Week 24: Holes

I'm extremely late in posting this, perhaps because I’ve been busy getting answers to some of my prayers regarding my next phase of life. This is labeled week 24 even though we're far past that, but that's because it was my thoughts around that time. I'll catch up with some more updated posts for this week soon. I think this post was just really daunting write so I kept writing pieces and putting it off.

During the time I BEGAN writing this, I had been on vacation, at home seeing family and friends which led to developments in my thought and prayer process that made those few weeks the most pivotal so far in my 70 weeks of prayer about my next steps in my calling and relationships with others. So, while many of my posts are simply evolving thoughts about my theology and philosophy and how they shape my life, these past couple of weeks there were some clear answers about my next phase of life. Although I have had a few things evolve throughout previous weeks this entire fall/winter that have given clearer direction to the path I will take once my 70 weeks is over, they were slow realizations, nothing major or poetic enough to write to you. But now, I feel as though they have culminated and combined with larger conclusions and that I can now express those along with more majorly, poetic realizations.
A wise woman once told me that when you kill an idol, it leaves a hole. An empty space in your heart that it used to fill. Your heart waves and bends around it, sometimes growing into the space. Sometimes something comes to fill its place: God or another idol. The vulnerability of a heart with a gap is that it is much easier for the latter to fill the gap than the former and then you're back where you've started, there's another idol to kill then the pain of another hole in your heart, and the cycle continues. Sometimes I wonder if it's like heart surgery- every removal develops scar tissue and so the more growths you allow, even if you eventually cut them out, the more scar tissue you develop. Maybe eventually, your heart is so full of scar tissue and patched up holes that it doesn't work right. But I suppose that's only the case if it's a human-you- that's doing the cutting out and the patching up (which, I'm not sure is possible with evil, tough, things that take over your heart. You need some divine assistance.). I think God could remove evil from your heart, fill it, and make it like new again- no scar tissue- if He willed it. Of course, you'd have to let Him in to do the work- which is the hard part.
To get into the personal specifics of how this impacts my 70 days, I had been struggling for a long while with an idol- a love- that I was unsure if it really was an idol. I read a few definitions of idolatry. One by Paul Moser that I liked said, "Idolatry is the universal human tendency to value something or someone in a way that hinders the love and trust we owe to God. It is an act of theft from God whereby we use some part of creation in a way that steals from honor due to God. Idolatry conflicts with our putting God alone first in our lives, in what we love and trust (Exodus 20:3-5; Deut. 5:7-9; Romans 1:21-23). In idolatry we put something or someone, usually a gift from God, in a place of value that detracts from the first place owed to God alone, the gift Giver." Well, this idol was a love that at I, although less consciously, held onto instead of having faith that God would take care of me, that I could act on the convictions God had given me without being afraid. I held onto this idol almost as a safety, as something I had in these unsure times when I'm not sure where I'll be in the next year and a half. The entirety of this is much more complex- as the fact that this love was an idol doesn't negate the truth of the love that was there, one that I believe was actually something from God. But the idol that it became in my heart definitely was not from God and became something dangerous, something that encourages us to act in the opposite of the way that love does. And when you realize you have an idol like that inside you, you have to kill it. Now does killing the idol mean you have to kill the root of it, in this case, the love as well? Now, that I don't know- I think it depends on the situation. And perhaps even if you don't kill the root intentionally when you kill the idol, the well intentioned root dies as well. But I couldn't tell you for certain.
I did not realize or at least admit that this had filled that hole in my heart and had grown until an idol until I laid awake at night a few weeks ago, refusing to submit to God given convictions in my heart, actively rebelling against Him, that I realized- I had placed this above God, and while not all the time, at times I desired this above God. Fortunately for me, God intervened, and got to work helping me kill that idol then and there. In fact, I think he had been working on killing it for a while and it wasn't until it was in it's death throes that I started to notice it leaving, started to notice the hole, the emptiness in my heart, and struggled in vain to hold onto it. But, like all things that are truth and are from God, there was some stillness, some peace, some goodness when I realized I had submitted to letting God kill it- I think the best description is that I felt cleansed.
This idol definitely played a role in my 70 weeks- how I viewed my next phase in life, where I'd be, how I'd interact with others. And I had prayed that God would give me clear answers about it. Well, He certainly did, and it wasn't exactly pleasant hearing them, but it wasn't as painful as I'd have expected either. I suspect God has been working on me for a long time, I just hadn't noticed. Sometimes I worry other things will take the place of an idol- in fact, the very things I pray about specifically for my next phase in life: my career, my family, my friends, relationships, etc. In fact, as I promised, I had some revelations about all of these aspects about my 70 days the past few impactual weeks but they don't really fit this post about idolatry and there have been more developments about what I should do in respect to my career, my family, and my friends since week 24 so I'll save those. I'll dedicate this post to idolatry and covering the "relationship" aspect of my 70 weeks that I'd been praying about.

So, I got some clear answers that this idol needed to be killed- that I could not base the next phase of my life on it and that changed a lot of things, took a lot of things out of the equation, and opens up my heart, my life, and what I feel my options are a lot more (in fact, the end of my 70 days is much more wide open now, which is kind of frightening). I realized so far in my prayers I was asking God what he wanted me to do at the end of my 70 weeks, but in my heart I was telling Him what I wanted to do and what I wanted Him to tell me. It doesn't quite work out like that and had I held onto the idol, I never would have been actually open to the true answers to my prayers that God provides.

So, I had an idol, it's gone, I struggle to keep it from coming back, blah blah blah. But how did this idol come to take up residence in my heart anyway? Likely, it filled a hole that was there from when I killed a previous idol. This previous idol was likely an ex-boyfriend back when I thought idols were just gold statues that people worshiped in the B.C. days- not something that I needed to be concerned about in my own life (which is why I say the idol was likely the ex-boyfriend- I wasn’t on the lookout for idols back then, so it could have been a variety of things). Thus, I didn’t even realize this was an idol and didn’t recognize the hole as one that needed to be filled with God. So, basically my heart was left unprotected and open to taking in a new idol as I didn’t even know to look out for idols, didn’t recognize an idol when it had taken over my life, and didn’t realize that the hole left in my heart was due to the death of an idol. So, this new one took over…
This brings up a whole new set of questions such as, why do we fill the holes in our hearts with idols anyway? Where did the hole come from in the first place? Was an idol always in that space or was that space left blank?
First, I personally believe we were made with this hole in our hearts- the purpose of which was to be filled by and with God. I think God put it there because He wants us to desire Him, not just to love Him because he made us that way- He designs us to desire him, but to have a choice in the matter. He makes a hole, a space for Himself, but he doesn't fill it unless we ask. He may pursue us, help us know what or rather Who to ask to fill it, even make it impossible to escape his presence at times, but he won't fill that space in our hearts without our consent- to me, that's at the heart (no pun intended) of free will.
So if there's been a hole there since we were born, why did it take us so long to notice? Why does it take some people a large portion of their life, or a whole lifetime (if ever)to realize there was a hole there meant to be filled by God, or a hole that has been filled all their life with something empty (an idol) that does not fulfill what they long for. Perhaps this is because an idol may have taken over that place early in life so the fact that it once was empty or had even been filled by God (perhaps in the way that we have that childlike faith and belief in God) may have gone unnoticed- we may have been too young to recognize it or even to remember it- or maybe it just remains an empty hole (although, I think that's rare- I think most of us find something to fill it, even if it doesn't fulfill it, because having a hole hurts).
Which answers the next question: why do we fill our hearts with idols anyway? Because having a hole in our hearts hurts. Well, that's at least why we seek to fill the hole with something, so why is that something more often than not (at least initially) the wrong things rather than God? The primary reason is is that we don't know what we long for. This hole creates a longing to fill it, a hunger. We all know it, that inexplicable desire for something more- we know we aren't full, we can feel it. In some the hunger is stronger than others, in some people it's very weak- they're close to content with life as it appears, as it is for them- but it's still there deep down somewhere. But, most of the time mistake what it is we long for. Instead of realizing that it's God we think it's another person, a relationship, a child, a career, money, the world, luxuries. We think that one of those things will be the magical cure for this hunger, only to find that even when we gain that, that our hunger is insatiable, at least when we try to satisfy it with these things (and even when we satisfy it with God we're still so separate from him on Earth that we'll never truly be satisfied until we're in His presence). So, some may look to fill the hole in the wrong places not realizing what the hole was meant for, not really noticing the hole, not realizing what they truly hunger for. In fact, I think the breath before we're "saved" is the breath in which we utter that the thing that we've hungered for all along, was God. I had been in this place- although I'd known God, and I felt quite an extreme hunger for something more (I'm definitely one of the people who has felt an extreme hunger all my life- I'm very aware of it and always have been since I was very young (which I consider a gift and only an occasional curse) but I didn't truly recognize that what I hungered for was God (perhaps I hungered for all the Godly aspects of wordly things, not realizing it was the God part of them that I longed for and not the things themselves) until towards the end of college, despite having considered myself a Christian since I was young. This was after the ex-boyfriend I mentioned previously- when that idol had been killed, my heart was open again, and God worked hard at getting in to fill it and I thought I let him, but I think I only consented with my head, not my whole heart.

That brings us to yet another question: if we do realize that God is what is meant to fill that hole but notice something else is already occupying it, why do we hold onto it? Why do we cling to idols? I think that this is because we may not have the faith or trust in God to give that space over to Him. We may not consent with our whole heart for Him to fill it. Lack of faith and trust spring from fear (and also lead to fear- it's viciously cyclical): fear that God won't provide, won't give us what we really want- only what's good for us but that will probably hurt- basically a lack of trust that what God will provide won't make us happy although the truth is that only what He can provide will make us happy and fulfill us. This fear is often in the name of "self preservation" because the world teaches us we have to look out for ourselves, not give away everything we have to others. If we want something, we have to go for it- take things into our own hands: our relationships, our livelihoods, our everything rather than place it in God's hands and soon that thing takes on a life of it's own and it grows into an idol. And this is exactly what I did, after I came to accept that what I longed for was Christ, I let an idol take over my heart unawares but refused to let go of it because I didn't trust that what God would do would be what I wanted, when I should know that all I really desire is God and all things from him. Anything not rooted in Him would be empty and useless to me (as it proved to be, which shocked me, although it shouldn't have I suppose).
There's a song by "Over the Rhine" that I listened to on repeat (along with a few others by them) those few weeks where they say that "obsessions with self preservation faded when I threw my fear away. You either lose your fear or spend your life with one foot in the grave. Is God that last romantic?" Thus, fear is the root of obsessing over self preservation which is what keeps us from acting in faith, which is what keeps us from throwing away idols and filling that space with it's rightful occupant. But if your fear away you're free- you're living in faith, you're alive. If you don't, if you live your life in fear, you're halfway dead. And finally, "is God the last romantic?" What a concept! Within the context, that means that unless we are without fear, we are not romantics. Unless we believe in Grace and salvation and trust that we can indeed be given our heart's desire if only we ask the Holy God of the universe, we are not romantics! In fact, God is perhaps the last romantic! Many would argue the opposite- many of the things in our culture that we consider "romantic" are ungodly things, or things that act, in fact, as idols. Running away from where you are to travel the world and discover all the worldly and man made passions and treasures is, "romantic." And if I were to tell my friends about many of my Christian beliefs and philosophies, the last word they would use to describe them is "romantic." But the truth is, they are the most romantic. A good friend (as well as the band "Over the Rhine") pointed out that those who choose to have faith in all that God promises in fact could be called the biggest dreamers of all- especially by common society. "You have faith in some entity that is going to save you and grant you your hearts desires? And do this despite all these supposed things you have done "against" this entity and that this all encompassing entity somehow knows you intimately, wants to know you intimately and downright LOVES you? Dream on."
Well, I've always considered myself a romantic dreamer so I'm working on keeping this idol at bay, throwing my fear away and I think I will dream on.

Easier said than done, I still stand on the edge of a big wide future that has the potential to scare me to spiritual death. Idols threaten to enter this hole in my heart all the time and I find myself having to work so hard to fill it with God. It's not something inactive that just happens. Filling the hole in your heart, especially when it has a history of idols, is an active and tough process. Especially because filling it with idols is easier, takes less thought, happens automatically as a product of our sinful nature, and is a quick "fix." But it's not a fix as much as a tumor that we'll just have to cut out later and hope it was benign or that the cancer didn't spread to other parts of our bodies. Filling our hearts with God is frightening- I don't know where He'll take me, what exactly He wants for me, or if I will receive the things I think I desire. It's agreeing to an entire future you can't forsee, but I suppose we do that with everything. In this case, it's a future that's out of my hands and into His, which, despite how we often feel, is a more secure place for it to be.

So we fill our hearts with idols not knowing our great, wide emptiness was meant for God, and we keep them there because we're afraid of what giving that space to God will entail... and besides, that future that we'd be giving over to Him is just so darn large and long- in fact, it's an eternity that we can't see.
One of the first days of freshman year of college, a bunch of girls from my floor in my dorm and I went down to the beach by Lake Michigan which almost all of our (now) Alma mater majestically overlooks. I'm not in close contact with any of them anymore, although we became good freshman friends. But I still remember us standing there in youthful wonder- at our new found freedom and possibilities, at the great literal and metaphorical expanse before us and I said, "I've never seen the ocean" to which my friend replied, "I think anything you can't see the other side of is an ocean." And to this day I think of what she said anytime I stare at an abyss- a vast body of water or distance, a fast journey- a period of time I cannot see the end of...
By that definition, we are all standing on the shore of something we cannot see the other side of- perhaps a darkness, a journey... a life?
At the very least we all stand on the shore of the ocean of eternity- wondering where the current will carry us if we have the faith to wade in.