Struggling with new.
Dec 30th by Jon- Tagged in:
- serious wednesdays
Please don’t be offended, but the Acuff family leaves vacations like bankrobbers fleeing the scene of a crime.
When we go on long trips or short weekend visits, we like to get up ridiculously early on the last day and beat the traffic home. I blame my upbringing. My family hit rest stops like a NASCAR pit crew. We timed our average miles per hour speed when we road tripped to Sunset Beach, North Carolina from Hudson, Massachusetts and sometimes I don’t think my dad even brought the car to a complete stop. My brothers and I would just tuck our shoulder and roll out into grassy medians like Hungarian circus performers, sprinting to the bathroom while my dad circled the parking lot.
During our drive, speed is a top priority, but during the vacation, things slow down considerably. Especially at the beach. My job as a dad is to big massive holes. That’s it. My daughters bought me an industrial strength shovel after I snapped all their kid shovels (I’m wicked strong) and I just dig the day away.
At our last trip to Tybee Island, Georgia, I was also in charge of building a sea creature corral. We made a shallow hole and filled it with as many interesting animals as we could find. Starfish, hermit crabs, seashells, we made our own mini aquarium next to our chairs. I even caught a big crab by sneaking up on it from behind with my cat like reflexes.
But then it died.
In the midst of watching this oceanic wonderland, the crab stopped moving. I picked it up. It’s little crab eyes were cloudy, it’s legs hung limp and when I placed it upside down on it’s back it stayed there without a flicker of life in it.
We stopped thinking about it and continued playing on the beach, but then something weird happened.
The crab started molting.
What I mistook as death was actually new life. Inch by inch, it’s shell started coming off like a winter coat. The crazy thing was that it didn’t just grow a new shell. I knew they shed that top shell, but the crab actually grew a completely new body. It’s legs, it’s antennae, every part of it come off in one completely empty replica of the crab. It wasn’t just the shell, this whole crab was brand new.
I always thought the big stuff would change, the shell itself, but it surprised me to see how complete and utter the transformation of that crab was. At the end of 30 minutes, it looked like there were two complete crabs on the beach. One soft and new and beating with the blood of fresh life. One a hollow, slightly smaller shell.
Watching this little crab grow completely challenged my understanding of what it means to become new. That crab wasn’t just improved. It wasn’t given a new shell but the same old legs to carry it around with. The whole thing was new. And I think that’s how God works in our lives too.
I’ve talked before about struggling with porn for 18 years or so. In the summer of 2005, I really confronted that issue. I ended up spending three years as part of a men’s group at First Baptist Woodstock that deals with that. And it was an incredible period of renewal and a season where my relationship with God went 3D.
But sometimes, I look back on that and I forget I’m new. I don’t believe the truth about God’s transformative nature. I think in 2009, I’m not “new Jon,” I’m just “old Jon minus porn.” I’m just a better version of the me I’ve always been. But that’s not true.
And it’s not true for you either.
We, as people, are capable of self improvement. We love the idea that the things we do in our lives can make us better. We can learn and grow and change. That’s why self help books sell so well. But God isn’t in the business of self improvement, he’s in the business of new.
That’s why 2 Corinthians 5:17 is a verse I will continue to write about:
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
How powerful is that last section? There are two grenades in there. The first is that the old has gone. It’s not just that the old has been replaced or that the old has been shoved into a closet and if things get tense again and you feel stressed you’re going to put it back on and become the person that hurt so many people in the middle of your divorce or got fired or abandoned your kids while you selfishly tried to “reclaim your youth.” That person? That shell? That’s gone. The second grenade is that in it’s place, the new has come! The new, not the better, the new!
You might look dead at some point in your journey just like that crab. I can’t imagine molting is a pleasant experience. The summer of 2005 was the worst season of my entire life as I became new. But new life was on the other side. That’s what’s waiting.
New life.
As I’ve said before, and I’ll say again:
Death to better, long live new.
Comments
[...] want to give props to a recent article Struggling with New because it covers the renewing power of God … and specifically talks about Jon’s [...]
Your honest vulnerability is truly hope-giving and inspirational. Thank you for Being the Surprise in my day today.
Thanks. I needed that reminder today, January 31st, when 2010 looks like a year of ’supposed to be better but I can’t tell the difference’. New life. Hmmmm….
Beautiful and so meaningful to me today. Just wanted you to know that God really used this post to speak to me.
Great post. Yesterday a long lost childhood friend who was the closest thing to a brother I ever had found me after all these years via facebook. I'm looking forward to talking to him soon on the phone. After I read his note I had a powerful emotional response and started thinking about how my life has changed. I am not who I was. The pain that we suffered together as children has shaped my life in some ways, but my life has been transformed. I was so aware in that moment what a miracle it is to be alive and to know hope and to know the amazing love and forgiveness of God. What a gift we've been given with that new life. May we all live it fully this upcoming year!
OK. I'm now officially hooked on this blog. I can tell because I keep coming back and reading what you say again and again. Your writing gets to my heart.
"You might look dead at some point in your journey just like that crab. I can’t imagine molting is a pleasant experience. The summer of 2005 was the worst season of my entire life as I became new. But new life was on the other side. That’s what’s waiting."
How encouraging is that! I feel I am in a season of molting and you're right it is not pleasant. It helps to be reminded that on the other side is real life. Where God goes 3D. Once again my friend, GREAT STUFF!
I love this day of the week. For me, This has to happen very frequently. I constantly screw up, not so much now as before. I would get extreme fits of rage, and some crying. Now I know how to combat my own sinful desires, and also know where all strength comes from. Faith. I can only combat anything with Christ power, otherwise I lose. This happens consistently, and a battle is preparing itself in my life. I must gird up daily, so that this tower will not crumble.
If you want to know why I referred to myself as a tower, it is because I am taller than a great many of my friends, oftentimes by up to and exceeding eight inches. That is the reason I oftentimes refer to myself as such.
well I believe we are new. I have experienced a great transformation this few years. I have felt God's presences and is true, we can be new and are!!. how comforting it is to know that he understand us and knows us. This new year I will write more new songs and worship him even more. I am so great full that he gave me a new life. I sense the Lord is doing a great thing all over the world.
Keep on Writing new songs for the Lord sister Grimm God will reveal himself like never before.. I am grateful as well for the past year and this new year. I had a blast ringing it in and When you end with God and begin with God who knows what he will do. Just enjoy the Ride of his Glory!
"Death to better, long live new."
Nuff said.
Sunset Beach NC? Rock on! If you are ever there the last week of June stop by the Windjammer on 4th street and I’ll buy you ice cream at Calabash Creamery!
Long live new.