Learning Along The Way

Be Transformed

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“I know sometimes what messes our life up most—is the expectation of what our life is supposed to look like.  Entitlement can leave you feeling entirely empty.” Ann Voskamp

 

Sometimes I hear my thoughts expressed through the words of another.  Eerie really.  How did they know I felt like that?  Or thought like that?

 

I have lived in the cell of unmet expectations.  I have circled the disappointments time and again in my head.

 

Perhaps what was penned in the book of Ecclesiastes has meaning here:

 

That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun.

 

So the stress and fear I am tempted to be stuck in, the regrets I have for time wasted or misspent, the longing for the time back with my sons when they were little?  All these things are common to others as well?

 

Outside life looks easy.  But inside the wrestling, the revisiting, the battle wages on.

 

God’s Word, the balm.  The renewal that comes with a mind fixed on Him.

 

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  A living sacrifice. 

 

Being made new into the likeness of Another; not losing who I am, my uniqueness, or how I’m wired for moving through the world but letting go of the thoughts that hold me in the cell.  The door is opened behind me; it has been since He set me free.  I didn’t see it; didn’t know it was open.  I have been looking at today through the lens of the past hurts.

 

Be transformed

 

It’s a process.  The metamorphosis does not happen in a moment.  Nor does it happen without dying: to damaging thoughts, to un-real expectations, to tapes of hurtful words spoken from brokenness.

 

The changes take time.  I am in the process.  What are you called to lay down before the One who died to free you from it all?

Leap of Faith

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It has been an interesting week.  Facing no income for my husband starting today.  Lots of opportunities to worry; every piece of mail for our son to consider various colleges that arrived, every bill, get my hair cut or not, talking about our other son’s wedding plans.  Do I trust or do I worry?

I’m choosing Trust.  in this moment.  I believe God gives us reminders of His promises throughout our days, if we keep our hearts tuned to Him.  Those reminders come in funny ways for me; He is mindful of my frame…yours too.  We’re unique you know.  He knows what we need to be encouraged.

Since I am wired to be a visual learner, I think in pictures (that I can’t duplicate like my artistic friends!) and this film clip so often comes to mind when I think of taking a step into the unknown.  Click on the title to watch this 2 minute clip.

Leap of Faith

And think about your own leap of faith.  Where are you having to take an unknown step?  Need help or encouragement?  Let me know; I’m in it too!

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I’ve been spending a lot of time lately pondering this idea of transformation.  I had the privilege of sharing with a Biola student ministry team at their retreat this past weekend and this was the retreat focus.  If you read my post yesterday then you know the very real struggle that is going on in me right now.  In this real life, how does transformation look?  How does it really happen?

 

Real issues like job loss and all the unknowns, or having your words and actions misunderstood, or hearing the whisperings of past failures and poor choices battling for mental attention are all examples of the proving ground for transformation.

 

You see, I’m finally learning that it’s a process.  Change of any kind does not happen with one decision.  Change is a process.  Change is hard, but change is good.  For the longest time I thought that if I decided to change, made effort to change then any normal person would be able to “just do it” like the Nike tag line says.  The fact that rarely has that worked for me has been an internal battleground of shame and blame: “what’s wrong with you Lisa?”  “Why can’t you just do _______?”

 

Anyone else have this internal battle?  Well it’s a narrative I have told myself for years.  I’m finally seeing the fruit of the seeds of transformation.  I now stand up to this false narrative and say NO!  I have learned a new narrative, the true narrative, in light of the Kingdom of God.  He loves me as I am, fearful, messy and broken and the God of All simply wants me to run to Him with my skinned knees, bruised heart and hurt feelings and crawl up in His lap to let Him comfort me.

 

Recognizing the simplicity of just being in His Presence, taking my 24/7 time, pushing the pause button and being with Him, acknowledging Him during the day in the middle of crazy thoughts, is a process of transformation too.  Even writing this has been like a sigh; an exhale of tension that is replaced with a slower more peaceful breath.

 

What have you learned in your transformation process?  Please share with us.  We need true community that is willing to be authentic.  Not sure what I’m talking about?  Let me know that too!  It’s all a process!

 

http://learningalongtheway.com/255-2/

New Direction

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My husband was laid off on Thursday.  His work was no longer needed by the company.  That was it. No severance, no two weeks notice, just work through this Wednesday the end of the pay period and good bye.

Now mind you on that particular day I was in the throes of preparing and finalizing details for a retreat I had been asked to lead on Saturday.  So at that time, my response was “Really?!? What a timely distraction from where my mind and heart need to be!  It’s obvious God wants to do a great work on Saturday!”  I didn’t melt into a puddle of tears, I asked my prayer warrior friends to jump in and I simply trusted God.  I didn’t start to worry about what and how and where and why. Not then.

Today however is a new day and the temptation to worry that is common to us all was present again.  I found myself swift to my to do list; taking control of the things I knew needed doing that I had in my power to do.  Three hours into my day, after neglecting my regular habit of entering into the day slowly by having coffee with Jesus, I stopped midstream and sat down and cried.  I cried out my worry, my fear of the unknown, all the pent up hurts from sudden and uncontrolled change in my life to date.  And just as suddenly as the flood came on, it receded.  I picked up my devotional, Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young, and read today’s entry:

“Waiting, trusting, and hoping are intricately connected, like golden strands interwoven to form a strong chain.  Trusting is the central strand, because it is the response from My children that I desire the most.  Waiting and hoping embellish the central strand and strengthen the chain that connects you to Me.  Waiting for Me to work, with your eyes on Me, is evidence that you really do trust Me.”

This was a love gift; a tangible reminder of love and provision even when I don’t see HOW. or WHERE. or WHAT. or I don’t know WHY.

GOD, the Maker of the heavens and earth and all created things, KNOWS.  He CARES.  He reminded me of this picture that I took at Christmas of 2008.  It was the first Christmas without both my Mom and Dad.  I saw this sign as just that; a sign to remind me that living in the past was just as it reads: Dead End.

In the same way, when I go down the path of thinking about what if? or how will? or why? it’s the same Dead End.  The knowing belongs to the One who is Omniscient (All Knowing).  What belongs to me is to Trust.  Thank you Sarah Young for your writing such a great devotional book.  Thank you Lord for Your perfect timing of this gift of words to remind me, and hopefully you as you have read this, that GOD is STILL in CONTROL!

I don’t know details, but I know the One who does!  How about you?  Where do you put your trust?  If you’re in a place of unknowing I’d love to hear from you.  Leave a comment or email me.  We can be in this together!

Leftovers

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Whew!  The past three days have been a whirlwind in our house: Company on Sunday, missionary visitors for lunches on Monday and Tuesday.  All meals I planned and prepared. And now I am tired!  Now don’t get me wrong, I love practicing hospitality.  In fact I am constantly spurred on to love and good deeds by my friend Sue, who daily blogs about the challenge and the blessing of hospitality.  She has encouraged me to think about the difference between entertaining and hospitality.  You might think of having people in your home as entertaining and see it as a burden.  Too much work!  I have learned to think about the blessing of practicing hospitality, a welcome heart, to those who cross my path and sometimes my doorstep.

 

Here’s the difference: entertaining is really putting on a show.  Sometimes that’s appropriate; bridal showers, baby showers, and birthday parties are all examples of entertaining.  They’re events for which time is needed to plan and prepare.  Hospitality on the other hand can be as easy as inviting someone over for coffee and a chat.

 

In fact, practicing hospitality can simply be offering to share a meal of leftovers!  What?  Leftovers for company?!?  Outrage, right?  Not at all!  When you take the simple lunch of what you have, like loaves and fish, and offer it to the One Who can multiply our humble offering and make all things new, hospitality takes on a new purpose.

 

Offering what little you may have in the refrigerator and pantry is not as important as giving your time and attention to the person (or people!) This is my definition of showing hospitality: “making people feel at home in your presence.”  It does take an attitude adjustment and a shift in mindset, which can be super challenging, but you can practice hospitality wherever you are!  If you need encouragement like I have, check out Sue’s blog here.  If you feel paralyzed about how to shift your thinking from entertaining to hospitality, let’s get together!  We can overcome the obstacles that keep you from willingly opening your home to show God’s welcome heart through hospitality!

Confessions of a Recovering Control Freak

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I am challenged.  I know that may sound funny, and my family is probably saying, “Duh!” but what I mean to say is I am being challenged.  Challenged to stretch. grow. change.  And it’s not comfortable or easy.

True Confessions?  I am a recovering control freak.  I have mentioned that issue before so I won’t dive too far in.  Just far enough to admit it.  Here’s how.

I have had a skewed view of friendship.  I am happy to spend time with friends, listen to their stories, laugh with them, cry with them, take care of their children, live life.  But when my life gets busy, I put my head down and get busy, withdrawing from others, ignoring calls or letting texts drop.  Definitely not reaching out, sometimes not responding when an invitation would come my way.  In this way, I was controlling my friendships.  I was being a one way friend.  And in a way, I was controlling relationships.

That is not a friend.  A friend loves at all times.

When is all?  Oh yeah.  ALL.

I am challenged.  I want to be a better friend.  I want to reconnect, reach out, invite, participate.

Ann Voskamp and the team at (in)Courage are planning something big to help women like me be more intentional with friendships.  I suggest you take a look at their plans here.  Let me know how you’re being stretched and if you’re challenged like me.  And if you have called me your friend, and I haven’t acted like one, not only am I truly sorry but know that I am committed to change.  Of course that means more FUN!  And that’s the perfect thing for a Friday, right?

 

Too Many Pictures!

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Yesterday, after reading my post “Learning to Listen” my DH (dear husband) said he liked the learning to listen part but the boulder didn’t make sense.  “I know what you mean because I know you, but it didn’t make sense there.” Of course, my DH is right.  Too many pictures clutter the scene.

 

If you’re a reader that doesn’t know my story yet then the picture of the Boulder in my path was probably confusing for you too.  It does tie in with Learning to Listen I promise. And true to His Way in my life, God brought me the connection in the well written form of a devotional entry from Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young.  She has done a masterful job of writing in the first person, Jesus talking to you.  Here is today’s entry, February 22, as is:

 

“You need Me every moment.  Your awareness of your constant need for Me is your greatest strength.  Your neediness, properly handled, is a link to my Presence.  However, there are pitfalls that you must be on guard against: self-pity, self-preoccupation, giving up.  Your inadequacy presents you with a continual choice—deep dependence on Me, or despair.  The emptiness you feel within will be filled either with problems or with My Presence.  Make Me central in your consciousness by praying continually: simple, short prayers flowing out of the present moment.  Use My Name liberally, to remind you of My Presence.  Keep on asking and you will receive, so that your gladness may be full and complete.” (1Thessalonians 5:17)

 

How does this tie to the Boulder in my Path?  It’s a metaphor for what got in the way of my perfect life as defined by me.  My husband, (not the DH; he comes later!) chose an affair over our marriage while I was pregnant with our first child.  That reality was the Boulder.  What I did about it was summed up in today’s entry from Jesus Calling: “there are pitfalls that you must be on guard against: self-pity, self-preoccupation, giving up.  Your inadequacy presents you with a continual choice—deep dependence on Me, or despair.”

 

At first I did what I thought God would want me to do, but I was not skilled at listening and definitely unpracticed in the art of Waiting.  When I didn’t get what I wanted (a restored marriage) I tried to solve the problem on my own.  Not really listening, not really looking deeply at the Word or seeking wisdom from those who had walked this path ahead of me.  That’s the part about finding my own footholds and hand holds to find a way over the Boulder.

 

After hearing from my husband that reconciliation was not going to happen, we divorced.  Failure.  Single parenthood. Loneliness. Despair. You get the picture.  After our divorce was final I decided to make my own way and that was to replace the husband.  I would be back on the path to a perfect life!  Makes sense right? In my not-so-far-in-my-past pre-Jesus life, the way to meet men involved going to bars.  (This is where the DH comes into the picture).  I met this cute guy, he liked me and life was good again.

 

Fast forward four years of life lived in my own strength without Listening and I’m still on the Boulder making my own way.  I was pregnant with our first child, co-parenting my 5 year old; my DH not a man of faith and me a woman of nominal faith.  It was at this point in my climb over the Boulder that I slipped and crashed into the weeds.  I had a miscarriage.  The loss of a child is traumatic no matter when the child’s life ends.  It was here, when I found myself in the weeds after all my efforts to get over the Boulder and on my perfect life path, that I came to the end of my self.  I earnestly cried out to God for help; desperate to truly connect with Him and His plan for me.  Here is where I began Learning to Listen.

 

With all this back story I hope it makes sense why I shortened the explanation yesterday!  Although I may appear to be the central character in this memoir, the real Central Character is God.  He made a New Way for me (Is. 43:19; Jn 14-6).  He will make your Way straight (Prov. 3:5-6).  “God’s hand is not so short that it cannot save, neither is His ear so dull that it cannot hear.” (Is. 59:1) Call out to Him! (Jer. 33:3; Rom. 10:8-10).

 

Learning to Listen

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This lovely sunflower is a volunteer in my garden.  That means I didn’t plant it.  Sometimes volunteers come from the naturalizing of plants.  Sometimes they come from birds.  And sometimes a volunteer shows up from long dormant seeds that have finally received enough water to sprout the life hidden within.

How seeds come to life in unlikely places is such a mystery!  All the conditions for growth have to be there for the seed to be successful.   Sometimes the conditions look lush and it makes perfect sense a plant would sprout. Sometimes the conditions look harsh and it’s amazing a seed would even sprout not to mention take root and flourish!  I do some preparation for my garden but really I am a neglectful gardener.  When I see a volunteer thriving in my yard I’m thrilled!  That new life in an unlikely place makes me think of a picture from my  life.

My adult life looked pretty straightforward: finish college, earn a teaching credential, start teaching, get married, start a family.  Pretty standard stuff.  But the path wasn’t  straight and easy.  I came around a bend and a Big Boulder blocked my path.  There was no where to go!  I sat down, overwhelmed by this roadblock in my otherwise perfect life.  I sank into despair.  As an untrained listener, I thought whatever happened next was on me to figure out.

I spent a lot of time trying to see how to get over this Boulder right in front of me.  I tried the climbing technique of “bouldering”: finding hand holds and foot holds to scale the side of it; I tried working my way around it; I even tried chipping away at it, all in hopes of breaking it down to continue on the path I thought my life should be on.  I made some headway and climbed up almost to the top ready to jump over onto the other side when my foot slipped and I slid down a different side, crashing to the bottom, ending not on the path, but off in the weeds!  I was a mess!  Trying to make something happen on my own without seeking help landed me in a heap and back into despair!

It was after this second detour that I finally caught a clue; I can’t navigate the path of my life without guidance.  I needed to seek  wisdom, learn to listen and apply wisdom to my life.  I submitted myself to the One who transplanted the seed of my life and began in me the process of sprouting, growing and bringing forth new life.

Learning to listen to the Voice is a process.  I thought there was a to do list to work through that would equal great growth;  “I’ve done my chores now bless me Father” kind of relationship.  It was a starting place for sure.  But God calls us forth to so much more from so much less.  He wants each of us to simply be with Him.  Learning to listen to His voice whisper in the wind, speak in the hush of snowfall, or call over the ocean waves crashing on the shore has taken lots of practice.  Other than the Word, the most powerful little book that has been a tool of listening for me is Practicing the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence.  Learning to listen to and be with God was Brother Lawrence’s greatest aim.  Whether peeling potatoes in the kitchen or doing daily chores or in times of prayer with the brethren, Brother Lawrence developed the habit of listening to the One Who is always present.

We can too.  There are so many challenges to listening in our information saturated culture with the “entertain me now” mindset; the challenge to push back against the noise to find even a moment of silence and solitude can be more of a battle than a challenge!  If you are in this process of learning to listen, I’d love to share in this challenge with you. We need to be in community with others who, like Brother Lawrence, desire to be “present to the Presence”.

Saturday Sigh

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What makes you sigh?  If you’re like me a sigh can mean a lot of different things. Sometimes I sigh when I’m feeling blue.  Sometimes it’s a sigh related to stress; a way to relieve pressure.  Sometimes it’s a sigh of content.

 

Ever notice yourself sighing a lot?  I never really noticed my sighs until shortly after my dad died 4 years ago.  His decision to take his life stunned me; it was tragedy beyond description. I spent a lot of mental energy replaying conversations, scenes from family gatherings, in a desperate effort to make sense of it all.  It was during this season of deep sorrow that I noticed my sighing.

 

In the pursuit of distraction from my loss, I had the privilege of going to a friend’s to work with her horses.  There is truly some mystical healing connection that God allowed me to work through by grooming those animals.  I learned a lot about the habits of horses, the common and those unique to each horse.  Did you know that when a horse blows air through its mouth, bouncing its lips, they are relieving tension?  It was through working with the horses that I first made the connection to my new frequent sighing habit.  To sigh meant I was physically releasing stress that had accumulated within me.

 

Over time as God has worked deep healing in me I have sighed less and less from the stress of loss.  But I notice when I sigh now and it’s become a self-check mechanism: kind of a biofeedback tool for me to pay attention to what is going on within me.  That’s how I have learned that a sigh means different things for me.

 

So why title this post Saturday Sigh?  When the week has been full of work, comings and goings, and lots of appointments, a respite from our regular hoopla comes on the weekend.  Saturday brings a sigh of relief.  It’s a release of stress and a settling into a slower pace.  Today is a Saturday of white space on the calendar; no obligations, no commitments.  Yes there are things that need to be done but somehow when the clock is not the ruler of the day, there is an audible sigh of relief.

 

How about you?  What makes you sigh?

Thankful

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Ever have one of those days?  You know the kind: the coffee pot clogs and water and grounds are all over the counter, the car doesn’t start, all the lights turn red on your way to your appointment and you’re already late?  What about a day when you get in one of those moods? Your clothes are uncomfortable, your coffee is too hot, and something smells bad in the fridge.  Things seem to go from bad to worse each moment.  The merry go round is going and you want to get off!  How do you stop it?  The best way to throw on the brakes that I have tried is to stop!

 

But it takes more than just telling myself this attitude stinks and I don’t want to be this way.  I have to change my attitude.  The only thing I have found that actually works for me is to force myself to name good things that happened that day.  There are good things happening all the time but when I am in “one of those moods” I don’t see them.  I have to stop and remind myself of what they are.  So the question becomes, What am I thankful for?

 

Sometimes I have to start with the basics: the air I am breathing, a body that is working, water to drink.  But once I get going, recognizing the many things I have to be thankful for I can literally feel my muscles relax and the tense, yucky attitude fades.  It isn’t easy to get there, I really have to force myself out of the bad attitude sometimes.  I have been challenged on many occasions by how opposite my head and heart feel from the straightforward words of Paul …”in everything, give thanks.”  What has really helped me is remembering that change is a process it’s not as simple as flipping a light switch: on – off- on – off.  I have to cultivate thankfulness.  That takes focused attention.

 

If you need help with this like I do, I have a book recommendation for you.  It is life changing!  1000 Gifts by Ann Voskamp.  Her writing style is very poetic and visual; as I read I could see the road she spoke of, the trees she described.  But she has an economy of words that I admire; a way of writing that drew me in but didn’t go on too long.  I don’t want to take away from the value of reading her book, but I loved how she unpacked this idea of being thankful.  If you haven’t read it I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you do.  Then when you start to go down the path of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, you can catch yourself and start a thankful list instead!

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