Mikki's Blog - Living in the Grace and Love of God » Christian Living

The Shopping Cart from Hell

Mikki — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:11:33 +0000

It began innocently enough. I walked into the store and grabbed the first available shopping cart. I checked it out a bit to see if it rolled nicely and having not received any red flags, I took off. Well, let me back track momentarily and invite you more fully into the moment.

Grocery shopping is a part of my life that I have a love/hate relationship with. It can feel like a piece of heaven or an experience from the pits of hell.

At times, I enter the store and they’ve got Norah Jones playing. When that happens, I always muse at how smart the owners are. Who could refuse such a beautiful musical invitation to experience the moment? I inevitably slow down and shop longer when Norah is pouring out her heart over the airwaves. I mellow out, breathe, and linger to experience the wonder of choice, creativity, color, smell, and touch. I dream of savoring that spinach dip or the chocolate cake or the chicken enchiladas….

And then on other days, I am on mission. I plan out my time strategy. I will shop when there are not too many people in the store. I will begin on Aisle C and proceed to Aisle G and blaze out of the store through Aisle H. It’s the ‘divide and conquer’ strategy. With laser focus, I enter the store to “get” something. With my Superwoman cape in place, I have a silent inner goal: I will enter this store, find my purchases, and be back in the car in less than ten minutes! Watch out, fellow shoppers!

Yesterday was one of the ‘divide and conquer’ days. It had been a particularly tiring day, yet I knew that I must buy a few things at the store. “Not a big problem”, I thought. “I’ll just run in and out and be done in less than ten.” And as I said, I snagged a good cart and set out to put another notch in my Superwoman belt.

Just as I got a little too far away to conveniently change carts, it began. My seemingly good cart that, mind you, I took time to ‘test’, began to pull to the side. I found myself having to maneuver my body, twisting sideways, waging war with my shopping cart. The cart resisted me steadfastly.

I planted my feet with each step, challenging this cart to slow me down, yet the faster I tried to move, the more this cart withstood me. I was not to be beaten. I have a bit of a competitive streak, loving a good win in anything from Rook to Balderdash to football to shopping cart war. The only problem with using this outlook in grocery shopping is that a shopping cart cannot be easily influenced by my strategic planning.

I found myself leaning slightly forward over the cart, using my arms to influence the direction of the cart. I tugged and pulled and the cart pulled harder. I yanked and the cart accosted me. With too many items in my cart to begin over, I pushed forward toward the mark of the high calling of Superwoman.

Eventually arriving at the checkout, having not taken too much longer than ten minutes, I noticed that my heart was, well, not very peaceful. I was frustrated over having to fight that cart throughout the entire store. And I thought about how we often resist God’s Spirit, pulling the other way, our way, following our bent, our own strategies, endeavoring to divide and conquer when God is calling us to surrender our will to His.

I also thought of how God leads us, how He gently calls us to follow, lay down our agendas, and stay in step with Him.

I fear that I am too often like that stubborn wayward shopping cart and as a result, my path is difficult and bumpy, lacking flow and peace.

What about you?

Will you pause and ask Father if you are resisting His Spirit? Are you pursuing your own agenda and not His? Are you seeking your own way?

Will you commit to doing your life differently?

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us from our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9

The Shopping Cart from Hell

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How God Speaks to Us Through Our Emotions

Mikki — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 12:14:02 +0000

What emotions are you feeling right now? Can you name what is happening inside your inner world? Could God be speaking to you through your emotions?

Are you annoyed, ashamed, confused, hurt, depressed, jealous, anxious, fearful, stressed, angry, or sad?

While it may sound like a simple task to name what emotions you are experiencing, I haven’t always been able to do that and I’ve found in my work as a therapist, that many, many folks are not able to accurately name what is happening inside them.

One part of my journey during the last few years has been getting connected to my true heart and my emotional life.

I vividly remember taking an Anger Inventory at a ladies’ retreat a few years ago. I had organized the event for our church ladies’ group. A therapist friend of mine, Susi Harbour, administered a personality test and an anger inventory to our entire group, including the other speakers I had invited. I remember being shocked at the results of both my test and the tests of the other leaders who were seated around my table. My score indicated that I was rarely angry; it was actually more like a non-existent score. I’ve since told my friend, Susi, that she should have pulled me aside at that point and scheduled an intervention immediately! You see, what that screams to me now is that I was out of touch with my heart, unable to express my anger, and needed to learn new skills for handling intense emotions.

The other women at my table were, well, fireballs at times! Their intense emotions were strange to me. Could it be acceptable to feel such a range of emotions? Was it godly?

Within six months, my husband and I were in the middle of a terrible crisis and I found myself struggling to survive emotionally. Time and time again, I answered our counselor with a resounding, “No”, as he quizzed me as to whether or not I had shared my feelings about certain situations with my husband.

A long, long season of examination and growth have taught me that there were, in fact, lots of intense emotions in my heart, but I didn’t have a clue how to share them or feel safe with their intensity. And while that may be foreign to some of you, I had grown up in a home where avoidance and denial were our ways of relating. That does not mean that we didn’t have love, we did. You see, we should value the positive things in our lives, and yet move to change the negative.

Is it okay to be angry? Are we sinning when we are angry?

Scripture clearly answers such questions. God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are shown to have intense emotions, including anger. Certainly, the Godhead is holy, and experiences anger. But can we?

We have guidelines in the Word about how and how not to express our intense emotions, including anger. I’ve learned that anger usually comes from hurt or fear, and therefore must be attended to.

God gives us emotions as signals. These signals can tell us when our boundaries have been violated, when we have sinned and failed to repent, when we are living out of balance, when we are ignoring our physical health, spiritual health, mental or emotional health, and so much more.

So it stands to reason that if we are unable to properly name what is happening in our hearts, then we are not living from our truest heart.

Looking back, I can remember feelings of frustration, irritation, anger, fear, and more, and yet I couldn’t really name those feelings. You see, if I had attended to my feelings, I could have heeded the signals God was giving me. It might have changed nothing, but I would have been healthier emotionally. When my world fell apart, I eventually become severely depressed. Still unable to name or express my anger, loss, or grief, I turned it all on myself.

It’s been a long journey of learning new ways to relate and communicate and unlearning old dysfunctional ways.

I remember one day a year or so ago that I felt so angry at my husband. I went to him and spilled it all with intensity. When I stopped speaking, he smiled and clapped his hands and told me how proud he was of me for owning my feelings and sharing my true heart. We both laughed and enjoyed the moment that pictured how we both had grown.

Can we be led by our emotions in wrong ways? Certainly! Just as I had capped off and denied a lot of my emotions, others spew theirs in irresponsible ways and are led astray by their emotions. Either is unhealthy.

My journey has led me to live in more peace, more rest, and joy. No longer denying my emotions, I’ve connected to a more passionate life, both in my relationship with God and others. Passion and desire are God-given, and when used in healthy ways, allow us to live-fully here on the earth. There is only one word for desire in the New Testament. It can be positive or negative. It can lead us to truth and purpose-filled living or it can lead us to a life of sin.

I now regularly notice what my emotions are saying. When I feel disturbed, I stop and ask God what has happened. I can usually retrace my day back to a moment when I ignored my heart or spoke wrongfully or violated my healthy boundaries. In other words, I use my emotions as signals to tell me what is going on in my heart.

What are your emotions telling you today? Are you connected to God’s life-giving flow? Are you listening to how he may be speaking to you through your emotions?

Our life journey should include becoming increasingly emotionally healthy. After all, God made us body, soul, and spirit; our emotions are a part of our on-board equipment that God has given us all. Through a life in the Word, led by the Spirit, and connected to Christian community, our emotions can become powerful indicators so pursue living from the truest place in your heart! God is speaking!

How God Speaks to Us Through Our Emotions

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Use This in Case of Emergency

Mikki — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:10:22 +0000

A little over three years ago, God challenged me with a particular scripture. It was one of those times when I ‘heard’ the scripture reference spoken to me by God, not knowing its content. When I opened my Bible and read this verse, I knew intuitively by God’s Spirit that it was what we might call a ‘Now Word’ for me and my church family.

The verse was Isaiah 30:15 which states “For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: ‘In returning and rest you shall be saved: In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.’ But you would not.”

In the historical context, Israel was being invited into a place of rest with God where she would allow God to do what she could not do. She was being invited to access God’s help without going back to her slavery mentality. She was being challenged to lean upon God and not look to any other source for her help.

Isn’t it easy to look at such Bible passages and clearly see how a nation or an individual made huge mistakes? As we say, hindsight is 20/20.

Much more difficult is for us as individual believers to ‘get it right’ when we are faced with challenging circumstances. Our emotions rage and our minds whirl.

God offered me, and I believe He offered my church body, a specific invitation on that particular day. Some accepted the invitation at the moment. Some never even realized there was an invitation issued, and most of us passed for a day or two along the way and flunked many other days.

In truth, we were just like Israel, tempted to provide our own escape routes and reject God’s path for our great need.

When we walk through stormy seasons, everything within us that is unlike God, comes screaming forth. How can we possibly trust God during such days? It goes against everything in our flesh, our world system, and our woundedness. And then there is the element of spiritual warfare which we say we believe in but often fail to recognize until it is too late.

The sadness in God’s message is tangible when He says, “But you would not.” Other versions say, “You were not willing.”

I think of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem with deep grief and crying out, “How often I wanted to gather you to myself and you would not.”

How desperately we all need to be able to live in this place of rest! This rest allows us to access divine resources.

One of the most successful evangelists of the nineteenth century said,
"I used to think I had to do it and the result was great physical strain and exhaustion; but now I feel He has to do it through me: the responsibility His; the message His; the strength His."

The words of Jesus recorded in Matthew 11 give us the same invitation,
"Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.” (verse 29)

Do you need rest in your soul? The wonderful news is that you cannot manufacture such rest, but God will give it to you.

There is a strength that comes from returning to God’s heart and resting in His love and ability. There is strength in quieting our souls and resting confidently in our Father.

You don’t have to work for it; you simply must receive it and lean upon Jesus for the continual flow.

You’ll know when you’ve connected to this heavenly flow. “Peace that passes understanding” will flood your heart. Peace that doesn’t always connect with our intellectual understanding will fill your being. A deep inner knowing that God Himself will be your refuge, your very present help in your times of trouble will abide within your heart.

This rest comes from knowing God’s heart for us, knowing His love for us as His little children for if we can rest in God’s heart, then we can confidently know that He is still on His throne and He is concerned about us and our lives and that He is moving on our behalf even when we can’t see it or feel it. Our faith provides an inner knowing that God can be trusted.

It is perhaps one of the most difficult things to do for us as humans. We’d much prefer to provide our own strength and ideas for overcoming, yet God resists this type of pride. It’s only in our utter dependence upon God that we find rest for our souls.

Would you be willing to ask God to give you that rest today?

Simply open your heart and ask.

May it not be said of us that “we would not.”

Use This in Case of Emergency

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