREEZE! in which two actors would start a scene. At any time, someone from the audience can shout “Freeze!” and enter the scene. Heart beating rapidly, I watched in exhilaration as the actors started their scene. It was now or never–I had to enter the scene. I knew exactly what to do.

“Freeze!” I said, a little timidly. I tapped one of the actors on the shoulder, they moved out of the way, and I resumed their position, which was in the middle of wrestling a chair. “Crikey! She’s a big one!” I morphed into my best Steve Irwin impression, pretending the chair was a crocodile. A chorus of laughter met my ears, and I felt a thrill of satisfaction, a bolstering of my self-worth. My “co-star” said something to me that moved the scene in a different direction than I was expecting, and my train of thought derailed.

I had thought that once I had jumped in, the rest of the scene would come naturally to me. Instead, I felt an inevitable sinking feeling in my gut as the initial laughter died down and I scrambled for a response. The remaining thirty seconds of the scene was agonizing. I wanted to crawl in a hole and die. Who am I kidding? I’m not funny. I’m shy. I’m scared. I don’t know what I’m doing! A mingled feeling of relief and embarrassment stirred when someone put me out of my misery and shouted, “freeze!” That was my first and last appearance at that class.

Sometimes life is a lot like an improv sketch.

Just like my first attempt at improv comedy, I jumped into my journey of self-discovery (approaching the year mark now) scared as hell but excited to forge my own path through a confusing scene. I knew the first couple lines to say. I even correctly predicted some of the dialogues and maneuvered my way around them with little difficulty. Like a good comedian, I delivered some one-liners that floored my audience. I’ve taken control of some of the twists and turns and used them as well as I can to my advantage.

But now, the thrill and the laughter has died down. I find myself thinking: Who am I kidding? I’m not equipped for this. I don’t know what I’m doing! And like a painfully awkward improv comedy sketch, I do not know what to say or do next.

I wait for someone to yell “freeze!” and take my place in this scene that I’ve messed up with my determination to force God’s will to align with my own. He isn’t budging on His part. And so far, neither have I. But I’m wearing down. Sometimes I’m worn down by bitterness, anger and grief. At other times, I’m worn down by faith . . . by faith in God’s goodness. It is a faith like Abraham’s, that makes no sense:

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.'(Romans 4:18)

Immediately when I feel a hint of that kind of faith, I recoil. Am I being duped? Am I succumbing to some kind of manipulative plan of God’s to draw me to Himself through suffering? Am I losing the wrestling match?  

The Spirit of the sovereign God lives in us (Christ-followers) to transform us into becoming more like Jesus for our good and for His glory. We are also told that we have the free will to reject the Holy Spirit’s leading. Even so, does it not seem at times as if we are pawns in this game of life? Sometimes I ask myself what is speaking to me, keeping me here weighted at the crossroads: my conscience, my shame, or my God? I find it so hard to resist Him . . .

19 One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” 20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use? (Romans 9:19-21)

In Whose Line is It Anyway? former host Drew Carey played a vital role. He introduced scenarios, stopped scenes in their tracks, and sometimes joined in the improv sketches himself. In a way, so it is with God. I’ve resisted Him as Lord of the game show, as Lord of my life. Like the time when I was derailed by how my fellow improv actor responded to my initial Steve Irwin impression, I am thrown off by a God who prefers to use the unexpected (and often the most painful) paths in life to bring about His good and loving purposes.

Heroes and Martyrs

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How many times have I told Him?

How many times have I told God that I do not want to be a martyr?

There are some Christians out there who say, without a doubt (I’ve never understood this), that they would take a bullet before denying Jesus. They would lay down anything, sacrifice whatever they most held dear, to avoid denying that precious relationship. Growing up saturated in a Christian home, a Christ-centered church, with Christ-honoring relationships all around me and involved in all sorts of ministries for Jesus . . . you would think I would be one of those Christians.

But I have never pretended that I could be a martyr.

On the contrary, I have begged God not to ask me to be a martyr.

When I was fifteen, I bought a book from our local “Bible book store” called I Would Die for You, about a boy who felt like he was called to be a martyr for Jesus. He ended up dying from a sickness he contracted on a mission trip when he was fifteen. For some reason, it sounded to me like an inspiring book at the time. When I finished reading it, I was terrified. I kept on seeing “signs” that I too was going to be a martyr. I remember a song playing on shuffle on my I-pod immediately after finishing the book, and it was all about dying for Christ. I recall seeing the number 41 shining through the blinds in my room and being suddenly convinced that was the year I was going to die (this is what anxiety does to you, folks). I laugh about all this now, but then, I could not have been more scared.

Today, I am not scared of losing my literal life for the sake of following Jesus, because there is no imminent, known threat.

However, today, and every day for ten months and counting, I am scared of losing something very important to me. No…I am scared of purposely leaving behind something very important to me. I am scared to perform my own execution, in effect. How…can…I…do…that?

How many times have I demanded that He give me the answer to my most pressing question in this journey? It is a question that, if answered, could at least anesthetize me before surgery. Why must He allow suffering to go unexplained, in any instance?

You know that verse in James that says perseverance must finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything? Do you know what I’m discovering the end of perseverance is? Sacrifice. Martyrdom. The laying of Isaac on the altar. The loss upon loss upon loss in Job’s life. The agonizing weight of the destructive thoughts and actions of every single person in the lifespan of humanity nailed to Jesus nailed to the cross.

You must die to live. You must sacrifice. You must trust though it seems like foolishness. You must be born again. That’s the Christian story.

It is a story reflective of all those good, sacrificial, heroic stories we all know and love.

But when it comes down to it, being a hero is a calling I am not sure I can live. That is why I could not write anything about those epic questions I asked in a failed blog post attempt. I was going to write all about how we are all the heroes of our own story, so we need to stay in our stories and keep fighting because it will be worth it in the end. But I found myself endlessly frustrated, tormented by my doubts.

I am still doubting. But the thing about doubt is that it always contains at least one crumb of belief.

So here is the space for my crumb of belief to speak:

It was the joy set before Him that convinced Jesus that dying a miserable death was worth it.

For the love of all that is good and true and hopeful and lovely and pure and beautiful, help us all to see the joy set before us as we endure our personal battles, as we persevere in a progressive world (both within and outside of Christianity) that shows us alternative scripts that seem to offer so much more joy, so many more answers, and so much more peace than the lives we are living. Help us to rest at the various crossroads in our lives for as long as it takes to become the heroes we were born to be.

Still W(rest)ling

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It was just today that I noticed that the word wrestling has the word “rest” in it. That is significant to me, perhaps because I’ve been getting an average of 4 – 6 hours of sleep per night and am feeling tired all the time. It is not that I can’t get to sleep or can’t stay asleep . . . I’m choosing to stay awake until ungodly hours because this journey of mine has me unhinged.

Like a swinging door tossed back and forth by massive gusts of wind.

I’ve been talking to God a lot via story and imagination lately. Near the start of my counseling journey, I started writing a story loosely based on the concept of the movie Inside Out, in which I interact with personified different parts of myself (anxiety, hope, anger, etc.) I’ve been asking the Holy Spirit to speak to me there. Though I realize it can’t come close to authoritative Biblical truth, I believe He is revealing wisdom to me in these messed-up pages that I bring to my counseling sessions unceremoniously wrinkled and folded and crammed in my purse.

Today I read a part of the story to her that I’d written over the weekend. If you’ve been following my blog or know me very well, you will know that I have often referenced where I’m at these past several months as wrestling God “at a crossroads” (sarcasm alert: Don’t you love the nebulous, noncommittal nature of that statement?).

Well, in this chapter, I meet with God in a garden that . . .

No matter the season, every flower was on the cusp of blooming. In my entire twenty-four years, not one flower had opened up its petals to display its full beauty. Not one flower had wilted and died, either. It was a premature beauty, this garden—full of a lingering, just-out-of-reach promise, like so many of the places I traveled and lived. It was an infuriating and comforting place all at once, and I would come here when I didn’t know where else to go.

When God comes to meet me at the garden, the flowers blossom at His touch. And at the end of our conversation, I am stunned at how He has also given me the power to reveal beauty–to release the flowers and trees into full bloom.

Spoiler alert: at the end, I find out that the garden is actually the crossroads.

What does all this mean?

It means I get to talk with you in more nebulous metaphors.

Actually, it simply means that I can rest.

I have mistakenly made the crossroads where I must make my monumental decision seem immediate and inescapable and impossible.

In truth, the crossroads was never meant to be just a place of wrestling. It is also meant to be a place of faith, of growth, of beauty in the confusion and indecision.

So here I am, resting in the wrestling. I’m getting a chance to drink some Gatorade and stretch and take a nap and talk with my competition. There is no need to rush to move past the wrestling match. There is no need to panic at my vacillating feelings. God will not be surprised at what path I choose, and if a wrong choice is made, that does not reflect upon my identity. As God’s child, nothing can take me out of His hand, not even myself.

 

This is The Worst Blog Post I’ve Ever Written

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Earlier today on Facebook, I posted a “preview” of an encouragingly epic blog post that I had not yet written. I just spent three hours staring at my computer, failing to write anything encouragingly epic.

Instead of posting my confusing array of disordered thoughts, I’m just going to leave these questions here, because maybe sometimes asking uncomfortable questions is better than providing half-baked answers.

  • What if Frodo refused to let Sam carry him those last agonizing steps to destroy the ring?
  • What if Harry Potter decided that staying with the Dursleys was safer than becoming a wizard?
  • What if Belle refused to see anything good in the Beast?
  • What if Elsa could never accept herself and lived in fear forever?
  • What if Katniss decided it would be better and easier for everyone if she just died as quickly as possible in the Hunger Games?

Wild

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This is a very recent song that I decided to record and play around with garageband tonight. The midi keyboard is a little off beat, but I wanted to remember the riff so I kept it in there. hehe. And there is nine seconds of nothingness at the beginning…

WILD
by Lindsey Snyder

Call me Job because
I’m putting you on trial
Even though I know I do not have the right
Call me Jacob ’cause I’ll wrestle you for hours
Until the blessing is in sight
Call me eve because I’m about ready
To take the fruit that’s hanging from the tree

What do you call me?
If you call me loved
Why do I feel
That you’re not enough?
What do you call me?
If you call me child
Then Daddy stop hurting me
Your love is too wild

Call me David ’cause I want something I can’t have
Yet I might try and feel your anger anyway
Call me Isaac because I’m going to the altar
Won’t you oh please provide a different way?
Call me Jonah because I would rather jump ship
Than go the way you’re pointing me to

What do you call me?
If you call me loved
Why do I feel
That you’re not enough?
What do you call me?
If you call me child
Then Daddy stop hurting me
Your love is too wild

Call me Thomas cause you know I’ve always doubted
Call me Peter because I’ve denied you too
Call me Paul because no matter how hard I try
I do the very things You don’t want me to do
Call me Lazarus and resurrect my dead heart
Call me Mary ’cause I’m weeping at your feet

What do you call me?
If you call me loved
Why do I feel
That you’re not enough?
What do you call me?
If you call me child
Then Daddy stop hurting me
Your love is too wild

Your love is wild
wild
Your love is wild
wild

What do you call me?
If you call me loved
Why do I feel
That you’re not enough?
What do you call me?
If you call me child
Then Daddy stop hurting me
Your love is too wild

Take Me Back to Egypt!

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Numbers 14:1 Then the whole community began weeping aloud, and they cried all night.2 Their voices rose in a great chorus of protest against Moses and Aaron. “If only we had died in Egypt, or even here in the wilderness!” they complained. 3 “Why is the Lord taking us to this country only to have us die in battle? Our wives and our little ones will be carried off as plunder! Wouldn’t it be better for us to return to Egypt?” 4 Then they plotted among themselves, “Let’s choose a new leader and go back to Egypt!”

Dear wandering Israelites,

How quickly you’ve become kindred spirits.

Here in the 21st century, I get to see a full view of your story: beginning, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, conclusion. I’ve seen the depths of despair you experienced enslaved in Egypt for hundreds of years, clinging onto your faith the only way you knew how: through wailing and weeping. I’ve watched in nervous anticipation as Moses tells you that it is time for deliverance. I understand your cycles of doubt and awe and worship and unbelief as you wander in the wilderness.

Many of you die in your 40-year wilderness of waiting, having seen glimpses of God’s glory, but never fully able to walk into the promised land.

I wonder if your premature deaths parallel the realization of my own longings. My resolve to follow God’s commands is waning and warring with a hope long suppressed. Does God have something good in store for us? My faith is wavering, but who else can I turn to? There is no one greater.

But there is so much danger. God will take care of us . . . in His own way. We may suffer for years and die a terrible death. We may survive and see our deepest desires fulfilled in this life. There are no guarantees. We are only promised God’s presence.

And the question is – can we trust God knows what we need better than we ourselves?

We have only the choice to obey or disobey. The final outcome will remain the same.

Friends, I want to go with you back to Egypt. Yes, we were enslaved, but at least we knew where our next meal was coming from (however meager it was), that we had a place to sleep at night (however uncomfortable it was), and we did not have the burden of freedom weighing on our shoulders, heavier than the largest piles of bricks.

The burden of freedom pulls back the veil to expose the internal war within us all. When we take on the burden of freedom, God will call us to do the impossible. It is only when we step out into seemingly empty air to cross a bottomless canyon that we feel something solid beneath our feet, despite all appearances that we are going to break all the bones in our body if we take one more step.

Hebrews 11:13-16 13 All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. 14 Obviously people who say such things are looking forward to a country they can call their own. 15 If they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back. 16 But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

If you had the context of Hebrews 11, I believe you would still make the same mistakes. I don’t say this to discourage you, only to empathize with you that your rollercoaster of emotions is the pulse of my own life. The pull of self-rule is tempting no matter how many warning signs and caution tape and examples of faith you receive.

Oh, nomadic Israelites, how my heart hurts for you.

Isaiah 54:5-8
5For your Maker is your husband—
    the Lord Almighty is his name—
the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer;
    he is called the God of all the earth.
6 The Lord will call you back
    as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit—
a wife who married young,
    only to be rejected,” says your God.
7 “For a brief moment I abandoned you,
    but with deep compassion I will bring you back.
8 In a surge of anger
    I hid my face from you for a moment,
but with everlasting kindness
    I will have compassion on you,”
    says the Lord your Redeemer.

Can we believe? With all the context, with the overarching story in view, I will try. But friends, I will fail, just like you . . . as history repeats itself, so will the individual story of the prodigal son. We are all prodigals in our own way, with nothing but a choice to turn away or to turn back. Rinse and repeat.

Homesick for Egypt,
Lindsey

The Beautiful Wishes with a Truth Tree

/ inhabitinghope / Leave a comment

img_3793“I forgot to show you my story!” my little sister (Big Brothers Big Sisters) shouted from the backseat as we drove to the movie theater for our weekly outing.

“You wrote a story?” I asked, pride swelling. Creativity is one of those things that makes me feel most alive, and seeing this ten-year-old girl get so excited about writing made me ridiculously happy.

“Yeah! But I forgot to bring it.”

“What’s it about?” I asked, intrigued.

“Um, I don’t know, I forget.” Undeterred, I waited for her response. “I forget” is her stock answer to a lot of questions, but if you are patient, she tends to inexplicably “remember”

. . . sure enough . . .

“It’s about a wishing tree,” she said, matter-of-factly.

My grin widened. It sounded like something I would have written at her age. “A wishing tree? That sounds awesome.”

When we returned from the theater, my little sis immediately retrieved her story and gave it to me to read. Her eyes sparkled with anticipation. I read with appropriate enthusiasm.

The story is about a girl named Sharlett and her brother Jeff who discover a wishing tree in their backyard. The tree has only six wishes and each time a wish is made a leaf falls off. When the last leaf falls, the tree dies, and there are no more wishes. Sharlett, Jeff, and her parents quickly go through five of the wishes, but when Sharlett and Jeff realize that there is only one wish left, they try to distract their parents while crafting a plan to keep the last wish on the tree. Despite much deception and trickery from the kids, the mom eventually finds out that the kids moved the tree out of their backyard so that their parents would not use the last wish.

The story ends with a poignant truth:

Mom said, “All the kids come in the house.” She said, “it doesn’t matter if the tree was gone, but tell me the truth.”

Recently, I have discovered what seems to be one of my most precious “wishes” in this life. I have done everything I can to keep my wishing tree alive, including deception and hiding.

“I’m less concerned about what you choose to do, and more interested in what the motives are behind your actions. Help me understand,” said my counselor one evening when I was particularly distressed about what seemed to me to be a strong desire to abandon what God wanted for me and go my own way. Her words disarmed me. Here was someone who simply wanted to understand me. Here was someone who was not panicked or worried about what decision I was going to make. She just wanted my vulnerability.

Maybe a week later, I had decided to tell another couple of friends a little about the difficult counseling journey I have been walking through, so that they would be able to pray for me more specifically. As I drove home that evening, though I knew the war was (and is now, too) far from over, I felt, rather than heard the words seep into my heart and spirit with sudden conviction:

“I’m proud of you.”

I immediately burst into tears right there on the interstate, because I knew I had and have been idolizing something above my God. I have acted in rebellion and have cursed Him. My trust in His goodness continues to be unstable.

And yet, here was the Savior of my soul, to whom no past, present, or future thought, action, word, or emotion of mine is hidden, reassuring me that He was proud of me.

Could it be that our God values us coming to Him in the messy honesty of our brokenness more than He appreciates begrudging obedience? Could it be that I can follow God and be angry with Him at the same time?  Perhaps the Christian life is more about running to God’s grace and love and less about walking in inexplicable contentment than I once believed.

You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one.
You do not want a burnt offering.
The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit.
You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God. – Psalm 51:16-17

Maybe God is not overly concerned about what we do with our wishing trees. That doesn’t mean that everything is relative. Our actions matter. Our decisions matter. But in the overarching story, our actions will not ultimately hinder His plan of redemption, and God has always been more concerned with the heart than the hypocrite’s righteous deeds.

Maybe God is saying to you and to me:

“It doesn’t matter if the tree was gone, but tell me the truth.”