wghtofglry's Xanga

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 06:41:32 GMT

Growing up, our house was almost always in a state of chaos. Whenever there was an unexpected knock on the door we would leap up, rush around picking up dishes, clothes, and general debris before opening the door . There were times when the mess was so overwhelming we would keep very quiet until the officious party gave up and went away.

We made the usual remarks to make ourselves feel better; “People with clean houses are neurotic or uptight". One of my siblings actually said, “I have loftier things to think about than housework”. We weren't very good bohemians, secretly, we were ashamed. Some people were just born having it all together and we weren't them.

It wasn't easy living that way. Things were always lost. We always had undone chores hanging over our heads, having people over was a big undertaking so we did it at little as possible. And worst of all, there was no beauty.

Later, I saw so many parallels in the way I grew up and the person I had become; an embarrassing mess. Excuses were so much easier to make than progress toward an overwhelming goal. It seemed easier to hide what I was than to change. But I was tired of hiding.

Would God give me the longing to be a better person and not the power to attain it? It didn't seem like him. Fortunately, I was naive enough to ask God to change me, hoping beyond hope that it was possible.

I look back and see that the impossible has been wrought in me. I'm very far from what I should be, but I'm not what I was. There is hope for the future; the transformation will one day be complete. Meanwhile, the journey, with all its struggles, disappointments, setbacks, and confusion is filled with a sense of wonder. What else is possible with me? As I grow older there is the temptation to say, good enough. I'm afraid of settling for good enough. God is teaching me never to settle. It doesn't make for an easy life, but definitely a life worth living.

Joshua 1:3, 9

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 03:48:56 GMT

I used to believe my emotions.

Whatever emotion I was feeling at a time, I believed I was feeling it because it was reflecting the truth. I didn't know emotions lied. If a situation felt hopeless, it was because there was no hope. If I felt useless, It was because I was worthless. If God felt far away, it was because he was unreachable. If I felt he couldn't really love one such as me, it was because I was unlovable. I know better now, but sometimes I'm still caught off guard.

The battle with our emotions is interwoven so seamlessly in our daily lives that we forget that there is a battle. How we feel may seem like a small thing, but it's the small things that make up the whole pattern of a life. The emotions will pass, but what we did with them will not always. It takes courage to fight against our emotions. It's easier to wallow in them than to place ourselves in the realm of our higher selves. Will I do the right thing even if I don't feel like it? Is my faith strong enough to overcome what I'm feeling?

C.S. Lewis summed it up best when, speaking as the demon Screwtape to his nephew on how to trip us up, said, " Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys".

I came to realize I was a coward. I didn't like to do things that cost me. I thought that to be reduced to doing a thing because I had to do it was to live a defeated life. I see now that this is the stuff heroes are made of. I would like to be the hero of my story that I may please my Father, but without the daily battle, without the pain, and without the discipline—that isn't very realistic. Flannery O'Connor wrote, "What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think it is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross."

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 23:41:48 GMT

My purse was stolen yesterday. After a brief tug-of-war the straps finally broke and the thief ran off with my purse. I yelled out to him to at least give me back my car keys. Surprisingly, he paused for a moment to look into the jumble of my purse, realized it would take much too long to find them and sped away. It sounds scary, but strangely it wasn't, very frustrating, yes.

I was in the Fashion District (a very loose term) in downtown L.A.. It consists of a multitude of little shops packed closely together that sell cheap unique, trendy clothing, fabrics and shoes. I go looking for that thing so unique nobody wants so it ends up in a trashy bin. Not having much money forced me to learn to be creative with other people's discards.

In the shock of the theft what amazed me is that all I could think of is how good God is to me, I felt a warm comfort that I was not alone. I saw the kindness of usually suspicious Jewish, Iranian, Asian, and Hispanic shop owners who graciously allowed me to make toll calls on their telephones and had kind words to say. After Octavio met me with an extra set of car keys, we had a very pleasant conversation with the usually hardened LAPD police officers who took the police report. They said it was a relief for them to get away from South-Central for a while and be around nice people. Of course Octavio brought up that he had been a chaplain for the Sheriffs at one time. By the time they left one of them joked that it was too bad that my tragedy made them so happy for a brief time.

Later, we went to dinner and to buy some replacements for some of the items in my purse. Then we went to a get-together our daughter was having at her house for some of her friends (We were invited!). Everyone was very entertained by my story. I was able to repeat that all the guy took was just stuff-our lives are more than stuff. Only God can do that! He puts everything into perspective. He makes good things come out of bad.

I was again reminded we live in a broken world, (as Lewis puts it, “We live in enemy occupied territory”). It's all part of the war I'm engaged in. It is what I'm here for; to make it a better place and to bring those who have been taken hostage in.

This is only temporary.

Matthew 6:19,20 John 16:33

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Sat, 10 Sep 2005 22:30:11 GMT

Octavio- talking to a bouncer at The Knitting Factory in Hollywood after a friend's concert recently.

My husband, Octavio, has always had a way with people. One of the first things I noticed about him was that he seemed to know everybody. Walking down the corridor of the mall where we met, people would run out of the stores and call out to him, “Hi Octavio”, “How's it going Octavio?”. I thought, " Who is this guy?". While we were out to dinner on one of our first dates I left the table for a brief moment. When I came back he had three of the surrounding tables engaged in conversation, (Angelenos were not known for talking to strangers). “How does he do that?”.

After we were married he would take the bus to work so I could have the use of our car. Soon after, he started bringing home his “bus” friends. Later, it was his work, then church friends. Now he brings home his Starbucks friends.

I admire that quality in him. There was a time I was saddened that I wasn't like him. I would try to force myself to be more extroverted, but just felt foolish. How could someone like me ever be useful? I have since learned to accept and even to love my bent. I realized that to do otherwise was to complain to God about how He had made me.

God seems to enjoy taking us beyond the limits of the imagination. All my jobs and my work at church have involved leading, motivating, and teaching people—I, the recluse-- the introvert. Had I gone by my strengths or by what would seem logical for me I would never have ended up doing the things I've done and am doing. Jesus told a crippled man to rise up and walk. It would seem cruel to ask someone to do the impossible, were it not that He meant to work the impossible in him.

Still, there are times when I grieve that I am not further along in my development than I am. I need to remind myself that God is not limited by my weaknesses, my circumstances, or my past in making me what He wants me to be . He can weave something beautiful out of the shreds of my mere humanity.

God always seems to be telling us not to behave as “mere men". It is not to taunt us but to reveal to us the Possibilities.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 03:34:25 GMT

My mind had been hurdling through meaningless space with nothing to hold on to. It was a horror to contemplate existence with no meaning. I was in torment. There was a constant fear that I was slipping into madness.

Then Soundness and Clarity came.

When I first encountered God, I recall telling Him, “ If you are there, you will have to hold on to me. I will not lie to myself, I need a real God or nothing at all.”

Only a few months into my encounter with God I was sitting in a theater in Hollywood watching Woody Allen's Interiors. The movie fueled the familiar torment of meaninglessness. I felt I was again fighting madness. I thought I had been fooling myself, this God thing hadn't been real. Out of nowhere, I suddenly knew I was under a kind of attack-- the raging stopped. I knew nothing yet about spiritual battles, dark forces, or the voice of God. Yet, there it was.

There was no denying His presence, it was palpable. I learned to expect to hear him answer when I called out to him. I then became so sure of his goodness, when he seemingly hadn't answered, I knew to wait. I realized nothing or no one, not even my own weakness, could hinder His purpose for my life—God was with me.

C.S. Lewis said those who follow God are accused of being satisfied with too little. On the contrary, it is those who don't seek Him who are satisfied with mere stuff.

Am I being mystical? A sterile religion frightens me. It is a monstrosity, just as any walking dead thing would be. It would never have been enough.

I don't want to become so sophisticated that I forget what happened over two thousand years ago. God, in form of a man, walked the earth and created a bridge between heaven and earth.

Monday, August 01, 2005

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 05:36:44 GMT

My mother had been kneeling, digging in the strip of soil by the side of our duplex. She was a beautiful woman. She was a very practical woman. I had been playing beside her. It surprised me when she held out her cupped hand filled with dirt and asked me to smell it. It had a clean, earthy, loamy smell. She said it reminded her of Guadalajara, her home state—it smelled of damp earth. I was transported by something so ordinary. That was a rare thing for me.

I used to pride myself that I rarely cried. I had steeled myself against sentimentality. In the first year of my encounter with God I made up for all the dry years. I bawled constantly. With each new season I bawled at the music played at church. Suddenly, it meant something. Easter meant something, Christmas meant something. Everything meant something.

More remarkably, I was able to be transported again by ordinary things. Sitting for a moment with gratitude on the front porch steps when I got the morning paper. Sizzling sausages and eggs for my family for breakfast. Bringing flowers in from my meager garden for our table. And, just simple bliss; a quiet corner, a good book, coffee/tea, and buttered toast with orange marmalade.

Too often, we are so preoccupied with the future or the past, we are unable to enjoy the present. Are there heartaches? Yes, but they can't or shouldn't negate the little pleasures.

Because God meets us in the present, there is holiness in the ordinary.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 04:15:33 GMT

There is always that Ache. It hovers at every occasion. In a moment with friends it fills the spaces between us. It lingers behind every piece of music. It's strong when my shortcomings glare at me. It's strong when I see our imperfect interactions with each other. It's strong when I am most content. It's always whispering, “This isn't it”

Why does it surprise that us the Unsettledness surrounds us? Why are we fooled into thinking that we can make peace with the Ache, or that relief will come if change our circumstances, or it's somewhere in the future, or that relief is just within our reach if we could just close our fingers around it? Were we not told we are strangers, aliens and sojourners? To try to make complete peace with this place is to side with the enemy who says, “This is all there is”.

There is a phrase in a song:

We are aging soldiers in an ancient war,

We drink our fill, yet we thirst for more,

If there is no heaven what is this hunger for?” .

We are lulled into forgetting that much of the war in our minds. It's not the great thing that we do for God, but who we are and where we are going that matters. Hebrews 11:13-16

Friday, July 08, 2005

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 04:22:09 GMT

I would like people to think I'm a better person than I am; smarter, more spiritual, more sophisticated, but when I come before God, we both know better.

I'm often tempted to defend my image or my dignity before others. In my saner moments I realize that the energy expended in posturing or defending myself is much better utilized in understanding, loving, and forgiving my fellow sojourners. We are all hurting. We all feel inadequate in one way or another. We are all trying to find Significance.

When all truth is revealed, what I really am will be revealed. What will survive is not my Dignity, but the measure of my love for others.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Tue, 21 Jun 2005 06:52:02 GMT

The Journey God invites us into is full, robust, weighty, and sinewy. It knocks you down, then demands you get up and take some more. There is nothing more frustrating yet fulfilling, heartbreaking yet passionate, mundane yet sublime. There is seeming disaster around the corner, yet the assurrance of surviving against all odds.

My life before my encounter with God had a feeling of unreality. It felt as if I wasn't a living being, but a character in an out-of-focus movie. God came in and invited me to step into Reality. Without Him I was made of too wispy of stuff to get into the rough and tumble of living a heroic life. He gave me substance. He is continuing to make me more solid so I can get into the fray and mix it up.

I complain sometimes when I have to get up again in the morning to face another day so far from Home with battles to be fought, weaknesses to overcome, and boredom to bear. In times like those I need to see Reality more clearly-- that place where I can see how intertwined what I do here is with my Home. There seems to be a veil that I have to continually brush away. The only remedy to counter this fuzziness I find in the words of God. Not when I read them as a have to, but as a must to survive. I am too wimpy to continue otherwise.

I don't want to face God ashamed of how I handled the part I was given. I want to face Him knowing I've fought the good fight. A little bloody, bruised and worse for wear, but able to say “I didn't go down”.

(John 16:33)

Friday, June 10, 2005

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 19:09:07 GMT

I was weird. What's worse, I knew I was weird. I couldn't stop myself. I was out of sync with everything around me. For some reason, at the time it seemed like it was the worst thing I could be. I was petrified that I would be found out. It's funny how there is a part of us that wants to be different, as long as we're different in the right way.

I didn't know how to laugh. I would see movies where people laughed until they cried and thought they were putting us on.

I remember laughing for the first time .

I was sitting at the kitchen table talking with my husband and his family (very witty people). I laughed. I mean, I really laughed; a deep, whole-body shaking laugh. I laughed so hard it hurt. I knew then something had happened to me. For the first time I knew what it felt like to be really happy.

I used to take myself much too seriously. I thought the things of God were gloomy when all along he wanted to teach me how to laugh--laughter not born out of superficiality, but of a calming realization that I am not the center of the universe. It doesn't all depend on me. I don't have to have it all figured out. It doesn't matter what others think of me. In forgetting myself I became more myself.

My journey here is sometimes confusing or seemingly complicated. The temptation is to look within. The answers are never there. I need to hear God. He is playing a song composed only for me. In following that music I will sometimes look very weird to my brothers and sisters. They mean well and I love them, but they are hearing the music composed for them. I pray for the courage to walk a different, unpopular or even (horrors) weird path. If I stumble, I can always laugh at myself. (John 21:20-22)