Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Being Vulnerable

Last Saturday I met with some of the ladies I know from church. We shared coffee and tea and dessert and talked about our babies and friendship. At the urging of my friend (and co-leader of the group) I read the blog post I wrote a few weeks ago about my Fear of Friendship.

It didn’t occur to me that it would be hard to read my own words in front of other people, but when the time came and I spoke the words I had penned regarding my own journey toward meaningful relationships, I became very self-conscious. Talking about my failures at past attempts at friendship and my preference for isolation rather than risking rejection in front of several women I admire and whose opinion I value was difficult, to say the least.

When I finished, I sat there with all those eyes on me and felt that I had laid myself bare before them. I didn’t look up for a little while, because I was a kind of afraid of what I would see on their faces. An interesting thing happened, though. As the conversation got going, one by one, each lady talked about her own challenges in making and keeping friends. 
It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was safe with these ladies. They have the same struggles that I do. They have been hurt, too.  They have the same longing to be truly known and loved, faults, craziness and all.
There was a moment when we all looked at each other in a kind of surprise when we realized that every one of us felt the same way. We were all looking for safe friendship. I think it was a moment of unexpected connection. I hope it was the beginning of some wonderful, deep relationships.

We know that God did not intend us to live in isolation. Some of the first words that he said after creating Adam in the Garden of Eve were, “It is not good for man to be alone”. We also know that his plan for the church was to enable us to lived in community with our fellow believers in Christ. So, how is it that we can go to church every week, shake hands with our “Brothers and Sisters in Christ”, even attend church social events and then go home feeling so alone? Is it that attending a large church give the illusion of community while still being in the midst of anonymity? 

Is it our technology based, fast paced culture that has us spending all our evenings in front of our tv’s and computers instead of visiting with our friends and actually talking to each other? 

Is it that we are so media and news saturated that we are afraid to get to know people for fear that they could be a mass murderer in disguise? 

It’s probably all of those things, plus a few I haven’t thought of. I do know, however, that we have to find a way to connect with each other on a meaningful level if we are going to have fulfilling lives. I’m starting to learn that what I have to do to get to that place of meaningful relationship is to allow myself to be vulnerable. I have to trust people to know me and not hurt me. As scary as it is, I have to be willing to be seen as I really am in order to be truly known. I’ve also been learning that when I take the step of trusting, others feel a little more comfortable to trust, too.  And that's when true relationship develops.

Friday, May 25, 2012

Putting Jesus in a Box

I was just sitting here reading my Grace for the Good Girl book when I had an epiphany. I have decided that there are things that are worthy of God’s involvement and things that are not. 

The passage that brought this to light is about Mary and Martha and how Martha so busy doing all the things that needed to be done that she missed Jesus. The Savior of all mankind was in her living room and she was all wrapped up in making sure everyone got fed and was comfortable in her home.

This is how it reads in the New International Version of the Bible:

38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one.  Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Luke 10:38-41

Here is how Emily Freeman says it: “Martha put natural limitations on a supernatural God. There were people in her home who were hungry and needed to eat. It wouldn’t be right to let them starve. Perhaps she placed her interpretation of what the people needed above the Lord’s. In her eyes, they needed food. Her knowledge of what happens when people get hungry outweighed her ability to imagine the impossible. She potentially missed out on watching a miracle because she was depending on herself to feed the people.”

Martha put Jesus in a box. She decided that if his visit to her home was going to be successful, she would have to make sure that it went well. She thought that Jesus was too important to concern himself with the mundane things, like seeing to the physical needs of the people, so she jumped in and tried to handle it all herself.

But, we know from The Feeding of the Five Thousand (Luke 9:10-17) and The Feeding of the Four Thousand (Mark 8:1-10) that Jesus was aware of the physical needs of his people and knew how to handle them.

Martha got so overwhelmed with all that needed to be done that she complained to Jesus and asked him to make her sister, Mary, get up and help her. She realized there was more to be done than she could do herself, but even at that point, she didn’t ask Jesus what she should do or ask for his help. She told him what the solution was. She said, “Make my sister help me!”

I wonder how the scene would have changed if she had said, “Jesus, all these people are hungry, what should we do?” Maybe everyone would have gotten up and worked together to make a meal. Maybe Jesus himself would have gone to the kitchen and created dinner for them, crafting a parable in the process. We will never know because Martha didn’t ask that question.

In my last post I admitted to my less-than-stellar housekeeping skills and how that has affected my comfort about inviting people to my home. What God just showed me this evening is that somewhere along the way I decided that it is all up to me to keep my home clean and organized, and God has nothing do do with it. It’s up to me to get it done, therefore my inability to do it to my own satisfaction has become a source of great shame in my life. I’ve gotten frustrated that other people (my family) haven’t helped enough, and I’ve complained about the situation. I’ve developed chores schedules and calendars for when things should be done. I’ve set up a reward system to encourage (bribe) my kids to do more chores. None of these things worked. Not once, though, have I asked God to help me with it. It never even occurred to me.

I’ve gotten better at relying on God in the crisis times. I’m learning to rely on him to meet our financial needs, because I know for sure that I can’t do that on my own. I take my concerns about parenting my children to him. The every day tasks, though, why would I rely on God for those? I can handle it. I’m supposed to be able to handle it!

Obviously I can’t, though. If I could, my living room floor would not be the hazardous obstacle course of toys, backpacks, last night’s pajamas, soccer balls and hula hoops that it is every day.

So, I think I am going to try a new tactic. I’m going to ask God to help me get my home cleaned up and organized. I’m going to take the problem to Jesus, and instead of telling him what the answer should be, I’ll see what kind of solution he can provide me.

What do you think? Do you think that God cares about things like daily chores? Do you have certain things in your life that you have designated as “my job” and others that are “God’s job”? Are there things in your life that you should ask him to help you with that you have considered to be too small or mundane for him to care about or have a solution for?

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Hiding

I recently picked up a book called “Grace for the Good Girl - letting go of the try-hard life.” I saw the author, Emily Freeman, on a Canadian talk show My New Day. I watched the video on you tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05_f6TcaItM

Even the title of the book sort of calls to me, because I am a good girl. I have always been the good girl. In my family when I was growing up, I was the responsible one who didn’t get in much trouble. At school, I was the smart one who got good grades and didn’t cause problems. (Often I was referred to as the “Teacher’s Pet”, which I hated because I knew it was a derogatory term, but I didn’t really understand what the problem was with that. The teachers always liked me. Isn’t that a good thing?) In high school, my “good girl” status went up a few notches because of the standards I held myself to in terms of boys. I intended to wait for sex until marriage, and that definitely made me a “good girl”, in my own eyes as well as the eyes of others.

Looking back on it, I can see that my good girl reputation and standards in this area was mostly due to fear. I was terribly afraid of getting pregnant and what my dad would do if I did. I felt desperate for male attention and romance, but I was too much of a good girl to go for just anyone. I mean, what would people think if I had a boyfriend who was a loser? I was much too smart for that! I couldn’t have anyone talking about how stupid I had been for ruining my life because of some boy that I had “fallen in love” with.

Any boy that I would allow myself to be in a relationship with had to share my faith, too. That’s the rule. You don’t have sex before you are married and you don’t date anyone who isn’t also a Christian. Now, part of this was just good judgment. My parents and Sunday School Teachers and Youth Group Leaders had taught me these things. I had also seen the results of not following these rules played out in the lives of kids at school, as well as at church. The problem came when my ability to follow the rules and make good decisions became a source of pride in my life. I judged myself to be better than those kids who didn’t “keep themselves pure”. I looked down on those girls who had the reputation of giving the boys what they wanted. In my mind, I didn’t do that because I was better than that.

In reality, I didn’t do that because I was scared . . . and because no one asked me to. I don’t really know what would have happened if the opportunity had presented itself. The day I realized that was a sobering day for me. It was quite a shock to face the fact that the great reputation I had, a good part of the way I defined myself, my great self-control, could have disappeared very quickly if a guy I really, really liked had paid attention to me and tried to take advantage of my affection. Suddenly I realized that I wasn’t better than anyone else. I was just protected. It had nothing at all to do with me and everything to do with God.

So, when you use something like your good reputation to define yourself, what happens when your life doesn’t live up to the standards that you, and everyone else, has for you. Well, if you are me, you work really hard to hide those parts of your life. You pretend like they don’t exist and make sure that no one gets close enough to see otherwise.

If you are me, and your life as a wife and mother doesn’t look like you think it should look, if it doesn’t look the way you think other people think it look, you make sure everyone is dressed their best for church on Sunday morning so that you can show up as the beautiful little coordinated family and people will think that you have it all together. You never mention the fights that you had with your children over the clothes that they are wearing. You don’t acknowledge the fact that you made your daughter cry because she wanted to wear the yellow dress, but you had decided that everyone should be wearing shades of blue today.

If you are me, you never invite people over to your house, because if they were to pass the threshold of your home they would not be able to ignore the fact that you are not a very good housekeeper and are not particularly gifted at organization. They would see all the old furniture and know that this mom has not accomplished what she should have in her life, because if she had, there would be designer furnishings and tasteful art on the walls and beautiful arrangements of family portraits in the hallway instead of this sad situation of clutter, hand-me-down sofas and piles of never-ending laundry.

These are things that must be hidden at all costs. No one must ever know, because if they did, the reputation would be ruined. People would think that I can’t hold it all together. They would think that, like my home, I must be a mess.

But the truth is. . . I AM a mess. I’m NOT holding it all together. The more I try to control everything that happens in my life, the more out of control it gets. And . . . I’m tired of hiding. I’m tired of being lonely because I’m afraid that people will reject me when they see that I’m not perfect.

So, at Emily Freeman’s urging, it’s official. I will no longer be hiding behind my good reputation. After all, if the truth is that my life is messy, but I pretend like it isn’t, then really, I’m living a lie. And I think that is also called "living in denial".

 

What this adds up to, then, is this: no more lies, no more pretense. Tell your neighbor the truth. In Christ's body we're all connected to each other, after all. When you lie to others, you end up lying to yourself. Ephesians 4:25 (The Message)

Friday, May 18, 2012

The Mommy She Needs

I’m exhausted. It’s not just that I’ve had three really long days in a row, although that doesn’t help. I think the biggest reason is that I sat in a meeting with my daughter’s 3rd grade teacher, her Occupational Therapist, her Speech Therapist, the Resource Specialist and the school Principal for almost 2 hours this afternoon. All these people gathered together for her Annual IEP Meeting.

For anyone who doesn’t know, an IEP is an Individualized Education Program. It’s a specialized education plan for students with special needs. My daughter has Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a form of high functioning Autism. She is highly intelligent when it comes to reading and spelling (scoring in the 96th and 99th percentiles of children her age, respectively) and math, but she struggles to understand social communication and has a hard time learning social skills (which is why she has speech therapy). She also has challenges with both her fine and gross motor skills as well as her balance (which is why she has occupational therapy).

So, in an IEP Meeting, as a parent of a child with special needs, you sit and listen to the professionals discuss all the areas in which your child is deficient and needs help to learn to do the things that other children do naturally. Now, I am really glad that the school has given us access to these wonderful people who work hard to help kids who are struggling. I know that they care about my daughter and want the best for her. They even took the time to tell us what a delightful and creative child she is and to discuss her strengths and the ways she excels academically. I am so thankful that they can see not just the unusual behaviors, but the causes of them and that they have ways to help her in the areas she struggles.

It is really hard for me, though, to hear a big long list of things my daughter doesn’t do as well as she should. It breaks my heart that she doesn’t have friends because she doesn’t know to play with them the way typical children play. She has her own way of playing and she doesn’t know how to adapt that to include other children. Sometimes when I see her on the playground with the other children, I can see that her body just doesn’t seem to work they way it should. She can’t keep up with the running, jumping and climbing that the others do. She tries for a while, but then they outpace her and so she wanders off to find something else to do.

Over this past year she has begun to notice that she is different than her peers. This is a good developmental milestone for her, because it means that she is becoming more aware of other people instead of being so entirely wrapped up in her own mind, as she was before. There is a part of me, though, that preferred it when she didn’t see the differences. She was happier. She didn’t talk about the things she can’t do, like climbing the monkey bars, jumping rope or playing sports. She didn’t tell me that it was all her fault that her class lost the baseball game. She didn’t feel sad because no one wanted to play with her. She was happy by herself.

My husband doesn’t like me to talk about this stuff. He gets frustrated that I focus so much on her weaknesses instead of her strengths. The problem is that I don’t know how to help her with her weaknesses without focusing on them. Of course, I encourage her in her areas talent. She writes great, creative stories. Her artwork is coming along nicely. She sings well and loves to perform. Those things come naturally to her. I need to try to help her in the other areas, though. I have to help her learn how to stay focused, understand non-verbal communication, not interrupt people, stay on topic in a conversation, sustain appropriate eye contact, etc. I have to find a way to teach her things that people normally learn without being taught.

I know that these are things that the therapists can help her with, but I’m her mom, and there is a part of me that believes that it’s my responsibility to teach this stuff to her. I mean, it’s my job to teach her self-care skills, manners, values, how to get along with others, etc, how then can I turn over the teaching of social communication and skills to other people? It kind of feels like a cop-out. But, the problem is, I don’t know how to help her. I’ve been trying to teach these things to her since I noticed that she wasn’t picking them up, but she hasn’t been able to learn them from me.

Sometimes people tell me that God gave her to me to raise because he knew that I would be the best person to be her mommy. I don’t feel like I am the best person who could be her mommy. I feel woefully inadequate to give her all the things that she needs. I don’t have the skills needed to help her learn how to make her body move the way she wants it to. I don’t know how to pinpoint the elements of social interactions that she is missing so that she can then be taught how to do them. I don’t know if I am explaining this well, but what I mean is that while I can see that there is something strange about the way she communicates (or doesn’t), it’s hard for me to put my finger on what the difference is, in order to correct it. So, I have to rely on other people to figure these things out and help her with them. People who have these skills. People who are not her mommy, because her mommy isn’t enough.

Now, logically, I know that I’m being too hard on myself and that God gives us these other people to help us when we don’t know how to help ourselves, because we can‘t know everything. But, as I have said before, my emotions are rarely logical. I just know that my daughter is in for a long road, it is not going to be easy, and I can’t change it for her. I can’t wave a magic wand and make the Asperger’s Syndrome go away. I can’t wish on a star and *poof* she knows how to make friends.

I can only pray that God keeps her in his hands and helps her grow into the woman he designed her to be. Oh, and that he makes me into mommy my daughter needs.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Waves

Overwhelmed
Waves wash over me
One after another
Sand shifting beneath my feet
I stumble backwards
Regain my balance
Start forward again
Another wave
The tide gains strength
The waves grow higher
But I’m getting stronger, too
Learning what to expect
Brace myself for impact
When to stand firm
When to relax
Let myself be carried
By the currents of the sea
To places I don’t know
Unfamiliar lands
That I’d never have a chance to see
If I fought each wave
Trying to stay
Where maybe I’m not meant to be

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Scheduling Friendship

In my quest to develop grown-up friendships, I’ve been surprised at how hard it can be to get to know people. My own emotional issues aside, making friends as an adult married woman with children is not like it was when I was younger. In high school and college, I could call someone I wanted to get to know better and say, “Hey do you want go mall or see a movie or something?” and we could make plans for later that day, or at the most, the weekend. Now, if I try to do that, the conversation goes something like this:

Me: ”Hey, I haven’t seen you in a while. We should get together. Do you want to do something?”

Friend: “Well, Johnny has soccer tonight and a game on Saturday morning. Jane has ballet tomorrow night and girl scouts on Thursday. Friday is date night with hubby. Saturday night I have a work dinner I have to be at. Hmm. Next week isn’t much better. I, think I can schedule something for next month, if you want, though.”

Me: “Uh…Ok. Let’s do that. Let me know when you can squeeze me in.”

I then hang up feeling dejected, because really, I just wanted to spend some time with a friend chatting and laughing, right now. Not next weekend or next month.

I tried that a few times before I realized that during this season of my life, spontaneous friend dates aren’t going to happen very often. I can’t really get too mad about it, because my schedule is just as busy. The problem is that, generally speaking, when I am free, they are busy and when they are free, I’m busy. Eventually I had to accept the fact that I was going to have schedule time to make friends.

Maybe it’s strange, but this was a really hard thing for me wrap my mind around. I’m not a “schedule” person. I’m not a planner, either, unless I have to be. I have a friend, though, who is a planner, and she was the first one to say, “Let’s put something on the calendar, because otherwise I will never have time for it.”

The first time I heard her say that, it rubbed me the wrong way, because I believed that building a relationship should just happen naturally. Being put into her schedule felt sort of confining to me. Kind of like, “OK, I have a hour block from 2:00 to 3:00 on Sunday, so let’s have a meeting and get to know each other. Bring your bullet point notes of all the important events in your life so we don’t miss anything or get off topic. Be prompt, because I have a 3:15 appointment with my hairstylist and I can’t be late.”

Now, she didn’t say any of this, or imply it even. It’s what I read into her suggestion. What I later came to understand, though, is that in our frantic, 21st century lives, our schedules will fill up whether we want them to or not. Either we have to take control of them and put the things that are important to us on the calendar, or other people and things will find a way to fill all our time slots. When I realized that she was putting time with me on her calendar because she valued it and wanted to make sure it would happen, it changed my entire perspective.

This also made me realize that I had to begin to be deliberate about developing my relationships. I couldn’t just expect them to happen. I had to put effort into them. I had to put some planning into them. I had to make it a priority and maybe sacrifice something for it. I had to give up an occasional evening of my favorite t.v. shows because that is when my friend had some free time. I had to give up my preconceived notions about what my friendships would look like.

So, now I put my friends in my schedule, and they put me in their schedule. It has to be a mutual scheduling effort. Otherwise, it will never happen.

I hope that someday life will slow down in such a way that my friends and I will have the freedom to take a spontaneous trip to the beach just because we feel like drinking a cup of coffee and watching the sun set over the ocean. For now, though, I’m honored when a lady that I admire values me enough to schedule me into her day.


Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart,
and the pleasantness of a friend
springs from their heartfelt advice.

  Proverbs 27:9

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

The Fear of Friendship

“If you don’t have three to five good friends in your life, I mean women you are really talking to, that needs to be your number one priority right now.”

Those words felt like they hit me hard in the middle of my chest. They came from Sandi Patty, who was speaking to thousands of women from the stage at a Women of Faith Conference in 2009. I was sitting by myself, having been given the ticket by a new coworker who wasn’t able to attend the Friday session. I didn’t have five friends. I didn’t even have three friends.

I had many acquaintances, after all, I go to a large church. But people that I could say I’m “really talking to”? There was only one. And if I’m honest with myself, I don’t know that I was “really” talking to her. She was talking to me, but I didn’t share as much with her as I should have. There was so much I was afraid to let anyone know. I’ve known her for 15 years, and I was still afraid that she would reject me if she knew what a mess my life really was. It was completely unreasonable to believe that, because I don’t do that to other people, but my fear is rarely rational.

When I was a little girl, a friend was someone to play Wonder Woman with, run away from the boys with, and stay up too late at sleepovers with. All you really have to do to be friends with someone is be about the same age and know how to play nice. Occasional fighting over toys aside, making and being friends is uncomplicated.

Over the years, though, something happened. Making friends became scary. Keeping them became hard. I’m not really sure what it was that changed things for me. I’m sure that moving around a lot during my childhood had something to do with it, but many people grow up that way and still manage to keep friends.

I had friends all through my elementary school years, and a best friend in middle school and high school, until my family moved from Oregon to Southern California in the middle of my Junior year. After that, I struggled. There were a few people I would “hang out” with or go see a movie with, but I had a hard time finding anyone that I could really connect with. My college years didn’t produce lasting friendships, either, other than my husband.

After I got married, making friends kind of stopped being a priority. I had this idea that all I really should need was my husband, so I looked to him to fill all my emotional needs. Unfortunately, that didn’t work too well for me. My husband is great, but there are certain things he doesn’t get. Girl things, like hormonal mood swings, chick flicks, decorative towels in the bathroom (as in why they should be there, but you don’t actually use them), or how miserable shopping for a new swimsuit is. He didn’t get that sometimes I needed to just talk things out, even if there wasn’t a way to solve the problem. At the time, I didn’t even know that the reason we had such a hard time communicating about anything serious was because I just needed to talk about it and he would get frustrated that he couldn’t solve the issue for me.

I know that I can talk a problem to death, but the thing is that even if there isn’t a solution, sometimes I can’t relax and accept it until I have expressed all the thoughts running around my head about it. That’s what great girlfriends are for. Husbands can learn to go through this process with us, but it doesn’t come naturally and they usually still struggle with the need to fix the problem.

After we had been married a few years, I tried to make friends with the girlfriends of some of my husband’s friends, but that resulted in a couple of disastrous situations that had me doubting my ability to be friends with other women at all. After that, I did what seems to be my defense mechanism after I have been hurt: I isolated myself. I convinced myself that nobody would want to be friends with me anyway, so I should just stop trying. I had my husband, my mom, my sister and my aunt, and that was all I needed.

The problem with this solution was that it wasn’t a solution at all. It just intensified the depth of my loneliness. It might have been different if my extended family lived near me, but my sister and my aunt were three hours away (in different directions) and my mom was four hours away. That distance makes it hard to meet up for a chat when you need someone to talk to or if just don’t want to face the fitting room at the mall without some moral support.

That weekend, at the Women of Faith Conference, I heard from at least three of the speakers the message that we need good friends. I started to get the point that God was trying to tell me something. I started praying for friends after that. I also started trying to find ways to connect with other women. It’s been a long, slow process, but I now have a few women in my life that I really trust. God has been faithful in bringing me ladies that are trustworthy and love me in spite of how sort of contradictory I can be.

When I started trying to be open with people, I was really cautious about what I shared and who I shared with. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because you don’t want to dump all your dirty laundry on someone you don’t know very well and end up with it being spread all over the church (or school, or whatever community you are a part of). But when I found someone I thought I could trust, it was like a flood gate opened. Suddenly all I wanted to do was hold on to this person and tell her all the stuff I had been going through that I hadn’t told anyone before. It was so nice to stop hiding my struggles and my pain that, looking back on it, I think I bombarded her. I thank God that she was strong enough to handle it and not get scared away.

Sometimes, after she and I had stayed out too late at the coffee shop and I had told her more than I intended to say, I would question myself and decide that I needed to stop dumping on her. Then I would kind of clam up for a while because I was afraid of how needy I felt and how needy I feared she thought I was. That didn’t last long, because I desperately needed someone to talk to, so after a while the flood gates would open again. Building a friendship with her was scary for me because I was making myself vulnerable and I knew that if she rejected me, it would really, really hurt. I knew, though, that I had to risk it, because being isolated hurt more.

We’ve been friends now for about four years and we’ve walked together through some tough life events. We’ve gone through job losses, family health scares, crises of faith and parenting challenges. Because of her, I have been relearning what it means to have a friend and how to be a friend. I learned that I can be who I am (not who I think I’m expected to be) and people will still care about me. I learned that I can admit that I’m not a very good housekeeper, and a true friend won’t judge me for it (or at least won‘t say anything about it J ). I’m now developing more new friendships and my confidence in myself and what I have to offer as a friend is growing.

I still have insecurities about it. I worry too much about what other people think about me. I over think relationships and read too much into conversations and off-handed comments sometimes. God has been showing me, though, that who I am, who he created me to be, is just fine, and if anyone decides that they just don’t like me, that’s not my problem. It’s theirs.

I believe that we all need special people in our lives that will hug us when we are hurting, tell us the truth when we need to hear it, encourage us to never give up and celebrate with us in our wonderful moments. We also need to be there for other people for all those same reasons. We need friends, but other people need us to be their friend, too. Other people feel isolated and lonely too. Sometimes, they’ve been there so long, that they are afraid to risk trusting someone not to hurt them.

So, here’s my question to you: Do you have good friends in your life? If your world were to fall apart today and something unthinkable were to happen, do you have someone you can call who will be there to walk through it with you? If not, can you at least begin to think about trying to develop those kind of relationships?


Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.

Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

     Ecclesiastes 4:10

Thursday, May 3, 2012

In the Presence of The King

This evening I was thinking about what it will be like when I get to Heaven and walk into the throne room of the King of Creation.

In The Presence of the King

Coming into the presence of the King
Overwhelmed by the light of his grace
I fall to my knees and cry out with the angels
"Holy! Holy! Holy is the Lord God Almighty!"

Lifted up and drawn closer to him
I find myself before the throne.
Unable to look upon his face,
I fall once again, this time at his feet

Suddenly I see all of my sin
Suddenly I see how broken I am
Suddenly I see what he gave for me
When he let them nail him to the tree

The tears begin to flow as I see there before me
The wounds from the nail
That pinned him to the cross
So very long ago.

Like the woman of old, I wash his feet with my tears
I cry out to him for forgiveness
For the darkness inside me
For my fear and my pride
Because it was for me that he died.

Suddenly I see all of my sin
Suddenly I see how broken I am
Suddenly I see what he gave for me
When he let them nail him to the tree

Strong hands lifting me up
To stand before the Lord
“Beloved, Look at me.”
“Lord, I can’t.”
“Child, I love you.”
“I’m so unworthy.”
“Daughter, you are mine.”

Slowly I lift my eyes,
His fingers stroke my cheek
Wiping away the tears
His face is radiant, His love alive
“Don’t you know how long I’ve waited?”

Wrapped in his arms,
all my pain fades away
My heart is clean,
my mind is whole
Finally, I am in the place
I was always meant to be.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Who I Am Designed To Be

This past weekend I attended the Bethel Church women’s conference, Women of Impact. It was great fun and I loved spending my Friday night and Saturday with some of my most favorite ladies. That kind of thing doesn’t happen nearly enough.

One of the workshops I attended was “Impacting your Future” which was taught by Pastor Shekina Gottlieb, one of the pastors on staff at our church. She spoke about becoming the “Me I’m Meant To Be” rather than the “Me I Want To Be”, or the “Me I Pretend To Be”, or the “Me I Think I Should Be”, or the “Me Other People Want Me To Be”, or especially the “Me That Fails To Be”.

It made me think, how long did I spend being the “me I thought I should be” or the “me I was pretending to be“? I know that the “me I wanted to be” was impossible, so for quite a while, I was just the “me that was failing to be“.

This quote put a whole new perspective on the subject for me.

"When you fail to become the person God designed you to be, all the rest of us miss out of the gift you were made to give." Shekina Gottlieb

Realizing this, that my failure to become who God designed me to be means that everyone else misses out on something that only I can give them, forced me to take another look at myself. If I don’t become the woman that God meant for me to be, my kids miss out on the mom they were meant to have. It means that my husband doesn’t get the wife he was supposed to have. My friends don’t get the relationship with me that they should have had. By neglecting myself, my dreams, talents and gifts, I do my loved ones a disservice.

So, really, it’s not all about me. Crazy thought, huh?

My unwillingness to do what God has put in my heart to do, because I am scared or feel unworthy or whatever, affects more than my life. It affects all the lives I am supposed to touch.

On one hand, that puts a huge sense of responsibility on my shoulders. I know that I am not yet who God meant for me to be, so how many relationships have I already missed the opportunity on because I spent so much time being the “Me that Failed to Be.”

On the other hand, this also frees me from the idea that pursuing my dreams and developing my gifts and talents makes me self centered. It’s not selfish. God made me with a specific purpose in mind, as he did every other person on the planet. I believe that he puts the seeds of that purpose in each individual in the form of our dreams. He means for us to follow them.

Imagine if Shakespeare had decided that writing wasn’t a job that could pay the bills and that he should be a stone mason instead. What if Leonardo DaVinci had given in to feelings of inadequacy and stopped painting and sculpting and imagining and dreaming. Or if Mother Teresa had listened to all those around her who told her that it was crazy to try to go to the other side of the world to work with the poorest of the poor in India.

Now, I know that we aren’t all meant to do things like this that make us famous or successful by the world’s standards, but that doesn’t mean that our impact on the world won’t be great.

There is a woman at our church that recently retired from the position of Nursery Director after more than 30 years of service. For the past 30 years, Miss Jennifer has cared for the babies of all the people that came to the church so that they could sit in the service and listen to the pastor and hear the Word of God. Her presence allowed those pastors with young children to minister to hurting people. She changed diapers, rocked infants to sleep, comforted scared toddlers and encouraged exhausted new mommies for 30 years. Outside of our church, very few people know her name, but I believe that her service has made her famous in heaven.

Billy Graham obviously was very successful in his evangelism ministry and crusades around the world. He’s a very effective speaker and many people have come to know the Lord as a result of his sermons, but he didn’t put on his crusades alone. Thousands of people were involved in putting the crusades together. Before Mr. Graham even came into town, many people had spend hundreds of hours in prayer for the event. People had to invite their friends. So many people worked behind the scenes using their gifts to organize, plan and make the crusades happen. There were hundreds of people who were there to pray for all those who answered the call to follow the Lord. Billy Graham couldn’t pray for each one himself. He needed all those mature believers there, ready to work one on one with people, praying for their needs and ministering in ways that he couldn’t from up on the stage.

I bring up these examples because I think that it is really easy for us to get caught up in the idea that to do something great for God we have to be one of the famous people. We have to be like Michael W. Smith, Joyce Meyer or Joel Osteen. We don’t. We have to be what God designed us each individually to be. We just have to be willing to do those things that he tells us to do.

So, what if, in your heart of hearts, you think that maybe you are supposed to be like the famous people? What then? I think you have to evaluate why you believe that. What are your motivations? Do you want that because being famous means you are important; because that’s the ruler you are using to measure your success? Or, do you believe that is God wants that for you, in spite of how you feel about it?

Recently, my husband met with the Senior Pastor at our church and was discussing the call that he feels God has on his life. He had the following conversation with the pastor:

“I just want to make sure that this is from God and is not something that I’m making up myself.”

The pastor looked him in the eye, “Does it scare you?”

“Absolutely,” Robert responded.

“Then it’s from God,” Pastor said.

So, if you believe that God has huge things for you to do, does it scare you? Do you feel inadequate to the task before you? If so, I believe that it is from God. I believe that he calls us to things that are bigger than what we feel we can do on our own because he wants us to rely on him completely. He wants us to know that what we are doing is not in our own power to accomplish. It‘s how he brings the attention and the glory back to himself.

 

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
   Ephesians 2:10

From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
   Ephesians 4:16