Ollie Ollie In Come Free

I never liked the game of hide and seek.  It just got boring after awhile, when some of the players found really good spots and the fun of finding them was replaced with the boring and tedious task of never figuring out where they'd gone.  My attention span was never that long. 

So while I never much cared for the game, I do like to hide.  I do it all the time.  It has become my coping method of choice and habit.  I'm not sure it's really a good thing, either.

I don't hide, as some people do, behind an emotional or facial mask of content and happiness.  I actually hide -- I immerse myself in computer games, I go to my sewing room and work, or I just get away from the house, alone, and am by myself.  I don't answer my cell phone, and I don't tell people where I'm going.  Sometimes I just go to sleep.  I don't generally call my friends (although I am always happy to see them), I don't participate in group functions much.  I don't like retreats and conferences because of all the people and the schedule and feeling herded.

I quite literally hide, and I do not want to be found.

This frustrates my family on a regular basis.  They need me to be available to them.  But when I can't, when the stress level is just too high or I'm just too tired, or I've just had enough -- I have to get away.  Because I'm an introvert, this happens on a regular basis.  It frustrates my friends, too, who tend to think I don't care about them.  It's not that, truly.  It's just that being alone is far less work than to cope with everyone's personality.

I'd love to say that I haven't always been this way, but it's not true.  I have always been this way.  People are hard for me.  I want to please them, and I am continually frustrated by the fact that I disappoint them regularly.  I try, and then I default to my usual habits.  And I hate myself for failing them, so I hide.  My husband has always interpreted this as my lack of care about what others think of me.  In reality, it is quite the opposite.

Here is what Matthew 5:14-16 has to say about it:

¹⁴ “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵ Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Probably the most ironic thing about all this hiding I do is that most people around me will insist that I'm not an introvert at all.  They would readily say that I'm an extrovert.  I find this very funny, because I have effectively fooled them quite expertly.  


I fool them by hiding the way most people do - by putting on a face, an attitude, a general aura of happy well-being.  The trouble is that I can't keep it up for very long at all.  Depending on the day and how physically and emotionally rested I am, I can only keep this up for a few hours, maybe a day.  But that's it.  


Perhaps I should have been an actor.  I could have been rich.  Surely I have missed my true calling.


Well, here's the thing of it:  (I swear I'm going to have that engraved on my dad's grave; he says it all the time) -- 


God knows my name, He is infinitely patient, and He calls to me every minute of every day.  He says "Come out, Jenny.  I know you're in there.  You must trust Me."


How can I refuse Him?  I always venture out cautiously.  And then I wander away, fascinated by some thing or another, and end up in that same vicious cycle of disappointing people or hurting someone or getting hurt myself.  Sounds like regular life for most of us, doesn't it?


It is regular life.  And that is entirely beside the point.  Remember what Beaver said about Aslan?


"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you." 

Following the King isn't always a safe business; the King Himself isn't safe.  We get beaten up and hurt along the way.  We hurt others.  This isn't because we're bad people, or because we can't cope.  It's because we're human.  It is because we learn from failure as much as success.

And quite honestly, hiding doesn't fix it.  It just delays it for a bit.


So I am working on not hiding these days.  Being in the company of people who don't hide helps a lot.  In order to be with them, I have to come out of hiding.  It's ok to take a break every now and then.  But if I'm away for too long, my light goes out, and I might just as well have put it under a bowl in the first place.  And then there's all the trouble of finding a match or a lighter, and feeding it enough to get it burning brightly again -- with all that hassle, you'd think I wouldn't even have gone into hiding and let it go out in the first place.


So once again, I come out of hiding.  It is a tenuous business and I am afraid.  But I know He is the one who calls me out, and moreover, it is an amazing thing to be caught up in this thing that my friend Richard called "the reckless raging fury that they call the love of God."

Deep breath.  Here goes.


xoxoxox

Operator, How May I Connect Your Call?

<sup>From II Corinthians 6:


11-13</sup>Dear, dear Corinthians, I can't tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn't fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren't small, but you're living them in a small way. I'm speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!


If ever there was a call to the body of Christ -- the Church -- today, it is this it.


xoxoxox

Only Ten Things.

From Romans 4 -- (The Message) --

^4-5If you're a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don't call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it's something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift.

I read this just now and was reassured.  Believe me, I need to be reassured right now.  Here is why:

Around about late February/early March, Hunk O Man and I had decided it was time to put our house on the market. We'd spend Spring Break, the first week of April, doing the odd and end things to get it ready.  Then, April 12 we'd put it on the market.

So Rhonda called and said "I know it's not ready yet, but I have this couple who'd like to look at your house.  Do you think I could show it to them?"  This was the second week of March, a full month prior to the time we had planned to put it on the market.  Rhonda is not a pushy kind of gal; she is sweet and accommodating.  But we thought hey, why not?  So we cleaned it up and I staged it, and the couple saw the house.

And they loved it.

On March 22, we had a signed contract and a closing date of April 25.  But -- we had a lot to do.  I only had about 10 things to do.  The list went something like this:

1.  Re-screen the back porch.

2.  Write two research papers.

3.  Read "A Streetcar Named Desire" and write an essay on it.

4.  Paint the dining room.

5.  Write six more essays for final exams.

6.  Make two prom dresses.  Don't use a pattern, just design one as you go and copy the other from an existing dress.  Drive the 1.5 hours to Raleigh about 3 times for fabric and patterns and notions and more fabric.

7.  Pack up the entire house.

8.  Prime and paint the kitchen cabinets.  

9.  Put a door on the closet in Bug's room, paint Babydoll's room, touch up the peeling paint in the laundry room, paint all the wainscoting that ran (quite literally) everywhere in the house.

10.  Try not to lose my mind.

And you know what?  I prayed a lot, worked hard, and God made it all happen.  It all got done and everyone's mind, including mine, came out intact and functioning normally.  The job was clearly too big for us, and God got it done.  

So with such a fresh example in my head, why am I freaking out now?

Because the house we live in now is my favourite house of all the houses in which I've ever lived.  I LOVE this house.  But -- this house is on the market also.  It has been for over 2 years.  We agreed to an open, month-to-month lease because we thought we'd probably find another house.  

We had a showing on Wednesday (my birthday, no less!).  The a/c was broken and it was probably 90 degrees and 90% humidity in the house.  I picked it up but didn't really "clean" it -- too hot to run the sweeper!  I can stage a house and make it fabulous, and I didn't do that.

But -- the people loved the house.  And yesterday, I had to go back to God and ask "Really?  You would make me move 6 weeks after I moved into the house I absolutely love and you would do it on my birthday?  Really?"

Now let's just hang on a minute here, Jen.  Am I talking to the same God who enabled me to accomplish that list of the 10 things?  What is the matter with me?  What makes me think He would put me in such a position?

I hang my head as I realise this:  I had to get past the freaking out part before I could step into the trust.  I wish it were one easy motion.  But I am a horrible sinner and it is not one easy motion.  Of all those I could trust the most -- the One who has never failed me -- I seem to trust Him the least.  I know God, really know Him.  I know better than to not trust Him.

So He reassured me today with Romans 4.  Because He loves me, and doesn't want to give me too much, and He wants me to remember that He never will give me too much.  If I have to move again, there will be another list of 10 impossible things and He will get them accomplished, not me.  Or even just one impossible thing -- that I don't lose my mind and have to be sent to the nut house -- and God will still keep me sane.  

¹⁶This is why the fulfillment of God's promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God's promise arrives as pure gift. 


When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do.


The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.


Promise, after promise, after promise.  I am thanking God today.

xoxox

Senioritis

I had a very difficult week last week. It was a week full and beyond fed-up with 18-year olds who have seriously I'm-18-And-I-Know-It-All attitudes. It was also a week of being irresponsible with my body, and eating things that raised my blood pressure to critically high levels.

Honestly, I should know better. I just read this today, from Proverbs 30:

Four Mysteries

18-19 Three things amaze me,
no, four things I'll never understand—
how an eagle flies so high in the sky,
how a snake glides over a rock,
how a ship navigates the ocean,
why adolescents act the way they do.

This was made glaringly apparent yesterday, as we were sitting at the table. I was explaining some American thing to Malene, the Danish student we're hosting until Friday. (We will be VERY sad to see her go! She is a doll!)

Rose commented that I was completely wrong, that it wasn't that way at all. So I reclarified for Malene, stating this: "Rose and Bug are always right."

Again Rose disagreed.

So I re-reclarified: apparently they are not always right, but I am definitely always wrong.

Rose hesitated. Then she disagreed. Bug wasn't so sure she disagreed with that.

I sat there thinking, 'have they left for college yet?'

Herein lies the paradox: I know I will miss them desperately when they are gone. But right now, I can't wait for them to leave. They seem to save all their good words and blessings for the people outside our immediate family. We alone are the ones for whom they reserve their disdain.

I think this is the biggest challenge I've ever faced: to remain Christlike to my children. When I am hurt by them, I want to return evil for evil. I want to hurt them right back, even though I would not hesitate for even a nanosecond to die for them. I'd be standing there in front of the firing squad, thinking -- you'd better appreciate this, you rotten kid!

I wonder also if it's because of the reflection this casts on me as a parent, as someone who has taught them to not hurt people. I've been the primary teacher in their lives, so apparently I've taught them the opposite. Aren't they acting just like me?

Ouch! Double ouch for thinking it's all about me!

Well, once again, it's back to that beautiful Word of God that slices and dices me with Its truth:

1-4 If you've gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don't push your way to the front; don't sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don't be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

5-8Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of Himself. He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of Himself that He had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, He set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, He stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, He lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.

Lord God Most Holy, make me like You today. Thank You for my Saviour, Your Son Jesus, my example, Amen.

xoxox