Words for Winter's Lingering

With a presumption that 'it's probably just me', I've been doing a bit of light research on the effects of this time of year on our general relational health.

Sweet flowers from a friend that included a card with life-giving words.

I'm not talking about mental health, although that definitely factors in.  I'm not talking about physical health, although the winter virus thing certainly factors in.  My focus, my sense of it, is on how this time of year seems to foster no end of minor to significant relational agitation, specifically and simply because of how we are talking to each other.  

It's like we're all just that much more grumpy, and that 'grumpy' mostly comes out of our mouths.

Here I risk minimizing what concerns me, simply by using a word like 'grumpy'.  That seems to imply that a good night's rest or a good meal might solve the problem.  And often that's a good place to start, sure.  If we can do a little self care and come back to the conversation open and generous, sure.

But what if the Seasonal Affective Disorder we're all experiencing by March, is poking holes in our love and decency, exposing some hurts and hostilities that spill out in some truly unhelpful ways of communicating?

It might be one explanation for what's bothering me of late; this seeming increase in sharp words, sarcasm, cynicism, often under the pretense of humour.  Humour that insults, tears down, and is pointedly aimed at an individual.  Bantering that starts out maybe okay, but ends in increasingly embarrassing, personal digs.

Call me sensitive, that's fine.  You wouldn't be the first, and that's why I started this with 'it's probably just me'.  But it's also why I did a bit of light research.

Just Google 'the psychology of sarcasm' and read a few (reliably-sourced, peer-reviewed) articles and see if I'm overstating things.  Look up the affects of different kinds of 'humour' on relationships.  Get a few definitions.  Maybe even ask the people around you how you're coming across.  Ask if they feel safe.

Perhaps you'll still tell me to lighten up.  And if you say so in ways that are safe and healthy for me to hear, I'll take it into consideration.  For sure I will.

And if it is indeed 'just me', then I'll press deeper into my own commitment to watch my words.  Even in the words used in this blog post, or anywhere, I truly hope to convey humility and grace and a desire for peace.  

But I won't always, I know this.  And surely as I post this, if you're interacting with me in some form in the next few days or weeks, you'll see me slip.  I'm earnest but not perfect.  So I'll watch myself, and invite you to watch with me.

Here Paul inspires me:

 "Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone." Colossians 4:6

"Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen."  Ephesians 4:29

And oh, the Bible is full of loving instruction as to how we might love with our words.

Oh friends.  Thank you for all the times you have honoured me with your honesty.  Thank you for all the positive words of love and encouragement and grace you have spoken into my life.  Thank you for allowing me insights into myself with your differing perspectives.  Thank you for helping me to lighten up with I genuinely need to.

May we all walk winter's last weeks with wisdom.

We need each other so much.

Confessions of a Hungry Introvert

Tuesday morning and it's quiet.

 

  The children have all gone to school after a four day weekend celebrating the new king's birthday.  That means that my first four days here have been abundant with voices and laughter and reading and worship and eating birthday cake and otherwise loving and being loved.

Over. The. Top.

I am overwhelmed.

Every time I come I learn new things about me.  I know.  I come to teach.  Bible stories and ESL are part of what I do when I come.  And so far that's going well (thank you Ann and Jill for helping to get all those ideas and papers and trinkets ready for the miracles lessons).

 But every time, I am more the student than the teacher.  True fact.

And right now my lessons are layered on top of what I've been learning already in these past two months away from my community of faith.

I hesitate to even mention this again, because I think I've done so in the last five blog posts running, or something like that, and I risk rolling the eyes of my readers.  But honestly, as I sit here in the quiet of a Tuesday morning, this whole need-of-people thing is what continues to surprise the introvert in me.

I am an introvert, somewhat to the extreme, in that I would say that I get my batteries recharged by being alone.  And solitude and silence are gifts to my soul.  And in all my ministry years, past, present and on into the future, my greatest challenge has always been and will always be how to balance this out.  Because....people.

These past weeks away from people I have experienced a beautiful, wretched need that, to be honest, normally I do not.  It's intense and real and uncomfortable and pressing me in ways wonderful and true.  I need my peeps.  I do.

Being here now, and the way this is filling me up, well frankly, sometimes it makes it hard to breathe.

Oh my!

How astonishing delightful it is to sit in the circle and sing together songs I am increasingly able to understand (thanks here to Esther's song book) in the mornings and evenings. 

How simply, deeply good it feels to be surrounded by sweet faces at the tables under the dining shelter, eating birthday cake (thanks here to Deborah and Lawee and David for being born in July) and having nothing else to be doing than just sitting and enjoying the looks on their faces as they devour the very special treat.

How comforting to my away-from soul to sit together for meals (something that's happening more and more as in the beginning I was more usually on my own to eat) and have long, unhurried conversation (which, again, I am increasingly more able to understand), about life and ministry and dreams for the future.  And this with the added bonus of sensing that, while we will always miss Bee, something of the dreadful long night of grieving has passed and joy dominates this place again.

And I am greedy for it all.  The being-with thing. 

Oh my people!  Here and at home!  How I need you!  Desperately, wretchedly, deeply simply, shockingly.

It's an interesting place for an introvert to be.  But it makes sense.  The theology of it is brilliant.  How better to prove that God intended us to do life in family, in community, with each other, than to take an introvert away from it for a while and see what it does to her soul?


I feel a self-induced research paper coming on (she said, robbing the moment of any poetry).  Only my fellow student-geek friends will understand this, I know.  But it makes me want to go looking for how I may have missed some nuances in my Bible before this, even having preached on it so many times before.

Tuesday morning and it's quiet.  And that's okay.  For now.  By four I'll be ready to greet them again.  We've got some serious reading to do if we're going to get this book club thing done before I leave.