Posts Tagged ‘Body of Christ’

Valuing Yourself and Your Work

May 4th, 2010

For the past few months in particular I’ve been thinking about what it means to really value your own work. This is something that I’ve struggled with for much of my adult life. I listen far too often to the voices in my head saying that I’m not good enough, that I have nothing to offer, and that my contribution isn’t valuable.

I think growing up in the church didn’t help this. For much of my life the sin of pride was communicated to be paramount and something to be absolutely avoided. For fear of becoming proud I degraded myself. Ironically, when we fear pride and run from it we can become proud of our humility and thus fall by the same trap we were avoiding.

In some ways maybe growing up around incredibly intelligent and talented people didn’t help either. I often fall prey to comparing myself to others and it doesn’t take long in this activity before I feel inferior and even worthless.

Whatever they are, when it really comes down to it the reasons and sources for this lack of value I feel towards myself, don’t really matter. The fact is that I have a very bad habit of degrading myself and my work and it’s something I feel I need to change.

By devaluing my own skills and contributions I am essentially burying my “talents” in the sand. I am devaluing God’s image within me. I am saying to my creator “You did not create well.” When I say “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body of Christ,” and I deny my contribution to that body, I am not just devaluing myself, I am devaluing the Bride of Christ. May it not be, Lord.

So, I’m trying to learn. I’m trying to learn that I do have valuable things to offer my family, friends, church and the world at large. I do have skills that are worth something.

There are a few little steps that I am currently tentatively trying to take towards valuing myself and my work:

  1. 1. I want to recognize that it isn’t sinful to accept recognition or praise. This is a struggle for me. It makes me really uncomfortable when people compliment me and I’ve never known how to accept it. I want to get better at this – I don’t want to run from compliments (of course, I also don’t want to seek them out and dig for them). I want to learn to be truthfully gracious when faced with recognition.
  2. I don’t want to be ashamed to ask for compensation for skills or services that I am offering. Money makes me uncomfortable, it always has. I don’t like talking about it. But, the truth of the matter is that our budget is incredibly tight right now and I can’t afford to offer my skills for free, but I want to. For me the battle over what to charge for things like the yoga class I’m planning on starting is a struggle against my own degradation of the gifts and abilities that God has given me. I devalue myself when I offer my knowledge and experience for free (that’s not to say that there aren’t good reasons to sometimes offer our skills for free, but I’m just realizing that most of the time the reasons that I have for offering my abilities for free aren’t really all that healthy).

Does anybody else struggle with this? What are things that have helped you to see value in yourself as a talented creation of God?

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

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A Salad Party

May 2nd, 2010

Last night we hosted our first real dinner party since before Thaddeus was born. I had been looking forward to it all week and I wasn’t disappointed.

Bryan and I have always loved opening our home and sharing a meal with friends. The first year we were married we had a standing open door policy every Thursday night. Thursday nights all our friends knew that we would make a big dinner and they were welcome to join us if they wanted. When we moved to Prague we dropped the weekly open dinner, but continued to regularly invite a variety of people over for meals. Since having Thaddeus though we haven’t really done this at all and I have missed it a lot. So, tonight feels really significant to me – in a way it feels like coming back home to something I love, that I momentarily set down.

There’s been a lot of that lately – a lot of stirrings in me to return to former loves. During my pregnancy I sort of set aside many of my hobbies, interests, and former passions. I don’t know why but pregnancy and the transition into motherhood felt all encompassing for me. So, blogging, writing, photography, cooking, health, yoga, reading, and entertaining all sort of fell by the way side. Now they are calling to me again. So, tonight feels like opening a door to these former interests and saying, “Yes, come in again. I’ve missed you.”

So, what did we do for our entry back into dinner parties? A salad party. Ok, I know that there are probably some people out there who would think this sounds a little lame, but believe me it was awesome!

Basically Bryan and I provided lettuce, salad dressing options and homemade bread. We asked everyone else to bring one thing to contribute to a salad for dinner. I think everyone brought more than one thing though, and we ended up having such a great variety and a really beautiful salad. Our salad had three types of nuts, three different cheeses, tomatoes, apple, dried cranberry, and bacon all atop a salad of three different kinds of lettuce. YUMMY! For desert we had everyone bring a fruit and we made a big fruit salad and topped it with homemade whipped cream and a drizzle of honey. Strawberries, coconut, pineapple, banana, mandarin oranges, candied ginger – Even more yummy!

My favorite thing about this was that it was so communal. Everyone contributed whatever they had or wanted to offer. Honestly, I wasn’t sure about how some of the flavors would go together at first (apple and tomato?) but in the end it was delicious. Everything came together to create a beautiful colorful tapestry of flavors. To me this is a beautiful little picture of the body of Christ.

We all are so different and unique. Sometimes we aren’t sure if we really have something to contribute to the body or the kingdom, but we all do. Each and every one of us adds a unique flavor to the salad. Each and every one of us makes the kingdom “taste better” through our involvement. Even if we think that we might not “go together” well , often we’d be surprised that our “flavors” mix just perfectly to create exactly what the salad needs to take it to the next level. As I ate my salad I couldn’t l help but think about all that.

The other great thing about this dinner party was it didn’t cost much. In fact it may have been the cheapest dinner party we ever hosted. All Bryan and I had to buy for it was some lettuce, and whipping cream, and yeast. We already had everything else for bread and a whole jar of Czech honey at home to contribute. Everything else for the dinner came from everyone else. And since everyone only brought a few things it shouldn’t have been very expensive for any of them either. I really thought it was a great way to divide the cost of a big dinner, so that it was really manageable for everyone. These days that’s a big plus around here.

So, next time you’re thinking of a doing a dinner party feel free to steal this idea. You can’t really go wrong with a great big salad! And you can use this idea over and over – each time you do it your salad will turn out completely unique and different from the last time.

What are some of y our favorite dinner party meals?? Or what things are you picking up again that you’ve set aside for a while?

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

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The Beautifully Broken Body of Christ

November 9th, 2008

Yesterday I realized something…

Let me set the stage: I was making lunch for a community gathering/retreat we were having. I had all these thoughts bouncing in my head about the communion experience I was helping to plan and about our community and what it means to live in community. I was feeling nervous about the time we were going to have together. The culmination of all this was the thought that would lead to my realization:

 “This is my body broken for you.”

With each tear of the lettuce and each cut of the knife the thought came:

“This is my body broken for you.”

As I set out the elements for communion:

“This is my body broken for you.”

And then I started to think about and pray for different members of our faith community the thought came again even louder this time:

“This is my body broken for you.”

I had never before thought about that statement as being about anything besides the bread of communion and Jesus own physical body broken on the cross. But suddenly it dawned on me that we have TWO things that we are told ARE the body of Christ Jesus: the bread at communion and the church (or the family of God). And it suddenly felt very real to me that when Jesus says, “This is my body broken for you” He is talking about how he himself will be broken, and about how the bread will be broken, AND about how his church and the members of his church will be broken. And this weekend I experienced that a little bit.

I feel like I experienced my brokenness and my past story and my personal expectations rub up against the brokenness and past stories and expectations of others in my community.

And it hurt…

… but today I find myself thanking God for it.

Thank you, Lord that I am part of your broken body!

Thank you for the darkness and the tension and the differences.

Thank you for hurting me so that I could more clearly see my own biases and brokenness.

Thank you for a community that is willing to be open with one another, and share our hearts and hurts with each other even when that’s really hard and when doing it might be really difficult.

Thank you for a community that is willing to love each other, and love the differences we see in each other even when those differences hurt us.

Thank you for a community that is willing to stay in it together instead of choosing the easier path.

Lord, thank you, thank you, thank you, for sending your son to be broken like we are.

Lord, I know and I trust that you are a God of restoration and redemption and resurrection. I know and trust that you love to take that which is broken and make it whole again. That’s what I see you being about and that is what I want to be about. Lord, forgive me for the ways that I have broken instead of redeemed, forgive me for the ways I have done that even tonight. Lord, continue to work in me – don’t give up on me – work in me to take all my broken pieces and make me whole. Lord, work in us as a community and make us whole. Make us a community that is about restoration and redemption and resurrection.

Tonight I still feel a bit sad and tired, but I also feel deep hope.

Tonight I was reminded of why I choose to be a part of this community, and why I love each of the unique members of this community.

Tonight I experienced more of what it means to actually live in real community.

Tonight I feel thankful.

Tonight I am encouraged to be part of God’s broken body and I look expectantly towards the resurrection and wholeness that is coming.

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany

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Sunday Church Talks: Church in a Coffee Shop

August 3rd, 2008

Today I experienced church. Not when I went to church, but when I met a few friends for coffee. It was a time of sharing and listening to each other. It was a time of encouraging one another and just being there for one another. I shared more of myself and my story then I had planned but I felt safe there and like I could share more then I’d intended. I listened to others share and in doing so became myself a part of their story. It was a beautiful time. I think this is what we need – what I need. I think people need other people to walk through life with them. We need people to listen to us and validate us. We need people to speak truth to us and challenge us and we need people to encourage us and support us. We need people with whom we can share ourselves with little by little. And we need to hear other people’s stories and see bits of their deep self’s, because it’s in those glimpses that we learn that we are not alone. We learn that our struggles are also the struggles of others. Our fears are also the fears of others. Our triumphs and joys are also the triumphs and joys of others. We need this reminder – or at least I know I do. I need this. Thank you for being church with me, my friends!

So, in what ways have you experienced real fellowship/friendship and church (the body of Christ being the body of Christ) lately? I’d love to hear J

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany

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Theology Thursday: Needing the Body of Christ

July 31st, 2008

I have been feeling very needy lately and honestly I don’t like it. I don’t like feeling needy. I like feeling in control (as I have mentioned before). I like feeling capable and able and independent and have a difficult time admitting that I need other people’s help. In fact I have a hard time even asking people to pray for me even though I know that I need their prayer.

Basically, though lately I’ve realized how desperately I need other people in every area of my life. I need help. I admit that I can’t do life on my own – any part of it really. So, there’s my confession. I know that I need people. The problem is that I have a very hard time actually acting like I need other people and letting that knowledge really sink into how I live my life. So, I need help. I need help needing people. I need help becoming needy. I need help letting people into my life and my heart. I need help needing.

I need help with that because, I am convinced that it is only in community, only through active involvement and dependence on the body of Christ, that we really grow and experience healing and life. I am convinced that the life God calls us to live is a communal life. We need each other. I need you. It’s hard for me to admit and live like that but I know that it is the truth. It is through the body of Christ that Christ reveals himself to us. It is through the Body of Christ that Christ often chooses to meet our daily needs. Christ often chooses to use his body to challenge, instruct, convict, and encourage us. But, if I don’t let others into my life, don’t let them know my needs or struggles or questions then how can they help me? How can they be Christ’s hands and feet to me? If I choose not to share my triumphs and victories and encouragements with them how can they rejoice with me? If I choose not to let them into my life why would they choose to let me into theirs? How can we really be the Body of Christ if we hold each other (and thus hold Christ) at arm’s length and don’t really let each other into our lives?

Those are my thoughts today… I think them, but I have a much harder time living them.

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

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