Four Years

The people walking in the darkness have seen a great light, on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned –Isaiah 9:2

Four years ago I woke up in the morning to the sight of a trashed apartment. Furniture was flipped over, the TV was on the floor, and there was a gigantic hole in the wall. My blurry vision came to focus in on that hole, and I remembered with clarity the large fist that narrowly missed my head and went through that wall instead of smashing my face the night before.

I don’t know what it was about that particular time that made me decide I had had enough. Worse things had happened, and worse nights had been lived through. There was no loud crashing sound as if it all fell down. It was more like some tiny part of me inside just took its last breath, sighed its last sigh, and finally died of sheer exhaustion.

I remember the sun beating down on me, torturous when combined with my headache and dehydration. I drove as if someone else were driving, propelled by something larger than me, to a place where I knew recovery was actually possible because I had seen it with my own eyes. I had not showered nor brushed my teeth and I reeked of the kind of hangover that makes you sweat whiskey right out of your pores. I couldn’t look at anything but the floor, but I went inside and I asked for help, because I was at the end of myself and there wasn’t anything else to do anymore. And people gave me hope and made me cry, and real life began.

Today by God’s grace I celebrate four years of sobriety, four years of total freedom from drug and alcohol addiction. And when I say “by God’s grace,” I really mean it. As you can see from pieces of my story, I did not start the journey because of some great virtue on my part. I started it because I was beat up, tired and sick, spiritually bankrupt. I hated life, I hate you, and me, and everyone and everything everywhere.

The greatest gift in the world is to be at the place where you are at the end of yourself, and at the end of all the things which you thought, at some point, might really make you happy. In this place there is misery abundant, there is the nearness of despair. Here you stand on the edge of the abyss of hell itself and look down into the inevitable, and you know it won’t think twice about consuming you entirely. Here is the terror thought of knowing you have to change, and here it is crashing into the thought that you know you can’t change. Here all your pretty illusions of money and security and romance and relationships and laughter and control crumble into dirt, because that’s all they are – illusions.

So there you are, and it’s you and God, and the only question is, are you going to keep giving him the finger, too? Just like you have to everyone else? And you look up, and you look back down at that slimy pit of hell, and you look back up….and something breaks again inside. The reality of your options is never clearer – this is the gift of reality when all else is stripped away.  

And that gift of reality, which was the result of incredible self-inflicted pain, was the best thing that ever could have happened to me, because it put me in the position to change. But not only that, it made totally clear how essential to my survival it really was to find God as the priority in my life, because clearly nothing else was right.

It’s been a gift, and it’s also been work. To clean up years of wrong living takes time and effort and perseverance and showers upon showers of God’s grace. I would like to say that my part has been to cooperate 100% with the changes God has wanted to make in my life, but that would be a lie. I still fought things for a long time. I still fight sometimes. But He led me along, sometimes skipping with joy, sometimes kicking and screaming. He led me in that way that only He can, right to where I needed to be, right to where I am today.

The most important thing He did was make it clear who He was. I prayed for this, desperately. I wanted to know I was safe in the arms of God and not just resting on some other new delusion or creation I had thought up in my scheming mind. And I really, really didn’t want to be a Christian. To be a Christian meant….work. Commitment. Change. Sacrifice. Riddance of self. Asking for help. All things counter intuitive to my nature.

 Even worse, to be a Christian meant (gasp!) to live outside of the culture I was so submerged in, and to (gasp!) take a stand on truth, and to (gasp!) probably make people around me uncomfortable sometimes. Anything but that! But God pointed me to the Cross and to Christ crucified for me. And the Word began to take on life and meaning to my deadened ears. And I learned that the power of the gospel is just so much bigger than my petty objections.

God designed me to seek Him and to have Him reign unchallenged in my heart. I know it because His Word says so, but I know it from my experience too. I’m just not right without Him. God also wired me, for whatever reason, to be passionate – to follow hard after what I’m going after. So I followed hard after sin, and that hurt. Now I follow hard after Him, and that seems much better. I am ever the adult-child, learning these very simple lessons and trying to be aware of my own need for time-outs. I need a lot of help.

I consider my old life to be in remission. I say that because I know I could make the decision to take it back on any crazy day. I could turn my face from God, and I could leave my green pastures to roam in fields of garbage and slime and filth. Sounds delightful, like the dog who returns to its own vomit, right? (see Proverbs 26:11). I think I’ll pass. For today, I seek Him for one more day, I thank Him for his provision of one more day, and I try not to look too far ahead. My mental projections into the future can be scary like horror movies, so it’s best if I just stay here for today with a grateful heart.

So it’s one more day of God speaking the same message into my life – that He brings good news in Jesus Christ who died and rose from the dead, that He scatters the darkness and brings life to death and wholeness to brokenness and health to sickness. He is infinitely good and patient with us beyond anything we can imagine, He leads us along and loves us and works on us, flaws and all. It is good to be a child of the king today!

If He can use me, then He can use you, too!

At the Root of Distraction

I order a medium black coffee at the speaker. My total flashes on the screen in red digital letters. Thank you, please pull ahead. I look up and say hello to the cashier who stands by the open window, typing on the screen of his phone. The cold blast of air conditioning pours out of the window and into the hot humid air, causing the corners of my dollar bills to ruffle. He absentmindedly grabs my money and hands me my change. He does it all with his eyes glued to his cell phone screen and never once looks up.

I buy our meat at the market down the street. I place my packs of meat on the belt and the cashier flicks the switch, moving them down the conveyor belt toward the register. I say hello and he grunts while looking over my head toward something or someone behind me. The register beeps as he slides my selections over the scanner. He looks at the customers behind me, at the clock, at the door. He barks out my total, I slide my card, and he thrusts my receipt at me and gives me the standard “have a nice day”.

 We take long walks through our neighborhood. I pass a girl sitting on the front steps of her house. The space between us is less than two yards. She is tapping on the screen of her cell phone. I say “hello, your flowers are beautiful!” And her eyes never leave her cell phone. We meet a woman walking towards us. Little Theo looks up and says HI in his sweet little voice. Her eyes never even flit our way for one second.

 How can we be surrounded by so many people so close to us while simultaneously keeping ourselves entirely alone on our own little islands? At times I am so desperate for connection that when I finally get a friendly cashier in the check-out at Meijer I find myself in all kinds of personal and lengthy conversations - about kids, about husbands, about the joys of working in customer service, about life.

Sometimes I really do just want to be kind and ask you how your day is, and would you just please slow down and look at me as another human being here in front of you in this moment? Because I’d really like to know how you are doing and just share this moment together, is that so much to ask?!

 Let me be clear – I am guilty of this too. I check my facebook while I wait in line at Wal-Mart. I may occasionally text while in the drive-thru. I cringe to think of how often you could probably catch me distractedly browsing on my cell phone while my husband is talking to me. I am at my worst when my kiddos are clinging to my leg, begging for mommy’s attention, waiting for mommy to detangle herself from the online world. I don’t want to imagine how much I have missed by simply not really seeing the people right in front of me.

 It speaks to something deeper than just distraction though. It speaks to our self-centeredness. It speaks to the fact that we are culturally conditioned on a daily basis to think that we don’t need anyone else. It speaks to our own sense of self-importance at the cost of real relationship with the people around us. It speaks to the incredible disconnect of much of the human race from one another. It speaks to our hard hearts, our disbelief, and our disobedience of Jesus’ command to love.

 Before I climb on the pedestal and critique the world today and all of these text-messaging face-paging distracted fools who only care about themselves, I should probably remember a few things: 1) I am guilty of it too (see above), 2) There was a time when I didn’t even see this as a problem and 3) God has changed the way I look at people, He has given me a new heart for people that I never have had before.

 I want to focus in on #3. Here is a thought on this from the Word of God by the prophet Ezekiel:

“I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.”  Ezekiel 11:19

 This was God’s promise to restore Israel, and this is God’s promise to restore us, today, here and now.  Do you still have a heart of stone? Do you continue to view the world around you through the lens of cynicism? There are all kinds of reasons I do this – fear, pride, and scars from past hurts. But it mostly boils down to our lack of love for God, without which we cannot possibly hope to love or even notice the people around us. We desperately need the work He does in us, and the work that Jesus already did on the cross.

I am a seed-planter. A small interaction with someone at a store that may only last for a minute may not even seem worth the effort, but I always try to remember that I’m not entitled to see the long-term results of anything I do for God. My role is to try to be obedient to God and take the best care of each moment which He places in front of me. Every small kindness can be used in big ways by God to point someone to the possibility of Christ crucified for them, too. Oh that He would make us aware of all the opportunities we have every day!

 The really great thing is that while I might get ignored by the drive-thru attendant, the cashier, and countless others whom I encounter on a daily basis, I don’t have to beg for God’s attention. He knows what I need before I ask, and I do not have to wonder if He heard me because He is trying to play Angry Birds on His tablet while I am talking to Him. He doesn’t have more important things to do, He is not restlessly tapping His fingers, waiting for me to finish so that he can check his email.

 My Heavenly Father gives me His full undivided attention, on a deeper level than I am even aware or capable of putting into words. He invites me into His presence to pray and to listen and to rest. He feeds me with His Word and allows me to drink deeply from His goodness until I am refreshed. He sends His Spirit to guide me and teach me. In doing so, he replaces my hard heart of stone with a heart from Himself, and makes it so that I am actually capable of caring about rude people who ignore me.

 My natural (cynical) response to people : What is wrong with everyone? People are crazy…

God transforms my heart of stone response into his likeness: How can I be kind to this person?

 Oh the things we receive from Him!  Isn’t it delightful? All we have to do is ask, come into His presence, and let Him change us.

 Lord, this week point out to us opportunities for kindness, opportunities which may make a bigger difference than we will ever know. Lord wake us up and make us aware! Help us be the people who point others to you. Destroy our hearts of stone and put in their place hearts which are receptive to you, to your Word and to your command to love you and love the people around us.