Battle Scars - 3-29-10

You want to know something funny? Ironic, really. One of the reasons – probably the reason – B____ doubted from the first my love for him was that it was so untried. He said, from all he had seen of real love, “Love to me is battle-scarred. When everything is dark and the chips are down and you have nothing left, love is the thing whispering, ‘I’m still here. Don’t give up.’”

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I want to laugh with the irony of that statement that has taken so many months to manifest. Yes, beloved, love is battle-scarred and far from being scared of that as I was once, I relish it. I am battle-scarred, and rather than finding my love for him cracking under the pressure and the incredible lack of physical confirmation, I bear the wounds proudly. I have seen what God is capable of, which is how I can see what I am capable of.

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Few loves are as battle-scarred as mine. The pure porcelain of it at its inception has steadily been layered over with steel. Nothing can be harder than what I’ve borne alone, and no purpose could be more worth it.

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Battle-scarred, indeed.

Revelation - 3-29-10

Eureka! I realized something today on my way home from work that had somehow eluded me all these months. One of the things I have been reminded of through the Breaking Free bible study is the nature of the enemy. I like how Beth Moore recognizes the danger and the inherent nullification of your purpose when you keep the focus on the enemy, while she still understands the importance of understanding just who it is you’re fighting, not just what you’re fighting for. And I had forgotten that Satan is called more than almost anything else, “the accuser.” As Beth said a few weeks ago, “Man excuses, Satan accuses, and God diffuses.”

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Well, one of the major factors in my difficulty enjoying my job was not just the behavior of the kids and the pressure of testing, but also this sense of feeling “not enough.” I couldn’t shake this low confidence in myself. Even though I knew God had redeemed my mistakes and had given me a second chance at this school, and that he had not placed me here to fail, I often had to cast away the fear that my choices in my misery last year would follow me here. That at some point, people would see I wasn’t meeting with my groups enough or I didn’t have a set of assignments ready or I wasn’t teaching well enough. All year I’ve had a progressive sense that the longer I am in this profession, the less I know and the less competent I become. Few things suck away your confidence and your purpose, not to mention your self-worth, than a constant sense of accusation.

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And it hit me, today in the car. Every time Beth would mention Satan’s nature as the accuser, I would think in terms of B____. I would think about all the accusations he had to tread each day. It just never occurred to me that I would be subject to that kind of attack myself.

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When I realized that, something in me snapped. I had not been able to feel much lately, even after those words God had given me this weekend. I accepted it was one of those times that I just had to stand on what I know instead of swaying with the lies. Even with the confirmation of my purpose, it was hard to really feel anything. But at the realization that I cannot have victory in God’s Spirit and not have it in every area of my life, and that my sense of accusation was not coming from God, from others, or even from myself, but from the enemy, I suddenly felt like a warrior again. I was mad, but in a good way. I felt wrath, determination, my fingers itching to swing away.

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Dammit, I’m taking my land back!

How's My Armor Looking? - 3-26-10

Sometimes I feel like I suffer from split personalities. As soon as I reorient my mind on what I feel is my true life, my purpose, my center, my God, I wake up and have to go to work again. And at work – though I am sure God has helped me numerous times, shown me favor and granted me wisdom – I can’t keep my mind on God as I would like to. I can’t feel him. I’m constantly being pulled in a hundred directions and my brain has to be “on” every single minute. This is “Martha” on speed. There is no downtime. There is no opportunity for “Mary” to come out. No basking, no reflecting.

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And the worst thing is that although I am industrious and love to have a job to do, this job, these kids, are pulling me apart. I must spend all day doing what I feel is wrong and having to be a person I don’t want to be. You tell me how that doesn’t kill your soul. I am not teaching. I am preparing test-takers so we can get some data. The pressure is unbelievable and the kids are ridiculous. I would have no skin left on my backside if I had tried some of the crap these kids pull with insolent regularity. I must always be firm, be in a rush, keep my eye on the test score. There is no time for interesting discussions. No, no, that is not necessary. But they sure learn those test-taking strategies. I shudder to think what kind of people we are creating to run our country for us. We are molding soulless statisticians, accountants, investment bankers.

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I used to watch “School of Rock” in delight because I was that kind of teacher. That’s how I was with my kids. I felt I was doing something real. But there is no point anymore. I don’t believe in education anymore. I haven’t for years. I am determined to home-school my own children. But right now? What shall we do?

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I have from the beginning of this year sought God and I can tell you I have been able to do a better job each day than I’m capable of. It’s important, I feel, to see over a long period of time what it looks like to see yourself do things in Christ that in no way you could do on your own strength. And yet there’s only so far I’ve managed to get. I cannot love these children. I have prayed so many times to see them through God’s eyes, to see them with love as the precious children he so loves. And I still can’t smile or laugh. I still close my eyes as they walk in to brace myself for the day. I have to bite back my frustration so many times and it still peeks through. I still keep investing my energies in pointlessness. I am not making a difference with these kids. All the endless discussions and discipline go nowhere. I have to shut them down when they bubble up with a connection they made or a cool thing they learned because it’s “off-topic” and we have to learn, learn, learn. I have to contact parents about their behavior and kill myself to get them proficient enough to pass their tests because their parents don’t study with them. I have to be stern and deal constantly with the attempts at arguing and bickering. My life is on a loop that goes nowhere and I’m tired.

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I’m in one of the darkest periods I’ve been in for a long time. I know it’s an attack but I just can’t seem to spring back up as fast as I have been, sword in hand. All is dark, all is confused. I ask myself, what am I doing with my energies? What is this mirage of B____’s “freedom”? What is this great good I’m supposedly doing for this family I’ve never even met? What is this great job I’m supposed to be getting? I’ve been in this job for so long. Wasn’t I supposed to learn from it last year and rise above it and make a good end of it this year? Weren’t all these seeds of faith I’ve been planting eventually supposed to pop up all over the place as visible blooms? I’ve fought the good fight so well for so long, truly seeing my inner life so much more brightly and clearly than my physical circumstances, but everything is so dark now.

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I have relished having a battle to fight, so proud that this is my name. And when attacks have come, I have felt the wound but with a glint in my eye, straightened back up and kept fighting, thinking, “I must be close to something great. I must be a real threat.” Maybe all those breakthroughs I was fighting for have indeed been manifesting for those for whom I have been striving. Maybe I was getting my wish and the blessings were going to them after all and I was getting all the attacks. And maybe now I’m just so wounded and tired, so bone-deep weary, that I’m finding I’m staying in the mud and blood a little longer than usual.

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You know, I loved the idea of being ezer kenegdo, of being lifesaver, of being someone’s victory. My name must be my nature because the thought that these upsets were just “life” was so draining. But if it was an attack, then there was a weapon for it. I could fight back. I could gather my arrows of purpose and my spear of faith and my sword of wrath and do some damage.

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But though I am Nicole, though I am Eve, the warrior, I am still a woman. I am still the Beauty in the story. And the question in my soul is, “Who is fighting for me?” I know God himself is for me and that should be enough, but if there was nothing humans could do to help, to save, to rewrite a tragic history, then why would he call us to pray at all for anything? Why invent the word “intercessor” if it was just a meaningless string of letters? After all, isn’t that my great purpose? Fighting for my people’s freedom? I have to believe that I am irreplaceable in my own life. I have to be the main character, the hero, in my own story. There must be a reason God placed me in this particular life. And if I can do such good and such damage for this awesome purpose of freedom, then a tiny part of me whispers, “Then what about me?”

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I had accepted that one day I would be fought for, but right now I had to do the fighting. But oh, my woman’s heart cries out, “Who will fight the dragon for me? Who will rescue me and carry me into adventure?” When will the warrior be fought for? When my armor splits under the blows and my sword arm is shattered and a soul-wound is about to be delivered, who will stand over me with a blazing sword? Who will cover me with the fine faith that has been tempered in me? Who will nurse my wounds?

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I had also accepted that for this particular battle, I had to go it alone with God. We’re wildernessing, right? And there wasn’t that constant anxiety and exhaustion that comes when you’re trying to carry a load on your own shoulders that needs to be shared. I must have been going on God’s strength to fly so high through these last months. But I keep wondering if maybe I was going on my own strength all this time with standing for B____’s freedom. Maybe I am truly that delusional and my interpretations of all those Scriptures has been, in the end, my own knowledge and wisdom. But that doesn’t line up. I do know who God is. I haven’t sought him so single-mindedly for so long only to be allowed to stray so far. That’s just not God. His Word says so. But more than once, I’ve prayed in exasperation and frustration for God to just take B____. Take him and bless him far away from me. He doesn’t want me in his life. So what am I doing this ridiculous mission for, for heaven’s sake?

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And all of this I bear alone. And God has indeed been enough. Every time I think about sharing this whole thing with someone, something in me says, “No. Not yet.” I do feel that I need to be alone with God for this time for a reason.

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But it’s when I’m under attacks like this that I long for someone to do for me what I’m doing for my people, this motley crew who knows nothing of what I do for them. It’s when I’m particularly bruised and cut and feeling like my unchanged life will never change and I’ll never see the blooms of all the seeds I’m planting, that I think, “Is there anyone out there who will stand for me? Aren’t I worth a victor of my own? Who will be my champion?”

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30 minutes later:

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Exhausted after writing that journal entry and feeling so beaten down and weary, I opened up my Breaking Free Beth Moore bible study workbook. Lacie and I are watching the next DVD video session tomorrow and I wanted to get my homework done beforehand. This bible study has changed my life. It has been one of the things that opened my eyes to this great purpose I have been believing in.

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Well, I was in no frame of mind to really receive anything, but I was going to be obedient and trust that some good could come out of it nonetheless. I had no idea.

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The first verse I was told to look up was Deuteronomy 33:26-29. As Scripture references are notoriously harder for me to remember than the actual verses, I didn’t notice anything familiar until I began to read. I began weeping at the first line. John Eldredge and Beth Moore, thank you for working together unwittingly to show me God.

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Deuteronomy 33:26-29:

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“There is no one like the God of Jeshurun,

Who rides on the heavens to help you

and on the clouds in his majesty.

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The eternal God is your refuge,

and underneath are the everlasting arms.

He will drive out your enemy before you,

saying, “Destroy him!”

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So Israel will live in safety alone;

Jacob’s spring is secure

in a land of grain and new wine

where the heavens drop dew.

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Blessed are you, O Israel!

Who is like you,

a people saved by the Lord?

He is your shield and helper

and your glorious sword.

Your enemies will cower before you,

and you will trample down their high places.”

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I weep.

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Next morning:

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When God wants you to do something, he affirms and confirms. That is certainly my experience with this purpose. Short of cracking me on the head, God is saying, “Uh, yeah, this is me.”

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I watched the DVD session of the Beth Moore Breaking Free bible study with Lacie this morning, and the whole thing was important but I wasn’t sitting there as I usually do, like, “She is talking to me. Can she see me somehow?”

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Until the end. As she closed, she spoke some of the very words I myself have been writing in this journal. She said she just felt led by the Spirit to claim everyone in that sanctuary where she was filming for God. She said she wanted God to get 100% of those people she loved. Not one would be left behind. And then she said that thing that made me glance around for hidden cameras, wondering if she had been overhearing me. She said, “I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy.”

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Whoa. Just whoa.

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That. Was. God.

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And Nicole is my name.
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We're Wildernessing - 3-20-10

One of the things that kept me holding God at a distance with disappointment and dissatisfaction all my life – punctuating every season of closeness with a bite – was my inescapable sense that he just wasn’t enough. He couldn’t possibly validate my desire for an extraordinary life. That desire had always been with me and spawned countless words on countless pages and the scintillating, sparkling dream of the Venture, of striking out into the wilderness and hacking it out myself to see what I was made of. I’ve long seen that such a dream just wasn’t feasible and it only left me with the itchy sweater of everyone else’s life. The thought that God must have been the origin of such soul-deep desires clashed with the inability to see how the proper, good, and holy God of the church would ever understand or allow them and left me cold.

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I so didn’t want to dumbly fall in with the lockstep of everyone else’s life. Something deep within me cried out that I was different, that such a life would be the death of me. But no one knew as well as I that it seemed I had been trained for nothing else. I knew better than anyone how weak and irresolute I could be. I was clamoring for a life that would kill me, that would rip me to shreds where the ordinary life would merely gently, steadily rub me out.

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The irony of it all was that I did want those things, too. I wanted the husband, the children, the well-appointed house, the pew at church as a family, the weekend barbeques. I was as captivated by Donna Reed as I was by William Wallace. How conflicted. And what order could be brought to such chaos? Certainly not God. Wouldn’t he only gently, tolerantly guide me to the dovecote and mercifully clip my wings so I couldn’t injure myself by continuing to throw myself against the mesh?

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Well, I believe I have the answer. I had been turning to God since the whole thing with B____ started to chip. I had to. I conceded absolutely, no pride filling in the cracks with sawdust, that I was completely inadequate to find my own way through the thick of this jungle. And he answered, with the mercy and quieting wisdom my flailing soul needed at that time. He answered by never leaving my abandoned heart.

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But it wasn’t until I read verse 9 in 1 Corinthians 2 that I started to see what I had been missing all my life: the facet of God’s nature that had been reflecting in me all along:

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“No eye has seen,

no ear has heard,

no mind has conceived,

what God has prepared for those who love him.”

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Some interpret that as strictly applying to the afterlife, to heaven, not to this earthly life. But that logic doesn’t follow through to its own conclusion. Are we then to believe that God only has for us more of the same, none of the wild, sweet adventure so many of us crave, and then blow our minds with heaven? God is more than capable of leading us into high adventure in this life and still shatter our expectations in his heaven. I absolutely believe this verse applies to us here, now. And only God in his infinite wisdom could answer the question that had haunted me for so many years: how could I satisfy the seemingly irreconcilable desire for the American dream with my need for a quest?

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And I realized – he is doing just that. My life seems to be all that Donna Reed herself would golf-clap for, and yet he has been leading me straight into the wilderness all these months. It’s damned uncomfortable at times – utterly dark when my little campfire goes out, cold sometimes under my flea-bitten blanket, sore feet. I’m sick of sleeping on the ground.

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But I’m doing it! I’m seeing my own worth by seeing God’s. I do have the strength for this life, for this casting off of rules and societal expectations and for leaving the safety of the cubicle and hacking my way into the bush. And that strength is embodied in one thing: the ability to say “yes” and “yes” and “yes” to God as he leads the way.

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I am a warrior. I needed this. I came so close to death so many times in my own life. My safe life held a danger that constantly threatened my very life – myself. I used to think it was because of my terrible, shameful weakness that I dreamed of death so often. What sort of pitiful, pathetic creature was I that I couldn’t handle the ordinary travails of life? And I really thought I could not only survive but thrive in a wild life that would be incomparably harder? What a joke.

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But what I have come to see is that I simply didn’t see the point. Every time I drew near the edge, it wasn’t from the pain of life. It was from the pointlessness of it. What was the point, the purpose of struggling through life? Why endure it? For myself? To carve out a good life for myself? And then what? Was I the whole purpose of my life?

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Not enough.

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I needed this fight. I needed a point in the struggles. I always did. That was the true nail in the coffin in my profession – there was no point to all I did.

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But now I do have a purpose. I have a fight. I have a reason to face all the trials of life and say, “Screw the pain.” God is simply saying “yes” to my desire for the extraordinary life and then whispering, “You up for this?”

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“Yes,” I say stubbornly back to him, feeling life curl up in me where there was none before. “We’re wildernessing.”

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Hit it.

The Meaning of Victory - 3-18-10

vic·to·ry

1. a success or triumph over an enemy in battle or war

2. an engagement ending in such triumph

3. the ultimate and decisive superiority in any battle or contest

4. a success or superior position achieved against any opponent, opposition, difficulty, etc.

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Synonyms
Victory, conquest, triumph refer to a successful outcome of a struggle. Victory suggests the decisive defeat of an opponent in a contest of any kind. Conquest implies the taking over of control by the victor, and the obedience of the conquered. Triumph implies a particularly outstanding victory.

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This is my name.

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Stubborn Faith - 3-16-10

You are my God.

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When the way grows dark and my feelings have left me, I will hold to this truth. I am stubborn. I am Jacob. To you go the first-fruits of my stubbornness. And I will yet say:

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You are my God. You are mine.

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“My soul clings to you,

Your right hand upholds me.”

(Ps. 63:8)

What No Mind Has Conceived - 3-14-10

I think I know why I have been kept so pure and untouched all these years, through all the lonely years when I despaired of ever being touched, when I raged that there couldn’t possibly be reason enough for me to have gone so completely unknown.

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It wasn’t just because I was made for him and him alone. I truly am God’s gift to my beloved.

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When B____ and I were dating, we didn’t do much, but what we did do was astounding to both of us. For me it answered so many half-fearful questions about whether or not I would ever be satisfied; if I was simply destined to be unsatisfied as I had been my whole life. I had come to suspect that my sights were set so high and my solitary, untempered expectations had simply become too top-heavy to ever find satisfaction in real life. For B____, he murmured to me that he wanted me more than any other woman he had known. And as careful as he always was with his words and intimated promises, I knew that was the absolute truth. Everything one of us did was instinctively, without being taught or modified, exactly what the other responded to. It was magical.

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But one of the things that made B____ draw away was not only that he just couldn’t see how this could go on and work out when I was waiting for marriage and he was kept in exquisite agony, wanting me but never having me. No, that wasn’t all of it. Poor thing was completely conflicted, unable to see how such an unprecedented relationship was to go on for days and weeks and months, and he was not particularly adept at taking a chance when he had no risk assessment. I was completely uncharted territory. And he didn’t have a map, a compass, a machete, nothing. How could he strike out into the wilderness when he had never been taught how to have faith enough to do it?

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But one of the other things that drew him away from me was my reason for saving myself. I was doing it for my husband, because I loved and respected him enough before having ever met him to wait for him. It was the best way I could think of to prove my faithfulness to him. And B____ couldn’t wrap his brain around it. He said he would never expect such a thing from a woman. And many months later, in one of the last conversations I had with him, the subject came up, and he admitted I made him feel bad, like some lustful pig, and that he had never done such a thing for any woman, his future wife included. I made him feel inadequate. How ironic. It’s usually the virgin who claims inadequacy.

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One of B____’s deepest wounds is being absolutely, totally convinced that he is not worthy of anything special. Anything “the eye has not seen, the ear has not heard, and the mind has not conceived” is more than he could possibly deserve. He always expected that he would always and only get what everyone else got. After all, what made him so special? From his birth, when his father’s health first began to decline, he was shunted aside. He was the baby, but where he would have in another situation been coddled and doted on as the baby and only son, he was informed steadily and subtly that his place in his family was most secure when he was no trouble. Babies of the family often deal with the good (getting the most attention) and the bad (always getting hand-me-downs). He got only the latter. To add wound to wound, he was mercilessly teased by everyone in his family as he was growing up. You would never know it, looking at him now, so big and strong and good-looking, so confident and funny, but he told me himself about those wounds when I shared my own. (This is what he meant about him not being able to keep me at a distance like he managed to do with all the other women, because as he said it, I was so emotionally open.) So all his life, B____ has had to make himself content with what floated down to him. He would watch as the hand-me-downs of life drifted by and he would reach out and pince them out of the current. Never in a million years would he ever countenance anybody thinking he was worthy of the first-fruits of anything. And never in a billion would he ever think God himself thinks that. Which is why my purity didn’t enchant him; it disturbed him. Other women had always been so much easier for him to be with because they were more clouded mirrors to see himself in. He had even said to me that with all the other women there were flaws that left him a little unsatisfied, but he couldn’t see that in me. He had seen my flaws and my weaknesses but they just didn’t seem to fall into that same category with other women. Well, that would seem a good thing, but it only drove him to face the question, “But how can I possibly be worthy of such a thing?”

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He will come to me when he can share his freedom, express his masculinity, give me his strength because he has already found the source of those things in God. He will not look for confirmation of them in me. He will come to me full and able to give and share with freedom. And only then will he have eyes to see that God does indeed know him worthy of what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no mind has conceived. I am that. I am the wilderness he didn’t think himself strong enough to explore, I am the gift he never believed he was worthy of, I am Eve, made for him and him alone. This remarkable woman who astounded him from our first emails was not shared with anyone else because he himself was the person intended for it all along. He was the only person God made deserving enough for all I am.

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I am God’s expression of B____’s worthiness, of his utterly special place as a son of God. No one with that identity in Christ could be anything less than worthy of what no mind, let alone B____’s, has conceived.