The Heart of a Hindu

“I’m concerned he might have some romantic interest in you,” Dad told me in the privacy of the hallway.

It was the morning following Good Friday. Dad was referring to my Indian friend who came to the service and then our house for dinner. 

I was skeptical. He was old—mid sixties at least. Dad thought he was interested because he said, “You wait and wait and wait, and then BAM. It happens.”

I thought Ashok was referring to some spiritual revelation. Now I wasn’t so sure. My dad’s theory began to look more and more probable when I got a call from him later. In a panic, I didn’t answer but waited for him to leave a message.

“I was very glad to meet your parents last night,” he reported.

Uh-oh.

“I was wondering if you would like to go to lunch tomorrow after the service. Or I could bring a cake over to your house.”

Like a wedding cake? I had a graphic mental image of Ashok showing up on my deck with a tiered cake and a goat.

What had gone wrong? How could we have missed each other? Ashok and I were coming from completely opposite angles: I wanted nothing but for him to find the true God and he wanted…me. 

Anxiety began to curdle in my stomach, morphing into a fog of fear. I cried out to God in my confusion: Why did you let this happen? How will he come to want you if he only wants me? I wouldn't reproach myself for obeying the Spirit, no matter how silly I felt. I believed without a doubt that God had orchestrated our meeting for his purpose. 

In a crowded Dunn Brothers, I had pulled my laptop toward me—thus making more room at the little table—at the exact moment he looked at me. He gestured and sat down with his Wall Street Journal. I had my earphones in, but he started talking to me anyway.

I had been practicing listening to the Spirit, which usually meant entering some unknown situation, and with that, some amount of fear. So I listened. I learned he was Hindu and promised to buy a copy of the Gita. He gave me his number and, trying to find the balance between following the Spirit and not being naïve, I gave him my email.

To me it was a chance to learn about his view of God. To him it was a courtship invitation.

Two weeks passed in which I experienced Satan’s sabotage. Sickness, scheduling obstacles, sleepless nights, close-shaves while driving. I prayed for protection and fought the onslaught of fatigue.

Two Thursdays later we finally met and talked about his Hindu beliefs. I contrasted them with mine, showing how we actually didn’t believe in the same God. I invited him to the Easter weekend services and he readily agreed. I was pleased that he wanted to learn more about the God of the Bible. I suppose he was pleased that he had more time to spend with me.

When it became clear to me that Ashok was in it for a wife, my hopes dovetailed. I didn’t want to see him again. The spiritual attack ceased immediately, but my own disappointment and fear tempted me to withdraw. I prayed for God to guide me in clarifying our friendship.

I didn’t know what to say to him when I saw him at the Easter Sunday service.

He told me he thought about bringing me flowers. He asked to come to our home again.

I had to muddle my way through an explanation that I would be more comfortable sticking to the Gita over coffee. All morning I wrestled with the desire to run away. He is your guest. You must be in this, no matter how uncomfortable. All morning I asked God, What are you doing with this? How do I go forward?

Imagine my relief when my mom reported that Ashok told her he didn’t realize how young I was (my age came up in a conversation) and certainly wouldn’t have thought of me that way if he had.

“I am looking for a wife,” he told her plainly. “I am looking for a wife like Grace.”

My heart grieved for his loneliness. I remembered spotting a longing in his eyes that first meeting. It was a longing for relationship. And I know the relationship that can fulfill that longing.

In that moment, I felt the Spirit prodding me: Are you going to retreat in fear? Are you going to withdraw your friendship for social decorum's sake? Are you going to reject his soul simply because you are a little uncomfortable? 

I had my answer. 

Snowboarding: Slopes, Spills, and Sitting Ducks

Leading up to my first snowboarding experience, people kept telling me how hard it was. “Try skiing,” they suggested. “It’s easier.” 

Not one person told me I could do it. 

So I set out to prove to myself that my attraction to the sport in general (or was it Shaun White?) might merit some natural skill. I’m standing at the bottom of Wild Mountain slopes, looking like an Oompa Loompa in my oversized snow pants, trying to strap the board on when Han says, “Grace, you’re putting the board on backwards.” It was the perfect start to a day of mishaps.

Eventually I got in forwards, but led with my right foot (goofy style) as I was copying Elijah and Andrew. Because I first led with my right foot, I found I couldn’t switch to my left, so spent the day taking the lifts with goofy footing and riding the slopes with regular. Honestly, the freakiest part of snowboarding is the lifts. One of the five guys in the group started a running joke that every time the ski lift stopped, I must have fallen getting off. “Grace is holding up the line again!” (As it happened, I never caused the ski lift to stop, even though I botched nearly every dismount.)  

If there’s one word to describe my snowboarding experience, it would be vulnerable. 

I was expecting it to be hard, I was expecting to succeed, and I was expecting to have fun—all three of which happened. What I was not anticipating was for my being (heart? pride?) to feel as shredded as my body by five o’clock.

Makes sense upon reflection. I’ve never met a person who jumps at opportunities to feel stupid, inadequate, and needy. I’ve met many people who avoid trying new things for that very reason. I hadn’t passed the initial strapping of the board when I realized I had to dispose of my pride. While I’m not afraid to ask for help, I prefer to do things independently. I relish a challenge, especially when someone thinks I should take the easy road. 

I also have a heart-idol—one that must be smashed every day if not every hour—of people’s approval. Without my desire to gain people’s approval, there would be no desire to overcome a challenge, prove everyone wrong. Neither could I walk away without proving to myself that I could do it. How those desires battled on the slopes! 

Every time I went down, my heart reminded me look how incapable you are. 

I was afraid to try anything bigger or harder than the kiddy slopes because I could barely control my board. I hated being out of control. I was not afraid of the slick ice or the risk or the jumps, but of the fact that I was inadequate to conquer them. I was afraid to let people see me fail. The warring desires and fears threatened to ruin my day.

I prayed, asking God to take the feelings away. He didn't. Instead He showed me how I live under them every day. Trying something new and difficult forced those feelings to the forefront of my awareness, but I was ruled by pride and approval as a lifestyle. My heart gave way like water breaching a dam. I surrendered the feelings to God and embraced the painful transparency of their absence.

Letting go of feeling like an inconvenience allowed me to let Andrew teach me how to stop, turn, and cut. He was patient, encouraging, helpful. Letting go of fearing failure allowed me to let Elijah take me on the terrain park and Double Black Diamond jumps. (I’m still trying to decide if I was giving into peer pressure, stupidity, or my desire to prove that I could do it. I couldn’t do the Diamond jumps, but as he said, once I tried the hard runs, the other hills would seem tame. He was right—I was freed from any fearful reserve.) 

Elijah knew all the right things to say. When I wiped out painfully on the terrain hill, frustrated to the point of tears, he didn’t pamper, or discourage, or even encourage—just cracked a joke. It reminded me that every snowboarder had once been where I was. Wiping out to the point of tears. Falling is the biggest part of learning the sport. A lesson in humility.

I dried my eyes, got on the board, and went down again. 

By the end, I had succeeded a few times in hitting all three jumps, and even the sloped wall at the bottom. Other boys aided me with the tow rope and gave me pointers. They didn’t act superior or scornful toward the nooby girl in the oversized snow pants. I bet they were all remembering what if felt like to have their pride scraped away by the ice.

By five, my body was so fatigued I could not go ten feet without spilling. But I was satisfied: I had succeeded in snowboarding, at least for a first-timer. However, it wasn’t the feeling of proving myself that I latched onto. Rather, it was the conquering of fear, learning perseverance, and surprisingly, that transparency which is more bruising than the ice and more freeing than the perfect run.

That afternoon caught me like an unexpected right hook to the jaw. In the shriveling fear of failure and ridicule, all I could do was depend on God. The act of snowboarding was really an act of smashing my idols. There was nothing I could do to remedy my inadequacy and neediness. I had to trust that God would protect me in my state of vulnerability. He proved Himself faithful. A peace blanketed my chaotic heart, a freedom to embrace the exposure and enjoy the ride.  

Isn’t that what He always intended? For His children to rest in His sufficiency? Didn’t Jesus come for my neediness? If I could feel such closeness with Him during an afternoon of snowboarding, I wonder what my life would look like if I lived every day in the grace of that vulnerability. I want to get to a place where I'm a sitting duck and anyone can take a potshot at me, and any wounds will simply remind me that I am not my own sufficiency. 

I have a feeling—just like the feeling of knowing I could snowboard—that if I did, God would take me on the ride of my life. 

At 20: Twenty Things I Would Tell My 15-Year-Old-Self

(In no particular order.)

1.      Never forget to experience God’s grace and live your namesake.

2.      The world will tell you who you must be, what you must do, how you must act (and all inverses). Live in the truth of who Jesus says you are, remembering that you cannot be any more righteous than you are by Him.

3.      Secure your heart so fully in God that you can offer it to anyone as they might need without fear of misuse.  

4.      Read, read, read.

5.      Do not let one disappointed love embitter your heart.

6.      Pursue the hearts of your siblings—you will need them.

7.      Take to heart the example of Jesus in private prayer, for that is the truest measure of your desire to know the Father and the truest demonstration of dependency on Him.

8.      Do not dampen your heart’s passion in conformity to people’s expectations of you.

9.      People will doubt your ability to “make it” as a writer; remember that writing is whatever you make of it.

10.  Forgive seventy times seven, and then again.

11.  Just remember, when you get that phone, you can never go back.

12.  Do not let two disappointed loves make you doubt.

13.  Know how to defend your faith.

14.  Don’t obsess over your outward appearance, for it will always demand more time, more energy, and more money. When you turn twenty, you will have to make up for lost time fashioning your character.

15.  Wait a few years to read Joshua Harris’ books.

16.  Do not obsess about what other people think of you, but be careful about how they perceive you, for upon that perception your reputation is established.

17.  Cultivate an appreciation for music and practice your guitar. Someday it will be a tremendous tool of expression and worship, if you know how to use it.

18.  Do not let three disappointed loves make you afraid.

19.  Ask Jesus to show you when you are being, and when you are being a moralist.

20.  Give yourself grace to make mistakes and wrong decisions. After all, there will be no twenty-year-old self to give you the right answers.

 

Painting the Blind Girl's Nails

Recently I had the pleasure of being pushed out of my comfort zone. An East Coast trip with two of my brothers ended in the Bronx where we spent two days with a family, the daughter of which was blind. It was my first extended experience with a disabled person.

I entered their home with all these preconceived notions about the life of a visually-impaired person, most which came from movies. I wondered if her eyes would be clouded over and if her other senses were so acute that she could karate-chop a person sneaking up on her. I wondered if she would want to feel my face to know what I looked like. I wondered if she would be docile and helpless, assisted in every aspect of life.

Crystal turned out to be none of these. She greeted us at the door and held out her hand. Adopted from China at eight, Crystal was a few months younger than I, but looked about thirteen. Her eyes weren’t clouded over; rather they moved of their own accord, back and forth, and in arcs, generally in the direction of the speaker where she tuned in with her ear.

I was her guide touring New York City. She took my arm and passed her walking stick across the pavement in front of her. People moved out of our way like Moses parting the Red Sea. Most were respectful, allowing us the disability seating in the subway; others were not so tactful, like the guy who said to me, “Yeah, I’d like to hold your hand, too,” as we passed on the sidewalk.

I had a lot of questions to ask Crystal about her life, and she was not shy about giving answers and elaborating. “If I describe the scenery to you, do you have any context for understanding it?” She said she knew what green was because of the trees and grass she has felt, but I realized she didn’t know how the color green looked because she'd never actually seen it. (Try describing a color to someone without using other colors or an object of that color, and then you'll see how abstract it is.)

She talked about her life as a person who sees would. She liked to go shopping; when I asked her what for, she answered, “I don’t know, I just like to go look around.” Or when talking about movies, she’d say, “I saw such-and-such and loved it."

When I went to bed, she would be sitting on her mattress, either knitting a scarf or tapping on her Braille computer. I was about to ask if I could turn the lamp off when I realized how ridiculous the question was. I lay back and stared into the darkness, listening to her fingers and trying to imagine what it was like to be blind.

On the last evening of our stay, Crystal asked me to paint her nails. “I have a whole collection of colors,” she said excitedly, “I’m obsessed with them!” She brought me a tin lunch box and rooted through it until her fingers found the one she was looking for. “This red one I got for Christmas.”

“It’s a beautiful wine color,” I said.

“Oh really?”

I stroked it on her nails. While we waited for the first coat to dry, I asked her what God was teaching her. To trust him, she answered, and confessed her fears about a learning program she was going into and a bible college she wanted to attend in Europe.

“Does being blind make it hard to trust God?”

“Yes. Sometimes I wonder why he made me have a disability when he could have made me without it.” Crystal went on to talk about the passages in Scripture where Jesus heals the blind man. “I think God made him blind so that he could heal him and be glorified. I wonder if he wouldn’t have known Jesus if he hadn’t been blind. Somehow I want to glorify God with my disability.”

I encouraged her that God already was being glorified through her. She was the most selfless, trusting person I have ever met. She didn’t allow her physical blindness to blind her to the needs of others. She was always serving, always thinking about others’ needs before her own.

Her servant heart made me ashamed of my own trivial complaints. Her longing for learning and travel dispelled all worries that we would have nothing in common. Her vulnerability stirred a fierce protectiveness in me. Her fear and longing of love and acceptance was not so removed from my own.

I spent only a short time with Crystal, but from what I observed, I believe her to be the embodiment of 1 Corinthians 13: patient, kind, humble, honoring, servant-hearted, trusting, hoping, persevering.

I also observed that I—who have twice her capability to go places and accomplish things—haven’t half her love. I am the resounding gong and clanging symbol. I am the one who can see and can’t see all at once. Are those who are visually, orally, or aurally impaired the only ones who must live vulnerably, trustingly, dependently? What would my life look like if I lived as she does?

If Cats Are the Devil, I Must Be a Demon.

I’ve never been particularly fond of cats, with the general opinion that if Satan had been female, his earthly form would’ve been the feline instead of the reptile. (Every time I see a cat, I automatically assume it is female, as if they have no need for males and reproduce by their own demonic powers.)

I had the pleasure of house sitting for a couple the past week and a half, with every luxury I could imagine, and only one pitfall: they owned two cats, both male. Oscar, the larger gray and white one and Boo, the brown and cream colored one with eyes like Puss ‘n Boots from Shrek.

While Oscar pranced around acting like he’d won the nomination, Boo shed cat hair, peed on the floor, and mewed at me while I read. I’d go into the bathroom to get ready for bed and come out fifteen minutes later to find him sitting outside the door, eyes glinting. I swear he was willing voodoo, perhaps in retribution for my accidently closing him in the closet for three hours.

As the week wore on, Boo’s meowing became more persistent and he would hardly leave me alone. The owner said if he did that, it usually meant he was hungry, but I was very punctual about feeding them Captain’s Choice Tuna. One evening I cracked the lid and Oscar came running, followed by Boo. After emptying the fishy can, I went into the bathroom next to the laundry room to brush my teeth. In the mirror, I saw Boo’s reflection in the hall. I had a nagging suspicion about why the cat watched and meowed.

Spitting the toothpaste out, I went into the laundry room and shooed Oscar away from the dish. Sure enough, the minute he passed Boo, the younger cat fled down the stairs. The poor cat had been starving all week because he was afraid of Oscar, who was feasting on all the tuna. After that I had to stand guard at the bottom of stairs so Boo could eat in peace.

Oscar paced back and forth in front of me, and then, seeing no way to pass me, fluffed up his fur and nuzzled against me. Now you kiss up to me, you little…When he didn’t succeed, he proceed to try to slip under my leg or hop over my foot, and then sat glaring at me. I felt deliciously manipulative at that point. Now how do you like it...

It wasn’t until the second to last night that Boo and I finally began to warm up to each other. I was tucked in bed with my laptop when he hopped up and curled next to me. He made this purring sound deep in his throat like a trolling motor, stroking his sandpapery tongue across my arm. I closed the door in an effort to keep him on the bed, but he panicked and leapt off, shrinking into the corner, mewing. He wouldn’t let me touch him. When I let him out, he streaked beneath a piece of furniture and wouldn’t be coaxed out. He gave this pitiful sound halfway between a mew and a honking chick, unmistakably crying. I knew if he had trusted me before, he didn't now.

It struck me that if cats are the devil, I must be a demon. I am just like Boo. Supply me with emotional and psychological nourishment when I'm hungry and then leave me to my solitude, pet me when I'm feeling luxurious because I am bigger and older and fluffier and more deserving than every other cat, and what on earth made you think I was going to do the same thing for you?? 

And then there are the innumerable times when someone tries to win my trust. Shows me what it feels like to have a friend and be loved. For a moment I am relaxed. And then the safe room suddenly looks like a trap I can't escape. So I wait for the first crack in the door to bolt and cower beneath a roof of excuses and fears, indistinguishable from a cat’s crying.

 

New Year's Tribute

For Abraham and the expanse of stars.

For that pinnacle moment when he believed God and was credited with righteousness.

For Sarah, a bitter, barren woman whose laughter was scoffing.

For Hagar, the human attempt to make God’s promise happen.

For Isaac, whose name meant laughter, the fulfillment of the first promise.

For Abraham’s faith in the sacrifice of his one and only son.

For God’s protection of his plan through a substitute sacrifice.

For the second-born: Jacob, who stole Esau’s blessing, and Perez, the offspring of incest.

For the barren woman in a familial culture: Sarah, Rachel, and Elizabeth.

For Bilhah, abused by Rachel’s manipulation and scorned upon giving Jacob sons.

For Leah, the ugly older sister and neglected wife.

For God’s faithfulness in giving her six sons, the triumph of a woman.

For the fourth son, Judah, and his descendants.

For the prostitute Rahab, who believed in the God of Jacob and was spared destruction, and for her son Boaz.  

For Ruth, a widowed Moabitess who left her people and pursued the kinsman redeemer.

For Obed, their son, the father of Jesse, the father of David.

For that youngest, most diminutive shepherd-boy, anointed by God as king.

For Solomon, David’s son, the product of adultery and murder.

For the series of Israel’s kings who did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord.

For the four hundred years of silence between the last prophet and a Wildman who ate locusts and honey.

For the faith of a young virgin and the courage of her betrothed carpenter.

For the birth of an infant in an obscure stable, the fulfillment of God’s first promise.

For the 42 generations of willfulness and ineptitude and God’s tremendous orchestration over 4,000 years to redeem his fallen creation.

For the one man, the Firstborn, the Freeborn, the King, the Kinsman Redeemer, and the Substitute Sacrifice.

For the girl who is also willful and inept.

For the God who uses the ordinary and imperfect.

For her bitterness of years past and scoffing of years to come.

For God’s forgiveness that purges bitterness and His faithfulness that rebukes scoffing.

For her human attempt to fulfill His promise of love, and the hearts she bowled over to get there.

For His unceasing pursuit of her heart.

For her barren idols of appearance, attention, and affirmation.

For His breaking down of her gods.

For her ungenerous heart and controlling hands.  

For the God who provides for a sparrow.  

For her selfish manipulation of others and her scathing words, for her cowardice and her taking of the wide road.

For His unconditional grace and sanctifying work.

For His faithful orchestration over twenty years.

For the year 2013. For the year 2014.

For the number of years, of which only He knows the exact number, until Christ returns to finish history.

I Am Not a Beautiful Mess

Sometimes revelation comes through reiteration. Last Wednesday, I sat beside two middle school girls in youth group, writing some idle notes as Ross talked about Christmas and why Jesus came as baby. Stuff I've heard before. It's easy to become complacent about the gospel when you've heard it a million times.

Something about the way he described God's holiness and humanity's messiness produced a revelation in my mind. Up to that point, the insight had been percolating in my head, a vague silhouette that for years I have been trying to snatch and pin down: what human messiness means.

I’ve been trying to write about it, but it keeps slipping through the spaces between the laptop keys. I gave notice at my job so I could focus on my passion. My passion: writing. Focus: writing passionately. Writing like J.R.R. Tolkien, Louisa May Alcott, Charlotte Bronte. Writing that gets to the core of the human plight.

I think I haven’t been able to pinpoint that focus because worldly truth has been clashing with God’s truth. My writing—an attempt at raw, emotional, relatable messiness—is lacking because it is only fulfilling the worldly truth that messiness is beautiful.

You see it all the time in the media: Jason Mraz’s song “A Beautiful Mess,” Hunter Hayes’ “Storm Warning,” Brad Paisley’s “Old Alabama,” all with some version of a girl who is imperfect and therefore beautiful. Movies play up themes with protagonists who are broken and learn to embrace their brokenness, learn to see the beauty in their failings.

In the literary community especially is beautiful messiness embraced. (Memoirs are generally a reflection on a time in one’s life where everything was a mess and—in reflection—is beautiful.) Nothing messy is beyond the scope of beauty, therefore all messiness should be embraced because beauty is desirable. Society embraces messiness because it is relatable. When you read someone’s memoir and realize they do/say/think the same truly awful things as you do, you feel less guilty for your failings.

Where does this understanding of embracing messiness come from if not an innate desire for beauty and wholeness? Our original design is for a beautiful wholeness, and our messiness is nothing more than a reminder of how great God’s plan is to redeem His design. The only beautiful thing about our messiness is that God still wants a relationship with us, even though our messiness separates us—and that’s because of His grace, not because our messiness is somehow attractive.

Because secular society does not acknowledge that Jesus is the source of the desire for wholeness, all it can do is make an idol of its messiness. We have come to celebrate our messiness because it is “only human.” All sorts of messiness (which is just a euphemism for sin) is justified because it is only human, and humanity is messy.

I’m beginning to realize there is something terribly flawed with this wisdom. Messiness is nothing without grace. Our messiness can’t approach His holiness. His justice cannot let our sin go unpunished. So He decided to suffer to allow us access to His beautiful wholeness until He makes us fully whole in the New Earth. How incredible that the God of the universe would make Himself human and experience the messiness of the world so we might have a savior who is able to sympathize with our weakness! So I might be in relationship with Him and embrace His beautiful wholeness.

I am not a beautiful mess. I am a terrible, sinful, hurtful mess. And it is only by His grace that I can partake of His beautiful wholeness. While I await the promise of a restored body and soul, I must divert from the literary world's wisdom and write about His grace, because my messiness has no meaning apart from his wholeness.