Raindyland

Last week I was cleaning for my aunt, and some Jehovah’s witnesses showed up at her front door. The young girl in the front – the “spokesperson” of the group – asked if she could read my aunt a Bible verse and get her opinion on it. I was in the next room and couldn’t hear exactly what verse she used, but it was one from Revelation about the end of the world. When she finished reading, she asked my aunt, “Do you think that could even happen?” And essentially she was promoting salvation as a ticket out of eternal hell.

And that was her idea of “witnessing.”

I’m a child of God, and I found that unappealing. I can only imagine what a non-believer would think of that – being scared into becoming “saved” because you didn’t want to burn in hell forever.

I’ve been hunting for a “so now what” for year. I’ve been saved, I’ve been baptized (even if it was only to become a member at a church and work in their nursery), and I’ve been in and out of church for most of my life. I graduated in 2010 from a Christian school and went on to four-and-a-half years at a Christian college. I chose not to put it on my diploma because I felt it was forced on me (everybody at my college was required to get it), but I have a minor in Bible. Trust me, I’ve been inundated with “God stuff” for the last twenty-four years. But there are very few lessons I remember that answer, “So now what?” So I know I’m saved and I know I’m not going to hell…now what do I do? The messages always seemed to be the same: you get saved, then you enter some kind of ministry. Or the mission field – that was always a big one too. So as one who doesn’t feel called to Zimbabwe or to be a preacher’s wife (holy shit, can you imagine me as a preacher’s wife?), I was always a little confused about how I would then be of service to God. Maybe that’s why I chose to be a teacher, even though I really didn’t want to: I believed that being a good influence on teenagers would be more effective than my dream of being a writer. I have been given the gift of writing, though, so when I turned away from teaching I began to imagine that I would use my words to “win people to Christ.” (That’s the terminology, right?)

It’s only been in the last few days that I’ve realized the “so now what” of being a child of God. And like the actual becoming involved, it’s not as complicated as people like to think.

Joey and I are reading a book by A.W. Tozer called The Pursuit of God. And it meets us with the understanding that yes, we’re both saved. But Tozer takes us deeper and says that our job, then, is simply to get to know our God better.

Notice no asterisk, notice no addendum. That’s all.

Of course we’ve been commanded to love each other, which wraps up the whole list of the Old Testament’s Law into a simple package – that’s what Jesus meant when He said, “My burden is light”, because it doesn’t come with four hundred and ninety-eight rules you have to follow. And it’s not to earn salvation that we love each other: it’s because of the relationship that we have with God that we do what He says. I’m also learning that “children of God” are just that – His children – not servants who should fear that they’re displeasing Him. We are His children with whom He is madly in love, and we do as He says because we love Him and want to please Him. But love should be our motivation in everything, not fear that we might do something to piss Him off bad enough that He says, “I’m done with you.”

But we make the one commandment of Christ so simple that we forget the most important part of it: “Love others, and love the Lord your God.”

What do you do when you love someone? Not necessarily in the romantic type of love, but think of, say, your best friend. I have three best friends who knew me from different areas of my life, and though I don’t get to see them very often (I don’t live in the same state as two of them anymore) I go out of my way to make communication with them. I miss them when I don’t get to see them, and I get so excited when I know a visit is coming up. And I don’t want to do anything to hurt them because I love them and I cherish the bond that I have with them.

The same can be (and should be) said of our relationship with God. He is, after all, our Heavenly Father. And though I’m revisiting what His role is as a “father,” that relationship should be so intimate that we don’t worry about displeasing Him. We should crave the chance to talk to Him. We shouldn’t come before Him with fear that He might be angry with us. Yes, every now and then I do something that doesn’t exactly jive with what He’s commanded me to do, and He lets me deal with the consequences. But that’s not a punishment: it’s discipline. Because He disciplines those that He loves. Tozer uses the example of Abraham and the story of him taking Isaac to the mountain to kill him. That story gets presented with a “God will provide” moral, but Tozer explains that Abraham was on the verge of making Isaac an idol in his life. And our God is a jealous God – when He says “have no other gods before me,” he means none. Shocking though it may have been, God used this little scenario as a reminder to Abraham to get his priorities back in order. But again, this was not punishment, and He didn’t let Isaac die.

Because God isn’t angry with His children.

Remember what I said about wanting to please God simply because of our relationship? I read a book a few days ago called The Birthright that goes into greater detail about our identity as children of God rather than servants. And the author, John Sheasby, brings up the story of the prodigal son. Again, the story is used differently, as an illustration of how no one is so far gone that the Father won’t accept them as children again. But Sheasby points to the older son, who pitches a fit when he’s slaved for years for his father and didn’t even get a skinny goat so he could party with his friends. The father turns to him and says, “Everything that I have is yours.” That wasn’t a means of placating the son – he was pointing out that at the beginning of the story he had divided his fortune with both of his sons already, he didn’t just dole out what was due to the youngest son. Anything he would have used to celebrate the older son’s labor already belonged to the older son anyway because of his birthright: it was already owed to him (and given to him) merely for being a child of a wealthy and generous father. He didn’t have to work for it, he simply could have sat back and enjoyed it. The father couldn’t reward him for what he’d done because the son had already been blessed for who he was, but wasn’t taking advantage of it.

Take advantage of it, dear friends. Be encouraged today.

The Hills are Alive

I’ve been raiding my mom’s house for her copy of “The Sound of Music” for weeks, with no luck. Our family has a habit of mistreating DVDs, which means that some are downstairs on top of the basement DVD player, some are in a multi-disc stack in the family room, some are in my room in the wrong cases, some are in the three DVD folders throughout the house, some are in the back of the CD folder under the TV, I think “Grown Ups” might still be in the DVD player in the car. So the idea of hunting for and finding a single disc in our house in next to impossible.

I finally found it yesterday in a white paper sleeve in Chandler’s room, next to the “Adventures in Odyssey” tapes and her old phone with all the buttons. I couldn’t wait to get it back to my house.

I’ve had the urge to watch it since Chandler and I drove back from Minneapolis. Since we had nothing to do but listen to music for twelve hours, we listened to lots of musical soundtracks, since we know the words to nearly all of them. And “The Sound of Music” came on. We were both in a production of it in high school – me as Sister Berte, she as Liesl – so we had fun reminiscing over our version of it, put on over a decade ago. Then “Edelweiss” came on. And when Liesl sings harmony with Captain von Trappe, Chandler sang harmony with me. And I had to look out the window so she wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes.

That trip was melancholy for me. She was coming home for my wedding, the first time the five of us had been in that house together since Christmas and probably the last time all five of us will be in that house again. See, I try to be tough with this whole new phase my family is in, but it actually makes me sad. My family was supposed to be different. We’d all stay close, we’d all be together. And now there’s the story that everybody is sick of hearing about and Chandler’s moved away and she’ll probably never live close to me again and Austin’s going away to college and I’m married with my own house and my own life. And nothing will be the same.

So I watch “The Sound of Music.” I remember playing the wedding march on our ancient stereo and taking turns with Chandler walking down the stairs in this ugly grey dress we got from our grandmother, pretending that it was we who were getting married. I remember watching the movie on Sunday nights before school. I remember watching it at my grandparents’ house and thinking how jealous I was that those von Trappe kids got to hang out with Maria. I remember riding my bike around our neighborhood singing “Do Re Mi” like they did. I remember being part of my high school’s production and feeling like I was part of one big musical family.

I remember the Mother Abbess’s words as I head out to odd jobs to make money while I’m pursuing my dream of being a writer.

I asked my mom for my own copy of the movie for my birthday this year – my movie collection at my house won’t be complete without it. Not so much because it’s a great movie, though it is. But I need that nostalgia. It makes me think of when things were better. It makes me sing for a minute.

And then I don’t feel so bad.

Goose

Mother's Day was this past weekend, and at church that day the pastor asked for all the women to come up to the stage so we could honor them - not only as actual mothers, but as spiritual mentors, mother figures, etc. He said their kids could come stand with them if they were there. I, who still see myself as a "kid" even though I'm an almost-twenty-four-year-old married woman, went up to the stage with my mom as her daughter. The pastor asked for some kids to hand out little Bath and Body Works hand sanitizers to the moms in honor of the role they play in our lives. And for some God-forsaken reason, my mother told them to give me one. The hand sanitizer smells fantastic and I'm happy to have it in my car now, but I told her I wasn't a mother - I'm not even a mother figure to anyone - so I really didn't need it. She insisted, and I took one anyway.

After the service, I had several ladies come up to me and knowingly smile, "Maybe soon you'll be getting presents on Mother's Day."

First off, I've already gotten one - look at my new hand sanitizer.

Second, no.

I thought people were joking when they warned me about this, but almost immediately after we got back from the honeymoon, people started talking about our babies. And not to be rude or anything, but no. We have a game plan, guys. We want to spend some time with just us before that. Hell, we want to have a dog before that, and I told him I'd like to wait a year before we bring one into the picture.

Besides, we have an unkillable plant lying dead on our coffee table - how can we possibly take care of a baby?

In all seriousness, we do want kids someday. I want to try my hand at being a mom and I know he'll be an amazing dad. But we have some things to take care of first. Our goal has always been for me to be a stay-at-home mom: we were both raised by mothers in the home and we think that would be the best option for us. (Note that I said "best for us" - I neither suggested that it was the only option or best for everyone.) And at this point he doesn't have a job that would support a family of three.

WAITNOSTOPDON'TSAYWHATIKNOWYOU'REGOINGTOSAY- I know. "If you wait until you're financially stable, you'll never have kids." DON'T SAY THAT TO ME. Because that's not what I mean. I mean, we want to wait until he has a job where I can stay home and we won't be living paycheck to paycheck. Now nod your head and say, "How responsible of you."

I'm reading a book right now that talks about love (like, actual love - not that romantic-feeling love), and it mentioned how the most healthy of marriages flourish when the two people in it remember that they are two separate people - each with their own intricate network of hopes, dreams, goals, and projects. Those did not go away when we got married, and they should not be squelched by the other person. (Unless overtly dangerous or illegal.) And we have those dreams, guys. We nurture those dreams in each other. And we know that, if we decide to have kids before we reach those goals, we'll take over the role of responsible parents and put those dreams on the back burner - who knows when we'll get around to achieving them? And we're not ready for that kind of tie-down.

I want to be a writer. And I will have a book finished and published before I take over as a mother.

Now nod your head and say, "How driven of you."

What really irks me about the child debate are those well-meaning people who smile and say, "Oh, but..."

Now to be rude, but keep your "but."

Listen, this little life that we're creating is ours. It's full of possibilities and uncertainty and confusion and lessons to be learned, and we're excited to figure it out together. And it drives me crazy when people with the kindest of intentions try to tell me that the goals we have set are subject to change. We know that. But leave those changes to us. Don't tell me, "Oh, you'll have a baby within a year after you get married." We very well might. We're taking every precaution not to, because babies are gross and we don't need that headache right now. But do not presume to tell me how our life will play out. Allow us to make our choices, like you did. Let us experiment and plan and try and fail and figure it out - like you did.

Now nod your head and say, "OK."

Cheerios

If you’ve been following me long enough you know that I love to read, and typically I’ll keep two books going at any given time: a “for fun” book, and a devotional book. I’m treating it as a devotional book, though it’s not a Christian book. It’s not even really a religious book: it focuses on psychology but addresses love, change, and “spirituality,” though not in the God sense. I’m only about seventy pages into it, but it keeps me drawn in because of the truths that are comforting to hear as universal truths, whereas so many Christian books are geared toward like-minded evangelicals. The book starts with the declaration that life is full of pain – pain that we often put ourselves through in the psychological realm of change (“there’s something wrong in me that I must work to correct, but it hurts to do so”). But that change and subsequently that pain is necessary if we want to be truly wise.

I came across a line when I was reading this morning that caught me off guard. It says, “One measure – and perhaps the best measure – of a person’s greatness is the capacity for suffering. Yet the greatest are also joyful…Buddhists tend to ignore the Buddha’s suffering and Christians forget Christ’s joy” (76). And like I said, this book isn’t a religious one, though the author calls himself a Christian. But I found it interesting that this secular book could knock me sideways with such a truth.

You look at the most stalwart of “Christians” (I use that term in the human sense because people like this aren’t what true Christianity is all about), and they focus so heavily on the gloom and doom of their faith: the suffering of Christ, how undeserving of grace we are, the inability of humanity to measure up to the standards that we feel we are up against. They believe in working hard, denying the flesh, and focusing on being “outsiders” in a world that doesn’t understand them. And in their dedication they push others away from the faith that they proclaim gives life. And no wonder: who would voluntarily sign up for a lifetime of misery to gain an eternity of bliss?

They forget that being a child of God is a joyful experience. The apostle Paul himself, who was beaten, imprisoned, bitten by a snake, shipwrecked, and despised for his teachings, was an expert on what “suffering for Christ” looked like. Yet at the end of Romans he writes, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (15.13). Not only does he encourage his audience to be hopeful and peaceful, but he declares that joy – not happiness, but true, hopeful joy that endures in any circumstance – comes directly from God. Even in the Old Testament, where rules and regulations plague the children of Israel, the authors encourage them to “sing for joy” to their great Father. Take a look at the psalms every now and then.

There’s such a heavy emphasis on “suffering for Jesus” that we forget what a truly joyful gift it is! That’s one of the tell-tales of a child of God, you’ll remember, from that “fruits of the Spirit” chapter: the child of heaven who knows exactly what he or she means to the God of the universe can’t help but exude joyfulness and praise. I didn’t see anywhere in that chapter, “You shall know them by their furrowed brow and declarations of what a terrible state the world is in.”

Shout to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before Him with joyful song.