Slow Dancing in a Burning Room

Tonight, during my fifteen-minute car ride home, I relived my high school relationship.  Listening to Dashboard Confessional and driving 75 mph, just like I did every weekend of my HS career, I remembered things I’ve tried not to remember, and dug up memories that had not surfaced for the five-plus years that have transpired since their originations.  As I cycled through feelings of warmth, sadness, regret, nostalgia, and confusion, I found myself wondering why I don’t “remember” these things anymore.  I mean, sure, the memories are there and I CAN remember them when I want to, but honestly, for five years, I mostly have NOT wanted to remember.

I am an emotional guy.  There is no denying it.  I feel things hardcore.  When I am sad, I am more than likely DEVASTATED.  When I am in a good mood, I am probably giddy and weird.  It’s just the way I am.  I live a life of highs and lows, mountains and valleys.  Because of this, I am starting to think that I don’t look back on things and dig up old memories because it’s too much of a roller-coaster ride for me. 

The good times I look back on and LONG for.  I LONG for driving home late at night, singing Dashboard Confessional songs to my high school sweetheart sleeping with her head on my lap.  I long for summer days spent down by the river, swimming for hours and listening to cassette tapes of Savage Garden.  I long to sit talking for an extra hour in the car when I drop her off at night.

But the bad times still hurt.  I don’t want to relive the pain of a relationship slowly burning to the ground.  I don’t want to think about making someone I care about cry.  I don’t want to think about walking away from something that meant so much to me.

So how do I deal with the past?  Most of the time, I just avoid the past.  I live with the overall emotion.  I am affected by the big picture, the broad strokes, but I avoid the details.  I suppress the events that incited the emotions.

Is this what I want, though?  Do I want to live a life that refuses to recognize the events that shaped me?  Do I go on living with only select moments of my past intact?  I don’t believe that’s what I want.  As hard as it is for me to FEEL those things again, I think my life can be richer and more meaningful if I acknowledge the beautiful and painful events that have propelled me to where I am at today.  To purposefully forget would be to lie to myself.

May the memories of the past help me shape a future worth remembering.

As the Deer... Is actually PRETTY bummed out.

I’m sure pretty much anyone who might read this has heard, and likely knows by heart, the song As The Deer.  This song has been popular for decades.  It’s based off of Psalm 42, which, in the TNIV, starts “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.  Overall, it’s a pretty positive song.  It talks about how intensely the singer wants to worship God, how intimate of a relationship they have with God, and how good God is.  It’s a great song.  But have you ever really read the Psalm that the first line is taken out of?

Check it out.  I find it quite interesting and inspiring.

This is a pretty broad generalization, but quite often in churches today, sadness is discouraged.  We are supposed to be happy because we follow and serve a good God.  We are supposed to take delight in the joy of our salvation, which often is taken to mean that we are not supposed to get depressed or discouraged.  Put on your happy face and sing a happy song.  Even this song “based off of” Psalm 42 is a pretty happy song.  But I want to take another look at this portion of scripture.

The first couple lines are fairly familiar.  Lines about thirsting for more of God.  Yep.  Good stuff (but doesn’t thirsting imply that you don’t have enough to satisfy?).  But then we get to verse 3.  This is where the classic song and the Psalm part ways.  The Psalmist writes that “tears have been my food day and night.”  He isn’t really putting on a happy face and singing a happy song.  Apparently, life has been pretty rough lately and he hasn’t been feeling so hunky dory.  This guy is hurting.  Tears have been my food?  Ouch.

He then reminisces in verse 4 about the good times when he would go to the temple and join in on the festivities, shouting and praising God.  Isn’t that all too familiar?  Remembering how God used to be close.  Remembering those times when you were so caught up in the goodness of God that you felt completely satisfied just knowing that you were created by the beautiful God and redeemed by this incredibly loving savior.  Those were good times, but where did they go?  Sometimes I find it pretty hard to figure out how God can seem so incredibly close and intimate sometimes, but then glaringly absent at other times.  Moving on…

Next, the Psalmist does something in verse 5 that I resonate with in huge ways.  He questions his OWN soul… His OWN feelings.  “Why, my soul, are you downcast?  Why are you so disturbed within me?”  When I am feeling “downcast and disturbed,” this is my most common response.  I question why I have to feel like this.  I question why I’m so messed up on the inside.  But then I often do the same thing as the Psalmist: I encourage myself to put my hope in God and still praise Him who is my Savior and My God.

However, unlike many Psalms that follow the formula, “I cried out to God and he heard me and delivered me,” this one is different.  After the Psalmists little personal pep talk, he returns to his grief.  He can’t shake it, despite the knowledge that God is good and worthy of praise.

In verse 7 he talks about feeling like he has been swept underneath the waves, and that deep cries out to deep.  I think he’s talking about that deep longing that we experience when we feel ourselves sinking further and further and we long for God’s hand to reach down and pull us out.  Deep cries out to Deep.

Again, he looks on the bright side in Verse 8, but then plunges back into his broken spirit. “Why have you forgotten me?”  Why must I go about mourning?”  “My bones suffer mortal agony…”

He ends the Psalm with his thrice repeated questioning of the condition of his downcast soul, and wraps things up with his weakly hopeful self-motivational speech.

I really FEEL this Psalm.  It’s not neat; It’s SUPER messy.  Grief and mourning are mixed with hope and praise.  In my mind, it is holistic worship.  It engages ALL of the worshipper, not just the neat  and tidy parts where she has it all together, but also the hurting parts and the questioning parts.

As the Deer is a good song, but I think our services need to occasionally reflect and acknowledge the messy truth in Psalm 42.

Restoration and Depression. Explain that one, please, God.

I am SO all about this whole “redemptive,” “resorative,” love of Jesus that fills us up when we’re empty and puts us back together when we’re broken and completes us when we feel deficient.  I truly believe that THAT is what Jesus desires for each and every one of us.  He came that we may have life, and have it to the fullest.

Thank you Jesus, truly.

Whether we admit it or not, we are all deficient.  We are all lacking.  We are all broken and hideous.  We can mask it pretty well, but when you cut to the core of who we are, all have fallen (far) short of the glory of God.  Believe me, you don’t have to tell me twice that I am a screw up and a failure and that I am broken and in need of fixing.

So I turn to Jesus, who redeems us, who lifts us out of the miry clay.  I turn to that peace and joy that I have felt so often in my life.  Most of the time, when I hit bottom, I eventually turn to Jesus and he assures me that I am not so ugly.  In fact, he tells me I’m beautiful and that through my love and obedience to him, I am an heir with Christ.

Okay, this is all SO awesome.  I believe this stuff.

But where is God in depression?  I have seen beautiful people that desire to serve God and be a light to others completely crippled and debilitated by the muck and mire of depression.  I have felt its effects (pretty significantly) both secondhand and firsthand.  God, where are you when your people (who desire you so intensely) are stuck down in the dark pit?

God is healer.  God is redeemer.  God is our lover that wants us to love Him and to call on Him when we are in need.

I know we can’t understand how God works all the time, but I REALLY don’t understand stuff like this.  Shouldn’t we be able to call out in faith and be lifted out of the darkness?  How are we supposed to be a Light of the World or a City on a Hill and shine the good news to the world when we are shut up in the darkness of depression.  Where is the restoration and redemption?

Again, I truly believe in that restoration and redemption.  I just have some questions for God about that subject.  Please pray for healing for all those who are struggling with depression.

A Faith TOO Strong?

So I feel like sometimes I WANT to doubt, but I’m so secure in my faith and so assured that God knows what he’s doing that I CAN’T doubt.  I’m able to tell myself, “Okay Josh.  I know life sucks right now and you have that hopeless, bottomless pit feeling in your stomach, but (here is where the clichés start ROLLING in) God is in Control. I just need to Let Go and Let God.   His Ways are So Much Higher Than Our Ways.  (Insert overused, probably misused reference to Romans 8:28 HERE).

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I believe those things.  Those things are true.  Those things are reassuring.  Those things are beautiful.  I love the fact that there is peace and comfort to be found there.  But here’s where I really start to sound insane:  Sometimes, when my faith is SO strong and I’m not concerned about the fact that life sucks (because of my God is in Control mantras), I start to doubt my faith BECAUSE it is so strong.  I look at the circumstances and think “Am I just deluding myself?  It sure doesn’t SEEM like God is in control.  Have I just given myself a crutch to lean on by continually lying to myself about “God’s Plan for My Life?”

Yes, I do realize that’s pretty ridiculous.  Doubting your own faith because you believe what you believe so STRONGLY?  Ugh.  Maybe I’m just playing mind games with myself, but I can’t get around it.

So how do I deal with this vicious cycle of faith and doubting BECAUSE of faith?  At this point, I’m not convinced I’ll be able to prove to myself 100% that I’m NOT lying to myself.  I might be stuck in this weird circle forever, simply due to the nature of the problem itself.  But, I do know that in Matthew, Jesus tells us not to worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself (Matt 6).   I do know that we are told to trust in the Lord with all our heart and not lean on our own understanding (Prov. 3).  I know I’m supposed to cast all my cares upon God, because God cares about me (1 Peter 5).

Somewhere within my limited knowledge and often faltering trust in God’s power and amidst my doubts about the validity of our claims about God’s power, God chooses to bless me with peace.  That peace is not always there, but when it comes, it’s previous absence makes the fact that it is there even more incredible.  Philippians 4 says that if we present our requests to God (doesn’t he know already?), then the peace that surpasses all understanding will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.  This sounds like a lot of spiritual mumbo jumbo, but I absolutely CANNOT argue with it.  Philippians 4:7 is probably the main reason that I call myself a Christian.  I have felt that peace too many times to deny its reality.  Sometimes, the trust and calmness I have about a situation makes me doubt, but other times, the peace that that trust and calmness brings is so unbelievably intense, that I cannot deny that it comes from Christ Jesus.  I cannot deny that Paul knew exactly what he was talking about in his letter to the Philippians.

I know not everyone has experienced this.  I know there are plenty of arguments against my logic.  But for me, it is enough to believe.

(most of the time)

Identity Crisis

It's hard to tell if all the crappy things in life really do always happen simultaneously, or if they actually slowly accumulate, simmering under the surface until all of a sudden they are a huge, slimy, stinking ball of stress on your back, preventing you from functioning normally.  I am starting to get the feeling that because I process things so internally, I am getting really good at pretending those crappy things don't matter and stuffing them down, only to find myself bogged down by all that crap, stuck down in a few weeks of good old fashioned depression.

The title of this blog is not implying that my beautiful, lovely mother that brought me into this world is also bad at processing her emotions and is subject to fits of depression.  I am referring to the famous quote by Saint Augustine, who said, "The Church is a whore, but she is my mother."  Such a great understanding of the simultaneous 'unimaginable beauty' and 'uncountable shortcomings' of the Church.  Using Augustine's quote as a leaping off point,  I feel that like the Church, which in the past has been both an agent of peace and love in the world as well as the perpetrator of some of the worst injustices in human history,  I am also somehow caught up in this tension.  I am stuck in the tension between being an ugly, perpetual sinner, and being a beautiful son of God redeemed forever by Jesus Christ.

So who am I?  That has been the biggest question in my life over the past year and a half or so.  Am I the perfect kid who was always polite, always respectful, always got good grades, always did well in extracurriculars, and was always respected by the adults and elders in his community?  The one who loves Jesus and is a youth pastor and wants to live out his life serving Jesus and loving people? OR am I this perpetually failing scumbag?  The one who gets depressed and snappy with people he cares about.  The one who drinks and does stupid things that epically mess up his life.  The one who cheated on his girlfriend.  The one who got caught up in sexual sin.  The one who lives with bitterness and confusion and doubt.

I truly believe that as much as I would want to be solely the latter and just be done with the former, the answer to this question is not one of these choices.  It is both.  Somehow I am living in this tension between hopeless, lost sinner, and redeemed, beautiful son of God.

Somehow, I am a 'hideous/beautiful' 'sinner/saint' that is a 'hopelessly broken/completely restored' 'doubter/believer.'

This is not a new revelation.  This is not an original thought. (I guess mostly because I believe this is what God intended for us from the beginning)  But this is something of which we easily lose sight.  It is easy to dismiss ourselves as worthless and unworthy and spiral into a whirlpool of negativity and doubt and depression.  However, Christ calls out to us in our ugliness and depression and tells us that he has redeemed us and wants us to be whole.  Sometimes I feel that wholeness in undeniable ways.  Sometimes it is glaringly absent.  I doubt.  I question.  I wonder if Jesus is really there.  But I think Jesus is okay with me doubting and questioning.  The good thing is, I keep coming back to the conclusion that He actually is somehow there, in the midst of my doubting.

I am hoping that writing out some of these struggles and questions I have will take my intensely introverted processing of emotions and doubt and force me to get them out and deal with them.  I really don't care if others read this or not, but if they do, I am hoping that they will be encouraged to also openly struggle with their doubt and with their identity crises as both whores and sons and daughters of God.