None Of Us Are The Best

Sunday was one of those days that was good until it just wasn't. I hope you know what I'm talking about here. It happens sometimes. We woke up, took our time getting ready, discussed Halloween costume ideas, and went into town for a coffee and toast breakfast. They made my latte hot instead of iced like I had asked, but it was fine. Was it fine? Yeah -- it was fine. We sat on a bench and decided what to do next and he kept talking but I didn't have anything to say back. "I think I want to go home." Ryan was headed into work later, and I'd be by myself until the night, and there was a list of things that I would either do or wouldn't do, but I was erring on the side of nothing. Dishes, laundry, emails, grocery shopping, 'thank you' letters. But probably nothing.

I wanted to spend time before he left, but I laid down instead because I knew I had started to derail. Once the train starts, it doesn't stop until the wheels are off and the smoke's overcome it. The sheets felt my weeping and then I remembered that nothing was the matter. I went to the couch, and he looked at me, knowing and giving me permission to not know. I told him that I was just feeling sad today and we turned on a movie that let me be sad.

There's this pendulum in me that swings between apathy and irritability, blankness or irrational worry, and it shows up at random and it knocks me about. It's mid-October and I wore a sweater and none of the leaves have changed and now I'm sweating and so help me God. It starts in my stomach and climbs to my chest and it usually comes out as an army of tears with no place else to go. I used to think that it was bipolar or something on the spectrum, and I used to pray that a doctor or therapist might give it a label so that all along it wasn't me - it was my disorder. But alas, it's just me and maybe it's you or maybe it isn't. When I'm not stuck in bed and when I'm not afraid that Ryan might have cancer and leave me here and when my days aren't ruined because our bread went bad, I'm still. I make time to write and I hear the Lord speak as He anchors each twinge of disappointment or empty feeling to Himself - something that doesn't depend on death or the changing seasons.

I was slowing down, in motion, but decelerating back to equilibrium. Ryan kissed me goodbye, and I sat alone in a quieter-than-normal apartment, mustering up a motivation to fold the clothes. I got a text from a friend shortly after telling me that she had an extra ticket to the fair and that she wanted me to come. I hadn't been to the fair this year, and it was the last day. I really love the fair - it's kind of like a sister to the circus and a good enough excuse to exchange coupons for food that's not acceptable to eat any other day of the year. Heart-attacks hidden beneath powdered sugar and the camaraderie that weaves its way between strangers who're all rooting for a good ferris wheel.

If nothing else, this invitation felt like a piece of sunshine on a day like today, and I was glad for it. I hurried to the bathroom to wish away my splotchy makeup, and as I looked in the dirty mirror that needed cleaning, it hit me. You were the last pick. I turned away and felt my knees get weak. They had likely gone down the list of available friends and after each of them had declined, they shrugged and stiffly held out this ticket that didn't belong to me. I had joyfully accepted, twirling the ticket high in the air, and what a fool I'd been to do that. I wasn't even a choice.

Well, I'm super busy anyways, and they're right. Someone else would have been a better fit. But honestly, screw them because I'll never live as a plan B, C, D. I was in the middle of some response explaining that a huge thing had just come up and how I wouldn't be able to make it after all. I was growing angrier and more insufficient. Before I had gathered enough momentum to start swinging, being pulled back and released by Bitterness and it's accomplice, Self-reproach, I felt a tug - a conviction that held me to the middle. I was experiencing a divine protection at both sides from One who's had practice in calming storms and splitting seas. He led me through and replayed similar conversations that I had fabricated about Him not long before, putting words in His mouth that fix like oil and water. Because the heart of Jesus and No, not you aren't seen together. I tell Him often how he has the wrong girl and then I grit my teeth because he probably chose me last.

. . .

We're in the middle of a series at church right now called Better, and we're finding that living an open-handed and generous life leads to a life of abundance and outpour. We've talked a lot about the next generation and the reason it's a core value of ours to invest in the ones coming after us. About how Millennials and anyone else clumped into the "do-er" crowd places exponentially higher a value on actions than on words. I think it's the reason there are so many of us burned out on religion and politics and other institutions who preach at the pulpit and leave us waiting on the practice. We crave follow-through but we haven't been taught how.

I've grown into a cynic's shoes, walking around just waiting for it all to come apart and not surprised when it does. Toby said something last night that touched on a growing spirit of skepticism in a young generation. He offered one better and said: "Let's be a people that are guilty of believing too much." And in every part of my flesh, that sentence tells me to run. Trusting too much that the Lord might actually do what He says he'll do has the potential to find me as a fool, waving my ticket high in the sky, accepting an invitation from one who may or may not have wanted me in the first place. But there He is, time and time again, parting the waters on my behalf and making me see straight through. Evidence of One who didn't blink when he chose me.

He's teaching me that there are prettier and smarter and more qualified candidates but that He only wants me for my job. He's letting me lose the battle of firsts to show me that being chosen is enough. He's good at disrupting my doubt and correcting my steps in the direction of Yes, you. And I've found that there's nothing quite as sanctifying as backing down from the greatest to take part in It's work. 

"It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did this on his own, with no help from us. Then he picked us up and set us down in the highest heaven in company with Jesus. 

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish - we don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing. No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and the saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing." Ephesians 2:1-10 (MSG)