things I’m learning as a twenty something

seeking healing

~ kwyatt1247 ~ Leave a comment

There’s not any degree of articulation that can describe the crushing weight of addiction. There will never be a combination of twenty-six letters that can adequately describe the way your breath quickens when you need a hit or the way your toes curl when you smell a drink and the slow, painful salivation of your mouth thirsting for a drink. (Even all of this, you see, is mediocrity.) And although I’ve never been addicted to a substance, I’ve been addicted to the blade when it breaks the skin and paints the roses red.

It’s been six months since I last deliberately harmed myself.  To be honest, I feel like a strange phenomenon-something they should make a documentary about, you know? Not at all because I’m anything extraordinary, but simply because after four years of being stuck at a red light, I’m now figuring out how to move forward, and I’m sure from an outside perspective, it’s quite a sight to see.

I was naive to think I could slam on the gas pedal and arrive at healing. The disappointment of that expectation slammed into my chest with such force, it knocked the oxygen out of my lungs. I had to sit in the car and attempt to frantically catch my breath with scrambling fingers, hoping no one saw me. But everyone saw. It was impossible not to see, really. They saw my desperate attempts to act like as if I’ve been driving my whole life. I wonder how many of my friends looked at me with big sympathetic eyes and just solemnly shook their head, as if to say “here we go …again.”

People struggling with addiction identify themselves by their addiction.  Due to their state of mind, we shouldn’t expect anything less. The focus of their addiction consumes their thoughts, which drives their actions. Especially if it’s a secret. But the Spirit has revealed to me in the last six months, the power of confession. Not just spiritually, but biologically, confession activates a special connection in the brain when the left (speech) and right (feeling) hemispheres are working together to confess thoughts/feelings. I’m never one to be the first to personally share things. (If I talk about myself for more than three minutes, I get uncomfortable that the attention is on me, and I feel like I’m self-absorbed. This is something that the Spirit is helping me to conquer. A community is built down a two way street, who knew?)  But when I was asked over coffee how long it had been since I took a blade to my skin, and I answered honestly-  life turned into blurred images, like the ones you see when you’re riding the tea cups. People tell you that you immediately feel free after confessing a long kept secret, but I’m not so sure. There was a sense of freedom, but like an illness, it got worse before it got better. The amount of shame was insurmountable, as it was being purged from my body. I had only ever seen my shame when I walked to the basement and looked at it through the darkness, but for the first time, it had been dragged into the light. I saw its ugly skeleton with sunken eyes, finally coming to an understanding that this friend I had was out to destroy me.

The past six months have been easily one of the toughest seasons of my life. There are days when I can feel the pain of the roots being pulled up from the pit of hell. Yes, there isn’t a better word for that darkness other than hell. I would be lying if I said I haven’t wanted to go back. But the grip of the hands of God- the hands that chiseled the mountains and deliberately placed a nucleus in its cell- is holding me, and I have to daily make the choice to let Him.

Through this He has taught me that healing doesn’t sweep over you like a sweet aroma. No, it’s the stench of bandaged wounds and bitter salts settling in a bath tub I choose to soak in. It’s the humbling process of learning to receive love, so I may walk out in freedom. I’ve come to terms with the fact that healing is something to be pursued. It’s not a force that will sweep over you and come when you call it, but it’s something you have to choose when you’re having a bad day. It’s like love in that way: it has to be chosen on the bad days. Really, healing is a form of love; it’s the process of learning to love yourself.

When my heart was grieved and my spirit was embittered,
I was senseless and ignorant; a brute beast before You.
Yet I’m always with You; You’ve taken my hand.
You wisely and tenderly lead me, and afterward
You will take me into Your glory.
Whom have I 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.
I’m in the very presence of God, how refreshing it is!
I’ve made the Lord God my home.
Psalm 73

not all water is from the same ocean

~ kwyatt1247 ~ Leave a comment

Lately I’ve been meditating on Peter and his relationship with Jesus. And I must shamefully confess that I envy Peter. I long for a brave, dare I say brash, boldness like Peter.

The passage in Matthew 14 of Peter and Jesus walking on water seems to capture their relationship in one passage. Peter is zealous with his love for Christ and asks to be called out on the water with him, yet when he takes a step in trusting Jesus, disbelief and fear overcome him. Ultimately his disbelief and fear is what inspires his belief.

I was created with a desire to go and to go far. It’s more than the twenty-something wanderlust, it’s a desire that I’ve had since I was very young, and it’s one that wants to lose itself in other cultures and other people. Oftentimes, when the church says “step out onto the waters,” we imply that this means ‘go to another country/city where you don’t know the language/culture/people and share the redeeming love of Christ.’ I’ve been programmed into thinking that an extravagant radical trip is what it means to step out in faith, but it wasn’t stepping out into faith, it was living one of my biggest dreams.

This is why I couldn’t comprehend saying no to an opportunity to go serve in Coney Island in Brooklyn this summer; an opportunity to do what I love, serving the impoverished, to lose myself in a new city, and take a break from what is around me.

I was given a great revelation: not all water is from the same ocean.

It turns out that my treacherous waters hold familiarity, routine, and the mundane. It’s one of my biggest fears to wake up ten years from now and be in the same place, working the same job, taking the same roads to the same places. Sameness terrifies me.

I asked Jesus a few weeks ago to “teach me how to walk on water.” He quickly reminded me that Peter never learned “how” when he stepped away from the boat. I asked Him instead to “show me what it looks like to stand where I’m supposed to sink.”

Not walk, but stand.  

I didn’t notice my word choice until yesterday. I saw Jesus walking on water, and I was stepping off my own boat to go to Him. But as I stood on the water, I became afraid. I just wanted to flee to Jesus out of fear for standing in one place for too long; I was afraid of sinking, and I wanted to be safe.

My fear- not my love- is what provoked me to run to Jesus.

But whenever I took that first step to run, Jesus told me to “stay.” The commander of the waves I was walking on commanded me, but I have the choice to obey Him, unlike they do. Staying would mean to stand still. Staying would mean to trust the power of my God over the power of the elements around me.  Staying would mean taking the risk of sinking.

And so, I stay. I stay in Dallas and say no to Brooklyn.

Which means I’m learning to grow where I’m planted. I’m learning to stand on waters that I’m afraid will swallow me. I’m learning what it looks like to live within the same community for an extended period of time, through conflict and celebration, without being “saved by the bell” so to speak.  This will demand my dependence on the pure, perfect, and holy characteristics of a God that deals perfectly with humans because only He can handle an apartment of seven flawed humans (I being one of them) for months on end. So I’m learning what it looks like to be more like Him: faithful.

I think I’ll even be okay with sinking, as His waves crash over me and take me deeper into Himself.

disbelief

~ kwyatt1247 ~ Leave a comment

I spent my spring break in South Padre. In fact, I’ve spentmy spring break in Padre for the past three years. I’ve seen God move mightily.I’ve seen His scripture come to life, and I’ve felt the breath of the Spiritbreathe life over an island that was damned.

Yet, last week (and this week) I was plagued with disbelief in a way that has never made me so sick.

By disbelief, I mean the belief that falls short in God using me. The belief that says He is holding out on me. The belief that says I have no purpose here. The belief that says I’ll find one somewhere else.

“Help me with my disbelief.” A simple prayer as brutal and honest as the cross that I was wrestling with.

I can’t help but wonder if disbelief was just as much a part of a disciple’s life as belief was. I look at Peter who was close to Jesus, Peter who not only denied Jesus three times, but was the rock on which the church was built. Peter, who went up on a mountain to see Jesus transformed, also went up on a mountain only to fall asleep while praying during one of the most climactic moments in history. Peter, whose feet walked on water with Jesus, also sank out of fear He wouldn’t keep him. A man who physically walked with Jesus battled disbelief.

Isn’t Peter’s lack of trust in Jesus to keep him safe on the water the same as my belief that Jesus is holding out on me? Isn’t all of this disbelief rooted in the lie that He isn’t good? And doesn’t doubting His goodness mean that I’m distrusting the exact manifestation of His existence?Goodness.

Disbelief must be acknowledged in regards to the distrust that burned Eden. “Did God really say?”

It’s easy to play the mute. What believer wants to contradict their character and confess unbelief? But the beauty of all of this is: Jesus was brutally slaughtered on a cross to make it acceptable for a believer to know disbelief. That’s the kind of love I will only find in an upside down kingdom; disbelief begetting belief.

Peter’s lack of faith in Jesus to keep him safe on the water is what led him to pray the shortest, but one of the most powerful prayers in history: “Lord, save!”

As a good Father, God knew I would need more than an explanation for my questions, but an experience to change my questions completely. The crucifixion does that. It takes the focus off my insecurities in myself and nails them to the cross.

Doubt of my purpose transforms into the fact that Jesus wouldn’t have willingly given up Himself for a void life. God wouldn’t have degraded Himself to the form of a man in order to walk with me, if He wanted to withhold good things from me now.

Today, I still pray that prayer. Although the cross took the penalty and the power of sin (anything that separates me from God), I’m still in this world which is full of it. It still grabs at me, and I still willingly give into it sometimes. But He’s not surprised. He doesn’t say “Really? After all these years and all we’ve been through, you still don’t get it?” He walks me quietly to the cross and lets me sit in the presence of belief. Because when He died for me, I think He truly believed that I would say “yes.” And that was enough for Him

the weight of glory

~ kwyatt1247 ~ Leave a comment

Preface: I’ve been learning about the glory of the Lord recently. These are just my honest thoughts about it. They’re messy and confusing to read through, but I needed to write them down. Also, usually by doing so, I can turn them into a poem easier. 

“Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice ‘Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?’ And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, ‘Weep no more; behold the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David has conquered so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.’” Revelation 5:1-5

I’ve been learning more about the glory of the Lord: the magnitude of his limitless power; the astronomic diversity his presence manifests itself; his incomparable holiness that brings man, made of iron and dust, falling to his knees- the weight of his glory.

This is the first time I do not haste when I take a drink. Instead I let the living water touch my cracked and bleeding lips and saturate my skin as I feel matter itself rush down my throat. I drink and I’m satisfied.  I feel the Spirit stirring in the atmosphere, making his presence known and the glory of the Lord illuminate the greyness I often feel. Reflections of light are dancing on the surface of this water because it’s alive.

Because it brings life.

I know this to be true, and that’s why the revelations of holiness concede justified anger. There are so many times when I throw a royal fit and I scream and kick and beat my fists against his solid chest of righteousness because I don’t understand how my loving and gracious Father can let love die between a couple of twenty years, can let a woman taste the force of a man’s fist, can let children be eaten up by their own stomachs…

The list goes on. I don’t comprehend.

Come into play: free will. Not just me, but every single person on earth that has ever lived, lives, and will ever live, has the gift of free will and whether we like to believe it or not, the way I exercise my freedom will often affect your life and vice versa. My God isn’t an advocate for violence or hunger or suffering. He’s an advocate for freedom; He’s given us the freedom to live as we choose.

There is blood on my hands.

But God.

I choose you and I say ‘I do.’ I’m draped in robes of righteousness. I take the weight of glory on as my own, my responsibility to magnify, and it becomes even more pressing. It’s hard to breathe and hard to stand. Your weight of glory is so heavy, God, and I am to bear it? But this weight of glory is something my hands cannot weigh or hold for its overflowing abundance of holiness is something that burns me to the touch. My eyes cannot see it for it is blinding. It’s not a matter of a lacking in human capacity- it’s a matter of humans simply can’t.

It (You) cannot be defined. It (You) cannot be limited.

Come into play: faith.

C.S. Lewis said “This is why He warned people to ‘count the cost’ before becoming Christians.” I’ve learned that this is a radical man’s faith- one that goes against every natural instinct I have. I’ve learned I’m in love with a lamb that is also a lion. I’ve learned there will be a wedding day, but first a war, and like with any war, there will be casualties. I’ve learned that the more I fall in love with the flawless, holy, immaculate character; I discover just how depraved, corrupt, and perverted I am. I’ve learned although I will spend my time in this present flesh striving to reflect your pure blinding light- a light void of darkness- it will never be so.

I remain unworthy.

But that’s why I’m here: because I know you’re the only one who is. It’s a hard process I don’t fully understand, and I can’t articulate it beautifully, or simply, or even at all.  I can’t measure the weight of his glory. And sometimes it sucks. It sucks to play the role of “believer” when all I want to be is the “seer,” but my God, it’s worth it.  For one day, I will see.

there’s more than one type of tree

~ kwyatt1247 ~ Leave a comment

We praise our creative God for the mountains and canyons, for the oceans, forests, beaches, and watercolor sunsets and sunrises, for the unfathomable amount of living things on this earth, yet with the same breath we curse His creativity because we don’t look like the person we compare ourselves to.

new seasons

~ kwyatt1247 ~ Leave a comment

At the beginning of a new season, I think it’s easy for us (me) to determine in what ways we are going to ‘grow.’ We say phrases like ‘I plan on growing in patience/humility/wisdom this season.’ Challenging ourselves and expecting schedules of growth make life about us and our own abilities and the glory of our new patience or whatever it may be.

Growth isn’t at all about challenging ourselves and growing our own abilities and strengths. It’s about trusting the Holy Spirit with what we have; ‘this is it. this is all I’ve got, but it’s Yours’ and believing He will do immeasurably more