When God Told Me to Quit Whining

The Lord asked me to give up complaining for Lent.

The transition to motherhood was pretty hard for me. I've never been a "go-with-the-flow" sort of person, and there are days and weeks of motherhood that are pretty much all flow. I just got caught up in the 1, 462, 863 daily details that come with raising a child. So I began voicing my frustrations, often, and mostly to Kyle. 

When Lent came around this year, I felt the urge to do some sort of fast, but honestly couldn't think of anything. My two token fasts: caffeine and Facebook, were out. I'd already given up Facebook, I was barely drinking caffeine because of the pregnancy, which also prevented me from doing any kind of food fast. (Okay I guess I could have given up sugar, but thankfully the Lord didn't convict me to do that because ALL THE CRAVINGS were happening.)

I prayed about it a few days, and then the Holy Spirit spoke pretty directly to my heart and said, "Work toward giving up complaining." 

It was kind of an embarrassing thing to admit, to be honest. At first I wasn't sure if I heard correctly. I was all, "Lord, complaining? Isn't there something a bit more, I don't know... serious that we could work on?" 

And then He was all, 

"Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life." -- Phil. 2:14-16a

As if that wasn't enough, Z hit a whole new "whiny" stage of his own. He having way more of an excuse  than I, since he lacks most basic communication skills. Still - on a particularly bad day when my patience was past gone I turned toward him and said (as my eye was twitching), "STOP. WHINING."

And then I felt a tiny little voice (let's call it the Holy Spirit) say, "He can only do what he sees you doing."

Ew. 

It's been kind of messy, actually. It's not like God gave me a twelve-step process to be free of negativity, but there are a few new habits I've begun to cultivate. 

- Filling my mind with positive things. Too Oprah? Maybe, but it works; and way more importantly, it's also scriptural. (Phil. 4:8) This doesn't mean burying my head in the sand, not by any stretch of the imagination. It's a pretty simple filter actually: will reading/watching/listening to/thinking about [blank] help me look more like Jesus?

Jesus was able to engage the world without turning into a hot mess of pessimism. I figure I could attempt to do the same.

- Being thankful. I have attempted to work on this ever since reading Ann Voskamp's 1000 Gifts. It's a sloooowwww process. I try to think of five things, every day, for which I'm thankful. Some days it's pretty easy, other days it's not.

When I was in highschool, my youth pastor challenged us to take someone we didn't like and for two weeks, every time a negative thought popped into our head, stop and think about something positive about that person. Doesn't matter how trivial it is. "Wow... their hair is always so clean." You know, whatever you can drum up.

I tried the experiment and found myself enjoying conversations with someone that a few weeks previous it was hard for me to be in the same room with.

So my most recent step has been to take not just people, but everything in my life that is a source frustration, and replace the negative thoughts with something about it or them that I'm thankful for.

And it's working out pretty well.

Granted, there are the small, trite inconveniences that I really just need to get over... I've found these are the easier things to stop complaining about, obviously.

And then there are the not so trite, kind of sensitive areas of hurt and disappointment that I don't think the Lord is asking me to, "just get over." There's a lot of pain in this world and I don't think Jesus wants us to mask it with a false Pollyanna-esque cheerfulness. I think He just wants us to trust Him. Trust Him more than we do ourselves.

Trust Him when we really can't keep our heads above water. When it seems impossible to focus on anything except how unfair or difficult our situation in life is. Truthfully, it seems hypocritical to write all that knowing how absolutely terrible I am at it.

But I guess that's why God told me to quit whining, so I can try to start trusting Him instead. 

When God is Quiet

It really seems unfair, you know, to shove a bunch of words and emotions into one person and expect her to also, by the way, learn self-control.

It's why I look at Z, when it seems he's feeling something for the first time and all he can do is cry or scream or make some garbled noise, with his eyebrows raised, on his tippy-toes, & arms extended out, as if to say:

"MOM, WHAT IS THIS SOMETHING I FEEL IN MY CHEST AND WHAT THE HECK DO I DO WITH IT?!"

I raise my own eyebrows and think, "You and me, kid, we're the same."

It may not be on my tiptoes with arms extended; but it's me hunched over the stove, trying to scrub out the words that spilled out because of insecurity or fear or anger because most of the time, I don't know what the heck to do with all the emotions rolled up tight and twisted and the thoughts that climb on top of each other, loud & clamoring, as I try to work it out.

The inner-monologue rolls fast and jumbled and quite often spills out onto those that are close.

And so four weeks into walking in the shadow of these stony giants, it dawns on me that, possibly, God brings me into the mountains to learn (yet again) how to listen.

He is quiet in the mountains, and his quietness begs my own.

Because His quiet is not empty; nor is it full of anger, or resentment, or fear, or contempt, as the human kind can be. It is full of power and majesty and redemption and it brings me to my knees.

When God is quiet I can hear the hope that anchors my soul, and all the clamoring thoughts?

They lay right on down.

Holding

I long for the sweet moments when Z finally stops moving long enough to settle his head against my chest and rest. 

Sometimes, I long to make this heart & soul & body stop moving long enough to lay my head against my God, and rest. 

And I have to remind myself that Z is still so new at being in this world, because it feels like he's been here always. And wouldn't being new require a lot of moving and wrestling through some tough things, like figuring out how to crawl? 

And then comes the self-reminding, that I'm still so new at being in this world but not of it, all eternal things considered. And doesn't this newness come with it's own set of things to wrestle through?

Even if it means the holding looks like wrestling, I delight in having Z in my arms. 

Even if it means the holding looks like wrestling, maybe God feels the same about me? 

Because really, if I'm in His arms it means I am His. 

It is really inconceivable to think that God's arms do not tire like my arms tire of wrestle-holding twenty-one pounds of adorable, but heavy, baby-chunk. 

Though I can't wrap my mind around how God never tires of wrestle-holding me, I am so thankful for it. 

Why I Ask Questions

At first, the process of working through tough questions about the Christian faith frustrated me - the back & forth, the complexity, the hard truth that there is no quick answer.

For example, a big one for me is gender roles within the church, this issue is revisited ever-so-often in my head. Most times the waters are too muddy to come to any definite conclusions; and so, after wrestling for a few weeks and maybe clicking one or two of the pieces into place, I table it for next year.

Now I see the beauty in this process.

It will be comforting, if and when I come to a conclusion, to realize it is one that has had time to prove itself wrong.

One that is fed by more prayer & Bible study than can fit into a few hours & the wisdom and council of those who's walk with Christ has been tested and proved faithful much more than mine. 

I've come to find that rarely do I wrestle through an issue that is solely theological (or political, or logical, or philosophical for that matter). More often than not insecurities and flaws are neatly wrapped up in my paradigms & interpretations of the Bible. 

However, running into my insecurities & flaws when wrestling through questions I have about my faith no longer discourages me, because God has met me there.

The Arena of Questions, where I often battled myself & others, is where God brought the deep healing I needed.

And it seems, when entering this arena, in particular, the only armor I can wear is that of God, and not of my own hubris.

A helmet, a breastplate, a shield, a belt, shoes, and a sword.

Salvation, righteousness, faith, truth, the Gospel of peace, and the Spirit.

These are what I'm called to carry when I seek truth.

I remind myself that if I don't approach tough questions with humility, properly outfitted in the armor of God, I risk bringing injury to myself or others. I risk not being equipped to block the arrows of deception, of pride, of anger.

But when I do approach with humility, sometimes I can see God holding His breath, thinking, "Yes, dearest, that one... ask that one! I can't wait to answer you."

Life always comes from the asking when we ask & listen to His words.

His Word has always, always brought life.

That's why I ask questions. 

Goodbye, Summer. Hello, Conviction.

Well it's still blazing hot but my heart still does the same dance every autumn. Maybe it's being in campus ministry that resets my spiritual clock to begin new things every fall rather than January.

I just finished reading Crazy Love. Books have always helped me on my spiritual journey because I respond to the written word and I enjoy being able to go back over thoughts, opinions, and arguments and process them slowly.

In a nutshell, it definitely poked a few sore areas in my heart. To name a few: comfort, materialism, selfishness, apathy, laziness, etc.

This morning I told my husband that I want to know what I'm doing will result in Jesus saying, "Well done, good and faithful servant," at the end of this life. After further reflection, I can only say that's true some of the time. Most of the time I want to know what I'm doing will result in the people around me patting me on the back and praising my work.

And I wonder why it's hard for me to make changes. I'm not enough of a reason for me to change. I would like to think so, based on how much I enjoy attention, but I'm just not.

Jesus is a reason. He's a reason for me to change.

With all these thoughts percolating, I also asked God to either confirm (or refine) my calling. More and more, lately, I have this resolve that doing anything besides what God would have me do is a waste of time. I reach out to the women on a specific college campus, primarily through discipleship; and I love it. But I want it to be worth something besides my own satisfaction.

Then I read an article a friend posted on facebook. (Don't worry, I'm working on pulling this all together.) There's a lot out there about the American Christian church's need to change. About how we're selfish, bigots, homophobic, ignorant, materialistic, narrow-minded, political lemmings, etc.

And I'm not saying I haven't seen that before, but my experience has been different in my local body of believers. We're not perfect and I've been hurt by my church, but we are made up of people, after all. So these thoughts percolated some more and I realized that the difference, in my extremely humble and (hopefully) able to hear, "You're wrong," opinion, is discipleship.

True discipleship surpasses the shallow in someone's life and gets into the deep & often dirty. The parts that are uncomfortable, hard, require time and sometimes finances. People need. Discipleship opens up those needs instead of pretending as if they don't exist. Discipleship requires that those needs be answered, somehow. By listening, by pointing to Jesus, even by sorting out the healthy needs from the unhealthy ones.

The other thing about discipleship is that it's extremely difficult to do it well without realizing your own weaknesses and needs. You can't sit across from someone and hold their hand through brokenness without some of your own rising to the surface.

I think the Holy Spirit is stirring a lot of change in me, many areas that need to be chipped away. Areas of my mind that need to look a little more like Christ and a little less like myself. But today it seems the Spirit did confirm my calling. By the grace of God to try and help people look more like Christ. To do this with humility, because to be honest there's no one on this earth who knew Jesus in person, and even those who did walk with Him seemed to often misunderstand what He was about.

So, written prayers have always been a little awkward to me, but I feel like it's the only way to really end this one:

Give me the humility to desire You more than myself. The grace to see You in others instead of always needing to be right. And the love that transforms me and overflows to others. Start the change with me, Jesus.