Friday Flashback

So, when I said that I was going to talk about death for a week, I didn't intend for it to kill the blog... Oops. Here's the first flashback to -sigh- almost a week ago: 

As I was driving up the mountain on Friday to hang out with some of my friends, I was praying and thinking about the satisfaction that happens when we mimic the process of creation in our small ways, when it feels like something is done well and right. Then I blinked wide and chuckled in disbelief because of the word choices in all of that. 

See, my friends I went to visit are a nine and twelve-year old pair of awesome, vivacious and hilarious sisters. And the thing that was "done right" was making a batch of cookies in time to take the dough for us to decorate and bake together. 

But "right" isn't anywhere close to how that happened either...Let me just say the trailer for that movie would include a mixer with one whisk that was constantly shooting sticky clumps on my clothes, the walls, counters and floor of my little kitchen, covering the air with a flour fog. Oh and did mention, I was late getting back from my lunch break?! 

Somehow. My strangely morphing and characteristically serious mind managed to view that as a success. And that, my friends, is nothing short of God's grace towards me. 

See, the list of things that went wrong were not relevant in that moment. Even just for that moment. I still had to fight them throughout the night, and in later reflection, as thing after thing was added to the list of unmet, subconscious expectations. 

But as I was in communion and present with the Lord on that mountain road, all I could anticipate was their smiles and laughter and the mess we would make together along with the cookies and sprinkles, and little bits of butter batter. 

And I shivered with excitement at His good work. And that good work wasn't necessarily the outcome, but rather the work He is doing to draw my heart away from myself and love with fresh abandon.

That is a work of abundant life. But it is also a work of many deaths. 

I've been thinking for several days about how to talk about the mortifying aspects of duality. Rather: the really tough, sandpaper kind of truth that makes us choose between two things. See, while it would be possible (and in my case, likely) to have many polarizing thought reactions to a simple statement, the amount of charged energy just doesn't stay static for long...

It's late; and I'm getting a bit too poetic for my own good. What I mean is this: thoughts fight. Yet the victory the Lord won last Friday is evidence that He is faithfully replacing thoughts and thought patterns with the truth of His word as I study it. It's not like I get to keep both thought options in my cranial wallet, though. The old must be put to death, and buried with Christ. 

"And He who sits on the throne said 'Behold, I am making all things new.' and He said 'Write, for these words are faithful and true.'" 

Revelation 21:5