Tuesday Train Wreck

I have a Bible Study group that I adore. I teach--facilitate--vent to----- (the description of what happens in this group can change from week to week).  We share...truly share our lives in struggle and in growth. It is a unique place to be heard and accepted exactly as you are even while being challenged to do the hard work it takes to prune and grow a life that really matters. 

I love them.

So.

Much.
You should come.

Since January we have been doing a study on temperaments that has been kinda funny, but also really eye-opening in a gut-punched kind of way. I wanted us to grow in our understanding of how God created us and what He expects for us to do with our God-given strengths and our flesh-drenched weaknesses. Although the content of our study was God-sent, my attitude was very teachery with just a hint of pride...some of you can imagine where this train might be headed. We finished our study with a three week look into the Fruit of the Spirit as taught in Galatians 5:21-25. It goes like this.....

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance (patience), kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." Galatians 5:21-25, NIV 

We had a great first week studying through love, joy, and peace. And then came week two. I studied about patience and kindness and goodness and was ready to teach what I had learned. My notes were printed out neatly and sweetly tucked into my folder in my church bag, ready to be hauled up to Bible Study happiness Wednesday morning. Imagine skipping, that was Tuesday morning.

Only Tuesday afternoon happened first and that train I mentioned is about to de-rail, so hold on.

My husband and son were out of town where my son was playing in a tennis tournament that was going poorly {they would use stronger, less Momma-ish adjectives meaning really BAD}. I was getting text updates and felt helpless in the face of my son's frustration and guilty for not being there. I pressed on and went to pick up my daughters from school. One hit me hard with demands and expectations before her beautiful little fanny even hit the seat of the mini-van. I quickly realized that we were not going to be on the same page and my idea of a little "girls' night" while dad and brother were away was not going to satisfy. We survived the 5 minute drive home only to really face off in the kitchen. Did you know your kids can hurt your feelings? In one honest yet badly delivered sentence I found myself both shamed by the truth of what she said and wounded by the way she said it. So I did what any 12 year old would do; and defended myself! {Anyone see the problem with that last statement? Yeah. I didn't for about an hour}.

I left my older daughter pouting and went on with my younger daughter to walk with some friends. As I was pounding the pavement I began to remember some of the Truth about patience, kindness, and goodness I'd just learned. I was humbled and ready to make things right as I headed home.

Only Tuesday evening happened first and that train that was coming off the rails crashed in a fiery heap.

My younger daughter got mad on the way home and threw a giant colossal car fit. As I was driving home I must've looked like I was having a seizure to other drivers because of how hard she was kicking the back of my seat. And I was sweating profusely since I'd had to chase her down INSIDE my mini-van to get her buckled up. She can go "boneless" like no kid you've ever seen.....seriously impossible to pick up. By the time we got home the "act your age and be the MOM not the 12 year-old" lesson I had just learned had completely evaporated along with every single shred of self-restraint. The end of this day had crushed me completely. And see, that's not a bad place for someone who believes what I believe. For weeks I had been teaching that we cannot transform our weaknesses on our own.  For weeks I had been teaching that when we fill our efforts with self-strength our families, marriages, and ministries are the ones most hurt by our powerless frustration. For weeks I had been teaching that real change takes Jesus, submitting to Him and allowing Him to fill us up with new stuff, foreign to us but completely made of God. So if I really believed what I'd been teaching for weeks, a "crushed flat, totally empty of my own failed efforts" kind of day should've been an opportunity, right? Well, instead of acknowledging the opportunity crushing emptiness provided, I came up swinging with self. And in my own frail strength I took out everyone in sight. Not with my fists, but with my self-righteous criticism, hateful words, and then angry silence. Anyone else ever shocked to find this is the only way self is strong?

And yet we all {miraculously, probably because Daddy came home} survived to face another day.

And I woke up thinking about the Bible Study coming up in a few hours....and my heart for the first time ever was filled with "I absolutely can't go to Bible Study" dread. As I looked around at the train wreck my efforts had created the day before I could still smell smoke. I planned all the ways I could change the lesson including some weird craft project that was really just coloring pages made spiritual. I couldn't figure it out without lying about having some made up disease, so I just faced it head on with great trepidation. Why the trepidation? Because as often as I make mistakes and am open about them with my ladies (often); I have never stood before them having completely, literally, word-by-word failed in every syllable of what I've prepared to say in the mere hours before it's time to share it with them.

This is how Galatians 5:19-21 describes a life lived in the flesh. Don't gloss over this, consider it. Lots of it felt familiar to me that morning.

"It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community.
I could go on..." Galatians 5:19-21 Message

I went to Bible Study and stood up and told them I was struggling and prayed all wobbly-voiced wobbly-kneed and then started teaching. Below are my notes without many comments; just copied and pasted from my Tuesday morning lesson before the Tuesday night train-wreck. Unless you've slept through this post, you'll see the connections.

Patience "Makrothumia" in Greek means “patience, a self-restraint of the mind before it gives room to action or passion; forbearance, long-suffering. The person who has power to avenge himself, yet refrains from the exercise of this power. It is patience with respect to persons while "hupomone" or endurance is patience toward things or circumstances. Makrothumia is associated with mercy and is used of God. Hupomone is inspired by hope while makrothumia is inspired by mercy. "The believer is to exercise mercifulness, for he can feel compassion for the misery of sin upon others....“Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy” (Matt 5:7). Spirit-led makrothumia comes out in my lack of judgment toward others; in my abundance of forgiveness, in my extension into the life of another person and my patience as I wait for them to repent.

Kindness "Chrestotes" in Greek means "kindness. It is joined to philanthropia – human friendship. It means forbearance, to overlook; and is the opposite of "opotomia" which means severity or cutting something short and quickly. It is the grace which pervades the whole nature, mellowing all which would have been harsh and austere.” 

Goodness "Agathosune" in Greek means “active goodness. It is more than chrestotes (kindness), a mellowing of character. It is character energized expressing itself in active good. Thus chrestotes in action is agathosune.” 
Kindness in action is goodness. 

Do you see how impossible it is? After I taught these words and we looked at other passages that just further confirmed the beauty of a patient, kind, good woman I told my Tuesday story of the opposite. My heart and voice were broken as I shared; not because I had a bad day {almost every woman in my class faces more difficult circumstances DAILY, that isn't the point} but because my heart was genuinely broken that I am so powerless, that my best efforts are so empty, and that I can so quickly disregard such beautiful grace-filled Truth. I saw the faces of these women who love me and I knew that some of them had already tuned out the powerful words we'd just studied in light of my sadness, and were moving on to planning what comfort casseroles they would bring me and when they could kidnap me for coffee or surprise me with skittles in the carline at school and what is it she always orders at Sonic?.....

I didn't want comfort, I wanted Him. And I was convinced anew and more than ever before that He is the only way. I was both humbly horrified by my behavior and freshly grateful for His strength that defies my own. And that desperation is why I shared with them and why I am trying to work up the courage to hit "publish" on this quite raw blog post. I want Tuesday's disaster to open my eyes and theirs and yours to the paradox of "Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal." 
John 12:24-25, MSG

Resolute dying to self and reckless living to God isn't popular and it isn't intuitive; so often it feels backward. But it is TRUE and it is FRUITFUL and it is SATISFYING. Take heart when you have a Tuesday train wreck, because it provides the opportunity to bury self and come up fruitful, and in that little nugget is the seed of Hope for each of us. Be encouraged, when you are weak He is strong and that is enough.

These are all phone pics taken on fun less "Train-Wrecky" days.
Blessed beyond what I deserve!

The definitions for patience, kindness, and goodness came from The Complete Word Study Dictionary New Testament, 1991 Spiros Zodhiates.