Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Twenty-Five Again?

Ever since my twenty-sixth birthday, I have been living a lie... a lie that, although another year is added to my life, somehow I plan to remain twenty-five. Why twenty-five? Well twenty-six sounds too close to thirty, and let's not even start to think about the dreaded twenty-seven. Imagine then, will you, how I am feeling facing the terrifying twenty-eight this week. Do you realize that means that somehow next year I will be one year away from the three-decade mark? Surely I've mixed up the math somewhere...I refuse to believe this is the truth. I mean I don't look close to thirty. I don't act close to thirty. And I certainly am not where I thought I would be at the age of twenty-eight....key word in that phrase I...

That being said, this time of year inevitably brings a standard amount of contemplation to the current state of affairs in the life of Miss Bre. (yes, almost twenty-five again, still a Miss) Some of these things bring me optimism, others, inevitably doubt, or regret, or feelings of fear or failure. I generally start making a list of things I've failed at in my feeble perception of what reality is, what the truth is, and start vowing to change. (these vows, of course, bring on compulsive behaviors of their own...as if I am not allowed to eat sugar, or spend money on clothes, or any other number of vices after my birthday strikes 12 am July 7th)... beating myself up over expectations that have placed on myself.

It's a vicious cycle 
           ....and it's going nowhere.

I live in a generation that is obsessed with speed. Obsessed with information overload, of rushing life, and then we are miserable when the "quick fix" we seem to have found isn't everything we hoped it would be. You can use any example you want of this phenomena, but I want to take a few minutes and talk to you about my favorite subject, the think that keeps me awake at night, the thing that brings me untold amounts of misery, the thing that I will never stop believing in, regardless of how many times I fall down...and it's worth examining again at twenty-almost-eight...

                            Love.

I'm a cheerleader for love. I believe love is the answer, and love always finds a way. Now before you get carried away and judge me, or think I'm talking about some teenage feeling that is synonymous with infatuation, let me explain...

I'm not perfect. I never have been, I never will be. For years, however, I was of the opinion I was pretty close. I did everything church told me to do, I read my Bible everyday, and I loved Jesus (or I thought I knew what that meant). When I went to college I studied systematic theologies, I knew what all the great theologians of the church had said about Jesus, I knew what the disciples said about Him,I knew what my parents, my church, and my culture had said about Him... but I had never really answered the question for myself, What will I do with Jesus, who do I say Jesus really is?

It is the question that defines your life, and somehow, in the midst of leading worship and preaching to others, I'd never given account for who I really believed He was. I'd never needed to. My life had been nearly perfect from the outside...until one day...I really needed God.

I've often spoke of my college years and the turmoil that happened both in my physical body, my mind, and my relationships. I found myself away from God, my family, and any real connection with truth.


I'd go into a rampage or other outrageous behavior so 
quickly and smoothly that no one, 
least of all myself,
could do anything to stop me before I'd ruined the situation
completely. (relationships, finances, opportunities)
Problems I kept thinking would eventually go away,
kept getting worse every year (relationships)

...it was though I was addicted to my own pain

...In those days, it never occurred to me to ask for a miracle.

I remember one night in my dorm room, literally lying on my floor, waling at what had become of my life. I was in an incredibly abusive relationship that I was convinced I could never get out of, I'd had a doctor told me I'd never sing or publicly speak again, and it seemed like all my plans were falling apart. I remember, in that moment, crying out to God.

I believe a certain amount of desperation is usually necessary before we're ready for God.

Once you've had enough you can't do it anymore, you consider the possibility that there might be a better way...That's when your head cracks open, and God comes in. 

Until your knees finally hit the floor, you're just
playing at life, and on some level,
you're scared because you know you're just playing.
The moment of surrender is not when life
is over..

it is when it begins.

I picked myself off that floor and made a decision to listen for the voice of God. I'd been ignoring Him, afraid of what He might say to me. And I was expecting a rant on how much I'd failed Him, my family, my church, myself...but that wasn't what I got. I didn't get a discourse on the atonement or a detailed description of a literal Hell...

I opened my heart to God, truly, honestly, and brokenly...
        perhaps for the first time in my life...
                    And LOVE rushed in.

I expected, I deserved judgement, but what I got was unconditional love.

For years I'd viewed God as a principal, someone waiting for me to mess up so I could crawl back to forgiveness, but I knew nothing of the actual character of my God.  

When Christ was asked what the greatest commandment was, He answered in Luke 10, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, you soul, mind and strength," then He went a step farther, "the second is like unto it...love your neighbor as yourself." 

I remember reading that and thinking, "I can't love my neighbor as myself...because I hate myself." I'd had so many terrible names spoken over my life, and I battled them in silence. Many from others, some from the voice of the enemy as I laid on my pillow at night. I'd been called insignificant, ugly, a failure, fat, untalented, unusable, unlovable,and not good enough. 

And somehow I'd allowed those voices, those names, those titles, to become louder in my mind than the voice that whispers in all our ears our true names the moment we are born. The name only our God knows, "You are my greatest miracle, you are the greatest miracle in the world." But I hated myself. I couldn't stand the moments sitting in front of my mirror getting dressed in the morning for class, forced to stare at someone that had went to every possible human measure to make man love me, to feel accepted. 

       It was at that moment I realized...I hadn't really
          been loving God...And that broke my heart.

For years I'd loved God because I was supposed to, not necessarily because I knew what love was, or that I needed my Lord. In that moment of desperation, however, I realized that the joke of a relationship i was in was not real love. (lord knows I'd tried to convince myself somehow, in some twisted way it was.) And maybe God's plan for me could be as simple as this...

               Bre, I love you enough to lay down my life for you.
                  Glorify me in your life by bringing love into the 
                     World I've created...start with Me, then move
                       to loving yourself, because I have never 
                         Stopped loving you.
                      Then, extend that extension of Divinity inside
                    You, to your family, to your church, to your 
                  Friends...And finally you will have the ability 
              To accept true love, true acceptance from someone else

I spent my life over complicating God, writing 20 page papers on theology, and trying to sound smart when it came to the nature of the Creator. But in the moment I really needed Him, He spoke to me in terms a preschooler could understand. I remembered those thoughts I had as a child about God, His goodness, His dependability...and I tried in some small way, to return to that way of thinking.
1 John 4:8 reads, "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love."

What a crazy, mixed up thought...When god was speaking to me, I in no way resembled the "Christian" I'd been brought up to be, with all the rules, regulations, and labels. God was calling me back into His Kingdom with one word...Love. 

In a lot of ways I don't think I had healed from hurt that had happened in my life as a teenager. People antagonizing everything about my life, looking and hoping I'd fail. The sickness that threatened to take my voice. The loss of my cousin and my aunt in their tragic deaths. The years battling various eating disorders, begging for carnal beauty. But God was calling me to the answer, and the answer, His answer, can always be found in His identity..."Love."

The love I speak of has nothing to do with human emotions, and everything to do with the ultimate sacrifice of a perfect God that looked beyond every fault I would ever have and saw my need for redemption, and my capacity for love. Nothing can separate us from God's love. It can heal the world. It can change lives...it revolutionized mine.

But then there is human love...
    You know, the stuff of movies....
        The stuff of fairy tales....
             The stuff of our dreams....
                  The hope of a "happily ever after"....

And the quest for that love has made me a miserable, depressed, wreck for at least the last fifteen years of my life. (I should have laid low on watching Titanic...it tried to convince me you could find your one true love, on a sinking ship, in 3 hours...and you've got mail...never try to find true love on an internet chat room)

Everyone wants to find that one person, someone that can make you happy beyond belief, accept you and your insecurities, your flaws, and your past. Someone you can love without any reservations, and without thought to yourself or your own happiness...and the kicker, they feel and reciprocate that same love back. Perhaps the greatest desire isn't even for some emotion, but acceptance, the sense of belonging, of security...and it's Biblical. 

We serve a God of order. 
It is no mistake or coincidence that after
God created the world...with everything man would need to
survive, He created us.
And immediately God saw in the human condition
that being alone was not enough, 
so he created the first marriage, the first family,
the first love story,
the first set of best friends...and He said it was
"Very Good."

Maybe if God still offered matchmaking services we'd all be set and not have as many broken hearts??? here's dreaming. 

Here's the thing about human love though...it is dependent on humans. Not only do you have to be in a place to receive it, you must create a space in your life to accept it.   

For years I was plagued by insecurity. I was convinced that I didn't deserve real love...so I dated whoever would have me. When you are plagued by insecurity, you will attract those who will prey on your insecurity. So I dated men who told me I would never find anyone else, that no one would ever love me, that hurt me, abused me, that used me. Then, when I finally broke free of the bondage of that stronghold, I'd waste my life on whoever would give me any attention...I had no standards, no regulations... 

      This is just for fun.
         I won't actually marry him.
            I can get out of this at any point.
                And the dates turned into weeks, that turned int
                    months, that turned into years.  

I don't think a lot of us put enough stock in what a big deal relationships are. Especially romantic ones. When God wants to talk about the relationship He desires and yearns to have with His creation, how does He go about it? He talks about marriage, He talks about the relationship between man and woman...and that should give us a clue that marriage, that relationships...are a really big deal to God.

Then, at some point, I realized that being single was better than being alone in a relationship. That honesty with myself was better than trying to convince myself someone that wasn't right for me could somehow work... and that maybe, just maybe, the statistics didn't have to be true. That love really could last forever. That real love exists. That love didn't have to be hard. I didn't have to fight with everything to feel like I mattered. That, when it's right, it will be easy. And that I didn't have to change who I was to be worthy of it.

Even though I've always been a hopeless romantic, I think society has convinced us that the way it looks won't be like the movies. Maybe he won't have time for you, maybe he'll cheat on you, maybe that's okay? Maybe you don't need to get married? Maybe you just need to settle for "this will do."

           And I've tried it all.

Then, at the end of yet another long-term relationship that made me feel more alone than being the recluse that I normally am, I had an epiphany:

          What if Love is real, but I'm the problem?
             What if I am blocking the miracle in my life?

And it hit me...like a ton of bricks. I'm the problem. It's time to make a decision to say yes to love, and to create a space that may cost my time, my energy, and my vulnerability...to say yes to love. 

....to become the type of person worth unconditional love, of sacrifice, of time of another human being. And not some silly boy that doesn't have a clue about what he wants, but a real man, someone to build a life and future with. Something that could glorify God by being an example of His love, made known to the world in a real, physical way?

....because in loving others, we see God...because we are all Children of God. 

So I decided to make a change. Lord knows everything I'd ever tried hadn't worked before, and to open myself up to a miracle in my own life. To ask God to change me for the inside out to be the person He called me to be, regardless of what it cost me or how much it hurt. And through that, to open myself up to finally allow His love to guide my life. I once read a story of a woman that felt very much like I did, and she felt like God spoke to her (emphasis mine):

       Bre...next time you're down on your knees,
why don't you just stay there? 
Why don't we stay in the realm of the answer,
rather than always returning to the 
realm of the problem?   
Let's Ask God for a new life.

And so that is what I aim to do. I'm not setting a list of do's and don'ts for this new year of my life. I'm choosing to set one overarching goal for the next however many years God blesses my life with. 

I will say yes, I will return to Love. And in turning to love, I will find God, and in finding God, I will find myself...and maybe somewhere soon, I'll find love on this earth. 

And that's where I'm at. 
     The call is not hard, it's mind-blowingly simple. 
           God is love, and I am closest to Him when I say
               No to fear, and yes...
  
                     To Love. 

xoxo...
     
 
  



No comments:

Post a Comment