Retreating

I am so tired.

I feel as if I am drifting away from who I am, somehow.  Or maybe all of the structures that I built are just fading into nothing, and who I really am is the only thing that is left.

But there is one thing that I do know.  I am so very tired of Christianity.

As all of this falls away, the cliche statements and ever-repeated lines, the fancy vocabulary and typical words of advice wear increasingly thin and unhelpful.  My mind is just too weak to even hold all of this within itself.  I can't do it anymore.

And suddenly I realize, I can let it all go, and the relief is almost overwhelming.

I can let it all go because what I believe is dependent on only one person.  Well, okay, two people.

The first one is myself.  I have chosen what I believe, and no one else can truly tell me how to believe or how to live.  Ultimately, I must choose whether I believe what they say is right.  And in so many ways, I want to let all of the doing go.  And I think I will.

Because it is finished.

Which leads me to who the other person is.  He's the one that's kept me alive and breathing and moving, even if it's merely a crawl.  He's the one who saved me.  He has quite a few names, actually.

The most well-known one is Jesus.

When I say I am tired, I mean that I simply cannot - and more than ever, simply refuse to - listen to the voices that speak these overused statements, these exhausting methods of "doing it right".  I am so very tired.  I can't do anything anymore.  I have to close my ears and open my heart, shut down my mind and let my soul simply exist within this place, and try to hear the voice of my rescuer once again.  It has grown so faint at times I fear that it was never there at all.

But all these "coincidences", these strings of events that are so very elaborate and beautiful, that have yielded so much joy...I cannot explain them in any other way.  Either I am inside of the most meaningful story of all, and someone is directing all of this, or life is madness that no man will ever understand, a ball of tangled string that will eventually unravel, meaningless.

I cannot accept that.

And so I must withdraw my heart from everything that would seek to speak all these conflicting "truths", everyone who seems to know what the world means, and I must remember who I am.  I must also remember who rescued me from the maddening empty and cold.

It may take some time, but if I listen any longer to those voices that demand that I listen, that tell me that I must do or not do, that I must believe or not believe, then I will surely collapse into my soul and succumb to insanity.  I can't handle it any longer.

My heart needs to bask in the Truth for some time before I am strong enough to recognize it out in the world again, and deny the lies that are mingled with it.  I must learn again the voice of my Father before I can deny the whispers of the Father of Lies.

Here's to regaining the truth.

When Life Gives You Mountains

It's late at night.  Sometimes there's snow, strangely enough, although usually instead it's rain, or it's dry.  In reality that has little to do with anything, but in a way it's a rather important fact.  The night and I seem to be spiritual twins, for whatever I feel, the night seems to reflect.  Maybe it's just my own projections.  But the cold, dry nights are some of the most bland and empty times, and the rainy ones are either times of relief or times of sadness.

I glance down at my hands, watch the veins that continually supply these multi-branched limbs with the fluid that keeps them functioning.  Why are they so useless these days?  Why is the mind on the other end of the bloodstream so empty of inspiration and meaning?  What's wrong with the world?

No, not the world.  Just me.

What's wrong with me?

Although I see that face staring me down every night, I don't have an answer.  I think it has something to do with love, or rather the lack of it.  Where does motivation come from?  I think it used to exist somewhere in the skybox of the mind, but it's flown away, and I haven't heard hardly a whisper for months.

What's wrong with me?  Why can't I be bothered to actually live my life?  Since when did minor inconvenience become an impassable obstacle?  Why is inspiration so hard to catch?  Why does everyone seem to be better at this than I am?

I don't know.  It hurts to know that I'm here because of me.  It hurts more to know that I'm not strong enough to get myself out of this, and even more to think that it's only impossible because I believe it to be so.  Why am I so gullible, content to live this miserable lie?  What is there to be gained from this that I can't live without?

Lord, make me human again.  Let the flesh that you gave your breath to breathe your Spirit once more, not this stagnant miasma of procrastination.

If my heart were connected to my brain, I might realize that this time just proves what a sinner I am.  But that link is nonexistent now.  Maybe that explains the emptiness, the lack of soul I feel in my day to day life.  I want to know what it means to actually be a man of God; at least those snippets that I once had.  This is almost nothing at all.  My heart is alone, and my mind receives no validation for its faith, and overall it just makes believing harder and harder every day.  Who knew that the 12 short inches between the two could be farther than the distance from one end of the galaxy to the other?

What's going on here?  Who is this man who lives in my body?  He sure isn't me.  Not anymore.  The man of God I once knew wouldn't tolerate this.  But this man does nothing to even try.  I can't even kick this impostor out.  I'm out in spiritual no-man's-land right now, and my brain's getting maybe half a bar of connection to my heart every fifty miles or so.  But we can't stop at gas stations, because we're on foot, and every moment leaves us further behind where we should be in life, further behind where God "wants us to be".

Why am I not comforted by the fact that God has a plan for me?

Maybe it's because I think I have to do something to earn that planned life.

Maybe if I do what I should instead of lazing around, I'll finally be the perfect student, the perfect artist, the perfect brother, the perfect son, and the rest of my life will come together, and I'll get married, and be happy forever, and go to Heaven at the end.

Something's wrong with this picture.

I remember now talking with my good friend just yesterday; I remember him telling me that at the end of this tunnel, God has my perfection and my ultimate good in mind.  It doesn't make it any easier, but every single tear that falls is water for the growth of new life, and every storm that I encounter is not by accident, for it will give way to new seasons.  The lightning strikes serve only to help me wake up, and the gloom of the rain is not meant ultimately for my misery, but for my transformation.  Only by the dark do we truly appreciate the light; only through pain do we recognize beauty; only by being alone will I realize that I have never been alone, and I never will be.

It isn't easy, you know, sitting alone, painfully aware of every wasted second, mind too weak to break from routine.  Willpower is a muscle, and disuse may wear it down to the point of breaking.  Only when I truly think of this do I realize that each step rebuilds it, and that the only way I can defeat these demons is through the Lord's grace that lets me take those steps.

I don't know what I would do without him.  I don't know how I could bear it if I had never known my Friend.  He has saved me so many times, probably more than I can realize, and he's guided me toward much more joy than I could have ever found on my own.  At times, he is the only thing I have to hold onto, to keep living for.  This Rock is the only thing that has kept me from going under.

Time to raise the sails.  This storm is fierce, but I'm not alone this time.

What's My Voice?

So I'm sitting here.  And at the moment, I'm searching for something.  A sound.  The problem is, I don't know what it sounds like, or how it flows.  I don't know what it speaks of or what it means.

This sound is my song voice.

You see, I have written lyrics in the past (some of which are on this blog, in fact), and I've always written them with a little voice in my head singing them out, vocalizing the words into a sound that has structure.  But the problem is, it isn't my voice.  It's the voice of whatever singer I was just listening to a moment ago.  And that's wrong, because that doesn't make me a song writer.  It makes me an actor, an imitator.  And if that's what I was looking for, then it would be alright.

I believe that every one of us has within the potential to be utterly unique and extraordinary, to say something or be something that the world has not seen before.  The trouble is that so many of us fall into imitation instead.  It makes perfect sense, really; from birth, we learn how to walk, how to talk, how to act and not to act, how to think and not to think, from the people around us.  It would be very hard for us to do otherwise. But this makes it hard to find out what that unique person inside of us is truly like, because they're hidden under layers of mish-mashed personalities that we saw, liked, and added to our persona.

Starting from scratch isn't easy, whether it's in singing, in writing, in thinking, in creativity, in intuition, or in our spiritual journey.  And I don't mean to say that we leave everything behind, because there are great lessons that all of us have already learned from our past.  But when we see those events as defining us, it is then that we incarcerate the person that we truly are.  Bad things happen, and so we adapt to try and keep it from happening next time.  Good things happen, and we change to make sure they happen more often.  And yet we're still miserable.

Maybe this is because we don't have an idea of what we're trying to be.  As Christians, arguably, we do: we ultimately try to become more like Christ.  But what does that mean?  Look at what Jesus did.  He hung out with normal, nonreligious people; he did things and said things that no one else would have thought to do or dared to do.  Why?

Because he was completely himself, and no one else.

Is that why we do what we do?  So that we can become like the people that we imitate, people that seem happy or successful?  Well, of course we do.  I suppose that's obvious.  But maybe this also reveals the source of our pain when it doesn't work.  We can dress like someone else, act like someone else, even think like someone else, but none of us are happy.  And so, everyone is still trying to find that "perfect image" to follow.  Have we never considered that maybe what becoming Christ-like means is not to all become uniform copies of a man who walked this earth, but to each become a unique, beautiful facet of an infinite God, whom Jesus is a part of?  God himself is Three, and yet he is also One.  And so we must be: each entirely different, each entirely a reflection of God's character, yet when combined, all forming a single Body.

Didn't Paul say that each of us had a different role to play?  Why are we all trying to reach the same goal?  Why aren't we instead seeking what our completely unique role is, instead of copying somebody who looks like they're happy?  Jesus never told his disciples to all become walking Bibles.  He told them to spread his message, yes.  And we are called to be like Christ, yes.  But when we are talking about a man who was God, a man who was also infinite, what does that mean?  I believe that it means something different for each of us.

What's my singing voice?
What's your singing voice?

That's between you and God.

About Joy

It's so amazing (by which I mean: incredible, relieving, and slightly hilarious) how, no matter how bad things seem to get, no matter how big a mess I feel like I am, God can bring along just the right encouragement at just the right time.  I love it so much.  What I don't love, though, is that I always seem to forget.

I forget every time that God has come through for me, and all the wonderful times I've had because of his encouragement.  The only thing I can see is the emptiness in front of me.  I haven't yet learned how to carry those moments with me, so that I might bridge the chasms of despair in front of me with God's amazing blessings.  Oh, to bring along all that joy, to store it in a bottle or a box, or stick it in a backpack for a rainy day.

I mean, there are those poetic rainy days, those days when all you want to do is dance in the rain, bask in it.  But then there are those times when the rain might as well be made of smoke, because it makes everything gloomy.  Life is the same way.  Sometimes the joy in our sorrows is immediately apparent, like the death of a godly man or woman that inspires us because of the way they lived their life, and the fact that it reminds us of the incredible joy that we will all share when we reach heaven and celebrate together again.  But there are also those times when the gloom of the clouds feels like the only thing that is true, and every little ache in our heart is magnified a thousand times, while joy feels as far away as a sunny summer afternoon feels during a snowstorm.

This is why we have to learn to carry the sunny days in our pockets.  If only it were as easy to do as it is to say.  Our minds are a sieve when it comes to certain things, and while a piece of paper may carry the words that can inspire us to remember the joy we left behind, sometimes it doesn't work if our mind is too clouded by pain to remember, and the words are just words.

Maybe we need more than just one piece of paper.

As the kid president in the video said, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled...and it hurt, man!"  And so we need to somehow overwhelm the pain of everyday life with joy.  But where?

John Eldredge says of the days after his close friend Brent was killed in a climbing accident, "As the shock of Brent's death began to wear off, the searing pain of intense grief took is place.  It was too difficult to read my Bible.  Conversation required more than I was able to give.  Frankly, I didn't want to talk to anyone, not even God.  The only thing that helped was my wife's flower garden.  The solace I found there was like nothing else on earth....beauty and affliction are the only two things that can pierce our hearts.  Because this is so true, we must have a measure of beauty in our lives proportionate to our affliction.  No, more.  Much more.  Is this not God's prescription?  Just take a look around.  The sights and sounds, the aromas and sensations--the world is overflowing with beauty.  God seems to be rather enamored with it.  Gloriously wasteful.  Apparently, he feels that there ought to be plenty of it in our lives."

That last line hit me pretty seriously when I thought about it.  I don't even try to make room for joy in my life. Oh, wait...unless you count all the imposters I make room for in my day.  I think this is part of the reason that all of us have some kind of addiction to some thing, activity, thought process, hobby, job, whatever it is.  We can't find the peace and happiness we want in our life, and naturally we have to find a substitute, or else kill our urge to find it, which is equally dangerous.  This hunger for joy is a hole left unfilled because God is not fully present in our world, and so a part of our soul is still disconnected from him, unless we come to him intentionally, seek his joy in the world instead of cheap substitutes.  But it's hard.  So hard.

And I know firsthand what can happen if there is nothing at all substantial to fill that emptiness.  The times when I don't make any effort at all to reach for God are the most gloomy and miserable times of my life.  The worst part is, the longer I spend in that place, the less I even want to reach out to Jesus, because it's so hard when your thought process has been twisted into the wrong shape.  It's like having a bad back and no chiropractor; I can't stand up, and although I might be able to get to the car to drive to the chiropractor if I did make the effort to stand up, the back pain is so undesirable that I don't want to try.  I'd rather lie in relative relief on the bed.  The problem is, eventually you need food and water.

Thank God, God leaves so much beauty for us in this world.  I think everyone should spend at least one day out of the month and take a nice long walk and admire nature and just think about the fact that God made it. Not only that, he made it for us.  When all was said and done, God put man in charge of all the other creations, one of the best engagement presents ever.  We screwed up afterwards, but the point remains that this world, despite its fallen and faded state, is still a stunning reminder of how much he loves us, enough to gift us this incredibly complex, impossibly beautiful place we call home.

Pick a sunny day, when it's warm but not too hot, preferably, and find a place with plenty of trees.  A local lake, maybe, or possibly a nearby forest or walking trail.  Just walk.  Walk, and look.  Admire.  Let go of everything else, don't feel the need to do anything.  Breathe a bit.  Maybe take some calm music along, but don't keep it on the entire time.  Or whatever works for you, really.  A walk in the city can reveal many things too.  The intelligence that God gave us shown in the ingenuity of architecture, or God's incredible skill and artistic spirit in inventing colors.  The Trinity's communal laughter echoing back through friends at a coffee shop, or a couple walking down the street.  And one stop in a restaurant or ice cream shop will reveal without a doubt that God was a genius to invent flavor.

The point is, there is beauty in every single inch of this planet, even in the artificial, as long as we have our eyes open.  And simply enjoying this beauty is a form of worship that is totally different than any other kind we have available.

And like the kid president said, create!  Doesn't matter what.  It could be words, it could be pictures, it could be sounds or tastes or an encouraging word or a hug or a million other things.  Think of something positive that people do, and that is another way that you can create and give back to others.  And if nothing else, you are giving back to God, which is yet another form of worship.

The mindset that allows for the pure unadulterated consumption of joy and creation of new things is hard to come by, but if more of us start seizing it when it comes, it makes things less gloomy.  Sometimes we forget to carry our joy with us, but there is an abundant source all around us and even within us, so long as we remember the Source.  And we can't be ashamed of enjoying the joy God puts in life all around us, so long as we remember that doing so is and should be treated as a way to worship him.  It's healthy, and it's a way to find our way back to God when we are lost.

You can't get fat on joy, so look for it everywhere.  It may just be what you need to get through something hard one day.

Our New Names

I love it when something God taught me months before gets brought back and built on right when it's most needed.

The message at church today was about the labels and names that people peg on us, or that we peg on ourselves, and we spend our whole lives believing those names are true, which affects our entire life.  But these names are lies.  As Aaron said this morning, "Satan can't do anything to you except feed you lies."  The sad thing is, we believe them and we live them.

How wonderful to know that we have been given new names, and each of us has a name that is our own, that is completely unique.  Almost a year ago, God told me my two new names, and only now am I just barely beginning to see myself growing into them.  It's such an amazing gift to be given this, although I am so undeserving of it.  And my names are the complete opposite of what I feel is true.

Back last April, God first started bringing this to mind.  I had been reading in a book about the verse in Revelation that says, "I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it." (Rev. 2:17b)  Soon after that, a pastor spoke at a homeschool event I went to, and he talked about the new names that God gives us, and told us that three questions mattered most, one of which was, "What do You call me?"  I was amazed.

I spent some time later on praying and asking God this question.  I heard two names, "Bright One", and "Warrior".  In a way, I didn't feel much connection to them at the time.  But in this season of my life, after this sermon, I realize that these names are the exact mirror of what I think about myself.  Most of the time I don't feel like the Bright One, an inspiration to others or a reflection of God's glory.  I feel like the Forgotten One, alone, unnoticed, not worth the time it would take to consider me at all.  How could someone like that be anywhere close to a great inspiration?

Likewise, I don't often feel like the Warrior, the one who fights for others, who stands up against what is wrong and doesn't give up.  I feel like the Weakling, the one who'd rather be passive than cause a fight by standing firm, the one who would rather not deal with anyone else's problems, the one who doesn't even have enough discipline to finish a day's work, let alone accomplish anything great.  How could a Weakling be a Warrior?

But...something's changing.  In my growing interest in music, I'm starting to realize that I really could be the Bright One, showing the glory of the Father by devoting the music I make to him, even if it's not all worship music.  In fact, I would rather it not be exclusively worship music, so that I might reach beyond the borders of Christianity and into the rest of it.  But in this is where I most need the Lord's help, because I might instead attempt to be the source of light myself, a dangerous step down a path of pride.  Thank God for the grace to grow into this slowly enough for my heart to remain in him.

And I feel more open, more caring, at times.  Not always.  In the power of Jesus, I can and sometimes am a Warrior for others, although it doesn't happen often.  Again, I am growing slowly into this, which is a good thing.  We should not try to take our new names on all at once when we have lived so long under the lies, or we'll either be overwhelmed and give in to disappointment, or we'll succeed and fall into pride.  It is a process.  You can't shoot a gun until you know how to hold it, how not to hold it.  You can't play an instrument without time and practice, and trying to perform at a concert a week after you first picked up a violin is only going to bring more pain on you.  These things take time.

But praise the Lord that Jesus's work has given us this incredible gift, this amazing grace of a new identity.  And this God, this Father who will never give up, he proves time and again that he truly does have a plan.  Now and then we can see the connections that are interwoven throughout every moment of our lives, but for the most part remain unnoticed.  But now and then, we see glimpses of the steps, the stages, the process.  And it's beautiful.  It will be a sheer joy to look on our whole lives from the perspective of one beyond time, and see how every single moment was in its proper place, leading up to everything else.  God will be glorified above all else.

So here's to new names, to events that will work out for the best, for the one who died for our new identities.  And here's to all the disappointments and failures, the grief and anger, the confusions and frustrations, for they are the stones that make up the path that leads to ultimate Joy.

The destination is worth the rocky roads.  Just wait and see.

Making Trails

So here I am.  I just finished putting together a quick and easy album cover for the EP that I'm planning and working on.  And I wonder what's going on, because since when was I planning to make music?  But, why not?  I mean, I love music, and the stuff I've put together so far is actually pretty good, and I'm always writing lyrics anyway, and I'm pretty sure I have at least a decent singing voice, so why not?

Chasing after a dream is kind of a funny thing.  And I realize that I've got one song finished and at least a couple more to make before I can do this EP thing, but the first one was good, and this is so much fun, at least on good days.  It gives me something productive to do, and music is a way to give back to the world.

I may be partly doing this to amuse myself, and I probably won't call something finished unless I like it, but really, when this music sees the light of day, it's not about me.  It's about saying something important, something that will hopefully help someone somewhere.  And I know my reach will be small, at least in the beginning, but that doesn't matter.  Some of the most inspiring stories to me are the ones I read online about Adam Young's music, how his songs have literally saved lives.  Isn't that one of the most powerful things a musician could hope to achieve?

I still don't know which direction I'm going, and so I think that my EP is aptly named: Making Trails.  I'm making my own path here, and whether I succeed or fail depends entirely on whether I keep going forward, because there's no roads where we're going.  I don't even know how this happened.  Loving music, realizing that it really is possible, and then just deciding then and there that I was going to do it, I guess.  Seems just like yesterday that I wasn't even sure I could put anything decent together at all, and a month later, I'm starting to see more than ever that it's all about what you set your mind to.

God willing, things will keep going and I'll keep on making songs, and have an EP in the next couple of months, and maybe an album sometime in the near future.  But I don't really care about making a ton of money or getting famous, because we always want more, and the world of celebrities is a shallow and harsh place.  And if I never do end up rich or famous, that's fine.  Being able to make music is reward enough.

I can't claim to be a musician, at least not yet, but I think I might just be getting there.  I don't know how to play any instruments very well, but I'll learn.  I don't know how to do everything in a music program, but I'm figuring things out as I go.  I guess the only thing to do now is hold on and enjoy the ride, because who knows when things could get bumpy?

It's all up to God.  I'll keep making these trails through the lands of inexperience, but the direction I'm going is for Him to decide.  And that's the best thing of all, because when you've got the great Guide leading you on, who needs maps?

~ Dane

A Life Weighs A Million Tons

I just had an epiphany.  Thinking about how life is, how life was, how life could be and how life probably will be, I hit upon something: my life goes into these pretty random sine waves of good and bad, and I've felt like if I'm not on the high end of the wave -- feeling completely connected to God, totally in love with Jesus, doing exactly what I feel is right -- life feels like it's wrong somehow, like I shouldn't be here, like I should be trying harder to stay in line with Jesus or else I'm going to go off the deep end by default.

Excuse the language, but damn, how long has that been there?

What brought this to my mind was this feeling that the low points in my life are just in-betweens for the moments that God is close and life is right.  But, I thought, doesn't that mean that I'm basically saying that most of my life is invalid?  If life isn't life unless everything's perfect, then...does that mean that I'm just a walking ghost, apart from those few precious moments?  Does it mean that God really isn't around unless I feel as if he's beside me?

Wow.  I actually believe that.

No.  Never.  I wonder how I bought into such a deadly lie.

Possibly because there's this thing among Christians, usually implied for the most part, that life should be a certain way, that unless we're spending most of our day with God, never getting angry, never looking at things we shouldn't, never ever being materialistic...then we're wrong, and that is bad.  Which is true.  But we've taken it much further: if life doesn't follow these guidelines, then not only are we wrong, but there's something wrong with us, and we should, we have to stop or else we're bad people.

Well...maybe not bad.  Just not all there, poor things.  Here's a three-week Bible study and a few sermons to set you right again.  Read a chapter a day, and call me in the morning, pastor's orders.

I honestly don't know whether to burst out laughing or break down and cry.  Is that what we think our goal in life is, to be perfect people and feel close to God?  HAH.

But it makes perfect sense to our reasoning minds.  "This is completely right, and therefore everything that is not is wrong and must be avoided."  1 + 1 = 2, right?

There are two problems with this thought, though.  One, Jesus never said "I am with you as long as you do everything you're supposed to and don't do things you're not supposed to do."  Two, most of our lives is lived in this less-than-perfect place, the dreadful In-Between.  But is it really dreadful, or are we just going about this all wrong?  Maybe the whole point is that God's always with us (just like he said), even when we're farthest from him.  Especially when we're farthest from him.

Woah...I'm going about my life all wrong.  All of a sudden it's perfectly clear that what I've been doing is trying to lift my entire life up to Jesus's level.  Might as well have been trying to lift the crust of the world.  But in my attempt to bench-press a freight train, I forgot the obvious.  Jesus comes down into our lives, not the other way around.  And I slap myself in the face and laugh.  Oh, what a wonderful God we serve!

But I've heard this before, and sometimes it still doesn't help, because one thing is left out: when life is at its lowest and God feels like a distant memory, Jesus is still within reach.  Within reach, right now.  Not if I can just get my life in order a little bit, not just if I can get myself to read my Bible a bit more every day, not just if I remember to pray before going to bed.  Right now.

While I'm squandering my time avoiding what needs to be done, instead just doing whatever I feel like because it keeps me entertained and distances me from my pain and weakness, and while my thoughts are going where I know they shouldn't but I can't control myself, and while I'm so utterly despairing of love and of life, he's right here.  So-close-I-can-touch-him here.  And he doesn't care that I've sinned, and that I couldn't be further from the truth.  He's still here.

It's so utterly freeing to realize that I don't have to lift my life up to the "good Christian" standard when I can barely even stand.  I don't.  He's here.  Life's not a signal tower you have to climb up to get a connection to God, because he's right here, right now, when you're in pain, when you literally hate him for the way life is turning out, when you can't take another step because the sadness is so heavy.

He's right here.

Wow.  I mean...wow.  Really?

Just goes to show how hard it is for me to take God at his word, I guess.  But he's taken that into account already.