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This morning I woke up at 4:30 AM and couldn’t fall back asleep. I was thinking about how my life has been going lately, and why I seem to have had a lot of trouble. More specifically I was thinking about how I’ve been interacting with other people and especially how and why I’ve been sinning against them.
I think that part of the problem is in finding the balance between independence and dependence. During high school and the first part of college I learned to be very self-sufficient, mostly because my parents, for various reasons, couldn’t or wouldn’t support me. However, learning to live without much support didn’t mean I stopped wanting or needing support from people—my needs just got covered over by a mask of competence and independence. Then the Village came into my life, and I met a lot of people who have been very supportive of me. Slowly my mask of independence has gotten stripped away. Unfortunately, this has revealed all of the suppressed neediness and longings underneath, and that has come out in the form of various demands on my friends that they can’t really meet.
While I was thinking and praying about it this morning, I was randomly reminded of the movie Spirited Away. In it a little girl accidentally enters the spirit world and ends up at a bathhouse for rich and successful spirits. One night she sees a spirit standing outside in the rain, looking at the fun things happening inside. She lets him in and leaves him to wander around. He soon figures out that people will pay attention to him if he gives them things that they want, like gold. In return for his gold, people feed him rich food and give him whatever he wants. He eats and eats and eats. Eventually, he calls for the girl and demands that she take his gold. She doesn’t want it, and won’t give in to his demands that she take it. Finally, she gives him a ball of special medicine that she had saved from earlier in her adventure. He eats it, and he begins to throw everything up. He screams, “What have you done to me?” and chases after her, violently ramming into things and still puking up all the nastiness inside him. The little girl finally leads him out of the bathhouse and into the sea. He keeps following her along her journey, until she reaches the house of a good witch that she has gone to for wisdom. The spirit decides to stay there and live simply, spinning thread and working for the good witch.
Right now, I feel like that spirit. I was alone on the outside and Jesus welcomed me into a community full of cool people and I was amazed to find that they actually enjoyed the things that I offered and gave me things in return. Sadly, I’ve become dependent on those things. I’ve insisted not only that my friends give me love and support, but also that they accept the things that I offer them. Luckily, Jesus knew what I needed and gave me friends that don’t just give in to my demands, but it’s made me puke up a lot of nastiness over the last few months and seriously question what God is doing in my life.
I guess I’m hoping now that this story will have a good ending for me like the one in the movie does. Isaiah 30: 19-21 says,
How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying “This is the way; walk in it.”
This verse gives me hope that, having learned a lesson about ways I tend to sin against my community, I can follow Jesus on the path of repentance, which leads toward a simple life where I am free from my own wild, confused demands on other people. Brennan Manning writes in his book Abba’s Child: “Spirituality is…a lifestyle: the process of life lived with the vision of faith. Sanctity lies in discovering my true self, moving toward it, and living out of it.” I think that is the vision of living at the house of the good witch: living simply in the quietness of who I am, unclouded by clinging demands upon other people. Now that I’ve seen the possibility of it through a movie, I pray that Jesus helps me to find what that looks like in my real life.
P.S. This is also posted at my blog: punkymule.blogspot.com |
