Confessions of a Christian...still.

About two years ago, I wrote a manuscript. "Confessions of a Christian". I wrote it in the middle of my biggest desert season ever. Ever. It was my only lifeline to hope for many months, and I felt like things just poured out of me. Things about community and loneliness and fronts and authenticity. Things that, I believe, we struggle with but don't talk about.

Am I the only one that feels like most Christian music is subpar to the rest of our musical options? Am I the only one that thinks it should be quite the opposite? What about finding cool Christians? Trusting people? Letting someone into your pain? Forgiving without the worry of it being accepted?

So I wrote that book. And I shopped it around to literary agents and I got a few bites. And I got one really BIG bite, but after a book proposal and a few weeks of discussions, my agent chose not to continue with publishing.

And now two years later, I am out of the desert. But I still go back and visit that place. Probably too much. I look back too much, I revisit it too much, I think about it too much. But I still see relevance in this little book I wrote, and I'm going to release it on our blog. Chapter by chapter. You already got chapter one. If you're anything like me, you struggle with those big questions of living in this world as a Christian and what the heck we are supposed to do.

I'm hoping for hope. And I am hoping that you will respond with those three little words that are the most powerful words I know. "Yeah. Me too."

-Liz

Christian D-Bags

Hipster. Soul patch. TOMS. Skinny jeans cuffed to capris. Cool guys that walk into a room and want to own it. Announcing their arrival. Deep Vs. Big voices and insincere intonations. No eye contact. Scanning the room for something better. Bloggers. Tweeters. Facebook chatters. Macs.

Christian D-Bags.

I preach sincerity. I preach authenticity. I preach that judgment is left for God and God alone. I stand up in front of high schoolers and church goers and co-workers and say that. Over and over again. And then, in my heart, I see those guys and call them douchebags. In my heart or out loud, it doesn't matter.

So which is worse? The too cool for school hipster douchebags or the girl that preaches authenticity and authenticly judges them in her heart? I wonder how honest I am willing to be. I wonder how honest we are ALL willing to be.

What's the point of a rambling blog if I am trying to be something I'm not?  I myself am a Christian douchebag whether or not I want to admit it. What I am is a girl that needs a heart transplant, just like the rest of us. So here's to hoping we all check into the hospital. Before it's too late.

-Liz

...and you call yourself a Christian?

“Ever since you started going to Young Life, you’ve become so judgmental.”

Ouch. Coming from my mom, that hurt me so badly. Over ten years later, it still hurts. But now it hurts for a much different reason.

At the time of that confrontation, I was so confused. In my teenage mind, I thought, she doesn’t get it. I haven’t become more judgmental, I have seen God, and I now know what is right. And so started a bad pattern in my walk with Christ. When I first heard the Gospel in 1993, I was at a weekend Young Life camp called Lake Champion. Looking back on it, there was nothing spectacular about the speaker. I don’t even remember his name. I never saw him again. But God was calling me that night, and I finally heard Him. I was changed dramatically. But amid all of the great things God was calling me towards, I ran away from my family. My family, who had done nothing but love me and support me my whole life, were suddenly not good enough to be around. They lost the privilege of knowing the new Christian version of me because they didn’t know what I knew. So why didn’t I tell them? Why didn’t I share the Gospel with them the very night I came home from Lake Champion?

In the eyes of my mom and dad, my newfound “religion” was nothing more than a newfound wall. It became a secret for me, and a source of rebellion. My relationship with God was private, and I didn’t want to invite them. And I didn’t – for years. Prior to coming to know Jesus, I rebelled with drugs and alcohol. That rebellion was a much easier thing to understand than this new separation I created. Shouldn’t inviting Christ into my heart make me easier to live with? To my family and friends, it was quite the opposite.

At home, I became withdrawn. I never wanted to be around my parents. I was embarrassed and upset that they didn’t know what I knew. But I never prayed for them. I never had those hard conversations. I would buy my mom Christian books for Christmas. I remember one year I bought her The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning in hopes that she would read it and come to know the Lord in the way that I did. Last year, I was home for Christmas and I saw that book on the shelf in a room that we hardly ever go in. The spine was crisp and brand new. It had never been opened.

Did I really expect the words of a Christian author, no matter how great, to do the work that God could do in her life through her only daughter? In essence, I wanted God to do things in her life that I never thought to ask Him for, nor was I willing to be a messenger.

I used this new relationship with God as an excuse to rebel against my family, and to write them off. In fact, I considered myself persecuted because of it. I moved away to college and never looked back. That self-righteous rebellion was so deep, that it was only until a few years ago, when I was 30 years old, that I realized what I had done. What God did next—was nothing short of amazing.

A few years ago I started having terrible chest pains. I imagined that if I had a heart attack, it would feel just like this. Now, this came at a time in my life where I was working out more than ever, and losing weight. So I was the healthiest that I had ever been. So I went to my doctor, and she gave me some anti-reflux medicine. This went on intermittently for almost a year.

One weekend I was in the Blue Ridge mountains on a YMCA trip and my chest was on fire. I couldn’t even raise my arms above my head. I thought for sure I was having a heart attack. By the time we drove the mini-bus to Urgent Care about twenty minutes away, the pain was gone.

A few months later, the pain got so bad that I couldn’t sleep at night. In fact, I couldn’t eat anything anymore either. I had an endoscopy that was relatively inconclusive. The doctor told me to stay away from fatty foods, acidic foods (tomato based products, citrus fruits), chewing gum, drinking too much water, the list went on and on. So I ate oatmeal and bananas and peanut butter. I ate like this for a long time.

When I turned thirty, I took three friends to Pennsylvania to visit my family for the weekend. My dad arranged for a limo to pick us up from the airport. It was so exciting! We felt like rock stars getting picked up by a limo driver. He even had one of those little white signs with my name on it. It was supposed to be the greatest birthday weekend ever. But by this time, I was sleeping maybe every other night. The stabbing pain in my chest would last all night long until about 4 in the morning, and would subside enough for me to go to sleep for a few hours before work. I was throwing up, I was exhausted, I was hungry, I was miserable. I would go on long walks in the middle of the night because moving was one of the only things that helped. I took a lot of 2 a.m. walks through my neighborhood. I was the unofficial neighborhood watch for months.

We arrived in Philadelphia and my parents had all these amazing meals lined up for us. I remember going to this unbelievable restaurant called The Backburner and there were filets and lobster all around me. In front of me was a bowl of brown rice. My mom had called ahead to the restaurant because it was the only thing I could eat. But that night, I couldn’t even eat that. I sat there, all dressed up, trying to celebrate my birthday, with my head in my hands. I was exhausted and starving and I now associated almost all food with terrible pain. I reached the end of my rope and decided to go back to the specialist and tell him I couldn’t take it anymore. Something is really wrong with me, and it’s not acid reflux.

I went back to the doctor and sat on the examination table. I told him that I couldn’t handle my daily life anymore and that I begged him to give me something for the pain. I just wanted something to help me sleep. If you’ve ever experienced any kind of insomnia, you can relate. The lack of sleep and feeling of isolation was just too much to bear. But my doctor would not give me any sort of painkillers. Instead, we ordered more tests to try to determine what was really going on inside of me.

After what seemed like endless tests, I had an ultrasound of my gall bladder done. It turns out that I had gallstones. Most people that suffer from gallstones have stones the size of dimes. Mine were the size of nickels. Every time I had those chest pains it was these stones moving around inside of me. They immediately scheduled me for surgery to remove my gall bladder. It was all very dramatic for me because I was someone that prided herself on being so independent. I was always the one there for my friends. I was also always the one that protected herself. It was much easier for me to be the caretaker than the one that needed to be cared for. In some twisted way. I looked at it as showing my weakness to other people, and I was always afraid of what they would do with that knowledge of my weakness, and would people think I am still cool if they know that I was weak?

So I called my mom and told her my surgery date. And without skipping a beat, she said she would drive down and stay with me during the surgery and the week of recovery. I was reluctant. Part of me thought, I don’t need my mom! I am 30 years old. And I live alone! I’ll be so annoyed. But I will tell you, God changed me in an enormous way. She came and stayed with me and was so kind to me, took care of me, loved me in the ways I seemed to have forgotten about. I felt my walls melt down around me. I was bedridden and weak, too weak to fight off my need to depend on other people. That was the greatest thing that could have happened to me and to my relationship with my mom. I remember when she left, I was so distraught, I had this love welling up in my heart that I had never felt before. When she pulled out of my driveway to go back to Pennsylvania, I could not stop crying. I have never experienced that before.

You see - I couldn’t wait to go to college. I had such an intense desire to move far away from my family. I felt like there was so much life out there that I couldn’t experience living in the same place that I grew up. I pretty much went to college and never looked back. I spent summers away from home, and didn’t think twice about it. So to be 30 years old and realize that I really did need people, and not only that, but that I really needed my family again, that was an unbelievable realization.

God does not want us to live solitary lives. God knows we need community, desperately. In our world, independence is applauded. If you are a self-made person and you are financially independent, you are highly regarded. But we take that too far. We think that we should rely on no one. Christians are especially guilty of this thought: God is enough for me, I don’t need anyone else. But is “enough” the right word? God is everything, He is enough, but we don’t know what’s best for us. We don’t get to decide that God is enough. And since when did God stop at enough? God lavishes gifts on His people. He always has. The sun rises and sets in unimaginable colors. When it rains and the sun shines through the clouds, we get this rainbow of colors that falls from the sky. When it gets colder in the fall, the trees don’t just drop their leaves, they turn from green to beautiful reds and oranges. God wakes us up with color every morning, and doesn’t stop until we go to sleep at night. He goes out of his way to show his creativity and love to us. When was the last time you looked at the people in your life in that same way? They are gifts from God. Their beauty is on display for you to enjoy just as much as the beach sunsets or the turning fall foliage.

This world is full of the evidence of a God who doesn’t stop with enough. His very character is that of abounding grace and mercy and faithfulness and patience and full life. Full life is never enough! So when we say we don’t need anyone else, we are rejecting the gifts that God is trying to give us. In Genesis chapter 2, after God created Adam, He said “It is not good for man to be alone.” It’s been that way since the beginning of time. You and I are no different! The people in your life are a gift. Do you realize that? The people closest to you are gifts from God. The people that want you to let them in the most, are the ones that love you the most. It took a painful illness for me to see that. God carefully walked me through one of the darkest times in my life to show me one of the brightest moments in my life. When I was reconciled to my family again it was a celebration. It was a party on earth, but it was a celebration in the heavenly places.

We do a disservice to our close friends and family when we shut them out of our lives with Christ. Our very identity changes when we come to know God more. That is scary when the people around you might not change. But don’t let yourself become so isolated from the ones that love you. Because they will love you no matter what, and God loves them just as much as He loves you and me. As Christians, we have to learn what it means to embrace the community around us that doesn’t know God—yet.

-Liz

I am a Christian snob.

I am a Christian snob.

I could tell you a lot of things about me, but that might be the most important thing. It is also the riskiest thing I could say on a blog (a goofy and far-removed way of me knowing you or you knowing me).

As a self-proclaimed Christian snob, I also care too much about what people think about me. As I sit in the judgment seat of other people and decide if I want to know them, I am constantly wondering if there is another Christian snob amongst them checking me out as well. Are they thinking the same thing?

Lately I have been reading dangerous books. Radical, Crazy Love, In the Name of Jesus, Living on the Edge. These are all books that are bursting my internal monologue bubble that constantly reminds me: “Liz, you are only worth as much as your last performance.”

What if what I do has NO bearing on how much people love me? What if I don’t have anything to prove to anyone? What if I don’t have to worry about people liking me back? And then, what if…God loves me the same forever? What if God’s love for me has NOTHING to do with my performance?

A friend once told me about a little formula called “The Myth of Measure”. Here it is:

Your opinion of me + My performance = My self-worth .

Do you know how many years of my life I have lived believing that to be true? There is a core belief in me that says I am only worth as much as you like me and how great my performance is. Every single performance. Every day. Every person.

The most radical thing I am doing this summer? Breaking the myth of measure. Believing that God is the one that hold my self-worth. Loving people, ALL people, without expecting love in return. Trying to not be a Christian snob. Welcome to the most challenging summer of my life.

Updates from Uganda: Time for School

I have been receiving small text messages here and there from Becca and the rest of the crew as to what they are doing and how it is going over in Uganda. For the past week they have been traveling across Uganda and taking the kids back to school. From what they said it has been an extreme treat to have the three amigos [as i have dubbed them] arrive just in time to spend a few precious days with. Unlike some of the children that they will be in school with these children are orphans. Their family is each other and to have an adult come and visit them and give them love means the world to them.

Please as you go through this week keep these children in your prayers as well as Becca, Jason, and Josh as they are sharing the love of God through their actions and learning so much in the process!

follow their journey at both of these sites:

Becca's Blog

Embrace Uganda's Blog

xoxo hsw

hope.

Our hope is that you will be empowered to help change the world, no matter where you start. 

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TFBP: Reports from Uganda

I spoke with Becca today. The three are doing great and they were able to pass out our first batch of friendship bracelets. This past

Tuesday they were visiting New Hope Christian Academy in Apach, Uganda and felt that it was the perfect time to spend time with the kids and pass out friendship bracelets.

They were visiting the kids at their school and had them get into a big circle and got the opportunity to speak with every individual child and tie a friendship bracelet on their wrist. The three said the kids faces lit up as they received their individual bracelet.

Please keep Becca, Jason, Josh, and all of our brothers and sister over in Uganda in your prayers.

xoxo hsw