Listen to Me My Friend: The Lessons Learned

Introduction

When you grow up a preacher’s daughter you usually attend a lot of church services, meet a lot of people there, and oftentimes get a lot of attention that you don’t want or appreciate.

Looking back on those years I realize those church services taught me to do two things very well and consistently.

One: Sit quietly and observe.

Two: Ask a lot of questions.

I didn’t always ask the questions out loud, but sometimes we silently question the things we see in this world while longing to make sense of it all and once I learned there was good and bad, and dumb and smart I wanted answers. I wanted proof, reason, explanation, logic, and most importantly, truth. I didn’t want any part of unknown, imaginary, false, or fake.

To many I suppose the known purpose of church is to save your soul. In my case I’d have to say that those two skills I learned there saved all of me many times, many ways. Nothing I learned there prevented heartache, pain, or suffering, but with questions come answers, and with answers comes understanding. In my mind understanding brings me to conclusions.

Needless to say, I don’t have all the answers but I definitely can say I have some understanding and peace of mind. Peace of mind about living, loving, and loss and I’d like to share it with you and I hope it helps anyone who is struggling through confusion and pain because it grieves my heart and spirit to see people hurting.

There’s always more wisdom to gain from truthful answers to our questions, and better examples to learn from, but if your mind has been rattled by circumstance or your heart has been devastated by loss maybe it wasn’t truthful wisdom you were taught or good examples that you learned from. Maybe the influences in your life and the so called lessons you were taught were inaccurate, or misguided or misinterpreted. Very often a seed of confusion and conflict is planted in the heart and mind of a vulnerable soul when someone uses their position or title in life to misguide, misjudge, mistreat or misunderstand someone else.

I remember the days when parents were expected to consistently show love and discipline their children, the church was cherished as a holy and respected house of God and people welcomed law and order to benefit and protect the citizens in our communities. There’s always been conflict and disorder somewhere but I do believe we have never had so many people using their voice, demanding to be heard and expecting us to believe they have all the answers as if they have acquired some high and mighty authority that’s worth listening to and learning from.

Thankfully I have learned a few lessons that have taught me how to deal with both the confusing and conflicting content and subject matter in my own heart and mind and now willingly rather than reluctantly I hope to bring to your attention what may be causing so much grief and frustration and misunderstanding. Obviously I am a student of lifelong learning but if a church service has broken your spirit rather than lifted your spirit. If a death has paralyzed you rather than made you stronger. If a tragedy has left you grief stricken rather than forgiving and compassionate. If you can’t understand why pain and suffering and mistreatment goes on all around us. If you live with false hope rather than knowing who has deceived you. If you haven’t stepped up to become the best example to your children…then I welcome you to read the journaling and poetry that has upheld me throughout my own lack of understanding. Each chapter is a different subject and is directed at the world around me concerning what I’ve observed, experienced and questioned. It’s a heart to heart type of conversation and within each attempt to make sense of it all, there is a determination to recover, remember, practice, and put forth the beliefs that have sustained me. This book is not my entire life story but when the chapters are combined it is a story of believing in a God given strength and endurance. A story of determination to persevere and to cling to, the God given opportunity for each of us to have our spirits lifted and our hearts and minds fulfilled with comfort, love, and understanding throughout the difficult days.

God bless you, for your efforts to endure.

1

No Safe Place

At around the age of thirteen I had the thought to someday be a writer, and with that thought I also had strong feelings about telling the truth. I didn’t know what subject I would write about, but I had the desire and determination to one day help people and hopefully lift their spirits with creative writing.

It was a hard lesson to learn but eventually I realized that many times what we have in our heart can be overwhelmed by what is going on in our lives. Our circumstances, our surroundings, our situations, our influences, and our choices can make or break a dream, a hope, a faith.

I won’t make a judgment on whether I was misguided or if I misunderstood but after many years of Sunday school classes and many different church services I walked away from attending those services like a lost sheep wondering off into the wilderness. It is sometimes a difficult lesson to learn or even be aware of, but it is worth thinking about, how religion and beliefs have influenced your life. It doesn’t matter what religion, tradition, cult, nationality, culture, educator, or authority you have been influenced by, the common accusation that can be involved in all of them is a criticism that the outsiders are wrong, and then as a result, we can or should separate ourselves, walk away, from people who don’t believe as we believe.

The environment that I was born into was Protestant and while not all churches portray Christianity in the same way, the message I heard was, this is us and that is them and don’t you dare be like them. Also, the world around us was wrong and while we were strictly forbidden to participate in that world we were also responsible for convincing the people of that world that they too should transform, change, give up and renounce their humanity and be like us. That doesn’t even make sense and I do believe there are quite a few generations suffering the consequences of the mixed messages they heard as a child. For so many people their childhood included sitting through the Sunday school lessons and an introduction to both God and the Bible and then hearing about how to be good or bad and accepting or rejecting behaviors that are right or wrong. We were formally introduced to God and then came an age and time of more choices and actually facing the real world and then the confusion and conflict began. Ironically, the underlying and confusing option we were taught is that we do