Light It on Fire

August 2020

"Today is the day of salvation." I paused when I read that. It hit me in the gut. It felt like such a common phrase, like something I'd heard a million times during altar calls in church every Sunday. In those moments, it was geared towards unbelievers, saying, "Today is your day! Whenever you're ready; that's your moment. Grab hold of all of heaven right now! Jesus is waiting with love and open arms." But there's more to the statement that applies to the already believers. "Just because you're being saved doesn't mean you weren't saved." It means that salvation is a relationship, a process, the act of being saved every day from whatever is in our way, whether they be outside circumstances or inner conflicts. Spoiler alert: most of the time it's the inside stuff that gets highlighted. Read on.

We are always in a process of discovery and growth. 

We live in the fire. 

I am 41 years old. My life has changed so much that I sometimes struggle to even know who I am in this version of reality. I was married before to a different man, served in a different church, lived in a different country, had a very different projection of how my future would unfold all in a life that seemed very settled and right. It all burned, which is not all bad or all good or anything to be graded at all, and now I am married to my new husband, serve in a new church, and live in a new country. It all feels so very different, and I am most certainly different but more me. Hmmm. My old future is dead, and there is a whole new potential future. How is that even possible? But even my newly projected potential future is not guaranteed. I've learned to hold on loosely and trust that wherever I end up, God will be with me.

How often do we put our future goals up as idols of the 'arriving' we'll achieve if we keep performing well and plugging away today? The truth is I had the vision but not the building blocks to create it. I was so strong yet so broken, and I was in a situation that was breaking me mercilessly more. Spoiler alert: it was more my church than my marriage. I needed to learn some important lessons. I needed to face some demons. I needed to self-reflect, surrender in a way I never understood, and allow some things to die, some roots to stretch, to mature, to grow. I was saved, but by God, how I needed salvation. 

I lost my life not just to find it but to keep finding it, expanding in it, to embrace the process of finding and redirecting and growing. 

I married my dear friend's husband. She battled cancer with glorious strength and flair, and she intentionally carried others along on her wave of positivity and encouragement. She was one of my longest-time friends, dating back to kindergarten. She was like a sister. We disagreed on a lot of things, but we had each other's backs in a fiercely protective way. And both being strong and determined, we didn't really need each other and just enjoyed watching the other do her thing as she grew in to her adult self. 

We watched each other from a distance in adulthood, both taking different paths and living very far apart. When she crossed over to her heavenly form to be with Jesus, I was there. I came in, and sat on the side of her bed. She never wanted to talk about the truly deep and difficult stuff--it was too hard. I always wanted to talk about it. I deferred to what I knew of her as she lay there heavily sedated, eyes closed. I didn't know if she could hear me, but they told me she could, though she couldn't respond. I started talking and she moaned in response to my statements. She could hear me. I told her I was so happy to see her. I told her how my son Levi was doing, because she cared about his Type 1 diabetes. I said her kiddos looked so big. I talked to her as though we were just two sisters catching up, and I did not say a word about her being sick, her pain, the fact that she was dying, because at least for our time together, I felt like that's what she would want. I treated her like she was alive, because for a little while longer, she was. I wanted her to feel alive until the very end, and I protected that space. It wasn't denial on my part. It was treating her as normal, separate from the battle and the pain, for her sake. That is how we had always done it. I touched her hand out of habit and then immediately pulled my hand away and said, "Sorry! Didn't mean to touch you!" Because there were two major dynamics at play there: #1 She did not like to be touched, and #2 She liked to be in control. For me to touch her hand was bad enough, but to do it when she had no control to look at me like I was crazy and slowly remove her hand from mine in disgust was just disrespectful. Hours later, she had moved on, and I brushed her hair. She hated having her hair brushed, but it couldn't bother her anymore, and I cried as I ministered to her earthly container, cringing every time I pulled too hard, laughing at the memories of her snarkiness and humor, mourning the loss, rejoicing that she was pain free. 

For the first year married to her widower, I felt for the first time in my life like I was living with someone else's shadow. Not necessarily in her shadow, but with it. I am a deferential empath, a people pleaser by nature, and for that reason along with my protective nature toward her and hers, I felt strongly the compulsion to honor her space in our lives. I still do. But while the transition to a new family was pragmatically accomplished, truly settling into that space where it was ours took some time. 

There has been so much transition in the life of my little biological family, in the life of my spouse's little biological family, and in the newly created life of our big, beautiful, messy, combined family that transition, change, resilience, trauma, adaptability, and faith have been very real travelling companions for us all for many years.

And change and transition are not bad. They are required for growth, whatever the initiating catalyst is. I have come to realize that struggle--I just want to repeat that word and let it sink in to my soul sometimes--struggle--it is not my enemy. I think we need to say it out loud sometimes: struggle is not my enemy. Our culture of plenty, or our culture of lack, has taught us to seek comfort, to avoid struggle and pain. That is not wrong. Pain is often an indication that something is wrong, so we want to fix it. It tells us to take our hands off the hot stove to preserve our tissue, nerve endings, and muscle function.

But let's pause right there. Pain is an indicator. It is our helper. It is giving us a message that will help us if we will listen to it. And let's get a hold of something else while we're at it. Pain is not only an indication that something is wrong. It is often an indicator that something is right. Birthing is painful, but it is good. Building muscle strength is painful, but it is good. Growth is painful, but it is good. Our boys have hugeness in their genetics, and they get growing pains sometimes at night. Their growing, healthy bodies are good, but sometimes it hurts! Proverbs tells us, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy." Being corrected can hurt, but it's good. That pain is telling us that something positive is transpiring! Stay in the process. Don't stop just because it hurts. The stuff that hurts us is telling us treasures of insight.

And how much do we learn from the situations we wrestle with? It is in the struggles of life that so much substance gets built into us, into our characters. They are where the forging is happening. We find humility there. We find our need for God and community there. We find out we're not always amazing there and that that's OK. We find the gritty meaning of grace there. We find the overwhelming salve of unconditional love there. We find our own real, true selves, our fears and hopes, our flaws and strengths, our drive and complacency there. We get permission to relax, because there's not so much to prove. We see so much underlying truth laid bare on the table, and the very best thing we can do is to let it be exactly what it is and look at it. Look at it. Don't pretend it's different from what it is. Because each and every one of us carries around the good, the bad, and the ugly in our personal bags, and while your Good/Bad/Ugly (GBU, for short) might be of a different variety than mine, it's all just variations of GBU. None of us is exempt or spared. The minute we stop protecting that lie that our yuck is too gross to acknowledge, or that it doesn't exist, we are suddenly remarkably free to actually examine it and let it teach us amazing things.

What good does it do to examine our own GBU? I'm telling you, it makes all the difference. Our bag is full of our experiences, our thought patterns, our hurts and traumas, our buried shames and pains, our personal protective mechanisms we've developed to assuage our hurts and traumas, oftentimes in unhealthy ways. And the pain of acknowledging all of it is usually what prevents us from acknowledging it, from acknowledging ourselves fully, and often keeps us from uncovering those underlying layers. But those underlying layers of pain and hurt, when unacknowledged, continue to create pain and hurt until we actually acknowledge and heal them.

When they create pain and hurt but are hidden away and buried, we deal with that pain and hurt in various ways that are often detrimental to ourselves or those around us. As the saying goes, "Hurt people hurt people." The only way out of the painful cycle is to dig out the hurts and pains that have been buried and to seek wise and safe counsel in working through healing those areas. It's second nature for us to do this when the wound is physical. We must not be so careless with those wounds that are just as damaging but easier to avoid because they are not physical and therefore seem less obvious. It makes absolute sense to try to hide those areas away and move on with life. It takes time to address them. It is scary to address them. It often stirs up the pain before it relieves it. We may avoid it, because we do not know how to address these things and just want to move on with life and not let those things 'rule' us, so we ignore or silence them. But they're there with quite a lot of ruling capacity until we address them, and they will direct much of our behavior until we address them.

This should be our way of life. It is a lifelong skill and a lifelong process. Once we have taken ownership of those parts of our lives, we empower ourselves to obtain peace where we never expected it and to stop thinking we need to present ourselves a certain way to others, even though we may feel exhausted, worthless, fake, disconnected, or fill-in-the-blank with the underlying insecurities that are mixed in with our GBU.

Blending a family can be incredibly difficult. Trying to deal authentically and age-appropriately with the GBU each beautiful individual is carrying around in their heart from trauma in their past and big adjustments in their present is a mighty task that takes patience, faith, intention, energy, and grace. And that's true for all of us in our relationships with ourselves and others whether we're in a blended family or have a different story. That's life. That's struggle. It's that really great space where we strive to be authentic and unafraid in the face of challenge and welcome whatever it is that the struggle is teaching or training in us, not to harden us but to soften us, to relax us, to teach us resilience and how to let go when holding on so tightly is robbing us of air.

As we decide to examine our GBU, we are not powerless. Oh no. That's where we start to really suit up. It's there that we uncover incredible potential to direct some traffic. We will have opportunities to light it all on fire. We can take action and grow. The good will be warmed and refined and made lovelier in the fire. The bad will be held up to the light, transformed, or burned up. The ugly will be consumed. 

Fire softens the potato but hardens the egg. The fire uses the pot and the log of wood very differently as conduits of heat. The fire warms, it cooks, it destroys, it hardens, it softens, it explodes, it refines, it emits light, it is powerful. Applied wrongly, it is devastating. Applied well, it is nurturing. In real life, when it comes to the secret things in our hearts, minds, and behaviors, the fire involves getting real with yourself about yourself. The fire is lit in counseling with someone who can help you sort out what it means. The fire is lit in being bold enough to say the thing that is burning in your heart but that you're afraid to say because the listener might reject you. The fire is lit in taking a posture of learning, not as a doormat, but as a discerning soul listening for wisdom and areas of growth. The fire is lit in owning your convictions when they might be inconvenient. The fire is lit when we are honest about what's in us. The fire is lit when we embrace the struggle within us and around us rather than pushing it down and moving around as robots, as cold and hollow as an empty fireplace. We're meant to be alive. We're meant to burn.

I encourage you to let your innermost GBU tell you the important messages it has just for you. It's the personal rulebook specific to you. That behavior you just cannot shake? Lay your GBU out on the table, my friend. The answer is in there. That message that repeats itself in your heart of hearts and causes you to shrink or blow up? Look at your GBU. Look at it. Examine what untended messages, memories, or fears have been their since you don't know when and let them rise to the surface.

When you let it rise to the surface, lay it all out on the table, you might feel afraid or ashamed, angry or defensive, sad or mournful, relieved or joyful. Feel it all. All the feelings tell us something, and they are there to be felt. And imagine this: when you let them bubble up and feel them, you are being proactive with your emotions rather than reactive; you are taking the reins. We are not letting our feelings rule us when we slow down and allow this process to happen. In fact, the feelings attached to all of our stuff will continue ruling us if we do not stop and take this honest look. Men tend to have an especially difficult time with this, though women do, too. By not looking, we can feel we're keeping it under control and ruling with our logic and not our feelings. But those feelings will always bubble up; it's just that in this case, they'll be unexpected and unwelcome, and typically our desire to get things back under control causes us to release those feelings as an angry outburst of temper that hurts those around us and causes us more anger, shame, and defensiveness. Let's not for one moment tell ourselves that burying these difficult things is managing our emotions. It's a massive lie, the opposite of the truth. It is actually through uncovering, acknowledging, and tending these things and their companion emotions that we begin to gain control and direct some areas of our lives that have ruled quietly for far too long.

Take a deep breath. Relax. Look at it. Let it be what it is. Be OK with your variety of GBU. Be honest about it. And little by little, light it on fire. Light it up! Awaken some, shine a light on others, disintegrate another, and transform yet another. Today is the day of salvation.