My tunnel

“Wow, where did this come from??” I thought as I tucked my child into bed and turned out the light…  This being a deep and uncomfortably dark feeling of intense loneliness.

Having learned so much about myself over the past year or so, I was caught off guard by the intensity, however it no longer had a crippling effect on me.  I began to analyze what may have triggered it and eventually concluded that I was feeling hurt after a series of disappointments and unmet needs – I was being reminded that people let us down, but God never will.

Armed with this conclusion, I am starting to find ways to change up my routine and reassess my needs to ensure that I’m relying on God, not on a man, to meet those needs.  I must say that this is NOT easy, regardless of how simple it may seem.

One of the hardest conversations that I need to have is one with God … one in which I am brutally honest about my hurts and my fears and about how deeply I crave the security of having an earthly companion to help me shoulder some of the load.  Every day the burdens of being a truly single parent become heavier … perhaps because I have begun to envy the fact that my child’s other parent has a partner.  Yes, it sometimes seems incredibly unfair, until I realize that they are human and have their own unique set of problems too.  I don’t want their life, I love mine … I just want someone to share it with.

I know I’m not the first, nor will I be the last, person to have experienced this profound empty, lonely feeling.  I also know that this will only last as long as I allow myself to stay here.  It is kind of like walking through a tunnel – if you decide to take up residence in the middle of the tunnel, the darkness is perpetual and pervasive … However, if you pick up your stuff and trudge on eventually you will emerge into the open, airy space beyond and feel the warmth of the sun once again.

This thought hit very close to home as it became clear that I had, without realizing it, made the middle of this tunnel my home.  It’s time to pack up and head out, reminding myself frequently that baby steps are still steps … Just keep moving!

It is a rich tapestry of love and life

A few weeks I was involved in a conversation about witnessing for Christ … I have to be honest, until recently I had not been very familiar with that term or what it meant as a Christian.  I grew up in an environment filled with the testimonies of others who shared how God, Christ and the Holy Spirit was changing and shaping their lives … only recently have I realized that those testimonies are the same as witnessing.

We, as followers of Christ, are called to share how Christ has shaped and changed our individual lives … I have always held the opinion that I can't force anyone to embrace and accept Jesus as their savior, however, I can share my personal experiences to illustrate how beautiful and perfect Christ's love for us is.  This isn't about being able to quote biblical passages or Scriptures, it isn't about entering into arguments or debates about Christianity and it certainly isn't about judging or pointing out how others are sinning.  It is about what Paul wrote in Colossians 3:15 (NLT) "And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father."

That same conversation eventually morphed into talking about the bible being black & white – or not – to me black & white would seem to indicate rules & laws … The bible is a love story illustrating for us just how much God loves us … it is not just a rule book.  As I see it, the only things about the bible that are black & white are the nature of God and of man, Jesus as the conduit or reconciler between God and man, that God loves us completely and infinitely.

In an effort to entangle Jesus as he spoke to the Pharisees, in Matthew 22:36-40 (KJV) one of the Pharisees (a lawyer) asked "Master, which is the great commandment in the law?  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." … This second greatest commandment is almost entirely gray because there are no instructions about how to love 'thyself', leaving it subject to interpretation and totally dependent on prayer and constant communication with Jesus and with God.  If the bible is black & white, why was Jesus relentless on the religious leaders who interpreted the Scriptures entirely in black & white?

I've been doing a lot of research on adultery … trying to wrap my head around why this has happened to me twice now.  This is a multifaceted thing … but in studying the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery (John 8:1-11) one of the things that I'm starting to see clearly is that we, as human beings, are not strong enough to simply "go and sin no more" … if we had the ability to simply not sin we wouldn't need Jesus as our Savior.  The same Pharisees that were trying to entangle Jesus couldn't call themselves sinless when Jesus said "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her" – these were the very men who interpreted the Scriptures entirely in black & white.  In Galatians 2:21 (NTL) we read that "I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die."

While it is true that the 10 commandments are black & white I ask that you consider this … Jesus seldom responded to a black & white question with a black & white answer.  Instead he was more likely to respond with a question or a parable that forces you to think and wrap your head around something far greater than rules and laws.  There is so much depth in the bible, so many layers … if it were simply black & white there would be no depth, it would be a silhouette, not a rich tapestry of love and life.