What Thanks?

With deepest regards to Ann Voskamp.

 

Gratitude in the midst of suffering. Eucharisteo. Choosing to accept the bad as well as the good, seeing them as parts of the same whole.

Shadows teach us to appreciate the light. Rain make us grow. Winter bids us rest. Pain wakes us up. “Thank God for the dirty dishes/ They have a tale to tell/ While others may go hungry/ We’re eating very well.”

I repeat Scripture and truisms, but my heart wears heavy pain. I speak praises and affirm faith from a node of agony. I endure; I do not thrive. I do not count this joy. I hate the gifts and shove them from me. I would rather lie numb and shocky than wake up to recovery. I do not want pain or anything that comes from it.

Healing comes after admitted injury. Healing requires playing the deal. I left the cards on the table abandoned without backward glancing. I so nearly fell off the edge of the world.

To be thankful for all that? All this? To lift drenched eyes and clenching-bruised hands and say, “God’s grace!” To feel the sliced-edged beating heart and proclaim, “He is good!” To wrap empty arms around empty self and declare, “Love everlasting!” Can I do such a thing? Can I not and live?

How dare God require smiles and cheer from shattering? How dare the surgeon require movement from the broken limb? Healing requires movement. Gratitude propels us out of our misery. We would coddle our pains until natural healing leaves us warped and unable to use. Divine healing realigns the edges for stronger repair and restoration.

We see the whole when we lift our eyes away from anguish and turn to gratitude’s dawn.

Close Enough for … What?

The other day, I was making up my bed with freshly washed sheets, and I decided to take care of a small detail that had been bothering me for a while. The box spring under my mattress lay at an angle on the bedframe, which made it difficult to settle the comforter over the foot of the bed.

My bedframe is an antique; four generations of my family have rested on it over the decades. A bit creaky when you lay down or roll over, but still in great shape. Occasionally, however, I would roll over and the box and mattress would fall out. Not the best way to wake up, I assure you, and another reason to straighten things out.

I took hold of that misaligned box spring and shoved. It didn’t budge. I went to the other side of the bed. Still no luck. I pulled the mattress off and tugged. Why was this silly thing not cooperating?

After a few more attempts, I stepped back to take a look at the problem, and that’s when I truly saw it. The box spring was not off-center. The bedframe was. A tug on the frame settled the box right into place, and now my comforter drapes very nicely and the mattress stays in place.

You may have noticed something in your inner self that feels a little bit off. Maybe it’s a habit. Maybe it’s an attitude. There’s something not quite right about it, but it’s small enough that you’ve never taken the time to address it. “It’s not that big a deal.”

Or maybe you have tried to do something about it, and you find yourself frustrated every time. “I just can’t fix it. It’s just the way I am. I can’t change.”

We each have an inner framework, a structure upon which we build our lives. When that is out of alignment, everything else will be off. We can cover up smaller issues with bedskirts and shams, but those don’t make the problem go away. Eventually, the bottom will fall out from under us.

I suggest that perhaps the issue is not the issue. Maybe it’s something underlying that “mattress” that is the real problem.

Take a few moments to consider those things within yourself that bother you. Pull off the covers, set aside the trappings. Take a long look at the framework of your heart and mind and see if perhaps something there needs to change before any other effort will work.

A few years ago, a movie came out that explored one of the fears we humans have of artificial intelligence: what if robots turn against us? Worse, what if they decide to protect us from ourselves? One of the lines the main AI repeated was: “My logic is infallible.”

The AI’s logic was correct. It put the pieces together in the right order. However, the premises upon which it based that logic were flawed (or perhaps incomplete). Its framework was off. Humanity must not be protected from itself because only in struggling and striving do we thickheaded creatures develop and grow. In trying to protect humanity from stubbed toes, the robots would actually destroy it through stagnation. The AI would not reexamine its premises, and so it had to be destroyed.

In another, older, movie about an AI that might have destroyed the world, the day was saved when the characters got the computer to play tic-tac-toe. The AI extrapolated a child’s game to the war game and turned off the nukes on its own. Why? Because it realized that pursuing its previous course of action would not achieve the results it was programmed for. It had been operating under misunderstanding, which it corrected.

You may have correct logic regarding that “thing” in your life. I challenge you to look at your premises. Is that “just natural” or is that something you can willfully affect? Are you really “doomed” to be like that forever?

What have you built your life on, and is it true?

I sleep more soundly these days, knowing that my bed is set right. If I’d used a carpenter’s square when I last moved the bed, I would have avoided this whole mess. There are many areas of life where, if we would only use the standard of the Carpenter, we would avoid fear, suffering, or discomfort. And many times, what seems an unfixable problem when confronted with pure logic becomes simple when we look at the foundation we’ve built it on.

Worst Advice Ever

We’ve all had someone give us advice with the best of intentions, I’m sure. And at least once, that advice made us think negative thoughts toward the giver. “Honestly,” we might think, “does this person have the tiniest clue what I’m going through?”

We know that the person meant well. We may even believe that the person genuinely cares for us. But we have to wonder about the connection to reality this person has, since what she’s telling us to do completely misses the point of the situation.

Interestingly, I have found myself in this very position of late. Not on the receiving end; I have been the giver of this “bad” advice. Click here for a witty pop culture reference. (Note: due to recent changes in laws, I can no longer link to interesting movie clips to illustrate my points.)

So what went through my mind as I spoke these unhelpful words to my hurting friends? I knew that what I was telling them wasn’t relevant to their situation; after all, they needed concrete, actionable things to do in order to resolve the issues at hand. So why in the world did I fob off esoteric, spiritualized answers on them?

Like any other well-meaning rhapsodizer, I truly think that what I offered was what they needed to hear. Without giving away sensitive details, allow me to illustrate.

Sally McFriend has a  boss who’s barely out of high school, in his first management job, and doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing. Boss Boy orders everyone around, nit-picks over every detail, and gets upset because Sally made a sale using a method other than his. He threatens to take away her new prospects (for which she receives next to no commission anyway) and vaguely hints that her job might be in jeopardy. Sally is frustrated, furious, and about two minutes from smacking him.

So I tell her to get closer to God.

If I may use a popular slang term, WTH? Sally needs tips on not doing something that would cost her the job or land her assault charges, not some hyper-spiritualized claptrap that has absolutely no bearing on keeping her out of trouble. I mean, come on. Everybody knows that religious answers are cop outs.

May I explain why I told her that? I’m guessing that if you’re still reading this, then you are at least curious.

How is “getting closer to God” going to help Sally keep her cool and her job? It’s not the zen thing where you become one with the universe and petty mortal concerns don’t affect you. Honestly, that doesn’t go deep enough to get to the root of the issue. It’s not avoiding the issue or pretending it doesn’t exist; that builds a bottleneck that usually makes a messy explosion later on.

I base my advice on several assumptions. Here are a few:

1. God is real.
2. God has the power to do what He wants to do.
3. God is purposely active in our lives.
4. God loves each one of us and wants to make our lives better.

It’s popular to say that if God really loved us and really wanted to make our lives better that He would make all the bad stuff go away and give us tons of money and no diseases or jerk bosses, etc. However, that is a Band-Aid approach that does not address what’s really going on.

I won’t get into the “fallen world” doctrine at this time, but I will say that we live in a world where bad stuff happens to good people and good stuff happens to bad people. We can all see this, every day. Sally is making real effort to do well at her job and earn an honest living. So why is she under a supervisor who plays power games with her? Why do babies starve and murderers live well?  Because the world is broken.

Rather than grouse about the whys and wherefores, I propose that we look at what we can do to remedy the matter at hand. By the time social reform makes bad bosses a thing of the past, we, too, will be things of the past. By the time world hunger and global crime get eliminated, the people currently affected by it won’t have had any relief. So what can we do?

And how in the world does drawing near to God make any of that better?

Each of us can make the greatest impact on ourselves. It’s our hearts and attitudes that we can change first and most thoroughly. Yet even that has limited effect; just ask anyone with an addiction. You know it’s bad but you do it anyway. You know you need to change or die, but you just can’t. We each hit a wall in our self-improvement that just doesn’t have a weak spot.

This is where God comes in and comes through. It’s my experience that God, while considerate of our physical needs, is far more concerned with our character. It’s the teach-them-to-fish concept. A starving person needs food, so it makes sense to just hand over a fish the first time. But after that, does it make more sense to continue handing over fish or to teach the person how to fish?

In this example, we see that hunger is a continual experience and need in life. No matter how much you eat, eventually you will be hungry again. So is it kindness, is it love, to never let a person figure out how to feed herself? Or is it love to teach that person what to do when hunger returns, as it inevitably will?

God wants for us to overcome the circumstances that we all face, that this broken world throws at us. If God took away everything that ever challenged us, smoothed over every bump in the road and took all responsibility away from us, we’d go from this to this in a hurry. It might look great at first, but life would lose all meaning.

God does not cause suffering,  but He does use it to make us better, to make us all that we’re supposed to be. When we let our bad times turn us toward God, we learn how to conquer the problems rather than ignore them, pretend they aren’t so bad, or let them beat us down.

So for Sally McFriend, Boss Boy’s behavior isn’t the problem. The problem is her response to him. By drawing closer to God and learning the things He wants to teach her, she will figure out how to get past that wall in her personal development that usually lands her in trouble. In choosing God over the anger/pain/fear/humiliation/hunger, she will gain the skill she needs to overcome.

And that is why I will continue to dole out “bad” advice. Life will continue to throw hard times at you. It will continue to be unfair. How are you going to respond to that? We all have the initial gut-response, but after that, what will you do? Will you live in fear and anger or hunger or pain? Will you slam into that metaphorical wall time and time again? Or will you go to the source of life, sit at His feet, and learn all His fishing tips?

Second-hand emotions …

Have you ever been disappointed by something or someone?

If you’re human, you have been. We’ve all had things turn out badly or some way other than we wanted them to. Disappointments seem a way of life, sometimes. Occasionally,we go through spells that last so long that we think our entire life is one cosmic joke after another.

It hurts. When we hope for an outcome, for a resolution, and it never comes … it hurts. When we invest in a decision that blows up in our faces, the pain can be worse than a physical injury. The most commonly-mourned pain is love, but don’t think that disappointment is limited. Jobs, children, dreams, finances, health, friendships … there are many ways to be disappointed and hurt.

If this is such a common thing, then what do we do with it? There are innumerable self-help gurus who promise solutions to dealing with pain and loss. Every relative and friend has a lecture just waiting for a moment. And then there’s logic, which will line up the facts in your mind and dictate what you should do. Contrast that with the emotions, and what a cocktail you’ve got to sip on.

What irritates me the most about this lingering suffering is the way I keep doing it to myself. I keep hoping that this time, it will be different. I’ve changed up my approach, I’ve applied the logic and advice and am not making the same mistakes. So why do I keep getting hurt? Why do I keep hoping when I know darn well that there is no reason to hope? To be honest, I get mad at God for allowing me to hope. It’s like He promises things and then takes some kind of pleasure in denying them to me.

Let’s take a look at someone else who hoped for something futile. Abram was just a dude living in Ur some thousands of years ago. He was minding his own business when God took a proverbial baseball bat to his life. “Leave your cushy life, trek across the wilderness, go to someplace you’ve never heard of, and I’ll make you the ancestor of an entire nation.”

Anyone else feel less than confident with those instructions? A bit vague, if you ask me. Abram was 75 when this happened, and he had no kids. I realize that it is medically possible for a 75-year-old man to sire children, but a wife who is over 70 is not likely to be able to bear them for him. Well, maybe since they lived longer in those days, Sarai still had functional plumbing, but I’m not betting on it.

So Abram packs himself and all his household up and starts walking. And walking. Stops for a bit to let his dad die, and then walks some more. Seriously? More walking.

So he comes to Canaan, has adventures and stuff, and all along God is saying, “I’ll make you the founder of a nation. You will have descendants.” God even gives Abram a new name to commemorate the promise.

After five years, I would be seriously questioning God. Abraham had to wait twenty-five years before the promise became a reality. I seriously don’t think I have that much patience. I would have said “Peace out!” and ditched that Popsicle stand. Seriously, how did he stand it?

While children and legacies are important to us today, it’s nothing compared to how important they were back then. Abraham brought his servant, Eliezer of Damascus, along because he had no kids and Eliezer was in essence his heir-in-waiting . Many traditions from that era claimed that the only eternity a person could aspire to was blood descendants. Without children, you ceased to exist. I can understand why Abraham jumped at any promise regarding children.

Abraham didn’t wait patiently, which is a kind of relief to me. It’s good to know that I’m not the only one who gets ideas on how to pick up God’s slack. Adoption is a legitimate way to have children, even in that day. And it soon became obvious that it wasn’t Abraham’s fault that his wife never got pregnant, since Hagar had no trouble. That was a mistake that we’re still feeling the fallout from. But events don’t end here, which is a very good thing.

So Abraham wasn’t perfect, and he wasn’t patient. He grumbled more than once to God. He took matters into his own hands from time to time. And at the end of each day, he still hung on to this crazy hope that he would one day have a legitimate child and legal descendants.

Dude, you’re old. Your wife is old. Get over it.

Right?

Wrong.

God had a plan, and it required that Abraham keep hoping when all hope was lost. Against all logic, against all advice, against all emotions, against all reason. To hope against hope, as the KJV puts in.

For all his detours and foibles, Abraham never stopped believing. He never really gave up hope. He always came back to God, always came back to His promise. And because he never turned away, God kept that promise, and we have some amazing stories to look back on and learn from.

The thing that so many of those gurus and advice-givers forget is that God is still active in our lives. In your life. In my life. Yes, it’s often hard. Yes, it rarely makes sense. But when your hope is in God, you will not be disappointed.

But how can you trust this, trust that God will come through when there are so many holes in your life? Well, for starters, read up about those whose faith got them through their miserable times. If they got through it, could not you, as well?

And hope when there is no hope. Remember that it is not about being perfect; it’s about perseverance. Are you willing to go the distance, to get back up again, no matter how many times you fall? God is ready to pick you up. Your story will not end in pain if you keep on keepin’ on.

Green thumb?

So I was reading the other day (shocking, I know) and I happened across a passage in the Bible that caught my eye.  Combing through the later Psalms is kind of uplifting, yanno?  When I came to 126, I stopped.  What caught my eye was the last two verses:

5 Those who sow with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
6 Those who go out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with them.

At first glance, it’s encouraging stuff.  It tells us that the pain will end, the trials will cease, and one of these days, we’ll be able to smile again.  That’s good to hear.  I think everyone can bring up a handful of examples of when we needed serious encouragement to get us through the tough times.

What stood out to me was a sort of implicit warning, however.  My mind, devious thing that it is, reworded the sentences a bit.  When you sow with tears, what are you planting?  When you reap sheaves with joy, what are you gathering?

Life can be excruciating at times.  Everyone has had at least one experience that “could have killed me”.  Betrayal.  Unfairness.  Your own folly and its consequences.  Can we agree that sometimes you’re the pigeon, and sometimes you’re the statue?

The question rising out of these two verses is: what are you planting in your distress?  When life has you down, when nothing goes right and getting out of bed seems like more effort than it’s worth, what harvest are you preparing?  When your heart is shattered and you can’t bear your own life, what crop are your tears watering?

No matter your preferred flavor of psycobabble, everyone agrees that pain is a process.  There’s anger, denial, bargaining, rage, moping, goth makeup– I digress.  Pain and grief take time to work their way out of the system, and the time frame involved varies for everyone and every situation.  But one thing that does not vary is the choice we have when we are in the middle of that ugly mess.

Bitterness is a natural response to the cruel actions of others.  But it is not beneficial for the long-run.  How many stories do we have about someone consumed with bitter anger whose life revolves around revenge?  That person always winds up far worse than anyone else.  When you are past the pain, wrapped in smiles and bright days, will you be reaping a harvest grown in poisoned soil?

Anger is also natural (and some would argue healthy).  When someone does you wrong, when you get kicked while you’re down, when you learn the hard way, anger takes root.  What happens when it grows up?

Say your situation is all (or mostly) your own doing.  You screwed up along the way, you just weren’t good enough to make the cut, or whatever.  What are you planting in your heart and life during this time?  Are you walling off parts of yourself that are “disgraced”?  Are you uprooting abilities or traits that contributed to the current problem?  Minimalism might be a popular decorating style, but I don’t think it works inside your heart.

Perhaps you’ve heard the term “sacrifice of praise“.  Do you know what that means?  It can sometimes be kind of hard to understand the references used in older writing, especially when the practice the phrase came from isn’t used anymore.  A sacrifice is something you give up.  Today, we generally use “sacrifice” to mean giving up something really important, something that it’s going to be hard to live without, or something that you don’t have to spare.

When you’re in pain or wracked with grief, you probably won’t feel like singing.  I can almost guarantee that you won’t feel like singing happy songs or being nice to another person.  Most of us want to have space to nurse the wounds, and sometimes that means loud music with someone else pouring emotional lyrics into our heads.  We require attention and aid when we’re hurt, when we’re down and out.  We usually don’t have the strength to give up, give out praises.  Especially if we think that God had something to do with our current situation.

Can you think of a more appropriate time to “sacrifice” praise?  You don’t have it to spare.  You don’t have the strength to find the pitch, and the words get stuck, anyhow.  And how many times have you been told that you can’t sing, hmm?  Well, friend, the Bible says to praise with a song; it never said anything about being in tune.

What are the benefits of dredging up a few words of praise through the miasma of your misery?  Why bother?  Why put on a glad face and pretend that you’re not hurting?

Now when did I say that you should do anything like that?  Nothing in this little treatise indicates that you should deny how you feel or the reality of your situation.  What I am saying is that there’s a way to give your pain a point.

When you come out of this dark time (and you will, one fine day), you probably will want to forget as much of it as possible.  I don’t blame you one bit.  But you know that what goes around comes around.  What you plant in your pain and water with your anguish will grow.  It will continue to mature in your life.  If you really want that horrible memory to fade away, then don’t plant weeds that will strangle you ten or twenty years down the road.

This is not putting on a show or pretending to be all right.  Your pain is real.  It is also finite.  Don’t let it have more power in your life than it should.  Don’t let it destroy you.

You know, some folks recommend simple activities like gardening to those who are hurting as a way of taking the mind off the enormity of the issue for just a little while.  The only thing I’ve ever had luck growing was mold.  However you get through your tough times, don’t forget to take care of your inner garden.  And if you need some help, I can recommend Someone Who is very good at getting rid of weeds.