I would like to share a bit more about my own personal Terrible Awful Jostler. He likes to rampage through my thoughts smashing my green crayons and knocking me down. He tries to imprison me in a dark dungeon built of fears. He replays films in high definition in my head. There are the old classic films of myself playing lonely and alone on the playground because I wasn't good at the games the other kids played. There are the films of myself as a young wife and mother and my husband telling me that I was not attractive enough/ not good enough at relationships/ not good enough for him period. There are more recent films that show me the mirror and point out new wrinkles. Sometimes it shows me my pathetic efforts and tells me I am too old and not talented enough to succeed at learning something new. I have had to learn to how to cut the power supply when the Terrible Awful Jostler starts playing movies in my head.
I look him straight in the eye and I say "I have a movie for you. It is a love story. Sit down, shut up, and watch." My movie is a romance, a lover whispers his love in the ear of his beloved. He says "no matter how great a flood you go through, you will never drown because I will be with you. When you walk through fire you will not be burned. You know why? Because I will be with you. Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you." (From Isaiah 43:2-4) The lover in my movie is not just a character created in my fertile imagination. He is real and the girl he is winning over is me. This silences the Terrible Awful Jostler for a time.
Bernard de Clairvaux said "There are two things you should know: first, what you are; second that you are not what you are by your own power."
No matter what lies you have been told, or who has told them to you, I want to tell you the truth. You are precious and beautiful and honored and very very loved. If you are not convinced of that, I urge you to start there. Find out what you are, who you really are. Then, silence the lies in your own head by remembering the Lover who made you what you are.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
The Blah
Sometimes I felt very much like a Blah; a nothing...a nobody...named Beth.
In the book there is a "Terrible, Awful Jostler named Richard" who goes around smashing Billy's crayons. He bears a striking resemblance to Billy's older brother.
I have a "Terrible, Awful Jostler" of my own. I don't ever see him, but I hear his voice when I step out of my comfort zone and try something risky. This happens when I sit down to write about desert times and what I have learned through them. The voice mocks "Woo Hoo! Look who's an expert now! Who are you to give advice? Where's your license to practice psychology? Seminary diploma? hmmm?"
The truth is I have no license to speak to these issues, no diploma either. I only have my own journey.
"But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God"
1 Cor. 1:27
"But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness' ...For the sake of Christ then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong." (2 Cor. 12:9,10)
Are you a Blah, too? Join me we can be Blahs together!
Friday, July 23, 2010
Mirages
You know when you are driving through a desert and in the distance ahead you see sun shimmering off water, but when you reach the spot there is nothing there but blistering sun and waves of heat? I don't want that. I don't want to waste your time, fellow desert dweller, with mirages, illusions of thirst quenching water, but with no substance beneath them.
It is too easy to keep other people and their pain at arm's length by offering easy answers and quick fixes. Sort of a "take two Bible verses and call me in the morning" approach. We tell ourselves we are giving hope when really we are sticking band-aids on mortal wounds.
So that's it. I hate easy answers and quick fixes. I want real struggle, real hope, real healing, real encounter with the real God. Nothing less will do.
It is too easy to keep other people and their pain at arm's length by offering easy answers and quick fixes. Sort of a "take two Bible verses and call me in the morning" approach. We tell ourselves we are giving hope when really we are sticking band-aids on mortal wounds.
So that's it. I hate easy answers and quick fixes. I want real struggle, real hope, real healing, real encounter with the real God. Nothing less will do.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Wandering in the Desert
I remember my first adventure in the desert. I was 17, shy, cautious, but with an inner thirst for adventure that drove me forward. I was a Rocky Mountain girl reared among lush pines and crisp high altitude air. I was afraid to meet the desert. It was foreboding, unfriendly, and potentially deadly.
My friends and I backpacked for days through Big Bend National Park in south Texas. We used compasses and maps to guide us. We refilled our canteens with rank mosquito infested stale water, because it was the only water to be found and trusted to healthy doses of chlorine to preserve our lives while drinking it. Then came the most dreaded part of the trip, the 24 hour 'solo'. Our guides dropped us off individually, out of view from one another, and we were to spend 24 hours alone. We were allowed a sleeping bag, water, and a journal. That's it.
I was terrified. I imagined poisonous spiders, scorpions and snakes gleefully swarming over me and feasting on my flesh. I imagined the rest of the group moving on and forgetting about me, not remembering until my bleached bones laid exposed on my rotting sleeping bag that there had once been one more member of the group.
Fortunately, my real solo experience was nothing like that. I sat alone until the quiet of the desert sank into my soul. My eyes began to see the beauty of the sandy colors. My ears began to hear the desert melody. God whispered in my ear. I emerged from solo changed. Unafraid. Even in love with the harsh beauty of that place.
Life took me into a longer solo a few years later when the man I married at 19 years old began anesthetizing his own pain in the arms of other women. Again I was terrified. Again I thought I could never survive. I was sure that no one before me had ever suffered pain so paralyzing and pervasive and lived to tell about it. I desperately clung to the dream of the life I wanted to live and fled from the reality that lay before me.
Gradually though, a quiet voice calmed my soul. He spoke to me. He said "I allured you here, to this barren desert to woo you. I wanted to draw you to a place where you could hear me speaking tenderly to you. I have a vineyard full of sweetness growing for you, in the proper season. This desert of trouble is your door of hope."
I don't mean to say that it was instantly easy from that moment on. The journey was still hot and dry and difficult. The days when I had to concentrate on merely putting one foot in front of the other, strung together until I couldn't remember when they began. But eventually, I found the vineyard, and learned to hear the voice of the God who loves me a bit more clearly.
During those desert days I prayed for someone to journey alongside me. I would like to travel alongside you. I would like to share more of my story and hear some of yours. I would like to be a sign post pointing to hope ahead, no matter what the road you are traveling looks like.
Ann
My friends and I backpacked for days through Big Bend National Park in south Texas. We used compasses and maps to guide us. We refilled our canteens with rank mosquito infested stale water, because it was the only water to be found and trusted to healthy doses of chlorine to preserve our lives while drinking it. Then came the most dreaded part of the trip, the 24 hour 'solo'. Our guides dropped us off individually, out of view from one another, and we were to spend 24 hours alone. We were allowed a sleeping bag, water, and a journal. That's it. I was terrified. I imagined poisonous spiders, scorpions and snakes gleefully swarming over me and feasting on my flesh. I imagined the rest of the group moving on and forgetting about me, not remembering until my bleached bones laid exposed on my rotting sleeping bag that there had once been one more member of the group.
Fortunately, my real solo experience was nothing like that. I sat alone until the quiet of the desert sank into my soul. My eyes began to see the beauty of the sandy colors. My ears began to hear the desert melody. God whispered in my ear. I emerged from solo changed. Unafraid. Even in love with the harsh beauty of that place.
Life took me into a longer solo a few years later when the man I married at 19 years old began anesthetizing his own pain in the arms of other women. Again I was terrified. Again I thought I could never survive. I was sure that no one before me had ever suffered pain so paralyzing and pervasive and lived to tell about it. I desperately clung to the dream of the life I wanted to live and fled from the reality that lay before me.
Gradually though, a quiet voice calmed my soul. He spoke to me. He said "I allured you here, to this barren desert to woo you. I wanted to draw you to a place where you could hear me speaking tenderly to you. I have a vineyard full of sweetness growing for you, in the proper season. This desert of trouble is your door of hope."
I don't mean to say that it was instantly easy from that moment on. The journey was still hot and dry and difficult. The days when I had to concentrate on merely putting one foot in front of the other, strung together until I couldn't remember when they began. But eventually, I found the vineyard, and learned to hear the voice of the God who loves me a bit more clearly.
During those desert days I prayed for someone to journey alongside me. I would like to travel alongside you. I would like to share more of my story and hear some of yours. I would like to be a sign post pointing to hope ahead, no matter what the road you are traveling looks like.
Ann
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