Judgment - A Distorted Perception

My husband Wade and I are going through the series Love & Respect with our young married group. Emerson Eggerichs told a story about a man that got onto a crowded bus with his three children. It was an overnight trip and as people were trying to sleep these kids were running wild in the bus and the father just stared out the window, seemingly oblivious. The other passengers were getting quite irritated and starting to make snap judgments like this man is a terrible parent, if these were my kids etc. They elected one man to speak to this father about getting his unruly children under control. The man called to the other a couple times before he responded. ‘Sir, you need to settle your children down. ‘He said.

The other man responded,’ I am so sorry, sorry, we just came from the hospital, my wife just died and the children just lost their mother.’

He said in that split second, nothing changed but everything changed. All that was given was a piece of information and it changed the whole perception of what the bigger picture was of this family.

How many times I have been guilty of snap judgments. I am sure there was many times that if I had just gotten one piece of information, my perception would have changed. Dr. James Richards says in his book. How to Stop the Pain, ‘Identifying what someone did is not judgment; that is merely observation. It is when we assume to know why a person did what he did that we have entered into judgment.’

Judgment means according to one definition in dictionary.com the forming of an opinion, estimate, notion, or conclusion, as from circumstances presented to the mind

Do you think the people on the bus stopped to consider that there was something wrong with the man? I am finding more and more that when I judge the people around me, it is often a reflection of the ugliness in my own heart. They are like a mirror revealing to me something in my heart that God wants to deal with. I know that it is conviction about my behaviour and not condemnation that I am experiencing. When I learn of these things I want to turn to God and let Him change me from the inside out. There was a time when I was less convicted of my position as a child of God that I would take these revelations and beat myself up with them.

I don’t know about you but the more God reveals my heart, the less inclined I am to trust my own opinions. As my friend once commented,’ It is so amazing to me the things in myself that I am blinded to.’

That is another place of God’s grace; He does not reveal everything I need to deal with all at once. He gives me the chance to take a look as he shows me what is within my heart. I still need to choose if I am humble enough to let Him do the work. There is no limit to the opportunities God presents to make me more like Him.

Jeremiah 17:9, 10 ‘The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.’

How are you forming your opinions of others? What is in your heart that you see in others? I encourage you to examine the things you say throughout the day. What is reflected in your thoughts?

Lord thank you for the endless opportunities to change the things within me. Thank you for the insight to see you mean it for my good. Help me to look past my ‘snap judgments’ and obtain more information to change my perception. I want to humbly accept your invitations to change me from within.

Earth Day

Acts 17:24-28 NIV “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being. ‘As some of your poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
Today is celebrated as Earth Day. Earth Day is a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the earth's environment. A day recognized as a specific time to take care for what God has given us. It is fitting that this is the day that I decided to turn over a new leaf. No pun intended. I came to this conclusion as I was getting ready and I considered wearing two bras. One for the real things and one for the growing thing under the real ones! I fight with these 10-20 pounds every year and each time it comes back it grows in a new spot! How is that possible? Ok well I know how it is possible that it got there. I am not a very good steward of my body that God has given me. I confess I am a little addicted to junk food and am leaning on the lazy side as far as exercise goes.
Ok now that the confession is out of the way. I will share with you what God showed me today with His creation. I went for a walk by the river (the beginning of the new leaf), my absolute favourite thing to do. I often do it with friends but the greatest friend of all, God, walked with me today. I shared how I have not been taking very good care of myself and how I really can’t do it without Him. He invited me to observe the gifts He gave me today as I went on my walk.
Rustling in the tall dry grass proved to be some prairie dogs having free reign in their playground habitat called earth. Green buds were springing forth from the trees and the grass was starting to join in the color parade. More rustling proved to be a robin, strutting under the trees, trusting the earth to provide its food. As I looked to the other side, dots of green shirts spotted the area as a company of people did their part to clean that space of the earth. Two geese waddled in front of me on the path, not paying me any mind. I walked over a bridge hearing the rush of traffic and the roar of the water streaming by.
More geese swam in the water; if you see them on the surface they appear so calm. I happened to catch a glimpse of their webbed feet; they were paddling furiously under the surface. Their calm presence seemingly a facade as the work underneath was in such contrast to their appearance. All of a sudden it hit me. That was me. I appear to be calm on the surface, but that is not always my heart. When it isn’t my heart, it comes out as some rotten fruit such as a bad attitude or judgement or frustration. Here I was seemingly swimming along when I am furiously paddling for my life. The inside of me is in turmoil and having many thoughts of how do I work this out, what can I do to make this better. How am I going to be a good Christian, lose the weight, make more money, look beautiful, parent my children, be a great wife.... the list goes on and on.
As I was walking I thought of all the creatures I saw. They don’t have to have a special day to celebrate earth. They live it, In Him they live and move and have their being. God has made them so they trust He will provide for them. He has also made us that way. He said in the verse in Acts that He made us so that we would reach out for Him and we would find Him. I found Him in all kinds of places today. He reminded me that it is in Him, that I live and move and have my being. There is nowhere else that I can rest but in Him, that as long as I continue to paddle so furiously under the surface, He will step back and let me do it. He loves me that much to honour my choices, even when they don’t honour Him.
As soon as I stop though, confess and turn back to Him. He is patiently waiting. The Creator of the universe. The One who determined my time on His earth, the One who determined the very place that I live. He gently leads me and says follow me, trust me, my child. Walk with me and be inspired, I look after my creation.
How were you inspired on this Earth day? Were you more aware of the things that you did to the environment today? Did your awareness extend to the Creator of the earth and everything in it? What did that look like?

Grief Reappearing

The Thomas M. Ellis book, This Thing Called Grief, states:’ Grief is a crazy-making complicated process. Grief is not about clear, predictable stages or steps. Rather, it is a natural process of dynamic changes that will ebb and flow as they may.’

I have experienced the crazy-making complicated process recently in a new way. Attending my Grandpa’s memorial was a great time of family renewal and remembering. I came home and ‘got on with my life’ stuffing the feelings of sadness. It wasn’t long though before God used my husband to prod me about my disconnectedness. I was living the reality that yes in fact; new grief does bring up old grief. Almost unknowingly I had started erecting walls to contain my pain. The loss of Grandpa had brought to the surface my feelings of grief about my mom.

I love that God loves me so much that even when I don’t consciously invite Him into my pain, He gives me opportunity to work through it. In these couple weeks since I have returned from the memorial, these are a few of the examples that He was in the middle of to allow me to feel and heal.

I attended a movie that allowed me to cry for the last half of it, steady! My daughter and her friend and I sat, without Kleenex, and shed tears of cleansing. (It wasn’t really pretty, but when is crying pretty?)

The day that my husband questioned me about what was going on I had been reading a book by Anne Lamott.She had written something that had struck a nerve with me and I had decided not to finish the book. Well that day as I gathered the books to return to the library I picked up her book, OK, just one more chapter. That chapter happened to be the story about her mother and how it was hard but she was a little relieved when her mother died. Their relationship was difficult and crazy at times, but now she was at the place where she just missed her. I knew what I was reading was precisely where God wanted me to be for that moment.

I took my son to the library and I returned with 3 books, one called Complaint Free World, the other Unattended Sorrow and lastly This Thing Called Grief. Hmmm, I wonder if I should pay more attention to what my heart is telling me. It seriously didn’t connect with me until later - I was not picking these books up just to be more prepared to help others in their grief. They were especially for my own heart at this time.

I realized when my husband cornered me with his love that it was grief that I was feeling. I don’t know what to do with it when it comes bursting through the covers of life. I tend to have very finite thinking sometimes. When I get to a certain place, I feel that I should be ‘done’ with something, rather than allowing my life to be a journey. My grief over Mom took me by surprise and in acknowledging it; God was able to heal another piece of my heart. I now feel I just miss her. I don’t dwell on the fact that the last times were difficult as she struggled in her mental illness, the fact that she ended her own life. I just miss having my Mom around, someone that always made me feel special and loved.

Another gift I was given was a visit from my sister and her boys. We are just re-establishing our relationship since her crazy making years of drug addiction. She has been clean for over a year now. Praise God! One day I may share some of that story. We had many conversations about Mom and her last times, shared our guilt and our grief and discovered the completely different ways we coped. I was reminded of how personally unique our journeys are with grief, even when we grieve the same person.

A line that stood out for me in the movie I cried through said that ‘love is fragile and we are not always the best caretakers’. As I walked through this part of my journey of grieving, I have seen that I have not always been the best caretaker of my heart. God tells us to guard our hearts for they are the wellspring of life. Although I took some deliberate steps to walk through my fresh loss, sadness still lingers. I needed to give myself permission to feel these things, to let God work it out for His good.

Stephen Levine says in his book Unattended Sorrow,’ Unresolved grief is like a low-grade fever. It flows in peaks and valleys. Sometimes it spikes into almost overwhelmingly afflictive emotions; at other times it lies almost dormant, nearly comatose, just beneath the surface, until a shadow crosses the heart and releases it.’

I am grateful for the shadow that released it, and the new opportunity to resolve it. I will trust my God to heal it and to not be afraid of it.

Do you have any unattended sorrow? Ask God to give you the courage to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. You will then fear no evil because He is with you.