T.S. Tuesday: Stacking up Truths

It's difficult to describe how I came back to God. To have it make sense to anyone outside of my life. There weren't too many concrete events that make tidy little blog posts. As Donald Miller said in his book Searching For God Knows What and in his blog post yesterday, there were a million steps that led me to where I am now, and even now, the steps are changing.

It was watching the Boy in the Striped Pajamas, it was dating a guy who was so much more cynical than I was that I actually started to believe something, it was stealing a Haitian woman’s parking spot, it was watching Planet Earth at the non profit organization I was interning at, it was reading ee cummings and T.S. Eliot, it was salty runs along the cliffs, it was new journals and an obsession with the Holocaust.

It was a stacking up of hundreds of little truths. In T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Dry Salvages, the third of Four Quartets, he writes:

"There is no end, but addition: the trailing
Consequence of further days and hours,
While emotion takes to itself the emotionless
Years of living among the breakage
Of what was believed in as the most reliable--
And therefore the fittest for renunciation."

I like the idea of the addition, the stacking, the summation of experiences and truths and ideas. That there is no end; only addition. Here Eliot is talking of suffering and pain, of death, but I’ve come to see this stacking up in every area of my life. My life is a compilation of truths and connections. Of a million steps that add up to where I am now.

Stacking hundreds of little truths up together is how I feel most connected with people--and with God.

I know it doesn’t sound much like basking, like soaking in God’s love. But my basking started with a few ideas, a few truths the size of mustard seeds, and built forward.

Love

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God is Love

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Love is God

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God

God is
God is here
God is here with
God is here with me.

In the last two years God has pursued me like crazy. In the ways that I like to be pursued (single men take note). I feel connected to God the same way I feel connected to people--through learning and growing, questioning, poetry, books.

God allowed me to stack up truths with him. I didn't need all the answers. I could still be cynical and skeptical and angry.

Amidst my questioning and cynicism and stacking up of truths I experienced Love. For myself. For this world. And for the God who created me.

And that was the start of the basking.

What if I am worth loving?

February 2007

I circled the small space in my on-campus apartment bedroom, talking to my mom on the phone. Again my mom was asking if I had gone to church. Again the answer was no.

It was a conversation like hundreds of others we had entertained that fateful year where I spiraled in post-study-abroad-the-world-is-an-unjust-and-awful-place-depression. The conversation consisted of mostly silence, deep breaths, and occasional grunts on my part.

I thought my mom would launch into another tirade about going to church, seeking help, doing anything to get out of the pit I was in.

Instead she told me something that I've never forgotten.

She said, “I want you to feel better about yourself, not just because you should, but because it’s a reality.”

For the first time in probably my whole life, I entertained that thought for real, like really for real. What if I really am lovable? What if that is the reality? What if the guilt and shame and anger I'd placed on myself for not measuring up to whatever impossible standards I'd created was just that, something I myself had created and entrapped myself in?

What if love was the reality?

Within the next few months my depression and self-hatred hit an all-time high and I hit an all-time low, and I realized that I either needed to live like I mattered and life mattered or life would be unbearable. And my mom’s words echoed in my mind.

With the idea that love and acceptance could maybe come from something bigger than and outside of myself, I decided to live what my mom had believed about me all along. Suspending my doubts, I launched my own Love Aly campaign in which I radically rejected any thoughts of self-hatred and did my best to "fake it till you make it," choosing to live like I loved myself even if I didn't feel it.

And it was this experience of unconditional love for myself that brought me back to faith in God.

T.S. Tuesday: How Far is Too Far?

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” T.S. Eliot

This past week (and especially weekend) has been particularly rife with nuggets of words, wisdom, and fits of unwarranted compassion. Every meager attempt I've made to write down these tidbits and stirrings in any coherent, accessible way have ended in writers block. Which, by the way, is a condition I don't even believe exists. More accurately, they've ended in writers procrastination with a hefty dose of divided attention disorder. But more than that, for one of the few times in my life, I am awed speechless, or wordless.

I've been reminded of the immense gift it is to even say the words "God speaks to me." I've been sobered by the weight of that statement. Don't get me wrong, I love being loved (who doesn't?), but I've been reminded of the great responsibility that comes with being loved. The responsibility to receive and respond to that love, to reciprocate.

While I'm usually thrilled to share what I've learned or am learning on this blog, this past week I've been hesitant to commit to writing the many exhortations God has spoken to me. I'm scared to share what God has spoken in fear that I will not hold up my end of the bargain.

The past four years have been a time of basking in God's love (more on this later), and learning to love myself and receive inordinate amounts of grace.

Of course God has still been speaking that love to me, but I also have a greater sense that he's asking me to participate, to give back. Not that I haven't reciprocated or worshiped or served these past few years--I have--but the thing is, I had never felt asked to do it. Everything I have given or expressed has been completely voluntary, an organic response to these fits of unwarranted compassion.

Like the beginning of a dating relationship, I had no expectations for God and he had no expectations for me (at least that's what I told myself). I think we both surprised each other. But what happens when you get to the point where you have to make a commitment? When words like 'compromise' and 'sacrifice' begin to enter the equation?

What if God is asking me to die to this self he has just taught me to love?

Right now it feels like I'm going a little too far. A little too uncomfortable. I have an unease with language like "a first time decision for Christ." Shouldn't we be making decisions for Christ daily, hourly, minutely? My story is more of a weaving of thoughts and ideas and experiences than an Old and New Testament divide.

I have to remind myself that this command is from the same God who wants me to bask in His love. Who in the same breath of the command to die to myself also whispered, "I have good things for you."

I'm scared that as soon as I put expectations on God, he's going to let me down.

But that's not the God I know. That's not the God of Love who taught me to love myself. Who gave me friends and a church community that helped me see his face and his presence in my life and the world around me. That's not the God who loves me whether or not I serve the poor or work at non-profit, shop fair trade organic or don't whine to my mom on the phone.

He's not a God of letdowns, but a God of surprises. Is it really that hard for me to see that he has good things for me?

It's scary, but it's also a privilege. I have dreams of starting a support group for people who struggle with eating disorders. I can think of nothing more meaningful or humbling than to see people set free from the bondage of believing their worth is intrinsically linked to their body fat percentage or sex appeal.

I need to remember that the reason he is calling me to serve is that I now have something to give: Him.

So, here's my confession: I'm scared to lead. Scared to fail. Scared to go farther.

But if I'm not willing to risk going too far, how can I possibly find out how far One can go?