The Land Between

The number of times (within the last three weeks) that I've heard messages and been led to the passages in the Bible on the Israelites in the desert of Sinai isn't coincidental.  God's showing me something: it's time to start my journey out of the desert, but there are a few things I still need to learn and to pack up before we can go.

A marathon is a great example of stamina and determination.  As a highly disciplined person myself, I figured all I needed to do was set some goals, go on my runs, and the marathon would just happen.  I haven't run the marathon yet, in fact, I'm in the middle of my training plan.  And I'm tired, and burdened, and incredibly unmotivated to continue on.  Life is a lot the same way.  I'm past the exciting beginnings right now, and the end is nowhere in sight.  I'm lost in "the middle" and I'm quickly, if not already, running out of steam.

I don't think I've ever heard a better description of "the middle" than Shauna Niequist, in her book Bittersweet:

"There is nothing worse than the middle.  At the beginning, you have a little arrogance, loads of buoyancy.  The journey, whatever it is, looks beautiful and bright, and you are filled with resolve and silver strength, sure that whatever the future holds, you will face it with optimism and chutzpah.  It's like the first day of school, and you're wearing the outfit you laid out last night, backpack full of perfectly sharpened yellow pencils.

And the end is beautiful.  You are wiser, better, deeper.  You know things you didn't previously know, you've shed things you previously clung to.  The end is revelation, resolution, a soft place to land.

But oh, the middle.  I hate the middle.  The middle is the fog, the exhaustion, the loneliness, the daily battle against despair and the nagging dear that tomorrow will be just like today, only you'll be wearier and less able to defend yourself against it.  The middle is the lonely place, when you can't find words to say how deeply empty you feel, when you try to connect but you feel like thick glass is separating you from the rest of the world, isolating and deadening everything."

The land between, the middle, the place where prayer doesn't seem to do anything.  It's a land fertile for complaints and emotional meltdown, but it's also fertile for God's provision and transformational growth.

I heard a fantastic message by Jeff Manion last week called The Land Between while I was at the Leadership Summit.  He was speaking on the Israelites and their journey in the desert of Sinai. It's a message that made an indelible impact on me, and while I haven't read Jeff's new book The Land Between, it's already in my Amazon cart.

God had a plan for the Israelites, but they weren't ready for the Promised Land yet--they weren't ready to be God's people.  So God gave them time in the desert to learn how to trust and obey.  Isn't that just what the Land Between is for?  A perfect opportunity to see past the pain of "the middle" and learn how to trust God right where we are?  It's where we learn how to pray and how to depend.  Where choices of the heart need to be made that will determine who we will be outside of the desert.

The space in your life that you most resent is the place where God is doing his richest and deepest work.  Painful and messy, honest and raw, but also beautiful and redemptive work is being done right there.  Instinctively you want to run away, but you shouldn't.  Change isn't an automatic process, and time does not heal all wounds. 

I'm still in the desert, learning how to trust.  If I can't trust here, then how will I trust there?  Where are you?  Are you journeying through the Land Between too?

I'll end this post with the benediction that Jeff gave at the end of his message, a beautiful sentiment of hope for those in the desert.

May God bless you in the Land Between. May you guard your heart. May trust grow. May our gracious God who knows what we need provides it when we need it… may He restore our laughter, increase our joy and may we find Him present and good.

Quietly wait

Psalms 62:5 "Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in Him."

Quietly.

Wait.

Is this difficult for anyone else?

I was challenged with the idea that God gives you an answer for all of your prayers.  If you didn't feel like you had an answer it was either because 1) you relationship with God isn't right or 2) you were given an answer that you didn't want to hear and dismissed it or 3) your question had already been answered and you forgot.

I pushed back from this idea almost immediately.  But why?  Surely not because I want to accept the idea of "unanswered" questions.  But because if God really does answer, then how do I continue justifying my "Well, I haven't heard my answer from God yet..." responses?

Then I read this verse and the idea was posed.  "What if I don't 'hear' my answer because I never really bother to listen?" Ouch.  Communication is definitely a two-way road.  And for a long time I've been doing a lot of the talking.  Perhaps it's time to pose some questions and then take the time to actually listen.

The Dessert of Disappointment

Dis-ap-point

Verb: to fail to fulfill the expectations or wishes of; to defeat the fulfillment of (hopes, plans, etc.)

Life can be full of disappointments, it all depends on your expectations.

I don't know why I didn't make this connection until today.  Control, worry, and disappointment are more intertwined than I knew.

I have a tendency to want control.  Over my life, my choices, my relationships, my finances, etc.  My desire for control usually leads to unrealistic expectations, which generally leads to unnecessary worrying about possible disappointments.

I spent my morning on one of my long training runs.  Long runs aren't my favorite, but to train for a marathon one must have a fair share of discipline.  I just keep reminding myself that it will be worth it in the end.  Unfortunately today I struggled through the entire run.  Unable to motivate myself enough to run, I actually walked more than half of the distance.  Frustration over what I quickly deemed a "failed" run and my inability to manage and control my thoughts left me sobbing through most of the rest.  I was overwhelmed by disappointment.  I had bigger expectations for myself.  I wanted better, more.

I've always expected a lot out of myself.  I aim high and shoot higher.  I'm not a newbie to setting unrealistic expectations for myself and others around me.  And I'm definitely not new to feeling the sting of disappointment either.

It would be really easy to cap this off and say that the lesson to my morning "mishap" would be to set more realistic expectations for myself.  But now I see that setting expectations will soothe the hurt, but not solve the problem.  The base problem is control.  Control of my life and my circumstances.

If I can truly relinquish my control to God and fully trust that He has even better things in store for me than what I can plan myself, I believe the unrealistic expectations will start to disappear.

Unfortunately for me that's like God asking me to lie in the middle of a busy street.  The idea is daunting.  My immediate response is to run and lock the doors to my life that I still feel the need to control.  It's risky and it's gutsy, and I'm still a little hesitant to take the first step.  But I must obey.  Josh talked on Joshua 3 at church this weekend about the fearful and disobedient Israelites who God punished by refusing entrance to the Promised Land.  Their children got a chance at the Promised Land as well, but to get it they had to step out into the water, literally, to show their obedience.  Not just get their feet close to the water and wait for the miracle to show itself, they literally had to step out with faith and obedience and then watch God do great things.  

It's time for me to step in the water.  To open the rest of my doors and let go of all of my unrealistic expectations for life.  Otherwise I'm doomed to continue wandering around the desert of disappointment.

Life is a journey of obedience, trust, and faith.  And God holds the only map.

Change

Change is one of my least favorite things.  That's just the creature of habit in me.  Even "good" change requires an adjustment to life.  Change also requires a good deal of faith, faith that the new routine will trump the previous and not leave you sitting on a corner in the middle of nowhere shaking your head and wondering how you ended up there.  Life is not a vacuum.  It requires that you take risks and step out on faith.  Yet another thing I have to work on daily.

Yet you can't do life without change.  Without the lows you can't truly appreciate the highs.  You can't have one but not the other.  It just doesn't work that way.  You can't just eat the M&Ms out of the trail mix, you have to eat all of the trail mix--even those pesky raisins.

The "lows" are notorious for literally bringing me to my knees.  Surrendered and broken.  I cry, crawl into Jesus' lap, and let His promise of better days to come wash over me.  Those moments are precious.  They're the reason that I can continue on despite the hurdles around me; I can't do it alone.  Only by God's strength do I engage with the world around me.  It's never easy, but that's a given.

Another day, another valley, another chance to crawl into Jesus' lap and let him soothe the pain from inevitable change.  Yet another lesson to learn and grow from. 

So, today I will cling to Matthew 11:28-30 and the quiet embrace from Jehovah-Shalom.  And I'll let tomorrow worry about itself.

Happiness is...

A blissfully unadulterated moment alone.
A memory shared between close friends.
Knowing you're precisely where God wants you to be.
The peace that comes from fully surrendering everything.
A cold sprinkler on a hot summer day.
A real conversation.
Driving with the windows down, music blaring, and no schedule.
Meeting genuine people who immediately make you feel welcome.
Loving what you do for a living.
Taking a lazy afternoon nap.
Seeing God's hand in the midst of trouble.
A kind comment from a stranger.
A hug from someone who cares.
Surrounding yourself with friends and family.
Taking a risk every now and then.
Knowing you did something to help, even if no one else saw.
Watching the sunset.
Catching up with an old friend.
Being who you were meant to be--and loving it.

Brother and sister

My brother and I fought all the time in elementary school and junior high.  In fact, I attribute some of my very excellent organization skills to this fact; my punishments for fighting with my brother frequently involved cleaning a closet or a kitchen cabinet.  We didn't start getting along until high school, and then for a while my brother was my best friend.  Of all the people in the world, my brother knows me the best. 

We haven't always been the best of friends, and he hasn't always dated girls that I liked, but we found our rhythm and he found an amazing girl.  He's getting married in September and I couldn't be happier for him, truly.

He's ready to get married, go to grad school out of state, and then join the Peace Corps with his wife.  I love his passion for water and third-world countries.  I just love him more.

I try to hold on to every spare moment that I have left before he moves away and I see him infrequently.  We were riding home from a family reunion, just me and my brother, and the thought that it might be the last time was slightly overwhelming.

I guess the lesson here is to appreciate the time you have had and optimize the time you have left with the people you love.  Life changes, regardless of my preferences, and God is in control.  I wish I had started sooner, but I suppose everyone feels that way.

The "worry" rocking chair

"Worry is like a rocking chair; it will give you something to do but it won't get you anywhere."

"The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith.  The beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety." - George Müller

I'm half-way through a fabulous book called Calm My Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow.  I will admit, I was excited about this book when I bought it.  I immediately opened it up and started digging in only to realize the amount of "reconstructive" work that would be necessary to read such a book.  I subsequently set it down and let it sit on the shelf for a year and a half collecting dust.  I was too busy to do all the work, I would just "deal with it later".

I've had issues sleeping for years.  In fact, the problem of waking up numerous times a night was starting to get debilitating.  I was sick and tired of being tired all the time.  Action time.  I got my doctor referral and visited a sleep center where I did an overnight study (I'm not even going to go into how weird the whole experience was.)  At my follow up appointment my doctor essentially said "yeah, there's nothing wrong with you; you just worry too much."

Armed with the knowledge that the issue was literally "all in my head".  I picked the book back up again.  Almost as it had been waiting for me to come back to my senses and read it, there it was, right where I left it.  It's requiring some effort and some honest realizations, but I can already see the fruit of progress.

If you're anything like me, you struggle with control and worry.  Sure, I'd given God most of the doors in my life, but I held on to a few.  The ones that meant the most to me.  The ones that I just couldn't relinquish control to.  The unnecessary worry associated with trying to juggle these remaining rooms is too much, but the thought of no control at all almost gives me a "deer in the headlights" sort of response.

I've had a note card with the verse Philippians 4:6-7 for years.  "Don't worry about anything, instead pray about everything.  Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.  Then you will experience God's peace which exceeds anything we can understand.  His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus."

I want that peace.  In fact, the visual picture that I get when thinking about that peace is a hammock, a cold drink, and a warm day on a sandy beach somewhere.  All encompassing relief from the prison of anxiety and worry.  In order to get that peace though, I have to open the doors and unclench my hands.

It's not exactly an easy process, but if my hammock and cold drink are waiting on the other side, I think I'll be alright.  I'm on the path though and I can see the sand in the distance.