A House on the Rock

So I have made this decision to walk with God, and to remember that I’m never alone, not really. I talked at community group about feeling alone, feeling addicted to my phone, because it’s my connection to the outside world. To things outside myself that fill me up, distract me from my pain, and make me feel whole...

...unless they don’t. And sometimes they won’t. That’s where I run into trouble. I ask, “What am I supposed to do? God’s not going to send me a text message!”

To this, Leslie tapped the Bible. I smiled shyly, point taken. Longest, text message, ever. And the best. I never have to open up the Bible, fearing what it might say, paranoid of the news.

God’s never going to get mad or lose His patience with me. God’s never going to cancel on me because He forgot we had plans and accidentally made other ones, or because He’s sick. God will never leave me unexpectedly and never explain why. God will never be late. He will never slip and say something stupid that hurts my feelings.

I AM SAFE.

And I am here. I am not in the past. I am not in another place. I am not in the future. I am right here, right now, and God is right here, right now with me. I don’t have to obsesively check my phone every thirty seconds, waiting for an answer. The Holy Spirit is already here, waiting to wash over my heart of cold stone like a rush of hot water. I can visualize it now. My heart, cold and grey, embittered by the pain of a thousand disappointments, paranoias, and injustices, begins to soften as the Holy Spirit begins its work, easing me into renewal.

Because renewal is exactly what I need. I’ve become bitter, jealous, and selfish. I don’t like what has happened to my heart at all. It’s a sick, twisted thing, these days, and it needs a serious makeover.

Lucky for me, one seemingly random trip to church started the whole process. I didn’t think for a minute going into it that such a thing would happen. I figured I would go once, sit through an awkward hour of feeling judged and out of place, and then I would walk home and politely decline the invitation to come back.

But that’s not what happened at all. Mere minutes into the sermon, I was biting my lip as tears poured down my face. The words couldn’t be more relevant. Pastor Mark talked of the parable in Luke of two houses near the sea – one built on a solid foundation of rock, the other of sand. When the storm swells came, the house built on stone was unshaken, but the house built on sand was swept into the sea.

I feel for all the world like my life, my peace of mind, is just like the house built on sand. My reliance on imperfect things – fellow imperfect humans, incomplete cellphone covereage, my own ability to succeed in school – is the foundation on which my life is currently built. And guess what? Every day, it seems, some part of that foundation lets me down. Heaven forbid someone take more than two minutes to respond to a text message. Heaven forbid someone is sick and there’s nothing in the world I can do to change it. Heaven forbid I can’t understand the assignment without help. But these things happen on a daily basis, and if there’s anything I can trust for the rest of my life, it’s that things will continue to happen. This foundation will continue to fail me.

I began to think, maybe this is something I haven’t tried yet. Maybe this is an option I should be seriously looking at. My friends and family have been urging me for months to get counseling, and I’ve been nothing but resistant to the idea. I haven’t wanted to have a designated breakdown hour, every Tuesday from 10:00 to 10:50... I wanted a REAL solution, something that was more meaningful than a scheduled vent session, something powerful that would actually enable me to live my life with strength and peace of mind. For some reason, I was doubtful that counseling would give me that.

But could God?

After being apart from church for so long, the thought hadn’t even really crossed my mind. But suddenly, it seemed so obvious. It was a complete DUH factor. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Heck, even rapper T.I. thought of it before I did:

“Wonder how I face years and I’m still chillin, easy, let go and let God deal with it.”

Of course, this is a lot easier said than done, but he had the right idea. I can’t do this alone. I’m failing miserably at trying to pick up the pieces of my house out the sea every day and scramble to rebuild my house, just in time for the storm to come crashing down on it again.

I have a lot of work to do. It’s not going to be an easy job to tread upstream and start moving all the building materials over to the new foundation on the rock. It’s true, I do still have some issues with organized religion to overcome, and I still have some deeply held opinions that are inconsistent with Christianity.

But, it seems to me that a life safe on the rock is worth the price of giving up my liberty to drop a bunch of F-bombs. There is a lot to change – I have some serious work to do on cleaning up my act. I realize it’s probably going to be a life long process, because obviously I’m never going to be perfect. But I think it’s going to be worth it. I’m tired of pain. I’m tired of exhaustion. I’m tired of fear. If changing my ways to make my life straight and narrow will help me walk with Jesus – and become more aware of all my blessings – then why shouldn’t I?

So I stand at a crossroads of great change. I’m still a little scared, a little hesistant to commit, a little steadfast in the beliefs of all my prior life – but it’s finally dawned on me that whatever I’m doing, it isn’t working, and I’m ready to try to change. It’s going to be a long road, but by the grace of God, maybe it will fill me up in ways my life as it is never will.