“Cause me to hear Your lovingkindness in the morning; for on You do I lean and in You do I trust. Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk, for I lift up my inner self to you. Deliver me, O Lord, from my enemies; I flee to You to hide me. Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God; let Your good Spirit lead me into a plain country and into the land of uprightness.” (Psalm 143:8-10)
Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day — and I’m happy to announce I survived once again! I’ve often joked that I was going to have a t-shirt printed that said “I Survived (fill in the holiday)!” because that’s how I feel many times when I come away from a family gathering. You see, it has been very difficult for me to survive any holiday or gathering with my family . My father died when I was a just a young mother with three small children. My mother is still alive and I have only one sister. I have two half-brothers, one with whom I have no contact and another who lives on the other side of the United States and we never get to see him. Between my sister and I there are five children who are now all married with children of their own, so the group has grown to 17, but most of them are young adults and very small children. The problem, as I see it, lies in the fact that there is just my mother (a widow), my sister (a widow) and me (a divorcee), so there aren’t a lot of older adults to relate to. For me, I have spent a lifetime trying not to be like my mother and wishing I could be more like my sister. You see, my mother is and always has been a control freak. She ruled the roost when we were growing up and now, even though her “children” are well beyond 50 years old, she refers to herself as “the matriarch” — meaning she believes everything should be done according to what she wants and says. She treats us like we’re still six instead of sixty, and expects us to just obey her. We’re not supposed to question; we’re not supposed to argue. Growing up, my father knew to stay in his workshop and out of her way. Eventually, she left him, husband number 3, and married husband number 4, a really kind man who did his best to keep her busy and happy. My sister and I adored this man and have often joked that when we get to Heaven, the first thing we’re going to do is ask God why he took our stepfather off the planet at such an early age, because it was really nice to have him around to keep our mother preoccupied with someone besides us! But after his death many years ago, we fell back into the old pattern of allowing her to have her way about everything again. Adding to my frustration is the fact that my family labels me a “troublemaker” because I always want question her authority or stand up to her.
Now, those are the “facts” of our family…here is my own personal perspective on what it was like to have the misfortunte of being daughter #2. I’m not saying this is a correct perspective; I’m just saying it’s how I’ve felt my entire life. Growing up, my sister could do no wrong and I could do no right. From as early as I can remember, I have always felt like I was just plain invisible. No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, it was just not good enough. My sister was naturally smart, obedient, slender and very pretty. I, on the other hand, had to work hard just to make average grades, definitely was not thin and, therefore, have never felt pretty, and I always had to be given a valid reason as to why I should obey before I would do anything I was told, which infuriated my mother! And the comparisons don’t stop there. My sister married well, had brilliant, obedient children and stayed married until recently when her husband of over 40 years passed away. I, on the other hand, married the first person who came along to get away from home, lived a life of rebellion and ended up divorced.
As a married woman with three children, holidays for me consisted of going to my mother’s house year after year where my children and I sat around and listened to all the accolades of my niece and nephew’s accomplishments and waited until an appropriate amount of time passed before we could go home without appearing rude. Many times I left angry after a confrontation with my mother who had done her best to wear me down by either criticizing every move I made or arguing with everything I said. I’ve come to know the stretch of interstate between my mother’s house and mine as the stretch where I cry all the way home and lick my wounds, and by the time I arrive at my destination, I usually feel much better and am eternally grateful for the refuge of my small home.
For many years now my favorite “holiday” has always been New Year’s Day because it means those other holidays are over and I have been given a fresh year to get myself straightened out so that my attitude will be better the next time the holidays roll around. If God was handing out gold stars for our human efforts, I know I would have earned a HUGE pile of them for the many times I’ve awakened on the morning of a holiday or family gathering and promised myself that I could get it right this time. “I can do this!” I would declare every morning as I hit the floor before heading to my mother’s house! But I’ve learned that outside of Jesus Christ, we simply cannot love difficult people or accomplish the things we set out to do with the best of intentions.
The Lord has been good over the last few years to begin the process of healing the hurts and pains from my childhood, my broken marriage, my children who are “clueless” as to just how much I hurt on the inside, and this distorted view I have of my family. I have come to realize that it’s because of the deep longings of my own broken heart as a child that I have continued to look to my family to meet my needs for so many years. You’d think by now I would have realized that, but some people just take longer than others to learn and I’m obviously a very slow learner!
But back to this Thanksgiving. God’s healing process has been slow and steady — much like everything else He does in our lives — and this year it just felt different. Perhaps it was because instead of hitting the floor declaring “I can do this,” I lingered in bed, spoke to God, asked for his help and read my daily devotional, “My Utmost for His Highest,” and knew that God had touched my heart. This time, I knew that God could — and would – meet the “deep longings” of my heart and that He could — and would – be my constant companion as I would yet once again make the right choice to do the right thing and spend another holiday with my family. I cannot begin to tell you how intense the battle between my flesh and my spirit have been in years past. My flesh would want to either do what “I” wanted to do that day or take a wrong turn on that dreaded interstate and drive as fast as I could in the opposite direction of my mother’s house until I ended up in Myrtle Beach or, better yet, Florida as far away from my family as I could get. But my spirit would always tug at my heart, telling me I should be obedient to God’s Word and do what I knew was the right thing and what God would want me to do! But this time, I barely had enough gas to get across town, so I knew running was not an option. I still struggled with staying at home and not answering the telephone, but in the end I knew I had to make the right choice and be obedient to the Lord.
So off I went to spend the day with my family. Only this time, I was able to walk through that door with confidence, knowing God was by my side. I was able to spend several hours visiting with various family members, watching the little ones in the family run and play, and eating good food without really caring how others behaved or whether or not they connected with me in any way. For once it really didn’t matter that not one person made an effort to strike up a conversation with me and not one person asked me how I was doing. That was okay. And this time I chose to sit at the small table in the kitchen instead of at the large dining room table and I wasn’t bothered by the fact that I might possibly be eating there all by myself. I felt an incredible peace and knew that if I had to eat alone, God would be there with me. Of course, I also knew that the large dining room table wasn’t large enough to hold everyone, so once the big table filled up, a few people would be forced to join me. They did and we had a good time. This time I was able to stay for several hours and only left because I was tired and not because I was hurt or angry and upset with my mother.
Two things made a difference for me this year at Thanksgiving: One, I remembered talking to my pastor once, and he helped me understand that I have a lot of what he called “unrealistic expections” with regard to my mother and other family members. These particular people are incapable of meeting my expectations and it is unrealistic of me to expect them to. The second thing is that recently I have been seeing a wonderful, Godly, Christian counselor who has helped me understand a term she calls the “deep longings of our heart.” “Deep longings” are something so deep inside of us and so precious that only our relationship with God can heal them; not other human beings who are probably hurting in their own way and have their own “deep longings” and just don’t have what it takes to heal mine.
So this time, things would be different. It would be okay because, like the verse above says, I had “heard the lovingkindness of my Lord that morning,” I had “leaned on Him” and Him alone, and I had “put my trust in Him.” And He in return had shown me the “way wherein I should walk” for that day because I had “lifted my inner self to Him.” As a result, He had “delivered me” and “taught me to do His will.” I had allowed Him to “let His good Spirit lead me into a plain country and into the land of uprightness.”
So, why was this year different from the past? Because in God’s own special way, the healing process is slow and steady and this year my heart was healed even more than in those years gone by. This time I had heard the still small voice of God speaking to my heart and I had listened more closely. Spiritually speaking, God is constantly operating on our heart, trying to conform us to His image and it is a long, slow, steady process. Much like open heart surgery in the physical realm, the surgery God does on our heart takes time. And because God is a good God, He does not just ram the knife in our heart, perform his surgery and say, “There, you’re all better.” Instead, He works at a pace that He knows we can tolerate. He chips away at our stony heart one small piece at a time because it would be too painful for us if He did it any faster.
All I can really say is praise be to God who causes us to triumph when we are willing to walk in His ways and be obedient to His Word. Be blessed…be encouraged…and know that God does indeed love you, too, and He longs to heal the pains in your life and the “deep longings” of your heart. But you must allow Him to do things His way and you must be obedient to His Word. Obedience to God is a requirement for his blessings and it’s also a ”heart” thing, not a “head” thing. Only God can see into your heart and only God knows when you have reached the point of true obedience and submission to Him. The good news is that He never lets go of us until we come to that place, no matter how many years that might take!
