15

My father passed away fifteen years ago today.  It was a Tuesday.  I was a freshman in college, a few hours away by car.  I had gotten a call in the middle of the night on Sunday and got picked up Monday morning by some family friends, so I was able to get home and go to the hospital and everything.

Soon it will be more than half my life without him than with him.  In terms of my conscious life of memories, it's already reached that threshold, I suppose.  I don't really know what to think of all that.  I sort of don't even know what I'm missing--who I've become and who he would have been and what our relationship would have been like as I became more of an independent adult.  Whatever milestones he's missed (hard to see those things from here).

Both my grandfathers had already passed away before I was born, and both my grandmothers since then.  I think about death fairly freely.  My own.  My mother or brother's.  Family friends.  It's not so much "frequently" as much as it is a regular undercurrent, a perspective that I have on life.  I don't think that it's too morbid.  (Maybe it is.)

In light of that, I try not to assume my life and the steady steps of numbered days.  Sometimes it helps color my interactions with loved ones--not taking them for granted and not assuming that I'll see them or talk to them again.  And I think that's a good thing.  Heartbeats and breaths--smooth muscle cells that I can't control, after all.

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Lately I feel like life has been more disappointment than joy.  More fear than freedom.  I feel like I've lost touch with the transformative power of the Gospel working itself out in real ways in my real life.  It's easier for me to dwell on the broken and the unsatisfying than on the restoration and redemption of those sad, disappointing, frustrating, tiresome, heavy things.

Prayer of a certain kind comes easy--the immediate, the conversational, the pleading and crying out and thanking.  The community around me (whatever that means) is good, I think.  But I want a magic bullet.  I want the easy.  I want what I want.  And when I don't get what I want, my brain is able to be rational and grateful to God for keeping me from what he would not have me have.  But the rest of me is just wondering when it's all gonna change and when I'm going to be satisfied, content, happy, at peace in Christ.

Which I suppose isn't the point, looking to some future time.  Today is the day and right now is the moment.  Repentance and returning.  Resisting and rejecting.  Rejoicing and...resting.

Jesus, What a Friend for Sinners

Time for the 2nd Annual January New Song post.  This might be it for the year, who knows.

Sometimes we write new music to old hymns that have fallen out of common practice as a way to bring them back into circulation and remind us of the truths that they express in a particular way.

I've decided to take a well-known hymn with a well-known melody and set it to new music to perhaps let the words resonate in a new way.  Familiarity can sometimes bring its own obscurity.  It won't be for everybody.  It might just be for me.

You can read the words here.

You can listen to a rough demo here.

I Dislike Change

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Why Are You Cast Down?

Just to make sure that I hit my quota of at least one post per year and get that out of the way early, here's a relatively recent new song from a few months ago.  It's an adaptation of Psalms 42 & 43, which have a common refrain running through them both:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
    and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
    my salvation and my God.

I don't have too much to add to that.  Here's a rough garage band demo of the song.



Why Are You Cast Down?

I remember how I marched up with the multitude
Shouts of praise to the house of God
Now I’m thirsty in the desert, longing for you
When will I see? What can I do?

    They say, they say to me, “Where is your God?”
    I cry, “It’s been so long, so long, so…”

    Why are you cast down, oh my soul, oh my soul?
    Why are you so troubled, oh my soul, oh my soul?
    Hope in God, praise Him again
    Praise the God of salvation

I remember how you led me through the lands of old
You sang your love to me night and day
Now I’m drowning in the deep, deep waters alone
Forgotten, grieving a heart grown cold

    They say, they say to me, “Where is your God?”
    I cry, “It’s been so long, so long, so…”

    Why are you cast down, oh my soul, oh my soul?
    Why are you so troubled, oh my soul, oh my soul?
    Hope in God, praise Him again
    Praise the God of salvation

Defend, deliver me, send out your light, your truth
Lead me into your joy, my God, my refuge

    Why are you cast down, oh my soul, oh my soul?
    Why are you so troubled, oh my soul, oh my soul?
    Hope in God, praise Him again
    Praise the God of salvation

The Long Haul

Our pastor asked us in the congregation to submit a paragraph or a page on the theme of transformational communities--I suppose testimonies of how we’ve experienced transformation in our lives individually and corporately. I have no idea if this is the kind of thing he was looking for, but this is what I wrote.

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I’ve been a part of the community called City Church of East Nashville for just over five years now. From my medium-term perspective, I feel like I’ve seen as many things not change as change.

I’ve seen my own heart, calcified with bitterness and anger, be softened overnight--some miracle of God’s mercy that I certainly didn’t instigate.

I’ve seen a covenant community share life with a family in poverty, to some degree of mutuality, and the difference that can make in one girl’s life as she grows up in the church.

I’ve seen people (myself included, I hope) grow in knowing their sin and their Savior all the more. Grow in prayer and repentance as a community. Grow in love and service and interdependence. Grow as a Gospel community.

I’ve also seen the dividing boundaries of us and them persist.

And I’ve seen the racial diversity of the church more or less stay the same as when I first came, attracted as I was by the mission statement that I saw online about “reconciling the diversity of East Nashville.”

Marriages and divorces. Births and deaths. People coming in and moving on. Pretty much everything in Ecclesiastes 3.

I think we do well as a community in weeping with one another as well as rejoicing with one another. In pointing each other to look to Jesus in order to glorify the Savior together.

And while so many things look the same as they did five years ago, I don’t lament that terribly right now. So much heart change isn’t necessarily evident at first glance. Seeds planted that may not show yet. Some sow, others reap, and we enter into each other’s labors.

Sara Groves has a song called “The Long Defeat”:

I have joined the long defeat

that falling set in motion

and all my strength and energy

are raindrops in the ocean

I can't just fight when I think I'll win

that's the end of all belief

and nothing has provoked it more

than a possible defeat

and I pray for a vision

and a way I cannot see

it's too heavy to carry

and impossible to leave

I guess that’s part of what I feel about being in it for the long haul. Praying and laboring the unseen kingdom into the here and now of our daily lives.

In the meantime, in the waiting and in the working, as I wrestle with all the false gods and idols that maybe, just maybe, might fix my life this time (not true, thank God), I find myself in a community that reminds me that Jesus is real. He is my portion. He is the Lover that I long for. To Him be all glory, in this place and all places, forever and ever.

On Twilight

A few months ago I resolved to read the first Twilight book, to see for myself what all the fuss was about.

The first couple chapters were slow going (also, since I'm semi-resolved to only spend time reading it if I've done some devotions that day). The melodramatic inner life of an angsty teenager. But once elements of plot started to take shape, it made for somewhat easier reading.

I'm about 200 pages in now (out of about 500), and somewhere around the 150-page mark, I read a sentence that gave me a future post idea (Top Ten Worst Sentences...?):

"Desolation hit me with crippling strength." (page 145)

Every few pages there's a sentence that just makes me cringe for one reason or another. Sure, the writing style depends on lots of adjectives and adverbs. But more so it's the ideas that give me pause.

Before I started reading it, I was discussing some of these thoughts with a friend, and we had a difference of opinion as to whether this was actually a damaging influence on one's worldview or just a fun diversion. Certainly, there are things that I read for escapist fun.

But I still feel fairly strongly that there's a lot of untruth in the fantasy that the book provides. Mostly, the myth of salvation in the romantic Other. Edward has been described as "perfect" several times already, not to mention other flowery variations on that theme. Even more explicitly:

"I wanted nothing more than to be alone with my perpetual savior." (page 166)

Ugh. The book takes true things--being cared for and protected by a lover, for example--and turns them into false idols, packaged as something that we want and must have. To my eyes, Edward is a creepy, domineering stalker with no sense of boundaries. But Bella (and perhaps the reader, by proxy) gives herself over to him as her total fulfillment.

I think I rail against the myth so hard in my heart because it's a fantasy that I know I'm prone to myself. Daydreams and imaginary conversations. Idealized mates. But it's not real, and it's not something that I need to encourage in myself. People are people. Marriage can be great and true. But never a substitute for Jesus.

Anyway, I will probably finish the book at some point, at which point I might be willing to see the first movie. I do not plan on reading the rest of them.

Then I'll probably re-read Harry Potter VII to wash the taste out of my brain. Yes, it's an escapist page-turner, too. But throughout is love, sacrifice, friendship, family, loyalty, endurance through trials, a host of truth.

Blogging After Midnight

The reason I'm up so late is because I just watched "Bridesmaids" with some friends a short while ago. Before that we watched "Unknown" (so much better than "Taken," for whatever that's worth). Before that I watched "It's Kind of a Funny Story" on my own. Today was a stay at home and watch movies day because I had/have a cold and it's a good excuse.

To be brief: it's been almost three months and I still get sad about it. Still feel pangs of missing her and what we had. Even while others have passed in and out of the radar in the intervening months.

What's the deal? When will it stop catching me off guard? Breaking up was the right call, but there was so much good stuff that was lost as a result.

I've played in so many of my friends' weddings during my five years here in Nashville. Most of them I knew separately before they became a couple. I've been experiencing bits of peace lately about not ever getting married. I've felt that peace before, but not so much since I moved here. But's in sporadic, in waves.

There's plenty else going on in my life these days, but I'm hardly ever here anymore, so I guess that's all for now. Peace.

Ready or not...

Here I come. Internet. With an update.

Back in April, the uncertainties at the time had to do with:

1) Whether or not I would get involved with a new church plant that would take me to a different part of Nashville

2) Whether or not I would quit my job

3) A dating relationship

So, in order:

A) I decided to stay at my current home church and not join the church plant.

B) I did quit my job. Sort of. I became a part-time temp with a half-time schedule since May. It's made a world of difference in my life sanity quotient. I can enjoy the work that I still do there, and I can also breathe when the music work gets full, which is has this summer. A lot.

C) We stayed together. Until last night. We made it six months, and then we just couldn't keep going, for various reasons. It's pretty sad, for the both of us. I don't think I'll say much about it here. She's a wonderful woman. We just couldn't make it work.

I consoled myself by eating half a pint of this.

I've only mentioned the breakup to a handful of folks. And now to the Internet. I have a few misgivings about that, especially since some of you will learn through here and not in person, which is not the point of this post. Sorry, I'm still processing and gradually letting people know.

The reason for the post is for something else that happened tonight. I learned that a friend of mine just got engaged. She was someone that I had made a real idol of a few years ago, and my idolatry caused a lot of damage to a lot of relationships. We've reconciled as much as we can and interact fine. But once you give yourself over to an idol, there's always a part of you that remembers the scar. It was just odd timing--the weight of the breakup and the weight of this old wound, one on top of the other.

That's all. I don't have a lot to say on all that right now. Just processing. And finishing my pint of ice cream. (OK, fine, sorbet.)

Time for the next course: red wine and potato chips.

Food-Coping: Not Just for Girls.

Swimming In Uncertainties

Multiple possible life transitions on the horizon.

Some or none may actually come to pass.

Wrestling with Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart.
Rely not on your own understanding.
Acknowledge Him in all your ways,
And He will make straight your paths.

Can't stop thinking thinking thinking thinking thinking on my own.

I'm not feeling terribly anxious. A bit unsettled, though.

Not sure what to do with everything. Perhaps some fasting and prayer.

Sleep, at least.

I know my identity is in Jesus...

But how do you do anything with conviction without having some sense of self wrapped up in it?

Right?

What am I missing?