Before Texas Flip and Move, it was Rehab Addict. I still like Rehab Addict, but our DVR got reset and stopped recording it, so I haven’t been watching it recently. I actually didn’t know if they were still recording, but a quick Internet search revealed that they are…and that Nicole Curtis has had another baby…and some other really damning things about her.
As my mom and I scrolled through “The Truth About Nicole Curtis,” I read a bunch of really horrible things about this woman that I have come to admire via her TV show and Facebook page. Truth be told, Nicole’s philosophy of restoring old homes to their original glory has really influenced my thinking and changed the way that I think about restoration and redemption. So to read terrible things about her—her actions, decisions, personality, and life—was very disheartening…until I realized that if someone doesn’t like someone else—for whatever reason—then he/she can spin a tale to say whatever he/she wants it to say against whoever he/she wants to attack.
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I am a recovering people-pleaser. Pin it on my personality type—or on being a preacher’s kid—but I am one of those people who cares a bit too much about what other people think. Years of therapy and a lot of prayer have nudged me out of the paralyzing fear that I used to live in, but quiet fear still lingers in my core—fear of disappointing, fear of not being liked, fear of making the wrong decision, fear of being questioned. Though logically I know that fear is not of God—I use the transitive property of fear here: If God is love, and there is no fear in love, then in God there is no fear—and though I know that living life worried about other peoples’ perceptions of me is no way to truly live—I, in all of my very human imperfection, still do it.
I think that this is part of the reason why major decisions are so difficult for me. I not only think about how a decision will affect me, but I think about how it will affect everyone else involved and how everyone else involved (and even people not involved) will perceive the decision. I know. This is somewhat egocentric. I know that I can’t control how someone else will react. I experience this all the time when my students love the songs I think that they will hate and hate the songs I think they will love. And it is crazy-making. But such is the reality of my life more often than I care to admit.
Friends: This is not good for someone going to graduate school for school administration!
Confession: I’m not sure why I’m going to graduate school. I know that God nudged me in this direction at 3am on a cruise ship in the Baltic Sea, but I don’t know what I’m going to do with the degree. School administration was never really on my radar screen. School music? Yes. Church administration? Yes. School administration? No. And yet...
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I saw a sign on the way to work this morning that said, “God just wants your ‘yes.’” I prayed aloud, “God, I’m saying ‘yes.’ I just don’t know what I’m saying yes to.” Then I silently continued, “Will you show me what I’m saying yes to—and how it is that I need to get there? My yes is and always has been to you, your call, and your desire for my life. My yes is to your love, peace, and justice, and I want to live in those—with integrity—but I need you to clearly show me how to make decisions that are fair, just, right, ethical, positive, and life-giving and I need you to give me the courage to make those decisions—for myself and for that which I have been called to lead—because I cannot do it alone. I’m really bad at it. Because I’m afraid of making the wrong decisions and I’m afraid that someone will get mad at me. Ugh. I don’t even like the words ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ But you know what I mean.”
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This afternoon, I had the unique experience of sitting with a student who needed to be separated from his class during Field Day. He is an extremely high functioning autistic student who can tell you more than you ever need to know about dinosaurs and sea animals, and the super-sensory experience of Field Day had finally gotten to be too much. After a brief lesson on dolphins vs. porpoises, my student asked if he could draw with the sidewalk chalk. The teacher who owned the sidewalk chalk said that that would be fine, so off went my kid. He drew gigantic animals over the entirety of the sidewalk, so avoiding the drawings was difficult for a seeing person—much less someone who is blind! But my kid didn’t care about that.
When Stacey-My-Blind-Friend-and-Teacher stopped to talk to a colleague and landed right in the middle of an animal, my kid politely interrupted her conversation with an excuse me, waited to be acknowledged, and then proceeded to stutteringly, matter-of-factly- but without eye-contact ask Stacey to move off of his drawing. He was not trying to be mean, rude, or inconsiderate. He didn’t worry how Stacey would respond. If she would have gotten mad, then he would have gotten mad, too. Plain and simple. That’s how things work. My student simply stated his truth and desires and trusted the receiver to respond. As it was, Stacey gladly moved and immediately began talking to the student about his drawings, so he immediately began to share information about his drawings—that she could not see and that he could not know she could never fully understand. The whole situation made me chuckle. But then I realized just what an example my student had been.
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Despite my best efforts to stay in people’s good graces—I’m a recovering people-pleaser, remember—I have realized all too painfully that if someone decides that she does not like me, then she can easily piece together stories slamming my merits, no matter how hard I have tried to please her or how determinedly I have tried to do the best thing. I know this. I have experienced it. I just hope that when it happens again—because it will happen again—I can look up with the certainty of how I need to react and then act with that certainty, just as my student acted today. I hope that I can look up with the humility to say yes and then follow where that yes leads. And I hope that when my character is attacked and my decisions are questioned—as teacher, minister, family member, friend, customer, or yes, even, administrator—that I will be able to keep moving forward, offering hope, restoration, and redemption, one house—no—one person—and decision—at a time.
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