Beating the cold

I admit it.  As much as I try not to get sick at any time, I especially try not to do so in the winter.  Supplements have been my mainstay for several months.  I take 2000 IUs of Vitamin D, a multivitamin with iron, and 500 mg of Magnesium citrate per day.  And I've not been sick very often.


But it happens sometimes.  So when it does, I tend to do things that make me feel comforted, even human.  The parts of the body that still work take care of the parts that don't.  Like today - I had myself a couple of bowls of soup and a few crackers, then went to bed with a heating pad to try to get rid of the bone-deep chill I felt.  I even got a little sleep - albeit broken by the banes of my indoor "at-home" existence: telemarketers and my daughter's cat.

The chill, however, has decided to return. So I am wearing my scarf, and have a couple of big fluffy towels lying across my shoulders and my legs as I type.  

In my mind I have a picture-memory of a time when I was about 13.  It was the dead of winter. Our house was not all that well insulated so we compensated with lots of blankets and quilts. And when we got up in the morning, we made sure to put our socks on before our feet touched the floor.  It was COLD.

We had an oil stove in the kitchen.  Mom would make the fire in the oil stove before we got up, and once the heat was up a bit, she opened the oven door, spread out a newspaper on the open oven door and pulled a couple of chairs up beside it.  My brother and I would come into the kitchen wearing our sweaters or long-sleeved shirts, jeans and thick socks, grab a cup of tea, and sit on the chairs with our sock feet resting on the newspaper - to warm our feet.

It was the closest thing to a fireplace we were going to get.  But the heat soaked into us and made the howling wind outside not seem so loud or forbidding.

Only 30 minutes later, I would have to go to the bus stop and shiver in the cold, but the memory of that warm spot in the morning helped get me through the dark, frigid days of winter.  

I can't ever remember LIKING winter.  I like it less and less as I get older; but, the memories associated with beating the cold really stick with me.  I remember one time sitting in the apartment of another brother once - I would have been about 19 or so - he had a fireplace. He put on some soft music; there was always music at his place. My fiancé and I sat on the hearth in front of the little fireplace with our cups of hot chocolate and watched the fire together as the music played.  It was cozy.  It was romantic.  

Why am I talking about this?  I guess it's to beat the cold.  To remember warmer times.  To remind myself that sickness - and winter - doesn't last forever. 

I think I feel a little warmer now.

Marketing? the Faith?

I was reading a friend's blog and she was talking about a couple of men coming to the door to proselytize their religion.  Of course they called it sharing their faith.

Some of these door-to-door folks can be quite ... persistent.  I wonder if they're trained not to take no for an answer (or not to walk away until someone gets angry and yells at them, thus scoring a "win" by being persecuted.)


Somehow that reminds me of a brief stint I put in as a telemarketer several years ago.  Yes.  I was desperate.  Yes.  I hated the job.  And yes, I did sell stuff people didn't want to people who probably couldn't afford it.  That's why I hated it - and I quit as soon as I possibly could.  I think I lasted about 3 or 4 weeks actually.  Ughh!

In my telemarketer training, I was told that as long as a sales prospect (note, they are not people, they are prospects) had an objection, a reason for turning down the incredible offer-of-a-lifetime, we "had" them - for there was a scripted answer to every possible objection.  The only statement a telemarketer can't refute is "I'm not interested.  No, no reason.  I'm just not interested.  Goodbye."

Huh.  There's food for thought.

But I digress.  I was also thinking that sometimes we as Christians have bought into this whole "marketing" thing, to our own detriment and that of the cause of Christ. Maybe it's not telemarketing but it is marketing the gospel, making it palatable, pushing and pushing until people hate to see us coming.  (Last night my daughter answered the phone after the 8th time from it ringing with an 800 number on the caller ID; she yelled in frustration into the phone, "QUIT CALLING!!" We all cheered when she hung up!)  

We Christians, especially those in leadership but also those of us (and I can be this way too) who just can't seem to let God be God - do ourselves and the world a great disservice.  We seek the best platform, try to find the right program, buy into the right gimmick - and basically use the world's marketing methods to do something that (according to the Bible) God's Spirit is supposed to do: convince people of their brokenness and bring them to Jesus.  We treat human beings outside the church (at best) like sales prospects ... and forget that they are really people: people who have real lives, real circumstances, real feelings.  All we need to do for the world (and even for that, God is the One who enables us, for without Him we can do nothing) is love God, love each other and love the hurting ones without judging them.  

Melody Beattie says in her book, "The Language of Letting Go" - (©1990 Hazelden) as she speaks about letting go and letting God lead and guide in our lives, "We will know when to go, to stop, and to wait. We will learn a great truth: the plan will happen in spite of us, not because of us." (February 11 reading)

It's so simple.  At least that's what the Good Book says. We quit doing God's job for Him and let Him be God in our own lives, let Him love us, let Him love others through us. That will naturally spill out into the lives of those with whom we come in contact and change the world, one life at a time.  

Each one, reach one - with love.  God will take care of the rest.

An Awesome God

There's a little chorus that our kids grew up in church learning.  It was the first song that we sang together in harmony as a family and occasionally the kids still want to sing it with us.

Our God is an awesome God -
He reigns in Heaven above
With wisdom, power and love
Our God is an awesome God!

Such simple words.  


I was reminded of this little chorus one night last week as I gathered with a group of believers and listened to a song by Chris Tomlin called "Our God (is greater)" - it's from his new album I think.  If you haven't heard it yet - go to Youtube (yes, that's the link) and listen to it.  It is FABULOUS.  The message is much the same as that little chorus.  

I need songs like that.  I need to remember that God is bigger than me because even though I give lip service to it, sometimes my behavior and my attitude is that I'm bigger than He is.  

Nature itself screams that He is greater, bigger, higher than I am, a consuming fire against which nothing and no one can stand.  I'm not talking about a nice little campfire that people like to poke sticks at and roast marshmallows in.  I'm talking about a raging inferno, a wildfire that goes where it wants.  I guess this post is an expansion of my last one on God not being safe, that I ask Him if He will do something for me but don't assume that He will just because I follow a certain formula or say certain words or quote scripture or really get myself worked up.  (Didn't the prophets of Baal have much the same attitude on Mount Carmel? OUCH!)

And yet with all His incredible power and majesty, His awesomeness, He still cares about the little things.  He still wants to have a relationship with me.  Puny me.

It boggles the mind.  

Who am I that He should even think about me?  Yet He does.  Why should He care about what concerns me?  Yet... He cares.  He cares enough to have foreseen my bankrupt state without Him and sent a way for me to come into relationship with Him - my only hope.

There is a sort of credo that describes the unadorned Christian life, one which I have come to hold dear lately.  Part of that credo is that I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.  The kind of life I was living, even as a Christian for decades, was so full of contradictions, doubts, fears, things that didn't work, resentments against "all-that-is-not-of-God", fault-finding, seeing demons in dishrags, that kind of thing.  It was insane!!  All the while, I was ostracizing the very people I wanted to reach, more and more becoming the object of ridicule - or pity, or contempt - by those who saw what I was doing to myself by toeing the Christian party line and having my head stuck in the clouds - or somewhere else, it could be argued.  SO out of touch with reality that even my speech was affected ... saying Amen after every statement and turning it into a question... Christianizing my everyday speech so much that nobody could figure out what the heck I was saying - I could go on at length but I won't, since that's another topic.  

But the word "greater" from that statement / credo jumped out at me recently, and it is that concept on which I've been meditating.  Someone put it to me this way - "God's got broad shoulders and good ears.  He's not deaf and He doesn't need you to defend Him.  He's got everything figured out.  So let Him be who He is!!"  At that point I realized (once again) that I was the god of my life and I was treating the God of the universe like a puppet, pulling strings to try to get Him to do my bidding.  It was time for me to decrease and for Him to take His rightful place as 'somebody bigger than you and I.'  When I gave Him back the strings, it was amazing how He grew in my life.

Sometimes I usurp His role; I end up flat on my face every time.  But when He is greater than I, He can be truly God - to me. 

Telling versus Asking

For a long time, I spent time endorsing and espousing the idea that if God promised a certain thing, then all I needed to do was "claim" it.  To "take authority over the enemy" and to "speak those things that be not as though they were." But the more I get to know Him, the less sure I am of that kind of attitude, which I once thought was "faith."  

I agree that Jesus has given us the victory.  I agree that He is more powerful than satan.  I firmly believe that He has all authority over the powers of darkness.

But more and more I am convinced that I don't.  That I am not more powerful than satan and that I win NOTHING, that if it wasn't for God, I would not even be breathing.  Moreover, I don't need to defend God on the debate battlefield, or to labor or travail as if trying to push Him through a keyhole into the world or reality I want Him to occupy.  It is a form of manipulation, even of self-aggrandizement, to "take" the authority that belongs to Him and use it to clobber someone or something.  He's far bigger than I am, far more powerful.  All I need to do is to ASK.  

Not TELL.  More and more I cringe when I hear people "command" God to do something for them (or satan to stop doing something).  They screw their faces up and strain and grunt and groan as if by their effort the supernatural could happen. Such faces would scare little children.  Heck, they even scare ME.  I need to be clear on this.  God is supernatural.  I am human. I am not supernatural, don't want to be, can't pretend to be.  

Asking involves saying Please.  Now THERE's a concept.  That God has the right to say no.  He is not obligated to do anything - at all!  I need to ask Him in a near-forgotten attitude called humility.  And leave the decision up to Him. And accept whatever He decides.

My primary concern must never be how much money I am giving to missions, or whether this hot political issue is right or wrong, or what I'm going to do with my rebellious teenagers... as tempting as that is for a recovering control freak (I was so deeply into judging people that I pushed people of all stripes, even my teens, away from me and robbed myself of having a voice with them.)  No - my primary concern needs to be one thing and one thing only: intimacy with God.

And I must make no mistake.  God, as much as He loves me, as gracious, merciful and forgiving as He is, is not "safe."  

There is an interchange in the book "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" when Lucy asks the Beaver if Aslan, the great Lion, is "safe."  The Beaver replies something like this: "Safe?  I should think NOT!  After all, he's not a tame lion.  No - he's not safe.  But he IS good."  That epitomizes the respectful closeness that I have with God.  

Intimacy with God is definitely not safe.  But in my relationship with Him I have found that He is good, He does what is good, and He seeks the highest good.  Not necessarily for me, but for His purpose.  

So when I ask Him anything now (and I find myself asking for less and less; I thank Him more and more) it is to know His will and to have the courage from Him to do it.  Or if for someone else - I ask for His highest good in their lives, trusting that He will do it, whatever that is.  The only thing I tell Him now is how I am feeling; He already knows it, but ... it helps me to get it out into the open.  I am learning to let God be God ... and to stop taking that role upon myself.    

Where everybody knows your name

I just spent an hour and a half with people I trust in a safe atmosphere.  When I entered that place, my mind was racing with the events of the day, filled with frenetic activity and unable to settle down.  

Just thirty minutes into that time where everyone knew who I was and they were still glad to see me - that was enough to let me relax and let down my guard.

There's an old song to a TV show I used to watch - a TV program called "Cheers" - and the chorus to the theme song goes, "Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name - and they're always glad you came!  You wanna go where people know that people are all the same; you wanna go where everybody knows your name."

And I do.  I've spent most of my life hanging around people who expected me to be someone I wasn't.  And it's good to know I can be me with these friends and I don't have to prove anything to anyone.  The only requirement for friendship with these people is that I am real, honest, open, and willing to embrace change as long as it's God who does the changing.  I could really get behind that.

Coach, Sam, Carla, Dianne, Cliffy and "Norm" always made me so wistful when I watched how they interacted and just accepted each other.  I never knew why.  Going to bars wasn't my thing - still isn't. It wasn't the fact that it was a bar (and don't get me wrong - some bars got more God than most churches!!) but it was the atmosphere I longed for and didn't know where to find.  And then I met this group of people with whom I was hanging out with tonight - and I knew I had come into my own.  

That's where I wanna go.

The human condition

Okay ... so I love to watch family-oriented films, animated children's movies...which hold in them lessons humans need to remember but often forget.

A few days ago, the family watched "The Iron Giant" (Warner Brothers, ©1999) together.  The story poses a question that is postulated by some as - "Can a gun have a soul?"  I would tend to disagree that this is the question posed.  It goes much deeper than that.

The question - as I see it - is "Can someone go against years of programming and choose to follow his/her heart instead?"

The answer the movie provides: YES.  But only with help.

The giant wakes up with amnesia.  He has forgotten who he is.  He gets himself into a dangerous predicament in a strange place, and suddenly this little boy rescues him.  A friendship with the boy means that he learns what things in this new reality are called, what life and death are, what is right and wrong, and (to his surprise) that he has powers beyond his wildest imagination.  The boy talks to him about different kinds of superheroes and tells him that he can choose whether to use his abilities for good or not.

Of course the government gets wind of him being there - how DO you hide a 100-foot-tall metal man? - and an overzealous government agent with an agenda of paranoia and self-promotion assumes the worst and calls in the "big guns" - literally.

But the giant's programming is defensive only.  Which reminds me of me ... and a whole lot of people. As the saying goes, "Hurting people hurt people."

When he is threatened, he starts to fight back - and his friendship with the boy stops him from fully carrying out his programming.  But it's too late: others' agendas have prevailed, and he must make a choice: allow a whole town to be obliterated or risk his existence to save them.

The movie is a profound look at the human condition - at the potential each person has to use whatever strengths he or she has to the fullest while still having the power to choose.

I guess I started thinking about the Iron Giant this morning because I know this person who is really amazing.  But he's been hurt and has forgotten who he is.  He's learning a whole new way of living, a whole new lifestyle.  He's learning that he is not as horrible as he was led to believe, can barely believe it himself because the voices of shame and fear are so loud in his mind.  And his natural child-like curiosity and his sense of equity and integrity are developing in this new reality of his. It's wonderful to watch.

I know a lot of people who are on that same road.  Myself included.  We're starting to learn that we are more than who we have become (to borrow a line from the Lion King.) 

And we need help to get there.

Callouses Wanted ...?

I have been spending some time practicing guitar at home to build up some callouses after not playing for about 18 years or so. Generally I have been able to play for a maximum of 20 minutes at a time in the last week or so, about one to two days apart. 

They were building up a little, but they were still hurting after practicing.  

Then tonight I was at someone's home and since I could play guitar and nobody else showed up who wanted to play one, my host handed me a guitar to play.  I ended up playing for about an hour.  OUCH.  I enjoyed playing with a group, but wasn't counting on the extra punishment to my fingertips!

Callouses are necessary to be able to play guitar for any period of time exceeding five minutes.  Developing them hurts.  But the body does build up extra layers of skin to compensate for the punishment and playing is easier with them there.

So callouses are wanted - on the fingertips. For guitar players that is.

Callouses on the outside are fine.  It's when there are callouses on the inside that I get very concerned.  When another's suffering doesn't touch me, when I could "care less" - those are the things to alert me that I am building a callous on my spirit.

We're humans.  We're not Vulcans.

Deciding that we are going to expunge negative emotions from our lives - at whatever age that happens - has the negative side-effect of numbing us to the pleasant emotions such as joy, love, tenderness, and peace.  This happens when we allow ourselves to be hurt but we deny that we are being hurt.  It happens when we keep getting into situations that are bad for us, and numbing ourselves to the pain by telling ourselves that we don't feel angry, or sad, or whatever. Before we know it... we are living in a stoic fog.

Emotions - I am so fond of saying this that I'm sure you must get tired of it - are NOT BAD.  They are emotions. They were designed to alert us to our inner life.  They are valuable.

I reiterate.  Emotions are not the enemy; they are a part of our human nature which was put there by God when He made us in His image!  He has emotions - and He gave us the capacity to have them too...because He loves us!  They have a purpose!


Stoicism is not to be desired.  Emotions were created to alert us that something is wrong, to enjoy the moment, and to motivate us to do great things: right wrongs, meet needs, go the extra mile.

When our emotions get us into trouble is when we: 
1) hold onto them (prolong them more than the moment requires),
2) deny that we are having them (suppress them) or
3) tell ourselves that we are really feeling the opposite of what we are feeling.  Some people call this "speaking in faith."  I just call it "lying."  

I know because I spent a lot of years in denial of what I was truly feeling.  It ate at me like a cancer and caused me to live in a spiritual straitjacket, not trusting my own feelings.  These days, I still do deny my feelings sometimes, but not nearly as often as I used to.  

And you know what?  When I admit what I am feeling and let my emotions alert me to what is going on in my inner life, that kind of honesty refreshes my spirit.  I don't hang onto things, nurse grudges like I once did.  And I can forgive stuff that people do to me just a LEEEtle bit more quickly.  If I were doing this all on my own I could boast, I suppose.  But God is the One who has given this to me in this journey ... and it is He who gets the credit. 

It's Okay to Rest

Sometimes the frantic pace and the enormity of the steps I've been taking in the last two years to be free of those things that bind me to the pretense of life, weigh upon me and I become weary.

Tonight I told a friend that there was a verse I clung to in early recovery and - truth be told - still cling to, because my journey is far from over.  It's Psalm 139:3 which I discovered in the New Living Translation, a prayer King David prayed to God.  "You chart the path ahead of me, and tell me where to stop and rest.  Every moment You know where I am."  What a comfort and a relief it is to know that resting is allowed when I just can't take another step!  

Everything needs rest.  The rests give meaning to music, to art, to life.  They rejuvenate, allow for healing and reflection to take place.  In the physical world, rest allows the body to repair itself.  It's okay to rest.  It's okay to take time aside to allow the world to stop spinning - even if only for us - and allow us to breathe.

The journey I've been on is like that of so many others, and in the resting times I can remind myself that I'm worth it, that my relationship with God and with myself is worth taking the time to cultivate, nurture, care for.  I dig out a list of affirmations that I say to myself sometimes, and remind myself that who I am today is not who I was two years ago, and who I will be in two years will not be who I am today. 


Like the ugly duckling in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, I am becoming who and what I was meant to be, often without realizing it.  Every now and again I get an inkling - but it makes me so grateful to know that God is not finished with me yet - not by a long shot.  

There are times that I feel ostracized and stuck in the ice like that young cygnet (baby swan) who all his life thought he was a duck.  There are so many parallels there that I can't begin to name them.  But even in his exile, he was becoming.  As he was trapped, he was becoming.  And when the ice receded, he had become without knowing it.  That is the miracle. It happens without me even being aware that it has... or without me pulling myself up by the tail feathers to see what's happening.  God ALWAYS finishes what He starts.

I can rest in that, too.

Learning to let go

I always wanted a horse when I was growing up.  My parents couldn't afford one.

So I hung around horsey places, I hung around horsey people just in case one of them might let me ride.  I put up with a lot of mistreatment at the hands of these people just to be near the horses.

Once I was at the barn / pasture where this one girl was boarding her horse.  She decided to give her mare a bath; it was a hot summer day and the bath would cool her horse off and give us something to do.  So we did - we washed and rinsed the giant beast, and we towel dried her as much as possible.  Then this girl suggested that I get on the horse - bareback, no bridle - and she would lead her around the pasture. 

I should have known what was coming.  We got to the far end of the field from the barn, and this girl let go of the animal's lead and just slapped her rump.  Princess took off trotting toward the barn.  I wasn't a very good rider and my legs flopped all over the place as I tried to "keep my seat."  My companion laughed at me. (WHOLE other post!) And then I did something - perhaps a leg slipped back toward the hind quarters, and Princess took the proper suggestion she thought was coming from me - and broke into a canter.  That's right.  She started to run.

I had absolutely no control.  Inside I was panicking, because she was headed straight for the fence.  Forgotten was any decorum or trying to "look good" or "do things right".  I was afraid for my life! 

My fantasy ride had turned into a nightmare.  I had to get off. That was the one thought in my mind.  Somehow, I still don't know how, I managed to kick one leg over her neck so that I was riding sideways on her back - my plan was to launch myself from her back, far enough to land clear of her pounding hooves.  And that's what I did, landing like a sack of potatoes on the ground, ripping my pants in the process!

The girl caught up with me, laughing her fool head off.  She gasped through the paroxysms of laughter that she didn't know why I got off; I was riding with the most perfectly balanced seat she had ever seen me ride with.  I was just glad to be alive.  Later though, I thought that perhaps the reason I had done so well was because I wasn't concentrating on having my hands here, my heels down, my calves in perfect alignment with and parallel to my spine, and my shoulders square.  My mind was completely otherwise occupied.  Granted, I was in survival mode!  But the point was that I had let go of my need to control the situation and was just focusing on the need of the moment.

I'm also told (though I have a hard time believing it because of my fear of the water) that the same thing happens when learning to swim.  I heard one fellow say just tonight that the point at which one can learn to swim is the point at which one can trust him or herself to the water.  The phrase he used was "let the water be the water."  That stuck in my mind. 

Let things be what they are.  Let God be who He is.  Let people be who they are.  Let myself be the me I am at the time, whether the reality is that I am sad, angry, joyous, or any number of different "MEs" that I can be.

It's not wrong to do that. It's not wrong to stand up for myself when a boundary is being crossed.  It's not wrong to feel angry when I am wronged.  It's not wrong to feel sad when I experience loss or loneliness. If I let go and let whatever it is happen, and just concentrate on the need of the moment without wondering where I'm going or where I've been, or whether I'll make it or not, or whether someone else will wreck everything, things do go better.  I find a balance I never knew I had, and when I look back at it afterward, I realize that this balance was actually God doing for me what I could not do for myself. Or perhaps it was Him making me aware that there was something that needed attention in my life. 

It's a scary place to be, this living in the moment, this letting go and letting God be God (just like letting the water be the water or forgetting what I'm "supposed" to be doing).  I don't always get it right.  Sometimes I forget and slip back into the old way of doing things and I've learned to trust that gut feeling of something not being right...and checking to see where I am spiritually. 

It doesn't feel safe somehow, giving up control of my life to God and letting Him run things.  But it feels right.

Powerless Alone

It's an awesome view.  It's a daunting climb.

Anyone who has ever been within two miles of a mountain can appreciate the awesome grandeur of nature, and the overwhelming task it would be to reach the summit.

Especially alone:  it would be impossible for one person, alone, to reach the top unaided.

Yet we try every day to live our lives unaided.  It might succeed for a time, but there comes a time when we are faced with a rock cliff that is impassable.  Without help it is too much for us.

We need a guide.  We need someone who has traveled this path before and can help us, not only through the difficult parts but also through the easy parts when sometimes, we are tempted to take back control of our journey.  How often we've taken an easier, softer way only to find that we end up in an impossible situation from which there seems to be no escape! From that point we must then retrace our steps back to the place where we grabbed the map.  

That's why God extends His offer for us to believe that not only CAN He take us through, but that He WILL (i.e., He wants to.)  How much better it is if we just let Him take the lead, trust that He'll show us the right way, trust that He will make the changes we have tried (and failed miserably) to make in our lives - just by virtue of our growing realization of His presence in us, transforming us from the inside out! 
 
He's very flexible.  He knows us better than we know ourselves and He will stay with us right to the end.  He finishes what He starts, perseveres even when we give up.  

And He's been there.  And back.  His invitation is still open.