where hard times and bitterness do not corrupt

One morning, two weeks ago, I woke up and realized something. I was bitter. There was no other word to describe it. And the thought was so clear I know it was God, in His grace, pointing it out to me. In that moment I saw that going on that way would only harm me...and others. It was a lovely Saturday morning out but I felt awful inside. I'd been a walking tomb of anger for approximately one and a half weeks. I still think, to this moment, that the issue merited the anger...but I know now that the pent-up anger did not merit the damage!

I was so shocked. For the first time in my life that I could seriously remember, I was a bitter person, and it felt so ugly. And maybe for the first time I also understood its cause: that bitterness is pent-up anger that isn't doing anyone any good. If I had held onto it, I do not know what I would be like now, another two weeks later. I am scared to think of it. I was awful to myself, awful to other people, awful to God. That very day I decided to let go of the anger...to forgive where forgiveness was needed. The next day at church we had communion which helped to solidify that commitment.

Now I am shocked to realize what a different person I am. I think that in letting go of that bitterness, I realized that I had to let go of many other small issues too. Really I think that I had seriously been conscious of the anger for only a little while, whereas it had been building up for a long time...possibly even for a year. And if I wasn't going to be bitter, I couldn't keep any of the anger. It is so much easier to smile...really smile, and to laugh. I don't feel like I have storm cloud above my head all the time anymore. I haven't felt so...light...in such a long time.

Would you believe...and I think it is possible...to work through tough issues with other people and in your life without being angry? I think it sure helps things to heal faster. I can say this because the issues themselves are not over. I'm still working through them.

But that weekend, I made one discovery. Oh, trials come. If we want to grow in the Lord, we're asking for it! But when they do come, we have two choices - to let them corrupt us and etch lines into our faces, or to rejoice as we're going through it. Because one day the trial that's weighing us down at the moment will be gone. And what will be left will be us - and if it's a bitter us, we won't be able to enjoy the good days. We'll be left in ruins. Whereas if we rejoice during the trial, how much more happiness we might have - not only during the trial, but when it's over. And we'll be the stronger for it. Joy is all in who we are, and rejoicing now is a true investment for the future.

When I say "rejoice in trial," I don't mean smiling all the time. Oh, definitely there will be moments when we can only smile a little inside, but our mouths just won't go, or else we're working our lips but our hearts are slowly cracking apart...and times when we can't even say, "smile." There will be moments when we can only cry. But we have to rejoice all we can! We can even rejoice as we cry a little, because crying helps. Maybe we'll be smiling through the tears, but that means we're still smiling.

And maybe one day we'll cry because life is getting harder and harder but actually we're getting happier and happier. And it's not a hollow sort of happy. It's real happy. And maybe it even looks kind of stupid because it is so opposite to all we're going through.

I think this is the secret..and that finally I can say it, to some small measure, with the Apostle Paul:

"I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want." ~ Philippians 4:12

And what a great secret it is.

The secret of a resilient spirit.

After I thought all this through and made this realization I cried a little too, because I realized that something even harder is sure to come along now that I've learned this lesson. But Jack Hayford put it so well in Pursuing the Will of God when he said that maybe God doesn't show us where He's taking us because surely we would shy back and say we couldn't handle it. But He's presently molding us into the people that can handle the future.

It is still so hard. Just because I write all this doesn't mean I'm all sparkles and bubbles. Maybe it sounds like it. But I think I have a right to be a conundrum, because rejoicing in trial is oxymoronic. :) That said, I have one more thing that I can rejoice for (another joy I can pull out at any moment) - and that is choosing not to be bitter...and being able to remain beautiful inside even in not-so-lovely circumstances. I am also thanking God for lesson-reaping time...that finally it is here. After two years interspersed with moments wondering why I'm still on earth at all, I think this is possibly the lesson. I'm just taking lots of breaths now because soon I'll probably have to dive under again!

One of the best things about joy is how share-able it is. :) After I let go the bitterness, I had a renewed ability to laugh with others and make people laugh. I think wholesome laughter is one of God's gifts to us in trial!

I guess I'm just realizing this week that it's hard all over. Everywhere I turn people are hurting or in pain or just having a hard time.

Just one thing. He is the God who gives us diamonds when we ask for gold. Diamonds...come at a high price, but they're worth their weight.

wonderful?

I was just sitting here thinking that God has something in store...whatever it may be, it will wonderful. I was kind of smiling about that. And suddenly I realized...what do I mean, something in store? I don't have to wait for the wonderful. With the perspective that God has something amazing in store ("No eye has seen, no ear has heard..." - how direct can the Bible get!), it is wonderful right now already! Gotta live in the present and enjoy the moment, lol. :P

the center of the universe

It is interesting to think that each of us, to ourselves, is the center of the universe; we think from the point of reference of ourselves, and everything else does rotate around us, in a sense. So what if our entire lives were meant to broaden our mindset? To teach us to think farther and farther out from ourselves, to take a bird's eye view on life? Maybe it really is so, for it seems that is the only way we can ever understand why so much of life seems to go against the grain of human nature. It always seems we have to live backwards to go forwards, to give up ease and comfort and natural wants and ambition for self, if we are ever to succeed in all the truly important things...

the perfect verse for a perfectionist...

I was thinking yesterday that 1 John 4:18 is a verse for perfectionists. I read in a book about perfectionism (Why Do I Put So Much Pressure on Myself, by Kathy Collard Miller) that one trait common to perfectionists is this constant feeling that God is displeased with us, that we just don't measure up. But: "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love." (NASB) To the perfectionist, that is profundity two ways. To put it in a perfectionist's terms, we musn't fear imperfection, because that fear would itself mar our perfection. I find this highly amusing. I mean, just read that sentence-before-last over to yourself real fast ten times. Inner laughter guaranteed. Maybe good therapy for perfectionism would be to take a half-hour doze of laughter daily - and at least two-thirds of that ought to be at ourselves.

I think I need to make a list of all the possible e-laughs that exist. Lol is getting rather dull. :P

I had meant to write a longer post but I'm just not up to it today. And I already said what I wanted to say most, and there is no need to be long-winded! So in the spirit of the above paragraphs, I'm not going to pressure myself to write anymore. :)

Hmm...it just hit me that two words I usually second-guess the spelling on are "commitment" and "guarantee." Uh oh. Not good.

pause

I have been seeking blogworthy moments in the past few days. Oh, there are plenty. But I'm very particular.

I found last Sunday after dinner. After church and fellowship time in the afternoon, I had gone with mom, dad, Amy and Andy to visit a family friend who was in the hospital. By the time we finished it was 5:00 p.m., so we decided to stop by a mall for dinner. At first mum and daddy and I thought about more exotic cuisine (Bangkok has so many options!), but it is always the most fun when everyone present can enjoy themselves. So we decided to go to a cute little restaurant that Amy and Andy could enjoy too.

After dinner and TCBY's - nowhere near as popular here as it is in the States, but a nice reminder for me of when I was a kid and we lived in Denver, Colorado and TCBY's was such a treat - we all took the elevator to the 6th floor of the parking complex. Actually last night was memory night for me, because the mall we went to, Silom Complex, was one where mom and the rest of us used to wait to meet dad after work. I had forgotten, but I remembered in the elevator on the way out. As I made that realization, the elevator door opened to reveal the very floor where we'd often waited - the floor with a food court and a funny sort of wall that I remember well from about 10 years ago, when I was 12. Ah, memories. :P

But the blogworthy moment happened as we walked to our car in the parking complex. It was the sort of dark that happens when day is handing the reigns to night. There were not a lot of people around. I sang out a few notes just to hear my voice echo. Our car was parked at the side, near a low wall, above which was open air and a view overlooking the city. I was headed straight for the car, but Andy (12, and a very whimsical sort of person who picks up very well on the beautiful moments) walked over to the wall and peeked over it. My first thought was, "Let's hurry to the car so we can go home." To my surprise, Mother and Amy slowly wandered over too. A long time ago, I might have been the first one to do so - paused to admire the view...seriously paused, not just a passing glance at how beautiful it was. As all this registered in my mind, I took a deep breath and walked over too. (Daddy just waited at the car, lol.)

I leaned my arms on the wall and breathed the air, which was surprisingly cool and fresh and free of exhaust, despite that we were downtown. It was a summery smell, like rain mixed with dry leaves. But the air wasn't damp. Such a rare, unique smell. I looked at the skyscrapers, with their glass windows reflecting collages of the lighted windows in other skyscrapers. We must have been reflected in one of them too, but of course we were too far away to see.

The sky depicted itself in watercolor texture. Neither day blue nor night blue. It had hints of purple in splotches and effervescently reflected the city lights. I had the thought that always, somewhere in the world, night is dawning and day is falling; every moment, darkness creeps over a bit more of the earth and light pours down over another...people waking, people falling asleep. The people of earth have every moment of the day covered. But of course, you say. We all know that! But at the moment it seemed very wondrous...like realizing a well-known fact all over again.

And pausing - consciously pausing, not just in passing - felt so foreign to me that I realized that I had almost forgotten how to relax. I don't do it as voluntarily as I used to. It always seems we're in a race to keep up with time as it passes. But the fact is that time will always be a step ahead of us! So perhaps that is why, if we know how to stop every once in awhile...it actually feels like stopping time! Because we then get the upper hand. We can stop, while time can't. Like the tagline for an article I saw in a French Reader's Digest, "Gagnez du temps sans courir" - i.e., "Gain on time without running" :)

Thoughts on reading God's Word

This morning I flipped open Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire and found a couple of paragraphs that express something I've thought about for a long time, but could not express properly in my own words.

"Maintaining doctrinal purity is good, but it is not the whole picture for a New Testament church. The apostles wanted to do much more than simply "hold the fort," as the old gospel song says. They asked God to empower them to move out and impact an entire culture.

"In too many places where the Bible is being thumped and doctrine is being argued until three in the morning, the Spirit of that doctrine is missing. William Law, an English devotional writer of the early 1700s, wrote, 'Read whatever chapter of Scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it--yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependence on him.' [1]

"One way to recognize whether we suffer from this disconnection is to look at our concern for people who are dirty . . . people who are "other" . . . people who don't fit the core group's image. [. . .] Yet Christians often hesitate to reach out to those who are different."

~ Jim Cymbala, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, p. 140-141

[1] William Law, The Power of the Spirit, p. 19

Reflecting on this, I realized that our response to the Bible must not be just, "Ah, what intellect! Ah, so much to discuss!" - as is often the temptation. The Bible is not for surfing the crest of the wave. It's for engaging life. It is not solely about transcending; it is about struggling people, for struggling people. Think about Jacob wrestling with God, and how often we end up wrestling with God in trial. The Bible was never meant to help us quit struggling. Indeed, the more we read and truly engage, the more trials God will send our way - and how we should rejoice for that (!), because the more we struggle (and ultimately prove our faith), the more we will grow. And truly it is darkest before dawn. Just before we think we've lost the fight, when we're hanging by that last bare thread, it is over - the sun shines again and we wonder why we ever even thought to doubt.

As I thought about all this, I heard my mom reading aloud to my siblings about George Müller - the first time he attended a Bible study. "George was amazed. [The leader of the study] had never been university, yet he prayed a better prayer than George, a divinity student!" May our reading the Bible teach us to pray better!

I don't care to defend Christianity in an intellectual debate so much as to prove it with my own life - quod erat demonstrandum (which is Latin for "which is the thing which was going to be proved," which means, "thus it is proved" - a phrase I found in a novel I read; I love it! :P). If someone has their heart set on believing something, no amount of argument and logic can evoke the heart change. It can influence them. But why not let them see for themselves!


This led to another thought. Could it be that God would be more pleased with me if I read just a bit of the Bible and it evinced a true change in my life than if I read much of it "intellectually" and had no heart change? And by change in heart and action here I don't mean just in our personal lives, but in touching the lives of others. So often we limit our jurisdiction to our own selves. The Bible is about so much more than perfecting our own selves. But again, we...I...have that tendency to think I'm the center of the universe. And literally I am, to myself, because this is my center of thought. But oh, how easy it is to forget to use that thought center to tell myself that I ought to view others as more important than myself!

About how much of the Bible I read: this is hard for me to grasp - this delicate balance. It takes discipline and a love for God's Word to really immerse myself in God's Word, and yet I could do that and not truly love God's Word, because it evinced no change in heart and thus no change in action. And if that were the case, reading God's Word would be only a "outward appearance" (1 Samuel 17:9) rather than the heart-change God looks for.

So each time I'm tempted to read just for volume, I need to ask myself how I'm letting what I've read so far impact my own life. And also, is it impacting me to have a true love for God's Word and to want to read it more and more? It's this sort of symbiosis that is so hard to achieve, and it exists only in the power of the Spirit.