beloved

You Are Not: A Reminder

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I’m about to repeat myself. Again.

I find I keep returning to the same themes in my writing over and over, probably because I keep needing to hear them over and over. Here’s one more reminder for the road.

You are not your worst fears about yourself– that you’re essentially unemployable and that you will never find out what you’re good at and be able to make a living with it.

You are not your spotty employment background or your so-so credit score or your monumental mistakes in the past.

You are not your history of relationship failures (or your history of failure of relationships).

You are not your failed marriages or your broken relationships with your parents (or children).

You are not who you were and you are not yet who you will be.

You are the Beloved of your Abba Father, the apple of His eye.

You are Forgiven, with a blank slate as clean as if there were never any bad marks on it.

You are a child of the One True King, despite your questionable family history and your own long list of personal quirks.

You are exactly where God wants you to be and He knows where you are and where He’s taking you. And trust me, you will get there one day.

 

Constructive Criticism?

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“Wounds inflicted by the correction of a friend prove he is faithful; the abundant kisses of an enemy show his lies” (Prov. 27:6).

I don’t like getting criticized. To be honest, it hurts my ego. It’s okay if I find fault with myself for doing dumb stuff but I’d prefer if other people didn’t. Still, if I’m honest I have to also admit that I need it. I need someone else who will keep me accountable for my words and my actions so that they line up with what I profess.

I see so many posts on various social media that basically say, “I do what I want and don’t you dare judge me”, i.e. say anything that might be construed as negative or critical in any way (or even someone who tells you the honest truth). While Jesus did speak against those who are judgmental or who are critical and mean-spirited, I do think it’s equally wrong and dangerous to live outside of any kind of accountability. After all, as a pastor once said, “The first person you lie to is yourself.”

You and I both need people who will get in our faces (in a loving manner) and call us out when we speak and act in ways contrary to our true selves. We need people who will say, “What you’re doing doesn’t match what you say you believe and that’s giving the faith you profess a bad name.”

True, the ability to speak that way has to be granted. Only true friends to whom I give the right can speak this way. And no, being a prophet doesn’t give you the right to trample over people’s feelings and be careless with your words. Prophets always spoke God’s truth in love and often spoke God’s judgment through heavy hearts and tears.

I’ve heard that for every rebuking/correctional word you speak you should always give two encouraging or complimentary words. And I do believe it’s never a good idea to try to rebuke or correct another person via any other forms of communication other than face-to-face. E-mails and texts and posts are good in their way, but they leave out facial expressions and tone of voice so vital to any kind of constructive criticism.

Most of all, remember this. The God who chases after you isn’t running you down to tell you what a no-good lowdown dirty dog you are. His words to you tonight are this: you are still My Beloved, the apple of My eye, and I thought you were worth dying for. I love you just as you are but I refuse to leave you that way. I won’t ever stop with you until you look just like My Son Jesus.”

 

Another Letter to Myself

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Last year at Kairos, Mike Glenn instructed us to take pen to paper and write ourselves a letter, to be place in a self-addressed envelope and mailed back, to us at some point in the future. The point was that you could see where you were back then and where you are now and how far you’ve come.

Mine came back today. Here’s what I wrote way back in 2014:

“Dear Me,

You probably feel like your life is headed toward a dead end. You feel like everything will always be as it is right now. You feel like you’ll never move out on your own or go on a date, much less ever get married. You feel like you’ll always be behind, trying to catch up.

Remember, God can take anything in your life and turn it to good. What seems impossible to you right now isn’t even remotely difficult for God. One day, you will look back and see God was preparing you for a future only He could see. Remember that you kept putting one foot in front of the other, trusting that God knew what He was doing when you didn’t.

God is good. His promises are always true, in sunshine and rain, joy and pain, good and bad, in daytime and nighttime, as long as forever lasts.

Don’t let your past define you. Don’t let failure define you. Don’t let other people (or even you) define you. Let the Abba Father who calls you His Beloved be the one who defines you both now and forevermore.

A slightly wiser version of you”

 

Downtown Franklin Revisited

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Ok, I admit that sometimes I can be like a broken record when it comes to weekends. I like going to downtown Franklin. I think I’ve established that. So guess where I went tonight, sports fans?

At least I varied it a little. I ate at Puckett’s instead of McCreary’s. I went to Sweet CeCe’s instead of Frothy Monkey. Aren’t I just a little rebel?

I brought my iPad and watched most of the movie Reality Bites. I’d forgotten how clever that movie was. And no, the fact that the movie is 20 years old does NOT make me feel old AT all.

I visited my favorite house in all the world. And by visited, I mean I walked by in a very non-stalker-like manner, not stopping to stare in the windows or anything creepy like that.

At one point, the clouds darkened and it looked like it might rain. But it didn’t.

I still think it’d be cool to live there. I know it’s not financially feasible, but one can dream, right?

In the movie Reality Bites, one of the characters is lamenting the fact that she hasn’t figured out what she wants to be by the age of 23. Another character remarks that all she has to be at 23 is herself.

I like that.

Don’t let anybody tell you that you’re a failure because you don’t meet some arbitrary standard of societal standards. It’s okay to not have your career path figured out. It’s okay to still be living with mom and dad. It’s okay to be single and not dating. That’s not what really defines you anyway.

As I’ve said many times before, God defines you and specifically, the fact that He calls you Beloved and is well pleased in you is what truly defines you.

I supposed I am a broken record, but that’s okay by me.

A Reminder of Whose You are

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“Yahweh your God is there with you, the warrior-Saviour. He will rejoice over you with happy song, he will renew you by his love, he will dance with shouts of joy for you” (Zephaniah 3:17)

That’s my favorite Bible verse. If I to choose one life verse, this one would be #1 with a bullet. Why?

It’s a reminder that what matters isn’t what you’ve done or even who you are but whose you are.

You are not your past or your failures or your bad choices.

You are not even your past glories and successes and your trophy case from yesterwhen.

You are not what you do for a living or your paycheck stubs or your net worth.

You are not the names people call you or even the names you call yourself when you think no one else is listening.

You are the beloved.

You are the one that Yahweh rejoices over, the one He sings over in the night, the one He dances with joy over, the one in whom He is well pleased.

That’s you.

That’s all that matters.

 

It’s A Good Feeling When . . .

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Elizabethtown-Panerai

It’s a good feeling when you can finally be you– the real you– with no shame or embarrassment. That you can be a full-on goober and not care what anybody else thinks. That you can be the ultimate anti-hipster and go against all that is hip and trendy and not give a rat’s . . . tail.

It’s a good feeling when people walk out of your life and you can smile and wave goodbye and move forward. When you know the people who mind don’t matter and the people who matter don’t mind. The people in your life are God’s blessing to you. When He removes people from your life, it’s often a bigger– though underappreciated– blessing. You never really know what He protected and saved you from when He did that.

It’s a good feeling when you’re content with who you are and realize the best things in life can’t be bought or sold or even valued. When you hear your Abba’s voice and decide that that one voice speaks more meaningfully to you than all the other voices of popularity and fame and success.

It’s a good feeling when you can finally forgive yourself for not being all things to all people, for not being perfect all the time, for being a forgiven sinner and not a first-rate saint. It really is a good feeling when you can not only hear God calling you His beloved in whom He is well pleased, but receive it and live out of it and never ever get over it.

So go live boldly. Make big mistakes and fail ridiculously. As one of my favorite quotes from a movies goes, “Have the courage to fail big and stick around and make ’em wonder why you’re still smilin’.”

And most of all, go out and love being you because not even you can love being you as much as God does.

 

Expensive Mistakes, Shame, and other Random Tuesday Night Thoughts

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Have you ever made an expensive mistake?

Immediately, I think of the movie Elizabethtown and the character Drew Baylor. He created a shoe which ended up costing the company he worked for close to $1 billion. It was, in his words, a fiasco.

There’s a great line from the movie:

“As somebody once said, there’s a difference between a failure and a fiasco. A failure is simply the non-present of success. Any fool can accomplish failure. But a fiasco, a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions. A fiasco is a folktale told to others, that makes other people feel more… alive. Because it didn’t happen to them.”

Maybe you’ve been there. Maybe your mistake wasn’t worth $1 billion. Maybe it was worth $10,000. Or maybe it just ruined a relationship. Or a reputation.

Maybe you feel the familiar nagging sensation of shame, never overpowering but always there, lurking nearby.

Tonight’s guest speaker at Kairos spoke of how two different people in the Bible dealt with shame in radically different ways:

Judas betrayed Jesus and ended up hanging himself, while Peter denied knowing Jesus and ended up hanging around. Not only that, the shame turned into an opportunity for God to use him in ways he probably never would have thought possible.

The speaker said something that I’ll never forget. He said something to the effect that Judas hung himself by his shame because he didn’t know that Jesus hung on the cross for his shame.

The cross means that shame has no more power over your (or my) life ever again. Shame has lost the power to speak into our lives because Jesus took those failures, those fiascos, those worst moments upon Himself on the cross. He took them to the grave, but when He arose on Easter morning, He left them behind, utterly defeated and powerless.

You are not defined by your fiascos or those moments of shame any longer. You are defined by what Jesus did for you and by who you are now in the power of His resurrection. You are defined as beloved child of God in whom He is well pleased.

Shame is all about your past. Jesus wants you to go forward and live in the future He has for you, not in that past any longer.

 

Music I Heard: For All The Ones I’ve Lost

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While this year for me is a happy time, it’s also brings a bit of sadness with it. The memories of those I’ve loved and lost come more alive at this time of year than at any other time. I’ve been thinking about a particular poem by Conrad Aiken that makes me think of family members whom I wish I could talk to but never will again this side of heaven:

“Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart that you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always, –
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.”

The good news is that there is the other side of heaven where I WILL see all these people again. And Jesus will be there to wipe away every tear from my (and everyone else’s) eyes.

 

Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word

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“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.” (Henri Nouwen)

I’ve posted and blogged and mentioned multiple times before how the hardest person to forgive is often yourself. You know yourself too well and you know your own weaknesses because a certain adversary reminds you of them every single day.

I know I’ve blown it with a friend and the friendship won’t ever be the same again. We used to hang out and be good friends but now she won’t even sit on the same side of the room as me and we feel like really good acquaintances.

There are one or two (including that one at Starbucks) who have taken to actively disliking me and nothing I say or do will change that. For me, I have to remember that I can’t be friends with everyone and that it’s not my job to make every single person like me. It’s my job to be the best me possible.

But forgiveness isn’t optional. Not with others and especially not with ourselves. How dare I choose not to forgive myself when God (who incidentally knows me better than I do) has freely forgiven me? And why would I want to live under a cloud of condemnation when I don’t have to?

No one does relationships well. We mistrust each other. We read too much into silences and jests. We say the wrong things and fail to say the right things. Most of us have gotten used to the taste of shoe leather from sticking our feet in our mouths so often.

But real friendship between two believers is the Jesus in me communing with the Jesus in you. It’s practicing forgiveness and grace and blessing, giving these abundantly because we know our desperate need for all of the above.

You are not your past. Or your mistakes. You are not the names you’ve been called or that you’ve called yourself.

You are:

Redeemed

Forgiven

Blessed

Child of God

Beautiful

Beloved

To Die For

The One Your Abba Is Still Very Fond Of

May we speak not hurt but life, not wounds but blessings into each other. May we always look to see the best in ourselves and in others and call out the beautiful and glorious in each other. May we learn to love others and ourselves the way God has always loved us.

Saturday Night’s Alright for Slacking

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I did nothing tonight. Hard as it is to believe, I spent this Saturday evening in front of the idiot box with a very sleepy cat/therapist named Lucy. This jetsetter, this man about town, actually had a quiet night.

And the world didn’t come to a screeching halt.

Do you ever wonder that people forget about you the moment you leave the room? That when it comes to priorities, you’re not high up on anybody’s list? That ultimately you don’t truly matter to anyone?

Sure, I’ve felt that way some nights. But I know this.

There is never a moment that goes by where I’m not in God’s sight, on His mind, and engraved on His hands and on His heart. He loves me completely, unconditionally, unwaveringly, every second of every day of eternity.

God loves you the same way. God loves each person as if they were the only person who had ever lived and could receive the fullness of Love itself.

That kind of love meets you where you are but does not leave you that way. It can’t help but transform the beloved into the image of the Lover. You become most like what you love most. Always.

I can’t say that staying home was my first choice. Or even on my list of top twenty choices.

But here I am, thankful even on a slow Saturday night that I have everything I need in the world right here. Finding the joy on nights like this really does transform how you see the rest of your life. Giving thanks for the small things makes room to receive the greater things.

I think I’ll sign off in a bit here and go do some actual reading of an actual book, with actual pages that turn and everything. How novel.

May you know in full (or as fully as a finite human can comprehend the infinite) how much your Abba really does love you at every moment, whether you feel it or not.

That’s all for now.