Forgive

I could cry it feels so good to be sitting here at Caribou spending time alone considering every waking moment this past week I have been surrounded by lots of people- children, husband, friends, teachers, neighbors, etc.  I am so blessed by so much community, but I have not spent very much time reflecting or processing the past two weeks. Right now, I wish I had creativity flowing through my brain to my fingers to my hands, but all I have is bullet point thoughts. I started a new job. Its so incredibly eye-opening. I love it. We looked at some houses in the Phillips neighborhood. I went on my first kindergarten field trip. I am having so many breakthroughs in marriage.  In life.  In everything.  How do you even begin to process so much life change?

Today, I had the day off of teaching. Aaaa… the blessings of working in education. You get all of these days off for conferences, teacher workshop days, holiday breaks, etc. So nice. Today, I went to spin class (and Nick came too for the first time!). I met with a dear friend for tea, and spent the entire afternoon cooking. As I cooked, thoughts that seem too big for my small head just bounced off the walls of my brain… teaching…marriage… college ministry… family relationships… students… moving… what ingredients did I forget? Etc. As Nickel Creek played in the background, the calmness of God caught me like a fish on a hook. I was browning italian sausage with ground beef just mashing and thinking, mashing and thinking, mashing and thinking and BAMB! I just put down the masher (the spatula) took a look out of the window at the beautiful day and prayed, “God? Would you help me stop? Help me stop thinking about things as inhumane as italian sausage and hamburger beef? Please clear my mind. Fill me with peace.”

My mashing turned into brainlessly browning meat while music saturated my anxiety. I spent most of yesterday attached at every limb to five kindergarteners at a time, ssshhhhing, holding hands, and walking children to the bathroom on our field trip to the Maplewood Community Center, where we watched a play. Kindergarteners can only hold it for so long. I can only think and talk for so long without needing to take a time-out of life. A time out of doing. A time out to Listen. Exfoliate my heart with the Word of God. Over the last few weeks, there are a few verses that have been so much more than words I heartlessly read. They have cut my heart like a sword. They have challenged the ways that I think and have CHANGED the ways that I think.

Because of a situation that happened with some of my students at school, I chose to handle the situation by talking to the students about forgiveness and what it means to truly forgive someone.

Here is the verse I read… Col. 3: 12-13 “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” For so long, I have just passed over that verse, thinking it was just one of those “love everyone” verses. Loving people isn’t that hard, is it? Um, I’ve discovered that it IS.

It is hard to love people. Loving people does not soley consist of smiling and sticking your thumbs up. If I am called to love and forgive others as the Lord has forgiven me, I have the hardest challenge of my life ahead of me. I certainly cannot do this without the supernatural work of God changing my heart and mind. I have learned so much about myself and the expectations that I place on other people. On my students. My friends. My family. My husband. I have the expectation that I deserve to be treated nicely and considerately. I expect students to listen to me.  I expect certain people to make me feel a certain way.  I expect that when people are rude or mean, they will apologize to me.  I live in the sense of what is due, what people should owe me.  I don’t outwardly act like this, but its the restlessness in my heart that reveals I have all these needs and expectations from certain relationships and groups of people that just don’t get met the way that my longings want to be met.  And I am realizing how bogus it is to hold unwritten and unspoken expectations for people who simply were not created to meet my needs.  No human being can meet my needs.

I have realized that I live very much out of the perspective of “Give and take.” I am not ok with just giving. I want to receive something for my giving. When people hurt me, I expect an apology and I expect it to be sincere and heart-felt. The reality is, however, not all people will apologize to someone even if they’ve been the one in the wrong. Free love is loving people without expecting something in return. Its forgiving them in totality, forgiving  AS GOD HAS FORGIVEN US. I will get nowhere in my love for others if I do not take a moment and ask myself, “How has God forgiven me?”

I am almost speechless because what God has forgiven me for could never even fill every page that could be typed and pasted onto the internet. My sin is so bad that it deserves death. And I’m not just talking about sin that is obvious, but the hidden sins in my heart. The thoughts I think. I have spit in God’s face and chosen temporary pleasures for my own selfish gain, made myself into a God rather than looked to Him as my God, wanted to be worshipped myself than worship God, lived carelessly, shamed others with hurtful words and blasphemy, made idols out of relationships, body image and on and on and on… God has forgiven me of ALL MY SIN! This is amazing! When someone wrongs a forgiven sinner, the way that we are called to forgive is as God has forgiven us. We are called to give grace, to wipe away grudges for even the most hurtful actions others have done to us.

I think that one of the reasons it is so hard to truly forgive other people is because we hold too high of expectations for people who are broken and sinful. Why do we expect perfection from other people if they are, by their nature, sinful, and not God? At least if you are like me, you either to a large or small degree think that others owe you dignity and integrity. Because you hold a very high status for yourself. You are beside yourself if others do not meet this end of the deal. Oh how hopeless we are without God to help us! Is it possibly to give and to give of ourselves joyfully without needing anything in return? Without expecting something in return? Could we love others and look past the ways they’ve hurt us or treated us? Could we prepare our hearts to walk into every situation without needing something from people?  Not if we don’t double click on what the gospel really is.

Did Jesus come to die on a cross for “good” people?  No.  He came for sinners.  Sinners aren’t just lonely beggars.  They are you and me.  WE are liars, murderers, filled with jealousy, malice, slander, sexual immorality, idolatry, etc.  Sin has separated us from God, and yet He came and took the punishment we deserve.  If we double click on Christ’s death on the cross, we’d see the torture, the pain, the sorrow, the death- that all happened because justice had to be served.  Death was the just result of sin.  And mercy was the gracious act of God poured out through the life and resurrection of Jesus.  He has forgiven us.  Not only has he pardoned our sin, but he welcomes us into his presence at all times.  He doesn’t define us by what we did wrong, but by the righteousness of Christ living in us.  If we understood the depths of His forgiveness of us, we would see more clearly that no one owes us anything at all.  But we’ll never understand this unless we are exposed to our sin and shown how much we really don’t deserve anything.  We are entitled to nothing.  Not even to others treating us nicely.

I am a firm-planted needer.  This is the first year of my life that it has been revealed so largely that I cannot help but see that God is revealing it because He wants to show me the problem with needing others and the solution of His total love that is the only real thing that can give me what I need. I am currently reading, “When People are Big and God is Small” by Edward Welch.  I am really hoping that this book, along with Col. 3 will help me begin to love people fully, freely, and graciously without needing them.  I am loved and accepted by God- I want HIM to be big and people to be small when it comes to my needs being met.

Quieted.

I can’t really think out loud, speak out loud, or process anything out loud. After a big fight in marriage after a constant few weeks without a big fight, I am quieted. I am slow to carry out any actions or sentences at all today.

I am meek today. Sober- minded. Outside looking into myself. It’s a confusing picture as I stare at me. Who is this girl? Why does she care about the things she cares about? Why is she always so unsatisfied with people and circumstances in this world? Why is she always looking in the wrong places to get joy and fulfillment? And why is she so dang sensitive and stubborn?

I don’t even know what the problem is. I don’t understand myself. Today, the thing that I am most afraid of is myself. When I am not satisfied or an expectation doesn’t get met, I become filled with anger. No one really knows this but my husband (and now you too). In our fight, I became so irrational and said all the words I now wish I could take back because in the heat of anger, I said things that weren’t true- things that hurt and cut deep. Why would I go down that road? I let sin consume me and turn into a fire in my heart. I let it burn, and its still burning. I am so weighed down in my sin today.

I am so selfish. I cry out for God’s forgiveness and he’ll freely give it. But I sure wont forgive others that fast. What is wrong with me? I’ve learned the gospel, let it saturate my brokenness and let it make me feel good, but I refuse to act gracious and forgiving to people like imperfect husbands and friends and family members, etc. I hate myself for this. When people hurt me, I invisibly stamp a sign on my forehead that says, “Hey you jerk! Now you owe me! Once you’ve made it up to me, I’ll start being nice again.” I counter-think to myself…ummm…Katie? Do you even know the depths of your own sin and how much grace you have been given? You hypocrite! Why have you set your expectations off the charts for relational perfection in your life? You can’t get that in human relationships! You were forgiven so you can forgive. So forgive already! Stop holding grudges and having the attitude that people owe you! No one owes you anything! You deserve Hell because of your sin, but Christ has chosen to have compassion and mercy on you and your sin-stained heart. He has purified you and erased all the sin. Can’t you forgive others like this?

I want to. I really do. I wish that I could become this way overnight. Yet, I know it is a lifelong process. The reality of eternity that is set upon my heart shows me that this life is really short and temporary, yet it feels soooooooooo long and like forever that I’ll be stuck in my immaturity.

I just want to escape today. I want to get out of here. Out of my skin. I want to be someone with a different temperament and a different outlook on circumstances and God. But I’m caught in the middle of a tornado it seems, circling around in the same patterns and crap and reacting to life in horrible ways.

I can walk out of our door and pretend to the world, but inside our apartment, the truth comes out. The truth that I’m not trusting in Christ or treasuring him. What happens is I start treasuring everything else and running to everything else to satisfy the deep longings in me, but none of these things can be my savior and promise me hope and a future, like Christ.

I’m just going to let it all out. I idolize Nick. I idolize relationships and social life. I think that they are Gods. I think that they will treat me exactly like Jesus does- with total care and tenderness and complete understanding. Where have I let myself go? I have begun to create a false idea of reality in my head. We are all sinful people and in need of a savior from it. The things I so often worship are not real God’s. My husband is not going to give me the total affections of Jesus, because he is only a human. He is finite in his ability to search and know me, like my God and Father. He does a pretty great job of this, but its those moments in which he cannot actually be God for me that I unleash the anger.

I need to take this afternoon and read God’s word and pray. I need to repent of the idolatry and obsessions in my life that are not God. I need to repent of my irrational anger and of the hurtful words that I spoke. I need to pray to feel the weight of Christ’s forgiveness. I need to pray to be slow to speak, slow to anger, and forgiving of others. I need to be quieted in my anger.

Still pressing on, though its deeply challenging today.

Thanks for reading- and of course- advice welcomed.

Glorious Grace

I am thankful for the Friday Night Blues I had two days ago. They led me to a total revelation of my insecurities and false places I place my worth, which revealed so many deeper things going on inside of my heart. When Nick came home Friday night, I was messing around with cool vintage paper, my recipe book, a glue stick, magazine clippings, and cool pens. Crafts ease my mind and allow my creative juices to run wild, rather than allowing myself to run wild. Nick came home and sat next to me, held my hands, rubbed my back and calmly asked me how I was doing while apologizing for the night’s miscommunication. It was very much glorious grace.

This is a pattern I am getting use to in my life. Searching for joy in the wrong places + measuring my self worth based on my works + getting angry and unleashing sin+ processing conflict+ realizing I’m not satisfied+ REPENTANCE = Receiving glorious grace and Christ’s righteousness covering all of my insecurities and sin. However, it is very much a wrestling match between believing lies and believing truth. It takes all I am to believe fully that God’s grace completely removes me from condemnation and punishment. I am totally freed because of Christ’s perfect life given to me and his death, which bore the wrath for all of my sin. It is finished. There is nothing more I have to do to gain his worth and love. Nothing. I’m free. But I have to knock down the wall of lies to believe it.

As the pattern continues, I continue to learn more about myself and God- and I’m slowly seeing myself change! Nick is honestly the best catalyst to my growth and change as a person and as a Christian. Being in such close relationship with him has revealed so many things inside of me that was sneakily hidden before marriage. Because of the natural level of accountability spouses bring each other, I am forced to look myself in the heart and examine. The deeper I am exposed, the more grace I see! I am flippant and swayed by emotions and circumstances (if that’s not obvious!), but God remains steadfast and unchanging in his love. Whew! I am so blessed.

As the Friday Night Blues were coming to an end, I poured out my heart and insecurities, Nick listened- much like I would imagine Jesus listens to us when we pour our hearts out to him. After a good cry, he began helping me with the recording equipment he surprised me with a few weeks after getting married. As he fuddled with the computer, microphone and piano, we finally figured out how to record! I played and sang while he played around with the computer program. I love writing songs and singing. Nick loves computers. A match made in heaven? I think so.

After facing the truth- that I have been rescued by God’s grace and shown mercy amidst my sin and rebellion of God- I eventually shed this grace upon Nick, and he shed grace upon me as well within minutes of him walking in the door. Honestly, I can’t imagine what marriage would be like without this understanding- that we are both deeply sinful and the only way we can truly forgive each other is because we have first been forgiven. Right now, I am trusting in Romans 8:1-2 “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”

Even though I had the Friday Night Blues because of a combination of expectations not being met, a sinful heart and insecurities, I have been set free from it all in Christ. Because of this glorious grace, Nick and I have been able to (after processing through deeper issues and sin) forgive and forget.

I am on the lifelong journey to hope in God instead of in things, people, marriage, how I look, how others perceive me, etc.

Thanks for being on this slow and awesome journey with me.