21 Mar 08

3 Joys

A couple of weekends ago we were at a friends wedding at a Manor House in the Countryside which was quite overwhelming, especially since he and his bride had paid for us to stay there over the weekend.The Wedding took place on the Saturday and I welled up and almost cried at 3 points during the day. Looking back on those times I think I was overcome with joy each time, but for different reasons.

The first moment was at the beginning of the ceremony. Now, my friend is the kind of character who needed his own entrance into the hall! The service began with a great rendition of the song “Oh Happy Day” which got everyone excited, then towards the end of the song, my friend came in with his 9 (yes, 9) best men jumping and hollaring and whooping in celebration of their mates imminent marriage.

My chest felt squeezed and my throat tightened as I saw such awesome joy in my friend as he bounced and whooped down the aisle, but it was especially due to the joy his best men had in celebrating this moment in his life. My eyes certainly watered as they partied down the aisle encouraging the whole congregation to join in with their jubilation.

The next moment of joy which made me well up was during one of the worship songs in the ceremony. I looked forward to see the special couple and saw my friends hair bobbing up and down as he was consumed in his worship of God. I think it was seeing the joy my friend had in giving thanks to God for this day and moment of marriage that got to me and made my heart feel heavy again.

The other time when I felt moved enough to cry was during the reception as my friend was finishing his speech. I knew he studied music at university (where I met him) and that his chosen instrument was his voice, but I had never heard him sing opera. But to conclude his speach, he sang a piece of opera to his new wife. The piece went on for alot longer than I thought was necessary, but I think that it’s length and the fact that he never moved his eyes from hers was what made me tingle with delight in seeing his total joy in and devotion to his new wife.

I hadn’t seen or felt such joy for a long, long time, and each moment shook me. It is quite strange to want to cry for joy because your physical responses are so similar to when you cry because of pain, except there is no pain, only delight.

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26 Feb 08

Human Hell House

I am currently watching my way through the top 25 documentaries, one of which is a film called Hell House.

I already knew what this documentary was about because I had seen something on a TV show where one of the presenters went to go and see it. What I understood from that TV show was that Hell House is a show put on by a Christian group in America to try to convert people. It is basically a house you walk through and in each room something is realistically dramatised like a school shooting, or an abortion, or a rape and suicide. Towards the end you find whether those who died went to Heaven or Hell and why. Then you are given a chance to become a Christian.

It sounds horrendous, twisted and manipulative. And it is.

But the people aren’t.

hell house posterI had put off watching the documentary because I thought I’d just get wound up with the hypocrisy and condemnation of the Hell House. But the film is put together so well. It is not judgemental or one-sided. It simply documents the preparations and opening night for the 10th year of the Hell House.

One of the people involved particularly touched me. It was a man with 4 kids. You first meet him one morning in his house as he is making breakfast for his children and getting them ready for school. After calling to his teenage daughter to hurry up, he walks into the kitchen to find his youngest having a fit. He calls out to everyone that “We’ve got a fit, yes a real one.” and carries his son into his bedroom and lies him on his bed so he can fit safely. As he phones 911 he says a quick prayer for his son who immediately relaxes his muscles and begins looking around, still in shock and recovering, but no longer fitting. The man tells the 911 operator that his son is OK now but an ambulance crew turn up anyway to check his son out. His son has multiple sclerosis which causes the fits. Later on we find out that his wife had left after an affair leaving him with their children.

Throughout this scene, I saw the gentleness of this man, his unassuming nature and his devotion and love for his children. It was wonderful and touched me deeply.

The film later shows his teenage daughter auditioning for the role of the abortion girl which moves him to tears. During the opening night of Hell House he escorts a group through the Hell House and during the domestic abuse scene where the wife is caught having an afai and is then killed, he looks very awkward. During the last room when a man asks people to become christians, he looks very uncomfortable and actually goes into the ministry room with the people who want to become christians. The film then shows him explaining that he feels he still hasn’t forgiven his wife and her other man, then he gets some prayer.

There are many scenes in the film which made me feel very uncomfortable. There are scenes where people are speaking in tongues, singing Christian songs and laying hands on each other in prayer. I’ve been to plenty of meetings like these in my past, but to see it on screen, especially this side of Amy dying, was unnerving.

The man I’ve mentioned above isn’t the only person the film focusses on, but the documentary shows how human the people who put on Hell House are. I was taken aback at how undisgusted I was after finishing the film.

hell house imageThey are clearly right-wing, evangelical christians and part of the Assemblies Of God Church. Hell House is obviously a gross presentation of Christianity. It assumes that the purpose of being a Christian is to get into Heaven rather than Hell when you die. I disagree. Surely Jesus’ message was more about bringing Heaven to earth, to those around you, particularly the poor and marginalised. Hell House also attempts to scare people into a relationship with Jesus, something Jesus himself never did!

At the end of the film, it says that 15,000 people have committed themselves to Jesus through Hell House over the 10 previous years. I truly wonder how many of those 15,000 are still following Jesus. I’m sure many are still going to Church most Sunday’s because many churches make it easy to be apathetic to one’s walk with Jesus yet still a member of the Church. But a relationship based on the fear of Hell can’t last because that fear will fade, there are too many distractions in the world. You might accidently stumble across Jesus through that fear, but it must be rare.

Sure, they have a twisted understanding of Jesus’s message and a horrible way of showing it to people. But for me, the film showed the humanity of the cast and production team and for that, it was beautiful.

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25 Feb 08

Junebug

A couple of weeks ago I was getting very angry. Not about anything in particular, just in general. Small things which annoyed me would send me into a rage and I didn’t know why and found it hard to control myself. I swore and smacked a cupboard door at one point over fumbling with a tea spoon.

I was a bit scared too becuase I didn’t like who I was or who I was becoming because of this anger. I slowly realised that it was probably due to a wave of grief over Amy, plus anxiety about Toby arriving and about needing to make more money through my web business to support him and Mary-Lou.

One evening during this time I sat down and watched a film called Junebug. It’s about an art collector from Chicago who goes to meet her new husband’s family who live in the southern states. The film has a unique style and shows the clash between her liberal tactile ways and the conservative, christian family in a humerous way. The reason the film is called Junebug is because her Husband’s brother’s wife is expecting a baby imminently and wants to call it Junebug.

As I was enjoying the film, I was intrigued by the husbands brother, the father of the unborn child. He obviously had issues, one of which was anger. In one scene he tries to record a TV program for his wife while she is having her baby shower upstairs but the video recorder kept ejecting the video. He gets so angry that he starts shouting and swearing which makes the ladies upstairs hush in embarrassment. His wife comes down to see what’s wrong but he rejects her help and throws the video against the wall. I was interested and glad to see somebody else dealing with anger issues.

A bit later in the film, his wife goes into labour, rushes off to the hospital all excited, then loses the baby.

At this point I literally sat forward in my chair. I couldn’t believe this baby had been stillborn. I couldn’t believe that such a movie would deal with stillbirth. I was positively shocked. All of a sudden the film took on a whole new meaning for me.

The most amazing scene in the film was in the hospital after the baby had died. The mum and her husbands brother were talking together and the mum (played by Amy Adams who was rightfully nominated for an Oscar for her role) went beck and forth between talking about normal things and crying so desperately about her lost baby and her husband. It reminded me of our weekedn in the hospital after Amy died. We too would go from talking normally about something to crying together then back to chatting casually. It was a very strange time.

One of the things the mum said in the hospital scene was that she felt so scared because shes didn’t know what her husband was thinking. He had left the hospital without saying a word. I felt even more that I related to this character, this angry dad who had lost his first baby. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that I could relate to a character so intimately. It was reassuring but sad.

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17 Feb 08

God Explodes

I recently blogged about Job and his suffering and how he chose to still love and honour God throughout. I was inspired by the book Where Is God When It Hurts to realise that Job didn’t deserve the suffering he endured and that God does not punish people with suffering.

Further on in the book, Philip Yancey explains his confusion at God’s response once he does eventually decide to speak to Job. Instead of comforting Job with “there, there, well done for enduring, you’ve matured and proved me right to Satan, thanks!” he launches into one of his longest speeches in the Bible all about what an awesome creator he is! He pretty much ignores the previous 35 chapters worth of questions about pain and suffering!

So does this mean that God has no answers? Or does it mean he has a huge self-centred ego? Yancey suggests that God’s message to Job is

“Stop whining, you have no idea what you’re talking about”. Or as Frederick Buechner puts it:

“God doesn’t explain. He explodes. He asks Job who he thinks he is anyway. He says that to try to explain the kind of things Job wants explaining would be like trying to explain Einstein to a little-neck clam… God doesn’t reveal his grand design. He reveals Himself.”

I swing from being intensely angry that I don’t know why Amy died and why this happened to me, to feeling OK about not knowing since it’s something I’ll never get an answer to.

But I do like the idea that God would rather simply reveal himself and his love to those who suffer than give pat answers which sum up the purpose for peoples pain. I like that idea because it points to God’s compassion.

Yet I feel distant from God.

My Mum gave us a copy of a Nooma video about grief a few months after Amy died. In it Rob Bell explains the Jewish tradition of Sitting Shivah where people coming to see those who are mourning, . They don’t crowd them with activity or conversation, they simply sit and wait for the mourner to make the first move. Rob Bell suggests that this tradition comes from the Jewish understanding about how God relates to those who mourn. He sits close by waiting for the mourner to come to Him. He doesn’t pressure them to keep praying or reading the bible everyday, He just waits near by.

When Mary-Lou and I watched the Nooma video, the Sitting Shivah idea really helped us relax about us and God. We both have got a struggle on our hands in terms of feeling secure and safe in Gods arms.

We’ve only just started facing Him again from time to time.Which is probably why I feel distant from Him. I do believe He wants to reveal Himself to me in new and unexpected ways, but for now, I’m still working things through in my heart

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17 Feb 08

Stop This Train

I recently came across a song by John Mayer called Stop This Train (lyrics here) which is beautiful.

I have listened to it over and over again over the last week or so, each time finding myself connect with his lyrics. It gives me a feeling of nostalgia and a longing for a different version of my life.

I finally expressed how I connected with the song to Mary-Lou last night when talking about feeling sad about losing Amy. If this is the train I’m on, the one where Amy has died, then yeah, stop this train because I want to be on the one where Amy didn’t die.

In his lyrics, John Mayer sings about the advice his Dad gives him. He says wait until you’re older, then you’ll realise that you can’t stop this train, you can’t change the place you’re in.

I really like the idea that age brings wisdom. I really loved the Proverbs about wisdom when I was younger. And perhaps I’ve idolised wisdom at points.

But if I’m to grow wise through losing Amy, I don’t want it. I want her.

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9 Feb 08

The Pain Blame Game

I have asked many times why Amy died. I’m not asking how she died, her stillbirth was one of the 50% that are unexplained. I want to know why.

Mary-Lou particularly has battled with the idea that Amy died because of something she did or didn’t do. No matter how much doctors, midwives and friends reassure her that she didn’t cause Amy’s stillbirth, she still wonders. All she wants is for God himself to tell her that it wasn’t her fault, but he hasn’t.

I knew this was a broken world long before Amy died. I grew up in an evangelical family and was aware that bad things happen to good people as a result of The Fall. I also believed that God was totally good, and this confused me a bit. But I had never experienced any major suffering to have to really figure it out, it was just another confusing tension which I could easily put to the back of my mind. I was also aware of my own sins and pride and never believed that I was one of those good people who didn’t deserve bad things.

When we suffer pain, or a loss, we humans often question why it has happened to us. I wondered whether Amy died as a punishment to me. I couldn’t think of a single sin that might have caused the punishment, afterall, there are many to choose from.

I have also been angry with God and wanted to blame him. WTF was he doing when she died? I believe he had the power to save her, so why, why, why didn’t he?

Reading “Where Is God When It Hurts” recently helped me think through the idea that Amy died as a punishment to me. Philip Yancey points to Job and Jesus to show that it is not a valid conclusion.

Job was blameless, that’s why Satan wanted to ruin him to prove to God that mankind will only freely love him whenthings are good. So Jobs suffering was not because he deserved it or as a punishment and even though Jobs friends urged him to repent of whatever sin broughthim his suffering, he disagreed that this was the reason and still chose to love and honour God.

Then there was Jesus who relieved many individuals of their suffering put never inflicted pain or suffering as a punishment. If God regularly punishes people, you’d have thought Jesus would have broken a few bones!

There are of course plenty of examples of God punishing Israel and others (after repeated warnings) but Yancey argues that this is not how God operates this side of Jesus.

Great. For me. But non of this helps Mary-Lou who is desperate to hear God tell her it wasn’t her fault.

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28 Jan 08

Spiritual Pain

I am currently reading Philip Yancey’s book “Where Is God When It Hurts“. I had to buy it after asking my friends if anyone had a copy. I was fairly suprised that no-one had the book, but it’s probably quite telling about Western Evangelical Christianity.

I’m definitely finding the book interesting but so far it has been about physical pain rather than emotional pain so I’ve not got alot out of it yet. But it got me thinking about pain differently. Philip Yancey suggests that pain is a wonderful example of God’s awesome creation – God created pain! The nervous system in each one of us protects us from further harm by detecting heat, cold, pressure, friction, etc. Pain is a warning system. He also suggests that fear, loneliness and guilt are good as they help us to make better decisions.

If all that is uncomfortable, read the book!

I started wondering about spiritual pain. If we are also spirits, can we suffer spiritual pain? What could cause spiritual pain? How would it feel? How would we describe it? Would there be another set of words?

When I picture what happened to me when Amy died I imagine myself being torn to pieces from the inside out. I’ve never been through such an emotional event before so I find it difficult to describe my feelings which makes it even harder to distinguish between my emotional pain and my spiritual pain.

All I know right now is that it’s very painful and confusing.

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25 Jan 08

Losing Discipline

When I was a teen I found self discipline fairly easy.

I never had a rebelious period in my youth. I put that down to the fact that when I was 14 I learned alot more about my heart condition and what God said to Mum & Dad during my first few weeks. It left me with a clear and strong sense of spiritual purpose and thinking that if God had both saved me physically when I was a baby and spiritually by dying on the cross, the least I could do is give him everything in return.

My zeal and determination with self-discipline was helped by great youth leaders and being challenged and inspired by books like “Celebration Of Discipline” by Richard Foster and “The Pursuit Of God” by A. W. Tozer.

Before Amy died I went on a made-up Soup diet to lose weight and I did well, I lost 1 1/2 stone in 6 weeks. Since finding out we’re pregnant again I committed to another diet with a friend, except we call this one a “lifestyle change”. Initially I lost quite a few pounds but then we both plateaued and over Christmas I put on some weight.

Even with the accountability of disciplining myself I’m finding I just can’t be bothered. I think I’m going through a wave of grief over losing Amy and that might be a factor. But frankly, I don’t care about disciplining my eating habits – it just doesn’t seem to matter.

Yet something tugs at me inside and tells me that I’m failing and it is important and I’m being childish and just sort yourself out and the tension makes me miserable.

If being undisciplined is not doing something you know it’s right to do (something the Bible says is sin), are we allowed to be undisciplined at times?

Does grief excuse lack of discipline?

I hope so.

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24 Jan 08

Religion, Politics and Hope

When I read God’s Politics by Jim Wallis I became hopeful that there were American Christians who thought and spoke sense. It was great to read this challenge to the Church and to have it explained so intelligently and passionately. So I enjoyed this video of him on the fabulous Daily Show:

Christianity and Politics obviously conflict alot in America, but much less so in Britain. I have long rued the lack of voice the Church has in both Politics and the Media in Britain. By “Church” I don’t mean the institutional leaders, but the people themselves. The Church has not been speaking out loudly enough over the last 50 – 60 years about social and political issues for many reasons. One might be the rise of the individualistic gospel making faith more of a personal gain and private matter. Another might be the rise of the less needy middle class in the Church which does not have an understanding or proximity to the poor.

Whatever the reason, the Church has become more and more irrelevant to the general public and the number of Christians has declined drastically over the last few decades. Meanwhile, Politics has become more and more capitalist, keeping the poor poor and the rich richer.

But I have seen a rise in young Christians become more socially and politically engaged in this country and this makes me hopeful – both that this nation’s social ills can be corrected and that the Church could become more like who she was created to be.

Please Church, stop naval gazing!

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20 Jan 08

Your Days Of Plenty Are Numbered

I very much enjoyed watching The Edukators this morning. It is a germna film about some young anti-capitalists who break into rich people’s homes and mess with the ornaments and furniture by rearranging them and pilling them on top of each other. They don’t steal anything, instead they just leave a note saying “Your Days Of Plenty Are Numbered”.

Mary-Lou and I have been thinking alot about our finances recently and about what our morals are regarding the poor. A friend who works with destitute asylum seekers recommended Shane Claiborne’s book “The Irrisistible Revolution” as the most challenging book he has ever read. Then he pointed me to this video:

Up until a year or so ago I used to obsess about the problems, injustices and dangers of the global economic system we live under.  It often left me with a sense of hopelessness since I couldn’t see what I could do to change anything. Slowly (which is typical) it dawned on me that engaging locally would mean that I stood a chance to make some difference to some people rather than hopelessly doing nothing.

I’m still trying to figure out how to engage with the injustices I come across locally. We learnt recently that we live on the 7th poorest ward in the country – Moss Side, Manchester. Yet we comfortably live in our own house and have a disposable income each month. What should be our response to that fact?

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