Unto the Least

I have been participating in the 30 days of thankfulness thing that goes around Facebook this time of year.  It's a great exercise in really being mindful and giving some real thought to the blessings in our lives.  There is something about writing it out that really does make you feel so much gratitude for all that is good in your life.  I try to write a post specifically about my husband, each of my children, my grandchildren, and my son-in-law.  I already posted about my best and oldest friend, and my amazing boss and coworkers, and I have another couple of friends I want to post on.  I like to give each person their own space so I can thoroughly express what they mean to me.  But honestly, there have been a couple of days that were rough because I wasn't feeling well, so on those days I did find something to post thankfulness about, but I felt like it was okay to also say that I was having a rough day.  God is cool like that; I know that he understands when I need to just say you know God, I'm having a pretty crappy day.  He likes it when we are honest and transparent.  In fact, he prefers it that way.

This past weekend Jay and I went down to Waco to attend worship at Church Under the Bridge (read about it here: http://www.churchunderthebridge.org/).  Our son Andy is a member of BRH, a worship choir at Baylor University, and they were leading worship on Sunday at CUB.  It is literally under a bridge at the main overpass right adjacent to Baylor.  It is pastored by Jimmy Dorrell, the Director of Mission Waco.  Many of the people who come are homeless, or from various shelters.  There are also folks there who are not homeless, who are members of local churches, but choose to worship at this church either every week or on a frequent basis, just because they love these people.  Breakfast is provided by a different local church each week.  They have small groups, and groups for the kids.  Just like any church.  But not.  Not at all.  There is a lot of love, and lot of genuine need, and a lot of pain, all displayed on the many different faces, young, old and in between.  Most are there because they love God and know that they have a need for something beyond their physical needs; some don't know or care, they just come for the food.  Either way they are met with love and compassion and genuine friendship.

During this particular worship service, communion was served.  It was pretty informal - we stood in line, tore off a piece of bread from a large French loaf, and picked up a small plastic cup of grape juice with a lid on it.  (The bread thing didn't bother me at all, but I will say if you are a germophobe, you would need to get over that if you are going to work with homeless people.)  After some words by Jimmy, everyone partook in the usual manner.  Afterward, Jimmy asked that each person turn to the person next to them and tell them something they were thankful for.  Jay turned to me to tell me he was thankful for me (there was no one sitting on his other side).  By this point in the service, I was so overcome with emotion from thinking about the ridiculous amount of material wealth I have compared to the people around me, and just HOW MUCH need there is and how many people are hurting and feeling SO very humbled and helpless and useless and embarrassed at all I have, that I was literally unable to even speak to tell him what I was thankful for. 

If you know me, I am not a person who cries much at all.  I am moved emotionally, often, but it rarely brings tears.  But it was all I could do to keep from sobbing out loud.  God has been doing a work in me, in both of us, for the last couple of years, moving our hearts to get involved in the work of serving the poor and needy, the hurting, the outsiders, the ones who are not like us.  He has created a restlessness in our hearts to make some big changes, and we have come to the point where obedience is required.  And this service was just a huge reminder, and a confirmation in my heart, that God is leading us. 

Leading us where?  I don't know.  Leading us to what?  I don't know.  And being the Scheduler that I am (one of Jay's pet names for me), resting in and being content with "I don't know" is one of the hardest things you could ask me to do.  I like to plan, I make lists, I calendar just almost every activity in my life so that I can know what to expect and plan accordingly.  And if you move my cheese, it takes me some time to adjust.  Not that I can't adjust, it just doesn't happen immediately. 

I had a conversation with my dearest friend just yesterday about living in the moment, and I told her I'm not really so much of a live in the moment girl as a "how much can I get done in this block of time" girl.  I even "triage" my lists if there is more to get done than is possible that day.

But God doesn't operate by my lists, or my timetables, or my slightly dysfunctional need to know and plan and plan some more.  He asks me to trust him with today.  And then tomorrow.  And then the day, the month, the year after that.  He promises that he has a plan for my life, but he does not promise to reveal it to me more than one day, sometimes one hour, at a time.

So.  I pray a lot.  I worry a lot.  I speculate and wonder and guess and try to make a plan that I can offer God, you know, just to help him out.  Here you go, here's a good plan that I think will work, if you'll just sign off on it we can get started.  That sort of thing.  Not happening. 

So I will wait on the Lord.  I will take the steps he asks of me, at the time he asks it.  I will have to trust, and hope that I understand clearly.  And if I don't, and I go the wrong way or get on the wrong path, I know he will guide me back.  Either gently, or if I am being stubborn or dense, perhaps with a more tangible bop on the head or kick in the pants. 

In this season of thankfulness, the thing I am most thankful for, beyond my family, my friends, my job, my home, food on my table, clothes to wear - more than all of that, I am thankful that I serve a God who loves me enough to sacrifice his son for me, and enough to challenge me and push me out of my comfort zone and make me grow for his purposes and to serve the ones he loves.  He makes me accountable for all the blessings he has given me, to give back, to be his hands and feet, to show his love to those who need it most, regardless of their circumstance or lifestyle, whether they know him or not.  We are all God's children.  God bless us every one.

Matthew 25:39-40

Truth: Do You Dare?

Writer's Note:  This post concerns an incident from several years in the past, not recent.  I wrote it down to get my thoughts out, saved it, and just ran across it again today and decided it was a worthy topic.

What exactly is truth?  And can we really handle it?  We claim to be truth seekers – at least most of us do, but is truth really what we seek, and what we offer?  Deep thoughts, I know, but a recent conversation with a friend got me pondering the whole issue of the nature of truth.

Actually, to tell the truth (insert ironic snort here), it wasn’t so much a conversation with a friend as it was her telling me some personal things to which I had a very strong reaction and deep concerns that she was heading for some big trouble, and that I did not verbalize.  In other words, I did not speak my true feelings about what she was telling me, and after we hung up, I found myself wondering why it was so hard to just be honest with her.  And I came to the mortifying conclusion that in this particular instance, though it would be easy to say I didn’t tell her the truth in order to spare her feelings, the reality of it was that I didn’t tell her the truth because it benefited me.  I would have risked her backing away, shutting me out, not feeling safe to come to me any more, or even worse, deciding that she did not want us to be close friends any more.  And if that were to happen, I not only would lose her friendship, but I would likely lose some connections with other people that I want to stay connected with for many reasons, because she is closer to them than I am.  So, in pondering this situation, I realized that I actually had very self-centered reasons for not telling the truth.

How often do we opt to tell only part of the truth, or some version of the truth, or the sanitized truth, or even an out and out lie, for reasons that are less than altruistic?  I like to believe, and often say, that I am an open book and that what you see is what you get.  But the truth (there’s that word again) is that there is probably no one in my life, not even my husband, who knows everything about me.  Sure he knows a lot, but there are many things I have never told him and probably never will.  Things from the past, to be sure, but still . . .  And among my friends, I can count on one hand, actually maybe half a hand, the ones with whom I’m even mostly transparent and honest.  I have a tendency to only have a very small number of close friends at a time, and even those relationships can be difficult for me to take beyond a certain level. 

How often we say the thing we think someone wants to hear, rather than our real opinion on the matter.  I am literally physically unable to have a confrontation with someone other than my closest family members, and so when an issue arises with a friend where some hard things need to be said, they go unspoken.

 

This particular character flaw has caused me no end of internal grief, as you know if you read this blog or know me, that I am a self-confessed people pleaser. And yet, when you have a deep need to say something hard but true, and you just cannot bring yourself to do it, you are the one that ends up suffering and making yourself miserable and wondering.  Wondering what if I told the truth?  What if they don't like what I have to say?  What if they don't . . . love me anymore? 

 

There, that's the crux of it really.  What if they don't love me anymore.  Because that would be the worst thing.  Except would it, really?  If someone stops loving me because I say something to them that they don't like or don't want to hear, is that a love worth being UNtruthful to maintain? 

 

I don't have a wise and sage answer, just the questions.  Always the questions.  But I'd love to learn to be more truthful, and I am working on it.  And it's hard and reeeeeealllly uncomfortable.  Because sometimes when the truth hurts, it hurts the teller as well as the hearer.

Unglued: The Truest Thing About Me . . .

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
~ II Corinthians 10:5 NIV84

Whoa.  Chapter 12 came at me like a runaway truck, just at a time when I was struggling with the very things Lysa talks about in this chapter.  I was reading sections out loud to my husband, saying "I feel exactly like that so often!" 

Lysa wrote, "Have you ever been in a situation in which something small feels really big?"  Why yes I have.  And she also cautions that if we are not careful, "these misguided feelings can distract us, discourage us, and trigger past pain to start taunting us."

Okay.  Nail.  Head.  Me.  I have shared on here before my struggles with being a people pleaser.  Well, hand in hand with that little dysfunctional personality trait comes what I like to call "talker's/doer's remorse."  I have a fairly self-destructive habit of second-guessing my words or actions, after the fact.  I overthink, sometimes to a ridiculous degree, something I said or did, wondering if perhaps it was rude, or insensitive, or if I didn't really make myself understood well, or if the person is angry at me, or any number of other scenarios where I should have said more, or less, of different, words.  I dissect conversations, looking for places where an expression on someone's face or a subtle tone in a remark or some passive-aggressive hint would tell me that I had screwed up royally and needed to make amends or fix it somehow.  Sometimes I do go back and offer an apology for any misunderstanding or hurt, and in most cases the person seems genuinely puzzled that I thought there was a problem.  But of course every now and then there really was a hurt or angry feelings, so when I begin the "remorse" cycle, well you get the picture. In the case of doer's remorse, I often think, after the fact, oh I wish I'd done this, or wouldn't it have been great if I'd thought to do this, or oh Lord I should not have done that.  I don't think on my feet well in social situations and when that happens, the "shoulda, coulda, woulda" is soon to follow.

Earlier this week, I was sinking in a bog of past regrets to the point that I was feeling blue and depressed for a couple of days.  That's about 36 hours longer than I usually wallow in misery about stuff.  Usually I wallow a while, then I self-talk myself back into my happy place.  But this week, for some reason I just could not climb out.  My poor patient husband, who is a great listener and sounding board, was at a loss as to how to help me.  He is not a person who struggles with regret very often, and he just could not understand why I was mourning over every little thing I felt I had messed up since we'd been married (at least I'm sure it seemed that way to him). 

And then I read this chapter.  At exactly the right time.  And then I read over it again, along with the final chapter in the book.  And those two chapters together = light bulb time for this girl.

Usually I am totally imagining any problematical scenarios that have arisen (only in my little mind in most cases) from my verbal blunder or social faux pas.  But I will worry about it and beat myself up and overthink and analyze and just chew it to death, feeling that somehow, again, I have failed.

There are times when I will just hop on that wheel of regret and spin until my eyes roll back in my head, thinking back over decisions I've made that I regret, choices that should have been different, things about the way I raised my kids that I now realize I could have done so much better, things said and unsaid to my parents, who are both now gone, words said in anger to my husband . . . you get the idea.  It is a vortex of doom and gloom that can suck you down and make you feel like the biggest failure in the world.

When I was thinking about this blog post and trying to come up with a title, I remembered something that I heard in an evening worship time on a youth group mission trip in 1999 (I remember the year because it was my daughter's last mission trip during the summer just after she graduated high school).  This statement had such a profound effect on me that I wrote it in my Bible, and when I got home, I typed it up on small pieces of paper, framed it and kept one for me and gave one to several friends I was going through a leadership class with at church.  It sits on a shelf above my desk at work, and I realized as I was writing this that, along with the scripture from 2 Corinthians, I need to be reading this and claiming it as truth, every day, so that I can free myself from the captivity of regret:

The Truest Thing

The truest thing about me
Is always what God says
Not what I think or feel
Not what others say or do
The truest thing about me
Is always what God says

So simple. And yet so full of the truth of God, the truth of scripture, the truth that we need to cling to when we are tempted to beat ourselves up, and when we hop on that crazy wheel of regret and failure.

Remember The Truest Thing about YOU is ALWAYS what God says.  Always.