When Tough Cookies Need Some Peace

Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of man…and this means that we are never safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to break in two and recreate the human heart because it just where he seems most helpless that he is most strong, and just where we least expect him that he comes most fully. 
—Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark

But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility…
—The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Ephesian church 

Coffee for all THE TIMES.

There are days, aren’t there? Days and seasons and years where it seems like nothing is going right, where things are not ok, where we are just off. Maybe we can’t put our finger on it; maybe we know exactly why we are not ok. Maybe something is off with a friend or a family member, maybe we are in the middle of saying goodbye to things or people or jobs we hold dear and to whom we want to hold fast, but we can’t. Maybe we still miss the ones to whom we said goodbye a long time ago, and our hearts can’t forget the ache, the hole left in absence. Maybe things are slipping out of our control—we see loved ones heading down hard paths or our health is falling through our fingers like heavy, wet sand. Maybe we find ourselves looking out of the window in the middle of our day, in the middle of the circumstances we find ourselves in and we wonder. We wonder how did I find myself here? What happened that this is the job, this is the situation, this is the place in which I find myself? 

Or maybe we are just tired. We are tired of the constant noise from our phones, our TVs, our news feeds, our neighbors both next door and far away. We are tired because we can’t remember the last time we had a really good rest. Maybe we just long for a break of some kind, of any kind. We long for a new season. New seasons of good things, of breaks in our heavy skies. We tell God that we are ready for something new; that we’ve truly learned whatever lesson He could be trying to teach us. We try to beg or plead or weasel our way out of our circumstances. Maybe our circumstances are the result of our choice or another’s or merely the result of a hard and unrelenting world, but still, here we are. 

Here we, then, in our individual deserts, in our own jungles, in our mazes and labyrinths and webs. Where do we go from here? How do we find peace, how do we find our way from here? How do we break out of what holds us back, what keeps us in prisons of discouragement and depression? 

If we can quiet our phones and our minds even just a little, even just for a moment, we will hear a still, small, gentle voice, calling out to our deepest longings. 

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”—Matthew 11:28-29

This ancient call comes from Jesus, the God-Man who turned history and lives upside down, who came to us in dire circumstances of his own. Born to an unwed mother, forced to flee his native country as a child, living a common, day-to-day life of a laborer for most of his years on earth, Jesus understands the need for rest, for peace, for purpose in the middle of life’s hardest seasons. He understood how hard it is to wait, how hard it is to ignore the other calls in our lives. 

We can trust this call comes from someone who understands us in all our seasons and sorrows, and from someone who has the power and the desire to give us a true rest, a true home, a calm in the middle of the storm. This call is still for us, the modern cynics, the baby boomers, the Generation X-ers, the entitled and the apathetic, the successful and the failed, the passionate and the confused, the energetic and the tired. This call is for us, for me and for you.

He never forces us to come to him; he only calls out to us to come, the only one who can offer what we so desperately need and desire. When we come to him, even when we have to crawl or limp, he will lavish rest and grace and peace. We will not find all the sorrow gone, no; we will find that the yoke of living life is now shared, and we will now walk with Christ Himself. We will find a loving teacher, a loving savior, a loving Father and Friend to support and strengthen our hearts. Even in the middle of heavy circumstances and burdens, we will find rest. That is the radical and wild promise of Jesus to us. When we, the Prodigals who have run from home, merely turn around, we will find Jesus waiting to embrace us in love and grace. We will be amazed at what He can do with our lives, our hearts, our brokenness, our pain, our fatigue. He is ready to exchange our ashes for beauty, our sorrows for joy, our sins for holiness, our mourning into dancing. He is ready to make us new, as each day is new and full of promise. 

When Limits Make Us Free

Such as I have give I Thee. 
—Old Sunday School song

Because we have such a hope, we are very bold. 
—The Apostle Paul, letter to the ancient Corinthian church

Basically, it seems to me that there’s never enough. Never enough time, never enough money, never enough time with friends, never enough cookies. Sometimes it’s hard not to focus on what is lacking, rather than on what is present. I think I start to see everything in my life as either a drain or a resource. While important to identify life-giving activities and pursuits, as well as what depletes us, it can also turn into a very self-centered mind-set. How do we balance what we have with what comes our way? How do we not let everything and anything become weights that make us look constantly inward? How do we make what we have into enough? 

Maybe what I really feel is that I’m not enough. I’m not enough for all the things demanded of me. I’m not enough for all the things I expect from myself. Even though fibromyalgia has made me let go of a lot of expectations from myself, there’s still so many things I would like to see myself do and accomplish. I’m not even talking about the Book I’m going to write to someday, or travel all around the globe. I would like to be able to hike a mile without a break or feeling like I’m going to die. I would like to be able to make dinner consecutive nights in a row. I would like to be able to go to church again on Sundays. Just a lot of little things that add up to big things in my head. 

What I’m finally realizing though, in the middle of all my yearnings and desires to do more, to be more, is that it’s good to not be enough. It’s actually freeing being able to say I am not enough. This life is too much sometimes, and I just can’t do it all. Sometimes, most times, I can’t even do the little things. 

Here’s why it’s ok: Not being enough, not having what it takes, not being able to pull myself up by my bootstraps, not being able to reach for the moon because I’m tired and it’s too far away, makes me see how much I need others. How much I need Jesus. How much I need to ask for help, for support, for ideas, for comfort. How much I need to pray and be open and vulnerable and honest. With myself, with others, with God. It takes guts, I think, to look in the mirror and say, while I’m not enough, I’m actually ok. In the middle of my not-enoughness, I will find that that the opposite is true. What I thought was being-enough, was actually impossible. The paradox is admitting that when we are utterly incapable of doing life by ourselves, we will learn how to do what we can well. When we realize our limitations, our smallness, we can accomplish the possible, and we will see that, yes, that actually is enough.

While I don’t have a ton of energy to give, or a million dollars to give to charity, or a best-seller to give the world, I have other things to give. I have time to sit and laugh and talk—I’m usually not in a hurry. I am not afraid to pull out the frozen taquitos to serve a guest. I have time to pray for others, to ask God for help and healing and direction. While I’m working on getting better physically, I’m learning how to care for this body, this great and bumbling gift from God. I’m trusting that being chronically ill will make me into a more compassionate and giving person. I’m learning to love God and love others no matter where I’m at, no matter how much I have to give, because, really, it’s not about me.

It’s about God taking whatever I have to give, and making it enough. It’s about that hope and that trust in Him, that He knows what He’s doing, even with a broken person like myself. He can take the smallest of things and make them beautiful and significant, like woven threads in a tapestry. This makes us bold in our giving, no matter how small. We are free to give what we have, knowing that God can and will transform the smallest sacrifice, the littlest gift.