Incomplete Idiot

"I've heard someone say that our problems aren't the problem; it's our solutions that are the problem. That tends to be one thing that goes wrong for me — my solutions." - Anne Lamott

Name:
Location: Georgia, United States

I am currently the Logistics Coordinator for MCYM/Club Beyond Europe (my missions agency is Young Life, just to be confusing). :0) I have traveled to many parts of this world, but I'm not as well-traveled as I would like to be some day. I have had more jobs than I can count, and my list of interests grows everyday. I take seriously Paul's urging to be "all things to all people". Mostly, I am interested in being a friend to all the folks I have been blessed to meet, because I am discovering (slowly) that it is not all about me.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Dead Birds




Dead birds is the metaphor used in an article I read this week in a Bible study I'm involved with. The author used the experience of arriving at a retreat expecting beautiful mountain views to refresh her soul, only to be greeted by the unwelcome presence of a dead bird in the foreground of her desired vista. She contemplated how to rid herself of this undesirable visitor, but soon realized that taking three steps back from the window afforded her a birdless view of said beautiful mountains. She likened the dead bird to all the things that are painful to acknowledge in her life which are caused by either her own sin or the sins of others against her.

Sometimes I think there are so many “dead birds” in my life that I can never get past them or hide them from my view. Pain is something that I’ve come to realize is the defining characteristic of this life. If I’ve successfully avoided pain on some level, I’m happy. If pain could not be avoided, I am distressed or depressed. “Life is pain, Highness! Anyone who tells you different is selling something!” Or, so goes the familiar quotation from The Princess Bride. I manage the pain in my life best when I face it head on and let the effects take their course. Of course, I need to be deeply rooted in God and his Word when that happens without experiencing a complete annihilation of my worth and will to live.

Bebo used to sing a song called, “Through”, and I don’t know if he still does, but its theme was that you can’t get over, around, or under pain; you have to go through it. I think the most profound question Jesus ever asked was to the man at the pool in Bethesada, “Do you want to get well?” Sometimes I don’t. Well, at least, I don’t want to have to do what it really takes to get there. I don’t want to go through the pain. Sometimes I just want to complain about the pain and receive the sympathy of others. Sometimes I think God really has gone and done it this time and given me more than I can handle. Sometimes I get discouraged at having to seemingly go through the same pain over and over again, and I just don’t want to look at it anymore. “I haven’t got time for the pain” as Carly Simon so aptly puts it. Pain slows me down. Emotional pain paralyzes me. If I can’t see it, it’s not there.

It makes a weird kind of sense that pain reveals sin. Pain is sin’s sign in the world. Where there is pain, there is sin. If only it didn’t hurt so much, we could see the sin for what it really is! I avoid pain by avoiding my family (I got pretty good at that – I almost made it 20 years), friends, colleagues, tanning booths, relationships. I do that because I don’t want to acknowledge that I have sinned or been sinned against.

I don’t want to be dependent…on God or anyone else. Ironically, it is when I grow dependent upon anything besides God that pain is most prevalent in my life. I do “hate my life in this world”, but not enough, apparently, to die to it and “bear much fruit” in the process (John 12:24-25).

Another irony involving pain is worth mentioning here. It is when I experience pain and am going “through” it and managing to involve God in that process that I feel most alive, vital, and worthy. Not unlike soldiers in the heat of battle (let me make no mistake; it is a battle), I truly live in those moments. If only they weren’t to tiring…