Letting Go Instead Of Holding On

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Tonight I am having a hard time getting my thoughts to “gel.”  There are pieces of creativity, phrases, melodies, images that are passing through my mind but none of them seem to rest long enough for me to make sense of them.  It’s like trying to catch the wind and hold it in your hands.  You can’t hold it; you can only feel it, and those two things are very different.  Holding something and feeling something require different things.  One requires energy and activity, while the other simply requires a willingness to be open.   One is achieved through effort and endurance, while the other is achieved through being still and present.   I know it may seem like I’m just rambling, but tonight, I feel a little entitled to do so.

It seems lately my life has been filled with different aspects of death and grief.  Some of it has been people I know who have lost loved ones.  Some of it has been the loss of people in my own world or people who have been seriously ill.  Today I attended the funeral of a cousin-in-law that I never met.  In doing so, I got to meet the rest of that branch of the family tree and immediately felt a connection to them.  I sat in the service, moved to tears both for the beauty of her life and the loss I felt in never having known her personally.   It made me remember all the losses I’ve had over the course of my own life.

shutterstock_3066153After the service, I went to another cemetery to pay my respects to someone I loved very dearly.  I hadn’t gone to this particular grave because it is quite a distance from my home, and I’m not one to hang out in cemeteries.  After all, burial places hold nothing more than the earthly shell of the people we love.  Today I was not too far from the final resting place of my loved one’s remains, so I felt compelled to make the trip.  Upon my arrival at the mausoleum, I searched and searched but to no avail.  I finally asked for help from the cemetery in locating my loved one.  It took much longer than I expected, and then the response hit me like a ton of bricks.  My loved one’s remains had been placed in a community crypt without any identification to the outside world.  It bothered me.  It sat in my heart like a lead weight as I stood in front of the unmarked crypt.  It hurt, and I struggled deeply with trying to square what I believe about death with what I was feeling at the moment.  That isn’t always an easy thing to do.

We all lose people we love at one point or another.  We feel the sting of death and the pain that comes with being separated from the physical presence of the ones we love.  We attend funerals and memorial services to honor their lives, and then we each find our own ways of navigating through the subsequent grief process.  I have found, no matter what the process looks like for each of us, there is one common thing we experience:  the struggle between holding on and letting go.  It seems to be an ebb and flow, but even after many years, we find ourselves still faced with moments of trying to decide when to hold on and when to let go.  When we lose someone we love, our instinct is to hold on.  We hold onto physical items such as clothing, gifts or other items that he/she touched, or things that smell like them.  Our longing for that person to still be with us makes us grasp at whatever we can to keep them here in some way.  We don’t just hold on, we cling.  We sometimes hold so tightly that our knuckles turn white and we lose feeling in our hands, and yet we still can’t find the strength to let go.  Letting go seems like it will only magnify our loss, and we will be left with nothing at all.  There’s nothing wrong with trying to hold on, but we must remember there are some things that just can’t be held.

Letting go usually comes with a sense of fear and apprehension for some people.  When we lose something, we naturally want to hold tighter to what we have left.  If we lose money, we tend to get tighter with what we have because it feels like if we don’t, we might lose it all.  We can become so hyper-focused on protecting our “stash” that we can no longer enjoy our lives.  The same is true with losing a loved one to death.  If we become so hyper-focused on protecting what remains of their lives here, we can become crippled and no longer enjoy our own lives.  Letting go is a process that occurs in stages, but we have to be careful to not mistake what it means to “let go.”  Letting go does NOT mean forgetting; It means loosening your grip.  Open ArmsRemember what I said about the wind in the opening paragraph?  You can feel it but you cannot hold it.  Think about standing somewhere beautiful and suddenly a perfect breeze comes blowing through.  You have two choices:  You can start grasping like crazy, trying to capture it in your hands, or you can stand still and experience its touch completely.   If your focus is on trying to hold it, all you will feel is the lack of being able to do so.  You will grasp tighter and quicker, but all you will feel is the emptiness of your own hands.  However, if you focus on standing still and opening your hands, you will feel nothing but the breeze itself.  Letting go is what enables you to feel!  Letting go is what enables you to remember.  Letting go is what frees you to be present.

Today was difficult, and the unexpected situation in which I found myself made it extremely difficult to keep from tightening my grasp after many years of loosening it.  The pain, anger, disgust and sadness that I felt standing in the corner of an empty mausoleum overcame me and brought me literally to my knees.  It crippled me physically and emotionally in a single moment.  I felt lost.  I suddenly felt like I had no footing.  Everything inside me was screaming as it was the day my loved one actually died, and I found myself unable to walk away from that spot.  My emotional hands closed tightly, and all I could do was sob.  And then I remembered what I believe.  I remembered what I know to be true, and slowly I started reconnecting the dots until I could pull myself away physically from that spot.  I stood with my hand on the wall and prayed.  I stood and talked to my loved one.  I knelt and kissed the wall of the tomb in which the remains were sealed, and then I walked out a different door because it was the only way I could make myself leave.

And then something wonderful happened.  I got my shorts out of the car and went back into the restroom inside the mausoleum to change out of my suit and into my comfy clothes for traveling back home.  I forgot to grab my other shoes, so I had to walk out in my shorts, athletic shirt and black knee high trouser socks.I had taken off my dress heels because I didn’t want to look THAT stupid, but I had to laugh at what I looked like.    All I needed was some sandals to complete my “old man” outfit.  I started for the exit, but then thought of how much my loved one would have found my appearance to be hysterical, so I turned and ran back into the mausoleum, into the hallway of the unmarked crypt.  I waited until the security guard walked away from the area and then leapt around, danced and laughed right there in that hallway.  I then whispered out loud, “I knew you’d get a kick out of that so that one is for you!  I love you. ” To some, that may seem inappropriate or even ridiculous, but for me, it was a reminder of the difference between holding on and letting go.

Loss of any kind is never easy, whether through death or some other means.  It is painful, and we scramble to protect whatever we have left.  But loss does not have to cripple us forever, and death is not the end.  Yes, it is excruciating at times.  It can be debilitating in those moments it hits us so hard we can hardly breathe, let alone function.  Grief does not have a timetable, and sometimes it jumps up and grabs us unexpectedly.  And when it does, we need to just step back, be still and open our hands instead of closing them into fists.  If it hurts, let it hurt.  If tears come, let them fall.  Whatever it is you feel, just take a breath and be still.  Open the hands of your spirit so that you can be touched, instead of grasping tightly to what you cannot contain.  Because in the end, the best way we can keep our loved ones with us is to let them go.

Blessings!

Get Out Of Other People’s Closets And Open Your Own

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I recently read a Facebook post from someone I knew from church when I was younger.  We didn’t attend the same church, but we attended church camp and youth events together, and ran in pretty much the same circles.  It was a beautiful post from a beautiful person with a genuine heart for God.  Brandon Beene is my friend and I wish so much that we had gotten to know each other even better when we were younger because we share some very common struggles.   Another of Brandon’s friends shared the entirety of his post on his blog, and it was so impactful that I put a link to it at the bottom of this page because it’s worth reading, especially if you grew up in church.

Something that Brandon talked about in his post was the way he was bullied growing up, much of it coming from the fact he was not a masculine guy.  What Brandon doesn’t realize about me (or hasn’t until he reads this) is that I experienced many of the same things.  Maybe some weren’t to the same degree because I didn’t get beat up physically, but I got beat up in every other way.  shutterstock_184639775The bullying and teasing and humiliation I felt drove me to the point of standing on the edge of a bridge,  picking which car I was going to jump in front of in case the fall itself didn’t kill me.  I understand Brandon better than he probably could have ever dreamed.  We’ve shared very eerie similarities on the opposite side of the same issue.  First of all, I couldn’t agree more with what Brandon said.  His comments about love and what it should be are spot on.  I’ve often written about what love really is and what it means to truly love others.  I’ve written about what God’s love really looks like and how greatly we can affect this world if we would strive to love as God loves.  The problem with loving that way is that it often bothers or even offends most “religious” people today.  It also doesn’t sit well with people who are not religious but who consider themselves to be superior because of their own moral compass.   The interesting thing is that our problems are an epidemic that only genuine love itself can resolve.

Most of the people who are around me know I’ve never been a girly girl.  I don’t like cooking or sewing.  I don’t like pink.  I hate dolls.  I didn’t like to read love stories.  I didn’t like to watch sappy movies.  I liked watching the creature from the black lagoon, and my favorite author was Edgar Allan Poe.  I burned bugs with magnifying glasses.  I spent all my time outside playing football with the boys.   I participated in all kinds of sports and was good at them.   I even cried when I realized that I wouldn’t be able to play football in high school, because girls weren’t allowed on the team.  I got teased all the time because I was scrawny and gangly, and hadn’t developed physically.  I hate dresses.  I never wore them unless I was forced to.  There were some pastors I encountered that insisted women wear dresses or skirts, and all I could think was how miserable it made me in church.  When I was a kid, probably about 6 or 7, I told a friend at church that I actually WAS a boy.  She pretty much believed it until the day she told me to prove it, and of course I couldn’t and had to pony up to the truth.  My opinion of girls was that they weren’t strong.   They were concerned with makeup, hair, nails and shopping.  Blech!

I got teased and was the brunt of a lot of jokes.  I suffered privately and tried to find other tomboys with which to hang out.  I liked being rough and tumble.  I am glad that in this day and age, it is more acceptable for girls to be that way, but it wasn’t so in my generation.   I even got teased in my family for not cooking or not knowing how to cook.  The truth is that I can cook when I try, and the things I have cooked have turned out well, but I still don’t enjoy it. I go shopping, but I don’t like it.  Another thing Brandon mentioned was that he didn’t really like sports or know the rules of all the different types of sports and I thought, “I know the rules of all the different sports.  Heck, I even know the rules to curling!”  I love sports.  I watch them and play them, and would much rather hang out with a bunch of guys watching a game and having a great time than sitting around the kitchen table with the girls talking about “girly” things.

shutterstock_200320292Brandon also revealed in his post how he was called gay on many occasions and had to endure many times when he was called a fag or faggot.  It was painful to read his experiences.  While I do think that men and boys can be much harsher outwardly than girls with that kind of name-calling, the truth is girls are just as mean and brutal; they just do it behind your back.  Where Brandon had to deal with people calling him those names, I had to deal with the looks and snickering that people thought I didn’t see. I certainly felt the awkwardness of being excluded because I wasn’t a “normal” girl.  I got teased unmercifully for wanting to hunt with all of my cousins and uncles.  I didn’t get called gay or “dike” to my face, but I found out later it was going on all the time behind my back.  I even had an experience where I was called into my school counselor’s office because a friend (who I trusted completely and considered to be one of my closest friends) told a teacher that I was a lesbian.  I’m sure it came from the fact I wrote very expressive poems and writings all the time and shared them with the people I loved.  I loved everyone.  It didn’t matter if it was men or women, or from which walk of life they came.  Unfortunately, that was unacceptable to the people around me.

I would often write how I felt about my friends and my mother even warned me to be careful about what I said to people or wrote to people because they would start to think I was lesbian.  I ignored it and you know what?  It happened.  I really struggled in high school.  I think everyone does.  We struggle with figuring out our true selves.  We struggle with who we are and who we think we should be, and that struggle is made so much worse when we don’t fit the mold of what our family, friends, or religion thinks we should be.  We get sideways glances.  We get rejected.  I had one friend in high school who always understood me as much as anyone possibly could at that age.  She knew that I was just emotional and expressive and was not a girly girl…and she didn’t care one single bit!  I liked to dress odd and funny.  I was a little bit of everything and never really fit into one particular group.  But the rumors apparently continued, and have throughout my life.  Even now, I manage an exceptional team of people on the job and have been successful professionally.  One day a few years ago, we were sitting at the end of a meeting just visiting a bit, and I made a comment about being such a girly-girl and my team all laughed because they all knew I was the opposite.  The newest member of the team made the comment, “Oh, you don’t wanna know what I thought when I first met you.”  She went on to say she thought I was gay.  When I asked why, she said, “ I don’t know.  You just seemed that way.  You are always in a suit and the way you walk….”  I just laughed it off because the truth is I LOVE suits.  I wear them continually and I don’t carry myself in an extremely feminine manner.  I walk heavy.   I’m not one to sit around and say, “Oooooh…aaaah” when babies come into the office.  This woman told me it wasn’t until she saw me with my husband that she realized differently.  She said anyone who sees me with him would know I wasn’t gay.  But me by myself?  Apparently I still give it off.  And you know what?  I’m ok with that.  I had to get to the point where I didn’t care what anyone else thought or I would have to remain captive to their opinions forever.

shutterstock_266832950Brandon mentioned how he didn’t have a gender identity crisis.  I will echo that statement.  I didn’t/don’t have a gender identity issue.  I had a comfort issue.  I was uncomfortable because I didn’t fit in.  When I was small, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, but as I got older, I realized how rejected and judged I was by others.  I knew I was a girl but I didn’t like anything girls liked.  I never owned a Barbie.  To this day, I hate them.  I walk into something girly and just cringe.  I can’t stand baby showers or wedding showers.  I feel like a man when it comes to those things because I have the same reactions to them.  I’d rather do pretty much anything than spend hours at them. Over the years, I’ve had countless people tell me they thought I was a lesbian.  Of course, they never divulged that impression until they had known me a while and figured out I’m just me, that I’m just quirky…but it still hurt.  Feeling like you don’t fit in is one of the worst feelings in the world, and it can drive you to some very dark places.  When you add on top of everything else that I have a form of bipolar disorder, you can see how my brain chemistry issues complicated things for me.  It made me highly creative and highly connected and intense, but this world doesn’t understand that.

I mentioned earlier that I was constantly the brunt of jokes about my lack of traditional femininity.  It was a struggle when I tried to square what society expected me to be vs. who God created me to be.  It was so difficult that when a member of our high school choir touched me in  very inappropriate ways as we sat waiting to go on stage for a performances, I was frozen and didn’t know what to do because the wounded side of me thought, “Well maybe I am ok as a girl because at least I’m not unattractive to him.”  The vast majority of my boyfriends were guys who liked to hang out.  They weren’t terribly romantic and I was fine with it!  I liked to do the kind of stuff they liked to do.  I eventually married someone who is a man’s man but who loves me because I’m not such a girly-girl. He is the perfect partner for me because he loves me exactly as I am and actually embraces it.  He is a gift from God, himself.

I have friends of all walks of life, including friends who are openly gay or lesbian…and I love them dearly.  I love them because God created me to love people – all people – passionately…because HE loves them passionately.  I don’t have to agree with their politics, religion or choices in order to love and appreciate them.  It has nothing to do with that.  It has to do with loving people exactly where they are.  And maybe I’m even more passionate about that fact because it felt like it happened so rarely in my life.

shutterstock_153650339The truth is that God made me this way for a reason.  When Brandon said God doesn’t make mistakes, I couldn’t agree more.  I have said that for most of my life but it wasn’t until I was older that I realized God wired me this way for a reason because there are certain people out there that I can touch as a result.  As a matter of fact, there are some people out there that only we can touch because of who we are and the experiences of our specific individual lives.  We can reach people that others would have a hard time connecting with because they can’t understand their situation or personality.   I’m different.  I’ve always been different.  I’ve also been ridiculed and mocked for it.  I’ve been called all kinds of names for it.  I’ve almost died for it.   On the outside I may have looked like a fun, carefree, and well-liked person, but in my heart I struggled with many of the same things as Brandon did.  It is time for us to get over our fears and live exactly as we are created to be!  Stop judging each other.  Stop labeling each other.  Stop bullying people who aren’t like you and call it something else.  It doesn’t matter how we try to rationalize our behavior, it is still wrong.  Don’t say you are a Christian and then spend your time making the people around you feel less than you.  God doesn’t do that.  Jesus didn’t do that while here on earth, and He certainly doesn’t expect us to do it either!

It’s time to be who God called us to be, not who our parents, friends, bosses or churches are trying to call us to be.  I teach this to my Sunday school class all the time.  The things you like, you like for a reason.  The things that don’t interest you, don’t interest you for a reason.  God created us with our likes and dislikes because it’s those likes and dislikes that connect us with others in different ways.

So I’ll close with something that came up for me when Brandon said he can relate to the struggle of Caitlyn Jenner feeling like an outcast.  I thought to myself, “I can’t imagine any man wanting to give it up to become a woman and everything that is supposed to come with it.”  But I can sure identify with the same things about it with which Brandon identifies.  I can identify with hiding mental health issues.  I can identify with hiding suicidal tendencies or attempts.  I can identify with struggling to just be who we are and let God sort it out because NONE of us have a right to stomp on someone else.  Let me just add that Chaz Bono encountered a lot of the same things even though he wasn’t as well-known in his life as Chastity as Caitlyn Jenner was in his life as Bruce.  I could better identify with her struggles because they were closer to mine.  If I were a child today, raised in a more liberal home, I would be “pegged” as having a gender identity issue.  And  if I continually said that I was a boy or wanted to be one, I guess I could more easily become one.  But you know what would be a million times better than labeling a child (or adult) as having a gender identity issue?  It would be saying, “It’s ok that you don’t like all that girly (or boyish) stuff.  It’s ok that you want to do what you like to do.”  Maybe we should sit down with our kids, as well as with our adults who are still struggling and say, “It’s ok to not fit into what our society has defined you to be.  You just be who you were created to be because God loves you just exactly as you are.”

shutterstock_219355915It’s scary to think of how far left of center we have become.  We’ve started labeling people as one thing or another instead of looking within and seeing them as they are.  We have actually started crippling each other by embracing the new politically correct labels instead of dropping the labels all together.   It used to be a shame to be called gay, where now it is embraced by society.  Now it is a shame to be called other things.  In some circles it is a shame to be called a Christian.  It doesn’t matter what era of time we look at, there are always people who did not fit in, who were bullied and mistreated because of their differences.   Society and humanity is cruel because we are continually looking for labels to put people into boxes where we can look down on them and feel better about ourselves.  What an absolute contrast to what God does and what He has asked us to do.  We need to drop the labels and embrace each other.  It doesn’t always mean we will agree, but love goes so much deeper than differences.   It would be so much better if we just simply loved each other.  I realize with an imperfect world and imperfect people it will probably never be that way, but we can hope.  And we can, through the telling of our stories, change the individuals who can eventually change the world.

Blessings!

Brandon Beene Facebook Post

Michael Robison Blog of Brandon’s Post

When Is “Enough” Enough?

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shutterstock_236380858Today I stopped at the post office to drop off a tray of mail, and I pulled up next to a very joyful, elderly gentlemen that was parked in a handicapped spot.  He was trying to get back into his car, which required getting his walker collapsed and into the backseat before he could get in himself.   I acknowledged him and asked if he needed assistance, but he just smiled and said he didn’t.  When I came back out from dropping off the mail, he hadn’t progressed very far in what he was doing, though he was still as joyful as he was when I walked in.  As I got into my car, I couldn’t help but think, “How blessed am I that I am able to walk to my car, get in and drive here and then carry in a tray full of mail and drop it off without missing a beat?”  Even with all my own aches and pains, I go about most daily tasks without even giving them a second thought.

It seems we get so caught up in the things that are wrong with us, or the things we need to change, that we forget about all the things that are right and don’t need to change at all.  We forget about the things in us that are perfect.  Yes, I said perfect.  We all have things about us that are exactly as God created them to be, and we need to embrace those things instead of taking them for granted.  I am not a perfect person.  I may not do anything perfectly, but as a child of God, I am already perfect in His eyes.  I am perfect in His eyes because when He looks at me, He sees me through the blood of Jesus Christ, and every time I fail at something or do something wrong, it is covered with that blood.  God sees me as who He created me perfectly to be.  I see myself as who I am with all of my failures and imperfections, and I think, “If I could just try harder, people would appreciate me more.  If I could just be better, people would love me more.  If I could just not mess up…if I could just be ‘enough,’ everything in my life would be grand.”

I spent most of my life feeling like whatever I did, or whoever I am, was/is just not quite enough.  I was raised with the perspective that if you have the ability to do something, you should do it, and if you are going to do something, then you should always do it to the best of your ability.  That is a very good way of approaching life, but the portion that was never really taught or emphasized was the price you pay when that mindset goes to the extreme.  shutterstock_228054031For me it was never about materialistic things (possessions or money), and it still isn’t, but the mindset is still manifested in other ways.  I heard somebody tell a story about speaking with a very rich friend and he asked this friend, “How much is enough?”  The gentleman responded, “Just a little bit more. “  That sticks with me.  When working for a company, how much is enough effort?  When is it enough?  My answer has always been, “Just a little bit more.”  How much will you give before it is enough?  My answer has been, “I need to do just a little bit more because I have the ability to work more or give more.”   Remember, I have always believed that  if you have the ability and you are going to do something, do it to the best of your ability – to the maximum of your ability.  I have a lot of interests and things in which I engage.  I’m driven to do every single one of them to the “best of my ability.”  Luckily I’m fairly intelligent and creative, and I am able to juggle a lot of things at once (and I have done so over the course of my life).  I think if I CAN do all of these things and excel at them, then I SHOULD do them, because anything short of that is not enough.  Anything short of that means I’m failing.  It means I’m average and I don’t want to be average.  I want to be excellent.

People say I’m competitive, and I am.  But what most of them have never understood is it isn’t so much that I’m competitive with them; it’s that I’m competitive with myself.  If I know I have the ability to be the best or to be first, then I am upset if I’m not.  It’s not because someone else was first or deserved it; I’m upset because I failed when I knew I could have succeeded.  That’s a really hard expectation to live up to in life.  We put such extreme pressure on ourselves to succeed and be the best in everything we do or every time we touch something, that when we aren’t perfect, we see it as an abject failure.  The truth is we aren’t a failure, we are simply human.  It doesn’t matter that we may have things for which we have superb and sometimes unbelievably amazing skills.  There will still be times that we do not reach our full potential when we engage in them.  That doesn’t mean we failed!

shutterstock_219355915Doing things to the best of our ability (in the sense to which I am referring), comes with a price.  We need to start talking more about that price because it is often extremely high.  I’ve paid that price at times in my life because it seemed less costly than feeling upset or distraught when I think someone is disappointed in me.   I’ve paid that price at times because everything in me screams, “You have the ability to not disappoint them!”  It’s interesting how nothing in me ever screams, “They have unrealistic expectations!”  Nothing in me screams, “YOU have unrealistic expectations of yourself!”   Just because I can, doesn’t always mean I should.   Just because I can, doesn’t mean it’s the best for me.  Doing everything I CAN to the  best of my ability will drain me, wear me out, and eventually destroy me.  It will do the same to you.  I’m not saying we should be lazy or careless, but we look at anything short of perfection or giving more than we have as exactly those things.  And most of us don’t want to be seen that way.

So when is it enough?  I am certain I’m not the only one who struggles with the fact that “enough” always seems just barely out of reach.  It’s like I can touch it with my fingertips, but I can’t grab it.  As a result, I am often filled with anxiety, guilt, disappointment and even a feeling that I should be punished because I haven’t lived up to my potential.  Doing everything you can to the best of your ability shouldn’t mean doing it better than everyone else.  Most people would say they agree with that statement, but when you watch them, you often see people who are actually not content with the level of their ability.   Maybe it is better stated this way:  Do things to the best of you.  You need to be the best you in all ways – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  And the best “me” is the one that is healthy, peaceful and without continual stress, anxiety and emotional upheaval.   Living under the pressure of those latter traits is not an abundant life.  God said, “I came that they may have life, and that they may have it abundantly” (John 10:10).  Most of us say we want that, but maybe we really don’t.  Maybe I want everyone else’s approval more than I want an abundant life.  Maybe I want to live up to unrealistic expectations more than I want to live an abundant life, because doing so makes me feel superhuman. We (I) think the busier we are, the more valuable we are, but an abundant life isn’t frantic.  It also isn’t draining.  On the contrary, it is fulfilling.  An abundant life isn’t about being enough or doing enough.  It isn’t about trying to be enough;  it is in knowing you already are!  It is knowing that God already loves you completely – even as you are.  You don’t  have to (and can’t) do anything to earn it.  You can’t do anything to make Him love you more.   Your choices certainly determine your level of peace and blessings in life, but they aren’t going to make God love you anymore than He already does, because you are already “enough” in His eyes.  We need to stop trying to be and do enough.  The apostle Paul said, “I have learned in whatever state I am to be content” (Phil 4:11).  Contentment is peaceful.  It is not stressful.  It does not put such mental and physical stress on your body and mind that you cave in upon  yourself…because eventually you will  and it will come out somewhere.

shutterstock_227837773When is enough “enough?”  It is enough right now.  And when you start to struggle with the expectations of others, or more importantly of yourself, you need to step back and say, “I am a child of God, and in His eyes, through the blood of His Son, I am perfect…and I am enough.”  If I could step back and live contented with the knowledge and understanding that I am enough, then  it won’t matter what anyone else thinks of me or what they think my choices should be.  As long as I am following what I know God would have me to do, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.  And if stepping back and simply doing what I am called to do causes loss in my life, then so be it…because letting go of the perspective that “enough” is “just a little bit more,” will free up space for us to grab and hold to those thing that make us realize we are more than enough.  Letting go of those things that are draining us (as scary or unsettling as that may seem), will free us from doing things to the best of our ability and leave it up to God to do things through us to the best of His.

Blessings!

The Ignorant Battle Cry of Christians

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shutterstock_148970525Recently, people of faith all over the world celebrated the resurrection of their Lord and Savior.  They celebrated the God who loved us all so much that He was willing to take on a human body, suffer more than anyone has ever suffered, and die the most horrible, unspeakable death for us because He loved us and wanted us to be free.   You’d think this would inspire these same people of faith to try to live more closely to the teachings of the One in which they have put their faith, but that doesn’t always happen.

Recently, I listened to a member of the clergy speak publicly with such venom and hatred for people who were different, believed differently, or God forbid, were “them old sinners.”  When it started, it was almost humorous, because it seemed almost like a caricature of what the media portrays Christians to be.  But as I continued to listen, humor turned to surprise, then to disappointment and finally to disgust.  All I wanted to do was to shout out, “You are the problem!”  Because the truth is that God loves ALL the world and every single person in it.  He loves those we would classify as “good” as well as those we would say are “bad” (eg. Hitler, Bin Laden, Manson, etc.).  It makes no difference who you are, because in God’s eyes we are all the same.  No matter what we do or engage in, or how we choose to live our lives, He loves us with everything He has.  In John 3:16, we are told that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that WHOSOEVER believes in Him, will not die, but have everlasting life.”  And then it also tells us that  “God demonstrated His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  (Romans 5:8).  He loved everyone while we were still rejecting Him.  He loves  us before we are “cleaned up.”  He loves us so much that He died for us WHILE we were rejecting Him.  That’s pretty amazing!

In today’s society, there seem to be more attacks on Christianity, but the truth is we bring much of that on ourselves.  If we weren’t so bitter and mean, maybe it would be a little different.  If we discussed our beliefs from a heart of love and lived the way Christ wants us to live, maybe so many people wouldn’t be so angry.  Make no mistake, Jesus told His followers that the world hated Him and as a result, they would also be hated at times.  (John 15:18-25).  So rest assured there will always be opposition to Christ and those who follow His teachings, but my point is that Jesus was about inclusion, not exclusion.  Jesus was about love not hate.  He never spoke with venom.  He never screamed at people.  He wasn’t about pride;  He was about humility.  He wasn’t about condemnation.  He wasn’t about prejudice of any kind.  He was about love.  shutterstock_247287523And yet I sat there listening to this clergyman shouting loudly and passionately how proud he was that he was raised knowing that abortion is sin and that “homosexuality is an “abomination!”  (Yes, that is a quote!)  He shouted about how we all need to “hold fast to the doctrines of our fathers!”  And inside, I was screaming, “NO, we don’t!!”  What we need to do is to hold fast to the truth of God’s word, not simply what our fathers or grandfathers taught us, or even what we have heard out of the mouths of pastors.  We are to hold fast, true and strong to the truth of God’s word, not man’s.  God has promised that if you seek the truth, you will find it, and you may even do so without a preacher.  I know that statement will be considered heretical to some people, but it is God who reveals the truth to you.  A preacher (or anyone else) can only share scripture and live an example before others, but if you are seeking the truth and you ask God to reveal to you what His word means, then He will.  We must study His word to gain knowledge, but the wisdom and revelation associated with it is a gift.   “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all generously and without reproach.”  (James 1:5)

Every person’s relationship is between that person, God and no one else.  Do our spiritual relationships affect other people?  They most certainly do, and to hear such passionate ignorance delivered in such an unloving attitude – and  to hear people actually cheer out loud – was one of the most disturbing things I have ever witnessed.  God is love, and to sit there listening to someone who claims to be one of His representatives shout in ways that declared certain types of sinners were less holy than him, made me sick to my stomach.  We are ALL sinners and equally guilty and I kept thinking of the story in the Bible (Luke 18:9-14) of a very religious man that was similar.  In a nutshell, this religious, faithful, church-going man prayed out loud so everyone could hear him, “Oh thank you God that I’m not like these other people!  I thank you that I’m faithful.  I thank you that I follow you.  I thank you I’m not like these robbers, evildoers or other terrible people like this man over here!”  The other man he referred to had been standing a distance away by himself and wouldn’t even lift his head and look up toward Heaven.  He beat on his chest and cried out, “Oh God be merciful to me because I’m a sinner!”   Jesus said it was the SECOND man that was justified and honored.  It was the terrible sinner (in the eyes of the religious man) who GOD recognized and honored.   Every time I hear a Christian speaking from a place of prejudice and anger or hate, I think, “How is it possible that people can’t see why their churches are dying?”  People wonder what’s wrong and wonder what they can do or what program they can start to get people to come.  We try all kinds of things.  We keep trying to make people want to come and worship with us, and the biggest thing we are missing in all of it is love.

shutterstock_63532855Why are our churches dying?  They are dying because of US!  They are dying because we don’t love and forgive as God loves and forgives.  They are dying because of men like this who stand up and scream against one particular sin or another.   They’re quick to shout about homosexuality, abortion, drunkenness or drugs, but they don’t shout about gluttony or selfishness.  They don’t shout about the person who overeats or is a workaholic.   They don’t shout about the person that gossips, which to me is one of the most divisive and damaging sins of all.  They  only shout about the things they haven’t done as if that somehow makes them holier than those who have done them.  And then they look down on those people as if to say, “If you will come crawling over broken glass and hot coals to Christ, then you can be saved,  but you’ll never be as good as me.”  Like the mob in the Disney movie, the battle cry of many Christians is, “Kill the beast!” when our battle cry should be, “Love them to death.  Love them above all.  Prefer them above all.  Love as God loved!”

We hear all the time, “Hate the sin but love the sinner,” but God does not give us permission to hate anything or anyone.  We are supposed to forgive the sin and love the sinner.  THAT is what Christ does.   As people of faith, there are certainly things and behaviors we should not engage in, but there isn’t one perfect person on this earth.  And the moment you start thinking more highly of yourself than you ought (Romans 12:3), you will fall.   If someone is engaged in something that is wrong or harmful, then it is our duty to talk with them to help them understand God’s word and the forgiveness in it, but not out of condemnation.  We are to do it (and everything else) out of genuine love.   I can think of nothing more wonderful than a church where everyone is truly welcome.  We need places where anyone and everyone are welcome to come and learn the truth of God’s word.  We need places steeped in neither legalism nor emotionalism, but steeped in truth – truth spoken from the most loving hearts.   Apathy is not killing our churches, hate is.  Apathy is not what is causing former Christians to turn away and say they want no more of church as an organized religion.  It is hate and meanness that is causing it, because no one has experienced more Christian hatred than those sitting in the very same pews of the very same churches.

As I sat in that room recently, listening to hatred and condemnation being spewed, I saw in my mind’s eye, picket signs, megaphones and people shouting “Onward Christian soldiers marching to war!”  When what I really longed for was a very different battle cry – one that says, “Come to me.  Love your neighbor.  Love as I have loved you.  Forgive as I’ve forgiven you.”  We must remember the battle is not between people of faith and atheists.   It is not a war between good people and bad people.  It is not a war between us and “them old sinners,” because you see, WE are “them old sinners.”  It is a war between me and myself.  It is a war between who we are and who we should be.  We must stop spending so much time crucifying everyone who is different or those who may disagree with us.  shutterstock_235743286We must start tending our own garden and pulling our own weeds instead of mowing down crops we don’t think should exist.  We need to simply turn our own hearts to God instead of trying to turn someone else’s, because we CAN’T turn someone else’s heart to God.  Only GOD can do that.  All I can do is to live my life the way Christ would have me to live, and that means to love and forgive above all else.  It means to stand firm on the truth of His word and not just what my parents taught me or what preachers have said from the pulpit.  I must stand on what God himself has revealed to me through prayer and study, by verifying for myself those things that someone else has said.

There is a Christian battle cry today and it is ignorant and idiotic.  It is bitter, hurtful and mean.  It is condemning, and Jesus was never any of those things.  We need to start loving more.  We need to stop hating the sin but loving the sinner.  It is time to forgive the sin and love the sinner.  That’s what we are called to do.  That should be our true battle cry.

I pray that all of us, especially people of faith, will have our eyes and hearts opened to the truth that love builds bridges.  Love tears down walls.  Love allows people to listen and softens them so it is easier for that “still, small voice” to touch them.  I pray that we will finally stop trying to scream the truth and just simply start living it.

Blessings!

Love Is Not Grey

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In this season when so many people are celebrating love, I can’t help but think of how far we have strayed in our society from the true meaning of it.  I’m not just referring to all the attention being given this weekend to a very different twist on affection, but in the general materialistic way in which people have come to approach love and what it means.  I have always been a “lover not a fighter,” and have always loved with my whole being.  I don’t know how to love any other way.  The love God placed in me for the people around me is so big that it is difficult to contain – and that struggle for containment has plagued me for most of my life.  A love that is genuine and pure is something that seems to be more and more lacking in our world.  We’ve drifted so far from the truth of what love is that we don’t just have shades of grey, but a grey fog of misunderstanding.

Corinthians 13So what is true love?  It is something that has become almost unrecognizable today, however, the Bible gives us the definition in 1 Corinthians chapter 13.  The interesting thing about it is that nowhere does it mention a warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you are attracted to someone.  It is all about commitment and action, and involves things that often do not come naturally to us.  It isn’t about chocolates and flowers, or special dinners and romance.  Are all those things wonderful?  Yes.  Do they sometimes come out of true love?  Of course!  But if we use these things as our indicator of whether or not someone truly loves us, then we will find ourselves often disappointed.  If we depend on big displays of affection to keep us convinced we are loved, then we are going to spend our lives searching for the next “sign.”  If we really want to understand love, then we must look to God’s word for the very base of it.  If we do, then we will begin to see what love really means, and the contrast it provides to the superficial nature of what the world has created it to be.  We are to love as HE loved.  That isn’t always easy, but just because it is difficult doesn’t mean we can tweak it and change it to fit what we think it should be.  God IS love, and I’m positive He knows exactly what He is talking about when it comes to the subject.  He gives us a complete picture and explanation of it; and He didn’t need 50 shades of anything to get His point across.  He, instead, used only 15.

 15 Shades of Love

  1. Love is long-suffering.  We don’t use this term much anymore, but it means to have (and show) patience in spite of troubles.  It means to endure without complaining.  Obviously, this is not something that comes naturally to us.  As a matter of fact, we say things like “Don’t pray for patience because you’ll just get trouble in order to teach you!”   Patience isn’t just the ability to wait for something, it is the ability to endure provocation, annoyance, trouble or suffering without complaint, irritation or loss of temper.  How often can you say you have truly been long-suffering or patient with someone in your life?  Oh, we endure things, but we certainly don’t act the way love would in the same situation.  Love doesn’t complain.  It is simply steady and even-tempered.
  2. Love is kind. Most of us know what it means to be kind.  Being kind means we have a desire to help others that comes from a place in our heart of goodwill.  It isn’t about being nice so that people will think highly of us, but rather being good to others even when they do not deserve it.
  3. Love doesn’t envy. How many times have you seen someone with something that you wanted and it made you feel upset or angry?  What about when it’s something you’ve desired and even prayed for over the course of a long time?  Do you resent the fact that someone else got it?   Are you able to feel truly happy for someone who has been blessed – whether it is materially, in a relationship or on the job – or do you sit back and think about how much you DON’T have?  Envy cuts to our heart and leaves us feeling discontent with regard to someone else’s advantages, successes or possessions.  Love will never be resentful, but will genuinely be glad for someone else’s blessings.
  4. Love isn’t inflated with pride. It isn’t constantly saying, “Look how great I am!”  When you love someone, you don’t do it so that other people will think you are wonderful.  True love doesn’t worry about getting accolades for what it does.  It simply does them.
  5. Love doesn’t act inappropriately. Love isn’t rude or doesn’t act in ways that are insensitive to others.  It is well-mannered.  So the next time you start to do be rude to someone you claim to love, you might want to step back and think.
  6. Love doesn’t seek itself or its own desires. It doesn’t insist on having its own way.  Do you have a spouse, significant other, family member or friend that you say you love?  Do you ever find yourself insisting on doing things your way?  It doesn’t have to be an overt or even external push for what you want over what someone else wants.  It can also be the tactics we sometimes use to get our way.  Maybe it’s the silent treatment or maybe its tears, but it comes from a place of simply wanting what we want.  It isn’t easy to look at it that way, but it doesn’t make it any less true.
  7. Love isn’t easily provoked. How quickly do you find yourself wearing your emotions on your sleeve?  Are you touchy?  Love is not reactionary.  It isn’t easily annoyed or flares up at the slightest irritation.
  8. Love thinks no evil.  Love doesn’t keep track of the evil done to it.  It pays no attention to the times when it is mistreated or taken for granted.  It doesn’t keep a list of all the things the other person has done so that you can use it in an argument later on.
  9. Love doesn’t rejoice at injustice or wrong-doing. This sounds like an easy one to say we don’t do, but what about when injustice or wrong-doing happens to someone after they’ve been mean to us?  We want people to “get what’s coming to them,” and often rationalize the fact we are happy about the hurt they are experiencing because “they deserved it.”  Love never celebrates wrong-doing, no matter how karmic it may feel.
  10. Love rejoices when truth prevails. Again, this one sounds simple on the surface.  Of course love rejoices when truth prevails!  Ok, so how about if the truth is painful?  Have you ever had someone you love accurately point out one your faults (gently or otherwise)?  Did you rejoice over the fact your weaknesses were suddenly out there in the open, or did you get angry and start pointing out their faults?  Love rejoices not only when the truth WE want to be revealed is revealed (or wins), but it rejoices when the truth revealed is inconvenient or painful to us.
  11. Love bears all things. It holds up under all things that come.  Bearing something means to carry it.  Love is strong!  No matter what happens, genuine love remains steady and carries the weight.  When someone we love is hurt or sick, love gives us the strength to take care of them.  It holds up under the pains of life that come to all of us.  It also bears the weight of the hurt we feel when we are not loved the way we think we should be.  It continues to stand strong through hurt feelings or terrible circumstances.
  12. Love believes all things. This doesn’t mean love is stupid.  It means it is ever ready to believe the best in someone.  Love isn’t cynical.  Love chooses to always look for the best in a person, to believe the good things in them because every person has redeeming qualities.  Love looks for the redemption and not the condemnation in a person.  Love doesn’t listen to gossip and it doesn’t take part in tearing someone else down.  Love continually works to build people up.  It points out what is right with them instead of what is wrong with them.  Instead of constantly looking at all the ways someone we love lets us down, it searches for the things he/she does FOR us.  It believes the best in someone always.
  13. Love hopes all things. In other words, its hope never fades – even under the worst circumstances.  This kind of goes hand in hand with believing all things.  Hope is an expectation, not a wish.  Love expects things to turn out for the best.  It looks forward to the future with desire and reasonable confidence that it is going to be not only okay, but good!  It doesn’t look ahead in time and start looking at all the ways things are going to come apart.  It doesn’t say things like, “That just won’t work,” or “there’s no way to do that.”  Love is an optimist!  Love is not depressed.  It looks ahead with great confidence that everything is going to be well, no matter what the current circumstances may look or feel like.
  14. Love endures all things. It does so without weakening.  Love is steady and enduring, no matter how the storm rages or the wind blows.  Love doesn’t run the moment things get difficult.  It will continue to stand through disagreements and hurt feelings.  It will continue to stand when things go wrong.  When there is illness, financial loss, material loss, it still holds up under it.  When the people around you let you down, it still stands.  When you’ve been hurt, it’s still there.
  15. Love never fails. It doesn’t give up.  No matter what happens in life, genuine love never gives up, because it can’t!  It is something that weaves its way into our spiritual dna and is impossible to remove.  If you truly have love for another person, it never fades or goes away.  Because we are human, hurts will happen.  We hurt others and they hurt us.  Sometimes we will encounter situations where we must remove ourselves from a situation that has become unhealthy for us, but that doesn’t mean we stop loving the person…because love isn’t about feelings.  Love continues to do all the things listed above – even when we are no longer able to be with someone in any type of earthly relationship.  Love desires reconciliation, but knows how to continue without it.  We may never enjoy close fellowship with them again, but it doesn’t mean we walk away internally.  I know this sounds controversial and maybe even abusive to say love never lets go, but it is the truth.  Love – a true and pure divine love for another person – transcends everything on this earth, including our own comprehension.  It reaches beyond our reasoning and allows us to continue loving, in spite of how we have been treated.  It stays.

This is how God loves us!  Love is so much deeper than what most people consider it to be.  When you read the aspects of what true love is, you finally understand that love is not a feeling!  Love requires action.  It requires sacrifice.  It requires commitment and most of the time we all fail to live and love as God loves because we continue to prefer the grey over the white light of the truth.

shutterstock_211224607Truth isn’t always easy.  It reveals us as we are and that sometimes reveals shortcomings we’d rather not face.  When it comes to love, there is another aspect we seldom discuss.  God tells us in His word that we are to love our enemies.  Say what?!  Not only are we, as people of faith, instructed to love our enemies, but He goes on to emphasize the point in Matthew 5:43-48 and says “So what if you love people who love you and treat you well.  That’s nothing special.  Even the most corrupt people in society do that.”  I love that God doesn’t pull any punches and just calls it as it is.  But how in the world is that even possible?  How can I love someone I don’t like or doesn’t deserve it?  We can do it by remembering first what love is and then how God loves US that way even though WE don’t deserve it.   When you realize that love isn’t about what you feel, but what you decide, things become much clearer.  Knowing what love is, frees us to live in ways that can change the world.  It empowers us to love more deeply because we can choose to do so in spite of our feelings.

So the next time we say we love someone, maybe we need to stop and think about what that really means.  Before we make that promise by saying the words out loud, we need to be sure we are willing to actually get out of the grey and truly live in the light of love’s truth..

Blessings!