thoughts

Out to lunch the other day with good friends (the kind you can just pick up with, no matter how long it's been since you've seen 'em) and were in a corner booth at Noshville's in Franklin. 3 couples, all roughly the same age (some more roughly than others!) having the most wonderful conversation about the Lord, some (a lot?) holy hilarity.....and a woman in the booth next to us kept looking around with a frown on her face! I'm thinkin' if you want quiet, stay home! The restaurant itself is noisy....that's kinda the way these places are. But at one point, she put her fingers in her ears!!! Seriously?? I find myself feeling more sorry for her than being angry. I always try to pick up on whether or not there's just been some tragedy to make a person act that way.....it didn't seem that way, because at one point, she and her husband leaned across the "aisle" between booths to converse with 2 people at another table.....and they laughed! So, I just can't figure out why it was okay for her to laugh, but not us! Oh well, some people can't stand others having more fun than themselves! We DID have fun, though.
The Nashville Praise Symphony played our last concert of the year.....at a church in Franklin, and we were helping raise money (and awareness) for a ministry called Caring Resources. 2 women, Farrar Moore, and Sheryl Cook, started this ministry and wrote a book, From Hurt to Hope, which they gave to each of us in the orchestra. Everyone has suffered loss and hurt, everyone comes to times in their lives when they need to forgive.....this ministry holds workshops to help people deal with what's happened in their lives, and then move forward in hope and freedom. Too many people just "stuff" the things that happen, and never deal with it properly.....there are people we all know who will just say "we're not having this conversation".....and that's that, according to them. That is not the way to deal with anything and only gives the issue room to fester in one's heart and life. A person may think they've "dealt with" an issue.....then years later, it comes back with a vengeance, kinda like my mom's cancer did 26 years after her initial operation and chemotherapy. Mom lived a long life and for just about a month less than 25 years, was cancer free....she had originally been given 6 months to 5 years.....and she's the kind of person who would say, "Don't you tell ME how much time I have left!" Told she'd never play the organ or piano again, she went to church 2 weeks after her radical mastectomy and played for the service.....leaving in the middle to go and throw up from her chemo.....then coming back to play the last hymn and postlude. So, was her cancer gone? I don't know, maybe from the initial site, but then who really knows what those nasty cells do when we're not looking? But my point is that with a hurt or injustice, we need to face it full on and bring it out into the open.....talk about it, in effect, cut it out of our heart, pray together about it (if there's another person involved).....and truly forgive. Every single person experiences loss......because loss is really just unfulfilled expectations. If someone in our life passes away, there's an unfulfilled expectation that they'll always be there for us. If our parents divorce, that's an unfulfilled expectation that they'll always be together.....just fill in the blanks for yourself. When we focus on the pain, hurt, loss, then, guess what? It's ALL ABOUT us! We as believers are to be focused on Jesus....who experienced the ultimate pain and loss (cut off from His Father) just for me and you. So, what are you focusing on today? What do I focus on? I do NOT want to be in "unforgiveness jail", because that's what it is......if we don't forgive whoever has hurt us, we can never grow as a Christian. One of the quotes in the book is "Without eternal perspective, I cannot forgive, and unless I forgive, I cannot have eternal perspective." And of course Jesus said in what we refer to as the Lord's Prayer....."forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us". In essence, God, please forgive me to the extent that I forgive others. Ouch! So, ya mean I've got to forgive the others before He'll forgive me? Go read it for yourself.....pick up any Bible and just start reading the New Testament. You'll find the right verses.....God will bring them out to you. Now, sometimes our pain is the result of someone else's wrong choices......happens all the time.....like Joseph in the Old Testament of the Bible.....his brothers made a really stupid decision to sell him to some Egyptian passers by. Then they told their dad Joe'd been killed by a wild animal. Talk about wrong choices! Well, God ultimately brought good out of it (amazing how He does that every time when we let Him), but Joe had lots of forgiving to do.
Sometimes our pain comes from a wrong choice we made ourselves......but hey, who can we blame for that one? We try to find anyone but ourselves.........I'm discovering that it always works better when I "own" the choices I've made. My parents used to say I was a very responsible kid.....every time something went wrong, I was responsible! But really, isn't it a part of maturity to take responsibility for the choices we have made? Some of us are "pleasers"....we just want to cause the least disturbance so we "go along" with someone else's idea or suggestion, not so much because we want it that way, but we want them to "like" us more, or something......I can say this because I'm a pleaser. But then when it doesn't turn out like I REALLY wanted it to, I look for someone else to blame......and ya know what? I need only to look in the mirror. I'm the one who ultimately made that particular choice, and I am the one responsible for how it turned out. No one else. Several years ago I played the lead part in a great Sondheim musical "Into the Woods", and one of my favorite songs was trying to point to blame to whomever I could...a recurring line was "so it's YOUR fault then!" No one wants to own responsibility....it's always someone else's fault that I feel this way.
Just some of the thoughts flowing through my mind this weekend.......