Stephanie Says.. Take a walk inside my head

Have you ever played “Something You May Not Know About Me”? (Probably not, as it is a game I just made up.) If not, you have probably played a variant. “True Confessions”? “True Colors”? “The Un Game”? “Two Truths and a Lie”? “Never Have I Ever”?

Many games are designed to facilitate us getting to know each other. We, as a society, like little facts, little bits of trivia that we can tuck into our mental nests. We even like the occasional shock when we find that something doesn’t fit with our mental image of someone we think we know well.
I, for example, am fascinated by vampires. Dracula, Twilight, True Blood-I’ve read and criticized them all. If you are one of my close friends, this fascination doesn’t shock you one bit. If, however, you just know me as a minister’s daughter or church helper’s wife, you may be taken a bit aback.
We do that, you know. We see different sides of people and think we know them. We even do that of ourselves, sometimes, don’t we? We don’t always look very deeply into our own beliefs until something shakes us loose enough to really examine them.

As most of you know, I’ve been going through my own time of upheaval lately. In addition to much whining (I don’t LIKE change, ya’ll. I don’t like it AT ALL), I’ve been doing some contemplation.

It’s really nothing new. We all question who we are, why we are alive and what it is that we believe from time to time, but firm convictions and solid grounds aren’t exactly hallmarks of mine. I generally listen to the opinions of others and try to figure out what people smarter than I think before I make up my mind about things.

This past year, however, in addition to crying, pouting, whining and pretty much giving self described Princesses a bad name, I’ve been thinking. I’m still not absolute on EVERY issue that comes my way, but I have really nailed down some of what I believe.

Here are some of my thoughts:

-What I believe about God
Well, first of all, I don’t think God can actually be defined in words. Not truly. I believe that we, as people, use words to try and explain or describe what God is, was and is going to be because words are all that we have. I believe, however, that God is bigger than words, bigger than language, bigger than time and space. I believe that the word “bigger” is totally inadequate to say What and Whom God is, but, once again, words are all that we as people have when trying to really convey something, so words will have to do.

Second, I DO believe that God created us. I believe that He created grass and butterflies and the ocean and snow and rubies and…well, just…everything.

Third, I believe that God could have done things so much differently than He did. We could be…oh…we could HAVE no more free will than a zombie or a robot and never even know the beautiful agony of choice and temptation, but we don’t. We HAVE choices. We MAKE decisions. Sometimes we make terrible, terrible decisions, but we were created with brains to make them, nevertheless. God created us the way He did KNOWING that we would be spiteful and hurtful and treacherous and deceitful and a million other things that ruin lives and break hearts. He COULD HAVE created us with no choice, no free will at all. He didn’t.

Fourth, I believe that there are things that happen that we will never understand. I often go off on flights of fancy on this one. In my imagination, I sometimes try and make sense of the bad that is happening by reconfiguring it into a story. Say, for example, something lands someone I love in the hospital. There, they discover that they are either critically injured or gravely ill. I may never know why this happened. In the story I am spinning, however, a volunteer or a nurse or a doctor notices the sad but peaceful and faith filled acceptance my family and I display in the face of such circumstances and is impacted in such a way that they themselves become a person of faith, spreading such peace to the people that THEY meet. This is, of course, pure fantasy. Sometimes things happen that we will never know the answer to. I believe, however, that even when they do, God is still God.

Fifth, I believe that God DOES love us. Once again, I cannot understand this love. It is often compared to the feeling a parent has for a child. Parents, it is said, love their children all the time, even when the child in question is breaking their heart. I don’t know. When it comes to God and love, I often have to regress back to the songs that I teach my preschool classes. “Jesus Loves Me” we sing “For the Bible Tells Me So”. “We love Him (God)”, we read in the Scriptures “because He first loved us”. We don’t REALLY know why. We look around and see people behind bars for horrible things. We see people who SHOULD be behind bars for horrible things. We hear of even children using words as weapons. We don’t know WHY God loves us when we cannot even love ourselves. We just cling to the old songs and believe that He DOES.

HOWEVER, I DO NOT believe that God loves us like…oh, you know…like a stereotypical babysitter does. I don’t believe that the “love” God has for us is the kind that allows humanity to just go off and do whatever they want whenever they please. Seriously? That isn’t really love at all, I don’t think. Not REAL love, anyway.

-What I believe about Sin
Okay, deep breath here. First of all, I believe Sin is anything we do that puts a distance between us and God. Telling a lie, shooting an arrow into someone’s head, taking the last piece of cake on purpose just to hurt the person we are sharing with…sin, sin, sin…as are a million more.

Second, I believe the distance that results between us and God is one that WE make. I don’t think God really moves anywhere. I believe that when we sin, it is US doing the walking away.

Third, I believe that people sin for all kinds of reasons. Life is hard. Like I said before, we are not robots. We are not programmed with every answer in our heads and we have to make choices. Choices can be hard. Choices can be icky. And, sometimes we feel as if we don’t have any kind of choice at all. Or sometimes we feel as if neither of our choices are good. But sometimes we just…well, frankly we want what we want when we want it and…well, frankly we don’t want anyone, even God, telling us what to do.

So, we, um, we do what we want. We do what we want WHEN we want. And step by step we walk away from God and what it is He knows is actually the best for us.

-What I believe about Forgiveness
Depending on how much you listen to country music or watch –American Idol-, the name Kellie Pickler may mean as much to you as Elvis did to parents in the early 1950’s. She has a couple of (in my opinion) beautiful songs to her name, but one deals with reconciliation or the lack thereof.
“Forgiveness”, Kellie sings, “Is such a simple word/But it’s so hard to do when you’ve been hurt.”
Sometimes I play the video just to hear that line.

Forgiveness IS hard. I believe that will all of my heart.

Being hurt makes us forget things, I think.

We forget any good that we had in the relationship and focus on what caused the rupture. Sometimes we nurse the hurt so much that we allow it to grow. And, in my experience, the more a hurt grows, the less we really WANT to forgive. If we ever even wanted to in the first place.

I’ve known many people in many different areas of my life. Some of them have been casually cruel. Some of them have wounded me out of ignorance. Some of them have lied to me KNOWING that doing so would cause me pain. But however hurt I am, however wounded I become, one fact remains: I AM NOT GOD.

See, this is something that blows my mind. In my belief, God desires a relationship with us. Every one of us. Every single person born. And some of us are just…well…mean.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that every single person who draws breath will eventually make a choice that will take them away from God and toward their own desires. I believe that every one of us sins.

But some of us do so KNOWING that God wants a relationship and WALK AWAY ANYWAY. And you know what? God still loves us.
More than that, HE FORGIVES us. We turn toward whatever it is that we want. We walk down a road that takes us further and further away from God and…He forgives us.

As a person, as someone who gets hurt, this is something I cannot imagine. I know that sometimes I WANT to forgive people, but my heart keeps getting in the way. Forgiveness, for me takes time. Fear gets in the way and a process takes place in which it has to be removed before a relationship can really be restored.

But God?

Well, let’s move on…see, there is a little more we need to cover here.

I believe that we’re not robots. I believe that we have choices. I believe that we all, at some point, make a choice to go a direction that leads us away from God and His plans. I believe that God still loves us when we walk that direction. I believe that God’s love is something we cannot put into human words. I believe that God’s love is something we will never ever understand. Not Really.

I believe that God’s love and God’s forgiveness are intertwined.

But, see, I believe something else. I believe, that, just as we as people make a choice to walk AWAY from God, we have to make a choice to turn around and walk BACK.

And that involves asking.

That asking may be the hardest choice we ever make in our relationship with God. I mean, let’s face it. We often don’t WANT to go back to what it is God is laying out for us. We ALL have egos that flare up in one way or another. And, sad as it is to say, our egos and God’s plans don’t coincide all that much.

It’s HARD to ask for forgiveness.

Wait.
Let me back up.
The asking itself is not hard.
The asking is words. We can do words. We’ve been doing words since before we were a year old.

It’s the SINCERITY that kills us.

Actually turning around and walking back to God starts with WANTING to turn around and walk back to God.

AND TURNING AROUND IS SOMETHING WE DON’T WANT.

Who really WANTS to walk down a road knowing that to do so means that we often won’t get our way?

Walking back to God means sacrifice. Walking back to God means putting somebody else before ourselves. Walking back to God means letting go of whatever put us on the road away from Him in the first place.

We’re people. No matter what we tell ourselves, we do NOT let go easily.

So, like I said, the words we can do. The sincerity is harder. The turning around and asking for God to pardon us is hardest of all.

But here is a mystery. God DOES pardon us. We’re whiny. We kick. We scream. We demand things that we don’t deserve. We walk away, following things that could never be good for us in a million lifetimes.

And when we turn around, when we REALLY turn around and take just that first step, God forgives us. We break His heart. We run away over and over again and He forgives us.

This is the part I’ll never understand.

This is the part I could never do.

Not in a million years.