LIGHT

I kept working my way through Granny’s journals but I think at some point, my goal shifted ever so slightly.  As desperate as I felt to really know and understand her, I felt an almost equal desperation to know and understand the God she believed in.  Because just like with her writings on the Bible, the picture she painted of Him was radically different than anything I’d ever seen before.

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March 19

The key to loving others is loving yourself.

The problem is that most people don’t seem to have a clue as to what that really means.

Especially those who call themselves Christians.

Christians are taught to love God and love others.

Period.

Talking about anything else is to allow worldly psychobabble to invade the church.

And so we doom thousands upon thousands to a life of enslavement and misery.

Because we’re too afraid to actually think.

The truth is this —

NARCISSISTS DO NOT LOVE THEMSELVES.

THE SELF-OBSESSED DO NOT LOVE THEMSELVES.

PASSIVE/AGGRESSIVE PEOPLE DO NOT LOVE THEMSELVES.

And if all we can do is label everyone like that as nothing more than prideful sinners and wash our hands of them, then we fail.

We fail HARD.

The people we so blithely label are people who have been made that way.

Yes, they’ve also made choices to remain that way, but THAT is their sin and transgression.

The sin and transgression that caused them to develop into what they are is not on their heads.

And unless we stop ignoring the distinction, we do nothing but contribute to the pain and agony of countless numbers of people — including ourselves and all those we claim to love.

Love God so that you can learn how to love yourself.

Love yourself so that you can learn how to love others.

That’s how it must flow.

Anything else does not honor God nor does it truly reflect Him.

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The admittedly limited knowledge and exposure I had to anything having to do with God and the Bible were simply nothing like this.  My impression of people who said they believed in God was pretty much along the lines of ‘you can’t trust any of ‘em because they’re all hiding something.’  How many times had Christians made the news after being caught doing seriously shady things?

I hadn’t really thought about it before but I guess the two exceptions were Jack and Kathryn.  I just figured they were kind and sweet people who happened to go to church.  It never occurred to me to connect what they believed with how they acted.  Not for any failing on their part, mostly that they didn’t shove it in my face all the time.  Which is what I remember my mother accusing Granny of.  Except I couldn’t recall anything of the sort.  The more I considered it, the more I realized that Granny and Jack and Kathryn were quite similar in a lot of ways.  Huh.

Hang on now.  Granny was just as deceitful as the rest of them.  She never told anyone about the things in her journal.

My first inclination was to agree with my brain but then I was like, “How would I know?  Sure, she never wrote about telling anyone.  Doesn’t mean she didn’t.”  Sometimes I really needed to tell my brain to stuff it.

And even if she never talked to anyone about all the things she was feeling, did that necessarily mean it changed how she acted and how she treated people?  Couldn’t she still have been a real person without sharing her deepest, darkest secrets with anyone who would listen?

Anyway, she had wanted me to read her journals, so there was that.  I didn’t feel any closer to understanding why, but I knew I wanted to keep reading.

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April 24

Forgiveness.

Everyone wants to talk about forgiveness.

But precious few want to take the time and energy necessary to explain it.

And I know I keep saying this, but it seems especially true of Christians.

There’s nothing simple or easy about forgiveness.

And yes, I know the Bible makes it sound that way.

Forgive or God won’t forgive you.

The End.

I refuse to believe, though, that God didn’t realize exactly what He was asking of people like me.

I read somewhere that you absolutely cannot rush to the forgiveness stage without having worked through all the complexities of the emotion and feelings associated with your abuse.

Why does that never factor into any discussions surrounding forgiveness in any of the church groups or Bible studies I’ve attended?

It’s always just been, “God expects this of you, so obey Him.”

Boom.

It either doesn’t matter what we feel or all we want to do is talk about feelings to the point that it becomes about nothing else and moroseness sets in.
What is forgiveness anyway?

Well, I may be totally off here, but after decades of agonizing, studying, and meditating on what the Bible says about it, praying, thinking, talking, and listening, I think I’ve finally landed on something that at least makes sense to me.

Forgiveness is the deep soul and spirit acknowledgement that you are not the one to collect on the debt others owe you.

BECAUSE YOU CAN’T.

In order to actually be paid what you’re owed, the perpetrator would need to have the power to recreate the exact moment in time when they violated you.

They would need to be able to put you in the exact same mental and emotional state you were in and then not do what they did so that you weren’t forced to endure torture and suffering at their hands.

It’s simply not possible.

That’s why forgiveness is the only way to move forward.

Anything else will imprison you in your pain for the rest of your life.

I had no idea anything could hurt as bad as admitting and recognizing the truth about other human beings.

I mean, I thought I understood what people were all about.

I have known my entire life that a lot of people were complete cockroaches.

But it’s not the roaches that are causing this excruciating agony.

It’s the stark reality that even those I have trusted with the very essence of who I am have also failed me.

That’s the pain my brain has been frantic to defend me from.

But oh my dear brain, here is a truth far more glorious than any pain —

If I am ignorant of there being a sin perpetrated against me, I will never realize there is something I must forgive.

April 30

I never realized how integral anger is to forgiveness.

Anger and forgiveness are NOT antithetical.

Anger is actually one of the correct responses to sin and transgression.

And yet I have still not been able to be properly angry at the perpetrators of my abandonment, abuse, and assault because anger terrifies me.

In addition, I’ve been taught my entire life that anger is sinful and only God has the right to be angry.

I’ve only ever seen anger as destructive, a thing to be greatly feared.

But even as I’m sitting here writing this, I remember what I wrote when I started this journey and I’m realizing that I’ve never actually seen true anger in my life.

I’ve seen only rage.

P & J never exhibited anger, they only allowed rage to erupt all over everyone in massive pyroclastic flows, devastating everyone in their wake.

So the reality is that it is not anger I fear, it’s rage.

In the past, when I’ve been caught up in emotional flashbacks, I’ve exhibited the same rage and done plenty of damage myself, subsequently beating the ever-lovin’ tar out of myself for being such a horrible monster.

I used to think that anger was a defense mechanism against pain and hurt.

Truth is, anger is actually a vital part of sorrow and grief.

And what I felt towards people in the past was not anger.

It was bitterness, resentment, and rage.

THOSE are the very unhealthy and sinful defense mechanisms.

THOSE are what harden my heart.

I remember looking into gemstones and the difference between hardness and tenacity.

Hardness has to do with how easily a gem can be scratched.

Tenacity is about how easily a gem can be broken.

Diamonds are high on the hardness scale but low in tenacity.

Nothing can scratch them, but they will shatter under a small amount of pressure.

Jade, on the other hand, is low on the hardness scale and scratches quite easily.

But it takes tremendous force to break jade.

People think hardness equals strength.

In reality, the opposite is true.

Hardness means being brittle.

It means your heart will shatter at the slightest provocation.

You have to expend so much energy and extreme effort to remain in such a state.

Just because your brain has become so very accustomed to it doesn’t mean it’s easy for you to maintain.

The amount of energy and effort becomes habitual and barely noticeable on a conscious level, but it’s still making you sick and rushing you to the grave.

And you never get stronger.

You labor and toil and you only get weaker.

But those with soft hearts know true strength and are brilliantly tenacious.

RAGE must surrender to SORROW.

BITTERNESS must concede to GRIEF.

RESENTMENT must submit to ANGER.

It is by no means easy.

It is TRUE LIFE.

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There was that word again.

LIFE.

It’s what Granny hoped I would find.

I think maybe it’s what she hoped I would find in the pages of her journals.

But did YOU, Granny?  Did you find life?

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May 9

Sometimes it all seems so ridiculously and unbelievably contradictory.

You have Jesus saying that God cares so much about us, telling us that we are way more valuable and worth much more to God than sparrows.

But then you have Paul saying that God made some to be objects of His wrath.

You have David and Peter telling us to cast our burdens on God because He cares for us.

Then you have God treating Job like a pawn in some divine chess match with the satan.

It just doesn’t jive.

There are those who have no problem just accepting the caring nature of God at face value.

I don’t know if they’ve never thought about the parts of the Bible like Romans 9 and the book of Job or if they’ve somehow managed to achieve some deep wisdom that continues to elude me.

Yes, the potter absolutely has the right to do with the clay anything He wishes.

But then does the potter also get to claim He loves and cares for said clay when He dooms it to a life of hideous and horrific agony and suffering?

For, you know, no apparent reason.

Please help me understand.

Because I simply don’t.

Nothing happens in this world except that which You allow.

You gave the satan free rein in Job’s life.

Amos said evil does not come to a town unless the LORD has caused it.

How do I reconcile all of that?

How do I hold it all together?

I know that your pain is all you’ve been able to see for

so, so very long.

It has been your entire world.

And I know that few things about the events of your life

make any sense at all.

But please hear Me when I tell you this truth —

THAT IS EXACTLY THE POINT.

The evil perpetrated against you is senseless and void

of any meaning.

The fruit of human iniquity and wickedness is

senselessness and meaninglessness and utter chaos.

Believe Me when I tell you this truth as well —

I FEEL YOUR PAIN.

I FEEL IT MORE DEEPLY

THAN YOU CAN COMPREHEND RIGHT NOW.

I chose to allow human beings to have freedom of will.

And I knew what the consequences of My choice would be.

That I would have to refrain from intervening when they

determined to enact the most horrific evil they could devise.

That I would have to listen to the screams and cries and

wails of agony and anguish as infants and children like you

suffered the most unspeakable horrors.

That I would lose so many because they would never get

to the point where they could see anything other than

their pain.

But I also knew there would be YOU.

One who wouldn’t give up.

One who wouldn’t stop fighting.

One who wouldn’t cease struggling until she saw ME.

So keep asking.

Keep knocking.

Keep seeking.

I am here.

IN ALL THEIR TROUBLES

HE WAS TROUBLED.

You cannot make sense of the senseless.

You cannot assign meaning to the meaningless.

Any attempt to do so only leads to whack and totally damaging theology.

It also leads to confusion and bewilderment.

I’ve been trying to make God give me something that would make it all make sense.

I’ve been wanting Him to give it all some kind of meaning.

But that’s not what Romans 8:28 is getting at.

In fact, the traditional translation does a grave disservice to what Paul was trying to communicate, in my opinion.

Lattimore’s translation seems to capture the essence of it much better.

“God helps make everything good for those who love God.”

It’s not that God makes sense of the senseless.

He doesn’t mystically imbue the meaningless with meaning.

Except that’s exactly what we demand, isn’t it?

We think everything must make sense and so we impose false meaning on acts of violence and brutality and abuse, claiming that it is God’s will and desire that we do so.

We unequivocally declare abandonment to be His will.

We gleefully affirm that abuse is part of His sovereign plan.

Because it has to be, right?

Otherwise He isn’t God.

Thus do we doom thousands upon thousands of people like me to an existence of confusion and bewilderment and excruciating agony.

Desperately searching for something that simply doesn’t exist but always being told it does and we just don’t have enough faith or we aren’t being open enough to God.

But here is the immutable truth -

It is God who imbues Life with meaning.

Anything devoid of God is devoid of meaning.

Acts of iniquity and wickedness are devoid of God,

therefore they are devoid of meaning.

Trying to shoehorn God into wickedness in an attempt

to find meaning is — well, it’s what Job’s friends did

and yeah, we know how God felt about them.

GOD DOES NOT GIVE MEANING TO THE MEANINGLESS,

NOR DOES HE GRANT SENSE TO THE SENSELESS.

What He does do is work to make everything good

for those who love Him.

Not by imposing false sense and meaning on

wickedness and evil and calling such things part

of His plan and purpose.

He does it by making all things new.

He does it by creating Life where there was

only death.