My Rights

"Rights are where survivors run when they can't handle relationship." says wisdom. "Survivors run to lies to protect them. Lies are a little fortress."

These are some quotes from the book "the shack". It is a fictional work and I try not to pull much theology out of fiction, but sometimes it strikes a deep chord with me and I know that Jesus is elbowing my ribs. "Did you see that? Yeah, that's you." It's a kind ribbing but even still it stings a bit.

I think a lot about my rights. It certainly helps that I was raised by some strong Women's Lib women (bitter man-eaters might be more accurate). This stuff is always tricky because you don't want to miss the central point that prompted the actions of the Women's Lib movement. A very cursory overview of history, makes a strong case that women have not been treated well as a general rule. My own mother made a lower wage at her job just because she was a woman. When she resigned, she was instantly offered the money she should have been making all along. Male chauvinism is not a manufactured ideal. It is very real and still lives a fat life in many cultures around the globe.

But what about my life? I am not my mother and I do not have to live my life waiting for every man to either use me or disrespect me or worse, abandon me. But I have enough of my own scars to make those very real fears. I'm not over-reacting or being a drama queen. Some men have really hurt me. My counselor would easily agree that as a child, I was a survivor and that is to my credit. But that credit comes at such a high cost now as an adult. I don't believe that God has called me to just survive and yet I can look back and see many, many days of just surviving.

Yuck! But this connection between rights and surviving is intriguing to me. As Americans, we are very "rights" oriented. Years ago (1992) there was a college student at Berkeley that went to class everyday naked. (He was called "the naked guy") He didn't like clothes, so he just showed up naked. It was on the news and he continued going to class everyday naked because he wasn't technically breaking any rules. However, during his second semester of nakedness, he was finally kicked off campus. Why? Because a female student filed a sexual harassment claim against him because she had to sit next to him in class while he was naked. This eventually prompted Berkeley to pass a law that you need to wear clothes. That is ridiculous! But it's a good example of how focused we are on our rights. He had the right to be naked until it infringed upon someone else's rights.

But, once again, what about my life? Jesus tells us over and over again we will find our life by loosing our life. He says to be the greatest is to be the least. He tells us we need to take up our cross daily and follow him. It goes on and on about how much it is not about us and how important a soft and pliable heart is to the Maker. That seems in stark comparison to someone demanding their rights. And yet, if you have never had a voice and you're feelings have been largely invalidated your entire life, do you even have a life to lay down? This new revelation helps me understand I've been living the Christian life largely by duty and obedience but without the peace that passes understanding. I get tastes of the peace sometimes. It is so sweet when the internal dialog in my head shuts up! But it seems so fleeting.

I had it for a few months this summer and I am fighting to get back there again. It's clear to me that I grew up believing I was a victim. (Probably because I was.) But I don't have to be anymore. But when all you have known is slavery, freedom doesn't really make much sense. If you have been blind your whole life and suddenly get your sight, you don't all of sudden understand everything you can see. In fact, a blind person will need to touch things and then make the association that this is what an apple looks like but he only knows that because he is touching it. The seeing world can barely grasp that idea because seeing is all we have known.

Galatians 5:1 is very clear:
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.(A) Stand firm,(B) then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.(C

Christ has done the work. We are free on paper. But so were the Israelites and they needed 40 years in the desert with daily water, manna and quail directly from the hand of God to overcome 400 years of slavery in Egypt before they could walk in their freedom. Even once we take up this freedom we are commanded to stand firm because our natural tendency will be to go back. Go back to Egypt. Go back to the yoke of slavery. Go back to being a victim and just surviving.

"Survivors run to lies to protect themselves." I am not a victim, though sometimes I am victimized because the world is broken and my friends are sinners, just like me. "Rights are where survivors run when they can't handle relationship." Demanding my rights is not wrong or evil, but it may not be God's will. We see Paul being beaten and falsely imprisoned over and over again, but at one point he evokes his rights as a Roman citizen. Why just that one time? Why not use that right as a sledge hammer for every closed door? I don't know. But clearly there is a time to evoke our rights. I don't want to throw away concepts like fighting for equal pay for equal work, but I also don't want to mistrust and feel afraid of every man I work with.

But on a more personal level, I just want to follow Jesus. Only He knows when I am supposed to fight for my rights vs lay them down. Only He sees the ways I am dying to myself for the sake of unity and those I love. "My salvation, my Honor depend on God. Ps 62:7. I want to run to God, not my rights to protect me. I want to stay in the messiness of working through relationships (actually I don't, but by faith I am trying). But I also want to give myself the grace to do this really poorly. Because that's probably all I can actually do. It is a foreign language to me. I am much more comfortable with spreadsheets and project lists and linear thinking. These things, however, are not the building blocks of relationships.

But here is what I don't understand. I have a lot of friends who really love me and who I really love. So how did that happen? If the language of relationships feels that foreign to me, why am I so rich relationally? That is very confusing to me. Perhaps the topic of a future blog.

But for now, I will lay down my rights by my choice. No one takes them from me. I lay them down. This is what Jesus also modeled for us. He could have said no to the cross. He even asked for that option, but He chose to lay down His sinless life for me, a sinner. That is love. That is the kind of love I want in my life and the kind of love I want to give others. I have fought for my rights and the rights of others for many years. Sometimes I even win. But even when I win, I still don't feel at peace. Rights don't make you feel safe at night and rock you to sleep. but love does. When I let the love come and rest my head on my Savior's chest and stop fighting, I actually feel at peace. Initially it is often a sad peace, but it eventually turns to just peace. It's as if something has to die each time for me get back to the place of peace. Perhaps my castle metaphor is starting to reveal itself as a castle of rights. My rights have been my strong tower rather than my God. As we often say to our children when they seem to have the same problem come up over and over again "How's that working for you?" Not so good.

Today I will choose God.

Change

Have you ever woken up to the realization that the people you work with or spend time with are using different lenses than you to interpret the world around you? It's like one of you is playing chess and the other is playing checkers but you are using the same board. Seems like a really bad idea doesn't it? Well, you're right. It is.

What's helpful about the revelation is that you can look back and reinterpret a whole bunch of things that were hurtful or misunderstood. You finally get it! Most of the miscommunication is because you realize you have been working with different definitions, different goals and most importantly, different assumptions.

What hurts like hell, is the general feeling of having missed the boat for so long. It feels like embarrassment or shame. "How did I miss that?" "What a waste of time!"

But what is true? The world is always changing. No way to stop that. I know many elderly people lament how fast life changes and often they just give up trying to keep up. (They are the ones wearing 70's leisure suits at the diner at 4:30pm.) They are fine to just except what they can and can't do. My counselor has mentioned several times that I need to accept my own limitations (others limitations too in fact).

There is no way to always know. I hate to get blind-sided. Not sure why yet, but how can we ever truly safeguard ourselves from not getting blind-sided from time to time? It seems impossible if the world is changing all the time and we are changing all the time, and our circumstances are changing all the time. You can count on one thing; change.

So, like many things I wrestle with, is change good or bad? Counselors love those questions, because it's like you are doing their job for them. They just ask you the same question back. (I think I should be comped for those appts.) Because the answer reveals the problem. It is both. Change is never all good or all bad, it's always some of the both. We want absolutes when the world is full of fragments and situational ethics. There are absolutes. But as Chuck Swindoll says, "When I was a young man I had a long list of things that separated me from other believers. Now it is a very short list."

So what do I do? I learn to live in the tension of not being able to always lean on rules and trusting God to walk me through it or, as in this case, bring revelation. Does God condemn me for taking too long to figure it out? No. Moses needed 80 years of prep to lead the people out of slavery, who needed 400 years to get ready and another 40 years in the desert to prep to enter the land promised long before that. He is clearly in no hurry and more than willing to administer the pain of waking up to reality in reasonable amounts. It still stings. Sometimes it breaks my heart, but even still I am able to stand again, eventually. He helps with that part of it too.

So when the arrows come that say "How stupid are you, to not have caught that by now?" I am confident Jesus is not talking to me. It might be my flesh or Satan or just the recording in my head of voices that have said those things to me, but it is not Jesus.

I need to hear Jesus' voice. I realize now, this is what worship does for me. I hear the voice of Jesus in worship. When I read the Scripture, it is a factual voice without much emotion or kindness. (Probably too many science books in college.) But when I listen to worship music and stare at the sunset, I hear and feel the love of my Savior. It permeates me and carries me and ushers forth my tears and deep heart that just needs some care and reassurance that He is with me and I will be ok.

Change happens. We get off the path sometimes. We are on the path and don't notice everyone else is on a different path. It happens. It's not the end of the world and there is always grace in the hands of a loving Father who is eager to take our hand and lead us. I will take His hand today and just sit here and rest for awhile as I recover from my wounds, self-inflicted or otherwise. He is in no hurry and that feels good. This one hurt me deeply and it may take me some time to recover. That's ok.

Pay attention to me

My husband and I have an inside joke from a Simpson's episode where Lisa does something that manages to capture everyone's attention. The scene has Lisa standing in the middle of the room with everyone staring at her in awe. Meanwhile Bart is darting around the room saying over and over again "I am Bart. Pay attention to me." So that is our code phrase when we feel lost or forgotten or the other one is daydreaming while we are talking. Usually I am the one talking and my husband is the one doing time travel calculations in his head. (Yeah, he is that guy!)

But more and more I am convicted about how much attention I constantly require. My greatest seasons of rest and peace are when this need is not screaming in my face. I think the key is to stand in awe of God. If you are in awe of God, then you are not endlessly thinking about yourself. That seems like an important piece to the puzzle.

Often I am reminded of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. How did they not just stand completely in awe of that kind of power to part the Red Sea and rescue them in a hopeless situation? I am sure they were in awe as well, as they watched God bring down the waters on top of the most powerful army of the known world. I doubt very much anyone was grumbling or complaining while they crossed over on dry land through the walls of water. But what amazes me more is that they were back to grumbling and complaining only 3 days later when they did not have water in the desert. But the truth is that I am an Israelite too.

My memory is so short and I am quick to exchange awe with self-pity. I hate it. I know there is an enemy that likes to remind me to go back to the mud pit and languish in self pity while I make bricks with mud and straw. But I don't have to go back there. I can live in awe of the God who parts the water, who draws water from a rock, who provides manna and quail from heaven and who provides a cloud to block the sun by day and a pillar of fire to light the way by night. But do we really have to be in the desert?

Another inside joke with my husband is from the movie Joe vs the Volcano. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan jump into the volcano together towards the end of the movie to appease the volcano God. Meg says to Tom, "We'll just jump and we'll see." They are then blown out together into the ocean while the island sinks. Suddenly, Tom's ever faithful luggage pops out of the ocean, which saved him once already earlier in the story, and they climb aboard. Meg is overjoyed they are still alive but Tom says "I don't know, we're floating in the middle of the ocean." Her response is "It's always going to be something with you Joe." I feel like Joe (Tom Hanks), but I want to be like Meg. Because there will always be something! That is life. There is always something that has the ability to steal your joy or destroy your peace. Love does not always win here. In fact fear seems to rule far too often even in believers hearts.

I have learned that there is never a good time to invest in your retirement. If you wait until it's a good time, it will never come and then you will be 65 and wonder what happened. Investing in your retirement is always a sacrifice. Investing time to marvel at God and the works of His hands is always a sacrifice. Our flesh will never be godly. We will always want to sleep in longer or watch tv or buy that candy bar, etc. We need the Lord to help us love the Lord. That seems crazy to me, but that is our reality. I keep thinking this is going to get easier. I will just wake up one morning and be other's oriented and selfless in my actions and never feel used again or grumpy. Why? The attacks of Satan alone should be all I need, to know life will be hard. Not every minute, but most minutes and my flesh will only continue to decay and ask more of me.

I recently finished the book "Tramp for the Lord" by Corrie Ten Boom. It is an absolutely wonderful book about God's provision and a life fully surrendered to God. But what encouraged me the most were not all the miracles God did for Corrie, but rather how she was just a normal person who saw God do amazing things and still doubted. She is an Israelite too. Here is a woman rescued from the gas chambers of Nazi Germany and she still wondered if God would come through for her as she got older. I take a surprising amount of comfort in that fact. I am not alone or strange or ungodly. I am human and normal and a sinner in need of a Savior. Praise God he has provided us with one.

So I spend most days battling with feeling largely undervalued and invisible. But I know the scriptures well enough and have known my God long enough to know that I am both valuable and visible to Him. He sees it all. He knows the little things I do to love the people around me. He sees my sacrifices of time and the small ways I die to myself for the sake of others. He is proud of me. He enjoys me and I make Him smile. As Brennan Manning says "God is particularly fond of me." I like that and hopefully as I get older I will be able to run to that place more quickly verses the mud pit. As Meg would say, "We will just jump and we'll see." How do you describe faith any better than that?