It's late. Or maybe it's very early. 3:34 AM according to the clock on my laptop. I felt moved by the Lord to get out of bed and spend some time with Him. In prayer, in supplication, in angst, in pouring out my worries, fears, anxieties, in asking for forgiveness, in complaint, in heartbrokeness.
I get this devotion daily called meditiations. I felt to boot up the laptop to check to see what the message for today was about, today being Saturday 7/23/11 - one day short of Jonathan's 5-month birthday.
The lesson was on taking up our cross. Here is an excerpt:
Yes, He could have saved Himself. But in choosing NOT to save Himself, He was indeed choosing to save others. The choice was His. No one took His life from Him. He laid it down willingly.
Thus He calls us to do the same. Will you be mocked? Likely. Will you be misunderstood? No more than He was. It's your choice as well. Will you pick up your cross and follow Him? Your cross may mean someone else's deliverance.
I read this and went straight to google to get a few more viewpoints on this whole "Taking up the cross" thing that Christ Himself directed us to do. I wanted a better understanding of what "Your cross" means. Clearly it's distinct and different for each person -- He doesn't say, "the cross", "your brother's cross" or "your sister's cross", "your mama's cross" or "your daddy's cross". He says "his" cross, which I take as "your cross":
Mark 8:34 (NKJV) When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
Mark 8:34 (MSG) Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, "Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat; I am. Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?
I like both translations, but the Message version really drives it home for me: Don't run from suffering and sacrifice self. The result: Finding my true self.
So what is my cross? I know for one it's the daily taking up the cross of a job which is not very satisfying to my flesh, but is something in which the Lord works in a mighty way, to His glory and greatness. I would like to drop it, but daily I pick it up, knowing that it is His will for my life right now. I don't stop hoping that this will change, but in obedience, I take it up - reluctantly, imperfectly, I take it up.
I've been wondering also about my "situation" with Jonathan's father. I call it a situation because it really can't be deemed a true relationship. He is still the husband of one wife, regardless of the fact that they no longer live together and have no affection toward each other in that way. They are two successful professionals, with assets and 3 children together -- these things preclude or possibly are barriers to them moving toward a true legal separation, i.e., divorce. And now, one in this arrangement - his wife - is setting down completely (after already, for several years, partly) - her career as an anethesiologist, to stay at home, full-time, to home school their two youngest children. They've agreed this is best.
It's ironic, considering that my huge desire is to do the same, but because of my "sin" so to speak -- and remaining in this "situation", it is something I can only pine and plead with the Lord to still in his grace and mercy bring to pass in my life. It's a miracle that I'm hoping for -- not a right, as in Kay's wife's case, to select.
I'm always reminded that she is his wife. He is her husband. I knew this before I laid down with him over a year ago for Jonathan's beautiful conception. I know it now after additional encounters of making love to him after Jonathan's birth.
So, is my cross the entering into a situation, after forbidding myself to do so in my former, still trying to get over "religious state" (for after our intial encounter, I pushed Kay away for the length of my pregnancy), where I don't really see a concrete end goal, i.e., marriage to this man that I am very much in love with -- an inexplicable love that's hard to describe but is real and significant to me?
Or would the cross be to walk away from our situation and just co-parent, while he and his estranged wife continue this arrangement they have until...I guess I don't know when.
I see myself carrying a cross either way. Neither decision is a cakewalk. Though one - leaving - would be easier. Staying, in truth, is the harder cross to bare.
In a previous blog entry, I wrote about "doing me" and feeling deeply that I should continue to walk this thing out...that the Lord is ultimately going to get the fullness of His glory through something that seems so not right to so many others - even my religious self. That He is perfecting and doing a work in Kay and I throught this. In this, I still believe, and it dovetails with the meditation comment above: Will you be mocked? Likely. Will you be misunderstood? No more than He was.
It dovetails with the message translation: Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self.
It doesn't make sense, but I believe that my cross to take up is to remain in this situation until it plays out as God directs...to continue to sacrifice myself and deny doing what would be the easier for me of the two choices - walking away. I do the walking away thing with great aplomb. Have done it several times. Being alone and not dealing with the complications inherent in relationship with someone who is as imperfect as me is easy. It would be a cross to bare, but nothing compared to the current cross of staying in this until God does what He needs to do in us. For I believe that He is, in some strange way that I can't understand, redemming the situation. Redeeming both me and Kay and using this to draw us to Him and cleanse and perfect each of us. That indeed, as mentioned in the meditiation, someone's deliverance could be at stake...
And you ask: How can you believe that when you are essentially in an act of adultry and practicing fornication, Kim? My sister, I think you are decieved...
I don't know. But He does. I keep having to tell myself that. He does. Just like, as I've said before, He knew that by allowing me to make the decision to lay down with Kay, the result would be the greatest blessing of my life outside of salvation - Jonathan. He knew.
Boldly He calls us to draw near to His throne of grace to recieve grace and mercy in our time of need (Hebrews 4). Daily He tells us to lift up our crosses. I think the two go together. Boldly seeking mercy and grace - Daily lifting up our cross. They need each other. One without the other makes for either a self-focused, "seeking only after his goodness of God" saint (if you limit yourself to seeking only his mercy and grace without taking up your cross) or a religious, judgmental, pharisee (if you only lift up your cross, without the cushion of his grace and mercy underneath to help you bare it).
I take up the cross of my job, but boldly seek his mercy and grace to help me bare it. I take up the cross of my entanglement, my situation, my love for Kay and all that's associated with it, including the sin of our sexual relations...the condition of his separation, and I boldly seek His redeeming mercy and grace to bare it.
That's where I am for now. It might change. What's most important is that we, Kay and I, will be changed through the baring and the seeking. And I will continue to believe that the change will be for the better - and to our Father's glory.
"What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?"
Everything I want is currently not in my hand - it never will be. In this situation with Kay, it most certainly is not - for what I want is to be married to him, our own little family, the picture perfect, nuclear thing...being a stay-at-home mom, with none of the complicaitons that I'm confronting now by being connected to him as I am now.
And yet, in each moment of this journey, I am finding my soul. I am. Weirdly, strangely, I am. And I'm finding the real me. Shaky, rickity, imperfect, but saved by grace, me.
If this personal, jagged cross I am taking up continues to allow my self discovery in Him to take place, then it's worth all the pain, suffering, longing for more, even the shame, embarressment, angst that goes along with it.
It is worth it...
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