On sticking your head above the parapet

Not for the first time, I've read a blog post by Deborah Jenkins and she has inspired me to write my own post. Not for the first time, this little nudge has come at exactly the right time; and not for the first time, it's been when I've been feeling very much in need of a bit of encouragement. 

I make heavy weather of things, I know. Life in this 'season' for me is definitely more like a slog than a gambol and writing, while very precious to me indeed, is regularly elbowed out by the mundane and the immediate. When time and head-space are both acutely limited I have to make sure that I read the Bible daily and spend some time writing in my journal because I have found these to be life and sanity savers. For long periods it's the only writing that I do, but I've kind of made peace with that. Anything over and above is a bonus.

I got something written a few months ago. I was pleased with it. When it was all finished I knew that it wasn't perfect, but so much work had gone into it that it was as good as it could be. I was satisfied. I was happy to say that it was mine. Every writer knows how difficult it is to let the world in and risk what they might say or think. It's very hard to be so vulnerable.

I showed it to a trusted friend. 

Continued over at The Association of Christian Writers' Blog, More Than Writers where I post on the 23rd of each month. Come and visit. There's some good stuff. 

It happened...and I'm still alive

Well, I worried and worried and fretted and flapped and chewed my fingers and asked 'What if...?' and the very thing that I feared so much has happened. 

Swimming. Source of endless angst for me as it necessitates getting my out of shape body out of comfy jeans and T shirts and into a garment that's small and tight and doesn't cover anywhere near enough of me. I read articles about how to choose a flattering swimsuit and I can never understand it. If it doesn't cover chin to ankle in dark coloured flowing fabric, preferably bias-cut, then how on earth can it be flattering? 

Anyway. 

I have Big hang-ups about the way I look, and I have started swimming again to try to get a big fitter, and (who knows) a bit thinner. 

I started swimming with the swimming club that my daughters go to, as they have a 'Masters' squad (ha!) that trains twice or three times a week and has in one lane a handful of older people that are closer to my level of fitness than the svelte gods and goddesses in the other five lanes. They sashay out from the changing rooms laughing and joking in their beautiful colourful swimsuits while I sort of skulk in my black one that's intended to make me invisible. 

Despite all this, I have been enjoying it.

I've perfected the art of draping my (large) towel over one shoulder, carrying my kitbag in front of my legs and scurrying between the changing rooms and the pool incognito with my hat and goggles on. You'd be amazed at how quickly I can arrange my things on the poolside and get into the comparative safety of the water if I time it right.

All this time (since February) I've been working on this. I know that it's unlikely that any of the other swimmers are particularly interested in my progress along the side of the pool, and I have repeated to myself over and over that I don't know any of them, and so what they think doesn't matter to me. 

And then. 

And then the devil upped the ante. At least I think it must be the devil's work, because no sooner had I started to get used to the way things were, things turned into a nightmare.

My older daughter swims three times a week with the same club, though at the up-and-coming end of it rather than the gasping for breath end. Sort of like the sublime to the ridiculous. There is one session a week that Elizabeth can't go to as she is committed elsewhere. Many of her swimming friends do attend that session, and it was always on a Monday at 5pm - 6pm.  This never mattered in the least, until they moved that session to 7pm - 8pm. 

This is the hour immediately preceding my swim. These kids, friends of my daughter, would be getting out of the pool just as I was getting in. Only a bunch of kids; eight, nine, ten, eleven year olds. Surely once they'd got over the hilarity of Lizzie's mum in a swimsuit and goggles surely the interest would wane? Maybe so, but the fear of being recognised by anyone made me blanch. 

Then, hot on the heels of that awful thought was another, more sinister concept. If those kids were emerging from the pool at 8pm, then their mums would be waiting in the changing rooms for them, just as I was stuffing my clothes in a locker and trying to sidle past to where the water is. 

The Sunday before this new arrangement started, I couldn't sleep. I worried and worried. I strategised that if I arrived ever so early and got changed in loads of time, I could maybe wait until the kids were just climbing out of the pool, which is the cue for the mums on the viewing balcony to get up and come down the steps to the foyer and changing rooms. In that minute while everyone was in transit, I could take my chance to dive out and down the far end of the pool, walking flattened against the balcony wall where they couldn't see me. This was the best plan I could come up with and hinged on split second timing. 

I worried and worried. I asked God to make me thin overnight (not for the first time). I asked for a mysterious blanket of fog to descend over the pool between 7.55 and 8.05pm.  I asked for courage, for discovery was inevitable.

I even had a dream about it that night; no kidding. I dreamed that I was in exactly this situation and I was so worried, but when I arrived that night at the pool everyone was leaving the building via one door, and I was able to enter through a different entrance at the other end of the building. Perfect! In my dream, my anxiety evaporated. Problem solved. I come in, they go out, and never the twain shall meet.  

In my dream, I said to myself, 'God will make it alright'.

I woke up thinking, 'God will make it alright'.

Of course, even that relief and reassurance, throughout Monday the tension mounted; I was aware on some level that it was unlikely that God would make it alright by changing the fabric of the sports centre in time for my swimming session. I seriously considered giving it all up and not bothering. If things hadn't already been so hard regarding this swimming thing, I might have decided to stop going at this point, but seriously it seemed that there had been one obstacle then another in front of me since I started this latest fitness drive that I am stubbornly convinced that it's the right thing to do. It must be doing me some good. It must. I don't want to be intimidated.

So Monday night came and I put my plan into action, and do you know what? It worked like a charm.

Nobody noticed me. Hallelujah.

If only that were the end of the story. The following week, the stress levels climbed, the same situation, and one of the kids pointed at me and waved. A couple of weeks later and I got cheers and a round of applause from the balcony. Several of the mums have asked me about the swimming; some of them have laughed. One pulled a disbelieving face and said, 'You?!'

Yes, me.

Some of the mums have said how brave I am (they don't know the half of it), and one or two have congratulated me. A couple have even confessed to a degree of envy. On the night of the embarrassing applause, one of my fellow swimmers said, 'Take no notice. You're having a go, they're just up there sitting down.'

This week I swam and as I walked onto the poolside half a dozen of the children waved and smiled. I waved and smiled back, and I didn't glance up to the balcony (with my contact lens out I don't see very much, anyway). I had a laugh with a few other swimmers in my lane, learned some things, swam a personal best and I'm starting to master the butterfly.

Yes, me.

So here's the thing that I need to keep hold of.

The thing I feared happened, and I'm still alive. They found out about me, they saw me, they laughed at me (but not all of them; and that's important), and yes, it was pretty much as bad as I thought it'd be, but I'm still here. The world is still turning, and I am still swimming.

Progress-wise, hmm, well, who knows. I scrutinise my body and the scales for signs of a dramatic up-turn in health, but if there are any, they are so gradual as to be imperceptible, but that's alright. I didn't get out of shape in the space of a few months and so getting healthier will be a slow process too, I guess.

I'm thanking God for two amazing things that have happened to me lately.

1.  I am actually enjoying myself.

2.  I am not afraid of being seen any more.

Well, not as afraid as I was. I don't relish the long walk to and from the changing rooms, but if I meet someone I know I no longer feel that I might die. This is a very small thing on one level but on another, for me, a Very Big Thing.

God did indeed make it alright.

Pulling the buttons off

The power of words has been on my mind a lot lately; words that build up or words that destroy. It's an easy thing to understand that words spoken over someone can encourage or damage them; there have been times in my life when I've been crushed by things said to me, and times when I'd been inspired. 

Words, words, words.

But something else kept nagging at me, and I realised that the power of words also extends to things that are said about someone, when they're not there. And that's a different kettle of fish. 

Everyone knows someone who's constantly running down other people, don't they? Anyone who's ever stood for five minutes in a school playground at pickup time would be able to identify a few people who don't seem to have a good word to say about anyone. Whether it's the shoes, or the hair, the tattoos, or the latest pregnancy, or the frequency that their kids get headlice, or the latest photos on Facebook or...or... anything. We all know people like that. The ones who have sharp nails and rip someone to shreds just for fun. Who seem to love the cut and thrust of the school-run and turn up twenty minutes early to get in some good gossip. 

I'm not like that, you know. If I'm early for the school pick up, I hang about at the end of the road or wait in the car until the children start appearing, and then dive in, deftly scoop up my offspring and scurry off, waving a few times and smiling like a loon. I don't do playground bitchery, so I'm OK, aren't I?

(Interesting note: my computer autocorrect tried to change 'playground bitchery' to 'playground butchery' there. I think that's pretty much the same thing, don't you?) 

So - it's not my thing. But wait a minute.

An unwelcome thought came to me: I'm no better.  I'm just different.

I think I am much more subtle. When I say, 'I think', what I mean is I haven't really thought about it much at all, until lately. Some things have happened that have made me consider more closely what I say, and how I say it, and I realise that I fall into the same trap as ScaryMum at the school gates, even though I got there by a different route. 

I love words and I use a lot of them. If one day it turns out that there was a quota of words assigned to each of us for use in our entire lifetime, then my last decade or so is going to be pretty quiet. There's nothing I like more than a chat over coffee with a friend, and I think this is where I come unstuck. the more you talk, the more chance you have of using words for the wrong thing.

How easy it is to make someone laugh at someone else's expense, then clap your hand over your mouth and say, 'Oops, shouldn't have said that!'  Easy to boost your own stock in a subtle way by making oblique observations about a person.  Criticise someone's decision, make fun of someone's mannerisms, pull a face when their name is mentioned. Easy even to pass on gossip under the guise of being concerned about someone. There are sophisticated ways of doing what ScaryMum does up front in the playground.

Then there are the occasions where it's not even you doing the talking. How easy it is to sit and listen and sip your coffee while someone else's reputation is chipped away in front of you. To smile and laugh and encourage the other person to offload their bitterness or irritation, legitimate or otherwise. Then place becomes strewn with the metaphorical corpses of all the people whose characters have been assassinated before you've finished your cappuccino.    

I had a dream a while ago that I puzzled over for days before it became clear. 

I was walking down a road near where I live. I passed a crowd of people who were excited and shouting (a bit like they used to do when two people had a fight in the playground, remember?)  As I walked past, I heard a shrill female voice yell, 'There she is! I'm going to kill her!'  I caught the eye of another lady and I grimaced at her. This could be messy.

 I hesitated, but decided that I'd better turn back and see what was going on. I wasn't going to let this woman murder someone. 

The crowd was shouting and screaming but I saw that the aggressive woman had hold of another, smartly dressed lady who looked frightened. The aggressor decided that she wasn't going to kill her after all, just 'rip her to bits'. 

'Ripping her to bits' meant that the angry lady was going to destroy the woman's fine clothes. The victim was wearing a designer outfit and the other woman was determined to ruin it. 

First of all she took her expensive shoes and snapped the heels off. The crowd cheered.

So relieved was I that there was to be no bloodshed that I decided to join in. I reached out for the victim's beautiful silk blouse and pulled it hard. It tore, and all the buttons flew off.

At this moment, I looked down and realised with horror that I was wearing the torn blouse.

And I woke up. 

I think that the dream tells me that when I collude with someone else to damage a person's reputation, I damage myself. When I pick the buttons off someone's life, or cut someone down to size I, too, am diminished. It might not be actual bloodshed, but wounds are inflicted nonetheless. And just as I pulled the buttons off her blouse, I exposed the nasty part of myself as well. 

I decided that I needed to be much more careful with my words. I mustn't score the quick point with a facetious comment at someone else's expense. I need to be careful what I say and what I listen to. I quickly realised how difficult it was. 

The newsreader had a new haircut and it made her look like a nuclear mushroom. A man interviewed in the street on the news had a painfully tenuous grasp of grammar. A politician said something that made my skin crawl and I couldn't resist making an unpleasant and personal remark back at the telly. And that was just in the course of the breakfast news. There was still an awful lot of day left to negotiate.

I have comforted myself by mentally pointing out to God that I'm not the worst. I know there are people who are much more vicious and open about their nastiness and gossip, but I know that it's no defence. If the pass mark for a test is 100% it doesn't matter whether you get 99% or 19%, you've still failed. I know that my sins have been dealt with my Jesus on the cross and that I am pure and forgiven in God's eyes, but the nagging thing for me is twofold:

1.  This is one of those sins that we tend to accommodate. We build it in and excuse it and we just accept that that's day to day life. Everyone does it. 

2. In the Bible, it says this:

'With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers (and sisters), this should not be.'  James 3:9,10

I don't want to be a person who sings praise to God and then is mean about someone over a coffee half an hour later. I don't want to be a person who writes a blog about living as a Christian and can be overheard in a cafe speculating about someone's private business. I don't want to be but I'm aware that I am sometimes exactly that person. 

We are held to a higher account, those of us that love Jesus and want to be different. We are looking for holiness. Our value comes from being daughters of God, not from other people's opinions of us, and if we need to bolster their view of us at someone else's expense, then we are doubly in trouble.

I was praying about this issue and trying to wriggle off the hook by telling God that it wasn't really a Big Thing, was it?  A picture came to mind of a fog. A swirling, dense, smog-like fog. Greeny-grey, and so impenetrable that when someone walked into the fog, they disappeared from view.

The fog is the business of talking about someone behind their back; using words to pull someone down. The whole gossiping, tale-telling, criticising, condemning malarkey that we all play at to some extent, from time to time. 

When you reach out to touch it, just to see what it's like, it sticks to you. The deeper in you go, the more grubby you get, until being dirty is the norm, and you've forgotten what fresh air feels like. 

You breathe in the toxic air, and if you’ve breathed it in, you’ll be dirty on the inside too and eventually you’ll breathe it out again, infecting those around you.

I don't want to live in the fog, Lord. 

I don't want even to play at the edges where I have the illusion of safety, but keep putting a hand in to find out how it feels. I don't want to be the sort of woman who feels better about herself by belittling others. I don't want to do this, but you have shown me how hard it is, how engrained in our culture, how petty meannesses and jokes at others' expense are considered socially acceptable. 

Father, I want to be different. (In a good way, please). I want to find positive things to say instead of giggling at the gossip. I want to hold my tongue no matter what the newsreader's haircut is doing. I want to bite back the clever remarks, even if they might win me a laugh. 

I want to build up, not destroy.

I want to encourage and inspire, not diminish and criticise.

I want the words that come out of my mouth to bring you glory.


Prayer:

Lord, shine your light to dispel the fog and show it for what it is. Burn it away so that it no longer stops me from seeing. Open my eyes to see it all around me and show me the danger of flirting with it by messing about at the edges. 

Send your Holy Spirit to give me the wisdom and strength to walk away from the fog. Make my words kind and gentle. May I speak your truth and nothing else. 

Amen