Breaking Boxes

I love when my little box explodes.

The boxes I build out of the things I've seen, touched, been exposed to, and then use the little fragments to create a box that I can understand. A box I can hold.

The problem with this box is that it's never very big. The previous box is always smaller than the newer box but ultimately they're all small compared to the grander schemes of life.

I believe I've said this before but I'll say it again. I hate my boxes. I absolutely despise them.

But yet, time and time again I find myself building them. I always find myself going back, picking up the pieces of knowledge I can grab and building another box. Box after box after box.

I'm not a 100% sure why I do this. I mostly think it's just out of habit. Even though I hate the box, I'm comfortable with them. I've found comfort in the smallness they bring me and despite the fact that I want to shred them to pieces, they make me feel safe.

Because to be in the bigness of this life, to live without holding onto something you can see, touch, feel, means being uncomfortable. It means you have to be okay with the unknown and I'm not always okay with that. It means trusting that there is something bigger than you, something greater that loves you with a love so deep and wide that it will never give you more than you can handle, and I'm not always good at believing that.

So I've been in the process of shutting down the boxing business. I finally was honest with myself and chose to believe that I was made to live in the excitement and the adventures of the unknown. I decided to leave the box making business, that I despise, and live in the openness of the great unknown.

But here's the small problem. When you've been making boxes your whole life and that's all you know to do, it's hard to shut it down. You find yourself making boxes without thinking about it, it just comes so natural. Also, when you've been making boxes your whole life, you find boxes in corners of your life you never realized existed. So not only are you trying to stop making boxes but you're also having to find and destroy ones you've already made.

Today, as I was laying on the beach. God destroyed a huge box. I heard the explosion. It was amazing.

I was laying out enjoying the weather and reading Cheryl Strayed's book "Tiny Beautiful Things" which is a book full of letters written to her advice column Dear Sugar and her responses to them. I was reading a letter from a woman who was questioning God due to a tumor that was found in her 6 month old child. She was asking Sugar her advice on God and believing him.

Knowing that Cheryl Strayed is not a Christian, I was hesitant, yet intrigued to read her response.

I'll be honest, I didn't have high expectations on it. She's extremely blunt and knowing she doesn't believe in God, I expected a response that either redirected her from God or something along the lines that would influence more along the lines against God.

I was wrong. I was so wrong.

Box explodes.

Her response was amazing. My jaw literally dropped at some moments. I couldn't help but think, "this woman doesn't even believe in God, yet, she seems to see Him and understand him better than I do at times. And I'm the one that claims to know Him!"

How little of me to think God doesn't speak through someone, even if they do not believe in Him. How ignorant of me to think that she wouldn't have anything good to say.

I have to admit. I was a bit embarrassed after reading her response. Her response was beautiful. If I had been in that woman's shoes, the one questioning God, she would have sold me in the direction to God. This woman, who claims to not believe in God, would have led me a step closer.

Why? Because God doesn't just use believers. He doesn't just speak to people who know him, he does not live in a box. He's everywhere. He loves us and uses us, even if we do not know it. He still uses us.

I'm so thankful God doesn't live in a box and I'm beyond thankful that he uses everything and everyone to help mold me and unleash me into the depths of his presence.

These are a few quotes from her response that I really loved:
"To use our individual good or bad luck as a litmus test to determine whether or not God exist constructs an illogical dichotomy that reduces our capacity for true compassion. It implies a pious quid pro quo that defies history, reality, ethics,and reason. It fails to acknowledge that the other half of rising- the very half that makes rising necessary- is having first been nailed to the cross."

"Perhaps the good that can come from this terrifying experience is a more complex understanding of what God means to you so the next time you need spiritual solace you'll have something sturdier to lean on than the rickety I'll- believe- he- exist- only- if-he-gives-me-what-I-want fence."

"What if the greatest beauty of the day is the shaft of sunlight through your window? What if the worst thing happened and you rose anyway? What if you trusted in the human scale? What if you listened harder to the story of the man on the cross who found a way to endure his suffering than to the one about the impossible magic of the Messiah? Would you see the miracle in that?"