Identity forclosure

From this blog post here.

"Identity foreclosure is a psychological term for the phenomenon in which a person makes premature conclusions about his or her personal identity without a time of exploration and discovery. Identity foreclosure happens when a person adopts the identity of others around them or is forced to accept the identity expectations assumed or given to them."

and

"I began getting to know myself—like one might get to know a new friend. I started asking myself questions. What do you like to do? What are you good at? What are your dreams? What makes you tick? What are some things you have always secretly wanted to try? If there was nothing holding you back, who would you choose to be?"

That post is also about a doctrine circulating in Christian circles that posits that women have a dependent position to men within the church called Complimentarianism - women "complement" the primary role men have as ministers within the church. No matter what view you have about religion or the role of women within Christianity, if God exists and has revealed Himself to humanity, then it is very important to know Him and His view about who we are as clearly as we can.  If you are a Christian, understanding Him is your daily meat and potatoes (metaphorically speaking) because the whole of your spiritual strength comes from standing under Him, and Him alone - not your own reasoning or anyone else's.

Don't ever be afraid of learning more about His way of identifying you for He made you from the very beginning. It isn't as if He is some outsider trying to barge in and change the good thing you have going on. Whether you are a man or a woman, rich or poor, modern or traditional, young or graying middle age, none of these things matter in Christ. His call is not to your gender, sexuality, age, influence, or fame. Jesus' call is to the person you are inside of that frail human frame, and He wants to light you up inside brighter and livelier and more creative and joyful than anything you've ever seen anywhere.

Are you sure you're sure?

Someone somewhere else asked if a true narcissist (her mother) could be a Christian, after all, the narc is all about himself and Very cruel. This is the encouragement I gave her in response. It applies to NPDs and all those with mental disorders and mental illnesses.

Narcissism, even within the parameters of the personality disorder, exists on a continuum. Some people are more, some are less. But really, it isn't a straight line scale, it's a landscape of selfishness. Some people cross the border regularly for visits, some people hoist the flag and buy penthouse apartments in the capital city.

By the time I learned about NPD, my mother was very much on the decline physically, so I had to get help from friends who also knew my opinion about her being NPD. My friends are still astonished that I am confident she was genuinely a Christian, they just couldn't find any evidence other than the religious forms she had always used as a cover.

The key thing to remember about Christianity is that the root of it is not in the mind, it is in the person's spirit, and we neither save ourselves nor keep ourselves in a state of righteousness with God by our prayers or good works. Being made right with God is something we give ourselves in trust to Jesus to do FOR us. That is our faith - we are trusting Jesus to reconcile us to God AND keep us from being such stupid jackasses as to walk away from that reconciliation.

Lots of people stop right there. They recognize the truth of the gospel that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, they sincerely believe it and acknowledge Jesus as their savior, they never stop believing that is true - and then they carry on the rest of their lives trying to live out of their reasoning faculties. Believing happens in the heart, reasoning comes out of your head.

NPD is an entrenched mental disorder. It begins as a form of self defense and grows over time to become an aggressive, pernicious, hideous thing. I heard someone call mental illness "cancer of the mind" once, and it might be a fair analogy. It makes the personality deformed and ugly, but it's key to remember that "personality" is just the part of a person that we see acting outwardly. The innermost part of a person we never see, only that person and God knows what goes on in there.

It only takes faith the size of a mustard seed for God to change someone completely from the inside out. How many have waited until the last moment to throw down the rebel flag and surrender, yet we have no problem believing they are saved? How many sit in church because it's full of "nice" people, yet never do believe that whole "blood shed at Calvary" rigmarole?

If your Mom says she saved, go with that in your prayers. Hold her words up to God with your whole heart and entrust Him to make her words true and sure. It's His problem and He can bloody well come up with the solution. If He is God, then He can live up to it for your mother. (I'll tell you a big secret about that kind of prayer - He ain't scared of it and He likes to save people right where they are.)

You will have to keep your own head outside of the neat little boxes psychology and religion want to stuff people in. Categories of mental illness and most sermons are ratiocinations of the mind, and faith in God always comes from your spirit. I recommend C.S. Lewis as a trusted ally - The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce, and the whole of the Narnia books.

Lewis had an understanding of people in the grip of addiction and mental illness, and hard won experience in being a faithful friend to both. I think both of those things light up his writing. "...it is not easy to throw off in half an hour an enchantment which has made one a slave for ten years."

Private conversations

Looks dry and dusty and ever so technical, doesn't it? I think it probably doesn't look much different to most people than my bookcases full of topical studies and Bible reference books.

I was listening to an old teaching on praying in the spirit a few minutes ago and the thought occurred to me that, although I'm hearing some really great and useful things that I hadn't heard before, it's someone teaching from the inside of their experience with God. Trying to explain it or share it with most people would be really useless, because most people either have little or no experience with Him. He's an Idea, or afar off, or a particle physics discovery yet to be made.

I think it's just human nature to try to study all about God before we actually commit ourselves to Him, and we Fur Shure [!] try to read all the commentaries on speaking in other tongues before we do that whole baptism in the Holy Ghost thing. I have some good news for you, though - all that in depth study is completely useless without God Himself teaching you. You'll never know a thing about God unless He shows it to you.

I realized not long ago that the reason my relationship with my mother did not ruin my relationship with God was that she was not in the relationship. I "got saved" as a little girl of about six or seven. We kids sat on the back row in church while Mother sang in the choir. We were disciplined enough to hold ourselves together back there, and what fidgeting we did couldn't distract too many people, but she could still keep an eye on us.

Since the sermons were a bit dull to my ears, I used to go looking thru the pew Bible for the words in red, because I knew that was Jesus talking. Generally, you can find some good action stories that way, quite a few miracles, and a bit of talking about things that had plain words but just didn't seem to fit as a story. I lucked up [Ha!] on the gospel of John, and he just quotes Jesus talking for the longest time, pages and pages, especially in the time right before his death.

I really didn't understand all the things Jesus was talking about, but I knew I could trust him, so I just kept reading. Finally I came up on John, Chapter 17, and for the first time I could read an entire conversation Jesus had with the Father! I mean all of it, not some little synopsis, but him going on and on - it was just like being there! Oh, I wanted to listen to every little scrap of it, I wanted to really know what those two talked about in private.

And it's in there. It was like sitting at the table in their house while they talked about the most important things in Jesus' mission here on Earth. Jesus is giving a status report, going over how things have gone and what he has left to do, almost like a top secret intelligence briefing or something. I'm still amazed God had John remember and put it in his gospel, I mean, who lets that kind of stuff get printed up and put out for even little kids to see???

Anyway, I got down to verses 20 thru 23:
 "I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who believe in Me through their word;  that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.
 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one:  I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me."


I had found my way in. Jesus himself was asking the Father to bring  me to the table, it wasn't just for The Twelve, "but also for those who believe in Me through their word, that they all may be one."  The official plan wasn't that I could be just one of the disciples, but "be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us."

I was completely entranced with Jesus' repeated insistence on "I in them, and You in Me, that they may be made perfect in one."

I wanted that. I wanted up close, side by side, free, unhindered access to God that no one could interfere with or obstruct. Somehow I knew I was being offered that deal and I needed to accept the deal or not, no guarantees that I would ever be offered the deal again. So, one day soon after, outside playing around by myself, I agreed to it, crossed the line never to go back, all in and no getting out for life.

If you aren't sure you like God, or definitely don't like Him at all, don't sweat it, you've probably been reading technical manuals and listening to 57th hand stories about Him.  You'll never like Him much that way. Jesus came as the Passover lamb, he walked around letting himself be seen and examined for who and what he was before he was accepted as a sacrifice. Look Jesus over for yourself, see if what he said and what he did was beautiful and worthy and if he is the kind of man who you can trust with your life.

You'll never figure God out for yourself, let Jesus show you. There's a place at the table set for you.

Like Dolly

Something I wrote somewhere on a post about Dolly Parton. I think there was an interview with her on a video clip, I can't quite remember where. I don't remember what was said that this was in response to, either, possibly something about expecting Christians not to sin - which is thoroughly ridiculous!


All people are sinners, Christians and everyone else alike.
(Remember John's rebuke, "If we (Christians) say that we aren't sinners, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us." I John 1:8)

God loves us all, Christians and everyone else alike.
(For God so loved the world..." John 3:16)

Pronouncing judgement (declaring an order of condemnation on someone's soul) is reserved to God alone, because we never know what's going on inside of a person, and only God knows what is right and true and possible for them, and only God knows which step is the one each person needs next to walk towards life and what steps each person is taking towards death.

God has made it very plain that He wants people to Live, really be fully alive and experiencing every beautiful and wondrous thing He has created. Jesus came to make things simple enough for us to understand. If you like who Jesus was and what he did while he was walking around in the gospels, then you see exactly who God is - Jesus is God written in human form.

Dolly is right on target. She isn't worried about fixing everyone else, she is sharing the love and forgiveness and patience she has received from God with everyone else. She isn't Talking it, she is Doing it - like she sees Jesus doing it in the Bible. Dolly is a Christian, she is following Jesus, she has let Jesus have the God seat in her life and she is free to be her honest self.

The only thing Christians have that the rest of the world doesn't is Jesus. He's risky, he won't ride around in your pocket, he doesn't do your bidding like a genie, he has his own way of doing things and he expects his people to believe what he says, but he knows how to change people into people who look like him.

Like Dolly.

From a conversation with a friend about gays, marriage, and the image of God

The image of God is not in our physical bodies, God is outside of creation. When the Word of God became flesh, he had to get it the same way you and I did, thru our mothers. God is Spirit (John 4:24), all the attributes we know of Him describe His wisdom, power, grace, justice, etc., and none of them speak of his sexuality, genome, IQ, health or height, for He has none of those attributes, they are all physical. (Funny to think of Him as not having an IQ, but that speaks to the content and quickness of the mind, and His thoughts are nothing like ours - He knows everything, always has.)

Secondarily, we were created in His image at the beginning, but we have continued to reproduce thru the ages with that image marred. The power to create a child today comes from the original commandment to "be fruitful and multiply," and that commandment has not been withdrawn. We bring forth the next generation based not on an echo or memory of His command, but on the continuing power of that Word still working to effect new life out of us. Nevertheless, what or whom we produce is defaced, marred, wounded from their beginning because we carry Adam's sin nature. Sin doesn't always mean a conscious moral failing, it means something isn't the way God planned for it to be and we pass on every sort of damage there is to our children - physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, DNA, whatever.

Speaking to the irreplaceable and incomprehensible value of your gay friends in yours and God's sight, you are correct. There is no human being on this planet that He does not value and care for in a manner and depth that our current grasp of the word "love" can barely hint at, added to which He also passionately desires to make Himself known to and thru you and your friends, even to the point of death. His own, that is.

This is the place where we have become so familiar with His grace that we can become forgetful of its tremendous power. We know the story, yadda yadda, yet we fail to remember that His purpose is to make people in His image, that His own glory would fill the whole earth - not ours. He wants His wisdom, justice, grace, and purpose working thru us, not our reasoning and desires. He made a new and living way to Himself, and we don't come. We really don't. It's too hard, it's tedious, we don't like changing into His image, and we're afraid of what He will ask of us next. It can suck Really bad. For a Long Time.

Marriage is about being in the image of God, two working as one to create new life and make this earth flourish like a garden. However, civil government can do what it pleases. I've thought for a long time that the government should offer no more than a civil legal union to everyone. Pack whatever or whoever the body politic want in the thing, God is not subject to civil law, but He is King and Master over all creation. What's that saying, you're free to make your own choices, but you aren't free to choose the results? Forget about what you see in the movies and what is being sold on every street corner, judgement and revelation are in the truth about every alternative to God being uncovered and made plain so there is no confusion about the choices being made.

Love your friends, look like Jesus. Some of them are going to want out of the horror this world is becoming and they need you to know the Way in the dark.

Song of the afternoon

I've got the Dixie Hummingbirds playing this afternoon, the version from the Mama album being a little bit more upbeat than this one, but the truth is the same.

I grew up in the South when gospel song shows were the only other thing you could hear on the radio, other than preaching, before noon on Sunday. The earliest programs were the best because that's when the black gospel and the pentecostals had their singing, airtime was cheaper at 6 AM, y'know. About 8 was when the Methodists and Presbyterians took over with choirs and last week's sermon.  I guess I don't really know what came on after 10, because we were for sure headed to church ourselves, neither my mother nor my grandmother ever let us miss and where else would you be other than with one of them?

It's a good way to be raised, I learned some measure of self control keeping my mouth shut and my backside in the pew for the length of a church service. We were Independent Congregational Methodist Cumberland Presbyterian Southern Baptists when I lived at home, then I went off to college and belonged to nothing. Of course, that means when I finally started looking for a church home of my own, I became Church of God. I'd like to go to the Episcopal Church downtown because I really like the liturgy, but I'm not sure too many of them would understand how none of the above is in any way chaotic.

Church is about the fellowship of believers, not choosing a social club that thinks like you. You go to learn to think like Christ.

I bring up the Dixie Hummingbirds because thru them I really first heard songs that talked about friends and family failing you, even betraying you, but keeping on with the Lord who remains ever faithful.  I don't know why white gospel doesn't have very much of that, it still happens in white churches, we just are trained to never talk about it. King David talked about it, out loud, in church, and had the choir sing about it in the service. But we don't.

In any case, I recommend to you old gospel music and old hymns, you'll have something substantial to use when you need to lament. Lament? Now that's a very, very old tradition that completely confounds the moderns. We'll talk about it later.

I'll see if I can't do a couple of playlists on iTunes or amazon. Perhaps you'll find some really good new old stuff in there. Some old song to find something new in you.

Because I'm a little long winded

I've created this blog as a companion to Sweetbriar's because I tend to be a little long winded when it comes to the things of God, and I enjoy it. There is no end to His beauty and wisdom, and I could go on forever about everything I find in Him - but I have no outlet for that. I don't have the teaching gift, so looking for a Sunday school class to teach would be useless. Like evangelists burn to tell everyone the good news about Jesus, and pastors ache to protect and nurture and grow up the sheep of His pasture, and prophets must declare the message they've been given lest it become a fire shut up in their own bones, teachers must get what they have learned into their students.

If I give a beautiful exposition of what I've found in God, either in scripture or what He's taught me step by step, and someone still doesn't get it, well, that's alright, bless their hearts. I hope God takes them on into good things and His wisdom in His own perfect way. It doesn't have to be through me and they don't have to see things my way - which is a long winded way of saying I don't care, God bless you, and I'm moving on to the next thing.

However, the wretched thing about the internet (and getting used to using it) is that you just want to put your thoughts out there. I've kept journals for years, not religiously or daily, but I've got some entries set back that I still find fresh and revelatory, and it just seems a waste of God's grace to me to keep it hidden, only to be thrown into the dumpster when I die.* I've also entered a year of change wherein that change seems to be churning and working continually, not having yet faded with the usual washout of a New Year's resolution.

So, in celebration of the inner wheels turning and the fresh wind of hope that comes with it, I'm going to let this blog go into territory that is not so "recovery" driven, but is much more personal in some ways. This is the blog of an introvert who believes, so my way of sharing is to bring out all the treasures I find. To me, it will look like an old bookstore full of volumes that never made the best seller list and yet the proprietor swears each and every one is a little gem to be treasured if only you knew what was in it.

I'll be the crazy old lady in the stacks. If you come near enough, I'll start telling you all sorts of things as if you really wanted to know and as if you could understand everything I was saying. If you're not sure, ask. It's just a blog.

Leakey's Bookshop in Inverness, Scotland

Looks marvelous, doesn't it!

*Note: I've learned the hard way with my mother's death that 95% of all the stuff you collected and found valuable has fallen apart with use or been mouse pissed into garbage by the time you go. If you have something to pass on, give it while the giving is still good.