Redemption

What is it - truly?

I was watching Masterpiece Theater's 2007 version of Jane Erye.  There's a piece of dialogue where Mr. Rochester asks Jane, "Do you believe in redemption?" and she responds, "If a person sins, they can be redeemed."  That line struck me.  It struck me because I've spent a lot of my adult life doing my best to live a visibly, holy life.  However, inward there is so much that is corrupt, that requires the Lord's redemptive power.  Privately, there's so much I've done and said that I would be embarressed for others to know about.  I've even, in recent months, thought evil thoughts about my own son - said evil things under my breath, like "Dummy", when he's only doing what most toddlers do.  Or I've been harsh with him - pulling him, pushing him - just evil, evil stuff.  Do I ask for forgiveness and receive the redemption made available through Christ?  Of course - as much as my actions still grate on my conscience even after seeking that forgiveness - when I ask to be forgiven, I receive the forgiveness.  And in my fleshly weakness, I typically find myself having to go back and do it again - seek that redemption - hating myself for my weakness - and yet, that same blood, it pours out.  I know that it pours out.  "How many times shall I forgive my brother - up to 7 times?" asks Peter.  Jesus's response: "Ay (my add), up to 70*7".  So, 70*7 negative thoughts, nasty words, pushy, impatient, harsh behvior times, I can go to the Father and He forgives, with the hope that with each time, the return trip gets longer and longer and longer, so that eventually there is no need to go back to Him - to be covered by the blood for that sin.

So that is redemption.  That is the blood that covers us and returns us to righteousness - to "right-standing" with God.  Its's the same forgiveness available to everyone.  Everyone.  And there - well, in a particular matter - is my struggle.  Specifically when it comes to sexual sin.  Sexual sin.

When I speak of my outward holiness, sexual sin is the thing I've fought hard with and have used at times as a measuremet of how Holy I am.  Well, I'm celibate.  That means I'm in good shape with the Lord.  In fact, that's such a HUGE thing, that I'm sure I'm okay overall in the holiness department.  That's something I can brag about: "Oh, I've been celibate for 5 yeaars!"  For some reason, I'm prone to believe that such a declaration makes people consider me a saint...worthy of praise.  However, if I were to instead say, "Well, I haven't yanked Jonathan's arm to hard to get him to stop doing something I don't want him to do for the past 2 weeks..." well, I would never say that because I would be too ashamed to admit in public that I do it at all.  We're not supposed to get impatient, or semi-abusive, harsh with our children.  No way in hell do you confess to something like that.  However, "I've been celibate for 2 years!" - THAT I want to make sure everyone knows about - or at least, I have no qualms about divulging that as a "virtuous" accomplishment.

Why?

Sexual sin, negative, harsh behavior toward your toddler, impatience and using a condescending tone with your elderly parents (guilty of that too), using expletives whenever something doesn't go your way, blaming God when something doesn't your way - all of it, every bit of it, needs the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ to put you back in right-standing with the Lord.  Period.  None is worst than the other.  They are all the same.  And yet, I continue to tout this sexual sin thing as being the end all be all of what defines just how holy or unholy you are as a person.

It's been troubling me lately, especially in terms of how I've judged others - or how I've been puzzled that the Lord still blesses and pours out his favor, grace and mercy on individuals - and manages to use, in sometimes mighty, anointed, miraculous ways, people who I know are in the midst of serious, sexual sin:  shacking up, fornicating with multiple people at the same time, or just serial fornicators, adultry - all kinds of stuff that.  Sexual behavior that, in my mind, rules out that person's usefulness in the Kingdom.  However, the Lord doesn't rule them out.  Not at all.

It makes me start to think that sexual sin might possibly not be that bad at all.  But that's a lie - cause even Paul points out in one of his letters that sexual sin is against our bodies - the same body that houses the Holy Spirit.  So, in our Father's viewpoint, there's something particularly egregious about sexual sin.  Nonetheless, it still doesn't have any ranking on it to make it either more or less important in the list of the many sins we inact against each other and above all our Father in heaven.  I just think the consequences of sexual sin might just be a bit more long-lasting and devestating in the long run than maybe some other sins.  But I'm getting off my point.

The point is that the Lord does use people in the midst of sexual sin, of hypocrisy, lies, deciet, theivery, dishonoring their parents, coveting other people's stuff, jealousy and envy - a whole host of sins - whether the person has asked for forgiveness and been redeemed or not.  He uses them. 

Now - do they have fullness of joy in their lives?  Are they living Kingdom of God lives, which is righteous, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.  I doubt it.  I can say that cause I know that I don't.  You can't have fullness of joy when you have to blurt out "f*&&%, s**+#, a**#%hole" and a number of other expletives when something inconvenient happens.  You can't have fullness of joy when you shove your 2 year old, or squeeze his arm to tight, or yell at him and you see him shake at the sound of your booming voice. There's no fullness of joy in a life raft with that kind of repetive sin - regardless of all the times you take that trip back to the Father to be forgiven and redeemed for it.

So -- redemption.  How I need it.  How I exploit it more times than I want to admit.  How I'm so grateul to God that He doesn't withold it, when in my heart, in most cases, especially when I act so un-Godly toward the love of my life, Jonathan, I surely don't deserve it.  Thank God also for all those He continues to use in the midst of their sin.  And how I hope for us all that we can, in Him, rise higher and higher above all that - to be so surrendered to the move of the Holy Spirit in our lives that the redemptive blood is ever flowing, never ebbing or diverted by our carnal choices, our bad behavior.

As Jonathan nears his 2nd birthday, I'm reminded that in the midst of my carnal choice in the early morning hours of 5/29/10, the Lord saw fit to take my sexual sin, and redeem it and turn it into the miracle of a child that I love with all my heart, and who I'm learning to live with in understanding, patience, forebearance, and continuous gratitude for every bit of who he is - the good, the bad and the ugly - and with a toddler, there can be A LOT of ugly.  Jonathan is stretching, growing, testing his limits, becoming more and more of who he is.  Lord, please keep me from getting in the way of it, but do help me to set up the right boundaries so that his expansion doesn't take him over the edge, but allows him the protective space to truly grow into who You have created him to be.  Please keep me out of the way with my ill behavior that I am too ashamed to admit to publically - but come to you, via this blog, to make it understood that I know that you know and that you are forgiving me and cleansing me and making better with each passing day.

You are making his father better too.  Good, bad or indifferent - my heady, fickle, ever-changing emotions toward Kay aside - he is Jonathan's dad.  Our sexual sin has united us for life through the blessed life of this little boy.  I'm tied to Kay.  Lord, help me to navigate this relationship.   Redeem this relationship, somehow.  Redeem it.  Make us both better for it. Not bitter.

I find myself there so much.  Bitterness and indifference.  Anger and longing.  Puzzlement, confusion.  The why, why, why of it all.  Wanting the redemption to take us to a place of true togetherness...

I was talking to April and she mentioned how Abril is going out on a lot of dates. Being asked out a lot.  I think that's wonderful.  She's 21 years old. She should be enjoying herself. She had a long-term bofriend much of High School and early in her collegiate life.  She's now taking this as an opportunity to interview new candidates for her heart. That's as it should be.

I never dated much at her age.  It was crushes, infatuations and then a series of long-term relationships and now, here in my mid-40s, I'm left with this semi-requited "something" that I can't really define, that doesn't appear to have any future (yes, I'm talking about me and Kay) and at the same time, feeling hopeless about Kay, I hold on to this other, corresponding hope for something "definite" with the kind of man I can really grow in life with and build a family with - who will love Jonathan as his own - a man like Joyce Meyer's Dave Meyer.  But  - in my heart of hearts - I'm still hoping that Kay is that man.  Just a crazy, mixed up mess, that has dumped me squarely in a pile of apathetic, "I don't want to be bothered at all." And at the center of that pile is some kind of device that has completely sucked out any kind of sexual desire or longing - and is starting to do a work of aging on my face and body.  Me is disappearing in a way before I"ve really been found and it's discouraging at best - completely, mentally excrutiating and dehbilitating at worst.  So, I have this persistent want of a life with Kay - that doesn't seem to have any logical basis or ability to ever hapen in a way that would be satisfying for either of us AND no real sexual component with the want.  And no sexual compoent with the other want (the other guy like Dave Meyer that in reality I'm really hoping ends up being Olukayode Oladeji).  So dang, dang, strange. So strange.

Anyway, back to my comments about Abril (which do make sense in this whole redemption discussion).  She's dating - and that's  good.  Very good.  However, in my confused, wondering why my love life is in such a state and how come I never had that kind of expereience of multiple guys asking me out and going out on dates behavior, mindset, I burst out to April this crazy question about whether or not Abril was in a generation where there are more boys than girls (seemingly like Jonathan's generation - cause a lot of boys have been born in the past two years and not as many girls). My mindset is such that that was my first explanation for why she's going out on so many dates.  Not that possibly, Abril's generation has a breed of young men who actually know what it means to boldly and courageously ask out a girl who they are interested in - and that Abril IS the kind of beautiful, intelligent, sweet-natured, and confident young lady that this sort of young man would ask out.  No, that didn't come to my mind first.  Of course, April proceeded to correct me -kindly. I felt like a heel and didn't even have the goodness to apologize for my goofuh.  I just quickly agreed with her and threw in, for good measure, a heartfelt, "Oh, yeah, Abril is beautiful!"  Pitiful.

I bring this exchange up, because it brought to my mind the fact that youthere are a lot of normal people in this world, meeting other normal people, going out on normal dates, getting engaged and married and having normal careers, families and lives.  Their lives aren't racked with a lot of psychological trauma or drama either.  They roll with the punches. They take the hits and jabs of life as they come and they don't roll up into fetal postions, lash out at others, or have pity parties. They laugh when they should laugh, they cry when they should cry. They tell the truth - they might lie sometimes.  Some believe in Jesus as their savior and others no God at all.  Though, I have to think that at least if you have Christ - you have much more than this life to look forward to - you have everything to look forward to - though I'm still learning what it means to look forward to the "promise" because I'm still a bit too tied to this side of things.  I think it's because I'm still hoping for some of that normal stuff I listed above or at least to rise above all the mixed up stuff in my life to get to normal.

I'm not there yet.

It's that redemption thing still being worked out - for those of us in Christ - we know of what that means - and that it is that alone which moves us to "normalcy" - whatever that is for the idiosyncratic we that we are.

I wonder, really, if the Lord specically calls to himself, those, like myself, who are freakishlyjacked up in the mind and heart.  I look at the saints in the Bible and most of them had issues, so I guess I might have something there.  The truly normal people I described above, who have a relatioship with Christ, I'm sure have thriving relationships with Him, but I just don't think that they're hanging by their toe nails on Him to live a life that is manageable - crying out to Him on a continual basis - and constantly having to get some stupid thing they've done or said redeemed.

That's me.

So Redemption.  The point of this post.  He redeems us all - He redeems it all.  And He's working in my life.  He's making a way. He's gonna make a way for Jonathan and me and maybe eventually Jonathan, me and some guy.  Some Kay (reference, end of my post here:  http://but-for-his-grace.blogspot.com/2012/01/i-am-convinced.html).

Yeah, I'm gonna throw Kay in here one more time at the end of this post - as he's part of so many posts.  As men in general are part of so many posts.  Maybe my first book will be about that.  This whole obsession with elationship and how it can be almost toxic and soul killing the longer we go without it.  I''ll use my mom as a case study.  Again, a future blog post... 

But I've gotta throw Kay in there again.  Afterall, I still have Jane Eyre Part II to watch (again, see reference post above).  Mr. Rochester is my type and shadow of Kay.  I'm Jane.  She went away. I went away - I'd like to go even further away (Auburn - do you hear me - or Florida Atlantic U (if I do creative writing - that's for a future blog post) - do you hear me).  And then she returned. He was changed. She was changed.  They were now able to be together.

A story of redemption played out in full, tangible (at least to me) effect...