From Finding Dory: Home

So, I saw Finding Dory for the first time the other day and it low-key wrecked me. I mean, sitting-in-the-middle-of-a-crowd-sobbing kind of wrecked, and for all the right reasons. If you haven't seen it yet, maybe don't keep reading, but if you have (or you don't care) carry on.

 There comes a point at one of the climaxes where Dory is left completely alone. She doesn't know what to do. She's lost everything, including hope that she'll find her parents. But then, she sees the shells, and she remembers. She remembers her mom telling her as a kid to follow the shells if she couldn't find her way home. As she begins to follow the line, she sees lines of shells going out in all directions, all leading to a little home deep in the kelp.

And then the moment we've all been waiting for. In the distance, her parents appear, and when they see her, they run (er...swim?). They embrace her, telling her that they had stayed all these years, knowing she'd come back. Dory starts trying to apologize for losing them, for forgetting, and yet they won't hear any of it. She's home.

Isn't that us? We run from God. We forget Him. Sometimes we get so far we don't even remember what we lost in the first place, we only know that something's missing.

We don't know that He hasn't moved. We don't know that He's been active, pursuing us, leaving us reminders to come home. 

Home has always been an idea close to my heart. It's always been something I've studied and sought for and hungered for.
I think I've realized that there's home and there's Home. 
Our home can be plural, and it can be places or people. Lee is home for me. Bayside is home for me. My family is home. My church family is home. My roommates and my friends are home. They're places where I belong, where I'm known and seen and I have a role. Places where my heart and dreams are safe.

But, unlike Home, they're not perfect (and they don't have to be).

Because Home is one person, one place.
I'll know I'm home when I hear those words, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." Some people think they'll drop to their knees, or dance, or weep when they get there. But I think that maybe I'll run straight to Him because after all that time, I won't want to be apart ever again.

I know Christ is my home because He is the only one who knows me completely and loves me completely. He knows all the things I hide even from myself. He knows all the mistakes I've made, all the evil hidden within me. He was there for every moment of the darkest nights, and He was the only one who could bring me back into the light. He never runs, never fails, never leaves. He's more than I understand, more than I'll ever imagine, and sometimes it's hard to handle.

But I know that there's nowhere else where I belong perfectly because it's the place that I was created to be: with Him.  

Yet how often do I run Home, only to trip over my apologies for being away? How often do I forget His face, forget His words, forget His love? When I resurface from burying myself in busyness, why do I hide from the only One who can give me rest?

Maybe that's what life is, a constant being home and coming Home. Being a place for others to belong and seeking the One who you belong to. 

From the Avengers

So, not to be cliched, but I love superhero movies. Adore them. Nothing gets me as excited as following all the latest Marvel news, and I will rearrange my life to make sure I see each new movie as soon as possible.

Which got me thinking, occasionally curious person that I am. What it is about a bunch of dudes (and ladies) in tights, running around beating people up that makes us so excited? What keeps us coming back and draws us in?

Somehow I don't think it's Thor's flowing locks or the pure charisma of RDJ or Captain America's....existence.

I think what draws us in is the brokenness of these characters. Iron Man is narcissistic and deals with PTSD. Cap lives in a time he doesn't belong in and always has the regret of missing that dance. Thor has the weight of a kingdom on his shoulders and a brother that fights for his ruin. Hawkeye, well, I won't spoil the movie for you but he's got things holding him back. Black Widow runs with blood on her hands and is constantly searching for redemption. Hulk has a temper and worries he can never escape his isolation.

We attach to these characters because we see ourselves. Knowing you're not alone in whatever you're dealing with is one of the most important things in any struggle. 

But it goes beyond that. If these were just screwed up characters, we would walk away with bleeding hearts, not zealous ones. We wouldn't be so happy with their victories if they didn't have any.

So what is it? Courage. 

We see these characters bruised and battered, and they keep moving, keep saving the world. It makes us think that maybe we'll make it beyond whatever's holding us back. 

So what's their secret? We see them move from tragedy to courage, but how do they do it? You may think it's their powers, but Stark's suit never saved his heart from fear. Cap's strength didn't keep him from loss. Hulk's greatest power is also his greatest weakness.

Courage doesn't come from being fearless. I've always heard it said that courage isn't the absence of fear, and that's true. The Avengers barely have a plan half the time, so I'm pretty sure they don't do this whole "saving the world" thing without at least a little apprehension. Avoiding spoilers, in the newest movie Stark's fear is what gets them into real trouble in the first place. Acting on fear, while not always bad, can be the very thing that makes your fears reality. 

Courage doesn't come from being qualified. These guys were superheroes, yeah, but sometimes they were pretty lousy at being people. A majority of the conflict in the movies (props to Joss Whedon's writing) comes from the fact that these guys+Natasha are not much of a team. Bruce randomly turns into a green rage monster. Tony thinks the world revolves around himself. Steve is still discovering technology. Clint carries around a bow and arrow to defeat aliens with guns. Thor, well, he's not even properly human. If these guys don't have it all figured out, I certainly don't.

So, when it looks like the odds are stacked against them, why do they stay? Why do they keep fighting the bad guys when it's all they can do to stop fighting themselves? 

Because the key to courage is fighting for something more important than yourself. 

For the Avengers, the goal is saving the people. Whatever it takes, whatever it costs, save the people.

And you know, maybe we're not so far off. Sure, we don't save anyone; we can't even save ourselves. But for those of us who have had our hearts changed by Christ, we know the only One than can save them.

Not to be misunderstood, the greatest goal of followers of Christ is to bring glory to God, but redemptive history seems to point to saving people as one of His chosen ways to bring Himself glory.

If we'd only keep remembering that the people need saving.

It says in John 15 that the greatest love one can have is to lay down one's life for one's friends. Our friends need saving. Is it not worth laying down our lives to save the people?

I'm not just talking about dying, although many of our brothers and sisters are still paying that price. American Christians tend to gloss over this verse as being a good idea, but irrelevant.

Isn't laying down our lives laying down our schedules? Laying down our comfort? Laying down our lazy Christianity and picking up the Cross for the sake of saving the people?

I'm not saying I've got any of this grasped, but courage as I see it doesn't require perfection, but action in spite of fear.

This kind of courage, Christ-centered courage, thankfully never says we walk this alone. He walks with us, as well as giving us people to spur us on.

So maybe heroism isn't so far out of reach, not because we're so great at fighting battles, but because our Hero has already won the war for us. He's got this. He's got courage enough to share. 

So I have hope that at the end of my life I can stand with my Hero and echo Jesus's words in John 17;

"I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do."

That Post With All the Lord of the Rings References

Call it a cliche, or silly, or whatever, but my greatest fear in life is spiders. Big ones, small ones, fake ones, I hate 'em all. Maybe it's because of that scene in the last Lord of the Rings movie. Maybe it's just because I'm a wimp. Yep, that's probably it.



Regardless, I see a spider and I freak out. Like, screaming-not-breathing-I'm-gonna-die freak out. When we moved into the house we're currently living in, it had been sitting empty for about seven months and my room was in the basement. So yeah, spiders galore. (Technically granddaddy long-legs, but still full of legs and scary-ness and evil.) The problem was, there is no way I was killing all five hundred thousand gazillion of those things living in there. So naturally, every time I found one I screamed a little (okay, a lot) and made my mother come downstairs to kill it. However, you can't scream for mom in the shower (I tried, she didn't appreciate it), and thus the shower head became my greatest weapon.

Spider: "Hey, I'm just gonna crawl across this curtain, don't mind me-"

Me: "DIE!DIEEEEE!OHMYGOSH DIE!!!"

Spider: "Could you stop waving that thing around? You'll get the floor wet."

 Me: "It's gonna kill me. I'm gonna die. I hope Mama and Daddy take good care of Preshis (my cat). Ben can have Balto (my dog). CRAPIT'SMOVING. DIEEEE! I HIT IT!" 

Spider: "flurgblurdeblargudghsdhdfb"

Me: "HAH!TAKE THAT YOU DEMON-SPIDER!I AM SPIDER KILLER, THEY WILL FEAR ME."

Needless to say, by this point the bathroom is soaked, my nerves are shot, and the spider is taking a ride down the drain. It's also the point when I remember: the spider probably wasn't coming for me, my bathroom is a mess for no reason , and I'm a wimp. 

How often to we make a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to fear? I felt like I was fighting an epic battle for my life when I was really killing a bug about as effectively as a four-year-old would. I felt like auditioning for a solo at church was the equivalent of singing to an angry planet that fed on memories and would eat the solar system if I messed up (Doctor Who reference, anyone?). I was afraid that talking to someone I didn't know would ultimately result in me making a fool of myself and that person forever hating me. Dramatic much? Maybe. Real fears that everyone experiences? Absolutely. 

Think of all the things we could do if we stepped out of our comfort zones. What's more, think of all the things we would have missed if we had run away from our fears. 

• I would never have ridden my first water slide in sixth grade and would've spent the rest of the day miserable.
• If I hadn't gotten the courage to audition for a play at the community theatre, I wouldn't have been asked by the director to be in the next play, one of the best events of my life.
• I wouldn't have been to New Orleans, Myrtle Beach,and, this summer,New Mexico. (My church choir director picks awesome places for mission trips.)
• Had I not auditioned to be a writing major, I might never have learned what happens when you follow your plan instead of God's. 
• Had I not had the courage to leave said creative arts school, I might have been stuck outside of God's will, and therefore miserable. 

Now, this list could be longer. But it's not, because I get scared. Fear has always been strong in my life, and I've struggled with it as long as I can remember. This post is more for me than anything.

"For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline."-2 Timothy 1:7 (NLT)

Fear isn't from God. It has no place in my life. There is so much to do and see in this world, and so little time. So why do we devote so much time to the things we're scared of?

Think of Bilbo Baggins. He was scared of these strange dwarves that showed up at his house, ate all his food, and then asked him to help them steal from a dragon. Had he chose not to go, to stay in his comfy little home in Bag End, to raise little Frodo, and to live a nice, quiet life, there would have been no Hobbit, no Lord of the Rings. In fact, Middle Earth would have been destroyed without Frodo to carry the Ring to Mordor. Gandalf chose Frodo because he knew that he shared a secret love of adventure, just like Bilbo did. The dwarves would have been killed, the kingdom lost to Smaug forever. "It's a dangerous business  going out your door," Tolkien wrote. But for Bilbo, it was worth it.

I realize this post is scattered, and my words are inadequate. Because, like I said, I still have to fight fear on a daily basis, and I lose a lot. But we must keep fighting, because it's worth it.

-Jon Acuff,author of Start (which just came out. Go order it now. Go. I haven't, because I'm broke (sorry Jon), and I'm regretting it already) and Quitter.

   

Every Life Is Beautiful

It's true.
God knit us together. (see Psalm 139:13)
We were made in His image. (see Genesis ch.2)
He has a purpose for our lives. (see Romans 8:28)
Every life is beautiful.

I've always believed adoption to be a wonderful thing. It is such a lovely symbol of how God adopts us as His children. Plus, wouldn't it be so cool to know your parents chose you specifically?

I've always believed abortion to be a terrible thing. And that's phrasing it lightly. Who are we to choose who deserves to live? We are not God. Not even close. 

That being said, I've always believed forgiveness to be an amazing thing. I will never, ever, understand how God could look upon a wretched creature like me and say "I love you. You are forgiven." He gives us a clean slate when we trust in Him.

The movie October Baby combines all these things so excellently. (It's on Netflix and in stores. Seriously, go check it out.) In short, it's about a girl, Hannah, who discovers that she was adopted after her birth mother tried to abort her, and her journey to let go of her hate and forgive herself and her birth mom. This movie shows how adoption can save lives and give children a chance for a better life who had no hope through no fault of their own. It shows how abortion can hurt people, not just infants, and the tragic result of bad choices. It shows how awesome our God is in that He forgives people, even those who have had abortions, so that we may forgive. 

At the end of the movie, it directs you to a website called everylifeisbeautiful.com. I haven't had the chance to watch all the individual stories yet, but the name struck me. 

Because it's true.
God knit us together. 
We were made in His image.
He has a purpose for our lives.
Every life is beautiful.