Juxtapose

I think I've gotten cocky, in some aspects of the word. As a little kid, I was shy, but friendly enough to talk to people and befriend. Somewhere around my eleven-twelve-thirteen years, I because withdrawn and self-conscious, the way that most kids do when they get acne and start tripping over things and have braces and never laugh at the right parts of the movie in a crowded movie theater. My parents were nothing less than amazing during those years, because I know I was no featherweight in the teen angst department - writing bad poetry, reading too much Poe and science fiction, heaping on the eyeliner, and trying not to be afraid to walk outside my house. From the minute I got up in the morning, I didn't waste any time getting into the shower and putting on my makeup before anyone saw me, and I didn't take it off until it was late and I had to go to bed. I spent a lot of time thinking about what I'd wear, what I should have said in some situation, and what people thought about me. Ironically, despite the angst, the depression, and the loneliness that I felt for those years (really not alleviated until I was a late fourteen), those years were some of the "closest" to God that I've ever been. Everything I did and thought was prefaced by a meditation on what God would have wanted me to do or think. Of course I didn't always obey the resulting thought, but that was my muse. My writings from that time in my life were verbose, poetic, and all about God and my own despair. I saw, in my pre-teen desperation, a need for God. He is the reason we all live, but for me, He was the thing that kept me living. For every moment that was pain and struggle, there was the comfort of a maddeningly heavy peace that I knew would come the next time I opened my Bible.

I can't describe those years in a way that would make them seem more real and less generic. Do you remember? When I was in them, every day was obscured in a haze of whatever emotion I felt for that day, and nothing was objective. I was involved in every activity, every volunteer opportunity, every servant?s position I could get within the church and everywhere else, trying to get my fill of the only satisfaction that I found ? serving and God. Mix them together, and, voila, instant soul-appeasement. God was and is everything I had, and He kept me sane, even if my experience of Him was by my own emulation of suffering-while-serving. Through those years, I learned that He loves those who are in turmoil, and to never see someone struggling with something as not ?worthy? of God. The struggle only serves to show that the person cares enough about God to fight back the flesh that is always crawling under the surface of our faith. This was the big-pants impassioned punk stage of my life. Every sin I committed, every confession I gave, every fear, thought, anger, sadness, and loneliness was, at that time, experienced as the pinnacle of emotion and that all these things were seen and done with the utmost of passion, for the better or for the worse.

And yet? after three or four hard years fighting against my own anger and sadness towards myself and nevertheless holding the promises of God dearly in their beauty and clarity towards the church and to Israel (Iwillneverleavetheenorforsakethee, Ihavelovedtheewithaneverlastinglove, YoushallcallmeIshi), God gave light. My faith moved from a spastic and elated rapture of many daily mini-salvations from my everyday flesh and sins, to a more comfortable companionship with God. My years in secular college had passed for that time, and by the time I was studying theology in Bible college, I spent my mornings reading my Bible in the mornings outside in the chill. My Bible, when opened, had every other line underlined in ink and written musings scrawled next to it. I could cry over my Lord?s suffering, and I could rejoice over the triumph of Israel when, in the rare instances, she trusted her God. These were the years I grew. My faith, my worldview, my means of loving those around me; all of these matured by leaps and bounds, and I found a love that I always knew I had but never knew. I wanted to be a servant. I wanted missions, but that wasn?t the point, as I see more and more now as I progress in my faith. Missions is only a means to the chief End of all mankind ? glorifying and serving God. I?ve never wanted to be in the limelight, I?ve never hoped to be well-known, and even when I found a love for missions then, I would have been just as happy washing the dishes of missionaries, because I still had no confidence in myself. Shouldn?t we always be as such? This was when I wore the jeans and a polo shirt ? comfortable, functional, and not bad to look at. On my way to work I?d pray in the car. Every moment was a chance to talk to the Creator. He is mine and I am His. I felt as if every time the Word was opened, I discovered something new and incredible and shocking to my faith. Everything I read was applied to my life, and it changed my worldview. I made commitments to myself to behave in certain ways in certain situations and have kept them since, simply because they make too much sense not to. The people I once saw as needy I now saw with renewed need ? salvation as well as the physical. My arms were branches, and from my roots in the grounds of Hope, I felt like I could touch the world and, perhaps, just maybe, it would even make some sort of a difference.

And now I have become comfortable, but in a different manner. My clothing of faith is of the whatever-I-like comfortable, favorite jeans and tee shirt type. I live in the liberty and the glory of my salvation and the grace of God. I?m not sorry that I have grown, but there is a part of me that misses the turmoil of my late childhood. I have become worn in the faith, saved by grace for so long that sometimes I don?t appreciate it as I should. Sometimes I feel as if the discovery period of finding truth and applying it to my life is gone, though I know it is not, and every day my assumptions are proven wrong, and my faith, in its many years, is proven all the more feeble when it is seen standing naked, small, shivering, in the earth-cloaking shadow of God?s grace and power. I have become confident with myself, as I go to school and work in what they sometimes call, ?The World,? and must every day live a faith that is alive and vibrant and living, the true daily manifestation of the faith that I felt and spoke of when I was thirteen. This is my time to act on it all. I can speak to people without fear or shame or shyness; I can act as I feel I should act, without inhibition of what people might think. I don?t wear all the makeup and dress the part that I felt the need to once, because I feel whole, unfettered by the demons of the world ? self-esteem and self-worth. These things can only be found in God, because they only can become idols when they fall into human hands.

And yet? while I do not miss the struggle of being a child in both the faith and the world, I miss the sincerity. I miss the earnest innocence of finding out truth and of seeing God in everything I touched and saw and everything I couldn?t. He was more real to me then, sometimes, when I could be crying and hate something and I could open my Bible and find Him there and let Him dry my tears. It?s a different faith now. In human terms, it was shallow then, to expect that God cared about my small problems in the light of the so many worse that occur in the lives of Christians everywhere. But I love the fact that however shallow my motives, He cared nonetheless. Nonetheless. Nonetheless ? this is my word for God. No matter what we do, He loves us nonetheless. Despite our foolishness, He is wise nonetheless. However great our sin, He is holy nonetheless.