love without borders

I am limited. I recognize it more every day. I think it helps to explore the actualization of this because then I can live more fully within my limits. And when possible, I can work on pushing them down. One level at a time.

And I what I want most limitlessly is to love. That sounds kind of corny to me for some reason—perhaps because the culture I live in has trivialized the word and made it mean a lot of different things. What I seek to address is the kind of love that is more than a feeling (though feelings are certainly involved);  “a love fiercer than the love between friends, more gentle than a mother’s when a baby’s at her side; a loyalty that’s deeper than mere sentiment and a music higher than the songs that I can sing” (Rich Mullins). A love that treasures people, knowing they are genuinely important. A love that isn’t afraid to know someone.

I think it starts with understanding that I am limitlessly loved, and from within that reality I can dissolve the walls that stop me from loving proactively rather than passively.

Who is my Neighbor?

It was probably one of the strangest mornings of my life. It definitely competes with that time our neighbors (out for their ridiculously early five-in-the-morning walk,) found a deranged old woman with all her bedding—feet bleeding from walking several bocks—just sleeping at the end of our driveway. The police had come that morning too and made for a lot of excitement, but it was different because my parents were taking care of the situation and I was only watching with my sister from our bedroom window. But now I’m a grown up (I guess) and can’t be as passive in emergencies.

I live in a house with three other girls in a downtown location. I woke up at around 6:00 a.m. (even though my alarm was not scheduled to go off until 8:00). When I came to, I heard screaming. It was a lot of screaming—repeated noises like somebody was in an awful amount of pain. I opened our window just to be sure, and there was certainly no denying that somebody was in trouble. My roommate stirred and I asked, “Nadine? Do you hear that?” She mumbled something incomprehensible. I continued to listen. “She’s throwing up now,” I said when the sounds of retching came up through our window. I shut the thing and went downstairs. Going back to sleep was out of the question. Being the good social psychology student I am, I refused to be a victim of the bystander effect. (The Bystander Effect: when nobody does anything to respond to an emergency because everyone assumes someone else will, or thinks of excuses to make themselves believe nothing bad is really happening.)

As I walked down the stairs, images flooded my head of someone being raped, stabbed, beat-up, mugged, and shot. I was afraid, but I think my fear of neglecting to save somebody when I could out-weighed my fears of anything that could happen to me. Having to live with knowing I didn’t try is a nightmare of what-ifs. When I opened our front door, I noticed that the screaming had stopped. I turned on our porch lights and I was out on the front lawn yelling, “Is somebody out there? Are you okay? Do you need help?” And Nadine came outside behind me. I found out later she was planning on staying in bed until she realized I was actually going outside. Then she came out after me with her pepper-spray. Good, smart Nadine.

            It was about then when I saw her—a young woman lying sprawled out in jeans and a red hoodie on our front lawn. She was still. Dead still.

I immediately started crying. I pointed, unable to go closer, “Oh God, Nadine, someone is there. Do you see her? Oh my God. Is she dead? Oh God. Are you okay?” I called out. The woman didn’t respond. Nadine ushered me back to the porch and suggested calling the police. I already had my phone out and I was dialing 9-1-1.

The emergency people told me that they would send someone to check on her and an ambulance was also on the way. They also asked me if I would feel comfortable keeping an eye on her to make sure no one else came around and so I could call if she left.

So we waited. We went out on the porch to monitor. It wasn’t long before the woman started convulsing and yelling again.

“PLEASE!” She shouted, “Somebody help me!” I ran out to her (Nadine close behind) and I said,

“What do you need?”

“I’m having a seizure!” She said this between convulsions. Now, even though I have been around for several seizures, I don't claim to know everything about them. I know there are different types, but I’m pretty sure there was more happening than just a seizure. She was seizing, but it was happening for a very long time and in a methodological manor-like substance withdrawal convulsions.

“We have to hold her on her side so she doesn’t throw up in her own mouth and choke on the vomit,” I instructed Nadine. Just as we did so, the retching started again. We held her as she convulsed. Good, sweet, Nadine was rubbing her back. Our neighborhood watch guy from across the street came out to help us. He didn’t really know what to do, told us he has also called the cops, and knelt over the woman with us.

I called my dad. I already knew what to do when someone is having a seizure (there’s not much you can do except wait for it to stop), but I think I just wanted him to be on the phone with me. Very soon after I called, the cops came. It was weird because they were not in a car or anything. It was just two guys just walking from around the corner with their little emergency bag.

“Is it epileptic?” They asked.

“We don’t know. We don’t know her, we just found her here,” I told them.

“Oh,” was all they said, and we all backed up as they got to work. It wasn't long before the ambulance also showed up. Bridget (our other roommate) was at the front door, wanting to know what was happening. Our neighbor went back to his house, and we retreated to the porch, explaining things to Bridget. We assessed the situation, guessing she was probably experiencing effects of a drug overdose or severe substance withdrawal symptoms. After we figured that out, we complained for a bit about being so rudely woken up and how we weren't sure how to clean up the puke from our lawn. I was a little surprised by my own insensitivity. As soon as something becomes someone else’s fault, it's easy to reason ourselves into forgetting about compassion.

The medics put the woman on a stretcher, telling her to stop banging her head lest she wanted an awful headache (indicating that some of this was in her control). I was expecting the cops to come and debrief us, ask us questions or even just say, “Thanks for calling,” or something. But, nope. They just gave us a little salute, and sauntered around the corner back into the dawn.

So the three of us had a small de-brief of our own and then did yoga together.

I began to think about how yes, it was a little scary that this happened to us this morning, but some people deal with this kind of (and much scarier) situations as an every day occurrence.  However shaken up I was by it, it did not feel like as big of a deal compared to those who experience traumatic circumstances on such a regular basis that they get to a point of desensitization. What on earth would it be like to live somewhere where people get shot, get raped, OD, and yell and fight right outside the door every single day?

And I could not help but note my own relief as soon as the ambulance guys came and took her away. What if there were no such people? What if we had to take care of each-other instead of relying on institutional authorities set up for that kind of thing? What if we were forced to bring her into our own home and slowly and painfully walk beside her in her recovery?

But instead they came and removed her. They cleaned up the matter and we did not have to worry about it anymore. Because what does she have to do with us?

the stars

I used to suppose the stars were made for us. Someone put them there for me to enjoy. But one night while staring into the vast glittering abyss, I realized this could not possibly have much to do with me. 
It's no lie that I get pleasure from seeing them. We witness majesty through the stars, and there is a mystery about it that we tap into. 
But they shine for Him- the Divine-The Maker; their Father and mine. When we enjoy the stars, we're merely enjoying what He enjoys.
What is more, we too are created in order to shine for Him. We are given the capability to radiate for others to see and enjoy the Divine. 

Psalm 148:3
"Praise him, sun and moon;
    praise him, all you shining stars."

When we have learned to share in the work of making God known to humanity, our beauty will rival the stars.

 

And we'll be what we were made for.

Peace

Sara Teasdale

Peace flows into me
  As the tide to the pool by the shore;
  It is mine forevermore,
It ebbs not back like the sea.

I am the pool of blue
  That worships the vivid sky;
  My hopes were heaven-high,
They are all fulfilled in you.

I am the pool of gold
  When sunset burns and dies—
  You are my deepening skies,
Give me your stars to hold.

the Second on Singleness

What would happen if you took all the time you spent daydreaming about a romantic relationship, all the affection you wish you could poor out there, longing, waiting, desire, and expectation for that and instead directed it toward your relationship with Jesus? Would your life change? These are the questions I have to ask myself. Because if I haven’t tried loving Him with my whole heart, not really, then I have no grounds on which to complain about my relationship with Christ feeling like not enough.

When David says in the Psalms, “For my soul longs, and even faints for you,” have you ever pursued that deep longing for Christ like you have for earthly relationships? Do you give yourself over to Him in all your thoughts and actions as often as you would when you have a crush on someone? Do you take the kind of risks for Him that you would take for somebody that you were in love with? Because if what He says is true, then what He promises us is much greater than earthly romantic relationships. In fact, I really believe those relationships cannot be satisfying apart from knowing that far superior love of Christ.

And let’s be clear here,

God’s not saying, ‘be okay with singleness so you can have a husband or wife.’ God is saying, ‘be okay with singleness so you can be okay with singleness.’ God does not just want to get me through singleness so I can get to the thing that is better in store for me. He is my very best.

And if you are single (or ever have been), have you ever protested in your prayers, “God, I’ve been so good and so faithful! WHY am I not in a relationship?!”

First of all, let’s be real. God doesn’t owe us anything. A real Christian doesn’t obey God to leverage Him. Second of all, when I consider all of the blessings I already have in Christ, to be upset over what I do not have is outright ludicrous. If we are trying to get into a relationship because we think that THAT is what God has to offer us, we are sorely mistaken.

And here’s why: Because Jesus IS the reward.

And here’s another thing that’s good to come to terms with. We are not going to be married in heaven. If that idea makes you upset or uncomfortable, you might want to reconsider your idea of what your relationship with Christ has to offer. In the end, if He is all you have, would He be enough?

And if we take a good look at what the relationship between husband and wife is meant for in the Bible, we find that they are a picture for us to fathom what the relationship with Christ is like with His Church. That’s us—collectively. And when God said, “it is not good for man to be alone” He created not just this one kind of relationship, but every possible type of human relationship. We just have to keep in mind that these loves are not the real thing—these relationships are not the ULTIMATE. I think this is why Paul sticks in these verses smack in the middle of while he is talking about relationships in Corinthians 7:

“But this I say, brethren, the time has been shortened, so that from now on those who have wives should be as though they had none; and those who weep, as though they did not weep; and those who rejoice, as though they did not rejoice; and those who buy, as though they did not possess; and those who use the world, as though they did not make full use of it; for the form of this world is passing away.”

Okay, I’m going to take back what I said about not being married in heaven. Because as the bride of Christ, we will all collectively be married to Him. That sounds weird, and it is, I don’t get it. I’m not even going to pretend that I fully understand that.

But still, even if we can grasp that concept a little, it creates a really uncomfortable tension between the mindset locked on the eternal and thinking about the needs that we have now. But I recently had a friend explain it to me as kind of being in a long-distance relationship. We have letters we can hold on to, a lot of examples we can look to of His love, and a future we can look forward to when we will be with Him forever, but for now it’s really hard and downright painful at times.

And I’m going to close with another quote from C.S. Lewis because I think he wrote out this concept so much more beautifully than I can try to convey it. This is from the book, “The Four Loves,”

“The dream of finding our end, the thing we were made for, in a Heaven of purely human love could not be true unless our whole Faith were wrong. We were made for God. Only by being in some respect like Him, only by being a manifestation of His beauty, loving-kindness, wisdom or goodness, has any earthly Beloved excited our love. It is not that we have loved them too much, but that we did not quite understand what we were loving. It is not that we shall be asked to turn from them, so dearly familiar, to a Stranger. When we see the face of God we shall know that we have always known it. He has been a party to, has made, sustained and moved moment by moment within, all our earthly experiences of love. All that was true love in them was, even on earth, far more His than ours, and ours only because His. In Heaven there will be no anguish and no duty of turning away from our earthly Beloveds. First, because we shall have turned already; from the portraits to the Original, from the rivulets to the Fountain, from the creatures He made lovable to Love Himself. But secondly, because we shall find them all in Him. By loving Him more than them we shall love them more than we now do.

But all of that is far away in “the land of the Trinity,” not here in exile, in the weeping valley. Down here it is all loss and renunciation. We are then compelled to try to believe, what we cannot yet feel, that God is our true Beloved.”

the First on Singleness

Forewarning: my experience is not going to be the same as everyone else who is currently or has ever been single. I come from a background where it is almost like you automatically get pitied if you are not in a relationship. I’ll say something honest like “I’ve resigned to the fact that I might just not ever have a boyfriend or ever get married.” And people often come back with, “Oh, you’ll get married. You’re really pretty!”
I still don’t get that. It’s not like I was fishing for compliments; I was just recognizing a very real possibility.
Then sometimes after intentionally declining a suitor, deliberately choosing not to be in a relationship, I can just feel people’s disappointment in me. I tend to respond very defensively. Why is it that people care SO MUCH about that part of my life? It makes me rather caustic towards dating/marriage in general, though I truly am not opposed to the idea (even if the reason why I’m single right now is by my own choice).

So as I struggle through all sorts of dynamics of the life apart from a partner, I’ve found that literature has opinions across the board telling us how to feel and think about singleness. It goes beyond literature. I can hear two opposing views from people I trust—and both seem to make sense. Most of it seems so conjectured—like everyone is just making up these principles based merely on their speculations and there is no set way we can structure our thinking about it to be healthy 100% of the time in 100% of the situations we find ourselves in. Even in the Bible when Paul writes to the Corinthians about singleness he makes it clear that this is his personal opinion.

This is Paul’s concession (not command), his opinion (not the Lord’s). He says, “Now to the unmarried and the widows I say, it is good for them to stay unmarried as I am.” V. 8.

Then he talks about remaining where you are at. “Nevertheless, each one should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him and to which God has called him.” V. 17, So I look at that and think how this goes along with the whole concept of knowing your ground or (as Jim Elliot says), “wherever you are, be all there.” If God has me single now, God wants me single now. So I should want me single right now… right?

Paul continues (again, not as a command from God, but as trustworthy advice), “I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord, but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife.” And he says the same thing about married women, that their interests are divided. (V. 32-35)

Then he goes on to talk about if a man is engaged, it’s fine to marry the woman, but the man who doesn’t marry her does even better. And then he says this crazy thing about how if a widow wants to get-remarried, that’s fine, but in his opinion, she’s happier if she stays single.

Now that’s kind of a very brief overlook of the richness of that passage, but we can kind of get this idea that Paul (who was a man who gave everything to pursue Christ) thinks being single is actually preferred over being married.

My first reaction is to be like, “HA! Take that, VALENTINES DAY!”

And it’s true that some days really I get what Paul was saying in how being single gives you greater opportunity to serve God. And some days I rejoice in embracing that freedom I have to not be tied to another person.

But sometimes I don’t feel like that at all. I just feel alone. And I feel deficient. And I feel inadequate.

And very truthfully and honestly, this is a giant struggle. This is my thorn to contend with. As much as I pride myself in my freedom of singleness and no matter how much I know my attitude should be, I still spend an awful amount of time thinking about relationships. What I am finding is that what I TRULY want most is to be satisfied in Jesus alone. I want it to be so that I feel so loved by Him and so well-taken-care-of in Him that to seek out the love of another feels almost like a waste of time because His love is all that matters. I want to know, TRULY KNOW the kind of love that IS all I need. I want being pursued by a man to pale in comparison to how it feels to share intimately in the heart of God. I want to comprehend how all human love falls short of what I already have.

But, I have no idea how to do that.

So I start to think that the real problem must be that somewhere deep down I must not believe that Christ can satisfy me as much as a relationship with another person could. But I a lot of times I go about changing this the wrong way. I start to think that the solution to this dissatisfaction is to just remove every other desire from my mind. Example: If I start to care about a boy, I will fight every feeling until I kill it.

But I’m not actually so sure that it is an achievable thing--to just try hard enough to rid ourselves of every desire that is not Christ. I’m not so sure that’s what He meant for us.

Our desire doesn’t need to be removed, but maybe it does need to be re-routed. What I mean by that is this: If we try to seek the blessings of God instead of just seeking God, we’re probably on the wrong track. The solution is not reactive (like, stop liking boys so much!) but it is proactive (start loving Christ more).

“The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself.  We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.  If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.  Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with [lesser desires] when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased.” –C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

the Intro to Singleness

At first I was really excited when I was asked to speak on singleness in front of around a hundred-ish of my Christian college-student piers. I was all like “Yeah, sure, I’ll talk about singleness! I know all about that. I’ve been single for twenty-two years! Never even held hands with a boy. Totally got this.”

But as I began to struggle with what to say, I realized I didn’t even know where to start. I had way too many opinions I wanted to spout out at people—stuff I’d collected from years of thinking over input from books, magazines, parents, teachers, conferences, seminars, classes, pastors, Sunday-school… both worldly and counter-worldly sources. Then after looking over past journals and thinking about everything that I SHOULD UNDERSTAND by now, I began to feel a little bit like I should be the last person that others look to as an authority on this subject. Mostly because the things I know and the way I live very often contradict one-another.

The one thing that I had going for me to give a talk like that was a whole lot of experience. So Instead of shoving a bunch of hard-to-follow advice at everybody, I tried instead to be as honest as possible and hoped that Jesus showed them something about Himself in the midst of it. I love public speaking, but preparing for that was TOUGH. It felt more like I was being prepared.

I’d like to take the next couple blog posts to expound on my notes for that. What with all the worried family members  asking me about "any new boys" and with hearing the constant worries of single friends who are terrified of getting left behind, I think this may be worth re-hashing. 

the Blue Like Jazz [review]

I went to the screening of Blue Like Jazz the movie in Grand Rapids tonight.
I got to tell Don Miller about how I didn't want to read Blue Like Jazz because everyone kept telling me that I should, but also how that book ended up being really important to me this summer in India... which was kind of fun.
My overall consensus of the film was that it captured the taste and ideas of the book pretty accurately, succeeding in incorporating those themes into a fictional plot. I would say bravo to the writers for accomplishing such a difficult achievement. Aesthetically, it was very pleasing; well done artistically. Most of the characters were believable despite the occasional moment with Penny (that may have been an acting thing though... I hesitate to blame that on the character).
I appreciated the realistic approach to analyzing God and faith. I think that this film will be a venue for many people to explore their relationship with God. I don't agree with the critic who thinks that there should have been a "gospel presentation" within the film. I think we should probably start working down on breaking down the idea that the gospel is something we should pour our vigorous efforts of presentation in something like a film. The gospel is something that reaches people by being lived out. I think that Blue Like Jazz will bring about great conversations and inspire that kind of living, but its primary purpose was not to be a "how to become a Christian" instructional step-by-step. True to the spirit of the book, it gets people thinking honestly and truly about the conflicts that arise within us as we live day to day at a constant war in knowing who God is, who the world says God is, and what we ourselves are saying about who God is.

Though I don't think there should have been a "gospel presentation" per se, I did feel like I missed Jesus a little bit. I felt like I left the movie thinking a whole lot about who Jesus was not, and not a whole lot about who He was. I would not ask any sort of attempt for the film-makers to outright define Christ, but even by somehow incorporating the illustration Don includes in his book about the soldier who takes off his helmet and sits with the hostages before they believe he has come to save them--I think it would contribute to the film immensely. I think that would have connected the heart of the confusion we feel when we "look into the abyss and know there is no one coming to save us," to the heart of Jesus for this world.
But perhaps that would have been extending beyond the purposes of the film. Maybe this was just to stir up some feelings inside of people that recognize that we are the problem--that whether we deny even the existence of God or live a life that appears to be serving Him, we all are deprived. And I guess the end of the film really did stop there--with the first step--with "I'm sorry."