Peter Piper Picked A Peck of People Pleasers

People pleasing. A phrase and state of being I have come to loathe. One that is unpleasant most if not all of the time for the pleaser, pretty sweet for the pleasee. Sadly no 12-step meetings for this one, although there certainly should be. Hi, my name is ___________, and I'm a people pleaser. Hi _______________.


This is the first of what will probably be many reflections regarding this nasty personality trait. A craft whose road I have traveled from apprentice to journeyman to master. So ingrained in this art have I become that sadly I realized it's the driving force behind most of my choices. Every word that I say to every person that I say it. Every position on every issue tailored so as not to offend the person I'm speaking to. It can creep into personal choices: what will I wear, what will I eat, what car will I buy, what books will I read, what music will I listen to? Until the wonderful me that I am and how God uniquely wired me together is so obscured by taking the path of least resistance that I am unrecognizable. It's utterly exhausting and comprehensively soul-killing!

So where did this ugly placating start? Childhood I would imagine. Be pleasant or be ignored - even worse, be disliked. When the personal security question of "Am I Okay?" isn't answered and reinforced through normal childhood channels (parents, responses from those in authority, etc.), one frantically starts asking for that reassurance from everyone she meets. Needy? And how. People pleasing in its simplest form. Validation turned to fear. Okay, enough deconstructing for the moment.

The farther I travel down this road to know and love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength, the more I realize the size of this malignancy. As is most obviously the case, one cannot endeavor to love and please God when the foundation her life is built upon shifts according to the whims of the surrounding world's likes and dislikes. If I want to stand for truth and foster integrity, I must be prepared to stay planted on God's truth. This will with certain inevitability lead to forks in the road. I must be willing to risk being disliked by people (shudder) in order to stick with the God who saved me.

Allow me to digress for the remainder of this post to a verse I received yesterday in an email from a friend. Thus began the long trek down this rabbit trail. What follows after it is my reply.

How is it possible for you to learn to believe, you who are content to seek and receive praise and honor and glory from one another, and yet do not seek the praise and honor and glory which come from Him who alone is God? (John 5:44)

Ahh, the bitter conundrum. (Well - maybe that's where my mental adjustment needs to start. Pleasing God not being bitter and all.) Back to my ponderings.

If I focus on pleasing God, a safe bet says I'd be more pleasing at least to believers - which I have found not always to be the case (believer being a subjective state). If I focus on pleasing God, then unbelievers, unfortunately (especially when it invites them to consider a personal wrongdoing), are not at all pleased with me. After chewing on this for some time this afternoon, I have landed on the element of inverted thinking. When I think of people as big then I am thinking of God as small. When I think of God as big then people occupy their rightful place in my mind. So I ruminated on Psalm 56 and came to the conclusion that in the words of the infamous Prince - "Who do ya trust if you can't trust God?" Who is going to provide for me? People or God. Who is going to vindicate me on judgment day? People or God. Who came to earth and died for my sins? People or God . . . . and so it all ultimately comes back to trust. Ruthless trust Brennan Manning would say.

Verse for the Day

Psalm 56:4 (NIV)

In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me?

Hi, Lot's wife here. Have we met?

An alarming thing happened today. Something that has been building for a year. Well, truth be told, it has been building for decades. Let me rewind a bit and include some background. I am a board certified, card carrying, remote hogging, channel surfing, lazy load watching tv addict. It is impossible to calculate the amount of time I have wasted in front of the idiot box - a term my mother was fond of - which always amused me as it was my mother who put a tv in her 8-yr old's room (granted, I was demon spawn - just ask my tortured older brother). Needless to say my childhood was a technicolor blur; as was the better part of my 30's.

So, back to my story.

When I recommitted my life to Christ at 38, tv was one of many addictive behaviors God and I took on. I moved in 2004 and made a landmark decision to opt for basic-basic (did I mention basic?) cable which consisted of about 12 channels. The customary broadcast channels, 22 home shopping networks and 11 stations broadasting only in Spanish. Okay, so that totals more than 9. But you get the picture. Pretty slim pickings - especially at 3 am when the viewing consists of infomercials or infomercials in Spanish (why did I never learn Spanish?!). The adjustment was initially like cutting off a limb. Still, after time, I started to thrive due to the abbreviated selections, and developed a very full and active life. Relationships were rekindled. New friendships formed. Books (books?) begun - and finished! A life full of the living.

Alas, a year ago I fell hook, line and sinker for the cable company's clever marketing and signed up for their inclusive package. (You know the one that bundles internet/phone/cable together in one "low" price.) The gimmick is to have you sign up for more services than you currently have in hopes that, when the price is jacked up a year later, you will be so hooked you've convinced yourself you can't possibly do without. As you can imagine, opening the door and inviting an addiction into the house again took its toll. My thriving relationship and dialog with God was stopped dead in its tracks. Friendships were strained. Weight was gained (after all who can resist mindlessly stuffing your face as you watch). Health deteriorated. Sleep suffered. Work suffered. Guilt and shame ensued over the countless marathon hours (days, weekends) spent in front of the tube allowing it to suck the drive and intelligence out through my eyeballs. My full and active life was stuffed into a moldy duffel bag and thrown into the dark recesses of the storage closet.

As you might have guessed, my low price came to an end recently and the decision was mine to ponder once more. Pay the extra 60 bucks a month or downgrade. So I downgraded. They came today. And this time, like any addiction after a relapse, turning off the cable channels I had grown so dependent on once again was physically painful. How on earth would I function minus my carefully sculpted watching schedule? The worst part? Mixed with the relief that comes from being liberated from my cage, came the sad wistfulness that tonight I would not be able to go home and see the first episode of one of my coveted shows new season. How sad is that? Just like Lot's wife, my heart pined for the oppression of my chains. So instead of running full speed towards freedom with full understanding I'd been spared, I turned and lamented my missing shackles.

I know the cravings will subside and the rewards gained will enormously outweigh any momentary longings. But boy the lessons learned will echo for I hope a lifetime. Be careless and invite sin to tea but rest assured it will quickly evict you out into the street and proceed to set your drapes on fire.

And so I'm off. Off to taste and see the land of the living.

Verses for the day:

Hebrews 12:1-2 (Amplified Bible) (emphasis mine)

1Therefore then, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [who have borne testimony to the Truth], let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us.

2Looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus, Who is the Leader and the Source of our faith [giving the first incentive for our belief] and is also its Finisher [bringing it to maturity and perfection]. He, for the joy [of obtaining the prize] that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising and ignoring the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Genesis 4:7 (NIV)

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.

The Down Right Dangerous Message of Failure

Debilitating. Discouraging. Demoralizing. All words meant to describe what the feeling of failure does to a person. Well does to me anyway. Mistakenly concluding that, as much as I loathe the fit of this cloak, my distaste would act as a deterrent, thus ensuring my commitment to success. Ahh, but closer scrutiny reveals that this particular garment has a sticky inner lining that once donned produces cling as stubborn as those annoying Styrofoam packing peanuts. More descriptively, dog poo scented Styrofoam packing peanuts. In short, failure – or my perception of it – can and has shut me down for quite a while - many times, days.

This being my first post, perhaps a little background is called for. I am a 40-something woman who has just been (finally) diagnosed with Chronic Lyme Disease. A diagnosis coming on the heels of an apparently all too common “it’s M.S., no it’s Lyme, no it’s M.S., no it’s Lyme . . .” tug of war played by numerous doctors with numerous contradictory opinions and their numerous non-conclusive tests (and, of course, the numerous piles of money the afore-mentioned things require). The end result of all this being that most days I feel like slightly warmed over crap on toast. (Well now. That was less than delicate, wasn’t it.)

Back to failure.

I had somewhere I wanted to be this morning. A bible study to be exact. But things started out difficult, and, as has become my m.o. more and more lately, I did not overcome those obstacles. The morning progressed and the physical challenges, coupled with disappointment in self, combined to strip the morning of any productivity whatsoever. And so, arriving at my job – 2+ hours late – my initially harmless, peanut-sized accessory had become a full blown Michelin man sized, medieval coat of armor. Hardly conducive to fruitful labor.

I am happy to report that with the aide and support of trusted friends (and their willingness to brave the stench) I was last seen beating the poo (intended) out of failure and stuffing the useless garment into a trash compacter, hopeful that at least for the moment it is gone. I’m keeping my eyes open though, and if (or more truthfully, when) the ugly vestige worms it’s stinky way back into my closet I hope to promptly feed it to the shredder.

Verses for the day: Eccleciastes 4:9-12 (The Message)

9 Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. 10 If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.

12 A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.