Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 181
January 28, 2016
how to make time & space for the life you really want
My Mama told me that there’d be days like this.
Days when it feels like the heat of Hades is burning blazes up your backside.
And just when you grip that blessed doorframe and the exit out, somebody slams that door hard, scrapes your fingers into a mangled mess, and you’re left flailing like a fool in the heat and the hurt and a bit of a weary chuckle.
Yeah, maybe, kinda, a whole lot of days like that.
Four boys scrap loud over the last scrap of bacon. My inner cochlear and introvert shrivel up.
Who in the busted world threw six garbage-empty egg cartons back into the fridge?
(Really, there were six: I counted. Six empty cartons tossed in on top of the cauliflower and broccoli. I have no words for the profound mysteries of life.)
There’s a crusted lava of eggs splattered across the stove top. This takes 12 minutes to scrape off with a razor. I know. I set the timer. 12 long minutes of this scraaaaping tuned a bit like a squealing fork across a Corel dinner plate.
Tolkien talks back to me every time I set a timer:
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Yeah, yeah, I’m a slow learner in a life going by fast — Every day, every moment, you only have one decision to make: what will you do with time.
It’s strange: You can want nothing more than time, and use nothing worst than time.
The timer screeches. There’s no stopping time.
I read this story to the kids. I do this a lot, read true stories to kids, because really: a mother’s vocation is to hands the kids inspiration. Malakai’s chin’s digging into my shoulder.
I shift the dented shoulder, Malakai shifts and dents deeper and I read to him, and his little sister sprawled across the back of the couch and Hope knitting another cowl for blizzard gear and Levi who is supposed to be doing math but has got one ear tuned in.
And I read how there were these ragamuffin kids who lived off on an island drifting near the coast of Thailand.
Yeah, literally lived off the island: the island was this outcropping of rock — and they lived off stilted houses clinging to the side of the rock, stilted houses over water, the village of Ko Panyee.
And all around Ko Panyee, around these communal tvs with cocked rabbit ear antennae, these barefoot kids sat cross legged and concentrated on endless games of football.
You can watch life. Or actually play life. And only one way wins.
So after a while, the whole feisty tribe of kids stood up and decided to be more than life-spectators: they were going to actual life-participators.
The rowdy bunch of kids made their own football team.
At which point, the rest of the islanders/stilters made fun of them.
Because there was this, oh, one small problem —
“Look around you…” the villagers of Ko Panyee laughed at the kids.
“Look at where you live.”
Look around you — look at where you live.
There’s a pile of laundry on the couch and dishes in the sink and there are books splayed everywhere like a clowder of sunning cats.
And I choke hard when I read that one line:
“In a village floating on water — space can be hard to find.”
In a life like this — space can be hard to find.
In a life standing on thin stilts over waves — space can be hard to find, space to think and dream and make and read and do and become.
An island of time can be hard to find to do new things and change old ways and stretch into different territory and give like you are called and grow into someone like Him.
Space can be hard to find and time can be hard to come by and how do you find the way to do hard things?
And all the football-hungry kids wilted into this clump: “We had a team — but no place to play.”
“Where we live — space isn’t something that we had.”
Where we live — sometime space for new ideas of ministry, new dreams of being, new ways of living, isn’t something that we had.
Where we live — who has space and time for popcorn on Thursday nights and rowdy rounds of UNO with kids, who has space and time to bring a pie to the shut-in down the street, space and time to disciple that lonely kid at church, space and time to create art?
Who has space to invite the neighbours over for dinner, invite a new dream to the front of the line, invite a new habit into lives that are so full, they already teetering on stilts over water?
One ragamuffin kid in a greying-white tank top stands up:
“We figured out we would have to create our own space.”
We figured out we would have to create our own space.
And I’m struck if that’s how it really is?
God gives us everything we need for space — but we will have to make space.
God gives us all the ingredients for time — but we will have to make time.
God gives us everything we need to live — but we will have to make a life.
No one just gets space.
No one just gets time.
God gives you the raw materials — but you will have to make your life.
So there are these kids on a village floating over water, without even one inch of solid ground to play football on — who look at what they’ve got — and they make space.
They figured out they would have to start collecting scraps of wood from around the village. They figured out they would have to gather up what wasn’t lean, what hadn’t been fully optimized, what hadn’t been creatively envisioned.
They believed: What they needed had been given — they would just have to see it and make it.
They figured out they would have to make space with salvaged planks.
When I get to the part where the kids start tying old rafts together and nailing down the salvaged planks? It’s hard to swallow, something in me burning — something like hope.
After school, and after chores, and after dark, they nailed together what they could salvage, the raw materials of their life reconfigured.
Until they had nailed together a floating, wooden, football field.
Malakai and Shalom laugh this cheering glee.
Yeah there were nails sticking out of the wooden football field, and sure, it is tipsy, a football field bobbing on rafts and barrels, and yes sireee, when they dove for the ball, they often found themselves in the water. They found themselves playing wet and on a slippery wooden, nail pocked field.
So maybe your space won’t look normal, so maybe your space won’t be comfortable, so maybe your space won’t be standard or steady or safe.
Make your space and play anyway.
That’s what they did: Those kids from the floating village of Ko Panyee played in the space they had made — with what they’d been given.
But even then, when the letter came from the mainland, inviting them to a football tournament, they just didn’t know if they had what it takes.
But that is just the thing:
You don’t have to know if you have what it takes.
You just have to know that you will take what you’ve been given and make something of that.
Those kids from the floating village of Ko Panyee played in that mainland championship.
“We were nervous…. ” the kids wrung their hands a bit. Real grass? Real ground? Real football? “But once we got playing — we realized we were better than we thought.”
They realized that their space that was unconventional — had made them a force that was unstoppable.
The nails in their field had made them nimble. The unevenness of their field had made them unflappable.
The small goals they had to work with on their field had made the big goals on the real field easier to score, easier to win. They made it to the semi-finals.
Then it began to rain. Their shoes filled with water. They were down by two by half time.
They gathered and tried to reorient — what could they make of what they were given?
They took off their shoes. They knew how to play with little. They knew how to play in slippery spaces. They knew how to make something good with what they were given.
The kids of Panyee who lived over water, the kids who made space over water for their dreams, they scored two goals in the second half — and. evened. the. score.
And a crowd of kids on the farm grin a mile wide, feeling it in their bones, how there is space in this world for any God-given dream, for any God-given goal, God always providing the raw materials to make real space, to make real time.
I’m grinning like a fool with them, me their mama who wants to tell them there will be days like this.
Days when you will just have to salvage time planks. Because you don’t get space and time. What you’re given are the materials to make time and space.
Days when you will have to make space.
Days when you will have to make your own field — and then go be outstanding in it.
Yeah, I can see it from the couch, hear it, how the clock is ticking like a miracle about to detonate…
But I can see that too —
There are hands on the clock but the hands on clocks are always bound hands:
You are the only one who gets to decide what you’ll do with your time.
Related:
How to Live Your Life When You Only Have So Much Time Left
January 27, 2016
What To Do When Life Feels Far Too Busy: 4 Signs of Over Capacity
Exactly 10 years ago this month, I crossed paths online with this blaze of a woman, Alli Worthington. You’ve never met a woman quite like the one & only Alli Worthington. She’s vivacious, a flaming match, like a bit of light contained, and you can’t help but absolutely love her and want more of her brilliance. Alli and I go way back to the beginning and she was one of my first friends & biggest encouragers in this out-of-the-way corner of the internet. After 10 years, a few babies, blogs, and businesses, this woman I love something fierce has got powerful words of real wisdom about how to Break Busy. It’s a grace to welcome the one and only Alli Worthington to the farm’s front porch today…
guest post by Alli Worthington
My granddaddy used to say, “If the Devil can’t make you bad, he’ll make you busy.”
That’s some good Southern preacher wisdom right there.
Before I broke busy in my own life, I proudly wore my busy badge of honor.
Busyness made me feel productive and needed, and I overlooked the havoc it was wreaking in my life.
Oh, there were warning signs, but I just kept telling myself myself I was a strong, confident woman, who could handle the stress and chaos.
But contrary to what many of us have been told, we can’t handle it all, nor should we.
So how do we know when we are reaching our limits?
We aren’t like our phones with flashing numbers that tell us we’ve reached our capacity.
But there are signs our body gives us if we’re paying attention, signs that may look different for each of us. For some the warning signs may be emotional. For others they might be physical, relational, or spiritual.
But rest assured, if you are over capacity, you will soon find out— the hard way.
Sign #1: An Inability to Control Your Emotions
I was talking about reaching our limits with a friend recently. She shared that she can always tell when she’s over capacity because she can no longer control her emotions. She told me this story:
I was scheduled to meet a group of friends for coffee. I love these women. They are my ‘people.’ But as I thought through the other things I should be doing that day, I realized I was beginning to dread it all. I went from looking forward to a relaxing morning with my girlfriends to feeling anxious about the whole thing.
By the time I got to my car, I found myself feeling irritated with my friend who had set it all up. Didn’t she realize how busy I was, how much I had on my plate? A real friend would have realized that the last thing I needed was one more thing to do.
About halfway there, I had worked myself into an anxious, angry mess. I texted my friend and told her I wasn’t going to be able to make it. I turned my car around and cried all the way home. I pulled into my garage and sat in the darkness, completely depressed. I convinced myself that if I could just get past this season of busyness, I’d be able to pull myself together. I’d be okay.
I have thought that same thing so many times.
An inability to control our emotions and constantly feeling anxious, irritable, depressed, and overwhelmed are all signs that something isn’t right.
Out-of-control emotions often reflect the out-of-control demands we put on ourselves.
Sign #2: Lack of Self-Care
People who operate at overcapacity rarely have time for self-care.
I’ve often justified skipping a shower and working in my jammies because I had too much to do.
Or making Snickers and coffee my go-to meal because it was convenient, despite the fact that it made me a caffeine-crazed maniac.
I find it easier to escape online than to take action for my own health and happiness. I’ve spent years goofing off on Pinterest and admiring other people’s lives on Facebook instead of investing in my own life.
If we already have a full plate of obligations and crazy commitments, the last thing most of us want to do is spend time planning healthy meals, working out, or taking care of our physical health or appearance. That just sounds like more work.
Taking care of yourself may seem selfish, but self-care is one of the most other-centered choices you can make in your life.
That’s because you can’t live the life God created you for, with space to be aware of His leading, if you don’t take care of yourself.
Sign #3: Neglecting Important Relationships
Do any of these sound familiar?
“You’re always busy. You never have time for us anymore.”
“Do you have to check your email now? We’re out to dinner.”
“This is the second time you’ve canceled our plans.”
“Mom, can you please pick me up on time today? It’s kind of embarrassing always being the last kid here.”
Do you feel as if you are habitually letting down the people closest to you: your husband, children, close friends, family, and colleagues?
It’s easy to feel guilty about these things. And once we start feeling just a twinge of guilt, it’s all over.
The onslaught of pressure and guilt we heap on ourselves outweighs any positive feedback anyone else gives us.
When I begin neglecting my important relationships, I know I’m over capacity, and it’s time to cut back to save my relationships and to save my peace of mind.
Sign #4: Neglecting God
In the Bible, we often see that Jesus is busy doing the work His Father sent him to do, living out His calling every day. But despite His full schedule, Jesus is undeterred from daily reconnecting with God.
He leaves cities with people unhealed and potential work undone all so He can spend time with God.
A huge sign that I am over capacity is when I start skipping church and prayer. Staying connected to God is what keeps me operating within my capacity and what helps me understand that God made me with limitations on purpose.
Having a limited capacity is not a flaw in my character. It is by glorious design and for an incredible purpose: to realize my need for Him.
Neglecting God out of our own busyness, combined with any of the other signs— lack of self-care, chronic lateness, illness, self-medicating, and neglecting our important relationships — are all symptoms that we are off balance.
These are not things to beat ourselves up over, but they are signs we should heed.
I learned the hard way that we have to start breaking busy before the busy breaks us.
And that means letting our lives be about what we are meant to do,
what God created us to do,
and not just what we think we ‘should’ do.
Alli Worthington and her husband, Mark, live outside of Nashville with their five sons, rescued dog and a cat who adopted them and now lives on the porch. Alli is a writer, speaker and serves as the Executive Director of Propel Women.
I’m telling you, you won’t want to put down Alli’s new book, Breaking Busy: How to Find Peace and Purpose in a World of Crazy. Want to break the cycle of busyness that leaves you drained and frazzled? Do no walk — run to pick up this book that unlocks how to live out your calling and find your confident calm in a world that really is crazy. Do not pass go, do not go into 2016 without this one: This book’s an absolute game changer
[ Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
January 25, 2016
what to do when you want light to overcome all of the dark
The old cahoot ran in his boots.
Weren’t too many of anybody who believed he could.
The kids and I read about the old guy one night after supper and the dishwasher’s moaning away, crumbs still across the counter.
How the old guy ran for 544 miles. His name was Cliff Young and he wasn’t so much. He was 61 years old. He was a farmer. Levi grins big.
Mr. Young showed up for the race in his Osh Kosh overalls and with his workboots on, with galoshes over top. In case it rained.
He had no Nike sponsorship.
He had no wife – hadn’t had one ever.
Lived with his mother. Never drank. Never ran in any kind of race before. Never ran a 5 mile race, or a half-marathon, not even a marathon.
But here he was standing in his workboots at the starting line of an ultra-marathon, the most gruelling marathon in the world, a 544 mile marathon.
Try wrapping your head around pounding the concrete with one foot after another for 544 endless, stretching miles. They don’t measure races like that in yards – -but in zip codes.
First thing Cliff did was take out his teeth.
Said his false teeth rattled when he ran.
Said he grew up on a farm with sheep and no four wheelers, no horses, so the only way to round up sheep was on the run. Sometimes the best training for the really big things is just the everyday things.
That’s what Cliff said: “Whenever the storms would roll in, I’d have to go run and round up the sheep.” 2,000 head of sheep. 2,000 acres of land.
“Sometimes I’d have to run those sheep for two or three days. I can run this race; it’s only two more days. Five days. I’ve run sheep for three.”
“Got any backers?” Reporters shoved their microphones around old Cliff like a spike belt.
“No….” Cliff slipped his hands into his overall pockets.
“Then you can’t run.”
Cliff looked down at his boots. Does man need backers or does a man need to believe? What you believe is the biggest backer you’ll ever have.
The other runners, all under a buffed 30 years of age, they take off like pumped shots from that starting line. And scruffy old Cliff staggers forward. He doesn’t run. Shuffles, more like it. Straight back. Arms dangling. Feet awkwardly shuffling along.
Cliff eats dust.
For 18 hours, the racers blow down the road, far down the road, and old Cliff shuffles on behind.
Come the pitch black of night, the runners in their $400 ergonomic Nikes and Adidas, lay down by the roadside, because that’s the plan to win an ultra-marathon, to run 544 straight miles: 18 hours of running, 6 hours of sleeping, rinse and repeat for 5 days, 6 days, 7 days.
The dark falls in. Runners sleep. Cameras get turned off. Reporters go to bed.
And through the black night, one 61-year-old man far behind keeps shuffling on.
And all I can think is:
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
The light shineth in the darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not.
καταλαμβάνω Katalambanō – Comprehend. Understand. Master.
Cliff Young runs on through the night and there is a Light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not master it.
The darkness doesn’t understand the light, doesn’t comprehend the light, doesn’t get the light, doesn’t overcome the light, doesn’t master the light.
Darkness doesn’t have anything on light, on hope, on faith.
The darkness that sucks at the prodigal kid doesn’t have anything on the light of his mother’s prayers.
The black of pornography that threatens at the edges doesn’t master the blazing light of Jesus at the center.
The pit of depression that plunges deep doesn’t go deeper than the love of your Jesus and there is no place His light won’t go to find you, to save you, to hold you.
That low lying storm cloud that hangs over you can’t master the light of Christ that raises you.
“Darkness can’t drive out darkness. Only light can do that,” Martin Luther King had said it, had lived it.
Only words of Light can drive out worlds of dark.
Only deeds of Light can drive out depths of dark.
Only lives of Light can drive out lies of dark.
Darkness can never travel as fast as Light. No matter how bad things get, no matter how black the dark seeps in, no matter the depths of the night — the dark can never travel as fast as Light. The Light is always there first, waiting to shatter the dark.
You can always hold His Word like a ball of light right there your hand, right up there next to your warming heart.
You can always count on it: Jesus is bendable Light, warmth around every unexpected corner.
Cliff Young runs on through the dark — because he didn’t know you were supposed to stop.
The accepted way professional runners approached the race was to run 18 hours, sleep 6, for7 days straight. But Cliff Young didn’t know that. He didn’t know the accepted way. He only knew what he did regularly back home, the way he had always done it: You run through the dark.
Turns out when Cliff Young said he gathered sheep around his farm for three days, he meant he’d run across 2,000 acres of farmland for three days straight without stopping or sleeping, without the dark ever stopping him. You gathered sheep by running through the dark.
So along the endless stretches of highway, a tiny shadow of an old man shuffled along, one foot after another, right through the heat, right through the night. Cliff gained ground.
Cliff gained ground because he didn’t lose ground to the dark. Cliff gained ground because he ran through the dark.
And somewhere at the outset of the night, Cliff Young in his overalls, he shuffled passed the toned runners half his age. And by the morning light, teethless Cliff Young who wasn’t young at all, he was a tiny shadow — far, far ahead of the professional athletes.
For five days and fifteen hours, and four minutes straight, Cliff Young ran, never once stopping for the dark – never stopping until the old sheep farmer crossed the finish line – First. He crossed the finish line first.
Beating a world record. By two. whole. days.
The second place runner crossed the finish line 9 hours after old Cliff.
And when they handed old Cliff Young his $10,000 prize , he said he hadn’t known there was a prize. Said he’d run for the wonder of it. Said that all the other runners had worked hard too. So Cliff Young waited at the finish line and handed each of the runners an equal share of the 10K.
While others run fast, you can just shuffle with perseverance.
While others impress, you can simply press on.
While others stop for the dark, you can run through the dark.
The race is won by those who keep running through the dark.
Could be the year to pull a Cliff Young.
When those reporters asked Old Cliff that afterward, what had kept him running through the nights, Cliff had said, “I imagined I was outrunning a storm to gather up my sheep.”
And I sit there in the thickening dark.
With the One who mastered the dark and overcame the storm to gather His sheep and now there is a Light Who shines in the darkness and the darkness can never overcome it.
And you can see them out the front window, far away to the west, out on there the highway —
the lights all going on through the dark.
Related: Because the World Can Get Dark & We Really Need You: 5 Ways to Keep Being Brave
What Women Need to Say to Each Other to Shatter the Dark
Resources: Jesus Project Memory Prints
January 23, 2016
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [01.23.16]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))! Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
William Patino
William Patino
you know you want to go breathe deep
yep – you really are see it right
@yoremahm
@yoremahm
@yoremahm
Headline: photogenic cat masters the art of a perfect selfie
in the midst of blizzards — this seemed on point
Here’s something fun — LifeWay and DaySpring are giving away an ALL EXPENSE paid trip to any Beth Moore Living Proof Live Event for TWO (you and a friend!) + a $500 Shopping Spree to DaySpring.com — it’s YEOW!
okay, so our crew of quirky kids thought this was pretty amazing
Emily Gibson
unlikely friends show up in the most unexpected places
Daniele Pellati
pretty darn inspiring: homeschool children around the world sharing their world
Can I see you there? Great Homeschool Conventions Humbled to be sharing at two of these events this year — can we cross paths?
March 17-19 in Forth Worth, TX and March 31-April 2 in Cincinnati, OH
Why attend a Great Homeschool Conventions event? They want to bring the very best to you, and strive to provide top-notch homeschool conventions which encourage, inspire, and educate homeschooling families to continue to do what they do best: homeschool!
Register and let’s connect! I’d love to encourage you!
anything’s possible
This week’s Sticky Note for Your Soul:
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yeah, wasn’t expecting that: fascinating ride in the car that started it all
the kid in you will say thank you very much
Lilo, Infinity, & Rosie / Instagram
I’m telling you — unexpected friends are everywhere: this you gotta see
go ahead, just enjoy this view (and the ride!)
Maddie Peschong / Mad Photo & Design
the bond between a bride and her service dog
okay, sometimes things don’t go quite as planned — but we improvise for each other folks — & it just gets better: so when the scheduled singer didn’t show up?
This happened
Sarah Owen Bigler, Facebook
what he’s doing here? has thousands nodding yes
really, you just have to start – take that next step. You can do it!
#DoHardandHolyThings
What’s on the Stack at the Farm
The Grand Paradox: The Messiness of Life, the Mystery of God and the Necessity of Faith :
“Faith makes all things possible . . . love makes all things easy…
“We don’t stray away from good doctrine or truth by focusing on justice and compassion for those in the margins – rather, we find Jesus and truth in the margins.”
#Struggles Study Guide: Following Jesus in a Selfie-Centered World :
“We were created not for earth but for eternity. We were created not to be Liked but to show love. We were created not to draw attention to ourselves but to give glory to God. We were created not to collect followers but to follow Christ.” Pick up Struggles — or give it to your teens.
Design Your Day: Be More Productive, Set Better Goals, and Live Life On Purpose :
“Days shouldn’t live themselves, and this is a book about making sure they don’t.” A non-intidimidating read that breaks down how to live the most meaningful days. A gem of a little book that’s been following me around these days and inspiring good, good things.
Sebastian Luczywo
Sebastian Luczywo
she has an extra chromosome, a camera — and a great eye. And this is what her professional photographer dad learns from her. Really — anything is possible
this is the miracle that happens when we live hospitality
Syrian Children Experience Snow: fun in any language
people busting open their lives all over the place — and becoming heroes. Undone
this was one of the most beautiful things I read all week:
how they’ve opened their home to fragile, dying children
and we busted open our hearts & fell in love with this little girl this week,Lilah. Abandoned. 10 months old. Hardly 7 pounds. Belly swollen hard with starvation. Lilah needs sponsors to live, to get the special formula she needs to live — so we got to become one of her monthly sponsors — you could too? Wanna bust open your heart to real happiness right now? Our family and yours could get to do this together! Come love Lilah Lu.
Then come follow her miracle story unfolding on Instagram
Victoria Henry
oh yeah, we can do this for one another:
one photo — captures the power of one teacher’s support
seriously, folks: Getting along, despite differences
From Q Ideas: Track with Q Ideas for a year of inspiring learning
So, this is us right now & it’s good & it’s hard & it’s really good:
“What Happened after We Got the Diagnosis:
about brokenness, suffering & joining the club”
um… wow…yeah we’re all moved by tears at this one. a really must see…
because it’s time to talk about this — we’re all going there together
( you are plugged into an IF:Local group, right? you are coming to IF, right? )
one community. ordinary people. doing extraordinary things
just be held…
… yeah, that’s what happens when you get pushed out of the shallow end.
When you find yourself in the real deep end —
that’s when you know He’s real.
So, I don’t know — maybe it’s okay to say adios to playing & splashing about in the shallow end.
Live where you can’t touch bottom — swallow God.
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
January 22, 2016
everybody around you wants you to read this today: what would it be like to meet yourself today
So some kid accidentally dropped a dozen eggs all over the floor this morning.
You can just close your lovely eyes and imagine how extraordinarily well that ended.
But one particularly helpful/lazy child (bless him) did up and volunteer himself to make scrambled eggs.
Because, as he elucidated us all, “It won’t take much now — we’re already half way there. And if you don’t mind shells, crumbs and dust bunnies in your eggs — okay, yeah, make that a scrambled crunchy omelet.”
We all passed.
The dog didn’t.
The thermometer read a balmy -7F when our knees creaked out of bed and yessirree, eyeballs froze with the cold on the way out to the barn this morning.
Yeah, you know —
It was so cold that the dog almost opted to use the back restroom instead of relieving himself out there in the polar vortex that could suck any unsuspecting canine right into the land of penguins and polar bears.
I slipped on the ice on the back step sometime around sunrise.
So my posterior may or may not now be a precise purple hue and yes’m, we’re thinking all and all, it’s been a pretty mighty fine, memorable start to the day — because honest? If you can breathe and murmur your thanks, it’s still a mighty good day.
And because the way you live your ordinary days is what adds up to your one extraordinary life, I may or may not have went and stuck a sticky note on that smudged and splattered mirror in the back mudroom, so anyone headed out (and down the deathtrap of those icy back steps) might catch a glimpse of themselves and ask that one question:
“If the Real You bumped into a Mirror of You today — would Real You like Mirror You?”
“You know,” — I ask the kid scrambling up the last dozen (undropped-still-intact-until-we-intentionally-decide-to-crack-them) eggs —
“so, if you bumped into an exact soul, body, mind, heart clone of you — would Real You like Mirror You?”
Because, sweetheart, you can go ahead and think bacon and eggs every day are as predictable as the sun rising willing in the east, but the most predictable thing about a day is that:
Somebody’s going to be late on you today, somebody’s going to interrupt you, somebody’s going to lose something on you, somebody’s going to say the wrong thing to you, somebody’s going to let you down, —
and every kid’s got to ask, every mom’s got to know, every woman’s got to decide, and every man’s got to determine:
If the Real You bumped into a Mirror of You today — would Real You like Mirror You?
Would you feel understood — or undervalued?
Would you feel special — or especially criticized?
Would you feel deeply heard — or slightly hurt?
Would Mirror You practice their faith and the Ministry of Presence and give you The Gift of Really Listening —
or Practice their Own Importance and all this trendy rage of Being Stressed and give you a knot of anxiety?
Would your presence be a gift — or a grief?
Would Real You want more time with Mirror You — or less time?
Would Real You want to be like Mirror You — or not?
Because the thing is?
The Real You meets Mirror You every morning first thing. So what if you decided first thing to be kind — the kind of person you’d love to face?
Those words right there, stuck right there on the end of my tongue —
and that sticky note with a heart and that string of questions now on every mirror in the house —
light in a reflection of morning glory…
Like His face smiling on all of ours in this mess of cracked egg shells that somehow isn’t quite as broken as before.
Photo Credit
January 20, 2016
what happened after we got the diagnosis: about brokenness, suffering & joining The Club
‘Without the shedding of blood, there’s no serving of dinner.”
The kid laughs like the only hyena in on a dumb joke.
“Get it, Mom?”
Yeah — yeah, I get it, Son. I’m gathering up his little bloodied test strips.
He looks as white as the snow that’s been falling like a death shroud around us for days.
He’d woke up looking ashen when our 2016 was hardly more than 24 hours old.
Grey, translucent skin. Sunken eyes, like bruised blue half moons had set under his eyes. Gaunt, his shirt hanging angular off bony shoulders.
Yet the kid never left the table without asking for second and third heaping helpings. But nothing seemed to be helping?
A robust farm boy of 13 eating like he was famished — and yet fading away.
The Farmer and I’d been saying it for days — as soon as the holidays were over, we were taking Kai in for the doctor to ply a fine tooth comb over him and tell us why the boy ebbed.
But when Malakai came in from the barn early on January 2nd and stepped on that scale some brother had left in the kitchen to weigh the dog, he muttered, “7 more pounds this week —“ he looked up at me, “I’ve lost 20 pounds since my birthday.”
No lie, I lunged toward that scale, not believing, shaking my head, looking down stunned at the number: 107 pounds. 5 foot 8 and 107 pounds? And relentlessly eating like the boy hadn’t seen food this side of a month?
“I’m thinking ER. Now.” The Farmer’s in from the barn right behind him, standing behind him, wasting no words. “No waiting till Monday and regular clinic hours after holidays. We go now. Brush your teeth, Malakai, and get your coat.”
“And underwear. Get on clean underwear.” I’m looking for my boots, Malakai’s health card, a brush for Saturday morning bedhead, a tube of lipstick for my bag, trying to remember important things, things that’d have made my grandmother nod approval — and I’m trying not to think why a voraciously eating boy looks like death warmed over and is dropping pounds like dying flies on the last days of summer.
I don’t know when I knew.
But I knew before the doctor on call told us.
I’d murmured the name of the thorn that I thought was waking us, murmured it to the Farmer on the way to the hospital — and he’d turned to me: “Well, that wouldn’t be what we’d really planned or wanted here. But it’s looking like it might be the easier of all the possibilities we’ve got here.”
Snow had started to fall, large flakes, lazy and soft and soundless.
“We’re going to be okay, right?” I had mouthed it to him, the worship CD and Ellie Holcomb playing the strings of the guitar unworried.
“Definitely. It’s all going to be okay. You know what we’ve always said —“
He squeezed my hand at the top of the hill there, just before you go by the vet’s. “All God’s plans are always good and all His ways are always for us.”
I know it.
I know it and there words that aren’t some cheap cliche but are your dying creed — and I swallow hard round that burning ember lodged up in the throat of me.
The Farmer said it later, when it was just he and I in an empty hospital hallway —
that it hadn’t really hit him, even when the nurse took Kai’s blood and told us the numbers.
Even when she said a normal blood sugar is 5 mmol/l — and your boy’s is seven times higher — 35.
It sorta echoed down the hall when the Farmer said it:
“It didn’t really hit me until the doctor came in and sat down on the end of his bed and just said that so quiet: “You have Type 1 Diabetes. And to live, you will need insulin 4-6 injections a day for the rest of your life.”
The Farmer’s standing there, letting that settle: This isn’t a broken arm and 6 weeks we get the cast off. This isn’t the flu and we beat this virus. At least for right now, there’s no cure. At least for right now, there’s no pills, no diet, no exercise will ever make it go away, no getting a reprieve from it.
It’s constant insulin awareness or death.
I squeeze his weathered hand.
“Happy New Year to us.” And he winks, smiles, nods, everything believed coming to meet us now.
Right out of the new year’s gate, you can sorta feel flattened by a bus speeding over a 100 down a straight back road.
You can feel like everyone else is mapping out their future, mapping out a new year — and you’re standing there with the map, looking for the red arrow that indicates where where in the world you even are now.
You can make your plans — but it’s God’s plans that happen.
You can blink and the landscape of your whole life can change and you ain’t in Kansas anymore and how do you not look a little bit lost, how do you look like everything is fine, and everybody is going to be fine, and really, we really are all just going to be just fine, everyone move along, we just need a minute to pull ourselves together here.
“I feel like we just joined a club.” The Farmer squeezes my hand back — yeah, just some green, very junior members in a club where there are some serious fighting warriors.
The Club that knows we don’t get to make the plan, where there are veterans fighting on the front lines of the unimaginable, IV drips of cold chemo coursing down the veins of the beloved and defiant, The Club that knows about the hurling vomit in a life battle all through the hours that everyone else sleeps and mothers stay up all through the godly hours with the seizuring and the struggling to breathe and there’s so many brave all down our streets in this war dance in the face of death.
This Club of warriors with medicine bottles at their sinks and needle marks up their arms and doctor appointments on the calendar and there is The Club of all of us who hurting in hidden ways and are beating back the grave.
“Happy New Year to Us —- Welcome to The Club.” He pulls me close.
It’s okay — it’s all really going to be more than okay. Grieving how plans change — is part of the plan to change us.
It’s okay to let go of comparing suffering, let go of avoiding or ranking or minimizing suffering and simply embrace suffering and all those suffering.
It’s okay to not be okay, to not feel strong, to carry an unspoken broken. It’s okay to be real and grieve losses and hold each other tight. He and I hold unto each other in the dim light of the hospital rooms, alarms going off down the hall.
Malakai pushes himself up in the hospital bed and he tells us something I will never forget, sunken half moons under his eyes:
“Looks like God knew my story was going to be bit different…. and that’s sorta cool.”
He smiles quietly, nods like he’s telling places in me of forgotten things.
“And this hard thing’s going to make me rely on Him more —- and that’s even more cool.”
I nod. Yeah, Son — cool.
yeah —
Never fear the moments you imagine will freeze you: Unexpected blasts of cold can be what draws you nearer to the flame of His love.
Darn the cold. Thank God for the fire. Welcome to The Club of those braving the cold blasts in a thousand daily ways.
“He’s real —-“ the kid’s nodding his head, “I’ve never felt God so real.”
I wanna tell the kid — That’s what happens when you get pushed out of the shallow end. When you find yourself in the real deep end — that’s when you know He’s real. Adios playing and splashing in the shallow end. Live where you can’t touch bottom — swallow God.
“I can see that, Mom —“ He’s smiling. “The hardest things can be the greatest gift. I can see that.”
The kid’s seeing things. Things I forget, things that can feel like a mirage at times for me, the kid’s feeling solid… things that I’ve let slip through my rope-burned fingers, the kid’s holding on to like a lifeline in his brave hand.
Kai pulls up his shirt, aims the needle at his own skin, injects his belly with 21 units of insulin, dabs away the bit of blood: Stay in this moment: You’re safe in this moment because God is in the present — I AM.
Malakai grins over at me, needle still in hand: “I am glad — I am glad God gave me joy.”
The kid’s courage draws more attention that his complaining ever would. I want to write it down on my hand to remember: Brave joy is the magnet for everything you need. The boy knows things I’m learning.
I sit on the edge of his bed, trying to read the kid’s eyes, my heart trying to braille-read what his heart’s really saying by the way his eyes make my heart feel.
The kid’s got no idea that The New Normal means heading down to city’s Children Pediatric Hospital.
Where our farm boy will sit with his needles in the waiting room at paediatric oncology with rows of brave kids with bald gleaming heads sitting on their mamas laps like strings of courageous pearls and you’ll look into Mamas eyes and smile at their warrior babies and you’ll be loving The Club of the Broken with all your broken heart.
The New Normal means 42 injections in his stomach of insulin every week, 56 needle pricks in the fingers, then milking his finger for drops of blood for test strips that will tell him how much sugar runs through his willing veins.
The New Normal means a life of being vigilantes, of charting numbers, of thinking your heart might bust with loving all the suffering in The Club and it turns out every single one of us, in one tender, hurting way or other, are in The Club.
The kid doesn’t need to have any idea of this — because the kid knows he only needs this: this moment’s grace.
And I nod at his grinning brave.
The grace that’s in this moment is your mana.
Wish for the past and you drink poison.
Worry about the future and you eat fire.
Stay in this moment and you eat the mana needed for now.
When I stand out in the hallway while the Farmer helps Kai and his IV pole to the washroom, when I’m standing there reading through the kidney, heart, and nerve issues surrounding Type 1 Diabetes, reading about how someday, a mandatory year or so down the road, maybe doctors will let us think about an insulin pump and how maybe the road will smooth out a happy bit then — and how we’ll stir pots of chilli with one hand and give insulin injections with the other and this new normal will be like old hat — when I’m standing there refusing to be sucked into into the worry burn of the future, I read:
“Type 1 diabetes, which is only 5% of those diagnosed with diabetes, may reduce the normal lifespan by 10-15 years. Approximately 1 in 20 younger people who have Type 1 Diabetes die in their sleep, what is generally referred to as death in bed syndrome.”
Oh — that can change — it doesn’t have to mean 10 less years.
I stay that night at the hospital, watch Kai sleep in a hospital bed, watch the snow fall outside his window during the middle of the night hours.
And I think of 10 full spins around the sun, 10 more puffs over birthday candles, 10 more first days of spring and how March sun feels on your face. I want him to wake, I want him to wake every morning, I want him to have those full 10.
I want all the hurting and brave in The Club That is All of Us, to beat back the odds, the dark, the fear, the pain, I want all the fighters in The Club That is All of Us who swing Hope at despair, who pummel worry with worship, who make every move with courage while everybody else moves on —-
I want that Club to inhale fresh air and have another glass of orange juice right now and taste the phenomenon of being and feel wind through the hair and believe that what you believe will come to you in your hour of need and today is a miracle — why do we get two?
It falls like fresh snow in the middle of the night, like the steady beat of the heart, like the rhythm of our being:
This life of ours is not our own — He owns our life.
This life of ours is not our own — His life is our own.
This life of ours is not our own — We are His own.
And I turn from the night window and the falling snow, to our boy sleeping in a hospital bed the second day of the new year:
There’s The Club of the Broken who ask: So what if we suffer — here is not our home.
There’s The Club of the Broken who believe: Suffering is a gift He entrusts and He can be trusted to make this suffering into a gift.
There’s the Club of the Broken who live it because there is no other way:
Just stay in the moment. The grace in this moment is your mana. Stay in this moment and you eat the mana needed for now.
I watch how the kid’s eyelashes tremble a bit in sleep. Even in dreams, we can’t deny that getting to live is holy ground.
Come morning, the snow gives way to the light, like the hope of a lifting shroud.
January 19, 2016
because this is the year you’re facing your demons & fears
Steve Wiens used to stutter; his words were garbled and stuck, lost inside of him. But he recently wrote Beginnings because there is a wild song that comes out of the deepest parts of him, a song about a God who is endlessly creating new life out of disastrous death, in you and me and everyone, everywhere. He hopes his words lead you to the God who loves you recklessly. It’s a grace to welcome Steve to the farm’s front porch today…
They were beautiful, and they covered the skies.
Eagles circled, mere specks in the blue expanse above.
Cicadas squeaked and chattered. Cardinals swooped low, showing off. A bluebird danced on the air, a blur of color and grace.
Imagine the sounds made by the birds in that garden.
Can you hear their song?
Growing up, my sisters and I routinely begged our parents to let us have birds as pets.
When my parents finally relented, we’d put these birds in small wire prisons in our house, where they’d rattle and squawk, looking pretty but anxious.
After approximately seven minutes, we’d grow bored of these beautiful birds, and they would sit in their cages, and we would go back to our lives. Eventually (and by eventually, I mean a few weeks later), they would die.
Birds, apparently, are not made for cages. Birds are meant to fly, to be beautiful, to be free.
Imagine a little girl in those first, magical generations, toes caked with the earth’s young mud, lying on her back, staring up at all that beauty, all of that soaring.
The tall grass brushes her arms as she runs across the golden fields, always keeping her eyes to the horizon, to where things soar.
Watch her scamper up that tree, leaning far over a large branch, legs wiggling.
See her spread her own wings.
In her dreams, she flies with them, high above her family, high above the trees under which she hid from her brother.
Watch her discover that robin’s nest, the hidden treasure of eggs gleaming like gold in the morning mist. Feel the rough bark on her bare feet, tough and callused.
Look up into that expanse with her and watch them soar, those birds.
Then watch as gravity and history pull her down that tree, even as she knows somewhere deep in her soul that she was also meant to fly, her heart escaping out of her chest in the sheer delight of being alive.
Watch her being caged. Watch her pretend her cage is her home.
Several years ago, as I was pulling out of the strip mall where I had just picked up pizza for dinner, I saw something that shocked me, in broad daylight. A man was leaning over a young girl, about three or four years old.
I assumed he was her father. I was in my car with my windows rolled down, and it took me a few seconds to register what was happening.
This father had grabbed a hold of the girl’s right arm with his left hand, and with his right hand, he was repeatedly striking her.
Her dark hair hung in loose ringlets, and she was wearing a yellow raincoat with black boots. She was not moving. Her head was down; I assume she was crying.
I do not remember what the father looked like. I just remember the sickening outrage I felt in the deep waters of my own psyche.
I had stopped my car and was staring. I had no idea what to do. Should I get out? What would I say? Should I call the police? Would they come in time? Was I really seeing this?
Before I knew what I was doing, I pulled away from that scene, away from that man with the voice that yelled and the hands that hit.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t do anything. I just drove away.
Someday, that little girl who was pulled down into the dark, swirling waters of abuse will need to face what happened to her that day. And when that day comes, she’ll need all the help she can get.
On Day Five, you learn that you don’t stay up in the sky forever.
Sooner or later, the storm clouds gather, and before you know it, the expansive sky has turned into an ocean, and you’re treading water, terrified. It is in those waters that you meet what you fear most.
In the early days of the earth’s history, the sea represented evil. The tempestuous ocean was the symbol of everything dark and chaotic, spinning with an energy that couldn’t be controlled.
Early writings consistently depict those creatures that lurked in the deep as mysteries to be avoided, cursed.
There is a Hebrew word hidden in the verses that describe Day Five that is frightening. In some translations, it’s translated as “whales”; in others, it’s simply “creatures.” But the Hebrew word tanniyn is a masculine noun which means “dragon,” “serpent,” or “sea monster.” It can also mean “venomous snake.”
This word is only used twenty-eight times in the Bible, but there is always a sense of foreboding desolation and evil surrounding it.
Have you ever had to face a monster? What did it look like? Where was it lurking when you found it? What did it take to face it without getting taken under?
It rears up like a dragon the morning after the six-day binge that ended ten years of sobriety.
What started as a small whisper of shame is now is a deafening roar, a fire-baked oven of self-loathing. You’ll never change, you’re no good, you’ll lose everything and everyone, and you deserve to.
It accompanies you to the doctor as you deliver the baby you have miscarried, your third in as many years. It is eager to point out how defective you are, how you don’t deserve children.
It mocks you and saps your strength, leaving you stumbling around numb, or raging at anyone who will listen.
It sings to you from the kitchen, promising sweet relief from a chaotic day, in the form of food that you are not hungry for, but you need in order to stave off the anxiety. And when it goes in your mouth, you know it is the one thing that is for you, only for you; it doesn’t have to be shared.
The song turns into a mocking dirge as you find yourself on your knees in the bathroom once again, emptying out that relief where all the other waste goes.
And like those swirling waters, your anxiety keeps spinning and churning.
When you face your monster, the one that accuses you with the slimy voice of shame, the one that tempts you to arm yourself so that you are invincible, the God who created the birds in the sky and that which inhabits the deep waters is with you.
It’s time to face your monster.
Steve Wiens is a husband to Mary, father to three sons, and pastor of Genesis Covenant Church, which he founded in 2014. His weekly podcast is called This Good Word.
His new book Beginnings: The First Seven Days of the Rest of Your Life is for everyone who faces significant transition―in career, in relationships, in life stage, whether good or bad. By exploring the first chapter in Genesis―day by day, creative act by creative act―Steve shows us how beginnings work, and how God works through our beginnings. I’ve been carrying this fascinating book around with me the last week — I think Beginnings could change the whole year.
[ Our humble thanks to Tyndale for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
January 18, 2016
how to keep choosing joy — when joy doesn’t feel possible
When I was going through a one real hard season, a friend named, Sara Frankl, who was watching the last of her life ebb way, reached out to me, and sent me a plain silver ring that she could not wear any longer. She sent it with these words: “I can’t wear it anymore as it’s too heavy on my sore fingers… It is purposefully hammered and bent, the way I often felt — the way you are feeling — but it is beautiful and perfect in its imperfections.” Sara went Home to Jesus, and I still wear the plain ring everyday, and Sara is still teaching me about choosing joy and seeking God’s purpose for my life today – no matter what that life looks like. As a mutual friend of ours, Mary Carver worked on the book that tells Sara story and shares her message of hope and joy, she was amazed and moved by the inner strength allowed her to withstand immeasurable pain both physical and emotional — and to seek the Lord through it all. Mary invites you to read an excerpt of their story today, where Sara offers her perspective on the age-old question, “Why do bad things happen?” and the more personal version, “Why me?” And Sara continues to reach out and encircle me with a wisdom to hold on to… It’s a grace to welcome Sara and Mary to the farm’s front porch today…
guest post by Sara Frankl, lovingly woven together by Mary Carver
It’s not about me.
That’s what has been popping into my head a lot lately when people ask me questions about how I deal with being sick, why I don’t get more frustrated, why I don’t complain more or why I’m not angry about my situation.
We all want life to be fair.
We want goodness to prevail and hard work to mean that life will be easier.
And that green grass on the other side of the fence that belongs to the people who don’t appreciate it?
We’d like that to be transplanted into the lawn of the person who spends all day feeding and watering the sparse-looking grass in hopes of a fruitful harvest.
But all of that is “me” thinking
– and it’s not about me.
Sara with Mary
Sara with her dear friend Shannon
The plain and simple truth, if we take big lessons in life and strip them down to the bare essentials, is that we are tiny blips on a very big screen.
Only God has the capacity to see all of it.
He saw all that came before us and sees all that will come after us, and only He can know the role that each of us can play that will best serve Him and each other.
So my life isn’t ideal by our standards. By my standards, it’s getting less ideal by the year.
That whole living in pain thing? I could do without it.
The getting sick thing? Gets old really fast.
The never leaving the house thing? I could think of some fun places to go.
I miss fresh air. I miss singing at church. I miss dancing until I’m out of breath and riding in a boat so fast you feel like you’re flying if you close your eyes.
But it’s not about me. It’s about what He can do with my life.
I have learned a lot about myself, my faith, my perspective. But that doesn’t mean I was given this illness to teach me something.
For all I know, God saw this illness was going to be in my body and helped nurture me so I could use it to affect someone else.
And as much as I would like this disease to be gone when I wake up in the morning, if it serves a purpose for another person to see their life or relationship with God in a new light, then I wouldn’t ask for it to be taken from me.
Because it’s not about me.
Nothing about my life is about me; it’s about who He needs me to be.
And how can I complain about that?
Oh, complaining can come so easily for all of us: your small house, your flat tire, the promotion that should have been yours and the grass that grows so fast you don’t have the time to mow it…
But what if the small house is so you are next to a neighbor who needs your help when her husband dies?
Or your tire went flat when you were driving so it didn’t happen when your teenage son was driving and he wouldn’t have known what to do?
Maybe the promotion would have been a dead end for you and next year a better opportunity will be waiting.
And that lawn? Maybe it’s the only exercise you do each week and is saving you from a heart attack.
The point is that you don’t know. I don’t know.
But it’s not about me.
It’s about how He can use my life.
So as far as I’m concerned, even those things that make me want to pull my hair out and scream, “Why me?!?” — are blessings in disguise.
Blessings for me, or for someone else, or for a reason I can’t even imagine.
But it doesn’t really matter.
Because it’s not about me.
Sara Frankl never stopped choosing joy — and her life never stops inspiring me to do the same. Known as “Gitzen Girl” or “Gitz,” Sara learned – and then shared – that a life full of joy is a matter of choice and no painful circumstance can take that from us. You can read Sara’s story on her blog, Gitzen Girl, and support her ministry with the Choose Joy Foundation.
Mary Carver is a writer writer, speaker, and recovering perfectionist. Mary is the co-author of a new book called Choose Joy: Finding Hope & Purpose When Life Hurts. Sara’s words breathe with vitality and life, and her stories will inspire smiles, tears, and the desire to choose joy. To learn more about CHOOSE JOY, visit TheChooseJoyBook.com. A read you won’t want to put down.
January 16, 2016
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [01.16.16]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))! Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
Tiina Törmänen
Tiina Törmänen
Tiina Törmänen
because sometimes you need to slow & breathe
yep, way too smart for a dog proof container
7 mind-blowing things you didn’t know
yeah, the idea of snow falling from the sky can be pretty funny
sorta how the Farmer blows snow — kinda
Andrew Suryono / website/ photo gallery
Cannot get enough of these photos, I can’t. Isn’t the world all kinds of something else?
who knew?
coyote spotted — playing?
Annie Spratt
making one little change in how we talk to our kids —
can help them learn and view learning differently
because, you know what? we all need to be rescued …
Michael Noroc
Mihaela Noroc
what this photographer is doing sorta leaves me breathless
America’s oldest teacher just turned — ?!?!
yes — just exhale
love can be found anywhere
Look at this: ‘We can make a difference, even when we’re young.”
I’m telling you, such beautiful people
he saved this nurse’s life — and then this happened
Facebook/Random Acts of Kindness Foundation
People! does it get any better than this?
Can you even?
Every single one of us is lovely — and we get to make others feel their own loveliness.
Robert Freed/GoFundMe.com/GarrettStrong
because we all have to do whatever it takes to be there — to show up
This week’s Sticky Note for Your Soul:
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yep – he gave the shirt right off his back. I’m telling you, people…
I wanna be like him: he’s constantly looking for ways to adapt to his disability
Choosing to act on what God has spoken
From Q Ideas: Track with Q Ideas for a year of inspiring learning
Do that hard thing. You can so do that hard thing.
Neva Swenson
‘No one gives you any warning
what day a wave’s going to slam into your whole world…’
Post of the Week from these parts here:
how to ride out your own life tsunami, how to live through any hard storm
you’ve got to believe it – anything is possible
kids here watched this one multiple times — awed.
it bears repeating: anything is possible
when it comes down to it? I want it all to end here like this.
I found this profoundly moving.
what’s needed every hour
yeah, one of those days where it was a bit of a bust & those kind of days can sorta rip out bits of your heart,
but He never fails to cup your face & the wounded places:
No matter how the day went down,
we aren’t what we did or didn’t do,
what any kids did or didn’t do,
what the house looks like or doesn’t look like,
you aren’t who is or who isn’t with you & you aren’t what got done or what didn’t get done…
your value is not defined by your achievements.
your value is defined by the One who said. it. is. finished.
and. He. achieved. it. all.
And in the midst of the real busted up hard days?
His grace is a very real place to choose
to come & rest.
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
January 14, 2016
The Secret To Get You Through Your Hard Thing: (hard new habits, hard procrastination, hard parenting, hard storm)
Dear Kid — and dear you trying to be brave and face hard things:
I know it seems the unbelievable impossible— but really — it’s going to happen one day to you too.
Turns out you can blink and find your mother’s very words rolling right there off the tip of your tongue.
True Story.
So hear me out on this, okay?
(I know, I know — How in the world does it turn out that you become your mother and really, how do her words migrate decades later into your mouth? It’s a great cosmic mystery of the universe.)
Francesco Gallarotti
And this is true too — it turns out you can blink and find yourself standing there looking at a younger version of your eye-rolling self. I see me in you.
I know, it looks like I am too wrinkled and beat up to get it — but try this: When you look at me, before you roll your eyes, use your imagination: I was once a something-teen-year-old too.
I could once whip my eyes around like you and sting the soft side of my own mama, and yeah, being a teenager can be a bit like being a random sniper.
Took me a long time to know that — actually, I didn’t come to know it. I came to feel it.
So when you got off the phone the other day and turned to ask me if you could go with them too, because, c’mon, everyone else was going? There were my mother’s words right there in my mouth, my own mother on my lips:
“Look, I could tell you that you could go… but I love you too much.”
And you did what I did — you rolled your eyes like you could just roll me down. And in a blink, I’m you, rolling my eyes at my own mother just like that.
In a blink, I’m 13 all over again and begging Mama — telling her I’m going to about die if she doesn’t let me go to Tina Moreau’s 13th birthday party. Tina’s sleepover 13th birthday party. Tina’s co-ed sleepover 13th birthday party.
Apparently my mother didn’t care if I died. Or had a hissy fit or if my whipping eye rolls resulted in said eyeballs detaching at 98 miles a minute from their sockets resulting in serious injury to anyone in close enough proximity.
Mama just said there was no way her daughter was sleeping over in the same room of sleeping bags where Shawn Petersen and Dougie Boursma were slapping their pillows down too.
Sure, I told her I didn’t even like those goobery boys, I wouldn’t talk to those boys, there was just no way I wanted to be the weird kid out, the weird kid with strict parents [20-year-later insert: the kid with the only sane parents] who wouldn’t let her go to the co-ed sleepover birthday party.
And my own Mama? Mama just said I could huff all I wanted to, but nothing was going to blow down her mama-clad resolve.
Then yeah, she said something about loving me too much.
And, yeah, I’d rolled my eyes.
You may have a better huff than I did, really. And yeah, you can definitely fling around to the window sharper than I could, turning that cold shoulder faster than the speed of light.
But, girl, have you got any idea how I remember wanting to go once too, because all the other kids were going, and being told that the I was loved too much to go (insert eye roll here)? I know it seems impossible, but believe the impossible thing: I know what it’s like to be in a 15-year-old bod and think your mother’s a cretin from a cave who gets some hideously sick joy in crushing all your necessary plans.
So here’s the thing — and it’s true for every parent and every teenager and true for the guy procrastinating and the woman struggling to change old habits and every single one of us going through hard things:
I know there feels like there’s only one of you. The you right now. The one who Feels All The Things.
But believe the impossible things, because it’s true: There are two of you, really.
The Short-Term You —- and the Long-Term You. The Now-You — and The Becoming You.
The Immediate You. And the Ultimate You.
And if I only loved the right now Immediate You —- and let The Immediate You come and go and do whatever she wanted, whatever made her Feel All The Good Things, whatever made her happiest, I wouldn’t be loving the Ultimate You.
Please hear what All The Parents finally figure out, what I finally realize my own mama was saying:
This isn’t fun for me.
There isn’t one fibre in my soft, pulsing mama heart that likes seeing the Short-Term Immediate You Hurt.
But I love the Long-Term Ultimate You too wide and deep and long — the you that can ultimately be —- that I’m willing to take the ire and anger of your Immediate Self right now.
I’m willing to take your anger and your eye rolls and feel the sting of it all on the soft insides of my mother heart. I’m willing to let my own Immediate Me hurt with your Immediate You — us both hurting together —- because I love the Ultimate You and am committed to the Ultimate You and I won’t sell out the long-term Ultimate You.
Sometimes the short-term Immediate You cannot have what she wants — so that the long-term Ultimate You can be who she wants to be.
Sometimes the short-term Immediate You won’t feel loved —- because this is about ultimately loving the long-term Ultimate You.
Sometimes the short-term Immediate You can’t have immediate gratification — so you can give the long-term Ultimate You what you ultimately want.
There are two of you — the Immediate You. And the Ultimate You. Who are you going to ultimately focus on?
So when I told you all that the other day?
When I put my hand on your shoulder and you bit your lip hard to dam everything back?
When I told you that this is what a mother does —- Though it kills me to see Immediate You hurting, I ultimately love the Ultimate You. Something burned, filled, my throat, and I felt my own dam give way a bit.
Because there’s this Father, our Father.
Because all of us have things in front of us that are hard and they hurt.
You and I both have this Father and it literally killed Him to see us hurting —- and I need to believe it:
When my own Short-Term Immediate Self is hurting, my Father’s hurting with me .
When my short-term Immediate Self is hurting, my Father’s ultimately hurting with me and ultimately healing me and ultimately remaking me and ultimately loving my long-term Ultimate Self.
“His love letter forever silences any doubts: “His secret purpose framed from the very beginning [is] to bring us to our full glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7 NEB).
He means to rename us—to return us to our true names, our truest selves. He means to heal our soul holes.
From the very beginning, that Eden beginning, that has always been and always is, to this day, God’s secret purpose in everything— our return to our full glory.” ( One Thousand Gifts )
Your Father can’t ever do anything other than love our long-term Ultimate Self, the one He’s secretly working everything to bring to full glory.
He can’t do anything less than want our Ultimate Self to be it’s ultimate best.
So when you turned from the window, the phone still there in your hand, turned that bruised shoulder of yours and looked in my eyes, looked to see if you could trust me and this ultimate love that doesn’t feel even one iota like love?
I cupped your face and looked right into your pooling eyes and in that moment, more than any other moment, I felt the burning believing of it with you, I believed with you in the unbelievable impossible—
And you can find your Father’s very words rolling right there off the tip of your tongue, feel the tender grace of it right there on your lips:
Just Trust Me.
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