Wading through life

The right song at the right time…

Artist: Blindside
Album: About A Burning Fire
Song: Eye Of The Storm

I think I’ve stayed for the last time
Goodbye
Hope is so much closer to beauty than sorrow
I think I’ll leave and leave self pity to die
Reflection is always brighter than shadow

Please come closer
Cause I don’t even touch You anymore
Please see I’m walking in to the eye of the storm
And I’ll still come out loving You even more

Love is in the air tonight
So just breathe
You made sure the atmosphere was thick tonight
So this is where it begins and where it ends
With a crack in a dark sky piercing light

Please come closer
Cause my heart doesn’t touch Yours anymore
Please see I’m walking into the eye of the storm
And I’ll still come out loving You even more

Love is in the air tonight so just breathe
Breathe my spirit breathe
Leave, leave now and don’t look back

Please come closer
Cause my heart doesn’t touch Yours anymore
Please see I’m walking into the eye of the storm
And I’ll still come out loving You even more

For some reason, and I think it’s mostly a control issue, I am entirely opposed to being someone’s project. This attitude has ran its course in regular friendships I’ve had over the years–friends just trying to help me grow here and there and me seeing it as a ploy to make me who they wanted me to be rather than letting me be myself. It had pretty much subsided–I thought.

I’m now noticing it in my relationship with God. And I don’t think it’s very healthy. I’m tired and weary of things needing to be changed in my life and my faith that they are for my own good is running dry. I know what the Bible tells me, but I just don’t see it; there’s no evidence.

But what say does the creation have over the creator? None. I’m left falling back on the Sunday school answer that God knows best and that he is in control.

How comforting… (sarcasm intended)

I went to post a few nights back and the Web site was acting weird and glitchy, so I couldn’t. I was able to go to Typepad‘s (my blog service provider) homepage and they offered this explanation: Temporary Service Degradation. What a phrase; how about: "Our site isn’t working"?

Anyway, all I was going to say in that post is this: What do you get when you mix 10 inches of snow with 60 degree air and another inch or two of rain? You get a lake in the neighbor’s yard and a swamp in my basement.

So, yes, we did have another traumatic flooded basement experience–this one the worst one yet. We started pulling water out of the carpet on Wednesday night and have continued through this morning. For the most part, we averaged about 3 gallons every 10 minutes or so, putting our total water displacement at an absurd 900 gallons. Cut that in half to compensate for times it wasn’t quite that intense (though there were times it was more so) and we’re still looking at 450 gallons. Taking those estimates (which are very rough) and calculating with our house’s square-footage, we would have had 1-2 inches of standing water had we not intervened–and that’s with a functional sump pump.

I took Thursday and Friday morning off of work to deal keeping this from happening. Scott and Clark joined me Thursday.

Friday morning we met with a representative from EverDry, who walked us through what it would look like to have them fix it permanently. Let’s just say the process isn’t cheap. But it would be something we’d have to do were we ever to want to sell this house (value goes down 25 percent on houses with leaky basements) and would actually be a good selling point (usually 110 percent return on investment with basement waterproofing).

The real kicker is that it appears the previous owners didn’t properly disclose the situation in the seller’s agreement. So, as EverDry does their work, they’ll be photographing evidence the situation existed before we bought the home and documenting that the sellers are liable and obligated to pay for the costs of waterproofing and replacing our damaged carpet.

In short, we’ll likely be suing them. I don’t really like how that sounds, but I also don’t like having to labor over our leaky basement every time we get a hard rain or facing the thousands of dollars in damage and repairs we’re looking at. We aren’t looking to ruin the family–just have our costs covered.

Two songs off two albums I recently discovered neatly wrap up the lesson God is trying to teach me right now.

• From David Crowder Band: Illuminate
  • How Great
  • Revolutionary Love
• From The Passion of the Christ: Original Songs Inspired by the Film
  • I See Love
  • To Relearn Love

You see a common theme in three of the songs, and the chorus of "How Great" (How great your love for us / how great our love for you…) ties it in nicely with the rest.

So, the lesson I’m learning (maybe I’m not actually learning it yet, but I’m at least aware of my need to learn it…) is how much God truly loves me. I’m discovering that I’m clueless on the topic and it’s been a big hindrance to me showing love to others.

This, of course, is the message delivered to me at lunch on Friday. During my discussion with Randy Shafer, a recent hire at Westwinds, he and I were talking through JLS–what it’s meant to me and the rest of the guys and where God might be taking us in the future.

Through the course of the discussion, I think Randy began seeing through my shell and discovered some heart surgery I needed done. I’m not sure what tipped him off, other than God’s prompting.

It all started when he asked me why JLS was so important to me and why I continuously wrestle with how to keep it together. He wasn’t trying to convince me otherwise–he was simply trying to dig deeper into my core. "What’s it about your group of friends that makes your relationships so meaningful to you?" he asked. "Try to say it in a word or two."

I’m not sure if I surprised him with my inability to pinpoint it or not. I can usually communicate with words fairly well. He claimed he knew what he felt was the answer, but after time continued to pass he suggested he was really looking forward to what I would come up with.

After a literal minute or two, I spat out "Because we care about each other"–totally breaking his one- or two-word limit.

He nodded his head, apparently knowing all along. And then he took it to a new, entirely obvious and rule-abiding level by saying: "It’s love, Joel."

We talked some more and the pre-eminence of love became increasingly apparent to me. Love has been laying on my heart a lot lately. I think I’m getting a grasp on how it needs to abound in my thoughts and actions–how it is needs to rule my life.

But then Randy turned the tables on me, completely taking me off-guard by the insight. With a few more keen questions and strategic discussion-guiding, he arrived at this: “Joel, do you understand how much Christ loves you?”

At that point, I must have shown the worst poker face since the creation of playing cards. Without me saying a word, he knew he had struck a chord. And even when the ensuing discussion strayed from the topic, he made sure to steer it back and nail it home before lunch was over.

I’ve known God has wanted me to concentrate on getting to know him more intimately for quite a while. But I tend to associate "knowing him" with theological head knowledge, not spiritual heart-knowledge. And even with Secrets of the Vine making the case that jumping from producing fruit to producing more fruit requires “abiding in the vine” (spending more time getting to know God than doing God’s work), I still didn’t arrive at the conclusion that I needed to realize God’s love for me on a new level.

It’s now painfully obvious to me.

The good news is, as Randy excitedly expressed to me, once I do realize it, my life will transform like it never has before.

I feel naked.

I feel this way because over lunch a man I hardly know looked right past all my facades and peered straight into my restless soul. He came to lunch with no agenda other than to be a transmitter of what God wanted to say to me and he did his job very well.

Good talk.