My Children,
The trip to Florida to get Sam triggered all sorts of emotions and thoughts in me. I’m not going to write anything here that you haven’t heard me articulate to you face to face. I really pray that these things will become a part of you though because they will help you so much as you travel your own life roads.
After the divorce in 2002 you know that I made some new friends that were willing to walk with me when all my old friends decided they didn’t want to (or couldn’t) walk with me anymore because of the bad choices I made which triggered the divorce in the first place. My new friends and I began to walk through life together, sharing each others’ burdens, loving one another unconditionally, the way people in the church are supposed to love each other but oftentimes don’t or can’t.
All of us in this circle of friends knew we were completely broken humans. We knew we needed God in our lives if we were going to have any hope; and we knew that He (God) most often revealed Himself in and through relationships to others. We also knew that we needed to give up being selfish, arrogant, ego-centric and childish if we were going to have any hope of obtaining the lives we wanted; and that our best efforts to do so always failed. God was going to have to take all these bad things in our lives away. The only way He’d do so was if we were entirely ready to let Him.
Guys, I believe with all my heart that we can’t fix what is wrong with us without help: help from God and from our fellows ( I know I can't). My best efforts to do so led me into a lonely and isolated life that ended in divorce and brokenness, hurting you.
Among my friends, I found a couple of guys (Dog Mike, and David – you know them) that had a bunch of stuff in their lives that I wanted in mine and who had been walking the path longer than me. I asked them to mentor me, passing on the stuff that they had picked up along the way . THey said they would and so now I get to tag along with them.
Dog Mike passed on three things that have become foundational to how I live. They are the three legs to the stool I sit on. You’ve heard them all and I list them in no particular order:
- If I am disturbed the problem is in me.
- What other people think of me is none of my damn business. And the corollary: what I think of myself is none of my own damn business either.
- If I spot it I got it.
When I can remember these things, keep God in the center and lean on He and my friends (Including Michelle) I am OK. Nothing can touch me. Throw me your worst and it won’t really matter. I can deal with any amount of pain. I can make it. I can do what's asked of me: love God (by expressing gratitude to Him for all that is coming my way) and love those along my path that day. Let me go through each of them again for you, because I really, really want you to get a hold of these things, long before I did. You will live life so much more fully when you get hold of these truths. The grass will e greener. The sky will be bluer. The joy will be deeper, the pain more intense, the laughter more frquent, and the peace beyond aything you have ever known.
“If I am disturbed the problem is in me.”
If this isn’t true we get tossed around on a stormy emotional sea because other people in our life have too much power. They can make us feel stuff. They have power in our life that no one but God should have.
This means that even when there are disturbing events around me: a fight with Michelle, or my boss doesn’t like the way I am doing my job, or money isn’t there for basic things that we need or want, or anything else you can think of – the part of the equation I can address is inside of me. Is God still in control? Does He still love me? Can I still trust Him? Am I doing my best? Doing the next right thing?
If the answer to those questions is, "yes," then I can rest because I can let go of what is going on; giving it up to the care of God. I can cease fighting to get the outcome I want and simply rest. If the answer to any of these is no, the solution is to change things so that the answers can all be “yes.” And since God doesn’t change, the problem lies in me and needs to be addressed.
I no longer can say, “If only that were different…; if only I had that…; if only they would… then I would be OK.” No, now I have to say, “God, what has to change in me so that I can be OK in spite of the way the world is coming at me? Help me to find gratitude for all this shit!” (Go ahead, say, "shit" when you pray. If you can't say it to Him then probably you shouldn't say it at all.)
“What other people think of me is none of my damn business… and the corollary: what I think of me is none of my damn business either.”
Since other people other than you guys are reading this, some of them might be offended y the word, “Damn”. I’d apologize but in this instance the word is used correctly. When I make what other peoples’ opinion of me my business I damn myself. As a pastor it is what I did for thirteen years. I pastored as much out of fear of peoples opinions of me – of my positional sense – that I lost sight of caring what God thought of them or me.
By default, if I am caring about what people think about me, I am not caring about them. How can I love well when I merely want to make them happy? I can’t. How do I discipline you guys when I know it is going to make you angry with me? How do I say “no” to things you want to do when I know it will only serve to upset you and make you angry with me? I do it because I love you and want what is best for you. What you think about me is of little consequence. Love is all that matters. I have to do the next righ thing.
This makes sense if we really believe that “If I am disturbed the problem is in me. Too often I live for others approval. I’m a good Dad the moment I stop trying to look like a good Dad and start loving. When I try to look like a good Dad, I become a fraud. Every day I have to surrender my right to care what other people (including you) think of me. I surrender my right to look good. I surrender my right to not look bad. I surrender my right to succeed. I surrender my right to not fail.
For too much of my life – all of my first marriage – I put most of my energy into “being somebody”. This meant that energy that belonged to love was absorbed by self. While it appeared to others that I was loving (because I figured out very early that “looking selfless” made me look good) I was really doing good things and saying loving things out of selfish motives. Love wasn’t the motive. Self was the motive. Because of this I ended up broken and alone. I don’t want this for you. Fortunately for me, my God is a God of resurrection. Death always precedes real life. I needed all of the pain, and all of the brokenness to be someone that has any love to offer.
Did you see that I said, “Everyday I surrender my right…” it is because I am human and I forget. Jesus said, “Take up your cross, daily…” It is not a one time event. For me it is much more frequent event. That is why you often see the bumper sticker, “One day at a time”. It is the only way that many of us have found to live, “Surrendering, one day at a time…” I am not capable of much more than that.
If I spot it I got it…
People hate this one. Do you know though that when you spot something in someone else it is because of some shadow memory in you that causes you to see a similar shadow in someone else? Typically, we see something in someone else that bothers us. The reason this is true is because we are seeing our own shadows cast across the other person. The truth of this statement doesn’t take away from what may be true about the other person, but really what I need to worry about is where it is true in me, because “If I am disturbed the problem is in me.” (not them)
Let me point out that sometimes we see good things in others that need to remind of us of the good in us. If we see someone else growing we can rejoice because we are growing enough to recognize growth in the other. If we see kindness in another, it is because there is a measure of kindness in us. If we see giftedness in another it is because there is giftedness in us that recongnizes it.
This comes in handy when others say hateful things about us. If we are really connected (and this is extremely hard to do) we end up praying for the other because they are really telling us something of themselves. Once again, it doesn’t mean that we don’t need to pay attention. We may need to pay attention to the deficits they are pointing us to without being overcome by the accusation. It is not in our best interest to care what they think about us. But it may be in our best interest to look at ourselves and our deficiencies so we can give them to God and not stress them. This is different from caring what the person thinks about us. It is being willing to be honest with ourselves and listen to what God may be saying to us about how we need to change.
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So there you have the three legs of my resting stool. I forget them all the time. I have to be reminded of them all the time. It is why I hang with the friends I do, because they remind me of what I need to do to live moving toward God and love rather than away from him toward loneliness, isolation, and outer darkness. I moved that direction for a lot of years and so I have a long road ahead of me (the rest of my life actually) to move back to the center; back to God; back to love.
I don’t want you to have to walk as far into the darkness as I did. You deserve better than that. And so I write, loving you with all my heart; you being the reason I breathe; reminding myself as I type of the truths I need to remember to love you well.
Live and love well, guys. Love as I’ve loved you. Love as God loves you. Offer grace where you want to hate. Offer forgiveness instead of justice. Give up your need to be right. Cease fighting anyone and anything. Take up your own crosses daily. Physically get on your knees
as you get out of bed every morning and pray something like, “God, I give myself to you today so that you can do whatever you want with me; growing me however you want to (even if I don’t like it, help me trust you.) Please help me get over myself and my own selfishness today so I can love the way you want me to. Today will you deal with all my problems so that other people will see your power and your love, trust, and follow you too. I want to be absorbed in love today.”
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