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Today, I have something really simple to say; if you hurt people as you move through life, you need to stop. Entirely. Forever. Look, I know that sometimes we hurt people just being who we are. We’re too much for some people and not enough for others. They have expectations we can’t live up to and they feel disappointed and let down. We make choices … Continue reading Stop Hurting People
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“I want you to know I never believed the things people said about you. Those people who said they could see better than you could what your faults are? I never saw what they thought they were seeing in you. All those times you were told that you are lazy or selfish or undisciplined or a stubborn know-it-all? I always thought the people saying those … Continue reading What God Told Me Yesterday
This week we’ve been talking about our dark side and why we don’t need to fear or reject it. Yesterday we talked about bringing our dark side to God. Today, we look how doing this is the key to being able to fulfill our call to be the light of the world. We Christians have a real problem dealing with the sin and darkness of … Continue reading Being Light to a Darkened World
Back when I was a kid, I would hear the words of Jesus telling us to love our enemies and pray for those who hurt us and wonder . . . do I have enemies? Did the popular girls at school who seemed to be snearing at me all the time count as enemies? How about the teachers who kept insisting that I do my … Continue reading Making the Most of an Enemy
Sorry for the long silence. I’ve been dealing with some heavy stuff here. I think it’s getting better. Prayers are appreciated. Or if that’s not really your thing, cash is always an acceptable alternative. 😉
Today, I want to talk about what happens when we refuse to believe we are forgiven. Like everyone else, the people around me have sometimes treated me in ways that weren’t the best or even done outright awful things which I then needed to forgive. Fortunately for me, forgiveness has always come fairly easily. If nothing else, my self interest kicks in and I realize that the benefits of letting go of the wrong far outweigh whatever payoff I might get from hanging onto my hurt. In doing so, I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons. That what other people do is about them and not me, for example. And that it’s easier to recover from being hurt than it is to recover from the way the fear of being hurt warps us.
However, I have often been befuddled and frankly, hurt, over the years that some of these same people who I have readily extended grace to for some pretty major things were often unwilling to extend grace to me for relatively minor faults and failings. For a while I thought that maybe the problem was that the sort of people who required extreme grace were also the sort of the people who were just kind of jerks anyways. However, over the last couple of years, I have discovered that there has been something entirely different at work.
What I’ve learned is that either because I didn’t communicate it well enough or they still felt guilty or the easy grace seemed too good to be true, a few of these people didn’t believe that I had really forgiven them. They believed that even if I had openly communicated forgiveness, in my heart, I was secretly angry, hostile and score keeping. Which made it easy for them to see my (numerous) faults and failings as evidence of hostility, passive-aggressive revenge or withholding. The truth of the matter is that I’m just far more flawed than these people may have realized. Continue reading “Disbelieving Forgiveness”
Pretty regularly my three year old Olivia will tell me, “Michaela loves me.” Or Noah or Dad or whoever in the family she’s just been dealing with. Believe it or not, this doesn’t just happen when someone hands her a piece of candy. Often it’s just after being hugged or read a book or being talked with. Just simple things that seem to make her realize that she is cared for. As a mother, I don’t think I’ve ever heard more reassuring words come out of a child’s mouth than Olivia’s, “everyone loves me.”
I know people who would probably think it is unseemly to declare oneself loved. We’re supposed to tell other people that we love them, not proclaim ourselves as loved. Even if it’s sweet for a 3 year old to say such a thing, it would seem weird and awkward for us to say it. However, as much as we tell people we love them – and we should! – what a gift to tell people that we have received and experienced the love they have for us as well. I know from experience – and I’d bet most of you do too – that there is little which is more hurtful than a loved one rejecting our love. To be a parent who realizes that as fervently as they have loved their child, that for one reason or another that child doesn’t feel loved. A spouse whose partner feels unloved after they’ve poured themselves out heart and soul for them. Or a friend who prayed over and sat with a dear one only to hear, “no one cares about me.” As wounding as never hearing, “I love you” can be, “I don’t feel loved” can be even worse. Continue reading “Do You Know How to Feel Loved?”
One of the things that is both frustrating and fascinating to me is how bad we tend to be at loving. We really think we love people even when we are destroying them. Or we have very loving feelings towards people who experience us as aloof, uninterested and disapproving. We say that another’s happiness means more to us than our own and then make them miserable by trying to impose our preferences and vision for how they should find happiness on them. Just over and over again, we do things which hurt those we purport to love and then get upset with them should they have the nerve to say, “you’re hurting me!”
I came across a post today on the blog “The Registered Runaway” that I want to share with you. We’ve all heard that love isn’t a feeling, it’s a choice. But this writer starts with an even better idea: love is an ability. IOW, it’s a skill we have to learn and develop. It seems to me that we are so bad at loving in part because of our old issue of not ever wanting to be wrong. We want to think that we know how to love when we’ve never put in the time and effort it takes to unlearn our mistaken ideas about love and learn how to do it well. So in the interest of education, I’d like to share a few choice excerpts from this lovely blog post “Love is an Ability”:
Most of the time, an ability is not given, it is grown. You have to feed it and nourish it and work like hell to make sure it thrives through each and every season. Love is no different.
I am convinced that saying you love someone doesn’t count as love. I am also convinced that willing your mind to love someone that you’ve never reached out and touched, doesn’t add up to much. . .
You cannot love someone until you know someone and there is a clear-cut difference between knowing of someone and really knowing someone. You can put people on pedestals, but you can’t love them until you know them. You can leave the word love as the lasting residue of your rant, but you don’t love the folks you’re talking about, not really. . . Continue reading ““Love isn’t a feeling . . . It’s an ability””
Everyone likes to think that they are good at loving. After all, we have really strong, loving emotions so surely we must be very loving people, right? But here’s a hint: if the person you love doesn’t experience you as loving, you’re doing it wrong. So in order to help y’all out, here’s a handy-dandy checklist based on the famous 1 Corinthians 13 verses:
Love is patient:
Do you complain that the object of your affection isn’t improving fast enough? Do you get upset that you have to deal with the same problems over and over? Do you wonder why they haven’t gotten their crap together? Or are you willing to allow them the lifetime God has granted them to become who they were created to be?
Love is kind:
Do you assume the best of your loved one? Do you step in to tell them how wonderful they are when they are beating up on themselves – or being beat up on by others? Do you help them write the story of their lives in a way which portrays them in the best light possible?
Love does not envy:
Do you think that your loved one has it easier than you do and resent them for it? When things go well for them do you get upset because things aren’t going well for you? Do you think that they are getting the better part of your relationship?
Love does not boast:
Is it important to you that your loved one recognize your every accomplishment, good dead and sacrifice? Do you feel the need to regularly remind them of what you do for them and how they benefit from being in a relationship with you?
Love is not self-seeking:
Do you have a “what have you done for me lately?” attitude with your loved one? Do you think about the things they could be doing for you, but aren’t?
Love is not easily angered:
Are you quick tempered when your loved one screws up? Are you using your anger to pressure your loved one into keeping you happy? Do you frequently take offense at things your loved one says or does?
Love keeps no record of wrongs:
Do you sometimes throw past errors or intemperate words in the face of your loved one? Do you feel that your loved one is more often in the wrong than you? Do feel that some past sin or error has created an imbalance between you which they need to make up for?
Love does not delight in evil:
Back when I was 18, I had two different guys I dated break up with me and give me the exact same reason: I was intimidating. That’s the word they both used. Which is really weird. I’m about as intimidating as a tree sloth. Which is to say not in the least. Now if they had said I was sloppy or spent too much time sleeping or wasn’t ambitious enough, that I could have understood. (See – like a tree sloth!) But intimidating? Hardly.
Interestingly enough, it turned out that both of these young men felt intimidated by me for the same reasons. I didn’t drink. I didn’t smoke. I didn’t view making money as the most important goal I could have for my life. And they did. Now, I had never criticized either of them for these things. Not even obliquely. They drank. I didn’t. No big deal. I never asked them to stop, never said I didn’t want to be around them when they did, never spoke poorly about people who drank. Nothing. The same with smoking for the one who smoked. The same with money. But both of them were intimidated by me because of this.
What was really going on was that by not sharing in their behaviors and priorities, I wasn’t affirming them. If I had been critical, they could have just blown me off as a stick-in-the-mud. If I had tried to get them to change their behavior or priorities, they could have told me to mind my own business and leave if I didn’t like it. So when I also didn’t criticize or judge them for the ways they were different than me, they didn’t have anything to react against in order to self-affirm. But I didn’t do those things. Instead I was content to let them be them and me be me and just enjoy each other’s company. Which meant all they had was themselves. And there was something in both of them that wasn’t entirely comfortable with their own choices and priorities. Being around me made that discomfort harder to ignore. It made them feel less confident and sure about themselves which was why they experienced me as intimidating. Continue reading ““If Any Man Come to Me and Hates Not . . .””
“You’re being too sensitive.”
Oh are those ever familiar words. All through my childhood they trailed after me like a tin can tied to the end of my shoelaces, with each step in danger of sending it bouncing across the floor. The sound of those words clanging along behind me made me wince until I could hardly bear to move from my spot any more. One day, when the strain of being planted in one spot got to be too much for me, I got wise, cut the string and walked away. For a long time though, the memory of that ugly sound haunted my steps. But many, many years of freedom from the constant accusation “you’re too sensitive” faded even that away until I was able to move about my world with an ease I had not dreamed was possible back when I was trying to be quiet and still enough not to send that tin can clattering across the floor.
I am sensitive. I am very sensitive. As I explained in the section of my book devoted to part of my spiritual memoir:
I was the sort of kid who felt bad for the fake Santa’s at the mall when little kids would cry in their laps. An old woman struggling to pull change out of her coin purse in front of my at the grocery store made me tear up. If the other kids were teasing the girl from special ed classes who smelled funny and dressed badly, I felt compelled to step in to help her even though that was a great way to find out that I also smelled funny and dressed badly. If you were someone I actually cared about, an angry word or harsh action could wound me down to the depths of my being. Continue reading ““You’re so sensitive!””
The Upside Down World 