Archive for the ‘Brokenness’ Category

28 Nov

Happy vs. Blessed Thanksgiving

Posted by Jennifer Clark Tinker in Brokenness, Inspiration. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

The last way to be happy is to make it your objective in life.

—”Nick Smith” in Metropolitan

I try not to say, “Happy Thanksgiving” when I remember. Instead, I prefer to say, “Blessed Thanksgiving.”

Why?

Because happiness is just way too elusive.

How are happiness and blessedness different?

Happiness is a feeling and feelings change frequently. Also, happiness is often closely tied to our circumstances–when they’re good we feel happy; when they’re bad we don’t.

Sometimes–even on holidays–or especially on holidays–it is really hard to feel happy. In fact, sometimes holidays can accentuate circumstances that are pretty crummy.

But blessedness just is, no matter how we feel and regardless of our present circumstances. We are all blessed in some way.

We are blessed with life and most especially we are blessed with a God who loves us. One of my dear theology professors used to say, “God loves you for Christ’s sake and will never let you go.”

When the message of Thanksgiving is that we should be happy, I go a little Scrooge. Partly because we can’t just flip a switch and be happy.

But also I think gratitude is deeper than that. Gratitude is tied to blessings–to those realities of life that are despite feelings or circumstances.

When we can see that which is true in our lives because of the God that loves us no matter what, we may not necessarily get giddy-happy, but we can begin to access a deeper sense of gratitude for God-with-us.

So when I say, “Blessed Thanksgiving” it is a prayer of sorts–that folks may know God’s love and grace in their lives amidst fluctuating feelings or shifting circumstances.

I am blessed by each and every one of you and the way you each stand as reminders of God’s love for me. I pray you will know the deep and abiding love of God in your life.

Blessed Thanksgiving!

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30 Oct

4 Simple Reasons Talking About Hard Stuff Can Enhance Your Life

Posted by Jennifer Clark Tinker in Brokenness, Community. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

20131030-194041.jpgIf there’s one thing I’ve gotten a bit of a knack for it is admitting that I don’t have everything all figured out. I’ve become rather at ease identifying and discussing challenges in life.

These challenges can be anything from disheartening health concerns to outright sin. Sometimes challenges we face are beyond our control, and sometimes we bring them on ourselves.

I’ve tried to be honest about some of my challenges here on the blog. They’re part of my resume as someone who seeks to live with integrity and I think it is important to share about them as part of the total package of what it means to live out our faith.

I’m not saying everyone should get a blog to blab out their baggage and angst to the interwebs. But if that’s helpful to you, then go for it.

More importantly though, I believe firmly that we need people in our lives–people that we trust–with whom we share about our challenges.

Here are four reasons I think talking about challenges in life can be of great benefit:

  1. We’re not alone. The more I talk about my challenges, the more I find solidarity with others. While each person’s challenges may be unique to their situation, I find that the reality of hardship is universal.
  2. Sharing feels better. Denial of challenges can eat us up, steal our joy and keep us from experiencing all the fullness of life in Christ Jesus. By contrast, talking about challenges with someone trustworthy can be a great relief.
  3. Talking is a constructive outlet for concerns. Secrets have a way of festering and fueling negative thoughts and behaviors. Talking about challenges with someone trustworthy gives us a safe place to let it out.
  4. The truth sets us free. When we’re saddled under the weight of our challenges it is hard to be fully present with others. Sharing our burdens can free us up to see and respond to needs in the world around us.

This is why I continue to talk about hard things on my blog and in my personal relationships. I hope you too will find strength and hope by sharing about your challenges with someone you trust.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like these other posts about “How Christian Community Helps us Face Challenges.” (Please click the titles below to go to the posts.)

 

Essential Traits of a Trustworthy Friend

3 Different Challenges and the Types of Responses Needed
What an Active Listener Does & Doesn’t Do

25 Oct

Weighty Matters: Learning from My Body

Posted by Jennifer Clark Tinker in Brokenness, Inspiration. Tagged: , , , , , .

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I’ve been losing weight and people are noticing. I’d like to tell you how this came about and what I’m learning from my body.

I see this as related to living out my faith because God created this body of mine, so to ignore my body is to be at odds with my creator. And really, being at odds with God just never ends well for me.

Some Background

I really, really hate to talk about this, but I have what is called Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). I hate talking about it because it is embarrassing to admit yet another way (besides my infertility problems) that my body doesn’t function properly, plus bathroom issues are just not a topic I enjoy–ever.

On top of that, IBS is a really frustrating diagnosis. Doctors don’t know what causes it, it’s not life-threatening, and there is no known “cure” for it.

There are ways of managing it, but they are often highly individualized solutions–the kinds that require a great deal of patient trial and error.

I have been in and out of doctor’s offices trying to get more answers. I wished for a long time for a different diagnosis–one for which the answers were more clear.

For quite a while I kept a food diary trying to figure out what foods made it better or worse. I could not find a pattern about specific foods, but in time I began to suspect that large meals exacerbated my symptoms.

Too Much to Handle

One might suppose that the solution was rather simple: if eating too much at once was a problem, then just eat smaller meals! While this sounds good in theory, it was harder in practice.

I did try to eat smaller meals, but I continued to have times when my symptoms would flare up and I was in a lot of pain. Still, the better I did at keeping my meals smaller, the better I felt.

I was actually doing pretty well until a few months ago when the pain got so bad that I ended up in the Emergency Room. It was pretty embarrassing for the only problem to have been my IBS.

New Discipline

After the embarrassing ER visit, I resolved to redouble my efforts to keep my meal size down. Putting less food on my plate was an obvious first place to start.

What I found though, was the most reliable guide for how much was too much was something even simpler still–to “listen” to my body. This was not something I learned as a kid in a family where the idea of “too much” of a good thing was laughable.

It has taken me a good deal of practice to actually key in to my body’s sense of fullness. And it comes surprisingly sooner than I would have guessed.

But in addition to the improvement in my IBS symptoms, listening to my body about my eating habits has also resulted in me losing some weight. I wasn’t looking for a weight-loss solution, but I’m glad that some good can come from this embarrassing condition.

Note: I am not a medical professional and my experience may not be typical. Please be sure to check with your doctor about your own weight and eating habits before making changes.

11 Oct

When “Christ vs. Culture” Met My Music Collection

Posted by Jennifer Clark Tinker in Brokenness, Inspiration. Tagged: , , , , .

When I was in high school I smashed all my “secular” music to bits with a sledge hammer on the floor of the garage.

This is probably pretty shocking to a lot of people I know. Indeed, it was an extreme act.

I’ve mentioned before that I essentially had two churches in High School: on Sundays I faithfully attended the Lutheran church where I was baptized at age 9 and on many Wednesdays I went to a charismatic Methodist youth group where my faith took on new dimensions.

To be clear, noone in leadership at either of my churches told me to smash my tapes and CDs.

Rather, there was an undercurrent among some of my peers that suggested we ought to do such things. Fellow Christian students would boast, “I got rid of all my secular music!” I even heard of a friend of a friend who apparently burned up secular tapes and CDs in a bonfire.

Why did we do these things? First of all, we had to rid our lives of those “evil” influences (Garbage in, garbage out!). But also it was to somehow prove how “on fire” we were for God.

I’ve written before about the law–the 10 commandments–and how I have spent some time in my life trying to skirt around the letter of the law to justify doing whatever I pleased.

I’ve also gone to extremes of legalism–using the commandments to really clamp down on myself and others. Purging secular music from my life was part of that clamping down.

If I was going to love Jesus with all my heart, then I should only have music about Jesus in my ears!

You might think, why not just give away or sell the music I didn’t want anymore to someone else who wanted it? But the thing is, the mentality of the time was that this stuff was corrupting people’s minds! So, if I just passed it on to someone else, I was responsible for corrupting them!

So then, why not just throw it away? But again, there was still the risk, if it remained intact, that someone else might pick it up and listen! Only the finality of complete destruction would do.

I considered burning the tapes and CDs I wanted to purge from my life. But living in a suburban neighborhood with pretty tight deed restrictions, I didn’t think a fire would go over too well. Plus, smashing with a sledge-hammer sounded fun.

And it was fun.

And it was a little funny too because CDs are pretty resilient and the hammer often bounced when it hit them. And once the tapes were broken open, the tape inside unraveled across the garage floor like streamers.

But it was sad too because I really liked a lot of that stuff. And most of it was pretty tame stuff. I mean, Wilson Phillips! I still miss that tape.

I want so much to distance myself from those days–from that legalism.

And the more my life-situation has me around fellow Lutherans–who are perfectly happy holding Christ and culture in creative tension–the more I puzzle over what I was thinking!

But lately, thanks to the magic of the Internet, I’ve become acquainted with others who were also dragged into this undercurrent.

In fact, I had been looking for the right time to share about this when a Christian blogger named Addie Zierman announced an opportunity to link up such stories. Her upcoming memoir, “When We Were On Fire,” is about how some of this same kind of stuff affected her.

When We Were On Fire Synchroblog

I haven’t read the book yet (it will be available on October 15), but I do follow her blog, How To Talk Evangelical, and in reading it have felt a lot less crazy for things I said and did back in High School because I wasn’t the only one then.

And I’m not the only one who is looking back on it and trying to reconcile where I am am now with where I was then.

Nowadays, most of the music I listen to is still Christian music. I listen to the Christian music because I want to, not because I feel like I should. And I listen to a few “secular” artists that I enjoy too.

And I hear Wilson Phillips has a new album out…

You can read more stories of others’ “on fire” days over at Addie’s blog.

1 Oct

Vases of Grace

Posted by Jennifer Clark Tinker in Brokenness, Family. Tagged: , , , , .

Vase of Grace

I blew it. I blew my top with my son. Again.

I don’t mean to do it. I really don’t. I don’t mean to yell at him.

He’s a good kid. A great kid really. He’s smart, funny, and caring. He’s a Lego pro. He does great character voices when reading aloud or playing make-believe. He “gets” God and Jesus and grace better than some people five times his age.

It is not his fault that I yell at him. Even if he does bad stuff, I’m the grown-up–responsible for keeping my own reactions in check.

There’s no good reason to angry-yell at any kid–none that I can think of in the whole wide world. Not a single one. It’s just plain wrong.

Add to that I’m this mom who is passionate about Positive Discipline, making a point to offer loving support, and non-punitive correction. I should know better. I should do better.

When I yell, I know that it is me who is out of control. I know that.

And I want to be quick to tell you that it doesn’t happen very often. Most of the time, we’re all pretty laid back around here. We get along well in my family of three: we cooperate, we talk about anything and everything, and we’re generally really nice people.

I don’t yell all the time. Hardly ever really. It’s almost not even worth bringing up lest you get the wrong idea about me. It’s not that bad…

Except, I saw a headline the other day that if you yell at your child it can cause as much emotional harm as physical abuse. I would never lay a hand on my child. I’ve never even spanked him as discipline. Ever.

But to think that my out-of-control yelling could cause him emotional harm?

Oh, Lord have mercy.

And I see it. Rather, I hear some of the fall-out of the yelling. “I’m the stupidest kid in the world!” is a typical response when I yell at him. His negative self-talk peaks whenever I lose control with my tone of voice.

Two Tuesdays ago, after I yelled I was quick to apologize. And he was quick to forgive saying, “That’s okay mommy. I’m kind-of used to it.”

Oh child. Oh sweet boy.

“You shouldn’t have to be used to that. Mommy is wrong to yell. Just as I want you to talk to mommy in a respectful tone of voice, you can expect the same from me. When I don’t speak to you respectfully, it is wrong.”

I spent the better part of that day feeling really crummy for having yelled, and for him being “kind-of used to it.” And my own negative self-talk dominated my inner-dialog.

But something happened that gave me hope. I can’t remember if it was the same day or the day after that, but I was still beating myself up about the yelling when my son brought me flowers from the yard.

Before I had a chance to come and see the flowers, he put them in glasses of water. But the stems were far too short to reach the bottom of the glasses, so he custom-engineered supports out of some of his Legos to keep the blooms above the water level.

These vases of grace gave me hope. Great hope. Hope that his predominate mode is confidence and kindness, not self-loathing. Hope that I get a second chance to do better. Hope that we can move forward and that he had already moved past the difficult moment on which I had still been dwelling.

It has happened again since I got those vases. But I caught it quicker. And I’m recognizing my triggers–triggers that have nothing to do with him at all. And I’m seeing that some of what triggers my out-of-control behavior are stressors that I can reduce or eliminate. So, with God’s help I’m working on all that.

It is important work, but it is a work in progress. But the vases, those beautiful vases remind me that there is grace, even for me.

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