A little bit of Larry.

I may have mentioned this before, but I don't often finish things.

The last episode of the Office still has yet to be watched. 

Prison Break's last few episodes are unplayed. 

And I have started, stopped, paged through and skipped over countless textbooks, fiction, and nonfiction novels alike. 

Maybe one day it will change, but for right now, I don't feel the urge to finish, and I don't like library late fees...

I find it doesn't take me very far, especially in authors like Larry Crabb, to relate to what I am reading. Its not a bunch of bull shit, try harder, figure out the right choice and make it, legalistic vomit, it truly engages the human soul and beckons an honest questioning of what realities are occurring internally. 

And that, that is stuff I will read. I'm really not all that into trying to walk the moralistic line that can often be heard at your sunday service. If that makes me a radical, well. okay. I'm in. 

Before I share the part of Larry's Book that struck me, I want to share a bit of my brokeness.

I think I know things. Like the head knowledge of my years in counseling have taught me things about the human heart, condition and reality. The truth is, they have, but primarily about my own condition. A condition that others have, but whose stories are different.  Something in me really thinks I have this thing figured out. I really do judge people.  

I saw it in it's starkness the other day as Rand and I were entering the mall. We were having a conversation about some people he knows. Audibly spoken or not to Rand, I had judged the people we had spoken of based on how they were living. The word's Rand spoke, I don't even think he knew at the time were speaking straight to those thoughts. Not in a rub it in your face, see your junk type of way. But truly in a gentle, humbling, way that pulled tears from my eyes as I saw in clarity my sin. 

What broke my heart about my sin is that I really have no idea. I think that I know what goes on. I think that I can mind-read and know heart motivations, but I don't. Not fully.  

So there we were at the mall. Something in my heart really longs to listen, to hear, to trust, to be hurt, to forgive. What I do know is that same judgement that is cast on others is how my heart truly feels about myself. It's that same harsh, controlling woman that is there. Repentence is where I long to sit, lie, and bathe in.

Fast forward to church on Sunday where we were singing "Man of Sorrows"

http://youtu.be/s7ZJ5D5q54g.

VERSE 4

Sent of heaven God's own Son

To purchase and redeem

And reconcile the very ones

Who nailed Him to that tree

CHORUS

Oh that rugged cross my salvation

Where Your love poured out over me

Now my soul cries out Hallelujah

Praise and honour unto Thee

BRIDGE

Now my debt is paid

It is paid in full

By the precious blood

That my Jesus spilled

Now the curse of sin

Has no hold on me

Whom the Son sets free

Oh is free indeed

And I couldn't keep the tears back in my eyes, still can't now listening to it again. 

My sin is so stark. My judgment so quick and bitter. 

The fourth verse's words, the chorus, and the bridge I will share.

My heart is starting to catch up with my head.
I know my debt is paid by the precious blood of Jesus. The curse of sin doesn't have a hold on me any longer and I am free. Redemption through that Mercy. mhmm

Free to fail.

Free to be honest with myself and others.

Free to repent. or not.

Free to experience a love that knows not the ways of brokeness.

That is the type of love I want to sprint towards. That is the kind of love I want to lavish in and give myself over to.

Fast forward to the sermon part of the service now. I wasn't big enough to stay present with it, so I pulled out Larry. This was actually the part of my blog that I had intended to process through, but I'm not sure if that is the point anymore. I'll share anyway from the beginning of Chapter 2:

"We need each other, never more than when we are most broken. But brokeness is not a disease, like cancer, that may or may not develop. Brokenness is a condition, one that is always there, inside, beneath the surface, carefully hidden for as long as we can keep a facade in place. We live in brokenness. We just don't always see it, either in ourselves or in others. 

A central task of community is to create a place that is safe enough for the walls to be torn down, safe enough for each of us to own and reveal our brokeness. Only then can the power of connecting do its job. Only then can community be used of God to restore our souls.

When we turn our chairs to face each other, the first things we see is a terrible fact: We're all struggling. Beneath the surface of every personality--- even the one that seems most "together"--a spiritual battle is raging that will only be won with the help of community. Think with me about the nature of that battle and what kind of community might help."

When I read that in retrospeck of my sin, I'm struck by the normalacy of it. The normalacy however cannot mask the ugliness, but it reminds me that it is always there, always operating under the surface. 

But.

What if it was more about it's reveal then the actual sin. What if my marriage was full of the same type of restoration Larry describes and the one offered by Jesus in the song above.

I want to live in that type of community, but it terrifies me. But, whether I choose to or not, the truth is still the same. We really are still struggling. The war is raging. Guns are drawn. 

The healing can occur, it will occur. I've tasted it. I still taste it. But the risk is real. Man of Sorrows speaks of it in its other verses. Betrayl. Sorrow. 

But freedom too. True freedom. 

I don't want to keep my facade on. but i do. but i don't. 

I long to take my mask off with my husband. ellie. this babe. my family. friends. 

I long to show them mercy with the same gentleness I tasted this weekend at the mall. My heart is actually started to desire that more then my head. And that sort of change I cannot amount to my hand.