Tag Archives: Christianity

Why Christians Should Write

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Jesus Christ is a believer’s gravity; he infuses meaning and purpose into our lives and tethers us to reality through the Body and the Blood.  There is no story more fascinating, mysterious, devastating, resplendent, and sanguine than the gospel, and this is the reason we need more Christian writers in the United States to write and be published.  Believers have an incredible capacity for story—true story—which is our duty and privilege to share.  When we weave gospel truths into our stories—even when we whisper or our voices shake—those stories assume deeper meaning, exactly what the world craves, whether knowingly or not.  Tales with no hint of the divine, no rumor of a Savior, may often be a poor investment, a squandering of what might have been.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”  Books written by Christians are just such miracles, stories that are able to be held, while the Great Story, instead, holds us.

my favorite paradoxes

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1) I lose my life to gain Life.

I love that when I surrender my life entirely to Christ, I gain real, true life in Him.

2) Strength through weakness.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

3) When I give in to my intrusive thoughts, they lose their power over me.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy’s premise is a simple one, and though it seems backward, it works.  My life is proof.

motivation

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“When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”
Luke 9:51

Christ knows what lies ahead for him: Gethsemane, betrayal, a cat o’ nine tails raking him over, and the crucifixion (from which comes the word excruciating), not to mention the weight of the world’s sin on his shoulders as he becomes a curse and his father looks away.

And yet he set his face to go to Jerusalem.  He steeled himself for what was ahead.  He determined to move in the direction of these horrors.

It inspires me.

Guest blogger: Broken

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If you follow my blog, then you’ve already been introduced to my roommate Desiree.  She is a wonderful woman of God and one of my very favorite people.  Because we have lived together for five years, she is one of the people who has seen me at my very, very worst, OCD-wise.  I asked her to write a guest post about living with an obsessive-compulsive.  Here it is:

Broken
by Desiree Wood

I don’t know how to describe what it’s like to live with someone with OCD, but you all know.

I’m sure Jackie told me that she had OCD while I was in college. She told me how hard it was—about thinking friends were demons or that she was destined for Hell, about sharing her struggles at camp the previous summer—but it just didn’t register. She hid it well for the first year or two that we were friends and roommates, an impressive feat.

And then came the day that I realized this was a problem. Jackie had talked through some other obsessions before, but this one was big. We had been on a retreat with the youth group we volunteered with for the weekend, and on the bus ride home, one of the teens dropped a bomb on Jackie about something he had done. I’m a teacher, so it takes a lot for an experience to blow me out of the water, but what this kid shared did just that! I was shocked when Jackie slid into the bus seat next to me and shared the news. And at that moment, I pleaded with God, “Why?” Why would He allow it to be Jackie who had to shoulder this news? Why the one with OCD triggered by thoughts of guilt? It was so much pressure figuring out what to do with this information. As she sobbed and we tried to work through the news at home that night, my heart broke for her. I felt completely lost and helpless.

To be honest, that’s how I’ve felt through most of this journey through OCD—through the changing meds and different reactions, triggers that come out of nowhere and take days or weeks or months to move past, through the CBT techniques that I felt really unsure about—it’s all a bit lost on me whose mind can just let go of thoughts as I choose. Looking back, I kind of like that I was so lost and helpless, because even though OCD has been hard to deal with for me and a million times harder for Jackie, I know that it has ultimately pushed us both closer to Christ. I love that He redeems the brokenness in our lives.

We all know what it’s like to live with someone with OCD because we are all broken people. Whether you live with family, friends, or a spouse, you battle the brokenness. We’ve all got our issues, sickness, and sin to overcome, and the people around us have to be our support. I pray that I continue to learn how to do that for Jackie.

Galatians 6:2 says, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”  I am blessed to live with Jackie—to have seen her struggle through OCD with Jesus, to have learned from her, and to have her in my corner as I battle my own issues.

What are your experiences with friends or family with OCD?

Me (bottom right) and Des (beside me) BEFORE we were roommates … she had no idea what she was about to get herself into!

Edmund Pevensie

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Edmund Pevensie of The Chronicles of Narnia is one of my favorite characters in literature.  Jack Lewis sometimes writes small phrases about Edmund that have made me think far beyond the Narnia cannon.

***SPOILER ALERT***  If you have been living under a rock and have not read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, then please stop reading this blog, get yourself to Barnes & Noble, and purchase and read the book already!!!

I am fascinated by Edmund’s transformation.

I love when (in Horse and His Boy), Edmund argues against killing Rabadash, saying, “Even a traitor may mend.  I have known one who did.”  In Dawn Treader, Edmund admits to Eustace, “You were only an ass, but I was a traitor.”  It has been so interesting to me that he became known as King Edmund the Just.  For years, I believed that his experiences ought to have led him to be called King Edmund the Merciful.  After all, justice had once demanded his own death, although Aslan took his place.  But then I realized that Aslan’s substitutionary death was also just– that is, it satisfied the debt and kept Narnia from perishing in fire and water.

I always wonder what it was like when Edmund first returned to England after growing up and becoming a king in Narnia.  In fact, I wrote a poem about it.

EDMUND

The wardrobe door was its own sort of holy baptism—
to push past fur coats with a spiteful heart of stone
then to reemerge moments—or years—later
with one of bold flesh that brimmed with nobility.
I like to think of you returned to boarding school,
a ten-year-old king and warrior, able and just,
your thoughts far from arithmetics as you plumb
the treasures in your core and find there grace—
grace overflowing, for you know as well as anyone
that even a traitor may mend.

I think this song by Kutless is actually about Edmund, and it asks some of my same questions.

What do you think: am I waaaaay too into Narnia?  What are your thoughts on Edmund Pevensie?

medical or spiritual?

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Discovered a website this weekend that is very disturbing to me as a Christian obsessive-compulsive.

At GreatBibleStudy.com, you can read quotes like the following:

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, commonly referred to as OCD, is not a mental disorder or disease… it is a spiritually rooted bondage in the person’s mind that needs to be uprooted.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is basically demonic torment brought on by a person’s bondages to fear and shame.

These ‘voices’ or compulsive thoughts are NOT caused because of a chemical imbalance (which the secular world cannot explain anyways); they are there because of a spiritual bondage in the person’s life.

Now, don’t get me wrong!  I believe that obsessive-compulsive disorder has entered into this world due to SIN, yes, but to negate that OCD is caused by a chemical imbalance seems ridiculous to me.  As a Christian, I view ALL of life through a spiritual lens, but these quotes seem like the equivalent of saying, “Diabetes is not a problem with the pancreas– it’s a spiritual issue!!!”  To say that diabetes is not connected to the pancreas’s inability to produce insuliin would be silly, just as saying that OCD is not connected to a chemical inbalance (our bodies absorb serotonin too quickly … that’s why we take SSRIs [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors … they SLOW DOWN the reuptake/reabsorbtion of serotonin]).


All issues are spiritual issues, but that does not mean that they are NOT also medical issues.  God is also the Author of Science and the Creator of our bodies.  To not combine the spiritual with the scientific is short-sighted, I believe.

What are your thoughts on these quotes?  I’d especially love to hear from obsessive-compulsive believers!

Holy Week

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I love Easter.  I mean, I really love it.  I love Easter the way most people love Christmas.

Palm Sunday.  Gethsemane.  The cross.  Blood, blood, blood, and the sin of the world on His shoulders.

And then Easter morning comes, and HE LIVES, and EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT NOW.  Such a mighty victory– one that turned the ugliest thing (the cross) into this incredibly BEAUTIFUL picture of salvation.

Here is something I have wondered.  You know how sick you feel over the weekend when you know you have a terrible Monday ahead of you– maybe it’s a presentation, or you have to have a hard conversation with a co-worker, or you have to face your poor sales figures once again?  The anticipation is terrible, gut-wrenching, so ugly.

My question is this: how could Jesus know about the cross from all eternity and survive such a weight of knowledge?  I imagine it was almost a relief when Judas finally stepped into the garden and kissed His cheek.

I am so proud of my God.