living in the tension

today i’m bummed out and just wanted to be real about it.

the cause for the bumming out is my own fault, but i’m not quite sure why, which only adds to the negative feeling.
the thing is, once again i’ve mismanaged our budget and we now have 2 overdraft fees against our checking account. this is the second time in the last month and it’s so frustrating! it would be frustrating enough if we’d just made a mistake or something simple, but what’s especially frustrating is that i follow the online statements religiously, at least every other day, but usually daily, to see what’s posted, comparing it to my excel spreadsheet of what should be posting soon, etc. i usually enjoy the meticulous process since i love lists and organization.
yet twice this month i’ve somehow bungled it up and ended with a negative balance. today two debits have shown up as being more than our balance.

i suspect that part of the problem is that i don’t have a complete understanding of the online banking’s complexities. it seems like it’d be pretty standard – when a debit clears at the bank, it should go through the online banking & show up on the statement. what i’ve come to realize though is that they organize the previous day’s debits with the largest debit coming out of our account first, which rearranges the way it looked on that previous day. so i can be looking at the online statement on monday and feel great, yes, we’re on track. then on tuesday, looking back at monday’s activity, it will be arranged totally differently than it was when I was actually looking on monday.
so even if i’m following the activity daily, they’re going to rearrange things the next day & change it up.

it makes sense to me that if i just keep track of what i know is coming out based on what we’ve spent and what funds we have available that we should stay in the black regardless of how they rearrange things.

but no.

somehow, all my figurings get randomly thrown out the window and i have no way of knowing why because i have no proof of how the online statement looked the day before and how it changed today. this last month we’ve had a total of $140 in overdraft charges. maybe i should start printing out each day’s online statement and comparing it to the next day… i don’t know.
it’s humbling to admit financial failure, especially when i’ve been thinking we’re great, everything’s on track, we’re good to go. it feels like no matter how hard i try, I still can’t even control the simplest of daily mathematical situations. and for the most part it’s really all on me. it’s both nick & i’s money, but i do the daily figuring since i usually enjoy lists & whatnot. we decide together what we should spend our money on, how much we should budget for groceries, etc. but i alone do the daily managing (or mismanaging).


it makes me wonder if i can’t control this little area of our life, how in the world can i even try to get a handle on other, bigger life issues?
and all you christians out there will say , ‘aha! exactly! the moral of this story is that you can’t control things and god’s trying to get you to understand that you’re not in control of your life – you should just trust him.’
and to all of you christians out there, i say that’s just annoying. of course i know i’m supposed to be trusting god, and of course i know i’m not in control of my life. but what does that mean in every day practical living?
i’ve always wrestled with the extreme view that’s projected by oversimplified christianity – the ‘let go and let god’ mentality… obviously god’s in control but that doesn’t mean we sit on our couch doing nothing. we still have to participate in the actions of life.


the answer is hidden somewhere within the concept of living in the tension of being human. i don’t remember which book i read it in, but it talked about that idea, that living on this earth as spiritual beings presents a tension that we’re ill-equipped to understand. it involves letting go while holding on, desiring something but not having it but still hoping, all those themes that seem to contradict each other but are supposed to exist simultaneously. i don’t get it. i don’t know how it works. i suppose somehow that’s also part of that tension.
i feel a little less bummed out though, thanks to venting. sometimes it helps.

the work of the spirit

so i've been doing some thinking and pondering the last few days.
here's what i've been thinking and pondering:

usually when i'm in church it's very difficult for me to focus on what i'm supposed to be focusing on. instead of paying attention to the service, i'm usually watching the people and being distracted by all the normal people-like things going on. if there's a baby anywhere near, the morning's shot for sure. they're just so entertaining with their wide-eyed wonder and squealing and hand-waving. it's pretty impossible for me to pay attention. and even regular full-grown people are distracting - i look at their outfits, their hair-dos, their interactions with whoever they're sitting by...
it's not something i'm proud of, but it's just my particular weakness. i'd rather be shoring up the spiritual knowledge imparted by the pastor or joining in singing the praises of my good god... i just find myself more often than not very distracted. this is something about myself that i'm not surprised by - i'm pretty used to it. i'm good at sitting still and giving the illusion of full attention being directed toward the front, but under the surface, my mind's usually all over the place.

a few sundays ago i was a little surprised by something though. toward the end of the service we were singing a few songs of dismissal and i closed my eyes (not out of a deeper reverence - mostly because then i can hear my voice better and hear it compared to the voices around me and i like hearing the pretty sounds blend... yes, it's true, that has nothing to do with worshipping god...) but all of the sudden i got this impression of myself standing surrounded by people (as i was in fact, standing) but suddenly not aware of the other people in a distracting sense. we were all standing side by side, but all of our attention was directed upward in praise. we were united horizontally by our vertical affection. we weren't paying attention to each other all that much, i wasn't comparing my dress to so and so's or deciding if yonder lady really should be keeping her noisy kids in the main church service instead of sending them to the nursery (things that only i can decide, you know), but we were each paying full and undivided attention to our maker. our thoughts and hopes and focus was single-mindedly directed toward the father in a way that was beyond our ability to achieve. we weren't all of the sudden more pious - it's like we were being drawn up into worship. he wanted us to see him in his glory, so he pulled our focus up into his presence.
it was only for a few minutes, but it was something completely other than i've ever experienced in church.
i knew it wasn't me. this might sound hoky or disturbing to you, depending on who you are or how you've grown up, but i know it was the holy spirit drawing my heart up into the heart of the father, corporately with my brothers and sisters who were equally being drawn. and instead of it being an individual thing only i experienced - i was standing side by side with others who were equally being drawn - it was an even more powerful feeling of joining a huge group of people all united by a magnetic pull of a god who wanted us to experience him more fully.
i tend to mistrust 'feelings' and see more value in something if it's purely logical and rational, but really, we were made to be emotional beings. it's when feelings overtake and supercede logic that things get out of whack. i almost feel like i've relied so heavily on rational logic to choose to go to church and choose to sing whether i feel like it or not, knowing it's the right thing to do - but god was saying, 'here's what it feels like to worship'.

it was just a few minutes at the end of church one day, but for me it was a total shift in thinking. it was so completely not of my own doing that i literally can't dismiss it as over-excited religiosity. i know it was from the holy spirit.

then this last sunday, something similar but even more amazing happened.
again, it was the end of the service and we were singing the last few songs. i closed my eyes, and i was instantly swept up in the most amazing mental movie of worship ever! it was so beautiful, i wish every one of you could see it!
like before, i was standing side by side with the people worshipping the lord in song, but each one of us was a part of the most brilliant river of light, travelling swiftly, moving together in a steady stream upward to an even brighter light above us. we were full of color but also full of silvery non-color at the same time. it was clear and bright and so fast - i wanted to stay there and be a part of that in my mind forever. as the song was ending though and we moved on to another song, i kept trying to hold onto that mental image but it left without my permission and i kept struggling to bring it back... but as moved on to another song, it changed to something different. instead of a river of light, all the voices changed into swirling clouds that rose up over us in the sky and joined each other to make a covering over all the earth, hovering and moving together in the same silvery, colorful, bright beautiful light. i was standing alone but was joining a great crowd with my voice that grew into an amazing panorama of beautiful worship. and again like the other sunday, it was my imagination and my voice, but i was being called up into worship, there was no effort of my own involved. i didn't do any magic trick to get this cool vision, in fact, i was pretty grumpy during the service - not at all in a churchy mood. but i knew the holy spirit was drawing me up into worship in a way that i could never imagine or accomplish on my own.
it was beautiful.

every once in a while i'd open my eyes and look at the people around me and try to make what my spiritual eyes were seeing fit in with the reality of them but it was kind of disappointing. the real people were dull - even the bright colored skirts on the trendy girls were dull and boring compared to the bright, silvery light moving in worship. i didn't want to see them in real life, i just wanted to keep my eyes closed and keep seeing my mental vision of them. but there was something about looking back and forth at real life and at my mind's eye that kept me comparing and trying to figure out how we fit. i kept thinking there has to be a reason that god made us human and ugly and pitifully dull in comparison with how we could be. he could have just skipped the humanity part entirely if there were no reason for it.
even after we were done singing and we went downstairs and ate and talked, i kept thinking about the conundrum. i talked to a few people about the vision of worship that i felt like god drew me into and we discussed it a bit... how maybe my vision was an idea of how our transformed bodies will be in the new heaven and new earth - what we were created to look like and how we were originally intended to worship... still mulling. then when i was laying in bed that night trying to sleep i thought some more. i was remembering that jesus chose to come in the flesh, to be human. i kept thinking, 'why?' then the answer came out of the blue like a big gong clang. obviously, it's because of human weakness! and when it came to me, it was so entirely obvious that it was almost too simple to be the answer to the question i'd been pondering all day. i'd just been trying to make it more complicated than it is.
our weakness and frailty is the perfect vessel for god's strength and beauty. if i were all that competent, if i were able to pay perfect attention in church and glean all the wonderful insights every sunday, if i were able to respect my husband perfectly in all his ways and love him entirely with all my being, i would have no need for god in my life.
my weakness and my need draw me into a dependence on the only one able to make me strong.
otherwise i might never turn to him. we were made with free will so we can choose whether or not to be in relationship with the father, but we were made so feeble, so frail that there's only one logical place to turn. and when we do, there's a part deep inside that feels perfectly right.

i've never been too good at witnessing or 'evangelizing the unsaved of the world' mostly because i can't quantify this feeling in my soul. i can't make my faith sound socially acceptable. but that's all i really have to go on when i think about god. i know it's right because there's this place in me that knows he's the only way. nothing else will do.

i don't know if that's the only 'moral of the story' - i'm sure there's more to be pondered, but that's where i'm at right now.

i meet with a small group of girls once a month and we talk about our lives, what god's teaching us - we pray for each other and eat food. the last couple of times we've talked about how we can keep each other spiritually accountable. when it was my turn, i was at a loss to say how they could keep me accountable - i hate thinking about all the ways that i don't measure up, and being held accountable sounds to me like choosing the one area i'm in the weakest in and trying harder to do it better. very often times i don't feel like i fit into the regular 'christian' mold that i assume i'm supposed to fit into - 30 minute quiet time in the morning, reading the bible and praying, writing scripture verses on pieces of paper and taping them to your dash, making cookies for the neighbors, having bible studies with my students after school...
those are all good things, but i have no idea how to go about being and doing those things every day. i'm not a good person more often than not.
as i was saying these things to the group, ann-victoria said maybe i could be held accountable to ask god what 'christianity' looks like for me. not that there's all different varieties of christianity and you have to find the right one that fits you... i think people just expect everyone to look a certain way on the outside without knowing what's going on in their hearts. instead of being concerned with doing the right things and looking good, i want to ask god to show me how to worship him with my whole heart.

then the sermon in church on sunday was about the greatest commandment - to love the lord your god with all your heart, soul & mind and to love your neighbor as yourself. the pastor went on to say that it's not enough to 'want' to fulfill that commandment, but we must 'will' it, and we have nothing within us that causes us to will it. it's only by the power of the holy spirit, creating in us that willingness that we can love. he went on to encourage us to make space in our lives to ask the spirit for that willingness.
i think that's what i need to be held accountable for these days - to continually ask the spirit for a willingness to love. all the other things that fit that 'christian mold' flow out of a heart that is empowered by the holy spirit and alive to the love of god.

anyhow, those are about 3 different threads weaving together in my mind these days but really with just one theme - the work of the holy spirit... a lot to mull over, but pretty cool at the same time.

if you've survived this lengthy post, give yourself a 'kudos' from me. :-)