Monday, August 8, 2011

From Survey to Blog

I was filling out one of those surveys - mostly it's just us girls who do them - and it struck me when I was done that I should copy/paste one or two (or three?) of the questions & answers here since they are so strongly tied to my student missionary experience.

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What is something you've learned about yourself recently?  Hmm... I'm gonna go for a big picture sort of analysis and define recently as this past year: I've learned to own my faith in God without the props and relationships that usually nurture and comfort it.  When I went away to England as a student missionary, it was one of the hardest years I've ever had, though I still call it one of the top 5 best things to ever happen to me.  Stuff was happening with loved ones outside England that gave my faith a run for its money and frankly, all the things that made me most comfortable in Michigan were lowest priority in England.  I suppose I've been learning the power and value of my own ability to choose and learning more to not care what other people think.  For too long I've been catering to the people who don't have my best in mind and not giving my best to those who love me so well.  There was something wrong with that picture - no wonder  I had painful growing experiences ahead.


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What is one thing you've learned about life?  That we shouldn't expect life on this side of heaven to be LIKE heaven; that's just setting yourself up for perpetual disappointment.  Life one earth until Jesus comes is love during wartime.  God's love for us, ours for him and ours for each other.  And we all know how both overtly & subtly wartime expresses itself.  And I'm speaking in spiritual terms, not just literal terms.  If you accept that every once in awhile life is going to upset your apple card, you won't be so blind-sided and you'll actually be better able to protect who & what you love when the hits do come.


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What's your worst experience?  When people you care about turn out to not be real friends at all and they play mind games to control you.  That is the worst manipulation & messing-up ever.  And what's worse is when the people doing it claim to be Christian examples.  Jesus once compared the pharisees to white-washed tombs filled with dead men's bones.  I think the bones were from those poor souls who got "eaten alive" and then put through the meat-grinder.  So often we only practice Christian values in doctrine but not in relationships.


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How many things in your past do you regret?  I wish I'd tried to draw out the deep waters in people rather than talking as much as I have.  I also wish that I'd learned more of what I know now sooner.  But the experiences that were once so hard... they propelled me into the arms of Jesus in a way I never would have known if I were in a "peace time" bubble, so I'm actually thankful for how other people failed me.  I know it sounds weird...


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If you could change anything about your past, what would you change?  I would have been more personally responsible/independent and thoughtful about the needs of others.


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What are some of your biggest fears of your life?  Letting my lessons learned slip so that I have to go through another unthinkably hard year to get back on track.  Just because last year was a top-5 doesn't mean I ever want to experience the same pain & struggle a second time.  Never again, please.


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What's the one thing you hope to accomplish in your life?  I want to do what God's called me to do.  Yes, it'll be high risk sometimes, but that's also where my conscience feels most safe, where my soul rests the most (not the same as numbing the angst with food), and where I feel most alive!  Like I'm doing what I was meant to do; what nobody else can do but me.  It's a challenge AND a pleasure.


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Are looks important?  To a degree, but looks do fade and fluctuate.


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Do you believe in love?   Ah, the real question is: what kind of love do you believe in?  But stepping aside from silly hair-splittings like that, yes I believe in love.  Love comes from God.  God IS love.  If the church has given you a bad taste, I don't blame you - been there, done that.  If life events make it seem impossible for a good & all-powerful God to exist, it's then that you either have to abandon God altogether or voyage into the tempest to find Him personally, because it's at that point where nobody can tell you what to do or answer your questions.  We're made for love and made in the image of Love.  It's a big deal, a lifelong commitment even if you're just trying to be a good single Christian friend & family member, aside from the bigger leagues of relationships & marriage.  Love is hard as well as good; people only want the good - they don't want to deal with the hard, and so they bail and then paint love in ugly colors.  The people who don't bail, even if they get left behind, actually don't stop believing in love even if they have wounds to recover from.  Those stories aren't told enough.  The way God sustains you through loss - if you ask Him to - is one of the most binding and strongly bonding experiences a person can have with God.  'Ever notice how God created the world primarily beautiful and secondarily functional and therein lies His divine genius?  We were made by love and for love.  People say that love isn't a fairy tale, but we forget that the fairy tales had some high stakes and epic challenges.  We always know the ending and so we yawn that all's well that ends well, but the characters (yes I know they're fictional) didn't know the ending.  And reaching back before the fairy tale we have BIBLE STORIES.  Full of miracles, the magical presence of our powerful God and impossibilities become hysterically funny realities and images so stunning that you can only bow and worship and obey.  God experiences emotions like we do - He gets us; He didn't just make us and walk away.  Even after we screwed up, He hunkered down to pursue a relationship with each of us if we'd only be willing.  Hopeless romantics are more noble and special and a class to be preserved than we know; I think that God loves to work with hopeless romantics, making them into passionate Christians just like He runs to the prodigal son but is sadly put off by "the good son."  God gets us, but He's not like us, which is EXACTLY WHY He's dependable.  He's wild and He does things we can't always understand, but He never fails to bring out a greater good if you never let Him go.  There are answers we'll never have here on earth, but I don't want a God I can explain with my finite mind.  To have the God you want, you have to embrace not having all the answers for yourself.  Do you want a genie in a bottle with limits - even if he is there at a simple rub - or the God who is mighty to save, forgiving, mysterious and loves you with an everlasting love?

Yes, I believe in Love.


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