Giving and receiving

Asking for help is not a sign of weakness; it is actually a by-product of practicing the spiritual discipline of not judging.  I don’t know why, but I am often astonished at how quickly someone is able to help me if I ask.

Problems that seem confounding to me often have clear, often simple solutions that others can explain to me.  I hope this is also true in the reverse.

Once I learn, through trial and error and often a fair amount of failing, who can be helpful in situations that I find impossible to understand, the beautiful side-effect is a deepening cache’ of folks I can call on in my time of need.

This frees up my time for the things that I can help someone else with - time I previously wasted spinning in uncertainty and a skills deficit in areas of life where I really, truly need to ask for help in order to resolve an issue.

This doesn’t have to be major stuff.  For example, when I study and prepare for a message series, I always cram too much into a single outline for a weekend message.  I will ALWAYS have this tendency.  Twenty years in and I STILL CRAM TOO MUCH IN TO A SINGLE MESSAGE OUTLINE.  What I have learned is that Scott, our co-pastor at NSC, can read my notes in 3 minutes or less and suggest to me what he thinks is my strongest point, what is extraneous information, and where in the outline I stop one message and go on to a completely new message.  I rely on Scott to help me in my weakness.  He never has this problem, and that’s great, because I could not be helpful in solving it for him.  But he has another area of message delivery that I can sometimes provide advance feedback on and I hope he finds it as helpful as I find him in my own preparation.

This is no big deal.  The world will no crash down around us if we do not practice this exchange of feedback.  If I go way too long in a message, the checked out faces in the room will teach me to stop talking.  But this kind of mutuality is helpful.  The scripture refers to this I think when it says, “Love covers a multitude of sins.”  It is not suggesting a cover up.  But it is saying, I think, that when we love and trust one another, it is a natural thing to rely on one another to cover our perennial weaknesses.  This strengthens the whole of a community.  It is helpful.

If Scott were to judge my over-preparedness, then I could not ask him to help me and in fact, he wouldn’t be very helpful even if I asked.  His judgment would negate his capacity to help.  

Is judgment getting in the way of love in your life?

Integrity

Integrity requires that we choose to live courageously by our core values over the comfort of taking the easy way out when faced with a tough decision that calls our values into question.  Recently someone offered me a high profile speaking engagement that may have helped our local community spread the word about our ministry.  They also required that I sign a release form that gave them ownership of the content I would present.  I chose not to speak.  

In past years, I might have been distracted by the perceived opportunity to share with our larger community all the wonderful things that I believe Northstar Community participates in out of my unbridled enthusiasm for our mission.  I wouldn’t have thought about the implications of willingly signing over my creative and proprietary rights in the process.

Today, I realize that this was not a respectful request when the speaker (me) was not being paid or even acknowledged for their work.  This is not an integrity move, and it took more courage than it should have for me to respectfully decline the offer.

Many carrots will be dangled in front of our faces that will tempt us to make decisions that are not consistent with our core values.  One way I am learning to distinguish a real carrot from fake fruit is giving myself time to make decisions.  All decisions.  Even small decisions.  Pausing to prepare, think about the implications of my choices, notice and acknowledge times when I want to avoid acting with courage - this time is necessary for me to live with integrity.

It’s not easy.  What shortcuts have you been tempted to take?  How have you allowed an “opportunity” to blind you to the cost of pursuing it?

Decency

In Brene’ Brown’s model of “B.R.A.V.I.N.G” - the first three things - boundaries, reliability, and accountability are fairly obvious and oft talked about concepts.  But  V is for “VAULT” really caught my attention.

The skill set she puts in this category goes like this:  “Learning how to keep confidences, to recognize what’s ours to share and what’s not.  The challenge is to stop using gossip, common enemy intimacy, and oversharing as a way to hotwire connection.” (p. 150 Braving the Wilderness)

These concepts are all ways Brene says we use fake connections to imitate true belonging.  When we gossip it feels all connected...until we imagine others gossiping about us.  Oversharing feels like intimacy until we realize that we shared with someone who was not safe and the sharing backfires.  Common enemy intimacy is when we experience a connective zing based on connecting with others based on who and what we are against.  This intimacy is particularly pernicious because it often joins us to people we with whom we share no common core values.  

This is why my Republican friends are rightfully upset because their Democrat friends are now labelling them a rascist because they voted for President Trump in the election.  My Democrat friends are devastated that their Republican friends say, “Hey, there is no way I could vote for crooked Hillary.”    The name calling and the connection each political party feels when they gather together and bash the other is an example of common enemy bonding.  Each is making assumptions that the other side believes are false.  But here’s the real problem.  We are making enemies out of people who are not enemies.  This is a problem.  

Folks, beware this kind of bonding.  It’s indecent.

Accountability

I am currently stalking the news articles coming out of Chicago and the Bill Hybels disaster.  Hybels, Senior Pastor for decades at Willow Creek Church - a wildly popular mega-church that was begun by Hybels in the suburbs of Chicago - ultimately ended his career under the cloud of sexual misconduct.

But first, everyone went to great pains to dodge accountability for these accusations.  The women were ignored, intimidated and eventually publicly maligned in an attempt to hold onto the image of this man who many had revered.

Eventually, the house of cards came tumbling down and now the entire board and the two newly appointed Senior Pastors have resigned as a first step in trying to make amends for their own blindness.  Much is left to be done before anyone can say what will come of this tragic fall of one man and the system that was so invested in his reputation that they failed to require him to be reputable.  

Taking responsibility is just plain hard.  But it is part of respectability.

This is not the first powerful Christian leader ultimately wrecked by his own hand nor will be be the last.  But it is a cautionary tale and we should listen.  Power, whether it is power in business, church, or at home, is a very potent and potentially toxic poison.

It is not good for any of us to feel like we are above the standards of decent human behavior.  

Don’t know what human decent behavior looks like?  That’s ok, many of us have to learn these practices as adults.  But learn we must lest we continue to perpetuate relationships where power rules and the peace that passes all understanding is nowhere to be found

Reliability

I am most vulnerable to resentment and a host of other self-defeating attitudes when I disappoint myself in some way.  I do care about what others think of me and often rely on a team of trusted friends and loved ones to help me decide how to think, feel and behave.  Whether I follow advice or strike out on my own independent decision making, I have learned that being reliable is a thing that I need to practice.

Reliability is not has hard as it sounds.  When paired with decent self-care, I have figured out that I can be reasonably reliable.  At its core, reliable means that when I say “YES!” I follow through and do it.  When I say “NO!” I do the appropriate actions that fit with my no.

I am currently reading and rereading an excellent book called Dopesick by Beth Macy.  In it, Macy unpacks the current opioid crisis from both a historic and personal perspective.  The stories are heartbreaking and achingly familiar.  Toward the end of the book, yet another of the young women who she had followed through her opioid addiction succumbs to the lifestyle and is found dead in a dumpster.  She wrote of the extended family’s tragic response - continuing to bicker, judge and blame one another for either “enabling” or following “tough love” principles.

She implied, I think, that this was just more missing the point.  

It make me think about being reliable.  I find in my own recovery work that it is a skill that is desperately needed.  This is a tough affliction, and more than anything, I suspect families need to learn everything they can, get clear about their core values in loving their afflicted one, and reliably apply these principles.

Recently I participated in a funeral service for a woman who I did not know but loved.  I had come to love her by knowing her parents as they faithfully attended our Family Education Program (that educates family about the disease of substance use disorder and offers support and encouragement for families as they make difficult decisions).  These folks were RELIABLE in their measured, healthy, loving response to their daughter, even though she herself resisted treatment.  At her death, this mom and dad grieved and were sorrowful but they exhibited little to no regret, recrimination or blame.  I find this remarkable and extremely unusual.

I suspect their own reliability gave them the gift of  no regret, recrimination or feelings of blame to work through.  Their compassion for both self and others was beautiful.  They had done their best; they had been reliable; they had lived with boundaries.

Tomorrow, we will talk about the third of 7 skills that strengthen us and reduce the likelihood that we will wallow in resentment.