Calling

 

But each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me,
and through each night I sing his songs,
praying to God who gives me life. Psalm 42:8

Sometimes I mourn the thoughts and inspirations of yesterday. Regret their transient fragility. Will them back to consciousness.
Time casually evaporates them and new ideas take their place. The regret lingers. Is it the lost opportunity of impressing you?

Other times, I imagine the future. Count down the interim, until I'm there. Where exactly?

I could think myself the most important person in the world. Lots of us do.

Stop. Time to be here and now.

Sit with the jittery man, who averts his gaze. Cravings for a drink shame him. Listen to him.
 
Sit with the fragile woman who can't tell her ex that he's no longer welcome to invade her house. She can't remember ever saying no to anyone, and her shoulders carry that. Listen. Don't forget.

Sit with the proud man who needs to have the last word. Don't resent him for it. Maybe just figure out a gentle way to guide the conversation to a place of common ground. There's something to learn from him, too.

Respect. Respect, genuineness and authenticity. That's a tall order and I want to gradually wear them into my skin. Practice them.

Perhaps this is how a call gets lived out.

Each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me,
and through each night I sing his songs,
praying to God who gives me life.
 

Colin Hay

Colin Hay is a very funny man. He's a musician, who plays guitar, writes spare, honest lyrics and peppers his time at the microphone with hilarious anecdotes. We've been to his shows twice and he has a way of drawing you into his stories.

He's obviously a talented musician, because he has three guitars on stage and swaps between them. They all looked the same to me, but he's good because he knows which one for each song. I think one was a twelve string guitar, but let's face it, we were at least five metres from the stage and well who can tell that stuff anyway?

He talked about sailing to Australia, from Scotland when he was fourteen years old, and that's a little of the reason my husband is a fan because he did the same thing when he was six. He told a story about having Paul McCartney over for dinner and Paul doing the dishes. Badly. And I'm sitting at the table, too, listening to Paul McCartney rinsing the crockery under the streaming tap.

He talked about becoming an alcoholic, and trying to stop drinking. He found it hard to stop here in Australia, because no one wanted to agree that he was drinking too much. Perhaps it was too confronting to their own alcohol intake. So he moved to California, and stopped drinking there. He talked about getting up and having breakfast one day, and thinking "Well. What now?" His question  embodied the deep lostness and grief of giving up what is most habitual to you. Even (perhaps especially) destructive things.

And the experience of loss and change and discovery evolved into this beautiful song.



I love that the simple act of swimming or drinking tea becomes a way to acknowledge the beauty of the world.

When I lie awake in the darkness and listen to the rain falling on the grass and the road, I can be worrying about not being asleep or anxious about tomorrow. Or I can just hear the water falling and feel the coolness of the air through the flyscreen and the slow breath in and out beside me. I can be here and awake and know the beauty of this world in the stillness of the moment. That is when prayer and miracles are possible.

PS. Linking with Emily...

A Broken Hallelujah

I am joining with Prodigal Magazine and SheLoves Magazine to explore A Broken Hallelujah.
There's a big link-up so go and check it out for lots of different takes on the theme.

***

She apologises. She can't come because of the funeral, and I nod, that's fine. Please don't worry. I ask a little more and she tells me of a young boy's death. She whispers 'suicide' not wanting to tempt, by saying it aloud. Perhaps if the word is swallowed, unspoken, it will not have happened.

Family draw around as his mother bears and breaks. She bears as a mother should never have to. To imagine the loss of a son is not enough, but it is all, at this moment. To carry a little of the pinching, endless discomfort of walking in her shoes. The complexity, the mystery, of bearing one another's burdens.

I feel it too, with my friend as her shoulders shrug and fall. 'What can I do?', says her helpless, uncomfortable expression. We are so like animals, who retreat to tend their wounds, because we do not quite know how to be broken in company. We are reluctant to be a bother, but it's being broken together that makes us family. That bonds us indelibly.

Judas hung himself, you know. Matthew said so. And he did it after the men who paid him washed their hands of him. "That's your responsibility" they said and would not accept the bribe back. The temple door slammed in his face.

So utterly alone. Left with his own failure. Unbearable. And he could not contemplate asking another to help him carry it. This is despair. To be so separated from community that no one can reach you to help.

And the paradox of desolation is that, in the midst of the deepest need for community, the desolate one feels an ocean away from everyone. How do we reach them? And how do we recognise who is desolate? There is no simple answer for recognising risk and who is really despairing. Psychiatrists struggle to predict suicide risk, and despairing people do not want to cause us inconvenience, so they do not let us see their struggle.

Our sensibilities make some subjects harder to talk about and I think that despair and suicide are difficult topics to raise. I think we would learn more grace if we could allow more despair to be acknowledged. If we could listen to more struggle and allow our community to help us carry burdens. Sometimes soldiering on and covering up struggle teaches others that despair and brokenness are not acceptable.

There is one broken hallelujah we could look to. Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, asks his friends to pray with him because he is sorrowing to the point of death. He does not hide his despair or withdraw from support. He is hungry for it in his time of need.

And I'm preaching this one to myself.

Did you see that? on Facebook?

It might just start with a status update. The comment appears within five minutes and it bites. Were you itching for the argument or did this just tickle a sensitive nerve? That is a world away from the update I *heard*... I see my friend answer graciously, as only she can, but it sets me thinking.

On Facebook, simple statements can be incendiary to someone reading from another perspective.

There's so much more than the words, to what we hear. Even on a screen. Can typeface have body language? Or is it just that the language I use, in this moment, draws on a million different conversations I've already had? And you've had a million of your own to activate besides.

Sometimes it's hard to hear the unadorned statement in the midst of all the triggered memories and associations. And most of the time that context and subtext makes words way more interesting and powerful.

Then there's times when I struggle to listen and not be ruled by my gut reaction.

To not bristle as he accuses me, or not wilt as she dismisses me. To hear a rebuke and not ignore it completely as inconvenient or unjustified.

It's easy to harden my heart, and in the process, stick my fingers firmly in my ears.

And that's when I miss the most.
Opportunities to understand or to change or to bless evaporate.
I long for a heart that doesn't harden, and ears that really hear, in the midst of the blaring context.

Conversation over a haircut

photo from stock.xchng

I made one of my infrequent visits to the hairdresser. She's pleasant to chat with, and accepting of my lassez faire, low maintenance attitude to hair. My ignorance of product. We compare stories of my children and her grandchildren. I update her about work and it starts her talking about refugees and migration.

Politics and religion. And immigration. #thingswedon'ttalkabout

She tells stories of people she knows from other cultures - all friends, all sympathetic portraits.

Then asks my opinion about refugees. And Islam and fundamentalism and burqas. She took my hesitation as an invitation for her opinions. No worries, I can do listening.

And she's quite happy to share.

Deep down, it's fear. Fear that refugees are extremists in disguise, that they'll get powerful before we realise it and they'll rip us all off by defrauding Centrelink. That burqas hide disdain and contempt for us. That refugees are different, they're not us and we might not like living next door to them.

I preferred her stories of people she's really met.

But sitting in her space, I found it hard to collect a coherent response. Since than I've formed a few ideas, but it's a long time till my next haircut.

I want to tell her about most of the refugees I've met. That they've been victims of religious persecution rather than perpetrators. That they don't want to leave their home country, they have to. In order to survive. That they spend months, years, days on end, mourning and missing their homes. Grieving the wives or children or siblings who were killed. Trying to forget the wounds they've received or the horror-filled memories seared into their brains.

That most of the Arabic speakers I've met are from Christian minority groups, and that the Iranians are those who have protested the Islamic state. That the idea of refugees promoting fundamentalism, or racial hatred when they bear its scars is oddly ridiculous.

That when she talks of pride in Australia and protecting our Australia, maybe the pride and the protecting rob of us the opportunity to be a nation of strength of character and true compassion.

Just a few ideas. What can you add?

Men get depressed

She's never called it depression before. I know it's taken me years to say it.

Last week she said he's depressed and I nodded because my soul gets stretched like that too. Depressed husbands make themselves push through. They twist their heart darkness into any other possible shape. They call it frustration or they label themselves "the melancholy type" or they just constrict to the necessary, hiding in bed but barely sleeping. They don't say "I'm depressed" very often.

Some have such rigorous self standards that they face a mountain of daily disappointment. Some wrestle with inadequacy bred into their bones and they doubt every urge or idea. Doubt paralyses them, and risking new notions fills them with terror. Fear that they cannot admit or perhaps cannot see.

Grace is the only solution. But depression conceals grace because it is born of self-criticism and failure. Failure to be what we long for, failure to see another's love for us.

So we talk about counselling and 'strategies' for self-care and the last thing he needs is strategies. He's all strategied up and he's worn out because it's another way to 'do the right thing' and be a good husband or father or person. His fear is of giving his all to God and finding nothing left for himself. That God would steal his soul if he offered it.

Someone else fears that God has nothing good to do through him. The fear robs him of passion and motivation. It leaves him misunderstood, dissatisfied and frustrated with himself. Another friend thinks others don't really like him and that man's wife reflects that she's 'a bit of an annoying person'.

It maddens me, this blindness. That we measure ourselves along such human scales, and our inadequacies become an obsession. Arrogance and pride can be about our achievements. But self- criticism is a type of pride too.

I see us all carrying self-critical burdens and they sap the life from us. God wants us to be free of this. Maybe freedom would come from seeing them more clearly and being willing to give them up. Willing to stop defining ourselves with them. To stop letting our imperfections be the barrier to God using us.

Let's turn the measuring around. Stop applying it to ourselves. Put it up against God, measure the life of Jesus. Start looking for achievement and adequacy where we're guaranteed to find it. Give up the flurry to be good enough. Accept ourselves, not to excuse failures but to stop the distracting internal war.

God is not stealing our souls, he's renewing them. We'll never find ourselves empty or soul-bereft trusting him. He's doing more than we can imagine in us (and through us), if we'll let him.

*NB. I write this, not knowing your particular experience of depression or self-criticism. Please forgive me if this does not ring true for you. I'm just reflecting on some things I've been thinking lately. This is not an exhaustive treatise on depression.

A faithful life

The funeral today was for a woman who has lived a faithful life. She has been having palliative treatment for cancer for six months and, four weeks ago, the funeral was for her husband. I can only imagine what it is like to see both your parents die within a month.

Her sister's husband looked stooped and worn today, his smile broad and sad-eyed. Her son's ex-wife will be more alone without her. She was praised by her doubting son for her faith in God and His love for her.

This family draws people from all through our community together. Gathered today, I saw the butcher who retired last year, the 'girls' from the chemist, people who've moved away from our church many years ago. They are well known for their extended family meals, their camping adventures and their loyalty. There's a prison officer who mows their lawn regularly because he remembers the years they let him live among their family.

The couple, who had been at our church for forty years, had loved many people, through youth groups and boys brigade, sporting teams and after school care, neighbourly love and inviting homeless young people into their family. They had seen the boom times and the broken times of our church and had served on, despite many people moving to bigger or newer churches.

They are well loved, because people had felt and seen the generosity of their love.

They were never celebrities and they lived a quiet life. They faced many hardships, losses and disappointments, particularly through chronic illness. But they didn't let those hard things shape them, they never became bitter or angry. Instead they continued to praise the God who loved them and to love people around them.

Sometimes I long to be recognised and for people to know the good I do. But that's not what a faithful life is about. I hesitate to start a heresy, but perhaps the most famous Christians are not necessarily the most faithful.

It may be faintly cliched to wonder what people will say at my funeral one day, but I do hope that however quiet it is, that people will say that I have lived faithfully.

Wondering...

(Yes. I drove past this bilboard. And took a photo.)

I'm wondering how they do it?

How can someone keep all the things up to date that need to be up to date?

When I consider the following list that one woman might need to get done

• going to the dentist regularly
• getting regular pap tests
• staying healthy in other ways - doctor/chiropracter/counsellor/whatever
• keep leg hair waxed
• getting haircuts
• getting hair colours
• taking children to the doctor/dentist/hairdresser
• I'm sure I've missed some - what is on your list?

How do people do it? How do they get their children looked after for one thing?

Just thinking this, as I realise that I haven't been to the doctor other than for pre-natal visits for the last ten years (possibly indelicate to tell you how long since my last paptest?). That I ignored a reminder from the dentist twelve months ago, that I wear long pants for 80% of the year due to unsightly leg hair and that I stopped colouring my hair (myself admittedly) when I was 25.

Is it just me?

Riots

Macquarie Fields riots from heraldsun.com.au

Riots in Britain. About a day later, the radio news became more than just background noise. There are riots in Britain. Remember our riots?

It made me think about people living trapped by hopelessness. I read a book that tried to understand the poor, and it still felt like just another judgement. But at least the writer had met the people he described. It is easy to have an opinion about poverty and the poor, but some of the loudest opinions are made without meeting anyone who is poor.

Laurie Penny wrote an insightful piece about the riots and the media attention they have garnered. Peaceful protests have been ignored, but the media can't get enough of riots and looters. And we love simple explanations like - 'a small group of criminals are making everyone else look bad', or 'Twitter is the reason for the spread of violence'.

This extract from Penny's blog is telling,

'In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"

"Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."

Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere ‘’’

What sort of behaviour does media attention reinforce? Perhaps those who feel powerless and ignored will try anything to be heard.

Caring

She's living at the house he bought. After the divorce. After winning a hundred thousand on a carelessly bought scratchie. He's had the house since half the money was in the till at the pub.

She's glad to have a place to stay. And doing her the favour eases the jagged edged fact that she is his carer. Not his carer on a welfare form. His carer on the watch for when he starts to be distracted with his own thoughts. Looking for his words to lose their distinct flavour. They can become like mist in the headlights.

He says there's nothing wrong. He lives it, too. If ignoring it were therapeutic, he'd be well. But he's not. He sifts everything he hears to capture words that make him better. But they don't. He careens, rather than slips into madness.

She came home to find the windows nailed shut and the back door couldn't open. He'd left the hunting knife on the table. The police had pulled him roughly out the door, with his arms clasped behind him. He hunted for explanation but it slipped away. She was saddened that he didn't notice his own incoherence. He thought it made sense.

She slept. It felt like days. Repaying the debt of pacing, interrupted nights. She tells me of retreating to her room. That she saw his eyes peering out from the darkness. That he waited for her to sleep and then he walked back and forth, all night. Wry, she laughs. His mad thoughts are funny. They are funny and timid and sad and broken.

Somehow she can shiver at his paranoid preparations and giggle at his oddness. Her steadiness is epic.

Family without burden is enticing. But it spoils us for the true beauty of care for a broken brother. Perfection has been smashed so that love can be glued patiently together. Built piece after piece, sturdily, secured one by one. It's a heroic, humble construction.

Joining Emily,

The cost of good

I wake each weekday to Adam Spencer. That drifty time from sleep to wake is filled with today's new debate. A few weeks ago, I listened to callers complaining that their promised rebate for solar power going back into the electricity grid was being cut from sixty cents to forty cents a unit.

So it may be that my dream-laden state has influenced my reaction to this issue. People rang to complain about the government not honouring contracts and recounted stories of spending large amounts on solar panels with the plan that the rebate for extra power would pay the cost of the equipment. GetUp emailed me to join an email protest campaign. I just felt annoyed. The phrase "Suck it up" came to mind. Harsh, I know.

Today it filtered into my half-awake state again. Barry O'Farrell chatted with Adam about his 'backflip' on the solar rebate cuts. So the complaints were pretty vocal, and ultimately effective.

And I'm considering why I feel disappointed.

It's not because I'm against solar power, or because I'm against exerting political power.

I am annoyed about human nature. That we decide to make positive changes for the environment or the community, because they are cost effective, rather than because they are right. That we complain about our expected income decreasing because there are other needs in the community for government money to be spent on. That we expect that someone else should pay for our solar panels.

Ultimately, we are selfish beings and we don't like to consider that higher taxes, or lower rebates, or paying the true cost of goods, is actually going to benefit the community. There will be more money to spend on other people's needs - on Overseas Aid, on mental health programs, on employing people etc. etc. That I am not actually the most important person in the world. That some people are never going to see $55,000 let alone withdraw it from their super to buy solar panels for their house (and then expect the government to cover the cost and whinge when they'll only get two-thirds of it rather than all of it).

I am disappointed that we complain as if we are poor, when we live in one of the most affluent countries in the world. That we have such poor perspective on what really matters. And I'm talking to myself in this, too. I wish we could be people who do right because it is good to do right, not because it is economically viable or cost effective.

Here ends the rant :)

Mysterious Gold

We didn't boil the kettle. We agreed on mandarins instead. The shell of skin fell away into my palm and the fruit was incense between us. I tasted a lifetime of Autumn sun-soaked lunches, and the cool juice was soothing.

And we talked of the motivation that has fled and the deep fear that this time will not end. We nodded about the loss of space, and order and self - she has been invaded, overtaken. And I can say little. She has always 'done the needful', but now they seem to need her to be everything and nothing all at once.

I watched her weariness and that she had started to tell herself that she is nothing. And I offered her a sweet golden nugget, a brief taste of nectar sweetness. She accepted the fruit but found it hard to hear the words. A tentative smile that disbelieved me.

And yet this conversation was not all heaviness or darkness. It was veined and traversed by gold and other light. Woven together they are able to withstand the being overwhelmed or the helplessness. As she laughed or told of joy flashes she affirmed her not-nothing-ness.

This variegated gold and grey, this Spirit-shot life in her heartened me. This is why she can go on. This is her refined-gold heart - that cares for a dying husband and bears with a needy daughter. That reaches love in many directions despite her worn heart. It is a mystery.

sharing with a prompt from three - Gold

and with Imperfect prose

Truth is hard

We're in the middle of a discussion. About leadership and how to have honest community amongst us. Someone shared his struggle, and the way its so easy to hide it. That sometimes we feel stretched so taut by life that we near ripping apart. And tears rise in me when I see him blinking hard. It's hard to say these things, that long to be said but stick in our throats. We don't want to be a bother but we wish someone would ask. If only they could know the hidden wish for comfort.

How can we build this family, this church, this team to be a place of comfort and guidance and honest meeting?

Can we speak the truth in love? Not share harshness or vengeance dressed as telling the truth, but the truth that points to shared brokeness and aspiration. The truth that shows my sin as much as it does yours.

It's a stumbling, faltering thing because blame or insincerity lurk just by our elbows. And real truth bruises me as it does you. No one always gets it right, but I don't want you to see that in me. Why do I have to be a reminder of imperfection?

Allender says,

"A leadership team is meant to be a community of friends who suffer and delight in one another. And to the degree there is a refusal to be friends, there will be hiding, game playing, politicizing power, and manipulating the process to achieve invulnerability." Leading with a Limp, p123.

How do I respond to questions that feel like an attack?
When someone asks if I am angry, the denial rises too quickly. It's defensive, dishonest. And the pause to shape honest, love words is painful. The pause to listen is more so.

And it can be just as hard to share my apology or my hurt. Authentic relationship, honest communion, real family is difficult, but I sense the reward each time a flash of humble truth is shared and weathered.

I thank God for these friends who share honest thoughts that challenge me.

Here's a challenge...

"The love of truth creates a deep hunger and humility to eat and drink more truth. And biblical truth is ultimately always about relationship, therefore the more we partake of truth, the more we are drawn to hunger for the kind of relationships that are marked by a passionate love of God." Leading with a Limp, Dan Allender , p121.

Broken Marriages

Roadkill is ugly. A carcass splattered into the bitumen, or hurled onto the verge of the road is stark and lonely. Lifeless. Sometimes I see the wreckage and wonder what it was like alive.

Twice in the past few months I have seen marriages torn to a carcass. Not driven past them, but seen the death up close. Seen the carnage from different perspectives.

Relationships can only bear so much. There is within each of us a limited amount of patience, and continual criticism wears it away. Fearfulness kills love and threats exhaust grace. I have heard two women say that they could no longer find strength within themselves to endure the pain of their marriage. They felt unable to keep loving.

Because love takes from within us, when it feels ignored. When it lacks any power to transform. And they sounded just so tired. "It's too late", say their eyes, their weary, worn selves.

Why do we wait until it's too late to rescue? We desperately wish that it will get better, that transformation will come. Some of us pray and still its too late to act. If only I could fix the wrongs and faults and brokennesses I see. If only I could really see them and not turn away quickly, pretending they're not there. Why is it so safe and comfortable to deny the problem?

If only my helplessness were not so real. I cannot make you live the wise way, the loving way. I cannot even do it right myself. And the community we have, the place we are part of - we protect anonymity and secrets. We don't want to pry or interfere. But sometimes we just stand by to watch the carnage, with eyes barely averted.

I need courage, because I want to subvert the culture of nuclear family secrets, and stop protecting myself from harsh realities. It's time I sought to change the patterns of broken relationships earlier - and to do it with grace not judgement.

If you met me...

it would give me a chance to explain a few things. That I speak with less fore-thought than I write. That I cannot find a space to take a photo at home. Well not the sort of photo that makes my house look neat and cosy. Somehow there's a pile of papers on every available surface - school notes, mail, preschool artworks, brochures, information sheets... Sometimes my brain feels this cluttered.

You might have a few issues to clear up, too.

We could share a meal, or a drink or just talk. I'd like to hear your story, sometimes that helps my feeling awkward when I can listen to you.

It's hypothetical, that's what stumps me here. If you could meet me, ... well... that would change things.



 5 minutes of writing on today's topic "If you met me..."

Allowing Possibility

"But in God's kingdom we operate by grace, which is an inverted logic that is both rational and paradoxical." Dan Allender, Leading With A Limp (p.92)

Leaders like to have the answer. I like to have a plan that I know how to follow.

But sometimes things get complicated. Sometimes we don't know what to do. Those are the times it's easy to stick to what we do know. And become rigid. Because ambiguity is scary. An unknown future is scary.

I love to stick to the rules the most, when my children are asking for me to do something differently. When they want something new to happen. But I can't just keep saying, "No you can't walk home from school by yourselves." One day I will need to say "Yes." To surrender my need to control (in one little area).

The situations can be more complex - Whether to make a person stay in hospital because they are at risk of deliberately hurting themselves? The answer can be simple. Make everyone stay, then they will all be safe and we will rest easy that the job is done. But each situation is different; each person is unique; each risk is subtly shaped. Creatively finding solutions means sometimes diverting from the rule. It means listening much harder to the problem to make a better informed decision. It means surrendering some control, giving some choice to the vulnerable one. And it opens the possibility of being wrong. But that ambiguity also allows the possibility of hope.

"A leader blesses complexity because she knows it will humble the team, expose their idols of control, and invite them both to listen with greater depth and to open their hearts to the inverted, odd, paradoxical ways of God." Leading With A Limp (p.93)

News from Japan

Bulletins throughout the day. My mouth is open as I watch the film of water washing a landscape away.

Cameras, a microphone in hand, he asks the questions to a woman lost and bereft. She's living in her car - a shiny red one, small Japanese made. She's living in a car because her home was dashed and murky water crashed. Her neighbours buried under rubble.

She's perplexed and uncertain. Shocked that she's here and breathing. Longing for the normality of casual hellos at the letterbox. Scooping rice into a bowl in the kitchen. Watching TV sprawled on the sofa after work. None of these can happen - she has no bowls, no kitchen, no TV, no sofa. Just an all-leather interior and a clutched handbag.

Was she good TV because she coud speak English? The street behind her is deserted, but the microphone is big and blue, catching her words. Utterly shaken and overwhelmed. But somehow saying that she will go on. What else can she do?

I watch pictures of destruction. Talk of nuclear reactors leaking contamination. And I am overwhelmed. Simply overwhelmed. People tweet #prayforjapan and I do, but will it help?

And I know that it will.
May the bereft people of Japan find refuge.

God is a safe place to hide, ready to help when we need him.

We stand fearless at the cliff-edge of doom, courageous in seastorm and earthquake,

Before the rush and roar of oceans, the tremors that shift mountains.

Psalm 46:1-3 (The Message)

Leadership and Pride

I'm reading Leading With A Limp by Dan Allender. I really like his approach. This is not a book review but I'm thinking about some interesting things as a result of the book.

I am reminded of the times when I have felt overwhelmed in a position of leadership. It usually happens when I am too busy. When the scope for action before me is so wide that I feel confused where to start, or what to choose to do. I think about people who have had ideas for action but I have tried to hinder them, rather than enable them. Not because I want to stop them, rather it's because their action makes me feel inadequate, that I'm not leading properly.

In that situation, my ego has become more important to me than the task we are trying to get done. It is hard to surrender myself and my pride when people are watching what I am doing. But leadership benefits from being humble enough to see beyond my own needs. I learn this lesson again and again when I realise that I am listening to my need to be in control or my need to be right. At that point I have to sacrifice those needs because they distract me.

When my needs consume me I am not available to the group. If a crisis hits I am too busy protecting my ego to listen to revolutionary solutions. But if I am not clinging to being right, then I can accept change or loss and not see it as an attack on myself.

I am struck by the fragility in all of us. Sometimes strong, powerful  leaders are actually protecting broken spirits, the best way they know how. Sometimes we are ruthlessly unforgiving of our leaders. Perhaps we would be more gracious if they could be more vulnerable about their human-ness.

Perhaps true strength is expressed in transparent honesty and rejection of the need to be in control.

"A broken leader is a sweet paradox of confidence and openness. If those I lead have already found out the worst there is to know about me - that I am a sinner - then the log in my eye is continually being removed in the midst of every crisis. The result is better vision and greater wisdom due to the freedom I feel to both live and die." Dan Allender, Leading With a Limp, p75.

The last days are here

In the last days,

they will tremble

in awe

of the Lord

and of his

goodness.

Hosea 3:5b.

Reflections on Family

The kids had started to call me Dad...

Desperate to belong, to fit in the picture. You know the one. The smiles range from awkward to delighted. It was taken the last time we all got together. "Do we have to take one?' someone groans, but we cherish the have-to. The necessity is the mark of belonging together.

He's been her boyfriend for just on three months, and one of them calls him Dad. Of course he's not their dad, but the instinct is deep in both of them. The pitiful story of a fatherless child looking everywhere, because he longs for that loving eye on him. The bedraggled, broken man clinging to this glimpse of himself with possibility. Wondering how to earn the name and the love bestowed so early and indiscriminately.

Is it the expectation which leads to his retreat? He turns his back on the lisped invitation to fatherhood, ends the relationship. Disappoints himself, and the child, because he is afraid of being a bigger disappointment.

My mind turns to the disappointments I create. When I cannot be what someone in my family needs. When I don't try because I'm afraid. When I try so hard to please that I miss seeing what is really needed. Family and childhood memories blind me to reality. Emotions rise, so deeply familiar, so sharp-edged with anxiety. I realise, too late, that I've made the wrong choice and disappointed again. It makes me sob - and I'm not one to sob - frustrated, disappointing eight year old me sobs.

I marvel at this messy, paradoxical invention - family. Delight in the belonging, the familiarity, the shared history - we can laugh, and care, so deeply. Frustration with the misunderstandings, the different perspectives, the pleasing everyone and no-one. Hurting and healing in one complex gift. God knew we would need family, but he also knew that family would need his redemption.

No wonder the church is complicated when we are seeking to be family.

'The kids had started calling me Dad' at Circumstantial