Archive for the ‘thoughts on Christianity’ Category

Grace and Grace Alone

May 24th, 2013

It was after 8pm when we pulled into my in-laws drive way. Sage sputtered periodic cries of hunger and exhaustion from the back seat. Bryan and I were equally worn down from the hours spent at the car dealership. Our stomachs rumbled, but our hearts were full.

I cried when I walked out and saw the exact car my parents were buying us. I was amazed – awe struck. As I wrote before it felt like too much, far too much. And in that moment I fell completely undeserving upon their generosity.

But, I first felt myself choking up long before that. It happened as I told my mom about the radiation appointment Bryan had that morning.

I don’t want to do radiation – I don’t understand it, it doesn’t fit well into my ideology, and I just plain don’t like it. But, I can’t even begin to describe to you how clearly we’ve known that this is the right next step for us. I don’t want Bryan to do radiation, but I know that he’s suppose to.

As I sat in that very public car dealership telling my mom about the appointment we also looked at the modifications that can be made to the car to accommodate a wheelchair for my daughter, Sage, down the line, as she is likely to need one. I could feel the lump rising in my throat and I could also feel myself raising my voice to talk a little louder. I found myself wanting the sales agent and others to know our situation. I found myself wanting their pity, their empathy.

It was not the first time I’d felt this. There have been moments where I’ve wanted to play the victim, wanted the pity of those around me. Most of the time I don’t feel that, but every now and then that feeling rises up.

As we pulled up to my in-laws house surrounded by new car smell everyone came rushing out. Bryan’s grandparents and aunt and uncle were there visiting from California as well as my parents who had left the dealership before us.

They all swarmed to see the new car. We were greeted with hugs and congratulations and Bryan’s grandma said a number of times, “You deserve it.” Perhaps my mother-in-law chimed into that chorus too and it seemed to be the general consensus of the group.

“You deserve it.”

As I heard that comment something about it just didn’t sit right with me, but I also felt the feelings I had felt sitting in the dealership, the desire for my struggle to be known and pitied, rise up again. “Yeah, we’ve been through a lot. We do deserve this.”

Bryan later sobered me up, when he commented on how untrue it actually was.

“We don’t deserve this car. That’s the whole point.”

That is the truth. We don’t deserve this car. That is the whole point. It is grace to us. Grace from God acted upon by my parents.

There is something about pain. We are incredibly uncomfortable with pain, aren’t we?

Because Bryan and I have experienced pain, and a twist in our road that seems completely unfair, those around us feel that we deserve and have earned some great tangible good. In fact I feel that too at times. I feel that my pain earns me the pity, help, and empathy of others. We are so uncomfortable with our suffering that we want to tip the scale back in the favor of those who suffer. We say it isn’t fair. We want things to be more balanced.

We want the “righteous” to prosper and the “wicked” to be swept away with troubles and when it doesn’t happen that way we feel that God has wronged us and those we care for. We believe that we are owed something better.

And when we see those who have been suffering given a massive blessing we feel they deserve it. It balances the scale for us a little bit.

In that moment of excitement, rushed upon by those who care for us, I felt we deserved it. We have been through a lot and in my pride I could say that we have walked through it gracefully and taken each hit in stride. I could cry out with Hezekiah and claim that I have “walked before [God] faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in [His] eyes.” Doesn’t that get me something? God owes me a good turn, right?

Oh, how very childish I am!

We all know on some level that our world is out of balance. That the suffering and pain we all have to face is wrong… is off…was not intended. We know in our souls that it wasn’t meant to be this way. And we are right! But, how wrong we become when we begin to think that we are entitled to something other than suffering. When we begin to think that we are owed, or that we deserve, grace.

We want the scale to be balanced and fair, but it is not and it never will be. Life is unfair. As the writer of Ecclesiastes put it “the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no one knows whether love or hate awaits them. All share a common destiny – the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.” We will all face suffering of one kind or another. We will all face death.

We all fall into the hands of a loving God and each of us falls undeserving on his grace.

Grace and grace alone.

Rejoicing in the journey,
Bethany Stedman

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Asking for The Impossible

April 2nd, 2013

I’ve been struggling to know how to pray for this upcoming PET scan.

I want to pray that everything comes back clean. I don’t want this to be melanoma. I don’t want to deal with another surgery. I don’t want Bryan to go through radiation and the other things they said might be on the table if this is melanoma again.

But, if the scans come back clean it won’t be a complete relief. The lump will still be there. Bryan will still be in pain from it. The doctor already told us that even with a clean scan he will still think it’s melanoma and want to do a biopsy and follow it closely.

Just having a clean scan isn’t enough. I want more than just a clean scan. I want this whole lump to just be gone, disappear, suddenly vanish.

But, I’ve struggled with asking God for that.

It’s easy enough for me to tell God that’s what I want, but asking him to do that…well, that’s harder.

I struggle with asking for a miracle. I mean, a clean scan would be pretty miraculous according to our doctor, but it is still a possibility, within understanding. But, the lump just going away, disappearing completely, well, that wouldn’t be in the realm of understandable, that would be a clear miracle, and I really struggle with asking for that.

It feels a bit like asking God for a magic trick.

It feels a bit like indulging in avoidance and denial of the path that God has set before us.

It also stirs up my own doubts about God, doubts that say “God might be good, but he’s not going to be good enough to me.” Doubts that question the ability, character, and very existence of God.

And it feels a bit selfish, self-centered, and unaligned with “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Last night a friend emailed me after I had shared some of this and reminded me how Paul asked God to take away his thorns and stumbling blocks and how Jesus asked God to “remove this cup” before going to the cross.

Then I got to thinking about all the other people throughout the stories of the bible who asked God for really big things. Who asked God to part waters, heal illness, send fire from heaven, even raise the dead. Sometimes God did what they asked and sometimes, like in the cases of Paul and Jesus, they didn’t get what they asked for. And yet they still asked, in fact Jesus asked so fervently that he sweat blood.

In other areas of my life I’ve been thinking a lot about asking. Before I turned thirty I wrote this post about communicating desires and asking for what I wanted in regards to my birthday, but these thoughts have lingered with me throughout the whole year.

I struggle with asking people for what I want and what I need, much as I struggle with asking God for what I want. But, I’m finding that clearly communicating my desires to those around me has only been a positive experience. The old saying “it never hurts to ask” is really deeply true. At worst you are no worse off than you were before you asked and at best you get your needs and desires met. I’ve realized as I’ve started pushing myself to ask people around me for what I want that most if the time it has worked out greatly in my favor. It’s still hard, but I’m learning and I’ve come a long way in the past year.

Perhaps now, God is pushing me beyond just asking other people for what I want and challenging me to ask him for what I really want – even the really big, seemingly impossible things.

I deeply value openness and I always thought that I was very raw and honest in my prayers, but perhaps that has only been true up to a point. I haven’t struggled asking God for things, but there’s always been a line I felt I couldn’t cross, there’s always been a few things that seemed un-askable.

Too big.
Too impossible.
Too unrealistic.

But perhaps those are the very things God wants me to ask for? Perhaps I have never really experienced the extent of God’s power because I have never pleaded with God to pour out that power in an impossible situation?

So, I’m trying.

Lord, I believe that you are all powerful. I ask and pray that you would touch Bryan with your mighty hand and heal whatever is malfunctioning in his body. I pray that the next two days would see a dramatic reduction in the lump in his underarm. I pray that it would miraculously go away. That this cup would be removed from us. That this path before us would be traded for a smoother one. I pray for a PET scan that is completely unquestioningly clean and a biopsy that is equally clean. I pray that the pain would stop. That the tumor would disappear. That you would work a miracle. For your glory and your renown, heal Bryan. Heal him completely and give us many, many more years together. We trust you to answer in the way that is best for us, we believe that your way is perfect and yet we put our desires before you and ask as your son asked “if there is any other way, let this cup be taken from me.” In Jesus name. Amen.

Rejoicing in the journey,
Bethany Stedman

 

 

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There is No Contentment without Gratitude

December 1st, 2012

This past Sunday at church the sermon was about contentment.

It seemed to me that the heart of the sermon was that we should be content with only Jesus, because Jesus is really all we need and all we really have (we came into the world with nothing and we will leave with nothing). And it seemed that the answer he gave for being more content was to remember and focus on how all we need is Jesus. Well, the more I think about it the more I sort of have issues with this…

While I think focusing on our lack, on how little we truly have, on how we came into the world naked and we take nothing out of it, does knock us off our high horses and works great for combating pride, I don’t think it works so well for combating discontentment. Or at least not for me.

When I focus on how all I really have is Jesus it doesn’t make me content, in fact it actually feeds my discontentment a little. I think this is partly because it draws my attention to my lack instead of my abundance. But, also partly because, truth be told, I want more. Jesus isn’t all I want. And perhaps it’s sacraligious, but I’m not so sure that he’s suppose to be all I want.

Ok, hear me out… Here’s my thinking. Adam (as in the “first man”), prior to the fall, was perfect and God walked with him in the garden. He had everything he needed and he had God beside him. But, he wasn’t really content. He wanted more. God himself said it wasn’t good, God himself said Adam needed more. He needed community. He needed a partner, a friend.

So, here’s what I think. We do need God. But he isn’t all we need. We also need each other. We also need community and friendship and love.

Focusing on how all we need is Jesus and all we have is Jesus isn’t the answer to our discontentment because it just draws our attention to our lack instead of our abundance, and because it misses a truth that God created us not just for Himself, but for each other as well.

For me, the best answer to my discontentment is gratitude.

Gratitude combats discontentment because gratitude takes our focus off what we don’t have and onto what we do have. It grows contentment in us as no other displine can.

When I focus on how much I already have, and thank God for all the good that comes from his hands it’s impossible to stay discontent.

Contentment isn’t focusing on how all we have is Jesus. Contentment is accepting where we are and what we have, accepting ALL things as good gifts from the hand of a loving God. When I focus on that, when I embrace where I am, where God’s placed me, that is when I grow contentment in my soul. When I embrace all that I do have, all that a loving God has given me that is when I find contentment and peace to walk through whatever lack I may have thought I had.

Gratitude and contentment go hand in hand. Personally I do not think there is any way to find contentment without gratitude.

What do you think?

Rejoicing on the journey,
Bethany Stedman

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Our Year Without Church: A Slap In The Face

November 2nd, 2011

It has now been a year since we stopped going to church. Well, not completely without church – we did go three times to other peoples churches. But it’s been a year since we stopped even trying to go to church, stopped looking for a church, stopped asking each other if we should go to church this week.

Just writing that causes me to feel a mix of emotions – hurt, sadness, guilt, fear, and even pride. Around this time last year I wrote a series of posts with my thoughts on church and I asked the question, “why go to church?” many people gave me wonderful responses to the question, but none of their responses were MINE. I needed to come to my own answer to the question. I needed to sit with the question for a while.

This question and I have now been stewing together for a whole year. I don’t really know if I’m closer to an answer, but I know that I’ve been through a process, a metamorphosis in my feelings toward church, over the past year. I want to share where I’ve been, what I’m coming out of and where I am right now.

Why go to church? For most of 2009 and 2010 my answer to that question when I was really honest with myself would have been “for the Stewarts”. The Stewarts are dear friends of ours and I went to church for them – To see them, to support them, to live up to the expectations I imagined they had for us. I knew it wasn’t the best reason to go to church, I mean really it was sort of like the high school boy that goes to church just because the girl he has a crush on is there. But, I figured it at least got me there, right? Looking back perhaps God taking them away from Prague was as much about him saying to me “Bethany, I want you to go to church for me, not for anyone else. I want you to seek me more than you seek community and belonging.” as it was about anything else.

Wow. Do you ever write a sentence and then realize you hadn’t thought of it before, realize that your own sentence just slapped you in the face? That just happened to me…”I want you to seek ME more than you seek community and belonging.” Ugh. I think this post is about to go in a complete different direction. I was planning on writing about the change that has happened in my feelings toward church, but I think that will have to wait till next time, this post is going somewhere different, so hang on for the ride…

Community. Belonging. Connection. The words haunt me. I search for these things, I long for these things, I always have. I’ve had moments when I’ve caught glimpses of it -moments when I felt connected and like I belonged somewhere. Most of my life I’ve felt like I wasn’t quite right, or didn’t quite fit, but there have been moments when that changed and I felt like I could be myself someplace. There have also been certain people who just always made me feel like I belonged with them, like they were part of this long lost home, this community that I was looking for. But, even when I had those moments of knowing such deep community, and that sense of belonging I longed for more of it. I wanted to hold on to it, capture it, and never let it go. I wanted it to never change, never dissolve, just grow stronger. I didn’t want boundaries, I wanted interdependence.

Having tasted those moments made it so much harder when things did change. Having seen glimpses of what I had been longing and searching for made those times when I didn’t have it completely heart breaking.

It’s why graduating high school was so hard for me – I went from a small school, being part of a super close knit community, feeling like I belonged and was connected to feeling alone, isolated and uncertain of my place in the world.

It’s part of why I still haven’t completely healed from the Springers leaving Prague and the ramifications that had for our community/church life.

It’s why I long for traditions and hold on to family heirlooms, because I feel that they give me a small sense of belonging and place.

It’s why the Stewarts having to leave Prague was so difficult for me to accept. Our sense of belonging and community was so closely tied with them…and then they were gone.

And I think it’s also part of why I’ve struggled so much with becoming a mom. Motherhood can be lonely and isolating and I hadn’t expected that. I thought that becoming a mother would be like entering a new community of belonging. At a time when I most expected, longed for and needed to feel connected, I instead felt isolated and alone.

I want deep, authentic, real, community and belonging. I long for it with my whole being. I search for it. For some reason I keep expecting to find it in the church, and wanting to find it there, believing that is where I should find it, but being disappointed and heartbroken each time that expectation fails. I do believe that the church should be a family, that we should find community and a safe place with our brothers and sisters in Christ. I do believe that my longing for community is right, and good, and from God. BUT…perhaps I have allowed it to grow too large. When I seek the all elusive “community” I so often end up empty. When I look back at those times when I did experience community, I realize it showed up most when I wasn’t looking for it. It showed up when I wasn’t trying to conger it up but was instead focusing on other things.

I realized as I wrote that sentence “I want you to seek me more than you seek community and belonging” that I’ve allowed my good desire for community to become an idol of sorts. I’ve expected church to meet my longing for deep authentic community and been disappointed. Instead of allowing God to use it in my life as he sees fit, I’ve placed expectations and a box around how I think God should use church in my life. If God doesn’t use church to meet my inflated need for belonging I blame the church instead of more humbly opening up my expectations and allowing God to do as he sees fit, belonging or no belonging.

Rejoicing in the journey-
Bethany Stedman

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How God Creates

February 8th, 2011

This post is part of the February Synchroblog. The topic for this month is Creativity and Christianity. There are a lot of wonderful bloggers who participate in these synchroblogs so I encourage you to check out what they have to say on this subject as well.


As I sat with the tangled threads of yarn slipping through my fingers, untangling yet another knot, so that I could roll it into a ball and make something hopefully beautiful out of it, I thought to myself, “This is how God creates.”

God creates by making order out of chaos.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Genesis 1

As I watched children making mud pies out of the dirt, unafraid to make a mess, unafraid to make a mistake, I thought to myself, “This is how God creates.”

God’s not afraid to get his hands dirty or stoop down amidst the mess.

“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Genesis 2

“The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, generous inside and out, true from start to finish.” John 1 (The Message)

As I pulled out strand after strand of yarn to start knitting a scarf over yet again, I thought to myself, “This is how God creates.”

God’s not afraid to start over.

“See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.” Isaiah 65

As I scrolled threw my friends beautiful etsy shop, where every stunning product is made from that which had once been discarded, I thought to myself, “This is how God creates.”

And As I walked through a new interactive art exhibit made entirely from trash and watched my son experience each of the senses through things that were essentially garbage, I thought to myself, “This is how God creates.”

God creates by making new vessels from old. God creates by making beauty from ashes. God creates by taking broken people and making them his children.

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of the vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion – to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.” Isaiah 61

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” Ephesians 5

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” 1 Peter 2

As I lay in the doctor’s office and heard the heart beat of the new babe within, and contemplate the last time I had heard that strange sound, I think to myself, “This is how God creates.”

God creates by making one flesh from two. God creates in intimate proximity to his creation.

“That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” Genesis 2

“If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there…For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand – when I awake, I am still with you.” Psalm 139

I am created in the creative image of God. So, does my creativity look like God’s creativity?

Do I create order or do I create chaos?
When I create am I afraid to get my hands dirty? Am I afraid to create something that’s “not good”?
When I create am I too lazy or fearful or impatient to start over?
Do I create beauty from ashes or ashes from beauty? Do I use the resources I already have no matter how limited or am I too quick to throw things away?
Do I create unity or division when I create?
Do I fully enter into the creative process, getting to know and love my creations intimately, as a mother birthing a child?
Do I create in the image of my creator?

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

PS – just in case you didn’t catch the announcement in this post… we’re pregnant again!

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