New Years resolution: Make room for sorrow

Few people make it through New Year’s without a list of New Year’s resolutions. Many of us will sit down and pen out, or mentally note, all the things that we are going to be differently this year. Whether we will pronounce vague sentiments like “I resolve to be more kind or loving” or whether we pin point our worst habits and swear to kick them, many of us will resolve to start to New Year off right.

Over the holidays I spent some time searching Twitter to see what other people were resolving to do. Here is just a small sampling of what I found:

@thisisrobthomas: my new years resolution this year is to not make any resolutions.

@cooperc23: New Years Resolutions 1.Win Lotto 2.Move to Cape Town 3.Season tickets to #Newlands 4.Study wine making =)

@Shmarrr: Resolutions never are kept after being made. Its the dumbest and most overplayed New Years Tradition

@SoCalPete: To cease all purchases made in china

@CROWNNUMBER1: I don't need any new years resolutions! I trust in God and I'm gonna let my actions speak!

@jeffstinco: What are your new years resolutions? Mine is simple: be grateful for all the amazing people and all the great things I have in my life.

@M__Falcon New years #resolutions in the making: 1. Stop drinking 2. Stop smoking 3. Less random sex

A post I found spoke about a husband finally fessing up to his wife about his pornography addiction. One stated they were finally telling their significant other they had settled and were ending their relationships. Another stated they were giving up cutting once and for all and resolving this year to only contemplate suicide once instead of ten times. I laughed at some, sneered at others and a few touched my heart.

I have had, what I affectionately call, the year that just was. So many circumstances, situations and relationships were taken from my hands, slipped out of my control and were beyond my reach. I watched some of my best friends lose spouses, some of my friends lose houses and careers and ministries and even a few lose their faith. I saw members of my family face serious surgeries, and others face serious crisis. I personally went through months of grief over the loss of a loved one and working through a major career change.

It was the year that just was, it is what it is, and was what it was.

What shocked me the most, but shouldn’t have shocked me at all, is that God was honestly so close in those times of loss, powerlessness, grief, worry and doubt. I have seen the hand of God move more in the last six months than I have in the last six years, not just in my life, but in the lives of others.

The pages of this blogosphere couldn’t even capture it all, nor could I even capture it all in words and to be honest I don’t even know if I would want to. It has been a very meaningful moment in time watching what the enemy intended for evil, God turning around and using for good.

My new year’s resolution this year is to somehow, someway, stay in touch with the pain, loss and powerlessness of this year. And of course, somehow find joy in the brokenness and sorrow of life. That may sound morbid or theologically incorrect on some level, but somehow I don’t want to lose sight of real life, real loss and real love.

I state every year I want to be near the broken, and every year I run into everything that is happy and fun. This year brokenness found me and the ones I love the most, and I am going to embrace that brokenness and make room for it.

In my experience spiritual maturity and reaching new depths in our faith aren’t found in the mountain top experiences, they are found in the valleys of doubt and despair. In the West we often say it is our money and privilege that muddies how we see Jesus and how we work out our faith. I’m starting to think it has very little to do with money and more to do with what we do with our brokenness and how we work so hard to avoid it. The irony of course being, the more money we have, the more things we can find to mask and medicate our pain and brokenness.

Instead of embracing our pain, we take great measures to elevate it. Some people travel the world, leave the people that love them or drown their sorrows in any substance they can find and still their pain follows like a shadow on a sunny day. We think that finding joy in sorrow to be an oxymoron, something that is inconceivable.

We seek out pleasure instead of patience; we look for fast remedies instead of reconciliation. We beg for the storm to pass, never stopping to think maybe we should learn to dance in the rain.

We love to quote verses from the bible referencing that we are to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn, but then we turn to fill our lives with happy rejoicing people, never making room for those in mourning.

We find clever catch phrases to help us feel better about our own brokenness, and seek to surround ourselves with people that love us, adore us, and at times, sometimes feed into our own narcissistic tendencies.

It almost goes without saying, that the church of the West doesn’t help the problem of pain. The church of the shiny happy people is often what we would rather be a part of, instead of the messed up, broken, church of reality.

Our appetite for social media, Facebook and other online persona machines, doesn’t always help our fascination with running away from pain. We can be as broken as ever, but a quick post to twitter saying “Everything is wonderful, life is great” can not only convince the minds of others all is well, but it can trick our minds to thinking the same.

Pain isn’t a predictor that the rest of life is going to be miserable, on the contrary.

The irony of being close to brokenness is that you are also close to joy. And that joy, when it comes, isn’t fabricated or trumped up. It isn’t predicated on finding a temporary high. It is based on the knowledge that God is with you, through good times and bad, and that is more than a cliché, but a lived out truth. You can sense his presence, feel His hand of healing repairing the holes in your heart, and feel His call not to give up, but to press on. Your joy doesn’t come from circumstance, you don’t have to find the next exciting thing to elevate your baseline happiness, you can find happiness in the mundane.

Tertullian, a early Christian writer said “Your joy is where your hope is” and James states "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing".

Maybe this year, we all can find some joy in our suffering, sense God’s hand with us during trials, and find the beauty in our times of sorrow. Joy always comes in the morning, and this year my gratitude driven praise and New Years resoultion is coming from a different place.

A place that can testify that God is good.

All the time.

God is good.

Puling up the big girl panties

Recently someone told me to pull up my big girl panties.

At first I was taken back, because they were serious.

My first response was to make a potentially serious moment funny and ask sarcastically if that was "a fat joke".

It wasn't.

It was a serious comment from someone who loved me, someone who was my mentor and someone who was very right.

Criticism, negative words and loss can cripple anyone, knock you off your track and leave you doubting and confused. I was recently suffering from a case of the blues and was starting to lose my way.

My Mom would always remind me as a child that "you can't control what people say, but you can control what you say and what you do". When I was young, I would roll my eyes back in my head and mumble "gee thanks Mom". I didn't see the deep truth in what she told me at that young age. I didn't see the timeless advice that I would need to cling to years into the future.

I was recently reminded that despite my unrelenting efforts, what was going to get said, was going to get said. What was going to happen, was already in motion and no amount of pleading, trying, scrutinizing my words and deeds, could change what was to occur.

No matter how deeply I wanted my true character and heart to come shinning through, I couldn't run to every person who heard the other side of the story. I was at the mercy of someone who had once loved me and had now for whatever reason come to resent me. I was criticized and had no chance to take the stand in my own defense.

And instead of holding my hand as I bitterly wept, my mentor kicked me in...my panties and told me to pull 'em up.

"Criticism is a part of life" they told me "you cannot create your own PR machine all the time. There are always going to be people who talk, positive and negative. Once you let criticism speak to your self worth, you are on a spiral for disaster. Those who are committed to you and love you are the ones that have earned the right to help you course correct your shortcomings and failures, but those who speak about you instead of to you don't have a voice."

They reminded me that no one who is living, moving and breathing is immune from the words that people will speak, but you can become thick skinned and tune out voices from the crowd.

As I slowly began pulling up my big girl panties I started wondering how many other people I knew became crippled by the words and actions of others. It has been said that "fear is the prison where potential is confined" and I wonder how many other people are jailed by their fear of what other people think of them.

The irony of life is that no matter how kind you are, someone will think you are fake.

If you become very confident of who you are and what you are doing, someone will say you are cocky.

If you are a bit of a rebel, they will call you a lost cause or a bad apple.

If you love deeply, they will say you are too emotional.

If you dream wildly of a better future, they will tell you your head is in the clouds.

You will eventually, in some way, in some manner, be dammed if you do, or damned if you don't.

So, if you, like me, are struggling against the tides of loss, self doubt, criticism and confusion, do yourself a favor and pull up your big girl panties.

Be kind, love big, dream in color, rebel against injustice, be confident in who God has called you to be, stifle the voice of the critics and cling to the voices of those who are journeying with you. Let those who criticize bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone speaks against you, and gives you a hard time, respond to them with the energies of prayer and kindness, even if they think your fake.

So join me and pull up your big girl panties and deal with it. There is a whole world out there waiting for who you are and what you have to give. Don't let criticism cripple who you are or what your called to do. Your too precious and too important to give up now.

Your big girl panties are calling...

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt