Praying for our Enemies

What is your enemy's perspective?

2010-06-03T00:08:00.001-07:00

This weekend has given me an interesting perspective on my enemy's perspective and how sometimes, learning a little more about your enemy helps you understand the person behind the enemy label and finding ways to find common ground.

For those who don't know this about my life, my kids play soccer. Hubby has played since childhood, at all levels, including the professional level. I'm not a huge soccer fan, mostly because the parents drive me nuts. Last weekend, we played against a team whose parents drove me to the limits of patience, and frankly, good Christian behavior.

The team was pretty good, and they gave our team a tough game. The girls played hard. It was a physical game, and things got rough at times. There were questionable calls on both sides. Each team got goals that the other team questioned as being valid.

I'll admit, I was upset at some of the reffing. But what upset me more was listening to the parents on the other team. They yelled at the ref, yelled at their players, yelled at our team, and were so disrespectful, I had a hard time not getting into it with them. They yelled at the ref if our girls pushed, but had no problem if two of their girls body slammed my daughter at the same time to get the ball from her. They liked the rules, but only if the rules went their way. I watched as they got in the ref's face to yell at the girl for her bad calls against their team. I watched as one parent got on the field during a substitution to yell at his daughter for continually being offsides. Lots of completely inappropriate behavior, and it made me sick. I knew it would do me no good to say anything to them, other than maybe make them angrier. So I prayed for them, and I prayed for their kids.

The crazy thing about this game- their team won. In fact, our team was never ahead in the game. So why did they need to behave so ridiculously? By the end of the game, I was half afraid there'd be blood.

Imagine my surprise when, for this weekend's big tournament, we needed extra players and the head coach of our team called their team. I asked hubby if coach was crazy. Those guys hated us. Why would they play with us? Well, some of the girls accepted our invitation. Including the daughters of their coaches.

At today's games, I ended up sitting by them. And I learned about their perspective. The first thing I learned is that these parents don't know anything about soccer other than the very basic rules. I spent a good part of the game explaining the nuances of the game. No wonder they'd been yelling at the ref in the previous game- they didn't know the rules, so they didn't realize that the ref was merely following the rules! Not that yelling at the ref is okay, but at least I understood why they'd been so upset about some of the things in the previous game.

The more we talked through the game, just about the game being played, not about the previous one, the more I was able to understand their level of ignorance, and hopefully, educate them about some of the finer points of soccer. I learned that yes, they get excited about the game, and tend to be a little on the aggressive side. But it's because they're passionate about their kids. I may not agree with the way they yell at their kids while their kids play, but off the field, they were loving, compassionate moms and dads.

Instead of viewing them as "the enemy," I realized that they're just people. People who are ignorant, but open to new information. We have different philosophies. They are more focused on the win. We want our girls to develop skills and have fun- winning is just the icing. We all appreciate good plays. We all want to see our girls do their best.

The next time we play this team, I expect we'll have another tough game. Both teams have good players. But I think, when I meet the parents on the field, we'll be greeting each other like friends, rather than fearing that the other parents are going to take us out. I'll still be praying for them, and their kids.

As I thought about today's game, I realized that not knowing our enemies and their perspectives often limits our ability to love them. I had more compassion for the other parents knowing that so much of their anger stemmed from ignorance. I respected them more when I realized how much they loved their kids. I had to wonder about our other enemies. Do we hate them simply because we don't understand their perspective? Would we like them better if only we understood where they were coming from? If we saw things about our enemies that reminded us of ourselves?

Who is righteous? And does it matter?

2009-12-20T22:20:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting to post this for a while, but honestly, I've been ashamed. One of the enemies I struggle with, someone I've posted about before, attacked me recently. And I violated my promise to myself that I wouldn't say anything back. Yep, I made a snarky little comment because the hurt I'd been keeping in finally boiled over. It wasn't the right thing to do. Sure, it felt good for a moment, especially because others backed me up, but inside, I had the sick feeling of knowing that in being right, I was wrong. Terribly wrong.

In our critique group last week, one of my critique partners brought a piece she said was rough and she didn't know what to do with it. I don't know if it will ever be something more than just a simple outpouring of her heart, but it touched me profoundly.

She quoted Ecclesiastes 7:16 "¹⁶ Do not be overly righteous, Nor be overly wise: Why should you destroy yourself?"

The point she made with it was that in her argument with someone, she was right. But the more she tried to press her point, the worse things got for her. Even though she was right, she was wrong to demand to be acknowledged as right. In being righteous and wise, she destroyed herself.

I realized, as I let the words hit me in the heart, I was being overly righteous with my enemy. She is wrong. On a lot of levels. But that does not give me the right to act wrongly towards her in my pursuit of justice. Because yes, I want for her to acknowledge that she has mistreated me. I want for her to offer me a sincere apology for all the things she's done to me. Honestly, I'd just settle for her not being so mean to me. But God says, "it is mine to avenge." Deut 32:35 says it plain as day, and it is quoted throughout the Bible.

So why am I puffing myself up in righteousness, thinking that it will somehow bring this person to justice? All I'm doing is bringing myself down. This person is not going to change based on my attempts to change her. She is probably looking at the situation, thinking she is the one who is right. That she somehow has the obligation to treat me the way she does because in some way it is righting a wrong. Her puffed up righteousness is bringing her to ruin just as surely as it is to me.

Will I see the day? I don't know. I don't even know that I can have the right heart about it. Proverbs 24:17-18 says "¹⁷ Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice, ¹⁸ or the LORD will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from him." Ouch. I guess there is still a lot of work to be done in my heart.

Somehow, I'd thought it was enough to not attack back. But God requires something deeper from our hearts. Maybe that's why I got to the point that I simply couldn't take any more. I'd outwardly been obedient and not attacked back. But inwardly, my heart was (and still is) filled with so much ugliness toward this person, it was bound to come out. I pray that I can find a way to love this person, not just on the surface level, but deep within my heart.

What is better? To be right? Or to be right with God? I've been right for a long time, but I desperately want to be right with God.

Talk about a little conviction

2009-10-15T21:39:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite Bible teachers is Joyce Meyer. Tonight, as I was listening to her teach on TV, she talked about random acts of kindness and how it could impact the world. And then she said, "if it happens to be one of your enemies, then all the better!"

I have to admit that I've been selfishly thinking about some of the situations in life, and in particular one of my enemies. I've been glad that this person has stepped out of my life. Glad I don't have to interact with this person. I've been worrying lately that I will be asked to help this person. The truth is, I don't want to help this person. I feel like this person takes and takes from everyone around him/her. So think, why me too?

But as I've listened to Joyce talk, I've been giving more serious thought and consideration to the idea that I'm being selfish in my fears in regards to being asked to help, and God forbid, spend time with this person. I've been worried about being asked by someone else, but given that I already know the need, shouldn't I just be taking care of it?

I can't find a single place in the Bible that says we don't have to help people we don't think deserve it. It doesn't say we shouldn't help people we don't like. It says we're supposed to go the extra mile for our enemies.

Choosing to follow Christ doesn't always mean choosing the convenient route. Which means I need to make a few calls and see about meeting these needs.

Thinking before plunging in

2009-08-24T22:11:00.001-07:00

I often battle with the idea of thinking before speaking. My mouth is permanently stretched from all the times it's had my foot inserted. And lately, it's one of the things God's been working hard with me on.

There's a particular person in my life known for her rude and negative comments. In the past, when I've responded, the results haven't been pretty, and somehow, she ends up being the victim even though the only thing I'd done was defend myself against her. So I've stopped responding. The barbs get ignored, and I try to pray grace over her. To be honest, it's really hard. I don't understand why God allows this person to continue to get away with being so mean and unkind. Why does she get grace when I get stomped on?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Turn the other cheek and all that. Someday it'll make sense. But it sure doesn't do much to ease the hurt over things she says.

So today, in a seemingly unrelated incident on Facebook, someone posts a mean comment about one of my pictures. Now, I don't know this person. Based on her profile, I believe we're "friends" because we belong to some of the same groups and have other friends in common. But I don't know her. So here's this mean comment about me, and I'm thinking, "who are you, and why are you being so mean?"

My initial thought was that I was going to send her a note to say, "I don't know why you posted such an unkind thing. I don't know you, and I'd appreciate it if you have some problem with me to address it privately, rather than through public meanness."

I started thinking about it some more. Read everything on her profile to try to figure out who she was and why she would say such a thing. Maybe it was a joke. So I waited for the punchline. Nothing. I continued looking at her profile, trying to figure out what to do. She appeared to be a Christian. She seemed like a nice person. Why would she say something so mean? Maybe she didn't know it was mean. Maybe she had a problem with me that I didn't know about. I redrafted my response in my head. And I prayed some more.

I felt a lot like I do when the negative person in my life is unkind to me. And I really felt like God was asking me to give this new person grace. And again, it kinda made me mad. Why do other people get to get away with saying whatever's on their mind, but I have to keep it all inside?

So I said nothing. Did nothing. Deleted the rude comment and left it at that. A couple hours later, I logged back on and this person had updated, apologizing profusely to people in general because her account had been hacked. I thought about how she must feel, the victim of a hacker, to have an inbox full of emails from people. Even though I certainly wasn't mean in what I wanted to say, it probably would have added to the frustration she was feeling.

That got me thinking about the very real mean person in my life. I honestly don't know why she's so mean to me. I could hazard a few guesses, but they don't really matter. I do know she's hurting. I know her life isn't as perfect as the image she likes to put out there.

I didn't understand why God kept me from saying something to the crazy Facebook lady today until later... until after my thoughtless words could have made a difficult day even more difficult for her. Given the longstanding nature of how my conflict with this other person has been, I can't even imagine what is really happening behind the scenes. What I do understand is that I have to be patient with whatever process God has going on... even though it's really hard. Because I don't understand. And in the meantime, I'm being pelted with a lot of ugliness that I can't do anything about. Except trust. And pray

Meeting Needs

2009-05-26T15:31:00.000-07:00

I recently got an email from an "enemy" who belongs to the same group I do. I don't like or get along with this person, and as much as I try to find ways to like this person, this person drives me up the wall. This person emailed the group expressing a need.

My immediate thought was, "of course so-and-so has a need. This person always has a need."

Then God tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me that I was capable of meeting the need.

As if.

I prayed. And I explained how I was tired of this person taking advantage of everyone else. How I was not going to be one more person enabling this person's bad choices. Now, let's be clear here. I am not talking about an addiction or anything life-threatening.

But I started thinking about all the things I had asked God for. How I wanted to bless others through my resources. Here I was, with the resources to bless someone, and I was choosing not to because I didn't like this person, and I didn't think this person deserved it. Selfish much?

So I emailed the person. I offered to meet the need. And yes, I had every intention of doing so. The person emailed back and let me know the need was already met. Phew! Except I have to admit to being slightly disappointed. Once I'd talked myself into meeting this person's need, I was looking forward to seeing why God was pushing me in this direction. What great thing did He have in store?

The amazing thing about choosing to love your enemies is not that you will end up being best friends with them. Frankly, I still don't like this person. But in choosing to make myself available to meet this person's needs, I made myself available to meet God. And it ended up being a rich encounter with Him I wouldn't have had otherwise.

A gap in posts isn't a gap in struggles

2009-04-09T11:37:00.000-07:00

Every time I look at my other blog, I see this one and think, man, I need to post something. But what?

I'd like to say I've defeated my enemies, or at least stopped struggling with my angry thoughts about them. The truth is, my heart is just as ugly and struggling as it's always been.

Lately, though, I've had the perspective that while I still haven't figured it out yet, God loves me anyway. He's not going to love me more or less based on my love (or lack thereof) for my enemies. It doesn't mean I'm not going to stop trying to figure it out, but it takes off a lot of the pressure I've been putting on myself.

How about you? How are you dealing with your struggles with your enemies?

Believing the best

2008-11-05T17:25:00.000-08:00

Michael Hyatt had an interesting post today about his commitments to Barack Obama. One of the things he talked about was assuming Obama's motives were good. It reminded me of a conversation I had with a good friend a couple of months ago. She said that she felt convicted over the fact that she's becoming more jaded. One of the things she felt like the Holy Spirit was telling her was that she needed to start believing the best of people again.

Believing the best of people...

I have to admit, I tend to believe the worst of people. Not so much that I listen to rumors and negativity, but I tend to assume that their motivations are bad.

As I think about my enemies, I wonder if part of the problem is my negative assumptions. Do I believe the best or worst of them? Am I setting them up for failure because I'm not even giving them a chance?

Are they my enemies because I want them to be my enemies?

I started to think more about this, and wondered where God might fit in to this. Does he believe the best or the worst of us? I have to think that because He knows everything about us, and loves us anyway, that He must believe the best of us. Despite all of our badness, He still sees something in us to love.

Lord, help me to believe the best. To see people as you see them. I have to think that if you can love the worst of sinners, it is because you believe the best in them. And maybe, if I can learn to believe the best in my enemies, I could find a way to love them, too.

It's okay to no longer be friends

2008-09-14T20:52:00.000-07:00

The title just about says it all...

A few weeks ago, our pastor gave a talk on this very subject. That despite the words of Michael W. Smith's song, friends are not friends forever. And yes, I totally stole that from Dave. :)

This week's been a really hard week in terms of friend/enemy struggles. I'll also say that it's also been a great week in terms of having folks surround me with their love and friendship. But it's been really hard. I keep thinking of a couple particular conflicts, and how even some of my very best intentions keep blowing up in my face. I was trying so hard to be their friend, despite the fact that they're really enemies. I prayed for them, I was nice to them, and in the end, none of it has made any difference.

I've been reading a lot in Proverbs over the past couple of months, and the thing I kept thinking about yesterday was how many Proverbs spoke about the difference between wise men and fools. And then I started thinking about these two particular people, and how they exemplify the foolish man.

Earlier this week, a friend of mine used an example of how an old friend came to her with a list of complaints about her and how she labored over how much was true- what to use to improve and what to throw away. Still earlier, another person, when I asked for prayer over my anxiety with one of these friendships, blithely said, "well, maybe you two will end up talking it out and you can be friends again." My reply was that I wish it were that simple, but it's not.

However, all these conversations got me thinking: what would happen if we talked, I got to air my grievances, listen to hers, and try to work it out?

The Proverbs came back to haunt me. I've tried talking it out with both people. Both have responded with the manner of a fool. Which led me to thinking of other conflicts I've had with close friends. My closest friends are the ones who, in proverbial terms, have always acted with wisdom.

Conflict is inevitable in any relationship. But I'm realizing that it is dangerous to have fools for friends and think that those conflicts can be easily dealt with. So what do I do? How do I handle these two people that I desperately want to reach out to, want to bring healing to, and yet they only want to handle things as fools?

Another wise friend said in regard to one of these negative situations that I just simply needed to back away and not talk to this person. That my relationship with her was only giving Satan a foothold in my life. I have been thinking about this for a while now. I know she is right.

Which led to a reminder of Dave's talk earlier this summer. He used the example of Barnabas and Paul. In Acts 15:39, it says, "they had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company." Both Paul and Barnabas did great things for the Lord. They both loved Him and followed Him. But their disagreement meant they could no longer be together.

The hardest thing in deciding to let go of these two relationships has been knowing that they are my sisters in Christ. I've felt this obligation to go above and beyond to make it work for the Lord's sake. Not even Paul did that. I've laid myself out as a martyr, made myself miserable, and I don't need to.

So I'm letting go. The Lord can continue to work in their lives, can continue in mine, and we do not have to do it together. Those relationships are too destructive in my life, and to continue down the path with them means that I am not as effective in the Lord's work as I would be without.

Today, my prayer for my friends, and my enemies, is that they would be able to let go of destructive relationships that prevent them from working effectively with the Lord. That they can cut off the tools of Satan, and be at peace. Amen.

What does it mean to deserve?

2008-08-31T18:56:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about this in regards to my enemies lately. I admit, I'm angry with them and I want them to suffer. They should suffer as I have, right? They don't deserve for me to be nice to them.

It's very easy to justify our treatment of our enemies. After all, they aren't our enemies because they were so darn nice to us, right?

A friend of mine posted a very simple, but God-smacking blog the other day that got me thinking about it. And here's what I came up with.

What does it mean to deserve?

If we look at God's point of view, because of our sin, we deserve death. And yet, though we did nothing to deserve it, Jesus died to save us from that death.

The world says we're supposed to get what we deserve.

Jesus said we don't have to get what we deserve.

So when we treat our enemies as they deserve, are we being of the world? Or of Jesus?

And which do you want? To get what you deserve? Or not to get what you deserve?

Because suddenly, I'm not so sure I've been acting right towards my enemies.

The Trust Issue

2008-07-13T11:19:00.001-07:00

I'll be honest here... I keep a lot of my enemy issues private. I started this blog, hoping to encourage others with the same issues and give myself a little accountability. But each time I post on my other blog and I see the listing for this one, I think of the things I want to post, and then realize that I am so not ready to let others see the vileness of inhumanity lurking inside me.

Or I start a post and then start thinking about how imperfect it is and how something so bad can't possibly benefit anyone.

Today, I started working through a Bible Study on Sanctification. It was part of a discipleship group I worked with for a while back when baby #1 was born. We never did that lesson, so today, I started working through it on my own.

Here's the conundrum of sanctification: while we are already sanctified, that is, set apart for the work God created us for, we are still being sanctified, and made more Christlike as God fulfills His purpose in us. Now, I don't pretend to understand it all yet, so please don't email me with your scriptural/theological arguments. Let's be honest here. Frankly, I don't understand most of that sort of thing. Here's what I do understand.

In Romans 7:15-24, Paul talks about his struggle with sin. I've read this passage dozens of times. Today, when I read it, I saw an important distinction I'd never made before. Paul defines himself separately from his sin. His sin is not who he is. And only God can deliver him from his sin.

Why do I think that's any different for anyone else? Why do I think I can suddenly jump up, and force myself, by virtue of my own willpower, to love someone I very clearly hate?

More importantly, why am I defining others by their sin? Why am I holding them to impossible standards that not even Paul can attain? Why do I accept the sin of others and love them and withhold it from those whose sin hurts me? Do they not both sin? If I hold one to a particular standard, why do I not hold all?

I admit, I'm particularly hard on fellow believers. When they sin against me, I am filled with an anger that burns with a fury that knows no bounds. I struggle with forgiving them. They're Christians. They should know better.

Am I free from sin? Am I so perfect that I can hold my head upright, completely blameless in all I do? No. I cannot even claim to be as good as Paul, who writes with such passion about his hatred of his own sin.

The truth is, as I examine my reasons for my feelings toward my enemies, it has a lot less to do with their sin than it has to do with mine. In not loving my enemies, I commit a greater sin than anything they could have possibly done. First, because I am disobeying a commandment to love my enemies. More importantly, though, I am not trusting God.

I hate my enemies because I desire to see justice. I want vengeance. And I do not see it happening. Where is the Lord? Why is He not smacking down these evildoers? I try to rush the process with my hate because I cannot see what He is doing in these people's hearts. While I can understand that there is a process of sanctification happening inside of me, I don't allow for that process in others. I can understand the struggle between wanting to do the right thing and sin, and yet, I do not trust that process in others.

When I say that I cannot love my enemies, I am saying that I do not trust God. I'm not trusting Him to work it out. I'm not trusting that as these evil things come out of hearts, that He is taking it and purifying it. I'm not trusting that as He is conforming me to His very image, He is conforming them. When I don't let out my issues with loving my enemies, I'm not putting them out there for Him to work on. I'm hiding it all behind the workmanship of my own hands, something that will never succeed in bringing me closer to God.

In trying to hide my feelings for my enemies, in trying to pretend everything's okay, I have leaned far too much on my own understanding, and failed to trust God in a work that only He can do.

So today, I pray that you will be unafraid to let your sin hang out. While it's not okay to hate our enemies, it's also not okay to hide it, push it down, and pretend it's not there. God will work on it. Maybe not in the timing you think, or in the way you think. But trust Him. Just as He is working the sanctification process in you, He's doing the same with your enemies.

Giving Grace to our Enemies

2008-06-02T21:50:00.000-07:00

I admit, I have a hard time with grace. Giving and receiving. I think it's a great concept, and yet, I struggle.

One of my enemies recently sent out a prayer request on one of the prayer loops I belong to. I read the request and was angry. Why should I pray for that? I knew why my enemy was in the situation. She'd made a series of poor decisions and rather than accepting responsibility for those decisions, was blaming everyone else for being in a bad place resulting from her own wrong actions. Why did she deserve any grace over that? She hadn't learned anything. She still didn't believe she'd done anything wrong. And now she wants me to pray for her to have God fix it? Nuh-uh.

The situation has been playing over and over in my mind. Exactly what she did wrong. Exactly why she deserved the position she was in. And then I realized... yes, she had done wrong. And while I fully believe she needed to understand that there are consequences of her behavior, it wasn't for me to decide. The reality is, she made a mistake, and even though she refused to see it as her mistake, others responded inappropriately to that mistake.

It didn't matter that she was wrong. It didn't matter that she made a mistake. We can't respond to her wrongdoing with further wrongdoing. An eye for an eye... Jesus abolished that law.

It's hard. I don't want her to continue living on her self-righteous steam. I don't want her to think she was right in what she did. But I also know she's got a lot of other people reminding her of how she'd sinned. Even though she shouts out about what a victim she's been, I see her insecurity. I know that deep down, she's probably whipping herself with even worse things than I can possibly send her way. There's probably a lot of lies mixed in with those truths. She probably doesn't even recognize the truth anymore.

As I thought about it, I realized that I, too, have made mistakes. Maybe not quite the thing she has done, but things I am not proud of. Things I wish I hadn't done. Things that have changed my life. I've faced backlash, and I've been handed grace. I will never be good enough to earn Christ's love, but he's given it anyway. If I had done what she had done, nevermind the fact that I know better, which option would I choose.

And so, days after I knew of her need, I began to pray. Lord, help her. Give her strength. Heal her wounds. Give her what she needs to leave this place of being an animal, lashing out and damaging others around her. Help her to grow beyond the insecurities that are holding her back. Let her know your truth. Tell her what you really think in her. Not what she thinks of herself. Not what others think of her. Not even how I perceive her. But Lord, how you see her.

I cannot bring myself to ask Him to fix the situation she's in. But as I try to see beyond the mistakes that led her down this path, I pray for the underlying disease. The things causing her bad behavior.

I also pray for grace. For me to show her. For Him to show me. And maybe one day, for us to show each other.

Guilt , Confession, and Envy

2008-05-15T22:17:00.000-07:00

I feel guilty every time I post on my other blog. I see how long it's been since I updated this one, and I think, I need to post.

But then, I realize it means I'll have to face some of the ugliness in me and I'm not ready to do that. Unable. Unwilling.

I don't want to deal with my enemies right now because it's easier to keep them firmly on the enemy list than it is to delve into the complexity of emotion that goes with sorting through the issues. Every time I think I have a perfectly sound accusation to hurl at my enemies, a justification for calling them "enemy" I realize that I am just as guilty.

So I guess I should probably just plead guilty and get it over with.

Which means confessing to my crimes. Since that's a long list, I'll start with one.

Envy.

One of my enemies is a very perky woman. So happy I wish I could rip the smile off her face. Her world can be falling apart and she still has sunshine and light bubbling out. I hate that about her. Perpetually happy people irritate me. And I think mostly, because I wish I could be that happy.

Ahhh... I feel much lighter now. Maybe I can get back to dealing with the whole enemy thing. :)

The enemies who stop us

2008-02-20T00:03:00.001-08:00

I'm struggling with some things in my life right now. Things I desperately want prayer for, but am afraid to talk about. It sounds silly, but the thing I fear is my enemies. Will they use my struggles against me? Will they criticize me? Condemn me? Judge me? Gossip about me? I think about these enemies and I know that they would do all that and more.

So here I am, suffering in silence.

I think about my enemies, and I wonder why it is that they would be so cruel as to take another's weakness and make a mockery of it. Why they would utter false words designed to harm rather than help.

A couple of other friends I know are going through a season of darkness. Depression. Frustration. Having the bad things in their lives revealed to help them grow. It is so lonely, this time of agonizing over the things we must do to change. Wondering what God could possibly see in us to love.

One of my very brave friends posted her struggles in a safe haven we've created, sharing her heart and her pain. While we don't have the exact same struggle, there are echoes of similarity in what's happening in our lives. Another friend popped up, commenting that she, too, was dealing with the same darkness. And then she made a great point. That Satan uses these times of hurt, when we don't want to let anyone in to see the ugliness we've tried so desperately to hide, to separate us from the ones who love us the most. The friends who can build us up. The ones who will look upon us with the love of Jesus, and with all the compassion in the world, say, "I love you anyway."

I admit, I retreat when I'm hurting. I don't let others in because I don't want to give them the power to hurt me more. But that's what the enemy wants. For me to feel the isolation and have room to come in and plant lies of doubt in my mind. But as this dear woman reminded me, I have to be stronger than that. I have to remember the truth in Jesus Christ that has set me free. I have to cling to the people around me.

The verse for our wedding was Ecclesiastes 4:12 "Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken." But it also applies here. When we stand together with God, we will prevail. We can't allow our enemies to convince us that cowering in fear and hiding will solve our problems.

My prayer for today: That we would recognize when our enemies are putting fear into our hearts and trying to force our retreat. More importantly, when we see it happening, that we do not cower in fear, but stand firm, and in our weakness to cling to the One who will save us, being mindful of the friends in Christ who will also stand with us.

David and Saul

2008-01-20T22:04:00.000-08:00

I know, I've neglected this blog. Frankly, it's because I'm so angry with my enemies that I don't want to pray for them. I don't want to forgive them. I want them to suffer. I want God to smite them.

The other night, as I'm trying to deal with this root of bitterness in my soul, my friend and I talked about some of the hurt and she said, "you know, I've been thinking in terms of this anger and I realized that the person I'm angry with is Saul and I'm David."

Quick cliff notes version: Saul was annointed King of Israel. He sinned in the eyes of the Lord and the Lord took away his favor, transferring it to David. When Saul realizes that David's favor has grown, Saul does what anyone (okay maybe it's just me) would do, he tries to kill David. Numerous times. David never harms Saul. In fact, he's presented with multiple opportunities to harm Saul, chooses not to, and then demonstrates this to Saul. Does Saul stop trying to kill him? Nope. In all this, David never sins against Saul. He never repays Saul's evil with evil. And when Saul dies, David avenges Saul's death. Throughout this whole trial, David remains true in his faith and honors God with his behavior towards Saul.

Since she told me this, I've been reading the story. Trying to see what wisdom I can gain for dealing with my Sauls. As we all know, I'd just as soon kill the people who irritate me. But that's not how God wants us to deal with it.

This morning, when I opened my Bible, what popped out at me was "it is mine to avenge," says the Lord. Funny. I highlighted that in high school. Funny how Deut 32:35 is quoted twice in the New Testament.

We want so badly to avenge the wrongs done to us. Particularly when the person so deserves it. When they have truly wronged us. When others agree we've been wronged. But that's not our job.

Tonight, I talked with a friend who's dealing with some icky stuff. A good friend of hers is doing some bad things to her, lying, and causing hurt in her life. As we struggled through it, talking about it, God put something on my heart. That the person doing these bad things needs Jesus desperately. She doesn't know real love, let alone unconditional love, and she's substituting these machinations and plots for something that will fill the empty space in her heart. But it will never work. Only God will do.

Saul thought that power would fill the hole in his heart. He thought that destroying David would give him more power and finally give him the fulfillment he desired. Not only did Saul never gain what he'd hoped, but he lost everything, including the closeness he'd once shared with the Lord. David remained focused on being faithful. Yes, as we know from the continuation of the story of his life, he did a lot of other things wrong. But he is known for being a man after God's heart. That, my friends, is what we need to be.

Just as there will always be Judases, there will always be Sauls. Someone who's always trying to tear us down to build themselves up. We have a choice in how we respond. We have a choice to repay in kind or allow the Lord to avenge. It can be pretty hard. I wonder if David thought, even for an instant, that his life would be a thousand times easier if he just killed Saul rather than cutting off a piece of his cloak and behaved honorably? Because I often think about it for longer than a second.

There's a lot of ugliness in my heart. And I know that the only way I will defeat it is if I remain focused on God and his Word. Saul? God will take care of him. And since he's God, I figure he can probably do a better job than I. That whole smiting thing, you know.

I keep thinking about my friend and her situation. It's tempting to pray for the whole smiting thing, because I think that would be pretty cool. But Jesus holds us to a higher standard. And mostly, I pray that she'll be able to see him for he really is. To accept unconditional love and to realize that He is all she needs.

Now if I can just figure out how to get there with all of my other Sauls.

Hanging with Judas

2007-09-30T11:31:00.000-07:00

I have an eclectic group of friends. Or, I should say, groups of friends. Yet within each one, we keep talking about trust issues and friends who betray us. I've been struggling with that a lot lately. Not as in being the betrayer, but as in being betrayed. I kind of got mad at God about it, wondering how, yet again, I open up to trust someone, and I get stabbed in the back. So in conversations with these friends, I find they're all in the same place with someone else. Wondering how and why they let themselves get suckered in to a friendship that took so much out of them.

I've done a lot of traveling lately, and I'm finding the plane is a great place to read the Bible. So God and I have been using that time to chat about some things. He pointed out something interesting I hadn't ever realized before. Judas. We all know about Judas, and how he betrayed Jesus. What hit me, though, is that Jesus KNEW what Judas was going to do. I don't know at what point he knew, but can you imagine, knowing someone would betray you and allowing them to be one of your closest friends anyway? Jesus could have picked any number of people to be among the twelve. He didn't have to pick the guy who'd sell him out. But he did.

It had to take a lot of love to choose someone who ended up harming you. It had to take a lot of love to live with the knowledge of future betrayal and treat him no differently than the faithful ones. Even if Jesus didn't know until that night, it still took a lot of love to humble himself and wash the feet of a man who helped sign his death warrant.

I wish I had that kind of love.

Right now, my stomach is in knots. My heart aches. And I feel like the dumbest person in the world for letting someone treat me like this. I get angry every time I hear her name. Every time I see her doing what I suspect can only be what she'd done to me, to someone else. I hate how much I dislike this person. I hate how little she cares. I hate how after all we've been through, she can pretend I don't exist. I hate how, to my knowledge, I have done nothing to her, she acts like I am the worst of all enemies. I hate how, despite my attempts to talk to her about it, she pretends nothing is wrong.

There's a lot of ugliness in me right now. A friend of mine was describing similar ugliness in her heart, and I thought, yeah, I know that feeling. I have it too. The hate and rage just boils inside me.

Except that isn't what Jesus did. Maybe he thought about what Judas would look like, drawn and quartered, the stench of his burning intestines filling the air. But probably not. He just loved Judas.

Lord, make me more like you, because I certainly don't know how to love the Judas in my life.

Unforgiveness

2007-09-09T09:18:00.001-07:00

I know, I posted this on my other blog, but you know, I think unforgiveness is at the root of having enemies. If we truly learned to forgive, would we have enemies?

Lately, I've been in a cloud of depression and doubt over a lot of things in my life. Oddly enough, it's been a good thing, because God has been revealing a lot to me about some of the things in my life holding me back. He's also been showing me areas where my motivations are less than pure. There's a lot of ugliness brewing inside me, and I could never understand why. Why this negative follows me around. Why, despite everything, I'm still struggling on a lot of levels.

Today, I woke up early, which is unusual because I'm not a morning person, and I've also been so tired lately that sleep is all I want to do. I'd planned on making my family a nice breakfast, but God kept putting on my heart that I needed to do something else. I simplified, and went to sit down at my computer. I thought it was because I was supposed to write. I got another feeling at the back of my mind to turn on the TV. So I did. A friend of mine loves Charles Stanley. I haven't gotten into him so much, but for whatever reason, he came to mind. Oddly enough, for a Sunday, there were no church type programs on TV. It was all paid programming. And then, sandwiched between a couple of them, was a Charles Stanley program. So I started watching it half-heartedly. He was talking about unforgiveness.

As he spoke, I realized that a lot of the things he talked about were a lot of the things God has been talking to me about lately. There are so many negative things in my past. So many wrongs. When I see a positive thing in my future, I subconsciously begin to self-destruct. I find it impossible to believe that the good I'm seeking is for real. I'm still hanging on to the negative memories. I honestly struggle with believing the good others have to say about me. Last night, I was talking with a CP about my writing, and she said some amazingly wonderful things to me about what she thought of it. All I could think was, "she's just being nice." I have a wonderful opportunity to submit and all I can think about is the negatives about my writing.

When I look back at my attitude towards her, I have to laugh because she is the sweetest person on the planet, and she's not the sort to say I'm a good writer if she doesn't think I am. She's not the kind of person who'd lie to make someone else feel better. And yet, there's this huge block in my heart that refuses to possibly believe that I could be a good writer. I am so conditioned to believe the negative, which only feeds the unforgiving spirit that is growing inside me. When I read contest scores, all I see is the negative. I keep waiting in expectation that suddenly, all the masks are going to be ripped away and finally the world will see me for the terrible person that I am. The bad writer I am. The bad mother I am.

And then I listen to Charles Stanley's message today. I realized that I am in bondage. The spirit of unforgiveness has me so tightly bound that I can't see anything clearly about myself. I've spent a lifetime believing lies about myself. I haven't been able to forgive myself for a lot of things, most of which are pretty silly. Pretty much any time I fail to be perfect, I hold it against myself. I can recount all the times where I've failed to meet the standard and use it as evidence as why I'm so bad. I remember all the things others have done to wrong me. More evidence as to why I'm unworthy. I can't forgive them, and I can't forgive me.

As God's been revealing this to me, I know it's holding me back in every area of my life. Success eludes me because this horrible oppressive spirit has kept me from believing it possible. Interestingly enough, my mind is warped enough to think that if I finally achieve success, despite all the negative, I can finally thumb my nose at all the baddies and say, "see! I'm not the horrible creature you made me out to be." ICK. What messed up thinking. I don't need success to prove that. More importantly, I don't need anything to prove it. Jesus says so.

What struck me as most powerful from the message today is this rough quote: "When a person who is a believer is unforgiving, they are out of character." I've been trying so hard to be instep with Jesus and live life as a Christian, and yet, I've completely missed it. I am out of character. There is a huge chasm between me and God and I've been unable to see it until now. Of all the things that disturb me, this is the most important. Yes, I want great things for my life. Yes, I want success. Yes, I want to minister to others. Yes, I want to be published. But none of that means anything if I don't have Jesus.

So please pray for me, that this spirit of unforgiveness would be defeated. That I would be able to clearly see God's truth. And that God would continue to reveal the things separating me from Him and empower me to overcome them so I can walk alongside Him with confidence. I'd also like prayer for forgiveness. I don't even know where to begin or how to forgive, especially because so much of it is layered deep in my life. It's not just one person or one incident, but so many things, things I don't think I've even begun to identify.

As I wrote this, I debated a lot about who to share it with, and whether or not I wanted it to go to the loop. But God keeps putting on my heart that I need to be open about this, and that there are others I can minster to through my struggles. But also, I tend to try to do a lot more on my own than I should. One of the big lies I've been believing is that I'm alone and I know that's not true.

If you are interested in hearing Charles Stanley's message, you can download it for free on iTunes.

Thanks so much for your prayers.

The bullies

2007-07-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the kiddos were fighting. The six year old is usually pretty easy going, but she finally had enough of the three year old terrorizing her. She lashed out and gave it to the baby pretty good. As I consoled my older daughter, I started to think about what it meant to love an enemy. She pointed out to me that her baby sister was a bully and she needed to fight back. After all, that's the big thing in school these days. Zero tolerance for bullies.

But why is a bully a bully?

In the case of my youngest daughter, a large part of it is that she's three. She's still learning to define her boundaries and her sense of self. Plus, she desperately admires her older sister and wants to possess everything big sister has, because in the mind of a three year old, that will make her like big sister. And really, a lot of adults are caught in that trap too.

Recently, I came across the blog of one of my enemies. She used to be my best friend, but after a series of unfortunate events on both of our parts, we stopped talking. The knife is still in place where she so-lovingly slammed it between my shoulder blades. Frankly, there are too many reasons why I can't ever be her friend again, however, as I read about her life, I realized I still care about her. My heart aches for the struggles she's dealing with, many are of her own making. So while I've acknowledged that there simply isn't a place in my life anymore for her, there is still room in my heart to care. I found that the festering sore of her betrayal is gone, replaced with love and sadness. A friend of mine started gossiping about her the other day, and I would have been tempted to join in, except for the healing I've had. I couldn't laugh and mock, but only pity and feel great sorrow. That conversation didn't get very far.

What did I do to get to this place with my enemy? Absolutely nothing. I'd given the situation to God a long time ago, and so when I stumbled upon her, I didn't need to do anything. Well, okay. I'd been praying. For a long time. Which brought me to the conversation with my children. How do we treat our enemies?

Luke 6:27-36 gives us insight:
27"But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. 30Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31Do to others as you would have them do to you.
32"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them. 33And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' do that. 34And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting to be repaid in full. 35But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful."

In college, I had a professor talk about how turning the other cheek exposed a person's evil. And while I still agree in principle that there is a piece of exposing the other person's evil in loving an enemy, I think what Jesus asks of us is even greater. In loving our enemies, we are forced to interact with them, to get in to the messiness of their lives and understand who they are. In viewing their humanness, we can't help but find ways to relate to them in a new way.

From what I've seen in the bullies I know, the bullying is a reflection of the weakness and insecurity of the bully. The more I look at the weaknesses and lack inside the bullies, my heart softens.

The more I pray, the more I find it hard to continue to maintain an attitude of hate. It doesn't mean I'm going to jump in and be best friends with a person who damaged my life in a very palatable way. It doesn't mean that my six year old should let her sister constantly beat her up. We can still have boundaries, but we don't need to hang on to the hate.

YOIKS!!!

2007-06-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

First, let me apologize for abandoning this blog for so long. I promise, I'll do better.

Second, I think part of why it's so hard to keep up on praying for our enemies, okay, MINE, is that I'm still so unevolved as a Christian, that as much as I try, I still want fire and brimstone. Really. Why can't God just smite them all and make my life easier? Of course, there's probably people out there who think I'm their enemy and would really like for God to smite me, so maybe it's a good thing that prayer isn't the heavenly version of 1-800-4HITMAN.

But hey, that's the reason this blog exists. I want to evolve. I'd like to be at the point where I can love my enemies. Where I can bless those who curse me. Yes, I know, that takes more of Jesus in me and it's a process. Which is why I'm here. Because it seems to me that a lot of folks have similar struggles in their journey. If I can be of any encouragement in that journey, then that's a good thing.

So share away. And if you have an enemy to add to the sidebar, do let me know. Let's pray for some enemies together.

Famous Enemies

2007-02-18T22:39:00.000-08:00

I don't think I have to mention any names-there's two women plastered across the media right now. One, for her very sad passing, another for being out of control. Everyone wants a piece of these women-their stories, their sad lives.

I wonder what it is like-to have to live under such scrutiny? To know that there is always someone watching, to record your every mistake. When you triumph, they are only there waiting to see how long it takes you to fall. They are celebrities-they are stars. People we love to gawk at.

The thing we forget is that they are people. With feelings. I can't imagine how hard it must be to deal with tough things in life-like a broken marriage, drug or alcohol addiction, an unplanned pregnancy-and have to do so while everyone is there, eager for the scoop.

I pray for them-their struggles, and the really tough things they must deal with in the very public eye. I especially pray for their children, who get caught up in all the frenzy. I also pray for those chasing after them, eager for the scoop. That they would learn compassion. And I pray for us-the consumers of these stories and pictures. I pray that we would give the celebrities-love them or hate them-room to live their lives in peace.

It's the stress time of year, sorry!

2007-02-09T14:10:00.000-08:00

I really do mean to pray more for our enemies, but we're in the busy part of tax season, so I don't get as much of a chance to get online and stay online other than my online job, as I would ordinarily do. It's pretty pathetic when I'm scheduled 20 hours a week, and this week, I'll be at over 40.

Is it time for a vacation yet?

Talking about my stressful life does have a point, though. ("I have a point, I promise!"-Legally Blonde) How often do we say that we're too busy or too stressed to pray for something? We'll get to it later.

I'm so exhausted right now that I'm getting little to nothing done. It's been over a week since I've had a day off. Throw in a growing family that can't take care of itself, my online job that also takes a chunk of time, and my dream of becoming a published author, I wonder, when will I EVER have time to just sit and be with God?

I was grouchilly yelling at God yesterday, because one of my old enemies contacted me. Freaked me out. The crazy thing is, she acted like we were long-lost best friends. I was kinda mad about it, because as I ranted in something I almost posted, but didn't, my memories of her were of how mean she'd been to me. The only respect I can honestly say I have for her is that she at least had the courtesy to do it to my face, rather than behind my back. So I'm asking God, why NOW? Why, when I am stressed and tired, and I'm barely hanging on to the life I have, does He have to have some enemy from my past contact me?

While the simple answer was that even now, I am to abide in Him, the more complicated answer came from my favorite church billboard. Driving home today, it said, Love adds and subtracts, but never keeps score.

That hit me right between the eyes, because here I am, feeling frustrated that God decided to bring this person who'd been mean to me back into my life, without so much as a, "Gee, I'm sorry I said and did all those horrible things to you way back when," and I'm just supposed to suck it up and say, "Great to hear from you, blah blah blah." Sounds an awful lot like scorekeeping to me.

Maybe I don't quite have this enemy thing figured out yet. That, however, will have to wait for another time, given that I have five minutes to change clothes and head off to work.

I'm abiding, Lord... or at least trying to.

Low Idiot Tolerance

2007-01-24T22:55:00.000-08:00

I know, how un-pc of me. But for those who've known me any length of time, I have such a low tolerance for idiots. And maybe, those are enemies I need to be praying for.

I was thinking about my last post-friends bent on self destruction, and I realized that I have such a hard time loving them through it. I know it's the right thing to do, and I know I should be doing it, but honestly, I just sit there and want to throttle them.

A friend of mine posed a question about whether or not it was possible for God to be disappointed in us. I said yes. He gives us the free will to choose whatever we would like to choose, but we don't always choose right. I think that when we choose wrong, He is disappointed in us. He doesn't love us any less, but He is disappointed with the decision.

I pray that I will get past my low tolerance of what I think are idiots. I have one friend being so stupid in the decisions he's making right now that I can't even bear to talk to him, I'm so angry. I see how badly he's hurting himself and I wish he would just wake up and stop already. It's so hard to sit back and watch. I pray that God will give me some of the strength He uses when we do things that are so heinously offensive to Him, yet He still manages to give all of His love without holding back. It is during those times when we need it the most. Knowing this, I pray that I can still be there, in love, no matter what the person is doing.

Long overdue

2007-01-22T22:27:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry about the lack of posts on this blog. I haven't had much to say in this department, though. I haven't been able to think of anything to really inspire in regards to enemies.

However, tonight, I realized some things about enemies that really hit hard. What happens when the enemy is inside?

I have a friend going through a really rough divorce. And while he could have had a much easier time, he ended up ruining it for himself. As he told me the latest installment tonight, my heart broke. I realized that he now stands absolutely no chance of winning, and will most likely lose his son. Not because he is a bad person, or a bad parent, but because he's his own worst enemy. He has a good heart, but unfortunately, he lets his emotions take over and rational thought leaves his brain. Granted, he isn't some sort of homicidal maniac or anything like that, but he ends up saying and doing some pretty dumb things.

I am hurting so bad for him, because he's destroying his life, though he thinks he's saving it.

When we pray for our enemies, we must also be mindful to pray for ourselves. To pray that God would save us from those self destructive aspects of our personalities that would make a bad situation worse. We think we're helping or doing the right thing, but what we really need is the wisdom to do what is really right, even if it's hard.

Time to pray for our enemies again...

2006-12-19T22:01:00.000-08:00

You know what I hate? I was thinking today that we needed to do this, and I had a brilliant thought pop into my head, and now I don't remember it. Don't you just hate it when that happens?

Tonight in church, our pastor talked about loving others and that the result of God's love in us is loving others. He told a great story about a man who stayed with a wife who kept doing bad things because he wanted to show his kids the example of fatherly love. That no matter what we do, God does not abandon us. And he felt that if he abandoned his wife, what example would that be to his kids?

It really humbled me, because I don't think that I'd have that kind of strength.

I also began thinking in terms of loving my enemies, that maybe the reward of loving our enemies, of praying for them, isn't always going to be that one day, it'll all work out, and we'll be one big happy family. Instead, maybe it's more that it's the example we're giving to others of loving anyway.

I watched Joyce Meyer again today, and it was so interesting to hear her talk about how, as Christians, we have to watch how we portray ourselves, because you never know who is watching and using that to judge what being a Christian means. One of my personal pet topics, because I'm so sick of the negative stereotypical image of Christians.

Which occurred to me... by praying for our enemies, and sharing our love, what better way to show the world what it really means to have Christ in us by doing the unthinkable? To show our love, to pray, to do whatever it looks like to treat our enemies with grace, knowing that it will never be returned?

I wonder if that's a little of what God feels when He deals with some of us...

Roaches and other offensive creatures

2006-12-13T21:52:00.000-08:00

As my regular blog readers know, I love Joyce Meyer. I've been watching her series on Managing Your Emotions . Today absolutely killed me.

See, I talk about praying for my enemies. I try so hard to try to make an effort to be loving toward those who aren't loving toward me. As I've mentioned, I regularly deal with a number of people who, for lack of better description, make my life miserable. I realized how much of it is me allowing them to make my life miserable. They probably neither know nor care that I spend hours obssessing over every slight, intentional and unintentional. And even though I try to turn the other cheek, I spend a lot of time being angry at them.

So there's my favorite roach people I like to gripe about. I seriously do everything I can to be kind to them, even though they treat me like a bug under their shoe (hence the name roach people). But there's still so much anger in my heart still. On one hand, I felt justified by the idea that you can be angry, but in your anger, you shouldn't sin. Because I'm not sinning. I'm just mad.

But a couple of gems smacked me right between the eyes and I've realized just how badly I need to re-adjust my thinking and my emotions. For whatever reason, I decided to go to the Greek on Matthew 5:22. Saying "Raca" to someone? Um, that's the modern day version of all my ranting about the idiots I have to deal with and calling them idiots. But before that, Joyce talked about the verses in 2 Timothy 2:23-24. The not resentful part really got me. And as I thought about it, I realized how resentful I am.

I resent the roaches in my life, the ones I constantly rant about being such idiots, who have no kindness or show any Christian love. I puff myself up because I at least can show them kindness and offer them love. But in remaining resentful, in ranting about what idiots they are, I have negated all of it.

I am a roach.

I have spoken so much in the pain and hurt and emotion of being mistreated by roaches. I have a friend who despises the roaches, not because she's met them, but because I've ranted about the roaches for so long, and how despite everything I've tried to do, they're still roaches. And because of the offense they've given me, she's angry on my behalf. A sign of true friendship, to be sure, but a sign that I am not nearly as mature of a Christian as I'd like to think I am.

It's one thing to pray for our enemies, but as Joyce pointed out in reference to Matthew 5:44, to bless someone means not to speak ill of them, to speak well of them. Can I truly pray for someone I speak ill of? I don't speak ill of them to their faces and certainly not to anyone I think might know them. But I rant day and night about what the roaches have said and done this time. And then I say, "but Lord, bless them."

I am a two-faced roach.

When we pray for our enemies, it's not just a matter of saying, "Lord, I lift this person up to you, or Lord, fix this situation, or Lord, bless this person." No. Somewhere in there, I also need the prayer, of "Lord, clean out all the bad feelings I have towards this person, and help me keep my big fat mouth shut."

Suddenly, I've realized, it's not enough to simply pray for my enemies. It's a good first step. But there's a greater depth involved than just passing on requests that the Lord already knows. It means that I must truly let go of the offense, and replace the resentment with the Lord. Sadly, I think it also means I'm going to have to work on removing some of my favorite words from my vocabulary.

It's a good thing I love a God that's stronger than my roachiest of roachness.

Enemies who won't be reconciled

2006-12-10T23:07:00.000-08:00

Spent some time talking to our soon to be divorced friend. He wants so badly to be reconciled, and yet, all she wants is revenge. It's weird, advising someone to go through with a divorce, when I believe so strongly that divorce is a bad thing. But I know it's not safe or healthy for him to pursue a relationship that the other person does not want, and her only aim is to hurt him as much as possible.

I wonder, how does this fit into how we should be as Christians? I read so much about forgiveness and turning the other cheek. I'm of the opinion that you can forgive someone, but it doesn't mean you have to subject yourself to more pain. Or put yourself in danger. Ultimately, that ends up hurting the other person as well.

I told him, as we talked, that none of us knew what would happen down the road. It's not unheard of that divorced people end up finding their way back together. And maybe it'll give the Lord time to work on her heart, as well as his, and give them both the healing they need.

Ultimately, though, I know that there are always enemies who won't be reconciled, marriages that will stay forever broken. And in the end, the thing we have to remember and be accountable for is that we did everything we could to honor the Lord. You can forgive seventy times seven, but if they don't want your forgiveness, there is nothing you can do but give it to Jesus.

We've all got relationships that are in the "won't be reconciled" column. There is nothing that we ourselves can do about it, other than giving it to God to work in our hearts-as well as theirs. It doesn't give us license to mistreat the other party, but it also means that we do not have to flog a dead horse.

The Enemy in the Mirror

2006-11-28T22:24:00.000-08:00

I have a love/hate relationship with Christian TV. Sorry to say it, but most of the people on there, IMO, are wackos. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I'm sooo judgemental. Everything I hate about Christians. Might as well say I'm a hypocrite, too, which is just fine, because I know I probably am one. Oh well. I'm digressing. There are a few shows I DO enjoy, like Joyce Meyer. She's way cool. She's like me, only older and smarter. ;) But I like how she thinks.

Anyway, she's been doing this series on Be Yourself . I highly recommend clicking the link and scrolling to it to listen. So since you're going to listen to it, I don't need to sum up, except to say this.

How much of the enemies we see in our lives are really ourselves? Our own perceptions? Worse, how much is really the thing we see in others that we lack in ourselves-that we wish had? Or maybe it's the thing we hate about ourselves that we can see more clearly because it's illustrated by someone else and we're too blind to see that we hate it about ourselves?

Just wondering...

All you can do is... PRAY

2006-11-19T22:51:00.000-08:00

It seems like this theme keeps hitting me over the head a lot lately. Here we are, locked in battles against people and situations we desperately want to change. As much as we want these things, the truth is only God can change people's hearts. It would be nice to transform an enemy into a friend. Sometimes, it happens. And sometimes, you have to wait and watch God.

It sucks, though. You sit and wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. Did I mention waiting.

It's tempting to take matters into your own hands, as Sarah did in having Abraham sleep with her maidservant. But that didn't fulfill God's promise, it only made their lives messier.

So you pray. And wait. And Pray. And wait some more. And pray some more.

Thoughts I wanted to share about the Ted Haggard deal

2006-11-14T22:28:00.000-08:00

I originally posted this on another forum I belong to, but it made me realize one of the biggest enemies I pray for all the time-ourselves. Our society. Our views on the world and Christianity that keep us from fully knowing and understanding Christ. Our eyes are so full of garbage and judgement and all sorts of stuff that shouldn't be there that we are not focused on Him. We desperately need prayer for ourselves, because condemning a man for his sins is not what Christ taught us.

**

Wow... I've been really pondering this since it (Ted Haggard's deal) happened, because the day after the news hit, I read an article where a woman was interviewed about it as she left the church. What she said broke my heart-she said that because of this man's actions, she will never enter another church again.

A few years ago, our pastor resigned due to an "ongoing sin" in his life. We never learned the details, but I watched as our congregation dwindled away... disillusioned by a man they thought was supposed to be perfect. They didn't even know what he supposedly did. He sinned.

And the thing that keeps getting me is that we forget-these people are human. They're on this pedastal for being pastors or worship leaders or whatever. We expect perfect, and our vision of God relies on who they are and what they do.

Um... NO!

The only perfect human being, the only perfect example of God was this guy named Jesus. And funny thing, he actually WAS (or is IS the proper way to put that?) God.

Do I think that as Christians, our lives should be transformed? Absolutely. But as some of you constantly remind me when I'm beating myself up for messing up or not being "there" yet, transformation is a process. I'm starting to realize that the transformation is not yet complete until we walk through those pearly gates and into the arms of our Father. Which means we will always be dealing with some sin in our lives, or more correctly, God will be dealing with some sin in our lives.

I think what saddens me most is that people like Haggard or my former pastor or every other leader in ministry who struggles with hidden sin is that they feel like they have to hide it. Why, as brothers and sisters in Christ, do we not have accountability with each other? Why can't we help each other through our struggles? Partly, I think it's our own pride, saying, "what will they think of me if I tell..." But I also think that in many cases, we've created a culture where we expect perfection. It's a cycle that feeds on itself-we expect certain behavior, and they feel they can't come clean because they know they don't meet our expectations.

Sin is sin no matter what. As the article that sparked this discussion pointed out, sexual sin is pretty obvious. But what about other sin? I am constantly (and still struggling with, mind you) being convicted of Matthew 5:22 "22But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell." Why aren't we in arms over pastors and leaders who do that sort of thing? Why aren't we shocked and leaving churches? Why aren't we outraged at the moral crisis in America?

It's okay to have other sins that erode at our hearts and our souls, but it's not okay to have sexual sin? That's not okay with me. And yet, that seems to be the message that America is eating up over and over. Is it any wonder that we're bombarded with attacks from nonChristians? From their perspective, we've made it abundantly clear that we won't tolerate sexual sin, and we loudly condemn anyone who participates in those immoral acts. And as long as we don't do those things ourselves, anything else is permissible. We can be a really terrible mean person, so long as we don't cross the big, bad sex line. What is wrong with us?

I'm glad to see this discussion, because it's been really running in my mind a lot lately. I'm outraged, and I've been holding it in, which is probably not a good thing. I'm not outraged at Haggard, but at us. I'm outraged that we're outraged.

Okay, I'm stopping, I promise. I keep thinking of more stuff and getting madder, which is probably not a good thing. Or maybe it is. I don't know. I feel like I need to do something, and I don't know what, and maybe that's why I've kept it bottled up. ARGH. I hate this. I need to stop stewing and start doing, or something. Yeah, I know. I should probably give it to that God guy, eh? ;)

**

I guess, or rather I hope, that while some people get weirded out with my openness, that I do so with purpose. I'm not ranting for my health or for the fun of it, but because I hope that when people look at my life, they see someone genuinely pursuing a relationship with Christ, and isn't afraid to put my garbage out there. What you see is what you get-or at least that's my attempt. You know about my homicidal tendencies, you know about my temper, you know about the mean thoughts in my heart that I fervently pray to be rid of. I'm not perfect, and I hope that my friends and fellow travellers on this journey, when they see me claiming to be, would smack me upside the head and tell me what a big fat dummy I am. Because I am striving for that greater prize. I hope that whatever I say or do and whatnot, that it would be an encouragement to others. We aren't perfect, but we are being made perfect. And it is only through the blood of Christ that it can be done. Take courage, fellow travellers.

The old ghosts from our pasts....

2006-11-10T13:41:00.000-08:00

ICK!

Last night, I went to an alumni event my college sponsored. Now allow me to illuminate some of my not-so finer qualities. Hubby was asking why this is the first alumni event we'd attended. I finally had to admit that well, I didn't like most of the people I went to college with. Ouch, I know. It's okay, they didn't like me all that much either. *gags*

So there we were, and one of the first people I spotted was this girl, a rather nasty sort-you know, the perfect hair-do, pearls, preppy sweater, yada yada yada. She and I never mixed well, given that I'm a jeans and t-shirt sort of girl and could neve stomach that whole perfectly made up look.

I did not talk to her-after all, what do you say to a girl you'd disliked throughout college for no particular reason except for the fact that she was a little too perfect for you to imagine yourself being friends with her. In fact, I'm not even sure she'd remember who I was, given that most of our college years were spent passing each other in the halls with her looking down her long, aristocratic nose at me.

But it did get me to thinking-why do I dislike her so much? Other than that whole Stepford wife perfection thing that she seems to do so well?

The truth is, I don't know her at all. I did Google her, out of curiosity. I found out a couple of things-one, she's a total rocket scientist. Had no idea about THAT one. And two, she's involved in all sorts of civic organizations and whatnot. On one hand, it's exactly what I'd expect of Miss, er Mrs. Perfect-chairwoman of such and such committee, donating her time to all these worthy organizations. And I thought, well, maybe I can see a little of why I'd dislike someone like that. I mean, I'd love to do stuff like that, but really, it's all I can do to keep my head above water, let alone try to organize some big charity function.

But as I thought about it, I realized something else. Yes, her name is on all these charities and projects and stuff. But that doesn't mean she's a good person. It doesn't even mean she's a happy person. Of all the things I remember most about her, and probably the biggest reason I picked her out of the crowd, is that she constantly walks around with this look of dissatisfaction on her face. The most striking thing about this girl, and probably the very basic reason why I never liked her, is that she always looks at you like you were a bug that just got squished on her windshield.

And I had to wonder, as much as her name is bandied about on all these things that should impress the general population, has it filled whatever it is inside her that needs to be filled? Because I have to think, that if a person looks that unhappy all the time, maybe she is, in fact, unhappy. Have you ever met someone who was just happy? There's this lady in my bible study, and she is going through a whole boatload of crap right now. But she has always got a smile on her face. There's just this joy radiating from her. If you ask her, she'll tell you it's Jesus.

While I can assure you that Miss Priss I Just Ate A Bug Face is a regular attender of church, and her name, along with her husband's, appears very prominently on all the "right" lists of those serving at a particular church, I wonder, does she really know Jesus?

Now I want to be clear here, I do not know her, I do not know her relationship with God, and this is all PURE speculation. But I'm trying to look into the heart of someone I don't know. Someone I don't like. And somehow, insert myself into her shoes so that I can feel a little compassion for her.

Even though I would name her as an enemy, the real enemy is me. Because maybe, the truth is, as much as I want her perfect image to have some crack, something to make her real and relatable to me, perhaps, the real enemy is me. And how I look at her. How I've spent so long not seeing her as a human being, but as some weird freak of nature to roll my eyes at and wonder if such perfection exists.

Maybe she looks at me as "the other". The sort of freak of a person who never looks well put together, can't keep anything organized, even if it's attached to her, and can spout off on just about anything, but has never done anything constructive with her life.

The funny thing about enemies, is that the more we see them as "the other", the more labels we slap on them, the easier it is to continue to hate them. She is a wife. She is a mother. She helps our community. She attends church. Maybe we don't have everything in common, but at least I can look at her as a human being. What she has in common with every other person I dislike (at least for the most part) is that lack of relatability-the fact that I don't see her, or them, as human beings. They are "the others".

Lord, forgive me. I pray that someday, I can come to an understanding of these people, maybe not in the sense that we get together for playdates and have tea on a regular basis, but at least in the sense that I can look at them with Christ's eyes, and love them. I pray that they will come to a closer relationship with Christ, and whatever emptiness is there, if there is in fact, emptiness, that He will fill it.

Inevitable?

2006-11-07T14:33:00.000-08:00

I don't know how much folks follow celebrity news. Honestly, I try not to. However, when I went on one of my obsessive election checks at our local news site, the big news was not how my favorite candidates are doing, but that Britney Spears has filed for divorce.

It hit me with a strange morbidity because when I started this blog, I began praying for her. I've never liked her. I think her music is terrible and she's a horrible example to young women in how she publicly acts and dresses. I don't know her as a person, and I've always felt guilty for disliking someone like that. And while I can't say I've seen or heard anything about her husband that's made me like him either (I know, I'm such a mean you know what), I will say that divorce is not something I'd wish on her or anyone.

The news reports all call it inevitable. And that breaks my heart. Maybe because it's true, but mostly because it shouldn't be.

Why is a marriage, especially one that's only two years old, so easily thrown away?

I still pray for Britney. I pray for her husband. I pray for her children. I pray that God will be with them as they deal with this tough situation and He will bring healing to them. I also pray that the public will give them the space to do so.

The thing that makes me the sickest over the whole thing is I caught part of her interview with Matt Lauer, and while I definitely thought she was way over the top, she made some good points about privacy. Everything she does, everything he does, is judged by a group of people who don't even know them. It has to be hard to wake up to daily comments in the media about being a bad mom or married to a loser and all the other horrible things people say about them. Because I am the research queen, and they still don't have status reports about the election up, I read a few of the articles about the divorce. It sickened me to read the comments-on two blogs alone, there were over a thousand. The worst were the ones that read something like, "Now that you've gotten rid of the loser, you can go back to God."

EXCUSE ME? Oh, you poor pathetic idiots who have the audacity to call yourselves Christians. And yeah, my words are probably not the most Christian thing to say, but it is righteous anger-and maybe one day, I'll learn the nice Jesus-y way to express it.

I honestly and sincerely pray for all the people who think that the dissolution of this marriage is their own personal party time or have some warped idea that this somehow advances whatever bizarre agenda they have. I pray for the hearts of people who would rejoice at the sorrow of Britney, Kevin, and their children.

But my greatest prayer is for marriage. I hate that we live in a world where divorce is so easy, and it's the automatic solution to our problems. Not that I think it's always bad-obviously, if a person is being abused, they need out. I was watching something on Daystar one night where it talked about divorce and why God hates divorce. God hates divorce because it hurts people.

This divorce-it hurts in more ways than we can possibly imagine. There's the normal hurt of any divorce-and it makes me sick to call any hurt from divorce "normal". There is nothing about divorce that is normal. But they will have to endure the hurtful words of people who know nothing about them, who've never spent a day living in their shoes. The rest of us-we will have to watch the sideshow as other, more important issues like an election get brushed to the side. As we make our bets on what next mess will happen in their lives, we dehumanize them just a little bit more. In so doing, we dehumanize ourselves a little more.

Lord, forgive us.

Why I don't pray negative

2006-11-04T23:16:00.000-08:00

I had a minor debate with a friend a while back-she was saying that she hoped that certain businesses would go out of business and that she prayed for it regularly. I took the whole sharing the love of Jesus approach and said that I don't pray negative things. She argued back about how there is Biblical evidence on smiting one's enemies. And yeah,I see it. In an OT framework.

But still, I can't seem to bring myself to wish or pray negative for others, even those who are deserving of it, in my opinion. It seems to work out that when I act in accordance with those bad feelings, it always backfires. I could say, "dear lord, this scum sucking pig is embezzling millions, please have them exposed and brought to justice." Never fails, but usually the opposite of what I want to happen ends up happening. Scum sucking pig will get off.

Which leads me to the next bothersome issue of praying negative. You reap what you sow. Funny thing about that is that if you're sowing negative thoughts, you're bound to reap them. I've already gotten a lot of negative yucky stuff. I don't want or need any more in my life.

So today, That Man was asking my opinion about our friend's divorce. No longer on the reconciliation bandwagon, but out for blood. And at first, I was slightly irritated with God about why He had me interceding and thinking that I was making a difference only to have this come up again. Fortunately, God is good about reminding of things like the real point of prayer-conversing with Him and getting to know His heart. Anyway, friend out for blood was mentioning that the other party has done some bad things that technically could have some charges filed. That Man wanted to know what I thought. My thought is this: absolutely, the one party did wrong. But the judge is smart enough to figure it out on his own, and has, in fact already done so to some extent. Right now, our friend is the victim. By not fighting dirty back, it exposes the evil of the other party-but by repaying the deeds eye for eye, so to speak, it makes our friend no better than the other person. And in stooping to that level, it is no longer about what's right, but about revenge. Revenge doesn't really have a place in the heart of a Christ follower.

Which brings me to my final, and somewhat unrelated, thought about praying negative. It seems like every time I think in the direction of wishing something bad would happen to one of my enemies, they end up getting the things I want the most. For example, this one gal who is just plain rude to me and likes to throw the fact that she's got a very wealthy hubby in my face. I remember thinking one day about how it would serve her right to have that fall apart somehow so that she could understand what it meant to live like ordinary folk. Shortly thereafter, he bought her a brand-new house that was simply gorgeous. The exact layout that I've always wanted for myself. Coincidence? I don't believe in it. As I look at the situations where I've been negatively inclined towards people, they end up with my stuff. Not the bad stuff, the good stuff-the stuff I've always wanted, but never gotten.

I have to ask God, why do you keep doing this? And I'm starting to realize that He's doing what He can to get my attention. Yes, they are mean, nasty, icky, yucky people. But He loves them. He wants to bless them. And I had a much larger point to go with it, except that I'm so sleepy, all I can remember is that my bed is really comfy and has clean sheets. I think it has something to do with the idea that He wants me to see things with His heart. He wants me to learn to love them as He does, and to be able to rejoice with Him over their triumphs. Uhhh... yeah. I'm not making sense now, am I?

Time for bed.

The unexpected result of enemy prayer

2006-10-29T23:18:00.000-08:00

I know, I've been horrible about posting here lately. Chalk it up to being busy, being stressed, and well, having a few things in my heart really challenged lately.

I've been praying for a couple we know that in a lot of ways, have been our enemies. One half of the couple is now becoming a close friend-again. The thing about this couple is that they're in the midst of a very nasty divorce. And I do mean nasty. However, a few days ago, the person we're in contact with started asking us about reconciliation, and if there was anything we could do.

Insert jaw on the floor.

God's been working on my heart on this one, and the thing that I didn't expect is that this person, who's That Man's friend, and I have been talking. And clearing some past junk out of our relationship. Crazy stuff.

And while this person has since indicated a hesitancy towards reconciliation, the one thing that has happened is that this person is seeking God again. Amazing stuff.

Maybe it's our prayers, and maybe it's not. But it has created in me an urgency to keep praying. There is so much healing needed in both of these folks lives that I just pray and pray and pray that they will draw closer to God and be healed by the master healer.

Family

2006-10-19T00:20:00.000-07:00

Maybe I still live in a crazy naive world, but I always thought that family was supposed to love each other no matter what. And so, it never fails to devastate me when I realize that of all the people on this earth who hurt me the most, it's certain family members who tend to do the greatest harm. I don't want to be specific, because even though I'm talking about enemies, I'm sure you've all realized by now that I don't want to hurt anyone, and I especially would never want anyone hurt because I called them my enemy.

But the truth is, we all have enemies in our family. There's someone, a mother, a father, a brother, a sister, an aunt, an uncle, a child, an ex, or some other random psycho who tends to make our lives a lot more difficult. We have no choice but to love these people, and certainly, we're forced to share way more family dinners than we'd care to with them.

In all honesty, I'd just prefer to remove these people from my life. My greatest dream has always been to live on an island somewhere where I never had to deal with some of these people. Pretty unrealistic, eh? But Jesus has another answer-He asks us to love our enemies. Which means all of my evil plots are for naught.

What strikes me, though, is how I am not alone in having family members like this-every person I've shared details with has shared a similar family story.

Lord, I want to pray for the enemies in our families, for the relatives who take great pleasure in tearing us down, in letting us know that we will never be good enough, and in making us feel like we are nothing. In You, we have a greater family, headed by a loving Father who looks at us in adoration, regardless of what we do. Though certain members of our earthly families might break promises, act without integrity, and wreck havoc on our lives, You, our Heavenly Father, will never break a promise, will never forsake us, and will never leave us out to dry-You will always act in your good and perfect will. I praise you that you are the perfect example of love, and for those out there who never had that example in their earthly families, I thank you for showing us a better example. I ask that you forgive these people who've wronged us, for they don't know what they are doing. I thank you for the woman who tried to offer me comfort in the checkout at the grocery store. Even though she knew nothing about the situation, except to hear the tail end of the conversation with the person who wronged me, she suggested that this person probably was only doing what had been modeled to her, that it was a cycle being perpetuated. Lord, I know that there are so many families out there, where a member of the family is perpetuating a negative cycle, such as violence, alcoholism, emotional abuse, etc, and I pray that you open their eyes to their sins, that they would see that what they are doing is wrong, and that they would repent of their sins. Further Lord, I pray that the victims would be given the strength to end the cycle, to make the conscious decision that it stops there and begin a new cycle centered on your love. I pray for forgiveness and healing in these families. Lord, I pray for forgiveness and healing in my family.

Amen.

The Hypocrites

2006-10-17T00:11:00.000-07:00

Thought I might as well go here, since I was just dogging myself for being a hypocrite on my other blog. Because you know, I really hate hypocrites.

I've been faced with them a lot lately, and I'm barely able to control myself over it. For example, I keep hearing all these people I know talk about "poor people" and how they want to help them. Okay fine, great. I totally agree with that. HOWEVER, what drives me insane is that these same people drive their luxury SUVs, live in their million dollar homes, go on their amazing vacations, and then have the nerve to whine about the plight of the poor. I feel so much anger and resentment towards those people. Not so much because I want what they have, although let's be honest here, I'd love it. But because I struggle to give what little I do have, and even though it isn't very much, I hope that it will bless others. It makes me mad when people who have so much more just sit on their butts, saying, "oh we should pray about that."

No, you morons. Instead of buying yet another pair of Manolo Blahiks, why not give it to those same people you're going to pray for?

So since I can't beat them over the head or kill them, I'll just pray for them.

Extreme Love

2006-10-10T23:50:00.000-07:00

As some of you know, I'm a big fan of Law and Order: SVU. The one thing about having cable now is that USA has it on almost every day. Several episodes. I could be in total TV heaven if I wanted to be. But I'm digressing.

Anyway, the episode I watched last night gave me an interesting perspective on forgiveness. They were tracking down a serial rapist and running out of time to do so. They finally realized that one of the victims knew who raped her. They did everything they could to get her to tell, but she refused, saying she'd forgiven him and that she didn't feel it was necessary to bring him to justice. She'd prayed with him and she knew he'd never do it again.

I realize it's just a TV show, but it struck me so hard-watching this woman who'd been brutally raped be willing to go to jail to protect the identity of her rapist. Her faith moved me.

I look at the idea of praying for my enemies, and I realize that my faith is not that strong. I don't think I could go to jail to protect a person who'd wronged me. I'll be honest, if I have the opportunity to bring someone who wronged me to justice, I would. Even at the end of the show, when it was revealed what a poor, broken man the rapist was, I was hard-pressed to find enough compassion for him to offer him that forgiveness.

And yet, isn't that the love Christ has asked us to give others?

Not only do I pray for my enemies, but I pray that I would be able to learn to love like Christ-that I would be so filled with His love that I could love like that.

Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

2006-10-03T23:49:00.000-07:00

So many things on my heart and mind tonight. One of the things I don't understand is why I am constantly being put in situations where I know I'm going to deal with people who irritate me. Okay, yeah, the whole patience, forgiveness, praying for enemies, okay, fine, I get it.

Anyway, there's this girl at church, who, to put it nicely, is a major roach. The thing is, I have no idea why she is such a roach. I've known her for, um, wow... since before I married my husband. She's never been nice to me. I have always been nice to her. I've had the "have I done something to offend you," conversation with her, and she still treats me like a mutant from the planet zero. The worst part is, we know all the same people, hang in the same circles, and well, it gets old being constantly snubbed and treated like dirt. It's tiring having to pretend that I'm just fine with it. I genuinely care for her as a person, and while I can accept that she and I will never be friends, what is so hard to accept is her constant meanness to me.

I'm not rambling here, so you all can say, oh you poor thing, having to deal with that mean roach all the time. I'm just hoping I can convey my frame of mind in trying to find a way to open my heart to her and pray for her. Which I have done. And I have seen some of those prayers, those asking for her to receive the longings of her heart, being answered positively.

I look at how she treats people, and it fascinates me. Only the people she thinks worthy of her time and attention get it. There's another girl at church, who a lot of folks would probably call a roach, because she is also a fairly nasty person. And I'd like to think that while I do not enjoy her company, I always do my best to treat her with kindness. I have always worked to make sure she is not left out. Maybe because I sometimes think that my roach girl probably thinks that I'm a roach, if that all makes sense. And I'd like to think that even roaches are worthy of compassion. Well, maybe not the real ones. Them, I'd like to squish.

But don't we all do that? Don't we all have people in our lives that we label, "Roach," and treat them accordingly? They're our enemies, and we seek to destroy them and wipe them off the face of the earth. Except like real roaches, they just seem to multiply.

So how do we respond to roaches? In Acts, Stephen asks God to forgive those who are stoning him as he dies. That's the response of Jesus as He, too, dies on the cross. This roach girl, in being mean to me and this other girl, and countless others she encounters, for whatever reason it is, has no idea what she's doing. Does she realize the way her actions and words hurt others? Probably not. And even if she does, the part she doesn't realize is that she's not just being mean to some roach. She's being mean to a part of the body of Christ-a body that she, too, is a part of. Ultimately, she doesn't realize that the person she's harming is herself.

Part of why I'm thinking about roaches (besides the fact that she once again, tried to step on me tonight), is that I just finished a great book by Margaret Daley , who is a dear friend, and just as great of an author. It's called Tidings of Joy and one of the main themes she deals with is bullying. I think sometimes we look at bullies and we think that they're just mean and nasty people. But one of the things I loved about Margaret's book is that one of the bullies who picked on the girl in a wheelchair, was how Margaret showed that this bully didn't know anything different. For her, bullying someone came naturally because she, too, was bullied.

And then, because God is always in my face about the same thing in multiple ways, I watched this cartoon today with the girls. The kids were being bullied by another who kept taking all their candy, but in the end, they realized that the bully was just a sad boy who felt bad that he had no friends and acted out because he didn't know what else to do. When the kids responded to him in kindness and reached out to him, he realized how wrong he'd been, and they ended up sharing all the candy. Simplistic, maybe, but I have to wonder, how many people are roaches simply because they don't feel like they can have anything else?

We can all be roaches-and I would argue that for most of us, we never mean to be roaches. In our minds, we think we're completely justified. The people crucifying Christ, and stoning Stephen, they all thought they were doing the "right" thing. They were wrong. And both Christ and Stephen had the compassion and love of God in them that they were able to ask for forgiveness, even when their attackers didn't realize they needed it.

I don't know. I do know that I never learned Roach Anatomy 101 in any of my classes. And while I struggle every day in trying to pray for my enemies, I know that the only way to ease my burden is to get down on my knees and ask the Father-"Forgive them, for they know not what they do." And I hope, that when I'm the one who's being a roach that whoever I'm being a roach to would have the compassion to ask the same for me.

Justified Hatred?

2006-10-01T23:07:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine is being sued by a former landlord, months after the fact, over something rather silly. As we talked about it, she said that she'd been trying to pray the right things, but in truth, what she really prayed for was that the guy would have a heart attack or stroke so that he wouldn't show up to court.

I can relate.

Don't we all have jerks in our lives who really, we can justify the reasons for hating them? People we know we're supposed to love anyway, people we're supposed to show kindness to, even though we want to kick them in the rear end?

Let's be honest-there are times when we'd really like God to just reach out and smite our enemies. Why can't God rain sulfur down on Bin Laden and his buddies? Surely He finds their brand of religious zeal utterly distasteful. Of course, I'd imagine that He finds a lot of other things in this world distasteful as well.

So how do we reconcile this with the command Jesus gave to love our enemies? It would be easy enough to brush it off, if only didn't give it four times.

I still don't know what that means or how to do that. But that's the whole purpose of prayer, isn't it? To keep praying, to let the Holy Spirit work in our hearts, and help us figure out a way to be able to say, "Forgive them Father, they don't know what they're doing."

Wow...

2006-09-30T01:54:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted-as much as I intend to get here, I just seem to run out of steam. It's called having way more on my plate than I should. And probably a little bit of poor time management skills. What can I say, I'm just a mess. ;)

Anyway, for those of you who don't know me, or where I live, recent events have had a huge impact. I live almost exactly halfway between Platte Canyon High School (where there was a shooting tragedy this week) and Columbine High School. The thing I think impacts me the most is how numb to it I am. It's like, "oh, there's another one." And the note that came home the next day with my kiddo about the increased security measures, I thought, "Okay."

(Because I am lazy, and well, because I'm supposed to be chatting about God on "other" issues-read my other blog if you want to know THAT story, I'm copying and pasting a post I wrote on another site, because honestly, I pretty much said it all in that one)

I realized there's a bigger, deeper enemy to pray for, one that you pointed out so well. One of the tools in Satan's bag of tricks is complacency. I'm sure I'm mixing my C.S. Lewis, but bear with me, it's 3 a.m. here and not only am I exhausted, but I'm fighting a cold, and God isn't letting me sleep until He's had His say. Anyway, I'm 90% positive it's in the Screwtape Letters-one of the tools the enemy uses is complacency.

After Columbine, I think we're all numb to this sort of violence in our schools. Honestly, when I heard the news, I thought, "oh, it's another shooting." As in, "oh, I have more laundry to do." Eventually, it did hit me harder, but you know, I look at this, and I hear about this sicko, and I don't see the level of horror in our community that should rightfully be there. There are no additional prayer services, no means of dealing with this other than a letter that went home with the kiddo outlining additional security measures being implemented effective immediately. Like having proper ID on school grounds is going to stop Satan.

The rest of the world is going on with its life, and I wonder how we'll react to the next school shooting. Because there will be more. It's just the way the enemy operates. And I wonder how many other people will view it just like the laundry, another bit of unpleasant business we have to deal with, but hey, that's life.

That is NOT life. That is not the life we have under Christ Jesus. And dangit, I am so MAD that we as Christians accept that. When DH and I were listening to Acts on CD last weekend, one of the things that struck me was how different the Christian community acted back then. How passionate they were in living the life Jesus and the disciples lived. Why don't we live like that? How would they respond to such a tragedy? Not with the ho-hum, "oh look, the world is getting worse, whatever shall we do about it," attitude that most of our country is taking.

I pray that we, as the body of Christ, not just a handful of individuals here and there, are willing to go out there, put on our armor, get on our knees, and fight. Because this war is a lot bigger than psychos shooting up schools, kids trying to kill themselves, and all the other nightmares our youth face.

The enemy of the day: Complacency. And that's one we all have the power to fight.

Cutting off good intentions

2006-09-21T21:50:00.000-07:00

The thing I love about God is that He always knows how to make sure we're paying attention. After my post about praying for the jerks in traffic, I got the wonderful opportunity to experience a whole slew of jerks. In the presence of my little two year old parrot. Fortunately, I didn't use any words of the four letter variety. However, she now yells at random intervals, "Stupid Wacko!" Which led to my five year old asking, "Why are you yelling at wackos?"

Oh. Yeah. I'm supposed to be praying for them instead of calling them names.

But I answered my daughter, and I tried to explain the intricacies of traffic and how bad it was to swerve and cut people off. And she said, "Why would they do that if it's dangerous?" My automatic response would be to say, "Becasue they're jerks." But really... do people just drive around dangerously for being a jerk? Of course not. How many drivers out there say, "I think I'll go irritate Danica today"? Yeah, that's what I thought. Which led me right back to getting down on my knees (well, as much as one can do while navigating the freeway) and remembering that I committed myself to standing in the gap for these "wackos."

Which is why, when I say that I'm no expert on prayer, I mean it with a very sincere heart. But just as sincerely, I hope to be better. I think about prayer with very good intentions, but I find that my mind often wanders-like to the lint on my pants. Or, to the weird stuff growing out of my husband's ears. And yes, sometimes even to bad places. I'm not quite sure how one manages to think about sinning while praying, but I seem to have mastered that skill.

The funny thing about praying for our enemies is that sometimes it just makes us more aware of the stuff we're doing in our lives and shouldn't be. I got so engrossed in my prayer/analysis of the "wackos" that I became distracted, and yes, I ended up cutting someone off. Oops.

I wonder what expletives that person said about me, or maybe, I had the great fortune of cutting off a person who knew a little more about grace than I, and the person said, "God, bless that wacko."

Enemies on the road

2006-09-19T22:47:00.000-07:00

When you think of enemies, you think of people like Osama Bin Laden. The big, bad dudes. But I think it's just as valid to think of the jerk who cut you off and then gave you the bird as an enemy too. Really, anyone who puts us in that GRRRR frame of mind is an enemy. I was thinking about that today, because, yes, some jerk cut me off and then flipped me off.

And I wondered, "why?" The thing I've learned about traffic is that you don't get there any faster weaving through traffic or by being a jerk. Being unsafe does not help matters, in fact, it only makes it worse. So let's talk speeding-you realize that your 5 mile an hour gain would only get you five miles closer in one hour, right? So how much time do ultimately gain on your commute? A minute? Two? Oh no, we can't have dinner a minute or two late. I once did a study for my own personal glee as far as how much time speeding saved me commuting to and from work (this is when I was working). Interestingly enough, when I sped in the places I COULD speed because of lighter traffic, I somehow ended up taking LONGER to get to work. Never could figure out why that was, but it happened every time I did this experiment.

So what's my point, other than berating jerks on the road? The way I figure, surely the rest of the people on the planet are smart enough to come to the conclusions I did. Okay, maybe they weren't anal enough to time the difference of speeding versus not speeding. But when you consistently end up at the same light at the same time as all the people you cut off, doesn't it make logical sense that you're wasting your energy by being a jerk? Which leads to my real point-why do these people continually put themselves through this same blood pressure raising misery every single day?

I tend to irritate the people behind me, because I've always figured that it wasn't worth it to fight the jerks, I just let them in. I try to practice a little kindness to the poor guy who probably had a bad day at the office, or is coming home to a psychotic wife who just deep cleaned his man junk, or whatever it was that turned what is probably a nice enough person otherwise, into a big jerk. I wonder, what is it that I could do for this stranger crossing my path. It becomes very easy to simply say, "Lord, I don't know this person, but clearly he or she needs you. Show him or her your love and grace and help them with whatever situation is causing this action."

Maybe it makes a difference, maybe it doesn't, but I hope that the jerk drivers out there know that occasionally, they might find themselves on the receiving end of a little grace. And who knows, maybe enough people will read this blog, start praying for the jerks who cut them off rather than returning the bird, and maybe we'll figure out a way to make commuting time a little easier.

Not there yet

2006-09-16T22:18:00.000-07:00

One of the comments I've received about this project is that it's a great idea, but they're not "there yet" in terms of being willing to pray for their enemies.

It's interesting, because I'm not completely "there" either. But there's a danger in waiting until you're "there". You may never get "there" without taking the steps to do so. I thought of this the other day when I was talking to my friend Lucy. Okay, *I* didn't think of it. Lucy did.

We were talking about a book that I'm writing, that I've been trying to write, but keep tabling because I'm not "there" yet in terms of having the right heart towards God, my readers, and in writing the book. One of the things Lucy pointed out was that perhaps the process of writing the book would be the thing that changed my heart. Not sitting around waiting for it to change, but to go ahead and work through the process.

I started this journey of prayer, not because I'm "there" yet, but because I want to be. The only way to get from here to there is to take a step. If you're not "there", that's okay. It's a process, and you have to start somewhere. So jump in and pray, even if it's "God, I am so not ready for this, but I trust you to lead me in the right direction."

My thoughts on prayer

2006-09-15T01:17:00.000-07:00

While I can never claim to be as great as Philip Yancey, I do have to say that a lot of where this comes from is inspired by his book, Prayer Does it Make Any Difference? . I think what I love is that in the beginning, he states very clearly that he writes from the perspective of a seeker, not as a person with all the answers. In truth, that is why I feel I must do this.

I'm not a big prayer girl, at least not in the way I'd like to be. I've always felt stupid praying, not sure if I'm doing it right or saying the right things, and whatnot. It reminds me of what was my personal theme song throughout most of my college life, and into a lot of my post college world. And you know, it fits now too. Now before some of you go postal when you hear who it is, I'm not vouching for their faith. I'm one of those wackos who can see God in just about anything, and well, this piece speaks to me.

Help Me by Concrete Blonde
(there's a discrepancy in the lyrics on the sites, so I'm picking the one I like best because I can't remember where my tape is. Yes, this is back from the days of tapes)

Maybe it's just a phase
the days and the nights and the nights and the days
of tossing and turning and burning and churning
Inside my brain

Or, maybe I'm finally insane
but I don't know what to believe anymore
It's like I'm caught in some revolving door
over and over and over and over

....teach me how to pray.
....tell me what to say
help me help me help me find my way

I never could play the game
And all their faces look the same
And I won't give up
Won't give in
You know I never want to be like them I'm
Ticking away like time
Out of sync and out of my mind
well I used to know a truth from a lie
just by looking in their eyes

carry me away
farther and farther and farther everyday

help me help me help me find my way

Hanging by a thread
and waves of confusion break down on my head
when I think of all the things you said well the words
fall
dead

higher every day
a price I swore I'd never pay

help me help me help me find my way

**

But you know, I look at that song, and I feel the vulnerability in my soul knowing the terrible mess I've made of my life, and the mixture of anger and pain and sorrow and frustration. I just want God to reach down and show me. To teach me how to pray. To help me find my way.

I look at our enemies, the people who make our lives miserable, and I wonder what it is that they lack in their lives that make them feel as though the only way out is to harm us. I look at some of the requests from folks who've posted. Camy's situation, where these jerks think that by taking down an innocent man that they will somehow gain from it. Jana's situation, where these other jerks continually make her feel bad. Tom W, who shot and killed a guy for no good reason that anyone can figure out. Jamie Lynn, who lost a son and is blaming a lot of people who don't need the blame. I wonder, do these lost people, do they need God to reach down and help them find their way? To teach them how to pray?

And maybe, there's something dark in our hearts, like the darkness that has me plotting the murders of loser freaks like the guy who gave me the bird today because I had the audacity to get in his lane and *gasp* only go five over the speed limit. Perhaps it's needing to learn how to pray for those things too.

Because honestly, what do you say to God when praying for your enemies? Doesn't He realize that you HATE these people? He knows that you aren't really asking, "Please Lord, bless this person." He knows you're saying, "I'm asking you to bless this son of a gun, but really, I want you to inflict him or her with boils, or if I really don't want to be bothered, just smite them off the face of the earth."

However, I find comfort in my beloved Philip Yancey. He talks about our relationship with God as a friendship, and the qualities we wish for in our friends. Yes, God knows what we're really thinking, even behind our holy words and holy actions. But when we get down on His level and openly say, "God, this sucks. These people suck. And I know I'm supposed to be praying for them, but I simply don't know how to love someone that I hate," we're connecting with Him in the honest, intimate way that true friends are supposed to communicate.

I love his quote of Tim Stafford on page 58 of his book:
We do not pray to tell God what he does not know, nor to remind him of things he has forgotten. He already cares for the things we pray about... He has simply been waiting for us to care about them with him."

Did I mention I love that quote?

I should also probably say that I haven't even finished the book yet. I'm still working through it, getting so much out of the first few chapters that I'm not even on the praying for our enemies part yet. I'll get there though.

The thing about praying for our enemies, and I'm fairly certain this is where Yancey goes with his book, is that while we may not start out on that same page as God, when we pray for our enemies, we're asking God to show us those people through His eyes. Just as He sees past our blemishes, He sees past theirs. And maybe, starting out on this journey, I shouldn't be so up front about that. Because the thing about enemies is that we don't want to see past their blemishes. We don't want to see their humanness. It's so easy to hate an "enemy".

There's this great childrens book out there called Enemy Pie . The thing I love about the book is that when the kid spends the day with his enemy, he realizes the human side of the enemy, and in seeing his humanity, realizes the enemy is really a friend. Yeah, I know, none of us are going to be inviting bin Laden over for tea anytime soon. But I can't help but remember how Jesus sought out traditional "enemies" of the Jews like lepers and tax collectors and turned them into friends.

But who knows? This could all be just another installment of "God is messing with Danica's head". Maybe the point has absolutely nothing to do with the enemies themselves, or even the fact that our hearts are hardened enough that we have enemies. Maybe I'm overthinking as usual and it really is just as simple as God using this as a way of saying, "My child. My friend. Come and spend some time with me. Tell me about your enemies. Not because it's anything I don't already know, but because I want to spend time with you. Time to show you that I care about what you care about. Time to show you that I love your honesty." Whatever.

And maybe, just maybe, we'll get really lucky and have the chance to watch Him smite a few of them. Too bad I'm not gifted in songwriting. I could write a whole new worship song: Rain down sulfur on the Taliban. Smite those al Qaida operatives.

Yeah, I know. God's got a lot of work to do on me yet.

Shockwaves

2006-09-14T22:38:00.000-07:00

That Man and I never watch the news. It's too depressing. But tonight, just as we were watching the tail end of CSI, the preview for the news caught our eye. It seems that one of our local teachers, a teacher both of the older children had, has been arrested for child pornography.

I do want to point out that I very much believe in the American justice system, and that you are innocent until proven guilty.

But you know, I'm a bit shaken. He seemed like the last guy on earth, if you know what I mean. The kids all loved him, and IMO, he was one of the best teachers the kids had. He made such an impact on the oldest, that he even came to his high school graduation party, and he teaches elementary school. I just-I can't picture it, and yet they showed footage of his IMs with a supposed 13 year old as well as him on his webcam. ICK.

I just don't know what to think or believe right now. But I do know, that if these allegations are true, it's just devastating. Even if they are false, a man's life is now ruined and the peace of mind of a community is just destroyed. I keep thinking in my head that he taught two of our children. He seemed like such a nice man. If he could do such a thing, and I still can't wrap my brain around the idea that he would, how can I be certain that my children are safe in the future. I couldn't pick this guy out.

But like I said, he was arrested, not found guilty, and I'd like to believe in his innocence, even if the bits of evidence on tv were pretty convincing.

So please pray for him-if he is innocent, that he would be able to survive this ordeal, as the information on the news was pretty overwhelming and bad. If he is guilty, I pray for his healing. And I also would just like prayers for his family as well as the community at large. He was so loved by the people in the school-I can't imagine what a shock this is for them as well. And of course, please pray for the victims and their healing. The news report said all of this was with an undercover police officer, but who knows if he did anything (if he did do it) to an actual child.

Is he a friend? Is he an enemy? I don't know. But my heart is breaking over the whole issue and I know there are a lot of broken hearts out there needing to be healed.

When do I pray?

2006-09-13T22:50:00.000-07:00

I am, by nature, a multitasker. And when embarking on this journey, I realized that I'm going to need time to pray. So I decided to set a time. Sort of like when you're fasting and the hunger pangs are a reminder to pray, well, for me, my enemy prayer time is when I'm on the toilet.

Seriously.

I mean, what else is there to do while you're doing your business? It's always driven me nuts that there simply isn't an activity to do while on the toilet. What a waste of my time. I know some people read, but then I get engrossed in what I'm reading, and before I know it, I've spent way more time on the toilet than I intended.

So today, as I sat on the toilet, pondering what I could do during this colossal waste of my time, I decided to make getting rid of my body's waste a time to pray for the waste of humanity: our enemies.

Yeah, I know. God is either up there rolling with laughter, or trying to figure out a way to school me on proper prayer etiquette. Until then, I'm going to use my toilet time efficiently.

More folks to add to the list:
The evil dead stepfather who is still haunting people from the grave
The person whose thoughtless words hurt me today
The soon to be ex-wife of a friend
The idiots on this one loop that I want to kill

Peace be the journey people!

More prayers for the list

2006-09-13T21:04:00.000-07:00

I've had some requests come via IMs and email, and so I'm updating here. If people want to keep requests anonymous, that's perfectly fine with me. I also think it's okay to use a different name for the person we're praying for, because I know that God knows who we mean.

So, adding to the prayers, we have:
Jamie Lynn (actually not an enemy, but she really needs some love and support)
Tom W (who killed a friend's cousin)
Bud

Let's lift these folks up! Lord, please shower them with your love and grace as you teach us to love them as you do.

Prayers round one

2006-09-12T23:03:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess if I'm going to be a successful enemy prayer blogger, I should probably start by praying for some enemies.

So I'm going to start with the obvious. Those of you who read my other blog heard my Al-Qaida example. Since I stole the idea from Philip Yancey's talk (and will be stealing many more ideas from him as I read his book), I think it's only fair to follow his recommendation: I'm praying for a specific Al-Qaida member: Usama bin Ladin. Yep, the big head dude. But I figure, I want God to do great things, so why not start at the top. Honestly, I don't know what to pray, or even how to pray, but I know the Holy Spirit will intercede on my behalf. I just want the Lord to touch bin Ladin's heart, to work in his life, so that even Usama bin Ladin will clearly see who God is, and know the Lord. I pray that his eyes and his heart will be opened up.

On a personal level, I wish to pray for Judy. Lord, I ask that you give me compassion and love for this woman who constantly torments my thoughts. A woman that I find myself disliking more and more every day, despite my best efforts not to. I also ask you to bless her, even though I often wish for her to be cursed. Lord, it is my hope that you would also open up her heart and her eyes, and even though she is the last person on earth I ever want to be friends with, I ask that you open a freeway of compassion between the two of us, so that we can find common ground.

Finally, because I just wouldn't be me unless I had something shallow in here, I wish to pray for some of the Hollywood celebrities who annoy me: Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Lord, I don't know these women, and I should not be irritated every time I hear their names, but I am. I know it is wrong to dislike them, and I ask that you give me compassion in my heart towards them. I ask you to bless their lives and show yourself to them. I ask you to protect their loved ones, especially Britney's children and family. I ask that you bless and strengthen their relationships, that you would shelter them from strife. Lord, I ask that you bless those who would use these women as role models and create in them a reflection of you so that those who would imitate Paris and Britney would imitate those qualities that reflect you.

In Jesus' Name...

Welcome!

2006-09-12T22:57:00.000-07:00

So yeah, I realized when you look at my profile, I'm already threatening to kill people. Well, I've made it 31 years and so far, the biggest thing I've ever killed was a pheasant. And that was an accident. I do think it's by the grace of God that I haven't completely snapped, so trust me, I need to be praying as much as humanly possible.

I want to make that clear, because folks, I am human. I make lots of mistakes, and if I ever stand up here and say how perfect I am, please slap me. Because I obviously have finally gone off the deep end.

So I'm here. And I'm praying. And I hope you'll join along with me. Will it work? Well, we may not get our enemies jumping up for joy and saying we're the best things in the universe, but you never know what sort of positive impact we'll have. Join in, share your stories, your prayer requests, but most of all, I hope you'll help us pray.