Learning Along The Way

Rhythm of Life

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When I asked my husband, who is a trained percussionist, this question: How important is rhythm to being a percussionist? He looked at me with this quizzical expression, but he humored me and responded seriously, “Rhythm is essential.  You can’t be a successful percussionist without a good sense of rhythm.”  I pressed a little further: Can rhythm be learned or is it innate?  He said, “No one gets all the variations of rhythm without practice.  Rhythm takes practice.”

Rhythm provides the structure to music that all else in the piece is built upon.  Interestingly, what is true of music is true of our lives.

Our pastor uses the phrase, “Rhythm of life”.  I’ve pondered the meaning and implications of that phrase for awhile now.

Rhythms can vary.  Just like seasons.  But even in the repeating of the seasons there is rhythm and it is comforting to our souls.

Rhythm to your day, the regular habits of thought and action that turn your mind and heart toward God are what the phrase is about I think.

It’s a pattern but not a rigid pattern; not a legalistic way of going about your day. Although there are those individuals who are very disciplined and their structure does not vary even to the minute.  That’s not what I am talking about here.

Rhythm of life is more about the big ideas, elements, that fill your days.

Ironically we often move through our day driven by the clock, the external keeper of  rhythm rather than by an internal intention or rhythm.  Time and again I hear people say things like: ‘I just don’t know where the time goes’ or ‘I don’t have time for …’

We are all given 24 hours to steward.  What we do with the time is up to us.  Of course there are fixed and variable elements in our lives that must be attended to: people, work, sleep, food; but it is often the intangible elements that give us pause when they’re missing: time with God, creativity in some form, mental rest.

If you are feeling out of sorts or driven by the clock without a break, I encourage you to make an assessment of your days.  Write down how you spent your time at the end of the day.  Do that for three days.  Look at what fills your time.  Now comes the hard part.

Change.

If there are things in your day that don’t have to be there: tv watching, internet surfing, excessive texting or tweeting, excessive time on the phone; make some changes.  To make rhythm adjustments change has to happen.  To make room for the intangibles some tangibles have to go.

In Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus he tells them about change.  “These former ways of living, don’t work for you any longer.  Put those off.  Instead, put these on.” (the Message)

What are “these” that Paul was referring to?  What are the things on your list that don’t work for you any longer?

 

Is Change Happening?

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Do you wonder if change is happening?

You might be battling discouragement today.

Maybe when the new school year began you started (or tried to start) to make changes in your routine: getting up earlier, eating right, being on time places, not losing your temper, writing that thank you card, memorizing scripture, or even just reading the Bible; any one of these changes might be on your to do list.

You started your plan and it was going great!

But life happened today and the to do list didn’t get done.  Or maybe it’s the third day in a row that “life happened” and the to do list is buried under the mail.

The question is: do you give up?  Just quit because change is too hard and you don’t see it happening?

Or do you make a different choice?  The choice to persevere?

Steady Progress
Three years ago to honor my dad’s memory I wanted to make our backyard into a relaxing retreat area by installing a water feature.  Here’s what it looked like brand new:

The plants were little and it looked rather stark.  It wasn’t lush and verdant like I had imagined, partly because the cost to plant mature plants was way out of the question and partly because I am committed to the process of growth and I wanted to watch the yard change over time.

Little by little, when I wasn’t paying attention, change happened.  Now, this summer the fountain area looks like this:

My point is, don’t give up!  Little by little, when you push back against the tide of demands and make another choice to continue on your new routine, starting again, you will see change when you least expect to!

Sometimes when we’re the most discouraged, we do want to throw in the trowel, in gardener speak, and just quit.

I have one word for you: DON”T!

Keep going!  Start again!  Get support from friends or, contact a Coach!  Click over here to learn more about working with a Life Coach.

Change can happen.  Change takes time.  Give yourself grace and get support.

First Time/Last Time

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This weekend sitting out in creation at our campsite listening to birds and the far off voices of people playing volleyball was a new venue for me to write.

It was a first time.

This was a big first for me; family campout with no kids.  It’s weird to think this is what life is going to be like not all that long from now.  Weird.

Our eldest is now joyfully married to a beautiful woman and they live out of state.  14 hours away.  Our youngest is a senior in high school and looking at schools across the country. 3000 miles away.  Is it something I said?  Naw, I’d like to think it was something we did: raised them to be independent thinking men!  However the end result doesn’t keep me from looking back…

Why is it that we don’t appreciate what we have and long for what we don’t have?  What is it in our nature that keeps us from being grateful or content?

I tried so many times to convince myself to be okay with the changing seasons; no more nursing babies, no more toddlers, kids in school and not at home, no more driving the Mom taxi because they have their licenses, no more family laundry; well maybe I won’t miss that one!

Not sure why each change has brought sadness, but it has.  I am happy to see the new stage for my sons, proud of the growth and accomplishments that come with each new stage, but the leaving behind is what seemed to be the issue for me every time.

I know I’m not the only mom who misses the little faces that now sport whiskers; although the whiskered faces are so handsome and manly and the way things “should be”.  Some women can’t wait to get the kids grown and out of the house so they can have their time back: time with their husband and time for themselves.  But that’s not me.

This mom wrote a great post last year that grabbed my heart: finding joy

I also know that I am not the first person to keep looking back at what was; Scripture is full of stories of people who looked back instead of being okay in the present.  

I can think of some pretty significant ones: Lot’s wife who couldn’t leave Sodom and Gomorrah without longing for her home & life there; the Israelites at the shore of the Red Sea; that same group complaining out in the desert wanting to return to the slavery of Egypt instead of moving forward into the Promised Land.  In the face of pretty big things God did or promised to do, people have wanted to return to what they knew instead of looking forward and trusting God for what was yet to be.

What about today?  Can I look ahead with trust to the unknown of what lies ahead?  Is it possible to be okay with not knowing if this is the last time?

Life Lesson #3 Keep On

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I have been under the pile.  Things to do.  You know, the usual: laundry, cleaning the house, grocery shopping, cooking. Add in relationships with family and friends, don’t forget work, and then fit in hobbies like gardening, reading, learning music, sewing.  Now add some major life events: college graduation for one son, college planning for the other, wedding planning for the firstborn and just to make life more interesting: The Change has come upon me.

I had all but abandoned my writing when, in the middle of the craziest busiest week this month, I looked out the window and saw this sight

I was immediately reminded of my unfinished blog series on Life Lessons.  So here it is.

Keep On.

The sunflower that had fallen is the tall one on the left.  If you don’t know sunflowers, it’s the tall skinny plant in the top row, directly above the garden arch in the picture.  It only slightly leans forward from the others. Hardly noticeable in its difference.  The brokenness that could have killed it now has become a testimony of perseverance.  Keep On.

I have been slowed down in my life by circumstances.  Or at least that’s the excuse I am clinging to right now.  But my circumstances are my life.  So how am I slowed down?  By my attitude about the circumstances.

Allowing my focus to be on the hurry and worry, rather on the acceptance of what is; the lack of seeking wisdom of what to let slide; neglecting the need to reach out to others for help; not speaking a very short word that is a step to freedom: “No”, have all contributed to a dry, distracted, unfocused life.   This is not the way to Keep On.

The sunflower shows me.  Keep seeking life.  Be renewed.  Keep On.

He came that we may have life and have it more abundantly. (John 10:10)

Mindset adjustment: abundant does not mean DOING MORE!

Abundant means life giving: Jesus in us, for us and to others.  Overflowing life.  Strengthening life. Joyful life.  Even in really tough circumstances.

My circumstances are NOT tough right now.  But I have had them.  You might be having them now.

Where do you seek life that changes you, that strengthens you?

I look to Jesus.  He lifts my head.  Through the Word. In the garden. In the chirping of birds. Through music. Laughter.  Oh that we might have eyes to see and ears to hear!

Friends, don’t let the busy-ness of your circumstances distract you from seeking life!

I made myself take time to read this morning instead of “getting right to work”.  I finished a terrific book, Beautiful Outlaw, by John Eldredge.  He ends the book with this:

“But this Jesus—this Beautiful Outlaw—if his exquisite life were to invade ours…oh, my.  It would change everything.”

Seek life.  Keep On.

His prayer at the end of his book was my prayer this morning.  It can be for you as well:

“Jesus, invade my life.  Cleanse this temple. Produce your Cana in me.  I give my humanity to you, to be restored by your humanity.  I give my life to you to live your life.”

 

Keep On.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunflower Life Lesson #2–Develop Strong Roots

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When I first talked about the amazing gardening experience, I briefly mentioned that, although the sunflower was lying down among its neighbors the cantaloupe and watermelon plants, it was not uprooted.  The sunflower was already 5 feet tall when it fell.  That means there was a deep, strong root system already in place so that the plant didn’t die when this trauma hit.

 

What life lesson is here for us?  Develop Strong Roots.

 

The question is: How does one do that exactly?

 

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you already know that I have weathered some really difficult seasons. I would guess you have too since life is not easy!  It’s funny that we think it should be; if we do all the right things then the result will be a good healthy life, great kids, a spouse who treasures us, a house with a white picket fence and a garden without weeds or gophers.  Ideal perhaps, but not reality.

 

How do we develop strength to withstand trauma that comes out of nowhere?

 

Develop Strong Roots.

 

Strong Roots take time, nourishing soil and water.

 

Time—a regular habit of spending time reading, hearing, and thinking about God’s Word.  Investing in your soul takes your time.

 

Nourishing soil—Jesus taught about soil. The soil of our heart can be nourished by praying for God’s work in our lives; memorizing Scripture; humbly surrendering to growth and change that He leads us to make that results in a changed heart more like His.

 

Water—Jesus told the Samaritan Woman “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”  Jesus is the Gift of God Himself to each of us.  He lived the life we should live, died the death we deserve, and was raised from the dead so that we may have hope knowing that our physical death has no lasting victory. His Spirit will live in you, to strengthen, guide and empower you when you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;  for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.

 

Life Lesson #2: Develop Strong Roots to be able to be lifted up by the Master Gardener when the difficulties of life knock you down.

“ Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord. “For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit.”

Know that I am praying for you, dear reader: that you call on the name of the Lord; that you nourish the soil of your heart in Him.

 

Sunflower Life Lesson #1 –Desperate

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I showed you this picture yesterday.  I was struck by how desperate this sunflower was to point toward the sun.

 

This plant absolutely twisted its stem into a crook shape to face its head upward.  That took a lot of the plant’s energy.  But because it’s in a growing season, the plant didn’t even stop growing!

 

Are my daily time investments keeping my head upward?

 

I wonder…how desperate am I to point myself, to reorient my life, no matter what, toward the Son?

 

Do I hunger and thirst for a right relationship with God or am I just saying ‘I’ll get to that later when my to do list is complete’?

 

Some questions are rhetorical; asked for the sake of discussion without having or needing an answer.  Some questions are direct and in need of answering.

 

These questions need my attention.  They need your attention for your life, too.

 

How desperate are you?  Enough to change your whole life focus?

 

 

Resilient (or How Does My Garden Grow?)

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I had the most amazing gardening experience ever!  If you’re not into gardening, that’s ok, it wasn’t super technical but there is a great story so bear with me.

 

A week ago our son graduated from Biola University.  We don’t live in the LA area so attending his graduation meant traveling down a day ahead.  Since we were going to be down there anyway we had made plans to be gone the whole long holiday weekend.

 

We left on Friday afternoon.  If you’re a mom you know how much preparation goes into getting ready to leave; for me it includes surveying the garden for potential issues that might need attending to before leaving.  All was in order so we were good to go.

 

It was a wonderful graduation; made this Momma very proud!  But I digress; the event is not the focus of the gardening experience!

 

After returning home four days later, I went out to survey the garden.  I found one of the giant sunflowers lying down in the middle of the cantaloupe and watermelon plants.  It hadn’t been uprooted so I knew I could stake it up and it would be okay.  That’s not the amazing part.  I’m getting there.

 

I wish I had thought to capture this with a photo.  While it was lying there on its side for 3 -4 days, the head of the sunflower, not yet in bloom, had turned itself upward toward the sun.  The stalk of the sunflower had to twist itself around in order to face upward.  When I staked the plant up it was crooked and the head was facing the wall behind the plant.  This would be a gardening experiment for sure.

One week later, this is what the plant looked like:

 

 

I have gleaned a lot of metaphors from this gardening experience.  As another experiment, I’d like to hear from you!

What life lessons do you recognize from my amazing gardening experience?

I’ll share mine tomorrow!

The Work of Training

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Here you see the result of training.  Not the act of training, the result of it.

 

The person who did the training had tools, time and energy that had to be used to get to this point in the growing season.  It was a lot of work and will continue to be a lot of work.  Some days are more demanding than others, but truly, year round there is work that needs to be done to maintain healthy strong life in the vines.

 

I see all of life through the lens of a garden.  It’s just the way God’s made me.

 

What season is your life in right now?  A season of rest?  Of lying dormant with no evidence of life? An active season of preparation?  A season of waiting?  The thing about seasons: they change.  But do we?

 

Any season you find yourself has its joys and challenges.  That is what is consistently true of life.  The training and preparation we go through before we’re called upon to bear fruit is so important.  Summer is a season of balance: watering, weeding, dead heading, maintenance, and waiting for the plants to bear.  Some days it looks like nothing is happening.  But the efforts will pay off.

 

Reading, studying, and memorizing God’s Word is much like the balance of gardening in the summer.  Sometimes no one sees or knows of your efforts but God Himself.

 

What are you in training for?   Does it frustrate you that no one sees your efforts?  Or are you like these vines, showing the evidence of training?

 

What if you’re not sure?  What if you’re feeling a longing to get busy and make a change in your life? Ready to get your hands dirty but don’t know what step to take?

Let’s talk! I’ll listen.

 

 

Weeding in the Garden

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What is growing in the garden of your life that you’re not paying attention to?  We get busy with the day to day routines: cooking, cleaning, laundry, shuttling kids, changing diapers, cleaning messes, working outside the home, caring for aging parents, the list goes on.

Tending to the garden of our hearts takes time, energy and focus, all tools you may feel you don’t have in your garden tote.  In different seasons the weeds grow more rampantly than others.  When I have allowed the weeds to go, the work to remove them is overwhelming.  When I have been too busy to be consistent in tending the garden, it shows.

What to do to get back a tended, well watered garden (think life)?

1. Start weeding.

What’s there that isn’t helpful?  What’s getting in the way, crowding out the good things you want to see in the garden of your life?  Get rid of whatever that is for you.

2. Ask for help.

Weeding takes a practiced eye; knowing what is a weed and what is a good plant can be confusing if you’re not used to the practice of tending the garden.  You might need a mentor, a seasoned gardener, to help you recognize what doesn’t belong.

3. Adjust your priorities

Everything cannot have #1 priority.  Really hard for an over-achiever to hear, I know!  Learning to know the difference between what things are ‘have tos’ and what things are ‘want tos’ also takes practice.  In different seasons your time must be spent in particular ways and in other seasons you’ll find there is more discretionary time.  But the fact remains, a little regular attention to the garden is the better practice than only one day a week or once a month!

Start.

Who knows, once you get in there you may discover the Master Gardener has planted something in your life that you weren’t aware of!

The Value of a Journal

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I know we are uniquely wired so what is burning for me today may not even cause a spark of recognition for you.  But I can’t help myself; I have to talk about how amazing it is to capture life in a journal.

 

The other day I was going through bookshelves for donations in my never – ending effort to lighten the load of stuff; I picked up a journal of mine from two years ago. I began to thumb through some of the entries and I ended up sitting down on the floor amazed by the goodness of God.  As I read, I revisited quotes I had captured from books I’d been reading at the time, snippets of Scripture, reflections on my days and prayers I had offered.  It was in those prayers I was struck by the beauty of making time to journal; I was able to see the changes that God alone has wrought in me.  Many of the struggles I was walking through then have been resolved; not all in the ways I had prayed but in God’s perfect way and timing.

 

My thoughts would have slipped away, the story of my life gone without notice, had I not practiced the discipline of journaling.

 

I call it a discipline because I really believe that anything we don’t do automatically, like breathe and have a heart beat, is up to us to form as habits.  The time of day you eat, what you eat, when you sleep, how you practice self-care, whether or not you regularly do anything, are all up for grabs without habits.

 

The habit of jotting down thoughts or author’s quotes or passages of Scripture that speak to me has had the effect of slowing me down, pausing to reflect, deepening me in ways I would never have planned.  Looking back on what I heard from God’s Word, capturing what I ask for in my life or for others has produced my personal Old Testament.  I can read and remember what God has done and can tell others, testify, of the goodness of God.

 

I haven’t always been really pretty in my writing in these journals.  I have given myself permission to write freely, authentically, so grammar, spelling and editing are out the window.  But something else has emerged through my freedom of expression; I have been raw and transparent without editing too.  Freeing myself from conventions has given my voice room to speak out my thoughts and heart hurts, giving voice to my prayers that I can say God has blessed.

 

I am not religious about journaling.  I don’t journal every day.  Some journals I haven’t filled.  I started journaling in high school through the genre of poetry; I didn’t want what I was talking about to be translated by an uninvited reader!  So my early journals really reflect my bondage even through expression.  Over the years as God has freed me and I am continuing to learn to walk in that abundant freedom, my journals reflect those changes.  It is glorious to see evidence of God at work!

 

What are your thoughts about journaling?  If you’ve not developed this habit, “it’s never too late to be what you might have been” to quote George Eliot.

 

What’s keeping you?

 

 

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