Pain... I still don't like it.

I injured my back when I was 19-years old working on the ski slopes of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. A man over 7-feet tall lunged for me and caught me, bringing me down with him. I had stopped the lift for him to get off. It was the bunny slope. Being a brand, new skier, he was afraid. Instead of just removing his skis or pushing himself slowly with his poles, he decided he needed a hand. Same fear, I suspect that makes a drowning person drag down their savior. Anyway, I was where I was supposed to be but the proper space between us did not protect me from his exceptional size. I was taken down off the beginners’ slope by ski patrol, sent to the hospital and went through weeks and weeks of physical therapy.

Ever since, one wrong move can create pain.  It can be something totally innocuous like picking something light off the ground or sleeping wrong. It is also true that generally, I get a hint beforehand. A little tweak that doesn’t stick but still alerts me something wicked this way comes. Yesterday, getting in my vehicle, I heard something, twisted to look and bam! Just like that, my hips lock up, my lower back is aching, and a pulling feeling shoots down my thighs. I should have expected it, as last week, it was bothering me a bit, but I stretched and rolled on the foam roller. Bingo! Pain gone.

It got me thinking about two things:

1.       Why do we not do what we know we should do?

2.       Paul’s “thorn of the flesh” and what it means to live in pain.

The question of why we don’t do what we should do has, to me, seemingly two easy answers: can’t, won’t …  which are truly the root of all the rest. I knew I needed to go to the chiropractor, but I didn’t because I chose to use my time in other ways PLUS, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to spend the money on it. We make believe our answers to this question are complicated and follow them up with anecdote: if you walked a mile in my shoes or you don’t know what it is like to be me but boil it down: I can’t, I won’t. I clearly chose I won’t until I must and now I am paying the price.

Which lead me to thinking about Paul and the thorn in his flesh:  To keep me grounded and stop me from becoming too high and mighty due to the extraordinary character of these revelations, I was given a thorn in the flesh—a nagging nuisance of Satan, a messenger to plague me! I begged the Lord three times to liberate me from its anguish; and finally He said to me, “My grace is enough to cover and sustain you. My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9a). We don’t know if Paul’s pain was physical, emotional or spiritual, but I don’t think that matters because what God wants us to pull from His allowing us to live in a bit of pain remains the same no matter where yours comes from…it brings us to greater understanding of His grace.

Most of the pain we live in is self-inflicted. Some pain is good like the kind we endure when working to get our bodies healthy. But it is the pain we don’t chose that bothers us most. CS Lewis wrote in the Problem with Pain: “Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say; my tooth is aching than to say my heart is broken.

Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9: “We are cracked and chipped from our afflictions on all sides, but we are not crushed by them. We are bewildered at times, but we do not give in to despair. We are persecuted, but we have not been abandoned. We have been knocked down, but we are not destroyed.” He finishes up in verse 12: “So death is constantly at work in us, but life is working in you.” We have all heard it said that from the moment we are born we are working towards our death. It is inevitable.

So how do you deal with your pain? Do you try to bury or ignore it? Take it out on those around you? Face it head on? Do you ask for help or go it alone? Do you fuss about it all the time? Do you smile through it? We have many options but only one brings relief: giving it away. “Are you weary, carrying a heavy burden? Then come to me. I will refresh your life, for I am your oasis. Simply join your life with mine. Learn my ways and you’ll discover that I’m gentle, humble, easy to please. You will find refreshment and rest in me. For all that I require of you will be pleasant and easy to bear” (Matthew 11:28-30).

I am not God… a collective sigh of relief, I know. I cannot say why Paul needed a continual thorn in flesh to remain humble. Seems extreme to me.  I can only speculate he was a choleric or sanguine personality type. I can however attest that when God has allowed my pain to continue there has ALWAYS been a something I needed to learn or remember, most centrally: rely on Me. We forget often. We think we can do it ourselves, especially in the good times. We also sometimes forget to be reverent, thinking we know when we do not. We put other things and people first. We ignore Him. We answer His questions of us: I can’t, or I won’t and so He puts us in a place until we surrender to: I will.

My will for His will…that trade off in my thinking was one of the hardest places I have ever been in my life and He did in fact, allow me to live in pain. Post surrender, bad crap still happens. I still hurt sometimes but I am never in pain like I was before. I have peace when I shouldn’t. Joy when I should be crying. Love … all the time! I think the purpose of pain is to teach, to grow and to morph us into something better than we would be without it. ALL that being said, I still don’t like it (wink, wink).

Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave. -Mary Tyler Moore

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful. -John C. Maxwell

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it! -Charlie Chaplin

My scars are the shadow of my destiny...

Monday, I got a new tattoo.  It is on the inside of my right wrist.  It is a bee.  A honey bee to be exact. It is a tangible acknowledgement of the calling spoken over my life by God and reaffirmed through people and prayer to be like Deborah.

So, who is Deborah? She is found in the Book of Judges. Judges were leaders who ruled in Israel during a time of no centralized government. She, along with fifteen others, served Israel in the time before kings. The Passion Translation says, she served as judge, sitting under a palm tree and settling disputes; which has a much different connotation than ruling.

Moses is the first person I remember hearing being assigned this position during his time of leading the Israelites out of slavery and into promise. In fact, the same word in Hebrew is used to describe both Moses and the judges: shofet. To me this job seems akin to administrator: a person responsible for running a business, organization, etc. per Webster’s dictionary. Deborah was judge, prophetess, warrior, writer, wife and “Mother of Israel” (Judges 5:7). Can you feel my trepidation as this pronouncement over my life?

She was such a powerful warrior (in spirit and prayer of course as women did not go physically to battle during this time) that Barak, the general, would not go to war without her. She prophesizes over him that because of his lack of faith that God will use a woman to ultimately defeat their enemy and he will see no personal glory from their victory. She wasn’t referring to herself, by the way. When the Israelites put the beat down on the Canaanites, their general, Sisera, ran, and he ran right into Jael. Sisera’s king was at peace with Jael’s husband so he thought he was safe but when he laid down to rest, Jael put a tent peg through his temple, killing him.

Deborah wrote a song of victory that day that is regarded as one of the oldest passages in the Bible. Her lyrics confess: “My heart is warmed by those in Israel called to command them, who offered themselves willingly to the people. Praise the Eternal One!” (Judges 5:9). She was excited about her purpose and the work God called her to do no matter the level of difficulty.

You know how some days, God just reaches out from His word and says the exact thing you need to hear. Hear to be affirmed or corrected or loved. He did that for me yesterday: Let everyone be devoted to fulfill the work God has given them to do with excellence, and their joy will be in doing what’s right and being themselves, and not in being affirmed by others. Every believer is ultimately responsible for his or her own conscience (Galatians 6:4-5; Passion Translation). The Voice says… Each person has his or her own burden to bear and story to write (v5). It got me thinking about Deborah’s exclamation and my own attitude towards my calling to be more like her.

It’s come in phases. First spoken over me in September of 2007 that I would be given the gifts of prophecy, healing and discernment. “Your scars are the shadow of your destiny”. At the time, I wasn’t sure what to make of all that. I did not feel “saved” or “spiritual” enough for such things to be attributed to me. Plus… hello? SCARY! Nobody likes a prophet.

My father was very excited about all of this, of course being the man of God that he is but I recognized immediately that the healing part wasn’t a physical healing but instead a spiritual and emotional one.  As the teacher continued to speak over me that day, he said I would transfer my healing to others and that people crushed by emotional scars would be comforted and released. He said, I would hear God as a still, soft voice and I would pray for the broken and wounded. Within a few days my sister, Tara, approached me and asked me yes or no. I said yes or no what and she said just answer according to the prompting of the Spirit. I said yes, and she whipped out a bottle of anointing oil, swiped it across my forehead and said that I would be a problem solver and was blessed to be a blessing, a threefold blessing. At this point, I am feeling like … dude, God maybe a little bit slower? Let me adjust to what you are telling me. Maybe try to figure it out a bit. Get some grounding. Take a breath.

God doesn’t want you to take a breath unless it is His breath because what I decided to do in that breath was slow down His course of action. Just a stupid side note here: every time I try to type action, it initially comes out auction. HA!

Anyway, I waited a month before I took a single step towards understanding a threefold blessing. Ecclesiastes 4:12 speaks to a threefold chord cannot be easily broken. Our God is, if you allow me the leap as I am no scholar, threefold. Numbers 6:24-26 is considered a threefold blessing: The Eternal One bless and keep you. May He make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Eternal lift up His countenance to look upon you and give you peace. There are so many theories and examples that I asked the Holy Spirit to intervene and describe for me it’s meaning as applicable specifically to me. He was clear… a salvation: body, soul, spirit. Being as I am not Jesus by any means and hence no savior let alone THE Savior, I asked what salvation means within this context and the Spirit took me straight to the dictionary: preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss.

I slowed down again and not until 2010 did I start revaluating His calling on my life. I started seeking him. Asking questions and getting answers like:

·         Don’t obey emotions just because you have them.

·         Find the level of maturity the Holy Spirit expects of you.

·         Not knowing your place creates anxiety.

·         Operate in wisdom.

·         Quit trying to explain motives and intentions and just behave.

·         Don’t let anything: no fault, no shortcoming or offense go by unforgiven.

He gave me James 1:4 as a touchstone, “Don’t run from tests and hardships. As difficult as they are, you will ultimately find joy in them; if you embrace them, your faith will blossom under pressure and teach you true patience as you endure. And true patience brought on by endurance will equip you to complete the long journey and cross the finish line—mature, complete, and wanting nothing.” Another stupid side note, if you know me well…some of those answers are flat out hilarious.

I began reading everything I could find on love.  I wanted to understand His love and how to operate in it. It became my desire. Eventually, He lead me to my Pastor and my sweet church and He began to proof and refine that love He was filling me with and before I understood it, it poured out of me. Then in January of last year, someone praying over me said, “you have the spirit of Deborah”. Just when I was feeling good (aka comfortable) about life and what I thought my calling might be, BAM! I knew just enough about Deborah to get me into trouble in my head. I did not want to be at war.  I did not want to be a judge or a prophet.

Satan wants you to reject what God calls out as truth upon your heart, your mind and your life. Rejection of that truth cripples His power within you and hence your power over satan. I did for a bit but then I began to study. I mean if I am a Deborah, I’d better figure out what the means. Laugh was on me because though she was successful at war, she was also success at peace bringing it to Israel for 40 years until the time of her death. He is calling me to battle in a war that is already won, and I should feel no anxiety or stress because I already know the outcome just like she did. Operate in faith.

She was a writer. This was no issue for me. I was already writing after a long discussion with Him about who’s going read this and why me, I finally gave up and started typing. She was a prophetess. Still a bit shaky on this one but I will say I have accepted discernment and I know God helps me see the outcome when He needs me to which is usually in the form of advising others.  She was a judge but as I said above, it’s more like administration and that is a gift I have been operating in effectively for quite some time, like since birth because I am a first born. We’ve already covered my mothering in previous blogs and then here comes the choke up for me: she was a wife. I was a wife, but I am not a wife. I would like to be a wife, but I have not had much luck with men and in fact, I would say most don’t see me at all. I have come to accept this as a protection provided by Him but just being 100% transparent…this is an area in my life that is a great struggle for me. I have had to take a hands-off approach because I need God to be fully in charge in this area and I have had to surrender what I once believed to be promises, trading them for happiness and contentment right where I am at which is not a wife…just in case you missed that SNORT.

On January 15, 2015, I wrote in my journal:

I don’t understand my path. You are testing me, but I am so tired and feeling very unloved. I want released so badly and I cannot understand why You are keeping me tied. Have I disappointed you?  He answered with 2 Corinthians 12:9, “and finally He said to me, “My grace is enough to cover and sustain you. My power is made perfect in weakness.” So ask me about my thorn, inquire about my weaknesses, and I will gladly go on and on—I would rather stake my claim in these and have the power of the Anointed One at home within me”. Followed by, “it is not for you to know why but rather to stay your course and obey. I hear and understand the desires of your heart. I know you are hurting. Your pain is my path. Endurance…run your race, Tiffany and allow me to do a good work in you”. Can you hear the echo in that of: “Your scars are the shadow of your destiny”?

I have quit fighting His call upon my life now…mostly. Human and so I will always have to fight off my flesh from time to time, but I try to keep my heart and attitude surrendered. When I don’t know what to do, which direction He wants me to go, I search deeper within the truth He has given me: I am a daughter, a sister, a mother, a friend, a writer… a Deborah. I am called to love and like a honey bee, fight for my hive; giving my life, if necessary. Oh! and maybe now we would a good time to mention, Deborah means bee in Hebrew.

If God is love…why aren’t you?

My friend Jen shared a message by Jentezen Franklin with me Monday. It was a sermon he had preached once before but now after writing a book, Love Like You’ve Never Been Hurt, it had a new, deeper meaning to him. It was a beautiful message in which he said these very profound words: “Christians aren’t supposed to be mean”. Jen and I ended up having a conversation about the message in which I told her a story I had just recounted to her daughter after she told me how she had been treated post giving her honest testimony to some fellow Christians.

I have a cousin who is gay. He has a sweet, tender heart. He struggles with his faith, in my opinion in part because it is popular within the Christian culture to say you cannot be both a believer and gay. I disagree. I know plenty of people who willingly sin and sit in church next to you on Sunday. Neither of you question his faith because his sin is acceptable to you, but God says clearly in Romans 6:23 that the wages of sin is death and I don’t remember reading a list of which sins lead to death following that statement, do you?

I went to visit him once while he was living in Los Angeles. We went out to a bar to have a drink and meet some of his friends, one of which I ended up having a conversation about faith. He asked how I reconciled loving my cousin when the Bible says homosexuality is a sin. I explained to him that I wasn’t his judge and I did not want him to be mine. He said yeah but… and I interrupted him describing a teenage girl who had two abortions and grew up to marry an addict and alcoholic who hurt both her and their children. I told him that I didn’t want him judging my sin of “thou shalt not kill” anymore that I wanted to judge his sin of “a man should not lie with another man as he lies with a female”. I need grace. You need grace. We all need grace. God is love and if I am striving to be like Him then I need to be loving. It is my job to love you not to judge you. Love brings you closer to Him. Judgement does not. He wrapped his arms around me with tears in his eyes, put his head on my chest (why do gay men love boobs) and said, “I wish we all could just love each other like that”. This man was out of touch with his Christian family because they did not approve of his lifestyle choices. They had not spoken to him in over three years.

Jen’s brother is the associate pastor at our church. Jake recently asked us why we give more grace to backsliding Christians than we do the unsaved. Powerful question. The Christian should know better while the sinner has yet to learn.

Luke 12:47-48 states: “Every servant who knows full well what pleases his master, yet who does not make himself ready and refuses to put his master’s will to action, will be punished with many blows. But the servant who does not know his master’s will and unwittingly does what is wrong will be punished less severely. For those who have received a greater revelation from their master are required a greater obedience. And those who have been entrusted with great responsibility will be held more responsible to their master.”

As a believer, I wear a much greater responsibility to do what is His will. It is not my job to rank sin and decided who gets grace and who doesn’t.  It is my job to love according to the love I have been given.

“Those who are loved by God, let his love continually pour from you to one another, because God is love. Everyone who loves is fathered by God and experiences an intimate knowledge of him. The one who doesn’t love has yet to know God, for God is love. The light of God’s love shined within us when he sent his matchless Son into the world so that we might live through him. This is love: He loved us long before we loved him. It was his love, not ours. He proved it by sending his Son to be the pleasing sacrificial offering to take away our sins. Delightfully loved ones, if he loved us with such tremendous love, then “loving one another” should be our way of life!” 1 John 4:7-11 (emphasis mine).

If you were raised in the South, then you at some point have heard someone somewhere tell you: you attract more bees with honey than vinegar … this holds true for us as believers. I don’t know a single person, including myself, who wants to go into a church knowing they will receive nothing but judgment, criticism and hatred. Until we grasp that love is at the root of the great commission, we will fail as the church.

Last time I referred to story about my church and the love that can be found there. Kneeling at our tiny i.e. VERY short altar, realizing what God was asking of me… I might have… not knowing anyone was near because my hair covers a multitude of sin as well as my face and saying it very softly, so it wasn’t truly or, so I thought inaudible… said shit.

YES! Literally, as God revealed His truth to me, crying and almost prostrate at the altar, I said, “shit”. Unbeknownst to me, my pastor, Warren, was right above me and without missing a beat, reached down, touched my shoulder and said, “Lord, in the name of Jesus, I pray the shit out of Tiffany. Amen!”. He laughed and told me to text him what that was all about later. He didn’t judge me for cussing at the altar.  He loved me right where I was at and it is love like that that changes the world. It is unconditional and all encompassing. It makes you feel like you can move a mountain with a mustard seed of faith. It gives you the knowledge that no matter how you feel, you know you are never truly alone. It teaches you to give grace and mercy, throwing judgement out the window, leaving it to God alone to handle. It helps you understand that being vulnerable is a strength not a weakness which in turn allows you to throw your arms again and again around the neck of someone that feels like they don’t deserve it. It brings you back to a church filled with it because inside there is no fear of condemnation just the soothing hug of acceptance.

LOVE IS THE REMEDY!

Remedy by Zac Brown... because he picked up on a universal truth like no other, I suggest we sing along:

I’ve been looking for a sound
That makes my heart sing
Been looking for a melody
That makes the church bells ring
Not looking for the fame
Or the fortune it might bring
In love, in music, in life

Jesus preached the golden rule
Buddha taught it too
Gandhi said eye for an eye
Makes the whole world go blind
With a little understanding
We can break these chains
That we've been handed
I've got the medication
Love is the remedy

Pray to be stronger and wiser
Know you get what you give
Love one another
Amen (amen), amen

I’ve been thinking about the mark
That I’ll be leaving
Been looking for a truth
I can believe in
I got everything I need
Let this heart be my guide
In love, in music, in life

I’m not saying I’m a wise man
Heaven knows there’s much that I’m still finding
Making my way down this winding road
Holding on to what I love
Yeah, and leaving the rest behind
For love, for music, for life

Pray to be stronger and wiser
Know you get what you give
Love one another

(Love is the remedy)
We’re all in this world together
Life’s a gift that we have to treasure
Happiness, now that is the measure
Love is the remedy
(Love is the remedy)

Everyone can be forgiven
One love and one religion
Open up your heart and listen
Love is the remedy

Pray to be stronger and wiser
And know you get what you give
God is love one another
Amen (amen), amen, amen (amen)