Category Archives: Healing

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A Time To…

Nearly 4 years ago I lost both my parents within 6 days of each other. A few days later my overseas missionary team, which was highly dysfunctional to begin with, began a painful implosion, and I made a choice a few months later to stay home and get healthy rather than go back overseas and serve in my emotionally crippled state. In just a few short months I had lost my parents, my sense of "family", my job, my home, my career and my dreams. I was devastated. And my life was decimated.  I was told by three different counselors that I had enough losses tallied up to "send me to Mars and back," or at least to a loony-bin for a bit. One of them at least still seems to marvel that I was still walking and talking and functioning in the world at that point.

I think have a pretty good idea what grief is.

Over at Kat Coble’s blog-house there’s a discussion on public grief going on. Kat (both of the Kats in my life, actually) is always good at making me think. I guess this is why she won the Thinking Blogger Award. Doh. At any rate, Kat honestly asked, Does grief now need to be public in order to be real?

What a powerful, meaty question.

I have watched the public response to the Virginia Tech tragedy with a mix of curiosity and sadness. As someone who’s lost loved ones (I kinda dislike the triteness of that phrase, but it serves me well here), I know all to well the agony the next year holds for the families and friends of the dead. But truthfully I feel more pain and sorrow for my boss, who just unexpectedly lost his mom, than I do for the strangers in Virginia. Its not that I don’t feel for them or have compassion for their loss. Its just that I’m not connected to them. And therein lies my curiosity with the public grief currently sweeping the nation over this tragedy. What is it that causes us human beings to be swept up in other’s emotions?  And must grief now be public to truly be grief? If we don’t grieve publicly, does it mean we are unfeeling, disconnected and cold?

I struggled with the question of public grief a lot at the time of my parents’ deaths because in the beginning I felt only moments of agony (grief) followed by long stretches of blissful quiet nothingness. Because I didn’t cry at their memorial services I thought there must something really, really wrong with me — aren’t you supposed to cry at your parents funerals?? I began to be convinced I must be shamefully disconnected from my own self and emotions. Turns out I was, but without the shame. It’s called the “shock” stage of grief and it is a blessed, blessed thing to which I sometimes wish I could briefly revisit.

Anyway… I’ve since realized that I can no more predict how I will react in the face of painful, terrible loss than I can predict the weather in Tennessee. Nothing is normal so everything is normal.

The movie “The Queen” addresses this issue of public versus private grief in such a powerful way. It really made me re-think how I looked at the Royal Family during the public mourning of Diana’s death. And it reminded me of how most of my own grief has been quite blessedly private.

In just the last decade our country has had many reasons to mourn. Columbine, September 11th, the Iraq War, and now the Virginia Tech shootings, just to name a few. We’ve had a good deal of tragedy. Yet realistically, our parents and grandparents had much, much more. Vietnam, JFK’s assassination, Martin Luther King’s assassination, Korea, World War II, the Depression, World War I… And that’s just the national ones. There are countless other more personal, private tragedies for each one of them, made all the worse from ours by the lack of medical technologies and psychological understandings. Us Gen-Xers and Y-ers and the Boomers just haven’t had life all that tough in comparison.

Yet we seem to be the most melodramatic when it comes to public grief. Don’t we? I’m not saying our parents and grandparents didn’t publicly grieve. I’m saying we have a tendency to be so much more morbidly fascinated with and compelled to grieve publicly for people we do not know than they were. And I rather feel that most of what I see today in the way of public grieving is more of either an emotional mob mentality grief, or a misplaced focus of grief.

What I mean by the first is like what you see in preschool when one kid is really crying out of hurt or fear and the rest of the group follows suit.  It’s not that the other kids are faking it (if you’ve had to deal with this lovely phenomena, you know they’re not!), its just that the first child’s pain is so real and powerful that the rest become frightened to tears by the possibility that something that bad is coming for them too and the only way they know how to respond is to cry hysterically.

You see this with high school girls too. I remember some kid at my high school, not horrendously popular but known, died in a car crash (involving drunk driving) and the next day nearly every single girl on campus (and a surprisingly large amount of guys) all crying hysterically very publicly for the next couple of weeks. The school even called in a grief counselor to help get things back under control. Now, this was a school of several thousand students. My graduating class alone was around 1400, so even if this guy was Mr.-King-of-popularity – which he most definitely was NOT – that many girls could not have known him personally enough to be driven mad with grief by his death.

Sometimes the power of someone’s grief touches some wound, some fear or some pain at the core of who we are. We cannot identify that thing that was touched, we only know the touching caused searing pain or overwhelming fear and we respond with powerful emotions of our own, that others and often we ourselves mistake for grief.

What I mean by the second is that all too often we in America (or perhaps its all of western society) are, I think, convinced grief is about the people we lose whether we know them or not when nothing could be further from the truth. Grief is not about them, it is about us. It’s about what WE have lost. We grieve for ourselves and how our lives will never be the same because of what we have lost.

Nor is grief limited to people. It’s also about dreams, jobs, careers, homes, cities and towns, places, things, ideals… anything we have lost that deeply meant something to us. So many things in our lives die and deserve to be properly grieved! Yet I think people in America these days feel we cannot grieve over anything but people.

So our national grief over September 11th, became more about the people who died rather than what we truly lost as individuals and collectively as a nation. What tragedy! What a way to compound tragedy. What we who didn’t know anyone in the Towers lost as individuals was our sense of security, our sense of safety in our own homes, workplaces and towns, our sense of immortality, our innocence of the realities of war…. But because it’s socially unacceptable to grieve these seemingly selfish and trivial things when thousands have lost parents, siblings, spouses, children, lovers and dear friends, we take our grief and (mis)place it onto people we don’t know and claim we mourn their loss.

Aw, come on people! We need to grieve what WE lost. I wept bitterly over September 11th because I lost a great deal. No, I didn’t lose someone I loved, but dang, I lost the nation I thought I lived in! I lost the state of security and safety I thought existed around me. I lost my ability to trust foreigners – and I HATE that! You lost a great deal too. And even though the Virginia Tech shootings don’t have the national impact that September 11th did, there are still countless parents who suddenly lost any sense of safety for their children in college and students lost a sense of safety and stability in their college lives. Those are things worth grieving. And when we deny ourselves that time, and worse yet, deny we are truly grieving for those things by claiming our grief is for the dead, we rob ourselves of the chance to heal from that tragedy.

That is not to say that we don’t grieve with the families who lost people they loved in the Towers, or at the University this week. We feel for them; we feel sadness and empathy for the loss of the ones they love in their lives. BUT What we grieve personally is whatever we personally, intimately lost in that tragedy, and for most of us it isn’t people.

I think another thing we grieve but (mis)place onto anonymous people, is our loss/lack of deep connection with others. Stay with me here a moment…. What I saw in those girls back in high school was a desperate need to feel connected to something or someone in a deep way, perhaps even just to feel something real period. I don’t think we have that really anymore in our society. Oh, everybody wears their "feelings on their sleeves", yet very few really have truly deep relationships, ones where feelings can be expressed without fear.

There is something about detailed knowledge of someone that causes us to feel connected to them, and can deceive us into believing we are more connected to people than we really are. We are so informed about the lives of people we don’t even know that we have pictures and minute details of the last time they shaved their head and went a little nuts, and it makes us feel like we know them. But we don’t. So of course when we know just as much detail about the people around us, we think we must have a deep connection with them – because after all, if we have a connection to Britney and we don’t even know her, we must have a DEEP connection with those we know (for some odd reason in our society knowledge = relationship. How messed up is that?).  Too often the connections in our lives don’t satisfy us; more often than not they are superficial at best, and not deep as we suppose them to be.

The made-public death of a fellow-anything (student, co-worker, artist, etc), reminds our souls of that deep longing for real connection, real satisfying relationships, and grief over our own dissatisfaction bubbles to the surface. The current love-affair with public grieving gives us a free pass to cry and scream and get hysterical (to feel, in other words) as well as a safe way to grieve our own loss/lack of deep relationships without appearing self-centered in a moment of such tragedy for others.

Grief is so unpredictable. It sneaks up on you and bites you in the butt when you least expect it. It shows itself in public sometimes in ways that does not look at all like grief and other times reveals its true fire in private moments of agony. Sometimes it looks like sorrow, sometimes it looks like depression, sometimes it looking like a angry raging lunatic hell-bent on revenge, or at least a piece of somebody’s ass to chew off. And then, sometimes things that look like grief are not really grief at all. Fear especially loves to masquerade as grief, because it gets a lot more attention and acceptance that way.

I can’t say why all the people are crying over the shootings at Virginia Tech right now. But I have to wonder what it was in this incident that tapped into hidden losses and fears. For me it’s another reminder of all the losses in my life and my deep-rooted fear of losing someone or something else. Thankfully, my own pain and fears haven’t given me much grief over this whole tragedy (they’ve been deeply fixed on another, but that’s another post). But the huge public reaction – including my company opening up a meeting room for people to view the televised Memorial Service – does really intrigue me as I watch others struggle through the powerful emotions this incident brought forth.

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Like a Stupid Bug

I came across this post the other day while surfing the NiT aggregator and laughed because I know the bugs the author was talking about. I’d never seen them before moving to the South, but they are indeed the stupidest bugs on the planet. Or at least in the South. They come out with Spring and spend most nights throughout spring and summer banging themselves silly on whatever around them shines the brightest, desperate to “go into the light”. Maybe they’ve watched Ghost Whisperer a few too many times.

The night after reading that post I saw heard one of these bugs desperately slamming itself against my rain-drainpipe. Poor thing must have gone blind looking at the motion light right next to it and mistook the shiny-ness of the drain for his into-the-light opportunity. I walked into my house laughing, still hearing the incessant bzzz-clunk!-bzzz-clunk! Stupid Bug indeed.

Today a thought smacked me in the face as hard as that Stupid Bug hit the drainpipe. Maybe I’m just like that bug.

Go with me here for a moment. I’m thinking as I type, always a dangerous thing I know, and we could very well end up way off in the tall grass instead of the playground. But I can’t help wonder if perhaps I really am more like those Stupid Bugs than I want to admit. I keep banging into something shiny thinking it’s my moment to finally step into the light, only to be thwarted by some stinkin’ metallic thing, or worse, by hot glass that not only forever separates me from my goal but burns me badly in the process.

Kat recently reminded me I am not alone. She took offense at me saying that God is all I have. It wasn’t meant as an offense, nor had I forgotten her friendship, or that of many others in my life. Rather, it is a true admission that everything else in my life will one day leave me. Kat, you will one day die, my friend, as painful and ugly a thought that is to both of us – and if I am still alive, you will leave me behind. Everything and everyone else in my life is the same. They will all one day die and leave me. God is the only thing in my life that will never leave, never die, never walk away. When all else is gone, He will still remain. When all else fails me, He will not. For a girl with serious abandonment issues, this is a truth too good to believe.

So instead of basking in that truth, reveling in it and celebrating it, I spend my days banging away at false lights, determined to go into them, no matter the cost. When they elude me, as they always will, I get frustrated and kick my legs in the air like some petulant two-year-old in the midst of a tantrum. Its only when I’ve exhausted myself and lie there on my back, panting, too tired to move anymore, that I am able to hear God’s whispers of Truth. “I am the One True Light.” “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” “You are mine and I love you.”

I didn’t go to church today. I was exhausted from another round of banging away at the light. This time it wasn’t Purpose I madly flew toward, but something else entirely that would take a whole ‘nother post to explain, so I won’t go there. But the effect was the same. Exhausted, on my back, legs flailing like a Stupid Bug. I could have pushed through the exhaustion and gone to church anyway, as I’ve done for other things important to me. But I just… didn’t. Instead, I slept.

When I finally came enough awake to recognize hunger and went in search of food, I fully expected to hear the stern Voice of God berating me for “forsaking the assembly”. I certainly felt like a sinner for staying in bed, so why shouldn’t He see me as one? Surely He would have harsh words for me, a supposedly “mature” follower, stubbornly staying in bed with the covers over my head instead of facing the world head-on.

He didn’t. His voice was sweet, His touch gentle, His words soothing. He wrapped me in love and spoke of never leaving me, never condemning me, always loving me, always being “for” me, even when I run from the very life He’s giving me.  He asked me questions, nudging me to go deeper into the dark things in my heart and life that scare me into hiding or into frantic slamming against false light. And even when I was too scared to go any further, He stayed, still enveloping me and whispering His love.

I don’t know what Stupid Bugs do during the daylight. I don’t recall ever seeing them except at night. But I have to wonder if they try to fly into the sun the same way they try to fly into my porch lights or if they just bask in its warmth and ever-present light. Perhaps its the loss of the the sunlight that makes them crazy and brings on the frantic desperation to get into whatever available light they find.

Maybe that’s my problem. Even though God is ever-present, there are dark things that can block out His light like an eclipse and make life go as dark as darkest midnight. When I lose sight of Him I go a little crazy and frantically look for another source of light, any light. When I find it, I slam the hell out of it in desperation, until I exhaust myself, or daylight returns.

I know there is way out of this cycle. And someday I will trust God enough to live through the dark nights without getting frantic or desperate for false light. But in the meantime, His grace covers me, even when I choose to sleep instead of “do church”.

My grace is enough; it’s all you need.
My strength comes into its own in your weakness. — God

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Grace Defined — a.k.a. Drenched

For now we are looking in a mirror that gives only a dim (blurred)Thru_shattered_glass_1 reflection [of reality as in a riddle or enigma], but then [when perfection comes] we shall see in reality and face to face! Now I know in part (imperfectly), but then I shall know and understand fully and clearly, even in the same manner as I have been fully and clearly known and understood [by God]. — 1 Cor. 13:12

I think most people have the same problem I do when it comes to understanding grace.  We don’t get it. It’s an enigma, a riddle. We just can’t seem to wrap our minds around it. We just know it is.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, and realizing more and more just how lavishly God drenches me with His grace. And just how unworthy of it I am. I realized grace is so much more than the definition of "unmerited favor" I grew up hearing. That description was inadequate for me as a child, and it didn’t get any better as I grew up.  I’m such a visual person. I needed a picture — or at least a word picture — to help me understand.

So I asked God for help. What I got, originally, was experience. God lavishing me with it, and then telling me, "that’s My Grace."  Uh, okay. How do I put that into words??

Thank God He puts people wiser and more knowledgeable than me in my life! My counselor has a word picture that helped me finally understand what grace is.  And then I stumbled across this web page that had the following definition, which puts that word picture into narrative form:

Protestants usually define grace as "God’s unmerited favor towards us in Christ". Though not incorrect, this definition is incomplete, for grace also includes the divine gifts which flow from this favor, such as our new life in Christ, God’s indwelling Presence and the ability to bear spiritual fruit.

Sacred Scripture says that grace is Jesus’ Incarnation (2 Corinthians 8:9), by which He took on our poor human nature in order to fill us with the "riches" of grace (Ephesians 1:6). Grace is more than mere divine favor, it is sufficient power in our weakness (2 Co 12:8), it strengthens us (Hebrews 13:9; 2 Timothy 2:1), enables us to stand firm (Romans 5:2; 1 Peter 5:12), and helps us in time of need (He 4:16).

The Bible also states that grace is manifold (1 Pt 4:10), that God lavishes "grace upon grace" on us in Jesus Christ (Jn 1:16; Eph 1:7), and that we can "grow in grace" (2 Pt 3:18). It even says that our words can give grace to those who hear them (Eph 4:29), for our edifying words can draw others to God.

Finally, grace is the Beatific Vision of the Trinity which we will enjoy for eternity when Our Lord returns (I Pt 1:13; Eph 2:7).

Gracewordpic2 Barney’s word picture is essentially the same. He just takes less time to say it, and usually draws on the dry erase board as he talks. I guess he’s rubbed off on me, ’cause now I’m re-creating his drawings (or drawrings, if you’re British) in Illustrator.   Perhaps we’ve taken this re-parenting thing too far….Huh1_2  Okay, back to the discussion. What I learned from Barney goes basically like this:

In Scripture we learn that God is Love. We can’t think of that description without thinking of Jesus. And we can’t think of Jesus without remembering the Cross, the ultimate demonstration of love. The Cross brings, or rather bought, our redemption from sin and death. Our redemption leads us into Abundant Life. All of that is Grace.

As grace begins to work in our lives we begin to grasp all we’ve been given, it brings us to our knees in humility and repentance.  We realize we aren’t worthy of any of it. That brings us back to God. But it not only reconciles us to God, but gives us compassion and understanding for others, as grace opens our eyes to their brokenness, and to their beauty as God’s dearly loved children, Jesus’ beloved bride.

As with Hope, I think the modern Church, and especially our 20th century cultural Christianity, stripped grace of its complexity and grittiness. Not out of malice or deliberate deception, but rather out of ignorance.  Grace isn’t soft and cuddly, or ethereal and fragile. It’s the robust, earthy, dynamic, powerful, tenacious, never-ending stuff of God. It can take on my ego, and take me down to my knees, then immediately oh-so-gently pick me up and lay me in the Father’s lap. It can tear apart my stubborn legalistic tendencies, then envelope and permeate my whole being.  It’s where my Arms20open20falls11_1capacity to forgive, to love, to have compassion comes from. Its what gives me the ability to weep and ache to the depths of my soul over the pain others experience. It opens my eyes to the humanity of the people around me, so that I no longer see a mean "monster" when I’m betrayed or hurt. Rather, I see a broken, hurting soul just as much in need of God’s forgiveness  and redemption as me. Grace gives me God’s eyes to see the beauty and image of God in even the most irascible, unlovely person. I can’t do those things on my own. I have to have God’s grace to do it. And the more I embrace and own the grace God lavishes on me, the more grace I have to give to others.  –Perhaps that’s what the Bible refers to as "growing in grace".

Me, I just call it being drenched.

Does that make sense?

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All Little Girls Have Daddy Issues

But now, O Jacob, listen to the Lord who created you. O Israel, the one who formed you says, “Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine…. Others were given in exchange for you.  I traded their lives for yours because you are precious to me.  You are honored, and I love you." — Isaiah 43:1,4

The conversation is all too familiar. You’d think by now I’d know how it ends. But I never seem to remember. I guess I just get too locked up in my own fear to see anything beyond my own nose. And sometimes even that’s obscured.

It starts with a vague feeling of unease. My need to control, or at least to know what’s happening, translates that feeling into a reason: "I must be uneasy because ______." All that is left is for my mind to fill in the blank with any number of possible causes. It picks the easiest, or perhaps just the most familiar. And thus our conversation begins.

I cry out in fear, worry quickly turning to panic. God quietly listens. Finally I fall silent, frustrated with His quietness, taking ragged breaths into my panic-ridden body. But my own silence is short-lived. I cannot stop the thoughts now. They are like a runaway train on a downhill slope. How in the world will I ever survive?  Why am I here? What’s the point of living?  Life is so fragile. The balance of life is too hard to manage. I cannot do this! God, Help me!

Finally I stop to listen, to look Jesus in the eyes, imploring Him to speak. Softly He caresses my face. After a long moment, He quietly says, "Do you trust Me?"

The tears burn in my eyes and spill down over my cheeks. My heart is heavy, so heavy. I know what the "right" answer is, but I can’t lie. Not to Him. I shake my head. "No." The truth is, I don’t trust Him. I want to. At least I think I do. But right now, I don’t.

Everything in me wages a fierce war against the very idea of trusting God to take care of me, to provide for my needs. Especially my upbringing. My father taught me well. Oh, with words and sermons and scripture references he said to trust God, but with actions, attitudes and behavior he taught me to be self-sufficient, to rely more on my own abilities and resources than on unseen forces and to stock-pile, stock-pile, stock-pile.  Like all little girls, I live to please my daddy. I live for his approval. Problem is, its hard to approve from the grave.

I wish I had a different set of daddy issues. Heavenly ones. I wish I could say I spend my days longing for my Heavenly Abba’s approval; that I live to please my Heavenly Father. I’m trying to, I really am. But old habits die hard. Very hard. Perhaps someday I’ll be able to say I do. But right now, right now I struggle with the old tapes, the old patterns of life long ingrained in the depths of my being.

Jesus repeats His question, softly, gently, "Do you trust Me?" And He holds out His hand. In order to take hold of it, I’m going to have to let go of something…

I’m trying. God knows I’m trying.

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Irrevocable, or Just Passionate?

God’s gifts and God’s call are under full warranty—never canceled, never rescinded. — Romans 11:29 (The  Message)

I realize this verse is actually referring to something else when taken in context, but it’s what echoed through my mind this afternoon and evening. See, Wade did it again; got me to thinking about the mission field overseas and helped me once again connect with the reality that my heart breaks for Japan, and India, and to so many other places.

Around this time five years ago, I was sitting in a hotel room in Richmond, Virginia at the beginning of the candidate process to serve long-term with the IMB. Four years ago I was overseas, finishing up a 6-week trip in Ethiopia heading back to my "home" in Cyprus, and wondering what in the world had I gotten myself into. Three years ago I was in desperate pain grieving the losses of my parents, my job, my home and my dream of being a missionary. I never thought I’d recover. Two years ago I was swearing I would never again serve overseas, but feeling guilty for it, and last year I realized I am finally content to once again live my life stateside outside the realm of official ministry.

So why is it today my heart was stirred like it hasn’t been in many years? Why is it when I went to the IMB website and looked at the current opportunities, all the openings I sawMary_lu_india in South Asia, particularly several in the city I lived in 2001 and one with the people group I learned about, learned from and became friends with–why is it those openings so excited me I began thinking through the process I might take (as well as the length of time it would take) to ultimately fill one of those positions — or something like it. Why is it, when I finally decided the issue was settled, the love affair with overseas ministry was over and I was content, my heart is stirred and excited?

Is it true — could it be true — that once God lays His hand on your life for a particular service, that that call is just as irrevocable as His call to Follow, or His command to Go?

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Finding My Voice

I’m watching Hillary Clinton on Night-line, and I’m surprised that I’m sort of agreeing with her — at least on some points.  Which is a total switch for me. Since I first saw her and Tipper "dancing" together on the stage at the 1992 Democratic Convention, I’ve not been a fan of hers. She just seemed so fake and so… I don’t know, pushy?

And I don’t think I can call myself a fan of hers even now. However, I do have to admit, she came off in this interview a lot more calm and sane and even sensible than she has in her "it’s all a right-wing conspiracy" days. No, I haven’t forgotten all the suspicious activity that has surrounded her and her husband throughout their governor years and White House years.

Yet, I cannot escape the fact that I did agree with her that the current administration has not capitalized on the opportunities of strong leadership they had after September 11th. Nor can I escape the feeling that she is right in calling for an overhaul of personnel in the defense/national security departments.

And I cannot escape that fact that as I sat here listening to her speak on definitions of leadership, on what needs to be done in Iraq and on why anyone would want to run for President of The United States (she left out a thirst for power and control) I could actually almost see her as President. If there is a viable woman candidate for the job, it would be her; and I could almost see myself voting for her.

And that is the most shocking thing of all. That I would even consider voting for Hillary is a far, far cry from where I was even a couple of years ago. Not just politically, but intellectually.

It took me until the last year to realize that I’m a lot like the character of Maggie Carpenter (played by Julia Roberts) in "Runaway Bride". Except, instead of not knowing what kind of eggs I like (over easy), I don’t know what I really think about politics or theology, or what I truly believe. I had some ideas, but in the family I grew up in, it didn’t seem to matter what I really thought. It was my older siblings and my dad who had the power. If I didn’t agree with them, I was made to feel stupid, brainless, unthinking. That would have been simple, except for the fact that my father was very conservative, my oldest sister is very liberal and my brother started liberal, but went very conservative over 20 years ago. I felt like a push me-pull you doll. I was damned which ever way I went. Dad’s death didn’t free me from the tug-o-war either. It made it more difficult because I couldn’t just ask him what he thought and decide to go with his conclusions.

Two years of counseling is finally paying off. I’m finally beginning to find my own political voice. And its a voice that is neither liberal or conservative. Yet at the same time is much more liberal than I thought I was. Truthfully, I fall somewhere in the middle. That "centrist" place that is so often condemned by both sides because they think we’re riding the fence. But we’re not. I’m not.

Look, was Saddam a bad man? Yeah, I strongly believe he was. But I knew even back in early 2003 when the build up began that this was going to be a long, protracted unwinnable war. It wasn’t hard to see, in my opinion. But then again, I was living in the region and had a feel for the mood and culture there.

But did we really need to take down Saddam? I don’t know. Right now I want to say, no we really didn’t. But what difference does that really make now? We are there. We’ve done the thing and we must now see it through. To just set an arbitrary date and pull out would be an egregious wrong to the people we’ve liberated from Saddam’s tyranny. Because, while Saddam is gone, there are far too many other tyrants desperate to take his place. And they will, as soon as we leave — or even while we’re still there.

And there in lies the biggest dilemma. We could be there forever. And that is just as wrong as just pulling up stakes and leaving. And this is where I saw Hillary tonight lining up with what I already believe and think. I could see her struggling with this very dilemma and coming to the same conclusions I am.

This is not fence-sitting, as the far-left or far-right would define me. To me, it is unwise to take a hard-line stance on anything, because life just isn’t black-and-white. Whether or not we "should" or "should not" do something depends on the situation at hand. Compassion should always temper the law but justice cannot always take a back seat to mercy and grace. Sometimes, often times, justice will walk hand-in-hand with grace — the "I forgive you" can still be (and usually is) followed by "but it is unwise for me to forget" and "you still have to pay the consequences of your actions".

I find that I more often than not, fall into this moderate category of thinking. Moderate on war, on economics and welfare and jobs, even (gasp) religion/Christianity in American politics. I think age has mellowed my hardliner tendencies — age, and finally finding my own voice, instead of relying on that of my father’s.

I get the sense that age has also mellowed Hillary. She seems to have moved away from her far-left leanings and moved closer to a more moderate view. But is this a real move, or just the ploy of a savvy politician? I still have trust issues where the Clintons are concerned.

The difference between Hillary and I, when it comes to Iraq, is that I am not convinced that the Bush administration lied about the WMDs. I have no problem believing he had them and that he sent them to Syria (or Iran or somewhere else) for "safe keeping". But perhaps they weren’t as advanced as our intelligence was led to believe. Who knows? But I’m pretty convinced that the Bush administration was (and still is) convinced their intel was good and that they acted in good faith on that intel. Hillary seems to think they lied then, and continue to lie now. I don’t think so.

What I see is an administration trapped in a web of bad decisions based on faulty or incomplete intel, with a big blind spot in their intel department. Sometimes you can fully, implicitly trust someone who just isn’t as in-the-know as they think they are.

I love the idea of a woman POTUS. I loved the show "Commander In Chief" because of this. I think it’s an incredibly intriguing idea, and one who’s time has come. I’ve often thought, depressingly at the time, that Hillary had the best chance of this at this point. But tonight, she may have won a voter. She was eloquent, well-spoken, intelligent and calm. Gone were the hysterics and theatrics that so marked what I saw of her during her husband’s presidency. And in their place I found a woman who shared my thinking on several issues.

But is she really trustworthy? Or is this just a very good performance by a studied, professional politician? This jury of one is still out on that one.

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Wisdom Imparted

Footprint_smallStarting isn’t the journey. It’s only the first step. You have to keep taking steps, even if they’re baby ones, to be on the Way.

This is what I heard God say to me yesterday morning as Rick spoke. And it struck a bit of a nerve.

I’m really good at starting things. Finishing, not so much. But starting… well, my home is filled with great and wonderful projects I’ve started over the last few years, all in different stages of, um, progress. But none are finished.

Saturday I started again on an endeavor I’ve tried and failed at so often in my life: regular exercise. I’ll get started, all gung ho and ready to go, only to get "sidetracked" by tiredness, busyness or just life. Before I realize it weeks have gone by without any exercise in my life, aside from walking to my car or walking through the grocery store.

But by last night I was already hearing the buzz of defeat in my ears, as I had napped through the time I’d set for exercise. Oh, I know I needed the sleep. I’d only slept about two hours when I awoke around 1:30am. And I could not for the life of me get back to sleep. So I passed the hours of 3am to 6am watching the latest news and the end of a movie I’d never seen until, finally, it was time to get ready for church. Yes, I needed the sleep. But, dang, did it have to come at the expense of my newly restarted effort?

Life isn’t a project that you start and finish and put on a shelf for all to see. It really is a journey that doesn’t end, just changes stages, from a temporal physical one to an eternal spiritual one. So staying put in one place really isn’t an option — even if you decide to do so. Life’s river keeps dragging us downstream, whether we want to go or not. And trying to stay in one place only leaves us with lots of mud and riverbank muck under our fingernails (wow– can I put more metaphors in one paragraph??).

Starting something, but never taking more steps upwards leaves me standing on a plateau — albeit, one that keeps moving me on towards eternity, but a plateau nonetheless.

The only way to move forward, or upward, is to take another step, and then another, even if they’re separated by many days, or months. Or years.

So today I determined to take another step. And tomorrow I plan to do the same. But if I fail I’m not going to give up. I’ll just determine again to take another step. And plan to do the same the following day.

My mom often told me, "practice makes perfect". I doubt I’ll ever be "Perfect" at life, but I’m determined to keep practicing. Even if it means I have to "start" again and again, and again.

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Still

Digging deep is exhausting. Ransacking one’s own heart to get to the core of the pain is not something for the faint of heart.

If I listen to the voices in my head, I am the faint of heart. Yet tonight, and for many many nights over the last two years, I dug deep. I found the pain. And I found it’s source. An elephant sat on my chest and I couldn’t breathe.

I came home and sat in the silence of the night, alternately writing and crying, sometimes both. My journal is filled with tear-stained pages.

Larry seems to be having a similar night as me.

"It’s interesting that God didn’t get angry, as my repeated implications
of nefarious activity in my life might have produced in another. He
knows that what’s really going on is the desperate hope of a very
scared child who has always had to fight for room in which to breathe.
I’ll even fight God for that. Too scared to hope that anything good
could be real, too badly hurt to want to be hurt again, so kill off the
hope and drive God away so that His offers of hope don’t tempt me away
from safety."

Tonight I heard a description of myself that sounded so beautiful; resilient, courageous, gentle, compassionate… I just wish I believed it were true. The mirror I look in shows me a far uglier picture.

So I sat in the stillness, writing on the wet pages of my journal. God sat down beside me and we cried together. I’d forgotten how good that feels. So much time running from myself. So little time sitting in the stillness, letting God drench me.

I know I have come a long way on this journey of healing, health and wholeness. But days like today remind me just how far I have yet to go. Could it be possible that the most painful and difficult of this path lies just ahead, in this very realm of learning to love myself?

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The Voice of Hope Inside

Note: This may seem like a rather personal post for those of you who just stopped in for the first time. It was written in response to a question my friend Larry asked me yesterday. But it is my hope that as you read, you begin to gain an awareness of the lies you have believed about yourself for so many years and that you can catch a glimpse of the beautiful and amazing person you really are and the truth of the person you were created to be.

You know the scene. You’ve seen it a hundred times in the comics section of the paper and played out over and over on the Family Channel Christmas marathons. Lucy entices Charlie Brown into the football field with the promise that she will keep the football firmly on the ground this time. She won’t move it, she promises. He can kick it as hard as he wants. Come on, she entreats. Let’s see how far you can send it. Warily our hero gets into position. He wants it all to be true. He wants to believe Lucy will be true to her word this time. So he trusts her and runs full force at the football, taking careful aim and swinging his leg hard to make solid contact with his old enemy.

Only to find himself flat on his back once again, having kicked nothing but air so hard there is none left to suck any into his lungs, even if he could get them to work after slamming his back into the hard cold ground and knocking any remaining breath out of his body.

Lucy stands above him, hovering and howling in laughter. Football still in her hands. You fall for that every time, Charlie Brown!

Splash_2001_1
We are all broken. Everyone of us is dysfunctional. We all came from dysfunctional families, some are just more obviously dysfunctional, but they are all dysfunctional to some degree. It’s just the nature of the broken world in which we live.

We carry that dysfunction into our adult life. Unless we make a conscious effort to discover it and allow God to transform us, to transform our thinking, to renew our minds each day with the Truth of who He made us to be, then we are doomed to not only repeat this behavior, but recreate the exact dysfunctional family situation we grew up with, and are most likely trying to run from.

My particular dysfunction revolves around a dad who was performance and results oriented, two much older siblings who acted as more as parents than siblings, another sibling, who, at three, experienced a lot of abandonment at the time I was born (sibling off to college, dad in Vietnam and mom suffering from depression and fear over dad at war) and a mom who struggled with severe insecurity and anger.

That’s the short version. The way these issues play out in my life would take volumes.

We all did the best we knew how to cope with life as it came. But we struggled and flailed and hurt each other in the process.

I grew up believing a laundry list of negative things about myself, including that I was spoiled, lazy, ugly, incompetent, incapable and "bad" — the best way I know to describe the adjective for having feelings, expressed or not.

I coped by avoiding conflict, becoming a perfectionist, believing those around me saw me in a negative light, allowing others to define me, and developed an acute lack of motivation.

When my world fell apart nearly three years ago with my parents’ deaths, my team’s implosion and my subsequent resignation from the IMB, I went into a deep depression. Two years shy of 40 I had my first mid-life crisis. Ah, well. I always was an overachiever in the melodramatic.

It drove me to seek a godly counselor who could help me sort out the chaos in my head and heal the wounds in my soul. The IMB’s Member Care office has the most incredible people in the world! They blessed me beyond words; and led me to the exact person I believe God desired to use to help me grow into the woman He desires.

Through that counselor I connected to a  book called, "Love Is A Choice" and it’s companion workbook. I highly recommend these books to anyone who longs to overcome their past.

Working through one of the chapters of this workbook Wednesday night brought about the epiphany I referred to yesterday. I finally saw the connection between the relentless negative "teasing" I received (and still sometimes receive) from my family and my negative self-image; between my performance and results-driven childhood, as well as the impatience and constant having things done "for" me by my 4 parents, and my lack of motivation as an adult; between my family’s avoidance of talking about feelings and my mom and my’s shouting matches when I was a kid, and my strong avoidance of conflict or talking about my feelings, anger and frustrations as an adult — and the strong predilection of my family to tell me insistently and consistently who and what I am all throughout my childhood, teens and even today (especially that I was spoiled and lazy) with my adult conviction that others see me negatively.

I had never before drawn that correlation. Never. It had never even occurred to me how directly related these things are. Especially the issue of lacking motivation as an adult.

I’ve spent most of my adult life chasing one passion after another. To the point that I came to believe I had no real ability to sustain any passion for very long; especially not long enough to make inroads into difficult areas. I don’t have a career. I have a string of jobs that I’ve found interesting. I’m not a master of anything, rather I’m a "Jackie of many trades" because my passion for each thing waned with time. It got to the point where I finally surrendered to the whispers of my soul and declared myself a couch potato at heart; an observer of life rather than a real player.

But the truth hit me Wednesday night like a shower of cool rain on a hot sticky summer day: I am not that person.

I’m not lazy — I’ve worked my butt off at a great variety of things throughout my half-life here on earth. Nor do I lack the ability to focus or push through pain or sustain a fast/long pace. My consistent service at the sound board at Mosaic bears witness to my focus, perseverance and willingness to do whatever it takes to advance God’s Kingdom. So does my time in India and my time in Cyprus. Not to mention the many years I spent in the entertainment industry, cultivating relationships, learning the various crafts of writing, producing, acting and production, the years I spent pursuing careers in most of these areas and the degree to which I went to stay current within my industry’s ever-changing landscapes of people and projects.

Nor am I spoiled. I had to fight for space to carve out some sort of place in my family. Something I have yet to accomplish. There was no room for me by the time I arrived in my family. We had the oldest, and the boy, and the cute bundle of joy that was a 16 year-old girl’s dream: a real live baby doll to play mommy with. Yeah, I was "the baby". But they’d already been-there-done-that with my older sister. So even that was not original to me. But that seems to be the only job I’ve ever been allowed  to have. Even at my parents funerals there was nothing for me to do. Watching me learn to tie my shoes was not the joyful event it had been for the others. It was a frustration to a busy mom who’d been through this three times already, and to a college-student sister who had better things to do and had already been through that "joy" with the three year-old; and it was a eating into the time a busy high school boy had to practice with his band in the basement. All my firsts were not firsts to anyone but me. And because of this I rarely got to enjoy the pleasure of them. Many times my shoes were tied for me by hurried and harried adults with somewhere to go, something to do and no time to waste waiting for me to learn to do things for myself. After a while I quit trying to do things myself. I quit trying to help with dinners and dishes and I quit making decisions of my own because I was usually overruled, or in the way or whatever I’d done was taken away and redone by a well-meaning adult who just "wanted to help me do it right".

I’m just like Charlie Brown. The promised football was never there for me to kick, so I finally quit falling for the gag. I quit swinging my leg. I quit running toward the ball. I even quit going onto the field.

And then my family wondered why I wouldn’t do anything, and labeled me spoiled, and selfish. And I, never knowing any better, kicked at that ball, trusting they really knew me better than I — because, after all, who knows you better than your family, right? — and squarely and painfully landed on my back, breath knocked completely out of my body.

But I’m not who they say I am. I never was. Wednesday night God pulled back the curtains of my life and allowed me to see myself clearly — or at least more clearly than I ever have before.

I saw a woman who’s been self-sufficient for most of her life. I saw a little girl who learned to fight for a place at the family table, even though she usually ended up on the losing end of the battle. I saw a good student and a good friend reach out and make friends over and over, with all the moves she made to different cities and different schools, enduring ridicule and scorn for not knowing the social rules or the cultural norms or for befriending the friendless rather than sucking up to the popular. I saw a young woman who stood up for herself and refused to go to church when she didn’t know what she believed any more. I saw a young woman make her way in the world on her own; no spouse to share the load, no parents paying the way. I saw how I made a place for myself in Hollywood, carved out a niche uniquely my own. I saw how I went to China by myself, led a team to India for 4 months of research and became a missionary to Muslim cultures all without a college degree. I saw how I’d taken care of everything from bugs and roaches in my home to plumbing problems and car trouble, from small arguments with friends to major rifts with roommates.

And I saw how graciously and generously God provided my every need along the way. Never in the way I expected but always in perfect time.

I saw how God has infused me with an inner strength that is more powerful than anything I’ve come against. I’ve been "hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed." (2 Cor 4:8-9) I have struggled and suffered great pain and heartache. I’ve endured loss upon loss upon loss. And still. I. Am. Here. I. Live. And I live an incredibly abundant life. So rich! So deep.

No. I’m not spoiled. I never was. I’m not lazy. I never was. I’m not bad for feeling deeply all that I feel. I never was. I’m not incompetent or incapable. And I’m not ugly. I never was.

My family will probably continue to insist I was spoiled. And that’s okay. Part of my epiphany was that that belief stems from their own stuff. And they have just as much stuff from their own childhood to deal with as I do with mine. They may never see me as I am and that’s okay too. It hurts, but it’s okay. I don’t have to believe them any more. They don’t have to tell me who I am any more. That’s not their job — it never was.

I now see I am strong enough and wise enough to define myself.

Praise be to the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly
realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.  Eph 1:1-8

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in
order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of
his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. Eph 2:4-7

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What It’s About

It was dark. I remember that much. Beyond that, I can’t recall the specifics of my surroundings. I was driving home from work. Tears were streaming down my face. Broken dreams and losses of things closest to my heart piled up. I felt homeless, helpless and hopeless. That’s when I heard it.

A whisper. Jesus. "This isn’t about you. Its about Me. He doesn’t want us to be this close, this intimate. He wants Me to hurt and grieve over you, over your withdrawal from Me, your distrust of Me, your denial of Me. Its not about what you can or cannot do, or will or won’t do…."

I had been asking God why in the world Satan would care about me now, at this point. I wasn’t a missionary anymore. I wasn’t anything. Except broke. And unemployed. And broken. Very, very broken. All to pieces.

I’d always believed — I think I heard it in Sunday School somewhere — that Satan only attacks when you’re doing what God wants you to do. Its usually said to "comfort" those of us struggling under some sort of "persecution" — or what feels like persecution. Or some struggle we’re going through. Somehow, somewhere, the Church got this idea that it was all about us, all about what we can do for Jesus; and all about what will happen to us when we do.

But that night I saw the Truth. I saw it more clearly than I’d ever seen it before.

"It’s not about you, or what you can or will do." He repeated. "Its about Me. He wants to hurt Me. And he knows he can if he can get to you. If he blind you to the truth of who you are to Me, to My love for you and to My presence with you always. Its about Me. He wants to hurt Me. It’s not about you…."

For the first time in my life those words brought comfort rather than the sting of humiliation.

I’ve hated that phrase since I first heard it. No, not when I read "The Purpose Driven Life". I first heard that phrase when I was a kid (too many years ago to speak of). Every little sister has heard her older sister spew these words with venom, while striking a diva pose at the same time. "Its not about you. The whole universe does not revolve around you, you know."

And I especially came to hate the phrase since coming home, broken and lost, after resigning from the mission field. I felt like a such a failure. And I felt overwhelmed by the loss of my parents, whose deaths were the last straws that brought about my breakdown and resignation, the loss of my home and job — and most of all the loss of my dream. Even more devastating, I’d lost the ability to dream. In all that darkness, God found me and scooped me into His arms. He held me tight and constantly whispered His love and adoration of me. He daily insisted the universe did indeed revolve around me. At least His did.

I had never heard anyone tell me about this kind of love. The kind that just loved. Didn’t expect anything in return. Didn’t belittle, or remind you of your "place at the table" or nag you to stop crying, get up and get back to work. Nor had I ever experienced it. My parents were wonderful people, but they were broken too. And part of their brokenness was revealed in the way they saw love; and in how they expressed love. So you can imagine how shocked and unbelieving I was in God’s constant expressions of His love and of His gregarious actions towards me. A failed missionary — can you get any worse of a failure in the Kingdom?

But He insisted. And persisted. And finally I began to believe. And accept. Even depend on it. The more I tested His wild love, the more it held my weight. So the more weight I put on it. Till eventually I was completely standing on it, and nothing else.

Of course, that’s when I started hearing that blasted phrase everywhere. And from the most frustrating place of all: my own brothers and sisters in Christ.

I know they meant well. They thought what I needed was a good "encouraging" rebuke; the kind that says, "I know you’re hurting but, really, Lu, it’s not about you. Others are hurting too and you should be out there bringing them comfort…" Well meaning. Served with a pinch of truth.

But I didn’t believe the rest of it anymore. I don’t believe "its not about me." It is. God proved that. Over and over. God said it, too. "You are the apple of My eye." "I did this just for you." "Its you that I want. Its you I want, not your deeds (or your money)." So I knew it was about me.

Now here’s God saying, in essence, no its not. Not this time. And in that moment I finally understood what its all about. God is all about me. He’s all about being intimate with me. That’s what real love looks like, being all about the one you love. And that’s why I can forget myself and be all about Him. Because He’s got my back. But Satan, well, he’s all about God. He wants to be me; wants to be in my place, as the apple of God’s eye. But he’s not, and that pisses him off. So he’s all about hurting God, any way he can. And especially the best way he can. Me.
What better way to hurt someone, to cause them immense pain and grief, than to turn the one they adore against them. It’s even better than killing the loved one. Especially in this case. Killing me would just bring me that much closer to God. No, the best way to hurt God is to turn me against Him; to convince me that He doesn’t really love me. Or, better yet, that He’s "testing me" and finding me wanting; that I’ve failed Him and will never be able to get back to where I "should" be; that I’m not doing enough, not trying hard enough, not serving enough…. the lies goes on. And I bought them all.

I wish I could say I don’t anymore, but I still do. I still get caught up in the lies and deceptions and intrigues laid out by the enemy to keep me from being intimate with God. But I’m working on it, and I’m not nearly as blind and gullible as I was before that moment.
In the dark.
Driving home from work.
When God told me, "its not about you…"
And I found comfort in it, not humiliation.
For the first time.