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Journal of an Awakening

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One week ago this day, something beautiful happened. I came alive spiritually. After some prayer and listening to the Spirit, I am endeavoring to write a journal of my experiences and lessons learned, perhaps to be of use to others who are at a time of dryness, or at least to be of use to myself when my love has grown cold. D.L. Moody said that he was like a leaky bucket, needing to be refilled again and again. In that regard, I believe he speaks for all of us, or at least me at any rate. There are times that I am very much spiritually alive, and times of being bleak and dull. (I don't mean the long, dark night of the soul where we seem to be in a desert wasteland without finding the God we earnestly seek, but are very close to the God who seems so far; I mean times where our love has grown cold, where we do not sense God and do not particularly seek him. The latter is where I was.) This journal starts today, and I do not know where it will end — my guess is that it will taper off when I next begin to drift from God, and/or there will be some point when I realize that I have not written anything in a while and it is now a closed book. Before that point comes, however, I think I have a lot to write.

With that done, let me first tell how I have come to this infusion of spiritual life.

I was walking outside and met a friend, and we talked. When he asked me how I was doing, I didn't have much to say, but mentioned a few thoughts I'd had. Then I asked him how he was doing, and he said that he had been feeling really close to God, and more aware of other people.

I hadn't mentioned, because it had been around so long, the emptiness I was feeling, and I became more acutely aware of how dry my own spiritual life had been, how mechanical of an exercise my Bible reading was.

That night, I was walking over to Wheaton's campus for Pooh's Corner (a group of people that meets to read children's books aloud). A long and slow-moving freight train was crossing the tracks. While I was standing and waiting, I thought about the conversation and my own dryness, and decided to work on my spiritual state when I got home.

—No, not when you get home. Now.

—Not now! I'm waiting for a train.

—Now.

I decided to do something then and there. But what? Iniative and power are all on God's side; there was nothing I could do that would accomplish closeness between God and me. So I prayed a simple prayer.

That moment, I was filled with joy and peace, deeper than I had known in a long time. I paced back and forth in that joy and peace waiting for the train — enjoying through them the simple little things: the walking, the sound of the train. Whatever I did, there was God.

I thought about Thérèse de Lisieux's little way (as depicted in the movie Household Saints), about resting in God's presence, and of being in God's will in even the most simple places — even waiting for a train. At a low spot — when I medically can't work above half-time, and have an intermittent job not related to computers — and when used to thinking about serving God in spectacular and heroic ways, it was good to realize that. I went on to Pooh's corner, and enjoyed things there a great deal more. There were milk and cookies, and I enjoyed them in a different way than I usually enjoy food. I usually eat good food slowly and in little bites, to consciously savor its flavor — but I do not completely engage, or rather I am not able to let go of my disengagement. This time I was able to engage, and not just with the milk and cookies; I was also able to engage with the camaraderie and silliness.

When I create something (even something little), there is a first conception of the idea, then an incubation period where I let the idea ferment, then a time of implementation. The fermenting period is one which I cherish, and one which I had rarely experienced since a loss of creativity. I experienced it then. I also spent time worrying about the loss of the joy and peace, although I tried not to.

I am not sure how to begin; a lot has happened since then. My account will probably grow more linear and chronological as time moves on, but the account of the days before will probably be more by lessons learned and by theme.

The lessons I have learned have not in a sense been new lessons, in the sense of something I couldn't have articulated before, but I have owned and experienced the knowledge more deeply.

The first lesson has to do with the bread from Heaven, manna. It was divine nourishment, and it required trust in God. You couldn't gather extra for two days; it would spoil. However much you gathered, it was enough. These two principles I have found to apply to God's presence, and spiritual nourishment.

I struggle with wanting to have things under control, to know ahead of time what to do with my time (in small part to avoid boredom, and in large part to continue to be nourished and grow close to God), and God doesn't tell me. That is better for my learning to trust him, I think. God isn't giving me a programme to follow. He's giving me a relationship.

I've read that spiritual growth is slow and gradual, and I believe it is. Growth since that one mountaintop experience has been imperceptible. But here is a case of a sudden growth. I think that that is a matter of God working differently with different people, meeting each where he needs to be met. Perhaps next time his work with me will be entirely slow — I believe I am growing and changing, but God plans on a larger scale than one week.

Before that Tuesday, I was uniformly groggy. My emotions after then have been a little bit of a roller coaster — I've had some moments of bliss, and some moments of sadness. Now I am feeling groggy and perhaps a little depressed — although that's probably because I didn't get enough sleep. God has blessed me with emotions; now perhaps he is trying to wean me off of them. He saved me for himself, not for emotions. I hope that the good feelings won't end yet, though; I need to heal from pain. I ask that I may first have him, and then after that enjoy him through emotional blessings.

I have been reminded of, and appreciating, the way of the heart described in Brent Curtis's Less-Wild Lovers: Standing at the Crossroads of Desire, which I will summarize/condense here, and would highly encourage you to read:

There is within us a yearning for a sacred Romance, a haunting that won't go away. Art, literature, music have explored this Romance and its loss. It uncontrollably haunts through natural beauty, telling of something lost with a promise to return.

If this were all there was to it, that would be great — but it's not. The Romance has an enemy, the Message of the Arrows.

We once trusted in good because we had not known evil. Now we must trust in good, with full knowledge of evil. Our loss of innocence came through painful experiences we adapted to by wearing a false self.

The Romance appears through things — moonlight, a song — but those things will sear us if we think the Romance is in them. We can hurt ourselves by trying to capture the things through which Romance has shown, or we can hurt ourselves by trying to forget the Haunting, and resigning ourselves to the Romance's loss. This resignation sees good as not startling, but only "nice", and evil as normal.

In resignation we give up on the sacred Romance, but our heart will not give up, and we compromise. We become, and take, less-wild lovers.

God calls us to give up the less-wild lovers, embrace our nakedness, and trust in his goodness. We are at a fork in the road. The one path can only be seen for a short distance, and looks uncertain, unpredictable. Anxious, we have no good road map, but just snippets of travellers before: encouraging but frustratingly vague.

The other way looks straight and safe far as the eye can see, and signs promise success on the next leg if directions are precisely followed. We read one last note quaintly encouraging us to trust the goodness of the first path, and start on the route of discipline and duty.

We discover that we don't feel much of anything, don't connect with people. Our passions show themselves in inappropriate ways. Our heart is with us, journeying under protest. So we crush it with more activity — or let our heart have a secret life on the side. We arrive at Vanity Fair, peopled by deadness of spirit, lack of love, lust, pride, anger... We think this is as close to the Celestial City as we are going to get, and so set up shop and try to distract ourselves with the soul curiosities and anesthetics: Bible study, community service, religious seminars, hobbies... These are often good things, but misused to squelch our heart's longings.

Most of us fall into two categories vis-a-vis these less-wild lovers. There are those who anesthetize their hearts via competence or order (a clean desk, stellar athletic skills, impressive dinner parties, massive amounts of time reading Scriptire), like a picture perfect wife who is always busy, admirably involved with the community, and is never really there to her husband. Her sadness says, "My heart is not available for anything that is not safe and tame. I am careful to avoid surprises that might upset my control, and if you were wise, you would, too." She tries to keep away the pain of the Arrows by sealing off those compartments of the heart that have been wounded. She may have grown up in an atmosphere too delicate to handle the weight of her unedited soul.

Others choose a different kind of control: indulgence. They seek a taste of transcendence from non-transcendent sources: porn, obsession with sports, or living off our giftedness, which is like crack cocaine to our souls. They touch the heart-place made for transcendent communion without being transcendent, and shackle us: addiction.

Only unfallen communion will ever satisfy our desire, or allow it to drink freely without imprisoning it and us.

If God married to us experiences from the first group a legalistic controller, the second group is a harlot whose heart is seduced by every scent on the evening breeze. God says, "I love you and yet you betray me at the drop of a hat. Can't you see we're made for each other?"

God's love became even more wild, but we become and take on lovers that are less wild. We give up on being in a relationship of heroic proportions, and take what is smaller but under our control.

The indulgence looks better than anesthesia, but the passion must be fed by worship or use of the other and so does ot leave us free to love. Its pleasure is part of the vanity of vanities.

The formulae that seem to control everything, do not offer wisdom about what to do with the depth of desire God has given us. If we try to anesthetize the desire, we become relational islands, and if we seek to indulge then familiarity breeds contempt and we must seek mystery elsewhere.

What, then, is the road less travelled, the way of the heart?

Perhaps, more than improving our habits, we are to invite Jesus into the aching abyss of our hearts. Internal discipline is valuable, but discipline imposed from the outside will be defeated. There comes a point when renewed religious activity is worthless. We must place our hand in God's, and relate in a personal way to him. We are drawn to and fear this intimacy.

We are once again at the crossroads. There is a chasm between us and Christ, but he beckons and promises a bridge. We listen, but his words sound like many we should not have trusted. Some return to Vanity Fair, some close their eyes and take a step. We look in our valise, and pull words we disdained the last time we stood at a crossroads — now we see their truth. We see that good can be trusted in, and that God is good. We see that to be free, we must allow ourselves to be haunted, surprised by goodness we cannot hold.

We fear to really ask for such bold movement from the wild God, and sit down, honest with ourselves. Vanity Fair never really has felt like home. We are captured by our less-wild lovers. We take the step into freedom.

We are clueless as to how we will cross the abyss, but we are glad to be on our way.

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