Maintaining Eye Contact
31. Maintaining Eye Contact
“Appropriate eye contact does not mean staring like a deer in headlights
into your listener’s eyes.”[189]
“The skills involved in leading and following center around principles of communication. The best leaders are those who communicate their intentions, while the best followers are those who respond well to the leader’s intentions. This is facilitated when both leader and follower do their part to maintain open lines of communication.”[190]
In 1982, Twila Paris sang, “I’m not looking behind me, at mistakes I’ve already made; Hope is living inside me … Lord, I’m keepin’ my eyes on You, following You, following You.”
Easier sung than done. Vicki wrote,
March 24, 2001 - continued
I know that this “thing” is not of me [i.e., the miracle of healing is not something I did – it is totally God’s doing]. I am an instrument chosen to reveal God’s glory to others. Everything He does has an intended purpose. He alone will fulfill His purposes in my life. It will not be my strength (or powers of persuasion) that will change people, but His and His alone. If I point to Him, He will do something wonderful. I can’t save or heal anyone, but He can make faith spring up in the hearts of people as they listen to my story. He will accomplish His purposes through me IF I will continue to trust Him one day at a time.
I’m reminded that God told me to keep my eyes “right on His face, and not look to the left or the right.”
Sami Winstead told me last night that she knew why I was healed. It was “for me and my girls.” She prays for Gary every night. I believe he will come to salvation through my healing, as will many others.
Thank You, God, for what You’ve done!
Oh, and I watched a show about cancer today, and I realized that in the past two-and-a-half years I have not been able to watch an entire show on cancer. I might watch for a few minutes, but then I would have to turn it off. I didn’t want to hear about anyone dying of cancer because it made “it” too real.
Now that I’ve been healed I’m not afraid anymore.
I guess my faith wasn’t as strong as I thought it was.
It was hard for Vicki to keep her eyes on Jesus when so many things were happening around her, positive and negative, good and bad. Being healed, and having the cancer behind her was wonderful, but there seemed always be a new challenge to deal with, if not daily then weekly.
Her routine helped to keep her headed in the right direction. Vic would wake up around 6 AM (she was always an early riser), put on some hot water for coffee or tea, and open her Bible. Every day she wanted to hear something fresh from God. She needed to hear from Him so that the fears (1) that the cancer might return or (2) that she might displease God were kept at bay.
The Bible says, “Perfect love drives out fear,”[191] but since when can any of us claim to possess perfect love? The text must mean something other than you and I possessing perfect love, right? Well, it does. The perfect love spoken of here is God’s love, something we do not possess but experience. And receive.
Vic kept going to St. John and Genesis, St. John and Genesis – Jesus and Abraham, Jesus and Abraham.
Saint John wrote that the key to going through life fearlessly was to allow God the Father to wrap us in His perfect love as expressed in Jesus Christ, His Son. As we permit God to embrace us and shower us with His love, fear is driven out. Anxieties and phobias shrink when God is hugging us, too.
Abraham accepted the word of the Lord, and His loving promises. As a result, God’s perfect love drove out his fear. As a result, Abraham had righteousness credited to his account with God. Genesis 15:1-6: “After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: ‘Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward,’ [and ] … Abram believed the LORD, and He credited it to him as righteousness.”
Ray Stedman, writing about this Genesis text, said, “If we focus our view on Abram’s faith, we are going to miss the point of this whole matter. There is a sense in which we make far too much of these men of old and their faith. ‘What mighty men of faith,’ we say; ‘how tremendous to believe God against all the evidence of the circumstances around. If we only had faith like that … we could do the things they did!’
“Then we compare our feeble faith with theirs, and try to work up a feeling of faith within us until we are turned into spiritual hypochondriacs, always going about taking our spiritual temperature and feeling our spiritual pulse. It is indeed true that when God saw Abram’s faith, it was reckoned to him for righteousness, but it is also true that when Abram saw God, he reckoned Him [God!] able to perform what He had promised, and so was able to rest his faith on God’s adequacy.
“What was it that made Abraham’s faith so strong? The answer is that he did not look at the difficulty so much as he looked at the One who had promised. His eye was not resting on the problems, but upon the Promiser. When he saw the greatness of God, the might and majesty displayed before him on that oriental summer’s night, he said to himself, ‘It makes no difference how I feel, nor what may be the difficulties involved, the Creator of that multitude of stars is quite capable of giving me an equal number of descendants.’”[192]
Wow! What great insights.
And what Stedman wrote lines up with what Vicki and I had been saying since the cancer invaded our lives in October of 1998. “We not pursuing a healing, but The Healer.” We tried to maintain our focus on God rather than on a temporary fix – for that is all a physical healing is.
The fear that the cancer might return, or that she would somehow displease God by her performance, dissipated … and then left.
Some of the Scriptures that began to have new meaning to Vicki were:
· “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.” (Isaiah 41:10 NIV)
· “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” (2 Timothy 1:7 KJV)
· “Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9-10 NIV)
· “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.” (Psalm 56:3 KJV)
· “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1 KJV)
· “Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.” (Isaiah 43:1 KJV)
Caution: repeating these verses like a magic formula will not destroy the fear that’s in your life. You must believe in and trust the God who said these things! Faith in God is the assurance that He is with us and for us – that He loves us, and that He desires good and not evil for us.
Vicki’s trust of and confidence in God was growing at the same rate the fears were dissipating. As a result, people wanted to be around her, if they could, all the time. People of good will wanted to be in the presence of a real, living “miracle” – for that is what Vicki had become to some. And she was so sweet – people came by the house for just a smile and a kind word.
But another group … a desperate group of terminally ill people … came to Trinity and our home, believing we had become “experts” when it came to procuring a healing from God. They came asking for “the EXACT words” that I had prayed, or the Bible verses Vicki had reflected upon as she prepared for the surgery.
We understood where they were coming from, and why they were coming to us. They wanted our formula.
Oh, how we loved them. We didn’t flippantly tell them, “There is no formula!” We did our very best to sweetly point to The Healer, encouraging these frightened people to pursue Him while they sought His healing power.
Vicki began to be asked to share her story at churches and women’s groups around our city. Calls came from the Church of the Nazarene, Church of God, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Independent or Non-Denominational churches. Dates were being booked. There was discussion about Vic’s availability. Our own denomination wanted a piece of her time, too.
Now a new pressure was building. Time pressure. We both wanted things to return to normal. I wanted to be back in my office, a place I had neglected and sorely missed for over a year. I saw Vicki’s healing as God’s creative way of providing me with “catch-up” time. Vicki also wanted a return to normal – a daily life that didn’t include painkillers, needles, tests, recovery time, the smell of hospital bathrooms, and the discomfort of hospital gowns.
We were about to discover “a NEW normal.”
We carved out time together on April 1, and oh, what a time it was.
April 1, 2001
[Today] Lowell and I had the most intimate conversation [we’ve had] in the last three years! Maybe ever. We REALLY talked about so many things. Life and death, the boys and discipline, mistakes, forgiveness, love, depression, etc. We think it was the most important conversation (real dialogue), maybe in our marriage. It was so important that we [sat down] together and helped each other remember what we talked about. We weren’t defensive. We were totally open and free.
First, we talked about how, whenever we’ve bragged to each other about how stable our marriage was/is, we’ve had a setback (to put it mildly). We’ve decided that instead of talking about how healthy our marriage is, we’re just going to live it, and let others decide if we’ve got a great marriage or not.
Talking about our relationship led us to talk about our friendship, and how free we are to be who we really are. Lowell and I both feel that we judge each other all the time, [having a] “What have you done for me lately?” type of attitude. Now, we no longer want to keep score.
We feel that we were raised in homes that didn’t “intentionally” create an atmosphere of performance-driven love, but it happened anyway. Both of our dads seemed to communicate that we needed to be a certain way, and if we weren’t, then “love” (feeling approved of, and accepted for who we were) was withheld. I would do anything to please my dad. If he disapproved of something I did, it was devastating. That didn’t happen so much with me, but Lowell feels like it was [consistently present] in his home.
Because both of us can’t do everything right (be perfect), then we get hurt and moody. Lowell especially. He knows that he gets real moody sometimes, and that he gets angry when I don’t do what he thinks I should. I admitted to him that I’ve always compared him to my dad (who does so many things well – money, discipline, keeping his weight under control and staying in shape, etc.). If Lowell didn’t do things the way my dad did, I was right there to criticize him.
I [admitted to] Lowell, from my heart, that I’ve never gotten over the time he called the police on Brandon. He was crushed, but then he explained why he did it all over again, and this time I listened. (We had agreed that if we found any drugs in the house, we had to call the police because drugs and sex inside our house was “non-negotiable.” Lowell had told that to both boys, so when Brandon had the drugs in his room and in his car, he had violated our rules. When he called the police, he was following through on something we had agreed to do. But I wasn’t really on board. And I thought he overreacted. I’ve blamed him for Brandon running away from home, and for running away from God.)
Lowell had been more consistent with disciplining the boys than me, and I’ve been more tender. I didn’t [feel he was loving enough, and he felt] like I undercut his authority and his word.
Lowell apologized to me for hurting my heart, and I apologized for holding a grudge against him. We both just laughed (instead of cried), which was wonderful!
Lowell asked me to forgive him, and that led into a good talk about forgiveness. I agree with him, that saying, “I’m sorry” is not enough. I’ve told him that we should tell the other person we’re sorry, but we should also ask for forgiveness. He said that he’s in agreement with that, and has been, but he’s also been really too proud to ask for forgiveness. He said he would change.
We talked a lot about how different we are. Our personalities are so different, NOT TO MENTION he’s a man and I’m a woman! He is my creative, actor, and emotional husband – so different from my dad. I’m less impulsive, more careful and timid than he is, but I also like to be around people more than he does. He really is an introvert and I’m the extrovert. He says he “gets his batteries recharged when he’s alone” (don’t take it personally, Vicki), and he stays healthy if he’s got time to be off by himself. He explained that after a whole day of listening to and meeting with people the thing he likes to do more than anything is watch TV. He just goes numb. I get energized when I’m out with my friends, or shopping for clothes, eating out, etc. He’d rather come home and veg than be out. Because we’re so different, I have thought he was lazy and anti-social, and he’s thought I was demanding. (He HATES to feel like someone is controlling him, so he rebels and gets really angry.)
We both think we have to work on accepting each other better. I told him that I like him, most of the time. That got a big laugh. But I didn’t think it was funny when he told me that I was domineering and judgmental. He told me that he feels depressed when he feels that I am in control, because he feels less masculine.
I told him that we have lived together for almost twenty-eight years, and I’ve always thought he just didn’t care about my opinion, or believe that I was as smart as him.
We took a bathroom break, and when we came back together I told him that he was a control freak, too, and that he didn’t like me being in control because that meant he wasn’t in control. That shook him up, [but he] agreed with me.
Now, what do we do? We both want to be in control, but we can’t be at the same time.
So much of our hurt comes from lack of trust. We just believe that the other person is going to hurt us, or criticize us, or demean us, or control us, and we want to slide through life with no pain, hurt, or turmoil, which is impossible! And Lowell doesn’t want to go to counseling because he doesn’t trust me or a counselor to fairly see how things “really are.”
That’s when we both started talking about our pride.
PRIDE IS THE BIG PROBLEM, all the way around. We both feel we’re right and the other [person] is wrong. And when we are wrong, we can’t admit it because that would hurt too much. So we simmer and boil and tell each other unkind (and untrue) things!
How do two prideful people change? Especially, how do two prideful people WHO ARE MARRIED and have a lot of history and hurt change?
It’s going to have to be God.
We prayed together, and we both noticed that it was the first time in a long time we had prayed for each other without mentioning Trinity, cancer, or money.
We need to pray for each other more … but not pray about what we’re doing so much, but for each other. I need to pray God’s blessing on Lowell, and he needs to do the same thing for me. And we’ve got to stop keeping score, let our past go into “the sea of God’s forgetfulness,” and just love each other. We’ve got to stop expecting so much from each other, and forgive each other when we make mistakes … and we are going to make mistakes because we are so human.
God, You’ve given us a great marriage, and You’ve given us each other. We haven’t always been thankful for each other, and we certainly haven’t talked enough, even tho’ we’ve known we should have.
Help us not to be ungrateful for the gift of each other that You have given to us. We need to be more thankful and less judgmental.
Help us, Lord. We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are upon You. Since You’ve decided to heal me, you obviously want us together, but better. Only You can help us, and You did today. Please keep doing it, Lord.
Being together never felt to good.
