T.S. Tuesday: On Wanting Things
“Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.”
― T.S. Eliot
I'm reminded of a story, a parable of a persistent friend who does not give up on what he wants.
"Jesus said to them, 'Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened." Luke 11:5-10
Wait a minute? Ask anything? Want anything? Even if it's my fault I'm ill-prepared to take in a friend at midnight, I can still ask for bread repeatedly, obnoxiously? And Jesus goes so far as to make this the example for prayer.
I have a problem with wanting things. Well, not a problem with wanting things, but a problem with feeling guilty for wanting things. I don't believe I'm allowed to want something unless it's world peace or the end of poverty or the well being of someone else. I'm not allowed to want something just for me.
I also get wrapped up in thinking that it's somehow my fault that I don't have it in the first place--like the man who wasn't ready to care for his traveling friend without a neighbor's assistance. I can't ask for it because I should have handled it on my own. I believe I'm left to handle it on my own.
And when good things happen--things I wanted--I question how much was God and how much was my "bad enough?"
The fulfillment of a selfish desire. I still feel guilty.
How is that freedom? How is that basking? Wasn't it God who made my heart and its desires? Isn't it God who wants to see me thriving and fulfilled? Who wants to give me joy?
Why do I have such a hard time believing He wants good things for me? Why do I have such a hard time accepting the good things? Or an even worse time asking for good things?
God, I know you know the desires of my heart. You placed them there. You knit them into the fabric of my being. I ask for wisdom in distinguishing your prompting from my selfishness. And I ask for grace when I confuse them.
I ask for humility to use the gifts you've given--the things I've wanted--to serve and bless others, to bring your Kingdom.
I ask for the courage to want something bad enough that it just might become possible. And I ask for the humility to give thanks both for the desiring and the fulfilling.
Amen.
Travels with Aly
Today--just for fun--I'm posting an excerpt from my memoir describing my time studying abroad in Coast Rica. I'm hoping it will one day reach the public eye in some publisher-endorsed kind of way, but for now, you get to be my test audience. Thanks for reading!
***
I was sure that I had forgotten something vitally important. Like underwear or tampons. I had heard from a few friends that it was difficult to buy tampons in Costa Rica. At 4:00 a.m. as I scrambled to wash my face, brush my teeth, and pack up the car, I was sure that I had forgotten tampons and would be forced to spend my period sitting in a corner yelling “unclean, unclean” while I slowly bled to death. It didn’t occur to me that I didn’t even know the word for unclean in Spanish, and I was going to Central America, not prehistoric Israel.
The stubborn escalator leading up to the maze of airport security beckoned me; I grimaced as I gingerly stepped onto the moving stairs that jerked me upwards, pulling me away from my mom and dad until the black biting teeth fit snugly together again, flattening and disappearing into the floor. My mom had cried and my dad had told me to be safe. I shifted from my left foot to my right foot, then back to my left, just a teardrop in the stream of restless passengers in the overburdened security line. I wiped my one renegade tear and readjusted my backpack, dense with the weight of my laptop, Spanish/English dictionary, and packets of reading material on Costa Rica. I could do this.
Location: Central America.
Capital: San Jose.
Language: Spanish.
Climate: Tropical.
It would be like a vacation of sorts.
I could do this.
***
“Como es su familia?” “Que piensa del gobierno estadounidense?” “Que es su comida favorita?” “Que piensa de la guerra en Irak?”
How is your family? What do you think of the U.S. government? What is your favorite food? What do you think of the war in Iraq?
In the United States people’s number one fear is public speaking, even dying rates second on the list. People would rather die than look stupid. My eyes scanned the barrage of oncoming cars, and I was hit with the sobering realization that there would probably not be a single moment the entire semester in which I did not feel stupid.
Even Max, the family dog, understood more Spanish than I did. My host dad, Don Pedro, surprisingly white for a Costa Rican with light eyes and a hint of possible freckles, would yell some seemingly unintelligible command in Spanish and the dog would obediently run, stand, or lie down according to my dad’s latest whim, whereas I couldn’t even figure out how to wash my underwear.
That night after shy introductions, a strangely silent family meal, and an uncomfortable discussion about politics, I was finally too overcome with exhaustion to feel stupid anymore. I pulled my fuzzy blanket up to my chin and was filled with ecstatic thankfulness that I could say a goodnight prayer to God in English and He would understand.
What about evil?
In my pilgrimage from cynicism to faith, gratitude is my final frontier.
In case you’re new to this blog, I have one exhortation: read Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. This book is “a celebration of grace and a recognition of the power of gratitude”—in the most powerful and compelling language I have ever read. It is my current obsession (besides Hunger Games) and progression in my spiritual journey.
 |
| Photo credit: Ann Voskamp |
Ann’s words have challenged my heart, but they’ve also challenged my mind. She’s addressed gratitude in the face of injustice, gratitude in the face of the mundane, and gratitude in the face of pain.
But today I ask, what about evil?
Ann writes that ALL IS GOOD. All is grace.
She says, “All God makes is good. Can it be that that which seems to oppose the will of God is actually used of Him to accomplish the will of God? That which seems evil only seems so because of perspective, the way the eyes see the shadows. Above the clouds, the light never stops shining.”
That doesn’t sit well with me.
She asks could it be, “that which feels like trouble, gravel in the mouth, is only that—feeling? What if faith says all is good…I think it. But do I really mean it?”
In my world, there are some things that don’t just feel evil; they are evil.
Death and war and rape and genocide and a million other forms of selfishness and injustice that pepper our world with pain. How are those moments grace, gifts?
I relate to Elie Wiesel, Jewish survivor of the Holocaust and Nobel Peace Prize winner, when he says,
“I feel like screaming, howling like a madman so that the world, the world of the murderers, might know it will never be forgiven.”
Sometimes I hear awful stories and I think I could scream for eternity and it wouldn’t be okay.
I think of catching and stopping warlord Joseph Kony. I think of the incredible victory that will be. But the tens of thousands of children who have been abducted and forced to murder, scream out to me that it will still not be okay.
That it will never be okay.
But God is reconciling ALL THINGS?
I can’t mean it. I can’t.
Not yet. Or maybe not ever.
 |
| Photo credit: The Christian Science Monitor |
I can see good and hope and love. I see things being made new everyday. As Gungor says, I know God makes beautiful things out of dust and out of us. But I can’t call it all beautiful—not in my macro-theology.
In my personal micro-theology I can believe it. I can name my own gifts, my graces. I can name my hurt and pain and walk the path to wholeness, to redemption, to beauty.
I can consent to each of us, on our own micro-level, acknowledging the gifts.
But I refuse to gift-wrap the world’s pain in glib statements of gratitude without the victims’ approval. Like my bloggy friend Adrian Waller commented the other day, I refuse to say, “God causes bad things that are "really" for good.”
I refuse to say that it is okay that this world is so messed up.
I used to think that meant I couldn’t believe in God. Or that I didn’t believe in God.
I used to think I couldn’t be angry and grateful at the same time. That I couldn’t be angry and faithful.
But the other thing I learned from Elie Weisel is that you can.
In fact, I can be angry with God precisely because of my faith in Him.
Elie writes, “I have never renounced my faith in God. I have risen against His justice, protested His silence and sometimes His absence, but my anger rises up within faith and not outside it.”
And so today—from within faith—I wrestle. I protest a world with warlords like Joseph Kony and hot topic issues such as sex trafficking and child soldiers. I protest the poverty I have seen in the city dumps of Nicaragua and Guatemala and in my own neighborhood in San Diego. I protest the less sexy atrocities of lack of access to land and food and crops that I encounter every day at my work. For a few minutes, I let my growing fears that I’m a Capitol dweller in the circus of the 21st century Hunger Games consume me, and I—in the same breath—I ask,
“Where are you, God?”and “Please rain down your GRACE.”
Amen.
***
Can you relate to this tension between anger and gratitude? Do you think it's possible to be angry at God and remain faithful? I'd love to hear your thoughts!