I have only one perspective to offer in this life.  I am me, the way God made me.  It seems to me that many people, maybe most, view their trek through life linearly.  As they move forward in time, what has gone before drops away, and all that exists for them is the here and now.  I don’t know if it’s good, bad, or just different, the way I view life, but it is more all-encompassing.  If our lives were a handbag, mine is the hobo style.  It is all one big satchel with everything mixed in there together.  No pockets or compartments.  I don’t know why that is.  It just is.  I tend to record things in vivid detail.  Not just the hardships, but the good things too.  Right now I can close my eyes and “walk through” my grandmother’s old house, which I haven’t seen in 20 years, and describe it in minute detail.  Every square inch.  Even the sounds of where the floor boards creak, and the specific scents.  I went on a mission trip with kids from all over the U.S. 32 years ago, and I can still tell you the names of every person on that team, even the last names of some and where they were from.  Never mind that at my age, I sometimes can’t remember what day it is, lol.

I guess to me, life is about people.  It is about relationships with others, and particularly the sense of belonging whether in family or a circle of friendships where we are loved.

I just had the great blessing of a reunion with a friend from that long-ago Teen Missions summer.  So many people would maybe feel awkward after so many years, but there was none of that.  It was like finding my long-lost sister.  June is truly a one-of-a-kind in this world.  We were assigned as tent-mates that summer during our pre-mission boot camp week.  We just bonded.  June is a s a 5ft-3 inch dynamo.  She is beautiful inside and outside, and she is both practical and sentimental, both a thinker and a doer.  She is very balanced.  I dare imagine that had I not fallen out of touch with her during the tumultuous early years of my independent adult life, her influence might have provided some much-needed perspective and maybe even saved me some grief.   I recall her breaking off her engagement to a fellow I had introduced her to, her wisdom in recognizing what she had a right to expect from anyone wishing to share her life, made a real impression on me.  Yet I did not have that same confidence inside myself.  Where does that come from?  Is it born in us or modeled for us, or what?

Where does such a strong and healthy sense of self come from?  I’ve spent a lifetime wondering.  I think I gained it over time, by the hardest means.  But even then,  there was a tempering yet to take place. In self-defense,  I became prickly.  Haughty even.   Life has a way of humbling a person.   Well, I don’t guess that is a hundred percent accurate, though, really.  Life can make you resilient and strong, bitter and fragile, or hard and broken.

I have always been very sensitive.  Too sensitive, in my own opinion, but who am I to question God’s design in me?  Frankly, I was born timid.  From my earliest memories I recall looking around at others and wondering how it was that they knew how to “be”.  How to speak comfortably, how to try new things and do well at them right off.  My problem was over-blown self-consciousness.   Even after I learned that most people are way less conscious of me than I am of myself, I continued to be easily deterred from things new and unfamiliar, for fear of failure.

Somewhere along the way I developed the habit of mimicking those people around me who seemed successful among our peers.  It was high school by then.  I learned to be chatty and funny, but continued to be sensitive (which you can’t fake or cover up).  I was the kid who turned pink from neck to ears if I was upset or embarrassed.  Still am.  Now, though, I am more prone to “go for it”.  Failure is not the end of the world.  Not by a long shot.

As life went on and things were what the were (you can read that in the sidebar under my “autobiography” of sorts entitled “Purple Morning Glories and Gold Ladybugs”), I came to a point in my life where I couldn’t do the mimicking anymore.  I did not even realize that I was acting.  It was an astute Christian counselor who pointed it out to me, actually.  She asked me to describe myself for her, how I was as a child.  I told her I was shy.  She said, “I thought so”.  In a rare diversion from her usual tactic of just listening, she offered an insight.  She pointed out that though I came across as very outgoing, if I was naturally more introverted, it was probably taking a pretty big emotional toll trying to be “on” all the time. She pointed out that it is okay to be quiet and introspective.  It was one of those times God shines a flashlight into your soul.  She was so right.  I mean, I am writing this about myself now, but I didn’t get it until that moment.

My ability to look around and sort of “wing it” through life had served me well for a time.  Whatever the reason for my lack of understanding and proficiency socially functioning in this world, natural shyness, sheltered childhood, whatever, I had the ingenuity to adapt and make my way into adulthood, but it was a mechanism that had outlasted it’s own usefulness and what a relief it was to put it away.

I have always been just as happy in solitude as in company of others.  I need solitude.  Some folks cannot bear to ever be alone with their own thoughts.  I seem to have an innate need to do so on a regular basis.  All my work has always been very people-oriented.  From cashier to nursing to sales.   I am a people person in a different way than the “traditional sense”.  Generally I view someone as a people-person, as someone who can converse easily with pretty much anyone.  I can do that, but don’t always care to.  A people-person is also someone who prefers to be surrounded by others most of the time.  That is not me.  A people person is very interested in the daily minutiae of other people’s lives.   I am a one-on-one people-person.  Deep and wide.  I am a depth-dweller in every way.  I don’t get much satisfaction in superficial things.  Trivia is not my cup of tea.  I like to know what makes people tick.  I like to know how the heart works.  Thing is, there are plenty enough people in this world who have never even wondered that about their own heart.  They are no more in touch with their own motives and values, than the man in the moon, and so those types are at a loss when they encounter one such as myself.  They may feel uncomfortable.  They may be defensive.  They may automatically be turned off by anything deeper than the latest contestant on America’s Got Talent.  That is hard for me to wrap my mind around.  Yet I am the first to admit it is no picnic being so deep all the time.

I have been told I am a phenomenon.  LOL.  When we are growing up we always have this notion that everyone else is normal and we are different.  We want to fit in, even as we proclaim how much we are unique.  I never quite got past feeling “different”.  I always say I am “special like them that rides the short bus”.  No offense to those who ride the short bus.  I am of the firm belief that all of human intelligence is on one spectrum.  As labels go, there are those who are “ultraviolet” and those that have their own individual color and qualities.  We call those ultraviolet ones “normal” but really it’s just gradients in the spectrum which we can’t or don’t discern.

At almost-fifty, I have had enough experiences in my life to realize that if this life were all there was, we might as well hang it up.  I cannot even fathom the lives some folks have led.  The struggle and deprivation, the suffering.  There are people even today who are born into slavery and die in it.  There is no “making sense” of the cruelty and agony some people have had to endure.  At almost-fifty, there are plenty of people who feel their life is just getting started.  So full of energy, so committed to their goals and plans, and having developed just enough patience to endure the due diligence they know it will require to get there.

I have one prevailing desire.  I want to see the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ come on this Earth.  I want to meet Jesus face to face.  I want to see the curse lifted and experience this world as it was meant to be.  That will seem bizarre to the average reader.  Even many Christians who claim to believe God’s Word, don’t see those things as literal coming events.  I believe a literal trumpet will sound and a literal event calling the church up to heaven, will occur.  I believe tribulation will come and I believe after tribulation there will be a literal thousand years of Christ ruling over the Earth, after which this Earth will be burned up, and a new one will be created.  I don’t know all of the details of this eternal “ages of ages” to come.  The Bible doesn’t give us much on that, but the way I see it, this life with it’s troubles and hard lessons, will be nothing but a drop of water in a huge ocean of eternity.  The Bible even says as much.  (For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the  anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.)

Life is abrasive, is it not?  As Christians, it seems even more so.  The longer we live, as we draw nearer to God, our perspective of this world and life are changed.  I reached a point several years back where this world no longer held any draw or attraction for me.  It was a defining moment.  I didn’t “arrive” there by my own efforts.  God brought me there by His tempering process.

Tempering is a process.  In metallurgy, if one wants to temper steel properly, it requires 4 stages.  First the steel must be hardened.  This is done by slowly heating the steel until it turns red.  In stage 2 the steel is then plunged into a bath of  clean cold water, steam boils off and rapidly cools the steel.  The steel is then hard, but it is also brittle.

I can look back at my life and compare this to when I was young and still “wet behind the ears” in my walk with the Lord, and understood relatively little about God, and ventured out into the world.  Faith and beliefs that are not tested, can’t really be embraced.  That period was definitely an “ordeal by fire” for me, and yes, indeed, I came out hardened, but brittle.  Fragile.  I knew more than I previously had.  I was no longer naive, but nor was I any wiser or stronger.

Before the third stage, the steel is wiped clean of any debris, and then the third stage is yet another heat process.  This time the metal is heated until a blue line forms, indicating the correct temperature for tempering that will render the steel most pliable, as in making springs!

I can vouch for the fact that I sure felt “blue” during some of those periods of tempering, and that I have come out of the other side of those experiences more resilient than before.

I thank God that He is a refiner.  I know that I cannot literally purify myself.   I can submit myself to His purifying process, which is what He requires us to do.  There is exactly ONE instance of the phrase “purify yourselves” in the Bible.  It is found in Numbers 31:19

And do ye abide without the camp seven days: whosoever hath killed any person, and whosoever hath touched any slain, purify both yourselves and your captives on the third day, and on the seventh day.

H2398
חטא
châtâ’
khaw-taw’
A primitive root; properly to miss; hence (figuratively and generally) to sin; by inference to forfeit, lack, expiate, repent, (causatively) lead astray, condemn: – bear the blame, cleanse, commit [sin], by fault, harm he hath done, loss, miss, (make) offend (-er), offer for sin, purge, purify (self), make reconciliation, (cause, make) sin (-ful, -ness), trespassive

This Strong’s definition seems to indicate both guilt and repentance, yet an inadequacy in that repentance.  Which is about right, isn’t it?  We can repent all day long, but without Christ’s sacrifice, the repentance is of no redemptive value by itself.

Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.  Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.   For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.

Outside the camp.  That is where the garbage was dumped.  That was where the lepers were forced to dwell.  Jesus went out there and suffered outside the gates of Jerusalem, despised and rejected of men.

Life is so much more than what we see here and now.  This world is not our home!