Looked Back

Looked back.

Not over my shoulder, in the rearview mirror, or on a previous page. No, I looked back on my Facebook timeline, actually. (It appears there are some upsides to this newly enforced format of our virtual friend world.) I clicked 2010 and boom! The shot of my freshly adorned engagement ring filled half the screen. Close below the accompanying engagement announcement was found and nearby Birthday greetings all listed neatly together. Amazing how one click contains a flashback. And how Facebook keeps a dandy record of life’s blurbs and happenings all nicely organized on the internet’s virtual shelf.

            But however it happened, it did. The flashback spurred the reflection and got me clicking back on 2008 and so on. It blew me away how that engagement announcement was not even two years ago… and yet it feels like five. Even crazy to think that 2008, when first introduced to the then budding Facebook world, was only four years ago. It feels like at least five. I know that’s only a one year difference, but hey, it’s a big enough difference! Within one year I was married, moved, and eight months pregnant. So I find that the length of year isn’t so much determined by the static number of days it has and always will contain, but rather by how much takes place within its span. I should say it’s more a combo of how much and what takes place. The more there is, the faster they go. And yet when events of significant, life-altering importance get tossed in, looking back is like mulling over a multi-volume encyclopedia. (Perhaps this dynamic sorta kinda touches on that whole idea, “To God a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day”… I’ll think on that later.)

            So it happened that I found myself scanning over those past years of Facebook statuses, comments, and posts; pictures of high school youth group, prayers and praises, brief commentaries on the latest English paper and my lost thumb drive being found. In doing so, I stumbled upon a strange nostalgia that altogether redirected my reminiscing: amidst all the posts and pictures, I got a glimpse of someone who use to be me.  

            Sitting on our craigslist couch with my husband quite near me and my sweet baby girl snoozing upstairs, this sight of a very much far away person left me in awe. I was looking at a young, zealous girl, often inspired and constantly talking about Jesus and, many times, pulling it off way too eloquently. I turned to Danny, “What happened!?!”

            It’s not that I’ve lost all inspiration, zeal, and gained 40 years. And, my goodness, Jesus is definitely still in the picture! But the change observed upon personal comparison was dramatic enough to think the person nonchalantly Facebooking on the couch was not near the girl quoted and pictured on the mac in front of her, namely, me. (If you need convinced, I could do a Venn diagram.) Conclusion: the girl posting on Monica Porter’s Facebook in 2009 is not Monica Porter. (And the fact that my last name was DesChamps in 2009 is a moot point here.) Please bear with me…

           

I was, and am still, a bit blown away by the personal change within the span of just a few years. I’ve thought about it times before, but seeing stark evidence struck me with the reality so differently. The girl of my high school years was always so... ambitiously inspired.

            I sometimes find myself as though mourning over some loss, now. As though the “me” then was someone so much more… amazing? (Honest, conceited statement of the day.) I read my Bible constantly. I wrote and discovered things all in the same instant. Jesus was dropped into conversation so easily and naturally. I seemed to live and function in a sort of childlike awe. I see that now. Don’t know what I necessarily thought then. I’m fairly certain I didn’t find where I was in life anything that amazing. In fact, I’m sure I was ready to move on and be done with it. Well, I have, per se. And I think the future I was driving at then is so much more different than I envisioned. And yet exactly what I was hoping for, at the same time…

            

I remember sitting in those familiar, Calvary pews one Sunday (about 13 years-familiar) and finding myself convicted. The pastor teaching that morning was sharing from the story of the Israelites as they wandered through the desert and their sin of longing to go back to Egypt where they supposedly “had it easy.” At the time, I was already reminiscing on the quickly fading “me” that seemed so much better than the “me” I was now finding doing my life. But God flooded me with realization in that very familiar Sunday seat that I was there looking back; longing for Egypt. I was completely unaware that while living, perhaps, a passionate Christian life, I was also shackled and bound. Interesting paradox, but God saw it, and I didn’t until that day. He was setting me free, taking me to something far better. It’s just the “scenery” seemed a lot worse. But He knew the perfect purpose of the dry desert I was retreating into and the necessity of parting me from the “liveliness” of my “Egypt” life. Leave it to God to know better (or rather, know best) and bring it all in perfect two-by-four-to-the-head revelation.

            I’ve had to remind myself of that day’s realization so many times as things have seemed exponentially dryer and, in my “expert” opinion, a lot worse than my younger days. (Like I know anything; and He’s been trying to get that through my head too.) I find myself having to cling to that promise, that this long, difficult process has been for freedom’s sake and to come into a yet greater reality of Him.

            I’ve often thought I was way more “Christian” then than I’ve been in my post-high school life. While I used to live and thrive off of opening my Bible in spare moments and praying over so many small things, I began wrestling to get myself to read the Word and even pray on a daily basis. It became an identity crisis.

           

So as I lounged there late at night on my craigslist couch feeling somewhat “older” by life’s experiences of late, I took all this reflection in; my husband beside me faithfully bounced some spirit-filled commentary off the matter. And I had to steal away to revelation back in the Sunday pew. What’s more, I know that if I really think about it, I felt so much like a mess back then in what I’ve treated as my “glory days.” When I was in Egypt it was much the reality of the slavery of Egypt. But as God took me in the isolation of the desert, Egypt seemed so much better. I’m beginning to taste the fruit of the desert, or rather, the promise land He’s faithfully pushed me to even believe in. We seemed to observe amidst that reflective moment, that the things that I talked about, the Jesus that I attested to then, is merely coming to life to me in such a deeper way. God wanted me to really experience Him, as I long declared Him to be. And even so, I know He’s been doing so much more.

I’m now standing outside of that Facebook moment on the couch. And I wonder if it’s still that lingering “legalistic” self that I’ve caught looking back and thinking myself “better then” than I am now. Because it’s not about getting or being better. It is about knowing Jesus. And that’s exactly what He has been doing in this season a part from so much that I once thought made me “me” (aka the girl on Facebook making everything so lyrical).

            So all those ambitions and passionate, life-lived revolutions I spoke of in years past? I think I’m actually here living them. Perhaps they don’t seem near as romantic in daily life as they did to the future-thinking girl before, but God has me walking them with Him. He’s been revolutionizing my whole mentality, my entire view of Him. And, despite what my high school-self envisioned, I know it’s perfect just how He’s brought it about. He did it, not me. (I know He wanted to get that through my head too.) Fancy that He used Facebook to pull all this up from the dirt…

Now moving into the promise land, conquering the promises, crossing the divide from so many insecurities, manmade standards, and fears, and nearly parting from the internal wrestling to the actuality of rest, it kinda feels like forty years...