Surrendering to God's Push and Pull

A local massage therapist offered a special to our faculty and I jumped at the chance for a discounted session. There’s something about laying on the massage table that not only loosens my muscles, but my mind as well. I do some of my best thinking on those heated beds.

At the start of the session, the therapist said that she “uses a lot of movement” in her work and asked if that was okay. This wasn’t my first massage rodeo (wouldn’t that be a hilarious sight?) and I told her I tend to trust the therapists because they know their strengths. Besides, I’ve had therapists move my legs and arms before to stretch them or shake them out a bit.

This therapist, however, employs a range of motion I had yet to see, or feel, before. In turn, she took my legs and arms and gave them a good shake down, letting every wiggly bit rattle and roll with the swaying of each appendage. Vanity left me years ago when nursing babies in public became a regular part of my life, so I wasn’t embarrassed by the jiggling, merely amused. Thankfully, she was much too focused on the task at hand to find amusement at my wobbly bits.

As I lay there, prone and vulnerable to a stranger’s prodding and shaking, God beckoned me to pay attention.

“Ain’t that just like God?” I thought, “Just like her to teach me a lesson even in this.”

So much of my faith journey has been exactly like my experience on that massage table. At its core, discipleship is about submission to God. As I tried to stay completely relaxed so my limbs would move according to the therapist’s desires, I thought of the times when I have relaxed fully into God’s arms and others when I tensed up and refused to budge. When I trusted God’s movements, I might have been uncomfortable at moments but the rewards were great as the events seems to tumble naturally into place. When I tightened up and dug in my heels, God kept working but with great frustration and I found myself in worse shape than when I started.

Relaxing into the will of the Holy Spirit guarantees the stressed places of my life will be poked and prodded until they loosen up. Similarly, parts of me will be stretched that I long thought had grown too rigid, even for the most nimble of hands. Discomfort is a natural but passing part of the process and leads to deeper release and fuller ease with myself.

But it takes trust, often in someone who feels like a stranger. God is an enigma at best. She is wily and too grand for any one set of eyes or even one world to fully comprehend. She reminds me of times I’ve trusted her in the past and I remind her how I may still have the scars to prove it. And, yet, she persists in beckoning, never giving up on me. She asks me to relax again and trust her pushing and pulling, promising that the results of the experience will be worth the risk. I tell her I don’t like transitions or uncertainty. Even though I’m becoming more practiced at it, that doesn’t mean I like vulnerability and submission any more than I did on day one.

She tells me she knows; she made me, after all. And she encourages me, asks me to have patience, and lays me down. I start to wonder where this is going and why God is asking my body and soul to move in certain ways. But I take Job as my inspiration, committing myself not to patience but to being steadfast and faithful. Discomfort and pain may be part of the process, but at its end, it will bring deeper understanding. It’s guaranteed not to bring all the answers and maybe not even half. It will, however, bring a fuller faith and closeness of God I had not hoped to relax into before.

The Steadfastness and Faithfulness of Joseph

While my husband is at work and the kids are at school, I find some time to pull out the boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations. Preparing the house for the season is a Herculean task, but one I adore and anticipate with joy every year. I love see each room transform as shades of red and green begin to litter the shelves, walls, and counters. I love some decorations simply for their beauty but many I love more for their memories.

I leave a few things for the family to do together. The tree is a two-person job and decorating it becomes a family affair, though, truthfully, my husband and I still end up doing the bulk of it as our children’s attention tends to wax and wane. They kids will find “their” ornaments, the ones with their names on them, and my husband and I will reflect on friends and family that gifted some ornament or another to us or on the time we purchased it together to mark a special occasion.

Special attention is reserved, however, for all of our nativity sets. We have the Snoopy set, the wooden set made especially for children to play with, one made of clay, and another of porcelain. We make an inventory of each one: Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus, the shepherds, the wise men, the angel, maybe a star, and certainly some animals. Usually there is a debate about which one is Joseph and which are the shepherds, they all look so much alike.

Poor Joseph.

It’s interesting how we say, “Mary and Joseph;” Joseph always being Mary’s “plus one” to the party.

I walk over and pick up Joseph from one of our sets and turn him over in my hands. Too often he is treated as an accessory, even in scripture. He disappears entirely after the story of the boy Jesus in the temple in Luke’s gospel. Mark never mentions him; neither does Paul in any of his letters.

I look at the small Joseph in my hands and wonder, anew, at his faithfulness. To marry a tainted woman, especially in Joseph’s time, was scandalous and Mary was tainted, carrying another man’s child. At least, that is how the world would see it. In a dream, an angel commands him to accept Mary, despite her condition, and trust that the child to be born is holy.

Against all odds, Joseph does as the angel commands. He could have written off the angel’s appearing as a dream. He could have bowed to social pressure and cast Mary out, as would have been expected. He could have walked away or cast out the son he knew wasn’t his own. But, instead, he stayed. He raised the child and loved the mother. He chose to bear down, deep into his faith, and remain steadfast and true to God and to Mary.

What would you do if every instinct, every societal norm, even every religious expectation told you to take one path but you knew God had called you to another? Would you be strong enough not to bow to pressure? What if it meant being abandoned by your friends and family? What if everyone called you a “fool” and shook their heads at your poor judgement?

This Christmas season, may we commit ourselves anew, not to the beautiful baby who smiles beatifically from his manger, but to the radical man who defies the world by dying on a cross, an ultimate sign of foolishness. May we find in our hearts the steadfastness and faithfulness of Joseph who dared to stay, dared to hope, dared to say “yes” to God.

I leave you with a poem I wrote many years ago during one of the first Christmases when I stopped seeing Joseph, the accessory, and started appreciating Joseph, the man.

A very blessed Advent and Christmas to you all.

Against the Screams

A young woman lies,

resting between the screams of pain.

A loyal husband waits.

Does he feel angry against the screams?

Does he question his decision?

Does he trust the angel in this moment?

Against her screams, can he believe?

Is he scared that the angel wasn’t real?

That it is all a lie?

Do those screams bring forth a savior

or a bastard son?

In this moment, does he have faith?

Can he?

Does he stay beside her?

Hold her hand?

Or does he go outside to wonder, wait?

He screams cut through the quiet dark of night.

And against the screams, he waits.