That By Which We Live And Die (part 1)

Oh the terrible dragging lathargy that is trying to start a blog post. Especially after long periods of time. Especially with lots of disconnected randomness to get out, a good deal of which you wish you didn't have to say.



My last post was almost two weeks ago. I've gone longer stretches without writing, but never with so much hassle for it. I was received a fair number of contacts a few days ago chirping at me to get my butt in gear. Obviously its not the riveting nature of the introspective narrative, its about me as a person. But still.



The Monday after I wrote that post I received an email from my boss. I was fired. Reason, I was busy the day before and hadn't responded to three text messages, mostly because I didn't touch either phone until about 10:30 that night. So that was cool.



What that started was a terrible system of entanglement. I was so frustrated. So frustrated with so many things, God being one of them. I remember yelling at Him. I spent a good two pages complaining in my prayer journal. Expressing feelings that seem to have come and gone consistently the last year and a half or so. Coming to doubt the very character of God. You see I seem to have kept hitting these places where absolutely everything was broken. And I began to wonder, three or four times over the course of these 18 months if God was really looking out for me. It seemed that every good thing that was introduced was only for the use of adding great suffering.

Let's use Heather as an example. She is without a doubt the most wonderful person I have ever met. She's funny, intelligent, humble, crazy in love with Jesus and blah blah blah. Despite three months of dedicated work to eradicate her from my heart and go elsewhere, it hasn't happened, and no one measures up. But I'm not with her. And given my recollection of how things happened, and the things which have, or more accurately have not gone one, since make it fairly evident that is just done.

And as I looked back over my life I could not find a single sustaining good things. All good things that have come to me have later become sources of suffering. I go there because I cannot deny the existence of God. I simply know to much. Left without that response, His character is all that is left. But I'll come back to this later.

What's crazy about how the loss of that job effected me is that I didn't even like it. Mind you there were things I liked about it. It had lots of freedom to it and that's something I would give up a lot for in a job. It had the potential to be fun job in a few months, and it was great to tell people what I did. And there was a ministry side I lost sleep over I was so excited to see it come about. But ultimately I didn't like it. It all rests upon the owner. Everyone who knows him says its nearly impossible to have a conversation with him, so you can imagine what working with him was like. I'd gotten to the point I was making daily entries in my prayer journal for "a job I didn't hate." But I did have a job. Which meant I had money coming in, and having a job makes it easier to find one. So now I'm back to stressing about money and have a pretty spotty employment history. With no idea what comes next.

As for how the job effected me, that is something I surely wish I didn't have to tell. Put as shortly as possible I spent the intervening time being as foolish and self-destructive as possible. On the side of what I can tell I'll say I pushed out every person and relationship. I lost interest in just about everything. I wrote in my prayer journal three times over the next 8 days, only one of which was substantial. It went something like this:

"August 30, 2009-
I'm doing this more of habit, desperation, and loneliness than anything.
I'm not sure what I think of You and the idea of whether or not You care about me or would help me.
I keep waiting for You to show up. To do something. To save me from this hell and give me life."

And yes I'm well aware how pathetic that is. For a man like myself to end up thinking in a place like that. But this isn't about being pretty. Its about honesty and the depths of a man's heart. And this is where men can end up. And if you think you're immune, then you should devote some time to avoiding this very stream of thinking. In our perceived strength we make stands without the strength of the almight God. And we fail. My good friend that I don't talk to enough Al is the person who first introduced me to the relevant Bible verse here. 2 Corinthians 2:19 - But he said to me 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."

But unfortunately that's not everything, and well just have to leave it at that. At least I didn't do anything I haven't done before, so if I ever go weak and completely idioic and fall in love with a woman and decide to get married I won't have another bag to check. Hello silver lining. Although I'd say that's more of a bronze.

What's weird is I knew it wouldn't last. I knew it was all crap and I knew it wouldn't last. But I was trying to so hard. I wanted it to go one. My ideal was to be able to one day point to the 2-month bad period 7 years into my walk with Christ. I made it 8 days. And somewhere inside that still bugs me.

What ended up breaking my glorious revery was Kairos. Now I wasn't sure about going. Deep inside I wanted to. At the root of my heart I wanted to connect with God and be pulled once again from the depths. Or more accurately, to have my eyes uncovered and realize where I already was. But I wasn't sure about going. I was looking for excuses not to.

I ended up going because I got pressured into it. Not by friends who were going, but by my brother and my mom, avid non-church goers. The both asked me if I was going and I didn't want to explain why I wasn't. So I went. I supposed I could have gone somewhere else, but I don't like lying, and beneath it all I didn't want to be anywhere else. And so I went.

The service was unbelievable. All the elements were of the normal quality. And my desperate need for what was happening left me breathless at how I was able to draw near to Papa in that time. But it wasn't all gravy. There I was after considerable absence from nearness with God. 3 weeks if you really want to look at it. Desperately needing the communion. Desperately needing guidance. And to my absolute horror I could not get Heather off my mind. But alas that was nothing new.

Its very easy and certainly accurate to say that part of my drive for my little life hiatus was the desire to wrench my feelings for Heather out. I'd become so convinced that it was painfully obvious that I needed to move on, and for reasons unknown I simply could not. It had gotten so bad that I found myself fighting back tears at the most innocuous things. For instance, on the way in the door to Kairos I actually had a tear break loose because the girl in front of my looked to much like Heather. But she didn't look anything like Heather. And the other day I say the reference initials of the Kansas City airport and almost lost it. I could perhaps expect such behavior were I closer to the time of separation. But we're 6 months out here. I've been on dates. I've come close to going entire days without thinking about her. And here I find myself regressing. I've been moving in the wrong direction. Despite prayers for the removal of such feelings.

So there I was, wanting and needing worship and finding her inexcerably on my mind. I prayed for her to be removed. I pleaded with God. But I don't think there was a full minute of that hour and a half where she wasn't on my mind. Since the prayers didn't seem to be working I just pushed it as far back as I could and made sure God was my only intentional thought. And in the end I got some great worhsip out of it, if slightly distracted and ultimately troubled by the tag-along.

Anthony was leading worship, and he's a fantastic guy. Before the last song he started talking. Right to me. Not overtly, but through the content. He started talking about being in a period of waiting. And he new how it was to have things be bad, and to feel like you were waiting on God and you'd never get any relief. How you heard promises of things God would deliver, and grow dull waiting for them to come. He recited a passage from Isaiah 41. "Be silent before me, you islands! Let the nations renew their strength!"

I was fairly shamelessly crying at this point, stuck between the attractive young blonde on my left and the attractive young brunette on my right. I was standing there listening to exactly what I needed to hear, from the voice of God Himself. "I have not forgotten you. I will come. Wait. I will renew your strength."

And then a thought hit me. Over the last few months whenever I've actually gone to God and prayed about the Heather situation, I'd usually find my Bible open to a particular passage. I always dismissed it because the passage heading was "The Helper of Israel" and I was always mistakenly remembering the chapter of Isaiah the prophecies Jesus. But it turns out no less then ten times I found myself looking at Isaiah 41, not knowing I should read it. So that was unexpected.

Then Anthoany went on, as the music kicked back up he said, "And while we wait, we worship." Which was by itself beautiful and wonderful. It called me faithfully back to that place, instead of elsewhere. But then another thought rushed my mind. A quote from Mike came back from a few months before. "Our weapon is worship." Our weapon . . . is worship.

Well Mike Glenn was off this week, and speaking in his place was the worship leader, also named Mike. He opened it up by apologizing for not being the other Mike and making a few jokes. Then he informed us he was going to be talking about worship tonight. He began talking about the importance of worship in general and then made a very convincing case for the associate of worship so heavily with music/singing elements in a service. He explained that singing was a spiritual discipline and went through a rudementary exposition of its importance in the Bible.

As a demonstration he told a story. He related how he had proposed to his wife. Imagine my horro that the story was nearly identical to how I proposed to Heather. For those of you who are unaware, that is no mean feat. I'd wager that perhaps as much 15% of proposals contain a similar central element, but the overall package? I'd guess fewer than 1% of proposals would be similar enough to make an impression. Reason being: I proposed to her with a song, that I wrote for the purpose, on stage, at a world famous music venue in front of a live audience. You just don't see a lot of that. I imagine songs figure in to perhaps a good number of proposals, even ones written personally. But the nature of that combined with the public proposal, to girls who are extremely shy just . . . . I found it rather depressing. I'm proud of that proposal. I think it was fantastic. That's still one of the best nights of my life. I loved it. I have no doubt I did the right thing. But now, it does sting. All that joy, which is still there, is backhanded. I sat there alternating between seeing it as a sign that I should still hold her in my heart, and wondering how I could ever be satisfied with a different proposal.