In Search for a Holy God: Redeeming Spirit, Mind, and Body

I have a confession. 

I struggle to confess. 

I lack strength to say when I've been wrong. I think sin left my vocabulary many years ago. When I no longer struggled with lust, I figured the rest of my past was just that - in the past. I was a new creation, abundantly living in the King. But sin lurked at the door, I invited it into my living room, and it took up residence but this time sin had a new name - please meet "This is who I am". 

I have another confession.

I have doubted God is big enough. The hole in my heart is large, the desires of my soul so deep I could drown in their waters - and I fear God isn't big enough to fit. If you are a child of the Christian 90's or 2000's you probably heard "God Shaped Hole" by Plumb. But what if that hole is so large and vast that even God Himself is not big enough to fill it? And to be honest, being in church, seminary and community has furthered this belief - that God isn't big enough to fill this void, because He made it too large for Himself. Yes God is the only way we are whole, yet the Body is the place we find fulfillment.

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On a recent car ride home from visiting one of my many sisters in college, the conversation got heated between my husband and me. He was poking at a wound, and me being the lion I am - I roared to consume rather than realize my need to confess the pain and accept the help from the other to be healed. 

Like most of our conversations it was about God, faith and family. As many other millennials have recently confessed, I was wounded by this faith I had walked into. It seems almost every day I read some blog or note about my generation leaving the church, of walking away from this institution. I understand, it's a hot button issue - we want to love but the politics and "God's side" of issues have been a death grip around our culture. Rather than sprouting forth love, by witnessing the Trinity's perichoresis we've pointed the world to a God of death and judgment, where we are the judges and God a mere puppet of our wisdom. 

While I have my own battle wounds over the last two decades of church going, and my story of trying to leave Her - I am here in the Church, pursuing God's calling to be a pastor. But I am not as wounded my church as I thought I was, and I can forgive Her transgressions - for she is a flawed vessel. See the conversation my husband and I had brought up the deep issue.

I have been hurt by God.

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It's a cliché I'm sure. But the fact remains, the pains in my heart revolves around my Creator - or so it seems. 

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I believe the prophetic word should be like the breath that formed all of creation. It is not by my own breath, mind, or words but when the Spirit falls and prophetic utterance takes place the possibilities are endless. This Ruach ha-Kadosh formed the seas, the skies, breathing life into these very bones. When this same Holy Spirit speaks through us, these broken vessels, fragile beings, She brings forth the same power and authority, love and creativity on the day of Creation. I believe it in the very depths of my core. That the touch of God causes healing, and it's not a healing where poof and it's magically fixed, but a touch that goes into the very DNA of the person, causing the cells to be corrected in a miraculous and holistic manner. I know this may sound superfluous - but the Holy Spirit heals us in bodily ways, often messy human hands, and the touch of God changes the very fiber of our being. I can't say this strong enough. I can't express it full enough. These words fail to express the need for a bodily touch of the Spirit, and the fact that the Spirit does respond in these ways. 

The Son became human, taking on the fullness of man and of God to make space for us, and the Spirit rested on Him inviting us to partake in this Holy Communion. We are not making space in these cobwebbed hearts of ours, but rather the Creator of the universe, the Holy One is inviting us to join in them. We get to witness the love of the Trinity, fully and beautifully - and we are never the same. When the Spirit draws us into the Trinitarian community we are marked, ruined for the ordinary and our taste is for the divine. But the Spirit does not draw us spirits only - being a mere decapitated soul. NO! The Spirit invites our body - the all of our humanity to be redeemed, to be marked by this dance and to witness to the world their beauty. 

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As we drove home I wept. For I feared God was not like I dreamt. That the God whom I formed my every thought around, whom I met in the nights of pain, and in the days of ecstatic joy was not the real God. I feared in my confession I would find Elohim to be a fraud, and I would be the fool that believed. I feared if I confessed that I truly believed that God worked I would be disappointed. See bodily change takes risk. To believe God can change my heart, well that's easy to measure - I may get an emotional high today, and next week it'll be gone but for a season God moved. The body is not so easily manipulated. I cannot fake my wholeness.

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I was 13. Going on my first mission trip. My youth group and I were going to Alaska. The night before we were to fly up there we were practicing one of our dramas. I was a party girl (the polar opposite of my adolescent self) and was holding a beer bottle, and at one point would fall on the ground in sight of the holy. Well something went wrong, and when I fell my wrist hit the bottle and pain surged through my body. Trying to be strong, I attempted to not make it a big deal. I didn't want them to see my weakness (which has so many thing wrong with it, but that's for another time) so I cried outside, alone till I could come back inside. After practice I went home, and my wrist swelled overnight, so my mom took me to the doctor before I was to get on the plane. I had fractured my wrist - you know one of those hairline fractures that would've been less painful and easier to heal if had fully broken. The doctor gave me a brace and I headed to Alaska. After arriving in Anchorage, we met up with several hundred youth at a church service in preparation for our mission’s week. In the service I felt the Spirit say my wrist was healed. I took off my brace in faith that the Spirit had spoken, and proceeded to act out my healing. After the service when one of the adults saw, they told me to put back on the brace. Me, in my cowardice, and deep desire to be accepted, simply put on the brace without ever telling them why I had taken it off. A seemingly small instance, but the next 10 years my wrist would still pop under certain weight, and for the first five years I couldn't carry anything heavy without intense pain. It was my marker, my sign that the institution didn't recognize me, and that I didn't have enough faith for healing to happen. In response I rejected a God who wouldn't touch my body, and lost so much faith in the process.

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Living in a Pentecostal context, people would often ask for prayers of healing. Yet when others would ask for healing prayers, I wouldn't touch the person - for fear my touch would be the 'faith zapper' making void all the other prayers. I knew I didn't have enough faith and feared I would be the preventing hand. Being a follower of Jesus I knew I should ask for my own healing, though anytime I asked for healing the double mindedness was so consuming I hated myself. In order to handle this bodily rejection, God became the God of my mind, an intellectual playmate of sorts. In the nights where the darkness would creep, the name of Jesus cast out fear and caused peace. Through counseling the Spirit rested on me, and I would sing His praises again. But the God that carried my Body... I wasn't so sure. It was during these immediate years after the mission trip experience that my eyes had a weird healing experience. Having been born with a very bad lazy eye, I had surgery at three and wore bifocals from that point on. Then one day between the ages of 12-15 my glasses broke, and I could see. I could really truly see without them. I was healed! But as the months and years went by, my eyes grew tired. And I could not see as clearly. Soon the headaches would set in, and I needed glasses again. This time not bifocals, but still glasses had to be worn. Once again I didn't have enough faith, God couldn't fully heal me. I would become a product of a half-healing.

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In a faith that often saw mental illness as demons, and physical handicaps often the result of sin or the enemy - I had no theology for lingering 'otherness'. Then my brother-in-law was diagnosed with Asperger’s, my little sister as well would be found on the spectrum. My husband struggled with depression, and I went through dark post-partum after the birth of our daughter. Both of my childhood best friends lost their mother's to breast cancer - though both had claimed healing in Jesus. Our bodies were being affected, they were fallen and I needed a God who cared. He was not absent, but His timing seemed so very slow. Yet His response turned everything upside down; through my two best friends, Hannah and Jenna. 

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Jenna is a mom of two, a lively soul who reminds me of the joys of God. She has blood pressure problems, and a number of allergies that prevent her from "normal" living. Her body isn't strong, and work is taxing - but God has made a way for her to revel in her children and in His nature. She is one of the most intelligent people I've ever met, though she lacks a degree. Yet one night at a prayer meeting God called me to pray for her healing as she asked the congregation to do so. I went and touched Jenna on the top of her head down to then down to her toes, and wept. The next week she testified to being healed of that specific allergy.

Hannah has cerebral palsy. Her heart is strong, and she has faced death so many times - yet she perseveres. God spoke a promise of healing, and every day we seek His face for this holistic healing. She has to wear noise canceling headphones because sound hurts so much. Her body aches in ways I can't imagine. Yet she cares so deeply for the other, her empathy is like that of our Eternal Intercessor. She has committed her steps to the Lord, though her feet may drag and her spirit may feel broken - she hasn't given up. In a church service God called me to anoint her feet, as the oil dripped and my tears ran; I'm still believing for her healing. 

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I have been marked. Hannah's very presence has changed me, the structure of my heart has been affected. From her I love in ways I didn't know was possible. Jenna has torn down so many walls, allowing me to believe in friends again. Her vibrate spirituality has challenged me to believe in a playful God again.

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See I believe in a Holy God, one who is not disinterested in our bodies, but rejoices in them. I believe in a Holy Spirit who changes us, causing right all that has been wrong. When we see a broken mind - the Spirit can make it right! It may be in the whisper of days, months and years – but oh for the glorious moments of fire that causes immediate and complete change! I believe that the prophetic is alive today, and we are invited to participate in the Spirit’s work of illuminating the broken to God’s love.

I believe because my mind can’t be greater than God’s. My imagination cannot be more beautiful than the Creator’s. My love for the other is a shadowed reflection compared to the Son’s. My desire for transformation is a small drop in the Spirit’s brooding over all creation.

I don’t feel it. Often I feel the exact opposite. I'm left wondering why God is dead. I wonder why Hannah’s body is still broken, why Jenna isn’t whole, why J's mind is still conflicted, why F doesn’t see, why our church is so full of broken people….. But perhaps it is in this desert, that the new creation is being made. That in the drought, the seemingly absent Spirit is holding us here, drawing us deeper than we ever knew, to a place of intimacy that we wouldn’t see otherwise. I wish it felt good, I wish I believed in my emotions. Honestly I doubt, there are spaces of fear so strong I want to run away from this place. But I have been marked – I have seen the backside of the Lord and I believe He will show His face. I am choosing to stay – not because I feel like it, but because all I am affirms His truth and I will have faith in this tension of already and not yet to abide. Oh Holy Spirit rest on us, draw us into this holy communion. 

My Journey to the Promise Land - Circumcision.

Could it be?
This freedom you mention, is it accessible to me?
My body is worn and my heart torn.
Yet you say there is freedom in His name.

I was baptized by water, a sprinkle to show my parents love.
The heavens spoke, claiming all I am.
Years would run by, and I a child would run 'round as well.

I was overcome by the Holy Ghost, in an ordinary service.
With laughter & tears, God was near.
At the tender age of seven, the world was beginning to grow.

I was exposed, a darkness that would taint my very soul,
The enemy would try to consume all I was.
I'd be baptized again, this my choice in the waters of the Church.

I would sin, but what does a child know of fallen man?
Lies, confusion, and yet God would speak.
The Spirit would whisper, and carry me in the night terrors.

I was submerged in the Holy waters a time or two again,
to be certain of my Salvation to His Hand.
As a adolescence what does one know of certainty or trust?

I sat in the seats, wishing for my death, as I was dead inside.
The worship team playing, youth singin' along.
Yet the Holy Spirit came, baptizing me in fire, speaking a new tongue.

You spoke, so very often I could hear You speak.
My soul would fight, my very sin arguing with ihe Holy One.
The conflict in the mornings, and through the nights.
I doubted I would ever be whole, and longed for okay.
Yet You were so very present, wrapping me in Your Wings.
Speaking Your heart to me, and I speaking Yours to others.
We walked together, and I knew I was not alone.
But sin consumed me, and death was ever knocking.

I don't know when it was, when the storm subsided, and I'd breathe.
Was it in the morning, the night or a season?
There was certainty in my voice, a confidence in my stance.

I was a wife now, a mother too, a student, a worker, a daughter.
The many hats required a new type of strength.
So even in my lack of asking, the Spirit descended making me new.

I was strong enough, I was good enough now. I was all about me.
I would serve, I would work, I would love.
I knew enough, I was brave enough, I could make my dreams happen.

I built barracks around this heart. Declaring the walls fortified with faith.
But they were absent from a living God.
Rather it was a dead idol, a false image of God that I served.

I responded to Your call, in a Lenten night, You would speak.
In the mornings I would discover You.
The Spirit of God, a wind whirling around making my walls fall down.

I am back where I was before. Yet lacking faith, and so unsure.
After many years, I don't know my Father's voice.
The Spirit's whisper meshed within my own, and the uncertainty is back.

But You speak, and I can know.
At least that's what the pastor said.
That as I make myself vulnerable, You would circumcise my heart.
That the fight doesn't have to kill me,
In fact it doesn't have to live inside.

If this is true Spirit - I want it.
If it can be Father - please take me.
If this is true brother Jesus - show me the way.
Because I can't follow You, and follow me.
I can't love myself the most, and make space for You.
Because You demand everything, and all I am.
So come.
Oh please, please, come.
Circumcise this heart, I am renewing my covenant with You.
Teach me Your whisper again,
Let me trust my Father's voice,
and I will swim in these Holy Waters till my dying breath.

Intimacy - as inspired by Teddy Hart

I'm afraid to disappoint you.
In the reaching of my dreams, I may let you down.
But maybe you know that already. In the midst of our conversation you know I am going to disappoint you - like with Peter, you aren't angry just stating a fact. Yet you still say,  "come follow me even after you've let me down, come with me. In fact your failure is what you need to truly follow after me, away from your preconceived ideas. Your plans of success now gone you can know me and love me as I am - not just who you want me to be."

Help me follow you Jesus, to humbly ask "can I not fail you?" rather than proudly assume that I won't.
Precious Lord, help me let go and follow you. I may let down the world, and maybe even you, but you still call me to follow you. Help me Lord, for I long to love you like Peter did. I want to say that yes I do love you Lord, as we sit over your meal.

Thankful

This is a short account but necessary to relieve the pressure on my chest.

This is my Jordan, these words my stones, a hopeful marker of the work of the Lord. Clearing who I was to make way for what is to be, and through the rushing waters He holds back it's current to let me cross into the Promise Land.
Oh Lord let us walk with you into the Promise Land....

Wrestle rather than struggle

I woke and my heart was tired.
I arose and my feet were full of lead.
As we run through this life, I keep falling.
I thought I knew, but how ignorant I am.
What do I do, when all I have is you?

I wish more than life, to be whole.
For this brokenness to come to an end.
It runs in my dreams, and chases in my waking.
It's everywhere I look - my pride is my sin.
Consuming every part of who I am, and staining the joys of what is.

Perhaps it's not as bad as my dreams.
Yet my imagination more a destructive vice, than a creative breath.
Will You change my affections?
Form them into something beautiful?
Rather than the monstrous whore it has been, make my affections right.
I am willing to lay it all down and walk away.
But You say to stay .....
I am working in this moment, in this place. As your afflictions grow heavy, and you try to run from Me. Beloved just stay here with Me. There is nothing that can ruin My love for you - no one can take you from My grasp, even yourself.

So I will wait.
In this moment when my list grows long.
My obligations unending...
I will wait.
You are the King, to You my heart will bow.
Leave me not blessed One, I am not strong enough anymore do this on my own.
Forgive my pride, my presumption to be a god.

Draw me near to Your heart and I will be.
For this is pure religion, to take care of the orphans, to watch over the widows, and holding fast the poor of heart.

I will rest here, at Your heart, in the place it is hard to stand but where Your face is seen and Your hand at work. Hold me fast beloved Brother, model for me true love.

I will arise and face the day,
Not by my own strength,
But by His voice I will wake.
His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He is watching over me....

Church - A Poetic Overture

As a daughter of the fringes I see others on the fringe and I long to bring them in; all I want to do is have them nestle in the bosom of the mother church.
It is His vehicle to bring the Light, but more over it is His Bride in which He reveals Himself like none other.
I desire to gather the fringes in, to be hidden in Her wings; wrapped in the warmth of her candlelight.
I remember entering her doorways, laying down the garments of the past. Taking off the coat of isolation, it's ragged sleeves with worn out holes would no longer allow the brutal winter wind to penetrate in to my very skin. Instead I would be offered a cloak of fellowship, of diversity, of hope - though it's shape would often be strange, and it's material not always comfortable, the warmth was unlike any other.

See I long to raise my kin in this place.
It is under the rafters of that cathedral,
In the pews of this steeple,
At the altar of the temple
that I long to bring the lost sons and daughter; for it is a safe and sacred place.

Please know my beloveds it is not always beautiful.
Community is messy, and sometimes downright hard.
You don't think like me, and I don't talk like you.
But we share a bond higher than our skin and bones,
and yet is in these broken bodies Christ finds His home.
So walk with me a while,
dredge through these muggy waters,
fight for understanding, and hold-fast to hope.
We may sing different harmonies,
but we are joining the same song.

A daughter of the fringes I may be,
But is in this place, this Church, that I am me.

Hearing Rightly

Five minutes into Dr. Chris Green's sermon about Becoming Christ's Body and I am convicted. While the sermon is focused on the community, I heard it yelling to me about hearing God -

"Just because we heard God, doesn't mean we hear rightly."

Dr. Green uses the example of Peter telling Jesus that 'God forbid the Messiah should be crucified'. While Peter was right since Jesus was the Messiah, he had his own imaginations interpreting the truth being spoken.

A couple months ago I heard the word "pastor" rolling around in my heart. Before I heard that word I was at a crossroads, an impasse in my call - I was finishing my first masters (in business of all things) and I didn't know where to go next. I was afraid of the darkness, the ambiguity of the spring - I needed hope, a purpose, a call.

I sought direction from my friends; they said wait. I went to lunches with elders; they said wait. But I knew I couldn't wait, especially being wasn't in my vocabulary. I am a doer; worth, reality and purpose are defined by what I accomplish. I couldn't simply live for the sake of living - I needed a step, a "to-do" list, I needed something more. In my desperation I attempted to put my purposes in "church" work, finding myself depressed after church on Sunday, and upset with the leadership because of how I felt. In response, I went to my pastor's office (which I talk more about in last month's reflection) and ended up crying in my desperation to be used, to give all I had to a mission, a purpose. Rather than taking advantage of my desire to do, or giving a quick fix - he asked me to meet with him and seek the Lord's will in my life.

It was shortly thereafter the word pastor began to roll around. When I confessed that desire, I was reaffirmed - beautifully so, my husband and by my pastor (even eventually by my Covenant Life Group). I felt I had found my purpose, my goal; my reason for living was on track again. You see, since I was 7 or 8 I've defined my entire being by the call. God's hand on my life, His mission purposed in my being was all I lived for, it was my entirety. But as time went on - marriage, birth, debt, school, and work - I lost that, my planned purpose of missionary had evolved to the point of not being there anymore. Stuck, but seeing the evidence of the Lord's work in maturing me, I wanted to find purpose again - preferably in a ministry label.

I don't think I can describe what it is like when you feel made for something. You can be born for it, formed for it, but the undertow of being made for a singular purpose is wrecking. Reading about a famous musician the other day they were told to not pursue music "because they wanted to, but because they had to". As an infant I was dedicated to the church and as the heavens opened my grandfather had a prophetic word saying I was being called to the Church of England - my parents stood in agreement. I wouldn't personally hear the call till I was 8, but even before then I remember intimately being aware of our Creator. He was there in the trees as I played with bugs; He was there in the dances of hallelujahs with my sisters. His hand held us as our car would teeter over the mountain's edge; He was there when my life would be opened to sin and stayed with me even in my darkest nights. It was in a church service where I felt called to be a missionary, and my mom would encourage me that I could be bi-vocational: a vet and a missionary. I bought books about Kenya, attempted to learn Swahili; history was my addiction, stories of missionaries and culture was my dream. Even in my playing pretend, my heart knew I had a purpose. In the nights that my sin would corrupt my soul, I would desire for my life to be gone but I knew God would restore me someday because I was called. A child not even yet a teen, I would hope I'd be preserved to live out this call.

Some of my happiest and most devastating moments have happened within the four walls of a local congregation. Moments of deep satisfaction and painful back-stabs have happened in the community of Christ. My husband is similar in his sentiment towards the Church - being born the son of a pastor he was always held within the arms of the Mother that is the Church. If the Old Testament Levitical order was still in existence today, my in-laws would have a quiverful of priests - as each of their sons are pursuing ministry. They are sons of the priesthood, and you can feel that radiating from my husband. He bears the burden of any congregation he attends, feels the spiritual journey as he looks around to the people. As a child he would feel that church was home, using the building for his own fun, and always being "in the know" about all of its activities. He was special, because he was the pastor's son - he was watched over, included, and church was a part of him. Then in the decision to marry me, move away, and pursue a different tradition, the local church no longer felt like home but a place of seclusion, and misunderstanding.

See I pursued the church, and my husband was often pursued by the church. I worked to earn my place in the Temple of God; my husband was born into the right. 

Oh God has a sense of humor, if in no other way than our strange combination! To some it may not seem like a big deal, but over 60% of our disagreements, 70% of our tears have been over this difference between us. But yet it is also our common bond - the Church, the ministry, the advancing of Christ's Kingdom is what has held us together, thrusting us forward towards the Spirit's call.

So "pastor" rolled around in my heart, and I assumed its meaning. I heard truth, and interpreted its meaning through my own imaginations. Thank you Dr. Green, for pointing that out - my husband had been trying for weeks to tell me that same thing, but I needed to hear it again for it to stick. I am called; I know that, I feel that; in some immature way I desperately need that feeling of calling. Till now my life has in so many ways depended on the way I heard and interpreted truth - but I want to hear the truth God spoke, interpreting through His imaginations, through His purposes. I believe this is done in community; it is accomplished in relationship with Yahweh, and with all the sons and daughters of God. My call cannot be separated from the Body, and I trust that the Spirit will guide me, speak to me and to those around me as we move forward into understanding the Person of Truth.

Thus this is my prayer: to trust in the Spirit to speak this call, rather than assume its form.