Uncomfortable Comfort Zones

In the Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 44, the people remaining in Judah made it clear that they just wanted the heck out of dodge once poop hit the fan.  They asked for God's direction and heard His reply through the prophet Jeremiah: If they stayed and faced the current trouble in their land, God would restore peace and protect them from the disaster that seemed imminent.  If they went back to Egypt, they would run into more poop.

Did they listen?  No.

Instead, they chose to go back to what was comfortable for them.  They chose Egypt.  They chose their shortsighted knowledge and limited experience over the Lord's infinite wisdom and sovereignty.  When they lived in Egypt before, it wasn't perfect.  They had to make sacrifices and be slaves to fickle rulers.  But at least they "had plenty to eat then, and [they] lived comfortably and saw no disaster" (44:17).

It sounds crazy, right?  Who would choose a life of slavery and back-breaking work over a life rescued and protected by God?

Unfortunately, the land and life God had brought His people to wasn't going as they had planned.  There were some hiccups that shook up their sense of security.  They were scared of the unknown, and they wanted out.  It was easier to return to what they knew than to face the discomfort of the moment and trust that God was in the process of making life better for them.  Because they went back, however, they ended up exactly where they didn't want to be.  God warned them that the trouble they were trying to avoid would follow them to Egypt, and it did.  Rather than staying in a land whose enemies were flesh and blood, they went to a land whose enemy was the Lord of Armies Himself.  "March into battle, you warriors.... That day belongs to the Almighty LORD of Armies.  It is a day of vengeance when He will take revenge on His enemies.  His sword will devour until its had enough, and it will drink their blood until its full" (46:9-10).  Everything the people feared in Judah caught up with them in Egypt...the place they ran to and were convinced they knew so well, their comfort zone, was more uncomfortable than they ever imagined.

This so closely reflects our story, doesn't it?

You ran from us and we have run from you.  When life in America didn't measure up to your expectations...when our family experienced some bumps in the road and it rattled your sense of security...it was easier for you to run back to what you knew than to face the discomfort of the moment.  It was clearly difficult for you to trust that God was doing what He said He would when everything felt so out of your control.  You weren't aiming to hurt us; you were protecting yourself from a perceived threat, however fictional it was.
Since, it has been difficult to surrender our fears and trust that God will protect us from our perceived threat of more heartbreak and more allegations at your hand, however fictional it might be.  It has been easier for us to go back to the life we knew as a family of four than to face the unknown of re-engaging with you.

We all ignored God's promises and ran to "Egypt".  We all ignored His assurances that He would have compassion on us and keep us from disaster and chose, instead, to go back to our comfort zones that were outside of God's will and protection and directly into the line of fire we were all hoping to avoid!

It sounds crazy because we are!

For the past year, I have been suffering a great depression, my thoughts spiraling more and more downward than ever before.  I once had a house full of kids coming in and out and tons of friends to do life with.  I'm now in a beautiful house, yet isolated from the world I once knew and am left with very few friendships that survived my vacuous heartache.  I was avoiding more heartache and instead, ran smack into it.  The irony.

I can't help but wonder how you have been feeling.  Has your decision to run caused you  more trouble than you originally imagined?  Have your choices fallen short in restoring comfort and peace as well?

Never for a moment has our family doubted that the God of the Heavens and the Earth was in the process of rescuing you, Lucy.  He would have restored peace in our relationship and our home had you stayed.  We firmly believed this and hoped to convince you then.  And God would have likely restored peace in our home and relationship sooner had the four of us continued to follow Him rather than protecting ourselves.  We all made mistakes.  We took wrong turns.  And we've each been scattered in different places and situations far away from where we'd all rather be; far away from where God wanted us to be.  You, Dad, and me have been captives bound by the lies that we can save ourselves.  Yet, in Christ we've been set free!! Why do we ignorantly continue to go back into captivity?  Why are we choosing a false sense of security over the real thing?!  Why are we choosing tiring work over rest in His compassion and protection?

We certainly aren't going "entirely unpunished" for our poor choices, but praise God that we won't be "completely destroyed" (46:28)!!  Our Lord is still on a rescue mission...for us all.

"'Don't be afraid, my servant Jacob.

Don't be terrified, Israel.

I'm going to rescue you and your descendants from a faraway land, from the land where you are captives.

Then Jacob's descendants will again have undisturbed peace, and no one will make them afraid.

Don't be afraid, my servant Jacob,' declares the LORD. 'I am with you.  I will completely destroy all the nations where I scattered you, but I will not completely destroy you.  

I will correct you with justice.  I won't let you go entirely unpunished.'" 

-Jeremiah 46:27-28

The Lord had mercy and spared His people then, and He wants to mercifully spare ours now.

"For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me will save it" (Luke 9:24).  I'm over doing things my way.  I've made a mess of myself, and I so badly want to be saved!  My life is now His--no matter the cost.  Have you hit your rock bottom yet?  Are you ready to surrender your way of doing life to take hold of His that offers more than you could ask for or imagine?  I'll forever be praying that you come back and find refuge in Him.

I love you, Loo.

Mom 

To Love You

"We have all been sinned against.  We all sin.  You have failed to love me as you should and I have failed to love you.  Your failure to love me is painful, sometimes profoundly disappointing.  But the Lord's love for me is perfect.  Although His love does not remove the sting of your failure, it gives me all I need to stand as a whole person, capable of loving you regardless of the threat of your further failure. 
And that is my responsibility: to love you.  My love for you (not yours for me) determines in large measure my experience of joy and my sense of intactness.  I can love because I am loved perfectly and fully by God.  And my love for you matters.  It can draw you to Christ; it gives my life power and value in His plan; it brings glory to God.  And, as I falteringly learn to love you without self-protection, I edge toward the longed-for reality of abundant living." -Larry Crabb, Inside Out, p.201

Our God wastes no time. I have been all over the place emotionally this past year: scared, hurt, hopeful, disappointed, angry, bitter, depressed.  And because I have been consumed mainly with your offenses against us, I've only succeeded at protecting myself and have completely failed at truly loving you as Jesus does.  I am so sorry, Loo.  I am sorry for allowing my hurt and my fear and my disappointment in your behavior and actions to dictate the measure by which I give you what you desperately crave.  I am sorry that I have been prioritizing our protection from any further disappointment or hurt instead of His will for our role in your life.  I am sorry that I haven't been an effective example of surrendering to and satisfaction with His Perfect Love that casts out all fear.

I was reading in the Book of Jeremiah this morning and His Spirit spoke loud and clear to my heart:
"You have not humbled yourselves even to this day.  You haven't feared me or lived your lives by my teachings or by my decrees..." (44:10).  Those same Jews left in Judah that I mentioned in my last post to you, who deceived themselves and prayed arrogant prayers, they also decided to abandon God and worship false gods because from their perspective, when they did they "had plenty to eat then, and [they] lived comfortably and saw no disaster" (44:16-17).  But the Lord made it clear that their sense of security was false and their worship misplaced.  Their fear shouldn't have been of war and famine, it should have been of Him.  He would surely bring disaster and destruction on them because of their blatant disobedience and choice to worship the wrong gods.

We have been guilty of the same.  We have been worshipping our sense of security and our pride, making every effort to protect ourselves rather than serving God and loving you, good or bad.  We have been so foolish to believe that keeping a safe distance from you will guard us from any more hurt or disappointment or trouble.  Yet, the reality is we've been placing ourselves right outside of God's will and protection and smack dab in the crosshairs of the enemy fire we've been hoping to avoid! When we walk contrary to God's will for our lives, we're bound to get hurt.  And doing so for the past year has caused me, in particular, to be wounded almost to the point of absolute defeat. 

Once again, praise Jesus! I will not be overcome <3 

I'm not sure what loving you now looks like practically-speaking.  But I do know it will no longer be based on your response or treatment of our family; instead, it must become a direct reflection of His love for us all...without fear.  Without demand.  Without expectation or selfishness. And with true and total abandon.  

At the Crossroads

Jeremiah 42  GOD’S WORD Translation (GW)

Jeremiah Warns the People of Judah Not to Go to Egypt

42 Then all the army commanders along with Kareah’s son Johanan and Hoshaiah’s son Jezaniah and all the people, from the least important to the most important, came to the prophet Jeremiah. ² They said to him, “Please listen to our request, and pray to the Lord your God for all of us who are left here. As you can see, there are only a few of us left. ³ Let the Lord your God tell us where we should go and what we should do.” ...⁶ We will obey the Lord our God to whom we are sending you, whether it’s good or bad. Yes, we will obey the Lord our God so that everything will go well for us.”...

⁹ Jeremiah said to them, “You sent me to plead your case humbly to the Lord. This is what the Lord God of Israel says: ¹⁰ Suppose you stay in this land. Then I will build you up and not tear you down. I will plant you and not uproot you. I will change my plans about the disaster I’ve brought on you. ¹¹ Don’t be afraid of the king of Babylon, whom you now fear. Don’t be afraid of him, declares the Lord. I’m with you. I will save you and rescue you from his power. ¹² I will have compassion on you. I will make him have compassion on you and return you to your land.
¹³ “But suppose you say, ‘We won’t stay in this land,’ and you disobey the Lord your God. ¹⁴ Then you say, ‘We’ll go to Egypt, where we won’t have to see war, hear the sound of a ram’s horn, or be hungry. We’ll stay there.’
¹⁵ “Now, listen to the Lord’s word, you people who are left in Judah. This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: Suppose you’re determined to go to Egypt, and you go and live there. ¹⁶ Then the wars you fear will catch up with you in Egypt. The famines you dread will follow you to Egypt, and you will die there. ¹⁷ So all the people who decide to go and live in Egypt will die in wars, famines, and plagues. No one will survive or escape the disasters I will bring on them.
¹⁸ “This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: As my anger and my fury were poured out on those who live in Jerusalem, so my fury will be poured out on you if you go to Egypt. You will become a curse word. You will become something ridiculed, cursed, and disgraced. You won’t see this place again.
¹⁹ “The Lord has told you people who are left in Judah not to go to Egypt. You need to know that I am warning you today. ²⁰ You only deceived yourselves when you sent me to the Lord your God and said, ‘Pray to the Lord our God for us, and tell us everything that the Lord our God says, and we’ll do it.’... ²² But now, you need to know that you will die in wars, famines, or plagues in the place where you want to go and live.”

The people left in Judah had just experienced more traumatizing destruction of all they held dear at the hands of a brutal Ishmael and ten of his men.  Their livelihood was directly attacked, their safety viciously threatened.  The request they made to the prophet Jeremiah immediately following their rescue from all of this craziness struck me:

"We will obey the LORD our God...whether it's good or bad...so that everything will go well for us".    

Since our adventures with you, I've been suffering a crisis of faith.  I've been faced head-on with the impossible question, "Will I continue to serve the Lord, even if it means everything doesn't go well for me here on Earth?" Somewhere along my faith-walk, I (like the people in Judah) deceived myself.  I arrogantly formed the belief that I could pray, ask God to guide me, obey no matter what (ha), and that all of this would predictably deliver an almost immediate "wellness" for me.  Because of my confidence in this formula, I've shamefully been heralded for my trust without borders...for my childlike faith...for my "direct line" to Jesus and my "pillar of smoke in the kitchen". Left here in the ruins of our once beautiful story, however, I'm faced with a much uglier truth about myself now stripped of the pretty lies my deceitful heart had it packaged in.

"When we face how deeply disappointed we are with our relationships, it then becomes possible to recognize the ugliness of what before seemed reasonable" (Crabb, 188).

 

My faith has been misplaced. 
It hasn't been in God for His will's sake, but rather in the hope that my own selfish desire for wellness would be met by obeying Him. I haven't been serving Him for His will to be done, but for mine.  I haven't been seeking His glory, but my own. 
I (again, like the people in Judah) have wanted to run back to a place and time that's not here--to my own "Egypt".  I've been wanting to move out of this small town so we no longer have to risk seeing you, or hear anymore rumors that are spreading, or hunger for reconciliation that seems more and more unlikely to be satiated every day that passes.  Yet, no end to this madness has been in sight.  I've felt stuck.  I've been squirming under the pressure, distressed and depressed in the discomfort of it all.  And I've been wrestling with God, angry at Him for not relieving me but also frustrated with myself, with my weak will...with my fair-weather faith. I've been standing at a crossroads spiritually.  Never before have the choices "wide gate" or "narrow" been so delineated.  And never before has the path of least resistance been more tempting.

"When the fullness of our disappointment drives us to an overwhelming sorrow hat replaces anger with pain.... That kind of pain...is the starting point for real change.  It is only when we face the horror of desperately longing for what no one has or ever will provide that we give up our demands of others to satisfy our thirst and we turn in humble, broken dependence to God" (Crabb, 188). 

 

Obedience doesn't promise immediate reward. There's no guarantee that my life will run smoothly in this world.  But there is a guarantee that I'm bulking up for the next!  Am I going to crumble under the weight of these trials or rise to the occasion and strengthen my faith?  Am I going to quit because it's hard, or press through the pain of now so I can experience real strength of character later? 

Am I going to go "back to Egypt" or obey and "stay in this land"? 

I can finally not just see, but believe now that God has not allowed all of this heartache to tear me down, but rather to build me up.  He's allowed these trials and this pain to work out the deepest parts of me so I can experience the joy of answered prayer long prayed for--to please Him, to be more like Him, to have the faith I crave that moves mountains.  Moving, running to "Egypt" (while providing immediate relief), would ultimately be my ruin.  The Lord is not uprooting us because He knows that we'll bloom by planting us in this soil...ripe for the growth that we all need right now!
Tilling the heart is a painful process, indeed.  But praise Jesus we're not being destroyed...we're being rescued!!

Which path are you going to choose?

Praying for you, Sweet Loo--that the fullness of your disappointment in every person that has failed to give you what you so desperately long for will drive you to turn in humble, broken dependence to God.  May He once and for all fill those empty places inside of us both.

Love you.

*Quotes from the book Inside Out by Dr. Larry Crabb

The Demise of a Demanding Spirit

"God invades the deepest recesses of our deceitful heart to ruthlessly expose what needs to be changed.  His acceptance of us on the basis of Calvary and His understanding of our hurt provide the context for His work in our heart, but relentless exposure of our arrogant demandingness begins the healing." -Dr. Larry Crabb, Inside Out, p.160

 

 

     In just a little over a month, it will be one year since all hell broke loose.  The subject and the emotions that come with our story together are tired.  People are tired of hearing about it, we're tired of talking about it, and I'm tired of feeling it.  Nevertheless, my heart still aches.  I'm down a few friends and a lot of joy and I desperately crave relief.  Just when I begin to let go and accept what is, you pop back into the picture with a message on Facebook or through text.  And you always want something.  You're pleasant, but demanding...your requests completely out-of-the blue.  You wanted to meet downtown at specific times on specific days with little flexibility or concern for my schedule. When that didn't work out, you waited a few weeks then asked for me to meet you right away because you had a gift for me.  How you can paint me out to be a monster one moment then desire to see me/buy me a gift the next felt suspicious.  And the reality is, I can't meet you alone. It's not safe for me legally anymore--not after the allegations you derived.  I have what's left of us to protect now.  And regardless, I can't pretend that nothing happened and sweep my frustration and confusion and hurt under the rug.  No part of your request made sense, but I still took your petition to prayer seeking God's wisdom in the matter because the truth is, Sweet Girl, I long for you to run back home like the prodigal son, eyes and heart finally opened to His Plan and to our pure motives and love for you.  I long to reconcile.

But His wisdom and your response revealed something else.  You still believe the stories you've twisted and fabricated--we're still the monsters in your alternate reality.  You flippantly regarded my suggestion of meeting with a counselor weekly to work on mending our relationship, first asking, "What relationship? lol", then claiming you were still scared of us and that you hoped we understand. You continued by texting that while you still feel moving to America was a big mistake, you recognize now that you need a family for money and food and clothes and a home...and that it is scary being alone. You no longer want a family but are willing to be friends.  Well, "Maybe be friends".  We do understand that it's scary, Loo.  We do understand that your perception of love is skewed.  But we don't understand how to navigate your inability to take any responsibility for your destructive actions or how to look past your unreasonably demanding spirit.

     Then Thanksgiving week happened.  Isaac gets into a horse accident and suddenly you're referring to him as your "little brother" again, texting to request his room number so you can come visit.  Again, as nothing ever happened between us.  And, frankly, I was mad.  My flesh screams, you don't get to do this! You don't get to choose when and where and how you're going to be in our family and when and where and how you're not! The world doesn't revolve around you! But no matter how justified we feel shutting you completely out would be, no matter how satisfying treating you the way you've treated us might feel, God's will continues to prevail.  He always stands between my flesh and my heart, guarding me from stumbling over you.  Once again, He called me to more prayer and more surrender.  And while I am so grateful for His perfectly-timed equipping and His Grace that is forever sufficient, I am also still so frustrated. 

When will He deliver you?  When will the happy ending come? When will He finally relieve me and restore my joy? I've been faithful.  I've died to myself time and time again.  I've chosen His will over mine.  I'm trusting His Plan.  What gives?? Why is He not fixing this????

     Yet again, I've been so focused on you and your offenses that I've missed the memo.  And yet again, the memo is that before God I am no better than you.  Just as you making any demands of us is absurd, so are we making any demands of God.  Who am I to try and work God's system?  You've been claiming abuse and fear and victimization with a hope it will garner people's sympathy and result in providing you with whatever it is you think you need at any given moment.  I've been claiming faithfulness and obedience and trust in Jesus, but with a "quiet strong hope that a good response from us will bring a quicker end to our trials and a return to better times" (p.148).  Both your actions and mine are abhorrent before our Creator! 

     The ugly truth is, my prayers have gone unanswered for longer than I expected and my confidence is shaken.  My "veneer of trust" is being "stripped away to expose a demanding spirit" in my own heart (p.150).  I see now that my "'trust' in God was rooted not in unconditional confidence in His character and sovereign plan but rather in a hope that He'd relieve [my] suffering in the way [I] desired" (p.151).  The happy ending I've been envisioning may not be anything like the close to this mess that the Lord has planned.  And I need to be okay with that.  I need to trust Him even when it seems like His goal is to frustrate me.  I need to follow Him even when it hurts.  Because God and God alone is Sovereign.  He is in charge.  It would serve us both well to remember that, Loo.  "Problems may fuel a demanding spirit, but never justify it.  God is unalterably opposed to a demanding attitude on the part of His creatures no matter how severe their suffering.  His ears are opened wide to hear cries of lament and pleas for help, but He will not come to a negotiating table to consider terms from angry people" (p.147). 

     I will likely continue to cry out in my broken heartedness.  I will almost definitely plead for His Hand to intervene, but I will be doing so now hyper-aware of my humble position before the Maker of the Heavens and Earth.  It's easy to pass judgment on you, determining that your actions don't deserve a loving, gentle, or forgiving response...but what a hard pill it is to swallow that none of us deserve God's Love and Sacrifices and immense Mercy.  We all deserve death and hell.  Yet Jesus still came to give us life so that none would perish.  God is still willing to fight for me, to listen to me, to open His heart to me, and to comfort me in my wickedness and selfishness; I need to continue to work on loving you in the same way. ...Free of all hidden agenda or hopes that I can convince God to go with my plans by acting in an obedient way (despite my heart of horrors)...Sans any expectations that my kindness might eventually lead to my desired repentant response from you.  You may never see the vastness of God's love for you or of the love He's calling us to have for you, but I surrender anyway.  He knows what He's doing even when we don't.  And He loves all of His Creation, even when most don't choose to love Him back. 

Always praying for you, Loo.
Mom