Expectations Ruin Experiences.

Acceptance, Growth 0

Expectations ruin experience because they place a demand on the situation to meet our needs. However, there is a good chance that our needs will not be met even if the situation lives up to our plan (our picture of how it should be). Our plan is a way of ritually killing all the inspiration of the event. Expectations are different from goals, which are good to have because they invite us forward and are much more productive and successful. If we miss the deadline or goal, we simply reset it, which facilitates moving forward. If we miss an expectation, we beat ourselves up and make ourselves feel bad, which do not facilitate moving forward.

— Chuck Spezzano, If It Hurts, It Isn’t Love, p. 41.

Acceptance

Acceptance, Growth, Healing 0

Accept that their actions hurt you deeply. Accept that this experience taught you something you didn’t want to know. Accept that sorrow and strife are part of even a joyful life. Accept that it’s going to take a long time for you to get that monster out of your chest. Accept that someday what pains you now will surely pain you less.

— Cheryl Strayed, Brave Enough, p. 83

A Family of Sinners

Acceptance, Faith, Forgiveness, God, Redemption 0

Long enshrined traditions around communion aside, there are always folks who fancy themselves bouncers to the heavenly banquet, charged with keeping the wrong people away from the table and out of the church. Evangelicalism in particular has seen a resurgence in border patrol Christianity in recent years, as alliances and coalitions formed around shared theological distinctives elevate secondary issues to primary ones and declare anyone who fails to conform to their strict set of beliefs and behaviors unfit for Christian fellowship. Committed to purifying the church of every errant thought, difference of opinion, or variation in practice, these self-appointed gatekeepers tie up heavy loads of legalistic rules and place them on weary people’s shoulders. They strain out the gnats in everyone else’s theology while swallowing their own camel-sized inconsistencies. They slam the door of the kingdom in people’s faces and tell them to come back when they are sober, back on their feet, Republican, Reformed, doubtless, submissive, straight.

But the gospel doesn’t need a coalition devoted to keeping the wrong people out. It needs a family of sinners, saved by grace, committed to tearing down the walls, throwing open the doors, and shouting, “Welcome! There’s bread and wine. Come eat with us and talk.” This isn’t a kingdom for the worthy; it’s a kingdom for the hungry.

— Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday, p. 149

Our Sorting System

Acceptance, Compassion 0

We tend to look down our noses at these ancient people with their religious codes regulating everything from the fibers in their clothing to the people they touched. But we have our own religious codes these days. We have our own scapegoats we cast from our communities and surround with Bible-wielding mobs. We have sins we delight in taking seriously, biblical instructions we interpret hyperliterally, issues we protect over-vigilantly because it helps us with out sorting system. It makes us feel righteous.

“Let’s not forget that Jesus told the woman to go and sin no more,” some like to say when they think the church is getting too soft on other people’s sin.

To this I am always tempted to respond: So how’s that working out for you? The sinning no more thing? Because it’s not going so well for me.

I think it’s safe to say we’ve missed the point when, of all the people in this account, we decide we’re the most like Jesus. I think it’s safe to say we’ve missed the point when we use his words to condemn and this story as a stone.

— Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday, p. 94

God of Forgiveness

Acceptance, Forgiveness, God 0

Where do so many of us get that feeling that if you’re not the best, you’re a failure? The God I believe in, the God I pray to, the God I turn to when I am at the point of losing faith in myself, is not a God who says, “I gave you one chance and you blew it. How can I ever trust you again?” The God I believe in says to me, “I have given you an incomparably valuable gift, the ability to know the difference between good and bad, between things that should be done and things that should not be done, the freedom no other creature has to use willpower to override temptation. And when you find that too hard to do, when you stumble and fall, when you are led astray by the pleasure of the moment rather than the long-term good, I will be there to pick you up, clean you off, and give you a fresh start, because I am a God of forgiveness, a God of second chances. Then when you are able to forgive yourself and to forgive people around you for not being perfect, I will recognize you as My child.”

— Harold S. Kushner, Nine Essential Things I’ve Learned About Life, p. 100-101

Grace Gets Out of Hand

Acceptance, Community, Faith, God, Universalism 0

Philip got out of God’s way. He remembered that what makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out, but who it lets in. Nothing could prevent the eunuch from being baptized, for the mountains of obstruction had been plowed down, the rocky hills had been made smooth, and God had cleared a path. There was holy water everywhere.

Two thousand years later, John’s call remains a wilderness call, a cry from the margins. Because we religious types are really good at building walls and retreating to temples. We’re good at making mountains out of our ideologies, obstructions out of our theologies, and hills out of our screwed-up notions of who’s in and who’s out, who’s worthy and who’s unworthy. We’re good at getting in the way. Perhaps we’re afraid that if we move, God might use people and methods we don’t approve of, that rules will be broken and theologies questioned. Perhaps we’re already afraid that if we get out of the way, this grace thing might get out of hand.

Well, guess what? It already has.

— Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday, p. 39-40.

The New You

Acceptance, Growth, Life 0

You get it right when you realize that you cannot go back to who you once were. And this is a good thing. You already did that person. Now it is time to be the new you. Now it is time to embrace that person you were who got you here. That person is brave. That person is resilient. That person is complex. That person is deserving. You are deserving.

This is why so many people say in hindsight, Now it all makes sense. It is not because they made one decision that turned out perfectly – that landed them in the room they wanted to stay in for the rest of their lives. It is because they made a series of decisions, and each one led them into a new room. And even when they were sure a room was not where they were supposed to be, or it felt really hard, or they could not imagine it getting better, they did not give up. They realized that they had to keep going forward into the next room and then the next, until they found the one that felt right.

— Sherre Hirsch, Thresholds, p. 183

Many Incredible Outcomes

Acceptance, Letting Go, Life 0

You get it right when you start to see that there are many ways for things to turn out and that if you are only focused on one, you will miss out. When you begin to see that there are as many incredible outcomes as there are paths. When you stop expecting it to be smooth and easy all the time. When you stop perceiving that other people have it easier than you and stop comparing yourself to others. Once you stop envisioning some destination where you think you “ought” to be going, you will finally see all the amazing possibilities and opportunities actually in front of you.

— Sherre Hirsch, Thresholds, p. 182-183