Writing, Acting, Living in God's Love
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This home page gives you blog posts, starting with my most recent, including resources for churches, families and your relationship with God. I try to be helpful and get to the point – there is, after all, already so much blah, blah, blogging about how to live!
I recall talking to my husband one night after everyone else had gone home after our small group meeting. I was frustrated.
“There are three people who hardly say anything,” I complained. “Why don’t they talk?”
There was a meaningful pause, then Bill said, “They don’t get a chance.”
Defensiveness stirred in me, painful self awareness dawning. “What do you mean?”
“Well, some people need a pause in the conversation. It takes a few seconds to gather their thoughts. But if the extroverts just keep talking, there’s never a pause.”
I’m an extrovert.
“So you think me and ___________ and _____________ talk too much?”
Bill was wonderfully diplomatic, “Try the 15-second rule,” he said. “Some of us need a silence that long before we’re ready to talk.”
15 seconds? Why on earth? Well, it turns out that there are two kinds of people – the ones who think before speaking, and the ones who are thinking as they speak. I’m the latter and thought everyone else was too. (Actually, sometimes I speak before I think. That’s usually not helpful.)
So I started trying the 15-second rule. Sure enough, those pauses often resulted in introverts speaking up. I thought they’d been withholding or checking out, when actually they’d just needed me to shut up for a minute. Lesson learned.
That’s what’s so great about an ongoing small group where people commit and just keep showing up. There will inevitably be friction (the ‘storming’ phase of group dynamics) and every moment of friction is an opportunity for us to learn about ourselves and each other.
It’s the emotional equivalent of working out. Not till we excercise our relationship muscles do we realize what’s out of shape, what needs strengthening, what lacks stamina. We show up whether we feel like it or not and we grow in love.
Of course, the group has to have norms that keep it safe for everyone. A toxic group won’t help us grow in love. In a group, for example, where no one is aware of the dynamics and taking responsibility, the extroverts will chatter on and the introverts will check out. It will be our growing up years all over again.
Here are some ideas for making sure everyone gets a chance to participate in a healthy way:
It’s really important that groups do strive for this balance of interaction; otherwise they’ll fizzle. Attendance will start to drop off. Learning to be present for each other and for ourselves at the same time is a key skill, necessary for unity and equity.
15 seconds may seem like a long time to pause, but if it gives introverts a chance to be heard, and extroverts a chance to quietly reflect, everyone wins.
Ok, maybe disaster is too strong a word. Call it extreme discomfort, stinging regret, and probable loss of relationship. When people seek out a church small group for growth and support, they’re acting on a need for good relationships, so it’s doubly disappointing when they join a group and get hurt.
Leaders need to take responsibilithy for setting a loving, respectful tone. More than that, groups need to come up with some ground rules that help everyone feel safe. I’m going to start by just diving into how I’ve personally messed up in my group. Call it a cautionary tale.
So we had a terrific, high functioning, homogenous group when a new couple joined. Basking in our automatic harmony, we neglected to review the norms of our group with them. We covered some basics, like when we met and what we did and the need not to break confidentiality, but we’d forgotten some of the rules that had become so ingrained they were not longer spoken.
One of them – the right to ask one another hard questions to help each other be accountable and make biblical choices.
One meeting, the newest woman began to complain about a relational problem, and I asked her a very personal question about that relationship. She looked stunned.
After several long seconds, she said, “I’m gonna plead the fifth on that one.”
And I realized – we hadn’t talked to this new couple about accountability at all. My question came out of left field for her. She had never granted permission for us to ask that kind of question, and as a person who had no experience in a Christian community, it just seemed intrusive and judgy to her.
I think her trust in me took a few backward steps that day, and it would have been avoidable if we’d been more clear during the onboarding process.
Couples can be tricky in group settings. Common wisdom in group dynamics is that people in the group should say what they have to say to the whole group, without breaking into factions. This keeps everyone in the loop with no one feeling excluded. Nothing destroys a group like people talking behind one another’s backs.
But couples have a prior allegience to one another that has to be considered. One fateful meeting, a wife spoke openly about an unresolved conflict with her husband that put him in an unflattering light, and everyone in the group heard her out. A few faltering comments were made offering support to both of them, but none of us really knew how to handle it.
The husband was angry and shocked that the whole group allowed this interaction. He felt threatened and walked out, and they didn’t return to the group.
As we analyzed how to keep something like that from ever happening again, we settled on the rule that no marital conflict should be brought up within the small group unless the couple has previously discussed it and agreed to seek the group’s guidance and support.
That wasn’t the first time one spouse had used the group as a place to seek help with a marital issue at the other spouse’s expense, but you can bet it was the last.
As someone with a degree in counseling, I’d had a sense all along that we were venting too much about our spouses, but I never did anything about it until we lost two people from our group.
I’m the biggest whiner of all, so I’m mostly talking to myself here. I think sometimes getting empathy from my small group, and having my problems prayed for, made me slower to do things I needed to do to take better care of myself.
For instance, I’ve suffered depression my whole life, but didn’t go on an antidepressant till I was 40. Having wonderful friends who listened and cared probably kept me from suffering worse depression, but I should have tried the drug a lot sooner!
There’s a fine line between venting in a healthy, honest way, and whining too much, but we have to help each other find it. We need to get comfortable with offering patient, affirming support and respectfully encouraging action. Some groups stay stuck by supporting an unhealthy status quo (like when we complain about our churches). Some groups stay stuck by trying to fix each other all the time without truly understanding and empathizing first.
Truly loving each other will help us avoid both. Love comforts and speaks truth at the same time.
The Bible is full of guidance for how to relate to one another. Small groups are the perfect place to learn this guidance and put it into immediate practice. We work on getting it right with good hearted people who are all committed to the process and playing by the same rules. That strenthens us to go out and relate well to the rest of the world, to bring in the same peace and joy where we live and work.
Because of my small group, I can bring three insights to any situation:
Have you ever been in a group situation where you’ve failed to communicate clear expectations and suffered for it? How would you handle it differently now?
Fourth in a Series on Why to Join a Small Group
The span of days between Thanksgiving and Christmas brings out the best and the worst in us.
One minute, we’re selflessly loading up groceries for families in need, the next – snapping at store clerks for making us wait too long in line. One minute, we’re wiping away tears at the touching message of a Christmas movie, the next – groaning at the prospect of Christmas day drama with our own families.
It’s an intense time. The hopes and fears of all the years kind of crash in on us, exaggerating joy and pain.
Small groups can help with all that. Over the years I’ve been in a Christian small group, we’ve always followed our Bible study with a time of sharing what we need prayers for.
That bimonthly discipline of meeting and praying gives everyone a chance to process how they’re feeling about approaching events. Over many Novembers and Decembers, I’ve heard a lot of statements like:
“Pray that I’ll be able to get everything done. I feel like I’m racing my advent calendar.”
“I hate shopping. We don’t have the money and I never know what to get.”
“Holiday’s aren’t the same now that Mom’s gone. Pray that we’ll figure out how to keep everyone together.”
“Pray that my _____________ doesn’t start an argument about ___________________ when we get together.”
It helps to talk about our plans and struggles with people who care, to people who want to help us keep God at the center of everything. I know that with the support and prayers of people in my small group, I’ve been able to navigate the holidays with more grace, and bring more joy to what I’m doing. I don’t think all those plays, parties, outreach events with church or family dinners would have gone so well if I hadn’t had a place to angst about them and get them prayed for!
Small groups can be especially important to people who are too far from their families to join them for holidays, or too stressed by their family dynamics to enjoy them. A low key holiday meal with a small group can be so refreshing, either as a substitute for celebrating with family, or something you do beforehand.
In our group, everyone brings one dish to the meal, we skip the presents, and we focus on the good that God has brought into our lives. Often someone will do a reading, or lead a song, and we usually throw in a game. When our kids were little, they’d often do a short Christmas play with an adult narrating. Those moments made for some fabulous memories, and some of those kids are friends for life.
We can’t choose our families; some of us have terrific families and some of us dread getting together with them. But we can all choose a small group of kind people who care for each other, and we can set up ways of relating that keep everyone safe.
A group like that keeps us centered in God’s love and gives us strength for whatever stresses the season might bring.
The recent election led me to reflect on the odd reality that my Christian small group, my most intimate friend group, is full of people on the other side of the political fence from me. How can this be?
Two reasons, I think. One is the reality that all of us know God is bigger than the USA, Jesus is more important than any other affiliation, and our unifying task is to follow Jesus and serve people his way. We rally around one big story, and one guidebook we’ve come to believe is ultimately reliable. The guidebook sees love at the center of everything, so there’s that.
The second reason is that there’s a magic that happens when people commit to meeting regularly and helping each other grow. As long as we agree on some norms that give structure and protect each other from our innate selfishness, it works really well. You can go as diverse as you like. Mix up ages, races, and walks of life. Welcome people with strange ways of speaking, weird clothes, or different political convictions.
I’ll go into more detail on group norms next post, but suffice to say, we work on listening well, we keep our tones respectful and we choose to love. Here’s the beginning of a conversation I had with one of the other members of our small group:
Me: I think most of the people in our small group voted differently than me.
Friend: I think you’re right.
Only read this paragraph if you last voted Democrat: It became clear to me as we talked that my friend was utterly misinformed, deceived by the misinformation spewed by ultra-right news sources.
Only read this paragraph if you last voted Republican: It became clear to my friend as we talked that I was utterly misinformed, deceived by the misinformation spewed by liberal news sources.
All resume reading: How could such a longtime friend, such a sensible, loving person, buy into this craziness? How could they be trusted with family secrets and be called on for help at a moment’s notice and yet buy into a belief system that was :
It was unsettling. Nevertheless, we kept listening to each other without interrupting. We surrendered the need to convince the other to snap out of their delusions. We spoke out of our decisions to choose love over political outrage, and stay connected.
And that’s what we keep doing, week after week, year after year. That’s how, in these barbaric times, you hold together a small group. That’s how you hold together a church. That’s how you hold together a nation.
Question for Reflection: When did you last have a respectful, productive, political discussion with someone who voted differently than you?
Second in a series on why to join a small group
In 1994, the year after we got married, my husband and I started a Christian small group. We’re still in the same group. Here’s why:
I was 32 when we decided to invite some friends to a weekly evening gathering, where we’d do a Bible study and pray for one another. I’d like to say my motivation was an abundance of holiness, but no, it was more – neediness.
I’d been married for a year, after more than ten years of wanting to be married, seeking and hoping and praying to be married. But after a year of being married, to the best of men, I was surprised to find myself lonely. All those rom coms had oversold romantic love. A husband wasn’t enough. A husband and God weren’t even enough. We needed something else.
We both had good families, and good jobs. We belonged to a strong church, had friends and hobbies. We traveled, we volunteered. Life was full, but we needed something else.
I found myself wanting my living room to be full of people who were walking the same path as Bill and I. People who were followers of Jesus, trying to be like Him in a culture that was pulling us towards selfishness, busyness and status. I wanted a large enough group to expand our perspectives, but small enough that we could tell each other about the junk in our lives and help each other with it.
We started with a couple we were good friends with, invited another couple who had just moved into town, and were soon joined by others.
I remember one of our first meetings, in the small apartment of the couple who had just moved into town. They’d come to Cincinnati to lead a campus ministry, which sounded cool to me, until I saw the plastic taped to their windows, and the government-donated cheese in their fridge. Not a lucrative field, campus ministry.
While the rest of us made more money than they did (we did end up among their financial supporters, by the way) we all had our own equally urgent needs of other kinds. It only took a few meetings to scratch through the veneer and start being real with each other.
We prayed together, for more money, more peace, more health, less fear, deeper understanding, greater love. We wrestled with Bible passages, seeing so many more facets of truth than we would have found on our own. Just talking about the things that were weighing us down lightened the loads.
The conclusion I’ve come to, after 29 years of marriage and 28 years of being in a small group, is that God is experienced in different ways when we’re alone, when we’re with a partner, when we’re with a small group, and when we’re part of a larger community. We need them all.
After our small group started, I knew I’d found what I needed. I wasn’t lonely any more. I had God, I had my husband and our full life but now I also had a safe group of people who would help us stay on the path we longed to walk.
Question for Reflection: What are some of your best group experiences, from any time of your life, in any type of group? What did it feel like?
Churches are always trying to get people to join groups of eight to twelve people who meet regularly.
They call them ‘small groups’ or ‘growth groups’ or ‘house groups’. One church called them ‘lambs groups’, which I get the biblical symbolism of, but I can’t imagine guys who ride motorcycles or pump iron joining a ‘lambs group’. I would steer away from that one.
Church leaders know that if people just show up to services, or even volunteer, but don’t belong to a smaller friend group, they may not stick with their faith. These groups meet a number of needs – people get to know each other and develop friendships. They learn more about the Bible. They learn how to pray for each other, then seeing the prayers get answered draws them closer to God. They live out what they believe in good, supportive company.
Anyone who really believes in Jesus is swimming upstream in American culture. That’s just how it is, especially if you’re younger. Little in mainstream mass media, art or academia supports the truth of the Christian faith. No major network or streaming platform is putting money into stories told from a Christian world view. Even saying we believe anything is absolutely true makes us suspect – puts us in company with unhinged preachers and terrorists and people who preserve tons of peaches in preparation for the apocalypse.
So, if we’re going to stick it out as followers of Christ, we need authentic community. We need to be family for each other, minus the weird dynamics. On the path where Jesus is leading us, we need fellow travelers to urge us on, tell us good stories, share their trail mix, and pull us away from cliff edges.
Even when you’ve come to a careful, studied conclusion about what you believe, it’s hard to hang onto it unless the people around you believe it too. My small group, just by gathering together in Jesus’ name, reminds me of the reality that God is really with us. We share what we’re learning, how we’re changing, how prayers are being answered, and I leave bouyant. This is not how I would feel if I stayed home and watched “Fresh Fried and Crispy”.
I’ve had the honor of being in one of these groups for 28 years. I’m writing a series of ten posts on how it’s changed the course of my life, and what we do to help one another. I’ll also talk about some of our terrible mistakes, so you can avoid those. I’m hoping something I write will urge you towards joining or starting your own. Just don’t call it a lamb’s group.
Question for the Comments: Do you meet regularly with a group of people you really trust? If not, does that seem attractive, or not so much?
What I find most heartbreaking about the high rate of suicide among young people, is that I know, if they could have waited, they would have come through the dark time and been glad to be alive.
The first time depression hits, and it gets hold to the point where life isn’t worth living, you think the rest of your life will feel like that. But you swing out. Most of us don’t just suddenly wake up feeling awesome – it’s a slower swing, but soon you look back, and think, “Wow. I was in a really bad place. Glad that’s over.”
So if you’re in the middle of it, please hang on! Even without doing any of what my previous posts suggest, we were made to move on from sorrow and failure and heartbreak and despair, to adapt and grow and thrive. You will too.
Taking care of ourselves chases depression away, just like it does for other illnesses. When we get to a more solid place, that’s when we need to make the self-care stuff habitual. There are things we can make part of our lives that will keep us out of the deep hole of depression. Here’s my top ten, linked to the posts that explore the topics:
Depression isn’t something we have to put up with. There are so many steps we can take that will lead us out to a better place.
Homework: Journal what choices you’re making that help you feel good, and which ones lead to you feeling bad. Analyze one of the bad choices, and note what kind of help you need to change it. Then go get that help.
You can’t leave the digital realm out of any mental health conversation, depression included.
There are a few reasons for this. For one, levels of higher social media exposure correlate with highter levels of depression. So do higher levels computer use and TV watching in general. Higher screen times indicate moderate to severe depression, especially when people view over six hours a day.
It’s hard for most of us to believe that what we watch and listen to will strongly influence our moods and actions. I want to think I’m more objective than all that. Guess not. I guess if we were that objective, there would be no fashion industry – in fact, no trend-based industry at all. There would be more Republicans in the cities and Democrats in rural towns. There would never have been 17 million people pouring freezing water over their heads in an ice bucket challenge.
Given the hard cold reality of how socially influenced we are, whether it’s by real people or digital ones, how depressed we are has everything to do with what we’re watching and listening to. So, in this area as in all others, we need to know ourselves to fight depression. What kind of content inspires and energizes us? What brings us down? What makes us feel good for a while, but leaves us feeling worse when it’s over?
If following a bunch of gorgeous people who spend gobs of time and money on physical perfection makes you feel inadequate when you look in the mirror – you could stop following them.
If watching porn leaves you more lonely, maybe its not as harmless as we want to tell ourselves.
If obsessing over your ex’s facebook documentation of all the best moments in their new relationship is driving you to despair – you get the message.
Staring at me from a bookshelf as I write are three wooden monkeys carved in Africa – each with a hand over eyes, ears, or mouth. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. When fighting a low mood, it only makes sense to see no depressing, hear no depressing, speak no depressing. (Unless the speaking is to someone truly compassionate and helpful.)
Even if I’m watching good, fun, inspiring stuff, too much screen time will keep me from doing the other nine things that help me fight depression, which we’ve covered in this series. It can also lead to later bedtimes and pooorer quality of sleep. I ended up deciding to keep the recreational screentime for the last hour or two of the day, and stop it in time to read something before I go to sleep. That feels about right for me.
I don’t want to get to the end of my life and wonder what real happiness I missed while I was watching everyone else’s virtual drama.
Homework: Pause after each show or social media session to notice your internal state. What are you thinking and how are you feeling? Is it positive, neutral or negative? Do you need to make any changes? How much screen time is enough for you? How much is too much?
Anything helpful to add? Click on the title, then scroll to comment after the article. For the first post in this series, click here.
I’m not knocking atheists. Some of the smartest people I know are atheists. A lot of them have high sensitivity and empathy too. It’s just that believing there’s no creator, no one who cares about the universe, no destiny, no afterlife – yikes. No amount of prosac could cheer me up with that worldview.
Agnosticism isn’t much better. There may or may not be a God, is a position with a little more humility; it doesn’t claim omniscience. But still, depressing. Not knowing if there is or isn’t a creator who cares, destiny, afterlife – that’s a quagmire.
Religions – those theologies and behavior codes that set us up for divine approval – those are the most depressing of all, because we can’t measure up. If getting to obedience or holiness or enlightenment is up to me, I’ll fail. I can’t even focus long enough to get the clothes into the dryer, let alone follow long paths or hold up heavy pillars or keep crushing commandments.
So what’s a good world view for depressive types?
I’ve taken a long time to think about this. Here’s what I’ve found to be the most cheerful and logical world view:
It’s worth a try. Jesus said, “Come, follow me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I’ll give you rest.” (That’s in Matthew 11:28 in the Bible.)
Buying into Jesus’ rescue story has improved my life immesurably. I have found following Jesus to be the best way through and beyond depression.
Homework: If it were true that God loved you and had come to rescue you from evil and suffering, how would that change your schedule this week? Give that altered schedule a try. See what happens.
Anything helpful to add? Click on the title, then scroll to comment after the article. For the first post in this series, click here.
I’ve heard quite a few people say things like that. I don’t believe them.
You can’t sever sensing from feeling. Everything we see, touch, smell, hear and taste affects our emotions. When I see a picture of a puppy playing, I feel happier than when I see a picture of an animal being hurt. When I smell lavendar, I enjoy that a lot more than smelling garbage. So it goes. Surroundings matter to humans.
Go into the room where you sleep and look around. Do you like the look of the walls? Do the sheets smell clean? Are there any annoying sounds? Rate the room on a scale of 1 (ugly and uncomfortable) to 10 (beautiful and comfy). Do that for all the rooms you live in.
If your numbers are low, you can do some things to feel better in your space.
I know, there’s that pesky issue of money for most of us, but cleaning is cheap, and so are some of the other changes that will boost your mood.
My sister runs an interior design business, Rusty Fig Redesign, and she specializes in repurposing, rearranging and reorganizing the stuff people already have to make it a more beautiful, more functional space. When people come back to their homes at the end of the day for the ‘big reveal’ -to see their redesigned spaces, they are always delighted. Some of them even cry with joy. They often say things like, “I can’t believe I get to live here.”
Granted, my sister is especially gifted at this, but anyone can do something to improve their space. Any small improvement gives you an emotional lift. So try asking yourself some questions:
Are there some things in the room that you enjoy? Maybe a scented candle, a framed certificate of an achievement you’re proud of, a soft throw blanket that makes TV viewing super-comfy? Comfort and beauty are different for everyone; my husband thinks his racing bike looks great in the dining room!
Obviously, great design isn’t the cure for depression. Lots of miserable people live in gorgeous mansions.
However, life is just more pleasant when you walk in to a room you’ve fixed up. It also gives you a little more energy and confidence to make other changes to improve your life. So, paying attention to the surroundings where you spend a lot of your time is one great way to fight depression.