Category: Spiritual Life

I’m an extrovert, so I’m rarely short on words. But this week God is asking me to hold my tongue, and I have to say it’s the hardest thing for me to do. Not just a little hard – like it’s hard to drink my full eight glasses of water each day – but hard like everything within me is roaring inside to speak. I want to explain myself, make myself be understood, justify my position, and give my two cents about my side of the story. Instead, I know I just have to walk away and be silent. This means living with being misunderstood and mistaken. It means trusting God instead of my ability to explain and fix.

Let me fill you in: This week I decided to take a risk in a friendship in my life. I chose to have one of those, “Can I share my experience of you recently?” conversations with a dear friend. I stayed up late the night before, praying and journaling about exactly what it was I wanted to say. Having the conversation was a risk, and I wasn’t looking forward to it, but there have been a few times when others have taken this risk with me, so I know how important it can be. A few times in my life this kind of conversation has been the most loving gift I could have been offered. Direct feedback from someone who knows you and loves you (very key – not talking about angry critics here) is an exceptionally rare and precious gift.

But, my conversation with my friend did not go so well. For whatever reason, my friend could not receive my feedback (and I’ve been there before too.) She deflected, minimized, sabotaged, and turned dramatic, involving another person to “her side of the story” almost immediately.

So here lies my fork in the road. I could try again, explain my perspective, and attempt to make myself understood, or I could turn on her, go toxic, and get caustic. Either way, it would mean more talking. And for the first time in a long time, silence seems like the only good and right option. So much of what I do day-to-day depends on words, articulation and communication. Yet sometimes wisdom and character lie not in what we say but in what we don’t say. Sometimes the best thing to do is to just get quiet and walk away. Sometimes we need to be like David in the Bible who chose not to retaliate when he was being unjustly attacked. When Saul threw arrows at David, he did not break out his bow, or rally his troupes, or fight back. Instead he just fled, alone and silent.

I know I have to be quiet now. I just know that being silent is the hardest thing to do. It’s requiring me to trust God with the outcome of it all, and I’d so much rather try to control it on my own.

I’m not really an RV person, but Tim has been daydreaming about our family owning an RV for a couple of years now. My daydreams usually involve a direct flight, a nice hotel, and drinks on the beach.

When Russell was just five-weeks-old – yes, you read that correctly – five-WEEKS-old, we took an RV vacation with our friends to Cran Fest in Wisconsin. Imagine this: me, Tim, our newborn, and our 85-lb sheepdog, plus Bill, Kate, and their two-year-old daughter Mica traveling through the night to view some cranberries growing in bogs. Dream vacation? Hardly. Memorable? Definitely.

For Tim, the RV represents family and togetherness and memories. He gets all nostalgic and dreamy-eyed imagining us road tripping together some day. I’ve been on three RV trips in my life, and two out of three times we’ve broken down on the side of the road. Our perspectives are definitely different!

But I love Tim, and Tim’s enthusiasm is contagious. So, this week we actually pulled the trigger on a little used 21′ RV for our family.

Sometimes love defers. Sometimes love means moving to the other side or at least trying out the other perspective. Sometimes love says, “You know, that is not really my thing, but I’m happy to see you so happy – let’s give it a try.”

Recently, our marriage counselor said to me, “Susie you are very nice and that is not a compliment.” Ouch! That did not feel good. But, alas, it’s true, and I’m grateful for the honest feedback – a rare and precious gift indeed.

Here is what I’m realizing: nice is not the same as loving. Yes, I know I’m very late to the party on this realization. I guess I’ve known that in my head, but applying it to my life is another matter. Christ calls me to love, but that may not always mean being nice. In fact, if I’m nice to your face and turn around and vent about you to someone else, I might have been “nice,” but I was anything but loving. Sometimes love calls for fierceness, and sometimes that intensity does not feel so nice.

So I’m pushing the reset button on this one. I’m choosing a new way. It might be clunky for me, and I’m sure I will relapse, but with God’s help I choose to live in love and not just in nice.

Forest Gump used to always say, “Mama says stupid is as stupid does.” I think the same is true for wisdom. Wisdom is as wisdom does. Wisdom is not just about knowing, intellectually, a bunch of great thoughts or quotes or pearls of wisdom. Wisdom is really about having competency in the face of the complexities of life; it’s about applying what we know.

Rarely a week goes by without someone sharing with me that they’re at a critical intersection and a decision has to be made. Often it’s job-related; sometimes it’s marriage or family-related. Sometimes it pertains to a health decision or finances or dating or whatever.

Often we find ourselves at a crossroads of some kind, and we would really like to get the decision right! Luckily there is an entire genre of scripture in the Bible called “The Wisdom literature” and we are going to be looking at it over the next five Sundays. These five books of the Bible have more to say about how to make great decisions than any other part of the Scriptures.

This past Sunday we talked about the in-between day of Saturday in the Easter story. Saturday is the day after the crucifixion, but the day before the resurrection. It is the day that stands between death and life, between despair and joy. If God’s plan was to raise Christ from the dead after the crucifixion, then why is there a Saturday in the story? Why didn’t Christ die and then boom! – rise from the dead? Why are these two events spread across three days? Saturday doesn’t seem to further the story.

Unless there’s something deeper going on here. God is really into these third day stories. You find this structure all throughout the scriptures. For example, Joseph’s brothers get put in prison, and they’re released on the third day. In the book of Joshua, Israelite spies are told by Rahab to hide from their enemies, and then they’ll be safe on the third day. When Esther hears her people are going to be slaughtered, she goes away to fast and pray. On the third day, the king receives her favorably. Here is the structure: On day one there is trouble, and on day three there is deliverance, but on day two…just silence.

Silent Saturday is a great reminder that we all live between the cross and the resurrection. But “Sunday” is coming, that day when God will renew and restore all that is broken and death will be no more!

My friend recently started a business, and his competitor got really nasty. I read some emails his competitor sent, and I kind of wanted to go punch someone. Isn’t this the way our world works sometimes? When we are angry at each other, we involve lawyers, cease-and-desist letters, and nasty emails. As much as we teach our children to be kind and share, all too often we adults haven’t learned the lesson.

Our Platt Park Church elementary-age kids are learning about the Biblical virtue of peace this month in their Upstreet class. Here is how the kids’ curriculum defines biblical peace: “Peace is proving you care more about each other than winning an argument.” And then they roll it out for the kids by saying this: “Prove you care about others by walking away from a fight,” and “Prove you care about others by letting go of ‘what’s fair.'”

If you are in a conflict right now, here is something I guarantee: the outcome will not feel fair. You have to let go of what is fair, because the other person’s perspective or solution is rarely, if ever, going to seem fair to you, and vice versa. Instead, you have to get quiet with God and figure out what it means for you to walk through the situation with integrity, because that is more important than what is fair. Second, if someone is saying nasty stuff about you or sending you emails that are emotionally loaded and don’t make sense – and maybe even contain lies – you may just need to NOT respond. You have the option to just be quiet…and walk away.

Sometimes walking away is the best way to protect your heart (and body) from the pain someone else wishes to inflict on you. Jesus is our perfect model in this. He did not retaliate when he had every right. He did not angle and work for his way or what was fair. Instead, he humbled himself, resisted others’ irrational rage, and perfected himself in love.

Yes, I know, easier said than done – for me too. Lord, have mercy.

I bought a piece of art from a friend the other day, and she told me about a somewhat painful comment someone had made to her. After looking at her art, this person said to her, “I could’ve done that,” and my artist friend said, “Yeah, you could have, but you didn’t.” I love that response! I love it because it underlines something I believe wholeheartedly: It takes a lot of courage and guts to create something, and that is why so few people actually do it.

It is so much easier to sit on the sidelines than to play in the game. That’s why there are as many as 76,125 people at a Broncos game, but only 22 are actually playing the game. It’s so much easier to critique than to be critiqued, easier to buy art than to make it, safer to balk from a distance than to put your own skin/voice/body/self into the arena and play.

The apostle Paul says, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works.” One thing that ought to haunt us is that apparently we have a choice as to whether we participate in the “good works.” We have a choice of whether we’ll utilize our gifts and talents. A choice on whether we’ll play in the game or be spectators with the one and only life we’ve been given. Recently, Tim pointed out in a message that Abraham was given this massive promise by God and because Abraham believed, he became a mighty player in God’s redemptive plan for humanity. Perhaps Abraham’s father was given that same promise but did not believe, did not trust God enough to move from comfort and security to a life of adventure.

May we be the ones who swallow the lump in our throats and trust God for big things with the one and only life he’s given us. What can you do that scares you and requires some faith today?

Tim and I recently sat through two eight-hour days of parenting classes in preparation for our upcoming adoption. In a required class about attachment, we learned the distinction between bonding and attaching. We learned that bonding activities lead to attachment, and attachment is fundamental to a child’s development. We were encouraged to prioritize and participate in a variety of bonding activities with our adopted child in the hope of forming a strong attachment, which will be critical to every next step of our journey together. Bonding activities for new parents include things like holding, singing, making eye contact and all the goo-goo-ga-ga babbling that new parents do with their babies.

I came home from our training sessions and prepared for Platt Park Church’s present sermon series, called “Alone: If we never learn to be alone, all we’ll ever be is lonely.” My preparation included reading about Facebook’s impact on society, and this quotation from an article in the Atlantic Daily struck me: “What Facebook has revealed about human nature – and this is not a minor revelation – is that a connection is not the same thing as a bond.” A connection is not the same as a bond, and a bond is not the same thing as an attachment. Facebook is more about connections than it is about bonding. Bonding usually happens face to face in those moments when we can’t easily project or edit an image of ourselves. Over time, enough of these un-edited face-to-face bonds form attachments between people. But this kind of meaningful attaching requires us to get off our devices and actually make time and space for face-to-face encounters.

When God created Adam, the first man, he said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” But think about it: Adam was not alone; Adam was with God! Apparently, even God’s presence was not enough to fully satisfy Adam’s heart, and so God created companionship. God knew that humans would need “face time” with other people in order to survive and grow.

I’m a big fan of Facebook, but I want to guard myself from the illusion that all my quick little connections are creating or sustaining healthy, vibrant attachments. Absolutely nothing can replace the gift of being present to each other in time and space.