Month: January 2020

Rescue

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Here is what I know: The church loves to talk about getting saved and chains being broken.

But whether through circumstances or warfare or sin or biology, we can end up back in chains.

It’s easy to feel like a “bad Christian,” when “good Christians” are defined as showing the world that they have something no one else does. I am not disputing that, if it’s genuine and not a forced portrayal. We are offered supernatural ways to love, spread peace, and have joy.

But. Sometimes…it’s a testimony to show people that you are just as jacked up as they are, but handling it differently. It’s the person who drags themselves into Bible study and church week after week after forcing themselves out of bed. It’s the person going through a divorce who doesn’t renege his or her faith. It’s the person with the wayward child that they are just trusting to the Lord.

Here is what I know for sure: God doesn’t work the same way all the time, and this last experience taught me that He is skilled at the art of the slow rescue. 

I actually feel it these days. I feel happy, and I feel rescued. There is so much gratitude, because I wasn’t sure if I’d ever feel that way again. I felt abandoned and I felt stuck and lonely and if things hadn’t changed in over 1-2 years, were they ever going to get better? And even when they were better, I just felt “okay.”

It was patronizing, but I kept feeling God say “Stay.” Don’t change houses. Don’t move to a more suburban area right now. Don’t persuade your husband to go back to your hometown. Stay in this foreign land.

I wasn’t pulled up from the muck and mire like I was in the past. I was free-falling a long time. When things finally did begin to turn around (emotionally–and some circumstantially), it was more like clinging to a rope and being pulled up inch by inch over the period of a whole nother year.

God taught me how to make different choices when I wanted to wallow or reinforce bad cognitive patterns. He asked me to let go of a lot of stuff I was clinging to for identity. He asked me to get stripped back to develop humility. He asked me to sit with Him at a picnic table, angry or happy, and talk with Him as a Father.

He did the real work of forgiving me, encountering me, and healing me. I just cooperated with Him.

Not very long ago, I was sitting with a patient who complained of overwhelming depression with His medical and social circumstances. We talked about some practical things, but knowing that he was a Catholic, I also felt like I was able to encourage Him by talking about the slow rescue. How God sometimes doesn’t lift us out of that cloud right away, but maybe puts something on the calendar or someone in our path to sustain us. It doesn’t feel like enough at the time, but sustaining is sometimes God’s work too, not just thriving. 

We prayed. I felt grateful that God gave me the opportunity–and experience–to encourage when God’s rescue doesn’t look the way we think it should.

Forgiveness

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Here’s how you know you haven’t forgiven, she said. When that person still has a title. It’s “Mary, the one who betrayed me” or “Ryan, the bully” or “my Dad, who abandoned me” (she lived that story).

There’s always a note after their name, whether in your head or heart.

I’ve had a few of those.

And they said it’s hard to get through. That forgiveness is a process. That sometimes old hurt resurfaces. But that God honors our efforts and our progress.

We say it in the Lord’s prayer: Forgive us our trespasses, Lord, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

It’s a tall freakin’ order sometimes, because the emotions run raw.

Sometimes there’s the Big Forgiveness, and sometimes there’s the little forgiveness. Little forgiveness is the topic of today’s conversation.

A thing that I’ve felt often in life is that I’m just a placeholder until people find some cooler friend. I’m inclusive enough to bring people in, and then I’m forgotten. It’s a narrative that has recurred in my life.

The girl in my neighborhood, the new kid in the school lunch room, a cousin-in-law (pre-marriage), and former friends.

There are the deep knife wounds, but if we’re not careful, we can end up dead by a thousand papercuts, too.

This year has been about genuinely embracing humility. It has been about not hoarding God’s glory for myself, and rejoicing where He’s moving and who He’s moving through. It’s putting down boundaries–realizing I can still have accepted a FB friend request from that person who was part of making middle school horrible, but I don’t have to follow her. It’s been freeing people to make their own choices without anger, and making ones for myself. It has been trying to release them from judgment–knowing God understands their tender hearts and circumstances.

It’s looking at how some people leave the lunch table, and some people stay. I was still living out my purpose by reaching out and bringing them in. And for a time, maybe that kindness was sustaining.

This former achiever doesn’t even know if she wants any kind of large impact anymore.

For right now, giving a lonely older adult hope through prayer as a home OT is where God has me. Learning how to love “the little children” (including when my baby is in the infant stage!) the way Jesus did is enough. Learning how to change my thinking is enough (“make a different choice” has been my mantra so many times when I feel a spiral of loneliness coming).

The more you have, the more you have to lose. I don’t want anything that God doesn’t want me to have before He wants me to have it anymore. Even if that means being a disappointment or not living up to expectation. Even if that means letting go. Even if it means staying.

There is a lot I don’t remember about my wedding vows verbatim, but the thing that comes to me all the time (Holla, Holy Spirit) is this. [I vow] to love you as Jesus loves, and to forgive as Jesus forgives.” This has been a phrase that has convicted me sometimes. Am I demonstrating God’s forgiveness to my husband?

I am wondering now what would happen if we made that vow more often to all kinds of people in our life. We can’t love or forgive on our own, but bringing that covenant promise into our relationships is a good way to start.

It’s not simple. It’s not easy. It’s not bloodless. It can cost something to everything. But I want to try.

Intentional motherhood

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So in about two months, a baby will be joining our family.

Honestly, pregnancy has been really exhausting (with the exception of a brief 2 hour window in the second trimester haha), but it also has not been as hard emotionally as I expected. There are still hard days living in the Philly area without the kind of community I’m used to having, but I’ve been coping well.

In church we talked about delighting in the Lord’s commands, and how to make space to do that. One of the things our pastor talked about was having cues (e.g. putting the Bible on your pillow, etc).

It made me think about how to be intentional with my baby.

I want my kids to know God is real. I want them to see and experience Him. And furthermore, I want to continue to see and experience Him for myself.

I will be home with the bambino two days a week with a 6-week maternity leave (ugh. Another pet peeve about PA).

When we are home, I hope to:

-Simplify a verse to the baby after morning feeding

-Sing one to two songs of worship with the baby in the afternoon

-Pray in front of my baby, leaving it down even if it’s crying if there’s no emergency. Putting God first

-Asking for forgiveness/praying for patience if I need to from my child

-Remind myself that godliness and being present and loving are way more important to my baby and to God than perfection and avoiding judgement

One tension I see for myself is that I’m pretty structured. I’ve traditionally been great with kids…you know, that camp counselor and older cousin. But I also am always thinking about what my response to behavior is reinforcing, good or bad. It’s good to be consistent with discipline, but I also want to be able to give grace and let some things slide more if it’s not important.

I also want to parent my child’s heart, not just their behavior.

In the midst of all this, I know I need to find rest, grace and space for myself, too. And I need to continue to challenge myself to go out/invite people over to find “my people.”

I don’t know how this will work, and I know I’ll be living in this tension for awhile.

I know there will be days I’m at the end of my rope, and I will need prayer and practical help. But I also know that God gave us this baby. God’s power is made perfect in my weakness. And I have an amazing husband to help (I don’t know how the old-school mom’s/wives did it on their own!)

On that note, good night!