More and more people like me!
What I mean, of course, is that some of my posts have gotten “likes”! That means you like me, right? I tried to “like” your “like” of my post to show you that I like you, too.
Click here to continue reading this (mostly) previously published post.
Thank you for liking me! I like you, too!
She’s a good friend.
I met her doing something we both loved – a downhill ski trip at University. We became fast friends, singing loudly, goofing off, and obnoxiously yelling at those below as we rode the chairlift that weekend. In the evening, over hot chocolate and quiet talks, there were many similarities in the hurts we had experienced, the focus of our lives, and the path our futures were leading us toward.
It seems God had brought us together and blessed our friendship with a small piece of His love that we could offer each other.
And so the friendship grew.
And then came the bomb
It landed beside the little plant God was nurturing, our friendship. The blast ripped bits of the plant, and oh, the pain! The pain in God’s heart was unbearable, breaking His heart too.
And oh!
How God mourned! He mourned for the future leaves and blossoms and roots that this little plant hadn’t yet had time to grow. He mourned for the hungry people who would come to this little plant looking for the fruit it was to grow to satisfy their hunger pains.
He mourned that instead of refreshing juicy fruit that would strengthen them, they would find only a withered, dry plant – a few leaves and a twig.
And oh, how the heart of God aches when friendships are spoiled!
We sat nearby, watching, startled at His suffering. Our hearts felt only indignation towards the other. And God tore his shirt, as the ancients did in a time of great mourning, His outer garment reflecting the state of His heart, broken.
Our sin was ripping the little plant apart, threatening its very survival.
Wounded!
“How can I show My love to this world,” He asks sorrowfully, “when My people don’t dwell together in unity? How can those hungry, sick souls taste love when you don’t give and receive it to and from each other?” He rocks back and forth in lament.
“How can My world be beautiful like a garden when the flowers of friendship and love among My people, a people called by My name, do not grow? How can others find their way to My heart by following a path of beauty if no beauty is found among my chosen flowers? How can you live without love?” He pleads
And so we, too, finally catching the Father’s heart in our own, rend our clothes and rock back and forth in the ancient posture of lament.
How have I allowed sin to hold back the growth in the relationships He has gifted me?
And so we run to our lost friend, like the Father of the prodigal son to his lost child.
When he was still a long way off, his father saw [his son]. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him.
We offer our hearts to our distant friend, like the cold elder brother finally offering love to his Father.
His father said, ‘Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours . . . ”
Together, we friends lift our hearts to God, broken and damaged. We come together, limping and wounded, from the damage we caused each other to our heavenly Father, and we ask for the oil of healing* for us and our friend.
And He is pleased.
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life that is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
And the plant now mending* and with roots twisting together in love, can face any storm. And the fruit is only a matter of time.
So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit. Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.
Footnotes
*Examples of God pouring oil of healing over us as individuals and as relational creatures are discussed here and in future posts.
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When we were five years old, we thought everyone was laughing AT us until we suddenly realized they were laughing WITH us.
Remember that?
Well, that happened to me recently. I’m unsure which side of the laughing AT me/ laughing WITH me continuum I ended up on. But at least my rear end isn’t THAT sore from the fall.
This story starts, like all good narratives, with dog barf.
So after the dog… ahem… expelled his undesirable digestive remains (well said?) . . . we looked around at each other, wondering what to do next. We were enjoying heartfelt gut-level sharing. I guess the dog wanted to join in in his own way.
We only had a few minutes left together and desperately needed time to pray together, to invite God into the messes of our lives that had been unearthed.
Thinking that we won’t have time to pray, I fetched paper towels to clean up the mess the dog had unearthed. Someone pleaded with me to stay. “Let’s pray together while we have time,” he said.
At another’s brilliant suggestion, I quickly covered the dog’s mess with paper towels, and we stood in a circle, sharing hearts, tears and compassion.
“Don’t step in the dog barf on your way out!” I called cheerfully.
They genuinely thanked me for the reminder, side-stepped the soaked paper towels, and left with a wave and a smile.
Years later, our dear friends complimented us about that meeting.
“Recently, we were learning about the levels of friendship,” they explained. “There are friends that you dress up for. You wear a corset under your sparkling dress to ensure you look as good as possible. You enjoy an evening with them and then put your feet up. Your stomach fat and your real selves come out later.”
Who needs another “See how great I look when I suck in my stomach” kind of friend?
“Then,” she continued, “you have the friends who invite you onto their couch when you are crying and simply move the laundry hamper to the floor so there is room for you to sit down. These are true friends.“
I teared up at her warm assessment of our friendship.
I was about to hug her, but she was still speaking.
“And you guys took it to a whole new level. We come over, and you just suggest walking around the dog barf”. The others in the room stared at us, mouths agape, not wanting to ask for elaboration. I didn’t blame them.
But yes, a compliment . . . right???
And so the secret to a healthy relationship? Get real. We get real because we want to be authentic.
1. Authentic in how we REALLY look. For example, we don’t use the “Make me look better than in real life” filters on our Zoom meetings. (Have you SEEN that function? It’s AMAZING! I WANT to turn that filter off but wow! Do I EVER look better!) Give me a break! We are all a work in progress, ok?!
2. Authentic in how we REALLY feel. For example, maybe we ask our friends to clean up the dog barf later. What we just unearthed emotionally or spiritually is a lot viler and should take precedence.
3. Authentic in our RESPONSE to our friends. We are humans clothed in the limits of time. We can clean up the dog’s barf or clean up you. Which do you prefer?
So, let’s get real.
And if that sometimes means standing around dog barf, so be it.
As a dog eats its own vomit, so fools recycle silliness.
This saying doesn’t quite fit this post, but it perfectly fits in another, less profound way. Let’s go with a partial fit today and move on. There is someone at my door ready for a cry.
Lord, teach us to order our values to reflect your heart more accurately. After a moment of stillness, consider asking God where your life may not be aligned with the upside-down priorities of the kingdom of God. Maybe He is asking you to stand around the dog barf, too!
She rejoiced.
It happened!
She danced in the field that summer morning, praising her maker.
What He promised, quietly, with a whisper of love, that He would guide and comfort, HAD materialized.
Here is what happened.
At the women’s gathering that day long, long ago, this good mother poured out her heart to another.
The tears racked her body as she openly shared her fears.
Generational problems pursued her family. Her grandmother, grandfather, father, mother, sister, and auntie bathed in the pool of these problems. None of them had figured out how to get out of this pool, dry off, to dance in that grassy place in freedom.
They all felt like they were drowning instead.
How would her relationship with her daughters differ from what was experienced by every other family member?
The despair of this situation overwhelmed her.
They bowed their heads, these two women, and prayed together that day so many long years ago.
And God spoke, in the recesses of this desperate mother’s heart, a strategy and plan to walk in freedom, step by step, to carve out a new path from the dysfunctional road all her family member walked.
I’ll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other. You must learn to be considerate of one another, cultivating a life in common.
And she was joined in marriage to a man who also longed to walk a new path, the one that Jesus walked ahead of them and beckoned them to follow.
And they did.
And years later, when their first child leaves home, they look back with a cool drink and remember the pain and branches across the path of the road they followed Jesus on. They remembered their hair and clothes full of the pieces of branches, yet their hearts grew larger each day as they learned, through following Him, how to love a little less selfishly, and pour more of their lives out on the other.
And He healed their union, their diversion from the path the others in their family travelled, with a different destination.
Their relationships with their children were healthy.
Not perfect.
Each member of this small family worked through and argued past, chopped chunks off each other, as a sculptor does to a piece of art.
But their path led to healthier relationships.
This couple celebrated the new lineage of increased unity that bonded their family, as they were all refined by this artist, Jesus.
And they danced together in that grassy meadow, this small family, for something new had risen from the depths into life.
Does anyone dare despise this day of small beginnings?
Blogpost Footnotes
*Also known as “God”
When I was a child, I learned of a true story of a married couple fighting about
. . . wait for it…
whether the toilet paper roll should go on THIS way
or THAT way.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what they were fighting about had nothing to do with toilet paper.
They were fighting about control.
Unfortunately, even WHAT they had control over, at this level of debasement, ceased to have meaning. They just both needed THEIR WAY. It sounds a bit like hell on earth, and in fact, it is.
A fictional demon character states his goal of hell on earth this way: “All the healthy . . . activities . . . which we want [them] to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return. ..”
CS Lewis in Screwtape Letters
As a young adult, I had seen many relationships that ended up this way.
I wanted to learn how to have healthy relationships, so I prayed I would be transformed. I asked God to make me a perfect person who could find a perfect spouse and we could live happily ever after. But in God’s frequent way, He did offer one key
not in a flash of deep, fervent prayer, but by using real life to sanctify me.
This path was a more painful route.
Here’s what happened.
I was journaling one day, and in that season, I tended to journal about my problems to process them. I felt God asking me to journal for another 10 minutes after I would have normally finished journaling. And God asked me to do this every time I journaled that season. At first, I didn’t know why I was doing this, but I obeyed. And very soon, a painful pattern emerged.
I had many unrelated problems that I was journaling about, but each situation had the same root that caused frustration, anger, or irritation.
Control.
Everything I was upset about ultimately boiled down to “How can I get my way?”
Ouch.
Now, I am from a good, Matriarchal Italian family, and let’s say that I knew how to choose my friends and boyfriends so that I could get my way. For example, when I was a child, my dad, in despair over his inability to live harmoniously with my mom, once asked for advice. “How do you and your friend Amy get along so well?” he asked. I effused the wisdom I had intuitively gleaned from 10 years of watching my female relatives and responded with this sage advice: “Sometimes, I let us do what Amy wants.”
I liked having my way all the time.
Here’s the kicker – In that season as a young adult after examining my journaling, I realized that I had to CHOOSE to give up a good thing for me – getting my way almost all the time – for a BETTER thing – having a CHANCE at having a healthy marriage.
And I must stress that it was NOT EASY for me to not have my way all the time.
More often than I’d like to admit, it’s still not easy to lay down my way when Jesus speaks softly to me, directing me and showing me a better path. However, I want to trust Jesus more fully because He longs for me to soar into my fullest potential.
And somehow, this continues to be the place where, against all expectations, I flourish.
Our human desire for power is never to be underestimated. Our compulsive desire for control is never to be swept under the rug. Our fleshly desire for influence, ascendency, and dominion should never be ignored. If you don’t know that you hold a sword in your hands, you will wound someone. And the one who becomes wounded may be you.
Christine Westhoff in Reframing the Prophetic
God, help us to have the wisdom to exchange what we cling to for something better, the gifts You long to give. Help us to unclench our hands long enough to receive Your gifts.
You’ve observed . . . when people get a little power how quickly it goes to their heads. It’s not going to be that way with you.
Jesus Christ (the guy almost 1/3 of the world claims to follow) in The Message
Our good-natured, fluffy golden doodle bared his teeth and lunged at our bunny.
Our bunny would have had significant injury had I not automatically reefed on his leash, so he bit the air next to the bunny instead.
Our dog had never before tried to bite our bunny. We were teaching our dog to lie submissively when the bunny was near. The two animals often touched noses, and sometimes, tail wagging, our dog licked the bunny.
But not on that day.
Immediately before this incident, I relayed a dream I had the night before to my husband and daughter. It was about a bunny mauled by a dog. The bunny was dead, or so I thought, but when I picked it up to bury it, I realized it was still breathing, but barely.
Was there a link between this odd dream I relayed and the bizarre, similar real-life event that happened only five minutes later?
We don’t want to be too quick to assume every dream is from God when processed pizza is the source most often.
But nor do we want to toss all our dreams, assuming God can’t speak through them.
How can we know when God may be speaking in a dream?
When we see something similar happening twice, it can be an indicator to stop, pray, and ask God.
For example, this happened in the ancient texts of spiritual wisdom.
When Pharoah had dreams of spiritual guidance, he had two dreams with a similar meaning, although the content was different. Same with Joseph. And God uses this pattern with me, I’ve noticed.
God says things twice to get our attention, sometimes.
So what was He saying through the bunny and dog dream, if indeed He was speaking?
In the whirlwind and confusion of my unprocessed thoughts, concerns, and worries, one person in my life seemed to be rushing into a situation, like a bunny, moving fast. And it was dangerous for her.
Help her, God seemed to be imploring me.
Help her to see the danger that she cannot see.
So I phoned her, and spoke my heart, and warned her.
And she listened.
Will she heed this warning and slow down? That is not a weight for me to carry. We all must live our own lives, choose our paths, and face our monsters we meet on the way.
Whenever you hear me say something, warn them for me. If . . . you warn [them] and they keep right on . . . You’ll have saved your life.
The Message
We held hands for a moment, walking together along our shared paths, her and I. And I spoke the words that seemed to be birthed by the heart of God through my lips; however garbled these words may have emerged, and however tainted with filth from my own life.
And we parted ways, with a wave, her and I.
So we look around in wonder as we journey because we don’t know who may touch our hearts with love next.
Because I wonder who will be burdened by God to blow like the wind so I move a little to the left or right, as God whispers to their souls? Who next must speak to me what it seems He is whispering to them about my life?
And life’s journey becomes a little easier to travel.
More and more people like me! What I mean, of course, is that some of my posts have gotten “likes”! That means you like me, right? I tried to “like” your “like” of my post to show you that I like you, too. My daughter, who is all Wise, because she, like all teenagers, has exceptional skills at “liking” things, says you can’t like someone’s “like”. I did “like” my own post once, which says that I like myself, I think, which is not unrelated.
What was I saying? Oh, yes! You seem to like me!! And since you like me, that means you are my friend!!
And since you are my friend, that means that I can call you at 2 AM when I can’t sleep so you can listen to my (real or perceived) problems! That’s what friends do, right?
So can you please send me your phone number? Thanks.
(Oh, and you want my phone number, so I can listen to you? Whaat?) Since so many people spend time liking me, you can’t expect me to have any time to listen to your problems!
This is a one-way street and I like it that way. Thank you very much.
(Wow. People are so needy nowadays.)
Seriously, members of this blog (so far, just me) meet to pray and listen to each other, and there may be someone who also attends one of these meetings, who is outward-focused enough to listen to (some) of your neuroses, IF we’ve spent enough time working through the nuances of my neuroses, of course.
You’re welcome!
. . . speak encouraging words to one another. Build up hope so you’ll all be together in this, no one left out, no one left behind. The Message
Seriously, (and this is the real Lori Lawe speaking, not the super neurotic persona I use as the voice of this blog. Why is that voice coming out of me when I write anyway??) Huh. Anyway… As mentioned here, distraction can sometimes solve our problems, but when that doesn’t work, Jesus is waiting, patiently, like a true friend waiting for you, to listen to you at a coffee shop even though you’re late again. He longs to hear what’s on your heart.
whisper . . .
And may you find the best friend ever, maybe even on the internet, friend.
Restoring Life 