For the past few weeks I have been trying to sort through all of the “stuff” I brought home from my vacation. Sadly I have to admit it isn’t pretty souvenirs I will cherish forever that I am dealing with, but instead it is the ugly truths about my family, our past, and consequently my potential future. I wish I could excitedly share that by God’s grace, my father found Jesus while I was there, but that wasn’t God’s plan, and I accept that.
I think of everything I experienced and saw while I was there, the two things that stick most in my mind, mainly because of how symbolic they are to me, are the Grand Canyon, and experiencing a monsoon in the desert. While both brilliantly display God’s majesty and power, I saw them to be symbolic of us as well.
The Grand Canyon has got to be one of the awesome, breathtaking creations gifted to us to experience. On a hike I remember stopping about half way down it with my boys and just gazing out around me thinking how amazing it is that with God’s power it was possible for water to cut through all this solid rock, mold, shape, and form it into one of the most beautiful creations in the world. I was choked up, speechless, and awestruck all at the same time. The next time I go out there I want to find a way to bring my kayak so I can travel through it on the Colorado River instead of just driving around the top and hiking down here and there. I don’t even know if there are words to describe what that would be like.
As picturesque as the Grand Canyon is, experiencing a monsoon is just as astounding in a different way. If you have ever been to Phoenix in the summer I don’t have to tell you how hot it is. Dry heat or not, 121 degrees is still 121 degrees, and the wind only made it worse because the dust it kicked up would not only blind you but make it impossible to breath and scrape up any exposed skin as well. So when you couple the wind, and the sand, and the heat, then throw in an unbelievable amount of water (not to mention electricity) that drops out of the sky with little to no warning, it is quite an extraordinary event. But what captivated me the most wasn’t just the monsoon itself; it was what happened after the monsoon. Streets flooded, driveways overflowed, and the water had no where to go because the ground was too hard to soak any of it up. So the water either dried up from the heat (and you can literally see it happen) or disappeared down the drains into the sewers, and even with the great intensity of the storm, the desert remained untouched and unchanged by the water, and a fire even broke out from the lightening.
So why do I see those two things as symbolic of humans? Well to me God is like the water that created the Grand Canyon and if we allow Him in, He will flow through us, mold and shape us into His most precious and beautiful creations, each unique in our own way, but equally beautiful in His eyes. Like the Grand Canyon each “form” will have its only story of how it was made, equally significant, and equally meaningful to all who witness it. And to me the desert is a picture of what happens when we continue to refuse to accept God’s water. Over time it becomes so dry and hard that eventually there is no way any water can ever penetrate it, never mind mold or form it because it is so desiccated and unyielding. It makes me sad to admit my father is like that desert, but I pray that some how, some way, God’s water can find a way to penetrate the surface.
jesusHave you ever had someone in your life that never could see the good in things? No matter what the topic they always have something negative to say. My mother is like that. And not only is what she says negative, but she always has someone to blame it on as well. It is quite depressing talking to her at times, and it is always emotionally draining. No matter what I do or say to try and show her a positive side, she cant seem to get past the darkness of it and who caused the darkness to be there.
I am preparing to travel out to see my parents next week and make decisions about what she will do once my father passes away. It has been a real struggle for me because this is just one of the major life changing decisions I have had to face as of late. I have no idea where they are financially, because my father will not surrender his control of the finances while he is alive. The only thing he has said is that he lost all of their savings in the stock market, which may or may not be true (my father has some truth issues). For right now I need to plan on the fact that moving in with me may be her only option. In my counseling class we are studying something called aging myopia, a serious and emotionally destructive condition caused by anxiety, where the persons focus is negative and self-centered, and is triggered by everything from their health issues to financial security. The one thing I found interesting was that all of the triggers have one common root, a lack of trust in God. It is the panic attack Jim was talking about in his last blog only this attack has been taking steroids and has grown so much it consumes their lives. I do find it kind of ironic (though fitting) that I am studying about this condition at the exact time I have to make decisions about caring for someone who has it. I guess it is just more proof that all things work together for a common good with God and nothing happens by accident. Gods perfect timing. I think the hardest part of understanding this about my mother, is understanding that without Jesus she will never overcome it. Eventually her fear and anger will become so great that it will not only destroy her emotionally, but it will destroy her physically as well. So as I look at all of this stuff God is showing me I ask Jesus what He wants me too take from it all, I mean beyond the fact that I will be caring for my mother as she goes through it. What Jesus showed me was how to avoid aging myopia in my own life. That the best way to overcome it is to never get it to begin with, and the only way to do that is to continue walking with Him and dealing with the stuff in my life and getting to know Jesus on a deeper level. Then He gave me this picture. I helped a friend of mine clean out their basement a few weeks ago. Their house is about 40 years old and they had never gotten around to it in that time. Thinking about it now, the basement had three categories of things stored in it; the cherished mementos from their kids, the things they only needed on special occasions, and the things they didnt want to or werent ready to deal with so they stored them down there and forgot about them. After 40 years, that stuff piles up and before you know it there is no room for anything else. The same thing happens in our hearts. That basement is a picture of what my (almost) 40 year old heart would look like if I refused to let Jesus clean it out; too full of my past to leave any room for hope for the future. Wow, when I think about my mother in that perspective, I can only begin to imagine what the basement of her heart looks like after 75 years. Gives me a pretty good understanding of why those who dont know and allow Jesus to walk them through this stuff suffer from aging myopia thats for sure. So, when was the last time you cleaned out your basement?
I had someone ask me today why I haven’t blogged lately. Hasn’t God been speaking to me? As I told them, of course God has been speaking to me; I just haven’t liked what He has had to say. It isn’t that He is convicting me of some hidden sin that I don’t want to deal with, or that I don’t want to do what He is asking me to do, it is that everything on my plate He is asking me to do is stuff that I failed at profusely so many times before, and quite frankly he is heaping my plate full with this stuff right now.
Do you ever feel that way? Like God is setting you up to fail? “Why would you send me there God, you know how bad I screwed up last time?” Or “Why do you want me to do that again, don’t you remember what happened the last time I did?” That’s where I am right now. Sitting with a plate overflowing with stuff I don’t really want, never mind the fact that I am not even hungry in the first place. Yet I know I must eat.
I know I know, God doesn’t set us up to fail, and even when we do fail there are still great blessings in our failures. I have said it myself many times. So why am I here? Why is this so tough for me? I know God is with me in this stuff, I see Him with me. So what is the problem then? Well if I am really honest about it, it isn’t that I am really concerned about failing itself; it is that I am afraid of others seeing me fail in these things again. In other words it’s my pride.
I know Jesus will still love me even if I do fail at any of the things before me. I have no doubt about that. My relationship with Him will not change. I am confident in that. But I don’t want anyone else to see me fail. I don’t want to take that risk especially with things I have finally come to terms with in my life. People have expectations of me, and I am afraid I can’t live up to them. Actually I am more afraid that if I don’t live up to them they will reject me because of it. I am confident in Jesus when I fail, but all I have ever known from man when I fail is rejection. I know we aren’t supposed to trust man, but we are supposed to trust Jesus in man and I don’t. Every time I have, I have lost.
I had a friend pray for me today and a part of the prayer was asking God to show me how I have grown and to know I am ready to do these things God is asking me to do. And while I appreciated the prayer and what they said, a part of me was saying would if I haven’t grown enough to do this stuff. Would if you are wrong and I do fail. It isn’t something either of us really knows because I have avoided it all completely for quite some time. Would if I fail in this “test”, what happens then? I know God will still be there, but what about my friends? Am I going to suffer the same shame and rejection I have every other time?
The one thing I learned in school that has always played out in my life is when you do well on tests, people expect you to continue to do well on tests. But when you do, eventually the fact that you do well on tests becomes the norm, they accept nothing less. So when you do fail at something, it becomes far more significant and far more noteworthy than any of the things you ever succeeded at. Or in my case, it becomes the guarantee I will loose my relationships. Do I trust God not to reject me? Yes. Do I trust man not to reject me? No. Why, because I don’t know anything else. But I suppose that’s the probably a part of the lesson here isn’t it….
