This week, I have found myself caught in a difficult place I have found myself so many times before.
To families I work with, I have often called myself a "nontraditional Christian". Perhaps that's prideful, perhaps it's a cop-out so that I avoid judgment, but I'm really not 100% sure of my motivation. A professor in college once called my personality "slippery". I didn't like that, but he's not wrong. I avoid, as much as possible, any and all definition, even though there's nothing more satisfying than feeling known.
I am a question asker. I am a person who needs to know "why". I am a fighter and a seeker, and that can come off wrong. Many times, people have judged that as not being a faithful Christian because they see it as a sign of doubt or disbelief. In my mind, I see it as a sign of faithfulness, of belief. Why fight for something you don't believe in? No, you fight for that you do believe in.
Throughout my life as well, I have been in puddles of "perfect" people while at the same time having a knack for collecting broken people. Maybe I love the broken because I know that we are all broken. Everyone is broken. Everybody has their fissures and canyons in their life. That's why we need Jesus. But there's something beautiful about broken people's inability to hide theirs. You can see Jesus better when you can't hide where he's working, or wants to be working.
Perfect people, people with rock solid testimonies and veneers, bother me. They bother me at some level because I distrust them and their stories. God is good; yes, all the time. But he is also working all the time. In true community, you share. If we are supposed to be in true community spiritually, then why are we not sharing? Why are we judging instead? I posit that we judge out of our own insecurity, out of our fear that we ourselves are seen as being imperfect. Because maybe we won't be respected anymore or get that job at that Christian foundation or be thought of as a "struggler."
Because we have seen how those labels have power and have seen their impact on lives, as people start to believe what they are called. We're responsible for our own development, but it is hard not to feel the sear of the rejections and the names.
My broken collective has all gone different directions. Some have become their labels, some have overcome their labels. All grow, just in different ways.
Have you ever sat down to "judge" someone's faith walk for one reason or another? Walk that line with prayer and petition. Just because one person has chosen to be vulnerable and share where they honestly stand does not mean that they are necessarily more or less "solid" than the person who stands in front of you and says that they're rock solid in Jesus. No man knows another's soul. No one has "arrived" in their spirituality or their walk with Christ. One man's plateau or peak period may be during another's valley. Give them six months. The man you thought couldn't be shaken might have proven himself weak and the "weak" man may still be standing strong.
We are called to love, to lead back to Christ, to be diligent and prayerful and gracious. We correct when we need to correct, but we should always start with love and with God.
I am a person with the propensity for very strongly worded opinions, This is something I am challenged about daily and something I try daily to be more wise about. However, with regards to this topic, I know that I speak truly when I say that above all other subjects, this one should be treated with more gentleness, wisdom, diligence, and prayer than any others before words come out of our mouths.
Paul writes, "may your love abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you maybe able to discern", "approve what is excellent" "and may be sincere and blameless for the day of Christ--filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ".
The first definition that comes up for "sincerity" is "without pretense." Without our masks.
When I read this verse, I hear, "If you are following God with your whole heart, then he will cast aside all human-coated thoughts, leaving behind only what is true and good and holy."
Follow God, listen to his voice while turning yours off, and speak out with a voice that is not your own, one not coated all over with your pride, your position, your particular brand of sinful.
Showing posts with label communication.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communication.. Show all posts
Thursday, March 22, 2018
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Mind Your Mind
Today at work, it was my turn to do the devotion.
It is not my habit to sign up, but someone was covering a college fair for me, so I took his devotion day for him.
It is also my intent to choose a day for devotions in which I am feeling particularly holy.
This is not that week.
It has been nearly 7 days of stress and frustration.
Overlapping travel planning with the final details of student move-in is a lot more work than you might think. There are also people everywhere, and my introverted self is just not used to it.
I could give a series of excuses, but the end of the story is that I'm just being short with people because I feel a little overwhelmed.
Yesterday was really bad.
Work was bad, tried to go to yoga and came across an unexpected face so I left before it started, went to a girls' night with some people I didn't know, then ended up just going out with friends.
There didn't seem to be any sources of relief for anxiety.
So I wake up, right, and I have to come up with something inspiring and holy to say.
First, I checked Oswald Chambers, but that just wasn't really apt, so I glanced through my bookshelf and found Jill Briscoe and a section in one of her devotions entitled "Doing Yesterday".
It fit.
My devotion of the morning, using her words, was about the tendency of ours to replay yesterday over and over and over again, how we could have done different and said different and all the bad things. We avoid God and just try to talk with ourselves, knowing full well we do so just to avoid the words we know are coming to us from God.
It's over.
Move on.
As a writer, I recognize the capacity of one chapter to be six different things depending on perspective. I can change the entire story just by giving it a revision of outlook.
In the same way, each day we are given the opportunity to look back on our words and actions and the words and actions imparted to us. We are given the opportunity to filter them, judge them, color them however we do so choose.
I can look back on yesterday and see the aggravations and set-backs or I can look back on the hidden pieces--like the gem of a student who appeared last-minute and, despite his financial setbacks, is going to make college happen. Or like my sweet housemates who have become to me inseparable friends and confidantes. Or like church friends who seek me out. Or my sweet boyfriend who is willing to be gracious and give me the benefit of the doubt when my hurt communicates messages I don't intend them to mean.
In any situation, there is so much good underlying.
Jill's prayer is for the Lord to help her mind her mind and for the Lord to mind her heart.
It is up to us not to forget and move on or push out of our minds but actively choose to see the world just a little differently and revise our yesterdays just a bit more constructively.
Change what you can change, apologize for any misplaced words or actions, learn what you can, then look forward.
It is not my habit to sign up, but someone was covering a college fair for me, so I took his devotion day for him.
It is also my intent to choose a day for devotions in which I am feeling particularly holy.
This is not that week.
It has been nearly 7 days of stress and frustration.
Overlapping travel planning with the final details of student move-in is a lot more work than you might think. There are also people everywhere, and my introverted self is just not used to it.
I could give a series of excuses, but the end of the story is that I'm just being short with people because I feel a little overwhelmed.
Yesterday was really bad.
Work was bad, tried to go to yoga and came across an unexpected face so I left before it started, went to a girls' night with some people I didn't know, then ended up just going out with friends.
There didn't seem to be any sources of relief for anxiety.
So I wake up, right, and I have to come up with something inspiring and holy to say.
First, I checked Oswald Chambers, but that just wasn't really apt, so I glanced through my bookshelf and found Jill Briscoe and a section in one of her devotions entitled "Doing Yesterday".
It fit.
My devotion of the morning, using her words, was about the tendency of ours to replay yesterday over and over and over again, how we could have done different and said different and all the bad things. We avoid God and just try to talk with ourselves, knowing full well we do so just to avoid the words we know are coming to us from God.
It's over.
Move on.
As a writer, I recognize the capacity of one chapter to be six different things depending on perspective. I can change the entire story just by giving it a revision of outlook.
In the same way, each day we are given the opportunity to look back on our words and actions and the words and actions imparted to us. We are given the opportunity to filter them, judge them, color them however we do so choose.
I can look back on yesterday and see the aggravations and set-backs or I can look back on the hidden pieces--like the gem of a student who appeared last-minute and, despite his financial setbacks, is going to make college happen. Or like my sweet housemates who have become to me inseparable friends and confidantes. Or like church friends who seek me out. Or my sweet boyfriend who is willing to be gracious and give me the benefit of the doubt when my hurt communicates messages I don't intend them to mean.
In any situation, there is so much good underlying.
Jill's prayer is for the Lord to help her mind her mind and for the Lord to mind her heart.
It is up to us not to forget and move on or push out of our minds but actively choose to see the world just a little differently and revise our yesterdays just a bit more constructively.
Change what you can change, apologize for any misplaced words or actions, learn what you can, then look forward.
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
David and the Golden Finch
The British don't say "You're welcome".
Unless of course they're greeting you as you enter their dinner party or church or unless they've just done you some unfathomably good deed.
In fact, to say "You're welcome" is nearly offensive, as it connotes to a Brit that you are nearly pompous, that what you've done for them is, actually, an unfathomably good deed.
I had a British friend explain to me that even if her mother had cooked an enormous, extravagant feast, she would still not say, "You're welcome".
So when they do say it (and it's not an arrogant fool of a person), you understand something deeper about the character of the person speaking. It shows, through pomp and circumstance of a small phrase, what they value, what's of pristine importance to them.
I have often spoken before of my man David in Belfast.
David the quiet.
David the humble.
David the steadfast and hardworking.
David the kind.
When David spoke to me or showed me something, he had my entire attention, such was the unobtrusiveness of the man. If he requested my focus, it was important.
One day, David was in the kitchen, which had big sweeping windows all along the side wall looking into the front garden, and called me in when he heard me close by.
"See them finches there in the tree there? Them's golden finches. Haven't seen 'em here for ten years near."
"Uh...oh? That's great."
And he told me about the finches. And then he was done telling me about the finches.
I was half out the door back to my books when I remembered to thank him (as one should always do when a non-share-er shares) for showing them to me.
From the kitchen, I heard a quiet, "welcome".
You could have pushed me over with a bird bone.
It was the first time I had ever heard David say that word.
And it was said over finches.
My next text was to my mother, who was equally nonplussed till I told her what he'd said after.
The finches are a big deal.
Nature and creatures and creation is of great value to my master gardener friend.
He notices the living world with acute detail and stores it up.
To be let in to what fills his heart most was a great honor.
I didn't know it was an honor and a privilege until his final word, though.
In an episode of "The Office", Andy Bernard says (in my recollection of the quote), "I wish there were a way to know you were in the golden years when you're in them".
There are moments when the opportunity for connection is right there and we don't realize it. Sometimes, if we jump fast enough, we can catch them. Other times, though, they fly away like finches.
It was a lesson to me to listen, not just to the words but to all the pieces of the context and the speaker I'd gathered before.
Listen with your whole self and mental history. Hear behind the words when your people speak to you. Hear their hearts and values and interests. Hear them.
Unless of course they're greeting you as you enter their dinner party or church or unless they've just done you some unfathomably good deed.
In fact, to say "You're welcome" is nearly offensive, as it connotes to a Brit that you are nearly pompous, that what you've done for them is, actually, an unfathomably good deed.
I had a British friend explain to me that even if her mother had cooked an enormous, extravagant feast, she would still not say, "You're welcome".
So when they do say it (and it's not an arrogant fool of a person), you understand something deeper about the character of the person speaking. It shows, through pomp and circumstance of a small phrase, what they value, what's of pristine importance to them.
I have often spoken before of my man David in Belfast.
David the quiet.
David the humble.
David the steadfast and hardworking.
David the kind.
When David spoke to me or showed me something, he had my entire attention, such was the unobtrusiveness of the man. If he requested my focus, it was important.
One day, David was in the kitchen, which had big sweeping windows all along the side wall looking into the front garden, and called me in when he heard me close by.
"See them finches there in the tree there? Them's golden finches. Haven't seen 'em here for ten years near."
"Uh...oh? That's great."
And he told me about the finches. And then he was done telling me about the finches.
I was half out the door back to my books when I remembered to thank him (as one should always do when a non-share-er shares) for showing them to me.
From the kitchen, I heard a quiet, "welcome".
You could have pushed me over with a bird bone.
It was the first time I had ever heard David say that word.
And it was said over finches.
My next text was to my mother, who was equally nonplussed till I told her what he'd said after.
The finches are a big deal.
Nature and creatures and creation is of great value to my master gardener friend.
He notices the living world with acute detail and stores it up.
To be let in to what fills his heart most was a great honor.
I didn't know it was an honor and a privilege until his final word, though.
In an episode of "The Office", Andy Bernard says (in my recollection of the quote), "I wish there were a way to know you were in the golden years when you're in them".
There are moments when the opportunity for connection is right there and we don't realize it. Sometimes, if we jump fast enough, we can catch them. Other times, though, they fly away like finches.
It was a lesson to me to listen, not just to the words but to all the pieces of the context and the speaker I'd gathered before.
Listen with your whole self and mental history. Hear behind the words when your people speak to you. Hear their hearts and values and interests. Hear them.
Sunday, December 8, 2013
Approachable
Some things in life do not make sense to me.
Like how I'm always told I look unapproachable and intimidating, yet every time I'm in a coffee shop with headphones in, a stack of books five high, a computer on my lap, a pen in my hand, and a journal stuck somewhere around my chair, apparently I'm irresistibly approachable. People think it's the exact right time to strike up a deep and divulgent conversation with me. I know many a stranger's dark truths and life story.
That recently happened to me with this man:
He woke up from his drunken stupor and told me his childhood memories, political views, and made me watch several videos of a sheep.
I'd like to harness that irresistableness and use it during appropriate social settings, not the ones when I'm trying to decipher criticism of Ulysses or write a presentation on disengagement and father-figure searching in The Gatekeeper.
Speaking of appropriate social settings, I was tricked into one this evening.
At newcomers dinner (take 2) on Tuesday evening, the pastor's wife casually invited me to sing with a choir-like group on sunday (tonight) because they were desperate for another alto. Made it sound super casual.
It turned into me showing up at someone's home, joining an established choir for Christmas Caroling, and discovering that Harmony was never showing up ever. Hello...strangers. Who wants to take me home tonight? To my home, that is, not your home. I don't know you like that. Or at all. Dang you, Harmony!
Luckily, I've been practicing my small talk social skills a lot in the past couple weeks and have "looking pleasant" down to a science.
First are the arms. Uncross them and place them delicately in your lap.
Next is the face. Stop staring like you've got laser beams for eyes and give yourself a nice, dreamy expression, making sure the crinkles in your forehead are smoothed. Maybe raise your eyebrows a bit to widen your eyes even more and make you look innocent and curious.
The mouth. It's pursed, isn't it. Or frowning a bit. Don't smile like an idiot, but you could stand to turn the sides up a little, so you look like you've laughed at least once before and would do so again if called upon.
Along with singing to some neighborhood folk, I heard all about some guy's reminisces about every english course he'd ever taken, the warm childhood memories of a man and his father geeking out over web design and technology together, and got myself a ride home with a very nice swedish south african girl named Sam, who also made me wear tinsel.
A battle awaited me at home. The crazy thing is that I don't even know where these attacks are coming from, like what their root is, so there's no way for me to come to plate against them really.
They knock the life out of me. Literally take me off my feet and to the floor (funny thing: that's another time I apparently am most approachable. Dang near every time I cry--which previous to this move has been seldom--somebody walks in on me or calls me).
But thank God almighty: New mercies will be ready for me in the morning.
December, day 8: complete.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
chocolate covered mind nuggets.
so here is me, being very very distracted by internet when i need to be writing my lab write-up. so here is my mind on the menu today, and in recent general. : )
as some of you may know i have decided to end my fast. there are a few reasons for this. i've been reading C.S. Lewis's book The Screwtape Letters, and man it makes me think really critically, and it screws with my mind. one part that really stuck wiht me was the part (i'm too lazy right now to go find the part of the book so this is my version) that said, we (demons) need to help make them focus on the task itself and not who it's based on let them focus not on G-d, but on the thing they've made. so yeah. for a while i was pretty focused, and i just prayed, prayed and listened. made a few really good decisions, and i really was enjoying this kind of constnat table for two (new life ranch term for quiet time) but it really has become like me just trying to see if i could do it, so yesterday, i decided that i was no longer glorifying G-d, and as much as i'd like to continue, i just didn't feel right doing it.
i've also been thinking about a very similar pattern in my relationships. A. i seem to keep picking the same guy. All different people, but i swear they could not be more alike. B. i kill all of my relationships. they are all really fun and great, but i just strangle the heck out of them, i hate that about me. i just subconsciously begin to hate them and then i drive them away. Conclusion: I truly believe that although (yes i know i am still a youngin' )that i will not be able to carry out a successful relationship until it's with the person i'm suppossed to be with. i really hate dating, it's tres fun, but i don't think it's worth hurting the people that i date. which is inevitable. so yeah i'm pretty much done with dating. i hate it. i do friendship really really well.
Communication: put in blue so that if no one reads any of this post they will read this part. : ) i would almost rather that they read this part and not the part above, but someone told me today that i'm no longer allowed to delete posts i don't like. : ) so 80 % of communication is non-verbal. i think that is sweet. and freaky. and i completely understand it. i can read people really well. but i also am frustrated that i can't read my own body language. i can always tell when other people are thinking or feeling certain things, but for the life of me i don't know how i'm coming accross, and i know a lot of times my body language/ communication style pisses people off, so i'd like to know what i'm doing so i can change that. so if you ( as the annonymous collective) are ever having a conversation with me, tell me what i'm saying. not verbally what i'm saying i usually know that. but what i'm saying with the other 80% of my communication to you. thanks.
also, i think i am beginning to notice some very "my mom" type attributes of myself. like the way she freaks out (well not really freak out but be very frantic about getting things done and the way in which they are done) and other things like that. like she and my dad were having a conversation today, adn i could have easily said any of the things that she did. i think that's why we don't get along is because, as much as it absolutely kills me to say this seeing as she is so not who i want to be in 40 years, but we don't get along because we are so similar. ew. okay. feedback on all is lovely. : )
as some of you may know i have decided to end my fast. there are a few reasons for this. i've been reading C.S. Lewis's book The Screwtape Letters, and man it makes me think really critically, and it screws with my mind. one part that really stuck wiht me was the part (i'm too lazy right now to go find the part of the book so this is my version) that said, we (demons) need to help make them focus on the task itself and not who it's based on let them focus not on G-d, but on the thing they've made. so yeah. for a while i was pretty focused, and i just prayed, prayed and listened. made a few really good decisions, and i really was enjoying this kind of constnat table for two (new life ranch term for quiet time) but it really has become like me just trying to see if i could do it, so yesterday, i decided that i was no longer glorifying G-d, and as much as i'd like to continue, i just didn't feel right doing it.
i've also been thinking about a very similar pattern in my relationships. A. i seem to keep picking the same guy. All different people, but i swear they could not be more alike. B. i kill all of my relationships. they are all really fun and great, but i just strangle the heck out of them, i hate that about me. i just subconsciously begin to hate them and then i drive them away. Conclusion: I truly believe that although (yes i know i am still a youngin' )that i will not be able to carry out a successful relationship until it's with the person i'm suppossed to be with. i really hate dating, it's tres fun, but i don't think it's worth hurting the people that i date. which is inevitable. so yeah i'm pretty much done with dating. i hate it. i do friendship really really well.
Communication: put in blue so that if no one reads any of this post they will read this part. : ) i would almost rather that they read this part and not the part above, but someone told me today that i'm no longer allowed to delete posts i don't like. : ) so 80 % of communication is non-verbal. i think that is sweet. and freaky. and i completely understand it. i can read people really well. but i also am frustrated that i can't read my own body language. i can always tell when other people are thinking or feeling certain things, but for the life of me i don't know how i'm coming accross, and i know a lot of times my body language/ communication style pisses people off, so i'd like to know what i'm doing so i can change that. so if you ( as the annonymous collective) are ever having a conversation with me, tell me what i'm saying. not verbally what i'm saying i usually know that. but what i'm saying with the other 80% of my communication to you. thanks.
also, i think i am beginning to notice some very "my mom" type attributes of myself. like the way she freaks out (well not really freak out but be very frantic about getting things done and the way in which they are done) and other things like that. like she and my dad were having a conversation today, adn i could have easily said any of the things that she did. i think that's why we don't get along is because, as much as it absolutely kills me to say this seeing as she is so not who i want to be in 40 years, but we don't get along because we are so similar. ew. okay. feedback on all is lovely. : )
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