The Golden Rule Reimagined

Luke 6:31

So the conversation started like this:

Me: “Why did you hit your sister?”
Son: “Because of ‘Do to others what you want them do to you.’”
Me: “You want her to hit you?”
Son: “No, she hit me first. Doesn’t that mean she wanted me to hit her back? I mean, if she’s doing to others what she wants done to her, then she must want to get hit.”

I have to admit, that’s a pretty great reimagining of Luke 6:31. Secretly, the revenge-seeker in me likes the idea that the Bible mandates hitting back. But I know that’s not what it means. So, I tried to explain to him that the Golden Rule didn’t work that way. “The verse is telling us how to treat other people up front, not how to react to them.” And, “You can’t control how another person behaves. You can only control yourself.”

I kept telling my son over and over that no matter how someone else is acting, you have to treat them the way you want to be treated. You can’t make someone be friendly. You can’t make someone show love. You can’t make other people do anything. However, you can be friendly to everyone, even the ones who are not. Because you can only control your own actions.

For some reason, no matter how I rephrased it over and over, he just couldn’t grasp the concept. “Why else would they do these things, if they didn’t want me to do it to them?”

“Because sometimes people are mean. Sometimes they make mistakes. People don’t always make good choices. They don’t always do the right thing. Because not everyone follows the Golden Rule.”

And then he had a lightbulb moment: “Do you mean that there are people that don’t do what the Bible says?”

Let that sink in for a moment.

My son, a scientist and mathematician, could not fathom that there are people who don’t try to follow the Bible’s teachings.

In all our years of parenting, we had continually taught our kids that there is a creator and he loves us and has set rules for us to be safe and live an awesome life. It was such a simple concept for our son to grasp that it never occurred to him that other people might not live the same way.

He understands the Golden Rule now, but I can’t help but wish we lived in a world where his reimagined version also applied because everyone followed God’s commands all the time. But then, I guess if everyone followed his commands, we wouldn’t need The Rule, would we?

Enough Faith, Already.

Luke 17:6

I am a woman of faith. I have to be or I would have fallen apart years ago. In the economic crash of ’06, my husband lost his job and we learned all about faith and trusting in the One Who Owns Everything. God used different people and programs to make sure we always had food and that the utility bills were paid – even our mortgage. In fact, he provided so perfectly, that on that year’s taxes we got a refund of $1. Yes. One dollar. We had exactly the amount we needed.

We had more upheaval and bounced from Illinois to Tennessee to Michigan in the space of 6 weeks. We used all our finances and eventually took a short sale on our house. We lived with my crazy-generous parents for a year and a half, invading their space and even adding another member to our little family. Pregnant? And jobless? Yes, but God still provided. My husband was offered a great job within a few weeks of finding out and the insurance covered my pregnancy.

Now here we are again. We moved across the country and after 9 months, found ourselves jobless again. And again, God is faithful. He is meeting our needs and we are living by faith and enjoying his blessings on us.

But in my prayers last night, I found myself whispering, I’m tired of having to live on faith. When is enough, enough? Immediately, I repented. It felt like an ungrateful thing to say to Jehovah Jireh after everything he’d done. I’m sorry, Lord. I don’t mind. Faith is good. I’m learning to depend on you. … And again, in the deepest part of my heart I heard a whisper, But can I live on something other than faith for a while…please?

I’m not sure I can even articulate what I mean but:

• I would like to buy AJ jeans that fit and not have to check the account balance first.
• I would like to take Ellie out for a smoothie when she does something awesome and not have to save up for a month for it.
• I would like to take Juli to the bakery for breakfast just because it’s fun to watch her eat a cinnamon roll bigger than her head and not have to wonder if that should be the only meal for me that day.
• I would like to go out for sushi once in a while with my sister and not make her pay.
• I would like to take my kids to Disney World while they are still young enough to enjoy the magic and not have to live on beans and rice for three years to make that happen.

Yes, it’s all very material of me. And yes, it all sounds so very shallow. I know by living in America, we are still wealthier than most. I am wearing my heart on my sleeve here. I know I’m am walking a fine line between vulnerability and whining, opening myself to huge criticism. Please understand that I am, in no way, ungrateful or underplaying how amazingly God has taken care of my family. But for some of us, living by faith is not easy and, while fulfilling, it can be an exhausting journey. (Like motherhood, come to think of it….)   So, mine is a first-world lament. I’ve been living by faith for so long for day-to-day needs and while I know God is providing the things we need, I’d like to enjoy some things we simply want.

I feel like an ungrateful heel even saying that.  I know amazing Christian folks who live by faith and still have enough to do fun things without worrying over every single penny. Their faith is not expressed by saying, “I know God will somehow provide our food this week,” but by saying, “I don’t have it, but I will give $500 a month to missions and have faith that God will provide it.” I want to look at the Christmas Giving Tree in the church lobby and pick the $500 card instead of trusting God to help us with the $5 gift.

Sure, the widow had more faith than the rich in giving her mites but I’d settle for a mere half a mustard seed worth and the ability to affect greater change in the lives of others while not worrying about my own family’s basic needs. It is exhausting.

I don’t want to spend foolishly.
I don’t want to buy my kids every new electronic device on the market so they can be like their friends.
I don’t want to take it all to Las Vegas and triple it on one Texas Hold ‘em hand.

I want to be the one God uses to bless other people like he’s done for us. But honestly, I just want to not think about money for a while. I just want to relax…

…and not hear that whiner in my heart sighing, Enough faith, already.

The Best Bad Valentine’s Gift

On Valentine’s Day 1997, romance was the farthest thing from my mind. Instead, I was trying to wrap my thoughts around something else in my head: a pituitary tumor. And yet, this is still a love story. Start the blurry, wiggle lines and cue the flashback.

When I was 22, I started lactating for no apparent reason. Blood tests came back saying all my hormones were in normal ranges; no further exploration was done, and I was simply told, “Well if this were a different period in time, you’d make a great wet nurse.” Gee. Thanks. How is that supposed to make me feel better? Is there a good way to add that to a resume?

Shortly after that, I graduated from college and moved from Michigan to Missouri to start my life as a responsible member of society. I stopped thinking about the hormone issues and concentrated on not freaking out while I tried to be an independent adult. In my new job as a computer support technician, I met and was trained by Rich. He was a brown-eyed, curly-haired seminary student; and within a matter of weeks, I realized I would spend the rest of my life with this man. I even got him a pocket watch inscribed with, Time Will Tell. But he knew, too. No, really!

For a while, I wondered when he would pop the big question, but he had set a rule: He wouldn’t ask me any time when it would be expected. It would be a surprise. This ruled out traditional proposals like birthdays, Christmas, and especially Valentine’s day. But then things started to go sideways, and it was less about when he would ask me to marry him and more about if: it was around that time that I started to go, um, kind of crazy.

Mental illness. There it is. Two words that chill a man who is contemplating a bride. I was suddenly exhibiting anxiety, depression, and obsessive compulsive disorder. I was put on a cocktail of Prozac and Lithium. Paxil was in there, too, for a while.  And Rich, a man of commitment and conviction, wouldn’t leave me in that state.

He also wouldn’t marry me. And that led to an endless cycle of depression on top of what I already had going on:

“Why won’t you marry me?”

“You need professional help.”

“Oh, that’s right. I understand.” Later…. “Why won’t you marry me?”

After a couple years of this crazy, circular ritual, I finally was scheduled to see a Psychiatrist. The catch? The only doctor my insurance would cover happened to be a Geriatric Psych doctor, and I was, at this time, 24. It didn’t prevent him from seeing me, but it did change how my mental illness was treated.

“I know you are only 24, but it is our office policy to give all incoming patients an MRI because in Geriatric Psychiatry, quite often the symptoms that look like Mental Illness are actually caused by a tumor somewhere in the brain. You are only 24, so it’s unlikely, but it is office policy, and so you’ve been scheduled.”

And so it was a few weeks later –Valentine’s week – that I found myself sitting in a Neurologist’s office looking at a scan of my head and being told that most of my mental illness symptoms could be explained by something about 3 millimeters growing on a gland the size of a pea: a pituitary tumor. There it was. I could see it with my own eyes. A surgeon was called, and we decided to do another scan in 6 months to see how fast it was growing; however, “If you start to have vision problems, come in right away because it may have grown large enough to press on your optic nerve.” Lovely.

Now the science part for those who wonder: The pituitary gland controls hormones. So the depression and the milk production and the really high highs and low lows that made me border on getting a Bipolar diagnosis (the MRI results came first) were likely the result of the tumor growing on the gland that controls stuff like that.

 I told Rich. For Valentine’s week, I’d gotten him the news of a tumor. Worst. Gift. Ever.

Then I had to tell my parents. That’s not the type of thing you do over the phone, so I made emergency plans to fly back to Michigan and Rich announced he’d be going with me. We arrived in the middle of the night, and after telling them the basics, I went right to bed. He stayed up to talk to my parents. To visit with them? Or comfort them? To tell them the things I couldn’t or wouldn’t? I didn’t know. I was exhausted and checked out.

The next day was Valentine’s Day, but I didn’t think about it. My head was elsewhere so when my mom told me that Rich didn’t believe that Lake Michigan freezes in the winter, I welcomed the chance to not talk about the tumor and took him out to the greatest of the Great Lakes.  We walked out on the thick ice – so thick that when you went to where the ice stopped, it was a 13 foot drop to the choppy slush below. We backed up a little because Rich was wearing sneakers and slipping at that moment would’ve been worse than a tumor.

Looking out over the water he asked, “Do you know what time it is?”

“Time to meet my parents for dinner?”

“Let me see what my watch says.” He pulled out the pocket watch that I’d gotten him years before. “It says, ‘Time will tell.’ Do you know what Time is telling me?”

My tummy rumbled. “That it’s time to meet my parents for dinner?”

“Well, yes. Do you know what else time is telling me?”

“That we’re going to be late? I’m starving!”

He sighed, “It’s telling me that we’ve been together for 3 years, and it’s time to get married.”

“I know. I’ve been saying that for a while.”

“So, will you marry me?”

“If you’d ever get around to asking me, you know I would!”

He blinked. And shook his head. And blinked again. “That’s what I’m doing, here. I’m asking you. Right now. Will you marry me?” and out came a ring.

I was shocked.  Obviously. So shocked that he had to ask me twice because the first time I didn’t understand he was doing it, even though he couldn’t be any clearer.  I pushed him. Like Elaine pushed Seinfeld. He slid a bit, but fortunately we were a couple feet from the edge. I said yes and we left for dinner.

What changed his mind? When I told him I had a tumor, he was relieved. Our lives had been so crazy stressful that he wasn’t sure that maybe he was the one causing my depression and anxiety. I mean, it started soon after I met him. But once he knew that it was not his fault and just a tumor, he felt like he could finally take that step. And there was no need to put it off. A date was set for 10 weeks later.

You’d think that is the end of my Valentine’s story. But it there’s more.

That same weekend, I went to the church I’d grown up in. It’s a Pentecostal church: speaking in tongues, dancing, Prophesy, healing. No snakes, though. When, during the worship service, there was a prophetic word, “This day a mother’s child is healed,” I looked at my mom and said, “That’s me.” And together we agreed.

Ten weeks later I became Mrs. Tatum. Three months after that I had my follow up MRI.

The doctor looking at the scans, laughed, and told me, “Sorry to have worried you. The other doctor must have been wrong. There is no evidence of ever having had a tumor.” I’d seen it. I knew it was there – and now it wasn’t.

It’s been 17 years since then. Why me? Why a tumor? Why a miraculous healing? I may never know. But here is one thing I learned through that:  Love is a commitment. It’s not always easy. It’s not always pretty. And when it gets ugly, what holds you together is the choice to stay. I know that no matter what our family goes through, Rich is going to be there. He’s not going anywhere.

Unlike my tumor. Thank God.

P.S. – God healed me so completely that I instantly stopped lactating. And when I finally had my own kids, my milk came in a week later than expected for all three of them.