I have been wondering lately about truth and grace and our overexposed but also wonderfully-shared society.  What did you think about that sentence?  Yeah, I am confused, too, but it encompasses the wild complexities of living in this age.
     With the advent of social media, the non-stop news cycle, expanded visual formats for every screen, we are living in a wild, media-driven world.  Social media is just one part of our visual world, and it is one that I both love and abhor. 
     One blessing of social media is connectedness.  I love seeing friends near and far, getting to witness their lives in peace and hope and struggle and walking with them in that.  I, also, love having a platform to share about where God has brought me and have others journey with me.  These are all healthy and positive, adding to my wholeness and being.
     Still, there is the hard, and one of those for me is being tempted to miss being present.  Sometimes, I can be worried about posting while I am in the moment of living.  When that happens, I really am not present.  When I give into that pressure, I so miss out.  Ultimately, I don’t want to “live” online because that leads to disconnection with the people right before my very eyes.  And, I do not want to miss them!
     Another struggle in social media-land is that I can easily start to live falsely in this world.  It can become one of constructs, and in that, too, I can stumble.  In my worst moments, I lose sight of reality and focus on perception.  Full disclosure, I am a recovering perfectionistic, first-born pleaser.  So, I can take a deep dive off the truth-train in this constructed world if I’m not careful. 
     I think the lesson for me is not to lose touch with reality, actual reality, in the midst of the crazy times we live in.  Checking in with my motives are paramount to living truthfully.  I have to ask myself-- am I posting because I’m feeling insecure and have a need to show everyone that we are a “good” family and/or that I’m a “good/successful” person?  Or, am I sharing because I am grateful for the amazing moments He has given us in this life?  The answer to these questions makes every difference. 
     So, in the spirit of transparency, I want you to know that I have a wonderful family, but we are also a mess.  We are flawed, selfish people who squabble and fuss at one another sometimes.  We also have tons of fun together and great connectedness.  We are a bundle of joy and hard, sass and gentleness and everything in-between. 
     I get, though, that we don’t usually share the nitty gritty of our sinfulness because it would be awkward for everyone else observing it!  So, because of practicality and emotional appropriateness, we end up sharing the good moments usually.  And, I think that is generally okay as long as we know that all the other stuff in our lives is going on, too. 
     Staying real is so essential, but it is hard.  It takes deliberate intentionality and work to remain grounded in truth-- the truth that we all live in and contribute to the sinful, amazing, challenging, and beautiful world we inhabit.
     When we live in reality, our postings will remain genuine because we know who we are and who we aren’t.  None of us is perfect and life is crazy-hard and wonderful all at the same time.  When we have this perspective, our happy postings remind us of the wonderful that God has graciously given us as sustenance to our weary souls.
     So, joy in the gift of social media, but tell yourself the truth about it.  Like everything, it can be used for good or ill.  Technology is not evil or good inherently.  Just like everything, it is tainted by the Fall, and the people who employ it are fallen, as well.  We bring our brokenness to it, but we can also bring the healing and redemption of Jesus, as well. 
     May we be people who are living in truth, not constructs-- letting go of fake affirmation and choosing to dwell in the known truth of His unending love.  As we do, we will follow our Savior, walking in His steps and not our own. 

Grace has left our culture with a swiftness and totality that takes my very breath away.  There is hardly any margin, mercy, or grace to be found. The art of disagreeing agreeably seems a lost and alien art.  Now, contempt has come calling, and we have drunk of it deeply. 
 
The stakes are truly high without grace.  Being candid with those whom you disagree can cost you something very tangible like your job and, even worse, the intangible yet invaluable good--your reputation.  One “wrong” statement or opinion can forever alter your present and future.  The very integrity I have tried so hard to live can be rendered moot by one interaction, one simple opinion fraying it completely. 
 
The Bible says that “a good name is more desirable than great riches.” (Proverbs 22:1)  But, how do we deal with a vitriolic culture that can wreck your name because you view the world differently than it does?  The coldness of our world scares me completely.  As David says in Psalm 69, “Scorn has broken my heart and has left me helpless; I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found none.” (20)
 
Sadly, another level of malice is often layered to our disagreements.  If one is on “the wrong side of an issue,“ many people often declare the person with the other viewpoint to be “evil,” as well as ignorant, spreading further malice.  When I think of someone who is evil, I think of the Devil, Hitler, Stalin, terrorists.  Sadly, we are calling our neighbors, friends, church members, fellow citizens with this same term just because we disagree.  And, it is utterly suffocating. 
 
I humbly argue that contempt is the true evil here.  For, when we feel contempt, we secretly believe in our soul that we are “better” than others, more enlightened, etc.  While stroking our egos, we secretly wish others could be like us— so rational, intelligent, and advanced.  Oxford Living Dictionary gives this definition for contempt—“The feeling that a person or a thing is worthless or beneath consideration.”  How aptly this describes our culture right now when we disagree; we are so swift to completely render others “worthless.”
 
Sadly, most of us choose not to do the hard work of truly, vitally disagreeing with someone while keeping his/her motives and humanity in check.  It is much easier to write off people as “quacks” than to hear their hearts, even if you think their conclusions are fundamentally, ethically, morally, and even egregiously wrong.
 
Being a Christian is helping me challenge this tendency in myself.  Because of my beliefs, I think all humans are made in God’s image—the Imago Dei, and this belief catches me in my contempt.  When I remember we are made in His image, it is harder to hate, harder to dismiss, harder to compartmentalize someone into a “bad” category.  Even my “enemies” in ideology are stamped with the divine. 
 
What does this mean for me?  Right now, it means that I have decided not to put myself out there politically/ideologically in the social media realm.  That could certainly change, but for now, it helps me practice what I preach— to dialogue with humans face-to-face or one-on-one regarding these hard issues, forcing me to surrender contempt as I stare into someone’s eyes, smile, and frown. 
 
But, I am not running, so if you want to know my view on abortion, immigration, refugees and vetting, President Trump, Democrats, Republicans, theology, marriage and gender issues, or just anything in general, please email me so that we can have a personal chat.  I will gladly tell you all these things in relationship but not on social media where it is too easy for me to hide and not look into your eyes.  We must see each other as human during these hard, vital, crazy, emotional, but, hopefully, respectful conversations/debates.

I ask you to join with me in fighting this contempt that so easily creeps into our insecure and vain souls.  No matter how you feel led to share your opinions to the world, I pray you would lay down your contempt as you do it.  I am trying right along with you, battling often on my knees to do this very thing. 
 
May humility be the cloak we wear and grace be the fragrance we leave when we share our opinions.
 
 
 

                Prayer is always, always changing me, but there has been a certain prayer crawling through my soul lately, challenging some of the small spaces in my spirit.  In Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung’s book, Glittering Vices, she introduced me to a word I have never known—pusillanimity, which means “smallness of soul.” (9)  What a profound phrase that encapsulates the deepest battles of who we are fighting to be. 
              The shapes of my soul’s smallness are many.  As I look at the vices in that book, I pretty much can find them all in the back corners and darker rooms of my soul.  But, there is one that God has been really working on lately—its name is envy.
                 This is one of those vices that embarrasses me most because as someone who hates pettiness, this sin unmistakably reeks of it.  Yet, it lives in me.  And, as De Young writes, “The bottom line for the envious is how they stack up against others, because they measure their self-worth comparatively.” (44)  This is so true.  Sometimes, when I look at others in admiration, it turns to envy, and I feel comparison’s gong ringing through my soul.  It is then that I can cross over into sin’s darkness.
               So, I have begun to pray on my knees to fight this darkness when it comes.  The prayer I pray is for His glory to abound more and more, especially in others.  I ask that His work in them to be great so that He may be glorified even more.  As I do, I begin to hunger for His glory above all else, rejoicing in His movement everywhere and in everyone instead of worrying about myself.  As John said, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (3:30) 
                It is a hard prayer, for my selfishness breathes just as strongly as Eve’s did in her garden.  But, as I submit, I am tasting His freedom.  It is a posture I am growing in, and I don’t always do it perfectly or as sincerely as I want.  Still, it is changing me, nonetheless, this wanting more of God and more for others than myself.
                   So, when envy comes to call, what will we do?  When we see someone more successful at our field in worldly terms, when we see God’s unmistakable voice in another and wish for it in ours, when we see someone who has a more “perfect” family than ours, when we look at those who are the great influencers and wonder about our own place in the world, what response will we have? 
                   I pray you will join me in praying that God will be glorified and abound more and more in everyone we see.   And, may we not compare ourselves to others but rejoice in the God-reflection that is in us each.  As De Young says, “From a secure sense of God’s love and life-giving power, untainted by the envier’s conditional and comparative lens, we can see the right way to follow Paul’s admonition to ‘in humility regard others as better than yourselves.’” (57) 
                 Matthew records these words from Jesus—“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (16:24-25)  As we carry our own crosses and watch others carry theirs, my hope is that we would not tarry over them--how big or small they are, what a wide or narrow road they walk, or if theirs has less splinters than ours.  Instead, may we be found simply and faithfully carrying our cross while wholeheartedly encouraging and rejoicing with others as they carry theirs. 
                  And, as our personal kingdoms fall away, our anxious, worried grip of insecurity will loosen.  We will, then, be able to revel and rest in the God-ness we find in His people—shouting our joy at His movement in them!!  The painful, beautiful practice of humility will lead us into rejoicing at His amazing movement through us all—gasping at the grace of God that He even allows us to be part of His workings here on earth.  God, grant us mercy upon mercies to do just this. Hallelujah and hallelujah.

And, so it begins—this blog of mine!  Let me amend that-- I hope it is truly His more than mine! I know I won’t be channeling His words, of course, but I pray that His Spirit will guide and direct me in all my ways as I begin this way of sharing.

And, for any of you that join me that are not followers of Jesus, welcome.  I talk about Him a lot because He is just so a part of who I am; I cannot separate us.  I ask you to come as you are, as well, and let us journey and share the ways of our lives.

I have not always been comfortable entering the blog space world because I didn’t know if I had much to say that was not already being said.  Still, I simply feel called to enter the conversation about life and reality in a more public way. 

I have an insatiable hunger to know God, know other people’s souls, and to interact with the world regarding truth, reality, ideas and such.  I cannot stop trying to understand God, the world, other people, my kiddos, the Cosmos, the Middle East, politics, how to be a better Mama and friend, and the list goes on!!!! 

Thus, I am an idea wrestler.  I cannot stop wrestling with ideas and their fruits.  Ideas are what make everything happen in the world—every human is living out a set of ideas, be they true or not.  What we believe, we act out in our daily life.  Ideas are so very, very important; we need to understand the ones we live by and what ideas those around us live by.

Here is to a lifetime of wrestling. J