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!

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.

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!

Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys.... Until It Is...

It's slightly annoying when other people's monkeys become your circus.... It's incredibly irritating when they turn their elephants loose on the crowd that you are in!

~Tonya Schrougham

This last week has been incredibly crazy!  Just when life felt like we were finding a normal, we get hit with a cost increase in a budget area that was not scheduled to change until the beginning of next year.  While one part of me is really happy with my initial reaction to this particular surprise with an insanely short window for adjustment and decision making (I had my worse case scenario plan together within 15 minutes of being informed of this change), I do find myself drifting into the world of worry on occasion.  I do not make decisions lightly so having the pressure to need to readjust with no warning whatsoever and less than two weeks before the cost increase hits is not exactly something I like.  

One thing I am learning during this season in life is that while I LOVE the popular meme that makes the rounds on Facebook and Pinterest:

I am beginning to notice that some people turn their elephants loose on me while I'm admiring the insanity of their monkeys....  Then comes the moment of truth.... Do I stay in their circus or is it time to exit the vicinity completely?  It seems like it should be such an easy choice!  After all... Who in their right mind stays in the path of the stampeding elephants?!  

But what happens when the elephants do not look like elephants?  What happens when the other people in the path of the stampeding elephants are relationships you value?  Relationships that have meant something to you in moments of growth?  Then the decision to leave or stay even in the stampede of insanity that only sees the scary little mouse that is actually a mere blip on the radar of life.  All of the sudden a challenge becomes the thing that throws everyone's world out of balance.  And so the elephants stampede...  Reaction to the perceived threat begins a chain reaction of choices that have impact beyond the immediate apparent "solutions" they offer.  

This particular change has me frustrated at times, mad at other times and at other moments excited at the possibilities.  I become frustrated that a short time frame has been forced on me (I'm determined not to pour money down that particular drain when the end result is the same in the long run). I become mad in other moments when all I see is yet another broken promise and the impact that has yet again on my life when I thought I had distanced myself enough from this particular person.  In the end, however, I keep coming back to the excitement at the possibilities.  

You see, I like familiarity.  I like what is comfortable.  But deep down inside I know that comfort and familiarity are not the things that make me grow.  I grow when I step outside that comfort zone and embrace the unknown.  In the end I realize that this change and decision is not much different than our decision this year to begin recycling.  The choice to recycle led to a decrease in our garbage to the extent we just in the past couple of weeks dropped our trash service opting to transport our trash ourselves as it saves us money.  As we have been looking at cutting expenses in our budget over the past couple of months we have addressed and looked at nearly every area except the area that we are now being forced to address.  With that comes a certain excitement at the possibilities... my truth... this particular change contains the potential to declutter my life emotionally as it allows me to move more fully past a painful piece of my story.  It allows me to make decisions from a less emotional place and genuinely assess what works and what does not work for our family both financially and emotionally.  In embracing the freedom of choice that comes with this change I allow myself the ability to exit the circus and leave the monkeys and elephants behind for someone else to deal with!  Will that be our family's choice?  Maybe, maybe not, but what I now have is a freedom to choose.  

And reassessing the impact of other peoples monkeys and elephants in my life is something I am discovering I need to do more often!  

In the end it really is a form of exhaling....  

Yep, that would be why these monkeys and elephants found me... 

The need for 

Exhale.

Sustainable Change

In June, my husband and I closed on our first home.  It's estimated to be the second oldest home in Mooresville and was built in approximately 1875.  The gentleman we purchased it from had lived there for nearly 40 years before he and his wife could no longer live here by themselves.  While when we initially looked at this home there wasn't this solid idea that we would want to spend the rest of our lives here that idea seems to be taking root as my husband and I make changes to our personal lives and our family culture that make us look at life more intentionally.  

In today's society it seems to be the norm rather than the exception for couples to have a starter home and then the dream home.  I think I really first started to notice our trend away from normal when I looked at Dustin one day and made the statement "I want to live in our house longer that the last couple".  Making that statement has made me more conscious of some personal choices that we have started to make in our lives with the idea of creating margin in our life for sustainable change.

Just this morning I was reading an article by Michelle Brock, When Justice Becomes Trendy.  As someone who was passionate about doing her part to end sex trafficking before it became the in thing to do, she has taken the approach of looking toward a future when the next big trend will come along and her cause will be discarded by the wayside by everyone, but those truly invested.  

Her article has had me evaluating how we as a family do things and oddly, I found it encouraging.  I realized that we've been investing in making life changes that will make living in those changes doable even after the trendiness goes away.

The first book I completed in my personal reading challenge for 2015 was a book by Margot Starbuck titled Small Things With Great Love.  One of the appendixes in the book included a list ways that her readers could begin to make intentional choices about how they spend their money by giving tools to evaluate businesses based on their environmental impact, their free trade practices, etc.  As we have made it through the first half of the year I now find myself evaluating how we've done.  The truth while I know there is always room to improve, I'm extremely happy with the habits we as a family have begun.  We shop local much more than we did in January.  We default to the question of can we get it used before running to buy the shiny brand new version.  I've begun to purchase through companies such as ePantry and invest in products from companies such as Seventh Generation.  

As I evaluate those extremely slow changes we've been making, after reading this 2013 article by Michelle Brock, I realize that this year has definitely been a year of change for our family, but we've been making intentional choices to make sure that our change that is sustainable.  Change that isn't dependent on trends, but change that we believe in enough to change not just our lifestyle, but our way of thinking.

Change

Change.  It's something we look forward to at times and yet dread in other moments.  It's the thing that signifies progress, but it can also be what moves us away from something we need to remember.  

I've really felt the impact of change in the last week as I've watched my baby girl turn one and move from infant to toddler.  It's in me as after a 13 year absence from college I once more begin classes to pursue a bachelors degree. 

As I've observed so many things changing in lives around me I find myself contemplating that word a lot.

Change.

Why do we so often want it so badly we go to great lengths to achieve it?  As I look at myself I start to see that often I want change so I don't have to actually deal with something that God is trying to walk me through.  Often dealing with the thing that is in front of me is hard.  It means facing things that I've spent years trying to ignore and it means that I have to go into those places that hurt.  

Know how I know that?  Because I have this awesome husband that won't let me quit these classes I've started.  The last week and a half have been one panic attack after another for me.  

Quiz time?

 Que the panic attack.

  Paper due? 

 Panic attack.

Lengthy reading?

You get the picture.

The reality is I've wanted to quit since day 2, but we keep wrestling through the panic attacks to uncover the reasons that I have test anxiety.  And through that process God is showing me things about myself that I had used frequent change to ignore.  

One thing in my reading for class this week that really stood out to me because of what I'm experiencing in this moment of my life is the moment in Scripture where God changed Jacob's name.  We focus on the part of the story where Jacob wrestles with God all night and then the next morning God tells him his name will not be Jacob any longer it will be Israel.  This time reading through that story looking for things I hadn't noticed before and reading what comes before in the same sitting I was struck by the change that was going on in Jacob all along.  So often I think we tend to go "Oh, God changed Jacob's name and then Jacob was different", but that's not the case at all!  Jacob was letting God change him long before God ever changed his name.  The thing we can easily forget about the night Jacob wrestled with God is that it was the night before he was to meet with the brother who the last time they were together threatened his life.  I'm convinced that God didn't change Jacob's name to change him, but to remind him who he was.  Jacob was already coming back to face his past, but this new name was God's way of reminding him in a very real, very physical way that he wasn't the same man who ran away all of those years ago. 

I'm not an expert, but the thing I'm realizing about myself is that too much change can be me trying to take the easy way out.  I can use the surface change as a distraction to keep me from dealing with the hard things that are going to bring the lasting change.  And so (with the help of that awesome husband I mentioned) as much as it hurts I choose to move through the anxiety and the panic attacks for the slower, substantial change that will lead me to that new identity that God has waiting.