It's me, it's Him, it's us

During the past year or so while Macho's health has experienced multiple incidents, I've been on an emotional rollercoaster. (I can only imagine how Macho has felt.) He couldn't pee; he peed too much and too often and in the wrong places. He pooped normally; he pooped diarrhea. He grew a tiny little bump on his belly that went away; he grew huge, scary-looking scabs all over his belly that are stumping the vet. He was so weak because he wouldn't eat, and he couldn't meow; he was so strong that he bit me and broke the skin while I was administering his antibiotic.

One minute, he's a sickly little 6.75-pound elderly cat who visits the litterbox to pee almost literally 20 times in one hour. The next minute, he's a strapping-virile swashbuckler cat who bullies my petite girl cat out of her napping spot.

Look at him. Does he look sick to you? The other day, I heard a loud thud in my living room. It turned out to be Macho trying to catch a bug through the door-window. Huh. So, Macho is a windowbrawler. Who'd a thunk?

I've cried at the mere thought of possibly needing to put him to sleep. And I've yelled at him for peeing on my bed YET AGAIN after I shooed him off my bed multiple times, and I've run out of clean sheets, and I've thought about putting him to sleep just so that I can have my life back.

But there's no need to put him to sleep. He still has so much life left in him. And if given the choice, I really don't want to live without him.

From what I understand, Macho's vet performed a thing-ectomy on one other cat before Macho. The other cat was donated to somebody afterwards and lived happily ever after.

There are times when I realize that I became a cat person because cats are low-maintenance, self-cleaning animals. But even when I look around and notice that my elderly cat isn't low-maintenance anymore, and it feels like all I'm doing during my spare time is cleaning up after him... I can't give him away to anyone else. His heart would break, and so would mine. He's mine, and I'm his.

Faithfulness can be EXTREMELY hard. But I think Somebody has been teaching me how He does it.

"If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself." (2 Timothy 2:13)

"And the Lord said to Moses, 'I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people! Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation.' " (Exodus 32:9-10)

The one true God -- the One who loves unconditionally, the One who loved the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son, the One who IS love -- had a moment where He wanted to zap His chosen people off the face of the earth. And Moses talked Him out of it. (Although I'm pretty sure He would have relented, anyway.) See? Maybe I'm not crazy after all. If God can have an "After all I've done for you, THIS is how you pay Me back?" moment, so can I, if I need to.

Like I said, faithfulness can be SO hard. It's hard showing up day after day, moment after moment, laying your life down over and over again, for someone who may or may not appreciate you... for someone who may or may not give you the time of day... for someone who may either just ignore you or adore someone else instead of you. And yet, you keep showing up, and you can't pull yourself away.

It's insanity... until you find someone who reciprocates your heart-actions. Then your ache becomes sweet. When you discover that the recipient of your affection actually wants you, too, there isn't anything you wouldn't do for them. If they give you an inch, you'll gladly give them a mile in return.

"But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." (Hebrews 11:6)

 

Sometimes I wonder why an aging cat -- who isn't allowed outdoors, who isn't as spry as he once was, who has been doubly "fixed," who has difficulty controlling his bathroom reflexes, who possibly may be battling an undiagnosed autoimmune condition, and whose owner keeps imposing boundaries on what he can and cannot do -- would want to still live with me. What is his motivation?

I think I know the answer. It's me.

Macho and I have a special bond that has grown and deepened over the past 16 years. He and I have a history together. Our relationship isn't perfect, but he and I belong together. And as we continue to grow old together, he will continue to be my $6 million cat, and I will continue to be his crazy-cat-lady mama who would do anything for him.

Sometimes I wonder why a middle-aged woman -- who isn't anyone's spouse/mother/bestie, who will never be the best-looking or the best-dressed or the best in her field, who is constantly living in other people's shadows, who is still learning how to control her volatile emotions, who has experienced a vast array of disappointments that just keep coming, and who has become so incredibly tired of allowing her heart to take risks only to be run through the shredder over and over and over again -- would want to still trust God with her life. What is my motivation?

I'm pretty sure I know. It's Him.

My Father and I have a special bond, and we share a secret place together that nobody else will never knew about. He and I have a history together, and we talk about it every once in a while whenever He wants to teach me something through it. Our relationship will always be uneven -- since He's an all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present God, and I'm just His kid who could never, ever compare to Him -- and we like it that way. And as our relationship continues to grow, I will continue to be His little girl who can't live without Him, and He will continue to be my King-Father who will always be available for me.

When life breaks my heart and life's questions scream at me on the inside at deafening decibels, and I feel like I'm the only one who can hear the noise, I know my motivation to keep going. It's my relationship with God. I don't know if this is all there is to life. But I'm going to keep trusting God and keep going. He's never let me down. And at the end of the day, if all I have is Him, then I'm going to curl into His lap and purr, because I know I'm welcome there. I know I belong with Him. I know He loves me and would do anything for me.

The truth is, whether things are going awesomely or horribly, I can't live without our relationship. It would break my heart. And it would break His.

Macho is a lot stronger than he looks. I think maybe I am, too.

Kicking the puffy remnant's butt

I'm going to be honest with you. On Saturday afternoon when I power-walked into church late, during song #1 in the worship set, I wasn't surprised that we were singing "Only Your Love," as song #1 for the zillion-billionth time. I've been a bit annoyed that my church has turned a song #2 into a song #1. It kinda goes against the praise/worship protocol that the pastors have ingrained into us worship leaders over the years. So, while I was settling in my seat, I composed a Facebook status update in my head that would have gone something like: "You know you have PMS when... you seriously consider bribing the worship leader to lead a hymn instead of what they picked for song #1." (If you know me, you know I hate hymns.)

But I'm glad I didn't post that, because there would have been so much wrong packed into that snarky statement:

1) God's presence was there during that service, regardless of the songs that were picked for the set list. God doesn't care as much for the quality of a song than He does for the expression of a heart -- a song is merely meant to be a vehicle for just that.
2) I probably would have hurt the songwriters' feelings.
3) I would have totally overlooked the fact that the worship pastors and leaders considered and prayed about which songs to include in the set list.
4) It's so obvious: My church isn't singing any of MY songs. Hello, jealousy, good to see you again.
5) I totally would have sounded like those old-fogey religious jerks who criticize everything. Maybe to a degree, I still am one.

Maybe God has been working overtime to squeeze more of that junk out of me.

Meanwhile, on Saturday afternoon, I did remember a random conversation I had with a stranger many years ago. I was at a wedding, and I sat at a table with some of either the bride or the groom's family. They had traveled into town for the wedding, and one of the men was asking me questions about my church. I think we ended up talking about the church's music, because he asked me if we sang any Maranatha! Music. Then he went on and on about how much he loved Maranatha! Music. (Um, OK, but that music was written like 30 or 40 years ago. When you read the Bible, do you skip the verse that says to sing a new song to the Lord?)

I also remembered how I went on YouTube a few years ago to listen to a Hillsongs song that I really like -- incidentally, it was an updated hymn. I remember scrolling down and reading some of the comments that people had left on the video's page. One of them said something like, "Hillsongs should be writing new songs instead of updating hymns." (Um, excuse me? 1) It's excessively rude to give a blanket criticism about an entire artist's repertoire on one of their YouTube videos and 2) If someone like ME actually likes the song, then mission accomplished.)

I guess everybody has an opinion. And there's certainly nothing wrong with having an opinion. I have freedom of speech just as much as any other songwriter does. God gave each of us a brain, a heart, and a gut for a reason. But I'm learning that sometimes it's appropriate to share an opinion -- in an appropriate way -- and other times it's best to just save it for when you're alone with God. (He always likes to hear what you have to say, even though He already knows what's floating around inside your brain, your heart, and your gut.)

I'm kinda learning a lot of stuff right now.

"Knowledge puffs up while love builds up." (1 Corinthians 8:1b, New International Version)

"Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees." (Jesus talking in Matthew 16:6)

"Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?" (1 Corinthians 5:6, quoted out of context)

"A little leaven leavens the whole lump." (Galatians 5:9, so there)

Heh, heh. OK, so maybe I'm having too much fun quoting Bible verses that are actually pretty serious. I grew up in a Pharisee's house, with Pharisee DNA, in a Pharisee family, breathing in Pharisee attitudes, which were constantly reinforced by Pharisee survival techniques. Pharisees are very puffy, critical know-it-alls who invent backbreaking rules for people to follow. Jesus pretty much yelled at them in the Bible and called them whitewashed tombs.

I am an ex-Pharisee. I remember being a Pharisee. It was extremely hard work keeping up a façade all the time, keeping the anxiety at a rolling boil in my head, not really being able to do what I really wanted in front of everybody and therefore developing all sorts of secret sins behind everyone's backs. (I have discovered that religious spirits and lust issues often go hand in hand.)

God has set me free from all that Pharisee junk, but of course the recurring problem with the ongoing healing process is the leaven. You can't just chop off a piece of dough and say, "Hey, all the leaven is in this piece over here, and now it's gone. You're free!" In a real piece of dough, the leaven is mixed evenly throughout. So, in a metaphorical piece of dough, removing every tiny piece of leaven is often a long, painstaking process.

In my life, I thought God was done squeezing out the leaven. But I think He's found some more stuff, and He's been slowing wringing it out.

I heard my pastor once say, "Once a Pharisee, always a Pharisee." In terms of getting rid of all the leaven, I can agree with him. But in terms of repenting, I disagree.

Some Pharisees repented in the Bible, but I think God had to be really drastic and shake their worlds to get their attention. (How else are you going to soften a stubborn person?) When Nicodemus came to Jesus in John 3, Jesus straight up was like, "Hey, man, if you want to be like Me, you need to be born all over again." When Paul was traveling to Damascus to hunt down some Christians, Jesus suddenly showed up and basically blinded him for three days.

I can't speak for everybody, but speaking for myself, taking Freedom classes at church hasn't always helped me. God has had to reach down, slice me open, rearrange some stuff, blow my paradigms to smithereens, be my Friend in a way that no one else could ever be, and love me to death. That has seemed to help me the most through the years.

 

Lately, His way of squeezing out any remnant of leaven has been during the current format of my "quiet times," which is just a few minutes every night -- just me, God, and my phone on the couch. (This photo is an example of what I usually see during those times.) No guitar. No keyboard. No library full of printed books. No intercessory floor-pacing. Just a smartphone with more than enough access to the Bible and music... and the awkwardness of accepting that that's all God wants right now. "It's the simplicity that's tripping you up," He said recently.

Whimper. Yes.

If I've heard Him correctly, this will be our nightly format through the rest of March. I think I'll get to unplug and regrow my guitar calluses in April, but we'll see. I might even graduate from Psalm 46 again and jump back into Isaiah.

But for now, I'm letting Him expose a very deep insecurity that's lurked in my heart. Remember me talking about the Pharisees who raised me? Dad didn't want me. I'm sure I felt it even when I was a little embryo inside Mom's womb and there was a brief little mention of a possible abortion inside a doctor's office.

God has told me, "You don't know what it's like to know the security of a father."

Nope. I don't. That old-fogey religious jerk, the one who used to criticize everything and probably still does -- the guy who raised me and basically only wanted a kid around so that he could study language development in children -- didn't give me the security of a loving father that many children have.

But God has been giving that to me for many years now. Lately He's been doing it while I've been nothing but a lump of a couch potato/mouse potato/phone potato in His presence. I don't have anything fancy to offer Him. I just have my life.

And I think He's also been letting me offer the security of a loving mother to a cat who probably should have kicked the bucket a long time ago. But as long as he's with me, I'll make sure he has everything he needs, and I'll make sure he knows that I love him and want him -- right to the very last feline breath.

"Listen, O daughter, consider and incline your ear; forget your own people also, and your father's house; so the King will greatly desire your beauty; because He is your Lord, worship Him." (Psalm 45:10-11)

Going back to the worship song situation I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I need to just shut up and be thankful that my church seems to be flexible about breaking protocol at all. Maybe someday they'll be like, "Hey, all those boundaries we set up about new songs being written for the church suddenly feel silly to us now, and we're now very curious about the ones you've written. Can we listen to a sound clip on Monday morning?"

All those rigid protocols, boundaries, and rules can often be hindrances to creativity, anyway. I'm thankful to be involved in a church that continually submits its processes to God and what He wants.

He's the most creative Being of all. Maybe many of His processes only begin with an idea. I mean, all He said was, "Let there be light," and six days later the entire world was created.

Maybe my dreams will come true when I least expect them to, or maybe in a way that I won't expect them to. But I certainly don't want some puffy remnant to get in the way.

Being ourselves

Warning: I'm going to write about my aging cat in this post, so things might get a little gross. And I'm going to talk about my relationship with God, so I might use some PG-13 language. Just a heads-up.

When I was a little girl, maybe about 5 years old, I was out shopping with my family. Rather, Dad was inside the store shopping, while Mom and sister and I were hanging out in the car. (We used to do that a lot, and I'm not sure why, but whatevs.) We had the windows open, and I saw a woman, maybe in her 50s or 60s, walking across the parking lot. She was wearing tennis shoes, and for some reason this struck me as odd because I had never seen that before. In fact, I blurted out loudly, "An old lady with tennis shoes??" She heard me, because she suddenly turned her head toward our car. She kept walking and didn't approach us, but I probably hurt her feelings. And I definitely embarrassed Mom.

Yes, even as a child, I used to freely speak my mind. Are you surprised?

Years later, of course I understand that there's nothing wrong with being "an old lady with tennis shoes," especially since now I'M the old lady with tennis shoes. And I take selfies everywhere, even in the church restroom. 'Cause that's how I roll.

I'll be 40 in a couple of months, and although I really don't consider 40 to be "old," I guess comparatively speaking, it kind of is. For example, if a college-age male flirts with me, I ain't gonna flirt back. Are you kidding? I'm old enough to be your mom, son.

I'm not sure if I've ever had an official mid-life crisis (although I've had plenty of other kinds of crises), but I've had plenty of time to think about my life and figure some stuff out. I'm definitely an adult, but in some ways I still live like a college student (e.g., I've lived in this apartment for three years but have never, ever used my stove/oven, and I don't ever intend to). I enjoy the independence of living alone and doing whatever the heck I want (e.g., I stopped by the McDonald's drive-thru and bought an ice cream cone on the way to mail my tax return today).

My independence is God's gift to me. Maybe that's one thing that sets me apart from other women my age. I'm definitely not the only 39-year-old independent woman in the world. I'm definitely not the only "old lady" who walks around in tennis shoes.

But I am me.

I have to be myself. I think God would be heartbroken if I weren't myself.

 

In my previous post, I mentioned that my cat Macho recently had surgery to remove his little thing. (Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to pee on his own.) His recovery has been interesting, to say the least. See his adorable little butt that's groomed/shaved metrosexual style?

Seriously, oh my gosh, he is such a drama queen. I never have to guess how he's doing, because he'll come find me and tell me. Or if I wait long enough, he'll show me. For example, I knew it was time to take him back to the vet yesterday when I caught him peeing blood in my bathtub. (He was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection, and I was warned beforehand that he could get this type of infection with his type of surgery.)

But even when everything's going well and he isn't having any health crises, he is so clingy. He follows me around everywhere. Sometimes when I come home, he's waiting for me by the front door like a little dog. He meows at me to feed him at 3:30 in the morning. He meows at me to feed him anytime I mention anything food-related. He tries to sneak inside the refrigerator nearly every time I open it.

He wants to snuggle with me on the couch. He wants to snuggle with me on my lap. He wants to snuggle with me while I'm typing on my computer. He wants to snuggle close by anytime I play my piano keyboard.

I have to keep a close watch on him. Sometimes he'll bully my other cat Choochie. (Which is probably why she swats her claws at his face every time he struts by her food bowl.) If he does #2 in the litterbox, I have to wipe his little metrosexual butt immediately or I might find a surprise somewhere in my apartment later. If he does #1, lately he's been missing the litterbox, and I've had to clean up after him. If he vomits, I have to clean it up right away or he'll eat it (seriously, he's like a dog). If he has difficulty with any of the above, I won't really have a moment's rest.

Right after he had his surgery, he had trouble learning how to control his newer, freer flow, so he ended up giving himself some kind of infection (possibly a fungal one; it's still being tested) on his belly. He was prescribed two different medicines to treat it, so now I have to apply these topical drugs on him every few hours. And I've been washing blankets and pillowcases and keeping Macho away from my bed and my table where I eat. Because, like a paranoid little mama, I don't want Choochie or myself to catch what he has.

And yet, I have no idea why he keeps getting sick, because he's as healthy as a horse. I recently discovered that I can't eat chicken anymore because Macho will climb on me and claw at me unless I feed him from my plate. Sometimes I give in to his desires just so that he will give me a moment's peace.

The truth is, Macho is completely helpless without me. Yes, my apartment was SO QUIET while he was away at the animal hospital, but I would rather have him here with me than not at all. He's a hot mess, but he's my little hot mess.

And I wouldn't want it any other way.

Macho has to be himself. Anytime he's not himself, I know that something is horribly wrong.

"So the King will greatly desire your beauty; because He is your Lord, worship Him." (Psalm 45:11)

"Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!" (Psalm 46:10)

Macho reminds me so much of myself. I'm just as overly dramatic, emotionally helpless, and clingy as he is (if not more so), and maybe there have been times in my life when God just gave in to what I was asking Him for because I was desperate and wouldn't leave Him alone. (Kind of like that neighbor or that judge in those parables where Jesus describes prayer.)

But just as quirky as I am, or just as quirky as my cat is, I think we both learned from the Master. I mean this respectfully, but God can be kind of crazy, too. See that photo a couple of paragraphs up? That's a once-in-a-lifetime selfie of me holding Macho (while he was wearing his little lampshade) and trying to make some eye contact with him. I was trying to meet him where he was.

God does the same thing with us, of course. He stoops down and tries to connect with us exactly where we are. Yes, of course the only way to access God the Father is through Jesus, but the fact is that He wanted so much to be near us that He actually BECAME one of us. And after we accept Him, He puts His Holy Spirit inside us -- He actually LIVES INSIDE US.

I don't know of any other god who does that. My God seriously wants us. He's for real. And He interacts with us in a way that I don't think any other god would reduce himself or herself to do.

For example, I don't remember the exact words of our conversation, but I recently was talking to my God about how tough I've become. I was like, "I'm a badass." And, because He's always going to be better than everybody else, He was like, "I'm the Baddest Ass of them all."

Yes, Father. With all due respect, and definitely in the spirit of what You were saying, You are absolutely correct. You are always going to be absolutely correct.

'Cause that's how You roll.

People may not always know how to break through all my quirks, temperament, or personality, and simply connect with me. But God always knows how.

I love my church. It's so huge that it meets on several different campuses at the same time. Sometimes I'll be going through something hard, and at church God will speak something very specific that I need to hear. On a couple of occasions, during a season when I was experiencing very deep grief, people walked up to me and said, "I feel like God told me to give you a hug." At the campus closer to my home, on a day when I happened to be thinking about my finances, a person sitting behind me told me that they felt like they needed to give me $100. Yesterday when I was feeling a little bit self-conscious about my looks, a perfect stranger walked up to me after the worship music and said, "I felt like the Lord said that you're beautiful and your worship is beautiful."

Wow. And all I did was show up. (See? You should go to church, if you don't already.)

Ideally, church is a place where you can show up and be yourself, and God can show up and be Himself.

At home, in my struggle to be OK with having a non-religious "quiet time," where I'm still on Psalm 46, God has boiled down our short, quiet times together: "I just want to cuddle with you."

That's my Father. That's how He rolls. And I wouldn't want it any other way.

God has to be Himself, and I have to let Him. I honestly don't know how I would exist otherwise.