This is a more exposing spread of paragraphs than my norm, so bear with me if I’ve moved into a realm too vulnerable for your tastes.  

So it was my birthday a couple weeks ago.  I’ve never been a big birthday person, but this year really wasn’t.  Birthdays weren’t grand celebrations for me growing-up (conversation/issue for another day), which takes my view of these (birth) days to a benchmark of sorts, but not much more.  (Although my mom does sing a pretty awful, and thus decently hysterical, yearly rendition of “Happy Birthday” to my answering machine.)  All mediocrage aside though, twenty-seven marked the first “bad birthday” I’ve ever had.

Suffice it to say I’ve never been “the typical girl.”  And certainly never the typical “Christian girl.”  I knew I held dreams of marriage and mothering (mothering and marriage is probably the more suitable order).  And I knew I had expectations and assumptions of “right passages.”  But I didn’t know to what extent.

In summary, my 27th birthday woke to a single soliloquy spanning Vogue’s entire archive.  Again, rare to my typical form, or at least conscious and shared form (meaning I think this has all been subconsciously around for as long as my birthday has), I hit the girly’est, lonliest, love-craving place I can remember.  No matter how shallow and ungodly it seemed, all I wanted was a man to tell me I was beautiful, and if he had a ring in hand, or was named Ben and/or Jerry, we could’ve just gone straight to the vows.   

These feelings were shocking and depressing enough, but they weren’t even the most pervasive.  I told you this was vulnerable.  The feelings I felt most strongly that sunny 27th morning were sadness and guilt.  Sigmund Freud says depression is repressed anger.   I would agree.  My sadness felt very, very sad, but more honestly, it felt very, very angry. Angry at myself.  Angry at my circumstances—or lack there of.  And angry at my anger.  Furthermore, I felt guilty, apologizing to God for being where I was/am that day/today.  “I’m sorry I’m not married.  I’m sorry I don’t have children. I’m sorry I don’t know what I’m doing with my life.  I’m sorry God…so sorry…”  As phrases hit the page, and further inwardness came out, it felt like I was listening to someone else, and yet something of the lands felt recognizably real, too.

One of the things I appreciate about blogging is that you can click “post” without necessarily finishing a thought process.  And that’s what I’m about to do.  Life is hard.  Believing God has you where you are, on purpose, is hard.  And feels really bad at times.  If the Bible is true though, and the Cross really happened, Something is unfolding that wants you and me to be exactly where we are today.  Even if that means having a bad birthday.  

makes it easier to believe God can handle the whole world in His hands today, but struggles to handle just mine?

I was asked in a radio interview last week the biggest challenge confronting college campuses today.  I said “isms,” with pluralism and relativism topping the list.  Imagine if your campus was restructured such that all faiths were combined under the same umbrella (I can’t not mention that “ella, ella, ella” is running through my head right now).  Imagine that your “staff position” was mixed with that of the Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Athiest staffers, too?  "You’re all aiming for the same thing right?!  Trying to help students explore their “god-concepts”? Ummmm, sort, but no, not really…  The LA Times ran an article Sunday that doesn’t fall too far off this paradigm shift. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-alameddine6apr06,0,2743519.story

It’s eerie how much this article took me back lawn conversations and lectures during my undergrad days at Emory.  In short, the writer takes about 80% of the article to build a point regarding “Allah” as synonymous with “God,” and thus rightfully needing to be used as such in the English vocabulary.  The point is padded by remarking that so many religious faces are acceptingly worn by “God,” and yet Allah remains separate—dangerously separate.

I’ll agree to the extent that openness to the term and context of “Allah” would do our linguistic and existential vocabularies well.  But on almost every other front, I have to disagree.  Compartmentalizing all gods into one “God” ends up minimizing all the gods.  Every “god” of every religion is unique and uniquely named into its given culture, history, cult and/or custom.  And although most may assume similar characteristics, they mean different things, to the degree that that have been differentiated at some point in history in order to designate a given faith, or spirituality.

Presuming that “all gods are the same” and should be titled under the same heading (“God”) feels to me like saying “all people are the same,” so let’s ditch specific “names” and just refer to each other as “people.”  Furthermore, consider my current writing environment: a family of bluebirds is singing into my window, and the Berlin Philharmonic is wafting spectacular notes from my living room below.  But what if I were to say, “There are animals making noise outside my window and sounds coming from downstairs.”  Oh how this minimizes the grandiosity of precise sound enriching my ears!

Finally, and I feel like I’m just getting started, but the writer of the article ended with: “One nation under Allah?,” as if to say this is where our country needs to head.  What a scary thought, I think—not because Allah is scary, but because trying to “refound” the history of a given country, let alone faith, is manipulative, dangerous and dishonest.  America wasn’t founded as a nation under Allah, or else old Christopher would’ve said so.  Furthermore, Islam wasn’t founded under “God,” or else I’m quite sure their Christopher would’ve said so, too, for Allah’s sake.

I wonder what it felt like?
I wonder what he felt like?

And why him in the first place?  It’s not like there weren't other people on the road, or like he didn’t have anything to do that day.

What about the minutes wherein they chose him?  Did they yell at him, or beat him - did he fight back?  How much force did agreement take?  What was Jesus doing during this time?

What did agreeing feel like?  Did he know the cause at hand?  Or its effect?  Did he even know who Jesus was?

How long was the walk?  Did he ever hear the whole story?  Did he need to hear the whole story?  

What does it mean that Sovereignty allows crosses?
Allows us to carry crosses?
Chooses us to carry crosses?
And sometimes forces us to?

Heard an interview with Drew Barrymore lately, where she said, “I don’t want to sit around and hope good things will happen.  I want to make them happen…I want to be in control of my own destiny.”  And on a different, but I-promise-to-tie-together-in-a-second-note, I was strolling by the ocean last week and distracted by the accelerating legs of a small bird.  He made me smile, with sand-cast feet running full-speed away from the approaching waters.  Each wave, clearly more wise and experienced than this little creature, showed uncanny amusement almost, as it let the bird race gravity.  Out of breath and in what seemed his fated end, the determined creature contributed one final stride.  And then, as if destiny were never in question, his wings took rise as his body glided off the sand into the warm, spring air.        

I was impressed by this exhausted run, but more exhausted by the bird’s forgotten ability to fly.  Because in a remarkably similar way, I forget this same thing.  If what God says is true, and I really have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 1:3), I have the power to fly—but typically choose to walk chained.  

Any given day finds me running as fast and as far as my legs will take me, which on good days is pretty far.  But the sad truth is, I’ve still settled for the pace of running, when I have the option of graced flying.  I’ve substituted the cheap lie that lets me function, for the unfathomable Life that lets me fly.  

We all want to make good things happen.  Great things, even.  But we can only cover so much ground, before the waves take us over—control so much distance, before destiny takes us under.  I’m wondering what would it look like today to be delivered from our own feat, and positioned into God’s?

Weakness—I think that’s what I need.  I think that’s what I want to ask God for today.

Outlandish?  Completely. Counterintuitive to me, culture and a lot of “the church”?  Utterly.  

But the truth of it is, I need to be weak.  God’s Word, and God, himself, I am realizing this Easter week, is flooded with personifications of weakness.  Endured weakness, failed weakness, transformed weakness, transforming weakness, and ultimately, I guess, resurrected weakness.  And maybe this is a stretch, but as of today, I feel like something of the crux of Christianity lies a willing surrender to weakness.  

Heard a thought recently that I can’t let go of.  “People will admire you for being strong, but love you for being weak.”  I have tried for most of my life to be strong.  I covet admiration and crave affirmation.  I long for people to see me as unfailing—to know my faith as unshaking.  Bottom line, I do whatever I can to avoid weakness.

Strength saturates our culture.  It’s sexy, stable and stands on its own.  Unfortunately though, it’s also a never-ending facade.  Yes, strength is always willing to lead us somewhere, but it’s always a Somewhere Road to nowhere.  So what I’m learning is weakness is actually my source of going where God wants me to go, which may mean “going,” but may also mean staying, being, or waiting, i.e. taboos in our culture, and in our post-fall complexion.  

As a Christian, my greatest understanding of Christ rises in my greatest understood weakness without him.  Thus, my strength after God MUST be prefaced by weakness in me.  Willingness to surrender—willingness to admit imperfection—this then, is my to way to strength.  My way to love.  The way to God.  

When I am weak, then I have reason to be with God.  When I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:10).

http://www.africaourownhome.org

You may remember my friend Holly from Uganda.  Just as I was leaving in late August, she was beginning her orphange.  Holly is an incredible inspiration as a young, passionate lover of Jesus, so I figured you might enjoy tracking with her story.

Hoping you're well.

If I’m honest, I’d much rather ask you, than God.  I’d much rather hear your answer, than “hope” to hear one from Him.  Why is this?  Do I really think you know more than Him, or better than Him?  No.  But do I really think God knows more than me, let alone what’s better for me?  Apparently not, which leads me to my next question.

Are our prayers really being heard?  Because if I’m really human, which I am, and if God’s really inhuman, which He is, is our “connect” really possible?  Is His hearing really plausible?  No, It’s really not.  So my only fair, or quasi logical, conclusion then, is that prayer isn’t possible without some mediary source.  Or force, rather (see Luke 2:5). Prayer isn’t normal or natural.  It leans more toward ridiculously abnormal and unnatural, in fact.  But I guess if God were really my God, wouldn’t I want Him that way!?

Believing the Lord as sovereign assumes believing the Lord has a plan.  So that, whether you pray for him, or I invest in her, God’s will will prevail.  His story will unfold.  Essentially, your prayers don’t determine outcomes.  Does that mean they don’t matter?  No.  But does that mean peripheral theologies of why you should, or shouldn’t pray have gotten off line.  Yes.  Too often, I think, we lose sight of our ‘role’ in praying.  Our role in God’s eternal story.  What we’re offered in prayer and optioned through Jesus Christ, is the capacity to ask unnatural things for the sake of supernatural intervention.  Impossible dreams of man, by way of possible faith in God.  When you ask something outlandish and see it come about, who gets the credit?  Who, but God, finds you amazed?

So I guess the question I’m left asking is, if we really believed our lives script scenes of eternity, and really believed God as jealous for our voices, why the heck wouldn’t we get-in on it!?  Why the heck would I prioritize asking your opinion, over His?