Jonathan is over at A Life Overseas today, talking about his feelings of worthlessness and the hope that carries him through.
I feel worthless.
The feeling rises and crests like an impending wave barreling towards the surface of my heart. And with each wave of worthlessness comes an intense weariness of soul, a near drowning.
The breakers seem to rise from nowhere. I can’t predict them, and that makes me mad. They’re not tied to whether my work or ministry is going well or faltering. They don’t seem to be related to whether or not folks approve of (or agree with) me. They just come. And break.
The paths of subatomic particles in a bubble chamber. Photo source: CERN
A few months ago I came across the phrase “No paradox, no progress” in a science magazine. The quote was attributed to quantum physicist Niels Bohr and immediately grabbed my attention. (Bohr made breakthroughs in understanding the structure of atoms, among other things.) No paradox, no progress?? This statement is as true of quantum mechanics as it is of life.
The phrase really stuck with me and came to mind as I was writing my last installment in the Parsonage Heresies series at A Life Overseas. I didn’t have space in the article to contemplate this beautiful quote the way I wanted to. And at any rate, I couldn’t remember in which article I had found the words “no paradox, no progress,” so I let the idea go. Until now.
When I went searching for the quote in the Place Where All Lost Quotes Reside (also known as The Internet), I discovered that Bohr’s actual words were more akin to “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.” I love the sentiment from this scientist: we need to give ourselves permission to embrace paradox.
Paradox, that discomfiting feeling we experience when opposites happen at once. Paradox is living in a place where it smells so bad and smells so good all at the same time. Paradox is feeling hope and despair in the same moment. Sometimes we struggle when we cannot reconcile our contradictory facts and feelings, or, in the arena of theology, reconcile seemingly contradictory Biblical passages.
We Western Christians are not very good at making peace with Paradox, are we? Yet without Paradox, our faith gets stuck. Without Paradox, we cling so tightly to our confusion and our contradictions that we can’t move forward in life.
I’ve found that it’s easier in the end — though definitely not in the beginning — to simply accept the paradox of two seemingly opposing truths than to attempt to force them into one truth and lose my faith. It’s better to accept both the good and bad in life and within myself rather than rationalizing any of it away. After all, Niels Bohr is also quoted as having said “The opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth.”
Bohr’s kind of thinking has strengthened my love for God (He’s so much bigger than I could imagine!) and enriched my study of the Bible (I don’t have to understand it all!). It’s illuminated my past and enabled me to offer grace more fully to other people. I think the more liturgical among us call Bohr’s motto “Mystery.”
Mystery is holding two truths together lightly in our imperfect, human hands, and releasing the need to have one Perfect Answer. Mystery is the reason I’m troubled by extremist theology. Why is it so hard for us, in a trusting embrace of the Father, to hold two truths at the same time? Why can we not hold both that God is mercy, and that He is justice? Why can we not hold both that God is sovereign, and that we have free will (because He gave it to us)?
This Mystery I speak of, it consoles me. I don’t have to have all the answers. I don’t have to get it all right. I can still believe. Mystery: it’s such a comfort. And in the words of Laura Hackett Park below, what Mystery can give back to us is a Life Abundant.
Jonathan and I have been married almost 15 years now, and I can honestly say being married to him is the best thing that has ever happened to me. We were friends first, then fell madly in love our senior year of high school. Even our first year of marriage – considered by some to be quite difficult – was pure bliss. And I can honestly say that every year after that has grown more joyful and more intimate. This is not to say, however, that we haven’t ever struggled.
I’ve shared before about two of the major struggles in my marriage. I’ve talked about how I didn’t want to move overseas in the first place and how Jonathan and I were at an impasse until God got a hold of me. I’ve also shared my struggle to believe God loves me as much as my husband, since he seemed to have so many more gifts than I have.
There is another difficult season in my marriage that I’ve never discussed online. The two stories I mentioned earlier represent enormous works God wanted to do in my heart and in my spirit. They also had enormous implications in the way I lived everyday life alongside my husband. The struggle I’m going to talk about today might seem more earthy than spiritual, but it still looms quite large in the landscape of my memory.
Some of you know we served in youth ministry in the States for 10 years. At one point we lived in a Parsonage next door to the church building, and we hosted summer youth meetings in our house. Initially we only invited juniors and seniors to our house on Tuesday nights for Bible study, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Later we started hosting all ages in our house every Wednesday night during the summer. And every Wednesday night without fail, teenagers trashed my house.
This went on for two whole summers. My house was a disaster every Wednesday night, and I had a breakdown every Wednesday night. Jonathan and I could not see eye to eye on this issue and often fought over it. He felt we needed to have the teens in our home, and that I needed to want to have them in our home, and that furthermore, he believed the teens would perceive my reluctance to welcome them into our home, so I needed to check my attitude.
This, as you can imagine, led to lots of stress in our marriage. I wasn’t confident enough to instruct the teens how to throw trash in the trash cans or how to avoid spilling coke all over my white living room carpet. I’m more confident now and would be able to teach teenagers in that way, but I was too intimidated back then. (Also I was much more uptight about cleanliness when I only had two kids as opposed to now, with four.) I just wanted my husband to kick the teenagers out; I wanted him to do it for me. At the same time I felt an intense pressure to let them in my house every Wednesday, or else I’d be a “bad ministry wife.”
Conflict can happen, even when you’re married to your best friend, even when you are absolutely convinced he’s the only one for you, even when you love practically everything about him. We shouldn’t be surprised when we have disagreements with our spouses. We’re different people, and we’ll see the world differently. And when we feel our own point of view so strongly, it can be difficult to imagine someone else’s point of view.
For any of my old darling youth group members who may be reading here today, please know I love you. And I want you to know I miss you all so dreadfully. I’m recounting a problem that was mine, not yours. Probably any of you who still like me enough to read my blog wouldn’t have been the ones tearing it apart in the first place, but either way, it doesn’t matter. This conflict wasn’t about you.
Two years and many, many fights later, we finally got creative in our problem-solving. We finally thought outside the box. This wasn’t either/or. It wasn’t: have them at our house, or they won’t feel the love. It wasn’t: have them at our house, or I’m a failure. It was: let’s have them at our house and not in. We didn’t cancel Wednesday nights at the Parsonage. Instead, we invited teens into our yard (but outside our house).
We gathered around the fire pit for hot dogs and marshmallows, for long chats and pyromaniac adventures. We played volleyball with the teenagers and let all the youth volunteers’ kids play in our kiddie pool. We swung on the bag swing and climbed up the rope on the oak tree. And it was a great compromise. It was hotter outside than in, that’s for sure, but my husband didn’t have to give up teens at his house, and I didn’t have to give up my sanity, my privacy, or my clean house.
I share this story to illustrate that compromises around ministry stressors are possible. For a long time, I saw the problem one way, and Jonathan saw it another way, and as long as we did that, there was no meeting in the middle. We had to get desperate enough to think about things in a different way, desperate enough try something new. I’m such a black and white thinker that our eventual solution never occurred to me (or my husband). In the end he must have figured he had to do something about his unhappy wife, no matter the ministry cost.
Now I look back and think how silly we were that we couldn’t find a compromise sooner. At the time, though, it didn’t feel silly at all. It felt deadly serious, as I’m sure all marriage conflicts do at the time. It took me a long time, but it was a good lesson to learn: sometimes there’s a solution that isn’t either/or. Sometimes there’s a solution that meets both spouses’ needs at the same time. Sometimes we just need to consider other options.
Today we’ll conclude our series with an interview with Timothy himself. My questions and comments are in bold. Also stay tuned for his book to become more accessible for overseas workers this summer, when it will be published electronically.
Many a Casserole Lady has cared for me. The Casserole Lady brings food to the hurting, nourishment to the weary, comfort to the downcast. She’s first on your doorstep with home-baked bread and brownies, with meatloaf and soup, and of course, with casseroles galore. She ensures you don’t need to plan and prepare meals when you’re grieving a loss, are freshly postpartum, or find yourself in any other time of need.
I love the Casserole Ladies, but I am not one of them.
Sometimes I think about people with the gift of hospitality and get this gnawing, guilty feeling. Why can’t I be more like them? I wish I could, for hospitality seems like the Real Spiritual Gift. Delivering meals to doorsteps, inviting large groups into your home for meals, hosting people long-term as part of your family — this all sounds so very first century Christian. I sigh and start to think I must not measure up.
But I think my accounting system is off when I calculate this way. Maybe I shouldn’t be tallying things up like this. It shouldn’t be about me, me, me. It shouldn’t be about how valuable or useful my gifts are. We shouldn’t have a “usefulness hierarchy” — that’s a joy-stealer if ever I heard one. Instead, I’ve come to believe that it’s about the love behind my actions. It’s about my offering of love to the Lord’s Beloved, for I speak a language of love to the Church that is no less than those gifted in hospitality.
This idea of speaking a language of love originated in Gary Chapman’s book “The Five Love Languages,” where he specifies these 5 love languages:
Words of Affirmation
Physical Touch
Acts of Service
Gifts
Quality Time
I’ve mostly heard the idea of Love Languages applied to individual relationships, and to marriage in particular. It generally seems to be discussed in the context of getting your own needs met, explaining why you’re disappointed when they aren’t, and of course making sure you meet your spouse’s needs in return. [Note: I’m not saying that’s how it’s discussed in the book. I’m just saying that’s how I’ve usually heard it discussed amongst The People.]
That approach just doesn’t satisfy me anymore. I want to reframe the gifts discussion, and I want to reframe the love language discussion. I want to stop talking about the gifts we receive from God and start talking about the love we offer back to Him. I want to move beyond just determining how I prefer to receive love, and start embracing the way I most wholeheartedly give love.
Some people, like the Casserole Ladies, love through their Acts of Service. (And we’re all grateful for them!)
Some people love through monetary Gifts. (And building funds and charities everywhere are grateful for them, not to mention those of us in support-based ministry who rely on Gifts for our daily bread.)
Some people love through Physical Touch. (And we’re all grateful for the huggers and the greeters and, let’s not forget, the tireless nursery workers and stay-at-home moms.)
Some people love through Quality Time. (And we’re all grateful for the preachers, teachers, and small group leaders who painstakingly prepare lessons week after week, and for those who sit with people, whether sick or well, whether discouraged or not, giving their time to them.)
Obviously this is not an exhaustive treatise on all the ways members of the Body might speak these five different love languages! I just want to ask this question today: How do you speak love, out of an overflow of your own heart, to the Church? Not what you think you should be doing to serve. Not what you see someone else doing. Not what you’ve always done. But, how do you speak love in such a way that brings you joy?
For me, the way I most wholeheartedly give love to the Body of Christ is through Words of Affirmation. I use words with the hope of blessing people, not for my sake, but for theirs. I offer words, and not just in blog posts — though they’re here too. I also pour all my love into emails and private messages, just because I want to, and because it brings me joy. It is through words that I give gladly and love fully.
I take my counsel from Peter, who says “Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you,” and from Paul, who says, “If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging.” I hear their commission to speak and encourage not through the lens of gift or skill or talent, but through the lens of love.
I want the discussion of love languages to be about what we give, for the pure joy of it, and not what we need from others. I want to approach service from the vantage point of love, and not of giftings. Not from a focus on me and what God has given me, but from a focus on offering my love to others. Not in order to pigeonhole myself into speaking only one “language,” but to embrace the way I show love and to give my whole soul to it.
I want our love languages to be an outpouring of love, a breaking open of our alabaster boxes.
What is your offering of love to the Church? What Language do you speak to her?
Check out Julie Meyer’s song Alabaster Box, in which she talks about pouring out all her love for Jesus.
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And we cannot end without a quote from Henri Nouwen who, in his book The Return of the Prodigal Son, expresses my feelings and experiences so well:
“When I first saw Rembrandt’s painting, I was not as familiar with the home of God within me as I am now. Nevertheless, my intense response to the father’s embrace of his son told me that I was desperately searching for that inner place where I too could be held as safely as the young man in the painting. . . .
I have a new vocation now. It is the vocation to speak and write from that place back into the many places of my own and other people’s restless lives. I have to kneel before the Father, put my ear against his chest and listen, without interruption, to the heartbeat of God. Then, and only then, can I say carefully and very gently what I hear.
I know now that I have to speak from eternity into time, from the lasting joy into the passing realities of our short existence in this world, from the house of love into the houses of fear, from God’s abode into the dwellings of human beings. I am well aware of the enormity of this vocation. Still, I am confident that it is the only way for me.”
