Archive for family
June 15, 2008 at 10:30 pm · Filed under family, loving others
I Have Always Missed Him
By Tina Gasperson
When I heard my stepmother’s voice on the phone telling me that my father had lung cancer, I was so horrified, but all I could remember thinking was “Thank God I already quit smoking.” I made plans to go up to Atlanta and see him, but he was already too far gone to seem like my real dad. I guess he’d waited too long to go to the doctor for that nagging cough, and lung cancer has a tendency to grow quickly.
Walking into his bedroom, I saw that he’d been banished from the king-sized bed and was lying on a white-sheeted hospital loaner with a big television sitting on a table at the foot of it. He didn’t recognize me at first, or if he did he chose not to acknowledge me. It wasn’t so much that he was on the edge of death, it was that he was stoned out of his mind on morphine. He hardly noticed what was going on around him, except for the television, which seemed to have become his world. He reacted to the scenes of the Western movie that was on as though he was one of the characters – maybe the town drunk, the way the slurred non-sequiturs dripped here and there from his mouth.
I was able to capture his attention a bit better after I shut the TV off. He seemed to be listening as I spoke, but his first words to me were, “give me a cigarette.” I wasn’t feeling too good about fulfilling that request, given the circumstances, but my stepmother assured me that I might as well give him one, and light it for him too, if that’s what made him happy. Since he’s going to die anyway, is probably what she was thinking. So for the first time in my life, I helped my dad light his Lucky Strike, cupping the flame on the lighter while cursing the tobacco for its part in taking the life out of my father. I couldn’t stop thinking about how embarrassed he’d be if he actually knew what was going on.
I know he would be, because I sure was. I’d never seen my dad naked, except for the occasional unsanctioned glimpses when I barged into his room without permission. But here he lay under the sheet, without a stitch of clothing. I meant to ask my stepmother, an LPN, why she chose to keep him unclothed but I never got around to it. When she and my stepsister took off for a much needed shopping break, I found out why: I was the only one around to maneuver his bed-ridden body over to the pan. For this daughter, helping my father pee was so far outside my comfort zone that getting it over quickly was the best course of action. It would have taken far too long to try to deal with clothing on top of it. I flipped the sheet back over him quickly and dumped the goods in the toilet.
Once that trauma was over, I was able to sit and soak in some of the ambiance of the world of a cancer patient. Mostly I just wanted to look at his face and try to find my dad. I wanted to look, but I didn’t want to. The face that used to be the most handsome man in the world to me was now like a skeleton with skin draped on. The steely blue eyes that had looked at me with love and anger and all the emotions in between, seemed colorless and far away. I’d never spent enough time with my dad. He was always traveling on business, or finding new women to be with. I worshiped him, like any girl does with her father. I thought about when I was eleven and I learned everything about football and made myself sit down and watch the games with him, because that’s what he liked to do and I wanted to do it with him.
I remembered his hands, how warm they were the times when he had touched my face. I remembered sitting on his lap and laying my head on his chest, and how the hair there always showed above the second button of his shirt (the top button was never done). I remembered the smell of his fingers – they smelled like tobacco – and the faint smell of the cologne mixed in. I remember the time, after I was grown up with children of my own, that he’d sent me a card and he had double-underlined the words I Love You. More than anything, I just wanted him to remember me. Here I was with him alone, something that had happened only a handful of times in my life. This was probably the last time I would ever be with him, and all I could selfishly think was how badly I wanted him to tell me he loved me. How much I wished this could all go away and he would just be my dad again.
About a week later I got another call. He was dead. I never saw his body. It was cremated before I could get back up there. There was an informal memorial service there in Atlanta, but his gravesite was to be in New Jersey. Nobody remembered to tell me where. And I guess that was ok, because I didn’t ask.
I only have a few pictures of my dad from later in his life. My favorite one shows him leaning against a big oak tree with his cowboy hat on. I don’t like the cowboy hat. But his face is beautiful to me. He looks so familiar, but at the same time so hard to reach. I have always missed him. Why should today be different?
May 28, 2008 at 9:59 pm · Filed under family, fun stuff, growing in God, loving others, struggling with sin
Is it a good idea to have expectations of others in a love relationship? I mean, is it even really possible to do that? To expect someone to behave a certain way or to become a certain person or improve in a certain way? I think that is making love conditional, because love and acceptance go hand in hand.
Love means I embrace you fully just as you are and will continue to do so. And this idea of unconditional love can be held separate from the idea of boundaries. Having boundaries in a relationship means that you cannot physically or mentally hold me hostage or I will remove myself from your presence, perhaps permanently. And this is good and right and doesn’t negate the idea of love.
But expectations create conditions. The person who feels entitled waits, perhaps impatiently, for the expected actions or change in the other person, and until that happens, there is something missing in the relationship. My husband could tell me every day how much he loves me, but if he is also telling me that he expects my appetite for sex to increase by 30% and that I’d better hop to it, I’m not believing that I am accepted. Or if he tells me that my cooking needs to be as delicious and well-presented as Rachael Ray’s technique and that he’s going on a diet until that happens, I’m not feeling encouraged.
Sometimes unspoken expectations scream the loudest. If Darin looked at every beautiful young woman that passed by him while we were having a conversation, instead of focusing on me, that would certainly deliver a message to me. If I go on and on about how Pastor Dashing is so wise and so well-spoken and how captivated I am by his every word, I might be saying something I don’t really want to say to my husband, especially if I’ve been nagging him or complaining to him about something I think he’s doing wrong, or ignoring him, or waiting for him to get on the stick.
I was thinking about this the other day and comparing it to some behaviors I have with my kids. I noticed that I told my daughter what a good worker she is, and I really meant it, and since then, she almost can’t stop herself from doing things around the house. I mean, even when she doesn’t want to, she feels compelled to do it because she believes that she is a good worker. On the other hand, unfortunately, I’ve not told my son the same thing because I’ve seen that doing chores around the house doesn’t come quite as naturally to him. And so he balks at every opportunity to help out. I’m going to do a little experiment, and I’ll let you know how it works. I’m going to start encouraging my son every single time he does one little bit of anything around the house. I’m going to praise him for it and tell him he’s a good worker. And I’m going to ignore it when he does a crappy job. Yes, I am going to stuff a sock in my mouth and be quiet. And over the next several months, I’m going to see if unconditional love and acceptance work better than expectations.
I’ll check back in 12 weeks or so and let you know how my experiment worked.
May 26, 2008 at 3:11 pm · Filed under family
I guess she had to do it. She didn’t know any other way of making the separation happen. The separation is supposed to happen, when a child grows up. For some reason it didn’t happen with her, not the way it is supposed to. Like when you’re 12 and you inch away from your dad because you don’t want anyone to see you with him. You love him, and you know you couldn’t live without him, but you just don’t want anyone else to know it. Or when you’re 15 and you sneak out to smoke cigarettes and curse with your friends and you know your mom would kill you if she found out and that’s why you’re doing it.
She never did those things, and I think she got stuck. And she had to do something about that but she didn’t know what do to do, so in a moment of desperation and super human adrenaline strength, she picked up a big boulder and lodged it firmly between her and me. The boulder is high and wide and deep and neither one of us can see past it or around it and it is too high to climb over. And we are separated now. Not much to be done about that. But I supposed it needed to happen. Just not like this.
And so she’s not stuck anymore but I am. It’s on the holidays that it seems to matter most. She’s not here, and not just in a physical sense, but in an emotional sense. And she keeps going further away and there’s nothing I can do. I don’t know whether it’s intentional or not, but the way the boulder landed made it so that there’s nothing left for us to talk about. And on days like today I miss her the most. And I’m stuck like Bruce Willis in the Sixth Sense. Like he didn’t know he was dead, I keep forgetting that she’s not mine anymore.
Am I the only one who gets so deeply impacted by the cruel ironies of life like this? How cruel is it, God, that you give us children and ask us to pour into them our very life, and we are the most important thing in their lives, and you give it a good couple of decades to really sink in, and then you take them away? And we become irrelevant. I walk around looking into the eyes of others to see if I can see the pain.
My children have left….
I am divorced now….
My youth and my beauty have faded… no one sees me anymore…
Everyone I work with is younger than me and my ideas are boring…
My husband is dying…
This is my Memorial Day. I look into the eyes of my children, the ones I have left. I hold their hands, trying to memorize the softness. I look into their eyes and see the trust and love. I try to carve an indelible memory but I know it will fade like the others. All the other thousands of moments… the first step, the first time she read to me, learning to drive… it all fades into a hazy blur and all I have, once again, is this moment.. no this one… no, this one.
Today I will probably get irritated with my kids and tell them to leave me alone.
May 24, 2008 at 1:16 pm · Filed under dying to self, faith, family, fellowship, growing in God, ideals, struggling with sin
Many of us are victims of hurt from other women. Most of the time it comes from a childhood hurt. For me, it was rejection. Cold, unfeeling rejection from two girls that I thought were my best friends. Many years later, I realize it is possible that neither of them meant to hurt me. But their actions left a lasting wound that perhaps only now is healing.
Women are often suspicious of each other. I have found that whenever I talk about my former “issues” with women, it strikes a chord with other women, who tell me that they have given up and just decided to hang out with men.
The root of this is the kind of childhood hurts like I experienced, coupled with the messages society delivers about what makes women valuable. These messages literally pit us one against another in an endless competition to be the most beautiful, the sexiest, the youngest looking, the best dressed, the most well off, and to get the man. Even if he is someone else’s man. Even if he is yours.
So after we experience the sting of childhood rejection, then they pile on with the news that we have to watch out or some nasty but beautiful vixen is going to snatch our husband or boyfriend out from under our nose, especially if we are not thin, smooth-skinned, and large-breasted enough to continuously captivate our mate and any other man in our presence.
This is not a good environment for friend-making. We don’t trust each other. We’re insecure, and we think everyone else is making us look bad. Just drive to work and you’ll receive hundreds of messages designed to make you feel bad about yourself so you will buy something.
I am convinced that because we women are constantly receiving the message “not good enough,” we see other women not as friends, but as dangerous rivals. We put up our defenses, just waiting for the first slight. If someone else is having a bad day and snaps at us or ignores us or says something insensitive, we take it as a personal rejection. Many times we snap back, or take our hurt and go hurt someone else with it.
My prayer today for all my sisters is that we would recognize our need for healing in our relationships with each other, and our need to overcome the deadly message of Madison Avenue. I know you all think I am “smoking something” with my posts on stepping out of the matrix and not following the systems of this world, but let me tell you that you are better off without these things. Living the message of Madison Avenue brings death to the things that are really important - the things that, when we get to the end of our life, we realize are the things that matter.
I got to be 40 and realized I had this hole in my heart that was missing friendships with women. Since I have begun to heal from my past hurts, I have discovered the nourishing quality of relationship with the fairer sex. With my female friends, I can be mothered. I can also mother and mentor. With my girlfriends, I can be a child. I can be myself in a safe environment where I know they love me. I can grow. Oh yes, we step on each others’ toes sometimes and it hurts. But “wounds from a friend can be trusted,” goes the Proverb. When it comes to friendships with women, “Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?” In other words, we will get angry with each other, but anger is born of true relationship. When we are envious of others’ status, that destroys relationship. Anger can make our relationships stronger, as long as we work through the anger and keep on trusting each other.
If you are one of those women who just don’t “do women,” I get you. I used to be you and I know that it feels safer to just avoid the issue of female relationships. I also know that there is an ache in your heart to experience the God-given blessing of healthy relationships with women. I am praying for you, my sister, to overcome your woundedness and reach out to that motherly woman who needs a daughter like you. Or to pick up the phone and call that mother who needs a sister, or that young girl who needs a mother. Don’t reach the end of your life and realize that in protecting yourself, you have missed what is really important in this life. In giving of yourself you will receive so much more. It really is worth the risk.
May 21, 2008 at 9:13 pm · Filed under family, little "c" church, paradigms
I make it my business to avoid the systems of this culture and this world as much as I am able to see those systems and recognize them for what they are. If you’ve never seen The Matrix, then maybe you’ve never thought about the systems of this world and how they conceal true freedom and spirituality with a deceptive sheen of “the good life,” or “social norms,” or “what is best for us.”
Think about all the routines and activities we are expected to participate in. Dress, political systems, homes, educational and medical systems, transportation, medical care, religious structures, careers, what we eat, what we feed our animals, what we allow others to shoot into our veins.
If you’ve never thought about these things before you may wonder what in the hell I am talking about.
Let’s choose just one item from the above list: our educational system. Did you know that human children learn and grow without much interference from us? If we love them, feed them, and give them shelter, their minds naturally grab hold of the information in their environments and they process it and learn. This is how God made them. They learn how to talk and walk and control their bladder. If exposed to reading material and people reading, they learn how to read. These things happen on individual timetables, depending on the individual. Did you know that the schedules for learning these things that we impose on our children are artificial?
Many people will tell you it is crazy and unnatural to simply let children learn as they will, on their own timetable. But have you ever thought about how crazy and unnatural it is to put 30 children all the same age into a room together and expect them all to process information the same way, at the same time?
Many people will tell you that children must “be educated properly” in order to have the best opportunities in life. Do you know how many people get college degrees in all sorts of carefully calculated arenas and never do anything with them? Perhaps even more important, do you know how many people never even graduated from high school and are highly “successful” (according to the systems of this world) in fields that many people think you could never get a job in without a college degree?
Many people will tell you that parents are not qualified to educate their children properly. Properly, meaning according to the artificially created standards of the systems of this world. Do you know how many children in public schools cannot read? Perhaps even more important, do you know how many children are “unschooled” who can read circles around their public-school educated peers?
All of these “rules” about educating our children exist simply to disguise the fact that we are wonderfully fashioned by our loving God, who created us as learning machines. Our humanistic society tells us instead that children must be subjected to the system, whether that system is public school or its imitators, private school and school at home, in order to learn properly. A God-denying culture says that unless we “play the game” we cannot function in society and we will never succeed at anything “important.”
The truth is that people who have not been submerged in societal norms for education can still participate in traditional career paths. For example, someone in my immediate family who was “unschooled” at home through high school and does not have a college degree, was just promoted to Assistant Vice President of a local bank. Not only that, but I myself dropped out of high school and never went to a day of journalism school, yet I manage to make a good living reporting and writing.
Even so, who says that being an officer of a bank or a journalist is a measure of success? These too are artificially created standards of success. If you’re raising your children with the idea that you must provide them with just the right education and pay their way through college, you’re missing it. If you think that making enough money to have a good mortgage, nice car, and plenty of insurance is success, you’re totally bought into the matrix.
There is so much more to this idea of systems. It truly is a case of the emperor’s new clothes. The more one delves into this and spends time thinking about it, the more disturbing it becomes. If you read this blog, you’ve already read some of my thoughts about the religious systems and you know that my family has stepped out of those systems with great joy and growth in our spiritual life and, yes, even in our fellowship with other believers, despite those who claim we are “lone rangers.”
If you spend some quality time thinking about what the world expects from us, and how much we automatically participate in those things without even realizing that there is another way, you might start asking why. And if you start asking why, your world will never be the same. Or you could just take the blue pill and keep right on with your nice little existence.
Morpheus: Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes…. Remember, all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more….
May 3, 2008 at 3:08 pm · Filed under Jesus, dying to self, faith, family, growing in God, paradigms, struggling with sin
This morning I was thinking (ok I was obsessing) about the importance of being right and doing right and making sure our loved ones can see what is right and do what is right. Then Jesus said, “But Tina, this is how the world will know that you are my disciple: that you love one another.” And I thought that was just so off topic. How off topic of you, Jesus. And he just looked at me and loved me.
So maybe it’s not about getting everyone on track, after all.
April 3, 2008 at 8:43 pm · Filed under Church, Jesus, bible, dying to self, faith, family, freedom, ideals, little "c" church, paradigms, struggling with sin, systems
My good friend submitted a comment on my post entitled “God.” I thought he raised some good questions, so I decided to make my reply a post where everyone could see it — perhaps there are others with similar thoughts and questions about my post and my intentions.
Tina, are you trying to engage conversation or controversy?
I see your over all concept idea of idolatry, but prejuduces, woundings, and crusades can be idols as well.
If the Bible is not divine or our final athority (or God-breathed) do we go to YOU for your emotional empressions of what God is saying at the moment. Or are we left with the maddness of the people in the time of the Book of Judges where people did “that which was right in their own eyes?”
How do we even understand what a relationship with Jesus is like if you have denied me the divinity and authority of the Bible? That is the only source I have which tells me what he was like and what he said. “If you want to know what my father is like, look at me.”
True….we do not worship translations…but His Word is truth and is a light unto my path and living water to my soul.
True….communinion is not divine…but is a wonderful gift of grace, a remainder how much he loves me, that he was willing to accept my rebellion, pride, hurts, fear, and pride to save the person I would become.
True….the church is not final authority…but hidden within the organization it has become is the Bride of Christ he is purifying and preparing to present to his Father. I REFUSE to forsake even ONE member of her just because she seems surrounded by inempt and frustrating rules and regulations. If she needs encouragement, that is why Christ has not taken me home; not to rail but to restore.
As a member of the clergy, if my fellow ministers have wounded you or you family, I want to to be the one to assume the responsiblity of asking your forgiveness. Too long we have wounded with our demandes and regations.
Hey Dave,
First of all, I love you a lot, bro.
I see I have struck a somewhat dissonant note here for you. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to explain, clarify, etc.
I guess I tend to engender controversy. It’s not intentional. But it does happen. I don’t shy away from it most of the time, but neither do I intentionally court it because honestly, my life would be a LOT easier if this controversy didn’t happen.
You seem to be saying (and correct me if I am wrong) that I have prejudices, woundings, and at least one crusade, and my interpretation of your statement is that these are the motivation for the things I have written in this post. Am I correct? For the purposes of this reply I will assume for now that I am correct.
So, if I am honest, yes, I do have prejudices - I think we all do. Prejudices are kind of nebulous usually and hard to nail down so I’m really not sure what prejudices I may be motivated by on a daily basis. I think prejudices are based in fear of the unknown, though, and don’t think I have many unknowns when it comes to the institution.
I have been wounded by many many things in my life, not the least of which is the institution. I think it is fair enough to say that all of us either have been or will be. But this was long ago in my past - probably about 10 years ago now, and while I was very, very angry at the time and allowed my anger and bitterness to put a wedge between me and Papa, this is no longer the case. I made my peace with the institution and even embraced it, for years. Some of my best friends are clergy. I am not angry or wounded any longer by anything the institution does - if I am angry it is only for the big picture injustice of the entire system and how it feeds on people, including clergy, to sustain itself.
Dave, I guess I’d take your comments about the Bible and turn them around: How in God’s name can we say that the Bible is the final authority and not Jesus himself? We have replaced Jesus with the Bible. Is Scripture inspired? Of course it is! Is it the most inspired piece of Christian literature that exists? I would probably have to say yes to that! Is it the fourth person of the Godhead? NO! Is it even the Word that is mentioned in Scripture? No, I don’t believe so! I believe that Jesus is the Word of God. If we believe that the Word of God is actually Scripture, then when John wrote that the Word was God … well nevermind because I think we have actually adopted that belief and mindset in evangelical circles that the Bible is God. That’s a problem if you ask me. But don’t ask me, ask Jesus! I’m definitely not the person where the buck stops. Don’t look at me, look at Jesus.
And yes, His Word is truth and a light unto my path: his Word is JESUS, not a book. Even the book points us to Jesus and not to itself. But we only go to the book and then stop there, thinking that’s enough and it’s not.
Communion is a great reminder of God’s grace, I don’t think we disagree there. My beef is more with the Catholic idea that communion is the actual body and blood of Jesus, which renders it God.
In protestant churches, the Word of God must be cloistered and guarded by professional clergy, just as in the Catholic church, the Eucharist must be cloistered and guarded by professional clergy, because we have given these inanimate objects a divinity that they should not have.
And regarding the Church, which is the actual bride, she is not hidden inside the institution, David, but throughout the entire world. The institution does not envelop the bride because she must and shall go free. Are there some members of the bride who move inside those institutions? Yes. Does walking free of the institution mean one is forsaking anyone? No, it does not. If I am a part of the true Body, I cannot forsake it because I AM a member of it. If you, as a member of the Body, choose to move within the system but remain separate from it because that is what Papa has told you to do, then do it with all your might. If I, as a member of the Body, choose to go out to the wilderness with Jesus on my arm because I heard him calling me out to it, then I will do it and proclaim it with all my might.
I think there are good-hearted people who believe, mistakenly, that being “of” the system is the best way to follow God. Do I condemn those people? Of course not! The couple who runs the last institutional church we were a part of are still our friends, we just saw them the other day and had a blast hanging out. The wife is asking us to come back to the small group we were part of where we had such great friendships and dug into Truth. We kind of chuckled because if we went back to that group that met in a friend’s home, there’s no way we could keep quiet about our views on the institution. Butwe are all on a journey and none of us has the ultimate and final solution except to the extent that we have Jesus. Isn’t it interesting that when we boil away everything that truly isn’t necessary, we are left with Jesus. That’s all I was saying in the post. That was my heart that I was sharing. Thanks for giving me the opportunity once again to share it more fully.
With much sisterly affection,
Tina
March 8, 2008 at 7:54 pm · Filed under Church, family, fellowship, freedom, little "c" church, paradigms
As is the case with many items on my blog, this post was inspired by the writings of Jim Lehmer.
We introverted, less social-butterflyesque individuals often feel guilty about our tendency to either avoid certain large gatherings or hide in the midst of them. I think the reason we tend to feel guilty is because of perceived social mores: one is expected to make small talk, interact with many people, and enjoy groups just for the sake of being with people. This is especially true in “Christian” circles, because of that dreaded hijacking of the term fellowship by the institution.
It’s easy for a Sanguine to pick up on the perceived social aspects in this wrongly defined fellowship. The Sanguine is always looking for more people, more social opportunities, and more excitement. Have you ever been talking with someone who asked you a question about yourself and then as soon as you began to answer you could see them scanning the room looking for someone else to approach? This is a classic outgoing Sanguine. They just can’t help it. Sanguines love the institutional definition of fellowship and can’t understand why everyone else doesn’t get on board with it. From there, it is all too easy to ascribe someone else’s lack of desire to interact in this way to a spiritual deficiency, and since this is all some people have been taught, the introverted melancholy starts believing they’re slackers too.
But that’s a lie! We are not slackers! And we are not violating some commandment of God because we’re not into the whole socializing thing. I remember when Darin and I finally realized that it was OK for us to be who God made us to be. We are melancholy. When we could start to see that God made us that way FOR A GOOD REASON, we could finally stop feeling guilty about who we are. And that made it easier to realize that fellowship IS NOT HANGING AROUND AT SOCIAL EVENTS AND DOING SMALL TALK.
Fellowship is what you already have if you are a believer. And so if you are a Sanguine believer, you will seek out the kind of opportunities for *expression of fellowship* (not fellowship, because you already have that) that seem right to you. And if you are a melancholy believer, it may be more difficult sometimes to find an expression of fellowship because, hey, we’re not always scanning the crowd looking for our next opportunity to “people up.” And that’s OK.
But most of us don’t realize it’s OK because we’ve been Hebrews 10:25′ed over the head for so long with the institutional interpretation of this passage. Let’s unpack that real quick. Looking at the Youngs Literal Translation, we are given: “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together…” OK, who is doing what in this sentence fragment? Let’s see. You and I are “not forsaking.” And who is “assembling” or “building” his church? That’s right, Jesus. And who is his church? Yes, that’s right: “ourselves” in this sentence. So, unpacked, what this little sentence fragment says is “don’t resist Jesus as he is building his church, putting each piece of the body where he sees fit.”
Somewhere along the line, we got so wrapped up in our church traditions that we thought we needed to change what the Bible said, “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together…” to something that fit in with our notions a bit better: “don’t give up meeting together.” We took the responsibility for assembling the pieces away from Jesus and gave it to church leaders. And then we took that and starting beating up all the melancholy people and forcing them into the institutional box. To me, what that looks like is, we just don’t trust Jesus to build his church as he sees fit, so we have to jump in there and manipulate and control people to make sure they’re doing what we somehow have come to believe is the right thing when it comes to living life as a Jesus-follower.
But God made us different, on purpose. Melancholies have a deep, deep love for humanity and a deep compassion for the hurting people in this world. Melancholies think deeply about issues and concerns, and look deep inside to examine themselves in light of the ideal that Jesus left for us. Because of that, Melancholies don’t do small talk well. And that’s OK, just like it’s OK to be a Sanguine and enjoy small talk. What’s not OK is to look down on someone else because they’re not the same as you, or to beat yourself up because you’re different. Hanging out with people can take many different forms: one or two people, or a “small group,” or a few dozen people, or hundreds if that’s what you’re into, and each form is but one *expression of fellowship.*
Jesus is assembling us together as he sees fit. Forsaking that can be either rejecting the leading of the Spirit to connect with someone, or it can be taking matters into your own hands and creating Frankenfellowship.
This is getting really long, but I just saw another really clear application of the free woman/slave woman analogy. Remember how God told Abram, as recorded in Genesis 15, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
And then God had Abram waiting. A long time. And Sarai, his wife, started thinking maybe it was time to make something happen. So she told Abram in Genesis 16, “The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.”
Do you see how we take God’s promise of connection with fellow believers, and if we don’t see it happening, we take matters into our own hands? Perhaps I can build a family through…. my own works.
And God let them go ahead with that plan, but it didn’t work too well. Ishmael, the child of the slave girl, became the father of descendants “too numerous to count,” but they were not God’s chosen people. Finally when Abram was NINETY-NINE YEARS OLD, God said it was time. And Sarai laughed at God. Oh, now you’re going to tell me that it’s time for me to bear a child? Now? Do you know how long it’s been since…
Sometimes we might have to wait for our expression of God’s promise, in this case fellowship. Don’t be nervous. Don’t be concerned what they say about you. Don’t settle for the slave child, for Pete’s sake. Let’s keep reminding ourselves that a real move of God is worth waiting for.
February 26, 2008 at 2:16 pm · Filed under Jesus, family, struggling with sin
It’s hard to explain what’s been going on the last several months. There’s been a turmoil in my heart - no, somewhere deeper than that, so deep inside that I can’t reach it or identify it or explain it. It started with a breach in my family, that much I do know. Odd, because it wasn’t the first family breach, not even in the nuclear part of us. But this one was different. Maybe because I didn’t see it coming. If other breaches were the hurricanes of life, slow to approach but full of fury, this one was the tornado. It came upon me suddenly, without warning, and in seconds a roaring locomotive whirlwind had stripped me of any sense of stability that I once possessed.
For months I couldn’t even mention in passing what had happened to me (to us) without crumbling. I couldn’t even think about it without waves of guilt and grief pushing me down, under water where I couldn’t breathe or speak or move.
I almost didn’t post this. And I realized that over the last six or seven months, I have been systematically shutting down anything in my life that might reveal the real me to someone, or even to myself. It wasn’t overtly intentional, more like a subconscious defense mechanism. Just park the car around back… pull the blinds down quietly and slowly… dim the lights… they won’t know you’re here…
And go to sleep.
So I have been hiding from myself because subconsciously I knew a major weakness in me had been uncovered by the breach. I didn’t realize it, but deep down I knew it. After decades of growth and progression toward maturity, I guess I was feeling pretty good about where I was at. I knew I wasn’t perfect by any means, but I was pretty smart, pretty clued in to the whole Jesus thing. The breach, however, took with it any sense of security and confidence I had built up over the years. The breach came skipping along and yanked the sheet off, exposing me.
And really, I was still right there with Jesus even in my humiliation, guilt, and inadequacy. It was just that now, I couldn’t credit his presence to my own doing. I knew it was all him. Once I admitted to him and myself that I had been exposed and I needed help, he stood me up and had a look at the wound. It was pretty bad. Because it is an old wound, and when the sheet was yanked off it ripped open the scar tissue and laid bare the infection that lay under the surface. Funny, I thought that had healed a long time ago. And now, I am in the process of letting Jesus wash me and dress my wounds, and if you haven’t done that lately, let me tell you it is humbling when Jesus wraps a towel around his waist and kneels before you to serve you. No Lord, don’t wash me! But you need it, and unless I do…
Some mornings when I wake I am overcome with a terror of the things I have to face for the day. I am seeing rejection or the potential for rejection in everything, and I am instinctively trying to avoid… everything. And I have to tell myself, feel the fear but do it anyway. That’s what I’m telling myself right now, feel the fear but write it anyway. Feel the fear, but make that phone call anyway. Feel the fear, but get up out of the bed anyway. And Jesus is lovingly saying, feel the fear, but make yourself vulnerable again anyway.
Because that’s what I do, he says. I make myself vulnerable to my beloved, the Church, again and again, because I love… because I AM love. And if I will live in you, then you will love too and you will open yourself to hurt (and sometimes it will be you that hurts others and yourself) and you will still pursue living and loving and you will still pursue me — and them.
February 24, 2008 at 8:35 pm · Filed under faith, family, ideals, paradigms
I wrote about kids the other day, and how they have to find and follow their own ideals. It just doesn’t work to traipse into the big wide world wearing your parents’ convictions. I said that it is important to find those before you head out. And I insinuated that as parents we need to help our kids make that switch.I was wrong.
Well, I was wrong on one thing. (That doesn’t sound too prideful, does it?) And when I found out that I was wrong, I felt my paradigm move, click, and lock into a new position.
It happened this past weekend. Darin and I stopped by to see some friends. We needed them; we needed to hear what they had to say and we needed to share some “body life” time with them. These two friends are truly elders - you know the kind - they would not want to be appointed to such an office, but they just “are” elders, regardless of whether a church CEO has decided they are or not. Besides that, we just like them and we like how the Spirit is expressed through them.
I know that my friend doesn’t read my blog, so when she basically started reiterating the contents of my post on ideals to me, it really got my attention, and Darin’s. It was as if she’d co-written the post with me. Kids need to find their own cornerstone. They need to figure out who they really are and what Jesus means to them, and they need to identify and take ownership of their convictions. There are no “grandchildren” in the faith. But when she got to the part about how this process happens, that’s when God really dropped a bombshell on me. You see, she said that they have to experience a crisis of faith in order to develop their own identity as a believer.
That’s where our paradigms parted ways. She’s already been through faith crises with several of her children. And unbeknownst to her, she made me see that we can’t gently shepherd our kids through their dark night of the soul. Every one of them has their own journey to take and make. Sometimes that journey is fairly mild and painless. They “get it” pretty quickly. Other times, with other people, it takes a big stumble or a huge veering off course before things get righted. It might happen while they’re still living at home, or it might happen when they move out. The thing is, God knows what it is going to take for each person to figure out that they’re a prodigal son or daughter.
And he’s willing to let it happen.
And it’s not my fault.
If my child veers way off course in his journey to his ideals, it is not my fault.
Paradigm shift.
Because there’s no way for someone to be dropped off right in front of their convictions, so that all they have to do is step over some magical spiritual threshold and there they are. No pain, no gain. Something like making the kid earn their own money for the Ford Mustang so they’ll appreciate it… If daddy buys it for them, they’ll just take it out and crash it.
It’s not up to us parents to take responsibility for our kids’ faith crises, or to try to steer them through it, whenever it happens (we’re not in control of when it happens, either, by the way.) It’s up to us to simply love our kids on their journey and trust God to get them through it.
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