Into the Shadows, please.

You could blame it on my husband actually-- the fact that I am once again drawn into the wilderness to look deeply at John the Baptist--or maybe to look through him.  John, I don't get you.  And that is just the truth of the thing.  Don't get me wrong: I like the whole nature-getting-away-from-it-all scene, and I have eaten grasshoppers (they were chocolate covered, but that still counts as insect-eating, right?), and in my teenage years I dabbled with fashion that was, and I confess it now, both uncomfortable and socially remarkable...for the wrong reasons.  I have even been accused (rightly so) of neglecting my renegade locks to the point where it looked as if I had taken some covenant to deliberately ignore their maintenance. 

But beyond these peripherals, John and I have very little in common, and my attempts to understand his heart cry absolutely fail.  See, I am a woman who likes an audience: give me a group of children, teenagers, adults that are willing to listen, and I am a sucker for the spotlight.  It is one of my least favorite things about me.  I am show-woman--this is my perverse nature.  Follow me into the wilderness?  You should be so lucky.  Give ear to my ramblings?  Blessed are ye! 

But my thankful reality is that my perverse nature is not my destiny.  My spotlight-yearning is not what I have been called to.  It is not my purpose.  And somewhere on the surface, but gradually sinking into my flesh, is the truth that my real calling is into the shadows.  And that is where, in the shadow place of obscured identity, of lost individuality, is where I meet John.  He is there.  He's sidestepping fame, even though he has it.  He's giving up his leadership role, even though so many have followed him, he's stepping out of the spotlight of his story and in to the shadows of God's holiness.  His purpose is becoming a footnote, a piece of marginal text around the plot-line of God's greatness and goodness.  

And I am longing to long to meet him in there in the shadowlands.  I am desiring to desire to want that place where I become tangential, dare I say forgettable, as I point to my Beloved and the Father who sent Him.  I want to want that.  Not just on the surface of me, but down deep.  All the way down. Down in my bones.

Leaning

I have an amazing pastor friend.  He asks easy and difficult questions, i.e: Do you believe that God is everywhere?  Everywhere? What about in Muslim countries? in homes of sadness? in the room where a child is being raped or butchered?  If He is everywhere, then He is everywhere…even there…watching the horror with unsurprised God-eyes.  This is an amazing concept—the ever-present, never-surprised God of ours.  We never shock Him, not even in the beginning.  He did not look down into the garden and say, “Oh, crap…they bit the apple.  What on my green earth can I possibly do now?”  God does not scramble or panic or quickly find solution.  He does not look at our actions, and figure out how to make it work into His plan, try to find excuses for us in weaknesses so that He can forgive.  It is all part of His plan and forgiveness that are as old as His eternal Son.

I remember when things were hard for me.  Harder than they are now…when I was alone and scratched out companionship on my wrists and ankles. There was a solace in the pain, an “I’m-really-not-alone”-ness.  And so I get it, I do.  When people hurt themselves, whether with exactos or drugs or even other people …I understand that despertion and the desire to latch onto something other than my little me so that while I was stagnant I was at least distracted by pain.  I remember the fear too—the fear that nothing would change—that I would always have a void to fill, that God would always be far away or not paying attention, or bored by my repeated failures.  That He would finally have enough of my pathetic Summer-self and my hypocrisy.  I was afraid that He would give up on me and write me off the way that I had written Him off—that He would rather be without me.  But this is not truth—it wasn’t true when I was making my ankles look like hamburger meat, and it is not true now—and it won’t ever be.  And we have to, even when we are hurting, even when we are alone and remembering all of the things we have done to ourselves, when we remember our crimes, we must fight against the lie that God has grown apathetic by our desire to find something more in life.  That we are a bore to Him.  We have to fight the lie that our own flesh would tell us that we can tire God, or frustrate Him , or foil His plans for us; that we are capable of finding the time and the place where God would rather be somewhere other than walking with us in the cool of the garden.

The truth of the matter is, is that we cannot save anyone, including ourselves.  Adam and Eve were not consulted on the garden when they bit the apple for all of mankind.  God is not in desperate need of our ideas.  We are not the Lord’s consulting firm.  This is an unsettling truth, but it affords more peace than the lie that we are orchestrating our lives, that we need to search for solutions and pull ourselves out of our brokenness.  What we are called to do, is lean. 

It’s beautiful really.  We are called to lean on Him in the desert of our heartbreak and our isolation and our desperate desire to not do the life thing alone.  And when we lean, Oh God, how you carry, how Your strength is shown, how Your power is made known—that You are with me, Lord.  Everywhere.  Every time.