Band-aids

"I'm okay. I'm getting better."

I can't even count how many times I've said this over the past year and a half, but I could probably count on one hand the number of times it's been true.

I have had scrupulosity for the last two years. When a person is scrupulous, they see sin where there is no sin. Everyday is a battle against yourself, fighting invisible monsters and waging impossible wars. It completely takes over your life.

My scrupulosity is heavily based in another issue I have: OCD. I've had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder since I was six, but in ninth grade the scrupulosity started. In order to get rid of it, I have to deal with the OCD.


This means therapy. Which is long and hard and scary. It's a painful process, and I'm not excited about it.

I'm so not excited about it that I'd almost rather continue coping with everything just the way it is. I'd rather keep on keeping on with my head down and my heart closed and continue hurting, just so I don't have to face it.

It's like putting a band-aid on your scraped knee while you're bleeding to death from a wound in your side.


I think we all do this in some way or another. It's a cultural epidemic. We ignore the responsibilities that keep piling up in favor of mindless occupations which do nothing to enrich our lives. We drink cups upon cups of coffee instead of going to sleep a little earlier. We bury our faces in our phones rather than speak to the person directly across from us because it might just be uncomfortable.

In an even more dangerous way, we do this with our souls. We drown out the whispers of our conscience with the noise of the world. We rationalize our sins so we don't have to abandon them. We avoid prayer like the plague and then wonder why we're miserable.

We treat the symptom, not the cause. We're putting band-aids on our hearts, and it's killing us.


Jesus doesn't do band-aids. He does healing. The Bible is full of stories of how He stopped the hurting and slayed the demons. Everywhere He went, He healed, and He healed completely.

He didn't tell the blind men, "You'll kind of, sort of think you can see." He didn't tell the lepers, "You'll be clean for a while, but the sores will  come back when you let your guard down.". He didn't tell the lame, "You don't get to walk, but you can hop on one foot if you tug on your left ear."

He told them their sins we're forgiven and they were made whole.

Jesus doesn't do delusions. He doesn't do temporary fixes, and He doesn't do conditions. He does real, total, generous renewal.

Go read John 11:1-44. What more proof do we need that Jesus can tackle all our bumps and bruises? He raised a dead man! Surely He can bring us back to life as well.


So, we have two options when it comes to how to deal with our wounds. We can either keep putting on the band-aids and hoping they'll go numb, or we can give them to Jesus and let them go away.

A band-aid is a short-term solution. Believing that somehow it's going to take care of something that truly needs stitches is believing in a lie. It's a rip off that eventually will need to be ripped off. And that will probably hurt more than healing ever would.

Jesus won't heal you halfway. He'll make you new. That doesn't necessarily mean you won't have to do anything, but it does mean you'll never have to do it alone.


Therapy is long and hard and scary. It's a painful process and that's okay. It's what Jesus wants to use to heal me, and ready or not, it's time to let Him. The band-aid's coming off.


What about you? Where are you covering up your problems instead of confronting them? What are you hiding from your Healer because your embarrassed or scared or think you can handle it? You wouldn't try and set a broken bone yourself. Don't try to mend your broken heart.


Peace be with you.
Caitlin

Being the Samaritan Woman

I happen to love the woman in the Bible. There are a lot of reasons for that, one of them being that I am a woman and another being that there are not a lot of women in the Bible so I pay special attention to the ones that are.

Each woman in the Bible has a special message, so I listen to each one individually.

One of my favorite of all the woman in the Bible however is the Samaritan woman, commonly known as the Woman at the Well. (John 4:1-42)

Read the Bible passage first! You can find it here: John 4


This woman is a Samaritan. If you know the story of the Good Samaritan and the history behind it, then you're well aware that the Samaritans don't have many friends outside their community. But this woman is an outcast within her community.

How do we know this? Well, most women would have gone to the well in the early morning or later evening, when it wasn't as hot outside, but not this woman. When she comes to the well, it is at the hottest part of the day, alone. She came at the time when she knew no one else would be there; she didn't want to see them, or they didn't want to see her. Either way, we know she's not part of the group.

So here is this woman: a Samaritan, outcast from the world and even from her own people.

I imagine that she felt like the lowest of the low. She is the one that no one wants to talk to at all. She is the one who is spurned.

If I were her, I would feel pretty low.


Who knows how many times the woman walked the hot and dusty roads to a from the well alone? Today is different. Jesus is here, and he asks her for a drink. Then He talks to her and she talks back all about the water and living water (which quite honestly must have sounded like nonsense.)

But this man is talking to her. She is the woman who no decent man would speak too, but there doesn't seem to be anything seedy about Jesus. I'm sure the poor woman was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Which it does.

Because then things get personal.

"Jesus said to her, 'Go call your husband and come back.' The woman answered and said to him, 'I do not have a husband.' Jesus answered her, 'You are right in saying "I do not have a husband." For you have had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband.'"
John 4:16-18


Jesus knows her. This strange man, a Jew no less, knows things about her. He knows what she has done and He knows how her life has played out. He knows her struggles and her fears. He knows the hidden burdens that she carries. And He looks at her with love. All I can think when I read this passage is I want to see the eyes of Jesus look at me with such love. 

Jesus has just told this woman everything that she has done wrong. He tells her he knows about all of her sin. That doesn't sound very loving to us. We live in a culture that refuses to believe right and wrong even exist, so to us, Jesus sounds like He's being anything but loving.

There are no words where Jesus says "You are loved by the Father", none of that. He simply talks to her. Still, I know that He must also be looking at her with eyes full of the love that he has for her, because nothing else could explain what she does next.

"The woman left her water jar and went into town and said to the people, 'Come see the man who told me everything that I have done.'" John 4:29


We have all done things we are not proud off, some a long time ago, some as recently as yesterday. This woman has been living a life of sin for years...and Someone knows.

Someone knows about all of her sin and all of her mess. He knows. . . and she wants everyone to meet Him?

It's like if I ran into a stranger at Starbucks who started to list all the bad things I had done in my life...

That conversation would be awkward...and at the end of it I would be trying to get away as fast as possible and never go back ever again.. (Even though fall and pumpkin spice lattes are coming. )

Yet this woman turns around and tells everyone. Come meet this man! Based on our modern day methods of communication, that would be like tweeting it, taking a selfie with this man and instagramming it and of course posting it on Facebook...

Can you believe that status?... (complete with selfie):

"Hey look me and the awesome man who told me everything that I have ever done wrong."

Awkward.

This is why I know that when Jesus looked at her, He looked at her with eyes full of love.

She did not want to run away. She did not want to hide. She felt loved and she felt forgiven. She turned around and (at the expense of everyone knowing all she had done) she wanted everyone else to know the love of Jesus. That's what love does; that's what conversion does.


So often, I am the Woman at the Well. I get mired in sin and I let it consume me. I focus on how bad I am. The things I have done. The mistakes I have made. I forget about the love of a Savior which can take it all away. When the woman got that chance, she jumped on it; I forget that I can do that.


The woman was not prepared for the saving encounter at the well. She just wanted to get her water and leave.

Then Jesus stopped her. He looked at her and He saw her. He saw her not for what she had done but for who she was.

That is the reason she turned around and wanted everyone to know. She had been seen for who she was as a person: intimately loved by God.


All that woman did was let herself be open to the love of God. That is it. She opened herself to the transforming power of God's love and He changed her.

This is a lesson for me, and probably for you too. Don't stay mired in your sin or in your muck. Don't stay mired in all the ways you feel inadequate or useless. Don't focus on what you can do for God.

Just let him love you. Just let him love you.


That is why I go back to this Bible passage a lot. I need to be reminded of the love of God, the love of someone who sees all my mess and sin and loves me anyway.

He's one whose love can transform my life.





Be not afraid!
-Emily

Limitless

 

Logo: Steubenville Conferences

For more information about Steubenville conferences, which are awesome, and play host to powerful speakers, great music, lots of Holy Spirit, and Jesus present in the Eucharist, visit http://www.steubenville.org/

 

A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.

John 10:10

 

 

So, I just got back from a youth conference. A really awesome, amazing conference. I cannot wait to share it with you all, but it's going to take a while to finish processing, and even longer to express.

 

 

For now I just want to give you the verse at the heart of it. The whole weekend was based off this, and the theme, "Limitless", revolved around it. It has quickly become one of my favorite verses.

 

 It is so applicable for me and where I am right now. I have a struggle which strives nearly constantly to deprive me of joy and peace and life as God wants it for me. I need to fix my eyes on Him and trust in His limitless power and His limitless plan. This verse is a beautiful reminder of that.

 

 

What are the thieves in your life? What are the things that threaten to rob you of abundant life? Is there a person who is leading you astray? Is there a situation that is beyond your control but is still weighing on your heart? Is there an attitude that's draining you, or a sin you cannot shake?

 

Whatever you're facing, whatever your thieves might be, take courage and throw them into the heart of Jesus. Cast them at His feet. He has already conquered everything we have to fear and is waiting, desperate for us to give it all to Him and longing to give us His abundant life in return.

 

What are we waiting for?


Peace be with you.
~Caitlin

 

 

 

He Must Increase

I must say it's a daunting task, much more so than I anticipated it would be. A blinking cursor and a blank page are perhaps the most forbidding pair I've chanced to come upon.

"It's just a post," I thought. "It'll be fine, easy even."

Wrong.

It's not fine. It was not okay for me to repeatedly put this off. It is now exactly 9:03 p.m. the night before this post is set to be published. And I have writer's block.

Fantastic.

Nothing I can think of is good enough. It's not funny enough, it's not witty enough, it's not deep enough...so on and so on. I am so worried about being clever and wise and having everybody think I'm so smart.

Unfortunately, I am just a little bit prideful.


It's sad, but it's also true. I don't like it, but I can't deny it. I'd like to say it's not a dominant trait of mine, and I hope I'd be right. I can say, though, that it is probably causing my writer's block.

I've been becoming increasingly aware of this self-centeredness. One place I've found it is in my faith. I have a terrible tendency to make it about me: what I do or don't do, how good or bad a person I've been. I spend a lot of time gaining knowledge about God, and not a lot of time getting to know Him. I talk a lot about God, but I rarely talk to Him. I make my faith all about me, not about Him.

I'm worried I will make The Bible Freaks all about me too.


I was thinking about all of this while brainstorming for this post. A verse came to my mind. It is one of the few verses I know by heart, and one of my favorites.

He must increase; I must decrease.

John 3:30

It's not about me. Nothing is supposed to be about me! If this project is about me, it is worthless.

My thoughts are nothing. My plans are nothing. My life is nothing if it's not lived for Christ.

And so...we at The Bible Freaks move forward with the realization and the conviction that this blog is not about us. It's about Him. It's all about Him.


My pride is not a good thing. It's a flaw. It's a failure. The most amazing thing about it though? It's fixable.

The God who conquered death itself is more than capable of conquering my pride. Not only that, He can fix everything else that's messed up about me and you. He can and will make our brokenness beautiful.

I hope He will use The Bible Freaks to do that.


Peace be with you.
~ Caitlin