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Everyday Ordinary Dawnings


This is the second in a series of essays exploring failure and its place in our faith and in God's plan for the believer.
You can find Part 1 here.


Adam and Eve chose the fruit and set a fallen world in motion. They didn't know they were choosing to live apart from God, or that they were ushering in pain, despair, toil, and trouble. They didn't know God would no longer walk with them each day or send them away from the only home they'd ever known. They didn't know they had altered life irrevocably for everyone thereafter for all of time.

That first sin, a cataclysmic failure, had unimaginably far-reaching consequences.

God allowed all this, which appears to be terrible, and he has his reasons. He doesn't have to answer to us about it, although we'd often like him to. We have to be content with sometimes not having answers. WE have to be at peace with the idea that  God can handle our failure — the notion that it might be okay that things are not okay.

But we resist this idea. We think if we work hard to appear flawless — hide the mess we made — we can undo our failure. Surely this is how we best serve God outside the Garden. We've been trying to fix our problems and failures on our own since we donned fig leaves. We think we're on our own, so we do our best.

But we aren't on our own. When God banished us from the Garden and posted an angelic sentinel barring our way back inside, he wasn't leading us to a place outside of or away from him. Our sin alone did that. So if leaving Eden wasn't about separation from God, then what was it?

What if our colossal failure and frailty are parts of God's glorious plan instead of blights that thwart it (as if we are even capable of sabotaging God)?



He willfully placed us outside the Garden and barred reentry, so we should embrace that. If that's where God put us, then most assuredly that's where God is, since he didn't wall himself inside while walling us out. Maybe we need to take God by the hand on the other side of our failures, right there at Eden's guarded gate, and embrace the path that our failures have birthed, acknowledging it as the very path God clearly put us on.

Perhaps we should stop resisting our new identity in a fallen earth. Not to remain in our fallen nature, but to acknowledge it and look directly in its sad face, because it is who we are until we leave this planet.  We can't fix it, but we aren't alone in it.

God is with us and goes before us and behind us. He is able to remedy our failure with the epic redemption plan he crafted even before we chose unwisely. Because he redeems, we don't have to shy away from looking our failure in the eye. We should, in fact, because when we do, God will be there with us. This is why we Christians mourn, but not like those who have no hope (1 Thess. 4:13). By pushing us beyond the Garden, God broadened our story into something much bigger and grander.

With the Garden, God created a paradise, but with our sin, we re-created it into a place of pain and lies. Eden was a place where we became sick and ceased to be who he designed us to be. Outside of Eden became the place we would rise, and God would become redeemer and begin to right all things. Out of Eden is the road to more, so much more.

Because of the curse, outside of Eden is a place of harder work. Long ago, we labored day and night to survive this hostile land. After inventing the wheel and industrialization, we now provide for our existence and have time, energy, and resources to spare. There are too many things to choose from, sundry ways and multiple opportunities to try hard and fail again and again.

The ancient, the present, and all the time in between have one thing in common: life outside of Eden is exhausting and unfulfilling. Then and now, we struggle. An old, wise king likened it to vanity and striving after the wind (Ecl. 1:14).

In all of life's busyness and labor outside of Eden, we wear out, we dry rot, we crack. Eventually life's meaning seeps from the cracks. In our weariness and emptiness, we find we've come full circle back to vanity, the futility that marks life beyond Eden.

We struggle because of slavery (Rom. 6:6), we struggle because of the curse, we struggle to thrive outside of Eden, and we struggle by God's design.

This is God's glorious plan: He barred us from paradise and subjected us — against our will — to futility, in hope that we would want to be set free from its slavery (Rom. 8:20-21).

What kind of God would subject us to futility (the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew word for vanity) against our will? We may rail incredulously at a God who would do such a thing and the thought that it could be part of God's plan. What kind of God would frustrate us like this?!

The kind who rescues us in our need. The kind whose judgment is really mercy when we disregarded his command and tasted forbidden fruit. The kind who planned for redemption long before we saw our shame and hid from him.

What kind of God subjects us to futility? The kind who loves us.

Even when our eyes were opened to the knowledge of good and evil. Even when we turned from trusting him to become our own source of discretion and discernment. Even when we thought we could work hard enough to fix our flaws ourselves.

When our sin and failure separate us from God, he comes to us, and he brings a curse to offer us freedom. He banishes us from paradise, but he joins us in our exile, right there on the other side of our failure.

Beyond Eden is where he offers freedom, that in our inadequacy and failure, we might seek him. The path out of Eden is a path to vanity, futility, and failure. But it's the glorious path that leads our hearts back to God. He meets us outside of Eden in our failure so we can ultimately find everything we need in him.


This essay first appeared in Reach Out Columbia magazine in a series on the role of failure in the life of the believer and God's master plan for his children.
October 23, 2017 1 comments
I'm growing out my hair color. Going gray.

I'll be 49 this year, and not that numbers mean anything inherently, but 50 on the horizon feels like a profound place to pause and reflect.

As long as I can remember, I've been a conformer, a rule-follower. I've spent much effort to meet outside expectation without even thinking about it. This facet of my personality is so much a part of me that I don't even know I do it most of the time. One way it manifests is in my measuring my beliefs and behavior against the expectations (perceived or real) and editing them to comply.

When you do that long enough, you don't know who you are anymore. I traded being myself for conforming to someone else's or something else's ideal. And it comes with it's own rewards and incentives to continue to behave this way, which doesn't help.

But I can think of only one instance when this is healthy:  when we determine to crucify the sinful nature and put on Christ. (Of course, we must know who Christ is, and for that I and others like me rely on an outside source to dictate who he is and what that looks like lived out. Dizzy yet?)

This new decade on the horizon is bring some unexpected things with it. I'm testing the stuff of my life for authenticity. I'm asking hard questions of myself, questions that may make uncomfortable the powers that be that I have allowed and conformed to. I've been searching myself with questions like:

Do I really believe this thing I've taken at face value since forever?
If I believe that, am I doing it right? Is my way the right way to live that out?
How do others who value the same ideal as me live it out?
What does that mean if theirs looks different than mine?
Is someone right, someone wrong? Could both be appropriate and add value?
Could the fact that there is more than one way be the actual point? Is this the real beauty we were supposed to find all along?

With a new decade, I'm becoming more open, more reflective. I'm more interested in real truth, knowing myself, owning what I know and want, and who I really am down deep, even if questions and uncertainty lurk there. I want to keep seeking answers and never stop. Even if I land on the same old answer I used to trust at face value. And even if I land elsewhere. I'm trusting God with the questions and the quest.

And that's scary for someone like me who values pleasing others and conforms to expectations.

But it's also freeing and rewarding because I'm learning who I am.

I once embraced the idea that the Harry Potter books were sinful because that's what people I trusted told me. I've now read them and enjoyed them immensely on so many levels. Further still, I'm willing for people I know who still believe that way to know this about me and form whatever opinion or judgment they will.

In other words, I'm willing to differ with people I love about things because I want to own who I am. It's hard work to be proud of who I am, because being the real me doesn't come naturally to people like me.  Complicating things further, many people feel free to make judgments about pastors' families when they wouldn't with others. I'm not sure why we feel that unkind liberty unless it has to do with the scriptures that say spiritual leaders should live above reproach.

I have found that trying to live above the approach of every cotton-pickin' person with an opinion is exhausting and impossible.  It's covering the gray with a chemical that will give me the appearance of my childhood brown.

So I'm growing it out, letting the artificial façade fall away. It's going to be interesting to learn which color of gray lives under decades of vigilant cover-up.

I  had a conversation with a childhood friend who went before me in going gray. I told her that my decision to go gray changed my perspective on my roots. I used to view my root growth as my enemy, old and ugly. Now, I welcome it, curious about what my natural color actually is (because it's been so long no one knows!). What hues will my gray be (I've never thought to ask before because it didn't matter to me.)? This shift in perception surprised me. The new perspective was my own personal proof I have been stupid.

I had adopted an outside view of what female beauty is and isn't. I didn't think for myself. I was surprised to uncover a desire to form my own ideas about female beauty.

My youngest daughter, at 17, is my biggest supporter in going gray. (She is so smart.) What is this new experience of embracing my gray saying to my young-adult children, not just the two daughters but the son also?

What else will I discover about myself when I look beneath all the adopted ideals I heaped on top of my natural self? What will I discover when I become ultra-aware that I have a propensity for mindlessly adopting the ideals of those I love and trust and try to stop doing that?

I am scrutinizing many things I've formerly accepted without the thoughtfulness they -- and I --  deserved. No more stupid (slow of mind, given to unintelligent decisions or acts, acting in an unintelligent or careless manner).

I want to know what I think about things.

Things like a woman's place in ministry and my desire to be seen as a competent human being with intelligence and an equal ability to contribute to the body of Christ that isn't defined solely by my gender. I want to be taken seriously and be treated as an equal spiritually and theologically. I want to know what I think about hard stuff like why God would give women the gift of teaching and then limit their audience to half the population. (My husband says teaching is not a gift but an office, and I'm thinking about that too.)

I'm thinking about friendships that cross gender lines and all the potential that could be there if we stop over-sexualizing and viewing one another through only the very small lens of anatomy.

I'm reading Harry Potter.

I'm longing to worship in cathedrals that are works of art because I'm discovering that art and beauty are a legitimate expression of glory to God in the highest, a true act of worship.

I'm looking at what other cultures, ancient and present, can teach me that are worthy of incorporating into my modern, Western Christianity to combat its bias.

I'm curious about church history and the mystics, and some of the more ancient Christian practices and wondering if we Protestants turned our backs on legitimate ways to walk in Christ.

All these issues feel like taboo.

I want to study what both sides say about all these issues and others, and draw my own conclusions. I want to uncover and own who I am, even if that reveals a whole lot of gray.

I'm learning that although God has told us in his word that some things are black and some are white, his creation is filled with many colors, including gray. He called it all good back when we were in the garden, before we stopped trusting him to define good and evil, before we stopped trusting him to lead us, and we stopped learning from him.

I want to live there in the Garden again, the one before they chose unwisely. And I actually do, because long ago I submitted my life to trusting Him, even with all the gray, and the Holy Spirit became my resident teacher. I don't think He wants me to be afraid to investigate my surroundings and learning of him.

Embracing the gray in my hair feels dignifying and validating. If I didn't feel the devaluing in coloring my hair, I certainly feel "revaluing" in taking gray into my physical, and, metaphorically, my spiritual,  identity. Searching the hues of gray feels like a new and unfamiliar land of freedom. It hints at the wisdom that's earned by mindful experience. It feels like the opposite of stupid.









October 14, 2017 2 comments
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About Me

About Me
Dawn is a writer, Bible teacher, speaker, and pastor's wife. She co-founded Columbia World Outreach Church in Columbia, South Carolina with her husband, Mike. By day, Dawn manages a law firm. In the leftover hours she writes for various online and print publications. You are welcome here. What you will find is real life and a faith that's a living organism -- which is to say it's growing and sometimes cranky, exuberant, stinky, wobbly, petulant, overconfident, tired, satisfying, and beautiful. May you find here some courage to own your own days and your own unfinished faith.

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