Right now there seems like there is one theme that keeps repeating itself in my life. As if there is one word that God keeps telling me over and over again.

HOPE.

I had the opportunity to talk with a new friend of mine a few weeks ago about some of the things going on in her life. Yes, usually new friends don’t talk about personal things early on in their friendship but she thought that maybe I could relate. She was dealing with some issues from her parents divorcing and was just trying to work some things out. One conclusion that we both came to is that what happened in the past does not have to keep affecting your future. The baggage from back then doesn’t have to keep you from becomng who you want to be. There is HOPE.

I read an article the other day about the ex-gutarist for the rock band Korn. To make a long story short it was about how he found God, quit the band, and kicked his drug habit. I don’t know what it’s like to kick a drug habit, but I imagine it’s hard. And I know that telling your friends that you no longer want to be apart of their group is hard too. But that’s what he did. If you were to look at this guy 10 years ago, God would be the furthest thing from you mind. But God can break through the toughest barriers. Because of that, there is HOPE.

I have read the story of a pornstar who left that industry to pursue a life with God. She has past filled with abuse, shame, and a feeling of being unloved. But that’s her past. Yes, her past is real but HOPE is real also.

I have my own issues I have dealt/am dealing with. I’m a work in progress. I am preparing a group presentation for class in which I am portraying a man going to see a therapist about his problems. A friend recently told me I would be good at playing the crazy person. I think she was joking. Well, it was kind of deep because some of the issues that are being dealt with in the presentation are things I have dealt with in my own life. It’s been a great opportunity for me just to look back and see how far God has brought me. It’s been an opportunity to for me to remember that there is HOPE.

Sure we live in a messed up world. A world where we see such things as poverty and excess, political corruption, religious persecution, human trafficking, terrorism, genocide, disease, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the crisis in Darfur, Republicans attacking Democrats and Democrats attacking Repulicans, abortion, divorce, child molestation and abuse, and the list goes on. It’s easy to forget about hope.

And we all have our our things to deal with too; we are all a little messed up in our own ways. We all have those wounds that have been dealt to us, those addictions that we just can’t seem to break, those fears of rejection or failure or the past or the future or abandonment in which we live out of. We all have those relationships that have left their mark, those areas in which we seek forgiveness, those things that bring us shame, and those days where nothing seems to go our way. We all need HOPE.

There is HOPE. Hope for something better, hope for tomorrow, hope for things to be made right. We know that things aren’t like they are suppossed to be, so we have hope that one day they will be made right. We know that we aren’t like we are suppossed to be, so we hope we can become someone more. One thing I know of, one thing that I can say without a single doubt, is that there is HOPE in Him. He is sure, steady, and always true. God is Hope.

“God, the one and only— I’ll wait as long as he says. Everything I hope for comes from him, so why not? He’s solid rock under my feet, breathing room for my soul, An impregnable castle: I’m set for life.” Psalm 62:5

There was this girl in my homeroom. Let’s call her Roxanne. Roxanne was great. Smart, funny, pretty, nice, & popular. If you were a boy in the eighth grade, you had a thing for Roxanne. She was just it. Roxanne and I were friends. Not best friends or anything. But because she was a nice girl, she would always talk to me. I had liked girls before Roxanne. Like the girl named Michelle in 1st grade. We would squirt glue on each other. That’s how you get a girl’s attention in 1st grade, you squirt Elmer’s in her eye. Then there was Stacy in 5th grade. She had blonde poofy hair that for some reason I found attractive.

But Roxanne was different for me. I mean, I was in 8th grade so I was practically a grown man and all. There was a Valentine’s Day dance coming up and I wanted to ask her to go with me to it. So I made of list of things I had to do so she would go with me. 1. Talk to her. 2. Make her laugh. 3. Wear a gallon of my dad’s cologne every day. 4. Buy her the new Boyz II Men cd. I did everything on my list. So I asked her if she wanted to go to the dance, to which she replied, “We are such good friends; I think we should just stay friends.” Which really means, “Are you serious? No, I’m too cool for you.” My first endeavor into the world of relationships had been crushed by the notorious Friend Zone. I still have bitter feelings toward the Friend Zone.

So what did I do wrong with Roxanne? I did everything on my list. I followed every step exactly. Maybe that was my problem.

I have a relationship with Christ. I’m not dating Christ or anything like that. He’s married to the Church. It’s hard to explain my relationship with Him. I mean, it’s hard to put into words any relationship. Relationships are just something you have to experience, are they not? The definition of relationship, an emotional or other connection between people, really doesn’t do that great of a job explaining relationships. As Christians, we like to use the word Evangelism when explaining how we invite others to have a relationship with Christ.

Evangelism is a funny word. You go to most Protestant churches and you will find the phrase, “…to evangelize the lost” in their mission statement. Of course we have all heard of the “Evangelical Church.” Basically the term is based on the emphasis of sharing the story of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection with a non-believer. Witnessing to the ‘lost.’

Sometimes the word ‘evangelize’ bothers me though. Sometimes the word makes me think of negative things. Sometimes when I think of the word ‘evanglize’, I think of a check list of things you have to do to become a Christian. In our society, we like our steps and our rules. We like guidelines and things we can check off. Sometimes I think the whole idea of ‘evangelizing the lost’ has been hijacked by a bunch of people who have turned it into some kind of process. Step A. Read this verse. Step B. Say this prayer. Step C. Get dunked underwater by the pastor. It makes it seems so rigid and so cold.

And when telling someone about Christ, evangelizing, I need to ask myself what I am really doing. Am I giving some person a list of steps they have to follow or am I inviting them into a relationship. As I learned with Roxanne, there are no steps in relationships. (You were wondering how I was going to tie that in.) It’s not some systematic process. I have met people before who said the knew Jesus was God and they knew His whole story, but they just weren’t ready to follow Him yet. The could check off everything on the list, but didn’t want to become a Christian. This means it’s not just some system. Becoming a Christian is entering into a relationship. Presenting the Gospel of Christ as some sort of list of steps or a type of process to follow is pretty much something a Pharisee would do. And we know that Jesus’ way was different from what the Pharisees were doing.

It’s kind of cool growing up in an entertainment town. Nashville is not as big as L.A. or New York, but there tends to be something happening every night of the week. And it’s usual to run into some celebrity when you are out on the town. And if you don’t run into someone famous, you will probably meet a bunch of people who think they are famous or are trying to become famous. At times, it seems like everyone here is a “musician.” I think 82% of the males in this town between the ages of 18-35 claim to play the guitar.

I wanted to be famous; well i used to.

I thought about becoming an actor. I think I’d be really good. I’d be good at pretending to be someone other than myself. I could get used to making a lot of money. I also wanted to be a TV game show host. I really wanted Bob Barker’s job on The Price is Right. I wanted his 70s style microphone/wand thing. And all of the old ladies who come up on stage and kiss me on the cheek, I mean who wouldn’t want that job?

If I became famous, I’m afraid I would get too wrapped up in myself. Maybe that’s why God hasn’t let it happen. I think most people have a desire to be somebody. I think most people wouldn’t mind being recognized for what they do. We all, in some way, seek the attention of others. We all have our own times when we say, “Look at me. Look how cool I am. Look at how attractive I am. Look at how funny I am. Look at how much higher I am on the social ladder than you.” Most people in some way struggle with vanity.

Honestly, I can’t turn on MTV anymore.

I really just get bothered by everything on there. Cribs. Seriously? If I watch this, I just become envious. I need a sub zero fridge filled to the brim with nothing but Crystal and a garage filled with way too many cars. All of those “reality” shows about beautiful people and their day to day drama. I just really don’t care about who broke up with who. I can’t even get a date myself, why would I care about somebody’s love life who lives in a house with 7 strangers? It seems like nothing but a bunch of people promoting themselves and telling me if I want to achieve a higher status I need to live like they are living.

Self promotion. It’s the idea of me showing others how great I am. You know, all of my writings, in all honesty I give credit to God. And if anything positive is taken from them I truly believe its God’s doing and not my own. But at the same time there is something in me that wants people’s attention. There is something in me that wants the approval of others.

It’s a struggle. Constantly.

I always have to evaluate my motives because I don’t want to get too caught up in “how great I am.”

And there’s this idea that if you don’t have this certain product, or you don’t look like this certain person, or that you don’t make this amount of money…well then you just are not that important. And most of us fall for it because we want to be important.

I like what John the Baptist said about Jesus. “He must become more important. I must become less important.” He had the right idea.

It’s about Him.

It’s not about me. It’s not about how great I am. It’s not about how good I look. It’s not about how much money I have. It’s not about how well I can sing or play the guitar. It’s not about how well I can write or how many things I can get published. It’s all vanity and it all leads to nowhere.
I want to decrease more often, so He can increase more often.

I find the stroy of Adam and Eve pretty fascinating. There only being two people on Earth. No one else. No bosses to watch over you at work. No bad drivers on the road. The activity of people-watching (which is a favorite of mine) hadn’t been invented yet. Imagine living here with just your significant other. Soulmates. I doubt jealousy was that big of a deal in their relationship. I mean, really who else was there for your mate to talk to? To top it all off, they’re naked. In the buff. Letting it all hang out. It wasn’t dirty or sinful. Pure. Without shame. No embarassment. Just, “This is me and this is you. We are naked and unashamed.”

(Actually this reminds me of an amusing article I read the other week about Christian nudists.)

I wear clothes sometimes. I mean, usually I have to. I probably wouldn’t have a job if I didn’t. This leads me to the question, why do we wear clothes? Forget the aspect of sexuality and lust. Why do we really wear clothes?

Most of us have things we don’t like about our body. Let’s be honest. I work out 4 days a week, but I don’t think of myself as having this perfect physique. We are self conscience beings who want to hide our flaws. That’s why we wear clothes. Who determines exactly what flaws are, though? Who says that looking a certain way is desirable?

Who tells me how to be me?

That’s the main question I am getting at. Who tells me that in order for me to be acceptable I have to act this way or dress this way?

Anytime I give someone the ability to determine who Matt is, I give them authority that is not theirs. My senior research paper in college was on the negative effects of advertising. Chiseled faces, six-pack abs, big boobs, and a model like bodies apparently sell products. They also sell us lies. They say, “This image is the standard. This is what you should wear. This is how you should act. This is what you should look like.” And we fall for the trap. We give someone else the ability to define who we are.

And it’s not just physical things. We have all adjusted who we are to impress someone at some point in our lives. Most guys will do it at some point for some girl and most girls will do it at some point for some guy. I have tried to adjust my personality at some point to try to impress a girl. It didn’t work. It never does. I once knew a girl who dated a friend of mine and she agreed with everything he said. She didn’t have any opinions of her own. This really annoyed me.

Adam never had GQ magazine to tell him how to look. Eve never had an image of a Playboy model to live up to. So what or who defined them? Adam couldn’t define Eve because she was the only woman he had ever met. She was his standard for womanhood. And he was hers for manhood. So how were they defined?

God defined Adam and Eve. He created them in His image. He determined their true identity. He instilled in them the standard to live up to. No one else. Just Him. Eugene Peterson translates it best in The Message when he says, “God spoke: ‘Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature’ …God created human beings; he created them godlike, reflecting God’s nature.”

I was created to reflect Him. I wasn’t created to reflect the image that’s on front of a magazine. I wasn’t created to reflect a different personality than the one He uniquely gave me. I was created so that He could define my life. I want to stop having standards for others. I don’t want to think that for someone to be higher on my own list of importance they have to look a certain way or act a certain way or even make a certain amount of money. (This is not to say physical attraction is not important. God gave us physical attraction to others for a reason. But physical attraction is from God and not outside things telling you what is beauty and what is not.) I want to see the reflection of God in others.

Naked and unashamed they were. Because God defined Adam and He defined Eve.

I began grad school the other day. A new chapter in my life. A chapter that I have wanted to start for the past year and a half. Now it is actually happening.

It was around 1 1/2 years ago when i felt like I heard God telling me to pursue this path of counseling. It wasn’t like I awoke one morning to His thunderous voice telling me to pursue a career of helping people work through their problems. A friend would toss out a random comment like, ” Hey, you’d be a great counselor.” Family members would ask me for advice on problems they were dealing with. And as these things were happening, a interest inside me began to grow for this pursuit. I remember one day looking through a bunch of writings of mine and I realized that alot of them had to do with getting over problems and issues in my own life and what I have learned from them.

So I knew counseling was the path, but I had no idea where to begin. I knew I would have to go back to school, but I didn’t know where. Now, let me say something. I wasn’t exactly the model student during my undergrad years. I didn’t fail any courses or anything. My grades were just average. I think I was more concerned with the social aspects of college. I guess I have changed alot since then. I like to read, and write, and learn, and think. And now that I have no social life, I will have alot more time to study. (okay. I have a social life, but it’s not so great that it will cause me to study less.)

It was basically a series of God shutting and opening the right doors that lead me back to my undergrad university for grad school. Back when I decided I wanted to pursue counseling, my college didn’t even have a graduate program in professional counseling. While trying to figure out where to go to school, they announced they were starting a program.

He provides.

And looking back now I can see how He has guided me to this new chapter over the last ten years. With all of the messed up things that came along with my parents divorcing, it’s just a reminder to me that He can bring good things out of negative situations. He can bring life to the broken. He’s in the redeeming business.

So that’s where I am. I am actually looking forward to learning all of these new things. I’m not jumping-on-the-bed excited or anything, but I am looking forward to it. The other people in the class seem interesting too. Being around good people is always a plus.

I’m ready for this chapter. At least, I think I’m ready. He is good.

I read an article the other day. The article was about young adults who grew up going to church, but now they are in their 20s and they don’t go anymore. Catchy, right? The article went further than just saying that a bunch of twentysomethings are leaving the church. It said that a bunch of twentysomethings are leaving their faith.

I liked the article. I am not saying that I like the fact that many people my age are choosing not to have faith in God. I like that the article was written.

I am a twentysomething myself. Twenty-five, actually. So I am exactly a mid-twentysomething. I can relate to many things that were said in the article by the twentysomethings who no longer have faith in God. I mean, I still have faith and all, but I understand how they feel.

Mainly the article equates that the absence of faith in these young adults is due to a lack of discipleship in many churches. Other factors are explained such as: The Church is very good at instructing children and teenagers on what the right answers are, but does little to engage on applying the answers to everyday life.

Still, sometimes today I get tired of going to church. I grew up in the Bible Belt. I grew up going to a traditional, southern, conservative church. I know all about church. I love the Church as a whole. I love the sense of community and family that it promotes. But as I said earlier, sometimes I get tired of going to church.

In the article, a girl is interviewed about how she grew up in a Christian home (just like myself), she was very involved in her youth group (just like myself), and she attended a Christian club at her high school (I helped start one at my school). And to sum up the rest of her story, she lost her faith because due to a lack of fellowship with other believers after she moved. I have been there. Feeling disconnected. Sometimes it feels like I am there now. It’s hard not to feel disconnected when you are the only single guy in a couples Bible study class.

I feel I can read people pretty well. I am not saying that people are easy to understand. People are quite difficult. Christians are the hardest people to read though. There is not that much transparency in the Church. I know this because I am a Christian and being transparent is one thing I struggle the most with. I think this whole transparency issue, a lack of authenticity, is what caused me to stray away from the Church for a few years. I grew up seeing people put on their Sunday Church masks and I grew up learning how to put on my own. I grew up learning the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong, but I never learned why. I grew up being taught that the Church was supposed to be a community of believers experiencing life together (not just on Sundays), but I didn’t have that many people disciple me Monday thru Saturday.

To be honest, that’s one thing that still bothers me. When church gets to be about how many people we can get in the seats, or how many people can we get saved/baptized, or how many hands we can shake on Sunday mornings. (Honestly, I get annoyed by those hand-shakers who shake my hand every Sunday, but don’t even know my name.) When I look at the New Testament church, I see a family. People eating with each other, people encouraging each other during difficult times, people being REAL with each other. No masks of self-righteousness. No fakers. No phonies. Okay, maybe there were some churches that dealt with self-righteousness, but that’s not what church was intended to be.

Deep down, my desire is to just be real. I want to be the same on Sunday as I am on Friday night. I don’t want to pretend to be more spiritual than I am, or pretend like I have all the answers. I don’t want to pretend like everything is going great, when I feel just like giving up. I want to be transparent. I want to go to Bible Studies and Sunday school classes where I can wrestle over issues with others instead of another teacher telling me what’s right and what’s wrong. I want engagement. I want to engage.

I wanted to share this story from my high school years. I went through 3 youth pastors when I was a teenager. I remember when my parents split up that the youth pastor at that time didn’t even talk with me about it. I don’t have some grudge against him or anything. I am just stating that I felt overlooked. There was no connection, no engagement, and it really affected me negatively for awhile. There are so many people in the Church who are hurting and yet most of the time no one even knows about it. I’m not saying that pastors should deeply engage everyone. We would need many more pastors. I am saying that maybe I could help others if I took off my mask a little more and invested in others outside of church. Maybe we could all be a little more real. Then we wouldn’t be afraid to let down our guard and invest in each other any day of the week.

“Christian Bowling.” I think I cringed a little bit last week when I heard the announcement at church about forming a team for a Christian bowling league. What exactly is Christian Bowling, was my first thought. Is it it like regular bowling, except with an added prayer before each roll of the ball? Instead of Rock and Roll playing on the jukebox, are there hymns belted out by a choir?

But in all seriousness, what makes Christian bowling…Christian?

I have no answer.

I know I don’t like the thought of a Christian bowling league. To me, a Christian bowling league says, “We think we are too good to be in a regular bowling league, so we will form our own.” I guess this shouldn’t surprise me, though. We as Christians have been forming our own little ‘Bubbles’ for years. We have our Christian schools, our Christian colleges (which I even attened), our Christian music , our Christian radio stations, our Christian books, Christian tv stations, and even our “Christian” political leaders. (I thought the quotation marks around Christian were needed when talking about politicians.) It seems sometimes that we are more exclusive when we should be more inclusive. But I am not going to go off on a tangent here. I want to share about my own little bubble.

I know I have shared this before, but I wasn’t too concerned with God for a few years during college. I mean I believed in God and all, but I was more concerned with what I wanted rather than what He wanted. I loved God, but He wasn’t high on my priority list. Around the end of my college years, my priorities started to change. I started to change. God became more and more a priority in my life. I wanted to follow Him more and more. And with any change, you have to figure out what to do with the past?

I created my own Christian bubble. I guess because I had this past, and now I didn’t want to be associated with anything from it. This includes people. I stopped hanging around with old friends. It’s not that my old friends weren’t Christian; they just were Christian enough. (whatever that means)

I am at a different place now, outside of the Christian bubble I created. I have found I can breathe easier out here. I don’t have thoughts like, “Oh I can’t go to a party because there will be drunk people there and I can’t associate myself with that.” I don’t think, “I can’t be friends with these people because they are not spiritual enough.” I really don’t care if other people see me hanging out in a non-Christian environment. As a friend recently wrote to me, “That’s why I have found it so easy to enjoy the company of unbelievers…they know they are messed up and don’t try to hide it…they are more real than we are…they don’t flaunt being “more spiritual.”

It’s funny because I feel that for most Christians I am either too Christian or not Christian enough. (again, whatever that means.) I know that some Christians judge me because I don’t think alcohol, dancing, and wearing jeans to church are sins. And on the other hand, some judge me because I am actually not afraid to say I love Jesus and I want Him to be my first priority.

I know I don’t want to be in a Christian bubble again. I know I don’t want to seperate myself from the rest of the world.

I just want to be more like Jesus.

I want to go places that the religious folk don’t think I should go. And be friends with the people the religious folk say I shouldn’t hang around. But I still want to be known as a man after God’s own heart.

In the world, but not of it. Just like Jesus.

I want to be a follower of Christ in just a regular bowling league.

Most of the time when I write one of these things it’s for the purpose of sharing something I have learned from my own experiences. I have experienced a lot and God has taught me so many things through my own past. This is not one of those pieces. This is not something from my past or something that God has taught me. This is something current. This is something fresh and real to me. It’s easier to talk about the past. This is a little more difficult because it is something I am going through right at this moment. It’s funny how that works. For me to talk about a present struggle, I am admitting that I don’t have every thing figured out. I don’t have all of the answers. And admitting that I mess things up all the time puts me in a vulnerable position, but it’s a real one. How many of us actually like to admit to out own sin? Whenever I read other Christian writers I always have the impression that they are some sort of spiritual giants without their own mistakes. I always think of those people as really godly and pretty much without sin. Recently, I have tried to do away with the labels within Christianity. There aren’t spiritual giants and spiritual weaklings. There are only people. Real people with real mistakes and real triumphs.

Well, I guess I should move onto my current struggle. It’s trust. I know I have admitted before that it is easier for me to trust God than it is to trust people. People are faulty and they do eventually let you down. But the truth is, sometimes I don’t trust God. We were reading about trusting God today in church and all of this just hit me. We were actually reading about delighting in God. You know the verse, “Take delight in God and He will give you your hearts desires.” The whole passage is in Psalm 37 if you want to look it up. But it also talks about trusting in God. After we talked a little about trusting in God to provide, that’s when I started thinking. I don’t trust God that much.

Like I said, it is really hard for me to trust people. People have let me down many times and I guess it has just affected me. I don’t want to be like this. It’s something that has gotten better over the past year, but I still have some trust issues. And it seems like when I start to let those walls down, the trust is broken and I am right back where I started. But I am far better about this than I was, I promise. Trusting God. Sometimes it’s just hard for me to actually trust Him. I mean, it sounds good and like the right Christian thing to say. “I trust God.” But how many of us actually do?

Do I actually trust God that He will provide for me? Do I trust that God will take care of certain situations? Do I trust that God in going back to get my masters? Will He provide a counseling job for me when I get out of school? Do I trust God in pursuing relationships? Do I actually trust that one day He will guide me to the woman He wants me to marry? We all have our own questions. I know sometimes I try to work things out myself. Sometimes I just feel that God is too busy to handle my problems, so I shouldn’t trust Him to take care of them. He’s got other kids who are way more important to Him than me. I mean seriously. I come from a broken home, I probably have failed for Him more times than I have succeeded, and I don’t read my Bible everyday. Sometimes I don’t consider myself to be high on God’s priority list so why should I just trust Him.

I know what the Bible says about trusting God. I know that He says He will never abandon me. I know that He says He knows my name. I know that God says He upholds me with His hand. I know that He says He will take care of me. I know all of these things, but sometimes I just don’t live like I believe they are true. The thing is, deep down, I know they are true. In my soul, I know that God loves me and will take care of me. That’s the hard part about living a life for Him, there is a difference in knowing things and actually living things. To live my life trusting in Him is hard. I am so used to having my own back and trying to arrange things for my own life. But I don’t want to be like this anymore. I want to actually trust Him with every aspect of my life. As far as the trusting other people issue, I’m sure He’ll work with me on that…

“Hi. My name is Matt and my parents are divorced.” No, I am not in some support group for people who come from broken homes. Maybe I ought to be though. I was 15 when my parents divorced. I always read things about children who think it is their fault that their parents divorced. I never thought it was my fault. I never asked, “Did Daddy leave because of me?” That blaming myself thing never happened to me. That’s not to say my parent’s divorce didn’t affect me. It did. It took me awhile to figure out how it affected me. For awhile, I didn’t even know that it did. There are probably still some hidden issues that it caused in my life, but I think I have found most of them and dealt with them.

I know at first I doubted the whole area of relationships. Can healthy loving relationships actually be real or are they something you only read about? (Personally, I have never read about any of those. I mean, there are those fairy tales and all…but they are make believe.) I was talking to a good friend of mine the other day about conflict in relationships. He actually said that conflict is what keeps the relationship interesting. Maybe I should rephrase that. Differences are what keep the relationship interesting. If you agree on everything then it gets boring pretty fast. I listened to Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz) talk about the elements of story the other day. He also said that conflict is what keeps a story interesting. Without conflict in a story we are left with something like, “Bob went to the beach. The weather was nice. He ate a good lunch. He played a game of volleyball. It ended in a tie.” See, no conflict or struggle or differences equals boring. I used to have this tendency to shy away from conflict in a relationship. Probably stemming from my parents divorce. I guess I thought that a conflict would lead to an ending of the relationship as it did with my parents. Now I know that there are always going to be differences in any relationship. Come on, you are two completely unique individuals becoming one…that is bound to cause conflict. I guess the main thing is working through the differences. A healthy relationship is not agreeing all the time or being exactly the same; it’s working together despite the differences.

I remember reading an article in a Christian magazine a few years ago. It was on dealing with being a child of divorce and how that affects your own relationships in your adult years. I knew it to be true. My parents divorce did affect my future relationships in a negative way. Thankfully, I realized this during college and with God’s help have been getting over the issues. I guess the main thing I dealt with is a fear of rejection. You know, pushing others away before they had a chance to reject me…this way at least I felt in control. But I wasn’t in control. The fear was in control. And once I realized that I didn’t want to live out of this fear, I had to come to terms that to pursue a relationship meant risk. Risk making mistakes, risk to be rejected. My favorite quote is this…”Nothing in life worth having comes without some kind of fight.” (Bruce Cockburn) I believe that we can substitute the word risk in for fight and it still be true. Nothing in life worth having comes without some kind of risk.

There have been more things I have had to deal with over the years. Being too independent is one. Going through my parents divorce left me with this attitude that I will not need anyone because they will eventually let me down. The only problem with this is that when you don’t need anyone, no one needs you. Yes, being independent can be good in some instances. But God designed me to desire relationship. Independence and relationship seem to work against each other. One more thing I have had to deal with is handling with the flaws of others. I am not sure if this has developed from being a child of divorce or not. Probably so. Probably something like, “I have always been quick to point out the faults in potential relationship partners because this way I would have an excuse not to get close to them,” or something to that affect. I’ll have to research this more while I am studying counseling. But yeah, making excuses and pointing out dumb flaws is another thing. I guess that could fall under the fear of rejection category. Pushing others away before they got too close. I heard this somewhere before, probably a movie, but I like it. “There are always a million reasons not to do something.” I can always make excuses. But I know I don’t want to make excuses anymore.

Well, that’s a peek into what it’s like being a child of divorce. If you’re not one of us, you probably will come across one of us. And if you do, remember these things because children of divorce mostly have the same issues. Don’t think that we are messed up because we all are kinda jacked up in our own ways. If you can relate to the things I have said, I hope you have talked to someone about these things. You cannot get through them on your own. That’s all for now…

I read a story today about a man I go to church with. I don’t know him personally; I know who he is and I know his children and all. It was a good story, good enough to get me thinking and writing. Well, there was an article written about him and his wife because they opened up a thrift store. Their thrift store donates its profits to missionaries. That’s not the part of the article that I enjoyed though. The part I liked was about the man. He said he had been a wild man for many years, addicted to marijuana and alcohol. He said he and his wife had separated about three years ago. He said he had his own battles that he was living in. The article then goes onto say that one night he prayed for help, and Jesus answered. Since then he and his wife have reconciled, and he is fully committed to following Him.

I absolutely love peoples’ stories. I love hearing about God transforming lives and peoples’ encounters with Him. To me, this is a central part of the Gospel. You see, I grew up with this belief that the Gospel is some list of things you have to do or believe to get to Heaven. And in a sense, maybe some of that is true. But the Gospel is so much more than that. One thing that I have learned is that we are all broken. We are all in the same boat. There are not groups of people who are super-spiritual and those who are not. We all have our own battles and pain that we have to deal with. We all have our own addictions that we need saving from.

When I look at Jesus, when I read His message, I hear this, “Okay, you can try to do life without me, but it’s not going to work out that great. You will be in pain. You will be lost. You will be enslaved. You will only find despair. Have a relationship with me. I will show you a better way, My way. I will heal your pain. I will guide you when you feel lost. I will set you free from sin and from the Law. I will give you hope. I will be because I Am.” He is about changing lives. He is about restoring souls to the glory they we’re meant to have.

You see, somewhere down the line becoming a follower of Christ got a bad rap. Holy Rollers, Bible Thumpers and Conservative Evangelicals are the terms thrown out there. Somewhere down the line His message was watered down where we could just go to church and follow certain guidelines (only when we felt like it). Sometimes we live like we don’t even know who He is, then just go to church on Sunday morning like everything is okay. Sometimes we like to call ourselves His children, but we really could care less about actually following Him with our lives. I say this as someone who has lived this way before. I say this with true concern and love. This is not what following Him is about.

I too have my own story of how He healed my soul. I have my own story of how He impacted my life. I have my own story to share. I believe our personal stories can have a greater impact on the world than some list of guidelines. Yes, things in the Bible are important but they seem so rigid when they are not used personally. And when I tell my story or when the man at my church tells his story, we do it because we’re saying that this can happen in anyone’s life too. He is greater than any sin I have in the past. He is greater than any wound that was dealt to me. He is greater than any doubt or fear I have. He is better than any addiction that enslaves me. He is all this and more, and He waits for each of us to come to the realization that we can’t do life without Him. We were never meant to live away from our Father. He wants to be apart of our story.