on doing, healing, and freedom

"What must I do to be saved?" I remember asking this from an early age. I would ask adults, the Bible, God, myself. I searched and searched for a formula. For a way to know. I had heard the words "believe in Jesus" my whole life, and I wrestled with them, even as a child. What did believe mean? I had always believed that God was real, that the Bible was true, that Jesus came and died for our sins. I didn't doubt those things. But it didn't seem like that was enough. People talked about it like it was a deep mystery, and like it was simple. That part was true.

The part that wasn't true, was that the thing I wanted most--to be in, to be safe, to be in heaven and with Jesus when I died--felt out of my reach. The Great Untruth: that God is far away, is the cry of this broken world. It meant that as a little girl, in a safe-haven of a home, I would cry, just wanting Jesus to be mine. Wanting to be saved, and to know what that meant, and for that to change how I felt.

To this day I don't know if there's something someone should have said. I remember being told not to worry about it. But I didn't understand what I later learned: if you want Jesus, you can have him. I remember being told that my longing came from God, that it meant he was calling me. What I couldn't grasp was that all I had to do was accept it. I didn't have to understand the mystery, or jump through hoops. I didn't know that my "I'm here God, what do I do?" was the same response as the prophets, "Here I am, send me."

I begged God to save me. And I believe now that he was there, crouching down to my eye-level, saying: "I'm here." His arms were around me, holding me close until I woke up. Strange and mysterious as God works, I came to a dramatic new understanding of Him, through a book called the Children of Cloverly. It was a sad book, as I recall, but with a little girl in it who followed the Will of her Heavenly Father, without question. I'm not sure what so captured me in it. But somehow her childish trust and desire to please resonated with me in such a way as to give me a new perspective on my relationship with the Heavenly Father, and my Savior-Brother. It shifted my understanding of 'doing right' to following a path offered me by the holy trinity. 

It all at once showed me a bigger picture where the emphasis was no longer on doing right for its own sake, or mine: but for the sake of staying close to the Shepherd's side. And at the same time, it simplified things for me. I no longer had to understand the whys and wherefores, the outcomes and consequences. I only had to ask the question "will this keep me close to my Shepherd?".

Like in Pilgrim's Progress, I now understood how my every step was like a journey to go see Jesus. And when I sought Him, and His face, and His righteousness, it was like walking with him. And when I got distracted or bogged down, or veered away from the path and my shepherd.... He'd come find me, and I'd fall on my face, and He'd pull my from the ditch and say "shall we go on?" and I'd be sad and repentant, and He'd just smile and wait for me to nod and follow Him back to the road.

We talked all the time in those days. I remember trying to figure out whether I was talking to the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. Sometimes it was one or the other, or all three. Often it didn't matter. He was there, as near as my breath, realer than anything I'd known. And he was showing me the path of life. In those days I lived and breathed the words in Philippians "for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain... my desire it to depart and be with Christ for that is far better". I lived for the heavenly kingdom, to store up treasure where it could never be lost. To see Jesus face-to-face was my aim. My favorite song was "every minute takes an hour, every inch feels like a mile, till I won't have to imagine and I'll finally get to see You smile" by Chris Rice.

And to coin another phrase of Rice's I learned to 'Run the Earth and Watch the Sky'. That's what I called the daily juggling of earth's adventures and my nearly incessant conversation with the Godhead. I felt like I could see both sides of the curtain: the beauties, difficulties, and perplexities of the here and now, the every day; and the glory, righteousness, heart, and smile of God, that reached straight into eternity and beyond. I lived for eternity, forgetful of the here and now, even as I slowly became more self-aware, and more tuned into the the spinning world around me.

Fast-forward through many years of learning what it means to grow into a person, an adult, an independent, in this strange and broken world. I had great reason to remember the words of Aslan "Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there."

I still spoke to God often, I poured through the Bible, I tried to remember his face. 

But slowly, in a subtle way, the lies of the Enemy were trying to take hold again. In some ways the same lies that tried to keep me at arms length as a child: you're on the outside, you're not safe, there are things other people just know. There were lies that I didn't let myself think about, even enough to squelch them, because I knew I had no 'right' to feel them, no reason to. And yet I did: you are alone, you're not wanted, no one is coming for you, you'll always be last.

I didn't even know enough to name these insidious thoughts, until one day I was sitting at a church retreat where they were talking about the lies of the Enemy: stuff Satan is trying to tell you. The opposite of God's truth over you. The lies we have to realize we're believing in some part of ourselves, before we can turn away from them and grasp hold of the truth of God. And they began to list all of those things I mentioned: that orphans feel. That I, the opposite of an orphan, felt I had no 'right' no reason to feel. And yet I did. 

And to prod that wound felt like being torn open. 

In an effort to protect myself from those fears and those lies, I had hedged myself in, trying to protect myself. I tried to not care and to not hurt. I tried so hard to do the right things, to be accepted in. My deep desire to do right, had become driven by fear instead of joy. And that had rooted deep. 

I'd been hurt by people and churches that had tried to control my behavior and thinking, without seeming to know the God I knew: the maker of cottonwood-leaves, and oceans, and stories; the one who breathed with me, walked the earth for me, died and came alive, and smiled for me. I'd seen a lot of people stuck in dusty words where I thought the passages should come alive like grass in the springtime. I'd seen people harrowed and hurting on opposite sides of a theological issue, or a matter of conscience. People I loved down to my core on both sides. And it hurt me.

I stuffed the pain away, with the confusion. I tried to find the right path and just stick to it. But, drenched in tears at that church retreat, I began to realize: in order to heal I had to let the walls down. I had blocked myself in with the fears. And I had to relearn what God says of me... I am His own. I was chosen, bought, wanted, known. I was seen, understood, held, kept, safe in Him. He had come for me, He was coming for me, and He would always come for me. I was in, I was family, this was my family. I couldn't flunk out of this, I couldn't lose the favor and the love of God by getting it wrong. I had forgotten.

And that group of Christians loved me well. They still do. But in that weekend I was shown in such a new way the unifying power of Christ among His people. You hear about unconditional love, but its rare to see it in such a way. Love and care and prayer that asked nothing in return; many of these people had never met me before, didn't know me, had no idea whether I would stay in their lives. But they treated me like family, shared with me their experiences of this living and glorious God that loved us more than we had ever hoped or dreamed. And through their outpouring of love, I felt the love of my Heavenly Father, and my Savior-Brother. I tasted that joy of eternity again.

It's a hard thing to wrap your mind around. That we can't imagine our God too good. If you think: that's too gracious, he wouldn't want to be that close to me, does he really care about this ache in my chest? His grace is better and sweeter and bulldozer-stronger. He wants to be even closer than that. He cares more about that ache inside you than you do: it hurts him more than it does you, and he wants to heal even the deeper places that you can't think about yet.

Onward, in a new freedom. I learned to trust the God in me. We're told that the Spirit lives inside of us, and we're told to listen to the Spirit. But then so many of us were told never to trust anything that comes from inside of us. But how could we not, if that's where God has chosen to dwell? If I really believe that I've been made new, that this new creation thing is a deep-down, life-changing rebirth... then the fear of getting it wrong should never be part of the equation. I'm new. I'm His. I'm holy. 

I don't think I'd ever understood before just how deep grace was. I don't remember how I pictured grace. I think, being told it was a gift, I thought of it like a package, and therefore much too small. I came to find it deeper than a mountain-quarry pool. It drowns guilt. And shame can't survive. Run to the arms of Christ, and you'll fall straight into it. A love that doesn't read debt. Favor that doesn't turn away from pain or doubt.

And once your eyes are tuned to find it, the scriptures come alive with the heart of God being absolutely for you. Jesus, longing to gather us to himself. Look to me, come to me, don't be afraid, I have called you by name, you are mine, I have made you new, it's okay: it's me, follow me, I will be found by you, I am not ashamed to call you brothers, I have called you friends.

Do we sin freely then, that grace may abound? Certainly not! I found myself instead free to sing and worship as never before. Free to talk about my story, and found it bursting with the glory of God. When pressed, I let myself bleed, and found I most often bled Jesus. I opened my mouth to encourage and shepherd, and tasted the Spirit on my lips. And the more I trusted in the depth of the grace of God, running straight into it for all my short-comings, sins, and blunders; the more that grace-pool surrounded me, permeating my relationships with other people. Misunderstandings and preconceptions and skewed intentions dissolve in grace too, and allow you to view people with fresh eyes. To love without fear, expectation, resentment.

Man, I'm still learning that love without fear thing.

We circle around the sun, and I fight depression and anxiety worse than ever before. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. The ache like grief in my chest, and the knot like dread in my stomach had taken up residence and didn't want to budge. And yet, deeper than any of that was the conviction, woven into my bones, and built into the constructs of my mind, strung in the sinews of my heart, that God was good. 

Even when holiness and doctrine and bible-studies felt like ashes in my mouth, and a burden on my shoulders... I knew that the God behind them was still real and still true. He was alive and mine and beautiful. Even when I couldn't taste and see as I'd been accustomed to, His hand was gentle on me. More than anything, He was for me. Before anything, He was a rescuer, and that not a whit daunted by my desperation.

I've come through, so far, and my song is the same: His grace is bigger than you think. His love more constant that you can imagine. His freedom the best thing I have known. 

And the joy comes back. And my understanding of grace continues to expand. 

The Fear of Getting it Wrong still creeps up on me. And the truth is, in some ways I get it wrong all the time. That's what the work and righteousness of Christ is all about. But I can't ultimately get it all wrong, because Jesus has ultimately and infinitely gotten it Right. And so I'll stick close to Jesus and his bottomless grace. His love is the only antidote I know to every pain and pitfall of my soul in this broken world. 

He is my Rescuer, the lifter of my head, and the truest friend.