when even the crazy sexists are okay in my book

This story certainly isn't new.  Most of it has been told, in one way or another, many times over the past few years as I make my way through the blessings and the fall-out of a liberal arts education.  I'm a work in progress, and this is my story as I currently understand it.  May God continue to increase my understanding of His wisdom and His Way.

I.

I had all the answers; he had none of the answers.  Our friendship was the perfect storm; while I needed certainty and could not tolerate the gray areas of life, he made it his personal mission to expose the gaps in my ideological armor.  Ultimately, the friction between us in this area was one of many irreconcilable differences between us that played a part in leading to the darkest years of my life.  For a year and a half we did not speak.  In the meantime, I grew up, becoming an adult in a fuller sense of the term, and then we were friends again.  This time I had lost my answers.  I was floating free, embracing doubt as my only truth.

II.

In many ways, I've lived a little bit of everywhere.  From growing up in America's heartland to attending graduate school in the far reaches of the Pacific Northwest to my first "real job" in the heart of the South, I have seen it all.  Raised under a metaphorical rock and entirely pop-culture illiterate, I moved from podunk South Dakota to a liberal city where the hippie bus is said to have broken down in the '60's to a conservative southern town on the edge of nowhere.  It was ideological whiplash, and I began feeling a bit like a chameleon.  By the time I arrived at the edge of nowhere just over a year ago, I was an expert at fitting in with most anyone, and yet I fit in with no one.  I was floating free, entirely confused and increasingly alone.

III.

I distinctly remember those first few months in Bellingham.  Coming off of eight months living at home with my parents and embracing my childhood faith and mindset, I was as "on fire" for God as they come.  I wanted desperately to show my new friends Christ and be a light in a dark place.

I kinda failed.

I mean, I was definitely different.  Looking back, part of me can't believe they were willing to be friends with me.  I was as "home-school kid" as you can get without actually being home schooled.  The thing is, though, I've always been a people pleaser with a relentless desire for knowledge and experience and an insatiable need to fit in.  By the time I left Bellingham, my faith was more secure and my ideological leanings more liberal.

The best part?  I was leaving for the very conservative South.

IV.

I thought I had finally found myself.  As I lived among people I came to love like family, I was increasingly confident in my somewhat differing opinions.  Maybe, just maybe, I was shedding my chameleon skin.  Life was simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting always being the disagreeing one.  As I followed blogs, read books, and formed an opinion on all of the issues, I slowly realized that my life was falling apart from the inside out.  I was angry.  In needing to have an opinion on all of the things, I was unable to tolerate difference.  I held onto my new-found certainty tightly, afraid to lose it.

And then God stepped in.  Through a few well-timed sermon podcasts from a far-away church, through a well-timed book that spoke to my true identity in Christ, through friends that modeled a Christ-like love, and through learning from more than a couple mistakes, I began to realize my need to let go of my anger.  More than that, I realized that my opinions on all of the things had taken the place of my relationship with Jesus.  I could get disgruntled about literal readings of 1Timothy 2 with the best of them, but I had forgotten to love the God who inspired those words.  I was so worried about what God would and wouldn't allow me to do that I was paralyzed from following Him in the day-to-day.

V.

I'm one confused girl.  I tend to rebel against rules and authority figures.  I hate being told what to do, and I hate being told "no."  I tend to want to trust that people will embrace things like sobriety and self control and modesty of their own volition rather than through the imposition of boundaries and rules.  I tend toward a post-modern understanding of the world, where knowing Truth is illusive, at least from our limited perspective.  I tend toward automatically disagreeing with absolute statements, and overly Americanized understandings of history and our place in the world irritate me.  All of these things make moving in "Bible-belt" social circles a challenging endeavor.  Church is often emotionally, mentally, and even spiritually challenging for me.  Sometimes I protect myself by checking out, other times I am deeply hurt, other times I react with anger.

The thing of it is, though, I know that I'm wrong about most things.  My perspective is hopelessly limited.  I am learning to live honestly and with love and grace and peace toward those whose opinions differ, even if I find those opinions repugnant.  And I'm learning that life is good when I'm not constantly at war.

VI.

Small group was coming, and the previous week had been entirely too difficult for me.  I had the day off work and I was bored out of my mind, so I decided to head over toward small group six hours early.  I sat in Dunkin Donuts for a couple hours before making my way to the public library.  I read a book, I wrote in my journal, I made some phone calls.  And as the slow pace of the afternoon began to restore my sense of peace, I felt compelled to pray.  I prayed for my sanity and thanked God for His presence, even when we miss it.  I prayed for the people that I would see that evening and the people who wouldn't be there, for all of the groups of believers meeting around the county that night.  I prayed that we would be receptive to the Holy Spirit, and that He would guard us from pride and anger.

Nothing big happened.  But pride and anger and restlessness also didn't happen.  God was with me, and I knew it.  All through that evening He was there, giving me grace.  That wasn't the beginning and it certainly isn't the end, but it was one moment in my journey of sanctification, one beautiful example of what it means for me to follow Christ in the mundane.

Praise be to His name.

all the intersections

The past month has been a season of silence.  I've made an attempt to silence myself, no longer trusting my voice.  I have shied away from leadership in my church or small group, from blogging about anything but my silence, from speaking from anger.  I haven't been perfect, but this has been a season of striving toward love and peace in all things.  There have been moments when the silence threatens to break and I am bursting at the seams with restless energy, moments when the silence does break and I speak (and often come to regret it), moments when God speaks through me and the silence transforms into a holy whisper.  These are the moments of clarity, when my silence becomes more than a self-imposed discipline, when it becomes clear that silence must be a continual, life-time practice.

~~~

It was a morning of madness, as I have come to think of it.  I had a bad feeling going into it, a feeling of dread overcame me and I didn't know why.  I should have prayed then and there, but I figured it was just typical Marilee emotions: flighty and unpredictable.

My sense of foreboding proved well-founded.  All hell broke loose.  Yelling, tears, accusations flew as they tore each other apart.  I pretended to not be there, pretending to check my email in a flurry of flustered awkwardness.

And then, as quickly as the storm blew in, it departed, leaving me to observe its painful destruction.  I sent out a desperate text message, a dear friend responded telling me she was praying.  And in the minutes that followed, God gave me the opportunity to speak words of hope and peace to a fractured soul, to tell her that I chose no sides, that I was praying for her, and that I knew how painful this must be for her.  She cried, and my soul wept with her, for the hopeless pain she carries day after day, for her loneliness and alienation, for the destruction she leaves in the wake of pain she carries.  As I gently touched her shoulder, I prayed desperately for peace for her.  For forgiveness in this place where forgiveness is so scarce a commodity.  For tenderheartedness when human nature seeks only its own advancement.  For love to break through when anger takes its wicked course.

I prayed for salvation.  For deliverance.  For an end to all this madness.

And God spoke to my heart that I was just in the right place.  Not taking sides, not giving advice.  Just offering love, peace, and hope.  And standing in the gap, interceding on her behalf and on her enemy's behalf.  Because my love must have no boundaries.

~~~

This particular Bible study was immediately and painfully different than the others.  The alone-in-a-crowd feeling was back and I shrunk into my corner and read a novel, not knowing how to engage a room full of friendly strangers.  My social awkwardness was rearing its ugly head and I hated it.  The room was fuller than it had been before and yet I felt alone.  I had come with so much on my heart, so much that God had spoken to me about the passage we were studying.  I was eager for the small talk to end and the study to begin.

And as quickly as it began, it derailed.  Suddenly we were sprinting full-speed down a rabbit trail that had little to do with the matter at hand.  The discussion was good, but I didn't agree with much of it and didn't know how to express my disagreement.  I remained largely silent, but the silence was a struggle.  I silently mourned the loss of the chance to talk about my earlier discovery.  I had thought it so important, and the opportunity was gone.

And in that moment of frustration and disappointment, God spoke to my heart: Daughter, your desire to speak of that which you know is not always from me.  Learn to be silent, to value the words of others above your own, to bring only mercy, compassion, and love to the table.  Learn to let Me speak through you, or don't speak at all.

~~~

James 1:19-21 (The Message)
Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear.  God's righteousness doesn't grow from human anger.  So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage.  In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.

this is the season of silence

These are the days of falling words, of silence, of void.
This is the season of reflection, of serene confusion, of quiet loneliness.
These are the hours for strains of music, for poetry, for a hot mocha and a Georgian sunset.
These are the times I find myself with little I want to say and nothing I want to be.
These are the moments of sorrow and of peace and of joy all mixed together in beautiful oneness.

***

I am finding a simple beauty in just being.  As I shed the cynicism of too much education and learn to see life through a clearer and simpler lens, I wonder how to reconcile myself to graduate school: that time I loved, that time of stretching, that time of becoming and of growth.  Because if it wasn't all good, it wasn't all bad either.

It is as if in attaining an education I found and lost myself all at the same time.  And now, as I sift through the wreckage of the colliding persons I could or should be, I find myself wondering where this is all headed.

As I learn to choose love over anger, patience over indignation, peace over violence, God over self, wisdom over knowledge, I wonder what to do with the mind I gained.  How to serve God in this world.  How to find God in the first place.

***

The internet is full of anger.  Fear.  Cynicism.  Righteous indignation.  Right people.  Wrong people.  A multiplicity of grays.  There was a time when I wanted to be a part of that community.

And now I don't.

Now I want to create.  I want to dance and to sing and to write newness and life into my world.  I want to be part of the solution, not a teller of doom.

***

These are the days of words both old and new, words that speak hope and life and peace.

This is the season for playing a part in God's story of redemption.

The time is now.