MOxieCreations

Ok, here it is my second blog entry on my newly renamed blog... MOxieCreations hit me tonight as a much more creative name for my blog. I have moxie, nerve, aggressiveness, courage, spirit—people have told me I have moxie, and I believe them…most of the time. At rare times I have felt like the cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz, paralyzed with fear., but usually I feel convicted, knowing, and sure of what I should do, I usually plunge in, open my mouth and the words will spill out of me, as if I am having an out-of-body experience with the internal me saying something like,”Is she crazy, is she really gonna say it? There she goes; telling it like it is…again.” Now whether or not, the person or people on the receiving end of my convicted self agree with my perception, well that’s another thing altogether. For the purposes of this discussion I am only concerned with….(is she really gonna say it? There she goes…) with ME!

Persuasion, an art form really, if done purposefully, is done often without the “other” knowing it happened to them, who happened to them, what happened to them. ..they suddenly shift in thinking, take a new position, and are convicted in the new “it” they own as their own. I think all sorts of things persuade people-- speaking, writing, art, music, images of all kinds, moods, nature, others, and God. For me, yes, back to me now, I recently experienced an incredible persuasive epiphany in my life. I have had them before…the moments when clarity sings thru your soul, when for a fleeting moment there is absolute order in the universe with a direct spiritual line to HIM. In fact, while it was happening, I didn’t know who or what was happening to me. The Holy Spirit, is so incredibly amazing, working with Jesus and the Father weaving this woven tapestry of human experiences, where the fibers of lives get woven together in such a creative, imaginative, thoughtful, beautiful and loving way. It can leave me just gapping, gasping in awe of the greatness of the Lord.

How much Moxie, one might ask? I’m being called to wear the Full Moxie Jacket, total and complete authenticity. No posing, no fakeness, no airs, no positioning…to just be 100% me, take it or leave it. This isn’t a dare, or a challenge, or a huge shift in my person. No, I think I have felt authentic, felt REAL, my whole life. People tell me I’m down to earth. But what God is writing on my heart is something more. It is a laying down of any pretenses either self-imposed or imposed by culture, or by people in my life who need or want to see me in a certain way, and so there is a certain amount of performing that has happened. Throughout my life, to some extent I have done this…buck up, put on the happy face, give them a good show, and dismiss the internal diatribe of what I am actually versus what I am not. Or, maybe it is just me that feels this way.

This is not to say one should be ruled by their emotions, quite the contrary. What I think this all means is that I am to be the person God made me to be, not the person some “others” expect of me. To have moxie means sometimes saying something that is very uncomfortable, saying it because not saying it is the big elephant in the room the one that tramples people’s souls. To me it is about responsibility. We have to take care to see each other in reality, not see just what is pleasing, comfortable, what we want to see. If someone is in pain, and they tell you, ‘oh, I’m great,’ are you going to want to believe them? Yes! Should you believe them? No!! We need to be real with each other in all our struggles and pain. What is the point of posing as if everything is fine and great and terrific and perfect…where is the learning, the growth, the intimacy in that way of living. I know if I have one annoying trait to others, it is moxie. I sometimes say the hard things, ask the hard questions, pry, or poke at people to get real with them. But the one thing that gets under my own skin is when I don’t push it or dig a little deeper to lend an ear or shoulder…when I most disappoint myself is when I hear, “I’m great” from someone that looks like they just cried a bucket of tears and I say, “Great” back to them. I’m not saying we don’t have great days, I’m saying pretending like everything is fine, and when you can see otherwise, is DENIAL. We deny in micro and macro ways, don’t we. We are part of all humanity. If we didn’t use denial to some extent, we couldn’t function-we’d be overcome with our puniness to impact things like poverty, war, AIDS and world hunger. And in the micro ways. You notice trouble in a family member or friend, but should we make waves, should it be addressed? Easy does it, right? We can’t fix people, we can only LOVE them. It takes moxie to be open, make ourselves open to each other, to be there in LOVE for each other. That is what is being written on my heart, be open to LOVE and be open to being LOVED.