When I was growing up, there was always a bungee cord or two somewhere near by.  My Dad kept a supply of them in his shop – some of them regularly used and some of them on standby.  We always had a handful in the car.  You never knew when you might need one.  They were like duct tape.  Almost as versatile as your imagination.

In more recent years, I have seen them put to far broader use than I could have thought of as a kid.  Like jumping off of bridges.  Or old water towers.  Or other crazy things that people do when they have an empty space in their brain where their good sense ought to be.  But the one that interests me the most is actually a spiritual bungee cord.  It is invisible to the naked eye, but let me tell you that the hook and the “boing!” are really there!

This is how it works.

Somewhere in your past you went through a painful event.  At the time you didn’t have a big enough frame for what went wrong, so you made a judgment or an inner vow or two about what was or wasn’t going to happen in the future.  This is especially an issue when the judgment is against God.  Somehow or another He didn’t do what He was supposed to do, therefore, you are going to step in and do the job for Him next time.  Pretty cheeky when you look at it like that, but it’s exactly what we do.  Sometimes we don’t even realize just how cheeky we’ve been.  It can be a knee jerk reaction to say, “well, I will NEVER put myself in that kind of situation again” (God, you aren’t trustworthy in this kind of scenario) or “I WILL do this or that to prevent this from happening ever again” (God, you can’t take care of me so I will take care of myself).  On the list goes.

Well, the judgments come with a price tag.  Sometimes God will let us get away with the new path we are determined to cut, but what we don’t realize is that the judgment acts just like a bungee cord.  Those hooks go into our back and the cord starts to stretch.  We might get a ways down the road and it will seem fine.  But sooner or later, we will run into a situation similar to the original event and “boing!” we are right back in the old emotions again.

You see, most of us want to heal and grow.  Right?  I am going to assume that is one of your goals in life.  So, after you emerge from your original painful event and patch up the pieces of you that are left, you try to get on with life.  You even heal up the wounds.  You think that you have gotten on down the road pretty well.  But then …

BOING!

You are in a situation where you think you should respond differently, and you can’t.  All you feel is the old emotions boiling to the top again.  Hadn’t you gotten past all of that?  Didn’t you spend hours and hours of inner healing to drop that baggage off at the dump?

Just recently I had this exact experience.  Probably the most uncanny version of this spiritual dynamic I have experienced yet.  Felt like I was time traveling, but not the fun kind.  Several years ago I had a “crash and burn” that left me pretty trashed for a while.  I was so determined not to have that happen again that I made inner vows in my sleep.  Well, it has become apparent in recent weeks that there was a treasure that got slimed in the midst of that season.  I have been making intentional strides towards unpacking that treasure.  And guess what comes gurgling up from the sewer?  Yeah.

Fear.  Dread.  Loneliness.  Depression.  Fear of loneliness and depression.  Anxiety.  Instability.  Did I mention fear?

It was like I was right back there again.

And trust me, I have done a LOT of inner healing.  A bit of deliverance too.

It took me a little while to figure out what was going on because the emotions felt so close and in the present.  But eventually – by the grace of God – I realized I had felt this way before.

In all of the work I had done to clean up the mess, I had not dealt specifically with judgments against God for what had happened.  Those judgments were the bungee cords that kept me stuck in the past.  My emotions could not advance to meet my present level of growth and that’s why I was feeling so much of what I felt then.

Bungee cords are great in the shop and for holding down the tarp on your car.  And hey, if you want to jump off an old water tower, be my guest.  But they are not so nice when they keep you stuck in the past when God wants you to walk boldly into the future.  If you’ve got a couple of them hooked in your back, why don’t you drop them off at the dump with the baggage.

There is a full teaching on this topic called “Trauma Bonds to Time”.  It is available on the Sapphire website at http://www.TheSLG.com.  It is an excellent teaching and I highly recommend it!

Sometime towards the end of last year I hit a wall with the book I have been writing on our relationship to time.  A good friend of mine told me that I needed to walk away from the manuscript for a while.  Probably saved the book’s life.  Even though I knew it was needed and I welcomed the chance to recharge my “I like writing this book” batteries, it was a hard transition.  I had wound myself up pretty tight with my goals and to set it aside completely felt like a big let down.

Enter Philip.

Philip is a parrot.  A Congo African Grey parrot, to be exact.  I met him the first time when he was only a few weeks old.  He had just been brought to the pet store from the breeder and was a shivering bundle of nerves.  I wasn’t much better, but my shivering was from excitement, not fear.  This was the moment I had been waiting months for – well, actually years.  Owning an African Grey parrot has been a dream for a long time.  The months of waiting were for the next baby to be available at that pet store.  And here I was, holding my dream in my hands.

For the next two months I literally haunted the pet store.  I was there nearly every weekday after work for an hour and more on the weekends.  He was still being hand fed, so he had to stay in the nursery.  In the early weeks he was such a cuddle bug.  They’d give him his evening feeding and then he’d stagger over to me, nuzzle into my neck and fall into a food induced coma.  As he grew, he stayed alert longer and longer and then began the fun of learning what he liked to eat and chew on … other than my fingers.  We still have a little heart to heart about that from time to time.

Then he came home!  What a weekend that was.  I don’t have kids, and I know that children are in a league of their own.  But maybe I had some small taste of what it will be like someday.  The first night was awful.  I don’t think either of us slept.  He may have slept more if I hadn’t been checking on him every five minutes.  I tell you what, maternal love does some weird things to you.  I suspect he navigated those first couple of weeks a whole lot better than I did.  If he could have talked, I imagine I may have heard something like, “MOM!  I sneezed.  That’s it.  I’m not dying.  You didn’t poison me.  I haven’t been eating carpet.  I had a fluff in my nose and it tickled.  Will you chill out, PLEASE?”

And then there were (and are) the triumphant learning moments that sometimes have a bittersweet flavor to them.  I bought him a ladder that sits on the side of his cage so that he can tromp up and down from the ground to his heart’s content.  It’s good exercise and it is a way for him to get himself back up to his cage.  The first few times he flew off (generally when something scares him), he came right to me and I picked him up.  But then I started training him to go to the ladder.  First I put him on it, and he climbed the rest of the way up.  Then I put him on the ground next to it.  Then I stood by it so he would come over.  Now, he doesn’t even look at me.  He goes straight to his ladder.  YAY!  But wait.  He doesn’t need me anymore!  The triumph of a good parent.  That is the point.  But the first experience of that independence kinda stings a little too …

So, he and I are bumbling our way along, just like any first-time parent and bird.  I think I am doing more of the bumbling than he is, since he is pretty willing to just be himself.  I am the one with the neurotic mommyness, legitimacy issues and beginner parenting skills (believe me, parrots need it!  They are like having a 3-year-old.).  And I think that God revealed His wisdom in causing this to be the time for the dream to begin.  I HAVE an African Grey now, after all these years, but it is not like getting an expensive piece of jewelry or the dream home or vacation.  It is an ongoing, developing relationship.  God has already been busy healing, growing, and unpacking things inside of me.  Things that add color and depth to my spirit and soul.  Things that will do the same for my book.

And I am writing again.

I was at the pet store one afternoon when two middle-aged ladies walked in.  One was there to buy some supplies and the other was along for the ride.  She’d never been around birds before … and there were a lot of them at this store.  In fact, that’s what the store was all about.  The mid-sized and larger birds were all out in the open on perches hung from the ceiling.  I watched her.  People’s reactions vary widely.  Some people are clearly afraid.  I was there one time when someone sidled through the door and stood nervously by the window.  She saw me and said she was trying to get over her fear of birds.  It can be hard when you don’t know what to expect from these feathered creatures, especially those big ones with the big beaks that you are sure could sever your arm at the elbow.  Some people are dragged there by enthusiastic friends and couldn’t care less about birds.  Others come in and gush and fawn over every single “cute little birdie” and I wouldn’t trust them with a bird to save its life or mine.

This lady, however, was showing signs of fitting into a category entirely different. Every so often someone comes in who is interested in something more than the latest rage or a pretty curio or a pet they can teach to swear.  These are the bird people.  She was one of them.  She just didn’t know it yet.

Her eyes were full of wonder.  She was drinking in everything she saw.  It delighted and intrigued her.  Though new to her mind and experience, it was waking up something that wasn’t new at all.  It had been there all along, waiting.  There was a treasure hidden away that needed just the right key to unlock the chest.  She was coming alive.

It was so much fun to watch her explore.  She went to the different perches and asked questions about all of them.  Her mind was eagerly lapping up all the information it could.  Her spirit had known it all along, but her soul had a lot of catching up to do!  Since before her life began she was wired to respond to birds.  Only now had the hunger been realized.

I felt like I had been giving a front row seat to a special ceremony.  A corner of the veil covering her design was lifted, and the Creator gave me the precious opportunity to watch.  I love to see God’s design come alive in someone.  When that shaft of light hits the untouched corner of their soul you can hear the angels sing.  Her eyes came alive with a light that had never shown through them before.  It is at these moments I especially appreciate the quote by St. Irenaeus: “The glory of God is man fully alive.”  You cannot help but worship the Creator.

I can celebrate this beauty in any context, but there is a heightened pleasure when it is in an area that I love too.  My “awakening” happened many years ago with a blue-fronted Amazon named Muffin.  That is when the shaft of light poured into the untouched corner of my soul.  I have been a crazy bird lady ever since.

The staff at the pet store didn’t stand a chance of getting to this lady before I did.  Her eagerness to learn was matched by my eagerness to share.  Our eyes met and I could feel that swift, secret smile and the joy of the spirit in the unspoken words,

“you too?”

Recently I was reacquainting myself with a timeless favorite, the “Anne of Green Gables” series.  One portion of the third book always stirs me to thinking about my perspective on life and eternity.  One of Anne’s childhood chums is dying of tuberculosis.  Anne is home for the holidays and visits her friend regularly in her last days.  Ruby confesses to Anne that she is afraid of dying.  She knows she is going to heaven, and even though it is supposed to be beautiful, it won’t be what she is used to.

“It was sad, tragic-and true!  Heaven could not be what Ruby had been used to.  There had been nothing in her gay, frivolous life, her shallow ideals and aspirations, to fit her for that great change, or to make the life to come seem to her anything but alien and unreal and undesirable.”

“‘I can’t help it,” said Ruby pitifully.  “Even if what you say about heaven is true-and you can’t be sure-it may be only that imagination of yours-it won’t be JUST the same.  It CAN’T be.  I want to go on living HERE.  I’m so young, Anne.  I haven’t had my life.  I’ve fought so hard to live-and it isn’t any use-I have to die-and leave EVERYTHING I care for.’  Anne sat in a pain that was almost intolerable.  She could not tell comforting falsehoods; and all that Ruby said was so horribly true.  She WAS leaving everything she cared for.  She had laid up her treasures on earth only; she had lived solely for the little things of life-the things that pass-forgetting the great things that go onward into eternity, bridging the gulf between the two lives and making of death a mere passing from one dwelling to the other-from twilight to unclouded day.”

It sobers me to think of a position such as Ruby had.  There was little substance to her life.  She had no acquaintance with heavenly things, no enriching and deepening of her earthly experiences with the hues and colors of eternity.  She had never lived for something bigger than herself, something that would last after she had gone.  She had never experienced the kind of awe that leaves you gasping for breath and knowing that you just tasted something of a God and a realm beyond your understanding.

Yet I don’t believe the answer is to despise this life or the little joys in it.   I believe it is God’s desire that we embrace our life here.  It is an adventure, a journey, an absolute one time occurrence, a chance for eternity to be expressed through you in a physical dimension.  Never again will you be a human body and soul with an eternal spirit, living in a temporal world.  What if we were to consider our lives, in the largest sense, as one continuous existence?  Remember this.  Your spirit has been around for eternity past.  God took it from the light of His own essence.  Your body and soul are earthly.  They will someday pass away.  But your spirit will not! (And some may argue that your soul is also eternal).  The “lifetime” of your spirit is unbroken.  It only changes location.  It came from heaven, it lives a unique adventure on earth and then returns to heaven.  So, why do we insist on separating so completely our existence on earth from our heavenly origin?

Some take the view that the earthly life is just to be endured until we die or are mercifully raptured.  Why?  Is that really what God intended when He made the earth and put us on it?  Why would He bother to make us human if all He wanted was spiritual beings?  He could have made more angels.  For some great and mysterious reason, He wanted creatures that would live in this kind of realm.  The longing for what is heavenly is right and good.  And I know that suffering causes us to look to the afterlife as a welcome relief.  But why do we live as though eternity is only somewhere we can go?  Have we forgotten that there is a piece of it inside of us?  Is there any possibility that we are supposed to, by God’s design, unpack and express this amazing experience of living in the temporal and the eternal at the same time?

How do you view your life?  For me, the point is not that I cease from all the joys and pleasures of life.  The things that Ruby enjoyed were not wrong in themselves.  But she had not the balancing weight of a soul that knows there is a deeper, sweeter well than the one of life’s little pleasures.  It is my hope to live a life that carries the fragrance of the eternal, like a traveler who comes in with the scent of the forest clinging to his clothes.  When the time comes for me to cross the threshold of that great Doorway between heaven and earth, I hope to feel the deepest thrill of joy and anticipation; having already tasted of what is yet to come.  Let not the heavenly realms be so unfamiliar to us here.

“In the darkness something was happening at last.  A voice had begun to sing.  It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming.  Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once.  Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them.  Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself.  There were no words.  There was hardly even a tune.  But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. … Then two wonders happened at the same moment.  One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count.  They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale; cold, tingling, silvery voices.  The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars.  They didn’t come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening.  One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out – single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world.  There were no clouds.  The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time.  If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves who were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.”  – CS Lewis, “The Magician’s Nephew”.

Word pictures can do different things.  In the last post about Nathan’s story to David, the power of the picture was in the relationship it had with David personally.  It was designed to give David a mirror in which to see a reflection of his crime, and to play upon David’s own emotional keyboard.  It was earthy and practical.  It appealed to some of the most fundamental emotions.  And it did its job magnificently.  But not all word pictures are designed to show us something about ourselves.  Sometimes they can take us into an entirely different place, through the portal of our imaginations.

The excerpt above is from the creation of Narnia.  The humans have stumbled upon this fresh new world, just as Aslan is beginning to create it.  They watch and listen as he sings it into existence.  Here is one of my favorite pictures:

“The eastern sky changed from white to pink and from pink to gold.  The Voice rose and rose, till all the air was shaking with it.  And just as it swelled to the mightiest and most glorious sound it had yet produced, the sun arose.” 

The sun arose!  That word pictures captures me every time I read it.  I can just imagine it happening.  I know, of course, that it isn’t real.  I know that Narnia doesn’t really exist, and no lion sang any world (to our knowledge!) into being.  But it gives my spirit a push into a world of wonderment and awe.  It makes me think about what it really WAS like when our world was created.  Our God may not have sung, but He spoke.  I can almost feel the air shaking with the power and authority of His Voice.  Could the sun have burst forth like this?  How did the trees form and flowers grow?  Did they pop out of the ground and then shoot up into the air like time-lapse photography?  And what about the stars?  Scripture says they did and do sing!  Somehow I can imagine their voices as being silvery and tingly.  And even if they aren’t, it leaves me with a sense of awe to ponder it.

I may have never gotten there on my own.  The pictures that Lewis painted in his story opened the door into a new realm for my imagination.  He gave me a picture that took me out of my own world and into one with an entirely different structure.  The sense of wonderment gave me the freedom to see what I have always known from a new perspective.  His pictures opened a door for me to ponder the amazing mystery of our own Creator.  For me, this strikes a deep, deep chord.  My imagination and my spirit can go there easily because I resonate so deeply with the God who Made.

What kind of word pictures spark your imagination?  Do they take you into another place, to think of things bigger than yourself, to ponder a mystery or a marvel about the nature of God?  What kinds of pictures give you the freedom to look at the known from an entirely different view?  Wherever you find one, treasure it!