Worth Fighting For

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We ran into a Purple Heart Vietnam veteran in Vancouver, when my husband thanked him for his service, he turned and looked him intently in the eye and said, “you were worth fighting for.”

Makes me tear up again just typing it. Though vastly underappreciated, what an incredible generation of warriors.

And what an honor to be told we are worth their sacrifice, even at the times we don’t deserve or appreciate it.

Kind of reminds me of Someone Else I know who tells me I’m worth fighting for even when I don’t deserve it….. #sundayfoodforthought

A Pressure-Cooked Reminder

It’s funny, in the last few weeks there have been so many things going on in our life – MAJOR life changes: my husband quit his job and now works from home, I started a professional speaking career outside my current job, my editor got back to me with all the changes I need to approve in my book, we bought a house….. It’s been overwhelming. I’ve been overwhelmed. Stressed to the max- I can feel it in my body (and so can my chiropractor!)

Naturally with all that going on, tension has run high in our home. My husband and I have been bickering and even arguing a lot, which is rare for us. And this only adds to the stress and exhaustion. I started to think, it’s been a while since we’ve really focused on working on our marriage, we’re coming up on 2 years, maybe we need to go to a refresher course or a retreat.

I was aware, in all the stress and busyness, my time reading and praying with the Lord has suffered as well. It’s been almost non-existent. I keep telling myself I’ll get back in my routine once things slow down. And then it hit me: I don’t need a refresher with my husband to ease the tension in my marriage right now (although there certainly is a time and place for that), what I need is a refresher with the Lord! I realized in my stress I let my focus shift to “what’s wrong with us” right now instead of “what’s wrong with me and how do I fix that?” I was looking to my husband to take all that stress and pressure off me, which is too big a task for his human ability.

Every time I sneak away for some time alone with my prayer journal, things seem less overwhelming and I let my husband off the hook.

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Color-Blinded

This is the most uncomfortable topic I’ve written about.

Here’s the thing, I grew up in a small farm town in Kentucky, of the 1300 kids in my school, there were like 3 black kids, and I was friends with them.

I wasn’t naïve enough to ignore that there were some people in my town and in my school who were outwardly racist – white people who hated the black families for nothing other than the color of their skin. But it didn’t make sense to me.

I moved to the “big city” of Cincinnati two months after graduating high school and my black friend ratio went way up. It’s not like I intentionally sought out to make my friend pool more colorful, it’s just that there are a lot more black people in Cincinnati than small-town Kentucky, period.

Every one of my black friends and I have more in common than we do not. Our skin may fall on opposite sides of the shade spectrum, but our beliefs, our values, our passions, our missions are aligned. I surround myself with people who are like-minded – on purpose. There is nothing of substance that differentiates my black friends from any of my white friends. (I do naturally talk more soulfully around them – I don’t know if they’ve ever noticed – and I love it.)

A few years ago, some weird things started to happen in our country and for the first time in my life, I started thinking about the colors of our skin. Although we are a more racially diverse society than ever before – think of how many more biracial couples, families, children, there are than in the 1980s when I was growing up – America’s racial tensions have increased not subsided.

I am told how my black friends feel about me by the media. And they are told how to feel about me.

I catch myself wanting to filter what I say and topics I bring up around them. Will I offend them? I start thinking about all the ways we are different, instead of all those things we have in common. And I hate that those things cross my mind. ABSOLUTELY nothing between us has changed, we have not changed. I can still talk with them about whatever I want, because we are friends, and that’s all that matters.

Earlier this week, riots began in Ferguson, MO again. I flew to Atlanta on Tuesday for work. Atlanta is a predominantly black city, in a lot of areas. And a lot of those areas are predominantly in poverty. I’m a small white girl wearing “fancy” clothes and driving a nice-looking rental car.

As I got in my rental and began to pull out of the garage, I wondered if the black woman working the booth was going to be sour to me this week, with everything going on. I wondered if she was thinking that I was thinking that I was better than her. I felt the need to come right out and say, “I have lots of black friends”, to justify the color of my own skin.

She was just as nice as ever. And I was relieved.

Next, I went through the drive thru for lunch and I could tell the girl on the other end of the speaker was black. So I knew she could tell I was white. And I wondered if she secretly hated me because of that.

She was the most pleasant KFC window-worker I’ve ever met, and when she handed me my friend chicken and mashed potatoes, she wished me a “good day” so genuinely I actually felt it.

Since then, the girl that checked me into my room was black, and the pool worker who tipped me off to the fact I had secret admirers watching me through the glass, and the woman who brought me my dinner tonight…. They were all black. They were all wonderful people and delightfully friendly. And none of them hated me because I was white. It’s like they didn’t even know they were supposed to.

Here’s what I hate: the fact that those questions even go through my mind. The fact that skin color is something I think about so much more often now, than when I was walking the school halls with the only three black kids. I hate that I feel myself stereotyping, and making assumptions. Rather than being color-blind, I’m color-blinded.

Have you ever felt like this?

And it’s not because we, as a people, as a country, have changed in the last 10 years, it’s not like we suddenly got more racist. (You could reason we have gotten less-racist – we do have a black president.) But because the media has told us we are more racially divided than ever. Because there are people who entice that division and push the gap wider. And because, like Pastor Chuck Mingo said from stage at Crossroads’ “Night of Hope” two weeks ago (the day the DuBose case was finalized; and there was a palpable anxiety in the city wondering if Cincinnati would erupt into riots), “we have an enemy who’s behind all of that who loves nothing more than to see people divided.” And isolated. And self-conscious. And alone.

People aren’t rioting and looting and attacking each other because of something the media said (I get that), but because they’re angry and confused. And those seeds of anger and confusion were planted, and nurtured and grown to full-stature by that enemy.

I love that I go to this church that is leading the charge to racial reconciliation, first, in our city then our country. I love that they get it. I love that they talk about the only color that matters is the color red, the color of Jesus’s blood that was shed to save and to reconcile each and every one of us – white, black, Hispanic, Asian – ALL of us. I love that there is literally a rainbow of an army of people in that church who are locking arms and working together to break down these stigmas and barriers. Who are re-writing that message that’s being sent out by the media. And I love that I get to be a part of that.

I am ready to see through people’s skin again, like when I was younger and less tainted by the lies of the enemy of this world. I’m through with those creeping thoughts and questions in the back of my mind.

But, this isn’t a clean-cut entry with a nice little “finished” bow on it. This is something that’s still very real and present in my life and something I’m still working on and working through. But, it’s something I needed to get out. To say it out loud. To face it head-on. So, with the help of ALL my friends, I can move past it.

Thanks for working through this with me.

Amazing Amazing Grace

“The thing I find most amazing about amazing grace is the chance to give it out;
Maybe that’s what love is all about.” – I’m Not Who I Was, Brandon Heath

This past week, I ran across the poetry and memoirs I wrote during the whirlwind five month romance that lasted from the day we met, to the day I married, my ex-husband.

It was ironic, and a little heartbreaking to read.

What I wrote most about was all the good things I saw in him and how bright our predestined future together was. I wrote about seeing him through God’s eyes, the way He had created him, and all the things he was called to do with his life.

But after we were married, once the routine, stress and pressure of everyday reality hit: bills, jobs, stress, in-laws, holidays, the piles of dirty laundry, and dishes left all over the house…. My own natural eyesight came back into focus. All I could think day after day was how different he was than before, and how our whirlwind romance was nothing like it was. How I no longer felt in love.

And, from everything I had read in relationship books, I knew it was my husband’s responsibility to keep up with the expectations he had set while we were dating, to satisfy my every dream and desire, to make me happy every day, to fill my love tank, to not step on my air hose, show me affection, chase after me, and resolve conflicts… It was his job to make me feel loved.

I tried guilting him in to loving me, threatening him, belittling him, challenging him, counseling him, and loving him into loving me. None of that worked. I even prayed to God to change him, to make him want to love and fight for me.

You May Have To(1) And when he didn’t, hurt, anger, bitterness, resentment set in. Criticism raged, and in time, I was disgusted by him. Instead of seeing his potential, I only felt contempt when I looked at who I saw. (It’s funny… I never really stopped to ask God what I could do to change the situation, because I knew, clearly, it was all his fault.) Eventually, all of this surmounted into hopelessness – about our marriage, about our future. I couldn’t see any way it would ever get better.

It’s easy when we’re in the “feel-good” phase of romantic love, to see all the good qualities in our spouses, to see them through God’s eyes. To see their potential, and all the good they have on the inside. But, when everyday life hits, how quickly all we can see are their flaws, their annoying habits, their broken-promises, how far they still are from that future person they were created to be.

Oh how that breaks my heart to think about how foolish I was.

It was not my ex-husband’s job to make me happy or satisfied, any more than it is my husband’s job now.

He can’t, really. Not fully anyway. No matter how badly he wants to or even how hard he tries. He can never truly fulfill all the things my heart and soul desire in a relationship. Ever.

There is only One Person who can ever do that.
This isn’t a self-help article – I’m not talking about finding zen and happiness on your own. Although that’s where the responsibility starts and lies – it’s up to YOU (and me) to seek fulfillment and wholeness and satisfaction and joy from the only One who can ever provide all of that for us – in any lasting capacity.

Jesus Christ.

I had been preached to my whole life growing up in church and youth group, “You have to keep Jesus at the center of your relationship for it to really work”. But no one ever took the time to explain to me what the hell that actually meant or looked like in real life.

If you’re in that same boat, allow me to shed some light on this for you now, based on what I’ve learned and am still learning:

While preparing for my remarriage, God showed me all the times I fall short from that picture He has of me, and the times I hurt and disappoint Him. Once I realized, I wasn’t really so perfect either, it made it a lot easier for me to cut someone else some slack when they don’t live up to my expectations.

In fact, I kind of learned to let go of expectations all together.

I learned that if I take the time to seek relationship with Jesus every day, to connect with Him regularly – through prayer, through reading scripture (to learn more about his character) through reading books about Him, then I find my happiness and fulfillment there, in that relationship. And that takes pressure off Barry.

Jesus literally fills me up – with love, with grace, with patience – so that I even have anything to give back to my husband.

And in our time together, Jesus is constantly renewing my vision to see Barry the way He sees him. I can look with fresh eyes and see – not the way he’s acting that day, or the way he’s making me feel – but all those things God has planted inside him that I get the privilege of watching come to fruition. I see the ways he’s trying rather than the fact he’s not there yet.

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When Barry hurts me or makes me angry, if I take it to God first – He bandages me up, from the inside out – and then I can go back to Barry healed and whole and able to continue to give him the love and respect he needs, rather than the bitterness or contempt I feel like showing him.

And I know that’s waaaaaaay easier said than done. I don’t always feel like going to God first about something, sometimes I’d rather pout or stew about it for a while. But every time I find myself slipping back into disappointment, I check myself and remember the AMAZING grace I’ve been given, that I don’t deserve. And I find the strength and desire to pass that gift along to my husband.

And here’s the BEST part: once you take those expectations off your spouse – to be “your everything” (something that is humanly impossible for them to do) then they are freed up to love you in the ways they can, and it’s all just icing on the cake!