How Dare You Say Something Kind!

Last night, at a neighborhood study group, a woman offered up a really nice compliment.  After I closed the study in prayer, she suggested that I open a prayer line for people to call in so I can pray for them.

You would have thought she suggested I dye my hair red and green to express true Christmas spirit.

In my typical false modesty fashion I responded with a deflecting joke about my Midwestern nasal sound that is not really made for amplification or recording.  I then make another not so funny joke about being Lucy from Peanuts cartoon, chagrining while charging people 5 cents at a prayer help booth, after I bully Charlie Brown.

This is actually an improvement.  I used to argue with people when they complimented me. 

Once a gentleman praised a class I led, and I just about took him to the woodshed.  Really, we ended up laughing as I protested his kindness directed at me by telling him directly he was wrong.

Why am I uncomfortable with another's kind appreciation? 

When someone says they like my flip flops, I smile and say thank you.  When I get a kudos for my cookie bars, I offer up the recipe.  Yet, when someone dares to say something nice about my study, leadership or writing I want to forcefully reject such talk as outrageous.

On the surface it seems like a form of humility, but it's actually false modesty and sometimes just rude.

Humility is putting the interests of others behind my own interests but false modesty is refusing to accept a gift of affirmation from other in a form of pretense.

When I cooperate with God and serve faithfully I should not be taken back when others are blessed--not so much for my fabulousness, but that how God works--through others. 

When the response is positive, that is evidence of sound ministry-in the Bible it's called fruit.  As long as I realize that from the perspective of a servant, giving people room to express appreciation is not arrogant.

It's sometimes hard to point to God as the one who really deserves credit-that can be a odd way of putting people off too.  It's like I would be saying...you shouldn't have complimented me that way, you should have given credit to Christ.  Yes, to God be the glory, but I don't need to scold or edit someone's kind words.  

It is not interpersonal relational calculus to accept another's appreciation in a humble way--it's not hard, so why do I make it hard?

I need to take the kindness when it's offered as a gift.   Open it, enjoy it, enjoy it and remember really it is a response to my faithful service to God and equipping from God.

A Perfect Season to Choose Healing

I just read the revised edition of Healing is a Choice by Steve Arterburn, who also hosts the excellent radio program and ministry, New Life Live. Healing is an excellent personal or church resource.
Arterburn structures his entire work around the question Christ poses to the man in John 5:6, “do you want to get well?” From that perspective he offers up 10 decisions that lead to wellness and 10 lies that slow down or block wellness.

While the answers to the questions and the unpacking of the lies are sound and helpful, what is most powerful are the stories that accompany each. Arterburn starts with the frank description of his divorce and then includes many other life stories that do more than evoke compassion they effectively point to application.

The book includes a vehicle for journaling, a concise Bible study and challenges that move the reader in healthy directions. It works as a tool for individual application on to use as a group.

It’s much more than advice—it is an honest portrait of typical brokenness and proven, practical path to healing. It’s sound, relevant and thorough. Most of all, it’s encouraging that we can confront what holds us with confidence –if we choose to be well.

Friendship & Feeling: Ladies Only

Grinning:


A conversation that I am sure no two men have ever shared.

I had lunch today with a good friend and shared a story about how I had done something significant, and it was ignored. I was at a point of frustration.

She encouraged me, sympathized with me, and affirmed me— all the good stuff a good friend does at such a time.

Then she said, “You need to go and tell this person that she has hurt your feelings, and you are taking it personally.”

While, that is true (how I feel), it occurred to me later, that no man on the planet would suggest or do what she suggested and I briefly entertained. What it may offer in therapeutic release it also costs, in lunacy.

Where does such a confrontation lead…would I feel better with a dismissive, “oh I am sorry.” I don’t think so. Would I find comfort in making a point? No, I would feel needy and sort of pitiful.

It’s not that honesty isn’t the best policy. It is. Yet, there is time for wisdom to quiet me down.

Besides, when this sort of thing crops up, it’s a good time to remember who ultimately do I serve and who I really need to seek to please.

Oh, and with some humility consider who I may have overlooked recently who is having lunch with a friend talking about how I hurt her feelings…

Better At Bats

Last night I sat in a barn while one of my chickadees took a batting lesson.  I worked through a Bible study assignment while she worked through the effectiveness of her swing. 

I was struck by questions her coach asked, and thought as I muddled through this assignment on self control--hmmm, that's relevant.

Coach:  Why do you not think about your grip?

Chickadee:  I don't know, I just swing.

Coach:  Why do you think you do it this way?

Chickadee:  Because it's comfortable.

Coach:  Do you recognize that you have other options, and while it may feel funny it will produce what you want?

Chickadee:  I guess.

Coach:  Which way just got you though with a rocket.

Chickadee:  The new way of gripping.

Coach:  So when you grip it different something different and good happens.
Chickadee:  Yeah
Coach:  So, make the decision yourself.  Do it.

I thought about areas inconsistency and repeated traps of undiscipline.  It occurred to me that I don't even think about it as a approach it.  In the abstract, concepts of life I want to "do better" but too often I go through the motions in the most familiar, comfortable way.  

What if I start with a decision about my grip, recognizing I have options and what are those options.  What if I practiced with various options until I discovered the most effective?  What if I do the thing that works best even if it feels weird. 

Mom and Dot may start hitting rockets. 

Author Fails to Answer His Own Question as to Where

Where Has Oprah Taken Us? The Religious Influence of the World’s Most Famous Woman by Stephen Mansfield is a frustrating read. Why, because Mansfield does not capture the extent of that influence at all.


He does a thorough job of highlighting the spiritual celebrities who frequented the Oprah show, but does not offer up what impression they really made on the audience. He tries to capture what impression it made on Oprah’s personal belief, but that is speculation and conjecture.

Another disappointment—the heavy reliance on Kitty Kelley’s Oprah biography. I have not actually watched an entire episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show and so Mansfield may be assuming a familiarity with the program in his readers that I don’t share. Still, it would be a much more substantive work and more true to the title if there was empirical evidence of influence.

Is it is possible that the people featured on the show were received as mere entertainment?

The strongest quality to the writing is a clear exposition of New Age, Postmodern relativism that glorifies the individual to a God-like stature. Mansfield does a good job of documenting how these New Age personalities (Iyanla Vanzant, Deepak Chopra, Gary Zukav, Eckhart Tolle, Marianne Williamson) contradict each other and logic and even the faith traditions (Christianity, Judaism, Tao, Zen, and Hindu).

He effectively points to Oprah Winfrey’s attempts to embrace all of these as inspiration and revelation—and that such a response to this is absurd.

Yet, he fails to finish that with the mark it really made on her viewers and fans. If Mansfield really believes that Oprah has become, “the priestess of an innovative brand of spirituality, one that was even reshaping the place and nature of religion in American life,” (xiii) he needs to make that case.

The book is an assumption that because Oprah highlights these works and words on her enormous platform it resonated in an impactful way with the viewer.

Perhaps it did, but Mansfield needs to demonstrate that, not assume it. This is an interesting compilation of modern humanism but does not accomplish what it sets out to do.

I read and reviewed this book as a part of Thomas Nelson Publishing Booksneeze program.

Journey without the Moses Moment

Spent some time today, not really facing a writer’s block, but a bit of a writer’s speed bump.

I offered to submit a story for my church’s annual Advent devotional.

This year’s them is Awakened and the gist was to collect stories of transformational faith experiences.  

I was wide awake, and alertly drawing a blank.

Awoke to my daughter’s orthodontist appointment this morning and I shared with her this theme and the concept of a transformational experience for this devotional, while we waited for her to be fitted for a zebra striped retainer.

Sally replied, “Oh yeah, I get it. I call those Moses moments. I don’t really have those.”

Apples don’t fall far.

God stirs me in everyday, ordinary moments that don’t make for one captivating story but it’s like a good recipe that builds layers of flavor.

I can read almost anything by Philip Yancey, or spend some somber time in prayer over requests from friends in my study class and be moved by both the power and presence of God.

I look at my rapidly growing girls, my kind and funny husband, my church that I love and I am struck by the overflowing blessing of love and relationships. I delight and give thanks for those gifts.

I am learning more and more about faithful responses in times of trial, and in time of tranquility. I am learning from God how to hold all of this loosely, to be in a posture to give and to receive from him.

“Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long. “ Psalm 25:5

Father, I want to learn to love, honor and know you with all I have. I pray that it shows in what I think, what I say and what I do. I thank and praise you for the mercy and grace you pour out to me. I pray that you find me cooperative with your purpose. I ask and seek this in Christ’s name. Amen.

Words

Words.  I love words.  I love speaking them, listening to them, reading them and writing them.  I just re-read my last post and thought about the line, "words can easily hurt but can rarely heal."   It just hit me what a strong statement I wrote, even in context.

Is it true?  I spent some time this morning using words to persuade one of my daughters to study more effectively.  I even asked her to consider what else might motivate her because the many words I was using involving consequence, implication and application--none of it was resonating.

I teach Bible studies because I know the truth in Scripture (inspired words) leads to a more confident, more honest, more impactful faith walk. 

What started this wordy tome on words, you ask (good question).  This bottle of lotion on my desk.  I don't need much to launch. 

If you can't read it, let me translate.  This lotion will, "melt away stress and help you unwind and feel at ease."  WOW.  Who knew? 

I realize that in the United States advertising and marketing writers are required to exaggerate, stretch and entice.  However, this reaches beyond the limit of a good pitch.

Is this harmless, just a far fetched use of words to attract my attention away from the 1,253 other lotions with the same sort of smell? 

Does it point to a greater issue that we so misuse words that we communicate and create empty meaning?

I am reading for a review a book about the spirituality of Oprah Winfrey.  Not a huge fan of this book or Oprah for that matter, thus the my plodding approach to the assignment.  However, the book is full incredible exaggeration that passes for inspiration or revelation.  Like the lotion bottle. 

Has our careless hyperbole created a problem in our ability to wisely communicate or are we just silly?

I don't know, I revisit my words to a friend about the power of words to hurt someone and the rare occasion when words really help.  I wonder if our misuse adds fuel to that dilemma?

Takeaway:  use words with care.

Also:  this lotion does smell good and makes one's skin soft.  Period.