I found 5 of these stone tablets and hung them on our fence recently just because I liked what they said. I was out doing my daily leaf count this morning on all of the trees in my yard and took this picture. This is the embodiment of what we are doing these days. And if you just kind of look at the surface of this, you think, " Yeah, we're doing that, and isn't it cool?" But you know what, it's also really hard. It's hard blending all of the personalities in the people we hang with. It's hard to always care when someone needs caring. It's hard to listen to someone sharing their problems when you just want to say, "Get a grip already!" To know that next time it might be you with the problem and the last thing you'll want to hear is "Get a grip!"Why can't I be more compassionate?
Why do I have to be so practical?
What is wrong with me anyway, that I just don't seem to feel as deeply as everyone else?
Why do I have to be so honest right now?
Please everyone, call me on this stuff. Help me to understand your problems, so that I don't immediately want you to just get a grip. Don't stop talking to me and telling me what's going on in your lives, because now you know my secret thoughts when you do so. Tell me WHY you can't get a grip. Help me to become less pragmatic and more compassionate. Help me to know when my practical side is overpowering my feeling side. I know that too much EITHER way is not healthy. There has to be a balance. And please, please do not think that I am directing this at any of you. It is totally me, and what's wrong inside MY head. If you are reading this right now, know that I LOVE YOU! I love you with all of the good and the troubling.
And finally know this: The second part of this tablet has been no trouble for any of us. We laugh and dream together WELL, and easily.
6 comments:
Thanks for your honesty Susie. This journey we're on, called "life" is not easy. It's a constant learning, refining, purifying process. We are just so lucky to have the love of Christ to get us through, to model after, to show us how to walk, how to breath, how to love.
Thank you Lord!
You are so right, Tracy. Thanks for our talk tonight, and thanks for modeling compassion for me!
We are all in process Susie. Your strengths are others weaknesses, your weaknesses are someone elses strengths. Put us all together and we have a little of everything there is to offer. Honesty coupled with love and compassion is hard to achieve. We are ALL being stretched in this. Keep probing, keep seeking God's face in these issues and be willing to walk through the refining fire. If we continue to love each other (as we do, very deeply so), we will get through this TOGETHER! Personally, I LOVE that you are practical, I love that you say "get a grip" sometimes and I love that you can help me see EVERY situation in a NEW light and a new perspective. Don't lose those qualities, just refine them!
I too appreciate your honesty.
For me, this is hard to read. A lot of the emotion and issues that are going on right now are ours, and the grip I have is all the grip I can get right now...so reading this hurts and feels very personal, and yet it is still important to me and to our friendship to know where your head is.
Words hurt, and you can't take them back. You can ask for forgivenes, but you can never take them back. So anytime God is guarding our tongue while He refines our hearts and minds is a good thing. And a lesson I can certainly learn as well.
We'll never really know the hearts of men, but we know the heart of the One that made us...I praise Him that He is willing and able to guide our thoughts, our words, our actions and our every step while we interact with each other on this path.
Susie,
It's a very male thing, your views here. It's typically male -- that impulse in us to grab the situation and wrestle it into submission or come up with 15 different solutions. Got a problem? I’ve got an answer! Take your pick!
It’s also a product of our pharmaceutical / microwave society. Why do you feel so bad? You live better than all the ancient kings combined! Compared to the rest of the world and the rest of history, you have it made! Nah, you just need a pill. (Might cause nausea, blindness, erectile dysfunction, oily discharge, and on rare occasions, death.)
That’s a bunch of crap. It’s not true. There are holes in us. We love deeply, and that means we are wounded deeply through that love. Those that love the most are the most deeply hurt. Those that reach and those that stretch are all the more hurt when they stumble and snap back. If we didn’t have pain, then we really don’t have love. Can’t have one without the other. The Chinese are right – it’s yin/yang. Sweet and sour. They live together, two forces opposite yet complimentary.
I sometimes find myself judging other people’s pain. I learned a long time ago how to stop it, and how to find compassion, but I fall back sometimes, especially with people I don’t respect or with people that thrive in the attention that pain brings (Munchausen’s syndrome.)
We all have to remember that we are at different levels. Problems look big to us, but they are neither big nor small. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” - Shakespeare. Anything and everything has only the power that WE give it. We decide what leads us. Even God won’t force Himself on you without you inviting Him. Money, status, sex, ability, death – all only as powerful as we make it.
What seems big to you is small to me. What seems small to you is big to me. We all have fear and doubt, and it’s usually unfounded. People like Mandela or Gandhi or Jesus or a POW or something like that would look at our problems and laugh. “I WISH it was only ____________. That’s a cake walk.”
Doesn’t make it any less real to us. It’s part of our growth. When we feel fearful or stressed or angry, that’s good! That means we are growing. Get ready for a breakthrough. Soon, that problem will be small and you’ll be big. On to the next task before Heaven.
So it’s less about compassion or “get a grip.” It’s more about being aware that people in pain are growing, and hoping that they take the lesson quickly so God can move them and grow them in other ways.
That should appeal to the pragmatic side of your character, I would think. Worked for me to look at it that way, in any case.
And, Jacqui, you are among people who love you. For me, I can’t imagine a time or situation that I would ever stop.
Dale
oh, my pragmatic and honest and grip-worthy sister!
Father is singing His Delight over you... and Son is gathering you in His Arms... and Spirit is Whispering Words of Hope AND Compassion to your listening ears...
And i for one, am so glad YOU LISTEN!!!! (even when you're secretly wishing i'd "get a grip")
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