Proud of my humility

I have been missing my Grandma lately, wishing she were here to talk with once again. She was a difficult woman at times and I would get nervous when we talked, mostly because I was afraid of being trapped into revealing too much about a family member and having them get angry with me.  Grandma was known to write shaming letters to people if she knew what their current sins were. She felt it was her duty and even wrote to at least one president! Even though her letters were beautifully written, I often thought that this was a cowardly way of admonishing people…that she was not really doing the Lord’s work, but her own; especially whenever I was the recipient of one of her letters!

When I was a young mother and living far away from family, I received one of Grandma’s notorious letters. She felt the need to tell me that I should never leave my babies at home alone, even if it was across the street at the neighbor’s house within full view of my house to drop off a cake! I was hurt and very angry that she would be so uncaring about how lonely I was and needing to make friends. To make it a little worse, she had enclosed a couple of brochures on how to be a good mother. I decided to write her back and tell her how much she hurt me. I received silence in return. She and I had been pen pals and her silence was loud. I finally was able to come back for a visit after months of being away and Grandma was invited out to my mother’s house for dinner. She couldn’t even look me in the eye! So before I left town the next day, I called her to settle this matter between us. She proceeded to inform me that she was very hurt by my letter. I was astonished to discover that she believed herself to be the victim! I apologized but stayed firm in restating how her letter had hurt me when I was very vulnerable and lonely. She finally apologized and thanked me several times for calling. We both learned a valuable lesson and became better friends. I also learned that letter writing should be used to communicate love; sermons need to be given in person or not at all.

 I take after this tiny woman who was a giant in our family. I too, enjoy writing letters, much more than talking on the phone.  I sometimes feel compelled to speak truth into people’s lives. I am also keenly aware of pride in my life. Grandma often confided in me that she struggled with pride. It was probably her biggest downfall spiritually and relationally. If I could talk to her today, I would share with her my own sin of pride and ask for her advice. She was a bible student and a prayer warrior who taught many bible studies in her home and the women’s Sunday school class for many, many years at her church. She quoted scripture from memory at every opportunity. I have often wondered why someone who loved the bible could struggle so much with pride and with being able to humble herself enough to admit when she was wrong and apologize when needed. Did she let God’s word seep into her heart and allow it to soften her? Was her studying simply feeding her pride for the next time she would teach? I wrestle with the answer; I desire to know whatever God wants to show me about myself. I also wonder if the Lord will have me struggle with this my entire life to keep me leaning on Him!

Every year I pick a word with the Lord’s prompting that he wants me to focus on. Then I search the bible for a verse that confirms my word or changes it. This year I felt that my word should be humility. And, sure enough, a devotional that I am reading gave me this verse, “I served the Lord with great humility and tears, although I was severely tested…” Acts 20:19a

Thank you Lord for Grandma’s honesty about her struggle; honesty is a good place to start. Now help me not to become prideful of any minuscule amount of humility you help me acquire this year.

Daddy's girl?

What does it really feel like to be adored by your daddy?  I wish I knew.
Did your daddy pick you up?  Set you on his lap?  Pat your head?
Call you princess, pumpkin, darlin'?  Did he ever laugh at your cuteness?
What is that like?
I have a dad.  He lived in the house with us.  He was there, but he wasn't.
My older sister called him ghost dad.
There were no cuddles, no touch at all.
He did not delight in us.  He only acknowledged our presence when we
were in his way...bothering him, blocking his view of the television.
I rarely sense that I missed out, not consciously.  Once in a while, though,
I do feel that daddy hole.  The emptiness that never got filled.
And this week, it felt like a big punch in the gut and this blog is my therapy tonight.
I really try to remember anything that gave me a clue that he loved me.  loves me.
He took us fishing....oh yeah because Mom made him.
He made weird faces at the dinner table...which we just found weird.
He bought us gifts when he had been out of town...Mom told him to.
Enough of memory lane!
I have to move forward again.  Tears may stain my pillow tonight, but JOY
comes in the morning.

Someday I will sit on my heavenly Father's lap and He will call me Princess,
because that is what I am to the King of Kings.  And He will let me cuddle for a while, He will
wipe away these tears.  Someday...

Me, paranoid?

If you could hear my thoughts, would you stick around? Heck, I wish I could leave me somedays.

If you ever want to hurt me, confuse me or just plain mess with my brain, then give me the Silent Treatment!  I am not sure which childhood trauma(s) caused me to loathe relational silence, but it is a mental torture.  I have suffered two recent occurrences, one with friends and one at work.  Both were equally painful for me, but I tried not to let on just how much it hurt because that would be too vulnerable and humiliating.  So I suffered on the inside.  Tortured myself with paranoid thoughts.  Here is an example:  "They don't care about me anymore.  I must have done something wrong.  I am too much trouble to bother with.  I am not worthy to be responded to.  They want to hurt me.  They are setting me up!  Abandoned!  Excluded!  Punished!  Betrayed!"  You get the point.  Are you running away yet?  Let me run with you!!

I try so hard to talk myself out of my own paranoia.  I talk to my husband, but he didn't grow up in my home and cannot relate to crazy.  Most of the time I have to talk to my sister who knows how to talk me down out of the crazy tree.  Somedays, I do the same for her.

So I picked up my new copy of Anne Lamott's book, "Help Thanks Wow" and was reminded that there are three things I cannot change, the past, (my crazy-making childhood), the truth (was anyone trying to hurt me or was I only reliving my childhood pain?) and you (I can only change me...and that sounds like a stupid cliche', especially when I am feeling paranoid!)  Anne offers a tangible solution for letting go of crazy, toxic, obsessive thoughts on page 36.  She puts her thoughts down on paper and puts that paper in a "God box."  It's an act of giving it to God, hands off.  I think I will try it next time my mind goes there.

My favorite quote from Anne's little book on prayer?  "Help me not be such an ass."  (Amen.)

Fasting from speech

One of the disciplines in the book Celebration of Disciplines by Richard J. Foster is Solitude.  Practicing solitude often involves not speaking to others.  In fact, the author suggests going without talking for an entire day.  I try that on occasion, just to tame my tongue which really needs a padlock some days.  Yesterday I fasted from most speech while I was at work....smiling, nodding and talking only when absolutely necessary.
OH the words I wanted to say!!!  If I could make a three point sermon from this experiment, I would confess that I either complain, explain or blame most of the time, or at least that is what I missed the most.  I want to complain about the weather, my aches, inconveniences, customers, co-workers, hunger, computers and on and on and on ad nauseam.  When I am not complaining, I am trying to explain myself, my motives, my ideas, how that last mistake wasn't my fault!  Or I feel the need to explain why I said something that obviously wasn't very nice and upset a co-worker.  Ugh.  The nastiest words I wanted to use was to point out the faults of others, complain about what they did and generally make them look bad...to make me look good?  How ironic!
I can also be very funny and witty and elicit a lot of laughter at work.  That is fun, but also needs to be reigned in at times.
I journaled about my experience on my lunch hour.  I hadn't gone more than four hours and I was completely disgusted with the words I never said!

Soooo, I started confessing and praying and asking the Lord to help me, because I cannot change this in my own power!  I want my words to edify, encourage, build up others and glorify Jesus...
If out of the heart the mouth speaks, Lord, change my heart!  Quickly!
Amen.

Favoritism

Last night in our small group we discussed James 2:5,6.  Don't show favoritism...
The conversation was all over the place; we talked about the poor, the homeless, other races, the handicapped, marginalized, and gays.  Each of us shared different times when we have felt scared, angry, disgusted, uncomfortable or indifferent when dealing with people who are different than us.

I was hoping to talk more about times that each of us have felt excluded, but it only came out in bits and pieces.  It may have been helpful to talk about the sadness, loneliness or shame that accompanies being left out.  I wonder if we could have gleaned more insight from each other's pain than we did by only discussing how or when or if we show favoritism.

There have been many different times in my life when I have been excluded.  One particularly painful time in my life was at the tender age of 13.  My family left our baptist church that I had attended since birth and started attending the United Methodist Church just down the road from our house out in the country.  I was scared and excited because I knew most of the kids that attended; we all rode the bus together every day!  This group met often and had parties, bible studies and even drove to school dances in groups.  The day I went to an indoor pool party with the youth group things started going sour.  I was so young and happy to just be there, that I had fun with everybody, including all the boys. Needless to say, this did not please all the girls.  That night, we all went to a movie as a group and I grabbed the arms of two of the older guys who I felt were my new friends.  That may have cemented the girls' hatred of me for the rest of my time in that church.  Those "christian" girls started making life miserable for me.  They talked behind my back at parties, gave me dirty looks, excluded me from any girl talk, made fun of my small breast size and told the boys to leave me alone.  One boy ignored them and became my boyfriend only making things harder for me to become close with any of the girls.  One night I called the ringleader on the phone and asked her why she hated me so much.  She said that it was just a personality conflict.  That statement made me feel un-likable and that it was pointless to keep trying.  I found that life at church was now even harder than life at school.  Our family eventually left that church for other reasons, but I have never forgotten what it felt like to be shut out. And, I learned a valuable lesson:  always try to make others feel welcome, valuable, important, included.

My belief that I tell myself when dealing with any new person in my life is this:  I may not know you, but you are either my brother or sister in Christ or you are my potential brother or sister in Christ and you are valuable to God and to me.  Either way, I accept you where you are right now, enough said.

Rest

I am tired. I say that a lot. Every day and more than once a day. I should write down how many times a day I say it. While at work, I say it to co-workers. At home, I say it to my husband. I say it to the small groups I lead and when talking to friends on the phone. But, I keep on moving, working, leading, and going. I am worried that it is depression. I have so much to be thankful for...I wish I could always focus on the good, but I am regrettably fixated on the negative. So, in order to keep from making everyone uncomfortable around me, I make jokes. I entertain people with funny stories and anecdotes even when I feel like sleeping away the day in a numb bubble or calling in sick and having a pajama day with movies and potato chips. What am I hiding from? What aching pain is dragging me down and causing such fatigue?
2010 was a year of letting go. Letting go of a few things. Things like fixing the broken relationships in my extended family. I had to let go of my fantasy of living in a perfect world. (I wrote these words at the beginning of 2011).

Then 2011 came and slapped me with a dose of reality that almost did me in. Tired did not describe how low I felt. (some things that happen you just cannot share in a blog!)

Healing came slowly. Each morning I felt like I was climbing Mt. Everest without any oxygen tank to sustain me and that was just when I got out of bed.

Hope seemed something to be grasped in another place, another time. Not in this world. Not for me. That feeling lingered for many months.

2012 is here and I face it with a gentle resolve. To be still. To let God be God. To let go.

To Rest. A friend often reminds me that a woman at rest is attractive to a weary world.

Foggedaboutit!

Reading in Isaiah 43 this morning, my eye caught a couple of verses I had underlined years ago.

Verse 19 says: "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past."

Verse 26 says: "Review the past for me, let us argue the matter together; state the case for your innocence."

These two verses seem to contradict each other...

Sometimes when I tell people my story; with good intentions they tell me not to dwell on it. It's in the past. We have an older neighbor across the street who loves to say with a strong polish accent, "Foggedaboutit!" (Translation: Forget about it!) Lately I have been really struggling with whether we should foggedaboutit or consider verse 26. How do we reconcile our differences if we simply "forget" and try to live as if there were no wrongs done? Obviously we need to talk over an issue if there is an accusation and a need for stating one's innocence.

And what about a person who is still haunted by his/her childhood? Is there true recovery from abuse if we rush past the memories and try to forget? Are we trying too hard to hurry up and forgive? Can we forgive completely when we haven't first looked at the depth of the damage done? Is that even possible? Or can we forgive without forgetting? I hope so!!! Sara Groves sings these words "And I'm not God; I'm a girl. I confess that I don't have a sea of forgetfulness."

So what does it mean to forget the past? I have read that when Joseph said "...God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father's household;" he wasn't saying that he couldn't remember what happened, but that he was canceling the debt! Still, I am not sure if the word forget in verse 19 means to cancel the debt...especially since the last half says "do not dwell on the past." So, should we forget or review? Like so many other passages of scripture, there seems to be a yes/no/both apply conundrum. I find that oddly comforting sometimes. If there is more than one answer to a question, then we as finite humans cannot hit each other over the head with one verse to prove our point!

So today I am embracing both of these verses...and hoping that God will show me when and where to apply each.