Detachment

There has been a growing awareness in me for a quality that I do not possess. I could never name it, just describe the effects of it: peace, acceptance, joy despite uncertainty and trials. And I recognized it in other people, some I knew well...some I merely brush up against in books. Reading Kathleen Norris this rainy afternoon I came across the word that was missing from my vocabulary and from the experience of my soul. She introduces the word detachment as not being the word we have grown accustomed to in our society: someone who has selfishly removed themselves from the people and life around them. The monks interpretation of this word could not be more different. "It means not allowing either wordly values or self-centerdness to distract us from what is most essential in our relationship with God, and with each other." A 6th century monk , Dorotheus of Gaza says that detachment is "being free from wanting certain things to happen" and trusting God in such a way that "what is happening will be the thing you want and you will be at peace with all."
      Over last summer while I was pregnant with Jack I began to search out books about midwives and their stories. One in particular began to show me this lack in my life. It was a true story of a midwife that went to live among the Amish and how their lives so impacted her own. There would be great tragedy, like the death of a baby or a husband, and while there would be grief there would also be an almost irritating passivity. Questions were not hurled to the heavens, there was not bitterness or wrath. Merely sadness mingled with a peace that was born out of acceptance. What will be will be. This grated against my American, need to be in control, need to understand mind. Yet I was strangely drawn to it.

Over the last few months the Lord has shown me Psalm 131, its beautiful, sweet imagery of a weaned child resting on his mothers lap not asking great questions, just being, spoke to me and brought me peace. I could relate to this picture, I like it, it was very sweet and made me think warm thoughts about God. This was until last Saturday and things were not going my way. A trip I had been planning feel through, my husband was not doing what I wanted him to do, neither were my kids. Heck, my whole life has been like this...never getting to do what I wanted to do! Wisely, my husband sent me packing. I ended up in a secluded woods, back against tree, my Bible opened in front of me. And God showed up. He really did and it was not comfortable or sweet. He showed me those last chapters in Job, which basically can be summed up as " who do you think you are??" Do you really think that life should go your way? That you should be in control of it? No more pictures of a sweet infant on his mothers lap, in the words of my sister I was a defiant 2 year old and needed to be reminded of my place. And just like children are relieved with boundaries, animals rest when they know their fence line, I felt a huge burden lifted when He confronted me. I can control nothing, not even my own little life, but that's ok because He can and He does a much better job. And I want to grow in this discipline of detachment, of accepting whatever happens because it all comes from Him and He is the giver of all good gifts (James 1). One of the main qualities needed for this is humility: I know I am but dust and I will not speak evil of my Maker.

A laying down in the dirt

                            This morning I am praying for a friend who is going to the hospital to have a much anticipated baby girl, and praying for a friend who is also losing a much anticipated baby. It would have been her first, she had patiently waited out her 30s to marry the man God had for her, and finally her longing to be a mother was going to be fulfilled.
   Then there is this horrible loss and how do you pray? And how do you make sense of this? I don't always understand the ways of the Lord. I was just reading in Acts about the persecution of the early church. James the brother of John is killed right away then Herod sets his sights on Peter. Peter is captured and imprisoned to wait until a certain execution. However, Peter is miraculously released by glowing angels. He escapes unhurt. These two men have their stories told just verses apart, yet such different endings. It begs the question, does God love one more than the other? Is He blessing one and cursing one, or is something else we cannot see with our physical eyes happening? Can there be life through death? Does joy really come in the morning? Jesus is a good one to handle these questions. Out of His dark night of white hot suffering and the following coldness of death comes the radiance of the resurrection morning. Talk about joy coming in the morning! So possibly these sufferings my friend is living through and the seeming incongruence between the treatment of James and Peter are merely a planting. A laying down in the earth of precious seeds. Seeds that will not be wasted but simply need some time to understand why they are there.

Purpose with peace

                     The older one is leaning over the younger, teaching her letters and numbers……feeling so helpful and important. She is being so patient and understanding and I feel a pang of remorse that I do not sound like that more often.  There is also this, this understanding of how they both feel. The oldest needing this moment of being needed, the younger passively accepting the “help”.  There is the familiar voice that I now realize I have lived with most of my days, a voice of shame. A voice that drives me to feverish busyness and at the same time shuts me down to an almost comatose state. This state Kathleen Norris and monks of old called acedia.  Not quite depression, but acedia is defined as a state of restlessness and an inability to either work or pray. When this comes upon me I feel desperation to do meaningful work, to make a difference, to give back not just take, and simultaneously all that I do seems pointless. It has been done better by someone else; it will just have to be done again tomorrow.  Often this leads me to taking on commitments and becoming busy to assuage a vague feeling of guilt and in reality accomplishing very little of real worth. There is a better way, a way to walk in peace and purpose.  For me it has involved several steps, and it is a continual process I have to circle back to.

1.       Give thanks. For everything, be specific.

2.       Live in the moment, not the big picture. We do not know the big picture, all we have is this moment and He is the only One who sees where all this is headed.

3.       Do the thing in front of me: laundry, dishes, change a diaper, read a book to an unhappy child.

4.      Do something creative. Even as simple as baking a new dessert, writing down thoughts, read a good book, go for a walk.

5.       Do something for someone else: make a call, write a letter, bring a meal.

Take, O Lord, and receive my entire liberty,
my memory, my understanding and my whole will.
All that I am and all that I possess You have given me.
I surrender it all to You
to be disposed of according to Your will.
Give me only Your love and Your grace;
with these I will be rich enough, and will desire nothing more.

~St. Ignatius of Loyola

Wounds

Holiness is wholeness...it is the Lord picking up all the pieces of ourselves that have been chipped away by other's sin against us and our own sin against others and our own selves. It is making us into our true selves that He planned for us to reflect His glory. These broken pieces of ours are sharp and jagged, cutting those that draw near to us. We inflict pain, draw blood, leave scars in the very same way it has been done to us and the cycle continues. But praise be to God....He sent His perfect One, His only One, His beloved One. This obedient One was broken as well. Fullness of God stooping low to indwell humanity, to save humanity. Body inflicted with hunger and exhaustion, emotions feeling the soreness of broken relationships, misunderstandings at every level.

Cruelness of rejection and physical abuse to the point of a broken death. Blood spilling. This wounded One does not wound. In the places that He was cut deep flows out the very healing we are all dying for. The fruit of His suffering in some mysterious, wild way heals us. Frees us. Picks up all the lost parts of us and gently places them back together. In this way the paradox of the Gospel saves us. 

                           " For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things.....making peace by the blood of His cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, He has now reconciled in His body of flesh by His death"      Colossians 1: 20-21

                        " Surely He took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered Him punished by God, stricken by Him and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed."

   Isaiah 53:4-5

So go to the stricken, risen One. Know your worth in His eyes. Not just the worth of getting you to Heaven or getting you signed up to help get everyone else to Heaven. Know the worth of your wholeness, your peace. That He cares deeply about your reconciliation....with Himself and with all others. 

Small Places

     How I crave the approval of man, the recognition of my spirituality, the significance of measured, noticed results. How I love to be spoken highly of!
But how to live in a way that I long to see Him spoken highly of? That I care about His fame more than my own, that I am content to work in small, dim places if it means the light of His pleasure and smile?

" It seems to me its about living each moment doing the smallest of things not caring that no one takes much notice of them. When you live in Christ, you live it for Him. He's the all we really need" Katherine at evlogiaonline.com

 This also means to me to not be ashamed of my weakness, crisis', neediness. These are simply revealing to me and the world the true state of my soul and it drives me straight to Him. That His power is made perfect in weakness. There is a little Psalm I have been pondering the last few weeks.I keep going back to it and turning it over in my mind, feeling that there is something very important in this for me to grasp.
               
                   " O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me" Psalm 103

Peace comes when I see myself for who I really am. When I quietly accept and surrender to the work He has given me, when I quiet my soul and rest against Him, allowing Him to work out the details and produce results. So I give thanks for these small places.

Cast Thy Burden

"cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain Thee" Ps. 25:22

The precept to avoid anxious care is earnestly inculcated by our Saviour, again and again, it is reiterated by the apostles and it is one which cannot be neglected without involving transgression, for the very essence of anxious care is the imagining we are wiser than God, and the thrusting ourselves into HIs place to do for HIm that which He has undertaken to do for us.........want of confidence in God leads us to wander far from HIm......."Thou wilt keep in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because He trusteth in Thee" Spurgeon 

Trust is the place that peace and joy come from...not having a job, or health. Trust in the goodness and ableness of our Father to meet our needs, to care for us, to see what we cannot see. SO stop resisting this O blasphemous heart. you have a good Father that sees your cares and knows them better then you. Look forward with expectation how He will meet your needs, even if its manna from the sky or ravens swooping low. He delights to do what no other can do.

A Wide Space

" You are legalistic" Those were the words spoken by my husband this morning and they have echoed in my mind and bounced around the walls of my heart all day. At first the reaction was denial....." That cant be....I know I can't earn His love, I know I can never achieve perfection on my own" Yet why do I try so hard to? There seems to be some kind of disconnect from my head to my heart...I know so much ..I do and live so little. I long to walk in freedom and grace and offer that to others, yet I am so tightly wound, trying to hard to hold it all together, afraid to drop one ball only to watch the whole show come pounding down around my ears. And is this not what I'm offering those closest to me as I view them as extensions of me. If my husband and children are not holding it all together, then their mess becomes mine. This results in harshness, anger , frustration, ending in guilt and remorse.
All Jesus gives me is a wide place "I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy; I came that hey might have life and might have it more abundantly" John 10: 10-11
"From my distress I called upon the Lord; the Lord answered me and set me in a large place" Psalm 118:5
He does not micromanage and dictate my life but He invites me to freedom and true life, a life found only in Him, only when I walk through Him as a door. And the only way I can fit through the door is to leave all my efforts and idols and SELF. So yes, I am a recovering legalistic Pharisee. I often leave that wide space and lock myself back in my cell and insist that everyone join me.....and its only when I realize He is the one with the key and He has forever freed me and He is pleased with me and He delights in me, that my heart sighs with relief. My stomach unclenches, He brings the life and He will bring that life to others as it spills out of my own freedom, not my striving.

Let there be light

I was thinking this morning that there are two types of anxiety: anxiety over what is real ( Jonny losing his job) and anxiety over what is not real ( I'm dying of cancer). The real source of anxiety is here and your looking it in the face-yet the Lord can bring such a sweet sense of peace, and hope and even joy in the midst of very real darkness. However, with the not so real anxiety-it is shifting shadows-never looking you square in the face. Always slipping out of the way when the light comes on or you try to call it by its real name. And there is no peace, no hope and no joy to get through it because its not really there. The only solution is to switch on the light.

" God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all " 1John 1:5
" Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shift due to change" James 1:16-17
" I am the light of the world, he who follows Me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life" John 8:12

So, very plainly, where He is there can be no darkness, no shadows. If its a good gift and brings light its from Him....if it shifts  about and resembles darkness it is not from Him.

Why is it I am falling back into the shadows so often? The shadows of fear, anxiety, and crushing  worry? Why cant I just keep up with Him? Stay close and abide and bask in the warmth of His all embracing, all illuminating, joy producing light? I cant hang on to Him and hang onto my fears. I cant have Him and control over my life, my body, my finances. I have to lift hands up, palms open. Offer the days of my life to Him-the minutes and hours I have left to live-the provision, the manna, the daily bread to live out those days. I only have to surrender and receive. Surrender my clinging, tight-fisted control for His freedom. Give up dark brooding unrest for His peace, give up my discontent and grumbling for His joy.
Lord, let Your light shine!