Tension
What kind of reader are you? These traits are things I notice about myself as a reader: Somewhere along the way, I’m assuming in college, I learned to read and engage with text by underlining and highlighting and writing in the margin. I obviously have to resist that impulse when I am reading a library book, but then I find that I often have a notebook near me where I jot down things that resonate with me. Do you sometimes generously offer to read things out loud to people when something makes you smile or laugh or think? I do! Just ask my family, who will nod (and perhaps sigh) in acknowledgement that yes, indeed, I am that kind of person! I love the act of reading more than almost anything else on this earth, and I love to share the things I enjoy with other people.
I saw a hat advertised for sale on Amazon that said, “Emotionally attached to fictional characters”, and that too definitely makes me smile in agreement. You can tell when I’m reading a book by C.S. Lewis, as I almost run my highlighter dry. If I wrote down a list of people I’d love to meet and interview, I’m fairly certain that many of the people on my list would be authors. When I am reading this book Liturgy of the Ordinary, I find myself wishing that Tish Harrison Warren was in one of my circles in life because I have so many things I would like to ask her. She has so many intriguing ideas that pique my interest.
At the beginning of chapter 6, our author opens the door of her home to honestly confess about a disagreement - a fight, really, as she admits - with her husband. And one of the little gems in this chapter is this line: “What we are actually arguing about is our fears, anxieties, identities, and hopes” (74). What a powerful awareness to be able to perceive that. As I underlined and chewed on that concept, I started thinking of times of tension with my own beloved one and trying to evaluate if this applied to our marriage as well.
When you stand and fervently speak your marriage vows, you may not even be able to articulate your fears and anxieties. You might not even fully understand your new identity as a newlywed spouse or be aware of all the hopes you have carried into this important relationship. But as the years go by, perhaps some of these things come to the surface or are the ignition for these conflicts.
Most certainly we sometimes have the same tensions rippling underneath in our conversations with God when we pray:
When we come to our Creator, fears can rear their stressed-out heads and blind our vision to trusting God as we doubt and question.
Anxieties can cripple our faith, making it move forward slowly, wounded and limping and broken, not the solid rock it ought to be.
Our identities or our perceptions of who we want to be or who we think we are can take away from the new creature God wants us to metamorphosize into with His help and encouragement.
Even our delicately held hopes can make a conversation with God a challenge when we hold onto them too tightly or make them more important than God’s dreams for us.
Part of what we have to do when we come to our Father who art in Heaven in prayer is summed up adequately and succinctly in just four words: “Thy will be done”. We need to let go of our fears and anxieties; we have to surrender our identities and hopes to being pliable like clay that God can form and mold into the creatures we were meant to be.
When it comes to conversing animatedly with our spouse, (AKA fighting/arguing/disagreeing), we simply need to be aware of the roots underneath some of the conflict, but when we find ourselves struggling in our prayer lives, perhaps looking at these same things could open our eyes to being more aware of holding too tightly to things that really ought to be held out to God with opened hands rather than clenched in our possessive fists. Galatians 2:20 beautifully reminds us of how we must move forward once we have accepted Jesus into our hearts: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
