In Direct

I'm learning something new. Well, actually it's old - but it's new to me.

I'm learning how to cope with being hurt by someone - whether inadvertently (which is usually the case) or on purpose.

I've always known THAT I was not supposed to go blabbing my stuff to other people and participate in the most common church activity there seems to be: backbiting, gossiping, and spreading discord. 

Yet it seemed to be the only way for me to get the message out without actually confronting someone - something I dreaded, so I just didn't do it. I didn't know how, and I didn't care to know either. After all, it would mean that I would have to change. And I didn't want to change; they were the ones who were supposed to change, not me. 

And people got hurt; their reputations got hurt. 

And I stayed hurt, too. Nothing got resolved; as a matter of fact, it usually got worse over time as I built my imaginary castle of perceived slights, false assumptions and expectations of being hurt further, and I thickened the walls with other people's opinions, people who already had axes to grind.

I raised the passive-aggressive approach to an art form. All that did was isolate me and attract more of the same sort of treatment - this time for real.

Learning how to put my head down, brace myself, burrow in and go directly to someone instead of to everyone but that person - that was hard. It was hard because I was ... terrified. 

Two friends spending happiest time together - courtesy of
imagerymajestic at www.freedigitalphotos.net

Even after I'd learned to be honest with myself about how I was feeling, even after I had learned to set boundaries for myself with others, and was even starting to set boundaries around myself in some situations, the direct approach was something at which I quailed. I ran from it at every opportunity. 

Until I couldn't anymore. 

Until I didn't have the luxury of talking trash about someone because I really, truly liked - even loved - that person, and I didn't want to run away anymore. Not from my friend. Keeping the relationship alive was more important to me than my fear. 

But I wanted to be honest too. If my perceptions were correct, we needed to work things out. And if they weren't - I needed to know instead of assuming wrong things about my friend. 

So ... I wrote an email.

Hey - I write. I'm a big believer in the backspace key - and I was afraid of spilling out words I could never un-say. 

So anyway, I wrote - told my friend how I felt, how I was hurting - and left the door open for a response.

And the response came, tempered with gentleness. As I had hoped, my perceptions were wrong, based on my own feelings of inadequacy, and the door to restoration had been opened. Before the end of the day, we worked out our differences. 

Love won over fear. 

And nothing awful happened. Huh.

Over Looked

Ever been the one left standing by yourself when folks are picking teams?

I have. It's not a nice feeling. It's like the team captains saw you, but didn't want you. Or perhaps they just picked their friends - or the ones who were the best at scoring goals. Being small in stature (as I was and still am, obviously) was a liability. I always got the impression they were looking over my head - like I was invisible or something. At any rate, I spent a lot of time on the sidelines when I was a kid.  

Being overlooked sucks. 

I thought high school was a thing of the past.
Just saying. 

"Teenage Girls Gossiping" courtesy of Ambro at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm under five feet, and I've been treated like a non-entity so many times (people looking past me at someone else who's taller, better looking, or older - or younger), that I'm more sensitive to it today. It's a deeply wounded place for me. And - it seems - when there is such a place that's raw and hurting, it turns into a magnet for more of the same. People can be cruel without even meaning to be. 

And when they actually MEAN to be - it's even worse. Especially ... especially if it comes from someone whom you like, whom you wish liked you. Even a little. Or who (worse yet) has told you that you're special to them - but who chooses to be around others when the crunch comes. 

I've been in situations where I've been right there - RIGHT THERE - when someone needed something I had to offer, something I had offered to provide  on many occasions. And ... they picked someone else. Right in front of me. 

Over and over again. I get so sick of it happening time after time, every time. I try to be gracious about it; I try to follow the advice of those who blithely offer it: "Don't let it get to you." The truth of the matter is that it hurts.

It hurts a LOT. And it happens most frequently ... in the church. The sense of being betrayed that rises up in me is hard to escape - and hard to stomach. In fact, it feels like someone took a good running start, and kicked me in the gut.

The psalmist wrote about this phenomenon.

"It is not an enemy who taunts me; I could have borne that.
It is not my foes who so arrogantly insult me - I could have hidden from them.
Instead, it is you - my equal, my companion and close friend.
What good fellowship we once enjoyed as we walked together to the house of God." (Psalm 55:2-14, NLT)

The psalmist then prays for nasty things to happen to folks like this. I can understand that sentiment all too well! Treatment like that makes me want to blow this pop stand ... sky high. Many times, I've wanted to just walk away and never look back.  Oh no, not walk away from God - don't misunderstand me. I just get so tired of ... being overlooked, taken for granted, ignored. 

And it's not that I'm after any kind of recognition or applause, or for people to call attention to me and tell me how wonderful I am just because they think that this is what motivates me. It doesn't.  Sometimes, though, I feel like the person who's been at a company for a long time and the younger, better looking people come in and rise to the top, even though that person is just as qualified for a promotion. Nobody even thinks to offer it to him. After all, that's the way it's always been. And hey, he might even turn such a promotion down - but how would they know if they never asked? it never even crossed their minds.

So ... more and more, I've been choosing to be around people who like having me around, people who appreciate my contribution. Tragically enough, that seems to be those who are NOT in the church. Either the church people don't like me, or they have no clue how to show love and consideration. Or maybe they don't want to be associated with someone who freely admits that she doesn't have it all together. It messes with the "Christians are supposed to be perfect and mature at all times" fallacy.

You can only take so much pain before it gets to be too much. At that point, you start to shut down, shut people out, shut up, and shut off.
 
So ... if anyone wonders why I hesitate to volunteer for things anymore in the church - perhaps it might help if they stepped inside my size 7 footwear for a while. I'm sure they wouldn't want to stay in my shoes for very long.  

I know I don't. 

Slings and arrows

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly I forget and need to re-learn lessons I thought I've already taken and gotten a passing grade on.

Lesson 1: God is far better able to handle things than I am.
Lesson 2: After a victory comes a period of testing.
Lesson 3: Letting go is still the best way to handle both.

After the MRI miracle (that's a link to my previous post) - our daughter called the specialist the following morning to book a consultation to discuss the results. They booked it for March 8 - just a little over 2 weeks from the day she called. We felt indeed blessed. 

Doubly so when the surgeon's office called her the FOLLOWING morning to say that they had received the results of the MRI and that they wanted to see her THAT DAY to discuss. Less than 2 days after the MRI!!

The discussion ended with him writing a requisition for surgery and putting on the requisition to place her on the cancellation list - in other words, the sooner this surgery happens (see my post about this on Get Unwrapped!) the better! 

WELL. I forgot lesson 2. 

Flushed with victory, I felt confident enough this morning to invite my daughter to a special service at church this morning led by the children. We enjoy these services because the kids don't just "perform," they MINISTER; they LEAD. Of course it's a bittersweet thing for me because it's something we feel that we will never be able to experience as parents, to have our kids involved in such things. Water under the bridge, too much water under the bridge to go into right now. Suffice to say that their experience of the church is far less stellar than we would have liked. Part of that is our fault in our insistence on rules and such, but another part is the fact that as much as WE were about rules growing up, the church atmosphere was even more so, and they almost always felt shunned by the people who were supposed to love and nurture them. 

Anyway, I thought she might enjoy seeing the kids in charge for a change; they really are wonderful when they lead the service. 

She turned me down flat. Thinking she might be doing so because of how she feels every time she goes to our church (crowded, judged, etc.) I suggested she catch it on UStream.

She made a face - clearly disgusted. "It's about ... God ... isn't it." The way she looked when she said His Name ... like it was the most distasteful thing she'd ever had to say ... cut me to the quick. 

"I ... see your point," I said to her, and walked away numbly - as if I'd been shot - through my soul - with an arrow: one that pierced straight through and that was still there, sticking out at both ends. 

I managed to make it to our bedroom and close the door before the grief overwhelmed me. Wave upon wave of remorse, shame, and sadness washed over the inside of me; I felt like a total and complete failure as a Christian, and as a mother.

My husband, my very best friend in the whole world, held me, let me sob, and then "talked me down." He reminded me of a couple of things I'd already learned ... but forgotten to remember in my sadness and hurt. Lessons one through three, above, to be exact. Plus a number of other things that had to do with letting go and trusting God, that it wasn't my job to rescue her, that she needed to come to Him on her own and I'd spent too much time (pre-recovery) trying to make it happen already (and all that did was have the opposite effect!!)  Without saying it, he reminded me that the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit; it's HIS job to bring people into a relationship with God, not mine. 

He let me pray all I could manage to pray (something like, 'Oh Gawwwwwd' - not very imaginative, but heart-felt!) He let me feel what I felt, and he helped me let go ... or start to ... and to trust God for the outcome. He did not judge me; he supported me and held me up when I couldn't hold myself up, and he turned my face toward the Source - until I found my Center again. 

"Two are better than one," the preacher wrote, "because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up the other ... and a threefold cord is not quickly broken." (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12)

Have I mentioned that (among other things) I'm so grateful that God in His wisdom and mercy, brought my husband and me together?

Showers of blessing

Mercy-drops 'round us are falling, but for the showers we plead.

While chatting with my husband one morning recently, we were talking about how we both have a tendency to forget the good things God does for us in the everyday, and want to have some sort of "proof" that He cares. We tend not to see the "mercy-drops" all around us. We want - and sometimes I think we truly NEED - those "showers of blessing." 

I suspect I'm not just talking about the two of us. At any rate, I'll just talk about our own experience. 

Lately, we've had a few things happen that have depleted our energy, made us think that maybe we were God's piñata for a while. An unexpected trip to the U.S. - Canadian border last summer, our daughter's knee injury on November 30, 2012, associated expenses to build a ramp and rent a wheelchair, and pay for physiotherapy sessions, plus the increased cost and usage of gasoline with an added driver in the house, all seemed to conspire against us. Not normally optimistic by nature, we saw ourselves as under attack. After the winter weather came, it was like we burrowed into our lives as if to hibernate until the bad things stopped piling up and the snow melted. 

We lurched from appointment to appointment, day to day, gritting our teeth to survive it all, grateful for the minor respites - the mercy-drops - that would happen every so often. When the specialist, over 2 months after our daughter's injury, finally decided that she needed an MRI, we saw a light at the end of the tunnel - only to find out that her date would be in June.

June. Waiting for spring was a symbol of everything we'd been forced to accept the previous few months.   

Yes, that is a patio chair buried in a snow drift on our deck.

It was the spring for which we had been hoping, praying even, for the lack of light and the frigid temperatures, the slippery, treacherous roads, the heavy winter outer clothing, and every single thing about the season, wore at us.

So... it was only fitting that God, with His amazing and somewhat ironic sense of humor, would choose to answer our prayers by using the very thing we both hate with a passion: winter.

The specialist had told us on February 5 that our daughter could ask to be put on a cancellation list - that in the wintertime, she could well be moved up due to people in the country not wanting to chance their safety on the roads, or not being able to get out of their long lanes. For the first time in a long time, I started praying for snow. Not here, necessarily, but just in the country, so that we could get to the hospital if we were called. 

A likely occurrence. NOT. Usually if we get a storm, it blankets the whole Island and nobody can go anywhere.

Every weekend since, we have been inundated with winter storms that have cancelled church services and/or planned family activities. This past weekend, when we finally did get a "snow day" (a work day for me normally), it was already on a provincial holiday, which meant that there would be no cancellations. Our hearts sank. Yet, we just carried on. I would like to say that we carried on patiently. That. Didn't. Happen.

In spite of it all, God provided a shower (or is that a flurry?) of blessing.

This morning, while my husband and daughter were out doing some rare errands before the forecasted snow (and freezing rain, and rain, and more snow) started to fall again, the hospital called with a message that there'd been a cancellation. They missed the call, and they thought that was the end of it. They'd not been home 45 minutes when the hospital called again. The spot was still open for 3 pm; was she interested? 

Uh, YUH!! 

By 4 pm, she was finished her MRI and they were on their way to pick me up from work. That's when they informed me of the other things that happened today as well. She got her handicapped placard for the vehicle (this after hubby had been ticketed for parking in a handicapped zone and contacted city hall to explain - they waived the ticket and suggested he contact the local Council for Persons with Disabilities to get a temporary permit), she paid her health care insurance premiums so that she would be covered while off on sick benefits, and they went to a few stores and stocked up on some supplies - all good things to take place - before the storm that was threatening hit our area. 

Now, we are settled in for the evening, the snow is falling and we are enjoying each other's company. In winter. Hmm.

And I'm feeling grateful, and relieved, and .. rather (suitably) sheepish.

When I am weak

I was reading in a devotional book just recently and it quoted Ole Hallesby when talking about prayer: "Prayer and helplessness are inseparable. Only those who are helpless can truly pray . . . . Your helplessness is your best prayer." 

I've been around people who think that "coming boldly before the throne of grace" (Heb. 4:16) means to come brazenly. They think that prayer is all about getting what they want by manipulating God into doing it, that it's their right as children to get whatever they ask for if only they'll believe strongly enough. 

If my child wanted an AK47, and boldly asked for it, it wouldn't matter how much that child wheedled, cried, threw tantrums, or kept me up nights asking for it - I would not give my child such an instrument of death. I use this merely as an example using "hyperbole" - an extreme exaggeration.

At some point, each of us must realize that there are some things that we don't know, and that God does. He sees the end from the beginning; we don't. So it's best to ASK. Not demand, not throw Christian tantrums, not flail around and yell, or do whatever it is we do to try to twist God's arm. 

We are the powerless ones. He has all power. He is Large and In Charge - and there is not one thing that we can do for ourselves. Not One Thing. 

It is when we realize and accept our own helplessness, our own inability to change the outcome, that we can approach God with the right attitude. 

Often, we pray and ask God for some desired outcome and He takes us through something we never would have wanted to bring us to ... not only that outcome, but better than we had ever dreamed. Since He is eternal and lives in the eternal "now" - He can see both sides of the door; we only see the one ... until AFTER we go through it and see the other side (and remember what the other side was like).  

Image "Sleeping Infant" by Dynamite Imagery
courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

It's very much like the age-old paradox of free will and predestination, which I see as the door through which we are invited, through our choice, to come into relationship with Him. On that side of the door, written on the lintel, is "Whosoever will." When we make the choice and walk through that door, we can look back on it and see that the writing over the other side is different: "Chosen in Him before the foundation of the world." It is not contradictory; it is complimentary.

A lot of things are like that in the Christian life. Lose your life to gain it. Give and it will be given to you. Happy are you if you mourn. 

However, it's the reality of our helplessness that is at the crux of it. God is intensely drawn to the desperation that arises in our hearts when we are convinced of our own powerlessness, when we realize that there is nothing at all that we can do, that He holds all the cards. When we call out to Him in our weakness, that is when He can demonstrate His strength. If we try to rely on our own limited resources and depend on our own human machinations, it doesn't work. Letting go is the only way for His power to show up in us and for us in ways that will simply amaze us and cause us to give Him all the credit, spur us to deep gratitude and a deep desire to please Him.

He is the source, the substance, and the satisfaction of all those desires.

Munificent Mercy - Greathearted Grace

One of the terms that you don't hear much anymore in the English language is "munificent." It means generous, giving and unselfish to the extreme. 

Every so often, I dig out a word like that and roll it around on my tongue, meditate on it as one of the character attributes of God, and apply it to other character traits He has. 

When I thought of "munificent," the word "mercy" came to mind. Automatically. (Never mind that they both start with the letter M...) God's mercy is over and above what anyone deserves. Including people of the Way. 

I forget that. I get so full of myself sometimes; I think I'm something special, which in a way I am as an adopted child of the Great King, but I get to taking credit for that when I know perfectly well it has nothing to do with me, but with the relationship I have with God, the one that Jesus paid the ultimate price for me to be able to have. Without His munificent mercy, I would be stuck in the mire, unable to get out of my own slime. 

Jesus made that possible, pulled me out of the pit. I couldn't get out on my own - not in a million billion years.

Royalty-free image used by permission.
"The Cross and the Hand" photo courtesy of its creator, njaj , at
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

And then on top of that ... He gave me His grace, out of His great Heart of love. This is what I think of as "Beyond" or as one of my kids said once, "A and B the C of D - Above and Beyond the Call of Duty" ... and then some ... because when you get right down to it, He didn't have to.  

He's God - He was not obligated (as in duty-bound) to provide a Way of redemption. He did it because He wanted to do it. He wanted to do it ... because He. Loves. Us. 

He. Loves. Me. Always has, always will. 

Greathearted grace. Not only removing the penalty of my insufficiency, but lavishing on me all the unconditional love I can stand, and more besides. Covering me, paying for me, believing in me: past, present, and future. Every thought, every moment, every motive, every word spoken, every time I could have said or done something but didn't. Acceptance with no strings attached. Approval in spite of my failings. Betrothal even while I was / am sullied by my own mediocrity. His patience even in the midst of my pain. His forgiveness even while I'm acting out, "in the very act." If that isn't cause for gratitude, if that doesn't spark devotion in me, if I want to take advantage or abuse that kind of generosity, then I've not understood either the depths of my own depravity or the deeper depths of His mercy and grace. Or both.

If / when I do start to grasp even part of that, it's so easy to want to live a life that's focused on Him, pleasing to Him. I don't have to try to have that desire, that passion ... it just comes; whether I "do it right" or not, I know He is delighted in my heart's desire. That passion for Him, the desire to put His wants above my own ... flows out of my innermost being, the one that is so thankful for every nasty thing He has taken away from me that I deserved, and every amazing thing He has given to me that I could never, ever earn ... all from the lavish love and goodness, the munificent mercy of His greathearted grace.

Pigeons, parakeets and peregrines

Ever been pigeon-holed? 

It's not a comfortable feeling. Someone (or a group of people) only thinks of you in one capacity, and when you stray outside of that, they don't know what to do with you. You might be considered as having become too big for your britches, or any number of other, less flattering adjectives or comparisons. 

A pigeon-hole is what they called those little cubby-holes in secretary desks long ago. Each hole had a specific thing that went in there, and it was a great way to organize items so you could find them easily. 

The problem with doing that to people is that they are a lot more complex than that. 

Some years ago at work, I qualified for serious consideration for an executive position, scoring among the top three in the country. When my co-workers found out that I was being considered for this, they couldn't believe it. To them, I was a clerk. They couldn't get their minds around the fact that I could be anything else. Someone even had the gall to tell me that I couldn't be in leadership until I lost some weight. (Seriously?) 

This tendency that folks have to categorize (and I'm no different, hence the title of this post!) can have disastrous effects. Recently, one woman killed herself because she knew that she would always and forever be known as the nurse that got duped into allowing impostors access to information about a well-known celebrity. Being in that kind of pigeon-hole was too much for her. So, she ended it. 

Just because we're in the church doesn't mean we're immune. In fact, sometimes the church community is a fish-bowl for all kinds of disturbing attitudes and behaviors which some folks think, say and do without considering the consequences. The reason I call it a fish-bowl is that it isn't done in a corner; non church-goers see what happens and stay away in droves, and those children who've grown up in the church are leaving as soon as they can and never coming back. 

Someone gets pigeon-holed into a specific category, and if they decide to branch out and stray away from that one spot, they get dumped on by all the other pigeons. Stay where you're put. Don't dream of anything more. This is where your "gifting" lies. Remember your place.

Another way that pigeon-holing happens is in the church versus outside-church dynamic. Just because I have to talk to you or interact with you at church doesn't mean you're a part of my life. Don't approach me on the street and say hi; I won't acknowledge your presence even if I'm standing in line waiting at the grocery store in the same line-up as you. If I see you waiting there, I might even choose a different lineup just so I'm not in that uncomfortable position. Yes. It happens. It's hurtful, but it happens all the time. 

The truth is that people are people. Inside the church, outside the church, people are people. As the deaf community says, "same-same." That folks think there is a difference is a sad testament to how compartmentalized and out of touch some churches have become. 

In a way, we can be like parakeets, parroting back what we're told over and over and over again, without understanding why we're saying it, singing it, thinking it. The jargon, the way we learn to talk in the church atmosphere, is unlike anything one hears in the outside world. Nobody talks like that! Imagine if a parakeet went back to the jungle and said "Pretty bird" to its wild cousins all the time. It wouldn't make any sense! 

Terms like "taking authority" and "speaking in faith" are bandied about in the church until we think that this is the way normal people speak and think. Then when we start talking like that outside the church, normal people think we're nuts! And then we pat ourselves on the back and convince ourselves that we are being persecuted for Jesus' sake and for the gospel's. ("Pretty bird.") We're not being persecuted because of the gospel. We're being left alone or laughed at because we're just plain weird. I know because I have acted and spoken this way and have been treated like a pariah, only to congratulate myself that I was being a light for Christ. In actual fact, I was driving people away from the gospel, because the very folks I was trying to reach said to themselves, "If this is what being a Christian is all about, count me out." 

The pigeon in the pigeon-hole and the parakeet that can say "Pretty bird" have one thing in common, aside from the fact that they are both seed-eaters and both quite numerous and found congregating in large groups.

They're in captivity. 

Peregrine Falcon
Photo Courtesy of Tom Curtis at
FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Harder to find, much fewer in number, and breathtakingly beautiful is the peregrine falcon. 

Misunderstood and feared, too. 

It would be foolish to pigeon-hole one of these gorgeous and intelligent birds, nor would you even dream of trying to teach it to say, "Pretty bird."  Its natural state is soaring high above, dancing on currents and updrafts of air it can't see but can feel, extremely focused and aware of its surroundings, the perfect illustration of liberty. 

Yes, some have been domesticated - but even then, the falconer is keenly aware that this creature is not a "pet." It isn't "tame" in the traditional sense of the word. 

Like eagles and hawks, when in the wild, it leads a relatively solitary life, living in small nuclear family groups, nesting in high, craggy, inaccessible spots. These are the "safe places" to which it returns to rest, to nourish itself, to protect its mate and feed its young. As simple as that is, there is one inescapable attraction: the creature is free. I often long for that kind of life inside, a life of freedom, of not being bound by tradition, rules, categories, and cages. I can't really say I've attained that level yet - but it's something to which I aspire. 

I don't want to be in a pigeon-hole anymore. I don't want to put anyone else there, either. I'm tired of saying "pretty bird" without knowing why. I want to live, really live in communion with the heavens, putting all my weight on the unseen, resting when I'm tired, feeding my soul when it's hungry, being secure and unfettered. If that means that I risk being lonely and isolated at times, perhaps that's a price I might be willing to pay if it means being that much closer to the open sky.