Tired of Feeling Ordinary

10.  Tired of Feeling Ordinary

 

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.

No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.[69]

 

We all have the extraordinary coded within us,

waiting to be released.[70]

 

“When in doubt ... dance!”[71]

 

During the retreat Vicki took stock of the previous two years – years of marital discord, verbal boxing and reciprocal silent treatments, and then marital healing.  That the exercise then created the spiritual desperation that she wrote of in the journal entry of October 14th.  Her frustration with “the ordinary” came about because she felt she was not living at the level she was intended to.  She believed she wasn’t experiencing the life God intended her to live.

Robert Louis Stevenson spoke for Vicki when he wrote, “To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”  Matthew Clayfield stated, eloquently and with tongue in cheek, “Cast off the shackles of this modern oppression and take back what is rightfully yours, because as William Shakespeare never wrote, ‘Life is but a bullring, and we are but matadors trying to dodge all the horns.’”

Clayfield defined “modern oppression” as so many of us fearfully and tenuously living beneath our capabilities.  Stevenson observed that life is all about “being” and “becoming.”

Pressure, in marriage, vocation, or body brings us face to face with certain real choices, namely (1) will we settle for “the ordinary,” or will we (2) rise to become who and what we were created to be?  We chose option two.  Two years of marital pressure became a catalyst that moved us closer to what we were capable of being.  We’d say to each other, “I love you now, and in your growing and becoming.”  In the late summer and into the early fall of 1991 we began to deliberately practice those words.  Had we not had those two years, what we faced over the next twelve would have surely destroyed our marriage.

Much like what doctors and scientists call clinical trials, God designed-and-ordained tests for Vicki and me that would serve to do several things our lives. 

First, these trials would show us the true content of our characters.  They would reveal the parts of our nature that needed adjusting.  In order for the ordeals that came to produce the needed modifications to our character, we would have to acknowledge what God revealed to us about our hearts.

Heart – the word the ancient Greeks used to describe the core or center of a person’s “self.”  According to the most influential of Greek philosophers, the heart was the seat of power in a human being.  The Greeks weren’t referring to the organ that pumped blood through a body.  They were referring to that immaterial, imaginative, cognitive, willful, determinative and eternal part of man that sets him apart from – and above – the rest of the created order.  They believed the heart was where the spirit of a person resided.

Second, after acknowledging our hearts’ true content, Vicki and I, individually, would next have to intentionally say to God, “What I thought about ‘me’ was wrong, and what You’ve revealed to me is my real ‘self’ is true and right.  You and I, O God, agree to change ‘my self’ in order to make me a better person.”  That acknowledgement had to be deliberate.

Third, we needed to be toughened in order to survive the days to come. 

When heart change comes, people discover that the trials served to strengthen them for future battles by exercising their spirit, soul and mind.  Vicki and I would experience that toughening and strengthening over the next seven years.

Many times we prayed, “Lord, give us a break!  Let us catch our breath.”  Mercifully, Vicki and I would then have long breaks from trials.  When we had our breathers, we had time to take stock.  As it turned out, we didn’t get much time to access and appreciate what God was doing in us, but we did use those times to look back … maybe just a week or a month.  Time and time again we felt we were given insight into, not only our character issues, but God’s amazing character, especially His faithfulness.

We discovered that God waits.  He has all the time in the world.  Sometimes He seems to take it.

Another thing – we found that God will not change anyone until He has a green light, that is, from the person!  Amazing, isn’t it – that the Creator gives so much weight to our will and willingness?

Once God had our go-ahead to begin the work on our hearts, He really went for it.  He didn’t hold back.

We saw a pattern after a few of these adjustments.  We observed that, as a last step, God would put us through some light exercises.  He did so stabilize the new whatever-it-was-He-wanted-changed thing.  He made them light exercises because we had our breaking points, and God knew what they were.  We found solace in 1 Corinthians 10:13 (NLT) “… God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation (or, in our case, the trials) to be more than you can stand.  When you are tempted, He will show you a way out so that you can endure.”

We saw, every time the change-dust settled, that God was worthy of our trust.  And, coincidentally, we learned that we were becoming trust worthy, too.

God insists that changes He works in a person’s character become concrete.  They must, or the trial is wasted.  He knows that those concrete changes can become new strengths, and out of those new strengths flow new ministries – new opportunities to serve others.  As a result, supernatural things can happen … and often do.

No more ordinary.

Just a few days after the women’s retreat, Mary[72] came into Vicki’s life.  Vicki had been longing for a close friend – someone like Sue, her buddy from the Bethesda days.  Vicki thought Mary had the potential to be such a friend.  They shared a lot in common, and it wasn’t long before both girls were close, and sharing intimately. 

We never guessed that Vicki’s relationship with Mary would become a major character-building exercise.

January 5, 1992

How can I begin to put down on paper what the past 2½ months have held?  So much has happened.

My relationship with [Mary] is a major part of it.  It’s as though God sovereignly brought us into each other’s lives for a very specific purpose.  She reached out to me because she needed my counsel and advice – and she needed a lot of it; more than I’ve ever given anyone before.  It was very intense from the beginning, but then it began to transform into a friendship … Her honesty and direct way of expressing her feelings began to work itself into a part of my heart that I hadn’t opened to anyone since college – 19 years ago!  I found myself opening up and being vulnerable to this new friend.  It was certainly a demanding relationship and it stretched me in ways I’d never been stretched before.  She had so many questions about God and Jesus that I didn’t even have the answer to, but it kept me on my knees … and that was good.

Her life as a newly “rededicated” Christian was very exciting.  God would speak to her over and over again, and tell her the most amazing things.  It gave me a hunger to dig deeper in Him so that He would speak to me, too.  She’s had that effect on all the ladies in the Bible study groups.  They’re all drawn to her and her current, though struggling, relationship with the Lord.

Then God began to show her parts of her past that had been buried and forgotten – painful, cruel things that had scarred her soul and caused her to put up big walls in her relationships … including her relationship with God.  She said I scared her because I was the only one she couldn’t keep her walls up with.  Neither of us knew why except that God intended it to be so.

We went away 2 days ago [for a personal prayer retreat in order to bring a breakthrough in Mary’s life] … I was very scared.  I had read the book “The Wounded Heart” and it all seemed so overwhelming and almost hopeless.  But I knew that I was to be the facilitator of this healing.  God had assured me that He would instruct me and lead me, but I had no idea what I was walking into.

I fasted and read and prayed all day Thursday.  I said, “God, you’ve been talking to Mary … now, talk to me.  Tell me what I am supposed to do tomorrow.”  But I heard nothing.  The only thing I got was a sense that God didn’t want me to have a plan.  He wanted me to go into the situation totally dependent on His leading.  [I also got this sense that] He would reveal to me one step at a time.  Well, that’s not what I wanted to hear, but it seemed that I had no choice.

What God did was absolutely AWESOME!  It’s impossible to condense 12 hours of ministry into 1 or 2 pages, but the Holy Spirit literally walked us through every step of her “heart healing.”  When I didn’t know what to do next this quiet voice in my mind would make a suggestion, and it was always [the] right thing.  Mary would be thinking something and I would say it … or I’d be wondering what to do next and she’d ask a question of make a suggestion.  It’s like the three of us [Vicki, Mary and God] were moving forward like a snake-line of people on skates, transferring momentum back and forth, from one to the other.

It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, but also the most exhilarating.

 

Vic longed to be needed.  She wanted to be an instrument in God’s hands, a tool He could use to bless others who were going through tough times.  She spoke of this desire, this prayer, often.  At the time it was her number one desire.

Mary needed Vicki.  Conversely, Vicki needed Mary.  To have finally moved into “the big leagues” (as Vicki would put it), operating in a situation way over her head and far beyond her natural abilities, was a dream-come-true.

She spent hours and page-upon-page in her journal describing, in intimate detail, the events of her weekend “healing retreat” with Mary.  Some of her words spoke of the impact the time had had on Vicki.  She would write and say, “It was such a miracle – the biggest I’ve ever been a part of!” and “It’s going to be so exciting to see how her life will unfold!”

She finished up this journal entry with these words:

What did I learn from all this?  I’ve learned to trust the promptings of the Holy Spirit in my heart.  Always before, if I sensed that something was from the Lord, my mind was flooded with doubts – that it was just my own idea.  He showed me that I could hear from Him … I stepped out and acted on it …

I feel so amazed that He chose to use me in such a significant way.  I certainly had no experience and no previous knowledge of dealing with the pain of childhood molestation.  But it’s as though Christ wanted me to be totally and completely dependent on Him in this.  It was certainly scary … but it was so powerful!

 

Then things dramatically changed.  Over the next several weeks Vicki journaled even more about her now stress-filled meetings with Mary.  She described feeling deceived by Mary, and then torn over what to do with the new information that came bubbling up from within the heart of her new friend. 

Vicki felt disturbed by her dealings with Mary, but never to the point where she wanted to withdraw or quit.  Mary was having bouts with depression as she mined the darkest, or obscure, parts of her childhood memories, and Vicki felt a friend’s obligation to stay the course.

Mary started talking about killing herself to end the pain.  Vicki became so concerned that she got in contact with Mary’s former counselor.

Mary spoke of a counselor [named] that she saw years ago.  She also told me that she spoke to this counselor several times yesterday about her depression. 

I couldn’t convince Mary to call her back so I looked up her name and called her myself.  IT WAS THE SHOCK OF MY LIFE when [the counselor] said, with anger, “I haven’t seen or spoken to Mary in 3 years.  She is a pathological liar and has very serious problems.   I referred her to a psychiatrist!”

It suddenly appeared that the past four months had been one big lie.  What had she lied to me about?  Everything … or only some things?  Was our retreat at the river real … or a giant, manipulative fantasy?

I feel totally betrayed and deceived.

Lowell is out of town – I can’t believe it!  I need him here so badly.  I have to make the right decisions, alone.  Jesus, help me.  I don’t know what to do.

I don’t trust my heart with this.  I don’t trust my instincts.  How could I be so wrong about someone – do deceived?  I feel so foolish.  I thought I was being led by the Holy Spirit … but was I only being manipulated by her?

I just don’t know.

 

For the next seven months Vicki wrestled with her own heart, all the while continuing to meet with Mary.  Because these meetings were so intimate I’ve not included the scores of journal pages Vicki recorded here.  Many of those pages are warped by Vicki’s tears, she loved Mary so much.

Finally, when the Mary-crisis had reached the numbing stage, God began to reveal to Vicki her own secrets – her own deceptions.  He ultimately revealed the character issue that had precipitated Him bringing Mary into her life.  One day it came to Vicki; her real desire was to be “someone’s savior.”  Vicki realized, in the core of her being, she longed to be admired.  She ached to be someone’s hero. 

The revelation rattled her.  Vic thought her motives to help Mary were driven by altruistic, charitable, and noble motives.  She also thought God’s Holy Spirit was always leading her actions.  Now she saw herself as a dervish.  Dervishes are those spinning, constantly turning, dizzy dancers who attempt to empty their Self so that the human and the divine meet.  But whirling dervishes tend to become mad – crazy by conventional standards.  And they’re convinced their madness is true health.  True to form, Vicki’s longing for emotional compensation had led to extreme confusion.

Vicki confessed to God that she was being led to do what she did for Mary in order to receive “… a pat on the back, a feeling of value, and a sense that I’m a really good person.”

From the beginning God knew her true motives for helping Mary.  Now Vicki did, too, and it bothered her.  She reevaluated everything she was doing in the community, at the church, and in our home.  She would write, “Talk to me, Lord!” in page after page of her journal.  And He did.

When God senses that we are open to receiving His heart in exchange for ours, He gets excited.  When we ask Him to replace our values for His, He is energized.  He wants His genuine love to replace our feeble attempts to love. 

God takes such willing and open people on as a Personal project.  Mother Theresa and Albert Schweitzer didn’t begin life in the same way they finished it.  Billy Graham wasn’t one of the most respected and influential men on the planet when he started out.  These three, and countless other servants of humanity, had humble and humbling beginnings.

One portion of the Bible that Vicki had underlined during the first eight months of 1992 was 1 John 3:1-10.  In that section of the Scriptures, written by the Apostle John (the disciple most believe was closest to Jesus as far as friendship goes), we are told, “See how very much our heavenly Father loves us, for He allows us to be called His children, and we really are!”

Vicki believed she was a child of God, so everything that came her way was “Father-filtered.”  Nothing that happened in her life came her way because God was caught off guard or surprised in the least.  She believed, in a child-like and trusting way, that the good, the bad and the ugly of served God’s purposes.  She believed, no matter what happened to her, that God loved her.

She prayed a simple prayer over and over:  “Lord, change me.  Transform me, from one who longs for the approval of people to one who has Yours.”