by bcmiller2014

Get Messy and Live

I feel a bit like starting by saying, “I just watched this fantastically depressing show on the BBC,” in an Emma Thompson-esque accent. It wasn’t that fantastically depressing, though. The main character dies, as does almost everyone else, so I suppose it isn’t happy. But that’s what happens to us all over time, if we’re willing to admit it.  And the main character was so very human. He made so many bad choices, and so many good ones. As a viewer of his life, I sort of loved him in the end.

I just read an article that I assigned to my freshmen, all about finding God’s will. So often I’ve been paralyzed by the thought that I’d miss it and suffer horrifying consequences, especially if I dared to think the wrong thing. That has seemed to me to be the ultimate sin. Circumstances could be forgiven, but thoughts seemed eternal, as if in their intangibility lent them to power to send me to hell. And yes, I know that doesn’t make sense. It was an inarticulate feeling and those rarely do.

The article suggested otherwise, though, affirming free will and a life process that we co-author with God. So often what I teach to others ends up being for me. I know that I think things that would shock my parents, Keith’s family, and many of my friends. And yet I find myself needing to think them, to dig through them for artifacts of things as close to truth as I can find. It’s such an irony to be looking for God in places I used to consider profane, and yet I can feel him in this process with me. It’s as though he’s handing me a spade and egging me on. It’s as though he wants me to get messy and live.

We all make good and bad choices, and there usually are consequences, but in the end I think maybe he looks at us like I did the main character in that show. He was gorgeous and horrible and selfish and noble and frail, and I loved him for all that. I saw glimpses of his heart and it was beautiful. I had grace for the rest.

8 Comments

  2. Unknown's avatar

    I hear your voice…it’s Ike the sound of drums from far away but as you get closer, they get louder…you are finding your rhythm and it’s raw and it’s true. And it’s beautiful.

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  3. Unknown's avatar

    A song is coming to mind as I process your blog tonight. The words go like this…”I can feel the rhythm of the lion of the tribe of Judah”. Your words/your voice feels like it’s getting firmer, growing stronger and becoming your own rhythm. It is raw, true and beautiful. I think He desires our hearts to be set free. I mean shoot…making earth, stars and human beings must have been pretty darn messy! I hear your voice. I see you. It is good.

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  5. Unknown's avatar

    And why, why, WHY do we have so much grace for everyone else…and not for ourselves??? And I, too, have found God in the most unlikely “profane” places ;-)…since i’ve had the courage to look for Creator in places I was, at one point, not allowed. I was asked by my parent’s pastor to be in a think tank group for creative ideas to reach our community. I felt I needed to be honest that I wouldn’t be comfortable figuring out ways to bring people in to his church so I wrote this to him:
    I know it breaks my parents’ hearts so I try to not say this publicly…..but I’ve never been as happy and PRODUCTIVE (in all ways…including spiritually…) since leaving the church ten years ago. I gave 33 years to it…three times a week …I was a youth pastor…care pastor…best friends with pastors…I even prayed *every* morning with my pastor’s wife. I was REALLY in to it. lol. And I feel it limited my life in so, so, so many ways. It boxed me in. It boxed in my thinking and acting and interactions. It boxed in how I saw God…and made him so very small. Since opening my heart to hear God however God wants to interact with ME personally….with no guidelines from an outside source….I’ve just seen how HUGE God is. How much of how I saw God before was from the confines of human understanding. I know partly this was not the church…it was how *I* was in church. But church….so very early in my life…kind of set me up for it.

    He never answered. ahem. And I now think I should have made it clear that I was HAPPY for HIM finding such fulfillment in the church….that this was just MY experience. I never know how to navigate that.

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