Fear...

From time to time, I like to create really random scenarios or perhaps even questions just so that I can think over what I would do or say. For instance, a scenario that I’ve acted out in my mind ever since I was younger is the “what would you save if there were a fire” scenario, and over the years, this answer has changed from my teddy bear when I was seven to my journals at eight to my paintings at twelve to my chest that has all of my journals in it, and maybe I’ll grab just several paintings in the other hand, and then I’ll just throw my favorite books out of the window at twenty two; forget the clothes, money, laptop, phone, and whatever else most people would grab…those books are gold to me, and those journals are basically me in paper form, and those paintings may not be so awe inspiring, but it took way too long to paint them to have them melt in two seconds. Another scenario that I like to entertain before going to bed from time to time is the “what would you do if someone broke into your apartment” scenario. This one has so many different endings, that I’m not going to go into detail.

You get the point. I am a thinker, daydreamer, whatever you want to call it: I am the person who sits in class and when nothing too interesting or important is being said, imagines what I would do if someone showed up on campus with a gun or I’m imagining myself on an adventure overseas working at an orphanage. While lying in bed staring at the ceiling, I’m wondering what one thing I would take with me to an island, or who I would take with me. And if I’m feeling really thoughtful, I’m the person who really thinks in detail about what animal best describes me…by the way, I think it’s the nightingale. I might even be wondering if I could be any fruit, what fruit would I be: I have come to the conclusion that I would be a strawberry 1) because the strawberry is the most unique since it’s the only one that has seeds on the outside, kind of making the whole fruit thing pointless and 2) If you considered seeds a fruit’s heart, then the strawberry wears its heart on its sleeve, and I may not always do this, but I certainly admire it. And lastly, one scenario that I’ve thought over, as mentioned in a previous blog, is the whole knight in shining armor who will hopefully pursue me scenario…

There is one question, however, that I’ve thought over many times and have never known exactly the answer to…this being the, “what are you most afraid of” question.

So on TV, people are most afraid of monsters or spiders or roaches, well frankly, none of things scare me. Mice definitely don’t scare me after the whole catching one and releasing it outside adventure that took place a few weeks ago in Monroeville. I’m not scared of snakes because when you see one, you walk in the other direction. Maggots really do freak me out, but I’m not scared of them..I don’t fear the maggot colony climbing into bed with me or chasing me, but I do have to admit that I do get the whole “I’m going to be sick” when I see them episode. So besides the creepy crawlies, I guess I thought I was scared of the usual things like “what if I fail miserably in a class,” except I don’t worry about failing because I work too hard to fail, plus there’s always forgiveness if I do. I’m not afraid of graduating, I’m not afraid of moving, I’m not afraid of where I’m going to work because there are so many options as a Registered Dietician that is ridiculous, plus these make me feel like a new adventure is about to begin, which is far more exciting than scary. I’m not so scared of the dark any more, unless the power goes out, then I just go outside because for some reason outside dark is not scary like inside dark. I’m not scared of bees or ants or dirt or breaking a fingernail. I’m not deathly afraid of heights or planes or hurricanes. So really, there are things that might momentarily freak me out, but there aren’t many things that I’m really scared of, and even the “cat-lady” scenario, no longer scares me. If I’m the old, single lady with a bunch of cats, I will not be rocking in a rocking chair being depressed, hopefully, I’ll be on an adventure somewhere doing something good for the Lord…and if not, then shame , shame on me. But the point is that after a lot of thinking over this one question, I’ve never gotten to the root of what I’m really scared of…

Until today.

This morning, I was reading through Mathew chapter seven, and I stumbled upon a verse that I’ve read a many times before, and this verse says,

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ and then I will declare to them,

‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’


And after reading that, my stomach dropped, and I knew that without a shadow of a doubt, this verse was an answer to my biggest fear. And my biggest fear is….that again and again, I will get so caught up in the World, that I will again and again forget that I live in a world that sits in God’s hands…and though, I don’t believe that I am just a “Christian” but really a born again believer. I don’t want to be one of those, “whew…I barely made it” to heaven believers.

My biggest fear is never knowing Christ to the depth that He desires for me to know Him…

This verse says a whole lot about the world we live in. I feel like I know so many “Christians” and I know so many people who go to church, but honestly, I don’t know as many people who really know the Lord. And when I say “Christians,” you might be wondering what’s up with the quotes. When I say Christian (without the quotes), I’m referring to those who believe Christ died for them, and so they died to themselves, meaning that everything they were, believed in, knew…changed. Their lives went from one that looked like the world to one that looked like Christ. And when I say “Christians” I’m referring to those who believe in God, and they may or may not go to church, but they don’t look like Christ, they don’t talk like Christ, and they aren’t living to find Christ. So basically, there is your definition of those who are “hot” and those who are straddling the fence of “lukewarm”. Cold would be those who have denied Christ flat out (Revelations 3:15-16). And if you venture to go read Revelations chapter 3:15-16, you’ll see that it’s basically a backup of the Mathew verse, except instead of saying the nicer “depart from me,” He says concerning those who are “lukewarm,” “I will spit you out of my mouth,” but both verses are referring to those who say ‘Lord, Lord,’ but never really knew him. In really simplified terms, you can’t live a life as a “Christian” and satisfy God. God either comes into your life and changes it or He doesn’t, and you remain like the world, but God doesn’t come into your life and you change in the sense that you go to Church and you don’t steal, but you don’t care to study the word, you don’t care to really know him, and you don’t care to follow him because you love Him, you just pick and choose what you will or will not do on your terms, and being a Christian is about God’s terms, being a “Christian” is about your terms, and that isn’t “knowing” God, that’s just “believing” in God, and we know that even Demon’s can do that.

You may be thinking I sound ridiculous, but give it some deep thought. If you were a musician (I don’t know sports, so this example will have to do) you would own an instrument, let’s say a guitar. You would come home every day and want to play that beautiful cedar top guitar. After awhile, you would know the smallest details about this guitar, like what strings sound best on it, or the best way to keep it shiny and new, and if you really love your guitar, you’d name it (my guitars name is Aeda). You would be extremely protective of it, not just anyone could put their greasy fingers on it, and if someone dissed your guitar or put a scratch on your guitar, you’d probably get angry and banish them from touching it forever. So with time, you’d get better at playing, you would constantly be learning new things from playing it, and your guitar would become something that you really care about because you would have invested so much of your life and time into it. And of course you’d carry it around with you on trips or wherever in its case, and you’d take it out and play for those who asked you to, even if sounds crappy, because that is your guitar, and you’re proud of it.

Now if you had a guitar case with a guitar in it, and you carried it around, people would assume that you are a musician, ok. But if you don’t practice, and you never play that guitar, and you just let it sit in the corner of your room to collect dust (which mine does from time to time) and you don’t know anything about that guitar (strings, care taking, what a chord is), then you’re not really a musician, you’re a “musician” because you may do some things that, on the outside, make you look like a musician, like going to guitar shops and buying strings, but if people really pay attention and they never see you play, and they never hear you talk about practicing, they’re going to start disregarding the guitar case, and in their eyes, you’re going to be just like them, musically illiterate.

And if both the musician and the “musician” were to audition for some band, I’m confident, because of the musician’s knowledge of the guitar and overall time spent practicing, that at the audition the lead singer would say,

“Dude, I can tell you love that guitar. Your fingers are so calloused from all the practice, that even if you make mistakes and you’re not as bad as Andy McKee, you have the passion we’re looking for, you can totally be in our band.”

And as for the “musician,” they wouldn’t know anything about the guitar other than it has six strings. They may be able to pull off a few chords from hasty memorization a few months back, but knowing guitar chords and knowing how to play the guitar, are two completely different things. And I’m sure the lead singer would say to the “musician,”

“Dude, you don’t have a clue what you’re doing. I bet you’ve never picked that thing up for more than five minutes in months. Sure, you probably go to the music store every now and then to pick up some tips, but obviously you never put any of them to practice, and it shows. Honestly man, you’re sitting in limbo between knowing about the guitar and not knowing about the guitar, and frankly I don’t want some guy in my band who doesn’t even care enough to learn about the instrument he ‘claims’ to love, you’d be better off just not playing rather than being a ‘lukey.’”

And while the musician gets to stay and hang out and play his guitar that he truly loves playing, the “musician” is probably pondering what “lukey” means, not having a clue that he was just spit out by the lead singer, and “lukey” was short for “lukewarm.”

So that’s pretty much the best I can do at describing to you what it means to be a real Christian and what it means to be a “Christian”. I never really thought about the two too often growing up, because I knew that I loved the Lord and I went to church, but when I was in High School, I realized that I tended to carry the world in my back pocket, which is not anywhere close to being Christ-like.

I don’t know about you, but it’s next to impossible to follow Christ with the world in your back pocket. Because when you start to fall in love with Christ, and you start growing closer to him, you’ll hear those muffled sounds of the world coming from your pocket, and you’ll look back, and when you look back, you’re no longer looking towards Christ. And you may pause, take the world out, play some hacky sac with it, toss it about, roll it in between your fingers, and before you know it, you’ve had the world out for an hour, and then a day, and then it’s been a whole week with you and the world, until you hear a quiet whisper from the other direction, and that’s God, so you feel bad and you put the world back in your back pocket and try all over again to get back to Christ,

But it’s only a matter of time before the world calls, and you’re looking back at that pocket, and your fingers are fidgeting to just take it out for an hour or so.

Even though I love the Lord, I still feel like I could know Him more. I could want Him more. I could choose Him more. I’m reminded of a song that you might have sung in youth growing up, and the chorus goes like this,

“I want to know you. I want to hear your voice. I want to know you more. I want to touch you. I want to see your face. I want to know you more.”

And that…is what I want… I want to know God more. After reading in Mathew, I went to crosswalk.com to look up what it means to “Know” God. Some definitions were “to come to understand,” “have knowledge,” and one that at first I thought was completely irrelevant was the “know” that referred to being intimate with a spouse. Now, I know what you’re thinking because for about five minutes I thought it to: “Martha, you cannot ‘know’ God in that manner because it’s disgusting,” but I don’t think “know” here is referring to being intimate with God in a physical manner as with a spouse, but I think the word “intimate” is really important in our quest to know God. If you look “intimate” up, you’ll find things like “inmost, deep within” or “suggesting privacy, warm or cozy” and lastly, “involving warm friendship or personally close.” I don’t know about you, but being “intimate” with God sounds wonderful. Knowing God in an intimate way is to share with him your deepest fears, desires, and needs(those things deep within). It is to cozy up with him and to whisper your heart to him, it’s to crawl into His lap and know that, though He is the Alpha and the Omega, He’s also a father and a friend. I’m reminded of a song I wrote several years ago called “Just for awhile,” and I want to share those lyrics with you because intimacy with God is what I was longing for when I wrote it.

verse one:
I love you, when the sun begins to rise,
And can you, see me when I close my eyes?
Do you see me the way I see you?

I love you, when the darkness rises,
And can you, see the tears that fall from my eyes?
Do you know me the way I know you?

Chorus
I’m fading away.
Time stand still for awhile.
Nothing seems real today,
When you’re here,
So take me as yours tonight,
If just for awhile.

Verse two:
And I know, I am not forgotten,
When the day is done.
And my heart,
It’s not really broken, just waiting,
For the healer’s touch.
And your there,
Arms wide open,
To a prodigal son

So there you have it. My biggest fear is that instead of throwing that hacky sack of a world away in the next trash can I walk by, I’m going to keep it in my back pocket. I think I’m most afraid that I’ll keep replacing time with God with really stupid and meaningless things like TV and Facebook. I guess, in summary, that even though I am a Christian, I have to be wary of looking like a “Christian,” because the one thing that I desire most, is to stand before God and for him to say,

“Ah, there’s Martha Lee Anne. She knows my heart, and I know hers, and now that she’s here, I can’t wait to get to know her more.”

My Life Fits in a Box

“My Life Fits in a Box”

Last night, one of my older brothers, Matt, came by my apartment to drop off some boxes to store at my house until he can move into his next apartment. In all, there are only about five or six boxes downstairs, much less than I would have had I been moving boxes to his house (my books alone usually take about 6 boxes). But something he said just before he left struck me as either unexpectedly insightful or somewhat disappointing…and this is what he said:

“After packing up, I looked around, and I thought, My life fits in a box”

After he said this, I looked up to see him scan over the raggedy things, and I smiled and commented that that would make a great title for a short story just before he closed the door and left. And then I sat there. I sat and wondered over what he had just stirred in me… “my life fits in a box”. I changed the channel back to the lifetime movie. “my life fits in a box.” I went upstairs and proceeded to brush my teeth, practice on my new violin a bit, and then eventually made it to bed. “My life fits in a box”.

What does it mean to me? My life fits in a box…resaid: “I have so little things that I can fit them all in a box…” or “my entire human existence, my entire existence is in that box” or “My life is so pathetic and I am such a tiny speck on this planet, that my life would fit into a box” or maybe “My life is so predictable and straightforward that my life fits in a neatly, packaged box until unpacked in the next scheduled existence which takes place at the end of this week in a new apartment.”

The point is that my brother made a HUGE discovery completely by accident
..and that is that our lives…our memories…are able to be packed into a box.


A box, A box of all thing…A small, wimpy, brown box; a box that’s taped up and so easily moved from one location to the next. A thing that everyone can relate to, because at some point, everyone has gone to a dumpster or to their closet to find shoved at the bottom or in the corner, brown boxes that they can fit their things into. I don’t have anything against boxes…but when Matt said “my life fits into a box”…I was highly offended when for the most part, it’s true. My life (my pictures, and books, and clothes, and food, and utensils, and those towels that my mom hate because their too fat) fits into a box. Everything that I have ever deemed valuable…and “would save if there were a fire” goes into something that is found in a dumpster, is cheap and easy to find, disposed of the second I unpack my valuables, and will eventually be used again when I have to pack my life for a new move.

Matt basically said, “My life fits into the same thing that everyone else’s life fits into…and my life, because it can fit into such a generic mold…seems pointless”

That’s why “my life fits in a box” kept repeating in my head long after it was said. Because he didn’t say it with enthusiasm…or with disinterest; he said it as if it was the world’s deepest, and darkest secret. His life fit into a box. His human existence fit into a box. A small, brown, taped, box. And who could blame him for sounding so depressed when he said it. It’s quit disheartening when you realize the only difference between someone dead and alive is that you’re still able to pack your things into corrugated fiberboard, and move them about, rather than have them decay in someone’s attic.

And when I woke up this morning, I was still thinking about what he said just last night because I would never choose to have my life fit into a box. I want my life to fit into a museum, or a library, but I never ever want my life to be summed up in a box.

And it hit me…. “my life fits into a box….” But really I would like to say,

“My life is so extraordinary and so in tune with God that my life can’t be measured, my life is not generic, my life does not fit into some crappy box, because everything I find valuable and everything that exist in me and for me can’t be put into a box..because it doesn’t get stored away when I die…No, it gets unpacked when I die…

I realized, really realized, that on earth…our lives are summed up by boxes. We fit what we think is most valuable into them, and we cart them around, and we unpack them and we repeat this process over and over and over….just like everyone else we know does. And all the while, we are so proud when we unpack the photo album of us spring 2007 or when we see our beautiful bound books or when we take out our mother’s favorite china, but when matt said, “My life fits into a box,” it didn’t ring with “look at my wonderful things,” because unknown to him he said… “My life as a human goes in a box, and that’s all, and these things in these boxes, that’s all…that’s all there is to life”

But I don’t want a “just all” life. I don’t want to live to collect things to be packed into boxes. I want to collect things that are stored in Heaven, and things that aren’t so predictable.
I don’t know about you but predictability depresses me. When I act predicable or look predictable or have things that are predictable, that just means that my life looks just like everyone elses…so I think what bothered me most about “my life fits into a box,” is that my life does “fit into a box,” and when I move, I’ll be using boxes, and that makes me highly predicable.

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Mathew 6:19-21

Now that rings with promise in my ears…no boxes, nope Heaven. A life stored within pearly gates, and a life revolving around the creator of the Universe, that’s a life that doesn’t look predictable. That’s a life that not about things but it’s about God, and it’s about being more than just a silly human that collects things, but a human that lives a life of promise and hope to gain things that he cannot lose.

It just crossed my mind that God probably looks at us like we look at those people on those hoarding shows. We watch and we think, “Why in the world would they keep all of that stuff…its stupid and pointless.” Hahaha....and then we probably think, “they need to go get some boxes to store that stuff,” which just proves the fact that it’s worthless.

So the point of this is that, your life doesn’t have to just fit in a box. Your life is not just a box you pack up and carry with you until you die. Your life was intended to be a unique gift, and a promise for things like joy, and happiness, and peace, and of course the struggles that come along with being a follower of Christ, but…having meaning in one’s life is not one of those struggles, its one of those gifts.

And lucky for you..this gift comes in a Savior, not in a box…