Dream Big (or small)

Bob Goff is the founder of Dream Big workshops. He is generous and funny and has turned himself into a brand of theology through his books on outrageous love. Goff says it’s good to have a lot of dreams bubbling away on the burners of your stove. Is this true? I don’t know, but I think so. I haven’t lived long enough to see most dreams make it to the plate. I can only manage stirring one pot at a time.

Usually it’s the writing pot that bubbles up like crazy and i have to run to stir it down before it boils over like scalding milk. I’ve been running for the burner for my whole adult life. I’m starting to believe that writing isn’t actually in a pot–it happens to be the hood that catches all the grease.

Anybody who has lived for awhile on this green earth knows you must abandon some dreams to grow others. Every spring when I buy seeds to plant, I wonder at the miracle of holding a tiny shriveled seed that will, under the right conditions, with good intentions (and limited neglect) turn into the surest sign of life. That miniature green flag poking out of the dirt waves a banner of hope. Life springs from death. It’s the most confounding, beautiful miracle.

I’ve been stirring a new pot this Spring, beckoning a baby dream to germinate and sprout into this world. It’s causing a lot of other dreams to wilt in the hot sun. I’m learning to be okay with it, because I’ve seen it happen before. That’s a good thing about getting older–you don’t panic so much about keeping all the pots stirred–you go ahead and let some simmer into slow-cooked, tender, unexpected wonders. You let the others scorch the pan (and throw it out altogether). It doesn’t mean you’re a terrible cook; it’s learning to let go of the uncontrollable. You focus on the pot in front of you and keep whisking.

My kids have been the best thing I’ve ever tended. I’m amazed at how resilient and strong they are. With a bit of trellising and attention, they just keep growing and blooming. The early years are so crucial in determining the right soil, establishing roots, and worrying about the environment. I’m not able to pursue much else–I’m still emerging from the fog (and waiting a divine potty-training intervention). But some scaffolding is in place, and our garden is beginning to take shape. I’m realizing I’m not a trained gardener, but God is faithful like the sun–He makes things grow when I water seeds. If I don’t ever water anything else, I really, really want these ones to grow and produce fruit.

But I’ve got to thinking about my kids, and how they, too, need to see how dreams grow. Not just dreams, but any sort of boldness in trying out new recipes. What will happen if they see me serenade the folks at the nursing home on a Tuesday afternoon? What will they think if they see me buy lunch for the school staff? What will grow if they see me teach Sunday school for forty years straight? These are dreams, too. Not the billowy kind that float in my blue sky imagination, but solid, reliable perennials. I wonder if Bob Goff knows that any little dream is worth its pot on the stove. It doesn’t have to be big.

Maybe God’s not asking us to grow a finicky orchid. Maybe he’s just asking us to toss some seeds in the dirt and water them every other day. It doesn’t have to be a boeuf bourguignon dream in the pot you are stirring. It could be one-minute ramen noodle soup. It could nourish someone for one meal and be worth it.

Will we make a place for it on the stove?

In this world you will have trouble

Well, there’s been another school shooting. Our kids are braver than us parents, running toward the shooter, sacrificing their own life for a friend. It can only remind me of Jesus, who laid his life down for mine.
The One who calms the seas and spins the Heavens in orbit, He is the God who promises, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

“In this world you will have trouble, I leave you my peace.”
This is the only promise from the only reliable Promiser. No gun control, metal detectors, push for mental health awareness, mindful breathing, emphasis on being kind. No tattoos of love on our wrists are enough. They are drops in the bucket, bandages on a severed artery. It is not enough.

Only He is enough. The Author of life who opens doors and closes chapters and writes our history and future. We cry out to Him for mercy in our time of need, and he responds. We fall prostrate before a King who cares, who in every way understands the evil of man, who rescues us not with muscle and brute force, but with a promise of new life if we repent of our self idolatry. The only way to turn to Him is to turn away from our human nature, our penchant to hate, point fingers, reason in circles, cast blame.

When a school shooting happens, we bleed questions, why, O God? We ignore the truth spoken in the Bible–that man is a hopeless wreck, and there is only one name under Heaven by which we must be saved: Jesus.

We are unstable in every way, distracted thinkers. We rely on the media to bring us stories of hope when they only exploit pain. There is no hope, no salve for the sting of death–except a risen Savior. Yet we crane our necks, worried more about what people think than fixing our eyes on Him. We shrug our shoulders in the middle of the horror–not much I can do about it. We pick up the remote control and flip from CNN back to Game of Thrones.

This is the frailty of our flesh: we look to escape before we ever find courage to engage. We wait like sitting ducks, hoping for this life to get better without ever naming an enemy for fear of being too politically incorrect. We enamor ourselves with the raunchiest, most violent, obsessively coarse entertainment and refuse to draw any correlation between our addictions and the depravity of men.

We have failed our kids. We are the wicked ones, because we offer our children no hope of breaking our own chains. Our promises to keep them safe are fickle.

Friend, there is still an anchor for the soul. The world is wasting away, but inwardly we are being renewed day by day–this is the hope of the believer.
It might be a timid, wobbly foot forward, baby steps to the Savior. He isn’t above running to you and snatching you up in His arms.

Social Deviant

There is a trend heating up that I can’t ignore or even articulate. It’s attractive and feel-good. No, it’s not Jimmy Fallon, baked donuts, or tattoo removal (though I’m a fan of all three).

My dad always said “if the whole world is running toward it, it’s best to stay far away”, something I detested as a teenager. But his discretion–my teenage freedom–was always marked by wisdom, and it suited his children well to heed his warning. I am grateful for parents who swam upstream when the current was moving decidedly in the other direction.

Maybe it’s because I’m thirty-five (that’s halfway to seventy, by the way) and turning into a version of my dad. Maybe it’s the mom in me, the future men in my house, the future woman with her tangle of curls, sitting in my lap. Or maybe it’s because screens are everywhere all the time, feeding us a constant stream of news, and I can’t look away from the train wreck. But it’s disconcerting. I aim to pin down this wiggly matter and proclaim it to the next generation.

The culture of my beloved country is changing. Any wild idea can be lassoed and tamed into some different, made-up flavor of truth. Twelve years ago I took a college level course called Social Deviance. We picked apart behavioral anomalies and wrote research papers on everything from crossdressing to obesity. It was a legit, junior-level class, and none of my classmates blinked twice when it came to sorting out social deviants from their counterparts. I don’t think it is too ridiculous to assume now that that particular psychology class has been deleted from the curriculum. Look around, and social deviance is the new norm. In fact, you will be taunted and your good name destroyed if you even attempt to disagree with this new weirdness smelling up the air. It’s lauded in the media and paraded through our schools, libraries, workplaces, and churches.

At our local library, children’s museum, and science center, employees wear rainbow colored nametags. I’m sure they do this with dignity, not batting an eye, convinced they are open minded, bolstering inclusivity. Do they think this is loving like a neighbor? For sure! Do they consider this is part of LGBTQ propaganda? No way.

Is it hospitable or appropriate for them to declare their opinion on sexual rights to my children? I think it’s pretty unnecessary. Most of the kids I see roaming these places aren’t yet old enough to understand the sex talk.

I’m trying to view this through a lens of love, while trying to understand the seriousness of the situation. These “ambassadors” think they are loving like a neighbor. They don’t know Jesus, or they’ve so ignored Him that they’ve come up with a new definition of love.

I’ve been having a hard time sleeping at night because I’ve been thinking about this. How do we navigate life for our kids when the most outrageous deviant behavior from twelve years ago is now commonplace? Christians are to reflect the love of Jesus, but now we are the enemies, the deviants of current culture? What is love, and how do I show it?

I’ll admit; sometimes I dole out some heavy judgment at the ridiculousness that plagues our American lives. Men that “feel” like women, gender nonconformity, obsession over appearance, and a sexual revolution are really only indicative of confused self-worship. It feels heavy, but it is nothing new.
Oftentimes fury over the state of our country clouds my vision. But when I sit in judgment, I condemn myself. I consider myself a healthy, logical, clear-thinking person, but  Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17)
I forget my need for Jesus, and that we are all, every one of us, wasting away with sin disease in our hearts. I forget that I, too, have struggled with sexual sin, abuse, obsessive behavior, hate, pride. I have had doubts that God really loves me.

When I have been humbled by this fact, it is much easier for me to look at people with love. To the woman with the buzzed head, to the man who paints eyeshadow on his lids: I care more about you than your nametag. If you are sick and want to know the Physician, I won’t look away, won’t feel ashamed. I’ve sat in the waiting room myself, hoping for the doctor to cure what ails me.

Still, there are some who are sinsick and don’t want relief. Jen Hatmaker, a well-known Christian author, announced she finished writing her newest book, a “manifesto” for LGBTQ rights. Glennon Melton Doyle tweeted, “If you want to know where a church stands on inclusion, do not ask who they invite to attend. Ask who they hire to LEAD, If there are no leaders who are people of color, women, queer–you have your answer.”

This is a twisting of the gospel, an angle that equates sin with diversity. It is yet another half-truth, the worst kind of insidious lie. It claims that the Savior is just good juju, and your worst nightmare rush hour traffic accident is really just a fender bender. Folks who believe this are solidly convinced by their own self-righteousness. You really can’t be changed because this is your identity. Jesus warned his disciples of people like this when he said, “the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me.” (John 16:2-3)
Their words are venom doused with expensive perfume.

Words will fly–let them. It doesn’t mean we ought to shut up and mind our own business. After all, we are all displaying nametags, rainbow-colored or not. I can’t hide my Christian stripes, for I, like Paul am “unashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ” (Romans 1:16). 1 Peter 3 reminds me to “be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior may be ashamed of their slander.”  I’ve never come up with beautiful conversation on my own, but somehow “letting your gentleness be evident to all” (Phil. 4:5) is enough for a stranger to become a friend.

It is time for believers to speak out with boldness, without fear of repercussion, not unlike Jeremiah did back in his time. He lived among his Jewish people who were whoring themselves out to the idols of their day. His introverted heart was broken at the ugliness, but he loved his people more than he feared speaking to them. We, like Jeremiah, must claim a similar territory, with burdened hearts pounding and fire in our bones. The liberal person of today thinks they are doing folks a favor by approving of self-seeking, what-feels-good behavior, but they are ultimately confused on who Love is. They are searching for sparkly, temporary salve. They are like little children plugging their ears, ignoring their daddy and toddling out into traffic. But God is so loving that He has sent His Son into the mess of rush hour to take the blow for us. And this is the miracle above all miracles: we aren’t being coerced, forced, or pushed into accepting a Savior. Real love only rescues you from the mess when you are good and ready to shout help me!
I ask the Lord to replay again and again the story of how He has snatched me from the danger of self-love and obsession. It is life to me–a song of pure, abounding energy. Love saved me. I’ll never get tired of telling others, and this is the very thing the Lord asks us to do. Not to condemn, but to point to Jesus.

I was sinking deep in sin

Far from the peaceful shore,

Very deeply stained within,

Sinking to rise no more;

But the Master of the sea

Heard my despairing cry,

From the waters lifted me,

Now safe am I

Love lifted me

Love lifted me

When nothing else could help

Love lifted me

(James Rowe, Howard E. Smith)

the big table.

Here, I am going to talk about writing, sort of. Nothing else consumes me as much as the need to put things on paper, for better or for worse. And maybe most of it won’t make it past my notebooks in scribbled form. But there are a thousand beginnings and endings, and I need to untangle the cords if only to wrap it all back into a tidy ball. It feels urgent. What if I die in a car accident tomorrow? What if someone else writes my book instead of me? We’re all working against an enormous clock.
I wrote one children’s story today and sent it off with another older manuscript to a literary agent. I used the word ‘hag’ in one of the picture book works. I quickly texted my friend Megan to ask her opinion of the word, and she gave me slight confidence in the matter, so I crossed my fingers and kept it in the script.
I have an outline and several chapter beginnings of a book, all on papers scattered through the house. There’s a narrative nonfiction saved one Google doc, and cozied up to it only a tab over is a fiction manuscript.

Joe brought home a big Reader’s Digest full of short stories by Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker and the like, and so I’m underlining sentences such as

He was as dogmatic as Mr. Kelada and resented bitterly the Levantine’s cocksureness. The discussions they had were acrimonious and interminable. (Mr, Know-All by W. Somerset Maugham)

Does anyone even want to read this kind of stuff anymore? I do. I want to write it, too. I could open a tab right now for a short story…and I’d want to put twelve-letter words in it like I was getting ready for a spelling test. I’m a puzzler. Nothing satisfies like locking the perfect word into place.

I have a notebook and pen on every flat surface in the house, should the need arise. I wrote today as my little girl stood in my lap, combing my hair straight into my eyes at the kitchen table. “Good,” she’d murmur, “it looking good.” Then she would brush it out of my eyes with her hands and stare at her handiwork. She was completely unperturbed by my need to scrawl notes. She repeated the process: comb flat into my eyes, brush and pat away the hair to reveal my face, stare in satisfaction.

How could I stop someone so sincere?

I’ve always been occupied with other things–I mean, since I’ve felt writing so urgent. It didn’t come along until after the babies. I am the main caretaker of the kids around here, of course. Sometimes I get the feeling other people can do kid stuff with their hands tied behind their backs, but I cannot. Even when the children are talking to my attentive face, I feel guilty for not following the conversation, My mind is always occupied. Focus is a struggle, and I understand the same issue in my own kids. They are all humming and reading all day and night. It has to be hereditary.

I remember, as a teenager, my dad driving me around to various meetings. He would always, always miss the turn. He simply was too bound up in his own thoughts to keep his mind on the road. It frustrated me when I realized I was the same. When boarding a plane, I need to look at my ticket seventy billion times to remember the flight and seat number. When I call the doctor to make an appointment, I jot down my own phone number so that it will be in front of me when the receptionist asks me for it. I constantly doubt my ability to speak in public, as if it is ad-libbing, as if I’m a liar and as soon as I open my mouth everyone will know.

With good intentions, I enrolled in an online English teaching class. I have texts to read, papers to write, and tests to take. The course is useful, and I hope to become certified in something other than being a homebody, but truthfully? I might be doing it to prove to myself I don’t need to write all the time. That some sort of fulfillment must come with a degree of professionalism.

My heart is not convinced.

Deep down, I’m waiting for a seat at the table, the grownup one, and not the kids’ card table. I’m waiting for an invitation, because my mind won’t believe it’s a legitimate work until I get a nod from somebody up the ladder. I timidly send off proposals and articles, yet before I’ve clicked the send button on the email, I’m sure I’ve flubbed it so badly, I shouldn’t have even wasted the time. The guilt of vanity weighs so heavily on my conscience, I cannot bear to be looked in the eye. They will know I’m a phony.

No, I’m waiting for a seat at the table. I think about how Jesus told his followers to not take an important seat until they were invited, lest they be embarrassed when a more distinguished guest arrives. Not to rely on themselves, as if they had any importance, but to remain humble. I wonder what this means for my own life, as I sit in my own kitchen and let my little girl brush my hair into my eyes. I suppose I won’t miss out when it comes my turn to move to the big table.

But I’m still anxious for it.

In the fire.

Today, a scary thing happened. A man in our neighborhood (a couple blocks over) began shooting at random houses on the street. As police surrounded his house, he fled in a truck, firing bullets at them as they pursued him. Eventually he was shot by law enforcement. He crashed his vehicle into a neighbor’s yard. The police dragged him out and took him to the hospital, where he died of his injuries.
This incident called for a lockdown at our school nearby. Kids huddled in dark closets, hushed to silence by their teachers. An emergency notice went out to families of students. I was glad to have walked them to school and return home an hour before the shooting began. I was even happier to pick them up after school no worse for the wear.

I imagine this could cripple a person for hoping in the future. Disaster struck, but not close enough to leave burn marks. I’ll walk my kids to school again in the morning and the day will begin fresh. When I get home, I’ll work on my online class, do some laundry, listen to GK beg me to hold her as I do a workout video (always during the workout videos, hmm, and a snuggle is always the best excuse to not finish Core de Force), scrub the toilet.

How is it that we aren’t promised tomorrow, and how is it that life is beautifully mundane? How can horror coincide with the daily, the get-up-and-eat-breakfast, without devastating us? How could one ever be prepared to lose a loved one when love is only a rhythm, a baseline, an extra cup of coffee in the coffee pot for me to warm in the microwave after he’s already left for work? It’s the unspoken promise that I’ll never be too busy for them, that I’ll be home when they come home, and there will be clean piles of clothes to wear. We can’t not take the beauty of life for granted; it is all we know.

We’ve been reading through the book of Daniel with the kids at night. (Not every night, just so you know. Some nights it’s Ribsy by Beverly Cleary. And some nights they wrestle on the floor until I get fed up and send them to bed.) It thrills me to read aloud the story of other brave young men to my boys. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego–now they had a story. When they arrived in Babylon as slaves, Nebuchadnezzar was king. He had a penchant for saying things like “do such-and-such or I will have you cut into pieces and your houses turned into piles of rubble.” (And you thought Trump was slightly egocentric and fanatical.)

The Jewish boys held their ground, though. They were level headed, self-controlled (Dan. 1:8) and smart (Dan. 1:17). They spoke “with wisdom and tact” (Dan. 2:14). They prayed fervently (Dan. 2:18) and were firm in their conviction that their God could handle anything. “We do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter,” they politely informed the king as he threatened to throw them in a furnace for not worshipping one of his idols.

Man, I want to be like that. I want my kids to be like that, and I think we’ve got to start preparing them to plant their feet on this soiled world and not budge an inch.
To keep their head when everyone around them is losing theirs.
To hold their bodies and minds in check when temptations are swirling around them.
To remember Who is spinning the world and breathing air into our lungs.
To not argue and pick senseless fights, but to shake their heads and say, “We do not need to defend ourselves to anyone.”

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego knew this: fiery flames aren’t reserved for just a blazing furnace. Nebuchadnezzar could cut them to pieces or roast them like hot dogs, it didn’t matter.
The world is ablaze, folks.
It is on fire and feeding us a confusing mix of misinformation. In sneaky, American terms, it says we can have everything we want and not lose our souls. It tells us we are just born a certain way, and our only hope is to follow our heart. It says money can buy happiness. That morality is a mere suggestion. That we can avoid pain and disaster. That it’s impossible! to destroy ourselves simply by becoming comfortable. That my spouse/kid/neighbor is a major hindrance to my self-actualization. That if we just got the right person in office, got our bodies into shape, if we just let people live without feeling shame about anything.

The lies keep licking at our feet. Flames flicker at the soft spots in our character, eager to melt it into puddles of indifference. “Let’s eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!” quickly becomes our attitude (1 Cor. 15:32). For the Christian, there might be a temptation to hunker down, keep our mouths shut, close our eyes and cross our fingers.

But there was someone else in the fire with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. If they had kept their eyes shut then they wouldn’t have beheld Him. They wouldn’t have noticed their Rescuer was close enough to touch. No, their eyes were open in the fire, their hearts steady and full of hope.
When the Jewish trio came out of the fiery furnace at the command of the king, the Bible says they weren’t harmed in any way, not even a singed hair on their heads. There was no smell of fire on them (Daniel 3:27). If I barely fry bacon, I smell like it for a day. But these guys came out of a fire not even sweating.

I wonder at the world where my kids are growing up. Inevitably, if we do our job right as parents, they are going to be scorned by the majority. We are training them to defer to one another out of love for Christ (Eph. 5:21), which is diametrically opposed to the world’s advice of following your heart. We’ve been telling them to keep their eyes peeled for wolves in sheep clothing, when the world seems to think it’s perfectly acceptable to dress up evil as good (if you need an example, look no further than your local bookstore’s drag queen story hour for children). We’re talking to them about the poisonous claws of marijuana and porn, among other things that are legal and destroying lives. We’re pointing out the lies of our culture, particularly the notion that a person’s worth is tied to their age, beauty, strength, and ability to contribute to society.
Our goal is for our kids is to worship, with their whole lives, the One who created us. This means sacrificing our “God-given right” to do whatever the heck we want. This means facing a furnace that’s been heated ten times hotter.

Will they stand up in the fire with their eyes open? I don’t know. It’s easier to pretend the fire isn’t blazing. At the very least it is in our nature to run away from fires.

Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego–they were unapologetic in their intensity to live as godly strangers, even as slaves to a merciless king. The only way they made it out of the fire was by keeping their eyes fixed on the Savior. Jesus–He who is in the furnace with us–is able to help us through the fire without getting burned. He wants us to train our eyes on Him.

He wants us in the fire and unafraid.


Biggest Loser

Back in the day, before we had kids, when we were wild (j/k!) and free and our jobs only tamed us from seven to five, we watched gobs of TV. This seemed an obvious, choice hobby, considering that early on in our marriage we were scrambling to pay the rent. Long days of college classes were eclipsed by various entry level careers–carpentry and warehouse duties (him), temp agency work and kitchen management (me). Before we hardly knew it, we were grownups and trying very hard to earn the title. Both of us were fairly unschooled in the realm of pop culture, thanks to a sheltered youth. We had little in common, but we were untethered, free to explore. Unlimited television–well, at least what the three local channels had to offer–was surely a mark of maturity, no?

Hindsight, as they say, is twenty-twenty. We should’ve been exploring the world, volunteering, tasting exotic food, pushing our physical limits, bonding over co-adventures. All those “quality time” moments that seem wasted fifteen years later, when wrinkles and bad backs settle in. However, we were your average poor twenty-somethings, and it was the awe-inspiring decade of reality TV. We were regular fans of Survivor, American Idol, The Amazing Race, The Apprentice. Around 8 o’clock, slothdom-guilt and self-loathing would kick in and I’d go for a jog around the neighborhood–strenuous enough to break a sweat, easy enough to keep an eye on my watch…I’d be home in time to watch Rock Star: INXS at 9pm.

My hands-down favorite was the tear-jerking Biggest Loser. We would pile ice cream in our cereal bowls and watch as contestants tried to resist temptation as they spent five minutes in a room filled with cupcakes.

Watching the transformation of folks who used to hide in their cars, shame-eating fast food out of greasy paper bags, into hard-bodied athletes was astounding. It was inspiring. Their selfie videos, where they confessed all sorts of feelings to a greater American audience (to the tune of ten million) viewers, pulled heartstrings. One woman had lost her entire family in a car accident. Talk about overcoming adversity. Let them have Ranch on their salad! I’d inwardly scream. Let them call their mom on the phone!

I (secretly) wept for them as I stretched out my hamstrings post-run on the floor where Joe couldn’t see me.

At the end of each episode, barefoot contestants weighed in on an oversized scale, the number above their head flicking like a slot machine, building suspense. As the number slowly came to rest–hopefully smaller than last week’s–the screen would split and a before photo would appear on the left, juxtaposed with the newest version of the “loser”. Our celebrities of the hour were shrinking before our eyes.

Amazing, that’s what it was. An undeniable transformation we could all see. It made anything seem possible, even if it was a slightly harsh, extreme way to induce weight loss. The pictures don’t lie.

At the time, I happened to be working as a personal trainer, acquiring clients with wishlists. “I want to lose weight,” they’d explain, but as I got to know them better, I realized what they truly wanted, and lacked: motivation. It was frustrating to design individualized workouts for people who ignored them and then showed up the following Monday, joking how they “fell off the wagon.” They were stymied by the convenience of the world around them, the Burger King on the way to the gym, the couch in front of the TV. I was limited in succeeding, and so were they, because ultimately I wasn’t cut out to be their motivator. I offered reason and proven theories of cause-and-effect, but I wouldn’t stand above them on the treadmill and scream like Bob or Jillian. They could always choose to ignore my instruction. Plus, I had my own hurdles to jump. I was 22 years old and in no position to play the wise elder.

It bears resemblance to just about everything else in life, doesn’t it? Aren’t we always looking for some spectacular before and after pictures, somebody to notice that we are changing for the better? That we aren’t stagnant or forgettable, but wholly capable of newness?
What, exactly, does it take to become a massively improved version of my former self?
Who can I turn to? Who can help me train my eyes on the prize?

It’s evident we are all yearning for a transformation. Look around and you can see it: identity is everything. It is doubt or security. Chains or freedom. When you are young and inexperienced, or old and foolish (having lived a bitter life with a clenched jaw and unrequited desires), you think identity is something that can be determined on your ability to muscle it to the ground and stick a nametag on it. If we are naturally strong, beautiful, confident–well, bonus points for already having skin in the game. In our culture today, there’s a constant yammering to find our identity, to not conform to any one size, gender, race, religion. We are now applauded if we howl at the gallery for acceptance. We are encouraged to expose and berate folks that don’t agree with our current obsession. If we demand to be accepted, maybe we can supercede the urge to be transformed.

But this is contrary to our very nature, and in the end doesn’t leave us looking much different than our “before” pictures. It just changes the angle at which the photo was taken. We’re still mired in our old self, our old ways. Our deepest desire (if we dare take a peek) is to transform.

Jesus knew this when He walked the earth. The Bible describes us as sick people in need of a Physician. In fact, we were dead.

As for you, you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you used to walk when you conformed to the ways of this world…
Ephesians 2:1

Do you understand this? We were dead. Without a heartbeat. Expired. Not alive.
We all lived like this, the Bible says, “gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts.” (Eph. 2:3) We thought we were living, but we weren’t.

But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in our trespasses.
Ephesians 2:4-5

God removes a stone organ from our chest and replaces it with pulsing, beating heart of flesh. The real picture is transforming from death into life, a gift offered because of His great love for us. Not moving the sin stain around or reinventing ourselves, slapping lipstick on the proverbial pig. The fact is, we can’t raise ourselves to life. No, only a heart surgeon can perform such a transformative operation. Only God can. Nothing but the blood of Jesus can.

I wish I could say I just turned off the television and started living life, but it has taken me a lot longer than I’d like to admit to living as my “new” self. I was so comfortable in that fat suit of mine, lugging around pride, bitterness, laziness, blame, and secret desires. I didn’t know that if I just let that life burn to the ground I could really start living. There is a word Christians like to toss around–sanctification–the idea of being made, over time, more and more into the image of Christ. It took, for me, a husband vastly different from me to realize I had nothing to offer my marriage. He would just have to take me as I am. It took a bunch of crazy kids to wear my pride down, to make it obvious I couldn’t possibly blaze a perfect path for them. It took the discomfort of feeling alone with nobody but Jesus as my friend to realize He is what makes a heart truly beat for life. He quieted my anxieties and let me pile the burdens high on His shoulders so I didn’t have to carry them anymore.

He is still pointing me around unknown corners, leading me through that abundant life where His kingdom is here on earth like it is in Heaven.

I didn’t know it before, that there was nothing to fear.

When you see a Christian, you should see a person who is alive.

Friend, if you know Jesus–are you walking around in your newness, or are you still taking photos of that old self, switching the lights off and on, trying to get the best angle?

Friends who don’t know Jesus, what is stopping you from transformation? I promise it’s worth it.