Mountains & Canyons

I'm running down mountainsides, plunging into canyons so quickly lately that my head is spinning. Sunday was a mountaintop day. I was high on the Spirit, just loving life and everything in it. Then comes Monday. Bam...dropped down to canyon level, my eyes tracking the indomitable heights and wondering how the heck I get out of this mess. See, "valley" is such a weak, peaceful, restful word for the low points of the walk of faith. It denotes rippling grass, a gentle breeze, pretty little fuzzy sheep grazing, and a still water brook rambling through the center. A valley is a place that one walks with her lover, preferably barefoot, and revels in the beauty of isolation. Valleys are beautiful. Canyons suck. Canyons are deep, dark, depression. They are deserted and smell of fear and old bones. They are a place of death and desolation. They're dry, dusty. Canyons are places that one creeps through on silent feet, putting one foot in front of the other and praying she makes it out alive. A canyon is solitude, loneliness, abandonment. Canyons are impossible to climb out of and deadly to fall into. These pits of the walk of faith are canyons, my friend. Not pretty little valleys. Sunday on the way home from worship at my church, I was having my own personal jam session in my truck. Man, I was rocking it out to Big Daddy Weave, Newsboys, Fee, Kutless. We were worshipping, my friends. Hands were raised, voices raised, and my spirit soared. There are a couple of songs that will always do it for me. They connect to my spirit and soul alike, giving me an instantaneous conduit to true worship. Four of my "instant worship just add Faith" songs are "The Day That You Found Me," "Like A Lion," "Everything Falls," and "What Faith Can Do." The first two are just GOOD songs...the kind that sports teams play to get pumped up before a big game. The "look how big my God is!" songs. The last two hit an emotional chord in me deeper than my canyons, that raises me up and makes me see how far I've come from my lowest low. So how'd I get from a true worship experience yesterday afternoon to anxiety attacks, shortness of breath, and general extreme stress today? Well, it started with a dream. Now, if you know me, really know me, you know that I dream often, vividly, and emotionally. My dreams are usually steeped in reality enough that they feel incredibly real, and I often wake up angry, frustrated, hurt, afraid, laughing, crying, or feeling great, based on the dream. Last night's was my standard "Don't wanna work on Monday" dream. If you don't know, I have an incredibly stressful, emotionally demanding job. I interview children who have made allegations of child abuse, often who are violently abused and deeply traumatized. This job lends itself to burnout and secondary traumatization, things that we prefer not to talk about. When I'm feeling pressured and feel that my job is inescapable, I dream that I'm working. Double whammy, because not only does the dream suck, but then you wake up and have to go do that for real! It's double the work with half the rest. That was last night. Last night I sat in a room with broken, traumatized children all night, having all of their pain poured on me in my dreams, and then got up, went to work, and did the same thing for real, with real children. Needless to say, I woke up out of sorts this morning, leading an already stressful day to be monumentally more trying. So is this my fault? Can I help what I dream? My conclusion, after much deliberation, is this. No. You can't help what your subconscious throws at you when you're vulnerable and open during sleep. You can prepare for battle, meditate on scripture before sleep, pray for peace, but ultimately, you're putting yourself at the mercy of your psyche. And that little jerk can do a number on you. But I do have control over my waking thoughts. I am instructed to "take every thought captive." Is that literal? Under the power of the Spirit, yes! When I woke up, with my dream still haunting me, my first reaction should have been attack. I should have appealed to the Spirit for strenth, for power, for a sound mind and a pure heart. Instead, I wallowed. I allowed my feet to slip slide down the canyon walls, scrambling for purchase, desperate for a foothold, only to land firmly on my butt on the canyon floor. Instaed of taking my thoughts captive and soaring on God's power to the mountaintop to survey my day's stresses in safety, I found myself underneath my stress, trudging painfully up steep paths to work my way back up. So today was a canyon day. Fortunately for me and my physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing, tomorrow is another day. While I do have to enter the world of victimization again tomorrow, I can choose to enter with my armor up, my shield of faith engaged, my sword of the spirit swinging, and fight for the ground I've been given. How will you start your day tomorrow? Will you soar on wings like eagles, or will you trudge the canyons with the snakes and lizards. Your choice. Choose wisely.

The Idols of Christianity (& Other Ramblings)

I find myself running on empty, like a car that's been driven too far without a fillup. Life is oppressive right now, and it seems as though I'm a child, standing in the ocean, being pelted over and over and over, wave after wave, until I'm finally knocked down and swept under. I feel the sand shifting beneath my feet, the earth giving way, and no hand is there to rescue me. I'm drowning in the everyday, treading water until the brief, "sandbars" of a free 30 minutes gives me enough breath to tread water some more. With everything that's going on, working four jobs, keeping up with my incredibly active family life, and desperately trying not to neglect my long-suffering friends, I have been shamelessly neglecting the most important task of my day. I've been neglecting my personal times of discussion and study with my Almighty God. Ironically, it's those times that are the life-preserver thrown into my raging sea. Spending quality time with the Lord, my divine Lifeguard, gives me the emotional, spiritual, and psychological energy I need to force my physical body to keep moving, keep performing, long after things should have broken down. When I neglect this aspect of my health, as I have been doing, I end up an empty shell of myself, unable to invest my heart the way I've been called to. But it's so easy to talk myself out of a quiet time. "I have so little free time," my inner child whines, "I should be allowed to spend it however I want." "But, you DESERVE this time to waste on 'Elder' or 'Once Upon A Time'" my snarky, overworked inner sluggard snaps, "you do so many things for other people, it's not too much to ask!" And I, once again, cave to my flesh and ignore the Lover of my soul, patiently waiting for me to open his word and sink into him. Don't get me wrong: I find nothing wrong with a good book series I can get lost in, or a television show that intrigues and amuses. Those are things that I enjoy and that relax me. This is not a diatribe on how culturally bound we've become as American believers. We are in this culture and should, so long as our conscience is not violated, enjoy the things that we enjoy. However, when those things replace spiritual nourishment, we have crossed the line to being engulfed in the culture and, according to scripture, have ranged ourselves as enemies of God. To put it in culturally relevant terms, we have abandoned the Elves, Hobbits, Dwarves and Men, and set ourselves as allies with Mordor. We've ceased fighting "for Narnia, and for Aslan," and have parked our butts on the White Witch's sled. Having just marked myself as a hopeless nerd, I'll move on. My pastor is doing a sermon series on Idolatry. Now, as believers in the evangelical church, we've all heard sermons on "modern day idolatry," making other things your God in place of God. That was last week's sermon, the bottom line of which is that anything that you place before God in your life, has become an idol, as surely as if you were worshipping Baal or Rah. This week's sermon was incredible, and hit on the spirit of the law regarding idols and graven images. In Exodus 20, God lays down the law. Well, the basis anyway. The Ten Commandments. Even unbelievers know these rules. These are the "no brainers," the basic, fundamental, "this is how not to suck as a human being" rules. Love God above all. Don't worship idols. Don't take the name of the Lord in vain (casually), remember the Sabbath, honor your parents, don't murder, don't adulter, don't steal, don't lie, don't covet. Duh. However, if you focus on the idol thing, there's something deeper going on there. What God ACTUALLY says to Moses, in verse 4, is this,

"You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them for I the Lord your God am an jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

So. That's pretty clear, huh? Is it? What was it that the Israelites did before Moses descended from the mountain, after meeting with God face to face? Made an idol, right? Did they make an idol to a foreign God? Did the golden calf they made represent an actual cow, or a cow-god? No. What does Aaron say? Exodus 32 verse 4, Aaron receives the gold from the people, makes the calf, and they say "these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Do you think any of the people were confused about which God brought them out of bondage? It had JUST HAPPENED. To clarify, Aaron then says that "tommorrow will be a feast to the LORD." The author uses the personal name for the one, true God, the I AM. They built an image of God himself...at least the God that they had in their minds. So did that break the commandment? I mean, they were worshipping him still, so how could he be jealous? Clearly the commandment was broken, as the next thing God does is try to wipe the earth of any traces of these idiots and start over again. So why? Why was that so bad? Why is God so adamant that we not try to mold an image of him, to capture him into something that we fragile, ignorant humans can fathom? We. Are. Flawed. We're jacked up, messed up, screwed up. Everything we do is tainted by the sin that we inherited from our fathers. We are INCAPABLE of fully understanding the God of this universe and all others. It's just so out of our league. So any image, any concept of God that comes from our hands, our heads, will be flawed and fake and corrupt and counterfeit. It. Won't. Be. GOD. In effect, we will be worshipping false gods, and isn't that the very definition of idolatry? How often I do this! How many times have you heard people say, even said yourself, "my God wouldn't..." or "I don't see God that way." Let me tell you, friend, the only way to see God truly, to view him as he is, is to read what he wrote about himself! God is not defined by your moral code, your life experience, your political or social views. He doesn't care what you think, feel, or see. He defines HIMSELF. God and God alone is capable of describing God. Fortunately for us, he does just that, over and over in his word. In order to ensure that you're worshipping the true God, you have to read, know, and believe every word of his scripture, every nuance of himself that he has dropped for us. Learn him. Love him. Here's a few things that his word tells me about the one true God, Yaweh, Jehovah. He is creator. He was before any, and he will be for infinity. He is light, and truth, and all that is good. He has no deception, no darkness, no sin or failing in him. He is righteous and pure, just in all things. He cannot abide sin or fault in his presence. He loves. He is LOVE itself. He is merciful, he mourns, he weeps for our faithlessness. He is gracious, he is compassionate. He binds up our wounds and dries out tears. He shelters, he disciplines, he guides and he rejects. He is all knowing, all powerful, all present. He is ALL. This is God. If your definition contradicts any of God's definition of himself, redefine yourself. Because trust me: God will not redefine himself to fit you. And someday, you will stand before the one true God, and he will ask you who you've been worshipping all these years. Because it won't have been him.