co-excavation.

New Years always has many connotations.  Resolutions.  That’s a big one.  What am I going to change about myself?  Usually they regard dieting, or perhaps being more friendly to the man in the other cubicle.  It varies, but from what I gather, the result is the same:  no matter how much one tries to change, habits get a hold and these resolutions become a goal waiting to be accomplished for the next resolution.  

Granted, there are those souls that actually accomplish their feats and that’s brilliant.  I believe that goals are a great thing, and I do not want to a to-do list anarchist by any means.  However, I feel like much of the [Western] world works in this sort of fashion:  come New Years, I want to start with a clean slate and fix my vices—all of them, if possible.

However, with this mindset, we think in revolutions.  Cycles.  Come New Years, I will change my ways.  However, a majority of the population knows themselves well enough that after six weeks, the daily menutia of life bogs on us and our goals deteriorate.  
But change doesn’t come in revolutions.  
Despite Socrates’s arguments, I strongly believe that life is not cyclical.  As a friend put in his blog, change comes through growth of layers.  We are organic beings.  We grow by having our roots in waters and nutrients that will support us and following the light.

But what light do we seek?  Where do we establish our roots?
That is the question one must ask if they seek change.

This past year has been a ride.  2011 has had its moments of ecstatic joy and distraught depression.  The summer was a season of the latter.  I do not wish to expound upon these moments too much, but essentially, there was a point in my life where a good friend of mine had doubts about my character [amongst other things] and there was nothing I could do that would change it.  In fact, the more I tried to change it, the more damage I did.  There was nothing I could do, and I really cared about how this friend of mine saw me because we were close friends.

John 14:15-21 had become an important passage in my life before the summer.  Essentially, in this part of the story, Jesus and his disciples just finished their Passover meal before Jesus is arrested.  Jesus had just told his disciples that he will be betrayed and eventually led to his death.  In this passage, Jesus comforts his twelve, saying:

If you love me, keep my commands.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.

That summer, I questioned that promise.  ”Where is this comfort you promised, O Lord?”  All I felt was this blanket of depression.  I don’t remember crying as much as I cried then.  It was really bad.

I feel like many people turn atheist at this point.  The ultimate question:  where is God in suffering?  Instead of digging more, most people just point at verses like this and scoff at them, deeming them lies—logical and experiential heresy.  

But God is in the pain.  God is there.

[This blog isn’t meant to prove God’s existence or answer the question of the void during pain, for what happens next is not something everyone will experience—especially those who haven’t heard Him speaking to the individual.]

In the midst of my pain, the only words I heard was “abide in me.”  Granted, when one is hurting, this is not the answer that they would want to hear.  In fact, usually, one doesn’t want to hear anything and just wants the situation resolved.  If they were to hear anything, they would like to hear some sagely words of wisdom that would be found at the tops of mountains by monks of foreign worlds.  

But “abide in me”?  During my pain, you want me to do work?  Wow God.  You’re asking for a lot.

However, while they may not have been the words I wanted to hear, they were what I needed to hear.  God grants us free will.  He gives us choice in our actions.  Life would be so much easier if we didn’t have to make choices—especially during the hard seasons.
But with free will, we have the choice to trust in God.  That’s been an odd idea to wrap my head around, and I still don’t think it’s fully wound.  Yet, there are times when there is nothing one can do, except trust a Father who has our needs.  [This said, that doesn’t mean God just fixes things and we let Him do all the work… topic for another blog or actual conversation, perhaps]

Change.  Being made new.  If we truly desire our actions and being to be different, then we must ask where our roots are found.  I’ll be the first to say that I don’t have all the answers.  Also, I’ll be one of the first to say that not everything is relative.  Experience is what makes us, and from what I’ve seen; the lives I’ve read and watched; the life I’ve lived, all of it points to one direction.

I am a mess.  I am an incomplete person.  I have betrayed many people, lied to many people, hurt many people, and crossed lines I never imagined crossing.  I have contradicted my codes.  I have dishonored and shamed the cause I walk.  I have hated myself for a long time.  But I need to hold onto the fact that someone once said that he is making all things new.  All things.  I don’t know how far this statement extends to.  It’s a very debatable line, but I feel like it would apply to even the atrocities I have committed.

Now it’s my choice to accept it.
To accept that this year may be just another year, but if I dig my roots deep and abide in Him, I can be made new.