Holidailies Day 5: Truth, Love and Imagination.

I've always considered myself a fairly honest person. I mean, I had my share of subterfuge as a kid, mostly hiding books that I wasn't supposed to be reading while supposedly doing homework, or hiding candy/soda in the many little corners of my room (if my parents are reading this... sorry). But overall, I was an honest kid, largely due to what I call me "Good Little Christian Girl" complex which went as far as major issues of morality, not so far as to convince me that my only purpose in life was to breed more good little Christian kids (that's a whole other story). In fact, I was often honest to a fault about some things. Tact was not my strong point for many years.

In college, my dedication to truth became more refined. The way that writing was taught to me there, truth had to be at the center of everything. Especially as a creative writer, where everything you write comes from that deep seated place within you, and if there are a bunch of lies hanging about in your life, than your writing is going to suffer. And I've found that to be true, for me. I found out that I never was really as honest as I thought I was, because I lied to myself all the time. One of my professors introduced me to a practice of looking at issues in your life and simply saying, "It is what it is. It is not something else." Talk about a simple statement that will mess with your life constantly. It's not fun, to be sure, but it's worth it.

What does all this have to do with love? This, in my mind is where Jesus jumps in, because there really is no way to separate my understanding of love from my relationship with Christ. It's way too wrapped up, not just in academic knowledge, but my personal history. Having dealt with depression for my whole life, unknowingly for many years, I can say that had I not been introduced to the love of God, I wouldn't still be here. It's why I'm so passionate about love being the only answer. Because I was the epitome of a Sunday School brat/Good Little Christian Girl and all that religion without relationship got me was deep into shame and feeling so unloved that I couldn't find a way out. My escape from that life of despair was a close call, and even after I moved forward enough to get through life without wanting to die, I still fought the lies daily and the only thing I've ever been able to find that will shut them up is the truth of being loved by God. Even this week, when I was diligently looking for jobs, I broke down in the middle of it all because being out of work for 2 months, after searching for a job for 3 months is the top of the list of things that can demoralize you in two seconds flat. I had to take a moment, speak the reminders I have taped up all over my desk over myself, and actively search out the knowledge of God's love before I could muster up the strength to go back to it. You see why these two things are wrapped up in my head.

There's another aspect to it as well. Love is the key to truth being received well. Well, really love is the key to anything being done well. Religion is only harmful when it gets separated from love (1 Corinthians 13 anyone? I find it interesting that this chapter is sandwiched in between the two chapters on the gifts of the Spirit, but that is again, a whole other story). Anything that you do apart from love automatically has a much higher chance of not being taken well. Especially being honest, because the term "brutally honest" exists for a reason. I have to remind myself of this all the time, part of my aforementioned battle against an inherent lack of tact. Saying things in a loving way doesn't mean you have to weaken your statements. It's the difference between saying, "You really suck at this" vs. "I want to help you improve in this area of your life." One is condemnation (there's none of that in Christ Jesus BTW. Romans 8:1, my favorite verse ever). The other is an acknowledgement of the issue, but with it an offer of standing with the person and helping them face it.

This is what Christ does all the time. He starts by assuring you that He loves you no matter what, and that He chose you as His Beloved before you chose Him as yours. Then He says something along the lines of, "I'm pretty sure you already know what areas you need to work on, and yes I see them, but I'm still going to love you while you work them out, and I'm also going to lend my strength to you as your fight your battles, and tend your wounds, old and new." If you want a slightly more eloquent and detailed version of that, I highly recommend looking up the book "Culture of Honor" by Danny Silk. One of the few non-fiction books that has ever grabbed me and engaged me just as easily as a novel. So good.

Now for the imagination part. What does it have to do with truth and love? Well, in my world, pretty much everything because imagination as a writer is my life-blood. If it's tainted with a bunch of lies, my mind creates some pretty freaky stuff. That's why I found that if I want to be writing anything worth reading, I better have some truth backed up by love ready to corral my mind when it wanders down dark paths. A prime example of this was last year for NaNoWriMo, when I was in a not-so-great place mentally and emotionally and literally everything about the novel that I wrote (if you could even call it that) was utter tripe. It still makes me shudder to think how bad it was. And I knew it. As soon as I hit 50K I put it aside and swore never to read through it ever. Though if I ever get up enough courage I may attempt to just to see if there were any pearls that snuck in amongst the swine. By contrast, the novel that I wrote last month has the potential to be one of the best things I've ever written, once I finish the thing and polish it up. The difference is where my life and my current mental state are. After a few months of going to Nikao School of Leadership and being more or less assigned the task of figuring my crap out piece by piece, I'm already in a much better place that I was 6 months ago and certainly much better than a year ago. That's taken imagination, because again, it's the way that I deal with things. My life works much better when I can imagine Jesus sitting in front of me and saying that He loves me, helping me figure things out. 

And everything He says, I can find reference to in the Bible. In that way, my rigorous religious training worked for me, because I have this inherent knowledge of the New Testament in particular, to be able to find answers for most of the Big Issues. I still read through it, because there are always new aspects, new perspectives to see verses through, new information about the contexts and all that wonderfully Bible geeky stuff that I was taught at Jessup. But at the core is all those verses I memorized in Sunday School, or at AWANA, or at camp every summer, or at Jessup for classes. And those provide the basis for me to make sure my imagination isn't being hijacked by lies that I've told myself.

I've no idea if that will make sense to anyone but me, and it's definitely something that I'm still learning as I practice it. It just came to mind this week, because a professor from Jessup was at Nikao on Tuesday teaching about it. And though I'd heard it all before while I was at school, it was still a powerful reminder about how I got to where I am and how I can keep moving forward. Allons-y!