Author: Erin

Better than being ok…

Posted on by Erin

This last weekend the women of my church put on a retreat.  Like pretty much everything my church does, it was an amazing, DIY, all hands on deck experience where literally every woman in attendance contributed to in some way, whether that be planning, crafting, cooking (oh, the snacks!), speaking, singing, writing Bible verses on note cards to place on everyone’s beds, making a million espressos, etc., etc., and so on and so forth.  Several women were  asked to share part of our stories, or testimonies.  Because I’m such an organized planner, I clearly waited until the last minute and  sat down on Friday morning and wrote it all out.  I figured since I’d already written it (mostly), I might as well polish it up and post it here.  By polish, I mean add at least another half page.  

So…I’ve decided we’re all best friends.  And since we’re all best friends you get to know some things about me that I’ve up to this point really only shared with a few close friends. Totally not juicy…don’t get excited…but I feel like we don’t walk around sharing with the world our moments of, “Here’s where I felt really vulnerable and exposed and like a giant idiot.”  But we should. So here it goes.

God and I have been working through being ok with the way He made me since He and I got our start back when I was around 7.  I’m an introvert. As a kid I’d cry at parties or go completely mute.  Then I’d beat myself up later, replay conversations for hours at night, and wonder why everyone else could be ok but not me.  I’ve recently turned into a more outgoing introvert, but that comes with entire Saturdays spent mostly in isolation.  God and I have worked through being not just “ok” with who I am, but pretty excited about it.  I went from hearing really clearly from God that the way I was thinking about myself was straight up rude to that ratio flipping to where, honestly, I’m pretty happy with who I am and how I look.  That took some tweaking and refining and some lessons in self-care.  And God never affirmed me by comparing me to anyone else.  He never said, “Don’t worry about your weight…look at Adele, people think she’s beautiful!” or, “Your nose isn’t as big as so-and-so’s,” or, “Julianne Moore is not the prettiest red-head out there…you are!”  Because that gives me confidence either on the back of someone else’s or because I’ve torn them down.  Both are ugly.  Both say that God isn’t enough.  God said, “You have what you have because I chose it. It was my choice as the sovereign and all-knowing guy that I am, the God who loves you and made you and likes the result. I thought about it and decided that size 10 feet were definitely the right choice here.”  If I ever start to get into some hateful self-thinking (which is always the result of comparing myself to others or to some standard from the world) I think about Him telling me, “Hey, I’m right and they’re wrong. End of story.”

So here I go, armed with all kinds of confidence and self-assurance, into a challenge that the previous me would have completely run from. Worship team. Singing. With a microphone. In front of all the people.  And I think, “This is scary, but God and I have got this! I know I’m totally ok no matter what happens! My security is in the Lord!”  I was certain that in no time I could just carry over all the lessons I’d learned and applied in every other area of my life.  After jumping over a few quick hurdles, I’d be sparkly, happy me and we’d all be the bestest of friends.

Except that’s not how it went.  It went like me walking into rehearsal terrified that everyone would think I was bad or weird or would end up wishing I’d just stop coming.  It went like me shaking through entire services and finding a quiet place to cry in between. I felt dumb all the time and like a burden. I felt like people were just dealing with my presence. And it went like that for years.

There is nothing anyone on the team ever did to make me feel that way (in fact, it’s sort of a collection of the nicest people ever), but there I was, just like when I was a kid, crying at the party or retreating so far into myself that there were literally no words in my brain.  I couldn’t live the experience, I was just surviving.  And it made me so mad because hadn’t God and I fixed this already?  I have all the tools, all the right thoughts, all the prayers, all the scriptures.  I’d practice and practice to refine my skills and be a better singer, expand my range, become louder and less mousy.  And still I’d show up at rehearsal and on Sundays and repeat the same horrific experience.  Over and over.

I was SO MAD.  Mostly at myself.  Never having been one who sticks with a challenge just because it’s challenging, I did a weird, anti-my-personality thing.  I kept showing up.  I decided I’d keep showing up until someone asked me not to. Besides, if my fears were founded, I wouldn’t have to wait very long.  And I’d cry if I cried and fail if I failed.  God had put me in this spot and it was really hard and I wanted to know why.

Then came the Christian Musician Summit this past fall.  Signing up for that, I thought, “I’m going to feel like a giant imposter because I literally know zilch about music, but here’s a moment to learn something new and bond with my people.”  I was pretty sure it’d be an amplified version of how I felt at rehearsals.  All these super awesome musicians who know way more than I do and are already best friends are going to be wandering around, talking their music talk, and I’m going to feel like a scared, mute, idiot.  Sure.  Let’s pay money for that experience.

But, once again, my expectations were way off.  It was a great weekend, I learned lots of things.  Side note: I feel like the world can be divided into two groups of people—people with whom I have shared a hotel bed and people with whom I have not.  There’s a special, trusting place you get to with another human being, to whom you are not related or married, when you sleep side by side.  I’m trusting you to not steal the covers, have previously trimmed your toenails, and not engage in unwanted spooning.  Traci nailed it.  We’re sisters for life.

Aside from finding my chest voice, learning how to blend better with other vocalists, and having lots of fellowship time with my team, one of my major take-aways was from this guy, Tom Jackson, who works on stage presence with major acts in Nashville. People like Taylor Swift plan a major tour and he comes out to tell them how to have the most amazing show ever. He talked about how being better at being in front of people comes from giving everything you can to the people in front of you and that the enemy of that is self-consciousness.  Your energy should be pointed out and not in.  It comes out of humility, which is not that self-battering, self-loathing thing we often think it is, but accepting the role you’ve been called to do and serving the people you’ve been called to serve.  You don’t have to have it all together.  Someone (spoiler alert, it’s Jesus) got it all together for us so we don’t have to.

It hit me that my problem was not in thinking wrong things about myself, it was in thinking about myself at all. I hadn’t been sending any energy out. I’d been taking all the energy, all the things I’d been receiving from God when I’d pray over and over again for Him to come through for me, and spending them on myself.  It would all just tumble around in me, battering against all my fears, not doing any good at all.  I realized what had been happening was that my ability to love our church and love my team in the way I’d learned to do in nearly every other setting of my life was being thwarted by this fear and constantly thinking about myself.  Was I going to be ok? Was I going to look dumb?  Was I going to feel like an idiot for being scared even though I knew all the right things to do so I wouldn’t?  Oh, dear God, patch me up, make me whole. Fix this.

The thing is, He already had.  He’d already gotten it all together so I didn’t have to.  He said, “Hey, now that we’ve got you feeling good and thinking all kinds of healthy thoughts about yourself…let’s stop thinking about you so much at all.” I’d been making myself the most important thing in the room. The only thing that mattered was that I was ok. God said, “Let’s give actual humility a try.  No the false humility where you think you’re less, but the real humility where you think about yourself less.”  Then He gave me 1 John 4:18, which wasn’t new to me but had never been spoken so directly to me from Him. God never speaks to me in an out-loud voice (because I’d probably pee myself), but there’s this thing that He does where a thought so clearly slices through my own pattern and stands in such contrast that I know the source is holy.  He said, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear because fear involves torment.”  And I’d been tormented, folks.

It was like He was saying, “Hey, just be loved.  And don’t be loved so that you can feel better about yourself, be loved so that you can love.”  Verse 17, just before the “no fear in love” part, says that love has been perfected in us so that we may have boldness.  If one word sums up the thing I did not have all that time, it’s boldness.  You can’t be bold when you’re pretty sure you’re about to screw it all up.  The thing I get to be sure about now, though, is that I can’t actually do that.  Standing up, putting myself out there, and trying doesn’t ever end in flames of failure.  It ends in grace. At the end of the day I get to say, “God loves me.  I love these people.  I did the best I could.”

In Christ alone my hope is found;

He is my light, my strength, my song;

This cornerstone, this solid ground,

Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.

What heights of love, what depths of peace,

When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!

My comforter, my all in all—

Here in the love of Christ I stand.

**As an afterthought, Tim Keller has written a book that addresses this concept of humility in much more depth and with more scriptural support and wisdom than I ever could.  If you want to check out it, it’s called The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness.  If you ever pick up anything he’s written, you won’t be disappointed.  Promise.

Invest

Posted on by Erin

“I’m gonna tell you something, Miss Randle,” he said as he was headed out the door. “Don’t ever change.”  He even did a little pistol-point at me with his finger.

“Ok,” I said.  “I’ll try not to.” Mostly I was being dismissive and trying to get him to scurry on out the door.  Planning time, baby.

“NO.  Don’t try.  Just don’t change. Don’t do it.” He had his serious face on now. Brows were furrowed.

“Well, what if I want a haircut?”

Sigh. Miss Randle is so slow sometimes. “You can do that. You can, like, change your clothes and stuff.  You can even shave your head bald if you want to, and if you do that I’ll shave my head, too, but don’t you ever change your personality, ok?  Just don’t.  It’s great.”

If you had told me the first week of school that I’d be on the receiving end of this level of pure sweetness by the end of October, I’d have checked the temperature of your forehead for signs of some kind of brain-boiling fever.   September had me in a full-on ugly cry at my desk after the second full week.  I even left a meeting in tears, accidentally slamming a door behind me, because I couldn’t handle people saying the phrase “3rd grade.”  I’d made a scene and I never make a scene, always preferring to suck it up in the moment and let it out somewhere other than in front of my coworkers and boss.  September was just that rough.  It was pray all day, drink wine every night, start every day knowing you won’t succeed kind of rough, but it’s over now.

October is over now, too.  It has had its own challenges, but I no longer feel like I’m fighting a losing battle.  In fact, I feel like a lot of the time we’re all winning. The conversation above is evidence of that.

If he could, the student I was chatting with would tell you his September was also very rocky.  There were lots of angry, screaming breakdowns, lots of time in the office, some violence, some storming out of the building, some calling of security guards.

So, how did we get here? How did we get to this place where he’s not just settled and controlled, but loving and funny? How did I stop having tearful meltdowns in inappropriate settings?

I’m convinced it’s investment.

When I walked out of that meeting and the door slammed behind me, I went to the quietest place I could find and, with all the lights off, literally backed myself into a corner.  I took several deep breaths and tried to stop the tears from flowing.  A minute or so later I looked up to see someone in the door.  A coworker, a friend, had followed me into the dark place.  She sat down with me and asked what I needed.  Throughout the day other folks showed up with lots of, “Hey, I’ve been there, too.”  The end of that story is that our team got together and solved a problem that was making it impossible for me to invest in my kids.  We all invested in the solution, but they also invested in me as a person.  Now I know that I have a group of people I can trust to come through for me, even when I’m a hot mess.

I’m not used to rushing from overwhelming situations and crawling into corners.  I’m not used to people coaxing me back to sanity.  But for so many of my kids, it’s their normal.  Just a few days before he said the sweetest thing ever, I’d found my little friend hiding under my desk.  Thinking he was just playing and hiding from me and knowing he doesn’t respond well to outright scolding, I made a game out of finding him with the other student in the room at the time.  When we found him, though, he was curled up, rocking, and visibly upset.  Redirecting the other student to work on some reading, I sat down next to my friend under the desk.

“Hey, dude.  I can see that you’re really upset about something.  What would you like me to do? I can sit here and you can talk to me about it or I can leave you alone.  What would work best for you right now?” I figured something had happened in his classroom or he’d had some kind of run-in with another student.

“Don’t you ever do that to me again!” he yelled at me.

“Um…do what, friend?” Now I was confused.

“I had no idea where you were! I was worried sick!  You could have been dead or something!”  Oh…what? This friend comes in about three minutes early for his time every day.  It’s never a big deal.  This particular day, however, I’d been in the office.  Knowing he’s always a little early, I took the ten second walk from the office to my classroom and was two minutes early.  That’s when I noticed he was hiding and figured he was playing around.  He had maybe spent 60 seconds on his own, but it was clearly enough time to send him into a panic.

My heart broke for him.  What had life done to him to make a 60 second absence enough to stir such strong feelings of abandonment? As I’ve gotten to know him, it’s become very clear that so many of his reactions and behaviors are entirely fear-based and that in response my actions have to be totally trust-building.  So, okay, friend, let’s sit under the desk in the dark and figure this out.

The day he made me promise not to ever, ever change, I’d just spent nearly an hour trying to corral him into something that at least resembled productivity.  He’d had this idea to scrap the classroom management system and use one involving earning play money for completed work and paying rent for things like chairs and pencils.  Switching systems is kind of a pain in the booty, but I saw it as a way to have valuable conversations about natural consequences and the weight of our responsibilities.  Plus, it’s always more powerful when kids have a hand in creating their own reinforcement systems.

So there we were, cutting out approximately one bajillion little paper bills, when he popped up and said, “Thank you so much. You listened. You really listened to me.  I had an idea and you said we could do it!  Here we are and we’re actually doing my idea!  And we’ve been working on it for days.  And you let me!”

“Well, buddy, it was a good idea. Honestly, if I didn’t think it was a good idea, we would not be doing this right now.”   He asked me once to always be honest with him.  If he came up to me with a song he made up and I thought it was dumb, he asked me to please just tell him.  Don’t sugar-coat it because that would never help him come up with better songs.  And besides, he could tell.  I asked him if this same philosophy applied to correcting his reading mistakes because he regularly yelled at me about that.  I got no response.

“I’m just so excited that someone actually listened to me this time.”  I am regularly thankful that heartbreak doesn’t make an audible sound.  If these kids could hear all the times they absolutely shatter me, I’d be in trouble.

And now here we are.  He gets top marks on his behavior chart nearly every day.  I cry every day, but now it’s because I’m laughing so hard.  At him.  For shaking his hips like Elvis, who just happens to be his favorite.

He’s not my only kid requiring such significant investment and I’m not the only one investing.  I’m not the only one sitting on the floor and creating safe spaces for kids.  Beyond a doubt, better than any IEP goal I could write, social skills lesson I could plan, or behavioral data tracking sheet I could design, that investment in their actual emotional selves is what I see spur the most change in the majority of my most difficult behavioral students.  We sit, we talk, I listen.  And as I listen, as we listen as the grown-ups in their lives, their little hearts change.  To stop the fighting, we have to stop the fear.  To stop the fear, they have to believe they are safe.  To believe they are safe, they have to be able to trust the environment and the people around them.

Even though he specifically asked me not to, I can’t help but change just a little bit when I’m around him (and all his little cohorts).  When you see the impact a bit of trust can have in just a little, bitty person, you can’t help but want to become more trustworthy every day.  I have people I can lean on who have proven through their investment in me that I am supported and not alone.  My fervent prayer is that I can spread a bit of that same thing to all the small humans who have been entrusted to me.  I don’t know what happens out in the big world, but when they step into my small one, please let it be safe. Let it build trust.  Let it be a place where we can all change, even just a little bit, into more of our best selves.