Family Portraits
Recently, a group of ladies and I went up to Hilltop Renewal Center in Idllywild. While there, we made a family sculpture that represented how we viewed our family when we were ten. For example, someone might send someone to another room to represent their absentee father or pose someone clinging to a banister if they had a sibling afraid of leaving home.
It was an interesting experiment, primarily because most of us hardly remembered our family dynamics at age ten. What on earth did my fourteen-year-old sister do when I was ten? I think she just made earrings out of Friendly Plastic Sticks all day.
Anyway, the activity revealed several things to me:
Parents can’t give us everything. It’s just humanly impossible, especially when you have multiple brothers and sisters.
We repeat some of our parents’ patterns and we break others.
We are all living in different realities composed of some truths, some misconceptions, and some unknowns.
Our parents, whether they meant to or not, prepped us for God’s transformational work in us. And our communities, whether they mean to or not, pressure us to respond to God’s transformational work.
We don’t get to decide how our communities will be Christ’s hands and feet to us, but we can choose to reject God’s gifts if we aren’t open. God uses these people to supply our needs, and thus, we need open hands in community to receive all the riches of God’s goodness. If we reject God’s gifts, our hearts become starved.
Needing People
This last point was the most potent for me because, while I have found people very useful to get what I needed, I haven’t always seen them as ministers of God’s gifts.
Around age ten, I began to notice that my siblings seemed more needy than I. They were louder and more dramatic, or cried more. They were funnier and talked faster or sought out more attention from my parents than me. They gravitated towards seeking approval from my dad or performing for my mom. I was quiet and thoughtful. Perhaps this contributed to the belief that because I required less from my parents, I needed people less.
Sure, I saw the use of having a family. People are very useful. My older sister was useful if I was sick. My dad was useful for answering questions or paying for cool things. My mom was useful for giving me food. My brother was an excellent playmate. And my younger sister was the only one who’d try my ideas. I quickly learned what my family members could or could not give me, and I accepted them as such.
But seeing my family like this reduced them to functions to suit my purposes. They were like tools to use to get what I wanted when the occasion called for it.
Becoming a parent turned the tables. Without understanding how needy I really was, I birthed three kids who began to use me to get their needs met. My resources vanished quickly. Then I had to make a choice. Would I ask other people to help me or would I bite the bullet and just keep giving out of my emptiness?
Dying to Self
I chose to keep giving out of my emptiness. It seemed like the right thing to do, but while I did this, I felt like I was dying inside. I don’t mean dying to self like the Bible talks about. I mean, pretending my needs weren’t as imperative as my children’s needs.
I changed diapers, performed night feedings, gave up leisure time, gave up an organized home, and gave up accomplishing tasks. I gave up pursuing my desires, and I certainly didn’t expect others to fulfill them. I believed that God would supply my desires instead. I told God my desires and continued spending time alone with Him, but my times with the Lord became less and less fulfilling. What was I doing wrong?
Self-deceptive Pride
There’s a lie in parenting that says, “Kids are the needy ones; adults are not. Parents have all the things to give; children have very little and thus can give little. Parents experience their kids’ pain with them, but parents have to suffer alone because that’s what grown-ups do. They silently suffer while giving up their needs for the sake of their children.”
This is not dying to self. This is self-deceptive pride. This is the Christianese way of dying to self. It sounds like Jesus’ teachings, but it’s not. We can’t pretend we’re less needy than our children. If we ignore, belittle, or pretend we don’t need much, we become numb, depressed, robotic, resentful, or addicted to something.
Where Will You Minister?
How on earth does someone actually die to self and allow God to meet their needs? Enter Community. Over time, the lies we believe come to light in family or church communities. And if we’re willing to admit our neediness to God AND receive from Him whatever He gives, He uses His body to supply all our needs. To find satisfaction in Him is to show up in community, believing our great need for God and then opening our hands for how He will act THROUGH His people. It is to ask the Lord, “Where will you minister to me today through these people? And how will you use me to minister to them?”
But here’s the hard part. We don’t get to decide how God will minister to us or through whom. God decides that. We can’t say, “No, I need my husband to acknowledge my hurt,” or “I will only confess this wrong done to me to my pastor,” or “The elders have to hear my anger and validate me! It’s them or no one,” or “I won’t show myself desperate to a woman. That is too shameful!” That was part of my problem as a young mom; I expected God to supply my needs in my daily quiet time and nowhere else.
This is to tell God, “I will control Your gifts to me as I see fit. I will only accept certain gifts from certain people.” If we do this, we reject the many gifts that God is waiting to give us to help restore our starved souls. People are Christ’s living, breathing body. He has them poised to provide the good gifts that will satisfy every need, if we are willing to open our hands to what God has to give. But if we designate and assign functions to how people can serve us, we reduce people to functions instead of possible fellow ministers of the faith to usher us into the Lord’s presence, where we are filled with all the goodness that is Him. Wow, how’s that for a Pauline sentence!
God can usher us into His glorious presence through the janitor, a nursery worker, or a child. This is not just a pastor's or a church leader’s job. We can minister and be ministered to by all parts of the body if we are open to receive His good gifts in whatever ways He gives.
I don’t mean we ought to tell everyone our desires and needs. I’ve tested that out a lot in the church, and I am always fascinated by the results. Once, I asked some sweet older ladies, “Why is homosexuality wrong? What about it isn’t good for us?” I was trying to discover how excluding one gender from this committed intimacy and the formation of a family might be destructive to our mental health. Maybe I should’ve rephrased my question because their eyes widened as they answered aghast, “Because it’s in the Bible!” I tried the same question with others until I found someone who could engage in this discussion without being horrified that I was even asking it. I wasn’t hurt or angry at those older ladies. I realized they weren’t the ones God had provided to discover these things with me.
