Decidedly Different

I was just sitting here thinking about the workload I've been under. Every minute of every day for the past week has been calculated - what can I do in 15 minutes? What can I do in 3 hours, before I have to pick my son up from preschool? How late can I stay up and how much can I get done to keep my clients happy? When will I get a break or when will I figure it all out? What am I supposed to do with my business? After all, my business came to be literally over night. How far can I take it (if left to my own powers, I'd be a workaholic, like my dad) while being the mother of a preschooler? Am I doing a good job? Do people think I am smart? Am I a quality worker? Does my son feel neglected? Does he know how much I love him while I stare at him over my laptop, juggling various clients and responsibilities?

What I do know is this. Every sentence above has been about me. I've been self absorbed and I hate it. I loathe it. I haven't even thought about how my husband feels with me so focused on what I have to do. Usually our conversations revolve around what I have to do that night to make sure MY job is done and that MY clients are happy. It has to be done, sure...I have to meet deadlines...I have to get teh work done in admittedly horribly small amounts of time...but I need to be more concious of the "partner" that I am to him.

That being said...and I realize I have concepts all over the place that I find difficult to put words to in order to string together, so bare with me. This recent stress has made it occur to me that there may be a completely different plan for my life than what I've been, well, planning, and I happy to hear it. HAPPY. I know deep inside, beyond any doubt, that I want to do work that is much more significant. Work that changes things....while that can happen in the smallest ways, I have always known that someday I'd be involved in something a bit more extreme. I don't know when that day will come...but I do think about it quite often.

I think it's part of the reason I am so focused on life's big concepts. I have been attending and am now, as of a month ago, a member of Community Bible Church, a church that has a huge following and is sometimes referred to a legalistic and a cult. I think it's because it addresses those big concepts over and over and over...very clearly. I also know it's because of the fact that its pastor, pastor Carl Broggi, is an incredibly strong man who is, to my knowledge, the most thorough, capable teacher of the Bible that I have ever come across. Do I love everything about the church? No way. Do I worship Carl Broggi? NO WAY. Does he want me to worship him? Absolutely NOT. But I do love Carl's teachings and feel thoroughly taught at the end of every sermon. Everything I could want or need is at my fingertips. I attended there as a teenager and actually have several hurtful memories that I have allowed, for a time, to keep me from really being comfortable there. In a nutshell, I was focusing on people who have hurt me, not on God. I have grown quite a bit as a person over the past year and have put it all behind me. I have an email that I sent to some friends about my decision, my family's decision, to join that church and I'll post it (when I find it) to give some additional background. Trust me...it wasn't easy to swallow the fact that I knew several eye brows would go up when I made that decision. I am not one to stir the pot - especially with friends and people of different beliefs - eagerly...

Back to the big stuff. A recurring theme in my writings is my search for answers...and speculation on the human race and its attempts to find them as well...
Some things are easy to find parallels with, others not so much. One example is yoga. I have been taking yoga classes for several months now, some teachers more focused on a spiritual aspect than others. I know enough about the spiritual foundations of yoga to know that it many times is in direct opposition to scripture, the only source of instruction that I trust. Does that scare me? No. I have a body that physically needs to be taken care of. The physical benefits of yoga are amazing and I've always been aware of that as a dancer. I have not, until this weekend, felt any sort of, well, anything regarding yoga's spiritual roots. I mean, take a class at the YMCA or a local fitness center and more often than not, it's just about the physical practice. Find a private studio with a teacher whose life is yoga and the experience is very different.

I realize many are focused on their individual spiritual journeys, whatever they may be, while practicing (I almost sound like I buy into that concept...just give me a second). The chanting (I don't pretend to know enough about it to really speculate)and the acknowledgement of humanity and life and all that is good is, well, good. I can appreciate that. I was in a class this weekend where the teacher was very good...and what he taught was very fun and physical....but something in me wasn't at ease. I told myself I was being stupid. I did my best to take it all in, to try to really be "in" the experience, even though the chanting and some of the things being said made me uncomfortable. Things that were not bad, so to speak, but things that just made me, well...see a bit clearer the things I don't always wish to see. There were references to the universe, blanket statements about God, how we are all on this journey together, however we see it, however we take it, etc. At one point we were told to acknowledge our higher beings and that's when I felt that pain. That pain in my heart that while I don't want to feel it - it comes. My stomach tightens, without my doing, and I am overwhelmed with grief because I know this...THERE IS ONLY ONE HIGHER POWER and HE is who we are to honor. I would not be honoring God by honoring myself...no matter how I tried to distort it. I could be thankful to God for my body, but honoring myself instead of a direct "what up God, thanks so much for creating me" is very different. So instead of praising myself, I thanked the Lord for my body, for my health and prayed for those, including my mother, who did not have the physical capabilities that I did. DId I expect everyone to feel the same? Absolutely not. That would be ignorant of me and pretty obnoxious. Certainly not everyone in there is this "mere christianity" gal (thx again, C.S. Lewis) that I am....though I ache for them to be...to see.

What's the big deal, right? So you say some really comforting words, some things that everyone can identify with and feel good about and get a fabulous physical workout in teh process. Yes. Those are good things. But for me, who has spent the past 2 years really digging around my own brain and heart...testing my current knowledge against old and learning all the time...this was not good for me. Well, actually, I guess it was good for me. It challenged me to get stronger. The teacher made reference, very respectfully to a religious man he came across on his journey here and very quickly commented that they were the "same"...both sharing their different beliefs, respecting one another, etc. He was trying to find common ground and that is great. He essentially said he and the jehovah's witness were the same because God/the universe is everything and we all find him a different way. He had some great points...about how any kind of mission brings about service, etc, and that is true. Hell, the fact that this teacher was in town was part of a "mission" to raise money for african villages. I thought of missionaries, of the homeless and abused, of the starving....and.... of this passage from "Jesus Among Other Gods" (i've referenced this before, I am guilty of not having finished this book yet, so this is what I got):

"All religions are not the same. All religions do not point to God. All religions DO NOT say that all religions are the same. At the heart of EVERY religion is an uncompromising commitment to a particular way of defining who God is or is not and accordingly, of defining life's purpose." Ravi Zacharius


But here it is, again. Is the purpose of our lives, of the human race, to find ways to be peaceful with our different beliefs during our time on earth? Is that it? To find ways to end war so that we live harmoniously, regardless of our beliefs? We can all do and be what we want peacefully? That's the American dream isn't it? Kinda? That sounds wonderful, and I wish it were that way. I wish everyone I loved and have yet to love no harm, no pain, no suffering. But the scripture is very clear that there is only ONE method, one way to God. That is through His Son, the ulimate sacrifice who paid it all, once and for all, Jesus Christ. We are also free agents to believe or not to believe.

I was thinking, with the aid of one of Dr. Broggi's sermon's ringing in my head, about Jesus. I have read countless words about Him. I have asked Him to change my life, to show me how to live my life and WHY? Because if history is true, if the Bible is true (and I say if lightly...) then Jesus is the prime example, source, giver of love and life. I didn't pray to a dead memory of a great man, I prayed to a living God to change me. If Jesus is God's son, part of the trinity - Father, Son, Holy Spirit - the Bible says He "is" God. Omnipresent. If He was able to make it through his human life and suffer all that he did, why would I not believe that it would be ideal to follow him? Surely he had some serious self control and strength, right?

Jesus, as a toddler, preschooler, child, teenager and adult ALWAYS knew the sequence of events that were to occur. He KNEW as a carpenter, every single time he hammered a nail that He would die by nails forced into and through his hands. He knew, everytime he smelled a rose, that He would gush blood from a crown of thorns being pressed into his head. And He knew, every day of his human life the physical pain he would have to endure to bridge the gap between the human race and a Holy perfect God. He spoke of his impending death so many times...and still served, taught and loved...every day of his human life. There's a passage that says that Jesus was found praying many times...knowing what his human fate was to be...the brutal death he would die..

Luke 22:42 states that Jesus asked God to "remove this cup from him". His cup was that he was going to BE MADE SIN and suffer the wrath of God on the cross. I'm sure a good number of people remeber the words, or something like it that say "Jesus Paid it all, all to Him I owe" But wait, He is God, so how does that work? Could he just say "screw it" and blow the whole world up and not suffer that way? Sure could. I will have to check for sure, but I think I remember reading that there were legions of angels ready to relieve Him at ANY time from this suffering (think about it...you love someone, they suffer, you have the power to stop it, at their word....you are on guard ready to fight!)But He loved us instead.

His "cup" was that he knew he would be seperated from God, as a member of the Trinity, in order to pay the debt, he had to be the object, for numerous blood gushing, painful, tortourous hours, of God's hatred and wrath, on a cross. It wasn't the PAIN he feared, but teh seperation from God, even for moments. I am sure Jesus would have been interested in another way, an alternative way to pay the world's debt...but that was never the plan and he accepted that. He knew it was to happen, so even as he was mocked while bleeding on the cross, he said nothing in his defense because it was supposed to happen. Nothing in the Bible contradicts that. There must be something HUGE to bridge the gap (Jesus) between imperfect people and a perfect God.....

So back to my yoga experience. That "pain" I felt was the pure knowledge that so many are told that anything is ok and acceptable and that absolutes are wrong or at the very least, worth an eyebrow raise and some talk behind the back. That we "all get there in our own way." My skin is hot right now as I am typing hoping I can get this out correctly....

While I wish it were that way, it's not. If it were that way, then Jesus DIED FOR NO REASON. He suffered that tortorous death for NO REASON. If we could earn our way to heaven, if we could do some cool rituals and say some great, good feeling words then JESUS DIED IN VAIN. And that hurts me. And I am glad that I felt pain this weekend because it shows me that my struggles, my earnest seeking has been for THE truth. Why else would I feel that way? Like I said, none of those words were negative or bad...on the surface....

Jesus died his human death at age 33 I believe. I am two years shy of that. I think about myself. If I knew, my entire life, what I was to suffer...how horrible of a death I was to die and how much it would hurt....what would all the days before include? Would I hate everyone around me...those I could see through who would tellme they loved me but didn't? Would I have at the very least a bad attitude, a fearful heart, a sharp word? Would I think that everyone around me, mom, dad, brother, husband, son and friends weren't enough to bear that pain or even worth it? I'd like to say no.

BUT AGAIN. It was NOT the pain that caused Jesus to ask God to remove this " cup" from him. He didn't say "God, this is going to hurt so badly, this is too excruciating of a punishment...please." It was that he could not bear the thought of the seperation from God for even a moment in order to "receive" the punishment. Seperation had to take place for unification to be possible. Amazing. I didn't understand this until recently. Actually, at one time I thought that if crucifixion was how they killed ppl back then, then what was so special about Jesus dying that way? Two others died beside him that day...remember the visual of the three crosses?

And even today...as I sit here chewing on the fact that I very well may sound insane to those who have never been affected by the scriptures, who are not worshipping God or really believing in anything...I smile and bite my lip in sadness at the same time that I am DECIDEDLY DIFFERENT.

That's all I can pour out of my head right now. I don't really get that many comments, and that's ok. I don't even know who is reading this. I know that it's healing to me, it's necessary to me...and so...here it is....