Brokenness

Take a close look at this picture. What do you see?

I took this picture while we were in Tofino, BC-- one of the most beautiful places my eyes have ever beheld, by the way-- so it has a particularly special meaning to me.

This is an old-growth forest, one of the rarest environments in the world. Some of these trees are over 800 years old. Tofino is home to rare and endangered wildlife, like bald eagles, grey whales, all sorts of sea lions and otters, and cool birds--many of which I had the chance to see.

When you look at this picture, there are several things that may call your attention: the green leaves of the trees, the sun shining brightly through the branches, the tall stretching trunks, or the huge grandfather of a tree that has fallen at the bottom.

When I saw these "nursery trees," I was really stricken with sadness. These are trees that have grown huge over a long period of time, and then something like a wind storm comes by, and they fall. Beholding that kind of majesty fallen feels somehow deeply saddening. Deeply wrong.

See, the thing is, we don't like to see things that are broken.

I've experienced this the past week with my foot. There have been so many times when I just wanted life-as-usual. To walk on my foot. To wear my cute shoes. To drive my car to a bookstore and get a tea while I write.

This whole thing has made me more conscious of how fake we can be with one another, especially on social networking websites. It's easy to post a picture of your food or your cat on Facebook or Twitter, and lie to the world, when all the while, you are feeling broken. And let's face it. We all feel broken sometimes.

None of us like brokenness, so we hide it. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden, we grow ashamed of our weaknesses and hurt. We try to pretend everything is just peachy all the time because we've got Jesus. But I believe this propensity to fake it is weakening our witness to the gospel.

See, the thing is, God is big. Redemption is real. And so are sin and pain.

God can handle the truth about where we are, right where we are. Maybe everything is just peachy for you right now, or maybe it isn't. God is the very same loving God, no matter where you stand. He hasn't forgotten you. He hasn't let you go or lost control.

When we pull back from others and refuse to acknowledge our brokenness--in whatever form it may take--we refuse the power of Christ's redemption and the glory of his sacrifice for us.

Going back to the "nursery log," I learned in Tofino that these fallen trees serve a very important function. It can take hundreds of years before some of them decompose, and in the meantime, they actually serve as a sort of nursery to young plants. They shelter these seedlings from the harshness of the world until the plants are strong enough to withstand them. They provide nutrients even in their decay. They provide homes for wildlife--some of which won't nest elsewhere. In essence, the brokenness matters. It sustains the future. It can be redeemed.

Have you ever felt frustrated social media that may feel like a charade? How does getting honest about our pain point toward the depths of Christ's redemption?

A Compassion that Weeps

I didn't want to write a blog like this. I generally try to avoid adding yet another voice to already-congested conversations in which people are so apt to become socially aggressive. But I feel I would be remiss not to acknowledge a problem I've been seeing in the church's response to the horrific tragedy of the school shooting last week. And that problem is this. We are trying to hard to "solve" all the problems and not trying hard enough to just simply grieve.


^{John 11: 32-44 (my emphasis)}
When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked.
“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.
Jesus wept.
Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” he said.
“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”
Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go."

When we face tragedy, we have a natural desire to want to explain it. We think that if perhaps we could just catch a hold of some deeper reason or motivation for the act, we would find peace. That's why everyone's so obsessed with finding the motive of the shooter and why the Jews in this story want to know why Jesus didn't keep this man from dying. When we can't find clear answers, we start to make up our own. We politicize events to form a commentary on things like gun control, prayer in schools, and parenting skills. We post clip art of God holding little sheep on social media websites and argue with each other on Facebook.

But we're missing something very, very important.

Jesus wept.

This passage never really made much sense to me before this week. I mean, I appreciated that Jesus had compassion, that He was capable of feeling such grief for his friend. But I was missing something.

Jesus knew all along He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead. Yet still, He wept.

Thus the grief of Jesus takes on a whole new dynamic, as does His compassion for us. It's so easy to dismiss real problems in life, real pain, by saying those children are in a better place. And they are--please don't misunderstand. But their being in a better place does not negate the horror of the situation, nor does it keep from moving the heart of God.

If Jesus knew it was to raise Lazarus back to life, and yet He still took pause to grief with those He loved, how much more ought we to grief with those who are hurting in this life? Grief, in this way, becomes a very holy act. In the church, we're all to quick to dismiss the realities of our fallen world and point heavenward. While we mustn't lose sight of the coming resurrection, we also must keep tender hearts that feel as deeply as the heart of God. How will this world catch hold of the hope of salvation, of the peace of God, if we don't demonstrate God's love meeting people right where they are?

In order to do that, we must first feel. The Bible says we should "weep with those who weep." This is a heavy calling and not something that is fun, for keeping a sensitive heart also means subjecting yourself to great pain. But if we don't know pain, can we ever know true healing?

What if, instead of spending our energy fighting over possible solutions or answers for tragedy, we simply stop, as Jesus did with Mary, and weep?

The resurrection is coming. But the death is just as real. May we never neglect the powerful hope of the resurrection by neglecting to face the reality of the fall.

A Tale of Mr. Lizard and Redemption

So, tonight I was enjoying a lovely evening with my mom, puppies, and Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama (How cute is her hair in that movie, anyway?) when suddenly I spotted an unexpected guest on my multicolored doormat: Mr. Lizard.

I should begin by saying that I've had a great sensitivity to life ever since I was a child. At the mature age of five, I decided I wanted to become a vegetarian--soon as I realized what meat was. And guess what? I've been meat-free ever since, almost twenty years now.

So you can imagine my chagrin when I see Mr. Lizard, who usually greets me from the wreath outside my door, inside my house. I like talking to these creatures, not touching them. He scurried into the closet and inside the bottom compartment of the vacuum cleaner. So I took an old t-shirt, wrapped it around that part of the vacuum so he couldn't escape, and proceeded to carry the whole thing outside. Foolproof, right?

Wrong.

I carefully set the full-sized red vacuum outside, and all I could see at this point was the tip of Mr. Lizard's tale. I brushed it with a random Bed, Bath, & Beyond coupon I happened to have laying around, and the lizard doesn't move.

So I brushed the tail again. And again, and again. But he still didn't move.

And then I realized what happened. When I moved the vacuum cleaner, I smushed him.

I carried the contraption back inside the house, returned it to the closet, and slumped into my couch. Then I looked at my dog Schroeder and explained the whole thing. He looked back at me, so concerned, and I started crying.

I kept picturing Mr. Lizard's tail and how it didn't move when I touched it, how I was the one responsible for that. It would've been easier had I run over him accidentally with my car, because then I would've had to keep going, and I never would've seen him. But I did see him, and he was motionless, and something about that was terrifying, particularly because I knew I was at fault.

Then, because I sometimes get irrational thoughts, I figured I'd check just one more time to make sure he was still dead.

And guess what?

He wasn't.

His little green body was clinging to the side of the closet wall, and I swear he looked terrified. I was shocked. Here I was, confessing my heart to Schroeder and even crying over Mr. Lizard's tragic passing, and meanwhile, he was having a little party as he tried to decide whether he wanted to squeeze inside the Apples to Apples box or the Lord-of-the-Rings-themed Risk. And let's be honest, how do you choose between those two?

What followed was a string of rescue attempts--including but not limited to my using a hanger to help him down and screaming like the stylist dyed my hair orange when he actually climbed onto it. Ultimately, though, you'll be relieved to know Mr. Lizard found shelter in last year's Easter basket, into which he ran directly before I carried him and the Easter basket safely to the front porch.

And I realized, what I was mourning, God was in the process of redeeming.

Okay, so maybe that sounds a little dramatic...this is a lizard we're talking about, after all...but the lizard is really more of a figure than anything else.

Is there anything in your life that you've given up on because it looks like hope is lost? Maybe it's a lot more serious than a lizard in the house. Don't despair; God is always in the process of redeeming that which we've lost. It's only when we really give up control that healing begins.