Inverse Functions

The conversation about where we were before we were born ensued again today at the breakfast table.  My 4-year-old wanted to know if she helped me learn to pour my milk into my cereal when I was a little girl.  I told her that she was still a heartbeat in God's heart when I was a little girl.  She decided she was probably as small as a bee.  Or maybe a fly.  Or maybe. . .

"You were nothing!" my son snapped at her.  "You didn't even exist!"

She frowned and looked at me.  I told my son that she wasn't "nothing."  She was everything.  Being a thought of love in God's heart is everything and there is nothing else that matters.  Not the size of the fly or the person or whether they have a human body yet or not.  Every child ever conceived, even the ones that were never born to full term, are everything to God and He knows them by name.

My son seemed content with that response and started mentioning other people that were named when they were still tiny beans in their mom's belly.

"Even Jesus!" Maci added.

"Yes, even Jesus was born in a belly," I agreed.

My 8-year-old boy sat still for just a second and asked, "What about God?  Was He ever born?"

I told Him that God has always been and always will be; He was not created.  He asked how that was possible and why he couldn't understand it and why it didn't make sense.

His mind seemed to try to grasp the concept and he looked confused and frustrated. I recognized the look that came over his face because I had (and still have) experienced it many times.  A look that screams, "I don't understand, so I don't want to think about it!  It makes me mad when I don't understand!  It's stupid!"  I can't even count all the times that I threw out truths about God just because they didn't make sense to me.  It angered me.

With his face squished up in confusion, my son said, "That doesn't make sense.  How can God always be?"

I thought to myself, Well shoot. I don't know, kid.  I've struggled with it and even lost sleep on many, many nights trying to make sense of stuff like this.  I was willing to give up heaven because it didn't make sense to me.

But when I spoke, these words came out instead, "Well, let me ask you this.  You're good at math, right?"  He nodded cause he knows that he's really super good at adding numbers.  "So then can you calculate the hypotenuse of a triangle using Pythogream's theorum of a² + b² = c²?"

His response was, "Can I what the who with the what?"

"Exactly." I said.  "You know math and how to add and how to subtract and measure and even a littel bit of multiplication and division, but that doesn't mean you're ready to understand Geometry."

"What's jimmetry?"  he asked.

"Well, it's a kind of math that you learn after addition/subtraction/multiplication/division.  It's a more advanced kind of math, like Algebra.  When students understand the basics, they can move on to more advanced stuff and then even to Calculus and Trigonometry."  

He was completely lost on all the terms.  He said, "I don't even know what those things are."

"I know that," I said.  "But they exist and they make sense to people who have studied things one step at a time."  I told him how I thought it would be fun to take a Calculus and Trigonometry class because I was good at Algebra and Geometry.  But halfway through Calculus, it started looking like a different language.  By the time I got to trigonometry, I was totally confused and just trying to follow the formulas even though they made absolutely no sense to me.  When I tried to understand it, my brain felt like it wanted to explode.  My calc/trig teacher understood all of it.  He could solve problems in his sleep, with half of his brain tied up in a dream about flying panda bears.  But he couldn't explain it to me.  Probably because he wasn't real good with the whole explaining thing in general.  He was a genius but I wasn't, so I had a hard time understanding.  So even though I had a foundation for these more advanced maths, that didn't mean I was capable of understanding them.  

Luckily, God totally understands these concepts that make our brains want to explode.  And He knows we're not ready for them.  Someday we will be.  Maybe someday far, far away with heavenly bodies and heavenly brains.  But right now, we are using such a tiny percentage of our brain and simply cannot process the understandings of these concepts.  

I asked my son if he was mad that he couldn't figure out why the tangent of an angle is the ratio of the sine to the cosine.  (wow, my brain wants to explode just writing that out; and my heart starts to panic).  Anyway, he was not upset about it.  He even laughed because he is nowhere near understanding these mathematical concepts.  He's okay with the idea that his mind is still growing.

So why am I so hung up on understanding everything that God says is truth?  Why do I get mad and angry cause it "JUST doesn't make sense!!"  It seems silly.  I honestly get way too hung up on that kind of stuff. 

For example:  

How is it possible that Jesus is not condemning me if I did wrong?  I should be condemned.  How does His death pay the price for me?  How is that even possible?  Aren't there consequences I need to embrace before I can desire to change?  What do you mean "God will change me?"  How does that work?  How is that even possible?  

It's frustrating to me that I'm just supposed to accept the "truths" of Jesus' words without even doing the work myself.  It's like trying to solve a trigonometric function using the formula without even understanding the formula.  I'm so lost.  I'm so confused and frustrated that my brain can't wrap around all of this stuff and I'm just supposed to accept that it's true.  There's too much in my brain and it feels like it's going to explode.  

But my son is at peace because he is confident in his addition skills.  Adding makes sense.  He is happy with adding.  When he's ready, he may desire more advanced math courses.  When he's ready.  Right now, he just needs to worry about adding 2+2.  Or maybe even 354+213.  He loves big numbers like that.  He even knows how to carry.  

There is so much peace in resting in the knowledge that I have.  I know it won't be enough forever.  But right now I know that Jesus adores me.  He can't get enough of me and can hardly wait for me to spend more time with Him.  I know that He is shaping me from the inside-out.  Don't ask me to explain it 'cause I can't.  I know some stuff.  So when I get all mad and anxious and hyperventilaty about things that don't make sense to me, I just want to go back to the basics and rest a while.  'Cause my basic understanding is incredibly beautiful and a place where I fall in love all over again.  I think it might even be okay if I stay there a long time.  When I'm ready, God will teach me more.  When I'm ready...  

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And in case you're wondering about the significance of the title, an inverse function is: 

...is a function that undoes another function: If the function fapplied to an input x gives a result of y, then applying the inverse function g to y gives the result x, and vice versa. i.e. f(x) = y, and g(y) = x. More directly, g(f(x)) = x, meaning g composed with fform an identity.

Give yourself a pat on the back if you understand that language.  Or buy buy a crown and wear it proudly.  But for the rest of us, let me break it down for you, like someone else did for me.  With inverse functions, when one number gets bigger, the other one gets smaller.  The function produces the opposite effect for the numbers involved.  

Do you understand the spiritual significance of this trigonometric function?  Jesus, bigger.  Me, smaller.  That's a whole lot better and more functional than Me, bigger.  Jesus, smaller.

So anytime you place Jesus first and make Him more, you become less and you're basically doing Trigonometry.  You're very cool.  And when people joke about how another day has passed and they never used Algebra even once, you can stand proud and say, "Really?  That's too bad; cause I use Trigonometry every day."