Good and Empty

My car is dead. 

Except that dead is not quite the word everyone else needs to hear in order to understand it's current state - what you need to hear is that it is totaled. 

But I feel like it died.  I feel like that because since the night that I drove away from my parents' house completely assured of my own plans to drive back to Denver, which of course were then  diverted by a car crash in which I ended up hanging by my seatbelt in a sideways vehicle, I have been in mourning.  I hate even admitting that; I mean come on...mourning the loss of a vehicle?  So, of course, in order to feel like a sane human being, I have attempted to analyze and give some type of deeper meaning to the grief process.  (If you know any counselors this is a completely normalized endeavor).

I'm relieved to say that it does have meaning, if not the meaning I expected. Have you ever heard the term "spoiling the Egyptians?"  It refers to the idea of taking valuable plunder from previous regimes of oppression so as to keep what's valuable and leave what's useless. In a sense, it turns out, my 2001 Honda Accord was my only remaining Egyptian spoil.

Six years ago I whole-heartedly injested several identity-changing lies about who I was. In order to make sense of an out-of-control relationship in my life, I listened to bad counsel and believed I was innately born to manipulate and control. This, they said (and I believed) would discount me for future leadership. Ever the legalist, I took this as a foundation on which to build a whole system of relating to others. If I should not be in leadership, I would never talk, sing, or do anything on a stage in front of people.  And I was determined to serve in the most understated and often humiliating ways. In fact, in order to thoroughly prove myself capable of this new role - I did a whole lot of service. So much so that when I was diagnosed with a debilitating disease in 2008, my first concern was that apart from what I was doing, which would now have to cease from physical constraints, I had no idea who I was to God.

Slowly, God began to redeem my life from the lies. I believe that the final nail in the coffin occurred just one month ago when I was given the opportunity to speak in public. I remember walking away surprised after I had delivered a cogent speech and realizing that God had concretely given me evidence of His full deliverance.

And this is where the story should end right?  Except that instead of fully embracing the freedom I was being offered, I went into a sort of sadness that was pervasive if not overwhelming. What I now know is that the end of all of those deceptive beliefs brought about an emptiness of meaning. It is a scary thing to fully release a six-year companion; even if that companion was sent to steal, kill, and destroy. Instead, I found myself in a new and unsteady place in which trusting God for who I was became a daily endeavor.  Continually looking to others for definition and support brought only disappointment.  God would not let me fill the emptiness that had been so recently occupied with anything or anyone else.

So back to the Honda. It was the only thing that stayed with me throughout those six years. I had so many memories in that car, and surely many of them were good. But they were old, and my years of crying out to God in that car for release, for freedom, for grace have been resoundingly answered. My one tie to that lie believing moment six years ago is now gone. It died.  And with it, I hope, went all remaining remnants of my Egypt.  So I will let it go; I will look forward to a new vehicle in which I will pray new prayers, believe for big things, and remember God's mighty and redemptive power.