Summer Camp For Grandparents!

Scott spent a month reviewing his old ways of thinking, believing and even communicating. He found some glaring changes, a few thoughts that he modified, a couple of tweaks and some continued agreement with himself. In other words - like the rest of us, Scott keeps changing his mind about some things and not about others.

This got me thinking.

I wonder what it takes to change my mind? See, I know I can be contrary and stubborn. I can resist change. But, I can also abandon things that have served me well when I fall in lust of a new theory, idea or fad.

How the heck do I even determine WHAT to change?

I wonder if most of us aren't just flailing around, trying to figure out how to avoid problems. And I wonder if this is a lousy way to live.

For 50 years (can you even believe it?!?) Pete, my husband, and I have been playing tennis against each other. We have loved competing against each other. And, despite our frequent trips to the courts, we really have not improved our game that much - and we didn't play that well to begin with...until.

We changed.

We decided that it was never too late for old dogs to learn new tricks.

We decided that we were worth investing in. We decided that we didn't just want to go out and muddle our way through a couple of sets of tennis, we wanted to enjoy rallies and actually improve our on-court performance.

So we have created summer camp for grandparents, post pandemic. We are taking tennis lessons, and Pete is even as I type away, taking a golf lesson.

And...whether you care to know or not, our tennis game is improving! It turns out that if you take lessons from some dude who is good at tennis, he can improve even an old person's game!

In tomorrow's blog, I'm going to dive into why I think the decision to change, to do something different, even with something as minor as tennis lessons, can be sacred.

Wanting the Wrong Stuff

Some of my friends tell me that they grieve over things not yet lost. I get it. They realize that their spouse is not willing to work on his/her recovery and this impacts their marriage. Or they worry about a child (or children) who are struggling with mental health crises. They feel resentment when they go to a bridal shower - remembering that their daughter is in no position to be in a loving relationship, much less get married. Or they avoid the happy baby showers, because their own grandchild is inaccessible to them. These are big griefs that we don't talk about much - which makes it worse!

I don't have any words to offer up for that kind of suffering, but I do have a suggestion for reducing self-inflicted pain. Stop wanting the wrong stuff.

"I want my kid to get sober." I know you do; so do I. But that is for your kid to want or not want, this is not your "want". We can only "want" for ourselves. So maybe we decide to "want" sobriety for ourselves. Don't need it? Are you sure? Maybe a different kind of sobriety work is available for us - like working on our own recovery from wanting the wrong stuff.

"I want my spouse to...." Oh I so get that. But that is not our want. We can state our preferences, our desires, our wishes...but our spouses have to want or not want - this is not our want.

"I want my boss to..." I so get that. We spend so much of our life at work, don't we all want to enjoy the experience a tiny bit more? Yes we do. But we can only want what we can change. We can provide feedback, ask for change, but our work team has to want what it wants, or does not want. We cannot WANT someone to do something and expect anything to change.

So what do you want for you? What next? What is your next move to getting what you want?

What If?

People who are always gentle with themselves probably do not need to think about all the ways that rumination, regret and remorse mess us up. So you guys can go have a nice day and stop reading right here! For the rest of us, the insecure, the sensitive, the perpetually anxious and often plagued with guilt peeps, who are alway berating ourselves with the WHAT IF’s? - I have a phrase for you, here goes: When we know better we do better.

I'm not suggesting that this little phrase serves as some kind of magical solution to all our feelings of guilt and shame. But what I am suggesting is this: we often get in a habit loop of thinking, feeling and doing. When it becomes just circular suffering without anything changing, we need to break up the band and find a new way to live.

So here's what we do. We notice ourselves falling into the trap of feeling perpetual guilt, we realize that this is more habit than factual reality (because if we are legitimately guilty then our work is to ask forgiveness and make amends), and we need to discipline ourselves to break the habit loop.

Here's my example: As my mother died, my daughter was giving birth. I rushed from my mom's bedside to be present for my grandson's birth - a ten hour drive. My father found this reprehensible; who ever wants to disappoint their daddy? But my mind knew that I had done all I could for my mom, and now I needed to be there for my daughter. I spent years dealing with a whole range of emotions. But healing began on the day that I made my two lists, and I was supported by people who loved me in saying, when we know better we do better. Anytime I found myself ruminating and rummaging around looking for alternative choices for a past I could not change, I said to myself: "This is not productive; this is not helpful. When I know better, I do better. I am doing better by refusing to ruminate, second guess and feel guilty about something I can not change...and would not change if I had to make the same choice right now." Let me be clear. What I had to accept, what I had to get better at doing, was this: not allowing other people to decide what I should or should not do, how I should or should not feel. I believe I made the choice my mother would have approved of - go home once all has been done, and do the next right thing. Celebrate a new baby even as you mourn the loss of the woman who loved babies more than ice cream. But if this sounds easy, then I am a poor communicator. It was not and it is not easy. But this is what a commitment to growing up requires - doing. hard things.

Jesus Died so That We Would Have More Wheat

"The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Those who love their life will lose it, while those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life."

John 12:23-24 NIV

I will never communicate this with the clarity of Barbara Brown Taylor through her sermon "Unless a Grain Falls" in her book Teaching Sermons on Pain, but here goes....

When I was a little girl, my grandparents' very southern Baptist preacher drilled into my head that it was my fault Jesus died. That's a lot for a seven year old to handle. But according to him, Jesus had to die because my sins needed to be atoned for. This made sense to me, because the previous fall my mother had taken me and my three younger brothers to Kmart to buy school supplies. While there I found the most beautiful jewel-toned pen. It was the kind that came with ink cartridges and had an amazing silver tip. I begged my mother for this pen. I promised all sorts of acts of service to earn the money for this pen. She said no. I stole it.

My life as a thief was short-lived because it did not net me decent results. You see, this pen was so perfect, so magical, so....charming, that one of the kids at school stole it from me. I told the teacher and she couldn't figure out who was telling the truth. So she told me to have my mother write a note and offer proof that this was my pen. The other kid, it seems, was innocent until proven guilty. The problem was, I could not acquire said note unless I confessed my own thieving ways - and no way could I do that! The following summer when I heard the preacher wax on about how I had killed Jesus, the guilt and shame was overwhelming. It replaced my bitterness at losing my precious pen to the class bully. Suddenly, the pen felt like a sword I had unintentionally used to carve up God's son.

But according to Taylor, who got her information from John, "Jesus died to fill the world with wheat, with so many sons and daughters of God that no one would ever want for read again. Only in order to do that, the seed had to be planted. It had to die, or it would never grow." (p. 64, Teaching Sermons on Pain)

Jesus had a choice. He could have given into temptation and ridden the wave of popularity. A few more resurrections like he pulled off with Lazarus and Jesus would have been set for life. But it would not have been enough to sustain God's message so that it would reach us and renew us in 2021. Jesus' choice taught us that death is not the end nor is the worst thing that could happen to a person. Jesus taught us that suffering is not something we should (or could) avoid. Jesus narrated his own death story in such a way as to prove to us that God is not mad at us nor is he still demanding live sacrifices to please his hungry, thirsty quest for self-satisfaction. (As if God needs us to give him stuff!)

Jesus was never moved off his trajectory - to love his father and do his will. Jesus showed us that suffering can be endured and redeemed. Jesus invited us to follow him and offer whatever we have to give - the smallest seed - to God, to see what he might do with it.

I am so curious - what would suffering within the context of following God's call mean for you?

A Certain Kind of Suffering

When it comes to suffering, we need to be careful to clarify that we are NOT called to suffer as Jesus did - please never confuse the suffering that the world endures as somehow equivalent. Suffering that is not chosen - famine, genocide, racial discrimination, sexual abuse - is not redemptive in any way. But in this instance, Jesus had a choice and he chose the path of suffering not as a goal, but as a by-product.

This is a specific kind of suffering. His goal was not to suffer as if that was some kind of badge of honor. His goal was to be the man who God created him to be - regardless the cost. This clarifies my own relationship with suffering - a bit. Here are a few questions I ask myself when faced with my own suffering:

1. Is this suffering mine to do? In other words, have I chosen this suffering as a way to align with my core values or has it been foisted upon me? Basically, I am asking a question to figure out what KIND of suffering I am enduring. Redemptive suffering as a result of following God's call to right action, unjust suffering at the hands of a situation or person outside my control, or suffering as a result of poor choices - otherwise known as consequences - which is it?

2. Is this suffering a decision I, and I alone, have made as a reflection of what/who I love more than my own life? This is a rare decision, but I suppose it can also be seen on a spectrum. I might choose to parent a child with a substance use disorder differently than my natural maternal tendencies if I am taught that my natural way of doing something is counter-productive for my child's healing. This will create inner tension and suffering because I am going against my instincts - but this is an honorable choice. I might choose to be a friend to someone who does not treat me as a friend. This would be a choice, a decision to sacrifice my own desire for friendship with this person in service to my value of loving people even when they don't love me back. (Oh so much more to say about this...but that's for another day. This would need to be a carefully thought out and prayed over decision. We do not need anymore martyrs in the world!)

3. How does this suffering contribute to the kingdom of God coming to earth? So much of our suffering is self-imposed or misguided. It is, as Will Willimon is famous for saying, important that an "outside agency" is in play in our decision making. We need to make sure that our "shadow self" - the self-deception, blindspots and other ways we are not self-aware - is not "tricking" us into making choices that are unhealthy and poorly boundaries.

How might your relationship with suffering change in light of these ideas?