My Story - Confession To Two-Potting

Besides my confusion over how I defined God's love and goodness, I eventually discovered another barrier to understanding and enjoying the love and goodness of God.  The barrier was that I was a 'two-potter' for years. This article helped me to find freedom in becoming a 'one-potter':

         http://www.letu.edu/people/matthewgreen/GraffPapers/The%20Two%20Pot%20System.pdf

Note: Learning to live as a one-potter rather than a two-potter also significantly helped me in my battle with  scrupulosity OCD.  (See the archive "My Story - Defining OCD and Scrupulosity" from May 31, 2010 for more on scrupulosity).

My Story - Love Me Like A Pizza?

When I was still a young Christian, a speaker at a Christian group meeting shared about his dating experience with the woman who is now his wife.  On one of their early dates he told her that he loved her. Having told her that he loved her at such an early point in their relationship, the relationship became awkward.  So to "fix" the situation he later told her over the phone, "You know when I said I loved you, I meant I love you like the way I love a good pizza."  

His story reminds me of how the word love can be misused or misunderstood.  The word love is used in so many different ways:  "I love pizza." "I love my wife." "I love baseball." "I love that shirt." "I love my daughter." "I love crossword puzzles." "I love God." "God loves me." "I love popcorn." Is it any wonder that I have often missed the significance of what it truly means when God says He loves me?

My Story - What is Love? What is Goodness?

A huge barrier to my embracing the love and the goodness of God in the midst of my suffering was how I defined the words 'love' and 'goodness'.  I eventually realized that I was defining these words on the basis of teachings of the culture, my own feelings, my deep-rooted selfishness, and / or  the teaching of some Christians who were well-meaning but I think were in error on this point of their theology.

How I define words has profound effects on what I believe, and what I believe has profound effects on how I relate to God.  I plan to elaborate on how I grew in enjoying God's love and goodness, but for now I will just share two working definitions that helped me in understanding how the Bible writers define God's love and goodness. 

• A pastor has defined 'love' (agape love) as:  "Love is meeting the needs of the one loved without counting the cost or expecting a return."

• Another pastor has defined 'goodness' as:  "Goodness is a generous kindness so concerned for the truth and well-being of another that it may display itself boldly in active intervention, rebuke, or correction." 

My Story - God's Goodness: At A Loss For Words

I have been struggling the last few days with feelings of great inadequacy to write about the goodness and love of God.  I firmly believe that He is perfect and unchanging in His goodness no matter what circumstances we face, but I've been struggling to find the words to convey how I have so confidently arrived at this conclusion.  I desire to use just the right words to convey how good God is so that others who have struggled like I have would be convinced in mind and heart as well.   

But I realized last night that no one person's words were the single key in my embracing the truth of a good God who has allowed a world that is full of evil and suffering.  It was a process over time that got me where I am now. My process included people's words, but it also included seeking God, suffering, learning, growing, questioning, honesty with God, failures, and choices of obedient faith.

My words will always be inadequate in themselves.  But, if you struggle like I have, I trust that the Holy Spirit will use my words in the ways that He knows is best in your own personal process.   

Prayer: If you also struggle to reconcile God's goodness and love with the suffering that we experience on earth, I want to pray for you as Paul did for the Ephesians:  "I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.  And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge -- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." (Eph. 3:16-19).

My Story - Questioning the Goodness of God

During my depression, an even greater struggle for me than pride was my struggle with truly believing in the goodness of God.  

For a period of several weeks or months in late 2003 -- before my friend Cathy's death and before my depression -- I started to struggle with questions about God's goodness.  At that time in my life "everything was going well" for me. I really enjoyed my teaching job, I was engaged to a man who surpassed my dreams, I had great friends, and I was enjoying a sweet walk of fellowship with the Lord. I felt so blessed and I (unwisely) compared my circumstances with those of other Christians who seemed to have more trials of pain and suffering in their lives.  Though I knew the Biblical answer that God is always good no matter what the circumstances are, I kept wondering, "God, are you really as good to such and such person as you are to me?"  

I had been a Christian for about six years at that point.  I was still earnestly seeking to know and love God, and I had this honest question about God's goodness that I could not reconcile in my mind and heart.  Little did I know that I would soon be facing my first season of intense suffering.  Soon, with the events of Cathy's death, subsequent trials, and my depression, the question of God's goodness to others in the midst of their suffering would become more personal as I faced the question of God's goodness in my own suffering.

There was still much that I needed to learn....

My Story - My Struggle With Pride

In my previous post I referred to the challenge of pride in going to a counselor.  This poem by Beth Moore  encourages me to relinquish my pride, but it also reminds me to rest in God's unfailing love for me when I'm struggling with pride, when I'm depressed, when I'm fearful, when I feel fragile... (Further Still p. 29).

"Holding Us" 

We often see ourselves as fragile, breakable souls.

We live in fear of that which we are certain

we can't survive. 

As children of God, we are only as fragile as our

unwillingness to hide our face in Him.

Our pride alone is fragile. 

Once its shell is broken and the heart laid bare, 

We can sense the caress of God's tender care. 

Until then He holds us just the same. 

Though I did not feel it or believe it most of the time, I know now that God was holding me through each moment of my crisis and depression in 2004.  And now I also see that during that time He taught me, little by little, to let my pride go in exchange for His grace.  I cried more tears of sorrow than of joy during that time, but as I began to experience His grace that was sufficient for my needs, some tears and even songs of joy began to come again too.  

Note:   I want to be careful about defining the way I use the words pride and humility. If you haven't read my post "Beloved Prodigal of Infinite Worth" from Tuesday, May 25th, I encourage you to go to the archive link and read in that post how I define pride and humility. 

My Story - Counseling

I first went to a Christian counselor when I was in the midst of severe depression. Beginning with the unexpected death of a co-worker/friend who contracted a serious contagious illness in January of 2004, I faced a series of traumatic events, difficult relationships, challenges to my faith, and the possible loss of some of my dearest hopes and dreams.  These challenges were far beyond my ability to control or to face with my meager human resources.  In addition, I did not know at that time that I had OCD.  My OCD dramatically flared up due to the crisis, and that made dealing with the crisis even more difficult. 

If I hadn't been so depressed and limited in daily functioning, I doubt that I would have taken the time or would have chosen to let go of my pride in order to see a counselor.  But, in the overwhelming state of my depression, seeing a counselor appeared to be not only wise but necessary. Looking back I'm thankful that my loved ones and I did not resist the humility, the time, or the money that it took for me to seek the assistance of a good counselor.

I certainly did not recover overnight and counseling was not always easy, but there were many healing truths and practical applications that I gained from counseling which I still benefit from today, six years later.  

Beth Moore writes, "Beloved, the world will not stop and our true God-ordained ministries will not end when we take the time to let God make us healthier and better equipped" (Believing God, p. 88).  Recovery from depression took lots of time and humility on my part. However, I imagine that I would still be depressed these six years later if I had resisted the various means of healing that God provided, including good counselors.  The investment was definitely worth the great rewards that I am reaping now.