Shut up and speak

"You don't always have to say everything that's true, but you do have to say the truth whenever you speak."

A friend said this to me this week and I felt at once convicted and encouraged.

Most of my life I've struggled to know when it's best to hold my tongue. I love the truth, I love justice, and I love Jesus. I want others to hear the truth that God has given me. But I haven't always been discerning in when or how to share it--and at times I've been prideful, seeking to make myself look smart at the expense of others. I admit that I have somewhat of an addiction to being right.

This has led me to believe that in many cases, it's better for me to stay silent and listen rather than speak out of a desire to convince others (doing this habitually is a challenge, and I'm very grateful to those who have put up with me while I'm learning). Knowing the truth and knowing when it needs to be spoken are two distinct things.

But recently, things have felt more complex and harder to ignore than I would like them to. I've been pulled in multiple directions, eager to put my neck on the line and damn the consequences, but convicted not to always just follow my instincts. No doubt this is partly due to my recent re-entry into the Twitter community, but I also think the Holy Spirit is to blame. Somehow I've found myself reading the books of Ezekiel, Hosea, and Isaiah all at the same time over the past months, and I do not think that's an accident. God is telling me something, something about Himself and what His vision is for my life. 

These three great prophets were proclaimers of truth. They embraced the pain of alienation from the world. God encouraged them to speak boldly and fearlessly and recklessly--but He also commanded them to wait for His signal. In Ezekiel 3, God tells Ezekiel that he will be unable to speak until God loosens his tongue to proclaim the message he's been given. Ezekiel--a fiery and, it would seem, hot-headed individual, much like myself--has no choice but to surrender to God's authority and timing. He literally can't speak unless the words he's speaking are from God.

Lately I've been anxious to speak. Anxious because the world is so desperate for truth, and because so many of us seem resigned to silence. Resigned to letting lies wash over us. Resigned to resignation.

The common refrain of Christians goes, "it's not worth it."

Not worth it to risk a fight, to alienate friends or coworkers, not worth it to get canceled or censured or silenced. So we silence ourselves, as if that's any better than someone else doing it to us. 

If you're a Christian, wondering how to make a difference in this divided world, I just want to encourage you: you don't always have to keep quiet. Shutting up has its place, but when we start shutting up to keep ourselves or others comfortable, we've left the territory of righteousness and entered the realm of cowardice.

I certainly agree, up to a certain point, that if what you have to say is motivated by pride or selfish anger or vengeance or spite or a need for attention, it isn't worth it. God calls us to self-examination and restraint more often than he calls us to battle--just look at Ezekiel. But if what you have to say is simply the truth, and someone needs to hear it, it's more than worth it. It's worth the conflict. It's even worth alienating friends. Because when a person feels assaulted by the truth, it is not the speaker's fault. And sometimes friends, neighbors, even strangers, need us to speak the uncomfortable truths they may not want to hear.

Knowing when to do this is tricky, and none of us will ever be perfect at it. You have to be steeped in God's word, drowned in prayer. You have to be attuned to His voice so that you can learn to distinguish between the words of God and the words of your own selfish heart. Before you endeavor to teach anyone, you must submit to being taught yourself.

And when the Spirit moves you, speak--and when you speak, be ready for what you say to spark a response. Be eager to engage, to listen, to respond to conviction. Be slow to rebuke, but courageous to do the will of God. Be driven by passion and tempered by grace. Be firm and fair and forgiving. 

These are God's words for you and me, right now, in every space we enter, digital or otherwise. If you're listening to God, He will often shut your mouth for you, like He did for Ezekiel. But when you do speak, your words will be all the more powerful for being spoken on God's authority. 

Say hello to my new car

That's right, I've acquired a new ride. A Honda CR-V from a bygone age (2000).

His name is Han "Storm Trooper" Solo, and we're already the best of chums.

You know that feeling when a car just seems to get you? When you look at a car and you just go, "Yes. This is a car I want to hang out with. This is the car."

That's the feeling I have about this new car. A feeling of rightness. A kind of kinship, like there's a piece of my soul shaped like this car--the piece that always wanted a Jeep Wrangler growing up. The piece that wakes up in the morning thinking "let's rearrange all the furniture." The piece that rolls down the windows on the way to the grocery store and wonders what challenges she'll rise to today.

That was how I felt about my first car, Sunny. 

Sunny was a banged up Pontiac Vibe with a sunroof and a 6-CD changer and a manual transmission and white hatchback spray-painted red (the paint eventually started to flake off like dried blood every time I closed the hatch). Sunny's muffler was no match for the Toyota engine that resided within his petite frame--that engine packed a punch, and one of my favorite things to do was to accelerate super fast so that when I shifted gears I felt it resonate in my bones. It made my unsuspecting friends nervous. They thought I was a bad driver, but I just loved the feeling of freedom. 

We had a bond, Sunny and I. The kind of bond that transcended boundaries, that endured even when the A/C went out one summer and I had to roll down all the windows on the way to work just to stay alive. Every time I see a Pontiac Vibe on the road I feel a pang for the first car that was my friend.

Between Sunny and Han, that sense of rightness seemed to wane. Two different cars came into my life in the interlude, my dad's old black Nissan Versa (nicknamed Sirius Black) and, after that car was totaled in an accident, the red Dodge Caliber (Cherry) I replaced it with. 

The summer after I graduated from college, the summer before I got married, I'd decided it was time to let Sunny go. So my dad traded him in to a car dealership for a new Honda and sold me his Versa. Sirius and I had a cordial relationship, helped by the fact that he was also a stick shift. He was a good car (probably the nicest one I've ever had, if we're being objective), but he was never my car. I figured he had at least a good ten years left in him. 

God, it seems, had other plans for Sirius. So it was that in October of 2019, I ended up with Cherry.

There were many things about my relationship with Cherry that were not ideal. First of all, I only got her as a replacement for Sirius after a slightly traumatic accident (no one was hurt, besides Sirius), so the subconscious residue of that stress came back every time I drove her anywhere. Secondly, there were a ton of little aggravating things wrong with her, and since I don't know anything about cars, I always felt incredibly reluctant to trust her. I almost feel bad for saying it, but I experienced no feelings except relief when I sold Cherry last week for a third of what I paid for her.

(No offense, Cherry--it wasn't your fault I hated you. May you find a better home.)

Since acquiring Cherry I'd been dreaming of a different car. I missed Sunny. I missed having fun driving. I missed feeling safe in my car, like I could trust it to have my back in a fight. After a long time praying and fretting about this, I recently decided to give it up to God and make do with my least favorite car ever, trying to simply be content that I had a car at all. And not only did I start to feel more grateful and less resentful, but God surprised me with a totally un-looked-for blessing in a new-old car. God's so good to me, and so patient with my pettiness. 

My new car once belonged to a friend from church, so I have it straight from a person I trust that he's a reliable mode of transport. Not only that, but they decided to sell him the week after I filed our tax return--perfect timing. Since Han is 21 years old, he looks like a watered-down version of a Jeep Wrangler, my childhood dream--but he's a CR-V, which I consider the ultimate ride of a cool mom. 

The turn signal clicks satisfyingly in the way that the ones in new cars don't. Looking out the windshield is like standing next to a giant aquarium. He's the car that makes me almost wish I had to drive to work every day. 

Han came along suddenly and unexpectedly, but at exactly the right time, with that trademark sense of it's-all-coming-together-ness that accompanies anything God has a hand in. It may seem a little sentimental, but when you believe there are no such things as coincidences, it's hard to be anything but. 

Is spring a fancy or a feeling?

It's that time of year again. Springtime, or at least technically near-springtime. 

People keep saying that in Nebraska we always have a "false spring" where the weather gets warm for a week or two, before returning to frigid icy Narnia-ness. In a way, I suppose they're right. The weather here does tend to be unpredictable. 

But also, doesn't the fact that we expect that make it just a little bit predictable? Calling it a "false spring" when this is what happens in the spring every year just kind of means it's spring, but not the way you want it. If spring is sometimes cold and sometimes warm, it doesn't stop being spring just because you don't want to have to wear a jacket, any more than a Chinese buffet stops being a Chinese buffet because they aren't serving crab legs. 

"False" or no, right now it's spring to me. I can tell because I've once again begun to feel the wistfulness stir in my soul. 

That spring thing

Spring is a long stretch. 

It's waking up and hitting the snooze once 

or twice.

It's a breath of change, of hope, of forward-ness. 

It's looking out the library window when you should be writing. 

It's running to your car in the rain, 

forgetting your umbrella. 

It's discomfort and daydreams and 

don't-

give-

ups.  

It's warmth on your face,

and a chill breeze to wake your heart.

It's mud, pine needles, bike tracks through a puddle. 

It's the world 

crying with you.

It's a bone-popping metamorphosis. 

Spring is all-enduring love, the essence of Easter. 

Evil is unnecessary

 

"If you had never tasted a bad apple, you wouldn’t know how to appreciate a good apple.”

The one-second-every-day app sent me this little inspirational nonsense as a notification and I have to say, I think it is actual bull crap.

I haven’t always thought that. I used to be more tragic-romantic in my assessment of the world. But I have experienced many things both good and bad in my life, and at this point it seems like a fallacy that we need bad things in order to appreciate good things.

Certainly, those of us who have experienced near-starvation might appreciate a hefty sandwich in a different way than a person who’s been well-fed their whole life. But let’s not leave all the deep enjoyment of that excellent sandwich to the person who’s suffered more (I think that would technically amount to discrimination and we don’t want anyone here getting canceled). It doesn’t take suffering to appreciate good things.

Of course, if by “appreciate” you mean “existentially contemplate and reflexively dread-grasp good things so tightly it actually prevents you from enjoying them,” then sure, we probably wouldn’t be able to do that without experiencing some bad things. But that is an unhealthy response, and actually a pretty sneaky way of evil still making us suffer, even while not suffering. If all I can do while I’m eating a good, crisp, sunshiny apple is think about that one time when I bit into a putrid one, I am not properly and fully enjoying the experience like I should.

To appreciate the good in my life, I only need to recognize where it came from. I’ve never eaten a bad apple. I have enjoyed many a good one. And when I enjoy a good apple it is a pure enjoyment. My mind doesn’t have to do backflips in order to convince me that the apple is good. It’s just what it is: a good and pleasant and simple thing. On a deeper level I believe that apple, like all wonderful things in all their pure goodness, is a blessing from God.

I won’t go so far as to say that suffering can’t be redeemed in this world. We can learn plenty about life, love, God, and cooking by making mistakes or going through hardship. It can give us perspective and empathy for others. But the suffering itself is not the agent of good–rather, it’s the work of good to counteract suffering that produces beauty from a bad situation.

I can say all this with confidence because I am prone to overthinking and mulling and brooding (and apparently, over-synonymizing). I am prone, when I look at my cats or my sleeping infant, to think of them getting hurt or dying. And it does my brain no good to contemplate evil while something good is right in front of me. So this reminder is for me as much as anyone else:

Le’ts not elevate suffering and evil to this heroic level, like good couldn’t exist without it. Good can ONLY exist in the absence or defeat of evil. Can evil exist without good to corrupt? No. Evil is good’s boring and greedy brother-in-law. It has no originality. All it can do is steal. Good, by contrast, creates from scratch–from before scratch. Don’t give evil the credit for being the next Tchaikovsky when really it’s just a mean-spirited John Cage knocking brooms over in the corner.*

I can only know bad by measuring it against good. Good defines itself, and thereby it is the standard by which we can recognize evil. Not the other way around. If we get that confused, we’re bound to live life focusing on all the wrong things.

*John Cage, for those who aren’t aware, was a 20th century composer (using that term loosely) who once got mad that he was terrible at being a music student, so he left college and made a name for himself by doing things like sitting on stage for four minutes silently or filling a piano with rubber erasers and calling it music.