Creating Hope and Inspiration with the promise of new possibilities.
Author: Poppy Dashwood
Poppy Dashwood is a church going momma who loves her family and her beagle. She loves to read, knit, and laugh as often as possible. Poppy is trying to stess less about work and life in general. She is on a journey to never stop learning and to learn how to live life to its fullest.
Healing has become a buzz word of sorts. Don’t get me wrong, I am on my own journey of healing. It is important and vital work we need to do within ourselves if we want to break out of dysfunction and find peace, joy and balance in our lives. We as individual people and as a society have A LOT of healing we all need to do. It has become a negative buzz word in the sense that more and more people are blaming their behaviors, often toxic or rude, on their healing process.
Folks, healing is a vital process! It’s scary and it can be messy. However, it is not like the get out of jail free card in Monopoly. Your internal healing should not be causing negative or traumatic experiences for others. Demanding kindness and tolerance from others for your abusive and ignorant behavior is not okay.
Eeyore is held up as the poster child of folks that are going through hard times. He is depressed and constantly down and constantly surrounded by his friends. They include him in everything they do and expect him to just be himself. He doesn’t need to put on a happy face, so to speak, to be included. And this is a wonderful example of how we should be engaging with each other!
So we tell our people to accept that we are the Eeyore among them and that they need to let us feel what we feel. This is a great perspective and I agree with this 100%. However (again with the howevers!), Eeyore feels what he feels and expresses himself WITHOUT abusing those around him. He does not go out and about throwing what boils down to adult tantrums and then tell his friends to just deal with it because he is going through a lot right now.
You be you. Do what you need to do to heal. Allow yourself to feel what you need to feel. The struggles of life are real and overwhelming and require processing. Healing will be some of the most important work you will ever do. Lean on your tribe because we all need a village. But be kind to others always as you expect them to be kind to you. They are all healing too.
After many years of committed membership and service, I find myself without a church.
This was a decision that my family and I made together, but for the first time in many years I am unsure of what to say about my faith identity.
Many people, including some on the leadership team I was a part of, conveyed to me messages of great sorrow and shock about our decision to leave and inquired if there was anything the church could have done differently that would have changed our decision.
After wrestling with that question, and all of the emotions that come with making this kind of decision, I would have to say that them having to ask that question means there is nothing they could have done differently. For the better part of a year and a half I was very upfront about the fact that I was struggling in many areas but I guess no one was listening.
So to ask me after the fact what could have been done differently, I would have to say, listen to people better.
In the midst of my ongoing current struggles my church community didn’t pay attention to the words I was saying and so didn’t come up alongside of me to offer support of any kind. After many years of giving and serving, there wasn’t anyone pouring support into me during my time of need.
In fact, during this time, most of the communications and interactions I received in regards to church life and commitments involved pushing me to be serving others in more and more and more ways. When I indicated that something was too much or that I couldn’t do what was being requested the responses I received made me feel like I was being difficult because my stressed out self couldn’t handle the continued demands being made upon my time, giftings, and resources.
Churches need to encourage members to not overcommit themselves. Burn out isn’t pretty to watch and sucks to be going through. Having strong and healthy church communities means ensuring all of our members are keeping healthy boundaries.
Leaving has had the emotional effects of a death on me and I am grieving for my church family. I feel sadness at the loss of connection and religious identity and I lament for being part of the lives of others. I also feel angry and taken advantage of as well as discarded and abandoned.
But most of all, I feel disrespected.
My time wasn’t valued, my efforts to grow weren’t encouraged, and my overall health and well being were not considered to be priorities.
When Jesus said “feed my sheep”, he meant for us to feed all of them. Not just the sheep that haven’t been brought into the fold, not just the sheep in the fold that we deemed needed special attention because they “had a hard life”, but all of them. How can the church feed and care for the lost sheep if they aren’t feeding and caring for the sheep already in the fold to keep them healthy and energized and growing?
I am one of those sheep, and I need to be regularly fed for continued spiritual growth. Each of us have unique needs that need to be taken into consideration when being fed.
When Jesus said to go and make disciples, he meant go and invite everyone to come into your circle, not just the ones that have been determined to be “deep seekers” and therefore worthy of admittance. I am not a perfect person and believe everyone who desires to be included should be welcomed to the circle regardless of what they can or can not offer.
So now you find me a church member who is unattached and walking away from the community that no longer seems to be part of my path. I don’t know what road I will travel down next, but I do know that I have been feeling God’s peace with the decision to leave where we were.
And God will continue to lead us as we journey forward.
It seems to me holidays have also become times of being overwhelmed by work and being surrounded by those who want to be at the gatherings but not contribute to them in any way.
When did holidays become the latest consumer event?
Growing up I remember looking forward with eager anticipation for holiday gatherings…
I am sure they were a lot of work for my mother, as the gatherings were normally at our house. Be that as it may, I also recall my grandmother coming to help clean to get ready, and my aunts all bringing food to contribute. Everyone helped clean up after the meal so that we could all move on to playing games.
As my cousins and I became older, we too helped with food preparation. I still recall the anticipation of waiting for one aunt’s cheesy broccoli rice and another aunt’s spinach casserole. My cousin made THE BEST desserts. We all worked together and enjoyed a fun family time sharing the work and the play.
The holiday gathering I just took part in this past weekend could not have looked any more different.
Gone are the days of all of the aunts bringing food and Grandma helping to clean. Family quarrels and dysfunction and old age are to blame for some of this. However, there are still plenty of people that attend. Instead of grandma and aunts and uncles, our gatherings now consist of my mom and step dad and me along with my siblings. Some of us are married, so that adds spouses to the mix.
The problem isn’t that grandma got old and the dysfunction gets in the way. The problem is that the spouses/siblings seem to want to be consumers at holidays and not help in any way. I don’t know if this is an age thing ( I am forty, but my siblings and their spouses are between the ages of 25-34) or just a new societal norm thing in general.
It’s like they are showing up to a restaurant or catered event. They put their orders in for what they expect to see foodwise, arrival time is when it is time to eat, and shortly after the meal is finished they want to know when can we start playing games. I spent this holiday helping my mom and dad prepare and then clean up a dinner for twelve people and two toddlers. Not a single other adult even OFFERED to help WITH ANYTHING.
Am I the only one who finds this behavior/attitude strange?
Is it because we have generations who’s parents haven’t taught them to be contributors?
Is it because we have generations who have been taught how to be polite but don’t care to be?
Perhaps it has nothing to do with being taught anything at all but is instead due to an oblivion caused by internet addiction. Maybe the thing is, no one else offered to help because no one else noticed we were even cleaning up. They were all to absorbed looking down at their phones.
Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest…..the list goes on and on. Little attention grabbers where we can be the designers of our perceived existence allowing others to only see what we want them to see. Masters of our social media domains. As such, we must make sure we are paying close attention to what all of our social media friends are doing, lest they manage to one up us when we aren’t looking.
I will admit, I am as guilty of this as the next person, but not to the extent of not being aware of what is going on around me. All of this social media interaction is causing us to each be isolated little islands.
This makes it impossible to interact with those who are right there in the same room as us. Making conversation is a dying skill, if it isn’t already extinct in some generations.
What is the good of having 400 Facebook friends or 1000 Twitter followers if we have lost the art of making and maintaining real human connections? Statistics show that we have never been more connected by communications means than we are now, but we have unprecedented numbers of people who experience loneliness on a regular basis and feel isolated.
Humans were made to be in relationship with one another. We need our tribes and communities…in reality and human flesh.
So do me a favor here. Mothers Day and Memorial day are right around the corner. Make the conscious decision to be at your next family gathering. Find out what you can bring or how you can help. Then be intentional about not looking at your phone while you are there and being present in the moment. Who knows, you might actually get to know and communicate better with the family members right in front of you.
DASHING EXPECTATIONS 