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Forgiveness part 6: Grace-infused relationships
(I found my flash drive with my notes on forgiveness, so I’ll continue sharing my thoughts. So far I discussed the need for mutual understanding and self-support in relational conflicts.)
Forgiveness seems like such a wonderful resolution to any conflict… until you forgive me for a lie I did not tell or a missing wallet I did not steal. Here is the downside of forgiveness–it starts with blame. I was raised in a family that believed every conflict or pain in relationship was someone’s fault. If I feel hurt, it’s your fault or if you’re innocent, then I’m wrong to feel hurt. Someone’s always guilty. Every conflict was resolved by making the wrongdoer confess and apologize, a power struggle with a winner and loser (really no one wins, and the relationship suffers). Forced apologies are a stipend of American families: “Tell your brother you’re sorry!”
Genuine forgiveness is only one part of a whole gracious worldview with which I perceive others and relate to them. What others consider an issue of forgiveness is often simply an issue of acceptance for Kimberly and me. We offer grace to one another (patience, understanding, benefit of the doubt) without making it a question of someone being right and someone being wrong–we are both flawed and we want to create an environment where we are accepted with our shortcomings. We do this all the time in facing mild irritations—when she slams kitchen cupboards or I forget to empty the vacuum cleaner canister. But even with big issues, I have learned from Kimberly that the path of blame and forgiveness is usually a misguided diversion from sorting out our problems with grace.
Using my family’s approach, I tried in our first few years of marriage to help her see her faults and correct them (shame her into goodness), but she would have none of it–it was not her deeds but my perceptions that were faulty. She was right, we needed better understanding and acceptance, not better behavior. Love certainly inspires us to change for one another, but it is the result of acceptance, not the basis for it. She and I have unique personalities and values, fears and pleasures, histories and perspectives, so we experience the same things quite differently. This does not make one of us right and the other wrong, one better and one worse. We are learning to appreciate our differences.
JUST ‘CAUSE WE’RE DIFFER’NT DON’T MEAN WE CAN’T GET ALONG
It’s true that Kimberly doesn’t tell me lies or steal my wallet, but neither do my colleagues or neighbors usually… not even most strangers I meet. Certainly there is plenty of real wrong in the world, evil that needs to be identified, confronted, and forgiven. But to me, that is the relational ER. For most of my daily interactions I want to foster a spirit of humble and loving acceptance and understanding. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy, and Lord knows I need a lot of it.
Matt. 1:5 Boaz fathered Obed by Ruth.
Ruth was the original Cinderella. From a pagan, destitute widow she became the affluent, honored bride of Boaz and the great-grandmother of King David. Tales of rags to riches are told in a thousand tongues, and American versions come with a moral: work hard enough and every pauper can reach the palace. Whether Carnegie or Rockefeller, Lincoln or Edison, our heroes rise from obscurity and poverty to wealth and fame by their own sweat. But this is not Ruth’s story. The central message of Ruth is redemption, deliverance purely by grace.
Ruth didn’t go looking for God in the promised land, but God went to Moab looking for Ruth. When He showed up, she embraced Him and clung to Him through ten years of childlessness, the death of her husband, and the loss of her home, and in that destitution she followed Him back to Israel. Her faith was truly remarkable, but it was faith, not self-reliance or reward. Faith is simply throwing the doors open for God to come in and do His thing. And the more of God we let in, the bigger the difference He makes, though major renovations are not easy or quick or painless (ask my wife about this!).
Boaz is the “kinsman-redeemer,” a wonderful foreshadowing of the coming Messiah who would rescue the poor and broken. Boaz was rich, powerful, and widely respected, but like his coming King, he saw a penniless migrant as wholly worthy of his heart. She was not a charity-case for whom he had pity, a bride who would always feel inadequate and undeserving of his love, abashed by his greatness, self-deprecating and daunted, always working feverishly to avoid his disappointment. Rather Boaz considered himself blessed and delighted to have her. What did she bring to the marriage? Only herself… which was the one thing Boaz wanted. She filled his heart.
From Ruth’s line would finally come the promised Messiah, stepping across an infinite gap of greatness to be with the ones He loves. We are the center of His thoughts, the passion of His heart. He valued us at the price of Himself, His own life. The bond between the most loving husband and wife, of Boaz and Ruth, is a pale image of His embrace of us, drawing us into His heart until we are one. It is not too much to say that He has tied His eternal happiness to us… we can break his heart and make his heart sing. But whatever we do or do not do, His love for us never weakens or wavers because it is anchored in His very nature. We bring nothing to this relationship but ourselves, and that is what delights Him and fills His heart.
This is the unpublished conclusion to my post “The Spiritual Exercise of Shirking Duty”
I think God is telling me, “You’re going to keep spinning your wheels until you let off the gas. You’re here to learn the art of idling.”
Idleness as a spiritual goal? That sounds very wrong-headed. I spent most of my life trying to maximize every minute, sleeping as little as possible so as to make the biggest spiritual profit for God. Every activity, even entertainment, was scored on how useful it was. If I read books, it must be for my growth. If I took a vacation, it was at a monastery. Every meal with friends was to “sharpen iron with iron.” Pleasures without eternal benefits were wasteful and wrong, and slowly every simple joy was twisted into a duty. I was driven by the fear that God valued me for what I did for him, and it was never enough.
My beliefs have changed, but the shadow remains over those natural delights that would ordinarily bring me pleasure. When I try to simply enjoy reading, writing, music, hiking, gardening, wood-working, and the like, this imperious gravity pulls me to turn each one into something productive, cutting off its wings and tethering it with a burden of obligation. Since last winter my only sure escape has been solitaire, not because it is especially fun, but because it is especially profitless, and so I can’t use it for brownie points with God. While shuffling cards, I’m doing nothing good for the world; I’m just killing time. And as I’ve learned to trust God’s grace there in the middle of that uselessness, I have discovered pure grace, not “grace” in exchange for my good efforts.
DUTY: LOOKS GOOD, BUT TIES ME IN KNOTS
How can I rebuild my life around the joy of being who God created me to be instead of the slave-driven motive of duty? As long as I keep believing that God loves me more when I do more for him, and less when I do less, I can never find rest in his grace. To truly discover the riches of God’s full acceptance apart from my profitability, I may need to become more useless still in order to set my faith free from its false grounding in my own goodness. “The foolishness of God is wiser than men.”
GOING OUT ON A LIMB OF FAITH
At the time of my last post, I was finishing up my work for the school year at Lynchburg College library. I get furloughed during the summer months, which punches holes in our finances. Even when I am working, I don’t make quite enough to cover our basic expenses, so our savings are slowly dwindling. I applied for numerous summer jobs, but no one was interested. Three years ago I started a lawn service to try to cover the summer deficit, but I discovered that putting out flyers got me very few customers. Though I really enjoy yard work, I hate–really hate–sales, and in order to get customers I have to sell myself (the most loathsome form of marketing to me).
Being depressed gives me no energy for that kind of entrepreneur activity… or for most other things that are needed in this world to sustain life. I enjoy my library work, and it gives me a distraction from depression. Now I wake up every morning miserable, and though it doesn’t improve my feelings, I have fallen into the habit of doing house projects to distract myself. Hey, if there’s nothing I can do to make myself feel better, I may as well get stuff done.
But for the last few days, it all seems so pointless. Why should I pull the weeds or repair the rocker or wheelbarrow when neither the work nor the results give me pleasure? My active depression actually pushed me to work on projects just to help me get through the day, but for the last three mornings, I have not woken unhappy. So I still have very little energy, but now even less incentive… not that it matters. Nothing really matters. When life is reduced to simply finding the least painful way to survive each day, what is the point?
Today is our anniversary. Since I come home from work after Berly is in bed, I was able to do some shenanigans to surprise her in the morning. She woke up Wednesday to banners draped from the rafters reading “BERLY IS THE BEST”. On Thursday she found a 3 foot paper flower I had made and a love poem. This morning she came downstairs to see an 8 foot tall card I made her covered with a list of her attributes. Here’s a snap of the card and the ten page list of attributes follows (I could have written hundreds more)–hey she deserves a lot more than a giant card! I spent some time this morning selecting a few of her good points and expounding on them to her. I was thinking to myself, “Hey, she’s married to me, so that wealth of goodness is all mine too!
“A few of the hundreds of reasons I am glad you are my wife”
CAPABLE, ENDURING, FORBEARING, FORGIVING, GENTLE, LONG-SUFFERING, MEEK,
MILD, PERSEVERING, PERSISTENT, SELF-POSSESSED, SERENE, TOLERANT, TRANQUIL,
UNDERSTANDING, CONSIDERATE, CALM, COMPOSED, EQUABLE,
KIND, TEMPERATE, CONSIDERATE, RESPECTFUL,
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
MILD-TEMPERED, ACCOMMODATING, VALOROUS, ATTENTIVE, BENEVOLENT,
GLADDENING, COMPASSIONATE, KINDLY, MINDFUL, OBLIGING, SOLICITOUS,
SYMPATHETIC, TACTFUL, TENDER, LEVELHEADED, TENACIOUS, THOUGHTFUL,
UNSELFISH, WARMHEARTED, UNCRITICAL, UNDEMANDING, UNHURRIED,
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
DISCERNING, STABLE, STEADY, TOLERANT, FORGIVING, UNDAUNTED,
MERCIFUL, MILD, DILIGENT, STEADFAST, AFFECTIONATE, VALIANT,
APPRECIATIVE, BENEVOLENT, CARING, CONCERNED, EARNEST, EXPRESSIVE,
COMPETENT, FAITHFUL, LOYAL, SWEET, THOUGHTFUL, GOOD,
COURTEOUS, FRIENDLY, PERCEPTIVE,
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
GOOD-HEARTED, GRACIOUS, KINDHEARTED, LOVING, STRAIGHTFORWARD,
TENDERHEARTED, CONSIDERATE, RESPONSIVE, CONSCIOUS,
PEACEABLE, ENCOURAGING, HEARTENING, COURAGEOUS, INSPIRING,
ADMIRABLE, DELIGHTFUL, ENGAGING, ENJOYABLE, GRACEFUL,
DAUNTLESS, REFLECTIVE,
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
LIONHEARTED, STRONG, BRAVE, PEACEFUL, TRUE,
VALOROUS, HOPEFUL, SELF-RELIANT, SELF-SUFFICIENT, TRUSTING, WISE,
INTELLIGENT, TOUGH, REASONABLE, ASTUTE, AWARE, CAREFUL,
FRANK, CONTEMPLATIVE, INSIGHTFUL, PRUDENT, SENSIBLE,
TACTFUL, SOFTHEARTED, ATTENTIVE,
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
SUPPORTING, AWAKE, GROUNDED, RECEPTIVE, SENSIBLE, CLEVER,
ABLE, BRIGHT, DEEP, GIFTED, TALENTED, COOPERATIVE,
TRUTHFUL, CANDID, ABOVE-BOARD, AUTHENTIC, CONSCIENTIOUS,
DECENT, DIRECT, EQUITABLE, GENUINE, INTUITIVE, HONORABLE,
INGENUOUS, OBLIGING, OPEN, PLAIN, REAL, RELIABLE,
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
SINCERE, STRAIGHT, STOUTHEARTED, TRUSTWORTHY, TRUSTY,
UNFEIGNED, DIRECT, GENUINE, GUILELESS, UNCONTRIVED, UNPRETENTIOUS,
DEPENDABLE, COGNIZANT, RELIABLE, SOLID, SIMPLE, MINDFUL, THOROUGHGOING,
LOYAL, RELIABLE, CONFIDING, CONSTANT, ENDURING, HONORABLE, STEADY,
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
ACCOMMODATING, SOUND, AUTHENTIC, REAL, SOUND, STERLING, UNADULTERATED,
UNALLOYED, UNVARNISHED, PRAISEWORTHY, GENUINE, PROFOUND,
CONSCIENTIOUS, FORTHRIGHT, GUILELESS, COMMISERATING,
RESPONSIVE, SENSITIVE, SOFT, SUPPORTIVE, SYMPATHIZING,
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
EMPATHIC, RESOLUTE, HARMONIOUS, LISTENING, ACCEPTING,
ATTENTIVE, INTERESTED, OBSERVANT, ACCEPTING, DEPENDABLE,
AFFIRMING, TRUSTING, RESPECTING, AGREEABLE, EMBRACING,
COMPANIONABLE, SUPPORTIVE, ENCOURAGING, REASSURING, COMFORTING, GROWING,
DEDICATED, HARD-WORKING, FAITHFUL,
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
PURPOSEFUL, DETERMINED, ENGAGED, INDUSTRIOUS, UNFEIGNED,
SOFTHEARTED, SHARING, INTIMATE, PRINCIPLED, CONSISTENT,
UNBREAKABLE, BROKEN-HEARTED, EMPATHETIC, UNDEMANDING, WELCOMING,
WOUNDED HEALER, OPEN-HEARTED, WILLING, COMFORTER
AWESOME
Most churches are uncomfortable with the melancholy. This has been a source of pain and confusion for Kimberly, and a spiritual stumbling block. The church’s unmitigated focus on an optimistic perspective (which it confuses with faith) seems dishonest and feels oppressive to her. This came up a few days ago and I responded, “It’s really only the churches in this country which are so upbeat. The American culture has won the church over. It is not as though Christians started reading their Bibles and said, “Oh, look at this! We are all supposed to be positive thinkers with permanent smiles.” If an American had written the Beatitudes, they would start out, “Blessed are the poor rich in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn are cheerful: for they shall be comforted need no comfort.”
Yes, you can mourn in church… briefly, over something big, with repeated claims of steadfast faith, but if you don’t feel better soon because of our sympathy, we take offense. How quickly does God expect you to get over your grief? The benefits from the beatitudes seem to be scheduled for the next life. After all, when do the poor “inherit the earth” and the persecuted receive a great “reward in heaven”? It appears the sorrowing find full and lasting consolation only at the resurrection. Jesus does not see the melancholy as spiritually weak or faith-less, but as blessed. Instead of a condition to avoid or get past, sadness is a door into spiritual blessing. Perhaps instead of avoiding or trying to fix the mournful, we might learn something from them, something about what it means to love a broken world.
Delayed by confusion, Anne at last flung herself from her seat just as the ski lift lurched into its ascent. The five foot drop stunned her, and so a kindly hand helped her into a small lodge to recover. Unfortunately, the kerosene stove inside increased her nausea. But as she lay there, a whiff of fresh, pine-scented air brushed her face. It trickled in through the cracked windows just enough to keep her from smothering under the acrid fumes. She called it “a thin ribbon of grace.”
Berly and I read this Lamott story weeks ago, but Sunday stumbled across her retelling it in a Youtube interview, and this time the phrase popped. When I am lost and broken and sick to my soul, I want God to fling open the windows of grace, but what I get is barely enough to keep me coherent, like a drowning man who is chucked under his chin just enough to keep his nose above this moment’s wave and then dropped again… like a malnourished child fed a few crumbs above a starvation diet. Survival grace. For those of us wishing for life to end, this frayed ribbon of grace seems less like love and more like torture. Why is God so tightfisted with His goodness as though He’s worried He’ll run short or we’ll fritter it away? What present consolation can we suck from the ending “happily ever after” if life’s story is “miserable until death.”
But Anne’s phrase whispered across my thoughts, enticing. Is it enough, this thin ribbon? I want a bank full of grace to draw on for my needs, but I am only given enough for this moment… sometimes barely enough. It’s true that I haven’t drowned yet, but every time the finger holding up my chin drops away, I’m sure the next wave will take me under. After all, I’ve been left spluttering for air many times. It’s a fact that I haven’t starved, but this is my last bowl of soup, and the cupboards are bare. Living hand-to-mouth is so precarious, so uncertain, so constricting, whether the shortage is literally financial and physical or the deficit lies deeper still, a hole in the heart.
In the desert the Israelites were completely dependent on God, and in spite of dining on a daily miracle, hunger was always just one day off, for forty years running. A thousand winters later, not much has changed for the children of God as they prove in their principal prayer: “give us this day our daily bread.” What is this addiction God has for pocket change allowances? Surely He doesn’t make us suffer needlessly. If He is truly a loving God, he must think this arrangement is a real windfall for us.
But as Berly points out, many of God’s children are jobless and friendless, homeless and hungry; some die agonizing deaths. We are not promised health or happiness or even sanity. Exactly what does it mean to claim that His grace is sufficient if it is not even sufficient to keep us breathing? From somewhere the thought drifted into my mind–His grace is sufficient for our hearts, the one thing that matters above all to us. In spite of life’s miserable suffering, we cannot deny that our hearts have not only survived, but grown. We are blossoming into the ones God created us to be. We have faced into our fears and discovered new strength, challenged shame and found love. We opened our hearts, and truth came in with insight, wisdom, and freedom.
But we are still tormented by depression. Something seems very wrong with our chosen path when we end up here. If we follow God as best we know how, should we not find peace, joy, rest, and fulfillment? Isn’t that what grace looks like? We want a life plan that works, that makes us feel good, accomplished, confident, whole, and if that’s the goal, our plan is clearly broken. But we tried other popular strategies, and they gutted our souls. Perhaps we’ve been measuring grace by the wrong scale. If our personal growth is the better gauge, then God has been truly lavish towards us, and if it comes to us through pain, we will welcome it gratefully. He sends a thin ribbon of consolation to keep our hearts from breaking, but his grace is not limited to this meager thread. His grace towards us has proven to be a river, not a ribbon, even if we cannot feel it or understand it.
I lost my USB drive holding my reflections on forgiveness, so my momentum on that topic has died, but here is a great quote from Stanley Hauerwas in The Peaceable Kingdom:
It is crucial that we understand that such a peaceableness is possible only if we are also a forgiven people. We must remember that our first task is not to forgive, but to learn to be the forgiven. Too often to be ready to forgive is a way of exerting control over another. We fear accepting forgiveness from another because such a gift makes us powerless—and we fear the loss of control involved. Yet we continue to pray, “Forgive our debts.” Only by learning to accept God’s forgiveness as we see it in the life and death of Jesus can we acquire the power that comes from learning to give up that control….
To be forgiven means that I must face the fact that my life actually lies in the hands of others. I must learn to trust them as I have learned to trust God….
But because we have learned to live as a forgiven people, as a people no longer in control, we also find we can become a whole people. Indeed the demand that we be holy is possible only because we find that we can rest within ourselves. When we exist as a forgiven people we are able to be at peace with our histories, so that now God’s life determines our whole way of being—our character. We no longer need to deny our past, or tell ourselves false stories, as now we can accept what we have been without the knowledge of our sin destroying us.
COSTLY SAVE
I am more productive just staying in bed than trying to multitask. When I try juggling tasks, I drop all of them, and one of them inevitably knocks over a vase. Unfortunately, I can’t even multi-think. I can’t keep two disparate ideas together in my head, however simple they are. The new thought drives out the old. I try to compensate with lists (which I forget to bring), notes scribbled on the back of used envelopes (which I inadvertently throw out), and pleas for Kimberly to remind me (a job she rarely accepts). I had a thumb drive with a to-do list that I cleverly kept on my key ring–can’t leave without it. But several times I almost left work with the drive (and my keys) still in the office computer, locking me out of both my building and my car at 2 a.m., so I took the USB drive off the key ring, and within a week I lost it.
Today I was working around the house and actually thought to keep a pair of reading glasses with me for small-print labels and dimly lit spaces. Hanging loosely around my neck they could easily get damaged, so I slid them to the top of my head (see, I’m planning!). As I was mowing, a tree branch knocked them off. I almost got down to retrieve them, but decided to grab them on my next pass. As I swung back by, I saw they lay in the cut grass, so I could just keep mowing and get them later. After three more passes I forgot and ran right over them. I found only a part of the mangled frame. I now know not to mow with glasses on my head… but next time I will forget I have them on my head or I’ll take them off for safe keeping and plop a book on them. This is why I buy $2 Walmart glasses. I have back-up plans for back-up plans… three or four levels of compensatory strategies.
It is a real disability–I’ve completely missed a couple days of irregularly scheduled work, wrecked our cars, and almost burned the house down. No amount of scolding or shaming on the part of others or planning and compensating on my part is going to fix it. When I clamp down on one thing, something else shakes loose. I’m grateful for a patient, understanding wife and a God who keeps an eye out for me. I still have my job and cars and house… and a supportive wife and caring God too!
My real back-up plan is God. I have to depend so much more on Him than many others do. His grace has such a bigger field of play in my life than in those whose lives are well-ordered. The penalty for not being able to take care of myself is that God takes care of me. Who could imagine a better arrangement? Happy frailties! (2 Cor. 12:9)
From Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow:
Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don’t make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit. God tells Job, who wants an explanation for all his troubles, ‘You wouldn’t understand.’
And we don’t understand a lot of things. But we learn that people are very disappointing, and that they break our hearts, and that very sweet people will be bullied, and that we will be called to survive unsurvivable losses, and that we will realize with enormous pain how much of our lives we’ve already wasted with obsessive work or pleasing people or dieting. We will see and read about deprivation and barbarity beyond our ability to understand, much less process. Side by side with all that, we will witness transformation, people finding out who they were born to be, before their parents pretzelized them into high achievers and addicts and charming, wired robots.
But where do we even start on the daily walk of restoration and awakening? We start where we are. We find God in our human lives, and that includes the suffering. I get thirsty people glasses of water, even if that thirsty person is just me.
Janathan Grace Reflections 