Calling Out Growth

This post stems from the one I wrote a couple weeks ago, about voicing love. But this time, I want to talk about pulling out specific qualities in your friends and naming them, and what kind of power that carries.

I remember in the summer of 2010, I had just come on staff to YWAM Salem. Even though I had been there before, had incredible times, and made many friends, being on staff felt very odd, disillusioning and lonely. It was kind of a shock, and to be honest, and I felt very small. I wondered what impact I could make there, if I could make any at all. I had no direction as to why I was there, I was only there because I felt God nudge me to go. So, I was feeling pretty aimless.
One day I was at lunch and sitting with someone that I admire a lot, someone who is probably one of the top 3 biggest influences in my life. And we're just sitting there, chatting, and suddenly he said, "You know, Becky...I see so much growth in you. I was telling someone I mentor the other day of the importance of taking spirituality seriously, and I said to them, 'You know someone who does that? Becky Sanders.'"
It caught me off guard. I said, "What? Really?"
He said, "Definitely. I know you can't see it, but you've come a long way."
There were a few reasons this was a big deal to me. #1. I admire this person a great deal. #2. I was in the midst of a major dry season, spiritually. #3. I felt like I had actually been regressing instead of progressing. He went on to list more things he was noticing in me, and I remember sitting there, first of all extremely humbled, but second of all, SO encouraged. It was like his words were bringing to life another side of me that I didn't think would ever be able to take breath, because of all my downfalls, failures and repeated mistakes. By declaring my strengths, this person was becoming a life giver for me. Like I said in my previous post, there is not only so much power in knowing someone likes you for you, but there's HUGE power in specifically naming someone's growth points and calling them out.

So, again, here is a task for you: Find a friend. Your best friend. Or someone that you know very well, someone you've been able to observe, someone you're close enough to that you have the authority to be able to call out the growth you're seeing. Sit them down. Name the specific things you see (increased awareness, confidence, greater peace, better skills at something they're pursuing, etc). Mean what you say. Don't water it down with flowery speech and sappy sentiment (unless that person is into that kind of thing). And then take a step back and watch how calling those things forth causes your friend to be able to not only dwell in those growth points, but transform in a greater way than if no one had noticed.

Start paying attention to where you're friends minds and hearts are headed. Be conscious of your ability to be a life giver. And tell them when they're moving on the up and up.

St. Mark's

(I found this buried in the depths of my blog drafts. I wrote it last year, after going to listen to a compline choir while on a mobile trip in Seattle.)


 
I recently got a chance to sit in on the compline choir at St. Mark's episcopal church in Seattle. 

It moved me so much I wrote a poem about it.  Revel in my cheesiness.

Tiptoe swiftly past
the doorman with the smiling eyes
raise my head to see
hundreds of figures.
Some intently focused
eyes closed and lips silently moving,
Others lightheartedly receiving,
eyes open and wandering.
Prostrate, kneeling, cross-legged
in pews, on ledges, on concrete floor
filling nearly every open space
in the colossal chapel of St. Mark's.
 
Find my seat on the cold ground
amidst people of every kind
cross my legs
and breathe.
The sea of sihouettes
allows me to absorb
into the atmosphere,
morph
into the hundreds
gathering for a half an hour
to simply listen.

Silence.
The church is void of
talking, moving, rustling.
The stillness is thick
but the anticipation is loud
each person waiting
in silent expectation
to hear sounds that allow them
to escape from the present
and enter into the unknown.

Finally a note is heard
Rising slowly from a undefined place
Growing greater as the seconds tick by
A note
in perfect pitch
Clear and crisp
echoing of the walls of the chapel
Then
another note
wraps its arms around the first
in perfect harmony
Then
another
and another
notes linking arms with one another
sung from the mouths of monks
hidden from sight.

Notes turn into words
words into prayers.
Verses from the holy scriptures
developed into chants 
the chants of the Gregorian monks at st. Marks.

Their voices unite the crowd
all gathering, wonderstruck
by the beauty
of what is tickling their ears
melody, harmony, praise
striking in our hearts
that familiar feeling
of being enveloped in something
our heads deny
but our hearts can't help
but give into.

The Struggle to Actively Struggle

I think today I want to write about resisting struggle, but that may or may not be where this post ends up.

First and foremost--I need to learn to take my own advice. I can't tell you how many times I tell people that active struggle will produce for them a full life, one with a broad spectrum of awareness, emotion, joy, pain, love, and everything in between. I consistently voice against numbing pain and unpleasantness through entertainment, spending, food, or what have you. But man, lately...I've been succumbing to the demon Numbness in an extraordinary way. It's a daily battle (or should I say daily defeat? Because I usually give in before the battle even begins.) It's easy enough for someone to tell someone else who is struggling with something to not give up, to keep going, that light will come, and that the beauty of life is in struggling. But what do you say to someone who isn't struggling today, but every day? With the same stuff? At what point does active struggle in a situation like that become a waste of time?

And that's kind of where I'm at. Active struggle feels like a waste of time to me. I guess you could call that hopelessness. Which everyone says is the worst possible place to be in. Which makes me feel ashamed that I would even succumb to something like that. Which makes me want to actively engage in my pain, but for the wrong reasons--for obligatory reasons. And as we all know, that never ends well.

So, I guess my ultimate question is...what is this whole struggle/pain concept all about? To struggle, in order to build character, in order to...what? To what end does having character get us? A full life? A better world? But then what? Why does Christ want to sharpen our character on earth? In order that we can sharpen each other?  In order to build the character of the body of Christ? But again, to what end? A better world...but, a world that will eventually perish, right? So, then what? Is pain and struggle simply a product of The Fall of Man, something we just have to deal with while we're here, and just make the best of it until we reach heaven? If that's the case, then numbing myself out sounds justified!

When I think about things like this I always wonder what it would be like to have a secular point of view with these kinds of questions. What do secular philosophers say about struggle and pain, and what the point of it is? Is it reduced to biology? Is it unexplainable without some type of source inflicting the pain?



In one of Gregory Boyd's sermons I listened to recently, he spoke about how a lot of Christians are content to dismiss hard questions and say, 'Just accept the mysteries of God.' Gregory said that's simply a pious way of saying, "I don't care enough to think about it."

Drawing the Line Between Good Fun and Moral Compromise

I was making a Netflix queue the other day, and added the movie 'Horrible Bosses' to the list, before I knew what is was about. I looked at the ratings and description a couple minutes later and decided I didn't want to see it because it would probably make me feel slimed (crude and sexual content, pervasive language, etc). So, I took it off the queue.
A couple days a go, I mailed back the last movie I rented knowing I didn't have anything coming from Netflix anytime soon. But today I get home from work, and what's in my mailbox? A red envelope...Oh, a Netflix movie. Which one is it? 'Horrible Bosses'. Oh man. Apparently I didn't take it off the queue like I thought I did. Well, crap, now I have to watch it. For real, I couldn't just send the movie back. I couldn't just not watch it. (p.s., I don't get this thought pattern--what goes on in our brains that makes us so eager to do something that we know is going to make us feel terrible? Not necessarily after, but even during? It fascinates me.)

So, I watch the movie. The first 30 minutes were so repulsive, I almost turned it off. But then it got funny. And I started belly laughing at some parts. And I'm not gonna lie, by the end of it, the movie was hilarious. The characters were great, the plot wasn't totally predictable, and I like I said, I laughed really hard. So, the point is, now that I'm done watching it, I don't really regret it. It was funny. Some parts were vile, for sure. In some parts, I covered my eyes. But I think I ultimately enjoyed this movie.

My question now is...what does that signify? Watching a movie like this HAS to be doing stuff to my mind and heart--slowly creating moral callouses, right? Excusing and even laughing at degrading speech, violence, perversion...Today I shrugged my shoulders at all of that and said, "Yeah, but some parts were just so funny!" We all watch these things and act like we remain unaffected. We all say we can handle it. But can we really? And, if we really can remain unaffected, is that even healthy? And if not, where do we draw the line in what we take in? Can we draw a line, with all the media/information/ads we take in that display all of this crap on a daily basis anyway?

Anyway, questions we've all heard/thought about before, but I was reminded of them strongly once again tonight. Share your thoughts!

The Power of Voicing Love

Have you ever had someone like you? A friend, I mean. And not just like you, as in they can stand you, but like you, as in they love everything about you: they think you're hilarious, they love your personality, they can't get enough of you.

Man, I love friends like that.

Why? Because when I know someone likes me, it brings out the best in me. I don't have to worry about saying the right thing, saying the wrong thing...or even saying anything, necessarily. When I know someone likes me, I let down all of my guards, and all of my defenses because I know that in the mind of that person, I can do no wrong. I can be myself. How freeing is that?

Now, I would assume this is true for most people. Everyone loves to be liked. It's the best.

But how often do you, when you really enjoy someone, tell them so? There's a proverb in the Bible, Proverbs 27:5 that says, "Better an open rebuke than love carefully concealed." Thank you Cynthia Stevens, to opening my eyes to the gorgeous truth behind this verse. I think I've always thought of this verse in terms of romantic love, but, lately, I'm seeing how powerful it can be in platonic friendships. And just to clear up some confusion, I'm not really talking about encouragement here--I can encourage any random person on any random thing if someone asked me to. And honestly, that kind of obligatory crap would cheapen this verse. I'm talking about when you're just really fond of someone. I'm talking about those people (and we all have 'em) that we just carry an unexplainable partiality towards. We just like them. We can't explain why. They just warm our hearts when they come into view. When their name is spoken, we feel a fondness. When we see a missed call from them, we get excited to call them back. Those kinds of people are special, and don't come around very often. What if that person, that person you love so dearly, has no idea the extent in which they're loved by you? What if you, simply voicing that fact, would open up a world of confidence for that person, all because they know someone likes them for them, and for at least that person, they don't have to be someone they're not?

Do we even get what a big deal that is?



Now do two things.

#1. Think about the people in your life that have expressed sincere partiality toward you, in the past or recently (I can think of 2 major ones). Think about how their honesty changed the way you view yourself (it made me more confident, made me dream bigger, made me like myself more).

#2. Now, think of the people in your life that you really like (I can think of a few.) Have you told them? (not yet.) Will you choose to have the boldness to tell them how awesome they are, possibly being a stepping stone to a turning point in their life?

As humans, we need this kind of honesty. We need people who like us, to tell us! Because that's when lives are changed for the better. That's when shy people start to speak up. It's when people who think they're stupid begin to think they're smart. It's when that one bit of truth speaks louder than anything else, and people begin to see they're worth something.

So, if you're fond of someone.. go out and tell them just how fond you actually are.

Failing at Accepting Normalcy

It's good to have friends who can help you see how far you've come when all you can really see is repeated mistakes, repeated lessons, repeated everything.

(I'm going to be honest and say that I fear these posts are becoming (or have always been) way too personal, but I'm choosing to voice this stuff anyway, because maybe someone might stumble across it and feel less crazy about themselves, and God knows that's what we all ultimately want, right? Right.)

I have this ongoing inner battle inside of me that tends to rear it's ugly head when I have nothing to do but sit. It gets shut up through busyness and adventure and risk taking. So when I'm not doing those things, I get slammed with discontentment, apathy, social isolation, depression...I've just always really struggled with living a 'normal' life. Now I've learned this far along in my life now, that just because I struggle with living a 'normal' life, that doesn't mean I need to reject 'normal'. And actually, that's my battle. I'm trying to embrace normal. Because I know the value in it. But each attempt has the same end--I just get pissed off. But I'm a stuffer, so I just bury the anger. But, as we all know, feelings have a way of surfacing whether we want them to or not. And for the first time in my life (in the past year or so), people are coming up to me, people I don't even know that well, and telling me they're noticing my anger becoming a problem. They all say I'm polite and nice, but I carry a weight of anger that's visible. So, I try to work on it, externally, but like I said, feelings surface, and I'm pretty much failing at hiding this anger that apparently people can see. But I think maybe I just need to come to terms with something--I am angry, actually. I'm angry that I'm 24 and still have no idea where my life is going. I'm angry that I chose to work a menial job and save money in a town that's incredibly difficult for me to thrive in. I'm angry that I can never remember that fact and I'm always trying to force myself to thrive here (this is 'return to Lee's Summit' number FOUR), when my soul obviously says "no". But I try to make it happen, like a parent forcing their child into engineering when he really wants to be in the arts.

I think one thing I'm angry about the most is that I've been suckered into shame and fear based living my whole life, and I'm still suckered into it, on a daily basis. Would I be so concerned with all of this if I knew that life is a journey and my process is my process and God will perfect the good work that he started in me? No. I'd be at freaking peace. That is a word that's foreign to my soul right now.

I think ultimately I fear turning my circumstances into remedies for the issues in my heart. Because since I'm feeling all of this, all I want to do is run--to any place other than this one. And I know that would fix things, temporarily. But I'm longing for a true fix. True peace! The end of striving, of being ashamed, of fearing the inevitable. And I don't want an upward spiral of relief, I don't want things to get worse before they get better, I just want relief now. Because this is getting so OLD. And I'm out of ways to fight it.

... #frustrated