A Jew’s Heart: Love, Respect, and the Ache for Reciprocity

As a Jew, I stand in awe of the God who spoke to Moses “face to face, as a friend” (Exodus 33:11). My faith is a direct line—Psalm 145:18 whispers, “The Lord is near to all who call on Him”—and it fills me with love and respect, not fear. I see God’s steadfast love in Deuteronomy 7:9, a promise that He returns what I give: a bond of trust, not trembling. This is my Judaism—personal, alive, a dance of Micah 6:8’s justice, mercy, and humility. And from this place, I reach out to my Christian friends with open arms, cherishing their faith even as it differs from mine.
I love them deeply. I see the fire in their eyes when they speak of Jesus, the way John 14:6—”I am the way, the truth, and the life”—lights their souls. I respect how Matthew 10:28’s call to “fear Him who can destroy both soul and body” drives their devotion, even if I don’t share it. I celebrate our shared roots—Genesis 1:27’s divine image in us all—and I honor their path, trusting Genesis 9:9’s Noahide covenant that God embraces their righteousness too. When they say God must be feared, I nod, “I hear you—it’s your truth,” and offer mine: “For me, Psalm 136’s ‘His love endures forever’ is enough.” I don’t ask them to abandon Jesus; I only ask to walk beside them, each in our way.
But here’s where my heart aches: the love and respect I give don’t always come back. They hold tight to Acts 4:12—”salvation in no one else”—and see my Judaism as a shadow, obsolete beside their Hebrews 8:13 new covenant. I say, “My faith is real, my God near,” and they reply, “You need Jesus, or you’re lost.” I offer Isaiah 54:10’s unshakeable love; they counter with Matthew 25:46’s eternal stakes. I’m frustrated—not because they believe differently, but because they can’t see my belief as whole. I accept their fear-driven faith; why can’t they accept my love-driven one?
I’ve tried bridging this gap. “Your 1 John 4:8 says ‘God is love’—can’t that include my way?” I ask. Or, “We both seek God—can’t we trust each other’s hearts?” Sometimes they soften—”I see your faith matters to you”—but the wall stays up: John 3:18’s “condemned already” looms. I don’t need them to ditch their gospel; I just long for them to say, “Your Judaism’s enough for you,” as I say their Christianity is for them. My tradition lets me embrace them—Zechariah 14:9’s vision of all serving God—yet their Mark 16:15 mission leaves no room for me to stand as I am.
I’ll keep loving them, respecting them, sharing Deuteronomy 6:5’s call to love God fully. But the frustration lingers—a quiet ache that the reciprocity I crave, the mutual “I see you,” stays out of reach. I won’t stop trying, because love is my faith’s pulse. I just wish they’d meet me halfway, not with fear, but with the 1 Corinthians 13:7 love that “bears all things”—even a Jew like me.

Company Culture

Creating and living a workplace culture which fosters a productive and profitable environment is something every company talks about constantly.  It all starts with an idea of what the company wants to accomplish.  Some companies even hire “experts” to make sure the mission statement reflects ideals customers and employees can easily understand.  The mission statement should be relatable and reflect a need which cannot be met by a competing company.  Sounds so very simple, doesn’t it?  If creating company culture is as easy as writing the perfect mission statement, why do so many companies have such low ratings on Glassdoor?  Since this has been a frustration of mine for many years, I’m ready to examine where and why so many get it so very wrong.

I have my own personal theories regarding mission statements gone wrong but, I know my theories won’t prove true in every company and every environment.  The simple truth of workplace environments is that they are comprised of people.  We hear it all the time.  People make the company.  Most companies completely forget the simplistic truth of that sentence.  I believe most of us know why it is so easily tossed aside in the day-to-day of running a business. 

People are complicated.  Doesn’t that feel like a fully loaded sentence?  While it is only three words, it perfectly summarizes the challenge of creating a workplace culture which churns out not only profits but also happy and well-adjusted employees.  Let’s face it, maximizing profits means having those well-adjusted, properly motivated and engaged employees.  There is absolutely no way to get around it unless you want to keep your company a small one-person show.  Most people understand the basics of needing a diverse team of people but, what does true diversity look and feel like?  If everyone knows and understands the need to build a diverse team, why do so many companies look for only one type of personality when they evaluate applicants?  Why are people who perform their job duties successfully shown the door because “they just didn’t fit”?   Why are people pushed to promote out of positions in which they perform very well, feel sufficiently challenged and where they are happy to remain for a large portion of their career?

So where is the disconnect between the desire to create a culture which delivers personal satisfaction while achieving financial success and the ability to make it a reality?  The answer to this question circles back to that simple three-word sentence – People are complicated.  To really begin wrapping our heads around this concept, I’d like to share two recent personal experiences.

My last career position was with a vendor company.  My supervisors with my own company were wonderful leaders but, they were constantly overloaded and overwhelmed.  This left me on my own to deal with the complex interactions with the customer most of the time. This gave me the freedom to consistently exceed contract expectations and grow professional trust to very high levels.  Even on challenging days, my job satisfaction was at the highest level I had ever experienced in my career.  The key to this relationship for me was mutual trust and respect.

My working relationship with the leaders of the customer company was very different.  It was a study in contradictions and a lack of clear direction.  Most people can agree that there is a huge difference between a “rapidly evolving work place” and “the right hand having no idea what the left is doing.”  Often the first phrase is mistakenly used to describe the reality of the second phrase.  This was the world which I carefully navigated every day.  Of course, the customer company assigned one of their own managers to oversee the contract.  This specific manager was someone who was very knowledgeable in technical skills but, new to management.  At first, everything went very well.  Sure, we had some bumps in the road but, we navigated them with success towards a nice level of mutual respect.

The customer company started showing cultural cracks when they were forced to downsize their staff by forty percent.  Shortly before the formal announcement of the cutbacks, the customer manager asked me for some productivity data with no explanation.  Without knowing the reason this information was needed, I provided just the basic statistics which were requested.   Decisions were made based on the incomplete information and incorrect assumptions regarding the missing information.  The domino effect of those decisions led to various productivity implosions within the building and negatively affected multiple departments.  I don’t need to state the obvious damage to the company culture because we have all experienced this at some point in our career.  In these situations, many promises are made with no knowledge of how they can be kept.  We also know that the resulting damage is very difficult to overcome without a heavy dose of honesty about the root causes.  Company decisions are often made based only upon financial reasons.  Forgetting to also uphold the stated mission statement and company culture destroys the trust with employees and customers.  Rebuilding that trust is difficult because, people are complicated.

Recently, I formed a private group on a social media platform.  It’s a small group of amazing people who I have had the pleasure to meet and get to know throughout my personal and professional life.  For most of our members, their only connection to each other is simply my relationship to each of them.  This past week, I posted the link to a values assessment which I have used to refocus the direction of my career goals.  Each person took the assessment and shared their results.  They were then encouraged to examine their results and compare those to how they view themselves.  Through this process, I was able to see complexities in these people which I would have never known or appreciated without this experience.  However, just one test or the results of one sample will never help us build a truly all-encompassing culture because, again, people are complicated.  

What is the answer to perfect corporate culture?  It’s been researched, examined, written and lectured about by experts for many years so, why don’t we have the perfect answer?  The answer is as complex as it is simple.  Corporate culture must constantly evolve because people and society are constantly evolving.  And, people are complicated. 

To be continued……….         

Career Shift

I started this blog as a way of sharing my personal story with those who know me.  Over time, I noticed a few people unknown to me were reading and subscribing.  That sincerely makes me believe I’m making that little bit of difference in someone’s life.  Since my mission statement in life is “Give a little – Take a little”, those few subscribers validate that I am delivering messages which resonate with and help others.  One of the best ways to motivate me is to show I am being heard and that those words are making small changes that make the world feel a little less lonely.  Having people follow my blog does this for me in such a beautiful and simple way.  I thank every single one of you who have decided to join me on my journey.

As we move through our lives, we change through things that happen or choices we make.  Yet, even with the changes, our essence remains constant.  As an example, we can change from having mostly negative thoughts to being more positive.  However, if a person is one who really needs to share thoughts and feelings, that can only be stifled for so long.  Eventually, that volcano cap is going to blow, throwing lava all over whomever is standing close by.  And, while it feels so good to let that pressure go, it’s not going to feel so amazing to those hit by the randomly thrown debris. 

The volcano analogy is a lesson I have had to relearn many times throughout my life.  For a while, I go about my life just being my outgoing smiling and problem-solving self, letting that lava flow at a controlled and safe rate.  Then someone who I need to keep happy in order to remain employed comes along and tells me to put a cap on it.  So, I do what is requested and seal off the flow.  I don’t have to tell you what happens a few months later.  We can only temper, not shut down, our natural flow because shutting it down eventually becomes destructive for all those within our personal blast zone.  It’s easy to forget this in the pursuit of our much-needed paychecks.  It’s also easy for those higher up in organizations to forget those in the trenches need to simply be who they are while performing their job duties.  Remembering to manage each person as a person instead of as a piece of a collective is challenging.

Do we really need to live that way?  Does being a productive member of the working world require that we must shut down key pieces of who we are?  Why are some allowed to simply be who they are while others are required to change who they are?  There have been many times I’ve been told to change key pieces of my personality or behavior to please others.  Yet, the same person telling me to cap off my flow says to me, “That is just how that person is” about another person who is displaying the same behaviors.  It’s confusing and frustrating. 

I remember a time I was told to NOT make personal to do lists because it overwhelmed my coworkers when they saw it.  “Your lists are too long” and “It’s more than anyone can get done in a day” were the reasons I heard over and over.  These lists were my personal lists which had very little to do with my coworkers or those who I supervised.  Yet, I was told I could not write these lists because it stressed everyone out.  The experiences I’ve listed are just a small example of the criticisms I’ve received through the years.  I always took the criticism to heart and adjusted to accommodate and please.  There were many times that I thought I was compromising.  The reality was that I was surrendering to keep the peace.

As I’ve been making plans for the next stage of my career, I’ve done several assessments to test various hard and soft skills.  There were two soft skills assessments which gave me some “ah ha” moments.  In thinking through examples of how I’ve used these skills successfully in the past, I realized that my passions live within those specific characteristics.  Those also happen to be the skills which my former supervisors did not value.  They simply did not understand my unique blend of soft skills nor did they know how to leverage those skills.  Or is it that I did not know how to explain and demonstrate the value of those soft skills in a way that could be easily understood?  It’s difficult to place the “blame” back onto myself.  It feels like another round of self-abuse.  However, there is an undeniable power in knowing that you can only control your own responses, reactions and feelings.  How others respond to you has little to do with you and a ton to do with their own unresolved issues. 

My new career goal will be to reinvent myself into a company culture leader or consultant.  The steps involved not only include a ton of research but also a lot of self-reflection.  This is the direction my blog will be taking from this point forward.  I will be bringing you along as I work through the steps required to form a valuable and realistic program which, if applied correctly by companies, will lead to managers understanding the value of leveraging their own soft skills and those of whom they lead.  My program will be led with a strong emphasis of self-awareness, gratitude, humor, kindness and acceptance.  While these words sound like rainbows and sunshine, I can assure you they are not.  These specific words are very often abused in the working world because they are not tempered properly by responsibility, communication, connectedness and individualization.

While I am switching up the material I will be writing about, I will remain true to my lava flow and continue to share thoughts, feelings and epiphanies I encounter along the way.  Please chime in with comments and suggestions whenever the urge strikes you.  These insights may be the exact valuable feedback needed to push me through a “block”. 

As always, I thank you for your support and involvement!

Surrender

Surrender.  Such a simple word for such a complex process and something that means so many different things to each person.  My post today will be filled with more questions than answers.  These questions have different answers for everyone and each answer changes not only with each different situation but also as we grow.  My answers are not your answers and vice versa.  Today’s answers may not be correct tomorrow.  

I’ve chosen trust for my word as the next step in my personal growth.  As I examine and work on what I always thought was such an easy and natural part of myself, I’ve discovered my challenge with sincerely embracing trust is understanding surrender.  To trust, you must surrender. 

Surrender your need to control and be in control.  Allow yourself to just be you.  Yes, mistakes will occur.  Yes, you need to learn from mistakes but, you do not need to beat yourself up over them.  If someone else physically or emotionally assaulted you simply because you made a mistake, would you accept that as what you deserved?  I guess the appropriate punishment deserved would depend upon the type and level of mistake, correct? 

Let’s put this in perspective by asking a few more questions.  Did you physically or emotionally harm anyone else when you made the mistake?  To what degree was the other party harmed?  Should a sincere apology, gesture or action be enough to at least ease the discomfort caused?  Now for the hardest question.  Was the other person truly harmed or was it simply a perception of harm by that person?  Do we owe others restitution for what was perceived as harm when none occurred?  Is the fact they felt harmed truly our fault or did the event simply reveal an area which is crying for introspection and acceptance within themselves? 

Stepping outside of ourselves to examine these complex emotions is difficult.  I am just beginning to understand the concept better.  Last week, I would have screamed, “It’s impossible to see and understand these situations from outside of myself!”  Today, as I write this, I’m starting to understand the process and visualize how it works.  I want to grab it and hug it tightly until it fully opens itself within me.  Even as I write this, I feel my mind and my soul screaming for this understanding to please, please stay.  Please open yourself completely into my entire being.  Hold me.  Surround me.  Fill me.  Love me.  Yet, I know and understand that it cannot grow if I hold it too tightly.  It must be allowed to move through me at its own pace. 

Is this surrender?  Is this trust?  Is this acceptance?  Is this simple and beautiful self-love?  Isn’t it all these things and more? 

Let’s revisit those questions a couple of paragraphs up.  To me, these questions lead to more questions.  If we were to ask these questions about someone else, would the answers be different than if asked of ourselves?  Is forgiving ourselves harder than forgiving others?  Is asking others to forgive us harder than forgiving ourselves?  Do we judge ourselves more harshly when we harm others than we do when we harm ourselves?  Do we feel we’ve caused more damage than what truly occurred?  Was anyone truly damaged or did we simply allow a light to illuminate a dark and lonely corner? 

Taking that step back to observe without judgement does not come naturally to most of us.  Our perceptions are based on many years of being told how we should act, what we should think, what we should do and who we should be.  Learning to love and embrace all pieces of ourselves as beautiful and whole is made even more complicated and difficult by all the mixed messages we receive from everywhere and everyone.  One moment we will hear, “you must have goals.  You must keep moving and pushing until those goals are achieved.”  The next moment you will hear, “stop, rest and listen.”  That sounds very contradictory, doesn’t it?  As I wrote it, I felt the confusion.  Once I saw the words, clarification came to me.  Stopping to evaluate progress is part of the pushing forward.  If all you are doing is pushing forward, you may end up ten miles down the road only to realize you should have made a turn five miles ago or the destination has shifted.  However, not all contradictory messages are so easily and quickly resolved.

This is where surrender has currently planted itself in front of me to be fully acknowledged and accepted.  As much as I want to believe I am letting myself surrender to trusting the universe, I am still self-judging and pushing myself forward when I don’t even know which direction “forward” is.  I have some loose goals, but I don’t really have a true direction or mission.  I say that I’m allowing the universe to guide me, yet, every day, I feel guilty for not knowing or understanding what my goals are.  I criticize myself daily for not doing enough or doing things “wrong”.  There are days I use myself as an emotional punching bag because I’m not going about my job search the “right” way.  It took me three days to write and edit a cold call cover letter.  I spent the third day telling myself how it should not have taken that long to write a simple letter.  Next, I beat myself up that this letter did not look or sound like a “proper and acceptable” cover letter.  Then I beat myself up over beating myself up.  

My next step was to visit Glassdoor to research companies in the area.  As I read each review, I saw the very same negative theme in every company.  I felt frustrated and helpless.  After pushing that emotion aside, I visited LinkedIn to research people who worked for these companies.  Now, I know the goal of this website is to market yourself to the rest of the working world, so you put the prettiest possible spin on your career history.  What a beautiful thing for overachievers!  It’s not so healthy for those of us who fall into the zone of being overly humble or self-depreciating.  That visit to LinkedIn led to a level of frustration which absolutely demanded I just stop doing everything and give into the feeling of hopelessness.       

The vicious cycle is just that – vicious.  I am forever judging and questioning myself instead of simply surrendering myself to trusting my worth, my journey, and the universe.  It’s those moments of desperation which make you do exactly what you need to do.  You literally have no choice in the matter.  It absolutely needs to happen, yet you continue to deny yourself the very thing you need until you have absolutely no choice.  How much easier would life be if we would surrender instead of fight through where we weren’t even meant to go?

I have a few examples of the phenomenon of needing and wanting to go one direction, choosing or being pushed by others to go a different direction and then the universe suddenly steps up to correct or refine our course.

Shortly after Don and I got married, even though I was eligible for a promotion, I asked my employer to just let me hang out as an assistant manager for a while.  I wanted to just live in the moment for several months and enjoy this wonderful new personal life without the extra stress and time constraints required by being a general manager.  Barely a week after our wedding, an area director was literally hounding me to take a general manager position at a location I knew was not a good fit for my personal goals.  I repeatedly told her no, but she kept pressuring me.  She is one of those who uses every form of emotional blackmail at her disposal to get what she wants; truly a master manipulator.  Of course, I caved.  I mean, after all, it was what I had been working towards for so long as my career goal, right?  Two weeks later, I was overly stressed out, exhausted and never home.  The thanks I received from the master manipulator was constant belittling and micromanaging.  After the fourth week, I asked to take the step back down and return to my original restaurant.  As soon as I announced my decision, her behavior towards me grew even worse.  My first day back in my home restaurant, I was so extremely thrilled to be back with my crew.  My joy was short-lived.  The full reason why would require taking this story too far off the rails but, just know it was another sign that I should have taken that pause and adjusted my path much sooner than I did.  The company barely let me catch my breath from that adventure before they started asking me to fill in for short and long-term assignments several miles away from home.  Of course, I felt guilty for turning down the promotion and wanted to be a team player, so I said yes, every time they asked.  Fast forward to my last few months of employment with that company.  I was sent on a six-week assignment to a restaurant which was approximately ninety minutes from home.  While I remained very firm on which days and type of hours I would work during this assignment, I still worked a minimum of ten hours each day.  Again, upon my return to my home restaurant, I was thrilled to be back and ready to catch my breath.  Unfortunately, I arrived back “home” to the same reception I received after the last assignment.  The next time an opportunity arose, I jumped on it.  Even though it still was not an ideal situation, I thought this was finally “it.”  Five months later, I left my key on the desk, walked out the door and never looked back.  I burned my uniform shirts that weekend.  I raged about the five years of my life I wasted allowing an employer to disrespect and abuse me for so long.

That long story illustrates how many times I ignored my instinct to stay still in the moment to evaluate the path.  It finally reached a point that the only thing that was absolutely crystal clear was that I needed to get out of that toxic environment.  My mental and physical health were at risk and I was exhausted all the way into my soul.  I went through a period of what can only be described as cleansing and healing my soul.  It was still a rough patch, but I had such a clear vision of my boundaries.  When I interviewed for new career positions, I communicated my boundaries in a way that I thought I had finally found my perfect fit.  And, for a while, it was; until my boundaries were crossed.  Once again, I allowed it in the name of teamwork and cooperation.  This time, the universe stepped in, swiftly and with a vengeance, to very loudly say, “Nope!  Never again!”

Here I am, sitting at my computer, job hunting, trying to stay positive as rejection after rejection arrives.  I fluctuate between feeling free to be myself and feeling that I need to pretend to be someone I am not just so I can financially support my little family.  It grows harder to stay true to my boundaries as the bank account balance dwindles.  Each time I consider changing my job search approach, I know the universe will not allow me to compromise my boundaries again.  Surrendering to the will of the universe, trusting it to deliver me exactly where I’m meant to be, the minute I’m meant to be there, is overwhelming and liberating all at the same time.  I know surrendering does not equal giving up.  I’ve still got to put the work in, search for the answers and recognize them when they come.  While I believe it is meant to be delivered to me, I’ve got to place the order and pay the price.   

Trusting the universe enough to surrender to its design and will is a battle I’ve won in the past.  It’s possible that I let myself be deprogramed by those with the best of intentions – to make themselves more comfortable.  That is another challenge I battle on and off; worrying too much about other people’s comfort level.  Maybe we’ll get around to that topic soon!  For now, I just want to thank those of you who are following along on my journey of being perfectly imperfect and accepting myself for being just that!