Dear Father

Dear Father,

I sit here with trembling fingers. Hesitant to type. Panicky as I contemplate how to even begin. You know my story well - the beginning, ending, and all the dramatic actions in between - and yet I'm afraid. The inner voices whisper "Don't. It's too risky. You'd be a fool. Keep quiet." And what they say makes sense to me. After all, I've lived with this secret for most of my life. It's been safely tucked away, hidden beneath layer upon layer of rationalization and justification. Bricked-up and securely walled away, even beyond the all-seeing eyes of my own consciousness. But not yours. 

Deep within this stronghold, this secret has successfully influenced and manipulated my thoughts, emotions, motivations, and behaviors most of my life. Like some movie-like, top-secret government agency, it has effectively pulled the strings and controlled my life. But you already knew this. The problem is, I didn't even realize it.

Until now. 

Recently, you helped me remember.

It's not even as if I could forget. I mean, how can one forget that? But, as you well know, I kinda did. I surgically disassociated my feelings, I hit the delete button on my thoughts, and I detached any meaning to it. Essentially, I disempowered the powerful. I turned it off. Closed the door and locked it. 

Or so I thought. But my experiences have a way of seeping through the smallest crack and then jumping out in front of me as I round the corner. 

[Big, deep breath]

I confess (my secret) to you. The One who already knew and loved me just the same. The One who patiently waited for me to finally get to a place where I was able to see and let you in. 

[Long, slow sigh]

I write these words as I wade through deep waters of varying emotions. There's anger and pain, shame and guilt . . . sadness . . . alongside freedom and acceptance, relief and forgiveness . . . and yes, even joy. I feel them all at the same time. Nevertheless, I retain some resemblance of steadiness as I stand on solid ground. 

I am profoundly saddened. Yes. This wound, which started physically, but quickly slashed my soul with razor-edged precision, I've allowed to putrefy and become septic. It's coursed through the veins of my existence unrestrained, and rendered me . . . well, worthless - I'm finally able to voice language to describe how I've felt most of my life. These feelings of worthlessness have left me impuissant [im 'not' + puissant 'powerful']. So, yes, I am profoundly sad. 

Be that as it may . . . 

I am also sincerely joy-filled. How can I describe the feeling of breathing with deep satisfaction for the first time? It's as if this living thing - it's weighted presence - plunked itself on my chest and I'd become accustomed to the wheezing and gasping for air . . . and then . . . You . . . Mercy reached down and lifted the heaviness. 

[Deep, satisfying breath . . . Long, holy sigh]

Now I can breathe as I was made to - free and unencumbered. Oh Father, if only I'd have known sooner . . . as I've begun to inhale and exhale with uninhibited impunity . . . as I've gotten a  mouthful of life, flowing by Grace . . . my one and only desire is to inhale - deep and satisfying - as I've allowed Your Sacred Life to permeate every dark corner. The places where the stench of rot and decay have long lived, are now heavy with the sweet fragrance of the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley.

I'm just now grasping by faith that as Your Spirit penetrates the depths of my soul, the odor of worthlessness wanes and You exchange it with the aroma of worth. I am valuable, because I am Yours. The lie that I am impuissant, You have substituted with the truth that Your power lives mightily within me. I am puissant = having great power! 

[Whew!]

I am not whole, or healed - and thank You for sending me to a gifted therapist who specializes in the pain that comes with my secret - but I am on my way toward wholeness and healing.

However, I am free. Free from the secret I've carried like a sack of boulders on my back my entire life. I've been rescued from this prison by The Only One who has the power to unshackle the chained . . . untie the bound . . . and liberate the captive - YOU. 

I am free. I am worthy. I am powerful . . . 

. . . And most of all, I am thankful. Thankful to The One who reached down and set me free.

To you Father, I express my most profound gratitude. Thank you. 

I love you, 

Your Child

When God Smiles

This morning, I asked the only person who knows I'm writing as A Divine Nobody to read through a couple of preliminary posts and give me some feedback. After reading several drafts, they stopped and asked me a question, "Why are you writing?" I shifted a bit in my seat on the sofa. I admit the question did sting for a moment, but as we continued talking about this question, something began to stir within and it's been churning like a stormy sea all day long. 

"Why are you writing?"

Why am I writing? That's a darn good question. I admit this is brand new, unfamiliar terrain I'm negotiating. On top of that, it's experimental - I'm writing anonymously for goodness sakes. This means I have no intention of letting anyone in my tribe know what I'm doing. I have zero followers, and have no ambitions of hosting a "grand-opening" party for the blogging world. I'm really not interested in being known, much less well-known, and have never identified myself as a writer. So what does one do when they have a desire for anonymity and they struggle with writing? If you answered "write a blog," then you're as unhinged as I think this idea is.

Yet here I am. I've created a space to write just for me. Golly. All this makes me feel like a gangly middle schooler, with crazy long legs and arms that still feel like foreign appendages, trying to be cool as they lumber across the lunch-room. Is that the craziest thing you've ever heard?

I would shout "yes" as loudly as I could through a megaphone, were it not for the massive grin on my face and my insides giggling like a kindergartner with a kitten? 

Why am I writing? I really have no other reason than it makes me happy. And I just have to believe that my Father giggles with me as I stumble along with putting words into sentences that make any sense at all. I believe I make Him smile. He loves it when I get so caught up in playing with words and phrases that express my thoughts and feelings, that the noise of the world dies away and I'm finally able to hear Him whisper. 

Why am I writing? To hear Father whisper. Each day there is a longing so deep in my soul that nothing can fill except Him. I just want to feel His smile and hear Him softly say "Yes, my child. Write what your heart longs for. Let My joy for you overflow from within you. I made you to create. So, go on. Create. Shine." And I become like a child, glancing up at the wide, big grin of my father as he watches me play or dance or color or perform, and his pleasure makes me want to relax and enjoy myself with greater gusto than I ever have before.

That's the moment . . . the moment when I get lost in the joy that comes from knowing I'm pleasing my Father. 

That's why I am writing. I'm writing for the moment . . . 

When God smiles. 

We've Believed a Lie

The other day I read a blog post from someone talking about something. It wasn't the something I read that got me thinking, but rather the comments from the readers to the someone and to each other.

These were supposedly well-intending, morally (and it was a Christian blog site) upright parents with the same goals I have - to protect our children. But the way they spoke to one another was appalling. The only parallel I can make is to "finger-vomiting" into a box to protect their anonymity. The hate, jealously, and comparisons shared with the other was downright rude. 

So this got me to thinking. Why do we run to the temptation to see those around us as the issue - to pompously see others as the ones who need to be fixed, the ones who are wrong, the ones we need to set straight, or the ones who are the enemy? When we perceive others as the problem, our contention is with them, and the issue we need to address resides within their actions or reactions, beliefs or disbeliefs, opinions or realities, concerns or disinterests. As a result, we find ourselves preoccupied with strategizing how we're going to hammer away at their responses, morals, ethics, or even integrity. We focus more energy on winning the game and beating them with our linguistic superpowers as a way to prove our immaculacy, innocence, or our highbrowed superiority as the better person or parent. To that end, we tear down, defame, sabotage, and incapacitate with the written word to the point of making calculated accusations meant to annihilate our enemy. 

Don't sit their smug with your mouth agape thinking you don't do this. We all do. 

What made me sad about reading this interchange of argument and counterargument was this:  All these things we do or say to win this war of words is predicated on a lie. A lie we've all utterly believed. And we're too blind with righteous rage to realize that believing and acting upon this lie does more damage to ourselves than we suppose we're doing to our "enemy." 

What's the lie? People are the issue. They are our enemy. Our war is with them. And because somebodies got to win, it's gonna be me. 

Guys, people are not the issue. People may create issues, but people are not issues. People are not our enemies. Our contention is not with them. You and I are not at war with one another. It's a lie. It's all just a cunning deception to initiate infighting within the ranks of those who are beloved. 

You and I are beloved. We're on the same side . . . in this thing together . . . fellow sojourners in this extraordinarily small gap we call life. I need you. You need me. We need each other. Period. That's the truth. 

As I thought more about this lie, I found it quite clever actually. Let me ask you a question: How would you defeat an enemy by never lifting your finger? Here's the clever logic in the lie. If you shrewdly created distrust among your enemy, so they began to focus their attention on each other, they would begin to doubt one another and cast a suspicious eye upon the other. And once this "lie" is swallowed, your enemy would begin to doubt the intentions, actions, and even thoughts of their own. This mistrust would consequently lead to disagreements, arguments, skirmishes, and then finally to all out war - a war that your enemy fights with themselves. All the while, you sit smug in your seat having never even lifted a finger to fight. 

And the diabolically ingenious, calculatingly clever part of the lie? They have just forgotten who's the real enemy. By seeing each other as the problem, we unwittingly succeed in accomplishing the real enemy's plan for us. We end up destroying ourselves. And by this I mean, you destroy yourself, and I destroy myself, all the while falsely believing we are laying waste to each other. 

This must stop! 

What if there was a better way? What if we refused to give in to the temptation to believe the lie, and instead embraced one another as the beloved and determined to stand together as we face the real issue? One, it would mean we would truly believe our conflict is not with each other, it's with the issue. But most importantly, two, it would mean we would begin to focus on the real enemy. Our actual enemy has one goal in mind for you - to steal, kill, and destroy. It's with this enemy that our battle lines have been drawn. 

But before we think this better way is the best way, and we believe our war with the enemy is ongoing and we must wage a daily battle with him. Here's a little truth spoken in love. That's another lie! 

The truth is that this so-called battle is over. The enemy of our souls has lost the war. He has been defeated. Past tense. Colossians 2:15 says that Jesus "disarmed the demonic rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in Him." Jesus won the war.  And so did we. 

When we're convinced of this truth, all the energy we expend trying to fight an already defeated enemy is freed. What if we used that power to build each other up rather than tear down? What if we spent the time we have in this life to lovingly encourage one another, to speak life and hope and peace to our brothers and sisters. Imagine what would happen if I was more concerned with helping you to shine, than I was with polishing my own reputation or status? 

I know we oftentimes think this is hard to do. But this is not a difficult challenge for us. Built into the fabric of who we are is this desire, ability, and responsibility to truly love one another with our words and actions. 

1 Thessalonians 5:11 tells us to "encourage one another and build one another up." Hebrews 10:24 says to "stir up one another to love and good works." Ephesians 4:29 shares with us to not speak badly of others, but to build them up and give them grace. We are called to "admonish the idle, encourage the faith hearted, help the weak, and be patient with them all," in 1 Thessalonians 5:14. 

All you nobodies out there, we can do this. Stop speaking vile words to people and start spewing life and hope and peace and love with the words we speak, and type, and with our actions.

It's time we stopped believing this lie. And the only way to stop is to start. Start believing and acting on the truth. When you're tempted to tear down, rip apart, gossip about, or be downright mean to somebody else.

Remember the truth. 

And just be Jesus.