Why take the easy road?

Tomorrow starts an old tradition that is one of my favorites: driving west to Colorado for the summer. It is all the more dear this year because I don’t know for sure when I’ll get to do it again. In the past few months, I’ve made some big decisions that will almost certainly change these annual routines of mine. I’m excited about my future, but I’m also experiencing how the decisions I’ve made about the future are affecting me in the present. It’s funny how time works like that – a decision I made in the past (last week) won’t change anything until the future (August), but it’s already affected how I experience this moment (right… now).

I tend to be unusually aware of these layers that exist over events. There are layers of sadness and appreciation and gratitude over this road trip to Colorado because it may be my last one for a while. Recognizing layers can be a strength because I am less likely to take these moments for granted. The downside is that it can also add a layer of drama to everything along the way. “This may be the last time I stop at a gas station on I-80” (ok, that is true. Is that really an event worth noting? Do I really need to go through some sort of grieving process over gas stations on I-80?). “There’s that old barn I pass every year. I should stop and take a picture of it” (should I stop at every landmark I recognize to take a picture? Will the other landmarks feel bad if I don’t?). I can’t appreciate or capture every single moment, and as hard as it is, I’m going to have to reconcile myself with that reality.

And, if I’m really on top of  my game, I recognize that there is a layer of irony (favorite concept in this blog so far) when my desire to appreciate moments adds so much anxiety that it can ruin the very moments I’m trying to appreciate. Are all these layers making your head spin yet? Welcome to my world, where there is nothing that I can’t make more complicated if I really apply myself. All I’m really saying is that I have mixed feelings about driving to Colorado tomorrow. But why say it like that when I could drag you through the process that I had to go through to get there? The ride may be bumpy and the curves downright scary, but the scenery along the crazy road is much more interesting.

Really?

“Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.”

Psalm 63:3-4, NIV

You know when you read a bible verse - and you’ve read it before - but this time, it catches you differently? I recently read the passage above and it snagged on my mind like a hang nail on a sweater. Hm. Do I really believe that God’s love is better than life? That’s an easy thing to say, especially in the strange little bubble I live in where the path of least resistance is to walk with God. Most of the people I know expect me to say those kinds of things. But I know, when I pause long enough to honestly consider what it means, that my life would be different if I truly grasped the magnitude of His love and the mystery that He chooses to love us at all.

In the next verse, the psalmist says that he will praise God as long as he lives. The more I thought about the preceding verse, the more the connection became clear. If His love is better than life, then what else would I do with that life than praise Him with it? He’s given me the gift of life and He has loved me with a mind-blowing, extraordinary and completely undeserved love. The only response that makes sense is to spend the time that I have been given - by Him - trying to live a life of praise in my words, actions and attitudes.

And now here’s a funny thing about praising God that completes this circuit even more fully: the more I praise Him, the more open I am to His love. Praising God, especially when my circumstances are not blissful or inspiring, brings me to a place beyond myself. By transcending my circumstances, even the good ones, I transcend myself and for a few brief moments, I am free. And it is in that space that the love of God is able to reach me and fill me and utterly have its way with me. In those moments, I know that I know that I know that God loves me (absolutely adores me, in fact) and that my love for Him means something significant to Him.

It’s a simple concept, but the application of it eludes me on a daily basis. My lack of praise keeps me from experiencing God’s love, which keeps the illusion alive that perhaps there is something out there that is better than His love. So I hold back, keeping myself at a slight distance from the only source of unconditional love in existence. There are many ways that God can break this cycle, but there is something that I can do, although I need His grace to do it: I can choose to praise Him. I can put myself in a position to receive His love. And by His grace, He will accept my praise (faltering and inconstant as it is) and “my soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods” (Psalm 63:5).