I’ve been recently perusing some of the emails we received when we had our FOC blog up last summer. Many people poured their hearts out to me which I found really touching, but even the ones who no longer attended a FOC church still spoke the “special language” of a FOCer and were still in the process of deprogramming themselves. Some of them were sweetly manipulative in asking me for access to this blog. One lady — who actually goes to Maybe Church — wrote me quite often and at one point said, “I’d really love access to your ‘real’ blog but I don’t want to ask. I’m just trusting God with that.”
She had been quite complimentary to me in the email and then followed it with that non-request request. It’s classic FOC. Butter ’em up to get what you want and for extra emphasis, throw God into the mix.
Uhm, peaches, here’s the thing: You were actually asking for access to this blog, there just wasn’t a question mark in your request. I’m all for trusting God, I am, but unless God appears to you in a burning bush to give you this blog’s URL, he’s not the one in charge of giving you that. I am. (Or, alternatively, I suppose you could ask Joe, since goes to your church and seemingly has this blog’s URL memorized.)
Assuming you wouldn’t do that, then yes, I’m the only one who could give that information to you. So why are you trusting God with that since I’m sure we can both agree he’s got more important things to do than to appear to you in a Starbucks cup announcing this blog’s URL?
Ohhh, wait a minute.
Could it really be that you’re trusting God to move my hard heart to give you the URL? That can’t be what you really mean, could it? But giving you this URL would totally defeat the purpose for having published a whole different blog elsewhere. It would make that decision seem irrational and, while I can be quite irrational, I’d rather not appear to be so if it can be easily avoided.
But that’s what you’re really doing: You’re trusting God to move my hard heart to give you the URL.
Well, it’s been over a year now, so good luck with that, Crackie.
I kind of hope God moves my hard heart to give you the URL in, oh, 23 years so you’ll look in your inbox and say, “What the hell is this?”
That would amuse me.
If she’s trusting God to help her be a gossipy busybody, she’s in for a long wait.
To me the best blogs are written by people that I have no idea who they are. One of my friends wrote a blog years ago and it was just no fun to read. Complaining about your husband when I know him just ruins the fun of laughing at what a dill wad he was. But I am totally guilty of being a busybody so I do get that! 😉 I am trusting God that you will all forgive me for starting a sentence with “but”.
NF — Hahahahahahaha. Yep.
Tracey H. — I start sentences with “but” all the time! For me, it was more the way she threw the God angle into the whole request. I felt a bit like I was being chastised for not just offering this blog to her — a woman who GOES to the exact church I was writing about.
I tend to become quite glacial inside when people use God to try to wrangle something out of me.