Versions of Me

I love the little girl in this picture.  She's serious, but at the same time looks happy and all ready to pose like the princess she thinks she is.  Sometimes I wonder what happened to her.  I don't really remember her all that well most of the time.  Somehow it feels like she's been lost over the years.

This little girl never seems to be bothered by the constraints of time or the world around her.  She always seems comfortable in who she is.  Never even considering for a moment that anyone would think there was anything wrong with her.

Somehow though the innocence that I see when I look at this picture seems to have disappeared.  The little girl that looks loved for who she is becomes lost in well meant attempts to mold her character and make sure she behaved in a certain manner and dressed a certain way.

Over the years whether it was true or not this little girl somehow started to equate being loved with being a "good little girl".  Her value in her eyes eventually was only there if she was able to be what others wanted her to be.  And so she became caught in a cycle of doing.  Constantly doing trying to earn the approval of others and even God.

"You can't keep her sealed off in the past anymore."

-Finding Spiritual Whitespace

Suddenly I find myself looking at this picture I've come to cherish differently.  Here is a little girl sitting quietly on a fence, all dressed up for no reason, holding a flower and letting the breeze blow her gauzy dress and hair.  I find myself realizing that this younger me actually has a very important lesson for the older me.  Rather than her needing to grow up and be like me, I need to learn to go back and be more like her.  

I need to remember that in choosing to invest in moments of spiritual whitespace I am choosing to live in the truth that I am valued.  I am special.  And I am God's beloved.  

In choosing whitespace I am choosing to live the extravagant life that this little princess personifies.  When I take that time to introduce quiet to the chaos of life I am making the decision to believe that I was made for beauty rather than just created to function.  And in doing that rather than consigning this little girl to the past, I bring her forward and embrace who she is in the present.

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 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.