Voices from Two Gardens

Yesterday I went to therapy and we talked about hearing voices. Sometimes
there is just so much noise all about us. So many voices telling us we are this or that, questioning whether we are this or that. My therapist asked about what voices I heard speaking to me and where I thought the main ones come from. It made me think a lot because the voice I probably hear the most feels like my own…I get stuck in my head every so often and question so much about myself, about how I try to love, how I do relationships, how I try to connect with God, and the nature of my own goodness and performance. He told me that sometimes the voices we hear are prior versions of ourselves. Versions from another time and space that can’t truly and accurately speak into our present. For me many times too it’s a prior version of who I thought or learned God to be that revisits.

The voice I’ve been hearing most recently revolves around my own feelings
and emotions. Basically it works like this, a big emotion or feeling comes, or
sometimes it’s the lack of a big feeling or emotion and I hear the voice saying how you feel is too much or not enough. I start to mull it over in my head and a personal inquisition starts. My therapist helped me explore what I feel in by body at these moments which turns out to be stress, tightness, and a closing off to what’s around me. My response when all this occurs is to create distance, space, to basically in short run. Fight or flight, usually flight. And at the heart of those feelings we discovered is fear. See I’m afraid that all this is really just dependent on me. That if I don’t do everything right, it’ll just all fall apart. When it comes to my relationships, whether it be with God or with another person, I’ve always defaulted to at the end it really just being on me. If I would choose right, feel right, happy enough, outgoing enough, exciting enough, passionate enough, I could make sure it all ended well and wouldn’t fall apart.

But things do fall apart. And what I have discovered is that for me it’s
easier to believe that I’m more at fault than to let all the falling apart just
be. See if I’m at fault then I’m still in control at least a little. And it
feels safer to be at fault than it does to come face to face with the hurt and
pain of all of who you are just not being enough. Subconsciously I’ve taken on a lot of the blame for my fallings because if I’m honest it doesn’t hurt as bad. At the core, it is nothing more than a defense mechanism to keep my heart safe.

There’s been one voice that has echoed in the background of my entire life,
God. I was at church the 2nd Sunday of my life and have basically been there ever since. It’s been a blessing for sure, but it’s also presented some
challenges. Some of the voices I attributed to God I’ve learned later did not
truly reflect his heart and mind. The voice that I thought was god told me
first off that I was originally bad, lost in my sin, and basically a
disappointment. No matter how hard I try, I’m going to fail, to fall, to get it
wrong. The voice told me that something had to be punished and that not being perfect meant creating distance. The voice told me that my heart was deceitful and not to be trusted. Since my heart was me, I quickly learned not to trust my own self. I took all these voices and brought them with me into all my life, vocation, & relationships.

I was yesterday reminded of two garden stories that both center around the hearing of voices. The first is in Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve are in the garden and they eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. After they eat the fruit they hear the sound of God coming to walk with them in the garden and they hide. They react in the same way I often do…they create space and distance because they no longer feel like they are enough. They now know they are naked. When they tell this to God he asks them “Who told you you were naked?” They heard a voice and that voice told them they were naked, unclothed, vulnerable, uncovered, and not enough. Does that sound familiar to you? How many times do we hear a voice, sometimes whispering, sometimes shouting that we are uncovered,
exposed and if someone sees who we really are the game will be over. We’ll be found out and lose all that we work so hard to keep. So to protect ourselves from ever experiencing that loss in the first place we create space, distance and control so we don’t get hurt.

That story from the garden has meant so much to me over the years but I’m glad that it is not the only garden story that can inform our lives. Another occurs in John 20 on Easter morning. Mary Magdalene, a follower of Jesus goes to the tomb while it is still dark. She discovers in the darkness that the stone is rolled away and goes to find Peter and John. After they inspect and leave bewildered the action picks up in verse 11:

¹¹ But Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping; and so, as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb; ¹² and she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying. ¹³ And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.” ¹⁴ When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵ Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing Him to be the gardener, she said to Him, “Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him in Hebrew,
“Rabboni!” (which means, Teacher).

There is so much here. Isn’t ironic that both the fall and the resurrection story happened in a garden? How many times are we stumbling in the dark looking for a dead body and something to bury like Mary? But the thing that speaks to my heart the most in this passage right now is the voice that Mary heard. She doesn’t even recognize Jesus, mistakenly thinking he’s the gardener. All that changes when she hears him call her name. In the first garden there’s a voice of accusation, a voice of question, one that says we are not enough, that we are lacking, that we are naked and should be ashamed. In this resurrection garden the voice calls us by our name, calls us by all of who we are and as soon as He breathes a syllable of our name we know that he loves and accepts all of who we are, all of our short comings and successes, all of who we are and all of who we aren’t. Mary knows it’s him immediately.

In the end I think it comes down to which voice do we choose to listen to. I think it’s a moment by moment choice, day by day, maybe even hour by hour and minute by minute. If the voice you hear is one pointing out all that you are not, one that makes you feel naked and ashamed, it’s not God. See Adam and Eve heard a voice and tried to hide. God was still right there trying to walk with them but they created distance and space to try to protect themselves. But maybe it’s a lie that our hearts need protecting. Mary heard a voice and she threw herself at Jesus trying to cling to him. What a picture of two ways to go through life. One drawing away and pulling back, creating space…the other being fully known and charging forward, closing the space to be even more fully known.

So I have…you have….we all have a choice to make. Which voice do we want to listen to? The one that tells us that we are not enough, that we are lacking, that we are failures, originally bad and are just going to mess it all up in the end? Or do we listen to the voice that actually speaks and calls us by our name down deep in our hearts. One is death and the other is life. I’m going to listen to the one that knows my name and every inch of who I am and tells me it’s enough, not because I’m good, not because I get it right every time but because I’m his. And if you hear a voice that whispers that you are not…it’s not true. Stumbling into the garden in the dark, alone, and listen for the voice…he’ll speak your name. We are loved just as we are. And because we are, we can go love boldly like him.

In the middle of writing this the song below came on randomly….or not : )