What Jurassic World Taught Me About Relationships

Today, I find myself reflecting on the recently released Jurassic World, the 4th installment in the hugely successful Jurassic Park franchise.  As a teenager growing up in the 90's I wasn't allowed to go to movies so when the original Jurassic Park was released I had no idea why everyone was so worked up over the first 3 movies.  Then in my late 20's as part of catching up with the highlights of modern culture over 2 decades I was directed to the original Jurassic Park film.  Instantly I understood why they were so successful.  I'm not sure I'll ever forget the feeling when I saw the first of the dinosaurs pan on to the screen as the music swelled with the classic music of John Williams.  From that moment on I was hooked.  I love these movies with their si-fi, horror, action-adventure twist.  I love the characters they gave us and even more, I love that they made dinosaurs believable in all shapes and sizes.  

After discovering that there were plans to release a 4th installment 20 years after the original I was ecstatic!  In the two days leading up to our date night which was when we planned to go see it, I was like a little kid.  I could hardly contain myself!  While I wasn't going to be able to recapture a moment that wasn't possible 20 years earlier at Jurassic Park's original release I did have the opportunity to create a new memory with Jurassic World.  So into the theater I went with my husband, as excited as a 13 year old must have been to see the first dinosaurs 20 years before, but with me I took the experience of a 35 year old which meant this movie ended up leaving me contemplating the lessons that can be learned from this particular film if we allow ourselves to get over the parts we might or might not agree with scientifically.

My favorite dinosaurs since the first movie have been the Velociraptors.  I'm starting to think maybe it's because they remind me of people that we don't exactly understand.  In all three movies they are portrayed as highly intelligent, but there is a communication barrier and the fact that the world and mind of a velociraptor is so far removed from the modern reality that all of the humans have been a part of for decades.means that they are to be feared and avoided at all costs.  Lets face it the first 3 movies get a LOT of screen time out of people running from or fighting against the raptors.  

The approach of this movie where the lead character, Owen, is actually working with the raptors to turn the very traits that make others fear them into a positive thing was a plot point I found interesting.  There's a line where he is describing what exactly it is that he shares with the raptors that I found extremely thought provoking.  

Owen

It's not about control.  It's a relationship based on respect.

Not control, but respect.  I won't completely break down how this impacted me since I don't want to spoil the film if you haven't already seen it, but it has left me thinking how that statement should apply to my own life.  

I'm starting to realize that I need to live more like Owen's character.  He joins the raptors where they are, accepting everything they bring with them into the relationship which interestingly enough includes the ability to kill him at any given moment.  Rather than protect himself from them constantly he becomes one of them. even referring to himself as the Alpha, or pack leader.   There's something about that relationship that made me ask how does that need to look in my own life?  If God has called me as a Christian to "make disciples of all nations".  Then I think it has to look something like that relationship between Owen and the Velociraptors.  A relationship that others can return to even when they might have forgotten what the relationship was really suppose to be.  I'm becoming strongly convicted that it doesn't look the way I've always been told church and Christianity are suppose to look.  It looks much more messy like the moment that the raptors lose sight of Owen as one of them.  It means taking the risk of being hurt and forgotten.

It feels like so often we put our toes in the water of doing church and life differently only to pull them back when we get a cold reception, but the example we as Christians were sent was rejected by his own family, country and ultimately even some of his followers turned from him.  We, however, jump from project to project never fully committing to anything enough to completely see it through because when it starts to get hard we give up forgetting that building muscle which grows us requires extreme pain at times.  

I suppose in one way, Jurassic World in the middle of its fantasy and science-fiction as given me a very real and emotional picture of relationships.  The pain, but also the good that can come out of them.  Always in the picture though I see respect.  Respect toward those who might be different from me and my life experiences.  Respect toward those I don't agree with, but even more those who don't agree with me.  It's choosing to live respectfully my daily life with people who have the ability to hurt me at any given moment realizing that the relationship is dependent on that one component.  I have to be honest though, it gets a little hard to know what that respect looks like when really crazy things happen.  I don't have the answers to all of that.  What I do know though is that it won't happen until I can learn to run with the raptors....

The Grace of Repentance

I recently had someone ask me if I believed in repentance.  It's funny because it feels like it should be such an easy answer, but for me it's not.  For me the word repentance brings back nightmares I had as a child.  Waking up at night to a silent house, straining to hear the slightest noise that would tell me I wasn't the only one left in the house.  At 10 years old my fear wasn't that an ax murderer had broken in and killed everyone, it was that God had decided to take everyone who had proved they were sincere about their "repentance" to Heaven and I was the only one in our family who was left because I knew my heart.  I knew as much as I might try I wasn't perfect and that I messed up a lot!

We would sing Jesus Loves the Little Children and I never believed it because I didn't feel worth loving much.  I looked at myself even as a child and just saw all of the things I couldn't get right.  I lived in fear of God rather than basking in the love and grace of God.  I saw God as someone who wanted to punish me not bless me.  Over the years I came to see blessings as things God gave you for performing as expected.  Not the result of the overabundance of his love for me.

Over the weekend I came up against a piece of my past that I thought I had moved through.  The heart wrenching fear that God didn't love me after all and that nothing I could do or say was good enough.  The incident had me sitting in a chair begging God to show me the truth and counter the lie that inside I knew was wrong, but the message from my past of an unforgiving God was so strong that it triggered my panic attacks.

Earlier in the year I purchased a necklace that reads pre-approved and has the definition inside a pendant.  I purchased it because somehow I knew I needed the physical reminder that God has pre-approved me.  Others opinions of me do not matter and they do not define my relationship with Him.  In this particular moment that message became the exact thing that God could use to speak the truth of who I am and who He is making me into.  It reminded me that I'm his Beloved, he values me and loves me more than I can imagine.

Over the course of the next 24 hours it felt like God just began showering me with reminders of his love, grace and truth.  He reminded me that David who failed so much was someone he called a man after God's own heart.  David, who killed a man after sleeping with his wife.  David, who didn't pay attention and tried to move God's ark in a way much different from God's directions.  David who had multiple wives.  This was a man who lived a really messy life, but the Psalms are filled with his searching for God.  I was reminded that the simple definition to repentance is not a list of rules I have to keep up with.  It's not penance when I've screwed something up.  It's realizing I'm walking in a different direction from God and correcting course.  It's changing my ways, not beating myself up over the fact I can't be perfect.

Grace is not something I can earn, but for repentance to be genuine it has to be something I can accept and live in.  Love. Grace.  Repentance.  You can't separate them.  Without love and grace, repentance is only judgement and humiliation.  Without repentance, love and grace are only tools to excuse anything we might want to do.  Separate they can be abused, but embraced together they become a thing of beauty and life change.  Together they give us David's story that inspires us to strive to be called like he was "a man after God's own heart".

So do I believe in repentance?  Absolutely!  I've lived it.  I experience it every day when I screw up.  I experience it every time that I let the lies from the past overwhelm what God is doing in my present.  But I also believe that it must be embraced with love and grace to have any effect in our lives.  Repentance becomes the means to repair relationship with God, not the means for our brokenness to be held over our heads.

Living Simply

Live simply so others may simply live.

~Mother Teresa

I find myself pondering lately the complexity that we invite into our lives and accept as reasonable.  We run from one activity to another never genuinely having time to stop and live our own lives much less genuinely engage with others in their journeys.

When did we decide it was acceptable to create a normal that leaves no time to invest in caring for ourselves or to actually see and listen to those around us.  

Over the past year I've been so frustrated at the things I thought were keeping me from leading a normal life.  Health issues, panic attacks, job loss, relationship changes.  I fought them until I wasn't able to any longer and then somehow when I stopped fighting God was able to begin to use all of those things to mold me into a different person.

I feel that my life as now started to be summed up in those words of Mother Teresa,

"Live simply so others may simply live."

I find myself wondering occasionally how many opportunities I have missed to share life with others because I filled my plate full of things that weren't truly important.  How many times did I miss the opportunity to chat with the clerk at the store because I chose the self-checkout for expedience?  How many times was my head buried in my phone so that I missed the fact that the woman behind me in line needed someone to share her struggle that afternoon?  How many times have I missed a crucial part of a conversation with someone I called friend because I was texting another person I called friend rather than being present?

Recently, I had a mentor challenge me to look everyone I meet in the eyes and I would be amazed at the change it made in my life.  It's only been a couple of weeks since I started doing this, but I've been amazed at how true that has proved to be.  It has introduced an unbelievable number of conversations, some casual and some that give me a glimpse into another's life, but conversations that make me realize how lonely the lives we live are even in a society that provides more opportunities to be connected than ever before.  

I begin to realize as I reflect on the last year of my life that God has been preparing me for the moment that I could have someone look me in the eyes and challenge me to do that for others.  It makes me realize that health, panic attacks, the introduction of whitespace, decluttering both my home of material things, but also my schedule from empty busywork have all been the work of a graceful God helping me learn to clear my life to make space for all of these people he wanted to introduce.  The people that I only meet in line at the store once, but also the one's that I start to share life with as I begin shopping at our local farmers market and get to know the various vendors that show up week after week.  

So often we make agreements to fill our lives with things that are simply time fillers.  They fill our schedules, they eat at the patchwork of our lives, leaving us empty and cramming our schedules to the overflowing point trying desperately to fill our lives with a small scrap of something that brings us joy, but then we are too exhausted to actually experience the joy we were looking for.  

Living simply doesn't mean having nothing.  It doesn't look like a paupers house.  It just means letting go of the things that consume our time and energy leaving little to no time for living life with others.  What I've discovered is that I have the ability to show up for more things now than I did when I was overfilling my life.  I'm more available for those "best yes" moments because I'm learning to say no to so many more things.  Sometimes it's stuff, sometimes it's not committing to things I know drain me.  It looks different for all of us, but simple starts to create a beautiful pattern when more of us commit to living it.

What does your simple look like?

Kindred Cravings

Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another: "What! You, too? I thought I was the only one". 

~C.S. Lewis

Remember kindergarten?  When you had been turned loose for the first time in a room full of other little kids you didn't know.  Your mom and dad nowhere in sight.  

Just you.  

Alone.

And then it happened.  

From across the room another little human much like yourself smiles and waves and suddenly you've found your best friend forever!

Wouldn't it be awesome if all of our relationships happened with the ease that those early childhood friendships tend to develop?  Sadly, as we get older and wiser, we learn to guard ourselves more and it becomes much harder to have those moments where you find those kindred friends.

I don't know about you, but I've gotten really good at being friendly without letting people close.  You see I tried it and I'm still recovering from the pain that came out of letting others see the real me.  It makes me reluctant to reach out again and share myself with others.  I know it's how God wants me to live my life, but the truth....

I'm afraid.

I'm afraid of being rejected again.

I'm afraid of feeling once more like the kid that no one wants on their softball team.

But at the same time I crave friendship.

Not just having people I can bestow the title friend on, but kindred's who get me.  Kindred's who are willing to accept me with all of the flaws that I bring into the relationship.  Because I don't need someone to point those out to me.  I know they are there because God and I are working on them every day.

And then somehow in the middle of the pain that remains in what use to be my authenticity, I find one of those people that make me say, "What! You, too?  I thought I was the only one...."   I thought that I was the only one to struggle with following God when what He asks of me doesn't make sense.  I thought I was the only one to feel rejected when people can't comprehend why I make the choices I do.  

And out of that recognition of a kindred comes the courage to send an email, a Facebook message or make a phone call.  Somewhere I find the bravery to reach out to that other figure that reminds me of myself.  Maybe it becomes a kindred relationship.  Maybe it's only purpose is to remind me as God reminded Elijah so many centuries ago, that He has 5,000 others waiting in the wings.  

Whatever it is and whatever it's purpose I suddenly feel the stirrings of a hope that soul deep friendships really do exist.  

That there are people following God's leading to a path similar to mine.  

And I desperately need that hope.  

Because I crave friendship.  

I was made for relationship and not just with God, but with others as well.

And so for tonight at least, the fear is conquered and the hope of a friendship glimmers in the future.

And the thought remains that where there is the hope of one, more surely await....

Whitespace is Faithfulness

     

If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones....  Luke 16:10a

I think I'm in the middle of learning a lesson.   I have the bad tendency to push myself to the very edge of what I can tolerate before crashing.  Today happens to be a crash day.  The bad thing about a crash day for me is that when I crash I do it big.  Today I've moved from bed to couch to bed and back to the couch again.  My entire body aches and I haven't managed much more than taking care of my 8 month old.

The sad thing is I knew it was coming.  I knew yesterday that I was starting to crash, but I ignored the signs and did all of the things I was determined to do with my day.  I didn't take care of myself.  I didn't slow down and stop to focus on rest even though I knew I needed it.  And so I ignored one of the things God's been stressing to me the most lately.  That I need to be faithful in rest.

Faithful in rest.  Kind of sounds crazy when we are pushed in every direction we look to do more.  Take on more commitments at work, at church and in our community.  We don't really care whether we are good at said things, we just keep piling them on because we are asked to.  Never stopping to rest until our bodies completely and utterly let us down.

Today as I sit here, my body screaming at me that it needed to rest long before I gave in, the passage in Scripture came to mind where Jesus tells His disciples "If you are faithful in little things. you will be faithful in large ones.... Luke 16:10a (NLT).  I've read this verse I don't know how many times, but today I suddenly realize that the very first thing that God gave to my care I'm abusing.  I'm not always faithful in caring for my body.  I put it under stress it was never intended to endure and then I refuse to let it rest when it begs for it.  Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that our body's are a temple of the Holy Spirit.  Somehow right now I'm picturing the Holy Spirit looking very much like a homeless person if He's trying to survive in the mess that is my body today.  I'm pretty sure the roof is leaking and a few windows are broken.  Which is where the importance of investing in soul rest comes into play.

A scene from It's a Wonderful Life comes to mind in which George comes "home" to Mary the night of their wedding and the roof is leaking and there are posters hiding the broken windows.  There's no rest in a place where the roof and windows leak.  When something is allowed to fall into disrepair it effects the entire structure and those who reside in it.  I'm starting to realize how failure to rest my body and soul effects my life.  

Sometimes I think we might have been our smartest in some ways as children.  Before we knew we were suppose to abuse our bodies in the name of adulthood we invested in resting when we needed to and giving our all to the things we enjoyed.  Somewhere along the way we lost that approach to life. We crammed our lives with activities forgetting to set aside time to rest and invest in our souls.  After all we were adults and that was kids stuff.  And our bodies have suffered.  

So the lesson I'm learning today is that I haven't taken the time to invest in Spiritual Whitespace the last week the way my soul needed and I feel it both physically and emotionally.  I'm drained and so tired.  While my roof isn't leaking like a sieve, I'm pretty sure I have a cracked window that needs repaired, but with that realization comes the opportunity to restore this temple before it becomes uninhabitable.  And so today I discovered that to invest in spiritual whitespace is to be faithful in one little thing so I'm ready for the large ones.

Abandon

 

In architecture, space sculpts the soul of a building, creating places for people to relax and relate.

~Bonnie Gray

I've recently come across an Instagram account called itsabandoned that fascinates me.  It's pictures of places that have been abandoned by humanity.  Some of them are left in such a way you expect to see the former residents walk back in to take up their lives at any moment.  Others there is an almost painful beauty in the abandoned state.  The beauty comes by the space that has been vacated by some unknown force.  I've wondered more than once why this account holds my attention, but every day I find myself looking for the newly captured empty beauty by a random photographer.  

Maybe these photos capture my attention because of what they represent.  Something that was productive, useful and served a purpose, but now is left to the fate of falling into disrepair and loneliness.  Maybe they hold my gaze just a little longer because I feel like them.  Once useful and productive, but now nothing.....   

Maybe I look at them and see the dreams and hopes that existed in myself 2 years ago that now feel impossible to achieve most days.  Maybe I look at them and see the people that walked away from them seeing the upkeep as too much and see the part of myself that others have reacted to as too broken.  

And then I look again and see the beauty in their abandoned state.  They might have been abandoned by those with less vision, but someone came along and was inspired by what was left by the less astute. That gives me hope.  Someone saw these places that were left behind, lost and unappreciated by those who found their definition of beauty in the newer and flashier locale and redeemed their abandoned state by recognizing the beauty of their existence.  That gives me hope.  Hope that the parts of me that seem too broken for some do have a purpose and beauty.  It reminds me as God reminded Samuel that while man looks on the outward appearance and measures me with his finite knowledge.  God looks at my heart.  God looking at the heart is how David failed so many times by man's evaluation, but God saw in David a man after His own heart.  

My husband likes to talk about embodied energy when talking about the advantage of using an existing building.  I think I look at these pictures of abandoned places and I'm reminded that when God looks at me He sees embodied energy.  He sees what He's already invested in growing me, in the dreams He's given me and in the plans He has for me and once more I find hope.  Hope that much like these rejected places that have been captured in pictures for every time I'm rejected God has someone waiting to recognize what I can be and to join me in that journey.  

The interesting thing about abandoned things....  while some choose to abandon them it creates space and movement for the few that choose to appreciate them.  There is a certain freedom that comes with living in abandonment.  Freedom to discern what's most important and what's least important.  Freedom to say no, but also freedom to say yes.  Freedom not to be defined by the abandoned state, but to live with abandon.

The Clutter of Empty Nests

Have you ever paid attention to the trees this time of year?  The leaves are just starting to come in and most of what we are greeted with even in a forest full of trees are empty branches.  Lately as I've taken walks I've been noticing that the trees aren't entirely empty.  Somehow God keeps bringing the empty nests to my attention.  The remnants of one little family of birds old life.  This is a place that played a role in their history, but this year they will move on and build a new nest in a different location.   It's just the way things are designed to work.

Sometimes I wish I could be a little more like the birds that once inhabited these nests.  To be able to accept moving on as part of my journey, but somehow that's hard for me.  There are parts of it I excel at, but the moments that feel like I failed.  I have a little harder time moving on from the perceived failures.  I want a redo.  I want to redeem the experience.  In those moments moving on is excruciating.  

Lately it seems that God has been addressing clutter in my life.  The hard part.... He seems to be pointing out that holding on to relationships after they've served His purpose creates clutter.  That's hard for me to wrap my head around.  Intellectually, I can acknowledge that as we move into different roles in life that relationships change, but somehow as an introvert I hate losing those places I've invested my energy and emotions.  

Today as I wandered through a local nature park I kept noticing those empty nests.  As I noticed the space they took up in the branches just waiting to unfurl their budding leaves I found myself wondering what are the empty nests in my life that God is wanting to move so that I can grow more freely unfettered by those things that pull my attention and energy away from what He wants to use me for.  What is it that is keeping me from abandoning the old life of last summer to fully live in this spring?  I'm sure it's an ongoing evaluation, but I'm finding it a necessary one.