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.

Which Way to Go?

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat

For some reason this quote from Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland caught my attention a couple of years ago.  In retrospect I think it might have been due to the fact I was realizing I had been living my life not really knowing where I wanted to "get to".  Classic children's literature and fairy tales have always fascinated me and Alice in Wonderland is no exception.  I feel like there's always a moral, an element of truth we overlook in the "funness" of the child's world that is embraced in these stories.  For some reason today the quote that caught my eye a few years ago, made me think once more about the deceptive simpleness of the two sentences.

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go?"

How many times have we been asked that question or have we asked it ourselves?  It starts when we are children begging for affirmation that the decisions and choices we are attempting to make are the right ones.  It doesn't stop there though.  When looking to Mom and Dad ceases to be "cool" we transfer that need for affirmation onto others, always looking to someone to guide our way.  As humans we fear making the mistake that will "mess up" our lives.  What if we choose the wrong career?  What if we date the wrong person?  What if we marry the wrong person?  What if we mess up as parents?  Our lists of "what if's"  goes on and on.  How many times do we end up feeling like Alice in that we never really know if our choice we are about to make is the right one and so we end up looking to a disappearing cat for our answers?

 "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat

I think the second sentence is the one that captures my attention the most.  "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."  In his book Chazown, Craig Groeschel points out in multiple ways that if we fail to plan we plan to fail.  How often are we guilty of living our lives by chance, hoping that we find the right career, the right spouse, living on hope in general that we find the right path in life.  That we will somehow stumble across the path God has uniquely designed for us if we get direction from enough people.  

I think this quote really caught my attention today because I realized how guilty I've been of living my life asking guidance from my own disappearing cats which unfortunately never gave the sound advice of it depends on where I want to get.  I realized that at 31 I've lived most of my life in the hope that I won't screw up my life too bad and that somehow I'll find the right way never really stopping to ask where I was headed to start with.  That said, yes I realize that when Abraham left for the land God promised him, he didn't exactly have GPS co-ordinates, but he had a direction from God.  But as I thought about how often I've tried to leave things up to chance, looking to others to guide my way through life never stopping to ask what direction I was headed.  Don't get me wrong other people can make great guides along the way, but if you try asking a farmer for directions in downtown New York City you won't get where you need to be.  However, if you need to find your way in the middle of nowhere with lots of country back roads you'll want the farmer every time!  That would be the reason that knowing the direction you need to head is so vitally important.  How do you know who to ask directions from if you don't where you're headed?  Does it mean you need the big picture right away?  I don't think so, but floating from person to person asking where you ought to go isn't the best plan either.

Random words from a children's book?  Maybe...  But if applied the right way they can be very thought provoking.