stor(ies)

Saturday night I caught up with some very old friends of mine in downtown Athens. We ended up at this place called The Globe - next to a big window and a view of a busy street corner. We began to catch up on every one's lives in spark note versions. There was laughter, empathy, a bit more laughter, and brokenness. I began to hear themes of redemption, betrayal, and grief in every story.

Lately I've made some personal decisions that weren't very wise... most of them were just plain wrong. Some have been the kind of choices made in sheer rebellion and others less thought through. Regardless - I found myself disappointed - beating myself up about them - and afraid that God was going to come at me with a hammer of some sort. The kind of fear you have when you get called to the Principal's office in elementary school. I was telling my counselor about some of my recent choices and how I felt about them, and she had an interesting thought - one that lined up very well with a book I've been reading by Donald Miller. "What if, rather than focusing on your performance, you chose to look at the invitations God's got for you?" she asked me. In other words - I can focus on trying to do better next time and always failing - or I can receive an invitation from the Lord into something else.

I'm a character in a story being written by an author. Recently, I noticed that I've been writing a bad story. It's mediocre - full of cowardice, rooted in insecurity, masked by comfort and self-indulgence. It's like one of those movies that you walk out of the theater going "I paid $10 to see that??" It's been unremarkable because I've been trying to write my own story. When you try to write your own story, you find that things like money, sex, alcohol, and relationships just aren't what they're cracked up to be -they don't satisfy. When you try to write your own story, you try to fill God-given desires in your own way and in your own timing - so while there's nothing inherently wrong about money, sex, alcohol or relationships - they can be damaging when stripped from God's context.

There's no peace when you try to write your own story. I've never found myself more restless than I've been the past few weeks - running from city to city just to get away from my own stupidity and ignore my compulsion to be in control. Driving home from Athens was humbling. It's humbling when you realize that apart from the Lord you have no good thing - even more humbling to realize that His grace is what's holding you in your terrible unworthiness. Driving home from Charleston a few days later was also humbling - realizing that what you thought was a decent story is really an awful one is hard to swallow.

Miller puts it like this, "You can call it God or a conscience, or you can dismiss it as that intuitive knowing we all have as human beings, as living storytellers; but there is a knowing I feel that guides me toward better stories, toward being a better character. I believe there is a writer outside ourselves, plotting a better story for us, interacting with us, even, and whispering a better story into our consciousness....At first, even though I could feel God writing something different, I'd play the scene the way I wanted. This never worked. It would always have been better to obey the Writer, the one who knows the better story."

We're characters - each with our own unique stories - being written by this brilliant Author whose heart is for us, not against us. God doesn't come at me hard or angry - His wrath was fully satisfied in Christ - but He comes to me with an invitation to be part of a better story - His story. I can't help but wonder what would happen if we received that invitation. One thing I do know is that He redeems even the worst chapters.

prodigal waves

I don’t know how to get back to where we once were
Where we ever there, or did we just wish for and hope so
If we wanted to leave, and go separate ways, we would’ve left by now
We’re in a deep and dark ocean, swimming on waves of change, waves of grace.

Something deep inside of me holds me like an anchor here
In my wildest dreams, I run fast and free
Home in Love, acceptance and peace.
But there’s a long road ahead, resting on the promise
That You always heal – teach me to run.

I don’t know how to let go, to begin to unearth
Thousands of tears, thousands of wounds I’ve managed to ignore
I would rather run than deal with the pain, it’s easier that way
But it’s Perfect Love that won’t leave me alone in this place.

Something deep inside of me holds me like an anchor here
In my wildest dreams, I run fast and free
Home in Love, acceptance and peace.
But there’s a long road ahead, resting on the promise
That You always heal – teach me to run.

To run into Your arms, bury my head in your neck
Hear you whisper of your Love and feel comfort from your breath.
To run like a prodigal home, expecting her Father’s acceptance
In the midst of utter failure and unworthiness.

Something deep inside of me holds me like an anchor here
We’re in a deep and dark ocean, swimming on waves of change, waves of grace
We’re not alone in this place.