I’ve been figuring lately, not in the numbers sense, but in the “something isn’t right, but I know I’m not wrong” sense. I haven’t been able to put my finger on it until yesterday, when I quite tripped across a thought.
“It is not about being right.”
I’ve thought it before. I aim it at others. But I somehow escaped my own scrutiny. How little I know my own heart.
I’ve mentioned before that pain does strange things to me. I find my corner to stand in and I build walls around myself with my “right” and my “good.” I might not argue it out loud, but the anger in my heart grows until I find myself lashing out, and I don’t really even know why. I suspect it is that their “right” feels like a threat to me. It is worse when half the world believes that right and I stand alone knowing more, knowing deeper, and I’m looking at God and asking “why have You made me this way?” and “why did You give me much to require so much of me?”
It is the people who truly ARE, the people who are living out their faith – in spite of the way the crowds raise up their “right” to acclaim – it is these people who give me pause in my self-appointed prison. They are the ones who offer me the grace to STOP. To stop arranging and rearranging my life to make it look more right to everyone else. To stop sharing truth in anger and self-defense. To accept that I AM human, that I DON’T know all I need to know of God.
I shout the Cross in my anger. I am right. It is probably a good thing that this is what I am limited to shout. I have strong opinions on many other things. But dwelling in the shadow of the Cross keeps reminds me that I have no real “right” to stand on – only redemption I could never have earned.
I become for a bit a practical agnostic. “If I can’t know what is right, how do I know if God is weighing in on my life or on circumstances around me? What difference will prayer make anyway? If I pray for healing and take my medication, will God be the one who has done the healing?”
“It is not about being right.”
No. It’s not. It is about knowing Him. It is about relationship. It is about living where I am, as I am with God doing His work in me, and letting down my walls of right in order to exist simply in Him.
We are told to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God. Without sin in the picture, I am given free access to God for relationship. But relationship requires humility – with Him and with others. I am not the only one allowed into His presence – Christ died for all. I am not the only one who lives under Cross-grace.
I am not the only one.
But I am one.
And I do believe that He loves me where I am, regardless of my fears about the “right” of others and how I may be perceived or hurt because of it.
So it is here, I think, that I learn to reckon myself alive to God. To say that “He loves me and He died for me, and He is at work in me, and that is everything I need.” To say that “I am human, and He is God. He is the only one who knows.”
They say that “prayer doesn’t change God; it changes us.” I don’t really know how true that is, because for me, the change often comes before the prayer. But I know how I long to pray sometimes, and how unsure I am that He might listen and hear me.
I begin my Lyme treatment on Friday. I am scared. My doctor says the most important part of my treatment is my need to believe that I will get better. After ten years fighting this thing, I don’t know how to believe that. It seems easier to pray than to believe that I have the strength in myself to expel this disease. But even then, I’m not sure I have enough faith to pray believing that He will heal.
I am so exhausted. All I want is rest. I don’t want to read or write or take pictures or process pictures. I can’t remember not being tired. I can’t remember what having energy feels like.
As my “right” has been slipping away this week, I want to fall into Him. Just to trust Him to take care of things, to take care of me and my messy, human heart.
I suppose that the humility I long for begins with a reckoning.
Praying healing for you, not only for your body, but also for your heart and mind, that you can believe in healing.
PS. I adore my new header. I love it more every time I see it. Thank you!!
I’m sorry, but your doctor bugs me.
We’ll pray when you can’t and let God sort out the details.
I know about the feeling of not being able to believe I will be healed. It’s been such a long time, life has been such a struggle. It’s not that I’ve stubbornly insisted God wouldn’t want to heal me. It’s that I just don’t know how to feel/agree/believe/think I will be healed. And there are always those who will point their fingers about what we think and believe. Who will say that we must maintain a positive attitude, yada yada. (I think a lot of them haven’t been through the fires of faulty body chemistry which affects not only our bodies, but our minds. I’m sorry that you have to hurt so much. I do admire you for “not giving up.”
I believe that God created our emotions, our ability to feel. And that he “knows our frame is dust.” If he a sparrow can’t “fall to the ground without the Father”, neither can we, for we’re worth more than many sparrows. We have this conflict, of being taught we should praise him in all things, and that we need to keep our eyes on Jesus, not ourselves — as if WE were the ones who made the difference, but then we also are told that our very weakness is what gives us his strength. That if we’re too self-sufficient, HE can’t come in and remake us.
God is greater than all the “you shoulds” and the conflicts. He’s greater than our inventions of who God ought to be. I think that if we give ourselves into his hands, and admit our weaknesses and fears, it becomes HIS responsibility to work in/through/with us to bring us to become the persons he has called us to be. Take heart, Kelly. God loves you. He hasn’t forgotten your needs. He isn’t finished working in you yet. But all of his children are beautiful to him, and much cherished!
I don’t know you except for the deep that you show in your writing. My words will fall flat and simple compared to yours, but I had this quite simple thought this morning on my walk…..”that the law made nothing perfect, and on the other hand there is a bringing in of a better hope, through which we drawn near to God.” My life is “perfectly imperfect” for me so that I will look and give myself to a better hope- Jesus. Everything pointed to Him in the O.T. and now every pain and suffering and thing that is just “not right” in my life is pointing to Him. It makes me long for Him now and hope for an eternity with Him later, and to want to know Him as the lover of my soul. Waiting seems and feels so hard. Waiting for the deliverance from whatever suffering is happening, or difficulty. I can’t help but think how important perseverance is to God. It purifies my hope. He is making you great in His kingdom, I believe.
S. D. H.
There’s so much in this post! One of the things I hear you saying is, “How can I believe God loves me just as I am when others rarely do? What does that sort of love look like?” I find myself asking one more question: “How can You ask me to believe in Your love, when I don’t know what love looks like?”
So much of our experience of God happens on the ground, away from our mental arguments and attempts to be right. It even happens when we’re too tired to hold on, to have faith. We stop being able to control reality and we discover that the God in control really is good.
Anyway, just want you to know that it’s okay if you’re too tired to believe you’ll get better. I was too, but somehow I’m getting better. I guess God did the believing for me.
Kelly, this really speaks to me right now. I just wanted you to know that, that your words, your truth, your vulnerability mattered to me tonight. I think that is what I most appreciate about you—your willingness to let your weakness leak onto the page. It makes me feel less alone, and I am with you, under the cross.
This was a beautiful post and your words touched my heart. God brings us to Him in many ways. As I heard in Bible Study today do we believe God will work through us and do what He says He will. I will be praying for you. I leave with peace from your words. Thank you for that!