Sabbath rest by choice or by force

Days like today make me realize how human I am. Once again, I have found myself overcommitted and overtrained which means that I was exhausted to the point of a migraine. Some ibuprofen, a hot shower, and an unusually long nap later, and I am still feeling the after-effects of the physical and emotional drain that a migraine can cause. 

My friend and jiu-jitsu mentor came in to teach this morning and, since he was coming down specifically to see and train with me, I didn’t want to miss it. As a result, what is normally a morning of rest and spiritual renewal for me turned into a morning of work, fun work, but work nonetheless. 

This isn’t a bad thing and I’m not complaining, mind you. I love jiu-jitsu and I’m glad I got to see my friend and learn some of his new strategies and techniques, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, and I paid the price after class. 

The older I get, the more I understand why God gave us the Sabbath rest. We only have so much physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energy we can give to the world before we are drained. Once we are drained, if we keep going, instead of our labors making us stronger, sharper, and more useful, they make us weaker, sicker, and less effective for God and those around us. 

Each of us has a certain capacity for work, whether it be physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual, and that capacity is limited by the limited nature of our humanity. If we attempt to exceed this capacity, if we try to draw more from the well than the well has to give, we start taking from our health. Much like with finances, overdrawing from our well of health is an unsustainable way to live. 

In the past, I would have simply popped some ibuprofen, downed a cup of coffee or two, and kept going. Lacking the sense to see that my body was trying to tell me something, I have medicated my way through many a migraine over the years. While it made me relatively successful, this drive eventually led me to panic attacks and a near ruined marriage.

After several years of therapy, prayer, meditation, spiritual work, and a lot of soul searching, I have begun to see things from a different perspective than I was capable of in my younger years. The push forward is not as important as my health and longevity. And as I have gotten older and more sensitive to what God is trying to tell me, I’ve begun to see that sickness, in whatever form it takes, is my body or mind’s way of telling me to slow down, rest, and recover. 

So today, after I crashed from exhaustion and a migraine, I took a couple of ibuprofen, a hot shower, and a long nap. When I woke up, thinking about the rest of the week ahead and realizing that a decision to rest and recover now would mean that I will be more capable of doing the things that are required of me later, I rescheduled a private lesson I had set up for this afternoon and took some time for Sabbath rest. 

“The Sabbath was made for man,” as Jesus said in Mark 2:27 (NIV). It is a gift from God for us and it’s free. We need only accept it. And Sabbath rest is not only available to us on Sundays (or Saturdays depending on your belief). Sabbath rest is available to us any time we decide to set aside time for God and rest. My friend who is a pastor takes Monday as his Sabbath because, even though Sunday is a day of worship for him, it’s also a work day because he works at the church. 

Having a whole day each week for God and rest is obviously desirable. God gave it to us for us to take advantage of. But that doesn’t mean we must limit ourselves to only that day for Sabbath rest. God is happy to spend as much time with us as we are willing to spend with him, whenever and wherever we are willing and able to do so. We don’t have to wait until we crash before we rest in God, like I often do. His arms are open for us now and forever. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Committing murder in my heart on the highway

Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. (Matthew 5:21-22, NIV).” 

I was running late for jiu-jitsu this morning, not too late, but late enough to be in a hurry, and I was getting annoyed by slow drivers and traffic lights. At one point, I even honked at the driver in front me for not turning when the light was green. It became clear to me later, after being stuck behind him for a while, that he was most likely lost and trying to figure out where he was going, and my attempts to hurry him along were not helping. 

As I got on the highway, I moved over to the left lane so that I could get where I was going more quickly. That is to say, I was speeding. Unfortunately for me, there was a big white pickup truck with shiny chrome wheels ahead of me in the left lane who was content to go just fast enough that no one could pass him and just slow enough to get on my nerves. 

The further I drove, the more frustrated I became. It was’t just the pickup truck in front of me. Everyone around me was annoying me. Either they weren’t going fast enough or they weren’t using their turn signal or I didn’t like the color of their car or they had a bumper sticker that offended me. It became increasingly clear to me that either something was wrong with everyone else or something was wrong with me. 

Just then, the thought came to me, “How many people have you murdered in your heart today while driving to jiu-jitsu?” I knew this was a reference to Matthew 5:21-22. I also knew that it was a lot of people. In fact, it was too many people to count. 

Then, as my mind tends to do, I extrapolated this out to all of the people I had ever been angry at or annoyed by any time I have ever driven anywhere for the thirty or so years that I’ve been driving. For many years, as a coffee equipment technician, I essentially drove for a living, meaning I was on the road for many hours a day encountering many hundreds of drivers each day, a lot of whom were not driving how I wanted. 

With this in mind, it occurred to me that, if I were to take Jesus seriously, and I do, I am guilty of murdering many hundreds, really thousands of people in my heart. Being subject to judgement by God for my anger, as if it were in fact murder, I realized that I have a very severe punishment coming my way. God being the just God that he is, I will eventually have to pay for these crimes of the heart against my brothers and sisters. 

But God is not merely a just God. He is also a loving and merciful God. He knows that we cannot possibly live up to his perfect standards nor perfectly obey his commandments. The entire Old Testament proves this over and over again. And so after many attempts to reconcile with us and forgive us for our transgressions, God finally made the greatest sacrifice a father can make, and he sent his own son to die for every wrong we have ever done or will ever do so that, through Jesus Christ, we may be forgiven once and for all. 

This knowledge, once accepted as the truth it is, should make us nicer. It should make us so grateful and so humbled that we could not possibly sin against the Lord ever again. And yet, we are selfish, broken, and extremely short-sighted creatures for whom nothing is ever really good enough. 

No matter what God does for us, including sacrificing his own son so that we may live, we still have lapses in love, compassion, and goodness. I, for one, had many this morning on my short drive to jiu-jitsu. Somehow, because I was late for class and in a hurry, I completely forgot that I have been saved through Jesus Christ’s death on the cross and I opted instead to get angry at every driver who crossed my path. 

Sometimes I think God allows us to have these moments of weakness just so that we can see how broken we are and how much we need him to make us whole. While this incident and this realization resulted in my praying for both forgiveness and for love and patience for my fellows, I know that this will not be the last time I get angry at another driver and commit murder in my heart. I hope and pray, however, that these incidents become fewer and farther between as God heals my heart and forms me into the type of person he would have me be. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

The jiu-jitsu mats are the third place between work and home

In jiu-jitsu class this evening, like most evenings, there were practitioners from varied backgrounds. The class consisted of men and women, people in their twenties all the way into their fifties, students and professionals, law enforcement officers, restaurant workers, caregivers, veterans, active service members, computer programmers, and more. Jiu-jitsu attracts people of all ages, as well as folks from different economic, ethnic, political, and religious backgrounds, and they all seem to get along. 

It’s almost as if, in spite of what social media and the media would like us to believe, our differences are less important and less pronounced than the things we have in common. On the mats, there are rarely ever any political debates, arguments are all but nonexistent, and, even though we are learning how to most effectively pin, strangle, and break each other, everyone tends to get along. 

Jiu-jitsu truly brings people together who normally would not mix. Where else can a person train with a veterinary technician one minute and a Secret Service Counter Assault Team member the next? On the mats, the only thing that matters is skill, demeanor, what you know, and what you can execute against a live resisting partner or pass on to your students. 

People don’t just practice jiu-jitsu to learn how to fight, lose weight, or defend themselves. The reasons for practicing jiu-jitsu are as varied as the practitioners themselves. But mainly people practice jiu-jitsu because it makes them feel better. It challenges them, forces them to problem solve, gives them a sense of purpose, accomplishment, and community, and offers a “third place” between work and home for people to get away form worries and responsibilities. 

Tonight, for example, I overheard two different people say they came to class to get their minds off of a loss in their lives. One person had to put his dog down after over fifteen years together. It had gotten old and was suffering badly from some health conditions that made it more humane to put it to sleep than to allow it to suffer. Another person lost her brother suddenly to a mystery illness. Both of them were devastated by these losses and came to jiu-jitsu as a way to take their minds off their grief and sorrow. 

Upon hearing this, I was humbled, but also extremely grateful. What an amazing thing to be able to provide an environment that feels safe, healthy, and welcoming enough that people want to be there during difficult times of loss because it makes them feel better. Knowing this fact makes me feel better also. 

We all need something like jiu-jitsu in our lives. We need a practice and a community that brings out the best in us while also challenging us to be better than we were yesterday. We need a healthy, safe environment for self improvement, connection, and sometimes even distraction. We need somewhere we belong, where they miss us when we are gone, and where they are happy to see us when we return. 

For many years, the mats have been this place for me. I’m fortunate to have a loving family as well as other communities outside of martial arts that I’m involved with, but martial arts have been a constant for me for over twenty years now. When I’m feeling good, when I’m feeling down, or when I’m feeling confused and out of place, I go to jiu-jitsu and I leave feeling better. 

Over the years, I have heard many people say that they never leave jiu-jitsu feeling worse. Even when they didn’t feel like showing up, they were glad that they did. Injuries notwithstanding, I can honestly say that I feel the same way and I’m thrilled to be able to provide an environment for others to get away for a bit, forget about their problems, and challenge themselves and grow in the process. It truly is an amazing life. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox

Walking the path of righteousness or at least not trespassing

For several years now, the county within which I live has been building a paved bike trail that will span the entire length of my town, from the beach to a pre-existing bike trail in the next town over. Once the trail is complete, my family and many others will have a safe way to travel and exercise by bike or by foot across over twenty miles of paved trails spanning multiple towns. I am quite excited for the project to finish so that we can take advantage of this amenity. 

Some parts of the trail have been completed for quite a while now, some parts are mostly finished, and some have yet to be started. Where the project is mostly finished, there are large spans of paved trail that are safe to walk on, at least as far as I can tell, but which are still closed off to the public. When I was out for a walk the other day, in spite of the sign that said, “Do Not Enter,” I walked one of these sections of the trail instead of walking on the side of the busy road. 

Admittedly, it was quite nice to have a safe place to walk and the trail allowed me to go farther than I would have if it were not there. I knew I wasn’t supposed to walk on it. I read the sign after all, but I really didn’t think much of it because it seemed safe and there was no one around to stop me. 

As I stepped over the mesh plastic barricade which has clearly been stepped or ridden over many times before, the thought occurred to me, “It’s not a big deal if I do this, but obviously it would be a problem if everyone did it. I’m not everyone though, so it’s okay.” The whole while walking on the trail, however, I had the feeling that someone was watching me and I started to hurry my way along so that I could get off before I was noticed by passersby. 

I made my way to the next cross street which has no trail or sidewalk and I walked hurriedly to the next intersection where there was a sidewalk. From there, I walked my normal route home, went inside, and went about my day. But the whole day, I had this nagging feeling in the back of my mind about whether I had done the right thing or whether or not I would do it again.

The next morning, my wife and I had the opportunity to walk together. There are several ways we can go when we walk, but I wanted to show her the new, albeit unfinished, trail that I had “discovered” the day before. As we approached the trail, I told my wife where we were going to go and she immediately bristled at the proposition. 

She said, “I’m not walking on there. It’s not finished yet. It’s not safe.”

“It’s perfectly safe,” I said, “I walked on it yesterday.” “Why would you do that?” she asked, “There’s clearly a sign that says, “Do Not Enter.” “Yeah, but it’s fine,” I insisted, “I’ve seen plenty of people walking and biking on it, and it’s safer than walking next to the road.” 

“Don’t be that kind of person,” she replied, “Be a good citizen. Set a good example for others. Just walk the way you normally walk and stay on the sidewalk. We can go that way when the trail is done.” 

For whatever reason, those words, “Be a good citizen. Set a good example for others,” really hit me hard. I never really thought about it from that perspective. I do my best to be a good person. I don’t intentionally lie, cheat, or steal. I try to be honest, I’m faithful to my wife, I go to church on Sundays, I repay my debts, I pay my taxes, and I own multiple businesses that serve the community. “Of course I’m a good citizen,” I thought to myself. 

But as I sat with her words for a while, I started to see her point. As a Christian, I am called to live by a higher standard. This means that I must not only follow the laws of the land within which I live, which includes not trespassing, but I must also live a righteous life for God and not for my selfish desires. Christ’s example is one of self denial for the sake of God and humanity, not of selfishly taking advantage of opportunities and breaking laws simply because no one appears to be watching. 

Jesus tells us, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48, NIV).” He doesn’t mean that we should be good only when other people are watching. Rather, we are to be good always because God is always watching. “The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good (Proverbs 15:3).” No wonder I felt like someone was watching me while I was walking on the trail. God was watching me and my conscience was letting me know it. 

There is nothing we do that is outside of God’s sight. Whether it’s sneaking an extra cookie at night when we think no one else is awake, embellishing our timecard when our supervisor isn’t paying attention, or peaking at an attractive woman when we think no one will notice, God sees us. And he holds us Christians to a higher standard because he loves us and, through the Holy Spirit, he is teaching us to be perfect. 

Of course, we should be good citizens. My wife is not wrong about that. We must go beyond that and be good Christians. That means not trying to get away with petty infractions of law or morality simply because we can. It means being impeccable in word and deed, and when we fail, which we will, admitting our mistake and, to the best of our ability, making things right. 

God requires more from us because we are the standard bearers of his name. What we do is a reflection of his love, his mercy, and his grace, but also of his son, Jesus Christ. We are called to live as Jesus did (1 John 2:6), to sacrifice anything and everything that stands in the way of our relationship with him (Matt 19:21), and to give up our worldly desires for the sake of heavenly standards (Titus 2:11-13). And, we are called to walk the narrow path of righteousness, even if it is inconvenient or less attractive (Matt 7:13-14). 

So no matter how much I want to, no matter how tempting it is, I will no longer be walking on the unfinished trail until it’s open to the public. It may seem silly or like a little thing, I know it did to me, but the little things add up in the eyes of God and in our consciences. There are plenty of places by my house for me to walk without trespassing, and it is better to be inconvenienced by what is best than to have an easy life full of good enough. Good enough is not good enough for God. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Isolation is not solitude and God is good

One of the reasons the c-vid lockdowns were so hard on me personally is that it is very easy for me to stay home for extended periods of time without leaving the house or interacting with anyone else. Isolation is my default state. And it’s simply not healthy. 

It takes a lot of effort, and has taken a lot of spiritual work, for me to want to be around other people. Left to my own devices, I would much rather hide. With food, water, and electricity, I would gladly stay in the house for long periods of time with no interactions with the outside world. In fact, the longer I stay in, the less I want to or am capable of going out. 

I’m not talking about solitude. Solitude is a healthy spiritual state wherein a person seeks God in the quiet, alone times. I’m talking about isolation. I’m talking about turning my back on God and my fellows. 

Isolation is not about pursuing one’s spiritual depths in a quiet place. Isolation is the unhealthy practice of disconnecting with the world in order to be alone with oneself. In solitude, I practice transcending self. In isolation, I obsess over self. 

The c-vid lockdowns, for me, were about forced isolation. They exacerbated my anxiety, i.e. “self-centered fear,” and amplified my fears and insecurities around socializing. Perhaps most importantly, however, the lockdowns gave me an excuse to revert back to the agoraphobia and paranoia I had spent so many years trying to overcome. 

Outside of the spiritual work I had done, which by time c-vid hit I had largely fallen away from, martial arts, specifically Brazilian jiu-jitsu had become a major social outlet for me. In addition to being great exercise for the body and mind, jiu-jitsu was the place I went to be around other people and to connect in a healthy, positive way. But just like that, I was no longer allowed to do jiu-jitsu and I began withdrawing back into isolation. 

Before I had to stop doing it, I don’t think I fully comprehended how important jiu-jitsu had become to my life. It was where I pushed myself physically, stretched myself mentally, and where I saw and interacted with my friends in the second most intimate way I believe one person can interact with another. 

As soon as I realized that our academy was going to be shut down, I began to feel my old self creeping back in. My life started to feel like it was collapsing in on me, my connection to the outside world was being broken, and I started having anxiety attacks. 

I can honestly say that emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually, the lockdowns were one of the most challenging times of my life. So much of the spiritual and psycho-emotional progress I had made over the previous years all seemed to disappear in the blink of an eye. But it was not all bad. 

The lockdowns forced me to take a look at myself and where the foundation I had built for myself in previous years was not as sturdy as it needed to be if I were going to thrive into the future. If I’m being honest, it broke me, but in this brokenness, I began to pray. I began asking God to take away the things that I was holding onto that were blocking me from being the person he wanted and needed me to be. And God answered my prayers. 

Over the course of several years, what was at first brokenness turned out to be exactly the spiritual death I needed in order to be reborn as God would have me. I began seeing a therapist who helped me reconnect with my spiritual path. I reconnected with the religion of my childhood, Christianity, in a new, deeper, and more personal way. I refocused my efforts on being healthier, both physically and mentally, being a better husband and father, and being a better teacher and mentor, both in jiu-jitsu and in other aspects of my life. 

As the result of this transformation, now when I am alone, it is not isolation, but solitude because I know that I am not actually alone. God is with me and much of my alone time is in pursuit of a better relationship with him. But I also appreciate even more the time I get to spend with others, whether it be at jiu-jitsu or with my wife and daughter. 

In the end, as much as I resisted the lockdowns, everything that caused them, and all of the consequences of them, some of which we are still feeling, they helped me to see that God is ultimately in charge. He uses even the worst circumstances to draw us closer to him if we are willing, and his love does not stop pouring out into our lives simply because the world shuts down. As St. Teresa of Avila said, “God writes straight with crooked lines.” 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Please use your inner voice

My daughter had a dance performance at school to day. It was the result of a week-long special program brought into her school where the kids were taught different dance styles from the 1900’s, spanning from the 1910’s through the 1990’s. I have to say, having been born in the late 1970’s, hearing people refer to that era as “the 1900’s” definitely made me feel old. It’s hard to believe that there are twenty five year olds who were born in the year 2000, but I suppose that is how every aging person feels at one point or another. 

Where was I? Oh yeah. My daughter had a dance performance at school today which my wife and I were planning to attend. My sister-in-law was also going, and my wife and her were going to ride together because they had plans to go out after. 

The performance wasn’t until early afternoon, so I went to jiu-jitsu class in the morning. When I was leaving class, I got a text from my wife that said her sister was at our house and she was taking a nap in my daughter’s room. She then sent me a text that said, “When you come home, please use your inner voice.” 

English is my wife’s second language and, while she speaks, reads, and writes it as well as most Americans, sometimes she mixes up slang or common American sayings. In this case, she clearly intended to say, “When you come home, please use your inside voice,” and I knew what she meant. Still, her actual words caught my attention. 

While it is sometimes necessary for me to be told to “use my inside voice” because I can get rather excited and, with that excitement, my volume tends to increase without me realizing it, I can honestly say that I’ve never been told to “use my inner voice before,” at least not in those words. That said, if I’m being honest, it felt less like a typo or misunderstanding, and more like a sign. It’s something I needed to read and it’s been on my mind all day. 

We could all do well to use our inner voice more often. I know I could. There are so many instances every day where that quiet whisper of God is drowned out by the world or by my own selfishness, pride, fears, and desires. Temptations are loud, obtrusive, and easy to give in to. 

We don’t have to practice listening to temptation. It will gladly impose itself on us without any effort on our part. Listening to our inner voice, on the other hand, requires a great deal of discipline, effort, and time. This is why practicing silence is so important, why meditation or contemplative prayer are essential components of the spiritual journey. Without making time for silence, without making time for listening to God, we may find that our inner voice is too quiet to hear when we need it most. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Marriage is a constant reminder of how imperfect my love is

Marriage is a constant reminder of how imperfect my love is. It is anything but unconditional. I give love and take it away for so many reasons. It’s frustrating and painful, both for me and the people I claim to love. 

I was not always like this and I’ve gotten much better in recent years, but I have a long way to go. I don’t know at what point I started using my love as a psychological-emotional weapon, but I assume it was somewhere in my teenage years. Now, some thirty years later, it’s actually a great point of shame for me. 

For a long time, I honestly didn’t know how petty, spiteful, and cruel I could be. It took having someone who vowed to never leave me and who was unwilling to settle for any less than my best to point it out to me. There’s something really powerful about the commitment of marriage that has forced me to look at myself. 

When two people take a solemn oath that, for better worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, they will remain faithful and steadfast to one another, and they really mean it, it brings not only the best out in them, but also the worst. In a truly committed relationship, there is no hiding. Marriage forces you to look at yourself. 

I am fortunate enough to have married someone who feels as strongly about commitment as I do. When we took our vows, we meant it. That means we have to make it work. I think this is some small part of what God had in mind when he gave Adam and Eve to one another, and when he said that a married couple becomes “one flesh (Genesis 2:24.” The intimacy of oneness forces us to look at and get rid of the things that do not serve the relationship. 

So much of who I am and who I was before I met my wife is based on the survival mechanisms I developed over the years from being hurt, disappointed, betrayed, abandoned, and whatever else you can think of that would make a person cold, withdrawn, and selfish. Somehow, my wife saw through all of this baggage and was able to glean the deeper truth of who I am enough to want to spend the rest of her life with me. Some days it still baffles me. 

But like I said, I was not always like this. I remember being a kid and being cheerful, optimistic, and kind. While I didn’t really fit in anywhere (in middle school, I finally found a group of friends who also didn’t fit in and we were inseparable) and that confused me a great deal, I remained relatively enthusiastic and curious about life. Somewhere along the line, however, I suppose I was hurt one too many times by people that were supposed to or said they loved me, and I became cynical, guarded, and bitter. 

My entire adult life has largely been defined by the outgrowing of this negativity, or rather the returning to innocence, albeit in a more mature way, of my childhood. The lessons, however, have not come easily. I have ruined many relationships along the way and I have nearly ruined my marriage on several occasions. 

One of the main problems is that I tend to use my affection as a weapon. It’s not malicious way. It’s often not even intentional. But when I’m hurt, I withdraw and shut down, and when I do, I take my love with me. 

It doesn’t help that I’m extremely sensitive and, therefore, easily hurt, and that my wife is not the type of person to hold back her feelings or pull punches with her opinions. Well, maybe it does help because she has the unique ability to bring out the worst in me so that I change for the better. But the combination of her directness and my sensitivity creates a tension that leaves me nowhere to hide. Even if I tried hiding, she wouldn’t let me anyway. 

All of this makes it very difficult to deny my shortcomings. I have seen, over the years of trying to make our relationship work, how what were once my survival skills, the things that kept me safe in my past life, are actually tools of destruction in my marriage. When I withdraw and withhold my love from my wife, it hurts both of us because it hurts the relationship and we are not two, but one. 

This all struck me the other day when I was meditating on Jesus’s love for us. It occurred to me that, no matter what was done to Jesus, he never withdrew his love. He never shut down. He never stopped caring. He never tried to manipulate others by threatening them with emotional absence. 

Jesus was betrayed, beaten, crucified, mocked, and left to die alone on the cross, and yet he never stopped loving us. In fact, throughout all of this torture and torment, he prayed for us. And here I am, loved beyond measure and beyond understanding by a merciful, gracious God who sent his own son to die for my sinful thoughts, words, and deeds, a God who has never once withdrawn his love from me, not even for a second, and I have the arrogance to keep my love to myself when my feelings get hurt. 

It is humbling and baffling just how selfish and broken I really am. I am, however, willing to change. I pray for it daily. I want to have the kind of love for my wife, my family, and my fellows that Jesus has for me. I want to be as generous and forgiving as God has been and continues to be for me. 

It’s an impossible task, but trying, with God’s help, is better than the alternative. In fact, Jesus himself said that I must. I must “love as he has loved me (John 13:34)” and to “be perfect (Matthew 5:48)” What greater purpose is there than this anyway, to love and serve God and my fellows? 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

The resistance is like a church bell ringing in my soul

I’m supposed to be writing my graduate school admission essay, but it’s hard. It’s hard because it matters. It’s hard because it’s personal. It’s hard because it’s about me and that brings up all of my fears, insecurities, and self doubt. 

Doing something like this brings me face to face with the stories I tell myself about my worth and my worthiness, about what it means to be accepted, and about what it means to be loved and received as I am, not as I pretend to be. 

Writing about myself, why I want this, and why I am the right candidate and this is the right school for me terrifies me because it exposes me. It exposes me because I refuse to give them only part of me. I don’t know how, and that’s not what they are asking for. It terrifies me because, if I give them all of me, what if that is not good enough? 

This fear, this paralyzing, mind-numbing, soul-shaking fear is how I know it’s important. It’s how I know it’s real. It’s how I know that I have to do it. The fear tells me where to go, even if I don’t want to go there, even if I hate the feeling of moving forward. 

The resistance is like a church bell ringing in my soul. It won’t leave me alone. It calls to me. It draws me nearer. It’s an inevitability. With every passing day and every toll of the bell, I can feel the pull toward the work that I must do. Even as I write this, seemingly in avoidance of the call, it has brought me one step closer to finishing the hard work of facing myself. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Meditating on not saying something stupid and regretful to my wife

At night, my wife wears a night-guard from the dentist because she grinds her teeth when she sleeps. Often at night, before going to bed, she talks to me with the night-guard in her mouth and I find it extremely annoying. My hearing is not the greatest and, in spite of the fact that her English is near perfect, English is her second language which can sometimes make her more difficult to understand than if she was a native English speaker. Combine these two factors with the night-guard, and her speech sounds mumbly to me, which often frustrates me more than it should. 

Tonight, was one of those nights. I came home after spending several hours at the jiu-jitsu academy for kids classes followed by team pictures for my daughter’s wrestling team and, when I got here, it was relatively late and my wife was already ready for bed. My daughter and I both needed to shower and eat dinner, and while we were each getting squared away for the evening, my wife began talking to me about something. She had the night-guard in and I immediately got irritated. 

As I felt myself growing increasingly more annoyed, the thought came to me that I had not yet eaten dinner. I was hungry, tired, and wanted to take a shower. Maybe my irritation had nothing to do with my wife talking to me with her night-guard in her mouth. Maybe I simply needed to eat, clean up, and sit down. It then occurred to me how many of our marital spats might be avoided altogether if one or both of us simply acknowledged that the thing we think is bothering us is not actually the thing that is bothering us. 

Life is funny this way. Very rarely is the perceived problem the actual problem. There is often more going on beneath the surface than what presents itself at a superficial level. But it can be very difficult to go deeper when we are always in a reactionary state to the stimulus that is right in front of us. Without a buffer between ourselves and our environment, the world bumps into us and we bump back into it. It’s like a never-ending pinball game of actions and emotions. 

The very fact that I did not react to my wife when she was talking to me with her night-guard in, in spite of my being hungry, tired, dirty, and grouchy is unusual for me. It is not in my nature to keep my mouth shut when something irritates me. I have a long history of speaking up with the wrong words at the wrong time. I’m very good at making things worse. But I have noticed that something has been different with me lately. Something has been changing. 

I’ve observed that I am not nearly as reactionary as I used to be. I have far fewer knee-jerk reactions to the things that annoy me. In fact, I’ve noticed that fewer things annoy me these days. I have no doubt that this change that has taken place within me is the direct result of a consistent meditation practice. 

For quite some time now, I have been extremely disciplined about setting aside time every morning to meditate before I leave the house. I try to do this before my wife and daughter wake up. Along with my other prayer and spiritual reading, meditation is an essential part of my morning routine. In fact, it is probably the part of my morning I look forward to the most when I wake up each day. 

There are many different forms and styles of meditation and I have tried several over the years, but the one that works best for me, and the one I have stuck with for the longest, is called centering prayer or contemplative prayer. There’s just something about this particular style of meditation that really resonates with me and, like I said, I look forward to my quiet time each morning. 

It took a while before I started to see results from my meditation practice which was a bit frustrating when I first started out. Like most of us, I wanted to see immediate, noticeable results. I wanted instant gratification and instant transformation. Spiritual change is often slow change, however. Unless you have some kind of life-changing white light or burning bush experience, you are likely to have what I have heard referred to as “the educational variety” of spiritual experience. That is, if you practice consistently, change will come slowly, over a long period of time. 

As I said, one of the changes that I have seen from my meditation practice is that I am less reactionary. It’s as if meditation has given me a built-in pause button that allows me to process stimuli for a moment before reacting to it. This buffer between the world and my reactions to it has saved me from making things worse on multiple occasions. And what is most interesting to me is that this pause simply comes. It’s not something I initiate. I’m not doing it. It’s just there.

If not getting myself in trouble by saying something stupid and regretful when my wife talks to me with her night-guard in were all that meditation gave to me, it would be enough. Meditation has become one of the most important things that I do every day and, as I said, I look forward to it each morning. I can honestly say that there is no other single practice that has had a greater impact on my mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being than meditation. But I know I have only scratched the surface on the depths of this practice and I look forward to going deeper. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

No one is above God and no one is beneath us

I’ve been reminded a lot lately of why we cannot rely on human power where only God’s power will do. Making false idols out of people doesn’t work. We are imperfect, broken creatures in need of salvation. Not one of us is beyond error or shortcomings. No matter how hard we try, we are destined to let one another down, to disappoint each other and to break one another’s hearts. If we don’t, it is purely by the grace of God. 

It is no wonder, when asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments (Matthew 22:37-40, NIV).” 

The first commandment, to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” tells us to place all of our trust in God, to have no other Gods before him, and to always put God first, even above and ahead of our loved ones. It tells us not to make false idols out of other people. If we do, not only are we betraying God’s commandment, but we are also putting unreasonable expectations on others and setting ourselves up for disappointment. 

The second of Jesus’s greatest commandments, to “Love your neighbor as yourself” teaches us not to look down on others, to not hold ourselves up as false idols above them, and to treat them as God has treated us, with love, fairness, and mercy. This commandment to love our neighbors as we are demands that we treat our fellows as peers, as brothers and sisters, and that we never treat anyone like they are unredeemable or unforgivable because, through Christ Jesus, everyone has been forgiven and everyone is eligible for redemption if they so desire. 

These two commandments, given to us from our Lord and Savior, are in part about humility. They help us to remain right-sized in relation to God and our fellows. The first tells us not to look up to anyone in the way that we look up to God, and the second tells us not to look down on anyone as if we are God. No one is above God and no one is beneath us. We are all equal in the eyes of the Lord (Romans 2:11).

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox.