Naked Epiphanies

Three-quarters past midnight. Lights out. Roommates asleep. Body immobilized. Spirit restless. Anxiety percolated from my bed where tears were once shed. Laying siege to my body, my elbows begin to tense, and my knees begin to ache. Perturbed, I begin twitching to ease the discomfort in my joints. This has happened before. It's a bodily mind game. Just. Get. Up. I pop out of bed to beat anxiety before its grip becomes too strong, mosey my way to my laptop, and being to write.

As ideas fluttered through my mind, they raged too rampantly to consolidate. Words so vivid yet so barren. Two o'clock rolls by, and I realize this is not a task to be completed tonight. Taking a frustrated glance back at my bed, seems the anxiety had faded back, ready to wreak havoc another night.

Hovering over my bed. I still don't feel ready. No, not yet. Let's stay up a little longer. Anxiety won't have time to manifest if exhaustion takes me first. It's time to shower.

Remove my sweats, grab my towel, sneak out of my room, flip on the bathroom lights, and start the shower. As the waters warm, I look myself in the mirror to see nothing but a cold grimace.

"What's wrong?"

I make my way to the shower and hop in. The droplets scorched my skin as I hastily reached for the knob, struggling to find equilibrium. Eureka! I have it. After moments of washing up, I pause. Soaking in the moment, words from an earlier conversation linger in my mind.

“Sean, you are my friend, and I still love you.”

The water runs across my freshly decontaminated skin. I sense the warmth of what is overcoming me. Apprehension washes down my thigh, through the crevices in my knee, over the hair on my leg, and onto the shower floor. Watching these streams of fear and shame spiral down the drain, love begins to penetrate into my veins.

“Sean, you are my friend, and I still love you.”

The words resonate within my heart once more, and my stony face begins to crack a faint grin.

“Sean, you are my son, and I still love you.”

My suppressed grin turns to rapturous smile, fighting winds of joy within my lungs.

“Sean, you are my son, and I still love you.”

The winds of joy blow through my cheeks, and laughter takes over. Smothering my face with my trembling hands, tears of joy stream down my face. I have seen it! There it is! The very segment of life I have been scrounging to find for so long has been right in front of me. How could I be so foolish? I finally understood. I finally understand.

“I. Still. Love. You.”

I turned off the shower, grabbed my scissors, and cut it off.

Stop Running

This past week carried more emotions than any prior weeks. Other weeks were filled with momentary bouts of anger, sadness, confusion. This week was filled with a constant slew of frustration.

Impeding lethargy.

Impulsive eruptions of tears.

Instances of distanced silence.

Needless to say, anxiety has taken its toll on me this past week. I apologize for the detachment. Underlying the plain stress from final projects, homework, track, and jobs one, two, and three lies the malignant discomfort of internal and external dissonance, a diminished D-sharp lingering in the air.

As I laid in bed, in darkness, in silence. As the room began to twist, shrink, and contort. As fear diffused over my peace, disbanding hope and love. Reality relentlessly continued to rear its face. Images of the past colliding with reality imprisoned my mind, thrashing it from wall to wall, as peace struggled for a twinge of breath.

All pounding against eyes, the dikes restraining the streams of agony to come. Overflowing, my heart cries out.

“Resistance is futile. Reality is always there. There is no more running.”

Depression sank its way into the pockets of my mind. Tears flowed across my cheeks, soaking into my “Thomas the Train” pillow from childhood. My reality is inescapable. My reality will not let go.

Perhaps reality is not to be run from. Perhaps reality is just what it is, real. Real and meant to be real. Tangible. Fact. I refuse to keep running. I’m sitting still. Embracing my place, Embracing my design. In reality. In Creation. In a universe much larger than I.

Greatest Speech Ever Made

My roommate showed me this video the other day and I don't know where to begin. This speech completely motivated me, but it digs so deep. I can feel passion welling up in my body and selfishness start to ease up its grip, but I'm left more frustrated than motivated. The feelings of motivation are causing me to wonder what I am supposed to do now. There is so much that I could do, but as a human (or maybe just an INFP... yes, Meyers-Briggs), I catch myself with feelings that are causing me to be selfish and do things out of my own intentions and to make myself feel better. Are these the feelings to do away with? The selfishness? Are we to seek to help, to better society?

Should I get rid of want except for the want to help others? But I can’t neglect my own needs or else I won't be able to help others. We all have these feelings, but these feelings and desires for our own good are holding us back. Should we not just do away with all our needs and become robots dedicated to helping others, for didn’t someone once say, "The man who wants nothing is invincible"? Well, that's the man that I want to be. The invincible one. The one who isn't vulnerable, sign me up for that one. Do away with my own wants because who did that ever help but myself. Learn and know what is right for all you see. Help them, learn their needs, and form your want into solely wanting to help them. Won’t that will help us all? But these feelings for myself... they won't go away.

But wait, is that what this is? An aim to get us in touch with our humanity? To realize we have been chasing the vanities of greed, power, and wealth? To realize that as humans our greatest tool is our ability to feel, to love, to connect? To realize that we are designed to want to see the best in others? We need this humanity, kindness and gentleness derived from these very personal wants and desires to be connected and unified with all. We are humans with the capacity to love humanity. We are not designed for hatred. Hate is a byproduct of our lack of love. “We have the power to create happiness. To make this life free and beautiful. To make it an adventure.”

Work Out Your Salvation

Recently, the messages at Flood Church here in San Diego have been motivational and have shaken up my shaken up some of my beliefs once again, in a good way. Although spring 2011 was a big time of disturbed beliefs, this helped solidify my beliefs even more. Matt Hammett’s messages have been challenging and have returned my life to me, the individual. The current series is called Safe and Sound: The Trite and True in Christian Clichés, and in the series, we are looking at Christian clichés and seeing what is biblical and what is hyped up tradition. Today, we completed the second week of the series.

The first week was the one message I wanted to hear, “Does God Have A Perfect Plan For Your Life?” The message fueled me and my personal responsibility to make decisions. After looking at Jeremiah 29:11, I realized it is usually taken out of context and used to formulate the idea that God has our whole lives laid out and has all these plans for us to fulfill. In contrast, Jeremiah 29:11 was designed for specific people in a specific place in a specific time. To abstract from that and create a universal truth for all people is wrong. God leaves it open for us to make decisions, but if there is something that he wants us to get done, like a Jonah moment, He will get it done. That is what’s not always happening though. Our pastor used the analogy of a painting to make is point more tangible. God provides us with this canvas of our life, gives us some paint of various events and gifts, and lets us go after it. Sometimes He’ll have to get us to paint something in particular or have us “paint by number,” but ultimately it’s us painting this masterpiece of God. This took me aback because for once I heard in church that I was responsible for things. Much of the time, people use God as the excuse for so many things when they don’t want to accept responsibility, as though God is making them do something. This was my dilemma back in the spring, a loss of purpose and an acknowledgement that I could ruin God’s plans. All of a sudden I felt a rush of responsibility, but this message reminded me of the freedom within grace and most importantly reminded me that God is still working. God is acting in what I do today, taking me to the message from today, “God Helps Those Who Help Themselves.”

Today at Flood brought me back to my Tetelestai: It Is Finished blog from July. Regardless of where we are, God has grace for us, and we either resist this grace or accept it. The success we face is not from our own doing, but God’s doing. If we think it’s our own, like when we are told to “follow our hearts,” we have this self-reliant faith that we can do whatever we want, but Jeremiah tells us that the heart is deceitfully wicked. Instead we need to remember grace and realize that 1) we can’t make ourselves a son or daughter of God and 2) we can’t live the life God calls us to live on our own.

For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. - 1 Cor 15:9-10

From Philippians 2:12, we are told to work out our salvation, not to work for our salvation. When we look at the statement “God helps those who help themselves” in light of grace, we start realizing that it’s truly that “God helps those who can’t help themselves.” It struck me when we read 1 Cor 15:9-10, where Paul is saying that he is the least of the apostles, the guy who wrote about half of the New Testament is the least of the apostles. Although he used to persecute the church, God extends grace even to him. “You are loved and accepted. Work out of that.”

From all this, I have been realizing that one cliché that I continually cling to is that I am supposed to surrender and let God do all the work, but after hearing these messages, God leaves is open for me to do things, but that doesn’t mean that He isn’t constantly active in my actions, working in me to will and to act His purpose. I am called to God-dependent work, work that relies on effort and work of the Holy Spirit. Grace is against earning but not against effort. Although I haven’t figured out what next, I’m still left with remembering to work out another cliché, who I am in Christ.

Breakfast with the Author of The Shack

I grew up with the greatest privilege of knowing the Paul Young and his children. Paul is the author of New York’s Times Best Seller, The Shack, and possibly one of the most intelligent individuals I have personally known. Back on August 17th, I had breakfast with him, a time that is still continuing to shape my faith. The premise of our conversation comes from my brokenness from my spring semester 2011. Back in May, I wrote ”Play” Summer has Arrived, and he was one of the individuals that I wanted to talk with so that I could develop some affirmations in my theology.

I was at the Young household one day and explained where I have been and asked him if he wanted to get coffee or breakfast later in the week. He was more than glad to. May I add that he and his family are some of the biggest characters of love.

One of the first things he explained to me, which I think is detrimental to his as well as our own theology, is that our religion is based on relationship. We are involved with this God and this God is involved with us. It dates back before creation. Part of how I was rationalizing the trinity in my head, I was using this God beyond comprehension that expresses himself in three persons – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Paul started tinkering with that, arguing that that view made God self-centered and apart from relationship. He started explaining to me the distinctness of the three persons and how they are in relationship with one other and express other-focused love. When we start there, it redefines everything.

After he explained salvation, I couldn’t help but ask the question, “What now?” It was one of the burning questions in my heart. He went on to explain by bringing out the uniqueness of individuals and how we are an expression of God’s love and God’s character. We all hold and share some of the characteristics and attributes of God in some way, He specifically explained it like this:

Whether you know it or not, Jesus has placed his love for his Creation in your heart, and you are sharing the way god loves this planet… When you see that mom who loves her little child and gets up at two in the morning dog-dead tired to take care of her baby, she is sharing the part of God in a passion he shares with her. When you see the way two people care and love each other. When you see the way the farmer plows the ground and works the soil. He is sharing not only in the way in God’s affection for growing things but also the love for us and providing for us. It’s everywhere. Every good thing comes from God. I can talk to the musician who is so anti-religion and mad at God and hear in his music the presence of the Holy Spirit because that desire to create truth or declare something wrong is a good thing. Whether he knows Jesus name or not, whether he knows where it comes from or not, it’s not a limitation of God’s creation. We’ve created a very static model of whether you’re in or out. You know what it is, it’s not about asking Jesus into our lives, it’s about realizing we’ve always been included in his.

It goes back to the relationship I mentioned earlier, we are all designed to work within creation and in relation with one another. When seen like this, you start seeing that we are all tools of God’s expression of love, unique individuals designed for some sort of love of God. You start to lose sight of the idea that it’s just you and start seeing that relation of all creation with itself and its Creator.

Back in the spring, one of the biggest things I felt I lost was my purpose, and Paul’s description of “what now” finally started getting me to remember that I was created for something. The near restoration of purpose was satisfying, but another characteristic of God that faltered along with my faith was that He worked presently throughout my life. I explained to Paul a friend’s challenge of open theism, and he came back with the idea of deep intimacy, that God created me and knows me so well that He knows what will happen and what I’m gonna do. One of my biggest concerns with the elimination of God’s purpose in my life was realizing that I could potentially mess something up, that God had an intention but I could’ve gone astray long ago.

We have created our certainty on theological ideas, not on his character, not on the fact He loves you. And so what God challenged was a good challenge, he was challenging the fact that you were thinking you had a relationship because you were trusting in theological certainties, like God has a plan and all this. God G-O-D distant. It’s this certainty based in his attributes not based his character. That he is for you all the time that he knows you intimately, he knows how you’re built, you matter to him. He loves you relentlessly and you can’t change the way he loves you. There’s nothing you can do to change the way he loves you. He already knows you’re gonna screw up. He’s worked it in… [H]e says look, “I know it’s going to take you 42 times to get this. So the first time I tell you and you totally ignore it. I’m going 41 to go. So I celebrate the fact that you didn’t hear Me because I know how long it’s going to take you.” This is relationship with somebody who absolutely adores you, who you are, how you have been created.

This was when our conversation became emotional on my part. I don’t think I allowed him to see that it was getting to me, but when he was saying that, I was holding back tears, internally fighting what he was saying, not because it finally made sense, but because I still could not believe it was true. I could not see it. I cannot see it. With focusing on faith for Peter’s Challenge, this is one of the ideas that I can only hold by faith because I don’t think I can see it any other way. This is when my faith starts to flourish again, realizing I need to trust God as well as other people as extensions of God’s love. As a thinker, I create a lot of scenarios in my head, but “God doesn’t live inside anything that is not real.” Paul explained that the biggest fear that comes of negative or imaginative thoughts is that God does not move there, and they come out of our already corrupt thought processes. No doubt that they could potentially do well, but it’s in these thoughts to be wary.

What now is wrapped up in who you are and who you’re becoming, the deepening honesty in your relationship with the father son and Holy Spirit. The move toward authenticity, the eradication of secrets, there are so many pieces to this. The joy of relationship the risk involved in relationship. Relationship and faith always involve risk. Religion involves risk. You just have to know what you have to do. You learn to live in the grace for one day. We learn to live without expectations which are disappointments waiting to happen.

This conversation helped reconstruct my faith and is now slowly but surely moving me towards participation in God’s community. God designed us to live in community and work with one another, and my role is to participate as a unique piece in God’s Creation. There are some parts of this conversation that impacted me drastically and others that I am still sketchy about. But hey, more than anything, I wanted some clarification on some aspects of theology and I happily got more that I asked for. All-in-all, Paul’s words were a message of love.

Peter's Challenge: FAITH

In my previous post (Peter's Challenge: 8 Weeks to Love), I talked about my "eight weeks to love" plan, and my first step was faith, the most tough and most foundational step. After about two weeks of deliberation, I finally grabbed a faint hold of my idea of faith. Since faith is the foundation for the attributes to follow, the time is absolutely necessary.

When I focused on faith the past couple weeks, I realized it requires belief and trust in something or someone. I realized there are some beliefs that can only be held onto by faith. Sometimes, you must have definite knowledge of faith, knowing that there is no absolute truth about an idea but at the same time knowing that is can must and only be accepted by faith, infallibly holding an indefinite ideology. The expression of this belief requires trusting God with the rough spots, trusting that God is on my team and will work things out for the better. There are so many aspects of God that I don’t comprehend, but one definite concept is that I am loved and cared for by God. God designed us to live in community and work with one another, and my role is to participate as a unique piece in God’s Creation. This participation requires the output of some of my greatest struggles, in the event that those form much of my being and much of my story. But because of past events, I have trust issues that have allowed me to build up some of the greatest walls against people. So part of I’m discovering that part of the expression of my faith is that I need to allow myself to be vulnerable and loved unconditionally by God and others. The Holy Spirit is making a better story for me, and I must forfeit my story.

Basically, I have been discovering that faith is optimism, a hope for something uncertain, holding onto the hope that things will work out, and knowing that regardless I can trust that God will provide and work things out for the better. I had been trying so long to prove to myself that some things were absolutely true, but that completely defeats the purpose of faith. Sometimes you just gotta hold on tight and see how things roll out.

PS. I had a conversation with the author of the Shack back in August that plays a huge role in some beliefs that I realized I can only hold onto by faith, click here to read it.

Peter's Challenge: 8 Weeks to Love

With the harsh spiritual season of winter this past spring, I spent my summer reconstructing my spiritual life back to a healthy spot. All I could really come up with was that I needed to "love." Returning to Point Loma, although still on the edge, I made my focal point of this year to love others because as a Christian that is what I am called to do. Two weeks ago, I went to my first church service at Flood Church after being back to San Diego, and Scripture reading stuck with me more than any other reference from a church service. The reference was 2 Peter 1:1-9, but the portion that stuck with me came from verses 5-7.

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith, goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.

Immediately, those verses hit me. I had been focusing on love, and here Peter lays out a "formula" of virtues, leading you to love. I realized, “This is it! A way to construct a virtuous character focused on love!” I admire most that he tells us to "add to," making sure you hold on to what you learned before. At the beginning and the end are the most important ones to remember because "faith" is your foundation and "love" is your goal. Because of this, I am doing an eight week plan to get to love. Each week, I am focusing on a different one of these virtues, hoping that in the end I reach love. The process will not start until I grab a semi-firm grip on faith because it is one of the most important traits. 2 weeks ago I decided I was going to do this plan... and I still haven't left “faith”... I hope I grab ahold of this soon...
As I go along, I will be laying out a timeline/reminder on my wall of the focal words and important dates when something powerful happened or I learned something amazing that will link back to an entry in my journal. Right now, I have “Faith” taped on my wall, with a date (17 Aug 11) which I will get into more detail about when I write my “faith” follow-up blog. I pray that this is a life-changing process and something glorious rises out of it… and I can cut my padawan braid. Pray for wisdom in this time of discovery.

NOTE: For those who don’t know, I have been growing a padawan braid since my spiritual life became rough, and it has become an on-going symbol of my apprenticeship to God and that I am not ready. When God shows me something profound and I am ready, I will cut it off. But until then… it continues to grow.