After the miracle comes

In my last blog post, I talked about my friend whose faith through a trial has been tenacious. Of course, the amazing happened in her life and God really showed Himself strong in her situation when all seemed hopeless. Here is an account of her miracle, and a few comments on it. 

And now that she has received her impossible dream-come-true, like Henny Penny from the fairy tale by Andersen, she looked around and found that nobody from the circle of friends she expected has lifted a finger to help her rid herself of the vestiges of her old life and get started in a new one. A new group of friends pitched in their time and resources to help her. But as she sat across our supper table from me last evening, she shook her head and said, "Nobody from [XXXXX] even showed up." 

I tried to make excuses for the group she mentioned, but it was tough, you know? Everyone makes time for what is important to him/ her. 

Snowflakes - miracles in themselves

Yet ... this time has been great for her to strengthen friendships with those who really do care about her and about her happiness and who show it. I've had priceless opportunities to put "skin" on my platitudes and actually roll up my sleeves and invest a little "sweat equity" into the relationship. 

Am I stiff and sore this morning? Oh yeah. Do I regret digging deep into two of my most precious commodities - time and energy - to help her? 

Absolutely not. In fact, I've been encouraged by her excitement, even challenged by her getting into the "Christmas spirit" (something I haven't felt for years, except in fleeting moments, nothing sustained) and wanting to decorate her place for the holidays. Everything feels so fresh and new, and her gratitude for God's goodness is tangible. 

It is wonderful that so many have had the blessing of praying for her and being able to take part - in some small way - in what God did for her. But it would have been nice to not have left the other, more practical things, for others to do. 

There are a lot of ads on TV these days about child sponsorship and giving a goat to a family half-way around the world. But what about the person who lives in our city, goes to our church perhaps, who is living below the poverty line and who struggles to make ends meet? who has to choose between food and electricity? What about the homeless in our own back yard? What about "at-risk" families in our province or state who don't have enough money to buy Christmas presents or school supplies or shoes for their kids? 

I'm talking to me, too. Ouch!

I know of some families who have given up on buying each other gifts for Christmas and who donate their time at the soup kitchen, or who donate the money they would have spent on Christmas shopping ... to turkey drives or the food bank. Thinking "outside the boxes" beneath the tree might do a lot of good for people who need help; it would also let them know that someone cares for them in a way that surpasses platitudes. And the thing about giving in that way is: it not only meets a need in someone's liife, but it helps the one who gives ... in ways that can't be measured. 

It might even spark some Christmas spirit. 

The Comfort Zone

By definition, a person's "comfort zone" is that realm of living in the everyday that feels comfortable, right.  At ease.  It's a combination of social circles, circumstances, individual relationships, job duties, and other miscellaneous expectations, routines, and habits to which a person has become accustomed.  It's the place in life where one feels safe.  

That makes a major assumption.  It assumes that the person has an inner comfort zone.  Such is not always the case.

The comfort zone I mean is the one where one feels comfortable inside - at peace with one's self.  The French call it "être à l'aise dans sa peau" - or "being at ease inside one's skin" - and it involves one very difficult - but essential - relationship. 

It's the relationship with oneself. For, as I understand the two most essential commandments of the Jewish law, identified by Jesus, it is necessary to have three relationships in life - and in this particular order of importance: with God, with oneself, and with others.

LINK for this photo

I've said a lot about relationship with God on this blog, so I'll leave that one alone in this post. Besides, I think that most people would agree that it's necessary to have a friendship with the Creator.  But I've seen a lot of people skip over that relationship with the self ... thinking it's somehow selfish ... and focus on other people exclusively.  Then they wonder why their caring for other people seems difficult, or forced, or why they are continually burning out and becoming resentful of the people they are nurturing.  I did that - for years.  I still fight the tendency to do it.  There seems to be a collective / cultural guilt surrounding the idea of being a friend to oneself. Perhaps it's that whole religious thing - the idea that paying attention to the self is egotistical, arrogant, and selfish. (Absolutely not the case. Just saying.) But as I keep telling my friends, "You're the only YOU that you have. Look after YOU ... please." I guess I need to keep reminding myself of the same thing, too.  Self-care fills my emotional tank and allows me not to get burned out as quickly (if at all) when I need to show compassion and caring to someone else.

Notice I said to show caring.  That doesn't mean that I rush in without permission into someone's life and start dispensing advice or (worse yet) barking orders - something I need to keep reminding myself about because that's what I used to do --- and on a regular basis.  It means that if someone needs a little help getting their bearings, I give them a soft place to land, to rest, to get their feet under them, to believe in themselves, and to learn to fly on their own.  It doesn't mean I create in them a dependency on me, on my advice or whatever else I think they might need. If I do that, then the relationship with the other person becomes about me.  That's not healthy.

But showing compassion and caring is the end result.  It will naturally flow out of relationship with God and then relationship with the self.  Many people focus on the end result of caring for others and showing compassion to them, - give, give, and give some more - and end up frustrated over time because ... well, there are any number of reasons but they all stem from a desire to have some sort of acknowledgement from the other person for their self-sacrifice.  It's been my experience that if I am looking after myself, I don't NEED that acknowledgement (I won't turn it away or be unthankful if it happens, but that's not my motivation or my goal) because I'm operating out of a place of fulness rather than running on empty all the time. 

As a matter of fact, when I actually DO start feeling edgy or resentful of someone else, that's my warning sign that I haven't been looking after myself. That's the time for some "me time" - to look after myself and be at ease inside my own skin - to find my own "comfort zone."

Breaking the cycle

Hurting people hurt people. 

It's a saying I've heard before - and I use it frequently, because it's true.  If all a person has ever known is abuse, ridicule, abandonment, and betrayal, it's all that person expects, and after a while it is seen as normal, just the way the world works.  

But it doesn't work like that.  There are people who wake up in the morning and don't wonder how many times or how deeply they'll get hurt that day.  For many years I didn't know that, because it was the way I lived life.  And I thought it was normal.  It WAS normal - for me.  

But it wasn't right.

The problem with that cycle of abuse is that once it's seen as normal, the tendency is to react to things the way the abuser did, even if the abuser is long gone.  

I remember an incident that happened when my first child was about 8 months old.  The poor kid was teething, and it hurt a lot. And she cried just about non-stop. Nothing I did helped: ice in a facecloth, Anbesol, bread sticks to chew on, the list went on and on.  I was getting more and more exasperated as the days wore on interminably; my patience was wearing thin.  

I'd taken about six hours of trying to ease her suffering one day, and it seemed to me that she just WOULD not stop (not could not: my perception, another danger sign).  I felt a wave of irrational anger build up in me and I knew that if I stayed in the room with her for one more second, I'd do something I would regret later.  I fled to another room, laid my back and my head against the wall, as if the wall somehow would give me the strength I needed to keep from losing my temper and terrorizing my child.  Before I knew it, one of my legs drew forward and I kicked the wall behind me with my heel, hard, in frustration.  And my heel went through the wall and stuck there ... until I wiggled it out.  

I turned around and saw a five-inch gaping hole in the drywall where my heel had gone into it. 

Found this picture HERE

The sight of that hole, and knowing that if I'd stayed in the room with her... well, it wouldn't have been good ... sobered my thinking.  The anger was replaced with a healthy dose of awe mixed with fear.  I left that hole in the wall and didn't want it to be repaired.  For years it stayed there as a reminder to me that people have feelings and things don't, that I was capable of the same kind of evil that I experienced as a child from angry parents, and that it was wrong to take out my frustrations on my kids. Period.  

I didn't know how to deal with the intensity of my pent-up emotions; I was afraid of them and shoved them down inside of me, and sometimes they'd boil over and I'd scare myself again.  It wasn't until after my children were both in their teens - and had already shut me out of their lives - that God showed me the root of the problem and I knew that I had to break that cycle, that self-perpetuating message I'd heard ever since I was a kid ... and that if I wasn't careful, I'd continue to pass that message on to my own kids without even being aware of it.

You know the message I mean. Or perhaps (lucky you) you don't.  It's the one that comes from a person that thinks he or she knows what love is - but doesn't.  It's the one that says,
- You're no good.
- Nothing you ever do or say is good enough.
- Go away, you bother me.  My problems are more important than yours are. Than you are.
- Your feelings don't matter.  Get rid of them. I don't want to listen to it.
- You don't deserve my protection; I'm not ever going to take your side.
- You were put on this earth to make me look good.  Shame on you if you don't.
- All I need you for ... is to do chores. 
- You don't deserve a "thank you."  Not even once.
- You deserve to be beaten. Hard, fast, and repeatedly. With whatever object is handy (and if no object, a hand.)  Until my arm is tired. And without a chance to tell your side. Not once.
- If you EVER tell people about what goes on here, I'll make sure you suffer for it.  You'll end up looking like the worst liar or the worst ingrate that ever lived. 
- Nobody will ever love you.
- You'll never amount to anything.  If you do, though, I'll take the credit for it for "raising you right."
- What you think doesn't matter.  YOU don't matter.

It's hard to break that kind of cycle.  It took a long time to build - generations in fact - and it took concerted and sustained effort to break it.  Every message I got as a child, even though it screamed in my mind, I had to frequently and immediately counter with the (new-to-me) truth I was learning:
- I have intrinsic worth.
- I can contribute to a conversation and not be ridiculed.
- What I feel matters.  Shoving my feelings down inside of me and denying their existence is hurting me.  I can express them safely.
- I can trust my own judgment. I can be wrong, and I can start over.
- I have a purpose.  I deserve to have a life, to exist, to occupy space.  I don't have to apologize for it.
- I can find pleasure in doing things for people.  It's okay if they thank me; (I should say "You are welcome" when they do, rather than deflecting their praise with religious platitudes.)
- The abuse was WRONG. IT WAS WRONG.  I did not deserve it.
- Children are people too.  Doing something to hurt their feelings and then laughing when they cry ... is sick and wrong. 
- The truth is the truth, whether or not people believe it. I can't change what other people do, think, or say.
- I can be loved for who I am, not just for what I can do. 
- I can take pride in my accomplishments because I worked hard for them. 
- I matter.  I am entitled to have an opinion.

My kids - by the way - will be the first ones to tell you that their mother, while far from perfect, has undergone a radical transformation in the last three-plus years. They feel more comfortable telling me things - confiding in me, because they know I won't "freak out" like I once did and that I'll actually listen.  

Yes, breaking the cycle is hard.  But when I remember what that vicious circle was like - there's NO WAY I'd want to go back to it.

Cobwebs

I grew up hearing the following story.  I don't know if it's true, but it could have happened.  

It appears that there was this one fellow who used to stand up and pray these long, complaining-type prayers every Wednesday night at one church's prayer meeting. Every week, the faithful parishoners would have to endure this long tirade.  Some would roll their eyes when he started up, others would bow their heads and shake them slowly. Still others would keep checking their watches. But he would press on, unaware of - or not caring about - the reactions of those in the room. He would drone on interminably, and would always end his prayer with this sentence: "... and OH Lord, would You please clear the cobwebs out of my life?  Amen." And then he'd sit down.

This went on for years.  The same prayer, the same intonation, the same final request. Nothing changed.  One Wednesday night, one soft-spoken old woman who had listened to him every week for years without comment, finally stood to her feet after he finished his prayer one evening with (as usual), "... and OH Lord, would You please clear the cobwebs out of my life?  Amen...."  Immediately she blurted out with all the pent-up frustration of ten years, "OH Lord, please kill that awful spider!"

Source (via Google Images):
http://www.freeimageslive.co.uk/free_stock_image/spiderweb4051jpg

I remember praying blanket prayers when I was younger - things like that old man's "cobweb prayer."  It was never anything specific - just this nebulous sense that I'd done wrong and that God could make it right.  Which He could - and did - every time.  But the effects were short-lived.  They always came back... cobweb after cobweb. Time after time.

But when someone suggested to me that after asking God to take care of my life, I take pen in hand and make a fearless and searching moral inventory of myself - in specifics - that was when I started to understand the reasons why.  The spider was still alive and well and churning out web!  It needed to be exposed and disposed of... not just the by-products of its presence but the actual center of it.  Like the gentleman in the prayer meeting, I had only been focusing on the symptoms, the results of it.  

As I continued that inventory - which was exhaustive and took MONTHS and not minutes - I came to realize that the root of all of those things was not this one or that one who hurt me... or this or that event that happened... or this or that organization that didn't meet my needs.  

The problem was me.  I was the one making all the cobwebs.

I was the spider. 

It wasn't the devil using me.  He SO didn't need my help.  It was me - all by myself - making bad choices and suffering the consequences of those choices.  But as I - out of desperation to be free - brought these things out into the light and exposed them for what they were, something very strange started to happen.  The cobwebs started to dissolve and fall away. 

Some took longer than others.  Some were immediate; others? I'm still aware of their presence in my life.  But I know that it's me - MY choices, MY selfishness, MY pride, MY fear, MY obsessions fueling that critter.  The less fuel I give her, the less web she can make.  And the thing is, there is absolutely no way that I can do that by relying on my own will power.  But I know that God can and will give me the strength if I ask Him.  I am learning to pray, "God, I offer myself to You, to build with me and do with me what You want. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Your will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness (to those I want to help) of Your power, Your love, and Your way of life.  May I do what You want ... always!" 

The spider isn't dead yet, not by a long shot.  But it's spinning a little less web.