The Sleepy Hollow Fire

Here in Wenatchee, Washington it has been an eventful couple of days.  A fire started yesterday in the afternoon and quickly moved along the hillside towards town, destroying around 24 homes and catching in several buildings downtown.  Earlier today there was a threat of an ammonia leak and warnings to stay inside.  As I write this, I don’t know the extent of the damage.  It seems the fires are no longer spreading, but they are still burning and there is concern that the wind could whip them into a frenzy if it picks up.

I need to process this fire.  It has shaken me up.

My house hasn’t burned down and I am safe.  I’m thankful for this!  But you should know that until November 2013 I spent the entirety of my life along the east coast.  They don’t have wildfires.  There were severe snows and hurricane threats periodically, but they rarely directly touched my life.  Living out west in an area susceptible to fires is a different experience entirely.  One of the things I’ve loved about being out west is the sheer wildness of it, the imposing peaks, the winding highways through passes, the reminders that I’m small.  But there’s another side to that coin that I don’t like as much and it is called fire.  I’ve had to ask myself over the past few days- “Can I stand to live in a place where there’s a very real possibility each fire season that I could lose everything?”

Uncertainty and Fear

 As my wife and I realized the fire wasn’t abating and was getting closer, we went for a brief drive up into the hills across the river to get an idea of what was actually going on.  Seeing the lines of fire along the ridges was shocking.  It was a primal scene.  Even worse was seeing flames erupt from buildings several miles from our house.  I felt very small and extremely helpless.  I was witnessing a force of nature.  It was no longer “out there” as in some disaster you see in the news or hear about secondhand.  I was watching it spread in my town and wondering how it was ever going to stop.

After we got home we turned on the news and discovered that evacuations were happening directly to the north and west of us.  You know that question, “If your house was on fire what would you grab?”  I always thought of that as a nice thought exercise, again one I wouldn’t have to actually consider.  But as I looked out our back window and could see nothing but flames on the hillside, we readied ourselves for a quick escape.  As we packed, I was struck by how little I felt the need to bring.  I was mainly concerned with my journals, letters from family and friends, pictures, and a few books that have meant a lot to me.

We were not evacuated, so we went to bed reluctantly at 3:30 AM, continuing to nervously glance out the window and check for evacuation notices.  We prayed a simple prayer before several fitful hours of sleep, and I was struck by something my wife Tiffany said to God.  She thanked Him that no matter what happened to us or our belongings, we had Him.

Returning

 And that’s what it always comes back to doesn’t it?  I was given another opportunity to realize my insignificance both personally and in my material possessions.  I was scared.  I couldn’t imagine the suffering of those that had actually lost their homes.  But I needed to be redirected, to see beyond the flames to the God of the universe, and to know that my life, now and forever is in His hands. 

This is not a new insight.  We know how suffering, loss, and moments of fear can give us a fresh dose of perspective.  I have a renewed desire not to take anything for granted.  People woke on Sunday morning like it was a perfectly normal day and by that evening they were fleeing their homes.  I was also reminded not to hold onto anything too tight.  You don’t get to take it with you, at some point in this life it may be taken from you, and most of it doesn’t matter anyway.  But last night these things I’ve thought about primarily as intellectual, head knowledge, shifted to emotional experience for me.  I pray I don’t forget the truth of it.  We’re such interesting and stubborn creatures.  Well, I won’t speak for you.  I’m mostly amazed at myself that it takes something like a town catching on fire to make me stop and actually take in deeper truths.  And by tomorrow I fear I will have forgotten it and started worrying about petty things, focused again on my comfort.  Let it not be so!

“Whom have in heaven but you?  And earth has nothing I desire besides you.  My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”  Psalm 73:25-26

Mixed Messages

 This is going to be one of those entries where I'm an old man waving his cane at those darn kids.  For some reason as I've been listening to pop on the radio, I've been paying closer attention to the lyrics instead of mindlessly rocking out to the catchy tunes, and as I listened and tried to make sense of them my irritation built.

Relational Confusion

Take Sam Smith's song Stay With Me.  He is a relatively new artist, but has become popular quickly, appearing on Saturday Night Live and non stop on most top 40 radio stations.  Here's the chorus:

Oh, won't you stay with me?
Cause you're all I need
This ain't love it's clear to see
But darling, stay with me

Then there's the boy band One Direction and their song Story of My Life whose chorus goes like this:

The story of my life I take her home
I drive all night
To keep her warm and time-
Is frozen
The Story of my life I give her hope
I spend her love until she’s broke inside
The story of my life

I found myself scratching my head as I listened to these songs.  They're so catchy it's easy to miss the fact that neither song makes any sense.  What are they about?  The message I get from both (look up the rest of the lyrics if you are also confused) is something along the lines of "I love you, need you, and want to be known and loved in return, but I don't actually want you or need you and I'm going to hurt you or leave the relationship."

This concept is found in movies like Friends With Benefits and No Strings Attached, both of which center around friends who start having casual sex to "get their needs met" only to discover that they develop feelings for one another and want a committed relationship.  The thing that makes these movies confusing is that they are sending out two messages- one is positive and affirms that sex and emotional connection go together and cannot be separated.  At the same time, most of the dialogue, humor, and coolness of the characters hinges on the fact that casual sex is happening. 

Double Bind

So why am I going on about this?  Because these songs and movies touch on a concept developed in the 1950s by researchers trying to understand communication in the development of schizophrenia and unhealthy family systems.  It's a complex idea and I can't do it justice in a short essay like this, but basically, a double bind is an emotionally distressing dilemma in communication in which two or more conflicting messages are sent out, with one message negating the other.  This means that the person receiving the message will be wrong no matter how they respond, and they are unable to confront the inherent dilemma.  The use of confusion makes them difficult to respond to and to resist.

Our culture is sending conflicting messages about how we are fulfilled in relationships.  The content is that committed and intimate relationships are what we need, but the overarching message is that sleeping around and having fun is what life is all about.  Do we use people or do we commit to them?  Teenagers don't know how to process, respond, or comment on this message.  They sense that they want to be truly seen and loved, but they are bombarded with messages to have as many hookups as possible.  Which is it?  This affects marriages as well.  We want to be committed to our spouse, but we always wonder if we'll be happier if we could be single again or have an affair.

We send this message to each other on a daily basis.  Come close, but not too close.  I want you to care about me, but don't ask anything of me.  Tell me everything, but I'll punish you if I don't like what I hear.  You're accepted unconditionally, but this is how we do things in this family.  This is the kind of stuff that makes people crazy!  My head has been spinning as I try to write this and make it coherent, because the contradictory messages create brain fog, confusion, and the need for a good nap.

I obviously can't change the film or music industry.  But I can urge you in your relationships to be clear about what you want and to pursue it wholeheartedly.  If your spouse is confusing you, ask for an explanation.  If you don't know what you want, figure it out.  Let's stop moving through life unaware of our thoughts, desires, and motives, allowing teenagers and twenty somethings to affect us with their bizarre messages about what's important. 

The power of a double bind lies in the fact that you can't comment on the contradictory messages.  I want to break through that and be clear: we were made to be known by God and our families, and to be committed and faithful.  Let culture punish you and tell you that you're outdated or missing all the fun.  You'll have what they really want.

How Do We Change?

I've been asking this question for what feels like my whole life, and I have formalized the pursuit of this question by studying Psychology and choosing counseling as a profession.  The question is both personal and relational.  I hardly expect to deal with a subject that has spilled much ink in one blog entry, but I offer what I hope will be a starting point on your journey to answer this question.

Beliefs about God

I build my foundation upon belief in God and the Bible.  If you aren't with me on this point, hang around and see if what follows makes any sense.  The essential thing to understand about God and change is seen in the reality of Jesus and the cross.  God seeks us out and saves us while we are completely apart from and disinterested in Him.  Once we are led to belief, it is God through the Holy Spirit who continues to move in us and help us grow despite our constant tendency to go our own way and live for ourselves.  We fundamentally resist change and are incapable of doing anything about it unless God acts, both before and after initial belief.

This last point is where a lot of the confusion about change begins. My thoughts on this topic are largely influenced by the writing of John and Paula Sandford, who have been blowing my mind recently with their material. 

When we trust in Christ, we are saved and our sins are no longer counted against us.  We belong to Christ.  This is the best news imaginable.  But unfortunately, the process of change and growth is just beginning.  Many are shocked to find that all of their old hangups and behaviors are still present after becoming a believer.  Growth is not complete and is still very difficult.

Psychology

My training was largely influenced by cognitive behavioral therapy and experiential, client centered approaches.  What these essentially teach is that people can change if their thought patterns are adjusted and they have the right kinds of reinforcement following new behavior.  They also teach that people are inherently good, know what they need to grow, and are capable of making the right choices if they are validated and helped to unlock their potential.

This thinking isn't dominated by "secular" misguided psychology.  A common approach in the church is to assume that through the right kind of teaching and personal discipline, maybe praying harder, change will be possible.  There is danger here of falling into one of two heresies that have plagued the church.  Gnosticism: believing that we are made whole by right knowledge or thinking, and Pelagianism: believing that we can heal ourselves by our own efforts.  The two together say if we understand our formation we can heal ourselves.

So What Then?

I bought into these ideas.  They are very subtle, and they appeal to our belief in our independence and abilities.  I was baffled when in a session, a client would appear to have a breakthrough of understanding, yet return the next week with no changed behavior.  Insight is not enough.  Trying harder is not enough.  Think back to salvation- God accomplishes it.  It is the same with our growth and continual transformation.  God accomplishes it the same way He did in Christ, with one difference.  We must now partner with God in this process by continually dying and taking our old nature to the cross.  When you have an insight about your behavior or wrong pattern of thinking, don't stop there.  Confess it, repent, take it to the cross and kill it.  When I think about what my partnership with God in this process looks like, I see my main task as being disciplined to remember each and every day how dependent I am on God to maintain any changes He initiates.  So it's less about what I'm able to will myself to do, and more about remembering that I can't will myself to do anything.  I must simply get myself in God's presence on a daily basis.  This is my chief task.  He will do the rest.

We are not looking to build self esteem or teach new skills upon a solid personality structure.  We are looking for root systems that are diseased and need to be put to death.

John and Paula Sandford write, "We are always dealing not so much with what was done to us as our sinful responses.  Reactions of resentment and judgment, however hidden and forgotten in the heart, must find their way to the cross...habitual patterns of response must be transformed by repentance, death, and rebirth.  Otherwise, no permanent or even valuable change of personality will result."

We are talking about assisting the process of discovery so that the Holy Spirit can write understanding in the heart.  For that difficulty Paul prayed that "the eyes of the heart may be enlightened" (Eph 1:18).

If you are stuck somewhere, unhappy with your spouse, your children, your parents, your habits, with the fruit of your life, basically, if you are a member of the human race, this is the starting point for you.  Get help from others and from the Spirit to find the roots in your life that must continue to be put to death.  It's the only way.

Leaving Home

I’ve been a Christian for as long as I can remember, which has saved me from much trouble in life, and for that I’m immensely thankful.  I don’t need to have an incredible conversion story in which I left the biker gang to feel that my faith is real.  But there are times where this kind of longevity can create difficulties, and I need old truths to become fresh again.  When you’ve been hearing the same things since you were a child, it can be easy to take them for granted as abstract truths with no bearing on day to day life. 

Take the teaching that Jesus left the sweet, perfect communion with the Trinity in heaven and came to earth.  Phillipians 2:6 talking about Jesus says, “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death-even death on a cross!”  Having heard this a million times, it is easy for me to take it all for granted, that Jesus left his home and gave up everything, making the ultimate sacrifice on the cross.  I’m more than a little embarrassed to admit that this reality usually elicits very little of a response from me.  I gloss over it, thinking there must be deeper truths about God to be explored.  After all, everyone knows what Christmas is all about, just like they know why we celebrate Easter.  But through my recent life experience, God was gracious enough to remind me of His love in coming to earth.  I want to draw your attention to the incredible ways that God uses our life experiences to teach us and relate to us.  

A Big Move

 

We just moved across the country to Washington from Maryland.  I’m very excited to be here, and it’s been something I’ve wanted for a long time.  But that doesn’t mean it’s been easy.  A long move like that is loaded with stressors, and since we’ve been here I have faced the inevitable homesickness that comes with such a change.  Everything is new and strange, there are no familiar places from which to draw comfort, and the family and friends I often relied on are thousands of miles away.  I was feeling the pang of this sharply the other night.  As the Spirit often does, I heard a gentle voice reminding me that this is a tiny fraction of how Jesus must have felt on earth.  He is more intimately acquainted with homesickness, loneliness, and all other types of suffering than I ever will be.  As it is written, “Foxes have dens, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”(Matthew 8:20)  I miss imperfect places and people, and I have moved to what I consider a desirable place.  Jesus left God’s side for the broken mess of earth and was surrounded by people who didn’t understand him at best and murdered him at worst.

Spurgeon puts it this way: “He solemnly determined that to offer a sufficient atoning sacrifice He must go the whole way, from the highest to the lowest, from the throne of highest glory to the cross of deepest woe.  He would not stop short of all He had undertaken to suffer for His people."  I was feeling sorry for myself, thinking of all I’d given up and in a flash, the teaching of the Incarnation became more than a children’s story.  This chastised, comforted, and led me to worship.  But it also taught me something about getting to know Jesus better.

Shared Experience

 We are relational creatures and so we need truths we can relate to.  Have you thought about this?  Part of the reason we are urged so often to imitate Christ and to share in His sufferings is because it helps us to draw closer to Him.  When you meet someone and discover that they have experienced the same things, even if they happened to visit the same restaurant we’ve been to once, we immediately feel closer to them, we get excited, and we have something to talk about.  If they went to the same school as us or lived in a town we lived in, we have even more to discuss.  If we knew some of the same people then we’re really jiving and beginning to think we could become friends.  We connect by sharing experiences.  I’m sure we all can connect with this feeling of being outside our comfort zone and the terror and loneliness that comes with it.  The God of the Universe made a bit of a cross country move himself, and He did it to save me.  I hope that now whenever I feel that ache, I will be reminded of what Jesus gave up for me and that I will long for heaven the same way that He did.  If we are unwilling to follow in the suffering of Christ, or be out on a limb, we are robbing ourselves of the chance to get to know Him more intimately.

The Incarnation is a call to follow His example in leaving comfort behind in order to accomplish something for the kingdom.  This is a unique way that I can imitate Christ.  Not all of us are called to make big moves, but we can make this truth fresh in our lives whenever we push aside our comforts and give something up in an effort to follow God’s purposes for our lives.  It is only a temporary leaving and homesickness anyway.  Jesus’ little trip made it possible for all of us to follow Him back to heaven in a little while.  Oh the things we will have to talk about.

It's New Years

I spent some time the other day looking over my journal entries from the past year.  Like many of you, I wanted to use the turning of the calendar as an opportunity to do some reflecting and to make some changes.  However, I didn't want to come up with the typical list of resolutions about eating less carbs or breaking free from the underground fight club.  I wanted to see if I actually learned anything over the last year and if I could apply it to my life in 2014.  I share this list because while it contains personal lessons, I think it could be easily applied to your situation.

The Weather Will Change

There's a saying in certain parts of the country that if you want the weather to change you just need to wait 15 minutes.  Sun quickly turns to rain, or wind suddenly dies down.  Even if your weather doesn't change rapidly, you can always count on the seasons to bring new conditions.  The first thing I noticed about my entries from the past year is that each time I wrote, whether it was a day or a month later, my emotions were always different.  I would be in abject despair about a certain situation only to discover a week later that it either resolved itself or God had given me the peace to deal with it.

Despite this obvious pattern, in each entry I behaved as if I completely lacked this perspective.  The issue of the moment dominated, and I didn't have the peace God wanted me to have.  For example, we just moved to Washington from Maryland, and many of my entries this past year were dominated by the theme of figuring out where to go next and how it was going to happen.  Now that we're here in Washington, I'm realizing that I wasted a lot of energy fretting about circumstances that not only resolved themselves, but emotions that did as well.

Watch Less TV

The second major theme I noticed is connected to the first.  I also discovered that I had a good bit of control over how quickly the emotional weather changed in my life.  There were times throughout the year where I "relapsed" and swung back to feelings of frustration or anxiety and I noticed a direct correlation between my ability to deal with life and how I'd been spending my time.

The entries littered with quotes from books I was reading or passages of Scripture I was reflecting on were the ones where I had a healthy perspective on life and a measure of contentment.  The weeks where I was just kind of getting by, going to work and watching a lot of Netflix seemed to be the times I completely lost perspective.  I had no idea this was the case until I looked back at the whole year.  I think it's important to note this because everything I'm saying is common sense, but when you're in the middle of it, when it's a Wednesday in February and you're just trying to make it through, you don't remember that how you spend your time matters.

 I was so lazy and self involved during the TV heavy weeks!  I think this is why many of our resolutions center around being more disciplined in some area of life, because we understand our harmful tendency to switch back to default mode.  What a contrast when I was spending time with God and fixing my gaze outward!  When I was focused on self, I was interested in what I was lacking and how this or that seemed unfair or unbearable and I needed it to change right now.  It was like two different people were writing each time, the mature version of me and the 4 year old having a tantrum, which is kind of embarrassing.  But it makes sense.  If I spent 30 minutes in a given week praying, reading about God, or listening to a sermon, that couldn't compete with the hours upon hours spent watching fictional characters live the good life and get all the happy endings I thought I was missing out on.

 2014

So I'm committing to emotional consistency in the coming year.  I'm realizing I have a lot of growing to do, and that I've been tossed about by the waves of life more than I care to admit.  Maybe you feel some of the same and want to get off the roller coaster in the coming year.  Remind yourself that your feelings will change, and take the steps towards peace and contentment by grounding yourself daily in Christ.

Me jogging: Ok, I made one stereotypical resolution