Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Knocked Down

Two things have knocked me on my ass this week: a personal psalm by my friend Sam and dinner with the Rozkos. Sam is a long-time friend of mine who shared a modern psalm on Sunday. It was incredibly moving to watch him read what he had written and bring it before the Lord and our church. The psalm was vulnerable, honest, gritty, moving, and very much a suprise to me. I did not expect to be so moved by his story, his cry to the Lord. But I am, and I am having a hard time facing that internally. His vulerability before our church and before the Lord are quite a challenge- that is church, and he did it well. I feel unequal to the task. Sharing like he did means that I have to let people into my crap and there is a very real possibility that I will be rejected, and, it feels,  rightfully so. It means that I have to fully bring myself before others and risk their suprise at my inner world. That means also that I have to let go of my dreams of being a famous youth minsitry thinker.

That is where dinner with the Rozkos comes in. In order to better start out on the road to becomming a famous youth ministry thinker, I met with two people from Life on the Vine that are mutual friends with Annie. I am terrible at seeing the first few steps to any very long journey, especially if they are at all practical. I wanted help thinking through changes I can make in my life now that will set me up for success later. That was the conversation I expected to have over dinner. I came out with a very different set of steps to take: almost all of which were internal and corrective. Corrective is putting it midly. The Spirit was there at Noodles and Company, cutting into the crap that lives in my soul, exposing it in great detail. I am ambitious, and not in a way that honors the Lord or serves others. I am insecure. I am egotistical. The Rozkos did not say these things, Annie did not, and I did not, but the Spirit laid them bare in me.

I hate them. They drive me crazy because they are ugly and do not honor the Lord or love others. I would like to tell you that I am submitting to the Lord in this and letting Him work it out in me, but that is not the case. I am holding onto these ugly things in me with all my might. I feel entitled to my ambition. I feel capable of affecting the change I want to see. I feel stubborn. And I can see that feeling these things is not really okay and not really what I want in the long run. I can see that I am facing off with God, and that I am going to loose. And yet, here I am, at the line anyway. I wish that I could say I am happy about it, and I wish that I could say that I am learning and growing and how glorious that is. But I can't at the moment, I am just on my ass. I feel like this guy.








3 comments:

  1. Thanks for being open and vulnerable Beyer; I understand completely about holding on to the things that make us the 'most ugly' on the inside. Stubborn and entitlement, those are great words to describe why we do this. Thanks for sharing your heart.

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  2. L.o.v.e this. Not only are you a fantastic writer and I can hear your voice SO clearly coming through in this, those feelings about being vulnerable and showing every part of ourselves are such a struggle (I would think) for most people, and your words described perfectly how scary and difficult it can be to recognize, confess, and change our hearts and surrender to the Lord.

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  3. wow. thanks Stef and Ashley. I found it very hard to write this and post it, so the encouragement definitely goes to heart. It IS so hard to talk about the darker, harder things in my spiritual life, (I can imagine that it is for everyone) and specifically about not wanting to submit to the pruning of the Spirit. God really knows what He is doing when He goes after our crap.

    Letting Him into this place is such a challenge because it means that I have to vulnerable not only to Him, but to other Christians. I wish that I didn't care, but I want others to think well of me, and this goes against that desire. It flies in the face of that desire.

    I think that part of my challenge from the Lord right now is to open up this part of me to more poeple than I have in the past and to let others be really IN, which means that they will see my crap, and have the chance to hurt me, judge me, and abandon me. I am still really wrestling with wanting to let the Lord into this place, He is so far from safe (*nod to C.S.Lewis*)... and if I know Him, that means that He will not guarantee that I am not hurt by others. So, I don't yet fully trust Him with the things that He is pointing out in me. I am ambitious, I am prideful, I am insecure. All of those things feel very vulnerable to me right now.

    Sigh.

    And that is how He rolls- knocking me on my ass. In some ways I think that it is great- He knows that I can take it and He knows that I can enter into this fight with Him, and I feel honored and loved by that. But, man, He has drawn His line in the sand, picked these issues to refine, and He is not backing down.

    So I stand toe to toe with the Living God. Wonder how that is going to turn out. ;)

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