Leading with a Limp

Former President Harry Truman, the man who oversaw the post-World War II era in the United States, was the one who is famous for saying, "The buck stops here."  A mountain of strength, nobody ever questioned his ability to lead.

Yet he walked with a limp, and needed a cane.

I get a little leery when I hear people talking about their addictions, their hangups and/or the hurts of their past and then they say that they are "healed."  

Perhaps it's a matter of semantics, but I prefer to think of  myself as "healing."  That means I am still in the process, that it is never done, that there is always more, that I can always go deeper in God than I am right now, and that I have not arrived.  People who think they've arrived  -  well, frankly they scare me.  There's a mindset of exclusivity that sets in, an element of I'm-better-than-you fanaticism that repels rather than attracts.  

Don't get me wrong.  God has healed me of a lot of the wounds of the past.  But my basic tendency to fix situations and to manipulate and control people is still there!  I am never cured of this addiction.  What I have is a daily reprieve that is contingent (in other words, that vitally depends) on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. 

I might be tempted to be an elitist at best (and a supercilious religious prig, truth be told) if I were to claim total healing, to claim that there is an end to the question of (to use a Christian term) the sin problem.  John the apostle wrote to Christians when he said, "If we say that we haven't sinned, we lie, and the truth is not in us."  And then he talked about Jesus being our Advocate with the Father for WHEN we sin.  Not IF.

God can use us when we are broken.  

Just consider Joni Eareckson Tada, paralyzed from the neck down in a diving accident when she was a teenager.  Today, she is a well-known evangelical Christian painter, singer, and accomplished speaker who is a voice for disability rights.  Yet every day she has to ask for help to do the most basic of personal care tasks.  And she is not resentful in the least of that fact.  She believes that internal beauty trumps external beauty, and models that in how she lives.

Could God heal her?  yes - He could.  But she would be the first to tell you that her external healing would not accomplish even a fraction of what God has done in and through her in spite of - perhaps because of - her physical limitations.  She has been able to reach more people, and not just Christians, by her indomitable spirit shining through a wheelchair-bound body.  Which brings me to something else that kind of bothers me about the idea that there can and should be total healing from things that plague us.

It's that elitism I mentioned earlier. Those of us who believe that there is a cure for addiction - or for sin - can very quickly look down on those who struggle daily with those issues, and worse, lead to an isolation away from the very people that need our help the most. "Us four and no more" or in more colorful language, "Ah don't smoke an' ah don't chew an' ah don't 'ssociate with them what do..." can hold at arm's length those who don't feel welcomed by our particular brand of faith. OR recovery.

I believe that it's one reason why so many institutionalized churches are dying a slow death, and frankly, why too many 12-step groups are going the same way.  Too much navel-gazing and not enough outreach... Outreach means we risk someone not agreeing with us, questioning our theology or our opinion.  As uncomfortable as that kind of confrontation is for me, I know that by rubbing shoulders with people who are honestly hurting, and sharing my experience anyway, I have the opportunity to help those un-churched in 12-step groups who might never attend a church service, as much as they might need it.  AND by the same token, I have the opportunity to help those Christians who wouldn't be caught dead going to a 12-step group, as much as they might need it.

Food for thought.

A Calm Submissive State

When I watch TV, I love to watch programs that are about transformation.  Among my favorite shows is something on the National Geographic Channel called "The Dog Whisperer."  Cesar Millan understands dogs, understands how they think, what their body language is, and what makes them do the things they do.  More importantly, he knows how to rehabilitate dogs and train people to co-exist in a state where the human is the "pack leader" and the dog is in what he calls a "calm, submissive state."  Only in that state, he says, is a dog truly happy because a dog is a born follower.  If he decides that his pack leader isn't in charge, someone has to control things and the dog takes control.

Kind of sounds like what we do.  We stress ourselves to the max trying to control our situations, to manipulate things to be the way we want them, and all that gets us is more stress.  This leads to a state of dis-ease and can actually make us sick.

The dogs Cesar helps are from all breeds, including some of the breeds with the most vicious of reputations.  It never ceases to amaze me how he can take a "hopeless case" and work with the animal, no matter whether their problem is fear, aggression, or just an unstable environment, and put things right. I'm amazed by his patience, by his instinctive understanding of the animals, and by the way the animals do something that seems to be so hard for humans to do: live in the moment, unencumbered by the way things were in the past.  What a gift!  For the rare dog that is terrified by things associated with previous abuse, he, along with his pack of dogs, is able to lift that trapped soul out of its prison in a few short weeks.

What is remarkable about all these stories, as varied as they are, is that they have a common thread.  I've watched it happen over and over again.  When the dog finally understands that the human is in control of the situation, it doesn't sulk or mope around, and it doesn't rebel.  It submits.... and it relaxes - visibly.  The worried look, the suspicious glare, the snarl, all disappear as he enters that calm, submissive state that knows that the master is in control.  The dog trusts in that.  And he can lie down right next to the very thing that he feared or lunged at before.  Miraculous!

Here is a picture of us in all our weaknesses, fears, hangups and failures.  God steps in and starts to teach us that He is in control, that we don't have to be.

The problem is, we don't want to hear it.  We run away.  Or we lash out, biting the Hand that feeds us.


Slowly, patiently, calmly, He works things out in our lives such that we are placed alongside people who will show us how to live out the lessons He has been wanting to teach us.  These people might not even know Him (or we might think they don't).  But they do His will in our lives because He has allowed them to cross our path for a reason - to point out something that needs work, to teach us to trust, to be in a calm, submissive state in our relationship with God, knowing that He is in control, and that we can relax and rest in Him.

Only there can we find what we've been seeking all our lives.  Peace and contentment.

A Breath of Kindness

We were standing in line at the checkout today.  The store was so crowded and there were people milling around.  One store employee had asked me if she could help me and I said no, we had found what we wanted.  As she turned away a tidal wave of her fragrance smacked me in the face.  I had my mouth open and everything!  I coughed and sputtered, groped for my ever-present tissue in order to filter some of it out so I wouldn't get a headache; already my eyes were stinging.  There was her perfume, stale sweat, and the cloying acrid taste of ash coming off her.  It was sickening.  Even hubby noticed it.

We started talking about how scents in general are so powerful not just physically but also emotionally.  How certain odors evoke childhood memories.  That's when he hit me with something I wasn't expecting.  When he smelled that lady's perfume in combination with cigarette ash/smoke and so forth, he had an overwhelming reaction inside: revulsion, anger, and an overpowering desire to just leave.  I looked at him quizzically.  "She smelled just like ___," he said, mentioning someone in his past that had made his life a living hell on earth.  Those feelings were not directed so much at this lady but at someone else - someone who is long gone but who still haunts his memories with her dysfunctional and destructive antics.  

Then he described the process of healing in his life like his heart, his spirit had been hardened into this rocky mass of stone by the experiences he had when he was a child.  He grew this massive shell which hardened him on the outside and it turned the inside to stone, so that he was unable to feel anything.  When God started to soften him inside, it was like pieces of rock started to shift along fault lines.  It was up to him to dig them out of his life, but they were still too hard for him to deal with them.  So he would dig them out and then give them to God, asking Him to grind them to dust, because there was no way he had the strength to render these things powerless in his life.  He would then trust God to remove those things or grind them to powder, and blow them away with a breath of kindness.

Ever since that conversation, I have been thinking about a guy we heard speak at a businessmen's luncheon one time a long time ago.  He had been a search and rescue worker.  One time while parachuting in to a rock face to do a rescue, the chute didn't open in time, and he fell over 40 feet and landed on his feet.  He broke every bone in both feet, shattered the bones in his lower legs, and basically looked like one of those cartoon characters whose bottom half turns into a pancake.  The doctors told him that he would never walk again.  Over the course of the next year or so, he worked hard and prayed harder, and God brought him to the place where he could not only walk again, but go back to the work he loved: search and rescue.  

Then he said and did something that has never left me.  He said, "That was ten years ago. But to this day, the effects of that day still come to the surface - quite literally.  I'm constantly pulling pieces of that rock face out of my body, and I never know where they'll come out."  He lifted his pant leg and put his foot up on a chair.  To our amazement, there, half-embedded and half-protruding from his calf, was a pebble about three-quarters of an inch in diameter (for those in the metric system, that's 2 cm).  The sight of it was both enthralling and obscene, like something that didn't belong - and yet it was miraculous that it found its way out of his body to be eventually discarded.  Truly a powerful reminder of that day, and of how far he had come.

There will always be more pebbles.  Always.  And nothing we can do can change how many of them there are, or how long they'll take to come out.  All we can do is ask God to bring them to the surface when we are ready to face them, and they will come.  Once they do, He will choose the rate at which they come out, and then we wait until it's time to remove them.

Removing them is painful.  It is; there is no denying it.  But those things don't belong there; we know they don't.  And they only hinder us from being all God wants us to be: joyous and free.  If we have truly made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to His care, then He will give us the strength to dig them out.   

We dig them out, and then give them right back to the only One who can crush them to dust - and blow them away. 

I'm broken

I'm broken.  I freely admit it.

There was a time when I didn't think so.  I thought I was fine.  (Denial: I was anything BUT fine.)  I thanked God that I grew up in a Christian home (Delusion: it was a religious home, steeped in religious superstition and fear.)  I boasted in my own Christianity (Deception: I was a legalist, bound up in rules and regulations, afraid of people who were different from me.)

One of my friends said once, "We're all broken toys."  At one point in my life I would have been offended.  But he was right.  Somewhere deep inside of me I knew he was spot on!  For many years - in fact, for most of my life - I just wasn't willing to admit I was broken.  God had to bring me through a lot of things to get me to face that fact about myself.  Abuse - verbal, emotional, physical, and more - had robbed me of my self-concept, stolen my childhood, crushed my innocence, whipped my confidence.  So by the time he said, "We're all broken toys," I knew it was true. 

In my dealings with people throughout my life, it's like I had this big red, black and white bull's-eye target painted on my back - a big "Kick Me" sign.  I attracted people who would treat me the way I was used to being treated: like a nothing. They were rough in their handling of my feelings.  Or perhaps I was just too fragile by then.  But if I was, I wore my fragility like a badge of honour.  By the time I figured out that I was a victim, I had learned to play that role to the nth degree.  I figured it wasn't wrong to play the victim if you really WERE a victim.

No wonder I repelled well-adjusted people who wanted to be my friends.  They couldn't stand being expected to "fix me."  They knew I was broken, too.  I "needed" people too much.  I needed them to need me, to not be able to live without me, to be my soul-mate.  I smothered them with my intensity.  

And when I was placed in a position of others needing me - such as being a mother - I became the controller.  I had to control everything my kids did, said, thought, and believed.  I became outraged when they dared express an opinion other than my own.  They were afraid of my anger; they resented my manipulative, intimidating, controlling ways.  And they turned away from me.  I was lonely and unhappy and I was mystified as to why.  After all, everybody would just be happier if they did what I said.

I was truly alone.  I was broken and nobody, not even me, knew how to fix me.

Except God.

He worked things out in my life such that I would be forced to go to Him in desperation.  He knew what it all meant.  He knew the very things that would send me running to find help.  It took Him well over 20 years in a marriage with a man who was slowly taken away from me by alcoholism, to get me to the point where I knew I needed help and that I was willing to do anything - ANYTHING - to be free of this horrible ache inside.  It wasn't a life.  It was barely an existence.  I thought about suicide but I was too scared.  I thought about leaving my husband and family but as I worked out the finances of it all, I realized that things would be so much harder with just one income: mine.

I remember praying that God would do something - I didn't care what - to heal me on the inside.  Things really started falling apart after that.  The tension built.  I felt more and more lonely, sad, abandoned.

The straw that broke the camel's back was just a simple thing.  It would have been nothing by itself, but after all that had happened, it let the rest of my load come crashing down on my head so hard that I felt I could no longer cope with things the way they were.  I felt so empty, so terrified, so lost ... so broken.  

That's when I asked for help.


And that's when God could start to heal my brokenness, to shine through the loneliness and the darkness I had known. To show me that His kindness was enough for me.  That my weakness could be - and would be - swallowed up in His strength. He helped me to see myself in a way I had never done before - as He sees me.  My relationships started to transform.  I formed new relationships with equals - a new concept for me.  I got rid of old dysfunctional relationships that would never change. I could talk to God about things, deep and intimate things I couldn't share with anyone.  But He listened - and He cared.  God actually became my friend, my strongest ally, my champion, and my healer.  I am so grateful He did.

I'm still broken.  In some ways I suppose I always will be.  But now I just trust Him to fix me, and I don't need other people to do that. He loves me just as I am, and loves me too much to let me stagnate; He keeps me challenged and engaged in my life and in relationship with Him.

That's freedom.  And for a broken toy, that's pretty cool.

This is (part of) my story

Lately I have been reminded of the simple power of telling one's story of healing, of God's miraculous power.  

A lot of people can say a lot of things regarding someone's beliefs, opinions, or thoughts, but there is very little anyone can say or do to argue with the voice of experience.  What comes to mind is the man blind from birth, healed when a man he didn't know made mud, put it on his eyes and told him to go wash in a certain pool.  He did - and came back seeing.  When the religious officials questioned him, questioned his theology, and ridiculed his opinion, he simply said, "Whether He is a sinner or not, I don't know.  All I know is that I once was blind, and now I see."

Powerful words because they tell of something that really happened.

Many people have commented on the story my husband and I have to tell.  So, since our assistant pastor came to our house in April 2010 and filmed some of our story, I am including it here.  We did the interview in fear and trembling - but we needn't have worried.  We have been accepted with open arms by people we thought would turn us away.  That's an amazing thing because - well, see for yourself.

The various communities of which we are a part have opened up their hearts and their arms to us, and we are so grateful.  

When I look back at how far we have come, I am truly amazed at God's power to transform.  I've been in recovery  -  on this road of healing  -  for about 22 months, my hubby for 20 months.  Each of us has been on a parallel road of healing in our lives.  The details are different of course, but the process is the same.  


The great thing about this is that we realize that God can use the awful, the difficult things in our lives firstly to bring us to the place where we admit we need help - and then, once we are where God wants us to be, to help others who might have the exact same problem, feelings, addiction, or struggles we did.  And not only can we give them hope that it can change, but we can tell them ... SHOW them how it can be done in the day-to-day.  

In doing so, God transforms the very thing we thought was so ugly, into something beautiful for Him.  What a miracle!

Ouch!

All that lovely green.  Gone.

Every fall for many years my husband cut back our six-foot Arctic willows to within two feet of the ground.  The first time he did it, the neighbours went nuts - one asked him just what he thought he was doing.

"Pruning," he said.  They thought he'd killed the poor things.  "Just wait," he replied calmly.

The next spring, the seemingly dead stumps produced new branches that grew so quickly that he had to cut them back half-way through the summer to shape the hedge that grew around the front of our property.  Every year he had the same conversation with the neighbours until they finally gave up and let him alone.  And every year the willows had to be cut back in July because they were growing so fast.

I'm sure that pruning hurts the bushes.  The shears cut through live flesh and off to the ground fall the branches that - aside from the odd leaf or blossom, are essentially barren and hindering the overall growth of the bushes.  But in the hands of a skillful gardener, it will thrive in the end, and it will produce even more lush foliage.


Just so with the Heavenly Gardener.  He trims off those things we have tried to do on our own only to end up with only a couple of pitiful leaves, maybe a bloom or two. Seemingly with no thought He reaches into the place where we started to do it on our own, and He cuts that self-seeking part of us off.  It hurts.  Our flesh cries out in pain.  

But it is a wise cutting the Master does, never more than is necessary. He forces us to dig our roots deep in the soil of His love and focus on what's important - drawing strength and encouragement from the Sun of His acceptance, and nourishment and renewal from the pure Water of His Spirit.  

Then, once the winter of our circumstance is over, we will be surprised at the growth and the beauty where once our lives were stunted and pitiful.  And we will eventually be able to offer our beauty back to Him, and our shade to others. 

Acceptance - A Powerful Force

There's part of a song that goes,
"Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came..."

Acceptance is a powerful thing.  Feeling accepted in the now is the only way one is open to explore change in one's own life or come to a place of self-acceptance.

There is tremendous value in each person.  There are a lot of people who agree with this in principle, but who think it doesn't apply to them.  I was one of them. I also paid lip service to this thought as it pertained to others, but the unwritten and unspoken corollary always was, "...as long as they're like me, or as long as they do what I am comfortable with."  I felt threatened by anyone who thought or acted in a way that I didn't.

And then I went to a place and met a group of people where they really believe that everyone has value just the way he or she is.  (And no, it wasn't church.) I believed myself to be as different from them as night is from day.  Yet, I was greeted at the door with a smile and a warm handshake.  I was accepted the way I was, whether I contributed or not.  And as I continued to meet with these people, I was loved.  Not for what I could one day become, not for what I did or didn't say or do - but just the way I was.

It's a powerful thing.

From this group of people, I learned and experienced acceptance, in all its forms. I'm still learning.

These are some of the things I am starting to understand:
1. God loves me just the way I am.  He accepts me as I come to Him, no strings attached, no demands.

2. I can accept myself just the way I am because God accepts me that way.  I can admit my weaknesses; He knows them.  He is at work within me.  He is in charge of my healing process and gives me permission to stop and rest when I need to.

3. I can accept other people the way they are too.  I can let them be who they are and make their own decisions.  I can also let them make their own mistakes without feeling the need to step in and stop them.  I don't need to rescue them from the consequences of their actions.  God is at work in their lives too and I need to let Him do His work in them without my interference.

4. The level of freedom, peace and/or contentment I have is directly associated with the level of acceptance I both feel from God, and give to myself and others.

Acceptance is part of learning - not just in my head but deep down - that I am powerless over other people. For someone who is addicted to controlling others through manipulation, guilt, shame, and intimidation, this is a very powerful part of my recovery from that pointless and stressful existence.  Learning to receive God's acceptance and to accept myself and others "as is" has been liberating, and is transforming me slowly.


I'm not really sure of all He has in store for me, but the journey is sure getting interesting.

Cut the Strings

Over the last few days I've been reminded of the tendency - okay the addiction - I have to fix people.  Fix situations, fix relationships, fix feelings.  Especially others' stuff.  

You know what? I know that's not right.  I know it is not good for me.  It's like I am compelled to carry the weight of my world (all the people I know and love, their problems, their stuff) on my shoulders.  It takes up most if not all my attention and leaves me no room - or energy - to take care of my own stuff, to look after me and my own spiritual maintenance. It's extremely draining.  And it's so not necessary.  Truth be told, it's pretty arrogant.  At the root of it, it's like I think the people who are important to me can't deal with their stuff by themselves and need my help.  Hm.  There I go again, grabbing things out of God's hands to control other people and their business - for it truly is His job, not mine.

And it's not like I don't know already.  One of the first things I learned in this process of healing is that I can't change ANYONE, not even one bit.  I remember saying that to someone recently who is still in that vortex of needing to manipulate and control other people.  This person responded that he/she knew that you can't always control other people (emphasis mine), but (and at this point I tuned it mostly out because I know the excuses - they were the same ones I used: things would be so much better if everybody just got along, if everybody just made an effort, if everybody just... just saw things the way I see them...) Later reports from the day revealed that this person tried to get my husband to see things his/her way and make concessions without me around.

Denial isn't just a river in Egypt. I remember running around like that, trying to get people to do what I wanted.  All the time.  All that got me was the people in my life getting angry at me, resenting me, and doing the exact opposite of what I wanted.  Yet I continued to do it, over and over, expecting different results "this time."  They never happened.  What insanity.... 

Change happened when I finally admitted to myself that I was absolutely powerless over other people, and that in trying to get them to see the light, my life had become totally unmanageable.  I had to literally take my hands off the puppet strings, quit playing God in other people's lives, and take a step backward.  Uncomfortable at first, since it was so new, this posture slowly grew on me and I started to feel more ... free.  I can't explain it any other way than this: I let go.  I learned to let people be who they were, without my input.  To let people do what they wanted - because they were going to do that anyway whether I wanted them to or not.  And not to feel threatened if they chose something other than what I would choose.  

That's why I had such a hard time with people of different faiths, denominations, doctrines, viewpoints.  I felt that if they didn't believe in God or see things the WAY I did, then they were rejecting ME.  How wrong I was!!  I forget who it was now, who told me, "God's a big Boy.  He can look after Himself; He doesn't need you to defend Him."  That set me back on my heels.  

Who I was then and who I am now are two different people - but the cost of freedom is eternal vigilance.  Those old ways of thinking can easily slip back in.  The great thing is that now, I can see those things cropping up in me and cut them off before they get a chance to take root. 

And when I am tempted to go back to that way of thinking, I remember a neat edition of the Serenity Prayer created for people just like me:  "God grant me the Serenity to accept the person I cannot change, Courage to change the person I can, and the Wisdom to know it's me."

Vignettes

As far back as I can remember, there was one thing that was a constant in my life.  It gave me a sense of stability that I might not otherwise have had, given the vortex of abuse I knew.

Every morning after breakfast, my father had to leave for the foundry, a loud, hot place where they made stoves on an assembly line. He'd get his coveralls on, give his hair a final combing, and head out the door.  And then it would happen.  He'd pause, then turn.  And suddenly she was there.  Mom would be at his side, it seemed like magic.  A quick kiss on the lips, (smack) and he would continue on his way.  It was something I could count on, something that for some reason made me feel good inside.  Later I understood what it was.  It was love.

Earlier in their marriage, my mother told me later, Dad had had to work for CN, the railroad. It took him away from home for weeks at a time.  "But he wrote to me while he was away."  She never said anything more about it, but one day I was going through some things with her in their room, and I stumbled on a bunch of papers tied up with string.  "What's this?" I asked. She blushed and nodded to me to go ahead and look.  There were those letters.  All the letters he wrote to her when he was on the railway.  In them there was such longing, such love, such passion - not like what you'd read in Penthouse or even Cosmopolitan.  But how much he missed her, how much he loved her, how very lonely it was without her.  That's when it dawned on me.  My dad was a romantic, and an incurable one at that.  And she kept those letters. Secretly SHE was too!! I often had wondered where I got that.  Who knew that I couldn't help but be one with both parents passing it on to me!
 

It was common to see strange cars pull up into our driveway on a sunny Saturday.  One or another of my dad's friends would bring his car to our place and mention to him that this thing or that one didn't work on the car, they couldn't get the timing right, or whatever.  He'd get a twinkle in his eye.  "Well, just for fun, let's have a look."  Ha.  "Just for fun" was his code.  He knew what was coming - he knew he could fix it.

Within a short time the car would be working fine and the guy would reach into his pants pocket for some money.  "Your money ain't no good here," Dad would tell him.  "Put that back."   He was like that.  He enjoyed tinkering on cars, fixing little problems, making things right.  It wasn't work to him. Taking money would cheapen it somehow, rob him of the joy.

He prided himself on being in control of his emotions.  My grandfather, his dad, died because of a tragic tractor accident when I was seven.  Dad went through the funeral, the burial, his face stoic.  Afterward - many years afterward - he told me, "Nobody saw me cry." Translation :  he cried.  But never in public.  Never.

I never met a man who worshiped his mother any more than Dad did.  He talked about her cooking quite often, described it in detail.  He'd worked in the woods with his dad and the appetites were large and in charge.  Today the dishes his mom prepared would coat the old arteries up "real good" with cholesterol ... and NOT the good kind.  But back then, they needed the extra energy stores that fat gave them.  Anyway, my mother was a great cook, but Dad never complimented her all the time I was growing up.  When we asked him why not, he shrugged and said, "If I told her it was good, she'd stop trying." 

One day when I was in my late teens, though, Mom had outdone herself. We had company over, it was a house full and the kitchen table was groaning from all kinds of goodies.  Turkey with all the trimmings, gravy made just right, the whole nine yards.  We'd begun the meal and we could tell Dad was enjoying it.  Every mouthful he seemed to roll his eyes up, yet he was getting more and more uncomfortable.  Finally he couldn't stand it.  "My oh my, that tastes good," he exclaimed.

We all stared at him in stunned silence.  Then in a trice, Mom was gone from her seat.  She bounded across the kitchen to where we kept the bread knives. She grabbed the biggest one, ran over to the door between the porch and the kitchen, knife raised above her head.  Then with two strokes, she cut a quarter-inch notch in the lintel!!  We were all so shocked that nobody said a word.  In triumph, she put the knife away, and flumped back down at the table.

In the uncomfortable quiet that followed, Dad spoke up.  "Now. You see why I never tell her it's good...."

The whole group erupted in laughter.  Even Mom!

Dad struggled all his life with addiction to cigarettes.  He had started when he was 5.  His mom used to help him sneak tobacco out of his dad's pouch, and I remember him trying many times to quit - and failing.  Mom had quit when I was a baby and she was on his case every day to stop.  He couldn't.  She got after him when he drank on the weekends, too.  He just did it to be sociable and to feel good... couldn't hold his beer, and would fall asleep on the sofa.  All in all he was mild compared to some.  But nothing but tee-totaling was good enough for Mom, who had grown up in an alcoholic home.  At the time I agreed with her ... and so when it came time for me to get married, I was concerned that he would show up at the wedding with liquor on his breath.  I begged him to promise me that he wouldn't drink on my wedding day.  "Please Dad."  He promised.

And he kept his word, bless him!  The day came and he was just - Dad, nobody else.  He and I were about to walk down the aisle together in front of some 300 assembled guests, and I turned to Dad and slid my hand into the crook of his arm just before the first notes of "Here Comes the Bride" started.  I thanked him for keeping his promise not to drink on my wedding day.  "I love you, Dad."  He squeezed my hand under his arm and leaned into me for a sideways hug.  "I love you too, dear," he murmured to me ... so only I could hear.

Not until after the honeymoon did I see the photos someone took of Dad sitting with Mom, after he had given me away, with my 2-year-old niece on his lap.   He was crying.   MY father!!  

I broke down and sobbed like a child.  He really did love me.  He really did.

I never forgot it.  I never will.

A Gentle Giant

This is a photo we have hanging in our home.  It was taken around 1985 I guess.  I apologize in advance for the quality of the photo as it appears here, because I took a picture of the portrait with my cell phone and from quite up close.

I pass by this photo at least four times a day, as many as a dozen times a day some days.

This is my mom and dad.  The photo was taken after Dad's heart attack in 1984 but before his stroke in 1989. It was a wonderful time for him and me.  A rift that had been there since I was six years old was repaired and our relationship restored shortly after the heart attack.  

Dad almost never criticized me.  He believed in me.  He believed in almost everyone.  He wanted to help, to make someone's life easier. And he hated confrontation of any kind.  I believe it grieved him terribly that Mom chose to discipline (I use a euphemism here) as she did.  Especially me, being the only girl and him - well, he'd always been taught that you never hit a girl or make her cry. Ever.  Even if she's asking for it. He loved us - and he loved Mom.  Looking back I can understand he was just as afraid of her anger as we - well, as I was.  And he was so caught up in the cardinal rule of that generation: "What will the neighbors think?" I can see now that he felt trapped and not permitted to say anything to her.  All that is water under the bridge; I've forgiven him for not stepping in and stopping what he suspected was wrong but which the culture said was perfectly fine. 

His faith in me, his love for me, came through even after I got to be six years old and was "too big" to sit in his lap - my choice, not his.  I never fully appreciated his support or his caring at the time.  Like the day he took me fishing.  I was about 10.  We went to the lake and got in the boat, then he rowed it out to the reeds where the trout would be feeding.  We'd taken along some worms.  He baited my hook for me, taught me how to cast, how to know when a fish was nibbling versus biting, and how to set the hook in the fish's mouth so it couldn't escape.  He talked me through my first catch - a lovely, 16-inch-long lake trout, the largest one we caught that day.  When we got home, I held my fish up high and yelled to Mom, "Look Mom!  I caught the biggest fish!!"  He never said a word to correct me. What a guy.

When I was a teenager, he gave me space - which I mistook for aloofness, for a lack of caring. It wasn't.  He so longed for me to let him just hug me.  Once God showed me that after his heart attack, there was a miracle of restoration in our relationship and I was able to enjoy his company, especially in those years between 1984 and 1989.  At the time I knew it was a great gift from God, but until he had his stroke in '89 and eventually died of brain cancer in '93, I had no idea how much of a gift it really was.

I feel his presence when my husband asks me to thread a screw into its place because, as he puts it, "You can see with your fingers. I can't."  Thankfully, the children have both inherited that trait.  They never got to know him; my oldest was four when he died.

I hear him when I watch my youngest tap her foot in impatience when we are getting ready to go somewhere.  She blurts out, "So are you ready or what?" and I remember my father out in the car when I was growing up, tooting the horn every so often until we came out of the house to go to town.  It makes me grin.   

And I can still hear his deep bass voice, chuckling right along with me. 

Spiritual Construction

The process of inner healing, or of recovery, can be compared to the demolition of an old, decrepit and dangerous house and the construction of a new home - a home in which our spirit, our true self will live.

First one has to admit that there is a problem with the old structure, so great that the whole thing needs to come down.  The foundation is flawed and leaking like a sieve, or there is a problem with the surrounding air or water that has contaminated and made the home unlivable. 


Throughout the process of demolition, re-laying foundation so that it is level and true, and building a secure and stable home, there is something that is a given.   Tools.   Each of the tools in the kit gets used in the construction and finishing of the home.  Each one serves a purpose.  And each one plays its part in making a safe place to live.

They have to be used in a specific order.  You can't build the walls before you lay the foundation (they won't stay up and will rot if stuck in the ground) and there are different tools used to lay the foundation than to build the walls.  

Just so in spiritual construction.  Coming to believe that God can - and will - restore us is one of those foundational things, and deciding to give our will and our lives over to His care is another.  There are many steps in the process.  I've talked about these in other posts.

But once the house is built, where do the tools go?  The garbage?  Never to be used again?  No, a house needs maintenance.  Screwdrivers, wrenches, hammers, pliers - all useful tools because screws loosen, washers need replacing, faucets drip, and so forth.  


The toolkit is handy to have around.


The spiritual tools we are given to accomplish our extreme home makeover of the spirit, are just as essential to keep around.  I want to stress that these tools are given to us by God.  We have tried to accomplish our heart's renovation / reconstruction on our own, and we've failed miserably.  Only God can accomplish this in our lives. Human effort inevitably ends up in failure because we get so distracted by our own selfishness and fall flat on our faces.  

The spiritual toolkit might be weighty to carry around sometimes, but it's a reminder that we are "works in progress" and that He is the chief Architect and Contractor.  And that what we have is a daily reprieve from our self-destructive tendencies - a reprieve that depends entirely on the maintenance of our relationship with Him.

All that is required is Honesty, Openness, and Willingness.  Simple to remember - it spells "HOW" - and so simple to understand.  

But it's far from easy.

Breaking Out

I spent most of the daylight hours of yesterday dodging the efforts of someone else to control my opinions, my social life, and my child-rearing philosophy.  The whole time, I felt a great amount of resentment building up in me.  This person looked at my writing, criticized my choice of illustration, and then complained that I hadn't shared something I'd written with her when I wrote it over 8 years ago ... all in the same day.  The longer she was around, the more angry I got.  She and I had not even spoken, prior to this summer, for over thirteen years.  The person she knew then is not the person I am now, but she still thinks of me as being that way. Even though she knows it's not true.

I needed some perspective.  So I went somewhere last night where I knew I would be accepted for who I was, where people embrace change for the better, and where I don't have to be on my guard.  Funny thing  -  but it wasn't church.  Oops, I digress.  In that place, I found the serenity I was looking for, and I found it in that very self-same acceptance and love.  I felt the chains of the day snap and break off me.

One of the things criticized was my choice of alias for this blog (Lazarus). I had thought it was pretty self-evident until this person questioned it yesterday.  It took me some time to realize that the reason for this is the same reason that folks who are alcoholic and don't know they are, have a real hard time with folks who claim to be alcoholics and in recovery.

For the record, I think you know that the Lazarus I mean is not the poor beggar begging at the rich man's gate.  The one I mean is the one Jesus raised from the dead, His friend who lived in Bethany, close to Jerusalem, the brother of Mary and Martha.  By way of illustration (since all the photos of mummies were of people with arms outstretched, a totally unrealistic image since the arms are bound close to the body), the best I could come up with was the idea of bursting forth, being let out of prison, ... ahh yes, chains.  Breaking chains.

What's coming to me as I write is that I felt stress, and distress, yesterday because I felt like I had to prove something, that I had to show this person that I had changed, that I'm not the same person as I once was.  Yet I found myself behaving in exactly the same way as I always had with her - putting on masks so that I would not be in confrontation with her.  Wow.  As angry as I was with her, I was twice as angry with myself for not staying true to who I had become.  And it also explains to me why I was so obsessed with explaining my choice of alias to her.  I am coming to understand that trying to do that is like expecting someone to get the point of a movie when all they have seen is the last five minutes of it. 

My wanting to justify myself to her made me realize that my relationship with her was not healthy - at least for me - because it was based on an imbalance of power; whether it was intentional or not on her part is immaterial.  

I know that such relationships either need to be radically changed ... or discontinued.  The temptation for abuse in such an association between two people is astronomical.  In other words, if I want to continue on in my recovery ... I don't need to be in a relationship with someone else that will undermine that recovery. I need to be with people who will encourage and not condemn, accept and not judge.

That way I can become who I am becoming, and break free of the chains of addiction to conforming myself to what other people think, and/or to the temptation to try to make them think what I want them to think.  That's a trap I thought I had been freed from.  Yesterday I walked right back into it.

So now I am walking right back out.  I have to; it's a matter of survival.  I can't allow myself to get back into that hamster's wheel of self-defeating behaviors.  

Two of the promises of CoDA (Codependents Anonymous) come to me as I think about this. They follow one after another, and go like this, "I learn to see myself as equal to others.  My new and renewed relationships are all with equal partners.  I am capable of developing and maintaining healthy and loving relationships.  The need to control and manipulate others will disappear as I learn to trust those that are trustworthy."  Hm.  Trust those that are trustworthy - there's a mouthful!!  Wouldn't a lot of problems in this world be solved if we could be in relationships with people as equal partners, and we only trusted those people who were trustworthy?  

My natural tendency is to be in unhealthy relationships, and so I cherish those relationships that I have where I KNOW neither party is - OR FEELS - superior to the other.  But I know that this is not by anything I have done, but simply by the kindness of God toward me even though I don't deserve it.  To paraphrase something I think of often, "What I really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition."  That spiritual condition is maintained by daily connection with God, and that alone.  I can't fake it or manufacture it on my own.  It's a gift - and I'm so grateful for that.

Friends Accept - and Respect

Sometimes it needs no words.  Sometimes words need to be said.

Friendship is such a wonderful, simple, magnificent mystery.  True friendship is ... priceless.

It's a blessing to have a real friend, one you can share your heart with, one whose burdens you can bear for a while to make the load lighter, one you can pray for or think of, and who you know prays for or thinks of you when you have a need.

I found myself thinking lately about friendship after someone I know and like was treated badly by some of those she considered friends. I was also thinking, since I am an introvert who lives with both introverts and an extreme extrovert, about the basic differences between extroverts and introverts. So I started thinking about how there might be a need for a friendship manual for introverts and another for extroverts.  Since neither really fully understands the mindset of the other, it might help to remember some things about each other.  

The suggestions that follow are all corollaries of The Golden Rule : treat others the way you would want them to treat you - but the way you want to be treated may be the last thing the person wants depending on their personality.  As a preface to each group of suggestions, there is a brief description of how the mind works for each group of people.

EXTROVERTS
These are the people who have no problem making friends.  Everyone loves them, everyone wants to be around them, and they are usually the ones who will have about a thousand contacts on facebook or on MSN.  Or both. The life of the party, they usually know how to have loads of fun.  When with other extroverts, their fun builds in a crescendo of hilarity.  Deep down though, even while they may appear confident, a great many extroverts are secretly insecure and need constant affirmation.  They've usually figured out great ways to get it without asking for it, so the illusion of confidence stays intact.  Friendships for them center around activities shared with people, preferably face to face.  The most important thing to remember is that extroverts recharge their emotional batteries by being with, talking with, and doing things with people.

For introverts who are friends with extroverts, please remember:
- Sometimes they talk before they think, so they might sound callous or insensitive. They really don't mean to be.  Extroverts think by talking.  They may not know WHAT they think until after they talk it out.  Give them room to stumble over themselves. They really mean well.  There is very rarely any deception or ulterior motivation with an extrovert.
- Extroverts live in the moment. They feel what they feel when they feel it, and they could just as easily feel the opposite way tomorrow. 
- Plans can change and it's a lot more fun to teach yourself to be flexible and to go with the flow.  Few things are more exciting than a roller-coaster of fun planned by an extrovert.  Let yourself be carried away once in a while.  You might like it.
- Your fun friends tend to like straightforward humor, slapstick, and puns rather than the more subtle kinds of humor like irony or satire.  It is easy for them to get carried away and go 'over the top' - guess what.  For the most part, they would appreciate you stopping them and letting them know they have crossed a boundary.
- They may be more physical about expressions of affection.  And impulsive.  Expect the unexpected.


INTROVERTS
These are the poets, the artists, the deep thinkers, the quiet ones.  They might have five people they consider friends throughout their lives but they would sacrifice much for those friends.  They don't socialize easily and tend to hang back in a crowd.  However, a common misconception about introverts is that they only want to be alone, that they are antisocial.  Yes, introverts recharge their emotional batteries by being in their own company. But it is also true that they thrive in the company of one or at the most three very close friends, people with whom they feel safe.  Introverts are their own worst enemies and most of them are very self-critical.  They are extremely sensitive and their emotions bruise easily. They both love and hate with an intensity that can be frightening. They are analytical (often mistaken as cold) and they are often "the voice of reason"  when hotter heads might otherwise prevail.


For extroverts who are friends with introverts, remember these things:
- Introverts need space sometimes.  Too much exposure to too many people for a long time drains them, the same as you are drained by being alone too long.  Give them the option to have some space and some time to themselves after a few fun activities. 
- PLEASE don't try to get an introvert to be more social.  It just makes them more resentful of you.  Introverts interpret "I just think it would be fun" as "I just want to boss you around."
- Try to make some time to spend just with them, one on one.  Introverts blossom with focused attention.  You'll be amazed at the dividends this pays in loyalty.
- Introverts find it very hard to commit to anyone.  Their definition of "friend" more closely resembles "soul-mate" than "play buddy."  Once they consider you a friend, they tend to stay for the long haul.  The down side to this is that they will put up with more than they should before telling you something bothers them.  Their biggest fears are betrayal, rejection/ abandonment, and exposure/ ridicule.
- You need to earn the right to criticize an introvert and that right is earned SLOWLY.  Because they are so fearful and sensitive, they are easily hurt by words, and they may question your motives.  Go gently.  Choose your words carefully; when in doubt, keep quiet.  And if you speak and your words hurt your introvert friend, at least apologize for hurting him/her.  Even if you feel that you were right, the cost of seriously hurting an introvert is a grudge against you that could last a lifetime.


Finally, for both groups, a final word. 

Friends accept each other the way they are.  That means you don't try to change your friend's basic nature, and you respect the right of your friend to make his or her own decisions. Each person is unique.  Carbon copies are not allowed.

It has been said that friendship means that you don't ever have to be careful of what you say to the other person.  Real friends, we are told, will take the wheat with the chaff, sift out the wheat and blow the chaff away.  


Poppycock.  

That's just an excuse someone invented to justify not thinking before he spoke, to make people think it was okay to be a jackass to someone who deserves better, who deserves to be treated with respect.  It's far better for everyone concerned to be good to your friends, to treat them with consideration.  

After all, each true friend is a priceless commodity, not to be taken for granted.

Baby Steps

I never go as fast as I want to in my recovery.  

I stumble, I falter, I skin my knees, and I cry.  A lot.

I keep wanting to get to the final result, the picture in my mind of where I want to be.  But my selfish inner core doesn't want to go through the process.

Change is painful.  Growth hurts.  It's worth it, but that doesn't diminish the suffering while the development is taking place.

I get so impatient; I compare myself to those who have been on this journey for a while and they seem to take such large strides.  I have to take ten steps to equal one of theirs.  They slow down for me, and I feel guilty for making them wait.  And at the same time, if they go a little too fast for me, I am so tempted to resent them for making it look so easy and leaving me in the dust. I'm familiar with this feeling in the physical sense too; since I'm under five feet I find it difficult to walk with someone who's over six feet - and often I end up falling and hurting myself when I try to walk as fast as they do to catch up.  I guess that should teach me something in my recovery.

Go at my own pace.  Even if it IS baby-steps, it's my pace and I know the Great One will take all the time that's necessary to help me. He'll wait for me; He'll pick me up when I make mistakes and He'll hold me when I am so tired I just can't walk another step.

And there are times like that.  Sometimes I fall down, sometimes I mess up.  Sometimes the journey seems so long. Other times I worry that it's going so fast I can't keep up, can't catch my breath.

He knows.

I need to just be thankful that I have those who will slow down and walk with me a few steps, and to remember that once I had a hard time even crawling...and others I know are at that stage in their journey.  I slow down for them; why would I need to feel guilty when others slow down for me? God uses them in my life.  And He's in charge of this process of inner healing, which I like to call recovery.  The word gives me hope that there is a day when I will be totally happy, joyous, and free.  When I will be liberated from the obsessions I have and just trust Him completely. 

He'll bring me through it.  He'll let me rest when I need to, and hold me, steady me at every step as I walk through the dark and scary places out into the light.  There is light.

His hand?  Still holding me.  And on His face?  Delight....

The Gift of Goodbye

I ran into a couple tonight at a diner, and they asked me if I ever heard from a certain person.

A year ago I would not have known how to handle such a question but tonight I just shook my head and cheerfully said, "Nope!"  To which the fellow said, "Us neither."  And he laughed.

What he didn't know, and what was none of his business, was that although for many years I considered the person he mentioned a friend, in reality, friendship was not what we had. I ended it over a year and a half ago.  

What we had was a codependent relationship (that is, two codependent people feeding off each other), and when I realized how that person's intimidating version of control and my manipulating and victim version of control were not good for me, and ended in me always getting abused over and over again and saying nothing until I exploded - and there was an apology - and the whole thing would start over again, that's when the relationship ended, this time for good.  While I was in it, I was just like Charlie Brown... believing Lucy every time when she assures him she won't pull the football out when he tries to kick it.  He falls (literally) for it every time.  She HAS to control.  He's COMPELLED to believe that she doesn't mean to hurt him.  And so it goes.  Or so it went for me with this person - for over thirty years.  

I'm not saying that it was easy.  It wasn't.  I had spent more than half my life thinking this person was my friend. I had to grieve.  Slowly I realized that it was for the best, that this was one more hindrance to my relationship with God, myself, and others... which was now removed from me.

I've said it before; real friends treat each other with the respect they wouldn't get from their families.  They are God's way of compensating you for the people in your life that have systematically hurt you. 

I read something once by a preacher by the name of Bishop T. D. Jakes.  It really touched a chord with me, even before this all happened.   I find myself thinking about it tonight, since I started thinking about this person.  I don't bear him/her any grudge, do not wish evil upon him/her.  I just can't be around him/her anymore and still stay true to the real me.  The people in 12-step programs of recovery from such relationships would call this process I'm talking about "detachment."  Sometimes people can detach without ending a relationship; sometimes they can't.  In this instance I couldn't.  Anyway, here is the quote:

There are people who can walk away from you.

And hear me when I tell you this! When people can walk away from you: let them walk.

I don't want you to try to talk another person into staying with you, loving you, calling you, caring about you, coming to see you, staying attached to you. I mean hang up the phone.

When people can walk away from you let them walk. Your destiny is never tied to anybody that left.

People leave you because they are not joined to you. And if they are not joined to you, you can't make them stay.

LET THEM GO!

And it doesn't mean that they are a bad person; it just means that their part in the story is over. And you've got to know when people's part in your story is over so that you don't keep trying to raise the dead.

You've got to know when it's dead.

You've got to know when it's over. Let me tell you something. I've got the gift of goodbye. It's the tenth spiritual gift, I believe in goodbye. It's not that I'm hateful, it's that I'm faithful, and I know whatever God means for me to have He'll give it to me. And if it takes too much sweat I don't need it. Stop begging people to stay.

LET THEM GO!

If you are holding on to something that doesn't belong to you and was never intended for your life, then you need to...

LET THEM GO!

If you are holding on to past hurts and pains...

LET THEM GO!

If someone can't treat you right, love you back, and see your worth...

LET THEM GO!

If someone has angered you...

LET THEM GO!

If you are holding on to some thoughts of evil and revenge...

LET THEM GO!

If you are involved in a wrong relationship or addiction...

LET THEM GO!

If you are holding on to a job that no longer meets your needs or talents...

LET THEM GO!

If you have a bad attitude...

LET THEM GO!

If you keep judging others to make yourself feel better...

LET THEM GO!

If you are struggling with the healing of a broken relationship.......

LET THEM GO!

If you keep trying to help someone who won't even try to help themselves...

LET THEM GO!

If you're feeling depressed and stressed...

LET THEM GO!

Get Right  or Get Left, think about it, and then...

LET THEM GO!

What a gift to be able to say goodbye without holding any ill will.  Much of what is fostered in organized religion is an "in-your-face" and "up-your-nose" kind of relationship where your brothers and sisters have to know everything about you, and be involved in every last detail of your life, express their opinions on everything you do, say, think. Whether it's about them or not.  If respect is consistently non-existent, if there is a pattern of abuse there, and if there is no indication that it will ever change, it may be time to say goodbye. 

The Prodigal

I was in French class one day about two years ago when I had a God moment.

They happen every once in a while. God catches me unawares and brings new richness into something I already knew, or teaches me a new thing and makes something I have been struggling with, just gel.

We were talking about something or other and someone mentioned the expression, "What a waste."  Nobody in the class (except the teacher) knew how to say that in French. And then he told us it was the verb "prodiguer" (prod-ee-GAY) from which we get the word "prodigal".  The sense was of recklessly wasting good food, or carelessly wasting one's life on frivolities and things that don't matter.

I'd always thought of the story of the prodigal son (told by Jesus in the gospel of Luke) as that of "the returning son."  It's the only context I'd ever heard it.  But this word means wasteful.  The guy went to his dad, said in effect, "I can't wait for you to die; I want my inheritance now," which is something that a grown child had the right to do in that culture, and then he proceeded to waste it.

And waste it he did - he wasted it ALL.  When he finally came to himself and realized how bad off he was, his only thought was to fill his belly, to have his basic needs provided.  He knew his dad was good to the hired servants, so he wanted a job and a place to sleep. That's all.  He knew his inheritance was blown; he had no right to ask for anything more under the law of that day.  Yet he knew that his dad - if he hired him - would be decent to him.  So he came back, expecting nothing.  Carrying nothing.  Smelling like pig poop. Wasted.

The Bible tells us that the father saw him coming from a long way off, and ran - not walked, RAN - to meet him; he fell on his neck and kissed him, pig poop and all.  He didn't give him a job.  Instead, he treated him with honor and with respect, threw a party and let everyone know that this dirty, stinky person who had wasted everything his father had given him including his father's reputation, had never lost his status as a son.  Wouldn't even let his son finish his carefully-prepared speech.  All was forgiven; it had been forgiven the moment the son asked for the money... though he didn't know it at the time.

God's love is like that and more - God's forgiveness is like that - and WAY more. 

When we were still in darkness, when we were still walking away, when we were wasting His wondrous and passionate love for us ... He never gave up on us, He gave it all for us... He waited for us to come to the end of ourselves and turn back to Him.  And when we did, there was absolutely no condemnation, but instead, acceptance and undeserved kindness.  The Bible calls that kind of magnanimous attitude, that kind of lavish love, "grace."  Jesus told the story of the prodigal son to demonstrate the Father's love for us, whether we waste His love in loose living or in rules and regulations ( as the older brother did in the story. )  It's extended to us no matter what our background, no matter where we have been, what we have done (or haven't done), what's been done to us, and what we feel about ourselves or about others.  No matter what labels are on our baggage, His love can pierce the locks, press through the wastefulness, and restore us to a relationship with Him and set us free from the chains on our hearts.

I'm so very glad. 

Not of this World

Every so often an uprising occurs in the church.  It's even embraced by some in the pulpit, preached on long and loud, and ends up dividing people rather than uniting them.  It makes followers of Christ into confrontational, obnoxious, one-issue and two-dimensional laughingstocks in the eyes of the world.  

It's the idea that there needs to be more Christians in positions of authority, power, government, school boards, etc.  That Christians can influence the steering course of a nation by writing to their congressmen, judges, members of Parliament and protesting about anything from homelessness to prostitution to abortion.  

It's all based on a lie.  The lie is that we can use the world's methods to usher in the kingdom of God.  The lie is that it is up to us to DO something.  

The fact is, there is nowhere in the Bible that says that God's people should seek positions of power, that they should organize protests or petitions against this issue or that issue, that they should support this political party or that one.  In fact, Paul the apostle lived in a world where wrong was touted as right, where the leaders of the empire were involved in all kinds of depravity and they persecuted Christians with a fanaticism that bordered on insanity.   Yet, he wrote to the people in the churches that he started ... to pray for kings and all who were in authority, to obey the laws of the land, to live peacefully with all people, so that nobody would have a reason to point a finger at Christians and make them a laughingstock.

Paul was, as far as I can tell, apolitical.  He supported NO political platform.  His only calling in life was not political but spiritual.

His focus was a transformation that started on the inside, in the human heart.  If you will, it was a universal grassroots movement with an individual focus.  It is true that Paul stood before kings and finally before Caesar himself.  But his message was not that the despotism, or slavery, or prostitution, or persecution of Christians would stop.  No, his message was what it always was: the gospel to apply to an individual life, no matter whether his audience was Felix the governor or a Roman guard whose name nobody even knows.  There was no politico-Christian movement to make Christianity the state religion (we all know how horribly things turned out when it WAS made the state religion!) 

There was no interest among the followers of Jesus to infiltrate the higher echelons of Roman political structure and make a fundamental moral change in the direction of the empire. Believers were told to be good citizens.  They were encouraged to live blamelessly so that nobody would have occasion to question their integrity or to have ammunition against the gospel by their conduct.

There's a lot to be said for that kind of an approach.  Especially in today's society.

When I hear about a Christian wanting to get involved in politics or in some sort of campaign that is for or against this or that political issue or viewpoint, I become very nervous.  Frankly, I fear for that person because it seems to me that the focus has shifted from letting God be God to taking up that position him or herself, and at the very least - quite possibly - that there's been the loss of some struggle inside against the lust of the flesh or the eyes ... and especially the pride of life.  

I'm not against Christians supporting one party or the other as long as that support is a private matter.  But when a Christian throws his or her hat into the political ring, politics being a dirty game, I find myself wondering just how long that person will retain his or her high moral standards before having to compromise beliefs and convictions just to stay in that position of power.  Power corrupts - as the saying goes. and the more power one has, the more affected one is by the political machine.  One person who was in a position of power told me from personal experience - about 8 years ago - that the higher one goes in government, the more grey there is.  The secret, this person said, is reaching a level of influence where you can still stomach the compromises you have to make.  

I'd rather not have to deal with any amount of nausea - thank you.

When Jesus stood before Pilate, and was questioned about His kingdom, He said, "My kingdom is not of this world.  If it were, My servants would fight."

Hello.....