and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
(Matthew 6:12 ESV)

It’s that ‘as‘ that’s the problem.  Are we really supposed to ask God to forgive us in the same way that we have forgiven others?  I can’t really pray that.  The forgiveness I want and need from God is so different from the forgiveness I offer others.

I think the verse should read more like this:

Forgive us our debts and in the same way, help us to forgive others.

That sure sounds more ‘Gospel-centered‘.   Obviously Jesus thought we might be tempted to misunderstand that part of the prayer cause He goes on to clarify in the verses that follow:

For if you forgive others, their trespasses your heavenly father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

What happened to grace?  Eh, Jesus?  This sounds like works.

[Here's a mini-aside that I'm going to flesh out in a blog post in the near future: I cannot make the mistake of reading the Bible through the lens of my worldview.  I have to subject every part of my worldview to the Bible.  Even when it's confusing and messy.]

The point of this text isn’t how crazy conditional God sounds when He speaks.  The point is that forgiveness matters.  God wants us to be at the point where we could ask Him to forgive us in the same way that we have forgiven others.  To pray that prayer we would have to really feel comfortable with the way we forgive others.

That prayer is hard for me because I don’t want God to forgive me the way I forgive others.  Here are three problems with the way I forgive:

1. My version of forgiveness is simply a lack of vulnerability.  I’ve mastered forgiveness.  I simply get ahead of the whole process by constantly expecting people to fail me so that I never have to be disappointed and I never have to be hurt.  That makes forgiveness really easy because your heart is never mixed up in it.

I never have to forgive deep and devastating hurts because I am never vulnerable enough to be deep and devastatingly hurt.

I can’t pray for God to be that same way with me.  God’s forgiveness is painful and costly because He has been vulnerable with me.  He makes Himself fully known by me and He has bound His heart up with mine so much that I actually am able to hurt the God of the Universe.

Forgiveness only means much if it costs much.

2. My version of forgiveness is a neutral feeling.  I measure the success of forgiveness by how much anger I have towards a person.  If I ‘m not angry or bitter that means I’ve mastered forgiveness.  But boy – I hope that’s not how God forgives me.  The great Gospel says His forgiveness doesn’t stop with removing His wrath.

God’s forgiveness of me is so complete that He actually wants good for me.  He doesn’t just feel neutrally towards me, He is crazy about me and pursues my good even at cost to Himself.

Imagine if I measured the success of forgiveness by how passionate I was to see good come to the people who wronged me?

3.  My version of forgiveness involves not forgetting.  Our culture is obsessed with the idea that we ‘forgive but we don’t forget’.  We learn that when people fail us we should never risk ourselves to be hurt by them again.

That makes logical sense to me, but it seems so far from the forgiveness God has for His people.  There is no expiration to God’s forgiveness of me.  He forgets my sins and He treats me as if I had never failed Him.

I can’ t pray for God to forgive me the way I forgive others because I bank on the fact that He will always forgive and always forget – separating my sin from me as far as the East is from the West.

Maybe I’m the only one who struggles with this.  Share your thoughts with me in the comments section!

There is no one for me but you.

There is no friend for me but you.

No partner for me but you.

No counselor for me but you.

No comforter for me but you.

No savior for me but you.

No joy for me but you.

No peace for me but you.

No truth for me but you.

No rest for me but you.

No love for me but you.

No father for me but you.

There is no one for me but you.

Thankful.

Not because I’m single.  Not because I have to teach at 6 AM or because this is one of the busiest weeks of my year.

I’ve been dreading Valentine’s Day for a while now.  I’m scared my dad might have ruined this day for me.

In 8th grade, he gave me a V-Day that put most of the days of my life to shame.  Ever since then, no amount of February 14th disasters has been able to sabotage my deep affection for this day.

My 8th grade year was the usual petri-dish of misery that most teenagers experience.  It involved the typical drama: best friends becoming worst enemies (and then best friends again within a window of about 17 minutes), boyfriends (who you never ACTUALLY spoke to) being caught passing notes to other girls and such.

In the middle of that mess, I had the Valentine’s Day of my dreams.

My mom was out-of-town which mean that expectations in the Harford house for V-day were pretty low.  To say that my dad was not into commercialized holidays would have been a drastic understatement.  The concept of putting love on a calendar was borderline offensive to him.

I still remember rolling over in bed that morning.  I still remember the haze of sleep clearing to reveal a cheesy bendy heart-shaped creature, and a potted daffodil plant on my side table with a card from my dad.

That may not sound like a miracle to you, but I know better.

My love language has always been people doing things for me that are outside their comfort zone; unnatural for them.

If my mom had done the same thing or if you sent me flowers tomorrow, I’d smile and say thank you and my heart would be warmed, but it wouldn’t go down as the best day of my life .  (You are welcome to send me flowers to test this theory.)

My dad gave money to a holiday he hated, in a way I’m sure he thought was sickeningly cliché.  And he did it because it meant something to me.

Daffodils were my birth flower.  As a little kid I was obsessed with them.  When my teenage self saw them sitting there I remember thinking: how does he even know that?  How did he remember that?  Where did he find those at this time of year?

I felt flooded with confusion and then clarity.  I felt really and deeply known; seen and heard.  Loved.  Uniquely and specially.

It might be my favorite memory of my dad.

It has made every Valentine’s Day since one of my favorite days of the year.  Every February 14th I wake up filled with joy and feeling so loved.  I laugh a little, remembering that day.  No matter what goes wrong, (and trust me – I’ve had some bumpy V days), I can’t shake the happiness hangover I’ve had since that day all those years ago.

And so I’m dreading tomorrow.  Cause death has a way of making the sweetest things taste terrifyingly sad.

(Not to mention the fact that I’m single, have to teach at 6 AM and this is one of the busiest weeks of my year).  Just kidding.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you all.

I pray today that God demonstrates to you His strange sweet love that is more unique and intimate than any in the world.

He’s pretty crazy about you.  He has demonstrated His love: He sent Jesus.  He too gave up what was normal and natural for Him to display love in a way that would make sense to you.

And that’s even better than daffodils.

Before Christmas I spent some time going through the Beatitudes.

Jesus has a crowd of people listening who are big fans of the blessings of God, and as soon as He has their full attention He drops a bomb: evidence of God’s blessing isn’t in the healed, but in the broken.  

He lists off all these different types of people who are blessed, but it’s the opposite of who we think of as blessed.  Just like the crowd back in the day, you and I have an incorrect perception of who is blessed.

Our different view of blessing.

Here’s who I think is blessed: confident, unyielding, just folks who stand their ground and don’t suffer.  I think people who manage to draw a crowd without offense are blessed.  Here’s why I think they are blessed: because they win influence, they grow in stature and fame, they get what they want.

Here’s who Jesus thinks is blessed: weak, yielding people who surrender their rights and never fight for their own name, who are persecuted and pursue obedience even when it costs them favor and influence.  And He thinks they’re blessed because they have Heaven and they get more of God.

Why the different views.

There are two reasons I can think of why Jesus and I have such different lists.  The first reason is because I don’t believe the rewards He lays out are true.  If I don’t believe that the meek actually will inherit the earth, it makes sense that I wouldn’t think they were really blessed.

That’s a possibility.

But honestly – it’s not that I doubt the rewards He lays out, I just doubt the ‘betterness’ of the rewards Jesus holds out.  I doubt that the promise of getting more of God is really a better offer than the promise of temporal happiness.

I think I believe that those who are persecuted on Earth will get more of God.  I’m just not sure I believe that more of God is worth giving up temporal rights.

I’m all about getting more God in theory.  But my life seems to testify I’m more about getting enough God.  I want just enough God to make me feel okay and sleep well at night and then I want the rest of my life to be about me and what I want.  Why would I give up things I love to get more of God when I have ‘enough’ God already?

The promise that those who mourn are blessed because they’re comforted is part of what led me to pray for suffering.  I wanted more of God and I was willing to suffer the loss of all things in order to gain Christ.

But today, wishing for one more conversation with my dad, I can’t help but feel in the deep dark parts of my heart, that maybe I had enough of God already.  Isn’t it better to have enough God and still get my dad?  Is getting more of God worth the cost of losing things we love?

Like the nation of Israel, I forget far too easily.  My memory has dulled the sweetness of the comfort of God.  There was a time when I believed that any loss was worth gaining more of God.

Seven months ago when I got the call that my father was gone, I wrote this:

Overwhelmingly thankful.  So many kindnesses this week. It doesn’t make it hurt less, but it does make the pain have a bottom.  The ground is under me; a firm foundation of grace to curl up in and cry.  I worship You for your great grace.  For your tender kindness. For your sovereign will…

Overwhelmed by God’s grace.  Overwhelmed by how He has written my life and made me His and taught me to love His Word and His Son.  I thank you God.  So thankful and full of echoes of faith that feel like they could be embers, fanned into flame by Him.

I must not forget that the past months have been some of the sweetest in my life.  I’m not super spiritual and I don’t have a gift of faith.  I’ve had my share of anger and pain and I feel like I’m in the worst emotional shape of my life.  But I know Jesus better today than I ever have and honestly – that is worth a million deaths to me.

So while my unbelief cries out to go back and have just ‘enough’ Jesus and some of my dad, my soul knows better.  Through His Spirit, my soul will continue to pray - whatever it takes to have more of you Jesus.

Blessed are those who mourn.  They will indeed be comforted.

I am my own worst nightmare.

I am ‘boy-crazy’, but before you judge me, let me explain what I mean:

• I am addicted to the thought of something exciting and new; a different future.
• I am addicted to living in a world where I get to enjoy all the excitement and exhilaration of new potential without any of the real danger of being hurt or known or disappointed.

Boy-craziness really has nothing to do with boys.  It would better be titled ‘potential-addiction’.  It can play out in dreams of vacations or more kids or different kids or a different spouse or a different job or a new promotion or even going to the nations.

1. Fight for today.  I believe that I have everything I need for life and Godliness.  Today, God has written my life perfectly for me to know Him better and reflect Him more clearly today.  I don’t want to waste today.  I will never have it again.

I will never again have the unique joys and the unique pains of today.  I will never again get to have the to-do list I have today.  I will never again get to be in the exact place I am today: missing my dad, confused about my identity, alone and afraid and yet excited and sure about God’s great hold on me.

I don’t want to waste this day.

I think the worst thing about ‘potential-addiction’ is that it keeps you convinced that the main joy of today is found in thinking about tomorrow and because of that it keeps you paralyzed from exploiting the present for the glory of God.

2. Cultivate potential-addiction.  Hmm.  I know this seems like the EXACT opposite of what I just said, but it’s not.

The problem with our potential-addiction isn’t the addiction itself, it’s the potential that we’re addicted to.  We’re addicted to the potential of boys or jobs or kids or freedom instead of being addicted to the potential of more of Jesus.

Today doesn’t seem to us to have the fullness of joy because today does NOT hold the fullness of joy.  We long for a different life because we were made for a different life.  God made me to fill my present with thoughts of the future: an eternal future with Him.  I’m supposed to day dream about the man who is God who is coming on a cloud with a sword in His hand to judge the living and the dead and those day dreams are supposed to fuel my ability to spend today in a way that honors Him.

My imagination is not an enemy of God.  It is a glorious gift in the hands of a mighty Father who longs for me to want more than this life;  to long for the day when my faith is cannibalized by sight.

Surely that’s the most exciting potential in the world.

Gosh.  May our God give us the grace to be more excited about His return than the potential of a date or a promotion or even having a baby.  May He make us addicted to the potential of more of Him.

God is crazy about me.  And He’s eager to comfort me.  And one of the ways I know this is because He ordained that I share an office with a dear friend who also lost her dad last summer and who also had a bad day on Wednesday.

She sent me this email Wednesday evening and it is so beautiful I just had to share parts of it with you guys:

while i was driving home tonight, i thought a lot about our day. the word discombobulated was the only word i could find that could rightly and succinctly describe it.

today was rough. gritty, even.

discombobulate: disconcert or confuse someone.

my dad’s death, your dad’s death is disconcerting – to say the least. when i think of the word discombobulated, i think of those nights you wake up in the middle of the night with your head at the foot of your bed and your sheets all twisted and crazy around you and you think it is morning, but the clock confirms that it’s only 3:27am. everything is wronged. reality and unreality are sparring for your attention and you are unsure who to side with. confusion. utter and total, confusion.

we are discombobulated.

ministry is confusing at the best, ridiculous at the most, and exhausting at the most often.

relationships are scary. why love someone when you know what it feels like to lose them? why strive for closeness when the closer you are, the more painful it is when you are ripped apart? all of these morbid questions happening simultaneously while clawing for someone to just sit with you as long as it takes to stop crying, to love you the most when nothing but bullets of hate shoot from your tongue. that scary juxtaposition of wanting so badly to be known and wishing you never knew anyone in the first place.

god is the most comforting, but so hard to get to. some days running so hard to him with angst and fear of not reaching him, other days sliding backwards on my own bewilderment and distrust.

i don’t just feel like my foundation has been moved.

i feel like someone has cut my feet off and demand i stand up at once.

i know we’re not the first ones to lose our parents. i know we will be okay. i know we will make it through and his mercies are new everyday – mercy big enough even for me and for you…

this is my prayer for us:

that we will be wise and honest in our need to go away to a desolate place. but that in that desolate place we will go to our father – who created us, who knows our pain the best, and who is the only one who could put our pieces of shipwrecked faith back together. and that when we come out of our time alone and we run right smack into the people he has called us to minister to, that we won’t run, or be angry, or be frustrated little brats, but that he will put within us a compassion just like that of Jesus. that we will trust the holy spirit to move through us and heal the hearts of those he loves so very much. father, give us compassion for those who hurt and suffer as we do, who are happy and joyful as we so badly want to be, for those who are in a state of confusion as we are, for those who need you so very much and are looking everywhere but to you. help us to be exactly where we are. help us to not waste this time of our lives looking for another season, but instead grow in our chest a heart that desires you more than the one you took away. put in us a heart of compassion.

I’ve felt pretty disconnected this month.  I sit down to write and I can’t think of any words.  I want so badly to be authentic and raw but sometimes I just can’t think of what to say.

I love that 'Felicity' is in my word cloud

But I’m hoping for better things in February.  And honestly – it seems like God was gracious to use me this month even when I felt useless.   January brought with it several blog posts that jumped to my top ‘all time’ list in a matter of days.

Let me know which ones you liked!

1. What to look for in a guy.
2. Bad boundaries.
3. I don’t have it together.
4. Why I love angsty romance.
5. New year’s prayers
6. Father hunger.
7. ‘Singleness Suffering’ series
8. Goodbye 2011.
9. The Danger of Seeking God’s Glory.
10. Are Women Crazy series.

So, you can read it below, or you can skip down and hear my ‘version’ of it.  I figured that those of you who don’t want to tackle words like ‘brethren’ would still want to enjoy the thought.

‘Brethren, do you believe in prayer? I know you pray because you are God’s people; but do you believe in the power of prayer? There are a great many Christians that do not, they think it is a good thing, and they believe that sometimes it does wonders; but they do not think that prayer, real prayer, is always successful. They think that its effect depends upon many other things, but that it has not any essential quality or power in itself. Now, my own soul’s conviction is, that prayer is the grandest power in the entire universe; that it has a more omnipotent force than electricity, attraction, gravitation, or any other of those secret forces which men have called by names, but which they do not understand. Prayer hath as palpable, as true, as sure, as invariable and influence over the entire universe as any of the laws of matter. When a man really prays, it is not a question whether God will hear him or not, he must hear him; not because there is any compulsion in the prayer, but there is a sweet and blessed compulsion in the promise. God has promised to hear prayer, and he will perform his promise. As he is the most high and true God, he cannot deny himself. Oh! to think of this; that you a puny man may stand here and speak to God, and through God may move all the worlds.’ – Charles Spurgeon

My turn:

Guys, do we actually believe in prayer?  I mean, not just pray because we’re supposed to do it, but actually believe that prayer works.

Most of us don’t.  Most of us think that prayer is really good and really important and that sometimes it does amazing things, but most of us don’t believe that prayer is ALWAYS successful.  We feel uncomfortable with that thought. Our experience of the world leads us to limit prayer to a useful tool for personal development rather than embrace it as an unstoppable force in the hands of an omnipotent God.

The truth is: prayer is the most powerful thing in the world.  It is more effective than electricity or gravity.  It has as much real and tangible power in the universe as the laws of physics.

When we pray, God hears us.  He must hear us because He made a promise to do so.  The one thing God is not free to do is act in a way that is not in accordance with His character so we can bank everything on what He says about Himself.

Amazing.

Imagine what would be different in our lives if we actually believed that as broken and messed up as we are – we can speak to the real and only God and that He actually will respond by moving mountains.

It’s an article calling guys to be a better steward of their female friendships.  The writer points out an epidemic in today’s culture of guys using their female friends to fill their emotional and relational needs without ever committing to them in any kind of real way.

At best, these guys are unwittingly part of a relationship that deceptively looks like a good deal for both parties. At worst, they’re willfully blind to the ways they feed a relationship that largely just benefits them.

I am a big fan of male/female friendships.  I am also a big fan of clear boundaries in male/female friendships.  I think this article is a great step in that direction.

My only fear is that this article is mostly loved by women whose primary application is to construct a mental list of men who need to read the article.  I don’t love that.  Every time we have great teaching on biblical manhood in our church we see that kind of response: a chorus of ‘amens’ from the women obsessed with talking about how the men need to step up instead of focusing on their own development.

So, here are my two thoughts for the ladies:

1. Stop thinking about other people’s sin and start thinking about your own sin.  

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that the tendency to abuse girl/guy friendships isn’t unique to men.  Most of the women I meet (myself included) are prone to miss out on the great gifts of singleness by living a life where they are never actually really single.  They use their male friendships to fill in the gaps intentionally left by this stage of life.

You may be doing this if…

• You have friendships that would have to drastically change if you got married
• You have friendships that you would drop if you were seriously dating someone
• You have friendships with guys that would make their girlfriend (if they were to get one) uncomfortable
• Your singleness is mostly spent planning, dreaming or strategizing for marriage
• You are a serial dater

Some of these things rob you of  the ‘undivided heart’ that Scripture calls the gift God gives to singles.  In our relationship-obsessed culture most singles seem to be straight-up encouraged to have a divided heart, constantly looking out for the interests of a spouse who doesn’t yet exist.

You’re not single because God forgot about you.  You’re single because that’s God’s best provision for you.  Are you using guys to fill needs that are designed to be left unmet in this stage of life?

2. Stop getting mad at other people for your sin.

I have an abysmal track record when it comes to boundaries in guy/girl friendships.  Like most girls, I have been furious with male friends who didn’t seem to steward my heart well.

Blaming others is Satan’s little distraction tactic.  It keeps us from asking ourselves  the question: since when is stewardship of what God gave me someone else’s responsibility?

As a single person, my finances, my time, my gifts and yes – my heart – are all given to me to steward.  I am the one who is going to be held accountable for what I do with them.

And you know what?  When we’re the ‘friendgirl’ we’re sinning too.  We’re being selfish and hurtful and we’re using the guys as much as they are using us.

Maybe guys in our generation struggle with leading and pursuing women because women in our generation struggle with waiting for men to lead.

Maybe the hardest thing for the guys in our lives is putting themselves out there and directly communicating their feelings.  And maybe we could be a part of empowering them to do that by stepping back and creating space instead of enabling their sin by filling the gaps with assumptions and unfounded expectations.

What would it look like to count the guys in your life as more significant than you?  What behavior from you is going to most allow them to be the man that God created them to be?

If you’re anything like me, you spend each night telling God how good you would be for them if He would just let you be together.  How about you prove it by actually being good for them now, today?  God made that guy in your life single because He wanted to bless them with an undivided heart.  Don’t steal that blessing by trying to make their heart divided.

I think it would be neat if the women of our generation took a little while to work on taking the planks out of our own eyes.  It would be neat if that freed us up to help the guys around us with the specks in their eyes; not out of selfish interest or self-preservation but out of a genuine desire for everyone in our lives to see our sweet savior a little more clearly.

The video is really neat.  Doug Wilson is urging dads to take their roles a little more seriously.  All across America there are little girls growing up with absent fathers and the needs that are supposed to be met by their dads are being unmet.  As a result they have this phantom appetite that leads them to seek satisfaction in other places.

I totally get that.  Since my dad died I’ve become more and more aware of that gnawing hunger inside of me.

Turns out I have father hunger, (cue sad music.)  You’ll get your invite for my pity party in the mail. Promise.

However, the other day I was watching Felicity.  (I know that most good blog posts don’t include that sentence, but go with me here).

The show starts out with Felicity throwing her college plans away to follow a boy across the country.  He doesn’t even remember her name.  Ouch.

Felicity has father hunger.  Which is weird, because the first frame of the show is her dad going nuts as she graduates from college.  He is involved in her life.  Sure, he’s not perfect, but he’s present and supportive.

That got me thinking: have I ever met someone without this ‘father hunger’?  Have I ever met a girl who was fully secure?