To water I’m bound weighed down by a sea root
That anchoring asphyx, unaccounted for ages.
Circling, swimming seething for freedom:
Trouble with chains won’t change my aversion
To dive and discover the depths of my heartbreak.
I settle for sand bars and selfish ambition
Swirling, twirling in twisted emotion
I’d forgotten my foot the feeling of roots
Keeping me close in comforting whirles.
From the bar someone bellowed “Below is your trouble”
“You’re stuck in a swirl, descend on the double.”
I scoffed at his two cents
The troubling trait as if traveling the chain
Could mitigate my malaise. Marauders be damned! Continue reading
Healing
Free Fall
Surrender can be a beautiful thing.
When things finally click and you realize there is just so much out of your control
And no matter how much goes wrong, you’re going to be alright.
I find great comfort in the idea that Christ is
omnipotent
omniscient
omnibenevolent
In other words he’s all powerful, all knowing, and perfectly and unlimitedly good.
So, surrendering *to* Jesus, makes complete sense to me in the context of my faith.
BUT.
Continue readingSurpassing Knowledge
I still get queasy in the pit of my stomach anytime I identify myself as “deconstructing.” I don’t like the term because of what people assume it means and the place it has taken in the conversation. More than that, I dislike the process and the fact that I came to a place where I felt the process was necessary. Parsing through your theology feels destabilizing. To stay intentional and grounded in identifying what you still believe, what you no longer believe, and what needs to be tweaked takes a toll, mentally.
What you believe about hell, for example, has some people condemning you to it. Remember that time John Piper Twitter-excommunicated Rob Bell for reexamining his hell beliefs? That happens a lot, for beliefs much smaller than hell. So it’s hard to take an honest-to-god review of your beliefs about hell when, in the back of your mind, there remains this nagging fear that where you come out on it may affect your eternal salvation. Or, more viscerally, your place in a community. My understanding is that eternal life comes as I consent to the work and lordship of Jesus. You don’t need full understanding or even enlightenment style, fully rationalized belief in order to consent.
Nevertheless, here is where I find myself, with a queasy stomach, parsing through my theology, wondering how patient Jesus really is.
Hello Sadness
I guess what I’m learning is to be okay with sadness touching every strand of my life, if it wants to. That sounds painfully melancholy. I don’t mean to say I am going to go find Sadness and drag her into every memory, thought, and experience.
But when she shows up, I want to invite her in and acknowledge her presence. Believe it or not, being sad doesn’t have to take away from a parallel joy.
Why have we split joy and sadness into these opposing binaries? So often they seem to be presented as exclusionary. Of course, there may be times when we, for our own mental health, ought to set aside things like sadness and worry so that we can be fully present to our joy. And there may be times when we delay joy in order to allow our anger a voice.
But I propose these times are an exception.
This extends to more than just our interior lives.
Let me give you several examples to show what I mean by joy (or any “light” emotions) being in the same room as sadness (or any “dark” emotions).