the way out

First of all, to my brothers from Wayside, I miss you a lot and I think about you often. I'm sorry I'm not better at keeping in touch.

Now I'm writing to everyone.

I have a problem from time to time: I forget who Jesus is. I also sometimes forget who I am.

It's dangerous, you know. It's one of the reasons I started doing drugs. Had I known, had I really understood the Gospel, I wouldn't have felt the enormous weight of guilt and shame from which I was trying to escape because it wouldn't have existed. I'd have known that Jesus loved me anyway, that he bore all that weight so I wouldn't have to, that I'm actually and finally safe/accepted/loved. And I did, in my head. I knew it. I just didn't believe it.

How did it happen, you ask? How in the world did I actually start believing it so that things changed? So that I changed?  Well, as I said, I still don't believe it all the time; but the way I sometimes catch the fleeting glimmers I do is by listening to him, to Jesus.

Somehow, I developed this habit over the years of always reading about him. The Bible was more like a history book instead of Words That Are Alive. From time to time, I would have experiences while reading where it felt like it was really real, but those were few and far between. (To be honest, they still are.)

But when I remember to read as though the things about which I'm reading actually happened, as though Jesus were actually a person, things begin to change. I sit down to read and I imagine the whole scene: there he is in the middle of a crowd, walking from person to person, looking into their eyes and smiling at them, healing them and loving on them, trying to teach them things which most of them totally miss, and this young guy wearing a three-piece suit made from Italian wool and some expensive-looking leather loafers comes up to him, hands in his pockets all casual like, and he says, you know, Hey, I like what you've got, so what do I need to do to get it? And Jesus looks at him with that piercing gaze of his, cocks his head to one side, and says, Love God and love your neighbor. And this young, successful, arrogant guy inflates his chest a little and says, Yeah I'm doin pretty well with that actually.

I'm not gonna tell the rest of the story because most of you know it. I'm just trying to say when I read it like that, when I'm listening to him, he's different. He says stuff that doesn't make sense. He rarely answers questions directly.

But that's just it: we know too much. I mean we know, don't we, that he was answering their hearts, answering their real questions, or what their questions should have been. That's what you were thinking as you read that last bit, wasn't it? Try and forget all the stuff you know and just listen.

There was an exercise we did at Wayside - the fifth and final rehab I went to - where we went through the Gospel of John and summarized every chapter, wrote it down in our own words. That's when it happened for me. That's when I met him again.

So my submission to you is that if you find yourself having the same problem - you've forgotten who he is, or you just want to change so badly but you can't - try it. Even if you've done it before, do it again. You'll start to believe he can actually change things. You'll start to believe he wants to. And actually, he's so good that you'll start to change just by getting to know him better.

"And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another." That's from the Apostle Paul's second letter to the church in Corinth, and you know what comes right before it?

"...where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."

a sacrifice of vulnerability

It's been a while.

Be forewarned: you might need your rose-coloured glasses toward the end.

This whole thing was sparked by my intention to get on here and shame the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower. (If you haven't seen it, know that there are spoilers in this post.) I planned it throughout the entire movie because I thought it was going to be like every other movie. I thought this poor kid was gonna fall in love with this poor girl and she was going to totally miss it and treat him badly and then realize it toward the end and that would be that - requited love, which is rare and frustrating to watch - and I was going to ask insightful questions about what that movie says about what our culture is telling us about love, and then the end happened.

You wanna know why I watch movies? I watch movies for the moments that open me up. You are wrong: I could not be doing better things with my time. I live to feel raw and awake and alive to the Story - the story of brokenness and redemption.

Like the part when this kid's parents find out what his aunt did to him, and his dad walks in to his son's room in the psychiatric ward and walks up to him and takes his head in his hands and kisses his forehead. You just have to see the movie because the whole time his dad is this disinterested non-person, and then this, this understanding! This gentle. encompassing. closeness.

The big questions now are not for you or for our culture. They're for me. Like: What happened to me that makes me seek out sickness? Why is it I want to be like that kid? I was way too young when I was introduced to sexuality, but I wasn't abused like he was. 

I just want to be understood, you know? Yeah. I want to walk next to be people who get it. This kid finds a group of people who get it, and that rings this big bell of longing inside of me.

But the sickness... you wanna know something? I was relieved, six years ago, when a psychiatrist told me there was a strong possibility I was developing schizoaffective disorder, but it's not for the reasons I used to think. I used to think I just wanted to be sick, to be lazy, to have excuses. I mean those could be part of it, but the real, deep undercurrent was that I could maybe, now, be free to be me. I thought schizoaffective disorder would provide a lens through which I could finally see myself clearly. I thought it could explain the darkness inside me.

But I don't think that's all of it, either. When I came home from that appointment, my sister was the first person I told - I didn't want Mom and Dad in the room with me when that psychiatrist told me because I didn't know what her diagnosis would be (or maybe I didn't want them to hear that I wasn't ADD, that I didn't have an excuse for totally failing at college) - and when I did, when I told my sister, she just hugged me and said, "I knew there was something else going on." 

But what was it? What else was going on? It wasn't schizoaffective disorder. I always felt different, but I know now that I'm not.

That's the point here: We've all got the same story. We're all trying to fill the big impossible holes inside of us. I've always felt different but I'm not. I am seriously - but not fatally, oh no, thank you, Jesus - narcissistic. Or I was.

The Gospel really is wonderful. 

I was led to pray recently that God would restore the innocence I had when I was three, because when I was four, it was gone. I was that young. (That would certainly qualify as an answer to those questions.) I didn't understand it at the time. I understood that I had to hide it from Mom and Dad, and as I grew older, I became so. ashamed. so full of guilt.

You know what opened me up? Another person's honesty. Michael's honesty. He told me what happened to him, and I thanked God at that moment that at least my offender was only a little bit older than me and that she was a she.

What is going on in the quiet?

I'm not trying to scare y'all, really, but we have to be serious from time to time. We have to ask ourselves these questions. And if I'm not vulnerable about all of this like Michael was, you might not ever see it in yourself. You might not ever come out and ask the questions which are eating you alive because you don't even know they exist. You might not ever talk to someone about it. 

And if that's you, you have to. You have to talk to someone about it.