I wish I could go back and tell myself a few things, the same things I would tell anyone younger than me. There is no avoiding pain and chaos; those are the tools that use your ingredients to formulate your future. But there is self-inflicted pain that is more than anyone should have to experience. I would tell anyone, God made you uniquely in his image and then remained. He didn’t walk away from a finished product, but you are a finished product. Will you evolve? Yes. But are you uniquely everything wonderful that you need to already be? Yes. He is with us because he is written into our image and our being. God is a creator. He sees a blank canvas and he longs to paint a beautiful picture. You are that picture before you were even born. You do not have to earn that image. You do not have to find that image. You are not meant to edit that image, to add to it, or subtract. You are that image now and will remain so forever. Step back from the painting that is you, and see yourself as God does. Never wander from that image that you are because that is where pain lies- in the oils and paints of humanity. Be true. Be loved. And accept yourself for everything you truly are while you refuse to believe the lies.
“Before you were formed in the womb I knew you” Jeremiah 1:5
I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me. – Galatians 2:20
The word innocent; it burns my own tongue and lips to utter and sits like a hot knife in the back of my mind. I am not innocent. I know, with all of my heart, that I am a good man. But innocent? No, I lost that long ago- or so, I thought. I have carried by guilt and shame like war trophies around my neck, felt the wrath of human judgement that burns like the fury of hell, and condemned myself to a place of suffering deserved by those who dare to violate the foundation of their moral values. This feels just. It feels deserved. Righteous punishment.
It is not surprising, then, that hearing God speak to me that I am innocent before him is painful, if anything, and impossible to comprehend. The idea that, perhaps, I never lost my innocence. Indeed, it could be so, as I was born into sin, that I never started at a place of innocence in the first place. I wasn’t born with it, I didn’t earn it, I’ve lost it many times: redemption. As I wrestle with my loss, a great loss due to my own confusing choices, I feel nothing but guilt and shame. Therefore, I wrestle too, with the idea of redeemable innocence. The idea that God redeemed me, that he only sees the real me and not the version of me that operated in falsehood, and upon that redemption is my innocence. I am not inherently innocent, but it is by his redemption that I am free of guilt. That does sound lovely. There is nothing more difficult to make sense of than this concept when you are suffering the loss of your own sin: actions, for which, you are guilty.
The only way that I might even begin to partially understand this concept of true unconditional love is to step outside the human constraints of time. We see each other from moment to moment. Always looking for confirmation that the person we are most vulnerable to is not who we thought they might be. Easily erasing the true heart and good of a man by summing him up by his mistakes and poor choices. After all, we must protect ourselves first, right? If they could do this now, they could do this 20 years from now. I thought they were good, but they proved me wrong.
The idea of unconditional love is a reflection of God’s love. He loves who we truly are. That is to say, that he loves the unique person and identity you were born with, delineating between the person who acted in sin and the person that truly exists. He is just to redirect us and remind us of who we are, but he does not recognize us as our sin. He cannot look upon sin, he only sees who we truly are. That is why we say, God never gives up on us. He cannot. This means, we are not only forgiven, we are not only free of guilt and shame, we are innocent. We seem incapable of doing just that for the people we love even the most. And we seem incapable of doing that for ourselves.
Grief is a game of loss in life. The steaks are literally life or death. So we have to search for the sparks of hope that are whispered between the screams of our tortured souls. One of those whispers that longs to be heard is: That is not how I see you. I see the real you. Redemption is yours and you are innocent not because you paid the price of suffering, but because I already did.
What’s the most annoying trope in books or movies?
Slow motion walk, flat affect, dirt and blood across the face: boom. Fire, car rises slowly into the air, bodies fly backwards arms toward the sky. The hero never turns. Never even winces.
It is human nature to turn toward the explosion. To watch the flames. To feel the fear of life’s sudden change. Frantically work to gather the injured. Desperate attempts to tame the flames. But to no avail. Life is forever deformed by the blast. And walking away, unscathed, eyes forward, with confidence is either madness or the movies.
Knowing your true identity is our only fail proof navigation system in life. It is not about “finding yourself”. It’s about being honest with God and asking Him to know yourself, as He knows you.
The loss that brings your greatest grief strips you naked. It reveals your most vulnerable self to yourself and to the world. The bruises, the lacerations, the bites and scratches, the decaying flesh: frozen in time and space, unable to move and avoid the embarrassment and shame of your appearance and place. The universal experience of grief is not pain, it is the endless questions that plague your heart and mind. In this state, battered and deformed, it is hard to recognize yourself. You remember who you thought you were: who you were known to be. And you remember the mistakes you made, the horrible things you called yourself, and the horrible things people now call you. This, at a time when you are most vulnerable and must lean on whatever identity you can summon. How easy it is to believe that you are a wretched soul, deserving of this, and that this grief is your true identity.
The truth be told, if we were true to our identity we would rarely experience an unhealing grief. If we could forgive others, forgive ourselves, see God’s hand, and make our choices only within the true unique identity he gave us, we would have never have faltered and we would remain in his peace. We would not have lost our person to bad choices. Or we would celebrate the life of the person taken from us and heal in understanding of God’s eternity. But the struggle of dishonesty about our identity begins like a quiet and unseen virus, infecting our self perception before we start to display the symptoms. And when we are laying in the ashes of our most profound loss, what we need of who we are is hardest to see.
Honesty and confession. That moment where we find ourselves with only a shallow breath remaining and no will to go on- no more self defense, no energy to fight, no sense of direction- accepting the wave of self defeat and hoping for death…that moment is our opportunity to tell God what we call ourselves. Tell God the names and descriptions of what we believe has become our identity. I told God that I believed I was alone, unloveable, unredeemable, a failure, a bad husband, a bad father, a bad friend, a bad son, a bad brother, insecure, unworthy. I imagined myself sitting in the burning dirt and brush, bleeding and broken, unable to stand. The car I was in only moments before, full of a happy family, a loving wife, a satisfied husband, now wrapped around a tree, mangled in a heap, still smoking. I wrote those names on a list as Jesus walked up behind me. Reaching down with one hand he grabbed the list, dark and shaded in gray scale and no color. As his hand took the list a light spread down the paper and my outstretched arm. His other hand grabbed me by the side and lifted me up. As the light flooded in, like a rapidly rising sun over the horizon, the landscape was revealed. I was there, again, in the valley between flush green mountains, the fire burning beside us, flames dancing as if rejoicing my prodigal return. His arm never left me, but he reached down with the other hand and placed my list into the flames. It flashed, consumed by the fire, and a dove emerged: beautiful, white, disappearing high over the surrounding hilltops. Gentle, genuine lover, caretaker, resilient, father, son, friend, protector, fighter, servant, willing; He called out the names of my identity as he saw them, written on his heart. He pointed to look above me and there were the pieces of my world, his many angels working diligently, picking up the many fractured parts, building new ones, and putting it slowly back together.
Our identity is unique to us. But it was gifted and generates its actions the same: through love. And because he first loved us, that while we were yet his enemies he died for us to live eternal as his children. There is no condemnation in Christ. That is hard to understand when the blisters of self condemnation still drain from your grief and shame. But it is true. And if we accept our honest and true identity, we have all we need to remain in his steadfast direction.
Jesus had an identity that was unique to him and served as his compass throughout his life and ministry. It was proclaimed when he emerged from the water, held by John the Baptist: ” And a voice from heaven said, “This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.” Matthew 3:17. He chose not to accept the false identities hurled at him from those who loved and hated him, the world, and evil. And his path, his identity, brought us to freedom.
What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done when no one was watching?
I remember driving up Highway 64, heading to her parents house to get our dog after a short trip, and our conversation flowed easy as it always seemed to do: “I would walk through hell with you”, I said. She looked at me and said, “I know you would”. It was true. Those words, that commitment, came out of my heart and soul. Blurted from my lips without a conscious effort. Speaking my truth. Even she would be unable to deny it’s validity. And while I struggled to walk through my own hell more than a year later, I did it alone.
In my house, where I was raised, my parents were far from a perfect marriage and our house had it’s own demons. But I was raised that it is in the commitment to survive the fires of hell that you are shaped and molded, like steel, into the sharp point of an old happy couple. Many years later, in my own home, I found what we did differently was lived out a mantra- if you are going through hell, I will take inevitable burn and live the scar of failure, rather than endure the necessary pain of healing to come out a new person, a rising phoenix, on the other side with you.
Piled there beneath the spring cleaning rejects of a neighbors garage, a piss covered mattress no home of its own, but a promise of a good nights sleep. My mother found that old mattress on a walk around the block and brought me back to grab it in the cover of night. Rounds of lysol and carpet cleaner later I laid on that bed and slept soundly for the next 8 years. How an old broken mattress continued to do its job until its final day foreshadowed the boy who slept soundly and would grow old himself, broken and stained by life, to persist and provide his calling until his time will run out.
Daily writing prompt
What’s the kindest thing someone has ever done for you?
Which fictional world would be the most fun to vacation in?
Created by song, a place where a child could become a King or Queen, creatures for conversation. I would vacation in Narnia and bring my worries to Aslan.
I would choose to go back and witness the resurrection from the tomb. If he didn’t walk out from behind that stone then the cross was merely an execution. But if he did…
