Passing People 101

This toy monkey from my son's babyhood

went to college with him (for  fun) and

witnessed HIS share of challenging

roommates!

Most college students take a life-skills course for which they get no academic credit.  It’s called Roommate 101 (in life, People 101). I repeated it several times. My freshman year, I had four roommates in three quarters.

#1: “Nicki Tene”—who welcomed me with smoke curling from her cigarette. (This was the ‘60s, when students could smoke in their rooms.) As an asthmatic, I’d checked “no smoking” in my roommate profile. Oops.  The dorm mother changed me to a tinier room around the corner with:

#2: “Imin Luv”--who, when not in class, was with her boyfriend until curfew. Then she slept in until her 10 a.m. class, while I (who had 8 a.m. classes) had to dress by flashlight so I wouldn’t disturb her. She dropped out to marry him at the end of the quarter.

#3: “Freida To-Be Freed”—who was counting the days to her 18^th birthday for off-campus freedom.  No more dorm life for her after this quarter.

#4: “Patchwork Patty”—who, like me, needed a roommate. No drama, no sparks, we got along.

My second “dorm year,” my roomie was a Star Trek fan who kept a Trek scrapbook and didn’t miss a Trek program on the dorm TV. A loner, too. I decided for “potluck roommate” the next two years and both became friends who wrote for a while after college. Based on that, despite a rough start, I’d say I passed “People 101” in the college dorm setting.

I was taken back to those challenging-people times recently while reading Safe People, a book about relational security by Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend. The book is subtitled, “How to find relationships that are good for you and avoid those that aren’t.” It’s for people who want improve interpersonal skills and for those needing to break free of “unsafe” behavioral habits. The authors point out that those who commit to behavioral change programs (such as the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous) find success because they want to work through their problems and develop good character. “Unsafe people,” however, resist character transformation. They:

*Resist admitting their relationship issues, think they don’t need help, and aren’t open to confrontation from others.

*Don’t confess when they’ve wronged others.

*Don’t forgive people who hurt them.

*Don’t show empathy to others.

*Don’t take responsibility for their lives.

*Don’t submit their life and will to God, and don’t “hunger and thirst after righteousness” (Matt. 5:6).*

Or, said another way, by shutting off awareness of their own problems and God’s resources for transformation, they act out of their own unconscious hurts, and then hurt others. They’re “unsafe,” then wonder why people avoid them.

By the way, Roommate 101 wasn’t a one-time course for me. In the dozen years between my undergraduate degree and marriage at 34, as life took me to four different major cities for mission service, work and graduate school, I had 21 different random roommates. I met some wonderful people—and some challenging (“unsafe”) ones who caused me to keep my thumb in Hebrews 12:14 (NLT): “Try to live in peace with everyone, and seek to live a clean and holy life.”

I still run into “unsafe” people in life’s daily challenges. When they are hurtful to me, I try to see them as people for whom Christ died. They won’t be “safe” until they’re safe and trusting in the arms of Jesus.  That’s worth praying for.

*Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend, Safe People (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), pp.34-35.

Snug in Papa's lap



"Over all,"  we'd call it a successful  "snuggle" of "Papa" and granddaughter Eleanor (photo by Eleanor's mother)

When our new out-of-town granddaughter arrived for her first visit to Papa and Nana’s home, she wore—as promised—her little girl “overalls.”  And Papa was prepared with his, which he wears when he gets into really grubby work.  We hadn’t seen her since she was three weeks old (and now she was four months), so that “reunion photo” was a special occasion!

Babies are such snugglers. My grandsons, now 2 and 3 ½, “cuddle” with “Nana” from time to time, wrapped in a favorite blanket for songs and small talk. And every time that happens, a little part of my heart goes back to memories of me, at 31, “snuggling” with my Heavenly Father. My parents had died just months apart, and this grieving “orphan” had to empty their home and settle their affairs. In that house of hard memories, I’d often curl up in my dad’s old rocker, Bible open as God wrapped me with His comfort and wisdom. 

Coincidentally (which is how God arranges things!) I’d recently felt a nudge to re-read a book that’s among my personal treasures, Amazed by Grace, by Lucinda Secrest McDowell. We met at Wheaton Graduate School about 1980, and in subsequent years I watched her grow into an internationally-known author and speaker. In this, one of her earlier books, she shared teaching about “sonship” that she received from missionary speakers. Instead of sons and daughters of God, the missionaries said, we live defeated lives—like orphans--when we act as though believing these:

*I am all alone and therefore it is all up to me.

*I am full of felt needs but want help from no one.

*I live on a success/fail basis.

*I am full of fears and have little faith.

*I am defensive and a poor listener.

*I have a complaining and thankless attitude toward God and others.

*I feel trapped by circumstances and that no one cares.

In contrast, McDowell related, living in freedom as a son or daughter of God is marked by displaying these characteristics:

*I have a growing assurance of God as my Father because of a true understanding of the cross.

*I am building a life partnership with God based on the gospel and not self-effort.

*I’m more forgiving, less judgmental and condemning.

*I rely on the Holy Spirit to help me use my tongue for praise and not complaint or gossip.

*By faith I see God’s sovereign plan over my life as wise and good.

*I learn to pray, claiming the promises of God.

*I seek daily forgiveness and cleansing from my sins.*

Such are the insights that can only come from those deep “snuggle times” with God: Bible open, heart listening.  He also has a way of reinforcing His truths through people who care about us and are praying for us.

Do you know a spiritual orphan? That status has nothing to do with whether parents are still living. It has everything to do with our willingness to be embraced by our Heavenly Father, and to do what He asks us to do to grow spiritually. Baby overalls are cute, but they’re not to fit us all our lives. Heaven’s closets have “robes of righteousness” waiting!

 *Quoted by Lucinda Secrest McDowell in Amazed by Grace (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1996, pp. 55-56.  McDowell cited her notes from “Sonship Week” Bible Course, Jack and Rose Marie Miller, lecturers. Used by permission of the author.

Puzzle-impaired?

We have a collection of small-fry puzzles for when our grandsons, 2 and 3, come to visit. Some are super-simple, with pieces exactly cut to the holes. Others (like the Elmo one below) require a little more discernment about corners and edges.  People who have problems fitting together the pieces of faith remind me of the “Elmo” puzzle.  Believe it or not, the Bible agrees with that. No, there’s no furry red creature from Sesame Street in scriptures, but there’s a Greek word, suniemi, for “understand,” which means:  "the assembling of individual facts into an organized whole, as collecting the pieces of a puzzle and putting them together.” That insight was shared by teacher-author Beth Moore in her book on the life of Paul, To live is Christ (Broadman, 2001, p.  194) as she discussed Paul’s explanation of the prophecy in Isaiah 6:9-10:



Go to this people and say, ‘’You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.” (Acts 28:26)
Paul was trying to point out that when Jesus came, even as the prophecies came together in His life and ministry, the Jews were so calloused that they wouldn’t “get it.”  Even though the prophetic pieces “fit” in Him, they just kept ignoring corner and side pieces and saying it was “impossible” that He was the one for whom they’d waited so long.

PUZZLING THEOLOGIES
You’ve probably run into, as I have, people whose spiritual  understanding is so messed up that they basically invent a new (and puzzling)religion. They think faith in God should result in a painless, wonderful life. But history and the Bible emphasize that “peace with God” doesn’t always mean earthly peace.  I’ve had my share of difficulties, tears, and hurt. But I trusted God to keep me going forward to what He had planned.  We don’t always see a tidy conclusion in this life.  I just got an E-mail from a friend with an overseas ministry area.  It includes a country where a Christian husband and dad has already served nine years in prison just for witnessing about Jesus.  Given the hostility of that area’s government, he may die there.  And he’s just one of thousands (millions?) who are suffering for their faith. Moore observes:
When we continue to resist what God has for us, we may cripple our ability to understand how the pieces of our puzzle fit together. We will continually single out our experiences rather than understand them as parts of the whole...Although we will not understand everything until we see Christ face-to-face, God often blesses us by letting many things make sense during our lifetimes. (p.195)

PUZZLES TO GROW ON
At this point, my little grandson Josiah, 3 1/2, does not like the Elmo puzzle (though he is quite friendly with our collection of “Elmo” children’s books). His spatial development isn’t mature enough to work this level of puzzle. Someday, though, his puzzle-ability may come to the level of optical art or mosaic scenes that end up on a card table for several weeks of “solving.”

I want to believe that will be true of me, too.  I have a lot of “puzzle pieces” of hardship and difficult people that just don’t make sense right now. But I know God sees the bigger picture, and in His wise way, the true picture will, in the end, make sense.  Or, to put it another way, in Heaven there may be a Room of Puzzles, all completed, and all splendid because God designed them!

Broken up is hard to be....

Icy driveway--see tire tracks at left

Snow on top of sleet, on top of more snow and sleet, left us with an ice skating rink for a driveway a few weeks ago. The immediate solution was the tedious one: slamming a shovel into the ice to break it up. As I was taking my aggressions out on the slab of ice, of all things, some old pop song lyrics came to mind: “Breaking up is hard to do.” They came from Neil Sedaka’s 1962 #1 hit (for one week) titled, “Don’t Take Your Love Away From Me.” I was a high school freshman that year, more interested in classical music than the current pop tune, but somehow  random exposures to that era’s pop culture found a niche in my brain. Technology that was a pipe dream fifty years ago allowed me to “google” it and hear the whole song (with a grainy black-and-white video) on Youtube.  Oh my, how times have changed. The singer was nicely groomed in pants and a sweater. Behind him, modestly “grooving” to the music, were young men in suits and girls wearing dresses or skirts and blouses! 

THE RING WAS THE THING...
Those were the days, when it was big to “go steady,” which a girl announced to her world by wearing a guy’s class ring on a neck chain. Eventually, there was the inevitable “breaking up” and returning of the ring. Somehow, as an academia nut with no boyfriends, I missed all that adolescent trauma. But as I emerged into adulthood and found my spiritual moorings in truly embracing Jesus as my Savior, I discovered a deeper, more transforming “breaking up.”  It’s what God does in our lives to take us away from shallow and worthless things and into a deep and abiding love relationship with Him.

If you haven’t guessed, I am a reader, with three to five books going at a time. Recently I read Henri  J.M. Nouwen’s Life of the Beloved, commended as “must read” by another book “in process” on my pile, one by George Verwer, founder of the world-wide mission outreach “Operation Mobilization.” Nouwen found himself in dialog with a discouraged secular Jew who questioned the value of any religion.  Out of that came Nouwen’s insight that brokenness can be a gateway to joy when we realize it carries the opportunity to purify and deepen God’s blessing on us. The apostle James said the same thing: to consider testings of our faith as “pure joy” because these are part of the maturing of our faith (James 1:2-4).  In other words, to rejoice in brokenness because it prepares the way for a deeper faith.

To return to that pop song of half a century ago, but with a spiritual angle, getting “broken up” is hard to go through. But it’s how God woos us from the “crush” or love of the world’s slippery values to bring us for our true love and Savior, Jesus.

What's your 700?

I was so tired, I could hardly wait to get to bed.  But I was minutes away from reaching a long-sought goal. So I pushed the needle with its long tail of yarn once again into the quilt, tied and cut it, pushed it again, and again. Finally, I  finished my 700^th baby quilt to donate to a local hospital for a baby from a family in need.  For the last five and a half years I have sewn these blankets  from materials found at thrift stores, yard sales, and store clearance bins. I originally thought I’d stop at 10, 50, then 100, then 500...while my family chuckled, “You’re not done yet.”  After 700, I’m ready for the break.

I started this project after learning that our hospital served some families so impoverished that they  had little to nothing to take their babies home in.  For some, “home” was a car, shelter, or relative or friend’s crowded house. In previous years, I’d randomly donated home-sewn baby blankets to our local pro-life clinic.  But this was a bigger need.  Plus, I got an elbow in the ribs from Galatians 2:10, about remembering the poor. Paul (author of that book) said he was eager to do that as part of his ministry.

'IN THE WAY'-OBEDIENCE
Like the patches in my quilts, God has a way of putting things together. I thought recently of the account in Genesis 24 about Abraham’s servant traveling to the ancestral land to find an appropriate bride for Abraham’s son Isaac. They certainly did “courtship” differently back then! But I have long appreciated the humble servant’s reaction when he found the young woman who seemed to be “just right.”  He didn’t pump his fist or call a town hall. He said, “I being in the way the Lord led me” (Genesis 24:27). In other words, as he committed himself to "the way" of a grueling faith trip and sought to keep a sensitive heart,  God brought it about.

As for the blankets, I constantly experienced God “leading” me. Yes, I opened my wallet to buy discounted “essentials.” At one estate sale I came across a huge roll of batting—almost as big as me.  As I wobbled down the street to my car with it, I wondered if I would ever use it up.  I did, within a few months.   I was also blessed by many who gave me fabric or batting, including a woman dying of cancer whose fabric-scraps gifting resulted in fifteen blankets.  One older lady and her daughter brought by a big box of serger cone thread in various colors. I rigged up a way to use it on my sewing machine.

A NUMBER FOR 'IT'S TIME'
Why 700? As other things needing time and emotional energy have come into my life, I sensed the need to fix a “goal.”  The number “7” is considered a perfect number in the Bible. God created in six days and rested on the seventh.  We still have a seven-day calendar.  He had Noah bring seven pairs of “clean” animals into the ark (just duos of all the rest).  Joshua marched about Jericho seven times before the walls fell.  Daniel and Revelation are full of prophetic sevens.

Our world bleeds with heart-breaking hurts, particularly for women, children and infants. I honor those who are there to help the helpless in my community and across the nation, and across the oceans at the front lines of disaster and war.  For a season, I felt God leading me to help my community’s poor,  even through such a simple thing as a baby blanket.

Care to share what God has called you to do?  I’d welcome feedback in the comments section.