Real (In)Security: Part II - Naked and Alone

Fear. We all feel it. We all hate it. We try to escape it but it seems inescapable. It drives so much of what we do.

I remember being full of fear when I lived in Bolivia. I was alone, without friends or family in a foreign country where my ability to speak the language was faulty at best. I was deeply insecure about my purpose and about whether or not anyone within 100 kilometers even cared that I was alive.

I had no idea who I was or what I was doing. I felt so utterly alone and incompetent. For the first time in 23 years my parents, who had always had a daughter who found excitement in travelling away from home, could hear the loneliness flooding from their daughter’s voice on the other side of the telephone.  

But one night, while alone in my room in that distant country, I came across this photo:

And after that something changed.

My reality did not change.

My situation remained the same.

My loneliness was still there.

But that night I made a decision, a decision to try again tomorrow.

So the next day I woke up and leaned, heavy and hard, on the things I knew to be true. I knew that I was someone worth knowing, someone who had something to offer, and I also knew that my feelings of inadequacy were lying. I just had to remind myself of that.

God just had to remind me of who I was.

Slowly but surely I began to see progress and made a few new friends.

Those first 4 months in Bolivia were difficult. But I ended up leaving there full of joy, accomplishment, and a connected heart. I’d end up returning there twice more in the 18 months that followed to live and work. With God's help I overcame the fear of being alone and took life head on.

Through that experience these are some of the things I learned:

Fear is a tricky thing. In some sense it is necessary for our survival. Fear keeps us from doing stupid things, it makes us think before we leap, and it tells us when danger is near. In some sense fear can keep us safe.

But if you have too much fear it can debilitate you.

In the beginning our greatest fear was taken care of.

 “Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner'" (Genesis 2:18).

Everything else God had declared good. The only thing in that perfect world that was “not good” was being alone.

I think that for many of us our greatest fear is being alone.  Not the kind of alone you necessarily feel when you are the only person in a room, but the kind of “being alone” that produces loneliness. We fear being unloved, abandoned, or not cared for. We fear being surrounded by a hundred people and feeling as though not one of them truly cares for us.

But this fear of being alone is not something that human beings began their existence with. Adam was not lonely without Eve in the Garden, he wasn't even technically "alone" because God was there with Him.

In the beginning, loneliness was not an issue because human beings enjoyed intimate communion with God and then also with each other. In the beginning we could fully be ourselves. We could be naked (Hebrew: ‘arowm), bare both in appearance and in matters of the heart. We were without pretense;  we had nothing to hide and we were unashamed (Genesis 2:25).

But then we lost our security. When humanity fell into sin her walls were quickly raised; walls of defensiveness and fear. We were given clothes for our bodies and fear for our hearts because we could no longer live in complete unhindered nakedness; we had to be clothed. Somehow sin brought with it the necessity of covering ourselves up, both physically and emotionally/mentally. 

In Genesis 3:8-10 Adam states here that he was afraid of God because He was naked. Why did his nakedness make him afraid? In reality we know the truth, Adam was not afraid of his physical nakedness – God had created Adam and was well acquainted with what an unclothed human body looked like. The word Adam used for naked, a different word than that used in 2:225, tells us why he was afraid of the Lord. The Hebrew term ‘eyrom implies a slightly different kind of nakedness. The kind that also implies helplessness. And this is why Adam was afraid. Because not only had he disobeyed God, but he was also helpless to do anything about it. He was helpless to repair the relationship; to fix it, to undo his sin; to erase any of it. And so Adam was afraid.

In a matter of seconds a relationship that was founded on security becomes founded on fear. This is because sin brings fear and shame. Sin brings the fear of not measuring up; it breaks our connection with God and others.

Not only is Adam naked and fearful, but he also quickly becomes defensive, blaming his wife for his own sin (Genesis 3:12). This man and woman who were created live in unity with one another quickly find that a wedge has now been driven between them. Two people united as one flesh became a divided flesh; relationships became broken.

Through all of the studying and thinking I have done on the subject of insecurity and fear I have some to believe that much of the suffering we inflict on others, and even the suffering we inflict on ourselves, is rooted in the things that we lost in the Garden. In the garden we lost our innocence and security. Fear and shame came on the scene and we could no longer trust that who we were was enough. We became utterly naked and helpless.  We lost the courage to boldly approach the Lord. We lost the courage to even approach one another. We lost the safety that comes from living in intimate community.

We began to fear being alone.

The very thing that God said was “not good” is the same thing that our sin brought us into. 

Loneliness has become the human condition. We all feel it, we all fear it.

But we are not alone, are we? Adam still had Eve, he even still had God. But after the fall something was fundamentally different in their relationships. Something inside of them changed when sin entered their world. Their relationships were now largely controlled by fear.

We are in the same predicament as Adam and Eve. We are born into a sinful world. We are born into a world that is riddled with fear and shame.

We are all born as sinners. It is a reality we cannot escape. And we all succumb to fear at times, to defensiveness, we like to blame others for our sins. And we all feel loneliness from time to time (or most of the time), don’t we?

How utterly hopeless this seems…

But hope isn’t lost! There are people all over the world who live lives that have largely been set free from insecurity and fear. And we are often amazed when we meet these people. They seem to have this contagious energy; they have a brilliance to them that we are drawn to.

Somehow they got their security back. Somehow they began to believe in their innocence.

It is possible. But it isn’t easy.

It will take a whole lot of courage.

I am not professing to be someone who has figured this all out, but I am professing to be someone who once lived a life riddled with insecurity, shame, and doubt. But then something changed. It began that night in Bolivia and it has continued on from then till now. My journey is not over (far from it!), but I can sit here and write to you all with a deep assurance that insecurity need not be the driving force of our lives.

So I invite you to come on this journey with me. This journey of exploring what real security looks like. If you'd like to come along for the ride then sit back, take a deep breath, tell yourself to be brave, and stay tuned for our next post about the kind of courage that changes everything.
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Do you struggle with insecurity? Have you found ways to overcome it? Do you have thoughts or comments you would like to share? Please comment below or feel free to send your stories to kait.jongsma@gmail.com - I would love to hear from you!

Real (In)Security: The Beginning of Change (A Late Introduction)

A few weeks ago I decided that I can’t watch the news any more. I don’t mean that I won’t. I mean I can’t. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, I just cannot do it. I get an ugly feeling in my bones when I do. There is too much suffering, and too many days go by when I wonder how we got so lost.

(Photo Via Nicki Varkevisser)

The world is full of stories of those who seemed to have lost touch with the things that make them human. Every day we are bombarded with stories of how we have hurt one another. I would like to say that these stories don’t shock me. History has told me that these things happen, a Holy Book even tells me why, but still I am shocked and saddened by these things. During my short 26 years I have also experienced a world of goodness, and so I am puzzled at the paradox of a world that is at the same time both beautiful and ugly; lovely and hateful; peaceful and yet full of chaos and war.

I crave a world that is full of goodness and grace, and though I am not the Saviour, I am His child and He has created me to be salt and light in this world; to be a preserver and an illuminator.

I often struggle with what this looks like on the ground. I wonder how I am supposed to do this because I am stumbling along in life just like the rest of us, unsure of what my role is in the chaos and noise.

All I know is that there are many moments when I know that we were made for more. We’re better than this, aren't we? We’re better than the bickering and bitterness, the mistreating and competing and taking advantage of each other. We’re definitely better than all the violence and rage. And I know this because I have seen glimpses of a better world; I have seen people who breathe life into the hearts of others instead of sucking it out like a vacuum. I have felt joy so pure that I wish it would last forever.

I once read that feeling that way – feeling so good you don’t want it to end – is an indication that maybe it wasn't supposed to end. We were made to live in eternal bliss with God.

But things got broken.

And it was us who broke them.

And I have asked God over and over why this is so. Why does life have to be this way?

Lord! I cry out with my whole heart, why do we hurt? And why do we hurt each other?

Because though I don’t believe that suffering, evil, and pain can cease to exist (at least not right now), I do believe that as God’s image bearers we have it within us to love one another as God loves us.

But the reality is that on the grand scale, we don’t.

Granted, there are some groups of people  that are fighting to live in real community with one another. They are inspiring. But the world is still overrun with pain inflicted on one human being by the hand of another. We still live in a world where evil seems to be winning (and I use the word seem here because I also believe that evil is not, in fact, winning - at least not on the grand scale and later we’ll talk about why).

I have wrestled with this question of suffering my whole life. I have read mountains of books and articles and tried to find some sort of reconcilable “theology of suffering” that makes sense to my empathetic brain. I have asked the question of why too many times. Why are we like this? And more importantly, is there hope for us? Is there hope for change?

I believe that there is. And most people who know me know that I believe that hope to be found in Jesus Christ. But please don’t write me off as another religious type just yet. I am not writing to try and persuade you to convert to Christianity, but rather I write to encourage you to consider three universal human values, and then to consider how practicing each of these values – values which were perfectly modelled to us by Jesus – might change you and thereby change the world.

In this series we’ll be talking about these three values which I believe are essential to our happiness and fulfilment as human beings. I like to call them the Fierce 3:

•          Courage
•     Confidence
•     Community

These may seem like weird values to choose, but trust me, they are crucial to our ability to thrive as healthy, loving, and peaceful human beings. These things mark the beginning of change.

As your read you will most certainly be challenged, agree, disagree, and have revolutionary thoughts of your own. 

Send them to me. 

I would love to hear the stories and opinions that arise from your heart as we take a look at things such as fear, suffering, and vulnerability. Will you journey with me as we attempt to piece together what it might look like to live in a better world? Stay tuned for my next post which will explore the concept of fear and why courage is needed.

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Have thoughts or comments you would like to share? Please comment below or feel free to send your stories to kait.jongsma@gmail.com.

The Outflow of Faith

We all spend a lot of time trying to become better people. The local Chapters store is full of shelves brimming with self-help books. Christians especially spend a lot of time doing this thing I like to call "sin management". We have somehow come to believe that our actions are what matter most. I mean, actions speak louder than words, don't they? But contrary to what our surface-obsessed world might say, our words and actions aren't what matter most. Instead it is who we are, not what we say or do, that matters most to the Lord. This is not to say that actions and words don't matter at all - they matter a fair amount! But read through any of the Gospels and you will see that words and actions are not enough for Jesus. In fact, words and actions are virtually worthless if we have done nothing to address the attitude of our hearts.

Jesus teaches us a third way. A way that is not driven by words or actions, but by something different.

He does not teach knowledge accumulation - knowing and saying the right things at the right times.

He does not teach outward action - doing the right things at the right times.

He teaches inward transformation - transforming our words and actions by transforming our hearts (Luke 6:45).

This concept is introduced to us very early on in the Bible through the story of Abraham. Abraham was counted as righteous not because he did and said all the right things (though as the father of our faith he was a pretty stand up guy!), but because he had faith. 

We spend so much time trying to control the outward things that we neglect to focus in matters of the heart. We focus on sin management and trying to control external factors that contribute to our sin instead of focusing on the only thing that is actually within our power to control: our hearts. We cannot control the world around us, but we can take responsibility for our own thoughts, feelings, words and actions. 

In Matthew 17 Jesus tells His disciples that they were not able to drive out a demon because of the weakness of their faith. Might it also be true that we are unable to get a grip on the evil in our lives because we too lack faith?

(Photo via RobinMeadDesigns)

If we don’t defeat sin, if we don’t thrive, if we don’t successfully endure suffering might it be because we lack faith? Maybe we fail not because we are weak, not because we are incapable, not because we are naïve or lacking in knowledge or self-control (though all these things may be true) – but because we do not have faith in the God who has demonstrated over and over again throughout history that He always gains the victory.

This does not mean that we need to beat ourselves up over it. But just that perhaps we need to shift our focus away from "sin management" and towards faith growth. 

What does that actually mean? How do you increase your faith in practical way?

Here are a few places we can start:

1) Get to know who God is

We cannot trust someone we don’t know or have no relationship with. Take a lesson from your other daily relationships: trust grows when we spend time with someone and see that they are a person of integrity, that they are loyal, honest and have our best interests at heart.

2) Look for God in the small things

Sometimes our faith is weak because we don’t look for God’s work in our lives or we miss the small but incredible ways in which He works. In Matthew 17:10-13 Jesus tells the disciples that what the Scriptures say about Elijah and the Messiah are being fulfilled right before their very eyes, yet they failed to see it. Why?  I think it has something to do with their eyes. They were looking for some triumphant Saviour who would overthrow Rome, not a humble carpenter's son and a crazy wild man who ate honey and locusts. Sometimes we don't think that God is at work in our lives because we are looking for grand gestures and miracles. God does those from time to time, but most of the time I believe that He works in the small things – in the encouragement of His Word, when a generous friends buys you coffee, when you're able to pay the bills every month, when someone offers to complete a task you had been struggling to find the time to do, when you choose love over bitterness. God often shows up in humble ways that we don't expect.

3) Don’t be a slave to your emotions

Sometimes our faith suffers because we don’t feel as though God has fulfilled His promises. We don’t feel  happy, we don’t feel  forgiven, we don’t feel  blessed, we don’t feel as though things will work out for good. Emotions are tricky things because they are powerful. I firmly believe that emotions are a gift, but like any gift they can be raised to the position of an idol. Depend less on how you feel and more on what you know to be true (this is where wisdom and understanding come in). Keep company with people who regularly remind you of God’s faithfulness and His Truth.

4) Take a leap

Faith in another person is solidified when we take the leap of faith and they come through. My relationship with my best friend was solidified when I shared with her a very personal story about a hurt that I had experienced in my childhood. Our trust in one another grew as she shared a similar story and we were able to comfort and speak truth into each other’s lives. My trust in her was solidified because she never judged me and to this day has never told another soul (though sharing with her was a first step towards me being willing to share my story with others). That age old saying, “you never know until you try” is true. You can never grow to trust someone if you are never in a situation in which you must trust them. Take a leap; step out in faith and see what God will do. Give Him the opportunity to show you that He is trustworthy.

"For we walk by faith, not by sight." - 2 Corinthians 5:7

the Most Beautiful Hope in the world

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.'

And he who was seated on the throne said, 'Behold, I am making all things new.' Also he said, 'Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.' And he said to me, 'It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.'"

- Revelation 21:1-7

Real (In)Security Part I: Friendship Jealousy

There are so many things I have wanted to write lately, but I have been utterly distracted and unmotivated in the area of writing lately. I hate it. But today that changes, because today I was given a wise word from a friend. 

I was reminded that sometimes we need to press through our feelings of apathy in order to gain the higher prize that pushing forward brings. If we always wait until we feel better to do things, then we will be waiting for a long time. And so though I have not felt like writing lately, I have also had several things pressed upon my heart that I feel led to share. And so I push through the sluggish feeling.

I will soon be starting a blog series, perhaps the first official series I have ever done. The series will be a conversation about vulnerability and the dynamics of the array of relationships we have in our lives and as a sort of ‘appetizer’ to that I’d like to chat a little about female friendships, in particular this tendency that we females have towards jealousy.

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I was seated at a high-top table at the local Starbucks a few months back chatting with a dear friend about jealousy. I was frustrated with myself:

“She’s moved away, made lots of new friends and I just found myself being threatened and jealous because of that." I said to her. "Shouldn't I be happy for my friend?” I don't know what I was looking for. I just needed to say out loud the thoughts and feelings that were swimming around in my head.

My friend’s response to my confession was both humble and convicting in the most backwards way.

“I know!” she exclaimed, “I've felt exactly the same way! Why can’t we just be happy that our friends are happy and making new friends?”

We chatted a bit more, and later that week I ended up confessing my feelings to my friend over Skype:

“R...” I said to her.  "I don't want to be jealous of your newly forged friendships. I want to be happy for you. I don’t want to be selfish or insecure, I want to rejoice at the fact that you have people around you when I can’t be there, and even when I can! I want to rejoice at the fact that you are experiencing the fullness of community. But I was jealous, and I need to figure out why.”

R and I had a great chat that night about what friendship means and why growth, even of a community of friends, often involves growing pains. The most invigorating part of our conversation was that there was never a clarification of who was “highest” in the pecking order of her friends, mostly because she doesn't sort all of her friends hierarchically. Instead there was a clarification of value and investment in our friendship. That conversation helped set me at ease, but I was still frustrated that I felt jealous in the first place. Why would one woman ever be jealous of another woman's friends?

In his book The Four Loves C.S. Lewis tells a story that seems to explain the danger of this strange phenomenon (that even men seem to struggle with from time to time) more clearly:

“In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s [Tolkien’s] reaction to a specifically Charles joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him “to myself” now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald. Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, 'Here comes one who will augment our loves.' For in this love 'to divide is not to take away.’”

It is beautiful to think that the more friends my dearest R will have the better I will get to know her because the more facets of her personality I will see. It is also a humbling and relieving thought to realize that as one of her many friends I am not her everything, nor do I have to be. 

But why am I jealous? I don't wish to be. I want to give this things that Lewis calls "true Friendship" freely to all my friends, especially to someone like R who is the closest thing I have ever had to a sister and is my kindred spirit.

So I prayed about it and talked with some people about it and this is what I have concluded: 
We women are very relational in nature and I believe that this aspect of our God-given nature can produce a divine ability to forge beautiful relationships. But most of us also share this tendency to get jealous. We tear one another down, we gossip and we compete for attention and affection. Why do we do this? As relational beings shouldn't we realize that jealousy is counter-productive to the growth of healthy friendships? 

Some people may chalk jealousy up to being a fruit of our relational nature. We are jealous because we want to protect our friendships. But after talking with several women about the subject I am now convinced that our jealousy is not the love-child of our “femaleness” and our territorial tendencies don’t really have anything to do with our relational nature.

Jealousy, more than anything else, is an issue of insecurity.

It may be a product of broken trust, negligence or a myriad of other relational blunders. But most often I believe that jealousy is a fruit of insecurity; it is a disbelief that who we are is enough - that we are worthy, valuable, likeable and good. We fear being replaced. In this world of throw-away everything we fear being tossed in the friend trash like yesterday’s leftovers. And this fear is often misplaced - our friends don't treat us like trash, but somehow we still believe that we are and so we self-protect. I think the reasons for our insecurity are as diverse as we as women are. But we shouldn't be this way because God created women as fierce, beautiful, helpful, caring, nurturing and audacious beings.* 

So here is a challenge for us. Let’s discover the roots of our insecurity. There is a different cause for each of us, through the help of a wise mentor I am just beginning to discover the roots of my own. But seriously, let’s figure this out and deal with it because every woman should feel the peace that comes with loving and accepting who she is; who God made her to be. But not only that, let’s do it for our friends, that we may bless them with the ability to enjoy the fullness of many friendships and the freedom to be fully themselves and because we as women were created to build relationships, not tear them down. If you're looking for a place to start, reading this might be helpful.

* For examples on women who are like this see the story of Ruth in the book of Ruth; Deborah in Judges 4-5; Rahab in Joshua 2 and 6:15-25; or Esther in the book of Esther, among others.

If you have a similar story of struggle with jealousy in friendships, please comment below or write to me at kait.jongsma @ gmail.com -  I would love to hear your story and be able to encourage you as you journey towards security in relationships!

Abba

Dear Father,

I pray that the world would know You as Abba; that the fatherless children of this world would have a Daddy. That those who’s fathers are absent or abusive or negligent would know You as the ultimate Father, the ultimate caregiver who loves to give good gifts to His children. That they would be able to balance the notion of You being a God who is completely holy and righteous and yet completely loving and completely kind.

May we come to you unhindered. May we seek you without fear. May we wish to please you because we love you. And may we know that Your love holds no conditions, no requirements, no have-to's, no limits. It is free, complete, unconditional and here. It has not left us alone. You have not abandoned us.

Oh God, that we would see you through eyes unveiled, not with the tints and cracks our earthly fathers have given us but with real vision. Help us see through the things we have experienced here on earth and to taste Heaven. May we forever approach your throne of grace and be overwhelmed by your love.

Amen. 

The Power of Words

I have been inspired lately by the teaching series at our lovely church on the Power of Words.

The words that have been spoken over us are powerful.  I was reading this blog post from Allison Vesterfelt about self-identity and it asked a very important question: where do you get the words you use to describe yourself from?

If you think about it, many of the words we use to describe ourselves are words that others have used to describe us. Words that have been spoken us, either positively or negatively. For one reason or another, though many words spoken over me have been words filled with love, sincerity, and thankfulness, I have always tended to focus on the negative. You’re stupid. You’re a liar. You’re annoying, weird, a little crazy. You're just plain not worthy of love.

And the strange part is that I'm sure more positive words have been spoken over me more often than the negative ones above. Some of those words were never even spoken by friends or family or any person in particular. They were just words that got stuck in my brain by some other negative spirit force out there.* And yet for some reason I have chosen to focus on them, rather than on all of the good things people (and my Father) think about me. And so often I wonder why I let the few bad things that have been said about me suddenly define everything I am. The negative spirit is winning.

Another one of my friends wrote this beautiful post about her body (it isn’t nearly as revealing as it sounds, but it sure is intimate). One of her points includes choosing believing what people say. Though that part of her “Bodies are Amazing” series has yet to be written , I would imagine that she will talk about believing the people who tell her that she is beautiful, and that they love her curly hair, and that her body is a blessing and not a curse.

My deal is not with my body. It is with my soul. With... well...  ME.

I have trouble believing that who I am is beautiful; that I should like my weird quirks instead of trying to be what somehow got defined as “normal;” that who I am is a blessing and not a curse.

Photo via (rachelraedotme)

But I am starting to believe these things. I can’t always pinpoint on exactly how. Part of believing is the wonderful help that comes in the form of good friends who speak beautiful words of truth about you. Allison in her post above talks about the importance of finding good friends. Another part of believing is that wonderful word called choice. You can choose what to believe, what words spoken over you to accept as truth. I can’t help but think of my best friend and one of her favourite phrases her mom taught her to say, "I don’t accept that." And you always say it a little indignant and with a little bit of rebellion. I don’t accept the negative words you choose to speak over me. I don’t accept your judgement of my inadequateness. And the things I do accept? All those wonderful words about me that have been poured out onto the pages of the greatest book ever written. 

I choose to believe what my Father says and to love the soul that is me.

May you choose the same for you.

*The devil is his name and lying is his game, my friends.

Hi, my name is Kait and I am a self-protector

If you're a self-protector too, read this: http://allisonvesterfelt.com/self-protection/