Hope in Mommy Guilt

My first daughter came completely unexpectedly....  

When my husband and I discovered we were expecting it wasn't exactly planned, but we were excited.  Then reality hit.... nothing about what followed was normal!

Throughout my entire pregnancy I struggled with high blood pressure, stress, isolation and now as I look back on it, even depression.  

What I had been led to believe was one of the most amazing experiences in a woman's life, becoming a mother, is a period full of mixed emotions for me even four years later.  

Don't get me wrong, I love being Mommy to my two little world changers.  However, no matter how many articles, books and podcasts you devour on the topics of parenting and motherhood, I am not sure that anything prepares you for "Mommy guilt".  Mine started before my due date.

I was admitted to the hospital early in my third trimester and Myka was born nearly 2 months early.  

Enter Mommy guilt....  While in the moment I was thankful that she was alive and doing well even if that meant she was in the ICU, it didn't take long for Mommy guilt to hit.  As we were separated by the length of a hall and the restrictions of NICU for her and bedrest for me the realities of "I couldn't carry her full term", "I'd have to leave her at the hospital while I went home", "I can only visit once or twice a day" began to hit me.  

While our determined little girl, who was born with a check-list, made getting home to Mommy and Daddy a high priority and that phase of Mommy guilt was short lived, it was the introduction of a shadow self into my world of Motherhood.

Your story might not include C-sections, NICU and preemies, but each of us, who answer to the name "Mommy" know the feeling of guilt that we are not enough.  We can't get the ducks of our life in the same pond let alone in a row!  And we are being asked to care for these little humans?!

Somehow over the years, decades and centuries that mothers have existed we have created incredible and often unattainable standards for motherhood.  I have looked for it.  Nowhere in Scripture can I find that we as mothers are required to give our children 5 hugs, 3 books and a special song before they can go to bed (see Boss Baby for context).  As mothers we can believe that the traditions we start with one child are necessary when children 2, 3, 4 and 5 come along.  It's just not true!

I have been learning as a mom myself that we create complex rituals and routines for ourselves.  These become the ways that we assuage our guilt in the periods we need to care for ourselves.  

So my Mommy guilt story doesn't end with my oldest finally making it home.  My Mommy guilt story picks up again over the past few months.  In January, I finished my bachelors degree.  I am now in that fun phase of "between jobs".  Enter Mommy guilt.... My daughters go to daycare during the week.  I struggle with this every time someone asks me if I am a "stay at home mom".  I feel the guilt and shame hit me full force when I am asked about what I do and then am I a stay at home mom.  The simple answer is "Nope.  I am a new grad looking for a job".  So why do I feel less than enough?  

When did we decide that it was an ideal for mothers to stay at home?  Now don't get me wrong I have friends who are stay at home moms and they are amazing!  They take their kids on play dates, go check out all the cool things going on around town and have all the cute little Pinterest projects they do at home (my kids on the other hand think Pinterest is a cookbook!).  On the other hand though... I have friends who help others heal in their roles as Physical Therapist, Occupational Therapist and Nurse.  I have friends who are mothers that run their own business.  All of us are called to something different, even if we are mothers.  Our roles all look a little different.

A friend recently loaned me a book that reminded me exactly why my husband and I have chosen to keep our girls at their daycare.  The most powerful gift I, as a mother, can give my children is relieving them of the responsibility of being the center of our family.  I have two toddlers and they are both full of massive emotions!  These little tykes do not even have the ability to control their anger without guidance and yet so often we saddle them with the role of nucleus of the family.

The same idea goes for Mommy's though... One of the greatest gifts we can give our families is to not make ourselves the nucleus of their world.  None of us were made to be the center of the world.  Think about it.... In science class we learn about the center of the earth being hot.  Some sources estimate it around 6100 degrees Celsius.  So if we as moms make ourselves the center of family life... well... we make ourselves a hot mess, literally!

Over my life I have had a love-hate relationship with what we in faith circles infamously call "the Proverbs 31 woman".  She has been elevated to an ideal.  So much so that I have noticed it is not uncommon for men to think they need to "free" women from this burden.  Rather than freeing us from it I think we really need to take a closer look at her.  This woman was amazing!  Not in the way that we typically think of her as slaving over her family, providing for their every need.  She was amazing because she is our first model of what a passionate woman looks like.  

She was the first feminist... (vs 15) She provided for her female servants!

She was a servant leader (again vs 15)... She provided for her female servants!

She had her husband's confidence in a culture where women were inferior to men (vs 11).

She is a business woman, buying land and planting vineyards.

And I can't help, but think when I read that "her lamp does not go out at night", she networks and has others working when she is asleep!

So she is a business woman and has female servants... I think we tend to place ourselves in the context of this woman and her place in history while forgetting that we live in a different era.  This woman is very likely taking care of her female servants because they are helping take care of her children...  

When we just look at this woman in Proverbs 31 through the lens of a stay at home mom ideal then we are missing the freedom that she is bringing to us.  In the era during which Proverbs is being written this woman gives hope and inspiration to all of the women who feel inferior and less than enough.  The more I read her story the more I become convinced as a mom that her role was never intended to create an ideal.  It was intended to give hope and freedom to women.  She is in Scripture to remind us that we as mothers do not have to be the nucleus of our families to be loved, respected and honored.  We do not have to show up to life guilt ridden that someone with the gift of relating to and teaching children is spending the day with our children while we live out the gifting God has given us.  

I become more and more convinced that our children need our presence, our boundaries and our example to help them navigate the complexities of life.  They do not need to be the center of our worlds.  Nor do they need us as moms to move ourselves to the center of their worlds for them to thrive.

What I'm reading 

Making the Terrible Twos Terrific

When Vacation Is More Than An Escape

Have you ever noticed the way most of us approach vacation?  We push through everyday life dreaming of the next escape we get that we call vacation.  It is our chance to escape life... to go to the mountains or beach to go on a cruise or tour Europe.  We live looking to these little pockets of time as our reprieve from the drudgery of life. 

Our family just returned from vacation.  Yesterday in fact.... We still have unpacking to do.  We still have laundry calling us and everyday life is starting to kick in once more.  My husband is working while I am doing the everyday tasks once more of running the littles and puppies to their respective appointments.  I found my way to my corner of Starbucks where I once more connected with the people I have come to know in this space that has begun to serve as my "unofficial office" over the past couple of years.  

This time the experience of vacation and the return to "normal" life has been markedly different for our family.  We all struggled to move this morning, but we still managed to get to our respective places in a timely and orderly fashion.  In fact, there was a feeling of contentment as we all resumed the rhythm of life that we had put to the side for the past 10 days.  Our newly turned 2 year old was super excited to resume her routine while our extroverted 3 1/2 year old was all ready to meet up with her friends and tell them all about her adventures on the beach.

The anticipation with which our entire family began to view our trip home as we neared the end of our vacation time this year has caused me to reflect.  What had changed?  Why was this vacation different?

As I thought about this I began to see that over the past few years my husband and I made the choice to pursue a more intentional lifestyle for our family.  We began to prioritize date nights, we began to make sure we made adventure a part of our everyday life.  We framed simple things like running errands as a family as adventures.  We slowed down and took the time to explore the things we were actually familiar with looking for the new and unexpected.  We slowed down to try to see the world around us through the eyes of our toddlers.  

So often as adults we become cynical.  We view the world through the jaded eyes of our "vast experience".  We perceive our children as lacking our understanding of the world when maybe the more accurate viewpoint is we lost our wonder at the world.

Don't get me wrong, I am all too aware that we live in a world where evil abounds, but sometimes our jaded eye sees everything through the lens of evil intent.  The eye of a toddler sees the world through the lens of wonder and adventure.  The little things like shells on the beach, the power of an ocean wave and the quirky nature of birds take on a completely different meaning when experienced in the context of a toddlers world view.

Jesus reminded his disciples in Matthew 18:3: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

What if the true gift of children to our world is their ability to see the world through this special lens? What if that lens is what Jesus was encouraging us to embrace?  What if in stopping and allowing ourselves to learn from the children in our lives we are moving closer to the kingdom of heaven that Jesus promises?

I feel like this family vacation showed me something interesting about myself... When I stop and allow my daughters to show me the world through their unique lens as children I see more than just nature differently.  I see that I cannot nor do I want to spend my life in vacation mode.  Vacation serves as a break, a reset of sorts.  It is greatly needed to sustain the normal rhythm that is life, but it is not intended to become the normal.  Everyday life is full of needed boundaries that give us purpose and move us forward toward goals.  Vacation becomes the opportunity to relax the boundaries to not hold so firmly to a schedule.  It provides a longer pause that allows us to breathe a little more deeply and slowly as we are freed from the demands of life for a brief period.  If we take vacations too often they lose their wonder as they become commonplace, but when they are inserted at just the right moment they create the perfect pause in the incredible symphony of our lives that God is creating.  

I find myself wondering as I move out of this vacation and back into the rhythm that is life if just maybe those rhythms and rests combined with the world lens of a child is what allows us to experience the kingdom of heaven on earth?  When I stopped to look at our return from vacation through the lens of my 2 year old I see that the everyday rhythm provides a much needed security.  There is a peace and calm that comes from embracing the familiar.  When I look at vacation through the lens of my 3 1/2 year old I see the throwing off of the everyday boundaries to embrace a period of wild, abandon adventures.  When I step back and combine those two lenses, I feel just a little closer to God.  I see His love in the peaceful familiar patterns we return to, but I also experienced His power and joy in the moments we were able to forsake the familiar and explore the unfamiliar with an abandon that isn't possible in the middle of the everyday rhythms of life.

Hope in the Journey

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."

~Jeremiah 29:11

This verse found its way into my life the year I graduated high school.  It came in the form of a little picture frame.  I remember thinking at the time it was cute, but what would I ever do with it?  My style at the time was fussy and the more swirls and curls in a design the better.  This little frame was incredibly simple to the point of boring.  It read Journey across the top and contained the verse from Jeremiah across the bottom.  Somehow through numerous moves and multiple rounds of decluttering this little frame held on.  Every time I picked it up to put it in the discard pile it found its way back into the keep pile.  It is probably the only thing that I still have from that day.  

Honestly, while I've considered it a verse that has defined my life for a while, I have a love-hate relationship with it.  Sometimes I really struggle with believing that God really does have plans that include hope and a future.

There are moments my life feels much more like The Waiting Place from Dr Suess's Oh The Places You'll Go...

...for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go

or a bus to come or a plane to go

or the mail to come or the rain to go

or the phone to ring or the snow to snow

or waiting around for a Yes or No

or waiting for their hair to grow.

Everyone is just waiting.

When I'm in that waiting pattern, it is hard to believe that there could be some greater plan at work.

The waiting place doesn't "feel" very hopeful.

Then I'm reminded of that little picture frame that now sits in my living room holding a picture of my younger self surrounded by larger picture frames filled with photos of my little family of four.  This little frame holds a reminder in the single word arching across the top "Journey".

Journey

 1.  a traveling from one place to another, usually taking a rather long trip

2.  passage or progress from one stage to another

A journey requires waiting...

As Dr Seuss reminds us it can be...

"waiting for a train to go or a bus to come or a plane to go"

When my husband and I were dating we vacationed with his family in Florida.

His family had a practice of driving overnight only stopping for gas and maybe one breakfast.  

We agreed that we would take this approach...

We have not done this since! 

One of the things we realized about ourselves as a couple on that trip is that for the two of us the journey is what we enjoy.  The destination is great, but there is so much to enjoy between point A and point B.  

That trip we pushed ourselves so hard to get to the destination that when we got there we were irritable, overly tired and we spent a part of our first day there just catching up on sleep!

I'd like to say I totally get and apply the lesson to every area of my life from that point on, but sadly that is not always the case.  

I think it is so easy to get focused on where we feel called, the goal we have set for ourselves or the future and hope we imagine God has planned for us.  In an intense focus on making that destination happen we lose sight of the lessons on the journey.  

Lord of the Rings in probably the most epic example of a journey we have.  It would have been so easy for Tolkien to focus on merely the journey of Sam and Frodo to destroy the ring, but he doesn't focus solely on this one journey.  Instead he winds together the journeys of several characters all crucial to the ending of the story.  There are periods where these characters had to spend their time in "the waiting place" because of the role they were needed to play in the larger picture.  A role that was critical to the "hope and future" of MiddleEarth.  

It can be easy to think of these stories as just that stories, but stories serve to remind us that a journey is more than just a destination.  A journey is an opportunity for discovery.  A journey is organic and ever changing as people and circumstances come and go.  There is a good chance that most of us will not finish our journey with the same people who were there at its start.  Twenty years later I still remember the person who gave me that small picture frame.  I haven't seen them in nearly a decade.  That little frame over time has served as a reminder that God's idea of hope and future doesn't always look like the destination we think we are aiming toward.  On graduation twenty years ago, I had no idea that a few years later I would graduate from nursing school.  When I graduated from nursing school I had no idea that years later I would complete my bachelors degree in a completely different field.  That little frame with that little girl is surrounded by pictures of a husband and daughters I some days thought would never exist!  

All of that still doesn't stop me from trying to rush to the destination on occasion though!  Do you ever have those moments where you feel that the hope and the future God promises are really distant and seem invisible and highly unlikely to ever happen.  I'm completely convinced that the people Jeremiah was writing to in Babylon felt the exact same way!  Sometimes the waiting while all the details line up feels excruciating.  

You know what still happens on occasion to my husband and I when we take a trip?  

Inevitably we get excited and want to push through to the destination.  

It is in that moment we have to decide if we are going to let the eagerness for the destination override the pace of our journey.

That is sort of how life is....

When we are in "the waiting place" we can juggle the bus, train and plane to get out of that space sooner, but what do we lose in the process?  

What opportunities or relationships are sacrificed?

So if you are in a waiting place (like I am right now) take some time,

slow down, meet the people around you.

Stop trying to juggle the schedule to escape and embrace this part of the journey!

What I Learned from Whole 30

Yesterday marked the end of an experiment for our family.  Well.... more specifically my husband and I...  Shortly after we were married my husband expressed a desire to try out this thing called Whole 30.  Now if you are a woman you can probably totally relate to my initial reaction... 

"Another diet?  I've tried diet after diet and they just don't work for me.  Not only that we haven't been married long enough for you to see me without sugar...  That's worse than me without make-up!"

So we shelved that idea... For about 5 years to be exact...  Enter an author I very much enjoy, Jen Hatmaker.  Randomly across my Facebook feed comes a post about her experience on Whole 30.  As I watched her pictures of amazing food find their way across my social media over the course of the next 30 days, I found myself thinking, "Maybe, just maybe I can do this."

Jump to a few months following her experiment with this life change and I found myself listening to her interview with one of the creators of this system.  The thing that caught my attention in this particular interview was the idea that the purpose of the 30 days was to deal with our addictions to food.  That hit home for me.  

What I know to be true about myself is that when I'm happy, sad, depressed or anxious food is how I celebrate, cope or hide from the pain.  If I needed any reminder of that it had come the year before when I heard the thing no one wants to hear at a doctor's appointment...  I had gained rather than lost weight after the birth of my second daughter.  

In the months following this realization about Whole 30 my husband and I decided that we would definitely do this.  Finally, the day came when I finished the bag of Oreos and realized I just felt yuck.    The food hadn't filled the void that it usually filled.  Shortly after that I did what any rational person would do.... I bought a half gallon of unsweetened almond milk and determined our start date from that singular plastic bottle and it's expiration date.  

That was about 40 days ago...  

When my husband came home five years ago and told me that he wanted to try this thing called Whole 30 I never would have expected to learn about myself from what I thought of as a diet.  What I've learned from our Whole 30 experiment is how I can abuse food.  Crazy thought, right?  I mean we need food to live, don't we?  

What I realized as we progressed through the Whole 30 is that I really don't need all of the food I typically manage to consume in a day, week or month.  The Whole 30 helped me realize to recognize when I was genuinely hungry and when I wanted to eat because I was bored  The Whole 30 by taking away my sugar and processed foods made me think about what "treats" really hold value for me.  One of the things I spent the last week doing is anticipating my first Starbucks visit after our 30 days was over.  Prior to Whole 30 I made excuses to go big on my Starbucks visits, guzzling a venti latte or mocha in short order.  This time I found myself like a kid in a candy store with enough to only get one piece of candy.... What was the exact thing I wanted to savor....  What was the smallest size that would give me the greatest enjoyment?  

The Whole 30 made me realize that I had stopped enjoying the things that should have been special.  I was using them to mask or medicate a feeling that I didn't want to experience.  Our experiment with Whole 30 has made me realize that one of the dangers in the addictions that we allow ourselves to have in areas we deem socially acceptable is the way they dull our senses.  We no longer allow ourselves to anticipate the simple things.  They become commonplace.  

When I had to spend 30 days finding some way other than snacking to fight boredom I found time to invest in things that had been on my to-do list, but just never managed to trump sitting on the couch snacking and watching a movie.  I  decluttered our bathroom closet, pantry, bookshelves and half our basement.  I found more time to read and visit the library.  I found time to spend special days with my daughters.  I don't think I've ever tried a "diet" that made me do the soul-searching that Whole 30 did.  

The Whole 30 brought me face to face with my socially acceptable addictions in the form of food and in some respects my laziness.  There were days where the urge to go get McDonalds for the convenience it afforded was so strong, I had to make a decision to make to not make the fast food run.  I discovered there is a part of me that wants to make things easy for myself.  I in no way believe that my struggle with food is over....  I'm human.  I think that this will be an issue I need to continually be aware of, but before Whole 30 I did not see food addictions in quite the same way I do post-Whole 30.  Will I live the remainder of my life sugarless?  No, but I believe that I will choose more wisely how I spend my newly developed sugar allowance.  

The Journey of Discovery

You know that feeling when you feel like your entire world has been rocked on it's axis.  You know in that moment that nothing will ever be the same.  You just cannot see the world in the same way after "that" event happens.

I am not sure about you, but my favorite part of a movie is the moment the lead character realizes, who they were meant to be and just grabs on to it and holds tight.  It takes "that" moment, but then the entire story changes.  We move a little closer to the edge of our seats and try to reach in to the character.  It happens early in our lives.  I think instinctively even as young children we have the desire to be known for who we really are.

One of my favorite things right now is watching my two toddler daughters watch "that" moment in their favorite movies.  For my youngest, Eden it means at 20 months mimicking the motions of Elsa as she runs up the North Mountain and belting out the word "Go" at just the right time.  For my oldest, Myka it means getting out her guitar the moment Ash, in Sing starts to stomp out the beat to "Set It All Free", in a fierce determination to let nothing hold her back any longer.  At a year and a half and three years old my little girls recognize that in this moment these characters have recognized who they are and they want to be a part of that.

As we become adults the movies change, but the draw to that moment does not.  We see it when Aragorn comes into his own in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.   Right now I see it in the song "This is Me" from The Greatest Showman.  As I see this scene I lean in a little closer because I want to feel that moment that this group of misfits leaves the opinions of other behind them and owns their uniqueness.

Uniqueness.... Have you ever noticed how humanity will fight to own a one of a kind original piece, but wants the most unique creation of all, humans, to fit and conform?  This is a brokenness we see all the way back to the beginning of our existence.  The suggestion to Eve that by eating the fruit "you will be like God" is the first invitation to humanity to abandon our uniqueness (Gen 3:5).  From there on humanity manages to consistently find ways to lose or hide our uniqueness.  Overtime we became obsessed with a need to fit in to the larger whole.  To find our place by conforming to the expectations of the most powerful personalities in our sphere.

Now we become resistant to our own uniqueness because it now includes unique brokenness.  If we begin to examine that brokenness we begin to feel exposed.  Our brokenness prevents us from conforming.  So we hide it and call it a weakness, trying desperately to conform when we see the glaring evidence that our very brokenness makes us distinctly unique.  No one shares our brokenness exactly because they do not live our same exact story.

C.S. Lewis wrote,

Friendship is born the moment when one man says to another "What you too?  I thought that no one, but myself.."

That is the power in exploring our broken uniqueness.  It is only by understanding the unique gifts we bring to the world that we can truly say "This is me".

Our messy brokenness can be so difficult though.  When we start to explore it, we will experience rejection.  It will make some people who have shared our journey uncomfortable.  We will experience discomfort as we learn about the unique individual that we have spent years and even decades hiding.    We will find beauty.  The moment we lean in to the screen when Elsa throws her glove or when Aragorn give a speech worthy of a king becomes something we have the opportunity to experience ourselves.  It allows us to look at the characters we admire and feel kinship.

I have often spent my life feeling like Mia Thermopolis in the Princess Diaries.  I'm really good at being invisible.  If I stay invisible maybe I won't get hurt or will at least avoid conflict.  Maybe I won't get yelled at or punished.  There are so many advantages to invisibility.  It's the next best thing to conformity.  If you can't mimic everyone at least make sure they don't notice you.  Then I started to realize as did Mia, royalty cannot hide.  If I genuinely believe in this whole God the Father thing, then I need to learn as Mia did how to conduct myself like royalty.  And so I learned to explore my brokenness.

That exploration led me to realize a lot of big things about myself.  I struggle with depression.  I have panic attacks and experience anxiety.  I have PTSD.  I stress eat.  I have moments of crazy insane mommy guilt.  I yell at my husband on occasion.  I also learned that I have a massive amount of grace to extend to others.  I am an introvert, but I am also relational (yes.... those two things can co-exist in one human).  I learned I actually enjoy camping and I love the outdoors.  I realized that I have a gift for details.  I learned that in spite of what that mommy guilt tells me, I actually have daughters who regularly expect to go on "adventures".  I learned that I never outgrew cartoons and I absolutely LOVE Disney Princesses.  I learned that fresh flowers bring incredible joy to my life and that it is ok to have them.  I learned I enjoyed listening to Podcasts.  I learned I love Bible Study and Application.  I learned that I could earn a Bachelors Degree while raising toddlers.  I also learned there were some soul deep hurts that still haunted me.  The crazy thing about emotional and spiritual healing that I am learning is that you never really "arrive".  You can't actually get to a place and say well... Mark that off the list.

The journey of discovery is unique to each of us.  We get to take it at our own pace.  God will stretch us, but he doesn't force us.  He will challenge us, but he doesn't dictate.  What we do get in that journey of discovery is our own moment to say "This is me".  The more we embrace and learn who God designed us to be the more we are able to live in confidence in our uniqueness.  As we embrace the brokenness and the lessons and healing it holds we are able to stop letting others dictate our lives and we are able to listen more closely to the still small voice that knows exactly who we are suppose to be.

2018 One Word - Hope

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD. "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."

~Jeremiah 29:11

For the past several years I have adopted a Word for the Year.  

2014 - Pieces

2015 - Recklessly Abandoned

2016 - Exhale

2017 Intentional

Quite honestly, most of those years those words have seemed really difficult.  They have become reminders though that words can have more depth and meaning then we ever imagine.  In 2014, leaving a job meant feeling like my life was falling apart.  It meant feelings of loss and abandonment.  It quite literally felt like life as I knew it was falling apart.

The crazy thing about words though is that they create a story.  When the end of 2015 came along I found myself once more leaving a job (which honestly seemed a little reckless), but this time it was with a sense of anticipation.  We were expecting our second child and I was about half way through school.  There was the offer of a volunteer position in the field I was studying and things looked promising.

2016 saw the birth of our second daughter and the releasing of various relationships, expectations and learning how to be a one income family.

As I have reflected on 2017, I find that once more the idea of being intentional has impacted my life in ways that I never expected.  It meant that in a year that held a lot of change my approach to that changed was different.  I wasn't just reacting to everything that was going on around me, I began to learn to slow down and be intentional about how I responded.  Our family as a whole has tried to be more intentional about how we spend our resources.  It has meant saying no to some good things so I could say yes to better things.

As we neared the end of 2017, I began my usual conversation with God.  It seems like every year my monologue with God goes something like this...

"So, God, are we doing a Word again this year?  I'm not really sure I want to.  Last year sort of hurt.  I'm not quite sure I liked the way that word played out.  Could I maybe have a "happier" word if we are going to do this again?"

Inevitably it seems that when I start this questioning, God begins to show me just how much having a word that year changed me.  I never hear that one word the same way.  I have started to think of it a experiential living.  We live our entire lives using words, but do we fully absorb their impact?  We use words to argue our point in a debate.  We use words to build up, but also belittle others.  Even if you chose a word for the year, have you ever asked God to speak that word over your life for an entire year?

This year God indicated earlier that usual what my word for 2018 would be.
Hope.

I'll be honest.... I'm a little nervous about this word.  I have learned over the past few years that there is always more to a word than we see on the surface.  I think of hope as something clean and pure, a light at the end of the tunnel.  I am a little afraid to have that definition challenged.  What if I don't like what I learn about hope this year?  But what if a new understanding of hope changes me?

And in that comes once again the reminder that words can be one dimensional or they can be experiential.  To live a year allowing God to demonstrate the multi-dimensional facets of one single word or phrase is truly life changing.

Hope will change my life this year.
Will I like all of the ways that happens?
Probably not.
But will I have a deeper understanding of that one singular word Hope by the end of 2018?
Most Definitely!

An Intentional Christmas

Sometimes even though my word for 2017 has been Intentional, it seems like intentionality finds me in curious ways.  Going into November I didn't really think about celebrating Christmas intentionally.  I was just trying to survive.  

Then it happened...

I felt God telling me I had to stop and slow down.

I was doing lots of good things, but they were not necessarily the best things.

It can be funny how we get caught up doing and being part of something and we miss the fact that we are losing who God created us to be in the middle of all the activity.

So I listened 

(after several weeks of sickness that forced rest on me)

And I stopped...

And then I started to hear again...

It is amazing how quickly we can lose the still small voice that God uses to speak His truth into our lives.  

A podcast I listened to recently suggested that the reason God speaks so softly and quietly is so we have to lean in close to him to hear...

I loved the visual this creates....

It makes me think of my own daughters...

One of my favorite things to do in the middle of a tickle fight is to pull them close and say...

"I love you so much!"

And that is how my Christmas season has become Intentional...

In a moment of wrestling and struggling with all the unknowns that loom in my near future God pulled me close and whispered... 

"I love you so much!

I have plans for you that you can't even begin to imagine

and I am working it all out in my time.

I'm working on your future so you can just be and enjoy the present."

So as November faded into the past and December became my present, I began looking for ways to intentionally enjoy a time of year that can be so chaotic and crazy.  

So far we have managed three different visits with Santa for Myka, my oldest daughter.

We have shared the excitement of our annual Victorian Christmas celebration with our community.

We have painted ornaments, made cookies, just driven around looking at Christmas lights.

My husband and I took the time to cram ourselves into a little train because a three year old asked, 

"Can you ride with me?"

We are just twelve days into December, but I have unintentionally met goals early by suddenly having the margin to invest energy I did not have before I listened and stopped.

I have been learning in this Year of Intentional that intentionality is not something that comes easy.

It can look great on a motivational poster.

It sounds really inspiring.

The reality...

It is really hard...

For me this year Intentional has met setting boundaries that protect my physical and emotional health and holding those boundaries even when it becomes uncomfortable.

Intentional has been saying no when the desire to please screams that I should say yes.

But as we come to the end of the year I feel like I am recognizing exactly how much this one word has changed my life.  

The word Intentional has taught me better self care and in teaching me that it has made me a better wife, mother and friend.

Being Intentional has helped me create margin so that I can slow down and listen just a little more closely for that holy whisper that says...

"I love you so much!"

Unforced Rhythms of Grace

Yesterday marked 5 years since I took the first steps away from my nursing career.  The Wednesday before Thanksgiving will mark five years since I last filled the position of Registered Nurse.  Leaving nursing was an idea that only made sense to my husband and myself.  It did not make sense.  I was two and a half months away from my wedding.  In our planning and wisdom we had decided that while I was feeling that God was leading me to leave nursing we would wait until we had been married a couple of months.  Our thought was that I would go to a part-time position and begin pursuing college classes that would prepare me for ministry.  

It was the perfect plan.... 

Until it wasn't.

I will never forget the moment I realized that all of the planning we had discussed meant nothing when God said it is time to leave.  

You see, I'm a detail person.  I find great joy in making the details work to accomplish a goal.  My first goal at that time was to make it through my wedding.  But God had decided that there were lessons to learn.  So we listened and I handed in my two weeks notice.  There were so many people that thought I was crazy.  I was quitting with no plan.  I sort of feel like I understand how Abraham felt as he packed up to leave his home country.  

Neighbor

"Hey, Abram, we see you are packing to leave.  Where are you headed?"

Abraham

"I'm not really sure.  I'm just suppose to leave"

Neighbor

"Dude, you are nuts!  Do you realize that there are heathens are out there?"

Abraham

"Yeah, but God said go..."

The crazy thing...

Within a week or two of my resignation at my job, our associate pastor at the church we were attending handed in his resignation.  As I was asked to fill his position as an interim I had my first taste of ministry.  While ultimately that position did not work out, it served to provide some valuable insight into what life in ministry would be like.  

As I've been thinking about that first step that began a rather crazy journey, it has struck me that November tends to be the month God consistently seems to call our family to follow him in crazy ways that test our faith.

Two years ago, after the position at the church had not worked out I was still working at a local optometrist office.  It wasn't nearly what I made in nursing, but it helped with the bills.  Then in November of 2015 God called us to the radical again...  He indicated that it was time to let go of that little part time job.  So after much prayer and with much trepidation, I once more handed in my resignation, letting go of the security that this job provided.  All of this as we were expecting our second daughter.  

Fast forward another two years and yet again in November, God has called me to let go of security again.  This one is a little fresh to share, but the truth in this situation is that I'm once again unsettled. While I can look at my past and see that each time we have moved in the direction that God has directed, He provides amazing opportunities that I never would have imagined.  

But still, I find myself standing once more at the abyss of the unknown.  I don't know what comes next...  I can't plan for the next step in my Bullet Journal.  I can't look at the details and connect them all in the right order.  Instead I have been called to wait.  Waiting is a nerve wracking place to be....  It is full of uncertainty and a fog clouds the future.  I can't see the next step right now...

I suppose it was likely a situation much like this that inspired 

Psalm 119:105 (NIV)

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.

Right now, the words that I find bringing comfort to my uncertainty come from Matthew 11:28-30 in the Message:

"Are you tired?  Worn out?  Burned out on religion? Come to me.  Get away with me and you'll recover your life.  I'll show you how to take a real rest.  Walk with me and work with me--watch how I do it.  Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.  I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.  Keep company with me and you will learn to live freely and lightly."

"Learn the unforced rhythms of grace."  

Part of me wants to force results.  I want to muscle through it forcing the details into a place where they work.  But deeper connection with God is not found in the busyness and white noise with which we surround ourselves.  It is found in the "unforced rhythms of grace".  

The truth is I am tired.  I'm exhausted in a soul deep way.  I desperately need the rest that God promises in this passage.  So for this season I find that the uncertainty points me to rest.  It points me to pull on those things that I lose sight of when I fill my life too full of the craziness.  I asks me to not just learn, but to remember what I have learned about the rhythms of grace God desires us to embrace and live out of freely and without burden.

Intentional Boundaries

"Boundaries define us.  

They define what is me and what is not me.  

A boundary shows me where I end and someone else begins..."   

~Henry Cloud

Can I be real for a minute?  Boundaries are really hard for me.  I really struggle with the feeling that I am failing in life when I set them.  I do not think I am necessarily alone here either.  I think we often associate boundaries with "mean" people.  You know those people who are the last to help anyone ever.  We think of boundaries as the meanest rendition of Ebenezer Scrooge.

God has been teaching me a lot about needing to establish boundaries over the past few years, but the last couple of months have felt like boot camp in boundary setting!  Which then results in incredible guilt that I am upsetting people....

"A boundary shows me where I end and someone else begins, 

leading me to a sense of ownership.

Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom"

~Henry Cloud

Imagine the United States without state boundaries....
What kind of chaos exists in that scenario?
Now image each state without county boundaries....
Now think of you neighbors....
What happens if you neighborhood has no boundaries?
What if those property lines did not exist?
Who is responsible or weeding what flower bed?
Who is responsible to mow what part of the lawn?

Boundaries in real life help us recognize what we are responsible for maintaining.
This applies to the scenario of your neighborhood, but also to our personal life.
Boundaries help create order.

If you think about it God starts our story with boundaries.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"
Genesis 1:1

God starts the story of all creation by defining two separate entities.
Heaven and Earth.
They have a distinct different role to play in the story that is beginning to unfold.
They have boundaries that set them apart from one another.

It is out of this story that creation continues all the way to you and I.
God created us distinctly separate.
God created us with natural physical boundaries.
The crazy thing is that God creates us with boundaries for a really good reason!

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6:
"There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them.  There are different kinds of service, but the same LORD.  There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work."

So here is the amazing thing that God has been showing me about boundaries.
They are there so I do not have to do it all and be all things to all people.
It is humanly impossible for me to help everyone I want to help.
And that is ok.

Boundaries are God's way of encouraging me to recognize my limits and be the best version of the person he created me to be.
When I recognize and set my boundaries from a better understanding of how God created and gifted me, my boundaries will actually benefit others.
Those boundaries will keep me out of their gifting.
It will keep me from interfering in the lessons God is trying to teach them that I with my human understanding will try to "fix".

Healthy boundaries can create the opportunity for amazing community.

"Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it."
1 Corinthians 12:27

What happens if we each begin to recognize what our part in that body is and stop trying to the part of another?  What if rather than a group of people spread thin, the church begins to develop into a group of people living from their gifting and strength?  What kind of community do we begin to create?  How does it change how we share God's love with the world?

Intentional Love

My heart hurts today.  In the past four days, I have seen anger, bitterness and hatred run rampant.  I have heard words thrown as daggers at those we call friends, but who see the world differently from us.  I have watched as our country begins once more to take sides and wonder how after fighting a Civil War which was bloody and ugly have we come to this place once more as friends turn on one another in the aftermath of tragedy.

My heart goes out to the families who even now sit in hospital rooms with their loved one's, who were injured.  My heart breaks for the families that must make funeral preparations for a life cut short.  But the truth is that these figures are mere names to me.  I know nothing of their story.  I have no idea about what their favorite food was, whether they loved movies or a good book better.  What were their dreams?  What was their most embarrassing moment?  All of the things that make us human are things that I do not know about any of these people that I have read about over the weekend no matter what side with which they were aligned.

After college I visited Washington D.C.  the Vietnam Memorial was one of the "must see" places.  I remember visiting the wall and wanting so badly to experience emotion, but I felt a detached sadness.  I could appreciate the sacrifice of all of the lives represented on its long length, but I had no one represented in the letters carved onto the face of the stone.  It impacted how I experienced something that creates such an emotional experience for some.

Events like those our country has experienced in the past few days is similar to my experience in Washington D.C.  They happen someplace separate of ourselves and they can have the impact of a detached sadness or outrage because of the very same reason, we do not know the stories that go with the names.  This detachment allows us to label those faceless names and masses.  We lose sight of the very real fact that each and every one of them is someones father, brother, mothers, sister, son, daughter or friend.  They each have a story in the same way we have a story.

It takes an intentional attempt to be self-aware to view any of these people as more than faceless names on a paper.  It takes intentional effort to slow down one's reaction enough to act and speak in love rather than expressing anger brought on by our fear at those things out of our control.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.

But the greatest of these is love.

~1 Corinthians 13:13

Paul reminds us in I Corinthians that love does not dishonor, nor is it self-seeking or quick to anger.  Rather it is patient and kind.  It loves and protects, trusts, hopes and perseveres.

The Gospel of John reminds us that God sent His Son out of love, not to condemn humankind, but to offer a means of reconciliation with Him (John 3:16-17).

Reconciliation...  Sounds hard doesn't it?  Reconciling with people who don't see things the same way we do...

Mother Teresa once said, "I have found the paradox, if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love"

What happens if each of us as individuals begin to love unconditionally like that?  What if when we experience hurt we make the intentional decision to love more?

The more I study Scripture the more I become convinced that the lasting power of Jesus ministry is not his miracles.  It is not his dynamic parables or even his resistance to the legalistic model of religion practiced by the Pharisees.

It was the strength of the love he practiced and taught.  

My husband shares a piece of wisdom from his counselor

 "Anger is fear trying to control something". 

I think we see that in full display in moments such as those we experienced as a nation this weekend.

We see it in our own reaction to these events.  It can be a little disheartening...  How are we suppose to deal with the anger that we experience from the varied perspectives that run rampant in the aftermath?  It can be so easy to become fearful and then to watch that quickly morphs into anger as we try to control the opinions of others, who think differently than we do.

There is no fear in love;

but perfect love casts out fear:

because fear has torment.

~1 John 4:15

The only true response to these events is love.  By all means hold your family and friends a little closer, but stretch out your arms to those who see the world differently from you.  The most effective way to defeat the anger that surrounds us is to overcome our fear with love.  When we learn to love people who see the world through a different lens, truly love them without the caveat of "maybe they'll come to see it my way", we embrace the love that Christ emulated for us.

The funny thing in Scripture is that we never really find out whether the woman Jesus saved from being stoned to death really left her life of adultery.  We do not see the full story of those that Jesus cast demons out of, but we seem to just assume that they walked away from their encounter with him changed.  That is the power of the strength of the love He demonstrated.  Even centuries later we feel the love in the pages of their stories and cannot help, but believe that they were forever changed by that encounter. 

So who can you intentionally choose to love this week? 

Today? 

This moment?

Relationships

Life has been crazy the last couple of weeks!

Oh, in one sense it is been that way because my husband had to travel for work.

But the other way it has been crazy is that I have interacted with multiple of my neighbors during this period!

Now this is huge because I am an introvert.

Sadly, I often have an intense desire to run into my house after extroverting myself for any period of time.  

This last week though, I decided to push myself to not do that so much.  Instead I began crossing the driveway away from the door to my house that was so enticing and instead I got to know my neighbors a little better.

Guess how much training that took?

None. Nada. Zilch. Zip. Zero.

Photo by Makole Photography

All it took was using the skills we learn as children.

It always stands out to me in Scripture, how much we try to complicate the messages of Jesus.

Matthew 18:3 says:

"Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, 

you will never enter the kingdom of heaven"

I have often heard this verse spun to emphasize the humility we are suppose to demonstrate as believers.

That sounds good, but if we go back and look at what is going on around this verse we start to see that this verse is more radical than humility!

This verse is set in the middle of a community that is dominated by the Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire was an environment where position was valued.  

Throughout the Gospels, we see examples of tax-collectors, these were Jews who turned on their own for position with the Roman government.  

We see the Sadducees, who cemented their position by social, political and religious means.

Into this society comes Jesus' disciples with the question "Who, then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" (Matthew 18:1b)

When Jesus calls a child to him to answer this question it is a radically different message than society has presented.  All around them his disciples are seeing a struggle for power.  Into that struggle for greatness comes Jesus, who points them to a child.

I have a soon to be 3 year old and a 1 year old.  

At our house we are constantly living in the world of a child.  

Do you know how uncomplicated that world is?
Somehow as we become adults things change.

There are now complex steps and formulas for making friends.

Social class does not effect them.

I took my 1 year old to the grocery store yesterday and everyone was a friend to wave at no matter what they looked like, how old they were or what position they held in society.

Somehow over time we seem to have complicated the idea of relationship.  

We have books and formulas telling us how to use this skills we developed as a child that we have lost as adults.

We have complex formulas for how to make disciples.

We rate people on scales creating a hierarchy to determine how we "should" relate to them.

We approach relationships in a detached formal manner, completely forgetting that these words for the disciples are for us also...

"Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, 

you will never enter the kingdom of heaven"

What happens if we forget the formulas and charts?

What happens if we discard the hierarchy?

What happens if we just start waving to people in the grocery story like a 1 year old?

What happens if we follow the example of a 3 year old and ask everyone we meet there name?

Ok, so maybe that might be a little creepy for adults, but what if we start by being aware?

What if we start by setting the goal to find one person wherever we go to say hi and learn their name?

Will we do it perfectly?  Probably not, but if we get it just some of the time we give our forgotten relational muscles a work-out.

One small way to start is to walk away from your door the next time you get home and walk toward the neighbor, who just got home also.

Embracing Change

This weekend marked a series of changes in my life.

I have a love-hate relationship with change.

Sometimes I love it because it can be exciting. 

Change can mark exciting new adventures.

Or it can be the result of really painful endings.

This week saw me walk up a set of steps in a building that has held both great joy and nearly unbearable pain.  

It was a building where I met my husband, but also the building where poorly chosen words have resulted in incredible pain that I find myself still battling.

I find myself a little surprised at the bittersweet feelings that came from the last walk up those steps.

You see, the pain is familiar.  

I've just adjusted to it and life without it scares me a little.

The emotions that I experienced exiting that building for the last time surprised me.

I thought I would experience relief, but instead there was sadness and fear.

Sadness that things had not ended differently.

Sadness at ending a chapter of my life.

Even if I have cause to walk through the door of this building again, it will not be the same.

That is where the fear comes in to play.

Change can be scary.

I had learned to cope with the pain, but coping is not the same as healing.

To heal there are moments when we have to let go of what is familiar,

We must let go so that the old life we were comfortable with does not infect the new life that God is calling us to embrace.

At the same time that I was closing this old chapter, a new chapter was opening;

The chapter that screams community.

As one door closed another opened,

This door made me realize that sometimes the old things we hold on to out of comfort actually prevent us from seeing the new life that God is inviting us into.

In having daily contact with this chapter that needed to close I was distracted.

Within an hour of closing that door, I began to change.  

I started to see the community around me differently.

I began to engage differently.

I was no longer torn between the old and the new.

See I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

and streams in the wastelands

Isaiah 43:19 

The reality is that God was doing a new thing in my life, but I was not fully absorbing it.

In the time I had been mourning lost friendships and the change that had felt forced on me, God was providing sources of life and connection all around me.

While Isaiah 43:19 encourages us to look for the new thing that God is doing, just as important for me was verse 18:

Forget the former things;

Do not dwell on the past.

The fear that change brings for me can make me idealize the past.

I can find myself focusing on what I have "lost" to the point I completely miss the exciting new things that God is creating around me.

Some of my exciting new is the discovery that one of my oldest daughter's best friends in daycare was actually the son of someone my husband knew from his childhood.

Another little boy at our new daycare who is close in age to our youngest is the son of one of my brother-in-law's good friends.

All of the sudden connections and community begin to develop within hours of closing a chapter.  

Change can be terrifying, but if we choose to hold sacred the former things we knew 

and to dwell on the past we will completely miss the streams that God is providing in what can seem to our limited perspective to be a wasteland.

But have you ever thought about what happens when you begin to introduce the life-giving source of water to a wasteland?

The opportunity is given for life to begin.

What can look to our past-clouded vision to be a wasteland is to God an empty canvas of endless possibilities, but it requires stepping away from the familiar and embracing the change of the wilderness and the wasteland.

What change is God trying to introduce in your life?

Does is scare you to death?

You're not alone if it does!

Intentional Battles

Photo Courtsey of Makole Photography



When I started my year with the word Intentional I do not think I anticipated the crazy turns it would take! In January, I knew my life needed focus and thought that this would be the way God used the word for me.


Fast forward to this the last week of July and I am discovering that Intentional goes so much deeper than I thought!
Being Intentional is not just about planning your day down to the last second.
It is not just about how you spend your money or how much time you spend watching TV.


Intentional means being aware.
Intentional means choosing wisely.
Intentional means recognizing your resources are limited.
Intentional means saying no to good things for the best things.
Intentional also means being willing to make really hard choices.
In this season of life being Intentional means examining what battles are worth fighting.


One of my favorite scenes from Lord of the Rings is Sam's speech to Frodo.


Sam: It's like in the great stories Mr Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end its only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something ever if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand, I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They keep going because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam: That there's good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.


Have you ever thought about all of the battles we fight?
We live in a broken world and it is inevitable that we will fight.
We fight with our friends, siblings, parents, children.
We fight with our spouses.
We fight addictions and depression.
We fight insecurities and jealousy.


But do we ever ask ourselves what is worth fighting for?


That is the lesson I have been learning about being Intentional.
Every battle we fight takes something out of us.
It takes resources both physical and emotional.
It takes attention away from other things.


So when you begin to intentionally fight battles you start to intentionally invest energy.
That is life changing!


An interesting exercise both my husband and I did recently is a values sheet.
We sat down and as individuals wrote out our values.
The blog Minimal Wellness has a great sheet to use for this.
You can check the post that helped us and get your own values sheet here.


Knowing our values is helping me personally, but also us as a couple start to streamline how we choose our battles.


When you value something then it becomes something worth fighting for.

What do you value?

Intentional Vulnerability

Yesterday we met with a financial planner.  Not because we have unlimited wealth and resources, but to help us prioritize and achieve some personal goals for our family.  Now just making it to the office was huge for me.  I have major panic attacks related to money discussions, but there I was sitting in an office discussing our budget with a financial planner.  I did great in the office and then on the way home in the car by myself I dissolved into tears.  I became incredibly angry with my husband over some innocent comments and I was so frustrated with myself because of my reactions.  It is only today that I finally realized why I had the reaction I did....  

I had made the choice to be vulnerable.

You see...

I set up the appointment.  We had tried doing this a few times before, but my panic attacks had ended up in us finally taking it off the calendar.  I was the one to re-initiate this meeting.  I told my husband I could handle it and then when the tears showed up afterwards I was angry at myself for a perceived weakness.  

I don't know about you, but letting someone look at my mess is something I avoid at all cost! 

I want to look like the ideal little family of four.  All put together and perfect.  I mean we all know it is not true for any one of us, but we still want that to be how others see us, right?  

And so comes our financial planner into the mess that is our budget.  We might not be swimming in debt, but our budget is the thing that we have wrangled with since we got married.  It feels sort of like trying to wrestle a greased pig....  Sometimes we have it and then it slips and gets away again.  So we decided to enlist the help of a coach.  

Enter vulnerability....

To invite someone in to look at how you spend you money, where you have debt and what you haven't even thought about preparing for is hard.  You open yourself up to fear of judgment.  

Theirs and your own.  

Recognizing the way this makes you vulnerable has made me look at my life to realize that this meeting yesterday, even with my meltdown which lasted less than an hour, was one step in a series of choices to be vulnerable.

The thing about choosing to be vulnerable is that you open yourself up.

Sometimes it is to rejection. 

Other times is it to new or deeper relationships.

My life lately has been a series of choices to be vulnerable.  

To let people into my story in a different way.

There were some who ended the conversation.

They walked away uninterested in understanding me better

 or going deeper in our relationship.

There were others though, who met me in my vulnerability.

They tackled the hard issues that I was wrestling with or just sat and listened and then shared part of their story.

Vulnerability drew us closer.

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another:

'What! You too?

I thought I was the only one.'

~C.S. Lewis

Vulnerability is something that as humans we fear.

We fear the rejection that will come from some when we open up, but when we live in that fear we miss what happens when someone says,

"What! You too?  I thought I was the only one."

Vulnerability provides the opportunity for us to see who genuinely wants to share our journey and who merely is there because it is convenient.  

Vulnerability allows us to recognize when boundaries are necessary.

Vulnerability moves us closer to the heart of God.

One of the things I think we can miss in the story of Christ is that at the moment of his death he was stripped bare.  He was exposed to anyone and everyone.   

When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

~Matthew 27:35

There were people who chose to mock.  There were people who chose to desert him.  There were also those who chose to draw closer.  Vulnerability is tied irrevocably to the story of Christ.  Letting someone into our messy life is the only way we truly heal.  

If we let them the fears that keep us from practicing vulnerability will destroy us.  They will isolate us and restrict us to "safe" relationships that never challenge us.  If we push past our fears and begin to practice vulnerability though, we find those with shared experiences.  Some will join us where we are on our journey and others will show us how to make it through the parts that we are unsure of the path.  

Vulnerability builds community.