faith

CLOUDS

/ jessicaivaska / 6 Comments

zsi-wua49t0-ales-krivec

Guilt. It’s like winter in Seattle. The grey always hanging around, covering up any light that tries to sneak in. When you try to run from it, putting on layers and turning the heat in the car all the way up, you feel better for a while. But eventually, the chill resurfaces in your bones and you just can’t shake it.

I’ve been living with guilt my whole life. I don’t know where I picked it up, but I want to put it down, bury it and never mourn its death.

Guilt has chased after me, clung to my clothes like bonfire smoke and tried to stifle me in big and small ways. The big ways are debilitating, but the little ways. . .Those are the ones that eat away at your soul.

I should have worked out today.
I need to clean.
My to-do list is so long and I’ll I’m doing is sitting here.
I could love my husband better.
We don’t have kids. Should we have already had kids?
I’d weigh less (and look better) if I hadn’t eaten that cookie.

The list goes on and on. I’m drowning in things I could have done different, should do different, or promise myself I’ll do different tomorrow.

Yet, when I stop running from the guilt, and let it catch me, I can pick it up and turn it over in my hand. That’s when I see the truth: My guilt is always about what I want to look like to other people.

I want “them” to look at me and love me. I want “them” to think I’m great. Most often, it’s a far darker desire: I want “them” to not be ashamed to know me.

So when I stop running, when I give myself time to examine the clouds that chase me, I realize that fretting over all the things the world tells me to do will never feed my soul.

And if it comes down to feeding my soul, guilt will never do that. Only the God who created me can. You see, this, right here, this is where I believe that many in our wonderful faith tradition have gotten stuck. We tell ourselves that our guilt is from God.

But, my friend, I don’t believe that guilt is from God. Guilt nags at you even after you’ve been forgiven. God tells you that if you accept His grace, you are washed clean, period.

Guilt claws at your back, telling you that today wasn’t good enough, but tomorrow could be. God tells you that in him you’re already good enough.

Guilt wounds. God heals.

But conviction, conviction is holy. Conviction doesn’t tear apart your soul. Conviction feeds it. Why? Because while guilt separates, conviction draws you in.

This is where some may say that I’m just mincing words. But I’m not. For me, they are completely and utterly distinct. Or at least I want them to be.

Using two different words lets me examine my feelings and see where they are coming from. It lets me assign different answers to each question I ask.

Are the clouds clawing at my soul, or is God pursuing my heart?

You see, when you define it differently, you get to have a different answer. You get to throw away the guilt and keep the conviction. You get to ask God for help. You get invite Him in, and ask Him to help clean you up, rather than push Him away because you feel too dirty. And that, that’s the stuff that will feed your soul. Instead of clinging to you, it will free you.

I don’t know about you, but I want that freedom.

 

BUILD IT

/ jessicaivaska / 4 Comments

axpdkcg_po8-stephen-crowley

I’ve been thinking about Noah lately. Noah from the book of Genesis. I like to think I could be like him, but when push comes to shove, I’m not sure I’m strong enough.

How about you? Could you be Noah?

God called him to do something utterly and completely crazy.

We teach it to children with a bit of a sing-song lilt, focusing on the happy ending when most of the story isn’t happy at all.

God tells Noah He’s going to flood the earth to destroy all of humanity. All of it. Except Noah’s family if he follows God’s call.

That call? To build a boat. A giant boat. A boat that was about 450 feet long.

I can see Noah’s neighbors laughing at him behind their hands. Rolling their eyes at the religious fanatic they dismissed as crazy.

But does having a call make your crazy? Sometimes I think it’s the most sane thing in the world. That we all have a call, a unique task – something we have to build. It takes bravery and faith to do it, especially when it’s something as outrageous as building an ark.

Some say that before the flood it had never rained on the earth. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but if it is, that only adds to the ridiculousness of Noah’s task.

I wonder if Noah ever had second thoughts. If he considered never nailing those first few cypress boards together. Or if he wanted to quit halfway thorough.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter. Noah did build the ark, and because of that, you and I are here today. We come from his line. God used him to rescue all of humanity.

Noah’s crazy task had a purpose. No matter what anyone else thought, he fulfilled his call.

I want to be like Noah. I want to have a direct call from God and faithfully put in the effort to complete it. But I think I care too much what people think. I want to fit in and only stand out for good reasons. For accolades. Not because I’m weird, or crazy, but because everyone wants to be like me.

I’m pretty sure while Noah was building the Ark no one wanted to be him. But once the door closed and the rain started falling in heavy, thick drops, I bet they had second thoughts. At the end of the day, Noah wasn’t crazy. He was a hero. Why? Because he followed his call.

God said build it, and he did.

In that case, I want to be as crazy as Noah. I hope we all can be. I hope we can become more willing to be used for something bigger, and ignore the snickers and stares we get as we live out our callings—whatever it might.

 

 

WEEP AND HOPE

/ jessicaivaska / 1 Comment

14281045655_b76afd80c4_b

Yesterday was Memorial Day. Erik and I went to the Lantern Floating Ceremony near Waikiki.

At the ceremony, people are invited to light a candle on a boat-shaped lantern and launch it out to sea to remember their loved ones. Over 50,000 people were there. Some floated lanterns. Others, like us, came to see the beauty of candlelight dancing on the ocean.

By the time the lingering twilight finally disappeared, there were thousands of lanterns floating on the ocean. Each one was lit for someone who was deeply loved while they walked this earth.

Death is a strange thing. Especially for Christians. It’s bittersweet. We know that the one who has left, if they have accepted Jesus as their Savior, is with Him in a MUCH better place.

And yet we still mourn.

We mourn because there won’t be any more memories. We mourn because we don’t get to be with them, and we mourn because death was never supposed to be a part of life.

We were created in God’s image. Adam and Eve — male and female. We were created to love and serve God and to love and serve one another. We were given the gift of life and it was supposed to be eternal. The tree of life was there to offer never-ending health and, well, life.

But then sin entered into humanity, and with it, death.

And so as we weep and mourn the loss of loved ones, we not only grieve the loss of their life, their love, their hugs and laughter, but we grieve the fact that our world is broken. We are sad because sin exists and because of sin, death exists.

But thankfully, there is hope. God saw the depth of our pain and was filled with love for us — His broken, sinful, evil children. His justice and goodness made it impossible for our sin to be erased, so he made a way for it to be redeemed. He gives us new life not only in this life, but in the one to come.

It is a life that will never end. A life without sin, a life without death. Life as we were created for.

Until that day, we weep and we hope.

WHEN YOUR CHURCH IS SCATTERED

/ jessicaivaska / 2 Comments

Scattered dandelion

My husband and I recently left the church where he has been a pastor for the last three and a half years.

It’s been hard. Heartbreaking and gut-wrenching. This church, these people are our community. They are the people we have worshiped with, laughed with, cried with, prayed with and counseled. We have eaten with them, sipped coffee with them, gone on hikes with them and loved them.

Leaving the church has felt like our community has been ripped away. It has left me reeling. It’s not that I don’t think our friends still love us and want to be a part of our life, but it will be different. It is different.

On Sunday we’ll be surrounded by the faces of strangers. We no longer have a church. My husband is a churchless pastor.

As I have been grieving this loss and wondering what God is up to, it hit me how wrong I am. We do have a church. Our church is just scattered.

Our church is in Seattle, Vashon, Kirkland, Gig Harbor, Hawaii and California. It’s in a small town in England and the frozen tundra of Canada — and everywhere in between.

The phone calls, FaceTime sessions, Skype calls and emails remind me that we are not alone in this. We cannot all meet together on Sunday morning, but we are still united.

We are united by the blood of Christ and our love for one another. And we are in good company. The early church was scattered too. The New Testament epistles remind us of this. They are letters, not scripts. They were written encouragements, not whispered in the quiet of a shared song or a long talk over lattes. Paul was far away from people he was ministering to. That’s why he wrote letters. And thank God he did, because now we have them.

I am not saying that there is no purpose or beauty in the local church. Far from it. The book of Acts shows us how important it is to gather together in person. To share prayers and meals. To live life together. I long for the day when we have a local church again. One where we feel like God has called us. One where we belong. But until that day, God is teaching me that church won’t always look like the “church” we are used to.

I have a church and I am so grateful for my church, scattered though it may be, one day we will all be together for all eternity. And until that day, there are text messages, emails, Skype calls, FaceTime sessions and letters. Those things have a beauty all their own. Today I am choosing to be grateful.

SWEATER WEATHER

/ jessicaivaska / Leave a comment

Penguins

The sun is shining brightly. Greens pop and blues run deep. It’s beautiful. The epitome of Hawaii in all her glory. It’s going to be 80. The perfect temperature for hitting the beach, sipping iced lattes and living in slippas.

Looking out my bay window at an endless ocean, you’d have no idea that the seasons change.

To mainlanders, Hawaii has no seasons. It’s endless summer. Once you’ve lived here a few years you pick up on subtle seasonal changes. The plumerias drop their leaves in the winter. The trades die off in the fall. Rain falls a little heavier into the “cooler” months. The night temps dip into the 60s in early spring. The changes are subtle. Imperceptible, if you don’t know Hawaii.

But today, a season changed. It wasn’t gradual. It was sudden. Abrupt. The season of why we came to Hawaii is over.

Today is Erik’s last day at the job he’s had for the past 3.5 years. The job that led us to pack up our home in Seattle, put our cars on a boat and have our dog go through a 4-month rabies vaccination quarantine. Today, that job is over. He will come home, his car full of reminders of an office with loud air conditioning and too many roaches.

Jobs end for people every day. We aren’t unique in that. But what is unique is for us, this wasn’t just a job. It was our life.

Erik is a pastor, and when you’re in ministry, work and life become blurry. Church attendees become friends and friends become family. Coffee dates go deep and tears are sacred. A late night phone call can be a friend checking in or someone desperate for prayer and rescue.

Work/life balance gets fuzzy in the best way possible.

But that also means that on days like this, you wish there was more black and white in the world than grey. You wish that a job was just a job and that walking away from it didn’t also mean walking away from your community.

I know that we are still friends with the people who attend the church. I pray that they will be long-lasting friendships on this earth and long into eternity. Yet I know they will be different. They’ll have to be. We won’t see people at church on the weekends. We won’t be in their Bible studies. We won’t worship with them regularly or run into them at church events. It wouldn’t hurt if we didn’t love them so much. I guess it’s a good problem to have. But I have never welcomed winter. I am a summer girl. I love the warming glow of the sun on my bare shoulders. I love loose sundresses and jumping in the ocean. Winter is cold and wet and grey. I fear that that is the season we are heading into.

I do know that God is good. I do know that He has a plan. I do know that He loves us and wants what it best for us.

I don’t know what that will look like. I don’t know how long it will take for us to catch a glimpse of our next step, of the next season. I don’t know how long the hurt will last. But I do know that the season has changed and now I need a sweater.