Wake Up. Get Up. Grow Up.

We’re headed back to Wyoming soon and I’m excited about it. Hence, the images below, which are fairly unrelated to the story. Enjoy. 

Fifteen years ago, dangling from the end of my rope, it occurred to me that I was angry at Christians and taking out on Jesus.

Like drinking poison, hoping the other person dies.

How’s that going?

Well, if unyielding depression, loneliness and anxiety were any indication, the poison was getting to me. One random Tuesday, lying on my bed at noon, crying, I looked up at my dust-covered bible sitting on a bookshelf. Well marked from the before-times, I considered picking it up.

What do I have to lose? I wondered.

Better question: What do I have to surrender?

 

What happened next is the story of my last 15 years, right up to today.

The short version is: Jesus never said follow my followers, he said “follow me.”

And Jesus wasn’t the one in the parking lot holding up signs, yelling at me on the worst day of my life. Bitterness over that was the poison I drank.

And I was curious. So I made a deal with the hurt and cynical parts of me.

Ok. We’ll read it. The whole thing, over the course of a year, and if after that we don’t believe it’s the inspired word of God, we won’t.

What do we have to lose?

What do we have to surrender?

 

Believe it or not, I did it.

Every morning that year, I sat with my old Bible and read. It was one of the first commitments I ever made to myself that held. I realize now, my commitment to the effort was like that of a toddler to the cake she and her mother are baking.

But I did show up.

The anniversary of that decision is April 21. This year it falls the day after Easter, which seems poetic and beautiful. As in: Now that we’re resurrected, what do you want to do.

But wait…before all that, there’s Lent, the 40 days before Easter. The time is meant to encourage spiritual reflection, repentance, and a renewed commitment to following Christ through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

This year I decided to give up some sleep. I’m on Day 35.

 

Wake Up. Get Up.

It’s no secret that managing my mind in the morning is my personal Thunderdome. So I decided that when I wake up, I’ll just get up and spend time with God, rather than lie there letting the mental doom chatter crank me up for the day.

It helps that, historically, when I set aside time to dwell in the presence of God, crazy things happen.

Like that one time, immediately after a silent retreat, when I told a guy and his family - complete strangers at a State Park - that we should all get in his car to escape a lightning storm. They listened to me, and two minutes later a tree fell on the tent his kids were in. Six soaking wet strangers stared at me sitting in their passenger seat, like who are you? 

So yah, it can make you feel special - like prophet or something. I was looking forward to the fireworks God had planned for me during Lent.

 

Grow up. 

So for the last 35 days I’ve come to my space every day, and except for the first day or two, it’s been crickets - no prophecy, scant direction, no big feels - and here I expected to feel connected, special or at least be rewarded for my faithfulness.

This morning I showed up at 5am with a little attitude about that, disappointed that the fireworks have been so few.

“Well, Lord, I’m here and I know you are too, but if I’m being honest, I just don’t feeeeeeeeeeeeeel it.”

Hoo boy.

I tell my clients all the time, if I had a friend who lied to me as much as my feelings do, I wouldn’t be friends with them. Feelings are important but they accidentally lie, all the time.

The truth is (if you choose to believe, as I have) God never changes. God never leaves. He listens to us complain, and loves us anyway.

He’s here, no matter how I FEEEEEEL about it.

 

The Ask

I implored God, before Lent began, to help me get up and go into the secret place as Jesus himself did.

Somehow every day I do it, even when I don’t want to. I’m strangely compelled. It feels like that toddler baking a cake with her patient and generous mother standing by “helping.”

But what’s with the dial tone? No life-saving prophecies? No fireworks?

Maybe, at one time, God used fireworks to capture and keep my attention, so I’d stay in his presence, rather than skate out like a teenager with a date. I treated the practice of devotion casually; showing up to secret place when I had time or needed something.

But I’m not a child in the faith anymore and Lent is a time of training and discipline - for what I’m not sure - but I can see how the practice is changing me. Changing what I expect, changing what I think I deserve.

The truth is, I deserve nothing but I get everything. That’s the trade.

And if I’m as hungry for the things of God as I say I am, where else would I be at 5am?

ps. I still read the Bible through every year. This year, I’m doing it with the Catholics and I’m surprised at all I’ve learned through the commentary of Father Mike Schmitz. Highly recommend The Bible in a Year Podcast.