The Love Effect

Yesterday I was with friends who got into a discussion about love. We had just finished reading Love’s Playbook 2 and 3 on Genesis. And the gal leading our group said, What is Genesis about? She told about watching Roadmap Genesis and how good it was, but it never answered the why question.

After all the discussion, I had to say, “It’s about freedom. Freedom and love are so important to God, that They have taken 6,000 years to show it.”

Of course that will be an ongoing discussion because we are just starting the book of Job (episode 4). If you are around Newbury Park, CA, and are inclined, come and join us at The Place, 10:30 Saturday morning.

Afterwards the pastor asked, “What is the Bible about?” and he got all kinds of answers, but not what he was thinking of, “The Kingdom of God.” That’s a good answer. But I, of course, like Love’s Playbook better. (smile) There are many right answers!

This morning I’m thinking about love and the Love Effect. How does love affect us? How does it affect children? Do you see it reflected by yours?

We have a description of love in 1 Corinthians 13, but mostly what it has done for me is make me feel like a failure, not good enough, I’ll never be that! So I came to put God in place of love when I read it, and I really like that. It gave me a whole new picture of God! Sad that I needed one.

I’m finding two classes of people who believe in God. People who believe God is all-good and all-loving, but who don’t read the Bible. And people who see good and evil as both coming from God who may or may not read the Bible, and others who want to see God as good, but read the Bible and get messed up. They come away with all kinds of questions.

If you read it you understand. It happened to me.

That is precisely why I am writing it. We can’t get better than our picture of God. Writing Judges really challenges this–even from a cosmic war perspective.

One thing that has really helped me is my friend Jean’s explanation; she is an ancient (Biblical) languages scholar. She says that there are two voices of God in scripture. His preferred will, and his allowed will. Most of the time we are seeing His allowed will. God values freedom so much that They (all three of Them) are willing to suffer to establish it!

Why? Because love isn’t real without it. Love is a choice.

I talked last time about love being a choice more than a feeling. And that is definitely true. At the same time, I heard myself telling a client this week that like is probably more important to a good marriage than love. You can choose to love anyone. But to like and admire someone, which makes him/her much easier to live with, requires a lot of like.

What does this have to do with children?

You obviously don’t always like them, but if you have any health, you always love them. And even when you don’t like them you can choose to love them.

But what is the love effect? How are our children affected by our love?

Love should not make us afraid. There should be no fear in love. Respect? YES! Fear? No!

I have a grandson that usually looks at you from under his eyebrows. It’s hard to describe. But his eyes are “closed” while they are open, and he almost always looks like he’s waiting to get in trouble, or expecting to get yelled at. He has been yelled at a lot. They all have–all eight of them. What makes the difference?

Love should not make us hide. God doesn’t want us to hide. That is when shame grows. It comes between us and Him–between us and people. We hide when we feel not good about ourselves–and we all have those places.

We see the first result of sin (separating from God, separating from love) as hiding in Adam and Eve. Hiding and shame are the same thing. The way you kill shame is in sharing with someone who loves you and accepts you. Do you feel that way with God? Do your kids feel that  way with you?

Love makes us confident. We can always feel sure about  going to someone who loves us, no matter how badly we have blown it. Even if we know they will be angry or sad, we still feel better when they know.

Love makes us relaxed. “Ah the comfort of feeling safe with a person…” said the poet. Intimacy is safety. When we know we are loved, we relax.

Love makes us secure. Security is the number one love factor for a woman. For children, boundaries make security–knowing what is expected is comforting.

Love gives us delight. God delights in you. Is that a crazy thought to you? He really does. Scripture is full of it–one of my favorites is Zeph. 3:17.

Love should give us love. When we are loved and feel it, it makes us more loving. Love is energy, it comes to us by receiving love. Think of it as electricity–you have to plug into the source.

Love should make us free. When we love someone, we leave them free to make their own choices. God does that  with us. We are absolutely free to choose against Them, and They are always hoping we won’t. They want to save us from the natural result of our brokenness, but they will respect our choice.

We can die if we prefer deathstyle to relationship.

So we need to train our children, help them make good choices, but leave them free to choose when they are adults. Just like God does with us.

 

Love is Not Perfection

My mother never had a question that her children would be perfect! Yes! Really! She really told me that once.

She said it in answer to my question, “Where did your perfectionism come from? Was Grandma a perfectionist?” It didn’t seem like it to me, but then…

“She taught us the right way to do things, and when I learned there was a right way and a wrong way, I wanted to do them the right way. And I never even thought about my children doing anything other than that. I was just sure you would all be perfect and do things right.”

I was amazed. Because I could relate to wanting to be perfect and always do things right, but I wasn’t very old before I disagreed with her that her ways were right! In fact at nine years old I was sure her ways were not right.

I had mopped and waxed the kitchen while she was at work, and all she had asked me to do was the dishes. I was so excited I couldn’t wait for her to get home. I must have always been seeking praise or approval by then, because I was sure I would get it.

The rub came because I didn’t see any reason to dry dishes that would dry by themselves if you gave them a little time. That was a waste! (I guess I thought I needed to prove it. Why wouldn’t I have figured out I should put them away before she got there?)

You’ve probably guessed the rest of the story. She came home and asked me why I hadn’t finished the dishes. (It’s so what I did with my kids–it kills me! I always noticed what was wrong before I noticed what was right.)

I had to point out that I had done the floor, but I don’t remember if I did that right away; I was so deflated and so angry that I vowed never to do anything nice for her again. (That’s why I think I was an approval seeker–to get so crazy so fast, I must  have had some need I was trying to fill or some lie {false belief} I was trying to manage. “Not- good-enough” was a huge one of mine.) And if you think that reaction was over-the-top, you are right. However, I don’t find it is all that rare.

And the dark side loves vows we make in anger. That’s great software for them to play with, emphasize, make spin-offs of, and manipulate for their use. Also get other people to trigger! I just learned that this is called “soul play.”

Expecting perfection is a real relationship breaker, emotional crippler, and way to set up failure or over-achieving in your kids. I probably don’t need to say anything more, but you may need to look hard at yourself to know if you expect perfection from your kids. We have such blinders when it comes to ourselves. Ask your kids–kids are usually great responders and sources of truth if they aren’t afraid of you.

And then there is the opposite. You may have thought this blog doesn’t pertain to you at all because you are laid-back and non-demanding. But there are two other ways this affects your kids.

The mom or dad who demands perfection from themselves may let there kids get by without helping and try to do everything themselves. After all if you want something done right, do it yourself is a fairly common thought. Or it’s easier and quicker to do it myself than to fight with them, is another common parental pitfall. They need to learn basic life skills. They need to feel needed and important to the family. It’s important to their development and success.

Or perhaps you are the parent who didn’t learn to help at home. Didn’t learn how to make your bed, or keep your room neat, or pick up after yourself, or do your own laundry, and you are cool living in a mess. It doesn’t bother you and probably isn’t important to teach your kids. But has it caused stress to you or your relationships, or your spouse? Your children? And you don’t know it!

There is a happy medium, a middle of this road. Give your kids chores, but don’t fight with them or yell at them or abuse them over chores. You are the parent, the authority, you don’t need to yell or fight.  Just make reasonable consequences and follow through. No need to get emotional  and stressed, just enforce consequences, every time, before you get angry.

Structure, boundaries, skills and community are important things to learn and teach. Orderly life makes everyone feel better and function better. We see that in God. Families who are healthy enjoy each other’s company. They actually enjoy being together, and they build each other up. But it is definitely something that is taught and modeled.

Don’t expect perfection. You aren’t perfect, and they aren’t going to be either. Grace is more important. God doesn’t expect perfection. He knows there is no way we could ever meet his level of rightness. We don’t think like He (They) do. And there is no way we can, we are broken. But His covenant with us is to put His (Their) ways into our hearts so we want to think like Them. Someday They will heal our brokenness and then right will become natural to us.

I can’t wait! But until then. Love is not demanding or expecting perfection. But neither is it expecting nothing. As long as they are under your roof, you need to offer structure and education. It makes love and happiness easier.

What is Forgiveness?

I hadn’t planned to write on forgiveness, but it pushed to the front. I’ve heard again and again that unless you forgive, you can’t be happy or successful at life.

So what is forgiveness? Saying what they did is alright? That is silly, if you hate what they did. And if feels wrong if you were crippled by it.

I hear and read many places: “You must forgive yourself.” I believe it. I say it myself. But what is it?

I believe there are some things that precede forgiveness: acceptance of brokenness, acceptance of love, believing in hope and that I am lovable.

In order to forgive, you have to believe that you can do great wrong, that you can hurt people–that you are capable of evil. You also have to believe that you are of great value, that you are loved and capable of loving others. The first is difficult if you grew up thinking you were the center of the universe, and never had it corrected. That last one is difficult for many of us, especially if we didn’t feel it. We are feeling people who can think. And we have to be able to do both mindfully. We try to be thinking people who can feel, but we are mainly run by emotion. (When you’re tired or threatened, emotion takes over. Even when you want to do something different, feelings will often sabotage and take you back to what is comfortable.)

Forgiveness matters because we crave loving and being loved. If we accept the above as reasonable, then we have to acknowledge that there is a God of love, or none of this would make any sense. Without God there would be no reason to love or forgive, except survival–and that, too, is God; without Him emotion would destroy us; so we come to the most basic belief underneath forgiveness.  We were made pure, good, loved and capable of loving; and became broken–capable of evil, attracted to evil,  often ignorantly. Emotions have become so twisted here that what feels good many times is destructive.

Are you following? Most of the important things in life are backwards, or feel backwards because we were made to run on love, but we don’t here.

So then what is forgiveness? I have thought about this for 10 years, and studied it longer. What actually is forgiveness? First you have to admit evil and wrong: Oswald Chambers says, “The recognition of sin does not destroy the basis of friendship; it establishes mutual regard for the fact that the basis of life is tragic.”

It is now, but it wasn’t always so. In our beginning we were all good, made for love and joy. That means we have to accept sin. What in the world is that? I see it as brokenness, but it is more accurately that which broke us–high-handed mutiny against God and love–that which separated us from God and gave us two conflicting natures. It was high-handed because there was no reason for it. It came because they could. They were free to rebel. It happened before us.

So then forgiveness makes possible the reconciliation that fixes the separation–the tragedy. But it is not reconciliation. You can forgive without reconciling. And that comes from the God-part of us. It can’t be otherwise. Reconciliation is the idea that people are worth living with, worth loving, capable of choice and change. But forgiveness comes before.

Forgiving is primarily for us–it frees us from carrying hurt and anger. It is the attitude that makes it possible for us to keep giving even when we have been hurt or when we have done the damage. We give ourselves another chance to get it. We believe we aren’t hopeless.

At the most basic level forgiveness is belief that love is real and freedom exists–that I can make choices and change, and so can you, that love is a power in the universe and we call it God. There is a being, a Trinity of beings, who is pure love who wants to live with us and bring us back to wholeness, but who will let us choose in freedom.

Love is not just an emotion. It is power. Pure stable energy that is so strong unstable energy can’t exist in it’s presence. The first five books of the Bible, and maybe all of them, are about God trying different ways of dealing with the problem of being with us because His presence would consume us.

Forgiving is the easiest thing God does. Reconciliation is a process requiring a want-to on both sides. But forgiveness most simply stated is for giving love to ourselves and others just because we can. Forgiveness may be separating in love (as God had to) or it may be coming together in love, but it is fueled by love and supported by choice. I can let go or take you back believing in the change love can make. I can come back to Love.

 

Would You Like a Joyful Heart?

Do you know how it feels to live with a joyful heart? It is one of the best experiences I know, yet it isn’t easy for me–it doesn’t come naturally. I’ve always thought it was just my mostly-melancholy temperament to blame, but I’m discovering that most people struggle to live in joy.

There are just so many things that work against it: our hormones, our health, our perception of others, the things we do for pleasure from food to drink to drugs all have a negative aftermath. Add these in the people around us. We certainly have no control over their choices, actions and words. It seems our joy is doomed.

But there is an antidote in Psalms 105 that I read this morning: “Exult in His hallowed name; Let those who seek the Lord be joyful in heart.”

There is a lot of instruction in the verses around that one: seek His presence always, turn to the Lord your strength, think upon all His wonders, remember what He has done, sing to honor Him, give Him thanks. Good stuff. But the one that caught me was “Exult in His hallowed name.” What does that mean?

“Exult” is like celebrating victory in war. “His hallowed name” is God’s very special all-good character. We can celebrate that God is all good. And since we live in a war, that is important. Especially because we are so used to this war zone we forget about it.

However, if we seek Him, spend time alone with Him, we are allowing ourselves to exult in joy! We are educating our hearts to be joyful. That just means we fill them with joy.

We celebrate love tomorrow in Valentines Day. But we can celebrate God’s amazing love every single day. He has the capacity to be up close and personal with each of us all the time. Imagine having a lover with you all the time whose presence gives you a lift, fills you with the feeling of sunshine, makes you feel more than yourself, like you can do or be anything you want, but mostly you just are constantly mindful of being LOVED.

I’ve been asked to teach on John 17 today, and the preparation has been rich. It’s the prayer Jesus prayed for all of us who would respond to Him. He was asking God to make us one with Them. Wow! We can have everything Jesus got from Abba! And He got the JOY that carried Him through the worst abuse and death ever.

That joy was resting in what He knew: He knew when he cried, “It is finished” from the cross, His triumph would be exulted in all over the universe–celebrated from world to world, evil would be done in the universe, Satan’s kingdom finished after all questions are answered here.

He knew and rejoiced that he could do more for us who stay connected to Him than we could ask or even imagine. (Eph. 3:20)  We can surmount impossibilities, rising on eagles wings. (Isaiah 40:31)  We have hope in everything because we are linked to God through amazing love. Power to resist evil, that hell can’t overpower, is ours.

If we focused on what we have, instead of what we don’t have, the love available to us, instead of our fears, we would live in joy. Once again, it’s a choice. Sometimes a choice you have to make every hour, or half hour.

Being Real is Messy

I hate messy!

So why am I a therapist?

That’s different. I’m good at professionally helping people find themselves and fix their issues.

But I don’t like it when my kids are messy, or my friends are messy. They don’t come to me asking for help. They don’t show me their vulnerability. They want me to think they have it all together. Shoot, they don’t even know they have issues! Don’t even know…

And yet I’m called to love them.

How? How do I do this?

Do I have to just trust them? Like what I can like, and love the rest?

Really?

I can’t even tell them what I see?

“No. Not unless they ask.”

God, this is too hard!

This is what You do? Really?

I can’t do this. I don’t want to.

“That is exactly why you have to let me do it for you…and I can…if you let me.”

But I don’t want to.

“But you can choose, and I will do the rest.”

Are You saying I can’t be God in their lives?

“Exactly, you can’t, because you can’t. You just can’t. It makes you uptight and stressed. And it sounds judgmental coming from you–unless you don’t know you are speaking for Me.”

I don’t get it. I don’t know how to love like that.

“You just need to help them see Me by making them feel valued. Choose to value them because I do. I’ll do the rest.”

Does this mean that I believe I can only love perfect people?

“Pretty close.”

I made my daughter believe that she had to be perfect for me to love her, didn’t I?

“You had a lot of help.”

Please forgive me. Tell me the truth, and heal my lie that I can only love perfect people.

“The truth is there are no perfect people for you to love. And yet loving is what makes you like Me. You are learning to let me love you. Now just let me use you to love them.”

Thanks. Please heal my fear of loving and being loved.

“I’d like that; don’t forget it’s a process.”

“How Can I be Happy?”

“I need to find something to make me happy!” she said with such feeling that I knew she believed it.

So I responded simply, “Why?”

Her look was shocked silent, disbelief taking her words. Why would she say that? Didn’t she hear me?

So I continued, “Why not just be happy because you can?”

I knew it sounded counter intuitive. She was going through a break-up she didn’t want. But as I explained that happiness is a choice, I saw first confusion, and then light coming from her eyes.

“That is what I tell people about my job!” She exclaimed. “They have always wondered how I can like working in people’s mouths all day. And I tell them I choose to focus on all the good things about it.”

“So you have a template!” I encouraged.

“Yes!” she was getting excited, “But I never knew happiness was a choice! My choice!”

As a therapist, I hear, “How can I be happy?” or “How can I find happiness?” stated in many ways; most often it comes as a wail, “I just wanna be happy!”

But it is always about the same thing “How can I get myself loved?” They wouldn’t say that, who’s going to ask “How can I find someone who will love me unconditionally just for me?” We don’t usually say things like that.

Seriously? The fastest and easiest way to get yourself loved is God. Because it’s already happening. All you need to do is plug in. You may have heard that before, or wondered how to do it, or what He is like. You may not know He is the best place to start, insuring a healthier human relationship if you get loved first and listen…

The how to is choice again. And as to what He’s like…

He’s everything good. He’s gotten a lot of bad press because of suffering. But even though He gets blamed for suffering, He isn’t responsible for it.

That is a long discussion, one I’ve written a 300 page book on, and another 45 page one soon to be released, so here let’s cut to the question–What is God like? And How can I know Him (Her, Them)?

The video below, “You Love Me,” is my experience of knowing God. You, too, are Loved. It’s who God is. It’s what He does. He has no evil in Him.

I got into making mind movies a while back, and I made the one below for me. (I’d had a rough week.)

I decided to share it here with you because it made me feel so good. Also, I got very good feedback from a client whose week was much worse than mine.

It’s only about a minute, and you can watch it as many times as you want. In fact, you can put it on your site or your phone. If you like it–check out my blog about God at http://Godhelps.net/God-in-a-Box and find out for yourself what He’s like and how to know you are loved.

yep, I saw the mistake this morning after posting it, and after watching it for months–only God is perfect 🙂

http://Godhelps.net/God-in-a-Box for discovering how much you are loved

Guest Post–Another Message to My Grandsons from Their Mom–this one about Love.

[lovelycrumbs] three things {part 1 – love}

There are really only three.Three things I want you to know about life.. About you.I’ll start at the bottom and work up…

Beauty. Woman. She will get to you someday. You’ll suddenly notice.

And when you do I want you to know what to look for.

It will matter. Really matter.

Look closely. Very closely.

Don’t. ever. settle.

One more time…

Don’t. ever. settle.

There are very few Real women out there. Fewer as the years go by and we lose sight of what matters.

But I’ll tell you what matters.

The very top of the list…

Until He is her everything you will never be enough for her. 

Read it again. It’s true.

Unless she knows that only He sustains every. single. fragment. of her heart you will never be able to carry the weight of it. You weren’t made to.

You were made to be her anchor, her steady. The Gift bound in the privilege of Loving. Unless she can see you as a Gift and not a necessity, love will come hard. Only He can fill a heart and make it whole. We cannot ever truly love apart from Him.

You can try, but all those efforts will run right through her wounded heart. We all have wounds. You will too. Some, no doubt, unfortunately inflicted by my messy humanity. But it’s not our wounds that define us.

It’s what we do with them.

Who we take them to. Only He can speak Truth into shattered hearts and make them whole.

And Healing. Scraping wounds clean. The Refining fire. It’s painful. And most of us never go there. We live numb, surviving lives and try to quiet the heart in our chest longing for more.

Only a Living heart can love.

You cannot selectively numb parts of it. If you kill it, you feel nothing.

So let Him choose her. Listen.

Really Listen.

Look closely. Who is she?

How does she treat others? Her family? Her father?

It really matters.

Are they open? Can they talk and understand and move through conflict with respect? Do they live in a spirit of judgement or grace? 

Is Christ truly her center or some sidebar reference brought out only when needed?

Is she comfortable with who she is? A woman who knows who she is will make you more simply by believing in you.

In the face of struggle does she fling her emotions around looking for a place to land? A woman who know’s Who’s she is will rest in His heart. Stand strong and steady even as the tears spill.

Does she really want to live? To share the Adventure, the Passion, the Wild Grace He spills everywhere? You were made to live a great Adventure. Fight battles for His heart. The only thing that makes that purpose full is truly sharing it.

Is she Beautiful? Yes, I mean that kind. Does she make your heart flutter and swirl? We all like to say it doesn’t matter but it does. That doesn’t mean everyone will see her that way. But He makes every. single. woman. Beautiful and you will find one that speaks His glory to you. In a way that invites you to be more, do more, seek more. 

The way she sees you will make you more.

I have to say it again. The way she looks at you will make you strengthen in your core right there in that moment. Notice it. Feel it.

When you find her. You will want to offer your strength.

And everything in this world will try to tell you you’re not enough. That’s been the lie, the legacy, since the very first lie. The passivity inherited from your very first ancestor.

You must fight for your heart. For hers. You are the Warrior made in the image of the King.

This life is a battle for hearts. And when you find yourself woven into the Gift of a heart that belongs to Him, you fight. To protect it. To strengthen it. To value it.

Love is not need, it is the celebration of a Gift given just to you. 

A Whisper of His Beauty just for you to enjoy. Every breeze, every star, every ray of light, every Breath of Him expands when shared. Cherish it. Celebrate it. Honor it.

And know you are enough.

Real love. His love flowing through her will never diminish you. The woman, the Gift He gives, will always be an invitation to His heart. 

Love with your whole heart. When He whispers, take the leap. And know that everything He gives is always Good.

Trust Him with your heart. Always.

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Posted By Loxlia to lovelycrumbs at 5/23/2013 07:16:00 PM