Tag: Love

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Someday we’ll Wobble in heaven…

We spent our Sunday afternoon just like 99.9% of all Coloradoans– decked out in orange and blue, eating junk food, and glued to a TV watching Super Bowl 50.

SuperBowlHondaThe only real differences between the Broncos fans of Port Alsworth, Alaska and those in the Promise Land that is Colorado? Well, there’s the fact that my friends delicately delivered their TV to my bosses’ house on their 4-wheeler with their toddler strapped to their back… and that we occasionally had to keep a rambunctious child from bumping the rabbit ears and disrupting our one precious TV channel that we (barely) were able to pick up the game on. Oh, and as the people of Denver took to the streets to celebrate the Bronco’s victory, we piled onto Hondas and drove the village, screaming and shouting in joy. (Evan, my bosses’ oldest even painted a Bronco on his chest and ran the runway shirtless. In February. With a Denver Broncos flag tied around his shoulders. Ohhh the embarrassing photos that I have tucked away for his some-day wedding slideshow…)

We have a wild crew of fifteen or so Coloroadoans who have all miraculously ended up in Port Alsworth through different missions agencies for just a time as this. The pre-game trash talking with community members (all in good fun), mid-game cheering, and post-victory celebration were all glorious and made me feel right at home. Until I didn’t…

Until I started watching the post-game awards and highlight reels online, using my precious internet just to watch my dad saunter back DadElwayand forth behind John Elway like the intimidating stud of a body guard he is.

Until I saw the photos of my grandmother, aunt, step-mom, and cousin at the game and after-party.

Until the Snapchat videos of my friends Wobbling in the streets of downtown Denver started coming through my phone. (Oh, how I love a good celebratory Wobble…)

Until I started texting with my dad, hearing what it was like to be at Levi’s Stadium during the biggest American sporting event of the year.

Admittedly, my heart was suffering from some hardcore FOMO (fear of missing out), but that feeling quickly gave way to an unexpected, overwhelming flood of grief. The sadness that nailed me right in the chest was so much less about missing a silly football game and so much more about the sudden realization that if I choose to continue following Jesus’ call to the nations, I’ll likely continue to miss out on the big (and small) moments of my loved ones’ lives– moments that I would otherwise be present for.

It hit me hard as I walked home Sunday night that had I not followed Jesus to Alaska, I would’ve been with my family in San Francisco, watching my dad live out virtually every American man’s dream. I would’ve been able to cheer for a team I couldn’t care much about, but I would’ve been in good company with the people I love most—my Raider fanatic family.

Instead, I’m here. Don’t get me wrong—I love nearly everything about my life in the bush. I love my job and my students. I love my stellar team at TLC and at the Tanalian School. I love my Gospel Community, running in the mountains outside my house after lunch, and the soon-to-be-spring nine o’clock sunrises. I love the opportunities that I’ve had in the last week to sit and listen to the stories of strong, Jesus-loving Native women from the villages that surround us. I mean, the Lord is BLOWING MY MIND with what He’s doing every day in rural Alaska, and I consider it such an honor to have been called to live in a place that is in a season of such dramatic transition.HGTWgroupBut there’s always been grief in that calling also; I’ve known that since the morning Jesus first called me here during a church service last Super Bowl Sunday. Foolishly (or optimistically perhaps…), I thought I had passed through the majority of the grieving process. I’m realizing more and more though, that by choosing to dedicate my life to Jesus and His call to go to the nations, that the struggle of missing out on the things and people I love will involve a life-long grieving process.

Of course, no matter where I am I’ll continue to celebrate silly Super Bowls, birthdays, and the weddings and new babies of my loved ones, but there’s a good chance that there will be seasons where those celebrations will be from a far (and will probably look more like taking a celebratory victory lap around a village on a 4-wheeler, than being physically present); a bitter pill for a quality-time, physical touch, people-person like me to swallow.

It’s a constant struggle, this reprioritizing of my heart’s desires so that following Jesus is higher than my desire to dance in the streets of Denver where I’m comfortable and happy. And as my FOMO and sappy, weak heart reminded me Sunday night, I am far from mastering the struggle.

The cost of being away from the ones I love is great; Jesus never denied that. But being a part of someone experiencing the freedom and love of Christ for the first time? Or watching a “violent” teenager’s heart soften because He’s reading God’s word every morning in Bible class? Or standing next to a girl who’s had books written about the violence and abuse that she’s endured in the Alaskan wilderness, but listening to her sing praises to our King at the top of her lungs with tears of joy streaming down her face? That is, and always will be, worth anything I could live with or without.

Jesus truly is better, and as the song goes, I need Him to make my heart believe that every. stinkin’. day.Girls(I suppose at the end of the day it helps alleviate my FOMO to know that one day I’ll hopefully be dancing with both my sweet Alaskan family and those I’m missing most on the streets of the New Jerusalem. And by George, we will celebratorily Wobble till we can’t Wobble any more…)

“But all through life I see a cross,

Where sons of God yield up their breath;

There is no gain except by loss,

There is no life except by death.

And no full vision but by Faith,

Nor glory but by bearing shame,

Nor justice but by taking blame;

And that Eternal Passion saith,

Be emptied of glory and right and name.”

-from Olrig Grange, by Walter C. Smith

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Judas’ kiss: Lessons in betrayal and life

It was one of those “punch in the gut” nights that will likely be etched in my memory forever. One where, toward the end of the night, all I could do was laugh at the absolute absurdity of the situation at hand to remind myself that laughter and joy still existed, even though the darkness seemed to be winning.

I can still feel the way the bathtub dug into the back of my ribs as I sat outside it, wedged on the floor in the corner of a bathroom, stroking the hair of the violently ill, brokenhearted girl in my lap. After a few minutes, my laughter faded and I could hear my neighbor sitting outside the room, playing her guitar and beating back the spiritual darkness the way the Lord has gifted her most clearly– line by line, worship song by worship song. I leaned my head against the bathroom wall and sang along with her until I was crying so hard that words wouldn’t come out anymore.

I cried a lot that night.

I cried because my students were clearly hurting after the night’s events and their pain broke my heart. I cried because I was afraid, both of the natural consequences of my students’ actions and because I was afraid to be the “mom” of the situation– the one who would have to lovingly and logically discipline the students I adore. I cried because my expectations for the night had been broken, then seemingly lit on fire. But above all, I cried because the trust and relationships that I had been working to develop with my students had been shattered by lies and poor choices, and I felt incredibly betrayed.

Since coming to the TLC, I’d been warned of the “eye-twitch moment”, aka the moment when you lose control of your body from stress, exhaustion, or sensory overload, and your body starts to revolt against itself. That night, as I sat squished in the corner of a bathroom, holding one student and staring into the confused eyes of another who had come in to check on us, I blew past the infamous eye-twitch and graduated to the full-body rage tremor. My heart was indignant and overflowing with every emotion possible, but the only thing I could articulate was that I was hurt. And when I’m hurt, my Aztec heritage kicks in and my immediate emotional reaction is almost always ugly and hostile.

I wanted to scream, but instead I bit my lip, moved my eyes from those of my student to the floor, and in my best restrained mom voice, said, “Someday we’re gonna need to have a conversation about what happened tonight, but now is not that day. You’ve betrayed my trust and hurt me really deeply. You are forgiven and loved… but you should go…”.

That night, after the situation was mostly diffused and my students were in their respective beds, I knelt in my boss’ living room and bawled. “I. Don’t. Understand.” “I can’t trust them anymore.” “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to give up on them, but I feel so betrayed. I can’t take it.” “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.” Fragmented sentences and bodily fluids poured out of me while my boss patiently listened and handed me Kleenexes.

“I know you’re really hurt by what happened tonight, but our calling is to go the extra mile with those Jesus has brought to TLC. And that’s what we need to do.” My boss gently responded over my heaving sobs before going on to explain a few practical ways that we could “go the extra mile” with them.

I sat and listened, seething and angry at my students, and angry at the ugliness of my heart while he spoke. When he was done, I managed to sputter out, “I CAN’T go anywhere with them right now, let alone go an extra mile; I don’t want to…”

Betrayal at its core is a break of relationship and trust. And it sucks.

Betrayal makes us indignant in our woundedness. It causes us to go to the darkest, most stubborn places in our hearts, sit down, and throw a baby fit. And that’s exactly what I did.

That night as I knelt on that floor and talked with my boss, I spun into myself, dug my heels in, and internally refused to move forward in trying to rebuild those relationships– essentially becoming the antithesis of the calling Jesus has given those who have felt betrayal within ministry (or in life in general).

I couldn’t see it as my emotion and exhaustion clouded my brain that night in December, but I was reminded in the days following that Jesus is a God who understands betrayal on the deepest level possible.

After all, Jesus was betrayed by one of his closest confidants, someone in His inner circle. He knows what it is to have His carefully built trust shattered. Within that, He showed His followers how we’re supposed to respond to betrayal through His interactions with Judas. (And last time I checked, His response wasn’t to throw a baby fit, cry, or purely dwell in the betrayal itself. Not that I would ever do any of those things… Ahem; moving on…)

Jesus responded to betrayal with grace and love. From the dawn of time, Jesus knew that Judas would betray Him, but that betrayal wasn’t without purpose; it was so that His Father’s perfect plan for reconciliation of man and God could be carried out.

Let me repeat that– Jesus knew Judas was going to betray Him from the get go, and yet He invited him into His life and His heart anyway. Not only did Jesus take a life changing risk in building trust that He knew would one day be broken and lead to His death, but He treated Judas with just as much love and grace as He treated His other disciples. So much so in fact, that when Jesus said that one of the people at the last supper was going to betray Him, everyone began asking who the traitor was.

Had Jesus treated Judas, the traitor, any differently than the other disciples I feel like that moment around the table would’ve included a painfully obvious (and awkward) shift of everyone’s eyes to Judas. Alas, it was a mystery who the traitor was until Judas showed up in the garden of Gethsemane with the Roman soldiers, servants, and Pharisees.

Jesus loved Judas well until the bitter(sweet) end and at a great cost.

But because He was just as human as He is God, Jesus also experienced emotion, there by reminding us that the pain of betrayal is real and something to be taken to God in prayer, rather than something to be brushed aside. We see in Luke 22:42 as Jesus called out to God, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.” that there was agony in Jesus’ knowledge that He was about to be betrayed. But the story doesn’t end with Jesus sitting in His emotion or agony; it “ends” (and I use the term ends in the loosest way possible here) with loving sacrifice in the midst of betrayal.

A month later, I’m able to acknowledge that the feelings that accompanied my betrayal were completely valid, but I also realize that dwelling in my emotions and battle scars cannot be the way this specific story ends either.

At the end of the day, I have to apply the Gospel to feelings of disappointment and betrayal when they come. Shaking them off and expecting them to disappear won’t work. Dwelling in them and refusing to move forward in relationship with my students doesn’t do anyone any good. And withholding future love because I’m afraid my trust will be betrayed again? That might be the easiest way out, but it isn’t what Jesus has called me to as His follower.

Jen Hatmaker says it so well in her book Interrupted: When Jesus Wrecks Your Comfortable Christianity:

“Jesus came to the foulest, filthiest place possible (earth), a place full of ungrateful, self-destructive people who would betray Him far more than they’d love Him (a whole planet of Judases). He became the offering for people who would slander His name with ferocity, yet His grace was theirs for the asking until they drew their last breaths, even if all they could offer Him was a lifetime of hatred and one moment of repentance.

We don’t get to opt out of this gospel. We don’t get to opt out of living on mission because we might not be appreciated. We’re not allowed to neglect the oppressed because we have reservations about their discernment. We cannot deny love because it might be despised or misunderstood.”

When the pain of betrayal comes, we have to look to Jesus and remember that ours is a God who understands betrayal, yet chooses to love anyway.

In fact, He chooses to love me, even though I kiss His cheek every morning and manage to wander away and betray Him for prettier, shinier, “more exciting” gods by lunch time every day. Yet His love for me is constant and perfect, unfailing and unafraid of my imperfection.

Jesus never promises us that we won’t get wounded in doing His work, but He does promise that those wounds and imperfect moments will become beautiful and for His glory if we give them to Him, (even if we don’t get to see this in this lifetime).

“As I have loved you, love one another.”

John 13:34

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How do you decorate gang warfare for Christmas?

Last Christmas was a mess— a really dark, emotional mess.

On the morning of December 10th I made great plans to sweep the brokenness and messiness of holiday life under a rug, slap a tree on top of it all, and have a Merry-freaking-Christmas. My students and I were going to be happy and we were going to enjoy Christmas, dang it! (Can you see the crazy, plastered smile on my face? No? Just ask one of my DSS girls… I’m sure they can imitate it pretty well given how many times they’ve seen my crazy-teacher-eyes around the holidays over the years.)

The very same day that I made this proclamation of well intentioned, forced joy, my Christmas dreams were crushed by the murder of one of my students.

Losing Johnny broke me, and I subsequently kinda gave up on Christmas for a while last year. I battled between depression, and the urge to fight my feelings and simply “fix” said depression. I so badly wanted Christmas cookies and cheerful music to fix everything like it always seemed to in those stupid ABC Family Christmas movies. So, I tried to force a few cheerful traditions as an attempt to pull myself out of the darkness and pain. But the truth was, while they distracted me temporarily, none of those things could fix my aching heart or the hearts of the students around me. If anything, my inability to fix the situation just shoved me further into an emotional meltdown.

I'm not even kidding you; Christmas was so broken last year that even my Christmas cookies came out in pieces.
I’m not even kidding you; Christmas was so broken last year that even my Christmas cookies came out looking like a mess.

A year later, life looks drastically different in the weeks leading up to Christmas. (Can I get a hallelujah?!)

But even now, twelve months and twenty-five hundred miles removed from the events of last Christmas season, my heart still hurts. It hurts because I still don’t know how to appropriately grieve the death of an eighteen year old who was trying to turn his life around. (And I feel stupid– like after a year of wrestling with the consequences and darkness of gang warfare, I should have this figured out…)

My heart hurts because even in the middle of nowhere, I’ve got a lot of really real crap going on in my heart, and I know you probably do too.

It’s the holidays, and therefore I’m dealing with my annual child-of-divorce, “I’m-going-to-have-to-pick-which-side-of-the-family-to-disappoint-on-Christmas” struggle. I’m wrestling with a deep, selfish desire to avoid the conflict and pain I know I’ll be confronted with upon my return to Denver. I’m struggling to reconcile the fact that when I leave this village and return to the safe arms of my loved ones in three weeks, I’ll be sending my TLC students back to unsafe spaces to fend off the darkness on their own for a month.

I know I’m not alone in the mess. There are real things that we’re all struggling with, and newsflash: the struggles (at least my struggles) don’t ever seem to care whether it’s Christmas time or the middle of July.

Within these weird struggles of life I’m left with a lot of questions. Questions like:

If the pain of losing Johnny isn’t going to go away, even a year later, how do I decorate gang warfare for Christmas? How do I hide the pain that it has brought to my Street School family, or the unrelated pain that I’m feeling in my heart because of family struggles and relational breakdown? Should I even try to hide it at all?

Should I try to smother my heartbreak by wrapping it in Christmas lights and pretending that it doesn’t exist? That seems to be close to how the world tells me I should handle this internal battle, yet that “solution” doesn’t sit right in my soul…

But I think this is what we, as Christians, feel like we have to do.

Within the church we feel this need to be perfect, especially around the holidays. But I, for one, can’t be perfect; I’m completely incapable of it. And I’m sick of feeling like there’s something wrong with me for wanting to be real.

Yet even within my craving for authenticity, I still hesitate to bring up the places I’m struggling. After all, I don’t want to be the one to ruin someone else’s perceived holiday perfection with my mess. None of us want to be the broken, hurting ones in the midst of a season that seems to be the antithesis of such behavior.

There isn’t space for real life or real pain in the way our culture does Christmas. I think that’s such a shame because I’m pretty sure God doesn’t have His calendar divided into “times that are appropriate to discuss hard things” and “times that are to be devoted only to the drinking of hot chocolate, wearing trendy/ugly sweaters, and listening to Michael Buble’s Christmas album in the car”.

No. In His calendar, there is a time of longing for, and a time of receiving Jesus through His birth.

And friends, this season—advent—is that season of longing.

We all have really deep longings that match our questions and pain, and advent should be a season, just like any other, where we can express those within the safety of the church without someone trying to sweep us under the rug and shove a shiny Christmas tree on top of us and our problems.

Advent is a season devoted to waiting and wrestling, longing and hoping. It was not created to be a season devoted to aesthetic perfection.

This world isn’t perfect; I don’t think you need a church calendar to tell you that. But I think that it’s okay to let advent be a season of recognizing just how broken this world is. It’s okay to talk about the imperfections in our lives, because through acknowledging them, we can more deeply acknowledge our need for Christ and His coming–for the renewal that only He could bring to our brokenness, both through His birth in that manger two thousand years ago and in His someday second coming.

This advent and Christmas season, I pray that the church will be a people who make space for the brokenness (and broken people) in our lives, knowing that Christ has done the same for humanity. May we be a people who speak truth and light into the dark, complicated places of our lives, together. And as we wrestle with our brokenness and as creation groans, may we see Hope within poor circumstance, rather than try to forget that brokenness exists.

May we look to the soon-coming Christ, the reason for our confidence and Hope for redemption, deeply knowing that because of what He has done for us in His birth, death, and resurrection, that our sufferings will be lifted one day, for He is making all things new.

May we be a people that sees the Light in the darkness, acknowledging both, but embracing the truth that Jesus came to be the light that could never be extinguished.
As I light the advent candles in my home, know that I will always light them for you too, Johnny, just like we did in La Alma Park last December at your candlelight vigil. You are not forgotten. You never could be; you simply shined too brightly with that goofy smile of yours. Thank you for teaching so many of us what Light can look like in abject darkness.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great Light; those who dwelt in the land of deep darkness, on them has Light shone.”

(Isaiah 9:2)

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I believe Love (and tacos) can conquer all

“Kacy, sometimes you open your mouth and say something, and I gasp. Because you get it. You’ve been there. Somehow you’ve lived parts of my story I thought no one person would ever understand.”

It was ironic to read those words in a note from one of my students this last week, given the fact that one of my worst fears in moving to Alaska was that I would never be able to relate to my new students. After all, what could I—a Brown, wild child, ex-hoodrat—possibly have in common with Native Alaskan teenagers from bush villages?

I was terrified coming here. I was scared that we would never find common ground, they wouldn’t like Mexican food… Or even worse, that my students simply wouldn’t like me. Could an approval junkie like me handle (and live in) that kind of rejection?

By the grace of God, my students and I have found more common ground than I could have ever hoped for in the last two months. (And after introducing my students to Mexican food and explaining that you don’t put soy sauce on Spanish rice, they’ve taken to my cooking. Even if they still spell quesadillas “Kacy-diaz”. Baby steps, right?)

Every night once my students are in bed, I lay down and scroll through a few online newspapers and my social media streams. In the last two weeks, I’ve watched in horror as terrorist attacks and subsequent political debates have unfolded on my tiny iPhone screen. As I lay under my blankets, in my warm bed in the middle-of-nowhere Alaska, my heart breaks for the world that we live in.

After all, I live in what could arguably be one of the safest places in the world.

Every morning I wake up in a village where the post master knows me by name and calls me to tell me when I have a package to pick up. I live in a place so safe and so quaint that if I’m hiking when the “grocery plane” lands, my neighbors put away my groceries for me; it’s just what we do here because this village is a family who lives for Jesus.

It kills me to read the news and be reminded that this is not the way of the world.

It pains my sappy heart to know that fear is driving hatred, racism, exclusion, and perpetuating foreign and domestic terrorism. But I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked… after all, as Carl Medearis (one of my favorite “Christian” authors) says, perfect fear casts out all love. Oh, wait… No, something is wrong there.

That isn’t the way of Jesus…

No, Jesus confronts fear with His perfect love. In fact, He confronted more than fear in His life (and death). Jesus confronted racism, sexism, pain, and shame all throughout His earthly ministry, but He did so specifically when He shared the Gospel with a Samaritan woman at a well in John 4:

“So Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as He was from His journey, was sitting beside the well around the sixth hour.

A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’ The Samaritan woman said to Him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?’ (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked Him and He would have given you Living Water.’ The woman said to Him, ‘Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get such Living Water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock. Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come to draw water.’” (John 4:5-15)

Jesus challenged man-made boundaries of racism here by talking to a Samaritan. *Gasp!* Then He got really risqué and pushed aside cultural taboos by crossing gender barriers and talking to a Samaritan woman. Even His disciples knew this was a big deal: “Just then, His disciples came back. They marveled that He was talking with a woman, but no one said, ’What do you seek?’ or, ‘Why are you talking with her?’” (John 4:27) They marveled at the fact that Jesus was loving someone so different from Himself… so foreign, so “lowly”.

Now, there’s speculation over whether this woman truly was an unlucky widow (several times over) or whether she was an adulterer or prostitute; We can speculate all we want on the facts here, but we will likely never know this side of heaven.

As a fellow woman, I can deduce however, that this woman likely wrestled with fear and shame if she had gone through that much deep, relational upheaval in her lifetime. And Jesus, knowing the depths of her heart more than I could ever begin to speculate, still chose to enter into her fear, shame, and brokenness to offer her the Kingdom of God anyway, even with the complicating circumstances of her nationality and gender.

I read this chunk of scripture and it causes me to pause. Every. Stinkin’. Time.

If this is the way of Jesus… And Christians are followers of Jesus… And I consider myself to be a Christian… What am I doing? What am I valuing in life if I find myself unwilling to cross uncomfortable barriers to love the ones He loved first?

If we as Christians claim to follow Christ, but are unwilling to follow Him across political, social, and man-made lines today in 2015, we are following something… but I dare say it isn’t Jesus.

Let me say it again: Jesus confronted the brokenness of the world with Love.

In the midst of the horrific headlines regarding terrorism and the political debate the rages on over the futures of refugees– real human beings— what our world needs is the love of Christ.

We don’t need another political mandate, stricter man-made laws, or bloodshed to retaliate for bloodshed.

We need to love.

And we will never be able to love those whom we are afraid (or unwilling) to get to know. The Lord has shown me this first hand time and time again through scripture, and through moving me to the middle of the wilderness to do life with people that I thought couldn’t be more different from me, but whom He adores.

“Those people” whoever “they” are?

“They” are beautiful.

“Their” culture is rich with lessons, just waiting to be learned and loved.

“They” have been created in the image of God, just like you and me.

“They” need Jesus just as badly as you and me.

(“They” probably like Mexican food just as much as you, my students, and I do. [Just sayin’… I believe Jesus and tacos can unite the world…])

We’re all human, which unfortunately means we’re all a bit screwed up. But Christ came in PERFECT LOVE and died for all of us, that we might turn to Him and die to our sinful selves. To die to ourselves is to live for Him, and I don’t know about you, but it seems like living for the Jesus of the Bible means to love the people He has placed around us and love them as we love ourselves.

Scripture tells us the truths that His perfect love casts out fear and His strength is perfected in our weakness. But we, as the followers of Christ Jesus, have to be willing to humble ourselves and be His hands and feet; we have to be willing to invite in our poor and needy neighbors– those who live right down the road and (hold onto your seats) those who are foreign. 

Jesus was not an example of discrimination or exclusion, and thus I struggle to believe that we should walk those paths.

What would it look like for you to truly love “those” people today? (“Those people”– whoever they are– probably aren’t as scary as you think. Trust me; I live in a house full of people I was terrified to meet.)

“By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in Him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”

“There is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out fear.”

(1 John 3:18, 4:18)

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Get in the river

FlyFishingTanalianYou can fish from the shore, or you can throw on a pair of waders and follow Jesus into the river. This is what Alaska is teaching me.

Okay, let me back up…

Maybe the cold has frozen the frontal cortex of my brain, but I’ve taken to spending my Saturday mornings standing in frigid rivers with a tiny pole, tempting Pike with sharp teeth to come near me. In other words… I spend my Saturday mornings fly fishing with my boys.

Full disclosure:

1) I know Alaska has frozen a chunk of my brain. I haven’t seen weather warmer than 40 degrees in weeks.

2) I’m a terrible fly fisherman. (Fly fisher? Fly fisherwoman? See, I don’t even know the correct term. Maybe that’s why I haven’t caught anything yet…)

3) Jesus continues to prove that He’s the only One who could ever tempt me to stand in an Alaskan river on my “day off”.

Due to the fact that I can’t talk or sing while fishing (lest I scare away my prey) I’ve spent a good amount of time lately considering the fact that Jesus walked into our proverbial river by coming down to earth. In fact, He came to us and then He called us to follow in His example.

Jesus walked out of his heavenly perfection and He entered in to our lives; it’s in His very name. Emmanuel—God with us.

In this season of living with my students, teaching and learning with them during the day, and hanging out with them at night, I’m learning what His call to “enter in” with Him to peoples’ lives looks like in a new way.

Consider with me the commands of Christ in the New Testament:

“And Jesus came and said to His disciples, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” (Matthew 28:16-20)

As I read this, I can almost hear Jesus saying, “Hey! Kacy. I came to you, for you. Now go and be with others. Tell them who I am, and when you can’t seem to remember who I am, simply remember that I am always with you. You need only ask and I will show myself because I’m Emmanuel– God with you; God within you.”

We see two of the other most important commandments of Christ later in the Gospel of Mark:

“One of the scribes came up and heard the Sadducees disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus had answered them well before, asked Him, ‘Which commandment is the most important of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.’” (12:28-31)

Love your neighbor as yourself. Woof; the weight of that calling is never lost on me. After all, this is the call—the one to enter in to the brokenness and pain of those around us and point them to Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t seem to be talking about “dipping your toe in the proverbial water while your other foot is comfortably planted on the ground” here. He isn’t referring to the kind of “entering in” where you see a struggle, recognize the pain and mess, and offer a Bible verse or applicable “Christian” platitude where you see fit, then leave, hoping that things will get better for that person.

No.

He’s talkin’ about slapping on your waders (even if they make you look like an idiot) and walking into the river of another’s sorrows beside them.

You might walk in and find yourself knee deep in the mud of life, which is often difficult to navigate. You might find yourself feeling like you’re drowning in the other person’s pain at times. The waters of their sorrow, pain, and fear will be cold, dark, and incredibly uncomfortable. But God is continuously reminding me that we have to be experience the rivers of other’s sorrow, in one way or another, to effectively love them as we love as ourselves. We have to be in it with them—truly in it. No matter what “it” is…

I don’t know about you, but I’m one broken, self-absorbed human being. I’m overly consumed by my own heart at times, and as I look at those moments filled with my own humanity I recognize that I’m being called to be just as concerned about the hearts of those around me.

But how do we do this? How do we enter in to the river of sorrows with another when we feel like we’re drowning in our own?

We love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. That may sound trite, but I don’t mean it to.

Think about it: What does it look like to love someone that much? You long to be near them. You want to be in their presence, to hear their stories and know everything about who they are, where they’ve been, and where they’re going.

In short, if we are going to love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength we have to be obsessed with His story. We have to be constantly looking to the Gospel to see who Jesus is, where He has come from, and where He is going. Our God came down as flesh—a tangible example of what it looks like to love the Lord through faith, obedience, and action (and how to love His people in the same way).

We have to be in the Gospel.

It seems so obvious, and yet in day-to-day ministry and life it’s so easy to stop looking to Jesus and simply become absorbed by the humanity and brokenness that surrounds us, or even the humanity represented within scripture.

I don’t believe that we ever intentionally take our eyes off Jesus.

For me, taking my eyes off of the Gospel usually begins innocently enough—I decide to spend time elsewhere in my Bible. For months, I was camped in the Psalms and the Pentateuch (and trust me, this is not a rag against the Psalms or the Old Testament—I LOVE both.) but slowly, ohhhh sooo slowly, I stopped looking at who Jesus was and what He has done for me.

I didn’t realize that I wasn’t looking at Him until I slammed into a wall of exhaustion a few weeks ago. Physically, I felt fine. Emotionally, I’d been better, but I knew that wasn’t my issue. I was spiritually exhausted from a lack of the Gospel in my life. And when my alarm would wake me every morning, I would lay in bed and cry at the thought of having to get up and engage with my students.

I can’t. I can’t do it, Lord. I’m too tired. I can’t enter in to the river of sorrows today. I just want to lay under this electric blanket and pretend that I’m not in Alaska and that life is not hard.

As I bemoaned this fact to a friend on the phone, she asked the question that she asks me so often: “Who are you seeing Jesus as right now?”

Jesus… Huh… I don’t think I’m seeing Jesus period… In fact, I haven’t seen much of Him in my quiet times or our lessons in the Old Testament this week. I thought out loud.

“That’s probably the problem…”

And I knew she was right.

We are to look at Him at all times; If we don’t, loving people and entering in to their lives is impossible. After all, Jesus is the only one who can save us. He is the King of the universe—the only god who has ever come to humbly die for His people and raise Himself to fulfill scripture.

He is the only one who can teach us what it means to “enter in” to the lives of the people we love.

We can’t take our eyes off of Him.

I recognize more everyday that I am not Emmanuel. No matter how hard I try to be a savior, I am not God for anybody. (And trust me, you would not want me to be your savior. I’m a mess. I cry too much and I doubt even more than I cry– a scary thought for those of you who know me… I let my fears control me, consume me, and ruin things far too often. I get angry at pain and injustice, and hell hath no fury like an angry Mexican woman…) 

So, I’m not God to this world. But by His Grace, I am of Him, in the world and so are you.

As believers, we’ve been called to show the world who God is and what He’s about. But that requires looking at Him and following His example of walking into the river of sorrows.

There are plenty of times in scripture where God promises to do amazing things once His people have gotten in the water.

What do you think Christ could do with you and those whom you love if you were willing to get in the river of sorrows with Him?

~

And the Lord said to Joshua, “Today I will begin to exalt you in the eyes of all Israel, so they may know that I am with you as I was with Moses. Tell the priests who carry the ark of the covenant: ‘When you reach the edge of the Jordan’s waters, go and stand in the river.’ ‘And as soon as the priests who carry the ark of the Lord—the Lord of all the earth— set foot in the Jordan, its waters flowing downstream will be cut off and stand up in a heap, so that the entire tribe of Israel might pass through on dry ground.

(Joshua 3:7-8, 13, 17)