Life on the High Road

Excerpts from Psalms 73

1 Truly God is good to Israel,

    to those who are pure in heart.

2 But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled,

    my steps had nearly slipped.

3 For I was envious of the arrogant

    when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

16 But when I thought how to understand this,

    it seemed to me a wearisome task,

17 until I went into the sanctuary of God;

    then I discerned their end.

18 Truly you set them in slippery places;

    you make them fall to ruin.

21 When my soul was embittered,

    when I was pricked in heart,

22 I was brutish and ignorant;

    I was like a beast toward you.

23 Nevertheless, I am continually with you;

    you hold my right hand.

24 You guide me with your counsel,

    and afterward you will receive me to glory.

25 Whom have I in heaven but you?

    And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.

26 My flesh and my heart may fail,

    but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

I grew up a church kid.

Not the "But I had a double life" kind of church kid.

I truly WAS the church kid...the kid who loved doing the right thing, who truly wanted to know God more, and the kid who enjoyed the safe, good, loving nature of the church every week.

With that, "taking the high road" in social situations was fairly easy for me. I cleaned up my side of the street in conflict, I chose my friends and romantic relationships slowly and wisely, and I said sorry the moment I realized I was wrong about something. People would tell me I was a rarity, that I was a blessing, that I was changing people's lives in how healthily I treated others.

That was the big word. Healthy. I've been called healthy my whole life. Whole. Entire. Life. I haven't been perfect, but I've recovered pretty gracefully when I have fallen, and I always have an admiring audience who can't wait to tell me how healthy my choices are.

This was all easy for me to do for about ten years, then it got more difficult about two years ago. It didn't get more difficult to know how to be healthy, it got more difficult to want to be healthy.

I started seeing too many crappy people get great opportunities in their lives, too many spoiled brats continue to get everything handed to them on a silver platter, too much sorrow for the humble and God-fearing people around me, too much pleasure given to the greedy, too much authority given to the prideful, too much "good" given to the bad and too much "bad" given to the good.

I started seeing and experiencing what I considered to be an overwhelming amount of emotional and situational injustice.

So began the long and subtle road down which my soul slipped, cultivating the resentment I've written about before, growing the infuriating question that I shouted in the darkness with rage:

What's the point of living the "right" way if good things are given to the cheats, the deceivers, the arrogant?

I struggled with this for a long time. I chose not to take the high road for, in my mind, a long time. I relished the injustice, in the wrongs done to me personally. I felt a savage survival instinct surface in me, willing and ready to wound anyone who tried to take what was rightfully mine. That bitterness and hate was mine, what I protected, even from the hand of the Lord.

I've been graciously lifted out of that mindset through a long and painful process, but still did not know what to do with all the injustice I still experienced until I read Psalms 73 this morning. I finally felt free of it.

Logic leads me to perceive injustice. The sanctuary of God leads me to perceive an all-consuming justice that misses nothing.

After this long journey, through all that I have overcome and have been overcome by, I can assuredly count these words as true:

My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever

How Now Shall I Live?

This has been an abundant November. Full of wonderful, full of terrible. Simply full.

It began with an incredible College Weekend at Lost Canyon. Turns out I'm a lot better at being in relational ministry when it isn't my job, haha. I had some pretty raw conversations with my cabin and had the pleasure of baptizing one of my girls in the freezing lake. The Lord moved, and He let me feel some of that beautiful breeze.

Only a week later, Friday November 9th, 2012, I experienced the worst day of my life thus far. I witnessed a three-year-old girl pass away unexpectedly. Not just any three-year-old girl, but the granddaughter of the couple I work for. Not only was she their granddaughter, but the daughter of two of my dearest friends, who have loved me better than most who have known me longer. She was their only child, and they waited fifteen years into their marriage before having her.

I may as well have watched all four of them burn alive in front of me with my hands tied behind my back, helpless and useless.

But November 9th was only Day One of their agony and sorrow. I still work in the grandparents' household, still witness the nightmare becoming a daily...hourly...reality.

If you are the praying type, I ask you to stop reading, stop whatever you're doing and lift them up to their Father right now. They all love the Lord, they are all changing my life in how beautifully they are entering into this darkness. But they are all exhausted, and only have enough energy to cling to the cross. Keep them in your thoughts, let their tragedy sober you up to see what really matters in life. For privacy's sake I'm not using their names, ask me in person if you wish to know.

The combination of these two meaningful moments in my life have given my thought trails an interesting color scheme as of late.

College Weekend thoughts: I am a leader, there's no denying. That is a waste of gifting if I am not trained, and I should not give up on training due to past failures. Whether I step into that calling or not, I am looked up to and reminded of that on an almost daily basis. How now shall I live?

November 9th thoughts: I am not protected from life's greatest sorrows by following the Lord. That is not His promise to me. Pain is not so avoidable as doing all the right things. I am entitled to no good thing on this earth, any and all good things are gifts to me that have a time limit. Who do I want to brave those storms with? Who do I want to go through the potential loss of a precious child with? How now shall I live?

I've also been thinking through how my "marriage" with Christ has looked in the twelve years that I have chosen to be bound to Him. We went around as a cabin at College Weekend and described briefly what our story with Him has looked like and where we are at with Christ now. My story at the time ended with me describing how different circumstances had led to me burning out spiritually and feeling more resentment toward God than I had ever felt six months prior, and I was at a place where I wanted to fall in love with Christ in the ways I had before. I wanted to rekindle what I had neglected, and lose my fear of investing in our relationship.

Then November 9th happened, and Christ was my only constant in the terrifying darkness. He remains my only warmth in the cold, sad days that have followed. He is the only air that satisfies my lungs, that calms my heart. In the depths of my despair, His soft and simple song keeps me willing to move forward. I could not have faced that day, these current times, without His Spirit alive in me.

I wrote this next part two years ago after a painful but healthy break-up, and it is more true today than ever: If you haven't caught on already, I am flat-on-my-back in love with Jesus. He is all that keeps me from becoming undone. He brings me to life. He turns my heart of cold stone into a hot pulsing muscle that has a significant purpose, that feels what must be felt even when I can barely breathe from the pain. He makes me beautiful. He puts nothing to waste. He redeems the violent, the cruel, the wretched. He calls the silent to speak, the shy to sing, the somber to dance. He calls everything inside of me to come forth, to be free, to either be pruned or to be used.

During the most peculiar of times, within the most unexpected of circumstances, I am regaining the courage to step back into the body of Christ and be used as needed for His purpose, all while keenly aware of my utter dependence on His presence. I hope to soak up this vivid season while it lasts, for I know one day I will feel burnt out and indifferent like I have before. I'll forget how hopeless His absence is, and take His presence for granted. I'll resent the shortcomings in my peers and become less and less vulnerable about mine. I will do all of these things if I do not learn from where I have been, and where I am now.

The path is set before me. And once again I ask...

How now shall I live?