Since recent events in our living courters, every time I say the word poop I laugh. The word made me laugh before but now, it takes on a whole new meaning. Let me start with a story…
We move our beds in the middle of the church at night just in case it rains and there are overhead fans to cool us down. It’s quite hilarious to see all of us sprawled out in the church. In the church, there is this crack on the floor near where Mollie and I sleep. We never noticed it before but this morning… we noticed it. We noticed it because sewer water was coming out of it. You can imagine Mollie’s horror to wake up and her bed is drenched in water just to find out that it is actually POOP water. It smelled. It smelled bad. It smelled really bad. We all go over there and agree it is poop water and then we fold Mollie’s bed over to get it away from the horrendous liquid. Just when we thought we had seen the worst, we all notice little chunks of poop near her bed. We freaked out, and of course the first thing I did was run and get my video camera. (Expect this video in the video from this month so be on the look out.)
I will forever be grateful to Mollie. Her bed was the dam that kept the poop from getting to me. She was my poop dam. God bless her soul.
The word poop takes me back to that moment instantly and I starting literally LOL’ing. As funny as it is, that word is also gross. I won’t go into the details of why poop is gross and worthless, we all know why.
You know what else is worthless? People pleasing.
As a culture I believe we have glamorized people pleasing. We laugh about it and tease people playfully when they can’t no say to something.
The difference between poop and people pleasing is that poop is funny and people pleasing should never be funny.
Squad leading has done a number on my people pleasing, especially this month. First off, I never even considered myself a people pleaser. I usually have no problem saying no or sharing my thoughts, and at the end of the day I will always choose what is ethical over what is expected of me. However, the trace of people pleasing is there and I can make a decision much faster if I think it will be received well. It looks different than I thought but God rustled it up to the surface and I see it. It results in poor reactions to people’s disappointments in me, making me nervous to make certain decisions that I know need to happen for the fear that the team may not agree with it. This poop, AKA people pleasing, makes me unconfident and unauthentic. It haunts me telling me that when people disagree they will not respect or want my leadership. They won’t trust me. Or worse, they won’t like me. It whispers that my worth is in how people view me and that leaves no space for mistakes or grace.
I have been trying to reflect on why it is that this month it has been so hard to make sure I don’t get tangled in that poop and I have realized it is because of the language barrier. Thus far, being in this town we have met 2 people who speak English. Our contact speaks no English and we speak limited Spanish. It’s hard to build a deep relationship and mutual love for someone who you can’t communicate fully with. It is certainly not undoable it just takes more time. You don’t see each other’s sense of humors, you can’t explain your heart to them. It’s really just a bunch of cave man speech.
Some of our conversations go as follows:
“A problem, poop on bed and floor. : )” (This is the text I sent the pastor verbatim.)
“We no water, need more.”
“Today, no lights.”
“Need money, bank, use card.”
“Water all in church.”
“Toilet. (then we wave him into the bathroom to see the problem.)”
It kills me! Haha! I have never been that good at charades but Catch Phrase, I am boss at. When it comes to using words to communicate, I have that down. This month is full of cave man speech and charades.
That is where my people pleasing finds it way into my mind. When I can communicate clearly and I have a relationship with someone, I can be bold and share my thoughts, express disagreements, and not think that if I make a mistake it makes me a dummy or a bad leader. But sometimes when something goes array here, I can feel fear welling up in me and I cannot stop the thoughts of insufficiency from taking over. When fear is unchecked it turns to anger and there has been a time this month that I have been just flat out frustrated. In fact, yesterday for example, our contact asked me to get the ladder and I couldn’t find it. The day before he pointed outside and told me, “ladder.” I turned to someone else and asked them to bring it in since I was doing something. That didn’t happen and I didn’t double check it happened. Of course because of the language barrier he didn’t hear me tell someone else to get it. As far as he was concerned it was my fault the ladder was stolen, and it kinda was since I am the leader. I have no doubt that is hindsight he is a man of grace but in that moment I was doubting that, not because of him but because of me. I was fearful that he saw me as a leader unable to lead properly. I was also fearful because this church has limited funds and I knew as a team who also has limited funds we would not been able to replace it. I reacted to my team in anger in my attitude and quick words. It was all because of my insecurities. I allowed myself to believe that my ability to lead well weighed on his opinion of me. That was a lie. I apologized to my team and they they graciously accepted my apology while I explained why I reacted poorly.
I don’t want this poop in my life. I don’t think Jesus had this poop. I don’t think he people pleased at all. I think that Jesus gave, did, and said “good” things out of an overflowing love in His heart and not to manipulate peoples perception of Him. And certainly not to convince Himself of his ability to lead, being called by God, and more importantly not to convince Himself of His identity in being God’s son. He stood firm on His identity despite opposition.
God I want to be like that! I want to be so solid in my identity as God’s precious daughter and in the callings he lays on my life that I never doubt it because of other people’s views or the assumptions I make about their views.
I believe that is why Jesus was able to lead objectively. Leading objectively is very important. It gained respect and trust and not for His own glory but for the glory of God so that Jesus’ words would penetrate hearts, transform lives, and save souls. Some people were not ready to receive Jesus’ words and were even angry but that never took the validity away from his words.
Back to the poop bed…
Only when Mollie woke up did she see that she was laying in a poop bed. This month, God woke me up, I stood up and found the poop in my bed. Just like we pulled the bed outside to dry out in the sun, I am choosing to walk out and stand in the Son. Dry my poop up Jesus!
P.S. To my dear followers… thank you for putting up with my crazy metaphors and particularly for reading to the end of this blog about poop.
