A time for every purpose under heaven:

…A time to embrace,

And a time to refrain from embracing;

Ecclesiastes 3

Ever tried to hug someone and felt their refusal to accept your embrace? Perhaps they stiffened up or went limp or distanced themselves and you knew that for whatever reason, they were not okay with your embrace.

It’s not always easy to embrace. Embracing involves risk and implies willing acceptance, whether another person, an idea, a view, yourself, your circumstances, or maybe your history.  Usually our refusal to embrace has more to do with our own selves and our own heart than with whatever or whomever we refuse to embrace.

As of late, I’ve been thinking about how at times it has not been easy for me to embrace myself.  I’ve been finding that my ability to love others and embrace them is dependent upon my ability to embrace myself.

Sometimes when we who are followers of Christ begin to understand that the Word says we must deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Jesus, we forget that Jesus also said we are to love ourselves as we love others. And to be able to accept both of those truths at the same time seems impossible. So we try to choose one or the other of the truths and find ourselves off balance.

One of the beautiful things about Jesus is His ability to be both/and at the same time. For example, He is both mercy and truth. We humans have difficulty being mercy and truth at the same time. Christ both accepts our struggles and challenges them, and yet it is more difficult for us to do the same. As humans, we have difficulty being both/and.  We can’t figure out how to deny ourselves and love ourselves at the same time. We find it hard to love ourselves for who we are at that moment and yet believe in and hope for who we will become. We are challenged to love others for who they are presently and yet believe and hope in who they will become.

I spent a lot of years denying myself, or so I thought, but what I was really denying was my fears, my struggles, my pain. That is quite different than denying yourself. To deny one’s selfish instincts, one’s desire to manipulate others, one’s lack of compassion, etc., is completely different than denying one’s heart. 

I’ve spent a lot of time in the past two years learning to accept my own heart.  I’ve been learning how not to deny reality, whether it be the reality of my own history or the reality of my present circumstances. And in doing so, I have been learning to love myself. I’ve had moments when I looked at my own childhood and had to say, “That wasn’t okay. That wasn’t right.” So my embracing has been not an embracing of the bad things but of my heart in those moments.

Brian Andreas, who has a line of art called Story People, wrote something I love for a piece of art called Open Heart. He wrote this verse,  “He told me one time he forgot himself and his heart opened up like a door with a loose latch and he tried for days to put it all back in proper order but finally he gave up and left it all jumbled up there in a pile and loved everything equally.”

I framed that piece of art and hung it on my wall. I must admit that sometimes people read it, scratch their heads, and go, “Huh?” But for me, it is a description of loving my process of learning to love myself.

Well, I realize I am being somewhat philosophical this morning, but I believe that for some of you, today is going to be an “aha” moment for you.  You will be challenged to be true to yourself. You will be challenged to love yourself and in doing so, you will find that you can begin to understand, ah, perhaps embrace, what Jesus said.  You can begin to truly love others because you love yourself. As you offer kindness to your own heart, you can truly offer kindness to the hearts of others. As you begin to look back at your own story and have compassion for yourself in your struggles, learning perhaps that you were wounded or scared or abandoned or unloved, and have compassion for yourself at that past moment, then you can begin to embrace your story. I am finding that it is in my story that I discover the keys to who I am today and who I am destined to be for it is my story that empowers me to touch the lives of others.

So dear believer, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is not impossible at all. Difficult perhaps, but not impossible. Your mission is to embrace. Yourself first.  Your flaws, your failures, and your glory. Then others. And in doing so you will fulfill the second commandment of Christ, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  In fulfilling the second commandment, we can better gauge how well we are fulfilling the first, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, and your soul,” for loving God results in loving others and loving ourselves.

There is a time to embrace and it is today. Fling wide your arms to embrace. Open the latch on your heart, let it all tumble out, and love it all equally, have compassion on your own heart and the heart of others and perhaps you will find God’s heart in the process.

A time for every purpose under heaven:

    A time to be born,

                And a time to die;     Ecclesiastes 3

We, as humans, live with the knowledge that one day we will die.

Maybe I am thinking about this since I am about to have my 50^th birthday. Now I am not planning to die anytime soon, but I am beginning to live with the realization that I am aging. I must admit it is bothering me a little. I have told all my friends and family that there better not be any black balloons at my birthday party. I may be aging, but I am not dying and I do not want to cry at my party.  

Some of my family and friends have been asking me what I’d like to receive as a gift on this special birthday.  When my daughter-in-law asked what I wanted, I gave her the name of an anti-aging cream!  

I don’t think of myself as, well, older.  In some ways, I still think I am that invincible teenager who could fearlessly climb to the top of a cheerleading pyramid.  Surely I am still that young girl who woke up at 6 a.m. ready to conquer the day and needing no coffee to do so.  

But I have come to accept, reluctantly, that my body is aging. I have joints that ache, mostly from jumping off pyramids!  And my body says that it would have been much wiser to have taken better care of it before now.

It is difficult to live with the realization that everyone eventually dies when you are very young.  But as we age, we begin to have this understanding  that are bodies are temporal, and yet we believe and know that we are more than just a physical body. We are body, soul, and spirit. 

 So as I find myself about to turn 50, I also find that my “inner person” is becoming more alive, more understanding, more fulfilled, more confident.  I recently read an interesting study from a group of sociologists at the University of Chicago which found that senior adults are more content than any other age group – despite their aches, pains, and accumulated losses. The study stated that the odds of being happy increased 5 percent with every 10 years of age.

I noticed this recently at our church. We had a class on ballroom dancing. It was beautiful to see those who are slightly my senior having so much fun as we ventured out from ballroom dancing to the Electric Slide.  I could just sense their confidence in themselves.  Despite a few aching joints, they went for it! And they went for the Cupid Shuffle, and the Swing, and anything else that was thrown at them.  At times we laughed until tears ran down our cheeks, and I could sense the joy and contentment in my older friends.

So even though I am not a senior adult, and I refuse to accept any of those senior adult discounts, I find a sense of being content in my own skin at 50 that I didn’t have at 30. (Suddenly I am finding a new confidence in Dillard’s department store.  They have an ad that plays over the sound system declaring, “Did you know that 50 is the new 30?”) I  find that I am less concerned about what others think and more at peace with my own heart. I find that as I realize there is a time to die, I long to make a difference in the days I live. People are more important than things, and enjoying the present moment is easier. I realize, in a new way, that my life is about my relationships with God, others, and myself. 

I am living more with purpose in mind. As the puzzle pieces of life snap together, I see the picture more clearly.  I take more time for enjoying people and less for work.  

I guess I am growing up. My dreams are less about success and more about living. I am planning new things, like going to Thailand to help with the work in ministering to young girls who have been sold into the sex slave market. I am less content to live for less than something purposeful.

Because there is a time to die, I want my life to count.

I have been gripped recently by the thought that when I die and my life is reflected upon by others (hopefully!), what would I want that to look like? If I live with dying in mind, how would that change the way I live? If I could write my own epitaph, what would I say? And could I live that epitaph?

So as a challenge to myself and as a way to set my mark on my goal, here is what I would want it to say.

She loved well

And lived fully

She never ceased to grow emotionally, mentally, and spiritually

Although she has now changed worlds,

Before she left she changed us

By learning to live in peace

And purpose

With integrity

And courage

Regrets, imperfections, pain, and failure

Led her to live in grace and love, mercy and kindness

As she lived learning to love herself and others

With the love which now has transformed her to heaven

Where she is completely free and fully alive

So if I can write my epitaph (It will have to be a big tombstone; you know I don’t write short stories!), I pray I can learn to live it. Okay, I admit that I have an issue with control but I release my family ahead of time from any real expectation of using my pre-written epitaph. 

What would you want your epitaph to say?  Perhaps some of you will take the time to write your own epitaph and set your mark on living it as well.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… 

Ready or not – Here I come! 

The object of the old childhood game is to hide well enough that no one will find you. If no one finds you, you win.

I think that is a pretty good picture of how we often live.  We look for the best hiding places; places to hide our true heart, our emotions, our giftings, our anger, our thoughts.  We try to hide so well that no one will see us. And then, if no one finds us, we declare that we have won!

Yet when we choose to hide our true self in our relationships, instead of winning, we actually lose. We lose the opportunity to be truly known and loved for who we really are. 

We hide our faces, our hearts, our fears, and our failures from each other. We then declare that we have won. Oh, not verbally, but deeply within our hearts. It is too risky to allow someone else to see our most intimate thoughts and feelings. We even convince ourselves that we can hide from God. And the paradox of it all is that in the hiding of our hearts, we effectively prevent ourselves from receiving the love of God and the love of others. 

We haven’t really changed so much since the days of Adam and Eve. We have tried to hide behind our fig leaves and convince ourselves that God won’t really know what we’ve done. Just like Adam and Eve, we try to hide ourselves from the presence of God. We often hide because we are afraid.  We believe that if God really sees us as we are – in our failure – surely He will be angry with us. And we neglect to acknowledge that All things are naked and open to the eyes of Him… Hebrews 4:13 and that in our nakedness, He has offered love and acceptance. 

But the beauty of the great romance that God enters into with us is perhaps best framed by the wonder that He never gives up. He is relentless.  He can always see where we’ve hidden. He never gives up in His pursuit of us. Yet He doesn’t force us out of hiding. He woos us and whispers for us to come to Him. He calls our name just as he did Adam’s, and by that very call, He shows that He knows us. He personally identifies us. 

He speaks right into the darkest places that we’ve hoped He wouldn’t see. He calls us to deal in truth with our own hearts. And then He replaces our fig leaf covering with the covering of Christ, the only one which can ever truly cover our sin.

Have we somehow pictured the image of God in the garden as one of an angry God? Would we dare to see His image as a God who is a “Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”?  Can we see His face as Adam and Eve left the garden….so saddened because Adam and Eve had chosen to live in a way that trusted their own hearts more than they trusted the heart of God? 

Could we say that we cannot truly allow God to love us unless we trust Him?

The same scripture that tells us that He is acquainted with grief, also tells us that He is tender and that He was wounded for us because with all His heart, He just wants to be with us. We are the ones who wounded Him, and yet He has overcome and pursues us still. 

I picture the little girl who was deeply injured. Her parent tried to look at the injury. The little girl screamed and kicked. The pain was too much. The pain caused her to withdraw from the source of her help. She wanted to handle it her own way. Yet the parent was tender, pursuing the child, and holding her until her emotions calm down and she gives up her fight. The parent has overpowered her because of love. Love knows it would be cruel to allow this little girl to face her pain alone. It would be cruel to leave the dirt in the wound. It would surely scar even more if it was not cleansed. The parent sees the big picture and does what seems painful at the moment, but what is healing in the long run. 

And there we find God’s heart. Pursuing us. Holding us while we kick and scream. Staying until we relax and offer our trust to Him. He washes the dirt away. It burns. We cry out. But He keeps on. He covers our wound with the Balm of Gilead. He knows we need to allow Him do the painful work that is necessary for us so that we might be healed, completely. 

The big picture doesn’t scare God away. He already sees it. He has already been there. No matter how long it takes for us to relax and learn to trust Him in the middle of our pain, He is committed to us. He is committed to the process. And He is the only one who can truly cleanse us, purifying our wounds, allowing the uncomfortable process of healing to begin, and carrying us during our painful times believing that we can learn to trust Him during times of woundedness and times of healing and wholeness. 

And as we learn to walk in trust, we can take the masks off our faces; we can confront our fears; we can face our failures; and in it all, we can discover the heart of God. 

A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him. 

Yes, we are just like Adam and Eve. Hiding our faces. Hiding behind temporary coverings. But we when calm down as a little child in daddy’s lap, He tenderly cleanses us, cover our wounds with healing balm, and we feel His strength. We are close enough to hear His heartbeat. And we “get” it. We “get” Him. For a while. Then as we heal, we climb down out of His lap and run and play again only to eventually find ourselves wounded again. But as time goes on, what He wants is for us to learn to trust. He longs for us to remember how He cared for us before and allow Him to do it again. 

Can you hear Him? 

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… 

Ready or not – Here I come. 

Open for me, my love…Song of Solomon 5:2