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Friday, June 20, 2014

Frosted Trash

There are two types of sin. Or rather, two ways to handle sin.
  • Carnal Sin - that people use for their own pleasure, and others use for gossip purposes.
  • Humbling Sin - that God uses to humble you, break you, and mold you.
Most people don't realize that the second type of sin exists.

The first type of sin is often all that we can see. Someone does something stupid, it gets leaked, and they'll never live it down. Oh my gosh, people will say. What was she thinking, people will say. Why are you even talking to her? people will say. Don't you know what she did?

And unfortunately, sin often never becomes anything more than that. A bad move, a source of rumors, a life of shame to follow. That's it. That's sin when we don't allow God to take it. And in a way, that's far more comfortable than allowing God to take it. Anyone can deal with rumors about them. It stings, but you can deal with it. Yet surrendering your sin to God, allowing Him to wrest it from your hands, and allowing Him to use it in unknown ways - yikes. 

As a child of grace, we are given just that: grace. Grace blots out sin. But the process is painful. You might feel like shards of pottery on the ground. Getting trampled. By people who hate pottery. One word: David.

But it will become worth it.

When you surrender yourself to the process of grace, it isn't easy. It isn't even always beautiful. It hurts, because you are so broken over your sin, and yet people still trample even the brokenness. And yet grace carries on. It doesn't pause, even for a second, rinsing away the shame. Sin is sin, and it will never have worth. But God, in his sovereignty, can use it to do extraordinary things in us.

Grace is a funny thing. It meets us where we are, but it does not allow us to stay where we are. It convicts us and acquits us. But we don’t often allow ourselves to experience its full beauty, due to our own selfishness. We like to think that God’s grace is the free-pass to do whatever we please. But it isn’t. The beauty of grace is only fully realized when coupled with repentance. Otherwise, grace is cheap. Grace only matters because it distinguishes the difference between our worth from our sins. But if we use grace to “justify” sketchy character, then it no longer meets its purpose. Then it is no longer grace at all. It is only an excuse at that point.

Grace is beautiful when coupled with repentance. It is at its most beautiful form when we realize how little we deserve it. That's when God uses our sin to humble us, to break us, to shatter our pride and to deepen our perspective. Sin is never beautiful, and often, that's as far as our vision goes when we think about sin. We don't realize that we are called to repent from it; we are called to be saved from it; we are called to be free from it; and we are called to recognize other people's freedom from it too.

In the cover photo of this post, there are shards of pottery. And basically, those shards of pottery will always be broken. But people take those broken pieces of trash and paint them and frost them and make them beautiful. I'm saying that grace takes trash, sin, and twists it to create in us something more beautiful. The trash itself isn't worth it and it isn't beautiful, but because of grace, we are.

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Sunday, June 15, 2014

Nationals.

(This photo isn't even from Nationals. But yeah.)
I soaked up this past week thoroughly. It was Nationals week, and there were so many things at this tournament that I will always hold onto. Some days, it was hard. Most days, it was still worth it. It seems like this trip was just enough time to deepen existing relationships, without being so long that you start to hate all your friends.

This year has not been a great year regarding people. I gave up on humanity this year. Most days, I retreated into my calm existence of thinking, writing, coffee, books, music, and solitude. No people. People are too inconsistent, intruding, and confusing. I could shut them out and retreat to a better spot. Most days, I still go there. I went there a lot at Nationals, even. Introversion is nice sometimes. Yet this tournament slightly revitalized my view of the human race in general.

What I'm trying to say is that I met people who gave me hope.

Not that I didn't already have hope. This year has been the most difficult year of my life, but for the first time ever, I am happy. I've never had a deep, lasting happiness. But now I do. I think it's because I always grasped at hope. There is a lot to be said for just muddling through. Making it until you find hope. That sort of thing. I refused to let go of the idea of hope – ever. And yet, this week, I met people who embodied hope. I've always had hope. I've always believed in it. I've always waited for it, and it has found me. But now I've met people – real flawed people – who embody the hope I have always held. Seeing hope embodied almost gives me more hope.

Nationals week was a lot of things. It was hard. It was trying. It was so overwhelming at times. It was frustrating, at times ridiculous, and at times not super fun.

But this week, two beautiful things happened.
  1. I saw hope in other human beings.
  2. I proved myself, to myself.
By saying that I proved myself, I'm not referring to my performance at all. I only broke in one out of my four speeches, and I didn't even make it past Quarters. I didn't meet my goals in that regard. But I still made myself so proud. I stepped out of my shell a little bit and poured myself into people, in completely new ways. I turned pages this week. I let go of old friends, and I invested in new ones. I got over being afraid of failure when it comes to new friendships.

Actually, I didn't get over being afraid. But I got over the fear hindering me.

I learned to let go. I learned to say goodbye. I learned to hold people and then release them. And then I also learned to say hello. I learned to savor the sound of new laughter, the expression new thoughts, and the warmth of new hugs. I learned the art of quietly turning the page, folding it up, and tucking it away. And then I also learned the art of saying hello, when you've been dying to say it for so long.

(I don't know if I should call them “arts” yet; I'm still pretty messy at this.)

Never has a medal, a trophy, a certificate, or a scholarship made me this proud of myself, and never have those things given me hope. Winning extends beyond having Mrs. Hudson call your name from a stage, facing 3,000 people. Winning is often a battle with yourself, and/or the world. Victory is sweet, and I have won. Saying goodbye and letting go of people is hard, because people sometimes become a part of you. Letting them go is like letting pieces of yourself slip through your fingers. But saying hello is also hard, because you make yourself vulnerable for a new person to become a part of you. And you might have to say goodbye to them someday, too. But I did both this week. Sometimes I made jokes about it. But I never would have guessed how deeply this impacted me.

Nationals 2014: one official medal. Countless unofficial ones, called friendships.

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Sunday, June 1, 2014

What we are Used to

"We prefer to live on other people's ideas. It's what we are used to." -Razumihin, Crime and Punishment

"What denomination are you?" .... "I don't really know yet."
"What college are you going to?" .... "That depends on a lot of things."
"What are you going to be?" .... "That's an excellent question."
"What political party do you affiliate with?" .... "A little of all of them?"

I guess these past few months have been anything but ordinary for me. I've realized that I don't know all the truths. The past few months have been anything but blind and they have been anything but normal. I feel like I've seen so much. I've changed my views and I've lifted my personal presuppositions from my faith. I guess I've learned to value rawness, humanness, and truth in these past few months. I've learned to value the search for those things as much as I value their solution.

I've seen that the beautiful lessons are learned just as much in the search as they are in the solution.

To be honest, I think my entire life - and most of all our lives - have been a panicked search for identity. How am I going to make myself matter? What do I believe in contrast to what other people believe? How should I act around them? Should it bother me if they don't like me? Do I even like me? Is something wrong just because a large number of people are screeching that it's wrong? Is something right under the same conditions?

Some days I feel like we're so vulnerable and gullible. We live on other people's ideas. And I get so frustrated when I realize that nearly the entire world does that. Somebody comes up with something in their own panicked search for identity, and other people see it their panicked search, and then all the panicked people grasp onto it until something shinier pops up. That's how the life-cycle works, son.

I read Crime and Punishment last December, and I absolutely fell in love with that book. It epitomizes so much of our humanity. I took a pen and wrote down, in my faded purple notebook, some of the most profound quotes of the story. Every now and then I go back and reread them. I love reading from an author that understands, perfectly, the bittersweetness of the human search for identity. Crime and Punishment was about the search for God, and the search for identity, and the search for truth.

I have come to value searching immensely. Searching has a negative stigma attached to it. If you don't have the parameters of your religion, wallet, education, and private life neatly defined, then you must be searching, and that must be bad. You don't have everything figured out. You're a drifter. You're a hippie. You need to grow up. Our search for identity is often rushed along by society. And that's not okay. A thorough search is so important. And if you don't have all your own questions answered?

No one really does.

What are you used to? Are you used to rushing the searching process? Are you used to deciding on who you are before God has shown you who He created you to be? Are you used to being afraid because you can't answer your own questions? Are you used to living on other people's ideas because you've been told to discard your own?

The point of this post is not to discourage guidance in a search for identity, and it is not to ridicule having answers. Answers are beautiful. I've found a few of those every now and then. That's why the search for them is immensely important. The solution can't be reached without the method. Don't rush it. Don't be scared to admit it. Search and search wholeheartedly. Think for yourself. Don't be afraid to question things. Don't be afraid to question everything. Truth has this nifty habit of rising to the surface.

Don't be afraid to sift through the silt of everything you've ever heard. The nuggets of truth will survive. Search, my friends, and search on. Don't be afraid to admit that you don't have it all figured out. We live on other people's ideas, because that's what we are used to. But think for yourself. Allow yourself to think and allow yourself to question and allow yourself to admit when you don't have an answer.

Your identity is not defined by somebody else's. Please don't be scared to embrace that.

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