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.

I have received much advice this past year. I have received stern advice. I have received funny advice. I have received confidential advice. I have received terrible advice. I have received advice in the form of stories. I have received advice in the form of songs. I have received advice from my girlfriends. I have received advice from my family. I have received advice from my husband. I have received advice from the few men in my life that I trust. I have been ignored, worried about, prayed for, scolded, scorned, played with, lied to, embraced, complimented, surprised, encouraged and brought to tears. I have made and lost friends. I have found and lost love. I have been crushed and lifted. Dreams have died and others have been born. People whom I thought would support me have disappeared and people whom I never thought to call on have stepped up without even being asked. It’s been a horrible horrible season, but it’s also been (in some ways) a blessing. I can’t promise that I’ll be any more active, competent or with it in 2015, but I am ready to make baby steps. I am ready to crawl. I am ready to try. Just please, promise to try and love me. I won’t do what you think I should. I won’t move as fast as you think I ought. I won’t listen to the things you say. I’ll ignore the remarks you make that don’t apply to me AT ALL (seriously people…Hi…my name is Stephanie…have you MET me?). I’ll stumble. I’ll fall. I’ll sleep. I’ll cry. I’ll break my promises and if you care for me very much, I’ll probably break your heart. But I promise. I promise to try. I promise to try to be there more, to listen more, to show up more and to care. Please. Please. Loving me is not mandatory. It is not a requirement. But if you do. If you really do, can you promise to try? I’ll stumble and fumble and fall. I’ll disappoint you over and over again. You’ll shake your head and bite your lip. I’ll do my best but I’ll fail. Please…if you really care…can you promise to love me anyway? Even if…Even WHEN…it hurts?

Under…you really don’t have to say anything at all, but if you do say stuff be careful. The heart you would could belong to someone who needs you to provide patches, not more cracks. For example:

A lot of the lot of advice that I’m getting consists of either pray or go to church. I appreciate the support…I really really really do. And, intellectually, I understand the sentiments people are trying to convey. But to someone like me…to someone with issues involving rejection…to someone who has spent their life being told “I don’t have time for you” or “Go ask someone else” or “Just be quiet. If people want you to talk, they will ask you to.”, such advice (unless coming from someone I really really REALLY trust) UNLESS it is coupled with actual time spent with me sounds like more of the same. I have enough people passing me by. So be careful. If you feel you MUST say something, be so careful. People don’t hand out their hearts lightly. Please don’t be the person who casually breaks them. Sometimes we need hands, feet and shoulders so much more than we need empty words. Be careful my darlings. Casually cruel kindness is really, really no kindness at all.

Sticky Children

There was a time that my life found me attending annual women’s conferences. If you are familiar with Evangelical Christianity, or know someone who is, you may have attended these as well.

Conferences are week or weekend long meetings often held in an arena or large hotel room. There are Praise and Worship times of singing, clapping and crying. There are times in which well known authors/actors/speakers and other people of note come and share their wisdom/inspiration/experiences (to me, one of the most memorable of these was a woman who served for a while with Mother Theresa-the small Indian children did not know what to make of her blonde American hair) and there are times in which concerts are performed by fairly well known Gospel or Christian pop/rock artists.

Conferences are often organized into categories. There is, for example, a ministry that sets up events for both senior adults and teenagers. There are conferences for people who are single and not dating. There are retreats for married couples (these often involve comedians doing skits-I do not really know why). On and on the list goes. I have been to marriage weekends. I have been to very loud youth gatherings (for which I was too old and quiet even when I WAS a youth). I have mostly, however, been to “Women’s Conferences”.

I am not generally made for such things. I don’t easily sit still. I don’t listen very well. I absolutely dislike large crowds and walking up and down stairs is something that fills me with severe dread. So, I usually spent my time trying not to doodle or whisper to my neighbor or fidget and distract the person beside me. As a result, I retained very little of what was shared.

Until her.

I don’t remember her name, but her story comes back to me time and time again. She spoke, you see, about one of my favorite passages in the Gospels, the love that Jesus displayed for the weakest, most overlooked members of His society, the children.

It went, she imparted, something like this:

Jesus was, as he often did, teaching a large crowd of people. This crowd was not just your average Sunday Morning attendance gathering. This was more than an extended family reunion. There were thousands of people pressed around Him, waiting to see whom He made mad that day or what miracle (read that as “magic trick” to them) He would perform or what object lesson He would impart.

The Disciples were, as the Disciples could usually be found doing, arguing about which one of them would be the greatest in Jesus’ kingdom or grumbling that John got to sit beside Jesus AGAIN at dinner or stealing all the pennies in the treasury for themselves. They weren’t ready for what came next.

NOBODY was ready for what came next.
Er…make that WHO came next.
All of a sudden, women…left out of the Temple, not allowed to testify in court, “Lord I may be a Jewish man but thank God I’m not a woman” type WOMEN began making their way through the crowd.

What’s worse is that they had children with them. Children. Dirty, dusty, bought and sold like property, slaughtered by kings and thrown into rivers, not considered even people yet CHILDREN were about to approach their Rabbi and the Disciples decided that they would not stand for it.

Picture it, implored the storyteller/conference speaker whose name has been forever lost to me but whose message still comes back years later…Picture it…these were not your fancy, ribbons and bows, Sunday clothes and hairspray, Chick-Fil-A going, wet wipe using, pristine families. These were…these were…McDonald’s people. They wore jeans. They had messy hair and holes in their shirts. They had catsup on their faces and their hands were (shudder) sticky.

“Hold up there” our narrator imagined the Disciples saying as they folded their arms and began encircling Jesus. “Our Master is a busy, busy man. You don’t have an appointment. You’re messy. You’re dirty. He doesn’t have time for you. Go wash off, clean up and maybe come back when you aren’t so (shudder) sticky.”

And then, and then, in the stillness of the auditorium, our speaker began the sentence that will probably come back to me for the rest of my life.

“Let them come” she imparted in the role of Jesus “Let them come to me. I love sticky kids.”

Do you hear it? Do you see?

If you are anything like me, there are times when there isn’t a lot of grace in your life. Judgment surrounds you and even the people who claim to love you best keep pointing out only your sins, only your mistakes.

I LOVE STICKY KIDS

If you are anything like me, your soul is torn and patched with BAND AIDS that don’t quite cover all the holes.

I LOVE STICKY KIDS

If you are anything like me, you are going through a time in which everything you have been dreaming of has been crushed and you wonder what you are any good for, anyway.

I LOVE STICKY KIDS

If you are anything like me, you can quote the Scriptures, win the Bible Trivia Games, sing the songs and probably preach the sermons, but you are looking for so much more than just the words people keep giving to you, because empty words never solved anything, did they?

I LOVE STICKY KIDS

If you are anything like me, you are tired of the endless debates about things that you aren’t sure even really matter and you just want something you can know for sure, you just want something real.

I LOVE STICKY KIDS

If you are anything like me, you keep trying and trying only to fall flat on your face over and over again and you wonder if you should just give up because you know if you try once more, you are just going to fail…again and again. Every time.

I LOVE STICKY KIDS

If you are anything like me, you are tired of people and their categories and their conditions and you wonder why we can’t all just be human together and why we have to put so many labels on so many things and can’t we just go love and care for the people in our world without so many judgements.

I LOVE STICKY KIDS

If you are like me, you are messy

If you are like me, you are mud streaked

If you are like me, you fall down

If you are like me, you have catsup on your face and honey in your hair

If you are like me, you are hurting

If you are like me, you have scars

If you are like me, you are broken

You are tear stained

You are torn

You are weary

And confused

And someone has tried to push you back to where it was you started from

You are ignored

You are stumbling

You are so very small

And you
You are sticky

It doesn’t matter, our storyteller reminded us. Jesus didn’t care.

You know what He did?

He put His arms around them.

Those sticky, dirty, messy, unimportant children who were the lowest of the low were embraced by The Perfect, Sinless, Son of God.

Can you hear it?
Can you hear the crowd murmur? Can you hear the Disciples gasp? Can you hear people asking if Jesus was out of His mind?

He, who had talked with the most important Religious Leaders of His day…He, who had stood up in church and explained ancient Scriptures written by the Prophets Themselves…

He, Jesus, that many people still hoped would strap on a sword, mount up on a white horse and go charging into the heart of the Roman Empire in order to lead a Bloody Revolution was placing toddlers in His lap.

The Hoped For General was tugging braids.

The Future King was wiping noses.

The Son of God was giving two year olds hugs.

They didn’t understand.

Some of them probably died still not understanding.

But every now and then, we do. Every now and then We

The Messy

The Fallen

The Forgotten

The Confused

Get a glimpse of Glory
And we don’t see swords

We don’t see armies

We don’t see sacks of coins or decrees or treaties or land or titles or crowns

We see nothing of Power

We see nothing of Might

We see Jesus

We see His Heart

We see His Love

We see Him holding out His hands

And offering an embrace

Catsup faced
Sticky Hands

And all