Jess Boctor

Category: Jesus

  • We’re All Kaleidoscopes

    I have the privileged of hanging out with Middle and High School students each week. It is a great experience because they keep me honest about how cool I really am (what exactly is Vine?) and somehow always confuse me for a student in their ranks (yay for adult acne!)

    Last week, I was talking with a Junior student who was sharing about how she wasn’t sure how to prepare for next year. The beautiful and terrifying last year of High School. Upon completing this sacred American rite of passage, students are deemed adults. Our culture, and very often the students themselves, expect a stroll across a stage to suddenly cement their identity and the path for the rest of their lives.

    I found myself asking questions about what she wanted to after High School and what career she wanted to pursue. When I started to ask why, she started throwing out words like “prove myself” and “start a career”. As we talked, I asked if the career choices she was intending to make would be things she would really enjoy. If she had taken time to consider what she really wants to do. She wavered momentarily, “No, I would really like to do…”.

    Inside, I smiled the painful smile of recognition. Of burying deep down what you want to do for what you should do, for making plans on having to carve out a space which claims “This is me and I have value!” I recognize the desperate need to have a plan, to have it all together and sorted out. Life, however, laughs at our plans. No matter how much space I tried to carve out; a volunteer position, an art studio, a foreign city, it was never enough to prove my worth to the world. How many times did my plans change because I thought, “If I accomplish this-or I go over there-THEN they will love me.”  How many times has realty taken a swing through my carefully notated and graphed plans? How different is my life from what I thought it would be when I graduated? The answer to these questions is a million, more than I like to count, and drastically, respectively.

    I am so thankful for it, too.

    As I have fought the good fight of learning to love myself, to like the quirky, flawed, and loud mouthed introvert that I am, I have learned that there are some deep and essential things which will always stay the same. I will always devour a good story in as little time as possible. I will always want to sing, dance, tell stories, and look for the connections in unexpected places. I will never be a very good judge of character. And at every party, you will always find me with food in my mouth so I don’t have to talk to strangers. Unless there is dancing, ’cause then I will be shaking my booty.

    So how do we meld together the constantly changing circumstances and roles we find ourselves in with the core pieces of who we are? This is the thought that dawned on me last week: we are all kaleidoscopes. We all have bits of color, glass shapes, beads or bobbles which are our core. However, as we go through life, these core pieces are constantly moving. The light is always filtering through them in new ways. The pieces make up new designs, they adapt to change and movement. In this way, we are continuous and continuously changing at the same time.

    As I finished my conversation, I was glad to know that, most likely, this students life is not going to end at all how she thinks it will. If she can discover her core pieces and appreciate the changes of pace, it will be better. So here’s to the next design.

    Continuing the adventure,

    Jess

     

  • Losing Sight of the Crowd

    For the past few weeks, my church has been discussing the concept of core sins. The background behind core sins is that there are nine basic sin traits (think a negative Myers-briggs), from which most other sins or harmful behavior manifest themselves.

    My poison is Envy.

    I had known this for a few years now. Envy comes from a desire to be unique–or, termed another way, more special than anyone else. Of course, the only way to identify yourself as more or less unique than others is to compare yourselves to them.

    Is she prettier than me?

    Can he come up with better ideas than I can?

    I could be as financially disciplined as they are, but then I would be just as joyless…

    I am sometimes deluded into thinking that others can’t see my envy because it doesn’t show up in the way it might be expected to (I’m different, remember, I can’t sin the way you think I should). I don’t care much about material things, so if you have a nice car or own a great home, I can pretty easily congratulate you on your success. However, if you start sharing your plans to travel the world, or start a new creative business, or talk about your rock solid faith– you might as well stab me with kryptonite. If you really want me to turn into a green envy hulk, tell me about your new book deal. I dare you. The worst thing you can ever say to me is, “You’re just like me, her, him, it, blah blah blah”. Those words make my skin crawl every time.

    So over the last few weeks, I have been comforting myself with this thought: our sins are often times our strengths turned against us. I would tell people, “I wasn’t designed to follow the crowd, I’m never going to fit in, so I should just embrace my strangeness. Now I just have to learn to love others when they do cool things too!”

    There is one problem with this, it completely takes for granted the fact that no one was ever ‘made’ for the crowd. Each individual is a beautiful, unique, intentionally crafted piece of art which God placed on earth. God has given each of us unique perspectives, feelings, experiences, gifts and talents. This is a belief I hold to my core.

    Right up until it threatens how unique I am.

    The problem with the concept of ‘the crowd’ is that it inherently assumes some sort of ‘otherness’ or separation between myself and the mysterious and ominous ‘them’. ‘They’ are all followers, I strike my own path. ‘They’ all feel comfortable together, I am awkward. ‘They’ set up the rules, I break them. ‘They’ are different from me.

    But who are ‘they’? Are ‘they’ really different than me if you strip away all the fluff of humanity and get to the heart of each person? What am I if you take away the things which God has graciously bestowed on me? I am broken sinner with a streak of self hatred. Are ‘they’ any different?

    Today, at church, God confronted me with how deep my envy has rooted itself into my perception of myself and the world around me. My envy causes me to constantly compare myself to others, to a fantasy life which I think I want (but ultimately would probably be my undoing), and to an imagined group of people who seem determined to get me to conform to a standard which doesn’t exist anywhere outside of my own mind. My envy makes me hate myself for not being like the crowd, and hate myself for when I am like the crowd. Worst of all, my envy takes my eyes off of Jesus. This is sin at it’s definition, it is missing the mark of Jesus.

    Our pastor shared a verse today which I may consider having tattooed across my forehead, or I may at least put up on my bathroom mirror:

    “If you think you are better than others, when you really aren’t, you are wrong. Do your own work well, and then you will have something to be proud of. But don’t compare yourself with others” Galatians 6:3-4

    So this is my new goal: I want to start each new day by focusing my eyes on Jesus. I want a heart which is in tune with the Holy Spirit. I want a mind which is contemplating my own work, work which I am actively pursuing and doing. I want my words to be encouragement to others in their journeys. I want my prayers to be an intimate discussion between myself and a Father who loves me more passionately than any human heart could. I want my soul to be thankful, satisfied, and content in everything which I already have.

    I want Jesus to break Envy’s power over me, and the first step is to lose sight of the crowd and keep focused on Him.

    Continuing the adventure,

    Jess

     

  • The Question of No Matter What

    Over the past few weeks I have been pondering a repeated question. It is simply this: do I love x,y, or z enough to do it no matter what?

    It is one of the biggest simple questions I have faced in a while. What set me on this track has been a re-examination of my beliefs about God’s will, my motives for creating art, and whether or not I will ever be Luke Skywalker.

    Let me explain.

    I think somewhere in my growing process between “I hate myself” and “God made me with purpose”, I became sidetracked with God’s will and a desire for Destiny. As I have spent time working through some of the issues surrounding self-loathing and gaining a better mental health perspective, I have been seeking out God’s perfect will for my life. There has to be one right? Some magical fast track to the best possible life where I am skinny, creative, happy, and never ever fight with my husband. I just have to find that narrow and windy road to get there.

    Recently, the Capt’n gave me a book titled Just Do Something by Kevin DeYoung. Similar to my current dilemma, it is a small book which packs a wallop. DeYoung makes the point that while God cares very deeply about every aspect of our lives because He cares very deeply about each one of us, there are few decisions which He will make for us. God gives us brains to–shocker–USE them. It is time to stop throwing responsibility on God for every aspect of our lives and start making some decisions about where we want to go and how we want to get there. We should always be seeking God’s wisdom, but seeking His wisdom and waiting around for some miraculous sign of His approval are two different things.

    As I have been processing how to take responsibility for my decisions, it has lead me question my motives for what I do. I mean, when I was blindly searching for that elusive narrow path of ‘God’s perfect will’ my general assumption was that if I found it, He would financially bless me for finding it. If God designed me with a purpose, why wouldn’t He bless me for finding my precise niche? However, if we look at that statement from another angle, the question then becomes, am I seeking God’s will because I truly believe His will to be the best? Or am I trying to find it so He will bless me with comforts and what I think is best?

    Interwoven in everything is a skewed longing for destiny. I want to find God’s will because I want to be the heroine who saves the world by using the force, I mean, ‘my giftedness’. This sense of a destiny which is waiting to be found increases my self absorption factor, and has me looking inward for a savior instead of up to Jesus. Instead of looking to the work which Jesus already did on the cross to provide my salvation, I continue to seek out a destiny of works which will get me into heaven. I need to give up the idea of being Luke Skywalker and learn to just rely on Jesus.

    This is how I cam to the question of no matter what.

    If I strip away the idea of ‘God’s perfect plan’ and start taking responsibility for my decisions, if I let go of financial motivations, and I look to Jesus to be my Hero, nothing is left but simply the task of doing the work. This is what creates the question. Do I love to be  writer enough to have words on a page be my entire reward? Do I love creating mixed media art pieces enough to let the process of painting, gluing, and scribbling be the reward? Is practicing the craft of bookbinding enough if all I have in the end is a place for my thoughts?

    This is what I mean about the question of no matter what: do I have enough passion to carry me through the journey no matter what the outcome is? Can I do the work for the sake of doing the work and the enjoyment of it?

    This isn’t to say I believe it is wrong to want to make a career out of these things, or that God cannot use me or that He did not make me with design. My point is, I need my focus to be on going through the process rather than the outcome. I need my focus to be on the journey rather than what I might get out of the destination. Which is why this is such a big question: do I love these things enough to make the long journey for the sake of the journey alone?

    Continuing the adventure,

    Jess

  • The Golden Rule of Preaching

    Recent conversations in my life have started me thinking on this question: what is the best way to preach the Gospel?

    After much pondering and struggling with this question for many years in my own Christian walk, the only answer I feel sure of is that there is no answer.

    There are so many theological and practical debates about how we should live out our lives as Christians and how to tell other people about Jesus. Do we drink? Do we dance? Do we sing at Sunday services? Do we have electric guitars? And did you know that drums are of the devil? The debate points are exhaustingly endless and I kinda don’t care anymore.

    What I do care about is if people come to know Jesus, they are reunited with their Heavenly Father and gain the counsel of the Holy Spirit. That’s all I care about. How they came to know Jesus doesn’t’ matter. Whether it was a tract, a fake $100 bill, a deep cultivated relationship, a preacher on TV, a pastor’s message on Sunday, or a crazy man preaching on the street corner, I don’t care. The reason I don’t care is because preaching the Gospel is about the Who and not the How. Who we are preaching about will always be more important than how we are doing it.

    Part of the reason I have come to believe this is because we are all going to fail. There will always be a time–whether from the pulpit or from a coffee shop–when we will try to share the Gospel and fall flat on our faces. However, I would rather try and fail a hundred times than never attempt because I’m not quite perfect yet. A hundred failures is a hundred opportunities for God’s grace and power to shine through my weaknesses.

    Beyond failure, I have come to learn that God reaches different people through very different avenues. Some people need to be walked, hand in hand with one person, to the feet of Jesus. Others may need to feel the security of a gathering. Still others need to be alone with Him to hear His voice. We are all different and I’ve learned to understand that our differences–when we’re not fighting about them–make us a more whole and complete picture of who God is. He is a God of diversity and creativity. He is a God who sometimes speaks in a cloud of fire, and sometimes speaks in a whisper. Jesus is a man who embraced children and cast money changers out of the temple with a whip. The trinity of God is complex and surprising. Jesus is the only way to God the Father, but I refuse to believe there is only one path to Jesus.

    So here is what I have determined for myself: I am going to follow the Golden Rule when it comes to preaching. I am going to preach the Gospel in a way which I would like to have it preached to me. I will invest in relationships over time, I will teach in settings appropriate to my strengths and gifting, but you won’t find me walking the street with a stack of tracts in my hand. It makes me uncomfortable when a stranger approaches me on the street, so I’m doubly uncomfortable when I am asked to approach others. I’ll leave the street preaching to someone else who loves to meet new people, who is comfortable in that space, and who God has gifted to do that.

    Most importantly, this is what I am going to stop doing: I’m going to stop shooting others down from the sidelines. I’m going to stop telling people they are ‘doing it wrong’ because it doesn’t’ make sense to me or it makes me uncomfortable. If I am asked for advice or direction, I will gladly give it. Otherwise, I’m going to KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT unless it is to give encouragement to people who are doing something I am not equipped to do.

    I recognize there is a lot of fear and doubt attached to how we go about preaching the Gospel and what it means to be associated with “those crazies”. However, if you really think about it, the Gospel is a Crazy Story. There is nothing sane about a sinless man giving up His life for the rest of us who can’t even love the people closest to us well, not to mention the rest of the world. There is nothing normal about a God who could wipe us all out with a thought, but chooses to be patient and sacrificing so we can be reunited with Him. We teach a crazy love story. Get over being crazy. Start asking yourselves the question of what’s the worst that could happen if the Gospel is preached differently than how you think it should be? If a group of believers  start doing strange bold crazy things for Jesus, what’s the worst that could happen? They might fail, so what? Hopefully, they will learn from the experience and do better next time. Maybe the worst thing which could happen is that they totally skew the message (hopefully unintentionally) and preach that Jesus is chicken. So what? Do we not trust that our God is bigger than  one mixed up message and that He is able to call anyone to Himself through any means? And what if someone never once speaks in front of a group of people, but spends time serving individuals and walking alongside them through the difficult parts of life? What’s the worst that could happen? They may not have as big ‘numbers’ of people they save, but since when is following Jesus about numbers?

    Here is the hard truth, there are people in the world who are choosing to live separated from God. In the end, this choice will lead them to Hell because God will not force himself on anyone, and Heaven is His domain. So we need every member of the body of Christ, doing whatever it is that they do best, to reach people and introduce them to Jesus. That’s it.

    If I touched a personal button, please know I am aware that this summary leaves out a lot of loopholes and past situations in which the message of Jesus has been twisted for personal gain. However, I would encourage you to examine if the stories about TV pastors embezzling money or the lazy Christian who never shares their faith are really the majority. I’m sure you’ll find they just aren’t. There are too many Christians going about their day trying to introduce people to Jesus through whatever means and talents they have for it to be true. So let’s stop policing one another about how we preach the Gospel and keep pointing people to who Jesus really is.

    Continuing the adventure,

    Jess

  • Becoming A Student Again

    I just celebrated my 29th birthday.

    As a joke (though, only partially) I told a friend I needed to make this year the best year ever. Since I’m such a procrastinator, it would make sense to push as much as possible into the last year of my twenties. For some reason, I (like many people) feel that turning thirty is some sort of deadline. I have to have a list of things I accomplished while I was still a twenty-something in order to start out the next decade of my life on the right foot.

    Insane, I know, but this is my strange little world.

    The reality is though, I probably won’t accomplish most of the things on my imaginary list of ‘have-to-do-this-before-I’m-thirty’. I don’t say this because I doubt myself, but because I realize that I don’t want to live my life according to checklists any more. I don’t want to live under the cloak of proof or the shadow of external worth. It’s too exhausting.

    Rather, I decided that 29 is the year I will become a student again. I want to become Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet. I want to study great storytellers. I want to form a study group. I want to listen more, practice more, and find out all the things I don’t know. I don’t want to pass the test, I want to digest the lesson.

    I think this is the next stage of my journey, and I am looking forward to walking into the unknown places it will take me.

    Continuing the adventure,

    Jess

  • When I Look Away

    This came rambling through my brain this morning.

    I feel like Peter drowning

    When I look away

    When I let my eyes fall upon the waves

    And Your face is swallowed by the haze

    I feel like Peter drowning

    When I try to walk alone

    When my journey crosses liquid

    And my identity becomes twisted

    So, shine bright in the midst of the storm

    Call me home with a shout resounding

    Reach out and pluck me from the gray

    Because I feel like Peter drowning

    When I look away.

     

  • Who Is Massaging Your Soul?

    Saturday morning I woke up with a kink in my neck. The kink became progressively worse on Sunday. After two days of wincing every time I looked at him, Abe (and his wife Rowe) made me an appointment for a massage.

    Now, this was not a girls weekend out and relax type of massage. This was what Jacob, my massage therapist with Muppet hair, called a ‘fixer upper’. Jacob worked my back, neck, and shoulders in a way I didn’t know was possible. He found muscle tissue I didn’t even know I had. However, the pain was worth the end result when I regained a range of motion lost to me for the last four days.

    As I laid on the table, I began to wonder when was the last time I had given my soul a massage. When was the last time I let someone else probe through the skin of heart to find the tightly wound places which hindered me? I couldn’t really remember. This used to be a common practice for me, but has given way to the business of life, and I think I am beginning to feel a kink.

    During the massage, Jacob–who has fingers I believe to be made of steel–would find a place of tension and push, holding the pressure there for an uncomfortable few minutes. Then a magical thing would happen, the tensions would start to melt away, leaving freedom to move in place of the knot. Now, I can’t undo weeks of damage and neglect to muscles in one hour, just like I can’t undo the tension in my soul in an hour. I can, however, begin the process of asking for help and letting others start the work of unknotting my soul.

    Who massages your soul?

    Continuing the adventure,

    Jess