Itsara

Some important information on Sean’s blog today. Lots of stuff happening.

What are you still doing here?

More stuff out of reading Blue Like Jazz. In one chapter, Miller and his friends hold a “confession booth” at their college, during the rowdiest campus party of the year. But they don’t take confessions, rather they confess their sins and the sins of the church and Christianity to anyone who steps inside. The effect is pretty powerful, and I started writing out my own confessions, which turned (as my thoughts often do) into something else.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…

But I do love him. Just like I love Cindy or my kids. And just like with them, I struggle with knowing how I should treat them, serve them, spend time with them… I struggle with loving them in those ways when I want to love myself in those ways.

What would my life be like if I lived like that all the time? I confess, I’m afraid I’d feel trapped and stressed, but hasn’t experience taught me that loving others does just the opposite?

I’ve been reading Blue Like Jazz again. It’s a really good book, if you haven’t read it. Donald Miller talks about religion, and Christianity in particular, in a strikingly non-religious way. It feels every bit like breathing fresh air. He’s honest about the things that none of us are honest about, even to ourselves, and he readily admits to the faults of himself, the church, and life.

In reading it, I wrote down a lot of thoughts in my little notebook. I’m thinking I’ll just give you some of them raw. Well, I’ll edit them a little so they make more sense to someone who’s not me. These are just the first thoughts I had, around chapter 3 or 4 or so. There are more I might share later. (more…)

It’s so obvious, I should’ve seen it before.

I was brought up with the doctrine that faith saves us and works are superfluous, to the extreme that works are sometimes even bad. James’ suggestion that faith without works is dead was explained away on a technicality. “We know we are saved by faith,” said one college pastor, “so when James says faith without works is dead, what he means is only that it is not growing.”

The lesson I received from all of this was that faith was all that is required for Heaven, and works was something only “full-time ministers” did. It fit perfectly with the passive, lazy religion I had created for myself. So even though the logic seemed a bit off, I accepted it.

Since then, of course, I’ve learned over and over again that belief in Jesus is not about going to Heaven. That’s the end, but it’s not the point. The point is a relationship with our Creator, the way we were originally designed. Belief in Jesus is not some intellectual assent to a doctrinal truth. That sort of faith, with nothing else behind it, is cold and dead. To believe in Jesus is to know Jesus, to love him. It is a relationship, in every way analogous to marriage.

If I said that I love Cindy with all my heart, but then lived my life as I did when I was single – doing nothing for her, never serving her, never showing her my love, never sacrificing for her – that would be a cold, dead kind of love. It would not be love at all. It would, in fact, be a complete and total lie.

It goes the other way too. I could work and work, and think I am sacrificing for Cindy, but if I do it out of duty, or because I expect to get something (even love) in return, then it’s not true love and Cindy would feel that. She’d know it, and it would affect our relationship.

That’s what James was talking about (and Paul too, though from the other side). If I say, “I accepted Jesus into my heart, so I’m good,” and then do nothing further about it, I’m only lying to myself. If I say, “Cindy, I love you,” then continue to live a self-centered life, my marriage is doomed.

Of course faith and love are messier than that. The truth is that I am selfish; I have told Cindy I love her then done nothing about it. But I want to mean it, and Cindy and I have worked at that, repeatedly. A true relationship with Jesus means work. That’s what Paul meant when he talked about working out my salvation – I work at my marriage with Jesus, trying to be the person I know I should be. Not because I have to, not because I “want to get to Heaven” or anything dumb like that, but for the sole reason that I am in love with Jesus and want to be the best I can be for him.

Our last house had a storage room under the stairs. We found it useful, so I designed one into this house. But the old one had shelves that we didn’t get to take with us, so although we had more storage space in the new house, everything was on the floor. It was impossible to get to anything, and everytime I opened the door Isaac would run in and grab a hammer or an axe or something from the rotting cardboard box on the floor.

So I fixed it. I’m really happy.

Those of you keeping track at home can add carpenter to my list of classes.

Cindy and I are slowly learning how to give up control. We’re both control freaks, though neither of us really realized that until we started parenting.

In some ways, we had to be control freaks in the beginning. It’s just the nature of how these kids have been raised (or not) that they need structure and a lot of it. Kids with attachment problems, in particular, need to know very clearly where their boundaries are and when they’ve stepped over them.

It gets weirder with teens though. Teens want to be free, obviously. They also need to be free because before long they’ll be on their own. If they haven’t learned to provide their own structure it could be very damaging for them.

We had this realization with one of our older kids recently. They were under fairly strict discipline and supervision for things done in the past, and one day they just kind of broke down. Cindy and I had already been thinking about how they were going to handle things in a couple of years when they would be on their own, so in our conversation we realized we had to let them start disciplining themselves.

So Cindy and I have been trying to watch ourselves. When our parenting alarm kicks in (the alarm that says, “Somebody’s doing something wrong. Correct it!”), we have to examine ourselves and ask, “Is this something that must be corrected, or something I just want corrected?”

For example, it’s not necessary to require an older teen to clean their room. That’s something I want them to do, but it’s not a battle I have to fight (it’s different with little kids – that’s when to train them to clean their room). On the other hand, if they’re not around for family dinner times or if they’re sneaking food, that’s something we can come down on at any age.*

It’s hard for us to let go. We have to watch them make mistakes, and we can do nothing but advise (which is hardly ever listened to). But by letting go, we give them the chance to create their own boundaries – just a chance. It might not work, but if we don’t let go then they will have no boundaries at all.

* Keep in mind, these are our particular boundaries. In no way do I mean to tell anybody else how to parent. This job’s hard enough without a thousand other people telling you how to do it. I know.