A Mother to Hold

Mother's day is coming up fast in New Zealand. It is a time of families celebrating the woman who brought them into the world. Churches around the country will be holding special services that have children handing out gifts to mothers and a sermon focusing on someone like Mary, the mother of Christ.

There is a lot of stuff around mothers happening around me at the moment. My new niece was born a few days ago. Many of my friends are pregnant and giving birth. My mother in law is battling cancer so my thoughts are with her a lot. Hubby and I are thinking about babies and when to start trying for them.

Mothers have such an impact on our lives, for good or bad.

And recently I have been missing my mum.

I have talked briefly about my breakdown in relationship with my parents without giving too many details. I don't think this is the place to vent my issues with them. But suffice to say that it is coming up three years since I have seen or had any contact with either my mother or father.

I love my parents deeply, we just have some issues that we can seem to sort out.

Every month or something hits me that makes me miss my mother like crazy.

This month it is mothers day.

It makes my heart hurt when I think about her. I feel empty and lost, like a part of me is missing. I wish that things could be different and we could talk about things but life is not like that. Things happen.

The thing I have been thinking about is around all of this.

Mother's day was created by a card company that wanted to make profit. The church in NZ has bought into it hook line and sinker. And though I admire the sentiment I think it is wrong.

It is wrong to have one day alone when we celebrate mothers. I think it is wrong because it puts pressure on all those people who don't have mothers, can't be mothers, or have issues with their mothers. It affectively isolates those who are already hurting by pushing in their face what they don't have.

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to push my misery on everyone but being a grinch about mothers day. I am all for celebrating mothers. But I don't think that the church, a place that is (or should be) full of broken and hurting people, should be focusing on this topic when the rest of society already does.

I mean let's face it, if my church doesn't do mothers day, I am not exactly going to miss it am I. It is all over TV, shop windows, and magazines. I would have to live in a cave to miss the sales that are being pushed in my face to buy my mother things like diamond rings and dishwashers. 

Kids will still be able to get cards for their mums, make them breakfast in bed, and show love to the special woman in their life.

But church? Church should be at least one place where people can find solace for their pain. That on a day that might be really hard for people there is a place where they can go and not have it shoved in their face. Where grief is acknowledged as much as joy.

But the church doesn't do grief well. We don't know how to lament with others. Church songs tend to focus on how happy we are that Jesus has saved us, rather than the pain of still living in a fallen world. We emphasise one and totally ignore the other.

In the last 24 hours I have talked to three women who find mothers day hard. One cannot have children, one doesn't have children yet but really wants them, and one whose mother has passed. Each of these women go to church and each them told me how they would avoid church on mother's day. 

There is something wrong when the people who are hurting are avoiding church in order to avoid more pain.

It's time to rethink how we do this in such a way that we don't diminish the joy but don't ignore the pain either.

All I Want For Christmas is EVERYTHING!!!

Christmas.

A time for family.

A time for holidays.

A time for presents.

A time for me to get totally pissed off at the world.

Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is a Christmas Rant blog.

The hardest thing for me to decide while writing this blog is what pisses me off the most about what Christmas is in my Western, consumeristic, individualistic, narcissistic world. So I am gonna number them off, in no particular order, to help me not ramble too much and to keep the rage to the minimum.

THINGS THAT PISS ME OFF AT CHRISTMAS TIME:

1) Advertising.

Now advertising pisses me off most of the time. It is a constant in my life that I have become comforted by: when all else is falling apart I know that the TV will be a continuous and stable source of aggravation. But around Christmas time the advertising gurus go into overdrive. Buy this massive TV for your mum or you are an awful child. Buy your child this amazing gift they have never heard of but definitely need otherwise you are the worst parent in the world. 

But there is one thing that gets under my skin more than anything. The ads that tell me that I need to spoil myself this Christmas. If all the gifts from other people aren't enough or aren't really good enough, I should spend copious amounts of money on getting myself diamond earrings or a new outfit.

WHAT IN THE CHRISTMAS FUDGE NUGGET IS HAPPENING HERE????!!!!!

When the flip did we need to buy ourselves Christmas presents?? Have we become so self centred that the one day where OTHERS get to buy us a GIFT, as opposed to the 364 other days when we get to buy stuff for ourselves, is so crap, their gifts are so abysmal and depressing, that we reject them for what we can get because at least we will like that??

Come on people! I mean if you believe in nothing else about Christmas apart from family and fun and gift giving, then doesn't this mentality defeat the purpose? Haven't we killed Christmas, or what we believe Christmas to be, by making it about ourselves? Which leads me to…

2) It's ALL about family.

Family is great. We all love our families….most of the time.

But for some people, including me, we don't get to see our families at all around the Christmas season. This can be brutally painful, especially when it is shoved down your throat every second of the day for about 2 months leading up to the big day.

Happy families, family all together, go visit your family.

OK ALREADY! Let's just make us all feel so much worse for not being able to, thanks.

But not just that, when did family become such an idol of our society? What about inviting in strangers who have no where to go? What about helping the poor or homeless?

I have a Korean flatmate who told me that her tradition for her family and her church every Christmas is to visit the old and sick and to make them happy with gifts and singing. EVERY CHRISTMAS!!! I love this! When was the last time I though of people outside of my immediate circle for Christmas day?

3) Christmas songs.

I swear if I have to hear Snoopy's Christmas one more time while shopping I may start throwing things. I think this is slight post traumatic stress disorder from the year I went shopping in the Warehouse and this song was on a loop. I drove me mental and I can no longer hear that song without wanting to rip my ears off.

But I digress.

Christmas songs are loved by many people but because of my Christian beliefs and my life in NZ I find them increasingly bizarre. My beliefs tell me that Christmas has a meaning, namely the birth of Jesus, and Christmas songs seem so hollow and shallow when they are about presents and missing people etc and not about the actual reason for the event. I also have only ever once had a winter Christmas (in England in my teens) and so songs about white christmas's and running through snow really seem counterintuitive to me, which explains…

4) the New Zealand inability to create their own cultural Christmas

In NZ we seem unable to celebrate Christmas without the fake snow decorations, snow flakes stencilled on walls, snow men, and Christmas songs clearly singing about the Northern Hemisphere. We do have a couple of crappy Christmas songs about celebrating on the beach, and one (which I actually love) called Te Haranui about the first Christmas service in NZ (which will be celebrating 200 years next Christmas!!). But we seem to be so influenced by America and England that we can't break this trend. We will decorate Christmas trees with snow flakes and then go out to the beach for a swim. We will play Christmas songs about reindeer while cruising with our windows down in 25+ degrees C. It's nuts. It's a cultural schizophrenia.

Surely there is a way to do Christmas in a way that is authentically Kiwi without missing out anything important.

5) People who gripe about Christmas without seeing the good in it.

Just when you thought I was the grinch come to steal your fun and joy, I come out with that stunner.

I may have issues with Christmas and what it has become, but I love the idea of getting together with loved ones, celebrating Jesus' birth, swapping gifts, and spending a day having fun. Celebrations are important and this is one worth doing well. I love Christmas. I love going to church and knowing that every where around the world my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ are remembering this same moment, that we are joined in celebration on this one day. I love buying people gifts and seeing them laugh and smile when I give it to them. I love decorating and cooking and the build up. I love watching my niece and nephews freak out on too much sugar and presents. I love remembering that I have a God that loves to celebrate too, that Jesus' birth had singing angels and presents and wandering strangers welcomed into it.

But I don't love what we have made it into. I don't want everything I see for Christmas, but I do want a small thing that someone has thoughtfully chosen for me. I don't want crappy, meaningless Christmas songs, but I do want carols that retell the story of Jesus birth. I don't want to make it all about me or just family, but I do want to celebrate it with people I love. 

So what do you want for Christmas, and are you celebrating well?

The Life I Deserve

 

I have noticed a trend recently in ads on TV. It goes something like this:

You need product X. 

Product X will make your life perfect.

And you deserve a perfect life.
So get product X.

You deserve it.

It seems to be a common theme. I am sitting here watching TV on a Friday night and just counting the ads that tell me what I deserve (no, I have nothing better to do, and yes I am a geek). In one 5min ad break there were 4 ads telling me how I deserve to have what they are offering.

I find this a fascinating concept.

Firstly, how egotistical are they?! If I am as amazing as they say then I deserve only the best. And they say that the best is them! Now as a Kiwi I am obliged to cut down any tall poppies I see so I immediately feel suspicious when they start telling me how amazing they are. 

Time to burst their little bubble I think.

YOU ARE NOT SO GREAT. YOU SMELL. YOU LOOK FUNNY.

There, that should do it.

But it isn't that that bugs me. I don't really mind if they are a bit arrogant. I can live with that.

No, the question I ask myself every time is, why? Why do I deserve this? What have I done to deserve anything? What about being human means I feel I deserve having pretty, expensive things?

I am not saying that my self esteem is so low that I think I shouldn't have pretty things. I like pretty things and I like having them, but there is something fundamentally wrong with us believing that some how we have a 'right' to having money, we have a 'right' to having everything we want.

Coz we don't. 

If we look at the biblical story, there is nothing to tell us that we have the right to anything! In fact it is quite the opposite.

We have no right to anything.

        

Everything is God's and it is through graces that we are given what we have. 

In fact, the only thing that we deserve is to grow old and die with no hope for anything else. It is only through grace that we exist, that we have hope, that we are alive and survive. To say otherwise is to take the grace of God and cheapen it.

We cheapen it by saying that we deserve all we want and we want it immediately. We leave no room for the providence of God. We stop relying on God and start relying on our money. We can provide for ourselves and we can spend what we want without feeling guilty. Who cares that there are people in the majority of the world who can't afford three meals a day, we deserve that new diamond ring for thousands of dollars. In fact, if we don't get it it will mean our partner doesn't love us enough, we deserve it and they should know that!

                        

We cheapen it by saying we deserve to look like models on TV. It doesn't matter that this is how we were made and God thinks we are beautiful. We cheapen God's grace by judging others by how they look, not through the love God has for them. We deserve the 'perfect' body and face. God obviously made a mistake. People with disabilities are broken and we hide them away so we don't have to be reminded that life can get difficult and doesn't work perfectly. We want to fix what we think God has done wrong. 

We cheapen it by demanding what we want and refusing to wait for it. We no longer want to wait for the voice of God in the small whisper. We don't want to be told no. We want it and we want it now. God sometimes takes time. Grace is always perfectly timed. But we don't want that. We arrogantly say that everything must be done when we want it because we DESERVE to have it now.

So we reject God's gifts, timing, and creation because we think that we deserve something more than has already been given us. We think that we are some how more deserving than others so we need the latest thing to outdo our friends and family. 

Well let me tell you, you don't deserve it. You may want it, you may like it, you may even buy, but you don't deserve it.

Remember who deserves the praise. Remember that God deserves praise because life only happens because God deems it to be so. We only have hope because God first died for us. God deserves our love and devotion because without God we aren't.

It is only because God wants you alive that your are alive. Don't forget that in amongst all the calls for your attention and money that there is only one person who really deserves it.

And only then will you actually find joy in life.