Do I Look Like My Mom?

Last night I was told by a long time friend that I look like my mom. This was such a loaded statement and I noted that he hesitated to even say it. I know why. My mother was on the order of 50-80 pounds heavier than what she should have been. She struggled with physical and mental afflictions for years. And eventually she took her own life. For years I struggled with bitterness and anger toward my mom. Most of the time, we did not have a good relationship.

As I told this person, who knew me as a child, that God has birthed a ministry in my life and I have begun share the message of the Lord’s goodness, I felt the validity of my statement being questioned. My mom did have this habit of bragging about things. She wanted to be able to say that she was doing the Lord’s work. She refused to admit any failures on her part. She would readily admit other’s failures, but never her own. And, alas, her life reflected a spirit defeat, despite her claims. I will never know what my mother’s motives were. Did she make these claims out of pride and a need to make herself feel better? Or did she truly want to do the Lord’s work and she was trying to speak these things into existence?

This I do know. Mom loved the Lord so much. She had visions of doing great works for the Lord. She wanted to be used by him. She sang to the Lord in the quiet places. When mom was stressed out (and that was often) she would go and play piano and sing to the Lord. These times of distress were the things that she most wanted to hide from people. When you saw her at church, she spoke as if everything were fine. Why do we do that? Why do we pretend?

I have recently come to know a woman who has lost her dear husband to cancer and, before his death, he publicly spoke of God’s goodness. She struggles with the whys. Why did God take him when he was doing God’s work here on earth? I struggled with the whys. Why did God take Mom (or allow her to take her own life) when she “could” have done so much good on the earth?

I cannot swallow it when people glorify the dead. My grandparents were strictly against the practice of it. They forbid their survivors to even have a funeral. I think I can see why. There are cultures in the world whose religion centers around ancestor worship and they even go as far as praying to their departed loved ones. I always hated it when I went to a funeral and I heard someone who cursed and hated the deceased person in life and then blessed and complimented them now that they were dead. But what about those people who were truly living for God’s glory in life? Is it ok to praise them in death?

This is what I think: There is a balance. On the one hand we (even Christians) can glorify the departed person and tell of their good deeds to the point where we see their goodness alone, instead of the goodness of God. Then there are those who refuse to allow the dead to be honored. My father-in-law was this way. He forbid anyone to even “speak any words” over his remains. The practice of no funeral (I believe), along with the practice of: refusing to speak of it, hinders the survivors from being allowed to grieve. Some people falsely assume that because I cry when talking about my dead mother that I am wallowing in despair and cannot see the great hand of God at work in this situation. When the enemy has torn apart and destroyed life, we have to, we must, look for the good in it. God created life and he was glorified in the death of his son. Everything that happens on this earth, happens for a reason. If we look at the death of our loved one and are unable to see the goodness of God, our despair is complete. We, as humans, have a desperate need to be able to see something good even in the darkest of things. I believe that was put in us by our creator so that we will see HIM.

I am not trying to be simply intellectual about the whole thing. I grieve my dead. I grieved her defeat before she took her own life. I fought to save her! And yet, she drove to a secluded place, away from her family. She got a hotel room and took a bottle of pills. She got in the tub because she thought drowning was a peaceful way to die and waited until death overtook her like a lion. She believed EVERY lie the enemy threw at her. She believed her family had abandoned her. She was so angry at me she threw my pictures and the Ebenezers I had given her away. I wanted her to hang on and get better. I tried talking to her and being with her. I tried tough love… I tried to save her but ultimately God had a plan for her life that was not my plan for her life. And that is a hard thing to admit.

I believe, I STILL believe, that God is in control. That means that God knew what she would do on April 8th 2009. He knew that a poor maid would find her dead naked body floating in a tub with a symbol of the ultimate gift of all (the cross) around her neck. God knew that she would reject his gift of hope for this life in exchange for the hope of eternal life. Mom could never see how the two were related. She believed the suffering would never truly stop until heaven. And I suppose she was right on that point. But she would not see that God’s will was for there to be joy and peace in this life as well.

So do I look like my mom? Well if that means that my heart is to serve my God… yes, I look like my mom. Oh yes, the physical resemblance is striking (although I am not as overweight as she.) But I stand here today and I openly confess my broken places. No hiding, no pride. The reason I confess this is that in my weakness, my God gets all the glory. The reason I can do work for him is that there is NOTHING, I mean nothing in me that thinks I can do this in my own strength. I KNOW I cannot. I do not confess the things, God is doing in my life to try and make ME look good. I want to make GOD look good… and he DOES look good! Because he IS good! In that respect, I do not look like my mom.

When I stand and tell people who are defeated and despairing that there IS hope, I am able to confess this from an intimate knowledge of what life is like without an all-powerful God in charge. When I stand and tell of the healing in my life, it is only a testimony of how great my God is. When I stand and say I am a new, transformed person, it is not to tell of my own accomplishments. Each Ebenezer is not trophy of the good things I have done, it is a remembrance of God’s goodness. It is a marker of God’s provision on journey. It is putting all the bad things that happened, in God’s light... showing the good things instead of the bad.

And again, I raise my Ebenezer in a place of heartache and pain; restoration and healing. I give respect to my mother, my mom whose image I resemble and I glorify the ONE in whose image I was created. And to him, my Lord Jesus, be all the honor and glory and praise for ever and ever.

New Year Resolution

With holiday season and the coming of the New Year, my spirit has been plagued with unrest. Several times my husband and I have tried to pin point the source of this unrest and the only thing I truly understood was that I am angry. This may not be a problem for many people but as a Christian I feel compelled to put this feeling to rest. Christ calls me to forgive as I have been forgiven. There is even a debate that unforgiveness can cause us to lose our eternal salvation… well I don’t know about all that but this is what I have discovered over the past few weeks of stress, tears, fits, sadness, and ultimately seeking God’s face.

I was confused and unnerved by the fact that the ones who I harbored unforgiveness against, truly had harmed me. Their offenses were damaging not only to me but to others. In my head I know that I have to forgive them but in my heart there is the lump of hurt that screams for something, some kind of resolution. Over and over I used the word “unresolved.” I can say: ‘I forgive them,’ with my mouth, but in my heart I feel… unresolved. So I deduced: if it looks like unforgiveness well then it probably unforgiveness. So how can I forgive and obtain that ever elusive resolution.

Hashing out the source of my angst last night with my husband, I told him yet again that I am struggling with the hurts he has brought on our family for, well, the past few years. Seeing as I have no plans to rid myself of him or make him pay, I needed so badly to find some resolution on the topic. “I’m just angry,” I said, “and I don’t know what to do with it.” I also poured out a list of others that I find myself hopelessly angry with. My husband wisely asked me to tell him just how angry I was. So he allowed me to pour out my anger and grief and despair. It must have been difficult to listen to that, but I think he was able to listen and rest in his own confidence of who he is in Christ.

This pouring out or confession was so helpful in revealing the true word I had been looking for. Somewhere inside of me, I needed there to be payment for the wrong that had been done to me and my children. There was this unspoken need for retribution. Some would call it propitiation or satisfaction of a debt. Although it was not a conscious thought in my head that my husband or the others who had wronged me should “pay” it was there in my spirit. So when I was using the word “unresolved” the word crying out in my spirit was “retribution.”

The comfort in having sought the scriptures for, well, my whole life, is that I have a lot of knowledge in my head, even if it is not really absorbed into my heart. So when the strategy of the enemy was to keep him plan of unforgiveness in my heart was brought into the light, the light of the truth of God’s word was easily able to shine on it.

Here is the truth:

When someone sins against you, they are ultimately sinning against God. The pain I feel is a result of me or someone else stepping out of God’s plan. So truly that person’s debt is not to the person they harmed but to God. And God treats all sin the same. Usually when I experience unforgiveness toward others it is because I have a hard time accepting my own forgiveness.
Robert McGee said in his book “The Search for Peace”: “if we hold on to unforgiveness, we cannot accept our “own” forgiveness. In fact, the only way we escape the torment of having unforgiveness is to begin to contemplate our own forgiveness until it has so impacted our lives that we are able to forgive from our heart.”

For years I viewed the forgiveness God gave me as him giving me a pardon or “wiping the slate clean.” But that is truly and unscriptural view of God and frankly “the” reason why I have been able to accept a true and complete forgiveness from God. It just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t follow the idea that God is a righteous. How can he just “overlook” my sins? Well the truth is that he doesn’t just “overlook” our sins. God is righteous and justice and for him to exist in that holiness there MUST be payment for sin. It is what we FEEL when we describe a “righteous” anger. We feel that this has been a true offense against out soul and God. The effects of which, destroy and deplete for generations. It is what I was feeling: the need for the payment.

The essential truth that is blocked by this partial truth in our spirit is that Christ has already made the payment for ALL sins: past, present, and future. This is a truth that needs to be put on ALL unforgiveness. Christ has paid for their sins, even if they are “not saved” and essentially “not walking in that forgiveness.” The payment was made for EVERYONE. The bible says, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us;” which means that he died for us BEFORE we came to him.

So what was the thing that helped so much to burry my unforgiveness: First, I confessed my anger and unforgiveness. It didn’t look like: “Dear Lord, I am harboring unforgiveness in my heart...” No it looked like: “I am angry! I’m hurt and confused… You not only hurt me but you hurt our kids and you hurt yourself!” I think people have the wrong view of confession. Confession should be cleansing, not holding back anything in our heart. Now, beware, this is not something that you can do with “everyone.” In fact most people cannot handle this kind of confession. Do it before God or with a Godly friend or counselor.

Second the truth was able to wash away my “sin” of unforgiveness which not only hurts the one I am holding it against, it hurts my friends and family, because I am NOT a nice person when I have this anger in my heart. But mostly I hurt myself. I sin against myself. I cannot “accept my own forgiveness” in this state and it truly does torment me… The truth is that God did not just “wipe away” my sins, he looked at me and said: “You’re guilty and the punishment that is fitting for your crime is death.” And then he turned and took my punishment and placed it on Christ’s body and Christ was tortured and suffered death for me. For me and for everyone even those who do not yet (or may never) walk in that forgiveness. No one’s sin is greater than mine, because God looks at all sin the same way. So that person who harmed me deserves forgiveness just as much as I do.

I find it fitting that as I was looking for the thing that was plaguing me I could only describe it as feeling “unresolved.” Here at the new year when everyone is throwing around their New Years “Resolutions” I am struck that it is simply used synonymously with “decision.” We are making decisions as to what we are going to do the next year.

Resolve is defined as: decide: bring to an end; settle conclusively; conclude: reach a conclusion after a discussion or deliberation. It actually means that we have “decided” or “concluded” after careful thought and examination. It implies the end of something as opposed to the beginning of something. To settle, resolve, at the end of the year is actually a rather fitting thing for me to do. So while you all are resolving to be a better person in the future, I am taking the time to resolve conclusively an issue I have deliberated on in my heart for this whole year and many years before that.

So go ahead and make your promises. Set your jaw for the future. But as for me I sit here with an awesome gift to enter the New Year with forgiveness in my heart and peace in my mind. I have truly resolved.

Mom's Jewelry Box

This weekend I spent a long time picking through my mother’s jewelry and it grieved me that it was piles upon piles of cheap costume jewelry. Not much of it is things I like, but I smiled remembering how much she loved to buy and wear big, shiney earrings and necklaces. Amongst all the glitter and glam, I found only one piece of “real” jewelry: her wedding band. She was not even wearing it when she died.

While going through the physical process, I meditated (as I usually do) on the spiritual side of what it represents. This is what I believe: Mom had so much junk in her life; like the cheap costume jewelry. She would see something she just “had to have” and without thinking about it, she would buy it. Mom was always struggling for money because she loved stuff and she loved to shop. In many ways she created money problems because she could not resist buying the things she saw and it all added up. And in the end she had a dusty pile of worthless junk. What is the lesson to be learned here? I think there are two:

The first lesson is: If you can be patient and save your money, you can have the opportunity to buy something more valuable that will hold its worth like gold and diamonds. The spiritual lesson is that the things we have to wait for are worth more than the things that come to us easily. When you’re young it seems very important to have a hand to hold: a person to “love” us and make us feel like we re the most important person on this planet. But when we are young we don’t know what is best for us. We want to have the marriage bed and all the things we imagine it will be immediately, but if we are wise and wait for God to choose our spouse we can avoid so much heartache and pain. Those of us who are married need to remember that God is transforming us and our spouse and will mold us into who he needs us to be. It is a process to that makes coal a diamond. Don't be distracted by others. Believe that God will be faithful to transform our spouse into the person we need, not just the person we want. Don’t settle for the costume jewelry you can have now, hold out for the diamond!

But you know, there is a positive side to Mom’s jewelry box, and the lesson is this: Our parents hand down a lot of emotional garbage to us. You could call it costume junk jewelry. So many times, in our bitterness and anger we take the lessons our parents taught us and throw the whole lot in the garbage and call it an example of what not to do. But if in your anger you fail to take the time to dig through the junk, you may miss the opportunity to find a gem amongst the junk. What is needful is to take the time to carefully consider each item and its worth and choose to keep it or throw it away. The size of the pile may be huge and the task overwhelming. The time may be “wrong” or the place uncomfortable. But we press toward the things that hurt so that we may gain understanding and then we remove the thorns so we may keep the blossoms.

So what gem did I take away from Mom’s jewelry box? Was it her wedding band? Well that is truly a gem, a symbol of perseverance in adversity. Mom stayed in a marriage that was plagued with mental illness and the resulting financial hardship. But the more precious gem to me in Mom’s box is the colors. Mom didn’t have much jewelry that I really like because I am simple, plain person. I have silver and gold and black in my own box. The only colors I really have are ones that people chose and bought for me. I probably would not have bought them if I had done the choosing. I usually want to blend in the background in this world, not be on display. The truth of the matter is that God created me and he created you too. God did not plant any weeds. Perspective is the only thing that makes a weed a weed. He had us all to go through seasons. Sometimes the flower is only a bulb underground or a dormant seed. Sometimes it is a tiny sprout or a luscious green plant. But there is a season in which the plant blossoms and beautiful colors appear. Mom wanted to always be in blossom. She loved bright, beautiful, bold colors. If it was flashy or bold she loved it. If it was silly, she bought it!

Joy in your season of blossom! A skilled gardener can force a plant to bloom in the time of his choosing. Let the gardener bring you into season. Though the world seeks to keep you underground, you must stand against it and shine. Show your reds and purples. Let it out for the world to see.