You know how I feel

Max Lucado is lovely.

I imagine you think so too.

I've read his books to my children; one of their favourites is the one about the Wemmicks - it's called, 'You Are Special' and it's a wonderful, gentle book about the love that you have for us, Father God. In fact, it's about 'The Audience of One', really - a lot for me to learn as well, and keep on learning. The only opinion that matters is yours, even if other people weigh me up and find me wanting. 

But I was on Amazon a few days ago and I found myself exploring the rest of Mr Lucado's books and I came across one that intrigued me. Reviews for this book were outstanding and so I bought it and started it the other day. It turns out that the author writes just as easily for adults as for children and he seems wise and insightful and gentle and yet really woke me up. I think this will be a book with a message for me. Or maybe more than one, I'm hoping, since I've only read the first couple of chapters and stopped in my tracks a couple of times already.

It's called, 'In the Eye of the Storm', and it's a detailed look at one day in Jesus' life - a day that the author thinks may have been (aside from the crucifixion) one of the most stressful days of your time down here. 

Jesus, I have never really considered that your life might have been stress-filled.  Yes, I know that you were afraid in the Garden of Gethsemane, and I know that you were angry with the money changers in the temple. I know that you were moved to tears when Lazarus died and I know that you were filled with compassion for the people who needed you. I know that you went through agonies both physical and spiritual in the last few days of your life. But stress? 

This is the day that you found out that your cousin, John the Baptist, was dead.  I have read this passage many times and I've never stopped to consider that particular part of it. Max Lucado opened my eyes with this:

'...the man who came closer to understanding Jesus than any other is dead. Imagine losing the one person who knows you better than anyone else, and you will feel what Jesus is feeling. Reflect on the horror of being told that your dearest friend has just been murdered, and you will relate to Jesus' sorrow. Consider your reaction if you were told that your best friend had just been decapitated by a people-pleasing, incestuous monarch, and you'll begin to see how the day begins for Christ.' 

Max Lucado, In the Eye of the Storm, p28

Not good then.

I've always sort of assumed that nothing got to you, Lord. That because you were God, you weren't surprised by anything, or wrong footed, or taken aback, or even particularly bothered. I imagined that you knew what was to happen to John the Baptist and so it didn't shock you. I thought that you were probably so supernaturally prepared for your own fate that it wouldn't scare you that hot on the heels of this news came the news that Herod was after your head too.

So bereavement and a death threat in the same conversation. 

I don't think I ever really credited you with feelings. Sorry about that. Insofar as I've actually considered it at all, I've sort of had an image of you as gliding through life totally in control, completely prepared, unshakeable. If you felt extremes of emotion then they would only be positive ones. That a negative thought never entered your head. That you were just full of peace and love and hope that you were unaffected by the nitty gritty of human life. I think I've always (and still am) a bit confused by the God-and-man thing. How much man were you? How much God?  Is there any way for someone with a small, human brain to grasp the idea that you were fully man and fully God? 

So if you were fully man, you must have been devastated by the death of your friend. Someone who saw you for who you were. Someone who understood (a bit). If I got that news, it would be the end of my day. I wouldn't function. If I heard that someone I loved had been killed, and the murderer was looking for me, that would be it. Too much, twice over.  Can't really get my head round it. 

All it says is that you went off on your own somewhere. 

But not for long. Suddenly the disciples came back. They surrounded you and all wanted to regale you with tales of miracles and healings and wonders that they had seen and performed an been involved with. They were exuberant and full of joy. They wanted to celebrate and they needed you to join in. You had empowered them; made simple fishermen into great leaders who could do great things. They were amazed and happy and full of enthusiasm. You'd just heard that your friend was dead and your life was in danger. So what did you do? Did you turn away and say, 'Not now. I've just had bad news. I can't be doing with all this right now. Leave me alone.'? 

Nope. You found it in yourself to celebrate with them, somehow. 

And there's more. Hot on the heels of the disciples is a huge crowd who are overjoyed to find you. They wanted a piece of the man who the disciples had talked about. The guy who had started all this. They all had needs and wants and you went from an attempt to find some peace and solitude to being engulfed in a large crowd demanding things from you.

No wonder you signalled to the disciples that they should get away with you for some rest. You climbed into a boat and sailed off. But when you got where you were going, it turns out the crowd had followed you. They want to hear you speak, listen to your teachings, have you heal the sick and do wondrous things. If ever there was a time for saying 'I can't do this now. Come back tomorrow,' that was it. But the Bible tells us that:

'When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.'

Matthew 14:14

'He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.'

Mark 6:34

'He welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed healing.'

Luke 9:11

You must have been tired. You wanted to get away, we know that, because you tried, twice. Once and your disciples found you, and then again in the boat away from the crowds. And yet, when your plans were thwarted, you didn't lash out or insist on your own way, you felt compassion for the demanding crowds, and you allowed your plan to change. 

I wonder if anyone asked you how you were? I bet they didn't. It makes me think of how I act so many times each week where I feel swamped by demands (and I know that many of these oppressive obligations might be in my own imagination). There are times when I'm patient, times when I cheerfully put aside what I want to do in order to do something for someone else. Those are probably in the minority, I suspect. There are the times when I respond to a need with bad grace, with much huffing and puffing and scowling and grumbling. That is a pretty frequent occurrence. 

And then there are the times when I stamp my foot (either metaphorically or physically) and raise my voice and snarl, 'No. What about me?  When do I get to do what I want to do? I can't do this now, come back later. Or preferably don't come back at all.'  

But you didn't. You had more need to find peace that day than I've ever had, and yet you had compassion on the people who demanded things from you and you responded with love and patience. You found a reserve of energy when surely you must have been running on empty. 

And guess what?  Out of this enormous crowd, how many of them thought to bring a packed lunch? Nope. Not many. They wanted you to feed them too. You asked the disciples to sort this one out, thinking maybe that their recent exploits would have taught them that God wouldn't let them down - but no. They looked at you with incredulity and so you had to step up once again. If you want something doing, do it yourself, hey?

I am thankful that I have never had news that someone I love has been murdered. I have never heard on the grapevine that someone is looking to kill me. I have never had twelve people descend on me at the moment I want to run away and grieve and ask me to join in the celebrations for amazing happenings and miracles that they have done in my name. I've never had a crowd of thousands asking me to heal their sick. 

What I have had are moments where someone is speaking to me, the children are clamouring for help, snacks, toys, computer passwords and assistance in the toilet (I know, there are only two of them but sometimes it feels like many more), the oven timer tells me that the dinner is ready, the doorbell rings or the phone goes, and I need to reply to an urgent message I've just received and I feel like screaming. Sometimes these moments erupt from nowhere; just before the onslaught I was quietly pottering on my computer with a coffee and there wasn't a thundercloud in sight. Next moment, the heavens open on top of me. My heart rate goes from a steady trundle to a sprint. 

Did you get up that morning with any inkling of what sort of day it would turn out to be? Did you climb out of bed and stretch and look at the blue sky and feel all serene and peaceful, only to be hit by the juggernaut coming your way?

Do you really know how I feel? Always? Really?

Max Lucado reckons that you do.

'His pulse has raced. His eyes have grown weary. His heart has grown heavy. He has had to climb out of bed with a sore throat. He has been kept awake late and has gotten up early. He knows how you feel.'

In the Eye of the Storm, p31/32

He goes on to suggest that it's hard to believe that you did feel all our headaches and heartaches. That we generally believe that you suffered pain and fear and sorrow, but not the day to day hassles that we go through. 

Can it really be that you felt frustration and irritation and disappointment and bad temper and self-pity? Did you really have achey joints or an upset stomach or long to stay in bed? 

If you did, nowhere in the Bible does it say, 'And Jesus went from that place very grumpily and stamped his foot and threw his mug against the wall and refused to come out again until they said sorry.'

So maybe your self control was amazing. Maybe you felt those things but your capacity for love was, well, superhuman. Maybe you were God as well as man. That's where we started. 

'For we do not have a great high priest who is unable to empathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet he did not sin.'

Hebrews 4:15

It makes sense that being who you were, so in tune with the Spirit, that the fruit of the spirit in you must have been a tremendous crop. No wonder you were overflowing with 'love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control'. (Galatians 5:22/23). It was you that Paul had in mind when he wrote that. So the thing is that you felt all those things, all those crowding-in emotions, all the trapped, resentful, selfish, irritable, self-pitying emotions that I feel and yet you kept on giving? Kept on going, kept on smiling, kept on loving.

That seems a big ask. 

I can't do that without you. And to be honest, even if you help me I can't guarantee I won't give in to the bad temper and scowl and mutter 'What about me?' 

But I want to try, because I don't want to be the one who's always bad-tempered and cross and inward-looking. I want to try because I want my children to be kind, patient, compassionate people and not irritable and selfish and stampy.  I want them to do better than me. I want to try because that's the sort of person I want to be, too. And I want to try because you want this for me and I want you to be pleased with me. 

So help me remember that you have been here ahead of me and even the negative emotions that I feel every day, you know those as well as the noble ones, should there be any. Help me to remember that you were a man, a real one, not an airbrushed one. You probably didn't have shoulder length bouffant beautifully conditioned hair and a manicure. Help me to remember that there were times when you felt cross and wanted to get away and you had good reason, but that you loved people too much to turn your back on them to meet your own needs. Help me to be inspired by that and not discouraged, because I am so different. So far from there. 

Lord, thank you that you are not a distant God who looks down on us without any understanding of the rubbish we wade through here on earth. Thankyou that you knew about demands and stress and overwhelming emotions. You came down here and you lived as we did, and if I believe that then I believe that you lived as we did in every way. You did feel the way we feel, but you didn't give in. Thankyou that you walk next to me when I'm struggling and that you have promised to hold me up. 

Thankyou. 

God-and-man. Still can't get my head round it. I think that cleverer people than me can't get their heads round it either. 

By the way, Max Lucado says that you might have had acne or knobbly knees. 

Surely not. Surely you weren't that human. 

Were you? 

Water

I feel as if my head is full of water.

Not just any water. I'm not talking about the little trickle of water that seems to lurk somewhere deep in my ear when I've been swimming and makes me do that strange jerking motion with my head on one side. Not that sort of water. 

This water can take on a whole range of characteristics; you'd be amazed at how many manifestations of this watery feeling there can be. Well, how often do I say stupid things like that? Of course, nothing amazes you. You know my every thought before I think it. You know how confused I get. How bogged down. How impatient and frustrated. How I love metaphor. Ha. Indulge me. 

Water. 

Sometimes it's like a whirlpool. Round and round I go, over the same ground. Faster and faster, going round in circles, not getting anywhere. I get sucked down, down, down. Into the middle where I spin round faster still. Sometimes it's a breathless, desperate sort of place, in my head. This is the way I feel when I'm confused and stressed, trying to find the beginning of a problem in order to work out how to unravel it. I chase my own tail and get nowhere. I can't see outwards because the water swirling is preventing me from looking anywhere but inward, and all the inward-looking just makes it all worse. 

Sometimes my head full of water is more like the sea; specifically waves crashing on rocks. The sort of rocks that cause shipwrecks. Sharp, dark, sinister looking rocks, and the waves are big and powerful. The water is turbulent, foamy, frightening. Towering over me, tsunami-like, intimidating and threatening. The deafening roar of breaking waves. The sea is grey and stormy and unpredictable. Nothing is built and things are demolished and eroded. This is not a constructive frame of mind to be in. 

Other times the water in my head is more like a drip-drip-drip onto a stone surface. It's a nagging, maddening sort of rhythm. Drip-drip-drip. The sort of thing I can't shut out. It's there all the time, just at the outer limit of my consciousness, unrelenting, distracting. Things get done, but my mind keeps wandering back to whatever the drip-drip-drip is. Slowly, over a long, long time, this drip will erode the rock onto which it falls and I have to deal with it. I can't leave it long because it drives me mad. I need to find the reason for the drip-drip-drip. I need to get something out of my head. You're good at helping me with this but I amaze myself how long it takes me to ask you. How long I put up with the monotony of the drip-drip-drip before I ask for rescue.

Occasionally I have a river in my head. A huge, vast, wide river. I can see the other side and I long to be there but I am separated from my destination by this huge expanse of water. It seems to be moving slowly, or even not at all but the currents under the surface are strong and I know that I can't swim across. Somewhere there is a bridge but I can't immediately find it. The river is beautiful, impressive but implacable. I need to find a way across but for ages I'm pacing the bank, looking across at the other side. I can imagine the view from the other side and I so want to be there but the journey across seems impossible. It's not, of course. Looking back you've shown me how to cross one or two rivers. Nothing is impossible with you.

Then the river might be a stream. A shallow, fast-flowing stream noisily bubbling over rocks and stones. It is fast-flowing and constantly changing. One idea bubbles into the next and they're bright and they twinkle and shine in the sunlight but most of them are impossible to grasp because they're swept away like a leaf on the water before they've properly taken shape. Sometimes I get so far ahead of myself I can't catch up. I'm full of ideas and possibilities and I want to gather them together and pin them down and make them stick forever but it's like putting my hand in this rushing brook to try and stop the water. I dart from one thing to another without letting anything take shape. Making my mind up too quickly. Doing things because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Not settling. Saying things without proper thought. Making snap decisions. Getting excited and not thinking things through. 

In direct contrast to this are the days when I feel that in my head is a large stagnant pond. It sits there, mostly in shade, and the water is thick and full of weed that would tangle around your legs and pull you under if you tried to swim. It's unhealthy. A breeding ground for wrongs and difficulties and mistakes and hurts. Entrenched in habits and bad ideas and old problems. Unable to get moving; nowhere to go. Bad. Nothing can breathe in this water. Nothing thrives. It's filmy and smelly and old and dark. I don't like being here. 

And then there's the torrent of water. I'm standing at the top of a waterfall watching the breathtaking quantity of water gush over the edge. It sparkles in the sun as it rushes away from me. I see things flash past, carried by the current to the brink and then they're lost forever as they plummet down and down and down. It's beautiful, majestic. Ideas and insights, revelations and images are there - sometimes I can hook one of them out before it disappears over the cliff but mostly they just pass out of reach. Spray envelops me and I know that something wonderful is happening and I am on the edge. Perhaps if I go a bit closer, but so often I lack the courage to go to the edge and peer over to see what vast and awe-inspiring beauty is over the other side. 

It rains a lot, in my head. Sometimes the water comes down as a gentle drizzle but other times it's a downpour. I have mixed feelings about the rain. I know that rain is necessary to make things grow, to make things clean; necessary for life. On the other hand I don't like being wet. I don't like how the sky goes dark and threatening and I can't see the colour that I can see in the sunlight. I don't like rain, and yet I know it's necessary. And then just occasionally after the deluge I feel wonderfully, deliciously cleansed. I feel as if I've been drenched in cool, sweet water. These are the times when I can perceive something good coming out of the storm. I look back (usually it's in hindsight, rarely can I see the sun behind the cloud when I'm standing with my hair plastered to my head and my clothes wet through and the rain coming down). I look back and I realise that you sent rain for a reason. I didn't enjoy it one bit, but I'm better for it. As you know, more often I just grumble a lot and try to get out of the rain. I don't like it much. It rains quite a lot in my head, but there are rainbows.

There have been a few times in my life when you have blessed me with another water experience; once or twice since you found me you've reached down and run me a big, hot, fragrant, delicious bath and helped me to climb in. This sort of water is pure comfort. It's the place I want to go when I'm tired and achey and cold and miserable and I don't want to be a mother and a daughter and a wife and have any responsibilities. I don't want to feel weighed down and defeated with aching joints and bits of me that hurt. I just want to be a little girl. I can remember a couple of times in my life where you understood and took pity on me in a wonderful Father like way and told me to climb in, lie down a while and just be still. Muscles aching, sliding down until the bubbles are at my chin. Feeling the warmth penetrate my coldness and cause a pleasant tingle in my fingers and toes. Feel the stress dissipate and the tension leave me. Prepare me for sleep. Safe and relaxing. A letting-go. Thankyou so, so much for this. 

Then there's the sort of water that I long for. Sometimes I actually find it, and lately I fancy that I can sometimes remember how to get there, but often it's beyond me. Actually, it's always beyond me, for this is the beautiful, tranquil, peaceful lake where you like me to come to meet you. I don't know why I don't seek it out more often but it's easy to miss a turning and find myself somewhere else. There are other places near here that are quite pretty; other picnic spots that I tend to use when I want my sandwich now and can't be bothered to defer gratification until I get to the end of the trail where you are. Other places that are nice but none as nice as this, but it's quite a walk. Takes some effort to get there. Maybe the more I come the easier it is to find. Perhaps the path isn't so long when you walk it often.

This is the sort of place where I like to sit down and look around, contemplate life. Find a spot with something to lean against and stretch out my legs in front of me and drink in the scenery, allowing it to restore me. I might have a book in my bag but I don't need anything to stimulate me as it's all here. So much to see and yet it's a restful place to be. Life-giving. Pure. Calm. Fresh. Free. A gentle breeze ripples the surface or a fish jumps, or a heron dives. It's full of delights. Something new to see each time I come.

I breathe deeply, fill my lungs with pure air. I wish that those I love could find this place because it would be wonderful to share it.  I want to linger, to reflect, to take off my shoes and socks and feel the clean, clear, cool water on my toes. There are trees and mountains reflected in the lake and the sunsets are awe-inspiring. It's vast but intimate. Impressive yet welcoming. 

When I'm here I don't want to go home. 

I think that one day I won't have to. I'll stay forever and there will always be something more to experience.

This is where I want to be.