Category Archives: Life Lessons

Life Lessons

Her name was Tina

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She was 7 years old, skinny, often unkempt, a wild little thing who screamed like a banshee, knew cuss words no little girl should know, and was quite the disruptive influence at the church school her grandparents paid for her to attend.

Somehow she stole my heart. I was 19 or 20, still young and idealistic, and I had not yet outgrown my childhood notion that love was enough to heal and fix anything. She was as drawn to me, a childcare worker at the school, as I was to her. At first she called me “Teacher”. Then she broke my heart by calling me “Mommy”.

Her mother, a single mom and an alcoholic, bought her a Raggedy Andy doll so that Tina could, as she claimed her mother told her, “also have a man in her bed at night”. She told me of what sounded like a steady stream of men in her mother’s bed, about fixing her own suppers, and about getting herself ready for school in the morning.

No matter how early I arrived to open up the church before morning day care started at 7:00am, it seemed that Tina would be waiting for me alone on the playground, underdressed for the weather, blonde hair all a mess, her thin little arms wrapped around herself, shivering. I would bundle her in my sweatshirt and hold her in my lap until she warmed up. It was one of those times that she started calling me “Mommy”.

She was impossible. She defied rules, tested boundaries, threw temper fits, fought with other children, and cussed like a little sailor. But she also sang the cutest rendition of both parts of Donnie and Marie’s signature duet that I’ve ever heard. And she craved affection and attention so desperately that it was painful to watch.

One day she flipped out when one of the school dads got playful with her. She shrieked, “Don’t molest me!!” and it scared him so much that he avoided her like the plague after that. I tried not to think about possible reasons for her reaction.

She was a bad influence on my little brother, and on a number of the other children. If she wasn’t clinging to me, I had to watch her like a hawk. She was a troubled little soul, desperately screaming for help.

One day she asked me if she could live with me, if I could be her mommy for real. I presented my case to my parents. In my naïveté, I actually thought I could ask her mother — who obviously didn’t want her — to give Tina to me, and I could raise her and love her to wholeness. Surely, despite my flaws and my youth, I would be a far better mother. We would live together in the “little house” behind the parsonage, and I would make sure she would not impose a burden on anyone else.

To me, she was worth turning my life upside down and backwards, worth giving up any hope of a “normal” future. How could I not do everything in my power to help her, to give her a better life, to rescue her, to save her?

I hated it when my mother would respond to my idealistic ideas with, “It’s not that simple.” This time I really hated it, because she was right.

And then Tina was kicked out of school. I marched into the principal’s office and demanded, pleaded, advocated, begged, guilted, quoted Scripture…you name it, I did it. How could we abandon Tina? Wasn’t she the sort of child who needed this school the most? The grandparents had sacrificed, skimping together money they didn’t have, in a desperate attempt to provide help for their little, troubled granddaughter — and we were tossing her out on her ear? I was eloquent and convincing…well, to my ears anyway. Everyone else seemed relieved to be free of the numerous ongoing and escalating behavior problems that were disrupting the other students. “We can’t sacrifice all the other students for one child,” the principal told me. “Why not?” I had the audacity to reply. “She needs us much more than they do.”

Just like that, Tina was out of my life. I never got to say goodbye, never saw or heard from her again. We had failed her. I was both angry and grieved.

The girl in this heartbreaking video reminded me of Tina…something about parts of her story, the way she looks and her outbursts of anger.

Tina impacted me more than she will ever know. I have no idea what became of her…if she’s still alive…if she even remembers me…I hope that she remembers that someone once loved her and believed in her, and thought she was worth rescuing. More than that, I hope that someone did in fact rescue her.

I hope her story had a happy, hopeful ending, her own version of this one:

Forgiveness

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Like many survivors, I have been clobbered over the head with demands that I forgive those who have wounded and almost destroyed me. Some of those “clobbering” me have meant well; they believed that forgiveness was the key to my healing, or even that there was a magic equation whereby  forgiveness=instant healing.

Others were more selfish. If I forgave, they thought, all this unpleasantness would go away, we could forget anything ever happened, life would return to normal, and they wouldn’t have to be uncomfortable.

I know survivors whose friends and loved ones told them, “We forgave your rapists and we’re over it now! Why can’t you forgive and move on?”

In some Christian circles, unforgiveness and the resulting “bitterness” is seen as a worse sin than the original offense. I wish I could say I was making this up, but I’m not.

This — and other false, damaging teaching about forgiveness — grieves me so much that I have wanted for a long time to write a series of blog posts on the topic. The problem is that I’m still working out my own thoughts and beliefs. Even worse, I still balk and struggle.

From my own experience, I’ve learned that forgiveness often comes in stages, and that it requires a full understanding of the offense against us. To use a silly example, I might find it easy to forgive you if I thought all you did was steal some loose change out of my drawer. After all, it was less than a dollar. But if I discover you also took my life savings, that would be much harder to forgive. When we rush a rape victim to forgive, before she has had time to process what happened to her and assess the damages to her body and soul, before she has experienced life as a rape survivor beyond the immediate aftermath, it is far too soon for her to know the full extent of what it is that she is forgiving. To her, it sounds as if you are demanding, “Pretend it never happened. Get over it and love your rapist!”

Then again, I cannot ignore the Biblical commands to forgive…to love our enemies. I have come to the conclusion that these things are impossible…at least for me. That which we find impossible or difficult should never be what we demand and insisted upon for others. I have purposed to strike the words, “You need to forgive!” from my vocabulary.

At the same time, I believe that those of us who claim to follow Jesus will eventually be brought to that time and place where God asks us to do the seeming impossible. There are some who will experience a somewhat instant forgiveness breakthrough, like when Corrie ten Boom was able to forgive, when she met him years later, the concentration camp guard who treated her beloved sister so cruelly. (She tells that story here.) Others, like me, are more hard-hearted. I’ll be honest — I have struggled immensely to forgive the worst of my offenders. It came in stages and layers: I’ll forgive this part or this offense, but not this other thing. I argued with God, But this part — surely even You agree that it is beyond forgiveness! Look at the damage it caused! Look at what it cost me! Look at how evil it was! Somehow…eventually…God forgave through me, for me, in my place, and He freed me to forgive my rapists and others who had abused and mistreated me.

But recently — as in these past few days — God has shown me how unforgiving my heart still is. I claim to be a follower of Jesus, yet I still refuse to follow His example in forgiveness, especially for the day in and day out bumps and bruises we inflict on each other, knowingly or not, whenever there are imperfect people doing life together. But You don’t understand! I have the audacity to argue with my Creator, the One who created the universe. I have to see this person all the time and how do I know they won’t do it again? Besides, isn’t repentance a pre-requisite for forgiveness, and how can people repent if they don’t know the full extent of how badly I was hurt? I don’t think they even know how wrong it was!

God helps me in my human frailty. He is so good and so merciful. He puts up with me. He helps me. 

It wasn’t until after I experienced the joy of God enabling me to forgive more utterly and completely than I thought possible, to replace my hurt, suspicion, and withdrawal with more love than I thought my puny little heart was capable of — it was then that He reminded me of Jesus’s words on the Cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

I’m so unlike Jesus. It breaks my heart.

I don’t want to be like the unforgiving servant Jesus described in one of His stories. The immensity of my rebellion against God makes people’s sins against me pale in comparison — which is exactly the point Jesus was making. But sometimes forgiveness is more than just hard — it’s completely beyond me. It’s in His forgiveness of me, in His love for me, that I find the ability to do the impossible.

It’s in being able to forgive…the big and little things, the nagging things I don’t want to let go of…it’s in finally letting it all go — like smoke up a chimney — that I make one little faltering step closer to being more like the Jesus I claim to love.

When people whose opinions shouldn’t matter so much tear us down | Monday Motivation 

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I wrote this to myself over a year ago. Here’s hoping it will be an encouragement to someone else.

Chase God. He made you and He wants you. Just because He thinks you’re fearfully and wondrously made doesn’t mean sinful humans (e.g., everybody on earth) will agree. Lots of people think you suck. So what? In Heaven, it won’t matter. Don’t worry about them; they are His responsibility. Don’t worry about what they think about you. Their opinion is so flawed, ignorant, and inconsequential, that it is meaningless. Remember that: meaningless.

They do not know you. They do not define you. They are hell-bound sinners, dying for grace, just like you. You aren’t a step-child. They aren’t ahead of you in line. They can’t make Jesus love you less. 

He wants your extravagant worship. They aren’t capable of that. Because they think they haven’t been forgiven much. But you know. Pour it out; don’t be afraid of wasting anything…give…pour…toss it all at Jesus’ feet…tears and blood and brokenness and beautiful scars…don’t be afraid to be scandalous because His grace is scandalous. 

They will never get it. Not until they see Jesus face to face, and then…don’t envy them those first moments.

When you see Him, it’s doubtful you’ll need a smackdown. Keep it that way. Look forward to running into the Throne Room and jumping into Abba Father’s lap, but don’t take it for granted.

You have beautiful scars. You are a redemption story. You know reconciliation first-hand. Don’t forget that. Never forget that. Rejoice. Celebrate. Until He comes. Don’t expect them to do it. Do it…and celebrate. Celebrate — with wild abandon…with extravagance…with every breath…

Even though some days I’m still not so sure about not needing that heavenly smackdown…

How not to be obnoxious after a short term mission trip

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I might as well admit this right up front: I have no idea how to accomplish this. In fact, I’m sure at least some people will find me obnoxious and insufferable — as well as even more bewildering and weird than usual — upon my soon return home, and that I will come across in those ways for a number of reasons. So I might as well warn everyone and apologize in advance.

It’s the little things. I now want to wear my Thai pants everywhere, having decided they are the most brilliantly comfortable garments known to humankind. I want to greet everyone in the traditional Thai manner. I want to torment all my friends and relations with endless pictures and stories. I want to eat rice at every meal. (To answer your inevitable question, didn’t I get my fill of the food while in Thailand? — it seems not. Even now, before leaving, I am planning which Thai restaurants to check out back home.)

Don’t bother complaining about traffic around me, because I will only laugh and tell you, “This is nothing!” Same thing with the heat. Periodically, I will chuckle for no apparent reason or, even worse, exclaim something oddly random like “Star egg!” in my poor version of a Thai accent…and then laugh my head off at what will make no sense to you. Unfortunately, any attempt at explanation won’t help much.

It’s also the big things. For a while at least, I will have little or no patience for “first world problems” — neither mine nor anyone else’s. I’m going to feel strangely in and out of American culture, part yet not part, having again stepped outside of it for a bit. But there is more, much more…

If you are one of those men who think it’s “cute” or “funny” to objectify women, or who tries to claim that “men are just wired that way”, I have even less sympathy for your attitude than ever before. I’ve seen the end result of that mindset, walking down the streets of Pattaya. You may not be there, thinking that your money gives you the right to use and abuse women, but if you treat sex like a commodity, if you value women based on how their appearance and actions make you feel or how well they meet your “needs”, if you blame women for your own lust, if you feel so entitled that you think women are “defrauding” you by not fulfilling your desires, if you complain that your wife falls short of your sexual expectations or doesn’t fulfill your fantasies — in short, if you view women as anything less than God’s image bearers who are fully your equals — your attitude is, to put it bluntly, sinful and ugly. You may bristle at what I’m saying, but the sad truth is that you are at least somewhat sexually broken, even if you think you have never acted out. The good news is that Jesus died for broken people…like you…like me…like most if not all of us…but that doesn’t mean we should pretend that it’s ok to view women as anything less than who God created us to be.

If you are someone close to me, you might be baffled, or even dismayed, that I now care so deeply for mysterious people halfway across the world, people I hadn’t even met two weeks ago, people literally foreign to you. You might not understand why I weep over them and pray for them, or why I can’t describe what makes them so special to me. I will tell you stories, but my words will not do these people justice. I will show you pictures, but you will not see what I see. I can’t explain. I’m sorry.

To you, Thailand may be just a place, a country. Perhaps you’ve even visited there. But, as I wrote these words, I’m in a van headed for Bangkok. I’m fighting tears because I just left a huge chunk of my heart behind in Pattaya. Tomorrow I will board a plane, and it will feel like I’m watching another chunk of my heart fall to the ground as we take off. I thought the piece I left behind in Haiti over 25 years ago was a big deal, but it was only a sliver compared to this.

I am already planning my return trip. I want to leave yet more pieces of my heart behind next time, while at the same time filling my heart back up. I want to water the land with my tears. I want to hug the people I’ve learned to love. I want to hold women close in my arms and pray over them with every ounce of my being, full of joy and sorrow and hope and pain and the love of Jesus. 

Then there is something that I hope the people who mean the most to me will not find obnoxious at all.

This morning I stood up in a meeting and told the workers assembled there that I didn’t want to be one of those people who goes on a short term missions trip and then returns home, pats herself on the back, acts all self-righteous, and goes back to life as usual. 

Even before I left for Thailand, I was feeling restless…to be frank, I’m bored stiff with nominal Christianity. Being in Thailand only made things worse or, as I would prefer to think, better. I have no more desire for same old, same old — not when I’ve seen powerful answers to prayer, lives transformed, and God at work. I want to live life back home with my heart wide open. I want to be Jesus’ hands and feet wherever I go. I want to find out what God is doing, and get in on the action. It’s a lot easier to do that in a foreign land, with a wonderful team of great people working and praying with you, without the distractions of everyday life. It will be a different matter back home. My attempts to find a way to make a difference, to live a life that matters, to walk out God’s purposes for me — I’m not expecting that to go smoothly, without mess or mishap. Knowing me, there will be plenty of bumbling about, stumbling and falling. Some of my floundering may come across as obnoxious or weird…even more so than usual. I apologize in advance.

So, yes…I want to wear my Thailand pants everywhere. But, far more than that, I want to wear my Thailand heart. On my sleeve, if need be, for all the world to see. And I want Jesus to keep on changing that heart of mine, until it becomes more like His.

When weakness turns to strength

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Sometimes you are weak. Pain — be it emotional, physical, or spiritual — can be debilitating. Suffering can take an enormous toll on us.

There can be weakness for a season.

However, that sort of weakness, the type that is due to injury or trauma, does not make you a weak person. It just makes you a human person who is suffering for a season.

I’ve never had chemo, but I imagine therapy can be somewhat like it. You feel like throwing up a lot. You hope it kills the trauma before it kills you. You hope you survive it and the trauma. You hope it brings healing so that what you are enduring is worth it in the end.

It gets worse before it gets better.

I was blessed with a “tribe” who helped me through my painful healing process, and I sent them this message today:

It gets better. People kept telling me that over 5 years ago, when the pain of my past finally came crashing down on me full force. During the worst part of my healing, all I could see and feel was pain — overwhelming pain — and it was only the grace of God that brought me through those darkest hours.

You, my tribe, you were that grace lived out. When I was angry at God, when I felt utterly abandoned by Him, you all (even our wonderful resident atheist Jew) stood in His place for me and kept me going. You loved and accepted me. You called me on my bullshit. You gave me hope. You were light in the darkness.

It gets better. You were right.

I’m boarding a plane in the morning — and where I’m headed and what I’m doing there would have been impossible for me not that long ago. Love didn’t just save me — it gave me strength and it gave me wings.

Thank you. The words are so inadequate.

I explain where I’m going on my other blog.