Category Archives: Healing

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Wish You Were Here

I love you mom and dad.
I miss you very much.

I know you’re happier — and better off — where you are . And I wouldn’t wish upon you a forced return to this world for anything.

But life is not the same without you here. It lacks a certain spice. One that only you two can bring.

I saw a sunset the other day, dad, that you would have loved. The sky was this amazing mix of amber and rose, gold and indigo. Who knew all those colors could go together that way! And you would love Tennessee! The land is beautiful beyond compare. I don’t even know if Alaska can beat it… but you would know that better than I…. Such history is tied to this land. Even our family history… ancestors that lived here… even some that explored this frontier long ago. How you would love it here!

And you’d love our team too. John, our leader… I wish you could meet him. You’d approve. He’s a godly man. A little weird perhaps, but, that only helps him understand and relate to me better. The team is so amazing… Jamie, Josh & Elizabeth, Adria, Brian & Dawn, Lindsey, Mike and the Frat Boys, David — whew, you should here David’s story! It would make your "eyes water" with joy and amazement at what God does in people’s lives.

And I’m working at the SBC offices, dad. I may not be overseas anymore… at least not for now, but you can still be proud that I’m continuing the "family business", as it were. I know that’s not a prerequisite you had to be proud of me… but I saw how my being a missionary caused you to puff out your chest just a little more than usual when you introduced me…. You’d be proud of where I work, of what I’m doing.

Adria browned butter a couple of nights ago, mom, and suddenly our apartment smelled like home. The aroma hung in the air for hours… next to Channel #5, the perfume of cooking was your best fragrance. How I miss our kitchen conversations! How I miss the hugs and tears and love we shared!

I miss your laughter! I miss dad teasing you; dad and I ganging up on you and giving you the willies over dad’s eye twitch. I miss hearing you say, in your best fake put-out voice, "Oh, you two!"

Where are you? Is Heaven pretty? Do you even know I’m gone? Do you even notice my absence surrounded by such glory and beauty?

Your absence cannot help but be noticed. I trip over it every day of my life. life. I hope you are happy. I hope heaven is all we’ve been promised it is. It will make all this pain worth it.

I miss you, mom. I miss you, dad. I love you both so very much. Remember me.

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Forgiveness and Peace

A painful occurence from last year has resurfaced.

A person I considered a friend hurt me deeply and basically kicked me out of her house. I decided to kick her out of my life. However, I never told her. Nor did I ever admit this to myself. No, after a few months of anger and a few more of just tears of pain, I concluded I was “over it”. It was in my past and I wasn’t looking back. I want to live in the future. Or at least in the moment. I’ve spent too many years looking backward. I don’t have many left. Let’s make these count.

But my dreams….my dreams. They betray me. They betray a heart still broken, still hurting. Still angry. Sometimes raging. And a spirit not at peace because there has been no resolution. And it’s on me. It’s all on me. It’s because of me the matter still remains unresolved. The door was slammed in my face. I was never really told why. I left. And never went back.

Not until today, when friends who love me spoke Truth — one in kick-a** style only he can get away with, and the other with the compassion only a friend of many years of enduring love can be capable of — only today was I willing to own up. To say, “I have not obeyed God. I have not done my part to, as much as possible, live at peace with this woman, as God asks me to in Romans 12:19.”

Over the last two years pain has layered upon pain, loss upon loss. Going overseas, leaving family, friends, and home behind. Team conflict, conflict with the leader, loneliness, home-sickness, feelings of incompetency created a landslide of negative thoughts and emotions. Then dad’s heart attack, his death, mom’s death, my team’s continued crumbling…. how much more could I take?

Nothing. Nothing more, was my heart’s determination. The next thing would be the straw that broke me.

That’s when it happened. Betrayal in a counseling session snowballed into stonewalling that ended with “you have to leave…”, a two-day deadline to get out and the declaration, “That’s not my problem.” when I said I had no where to go.

I was wrong. I had many places to go. God provided, as only He can, through loving friends and compassionate church family.

But now there was truly nothing left of me. I was just broken, jagged pieces. Shattered. Scattered.

Thank God. THANK GOD for being who He is. Loving, gracious, compassionate. He rescued me, held me in His grip, hid me in His chest, cradled me in HIs arms, and wiped ever tear from my cheeks.

I buried my anger, I ate my way through my pain, gaining 20 pounds along the way, and denied my responsibility to live at peace with everyone, as far as it is possible, even with this woman.

I admit it. I don’t want to forgive her. I don’t want to release her from the consequences of her actions and love her — which is how I best understand forgiveness. I HURT. Still, even today, the pain is there. And my mind screams, “It’s not fair! Someone should pay for this!”

How ugly my heart is! How can I call myself a follower of Jesus when I will not follow Him into places in others’ lives that He willingly traverses in mine every second of the day? When I will not forgive another for something less than He has forgiven me? When I will not take captive these thoughts that set themselves up against Jesus’ very reason for suffering the humiliation of the cross and replace them with the choice to forgive, release and live at peace?

This must be what Paul meant when he said, “Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.” (Romans 7:24-25)

Yet he goes on to say (in chapter 8… who thought up these weird breaks in the Bible, anyway…??) that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (vs 1)… and furthermore, that we who have the Spirit of God living in us have power over the sinful nature… “So you should not be like cowering, fearful slaves. You should behave instead like God’s very own children, adopted into his family — calling him ‘Father, dear Father.’ For his Holy Spirit speaks to us deep in our hearts and tells us that we are God’s children. And since we are his children, we will share his treasures — for everything God gives to his Son, Christ, is ours, too.”

Father, help me! Help me obey You. Help me forgive Brenda.

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Love Yourself…?

I checked out a church in Brentwood that’s only been around for a year. I was told the pastor used to be at Christ Church (a HUGE church here in Nashville) but left there to start this new community a few miles away.

It was interesting. There was a pretty good sized crowd, but not a really huge one. The music was good — though I only caught the last couple songs, ’cause of course I was late. — Hey, when you start something at 9:30am and it’ll take me about a half hour to get there, just count on it, I’ll be late. And early riser I’m not.

Anyway, the pastor was pretty good. He was casually dressed and sat on a stool most of the time. Those of you from Mosaic will recognize the format. šŸ™‚ I really liked his talked, until his last point. Then he lost me.

He was focusing on 2 Corinkthians 8, which is kinda funny to me, since I’ve been in 2 Corinthians during my alone times with Jesus the last couple of weeks. Paul was talking about giving the church at Corinth a chance to prove that their love is sincere by giving to the church in Jeruselem what they had promised to give a year prior. Stan, the pastor, talked about how God gives to us in abundance all that we need (see chapter nine for more on this) and that God Himself loves to lavish His creation with gifts. And that God longs for us to be like Him. Stan also talked about how our motive for giving to others who are in need should not be to be seen or known for our “generosity”; that our generosity proves out the sencerity of our love — for God and for others.

Okay, I’m with him so far. But then he took this radical left turn…. and lost me. He started in on how we can’t just go from loving God to loving and giving to others. He said there’s a vital step that many miss… and that’s learning to love ourselves. And by the time he was done he was focusing more about learning to accept the love of God and love ourselves the way He loves us, than he was on being generous with our lives and spending ourselves for the cause of Christ.

Now, I agree that part of becoming a generous person is recognizing how deeply and richly God loves us. Before we can spend ourselves for a cause, we need to know that our Source will not fail us, not run dry or just run out on us. But honestly, when people begin focusing on loving ourselves, it just creeps me out. Maybe it’s the phrase “love yourself”, or maybe it’s because I can find nothing in the Bible that says we need to learn how to do that. I see lots of places, however, where it seems to me to imply, infer, or even flat out state that we have no problem doing that. Jesus didn’t make a big deal of it when he said, “love others as you love yourself.” He just said it. “Love God. Love others — as you love yourself.”

So, does that me that we must love ourselves before we can love others? Or does that mean that we love others as we are loving ourselves. Kinda like you clean the kitchen as you do the dishes… or do you clean the kitchen first, then do the dishes…?

This is one that always gets me all messed up. Perhaps that’s why I just don’t dwell on it much. But in the conversations I had with people the last few weeks, it seems to be a theme in the lives of people here in Nashville. At least for some. And it’s a huge theme for this church I went to. In fact, their motto is: “Love God. Love Yourself. Love Others.” Hmmm….. that sounds rather backwords to me.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think we should never take care of ourselves or make sure our needs are met. I just don’t think NOT loving ourselves is really an issue in today’s world. We make sure we get a showever every day, right? Make sure we get food when our stomaches growls — even if it growls for quite some time, we still make sure we fed. And when someone steps on our “rights” or over our “boundaries” we’re usually pretty quick to tell them. You want proof? What was your reaction to the last person who cut you off on the freeway…? šŸ™‚

I often wonder, and sometimes am convinced, that people are just using the “I’m learning to love myself” or “I need to love/take care of myself first” card as an excuse for their stingyness and spiritual lethargy.

I really believe Jesus was saying that we should love others as we are loving ourselves…. not just like we love ourselves, but as we learn how to accept and believe His unbelievable, unfailing, unconditional and unending love for us. As we see that our Source will never fail us, never run dry, never run out on us, we will be too full of love to contain it.

I just don’t want to focus on loving myself. I want to focus on loving others with the unending resevoir of love Jesus drenches me in every day. If I’m psychologically unsound, so be it.