They finally found their way, not to a cobbler, but to a big dumpster. Two silver flats, once a birthday gift, have retired from the journey known as my life.
Their stories don’t include trips overseas, where they graced the walk ways in London or Rome. No reminiscing about pounding the pavement in L.A. or New York to interviews, auditions or jobs. They didn’t walk the stage at graduation, or dance at a wedding reception. The sole secrets they carry are simple and more unassuming.
These shoes have seen more work than play, because I can’t work in heels. They have felt the cool marble floor as I stood helping women find the perfect bra, and a confident fit. They have heard sermons preached, and songs sung in church. They carry the scuff marks of working in a kitchen with savory food and great company. They carry the hint of coffee, after spending late evenings in coffee shops. There’s worry, doubt and anxiety in their steps, but also hope, joy, and peace.
I looked at my tired, worn out flats and remembered they are journeying shoes. They only tell part of the story, but they don’t define it.
As I chucked them into the trash, I felt like God was reminding me that is not about the shoes. It’s remembering that He is with me in all my steps. He is in me, taking all those steps, because of Jesus. One step at a time is what I am called to, and trust Him with the rest. I get caught in the details, and the trials of living life, when I am really on an adventure. If I take a few steps back, everything comes into Focus. I remember that regardless of where God leads me, He purposes my steps.
30 Days of Hustle
Real Talk
I’ve been in a bit of a blogging funk. I’ve let emotions like fear,worry, and doubt dictate my decisions lately, and that includes my writing. Ironically, I find the less I write the more it contributes to so many negative emotions. It’s like if I don’t create, it builds up in inside and turns into a mess. Any of you creatives out there know what I am talking about? I spend far too much time asking the wrong questions, and listening to the wrong answers. The more excuses I’ve let squeeze in, the more the tenacity to write is pushed out. Let’s just say this is my, oh, 20th attempt at blogging consistently again. I may fail again, but maybe this will be the time I don’t fail. Maybe this time will be different.
Starting Again
Today I was faced with the same challenge, but from two different sources. The challenge, essentially, is to do some things differently the next 30 days. The year is about half over, and I have thought a lot about what I set out to do at the beginning of the year. The timing for this challenge is perfect.
This challenge first came from Jon Acuff. I signed up for his “30 Days of Hustle”, a way he is helping others carry out their goals. I’m a huge fan of Acuff. He is a leader, smart, and just an overall generous guy. Today was Day 1 of his challenge.
The second place I received this challenge came unexpectedly from a message at church this morning. My pastor preached on living a fulfilled life versus a full, and how we spend our time. He talked about how epitaphs have two dates: date of birth and date of death. In between the two dates is a dash, and he talked about the dash called our life. What would we do differently if we had 30 days left to live?
Kind of crazy.
I’ve already been feeling the nudge of the Spirit to present how I am spending my time. Aside from what God is accomplishing through the jobs He has me in right now, I know there are other things He wants to do through me. Some of the negative things I feel come from focusing on what God hasn’t given me, and what He hasn’t done. But there is so much He has already done, and has given me. One of the things I feel He has impressed on me is to write my first book, and I’m focusing on writing the first chapter of my first book over the next 30 days.
As a means of jumping back into blogging, I am going to take this opportunity to invite you to join me in on this 30 day venture. I’ll blog at least once a week for the next four weeks, and keep you posted. What is one thing you can focus on accomplishing in the next 30 days? What are some things you would do differently if you had 30 days left to live?
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Friday
I don’t know about you, but here is my blogging cycle:
1. Start a blog with all the excitement, and motivation of a sprint runner.
2. Go strong for a few months. Hit “writer’s blog”. Sort of.
3. Begin to let life get in the way. Abandon blog for a long while.
4. After around 8 months, the void sets in that was once filled by blogging and writing.
5. Visit ignored WordPress blog.
6. Blow the dust off the widgets, dig through the old words, and begin to be reacquainted with WordPress for the 8th time.
7. Five hours later, all that is accomplished is a new layout, a decent color scheme, and a “Apologize for my blog absence that you didn’t notice. I promise you, faithful readers, a *book* this time” post.
8.Repeate steps 1 through 8.
I don’t promise you a book, dear readers. In fact, I guarantee you nothing. All I know is what I’ve done in the past. I start and stop and start and stop and start and stop this blogging thing. What I can guarantee is that you know exactly how I feel. Sitting on the shelves in your mind are goals, projects, and passions. You know what it’s like to start something, and then quit.
And it’s ok.
It’s Friday, the end of another week. It would be easy to let the exhaustion, business, and excuse of “start on Monday” win.
Or not.
Today is our day to take a step towards finishing something we started. I don’t know what it is for you. But you will take a step today. The question is in what direction.
I’m blogging. Again. For the sixth time.
Back to grind.
Happy Friday.
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Foundations and sure footings
Algebra was a challenge for me; I barely passed with a “D”. My mom wanted the school to hold me back to repeat the class. She knew I was not ready to move on, and thought another year would help me out a lot. The school refused, citing a “no fail” policy, and off I went into geometry. Geometry was not as much of a struggle as algebra, but work reflected that my math skills were lacking. I continued on to precalculus and that was almost a joke. With a rocky foundation, a high level of academic insecurity and the demand to apply all math concepts I had been exposed to thus far, I was not ready for precalculus success.
When I entered college a couple of years later, I was placed in remedial college algebra classes. The frustration was two-fold: I thought I was done with math, and had I repeated algebra a few years earlier I probably would have placed out of the classes all together.
God brought to mind this part of my academic journey as He has called me to press into Him in some basic ways. After 27 years in church, years of experience in ministry and a B.A. in Religion, it is easy to feel as if I have a “solid foundation”. However, over time I’ve drifted in and out of studying God’s word consistently, and spending intentional time alone in His presence through prayer. Circumstances have exposed weak areas in my foundation, the lack of strong footings, in my own walk with Christ.
I often think of Matthew 13, when Jesus explains the parable of the sower to His guys, and the idea of the “cares of the world” stunting the fruitfulness of the Gospel in some one’s heart. I often find my own heart fighting against giving into the realities of living in this world, and seeking provision instead of the Provider. I plead with God a lot about wanting certain things in my life. I want to “just be done” in certain areas. I want answers. I want conclusions. I want to move on. I want to “meet the one”. I want new circumstances to over ride the present ones. I want financial security. I want a new season. I want the old season.
I want relief and not redemption.
God is not forcing me to, but revealing His desire to “hold me back” in my spiritual life. He is bringing me back to the simple truths, because He wants to solidify my confidence in Him. More importantly, I hear the Creator of the universe calling me to a deep relationship with Him. Unlike algebra, I am not called to master some level of spirituality, but rather relate to the Master rightly. There is purpose in all that God does, and in that I can trust Him through the repetition.
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A modest response
She grew up in a small town with a close family, and conservative beliefs. Rebellion wasn’t her style. Neither was using her body to gain attention.
So we sat and talked about the clothes women ware, our motives, and what was going on in her heart.
We already covered a lot of ground that summer about who God says He is, who He says we are before Christ, and who we are now in Christ.
The foundation was laid. It was perfect timing to exercise the truths we had covered, and to seek the Lord about this area of her life.
I think she was expecting me, maybe even wanting me, to give her a list.
“Shorts should hit so many inches about the knee.”
“No tank tops.”
“Buy a head covering.”
Who was I? Yes, I was her small group leader. Yes, I was 10 years older and a little more seasoned in walking with the Lord.
But I wasn’t her Lord.
I was a woman who asked, and still asks, those same questions.
I didn’t give her a dress code. Instead of adding to feelings of condemnation, I was able to give her encouragement. Encouragement to seek God and hear His heart about those things being stirred up in her own.
If I gave her a “dress code”, then it’s about me and my “standards”. It would be about the girls in our community.
It would be about our behavior.
I could give her answers, but those results are temporary. Instead, I took the opportunity to encourage her to bring it to the Lord, and trust Him to give her answers. I knew He would speak to her about it, and what He said to her would be more lasting.
It would also build her faith, and her trust in Him. How did I know? Because of the people in my life who trusted the Lord with me as I wrestled with Him for so many answers.
As believers we tend to want to say something, about everything all the time. With out even realizing it, too often we try to be some one’s Holy Spirit, some one’s “lord”. We want to have answers, and offer the right words.
Often it’s better to just listen, and ask the right to questions to allow a person to process.
Sometimes it’s better to say nothing at all. It leaves room for silence, and to seek the Lord for themselves and hear Him speak directly.
There is something beautiful about sitting with the Lord, with His Word, and to lay before Him those questions, those concerns, and doubts of our hearts.
In those moments we are clothed with something greater, more lasting than answers; we are clothed with Intimacy. God wants to give us more than a solution, He wants to give us Himself.
We can trust God with people, though we often don’t. Some times He will give us the words, and the wisdom to speak. But some times He doesn’t, and we can trust Him with the silence. We can trust Him with the “I don’t know” answers we give. To others, and even to our selves. Then, out of those unknowns, we will know something deeper: we will know Him.
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Behind every word ever penned.
Behind every song lyric.
Behind every movie scene.
Behind every chapter in a book.
Behind every witty line on a t.v. show.
Behind every blog post.
Behind every poem.
Behind every verse.
Behind every letter.
Behind every speech ever given.
Behind every eulogy every read.
Behind every sermon ever preached.
Behind every journal entry.
Behind every essay turned in at school.
Is a writer.
Keep penning those words. The world needs your voice. Tell your story.
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Here’s to you, bloggers
Writing lulls happen to the best of bloggers. You find a groove, a routine of writing, editing, then posting. You may read another blog, respond to their material, and a sense of sustained inspiration is found. Some thing on the news, *cough* “twitter feed” *cough*cough* lights a little flame under your keyboard and the next thing you know you have a PhD dissertation on your hands.
Maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement.
But then you have those days.
Days met with discouragement.
Doubt.
Lack of motivation.
And inspiration.
You know, those days where you question the pursuit, tempted to give up.
So a couple of days go by. Then a week. Life starts to get busier, and a month has gone by without a post. Next thing you know ten months have gone by, and you can’t even remember the password to your Word Press.
At least, that’s what happened to me.
But as many times as I started and stopped blogging I realize it happens to us all. Everyone is searching to find their voice as they post away thoughts and convictions. Everyone is fighting for time in a busy life and fighting against the mundane to find the words to create connection, to engage the audience in a conversation. Everyone looses the energy to silence the inner critic.
When I feel discouraged I start perusing other blogs. I dive into the taglines, and links to discover a plethora of electronic exchanges, a meeting of the minds tucked away in the comment sections. I find my fellow writers challenging the way things are, digging a little deeper into the patterns of the culture to discover what drive us to live how we live. They are responding to the culture, to the church, and the people around them through sentences and paragraphs.
So here’s to all the bloggers. To the ones who set the bar so high, you 4.0 GPA bloggers. To the ones who didn’t even know there was a bar, still writing pages on Facebook. To the ones who use it as an escape. To the ones who use it as a platform. To the progressive voices. To the conservative ones. Keep writing. Keep editing. Keep posting. Keep sharing. Because we’re all in this together.
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Fresh (re)start
I have to start somewhere.
I have to start some time.
After a ten month hiatus from blogging, it is daunting to tap the keyboard again.
It’s tempting to refresh old posts expecting fresh views.
But that’s not honest. Those are published posts. What’s written is read.
I started a blog, and then I quit.
A minor set back; a small failure.
So here’s to finishing what I started.
To a new season with fresh ideas, and new posts.
Here and now.
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Desiring Life: Marriage and children
In a pensive moment about where I am at in life I was thinking it’s possible I may never get married or have children. It’s wasn’t this grievous moment of reality, but just an observation.
I was specifically thinking about not being a mom. The part of me “ok” with that is fearful. Fearful of being a mom, and not being good at it. Fearful of how hard it must be to trust God like that. Fearful of being pregnant, and giving birth. Fearful of what motherhood will stir up in me, and not wanting to face it; that’s probably the biggest fear of all.
I wasn’t that girl who grew up dreaming up marriage and children. I had to become an adult before I even had a chance to have a childhood. My parents did the best they knew how. I was 13 when they got divorced, and things became increasingly more complicated. I continued to do the best I could, but that cost my heart a lot.
By the time I entered my 20s, marriage and children weren’t even a thought. I started to put on a lot of weight, because I was eating my emotions instead of dealing with them. The wounds had scabbed over with bitterness and cynicism. On the one hand I would say “I don’t need a man”, but what my heart was saying I didn’t trust men enough to let them get close. I was buried underneath my own attempts at living life. I wanted friends and close relationships, but had no idea how to let my guard down long enough to let people in.
Today I can humbly attest to the ongoing process of being transformed into the image of Christ. Where there was once death, and hopelessness, I now see the fruits of Life. I see humor being less of a defense, and more of a genuine response to interactions. I can hold meaningful conversations at length, and ask questions with true interest. I see God sharing His heart with me for family, and children. I see the softness in the soil of my heart where ground was once rocky, and too hard to be plowed. I see Joy rushing out to a car to say “hi” to my friend’s kids, because I genuinely miss seeing them.
And I would love marriage and motherhood to be apart of that process. But if I never get married or become a mom, it is God’s grace to me to see transformation in my heart. It’s hard to have desires go unmet, but for me it’s a work of Love to have some desires at all.
It’s easy for me to say I’m content in being single, because it’s “safer” not to risk my heart. It would be easy to decide what my life is going to look like. It’s easier to give up than it is to allow Hope to keep my heart soft to what ever God may have. It’s easier to create a perceived “known” to live out of instead of trusting God with the unknown. But as I continue to trust Him with the known of today I continually allow Him to grow the hope of the unknown of tomorrow. Because regardless of what tomorrow looks like, I know Christ is already there. And where ever He leads me I know there is Life to be found. Life in abundance.
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“Listen Up!”
Do you recall a teacher saying this to you? Or a leader at a meeting when he wants every one’s attention? Now you hear it every where you turn. From blogs to pulpits, your friend you see at Starbucks, from Facebook statuses to Best Sellers to tweets. Every one has some thing they want to tell you:
“You have to do something!”
“It’s up to you to make things happen!”
“Find your passion and pursue it!”
“Find your dream, or cause and fight for it!”
Or, and this is my personal favorite, lastly:
“Maybe God is waiting on you!”
So, I stopped for a moment, and thought about what is really being said.
First, the messages are centered on me, and not Christ. Second of all, they imply I have to earn something from God, God needs my help, or God is some how restricted by my actions. Thirdly, I realize waiting on the Lord sounds spiritual lazy to people. Fourthly, it echoes a fear I think we all share: we fear we don’t hear God.
Me-centered verses Christ-centered
Many questions surface in faith conversations: the authority of Scripture, how to apply Scripture to our lives, fighting for social justice, homosexuality, tattoos, divorce, marriage, same-sex marriage, finding your call, finding a church, baptism, Calvinism, abortion. It can be A LOT to wade through, and can be overwhelming. But Jesus unites everything. It’s all about Jesus Christ. I find Oswald Chambers words most articulate on the matter:
“A saint is not to take the initiative toward self-realization, but toward knowing Jesus Christ…He sees every situation in which he finds himself as th means of obtaining a greater knowledge of Jesus Christ, and he has an attitude of unrestrained abandon and total surrender about him.” (My Utmost for His Highest)
Each message is calling us to put our faith in one of two things: Jesus Christ Himself or ourselves/humanity/the church. Our purpose is to know the Word, and be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. As we are bombarded with the “me-centered” messages of our culture, we can pause to see where we are being encouraged to place our faith and our trust.
The Nature of God
What I start to really hear are my own doubts echoed in these messages: “Does God really love me?” “Is God really in control?” “Is God really going to provide?” “Is God really trust worthy?” “Is God really good?”
It’s easy to make assumptions about God, and His character. If I haven’t taken the time to know who God is, based on what He says about Himself in His word, then I can easily end up with a god in my own image. Furthermore, I am completely dependent on God to share Himself with me, which is why we must turn to the person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ answers the questions about God being just, and the wrath He demonstrated in the Old Testament. God is holy. I am not. A Sacrifice was required in order to have a relationship with God, and Jesus Christ is it. And it was *always* the plan. The entire Old Testament points to Christ, and the entire New Testament (and even now) points back to Christ.
Because I am in Christ, I am declared righteous. I am a coheir with Christ, and that means everything that is His is now mine. I have a new inheritance. I have a new Identity. Once I start to live out of this Truth I can start to see God is good, He is faithful, He sovereign, and He loves me. He desires to share Himself with me, otherwise Christ would have never came.
Waiting on the Lord
People have such a hard time with this, and their messages reveal as much. I wrote about this in my last post, so I’ll only say a few more things. Waiting on the Lord means I am giving God an opportunity to share Himself with me, and prove who He is in my life. I don’t know if you knew this, but God wants to share Himself with you. He wants you to get to know Him. He wants to proves He is good, He is faithful, and He is in control. He doesn’t need to prove anything, but we are dependent on Him to do so. God wants a trusting relationship with you, and trust is built by stepping out in faith-based on who God says He is in His word.
The proof is the transformation of our lives to look more like Christ. I see the presence of God in the peace He gives to friends in hard, and heavy seasons. I see God’s provision as He daily provides for me, even though I am not earning an income. I see God’s goodness when He gently guides my friend’s fear to faith through her relationship with her fiance. I see God’s faithfulness watching my friend daily surrender to the Lord, when the world around him tells him to surrender to his desires.
Hearing our fears verses hearing the Lord
I think one of our biggest fears is we don’t hear God, and we are going to mess things up. I think we often doubt His love for us, too. God’s not big enough, or sovereign enough so it’s up to me to get things done. It’s up to me to save the day, to love well, to care for people well, and to provide for myself. Jesus Christ, living His life through me, is the only One who can save the day, love well, care well, and trust God to provide.
I’m learning about this first hand. I haven’t paid my rent in a while, and I got a notice on my door last month. I took one look at the notice, and started to freak out. All of a sudden I was in my apartment, crying, and pacing around trying to figure out what I was going to do. How was I going to bail myself out, because clearly God had left me hanging. One piece of paper sent me sinking into a sea of doubt, forgetting I trusted God three months ago to quit my job without knowing what was next.
Then God reminded me of Peter’s story in Matthew 14, where Jesus is walking on the water during the storm. Jesus’ first words to His disciples, as they were freaking out, were: “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” Peter decides to take Jesus’ at His word, asks to come out to Jesus, gets out of the boat, starts walking on the water, takes his eyes off Christ, and starts to sink. If God is calling me to walk on water, then I’d better keep my eyes focused on Christ. Following Jesus means trusting Him to with everything I’m leaving behind.
The messages I hear feed on my fears, and not on my faith. They tempt me to distrust God, and trust myself. Everything in our nature wants to be self-sufficient, and a savior. It’s one of the reasons why the messages we hear can be deceptive. They are just one degree away from putting our faith in Christ, and putting faith in ourselves. People are tempted to put faith in humanity, but confuse the beacons for the Light.
I’ll end with this quote from a book I recently finished: “Be doctrinally diligent. Stick to one question-is this person [this message] directing listeners to Jesus?…” ~Max Lucado (Fearless p. 155)
The Racheal Retort 