Turning the Page

God is Going against the Grain and it’s Terribly Good

There is a grain or a pattern to our thinking that needs to change, but we are stuck, so God gently comes against the grain and changes it from the inside out.
It goes against the grain of self-protection to let someone in, especially when we have been hurt. But God is in the business of woodworking and craft.
I love to look at beautiful timber. A tree has grown, and in the seasons of its life, it experiences the wind and rain, storms and droughts. The impact of these events shape the growth of the tree. Then, we cut the tree down, and before us, we discover patterns never seen before.
Patterns show cellular channels which transport nutrients from the roots to the leaves and back again.
Every piece of timber has a unique and special appearance to its grain. We see the shaping experiences that have gone into the formation of the wood. There is a pattern, a movement, a grain.
Carefully trained eyes can tell the flow of the grain.
There is a little phrase ‘To go against the grain,’ and it means to go against everything you believe to be true.
If you say that an idea or action goes against the grain, you mean that it is very difficult for you to accept it or do it because it conflicts with your previous ideas, beliefs, or principles. Collins Dictionary
This phrase comes from the world of woodworking. A craftsman sees the grain, the flow of the timber, and how it’s been created.
 
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I Will Not Submit But Maybe I’ll Taste

No one likes to submit. It feels foreign and dangerous, but we long for intimacy (in-to-me-see), so we taste and see if the other is good and safe.
There was movement and rhythm as the couple glided across the dance floor. He gently led, she moved in response. She would tilt her head, he would follow. This was passion. This was love.
There was grace and beauty, purpose and direction.
The music leads them both. The beat kept them in time, and the rise and fall of notes kept them riding the waves of the composers’ expression. It was an expression of perfect submission.
They to each other and both to the rhythm and rhyme. Floating in perfection, entranced in grace towards each other’s little failures.
The other couple on the floor, though, were struggling.
One wanted to Hip Hop while the other wanted to Line Dance and the music was strictly ballroom.
It just wasn’t working. No one submitted to each other, and there was no listening to the music.
 Can two walk [or dance] together, except they be agreed? Amos 3:3
I long for perfect dance. A flow of perfect unity, but more often, I feel pull and push, demand and manipulation. ‘You will submit’ and ‘I demand you do …’
Relationships become policies and procedures, rules and regulations, real estate agreements, rather than walking in three-fold unison with something bigger than the relationship itself.
 
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What to do with your Curve – Incurvatus in se

There is a self-centeredness to ourselves, a turned/curved inwardness, incurvatus in se, but there is one that shows how to break the gravity, the pull of the curve.
There is a pull on me all the time.
It’s in the lyrics of the eighties pop hit.
What about me, it isn’t fairI’ve had enough now I want my shareCan’t you see I wanna liveBut you just take more than you give. Garry Frost and Frances Swan
There is a demand for others to meet my needs. They should know that my life is the most important thing in the universe. It’s all about me.
Meet my needs; then, I might move on to listening to yours.
There is a curve, and all our thoughts run into it. When we run into others’ curves, their demands for a better life, then there is a clash.
There is a fancy theological term for this gravitational pull. It’s ‘Incurvatus in se’
Incurvatus in se
‘Incurvatus in se’ is Latin for “turned/curved inward on oneself.” It’s like a gravitational pull affecting everything I do.
I love others, but deeply I wonder ‘what’s in it for me.’ I give to others but wonder if I will receive back.
I am an empty vessel, and I demand you fill me.
Tell me pleasant things, nice things, affirm me. Fill me with water. I am hungry so feed me.
I am determined to see my pain relieved, and I will do whatever it takes to meet that need.
Some may give it a diagnosis such as Narcissism, but it’s in all of us. This inward curving towards ourselves. For some, you can easily see their curve, but with most, it’s more hidden, subtle, and manipulative.
Of course, no one can ever completely meet the need of the curve. Because, well, they are also under the gravitational pull of the curve too.
Perhaps sometimes, they offer a few drops of presence that somewhat alleviates the pain. But for the most part, we are so thirsty and determined for pain relief that it becomes automatic to reach for the chocolate bar, bottle, online shopping, or porn site. We have a curve that takes us to a cistern.
Where does your curve take you?
God is compassionate about curves.
Are you feeling somewhat down now?
I may well have woken you up to the reality of something of yourself that you may not like. But isn’t an awareness of the battle better than living in a foggy dream world?
We need someone who fully knows the power of the gravitational pull to self-centredness to somehow push against the trend.
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Are you Tired and Weary? You Need a Refuge

Tired and weary, worn down and burned out. You can’t find relief because you have no refuge. So let’s build a storm shelter together.
It’s the noise that wears you down. The ambient, in the background but all around you, stresses of life.
You’re the meat in the sandwich, and everyone wants a bite.
Its the
People
Politics
Media
Feelings and thoughts
The grind of the grindstone wears you down till nothing is left.
All you want to do is to go to a place where the streets have no names, no postal codes, and there’s no one hammering on your door.
I want to run, I want to hideI wanna tear down the walls that hold me insideI wanna reach out and touch the flameWhere the streets have no name. U2
My Mothers Bible
The other day I was flicking through my mother’s Bible and happened to come across a verse in the Psalms where she had marked with pen and added a date.
I checked the date with other memories of what was happening in the stream of her life at that time.
It was a time of struggle for my mother.
My father was unwell, and she was losing him. He died 82 days later, on October 3rd. She would follow him in ‘promotion to glory’ 166 days later.
I recently wrote about this in a guest post on Contemplative light – I’m Grateful For Ink
What a stormy time for us as a family that was.
 
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The Problem is Not the Problem

“The problem is not the problem. The real problem is much worse.” Sandy Burdick
I can still see the look of abject horror on Alma’s face, and the dark brown eyes opened wide as I approached her. I was about to tell her that she was magnificent, and she was terrified.
She was an inmate at a women’s prison where I was part of a team that met weekly with groups of women who were sexually abused as children or adolescents.
In our first session, we always showed the short classic movie, “The Butterfly Circus.” 
It is an incredible telling of the gospel story and the impact of a relationship with Christ without mentioning faith or religion.
In it, the leader of the Butterfly Circus, Mendez, encounters a man, Will, with no arms or legs at a different circus’s sideshow.
While others make catcalls or pull back it horror, or even throw tomatoes at him when the crowd clears out, Mendez approaches Will, leans down to look him eye-to-eye, and says in true admiration, “You are magnificent?”
Will is so stunned; he spits in Mendez’ face.
When the movie reaches its dramatic conclusion, we members of the team get up and go look each of the inmates in the face and say “You are magnificent!”
Alma had seen that happen to several of her fellow inmates and now saw me approaching her.
With that look of horror on her face, wide-eyed, she began to shout at me, “No! No! Don’t you dare say that to me.”
 
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Are You Afraid of Who You’re Becoming

The change felt good, but they were also afraid of who they might be becoming. Then they learned that they were not alone and to trust the train they were traveling on.
It’s always scary when you don’t know what’s on the other side. Who am I becoming? What will happen as my new self is revealed? Will I be rejected? Will I be hurt like the last time I stepped out?
For my friend John, this was new ground he was walking on.
Never been here before, and he felt fragile.
We had been walking, talking, and praying together for a few months, and he was beginning to see something change in him.
It wasn’t forced or fake. It was, in his words, ‘Natural.’
Like it was something that was there all along but now seemed to be making an appearance and revealing itself. Like a spring of water starting to bubbe up seemingly from nowhere.
But he was kind of scared about who he was becoming.
He knew he couldn’t stop this internal growth, it was good, and he didn’t want it to stop, but what about how others would react to the new man.
All the scenarios played out before him.
Where was this train taking him?
When you’ve learned some new things about yourself, processed some pain, asked some hard questions, and worked out some shakey solutions, then there is always an invite.
It’s an invitation to move forward. You can no longer stay where you are or even retreat back.
You feel like you’re on this train and it has already left the station of yesterday. It’s chugging along, and you’re wondering what’s coming next.
There may be quiet and excited anticipation, but more so, there may be a fear of here we go again.
In the past, you put yourself out there and showed your best creative self, but people, even your family, and friends shot you down. Instead of cheering you on, you got ambivalence and negativity. No one captured your vision.
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How to Stop Being the Scapegoat. Six Keys

Are you tired of being the Scapegoat but don’t know how to stop it? Six key steps to stop being the dumping ground of other people’s rubbish. 
She felt like they were making her a scapegoat.
They were saying she was responsible for all the terrible things that had happened. It was her fault. Everything bad that happened was her responsibility.
This was a pattern of abuse she had experienced for a very long time. Jenny remembered as a child that once her mother had broken a cup, but somehow it was her fault. Then, the vicious words rained down.
Now it felt like she was a human receptor for other people’s stuff.
She was wired for it. Anything that went wrong, she took the blame.
Even when they didn’t blame her or say it was her fault, she still, for some strange reason, felt she was to blame.
She reasoned that it must be something to do with her. She was a failure, and so she caused all these bad things to happen.
Jenny had a big ugly, smelly goat bleating in her brain.
This belief entered early into her brain when she started to receive the abuse of others. Then she took it on as part of her identity.
The scapegoat was as much of her identity as goat’s cheese is made of goat’s milk.
Her depression was worsening as the guilt and shame piled up. Her anxiety was building as she waited for the next guilt-filled message to be handed out and for her to take in.
She was tired. Really tired. The goat, and its bleating, was keeping her up at night and alert all day.
But now, she was beginning to wake up to the bleating, blahhing, and destructiveness of its voice.
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Do You Have a Scapegoat in the Backyard of Your Brain

They kept feeling a sense of guilt and blame for something they didn’t do, but then they discovered a Scapegoat living in the backyard of their brain.
It wasn’t nasty, or maybe in a subtle kind of a way it was, but they felt like they were receiving all the blame for things that happened, and because of that, they were being excluded from the relationship.
Why would anyone want to have a relationship with someone like them?
Someone so terrible as they were.
And it was so subtle, so sly, that over time this inner negative critic wove its words into their deepest beliefs about themselves.
It was a goat. A scapegoat, and they had one bleating in their brain.
It’s all your fault
You’re the one to blame
You never get anything right
They did this because of you
You don’t deserve any relationship
Then with these inner voices bleating in their brain, they began to believe that they didn’t have any value or worth.
Nothing beautiful or meaningful about this smelly old goat.
They withdrew, hid, and definitely didn’t put themselves out there because they knew that there would be just more criticism, blaming, and shaming.
They had a goat, a scapegoat, grazing in their brain.
 
Read more at Do You Have a Scapegoat in the Backyard of Your Brain?
 
 
 

Five Actions to Take when Someone Rains on Your Parade

Some people seem to like to rain on your parade, but we can learn how to hoist an umbrella and continue on.
They couldn’t help themselves.
Anything my friend did was negated. Any attempt at doing something special, creative, or different was criticized and smashed with harsh words. Sometimes an indifference, a bored ‘Whatever.’
It wasn’t that they wanted approval, but more so, they wanted to share the joy they found in their creativity.
They had the breath of a creative God within them, and they wanted to share their own creative expression with those dearest to them, but it was routinely dismissed as nothing. So there was ambivalence to their deepest gift.
Something began to die and shrivel up within them. The spark of expression was growing low.
Nothing they did was good enough. Depression, a poverty of spirit, and despair slowly began to suffocate the God breath out of them.
 
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Why Did the Samaritan Cross the road Because the Chicken didn’t

So why did the Samaritan cross the road? Perhaps he wasn’t afraid of the sky falling in. Let’s not be chicken with people like us.
I happened to call an acquaintance of mine a few days ago. He does some jobs for me every now and then.
As we talked, he said that he had a kind of personal crisis in his life. So I gently pressed a bit further and found out what had happened.
The same thing had happened to me many years ago. In my gut, I felt a deep connection. We chatted for a bit longer, and then we finished the call.
Later that day, I realized that I could have offered a bit more. I thought that I could have invited him for a chat and a coffee.
I thought of all the excuses not to cross the road as such and invite him in.
I’m too busy
He’s too busy
He might think I’m overly intrusive, nosey.
I might not know what to say
Then I remembered this post you’re about to read.
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