So I’ve had some time to marinate about this weekend I just experienced. To start off I want to say that I have never had a weekend like this before. I was beyond challenged to think of what it means to truly care about something. Now I am not saying that if you decide not to do something like MOVE:DC that you don’t care because people show care through different actions. But actually going to this event is the only way I knew how to show my love and care. There are children being abducted, raped, murdered, and forced to be child soldiers and we’ve been given 2 options. Be an upstander or a bystander. I refuse to be the latter and it meant road tripping 15 hours to DC and spending my weekend in a global summit and marching around the White House. The friendships I made and the experiences I had will forever haunt me in a way that challenges me. I had the opportunity to talk and feed a homeless drug dealer. I was able to give of my time and money to a cause that is trying everything to stop a 26 year war, and in the words of Sean Stephenson, if you have haters than it means you are doing something right. No one hates on you for sitting on the couch. No one hates on you for playing video games, that is what they expect of you. They hate you when you start making a difference and they aren’t. Gary Haugen of IJM said, ” The grow ups in these buildings [the buildings of DC] won’t do anything about this conflict. They won’t do anything because its too complicated, well civil rights were too complicated, women’s rights were too complicated, the holocaust was too complicated, but when we look back on it now it’s not so complicated. That’s why it takes a generation willing to fight through the complexity for change to happen.” I find myself constantly fighting with everything I’ve been taught, to see a new form of theology. My fiancé showed me this, love everyone. It’s that simple. I have a degree in church ministry and cross cultural communication and community development. In simple terms I know a shit ton about the bible. But in all that knowledge I still don’t know how to give people Christ. But it’s simple. You love them. As they are. Gay, straight, black, white, Muslim, Christian, left, right, democrat, republican, conservative, liberal. It doesn’t matter. Love them. I would rather God tell me I had my theology wrong but at least you loved people than have him say your theology was spot on but you didn’t love people. So that’s what I’ll do. I’ll fight for the voiceless. I’ll love others. I will put my preconceived notions of God on the shelf and let his mystery unravel before me at His choosing. If I never learn a new thing about God but I love people then I know I’ve lived a life worth living. I think God has enough grace to forgive me for never speaking “truth” into a “sinner’s” life when instead I’m loving a human being the way he created them. That’s what MOVE:DC taught me and even if people disagree, that’s okay. I’m done pretending I know who God is, what He wants, or to know His knowledge. Because His wisdom beats out my knowledge every time. He has shown me that every time I think I know Him more that His mystery is always bigger. I’ll continue to seek Him out, but I will not be apart of the machine that enslaves people with doctrine, or enslaves people with a list of to do’s. I will set the captives free… With love.

Besides it seems to me there are already plenty of people who know exactly what God’s word says so I’ll let them speak the “truth”. {sarcasm}

I hope that when our grandchildren ask us, “Where were you when the LRA killed thousands?” We can say, “I showed up, I did my part, and I saw an end to the violence.” The question is, will you be able to say the same?

So the other day I was being an idiot. You know when someone is wrong, and in all of your wonderful knowledge you decide to set them straight? That moment when you feel the need to let people know, “Hey, I have the right answers!” Well that happened to be me, and the person I was letting know this “wonderful truth” happened to be my fiance.

You see my life has been super hectic lately, so much so that we haven’t really been able to spend time together. I felt like she hadn’t really considered that she hadn’t shown me any affection in awhile. I mean heck we hadn’t seen each other in what felt like forever. So as I tell her how I feel she turns away from me. She doesn’t fight me and say how I am wrong or how I wasn’t showing her any, instead she just turns away from me and starts to cry. Remember earlier about me being an idiot, it was around this time I realized it.

So in my NEW found knowledge I decided, “I need to make this right.” It’s not rocket science to know you don’t act this way, but I have never claimed to be smart. So I start to try and make my apology attempt, but I want her to know that I am being sincere and apologizing because I realize what an idiot I was being, so I try and get her to look at me. She won’t respond. I keep asking her, “Baby, will you look at me please?” “Baby I want to tell you something, can you turn around?” With tears in her eyes she keeps saying no. I cannot get her to look at me. I finally out of desperation and frustration ask her, “WHY WON’T YOU LOOK AT ME?” She said something to me that I will never forget.

“I don’t deserve to look at you.”

I felt as if someone just punched me right in the gut. A freaking one two upper cut straight to the abdomen. I remember thinking, “Why would you ever think you don’t deserve to look at me?” She kept repeating that she hadn’t earned the right to look at me because she hadn’t been even attentive to me or even seen me in awhile. I remember just saying to her, “The problem is we aren’t giving each other attention, so you not looking at me isn’t helping that.” Of course that sounds mean, but my intentions are this:

You cannot do anything that would make me not want to see you.

It was here when I grabbed her and wrapped my arms around her and said this, “There is nothing you can do to ever not deserve my attention, you can straight up murder somebody, I hope you won’t, but you can, and I would still want to give you my attention.”

I realized this is how I treat God. When I do something that I feel would disappoint Him I say to myself, “I don’t deserve to look at you.” The entire time God is saying, “The way we fix this is for you to do just the opposite.” “Look at me, know you cannot do anything where I would not want to give you My attention.” I was telling my fiance that we can fix this whole fight if she would look at me so I could tell her I am sorry. God was saying, “if you understand this is how it works, then why is it when you feel you’ve messed up and can’t look at me, you won’t follow this example?” He wants me to just look at Him. He wants me to see the way we fix it is to not turn away.

I am slowly getting better at being a good fiance, but it’s times like these that help me realize I have a long way to go. Don’t turn away from Him or others when you act dumb, face them. Look them in the eyes and show them, “I want you to have my attention, because I love you and would like to make this right.” Wrap your arms around them and say you’re sorry. 

Pixar does a really good job asking us the same question God asks us, “When you are old and your wife has passed away, when you are a broken toy, when everyone tells you that you are an obsolete robot, when you don’t fit into the expectations of your family of rats and people tell you that you can’t be a chef, when one flipper is too small, when they think you are just a rusty worthless tow truck, and no one thinks you can do what you were created to do, will you give up?” That’s the question that we really need to think about. Are we going to give up? Because between you and me, I’d rather inflate every balloon I have, fall with style, shoot for the stars, cook the best plate of food I have ever cooked, keep on swimming, show my true paint coat colors, and do EXACTLYwhat I was created to do.

Sleep takes its hold with a sinking pull.
And now that I’m alone, this burst of light
fills my lids and I’m awake to songs of horror.
Your ill-bought greatness, he’s seen it all from the frame.
One day you’ll reap the seeds of a shadowed past,
and I can only hope I’m there.
You tried to satisfy the thirst of a thousand ages,
But built the stacks of bones as your monument to dead vanity.
It’s just a shrine to the words you use to wreck.
Tell me, How can you sleep?
How can you just welcome the wine and throw out your nets?
You throw out your nets and set fame to bait the noose.
Set fame to derail what’s innocent.
Why spare the life of inglorious waste? Why let him live?
He’s just hunting your own! How do you just sit there and watch?
“Because i love you more than you know.
Look again and tell me what you see!”
In the window was me. The massacres were all me!
Oh God, please! Please! deliver the penalties for all of this from me.
I’m not finding justice, no warrant for mercy…
Don’t give up on me. Don’t give up on me!
What happens when I turn and run again? And again, and again?
“I will forgive you.”
And what happens when I lie to your face?
“I will forgive you.”
Oh my God, I can be so defiant to some one who’s arms stretch to me.
“I will forgive.”
Don’t give up on me! Don’t give up on me!
“I have forgiven you!”
I’ll awake to new purpose to fight this body.
No longer will I play the dark shepherd.
Let not my words be ripped from the throat of a horror.
Oh, forgiver! Oh, forgiver! Where is justice, where is justice in letting me live?

-Oh, Sleeper