Standing Up Straight

But in the last year or so, I’ve started to see that my ideas of what God’s love is like are not based on what He says. They’re based on my experiences with other humans, other frail and wounded humans who aren’t perfect examples of God’s love. And the more I find out about what God says about His love, the more I find that it really has nothing to do with what I do or don’t do. It’s not about me and my ability or disability to please God and stand up straight of my own accord. It’s about Him being so full of love that I get showered with it no matter what. That thought is so new and revolutionary to me that it is taking a long time to sink in. I’ve heard a lot through my life about the love of God in Christ, and I’ve said all along the right things about it. I know in my head, but I’m not familiar with it personally in my heart. I want it, though, I want it to fill me and change my life from the inside out. But I can’t change my heart any more than I can stand up straight. I don’t know how, it hurts, and I’m incapable of sustaining any lasting change on my own. I just have to wait and offer my heart for the changing. That’s hard work, and sometimes it feels like it will never happen.

The other day I was talking to my housemates, and the subject of posture came up. I began with my usual tirade against myself and what horrible posture I had. They both looked at me like I was crazy. “But Jenny, you have great posture whenever we see you sitting at the computer typing,” they said. I was surprised. “Really?” They assure me that it was so. But I didn’t really believe them…after all, I wasn’t consciously trying to have good posture when I was at the computer, so it must not be possible. Then today, walking home from church, I noticed that I was standing up very straight and tall, and that it didn’t hurt, and that I wasn’t trying. It was just happening naturally. For the first time in who knows how long (more than a decade at least), I was walking straight and tall, head held high, without willing myself into it. And that, I believe, is the kingdom of God. It’s finding that one day the things that you used to browbeat yourself into are coming naturally. It’s waking up to a new attitude that you had tried and failed to cultivate before. It’s feeling gratitude where you usually feel annoyance. It’s good stuff bubbling up in you without your meaning for it to do so. It’s my heart being changed, slowly but surely, and the rest of me with it. I spent so long thinking that to walk upright was something I had to accomplish before God would really like hanging out with me at all. But it turns out that walking upright is something that God teaches you to do while you’re hanging out. You can slouch and creep all the way to the cross, and God will eventually love you into a person with head held high. I know I’ll still have moments where the old muscle memory of slouching will come back and I’ll be staring at my feet again, just as the muscle memory of long-held sins will keep dragging me down. But I’m coming to see how much lighter God’s yoke is than my own. And feeling loved just for who you are is enough to make anyone stand up straight.