Nurturing the younger me

Grace upon grace. It is a phrase of encouragement I repeat to my clients all day long in my job as a therapist. But truth be told, as much as I proclaim it to them, I am preaching to my own battered soul. I offer grace to others, but I have trouble leaning down to gather for myself that grace-based provision of daily manna off the dusty desert ground. 

Gathering up that manna represents a new spiritual practice for me: the practice of nurturing the younger version of me. 

I'll be 53 this year. I’m relishing the wisdom and slowness the fifties are bringing. The empty-nesting stage has provided ample opportunity to reflect on my 28 years of marriage, the early parenting years, my friendships, my family relationships, and my relationship with God. But those reflections can cause me to flinch sometimes! As intentional as I was and as pure as my motives were at the time, I cringe at some of the “younger me” moments.

What was the younger me doing, causing me now to wince? I abandoned my carefree, playful nature in favor of being an uptight Perfect Christian Mother who raised Perfect Christian Child 1, 2 and 3. I was so concerned with hiding God’s word in their hearts that I stuffed it down their throats. (Yes, every time they washed their sweet little elementary school hands they had to stare at James 4:8 I taped to the mirror: “Come near to God and He will draw near to you. WASH YOUR HANDS YOU SINNERS AND PURIFY YOUR HEARTS, YOU DOUBLE-MINDED.” You’re wincing with me, right?) I was more judgmental and anxious because my black and white, binary thinking convinced me to believe there was only ONE right way to do things. I was more obedience-demanding than connection-building, concerned more with how the kids behaved than how they might need to feel safe from my seething frustrations. My faith became embarrassingly formulaic. (“God, I will make the kids do their chores and memorize weekly scripture verses and you will make darn sure they will never rebel. God, I will serve you faithfully and you make sure I never have to suffer.”) 

When I envision that younger me, I want to fuss at her for being rigid. I want to roll my eyes at her for being judgy. I want to belittle her for her short sightedness in caring too deeply about what other people thought of her. But instead, I offer her grace. I nurture that younger me by accepting her and loving her. 

Because she is me. 

And God has spoken His unfailing and immeasurable love over me and nothing can separate me from that love. Not even the mistakes of the younger me. 

How do I nurture the younger me? Grace upon grace. I see the young-bride-me who wanted things to go her way every time and I tell her that her selfishness has been crucified with Christ. I tell the younger me she was parenting those 3 kids under 3 with incredible courage, despite her exhaustion. I watch old videos and tell her I am proud of her zeal and commitment, even though that zeal looks a bit like legalism to me now. 

Nurturing the younger version of me allows me to accept her, to love her, to forgive her, and to show her grace, because she was doing the very best she knew how to do at the time. Grace upon grace. It is the mantra that pulls ME out of a pit of shame, self-criticism, and judgment. When I make mistakes, when I look back and regret decisions, I whisper to myself the hope of the gospel of grace and mercy. Praise be to God we are constantly growing and changing (2 Cor. 3:18). 

We all are making mistakes as we go. Let’s look back more gently, okay? To nurture the younger version of ourselves, we MUST pay attention to what our internal voice sounds like. Does it sound like a friend or a foe? God is our defender, not our accuser! When you look back on your past failures, your flesh will be tempted to look back with words like “I’ve never been __________  enough (skinny, pretty, smart, educated, loved, brave). I was so stupid. I’m a failure. I’m an idiot. I’m worthless. I’m so ashamed. I’m too much.” Those are painful words of judgment.

Our reflections on our past must be marked by grace and compassion instead. Remember, it is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance. (Rom. 2:4) Try changing the tone of your voice to a softer one, a more gentle one. Watch for accusatory words you are saying to yourself and change them to words of hope and forgiveness. And you can steal one of my very favorite tricks when shame is hunting you down: Imagine that younger version of you. While grinning, shrug both your shoulders, wink at her, and say out loud, “Well, she was doing the best she could at that moment and now, by the grace of God, she knows better so she can do better!” 

As we learn better, we do better. Grace upon grace.

NURTURING SOULS BACK TO HEALTH

My pain was deep.

But the shame I heaped on myself for even feeling the pain became an unbearable weight. My inner critic wagged her finger at me, belittling me with cruel pain comparisons:  

“Why are you so weak?” 

“Stop being sad. At least you don’t have cancer.”

“You didn’t lose a child. Why are you even upset?”

Until then, I had a stunted view of grief. I mistakenly believed that people who went to funerals were the ones who had permission to grieve. And the pain I was experiencing felt hard to articulate and too messy to share. There was no casket, no sickness. Yet my heart felt shattered.

My husband had been on staff at our church for 10 years when a series of troublesome upheavals whipped through a previously close-knit staff. I’ve never been in a west Texas dust storm, but what happened that spring felt like what I imagine it would be to experience one. We could see the ominous, gray cloud on the distant horizon, but we weren’t sure if it was headed our way. Then suddenly it came directly at us, leaving dust, debris, and a cloud of confusion. After the storm blew through, my husband was jobless, we were without a home church for the first time in our 21 years of marriage, and we were thrust unwillingly into leaving the town and home we loved. I hurt so deeply for our 3 kids (15, 16, and 17) who were experiencing confusion as the church and social life they loved was now falling to pieces. It felt like we were left covered by layers of uninvited gray. The dust seemed to even leave a dry, chalky film on our tongues, rendering us speechless. 

God felt far way; the pain felt near. My inner critic’s judgment against me was not working to alleviate this searing pain.

It was then I had to learn to nurture my own soul through grief. I learned to give myself permission to gently nurture the pain itself. I had to silence the destructive cycle of shaming myself for presumed weakness, but instead have the courage to look the pain squarely in the face, to stare right at it and tell it, “I SEE YOU. I WELCOME YOU.” I learned to do one of the most spiritually nurturing things I have ever done: I allowed my sunny personality and my life-of-the-party persona to curl up in a fetal position. And wail.

And oh how I wailed. As I welcomed the pain and named it GRIEF, I began to learn what it means to lament the loss of something other than a person. I lost a life I loved; a church family I served alongside; a community I adored. God invited me to weep with Him. I heard the gentle whisper of Jesus that I would be nurtured and comforted as I allowed my soul to mourn. I had to abandon my belief that my hurt was less than other people’s hurt; loss is loss; pain is pain. Losing the life I knew, the church my kids were baptized in, the town I loved, was a grief I needed to name and feel. God built us to look squarely at reality. He built us to look directly into the pain as well as gaze into His compassionate heart. 

It turns out the chalky gray dust covering me was more like the brokenhearted ashes spoken of in Isaiah 61. And because God is who He says he is, He turned those ashes into beauty, the despair into praise. Eventually, the death of those losses brought a resurrected life, rising up with more freedom and new courage.

What gray dust is covering you? Are you experiencing a hurt you have not yet acknowledged, a grief you have yet to name? 

Maybe your dust storm looks like that child you have not yet been able to hold. Or the loss of a mother who turned her face from you to her bottle of wine or new boyfriend instead. Maybe you are weary of feeling ostracized from a social group. It could be that you long for a life companion but are told Jesus should be enough, yet you continue feel the dull, lonely ache. Maybe you grieve for the direction your life took instead of the one you dreamed of when you were younger.

Dear one, you are invited by Jesus himself to nurture your soul back to health through grief. No matter the level of your pain, it is yours to feel. Jesus never encourages us to minimize or compare. He is the Messiah who has the courage to look right at our pain WITH US and then promises to never to abandon us. Tell your pain, “I SEE YOU” and I promise, God will gently guide you through the hazy storm. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Matthew 5:4

Anxiety threatens to beat up our world, our nation, our families, our lives. One fear at a time. One panic at a time. One “what if” at a time.

The onslaught of issues we have to fear is like the waves crashing on the beach. One after another. The next one brings the next one. They crash on us with overwhelming force and we begin to feel sucked under.

We were never created to live in a STATE of fear. The anxiety systems in our bodies were designed to handle an incoming stressor, take care of it, and settle back down. Our souls cry out for us to live in a more settled state.

But instead, we often believe the anxious whispers that we SHOULD dread what has NOT yet happened. We listen to the dark murmurings convincing us we are INCAPABLE of handling whatever comes our way. The waves keep coming.

Instead of being beaten up by the waves of fear, we must face them. We must choose to silence the voice of this anxiety. We must stop waiting for the voices to simply go away but instead decide for ourselves that we will walk by the guidance of a more trusted Voice.

“He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, ‘Quiet! Be still.’ Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?’ They were terrified and asked each other, ‘Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!’” Mark 4: 39-41

Soul Adventurers, if you are being beaten up by the waves today, sit down and make a list of all that you fear. All of it. Get it out of your head where it swirls around, threatening to paralyze you from living your life. Take a deep breath, then remind yourself to take your life one moment at a time. One step at a time. One day at a time. Face ONE thing on your list. Claim the truth that you do not have to live in the fear but choose instead to believe the Voice of the only One who truly can calm the storm.