The Core

In celebration of my 22nd half-birthday, and the day I can officially claim to be 23, I have been pondering the concept of being wrong. It's a novel concept for me ;) (totally joking). I'm getting quite used to being wrong, actually. Which is good. It keeps me humble. And my birthday and half-birthday are the perfect days to ponder all the times I wasn't right. I have a whole ritual built up for my birthday and half-birthday celebrations, one that doesn't involve cake, parties, or presents (though it still typically involves chocolate, thank heavens!). Nope. My birthday celebrations require introspection, lengthy journal entries, a formal prayer, and, apparently, blog posts. 

The ritual for my official birthday is much lengthier than for a half-birthday. On my official birthday I engage in an hour or so of introspection and journaling as I mentally review the previous year, cataloging my successes and the number of times I failed with flair. Then I start planning for the next year, writing out everything I want to realize before my next birthday (including character flaws I'm planning to fix). That's actually my favorite part of my birthday. It sure beats the next part when I think back to the worst birthday of my life--my 21st birthday also known as the day I came face to face with the fact that my plans, my dreams, and my goals had not turned out like I wanted them to. Finally, I kneel down and close my eyes in a formal prayer during which I attempt to trust my life to God to direct as He chooses. That is a struggle and I don't usually feel that successful. Being wrong might keep me humble but that doesn't mean I cede easily

To mark the end of my birthday celebration I eat chocolate. 

And cry.

It's a great birthday and I'm not even being sarcastic. I genuinely enjoy (almost) every aspect of my birthday. Much more than I enjoy presents and parties and having a fuss made over me. 

My birthday's weren't always so somber. I didn't used to give turning a different age a second thought, but the closer I got to my 21st birthday, the more serious I became. Because for almost my entire life, the end of my 20th year was a major milestone. A marker. A measure for where I expected my life to be and what I expected to be doing. And the closer I got to 21, the harder it became to accept that I would not be living my life according to my plan. The plan I'd laid out for myself at the age of 4 and never once second-guessed. A plan based on just two things (well, three or four, I guess). That I would not go to college (1), would be married (2) by the age of 20 (3) and become a home school mom (4). 

My 18th half-birthday was celebrated the day after I started college. I am not married, past 20, and am not at all close to being a mom. 

Apparently 4-year-old me was wrong. And that truth hurts. It's hurt since my first day of college. It hurt every time my birthday was celebrated with a slew of midterms. It hurt when my 20-year-old friends got married. It hurts every time someone tells me that there's some guy out there whose going to be so lucky to marry me and who will absolutely cherish me (my mom's words, not mine). And it hurts every birthday and half-birthday and about a million times in between. 

Thankfully I am self-aware enough to realize that although it's painful to have been wrong about the details and timing of my life's biggest dream, that pain is nothing to what I would feel if I'd been right and gotten married by 20 to the wrong person. That terrifying thought is what keeps me grateful to God that He didn't give me an opportunity to rush into anything permanent. It's also what makes me keep relationships at arms length.

I've met too many people I thought I could trust only to find out they were lying (if not outright, at least by omission). I've learned that if people want to they can put on a really convincing temporary facade that covers the ugly and occasionally sinister side underneath. I live in a world where powerful people lie through their teeth and dark secrets are cloaked in glamour. How am I supposed to know who the right person is?

Thank the Lord for my dad who taught me how to look beyond the outside and see the real person within. He taught me truth with one, simple, oft repeated story--the story of how he met my mom. That story showed me that people's actions don't matter as much as the reason behind those actions. That sometimes people do stupid things but that doesn't mean they're stupid. That charismatic people can have rotten characters. That an unfortunate number of people cannot be trusted. But that every once in a while you find an individual who despite their hardened, scarred, and wary exterior, has a good core. That's what he called it. A good core. According to Dad it was my mom's good core that convinced him to pursue her despite a ridiculous number of setbacks. And a good thing he did because he was right--underneath the touchy, emotional woman he married was a woman with a lot of pain and trauma and a remarkably good core. 

Thanks to Dad I've been able to connect with people on a deeper level. When you're not focusing on how people look or how they act and are instead trying to understand the "why" behind their actions, it's a lot easier to respond gently, extend mercy, and forgive freely. I've definitely not mastered it. I do still jump to an woeful number of conclusions before I remember to cast aside my perception and see what's really going on, but once I do, almost every relationship improves.

Why not every relationship?, you ask. Because every once in a while I meet someone who I feel like is rotten at the core. A person, who, no matter how hard I try, I can't figure out. Someone who lies outright, betrays me, and wounds me so much that I can't see past the scar tissue. And in those moments I think, "Wow, that's what a bad core looks like." 

Let me warn you. That is the wrong thing to think. 

I've spent most of my life attempting to see people's cores and I thought I did a pretty good job. I can think of few people (if any) that I haven't been able to reconcile with and accept in spite of past wrongs or hurts or conflicts in our relationship. But I suppose God knew that in the back of my subconscious I wasn't so merciful as I thought. 

Which, I suppose, is why He sent me Isaiah 59. I had to read it in two sittings because the first time I couldn't make it past verse 7. It was too awful. Talking about people sacrificing children, running to evil, shedding innocent blood, weaving traps, and glorying in violence. I couldn't take it. I closed the book and told God He'd better not mind if I didn't read any more. It was too sickening to read about those rotten-to-the-core people. 

The next day I opened the chapter again, for two reasons. I'd made a goal to finish Isaiah and I suppose I was morbidly curious about what else these wicked, rotten humans were doing. I picked up where I'd left off, only to stumble to a stop in confusion two verses later. Verse 7 had been written in third person from the perspective of someone who was watching and describing the evil from the outside. Verse 9, without warning, jumped to first persons as the writer counted himself among the people he was describing. It was unexpected and shocking. And it took me three times rereading the chapter for me to figure it out. 

Isaiah, who had just been describing all sorts of atrocities committed by people I'd assumed were rotten, began describing the core of those "rotten" people. According to Isaiah, the very people who had spent their lives killing, raping, and hurting innocents, were, at the core, lost, confused, and hurting. A core that I not only understood mentally, but also connected with on a deep emotional level. He spoke of the wicked man's recognition of the harsh, inescapable nature of justice. Of the darkness surrounding them, causing them to stumble and grope as if they were blind. A darkness of their own making that left them so desolate they felt like dead men (zombies came to mind at that passage). They spoke of anger and their own inadequacies that made them "roar all like bears" and a depression so great they "mourn sore like doves" in silent torment. They spoke of knowing their sins, the transgressions on their heads. The cost of such actions. The utter hopelessness of their situation. 

What tore my heart was that these individuals, lost in torment and darkness, didn't know where to turn for mercy and hope. They didn't know about Christ or how to reach Him. They were trapped in their iniquity with the awful realization of what they'd done and absolutely no way they could ever pay recompense for their actions. Doomed to live in darkness for eternity and forced to accept that death as their lot. 

In 7 short verses, Isaiah showed me their core. A core that I recognized in myself. True, I've never taken an innocent life but unfortunately I have taken the life and joy out of people with a thoughtless comment. I do understand what it's like to feel lost, alone, tormented, depressed, angry, inadequate, judged, doomed, and hopeless. I do know what it’s like to lash out. To try and hurt people to cover up the pain. Pain is pain and darkness is darkness. I saw my core reflected in those pages. I saw their core. And it wasn't rotten.

Suddenly, the description of God as "no respecter of persons" made a lot of sense. I'd always taken it to mean He doesn’t judge people based on age, size, race, deformity, social class, or family and instead sees all people equally. But it is so much more than that. More than not looking at race or social class. He literally does not look at the outside--not at the behavior, the attitude, the really bad decisions, the walls of anger and resentment and blame. Not even the intentional rebellion. He sees none of that. He sees only the core--the soul. The too often scared, hurting, crying spirit who needs someone to be a light in the darkness, to share the message of Christ and redemption, to forgive and love unconditionally while teaching the right way to live. True, not everyone is ready for such things. Some are still willingly led astray by the darkness, but for every one who's still choosing the rotten path, there are likely five more who've hit rotten-bottom with their cores split wide open, pleading for a chance to turn back to the light. Because behind it all, behind the evil and the mistakes, behind the hurt, behind each person there is an inherently good core. A light of Christ. And someday, hopefully, that core is going to shine through.

So this half-birthday I think I'll be working on letting my outward behaviors reflect my core so that I don't fall into judgement and pride as quickly. So that I'm willing to reach out and help even when I'm hurting. So that I don't let scar tissue keep me from loving. I don't have any clear idea of how to accomplish that, but it seems a much more worthy pursuit than sitting and wondering when I'm going to get married. :)

In case you were wondering, Dad, that is most important thing I learned from you growing up.