I
chose the title of this post to be "Managing Grief" to expose the
fallacy of this statement and to also share about my experience of believing
this fallacy for the past 8 weeks. On this day two months ago, I boarded a
plane leaving Mexico for the third time in the prior 12 months, and probably
for my last time for the next 6 months at least. It was a truly, deeply
difficult and saddening day for me. I couldn't stop crying for the 5 hours
leading up to my plane taking off the ground. And I continued to cry for a good
hour on the flight in the air.
It
was such a difficult experience for me because I kept thinking "It's too
soon to say goodbye" - a thought most of us have at the passing of a loved
one and a reflection of the emotions we experience in that grief. Confusion at
trying to understand a timing that wasn't planned by our own mind and a longing
for the future days and memories that would no longer be shared and held with
that special loved one. I didn't recognize it at the time, but I was experiencing
grief in a way like I had never experienced before. And because I didn't know
how to identify it, I became consumed by it over the following weeks and dealt
with more pain than I ever could have imagined on that day leaving
Mexico.
For
the past two months my heart has grieved greatly. I have had nights after
nights of trying to understand God's timing in calling me back to the States
and trying to discover His purpose for me in this new season. I've spent many
hours crying and crying, dwelling in the pain I've experienced from leaving my
friends and faith family in Mexico to come back to the town I grew up in to
start all over again. Just as I began to call that crazy, overly crowded,
smelly, loud, uncomfortable city my "home", I was called back to my family's
house in this small town at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains,
completely clueless as to what I would do next and how I would MANAGE this new
season of my life.
But
here is that fallacy again. Believing that I could MANAGE. Manage my grief, my
reverse culture shock, my transition into living a completely different
lifestyle than what I had been experiencing for the past year.
A
couple of weeks ago, however, I had a really sweet night with Jesus after
hearing a great sermon at church. It was an intimate encounter with his freeing
truth that I desperately needed and longed for. I started to realize that I had
been getting caught up in viewing God’s will for me as something he wants me to
DO, rather than someone he wants me to BE. I had been so worried about my
future and what I will DO, that I had lost sight of letting the Lord teach me
about who he wants me to BE in this world. I had been beating myself up,
questioning the real value of the life I am living right now, what I am DOING,
and comparing it to what I DID in Mexico. I kept telling myself, and letting
myself believe, that because I am not “doing” ministry work anymore, my life isn’t
as fruitful for the Kingdom as when I was in Mexico. And because I haven’t been
“doing” really anything “of value,” I am not finding any fulfillment or joy
from this season I am currently in. I had focused so much more on the “doing”
rather than the “being”, and this great sadness and deep pain had overwhelmed
me as a result.
I
think this must be an experience other missionaries experience in seasons of
transition, especially if they have stepped away from the mission field for a
time. I think the enemy has been very cunning in his scheme to discourage and
attempt to bring down God’s people in this simple strategy of convincing us to
believe the lie that we aren’t “good enough”. I think I am not alone in this
difficult season that I have experienced lately, and so my hope with the rest
of this post is that someone else out there might be just as encouraged and
freed as I was by this truth that trumps over the enemy’s lies you might be
hearing right now.
One
of my all-time favorite books that I continue to pick up to read over and over
again is “Beautiful Outlaw” by John Eldgredge. If you have never read it, you
should stop reading my blog and go purchase this book and start reading it
immediately. When I first read this book, I couldn’t put it down. Well, I kept
putting it down because I would stop to reflect on what I was reading and would
journal my thoughts as I went through the book, but I read this book at any
moment I could find for a week straight. I carried it with me everywhere.
This
book exposes the personality of Jesus in a way like I had never experienced before.
I thought I was in love with Jesus before I opened this book, but those
emotions and love I had for him were only the beginning of this rushing fountain
that burst forth after seeing and experiencing Jesus in a more intimate way
through this book. I could go on for days about how great of a teaching tool
this book is and what freedom one can find in hearing these truths about our
loving Savior in a language like we haven’t really read before, but I won’t. I’ll
just share an excerpt from one of the chapters towards the end of the book that
I really believe reflects more eloquently what I was going through the past few
weeks in transitioning being back in the States and the truth of the freedom
that comes from Jesus to bring us victory over these lies and schemes to which we
might have fallen prey. In the final chapter, “Letting His Life Fill Yours”
John Eldgredge writes:
But let me tell you, few things can mess you up as
badly as trying to do your best. For the tender heart, the earnest heart, it is
so discouraging to give all you have
trying to do what you think Jesus would have you do, and find yourself falling
short, sabotaging your own efforts at every turn. Discouragement and shame
settle in like a long Seattle rain.
And this is what most Christians
experience as the Christian life: Try harder, feel worse.
I spoke of cunning traps that
replace the simple priority of loving Jesus. Here is a very surprising one- the
trap of integrity. What I mean by this is when our attention turns to
maintaining personal righteousness. This seems noble and right. Jesus told us
to keep his commands. But this can be a trap because most Christians interpret this as “Try harder; do your best.”
I find myself slipping back into
this weekly. A handful of symptoms tip me off. Exhaustion, for one. I’ll just
find myself wrung out again. Or an unnamed internal distress; my insides all
twisted up. Discouragement, that old nagging cloud of “I’m totally blowing it”
back over me. Irritation with needy people. These symptoms- and a host of
others- are the collateral damage that results from trying my best. They let me
know I’ve fallen back to thinking that to love Jesus is to give my very best in
living for him. And this is a sticky business. Because on the one hand, that’s
true- to love him is to obey. But out of what resources? From what fountain of
inner strength?
I thought it was my faithfulness. My
integrity. A willingness to sacrifice, to fight well. And of course we are
involved; of course our choices matter. But didn’t Jesus warn, “Apart from me
you can do nothing” (John 15:5)? The good news is this- you were never meant to
imitate Christ. Not if by that you mean doing your best to live as he did. It
ought to come as a great relief. Something inside me says, Well- that’s certainly been my experience. But without
understanding that I was never meant to
do my best, I feel awful about it.
In a biography of Christ which is
good in many aspects, I ran across this terrible snare. The author describes
the mission of Jesus as,
a spiritual revolution, the replacement of the
unreformed law of Moses by a New Testament based on love and neighborliness,
which could be embraced by all classes and all peoples… Life on earth was to be
devoted to a self-transformation in which each human soul strove to become as
like God as possible, a process made easier by the existence of his son made
man, thus facilitating imitation.
It
is an evil and crippling distortion. Jesus didn’t start the Peace Corps. The
secret to Christianity is something else altogether- the life of Christ in you.
Allowing his life to become your life. His revolution is not
self-transformation, but his transformation
of us, from the inside out, as we receive his life and allow him to live through
us. Vine, branch. Anything else is madness…….
God knew what he was doing
from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those
who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first
in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of
our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children
should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called
them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after
getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing
what he had begun. (Romans 8:29-30, The Message)
Jesus
stands first in the line of humanity that God is restoring. He is not merely a
model- that would be unreachable, crushing. He is the means by which God is restoring our humanity. That is what
Christianity is supposed to do to a person. This happens as his life invades
ours.
BUT HOW?
Love Jesus. Let him be himself with you. Allow his
life to fill yours.
Every
day, give him your life to be filled with his. This is part of what I now pray,
every morning:
Lord
Jesus, I give my life to you today, to live your life.
Of
course, this assumes that you are willing to surrender your self-determination.
You’ll find it hard to receive his life in any great measure if you as the
branch keep running off on your own, leaving the Vine behind in order to do
life as you please. Honestly, I think this is why we accept such a bland Jesus,
or a distant Jesus- he doesn’t intrude on our plans. I said earlier that one of
the most bizarre realities of the religious church is how loving Jesus is
considered optional, extra credit. The same sort of madness has crept in with
the idea that you can be a Christian and hold on to your self-determination.
And
how is that going, by the way?
If
you are not drawing your life from Jesus, it means you are trying to draw it
from some other source. I’ll guarantee you that it’s not working.
Jesus
was simply stating a fact of nature when he said, “Whoever wants to save his
life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it” (Matthew
16:25). Grab for life and it falls through your fingers like sand; give your
life away to God, and you will be a person his life can fill. If you want the
real deal, if you want to experience the lush, generous, unquenchable,
unstoppable life of Jesus in you and through you, then surrender your
self-determination.
Lord
Jesus, I give my life to you today, to live your life.
The
more you give the parts of your life over to Jesus, the more his life is able
to invade yours. The relief alone is worth the price.
