Rock

Happy almost Easter.

Sorry about the lack of enthusiasm there. In addition to trying to remove the exclamation point from my life (because I am developing a sincere dislike for people, especially former speakers, who use exclamation points in a book) I'm just not excited. You see, for me, Easter last year was a big deal. Big. Huge. It was the end of a terrible season in my life. I want to say that Easter Sunday that Sunday was an epic experience, where light flooded back into my life and all the past wrongs that had ever happened were set right. That'd be a lie, so I'll try to avoid it.

But the point was that I could talk to God again. I could pray, and not in the angry, despairing, fearful, useless words that had defined my life before. I always get a little creeped out by mystics- I'm not really sure what to do with people who love God that much and in that way- but the easiest analogy is like getting back together with someone after you've had a fight. You know, you can talk again and each person forgives and forgets enough to function together. You put away the things that you argued about in the first place and focus on the reasons why you like being around the person. It's not a lie, per se, you're just willing to love the other person while they work on fixing the things that made you angry.

Well, God's not going to change, so guess who needs to fix themselves in this argument?

The really frustrating thing is that a year later, I'm still the same. Well, I'm a little different. The outside pain that I wouldn't let myself feel is creeping in. And I can't sit down in front of God and say that I've failed to hear the cry of the needy, because I have. I think I've been under the impression that hearing is enough. Goodness knows it's not. Imagine if God had only heard the cry of the Israelites in Egypt.

But doing is difficult. It's this rock in between me and God right now, because I'm not willing to do. But what do you do about the things that stab your heart? How do I do anything to help the more than 4. million. Palestinian refugees? Crying over their stories is not enough, but inviting them to live in my dorm room that has seceded from the residence hall isn't particularly reasonable. What do you do about abusive parents? Abusive boyfriends? You can't catch them all. How do you get a world that can feed every one of its citizens to wake up and realize that global hunger needs to be something in our shameful past? My heart breaks over the big things, the things that I have minimal control over. What are you going to do? You gonna beat up everybody?

But there must be something I can do, something beyond the small things I do.

And I'm really afraid there is.

You see, I don't want to go to the cross. I don't want to follow Christ to the cross on Friday, because I know that I've got my own cross that I have to pick up, my own mission for the redemption of humanity that no one else is going to do. And I don't know what it is yet, but the potential scale of it scares me to death. I can see the cross. And I don't want it.

See, I'm one of those people who said a long time ago that I'd follow You, Lord, wherever you lead. And I'm one of those people that says now, not there. I'll follow you anywhere but there. And there. OK, and maybe there too. Oh, and there's definitely out. Here, I've got this sharpie, how about I just mark off sections of the world that we won't go to, people we won't talk to, things we won't do, because I don't want to go there, no matter who's leading me there. And I know that I'm doing this. And I don't want to fix it.

Give me a church. Stick me in tower for another three years of education. Keep me in middle class America. Surely there's enough of a field there for me. And there is, I don't mean to knock anyone's calling, but there's also many other places that I am unwilling to go. I can't resolve this with God. One of us has to change. I'm pretty sure I know which one of us it'll be too. So I'm waiting on something to break, because I know it's coming. I'm sure it'll come at probably the most inopportune moment, but how do I fix this? How do you break your own arm? Because that's what bending on this is like for me. It's a beat down of a vital part of my pride, my fear and my humanity.

It's hard to see how far you've grown when you've shrunk.