I have learned from those inspired by the Creator of Love that our first goal in building community is to build healthy self-love. We need this foundation on which to build our homes. Why? Because home is where our children have the best opportunity to thrive. We are home. We, individuals are home. Home is not the perfectly manicured lawns, not the beautiful buildings that we erect, not our trendy decor, or varied libraries. When we build ourselves well, we provide safe, solid homes.  And to build well we must invest in good friendships, because friends are our teammates in the construction and living of life. 

An open rebuke is better than hidden love! Wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy. The heartfelt counsel of a friend is as sweet as perfume and incense. As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.
Proverbs 27:5-6,9,17 – https://www.biblegateway.com/passage?search=Proverbs%2027:5-6,9,17&version=NLT

Looking at our own faults can be very uncomfortable. That process often creates shame, and shame is a big barrier to change, if we keep it hidden. It is my experience that when I repeatedly choose to minimize my weaknesses, shame is magnified. I become defensive and focused on self-preservation. This self-preservation can generally look like an ostrich with its head buried in the sand. I pretend that there is no danger, and may blindly lash out with my powerful ostrich legs.

How powerful is an ostrich’s legs? According to National Geographic: “An ostrich’s powerful, long legs can cover 10 to 16 feet in a single stride. These legs can also be formidable weapons. Ostrich kicks can kill a human or a potential predator like a lion.“ When our heads are buried in the sand, our strengths can actually become the weapons with which we do the most damage. Imagine those legs being used blindly, without proper focus. Imagine a group of ostriches walking around with buried heads, kicking at unfocused targets. What havoc that would wreak.

This is what our lives look like when we surround ourselves with people who affirm our unhealthy choices. Such people are often also walking around with buried heads, afraid to face their own shame. We dig deep into the well of confirmation bias. We gossip. We manipulate. We become situationally blind, even though we know a lot about what being healthy looks like. We tend to blindly focus only on our strengths. And so we miss the opportunity to truly grow through challenge. We miss many opportunities to create healthy homes and healthy communities. We become a clan of blind ostriches who may even seriously wound or kill fellow ostriches while we allow lions to roam freely around us. We miss the opportunity to develop wisdom, to show love, to be honest, to be supportive, to be genuinely kind.

How do we invest in building healthy communities where we, and our children can thrive? We must seek to build healthy friendships. People who pursue wholehearted living know that a healthy community is our strongest foundation. We need people who will love us honestly. We need people who love us because they know us through honest assessment. Honest assessment is well balanced support made with encouragement, affirmation and critique. Unfortunately, sometimes we have such a violently negative reaction to honest critique that we are unable to acknowledge the presence of affirmation and encouragement.

It is true that facing our shame is uncomfortable, but it is absolutely necessary if we are to grow. A person whose goal is wholehearted living would seek the truest cherished friendships where there is engagement in honest assessment. I challenge us to take our heads out of the sand. It is human nature to in some way and at some time live with eyes below the sand. So, my friend, fellow human, it is unlikely that you are the exception if you have not taken the steps to become proficient in naturally facing your shame. One can only hope that the balm of affirmation and encouragement will hasten healing and growth. Because we really are better together, healthily.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is very hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. I’ll say it again—it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”
Matthew 19:23-24 – https://www.biblegateway.com/passage?search=Matthew%2019:23-24&version=NLT

How is it possible that wealth, that great honour, the outward indicator of God’s favour, the marker of a life lived to His great honour – according to the preacher – how is it that wealth creates the biggest obstacle to the Kingdom of Heaven? I’ve thought about this a lot as I interact with some people whom our society deems wealthy. I particularly consider this thought when I see the type who look at the poor with philanthropic scorn. You know whom I mean; the silver spoon bootstrap wealthy who have achieved and acquired because of their hard work. Those guys, the ones who deign to give a handout to the stragglers, and then discuss the great weight that they drag behind them, as a result of the paucity of progress among the entitled, the lazy, the foolish, the unmotivated.

Friend, having clearly seen their hump, I was happy to be that verbal sledge hammer which pounded them through the eye of the proverbial needle to enlightenment and glory. For it is indeed noble work to prod sagging souls along on their way to the Kingdom. Is it not?

It is not.

“Wealthy?” The Spirit of God asked me. “Who is wealthy? And through which eyes, daughter, have you been assessing the wealthy?” It was quiet, and as far as I was aware, there was no one else with me. I had invited no One. So I turned abruptly to see who had interrupted my meditative soliloquy. He quickly held me still. I wondered why He would prevent me from seeing whom He was. And then gently, He held a mirror up to my eyes:
The disciples were astounded. “Then who in the world can be saved?” they asked. Jesus looked at them intently and said, “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.”
Matthew 19:25-26 – https://www.biblegateway.com/passage?search=Matthew%2019:25-26&version=NLT

I could see then that He hadn’t been trying to hide. He was trying to preserve my sight. For had I moved an inch, drawn away from Him, I would have surely driven the massive protruding beam more deeply into my eye.

“Who is rich?” I asked. The better question, He asked me; “Who is not?” Which of us is not rich? Which of us have not been gifted with Love. We have however been gifted with varying aspects of love. We all possess a skill that only we can uniquely execute. This is but a component of love. A gift given for the greater good. None have been excluded. All have been gifted. But like the rich young ruler, who had earlier walked away unfulfilled from his conversation with Jesus, we fail to correctly identify our most valuable asset, and we overestimate the value of the unique gifts that we believe fill our lives with invaluable purpose.

It seems that we then become filled with a sort of illusory superiority, in line with the Dunning-Kruger effect. We do not recognize that we are deficient in love, because we conflate our knowledge of love with the skill that we offer the world. Our gifts become our humps, our inflated egos. We wonder why others just do not easily carry and supply great stores of our gift. We fail to recognize that our gifts are our contribution to the community of humanity. We do not see that together we provide a complete gift of love. And so with humps and beam-obstructed eyes we trample each other as we journey to myriad false kingdoms.

Our very little children journey more successfully. They walk together in love. They communicate openly. They help each other; and they do this fairly well until we, with our humps and beams, guide them away from love.

Grace to Grace – Hillsong How grateful we become when we recognize that our Father guides us as gently as the psalmist describes in Psalm 103:8, with “compassionate and merciful…unfailing love” that is unbreakable even in death (Romans 38:8). We begin to allow Him to clear our eyes. We begin to allow Him to teach us what it is to be truly rich; and then knowing love, we walk more easily into His Kingdom of Love, “on Earth as it is in Heaven”, together.

As captured by Princess A on our travels

I’m pretty sure that everyone who knows me, knows how treasured a gift I believe emotions to be. Our Father in heaven was so incredibly loving to us in giving us such effective ways of processing life and moving forward stronger. Emotions are truth. And truth is powerful. Love is truth.

I’ve had this blog reserved since September 23, 2012. Of Thunderstorms and Rainbows; because this is life; I live it and I love it. And although I have cherished the journey, I haven’t known how to start here. So, I waited. I waited because I believe that all things happen in perfect time. A perfectly slow and steady flame releases the most well combined flavours. And so I waited. And while waiting, I lived, and learned how much I was loved before I even was; and I learned to love myself as I am, perfect, and I am learning to love others as perfectly, and I am learning how to serve.

Today is the day. The things to be said have come together with the beautiful heat of a slow and steady flame. And here we begin. Of Thunderstorms and Rainbows: Genesis.

Most of the time I feel crushed, and still always able to see God’s mitigating hand to some external degree (rainbows) and more so internally as I grow in peace and compassion.

I don’t really know how to explain growing love, or peace, or faith, or awareness of my own faults, while feeling perpetually crushed for hopefully some greater good here on Earth.

On Friday morning, June 28, 2019, I asked God, “Is it real faith, if I feel that I have to know every outcome, or if an outcome needs to be what seems to be good? Or is faith just trusting You to keep walking ahead of me, uncovering silver linings and providing safety nets?”

Because I have never seen resolution, here, or felt supported, here, and I am increasingly seeing goodness and growth, and love, and His compassion. Is this what it means to feel His deep love, and to want to have others experience that as well?

I just know how much I have screwed up in trying to make life work. So, really, I don’t know what better means anymore, except for hoping to grow in love.

And as I reflected on this place of deep sadness and searching, and love, I remembered a past interaction: a rainbow moment. Brene Brown says that hope is living with the knowing that there is a way forward. I believe that this knowing only comes with experience, ours and others shared. And so this morning, when I felt the deep sadness of specific circumstances, I accessed a memory brought to heart by the Spirit of God.

Four years ago, on a very beautiful day, when my children were lavishing me with love, I felt both so happy and so deeply sad. I sat in a chair in our living room, looking through the windows, and I asked God why I felt so sad on this day when everything was so beautiful. And His response was, “Because what you are grieving is real. So it’s okay to be sad. Grieve what could and should have been, but was not, and then build something new from here.” And He told me how to build.

We talk, my Heavenly Father and I, because His guidance has proven true. I seek Him and continuously find Him. To be clear, He has never been lost, but I have found that so often I seek with eyes closed and walls up. When I open them, in response to His persistent gentle call, or the thunderstorm of consequence, He is always right beside me. And so I believe. This is my experience, and so I believe.

These last months, and life in general, have been extremely difficult and also very amazing. I don’t think I knew just how difficult until this morning when tears were silently streaming down my face, as I answered both Shannon and Tina’s well wishes that life will soon be better.

Sad tears are a gift. Did you know that our sad tears are full of toxins, and that they actually physically cleanse us as they fall. Somehow I still hate the weakness that I feel when they begin to well, and more so when they fall. I hate and love them. But, having already been given the freedom to grieve, I did. Because grieving was the truth.

AND I LOVE THAT WE HAVE A FULL RANGE OF EMOTIONS! When the tears were spent, and my eyelids so heavy that I could only sleep, I was reminded by the Spirit that I do not permanently sit in sadness, but we, together, move forward and build. God has taught me that my life’s motto is: Love. Learn. Serve. So I got up out of bed, showered, made my outside reflect the sassy freedom that I felt on the inside, and went to church to meet the person whose name the Spirit spoke to me this morning. I was late for the service, but I was certain that it would be perfect. I was certain that I would be able to revel in His love whenever I walked in, and I was equally certain that this person whom I had only seen three times in six months would be there.

I walked in to the closing praise, and it was incredible. In two songs I felt that I had fully shared in God’s presence with all those who had been gathered there. And there she was. So, instead of slipping away as I usually do, I touched her, and asked after her dreams and her heart. I am so happy that I listened, both to the Spirit, and to her. Because I accepted His gifts of emotion this morning, because I let Him sit with me, and because I allowed Him to take my hand and help me to rise, I was able to be a part of His brilliant rainbow.

Just in case you are also asking and wondering, life never will get better, there will always be a mountain. Love moves them though. So I’m building love. Moving mountains one at a time. And living with you, all and any of you who wish to join me in this life of thunderstorms and rainbows. We are better together. Live it. Love it. 🌈❤️💃🏿

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