Free People: Aren’t Chained to Resentments

Take a moment and consider the worst thing that's ever been done to you.  A lie somebody told.  A wound they inflicted.  A treasure they stole.

We must never ignore that the harmful actions of others can have long-lasting effects on our lives.  It can be as overt as a bruise on a cheek and as insidious as a learned cynicism.

It's important to stand guard alongside our souls.  For while evil can set up camp easily in the mindset of weaker targets, it is the free in whom evil takes its greatest delight when narrowing its aim.  And if evil can execute a fall of the free, it's its most powerful achievement indeed.

Pain can lead to anger.  Persistent anger can become resentment.  Resentment can breed hopelessness.

Resentment is the boulder to which our feet are tied when revenge is our king.  It is the ocean by which we drown when we ignore the life vest of forgiveness.

Resentment is drilling a hole in your own boat and cursing it for sinking.

It's stiff-arming a medicine while lamenting your pain.

It's the dumbest gift you can hand over to your most squalid enemy--the keys to your soul,

your joy,

your life.

It auctions off the acreage of your heart to the ones who shouldn't be near it.

But how can resentment be stopped once it's begun its fiery stomping into your existence?

By opting to exist elsewhere.

During a rough stretch five years ago, I trained myself to spend the bulk of my time in activities where God was more apt to show up.  I chose mentally to be where He was and chose to be less where my fears or sadness could get the better of me.  When things of His nature consumed me, I wasted far less energy being befuddled and overwhelmed by circumstances that were out of my control.  I learned to U-turn my worry-prone heart toward His rest.  I prayed for peace by the minute until it felt more natural.  His words and His promises were my ever-worshipful soundtrack.  I studied examples of godly warriors who had emerged victorious on the other side of purported defeat.

And while not nearly as gratifying as the violent snap of a bolt cutter, the steadfastness I adopted chipped away at what I might have been and made space for the potential I held.

Thus, I have found that the best defense against resentment is commitment to good.

To the purposeful immersion in His uplifting love and grace.

To the tightened seatbelt of endurance when the road turns bumpy and unpaved.

To the acknowledgement that it's possible to become like your enemies.

To the vow that you'll never let it happen.

You are so much better than that.

Resentment, like a dirty room, must be tidied consistently for the mess not to overrun.  Untie your feet, patch the hole in your drowning boat, swallow the pill, and evict your disorderly tenants.

You have a choice--a say--in who runs your life.

And by golly, I hope that it's you.

Free People: Are Unafraid to Speak Truth to Stupid

Sometimes, people say and do the stupidest things (things that make you wanna make the face below...)

When I say "stupid," I'm not referring to a lack of education or ignorance.  I'm referring to the guttural stupidity that accompanies a lack of concern for other people.  Pathological dishonesty with no expectation of consequence.  Pure selfishness and a purposeful indifference to common decency.

It's alive and well in the damaged, hurting hearts of those who feel others should hurt, too.  It's there in the evil hearts, too, just for fun.

Any way you slice it, dice it, or recognize it, stupidity proliferates and thrives when we don't do anything about it.

If you aren't free, you'll be prone to silence.  I've been in situations like this--and I'm sure you have, too--where the behavior is so stupid and the offender is so difficult, that, though the answers and the recourse should be obvious, you're too paralyzed to act.

It requires guts to confront a superior, an elder, or a bully, so we let things pass in the name of martyrdom or in the observance of what has come to be "wussy forgiveness."

You know, wussy forgiveness.  The one where, out of the inability to speak truth, we just tell the behavior and the perpetrator "it's okay," and then we figure out how to make it "okay" going forward.

Stop calling stupid okay.  Stop calling evil okay.  It isn't okay.  And it won't be okay, no matter how many grace baths you give it.

Moses comes to mind when I think of this aspect of freedom.  God called long-forgotten, exiled-to-the-sheep, hobo little stuttering Moses to go and speak toPharaoh (the king) to tell him (yipe!) to free the Israelites.  At first, Moses resisted out of fear and insecurity, but he was his people's only hope.  So when he chose to obey, God's power came upon him, and he spoke freely to the most feared man in the land.  Pharaoh didn't listen, which was stupid.  He was too proud to listen to God.  Because he behaved stupidly, his people suffered for it time after time after time.  They were sick and couldn't drink their water, and their homes were overrun with frogs and locusts and other disturbances.  It eventually cost the kingdom lots of children, including Pharaoh's own son.

The world is full of people who charge full-steam ahead to do what they want, no matter what it costs or who it might hurt.  They might not stop because you tell them to, but you have to try.

We must feel the freedom to speak up in the little things.  We must feel even more urging in the big things, even when it's hard.

Especially when it's hard.

I think of the young girls violated by the Olympic doctor, and all of the opportunities that were missed to do something about it.  I think of the children and teachers who don't confront or turn in bullies, only to have school shootings or suicides result.  I think of the friends and family who sit idly by, watching spouses cheat or drink themselves into oblivion, only to have a family come to ruin.

Think of the destruction that could be spared all around if we stopped ignoring and making excuses for these blatant wrongdoings.

Free people don't make excuses for stupidity.

If you speak up, the person might not stop.  But if you don't, they absolutely won't.

Don't be afraid.  Don't be silent.  Be bold.  Have courage.  Be free to stand up to what shouldn't be.

You never know what or who you might save.

Free People: Aren’t Easily Offended

"He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool." - Brigham Young

Freedom requires thick skin.

Have you ever touched actual thin skin?  I've seen some of the thinnest skin possible in my career because I work with babies born as prematurely as 23 and 24 weeks gestation.  I'm convinced the only reason I was able to get my first IV start ever as a new nurse was because of my one-pounder's transparent skin--I could see every running network of every vein he had.  All NICU nurses know that if you have to start an IV, you want a baby with thinner skin because it's easier to get access to them--it's a little like having a permanent X-ray.  If they are born early enough, their skin is even gelatinous.  They can't protect themselves from heat loss.  The most dreadful IV attempts happen with full-term, fully-padded babies with dense, dry skin.  You often can't see any veins at all (a "blind stick" is the worst), and even if you can see their vessels, their thick skin makes accessing and cannulating their veins virtually impossible at times.

So consider your own "skin"--is it immature and thin?  Does your sensitivity to even the slightest offenses read like a permanent X-ray of weakness?  Does it take one tiny stick to access all of the inner-workings of who you are?  Are you an "easy stick?"

Or do you make the people poking at you really work for it?  Are you padded with self-confidence and a sense of humor?  Are offenders forced to try their hand at you from multiple angles to get at you--only to have them give up?  Are you a "tough stick?"

May we all learn the freedom of beinginaccessible to the snap of a snarky comment.

And while physical harm is cause for revolt, if the only thing that stands to get hurt from an action is your feelings, I hope you reevaluate the need to suckle upon it like the nourishment for a newborn baby.

Free people don't go out of their way to experience offense.

I don't know many of us who haven't seen the circulating YouTube video of the pastor sharing the story of a man who shrugged off an offense with the statement, "I can afford it."  If you have the time, Google it for a heartwarming anecdote.  Otherwise, I'll break down the bottom line for you here: when your worth and happiness don't depend on the actions of others, you can afford to take the "hit" of an offensive remark made toward you.

Not all stinging commentary is an insult.  Is it true?  Own up to it and fix it.  Is it an assumption?  Correct it loudly by living differently.  Is it funny?  Learn to laugh at yourself.

And if it's clearly intended to be an insult?  For the love of all that is holy on heaven and earth, just ignore it.  Retaliating or snapping back is only evidence that you've let them tap a vein.

What if we stopped scavenging through intentions and inflections for hidden assaults...

...and just let words linger in the air?

What if we stopped taking nastiness seriously?

So what if people try to be mean?  So what if they don't mean to be mean and end up being mean?

Hide your veins and fatten your skin with freedom.  Don't go looking for offense, and if it finds you anyway, be free to tell it to get lost.

So long, thin skin.

Hello, freedom.

Free People: See Beauty Where Others Do Not

The summer before I got pregnant with Harlow, I developed a voracious appetite for reading.  In three months, I had devoured eight books, including gems like The Help and The Secret Life of Bees.  There are two things I remember most clearly from what I read:

(1) The chocolate pie encounter with Miss Hilly in The Help (gah, that's a good scene).

and

(2) A description of a skunk's odor fromThe Lovely Bones.

For those of you unfamiliar with the latter story, it follows the Salmon girl ("Salmon like the fish; first name Susie"), as her spirit roams the heavens and the earth after she's been raped and murdered by Mr. Harvey, an older man who lived on the route to her school.

Susie enjoys this smell most of us find horrifyingly putrid.  In fact, she loves it so much, it's the aromatic backdrop for her version of heaven.  Alice Sebold writes as Susie, "The air in my heaven often smelled like skunk--just a hint of it...It was the animal's fear and power mixed together to form a pungent, lingering musk" (p. 15). 

It was the first time I'd ever heard beauty applied to a bad smell.  And all these years later, when a skunk's stench of attempted survival permeates the air of our winding country backroads, I think of Susie Salmon.  I consider the fear, I consider the power.  I search for the beauty.

It still stinks, but it's somehow more palatable.

Anything can be ugly from the right angle.

Winter in its nakedness.  Dimples of weight that can only be found and never lost.  Words slung in fear or hatred.

The unfree have but one lens with which to view beauty--it's either suited to the symmetry of their hopes and expectations, or it's a blundering, blubbering, ugly, obliterated pile of scraps.  They lack the perspectives that give us life's odd and striking beauties.  They don't understand it, and so to them, it can't be good.

When your heart becomes unfettered--untortured by the illusion of what should be and clasping endlessly to an unshaped lump that can be molded with care--the possibilities become limitless.

Freedom takes the scarcity of January and reforms it into the appreciation of June.

It turns a puddle into a splash pad.

It takes fat and saggy skin and stretch marks and refreshes them into challenges and goals--or even into battle scars from a life lived distantly from the sidelines.

Freedom finds beauty even in the hurling ugliness of an enemy--by seeing a charge to be an ambassador for goodness and not succumbing to the pansied doormat of victimhood.

Freedom gives new mothers the chance to find beauty in elongated, bruised, and squashed faces.

It morphs the sting of a horrible diagnosis into the joy of formerly insignificant things.

It takes splinters and thorns and nails and the agonizing cry of death and blows it as a triumphant victory cry for those of us who'd otherwise have no hope.

The lens of the unfree is picky.  The lens of the free swoops and sifts and narrows until it finds an opportunity,

a reminder,

a challenge,

an anything 

so as to be intentionally and perpetuallysurrounded by light.

Anything can be beautiful if you look at it from the right angle.  Even a stinky skunk.

You need only the freedom to see it.

Free People: Laugh More than Others

Think of the last time you laughed really hard.

Not just a polite chuckle or that obligatory smile you wear as you comment "LOL" under a cute social media post.

I mean that snorting, gasping, sounds-like-you-have-emphysema, tears-streaming-down-your-face kind of guffaw.  The kind of laugh that leaves you tingly and euphoric when you finally calm down enough to catch your breath.  The kind of laugh that you can't stifle in church when someone mispronounces "prostrate," even though your mom is cutting devil's eyes at you.

The kind of laugh that makes you say, "Whew! I needed that."

We do!  We need laughter as much and as often as we can get it.  It burns calories, relieves stress, helps us fight illnesses, can decrease our sense of pain, and some even say it makes you live longer.

Free people laugh more because they can find and choose joy in more places.

I remember in one of the Chuck Swindoll books I've read, he described how some Christians roam the earth sullen and martyred because they've come to equate suffering with holiness.  He pooh-poohed the notion and identified the ridiculousness of such a belief.

Christians (the ones who should be the most free), though we may struggle and suffer, should be choosing joy no matter what we're facing.  We have the freedom to do this because of our ultimate Hope.

I've watched many friends who have miscarried babies push joyfully through morning sickness of viable pregnancies.  They can look past stretch marks and weight gain and discomfort because they can find the joy through it.  There's an end-game ahead, and they don't lose sight of it.

I've watched certain friends going through chemo, and I've seen how they can smile more than others.  They appreciate today, which helps them think less about tomorrow and the worry it might hold.  And when their days grow short, if they're heaven-bound, they wear their joy with even more purpose because there's an end-game ahead, and they don't lose sight of it.

Every pain has an end.  Every struggle has a conclusion.  Every sadness has a termination.  Every comma has a period.

And when you can remember that, the world doesn't seem quite so scary anymore.

Have you ever noticed that people who have more going for them are sometimes the ones who laugh and find joy the least?

That's because joy isn't of this world. 

I've worked in the NICU for nearly nine years now, and I find it fascinating to observe and compare behaviors in parents of very ill, extremely premature babies versus those getting a drive-by experience of our unit with their temporarily and mildly ill older babies.  Surprisingly, I find that the mother of the latter is the one who tends to grieve harder in the first few days after admission.

For the mother of the healthier child, everything was going well until something went wrong.  The pregnancy was perfect, but then an unforeseen low blood sugar requiring a little IV fluids or some fast breathing lands their new bundle four floors below, separated from their aching mothers.

Tomorrow will be different.  Tomorrow the baby could be better, but today, the world is undone, and it's not how it was supposed to be.  She can't see toward tomorrow because today is too bleak.

For the mother of the sicker child, everything was going wrong until something finally went right.  They made it to 24 weeks before their blood pressure sky-rocketed or the baby was just big enough to intubate.

Tomorrow could be different.  Tomorrow, the baby could be worse, but today, the world has this glimmer of hope, and it's not how she thought it would be.  She may not be able to touch or hold her baby for weeks, but she's doesn't care.  She can't think of tomorrow because today is too good.

Neither mother is wrong.  I felt all of those same emotions as the harder-grieving mother when I faced pregnancy complications with Benning.

But the joy is so much more evident in one, and it's odd!  In theory, this mother should be more upset, unable to face the days, and there will be times that she will feel this way.  She has more to be afraid of and more to overcome.

But she doesn't look for what should be--she looks for what is.

Joy is lost in expectations.  If you look for joy in perfection, you will always lose it.

Joy is found in the freedom to ignore the expectations and appreciate the beautiful realities hidden somewhere inside.

Joy can abound in any situation, if for no other reason than to know that the situation will end.

Laugh with joy at the things you can--at the mispronounced words in church and the times you trip and fall down.  Laugh at the cutesy ways your children say things and the cat videos on Facebook.  Laugh at others' jokes.  Laugh at yourself.

For while things can get serious, you don't always have to be.

There's an end-game ahead, and I hope you never lose sight of it.

Free People: Aren’t Controlled by the Past

Imagine that someone has taken a lock and key and trapped you inside the worst version of yourself from the past.  Close your eyes and consider what that looks like to you.

Is it from your sixth grade year when you had braces and greasy hair?  Maybe it looks like the gangly, wiry kid that got teased in high school.  Or the chubbier-cheeked kid who got picked last for basketball. 

Maybe it's the person who made a giant mistake.  A giant mistake that's turned into a giant secret.  A giant secret that's turned into a giant burden.

Maybe it's the version who was left wounded or warped by people who didn't care anything about you.

Can you envision that your worst self is your puppeteer?  Or...do you even have to imagine it?

Does who you were or what's been done to you manipulate the way you live today?  If so, you aren't free.

Paul could have let the past control him.  He had ventured out on a murdering spree, targeting anyone who followed Christ.  God set him straight with a proverbial brick wall of literal blindness, and while Paul could have worshiped and believed quietly in the closet of his home, Paul commanded the attention of the masses.  Paul wasn't fettered to shame--he turned his life around.  And if God could forgive him, so could he forgive himself.  If God could offer him grace, he wasn't too proud to accept it.

Mistakes don't have to be our dictators.  Regret doesn't have to be our chains.

Despite a past that could have steered his course in a vastly different direction, Paul lived free.  And the world was better for it.

Joseph could have let the past control him.  He was beaten to a pulp by his jealous older brothers and left for dead.  He lived a thick chunk of his young life behind bars for no reason at all.  God freed him and raised him to the height of success, and when those thugs he had for siblings showed up in need, Joseph could have answered in spite and retaliation.  But he didn't.  Joseph wasn't restrained and embalmed in bitterness.  He embraced his brothers, and he helped them live.

When you can cut the cord between the pain of past abuse and your at-present heart, the way you respond becomes entirely up to you--be it in wise separation or open-armed grace.

Despite a past that could have stonewalled his heart, Joseph lived free.  And he was better for it.

I've seen great men and women of faith up close and personal choosing to defy their ugly pasts.  Friends who have used bad decisions to reform their futures.  A grandmother who gave a giant hand-slap to her abuse-riddled past with a commitment to being kind to the world around her.  A friend who has sliced through the hurt of abandonment, choosing to live a life that doesn't dignify such disrespect with the bother of her time, energy, or wasted resentment.

People who live free.  Who have shown me how to live free as well.

Who remind me that the past can be a mere chapter in a history book and doesn't have to be a daily entry in a present-day diary.

Who have shown me that the past can remain a handy how-to for distant hiccups and doesn't have to be the thermostat of the days to come.

May it be said of you that you controlled how the past assimilated into your life and not the other way around.

May it be said of you that you rose above, that you cut the cord, that you defied the odds.

May it be said of you that you lived free...and that the world was better for it.

Free People: Are Dangerous People

There's an edge and a danger to things we can't control.

I find this most clearly when I think about the weather.  We can't pull the puppet strings of the clouds and tell them when to gather and when to scatter.  We can't push away the raindrops and tell them to come again some other day.  We can't wave away the lightning or woo the sun to appear from hiding.

Years ago, I watched a storm surge on the beach in Panama City.  I was huddled up with my sister and brother-in-law, and we watched the gray, misty fog encroach upon the white sandy getaway of our condo's beach.  The waves crashed randomly but beautifully, like a diminished chord on the piano.  Through the splattering rain on our balcony window, I saw a section of the water start to turn.  It was thin, and it spun faster and faster as it moved horizontally and parallel to the shore until it had formed into a whirling waterspout.  I scrambled to try and capture it on video, because it was one of the most wildly wonderful and beautifully terrifying things I'd ever witnessed.  It continued perfectly shaped a little down the beach, until the elements that had so artfully pieced it together fell quickly apart, and it disassembled into the rainy abyss.

It was lovely because it was wild; it was dangerous because it was free.

Like the turn of a tornado or the howl of a hurricane, free people are dangerous because they can't be contained.

I love the story of Paul and Silas being imprisoned.  During their ministry, they were unceremoniously thrown into jail, and though their bodies were chained, their hearts and their faith could not be caged.  They sang into the night songs of worship to the Lord, and as they did, their shackles fell to the ground, and their cell was opened.  The guard was terrified--how could they have possibly escaped?

What the guard didn't realize is that you can't contain a free man.

I used to love Pastor Mike Glenn's description of Jesus' frustrating nature--people get upset with Jesus "because he doesn't stay where you put him."  If you put him in the grave, he'll end up in the garden.  If you put him in the corner, he'll march right into the center of your life.  If you put him on the backburner, he'll charge into the front.  That Jesus, he's a dangerous one because he can't be contained.

He's free.

And like the wild nature of a tornado, be it in the plains of Oklahoma or the green pastures of Tennessee,

Free people are free no matter where they are.  No matter where someone puts them.

Though the world can shackle your body, only you can shackle your soul.

So what about you?  Are you enslaved or emboldened?  Are you belted to a life of chains?

Or are you free to roam about the cabin?

I hope we can put a little danger to your name while we explore all the ways to live free.  Come along!  You're in for a wild ride.