So you wanna be great...

by Lenora Rand
For Recovery Worship, October 3, 2009

Jesus asked them, "What were you discussing on the road?" The silence was deafening—they had been arguing with one another over who among them was greatest. He sat down and summoned the Twelve. "So you want first place? Then take the last place. Be the servant of all." He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, he said, "Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me—God who sent me."

Mark 9:33-37 (The Message)

Sometimes I read stories about Jesus’ disciples and think, “What were they, 2nd graders?” I mean, come on. They’re walking down the road arguing with each other about who’s the greatest. I don’t think I’ve argued with anyone about who was greatest since…well since I stopped saying stuff like, “I can jump farther than you, poopy face, Na Na Na Na Na.” Do grown ups actually do that—I mean really—unless maybe you’re Muhammed Ali. Remember his poem about being the greatest: I'm the king of the world, I am the greatest, I’m Muhammed Ali. When Ali said that every major newspaper around the globe reported it. Because it was so audacious. Outlandish. Grown ups just don’t say that kind of stuff every day.

Out loud, at least.

Oh…but in secret. Inside our crazy little monkey minds…that’s another story. For me at least.

Like at work a couple weeks ago, this really became apparent to me, it got right up in my face basically. I work in advertising and we were preparing for a big client presentation. We were showing this client 6 or 8 new ad campaigns. The way this goes is, as a creative person, you come up with the ideas and then go to internal meetings with the creative lead and all these business and research and strategy types—we call them suits--where you present your ideas, get feedback and refine the ideas or the ideas get killed completely and don’t move forward to the client. This is a big part of what I do for a living, but this process is always hard, always painful for me, because deep in my heart, deep in that secret, not-so-evolved-place inside me, I want to be the greatest. I want to be the one who has the best campaign in the room. And I want to be the acknowledged King of the advertising world. Or Queen…whatever.

Not that I ever say any of this out loud, mind you. In meetings I am calm and thoughtful, and I’m rational and I nod my head calmly and thoughtfully and I dutifully take notes on how to change and improve my campaigns and I act like a team player and I’m supportive of everyone’s work …while secretly inside I’m comparing myself and my stuff to everyone else’s, I’m seeing how we stack up against each other, I’m checking to see who’s the greatest among us. Is it him? Is it me? I want it to be me. I work really hard for it to be me. I don’t sleep well at night going over how I can make my work better and how I can present it better just so I can be the acknowledged best in the room.

And as we were going through this campaign development stuff a couple weeks ago, I have to say, I didn’t feel like I had the best work in the room. And it was driving me crazy…I was feeling so bad about myself. Every day going into work I had to talk myself off the ledge. Not that anyone could see this of course. Outwardly, zen-like calm. Inwardly, gorilla jumping up and down, beating chest and screaming for more bananas. And I tried to medicate the feelings with food, of course. Because that’s what I do.

So on the day of the big client presentation there’s about 30 people gathered in a room and us creatives get up one by one to present our campaigns. The first guy got up to present—Dom—and I have to tell you, I think Dom is brilliant. He’s funny and clever and quick, and his campaign was good but he presents it so well and he’s so likable that whatever he does always seems even better. In contrast I always feel stiff and like, even if my ideas are good, I’m terrible at presenting them, I’m trying too hard and I’m boring and nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I’m gonna eat some worms. But this day Dom got up and presented his stuff and he wasn’t in top form, and the room wasn’t with him. Their body language, their lack of laughter, I could just tell, he wasn’t going over like gangbusters. He was maybe even slightly semi-bombing.

And you know what?

I was glad.

I was relieved and happy, outwardly calm and zen-like, sure, but inside leaping for joy, doing little cartwheels in my mind, full of glee and hope, because now maybe I had a chance, if not to be the greatest in the room, to be at least great-er.

So, yeah, I really wish I could tell you I am not like those disciples, those big babies arguing about who’s greatest. But I am ashamed to say, in my heart of hearts, I really am. And maybe the fact that I do it secretly, maybe that even makes it worse, meaner, nastier, deadlier. There’s that famous saying in recovery circles, “You’re only as sick as your secrets.” And my secret desire for greatness, my constant comparisons of myself with others, I’ve been coming to see, that is not only sick, but making me sicker. It makes me anxious, and sad and fills me with shame and makes me want to eat 3 lbs of chocolate and keeps me up at night and leaves me feeling very lonely.

This past week I was reading the 5th step in the brown book of OA—the Twelve steps and Twelve Traditions…and I came across this sentence that hit me right between the eyes: “Many of us have always felt we had to be better than everyone else or we were no good at all.”

First, I was happy to read: “Many of us…” in that sentence. Maybe I’m not the only one who is this sick and crazy. That was encouraging. And then the rest of it:“ Many of us have always felt we had to be better than everyone else or we were no good at all…” that felt like the truth, my truth at least. Right there on paper. I want to be great, I want to be the greatest because if I’m not that, I’m nothing. I am worthless, and unloved. And that’s why I spend all this emotional energy and physical energy trying to be great. But secretly. Not so it shows. I want my greatness to be discovered and praised. Praised a lot. Praised the most. Because if not, I am nothing. I’m no good at all.

And here’s the thing: even when I do get some praise and acknowledgment and approval, it never seems to be enough. I’ll always remember what Garrison Keillor said once in an interview. Someone asked him how he felt about all the acclaim he was receiving and he said something like, "Well, you know, it's not really enough. It's never really enough. What I want is to be WORSHIPPED FOR THE GOD THAT I AM."

Oh yeah, that’s it exactly. Whatever praise I get is nice, but not enough. Whatever success. Whatever approval. Because frankly, no one yet has worshipped me for the God that I am.

It's so strange that on the one hand you can feel like such a failure and slug and on the other want/imagine/desire to be seen as a God.

This is the exact nature of my disease, the exact nature of my insanity.

Now, I’ve read this scripture before and the answer I thought Jesus was giving in this story to all this insanity was simple “Stop trying to be great, and put yourself last, be a servant, be humble and be small, like a child…”

But looking at this passage carefully again, I realized that actually isn’t what Jesus is saying at all. First he doesn’t tell you to stop wanting to be great, or the greatest. In verse 35 it says “He sat down and called the Twelve and said ‘So you want first place?’” See he doesn’t say not to feel what we feel, he asks us just to claim it, admit it, stop hiding it. To say, yes, I may look like I’m Miss Zen-like Calm 2009, but inside I’m a little rat in a maze desperately wanting first place. “Yes, I do, I do want first place.”

So that’s the first step…to tell the truth, to let go of the secret.

And then Jesus uses a couple metaphors to explain how to be great. He starts by talking about becoming like a servant.

Now for any of us who’ve struggled with codependency or Al-Anon issues, this whole “be a servant” thing sounds scary, it sounds way too much like “be a doormat, take care of everyone but yourself,” which has made many of our lives unmanageable. And it’s hard to know exactly what Jesus meant by using this metaphor because I suspect being a servant in Jesus day meant something different than it does in ours. One thing I do imagine that was probably the same, though, whether you were a hired servant thousands of years ago or today: You’re not in charge, and you know it. All you really need to do is show up and do what you’re being asked to do. And that’s it. Until the next day, when you show up and do it all over again. You’re not in charge…and no one expects you to be, and you are appreciated not for being in charge, not for being God-like, but for being present and available and willing to do what you do best as a servant, whether that’s washing the donkeys down or polishing the BMW.

And that, in and of itself, is kind of a relief, isn’t it? It is for me, because when I get into the whole “I have to be great or I’m nothing” mind swirl it’s about trying to do stuff right, it’s about trying to take charge of the situation so I look good and so people will like me, approve of me, love me. But when you’re a servant, it’s very clear. You’re not in charge. So you might as well stop trying to control things or manage things or get on top of the situation. Because you’re not really in charge.

This whole “what does it mean to be a servant” question also reminded me of a story Jesus told which we often call the story of the Prodigal Son. Though it could also be called the story of the Amazingly Forgiving and Loving Father. Or the story of The Hired Servants Who Are Well Taken Care Of. Remember, when the lost son of the story comes to his senses he thinks, Wow I should just go home. My father takes care of his servants so well, they’re doing so much better than I am, I’d be happy to go home and just be one of them.” So, that’s a little different view of servanthood, isn’t it?

It’s like Jesus is saying, “You want to be great? Then be like one of my servants who I feed and clothe and give good beds to and give good work to do, be like one of my servants who people actually envy, because I don’t expect them to be in charge and because I take care of them so well.” It’s a picture of servanthood that isn’t about being a doormat or being responsible for everyone’s happiness. It’s a vision of servanthood that’s about being well provided for, well cared for.

The other metaphor Jesus uses to explain how to deal with our insanity around trying to be great is that of holding a child.
37He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, he said, "Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me—God who sent me."

You want to be great? Jesus asks. Then embrace the children. As I do. When you do you will be embracing me and the God who sent me.

One day soon after we had our big client presentation, Gary and I met for lunch one day. Our waitress was in her late 20s and cute and kind of funny and joking around with us and we got started talking—she found out we had kids and she was saying how she didn’t know if she was ready for kids yet, but she didn’t want to wait too long either. And I told we’d waited until we were older and we were happy we did, I basically told her not to worry. And then she said something, kind of off-handedly, about how what she really needed to do was quit partying so much and get her life more together, and she laughed, but beneath the laughter there was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, shining like a tiny gold nugget, small, but hard to miss…a glimpse of her brokenness and need and fear…and it got to me. She walked away to keep doing her job and I almost cried. I thought about trying to say something to her—have you thought about joining a recovery group, for example…but I didn’t know if I should, I didn’t want to be weird or preachy or shaming. Anyway, after we were all paid up and we stood to leave she was just standing there and so I went over and hugged her. I embraced her, I held her like she was my own child, or like my favorite niece or something. And that hug, in that moment, felt like a prayer, it felt like me embracing her not just with my arms, but with God’s arms too. I have no idea what she took from that hug—when it was over she kind of laughed and said, “Oh, you’re so sweet…” but I know what I took from it. In that moment I felt…great. Great, not as in brilliant or funny or the best at something. But deep down great, connected to God, filled with love.

You want to be great? Jesus says. Then embrace the children.

Jesus says to feel valuable you might want to stop trying to do it yourself. Stop trying to pump yourself up with the trappings of greatness. Let go of the illusion that you’re in charge and that if someone pronounces you the best in the room, then you’ll feel loved. That you will finally love yourself. And you’ll finally feel loved by God.

The problem with trying to feel great by being the best in the room is there’s always a Dom in our lives, always someone who seems greater than us, no matter what anybody says. Someone who’s skinnier or smarter or funnier or more talented, or who has a cleaner house or more together kids… As Sarah McLachlan said in one of her songs, “There’s always one reason to feel not good enough.”

So really, Jesus says, to get that feeling of connection and love you want, you might want to stop worrying so much about whether you’re the best, which is really about separating yourself from others, pulling away, standing out. You might want to stop that crazy swirl and look up and notice we’re all just big babies around here, we all just need someone to embrace us. So instead of holding your breath, and holding all the judgments and comparisons and shame, you hold out your arms and you hold all those children around you like Jesus did. You hold them in your arms and your heart.

And you do the same for yourself.

I used to think that when Jesus picked up that little kid in this story, he was telling us to be like a child who’s small and unimportant and knows it but it doesn’t matter—the child just has fun and doesn’t care who’s the best or not. But then I actually had children. And I realized practically from the word go they are in competition with each other, seeing who’s fastest, who has the most toys, who’s first in line, saying I’m better than you poopoo face…it’s amazing how non-angelic the little angels can be. They want to be the greatest, just like the rest of us big babies.

But maybe there is one difference between little kids and us. They let Jesus pick them up and embrace them. When my kids were little and sometimes even now, when they felt bad about themselves they would crawl into my lap and let themselves be loved.

That’s all Jesus seems to want from us. Not for us to pretend that we’re something we’re not. Not to be ashamed of our desire to be noticed and approved of and praised. You want to be greatest? Sure you do. I do. And It’s OK. We’re all big babies around here. Mostly we all just want to know we’re loved.

I think I might be starting to get it. At least a little. At least. just for today. as they say. You want to feel great? Embrace the big babies all around you and the big baby that lives inside you. Embrace them like Jesus does. Like Jesus wants to do with all of us right here and right now.

Just crawl into that lap, and let yourself be loved.

Who do you trust?

By Lenora Rand
From the August Recovery Worship service.

“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me.” John 14:1

Ok, I'll admit it…I have a few tiny trust issues. I don’t believe generally that things are going to turn out well for me. I tend to anticipate, in fact, that things are going to go badly. Possibly very, very badly. In my heart of hearts I believe that the world is a deeply nasty, unsafe place and though my life has not been too bad so far, no major huge successes or windfalls certainly, but no major disasters really, it’s only a matter of time before the worst happens.

To celebrate our first wedding anniversary, Gary and I decided to travel to Maine for a summer vacation. While there we camped in this beautiful state park out in the middle of nowhere. We were young and poor—we had only a miniscule borrowed pup tent to sleep in, which we pitched in this idyllic remote area, nothing around but the bugs and the birds (and possibly some bears lurking behind trees, stalking us…). We also had a little axe luckily, so we could cut up enough branches and fallen limbs to have a small fire. So on our first lovely Maine night in the woods, we sat by the fire, surrounded by a chorus of nature, until bedtime. At that point we crawled into our pup tent. And Gary quickly went to sleep. I did not. I lay there listening. Considering the possibility of bears. And snakes. But trying to talk myself off the wall of my fear. I was a city girl and not a nature girl but I told myself many other people had survived nights out in pup tents so I should just calm down. I was beginning to relax a little when I suddenly heard some other noise—not bug-related or bear-related…no, it was the noise of a truck or a car somewhere in the not too distant distance. And that’s when major panic hit. What about axe murderers????? There could be axe murderers in the woods. And we were so far away from civilization how easy would it be for them to creep into our campsite and murder us in our sleep? Possibly even with our own axe, which we’d probably conveniently left for them next to the fire pit!

I nudged Gary awake and asked, “What did we do with the axe, where did we leave it?” He said something along the lines of “What are you talking about? What difference does it make?” So I explained to him my whole theory about the axe murderers and my strong sense that we should have the axe in the tent with us, both so they wouldn’t kill us with it, and possibly for protection in case they’d brought their own axe. We’d only been married a year, remember, and we were still getting to know each other and I’m thinking at that point Gary was wondering if an annulment was still a possibility. He kept reassuring me everything was going to be all right and told me just to go back to sleep and I told him I really thought he should go out and get the axe and then I would sleep a lot better. But he wasn’t budging…so finally, now with fear and fury, I crawled out of the sleeping bag and the tiny tent, by myself, got to the fire pit, retrieved the axe and squirmed back in. I tucked the axe under my pillow and, no thanks to Gary – Happy-frigging-Anniversary—finally, finally got to sleep.

So yeah, trust has been a bit of an issue for me. And I’ve tended to self-medicate over the fear—with food mostly but with whatever is handy truthfully: cigarettes, alcohol, shopping, working…which has led to a lot of addiction issues I’m slowly, slowly recovering from.

And because I don’t trust, I’ve tended to try to take matters into my own hands as much as possible. Get to the axe before someone else does, so to speak. Which has led to a lot of attempts to control people and situations, tendencies toward perfectionism. And then the exhaustion from trying to be so perfect and to control everything has often led me to just want to throw up my hands and go off somewhere and be alone for the rest of my life. The problem is where would that be? Not out in the backwoods of Maine, certainly…!

The disciples in the story John tells in John 14 had a few trust issues too. Philip and Thomas in particular. They are clearly caught up in a crazy mind swirl in this story. Trying to figure out how they can possibly trust God. And how to trust Jesus, who never gives a straight answer it seems, who’s always talking in metaphors and symbols and pushing them to step outside of their regular ways of seeing things and doing things. Which is really quite annoying. It doesn’t take much imagination to hear their annoyance and frustration in this passage. And reading between the lines, you can almost even hear them saying a few choice words that John didn’t record for posterity.

“No, we don’t (insert swear word) know, Lord,” Thomas said. “We have no (insert swear word) idea where you are going, so how can we (insert swear word) know the way?”

But Jesus tells them, Look, I know it’s hard to trust in God because you haven’t seen God—but you’ve seen me, you’ve known me, and so you’ve seen God. I am your best picture of God.

What Jesus seems to be trying to explain to Philip and Thomas is that he understands that their ability to trust God, to turn their will and their lives over to a power greater than them, is very dependant on their picture of God. The picture of God they’re carrying around with them. And that’s the message I think Jesus is tryng to communicate to us too.

Zoe, my oldest daughter, has been taking driver’s ed this summer. And part of the deal is that we, her loving parents, need to go out and practice driving with her. For hours. There are many advantages Gary and I have discovered about having children later in life. But I have to say, being in the car with your kids who are learning to drive…at our age…heart attacks are not out of the question.

AND now that I’m watching Zoe drive and in the habit of screaming when she gets too close to parked cars, or flailing my arms and stomping on imaginary brakes when we come speeding up behind other cars at a stop light…I’ve also started noticing how Gary drives. And he does some things…now that I’m paying attention…that are pretty scary too. But the thing is, I am not generally screaming or flailing while riding with him. Because I trust him. I trust that he knows what he’s doing. So he can be going at the exact same speed as Zoe while approaching a stoplight and with him, I’m perfectly relaxed, but when Zoe is behind the wheel, I’m going: “Slow down, slow down, slow down….BRAKE! BRAKE! BRAKE!”

Now, I’m sure you’ve heard someone talk about how surrendering to God or your Higher Power is like letting God be in the driver’s seat. And I have to say whenever anyone suggested that sort of thing to me—Oh Lenora, you’ve just got to take your hands off the wheel--I’ve kinda wanted to slap them. And I think that’s partly because I’ve been terrified. Because I’ve got two pictures of God I’ve been hauling around with me all my life. One of them is the picture I carry in my mind, the one that says God is good and kind and loving and wants the best for me. That’s the Senior Class picture of God, the official, retouched photo that goes in a frame and sits on the piano. The other picture is the one I carry in my gut, the picture taken when no one was prepared, no one was smiling for the camera, my secret picture, the one that actually affects the way I act and live every day. That one isn’t so pretty. In that picture, God looks judgmental and mean, or totally checked out and uncaring, or too busy to bother, or like he couldn’t care less what is best for me—I am just a speck of dust and he’s got more important things to deal with. It’s not the official photo I show when I’m talking about God. But it’s the one that I carry closest to my heart. And the way you get to see this picture of God is in how I act. That’s the God I’m picturing in the driver’s seat when I’m into my addictive behavior. When I’m trying to fix, manage and control.

I have been in years and years of therapy. And I mean that literally. Frankly I could have purchased a small house for the amount I’ve spent having my head shrunk over the past 25 years…or even a large house in some sections of the country. Maybe two houses in Arizona these days. Most of that time I have been seeing a psychiatrist, Jeff, who has always sort of reminded me of Yoda of Star Wars fame. Full of annoying bits of wisdom, he is. Speaking in metaphors a lot, he does. Jeff has this habit, like Yoda, and frankly, now that I think about it, like Jesus, of suggesting you do things the opposite of the way common sense would tell you to do things. Like when you get angry with Jeff he says thank you and acts like you’ve given him a gift. Or when you complain to him about someone who has yelled at you or called you a loser or something along those lines, he’s been known to suggest you thank that person for saying out loud the messages you’re usually spewing at yourself secretly inside your own head. Or when one member of your family is causing “problems” he might suggest you be grateful to them for carrying the pain and anger of the whole family. Weird stuff, it is.

One of the other weird and wonderful things Jeff has done is helped me begin to get a new picture of God. To replace, at least sometimes, the picture I usually have imbedded in my brain, with a better one. Like Jesus said to his disciples, my therapist has said to me, “What if God actually looked a lot more like me—doesn’t it seem like I want the best for you? Doesn’t it seem like I find you fascinating and strangely adorable and worth my time and attention? And what about Gary—what if your picture of God looked less like a pissed off police officer and more like your husband when he’s laughing at something funny you’ve said, or rubbing your back when you’re sad? Or your children—have you ever imagined that God could love you so unconditionally? Or what if God looked more like your therapy group? Or your best friend? Or your church choir singing together on a Sunday morning?”

When I was growing up we used to sing this old hymn called “Trust and Obey.” Maybe you know it. The chorus goes: “Trust and obey. For there’s no other way. To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” I used to hear that song and think, “Well I’ll never be happy in Jesus then…’cause (insert swear word) if I’m ever going to trust and obey." I couldn’t hear “Trust and obey…” meaning, “Relax, you don’t have to be in charge here. You don’t have to worry yourself to death. I’ve got you covered. I love you and I’m taking care of you.”

No, those words, “trust and obey” sounded to me just like another way of saying, “Shut up and do what I tell you.” “Quit whining and pretend to be happy.” Because that’s all I could hear my picture of God saying to me. So I guess it’s no wonder that I’ve spent a good portion of my life, flailing around and screaming Brake, Brake, Brake. Or sleeping with axes under the pillow.

But lately I’ve sometimes been able to catch a glimpse of a different sort of God. One who is looking out for me. Who wants good things for me. Who has my best interests at heart. I’ve been trying to do what Jesus suggested to his disciples, looking at him when I think about trusting God, looking at how he treated people, how Jesus asked questions more than he pronounced judgments, how he gave 2nd and 3rd and 4th chances, how he never cast the first stone, how he touched the untouchable, and healed the ones everyone else had forgotten, how he believed in people more than they believed in themselves.

But unlike Philip and Thomas, I don’t have Jesus standing right in front of me every day. Sometimes it’s hard to get a clear picture of him too. So I’ve also been working on changing my picture of God, the one that I carry in my gut, by looking at the loving, kind, caring trustworthy people around me. At the people who believe in me, and care for me, and want to be with me, who forgive me and give me another chance, and another, and another.

One of the things they say to people coming into recovery who are struggling with the whole idea of a Higher Power is that you can think of your 12 step group as your Higher Power. What if we really did that? What if, instead of looking at the often distorted snapshot of God we have inside us, we took a look around this room, and we looked in each other’s eyes? What if we allowed ourselves to see the compassion there? What if we allowed ourselves to see, in these eyes, delight in us? Forgiveness for our failures? Understanding of our struggles? A desire for us to do well, to succeed? What if we saw the love? Imagine what we might do. Where we might go. What we might accomplish if we could really see what’s right in front of us. And imagine what might happen if we could actually trust that.

Keep Coming Back

By Lenora Rand
for the May Recovery Worship Service

Luke 18:1-8 (New Living Translation)
1 One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. 2 “There was a judge in a certain city,” he said, “who neither feared God nor cared about people. 3 A widow of that city came to him repeatedly, saying, ‘Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.’ 4 The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, ‘I don’t fear God or care about people, 5 but this woman is driving me crazy. I’m going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!’”
6 Then the Lord said, “Learn a lesson from this unjust judge. 7 Even he rendered a just decision in the end. So don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly! But when the Son of Man[a] returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?



We have a screened in back porch that we added on to our house. It’s beautiful out there in the late spring and summer when the weather finally warms up. We love it out there, Gary and the girls and I. Our cats also love it. They are indoor cats so when we let them out on the back porch that’s as close as they get to being outdoor cats and it’s exciting for them, let me tell you. They strut around, keep a close watch on the birds and rabbits and squirrels and the random stray cats from the neighborhood who occasionally wander into our backyard. They get up on the table out there and pace on it and perch on it, they make it their vantage point from which to rule the kingdom. All they need is the Lion King soundtrack behind them. In essence being on the back porch for a couple of indoor cats is as right as it gets.

There’s a window in between the kitchen and that back porch and we don’t have a screen on it so we can just open it and the cats can hop out onto the porch easily. We do have to open the window for the cats however and that’s where we sometimes have an issue. We, their humans, are not always ready to drop whatever we’re doing to let them out. But when they want to go out they want to go out. And they have ways of making us do their bidding. They have a stool next to the window and they sit on that and tap on the window. Then they scratch on the window. Then they start meowing loudly, overly dramatically, endlessly.

We especially have problems when the weather changes and it’s suddenly cold…they are cats of little brain and so we let them go outside and then they want to come back in (tapping/scratching on the window) in mere moments. Then they forget that they hated it and want to go back out a couple minutes later. Which drives us all nuts. Or recently, we had some broken screens out there, we couldn’t let them out until we got them fixed…that was a very sad time in their pathetic little lives. And they let us know about it. The sitting on the stool scratching at the window and meowing was totally annoying. Why you may wonder didn’t we just remove the stool so they couldn’t do this? Well we tried that. But if you remove the stool what they do is just hang on the windowsill by their fingernails and meow, looking back over their shoulder at you to make sure you aren’t missing their horrible predicament.

Like the widow in our Scripture reading, being annoyingly persistent ultimately pays off.

But it’s not a pretty picture, really, is it?

I hate being an annoyance. I hate being intrusive and obnoxious and pesky. Which this widow, and my cats clearly, are. I also hate being that obviously needy. You know, what I mean? Neediness is embarrassing. We live in a society that’s all about self-reliance and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps—whatever the heck that means…it sounds a little painful, actually. But being needy…even the word kind of makes us cringe. Someone says, “Oh, she’s so needy.” And that’s code for, “keep your distance, she’s very high maintenance.” Or “He’s so needy,” is code for stop dating him, he’s going to turn into a stalker. Who wants needy friends? Needy neighbors? Needy co-workers?

Being needy has a bad name. Being persistent in our expression of need just isn’t cool. And I sometimes feel like I’d rather die than embarrass myself like that.

And then I realize, I have almost died. I have almost killed myself with cigarettes. And with a raging food addiction. I have sucked back all my fear and shame and anger and stuffed all my sadness and hurt and real wants for years, rather than embarrass myself with my neediness.

Here’s another thing that really annoys me. In recovery groups they have all these expressions like “one step at a time” and “It works when you work it” and “Keep coming back.” “Keep coming back,” is something that’s said at the end of meetings and sometimes I really hate hearing that. I hate it because it’s a slogan and it feels so cult like and both silly and scary at the same time. I grew up going to a church that got a little too close to being a cult for comfort at times and so that kind of lingo sort of freaks me out.

But I also hate it and maybe hate it most because it reminds me that I need to keep coming back. That recovery is an ongoing process for all of us. That the life of faith, of becoming whole is an ongoing process. That I’m not done yet. And I really really hate that.

The widow in the parable Jesus tells is definitely someone who keeps coming back. Every day she hauls herself into court. She pleads her case. She cries out for attention, help, justice. People stare. Look down on this pushy widow. Want her to just shut up and give up and go away, but she doesn’t. And finally the judge gets worn down, worn out, and he gives in and helps her. Not because he thinks her cause is righteous. No, just to get rid of her. Just to make this obnoxious crazy lady go away.

And yet this obnoxious crazy lady behavior is exactly what Jesus is recommending to us. Promoting. Applauding, in fact. Hurray for the obnoxious crazy lady who keeps coming back! Who’s angry, who pounds on the door with her demands, who says what she wants loudly and clearly, who isn’t afraid to let her neediness show or her tears flow in public, who doesn’t give up until her pleas, her prayers are answered.

OK, so here’s another thing I hate. Not getting what I want right away. I know in this parable we’re dealing with an unjust judge. And God, who, the Bible says is so much better than this judge, will definitely hear us and answer our prayers. “So don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?” it ask us in verse 7. Then in verse 8 it says, “I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly!” But, wait a minute, which is it? Is it about us crying out day and night for as long as it takes? Or is it about a quick response? How is Jesus defining quickly, you’ve got to wonder.

When I was about 12 years old, a friend of our family was getting married and we were all going to the wedding. So my mom took my sister and I out to shop for dresses to wear to the event. My sister who’s a year older than me, found a cool dress that looked good on her right away. Everything she tried on seemed to fit her fine—it was just a matter of picking the dress she liked most. I, on the other hand, didn’t have the “anything you try on fits fine” kind of body. I was not skinny. Not horribly fat, but I was chubby, husky, as it was sometimes called back then, a husky girl, as if we had an outer husk, except that hidden inside this husk was actually an acceptable-sized person, versus an ear of corn. So we searched and searched for a dress, something that fit me and also didn’t look totally stupid or like an old lady dress. Something cool. Hours and what seemed like hundreds of dresses later we finally found one that had the cool factor and it also fit. Well, it almost fit. It was just a little snug. We asked for the larger size, but unfortunately the store didn’t have it. So we struck a deal, my mom and I. I would try to lose a little weight before the wedding, which was 2 or 3 weeks away. It wouldn’t take much. And we bought the dress.

Fast forward to the night before the wedding. I tried on the dress again, and guess what, I hadn’t really lost any weight. Or if I had, not enough. The dress was still too tight, way too tight, and I looked terrible stuffed inside it, like a sausage coming out of its casing. But what could I do? The wedding was tomorrow and I had no other dress to wear.

So I lay in bed that night and prayed. Cried out to God for help. Couldn’t God just take ten pounds off me during the night?. Couldn’t the God who parted the Red Sea, the God who could make frogs rain down from heaven, who could make the blind see and the lame walk, couldn’t that God give me what I needed, give me the thing that would make everything all right for me?

I woke up in the morning, with hope in my 12 year old heart. Then I put on the dress.

That may have been the first time I pleaded with God to fix my body, but it wasn’t the last. I prayed it every time I started a new diet. Started a new exercise program. And when I walked into an Overeater’s Anonymous meeting 20 years ago, I walked in with that prayer again. Fix my body, God. Help me lose weight and stop being insane about food. When, a few years after that, I walked into the office of a therapist who specializes in helping people with addictions, I was praying that prayer again. God fix my body. Fix my relationship with food.

I’m here to tell you tonight, that the prayer I prayed when I was twelve and have been praying ever since, the prayer I prayed, twenty years ago, when I found my way to a 12 step meeting, that specific prayer, has not really been answered, at least not in the way I hoped it would be. My relationship with food and with my body, is not all better. It’s not all fixed.

But I can say this: because I've kept coming back, because this addiction stuff keeps bringing me to my knees, because I’ve kept pleading with God for help on this issue, because I’ve kept showing up with that prayer for help, I've gotten so much in all kinds of other areas of my life. Every day I deal with my food addiction and learning to love my body. But along the way, I’ve gotten so much that I didn’t expect or imagine.

You’ve probably heard that famous quote: Eighty percent of success is showing up. One of the things I’m learning in recovery is also that 80% of healing is showing up. 80% of growth is showing up. And as the widow teaches us, continuing to show up. By showing up and crying out for help, I’ve gotten help for things I didn’t even realize I needed help with. Help in being a good parent. In how to be a healthy person in a marriage., how to be a healthy person in my job, in my church, with my friends, in the greater world.

Asking for what you want and believe you need is a tricky business. Because sometimes what we think we want and need isn’t really what we want and need most. I didn’t get what I asked for when I was 12 years old, I didn’t get the quick fix I was hoping for, but as someone once said, if I’d gotten what I prayed for I would have shortchanged myself.

I am beginning to think this is true of all our prayers, all the things we keep coming back to God asking for help with. God does answer our prayers, maybe just not always the prayers we’re praying out loud. Because on some level we don’t always know what we really need. We’re just scratching the surface most of the time. And the point is to keep showing up, like the widow in this parable did.

And maybe, just maybe, the act of continuing to show up, continuing to ask, day after day, continuing to nail our demands on God’s door, to be angry with God and obnoxious and pushy with God, to get in God’s face, and say I’m here, and I’m not going away until you answer me…maybe that is the quick answer Jesus was promising. Us showing up, coming back, pleading with God, yelling at God, maybe that is what God wants. And maybe that is what we need, most of all.

I don’t know whether showing up will get you the outcome YOU want. But I do believe that “God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night.” I don’t know whether it will change the situation you’re hurting in, the way you expect it to, or change the addiction you’re struggling with, in the way you envision it, or change the relationship you’re trying to navigate, quite the way you want it to. But I do believe it will change you. And God will give justice. Justice, which means putting things right. Right in our world. Right in our own lives. To have justice is to have things working the way they should. The way things are meant to be. Not out of whack. Not all screwed up. When we ask for justice, will God keep putting us off? “No, I tell you, God will grant justice to them… quickly!”

So be obnoxious. Be annoying. Be persistent. Be needy. Hang on the windowsill by your fingernails if you have to. You want God to make things right, really right, more right than you could imagine? Bang on God’s door. And keep coming back.

Following Orders

By Lenora Rand
From February Recovery Worship Service

I don’t like being told what to do. I don’t handle it well.

Gary, who has been married to me for a very long time now, will attest to this fact. But early in our marriage he hadn’t learned this yet…and would occasionally try to tell me what to do. Like one night we were preparing dinner together, chopping up vegetables for a soup or something. We each had our own cutting boards and we were both hard at work when Gary glanced over at my chopping area and said in the nicest possible way that I was doing it all wrong. “You’re supposed to cut vegetables on an angle like I’m doing,” he told me, “That’s how you get the most nutritional value out of them. So start cutting them like this not just straight up and down like you’re doing it..”

When he finished speaking, Gary continued chopping carrots in his own merry and correct way, but I became very still and very silent. I’m not sure how Gary interpreted this stillness and silence. Maybe he thought I was thinking about the wisdom of his words. Maybe he thought I was thanking God that I had been enlightened. Thanking God I was lucky enough to be married to such a wise and knowledgeable vegetable cutting expert.

I wasn’t. I was the stillness and silence of a grenade which has just been dropped on the ground, in that second or two before it explodes.

I did explode. It wasn’t pretty. What I said came out of that dark hole inside me that contains all the stored-up rage and hurt of a lifetime. The kind of stuff that is more like the growls of a cornered animal than anything else. If I had been a cartoon character you would have seen steam exploding from my eyes and nose and ears. Needless to say, we had a big fight. Luckily we put down our knives first.

But I think Gary got the message that day. I don’t like anyone to tell me what to do. Even if they’re right.

Which brings me to our scripture for today, John 15: 9-17.

The crux of the passage is in this verse, John 15:12 "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
Now I’m all for love. I mean, who isn’t? And if we had to take a vote today and I asked for a show of hands, all in favor of love, I figure there wouldn’t be many of us clutching our hands in our laps. Maybe none of us. What’s not to love about love, right?

Except of course, when you actually try to love. That’s where it gets tricky. It gets tricky when you’re commanded to love the boss and the company that’s just “eliminated your position,” i.e. fired you. When you’re commanded to love the parents who abused you or the children who can’t forgive you and don’t want to have anything to do with you. When you’re ordered to love the significant other who doesn’t seem to give nearly as much as you do, or the friends who don’t seem to have any time for you. Or how about this—how does it feel to be commanded to love terrorists who fly planes into buildings? Or leaders whose greed and short sightedness have given us a world in a financial abyss? And sometimes hardest to deal with of all—how do we respond to the command to love, when it’s ourselves we need to love, and when all we feel is screwed up and contemptible and unworthy of love?

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

When you think about it, this scripture is not easy. Not simple. Not clear. And as much as we all love the idea of love, when you put it like this, I command you to love, you may, as I do, feel like growling back at God from that dark hole of rage and hurt inside you, “Don’t tell me what to do.”

Of course, most of us here come from a country founded on rebellion against authority. A country that said to its mother England, don’t tell me what to do. And our heroes are people who win mostly by not following the rules…think about the popularity of Bruce Willis in movies like Die Hard, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Live Free or Die Hard… I can’t help but notice that Bruce never made a movie called Die Hard And Follow Orders Politely.

And those of us who struggle with addictions …many of us come from families with addicts and various kinds of dysfunction, families where we learned early on to distrust authority, where we learned that the orders we received from our parents weren’t necessarily for our own good, or to enhance our lives. Our families were focused on their next fix rather than on caring for the real needs of their children. Or their commands stemmed from a desire to take care of their own need for the family to look good and to keep us kids from getting in their way and bothering them too much, rather than out of any real concern for our growth and well-being.

I had this figured out in my family by the time I was four years old. I remember one day being asked by my next door neighbor Tony, who was about my age, if I wanted to go with him and his dad to his grandfather’s farm for an hour or so. The farm was close by and Tony told me we’d get to play in the grain silos, which sounded incredibly cool to me. So I went into the house and asked my dad if I could go. And my dad was busy doing something, and just seemed annoyed by my interruption and said, No. Told me I couldn’t go. When I questioned him, I got yelled at. NO discussion. But I decided not to follow his orders, and I went anyway. I really can’t remember anything that happened at that farm, I have only the vaguest memory of those grain silos, but I do remember coming back home, bracing myself for the trouble I was going to get in because I’d disobeyed. But I got home and my Dad was still inside, involved in whatever project he’d been doing before I left and he hadn’t even noticed I was gone! Which seemed to my 4-year-old self like total confirmation of my decision to not follow his orders. It seemed like complete confirmation of the suspicion that had been growing in me for some time which was that I was more committed to taking care of me than my parents were. My parents weren’t really in my corner, on my side, looking out for my welfare. They were lost in their own stuff and I was basically on my own. I grew up in the days of the TV show Father Knows Best. But I decided at an early age, that I couldn’t trust that. I came to believe that Father Knows Best was a lie and I knew best.

Walking around with the belief that only you know best and that nobody is going to look out for you but you is certainly one way to live your life. It’s a way to live that can cause you a few teensy problems however. Or a few major ones. For me it has had a lot to do with my story as a compulsive overeater. I didn’t trust the rules about what was best to eat and how much and when. Three meals a day? Healthy snacks? Eat your vegetables? Drink plenty of water? Oh man, give me a break. That sounds awful. So I ate what I wanted to when I wanted to. I defied the commands of the food pyramid, frequently and mostly secretly. But then I felt bad afterward. Not just “bad” with a small “b” but BAD, all caps, morally bad. In order to take care of myself, I felt like I had to break the rules. Which made me a bad person, an outlaw. And I felt sad and lonely being a bad person, which of course, led me back to food for comfort and care. A vicious cycle.

Since I’ve been in recovery one of the shifts I’ve been making—and it’s been a hard one for me to make, it’s a one moment at a time, kind of deal—is rather than seeing myself as a bad person in need of punishment, I’m starting to see myself as a sick person in need of healing.

So instead of being the outlaw in a black leather motorcycle jacket, thumbing my nose at authority and riding my Harley off a cliff in heroic defiance, I am learning to envision myself as an adorable child in one of those hospital shifts with a little too much southern exposure, propped up in a comfy bed, being visited by caring friends bringing me flowers and cards and DVDs and who aren’t there to judge me or arrest me, but are just there to sit with me and hold my hand or plump my pillows.

It makes a difference. Whether we define ourselves as outlaw or sick child, makes a difference. And what I’ve been learning about that in recovery made me want to take a second look at what John might have been trying to say in this scripture. So I started with that word I hate so much: commandment.

The dictionary definition of commandment is “an order or injunction given by authority.” I guess part of my problem is, when I think of an order from an authority, the first picture that comes into my head (other than seeing my own father, probably) is of getting orders from a military commander. I see one of those mean staff sergeants yelling at the recruits. I hear drop and give me 20. I imagine endless marches through the rain and darkness and cold all to satisfy the power-hungry whims of some petty jerk. A good thing I never joined the Army, huh?

So when I hear “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you,” I’m coming to realize, on some level that is also how I’m picturing God—the power-hungry, petty jerk, jerking me around to satisfy some need of his own without regard for what might be good for me. And I feel like, yeah, loving one another sounds like a good idea, in theory, however… I can’t imagine it working out so well. There probably won’t be an upside for me in this.

The funny thing about that definition of commandment-- an order or injunction given by authority—military guys aren’t the only authority figures out there giving orders. As I get older I have found myself spending a lot more time in doctor’s offices, leaving with a tote bag full of prescriptions. Leaving with doctor’s orders. These days, my doctor has me taking a smorgasboard full of vitamins and mineral supplements and medicine of various kinds. I feel like I have to allow an extra half hour to my morning routine just to get down all these pills. And I don’t always do it. I don’t always follow my doctor’s orders perfectly. Some mornings I take only a couple of the pills, the ones I deem most crucial. But here’s the thing. When I skip my pills I don’t feel like I’m being morally bad as much as I feel like I’m just not able to take care of myself as well as I could today. Because I see my doctor’s orders as something that comes from a desire for me to be well and healthy and happy, I see them as life-enhancing, I see them as good for ME.

That shift in thinking has been huge for me.

And, I’ve begun to think that maybe it’s no accident that sometimes in the Bible, Jesus would refer to himself as a physician. (And never referred to himself as a staff sergeant.) And so maybe, in John’s gospel, when Jesus commands me to love he’s not putting a gun to my head and saying do this or else, rather he’s handing me a prescription…he’s saying, do this and you’ll feel better. You’ll be healthier. Happier. You’ll become whole. You’ll be well.

Does this make it any easier to figure out how to love? How to love the boss who fired us, the so-called friend who hurt us, the spouse who doesn’t support us, the ones we call enemy, whether those enemies are people we work with or people in countries across the globe? Does it make it any easier to figure out how to love ourselves?

Maybe not. But it does give me motivation. It does help me see that if I don’t try to love, I may be missing out on something really good for me. It does make love something I want to try to figure out. With this new way of seeing, figuring out how to love myself and others seems like the way to life, the way to abundant life.

In the therapy group I belong to we have a ritual that has developed over time. This group is made up of people in recovery from all kinds of addictions—food, alcohol, relationships, debt, workaholism, perfectionism—you name it. And toward the end of every session one or two, or sometimes everyone in the group, will ask our psychiatrist for a prescription. What’s my prescription? We’ll ask. And then wait, like little birds in a nest, hungry for Mom to give them their bug or their worm. Or like people in a communion line on a Sunday morning, mouths open, ready for the bread of life.

This ritual in my therapy started probably because at one point some of the members of the group were taking anti-depressants and they needed a refill or a change in their medication. And the therapist would get out his prescription pad at the end of the session to write that for them. And some people got jealous. Wanted a little something to help them get through the week, too. Their own prescription. These days, no one in my group is taking actual medication but people still ask for prescriptions at the end of the session because what they are asking is for the doctor to tell them what to do. They are asking for a soul prescription. What would be good for me to do this week? How should I behave this week so that I will feel better? What should I do to love myself and others this week? Tell me what to do to have life and have it more abundantly.

And I’m right there with them. Asking for my prescription. Yes, even me, the person who never wants anyone to tell them what to do, I’m finally, day by day, starting to get it. Starting to get it that God is not the staff sergeant putting a gun to my head. Starting to get it that God is the doctor, with a steadying hand on my arm. God isn’t barking orders at me for his own agenda. God is actually good and loving, and looking out for me. And God is handing me a slip of paper and written on it are the words of life.

This is my commandment, that you love, Jesus said. I am finally beginning to hear this, I’m finally beginning to hear Jesus saying to me, saying to all of us sick little kids sitting in our hospital beds in the children’s wing, “You want to feel better, you want to really live? This is my prescription: love. Love each other. Love yourselves. Live in my love and love this whole beautiful, aching world. Just love.

That is the way to life.”