I want an explosion.
My best friend once showed me something her roommate had written and it started out like that: I want an explosion. It was wonderful. Not happy, uplifting, let's-resolve-all-our-problems-by-writing-something-worthy-only-of-a-Hallmark-card-all-the-while-complaining-about-how-it-sounds-cheesy, but angry and violent and crude and edgy and wonderful. Everything I'm not. Mozart to my Salieri. And it made me so mad that she could say something like that and have it come out so powerful and yet disregardful of the power, just expression and angst. Everything sharp and intense in the world and none of its pathetic fluff. There's a chunk of me that wants to be like that, sarcastic defense mechanism and all. I don't want to be round anymore. I don't want to nice or kind. I don't want to be pathetically good, like Marius and Cosette or Lucie and Charles. I want passion. I want emotion. I want an explosion.
That's a chorus to my life right now. The tire on the family van blows. I don't want to sit calmly by, trusting that it'll work out. I want to yell at the world, or at least cry, react in some way so that life knows that it's not OK to do this to me on my way back to school. I did scream at the next person who made me mad. I had to let him know that it's not fine to act like helping someone move in is the hardest thing you've ever done in your life and I had to let him know that acting like a complete and total (insert your favorite insult here) is not acceptable. And I'm not really up for sitting by as friend lets an idiot boy ruin her days and I'm not really happy to let another friend be tortured by the memory of her best friend and the worry of how to deal with such a rejection. Dear friends, I want to fix your problems. I don't want to hear you complain about them. I've listened for long enough- let's take a stand. Let's take on the world today. We need an explosion.
Because it's not fine to be mistreated, for anyone. It's not fine to live your life halfway, when it's been paid for so you can live it fully and it's not fine to let anything or anyone stop you from being everything you're meant to be. This is not an uplifting statement. This is pretty much a command. Stand up for yourself. Make a difference in your life so you can make a difference in someone else's life so this whole stupid, warring, broken, painful world can get fixed. Do it so my life will be better. When this world is whole, there's not going to be anymore troubles. Yes, and I know that I don't have any problems in my life. I know the meaning of the word blessed and I'm ready to want to live like I am. I know that my world is just a bed of roses and that I should be delighted for the air that I breathe and the water that I drink and the food that I eat. (Hey, world? Maybe you didn't notice, but when you laid down this bed, you left the thorns sticking up. Thanks for the warning.) So while I know that there's no reason to rock the boat, I want to cause a little commotion. I want to cause an explosion.
I'm probably not mad at you. I probably just need to sit down and chill and think a little before I just blow up for all the world to see. But I don't want to sit down and I don't want to chill. Waiting just lets it shrink enough to fit it back in the bottle until the next person shakes it without the lid on. I just need to yell, get it all out- do I even know where this anger is coming from? No. Yes. Probably. And that makes me madder, that I could fix it, I'm just too expletive lazy and too expletive apathetic to make it better. But I don't want to go back to the status quo. I don't want to go back to that happy land of not seeing what's around me just so I pretend that everything's all right. It's not fine. And life needs to know that. We need to know that. We need to fix things. It's not acceptable to fight in the family of God. It's not acceptable to be His on Sunday mornings and your own for the rest of the week. It's not OK to talk about people behind their backs, or in Facebook statuses, or anywhere else, except to their face so things can get fixed. Don't be afraid of going through the mess. The bitter comes before the sweet. If I don't break my heart then things will just get worse. You can't just patch it and pretend that makes it whole. One day, that patch is going to be just as bad as the crack in the first place and then, my friends, you'll want an explosion.
I don't want to go to church and feel like I'm reading between the lines of the sermon- I don't need politics from the pulpit. It is hard enough for me to come back to a God who won't talk to me, ignoring the fact that I'm probably not listening, and a God that lets His creation suffer, ignoring every explanation I have of that suffering, and a God that stopped fitting in my temple, ignoring the fact that He could never have even begun to fit in there in the first place. It's hard enough for me to sit there and pretend like listening to people drone the call to worship and the prayer is fine, pretend like I don't want someone to be moved by something, to show some emotion, to let me know that they're not OK either, but that God is fixing that and is living and is real and in their lives. I don't need a ritual. I don't need a remembrance ceremony. I need You here and now and alive and well and I need You to remind me of why I let myself get into this mess we call Your church in the first place. I need You to go with me into every part of my life, to stop me from being what You don't want me to be, to be my shelter, my shield, my guide, my words, my passion, my energy, my life, because I'm obviously not capable of making You be that on my own. My worth to You in public is what I am in private and I am a mess by myself. God, I wanted to shout You to the nations, not blare out a few out of tune notes before busting my lip. I want to be right, I want to be holy, I want to be Yours. And right now, I think to be Yours, I need an explosion.
Somewhere along the way, I'll realize that the world takes a lot of crap from me, as do you, dear reader. I'll realize that who I am in the world pales in comparison to who I want to be and that my ideals are useless unless acted on. I'll realize that my hypocrisy can only go so far before I must fix it and I'll realize that there are many things I should want before I want an explosion.
No comments:
Post a Comment