First Snowfall Freak Out Lady

 

Do you find the news becoming overwhelming? I have to take it in small doses, otherwise I think my head will spin off. Weather, war, politics, economy, violence, plane and car accidents, all around us flows the chaos. It’s no wonder we have become more anxious. To hear it from the news, we are all going to hell in a handbasket – quickly and soon.

I tease a friend about being the “first snowflake freak out lady”, but that is the pot calling the kettle black (have I used enough clichés yet?). I’ve written before about how I seem to invent things to be anxious about when there is no reason to be anxious. I listen to the news and begin to believe any one of those things could happen to me, or someone I love, at any time.  I’m the “first disaster freak out lady”. Any suggestion of trouble, and I’m sure it will somehow affect me and mine.

Our son called to ease my mind about the vicious flooding they were having in North Eastern Australia. I hadn’t know there was vicious flooding in North Eastern Australia. Now that I did, I was terribly anxious about their living so near a river and a dam. Thank you very much for the information. One whiff of that first snowflake of disaster, and I’m off.

And don’t get me started about anxiety contagion. My first snowflake friend can start in on her anxiety and the next thing I know, I’m having it too. My husband was working on our taxes, and his anxiety was creeping into me. I guess it’s lovely I feel their pain, but it’s their anxiety, why make it mine? I guess because if I don’t have a reason to be anxious, I’ll take on yours.

Our political climate makes me anxious about “what’s next?” What is the next big change, or dismissal or threat? I know a whole lot of people who are experiencing anxiety over the constant input of politics – so in addition to my own anxieties about what’s going on, I empathetically take on theirs as well.

Anxiety is the feeling of being out of control, not knowing what to do next, or what will happen next or how can I best deal with this thing?  And since we can’t always take care of these situations (record rain fall in Australia, war in Ukraine, firing of government workers, taxes or snowfall), we get anxious and stressed.

What to do? The Bible tells us to be “anxious for nothing, but in everything make your requests known to God.”  Feeling anxious? Pray about it, give the issues to God. Doesn’t that sound easy?  It is not. I like my anxieties, even if they drive me insane. I like trying to control the uncontrollable and failing each time. It’s crazy, but I must like it, because I find it very hard to give my anxiety over to God.  In another place the Bible teaches us to “cast all our cares on Him”. We are told that God knows every sparrow that falls, and the number of hair on our head – so he should be able to know and handle our cares.

We all long for peace of mind, which, like a good night’s sleep, is priceless. Our minds are far from peaceful when we fill it with anxiety. Rather than peace we find ourselves dreading tomorrow, fretting over today and frustrated and guilty with yesterday.

Last year was a minefield of anxiety bringing experiences for me. My sister was ill with pancreatic cancer and the treatments she went through to try and hold off the inevitable. I was finishing out my last year of teaching while cleaning up my space and preparing to retire. Two of my friends lost their husbands. One of my medications became impossible to find. We were in the final months of a highly contentious Presidential election. Everywhere you looked there was trouble around the world and next door. Then my sister died, my brother decided to move away, I tried new medications and we elected a new president. And it hadn’t even yet begun to snow.

Everyday my prayer was for God to take my anxiety, my fears, my stress. And every day I tried to exert some control over my life to help God in the process.  Somedays I truly let go and felt God carry me through. Those were amazing days. The issues were still all around me, but I wasn’t eaten up with worry and anxiety over them. But then there were the days I refused to let go, and struggled for a good night’s rest and any type of peace. Letting go is a constant battle. But I am learning to cast my cares on God. I have experienced His peace through some very difficult circumstances. 

Part of this experience of letting go came with sharing my weakness.  I let my friends and family know I was struggling with giving God the control of my life and the issues threatening to overwhelm me. I had an army of people praying for me. The experience was nothing short of amazing, to be walking through these difficulties and feel peace. To have normally overwhelming moments filled with calm rather than anxiety. Thanks to God’s hold I could walk through the hospital and hospice care without the overwhelming crush of anxiety.

We have no more control over new presidents or death then we do over the weather. There are a few things I can control, but not those and really not much of anything else. I can control stepping into each new day seeking to hand over the controls to God. I can begin with prayer and continue throughout the day. When I feel the boiling up of anxiety, I can stop and give that anxiety to God to carry for me. And if I take it back, I can start all over again. I may not be able to control the fall of snow, but I can choose to drive in it or not, and pray for safe travel for those who have to be out in it. I may not be able to do much more than cast my vote, but I can pray for my country and fulfill my civic duty at home as best I can. I may not be able to stop violence around me and in the world, but I can pray that I will be a person who offers love, kindness, and peace around me.  I can turn off the news. And when that first snowflake of chaos falls, I can pray, seek and claim God’s peace for whatever situation that comes.

 

Amazing Love

 

I’m writing this on Valentine’s Day, thinking about love. Not the smarmy way love is often treated on this day, but love in the deepest sense.

One of the most amazing parts of being human is our ability to love. It’s like a never ending pool we can draw from. Years ago, while awaiting the birth of our nephew, close friends were sharing that their daughters had concerns. For years those girls had been our “chosen” godchildren (they referred to us as their fairy godparents). With the coming of our first (and only) nephew, they were concerned we’d no longer have any room to love them. In all our excitement about our nephew, we’d never given a thought that the girls might feel this way. I wonder how many children, waiting the birth of a new sibling, have similar worries.  It became a wonderful opportunity to share that love doesn’t work that way. We have room to love them and love our nephew, all with the same intensity. In fact loving produces more love – it multiplies!

I was amazed to also discover how deeply you can love someone even before they were born. When we received news of the expected nephew, it hit me like a rush. I loved this little boy, 9 months before I even met him, and upon meeting him, well the love only gushed out more.

We never had the privilege of having children of our own – or better put, giving birth to our own children. But we have had an abundance of children to love. Our two girls mentioned above, our nephew, and the young teen we took into our home a couple years after we were married. That teen stayed with us several years and is part of our chosen family. The daughter of a friend became a surrogate grandchild upon her birth.  Above that, we officiated three marriages of young people we love as deeply. One of each couple was a student I had taught, whose parents we’d grown close to and the relationships continued long past graduation. They, their spouses and their families, are more part of our family than friends. One of those three we consider our chosen daughter.

Having those experiences has taught us a lot about the power of love in our life. This concept of chosen family is amazing. My husband was adopted, at the age of 9, by wonderful, loving, older parents. My adored nephew was also adopted, his birth parents choosing my brother and his wife to raise their child when they could not. When we took in the teenager from our youth group, he chose us to be his forever family and that relationship has continued for 40 years. My parents had several foster kids join our family through the years. We’ve seen chosen family in action, and experienced it every day. These family connections could not be any stronger if we’d given birth or been born into them.

A lot of people can’t imagine this type of family building. How could you open your home to someone outside? Others can’t imagine this love being equal to blood family in any way.  My husband has a cousin who felt the estate left to him when his parents died wasn’t legal, because my husband wasn’t “blood”.  She didn’t even recognize the legal bond adoption creates, let alone the family/love bond created. Our chosen son and daughter do not carry any of our blood, but the bond we share is every bit as strong for all parties involved.

Of course, not all such stories have happy endings. My parents had one foster experience that was really terrible, and became their last. And even when relationships are good, strong friendships, most can wane over time as people move on into different seasons. Not everyone even wants their friends to “be like family”, since dealing with their own family is enough. But for us, this little circle of chosen, extended family has been, though not always blissful, a blessing.

Someone once told me it was “nice” of me for taking in our son. “Nice” is not the word I would have chosen. It was hard, and sometimes I was anything but nice. We were all dealing with a lot of heavy issues. It was complicated and exhausting. But what held it all together was the fact that we loved him so much, we couldn’t imagine any other way than to have him with us.

Not long after my mother passed away, my Dad remarried. I was an adult, married, on my own. It should have been no big deal. But I was still grieving, and my step-mother wasn’t my mother. They were very different. And she wanted so badly to be part of our family, she tried too hard, making things worse most times. But I got tired of fighting against the very core of my existence – to love. I spent many years praying about our relationship and eventually realized I had come to love her, deeply. And if I thought that turn around was amazing, my brother, who had been not so subtle about his feelings regarding our step-mother, one day called my sister and asked if she could broker a conversation. This was after our Dad had died, and my brother felt convicted to ask her forgiveness. They had the conversation, and although the relationship was far from perfect, my brother shared how incredible it was that he was feeling love for someone for whom he’d never imagined feeling anything but tolerance.

People who have no relationship with God can and do have equally powerful stories about love. I believe it’s a common grace springing out of how we are created – to be in relationship and to love deeply. I believe God desires relationship with his creation, and loves us so deeply, he gave us Jesus. Where our very nature makes it impossible for us to have a relationship with God, he took our nature on himself so we could have forgiveness and enjoy a relationship with the Holy God.

Because of that Gift, we can love even more deeply, especially people we wouldn’t choose to love. Jesus taught that we were to love our neighbor as our self. And what makes a neighbor? I would think anyone near us for any portion of time could be a neighbor. Loving in this way would sometimes be impossible without God doing the loving through us. It’s easy for most of us to love a baby. Most of us have “fallen in love” with someone, and that’s dangerously easy to do. But to love a stranger who sits by us on a plane, or a student who has never taken a bath, or anyone who is different from us and makes us uncomfortable – that takes a love more powerful than we can conjure.

Loving the unlovely is most difficult. But that’s what God did for us. As wonderful as we think we are, it doesn’t take much to realize we are far from perfect. Some of us don’t love ourselves at all, let alone a neighbor. But if we remember that Jesus loved us enough to die for all of us, before we had a chance to clean up our act, if He did that for us, it’s not asking too much to allow him to love others through us, is it?

While loving the young people that came into our life was relatively easy, others, like my step-mother, were not so easy to love and required God’s empowerment. This is especially the case when, like my brother, you feel a conviction, but on your own would have never stepped forward to do anything about it. It was rather a miracle that he took the steps to ask her forgiveness, and out of that God poured love. There are people in our lives we have to live with/by, work with, be around that we sometimes just can’t stand. We feel anything but love for them. As a believer, I have learned to pray for those people, and ask God to help me love them. Much like my step-mother, God has answered that prayer, and changed my perspective.

This isn’t like a magic pill. Sometimes I never get to that space. Sometimes I don’t pray for the change of heart. And in most all of the experiences, the love isn’t the same as what I feel towards family. But it is compassion and caring and finding joy being with them.

Love in any form is an amazing gift. To be loved, there is nothing like it. I stand in awe at being loved by the Creator of the Universe. I also marvel at the love given to me by others. Loving others is pretty wonderful too; although it can pack with it a lot of other, not so wonderful things, it’s worth it. Relationships are messy and complicated. God’s loving me certainly comes with a lot of not so wonderful things from my end, my being much less than wonderful most times. But He does love me, not because I am worthy of his love, but just because He loves me.  He calls us then to love, and I’ve found loving my neighbor to give me greater understanding of God’s love.

Romans 5: 5-8 “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to me. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possible dare to die. But God demonstrated his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

 

Surviving the Storms

 

This morning I read again the story of Jesus, after a day of teaching and healing, stepping into a boat and having the disciples row out onto the Sea of Galilee so he could get some rest from the crowd. (Luke 8:22-25)  Jesus fell asleep. Suddenly a storm sweeps up. The boat begins to rock and waves start to splash over the sides. The disciples begin to realize they can’t out row this storm. They become afraid and finally wake up Jesus, yelling that they were all about to die. Jesus gets up and, Luke tells us, “spoke” to the wind and it quieted right down.

These men with Jesus have watched as he healed people and even raised a couple from the dead. But somehow it didn’t really cross their mind that he could calm a storm. I think they woke him more to get him ready to go overboard, then expected him to save them. But he did. The speed with which the wind obeyed would have astonished anyone, but for these seasoned sailors, it blew their minds.

Imagine being there. Imagine going from ready to die in the storm to idly sitting on calm seas, in the blink of an eye. Jesus spoke, and it was over.

I find wind storms particularly scary. We have some good ones here in the Pacific Northwest. Trees fall, powerlines fall, windows rattle, and the noise is ferocious.  But I’m sure nothing like a hurricane or a tornado. The pictures you see of houses lifted off the ground, cars – the wind has amazing power to destroy. One winter at the coast we had strong winds and freezing rain. I couldn’t sleep for the sounds of branches breaking and crashing, and the fear of a big tree coming down on our house. In the morning it was like waking up in a glass forest. The sun had come out and every tree, twig and blade of glass was covered in ice. It was blindingly beautiful.  All of that fear through the night opened up to unimaginable beauty. But there was reason to have feared. Our driveway was blocked by fallen trees, and there were homes that were damaged. We had a tree miss our house by inches, taking a portion of the gutter with it.  Wind is scary.

Being in a windstorm in an open boat in the middle of a huge lake would be a nightmare indeed. All that power of wind and water combined to take your boat down, you’d feel pretty small in the face of it. Meanwhile, Jesus slept, unbothered.  As I said, I don’t sleep well through storms, so that alone is pretty amazing. He didn’t wake up until the disciples cried out. They were at the end of their rope, preparing to die. Maybe they finally thought of Jesus as possible help, or maybe they just felt they should wake him up to face the storm with them – either way they didn’t act like they knew the creator of the universe, along with wind and storms, sat in that boat with them. They cried out, Jesus woke up and spoke. The wind stopped and he scolded them for their lack of faith. Even having seen the amazing things Jesus had already accomplished, they didn’t believe he had any power over this situation.

It’s one thing to have no belief in God or Jesus, but quite another to believe and yet, not quite.  If you don’t believe in God, creator of the universe, then this story is just that, a story. Miracles are off the table because we live in a system that doesn’t allow for things “outside the box” to occur.  But these disciples had begun to confess that Jesus was more than a great man, He was God, in flesh, walking among them. He’d raised people from the dead! Who can do that? He healed people without even being there to touch them. They had seen all of that. And yet, in their foundering boat they didn’t turn to Jesus first. They did everything humanly possible to out run the storm, bail out their boat and when it all became helpless, they woke Jesus up. They didn’t know Who was in the boat with them.

 I function a lot like that. A situation arises and I go to work trying to fix it. I often call on God as last resort. Why? It’s not because I don’t believe he could calm the storm I am facing. I do believe he can do anything. I sometimes feel the situation isn’t worth bothering him with; he gave me a mind and I need to use it. Sometimes that works. The truth is, so many times when a crisis strikes I just jump into survivor mode and forget to bring God into the picture at all. He comes in as an “all else fails.”  How many times do we feel helpless in a rising crisis and think woefully, “all I can do is pray”? As true as that might be, it’s not a last resort. Prayer should be the first line of defense and really be “everything I can do is pray”. Seeking God’s help isn’t the last straw; it should be the first.

But if we are being honest, we like to feel in charge. We like being in control, god of our own life. We think we can fix most anything. The Bible points out “without him we can do nothing.” (John 15:5) but “I can do all things through Christ.”(Philippians 4:13)  That is our new reality, if we choose to follow it.  There will always be storms, and sometimes the boat even capsizes. But in the midst of the storm, God is there with us, in the boat, in the storm, waiting for us to reach out to him for help. Even if the boat sinks, he stays with us. 

I prayed for my sister to survive cancer. She didn’t survive it. But God was in that cancer boat with her all the way. She had such beautiful peace about Jesus taking charge. And he is in the grief boat with me, and was there all through that storm. On a lesser, but still important life issue, I prayed for a different political outcome this past election. What I prayed for didn’t happen. Does that mean God failed me, didn’t care about my concerns, doesn’t care about our country? No, as Francis Schaefer said in the book I am reading*, “You are not alone in this Twentieth Century (now Twenty First Century) boat.” Jesus is still with us. Seeking his help doesn’t mean we will always get our way, and that’s probably a good thing. As much as we think we are in control, what do we really know?  It makes more sense to seek the help of the Creator God, then to go it alone.

We need to constantly remind ourselves Jesus is right here with us, in the boat, and all we need do is reach out, take His hand and lean in to his hold as the storm hits. We are not alone.

 

*Schaeffer, Francis and Edith. Everybody Can Know. Tyndale House Publishers. 1973.

 

 

Learning to Love

 

“They will know we are Christians by our love” goes a phrase in an old song. The New Testament speaks of Christians being noticed for their love – towards each other and towards their “neighbor”. The implication is that this is a rare thing – people honestly loving and supporting others – so odd, that Christians showing love would really stand out.  The love spoken of is, in Greek, agape, unconditional love, freely given, no strings attached. This is loving like Christ loved. Agape love is Fruit of the Spirit. God loved me, so much that He died for me to enable forgiveness of my sins, and I am supposed to be both forgiving and loving to others, despite their sin.

I find myself laughing at comedians mocking politicians, including President Trump. I enjoy their spot on mimicry and their ability to cut through it all to show the nonsense. Today, right after laughing through such a TV clip, I was caught short by the book I’m reading on Christ’s love. Christians are told to love, openhandedly. We are not encouraged to pick and choose whom to love. We are told that love should become part of our very nature, Christ-like, agape love.  Do I love Donald Trump in that manner? Absolutely not. And I was convicted.

It’s this same lack of Christ-love that marks too many of us Christians. We say we love the sinner and hate the sin – but our behavior doesn’t reflect those words. To most of the world today, Christians are seen as moral bullies seeking government legislation to limit what we read and do. The entire abortion issue is a case in point. The new laws are so strict doctors are afraid to even help women having miscarriages, or hemorrhaging periods. These laws were created with a sense of religious piety – sanctity of life of the unborn, but what about the sanctity of the women? These laws leave these women high and dry and feeling anything but loved and supported by the communities who enacted these laws, many of whom are self-identifying Christians.

And how much of Christ’s love am I feeling for those pious Christians and their laws? Not much.

So where does that put me?  Can I love Donald Trump with Christ’s love? Can I hope the best for him, offer him kindness, grace?  I realize I struggle with the same crisis as the pro-life group. I have a great deal of difficulty loving those I disagree with.

 I think it begins with recognizing that none of us is perfect. The Bible teaches that everyone sins and falls short of the standard God demands. None of us can save ourselves, even if we are the best person who ever lived. Take Mother Teresa, she understood that she needed a savior. All her goodness and acceptance of the unlovely in the world couldn’t/wouldn’t save her. And she would probably tell us that the only way she could love the unlovely was having Christ’s love in her.

So if none of us, no matter how “good” we appear, are without sin, why do we give one another so little slack (let alone love)?  We all need a savior because we can’t save ourselves. We cannot meet God’s standard without his providing the way. We are all in the same boat, whether we are Mother Teresa, Donald Trump, the homeless man down the street, or me. And if that is the case, why can’t we have pity and grace for people who have yet to recognize this truth? And beyond that, why can’t we have pity and grace for just people, especially those who are different from us?

If I believe I am better than someone else, if I think I have less “sin” to atone for, then that makes it easier to judge and belittle, even bully that other person. I feel self-righteous pointing out their faults (or laughing at them). If I believe we are all equal, and none of our personal goodness buys us anything in God’s bank, then I tend to look at others differently, like we are in the same predicament. What right do I have to judge them, when I can’t maintain a life without sin? 

Maybe I think my sins are not as bad as another’s.  I’ve never murdered anyone. I’ve never robbed a bank or pushed someone down to get to the front of the line. But I have enjoyed jokes at the expense of others. I have gossiped about people. I have colored my story to make me look better. I have refused to love people I don’t like or agree with.  I’ve sinned plenty. And since sin isn’t about quantity or even quality, I am still a sinner, just like everyone else. God doesn’t judge like we do – he looks at us all as sinners. Period. Good news, he sent Jesus to take care of that issue. On the cross, everyone was forgiven, even the people I dislike. Now it’s about choice – Jesus or not. If we choose Jesus, we join God’s family. If not, well then we choose to live without him. We refuse to accept his forgiveness, so we choose to live “unforgiven”.

I’ve chosen Jesus. I’m still a sinner. Every day I make bad choices. But I am a forgiven sinner. Not because I’ve done anything at all. I am forgiven because I accepted God’s gift of forgiveness. Now I have other choices regarding how I live with this forgiven life. Do I seek to live this life so I reflect the marvelous gift I’ve been given? Do I seek to live a life full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and self-control? Or do I see a life that crushes others, points out their weaknesses, laughs at their issues?

Even forgiven, I can still sin and make a real mess out of my life and others. I’m still forgiven, but if I choose to live in my remaining sinfulness, to what purpose? I can be a better person.  I can learn to love people I dislike. I can learn to give compassion and mercy to those less fortunate, including those who have yet to choose God’s forgiveness. I don’t always do this, because I often choose sin over God’s power in my life. And God lets me make that choice. It’s not what he wants; it’s not my best life. My best life is letting him produce his Fruit through me, including loving those I don’t wish to love.

There are many issues on which I disagree with our current President. But regardless of that, I still have the responsibility to love him as Christ loves. I can only do that through allowing Christ’s love to flow through me. And that comes with my making a willful choice to do so. Truthfully, I don’t want our president to fail. He fails and we all do. So, I have begun praying for our president. It’s a step.

At church today I heard a song that spoke to all God has done for us/me, especially in giving his life in my place and forgiving me. One line stood out “If you gave your life to love then so will I.” I want to choose to love, forgive and live as Jesus. Philippians 2:13 “For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”