Appendix

Today, I am feeling very much like an appendix, a metaphor my friend Ashley described to me once. A thing that can be useful sometimes, but that no one really needs. It gets cut away, yet the body heals and, in time, does not even remember what used to be there.

I don't know how to be a person of value. I don't know how to do virtually anything. I see important, astonishingly wise, and brave people around me, moving in and with God and I do not know how to feel the way that they do, to harvest the passion that spurs them to carry on. I think I used to feel it, but sometimes I find myself wondering if I ever did.

Too much of the time, I feel alone with God. I don't know how to bridge the gap between myself and other people. I want to be understood but before I can do that, I have to understand others and I don't know how to do that either. I want more than I can have, I want to do more than I am able, and I want to love more than I am loved. But I don't know how to do that.

I sit and think of the ways my life has turned out, the ways I have seen good people hurt, demonized, and cut down, the ways I and others have been taken advantage of and my heart cries out. Why do I want people more than I want God? Why am I not satisfied with what I have? Why do I need more?

Why can't I be happy right now, in the beautiful moments of today?

Why do I feel so restless?

I am almost 22 years old. When do I learn how to be a person?

Truth + Thoughts From Saturday: Storm Seeking

Tonight, I am spending some time alone with some music and God (and obviously my laptop - an interesting combination) to meditate on the Thought and maybe get some resolution. As I got distracted by the Internet, my phone, and my own warp-speed thoughts about what the Fall semester is going to be like, the song The Truth by Relient k blasted through the TV sound system and I stopped dead in my tracks as the lyrics flowed through me.

"I've collected all these thoughts, and I'm dying just to lose them..."

"I'll just have to accept that my mind is inept and the only thing that's left for me to do is trust you..."

"Convince me, because I really need your help, convince me, because I can't see this for myself..."

"Put the emphasis on the evidence, begging for the proof, oh-oh-oh, sometimes the hardest thing to believe is the truth..."

"This is so unnerving, I know you've never lied to me before, but the things you're telling me, I can't yet believe, yet can't ignore..."

"Attempt to place our lives into your hands, confide in what you'll do..."

"It's a world full of cynics, who say to stay alive in it, you've got to stick with what you know..."

"But the heart is always aching for the soul to start taking a chance by letting go, so let go..."

"Sometimes when you're trying to sleep and all your doubts and your faith don't agree, it's 'cause sometimes the hardest thing to believe is the truth..."

It all just hit me head on, like God was tapping on the door of my heart. So I will live in the now until I hear something different and stop stressing so much (well, I'll try at the very least) over things that maybe I shouldn't be trying to change. I will also stop being awkward if I can. That would be good too.

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Thoughts From Saturday: Storm Seeking


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³⁵ That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” ³⁶ Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. ³⁷ A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. ³⁸ Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”

³⁹ He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.

⁴⁰ He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

⁴¹ They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

Mark 4:35-41

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Once again, I will offer a synopsis of why I am even bothering with this writing exercise. There are a few reasons, some of them more important to me than others. I do it because it is a helpful way for me to analyze Scripture and fold it into my beliefs – an opportunity to learn. I do it because my mouth sucks at being a mouth and when I talk in church I hardly ever end up saying what I actually think or anything of value. And the last reason is because, quite simply, I never want to find myself talking for the sake of hearing my own voice or showing other people how smart I can be. It is one of the most disgusting things I do and I try when at all possible to keep myself from doing it. This is one of those ways. /end_disclaimer

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That evening had been a vibrant discussion of the “storms of life” – a discussion which, I am sad to say, was over a month ago now. I can’t even remember the date. For shame! I have gotten out of typing up and organizing what I’ve written, but hopefully with the beginning of the fall semester comes a bit of structure and not a failure to type up these little passing thoughts I have.

I don’t remember everything that we talked about for the aforementioned pathetic excuses, but I do remember how I felt that night. As Garet proceeded through his sermon, I began to see where he was taking it and was more than happy to cede to his conclusions, if not a little sheepishly. I am not embarrassed by what I believe – it is only that my continued inability to believe in myself and what God can do through me and for me is one of the biggest stumbling blocks of my life. I say it here and now, without shame, if only because no one alive aside from myself and a few, sorry stragglers has ever or will ever read this blog – unless I trip over myself and my inane desires for simultaneous privacy/safety and companionship.

But enough of my own personal failings. To the Gospel reading, Batman!

We’ve all heard this story. Jesus is sleeping and a storm comes up out of nowhere. The disciples are freaking out as the boat is battered by the wind and the waves – they are hanging on for dear life. The storm has no seeming end in sight and they are all frightened. And they are more than a little irritated with Jesus.

“Don’t you care if we drown?” they ask.

I shiver when I read those words because they are only too recognizable. How often do I complain about what I am going through? How often do I look around me at the storm I’m in and subtly try to guilt God into giving me my life as I would have it, as if he can’t see right through me? Talk about ungratefulness!

I don’t mean to exaggerate my life. I don’t know that I’ve ever turned away from God so violently and absolutely that my life has fallen into a pit of what we would consider calamitous sin. But the gradual decline and the sudden turnabout can be just as devastating to spiritual health. When we refuse to evaluate ourselves and how aligned we are to God’s will, that gives the devil the opportunity to wreak havoc on the state of our souls.

In most of the storms of my life, I’ve heard people say “count your blessings,” and nearly every time I heard it, this sick feeling would rise up in me and I felt like either throwing up or giving that person a piece of my mind. Count my blessings? Who invented that trite, devoid-of-feeling phrase? What human alive on this planet honestly believes that a person genuinely hurt and broken wants to hear that they should just shut up and be grateful that it’s not worse? No matter how true the words may be, hearing them in the middle of a storm still feels like being kicked in the face.

Jesus offers no such clichés. His words are authentic and compelling. He doesn’t rail at the disciples for daring to suggest that he would rather take a nap and let them drown than take the second or two it would cost him to save them all, despite the fact that he’d be well within his rights to do so. He doesn’t refuse to help them because they’ve come to guilt him for relief from their storm, which is probably what most of us would do when presented with that kind of attitude. Instead, he offers a dose of God’s reality.

In an instant, the winds have died down and the sky is clear and the waters are still.

Jesus asks, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

That cuts me to the quick because, true to form, Jesus gets right to the heart of the matter. We try to navigate on our own. Even the disciples did. It was only when the storm was reaching the point of destroying them that they turned to him, annoyed and expectant. We try to act like storms are God’s way of punishing us and if he doesn’t swoop in and end it when we want him to, that must mean he doesn’t care about us. I don’t know how much more wrong that could be.

You can get into an entire argument here about the morality of God “sending” storms, what God does and doesn’t do, and what Jesus’ promises of life really mean. But if you did, you would be missing the point.

Storms can be hell, there is no denying that. Yet those moments of sheer panic and frustration, of loss and heartache, of anger and acceptance – those are the moments that bring us closest to God. When we are down and ready to quit, tired and anxious and impatient and broken, we have two choices. We can lose ourselves in our own struggle or we can recognize that we need God. And when we do, as the disciples did (though, rather ungratefully), he delivers! Always! He might not do what we want or what we expect, but that just goes back to my favorite old saying of Sunday School.

“Do we know everything?”

“NO.”
“Does God know everything?”
“YES.”
“So who should we trust in?”
“GOD… Miss Christen, when is snack?”

It all comes down to that, really. If we truly believe in God and love God and trust God as much as we say we do, then we need to act on it daily and, most decidedly, in times of trouble. As hard as it would be to rejoice in the storm, we can still choose to recognize that it is a time for us to move with God and remember that he is always there for us as no one else could ever be.

(On a side note, I feel like this post isn’t as collected and polished as they normally are, and for that, I am sorry. Hmm. Should have written it on that Saturday. Lesson learned!)

In Christ,

Christen