Archive for Authenticity
Honest Anger
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A few years ago, I invited a counselor friend of mine, Susi Harbour, to come to our ladies’ retreat and administer a personality test to our ladies. I had already taken it once and thought it would be fun and useful for the ladies of our church to know more about themselves and how they ticked. Susi suggested adding an anger inventory to the activity. “Okay, sure,” I said. I suppose I didn’t quite get the purpose of the whole thing, but I figured it’d be interesting.
As I sat at the table with other Christian women leaders, I was surprised that they were such fire balls! They apparently had lots of anger! I, on the other hand, scored “anger avoidance” as my style of dealing with anger. I didn’t really think that was such a bad thing. I mean, after all, I was a godly woman. I was extremely patient. I almost never spoke sharply to anyone and had lots of grace for others. Well, as it turns out, I had a lot to learn about how to deal with my anger and what healthy anger was.
Just a short time later, my world crashed. I was drawn into a whirlwind of pain, gossip, betrayal, fear, threats, and just plain lack of people skills and Christian love, and my anger style kicked into overdrive!
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Living Intentionally
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Live intentionally… by your sacred design…and experience what happens. These words on my friend’s blog* stopped me.
What does it mean for us to live intentionally?
How much of your 2010 was intentional?
When I reflect upon 2010, I recall some very intentional significant moments. I also realize that there were moments, hours, days, and maybe even weeks that just happened. And such is the nature of our lives too often.
Yesterday, I did something intentional. I took a step to reconnect in an authentic way with someone I love. It was something I had thought about doing many times, yet I had just not done it. There were several really good reasons. It involved risk. Vulnerability. Intimacy (not just for marriages… “In-to-me-see”).
My intentional step gave me inner peace.
As I reflected on this today, I began to think of the definition of repentance. It seems we can often relegate the idea of repentance to whatever “big” sins we have committed or what we view others as having done to us. Yet today I thought of how repentance is a necessary component of our lives and relationships for we often fail each other, whether intentionally or through neglect or the lack of purposefulness.
Although we can never be assured or guaranteed that another person will respond to our repentance with grace and acceptance, we can find inner peace by our intentional actions.
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What the World Needs Now
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"We are called to reach people who need to see some humanity.” This comment by a friend of mine resonated with my heart. Let me explain.
Somehow the church of the living God has adapted a mindset that encourages hypocrisy in our members. We have become a culture of people who are unwilling to be real. We are afraid to take off our religious masks. We have the sneaky suspicion that to do so would mean being judged by our church and our “friends”.
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The Starting Point
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Sometimes the processes of our lives could be best represented by a circle. We start at a certain point, sure that we have all the answers, cocky, self-assured, ready to conquer the world and move aside all the poor fools who have so much less understanding than we do. However, life with its hard knocks and deep valleys, has a way of enlightening us and leveling the ground of our self-importance. We often find that we weren’t quite as “right” as we first thought. We come full circle and learn to see the wisdom in some of the ones who have gone before us in this journey called life. We experience hurt and pain. We are wounded.
And a most peculiar thing happens for those who open their hearts to learn. We find that our wounds have the potential of becoming a source of healing for others.
I suppose that we have two basic choices when life wounds us – and it always does in one way or another. We can shake our fists at the pain, curse those who brought it, and become angry, resentful, and bitter, demanding payment from the world and life itself for surely we deserve retribution for the wrongs committed against us. Or we can allow God to bring beauty out of our woundedness.
If we are to truly make a difference in this life, it seems to me that the starting place for that is the place of our woundedness. Why would such a thing be true?
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A Time to Embrace
Posted by: | CommentsTo everything there is a season,
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.
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