Dying of Loneliness

I knew someone once who died of loneliness.

Her husband had died in a tragic accident and she, ill and unable to get out of the house without the help and support of her neighbors, family and friends, and deep in grief, slowly died ... of loneliness.

Fewer and fewer people stopped by to see her. Fewer and fewer called her. She had no outside interests, nothing to occupy her mind. And she spent literally days at a time without any human contact.

After the death of her husband, who doted on her and talked about his day with her, it took her seven years to die. And of course the death certificate said she died of a heart attack. But it was hastened by an unutterable sadness that permeated every waking moment of her life. How very tragic! People just went on about their lives, and never gave her a second thought. It wasn't like they were TRYing to exclude her. She just never crossed their minds.

Some might have said that she could have used the phone and called someone, reached out. That's probably true. But I have to say that when a person is lonely, hurting, or depressed - the last thing that person wants to do (even though it's the best thing for him or her) is to ask for attention or for help. I know from experience. Frequent experience.

The last few days has been rather draining for me because of a situation beyond my control. When that happens, the first thing that suffers is my sense of being loved, appreciated, and important to someone - anyone. It is so easy to slip into self-pity, resentment, bitterness, and anger. It is the simplest thing in the world to self-isolate and to blame everyone else for - for not meeting my needs.

Gloria Gaither told the story once on an 8-track tape I used to listen to (yes, that dates me) of her son Benji. Benji was three at the time and his grandmother thought it would be a great thing to take him out in the field behind their home and play ball with him. Someone had gotten him one of those plastic bat and ball sets - the one with the hollow ball and the big thick hollow plastic bat. She'd throw the ball and he'd swing - and miss. Over and over again he would swing for all he was worth ... and over and over again he would not hit that ball. When Gloria was looking for him to ask him to come in for a meal, she saw him in the field with his grandma, "playing ball." As soon as she got within earshot, Benji threw down the bat, stamped his little feet and yelled in frustration, "You did it aGAIN Grandma ! You missed my bat AGAIN !"

I've often thought of that little story when life isn't going my way and I get disgruntled. (What is a gruntle anyway...?) Things go wrong, my needs aren't met, I keep giving and giving and giving and then the anger starts to build up. When I start feeling sorry for myself, before long I lash out inside at the people who just aren't hitting my bat. Then I start to shut down emotionally, to sit on my pity-pot and pout. Feeling angry is not bad; but feelings are transient things, and if they are allowed to stay for too long, they can morph into something dangerous. That's where I was headed earlier today. Often at those times, God (in His mercy and compassion) sends me some way to arrest that mindset. Tonight it was a very simple message from a relatively new friend, a message that said something nice and let me remember that I was special.

And that is just the thing. Often it is a simple kindness that can make the difference between someone having a rotten day and just making someone's day.

Here are examples of words that make someone's day when they are spoken... and meant:

Thank you.
Can I help you?
What you did (or said) was so sweet!
I miss you. Can we get together and chat?
I just love the way you __fill in the blank__.

It doesn't sound hard, does it?

What's so Awful about Weakness?

People come in all shapes, sizes, abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and types of intelligence.

What's the first thing you notice about a businessman who happens to be using crutches? Is his immaculate suit and tie? Is it the smile on his face or the color of his hair (or that he even HAS hair?)

Or is it the crutches?

Okay, I get it that people don't want to be sick, or weak, or in some way "less" than what is considered the norm. Parents don't want that for their children - the teasing, the limitations, and other lessened joys in life. (Lessened compared to what? especially if they've never known anything different?)

Anyway, I heard someone talking about their infant who had a problem with one of his senses - for the sake of argument let's say he needed really thick glasses for the rest of his life. First, is he less of a person because he can't see as well as those who don't need glasses? Second, how will that limit him in any appreciable way? Why then, did this person get all kinds of comments like, "Oh that's awful! God can heal him - let's all agree together in prayer; He can do the impossible!!"

Don't get me wrong; I believe that God can heal anybody if He wants to. I just don't think He necessarily wants to in EVERY case. What if God knows that this young fellow (as happened with my husband) will be in a room one day when a bunch of acid explodes in a chemical reaction? those thick glasses will keep him from going blind!! What if the visual disability keeps him from going into a career where he would most likely be killed before he could accomplish all that God had initially planned for him? Like say, the military? What if God uses this young person's inability to see well to teach someone else a lesson and turn their life around in a way that nothing else could? Some of the most amazing people I've known had significant physical limitations, mental difficulties, or intellectual challenges - which made them all the more amazing for their steadfast faith, their persistent and loyal love for their family and friends, and their passion for the lost.

In fact, the apostle Paul boasted about his weaknesses, about his physical limitations, because he knew that when people looked at him they thought, "What a wimpy little weakling of a man! Bow-legged, near-sighted, waddles when he walks! ... but there's something about him that's so compelling. This God of his must be pretty impressive to make him this passionate..." and we know that hundreds followed Jesus because of Paul's witness. Of those, dozens were healed of all kinds of sicknesses. Yet Paul himself was not. Three times he asked, and finally Jesus told him, "My grace is enough for you; My strength shines even brighter in your weakness."

So what's so awful about it?

Rigorous Honesty

Skin experts tell us that in order to get rid of the occasional blemish on one's face, one must resist the temptation to squeeze it. Instead, keep it clean (morning and night wash with a clean washcloth and soap, rinse well and pat dry, let the skin breathe for 5 minutes before putting any other product on). In the morning, moisturize after washing, and before doing any skin care / makeup routine. At night, after washing and before bed, take a little toothpaste on the end of your finger and apply it in a circular motion. Leave it on overnight. The next day the blemish should be half the size it was.

I don't know anyone who doesn't look in a mirror at least once a day - sometimes several times. The mirror tells us when there's dirt on our faces, or whether there's anything out of the ordinary that needs attention. Usually when there's something wrong, we stop and take the time to fix it (or start to deal with it), and don't walk away from it. Food stuck between the teeth? floss. Bar-b-q sauce on your chin? wipe it off. Pimple? look after it as soon as possible. Fresh coffee stain on the shirt? treat it by rubbing in some salt before it dries, put it in the hamper and get a clean shirt. (There's a little cleaning tip for you there - a freebie...)

There's a quote on healing from the inner scars from a life spinning out of control, a quote I like to repeat to myself. It talks about those who recover as those who are capable "of grasping and developing a lifestyle which demands rigorous honesty." They are like those who look in the mirror and say, "Oh, that's not acceptable - that needs to be dealt with right away" instead of shrugging their shoulders and pretending the problem doesn't exist.

The kind of honesty I mean is the truthfulness we practice with our self. It's fearless. It's realistic. It sees the good AND the bad. It does the "next right thing." It trusts God to do for us what we have no power to do on our own. And it keeps listening. Trusting. Doing the next thing that God leads us to do, whether that's dealing with a resentment in our heart, going to visit a sick friend or not taking paper clips home from the office.

There's a verse somewhere in the Bible that talks about the kind of day-to-day rigorous honesty I'm talking about. It says, "... line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little..." or words to that effect. Basically it's saying that everything is important enough to leave in God's hands, to trust Him to handle, and this is played out in giving every little thing to Him as it happens. In doing so, He heals us.

And this same process of healing never stops, by the way.

Pillow Talk

Maybe we need to rethink our whole concept of prayer.

We are in a relationship with God. Jesus is our Bridegroom. He has proven to the ultimate degree His love for us, His passionate desire to enter into intimacy with us.

What if prayer is just talking to Him? There's a concept. Not pleading, not manipulating, not groveling, not demanding. Just talking. Talking based on relationship, on a love that is strong and sure on His part, and can only grow deeper and more pervasive on ours. It wasn't by some whim that God has referred historically to His people as His spouse, His bride. We get to know Him intimately, and we know what makes Him pleased, sad, frustrated, joyous. As our love grows for Him we find ourselves not wanting to make Him sad or frustrated by our behavior. And not because that's what we "should" do - but because He loves us and we love Him. We let Him into the deepest recesses of our being; we allow Him to "know" us, the real us - not what we want to show Him or others, but the deep-down stuff. The relationship, the intimacy, is too important to us to want to jeopardize it. We look for His smile, we live to hear Him laugh.

From that place of intimacy, our prayers begin to look (and sound) different. Gone are the trappings of changed vocal tones and repetitive chanting, gone are the petulant and selfish demands, gone are the attempts at sanctified arm-twisting, it's just "Jesus and me - talking." Like best friends, like husband and wife having a bit of "pillow talk." That's when what really matters to us comes to the fore, and all the barriers and façades are stripped away and we share our heart with Him. Not what someone else is doing, not what the accepted prayer format is, not anything less - or more - than just talking about real things with Someone who's real and who really loves us far more than we can even begin to understand. And He begins to share His heart with us, to gently teach us what matters to Him.

I was reading the Psalms this morning in the Message. Psalm 25:14 jumped out at me. "God-friendship is for God-worshipers; they are the ones He confides in." Our picture of "what worship looks like" aside, it is basically seeking His face - not for what He can do for us but because of who He is: love, compassion, gentleness, goodness, acceptance, grace, - everything. Those very things make it possible for us to have a relationship with Him in the first place. To walk with Him, as Adam did in the cool of the evening before the fall of humankind, and as Enoch did in the days before the law was even given.

Not because we are worthy of it; we aren't. Not because we have a right to it; we don't.
But just because He is ours and we are His - we're wearing His ring in our hearts.

Please Sir

We hear of two different extreme attitudes regarding asking God for something we want or need. Anything from a job to an inner healing.

One is the attitude of entitlement. Don't say please, just barge in and demand it. God's obliged by His word to give you anything you want. That's akin to a spoiled child demanding his own way and throwing a tantrum when he doesn't.

The other is an attitude of unworthiness. Don't ask Him for anything if you can help it; He's too busy to bother with you. If you HAVE to ask Him, grovel. And don't expect Him to give it to you either. At least not before you've done a whole lot more groveling. This is the picture of the one who has come to expect nothing from abuse from a parent.

The picture above is of the character Oliver Twist, still hungry after being given a meager serving of food. "Please sir, I want some more." Respectful. Yet he identifies his need. And he won't go away until he gets an answer, yes OR no.

He is neither cocky nor afraid. He is just needy, going to the only one who can meet that need and asking politely.

Wow. When I realize that God is so much more powerful and so much more loving and compassionate than that workhouse master who withheld food from the children to keep them in line, I find myself taking a lesson from Oliver Twist, knowing that God has my best interests at heart. His heart.

Grace upon Grace

It's mesmerizing, watching the waves come in at the shore. I remember a few times as a child on rare outings to the beach, losing myself in their hypnotic rhythm, allowing myself to be almost dizzy with the motion of a constantly moving landscape while I stood still, almost ankle deep as wave after wave lapped up nearly to my knees and back down. Then I'd feel the wave suck a little of the sand out from between my toes on its way back to the ocean - and within seconds it would all happen all over again. One after another - they never stopped. Rough, smooth, sunny, windy, rainy ... it never mattered. The speed and intensity might vary, but they never ceased rolling in. There was something comforting about the constancy and dependability of it all.

So when I first heard Gordon Jensen's song, Grace upon Grace, it touched something deep in the recesses of my spirit.

The concept of grace is not new to Christianity. But it is often sold short because all the preaching and the usual talk on grace talks about the forgiveness we have from the sins of the past. But let's think about it for a while. When Jesus died on the cross, you and I had not even been born yet. All our sins were in the future at that point in time - and so were all the sins of our children, and grandchildren, born or not even conceived yet!

In fact, when Jesus said, "It is finished!" He was talking about paying in full for every sin, past, present, and future - forever - for every person, past, present, and future. Nothing we have ever done and nothing we will ever do is too much for God, will not take Him by surprise, or cause Him to love us any less. Once we give Him our will and our lives to take care of, He will never leave us - never! His intense passion for relationship with us is faithful, persistent - even when we aren't. The deposit, the down-payment of His Spirit that He has placed in each of us will not let us go; He is faithful and persistent to complete what He has started and He has guaranteed that completion. That grace keeps on coming and coming, pouring over us, never-ending, above and beyond what we could ever imagine. Such lavish and loyal love - coming from the most pure heart in the universe - can only produce one reaction in the life of one so loved: a life lived from gratitude.

Consider these words:

Like the ocean in waves ever seeking the shore
To His children comes the grace of the Lord -
And like a mighty sea so deep and so wide
His grace to us is an endless supply....

Grace upon grace like the waves on the shore, always enough, always more -
Grace upon grace like the waves on the shore - all that we need is ours from the Lord.

In daylight or midnight the waves touch the shore,
One on another they faithfully pour!
Summer or winter they never subside
And so our gracious Father provides
Grace upon grace like the waves on the shore, always enough, always more -
Grace upon grace like the waves on the shore - all that we need is ours from the Lord.

Thank You SO much, Lord Jesus!!

The Rear View

There are a few schools of thought about the past. One school of thought says, "Let's get back to the good old days!" The other says, "Let's forget the past and move forward! It's in the past, we shouldn't give it another thought!"

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. While living in the past and yearning for the way things used to be is tempting and can even sometimes inspire, it limits us from envisioning what the future can hold to what the past has already been. And while the future is still before us, unwritten, many of the past's unpleasant pages might be repeated if we don't remember it and learn its lessons. The past, even the awful parts, can be a truly powerful thing if we determine not to repeat our mistakes and to use our own journeys out of the darkness of the past to help those who are still in their dark place....right now.

There's a quote from a very old book that I like to remind myself of, frequently. It's phrased like a promise, or a series of promises, made to those who follow a lifestyle of rigorous honesty before God, within ourselves, and in front of others - and of healing from past hurts, forgiveness of resentments, and making restitution for past wrongs wherever possible. "We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word 'Serenity.' We will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. Those feelings of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things, and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook on life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves." (The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous)

I liken the past to what's in the rear view mirror. Some folks don't use their rear view (they ignore their pasts). And it's true that the windshield (the present and the immediate future) is much larger, intended to be used much more than the rear view mirror. Figuratively as well. But if a person doesn't know that something is creeping up behind him or her by using the mirror and either speeding up or pulling over, there could be a nasty rear-end accident, which could have been avoided with a glance every so often backward in the rear view to see what's going on where he or she came from. So with us in our spiritual lives. Once in a while it's good to remember where we've been, if only to encourage ourselves as to how far we've come and to Whom we need to be grateful - because we couldn't have gotten this far without His great love, guidance, and patience with us. And we can also be encouraged from His faithfulness in the past, that He will never give up on us. Never.

That's worth a look back once in a while.

A New Freedom and a New Happiness

Recently I had to attend an all-day workshop with someone I really didn't want to be in a room with.

This person was someone I found hard to be around because in my experience, she used some sort of scented product that instantly gave me a headache whenever she came within 10 feet of me.

She was also one of the people I named last fall in a work-related fiasco I spoke about in an earlier post (click here to read about it.)

I knew I had to talk to her but I was dreading it. I believed her to be unreceptive to what I had to say.

At the workshop though, I noticed that she was not wearing any scented product. So at the end of the day, I saw her by herself and thought that this was the perfect opportunity to thank her. I spoke to her and said that I had been meaning to talk to her about last fall when all of that happened at work. We talked for about 10 minutes, and we each shared things the other didn't know. We were talking like friends at the end. She turned to me and said, "You know, I feel SO much better! Thank you for your courage in coming to me, I'm so glad you did!" We wished each other a great evening... she even offered to let others know the things about last fall that she had discovered during our chat - to get the word out.

I had this big silly grin all over my face as I walked to the car.

It made my day.

One Story of Forgiveness - and More

The phrase "Like mother like daughter" made me cringe when I was growing up. My voice sounded like my mother's voice when I answered the phone and often even her close friends would launch into a conversation with me, thinking I was her. It was embarrassing.

Even more embarrassing because she was the last person I WANTED to be like.

I grew up terrified of her. Her temper was ... red-hot and dangerous. At 8 years old and less than half her height, I ran away when she lost her temper; that only made her more angry. After she caught up with me, well, it wasn't pretty. Though I would have denied it at the time because I protected myself from the truth in order to cope, deep down, I believed she was a monster.

That was my unconscious perception of my mother for over forty years. Everyone thought she was a saint; I even deluded myself into thinking that she was, that I was being brought up in a "Christian" home, that I was lucky she was bringing me up right. But she wasn't. When she got mad, I'd better not be the one in her cross-hairs or I would be in for it. Aside from the times she lost her temper and lashed out physically, the constant criticism became second nature to her. She didn't even know she was doing it. In fact, she thought she was raising me right.

I hid from the bare facts of my childhood until I was 42 years old. And when I finally faced them, I nearly went insane with rage. How dare she! How dare they!! Everyone in the family was complicit. We weren't allowed to talk about what went on inside those walls. Only after I couldn't run from it anymore - not that long ago - did I realize how very angry, hurt, and resentful I was against her for robbing me of the right to be a child. For over five years I was unable to forgive her. For the first two of them, I couldn't even stand the sight of her. I cut her completely out of my life. I did come to some modicum of tolerance for her. I thought I had forgiven her, but I had only made excuses for her behavior and never really faced my own feelings.

So as I got into a spiritual process of recovery and began to systematically look at these hurts, I realized that I had to forgive her, but I was a very long way from that. And it was suggested to me that as a child, I was never allowed to feel my feelings but had to stuff them deep inside. Feelings, I was told by my counselor, were healthy to express in safe ways. Feelings are for feeling. That's what they are designed to do. They are a pressure relief valve, a signal that something is wrong and needs to be righted, or that something is right and needs to be enjoyed in the moment.

I journaled my forgiveness journey. I wrote down all the big - and little - things she did and said that hurt me and how that affected me at the time, the messages her behavior gave me, how terrifying it all was, the repercussions throughout my lfe, and how limiting it still was for me as an adult. In putting this all on paper, I gave myself an avenue, and permission, to express all those feelings that should have come out when I was a child, but I didn't have the self-awareness or the emotional maturity - or a safe enough forum - to do it at the time. I was too busy surviving.

I cried and cried and cried. For weeks. All that hurt poured out of me, in tears, and in ink on paper... I poured out to God all the bitterness and the anguish that a small child of eight years old could feel after 40 years of holding it in. Occasionally - and these times were precious - I spoke to my inner child and told her the things she should have heard, true things that countered the lies that she was no good, that she was evil, stupid, crazy. Truthful things like she was special, that she could be herself and people could like her just the way she was, that she didn't have to change for anyone, that what happened to her wasn't her fault. Day after day - all that garbage poured out of my spirit. It needed to come out into the open; it was killing me inside.

As all of this emotion came to the surface, it became clear to me that what she did to me was wrong. It might have been for the right reasons sometimes - but the way she went about it was wrong. She didn't know how to praise or encourage. She thought it shouldn't be necessary because she didn't need it growing up. She felt sorry for her mom, who was herself a victim of spousal abuse, and so my mom did everything in her power to make her own mother's life better. It was different for me; I was terrified of my mom and did my best to avoid her attention, because the attention was doled out in criticism, fault-finding, and abuse.

As the built-up pressure came out of me, as the tears washed away the hurt and the rage, the storms subsided and more and more often there was a calm. The knowledge that what she did to me was wrong ... was a revelation to me. I had taken the first step in forgiveness. "What you did was wrong." And the second followed it: "What you did hurt me - in ways you can't even begin to imagine." And the third, "I have a perfect right to be angry!"

Expressing that anger - to God, whose shoulders are so broad and who loves me so unconditionally, was the only safe outlet for that amount of rage. He was so patient, so kind. He held me and let me rant, let me weep, let me do whatever the child in me had to do to get that poison out.

Slowly, a new realization dawned on me. I began to understand that I wanted her to pay for what she had done - not just pay, but pay ME back. And then I remembered something that Joyce Meyer said. Something about what happens when someone hurts you - it's like they stole something from you. Something irreplaceable. Like self-respect. Or self-esteem. "But they don't have it anymore," she said. "The moment they took that thing from you, it flew from their hands and they couldn't give it back to you even if they wanted to!!"

It was like being owed a bad debt. They owed; they couldn't pay. It could stay on the books for a long time, or ... I could write it off.

All that was left was for me to make a choice. Was I going to keep that debt on the books or was I going to write it off - the way a bankruptcy trustee writes off the debt of someone who's unable to pay his or her creditors?

I struggled with this for quite a while. The words of a speaker I heard once at an AA meeting came to me. She talked about having to forgive her mother over and over and over, and that it came slowly after a long time of consistently doing that. But she kept at it and it eventually reached her heart. That made such a big impact on me!

Finally I prayed, "Lord, I'm willing for You to make me willing to forgive her in my heart. By the power of the sacrifice of Jesus, and definitely not my own strength, I choose to forgive her, as often and as many times as it takes to be real to me."

Honestly, I'm not exactly sure when it happened. It was gradual, as I kept turning that over to Him again and again, being honest with Him about it, asking Him to take it one more time, yet again, and ... thanking Him for His patience. But as I did, I started to see my mother in a new light...as someone who herself was emotionally stunted at the age of two years old by her abusive stepfather, and who was deeply bound up in her own fear. One day as I was thinking about her, I found myself - well, misting over. I looked within and found that God had given me compassion for this woman. I found myself wanting to help her, not retaliate.

That's when I knew that I had forgiven her in my heart. What an amazing feeling!

That's when I started noticing other things too. I believe that something spiritual happened in the heavenlies when forgiveness finally won. I remember sitting across the table from her during a visit, blown away as she opened up in detail for the first time to me about her growing-up years. She, who just a few short years previous had been unable to understand how I could be upset about things that happened 40 years ago, admitted to me that she grew up in fear, and that she was still afraid. "I guess things that happen to you when you're little really do follow you into your adult years," she mused. I nearly fell off my chair. Finally she understood... something I thought would never happen.

Since that time, our relationship has deepened. I call her and we talk for an hour or an hour and a half at a time, when before, I'd avoid doing that and she'd call and send me on a guilt trip, and then I'd call her or write her out of a sense of duty, and even then the conversation was superficial. Now, it's so different. We talk about "real" things - spiritual things, important things, things of the heart. Often.

And the best part is I've noticed a softening in her, a desire to be free of the fear that has been such a part of her life for over 70 years. She has asked me some very pointed questions. Me, of all people - the one before whom she did not dare be wrong. How ironic is that! She's nearly ready to admit that she is powerless over other people, the very first step in healing.

I couldn't be more pleased for her. She's about to start an amazing journey.

Peril to Passion

We watched a 2007 documentary this morning on the Learning Channel about the 1982 British Airways Flight 9 - which flew through a volcanic ash cloud and eventually lost all engines. It was the first time anything like this had ever happened. Nobody knew what was the matter as the cabin slowly filled with smoke, and the engines glowed with what appeared to be a blue flame - and eventually cut out.

Every person on board KNEW he or she was going to die. People were writing notes to their loved ones in case the salvage crews would find them. When the pilot and crew descended under 6,000 feet and were able to restart the engines, the sense of relief on board was obvious. And when they landed the plane in Jakarta in spite of not being able to see through the wind screen (the ash had sand-blasted the glass), and everyone realized they were all going to be okay, there was cheering, clapping, and more. Much more.

Perfect strangers were brought together through a shared peril and knowledge that they were saved from certain death. They hugged, laughed and cried together. And twenty-five years later, they were still meeting once a year to maintain contact. People from different walks of life, with varying abilities, beliefs, and plans, in those few hours, became - a family.

It was beautiful.

It got me to thinking. (I guess I think - a lot.) Perhaps the reason why so many Western churches are powerless, floundering in backbiting, gossip, power struggles and lovelessness, is because we've lost our first love : Him. We've forgotten the very basic reason we're all together in the first place.

We were all facing certain death. There was no escape. But He brought us to safety - to a place of hope, peace, and love where before, there was none of these things. That place is called Golgotha!!

We all share this marvelous deliverance, in spite of our own powerlessness to save ourselves. BECAUSE of our own powerlessness to save ourselves. Our Deliverer loved us so much that He brought us out of the place of despair and hopelessness into His Father's presence. Have we lost sight of that? where is our gratitude? has it all become about our comfort, our agendas?

Perhaps it's time to go back to the place of the Skull. To take a good, honest look at the One willingly dying there... for us : to rescue us from a fiery eternal death, just to open up a way for us to have intimacy, relationship with Him. Being able to commune with us was that important to Him! It's time to remember our utter hopelessness. To revisit our amazing deliverance. To refocus our faltering attention. To recapture our First Love. To overflow with gratitude, with joy!

Appearances, agendas, and position mean nothing. He means everything.
Gaze with me upon the Lamb. (click the link to read the story...)

The Hardest One to Forgive

I thought I was finished my list of people I had to forgive, people who hurt me.

In His usual gentle but persistent way, God brought me back to the list. "You forgot someone."

Forgot - who? I wondered.

"YOU."

Uh-ohhhhh. This was going to be a rough one. One of my favorite exercises was self-punishment. Even in front of people I would make disparaging comments about myself, my size, my looks, my habits. I didn't know how to take a compliment. "Oh this old thing? I paid $2.95 for it at Repeats." Or worse yet, I'd spiritualize my self-deprecation when someone complimented my singing voice - I'd totally take the wind out of their sails and slap their compliment in the face by saying, "Well, praise the Lord." (I've since learned to smile brightly and say "Thank you!" and mean it.)

I had taken to putting myself last. Always. Go to the department store, get something for everyone else but nothing for me. I didn't deserve anything. It wasn't like I didn't have the money either. It was that I just wanted to get in the store and out of it before someone noticed me. Time after time I would duck into an aisle to get out of someone's way, feeling like they were breathing down my neck, or wanting to get past me but couldn't because I was so fat. I remember going once to this one store, finding only something that I liked and wanted, but nothing on anyone else's wish list. So instead of making someone else stand behind me at the checkout just for my stuff, I put the thing back where I got it and walked out of the store.

I thought I was this horrible person because I acted the way I did toward people who mattered to me. Had to be right ALL the time. Had to win EVERY argument. Had to show off how much I knew. Had to make sure that my story of suffering was worse than anyone else's. If they had a cut on their knee I would show them the scar I had on mine from the 13 stitches I had when I was two years old...that kind of thing. Had to judge everyone's words, actions, beliefs, thoughts. My temper tantrums - well, the kids just avoided getting me angry because nobody wanted to be around that. My freak-fests: snooping around the house looking for secret stash, crawling around the bushes and under the deck outside, rummaging through all the cubby holes in the trunk of the car, under the seat.

Everything I did was fear-based. Even the fits of temper. Fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, fear of anger. Fear of being wrong. Fear of being seen as stupid.

But as I looked at the things I did to hurt myself before getting into recovery, and then after I got into recovery, to sabotage it, I realized that I had never forgiven myself for having to go through what I did, for having to do what I felt I had to do to survive my childhood (I say survive, not go through; I was never allowed to be a child). I blamed myself for my own abuse. Huh. The sense of shame was hidden by several layers of "That didn't hurt" and "I'm warning you - don't corner me" - but it ran deep. It was very closely tied to that frightened, lonely little girl I talked about in "Beautiful" - the one who didn't at all believe she was worth anything.

My counselor explained to me that guilt and shame are two different things and that the first can be good while the second never is.

Guilt is feeling bad for what we've DONE. Shame is feeling bad for who we ARE.

It took a few weeks of constant digging and bringing to the surface all the ways I was hurting myself. I kept trying to wriggle away from it. Sometimes these self-defeating behaviors and attitudes resurface - they are that deeply ingrained. However, they are better than they were. I'm constantly learning of new ways to let go of the lies I was told, the lies I told myself after having been told them so long I believed them.

And I keep telling that little girl that she is something really very special, that she has a great purpose in life and she is only beginning to tap her potential. It's slow, but she's starting to believe me. One day at a time, she is starting to stop hiding in the closet.

At least now, if I see something I like in a store, and I want to get it, and I have the cash, I can allow myself that luxury.

It's a start.

Standing on Guard

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
- Thomas Jefferson

I've quoted this President Jefferson quote before; I used to think that what he said didn't make sense. In my healing process, though, I've realized that it takes a watchful eye to maintain this kind of lifestyle: a spiritually-based lifestyle of rigorous honesty, with the freedom to feel one's feelings, the responsibility to not nurse resentments, and the intense desire to draw closer and closer to God.

There's a Bible verse that is very largely misunderstood; well, at least I misunderstood it, for a lot of years. It says, "Keep your heart above all things, for out of it spring the issues of life." (Proverbs 4:23) I thought it was cross-referenced with "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked..." (Jeremiah 17:9) - but in fact, the opposite is true. Proverbs 4:23 in the Hebrew literally means, "Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life." (NASB) The underlying meaning is that the heart is so important and so precious, being the seat of emotions and will, that its well-being and health must be guarded at all times.

The Jeremiah passage refers to the unregenerate / godless heart. But Solomon (in Proverbs) was giving advice to his son whom he raised to respect God; he encouraged him to guard the center of his mind, will, and emotions at all cost so that it was functioning the way it was designed to work, so that his insides would serve him well. That takes work. HARD work.

Complacency is the lazy cousin of arrogance - and it's one I know quite well. Yes, I've come a long way in what can be considered a very short time. But that in no way means that I've arrived; there is always more to discover, more to turn over to God, more layers of manipulation, of self-deception, of powerlessness in me. The tyranny of the urgent takes over. Boredom slimes its way into my daily routine. The "insanity" of my addiction to "fixing" or "rescuing" people, very easily returns when complacency creeps in.

Something I hear quite frequently sounds like this: "It is easy to let up on our spiritual program of recovery and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do. For our addiction is a subtle foe. We are not cured of our addiction; what we have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition." (The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, adapted) That passage reminds me of something a Bible camp counselor told me one time after I described a spiritual awakening I had when I was a teen: "The problem with a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1) is that it keeps trying to crawl off the altar."
The process of healing (or 'recovery' as I like to call it) contains spiritual tools that can be used at any time as needed for maintenance. It's just like fixing up a fixer-upper. That refurbished house is going to need upkeep in order to keep it looking good and to keep the leaks of air and water away. If someone hurts me, or hurts me again, and I've let resentment creep back in, then I need to work through the process of forgiveness - and rely completely on God to give me the strength to deal with that. If I screw up - and I do, often - I need to become willing (through God's strength) to apologize, and then go do it. It keeps me humble, dependent on God for everything.

Maintaining my spiritual condition is crucial to my continued recovery. If I'm not progressing, moving forward in my walk with God, then I'm losing ground. There is no "holding pattern."

I've tasted enough of this lifestyle and the benefits of it to motivate me to work at my relationship with God, press in to His heart, receive His love, love Him in return, and let that love spill over into my relationships with people. But it all starts with relationship with Him and repeating whatever step in the process I need to repeat in order to maintain peace with Him. This is "laboring to enter into His rest."

Rest. Yes, that's worth it.