shutting the door in Fear's face

i've been in 6 ambulance rides to the emergency room, and one of them unconscious.
you'd assume that fear would be the first natural reaction to a situation like that, but you'd be wrong.

when you are faced with death, everything goes still. there's a peace. i could only feel my heart swell thinking of how beautiful life truly is. rather than panic, i find that it's most natural to quarry courage.

an ambulance ride isn't the only ride that insinuates valor though. you personally may not be down to your last heartbeat or gasping breath, but you very well could be down to your last paycheck, solution, or thimble of faith. it seems like each sunrise can bring new reasons for personalized fear. we fear the economy, the middle east, nuclear war, global warming, swine flu, terrorism, or even the cranky old neighbor's rottweiler chained to their not-so-sturdy fence across the street. did you know that, according to the Report Newsmagazine back in 2001, 'ordinary children today are more fearful than psychiatric patients were in the 1950s'? ironically, i find that fearfully terrifying.

Fear, it seems, has taken a 100-year lease on the building next door and set up shop, unwilling to share our hearts with Love. why must Love comply and leave? but yet, it does. you never see Fear out walking about town, linking arms with Happiness, or buying a nice dinner for Joy. this begs the question: can one be happy and afraid at the same time? clear thinking and afraid? confident and afraid? merciful and afraid? nope. Fear never wrote a symphony or thoughtful poem, negotiated a peace treaty, or cured a disease. Fear never pulled a family out of poverty or a country out of bigotry. Fear never saved a marriage, relationship, or buisness. Courage did that. Faith did that. Love, Joy, and Happiness did all that. but fear itself ... it herds us all into a prison and slams the doors, just like they do in the tower of terror at disneyland. except this time, you're not guaranteed a safe exit.

Fear really just corrodes our confidence in god's goodness, releasing a swarm of doubts with the potential to lead to anger. this causes the "control freak" phenomenon. trust me, i've been here. i am a self confessed struggling control freak, and believe me - it's a daily battle. fear, at it's center, is a perceived loss of control. when life spins wildly, we grab onto something we can manage: our diet, the tidiness of our lives, the armrest of a plane, or most often, people. the more insecure we feel, the more our inner tyrant emerges. Martin Niemoller once said that Hitler was really just a "terribly frightened man." How true.

i think Fear also deadens our recall. like when jesus took the disciples out on the boat, and a great storm arose when jesus had fallen asleep. everyone came rushing down to where he was slumbering, and panicked. did anyone mention jesus' track record or review his resume? shouldn't his disciples of all people remember his accomplishments, much less who jesus even is? they didn't. Fear is a form of spiritual amnesia :) dulling our miracle memories, it makes us forget the goodness of god ... even when it's staring right at us in the face.

if we medicate fear with angry outbursts, sullen withdrawals, drinking binges, self starvation, or viselike control - we really just exclude god from the solution, and exacerbate the problem even more. we just subject ourselves to a position of Fear, allowing the anxiety to dominate and define our lives and who we are. WHAT ARE WE THINKING?! joy-sapping worries? day-numbing dread? paralyzing bouts of insecurity? Fear fills our world, but it does not have to fill our hearts. this is a choice, people. it will always knock on the door. YOU CHOOSE to let it in, much less stay for dinner, or sublet out your room upstairs for a few months, years, decades.


i used to be incredibly afraid of pool cleaners (this is no joke haha). it got so bad I could barely look at one, much less be near a pool with one. one day I came home from school, and glanced over at the backyard pool to see our pool cleaner, doin' it's thing, crawling up and down the sides of the chlorinated walls. subsequently, i had an anxiety attack that crippled me for the rest of the day. summer was coming up, and my family was at a loss for what to do with my seemingly random obsessively paranoid behaviour of pool cleaners (this was before i was diagnosed with OCD, but i digress). in short, my brother made sure that pool cleaner was nowhere in sight everytime we went outside, or went swimming that summer. i don't think i've actually ever thanked him for that, but it meant the world to me. i was so baffled at his nonplus attitude at the machine, showing no signs of any kind of terror whatsoever. he seemed almost superhero-ic to me that summer.

i can remember looking at him and wondering in awe, how can he do this?

the disciples on jesus's ship cried out, "who is this man that calms the seas?"

who is this man, indeed. silencing waves with one word. showing that love surpasses fear. and equipping my brother to be able to yank out that disgusting pool cleaner out each time his no-longer-terrified sister went outside, and slowly helped her work her way back into the water with the once-dreaded machine drying out besides the pool beside her, anxiety-free.

way to go, kris. you helped your sister refuse to let fear win.

here's a prayer that you and I will too.

waiting up late for santa claus

some businesses instruct employees to say "happy holidays" instead of "merry christmas".

schools rid holiday programs of christmas carols and religious references, focusing instead on ... winter.

parents refuse to teacher their children about santa claus, because it's a "lie" or "misleading" or "unrealistic", regardless of the fact that santa claus physically did exist once. so their kids grow up, never having the opportunity to believe in something bigger than themselves, to believe in something magical, beautiful, and wondrous in a child's eyes.

a school in Massachusetts is even refusing to allow anything holiday-related in its holiday gift shop. get this: even red and green tissue paper is considered "too christmasy" for children to purchase. i can just imagine their collection of christmas cd's on sale, complete with massive parental warming labels on the front.



so okay, yes - christmas is a religious holiday. i mean, without the baby in the manger, there would be no reason to celebrate the "reason for the season". But christmas has become so commercialized, someone without knowledge of the holiday's origin could believe it's all about Santa and buying gifts. of course retail stores would love for us to buy, buy, buy and make their holidays merry and bright. i would know, i work at macy's -- your holiday monetary cheer is my weekly paycheck.

i just think that with the recession just beginning to supposedly break up, it will be interesting to see if people spend more this year. some stores didn't order as much inventory this year so as not to be stuck with it after the holiday, but i suppose people's predictions are all over the board on that.

all that being said, aren't you as disappointed as i am at what's happened to the holiday? it doesn't take a christian upbringing to celebrate december 25th's holiday of gift-giving and cherished family time. even the non-religious will regale children with dicken's christmas carol, continue traditions of leaving cookies and milk out for santa claus; they'll listen to christmas music, watch specials on TV, make dozens of cookies and enjoy parties with co-workers, friends, family.

What would our world be like without Christmas? unimaginable.

it's a huge part of every person's life, especially retailers who rely on these few weeks between Black Friday and Christmas Eve to make up for slow sales during the rest of the year. and while this isn't an endorsement for overspending this holiday season, it is a reminder that it's not just a holiday -- it's christmas. let's make it a merry one, regardless of circumstances, stresses of the year, lack of loved ones present, low finances, or internal struggles. there is a "reason for the season" (thank you, jan veldman), and although i personally happen to believe in celebrating the birth of my lord and savior ... i would like to give christ more credit in realizing that he knew through this celebration we call Christmas, there would be so many other things to be thankful, grateful, loved for... i think joy is the real "reason for the season". joy in christ's birth, and yet joy in family, blessings, faithfulness, hope, and if none of those -- then pure, unadulterated holiday cheer is enough is put a smile on an open heart :). merry christmas, everyone. this holiday season isn't about you, and it certainly isn't about me: it's about all of us, and i'd like to think that at some point in your life you will be able to feel the same way, joining hands and warming hearts this december.

call me naiive, but i can't help it ... i believe in santa claus :).

leaving the old self

the ordinary idea to become a christian is this: we take as a starting point our ordinary self with its various desires and interests. we then admit that something else – call it ‘morality’ or ‘decent behavior’ or ‘the good of society’ – has claims on this self: claims which interfere with its own desires. what we mean by ‘being good’ is giving in to these claims.

some of the things the ordinary self wanted to do ...
well, they turn out to be what we call ‘wrong’.
and, we must give them up.

other things, which the self did not want to do ...
well, they actually turn out to be what we call ‘right’.
and, we shall have to do them.

but we are hoping all the time that when all the demands have been met, the poor natural self will still have some chance, and some time, to get on with its own life and do what it likes. in fact, we are very like an honest man paying his taxes. He pays them all right, but he does hope that there will be enough left over for him to live on - because we are still taking our natural self as the starting point.

as long as we are thinking that way, one or other of two results is likely to follow. either we give up trying to be good, or else we become very unhappy indeed. for, make no mistake -- if you are really going to try to meet all the demands made on the natural self, it will not have enough left over to live on. the more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience will demand of you. and your natural self, which is thus being starved and hampered and worried at every turn, trying to be good, or else become one of those people who, as they say, ‘live for others’ but always in a discontented, grumbling way – always wondering why the others do not notice it more and always making a martyr of yourself. and once you have become that you will be a far greater pest anyone who has to live with you than you would have been if you had remained frankly selfish.

the christian way is different: harder, and easier. god asks for our all.
really, He doesn't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work, he wants you. me. us.

half-measures are no good. It's as if He says, "I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked – the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.’

it is like that here, for me, in arizona, right this very second.

the terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self – all your wishes and precautions – to christ.
but ... it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead.

really what we are trying to do is to remain what we call ‘ourselves’, to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be ‘good’. We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way – centred on money or pleasure or ambition – and hoping, in spite of this to behave honestly and chastely and humbly.

how funny that that is exactly what christ warned us we could not do.
as He said, 'a thistle cannot produce figs'.

therefore, if I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. if I trulywant to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface.

i must be ploughed up and re-sown.