Taboo Topics: Losing a baby: For those who are not the person who has gone through it.

i thought i was finished with this series on people who have lost a child and then i received this email from a friend of mine who lost a baby. i knew this was one more to be shared and i imagine it will impact a lot of people deeply. i want to encourage those of you who read it to refrain from doing what we often do when hearing someone’s story – justifying, rationalising, critiquing, judging, preparing our response and more – just try and read the story and really hear the voice of a parent who has lost a child and is still in that place of it not being okay. just hear what is being courageously shared. [my friend asked to remain anonymous to protect the people in their life that this speaks to/about]:

Don’t tell me how many times it’s happened to you, I don’t want to know the possibilities of this ever happening again. I can’t see my way through now, how can I comprehend ever going through this again?

Don’t expect me to be better after the time you’ve set out as being reasonable, It may take 5 years, it may never be over. Look out for me, make sure I’m not stuck in a season, but don’t expect me to be fine by now

Don’t treat me like I’m over it, When you see one day that I’m the person I used to be before all this happened, then you can treat me like I’m over it.

I will never be the person I used to be before all this happened

Don’t tell me 4 weeks after my baby has died that you’re pregnant and expect me to be happy for you. I hate you, I hate the God who has allowed you to be happy and not me, I hate the people congratulating you. I am working through asking God for forgiveness for hating. How do you ask a God you don’t trust anymore for forgiveness? I am working through feeling guilty for no longer trusting a God I have always known. How does a God you’ve always known to be one thing suddenly change? I’m working through not seeing God as I’ve always known Him to be. Do you see what your “announcement” has set off in me?

Don’t judge me when you don’t see me singing in Church, I’m reading every song in a different light and with a different perspective, I’m evaluating whether or not I can honestly sing any of those words and mean them even a tiny bit anymore. I’m feeling judged for sitting in church week after week without praising, I don’t want to be here, I want to be in bed feeling sorry for myself, but I’m not…I’m here, I’m with you, it’s a massive step…recognize that

Don’t tell me it’s all going to be ok, you don’t know that. You told me it was all going to be ok when I went for my scan, we know what happened after that…Tell me you love me and you’re there for me, tell me you’ll walk this road with me no matter how long it is, tell me you won’t judge me, tell me you’ll try

Don’t tell me you understand. Really? Your puppies got run over, you understand “exactly what I’m going through”? You will never understand. Maybe one day (hopefully never though) you’ll have some kind of idea, but you’ll never understand. I don’t pretend to understand what someone else in my same situation is going through. That’s because they are unique, their situation will be perceived from the point where their personalities and outside influences affect them. I’ll never 100% understand what they are going through. You do not have the capability of understanding so telling me “you understand” only minimizes my experience of this to the size of your ability to comprehend it. I don’t blame you for not understanding though, I envy you.

Don’t tell me you’re sorry for my “unfortunate situation”. My baby died and was torn from inside me, you term that “unfortunate”?

Don’t offer empty words of consolation, hug me, I’ll know exactly what you’re saying.

Don’t make every “coffee date” a time for you to find out how I’m doing, I want to be able to go for coffee with you without the anxiety of what questions you’re going to ask me, and how those questions will affect me on this specific day. Let the conversations happen naturally, but listen…because somewhere in that conversation I will tell you how I’m doing…

Don’t pretend awkwardly that you haven’t heard me mention something about my baby or how I’m feeling today. Follow up, listen and talk with me, I’m feeling strong enough to open up and talk, don’t ignore me, that’ll only make me feel as if you think I shouldn’t be talking about it.

Don’t let me eat alone in the days right after everything. I feel guilty for even feeling the need to eat at a time like this. Bring food, it’ll make me realize that you think I should be eating even at a time like this and then I can feel just a little less guilty. Don’t ask me what I eat or don’t eat, I feel guilty for being hungry remember? It’d probably make me feel a little less guilty by eating food I completely dislike so I really don’t mind

Don’t make every meeting a somber event, make space for me to have normal times, you know, like when we lived life innocently and we’d go to each other’s houses and play games or watch a comedy together, or we’d go have breakfast in the park. I want ‘normal’, I crave ‘normal’, I can’t get ‘normal’ on my own, I need you to make it for me

Don’t look at my tummy in the months after, to see if I might be pregnant. I’m aware of not being pregnant every day, so keep your eyes off my tummy. Believe me, you’ll know when I’m pregnant again, I’ll be shouting it from the rooftops. So please, don’t make me insecure wondering when someone’s going to ask me about my tummy just because it’s a bit bigger…maybe from being pregnant before, maybe from a bit of extra weight that sadness has added on

Don’t tell me it was probably for the better. Would you ever go to the mother of a disabled child and tell her it would’ve been for the better if her child had not lived? That’s what you’re saying when you tell me that. I would’ve loved a disabled child, or a sick child, etc inspite of all that. That was my baby, I don’t care what was wrong with him/her

Don’t forget the important dates, I’m remembering them, I’ll never forget. The date we found out we were pregnant, the date we heard our baby’s heart beat, the date the doctor told us our baby was dead, our baby’s due date, what would’ve been our baby’s 1st birthday, it goes on, it forever will. When I’m still raw, remember the dates

Don’t tell me I have a choice as to how I’m going to let things affect me. Do you think I would ever choose to have things affect me like they do sometimes? I don’t have a choice in how things are going to affect me, from one day to the next I have no clue how even a simple question will affect me. You asked me yesterday How I am, I said fine, You asked me today…I burst out crying. You asked me this morning how my day has been, I said great, you asked me this evening…I got angry at you. You asked me at 13:00 what I’m up to later, I said I was going out, you asked me at 15:00…I was curled up comatose on my bed. You asked me at 20:00 how I was, I said good, you asked me at 20:05…I was cursing God. I don’t know from one minute to the next how things are going to go, my life is in turmoil.

Don’t expect me to be your support. I don’t want to know whether or not you’re coping, I don’t have the emotional capability to handle your feelings. You have your own support system, go to it so you can be mine.

Don’t get upset if I react negatively to something you say to me. I’m sorry for hurting you, but right now you’re the stronger one, can you carry that for me? Please?

Don’t tell me (as you roll your eyes at something your child is doing) “one day you’ll understand”. I understand now. I am a mother. I became a mother and my husband became a father on the day our baby was conceived. I may not have a living baby to prove it to you, but he/she will forever be alive in our hearts. We are parents, we just ‘understand’ a different area of parenting than what you do.

Don’t think that when I’m laughing I am not grieving anymore. I feel guilty, I feel as if I am betraying my baby’s memory.

Don’t forget that I’m still grieving. I know it’s hard for you to be aware of things you say to me, but please, is it such a burden to carry in light of everything? Will you carry that for me?

Don’t think my pain is healed. A part of me will forever be broken, but I will learn to live with that…in time

Don’t get annoyed or hurt when I don’t rejoice with you when you tell me you’re pregnant, I haven’t slammed the door in your face. I want to, but I haven’t because I care for you and want to protect you from me so that you can have the space to rejoice for you. I can’t right now, because I’m using all my energy to fight against hating and envying you, but I’m quiet, and that is my way of saying I care enough to be silent.

Don’t get upset when I don’t talk or open up to you. My words are coming from a place of pain, anguish and turmoil. I love you, that is why I’m silent. My words will only hurt you, so I keep them inside.

I used the analogy once when someone asked me how I was, I said it was like that earthquake that hit Japan last year. One week Japan was thriving, nothing on the horizon that was going to turn their world upside down. The next week everything had changed, all there was for as far as you could see was rubble. Lives that had crumbled into little bits that were no longer recognizable, nothing visible that was still intact. Nothing remotely resembling the life they had, the dreams they held for their futures.

Hopelessness, deep, deep sorrow, utter disbelief. The week before they couldn’t imagine anything like this, they didn’t have the ability to even comprehend the devastation lying ahead for them. In the first few days, no one knew where to even start. Where do you start to begin putting your life together again? How do you begin to fix years and years of life that has been broken down to nothing in just a matter of minutes?

Slowly you pick up a brick and move it out of the way. After a while the bricks become too heavy because your arms are tired, so you start moving pieces of broken brick instead. You rest a while. You’re tired, but your life is in limbo at the moment because you have no security, you have no confidence, you have no dreams for the future, you have no hope. You keep your head down because to look at the ruins of your home, your life, your dreams, as a whole picture is too painful, you can’t bear it. So you keep plodding on with your head down. Eventually you reach the base of where your house once stood. There’s a lot more rubble here because of the size of what once stood there, but you’ve made progress. What lies ahead is a much bigger task than what you’ve gone through already but you have nothing else to do, no other reason to do anything. So you keep going. You think of giving up sometimes because of the strain of it all, but you don’t. You don’t know what drives you, you don’t know what pushes you to keep going but you do. Maybe it’s the fleeting thought that one day you will have a house again, if you just clear this mess, you can build a life, build hopes and dreams and a future. The size of the task is daunting, but you keep going.

After days or weeks, or months, you lift another brick, but this time you see something underneath it. It’s dusty and dirty, and you can’t see it clearly, but you know it’s something you recognize and so you reach for it. It’s a vase, a simple thing that used to hold such beauty. It’s not damaged. Maybe a little dusty, but it’s still intact. You can’t believe it. How did anything survive? You cling to it as if it is the most precious thing in the world. You carry on clearing up. More things slowly start to appear while you’re clearing away the rubble. They begin to form a pile and the pile grows and slowly… keeps growing. Every now and then you go and sit next your pile, and admire the things that are still intact, the good memories start to fill you and give you strength. You get enough strength to go back and clear a bigger section. The times between clearing and resting grow bigger. What once used to fill your days is still there, and always will be, but you have hope now, it may be only a little, but you see how far you’ve come, you could never have imagined getting to this point but somehow you have, you’re a survivor, you ARE strong enough. The road ahead is long. Your house will never look the way it did before, but you start to recognize it as home, you start to see the possibilities in your future. But you never forget, to forget would mean to nullify everything you’ve been through and besides, how could you forget something that impacted your life so much, no, you never forget, but you begin to learn how to live with the memories…

Prayer-liners [ii]

some more quotes from ‘Prayer: Does it make any difference?’ by Philip Yancey, which you really should read:

‘Be still and know that I am God’: the Latin imperative for ‘be still’ is vacate. As Simon Tugwell explains, ‘God invites us to take a holiday [vacation], to stop being God for a while, and let Him be God.’ Too often we think of prayer as a serious chore, something that must be scheduled around other appointments, shoe-horned in among other pressing activities. We miss the point, says Tugwell: ‘God is inviting us to take a break, to play truant. We can stop doing all those important things we have to do in our capacity as God, and leave it to Him to be God.’ [pg. 19]

‘Why pray? I have asked this question almost every day of my Christian life, especially when God’s presence seems faraway and I wonder if prayer is a pious form of talking to myself. I have asked it when I read theology, wondering what use there may be in repeating what God must surely know. My conclusions will unfold only gradually, but I begin here because prayer has become for me much more than a shopping list of requests to present to God. It has become a re-alignment of everything, I pray to restore the truth of the universe, to gain a glimpse of the world, and of me, through the eyes of God. In prayer I shift my point of view away from my own selfishness. I climb above the timber line and look down at the speck that is myself. I gaze at the stars and recall what role I or any of us play in a universe beyond comprehension. Prayer is the act of seeing reality from God’s point of view.’ [pg. 21]

for more thoughts on prayer, click here.

psalmthing to chew on: psalm 21

there are some lines in this psalm that are not as easy to digest as they used to be and i am not going to focus on that, because i am clearly not exegiting the psalms, but simply pulling out lines and ideas that strike me…

and with psalm 20, it is verse 6 and 7:

‘Surely You have granted him unending blessings and made him glad with the joy of Your presence.’ [verse 6]

i like that phrase ‘the joy of Your presence’ despite being in a place and time where, feelingwise, God feels pretty distant… largely linked to the fact that my wife is sick with a horrible cough and no amount of praying seems to move His hand on that [me and God always seem to have issues on the healing thing - money? no problem, faith for a million bucks... but a simple healing? and just a wall!]… but that is part of my understanding of the concept of joy, i think.

the way i see it, happiness is situation dependent – you give me a chocolate, i am happy – there is nice weather, i am happy – johnny depp is in a new movie, i am happy… whereas joy can be situation irrelevant. so the beautiful Val is sick which does not make me happy, but there is an inner joy linked to a belief in God and in the fact that in the bigger picture everything is taken care of and will be okay again… so for me, joy is kinda like a happiness [similar feeling a lot of the time] but one that runs deeper.

and so ‘the joy of your presence’ is comforting. because i have experienced it to be true, and i imagine i will again. as i like to say [and write], God is bigGER!

‘For the king trusts in the LORD; through the unfailing Love of the Most High, he will not be shaken.’ [verse 7]

what i like about this second verse is the phrase ‘unfailing Love’ which i’ve given a capital ‘L’ to because God’s Love is so much bigger and richer and higher and deeper and effective… and then that because of this Love and being able to trust in it, the king will ‘not be shaken.’

that is powerful. being able to trust in the Love of the God i serve, also helps me not to be shaken. it is something i can cling to. it is something i believe in and it is something i have experienced, both directly and through God’s people, the church. and that is an exciting, transforming thing.

psalmthing to chew on: psalm 20

there seem to be a lot of ‘i’ and ‘me’ psalms leading up to psalm 20 and then some that focus on God but from an ‘i’ or ‘me’ perspective… and so this one has a very different feel to it:

‘May the LORD answer you when you are in distress; may the name of the God of Jacob protect you.
May he send you help from the sanctuary and grant you support from Zion.
May he remember all your sacrifices and accept your burnt offerings.
May he give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed.
May we shout for joy over your victory and lift up our banners in the name of our God.
May the LORD grant all your requests.’ [verse 1-5]

 

the last line of ‘LORD, give victory to the king! Answer us when we call!’ [verse 9] seems to confuse that sense a little bit and in fact it is verse 7 that introduces the ‘we’ to this psalm: ‘Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. They are brought to their knees and fall, but we rise up and stand firm.’ [verse 7-8] – and end it in a more community sense, but it definitely has a different feel and even the ‘we’ in verse 5 is more of a ‘you’ as it talks about the community celebrating the individual victory.

the psalm begins with a strong sense of calling down blessing and ends with that reminder above, which is probably the primary thing i take from this psalm, that some will trust the creations of their hands [chariots] and others will trust in nature [horses] but we will trust in the one who created both man’s hands and nature [the name of the Lord our God].

this psalm drips with the faithfulness of God and is a great reminder in times when it doesn’t seem like He is near or cares much, that we should continue to call out to Him, as He has proved faithful in the past and will do so again.

psalmthing to chew on: psalm 19

psalm 19 is a tough one. because there is just so much in it. it is a beautiful, beautiful psalm. make sure you read the whole thing.

It starts so powerfully with a declaration of who God is:

‘The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.’ [Psalm 19.1] This makes me think of Jesus calming the storm in the boat ['The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!” He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. 25 “Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples. In fear and amazement they asked one another, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.” [Luke 8.24-25]] and when Jesus entered Jerusalem triumphantly ['When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” Luke 19.37-40]

the message is that God will be praised and if we can’t do it then nature will take over. the glory and creativity and imagination of God are all revealed through nature. take a moment to praise God and add your voice or the meditation of your heart to the chorus…

verse 4 ['In the heavens He has pitched a tent for the sun'] got a little more chaotic when i read it to my wife [aka the beautiful Val] because it reminded both of us of a really funny awkward sermon moment which happened here.

but back to more serious things. STOP LAUGHING!

this next section i just loved the poetry in the writing:

‘The law of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul.

The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple.

The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart.

The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes.

The fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever.

The decrees of the LORD are firm, and all of them are righteous.

They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold;

they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.

By them your servant is warned; in keeping them there is great reward.’

The first time i read over this psalm i read the word ‘warned’ in verse 11 as ‘warmed’ and i think it works both ways… because when you start to know and experience the character, heart and faithfulness of God, then even His commands/law/statutes warm you – there is a confidence and sense of being able to trust this God who promises to be with you even when you are ‘broken-hearted’ or ‘crushed in spirit’ [psalm 34.18] and even when you are walking through ‘the valley of the shadow of death’ [psalm 23.4] – He won’t take all the bad away, but He will strengthen and comfort and walk alongside you…

verse 12 and 13 ask for protection and forgiveness from sins we are aware of and even those we may not be which is a good reminder of the accountability we need to have with other people who can help point out our weaknesses in love as we invite them to.

and then the psalm ends powerfully with: ‘May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.’ [vs 14]

if only all Christ followers, myself included, could start each day with that prayer and then try and back it up with our actions, we would completely start to transform the world…

psalmthing to chew on: psalm 10

‘Why, LORD, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?’ [vs.1]

that is how this psalm starts and it reminds me of that old – ‘if there is a huge distance between you and God, guess who moved?’ – which in some dimensions might be a cheesy christian car bumper sticker, but actually there is a lot of truth to it and i am reminded of a couple of verses instantly:

‘The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit.’ [psalm 34.18]

‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for You are with me, Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.’ [psalm 23.4]

‘Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you.” [deuteronomy 31.6, repeated in hebrews 13.5]

and then this conversation between Moses and God in Exodus 33:

‘Moses said to the LORD, “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ 13 If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.”

The LORD replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. 16 How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”

And the LORD said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”’ [vs. 12-17]

Again, the psalmist is just speaking his heart when he cries [because i get the strong impression it's a cry or a wail]: ‘Why, LORD, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?’ [vs.1]

Whereas God has promised again and again that He will be there. He won’t necessarily remove bad times [which is why we end up feeling like He is not present] but He has promised to be near when they strike: ‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’ [Romans 8.28]

And once more the psalmist ends at the point of realising this and pointing it out for himself – the undeniable strains of the character of God revealed in ways like this: ‘The LORD is King for ever and ever; the nations will perish from his land. You, LORD, hear the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed, so that mere earthly mortals will never again strike terror.’ [psalm 10.16-18]

psalmthing to chew on: psalm 9

the danger of this, for me, much like for a preacher to be planning a preach, is that the reading becomes preparation for blogging as in reading to find my blog point… and so i am doing my best to ensure that doesn’t happen by trying to read the psalm a number of times, where a later one of those will be to draw out the point i am wanting to share, but the first one is simply to read and embrace the psalm for what it is…

and so on to psalm 9:

for starters, this is a great reminder of a good place to start prayer – with recognition of Who God is and praising His name…

‘I will give thanks to you, LORD, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.
I will be glad and rejoice in you; I will sing the praises of your name, O Most High.’ [vs.1-2]

Then this part of the psalm jumped out at me:

‘The LORD reigns forever; He has established His throne for judgment.
He rules the world in righteousness and judges the peoples with equity.
The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.
Those who know Your name trust in You, for You, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek You.’ [vs.7-10]

what i was reminded of is the two facts i know about God – one, that God is Love, and two, that God is Just… and sometimes those characteristics may seem to contradict each other, but the reality is they never do. God’s Love never cancels out His Justice [His Justice makes the punishment for sin death but His Love causes Him to send His Son Jesus to take that punishment of death in our place] and likewise His Justice never cancels out His Love.

there is a lot more, and this psalm is worth a couple of read-throughs, but those were two things that stood out for me… what about you?

Prickly City – new cartoon worth taking a look at…

my brother-in-law keith just introduced me to this new cartoon strip called Prickly City by a guy called Scott Stantis and i took a look at a bunch of them and there’s some good stuff – great series on the Occupy phenomenon and some other good ones – here are a quick pick:

on the place of using metaphor to understand/describe God [part i]

i have been busy reading brian mclaren’s ‘Generous Orthodoxy’ and as a previous not-a-big-fan-of-brian-mclaren am absolutely loving it and highly recommend it – breaks open a lot of different boxes and helps clarify a bunch of christian labels in a very helpful way…

here is an extract from the latest chapter which i really enjoyed titled, “Why I am Mystical/Poetic.” and the context is using metaphors to understand God:

‘So we reach for another metaphor to correct the first, and we say that God is also a father, or a friend, or a shepherd, or a vinedresser, or wind, or storm, or fire, or water, or a rock. Each metaphor enlightens, but if taken too far, or taken in the wrong way, it can mislead. (Is God cold and uncaring like a rock? Shapeless and conforming like water?) We must, therefore never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God – whether in prose or in poetry. Romano Guardini, chaplain to Pope John XXIII in the Second Vatican Council era, captured the challenge of trying to speak of God and divine truth:

“[When one] attempts to convey something of God’s holy otherness he tries one earthly simile after another. In the end he discards them all as inadequate and says apparently wild and senseless things meant to startle the heart into feeling what lies beyond the reaches of the brain. Something of the kind takes place here: “Eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Cor 2.9). [These realities beyond understanding] can be brought closer only by the overthrow of everything naturally comprehensible. Flung into a world of new logic, we are forced to make a genuine effort to understand.”

Now there is no need to swing to an opposite extreme, to say that since even metaphors can mislead, we might as well give up on language altogether. C.S. Lewis caught the needed balance – that language can be a window through which one glimpses God, but never a box in which God can be contained – in a dense but brilliant poem called “A Footnote to All Prayers.” The poem begins:

The one whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow.
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring
Thou

Then he compares himself to Phaedius, a classical Greek sculptor famous for his majestic sculptures of the gods:

And dream of Phaedian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images of folk-lore dream…

Lewis goes on to say that people deceive themselves in prayer, thinking that their images or thoughts of God are actually God, and comparesall our prayers to arrows aimed wide of their target (but that God mercifully hears despite their bad aim). All who pray, he realises, are idolators “crying unheard/To a deaf idol” if God takes the words of their prayers absolutely literally. He concludes by begging God to “take not… our literal sense” but rather to translate our limping metaphors into God’s “great/unbroken speech.”

A generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, narrow, controlling, or critical orthodoxies of so much of Christian history, doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is humble; it doesn’t claim too much; it admits it walks with a limp. It doesn’t consider orthodoxy the exclusive domain of prose scholars (theologians) alone but, like Chesterton, welcomes the poets, the mystics, and even those who choose to say very little or to remain silent, including the disillusioned and the doubters. Their silence speaks eloquently of the majesty of God that goes beyond all human articulation. And it welcomes the activists, the humanitarians, the brave and courageous and compassionate, because their actions speak volumes about God tha could never be captured in a text, a sermon, an outline, or even a poem.”

[a Generous Orthodoxy, brian mclaren, pg 170-172]

why i believe that God is not faithfull

i was thinking about this the other day and it’s a pretty silly semantical thort but it was mine and that it was too. [eh hem]

and hopefully someone is already penning me an email [can one do that?] to tell me i spelt ‘faithful’ wrong, without reading the blog post [those are some of my favourite people] but actually that was the thort that ran thru my head the other day

God is faithful, for sure, i have no doubt of that and especially so after experiencing it [albeit on many 11 hour 56 minute occasions] many times the first half of this year, but He is not faith full as in full of faith, because God doesn’t need faith like we do.

Why not? Because He knows Himself. i think some dead english guy wrote the phrase “to thine own self be true” which is what God absolutely is. God cannot not be true to Himself. He is Love and Justice and Mercy and Grace and Faithfulness and Wisdom and all of those descriptors get a capital letter when speaking about Him because that is when they are at their absolute truest.

So God doesn’t need faith in Himself – hope that He will act in the way He should, because He is God and that is who He is and He will absolutely always act true to Himself and His character.

So God is definitely not faithfull. He doesn’t need any faith.

But what He is, is Trustworthy.

Which we have learnt from experiencing His faithfulness.

the beautiful val and i started the year trusting that the belief i had that God was wanting us to wait on Him for plans for this year was a valid one and so we waited and prayed and asked and answered other peoples questions using the phrase ‘i don’t know’ to good effect and then two possibilities came up – the Simple Way which we are doing and an internship [for tbV] with IJM [International Justice Mission] which we are not [at the moment anyway]. the process happened pretty smoothly and at the end of april we were invited to join the Simple Way in Philadelphia [those who have read 'The Irresistible Revolution' will know what it is, those who haven't should!] for 19 months with val working in crisis management and emergency services and me being involved with the hospitality house which deals with people coming to check out the work and happenings of the Simple Way and hopefully some communications stuff as well.

which left us with the big 5 – getting someone to take over our apartment, selling both our cars, getting visas, buying air tickets and getting rid of our stuff [with a 6th one - paying off val study visa and car loan - lurking quietly in the background] which have now largely been taken care of thankx to incredible provision by God and people who love Him [and love us which is really cool] – getting no salaries from Feb [and then having the two salaries we were meant to get in April not arrive due to a clerical error] meant that we really had to trust God a lot that we were being obedient to what He had said – and sometimes literally the night before we needed money it would appear in our account, with no-one knowing that we needed it. The visas are on hold as we wait for some info from the Simple Way which we should get later today and it seems like we will get better ones than we were applying for. We were blown away by a gift from a good friend last nite that will allow us to, as val would say, punch number 6 in the face. So it is all looking good.

Did we triumphantly trust God the whole way with no doubting or second-guessing or getting ready to panic or stress or make a plan B? Absolutely not. We had moments of weakness and struggle and panic and doubt. But we continued to trust through it all and God, as always, continued to prove faithful and show us, in His perfect timing that He has us. And a lot of the time He did it through His church, the Christ-following people we are fortunate enuff to be in relationship with. And not always the ones we suspected it would be. We have been pleasantly surprised time and time again.

So God doesn’t need faith. Therefore He cannot be faithfull.
But God is trustworthy, not always in the ways we expect, and so He is absolutely faithful.
Church, when it works, is incredible.
and some other fourth thing…