Episode #60: How to Embrace the Unexpected Choice

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Grit ‘n’ Grace: Good Girls Breaking Bad Rules

Episode 60: How to Embrace the Unexpected Choice

 

 

Cheri

Okay, Amy, so tell me what your top 3 pet peeves are.

 

Amy

Why?

 

Cheri

Well, I’m coming to visit soon. So as a recovering perfectionist and people-pleaser, I’m asking for help. If you tell me the top 3 things to AVOID, I won’t obsess over making mistakes while I’m there.

 

Amy

3. Socks on the floor next to the hamper.
4. Dishes in the sink next to the dishwasher.
5. People who think the rules don’t apply to them. You’re not one of those, so you can  totally relax on that one!

 

Cheri

People who think rules do not apply to them make me absolutely insane.

 

Amy

Alright. Now you know mine. What are yours, so I can behave, too?

 

Cheri

3. Being interrupted. (I don’t mind interrupting other people, but, boy, don’t you dare interrupt me.)
4. Apostrophes where they don’t belong — you’re, your … it’s, its.
5. People who can’t figure out how to USE THEIR TURN SIGNAL.

 

Amy

I’ll make sure to use my turn signal while I’m chauffeuring you around NC!

 

Cheri

{Yelling at a driver after Annemarie and I saw WonderWoman} “How am I supposed to know what you’re planning to do if you don’t signal your intent! I can’t read your mind!” Evidently the windows on both cars were open, and I embarrassed her.

 

<Laughter>

 

Amy

You really took that Wonder Woman thing to heart, didn’t you? Super Cheri on the move!

 

Cheri

Oh, now that’s a little scary.

 

Well, this is Cheri Gregory…

 

…and I’m Amy Carroll…

 

…and you’re listening to “Grit ‘n’ Grace: Good Girls Breaking Bad Rules.”

 

Amy

Today, we’re reflecting on what we learned from our conversation with Carey Scott, author of Uncommon.

 

Cheri

Who also has trouble with bad drivers. I just LOVED talking to her.

 

Amy

Oh my goodness. Do you not love Carey’s contagious passion? I mean, I was so fired up when we finished our interview with her. I was energized and inspired. I felt like I had been to church.

 

Cheri

I’m not used to really liking somebody being in my face, but she’s one of those people that I felt could get into my face, and I wasn’t going to deck her or tell her to back off mainly because … she was so authentic about her own struggles.

 

Amy

Yes.

 

Cheri

She was in my face about what I needed to do probably more than I would normally be comfortable with, but she led with authenticity and vulnerability, and boy, that goes a long way.

 

Amy

I absolutely feel that as well. Coming up, our guests have to look forward to not only Carey, but also Lisa Wittle, and we kind of interviewed them back-to-back. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, they’re the preacher girls.” But both of them are the kind of personalities that would normally intimidate me. As that reforming perfectionist, I tend to, especially in large groups, kind of recede into the background. Not one-on-one. I’ve got kind of a big personality in that setting, but in a group of people or in the presence of somebody with a personality like Carey or Lisa, I would usually recede, but I don’t feel that way with either one of them because of their authenticity and how open they are about their own flaws.

 

Cheri

That’s an interesting thing for you to say because I think we both have the “driver” personality, and I do the exact same thing when I’m in a group. I’m generally never the most powerful driver personality in the room, and if I can’t win, I don’t play. I’ll sit back and let the other big personality take over, but you’re so right. With Carey, I didn’t feel like I needed to shrink back. I felt like she was very much calling us up, calling us to step up and move forward.

 

One of the things I mentioned during the interview; just this whole idea of being uncommon. I kind of wrestled with it as I was reading the book, because I don’t use that word a lot. I don’t use the word common very much or uncommon, so it was really interesting for her to unpack it. When she was talking about the beatitudes early on in her book, it reminded me that I have this old post-it note in my oldest Bible, the one I actually had as a kid At some point, I had read through the beatitudes, and I realized that just kind of that whole section of Christ teaching, I wrote on a post-it note, “Make the unexpected choice.” That was kind of my summary statement of that whole section. In any situation, when we have this normal, natural, flesh, human reaction to make the uncommon choice rather than the common choice.

 

Amy

Oh, I love that. That appeals to my rebel rule-follower thing that I always say about myself because then I can put my rebel to work in a positive way. It’s like, “Oh, be countercultural. Be uncommon. Make the unexpected choice.” It’s the pushing back against the norm that appeals to my rebel side, but it’s in a good way, instead of that negative rebelliousness.

 

Cheri

I love it, and you have a rebel rule-follow voice. It just came out again. I’m starting to recognize it when I hear it.

 

Amy

Oh. It’s my alter ego.

 

Cheri

I love it. I love it. It’s your superhero person. We need a cape for you then. We need a cape and a costume and everything. What is the rebel rule-follower … Okay I’m going on a bunny trail. One of the things I pulled out of our conversation with her is that common is being easily frustrated and easily offended. And we talk a lot on this podcast about how it’s okay to be human, and I think there’s this tension between the parts where it’s like, “Yes, we’re going to give ourselves grace for being human.” But then there’s also those aspects of being human when I excuse it over and over and over again, I’m not growing. I’m not becoming who I know God created me to be, and when I let frustration, and when I let offense just take over all the time. Yes, I’m being human, but yes, I’m also not growing. There’s that tension between them.

 

 

Carey was talking about the things that can get us all frustrated and offended and call out in us that common response. Whether it’s bad drivers or maybe God not helping us the way we think He should. Then you pointed out that believing is confident rest. What did you mean by that? I took note of it.

 

Amy

Well, this is something that God is working in my heart this year, because, as I mentioned believe is my word for the year and what God has just really been showing me is how much unbelief I have in my life. It’s really kind of broken my heart to see it, but it’s one of those growing pains to see these things about ourselves. But that striving that we talked about is so much a lack of confident rest. Where does that striving come from? For me, it comes from unbelief. It comes from the thought that I have to do it myself. It comes from having doubt about whether God can do it at all. I was reading yesterday the story of the man who brought his child who was mute but also convulsing and things to the disciples. They couldn’t heal him so he brought him to Jesus and he says, “If you can do anything, I’d be kind of grateful.” That’s my loose Amy translation. Jesus was kind of indignant and he repeated him. “If you can do anything?” I was like, “Oh, Jesus is a little ticked, there.”

 

Cheri

I love it.

 

Amy

But I thought, how often do I come to Jesus and say, “Well, if you could do this,” and the if is doubt. It’s not confidence in Jesus. I’m just realizing how many times I respond to Jesus that way with a lack of confidence and certainly a lack of rest that I’m striving instead.

 

Cheri

You’re making me think of Tasmanian Devil Amy.

 

Amy

Yes.

 

Cheri

I’m guessing that when Tasmanian Devil Amy shows up, there’s no rest involved, and it’s almost your way of saying, “God, if you could pitch in. I’ve got most of this, but if you could pitch in a little it might be nice.”

 

Amy

Do you live in my head?

 

Cheri

Yes, I do, because I’m just thinking of when my to-do list is a billion miles long, I’m demonstrating once again that I believe it’s all up to me. The idea of rest being a sign of either belief or at least the desire to believe, because, girl, when I do try things like silence and solitude or I try to take a full day off, it just about kills me.

 

Amy

Tell it, tell it. Even sitting in my chair in the morning with my Bible and my mind is racing in 50 different directions; that is not confident rest. I need to be able to switch that off, spend the time with God knowing that I can rest, because He’s got it.

 

Cheri

One of the verses that’s really been important to me over the last few months is from Exodus where God says that he will fight for me, and I’m just so used to being the one who has to fight for myself. I’m the only one who understands my perspective or who understands the situation, and I’m really coming to find that when you start using “the situation” or “my perspective” over and over again; at least for me, my world may be a little too small.

 

Amy

Well, I want to comment though on what you just said about Exodus 14:14, because you gave us the NLT version, and I love it. The Lord Himself will fight for you, just stay calm. Well, we know in our culture right now, this whole “Stay calm and carry on.” That British phrase and here it kind of is echoed, “Just stay calm.” But in that British phrase that’s repeated in different iterations everywhere right now, it says, “Stay calm and do something,” and this says, “Stay calm and rest.” The Lord Himself will fight for you.

 

Cheri

Stay calm and rest. Okay. We keep coming back to that theme, so it must be important.

 

Amy

Yes, yes, yes. My form of striving, we talked about our different forms, and I want to hear more about yours, too, and this whole idea of being offended and how to deal with that. My form has been in wanting to shape my own image, and that’s how my perfectionism has taken shape in my life.

 

Cheri

What do you mean by image?

 

Amy

Well, I want to create something that determines how other people think of me.

 

Cheri

Oh.

 

Amy

Mm-hmm (affirmative). I want to be known as, that lead-in, when I even re-read it just then, I thought, “Oh, that’s just dangerous. I want to be known as … ” Yeah. Godly woman, these are all in quotation marks, competent worker, amazing mom, loving wife, and here’s the thing. Those are all really good goals, right? There’s nothing wrong with those goals. It’s just the motivation behind it. It’s not that I actually want to be those things. I want to be known as those things. That gets ugly really fast.

 

Cheri

I think the term for that these days is “impression management.”

 

Amy

Oh, wow. That sounds so positive.

 

Cheri

Doesn’t it? No, but it’s true. I remember sitting down with a colleague once and telling him, “I want you to perceive me as,” and then I filled in the blank, and afterwards I thought about that conversation. I’m like, “Hmm, control issues much, Cheri?”

 

Amy

Exactly.

 

Cheri

Oh my word. Well, yeah. One of the things that our interview with Carey reminded me of is a book I read a year ago or two years ago called Unoffendable, and I need to read it again, because his whole premise was as Christians we should be the most unoffendable people on the planet. We should not be easily frustrated. We should not be easily disturbed by the fact that other people act like human beings. We should not be easily shocked, and that we even shouldn’t be easily angered.

 

 

He spent a lot of pages debunking so called righteous indignation as being just a way that we allowed ourselves to focus on the speck in another person’s eye while ignoring the log in our own. I did pull a little quote from here, from the book. He said, “Being constantly offended is exhausting.” I’m going to tie that in with what we’ve been talking about; rest, because so much of the offense just happens in my own head. It’s not physical labor, but it is, I belabor what has happened over and over inside my head.

 

 

He says, “Being constantly offended is exhausting. We’re told in Psalm 46:10 to ‘be still or cease striving and know that he is God.’ Some people are familiar with this verse, but not the larger context, which is that of someone looking over the remains of a battlefield. The original Hebrew is suggestive of stopping the fight, letting go, and relaxing. God wants us to drop our arms. No more defensiveness, no more taking things personally.”

 

 

There goes the people-pleasing part of me. “And He’ll handle it. Really. Trust him and rest.” That for me was the tie I saw between rest and taking offense. He says this several ways throughout the book, how tiring it is, how exhausting, how depleting, and I guess I just never really thought of it. I think I come from families that kind of … I was about to say we take pride in taking offense. That doesn’t sound good, Amy. Can you rescue me from that? I don’t like it, but I think it’s true. It’s our hobby, and then we roast and toast the people who did it to us. I hadn’t thought of how tiring that actually is and how much it takes away from who I want to be.

 

Amy

Well, rest and trust, they’re so hand in hand, and I think that what Carey is calling us to in this uncommonness. It takes both. It takes such a strong trust of God and who He is and that His ways are right, and they’re higher than our ways, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Then we can rest in that. Barry and I watched the Shack movie this weekend and y’all do not send me emails. I understand it was controversial and all the theology is not quite straight in there, and yet we loved the movie.

 

 

One of the things that the character who played God in the movie said that I thought, “Oh, that is not exactly from Scripture, but it is true.” She was talking about forgiveness and she said, “Forgiveness is not excusing the action. It’s trusting God to make it right and to take care of it.” That is such a high level of trust, and it can be applied to everything, offense and forgiveness and striving and what our image is and really anything. Belief and trust are hand in hand; rest and trust are hand in hand.

 

Cheri

Well, listening to you, I’m realizing that we strive about what other people think about us, and when it comes to offense, I strive with what I think about other people. Either way there is striving and it’s all about image and perception. When it comes down to it, nobody understands our hearts, and I can’t understand another person’s heart. I have to trust that God is the one that knows people’s hearts and treat them with love and with kindness, like Shaunty Feldhahn said, even if the current situation doesn’t seem to call for it. She said that we are to treat them with kindness even if they are actively treating us unkindly because that’s what Christ called us to do. Not because it’s the easy thing, not because it’s the natural thing, but because that’s what we are called to do. Darn it, all these things are connecting again.

 

Amy

Oh, it’s true. It’s true. Okay, so one of my favorite lines that Carey said that just cracked my whole head up, was my husband is the diplomat and I’m the assassin.

 

Cheri

That is the best.

 

Amy

Do you love that?

 

Cheri

I knew you were going to jump on that, because that is just the best.

 

Amy

I’m not the assassin. We might have a little bit of a reversal of roles in our family, but I won’t go too far down that road. I don’t want to malign my husband or anything. He’s not an assassin; he’s just so smart I can’t argue with him a lot of times. Anyway, I was really thinking about how do we live, and this ties in with the Shaunty interview, but how do we live in the tension of kindness and boundaries. Do you have any thought about that?

 

Cheri

I do it badly. I think you’re right. Learning the difference between niceness and kindness is huge. I think that’s where I know that when I take offense, I am not nice and I’m not kind. There is no doubt about that. The danger with saying I’m going to become unoffendable, is that it’s easy to go, “Well, then I’m going to be a doormat.” And we’re not called to do that either. Again, Shaunty called us to be truth-tellers and to bring up things of concern. She never said not to have boundaries.

 

Amy

I saw a video of Brené Brown recently saying that the people with the best boundaries are the most compassionate people she knows, and I thought, “Interesting.” I think we could say also that they’re the kindest people that we know. Because we people pleasers are prone to say, “Yeah, sure I’ll do that for you.” Which we think is the kind thing to say, and then we’re mad and we resent that person because we’re doing something we never wanted to do, we didn’t have time to do, we don’t have the gifting to do. And I found myself in this role recently, and I had to just pull back and say, “Well, it’s your own fault. Learn the lesson and say no next time to someone, actually a friend, who would have taken the no quite well.” So it was totally my fault.

 

Cheri

Do you ever have a feeling right before you say the yes? Or do you not realize until afterwards?

 

Amy

Well, I know you’ve heard me joke so many times about, “Oh, my chest hurts.” But I actually, I’m like, do you remember Sanford and Son, and he’d clutch at his chest and say, “It’s the big one, Elizabeth.” I do have a physical feeling. It’s not the big one, but I have this physical feeling in my chest, like this pressure, and I’ve ignored it way too long. It’s funny how even our bodies tell us sometimes, like “Don’t say yes. Don’t say yes.”

 

Cheri

I don’t have it in my chest. I get it right between my eyes. There’s just a tightening of the skin. If I’m paying attention, if I’m prayerful about it, if I don’t rush forward, just a simple, “What is my body telling me? Alright, so what’s the bad rule that you’ve pulled out of these episodes with Carey?

 

Amy

The common and easy road is the best road.

 

Cheri

That one actually doesn’t even sound good. That even sounds like a bad rule. This one doesn’t hurt me as much, which means I’m probably more in denial than some of the others.

 

Amy

Yeah, it sounds a little bit like that wide road in Scripture doesn’t it?

 

Cheri

Yes, it does. What’s the fact we can focus on instead?

 

Amy

Living uncommon is the ride of a lifetime with God.

 

Cheri

Head over to GritNGraceGirls.com/episode60.

Amy

You’ll find links to this week’s Digging Deeper Download, Bible verse art, and transcript.

 

Cheri

If  you’ve enjoyed Episode #60 of Grit ‘n’ Grace: Good Girls Breaking Bad Rules, would you share it with your friends? You’ll find super easy “share” buttons on the web page for every single episode.

 

Amy

Be sure to join us next week, when we’ll be talking with Erin MacPherson, co-author of Put the Disciple into Discipline: Parenting with Love and Limits

 

Cheri

For today, grow your grit … embrace God’s grace … and when you run across a bad rule, you know what to do: go right on ahead and…

 

Amy ‘n’ Cheri

BREAK IT!

 

Outtakes

 

Cheri

So what’s the — I always do that, I smack right before that. Now, I’m going to snot, smack and snot. That’s great on podcasting. No, that’s not going to be the outtake. I throw you under the bus, not me.

Amy

Not fair.

Cheri

Oh my gosh, the outtake of you with the contest was the funniest thing ever. I really wanted to make that the lead-in because it was so dang funny. I thought, “You know, for our listeners who listen all the way to the end; they are in for a huge treat here.

 

Amy

Well, the thing was, I was so animated because I really did believe I was going to win, but since I haven’t heard, I’m assuming I didn’t. Bummer. Again.

 

Cheri

I’m so sorry. Yeah, that was my favorite part. “Do you ever win anything?” “No.” It did not bother you in the least. Reality. Why deal with reality?