Bittersweet Brokenness

Oh, but God and I have a violent relationship at times. I'm amazed at my own hardheadedness and His stubborn refusal to let me stay there. It's volatile.

I am in the midst of persistently being taught a very tough lesson about chasing after people and things that don't satisfy. I've always struggled with this, but it seems as if it's not going to be tolerated any longer. He will snatch those things from me, forcefully if possible. It's tough love. As He takes these things, He keeps telling me over and over not to let my losses make me bitter. Which is like telling the rain to stop falling. I'm the champion of becoming embittered when things don't go my way. I don't know how to absorb loss, grieve, heal, and move on. I only know how to feel pain as intensely as it can be felt and then harden over. When I do this, I crack, and so the next time it happens it's every bit as bad as before. This is what makes me take the attitude of, fine, God, if this is how it feels every time I lose something, I'll just stop caring. I know that's not the right response, but soemtimes it feels like the only one. Tim Keller's sermon this past Sunday at church, which you all need to download from redeemer.com, was about the passage in Mark where Jesus is transfigured and then casts a demon out from a boy. Everyone was kind of panicking about the fact that the disciples couldn't exorcise the demon, but Peter, James, and John likely were not, because they had just had an experience of true worship. He talked about how the only way to keep our trials from making us bitter is to worship. And I see how recent experiences are forcing me to choose between worshipping Jesus or lashing out at Him in fierce anger. I can either decide that He's good and therefore circumstances are going to make me more like Him, or I can decide that He's out to get me and therefore not to be trusted. I know we all know what the right choice is, but it's not any easier to make.

Side Note: Ironically, a completely different part of the sermon popped up in a very real way as God and I argued last night. I asked Him for something, and then I added, almost spitefully, "If you can." And I heard Him say, "'If you can?'" And I immediately flashed back to that passage in Mark, where the father of the boy with the demon challenges Jesus in exactly the same way. Humbled, I repeated that man's words: "Lord, I do believe! Help me overcome my unbelief." Tell me now that Scripture isn't applicable to our lives today.

Abby Downing, the amazing woman who discipled me two years ago during my first summer at The Gathering Place (all together now: the what???), used to tell me all the time that brokenness is a good thing because it is through that that we become wholly consumed with and reliant upon Jesus. Brokenness is essentially the beginning pain of being severed from the things on which we place an excessive amount of importance. Anything I love more than Jesus is fair game to be taken from me because only then will I learn how to make Him my all in all. Knowing this truth has kept me from the edge of bitterness many times. I've learned to value brokenness for its power in purging the things that are not Jesus from my heart. I long to be only about Him all the time, and to value Him supremely in my life, but the way to that end is narrow, cloudy, and littered with the fragments of whatever else I would stubbornly cling to in my flesh. Sometimes I can feel my heart breaking within me, but I cry and pray and beg Jesus to bind it up and not let me take it back and try to soothe it with lesser joys. It's bittersweet.

Song In My Head: "Jealous Kind" - Jars of Clay. I pretty much wrote this entry just so I could sing the praises of this song. I haven't been real impressed with anything the Jars did after their first album, but I can usually appreciate one or two songs on each album they put out. Their most recent one, "Who We Are Instead," kind of baffled me a little bit. It seemed like they were trying to reinvent their sound, but instead of influence, what I heard was a lot of blatant copying. It makes out like O Brother Where Art Thou meets Simon, Garfunkel, and the Stone Temple Pilots (see "Trouble Is," "Lonely People," and "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet," respectively). Not their best effort. But one song has always impressed me musically, and yesterday, as I really listened to it, nailed me lyrically. "Jealous Kind." You all need to go get it and put it on repeat for an hour until you know all the lyrics. I'm only going to put one line in here because it's scary how much it speaks my heart. You know how sometimes you hear a song and you have to catch your breath because it resonates so strongly? It's as if that singer crawled inside your head, grabbed all your tangled, messy thoughts, and packaged them up into this poetry, this perfect representation of what you would say if you had the chops. Thank you, Jars of Clay, for this: "I'd rather feel the pain all too familiar/Than be broken by a Lover I don't understand."