The Eating Contest

I’ve been mulling over this blog post for some time. Ironically, I absolutely did not want to write it today and am making myself do it anyway.

I’ve been thinking recently about happiness and joy (and had a very lengthy conversation on the subject with my very dear friend just this weekend).  I’ve needed to boil down my definitions of these two concepts and have found that it all looks different to everyone, which was fascinating, and I would love to hear comments on how people view it differently!

In my Thanksgiving post from the end of last year, I touched briefly about the war between flesh and spirit, what I think I have learned is that it is less of a war and more of an eating competition, and we stack the odds.

The flesh craves happiness.

The spirit craves joy.

I think what makes the flesh happy is usually set up by lack. Praise makes me happy if I have felt worthless. Food makes me happy if I have been hungry, Wealth makes me happy if I have been poor, etc etc etc. For me, I crave validation, time by myself away from the judgements and opinions of others, order and cleanliness, and yeah, I crave cake.

The spirit, the new spirit anyway—the one that has already been justified before and has peace with God *Rom 5:1* and been given an inheritance with Christ in the heavenly places *Eph 2:6* (I don’t quite remember what it was like, if I even acknowledged a higher desire than that of my flesh, before that point)—craves connection with its source, it’s vine, it’s light and life and, at least  for me, three things in particular:

To know God. To know myself, through his eyes, as he created me to be. And to make God known and seen by others.

I don’t know what your things are, but I encourage you to do some thinking into what your flesh and spirit crave and where you put, and ought to put, your resources.

Interestingly, when people are thirsty, they sometimes think they’re hungry. When their Spirit is hungry, they can often believe the Flesh is instead—a restlessness, an anhedonia, a general fog or dissatisfaction. And I can eat cake, clean everything, watch Youtube for hours, buy something, paint my nails, and at the end of the evening, I put off going to sleep because something doesn’t feel right. The day isn’t over. I haven’t fixed the feeling.

I haven’t fed my spirit with joy, even if I’m been trying to make my flesh happy. I have done nothing in that day to know God, to know who I am in him, or to make him known.

Because I can eat a dozen cheeseburgers and a gallon of ice cream, but I haven’t had any water!

Our flesh is loud, it’s prominent and obvious. It’s visceral. It yells a lot, things like: I have no money. I have no success. I have no status. I have no worth. I’m hungry. I’m cold. I’m tired. I’m grieving. I’m hurt. I’m addicted. I’m lonely. This isn’t what I wanted.

I used to have a habit of beating up my flesh when it started to talk like this—give it the backhand and tell it to shut up. I’ve been a little kinder of late. I’ve been letting it have its say and listen to some sad music and explain how it wanted things to be, for a little while. Because it’s okay to not be okay, and amazingly, at 27, I find it’s okay to not be perfect.

I can let my flesh speak, but I still don’t want to feed it.

I don’t want to go out looking for success or satisfaction that won’t lead to joy. I want to admit that I was created as a human being with a flesh and a sprit, and that’s not a bad thing, but to survive this really crappy world and all its disappointments and tragedies, I can’t just satisfy my flesh. I need to feed my spirit.

I realize nobody else is coming to the pity party, that looking through Pintrest is a lot like Madam Blueberry and her creepy photographs of her neighbor’s stuff, that no amount of feeding for my flesh compares to the living water my spirit craves. I talk to myself the way I do my 4-year-old son. “I know that’s what you want. You can’t have that right now, but you can do this instead.” And then pray we both understand why the alternative is a better option. 

Food for our flesh is not always readily available, and it runs out fast with the next tragedy or frustration or the last cupcake. Food for our spirit is always with us, will never leave or forsake us *Deut 31:6*.

When our flesh is our focus, our spirit is drowned by the hunger of that flesh. But when our spirit and its health are where our resources go, then it can grow to eclipse the flesh so that, in every circumstance, we can remain satisfied, have motivation in the right directions, make the right decisions, and love others more than ourselves.

I picture my spirit like my shadow, always with me, but not always acknowledged. In the metaphorical sunset, the cool of the afternoon, the peace of the coming night, it’s huge and towers before me on the path. In the noon though, when the sun is high, the heat intense, and thirst of my flesh unquenchable, the spirit shrinks to barely visible.  

So, to sum up, my flesh, like yours, is really freaking hungry. There are so many things it wants and craves and cries for. But we are not just flesh and wants and frustration. We are set above with Christ in heavenly places, people! We are the workmanship and the hands and feet of the true and living God. Let your flesh have it’s say, be kind to it, but don’t let it win. Ask God what he designed your spirt to crave, and then feed it like crazy.

I really want a cupcake now.

Happy Valentine's Day

My high school Bible study leader once asked us, “What is the one word God would use to describe you that you would never say about yourself?” Without thinking, the word that came into my mind was “Beautiful.” 

My mind reacted the way I picture a body reacting to a bad organ transplant, attacking the word at full-force, trying to find a way to make it dissolve. But it wouldn’t go away, and slowly I felt myself melding to it, accepting it. God thought I was beautiful, something no boy, no friend, no person besides my immediate and extremely biased family members had ever thought me. 

God thought that I was beautiful, made me beautiful, and had told me so. It was the first time I recall hearing something directly from God, and it was also the first moment I felt truly, personally loved by God.

Sure, I knew God loved me. The Bible tells me so, right? Lots of people told me so. Even in my gratitude for Jesus’ death on the cross which made it possible for me to have fire insurance for when this long and torturous life is over, it never felt particularly personal. Like maybe Jesus had died for everyone else and thought, “Eh, yeah, I guess she can come too.” I don’t think I’ve ever talked about that before.

Back before I understood, I looked at God and thought, “So, I have to live this hard life of a Christian and follow all of your rules, but I didn’t ask you to die for me. I didn’t ask to owe you anything.” But I still didn’t want to go to hell, so I went one step further with, “I didn’t ask for you to make me in the first place.” I resented God for the existence and salvation he gave freely that I could not possibly understand.

And then that moment happened. And something clicked. The one thing I had wanted to hear from someone, he told me. And it wasn’t about my weight, or my nose, or my hair color, it was about me. The me he created because he wanted to. Because he loved me, and wanted me to exist so he could love me. Because I was beautiful to him.

Maybe it’s just because date night was yesterday, but today, I’m not thinking about any other love, any other Valentine, but God.

I got my old Bible off the shelf—the one I don’t read much anymore, because it’s started to disintegrate. I wanted it today so I could see the places I have marked, the verses I have poured over and underlined time and time again, the places where I felt his love. I wanted to  sit in it for a couple hours while I’m home by myself.

What stood out aren’t the usual bits that we turn to or post on the internet. Instead, they’re the little quiet places where, even in a completely random context, God sent me a message, reminding me of his love.

Like in Deuteronomy, when he’s, once again, dealing with the Israelite’s rebellion but reminds them, “ And in the Wilderness, where you have seen how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.”

When he was describing his wrath as a “whirling tempest” in Jeremiah and says, “Am I God at hand, declares the LORD, and not a God far away?” And I recall when I felt so distant, and he came at me like a fire before my face to remind me that he’s not some far off thing, but is here—and wants to hear from me. 

When talking about The Judgement of the Nations in Joel and says, “The LORD roars from Zion, and utters his voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth quake. But the LORD is a refuge to his people, a stronghold to the people of Israel,” and he reminds me that the heat of his wrath is for the Enemy, and the light from his fire is for me.  

In Amos when he says, “The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?” and I remember that is power, his love, his voice is greater than any other force. That it brings down mountains and calls even the most lowly to action, and his voice calls for me.

At the end of Zephaniah, he says, “The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you with his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”

From times when I couldn’t imagine anyone, let alone the creator of the starts and the oceans and the source of the light of the sun loving me, he did. He rejoices over us with gladness. He exults over us with singing.

From times when I would watch movies where a boy was so excited to even be in the same room with a girl and thought, “I wonder if anyone will ever love me like that,” and I listened to songs where men poured out their hearts full of love to these nameless women, and I wondered if that could ever be real.

It already was.

So, whether your celebrating Singles Awareness Day, or going out with your spouse, or perhaps a date where you have no idea what to expect, or if you think it’s a stupid commercialized holiday cheapening our meaning of relationships, or if you like to go around telling people about Saint Valentine’s imprisonment, torture, and beheading, I hope you spend some time with your first and forever love today, and let him remind you how beautiful you are to him.