Learning Along the Way - Shining Light on Your Next Step

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!

Do. Be.  An apparent contrast in terms; but is it?

I have spent a majority of life in the doing arena.  Get good grades.  Do your best.

Striving for approval, recognition, acceptance.  Our culture places value on achievement.  We are trained up to fit in, act right, look a certain way, have an acceptable spouse with an acceptable career; live in a particular place, drive acceptable cars.  The list goes on.

None of these things or goals are necessarily bad unless the motive behind the goal is bad.  Bad motives?  What would those be?  The interpretation of motives depends on your worldview.  By what measuring stick do you compare yourself?

With the measuring stick of the world, the list above will be evaluated by what is the biggest and best.  Who determines what is best?  Your peers?  The advertising agencies?  The opinions of your family and friends?  The measuring stick fluctuates with the popular influence of culture.  When have you arrived?  When can you simply relax and enjoy life?  How much is enough?

What if you wanted to change the stick, which measures you?

Unfortunately many who choose to walk along the Way as a Christ follower bring with them the measuring stick of the world and apply it to how they’re doing as a Christian.  Suddenly without recognizing it, the life of faith takes on the life of the works focused world and relationship with God is sacrificed on the altar of performance: serving on committees, teaching Sunday school, leading a small group, helping with AWANA.  Again, none of these activities is bad unless the motive for doing them is.

What if there is a different way?  A way of living simply; a way of enjoying just being without striving for…whatever?  Do or Be. Now that is the Quest.

There is a different Way.

Slow down.  Get off the merry go round.  Spend time alone with the Lord, in silence.  Write in a journal.  Sit still outdoors.

Listen to the birds.  Focus on one sight or sound.

Be still and know…

I posted this picture on facebook today. My dear friend Sue gave me this sign for Christmas the year my mother died.  It is a huge visual reminder for me on a daily basis.  I would go so far as to say it has helped me heal.

What is it about a good laugh that feels, well, so good?

According to research there are so many reasons why laughter is good for us!  Here is a link to a great article telling of all the many benefits of laughter:

If you don’t hop over there, here are some quick benefits of Laughter:

helps your physical self by

strengthens our immune system

helps lower negative affects of stress

helps your emotional self by

easing stress levels

changing your mood

helps your social self by

strengthening relationships

building resilience

This article also gives some suggestions for ways to bring more laughter into your days.

My personal favorite has been to laugh at myself and invite others to join in.  Just last night we were watching our favorite baseball team on tv.  There was a camera shot of a couple of fans and one had made a sign, which read: Hit the ball here!  The person had cut a hole out of the sign and had slipped their arm through and then put on their baseball glove.  No big humor here.  Except that when I first saw the man standing there with his gloved hand through the sign I wondered to myself

“How did he get that glove through that small hole?”

When I realized how ridiculous my first thought was I laughed out loud at my silliness.  That laugh led to my true confession to my family which in turn triggered their own laughter.  It was a great moment of the power of sharing a laugh.

Another benefit of laughing at oneself is humility.  You can’t think you’re all that and a bag of potato chips when you stop taking yourself too seriously.  They’re mutually exclusive.

Better health, better relationships, happy life.  Who wouldn’t want to laugh?

What do you do to help build laughter into your days?

Mother’s Day has been hard for me.  My mother passed away five years ago this June 26.  But Mother’s Day was hard before she was gone.

On her deathbed she blessed my sons, she thanked my husband for his parenting and love.  She spent time alone with my dad and with my brother. And for me?  Not a word. An angry glare in silence.  A glare I had seen many times in my life.  I met that look with the same little girl hopefulness: “ I love you Mom.”  On her deathbed, she turned her face away from me and muttered, “I love you too”.

What would possess a mother to reject her child time and again all the way to the end?

A lifetime of hurts.  A lifetime of longing for affection and acceptance.  A heart that yearned for simple gentleness that was not given.  That was her legacy to me.

In these years of healing since her passing, I have learned I have much for which to thank my mother.

She taught me to be introspective.

She taught me to be resilient.

She modeled a strong exterior and how to be a hard-working woman.

She showed me how to suck it up when life was tough.

She also taught me what kind of mother I wanted to be.

Since her passing I have leaned hard upon the Lord as I learned to trust Him rather than seek my mother’s approval.  In place of performance I receive grace.  I am accepted, as is, no performance necessary.   These are Truths that I have Known in my head but now Know and Experience in my heart as well.

I didn’t realize how desperately I was seeking after the wrong acceptance, conditional acceptance.  All the while God was patiently waiting to remind me that He already accepted me and took care of the needed performance on the Cross of Christ.  I’m forgiven and accepted because Jesus was rejected and condemned.  What an exchange!

Now that Mother’s Day is past these reflections may seem a little after the fact, but even today I recognized again how deep these wounds go and how God’s love is deeper still.  My prayer is all will come to know how deep the Father’s love for us, how vast beyond all measure.

This is one of those books.  Read it again!  Again?  Again!

Max was their alter ego I think.  We would roar! And gnash!  And roll our eyes along with the Wild Things.

Seeing the cover makes me smile.

Pretend play and acting out characters in books were a part of childhood.

Sweet memories indeed.

When the movie trailer came out both my adult sons were excited to see it; we planned to go together.  One thing or another got in the way of us going to the theater; I haven’t ever seen the movie and I’m not sure they have either.  Somehow a movie version might steal or change the memory of this book.

Thank you Maurice Sendak for your willingness to step outside the box of conventional children’s books.

This book will forever be a glimpse of childhood for my sons and a very sweet set of memories for this Momma.

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?

“Come to Me all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy and My load is light.“  Jesus

What is very appealing in these words of Jesus is the idea of rest, rest for my soul.  Twice He mentions this idea.  It is easy to picture my physical self coming to Jesus, laying down a physical burden like a backpack and then being at rest.  But I don’t think that is all He means because Jesus says “rest for your soul”.

How do I come with my soul burdens and receive rest?  How do you?

What are the burdens of my soul?  And yours?

“Search me O God and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.

Point out anything in me that offends You and lead me along the path of everlasting life.”  David from Psalm 139 NLT

There is something soothing about rain.  It might be the fact we haven’t had enough rain this year.  Maybe it’s soothing to me as a hobbyist gardener.  Whatever the reason, I love to hear the rain fall.

Rain is renewing.  It rinses the leaves. It cleans the air.  In San Luis Obispo, it’s FREE irrigation!

Of course too much of a good thing is still too much.  Sometimes an abundance of a good thing like rain can be dangerous.  Thankfully we’re not there yet.

What we do with an abundance of good things?  The abundance may not come in the form of rain; it might take the form of an unplanned addition to your family or a financial windfall, or too many lemons on your tree for you to make use of.

If my mind is set on the things above then what to do with abundance will take on different form than if my mind is set on the things of this world.  I mentioned that I have been mulling over a question for several days and that tumbling, rolling thoughts have bumped up against a false narrative that I have believed for a long time.  What’s a false narrative?

I first learned the idea from the Apprentice Series.  The author, James Bryan Smith, introduces the concept in The Good and Beautiful God.  “We are creatures who live by our stories” A false narrative is a story we have believed that is not true.  Lies we believe come in many forms; interior transformation takes place when we replace false narratives with the True narratives of Jesus.  I have loved reading through, talking through and walking through the transformation process with others.  That is real community: people willing to risk being vulnerable with others and do the messy work of really relating.  But I digress…

The false narrative that I saw through the tumbling question was simply this: my stuff is my own.  If I really look at the difference the Resurrection makes I see the places in my heart that I have clung to stubbornly like a petulant child grabbing a cherished toy and turning away with a loud ‘No!’  I have believed that stuff is important to show a level of achievement, a statement of ‘I have arrived’.

The Resurrection is a demonstration of new life, of ‘other world’ life, where the focus is not on self but on the Giver of life and every good gift that is given.  Whatever the gift is, the Kingdom perspective is the gift is meant as a blessing to be shared, a way to be a blessing to someone else.  Jesus going to the Cross, taking on my penalty so that I am free of the guilt of my sin, giving me new life through His sacrifice is the best good and perfect gift!  Receiving the Gift is the beginning point in the process of spiritual transformation.  My mind can be made new, my false narratives can become new true narratives day by day.  That is good news!

So I am beginning to see my abundant stuff differently.  Considering what and how to share with others.  Awareness is the first step to change.  My awareness of the false narrative that my stuff is my own is the first step to change; what I do next will be a part of the ongoing process of being Lisa in whom Christ dwells.

What have you been recognizing within yourself?  What change are you considering?

The tumbling I mentioned has continued.  This question, What Difference Does the Resurrection Make? has rolled around in my head now for two days; the backdrop transforming thought as I have lived a regular life on the outside.

I’ve made a connection, thanks to the comment left on the post.

Right theology can lead to right thinking which can lead to right action. 

Please notice I did not say an absolute ‘does’ or a guaranteed ‘will’ lead to right result.  We can know all the right things but what we do with them, the outcome, has many opportunities to get messed up.

From the spring of 2009 to the summer of 2011 I had the privilege of meeting weekly with a group of younger women.  We called ourselves NTBS (non-traditional Bible study).  We didn’t go through a traditional Evangelical Bible study workbook.  We spent our time looking together at the big idea: “what difference does being a Christ follower make in my daily life?”  We had opportunity to work through Renovare’s Spiritual Formation Handbook and grapple with weekly Soul Training exercises that caused each of us to squirm a bit in different areas of our lives.

After working through the handbook we began to read and discuss and act on The Good and Beautiful God by James Bryan Smith.  In this and the following two books in the Apprenticeship Series a concept was introduced to us that none of us had ever tackled before; the idea of narratives we tell ourselves.

A.W. Tozer said “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”

Slowing down to really think about our thinking about God and His Word and, when necessary, work on aligning our false narrative with the True narrative found in Scripture was the focus of our time together.

I miss meeting with these women.  We became a community within our larger community.  One was moving for grad school, my life circumstances weren’t going to allow a weekly meeting in the evenings in the fall, so we agreed it was time to take a break from NTBS.  But I am a changed woman from spending the time with these women, allowing myself to really think about what I believe and how my beliefs affect my actions.

The tumbling thought of What Difference Does the Resurrection Make? is still rolling around in my mind and has bumped up against a false narrative I have told myself for a looonnnggg time.  More on that tomorrow.

I have spent the better part of today alone and musing.  I did have some lovely outdoor time hiking a nearby trail with a dear friend, but even then I spent more time listening or asking questions than talking about what’s rolling around inside.

Our Pastor Tim asked an open-ended question of his Easter Sunday audience: “What difference does the Resurrection make?”  And I’ve been mulling it around in my head ever since.

Our family shared a huge feast with 25 others yesterday at my friend Sue’s home.  The echo of the question was ringing in my ears keeping me distracted and not 100% in attendance with everyone sharing the Resurrection Cake (angel food—hole in the center covered with whipped cream) and singing three verses of “Up From the Grave He Arose”.  I listened and asked questions, but still “What difference does the Resurrection make?” was tumbling in the background of my mind like a rock polisher at work in the garage.

And just like the rock tumbler sands off the edges and shines up a stone, pondering this gem of a question reminded me of this portion of Paul’s letter to the Colossian believers:

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

That’s a power packed sentence but it says it well.  Accepting the reality and work of Jesus Christ through the resurrection means we accept His rescue operation.  You and I can have forgiveness for all we have ever done or said or thought that has been below God’s perfection.  Not only are we forgiven but He has bought us back from the domain of darkness and put us into His kingdom!

Have you thought about this question?  What difference does the Resurrection make?

It’s big.  There’s more.  Stay tuned…