Beth K. Vogt's Blog, page 3

What Do We See When We Focus on the Haze?

A heavy brown haze has hung over my hometown of Colorado Springs for several weeks now, often completely obscuring the view of Pikes Peak. Smoke has blown in from the wildfires in western states, particularly the Dixie Fire, which is now the largest single fire in California history.

The weather app on my phone includes an air quality alert, just in case I wasn’t paying attention to the fact that our normally Colorado blue skies are now brown. I have asthma and even though it’s well-controlled, I’ve stayed inside. A lot.

My family lived through the Waldo Canyon Fire in 2012, including being evacuating from our home for two weeks because of smoke damage. To some degree, I know what people in California are experiencing.

And yet, I’ve avoided thinking about what’s happening “out there.” Maybe it’s just I don’t want to get too close to those memories.

Dealing with the smoke every day? It’s a nuisance, but I have newly installed air conditioning. I can close my windows, shut my doors, and be fine, just fine.

Then my daughter Katie Beth posted on IG that she was praying for all the men and women fighting the fires producing the smoke keeping our mountains hidden from view.

Reality check.

The entire town of Greenville, CA has burned down. Over 487,000 acres have burned, along with more than 900 structures, including homes and commercial buildings.

Sometimes the comfort of our homes becomes too comfortable. We forget the importance of the simplest of things, like praying for others who are facing danger and heartbreak.

When a friend is struggling, I like to say, “I’ll turn my thoughts of you into prayers for you.”

It’s time to stop looking at the haze in the sky as nothing more than an ongoing inconvenience. An interruption to my daily walks.

Instead, I can use the smoke as a reminder to pray for all those affected by the fires – homeowners and business owners, as well as the firefighters battling the blazes, and their families who are concerned for them and want them back home.

Won’t you join me?

What do we see when we focus on the haze? #focus #perspective
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'Great opportunities to help others seldom come, but small ones surround us every day.' #quote by Sally Koch #opportunities #encouragement
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Choosing to Hold Our Pace When We Can’t See a Way Forward

@bethvogt

It’s been another week of watching the Olympics for me and yes, another athlete’s experience in Tokyo taught me a life lesson I’m going to remember for years to come.

Rob and I were watching one of the heats for the men’s 800 meter. (Can I just say track and field has a lot of heats?) USA’s Clayton Murphy, who won an Olympic bronze medal in this event in 2016, was running in the heat, so of course, we were cheering for him. Things didn’t look good for Murphy. He was boxed in by the other runners, and as the commentators said, he was looking for “some space and daylight,” but wasn’t finding it.

I made some comments of my own about the race, along the lines of, “He’s not going to final.”

Murphy somehow, someway, edged past the runners surrounding him. He kicked it and came in first.

In his interview after the race, Clayton said, “I said a prayer and hoped space would open up.”

I said a prayer and hoped space would open up.

Talk about a life lesson to hold onto to.

Murphy didn’t look at the runners surrounding him and think, “This is an impossible situation. There’s no way I can win.”

No, Murphy kept doing what he had trained to do. He ran.

He prayed.

He hoped.

There was no quit in him.

Murphy won his heat, but even if he hadn’t, he would have known in his heart he’d given the race his all.

I was talking with my friend Rachel the other day and she mentioned how she sees a lot of people struggling with discouragement. With the temptation to quit.

I agree. I’ve faced that struggle, too, and know others battling it.

Maybe …. just for today …  what we need to do is keep running. Hold our pace, even if we feel boxed in by our circumstances. If we can’t see a breakthrough, let’s say a prayer and hope a space will open up for us to move forward.

Choosing to Hold Our Pace When We Can't See a Way Forward #perseverance #hope
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'Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.' #quote by novelist Victor Hugo #perseverance #encouragement
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Judge Not Lest You Be Blind

@bethvogt

Sometimes we just don’t know.

That’s my takeaway from all the news swirling around Simone Biles. Sometimes we just don’t know the entire story and we need to be okay with that.

Simon Biles is an American Olympic gymnast. The GOAT — the Greatest Of All Time. People love her. Love her story. She’s a gymnastics powerhouse and when she wins, America wins.

Biles leads the U.S. women’s gymnastics team at the Tokyo Olympics. We watch her perform, imagining all the gold she’s going to haul home. And yes, we were watching her yesterday when her vault went wrong, and she withdrew from the team finals competition.

That was not the way things were supposed to go. Her story went awry. All the imagined headlines? Rewritten.

But Biles is more than headlines. Behind the news stories is a 24-year-old woman.

What happened?

We may never know the entire story — and we need to be okay with that, rather than fabricating our own stories about why Biles didn’t compete in the team finals.

Biles clarified it wasn’t a physical injury, but that she was “dealing with a few things.” Whether her reason for withdrawing was a physical injury or stress, either one is a valid reason to back out of competition. No athlete, whether they are a rookie or the GOAT, should force themselves to compete when they are mentally or physically struggling or injured.

Yes, athletes push themselves all the time, but they also need permission to decide when not to push themselves. When to say, “Enough,” without marring their reputation.

We judge athletes based on their performance all the time. The truth is, we judge one another based on our performance — or lack thereof — all the time, too.

We so easily forget that we rarely know the entire story of why someone does something. Or why someone chooses not to do something.

As an athlete, Simone Biles faces judges every time she walks on the gymnastics stage. Yes, she’s chosen that. Let’s not judge her now when she’s chosen to step away from competition. We don’t know the full story. For whatever reason she decided against competing, she made the hard right choice for herself at that moment — and she wasn’t forgetting about her team.

Choosing not to judge someone else? It’s called grace — and judging others, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, blinds us to grace. I want to be more lavish with grace, while ignoring the impulse to judge. After all, how would I want others to respond to me? With judgement … or with grace?

Others may think they know who we are. Why we act the way we do or say thing things we say. But they don’t know the entire story – the war being waged in our minds and hearts. Remembering that we just don’t know prompts grace, not judgement.

Judge Not Lest You Be Blind #Olympics #SimoneBiles
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'Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.' #quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer #grace #hope
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The Mountains are Calling …

@bethvogt

The quote by John Muir, “The mountains are calling and I must go …” seemed the perfect way to announce that I’m taking a blog break today.

My husband and I ran away to the mountains to celebrate his birthday, which is tomorrow. I’m off social media to give both of us a real chance to relax. He doesn’t do social media, but if I’m on it, well, that ruins our time together.

Hope you have a wonderful week and I’ll see you next Wednesday.

 

Friendships are Risky Business

@bethvogt

 

My friend Scoti called me after I’d posted my blog “Don’t Believe Everything You Think” last week. The one where I confessed to losing a wrestling match with my thoughts for 48 hours. And how connecting with a friend and focusing on the Truth helped me win the victory.

Scoti: Are you okay? I’m worried about you.

Me (laughing): You read the blog post, didn’t you?

Yep, she had. Good friend that she is, Scoti wanted to make certain I was really okay.

  Yes, I’m really okay.

I wouldn’t have written last week’s post if I wasn’t.

After Scoti and I finished talking, I grabbed my computer and scanned my recent blogs. Is my honest writing focused too much on struggles and not enough on hope?

I don’t think so. (Of course, you can call me on it if you think otherwise.) But I also believe you have to first be willing to share your disappointments or discouragements before you can share how you’ve found hope.

Back to Scoti.

I’m thankful Scoti called me. We all need trustworthy friends who care enough to make the risky phone calls. Who dare to have the hard conversations with us. Who want a soul-deep answer when they ask, “How are you?”

Scoti and I have invested both the time and effort needed to earn one another’s trust. Funny thing is, we look back on the beginnings of our friendship and laugh. Back then, we both pretended to be okay. One honest conversation at a time, we relaxed and got real with each other.

Scoti likes to compare our friendship to the Velveteen Rabbit because it’s all about the process of becoming real. If you haven’t read the children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit by British author Margery Williams, I highly recommend you do.

Here’s the other thing about Scoti: She called to check on me while she’s still recovering from a life-threatening battle with pneumonia. Scoti has enough going on in her life … she battles every day just to breathe. She doesn’t need to worry about me. But she looked past her challenges and called me because that’s part of an honest, caring friendship.

How about you? Who can you be real with? 

 

Friendships are Risky Business https://bit.ly/3kbQ5bq #encouragment #friendships
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'A true friend never gets in your way unless you're going down.' #quote by author Arnold Glasow #friendship #kindness
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Don’t Believe Everything You Think

@bethvogt

 

I mulled over this blog post for quite a while. Started one topic. Erased it. I wanted to think of something funny. Something light. Put a spin on things so my words were encouraging from the get-go.

But it was a bit of a fractured start to the week, one where I fought to find a good rhythm to my days. My thoughts bobbed up and down between hope and doubt as I clung to the life preserver of my faith.

Some days are like that, right?

I let discouragement dunk me one too many times until I sent up a “prayer flare,” as I like to call it, and texted a close friend, admitting how my negative thoughts were pulling me under.

She was struggling too. Her response to my text: I’m calling you.

It wasn’t so much about “misery loving company” as it was two friends being honest with each other and then dragging each other back to solid ground, inch by inch.

She spoke truth. I spoke truth. And the Truth pushed away the lies that were swamping us. We leaned into our faith and focused on scriptures like:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. (Philippians 4:6-7 NIV)… the joy of the LORD is your strength. (Nehemiah 8:10 NIV)Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds … (James 1:2 NIV)Do not despise these small beginnings, for the LORD rejoices to see the work begin … (Zechariah 4:10 NLT)

Here’s what I’m learning once again: so much of how we feel is determined by our thoughts. But all too often we don’t monitor our thoughts closely enough. Instead, we just push auto-play on what we’re thinking. I need to post the quote, “Don’t believe everything you think!” in every room in my house. What about you?

The truth I remembered after talking with my friend? God does not speak discouragement over us.

The repeated thought of, “You should just quit” that got a stranglehold on me at the beginning of the week? It wasn’t God-given. God is a God of encouragement. Of hope. He doesn’t beat us down.

We all have tough days. The important thing to know is who we can shoot a prayer flare to when the day becomes too hard.

Who will speak Truth to you so you can hear it over the lies that drag you into deep waters? Who do you speak Truth to when you see their flare go up?

Don’t Believe Everything You Think
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Reaping the Benefits of Intentional Conversations with Family

 

A week ago, I exchanged my usual daily outfit of leggings and a Life is Good T-shirt for a casual-nice outfit accessorized with jewelry and a touch of makeup. The occasion? A girls’ night out with four of my favorite people: my daughters, Katie Beth, Amy, Christa, and my daughter-in-love Meagan.

We’d reserved a table several weeks in advance to take advantage of the local fondue restaurant’s “BFF night.” After counting down the days and hours, we waved goodbye to our varied responsibilities, including my daughter Amy’s adorable one-year-old who stayed home with my husband, and piled into my car for a much-needed night out.

For all our “getting away,” the evening was about being together.

I’m still treasuring that part of the evening seven days later. There I was, the mom of all these wonderful young women … and they were including me in a relaxing evening overflowing with cheese fondue, salads, chocolate fondue, and non-stop conversation. Believe me, I don’t take for granted the gift of being included in my daughters’ lives.

The food? It was excellent. The conversation? Better than we expected.

We could have just chatted – let the conversation flow back and forth. Instead, we ended up asking each other “popcorn questions.” I started off with, “What is your high and your low right now?” Not for the week – but in general. We didn’t go in an orderly fashion around the table, either. Instead, I randomly chose a different daughter to answer the question.

So began an evening of yummy fondue – the salads were good too – and some of the best conversation I’ve ever been part of, all because of popcorn questions. Questions like:

What aspect of selfcare do you need to improve on? (I said rest. Not sleep—rest.)What’s on your bucket list? (I learned one of my daughters doesn’t care for bucket lists – or even making a 5-year plan or a 10-year plan.)What movie or TV show remake would you like to star in? (I will confess I kept changing my answer.)What is one thing you wish you were doing and why aren’t you doing it? (One daughter has since joined a local gym.)

The evening was a time of talking and listening – where at some point, each one of us had the undivided attention of everyone else. None of this was planned in a “Now it’s your turn” kind of way. It happened naturally, thanks to spur of the moment popcorn questions.

All because we took time for one another.

Reaping the Benefits of Intentional Conversations with Family #relationships #trust
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'Choose to focus your time, energy and conversation around people who inspire you, support you and help you to grow into your happiest, strongest, wisest self.' #quote by Karen Salmansohn #family #conversation
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Today … Tomorrow … Every Day … Let’s Focus on Hope

@bethvogt

My friend Jeanne and I have May birthdays. We’ve developed a funny tradition around our birthdays: we never celebrate them with each other during our birthday month.

Don’t get me wrong – we’ve tried many, many times to celebrate during May. We make plans to meet for breakfast or lunch or dinner. Inevitably, our plans get pushed back again and again, and we find ourselves finally meeting up in June or July.

This year we celebrated on June 21 – yes, two days ago. We’ve decided not to fight the inevitable, but embrace belated birthday get-togethers as our special custom.

One of Jeanne’s birthday gifts to me prompted this blog post. It’s a delicate gold chain with the word HOPE spelled out within small gold blocks.

While LISTEN is my One Word for 2021, HOPE has become a sub-theme for this year, as I’ve leaned into the belief that hope is a renewable commodity. No matter how depleted my supply of hope is at the end of the day, it is replenished every morning because God’s mercies are new every morning and his faithfulness is great. (Lamentations 3:22-23)

Today, inspired by my friend’s gift, I decided to share a quote acrostic with you using the word HOPE. Each letter of the word is linked to a graphic highlighting a quote that starts with that letter. May you be encouraged by one – maybe all – of the different thoughts expressed about hope.

 

“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all the darkness.” Desmond Tutu, theologian

 

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” Helen Keller, American author

 

“Pray, and let God worry.” Martin Luther, German theologian

 

“Everything that is done in this world is done by hope.” Martin Luther, German theologian

 

 

Does one of those quotes encourage you more than the others? I’d love to know!

 

Today ... Tomorrow ... Every Day ... Let's Focus On Hope! #quotes #hope
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'Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.' #quote by George Iles #hope #encouragement
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Choosing to Own Our Days

 

I wake up several times each night. I know I’m not alone in this repeated I’m-asleep-now-I’m-awake middle of the night routine.

The first thing I do when I wake up is glance at the alarm clock on my bedside table. It’s an illuminated model with oversize red digital numbers I purchased several years ago for my mother-in-law who battled macular degeneration.

It’s not so much a sentimental keepsake as it is a practical one. If nothing else, I no longer wake up each morning and ask Rob, “What time is it?”

Consulting the clock throughout the night goes like this:

12:20 a.m. Whew! Still have some hours to sleep …

2:45 a.m. Okay … still not too bad …

5:00 a.m. To get up or not to get up, that is the question …

I always hesitate to look at the clock face to see how much time has slipped by since I last opened my eyes. I cling to those hours in in the middle of the night – don’t go, don’t go – rather than resting.

What a contradictory relationship we have with time.

My youngest GRANDgirl turns 1-year-old tomorrow. I find myself wondering, “How did this happen?”

And yet, I know exactly how she reached this wonderful milestone. She (and her parents) live with us while my daughter Amy finishes college. I’ve had the privilege of watching my GRANDgirl progress from who-will-you-be newborn to all-about-pushing-the-boundaries toddler.

She grew up, day by day – and I cheered her on, celebrating everything from her first smile to how she now conquers the stairs and dances along to Elmo’s song. La la la la …

Every day she grows up is a day I grow older.

Do I cheer for the progression of time when I view it through the “I’m growing older” lens?

Yes, yes, I do. Well, maybe I don’t cheer, but I made the decision years ago I would embrace getting older. Not fight it. Not grieve it.

Today becoming yesterday as we walk into tomorrow … this is natural. This is good.

I can look back over my shoulder and see my yesterdays. Those are called memories. But tomorrow? I can’t count those. I don’t know how many of those I’m allotted. I plan on celebrating birthdays and anniversaries and just-because days with my family for years to come … but only God knows the number of days I’m here on this earth. (Psalm 139:16)

Here’s to valuing the time we have. Days gone by and days to come, and yes, accepting the hours we wake up in the middle of the night. And here’s to today … and choosing to start and end each day with hope.

 

Choosing to Own Our Days #time #values
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'You've got to own your days and live them, each one of them ... or else the years go by and none of them belong to you.' #quote by Herb Gardner #life #perspective
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Choosing to Value Others By Listening to Them

@bethvogt

 

Listening, truly listening to another person, is both simple and hard work.

I’ve focused on listening to others for the past 18 months, ever since choosing “Listen” as my One Word in 2020 and then again in 2021. The one lesson I’m going to remember when 2022 arrives and I move onto a new One Word is that listening takes diligence. I have to purpose not to talk, talk, talk when I’m with someone else. Instead, I set myself on SILENT and actively listen during a conversation.

We’ve all heard of the Golden Rule – the guiding tenet prompting us to treat others the way we want to be treated. Worth remembering, right? And it’s also applicable to choosing to listen because, well, I want someone to listen to me when I’m talking. Don’t you?

Philippians 2:3 raises the bar higher, telling us to consider others more important than ourselves. The verse doesn’t settle for not thinking about me and what I want. Instead, I’m to consider how valuable another person is, reminding myself they are made in God’s image, and to determine to put their needs ahead of mine.

One of the most practical ways we can show someone how important they are is by listening to them. The act of listening to another person instills value on them because we’re saying – without using words –they are worth our time and attention. Our family member or friend or colleague is more valuable to us than anything else we could be doing.

Of course, every conversation is a two-way street. But to be a good listener, we have to be intentional. We choose to stop moving, as it were, and yield right-of-way to someone else, allowing them to talk uninterrupted. Our contribution to the conversation? Listening.

I’ve learned to close my laptop. Set my phone aside and ignore any incoming texts or phone calls. Mute the TV – better yet, turn it off.

It’s also important to face the other person and make eye contact because we don’t listen just with our ears. A lot of what is said is conveyed through a person’s body language. If we’re not looking at someone when they’re talking, we may miss out on vital cues to underlying emotions.

When there is a space of silence, I tell myself to wait … wait … wait … and inevitably, the person starts talking again. Or I ask them, “What else?” Just those simple question usually prompts someone to share more.

In the past 18 months, I’ve discovered what a privilege it is to listen to someone when they’re talking about both the minor and major events in their lives.

I’m curious: How do you feel when someone listens, really listens, to you? 

 

Choosing to Value Others By Listening to Them #listen #relationships
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'Listening is such a simple act. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don't have to do anything else ...' #quote by Margaret J. Wheatley #listen #focus
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