The Anatomy of Falling {or, “...how to go from hot to lukewarm in a very short time...”}

If only there were a “red alert” attached to offenses. A serious fall begins precisely at the point where we no longer love as we did at the first. And I don’t mean our love for God. Many scholars will tell you that the warnings contained in Revelation about the lukewarm condition involve our love for the brethren.

You become offended, and at that very point, you begin seeing people you used to care about through a distorted filter. You should have rejected the offense instantly, but you didn’t. Now, it will always get more difficult to reject. And then more difficult. Yet more difficult, each and every time you or I entertain our right to be offended.

Once you fall from a first-love state, you are at the mercy of your own opinions and emotions. Think about it: you left off your obedience to the Holy Spirit, who is continually telling you the truth - the truth that involves the command to let the offense go. You grieve Him, deeply.

The first thing to go is your clarity.

Cue the spiral into the lukewarm state. Next, you manifest darkness. How? By acting on your distortions and involving the heart and mind of others by “sharing how you feel” - all those feelings flowing from your space of non-clarity. There is no going back from here.

There is forgiveness. Always. But there is no putting that stink back in the bottle. There is no unspilling that milk. You will - from this point forward - have more to do to fix it than you ever would have by keeping your offense to yourself.

You have set in motion a series of events in which you both lock yourself in a position of perpetually justifying your opinions, and contaminating others. You have activated a negative confirmation bias that will never leave you until you send it away. You will find what you look for, you will see what you believe. You are manifesting darkness, not light.

Yet you won’t see your understanding as darkened - because if the light that is in you be darkness, behold how great the darkness. The disturbance of love and the disorientation of unrepented offense has stolen your clarity. You have dumped your stuff into the material world, projecting your bile. Now, your spouse, friends, all in your near-orbit must relate to you correspondingly.

That should break your heart, but you’ll be too busy arranging your alliances.

You are affecting your future. The results can and do last a lifetime. Almost no one ever recovers, because almost no one is willing to do the work it would take to restore relationships and forge a change of perspective. Christ, in Revelation, says it this way, “Repent, and do the acts of love you did at the first.”

Walk in love at all times. Let the fear of the Lord grip your heart in this. Put healthy distance between yourself and those who walk in willful woundedness. Never allow your own mind to entertain an offense. The bigger the reason to be offended, the bigger the reward for refusing it, and the worse the consequences if you hold on to it.

I have seen this play out, again and again. Offense is a thief and will alter destiny and it can alter generations that come after you. You can say you are not offended till eternity rolls, but if you aren’t doing the works you did at the first -

you’ve fallen, and you can’t get up.

Unless you change your mind.

That Long Winter of Yore {And my SOLD OUT art collection of Winter 2020, and how they are related}

What I learned, during The Long Winter of 20-whatever-whatever, that inspired my latest SELL OUT collection, titled “Friends and Flowers, A Celebration”…

….I learned that, as a leader and a Christian, I need clear boundaries and an equally clear, Biblical value for the role of leadership. When boundaries are crossed, and/or when I am mistreated, it is more than okay, it is absolutely vital to say to myself, “I was the _________________. (insert: mother, leader, pastor, business owner) in this situation. I am the one sticking and staying. I deserved to be treated much better than I was.”

This kind of objective self-tenderness is not self pity. Rather, it is a necessary moment of clarity.

Self-compassion is something that I am not so good at. Most leaders aren’t. When offenses take place, I often move on quickly (good), but I equally often move on without acknowledging the objective truth (not good). I need complete clarity on the fact that I deserved (in the proper sense, not the entitled sense) to have been treated much better than I was. Or perhaps I need complete clarity on the fact that my husband deserved to have been treated much better than he was.

Why? Because suffering is part of leadership. The Bible calls it “filling up the sufferings of Christ.” The sufferings of Christ mean being ill-treated. The sufferings of Christ mean having your “good be evil spoken of”. It is when others return evil for good.

“My Pioneering Friend”

Note: it is not when others “return evil for perfection”, because you’ll never lead with perfection. We didn’t and we don’t lead perfectly. But our leadership was and is faithful and good.

When your good is treated as though it were bad, that is part of filling up the sufferings of Christ.

But it isn’t filling up the sufferings of Christ if we, as the people He has called to do a certain specific job, do not stop to acknowledge said suffering.

We cannot offer up as costly worship, what we do not acknowledge.

You and I as leaders have to stop and consciously acknowledge, before the watching eyes of God and the watching eyes of our own heart, that we were rendered evil for good. “This is what that looks like”.

Then, count it as filling up His sufferings.

You and I get to take our badly bruised heart, and count it the equivalent of an alabaster box of expensive perfume, broken and poured out on the feet of the One who called us in the first place.

To do this honestly and well, is the wisest thing a leader can do. It kills many birds with one stone: it turns heaviness to gladness, it removes every trace of bitterness, it creates space for the Holy Spirit to minister to us, it cements our position before God in secret places. 

It secures our reward, it makes us fit to be a leader of other leaders; and then, if all that were not enough, it all becomes another reason to praise Him.

Take time to get clear on these things.

Because all suffering leads to promotion.

It’s been two years since that Long Winter. I’m completely on the other side, with a new circle and a healed heart, a very clear head and a wiser perspective.

And we are already living into our promotion. So I know these things for sure.

Now it is your turn. If you get clear on this, your pain will qualify you to be a leader of other leaders. Those leaders, precious and called men and women, will one day need to hear you tell them, without batting an eye, “You were treated quite badly. You deserved better than that.”

Their tears will begin to fall…the tears may even become sobs. Hold the space for them. Because their healing is on the way.

They will need you to show them how to alchemize the suffering, and turn it into their next promotion.