Mean-spirited Maria

January 27, 2022

Maria 1 Peter 3, Conviction, Holy Spirit, Sin 3 Comments

….what is inside the heart —the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. 1 Peter 3:4 CSB

Pop often accused me of ‘pulling wings off of flies’. I had a sense of what he meant.  This was his way of letting me know how unkind I had been, picking at and trying to provoke my mom.

When I searched on line to see if my dad had just made up this expression, I read with horror: “In typical usage, it describes a cruel person, such as a bully or someone who enjoys tormenting others…… for no other reason than to take pleasure in being mean to them/in watching the other person be hurt….emotionally, physically, or otherwise. (accessed 24 Jan 2022)

I did this very thing in my most recent zoom call to Mike’s mom. She loves her Episcopal church and during our conversation, she expressed great sadness in how attendance has dwindled during the pandemic.

I could have just commiserated with her.  Instead, I boasted in how many people have joined our church. I also slipped in some remarks to the effect that in order to become a member, you have to be able to point to when you gratefully accepted Christ’s righteousness for your own and what He has done for you since then, unlike her denomination. Totally unnecessary, and meant to make her feel bad.  She never knows how to respond to me when I bring this up.

At the end of the week, I’m flying out to Seattle to spend a few days with her.  She’s growing more fragile and isolated due to all the Covid restrictions in her retirement complex. I’m hoping to cheer her up some and cook some food she’ll enjoy.

Back to that zoom call, I continued with a mean spirit, asking, ‘Do you all still have to wear masks in Seattle?’ (I knew the answer).  Again, it was meant to be a dig, designed to highlight the difference between Washington state and where I live, here in Alabama where we have no Covid restrictions. 

Then I added something about how ineffectual and silly masks are. Unnecessary!

I felt terrible during the entire conversation.

I confessed my cruelty to the Lord and told Mike.  But the following morning, the Holy Spirit REALLY convicted me.  During the first half of the day, even at the gym, He continued to reveal more and more of my heart.

Let’s call a spade a spade.  What I did during my conversation was to ‘despise’ my mother-in-law.  It dawned on me while on the rowing machine, ‘there’s no middle ground’. Either I love someone or I despise them.

Calling my sin by its nature helped me, in a painful way. This morning, the ‘reveal’ continued. 

What do you think of when you read how we are to ‘flee from sin’?

I picture Joseph escaping the clutches of the promiscuous Mrs. Potiphar. But I never have applied this warning to Maria, until this morning.

That’s when I also came across the 1 Peter advice to wives of unbelieving husbands. Again, I had never thought of how I could apply to me, in a different context.

 I’m praying and have asked friends and Mike to pray for my heart during these next few days with Mike’s mom.  I want to be that quiet (‘unprovoked and unprovoking’ per the Greek) and gentle (‘self-controlled’) gal whom the Father is pleased to call his daughter.

 

What do you want people to say about you at your funeral?

January 20, 2022

Maria 1 John 3, Death, Love, Trusting God , , , 1 Comment

And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 1 John 3:23 ESV

I lead a weekly ESL conversation class on Zoom. Typically, four of us meet for an hour.  The two women are Mexican and our one gentleman lives in Argentina.  They are strong intermediate-level speakers.  We have come to know each other and enjoy this mid-week hour as friends.  And I know they appreciate being able to practice their English.

As a language coach, I propose the weekly topic. Yesterday’s question or theme is the title of this blog.  ‘What do you want people to remember about you and how you lived your life?’ I wasn’t sure if my three friends felt put-off or startled when I sent them via What’s App the question to consider. They approached the subject with enthusiasm and we ended up learning a lot about each other’s cultures and approaches to death.

What’s interesting about this topic is that one of my sons is currently reading a leadership book for Christian men about creating a vision for oneself as well as for one’s family. He mentioned one of the suggestions was to do this very thing, to start with the end in mind. Just how DO you hope people will assess your life once you have died?

Happily, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel as Christians. The Bible provides many possibilities that are pleasing to God. The verse at the beginning of this post is one that continues to linger in my daily thoughts.

The way the apostle John condenses and communicates Jesus’ commands struck me about 2 weeks ago as a wonderful life purpose.  What pleases God is for us to rely on Jesus and love people as our Lord did while on earth.

Actually, the first part, ‘trusting Jesus’, is the main command. I am to depend on him for power to love people well.  Active love, how I treat people, is costly because it involves investing resources such as time, energy and money.  Added to that is my attitude, how I bring patient, studied attentiveness to someone in order to understand their needs and the manner in which they feel respected and valued.  I can’t do any of that in my own strength. That is why relying on Jesus is paramount.

I wish I had paid attention to John’s exhortation when I endured ongoing bitter attacks from a student at my last school. I tried to respond with love and patience, but out of my own reservoir. It got to me.  Many days I headed to school absolutely dreading French class with this gal. Her animosity and her dad’s displeasure with me lasted a year and a half before she graduated from the middle school. 

Five years later, I feel clear now on just who is my power source to obey. And in fact, I got to put my money where my pen is.  Yesterday, I realized that my mother-in-law who lives so far from us needs some TLC. At 93, she has been hit with one medical situation after another.  She said to me yesterday over the phone, ‘Maria, why is all this happening to me now?’  Thank you, Father, that your Spirit got my attention.  I booked a flight this morning for next week.

Wrapping up, what is it that I want on my tombstone?  ‘She relied on Jesus and loved her friends and family well.’  No, that doesn’t include ‘neighbors’ like my former student.  But I think that if I can mature in believing and depending on Jesus to love those who make up my family and my circle of friends, the spillover effect will extend to others the Lord places in my life.  That is my hope and my prayer.  

I killed the ‘red lizard of sin’!

January 13, 2022

Maria Idols, Matthew 5, Sin , , Leave a comment

If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. Matthew 5:30 ESV

Until last week, that talkative ‘red lizard of Sin’ continually plagued me.

Did you ever read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis? It’s a short book and very compelling. In one scene, an angel confronts a man who has died, described by Lewis as a ‘ghost’, someone who had rejected God and heaven. On this ghost of a man’s shoulders chatters a lizard, unceasingly arguing for the mildness of sin that he, the reptile, represents. 

This angel advises the confused ghost-man to kill the red lizard who whispers all the more persuasively to the contrary.  The lizard argues that the man most assuredly can manage him, that’s he quite tame, that what he suggests the man indulge in is not that bad.  

The angel doesn’t argue with the ghost-man or with the tempter. He simply offers to kill the Red Lizard himself.

The ghost-man cringes out of fear, anticipating pain and the loss of his pet sin.  But he yields to the angel who slays the reptile, thus liberating him.  I won’t spoil what happens next.  Read the book!

Like the vacillating ghost-man I have felt the forceful propaganda of a similar red lizard.  The Spirit himself finally convinced me that I had to sever something I had created because it was causing me to sin.

What was that sin?  An out-of-balance preoccupation with something material that often shoved Jesus out of his primary place in my thought life and heart.

I wrote last week about the project I started in 2018 to build a business helping language learners with English.  Nothing sinful in and of itself.  But starting and building an online presence tapped into pockets of ambition and pride deep inside of me that became disordered. 

Last week when I posted my blog, I had resolved to wait on God to see what he wanted me to do.  Within 24 hours of hitting ‘publish’ I knew what I had to do, what HE wanted me to do.  Since I was continuing to obsess, I had to take drastic action.  I truly wanted to be FREE, to tolerate NO interior drive that competed with Jesus.

So, I killed it.  I severed it, this on-line presence.  I knew that I did not have the power to tame it or change my thoughts and feelings.  Just as we clean up our phones to make more space, I had to eliminate the largest ‘file’.   

I called up Go Daddy, the tech company hosting my website, and told them to cancel it.  The tech support guy reassured me that it would remain active until the subscription period ran out in 5 months. 

“No, I want you to kill it now.  It’s a trigger for me.”  I’m sure he didn’t understand.  But he proceeded to read me the statement declaring that if he shut down my website, I would lose everything I had created. I replied, “I understand and accept that.  Please just do it.”

Just like that, three and half years of content disappeared. I purposely chose not to back up anything. Then I contacted Mail Chimp and did the same thing.  With this service, I had been writing and sending out helpful teaching tips, follow-up extension activities and how I had used each video in my on-line English class.  Now that was gone, too.

What did I feel?  Nothing. Just a sense of blahness.

But by the next morning, by grace, while lingering over scripture and dialoguing with Jesus in my journal, I started to feel light, free and cheery.  I knew I had done what was right for me.

It’s taken me two years to reach this point. I’ve wavered and talked to Mike and family members ad nauseum about feeling a love-hate relationship with English without Fear.  Making weekly content has felt burdensome. Yet at the same time I have taken pride in what I offered weekly to the language learning space. The burden grew as I felt or imagined that my subscribers ‘expected’ new videos on a regular basis. The continual wrangling with my thoughts and feelings weighed me down.

Am I sorry I started English without Fear?  Nope. I learned a lot about video production. I made contact with English language learners around the world who have enriched my life.  My faith deepened and I grew in my understanding of what sin is.  I don’t want anything to compete with Jesus and the first place he occupies in my life.

As Graham, my son, reassured me.  I can always start something similar again, if that is God’s will for my me.  He doesn’t waste any experience, but repackages it for his purposes.

My yoke or his yoke?

January 6, 2022

Maria Freedom, Galatians 5 , , , , , , Leave a comment

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1 NIV

I visited the bathroom too near early morning so that I couldn’t fall back asleep.  Instead, I lay awake thinking.

Over the past 10 days, I’ve been obsessing a bit on an old matter I thought I had already dealt with. It started like this.  The day after Christmas I met with a local Hispanic pastor whose church wants to offer ESL (English as a second language) classes as a ministry.  I’m very excited about this project since I know I can make a difference in some local women’s lives.  The Lord has given me years of experience teaching French and now English on line since I’ve been retired. I use the best method available, one that is based on research about how people acquire language. I don’t use the traditional tools of grammar pronunciation drills, but employ the intuitive approach of teaching with comprehensible input.  I describe it simply as ‘Mommy Talk’.  Nothing intellectual there.

It wasn’t the idea of starting up this ministry that kept me awake.  No.  But what happened, given this new endeavor, is that I resurrected the issue of creating content for my YouTube channel ‘English without Fear’. 

I initially began creating simple videos for English language learners in 2018, with the idea of turning it into a business after leaving the classroom.  Later, I realized I didn’t want to make this a money venture, but continued producing content as a way to ‘bless’ the language-learning community. Unfortunately, I started to feel ‘obligated’ to keep producing a weekly video. 

Throughout 2020 and 2021, I wavered back and forth about letting it go, because it felt burdensome, like a self-imposed ‘should’. Through counseling and much prayer, I closed the door on that project, producing my last video in early October of this past fall.

That is until I uploaded another one last week, the final week of 2021.  I justified going back to this activity by linking it with the forthcoming ESL classes. ‘My videos might be useful to my future ESL students!’, I reasoned.

But it’s been too much for me.  Not in terms of time or energy, but in emotional space.  Like a magnet, I have felt the irresistible pull to think about it, to plan the next episode. But my thoughts have gone back to being irrational. ‘My YouTube followers expect new content!’  

When I am honest with myself, creating these videos still feels like a task, a ‘half to’.  Not only do I not like feeling obsessed, I don’t like thinking about anything more than Jesus.  When other matters crowd out my meditations on the Lord, I feel drained.

So, this morning I journaled to Jesus: ‘I’m exhausted still struggling and debating ‘do I’ or ‘do I not’ make more videos? I feel my mental energy being sucked away from you, Lord. What do you want me to know?’

I then continued with Bible reading.  A few minutes later, I remembered something I had recently read in Oswald Chambers. He had advised waiting and not ‘doing’ whenever you felt doubt about a proposed course of action. That thought felt like a strong suggestion from Jesus.  So, I took it seriously and committed to wait, at least another week, before thinking about this question again.

Then came another thought.  Trevin Wax had quoted John Stott in a piece, “Go wherever your gifts will be most exploited for the Kingdom of God.”  That certainly affirmed my involvement teaching ESL to local Hispanic women in a church setting.

Finally, advice from my friend Mabel made its encore appearance in my conscious thoughts.  She had shared a two-fold very useful way for deciding where next to invest one’s energy. Ask yourself:

  • What do you love doing?
  • What can you do that no one else is doing?

That’s easy.  I DO enjoy helping people acquire language the natural and best way.  And no one else that I know of in Huntsville is teaching ESL this way to Hispanic gals.

But plenty of people around the world make video content in simple and slow English.  I think Jesus wants to keep me walking with him, bound closely by his lighter, tailor-made, energy-providing yoke, rather than the one I tend to craft for myself.