Imitation vs. Intimacy

I spent time recently working on some curriculum for my youth around the idea of “Storyline”...this whole idea that the story of Christ feeds in and through scripture and we have been grafted into the story.  Our story becomes part of Christ’s story and Christ’s story gets lived out through our lives, our stories.  And I decided to start the story at the beginning (a very good place to start).  Genesis.  Where the scene is set, the setting established, key characters named (aka: God and, for my purposes, generic man and woman made in the image of God – as generic man and woman created in the image of God are the continuing although ever changing characters in God’s ongoing narrative), and the plot alluded to in every meaningful way. 

I was working out my outline and got to Genesis 3.  Where Satan (the behind-the-scenes antagonist) enters the picture.  Here are Adam and Eve in perfect, naked bliss.  And Satan, disguised as the serpent, throws them a curve ball with a temptation.  A bite from the tree of good and evil.  He tempts them with the one thing they don’t have.  And the ironic thing is...they don’t have it because without that choice, it doesn’t exist!  Pefect.naked.bliss. Perfection!  They can’t know the difference between good and evil because there is no evil!  There is no difference!  God knows.  And Adam and Eve choose that to know what God knows would be better than what they now have...an existence where God walks with them in the garden in the cool of the day.  In in a moment, in a bite, they choose imitation over intimacy. 

 . 

Imitation over intimacy.

They choose to be like God instead of to be with God.  They were made for relationship with the Almighty.  WE were made for relationship with the Almighty!  Built into the core of who we are is a craving and longing for connection with the supernatural because it was wired into the purpose of existence!  But perfect relationship was traded for imperfect knowledge.  Before Genesis 3 even comes to an end, we see God hint to a bigger plan.  The plan that, in retrospect, we can see alluding to the coming of Christ, the coming of a Messiah.  One who would save humankind from their sins and *drum roll please* restore relationship! 

Seems basic.  Maybe even “old school” theology.  Not real deep.  Not above the obvious for a sub par biblical scholar.  So what’s the point?  It seems basic but it caught me profoundly and new though the story be told hundreds of times.  I have always taken the basic reality of the actuality and attributed my post-New-Testament choice...  “I have Jesus,” I’ve always thought – far too easily, “I made a choice to accept the price, the mercy, the grace, and the conquering over the grave and therefore I have restored relationship.  It’s come full circle.”  Wrong.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Wrong.

Wrong because there is no full circle. (Unless the circle starts back over with me destroying restored relationship.)  Wrong because I almost daily fall into the old but new pattern of choosing imitation over intimacy.   I choose to be like God instead to be with Him.  I choose to be my own god (isn’t that what Adam and Eve wanted, to be on par with their creator?) and make my own choices and seal my own demise while doing things just so and so rather than live inside of restored relationship.  I want to know things I shouldn’t know...I worry instead of trust and harbor instead of forgive (both instances where I know the difference between good and evil and still live outside of relationship...).  I have Jesus but in a moment, I push aside the intimacy I was created for.  I choose to be like God instead...a temptation with no real fulfillment. 

Oh, sure, it looks different now.  I call myself a Christian, you know.  I believe that my attitude should be the same as Christ Jesus (Philippians 2) and that whatever I do, I should for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10).  I am a firm believer that asking yourself honestly “What Would Jesus Do?” and responding accordingly is without question necessary.  James says faith without works is dead.  Absolutely. Actions matter.  Looking the part - not without merit.  And yet I think I need to be reminded that works without faith is flattery on the verge of mockery.  Imitation crab.  Cheap, processed, substitute lacking any of the reality.  Oh, yes, I want to look and act like Jesus. Truly. But I’m not in relationship in such a way as to know how He would have me mirror Him. And that's the problem.  

I am still trading intimacy for imitation.  I want to look like Jesus, but I don’t really even “carve” out the time for the One who should be infiltrating my every moment.  I end up little more than a white-washed tomb and goody-goody Pharisee of Jesus’ day...convinced I’m closer to God because I look the part.  But I really do want to look like Jesus! I want you to look at me and see Jesus. I want you to know that I’m a Christian because of my love (John 13).  I want you to know the power of Christ over death in the resurrection (Romans 1).  I want you to know me to be merciful and gracious and humble and a servant and...  That’s all well and good.  It is.  But looking like Jesus and being intimately connected to the God of the universe?  Oh, those are two separate things.

The interesting part is that intimacy breeds imitation. (Imitation will almost never intrinsically breed intimacy – “who cares? I basically look the part anyway?”)  It doesn’t take an Einstein to figure this out.  Just look at couples who have been married for 20 years... Long before they get to the matching jogging suit stage, they physically start to resemble each other.  Science has actually proved this!  And that is just one off handed example. 

For another basic personal anecdote...my best friend, Liz, has an eyebrow. Two actually.  But when she seeks to show her displeasure, disdain, or overall unsatisfied confusion with whatever is being displayed before her eyes (often something I’ve said), she raises just one eyebrow.  And purses her lips.  And brings her chin to the side as if to make eye contact more specifically and to say “Really?  REALLY?”   If you know Liz, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  She does this.  And now, because I spend quite a bit of time with her, I do it too.  I didn’t start making faces in the mirror and practicing before leaving the house one morning.  I didn’t think “I would like to claim that face she makes”.  In fact, I hadn’t even realized I had picked it up until I was with Liz and proceeded to give something her own wiry look and she declared “That’s my face!  That’s my look!  I do that!” A

The more time you spend with someone; the more intimately you’re connected to someone; the more you begin to pick up on his or her isms.  Habits.  Character.  Nature.  It’s just the same with God.  How could it not be?  Intimacy is the original design.  A design where the key secondary characters were made in the very likeness of God.  Made to resemble God.  (And so the greatest spawns the lesser).  And such is the time spent abiding in intimate relationship with the only One who both knows and loves me fully. 

Today will I choose to imitate or be intimate?  To hide or to abide?  

"So come with me, I'll show you life even better than this. Come with me, I'll show you love, you didn't know could exist. Better than your first crush; better than your first kiss.  I'll show you how to live..."
 - Sanctus Real

The Middle of the Cinnamon Roll...

Summer Ponderings - July/August 2012

The skies were beginning to grow dark despite the fact that dusk was still a few hours away.  And the winds were picking up...with just a little drizzle in their sharp breezes. A single rumble of thunder was just close enough to recognize and just far enough away to question.  After weeks of near drought, a storm was brewing.

I closed my eyes and allowed a contented smile to find its way across my tired face and reach a small piece of my weary soul.  A storm.  Something about a good storm seems to put my world to right...

The new, young friend sitting beside openly expressed the antithesis of my moment of internal pleasure.  She was eager to escape the deep, dark skies, powerful winds and crashing rain of an approaching storm.  To escape the terror.  I, I myself was still caught in the impending wonder.

Such a realization is never truly lost on me.  Not even on the worst of days in the hardest of weeks.  A storm will forever and always catch my sense of both terror and wonder.  For years now, I’ve been gripped by the wonder.  The wonder of a storm. 

It was during an incredible January thunderstorm with rain cascading down and flooding the streets and thunder rattling the building and lightening crashing through the dark sky in vibrant hues...which I watched from a third floor hospital room...that I first became conscious of this gripping.  Of the way it captured not only my attention and imagination but also my heart.  From the hospital room without a voice, several new scars – including a painful one across my throat – and a fresh and raw cancer diagnosis, I found myself in my own storm.  One where I was scared to admit even my fear...and I was desperate to see the beloved beauty and wonder of the storm I loved and saw outside my window...inside of my own.  Inside of my own storm.  I found it in me.  The me I was in Christ. The unique way I was designed wasn’t at the hands of cancer or the life surrounding.  I was still there somewhere. Who I was and who I was created to be was locked in something both terrifying and wonderful. 

I clung to that identity.  With the ferociousness of one who watched the rest of life cascading between her grasp and spiraling out of control.  And spiral out of control it did.  For another four years.  And after four years I opened my clasped fists and looked at the shell of who I once thought myself to be.  For everything I thought I was clinging to, there was nothing left.  Little by little the things of life had stolen the life out of me.  Some pieces I know I conceded willingly – though for some I traded riches for rags.  Other pieces life snatched out from underneath of me when I least expected it and far without my permission.

I woke up some mornings ago and realized I had no idea who I was anymore.  It was a terrifying realization.  Jesus was still in the midst of things but I could only see where my relationship with Him gave purpose and not definition.  Nothing made me excited or got my blood flowing.  Things that used to make my eyes light up or my pulse quicken seemed silly in some cases, juvenile in others, not applicable would be saying a lot, and all of them a million miles away.  

But that didn’t and doesn’t make me a shell.  Just like making my way to the middle of a cinnamon roll (the best part)...there has to be more to what I’m seeing.  The best and truest pieces are yet uncovered.  If I can just get to the core...  Because I’m not who I want to be... And not who I could be....  And there are glaring pieces missing from my definition... And I find it hard to dream a dream or place myself inside a reality where life will truly play out.  There are some wires that need to be connected and adjusted in order to really plug into the power.  But I am still wired. Uniquely wired...designed, formed, and created.  With all I struggle with in the midst of identity, I have to trust that the God who knit me together in my mother’s womb, wasn’t a novice...but knit me together with a plan and purpose, intricately and expertly.  And in the midst of recognizing a new definition, I have been clinging to the promise of Philippians which tells me that He who began a good work in me, will also be faithful to complete it.  For all I am and all I’m not, I am not finished yet...

“My name is Anika.  I have a dozen pet names and nicknames and mispronunciations...almost all of which will make me smile or at least smirk in a reluctant acknowledgment that you are trying. But a piece of me melts when you use my name correctly and intentionally.  Anika.  Anika Joy.  No one really uses or knows my middle name but those who do challenge me to live out of it.  And one of my greatest joys is to see and experience the joy in others.  I love watching people smile; seeing the things that fill them and their faces with pieces of real joy.  Perhaps, ironically, because it is the hardest thing to find in myself.  Past their smiles, I simply love people.  Though I try to deny it, I very much love those in the world around me.  I love loving on people for no reason at all and finding ways to remind them of their worth and value.  I love rich conversation with friend and friend to be...talking and listening and solving the world one word at a time.  And I ache and I break but I am filled with such a compassion and desire to hold and so love when I am trusted with others’ worlds.  I love being sought out for wisdom and advice and a listening ear and the confirmation that who they are and what they’re feeling, that they’re feeling, isn’t stupid.  I love helping them live out of the identity...the one as the Beloved...the one I myself often struggle to claim...

But somewhere, somewhere in that identity is me.  Simply me.  And I love simple pleasures.  I love eating around the outside of a cinnamon roll and savoring the middle...I love the middle.  I love a good cup of coffee and smooth dark chocolate.  I love hot baths where I can soak until the water cools and instrumental piano music and homemade bread...making homemade bread.  I love heavy blankets when the weather is cool (and when the bedroom is just cool enough to justify turning on my electric blanket to sleep snug under the covers even when it is sweltering outside).  I love being genuinely hugged – long and tight – by family and friends...the people that mean the most.  I love long letters to and from those friends and I love time simply spent doing life with them.  I love seeing the world through their eyes and the way they make normal moments an adventure. 

I love adventures – big and small. I love pausing and drinking in the fullness and richness of life wherever it is to be found.  I love the excitement and fear in my stomach as a plane arrives in a land I’ve never been.  But I also love basic road trips with the radio up and my sunglasses on.  And I love long walks and the feeling after a run – though the experience itself is often painful and slow.  I love swing sets and flying through the sky and living in the moments where I feel completely free.  I love being free to experience the world around me...especially barefoot and from between my toes.  I love sunsets and lying out on damp grass to stare into a black night with stars that shine with a light breaking through the darkness in a way which can’t be understood.  And I love sitting on the beach and listening as waves crash against the shore.  I love driving down a road where the trees cover as a canopy...with the branches cloaked in ice during the winter and the colors of the fall and the flowers and buds of blooming spring and the rich green shade of summer.  But most of all, I love spring.  I love the newness.  I love opening a window with soft breezes and warm sun just as the world is becoming alive again. 

I love when the world, my world, feels the most alive. I love teenagers and the way they are their own but not yet...and still need someone to help show them the way, still want to be someone worth investing in.  I love camp and watching young people of all ages and kinds come out of their shells to experience life.  I love when camp includes Jesus and suddenly the kids encounter a God who loves them in the midst of a place they love with people who love them and things like faith begin to become real.  I love doing life with my family and the time spent with my siblings...Caleb’s shoulder rubs or goofy way he’ll insist on calling his sisters beautiful in pajamas and a pony.  Or Gabe’s gentle giant approach to life and the way he’ll sneak in for a hug before telling me he misses me.  Or Amelia’s compassion for the world and our conversations where we’re out to solve its problems over a gas station donut.  Or Faith’s quirky humor but intentional nature...all in the midst of the fact she will always be my big sister and the one I still rely on for advice and a perspective shift. 

But part of me, admittedly loves when my perspective – or at least my mindset – can’t be shifted.  I love doing things that people tell me I can’t...and then blaming it on my stubborn Dutch heritage and pride when I’ve proved them wrong.  I love doing things out of the ordinary... things that surprise people.  Pretending to live fearlessly.  I love random facts and strange information and the look of amusement on faces when I share it precariously.  I love getting lost in a good book and captured by someone else’s story.  I love stories.  I love hearing stories.  I love telling stories, sharing stories, writing stories.  I love the sound my fingers make as they fly against a key board barely able to keep up with the thoughts I haven’t paused to consider. 

I love the way that Jesus has a way of showing up in the words which are left when I do stop to consider.  And I love the way that Jesus is in the habit of showing up when I least expect it.  I am overwhelmed by God’s faithfulness in light of my infidelity.  The way in which He is always there, waiting, on the other end of my protest...reminding me He has never left.  That praise is a choice.  That joy and trust and obedience and repentance and love are all choices.  Choices I am called to make in the midst of all I don’t understand and all life sends...and in so doing never removing myself from His presence.  I can’t comprehend or fathom the how and the why of the fact He loves me but God’s love never fails. He is the middle to my cinnamon roll, the best part at the core of who I am.  And He continues to reveal Himself in ways He knows I’ll understand...in pictures and analogies...the reminders of that faithfulness in those ways are never lacking.  And because of it, I will always love thunderstorms with strong winds and crashing thunder and magic lightening and watching it from my window until sleep claims me again.  Or and most definitely way the sun breaks through the clouds on a dreary day...creating just a glimpse of the light behind the darkness but showering everything it touches with golden rays.  Proof that there is more behind what I now see.  I still choose to see beauty in every scar...

Because scars are the reminder of pain but the appearance of healing.  Every scar tells a story.  May all of my scars eventually go back to tell not my story...but how my story fits into the Greater Story.  The Greatest Story.  May my identity first and foremost be found in Christ.  Found in that story.  And may that be enough...”