Give It Away

Today I paid for the people behind me in the drive-thru lane at CookOut. I don't say this to brag but on the way home from work/CookOut I heard a lot from the Lord.

My church is on this theme of "Give it Away," which I totally heart because giving and serving just causes rejoicing in my spirit. I am so proud to be a member of my church and so proud of them for doing this series and for focusing on true service. Not the kind of service that crams Jesus down people's throats, but the kind that just loves on people like the family God intended for us to be. Which leads back into my CookOut Drive Thru give-it-away.

So I've heard of people doing this paying anonymously for the folks behind them in the drive thru lane, like on the radio they talked about it and I have heard it various other places, but a major shift occurs when you do it yourself. So I'm sitting in line after ordering my milkshake, not even thinking about anything except getting home to relax and my gaze suddenly focuses on the car behind me. Then my spirit starts to move to pay for them and immediately, lies come upon me: "they don't need you to pay for them - if they couldn't afford it, they wouldn't be here," "people will think you are weird," and then the ultimate trickery ensued: I began to think about the purpose of paying for them. Would they know it was a Christian act? Did they see my "COTR" (church) bumper sticker? Was I representing/advertising the church?

Even looking at those questions I had going through my mind an hour ago, I am laughing. When I got to the front of the line, I paid for the car behind me. Did it matter if they could afford it or if people thought I was weird? Did it REALLY matter if they could see my bumper sticker?! Seriously, self! As I drove away quickly, not even glancing back, I realized the point of the exercise: the five words that changed my life and fate and everyone else's who accepts the eternal gift were being repeated now to the family in the red minivan. "It's been taken care of." Your bill has been paid. You are free!! It gave me chills to think about the parallels and how if I had listened to my devil-inspired doubts those folks may have never heard those words!! I have no way of knowing, but I smiled to consider the possibilities I could have helped create in their lives that God could work with. I will definitely be doing this more often.

Further down the road, I considered unrequited love. I teach seventh graders for a living and their lives are rampant with stories of unrequited "love." I thought about how primed they are in that regard to understand how God feels about us. He has taken our debt and wiped it away! And he has made sacrifices only Abraham and Hosea could begin to understand - yet his love is essentially unrequited, even by those of us who claim to try. It's amazing how much teenagers could relate to their Father if they understood!

Separate

So this word keeps popping up - separate (adj.).  On the way to work this morning, it spoke to me.  I was listening to His Radio and musing on the lyrics of the song "While I'm Waiting" by John Waller.  In it, the words are: "I will move ahead bold and confident/Taking every step in obedience/While I'm waiting/I will worship while I'm waiting I will not faint/I'll be running the race even while I wait..."

It made me think of the last Women's Encounter.  Having been to an encounter before, I knew the hot-seat session was coming. My problem was I had pretty much dealt with everything at the previous encounter - all the fears, childhood issues, self-confidence problems, "Yahweh's child," and so what did I have left?  Two cool things happened as I pondered this at the Encounter.  One, God spoke to me - words so comforting I broke into tears: "Rejoice in your wholeness, child."  Of course.  God had healed so many aspects of my life - it was time to rejoice in finally being full and whole and finding value in being a child of God.  And two, as I searched, I realized that what I still faced was the physical healing issue.  Don't know if I have mentioned it, but I am in a wheelchair.  I was in a car accident as a child and have been in a wheelchair ever since.

Have been a Christian pretty much my whole life but it was not until I encountered philosophies that embrace spiritual gifts that I began to understand God's power to heal.  Of course, Jesus and God healed all the time in the Bible, but what did that have to do with me?  Slowly, I began piecing together my view on physical healing.  It is harder than you might believe - to reconcile your faith in God's power to heal and the recognition that it may not be in His will.  I am an adaptive person, perhaps by nature, or perhaps as a result of my "condition" but I am, nonetheless, the type to accept things as they are and move on.  To this end, I have never really developed a sense of pity, nor one of pride, toward my disability.  It just is what it is and I move on.  However, the revelation that broke me at the Encounter was: I WANT TO RUN AND DANCE FOR GOD - and my body just won't cooperate!!

At any rate, this is what I shared in the hot-seat session and this is what my great spiritual adviser said: "You like to rationalize, don't you?  I feel God saying the word, 'separate.'  Work out your salvation and purpose SEPARATE from the chair and the disability.  Separate.'

Yeah, okay.  Easy for walkie to say, but my struggle since has been to understand what it means to be separate from what I have seen for so long making me who I am.  The disability has never defined me, or at least I have gone to lengths to ensure it hasn't, but of course it is part of me and who I am.  It has taught me so many things and I am a better person for having had the experience.  Suddenly, I am forced to reconcile a whole new concept: who I am is SEPARATE from this chair!  What?!

To sum up what I am struggling with, here is a poem I wrote some time ago about the conflict between embracing God's will and fully trusting it:

I want to lay it down at your feet

But I can’t let it there when I leave

Can’t means something to me

And I can’t leave this at your feet

So if I bring this to you now

I have to stay until you heal

The pain you found inside me

If I leave it with you

I can’t go anywhere

And if I want to leave

I can’t give it to you

This thing is attached to me

And I need you to set me free

And here are the words that can best explain where I am with this now:

"I'll be running the race even while I wait/I will worship while I'm waiting."

See, because Christians are MEANT to be SEPARATE!  We are not better than everyone else, we are not holier or above the things of this world - we are separate from them (which by the way is actually what "holy" means, so maybe we are that).  We are not from this world.  We are separate.  We can be here and learn the lingo and fit in and get jobs and so on, but our purpose and calling and our home and hearts reside in HEAVEN!  I can find my purpose in God's plan separate from my chair, because I am not in a chair - I am separate - I am running and dancing for God: running the race, worshipping, and waiting...to go home.  And when I get there, that chair will have never mattered a bit.

Choice and Effect

So I've been thinking about the vast impact of the choices we make.  One decision, one action, and we impact multiple lives permanently, forever.  A father chooses to let his son down and the son is scarred for life - never trusts, doesn't believe in love, can't even believe his own Creator could love him.  And why should he?  When the one who physically gave him life let him down, how can he believe that someone out there can care about him unconditionally?  If you make a choice, lives are affected, regardless of your intentions, for better or worse.  How, then, do we make choices that affect people in the right way?  How do we inspire, love, encourage people through our choices?

The best answer I can produce is to keep our choices in line with the only one who knows how each life's puzzle piece interconnects.  We must constantly seek the spirit's direction in order to keep our actions in accordance with God's will for everyone's life.  That makes sense of course, read the word, follow directions, just add water, etc. and so forth.

So then what do we do when others' choices have impacted our own lives?  What do I do for a student who doesn't believe anything good about others or himself because his father abandoned and neglected him?  The answer eludes me still.  But it's something to think about anyway.

Musings on Agape

In 2008, I attended my church's Women's Encounter - a retreat where you encounter God's presence in the fullest sense (this side of heaven).  I went not knowing what to ask God for, just knowing I was open to whatever.  In the first small group meeting (foot-washing) I discovered that I was dealing with fear.  As the encounter progressed, I realized I had a fear of almost everything and that it stemmed from not trusting God, as well as not recognizing God as first priority in my life.  I feared judgment, rejection, windows (?), failure, you name it.  So, I mentioned that and my group prayed for me, but I felt like there was more.

In our second small group (Forgiveness and Release) we were supposed to think of people we had not yet forgiven.  God has instilled in me throughout my life a strong sense of forgiveness, so when it was my turn, I had nothing to say in that regard, but I began to realize I needed healing.  I had a spirit of fear because I didn't trust God.  I didn't trust Him because I was sustaining the notion that I had to earn his love.  If I had to earn his love, then my trust was placed in myself - my own ability to perform in order to earn.  This was not just my philosophy of God - it was my philosophy of LOVE!

As a child, performance was king.  If I got straight A's and won awards, my parents were proud of me.  Of course they were, they are my parents!  But I came to realize that they were only happy with me and proud of me when I was achieving.  If I didn't do my chores or if I said or did the wrong thing, not only was I punished, but I was ignored.  I was AFRAID of my parents, all the time.  It wasn't a fear through love, but a fear completely devoid of love.  My definition of love became "what I earn when I do good."  Don't mistake what I am saying.  Punishment is not a bad thing, but it should never be absent of love (agape).  Agape love is UNconditional, and it is supposed to be the love your parents and family model for you.  This is not easy of course, and it is often the result of a conscious effort to not only love unconditionally, but to let the other person know they are loved no matter what!

It is not the sort of love I knew.  In fact, had you asked me throughout childhood if my parents loved me, I would have said no.  I thought my sister loved me and my friends and boyfriends loved me, but the truth was I spent much of my time trying to earn their love (except in my sister's case) as well.  I did anything for my friends, with no regard for healthy boundaries, and the same with my boyfriends, which led to giving pieces of my heart and body away long before I should have.  But in my mind I had to earn all that love.

One Sunday, my pastor put it like this: there are servants and there are children.  Your servants are permitted in your house as long as they are earning their keep.  They are not permitted to walk up to your refrigerator, open it, and eat from it what they will, nor are they permitted to use what is yours in your house.  Your children, on the other hand, have permission (when given) to access a bed and food available in the house, because they are your children.  So it is with God that we are his children, and we share what is his and he loves us simply because WE ARE HIS CHILDREN!  Not because we do better than Sally down the street, nor do we lose the love and rights when we flounder, but we are entitled to his gifts because we are his children.

This sermon made zero sense to me.  But a seed had been planted and I realized: I was a servant.  I grew up a servant in my family.  I was treated better than a servant would be, but I had to earn it!  Otherwise, I was treated far worse.  I serve God, but I am his child!  That shift truly began for me during the encounter.  My group leader decided upon hearing my story that my child-self (inner child I suppose) needed to be healed.  And that's what they prayed for.

Perhaps not immediately, but my fears disappeared.  I have even since challenged them and they are gone!  Doubt may creep up now and again, but I have taken an alias - a new identity - one rooted in love: I am a child of God, Yahweh's child.  It is who I am and I am loved simply because of it.  All the good I could do in my life could not entitle me to God's love.  Nobody deserves God's love, grace, and mercy, but he offers it freely through Jesus Christ, and that means that no matter what I do or do not do, God will not rescind his love for me. 

This is called freedom, and through understanding God's perfect agape love, I have experienced freedom.  Freedom to love and serve God happily, and the same for my husband, and even my family.  While I have officially cleaved from my family and no longer give power to their...well, anything really...I still can love them with agape love that transcends understanding.

I pray that my parents learn about agape love, and the same for my siblings.  None of them seem to get it and my heart breaks for that fact.  I spoke to my sister on the phone today who, after 7 years (post-age 16) had no contact with my parents, has been working on repairing her relationship with our dad for about 3 years now.  She is getting married and was working through some financial conversations with my dad.  She explained during our phone call how she just couldn't take those conversations anymore and that she was done.  This is not the first I had heard of the same thing, and I always offer her the same advice: you can love Dad anyway, whether he does what you want or need him to do or not.  I have learned this and it makes me happier.  I can let them say and do what they will, within my boundaries, but it doesn't bother me - I am free of their judgment.  I can agape them and they don't have to agape back, because that's not what agape is about.  See, she is not a follower of Christ, and agape from God is a foreign concept for her, but I can be an example of it to her, and allow God's light to shine through me.  I pray for the day when she feels that warm light.

The understanding I have received through all of this has changed my life - drastically.  The best part is, it makes me a better witness for the power of Christ, because despite everything - all the challenges, I can honestly say I am loved for who I am - Yahweh's child =)