The L Word

01 Monday Jun 2015

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My best friend growing up got married this weekend, and it was a blast.  If you’ve been to a wedding that wasn’t fun, they weren’t doing it right.  Jesus performed His first miracle at a wedding!  He turned water into wine.  If He was good with the wedding being fun, I’m good with it, too.  (Excuse the happy couple photo bombing us in the background!)

wedding

They say the L Word a lot at weddings.  LOVE is the word of the day! It’s a happy occasion.  Life is good.  People are cleaned up and on their best behavior. The future is bright, full of promise and hope. Plenty of laughter, happy tears, eating, drinking and being merry!

Using, and even feeling, the L word at a wedding is fairly effortless.  Where the rubber hits the road is trying to love people when they’re not cleaned up, when they’re miserable, crying, and full of despair, when their lives are messy.

Back during the bleakest time of my life, which I affectionately call The Dark Night of the Soul, people would see me in Walmart and react in one of four ways.  I can’t see people’s hearts, so I don’t know for sure, but I’ll describe how I perceived each scenario.

1.  Give me a hug, say, “I’m so sorry” and tell me they were praying for me. Yes, yes and yes! I had never needed a hug, never needed sympathy, never needed prayer more in my life. When faced with seeing someone hurting, you don’t need to worry if you don’t have the words to say.  Just love on them.

2.  Ask me how I was doing.  Not the sincere kind of “how are you?” asked out of true concern, but the rude, sarcastic kind we Southerners are infamous for — the “bless your heart, you got a little too big for your britches and got taken down a notch or two, didn’t you?” sort.  I didn’t want to talk about it, even if I perceived sincerity, so my standard go to line was, “I’m hanging in there, like a hair in a biscuit.”  (That, friends and neighbors, is called a Southernism.  There will henceforth be many of those in this blog.  Prepare thyself.)

3.  Act like they didn’t see me and go down a different aisle.  I could sort of understand this one.  Sometimes you just don’t know what to say to someone, and rather than say the wrong thing, avoidance seems like the easiest choice in the moment.  I felt like hollering, “I don’t blame you!  If I could avoid my life, I would, too! I’m a lost cause, but save yourselves!”

4.  Glare at me in undisguised and unashamed disgust and turn away in a huff.  Having been in church my whole life, I knew this one was going to happen. I had fallen from grace.  Sadly, somehow, somewhere along the way, someone decided people with broken lives are bad advertisements for the church.

Once, I remember shaking my head and saying out loud in the middle of the cereal aisle, “Lord, protect me from Your followers.”

Not that I’ve always been loving to everyone, mind you. However, I do try to be kind and loving, and I’ve tried to apologize to those I have hurt and asked their forgiveness. None of us are guiltless in this area. But Jesus gave us this goal in John 13:35:

“By this everyone will know that You are My disciples, if you love one another.”

He didn’t say they’ll know us by how we’re dressed.  Or where we go to church, or IF we go to church, or how we look, or how we talk, or where we’re from, or what music we listen to, or what we eat or drink.  The true mark of a Disciple of Christ is LOVE. No other litmus test. Just love.

So if you’re wondering what to do with yourself this happy Monday, try this: Love people.  We’re all fighting a battle of some form, and the world already has enough anger, hatred and judgment.  Someone in your path today feels defeated, scared, hopeless and unloved.  You know what it feels like to be torn down. So build people up. Hold the door for someone at the grocery store.  Tell the bank teller she looks pretty. Wave at your neighbor mowing his yard.  Tell the grieving widow you’ll pray for her, and actually DO IT.  Speak a kind word to the lady at work who is always nasty.

And if YOU’RE the one who’s always nasty, for Pete’s sake, stop it.  People with broken lives aren’t the ones who are bad advertisements for Jesus . . . .

But if not, is He still good?

29 Friday May 2015

Posted by in Strength for the Journey

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If you had asked me twenty years ago if God was good, I wouldn’t have hesitated to say YES! Of course He is! I had no clue that I was basing my view of the goodness of God upon my circumstances. Somewhere along the way, I got the mistaken assumption that if God was good, bad things wouldn’t happen to me. And assumptions, even if they’re not factual, eventually become the basis of your belief system.

Let me take you back to the early 1990’s. All I ever wanted was to be a wife and mother, and here I was with two beautiful, healthy daughters and a son on the way. I got to cook and clean and raise children all day! Life was a dream come true! (Yes, I should have been a housewife in the 50’s). I lived where I wanted to live, in a small Air Force town in North Carolina, only two hours away from my family.

This particular night, I was sitting in a Bible study and my husband (at the time) passed out blank sheets of paper. He instructed us to sign the bottom of that paper if we trusted the Lord to write whatever He wanted on it. No questions asked. No fear of the future. Just hand it to Jesus and say, “Here is my life, Lord. Do with it what You please.” I immediately signed my name on the paper. Why wouldn’t I? I mean, who didn’t trust Jesus?!?!

My friend Kim was sitting beside me, and I noticed she was holding her paper, just staring at it. I felt indignant! I said (rather snidely, I’m afraid), “What’s wrong, Kim? Can’t you trust the Lord with your life?” She said, “Look at you, Dee. You have what you want. You have a husband and children. What if I sign this paper and I don’t get that? What if God doesn’t want me to have a husband or children?” I felt the wind go right out of my self righteous body. She was completely right. I trusted God because He was giving me what I wanted. How would I feel if I weren’t getting my way?

Little did I know, my misguided theology wouldn’t be corrected for many more years. You’d think I’d’ve gotten it straight then, wouldn’t you? Oh no, this one, she’s a hard headed little thing.

I had no idea that life was going to happen to me, just like it happened to everyone else. That I’d end up leaving that little military town I loved, I’d move to the Arctic Zone and freeze to death (if it’s below 80, I’m shivering), my son would have a tumor at 8 months of age, that although we would move back to NC, life would eventually knock me down to rock bottom. Before too many more years, I’d lose that perfect little family unit I thought I had, along with my church and my home. And I’d lose my daddy, the only man who had ever loved me unconditionally.

I didn’t know then that there would come a day when I’d pray constantly, “Lord, You said in Psalm 37:25, I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread. Please provide for me and my children.” Every day I prayed for God to give me new mercies. I needed Him for the next step, the very next breath.

I wonder what I would have done if I’d been handed that piece of paper during that stage of my life? God surely didn’t seem like a good God to me anymore. He seemed distant, far away. I used to be in His lap, but now it felt like His lap was full of other people, and there was no longer any room for me.

During this season of my life, my friend Joey told this story in Sunday School. He said someone dropped a glass, caught it just before it hit the floor, and said, “Whew! Caught it just in time! God is good!” Joey said to his friend, “What if that glass HAD hit the floor and shattered? Would that mean God WASN’T good? Isn’t God good whether or not your glass breaks?”

Time stood still in that moment. The Holy Spirit spoke to me in His still small voice as loudly as I’ve ever heard Him and said, “That’s what you think of Me, Dee. You think I’m not good because your life didn’t turn out like you wanted.”

Well, Lord? Didn’t I pray? Didn’t I BEG YOU to fix it all? Didn’t I study and quote Your Word? I did my part as best I could. My marriage still failed. My daddy still died. My children are hurting and I can’t fix it for them. You could have, and You didn’t. If I saw my children struggling, I would move Heaven and Earth and do everything in my power to help them, and You said You love my children even more than I do. Why wouldn’t you fix it for them, if not for me? 

No answers came immediately. Just the realization that I needed to dig deep and find a way to believe God still loved me. And He was still good.

(He did eventually show me He was with me all the time. But I’ll save that story for another day — give you a reason to tune back into the same Bat Channel, same Bat Time.)

If you’re wondering if God has forgotten you, if He is good, if He sees what’s happening to you, I promise you, He hasn’t, He is, and He does. Will it turn out the way you want it to? Maybe not. But let me leave you with my favorite C. S. Lewis quote from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver . . . “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course He isn’t safe. But He’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Jesus Sent Me Flowers

27 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by in Strength for the Journey

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It was Friday evening, May 27. 2011. I’ve got a photographic memory for dates and numbers, by the way. Some details just inexplicably stick in my mind.

I had the brother of my heart, Phil and his girlfriend, Jamie over for dinner. (He’s no longer legally my brother in law, but divorce couldn’t take him away from me). I love cooking for people, and this time was especially good, if I do say so myself.

We had finished eating, and Phil and Jamie were having dessert as I started the dishes. I heard my phone vibrating and said out loud, “Todd Hall? What’s he doing calling me?” I answered, hoping he couldn’t hear my pulse hammering in my ear.

He said he was coming to town to see a movie, and asked if I wanted to go too. He’d already asked our mutual friends Jeff and Susan and they had plans, so he thought he’d see if I was busy. I thought, “Really? You’re straight up admitting your first choice didn’t pan out? Oh well, I’ll take it however I can get it!” I asked him if he’d had supper and he said he’d planned to eat popcorn. I volunteered the meal I’d just cooked. He wisely accepted. Oh yeah, I got you where I want you now, buddy. 

I laid down the phone and said, “Okay Phil and Jamie, nice to see y’all! Thanks for coming! Out you go!! Todd Hall just asked me to the movies, and I’m about to use my mad cooking skills to reel this one in!” (When you love people, you can shoo them out when you need to and they still love you back, ya know.)

I remember thinking several times, “Is this really happening?” I hadn’t been to see a movie with anyone but my ex husband since high school. What if I was doing this wrong? Am I sitting the right way? Do I smell good? What if I have popcorn between my teeth? I had been single for several years and was a self avowed man-hater. Oh I wasn’t good at this. At all.

Our mutual friend Susan had introduced us the year before because she thought we’d be good together. She promised me Todd was a great catch. Lord knows he was handsome, but what was inside mattered more to me. Everyone said Todd Hall was the nicest guy they knew. Great dad. Family man. Good Christian. Not one negative word, and you can believe I’d checked him out.

If I was ever going to have a man in my life again (and I was PERFECTLY okay if I didn’t), it needed to be someone who came with high recommendations from someone I trusted. I really wasn’t ready to go out with anyone when I met him, but during that year, we’d spent more time together, and I was ready to drop my wall a little bit and give him a chance.

Todd Hall made me re-think my man hatin’ ways. Maybe, just maybe, there was a good man out there who was single . . . .

He was the perfect gentleman that night — and that was very important to me too. When he walked me to the door, said goodnight and gave me a sideways hug, I simply prayed, “Lord, Your will, not mine.” God knew my heart more than I did, and He knew I didn’t want to trust anyone and get hurt again.

Two days later, I was teaching an adult Sunday School class. As I got up to speak, a man I didn’t know, and still don’t know, stood up and started to the front. He stopped at the podium, handed me a dozen yellow roses, and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t usually do this kind of thing. I don’t even know your name. I drive a truck and Friday evening as I was coming home, the Lord said to me,

Go buy your Sunday School teacher some flowers and tell her, ‘You’ve had a long season of thorns, but now is your season of roses.’

Let me tell you, it was hard to get my composure to teach. “Season of thorns” didn’t even begin to touch it, I thought. More like, “Valley of the Shadow of Death.” Oh how badly I needed to believe “A Season of Roses” was headed my way.

After worship, this same man came up to me and said, “I didn’t want to say this in front of everyone, but I’m assuming you’re divorced, and it hasn’t been an easy road for you.” I nodded and said, “To say the least.” He went on to say,

The Lord told me it’s a man. Your season of roses is a man. He’s giving him to you, the one He wants you to have, and I think you’ve already had a date with him.

Since no one really knew that, I was in shock for a moment and said, “Well, I did have a date Friday night. My first one since my divorce actually.” He said, “That’s him. He’s the one the Lord is giving you.” I asked him what time did the Lord tell him all of this, and he said “About 6:30.”

Not surprisingly, that was about the same time Todd had called me.

Like Mary did in Luke 2:19, I treasured this word and pondered it my heart. I kept it to myself because I needed to see if what the guy said was true. The Bible says in 1 John 4:1,

do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.

For that reason, I waited a year or so to tell Todd about it — long after I was absolutely sure this man who gave me flowers from Jesus was 100% right. I remember Todd’s eyes were big as saucers as he said, “Jesus gave you flowers? This dude was talking about me? Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

Really? I said, “What was I supposed to say on our second date, ‘By the way, Jesus sent me flowers Sunday. And He said He was giving you to me. You’re the one! Don’t you feel special?!’ What would you have done if I’d said that?” He said, “I would’ve thought you were crazy, and I’d have gotten up and run out of PF Chang’s!”

Folks, sometimes it’s best to keep a word from the Lord to yourself for a while . . . even when you know the truth in your heart.

This is a picture of my roses that day.  Yellow roses will forevermore mean a gift and word from God to me.Jesus Sent Me Flowers

I’ve got his last name now. I love his kids like my own. My kids adore him. I’ve never had one doubt — never once thought maybe this wasn’t the right path.

Thank You, Jesus, for sending me flowers. For sending me Todd Hall and his whole family. Yes, there will still be valleys and hard times. But for today, I’m still enjoying my Season of Roses.

And it feels good.