January 7, 2006 continued

Not only do you need to deal with the baby inside, you also need to recognize that this baby is you. The spirit within you. The essential you. The real you. If you are in Christ, that baby is no longer broken; it is now once again capable of resting and finding its connection and completeness in God's arms. But it will still weep if you neglect to bring it to Him and leave it in His safe embrace... It will fuss whenever you continue to attempt to drown out its hungry cry with things and stuff and noise and events and people.

We are spirit. We must become ever more aware of that. Your body may be a lot of things, but it never has been and never will be YOU. It is something that you possess. You HAVE a body. You have your body and I have my body. It is possible that I may admire the make and model of your body more than I admire the make and model of my own...just as I might find your car to be more sporty and attractive than mine. But while most of us have, hopefully, grown beyond identifying who we are by what car we drive...very few of us can say the same when it comes to our bodies.
If our bodies are something akin to the vehicles that we drive around in and our minds are comparable to our PCs...then who is the "I" who is doing the driving and the computing?

That "I" is the ethereal gemstone, the mysterious, costly pearl buried within the hardware of our bodies and minds. Your spirit is the only real "you" worth talking about. Yes, it is that needy baby we just met. Your spirit is the you that God created specifically to connect with and love throughout eternity, the you that Jesus died to save and possess. The you that is broken and incomplete without Him. Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. He is intensely, passionately concerned with your spirit.

God is not bound by time. When He sees the essence of you, He sees what exists in eternity when earthly things have all passed away. Your body is a special tool that He has given you to contain you and carry you along in your passage through time and space. But it is the spirit inside that He relates to, knows intimately and loves. If He wanted your earth-vehicle to look like a movie star or a model, He could simply breathe the word and it would look like a movie star or a model. He is God, after all. But He recognizes your body for what it is... A THING. There isn't anything wrong with things...they are useful, wonderful, but very temporary gifts. But things are not persons. I know it sounds strange to our ears, but human bodies are not people...they are merely things that belong to the people who are hidden inside of them.

If God were to consider your body, He could see it as it looked at every point in your life from beginning to end. In one glance He could see the tiny cell that signified your entry into time, the newborn body, the energetic child on the playground, the new mother's body, the elderly man or woman, worn and tired... This is nothing more than the history of the vehicle you drove about in. The real you is separate; ageless and timeless. The Bible tells us that God is spirit and those who worship Him will worship in spirit and truth. It is that timeless person INSIDE this thing that we make so much of that the Lover of our souls adores. He alone can never be misled by outward appearances. These bodies that seem like impenetrable, inescapable coats of armor to us are much less than a diaphanous wisp to Him. He sees straight through to the you that so longs to be finally seen, accepted and loved.

Often times in our desperate longing we give ourselves to someone who is attracted primarily to our outer shell, who is taking small note of and has little appreciation for the person under the skin, and we deliberately fool ourselves into believing that this constitutes being loved. But we may just as well form an intimate bond with someone who only really wants to drive our new car or swim in our new swimming pool. How long will our self-deception last? You can guarantee that someone else will soon come along driving a newer and faster car or owning a bigger and better swimming pool...and even if our "lover" is not allowed to drive their car or swim in their pool he is certain to want to if cars and swimming pools are what he is most concerned with. And really...at the end of the day it is all irrelevant because none of this...cars, pools or BODIES...has anything at all to do with the YOU that is hidden inside screaming to be acknowledged and loved.
Why have I gone off on all this about the spirit and the sobbing baby within? Because in the past few months, and especially in the past few days, I have been forced to face myself.

Back to my story. I guess I would never have thought of myself as a person who had a problem with being alone. I've always spent quite a bit of time alone and tend to burn out rather quickly when I am surrounded by people for lengthy amounts of time with no "breathing space". I've actually considered myself something of a loner.

But I am beginning to see that there are many different levels of aloneness and that we seldom if ever allow ourselves to venture into deep solitude. Frankly, when it gets too quiet and there are no distractions at all there is then nothing for it but to listen to that infernal, eternal crying. Few of us can take that for more than a moment or two, so we literally spend our lives running from our own tears...constantly talking to cover up the sound of our own whimpering voices within. It is an exhausting life, but better than the alternative which is nerve-shattering. Some of us are better at distracting ourselves than others and tend to choose more harmless or even very positive, productive distractions. This can buy us a surface sort of happiness and a measure of success at life which is deceptive. But put us in an isolated situation with no company but our own and no distraction beyond our own minds and we quickly begin to unravel.

In the past few days, since the move to this mobile home monster, I have had many of my usual distractions and comforts peeled away. Most of my relatives are out of town temporarily, my home phone and thus my internet are not hooked up yet and my television doesn't seem to be hooked up to the antennae right and can barely be watched. I can basically write or read. Writing can only be kept up for so long. Reading is a reliable distraction but after a while it all begins to blur. To be honest, I can't remember ever feeling this alone. The odd strangeness of this place keeps me from feeling the comforts of home. The quiet after I put my son to bed at night is deafening. Except for that baby fussing...

Right after my husband committed suicide the baby, the internal me, was screaming. It wasn't just crying; it was in a state of emergency. It was hyperventilating. It was in perpetual hysterics. It simply could NOT be ignored. Distractions and comforts and even people were summarily pushed away much of the time so that I could spend hours and hours just pacing and holding that sobbing infant desperately against the very heart of God. And a strange thing happened. That terrified infant listened, really listened, to the heartbeat of God for perhaps the first time ever...and was enveloped in a sweet peace beyond comprehension. I...the real me...began to crave God's peace. It quickly became my lifeblood. It carried me gently somewhere above whatever was going on at the time. Whereas the baby is usually stuffed down below decks somewhere whining and fussing in the shadows...it was now lifted up into holy light, above all details, worries and distractions, and cooing softly at the sound of God's heartbeat and reassuring whispers of love.

It was wonderful, but somewhat disorienting. At a time when I should have been, as I told friends and relatives, in a hospital somewhere under sedation; I was instead experiencing more peace and stability than ever before in my life. When I would begin to wander a little too far from His arms the lurking pain and confusion and guilt would hit me with the force of a nuclear warhead and I would immediately, instinctively go leaping back headlong into that peaceful place He provided.

The question that I am grappling with right now is...why do we save this wondrous dependency for states of emergency? And we do. And it isn't His intention that we do so...it is our own reticence. We are shy with Abba God. We feel that we need a really good reason to fly into His arms. Somehow we seem to think that He will tolerate holding us when we are in dire straights, but the rest of the time, when we are merely feeling tired, bored, restless, unloved and unlovable, lonely, whiney, worried or irritable, He expects us to buck up and figure it out on our own. We don't want God Himself to see us as big babies and get disgusted with us, do we?

I am beginning to see how warped and destructive this attitude is. We need Him every bit as much in the little things and the everyday loneliness and restlessness as we do in times of major disaster. We just plain need Him. Always. Period. He is our life.

So now that a few months have gone by and I really should be beyond the hyperventilation stage... Now that informing shocked relatives and planning a heartbreaking funeral have given way to paying bills and choosing carpet and learning to do so many things alone, I find that I no longer automatically fly to Him. I have to remind myself that I needn't live alone and in pain. I have to remind myself that He is always right there inside waiting for me. I am free to deliberately choose to put my fussy little self into His loving arms moment by moment by moment.

But I am determined to learn to do so. There is absolutely no reason to live the half-life I lived previously. He WANTS me there in His arms listening to His heartbeat through the nights and floating above the pain, worries and distractions of the day. Christ died to give me my place just there.
We have an open invitation. He calls out to us, reminding us to quiet ourselves and listen. Just beyond the noise of life He sings soothingly to the infants who we are. "Peace, be still".