Performer

There's this woman who haunts me when I'm falling asleep at night. Her spirit followed me across the ocean, held captive as it is in the words written by a physician, printed in a water-damaged book I keep with me. I've written my own words about her before, about the things she's told me. She keeps telling me things. They are old words but they feel new every time.

"—she loved much."

That's all she did. That's all Jesus required of this war-torn woman with a broken soul and used body. Across the table from her, there was that other man. The man who had it all together. He was so good at what he did. Yet, for his perfection he was condemned. For her honest, broken outpouring of love, she was accepted.

His name was Simon. I don't know her name—that's why she's haunting. Her name did not go down in history. It stopped there, in the first century AD.

The story seems all topsy-turvy. Here this woman is, literally filthy, but the love in her heart gives Jesus joy. Simon, on the other hand, is literally clean, but the spiritual state of his heart is comparable to a second woman's physical condition, a page over in my Bible. It's a physical condition that has her ostracized from society. She knows all about those filthy rags Isaiah the prophet compares righteous works to. From Jesus' reaction to Simon, you'd think Simon was wrapped in those very same filthy rags. He practically was.  All he did was perform, and that's what performance is.

She didn't perform.

I perform. I put all this pressure on myself. I am bound and determined to show those feminists what I can do. It'll show those church people who say all I'm meant for is marriage and babies and nothing else. I'll show up those sociologists who say people living on pennies are likely to stay there. I'll be the poster-child of the American dream. I'll show the world how I can change it.

Mostly, I perform for myself, prove myself to myself, show up myself. I'll excel at school. I'll ace the tests and climb the ladder of success. I'll beat my body into submission. I'll train my mind. I'll be completely independent of anyone.

...for what?

I tell myself for God. You know who else did something for God? The Muslim extremists who crashed planes into the Twin Towers. The Christian crusaders who tried to win back Jerusalem, and brainwashed children into fighting too.

I think I do things for God, but actually it's for myself. I'm trying to do something, get somewhere that will make me fulfilled in myself. But ancient whispers from a book, that run through my head and hang in the misty, twilight air, say I need to give up and just be. That me, now, in any and every situation is who I am supposed to be. As long as my heart is beating to the praises of eternal songs sung to the Creator, then I have already arrived at the destination. And I didn't have to work to get there. I didn't even have to tell my heart to beat, I just breathed slow so I could feel the rhythm and let it control me. Let the love of Christ control me.

Maybe, after all, it's true that life is a story, but it's not one I'm writing or even have much power over.   I can't write a better story than the one that's being given to me by an omniscient God who I cannot begin to understand. Perhaps the liberty I have in the matter is that I get to choose what song I am going to sing as the plot unfolds. I get to choose how much I fight or submit to the tempo.

I'm a fighter. Some days I live in a mental hell from all the pressure I put on myself to perform well academically, physically, spiritually, relationally. Some days, I give up. I remember my origins, remember who I am really, who God is, and I give up. Those are good days. But they are too far in between. I can't come to Italy once a year to remind myself. So I lose hope that I'll ever stop holding myself to an unattainable standard that is also, by the grace of God, an unwarranted standard.
When will I stop chasing the wind?

"—she loved much."