Drawn Out of Isolation

I have been reading Proverbs over and over, and there are some verses that strike me each time around. One of them is Proverbs 18:1 "He who separates himself seeks his own desire, he quarrels against all sound wisdom". The Spirit has been using this verse to illuminate that I do this. I am guilty of self-isolation. I am guilty of hiding away from others.

"Community" is something of a buzzword in Christian culture right now, but the tangible implications of what that looks like doing and what that looks like giving up are still being worked out in me. I'm still growing into it, watching my limbs fill in the crevices and pushing my arms through sleeves. I'm a strong idealist and I revel in what that looks like, but I'm still in the present process of translating what obedience means at the eye-level of life. 

I have come to realize that I face many temptations to "separate myself" as an introvert. There is both a selfish temptation to hoard the things I have been given to steward and a fearful temptation to self-protect by failing to make myself known. As a single, it is easy to settle with focusing on whether my own "needs" are being "met", looking no further than the demands of the daily grind. The hoarding is a bit of keeping my life "neat" for myself in an effort to minimize dissonance and discomfort. But this bothers me. It bothers me that I am content with keeping up with work, paying bills, and having some fun here and there. Joy breaks into a boil when I recognize that I can exchange fleeting things in for eternal things. 

The self-protection is a little bit more subtle. It is possible to be "around" your church and fail to be in community. It is possible to be with your church for every meeting and still live unknown. I think we all want others to pursue us, for others to find questions that get to our deepest core. But there is a prideful and fearful kind of isolation that refuses to come outside unless they are pursued with extraordinary persistence and uncanny intuition. It is prideful because I think that I am so "special" that someone should be willing to go to such great lengths to draw me out. It is fear driven because I fear rejection from anyone who didn't prove their acceptance by pursuing me. It bothers me that I use more effort to preserve myself instead of allowing my soul to be revealed. It's only in that place that I can receive counsel and instruction, enjoy fellowship, and comfort others with the Comfort I've received where I've needed it most. It's only there that I can serve others and be served, living as one who is not simply a redeemed individual, but one who is a part of a redeemed people.

It is not good for man to be alone. I am so grateful that being a part of the church means that I don't have to be.

A Prayer for Fruitfulness

She was a woman who loved her hen flock and her garden and her flowers. Every day, from early spring to late fall, she made a little wander around her house and yard to see what was coming up or getting ready to bloom or blooming. She was always bringing home some plant or seed or root and "sticking it in the ground" to see if it would grow.

-Wendell Berry

Lord, make me a woman whose words and actions stick people in the dirt of the gospel, watching You make them grow. 

Let my life beget life.

 Make me into a woman who builds up with her hands and tongue rather than one who tears everything down. 

Make me into a cultivator, one who flours her hands for the work of kneading and watches life rise.

Friendship Love

I recently wrote a love poem that was intended to speak of two lovers. This poem is meant to speak of the friendship kind of love between a man and a woman--one that is often filled with a kind of tension but has a loveliness of its own. It is a love that builds up and prods the other on, hoping a holy vision for the other--but it is also often a temporary one.


I will eye your beauty
not as a treasure to keep
but as a light to behold
and blow a little brighter

I will turn my feet
When another comes 
to walk beside you
and you together 
turn to stare

I will count
every shared gasp
struck by the same vision
every shared laugh
giddy with perpetual Rescues

All of these
all of you
a gift received
a gift returned
till Heaven descends

The Gospel for Perfectionists

The large white space with the little blinking line on the top is very intimidating to me as I search for the best words to write tonight. I do  have a confession for you--my writing contains many confessions, some more consciously made than others. If you are a good friend, you probably already know this:

 I am a perfectionist.

That does not mean (obviously) that I am perfect. The problem often lies in my standard making and my response when I miss the mark. Sometimes I trace others' lines to follow, and sometimes I draw my own. Sometimes I think they will motivate me to excel, but they often leave me feeling paralyzed with a dense fog of guilt and self-condemnation surrounding me.

Listing the virtues of the ideal, preparing a dress too small for me to squeeze into, delineating a self airbrushed beyond recognition--these are counterfeit saviors, anchors set on shifting sand. Left to myself, I would be my own destruction.

Last Winter I started a study of 1-3 John with some friends. During that week, one verse struck me very deeply:

...And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. (1 John 2:1-2)

The truth that Jesus is my propitiation was a life giving truth for me. I kept repeating it over and over in my mind, turning it over in my mouth and drinking it down like cool waters for my parched soul. Because Jesus is my propitiation, I do not have to beat myself up and stand slouched over with guilt. He was the one who was beaten up on my behalf. And the Father took my sin and its penalty far more seriously than I ever have. Even if I tried to go to extreme measures, starving myself or cutting my body in an effort to make up for my failure, that would never amount to the cost demanded. It would all amount to pennies in a piggy bank the size of a sea. But the Father understood the full penalty of sin, and Christ willingly bore it.

This old gospel refrain is what my heart needs on a regular basis. May we walk more fully in the light of Christ our propitiation and advocate.

When we emerged on to the busy High with the traffic streaming past, we shook hands, and he said 'I shan't say goodbye. We'll meet again.' Then he plunged into the traffic. I stood there watching him. When he reached the pavement on the other side, he turned round as though he knew somehow that I would still be standing there in front of the Eastgate. Then he raised his voice in a great roar that easily overcame the noise of the cars and buses. Heads turned and at least one car swerved. 'Besides,' he bellowed with a great grin, "Christians NEVER say goodbye!'
-Sheldon Vanauken (talking about C.S. Lewis)

Where I Write a Love Poem

I'm not much of a poet, but I wrote a poem the other day. Although it is not targeted towards any man, it captures--in a small way--my own reflections on what real love is like.

I don't want to love you
At first sight

I don't want to love you
For the charm of your grin
Or your polychromatic laughter

I don't want to love you
Like I dreamed I would love you
"You", one of "them",
One of those "hippies" or "readers" or "men with a pen"
Or even one of those "blue-eyed" wonders

I want to love you
Where only grace can take us

I want to love you
With a sculptor's gaze

I want to love you
With the love that counts hairs

I want to love
you.

We were not made in God's image for nothing. The child's preference for sweets over spinach, mankind's universal love for the toothsome rather than the nutritious is the mark of our greatness, the proof that we love the secular as He does--for its secularity. We have eyes which see what He sees, lips which praise what He praises, mouths which relish things, because He first pronounced them tov. The world is no disposable ladder to heaven. Earth is not convenient, it is good; it is, by God's design, our lawful love.
Another toast then.

-Robert Capon