On Trying to Accept Reality

"Self-denial is a beautiful thing."

I said this tonight to a friend who came over for tea. Really, only I drank tea. She drank water from the red-topped water bottle she always has in hand.

"Self-denial is a beautiful thing," she echoed, wholeheartedly agreeing. But of course, neither of us really agreed with ourselves or with each other. We laughed. I think maybe we both needed that laugh.

But let me tell you: when you feel like you are in the middle of . . . everything, when you feel like the romanticized beginnings of everything about your life are starting to dissolve and the grit and the dirt of who you really are and what the world really is are coming into focus, and you are trying to trust Jesus and you want the gospel to become real to you, but mostly you just feel like you are getting clear on the sin and fallenness aspects of it--well, then, my friend, self-denial sounds like a beautiful thing.

And I don't mean self-denial like that of the "deny yourself and take up your cross" variety. I mean the pretending that you actually are the perfect, unspoiled creature you always hoped you were variety of self-denial. The kind of self-denial that convinces you, on the days when you feel like your hair looks good and your confidence is up, that you actually can make all of your dreams come true, and that they are actually all good dreams to dream. That kind of self-denial.

I once sat in a counselor's office in midtown Manhattan and on a piece of white butcher paper--stop me if you have already heard this story--on a piece of white butcher paper, she drew what looked like the outline of a gingerbread man. And then around that gingerbread man, she drew the outline of another, and then she added a third gingerbread man outline around that second one.

She finished drawing and then pointed to the inner ginger-guy and told me, "This is the real Elizabeth." And then, motioning towards the outer ginger-men, she said, "These are the layers you have built around the real Elizabeth."

Lately, I have been trying to shed some of those layers. And I thought that once that happened, it might feel cathartic and freeing. But really, right now, it mostly looks ugly to me.

I thought I was better than this.

I thought the world and people, in general, were better than this. But then, I guess that's not really the gospel.

In Christian circles, when we say "the gospel," we mean the "good news." And what we mean by that is the good news that Jesus came to save us from our sins, so that, "whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (see John 3:16).

But before you can even realize that that is good news, it probably helps to understand that Jesus was needed in the first place, that the world was in such a desperate state that the Supreme Being had to get slaughtered to rescue it. In our quest to be positive and likable and encouraging, maybe we gloss over that part of the story sometimes. Or maybe we gloss over that part of the story because it is the hardest to stomach. I certainly don't want to walk around having to think of myself as "depraved" or "fallen" or "desperately wicked".

It turns out that it is hard to really look yourself in the eyes.

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

-2 Corinthians 4:16-18