Recently, I've come onto blogger all of 15 times in the last two weeks to post about thoughts running through my head.
The problem is, that whenever I do that, I start writing, and a kind of mental regurgitation seems to happen- where all the unfinished thought processes my brain has been sorting through appear, and I lose sight of what I originally meant to post about in the first place. It has been a taxing process for me to get through those "thought bunnies"- that are often the product of my inner Negative Nancy. She likes to insert her annoyingly morbid rhetorical questions in the middle of my pursuit of redemption- she's such a freaking jerk.
So....I think its time to let my inner Polyanna talk for a while.
I've always been a bit fixated on movies Pre-1970s. When I was a kid, my mom would let me watch TCM and AMC. I was NOT allowed to watch Nickelodeon. My mom thought it taught kids to be disrespectful, rude, and that farting in public was okay.
So, in addition to Disney movies, my childhood was swept up in the romance of Fred Astaire, and glittering silverscreen starlets. I wanted to be in a movie with Rock Hudson. I thought he looked kind of like Prince Eric in the Little Mermaid- my Quintessential Disney Prince. I wanted to sing in a large field in Oklahoma, and be carried up red carpeted steps- to wear a sweeping dress made out of feathers, and sing with beautiful lips and shining eyes and glossy magnificently waved hair. The stories were timeless, and the music was beautiful, and the dancing was classy, and I, at 12, was more in love with Nancy Drew than I ever could be with the Babysitters Club.
But out of that era of story telling, one of my favourite characters was Pollyanna. She had beautiful blonde hair, and she met adversity with a smile on her face ,and truth on her lips. I did not envy her the catastrophic fall from the tree- but I did envy the love her whole town felt for her. I wanted to be so loved, and honored- to be found special, and lovely, simply for being me.
But childhood wounds aside.....I think that its funny now, to recognize that there is a hidden kind of Polyanna within me now, that I am now recognizing has been smothered by me.
I have wanted to be "A realist'. I've wanted to be honest with msyelf about of the challenges I face in terms of my personality, and the restrictions my world has on it.
I've have strived to be a realist, because I know that within me, is a resolutely deep propensity to dream- to let imagination take over, and allow reality to become blurred. I recognize now that, although it is true that if I let it take over, dreaming could take my life out from under me- I also recognize that stifling it all together- to become so assailed with doubt every time even the simplest dream outside of my "scope of reality" emerges- that it kills that hope all together...is ridiculous. Its not realism. It is fear. And fear will rip my life out from underneath me just as surely as dreaming would.
People make fun of "Polyannas" now. To the world, they are cheesy, unrealistic, and two dimensional. They don't understand Reality- and Reality is that one person can't change the world, and one person can't effect an entire town with their goodness- that one horrible act will carry twice as much impact as one good act. Reality says that Polyanna was overly perfect- no one had the capacity to love as honestly, or as innocently all those strangers. Reality says that Polyanna would probably have grown into cynicism, once she saw the way the world worked. That the hope of a child is tempered by the living Reality of adulthood.
Reality. What is that really anyway? It doesn't work the way people think it does, and should. The world says Reality is that the world is the way the world is, and it is important far more important to be informed, and that you need to know your limitations. Reality is statistics- its not what we know as completely true- its what we know is true MOST of the time. Reality is facts, figures, banks statements, and parking tickets, and water bills. Reality is money. Reality is that you can't spend time with your kids, because you're busy giving them the American Dream. Reality is that you don't want to go on a date with your wife, because you're so tired , you don't know what you'd talk about that wouldn't segue into an arguement. Reality is that you're too fat, or too thin, or too acne prone, or too pretty,or too ugly. Reality says that you're too much but not enough. You don't fit a standard for normal set by statistics like you should.
Reality says you must stay in your box, and live in your small world, and eat healthy, and pay your taxes until you die. Anything else would be a wonderful anomaly that usually only happens in fairy books and disney movies.
Wrong. Reality is WRONG.
Its so wrong it makes my skin crawl. So wrong it makes my heart beat angrily on the cage of my ribs, and my mind scream in outrage, and my spirit threatens to cower until it realizes it has the power to swell rebelliously- to completely obliterate that NOXIOUS LIE with overwhelming, gut wrenching, wonderfully freeing TRUTH.
Pollyanna's going to have her say!
.......Well...maybe I should put aside that reference. It was helpful before....but now Maybe I should just take ownership of what I'm about to say.
That this is ME speaking. Its MY heart (yielded) and My life (*surrendered*), and Polyanna was a children's story, but I have living, breathing proof of God's creative masterpiece.
So-Here's MY reality.
Psalm 3:1-3
"O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me;
2.Many are saying of my soul,
"there is no salvation for him in God" (How many times have I told myself the same lie?)
3. But you, O Lord, are a shield about me,
my glory, and the lifter of my head."
Every self-destructive cycle I've lived through has convinced me, over time, that I am incapable of not repeating them- and inadvertantly, that God's love and redemption of my life cannot change that. That was my "reality"- that I would keep making the same mistakes until I died- and that at Heaven's gate, I would be rejected because I couldn't live up to "The rules of being a person on fire for God"- a secret code that only the most disciplined ,and naturally beatific of Christ-followers knew, and everything else was just "luke-warm". I have lived believing that I was a bad taste in God's mouth, that just wouldn't go away.
What a hideous lie.
1 Peter 2:4
"As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." ..... v.9 "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own posession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into marvelous light."
I was created by the God of Marvelous Light. The God who made me- created the empathy and sensibilities in me that have been perverted by a broken world into something I have been ashamed of. I am "too emotional", and "spazzy", and my vulnerability has become something I want to hide- to keep from the eyes of people who would use it against me. But God created in me, when I surrendered my life to him- a kind of openness of heart that he wants to use. How many times, in the past, did I ask God to make me transparent for his message? How many times did I ask him to make me authentic- to help me be living proof of his love for humanity, and his unfailing mercy? And when he creates in me this softness- in the world this "weakness" and "naivety"- how can then try to shield it? I am a building block for a building- a temple of the living God. Where others are called to be a wall- I am called to be a window. Its time to wake up to that reality, embrace it, and move forward with open hearted discernment and embrace God's brokenhearted, lost little children.
And I can do that because my reality is NOT defined by the my "experience"- by how many times I've been burned or how many time I've been broken or tried and failed. I am DEFINED by my REDEMPTION.
John 14:6
"I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
And that redemption is perfect. Is the person? No. I am constantly swayed by past understandings of who I am and who I was. I fight the quelling knowledge that I am one person in a big world. But that is until I begin to remember that this world is not made up of building or tools. Its not made of the things humanity has created, or the natural, temporal world we can't control despite technology.
This world is full of created, sentient beings who were created with an instinct, and desire to love and be loved. Every act speaks of a desire for love, pure of perverted - that is constantly seeking its fullfillment in the world of buildings around it-
Hebrews 11:1
"Now Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
For by it the people of old received their commendation.
By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible."
I was created to love things not seen-to Love God and after filtering my vision of this world through that exceptional love, to then meet humanity, and love the wholeness of a person as I understand it- to love despite perceived flaws and failures - to love beyond race, and class, and creed, and socioeconomic status. I am created to be a window that reflects, and allows light to pass through. To let love pass through.
I am not a failure. I am not an accident, I am not a bad taste in God's mouth, or a liability to his kingdom.
I am beloved.
And SO. ARE. YOU.
THAT is reality.
