I Had No Idea.

I have never been a very political person. I trusted my husband’s advice when it was time to vote for anything. I used to jest that whatever was going on wouldn’t change the fact that I still got up every morning, showered, dressed, had breakfast and went to the same job that I went to the day before. If a soldier showed up to explain that things had drastically changed, well then I would pretty much do what I was told – because that would certainly change my morning routine.

I know my attitude was as wrong as it was cavalier. It was a blatant insult to the suffragettes who had sacrificed comfort to confront those who stood between them and the best option they saw to have a future that considered the beliefs, needs and values of all women.

It’s not that I am unintelligent. I have been, however, ignorant – by choice. It’s not that I don’t like a good discussion. I am always willing to change my views, even if they require changing my more values. But the information I base my views on had better be sound. It’s certainly not because I am unwilling to argue tenets. I love a good debate, but it had better be as close to a true debate as possible. Don’t ask me to entertain mere emotion, at the loss of reason and evidence. If you see a problem, show me what you consider a solution. I will patiently listen to you and expect the same respect from you.

That said, during the current racial protests, I’ve educated myself a bit. I freely admit that I do not know a lot right now, but I know more. And what I’ve learned is disturbing and heart-breaking.

The other day, I watched Pastor Michael Todd’s sermon from Transformation Church in Tulsa, OK. I was interested in hearing what this young Christian man of color had to say about the protests. He was pretty calm as he addressed that very subject, but was honest enough to eventually admit, “I am a Christian and I’m pissed!” Sounds fair enough to me.

He mentioned the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. From May 31 to June 1, 1921, mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood district in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The attack on “Black Wall Street” destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the wealthiest black community in the U.S., ultimately leaving about 10,000 black people homeless with no reparations made for the loss of businesses, homes, inventory or personal property. All those successful businesses and 10,000 Americans of color displaced, because of what one unidentified man may have done to a white woman – no one had time for a trial. The details horrified me.

I had no idea.

This riot started exactly 99 years after the Black Wall Street Massacre. I was checking out Facebook and kept seeing comments that used the words “tragic” and “sad” and “angry” and finally a name – George Floyd. A quick Google search and I understood. Within a few minutes, I watched something I’d never seen – a man died as I was watching. I couldn’t reconcile what I had seen – a man taking his last breath and laying completely limp beneath the knee of another man. I actually watched a man die. What followed since then has been an outpouring of anger and hate, a demand for a pound of flesh – a single match thrown into a vast pool of gasoline.

The protests throughout the country started in Minneapolis, MN, only an hour and a half’s drive from where I live, in a neighborhood I’d driven through often on my way to the hospital there. However, it just so happens that here in New Ulm, it’s rare to see a person of color. It makes it so easy to sit in the comfort of my whiteness, with the respect and safety it affords me. And that absence of people of color also makes it easy to think my story is everyone else’s story, and my story doesn’t include the anxiety of seeing a police officer, or knowing there is no point in applying at a certain company because I was the wrong shade. 

The current racial situation is scary because I am white. If rioters were to come to New Ulm, they wouldn’t see my heart. They wouldn’t take the time to ask me how many friendships I’d had with people of color. They may not be willing to see beyond my skin color.

People of color have a history of being unheard, unseen and overlooked that I understand only on a very personal basis – not on a regular basis by people who don’t know me, and certainly don’t want to get to know me. Still any one of the violent rioters could see only my color, and I could feel the full impact of their anger over a history I wasn’t part of and, frankly, would have had nothing to do with and would never condone.

But I’d be white.

And to take your anger and frustrations out on a total stranger because they’re not the same color as you isn’t fair, it’s not right. Right?

“Americans, I think, have a great advantage. To renew our unity, we only need to remember our values. We have never been held together by blood or background. We are bound by things of the spirit, by shared commitments to common ideals.“ President George W. Bush, 2016

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Breathe in, breathe out and try to relax

When I lived in Atchison, KS, my younger brother by nine years came to move in with me in order to finish high school. The very first piece of advice I heard? “Keep him away from the black kids.” When Chuck started school? He found every single student of color he could find and brought them to the house!

What they didn’t understand about me and my brother was that we’d been friends with more than a few people of color as we grew up. I thought that meant I understood them, that I “got” them. I didn’t. Not really. And I know that I still don’t, but I will never pretend to.

Let me explain. When I was in St. Louis, MO for a conference in college, my friend and I thought it would be wise to locate the building we’d need to find in the morning. So we took off, just a couple of white girls driving down the street, enjoying the opportunity to be away from classes for a few days. Everywhere I looked there were White Castle restaurants, which we didn’t have back home. The weather was perfect for leaving the windows down. It was wonderful!

We found the way to the university easily and then tried to find the route back to the hotel. This was a bit more problematic. Not realizing that White Castles were everywhere, we started using them as landmarks, confident that if we saw one, we were on the right track. As dusk set, the landscape began to look different. “Jane” I said, “When we drove to the university, there were white people in the White Castles. Now I only see black people. So either people ate shifts based on your particular shade of skin, or we’re lost.”

Oh, we were definitely lost! It was time to end our tour of St. Louis’s White Castle chain and find our way back to the hotel. As we waited for the light to change at the intersection of 14th Street and Martin Luther King Drive, a black teenager approached the car. Great! We could ask directions, which we got after this young man asked if we wanted to take him and his friend home. My heart absolutely shattered. This kid should have been home studying; instead he was offering himself to anyone who would pay him for the use his body for a price, as if it didn’t belong to him or had no other value.

We got back to the hotel, a little wiser and a lot more disheartened. What could we possibly do about it?

The next morning, I got up early to go to a nearby store to pick up some pantyhose. If the night before hadn’t been enough to unsettle me, my shopping experience sealed the deal.

As I looked for the pantyhose, it slowly occurred to me that there were none called “Nude.” In fact, there were none for a light-complected white girl like me at all.

Curious, I went to the cosmetic aisle. There were absolutely no cosmetics for someone of my color at all. In the hair products I saw products I didn’t even know existed and had no idea what any of them did. It  brought to mind the time a friend of mine said she was going to perm her hair later in the evening. I told her the thing I hated most about perms was getting all the curlers in. She patiently reminded me that she didn’ t want or need to make her hair curly; her perm was to straighten her hair. (Here’s your sign!)

I walked outside the store empty handed and realized I hadn’t noticed the billboards. Every single one had attractive black people showing off their product. Not a single white person to be seen. No one who looked like me, outside a store that didn’t have me in mind when they ordered inventory. A strange and uncomfortable thought came to me: I had a right to be able to buy what I want when I want it! How could anyone not carry the products I needed? I quickly squashed that thought but was ashamed by it.

I have never forgotten the moment when I realized my skin color excluded me from buying what I needed. It was profoundly disconcerting to have people with my skin color unrepresented in the images around me. In fact, as I looked at the people on the sidewalks, I began to search to anyone else who looked like me. I had an unfamiliar desperation to at least see another white person because this very small part of the world did not include me. Not because of any nefarious plan, discrimination or injustice, but simply because of demographics. And that sense of privilege and entitlement I’d felt earlier was a surprisingly ugly thought that simply came because I had never had what I needed or wanted unavailable to me.

I’ve had years to think on that snapshot of my life experiences. I look around and see white people in television and movies. Santa is white. Jesus is white (though I’m pretty sure that’s not accurate!). I see white people in political offices and upper management. It’s all very comfortable for a white girl like me to see the world when it reflects my ethnicity, my experience, my goals and dreams.

See, a lot of white women my age have grown up playing with the same toys, had the same celebrity crushes, the same encouragement and opportunities. We understand each other because we “know” each other. But we aren’t educated in what black women our age experience. We don’t “know” them as well.

While we can and should respect their experience, we simply don’t understand what doesn’t reflect ourselves. I don’t think it’s because we don’t want to! We just don’t know how to educate ourselves. I know that in the wake of George Floyd’s death, people have shared book and video titles that would help. But those books and videos only provide knowledge, which is a good start. It would take relationships to gain wisdom and understanding. It will take a lot more for us to understand how it feels to have people not look us in the eye as they pass by because we’re darker. To have someone hold their purse a little tighter because we’re darker. To be seen as someone to be afraid of or suspicious of because we’re black.

And when we watch the protests on television, we understand how senseless, destructive and quite frankly wrong they choose to be heard is. But I think we need to consider that, like so many other minorities, they don’t have a voice and they have no leadership like they did in Martin Luther King, Jr. And when you can’t speak, you scream. When there is no platform on which to build, you destroy. You take the only options and tools available and demand to be seen.

This is the same frustration that has lead to #metoo movements and #blacklivesmatter, etc People just want to be seen and treated with some respect and dignity. They want boundaries for themselves that are honored. And it can start very simply in the small details. When someone says “Stop” just stop. When a tall black man of substantial and imposing height walks by you, just flash a quick smile to him like you would to anyone else. When someone definitely looks like she’s “not from around here”, just talk to her.

I’ve never been too shy to draw someone into a conversation, and one day I saw a very nice looking black woman sitting at a nearby table, alone. There were no other diners around, so I went over to her and asked her if she was enjoying our town. She told what brought her to New Ulm. I shared some tips and recommendations on how to best enjoy the town.

When we parted, she thanked me for talking to her, telling me that she’d been in town for two days and no one had spoken to her. I assured her that the folks here are cautious with anyone they don’t know. However, I could attest to the fact that you couldn’t find kinder people. It just took some time, but once they warm up to you, they won’t hesitate to tell you about their son’s ex-wife’s hysterectomy!

Just let them talk and then listen to them. Really hear them!

I certainly don’t support the way some protesters are acting. And I’m definitely not an expert on the black experience! But I know what it’s like to not be seen, to not be heard.

In his devotion for today, Rick Warren shared Proverbs 31:8-9 (NIV): “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” Besides the black community, we have…

• the poor
• the uneducated
• the handicapped
• the mentally ill
• the babies
• the children
• the geriatric
• the obese
• the single parents
• the nerds
• the homosexuals
• name your own

It’s a long list because there are so many circles to classify ourselves in. But right there in the center of our Venn Diagram, right there in the middle, we find the one thing that we all share. We are all children of a powerful and loving God, who must grieve over he way we treat other children of God. Those of us who know better need to do better when we can.

It’s suffocating to never be heard. And I suppose that’s why George Floyd’s last words will linger for a very long time.

 

Not Another Crisis!

I’ll be honest. When I hear new details of the George Floyd protests, I get a bit anxious – because the protesters are angry, violent and, most frightening perhaps, unpredictable. When I hear an update on our government, I grow concerned – because some politicians are duplicitous, powerful and, perhaps most frightening, unpredictable. I don’t know what’s true or what to expect. You know the feeling?

We live in a time in which there is very little information we can not access. You may even say too much information, and too many people sharing or creating that information. And far too little experience discerning fact from fiction. Harder still, I believe, is determining what’s true from what is almost true

So what can I count on to be both true and unchanging? What can I take comfort in knowing? The Word of God and the nature of God.

This year has been hard on all of us. Even the introverts are tired of the limitations the Coronavirus has left us is. And at this writing, businesses and neighborhoods are being destroyed in protests spurred by the loss of a black citizen’s life at the hands of a white authority. And none of us really know what to do. About anything. It’s now that I take comfort in my salvation and adoption by my Abba as his child.

This morning, my husband and I were discussing whether our current condition is a sign of the end times. Is Christ about to return at any moment? Will it get even scarier out there before he does. And we determined that we’re no more intelligent or wiser than Christ, who himself doesn’t know when the God who has the moon and stars in his hand will give the charge, so what do we know.

But that brought to mind 2 Peter 3:9:

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

In the same chapter, the church is encouraged to be prepared and to live so as to be found spotless when Christ returns.

Today, it would be so easy, as a Christian, to sit in self-righteousness and be confident of my readiness, to think “I’m ready!” And while checking the news and reading social media, seeing hatred and deception, it would be easy to be the Pharisee who publicly thanked God that his God saw him as a righteous man was not a sinner like the tax collector. We are right with God…unlike the vipers in government and the vandals, looters, and other ne’er do wells.

But before we get too comfortable with this increasing polarization, I want to remind you of 2 Peter 3:9. God is staying his hand so that the people who we’re about to pronounce judgement on still have time to accept Christ as their savior, understand they’re sinners, and repent.

Before Christ ascended into the heavens, he commissioned us to share the Gospel. It’s great to be on Team God!  But we can’t just join the team and be done, proud that we’re there. We still have the daunting task of waiting diligently so as to be acceptable at his son’s return. We can’t just stop because we got our Get Out of Hell Free card. We’ve been commanded, by the one to whom we belong, to invite others to join the team. That’s why we’re still waiting. 

It’s so easy to look at a fellow sinner and condemn them for their behavior and polarize ourselve opposite them.

Us, them. 

Saved, unsaved.

Worthy, unworthy. 

Loved, unloved.

We are all sinners. And we are all unworthy and completely dependent on the grace of God. But we are all loved by our Abba. 

And so God waits. The house is on fire, we’re safe, and we even saved one other person. What are we going to do about the others still trapped in the house?

WHEN YOU RUN OUT OF PETALS

In reading Brennan Manning’s The Furious Longing of God, I had to stop and meditate on a section, much as you would stop at a solitary painting in a gallery. Not because it’s the most spectacular painting in the show, but because it touches you – and perhaps only you on this particular day – in an imperceptible but undeniable way. This section of the book spoke to me of the incredibly fierce, passionate potential of love; rather than the simple sweetness of a valentine card we mandatorily distributed in grade school and often enough didn’t receive in complete reciprocity in grade school.

This kind of love is hard for me to understand when it comes to my children, much less for the rest of world. I struggle to love someone very close to me when the “love” I grew up with was conditional, with strings attached, at a price that I could never hope to repay. And repayment would be expected, although I never knew when or how.

What I’m coming to understand about loving others as my Father loves me is this: God loves me always and anyway. If I were to hold a daisy and play “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,” it would have but one single petal. Because he loves me!

But what about my sin? Surely each sin should add another link in the a shackle for the world to see, a reminder of my human failings, an ever-growing statement of my shame, a testament of God’s exhaustive mercy. Yet it’s not only forgiven, it’s undeservingly forgotten, and I doubt very much that God’s glory would be as evident if his children walked around with the chains of their failures dragging behind them. No. We are set free!

Several years ago, about a week before Christmas, I told my husband I was going to Kmart to pick up a few stocking stuffers. Everything I got was less than $3.00, more often under $2.00. Imagine my surprise when the cashier informed me that I owed her over $200.00! As I drove home, I considered every plan I might use to return at least half of the items. Would I return a few things at a time, or should I just bite the bullet and return half of my haul at once?

Neither option allowed for me to hold onto my dignity. And I gave up any hope of simply not telling John, because I’m a lousy liar! He was naturally taken aback by my abundance of small stocking stuffers. Two hundred dollars was way more than we could afford! He said, “Just keep it all. It will be fine.” I’ve always remembered his quiet mercy. But here’s the thing – when I told this story to some friends a few years later, he said, “I’d forgotten all about that!”

I can’t imagine how! I’d spent years keeping that mistake on my list of “Things to be Ashamed Of”, and he had stopped thinking of it entirely! I began to wonder what other things he may have forgotten, how many other things should I be cautious about reminding him of – just in case he’d forgotten them as well. (Wink, wink, nod, nod, know what I mean?)

To make the comment all the sweeter, he wasn’t aware of how very many times I’d heard my mother say, “I’ll remember that.” And she did, bringing up a slight on my part every time I did something wrong and she wanted to make sure I, as well as my step-father and brother all knew how very horrible I was. Yet here was someone who had not only chosen to not keep a $200 mistake in his arsenal, but had managed to forget it. And he loved me.

Now, if my husband could not only forgive but forget one of my wrongs, what God promises is mind-blowing! But this is exactly what our Abba promises. Imagine what we could do without the weight of remembered faults. Imagine the freedom of being able to not only forgive others for being just what they are – people capable of disappointing us, failing us, hurting us, ignoring us, or just plain getting on our last nerve – but to actually treat them as if they hadn’t slighted us at all. What if our mercies could be new every morning, too?

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:22-23 NIV

What if, before I even open my eyes in the morning, instead of getting irritated because I know that I know that I know a certain empty can of Pepsi is not in the recycling bin, but rather right where my husband left it – so close to falling off the counter next to the recycling bin that a faint breeze would be enough to push it off the edge, I thank God for the man he gave me? (I have a more adhesive memory than my husband does, which is inconvenient for him. ;D) What if, instead of expecting my co-worker to misfile something because she “always does”, I look for the woman God sees; a woman who loves her family dearly and has immeasurable potential?

Don’t expect a sermon or a Power Point presentation on how I learned to forgive and forget. I stink at both! (Although forgetting seems to get easier each year that I grow older.) Sadly, I simply cannot grasp how anyone can forgive and forget. I can’t imagine there are many of us who can. Remembering where our pain has come from can be as much a means of survival for us as remembering where the nuts are hidden is for a squirrel. And part of becoming a good, upstanding citizen depends upon our behavior being rated on a scale from selfless to horrendous. Our parents, teachers and other authorities are there to nudge us back to mid-scale so we don’t hurt others, to prevent anarchy. Unfortunately, those “nudges” are sometimes tainted with shame along the lines of “Naughty boy!” Some of us have had those lessons reinforced with the more effective use of punishment and fear, from being disregarded and unloved to being beaten and malnourished.

Have you ever thought that if people knew more about you, they’d be amazed that you can function at all? I have. Often. But then I realize that there are a lot of us out here who are functioning the best we can, in spite of so many things. If only we could extend to them the same compassion and patience we crave.

I think it’s just that kind of love that Jesus was here to share and demonstrate. When he healed the crowds, I very much doubt that he stopped to decide if someone was worthy or not. I would imagine there were those who were cruel and abusive to their families, those who had stolen from their neighbor, betrayed their spouse. Perhaps they were among the very ones who needed Christ’s touch the most. The kind of healing they required had the potential to create healings far beyond a broken hand or restored hearing; this was the kind of healing that impacted everything and everyone the hand ever touched thereafter. To think that Jesus knew the hearts of everyone he touched and still loved them enough to heal them. He had to have known there were people for whom a healing touch may not change anything, but such is his love for us. His healing provided hope that things could be different!

Today Christ doesn’t see just what is, but what should have been when we were formed in our mother’s womb, and what still could be because of the future he has spoken over us.

It’s not too late until we draw our last breath, because our Father loves each of us always and anyway. Imagine…He loves us as much as he loves his own son.

Buh-Bye!

Saturday Night Live had a skit back in 2010 that left most people hating a single phrase: the oh-so-irritating “buh-bye”. And no one made those two syllables sound more obnoxious than David Spade. It’s almost as if this was the line he was born to say. As passengers disembarked the plane, each received the same insincere, just-keep-moving “buh-bye.” And that, my friends, is exactly what I have to say to 2019. I can’t wait for it to be over! I’m worn, overwhelmed, exhausted, broke, and so completely ready to be done with this year.

I’ve been ready for 2019 to be over since January 4th, when I totaled our car in an against-all-odds single-car accident – on an in-town, two-lane highway 20 minutes before 8:00 am on a work day. By the time Maggie got her driver’s license in October, I was more than happy to surrender my license.

I was ready for it to be over in February when we had to replace our furnace. 

I was ready for it to be over since the end of March when I fractured the glenoid fossa in my shoulder and it dislocated about 4 days later. For a couple of reasons, the specialist I saw said it really can’t be fixed, which means it is permanently dislocated.

But just as I was beginning to think some very mean person had signed us up for some twisted version of the Fruit of the Month Club, we stopped having big monthly issues. All that was left were the “regular” financial, medical, vocational and emotional things. I’d like to say things got better, but that’s not quite the same as things not getting worse. Here in Minnesota, they like to say, “It could be worse.” I don’t recall accepting that as a challenge.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, you have a year I can’t wait to say “buh-bye” to.

It’s probably too late to warn you that this isn’t a warm, fuzzy holiday post. However, it’s an honest post. It’s really not my intention to whine. (Trust me! If I wanted to whine, this would be a much longer post.) I’m writing this because I’ve had the nagging sense that I failed or have been foolish.

I’d felt so bold and certain when I wrote that I am no longer the child of my mother, but rather the child of my heavenly Father. Since that post, I’ve been wondering who I think I am to say anything encouraging. I’ve felt especially powerless and hopeless about my chronic pain, which is honestly pretty exhausting because it never goes away. And yet I keep trying to do the things I did before the chronic pain. Like Job, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering WHY? Haven’t I had enough to deal with? Why can’t I get a damn break?! Or am I really as undeserving of mercy, grace, and goodness like I’d believed I was most of my life?

It would be so easy to think I’ve been foolish and pathetic to believe I could have a happy life. Was I that stupid school girl who was so gullible as to believe that the cute guy really wanted to take her to the dance, while his friends laughed and she sat alone at home in the dress she’d begged her mother to buy?

Or had I failed? Had I done something wrong? I’m not always the most sensitive person. I can be judgemental. And I know I can have an ugly heart sometimes. But am I really that bad? I try! I try to make sure everything gets done, that the bills get paid, that every customer I help gets good service. I try so hard to be good, but it never seems to matter or make a difference.

I’m beginning to think that my deepest wound, my greatest fear, is learning – not thinking, but discovering – that I’m insignificant, unworthy of anything good and definitively unlovable. 

This scares me because it leaves me with two possibilities:

1. This is true and there’s nothing different for me to expect.
2. This is not true and I’m lowering my standards to make things more palatable for my sense of self.

Neither is very exciting.

Yet, as I sat pouting and kicking at the collateral damage of this year, I wondered what I could possibly have to say that could encourage someone else. Then last night after ripping out some paragraphs better suited for other posts, I found this:

Please don’t let it overwhelm you. I promise God is with you. You don’t see him working. You do not get how a loving God could allow you to be where you are, but you’re alive because he loves you. You will come out blessed, stronger and able to help others.

Don’t quit. Pick your head up. God is with you.

How about that? God is with me. As in Immanuel – “God with us.” Hmmm.

So maybe it isn’t about all the problems I have, or even how they seem to pile up. Maybe it has more to do with what I do when they pile up. Do I sit there in a mess that could show up on, frankly, anyone’s front step? Or do I continue to hope against all hope that God is real, that he does love me and he does want to hold me close to him as a child? Do I just sit where I am, or do I hold my hand out in the faith that someone will reach out to take my hand in theirs and pull me into their arms – but not in a creepy way that tells you that it’s too late to worry if you left the door unlocked.

Some, including myself, will think I’m a whiner. Others, also including myself, may recognize the childlike fear of being unwanted. And it really is an all-or-nothing, this-or-that deal, isn’t it? Either God is who his word says he is and there is hope and love to be had, or God is just another Wizard of Oz. That’s the choice I have to make next year. Which still gives me a few hours to wallow in self-pity.

I want so desperately to be loved by a God about whom things like this are said:

If I can be convicted of my justification with a God who loves me enough to sacrifice his only son in order for me to be made righteous through his blood, then I will do all I can to convince every other aching person out there that they are not unlovable, that there is a good Father who loves them the way they were always intended to be loved, but weren’t.

That would be nice way to end 2020.

 

 

 

SHOW ME WHERE IT HURTS

Anyone who’s watched Raiders of the Lost Ark knows all too well the beating Indiana Jones takes right up to the scene where he finally gets a chance to stop and catch a breath. It’s only then that he or the audience gives much thought to his injuries. Marion tries to take advantage of the moment to kiss it and make it better, but each touch is met with varying cringes. Finally, she says, “Damn it, Indy, where doesn’t it hurt?!”

Isn’t that sometimes the easier question?

But the question I’ve really been pondering has been the one Lysa TerKeurst brought up: What is my deepest wound?

Honestly, I thought it would be a bigger challenge and require a lot more navel gazing than it did!

But I think my deepest wound is the fear of being unlovable and alone.

You know, the kind of alone where you’re pretty sure no one cares about you. Because you’re broken. Because you’re hideous. Because you’re worthless.

And you know you’re broken because the thoughts you think are wrong and weird, and you can’t even pass a remedial algebra class in your third year of college. You know you’re hideous because no one ever asks you out but if they did, you’d wonder what was wrong with them. You know you’re worthless because for years you felt hatred actually emanate from your own mother.

Who could ever love you? And don’t say “God” because if the people around you – people you can see, hear and touch – don’t seem to want to see you or hear you, much less touch you no matter what you do, then how are you supposed to believe that a God you can’t see, hear or touch loves you no matter what…just “because”!

That is what you’re supposed to believe when no one wants you?

That is what you’re expected to hold onto when you’re completely and painfully alone?

That sense of being completely and forever unlovable is what I think my deepest wound is. In fact, I’m willing to suggest that it’s the deepest wound most of us have.

Why?

Because it’s the one wound that consistently threatens to keep us from the only one who can fill the gaping wound, the only one who can stop the bleeding – the very one who created us. Because that is the wound that God’s greatest enemy will always rub, bump or flat-out jab to keep us from ever being fully confident of God’s love for us.

During the past six years, I’ve been getting to know the God I trusted to give me my Get out of Hell Free card when I was 12 years old in a Southern Baptist church. It was a pretty typical Southern Baptist salvation. As the congregation sang “I Surrender All”, I made my way down the aisle to the front of the church, and accepted Christ as my savior. But it’s taking a long time for me to actually surrender all!

That was it, though. I tried to be a good girl like a Christian was supposed, but my life was painful! I spent the next 20 years just trying to survive, wondering where God was. If God loved me so much, why didn’t anyone else? If he loved me, then why did I feel so unlovable?

That, I think, has been my deepest wound.

What changed? How did I come to actually believe that I was not unlovable? Twenty-two years ago, my Father gave me a husband who refused to give up on me. One day, shortly after we were married, I was considering that I wasn’t sure I loved John. I was grateful to him – which is another post entirely – but I didn’t think I loved him. I also had a four year-old daughter who was especially challenging. I wasn’t sure I loved her either. So I sat on the front step of our apartment and told God, “I don’t think I know how to love.” He gently told me, “That’s why I gave you John.”

John kept showing me love and patience again and again, no matter what I did or said. I saw how it looked. Eventually, I felt it, and I could recognize it when I saw it. I recognized it when it came from my Father.

Even before I began this blog, I was quite aware of the fact that I was not equipped to feel loved – by anyone. I felt unlovable and unloved not simply as a woman, but as a Christian, too. And that seemed so wrong to me. Something told me I couldn’t be the only Christian who was so convinced that they were unlovable, that they were missing out on the most complete love of all.

It’s sad enough that anyone would feel unlovable. It’s so much more unfortunate that many of those people are born-again Christians. And I want more than anything for us to be set free from the lies we’ve been told about ourselves so we can live a life so fiercely victorious that satan is terrified every single day of what we will do with that freedom!

But first, we have to heal.

A NEW THING

I have always had a passion for sharing what I knew and what I thought. Anytime, anywhere. Usually without invitation. And that seemed to be a problem for my teachers. All of my teachers. From First Grade through my senior year of high school. (I don’t think anyone noticed in Kindergarten because none of us had much self-control then.) But I still have the quarterly report cards that pointed out, “LaRonda talks too much in class.” When this came up in a conversation with a college professor, she said, “Well…we don’t have report cards in college.”

The thing is, I was never talking about how ugly I thought Heather’s dress was or how I couldn’t decide if I wanted to marry Shaun Cassidy or Leif Garret. I was almost always making comments on the lesson the teacher was teaching us – at that precise moment, unfortunately.

Equally unfortunate is the fact that the teachers never seemed to understand that. They seem to have thought I was talking about silly girl things and simply being a distracting nuisance when, in fact, I was only being a distracting nuisance. I’m realizing now that it was my way of learning and actually actively engaging in my education. It was how I learned best, and I had the grades to prove it. I just didn’t realize that no one else in the room worked that way, and I was making education and educating harder for them.

But because everyone believed the problem was that I talked too much in class, that became a source of shame and insecurity for me. To this day, my husband and I will go home after a Bible study, and I’ll say to him, “I talked too much again, didn’t I?” Sometimes I feel enough shame that tears come to my eyes (just as they are now by simply mentioning it).

What I’m getting at is this: I have an inherent passion to share my thoughts, and back in 2011 I thought blogging would be a great way to do that. If no one cared to know what I thought, they simply didn’t need to read what I wrote. But I had no direction, no substantial focus, so I quit.

Then in 2018, Maggie thought it would be fun to do a dual blog in which we would follow up each Bible study with her take on it as a daughter/teen, and I would share my thoughts as a mother/”mature” woman. I thought that sounded exciting, so the next Sunday night I blew off the dust on my old blog site and wrote down my thoughts on the Bible study. I kept waiting for Maggie to join me as I continued to find things to write about. I’m still waiting.

Eventually, I decided to change the name of my blog since I was obviously going to write about what I was learning about God, Christ and the Holy Spirit. I’d finally found a direction, a substantial focus. However, I have recently felt “committed” to “righteous writing”, and I’m no preacher. I’ve also learned that I absolutely treasure feedback because that’s when a conversation can begin. (I’m not foolish enough to suggest that there’s no emotional satisfaction, too. I enjoy encouraging comments, and I’m grateful I don’t have enough followers to say mean things. And I doubt there are many who don’t feel the same need for acceptance and fear of rejection.) One day, I hope I can genuinely say, “All glory goes to he who gave me this gift. None of it is me.”

Which brings me to this post. I have a story to tell. We all do. I’ve long thought that my story was about the pain I felt growing up with a mentally ill mother who was often quite cruel; the difficulty I had in my 20’s trying to meet so many unmet needs in a healthy way – and failing miserably; the challenge of acting “normal” in a world that had no idea that I only understood over-achievement to avoid being punished, all the while feeling inherently defective and unlovable; and taking 16 years to believe that my husband and children loved me “just because” and weren’t going to suddenly tell me they were just trying to be nice all these years, but the truth is they never loved me.

Most important, it took me this long to learn that my Father is nothing like my mother. And that is what I believe my story is. My story is God’s story; I’m simply a character in a story that reveals his nature.

I’m equally aware that I’m not the only one out here who has been abused, misused and lied to about who they are. Even the best-intentioned parents will manage to smudge God’s picture of who his children are. I also know there are others who have survived against the odds – literally. Some of us have experienced things that most of us couldn’t conceive or process even if we knew the story; and we’ll seldom hear the story. In fact, you’d be surprised at who you work with who’s grown up in truly damaging homes. Some of them may even be the friends you think you know. Chances are, they work very hard to make sure you never discover their secret.

But the only story I can tell is my own. And perhaps someone can see that they’re not alone, their abuse and misuse was not their fault, their Father loves them very much, they are enough and they are lovable. I’m not talking Stuart Smalley stuff. (Yes. Yes, that is former Minnesota Senator, Al Franken, on Saturday Night Live. My state also elected Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura as governor, so…). No, I’m talking about discovering who we were born to be and finally living like the child of God that we are, rather than the child of                      _     we were told we were.

To be honest, it’s scary for me to consider being vulnerable; but for the most part, those readers – who are fortunately small in number right now – will either not read what I write or will likely be very gracious. Those readers who are part of my church family and only think they know me, well…I don’t know what to tell ya! 🙂 Those readers who I know peripherally, I guess a more intimate introduction is imminent, huh? (I love a good alliteration!) Just understand that this has nothing to do with getting pity. Although there’s still some pain when someone accidentally and unknowingly bumps into an old wound that hasn’t quite healed or has very recently been re-injured, I know I’m loved and safe now. This is intended to be a story of healing – how and from what God is healing me.

I guess we’ll see what happens! By the way, the other thing my mother read on every single report card was “She is not living up to her potential.” Perhaps I can do something about that. I may be over 50, but some of my teachers also said I was just a late bloomer.

BUT WHY?

Very little is more frustrating than doing something simply for the sake of doing it. Many years ago, I attended a friend’s baby shower. I took my gift to the gift table and handed it to the gift table manager. She was quick to point out that the accompanying card didn’t have my friend’s name on it and suggest that I do that. Since there was only one mother-to-be at the shower, I hadn’t expected this social construct to be important. But in order for the gift table manager to have a fulfilling purpose beyond receiving and strategically stacking gifts, checking envelopes for names to add some value to an otherwise so-so responsibility. Or maybe she just really, really believed names should be on envelopes!

Sometimes, traditions get passed from one generation to the next. You know the story of the young mother asking her mother why she was always sure to cut off each end of the ham for dinner. Her mother didn’t really know why, so she asked her grandmother, who settled the matter saying, “Because none of my pans were big enough to hold a full ham.”

Simon Sinek examines this kind of thinking in this 5-minute short-cut version of Start With Why. And, yes, he focuses on business training, but when he says:

When we look at it this way, our church families are challenged to determine why we do what we do.

It’s so tempting to look at mega churches and feel a twinge of jealousy when our own small parking lot and pew seats remain sparsely filled. What do we do when popular churches offer spectacles more electrifying than Hamilton and all the members are on their feet in a deafening praise, while we have a generation of grandparents and great-grandparents, a smattering of young families, and teens with a very short attention span?

The harvest Jesus talked about is still out there, always out there, until God gives the nod to Jesus that it’s end-game time. So…

Why do we have church? Why do we open the doors, call for volunteers and pay for building maintenance? Why do we have coffee and doughnuts available? Why do we congregate and sing together? Why do our pastors prepare a new sermon every week and our boards get together to plan?

Why? We aren’t a business. The offering isn’t a cover charge.

Why did the field workers who got hired late in the day get paid as much as the workers who put in a full, grueling day? Because there was still work to be done. It absolutely must be done because we’re running out of time!

People are finding comfort from the wrong things. People are living one day after another without knowing how very loved they are by the one Father that will never leave them or forsake them. People are dying without salvation.

Certainly, there is plenty of work to be done before the sun sets. There are people who need to be loved into salvation.

What if all we ever have are the members of our small church to be the hands and feet of God? Here’s what I see in my church family:

• A generation with years of faith-building trials, heartache, blessings and wisdom that can only come from a long life. A generation that will not be here forever. Their hearts are soft enough to be pierced by the word of God; but their confidence in a good God is heard in their fervent prayers and felt by their gentle hands.
• A generation of young parents who have chosen to raise their children to trust God, appreciate Jesus, listen to the Holy Spirit, and love others. Their young ones won’t be young as long as we think they’ll be. Soon, they’ll be…
• Our youth, the ones who will elect the people who will determine the legislation that affect all of us. They’ll create and run business that will set standards of trust and transparency. They will be the thermostat for their community, their state, their country. They are the ones to whom we will entrust the harvest we don’t have the time to finish.

I think we need to know why we do church. I think we need to determine if we need to keep putting a name on a card when it can only go to one person. Maybe we need to figure out why we keep cutting the ends off our hams. There are far too many souls out there waiting to be loved into the kingdom of God for us to be wasting our resources on anything that doesn’t help get them there.

I ended my last post with “You are so loved!” I tell my family that often. They give me so much joy that I could never not love them. But this morning, after I’d texted my teenage daughter that she was ‘so loved’, Holy Spirit nudged me and said, “So are you. You and the rest of the world are so loved that God gave his only son, that whoever believes in the son will not perish but will have everlasting life. We are all so loved by our Father. He wants everyone to just come home where they belong! He already has a place at the table with our name on it.

That’s a pretty decent WHY!

Let’s pray that as fishers of men, we are as able to pull in a net bulging to the point of breaking as we are to trust Christ to tell us where to throw the net out and that we’re willing to throw it out at his word no matter how many times we’ve already tried or how tired we are.

And remember…you are so loved!

 

 

 

 

 

OK…FALSE ALARM!

OK. You know what? I think I just needed a nap, a hug, and some good friends!

Once again, God gave me a crash course in assurance. Most of my lessons are like this because I think God has this tiny window of opportunity before I change my mind. Seriously, I’m like that kid – you know the one – who gets to the edge of the diving board and is too scared to jump but they can’t really go back to the stairs either so they just stand there hoping the world will open up and swallow them whole but it doesn’t so they go ahead and jump with the conviction that they’re about to drown to death but when they don’t die they figure death would have been better than being embarrassed. Yeah, I’m like that kid.

Shortly after I called the wahh-mbulance the other day, I opened an email from Morgan Harper Nichols. Unlike most of the subscriptions I get emails from, she’s gone to the trouble of personalizing her emails with the recipient’s first name. And that means I saw this as the subject line before I even opened the email: You’re not alone LaRonda.

I know. Right?

Of course, as nice as it was, all I could think was, ‘Maybe you’re not alone, but I’m pretty sure I am.’

I was wrong. So very wrong. Because I’m lazy, I’ve cut  and pasted the rest of Morgan’s message:

When you find yourself in a new place, and you are trying find your footing, may you never feel that you have to navigate it alone. Consider it a blessing that there are other people in this world that you can learn from, even if you are not able to speak to them directly.

You may not be able to be as open to your boss or a colleague as you would like to, or you may not be able to seek wise counsel from family members like you wish you could, but that does not mean you have reached the limit on who you can look to or reach out to.

And it’s okay if “reaching out” takes you out of comfort zone. That’s exactly what’s supposed to happen. The moment you take the step to ask a question or express a need that you have is a bold rejection of the lie that you were meant to do this alone. It does not make you needy. It does not make you weak.

So don’t be so hard on yourself. If you feel that reaching out makes you vulnerable, it does…and it has also made you strong. You were never meant to be in this alone. And the more you begin taking steps to live out this truth, the more you will begin to see just how much it makes a difference in you.

May this be the week you begin to practice stepping out of your comfort zone just a little bit more. May you begin to open your heart to possibility that vulnerability takes courage and the willingness to accept that you have no idea what is going to happen. Be honest about what you are thinking and feeling this week. Be honest with yourself. Be mindful of the moments where you feel tempted to shut down or withdraw or give up. And it’s okay to have these moments and being able to acknowledge them is a huge step in working through them.

Sincerely,
Morgan Harper Nichols

Yesterday, I went to church and was surrounded by amazing people who had not only had their faith tested and strengthened, but are in the midst of a trial right now. It’s foolishness to think your problems are more insurmountable than someone else’s. I don’t think I’m struggling with how bad I think things are. I know there are painful things that I can’t imagine having to go through, and my heart breaks for anyone carrying such a load.

Lately I’ve thought a lot about painful things that can never change until we’re Home. Two people in our church family have lost their spouse this year. Another woman had her leg amputated. A young woman I once worked with lost her five-month old boy to SIDS. People don’t return to life. A limb isn’t going to grow back. I can eventually pay off debt or purchase another car. I can even arrange things to compensate for the changes in me since my open-heart surgery. And I’ll eventually learn how to work with one good arm and one permanently dislocated arm. It won’t always be easy, but it can be done.

However, some things do not change. There are some things that I can’t fix, and that makes me feel powerless and vulnerable. (That was harder to say than you might think.)

I’ve spent most of my life garnering as much control as I could because I was the only person I could count on to not hurt me. (And, honestly, I’ve probably been crueler to myself than anyone else has ever been.)

So right now, I need help to carry things, to cook, to do my job. I have to ask for help when I need it. Here’s what can happen:

• Someone will gladly help me.
• Someone will help me but not exactly the way I would have done it – which, of course, is the right way.
• Someone will help me and then hold it over me when they need to leverage it for guilt.
• Someone will say ‘No.’

That gives me a 50% chance be being hurt. And a 100% chance that I won’t ask for help until I’m desperate.

Fortunately, God has put people in my life who are as persistent as they are kind. Fortunately, God has infinite patience with me as he teaches me that it’s okay to ask for and accept help. And that I can be secure that if I reach out my hand, there will be someone there to hold it.

Sometimes, I just have to be brave enough to jump and trust that there are lifeguards who won’t let me drown. Yeah…pretty sure.

I THINK I’M DONE

When I started this blog a little over a year ago I felt pretty strong, pretty confident, and I had fantasies of writing something that would, in some small way, touch someone. My greater goal was to help people who felt unlovable to realize that they were lovable and loved by a God who treasures them, quirks and all. The only way I felt that was possible was from the other side of my own doubts. And to be honest, I lasted longer than I thought I would.

I don’t think I can do that right now. I have no doubt that one day I’ll start writing again, but it’ll definitely take more than I’ve got right now.

A few weeks ago, I posted Are We There Yet? I think that’s a fair enough question.

Most of the trouble is that I’ve always tried to be a good girl and never ask for much. I tried o be a good student, a good employee, a good Christian. I learned at a very young age that I was not much more than an option.

I don’t recall what I did wrong, but my mother told me she’d made a call to the orphanage. The only thing I understood about the orphanage (which we actually had in our city) was that it was where children went when they didn’t have parents. She told me someone would be by later to get me. They’d put me in a dark room and feed me when they felt like it.

I waited quietly until it was dark enough to know grown-ups weren’t at work anymore, which also meant someone hadn’t come to take me to the orphanage. I asked my mother if they were still coming to get me. She simply said, “They must have forgotten about you. They’ll probably come tomorrow.”

i never went to the orphanage. I continue to live with my mother, which was probably worse than the alternative.

I’ve spent most of my life convinced that I was unlovable and insignificant enough to be easily forgotten. At best, I was tolerated. But that tolerance was very conditional, and I was constantly reminded with, “If you don’t like it, you can leave.”

I didn’t like it, but I had no where to go so I couldn’t leave. And I didn’t leave until the day before my 21st birthday.

My point is this: When you grow up without grace  or mercy, there’s no way you can recognize it when you see it. Even if you could, you can not accept it when you’ve believed that you’re something to be tolerated.

I thought I had made progress, that I had more confidence in God’s word. But I know now that I haven’t. I was starting to come to terms with the limitations after my open-heart surgery. I kept looking for the good after I wrecked the car in January. I trusted God to provide when we had to replace a new furnace in February. I even tried to remain optimistic when I wrecked my shoulder at the end of March. And somehow, we’ll find a way to pay the taxes we owe to the state.

But if God knows me so well, doesn’t he know that I am not that strong? My body had already betrayed me enough, but to have to live the rest of my life with the pain and limitations of a permanently dislocated shoulder? How does that glorify God? To be so perpetually broke that the kindness of really generous friends and my husband’s family barely scratches the surface of our debt because more debt is piled on than we can dig out…how does that glorify God?

So I’m angry and confused. I feel foolish for trusting God because there are plenty of people who are looking at me and wondering why they should trust him if this is what a Christian life looks like.

So here’s the deal: I can not write anything encouraging or motivational right now. This post is concrete evidence of that. So I shall keep all of my thoughts inside my pretty little head until I can be nice again. Besides…if I don’t like it, i can always leave, right?