Haters gonna hate

I am 26 years old, and finally realised something this week.

It's time to grow up.

I imagine a lot of us go through life worrying about what other people think of us. We worry about other's approval, our status, people's perceptions of our success. We think of ourselves as independent, rebellious, self-sufficient, but suddenly someone says something someday which can make us question the whole of our self-worth - even if for a second. People's praise can make our day and people's criticism can break it.

I don't think this is just me.

It feels nice to be liked. That's the truth. And who doesn't want that? Who doesn't want to be respected, praised and looked up to? For most people, other people's estimation of us matters. I think this is fairly normal. It's an inevitable side-effect of human nature being fundamentally relational. We are made to be in relationship with one another.

But this week it all struck me.

You see - we humans are fickle creatures. We are imperfect. We back bite, sling mud, and hurt each other. We crucify one another.

I thought of Mother Teresa's words. Her children's home in Calcutta reputedly had this written on one of its walls.

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. 

If you are successful, you will win some faithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway. 

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway. 

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway. 

The good you do today will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. 

Give the best you have and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway. 

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

I like to summarise this wisdom as follows:

Haters gonna hate.

 
It may not come as a huge surprise to many of you, but I tend to overthink things. When I receive any form of criticism I tend to take it to heart and think about all the ways in which the criticism is true and all the ways in which I fall short. Exhausting, I know.

But yesterday I was thinking about this taken to its logical extreme. I realised that even if I were absolutely perfect and the kindest, most gentle, most true and capable person in the world, I would still be hated by some.

Because I thought of Jesus. I thought of this amazing and flawless man who was also God, and I thought of how he was crucified and torn apart.

Even for Jesus - haters gonna hate.

So I leave you with this thought today. Some people will always hate you. For some people you will always be wrong. It may or may not be to do with you. But the truth remains: some people won't ever like you. To live consciously or subconsciously at the whim of other's approval is a waste of time.

Do the best with what you have. That is enough.

Monday blog hop: Graham Criddle

Today I am honoured to host my father in law Graham Criddle's answers for the Monday blog hop. Check out his blog When Kingdoms Meet for more.

As part of the “Monday blog hop” engagement Mel, the lovely wife of our youngest son, asked me to write a post for her blog. On it she writes powerfully about what is going on in her life – the highs and the lows – giving a deep insight into what she is experiencing and her journey with God. Always challenging, sometimes hard to read, real, honest and open.

I was asked to comment about four things regarding what I write:

What am I working on?

Why do I write what I write?

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

How does my writing process work?

What am I working on?

I write for lots of different reasons – notes for sermons, church documents, my blog and academic papers. The academic papers are for assignments associated with my MTh in Applied Theology with the most recent being “the church, the world and the kingdom of God” while the next will be looking at the area of Christian Leadership.

These are all very different with different intended “audiences” with academic papers probably just being seen by one or two people who will be looking for a disciplined approach to reasoning and argument while notes for sermons help me to prepare to communicate God’s message to people in a church service who are looking to meet with God and grow in their relationship with Him.

Whatever I am writing it is an opportunity to explore new ideas, to grow in my understanding of God and what He is calling me to be, to think about my relationship with Him and to try and work out how living as a Christian in my particular context works.

Why do I write what I write?

My blog is focused on exploring the idea of two different “kingdoms” – the kingdom where God rules and the power structures of the world in which we live – and how these intersect and challenge each other.

Many people think about God, if they think of Him at all, as some powerful being in heaven who has no involvement in what is going on in this world. Others look at the things going on around us, and the injustice and suffering which is so prevalent, and blame God for not intervening. Jesus, in the prayer He taught His first followers recognised that God did reign in heaven but that His will was not being fully seen on earth – but that this was something to look forward to, to pray for and to work towards:

“your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10)

On the other hand, it is easy to look at what is going on in society and to accept things as they are without really reflecting on them and questioning whether they are “right” – in the sense of whether they are in line with God’s will or opposed to it. Some examples:

Are our politicians engaging properly with the challenges and issues which we face and, in particular, how are they providing for those who are marginalised and suffering in our society?

Should we simply accept “the market” as an impersonal force which can’t be challenged or should we ask questions as to whether some of the things done in its name are appropriate?

Is the incredible power and influence exercised by the media a good thing and do we too readily accept the messages and biases which it presents?

Is being a “consumer society” a good thing or do we accept it too easily and not explore some of its implications?

As a Christian I believe that I am a citizen of God’s kingdom while also being a citizen of my country. This dual-citizenship gives me dual responsibilities as I am called to live as a representative of God in the country in which I live. One of the things which this entails is speaking out against things I see which are not in line with God’s ideals which include love, justice, grace and mercy. I don’t believe I have the right to do this in a strident or arrogant way – I don’t speak from “a place of power” - but believe it is appropriate to “speak to power” when I see things which are wrong. As such I seek to be a voice in the debate around what our country should be.

But my main focus is on reflecting on a Christian response to what is going on and to think about how Christians should engage. And my primary target for these musings is me as I try and work out how I can most effectively live out this “dual-citizenship” role. And if other Christians read what I write and find it useful that is great.

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

I don’t really know the answer to this one. I do look at a range of different blogs but haven’t found one which approaches things in exactly the same way I do. This is probably a reflection on the relatively narrow focus of my blog which, while self-imposed, I sometimes find a bit constraining!

How does my writing process work?

I tend to treat the screen (I do all my writing on computer) as a blank canvas and write in a fairly sequential way. I often end up producing blocks of text which then need to be manipulated and worked together to produce something which flows more coherently. If I were more disciplined in producing an outline and “storyboard” before I started it would probably be much easier to write and result in a better product but I’m not convinced that is going to happen!

When writing a blog entry it is normally in response to something which is going on, something I have seen or heard, something which is reported in the news which triggers a thought and it goes from there. Normally, it isn’t a long process, probably a couple of hours from start to finish. One time when I was on holiday I saw something to which I wanted to respond but wasn’t able to until I got home a week later. That gave me time to think and reflect and get some ideas together while I was away, which probably resulted in a more thought-through article, but I did find it frustrating at the time!

Next week I am hoping to host a blog from my good friend, Vic Van Den Bergh. Vic is a vicar in Tamworth with involvement in many different areas of life with a real heart for God, for God’s people and those who need to experience God’s love. He has been blogging for seven years and  his blog is at http://victhevicar.blogspot.co.uk/  

Thank you so much Graham! Your wisdom, integrity and commitment to engaging with our society in a way that is faithful to God's teaching inspires me. Check out Graham's blog next week to follow the Monday blog hop trail.

Monday blog hop

Last week, I was nominated by my lovely hubby Dave to be part of something called the Monday blog hop. The idea is that you answer the following questions about your writing:

What am I working on?
Why do I write what I write?
How does my work differ from others in its genre?
How does my writing process work?

Your response to these questions is hosted on another person's blog, and you get to nominate another one or two people to answer the same questions. You then post their responses the following Monday on your blog.

You can find out more about why and how I write on Dave's brilliant blog Limping into Truth.

Next week I'll be hosting my wonderful father-in-law Graham's post for the Monday blog hop. His blog When Kingdoms Meet is a great place to reflect theologically on current affairs and issues. I am excited to hear more about his writing process next week!

You died

Lately my internal monologue has been dreadful. Unforgiving. "You can't do this," it says. "You're bad at everything. You're useless. Maybe you should give up. It would be better for everyone." And on and on it goes.

It has made being a leader difficult. Contending with a hectic work environment, other staff members' differences, and the needs of extremely vulnerable people, with a torrent of criticism of your own manifest inadequacy, is at best stressful and at worst punishing.

I was reading Colossians the other day and this really struck me.

"Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your heart on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." - Colossians 3.1-4 (emphasis mine)

The other night we had dinner with two dear friends of ours. In frustration at our very human nature, my friend mentioned this. She said, "But of course we do this. We are dead. Dead! We are dead in our sinful nature. We need God to be alive again."

We are dead.

"You died," Paul writes. "and your life is now hidden with Christ in God."

There is a lot of power and poetry in Paul's writing. Elsewhere he elaborates, "Your sinful nature was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead." (Colossians 2.11-12)

Dead. Buried. Raised again.

Most of the time, I don't live and go about my everyday life with the knowledge that I am dead. That what happened when I came to faith in Christ was that I died, my old self was buried, and I was raised back to life through Christ.

That I died, and am now alive only through, because of, and in Christ.

Everything about me - my mistakes, my flaws, my internal monologue, my pain and illness and regrets - all these things died and were buried. All my strengths, my successes, my sources of pride and love and passion, are what they are because they have been resurrected by God.

I cannot be alive outside of him.

I think living totally dependent on God's power must be pain and misery before it is unbridled freedom and joy. For to truly die a full death in this way is to feel and know and live in what you were, and then to feel the agony of death and surrender of things that were part of you. The death comes before the resurrection.

It must be amazing to know and fully live the power of Christ's victory. To know that God can give you all strength when you are weak, that you are an empty vessel waiting and ready to be filled by all the inconceivable power that God wants for you. To know that you are nothing without him, but that that is the point. That he wants you to be nothing on your own so he can fill you up.

That nothing can be accomplished living as your dead self.

I pray that I would be able to fully understand this on this side of heaven.

The dark room and the man from Bethesda

"Come out of the dark room"

Recently at church we have been having times dedicated to praying for healing. I went up to ask for prayer from my pastor and his wife on Sunday, for my health and also, on a deeper level, from my fears.

My pastor said he felt God was saying to me, "Come out of the dark room."

He said to me that he sensed that I was more at home than I have ever been before, but that I need to let go of things and fears which I have lived with for a long time. Fear of failure. Fear that my life hasn't turned out the way others hoped it would. Fear that I will struggle with depression for the rest of my life.

"Come out of the dark room," my pastor felt God was saying.

I have been thinking about this a lot. Talking with Dave about this, I have realised some things.

"Do you want to be made well?"

In John 5, Jesus encounters the man at Bethesda. This man has been an invalid, living amongst the blind, the lame and the paralysed, for 38 years. Before he heals him, Jesus asks, "Do you want to be made well?"

At first glance, this seems a no-brainer. Of course he wants to be made well. It's obvious!

But I have been thinking about this. This man has been an invalid for 38 years. 38 years. An unimaginably long time. He has spent his life as an invalid. This is what he knows. His income would have come from begging. His friends would have been others who lived around the Bethesda pool, rejects despised and shunned by society, fellow comrades struggling with him through the difficulties of being ill and looked down on in the worst possible way. 

This was his life. He would have seen himself as an invalid. This was his identity.

So when Jesus asks this question, he is cutting through 38 years and getting to the core of this man's heart. 

"Do you want to be made well?" 

Are you ready to give everything up? Everything you know, everything you are?

For me?

Comfortable darkness

I don't know if many other people feel or know this, but sometimes it can be comfortable to be in the dark room.  

When I say comfortable, I don't mean that it's enjoyable. I mean that there is a great deal of comfort from familiarity. If despair and exhaustion and depression are all you know, sometimes it is easier to live within their shadow than to move into the light. If it is part of your identity and who you are, it may never occur to you to let it go. 

Dave told me about a bear that was held in captivity for many years, confined to a cage where all it could do was pace in a small square. When this bear was eventually and thankfully released back into the wild, it didn't know what to do with itself. For a long time it continued to pace in the exact same dimensions that it did in its cage. 

After a lifetime of captivity, the chains that kept the bear subject had become part of its identity. It had to be challenged to break free of them.

The bear had to be taught how to live freely outside the cage.

Breaking the chains

When my pastor said "Come out of the dark room", and my husband reminded me of John 5 and this bear, I realised a few things about myself. Depression is a major part of my identity. The symptoms are the bane of my existence and my greatest fear. I hope and pray and worry about the struggles. It is by far the dominant force in my mind. But the truth is that it is a deep, deep part of me. 

Many people forget that chains can bind you to other people. Depression has given me the capacity and understanding that has allowed me to love others more fully and more deeply. To understand, come alongside, and fight for others who are in pain and alone. I would not trade these lessons for anything. 

During the service, I asked myself something. On a deeper level, a real, complex, soul level, did I want to be made well? Did I really want to be free from depression? Was I ready?

If I were completely healed from depression, would I be confused and at a loss? Would I feel that my mission was compromised? Would I have doubts about who I am? 

My pastor had prayed that the chains of my fear and my depression and my past would be broken. The truth is that I have not prayed that prayer for many, many years. I had assumed that my depression would always be embedded deep inside me and I would never be free from it. That it served a purpose from God. 

I had given up. I had given it a hold over me.

The man from Bethesda

The man from Bethesda is my soul brother. In him I see me and in me I see him.  

I have struggled with depression since my earliest teens, which means that I have lived with it for over half of my life. It is really difficult for me to understand life without it, in the fullest, most complete sense. It is a part of my identity that I have not fully laid down to God. 

Jesus asks me, "Do you want to be made well?"

Are you ready to give this up?

God tells me, "Come out of the dark room."

Step into the light of what I want for you.

Let go of the warmth, comfort and familiarity of the dark room. The dark room of how you think of yourself and your life. The memories of your past and what you think you deserve and are capable of. Your ideas of what you are here for and what you are capable of. 

Follow me.

On emptiness

"And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce." (Soren Kierkegaard) 

For the past few days, I have been overwhelmed by a feeling of emptiness. It has been intangible, impossible to put into words. It has been like a shadow hanging over me. Strange that nothingness can have such a domineering presence. It is hard to blog about it now.

Nothing in particular has happened. I have not been ill, or depressed, or in pain. Life is going at a steady pace, rolling by with the every day. There have been no particular tragedies or drama. Things have been ordinary.

Kierkegaard famously said, "The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing." I have been thinking about Kierkegaard. The poet of emptiness.

It is possible to live life unanchored. Drifting. To go along with the current without stopping to think. It is possible to lack connection to anything. To people, to nature, to God. To be empty inside, without thinking of how to fill yourself up. To be incomplete, and to feel it.

Now and then I find myself in this place.

A dear friend of mine came to visit yesterday. In talking to her I realised that for longer than I can remember, I have lacked that sense of connection that allowed me to say: I feel nothing. I feel empty. I feel far from people and far from God. I feel unanchored inside. I feel bored. I said these things to her yesterday. In doing this I realised things I had been insulated from in the vaccum.

The truth is, I lose connection now and then. It is a lonely place to be. It is a place that keeps you alone.

I live a middle-class life. I have a husband, a job, a dog. I love them all. I live in a house that I am happy in. We pursue stability and we have found it. We have friends and a social life. I have hobbies and I engage in them.

I have been looking around and inside myself these past few days. I have been thinking: This is it.

Is this it?

I know what the emptiness inside my soul points to. This isn't it. This can't be it.

"To live is to feel oneself lost," Kierkegaard said. To feel lost is to seek after the One in whom we are found. Without this awareness, we are nothing. We float along the tides of life, seeking the things we think we lack. We look for a house, a car, a job, a salary. We look for comfortable friendships and comfortable relationships. We lose ourselves because we lose what it means to be in debt and in ransom. To be saved by our Maker. To be married to Christ.

As St Augustine put it, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

I know these things are true. But what to do with the knowledge? This is the human condition. We know what to do and yet cannot do it. We realise we are wrong yet cannot save ourselves.

In the vacuum it is hard to reach after Him. It is hard to feel anything or do anything at all.

All I can do is pray for God to help me. And I know He will.

Grief pt. 2

Last night, Dave and I enjoyed a long awaited movie night. We watched 'I Am Legend', a film which I had been wanting to see with Dave for ages and which I had watched for the first time when I was a teenager. My memory of the movie was fuzzy, outside of brief themes and outlines, and the feeling that it was sad and dramatic and amazing.  

There is a scene in 'I Am Legend' when Sam, the lone protagonist's only living companion, a wonderfully loyal German Shepherd, is attacked by the infected while fighting them off her master. Holding her to him in her last moments, the protagonist sees that she, badly wounded and weak, has become infected and is 'turning'. When the transformation becomes complete, a stoic but heartbroken Will Smith is forced to choke Sam to death with an embrace. Sam dies, and without his only friend, he is more alone than ever.

In hindsight, before last night, I did remember that there was a really sad scene in which the protagonist's dog dies. I remembered but I didnt think I might not be able to handle it. But I couldn't, really. I sobbed and sobbed and images and memories of Ralph alive and Ralph in a body bag on that horrible night flooded through me. And for the first time in months, I felt the agony of losing Ralph afresh.  

I wonder when grief ends. A few days ago, my friend found a photo her daughter had taken of Ralph in 2012 and posted it on Facebook. Dave was sad that day. He missed Ralph a lot. I did too, but I felt alright. I didn't feel the stabbing pain. I was able to smile and hold Mika and I remember wondering whether this meant that I was over it all. That even though I thought of Ralph often, wondering what he would do in a certain situation, how he would get on with Mika, I no longer felt the ache of loss. That I wasn't grieving anymore. I wondered if it meant that I was okay now with his death, which left me feeling mildly guilty about moving on too, if I am completely honest.

When does grief end? Last night, I looked at Mika and I held her, and I missed Ralph, his smell and his coat and his wilful, no nonsense nature. I felt the tragedy of it all and how much we had poured our lives into his. I just missed him, and wished I had never taken him out that day.  

I love Mika so much. She is so different from Ralph in every way. I couldn't have asked for a sweeter, more loyal companion. And most of the time, life is full of Mika adventures and the hole Ralph left in my heart is veiled and dull. But maybe some grief never ends. Ralph's death was horrible, unfair, random, tragic, and we loved him. It is right that we should still feel it all sometimes.

Maybe grief will always be this complex, this mysterious. Changing and masking itself in new forms, hiding till it gets forgotten, then reappearing with a vengeance.

And maybe it will be a while before I can watch scenes where dogs die.