Dangerous Mercy

I love the ocean. I love the way it looks, the way it smells, the way it feels, the way I feel in it. Everything. My favorite activity is "wave bashing," a bit of a misnomer, really, as I do not bash but am bashed. I stand knee deep in water, or out far enough so the waves are breaking and allow them to push, pull, and force me to bend to their will.

My friend at school has been trying to teach a couple of us to ballroom dance. He taught us the box--forward and backward--and we practiced a bit. It was going... very mediocre, and he looked at me knowingly. "Elizabeth," he said, "the one thing you need to learn is to let the man lead." If you know me well enough to know I love the ocean, you probably know about my control issues. So maybe he says this to all the girls he dances with, but maybe he just said it to control freak me. I, of course, laugh at him and say, "Yeah, sure. That's not going to be a problem." I then proceed to spend the next thirty minutes being pushed and pulled around an empty classroom until I forget I'm not in charge. I go left, partner goes right and we stop, fix our "frame" and start again.

One of the lessons God and I are working on is my need to be in control. I get really bent out of shape when I run late due to no fault of my own. When I don't have time to do X, Y, AND Z. When a person I was relying on falls through. When I fail to live up to this ridiculous standard of perfection I've somehow set for myself as attainable. But I'm not in control and I'm left to the mercies of others and I have experience being let down and failed and also with failing.

I am in the ocean. Outside forces act upon me every day. It feels like lately one wave after another has been pounding me--my friend changing schools, the latest whatever with Boy, my confusion about how to respond to a gay friend, my jealousy over two friends pairing up, my sadness about a friend ultimately not choosing me, my unorganized summer, my stress over the end of school, all the work I have to get done before finals, all the friendly obligations I have to fulfill. It's worse than wave bashing--my feet aren't on the sand. I'm floating and pushed and pulled and slapped by one wave after another. I've passed the point of fun (wave bashing is fun) and I'm into the scary zone where I am completely at the mercy of the water. I could very easily drown. The water has no mercy: it doesn't care about my survival. Its purpose is to subdue me. It's succeeding.

Rich Mullins sings,

"There's a wideness in God's mercy

I cannot find in my own.

It keeps me aching

With a yearning

Keeps me glad to have been caught

In the reckless, raging fury

They call the love of God."

I've never thought of God's love in these terms. It reminds me of Narnia, "Safe? Of course he's not safe. He's not a tame lion, you know." I am caught in the "reckless, raging, fury" of God's love for me. It's not peaceful, or placid. It's violent, uncontrollable, and when experienced right, it leaves the beloved completely and utterly helpless, at the mercy of the Father. The Father's mercy: boundless, unchanging, eternal, relentless.

Either way, I'm not in control. Other people make decisions that crash over me like waves and threaten to drown me, or God's terrifying love--"never safe but always good"--threatens a different sort of drowning. Either way, my feet have left the ground.

First written April 17th, 2010 at the beach

I love this world: I live in the southeast, and right now, early summer, is one of the most beautiful times of year. Spring is also beautiful, with all the green bursting forth seemingly overnight, and fall's colors are as captivating as a Matisse painting. I love being alive, which is something of a change from past attitudes of apathy, and I look forward to my future: continuing my education, reading new books, meeting new people, having new ideas, seeing new things and new places. Getting married. Having children. RAISING those children. Doing something meaningful with my life, whatever that may be.

Life is wonderful and I can't wait to experience all of it.

But at the same time, as I get older, I'm introduced to the duality of nature. The world is beautiful and exciting and wonderful, but at the same time, it's scary, dangerous, and not at all something to be prolonged. This is seen in the deaths of people I love and want with me. In the changing of summer's green to fall's orange to winter's cold gray. In friends moving away, of my moving further away emotionally from people I used to love. In uncertainty for my future, and in not knowing what I will do or whether my life truly does have meaning.

C.S Lewis would say this is God reminding us that we don't belong here, in the most pivotal sense of the phrase. We're not meant to be comfortable in this world, because comfort leads to complacency and a desire to keep the dream rather than to move forward to the reality.

Discomfort on earth is good for us. It keeps us from becoming too attached to "the things of earth" and constantly pushes us forward to something "more." Only one of the reasons I try to accept my discomfort and unhappiness along with my joy.

It reminds me of a Rich Mullins song:

Nobody tells you when you get born here

How much you'll come to love it and how you'll never belong here

So I'll call you my country, but I'm lonely for my home.

I wish that I could take you there with me.

I'll sing His song in the land of my sojourn.

I'll choose to keep singing.