Speaking the Truth

It seems funny to follow my last post about my awesome husband with this story, but here goes.  My husband is an extremely honest person.  And by extremely I mean brutally.  So often over the years I've looked at him after he's said something honest and thought, "I can NOT believe you just said that."  My favorite story to illustrate this happened while we were dating.  I needed a new bathing suit and invited him to go shopping with me.  As I tried on bikinis I would come out and show him.  (I know, probably not my wisest decision)  The scenario went like this: 
I would walk out feeling hopeful
He would look me up and down, nod and then say "turn around"
I would turn around
He would shake his head and say "nope"
With the first few suits I just thought it was a bad fit.  But after 10 or so repeats of this exact performance I burst out with "what is so wrong with every suit AFTER I turn around and you see it from the back?  And he told me, without emotion, "they all make your butt look square."
So I calmly said, "oh, ok, thanks for being so honest and helping me find the perfect suit."  WRONG.  I snapped, "well maybe I just have a square butt and shouldn't even buy a bathing suit."  I put my clothes back on, returned all the bathing suits to the rack and we left the mall with tension crawling between us.

In all reality, he is still one of my favorite people to shop with because he is so honest.   But the contrast between us back then was huge.  I hate conflict.  I want everyone to feel good and get along.  So much so that in my younger years I would lie if I thought the truth would hurt someone or cause a rift in a relationship.  I often stuffed my own hurts just so I didn't have to have hard conversations with friends.  I can remember many times when I was angry with one friend or another but when they would ask I would tell them I wasn't mad because I wanted everything to be fine.  So I would pretend or if it happened too often I would end the friendship.  The strange thing is, I thought of myself as a very honest person.  I wouldn't have said that I lied regularly because I thought that all of my lies were for someone's benefit.  As a teen, if I knew that my Mom wouldn't like something I did, I just decided it was best not to tell her.(sorry Mom, just kidding, I really was as perfect as you remember)  If I felt like my opinion wouldn't be in agreement with the friend or group I was with, I just kept it to myself.  If I felt like my struggles would upset someone, I hid them.

Ephesians 4:15 tells us "we will speak the truth in love, growing more and more like Christ."  4:25 goes on to say "So stop telling lies.  Let us tell our neighbors the truth for we are all parts of the same body."  The first time a friend confronted me with this truth in the middle of a small group I wasn't sure how to react.  He called me out by telling me that I wasn't protecting someone else's feelings but was protecting myself from conflict.  He said my lying wasn't helping me or the people in my life.   He was proposing a whole new way to live.  I wasn't sure how it would work but if this was what God really wanted for me I decided to try.  Soon I had the chance.  A friend hurt my feelings and called me later to apologize.  My former response would have been "oh it was fine, I wasn't upset."  But this time I answered honestly and told her that I forgave her but that I had been really hurt by her comment.   We talked it out and life went on.  But I will be honest with you here, learning to live this way wasn't easy.  I would often shake as I was honest about my feelings or responses.  I would still feel sick when I knew I had to have a conversation with someone.  But I also saw my relationships grow deeper, and my relationship with God grew too.

I still don't like conflict and have to overcome that each time I take the step to grow more like Christ by speaking truth in love.  My husband still struggles with blunt honesty but he too is growing more like Christ remembering to say it in love.  Mostly I'm thankful for the friend who cared enough to call me out.  His honesty came out of his love for me as a sister in Christ.  He knew the way I was living wasn't allowing me to be who Christ was calling me to be.

How about you?  How do you do with speaking the truth in love?  Do you struggle with the truth part or the in love part?

Worthless?

Weeks ago I was laying flat on my back with a headache.  As Rick, my husband, walked past I said "I feel worthless; I'm just laying here doing nothing."   That was before I got the test results that told me that I have a CSF leak.  You would probably think that finding out that I have the leak made me feel like it was ok to lie around.  But I really don't like lying around. I like to be up and doing things.  I like to be the one serving others.  I like to be active and involved.  And there's really nothing wrong with that.  But in this period of time, many of the things that fed my worth have been stripped away and it's a struggle for me emotionally.

Our society equates worth with what we contribute.  I can remember as a young stay-at-home wife and mother attending business parties with my husband.  Other women would ask me, "What do you do?" My answer that I was home full-time was usually met with a polite dismissing comment and they would excuse themselves to talk to someone who seemed more interesting to them.  I was happy to be home with my kids, but these encounters still stung.  Part of the way I dealt with it was to remember that my contributions weren't financial but they were still important.  And that way of thinking has carried me for a lot of years.  Again, I don't think that it's a bad way to think.

But like God so often does when we're on the edge of the truth, he finds a way to bring me into his center because God doesn't want me to stay on the edge.  All these years I've been justifying my lack of outside employment and how that ties to my worth by looking at all of the ways I contribute through my life.  I could count up hours instead of dollars and I felt good about how much I was pouring myself out to serve others even if I wasn't making any money doing so.  I still felt like I was contributing--to my home, to society, to God's kingdom.

God says my worth comes from who I am and whose I am, not my tasks. I've said I believed that for years.  But if I truly believe that, when my tasks have to slow down or stop, I wouldn't feel worthless.  Scripture over and over talks about worthless idols and often when people are described as worthless it is because of their idol worship.  Am I an idol worshipper?  Maybe, if the idol is being healthy or being the one who jumps to help others.  (Remember an idol is anything that takes the place of honor that should only be reserved for God.  If these things are more important than doing what God asks, they've become idols)

So when I first had to start staying home more and laying around more I thought, "Ok, I'll just be the prayer warrior.  I can't go in and serve but I can be useful by praying like crazy while I'm home."  Again, this isn't a bad thing.  It's awesome to pray for others but my ability to spend time praying for others doesn't give me my worth anymore than a job or volunteering or any task does.  Philippians 3 says, “I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. ⁸ Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ ⁹and become one with him." (NLT)  Christ is the one who gives me my worth.  Not because of anything in me or anything I do, but because of HIM!  Psalm 139:13-15 reminds me that I am fearfully and wonderfully made and again the thing that tells me is that my worth comes from being made by God.  It says "wonderful are your works." Not because we're special on our own but because God is special and he made us.  

So if my worth comes from being created by God and the gift of Christ's righteousness, I can rest in that when I can't do anything else.  When I can't do anything else, I can still love the Lord with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind and all my strength. (Mark 12:28-34) So when I go back to the basic questions; "What gives me my worth? What makes my life worthwhile?" I can fall back on the truth of scripture and remember that there's nothing I can do that will add to what Christ has already done.  I just need to live my life worshiping the one who gave me life and has allowed my present circumstances.  That's a lesson worth learning.