Stay Curious

Marriage, Relationships 0

The key here is going slowly and staying curious.  Again and again, we have seen couples turn things around simply by asking a lot of questions in the spirit of inquiry, rather than by jumping in to explain themselves.

The rule to remember is this:  Understanding comes before explaining.  Most people reverse this and try their hardest to get their partner to see things their way.  It’s truly uncanny how it shifts when you can really hear your partner, when you can say “tell me more” and mean it.  This, of course, is difficult when what your mate is telling you is hard to hear.  But when you can hold on to it, this approach creates absolutely the right atmosphere for intimate disclosure.

— Ellyn Bader, PhD, and Peter T. Pearson, PhD, Tell Me No Lies, p. 121

Give More Love

Forgiveness, Love, Parenting 0

If there’s bad behaviour, the quickest way of stopping it is to give more love.  That always works, you know.  People say that we must punish when there is wrongdoing, but if you punish you’re only punishing yourself.  And what’s the point of that?

— Mma Potokwane in The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, by Alexander McCall Smith

The Will to Walk

God, Guidance, Obedience, Trust 0

Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless.  He cannot ravish.  He can only woo.  For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve.  He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning.  He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation.  But He never allows this state of affairs to last long.  Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives.  He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs — to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish.  It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be.  Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. . . .   He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do to vice.  He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there, He is pleased even with their stumbles.

— Screwtape in The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis, quoted in A Year with C. S. Lewis, p. 136

Something Better Is Brewing.

Letting Go, Life, Obedience, Trust 0

This is at least some of what it means to “wait on the Lord.”  Waiting on God does not mean passive indifference — hanging around and doing nothing.  It has more to do with saying no to impulsive, spur-of-the-moment actions or decisions, and by so doing, saying yes to something you know will satisfy much better down the line.  Those who have not yet learned how to wait on the Lord may tend to indulge in something immediate that only half satisfies.  But Christians who have fostered a degree of self-control — Christians who know God better — don’t mind putting pleasure on hold.  They know something better is brewing down the line.

— Joni Eareckson Tada, Pearls of Great Price, May 2 entry

Until He Finds It

God, Love 0

This God’s love is a redemptive love; a patient, kind love that never gives up (I Corinthians 13).  This Father is a shepherd who, as Jesus taught, does not give up seeking his beloved, wayward sheep, but looks for it until he finds it (Luke 15:4).  His covenant with creation will not allow him to abandon it to its own darkness, but commits him to redeeming it in its entirety.

The love of God in the New Testament, as in the Old, is perfectly compatible with divine wrath and punishment (Heb 12:7-11).  However, such punishment is always a means to an end, and such wrath is never the last word.  The last word is always grace.

— Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, p. 103

You Are Enough.

Joy, Letting Go, Life, Relationships 0

Throughout this book, I’ve been carrying on about men and finding them and getting them and keeping them and deciding whether or not to kill them, and if so, how, and so on.  And that’s all funny and mostly true and all that, but the real truth is you are enough — just the way you are, just who you are.  You are a complete entity, a whole person, right there in the skin you’re in.  You don’t need to have a guy to be happy.  Admit it:  You have more fun with a gang of girlfriends than you’ve had on the absolute best date of your entire life.  If somebody comes along who treats you right and makes you happy and you can do the same for him, well, that’s just dandy.  But I’m telling you, the only way that I know to get and keep a happy, healthy relationship is first to create a happy and healthy life for yourself without one.  This is your life to live.

— Jill Conner Browne, The Sweet Potato Queens’ Field Guide to Men, p. 206

The Man’s Own Faith

God, Guidance, Obedience, Trust 0

Observe the grandeur of redeeming liberality in the apostle.  In his heart of hearts he knows that salvation consists in nothing other than being one with Christ….

And yet he says, and says plainly, that a man thinking differently from all this, or at least quite unprepared to make this wholehearted profession of faith, is yet his brother in Christ.  Even in such a one he believes that the knowledge of Christ, such as it is, will work, the new leaven casting out the old leaven until he too, in the revelation of the Father, shall come to the perfect stature of the fullness of Christ….

But how can he help him if he is not to press upon him his own larger and deeper and wiser insights?

The answer is clear.  Paul will press, but not his opinion, not even the man’s own opinion.  But he will press the man’s own faith upon him….

Obedience is the one condition of progress, and Paul entreats them to obey.  If a man will but work that which is in him, will but make the power of God his own, then it will go well with him forevermore.  Like his Master, Paul urges to action…. 

Whereto you have attained, walk by that.

George MacDonald, Your Life in Christ, p. 203-205

Forgive

Forgiveness, Relationships 0

Forgive.  This is the critical antidote to break the toxic cycle of rejection, resentment, and revenge.  People who feel hurt end up hurting others.  Somewhere along the line, someone has to stand up and say “the hurting stops with me.”  Forgiveness is the essential first step.

— Tim Murphy, PhD, and Loriann Hoff Oberlin, Overcoming Passive-Aggression:  How to Stop Hidden Anger from Spoiling your Relationships, Career and Happiness, p. 101

Rock Bottom

Letting Go, Life, Trials 0

It’s a good thing to have all props pulled out from under us occasionally.  It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand.  It stops us from taking anything for granted.

— Madeleine L’Engle, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, quoted in Glimpses of Grace, compiled by Carole F. Chase, p. 104