relationships

Lent Day 34: I give up The Need to Impress You

March 22, 2021 — 1 Comment

The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

Isaiah 58:11-12

I give up my need to impress you. I give up my need to cater to your needs. I give up my need to make sure you feel okay with how I’m feeling. I give up making myself small so you don’t feel threatened. I give up diminishing myself so you can feel better. If your worth comes at the expense of my worth, I cannot feed into your need. If your liberation comes at the expense of my liberation, I cannot feed into your fight. If your rise can only come at the expense of mine, I do not want to be part of your journey. God is my guide. God is my strength. God has determined that I am whole, worthy and full. I will not let you take that from me. I give up being less so you can feel more. That is not love or kindness; that is short-sighted and incomplete existence.

Lent Day 20: I give up Human Relations Tactics

March 8, 2021 — 1 Comment

You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

Isaiah 58:11-12

I give up trying to impress everyone. I give up trying to play the game of being the friendliest in the room. I give up the tactics of networking and commodifying human relationships. I want to connect, the way that feels kind and true in my body. I want to see people. I want to know people. I want to be a spring, a well that isn’t obsessed with doing the connections, but is flowing connection vibes from the inside. Make me this sort of people attracter, keeper, holder, builder.

Lent Day 19: I give up Disconnection

March 7, 2021 — Leave a comment

The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

Isaiah 58:11-12

I give up curating a community that makes me feel comfortable. I give up curating a community that makes me feel unchallenged and right. I give up curating a community of relationships that cater to my needs. I give up writing people off because of my initial reactions and hurt. I give up unforgiveness because it makes my life less complicated. I ask for a grace and understanding that springs from an immense love for all humanity. I ask for an undying hope in humanity. I ask for new eyes to see those who have hurt me as those who are hurting or have been hurt. I ask to be refreshed and renewed so that I will be a well-watered garden for all to find rest and joy.

Love

February 12, 2021 — 1 Comment

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Ephesians 4:14-16

It is love that helps us be grounded. It is love that roots us and helps us stay connected to ourselves and to each other. It is love that prevents us from being tossed back and forth. It is love that will overcome the constant messaging we receive from the world. It is love that will protect us from other people’s manipulation. It is love that holds us up with integrity. It is love that helps us to be brave in our words. The goal of our brave words is to help us grow.

What is love? Love is patient. Love is kind. Love rejoices with those rejoicing. Love finds gratitude in the midst of blessing. Love honors others. Love cares for the whole and the relationships. Love listens to anger to grow and become more attuned to what’s not right. Love forgives. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

I pray that we pursue and live out a kind of love that heals relationships, builds our integrity, and pulls us through these difficult times. In moments when one aspect of love feels too daunting, how can you fall back on another? Maybe you don’t have the strength to speak; can you find the faith to be patient? Maybe you feel overwhelmed by anger. Can you also find kindness for yourself and for those also hurting? There is always a way into love and it might require courage to make new pathways into it. As you keep up this work, your spectrum and vessel of love can only grow more multi-faceted and secure.

The Testing of Friendships

September 7, 2020 — Leave a comment

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ he said, ‘you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Feed my lambs.’ Again Jesus said, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He answered, ‘Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Take care of my sheep.’ The third time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ He said, ‘Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.’

John 21: 15-17

It doesn’t feel good either to be the recipient or the reason for a broken relationship. A bad conversation. A surprising revelation of one’s character. Two life paths diverge because of exhaustion, unresolved resentment or lack of interest. Relationships build us up and tear us down, and we want the kind that tear down our walls, not our worth.

How often are we like Jesus, the one who was rejected and abandoned, yet also the one who later seeks out reconciliation? How often are we like Peter, set on our timeline of forgiveness and reconciliation and hurt when it doesn’t go as planned?

True friendships are difficult. The ones built to last go through fires, fights and forgiveness. It requires courage and humility to be the first to approach even when you have been wronged. It requires vulnerability to outwardly ask for care and respond with care. The journey of moving through different seasons of relationships often contain hurt, pain, repetition and uncomfortable intimacy. True friendships are worth it because as messy as the relationship between Jesus and Peter is, they exist when two people with the same mission towards humanity find each other. That is rare and testing in these scenarios can only survive if the calling and purpose remain at the core.

If you didn’t hold so dearly to your pride and ego, who would you reach out to? If you didn’t worry so much about your reputation or the sunk cost of friendship building, who would you let go? If you think about your deepest purposes in life, who do you feel safe to share those deepest secrets?

Monday Map: Radical Friendships

July 13, 2020 — Leave a comment

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

John 15:12-17

At first blush, I get the warm fuzzies. Friendship goals! Sacrificial love! Laying down your life for your friends. Until you read that friendship with God requires you to follow his commandments. What friendship is contingent on my obedience? Friendship with God! What do I gain? The Father’s message. So…? Bearing fruit. Okay…? The ability to love one another. Is it worth it to sacrifice my autonomy to obey Jesus to know God and to love others?

  • What is your relationship with obedience? What images, feelings, people, colors come up for you?
  • What fruit do you actually want to bear? Economic? Relational? Emotional? Character?
  • What do you gain from loving others beyond what they can give back to you?
  • What’s missing from your friendships?

Ask God for the relationship you want with them. Ask God for the friendships you need.

Sh*t Christians Don’t Say: Singles vs marrieds

June 29, 2019 — Leave a comment

Just kidding. The church LOVES talking about singles and marrieds. It’s both adored at the pulpit and anticipated in the audience. There’s this rush of hope every time that maybe this sermon would unlock and unravel the pain of waiting for singles, and root and make sense the never talked about pain of staying for marrieds. Yet no one really talks about the pain of waiting because we love focusing on how singleness is a gift and that the Lord can really use you specifically in this season. So we have a bunch of singles hurting inside lashing themselves with this holy waiting and trust. And no one talks about the real pain of marriage. Ya we talk about how it’s ultimate sanctification and how’s that’s the hardest BUT MOST BEAUTIFUL thing on earth, blah blah blah. But can we cut the glamorized version of difficult sanctification and get into the nitty ugly cave. Do we talk about falling out of love with your spouse? Do we talk about low grade amounts, and I dare you, overt abuse? Do we talk about how monogamy is not natural and how sometimes this fight seems too uphill? We don’t. We wrap obstacles in, we’re being sanctified.

The danger of never talking about these things is that when someone is in that position, the response is guilt and shame. If we are ever in a space that is not publicly discussed as normal, we feel abnormal when we experience these human tendencies. Shame is hiding because of a fear of losing worthiness. Shame is hiding because of a fear of judgment. Shame is hiding because a facade keeps others distant from your mess. Isn’t that what happened at the garden? We assumed God would lash at us so we hid and lied instead. I wonder if those peeps in Eden were outright about what they did, would they have been able to stay in the garden? God might have let them stay? The transgression wasn’t the issue? The hiding was? But the reality is, we are no longer in Eden and people are not lovely like God. When we are vulnerable people do cover us in judgment, create distance and make us feel less Christian or unwise/blind/foolish when we talk about said topics above. It’s a fucking catch-22. If you talk, you might get shamed. If you don’t talk, you are imprisoned by shame. How do we change the culture to merely listening and holding space, suspending your judgment and quickness to scripture showering?

But I think the deepest issue with this whole thing is singles v marrieds. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP DIVIDING PEOPLE IN THE CHURCH IN TWO CATEGORIES. Why do you do that?!! Why do you delineate people by relationship status? Inherent in that boxing is our huge human-created difference, there’s a type of crossing over, there’s us v them and they wouldn’t understand the struggle. Don’t act like after marriage, spouses don’t want to sleep with a hot emotionally available dude that walks by. Don’t act like singles cannot get deeply sanctified by close friends and roommates, FO SHO. When you say singleness is a gift, then proceed to spend 15 minutes chatting about the beauty of waiting….take a nice exhale, smile and then get into your inclusive circle tone of voice to talk to those who are married, it is obvious and weird. Stop taking a few verses in the Bible and elevating them into central to our faith structure — don’t we Christians love doing that with whatever scripture seems perfect for such a time as this. Why don’t we talk about things we as humans struggle with that cross all boundaries? Greediness. Jealousy. Greediness. Racism. Sexism. Misogyny. Defensiveness. Ego. Gossip wrapped in we should pray for her. Ego. Fucking ego. Why do we need pastors specifically for singles and marrieds? What qualifies one to know people in these categories better? I’m really asking. Do I go to one pastor if I’m thinking about masturbation and another pastor when I want to hoard my money? Stop drawing out details of my identity like they’re my defining trait. Stop making such a big deal about my status like that’s the reason I sin. I don’t always put God first because I’m human and selfish. My relationship status is not how primarily relate to people. We have created a culture of such connection like that in church. It’s incomplete and often damaging.

Stop putting people in boxes so it’s easier for you to manage and control. Stop defining people so you can quickly go to your prescription box of scriptures. See me as a complicated human. Show me the wisdom and faith and trust I too have the Spirit.