Reflections on 2014

I find myself in a contemplative mood tonight.  I suppose it could be that it's the eve of the eve of a New Year.  It kind of makes one reflect on the events of the current year.  As I sit here the words of a song by Plumb come to mind...

"Standing on a road I didn't plan

Wondering how I got to where I am

I'm trying to hear that still small voice

I'm trying to hear above the noise"

It feels like that's been my life this year.  Struggling to hear above the noise of my doubts.  Struggling to hear the still small voice that is God when everyone around me is trying to advise as to what He is or might be saying about me.

I look back on 2014 and I'm nowhere near where I wanted to be.  I should be a semester into a Bachelor's in Biblical Studies.  I'm working the job that I thought for sure God was going to phase me out of this year.  Instead the job that I felt He wanted me in the most is gone.  And so I question, "How did this happen?  What did I hear wrong?  What's wrong with me that You changed the plan?"  

Then I think about all of the thought that went into picking out my word for the year.  To be honest I argued with God over my word.  It was weird.  Everyone else got to pick words like give, fight, love, etc.  Not me, God give me Pieces.  

Pieces....  Kind of what my year seems like.  It feels like the dreams from January are in pieces around me and most of them seem to be lost.  Pieces kind of indicates something is broken, right?  Who wants to go into the year with a word that hints of brokenness?

Of course God also gave me a really awesome song to go along with my word.

Still, it feels like my brokenness gets put on display for anyone to see.  Pieces means vulnerability.  It means that people all around me get to see the messiness of my life.  

As I reflect on the past year though I start to see the truth in the line that says...

"He knows how to make your pieces fit."

See the beauty of the word pieces means that I am broken, I am messy, I'm emotional and I've hurt a lot this year, but God has taken those pieces and is making a mosaic out of them.

A mosaic by definition is a picture or pattern produced by arranging together small colored pieces of hard material, such as stone, tile or glass.  In my case the material is the broken pieces of my hopes and dreams that when God steps in He knows exactly how to take the things that might not have quite worked out the way I had hoped and He makes them something beautiful all the same.  The even better part is that they become something far more beautiful than they would have been otherwise because God designed and redesigned the mosaic of my life.

When I'm in pieces that's when God's work shines through the brightest.  When I'm in pieces I'm not trying to hold myself together so people see the God I think they should see.  They see the God that is designing and redesigning me.  I suppose when I look at it through that lens the painful moments where I was being broken in some way have a new beauty and meaning.  

So..... What do you think God will do with Reckless Abandon for 2015?  Yep, technically it's two words, but it needed the adjective....

Oh, and I have a song for that too...

Peace vs Chaos

Chaos....  It's the week of Christmas.  In fact it's the Eve of Christmas Eve, all around us there is rushing to get those perfect last minute gifts.  To cover everyone on the list that we might have forgotten...  The mailman, the paperboy, did we get the distant relatives their fruitcake.  We take a season that inundates us with songs about peace on earth and we join in the chaos that is anything, but peace.

Peace....  It's such a calming word.  Just saying it makes one start to relax...  Until you remember that you still need to wrap all of those presents and get them under the tree.  Oh, and does overnight mail really make it overnight or should you drive the 3 hours and just deliver the package yourself?  Although you really don't have that time since you need to wrap still more presents and then get ready for one family gathering on Christmas Eve and yet another Christmas morning.  And then there's the Christmas Eve service at church or should you try to squeeze in some time volunteering for the dinner the church has agreed to host at the nearest shelter.  Which will appease God the most during this crazy time of year?  Which one fills the requirement of "goodwill to men" the best?  The decisions pile up and scream to be addressed and still Christmas creeps closer and closer while you just don't have enough minutes in the days left until the big event!

We stuff our lives so full of activity at this time of year.  We do it all in the name of good, but is it really?  I've been giving it some thought this year as our family has decided to not get caught up in the chaos that surrounds Christmas.  

I sometimes think as Christians we've become caught up in the commercialism that surrounds the time of year that we celebrate the birth of Christ.  We get caught up in the chaos that is the world around us.  Do we ever stop to think about the events that surround that insignificant night in Bethlehem centuries ago?  

I say insignificant because that's really what it was.  When you think of the media coverage that surrounds the birth of the latest British royal and compare it to the fact that the first to acknowledge the birth of this baby that was likely just one of several born in Bethlehem were mere sheep herders that night really isn't significant from a world view.  In fact the chances are that night the occupation by the Roman government and military was of much greater significance than the young couple from out of town who had their first child.  So in a time filled with the chaos, confusion and unrest that comes when one country is occupied by another there comes a baby boy.  A baby boy who's birth announcement is delivered to rough shepherds in a field by angels.  I love the way the NIV translates Luke 2:14 

"Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace to those on whom His favor rests."

Peace.... There's that word again.  Peace, what does it mean?  I think often we believe that it means an end to war both physical and spiritual wars.  But that child was born into a nation occupied by another government.  And 30 plus years later when he was put to death that same foreign power still controlled his homeland.  Kind of challenges the idea of peace.

So what if peace means something totally different than what we think of this time of year?  What if peace means that the purpose of his birth was to bring peace in us as a counter to the chaos that surrounds us?  What if the "peace to those on whom His favor rests" is intended to be a gift that we are given?  What if it's God giving us the opportunity to throw off the chains of chaos and duty and to purposefully invest in moments of quiet?  What if it's not just moments what if it's the opportunity to live our entire lives with a tranquility and quiet inside us that defies the chaotic, busy world around us? 

Sounds great and unrealistic, right?  But does it have to be?   That same baby boy who's birth was announced with the phrase "peace to those on whom His favor rests" went on to share with his followers that:

"Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God"

Is it possible that by choosing to live in the chaos that surrounds not just Christmas, but is the accepted not just in the world around us, but in the work we claim to do for the Christ who promoted peace we miss out on unimaginable blessings?  Have we turned relationships into tasks to be accomplished rather than a whitespace moment to spend with a friend that will add beauty and meaning to our lives?  Have we begun to thrive on the white noise that surrounds us and no longer recognize that God speaks in stillness?  If in his favor God extends peace then are we choosing to decline His favor by opting to live in the chaos and call it God's work?  Is it possible that we are settling for less than God's best for us in neglecting one of the key reasons he sent us his Son?

So on the Eve before Christmas Eve, I'd like to invite you to opt out of the chaos.  Stop and find a moment to explore what peace means to God.  We're surrounded with songs that remind us about holy nights, moments of peace, simplicity and we have a choice.  We can become a counterbalance to the new kind of chaos that exists in our world today or we can join it and never fully grasp what peace on earth truly means.

My Paradigm Shift

The paradigm has shifted and there is no going back to what was before....

We all go through periods of change.  Some moments are easier than others.  A little happier and with change that is something to celebrate.  Other moments are a little less enjoyable, but survivable.  Still others leave us devastated in their wake wondering if life can ever be alright again.  I think the latter ones are the moments when we feel that paradigm shift.   

I don't know about anyone else, but I for one am not overly fond of things that change in a way I can't recognize anymore.  It leaves me feeling off, wondering where I fit in and more often then not if it is a negative experience I find myself trying to find a way to blame myself for the fact that the change happened.  

Often lately I find myself feeling much like Frodo returning to the Shire after his journey with the ring.  He left the Shire an idealistic hobbit thinking very much that he would deliver a ring to the Elves and he would be done.  Little did he know that a long, difficult journey was before him that did not end at Rivendale, but went all the way to Mordor.  When he returns he is so changed he never really finds a way to fit into life in the Shire.  A shift had occurred and he was no longer the same hobbit that everyone remembered.  

I think that is very much how I feel at this moment in my life.  I'm a Mommy, but it's not my sole identity.  I have things I feel very passionate about, but fail to see a way to live them out.  After months of isolation I'm returning to a world where everyone's daily life has continued on, but I'm no longer a part of it.  Where does that leave me?  

I feel like God's been showing me some interesting things about where that leaves me.  It leaves me in a world where I see much better the "what was supposed to have been" rather than the "what happens now".  But I think that's ok.  It leaves me realizing that it's alright to stop pretending things are ok when they aren't.  It leaves me valuing my whitespace moments that provide the opportunity for God to speak to me.  It makes me realize that maybe the well-meaning white noise around me keeps me from hearing what God wants from me right now.  Maybe God blesses me with silence and isolation to bring me closer to Him.  

I look around me and see so many activities going on under the guise of good, Godly activity and I start to understand that we've become so busy doing for God that we've forgotten how to just be with God.  Or did we ever really know that?  Are we afraid of what God will say to us if we stop long enough to hear?  Will He ask us to do something uncomfortable?  Something we don't want to do?  

I'll pretty much guarantee that He will.  How do I know this? Because when I stopped to listen that's exactly what He asked me to do.  To stay in a situation that brings much more pain than joy.  A place that it's impossible to explain to others why I stay except for the simple explanation of God says stay.  But in staying He's asked even more.  He's asked me to stop pretending.  Stop pretending that I'm strong enough to muscle through each moment He asks me to spend there.  To stop pretending that I'm not messy.  

The reality is I'm exactly that.  I'm messy, I'm emotional, I'm not ok all the time and the truth most days I don't want to stay where God has asked me to join Him.  But that's where my paradigm shift has left me, in a place I don't feel I belong, but God says I'm there for a reason.  My paradigm shift has changed the landscape that I'm returning to like an earthquake disrupting the beautiful California countryside.  In its aftermath my home disappeared and I'm left trying to figure out the pieces that are left of that former life.  

Pieces....  My word for 2014....  It begins to make sense of my paradigm shift....  It destroyed the facade of genuine and authentic and makes me see myself differently.  It brings to my attention others that struggle with shattered pieces that belonged to what used to be their reality and in doing so leaves me feeling a little less lonely in my messiness.

Masks

Have you ever noticed how much people like to wear masks?  We never want to really let others see us for who we really are, so often even when we profess to want genuine and authentic relationships we bring our faithful masks along.  Of course we make sure they are the really cool ones.  The ones that are nearly indistinguishable from us because they contain key pieces of our emotional and spiritual DNA.  They are thin enough that most of the time we convince even ourselves that they are really us, but like any really good mask they hide who we are from everyone around us and sometimes they are even so successful they hide us from ourselves.  For however long we wear them we can convince ourselves that we really aren't as lonely, sad, depressed or isolated as we truly have become.

Masks become a way of life with most of us.  They are what we hide behind when people hurt us or disappoint us.  In fact the more people disappoint us and fail to respond to any gestures of genuine relationship we perfect our mask just a little bit more.  Protecting ourselves from hurt and rejection we secretly vow inside to never let anyone that close again.  

Tonight, I'm finding myself conflicted.  One part of me wants to continue to hide behind the mask, while the other part values the honest, but rather ugly truth.  The honest truth is 2014 hasn't been a very fun year for me.  I've felt rejected and abandoned on several fronts.  It feels like I've lived most of this year much more dependent on a long-suffering (and very awesome) husband than I would have liked with very few friends.  I think circumstances made it even worse since I started feeling the need to live behind masks again.  Never able to be myself with those around me.  Being me wasn't ok anymore.  I'd been genuine and open and the hurt that came along afterward wasn't worth it.  I wasn't ok, but it felt like everyone around me was wanting me to be ok.  They wanted a Tonya that wasn't hurt and crushed, but that's where I was so I pulled out my mask.

One of the bright spots in 2014 for me has been the introduction of a new counselor into my life.  God blessed me so much when he sent D into my life!  With her help and experience I'm learning that it's ok to not be ok with the way things are in my life right now.  I'm also learning to value the very small group of people that it's ok to just be Tonya with.  The small group of people that I can just take off the mask of politeness and say I'm not ok today.  The people who can talk me down when a panic attack starts.  

I'm finding that I'm happiest when I can stop the masquerade that is life outside of this support system because the truth is that I'm not made to live my life behind a mask.  God made me to reflect His glory and that glory has the ability to shine the brightest in my darkest moments.  In my darkest moments I've discovered that I can't hide behind the mask of false happiness anymore.  I've lost that mask somewhere in the last few months.  So I walk out of moments that make me double over in sorrow and loss and I go find a corner in which to mourn the loss of that piece of my life.  I've stopped trying to hold it together as much.  I've also noticed though that when you lose the mask it makes people uncomfortable.  They want to fix something that isn't in their ability to "fix".  My reality is I'm in a season of great loss and grieving, I'll make it through.  God promises in Psalms 23 that even when I walk through the death of a dream He's with me.  He doesn't make me go there alone.  Yes, He's with me, but he's also surrounded me with my tiny fellowship of friends who's strengths support my weaknesses.

So my truth and reality is I'm not ok right now, but I'm ok with that.  Every time that God adds another member to my fellowship of friends, He adds another piece to the puzzle that allows me to lose another mask.  And the adventure in that is my friends come from the most unlikely places!! 

White Noise

As I enter the last month of 2014 I find myself looking back over it with mixed feelings.  It's been such a roller coaster year.  I find myself marveling that the very things that filled me with hope and excitement at the start of 2013 have now become a source of immense pain, sorrow and isolation.  How does so much change from one year to the next?

2014 has become a year that while I would never change the birth of our beautiful little Myka, for the most part I struggle often with just wanting to forget the pain that is the last year.  I've had a lot of "why, God" questions this year.  Why when I've always experienced almost sickeningly good health do I have to be taken out at the knees by pregnancy?  Why does it have to impact all of my relationships in a way that leaves me feeling alone and isolated?  Why does that extreme isolation have to last another 2 months after our Princess Baby arrived?  Why do I have to continue to feel that extreme sense of aloneness even after that 2 months is up?  I'm full of why questions.

The reality is I'd love to snap my fingers and get over it.  To get on with my life the way I lived it before everything started to change, but the truth that I'm discovering is that while the answers to all of my "Why" questions aren't always apparent every so often God gives me a little glimpse at the reason.

You see, God has spent 2014 teaching me some important lessons, just like Moses had to flee to the desert to hear God, Elijah had to be separated from the noise of those around him and even Jesus, himself spent 40 days in the wilderness, I had to become separated from the busywork I was surrounded by that masked itself in relationships and church work to actually have the opportunity to hear what God was trying to tell me.

James reminds us that we are to "count it pure joy" whenever we meet with difficulties, but I think that myself like most people would like to kind of gloss over that part of Scripture.  It's much easier to read about the cancer survivor or the motivational speaker faced with the challenge of living life without arms and legs then it is to ask how that verse applies to me personally.  See, I know I'm probably not going to like the answer.

For me the answer has meant that God has had to remind me that I can't hear him when I won't slow down to listen.  When I'm caught up in the activity even of "good work", there is lots of white noise.  White noise while it's never very loud none the less drowns out beauty of silence.  This morning as I write this I'm sitting in a quiet living room before anyone else is up.  It's amazing what you hear when you stop to listen to what is going on around you.  I hear the little noises that my baby girl makes in her sleep.  I hear life starting to happen on the street outside my house as people start their morning routines or commute.  I hear the ticking of the clock that I often forget about.  I hear the creaking and settling of the house we call home.  And lets not forget the breathing of the dogs lying next to me.  In my daily life, I had become so busy running from one thing to the next that I never stopped to pay attention to the seemingly meaningless details.  The things that make up the fabric of our lives are the little things we often ignore.

I think that's what God has been using 2014 to show me.  The importance of taking those moments and just listening and being.  Whether it's with him or with the people I happen to be with, I realize that by having things taken away I value them more.  I realize that it's ok for me to give myself permission to spend an hour with someone and not look at my phone.  If I'm staring at a screen for a large portion of my time with someone, I'm creating white noise that keeps me from truly seeing what they need from me.  They don't need me distracted, they need me present.  The time that I spend with someone and how I spend it impacts how they will be a part of my life tomorrow, next week and even next month.  If I make them feel that I'm distracted and they are taking me away from more important things chances are that next time I try to spend time with them they might not be available.

I think as I try to re-acclimate to life after extreme isolation I realize the little things now.  I realize how I feel when someone I'm with is trying to carry on a conversation with another person via text while spending time with me.  I struggled for a while with how it made me feel, but now I'm seeing it as the gift it is.  Extreme isolation brings with it a higher sensitivity to how a disconnected person experiences the things that I might have never thought twice about doing before experiencing it myself.

At first I just thought of myself as broken.  Health that made it impossible for me to live a "normal" life.  Isolation when my health kept me from doing all the things I had once juggled successfully.  Now I'm starting to see it as a blessing.  God has given me the opportunity to clear my head of the white noise that we so often live our whole lives in and has allowed me to find value in whitespace and saying no to busyness while saying yes to life with purpose and being truly present in small doses rather than living in the lie that you can juggle dozens of "close" relationships successfully.  Never taking care of or truly taking time for myself to recharge and reconnect with God.  Don't get me wrong.  As my counselor reminds me, I'm coming out of this part of my life with a new identity.  One that I often don't understand completely yet and I do still have moments of mourning the "normal" life that I had at one time.  It seems like it would be much easier to go back to living in the white noise, but once you've seen the value of life stripped down there's no going back.

The Danger of Extremes

It's come to my attention recently how much we tend to live life by extremes.  We are either on top of the world or at the bottom of the trash heap.  We either want fast food ready almost before we order or we want a long leisurely multi-course dinner served to us over an extended period of time.  But the extremes don't stop there.  They infect our language and the way we live our lives.  We become so accustom to the extremes that when we are in between them (which let's face it, unless we are creating our own drama to exude a false sense of the extreme we spend most of our lives in the in between) we feel less than enough.  We feel bland, unexciting, not worth anyone's attention.

As someone who grew up in church the extremes were defined as the mountain top experience and the valleys of life.  The mountain top experiences were the "Praise God!" "Hallelujah!" moments while the valley times were the moments you were somberly asking everyone for prayer and if it were extremely personal it was the infamous silent prayer request.  The in between times didn't really rate acknowledgement.  Nothing exciting was happening, but then again neither was anything bad.  So you just coasted along content to maintain the status quo.

So, you might ask, what is the problem with those extremes?  Don't we need the rejoicing of the mountain top experiences and the reality checks of the valley moments?  Isn't there a time for fast food and a time for the five course meal?

Of course, in Ecclesiastes we're given a very lengthy reminder that there is a time for everything.  The top of the world moments should be celebrated and the moments of deep struggle need to be acknowledged, but the danger comes when we feel the constant need to live in one or the other.

One of my favorite places to vacation is in the Smokey Mountains.  I remember several years ago a friend and I spent the July 4th weekend in Gatlinburg and took the time to drive to the tallest peak of the Smokey Mountains National Park.  It was a lengthy drive to get to the top of the mountain and once we got there it was a short drive to crest the peak of the tallest point and begin the descent toward the valley.

I suppose that what stands out to me about that is the fact that life mimics the mountain range.  While we have those moments of ecstasy and the conflicting moments of deep despair, neither is where we spend the bulk of our time.  Most of the time is spent making our way to one or the other of those extremes and in the overall snapshot of our life we don't spend great amounts of time (even if the valley moments seem to last forever some days) in either extreme.

So what happens if we start to change our thought process from needing to be in one extreme or the other to being ok with where we are at that moment in time?  What if we learn to celebrate the mountain top moments, properly acknowledge the valley experiences, but also to value the in between times when we are headed to or from one of the extremes?  It creates an interesting experience as we learn to be present and experience each moment of the life we're given.  Personally, I think it means we begin to experience the extremes in a much healthier way because rather than living from one of them to the next we are experiencing the journey that it takes to get from one to the other.  When we choose to only experience life by extremes it's like reading the Cliff Notes version of a classic book.  Oh, you get the general idea of the storyline, but you miss the heart of the characters the author created.  You miss the tension that builds from scene to scene so the climactic end to the story doesn't hold the same excitement as if you had experienced the entire story as the author intended.

So what's the danger in living our lives in extremes?  If we are bouncing from extreme to extreme we are missing the opportunity to experience our own lives as they are taking place the way the Author of our lives intended them to be experienced.  Those in between moments are there to provide us with the chance to get to know the other characters that God has introduced into our story in a unique way and for a purpose.  And as with any well-written story, if we fail to take advantage of the opportunity to engage and develop relationships with key characters as they are introduced we miss vital elements that are essential to the intended development of our own story.

The Beauty of Brokenness

I started this post 3 weeks ago, coming back to it today I found myself able to finish it.  Probably a little differently then it started, but I think that demonstrates the point all the more...

I find myself contemplating the much overlooked beauty of brokenness today.  I suppose that could be because today I feel exceptionally broken and God's needed to show me how that speaks to him.

You see tomorrow I enter the 30th week of my pregnancy.  A pregnancy which honestly has been extremely difficult both physically and emotionally.  Life change is never easy, but when pregnancy, job change and a move to a house in much need of TLC come all at the same time it brings an entirely new meaning to the word overwhelmed.  Add to that the unexpected limitations that pregnancy brought to my life-style physically (making it to work each day I'm scheduled is the equivalent of making it to the top of Mount Everest!) and what should have been a time of great celebration and joy becomes more like surviving the Amazon armed with nothing, but a pocket knife.  That's caused a lot of frustration for me since I truly am excited about and look forward to meeting our Little Miss Muffet, but the struggle to survive and get things ready while not being able to handle the day to day routine of keeping a house in order and making supper often takes precedence over the excitement that I'd love so much to live in for even a few days.  As I see other expectant mom's able to continue their lives with full time job demands and still take care of the children they already have it makes me feel less than adaquate most days.  Every so often the thought crosses my mind that I can't judge my behind the scenes bloopers by the highlight reel of their life that I see, but the truth is in my brokenness I'm often guilty of doing just that.  I see all of the pieces of me that aren't good enough and don't measure up.

"The pieces of me" it's really an interesting choice of words since at the first of the year when challenged to choose a word for the year God kept bringing me back to the word  "Pieces".  Everyone around me is picking words like give, strength, fight...  Words of action or substance and I kept coming back to the word "pieces".  I didn't understand it completely, but I went with it.  It wasn't long after my word choice that we discovered we were expecting, pregnancy soon exposed the need for some job changes where my second job was concerned as stress brought on blood pressure issues and hormone changes soon meant that pushing through the difficulties became nearly impossible emotionally.  So again I start to see the pieces of me that don't measure up to other people's expectations.  The pieces that make up me that aren't ok with other people as they start to come to light.

It's interesting when you start a blog post only to come back to it 3 weeks later...  As I write now I sit in a hospital bed waiting to see if our Little Miss Muffet is going to be joining us several weeks earlier than planned.  Waiting....  It's become another of my pieces.  It seems to be one that God feels I need right now.  It's interesting though as I find myself chatting with the nurses taking care of me sometimes baby chat other times lapsing back into the chatter that was a natural part of my life in my 10 years of nursing I find that God seems to be using this time in a hospital room to give me what my favorite author, Bonnie Grey , refers to as spiritual whitespace.  He's taking this time in my life to slow me down, take away the responsibilities that feel so overwhelming at home and He's showing me how some of those pieces fit.  He's reminding me what it's like to be able to share my story with someone else while at the same time reminding me to stop and listen and rejoice in their story as well.  To hear the similarities, but recognize the differences in our stories that have intersected for this moment in time.  Considering that when faced with the idea of a hospital stay earlier in pregnancy I fought it and argued against it, I find that right now it's exactly where I need to be.  It's given God the perfect opportunity to show me the beauty that is the brokenness I've felt for so many months.  A chance for him to remind me where I have been, but at the same time to reinforce where He's leading me.  

So right now in the moment while the pieces of my beautifully broken life have me resting in a hospital bed I find myself enjoying the whitespace moments God is sending me.  Moments where Dustin and I can just rest and listen to our Little Miss Muffett's heartbeat, moments like now where her little heart tones become the white noise I go to sleep by, time spent with my own mom learning to listen to the stories and experiences I haven't always listened to well, but thankful for the time hear them again and learn what might apply to my forthcoming adventures as mommy to my Muffet.  Brokenness, pieces of me and whitespace... The one thing they share in common?  The beauty of a picture that God wants to create in each of us.