I have a feeling it’s going to take me a few posts to really cut down to the heart of things. It is extremely important to me that you who read this series understand that I am not writing about mourning, or about surviving, because I think You! Too! Should! Be! Happy! I am not pushing my way through this single topic for 31 Days because I think There! Is! A! Formula! and that if you follow it You! Will! Be! Whole!
I’m not.
Pardon the exclamation points. But this really matters to my heart.
I don’t believe there are 21 steps you can take to be all better, or 3 tips you can follow for a happy life, or that happiness can come in a series of ten checked boxes. There is no way in hell I’m going to tell you that to get over sexual abuse, the death of a loved one, the stolen childhood, or anything else that has utterly broken your heart, all you need to DO is X, Y and Z.
I’m not even going to say that all you need is Jesus.
Even though it’s true. Because, Jesus.
But the reason I’m not going to come at you directly with “all you need is Jesus” is because most of the time when we say “all you need is Jesus” we attach to this truth a whole list of how-tos.
“All you need is Jesus, so pray.”
“All you need is Jesus so stop taking those anti-depressants.”
“All you need is Jesus so if you are still having panic attacks then I guess you don’t have enough faith.”
“All you need is Jesus so read this, do this, say this, and join a small group if you’re actually committed. Then you’ll see!”
No.
I’m not going to tell you how the Lion of War intends to show up in your battles, or how the Prince of Peace will choose to establish his reign in your hurting mind, or how this Father to the Fatherless and Husband to the Husbandless will quiet you with his love. I honestly don’t know how. I only know he can. And that he promises he will. And that sometimes we don’t feel it the way we want to feel. And that sometimes it just doesn’t feel real. And sometimes it is very hard to believe.
My son and I are reading a book in which the author stresses over and over the difference between synthetic and analytical thinking. There is a difference between the question “how” and the question “why.” If you say you are going outside today and I ask you why, you will not say “because I am opening the door.” No. That would be silly. Opening the door is HOW you get outside, but it isn’t why.
Follow me?
We Christians love our experiences with God and so in our attempt to convey the hope we’ve derived from the kindness he’s shown, in our desire to see the people we love be similarly swept away, we are apt to reduce our experience with Divinity to a set of how-tos. Stick with me a minute; I’m going to use the analogy from the children’s book to show what I mean, okay?
“God took me outside! He took me to this incredible vista and I saw so clearly and I heard distinctly and I FELT that am loved!”
We clamor around. The intuitive among us (who haven’t quite forsaken the childlike heart) ask, “why?” But the rest of us common-sense adults respond practically, “how?”
(We know that to get B, one must do A. Easy-peasy.)
“Oh, first I put on shoes, then I turned the door knob, then I opened the door, then I stepped outside! Try it!”
So we do. We all put on shoes, turn knobs, open doors, and take steps. And, because it’s a natural law, some of us see something lovely. And other of us…don’t.
And then when those for whom the formula “worked” see that the others have come up short, we want to figure out why.
“Well, maybe your shoes aren’t tied properly. Maybe you stepped outside with your left foot first. Maybe you went through the door but your heart wasn’t in the right place. It must be something you did wrong, because I did it and found God, so you ought to be able to, too.”
You see where this is going. How and Why are two very different questions, and we have to learn which to ask, and when.
What if instead the conversation went like this?
“…and he took me outside and I saw this beautiful vista…”
“Why?”
“Why? Well, now, well, I don’t know. I think because…he loves me. I think he loves me.”
I don’t know about you, but if I was the one asking why in this situation, my heart would burn within me at an answer such as this.
I would want to MEET this Jesus.
Are you following me?
It’s never going to be steps or formulas or checklists or perfectly filled boxes that heal our souls. It’s going to be a Person. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed but Persons – even God-Persons – can be very surprising in the methods they employ.
There are true things about God. And these true things about God can meet our true experiences and transform them according to His kindness and purpose for our lives. But I ardently believe that our way forward is one of interacting with God as a Person, not one of interacting with the Christian Life as thing to be attained.
We grow in our understanding of WHO he is, and we take steps (bold or tentative) toward him in the context of who he reveals himself to be. It’s not about doing All The Things. It never has been. He’s just way bigger than that, you guys.
So tomorrow I’m going to continue to break down “blessed is the one who mourns for he shall be comforted.“ I’m going to dig through the Greek and come back up for air waving jewels excitedly in your face – but please, please, come with me knowing we’re not excavating a formula. We’re in this for far more than that.
We’re in this thing for a God, a wild and glorious God, a safe and protective God, a gentle and strong and good and holy and an Everlasting Almighty God. A God worthy of all of our praise and all of our honor and all of our worship and all of our hearts and worthy even of all the risks entailed in a dangerous, liberating journey into the scary depths of mourning.
So stay with me, please. I need you.
This post is part of Survivor Songs, a 31-Day series. A full list of posts is found here.
That’s a beautifully written post, with so much to ponder in it.
Thanks.
Wow, Harmony. You are really writing some beautiful stuff here!
When I read this line: “…that sometimes we don’t feel it the way we want to feel”, I at first understood it as saying that sometimes His presence doesn’t feel the way we think it ought to feel. (I REALLY need to stop skimming when I read!) But actually reading it that way hit me hard because there’s always this underlying “ideal” that I carry around in the back of my mind and I have trouble recognizing the gifts I’ve been given when they don’t correspond to that ideal image.
What you’ve written today reminds me of a conversation I had with my dad awhile back. We were talking about fasting and prayer and my dad said to me, “It’s not about WHAT you do. It’s about WHO you know.” Those few words have really made their way into my heart and I’ve been trying to live them ever since. I blogged about it a little after that. I’ll have to see if I can go find that post…..
Lisa, please link back to it here if you find it; I would love to read that post. 🙂
Now I can’t remember which angle I intended with that line – as I read it now I see it the same way you did, that we don’t experience him, feel that experience, the way we think it’s supposed to be/feel. Or sometimes it just hurts, or goes a different direction than we expected, or there are no miracles, and we mourn in that too – we mourn or lost expectations. I do the same thing with ideals. I know that for me, ideals can sometimes cut my joy, or make me bitter, and instead of begin able to let the ideal go, there is something in me that clings to it. Like if my experience with God in a given situation is not what I expected, and in fact feels much worse, then my temptation is the same as what I’ve been really considering with mourning:
I either want to cling to the ideal and hold onto the pain of not attaining it (causing me to be hard against God), or I want to pretend it didn’t matter much any way (because I’m embarrassed maybe?) and act like it was of no consequence to my heart (and cause me to put an entirely different wall up against God). But if I look the ideal straight in the eye, hold it up to Heaven and say, “what is this? This is what I wanted/ needed/ expected and I don’t understand why you did’t follow through.” THEN there’s a chance that I might experience the Presence of God in the way that is actually real (not confined by the smallness of my ideal). It’s like God meets me there.
Now you have me rambling. Good stuff! I like thinking about this kind of thing in the morning. Maybe I should take it to heart and just acknowledge the disappointment I feel RIGHT NOW at waking 2 whole hours later than I had hoped, which means no alone time for Mama today, at all. Ever. Hello, children. Sigh. Fine. 😉
Here is the post I mentioned. It’s going in a slightly different direction than what you’ve talked about here, but I think the ideas do complement each other.
http://orthodoxmindandheart.blogspot.com/2014/03/its-not-about-what-you-do-its-about-who.html
Lisa, thank you! I loved, loved, loved reading that this morning.
This is great and I totally agree- formulas are not the answer and telling someone who’s hurting that all they need is Jesus is not a helpful thing to say. When people claim to have the answer and then it doesn’t work for you, all kinds of doubts rise up. I’ll be covering this a bit in a post in a few days time but I love that you point this out. God is so much bigger than our ideas and not as predictable as we might like to think sometimes but I love that it’s about him interacting with us as individuals and us interacting with him as a person.
Your analogy here is PERFECT! Yes!
Wow, thankbyou for sharing your heart. We don’t know how, but we knownHe will and can take care of all the details. I look forward to reading more here. Blessings.
Thank you for this really important and helpful post. Finally getting a chance to respond. Yes, our God is not after our works, but after our heart. Amen!