Waiting in Silence!

As I wrote the title to this rant just now, a deep sense of apprehension cascaded across my body. The hair on my arms rose up, and a chill ran down me despite the under armor long johns I am wearing for the winter. To the best of my recollection it is coming up on seven years. Seven silent and in many ways terrifying years…

Psalm 46:10 “Be still and know that I am God”…

That is the last thing He said to me before everything went silent. I never sense His absence, just His silence. And it isn’t just the last seven years. It either came to a head or began Christmas day 2002. The passage of time beyond that day is a blur for the next six years. Those are the days He carried me!

It has been an agonizing thirteen years. An unimaginably painful journey through a deep, dark valley made of family tragedy and pain that has come in successive waves. Sometimes so close together you haven’t been given a chance to exhale from the previous one. It is all a matter of public record for the most part. But none the less when the story is told in its entirety, sometimes only half way through it… you see it happen. You watch the question appear in their eyes. You sense the icy finger of doubt slice through your conversation. “Come on” they think! Individually these things happen to one out of ten… maybe a hundred families, never successively over a period of years to just one family...

I am wasting words, that is enough said! This is not about my journey or my story. This is about waiting, ‘Waiting on God’. I really can’t even begin to describe what it is like to be oppressed from any and every imaginable direction and wake up every morning with hope for a better tomorrow. Then, days, weeks, months… thirteen years pass and still, no Word, no horizon, no tomorrow beyond the moments in front of you… just silence. Yet, silence in the face of miraculous deliverance. I said earlier; “I never sense His absence”, and I don’t. But the pain of His silence has become unbearable. That is the only word that comes to mind and yet it doesn’t describe the pain of this silence.

I still completely place my faith in Him. There is nothing, no other choice outside of Him. The choice is either Him or not. That is the clarity that has come from this. Not just clarity, but a yearning for him that rivals that which I have for my wife. I know we all profess as Christians to have a love for God above all else. I do and I am sure you do as well. But this surpasses that. It is a physical yearning that goes beyond a carnal or sensual feeling (although it is a part of it). It has crystallized this verse in my mind:

Luke 14: 26,27 – If any one comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters – yes even their own life- such a person can not be my disciple.  And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

If you ever read Job chapter three you will get an idea of what living in a prolonged state of agony does to your soul. It is often thought ‘not’ to be a good chapter to read when in a state of severe depression. I totally disagree! I can not tell you how closely I identify with the thoughts expressed in this chapter. I find absolute solace and something I can repeat to God in Jobs words. Living like this brings passages like Luke 14:26,27 to life… it is crystallized by living with a deep love for a God who is able to deliver you without so much as a thought… and doesn’t or won’t. Even as He sits right beside you and watches you suffer! And you accept that because you believe He knows and Loves you, despite His silence and all the evidence to the contrary. What develops from this is what I described earlier as an irrepressible longing to physically be with God. Sometimes so much that you ‘like a baby’ want to crawl into His lap and be held. I keep having this persistent thought of wanting to love God more than any other human that has lived… if only I could. The truth is I don’t even know how to love. But with what I have. With what for me is ‘love’ and everything else that is inside me, all of it wants to be God’s favorite possession. Too literally walk this world and into the next daily and physically hand in hand with God. NOTHING ELSE MATTERS to me. Nothing else in my life compares. And all that I love here is an object affected by the pain bleeding from my life. And because of it, because of my failure, my inability to change any of the pain that is wrought by my own hand in the life of those I love… I detest it! I detest all that I am, all that is tainted by this world. Many days I just want to go home, or stop existing. My only hope for anything is found in Him alone. There is nothing left outside of that. There is nothing else of value. Everything that I know… that I have touched is so broken that I feel every breath I spend outside of a complete pursuit of God is a breath wasted. Long ago, I used to wonder how people decided which decisions to bounce off of God and which ones they rolled through on their own. To me it appears that I have so royally screwed up everything by making my own decisions that I don’t want to make a single decision apart from Him anymore. I don’t want to exist without Him. And the closer He is the better.

I am an A type personality! If I do anything it is 150% or nothing at all. If Gods end game is a close personal relationship with me. Then no one is going to get closer! At least that is how I feel inside.1 Corinthians 10:13 tells us in essence that nothing is going to happen to us that hasn’t first been filtered through Gods eternal hands. And there are so many other passages that make the case that all of it is His. He controls it down to the minutest detail and nothing escapes His attention. So even though my family and I are still thirteen years later walking on a dark, barren and rocky road with absolutely no end in site, I still trust Him! I know He is here, right beside me. Really holding my hand… He even said so! I still love Him… even more. I can not begin to tell you how crystal clear the vision He has given me of what a life would be like in the absence of God. I guess that is where the longing for Him comes from. The word “Frightening” doesn’t cover what life would be like without God. And when you consider how frail, broken and even detestable my life is under His gaze. How ridicules even the thought that He knows of my existence is. Yet not only does He, He loves me… and not just loves me, but He likes me! And He wants to spend the day with me, caring for me, teaching me, loving me… maturing me! Maybe the last thirteen years and those that are to come are the only way I could have seen. Can clearly see Him… See His love for me. And in turn, from my dead and blackened heart, create a love for Him self.

I don’t have any answers because He hasn’t given me any. But I do see something now that I could not have seen otherwise. I see how insignificant all that my life has been in the light of eternity. A thousand years from now we will probably not even remember this time. And it certainly will have no impact on our life any more than high school does to a fifty year old. The only thing that will matter, the only thing that will last; is only that which God builds through me.

Life Crisis

As every male matures into adulthood at some point they will hear someone use the term ‘Mid Life Crisis’.

And as we progress into our years, not only will we continue to hear the term used with more frequency, but each of us in some way or another will come to terms with it. As for me… well let’s just say I never envisioned a time where I thought I would experience this.

I turned fifty a few years ago and it didn’t hit with any more or less significance than any other age. Although, the number it self seemed to imply some kind of bench mark. But now at fifty two I find that over the last few years my mind has been wandering more frequently and deeper into introspection. Reviewing my life, my choices… my mistakes! The review isn’t all that pretty and to be brutally honest I have made an absolute mess of things. As I look at the sum total of who and what I am and as I simultaneously turn and confront what every man must at some point in his life, his ‘Mid-Life-Crisis’. I have come to realize that society and the machine that fuels our capitalism. The very mechanism that is responsible for spreading the tale of woe and misery for anyone found wanting at the door of ‘Mid-Life-Crisis’. IT has deceived you, me, all of us. Every male that will advance down the corridors of age is marching to the beat of societies drum so he can be prepared to meet his “Mid-Life Crisis”… AND IT LIES!

Now I find myself sitting on the door step of “Mid-Life-Crisis”. And it isn’t a mid life crisis at all, it is a total and complete crisis.

IT, opened IT’S door but I couldn’t go through. Because IT, was not what the machine taught me to believe. It taught you, me and all of us to reach the door of mid-life so you can look back upon all that you have amassed. All the things you did because you weren’t going down with a bucket list. You were not going to be the guy standing here at IT’S door and say; If only I…” NO, not you, YOU DID IT! I know I did. I was confident that as I approached this mid life door my ducks were in a row. Sure there were more than a few things I can’t do but that any of us would love to do money permitting. And for a time I had the money, all the money I could spend. But it meant nothing. If it really had any value, I would pursue it again. But I had reached in some way or another most if not all my goals. I was here without any thoughts of; “Oh if only I…” I went after life, and on a few occasions I caught it briefly. And I did and still do the family thing. I have a beautiful wife who loves me, three grown, to almost grown children that although each may be wayward in one way or another have a solid belief in Jesus and His sacrifice for us… as do I. And that brings us to the crux of the matter. Because, not only do I have a solid belief in Jesus, I love Him! I want to give all that I am and have to Him! I have wanted that for the last thirty years. But I also had my niche to carve out. MY niche! After all I had to look and be the part. I had to reach my mid life with my salvation in hand my Christian family by my side and a career I could be proud of as I begin to pass gracefully into old age.

DO YOU SEE THE LIE? I sit here looking back at what the world says is a successful life. Sure, I have my share of mistakes. But it looks a lot like it is supposed to. It looks just like I tried to make it look. And as I summarize all that I have reviewed over my fifty two years of life. I can not think of a single thing that I can present to God and proudly say; “I tried my best… for YOU”. Oh, I tried my best, but it was for me and for what I wanted. I really have no idea what God may have wanted. I was to busy preparing for mid life.

If I had listened in the beginning it wouldn’t be this way. If I had understood; “Be in the world, not of the world”. If I had; “Sought Him first” or “Hated my life and this world, picked up my cross and followed Him”, it wouldn’t look like this. I thought I was doing all those things. But after Thirty years where is the evidence? And as I reflect back I wonder how or why I thought that I was pursuing God, when in reality I was pursuing my own agenda and bringing God along for the ride. The answer for me began at the most miraculous moment in my life, my conversion. As I think back I realize that from the moment of my salvation all the way up until this point, everything I have done has been to pursue MY life with God walking beside me. Allowing Him to glorify Him self inside of MY life and my agenda. WOW! Did I miss the boat!

It’s not that I haven’t tried to live a Godly life, I have. And it is not as though I haven’t lived as a Christian, I have! But at twenty one years of age I knew what I was being redeemed from. And I thought I knew what it meant to Love God, and to serve Him alone as my King. To pin my ear to His eternal door post and live the remainder of eternity as His servant. But I got confused as to when all that was all supposed to begin. I began to walk the walk and talk the talk. I was relishing my new relationship with God and enjoying all the ways He was blessing and redeeming MY life. It has been an awesome, but pain filled walk for over thirty years. But now here I sit on the door step of Mid Life, looking back at all that I have accomplished. And every last bit of it is an example of what ‘I’ had wanted to do while expecting God to keep in step with me along the way. And now I realize that somewhere in my past I made a turn and God didn’t and I just kept right on walking. Walking so far away that now I can’t even see Him anymore! He is still all around me and still moves in awesome ways. After all He is still God. But all that I am, all that I created is the sum total of what “I” have wanted to become. And now I sit here staring ‘Mid-Life-Crisis” in the face and I realize that I have nothing to offer the God I say that I love and serve! Nothing that’s any better or any different than any other man that walks this planet. I sit atop the pile of garbage that I have amassed and survey the empty wasteland that I have created. My mistakes (although different) are just as devastating as the ones I made before I gave my life to God. And all I am at 52 years of age is a little cleaner version of the filthy man God redeemed thirty years ago.

That is my Life Crisis! For thirty years I have marched to the drum beat of this world and tried to make God a part of it. Never realizing that there was another path, Gods path, the path He expected me to take after He bought me. God’s path may have even been the same path as the one I took. But I asked God to follow me on my journey instead of me following Him on His. And fifty two years later all I have to show for it is what belongs to this world. I have yet to build anything of substance for the next.

I pray He will redeem my time left here on this planet again and allow me a chance to do something wonderful for Him before I am kneeling at His feet. But more importantly, for “YOU” I pray that you understand what Jesus meant with all those crazy, totally committed statements about what it would take… what it would mean to give up your life for His.

I always viewed my life, my Christian walk as a shared thing with Him. He has his part & I had mine. He got his ten percent, I got to spend the ninety…

I was so wrong.

It is all His. Every breath I take. And all I want to do with what I have left is spend it for Him. What ever that means! No agenda, no purpose but His. To pursue the thought of walking so close with Him while I am still here, that it won’t feel any different when I walk the streets with Him there.

I Love Him more now than ever before, and regret so much the time I have wasted.

Eternity does not begin upon our end here on earth. It began for each of us the day we were born. And what eternity will look like for all of us when we can finally see it, is dependent upon where your heart lives while you are here. 

Please don’t follow the world’s path into your mid life crisis… but exchange it for His while you are still here. Learn to walk hand in hand with the one who bought you while you still breathe this air.

His only agenda is to know and love you and be known and loved by you.  

God Bless!

The Ride

Imagine your driving in an old convertible car. The top and windows are rolled down and there is a trail of dust the car is kicking up behind you going back as far as you can see into the distance. Much like the scene from Thelma and Louise! They are driving down the dirt road heading for the edge of the cliff, only it’s you driving and everyone you love is in the car with you. The accelerator is stuck wide open and the steering wheel is locked into position. You are numb from the fear of the impending disaster and even though everything is happening at tremendous speed, it all seems to happen in slow motion. It’s as though years have passed while with each second you watch the car consume the road in front of you drawing you ever closer.

As you look through the windshield, instead of seeing a big expanse of mountains and sky you see a wall of blackness where the cliff should be… and nothing beyond it. You watch as the road passes by your open window. The wind blows in your hair and cascades across your face, drying the tears that stream from your eyes. It all seems so surreal! In slow motion you watch as the wall of blackness approaches. You sit motionless as the hood of the car disappears into the blackness. Inch by inch the blackness creeps up the hood closer to the windshield. You watch as the road blurs by your open window, expecting to see the edge of the cliff and waiting to feel the front of the car begin to plummet into the blackness. Your wife and children stare at you in disbelief as you bow your head to the steering wheel in utter failure, unable to prevent any of what is happening…

But nothing happens.

For every inch the car moves forward the blackness recedes an inch. And despite the dizzying speed, the edge of darkness remains just inches from the windshield. You sit powerless to change anything and completely at the mercy of who ever or whatever pilots the vehicle. Your wife and children, time, space, EVERYTHING seems frozen in that moment. But nothing is frozen at all. The car is careening wildly as it rolls over rocks and gullies. You watch as debris kicked up by the front tires fly’s into the air and passes under the car behind you. The image of what lies in front of you… your next year, your tomorrow… your next moment, can only be viewed as it passes by you. Only the one driving the car knows where you are headed and when the trip will end.

If this whole experience were a carnival ride, you would be experiencing the complete thrill and exhilaration the maker of the ride intended you to have, because you placed your faith and trust that what he has built will bring you safely to the conclusion of the ride.

So how is it for you?