The Road Less Traveled

This morning, I was lying in bed looking up at the sky-- I've been sleeping outside; if you haven't done it I highly recommend it (sorry, Mom and Dad, you may have lost your daughter here)-- and the words to a song I listened to when I was a little girl came tiptoeing into my mind. I was temped to look up the rest of the words, but I figured maybe the ones I remembered are significant in some way. Probably don't look them up yourself, just to be safe.... Here they are: 

"Go to college, a university; get a real job-- that's what they said to me.... You-- I don't wanna be just like you." 

If you know me, you may know that I've never been super attracted to the typical ways of my culture. Before all this 'living for Christ' stuff, that desire manifested in some not-so-great ways that were pretty mainstream anyway. I guess I didn't ever realize that living radically in love with Jesus is really the only 'road less traveled', so to speak. 

Like this lyricist, a lot of my passion for a "different" life comes out of bitterness. You can probably tell just by these few lines that this is the case for him. Maybe you didn't know that abut me, though. Just before this paragraph, I had to stop myself from writing, "You would think I would have learned that, growing up in church and all..." Perhaps to you, that sounds harmless-- true, even. As I looked at that sentence though, Holy Spirit reminded me of something He and I have been talking about a fair bit lately. I have a huge grudge against the church, as in churches plural, not one in particular. Since I've begun my inquisition as to what it looks like to be a real follower of Christ, I've discovered that, in a deep place in my heart, I feel like I've been fed a watered-down version of Jesus and life as His disciple. Maybe that's true. It probably is. 

The thing is that teenagers can smell a fake from a mile away. They pick up on it when their teachers don't practice what they preach. Maybe I'm not remembering correctly, but I think that a lot of this bitterness started because I didn't run in to a lot of people who looked like what I thought true Christ-followers should look like. Part of this is my fault, for putting what it looks like to have a relationship with God into a box. That's probably the biggest part. Maybe part of it also comes from the fact that there just aren't that many sold-out lovers of The Lord in America any more. Call me judgemental-- I am, definitely, and God and I are working through that. But I think there has to be some truth behind these thoughts as well. 

Whatever the case may be, I want to apologize. I realize a lot of my well-meaning blog posts have come out of a place of hurt, spewing bitterness that overshadows the truth that may have also come out. I know that the greatest commandments (according to Jesus Himself) are to love God and love others. Discipling people, changing their minds and hearts, has to come out of a place of radical love, not correctness. My motives have been tainted, even if my material has been good. I don't want to be right. I want to ooze love out of the abundance God pours out on me. So, please, accept my apology. Forgive me. God has work to do yet as I am continually learning how to love with the love of Christ. 

Thanks for sticking around.

-Ash