California Roll

Without the Lenses

I lost my glasses in the spa at Indian Springs Resort last Monday. Staff searched, but no one found them. After waiting thirty minutes in their lobby, I needed to head home for dinner. But by that time, 6:15 PM, darkness had fallen.

Our room didn't lie nearby, but a block away. And the route to there was not straight nor well-lit. I stepped out the lobby door and had no idea whether to turn right or left or walk straight ahead. All I saw were black and globs of light with fuzzy edges, like dandelions. Without glasses I couldn't even orient myself.

I couldn't ask Collin for escort service because our room had no phone nor did I have my cell with me (nor recall his number).

I returned to the spa desk and lamented to an employee. She stepped out with me, dispensed directions and then left me on my own. "A path goes off to the left. Follow it past the palm trees, then turn right."

I wasn't sure I could remember her words and get myself home. I prayed.

A phrase from a familiar song, and Bible verse, floated through my brain. "We walk by faith not by sight."

Familiar plants, fountains and buildings now appeared weird, even menacing. Would someone spring out at me in the dark? Remembering that unseen angels hover around comforted me, but how I longed for my glasses.

Was this adventure God's crazy way of answering a prayer I'd prayed an hour earlier? When lying on a white-sheeted table in the spa, I had asked that God would give me an epiphany. I wanted to receive his revelation about myself or him.

While carefully placing my feet down on the dark path, I recalled something my counselor said in a session many months ago. "I'm getting the image of a large mind. . . I think it means you rely on figuring things out."

Hmm. Jesus talked a lot about how religious leaders were blind. They thought they saw the world accurately, but actually their pride and unbelief distorted their vision. Jesus labeling them blind made them unhappy. (John 9:39-41) Jesus insulted them further by telling these studied religious leaders that he himself was the light (what an audacious -- egomaniac thing for a mere man to say).

Jesus also told his followers that he did the things the Father showed him (John 5;30). Nothing he did was only his own initiative (Jhn 5:30). It all came from the Father. He didn't say a single word unless he heard it from his Father (John 8:38). His Father commanded him what to say (john 12:49.

All these things I have studied earlier came together for me as I wished for my glasses and peered through the dark.

This is my epiphany -- I need to turn from trusting in my own mind or understanding (Proverbs 3:5).

Yes, I can analyze things well and know much. I won't throw that all out, but I'm talking about not relying on those abilities Rather, to keep checking in with God because I know that alone, without recognizing my need for God and dependence on him, I'm near blind.

My physical vision is terrible. I can't recognize a face ten feet away without glasses. And last Monday going without glasses certainly made clear how much they change everything. Those two small lenses totally alter my view of the world.

I reached the light of the eaves of our lodge and breathed a sigh of relief. Knocked on Room #24 and Collin came. Getting dinner would be a challenge, but not scary with Collin holding my hand and gently showing me when to step up or down curbs.

Glasses make all the difference. The same things look so different according to whether those frames perch on my nose.

Ahh, to wear the lenses of faith always -- to view the world with certainty that God deeply loves and cherishes me and, despite the bad things that happen, is still in control. The glasses I wear change everything.

Reasons for my Fears

    Lately a high-powered, energetic female authority figure said something I found hurtful.  She didn't intend it to be that way, it's just her mode of doing things which clashes with my sensitive personality and also cultural expectations.
    I'm glad to report that I did tell her about - albeit not in the best manner or timing -- and she did apologize via a note card. (Yeah,God!  you're at work!)
    I'm thinking I should get together with her to talk more, but find myself hesitant to call. I've been asking myself why that's so hard for me.
    While I was driving on the freeway (look out cars, I'm thinking!), it occurred to me that in relationship to her I see myself as a small child. She's like a big authority figure, scary like my mother was when charged with a sense of her entitlement and anger. 
    I sensed God calling me to look at myself differently.  Not to see myself as a child in relationship to her anymore.
    Before I went to bed last night, as I often do, I asked God to work with my spirit while I sleep and separate out the things of past versus the things of the present.
    I couldn't sleep. Unusual for me.  I lay awake in bed from 11 pm to midnight.
    Now the possible explanations of this phenomena are many:  I drank caffienated ice tea that afternoon and I'm very sensitive to caffeine and I was charged up from not just one but three relational/ministry kind of excitements.  But, I think also God has something in mind.
    I got up at midnight and asked myself what I was feeling. I started crying.  Inside lay a deep core of fear. The outer reasons was an e-mail I sent out at 10:15 pm which, in retrospect, appeared audacious to me - like the authority figure might take offense.  That's the superficial reason for my fear.
    But I knew the extent of the emotion was irrational, must have its source in childhood.
   I prayed and asked God to help me and take me to the source and origin of my fear.
   Much of my irrational fear has to do with seeing myself as very small in comparison to the big, smart, well-respected and liked authority figures in my church.  Those "bears" (as my little, child self sees them) can squish, maul me.
    In this memory that came back, I felt six inches tall and my mother towered over me like the Jolly Green Giant, but she wasn't jolly, maybe green.  I could tell you what she was mad about, but it doesn't matter, it was a little thing regarding how she heard disrespect in my words.  (Frankly, I think I just embarrassed her in front of a neighbor.)  She didn't belt me or anything physically abusive like that.  It was just her tone, her wrath that scored and squished me.
    Anyways, with intense, painful emotions like that we take a vow, we determine in our childhood minds to never experience that again by ....  For me it was,
 

    I will not trust anyone bigger than me that they will hear my voice unless I confirm in the moment with them that they do respect me/want to listen

    I vowed to always protect myself, to not take emotional risks with female authority figures.

Jesus came – flooded the scene with light – now I can see my mom – just the image of a little, tuny bear inside of her, something so small as a child's teddy bear, yet fierce because it's so scared.  I can see that now, I can feel it on an emotional level.

    Yet, I know that living it out will be hard. 
    And for any of who pray, please pray that I can keep staying in awareness and belief in Jesus's love in such a way that it delivers me from all my fears.

More than I Dreamed

    In just three months my 18 year old travels across the country to attend Stony Brook, State University of New York.  Questions trouble me sometimes.  Who will she hang out with?  What influence will they have on her?  What impact will this experience have on her spiritual journey?  How will her faith survive the challenges of dormmates or professors who don't believe there is a God who loves us personally and cares what we do with our lives?
    Just one week ago Jenny and I sat in the auditorium of Stony Brook's Student Activities Center on Long Island with some hundred other parents and incoming students to the Honors College or WISE (Women in Science and Engineering).  Students separated from their parents when for a session with the head of the Honors Colege and personal counsel from older students about choosing their classes.
   Four hours later, at 6 pm, Jenny and I sat waiting for the train bound for NYC, where we would spent the night at a hotel reserved in Chelsea.  Jenny was feeling unsure about the classes she'd signed up for.  For me questions like the ones I posed had been triggering my prayers all day. 
    God reached down to us in the form of a young man.  A stranger stopped by us and asked, "Did you attend the orientation today?"
    "Yes."  I stared at his Stony Brook T-shirt.  "Were you an adviser?" 
    "Yes, how did you like it?"
    Jenny explained her background, goals, and  doubts about her schedule and this student advisor's response helped her feel more comfortable with her choices.  He started walking away from us, down the platform.
    "Is there some reason you're going farther down?"  I asked.  After hearing that the coming train didn't stop this far down the platform, we followed him.  We sat near him on the train and talked with him most of the next hour and a half.  I learned his name was Felix, that he commuted from his home in the Queens.
    I ignored some of the initial chatter between him and jenny, until I overheard him speaking about going on a marvelous, life-transforming trip to Ghana.   "Was that through a church?"
    Yes.  And we talked from there about Christian music, heard his story of how Jesus came to mean everything for him and then - marvel of all marvels - when I asked if he was a part of some student group on campus, he said, "Inter Varsity."
    How my heart soared when I heard that, because it's the group that supported and grew my faith and relationships throughout my college years at UC Davis.  He went on at length about how wonderful this group was. 
    Wow.  Just what I wanted my daughter to hear.  Of course I've been telling her about IV, but like any teenager, her mother's words about what might be a good group for her can't compel.  She has to find her own way. Thank God for sending a messenger. 
    If He could arrange this, of course He will continue to take good care of my daughter.

   

Who am I?

    That question -  Who am I? - is profoundly deep.  Of course I, like everyone else, asked that question between adolescence and adulthood, but perhaps I didn't succeed because I'm still asking that question.  Or, perhaps, we were never meant to settle that question completely once and for all.
    I remember at age 23, freshly graduated from college, hearing, "Seems you don't really know who you are."  These words came from a man I respected - after all he had a beard, wrinkles, married and studied along with me at a scaled-down seminary program.  I pondered his words a lot. What did he mean? Why did he say that?  How would I be different if I knew who I was?
    And now, my former high school English teacher who has kept in touch through the years and frequently invited me to meals and cultural events, insists that I am not - nor never was- an introvert.  If so, pah on Meyers Briggs psychological inventory which proclaimed me one, albeit a little known variety, a "social introvert," i.e. one who recoups by spending time alone, but to whom relationships are important.   
   Two other experts handed me differing definitions of introversion vs. extroversion this year.  One woman teacher and coach said, "You can tell the difference by the way each type processes.  I'm an extrovert, but my husband in an introvert.  So when I talk things out and propose an idea, my husband, being an introvert, thinks I'm earnest about doing what I've suggested  because he doesn't propose anything until he's already thought it through."
    I was excited about this definition at first and perhaps explaining it to my husband helped him understand that he can express enthusiasm for an idea I've expressed without committing himself, since I'm not committed yet.  Ideas like going to Alaska, going to live in France, etc.  But in practicality this definition hasn't found it entirely true. I process both ways, and so does my extremely introverted husband.
    Another expert, a psychologist friend, has blasted Meyers Briggs as being too simplistic and in other ways wanting.  He says that the amount of stimulation that an individual desires and thrives on indicates whether s/he is an introvert or an extrovert.  Not the degree of warmth which an individual exhibits and which is often taken as a sign of extroversion.  A person can come across to others as warm and still an introvert.  When I heard that, I thought, "That's me."
    Hmm . . . Perhaps I'm midway then in a scale of introversion vs. extroversion.
    I read today David's words, "Who am I, O Sovereign Lord..."  He then recounts the wonderful things God has done for him, such as taking him from following sheep around to being the king over a great people. I also feel like that.  I was once alone, hurt, fragile, embittered, insecure. I stayed away from much people contact because I was scared. Left me lonely, but safe.
    Oh, the wonderful things God has done for  me.  I am no longer who was was then, nor even who I was two years ago.  Theophostic Ministry (a type of healing prayer) is truly, deeply changing me the core of my being, from the inner depths to the outer indicators and actions.  According to TM's founder, Ed Smith, TM can change people's personalities, personalities are not a constant given as many have assumed or taught.   
    Ed Smith's point does seem true in my case.  I am no longer who I was.  So I ask again that age old question, "Who am I?"

First Lines Don't Tell

    My wise husband Collin (see his great blog!) often says, "Life is not a short story."

    What does he mean by that?

    Resurrect what your high school English teacher taught you as she helped you see the whole story in light of the first paragraph and how the first paragraph was a window into the meaning and direction of the ensuing story.

    People aren't like that.  We can't tell from a little sliver of interaction how they will interact in the following interactions.  We can't know a person's whole story from the first paragraph. Much as I'd like to.

    I'd like my world to be orderly.  I like to predict how people will act so that I can run away or come close depending on what feels good to me.  I sometimes fancy myself a very good reader of person and thus predictor and organizer of my world.

    Life doesn't work that way.  Especially life in the kingdom of Jesus.  He keeps calling me out of my comfort zone,  keeps asking me not to withdraw from people who have hurt me.

    Take yesterday.  I awakened with chills and skills racing through my mind regarding how to handle the upcoming conversation with an acquaintance at church, a leader.  Then I prayed with my husband and I lapsed into tears, feeling overwhelmed (grief again).

    I'd formed my impressions of the woman I was to meet with, "Sally,"  from just two encounters.  I'd seen Sally handle the needs of a newcomer at church all wrong. She sent him away without being able to make the phone connection he needed with a cab company or the offer of a ride - just "go look for a phone over by Draegers." She turned to me and another woman and said, "He's a big boy.  He can take care of himself."

    Yet, I'd seen the look of anxiety on his face.  I felt bad for this Atlanta businessman stuck in our too-busy-to-help your California church.  He needed to get back to  his hotel on time to pick up his luggage and reach the airport.  I wanted to do something for him, but effectively this leader had told us that we shouldn't do anything more.

    I typed this woman as not having the "Good Samaritan" spirit because she failed this man. I also figured it had to do with culture - you know, the big city culture instead of the town one, the "independent, take care of yourself" culture instead of the hospitality and taking care of each other I've seen in Japan.

    When I met with SAlly this week, I tried to bring my issue with what she'd done in as gentle a way as possible.  "I know I've seen only a sliver of who you are and this is probably not the way you are all the time and there's probably lots I don't know about the situation."

    I had the words to say to her right - not presumptuous -  but in my heart I thought she was wrong.

    Wrong - oh. Oh, it's me.  After hearing her story, I'm not sure whether she did the wrong thing or not.  I certainly know that she does have the giving, caring, go-out-of-your way spirit of a helper of strangers.  I had evaluated her by the opening sentences.  I was wrong.

    It goes the other way too.  I can't predict whether a person will always understand me and be sensitive to my desire/need to be appreciated and affirmed. 

    Take my counselor whom I saw yesterday.  (And, ironically, of the same first name as the other woman!)  At the end of the session I felt hurt and, to be honest, angry.  I wanted to withdraw and not reveal anything more to her. Like not making another appointment (even though I've seen this lady some thirty times and God has used her significantly in my life).

    God said, "Don't you do it."

    Yes, master. If you say so.  I was not happy about telling the counselor my feelings, about exposing my hurt with the possibility that she wouldn't understand and I'd feel even worse afterwords.

    Well, she did understand and showed it and apologized.  Still, the words she added chilled me again.  "Probably because of the way we interact, this will happen again."

   

Again! She's the licensed professional  Why should I have to go through this again!  Why can't she be consistently accepting and affirming?  I want to retreat.

    Carol, listen to yourself.  Is that all you want?  To feel better, safe?

    No, I want to be like Jesus.

    God, you haven't given me a short story.  You ask me to let in unpredictability.

    I want to control my life and keep it easy, but you keep calling me to more steps of growth and dependence on you. It reminds me of the parable in the Bible where a master gives a talent (money)  to a servant.  When he invested and got a good return, the master didn't just say,  "Thank you and now you can have a rest."  The master gave him more talents - more responsibility, more risk-taking  Yes, more.

    Or, for those of us into reading to small children, "If you give a mouse a cookie, he'll ask for a glass of milk."   So God also keeps asking for more. Hmm . . . what have I made God into here?

    Yes, He's more much more, and he keeps giving me more and more - more richness and more trumpets calls to follow him despite my fears and pain with the promise of beauty, joy and goodness.

Spring Awakenings

    Normally, I'm able to wake in the morning with a get out and go zeal, singing like a "morning bird." But in the past days I'm come to consciousness with a sense of uneasiness and dissatisfaction with relationships and life.  Remnants of disturbing dreams mock me when I awaken.
    Today before I moved my hands to pull back sheets, I chose to praise God for the joys of Saturday, the day prior.  I anticipated and gave thanks for the joys of that morning, my first Easter with my mother gone.
    Yesterday carried such an extreme range of emotions. Exuberance at the beauty of the day, elation as I sang songs commemorating Christ's coming to life again, and enthusiastic belief and acceptance that God indeed was making my life new.  The warmth I felt for a woman I encountered at church, a woman who has shown herself controlling and dominating, surprised me. That I could feel love genuine for her gave me a sense that I am indeed being changed by Jesus. And that is good news indeed.
    But also in the quiet moments at home I felt quite hurt. Though I knew rationally that I shouldn't be feeling this way,  a sense of rejection and exclusion came over me.  I was saddened, even angered a ibt, that my kids weren't doing things my way.  Instead of choosing to be with me in the kitchen or to have some family time, the two of them played and giggled together as they did egg hunts for each other, took photos and then viewed them on the lap top.
    Rationally, I knew this was a wonderful thing.  They get along with each other! They enjoy each other! This is what I've prayed for.  It's a marvelous thing, something I didn't experience much in my days of hunting for Easter eggs.
     (And, in case my kids read this, please understand I'm speaking "Venetian" here - over generalizations, how I "feel" about it, not necessarily exactly what happened. In many ways my teens did try to please and honor me.)
    I didn't express to my daughters my sense of hurt and rejection.  Instead, I went outside and studied the tall, frilly irises.  I cried, I grieved, I thought about when I first felt this sense of being excluded. 
    It wasn't with those with me today, but with a two-some within my family.  Grief poses in these childhood emotions resurfacing.  Being  in counselling also causes these emotions to well up. Emotions that I cut off and didn't experience when I was a child up now rise up out of their graves and haunt me.
     I don't want to become like my mother.  I don't want to channel my fear of losing relationships into destructive attempts to control or withdrawal. So I need to feel what's at the root and bring that to Jesus.  I wrestled with that all afternoon.
    Before our 5:30 dinner I asked God to help to be fully emotionally present when a friend came over to join us and in our family time afterwords.  My kids have complained some lately about my body being there but not mind and heart.  They sense that  I'm living in the moment, but isntead mulling over other relationships or my lists of things to do.  This is bad.  This is a destructive way to handle grief.
    God answered my prayer that I could be present. Time with my friend was good and we ended with prayer.
    At 8 pm, after dishes were done, two of us in the Park family took turns being royalty- a new "game" suggested in a magazine. (The other two Park players will take their turns on another occasion.).
    Sheri joyfully employed her half an hour as princess to become an Irish dance teacher with us three bumbling dancers.  Delight filled her face as she ordered us in complicated steps, and then in progressively simpler ones as she saw how hard it was for us.  After some consternation and initial resistance from Jenny, we all had fun following her lead.
    In Jenny's turn to be princess, she asked for bedtime stories from Collin. We all lounged on couches and easy chair in the living room while Collin read three Bernstein Bears book to us.  I hadn't heard those (and hadn't missed it) for years! I became so relaxed I extended back my green leather chair and grabbed a few minutes of snoozing.  I felt warm and connected with my family after giving our children the freedom to be royalty for thirty minutes each.
    I went to bed more convinced than ever how much I need Christ to save me.  He only is the one to save me from from myself.  Left to myself I would resort to always working or distracting myself from emotions I need to feel and tend too. 
     Jesus only can give me the strength and courage to embrace humility and to let others have their freedom and choices,  Even when those I count on don't recognize what I think I need or want.
     He only can give me the reassurance I so crave. In the end, I am loved.

Why Bother?

    Someone asked me, "How are you growing through this experience with your friend?"  Good question. I think she was wondering why I was bothering to keep trying.  Here's my reply.
    I'm undoing a number of decisions I made as an infant when I felt others' anger and abandonment.  I turned away from these to trusting in Jesus to take care of me.  One assumption that I've often operated under is that people aren't able to handle my emotions.  People will leave me if I make known my pain, so it's better to live in my head. 
    So just the act of sharing my hurt and anger with my friend this last week, embarrassing and humiliating as I found it to be, was an act of growth.  More pain too came when I didn't get the response I wanted. 
    Did that make the interaction fruitless?  No, I'm not going backwards. As I've told my friend, the intensity of my hurt comes not from the present, but from the past.  Yes, wrong was done in the present, but the depth of my anger comes from what I experienced as a baby. Grief at mother's death is a part of my intensity too.
    Pain in the present is a door I can open to take me into the past.
    My counselor  does a form of Theophostic Ministries where a good portion of the time is spent in prayer. We ask Jesus to take us back to the source and root of the pain.  He did that for me.
    I hate going back there. I resist going there.  I occasionally forget my counselling appointment or, when I go, I keep things more on the surface. I can't be pushed there or I blank out.  It has to be my choice. But I did go there this time and it was easier than the first time. 
    Jesus is helping me see some of the decisions I made as an infant and to turn from those. We prayed prayers like, "I renounce always being a victim and always having to be in control."  "Renounce" here means a decision or vow that I made, albeit unconsciously - I was very, very young. I renounced the decision to not be a burden to others or to not tell others my emotions. I renounced the decision to always be distrustful. We prayed against terror, panic and fear.  Many, many other prayers were prayed too. 
    These prayers are powerful.  I've experienced in the past how they open up for me new paths to walk in.  Instead of just unconsciously continuing in my ruts, I see new options.  Through these prayer sessions I've been able to step out from under the yoke of fear, suspicion and shame.  Not that I knew I was under that yoke beforehand!  We often live our lives, thinking we're fine, until pain shows us we're not.
    A friend, who also is a counselor and has experienced and does for others Theophostic Ministries (TM), said once, "You have to be in a lot of pain to do TM."
    So that's what I got out of this conflict - motivation to go do TM work again and find more healing and freedom for my daily life.

   
   

My Stomach Speaks

    My stomach doesn't know peace yet.  I thought my heart did when I lay myself in bed.

    I haven't been sleeping well since a conflict with a girlfriend.  I talk to her tomorrow (oops, today - since it's 4:10 am now).  My stomach awakened me at 3 a.m.

    Sarah Groves sings about being truly alive. I love that song, but dang is it hard!

    In my last counseling appointment we asked God to show me what early memories were associated with the intensity of hurt I was feeling with this girlfriend. An image came that has often come came again.

    It was me kneeling be my bedside as a child, crying, knowing soon my mother would come and say, "Stop crying or I'll give you something else to cry about!"

    I learned not to feel.  I disassociated because the feelings were to painful and there was little comfort to be had at home after I was two years old.

     When I  last met with my counselor two weeks ago,  I renounced the decision I made as a child to disassociate. After that images came  of me at two and being six, but they were just outlines,  two dimensional figures where I couldn't see my eyes, hands or nose. I was lying flat on the ground.Those two figures lay in a pond,  head to head, as if dead.  One small, one larger.

   

Gross.  That's what I was as a child, dead inside.  Then I saw those figures getting up and a series of such outline figures consolidating into each other.

    I cried buckets then and the next day. I did meet Jesus there in the counselor's office.  I sat on his lap and then He played with me.  He let me slide down his knee and hide under his white long garment. I felt happy and safe, but the counseling time ended too soon. Another person had to have there turn and I wasn't ready to leave yet.

    When I awakened the morning after meeting the counselor, I felt despair.  I wanted to die.  Fortunately I could go back to that image of being with Jesus and find some hope there.

    Don't get me wrong, I don't often feel like I want to die - in fact, that may have been the first time ever that I felt that feeling. Perhaps it had been there all along, bottled up, pushed under. And the despair did go away. But I write it because it shows the powerful feelings locked up inside that came bursting out with those prayers to renounce the vow to disassociate.

    I don't often want to go to those hidden, deep places of my heart and mind. In fact, last week I was baking a cake when the counselor called to say, "I thought we had an appointment."  I wanted to be there, but some part of me didn't want to be there I think.

    I go again tomorrow. For you praying types, please pray. Purity is hard work.

Good Grief

    I grew up hearing "Good grief!" spoken as if it were an expletive, since my Baptist family refrained from words like "hell" or "shit".   We had all the same emotion in annoying circumstances, we just used different words, like,  "Shoot!"  (not that that makes us any better as persons).   The accent was always on grief  when we said, "good grief"  -- never on good.
    But that phrase has come to have a new meaning for me.  Grief is good.  Grief is necessary.  Grief is vital, especially after losing a parent as I and many others have experienced this last year.  I must enter grief - feel it, reflect on it, come before God and hear him - so that I can be set free.
    I returned two nights ago from a twelve day sojourn in "Paradise"  - the islands of Hawaii and Oahu where my husband's parents and siblings and their families live. Amid the pleasures and distractions of warm air and water, relatives and friends, shopping, I took time to grieve.  I'm glad I did.
    Here's what I wrote several days after Christmas as I sat on a patio in Hawaii accompanied by the songs of colorful birds, spikes of yellow ginger flowers and the sea shining blue far below me:

    I feel sad this morning, very sad.  It's about never having had the kind of connection I desire with my mother and sister.  I enjoyed yesterday's time with my friend, yet I'm sad that  parts of me  she will never understand.  And life is so full of relationships that promise to  meet my longing to be known and understood, yet then those promising relationships can't be sustained.  Sometimes they even break violently.
    I'm sad too that I disappoint or hurt my husband Collin and my daughters.  Words and images of that happening during the last day or two fly before my mind.  Little words, little turnings away from others.  I'm sad that acting on what I want denies others what they want.  Sad that I fail to understand often what Collin needs at the time he desires it.   I'm sad for the many years of livign athome with Mom and Dad and feeling little connection.
    I breathe deeply in and out, exhaling the rotten, depleted air and breathing in new and deep.  "Come Spirit of God, Spirit of truth, reveal yourself to me."
   I admit: I have failed my own dear ones.  Maybe this knowledge of my own failure despite my earnest attempts is meant to lead me to humility.  (And I did pray for that lately--a dangerous prayer to make.)  Maybe this pain at my own failures will enable me to feel and act with mercy towards those who have hurt me.   Those hurts I receive from others which go deep and wound my heart were often done nunwittingly.  The perpetuators have little idea what they've done.
    Nothing in this world can ever deeply, ongoingly satisfy.  Not even Paradise.
    Yet now, I smell the sweet ginger of forgiveness, of being forgiven as I have forgiven others.

   
   

Looking in His Love Eyes

    This post will make more sense if you read yesterday's post first.

    Yesterday I went to see a counselor.  We started by asking God's protection over the time, that no lying spirits would speak, only the Spirit of truth, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

    Now I know that for some of you reading this, that might make no sense at all - -- might seem like a bunch of mumbo jumbo.  Your reaction might be similar to that I feel when I see people using crystals.  I hope you hear me out anyways.

    I told Susan, the counselor, of a time when I was a kid -- of six?  eight years? -- when I had some disagreement with my mom.  My mom was incensed at my lack of respect -- probably the tone of voice I used.  I don't think I called my mom any names, even as a teenager.  She told me that when my dad got home, he would deal with me.

        Well, he did.  With his belt.  The first and the last time he did that.  Even now I can see him out on the concrete patio pulling his thin, brown leather belt out of the grey loops of his trousers.  It's been just a shadow of a memory in my mind lately, no feeling attached to it.  But as I talked to Susan the dread came ebbing back, then a flood of terror and anger.  I felt betrayed by my dad.  He hadn't even listened to my side of the story -- just acted on what my mom said.

       Susan asked me, "What did you decide on the basis of that?" 
       "To be very good and very smart."

       That sums up well the thrust of my life -- such a burden.  After this, I explored wtih Susan another memory that portends me taking on jobs too big for me in order to forestall conflict, keep anger at bay.

       No violence in that next memory, but still it brought momentous effects.  I was a child of perhaps ten (old enough that my siblings had stayed home from this binannual trip to southern CA to relatives).  I was trying to read a map and give my dad directions of how to go through Pasadena.  No one had taught me how to read a map and I didn't feel competent.  I didn't like the job but did it to preclude my mother taking that role and the inevitable anger and arguement between her and dad if she did so.  I hated (and still hate) open expressions of anger between people. 

    What's the point of all this?  I asked Jesus to come into these memories and I believe I'm a new person as a result of that.

     The details:  After I asked Jesus to come, at first I just saw myself with a plexiglass cube around my torso.  It  extended in front, on my sides and behind me so that I was shielded.  It represented my defenses, the protection devices I've devised to keep people from getting too close and hurting me further.

    I decided I wanted the hard rigid sides of my cube protection off, despite that being scary.  I don't know whether I took it off or Jesus.  But repentance is like that -- I do it, but God helps me do it.   Then I saw myself naked with barbed arrows going through me.  It hurt. A lot.

    I asked Jesus's help.  He took them out, but big round holes as big as nickels remained.  I looked at myself and saw the blood trickling down from some twenty scattered holes. He took a white cloth and wiped them clean and applied salve. 

    Then he invited me on his lap.  I sat there on his soft, brown robe extended wide over his spread knees.  I wanted to cuddle with him but was afraid of messing him up.  He told me, "Don't worry.  I don't care."  Then I leaned against his breast. 

     I wanted to look into his eyes, but couldn't see his face.  So I asked him why.  I heard an old song, "Look into my love eyes . . . I washed you with the blood flowing from those love eyes."   I knew then I need to keep looking in Jesus's eyes so as to feel the love from him, know him as my source of rightness and  that would diminish the pain of others' anger.

    I came home feeling free of an immense burden, feeling loved.  I decided I needed to relax that night, not do more unpacking.  In the hours since then, I keep hearing the  echo, "Look into His love eyes."   So although I'm sad that a given person is mad at me, I'm not paniced, not turning it over and over in my mind as I normally do. When I think of Jesus I see a big smile and feel a light beam chasing away intruding darkness.