{"id":33357,"date":"2023-10-12T14:46:23","date_gmt":"2023-10-12T21:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=33357"},"modified":"2023-10-12T14:46:23","modified_gmt":"2023-10-12T21:46:23","slug":"give-me-your-eyes-for-my-mom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/give-me-your-eyes-for-my-mom\/","title":{"rendered":"Give Me Your Eyes For My Mom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you heard the song Give Me Your Eyes<\/a> by Brandon Heath? The chorus sticks with me.<\/p>\n

Give me Your eyes for just one second
\nGive me Your eyes so I can see
\nEverything that I keep missin’
\nGive me Your love for humanity
\nGive me Your arms for the broken-hearted
\nThe ones that are far beyond my reach
\nGive me Your heart for the ones forgotten
\nGive me Your eyes so I can see (1)<\/p>\n

I try think of remember song when I think of my mom. Lord, help me to see her with Your eyes. Help me to look beyond my pain. I try to think of a little girl whose parents divorced. Then, not long after her father remarried, her mother died of a brain aneurysm. My mother, along with her older brother and sister, moved in with her father, his new wife, and step-children. She was eight years old.<\/p>\n

My mother has never emotionally matured beyond the level of that little girl who lost her mother. This is the context I strive to think of when it comes to my mother. I have not received the emotional support I craved from her because she did not have the maturity to give it to me. In their book Rare Leadership, Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder write, \u201cWhen your emotional capacity gets overwhelmed, trauma occurs and your ability to suffer well gets stunted.\u201d (2) What my mother experienced as a young girl caused trauma and stunted her emotional growth.<\/p>\n

The eventual side effect of my mother\u2019s trauma caused a rift in our relationship. As I pursued emotional maturity, I set healthy boundaries with my parents. Their response to these boundaries was to cut me out of their lives. They have not spoken to me in over eight and a half years. Yet God did not leave me as an orphan. A couple in my church, Mike and Diana, stepped in and became my surrogate parents. They loved me, supported me, and encouraged me in a way my biological parents could not.<\/p>\n

Warner and Wilder comment, \u201cThe church today is in dire need of fathers, mothers, and elders \u2013 people with the life experience and walk with God to act like themselves, keep relationships bigger than problems, and model an intimate walk with God in the midst of hardship.\u201d (3) Mike and Diana provided this for me. The ability to grow, to endure hardship, and to live a life of joy is one of the four traits of the RARE leader. (4) I am grateful for the unconditional love and acceptance I have received from Mike and Diana. The love they and others gave to me helped me to learn and grow.<\/p>\n

The mark of a RARE Leader is one who knows how to suffer well. They are able to maintain joy amid trials. \u201cJoy is not a recipe for avoiding pain. Joy is what enables us to suffer well. Joy assures us that we are never alone in our pain and that those who share our suffering will show us how to remember who we are when things get hard.\u201d (5) When we look at the world the way Jesus does, when we learn to see with His eyes, we learn how to suffer well.<\/p>\n

I admit, I still struggle when it comes to my parents. I want to see them with the eyes of Jesus, I want to remember the trauma my mother experienced. This is not easy because I still have my own childhood trauma.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to build this capacity when you are not triggered if you want any hope of getting back there when you are triggered. In order to suffer well, you have to develop your capacity for appreciation.\u201d (6)<\/p>\n

I cannot change my parents. I cannot make them accept healthy boundaries or make them choose to have a relationship with me. I cannot force them to grow or mature. What I can do is continue to pray for them and continue to strive to endure hardship well. I can choose joy in all circumstances and seek to progress on my own path of growth.<\/p>\n

[1] Brandon Heath. \u201cGive Me Your Eyes.\u201d Songwriters: Jason Ingram and Fred Rose.<\/p>\n

[1] Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder, Rare Leadership: I4 Uncommon Habits for Increasing Trust, Joy, and Engagement in the People You Lead<\/em>. (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2016), 177.<\/p>\n

[1] Ibid<\/em>., 179.<\/p>\n

[1] The four traits of a RARE Leader are: 1) Remain Relational; 2) Act Like Yourself; 3) Return to Joy; 4) Endure Hardship Well. Pg. 19.<\/p>\n

[1] Warner and Wilder, 177.<\/p>\n

[1] Ibid<\/em>., 185.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you heard the song Give Me Your Eyes by Brandon Heath? The chorus sticks with me. Give me Your eyes for just one second Give me Your eyes so I can see Everything that I keep missin’ Give me Your love for humanity Give me Your arms for the broken-hearted The ones that are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2834],"class_list":["post-33357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-warner-wilde","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33358,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33357\/revisions\/33358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}