Xena Made it Look So Easy

I guess I'll just start out by saying no one makes sense any more... but maybe it's just me?
Where ever I go I see people living their normal Western lives and I just don't get it any more... but maybe I do?

The best way I can describe these feelings is painting in this light; As a kid I was very imaginative, my sister and I had a made up world of tree sprites, and animal royalty and all around magic and sunshine. It was like living in a secret garden, and that's very much how my relationship with God was for a long time.
But like all heroines from stories that deal with magic and fairies I grew restless and went out into the world.

I became Xena in a lot of ways, I was warrior woman with a spit fire attitude when wound up and an even keel when left to my own devices. I loved the way my life had become, and the way it looked like it was heading.
I left my safe quaint delicate little garden and roamed through fields of glory making big battle plans and working to secure a future as glorious as the grand visions my wanderings gave me.

Let me clarify that I am still that person, a rough and tough warrior woman, sword in hand and and dreams in heart but something has happened as of late.
I've been invited into a lot of people's 'gardens'. Their private lives and worship sessions and here is the part where my childhood obsession with Xena didn't prepare me for.

You see in the television show Xena traveled around kicking butt and taking names, but every once in a while she'd visit some mystic temple or lavish garden and she fit in there just as did on the battlefield.
In the real world- or the semi-parable world- it doesn't work that way.
I end up being a lumbering warrior trampling on flowers and pulling up the shrubs by the roots.
I don't mean to shake values and challenge core beliefs, but you really didn't have to worry about offending people out in the field like you do in the garden.

Home has been very much like a big open plain littered with gardens that I've visited.
Churches I've attended, Ministries I've been apart of even friends that I keep are all these gardens. While I am able to live in them comfortably I just don't fit in with them. There are always those nagging little things that make you bristle under the armor your wearing.
It's like they're from the same culture but a different tribe.

This is more of a get this weird feeling of rogue-ness off of my chest kind of blog, but I think it can be applied to a lot of people who have experienced being apart of a culture that has lived out of the status quo.
I don't just mean people in ministry I mean people have held the dying, loved the unloveable, listened to unspeakable confessions with out batting an eye and extended grace to every one they met with out questioning that persons faith or motives.
I don't meet those people often, and I don't get every one else in the world who can't do those things any more.

The Bible says "The weapons of my warfare are not carnal" and I'm starting to get that. We're not fighting a war in the traditional sense. We're taking ground empathy and grace not excluding our selves and judging others. Each battle is won by becoming part of a culture and enforcing the positive strengths of that culture rather than over taking a culture and punishing all of it's wrong doings.

So I've decided that I hate the metaphorical gardens, where they hear the stories of people doing something out side of their four walls/paradigm/every day norm and associate it with what they can understand rather than seeing it for what it is.
Ministry is about winning the lost, it's about being Christ to a hurting world.

The only time Jesus quoted scripture was to those who used scripture as a weapon, the rest of the time he just quoted his father.
That's what we do out side of gardens, we live our lives by what God says, not by what someone holier-than-thou thinks is right. And out side of gardens we get stuff done.

I'm not bashing traditional church, or any particular group, I'm just calling my self out a little bit. Garden's are great to rest in, but there no place for a warrior to live.
I'll stop tearing up your shrubberies now, I'm picking up my sword and I'm going to push out of these gates.
In the words of Xena...

Gardening, among other things

My parents have been pastoring a church out of their hope for the past eight years. It's a great place and I've really grown in this environment where every one has something to say. Where we've all been activated to speak and prophesy because we've all seen the loving heart of God.
On occasion my parents have asked me to speak while they were out of town but I've always been nervous and haven't really known what to say.
Tonight I'll be leading the 'service' and well I think this time I'm prepared.
Thanks to an early start at work I've had some time with God, just me him and the espresso machine. It's really given me some time to think about everything he's been laying on my heart and just let him know how thankful I am for the opportunities he's given me lately.
So I wanted to share a bit what God and I were talking about this morning.

Am I a gardener, or a garden?
At different times in peoples lives they are gardens, being worked on, worked in, and often worked out.
But also the Bible tells us Jesus is the gardener in our lives, the bible also tells us we are co-heirs with Christ and are to share in his laboring (IE be Jesus to every one we meet). So this left me with the question, When do I get to be the gardener?
When do I stop being constantly worked on and start showing others the potential they have?
Paul tells us in Corinthians that salvation is a continual work in us and that we must die daily to the human things. The things that make us separate gardeners from gardens.
And in that adamic human nature I asked: "When do I stop dyeing and when do I get to live again?"

I remember in Spain one of my teachers Andrew Shearman often said that we should be pouring into at least 2 people.
That is two people you are "mentoring", teaching and equipping to be all that God has called them to be.
It doesn't have to be a formal teaching, mentoring thing just hanging out and showing them Christ in a real world environment and being there when they need you.
For a parent this one is covered, two kids or more and your doing this mentoring thing, you got it down. lol
But for a single girl who often feels she is being poured into rather than pouring into others it's often hard to draw that mental line of being a proverbial gardener and a proverbial garden.
In my heart it's an easy answer. "I am both!"
But my head is another story. My mind has a hard time wrapping around being both a vessel and a pitcher. It seems impossible for my brain to comprehend that I'm being poured into while I pour out.
I'm trying to connect the two but often it's my brain that calls the shots and my heart takes the back seat.

While mulling this over another statement Andrew would often quote came to mind. "Ice cold brain, Red hot heart."
This means we should think things through while living crazy passionate.
Often I feel I've mastered this concept- only I haven't connected the icy brain and the burning heart.
My heart screams out the mysteries of God while my brain just struggles to remember who I really am.
I suppose this part of the asnwer to my original question; When do I stop being the gardener and start being the garden?
When I learn and truly KNOW in both my heart AND my mind that I am both.

Only problem is, this concept is easier said than done.