A while back, there was the sweetest post going around social media featuring a little girl, weeping and overwhelmed at the prospect of going to her soccer game “unprepared”. Maybe you’ve seen it. As the video progresses, her mother patiently fleshes out the reason behind her sadness and tears, and we come to learn that she is so upset simply because she doesn’t understand the meaning of, “make-up game”. In her innocence and limited exposure to the term, “make-up”, she was distraught over believing with her whole self that she needed to wear make-up to her “make-up game”. It both made me smile and want to reach through the screen to comfort her!
As adults, we can watch something like that and be relieved knowing that her sadness was all for naught. But for her, she was all in with her feelings, truly believing she didn’t have what she needed. From her perspective, she would be showing up to her game unprepared and fearful of the consequences of doing so.
But don’t we do that even as adults? Many times, as we move through life, we see and respond to it through inaccuracies. Just like the little one I mentioned above was overwrought with emotion, we too, can spend a lot of time, energy, and tears impacted and reacting to things that just aren’t true. It may be because of beliefs we’ve held since childhood, or behaviors that we saw modeled for us as we were coming up. We might have misinformation that we haven’t tested for ourselves yet, or even be misled for a season by those we thought were trustworthy. And sometimes it’s just simply, as with the little girl, we have not developed the maturity or capacity to understand yet.
In all of the stories we tell ourselves, it’s God the Father who wants to be the loving parent, patiently relieving us from unnecessary sadness and anxiety. He sees us in our distress, despairing over things he knows may feel very real, but are not. He invites us to take a deep breath, relinquish the misperceptions we’ve come to believe, and allow him to show us our circumstances from his perspective. He presents the truths behind any ideas or narratives we have been telling ourselves or hearing about from others, and is the only one that can be trusted to give us accurate information one hundred percent of the time. God’s perspective, both as the Creator of this world and as our Father, equals true reality. When we come to understand things are they truly are, and align ourselves with his version of our circumstances, we are best positioned to handle whatever we may be facing.
If you want to smile today, watch the video of the little girl distraught about having to show up at her “make-up game” without make-up. Try and see yourself through the eyes of the parent encouraging her little one to believe what is true, and then remember how much God wants to do the same for you and I. Seeing our lives through the eyes of our Father in Heaven really is a game changer.
“The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am achosenchild of God, precious in God’s eyes . . . we must dare to opt consciously for our chosenness and not allow our emotions, feelings, or passions to seduce us into self-rejection.”
– Henri Nouwen
I had a really good friend in 8th grade. She was an amazing artist and straight A student. Shehad parents and a family that loved her. She was extremely well liked at school, and was kind and friendly to all who knew her. Every earthly indicator pointed to a bright future. But she was in deep pain. So much so, one night she ingested an entire bottle of pills. She thought she could just fall asleep and not wake up, forever free from the hurt she was feeling.
But a few hours later . . . just a few hours . . . she did wake up. And she didn’t want to die anymore. She went into her brother’s bedroom, scared and asking for help. He immediately woke up their parents. They rushed her to the hospital, but the medication had already been absorbed into her organs.
There was nothing they could do, except wait for her to die.
What has always stayed with me is the realization that in just a few hours, she went from considering her life not worth living out of desperation, to desperately wanting to live.
Her feelings had betrayed her.
A little time . . . a little sleep . . . shifted her perspective and allowed her to see the hurt she was feeling was nothing worth dying for.
I am not going to pretend that for one second that I understand depression, or dismiss the very real pain that people who feel suicidal experience. Not every hurt will go away by tomorrow morning. Some hurts last months and even years.
But my hope and prayer for each and every person that finds themselves in a moment of thinking they want to choose to go . . . is that they would choose instead to stay.
Tell those who love you. Ask for help. Things we are going through, no matter how difficult, are just that . . . things we go “through“. There is a beginning and there will be an end, but the end should not be one’s life. Yes, we will all enter into hard times, but we must hold on with the knowledge that at some point we will also exit out.
It may feel too heavy to survive, but we cannot always trust our feelings. Instead, we must cling to what we know rather than what we feel. Hold on to those who love you. And when you can’t find the truth within yourself, let those who love you remind you who you really are, how much you are loved, and are valued, and what your life is really worth.
My heart breaks for every parent, sibling, family member and friend that has ever had to walk this road full of shock and pain, left longing for even one more moment with a loved one.
Don’t go. Stay.
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” – Psalm 34:18
With the ringing in of every New Year’s Eve comes the call to reflect on the previous year. If ever there was an approaching new year, literally asking us to reflect, it would be 2020.
What is the most important thing you know walking into 2020?
The number itself is shorthand for perfect vision. For seeing things clearly and as they really are. It’s also synonymous with hindsight, which by definition is, “the knowledge and understanding of an event only after it has happened”.
The irony is that while we are moving forward numerically, we are being tasked to take with us some clarity from the past.
So, as we head into 2020, what do you see clearly now that you haven’t before? What events or experiences have you had that have gifted you with a newfound understanding of yourself or others? What are some things you know now for sure that are going to change how you live your life in the coming days?
Here’s the most important thing I know walking into 2020 . . .
It doesn’t matter what else we do well, if we are not loving people well.
Knowing what to believe today can be challenging, especially when so many voices are constantly claiming different versions of truth. Technology provides us with an endless supply of opinions from the media, politicians, celebrities, and leaders in the faith community. Many of those voices are telling us we are free to believe whatever we choose. That seems to work well . . . right up until the point that we disagree.
Our nation seems incapable right now of practicing what it preaches. We all claim to know that we need to treat everyone with kindness and be respectful of those who believe differently than we do. But more often than not, that theology only extends to those who share the same ideas, beliefs, skin color, and political views as we do.
When we stop and think about it, there’s nothing “extra” we do when we are kind to people who are just like us. How hard is it? There’s something about you I like about me. It really requires nothing from us.
But to choose to be kind to someone we strongly disagree with? Someone who opposes things we really care about? Someone who seems to purposely push our buttons and if we’re honest, we feel is 100% wrong?
Those are the moments we have an opportunity to make a real difference in the world.
To actually be different than what the world is currently offering up. It’s easy to say we want things to change, but until we choose to do something different, we can be sure to get more of the same.
So, I’m not sure if you already know this . . . lol . . . but if you disagree with someone on social media, especially someone popular or influential, you need to be prepared for a potential public shaming.
Unfortunately, we have all been witness to what happens to someone on the wrong side of public opinion. This is neither a new observation nor topic that hasn’t already been addressed. But it is an ongoing problem with no foreseeable solution in sight.
Some of us may have even experienced this first-hand. Or maybe we’ve even been the ones doing the shaming. Regardless of the roles we have or haven’t played, we all know it needs to stop. The lack of civility is exhausting.
So, how do we change things? Where do we go from here? How do we collectively encourage people to continue important conversations without fear of saying the wrong things? To not be afraid to use our voices for fear of retaliation. How should we respond when we are accused of asking the wrong questions when our true intention was seeking greater understanding?
2020 is asking us to look back and consider our actions.
I think we can all agree on a few things right from the start. All of us need to take responsibility for facilitating respectful conversations. We need to hold ourselves accountable. We need to decide in public spaces, just as in our private lives, that it’s far more important to be kind that it is to be funny, snarky, self-righteous, or any other adjective that would cause anyone else to feel devalued.
We need to honestly ask ourselves during each interaction whether or not we would say the same thing if the person were sitting across from us, face to face.
Think about what would happen if all of us owned this in 2020. If each of us would commit to measuring and weighing each and every world before it left our mouths. If we would listen to that voice inside us questioning if what we just typed is really what we want to put out into the world. If it’s really what we want others to know about who we are.
Everyone has something to say. Everyone has shareworthy thoughts and feelings with the capacity to help and encourage others. But everyone also has the capacity to be hurtful with their words. We say we know these things, but simply knowing something isn’t enough. We need to infuse our actions with that knowledge. We need to realize that sometimes backspace and delete are the most important keys on the keyboard.
Many of the problems we face in society today stem from people believing and communicating to others, directly or indirectly, they are “less than” in some way. That includes what we tell ourselves. Poor self-esteem, verbal attacks, racism, and everything in between stems from not believing the truth about the value of ourselves or one another.
So, maybe that’s where we need to start. With the truth. Our baseline of change needs to be a foundation built on what is true, about ourselves and each other.
The truth is that our worth is not determined by what we or anyone else thinks of us.
Our value is God given.
My prayer and challenge for all of us is one in the same as we head into 2020 . . . may we all see ourselves and one another the way God sees us. I’ll share more about how I think we can do that in the next couple of posts.
Wishing you and your loved ones every blessing in the year ahead!
hindsight 
You must be logged in to post a comment.