Perhaps you’ve noticed the blog’s been a little quieter than usual. I’ve been enjoying a series of delightful days, on vacation at last. Everything in me feels like I’ve finally set down an overstuffed backpack.
But I’m not what you would consider great at vacation. Africa has stained itself on the inner walls of my cranium. Ominous lines from parables ricochet in my head about a rich man “in [his] lifetime receiving good things” (Luke 16:25), then spending his eternity in anguish. Guilt and I have always had a tight-knit relationship, while I have a complicated, historically unhealthy relationship with desire and pleasure. In college, I was literally wasting away by my ability to suppress my desire for food.
So there’s that.
Too Much Perfection?
Sometimes, my days on vacation felt like too much perfection. It was a line I’d picked up from the 1996 flick Bed of Roses, where a florist (Christian Slater) is telling a woman about Sterling roses. They’re a dusky shade of purple-gray, and get this—have no thorns. The woman tells the florist this is highly suspect; that roses should have thorns. Otherwise it’s too much perfection. Later, after the two spend a day together, the florist sends the woman a bouquet of Sterling roses, thanking her for a day of too much perfection.
But on said vacation, I was remembering a friend of mine who’s suffering deeply in her service overseas. I asked God to refresh her. That he would let her know he has her name written on his hands. That she is more than what she can muscle through with her head down.
Then I wondered if people had been praying that for me. I thought of how much I would want my friend to absorb God’s kindness; to soak it up as a daughter, not a hired hand.
You are More Than What You Do for God.
Courtney Doctor writes in her book Identity Theft that three lies tempt us from our core identity as children of God:
The lie of the slave says you have to work and work hard, to secure and sustain the Lord’s love…your worth is tied to your ability to produce and behave.
….The lie of the orphans says you’ve been abandoned and are all alone. No one really cares about you, provides for you, protects you, or loves you.
And the lie of the illegitimate child says you don’t really belong, never did. The warmth and joy of family life is reserved for others—those who are more deserving…
I’d been skimming through the story of the prodigal son (side note: do not miss Timothy Keller’s podcasts on these). My homeboy in this story has always been the elder son; the good one. My heart actually bends for the hot anger of the elder son: I can picture the tears on his face, his wide gestures. I guess I’ve heard a translation of them in the stories of so many exhausted servants of God: Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends (Luke 15:29).
So in reading the father’s words to the elder son there on my vacation with a side of guilt, I tripped over them in a new way. Son [/daughter], you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.
(It is not lost on me that at the end of this story, it’s not the younger one who remains far from the father.)
This braided itself with the words of Peter Scazzero in Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. He warns us not to use God as an excuse for avoiding the pleasure he created for us:
God never asked us to die to the healthy desires and pleasures of life—to friendships, joy, art, music, beauty, recreation, laughter, and nature. God plants desires in our hearts so we will nurture and water them. Often these desires and passions are invitations from God gifts from him. Yet somehow we feel guilty unwrapping those presents.*
I see a similar take in 1 Timothy: For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer (4:4-5). Obviously we could use overindulgence as a willingly blind excuse for our own idols, our own selfishness. But imagine my daughter rejecting the gift I’m bringing her from our trip: I just can’t. It’s not for me. Nope. I bought it specifically for the smile on her face; to remind her that even when she can’t see me, her well-being is on my mind.
The List
I knew that soon, my vacation would be over. Like a hand pulled from the sand, real life would slide right back in. So I started a list of all the thankful happinesses from these handful of days; things I felt grateful for as they fell in my hands like a waterfall. I’m already getting close to 100.
I think of God’s seven-times-yearly scheduled festivals (and most of them breaks from work) for his people, his years of Jubilee, the Sabbaths he associates with himself. I think of my chief end as a person–not just to glorify God, but enjoy him. And I realized today that I haven’t cried on this vacation once—except for last night, in a romantic moment with my husband watching the sunset. What a nice change.
My list of happy gratitude has past three pages! Here’s to a few days of too much perfection.
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