Everything

There are very few people who will truly love the whole version of ourselves.  Who, once they see some of the rawer forms of our negative traits, will embrace us all the more.  I would dare say that the vast majority of us cannot even love ourselves with that kind of all-encompassing completeness.  I see the darker sides of myself and respond with self-judgment, self-loathing, self-contempt, and shame.

And yet all of us have those darker sides.  At our core, our personalities include positive and negative, and the same person in different contexts can demonstrate both compassion and apathy, humility and arrogance, patience and anger.  I pretty much just described myself.

That's where God comes in, and, of course, the brilliant Alanis Morissette giving us His truth.  If you're unfamiliar with Alanis, I'll tell you she's up there with the Psalms as one of my favorite sources of God's truth.  This song is a great example why:

[If you're listening with children nearby, the 2nd version removes the one instance of the word a**hole.  If there aren't kids around, use the 1st one - let's be honest and call ourselves what we are sometimes.]

Go back through those lyrics and see where you find yourself being described: withholding? wise? brave? mistrusting? blame-shifting? gorgeous?  Depending on the day, I can be each one of those descriptions, though I do a better job hiding some of them than others.

Our God is one who, despite our best efforts to hide it, see all of us.  He chooses to love us when we are at our most awful and our most divine, with an unconditional love beyond what we can even offer to ourselves, much less those around us.

"You see everything, you see every part"  You have searched me, LORD, and You know me ... You perceive my thoughts from afar ... You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, You, LORD, know it completely.  -Psalm 139  

"There's not anything to which you can't relate"  We do not have a high priest [Jesus] who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are ... -Hebrews 4

"And you're still here"  ... neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God ... -Romans 8

And this section preaches the most truth to me:

"What I resist persists and speaks louder than I know.  What I resist, you love, no matter how low or high I go"  Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me ... will hold me fast. -Psalm 139

How often do I fight losing battles against my own negative traits, resisting with all my might, yet unable to suppress them?  But God meets us where we are regardless.  We can't sink too low for Him, no matter what, and we certainly will never be too high for Him to reach.

Brave & Say

This wasn't the direction I planned to go with my second post, but my three year old has been singing the song "Brave" by Sara Bareilles over and over (and over, and over, and over ...) for several days straight, and I just can't escape it.  So I've decided to embrace.

I mentioned previously that the way in which a work of art holds value to an individual may not be the same as how it originally held value to the artist.  Similarly, the same work of art can be valued on a number of different planes simultaneously - when listening to a song in the context of a breakup, you hear it one way, in the context of the birth of a child, you hear it differently, and all the while you may still be able to hear the social message it was originally written to express.

It's important not to take away from the intended message of this particular song.  The obvious messages are significant, and absolutely in line with biblical truth in their own right.  Leaving those in place, I think it's possible to shift our ears to a spiritual filter and hear another layer too.  What if, as you listen, the lyrics are heard as God's words to you about your relationship with Him?  Try it:

When is the last time you really prayed?  I mean the kind of prayer where your heart pours out everything, baring your thoughts good and bad to a God who's only desire is to know you, to see all the parts of who you are?  I know I'm not alone in feeling trapped underneath the things I won't say to Him, living in a metaphorical dark cave of solitude that I've made through my own silence, especially when it comes to what I'm honestly thinking of God Himself.  Yet I hear Him in these lyrics calling me out - "Let the words fall out, stop holding them in, say what you want to say so I can move towards you in love.  There's nothing you can say that I can't handle - I want to see all of you."

Being a 30-something, I personally can't think of Sara Bareilles' lyrics without hearing John Mayer's "Say" in my head, and actually, that song continues this theme of God pressing us to speak to Him openly, vulnerably, without reservation:

Maybe today's the day to take the battles we're fighting in our heads and hash them out with God boldly, honestly, without fear.

"Even if your hands are shaking and your faith is broken ... say what you need to say."