Tracing Letters

If I wake up one morning sneezing, I can load up on drugs and chicken noodle soup and see the runny nose and coughing subside in time. That doesn’t mean I’ve found a cure for the common cold. In the same way, if I have an addiction to alcohol, I can set up boundaries and never have another drink again, but that doesn’t mean I’ve resolved any of the issues that drove me to drink in the first place. Bad physical habits are hard enough to break; even more difficult is correcting destructive ways of thinking and feeling.

Anyone who has known me for more than about ten minutes knows that I function in a mindset of self-deprecation. My natural impulse is to tear myself down. If someone hurts me or criticizes me, I automatically accept the blame for the situation. If I find myself in a place of conflict, I pile all the responsibility on myself so that I might not have reason to dislike or resent the other person. I am an expert at accepting the greatest harms that have been done to me and then twisting them so that they are all my fault. Of course this has built into me a very heavily ingrained sense of worthlessness—I have nothing to offer the world, and my existence just doesn’t matter. This mindset shows up in the way I talk (I don’t), in the way I carry myself, and in my sense of humor.

I know full well that Scripture contradicts this point of view. Psalm 139 is one of my favorite passages in the Bible, and Jeremiah 29:11 remains the single verse that has most impacted my life. My favorite character in the Bible is Gideon, the man God used to lead Israel despite his constant protests that he wasn’t good enough. Yet I have always struggled with recognizing the value that is inherent in me as a son of God.

It has taken me many years just to reach a point where I am aware of this problem in me, and to grow into a functional understanding of God’s character. Only now am I beginning to accept that maybe God loves me without condition and without qualifiers. Only now am I grasping in my head the liberating truth of God’s grace, that it is His hand placed upon our lives to help us do the things we are called to do but are thoroughly incapable of doing (like recognizing our own value). Only now am I starting to realize that I don’t need to be ashamed of myself, and that I can be a little bit more assertive and it won’t matter what people think.

Essentially, I’ve recognized the problem and I’ve begun to see the solution. But how do I transfer this new knowledge from my head to my heart? How to I plant this seed of truth in my soul and have it take root? How do I make this way of thinking a good habit to replace the bad habits that still reign quite solidly in my head and my heart?

I know a girl who taught herself Korean. It’s a difficult language to learn, for sure, but especially in a place like Nashville, where absolutely no one else speaks it. But she worked at it every day. She immersed herself in every bit of Korean culture she could find, seeking out a Korean church community in the area and watching Korean television online. She dedicated herself to grasping the grammar and composition of the Korean language, which is designed completely differently from English. She memorized characters and vocabulary and expressions, and she worked to develop her accent. Then one day, after living and breathing Korean for well over a year at the very least, something clicked in her mind. She just realized suddenly one morning in Korean church that she no longer had to translate to herself. No longer did she have to ponder the Korean words and figure out what the English translation was; now she was actually truly listening and thinking in Korean. Now she could just enjoy the sermon without having to utilize a good chunk of her brainpower just translating. She could watch Korean television without having to actively translate to English before comprehending the dialogue. She just understood Korean without English coming into play.

I’m starting to think that it’s the same with developing healthy thought patterns. I’m a native speaker of Deception, and I’m trying to learn the language of Truth. And right now I’m just learning the vocabulary of Truth. I’m just learning how sentences are formed. I’m tracing out the new letters on lined paper, the same letter over and over a thousand times. And I’m constantly translating in my mind. When I find myself thinking, ‘Dan, you pretty much suck at life’, I have to “translate” that very intentionally to what I now know to be true. I have to catch myself in the act, and actively say, ‘Dan, it’s okay if you suck at life, because it’s no longer in your hands. You’ve given it over to God, and He’s promised that He has a plan and purpose for your life. He doesn’t suck at life…’.

I’m just waiting for that day when, like that friend who learned Korean, it just clicks in my mind. That day when no longer must I expend the energy to translate everything, and instead just know. That day when I can think and feel and speak the language of Truth naturally and with confidence, and when I just know who I truly am in Christ and can live it out honestly.

That day is coming.

My Name is Daniel (part 2)

My name is Daniel. Daniel Patrick Wright, Jr. That’s right, I’m a junior. I’ve been lugging my father around my whole life. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing; someday when I have my first son I’m most certainly going to nominate the name Daniel Patrick Wright, III. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m quite fond of the name Daniel.

However, my name is not the only thing I hold in common with my dad. The name often serves as a reminder that we as children are often saddled with the faults of our parents. I don’t really know anything about the concept of generational curses, other than that it’s a frequent theme in the Old Testament. I don’t even know if that is anything remotely applicable to these thoughts here. I do know, however, that part of growing up is realizing just how much we are becoming like our parents.

One very prominent fault of my own is my nearly paralyzing reluctance to take risks. I’m the guy who, upon finding himself lost in the forest, is perfectly content to sit down and wait for someone to find him, out of fear that looking for a way out will only make him even more lost—and all that only after being forced into the woods in the first place. If I don’t know for a fact that something is the right thing to do (or the only thing to do), I won’t do anything. Sure, this protects me from making a lot of mistakes. But if I want to do more with my life than just work/eat/TV/sleep/repeat, I’m going to have to take some risks. And sometimes I’m going to have to take risks without knowing what all the variables involved might be.

I am watching this whole thing unfold right now with my own father.

When I was four or five years old, we moved from Alberton, Montana, to Hobe Sound, Florida, so that I could attend a school there that my mother wanted her children to attend. I was enrolled in kindergarten at (then) Hobe Sound Bible Academy, and my mother took up the position as high school English teacher. My dad found a job as a roofer, something he had done when he was in Bible college. I was seven years old when my parents separated, and my mom was left to raise three sons (the youngest being less than a year old) by herself on an extremely small and inconsistent salary. My father remained in the area, continuing to work on roofs.

My relationship with my father is another story for another day, so I’ll fast forward to Super Bowl weekend 2008. I joined him in Indiana on the occasion of his mother’s funeral. I barely knew her at all, and I had never even met anyone else on my father’s side of the family. I think that due to my proximity to the funeral (I lived three hours away in Nashville), he simply wanted me to be there with him during what had to be a very difficult time for him. It was during this trip that he told me about his dream for his life. He’d always wanted to return to Montana and open up a carpentry shop. He had a heart for the Native Americans—in fact, both of my parents had been teachers at a place called Northwest Indian Bible School when I was born—and so he also wanted to hire on a couple Native American guys that he could teach and mentor in his shop. But he’d felt obligated to remain near us as we grew up, and so he’d never made the move back to Montana. My youngest brother was about to turn eighteen and graduate high school at this time, and I think his dreams had started to return to the forefront of his mind (that is, if they’d ever left it in the first place).

But thanks to the ballooning of insurance rates in Florida following the disastrous 2004 hurricane season, and to the economic recession that is currently in place worldwide, he has had trouble finding work at all, much less enough to allow him to save up for a move. His truck is too old to make the trip, and he just doesn’t have the money to make it happen. So he continues to try to ignore his dreams and just fight to make ends meet working the same job he’s worked for the past two decades—a physically demanding job which he frankly can’t do too much longer at his age. Doing what has to be done to make it all happen is just too risky.

I realized not too long ago that I am absolutely following in his footsteps. In college I worked at a grocery store during the summers, and upon deciding to move to Tennessee I simply transferred from the store in Florida to one in Nashville. I had a job waiting on me when I arrived. Then suddenly four years passed, and I’d done nothing to further my dreams of making music. I was stuck in the rut of working forty hours a week at a job that sucked about eighty hours of energy and willpower out of me. My fear of doing this for the rest of my life was only trumped by my fear of not being able to pay my bills. And so I stayed.

After learning about my father’s dreams, though, I began to realize that I was fully placed to find myself two decades down the road in his exact same position. And so I began desperately praying for a way out. Nothing ever came to fruition, though, and the workplace environment began to degenerate considerably, adding to my misery. So many times I just wanted to walk out of that place forever; I wanted to just give up and try to force God’s hand, really. But each time I felt God tell me to hang on, to wait just a little longer. He promised I wouldn’t be there forever, but every time I wanted to quit He told me to persevere. In August and September of 2008, a sense of restlessness began to build inside of me; friends were traveling to Canada, France, South Africa, and all over the U.S., and yet I was stuck. And still I was told to stay.

Then in April 2009, I felt God clearly say to me that it was time. I put in my notice for the end of June, giving me two months to chicken out. And during that time I received nothing but confirmation. All the friends I expected to be voices of reason to advise me to think and pray a little harder before quitting instead expressed nothing but encouragement and happiness. And one night at church I felt God point out to me that I’ve inherited from my parents an aversion to risk, and that He wanted to heal that place in me that allowed fear to reign, and that taking risks was going to have to become something I get used to. He reminded me that I had prayed a very genuine and desperate prayer for Him to build faith in me, and that this was a vital part of the process. He was going to take it quite seriously.

So here I am, jobless and uncertain where to go next. My dreams of making music and traveling have been pumped to almost painful levels, and I’ve been receiving stronger encouragement than ever before from those around me. Yes, the obstacles are pretty much insurmountable. I’m not gonna lie; I have no idea how to make things happen in my current circumstance. But I also believe in grace, which is God’s hand placed upon us to empower us to do the things He’s called us to do, but which we cannot do in our own strength. This is where my faith must grow. This is where I must continue to take the risks that will allow me to follow after the calling God has placed upon my life.

I have inherited this legacy of playing it safe. I am watching as my father struggles with the idea of pursuing his dream, which seems to me like a legitimate calling from God. I am realizing that this is something I need to break now, and build a new legacy, one of faith and courage and boldness which my children can look up to someday as an example to follow. And I am fully aware that I can only do it through God’s grace.

And this really is why I created this blog. I’m in a rather crazy point in life, and I just want to provide account of the developments as they happen. I hope that it can be both a place where I can reason things through “out loud” and a testimony to others of what God can do if we’re willing to let Him have His way completely. It was over a year ago (March 11, 2008, to be exact) that I told God I wanted to be transformed into who He wanted me to be, no matter what. I was sitting in Starbucks, having just finished reading The Rainbow People of God by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and I realized that I wanted to be completely turned over to God’s purpose, no matter what it might require of me to do or to sacrifice. And He’s taken me very seriously. So let this place be a chronicle of what God can do with an underdog like me.

My Name Is Daniel (part 1)

My name is Daniel. It’s a good name, and I’m quite fond of it. It of course brings to mind the prophet Daniel of Old Testament fame, one of the most fascinating characters of the Bible, and one of the few of whom nothing negative is recounted. It is also a bit of amusement that my name Dan Wright sounds very close to “damn right.” The jokes are constant, but welcome. Until recently, this was all that my name meant to me.

“Daniel” is a Hebrew name that means “God is my judge.” I was raised to believe that this was a frightening thing. Some see God as the Santa Claus who wants to grant us our every desire; I saw Him as a Santa Claus focused more on his “naughty” list, looking hard for any excuse to leave me a stocking full of fire and brimstone.

I recall very clearly a sermon I had to sit through as a child. This elderly preacher was either a guest at my home church, or a featured speaker at one of the campmeetings I had to attend with my family every year. His sermon was about restitution, and he spoke of a time when, as an adult, he felt convicted by God about an incident in his childhood when he shoplifted a packet of grape Kool-Aid. He said that he knew then that despite his years in ministry, and despite decades of relationship with God, that he would surely be bound for hell if he did not make restitution for that small offense early in life. So he found that store, apologized to its totally nonplussed current manager, and paid the pennies that item had cost. Only then could he find peace, and find relief after narrowly avoiding a certain descent into damnation.

One can easily imagine how this story might affect an impressionable child. I wrestled for years with the fear that some unknown sin would condemn my soul, or that I might die immediately after committing some trivial sin, without time to make restitution. It (among other things) cultivated in me a deep desire to leave the community in which I’d been raised just as soon as it was possible. At the very beginning of my junior year of high school I began the college hunt, only really considering schools well out of state. And it was only until I was long gone that I was able to suppress the feeling that Damocles’ old sword was hanging over my head everywhere I went. I still didn’t have a healthy view of God’s character, but I’d managed to develop a sense of nonchalance towards sin in my life. That was really all I could do just to stay sane and not give up completely.

And so this understanding of God as judge was suppressed, if only for the sake of survival. The meaning of my name was never brought to mind. Until recently.

It was only after years of spiritual, emotional, and social maturation that the meaning of my name returned to mind. And it was right in that moment that God showed me the intense freedom that comes from knowing that He is Judge.

God had grown me into someone completely different from the little boy who’d had the hell scared out of him during every altar call, every revival service. But I still had the tendency to carry around every negative word spoken into my life. I had a healthier view of God, but not a healthier view of myself. I didn’t walk under the condemnation of God, but I did walk under the condemnation of everyone around me, and of myself. I would become indignant if something damaging was said about someone I loved, but I would accept and excuse the damaging things that were said to me. I could never imagine saying something hateful to another person, but I was absolutely ruthless in criticizing myself.

What God pointed out to me that night was that yes, He is my judge. And no one else. My family cannot judge me. My friends cannot judge me. My pastors cannot judge me. And most of all, I cannot judge myself. All the words that have been said in condemnation of me carry no authority. And nothing I say to tear myself down can carry any weight when I remember that only God’s opinion matters.

So yes, God is my judge. And I’ll own that. While it is a sobering fact that should certainly be considered with proper gravity, it is also incredibly freeing. Ever since then, I feel far less weight on my shoulders. Self-deprecating comments have become much less automatic from me, though not without conscious effort (after all, it requires conscious effort at first to kick a bad habit). And I care less what others think about me. Everything that has been said or done to diminish my self-worth has gradually been losing its chokehold on my heart. Yes, I have a very long way to go until I’m fully healthy in this regard, but the progress is unmistakable. I am not the same person I was a year or two ago, and it is all through the healing power of God’s truth.

Like Tupac once said, only God can judge me.