The Embodiment of Love©

     I cannot count how many times I’ve heard sermons or teachings on the life of Mary and Martha.  It was often a favorite at women’s retreats. The admonishment was how we might lay aside our busyness and learn to sit at Jesus’ feet.  Mary, it was stated, had found the “better” way. I used to think that was about learning how to be a better listener and “rester”. I see it differently now.

     I look at my life that was and now is and I see the 2 places I’ve lived.  Martha, in my life, represents striving to get it all right for Jesus. Mary, represents knowing my place with Him.

     Let me explain.

     The life I knew was one that was filled with lists and admonishments to become something I wasn’t.  The truth is, it was really earning my own righteousness. It wasn’t presented with those words, it just is what it was.  There were words spoken reminding me of what to strive for; “he must increase and I must decrease”, “study to show yourself approved unto God”, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling”.   I was encouraged to do what I could and leave the rest to God. So I did.

     Most of my life I heard teachings that focused entirely on the things I was supposed to do in order to be worthy of this life that Jesus offered to me.  I studied hard. I gained much knowledge. I strove to try and figure out how I might decrease so that somehow, some way Jesus would increase. It was exhausting.

     I learned early on that Jesus had come to this earth to save me from sin.  The emphasis was on how bad of a sinner I was. I made Jesus die because of my sin.  At least that’s how I interpreted it. But here’s the thing I didn’t get. Jesus didn’t come to save me from my sin.  He came to restore my identity. Sin got in the way of that, so he paid the toll with His life in order that He might get things back to where they were intended to be.  

     When Adam and Eve were created they were made in the image of God who is love. There was perfect love in them.  They were told if they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would surely die. They ate.  They got separated from that perfect love and suddenly they became in need of love instead of being love. They lost their identity.  It’s what this whole thing is about.

     I was made to be love but sin got in the way of that.  It changed the way I saw myself and how I saw others. Jesus came and died to the power of sin, taking mine with Him, raising me to a new life with His perfect love once again indwelling me.  When focused on behavior and sin, I couldn’t see love. All I could see was the “to do” list of failures and activities that must be conquered.  

     I lived like Martha.  I was busy with “all the things” in hopes that I would live this life well.  It was the wrong focus. It kept me from what was right in front of me, love.  Mary chose what was better. She saw where love was. She stayed there.

     The whole focus on what life with God is really supposed to be is love. God IS love.  Mary, to me is a picture of living as one who knew she didn’t have to do a thing to be loved.  She just was. Martha, on the other hand, depicts the life I once lived, where behavior and performance were critical.  Jesus said to her, “Martha, you are worried and upset about many things but few things are needed, indeed only one.” “Mary has chosen what is better and it won’t be taken from her.”   Mary knew.

     I’ve said it before, an apple tree doesn’t look around the orchard and stress and strive to make apples.  It sits in the sunshine and soaks up the rain and apples pop out on its branches because that is what it was made to be, an apple producing tree.  So it is with me.

    I was made to be love.  It was the original design.  When sin entered this world I was born into it, we all were.  It changed the dynamics of everything. So Jesus came. He took it all upon Himself because it kept me from my real, authentic identity. 

     It’s about becoming what I was made to be, love.  

     Dione Warwick sang it best.  “What the world needs now is love, sweet love.  It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.”  

     I am love, you are love, we are love.  It was the original design of mankind. What would this world would be if we allowed that to be our identity.  It’s what Jesus came for. To restore me back to what was intended all along, to embody love.

     What matters more than anything Galatians says is faith expressing itself through love.  It’s what this world needs, love, sweet love.

©coopyrighted:  Julie H Todd 2019

    

 

     

Eulogy of a Conformist©

     We’ve been talking a lot about conformity verses transformation at my church.  I have loved the series Chris has been doing. It resonates deep within me as I look back over my long life in the church surroundings.  It’s refreshing to find words that touch me allowing me to see how much God has done to remove me from the religious way of thinking and living I was so accustomed to.

     David and I took a six year break from church, several years back.  It felt strange, at the time, as I had been in church for over 50 years.  But it had to be done in order to find the simplicity of the gospel. It was, honestly, one of the best things we have ever done.  Too many years of conformity kept us from the freedom of knowing who we truly were. 

     It was easy for me to conform in the church setting, after all I’ve always loved boundaries telling me where to start and stop, especially as a young mother.  Seeing rows of children sitting perfectly alongside their parents seemed to be the ideal goal to strive for. So many families appeared to have it all together.  I could barely get mine dressed and out the door on time. I wanted to be like them. I thought it showed a level of spirituality.

    Young girls’ hair perfectly coiffed with bows matching their beautifully designed dresses,  boys with tucked shirts and matching trousers sitting up straight.. This is what I should strive to be, I thought.  If my children are obedient they will look like this. I began to work to conform to what I thought modeled the “perfect Christian family.”

     Conformity will suck the life out of you.  It will tell you, that in order to be something, you have to do something.  It’s the farthest thing from the truth and yet we buy into it so quickly. I, myself, experienced it most in the church setting. 

     I had a good friend, at the time, who had a large family, much like mine.  She had a routine and a schedule that seemed so perfect. I often would talk to her about my life and the chaos that ensued on a day to day basis.  The more I tried to get my children to conform, the more battles I faced. I would become so exasperated that I could barely keep it together. I sought her help. She heard the difficulties I faced as I was open and vulnerable.   Slowly, but surely she moved away, stating that I just didn’t seem to have the joy of being a mother. It was one of the most hurtful things I have experienced in a place where people were supposed to love each other in the good and the bad.  I felt so utterly judged for something that was so far from the truth. I discovered that people didn’t really know how to encourage you to be who you were. Everyone was busy trying to keep their own plates spinning.

    I adored being a mother.  I just couldn’t be her. I couldn’t make her life work for me.  

   The church setting for me had become another place where I could fall into the bowels of shame.  I couldn’t see anything but the lists of things that I had to do in order to be loved, accepted, and included.  Every week there seemed to be one more thing that I just wasn’t getting right. I know this is controversial to many to even write this.  Many will not understand where I’m coming from. But it doesn’t matter. It’s my story, for better or for worse.

      Leaving, for a season, became the best solution for me, because in those years away I found the reality of what has always been. I didn’t leave God.  I found Him in ways I’d not known. I discovered that I am loved and accepted for who I am, not for what I do. It’s not about my performance it’s about His love that indwells me. I began to learn the simplicity of the message. I became comfortable in my own skin.    

    The Message Bible states it beautifully. “Are you tired, worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me get away with me and you will recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to love freely and lightly.” Matt 29:11 

    That has been my experience.  I was tired, worn out and burned out on religion.  I was tired of trying to conform to what I heard and saw.  I couldn’t find myself in the midst of it and the truth is, I know I wore my children out trying to find my way.  So much focus on behavior, which only created places of shame. The truth is, no one’s behavior is ever good enough to be accepted.  It’s the lie this world tells us.

      Everyone comes into this life looking for a place to belong.  Many, like me, perform to get there. Even when there was success I still didn’t really belong, because the ladder of conformity to be accepted, never ended.  Each step required another.

     Six years away with Jesus changed that.  He recovered my life. He showed me how to take a real rest.  I no longer feel the pressure to comply with an ideal or an ideology.  No one’s life fits but mine. There’s no more focus on behavior because there is no longer a need to be like anyone else.  I am accepted in who I am, completely.

     Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.  In that love He laid down His life for me, took the pressure of performance and striving away and sealed Himself in me forever.  It’s a simple gospel that fits.

 

 ©copyrighted: 2019 Julie H. Todd

Exclusivity, The Lie I Lived©

     The emotions, when paid attention to, will indicate the pile of crap speaking to me.  I can allow them to lead me to it or I can walk away, busy myself with some distraction, and press the ignore button.  Walking away doesn’t make them go away. Instead it becomes a game of whack-a-mole, pushing them down, until the next event comes along.

      When I can feel the tears right behind my eyes I know something has been touched or even jabbed. The last words out of my mouth to David brought them.  “I just want to be included”. As I felt the sadness sweep over me I knew somewhere, deep inside, there was shame.  

       I love Brene Brown’s definition of shame:  “Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging”.

      I was reminded of something I heard yesterday at church. “It’s in the teenage years that we are least convinced of our value.”  It struck me then, it strikes me now.  

      Something transitions in the teenage years.  It did for me. I’ve seen it happen for my kids. As I think back on mine I am painfully aware of the many experiences that left me believing I was flawed and unworthy of acceptance and belonging.  These things have stuck with me because the truth is we often value ourselves based on the reactions and words of others, often misinterpreted. We allow people to be a part of telling us who we are, or are not.

      It was in junior high that I first was made fun of for my middle name.  I was 13 – 14 years old. Lamar, is not a popular name for a girl. It’s a surname in my family passed on to me.  I had never really thought anything about it. I’d never been ashamed of it or even thought there was anything wrong with it until the girl sitting behind me began to taunt me. Suddenly I was embarrassed and ashamed.  Each year I cringed as the homeroom teacher called out my full name.

      The teenage years were the years that boys first really began to notice girls.   I looked more like Twiggy than Marilyn Monroe. Hearing the boys, laugh about my skinny legs sent me into quite the shame storm.  My body was unacceptable. I stopped wearing skirts and dresses to school after that. If they couldn’t see them, they wouldn’t make fun of them.  It took me years and a few extra pounds to get over that and be comfortable wearing dresses again. If you had the right shape you were asked out. If not, you weren’t.  That was a hard one to get over.

     It’s not just the way the boys treated me, the girls jumped in, unbeknownst to them,  and added a different spin. Everyone was vying for attention and acceptance. Girls can turn their backs on you quicker than anything.  

    High school, here in the 70’s, included sororities with “rush”.  You were either chosen or not. I followed my friends and went out for the clubs they did, after all we were a pack coming out of junior high for our first year.  They got chosen, I didn’t. As they moved on to new groups I was left behind, leaving me to feel excluded from the group I had grown comfortable with. I had to start all over.  Tenth grade became one of the hardest years of shame that I had ever experienced. 

      It was all about popularity and whether you were in or out.  You could be popular in junior high but once you reached senior high that all changed.  You think you have these great friends for life and apparently they’ve forgotten all about you and what you’ve shared together.  At least that’s how it was translated to me. I didn’t have the tools to process it all back then. It became a prominent place of shame.

    Suddenly my body wasn’t the right shape, my name was the wrong name, and I was wrong for the groups my friends had moved onto.  Add in the fact that I wasn’t chosen for the cheerleading squad after setting my heart, practicing religiously, giving my all. Where did I fit in anyways.

    There are so many things set against you in the teenage years.  Honestly I think it’s where most of the garbage I believed about myself got deeply planted in.  It carries on through life with you, forming your belief system. If you don’t believe me, just ask my husband.

      I felt excluded then, I still can feel it now. It might be one of those things that gets triggered the easiest.  Because everything I had been comfortable with, changed in my teenage years.. Suddenly I felt evaluated, judged and excluded.

      I wasn’t really set up to deal with that stuff in the right way.  The world stepped in and told me where I belonged and where I didn’t.  And I listened…. It didn’t just end there, it moved into my church life.   The church can often be brutally exclusive, especially if the focus is based on what we do and don’t do.

     Slowly but surely my mind is awakening to the shame I’ve lived under.  My operating system is being renewed to the reality that this world and the people in it do not give me value.   God established my value when He put me on this earth. As I belong to that, I belong to myself. I live in confidence knowing I have a place in this world because He planned me to be here.  He thought of me, fashioned me and loved me completely as I am. That’s my reality, that’s my focus. No one in this world will ever give me that.

     My grands remind me of it constantly as I watch them.  They have not been tainted by this broken world. They are so free.  They are comfortable in their own skin. They don’t care what others think about how they look, dress or act.  They know they are loved and cared for just as they are. That’s my reality too. 

      Exclusivity is the lie I lived.  To God, every part of me has always been perfect.  I have always belonged with Him.   I can’t get more included than that.  

©copyrighted: Julie H. Todd 2019

           

Operating Systems ©

     It’s always amazing to me when I hear something and realize just how wrong my belief has been.  It’s part of the dichotomy of what I had heard verses what I now see. It’s one of the difficulties of sitting in a church pew, listening to a fallible man tell me about an infallible God.  Sometimes it’s all subject to a person’s interpretation and sometimes that interpretation is a recipe of a little Old Covenant mixed in with some New Covenant. The Old Covenant was set up to put the work on the person.  Lists, laws, should’s and should not’s are given in order to get to righteousness. The New Covenant put the work on Christ. It’s subtle but it’s easily mixed together. Yes, Christ finished the work but still you must… 

     I lived under this mixture of covenants.  It caused me to delve into myself in ways that just did more damage.  I tried to understand why I was doing what I was doing so that I might stop.  I wanted to figure it all out and get it all right. I didn’t have a clue that I never really would.  Because the truth is, none of this is about lists, laws, should’s and should not’s.   

     Romans 7 is a classic example, except that I didn’t really grasp that whole passage.   I heard sermons preached on it. I even heard debates where one side presented their argument on how Paul was not saved while the other presented theirs on how he was.  I never could figure out which side I was on so I just left it there until suddenly, something my pastor said, clicked with me.  

     He was talking about how one of the main translations for the word “sin” was two words, “operating system”.  As I heard it I realized something.  Romans 7 isn’t about whether Paul is lost or saved, it’s about what operating system he is living under.  When I don’t live under the operating system of Christ in me, my life can look a lot like Romans 7. I will do the things I don’t want to do, and the things I want to do I won’t.   

     The whole purpose of the law with its requirements was to bring me to the realization that I would never get it right.  The New Covenant was established to do what the Old Covenant could not. It’s no longer up to me and my huspa. Christ stepped in, took my life up with His and got it right on my behalf.  He brought all that rightness into my life when He wove Himself together in me. Everything I am lacking He is. Everything I need to do, He does.  

     Most of my life I had the wrong focus operating out of the wrong system.

      It’s all about perspective and what I allow mine to be. I am Jesus in Julie, do I really get that.  It’s what changes it all.

     Here’s my reality.  When Jesus went to the cross He took my old sinful habits and  broken down identity and the shame it brought and he crucified it with Him.  When He was buried, that old junk was buried with Him. When He was raised to new life, I was raised to a new life too. I was given a new operating system, Him.  He made His dwelling inside of me, offering all that He is and all that He has done completely to me. I am dead to sin and alive unto God every moment of every day.

     Life is no longer about what I can do to be pleasing, and honorable in order to bring glory to God.  It’s about accepting my true identity, where there are no more requirements, where I am loved and approved and accepted once and for all.  God completed everything in Christ and then He imputed it all directly into me. That’s my operating system.  

      In this computer age we all know what happens when a computer tries to operate on an outdated system.  It just doesn’t work like it was designed to. Neither do we.

     On my worst day I am still righteous because He made me so.  I am loved beyond my wildest imaginations.

     It’s no longer a sin-managed life.  It’s about the belief and acceptance of what has already transpired in me.  All of Him into all of me.  Jesus said “just as the Father is in Me, I am in you.”  The focus is no longer on my behavior, it is now on how I am identified.  Jesus did what I could never do.  He took away the requirements and set me free to just be loved.  

     The apple tree produces apples because it’s what it was made to do. Apples are what they were made to be. They pop out on the branches because of the life flowing into them. Grapes don’t work to be produced, the life is in the vine which feeds the branch that bear the grapes.   It’s really that simple.    

     Mr. Rogers said it best, “it’s really easy to fall into the trap of believing that what we do is more important than what we are. Of course, it’s the opposite that’s true: What we are ultimately determines what we do!” 

     Mr. Rogers was right.  When I live the identity I’ve been given, I will do what I was made to do.  Jesus said, “As I am, so are you.”  Believing that, changes everything.  

©copyrighted Julie H Todd 2019

        

The Tale of Two Stories©

     When I heard the pastor say it I knew there was something to it.  “There are 2 stories written on our lives. One is the story the world tells us, the other is the story God has written.”  That was 15 years ago. In these last 15 years I’ve been looking to understand the story God has written.

     Shame tells us we are wrong.  Guilt tells us our choice is wrong.  I never associated shame with identity.  I always thought it was about my sin. When I was told that Jesus came to take all my sin and shame, I thought shame was my bad feelings over my bad choices.  I don’t think that anymore.

     This quote by Emily McDowell says so much to me.  “Finding yourself is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are also not lost.  Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are.  Finding yourself is actually returning to yourself. It’s an unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.”  

     As I ponder these words alongside the words of the pastor I realize how much they line up with what I’ve begun to discover.

     Shame is all about identity.  It’s the story that cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and my own inaccurate conclusions have told me about who I am.  These last few years have been quite the excavation of all that.  

     I’m not a very artistic person but I have created a few things in my life.  I know the time, the love, the care that went into each piece. I know the thing I created better than anyone.  I know it’s value. No one else does.

     It’s the same with me.  There is only one who knows my true value.  It is He who created me. He put me together, woven in my mother’s womb.  He fashioned me and who I was meant to be. He has always had a story, it was written the moment I was a thought in His mind, before the world got its hands on me.  I have been returning to that story and as a result I am finding my belonging within myself.  

     I am learning to dispel the shame story and live under the true story.  I am learning to embrace all that I am as one who is truly loved.

     You see I took the ideas of things said and done to me by broken people and I made them about who I was.  It’s just not the way it was meant to be. So, yea, God sent Jesus to take the separation that sin took from my life but He also came to restore my identity.  It has absolutely nothing to do with my behavior. That’s life altering for a woman like me who spent so many days striving and performing to be loved and accepted.

     I’m finding that it all comes down to what I do with the emotions and voices in my head.  God says that when Jesus came, He offered His flawless life for my flawed one. The old life, the me of this world was crucified with Him and laid to rest.  He raised me up and offered me a new, perfected life in exchange for my old, broken one. He gave me everything He was and is. All that old junk is gone, according to God.   It’s my mind that has to be convinced now. 

     It all comes down to what I believe and tell myself.  Every day, I am righteous, forgiven, seen, sought after and loved completely;  even on my worst day. It’s astounding to consider.  

     Emotions tell me what story I’m embracing.   Much like lights flashing on the dashboard of a car, if I stop to take a look I will discover what I’m listening to, what story I’m hooked into. 

     My old worldly shame story has told me that there is something wrong with me.  I’m unloved, devalued, unimportant or unwanted. It never tells me anything good.  It tears me down instead of building me up. It devalues me, often using other people and their words or actions.

     It’s affected me the most in my marriage, my closest relationship.  One response from David will take me there.  

     I can participate with this shame story by adding fuel to the fire or I can shut the whole thing down by stopping to consider..  “What’s really going on here?” I begin to ask myself. “What do I know about David?” “What do I know about myself?” David might legitimately be acting out of his own shame story yet when I stop to look at the in’s and out’s of what is going on inside me, I am enlightened to what I am believing, and what story I’m listening to.   The reality is David and whatever story he’s reacting out of cannot give or take my value, unless I let it. There is much to be said about knowing who you truly are.

      Emotions aroused can be a beautiful invitation to disassemble the maze of shame that has stolen my identity.  It was not intended that anyone in this world would give or take my value. It never was, it never will be. My identity was established a long time ago.   I’m finding my way back to it. 

      We all have 2 stories written on our lives.  One is the story God wrote. The other is the story that has happened as we’ve lived in this broken world.  It all comes down to which story you allow to guide you. Your life and the way you see yourself will be shaped by what you embrace.

      So I ask you…. what story are you listening to?  

    ©copyrighted 2019 Julie H Todd