One of Three Options
Several weeks ago, my wife Stacey and I got into a fight. It was over nearly nothing. But that we would get so sideways revealed much deeper sadness and disappointment had been lingering around for awhile. It was one of those ugly fights, flooding far beyond the banks of the stated issue. Blame is eventually cast for who ultimately should be held responsible for the Vietnam War or Africanized bees. Some arguments can be moved past by understanding, humility and good listening. This was not one of them. And in a twist of cruelly ironic humor, the next evening Stacey and I would be driving north to help lead a marriage retreat for our church…
Historically, there always seems to be a speaking commitment soon following our fights. I hate that. There are really only a few options when this happens. 1)-I can try to patch things up so that we can function at the event. 2)-I can suddenly get violently ill and not be able to attend the event. 3)-I can show up to the event and tell everyone we’re not doing well and would they mind breaking into groups of three for the weekend while we each go wander alone in the woods.
We went and in general terms I told the couples that we had a rough time the day before and were even now still fragile. It actually probably allowed the weekend to be even more meaningful. All the presenters did a great job and all the couples were vitally engaged and facing their marriage with great intentionality and humble dependence upon God’s grace and sovereign protection.
Slowly, upon our return, Stacey and I have been sorting out the sadness we can carry in our marriage. We love each other a lot and have a beautiful marriage. But we will hurt each other again…It got me to thinking…
Those of us trying to influence anyone else, trying to teach these truths of grace and trusting our identity in Christ-we want our lives to model what we’re sharing. So we can feel like phonies when we discover that our lives are sometimes as messy, broken and unfinished as those we’re asked to influence. I used to not know what to do with that reality. It always made me want to run off somewhere and make a living looking for beach glass. I did not want to even bluff like I could possibly own responsibility for teaching these life changing truths that hadn’t always changed me fast enough.
Now I’m older. And I’m realizing that such frailty, failure and futility is part of the very message we love so much. It is proclaiming that the magic doesn’t reside in John. It resides in Christ in John. And sometimes that is not an exact science. There are moments, many of them, when I can fully feel I am fused with Him, letting Him live through me, trusting Him to do mighty things in me. Then there are other times when I sincerely wonder if I even know God.
I will always display some measure of foolishness, pain and immaturity, because, well because, there is still foolishness, pain and immaturity in me! It will never nullify the veracity of “Christ in John Lynch”. I am fully righteous. I am fully fused with God Himself. I am fully a new creature. I am fully God’s adored, I have everything in me I need, I am a man unable to be condemned no matter what I get myself into…But I am still a kid. And I am not always yet willing to humbly trust God. There is still something in me that fights this health. And this new life is undoing stuff all the way back from the goofballs in my family line. Some of what I am living out will be better seen in my kids than me.
And if you catch me at any particular moment I may not look much healthier than someone without Christ. I can get just as loud or irrational as about anyone I know. But the magic continues on. God does His beauty. And Stacey, although she might not have admitted it that Thursday evening, is better and more authentically loved by me than 25 years ago. And so is everyone else I know, including my God.
It is imperative that we who carry this message, who dare take grace and identity into a religious culture of performance and self-willed sanctification, that we give ourselves the grace we promise to others. God is not ashamed, embarrassed or surprised by our junk. He just smiles, puts His arm around us and says something like, “Stick around kid. I’m growing you up from the inside out. I know what I’m doing and I’m proud to be doing it in you.”
So there.
John (for Bruce and Bill, the gang at Truefaced, and all who carry this message of hope)
I really needed to read this tonight. Thanks for posting it.
John,
Read your post the day after my wife and I experienced a similar thing. Thanks for helping us feel a little better about things by sharing your thoughts. Here are Megan’s:
http://www.halfpinthouse.com/2009/11/you-wanna-hear-another-secret.html
Best to you, Bill, and Bruce,
Craig
This is a great post! I find myself from time to time trying to “have it all together” and other times I’m just as free as a bird, living in The Room of Grace. It’s a journey I embrace whole-heartedly.
It’s wonderful to find others who are living in and growing in grace. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and wisdom, and bringing more clarity to what I am experiencing.
Blessings…
sandy
Your sincere honesty ministers deeply to my heart. I too struggle with all that you mentioned above. I am part of the grace club. Thanks.
John, you chose intimacy, you chose authentic vulnerability, which is ALWAYS the deal.
I read a book “God in the Alley” by Greg Paul…
Greg runs a Ministry in Toronto called Sanctuary Community. Toronto attracts a huge number of folks who have no place… homeless, misunderstood, mentally ill… there is a huge community of people amongst the wealth of Toronto who don’t fit. And Greg leads a ministry for these folks, yet he was having a problem really relating to them.
One day, with one of the men in his office, Greg completely lost it… he recounts the misery he’s in… and a miracle happens… the guy RELATES.
And Greg Paul figures out that when we share our weakness, when we share our brokenness, it provides a meeting place where others can join us. And in that instant, Greg ALSO realized that Christ does exactly that for US. It is in His brokenness that we find our place, that He is approachable.
When we offer our brokenness, we are most like Christ; we are most authentic, most approachable, and most humble.
-vern-
From the book “God in the Alley” by Greg Paul
If you had asked me when I was, say, twenty-five, how I could be the presence of Jesus, most of what I would have told you—assuming I understood your question at all—would have centered on ways I could possibly have modeled his strength, purity, or faithfulness..And if you had gone on and said, “Where or how do you think you could see him in other people?”—well, I would have thought you were talking gibberish, to be honest. But if I had been able to get my head around the question, I would likely have said something about seeing that strength, purity, and faithfulness at work in others.
Of course, the biblical writers encourage me to be strong (in the Lord, and in the strength of his might, according to Paul`’), exhort me to be pure, and call me to faithfulness. These are the behavioral goals to which I ought rightly to aspire.
However, these stories of my friends reveal a peculiar paradox: I am more likely to have Jesus revealed to me and through me in weakness than in strength, sinfulness than in purity, or doubt than in perfect faithfulness. If I can sum up all these “failures of the spirit,” all these ways in which nothing ever seems to work the way it should—not the people around me, not the sequences of events that I witness or in which I find myself engaged, and certainly not the operation of my own contrary heart—if I can sum up all these things with the single term brokenness, then I come to this astonishing conclusion: Jesus is found in brokenness.
This is the surprise of brokenness. The all-powerful Lord may seem distant and even frightening; the spotlessly perfect and unique Christ may seem unattainable. But I know what it’s like to cry out in desperate prayer; I, too, seem to need to suffer in order to learn how to be the Father’s obedient child—although, unlike the Son, its generally my own sins that cause my suffering. It’s the broken Jesus whom I can approach and even, in some small way, begin to emulate. It is he who connects me to the Lord and Christ.
The surprise of brokenness is not just that the Almighty allowed himself to be broken, and that he invites me to touch him there in that brokenness. It’s also that my own brokenness—that hidden, ugly, twisted stuff that I had expected would disqualify me forever from his friendship, and that, if it were known, would torpedo all my other relationships too—is precisely the place where he desires to touch me, and it is the place where I am most able to truly connect with other people.
My brokenness, then, turns out to be a place of meeting. My friends from the street keep me at a distance as long as they consider me to be whole and holy; when they discover the truth that I am messed up too, we find common ground.
Shortly after writing it, I gave a draft copy of the story of my almost fight with Derek to a friend to read.. He had come from the street, was valiantly battling addictions, and had been speaking to me about the riot of resentments he was experiencing in dealing with some of his past associates. I had told him several times that I often experience similar feelings myself, but that seemed difficult for him to accept. Many of my street friends seem to think that because I am a pastor, I must be of a different species from them and perhaps not capable of the same kind of emotions, instability, or dysfunction. By nature, I’m not inclined to quick displays of anger, and I’ve had years of experience dealing with truly objectionable people and situations in a (mostly) calm manner. Although he knew me well, the story was a surprise to my friend. And it was a gift. To both of us. He understood immediately that I was choosing to make myself vulnerable to him, and he treated that confidence—and me—with supreme tenderness. It encouraged hint to know that I really do share some of his struggles and helped him to see that they are part of the human condition, not just more evidence that he himself is a screwup.
As long as I pretend to myself and others that I am “just fine, thanks,” I keep people—and even God; especially God!—at a distance. When I admit my brokenness and enter into more intimate relationships with God and his people, I am less inclined to judge others’ brokenness. Instead, I can dignify it, recognizing and mourning the deep pain and alienation that is the inevitable result of being sinful people living in a sinful world but rejoicing also that we are together in this, and that God is with us, meeting us at the very point of our need. Essentially, this is simply the practice of confession, and confession is truly good for the soul. It releases me from the pressure of having to pretend that I am other than I am. And that honesty forbids me from requiring very much of others.
Hey John! I was on Darrin Hufford’s website (freebelievers.com) and stumbled on his interview with you about Bo’s Cafe. I thought it was interesting when he said that he basically objected to Steven, near the end of the book, seemingly to have nailed his fix, whereupon he and Linsey would “ride off into the sunset.” At that time someone in the podcast started singing “Happy trails, to you…” Darrin of course was relieved when Steven, like all of us, blew it again. Everybody thought it was really cool, at the end of the book, when the roles were reversed and Steven became Andy’s “protector.” I thought Bo’s Cafe was wonderful in portraying (in a very real way) that safe place where brothers and sisters, who are a little further along the way, protect us despite our junk. In the book I noticed that the one being protected was always in fragile, humbling, and sometimes tumultous circumstances. The protectors, though not without faults, were portrayed as solid and unflinching–there was nothing that the one being protected could do or say that would cause a protector to pull back or leave. How often does this really occur in your experience? If it occurs once in a while, did you and your co-authors consider depicting this in your book? I’d love to know!!!
Christ in Ney Lopez!!!