One of my coworkers was telling me just this week how much the tools in Crucial Conversations helped her to deal with a difficult colleague.  She said that for the first time, she felt confident and empowered in speaking with this person.  You could see in her face how much it built her up.  After she told me the story, she said, “That’s my long way of saying, Thank you, for sharing that with me.”

Because I want to be a positive influence in my world, that comment really pumped me up.  Crucial Conversations in particular has helped me tremendously as well.  When the stakes are high and the emotions are hot, it is so hard to think clearly.  The tools in this book are vital to having the best relationships possible.  I am having conversations today that I only dreamed of in the past.  I know how corny that sounds, but it is true.  Check out the newsletter and subscribe, if you like it.

I am not sure how it happened, but I published my last post with comments turned off.  I have changed that and they are back on now.

A Quick Case Study

This mistake on my part might make an interesting case study of my last post.  My guess is that some of you saw the “Comments are Closed” notice and determined (based on my behavior of closing comments) that I was not interested in what you had to say.  If you did, you were incorrect.  Despite my behavior of turning off comments, my intentions were to hear from my readers and my desire is to make that as easy as possible.  One of the joys of blogging is receiving feedback.  I like hearing how my words affect you.

The prior post was about the “We see/They see” quote repeated here:

We judge ourselves by our intentions.
Others judge us by our behaviors.
We cannot see our own behaviors.
Others cannot see our intentions.

My intention was to share my thoughts and hear yours.  You saw my “closed comments” behavior.  I was blind to my own behavior until someone pointed it out to me.  Likewise, you could not have seen my intentions until I explained myself.

Communication is Key

I was also stirred by an email from a dear friend who’s expressed desire to begin to look for intentions more in the coming year.  I appreciate that thought and it leads me to ask how one looks for intentions.  I think it is important to note that the first and most important element in communicating behavior and intentions is communication itself.  The problem is not that we don’t try to see our own behavior, we really cannot see it the way others do.  It is not that we don’t try to understand the intentions of others.  We actually cannot know them.  The only way we can possibly know what our own behavior looks like to those around us is to hear it from them, and we can only know their intentions when they communicate them to us.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not talking about being nice.  I’m talking about communicating on a whole new level, something that does not come naturally and will take risk and effort.  It mostly is not modeled for us and it feels weird when we do it (but it is worth it).

Here are two unhealthy ways I could handle a situation with you: Let’s say that you do something that irritates me.  I could determine that you meant to hurt me and react based on that assumption.  I lash out at you verbally and we argue.  In that case, I didn’t understand your intention and you didn’t understand my volatile reaction.  Now let’s roll back the tape and replay it again.  You do something that irritates me.  I give you the benefit of the doubt by assuming that you didn’t mean to hurt me.  I conclude that your actions were unintentionally harmful.  I graciously choose not to respond to what you actually did.  While the first way may lead to unnecessary conflict, the second way can lead to being taken advantage of by the person who had ill intentions, but is never held accountable for his or her actions.

No matter whether one makes a positive or a negative assumption about the intentions of the other, the operative word is “assumption”.  Assumptions are not truth.  I hope I am not taking this verse too far out of context, but it reminds me of the words of Jesus in John 8:32, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” The only way we can learn the true intentions of others is to communicate.

We judge ourselves by our intentions.
Others judge us by our behaviors.
We cannot see our own behaviors.
Others cannot see our intentions.

To complicate matters even more, the “we” and the “others” changes constantly. At the same time that I am being judged by someone by my behavior, I am judging them by their behavior.

This miscommunication is the source of much fighting, loss of friendships and even wars.  Sometimes I wonder how we humans manage to get along as well as we do.  Mostly I wonder how we can do better.

At the beginning of this year, I set some goals for myself, one of which was to

Move my spiritual journey from one of “learning about” to intentionally expressing God’s love in a tangible way to people who are in need. (hurting (everyone), poor, hungry, homeless…)

Even as I read that statement, I am stirred.  What does it mean when your own words stir your heart 10 months later? One of the biggest lessons of my year is around humility in my beliefs.  I want to hold my faith with open hands up to God and declare, “I don’t have all the answers.  I don’t believe the same things I believed 30 years ago.  I don’t even believe the same things I believed 10 years ago.  I am constantly changing, learning, adapting and I won’t believe the same things in 10 years that I believe now.  With that in mind, I pray God to help me have a humble heart that values the thoughts, beliefs and feelings of others.  Help me to see your thumbprint in everyone.”

This year has been one in which I am intentionally moving my focus from my intellectual beliefs to actually doing more of what God is calling me to.  Moving from talk to action.  you might say that I am adding more orthopraxy to my orthodoxy.  With that goal, the Justice Project has truly captured my heart; “a yearly comprehensive service initiative, where we invite a diverse collection of churches, organizations, & individuals to help us make a change for good in an inner-city community through selfless service, radical hospitality, & a message of God’s love & ability to transform the human heart.” I can hardly tell you how excited I am about what is going on here.  I am such a small part of it with such a huge desire to be more involved.  Folks from all over Charlotte have joined together to help folks in just one inner city neighborhood.  It’s a grass roots organization with little funding and the intention to remain that way.  It is relational from the ground up.  The focus is on building relationships with the community in Villa Heights as we serve them and partner with them to promote positive change in their community.  It’s about building relationships within the helper groups as well as those who have needs.

When I think about poverty (like any other problem), my troubleshooting skills take over. Let’s solve this problem once an for all!   I begin to consider the causes of poverty, but to find a solution, not just to blame.  The problem overwhelms me.  Part of me would like to explain away why it cannot be solved then walk away having appeased my own conscience.  H. L. Menken said, “There is always an easy solution to every problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.“  There is no easy answer… and I fear that many “easy answers” exacerbate the problem.  I could be oversimplifying things by saying so, but I believe that the solution begins in Jesus’ answer when someone asked him what the greatest commandment was.  He replied that nothing is more important than loving God and loving our neighbor.  Oversimplified or not, that’s where I am focusing my efforts.

Anyone want to join me in Villa Heights this Saturday?

Brian McLaren is coming to Charlotte. Who is Brian? Why is he coming? I can only tell you what I know. He is a major voice in the emerging church. I was ready to sign up for this event from the beginning because a great friend of mine, John, had invited me. When I read Brian’s book, The Secret Message of Jesus, I became really excited about it. The title of the book was a bit of a turnoff to me. It sounds like hocus pocus stuff like using a special decoder ring to learn the secret message. It is not like that at all. Brian invites his reader to return to the Jesus of the Bible. I found the book to be refreshing, engaging and challenging.

I would like to invite you to this event at Area 15 in Charlotte on Friday and Saturday February 1st and 2nd. Click the photo above for details.

Stories

Hearing peoples stories, Helping people tell their stories, telling my story.

I believe stories are a key to unlocking people’s heart. We argue theology and practices while the world is dieing for someone to listen to them, to love them. Everyone has a story. Everyone. This is not an exaggeration. How many things can we say are common to every single person no matter their language, customs, beliefs… in fact those might be the very things that are the catalyst for the stories. Everyone has a story. I want to tell my story, write my story, hear the stories of others. Stories!

I have a friend who shared some of his story with me. He has a lot of pain in his heart and many people have told him to get over it. Many of these people are followers of Christ. My friend is not. I believe his pain is preventing him from making a rational decision of whether or not to follow Jesus. You see, I believe that we have a choice to follow God or not.

After reflecting and processing these conversations, I believe that these feelings are not necessarily preventing my friend following Christ. What the feelings are doing are paralizing him. They are preventing him from even having the presence of mind to even be able to make a decision to follow Jesus. Everyone gets the opportunity to decide for themselves whether to follow him or not. Anything less is coercion and not truly following. We have a choice. He isn’t able to make a rational choice because of the emotions that are tied up in it all. He needs someone to listen to him. Not argue with him, but listen to him.

I don’t believe he is alone. Many of us are so weighed down with feelings about events and people from our past. We cannot even think clearly. Everything is colored from those events… or our memory of the events. It is like cholesterol building up in the veins, blocking the blood flow. (Ooo, there’s a metaphor). Telling our stories is like an angioplasty clearing our emotional and spiritual vessels to allow the healing of the blood of Jesus to flow through us.

I want to be a spiritual heart specialist. I want to listen to people’s stories. I want to help them to unblock their hearts so they can make the decision for themselves.

Reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller tonight, I felt a confirmation of this direction for my life. In the book, Don’s friend, Penny is telling him how she came to be a Christian through conversations with her friend, Nadine. Check this out:

…During those first three weeks in France, it was comforting for Penny that Nadine cared so much about her past and her story. This helped Penny listen to Nadine’s story…

That excites me. The idea that the walls in Penny’s life, the preconceived notions of what being a Christian was all about, the hurts that she had received from people who called themselves followers of Christ. She needed to be able to talk about them. That’s all. She needed someone to listen. That’s all.

This Jesus stuff is for real. I don’t have all the answers. I used to. Now I know better. I want to be a listener for Jesus.

We hold beliefs in our core being that tell us what to expect. Then we operate out of those beliefs and when things don’t go the way we expect, we feel uncomfortable feelings. If I believe that my cup with a lid holds steaming hot Starbucks coffee and I take a sip, anything other than that a hot coffee taste is going to make me behave in potentially ugly ways… Most mornings at work, I get a cup of Starbucks bold coffee. I like it black without any sweeteners. After I finish the my coffee, I refill the cup with water and drink that over and over during the day. Not too long ago, I got distracted for a while before I finished my coffee. When I returned to my desk, I picked up the cup, for a sip. Because the cup now felt cool, my mind (my belief) said, “This is water.” But it was not. It was cold coffee. Yuck! A classic example of my beliefs not lining up with reality.

What if I find out that my beliefs about the world (that are more important than what is in my coffee cup) don’t line up with reality? Come on, let’s be real. I do not hold all truth. There is still so much I have to learn and unlearn.

When my four daughters were little girls, they all learned the way we did things and what we believed as a family. What were our values and what did we believe about God. One by one, they became teenagers and the questioned everything… and I mean everything. That caused three things in me:

First it caused me to realize that I had never given myself permission to ask some of these hard questions. I chose conformity so I could find acceptance.

Secondly, realizing that I didn’t have the answers they were looking for, I started looking for answers. Why do I believe what I believe? When Danae challenged me on how God decides who goes to heaven, I remember reading through the entire New Testament looking for anything to do with salvation. I used a pink highlighter so I could easily review and digest what I read. The first thing that struck me was that several times, people came to Jesus and asked him how to get eternal life. His answer was different every time. If he was looking for a simple, repeatable 1-2-3 answer, he could have done better… maybe he could have printed a tract with the answer … but I digress.

The third thing their questions did in me was cause me to feel embarrassed that I didn’t have the answers they were looking for. In my mind, a good dad would have the answers. Once I remember Erin asking me a question while we were watching TV and I felt annoyed towards her. When I realized that I felt annoyed, I asked myself why in the world I would feel annoyed with her. That was when the reality hit me that I was living from a paradigm that said I have to have answers to all of the questions. As goofy as it sounds, that was what was going on deep inside of me. Once I recognized that she didn’t expect me to have the answers, I was doing this to myself, I was on my way to freedom. The next time she asked, I felt that feeling of annoyed embarrassment (because the feeling is automatic), but I quickly reminded myself that I didn’t have to know the answer. I looked at her and said, “I don’t know,” and she was just fine with that.

On this side of teenage-hood (I am happy to say that there is life after teenagers), I am still asking questions. One answer seems to lead to ten new questions. It is a process of uncovering new things all the time. Frequently the new learning challenges my old ideas. That can be uncomfortable because old ideas are like a warm blanket in a cold house (that was for you, Melody). Exposing false beliefs feels like pulling back the warm, comfortable blanket. It feels cold. So why do it? Why not enjoy the warmth of the ideas that make me feel good about myself? Because I am lazy and I would rather create a world that makes me feel good about me whether it is true or not. Left to my own devices, I will create a world that works for me. I, me, mine… That is not what I believe Jesus had in mind. When he was here, he pushed against the people in authority who created rules and social orders for the purpose of making sure they (the rulers) were ok. He wants us to have an outward focus. It is truly not about me. It is about me in the sense that God has put unique gifts, talents and strengths in me (that I am only now beginning to recognize), but these gifts, talents and strengths are not for me. I Peter 4:10 says that they are to serve others.

When we shut off questions or pretend to have all the answers, we invite pride and idolatry into our lives. We lose credibility with people who are genuinely looking for truth. And we allow (or even cause) things to come between us and God. My prayer is from Psalm 139:23-24

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.

I invited my buddy, John to run with me in the Cooper River Bridge Run (10K), which was today. I ran it last year for the first time… not just the first time for the Bridge Run, but the first time for any race at all! It is hard to teach 48 year old muscles that they can actually do this. John accepted my invitation to run and we did it together—today.John is an experienced athlete and I am not. He has played and continues to play all kinds of rough and physical sports from soccer to Gaelic Football. All that to say, John is in great physical shape. I am not. Why then are our finish times exactly the same? How did I get done in only 1 hour 6 minutes? How is it that John didn’t do so well, (his time was only 1 hour 6 minutes)? How could our times be exactly the same? What are the odds? The odds are exactly 100% when your buddy gives up his chance at beating the Kenyans to the finish in order to be with his friend.

Here’s the way I saw the race:

We arrived and parked downtown just in the nick of time to catch the bus and get over the bridge to the starting line before the bridge closed for the race. The ones who didn’t get over in time had to go the long way around and risk starting the race late. Grabbed some water and found our place in the lineup. Never did find the bananas. Where were the starting side bananas?

At 8:00, the gun went off… wait, no gun this year, just an announcer counting down the time. And we were off… walking… slowly… creeping towards the Starting line. The race starts at 8, but each runner’s time is measured by a little chip on their shoe. Our time started when we crossed the starting line. Ok, we were through the starting line and on the obstacle course. For the first two miles we dodged walkers and slower runners. It was pretty dangerous, but par for the course. Look for an opening and dash through.

Then we hit the bridge. I thought the new bridge was harder than the old bridge. The angle of ascent was steeper and it was longer. Once we got to the top of the bridge, the rest was downhill or flat. But that was one long hill! I thought we’d never make it. I was thinking near the top that I ought to walk a bit and I did for about 30-40 yards, then started running again.

Not long after hitting the top, we passed the 5 K mark and I looked at my stopwatch. It read 33 minutes and some seconds. That wasn’t going to be a good enough pace to make my goal of 1 hour for the 10 K, but I didn’t think I could do a faster pace. John encouraged me that runners frequently go through a place where they can run faster after they have been running for a while. I heard him and hoped that I would experience that.

After we were off of the bridge I was so glad to have that behind me. John was encouraging me so much. He would find openings between other runners and I followed him through them. Sometimes he’d jump ahead and look back to see if I was still behind him. I’d catch up and say, “I’m with you, man.” About mile 4, I was really feeling the fatigue and I wanted so badly to walk a while. John wouldn’t “let me” though. He’d keep encouraging me to remember my goal. I remember hearing these phrases over and over; “Come on.” “You can do it.” “You are doing great!” “Run to win the prize.” “Run the good race.” “We are running the race of life together.” At times, I was dazed. I could only see this mass of people in front of me and I kept going thinking to myself, “One foot in front of the other one.” “Baby steps” “Just keep going” As John continued to remind me of my goal, I said to myself, “Have a huge goal, then take baby steps and you’ll get there.”

Earlier in the race, at the first water station, we both got cups. At the second station, I was having trouble and John got me a cup. I swallowed most of it, poured some of it on my face and shirt. The second cup didn’t agree with me, so I decided I wouldn’t get any more water until the end. At the third station, John got me another cup. By this time, I was barely running. Not sure what to do with this water, I poured it on top of my head. When I did that, I kicked it into gear like there was no tomorrow and ran hard. I was determined that I’d finish the race like that. But I couldn’t do it. I slowed back to my slower pace and started thinking about walking again. John wouldn’t let me. “keep going… remember the goal… we’re almost there”

At some point he said, “This is not the end, it’s just the beginning.” By that, he meant that the best was yet to come, but I thought to myself, “NO! This is the end!” I told him that one didn’t work for me and I kept on plodding along. Along the end of the race route, people stood and cheered us on. That was so awesome. Sometimes people would stick their hands out for a runner to slap as they passed by. I did that and it was neat… especially with the little kids.

Finally, we rounded the last corner and I saw the finish line. What a welcome sight! John said, let’s give it a big finish. I kicked it into gear one last time and ran as hard as I could to the finish line. They wanted us to keep running for a few blocks so that other runners could get through. I moved to the side and walked. I had earned that walk! I was completely spent. By the time we got to the fruit and water, I was hobbling like an old man! I have never ever been that sore and tired before.

It is now Saturday evening and my legs still hurt, but there’s a feeling of accomplishment that feels really good. I have another feeling too. I feel fortunate to have a great friend like John. To sum it all up, I must say, “This is not the end, it’s just the beginning.” Thank God it was the end of that race, but there will be more races, God willing, and more time to build our friendships.

As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another Proverbs 27:17

That is one of those Bible passages that sounds so poetic and spiritual. In reality, sharpening a knife with a steel is a violent process. It is a process of knocking off part of the knife. If knives could feel, I think it would hurt. In reality it is uncomfortable to “rub up against” others. But that’s how knives (and people) get sharpened.

I want to be sharpened! That means partnering with others who are moving towards the same destination. As I start this new year, I am going public with my desire to seek out relationships with others who will challenge me and help me press on to who God wants me to be. This blog is step one. John, I did it! Thank you for following up with me.