Have you ever read Catherine Marshall’s book Christy?

The story chronicles a 19-year-old idealistic young woman’s life as she volunteers to teach in a mission school in the rugged, Appalachian mountains.  Everything safe and familiar is stripped away as she witnesses poverty, abuse, suicide and desperation.  She is left with her struggle of God, herself, and life as it really is.


In talking with a wise, older teacher Alice, Christy begins to see things in a New Light:


“‘Every bit of life, every single one of us has a dark side,’ [Alice] retorted. 


‘When you decided to leave home and take this teaching job, you were venturing out of your particular ivory tower. I know, I was reared in an ivory tower too. Then we get our first good look at the way life really is, and a lot of us want to run back to shelter in a hurry…


‘You’re sensitive, Christy. So am I,’ said Miss Alice. ‘You want to know why seeing stark evil hasn’t made me rough or bitter?’ 


She seemed to be seeing into her past. Then she took a deep breath, plunged on. 



‘Remember, I said it was God who was prying the little girl’s hands off her eyes. As if He were saying, 


‘I can’t use ivory-tower followers. They’re plaster of paris; they crumble and fall apart in life’s press. So you’ve got to see life the way it really is before you can do anything about evil. 


You cannot vanquish it.  I can. 


But in My world, the battle against evil has to be a joint endeavor. You and Me. I, God, in you, can have the victory every time.’


After that, He was always right there beside me, looking at the dreadful sights with compassion and love and heartbreak. His caring and His love were too real for bitterness to grow in me.”







Want to know the first time I read those lines?  


I was overseas on my first summer-long English teaching trip.  I had ridden a bus through the East Asian countryside, overwhelmed not only by the poverty, but the incomprehensible mass of people.  


Everywhere I looked there were people.  


Everywhere.



And how many had heard of Jesus?


How many knew Hope?

I had heard stories, but it is different to see it with your own eyes.  I had traveled with a local friend of mine, “Annie” to see her hometown and meet her family.  On the way home, my sadness gave way to anger.  Not only was The Task overwhelming, but I was completely inadequate.  


What on earth could I do to even make a dent?


A teammate read those lines that day.  It was both good and terrible.  After all, the word the author uses to get the little girl’s hands off her little girl eyes is “pry.”


Prying implies a struggle.  


I don’t want to see these things.  I don’t want to know.  I was just fine in my ivory tower.


But He was slowly teaching me I wasn’t.  I wasn’t just fine.   He hadn’t completely overhauled my heart and life for me to soak it all up and relax in my ivory tower.


Besides, too much of that and I would be bored to death.


He made us more than conquerors because there are things in this life to conquer.  Not on our strength but in His.  Life is horrifically sad.  Tragedy abounds.  But for “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” all is lost.


But because of that hope, we move into our world with all the energy in our [being redeemed] manhood and womanhood.  


But if we’re never completely convinced it’s horrific…what’s the motivation?  


As Larry Crabb says, “Decent people manage well.  Fanatics get in trouble.  The real key to life, we seem to think, is to keep things pleasant while we pursue God with a good bit of our heart, soul, mind, and strength…


But when we are able to maintain the fiction that life is tolerable at worst, and quite satisfying at best, we sacrifice an appreciation for the two center points of our faith:


The Cross of Christ and His coming.


The Cross becomes the means by which God delivers us from something not really too terrible, and the Coming is reduced to an opportunity for a merely improved quality of life…


Most of us have never been staggered…


When even the best parts of life are exposed as pathetic counterfeits of how things should be, the reality drives us to a level of distress that threatens to utterly undo us.


But it’s when we’re on the brink of personal collapse that we’re best able to shift the direction of our soul from self-protection to trusting love.


When hints of sadness creep into our soul, we must not flee into happy or distracting thoughts.  Pondering the sadness until it becomes overwhelming can lead us to a deep change in the direction of our being from self-preservation to grateful worship.


When we realize life can’t give us what we want, we can better give up our foolish demand that it do so and get on with the noble task of loving as we should…”


(Inside Out, pgs. 213-215)



I first read those lines from Christy in 2001.  He’s done nothing but convince me of its truth the past 13 years.


I’ve personally been staggered in many dimensions of life: marriage, community, ministry, motherhood, my mental health, my own lacking character, my arrogance, demanding spirit, failure, shame and fear.


But through it all, He really has been right there.  



He can’t use ivory tower followers.



But broken clay pots?



Ah, yes.  Those He can shine through the brightest.

Do not move an ancient boundary stone

Or encroach on the fields of the fatherless,

For their Defender is strong;

He will take up their case against you.

Apply your heart to instruction

And your ears to words of knowledge…

Buy the truth and do not sell it;

Get wisdom, discipline and understanding…

Proverbs 23:11, 12, 23

Keeping a close watch on [Jesus], they sent spies, who pretended to be honest.  They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor.  So the spies questioned him:

‘Teacher, we know that you speak and teach what is right, and that you do not show partiality but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.  Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?’

He saw through their duplicity and said to them,

‘Show me a denarius.  Whose portrait and inscription are on it?’

‘Caeser’s,’ they replied.

He said to them,

‘Then give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s.’

They were unable to trap him in what he had said there in public.  And astonished by his answer, they became silent.

Luke 20:20-26

I really love Him.

https://www.intentionalkingdomliving.com/207/

We’re treading some sensitive Inside Out waters today.  Since I cannot guarantee that only women read this blog, I want to proceed with caution and awareness.  

“With the loss of joyful freedom to fully express all we are as men and women, we sense a deep uneasiness, a restlessness that drives us to recapture the wholeness that comes from enjoying our sexual identity.  But without God, the nearest we can come to rich and exciting enjoyment of that identity is fulfillment of our physical desires…[this] provides fallen people with the closest available approximation to what is means to be fully alive as sexual beings…

When people turn from God, the first thing they pursue when God removes His restraining hand is sexual pleasure…

Until we sense the deep discomfort we feel in relating as men and women, we haven’t touched the core of our struggle…

The feelings of shame so deeply attached to our doubts about our maleness or femaleness provide powerful motivation to protect ourselves from further wounds.  We will not face our self-protective maneuvering nor be passionately convicted about its sinfulness until we see its function is to preserve whatever is left of our identity as men and women.

When the happy-go-lucky husband realizes his refusal to sincerely communicate with his wife about difficult matters reflects a terrible fear that he may not have what it takes to win respect from her, then he can begin to face not only the terror of threatened manhood but also the thrill of its potential.

When the businesslike woman sees her fear of being exploited or disdained if she offers what’s really inside her feminine heart, then she can better understand that her self-protection is a desperate attempt to hide her damaged womanhood.  When she realizes that beneath her defensive hardness is a woman, wounded and afraid, she may get an exciting glimpse of what it would mean to be fully female, a glimpse that will both terrify and entice her.

Deep repentance includes giving up self-protection in order to more fully express the man or woman we were created to be.  It liberates us to be the tender, strong, involved men and the secure, giving, vulnerable women who can live out God’s design and more properly represent Him.  Change at the deepest level requires a recognition that we see ourselves as weakened men and damaged women.”

Inside Out, pgs. 209-212

I think with books like Wild at Heart and Captivating, we’ve brought this conversation into many of our homes and churches and small groups.  And I have no interest in pretending to be a men’s group leader or a psychologist or anything.  I just want to obey God by bringing it up here.

There was a time in college when I only wore (well, hid in) baggy clothes.  Some of it was not feeling great about myself.  But a lot of it was deeper.  I remember consciously thinking, “No guy is going to choose me because of my looks.”

And I was going to make sure of it.

When that is what you portray, the message is received.  There is no joyful freedom in allowing the beauty God gave you to flow through.  There is no pleasure in feeling feminine or pretty because it could attract unwanted attention you have minimal boundaries to reject.

You see, my heart was just starting to come alive to Him.  He was walking me through some deep wounds and fears and was coming through for me.

And I was terrified.

Mostly because if others saw the healing in me, they might want it.  But they might also want me.  And then what was I to do?  I would for sure fail them.  I didn’t have very many years of relating to more than a few people in a way that can bond you.  And what if I related in this new, sincere way and it didn’t work out?  What if they left?  What if I wanted to leave – if I felt trapped or got bored?

I had not yet figured out we’re Jars of Clay.  That the all-surpassing greatness is in Him.  We point to Him.  We don’t have to be afraid of letting others down.  Of course we will.  But that’s okay, we are not their greatest hope.

Again, I am not just talking about dating/marriage relationships.  But community.  Healthy, interdependent relationships with both genders.  The kind of intimacy that at once connects you and frees you to be a unique individual.

I had known independence.  I had known stifling co-dependence.  I wanted to learn healthy interdependence.

But here’s the problem:  Everybody else is broken, too.

Everybody.

And we learn to do this dance with each other in differing levels of healing and wholeness and brokenness and spiritual poverty.  We hurt each other.  Really badly.  But we also laugh until we cry.  And we sing together because no matter how much we’ve let each other down, He has never let us down.  And we hope that love will win.

It does win.  We know it does because we’ve read the last chapter in the Book.  But if you’re reading this and haven’t at least entered into this conversation about healing and gender identity, please do.  I hope it goes without saying you need to find someone trustworthy who won’t blab your story to the masses.  It needs to be someone of your gender.  You need God to guide you.  And you have to be aware that whoever you talk through this with has their own level of issues in this area.

But none of those things are reasons to avoid it or sweep it under the rug.  The enemy thrives in secrecy and shame.  Find someone who will listen and empathize without enabling bad choices or continued sin.  Because if this is an area in which we self-protect, it is sin.  We’re failing to love genuinely with our whole heart.  It’s still about us and our threatened manhood or womanhood.  Not the other person.

In Praying God’s Word, Beth Moore quotes Dennis Jernigan’s reason for sharing his testimony in this area:

“Why do I share my testimony?  For several reasons.  When God gave me the gift of life, I believe he coupled it with the desire to share my freedom with others…I could never withhold salvation and hope from anyone, even though it means the regular sharing of my own deepest wounds and failures.  Like Jesus, I was called to lay down my life and my reputation that others might see what redemption looks like.”

Lay down our lives.  Lay down our reputations.  Probably not in front of everyone, though He may ask that of you.  But to be willing to dig deep enough, to stand in the pain long enough, to let Him begin to heal you.  So others can see the Healer.

Please don’t make me tell you I haven’t figured this all out.  Of course I haven’t.  I’m still a mess, hiding one day, trying to control the next.

But He and I are walking through it together.  He’s never let me down, even (especially?) in this awkward, sensitive area.

He will never let you down, either.

https://www.intentionalkingdomliving.com/212/

https://www.intentionalkingdomliving.com/215/