No Defense

Recently, I read about the idea that you cannot assess the character of someone while you are in the process of defending them. This has got me thinking about defensiveness overall and how it affects us.

Several years ago I took the Sonship Training Course and in it was an exercise where you were supposed to try to go one week without defending yourself. Being the lax student that I am, I didn't even attempt to go there. In fact, I wasn't even sure that it was a worthy goal. I didn't quite get what defensiveness had to do with it. I had a lot to learn.

Fast forward 20 years and I am starting to get it. Defensiveness short circuits the learning process. It balks at self-assessment. It can be indicative of a heart that is not teachable. It loses sight of the gospel.

So what am I to do when faced with an accusation that attacks my actions or my character?

Rather than defending myself I can stop and ask if there is any truth in what was said. This can be horribly painful, but it is necessary. If indeed, the accusation is wholly untrue, then I can explain myself, if necessary, and move on with a clear conscience before both God and man. How the accuser responds is between them and God.

I think most people defend themselves because the accusation is seen as an attack on their character and nobody wants to have their flaws, failures, and sins served up on a platter. But this is where the grace of God comes in. The very essence of sanctification, of growing to be more like Christ, involves humbling ourselves before God as He exposes and transforms every nook and cranny of our lives.

So, in effect, an accusation that might have even a small element of truth in it, is a wonderful opportunity to learn and grow and praise God for His faithfulness to me and His grace that covers all my sins. For the sake of my relationship with God and with my neighbor, I need to have an open and teachable heart that knows the grace of God is the best defense.

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Taboo Topic?

It was all over the news today. A sex trafficking ring busted and 105 victims rescued, one was just nine years old.

I haven't done a lot of reading on it. I can't really bring myself to just right now. Sometimes the evil side of humanity is just too hideous and I have to turn my eyes aside until I have the inner strength to look it in the face.

This all leaves me wondering, though. What will happen with these girls? What does their future look like? Where does healing even begin?

But you don't have to have sold your body and your soul for money to find yourself crushed in spirit and emotionally damaged beyond recognition. It happens all the time. I've seen all sorts of statistics but they seem to run between 1/4 and 1/3 of females will have experienced some sort of sexual abuse by the time they are 18.

That means that perhaps one in three women make it to adulthood with a totally skewed view of their own worth and a totally twisted view of sex itself.

Even for those who have not suffered at the hands of an abuser, sex is such a confusing and emotionally and spiritually charged topic. The current culture spills forth lies by the fistfull. Good is bad and bad is good and we find ourselves drowning in a toxic stew of expectations and perversions.

It seems like sexual brokenness is everywhere. We just don't talk about it. For far too long the church has just sort of ignored the topic as best it can, until it is forced to deal with the issue. I don't think any of us needs another lecture on God's original intent for sex or another spin through the quasi-erotic Song of Solomon. It is more a matter of how . . .  how . . . HOW do we get from Point A to Point B?

I pray that these 105 girls will receive the care and counsel and healing that they need. I hope that the best of the best are there to care for them through the next years as they grow through adolescence and into adulthood and all that that entails. May none of them fall through the cracks.

But what about the rest of us? Now I haven't done a whole lot of reading in the marriage book department (finding them only slightly more helpful than parenting books, which I consider the scourge of the earth), but the ones I have read never ever seem to even touch on sexual brokenness. What a totally bizarre disconnect and a huge disservice to women, and to the men who love them.

I have a friend who has just started blogging about the horrific abuse she suffered at the hands of several family members. I see this as powerfully healing, not only as an outlet and a way for her to put her pain into words, but for those who read her story and know they are not alone.

I think it is time to talk.

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My Can of Worms

Earlier today my friend, Julie, shared a blog post that got published in the Chapel Hill News. It is a wonderful post about her journey to make peace with her own body, regardless of its current shape. I think she is the first person I have ever known personally to be this open about this topic.

For all the talk out there about body image and cultural expectations, very few people seem to write about their own personal battles. I have mentioned bits and pieces of mine, here and there (You can go back and look for those references in my posts yourself. It will be like an Easter egg hunt.), but really struggle to come out in the open. Perhaps it was because I was so defined by my eating disorder for a few years in high school. Perhaps it was because, for some reason, I still feel a huge amount of shame surrounding that struggle. Perhaps it is because I just so want to leave all that behind having enjoyed years of freedom and not having to pay heed, at every turn, to what I eat and how I look.

Sure, there are times when the shackles come back to haunt me. I think that is why I have such a visceral reaction to the "eat this...don't eat that" approach to life. I have know that slavery and I don't ever want to go back.

Is this a struggle for you? I am asking my readers to interact with me a bit on this. The statistics on eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, orthorexia, yo-yo dieting, overeating....the spectrum) say that there are a lot of y'all out there, yet I don't hear anybody talking about it, at least not on a personal level. Am I missing something? What concerns you? What is hard for you? Is this even an issue for anybody any more?

Every so often, though, I think it is time to tell the whole story. My whole story. It ain't pretty. I wouldn't even know where to start. But I think it might be time. Thank you, Julie, for giving me the courage to really speak up after all these years.

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Delighting In Weakness

I have never been what anybody would consider a "strong" person.

I started out the runt of the litter, so to speak, and bottom of the heap. Painstakingly shy and devoid of any athletic ability, I was a perfect target for the neighborhood bully and the last (sometimes second to last) to be chosen for any team. Other than my intellectual prowess, at least through grade school, I had very little to offer the world. I would sit and watch all those "everything" people. The ones that were smart and athletic and popular and grand citizens and wonder how they did it all and how they knew how to do all they did. I somehow failed in the skills department. Nobody would have ever described me as strong.

Stress and pain and life in general were hard for me to handle. I had my inner demons, too. My weakness went technicolor when, at 17, I was diagnosed with an eating disorder. That year is a blur and yet God plucked me out of the pit. But I was pitied because I was so weak.

Pretty much all my almost 50 years have been a saga of one weakness after another. I wanted to be the strong one. The tough girl. And yet I wasn't. I'm not. I was never the strong disciplinarian when raising our kids. I couldn't homeschool, even though I got plenty of "anybody can do it" advice (well, anybody but me . . . at least not without bloodshed).

I entered into the world of real estate in absolute terror. The stereotype of the hard-nosed, aggressive, pushy realtor is well earned. I have encountered more than enough agents who graduated from The Steamroller School of Real Estate.

And my passage through "The Change of Life" was anything other than a show of strength, what with incinerator-worthy hot flashes and emotional meltdowns that would make any drama queen proud. Coping was not my strength. Nothing was.

But I guess where I feel the weakest usually is on the inside. There are sometimes that my heart just hurts. Those times when the stress of life and the reality of my own failures seem too much. There are times when loneliness overtakes me and I don't know where to turn. There are times when I am handed a plate of obstacles but with seemingly no tools whatsoever to tackle them. There are times . . . well, what am I saying? . . . most ALL the time . . . I feel so weak.

Last night I went back to 2 Corinthians 12:10. Well, I read through the entire passage but got down to the punch line and these words jumped off the page:
"I delight in weaknesses." Delight. Delight? Well, that is what the NIV says anyway. Other versions say things like "am content in" or "glory in" and so on. But for some reason the translators of the NIV chose "delight in."

Why . . . WHY would ANYBODY delight in weakness? Our world HATES weakness. Sometimes even the church hates weakness. But we are to delight in it. Why? Well, because of the verse before that. God's power is made perfect in weakness. He says "My grace is sufficient for you."

What a relief! I don't HAVE to be strong. I don't have to depend on something inside of me that isn't there to get me along in this broken world. I can't.

Almost two centuries ago Henry Francis Lyte penned one of my favorite hymns, with this beautiful line: ". . . well our feeble frame He knows."

I am so thankful for a God who "remembers that we are dust." (Psalm 103:14)

There is no strength in dust, only in the Creator of the universe and the Creator of the dust. I can delight in that.

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Taking My Own Medicine

I need to take my own medicine. For the past several months I have been so impressed by how important it is to listen to people. I even wrote my last blog post in it. I have been saying this on Facebook. I have been saying this to my friends and family who have come to me for advice (Ha! Imagine that! What were they thinking?) I even wrote this on a church survey. And most of all, I have been telling this to my husband.

Matt and I don't get in too many fights. We are both rather conflict-averse, but most of all, and perhaps because our relationship is much more of a friendship/companionship type marriage, we just don't have all that much to fight about.

But recently we have had a few good ones. They have run along the lines of my "Why do you have to try and fix me?" rant that some of you know so well. I have explained, passionately, just how much I need to be listened to and have been fighting against his words. But I missed something. It was all about me. ME.

I have been dishing out to the person I love more than anyone on the face of the planet advice what I haven't been willing to take myself.

He needs me to listen to him just as much as I need him to listen to me. Maybe this is what Jesus is talking about when he says in John 15:13 that

"Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends."

Perhaps I need to lay aside my need to be listened to and just sit down and listen to my husband. 

Lord, Jesus, may my ears be big and my mouth be small. Amen.

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Listening To the Nail

There is this video that is running rampant on Facebook: It's Not About the Nail. It is meant to be funny and yet prove a point. The point being that, even though women might be emotional and just want men to listen to them and not fix them, the problems men perceive and the solutions that men suggest are perfectly logical and just what is needed. You are left with the perception that women are  emotionally deranged beings and just want to whine instead of get with the program.

I watched it and laughed, too. The woman, we'll call her Miss Nail, sits there with a nail sticking out of her forehead, complaining of pain and how her sweaters are all snagged, and the man, Mr. Solution, says that she obviously needs to just take the nail out of her head and the pain will go away. "If you would just . . ."

But how many times do we hear that? We speak up, begin to share a burden, only to be answered with "If you would just . . . ." There is nothing that cuts off communication and stops fellowship in its tracks than being set up as a project for somebody else to fix.

The truth is is that it might NOT be about the nail after all. Or "just" taking the nail out might not be easy or even possible. What if the person the woman trusted more than anybody on the planet is the one that hammered that nail into her head and she is afraid to let anybody else near her? What if the only way to get the nail out is to travel a long distance to a highly qualified medical professional who can remove it with the least damage, but she doesn't have the money? What if that nail is in her head in such a place that its removal would result in her bleeding to death and so she has to live with it as it is? What if what she is talking about isn't about that nail at all? What if it is another matter entirely?

Mr. Solution might find this out if he were to maybe ask some questions and listen long enough to get the full picture. The "here I am, Mr. Fix-it to the rescue" attitude cuts off any true communication and understanding of the heart of the problem.

Listening is crucial. But listening takes time. Last week I read a most excellent article from a man who had interviewed a large number of college age and young adult atheists. He just wanted to listen and hear their stories. What struck me was that the most of these people came to him expecting to be argued with and debated and urged into changing their position. Once they realized that he was just there to listen then they really opened up. He said that early on most would claim that their decision to become atheists was a rational one, but if he listened long enough he would find out that often it was more emotional than rational. But he had to listen long enough.

Do we listen long enough? It seems like the knee-jerk reaction in society and even, maybe especially, in the church, is to fork over solutions and prescriptions without ever knowing the full story. We hear a snippet and assume, based on our own frame of reference, that we know exactly what is going on and how to fix it.

Young Woman shares with Older Woman that she is struggling in her marriage. Older Woman suggests that the solution is for Young Woman to keep her husband happy by having lots of sex. Lots of sex equals happy husband and happy husband equals happy marriage or something like that, maybe because that is what worked for her.

But the problem is that Older Woman never asked Young Woman any more about her struggles and the nature of the problem. What if struggling in her marriage means husband is having an affair, or abusing her or her children? What if husband is addicted to pornography and has rejected Young Woman as not exciting enough or forcing himself on her? What if struggling in her marriage means that every time she begins to have sex with her husband she is flooded with memories of being raped by her uncle and, try as she might, she just shuts down? The solution of "just have more sex" would not only be ineffective in the face of these situations, it could be downright harmful. But Older Woman doesn't know this because she never asked and never took the time to listen.

People who are hurting rarely fight for the right to be heard. Shut them down with a "you just need to" and you have shut them down for good. We are called to love and encourage one another, not necessarily fix one another. This isn't just my lame idea because I get tired of getting "fixed" myself, other people have said it, too:

Our mutual calling is to live out our faith together, not simply provide solutions to one another. —William P. Smith from Loving Well

That's not to say we cannot work toward solutions together. But we must listen long enough to truly understand the problem before we can, together, come with a solution. If we are to bear one another's burdens (Galatians 6:2), we need to be able to identify what those burdens really are.

For Mr. Solution in the video, it will mean listening long enough to get the whole picture. It might mean that he has to earn the trust of Miss Nail before he can take out the nail himself. It might mean that he helps Miss Nail raise money to travel to the specialist who can remove the nail for her. It might mean that he is there to assist her when she puts on her sweater so that it doesn't get snagged on the nail. But he won't know until he listens.

I think that is one reason why James tells us to "be quick to listen" (James 1:19). If we listen, we just might learn something and end up loving somebody in the process. 

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Bear With Me . . .

Dear Mama Bear, Junior Bear, Baby Bears and, I assume, Papa Bear (based on the basics of animal husbandry, I assume you must exist):

I come in peace. I feel no enmity between your people and mine. I understand that we have invaded your Happy Hunting Grounds and therefore you have no need to respect boundary lines nor fence posts nor restrictive covenants regarding the keeping of livestock or wild animals of any kind.

I understand that you are likely hungry and we humans seem to have the goods. We humans set out seeds for your gastronomical pleasure and bags of garbage to provide you with a satisfactory trash-picking experience. Not only that, but we even provide you with decks to climb, hot tubs for your bathing needs, and play structures to keep your wee cubs entertained.

I like you. But I have a problem.

You see I have dogs and my dogs have noses. And, seeing how you don't seem to have discovered the joys of Dry Idea or Speed Stick, my dogs can smell you from what seem to be miles and miles away.

Sometimes their sniffing starts out quietly and slowly. In the middle of the night it usually begins with a breathy "Hhhmph" followed by a growl and a large sniff and then another "Hhhmph" or two—or ten. So I am partially awake before the all out I Must Alert The World That We Are Being Invaded By Alien Beings bark sets in.

Other times there is no warning and I must peel myself off the ceiling and hope my pulse, that just tripled from the sudden Alert The World barking, will slow down some time this week.

Just this morning, dear bears, your presence set in motion a chaotic domino effect that ended with one sleep-deprived people-teen yelling out the window for the canines to SHUT UP! You may have heard about not waking sleeping bears. The same applies to sleeping adolescents of my species. To awaken such a sleeping monster is a foolish and dangerous thing, indeed.

I understand that this is all part and parcel of living in the mountains, or more particularly, living with dogs in the mountains. I don't have anything against your being here. What I do have a problem with is the fact that, no matter how much my dogs are sniffing and barking and trying to save the planet, I don't see you. And I like seeing the source of the chaos.

It is kind of like traffic jams. I understand that this might be totally lost on you bears, but we humans, when we get stopped in traffic on the highway and move at a snail's pace (or a sleepy bear's pace) for a mile or two and end up being late to the dentist because of it, we like to see WHY we were held up. There is something SO darn frustrating with never seeing the source of the jam.

This is the same case. If my dogs are barking themselves into a frenzy over you, I want to see you. You are fun to look at. In fact you are just plain cute. And, by the way, your babies look as if they were plucked from off the assembly line at the Gund factory.

So, this is my plea. Stand up and show yourselves. If necessary, just come and ask for food. I can understand the word "please" in five languages (six if you count Pig Latin) and am always happy to oblige. I currently have on hand some stale "everything" bagels, week old baked beans, and popsicles purchased last January to sooth a sore throat, and I am ever so willing to share.

So from now on, I am happy to share my chunk of the planet with you. I will try to be a good neighbor. But don't be shy. Show up every once in a while. And the pups will thank you, too. Dogs barking at bears are more tolerable and endearing to their owners than dogs barking at air. The least you could do is provide us with a wee bit of entertainment.

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