The Tyranny of Self-Doubt

Posted on February 21, 2012 by

Verla--head onKevin Costner’s moving tribute to Whitney Houston at her funeral offered fresh insight into why Whitney may have initially turned to the alcohol and drugs that ultimately took her life.

Costner said he and the superstar became fast friends because they came from the same background. Both were raised in strict but loving families, where church was the center of their growing up years.

Whitney knew she was loved and accepted, Costner said, and knew her voice was a gift from God. But as a young adult, when complete strangers gave her an outsized success, she struggled with waves of self-doubt. “Am I good enough? Do I deserve this? Will my next project disappoint them?” Costner called it the burden of fame.

It was pretty overwhelming–a skinny, mischievous kid from New Jersey called “Nippy,” catapulted into the stratosphere of superstardom. In rapid succession she racked up seven consecutive No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Hot 100 Hits, eventually selling over 170 million albums, singles and videos worldwide. Seven studio albums and three movie soundtrack albums all earned diamond, multi-platinum, platinum or gold certification. Even her version of the National Anthem at the Super Bowl in 1991 became a best-selling recording.

Theories abound as to when things started to go terribly wrong. Bad choices, bad companions, addictive personality, fear of failure. The problems snowballed. Drugs wrecked her voice. A new album underperformed. Once adoring fans booed her offstage in Europe. It must have been excruciating to experience and it was equally painful to watch. I make no excuses for any of it, but it’s tragic nonetheless.

Over the weekend I heard a couple of Christians discussing Whitney’s story. They talked like the Holy Spirit bullet-proofs believers from making such destructive choices, as if true believers never experience such a downfall. That’s ridiculous. The Holy Spirit certainly has the power to help us overcome addictions. But our self-will and brokenness can insist on doing life our way first and there are consequences.

I’ve known several wonderful, talented people who’ve made a solid commitment to God who, nevertheless, fell hard for dozens of reasons–bad choices,  genetic predisposition, addictive personalities, and, yes, self-doubt, low self-esteem, and fear of disappointing others. They are brave people who have worked hard in Twelve Step programs and with the help of the Holy Spirit to get their lives back on track.

You may never have struggled with a serious addiction. If so, thank God. But that doesn’t mean self-doubt will never tap you on the shoulder. At some point in life, if you do something extraordinary or, conversely, if you suffer a major failure, there will be times when you, too, will be plagued by the same question, “Am I good enough?”

Psychologists say common sources of self-doubt are: 1) significant past experience(s)  when you tried something and didn’t succeed (or saw someone else fail at something), 2) someone important to you made crushing statements about you and you believed they were true, and/or 3) you have a melancholy temperament that tends to see the downside of things, including yourself.

What will help?

Identify the wounds that have cut deep and how they have shaped your attitude toward life. Name the lies you’ve believed about yourself as a result. Reject them–especially those perpetrated by our culture, such as you’re too old, too fat, not smart enough, not normal. Dig into scripture and replace the lies with God’s truth. The Bible is God’s love letter to us all.

Yes, the Bible says we are all sinners. But that’s a description of our spiritual condition and our need of a Savior. It’s not a statement about our worth. God says we’re made in his image. That makes us eternally valuable. Jesus thought we were worth dying for. The Holy Spirit loves us so much he promises to take up residence in our hearts to help us handle anything that gets thrown at us, if we ask for it. That’s a pretty profound posse’ of supporters.

So poke your thumb in the eye of self-doubt and dare to be fully you!  God’s counting on it. He has no understudy to play your part. In fact, he has celebrated you since the day you were born.


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Raise Your Hand If You’re Normal

Posted on February 1, 2012 by

Verla--head onFrom the time I wrote my first term paper on Dolly Madison in middle school, I’ve enjoyed reading and writing about people in the public eye. As a kid, the lives of famous people seemed glamorous and exciting, with wonderful perks and lots of toadies to do their bidding. What’s not to like?

Now, as an adult I read biographies and memoirs for different reasons. I assume the famous person’s experience and influence may have given them more insight into how to live well or how to handle setbacks. Sometimes I’m just curious. Ironically, once you get past all the window dressing that goes with a public life, they look strangely like the rest of us. They struggle with doubt, insecurity, failure, feeling misunderstood, relationship issues, physical and emotional heartaches. Life, it turns out, is a great leveler.

Recently, I read a spate of personal memoirs by well-known Christians. Billy Graham, accustomed to speaking to millions of people around the world, talks in his book Nearing Home, Life, Faith and Finishing Well about his struggle to make peace with his now-marginalized life dealing with Parkinson’s disease and other ravages of aging.

Eugene Petersen, in his memoir The Pastor, writes about his frustration when, as a young pastor, he had to deal with denominational leaders who required him to produce voluminous monthly reports he was sure nobody read. He confirmed his suspicions with some subversive mischief. He included horrific fictitious things allegedly going on in his life in the reports–things that should have evoked an immediate crisis response! None ever came.

Mother Teresa, before her death, wrote not only about her battle with depression but ethical dilemmas like whether she should accept large donations from organizations like casinos, if it meant being able to save the lives of thousands more people who were dying on the streets of Calcutta. Her conclusion? She took the money as long as there were no strings attached that would compromise her work. She left the judging of the organization up to God.

The memoir that most wrecked me, though, was Brennan Manning’s new memoir All is Grace. I’ve always admired Manning’s shameless honesty about his failures–like his lifelong battle with alcoholism and how he left the priesthood to marry and then botched his marriage. No glossing over the hard parts for him.

However, in this final book Manning takes honesty to a whole new level. In fact, I found myself wishing he had saved himself a little face. After all, the man has impacted hundreds of thousands of people and is now a mere shell of his former self, battling “wet brain” syndrome and near blindness. I kept thinking, “Brennan, you don’t need to tell us all this. Spare yourself the humiliation! You’ve done so much good with your writing and speaking. Don’t do this!”

But again he insists on waving the banner of God’s outrageous grace, at his own expense—not as an excuse for his failings, but because his spiritual poverty drives him to God. And what he finds in God’s embrace is worth whatever humiliation his sins have cost him.

Manning knows there was nothing cheap about God’s grace. It was obscenely expensive. It took the death of God’s only Son to cover our tab. But he’s positively giddy about the fact that because the sacrifice was so enormous, the amount of grace available to us in God’s bank account is equally enormous–big enough to cover our most destructive behaviors, all our falling downs and getting ups. Our part is simply to offer a repentant heart and make a humble request, “More grace, please.”

It makes me uncomfortable—this wild God with stockpiles of grace, enough for us all, followed around by a broken old man with a checkered history who tells anyone who will listen, “He’s crazy about me, you know.” It’s not normal.

On the other hand, normal is overrated. I hope whatever he has is contagious.

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Jesus and the Spin Doctors

Posted on January 15, 2012 by

Verla--head onThe 2012 Primary and Caucus season is barely underway and the mudslinging is already so heavy the candidates need waders. The candidates, their PACs and Super PACs, reportedly spent $16 million dollars in Iowa alone (Rick Perry backers spent the most–$475 per voter. Rick Santorum spent the least–$19 per voter, with the other candidates falling somewhere in between.)

Now the push is on in South Carolina, a make-or-break state for candidates and a state where politics is a contact sport. More millions spent. Attack ads increasingly ugly.

I’ve been watching all this with special interest since I spent many years as a journalist covering local and state politics in Chicago. I also worked on the other side of the equation in public relations, where reputation management, “impression engineering,” and corporate positioning is an art form practiced on behalf of clients.

One of the sad things I learned in both journalism and PR was that often the truth isn’t nearly as important to people as their perception of what is true. Thus, in politics, if a politician and his or her handlers feel threatened and can’t make a convincing case for themselves, they will try to change your perception of their opponents. Truth may be a casualty.

The Pharisees were the reputation management experts in Jesus’s day. To make sure that only “their kind” gained any position of authority, they had hundreds of rules for what it took to be a Pharisee-in-good-standing. They were notorious for going on the attack to discredit anyone who didn’t “get with the program.”

Then along came Jesus, who didn’t give a rip about all their posturing and silly rules for putting people in their place. He cared about people and the condition of their hearts. The Pharisees felt threatened by Jesus. He challenged their position in society, so they crafted a disingenuous plan to undermine his reputation. (Sound familiar?)

They brought him a woman caught in the act of adultery and tried to drag him into a legal debate about how the woman should be punished.  They weren’t interested in justice, the correct application of the law, the woman or Jesus’s answer. They just wanted to trap him and hurt his credibility.

Jesus didn’t take the bait (which is a valuable lesson all by itself). With a simple observation, he re-framed the whole discussion. After the Pharisees had blown off their steam, he calmly said, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” In other words, “Hey, you with the holier-than-thou attitude, take a look in the mirror. It isn’t pretty.”  As the truth soaked in, one by one the Pharisees slinked away.

Then–because Jesus is always more interested in the truth than in taking sides–he turned to the woman, who had her own issues. Gently he told her he, too, didn’t condemn her, but she still needed to face her own junk, her adultery. He urged her to use her reprieve as an opportunity to live differently in the future.

Every day we–as individuals and collectively as those in the family of faith–are being ranked and evaluated by family, peers and the “rule-makers” in our culture. Sometimes they tell the truth about us and sometimes they promulgate a faulty perception that has little to do with the truth. Jesus promised they will be held accountable.

However, the guilt doesn’t stop there. In an effort to protect our position or reputation, we attack, undermine or distort the character or behavior of those who aren’t “like us” or who don’t follow every rule we deem critical–in politics and in life.

Again, Jesus comes along to reframe the discussion. Be careful at whom you throw stones. I know the truth about all of you. He invites us to measure our actions and words by his standard, take the forgiveness he offers and live differently in the future.

If you think I’m trying to make some kind of subtle political statement about a particular candidate or party, you’re wrong. What’s happening in the political arena simply illustrates the true condition of the human heart when not reformed by God. Building up our own image or tearing down someone else’s comes more naturally than we care to admit.

God said he made us in his image. It’s the only image that should matter.

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The Chameleon in Us All

Posted on January 6, 2012 by

 Verla--head onSitting in a doctor’s office and filling out pages of medical history is not my idea of a good time. But it’s part of the tedious transition to a new doctor when you move to another city, which we’ve recently done. The older you get, the more history there is to report…unless you’re my husband, who is so disgustingly healthy his medical history could be completed on the back of a postcard.

There’s something a bit unnerving about seeing everything that has affected your health catalogued in one place—the surgeries, broken bones, car accidents, meds, traumatic events–rolled out in chronological order. I found myself thinking Who is this person and how did she survive all that?

I had the same thought today when I read that British physicist Stephen Hawking just turned 70. Hawking was diagnosed at 21 with Lou Gehrig’s disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), which typically is fatal in 3-5 years. Today, although Hawking is wheelchair-bound, needs around-the-clock care and relies on a computer and voice synthesizer to speak, on the world stage he continues to contribute brilliantly to his field. Again, I thought How does he do that? 

We do it by adapting, changing to reflect whatever is our new reality at any given time. We don’t give it a name. We just do it.

Adaptation is a word more commonly used in nature, where mutation abounds. The veiled chameleon, for example, is a nervous, territorial creature with rotating eyes that act independently of each other: one can focus up and to the right, as the other looks down and to the left—a mutation developed as a hyper-vigilant alert system. Flounder have the ability to change color and blend in with sea gravel on the ocean floor, both to hide from predators and to gain an advantage when stalking other sea creatures for food. In both cases, biologists say, these creatures change not just to accommodate changing circumstances but to survive.

Adaptation in humans is more complicated. We adapt not just to survive or even to overcome past physical challenges or medical traumas. We also adapt to handle the emotional, mental or spiritual repercussions of those past experiences, because cumulatively they affect everything we do right now. Left unattended and unaddressed, they can sabotage our future.

The trick is figuring out how to handle all those collective experiences in a way that allows us to move forward–without becoming hardened, scared people who, like the chameleon or the flounder, go on the attack when threatened or go into hiding as a result of the pain and injustices visited on us by a world that’s not always kind.

Christians deal with the whole adaptation thing on an additional level. A common question among my friends goes something like this: I don’t hold the same point of view on this (insert the issue of your choice) as my friends at work, but I don’t want to be seen as a weirdo. Hey, I’m just a regular guy trying to make it in a tough world, just like they are. But I’ve become their favorite whipping boy because I don’t move in lockstep with the crowd. Do I have to become like them and turn my back on my values to survive in the workplace?

The answer does not lie at either extreme. Adapting does not mean camouflaging who we are until we are unrecognizable or, conversely, hiding out in holy bunkers and lobbing grenades at the world until Christ’s return. Rather, we are invited to steep our hundreds of daily choices in the guidance of scripture, include wise counselors among our companions, and keep our hearts tender toward the inner promptings of the Holy Spirit. When we need to know what to do, the appropriate response will be clear.

Jesus showed us how it’s done. He walked the same dusty roads as everyone else, ate at their tables and looked for ways to bring hope to the brokenhearted, justice to the oppressed, kindness to strangers and love to the unlovable, while never changing who He was at His core. We’re called to do the same.

In other words, the best survival mechanism of all is to align ourselves with a different reality completely–God’s eternal reality, a safe place where eventually we can be who He created us to be, with no need to adapt ever again .

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Tomorrow Has Been Officially Cancelled

Posted on December 30, 2011 by

Verla--head onToday I read that 13-year old Rebecca Black’s YouTube video, “Friday,” was the most watched music video of 2011. The upbeat song with excruciatingly awful lyrics went viral this year, drawing nearly 16 million viewers. The amateur internet sensation never claimed to be a serious recording artist. She was simply sharing her good-times attitude toward Friday as the launch pad to the weekend and, apparently, a lot of people wanted in on the party!

Ironically, half way around the world, Friday was getting a different kind of press. The independent state of Somoa, a group of islands in the South Pacific, announced it has cancelled Friday. (Can they do that?) Samoa wants to jump from one side of the International Date Line to the other this Friday, to be more in sync with its two biggest business partners – New Zealand and Australia. So–for this week only–Somoans will go to bed Thursday night and wake up to Saturday.

Frankly, I love Fridays. But we’ve all had days we wished we could cancel. They represent future deadlines for which we’re not prepared or past days we wish could exorcise from the public record or at least from our memory.

About a year ago I met a woman who, by her own account, had lived a good life filled with many happy days–except for one, a day I’m sure she wished she could have cancelled.

I met her while spending a summer morning visiting a retirement center. I was part of a group of ten people hoping to bring a little cheer to the center’s most vulnerable seniors. We took ten wheelchair-bound residents, along with a nurse, on an outdoor excursion around the Square of the State Capitol, then on to a lookout point overlooking Lake Monona, to watch the sailboats. I played wheelchair jockey to a shy, tiny woman who would soon celebrate her 100th birthday.

In an effort to engage her in light conversation, we talked about our husbands and what a blessing it was to have a good partner. She explained she married her husband right out of high school. They were married more years than she could remember and they loved each other madly. She couldn’t remember exactly when he died, but said they had never spent a day apart. Even when he was forced to go into a nursing home the last year of his life, she visited him every day. Well, every day except the day he died.

She began to cry, remembering with great pain that she was not there the one day she should have been. It haunted her. She felt she had let him down. It was a day she wished she could have erased forever.

The other wheelchair teams were already walking way ahead of us down the street, but I stopped and knelt down beside her. “God doesn’t blame you, you know. He’s quick to forgive and died to set us free from guilt and regret. If God has forgiven you, isn’t it time to forgive yourself? After all, you were by your husband’s side every day but one. He had a lifetime of memories of your faithfulness.” She squeezed my hand and whispered a quiet “thank you,” as I rummaged through my own mental lockbox, wondering if I, too, had unreleased regrets.

Regrets represent the deepest sighs of our soul. By definition, they are part of something that happened in the past, invisibly latching onto our spirit like tiny weights slowing our forward momentum.

Jerry Sittser in his book A Grace Disguised, argues persuasively for dealing with our regrets to avoid living in a perpetual state of guilt.  “We think there is no forgiveness or redemption because we are deprived of the opportunity to right our wrongs.”  But, he says, “Regret can lead to transformation if we view loss as an opportunity to take inventory of our lives.”

Traditionally, we think of January 1st as the perfect time to take just such an inventory. This year, look over your shoulder one last time and make sure there are no lingering regrets waiting  to taint the year up ahead. Release them to God. Making things new is what He’s all about.

Posted in Christian Living, Regrets | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Have You Seen Him?

Posted on December 22, 2011 by

Verla--head onMy mailbox is full in December. I receive letters and emails from friends and family, spreading good cheer And I also hear from people who have read something I’ve written and just want to reach out and know someone is listening.

This morning was no exception. There were letters and emails with expressions of God’s goodness and provision in 2011. And then there was a long, poignant note from someone on the other side of the world who explained that this year God had been silent on the two issues about which she needs to make major decisions soon–issues for which she’s been sincerely seeking, without success, for direction from God. For her, it is not a season of glad tidings and great joy.

She wrote, in part, “I sometimes find myself asking whether He (God) still answers prayers or whether He has made a sober decision to ignore our prayers. … It is a very painful and excruciating time. … He said all things work together for our good, but I am struggling to see what good this is working for us. Having a hard time seeing past the circumstance right now.”

It’s hard to feel merry when Heaven is quiet.

I’ve been there…more than once. I even wrote a magazine article about it, in an effort to make sense of those times when God demonstrates with annoying clarity that He cannot be managed or packaged into a formula or neatly explained by a clever saying on the back of a t-shirt.

Sometimes, in the absence of answers, we are forced to lean on what His Word says about His unchanging character–including His compassion when we are hurting and His promise never to abandon us in our darkest hours.

The Christmas story itself is further proof of God With Us–the sending of His only Son to live among us and ultimately die an ignominious death so He could get all his children back. It’s God’s story in a nutshell.

If you are one of the people this Christmas with unanswered prayers, this may be a season of hanging on until the answers come. Nothing more. That’s okay.  Watch this video and know you’re in good company. But don’t give up. Wise men still seek Him.

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What Jesus Wants for Christmas

Posted on December 16, 2011 by

Verla--head onThis is the time of year when Conventional Wisdom (whatever THAT is) says we’re supposed to be “making a list and checking it twice,” because Santa is coming to town. Frankly, it’s more like Macy’s, Hallmark, Toys ‘R Us and Best Buy coming to town…and into our mailboxes and computers…to tell us all the things we must buy or receive to make our joy complete by December 25th.

Most websites will even cheerfully break down gift ideas by category–stylish gifts, food gifts, gadget gifts, environmentally correct gifts. Their lists are more intimidating than my list. How did I manage to live this long without all these things?

The gift list elves go into overdrive when it comes to recommendations for the hard-to-buy-for people on your list. Gifts.com ranked the Air Swimmer Remote Control Inflatable Flying Shark one of the top gift buys of 2011. What? You don’t have one of these bad boys? The helium-filled fish moves up, down, left to right, like a real shark and will reportedly stay inflated for weeks. Or, for the serious athlete, there’s the Garmin GPS receiver with heart rate monitor, a sports training watch that does everything but kiss you on the lips for completing your run, all for under $400. Is this a great country or what?

I’m really not a Grinch when it comes to Christmas gifts, although I do push back against the excesses and the manipulation of our emotions and resources in the name of Christmas.

But, that aside, who doesn’t like to receive gifts? I like receiving gifts any time of the year–especially ones that showed the giver had me in mind and I was not just another name to be checked off a list. I like to give those kind of gifts, too. In fact, some of the most memorable gifts I’ve received or given didn’t cost money.

On my daughter’s 18th birthday I gave her two journals filled with entries written about memorable events in our life together as mother/daughter from when she was age 10-18. Good times and sad times, funny things she said, kitchen catastrophes (mostly mine) as we cooked together, pet crises (including Pisces, the cat from Hell), disappointments, highlights, you name it. Just thinking about those memories makes me smile.

The journals represented a gift of my time. No cash required but, for most of us, it’s still an expensive gift because we never have enough of it. Maybe that’s why we reserve such a gift for those we love the most.

The journals were also a gift of remembrance–a way of expressing shared history that was special–even the hard parts–because we got through it together. It was a chance to acknowledge all the times I needed to ask forgiveness for not doing the parenting thing perfectly. And it was a way of affirming how special she was (and still is) and how much richer I am, having shared life’s journey with her.

Who on your list deserves such a gift? What about Jesus? We typically talk about Him as the Giver of gifts, not the recipient. Is He even on your list?

 Him:  Honey, what do you think we should get Jesus?

 Her:  I don’t know. Do we really need to give Him anything? He’s so hard to buy for and the shipping costs will kill us! We haven’t been to His house in ages. I don’t even know His size! Besides, He gets so many gifts, He won’t miss one more from us.

Well, you’re right. Jesus doesn’t need anything. But He went to extraordinary lengths to demonstrate how much we mean to Him (which, of course, is the real story of Christmas). So, it’s no stretch to think He’d like to know He matters to us, too. (Do you like giving lavish gifts that go unacknowledged year after year?)

I’ll bet He’d love to hear you reminisce about your shared history with Him–the good, the bad and even the ugly–and to receive the gift of your forgiveness. Usually He’s the one doing the forgiving of us. But we can offer to let go of the harsh judgments we may have made about Him–when we erroneously presumed He didn’t love us, wasn’t listening or didn’t care, because He didn’t act on our behalf in the way we felt He should. I’ll go first. He’ll love it.

Surprise Jesus this year. Give Him the only thing He’s ever wanted. More of you.

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