Relationships

Life has been crazy the last couple of weeks!

Oh, in one sense it is been that way because my husband had to travel for work.

But the other way it has been crazy is that I have interacted with multiple of my neighbors during this period!

Now this is huge because I am an introvert.

Sadly, I often have an intense desire to run into my house after extroverting myself for any period of time.  

This last week though, I decided to push myself to not do that so much.  Instead I began crossing the driveway away from the door to my house that was so enticing and instead I got to know my neighbors a little better.

Guess how much training that took?

None. Nada. Zilch. Zip. Zero.

Photo by Makole Photography

All it took was using the skills we learn as children.

It always stands out to me in Scripture, how much we try to complicate the messages of Jesus.

Matthew 18:3 says:

"Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, 

you will never enter the kingdom of heaven"

I have often heard this verse spun to emphasize the humility we are suppose to demonstrate as believers.

That sounds good, but if we go back and look at what is going on around this verse we start to see that this verse is more radical than humility!

This verse is set in the middle of a community that is dominated by the Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire was an environment where position was valued.  

Throughout the Gospels, we see examples of tax-collectors, these were Jews who turned on their own for position with the Roman government.  

We see the Sadducees, who cemented their position by social, political and religious means.

Into this society comes Jesus' disciples with the question "Who, then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" (Matthew 18:1b)

When Jesus calls a child to him to answer this question it is a radically different message than society has presented.  All around them his disciples are seeing a struggle for power.  Into that struggle for greatness comes Jesus, who points them to a child.

I have a soon to be 3 year old and a 1 year old.  

At our house we are constantly living in the world of a child.  

Do you know how uncomplicated that world is?
Somehow as we become adults things change.

There are now complex steps and formulas for making friends.

Social class does not effect them.

I took my 1 year old to the grocery store yesterday and everyone was a friend to wave at no matter what they looked like, how old they were or what position they held in society.

Somehow over time we seem to have complicated the idea of relationship.  

We have books and formulas telling us how to use this skills we developed as a child that we have lost as adults.

We have complex formulas for how to make disciples.

We rate people on scales creating a hierarchy to determine how we "should" relate to them.

We approach relationships in a detached formal manner, completely forgetting that these words for the disciples are for us also...

"Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, 

you will never enter the kingdom of heaven"

What happens if we forget the formulas and charts?

What happens if we discard the hierarchy?

What happens if we just start waving to people in the grocery story like a 1 year old?

What happens if we follow the example of a 3 year old and ask everyone we meet there name?

Ok, so maybe that might be a little creepy for adults, but what if we start by being aware?

What if we start by setting the goal to find one person wherever we go to say hi and learn their name?

Will we do it perfectly?  Probably not, but if we get it just some of the time we give our forgotten relational muscles a work-out.

One small way to start is to walk away from your door the next time you get home and walk toward the neighbor, who just got home also.

What Jurassic World Taught Me About Relationships

Today, I find myself reflecting on the recently released Jurassic World, the 4th installment in the hugely successful Jurassic Park franchise.  As a teenager growing up in the 90's I wasn't allowed to go to movies so when the original Jurassic Park was released I had no idea why everyone was so worked up over the first 3 movies.  Then in my late 20's as part of catching up with the highlights of modern culture over 2 decades I was directed to the original Jurassic Park film.  Instantly I understood why they were so successful.  I'm not sure I'll ever forget the feeling when I saw the first of the dinosaurs pan on to the screen as the music swelled with the classic music of John Williams.  From that moment on I was hooked.  I love these movies with their si-fi, horror, action-adventure twist.  I love the characters they gave us and even more, I love that they made dinosaurs believable in all shapes and sizes.  

After discovering that there were plans to release a 4th installment 20 years after the original I was ecstatic!  In the two days leading up to our date night which was when we planned to go see it, I was like a little kid.  I could hardly contain myself!  While I wasn't going to be able to recapture a moment that wasn't possible 20 years earlier at Jurassic Park's original release I did have the opportunity to create a new memory with Jurassic World.  So into the theater I went with my husband, as excited as a 13 year old must have been to see the first dinosaurs 20 years before, but with me I took the experience of a 35 year old which meant this movie ended up leaving me contemplating the lessons that can be learned from this particular film if we allow ourselves to get over the parts we might or might not agree with scientifically.

My favorite dinosaurs since the first movie have been the Velociraptors.  I'm starting to think maybe it's because they remind me of people that we don't exactly understand.  In all three movies they are portrayed as highly intelligent, but there is a communication barrier and the fact that the world and mind of a velociraptor is so far removed from the modern reality that all of the humans have been a part of for decades.means that they are to be feared and avoided at all costs.  Lets face it the first 3 movies get a LOT of screen time out of people running from or fighting against the raptors.  

The approach of this movie where the lead character, Owen, is actually working with the raptors to turn the very traits that make others fear them into a positive thing was a plot point I found interesting.  There's a line where he is describing what exactly it is that he shares with the raptors that I found extremely thought provoking.  

Owen

It's not about control.  It's a relationship based on respect.

Not control, but respect.  I won't completely break down how this impacted me since I don't want to spoil the film if you haven't already seen it, but it has left me thinking how that statement should apply to my own life.  

I'm starting to realize that I need to live more like Owen's character.  He joins the raptors where they are, accepting everything they bring with them into the relationship which interestingly enough includes the ability to kill him at any given moment.  Rather than protect himself from them constantly he becomes one of them. even referring to himself as the Alpha, or pack leader.   There's something about that relationship that made me ask how does that need to look in my own life?  If God has called me as a Christian to "make disciples of all nations".  Then I think it has to look something like that relationship between Owen and the Velociraptors.  A relationship that others can return to even when they might have forgotten what the relationship was really suppose to be.  I'm becoming strongly convicted that it doesn't look the way I've always been told church and Christianity are suppose to look.  It looks much more messy like the moment that the raptors lose sight of Owen as one of them.  It means taking the risk of being hurt and forgotten.

It feels like so often we put our toes in the water of doing church and life differently only to pull them back when we get a cold reception, but the example we as Christians were sent was rejected by his own family, country and ultimately even some of his followers turned from him.  We, however, jump from project to project never fully committing to anything enough to completely see it through because when it starts to get hard we give up forgetting that building muscle which grows us requires extreme pain at times.  

I suppose in one way, Jurassic World in the middle of its fantasy and science-fiction as given me a very real and emotional picture of relationships.  The pain, but also the good that can come out of them.  Always in the picture though I see respect.  Respect toward those who might be different from me and my life experiences.  Respect toward those I don't agree with, but even more those who don't agree with me.  It's choosing to live respectfully my daily life with people who have the ability to hurt me at any given moment realizing that the relationship is dependent on that one component.  I have to be honest though, it gets a little hard to know what that respect looks like when really crazy things happen.  I don't have the answers to all of that.  What I do know though is that it won't happen until I can learn to run with the raptors....

The Grace of Repentance

I recently had someone ask me if I believed in repentance.  It's funny because it feels like it should be such an easy answer, but for me it's not.  For me the word repentance brings back nightmares I had as a child.  Waking up at night to a silent house, straining to hear the slightest noise that would tell me I wasn't the only one left in the house.  At 10 years old my fear wasn't that an ax murderer had broken in and killed everyone, it was that God had decided to take everyone who had proved they were sincere about their "repentance" to Heaven and I was the only one in our family who was left because I knew my heart.  I knew as much as I might try I wasn't perfect and that I messed up a lot!

We would sing Jesus Loves the Little Children and I never believed it because I didn't feel worth loving much.  I looked at myself even as a child and just saw all of the things I couldn't get right.  I lived in fear of God rather than basking in the love and grace of God.  I saw God as someone who wanted to punish me not bless me.  Over the years I came to see blessings as things God gave you for performing as expected.  Not the result of the overabundance of his love for me.

Over the weekend I came up against a piece of my past that I thought I had moved through.  The heart wrenching fear that God didn't love me after all and that nothing I could do or say was good enough.  The incident had me sitting in a chair begging God to show me the truth and counter the lie that inside I knew was wrong, but the message from my past of an unforgiving God was so strong that it triggered my panic attacks.

Earlier in the year I purchased a necklace that reads pre-approved and has the definition inside a pendant.  I purchased it because somehow I knew I needed the physical reminder that God has pre-approved me.  Others opinions of me do not matter and they do not define my relationship with Him.  In this particular moment that message became the exact thing that God could use to speak the truth of who I am and who He is making me into.  It reminded me that I'm his Beloved, he values me and loves me more than I can imagine.

Over the course of the next 24 hours it felt like God just began showering me with reminders of his love, grace and truth.  He reminded me that David who failed so much was someone he called a man after God's own heart.  David, who killed a man after sleeping with his wife.  David, who didn't pay attention and tried to move God's ark in a way much different from God's directions.  David who had multiple wives.  This was a man who lived a really messy life, but the Psalms are filled with his searching for God.  I was reminded that the simple definition to repentance is not a list of rules I have to keep up with.  It's not penance when I've screwed something up.  It's realizing I'm walking in a different direction from God and correcting course.  It's changing my ways, not beating myself up over the fact I can't be perfect.

Grace is not something I can earn, but for repentance to be genuine it has to be something I can accept and live in.  Love. Grace.  Repentance.  You can't separate them.  Without love and grace, repentance is only judgement and humiliation.  Without repentance, love and grace are only tools to excuse anything we might want to do.  Separate they can be abused, but embraced together they become a thing of beauty and life change.  Together they give us David's story that inspires us to strive to be called like he was "a man after God's own heart".

So do I believe in repentance?  Absolutely!  I've lived it.  I experience it every day when I screw up.  I experience it every time that I let the lies from the past overwhelm what God is doing in my present.  But I also believe that it must be embraced with love and grace to have any effect in our lives.  Repentance becomes the means to repair relationship with God, not the means for our brokenness to be held over our heads.

Respite

Without whitespace, we become emotionally disconnected.  We cannot be touched, nor can we touch anyone.     ~Bonnie Gray

This week I've been operating in exhausted mode.  Last week everyone in our little family of three managed to be sick one right after the other.  This week my husband had meetings and overtime galore and by yesterday I found myself hitting a wall.  I had forced myself along as much as possible, but desperately needed something to bring me joy.  Something that would delight the little girl inside me and so my husband arranged a date night taking me to see Cinderella.

I'm not sure I even realized how much I needed to feel again.  In just coping with the daily demands of life without stop I had become numb to the world around me.  In contrast today as I've taken time to feed my soul I've managed to feel the day I'm going through.  Rather than rushing through the immediate demands of the moment, I've been able to enjoy the funny faces my 7 month old makes as she continues to  adjust to the new texture of her baby food.  We've celebrated her consumption of the entire tiny jar of pureed peas for the  progress it is.  We've had fun matching up her Supergirl onsie and Daddy's Captain America superhero shirt.  I've actually taken the time to taste and enjoy my lunch rather than just swallowing  it as fast as I could to move on to the next item on the list.  

I'm starting to realize how much I do that.  Hurry through one thing to move on down the list.  Not really stopping to experience the moment.  I suffer for the moments I do that, but as I realized this week, slowing down to feel also means I feel the painful memories a little more.

One of the things I've realized with the season of life I'm in right now is that I feel isolation more acutely.  One of the fears I've had since a little girl is the fear of being forgotten, being alone.  When I was 7 I changed schools.  We didn't physically move, but my entire world changed.  While from a distance I saw my little kindergarten friends move on over the years, I always believed that while I remembered them, I was no more than the face they'll never put a name to in a single class picture from 1986.  While most people tend to think children are resilient and will get over things like that, it doesn't seem to have been the case for me.  My belief of that experience has impacted me for decades.  It has made me stay places I should have moved on from longer than I needed to be there.  It's impacted how I leave jobs and churches.  As far as I'm concerned I always believe I'm the most forgettable person in the room.  

This week that belief was challenged.  As I stopped for lunch in the middle of a day full of errands, I heard my name.  As I instinctively looked up and around I recognized a face I hadn't seen in 4 or 5 years.  The first person to befriend me after my move to the Indianapolis area, the first person to call me friend in this new place.  Someone, who I had lost track of in the busyness of life, was sitting at the next table.  Not only was she sitting at the next table, but she remembered me!  After spending some time catching up and exchanging current contact information we parted ways.  As I walked to my car and through the rest of the day I continued to hear the words "you're not forgotten".  

As I get to the end of my week I find myself realizing how much I miss hearing from God when I'm in the busyness of doing.  When I'm not taking the time to care for my soul by resting I get stuck in my head and the lies I've believed about myself for so long.  As I take the time today to embrace the rest that God has for me I am reminded that God designed us for rest.  God created a world, animals, humans, plants and so much more, but even He rested.  

Rest....  It's not something we earn.  It's not something we are worthy of.  It's something we were created for.

So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God.  For all who have entered into God's rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world.

~Hebrews 4:9-10

Rest...  It's how we are suppose to connect to the God who created us.  It is how we hear the message we are the Beloved.  

Rest.... It might not change the fact that the now 35 year old adults that I once attended my early years of school with probably don't really remember me.  It doesn't change the pain of feeling forgotten in more recent relationships that seem to have moved on past me.  But what it does do is reminds me that where it's important I'm not forgotten.  But it does remind me I'm so very loved by Someone who will never forget me.  

The Significance of Three Percent

Only 3% of the world's coffee meets our standards.

~Starbucks

As I sit here tonight in a Starbucks that particular phrase on the top shelf of a display catches my attention.  Only 3%.....  That means that 97% of the coffee produced in the entire world fails to make the cut for this company.  For someone who is not a numbers fan those particular numbers are interesting somehow.  Maybe it's because I've been contemplating my past a lot lately.

It seems like I've spent a lot of my life feeling like I'm part of some rejected minority.  Never the first to be chosen for anything and often feeling like the default solution when I did end up playing a role of any significance.  Often times it seems that my belief that I'm less than enough is born out by being replaced by others or having the unneeded information shared of why I wouldn't have been the first choice for a particular role as my inadequacies were laid before me.  

I've spent a lot of the last year feeling that sense of rejection.  A sense that I was part of a rejected 3% while the other 97% was running full speed ahead toward..... I'm not  really sure what they are running toward, but they seem to be running at least while I just feel part of nothing.  

But now I find myself thinking only 3%.....  And I start to see my perspective change.  Starbucks has a reputation.  Some would argue it is one of highly priced coffee, but the reality is that they are so particular with their standards that it means they pay more for a premium product therefore they must charge more for that premium product.  

Only 3%....  I remember reading a blog post a few months ago suggesting more thought should go into using a particular song in worship.  That song happens to be one of my favorite worship songs for the exact reason the post suggested caution.  It's a song that offers all of oneself to God.  It's a plea for deeper relationship.  

"Spirit lead me where my trust is without boarders

Let me walk upon the waters wherever you would call me

Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander

And my faith will be made stronger

In the presence of my Saviour."

So I find myself contemplating that 3% again. What if what others point out as inadequacies are actually the things that God uses to keep me close to Him?  What if they are part of His refining process for me?  I think one thing I've always realized about myself is that when I'm the most unsure I find myself looking to God the most often.  What if the things that  separate me from the 97% running a full speed are the very things that are making part of something great that  God wants to accomplish?  Out of 12 disciples Peter was the only one to get out of the boat.  Peter was the one who was willing to go into places where he was out of his depth and his inadequacies were exposed so that Jesus could call him out to great things later.

And so I find myself contemplating the significance of 3%...