Years ago I got enough of a narcissist in my life and when I crossed this person they came at me, fists clenched. I stood my ground. “Go ahead,” I said. “Hit me.” That stopped them. I then said, “Nothing I ever do is right. Nothing I do is good enough.”
In other words, I stopped performing, stopped being manipulated, stopped responding.
The most unkind thing we can do to a narcissist is dance to their tune. We, as the more “well” person in the relationship, are called to put on a new song. They can learn to sing along, or they can get along.
Someone, telling me about someone else being mad, as though that was important, was happily surprised when I said, “He can get glad in the same clothes he got mad in.” I have to not care. I have to be healed, set free, even delivered of the need to please, to keep the peace.
It seems to me that narcissistic adults are, just like brat two-year-olds, begging for someone to draw some boundaries, help them learn to behave and therefore get along in this life.
But labels—no. Once you decide your mom, mate, boss, friend, or pastor is a narcissist, you will see everything they think, do and say through that lens. YOU ARE JUDGING AND WHAT YOU JUDGE WILL, IN SOME FORM OR FASHION, COME ON YOU. You will see them as fatally flawed, and just someone to leave in the dust. You will stop praying for them, stop letting God have say-so, and lose all your power.
So examine the relationship. Where have you enabled? When have you bowed to their nonsense because you’re afraid of a bit of conflict?
Isn’t it disgusting when you see moms asking permission from a toddler for the day’s activity? And when she tries to give him whatever he wants to stop the whining, does he stop? No, he whines all the more, and eventually starts yelling and screaming. He’s absolutely begging for some non-negotiable boundaries, for someone he can trust to help him be a better person.
Well, you can’t spank your neighbor, or your mate, right? No, but you can get to the end of your rope, stop trying the tired things you’ve been trying for ever, and that have never and will never work.
Oh, you wanna back up to that spanking part? You want to so self-righteously tell me you don’t believe in “hitting” your child. Well, if you think spanking is hitting, you definitely should not spank, but that’s for another time.
So, don’t call your kid a brat, don’t call your mate a narcissist. Call yourself brave and wise and finished with the nonsense.
And remember this: We often see in others what we dislike in ourselves. Yes, that gal in the mirror may be a work in progress as well. Let’s just all get out of God’s way, and get in His ways. Can I get an Amen? Amen!
Talking to myself today, because when I start listening to too much YouTube and getting all brilliant about everyone else’s issues, I can really get all up in God’s business, and forget all about love and forgiveness, and walking in all the fruits of the Spiritl. INSTEAD I just get miserable, mad, and pathetic. Like a two-year-old or a narcissist who needs the “gift of No” and maybe a nap. (I HEARD ABOUT THE GIFT OF NO FROM TIM HAWKINS.)
Think of that when that person is being impossible. What’s really going on? What do they really need from you? It’s not enabling, that much is for sure.
But it’s also not getting all in the flesh because you’re the latest expert on narcissism and you’re going to tell them off right this minute. Pray and wait. God really wants to help us all, deliver us all, set us all free to enjoy each other.
This will help: Think of a new label, and make it one you want TO SEE BECOME REALITY. Your two-year-old, because of your excellent training, is “a fine young man”, for instance. Your drama queen teenager is a “deep and good-hearted woman IN THE MAKING”, your know-it-all grouch husband is a “Dearly Beloved Child of God.”
Someone in my house called someone else in my house “such an ass” and I said, “Do not call my child names.” So, how about we just, as I said in the beginning of this diatribe, stop with the labeling. It doesn’t help at all. It harms. STOP WITH THE FINGER POINTING, AND PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER AND LIFT YOUR EYES—GETTING THEM OFF NARCISSISTIC BEHAVIOR AND ON THE HEALING LOVE OF JESUS.
I have been, with so many others, praying for revival in our land, in the world, in the church. But it occurs to me we might want to agree with God’s reasons for revival, and we might pray a little deeper about this. I feel I am treading on dangerous ground here, when I say we need to pray for revival not so gas prices go down, and wages go up, and life becomes safer and more comfortable. Yes, these are all nice things, but let’s have pure motivation, purified via abiding in Christ Jesus, so that we pray for revival with a heart of flesh.
Again, lets pray a little deeper, about that place where it all begins: at home. We can never pray too passionately for families–that marriages are strong, couples simply awash in the Love of God. Let us pray that children are so intensely valued that we see them exactly as their Creator sees them–the greatest imaginable of gifts, and worthy of training, discipline, and focused attention–undergirded by unending prayer and warfare.
Why not stop speaking what is: skyrocketing divorce rates, kids left bereft and easy prey for any predator and taker, pornography in schools, etc. How about we believe the Word of God which tells us, in short, that we have what we say. Let’s declare what we want (and INTEND) to see, rather than what is. When we lament what the enemy is up to, and what he’s already accomplished, it’s glorifying him and his work. It’s a perverse/death-bringing use of the tongue (see Proverbs 18:21).
We not only have what we say, we believe what we say. So, let’ say something that’s truth–something believable, remembering that everything Satan does, every evil, is based on a lie. It’s a lie that we can’t overcome, that any battle is too far gone, that we have to just wait it out and hope we survive.
We are not just conquerors. We are more than conquerors. When will we see this truth? When we believe God and say what He says; when there is a revival in our own hearts.
In reading the following aloud, and not fussing about the KJV translation (or just read in your own Bible) you will feel hope arise in your heart. And, I pray, the peace of God. And the Love that works with faith to bring . . . revival!
Romans 8: 31-39
What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.
Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I live with kind and undemanding folks, which sounds like a very good thing, right? But it can cause me to get a bit selfish and too into my own thing, which never seems to satisfy my soul. So, in my recent adventures in doing less and going my own way more, I am reminded of what I should KNOW by by: There is satisfaction in sharing, satisfaction in sacrifice.
And I am reminded of my mantra: A smart girl like you oughtta be able to figure this out. Of what am I speaking? I am speaking of the lack of shared meals happening of late at House of Parker.
We all have differing schedules, dietary preferences, and priorities–one person gets up at 3:30 a.m and is home any time between noon and 5:00; another gets off work at 11:00 p.m. The easy thing is to just say, “Who cares?”
The voice plaguing me says they don’t know or appreciate what it takes to put healthy meals on the table; it takes too much time; we’re in a new season and it doesn’t matter that much anyway. “Reason” continues: If I cook what they want it’s too hard to stay low-carb; let them cook their own–they know how.
And yes, they can and often do “cook their own” with the attendant continually messy kitchen, use of ingredients meant for other things, formation of unhealthy habits, and a general state of culinary chaos.
But that isn’t “the thing” really. The thing is that we no longer have “Table Share”. When I read a beautiful quote, or hear an amazing tale which simply must be shared for the joy and edification of all parties, for the common bond created via the ensuing good conversation, the best opportunity for doing so–while enjoying a meal–is unavailable.
What then shall a smart girl do? Give up? Sigh? Call someone and gripe (true friends share joys, not gripes)? No, she changes things here and there. She calls a family meeting first of all, enticing everyone with milk and no-bakes (chocolate oatmeal cookies cooked stovetop with plenty of butter, vanilla, salt, maybe some peanut butter and almond flavoring, and a bit more salt than called for).
In this meeting it is discerned that everyone is fine with her having more time to “do whatever” she wants, and that she should just “make herself happy”. And so . . . the hope that they will tell her what to do, how to solve this issue about which she is apparently the only one who cares, fades into more of the voices: It doesn’t matter; no one cares; you’re the only one bothered by this.
I own it. I am bothered by this, and that’s reason enough to do something about it, and I will find a solution.
So here it is: Breakfast together will be in the form of a weekend brunch; we’ll have dinner together (sort of–when it’s possible) and I will have beautiful times alone, as well as lovely times with only one of my beloveds at a time per their schedules, and on those marvelous times we’re all available, it will be all the more beautiful and lovely for the rarity.
And I will relax, and live in the unforced rhythms of grace given by my Creator. Because it always comes down to this: As smart as I am, He is smarter. He cares about what I care about, and He cares about me.
So rather than losing my creative juices via fretting, I will stop. Rest. And make my darlings happy by making myself happy. I will live each and every day without a plan or a goal, except to receive what God has for me–peace and love and joy–and pass it on. If that happens to be over a meal, so much the better.
Life is good. Worry is bad.
The March 21 offering in Devotional by Smith Wigglesworth is the tale of a miracle healing, wherein before Smith came on the scene God prepared a woman’s heart to receive. This was a handy thing for me to be reading, as my son came to ask for healing prayer just after I finished. My heart was prepared to pray, and I wanted his heart prepared as well.
“First,” I answered, “Sit down and do me the honor of letting me read this to you.” Benjamin sat and I read Smith’s marvelous story, beginning with Matthew 8:17: He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.
After finishing the devotion, I took Benjamin’s right hand and wrist (where the pain was) and began praying, during which action I was impressed to remind my son that his name means “Son of the Right Hand.” There was much more, and he received more than healing. He received encouragement.
I didn’t wake up encouraged today, and I was in no mood to encourage anyone else. But then there came that miracle thing called Quiet Time, and I was encouraged by the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John; then by Paul in I Corinthians with Love words, and David speaking straight to my heart in Psalms.
In Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest I was struck by the statement, “I have been identified with Him in His death.” Pondering this, I read from Smith Wigglesworth, focusing on the fifth verse of Isaiah 53: But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.
I choose to identify myself with The Healer.
The final thought in this devotion is, “One bit of unbelief against the Word is poison.”
He IS the Healer. Amen.
I’m hearing lots about eliminating “toxic” people from my life–those who don’t contribute to my “success”–about walking away. I really like this idea, but does God?* In listening to and reading motivational “success” gurus I know I’ve gotta get up at 5:00 a.m. if I’m going to “be somebody.” But God says I am somebody. People always want to know what I “do” and the temptation is to say, “I’m a writer,” as this, unlike homemaking, is an approved occupation. But God approves of me. Just because.
Still, the messages are so compelling, as are the ideas of writing bestsellers and achieving other lauded goals, having an actually heeded day planner, and checking off my to-do lists each day. And the facts that vision boards don’t work for me, and my plans almost always are superceded by “life” doesn’t faze me. It can’t be that all those people are missing something–after all, they’re “successful”–I MUST TRY HARDER. FASTER, FASTER, WORK, WORK!
As I ponder all these things, and wonder why Christian motivational speakers consider non-Christians “successful” simply because they’re famous, I suddenly remember something I once heard, and now I am listening: If at first you don’t succeed, fry, fry, a hen. Ah, now that sounds like success to me. My daughter recently roasted a fat chicken in the Hobbit way – bacon, butter, herbs, and those things under as well as atop the skin. The chicken was first rinsed and then patted dry, to be cooked on high heat, and all in pursuit of a very crispy and delicious skin. Roasted along this dear bird were root vegetables, and all hearts were made glad.
When Rebekah asked what I wanted done with the chicken I could have told her my plan. Rather, I asked for her suggestions and out came An Unexpected Cookbook–The Unofficial Book of Hobbit Cookery. Not my plan, but better than. I’m liking the sound of that: Not my plan, but better than. My daughter is happy, my family enjoys an excellent meal, and I don’t have to cook. Success!
* In Andrew Murray’s classic book, Humility, he writes: “Look upon every fellow man who tries or vexes you as a means of grace to humble you.”
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