Living Simply

Live simply so others may simply live.

~Mother Teresa

I find myself pondering lately the complexity that we invite into our lives and accept as reasonable.  We run from one activity to another never genuinely having time to stop and live our own lives much less genuinely engage with others in their journeys.

When did we decide it was acceptable to create a normal that leaves no time to invest in caring for ourselves or to actually see and listen to those around us.  

Over the past year I've been so frustrated at the things I thought were keeping me from leading a normal life.  Health issues, panic attacks, job loss, relationship changes.  I fought them until I wasn't able to any longer and then somehow when I stopped fighting God was able to begin to use all of those things to mold me into a different person.

I feel that my life as now started to be summed up in those words of Mother Teresa,

"Live simply so others may simply live."

I find myself wondering occasionally how many opportunities I have missed to share life with others because I filled my plate full of things that weren't truly important.  How many times did I miss the opportunity to chat with the clerk at the store because I chose the self-checkout for expedience?  How many times was my head buried in my phone so that I missed the fact that the woman behind me in line needed someone to share her struggle that afternoon?  How many times have I missed a crucial part of a conversation with someone I called friend because I was texting another person I called friend rather than being present?

Recently, I had a mentor challenge me to look everyone I meet in the eyes and I would be amazed at the change it made in my life.  It's only been a couple of weeks since I started doing this, but I've been amazed at how true that has proved to be.  It has introduced an unbelievable number of conversations, some casual and some that give me a glimpse into another's life, but conversations that make me realize how lonely the lives we live are even in a society that provides more opportunities to be connected than ever before.  

I begin to realize as I reflect on the last year of my life that God has been preparing me for the moment that I could have someone look me in the eyes and challenge me to do that for others.  It makes me realize that health, panic attacks, the introduction of whitespace, decluttering both my home of material things, but also my schedule from empty busywork have all been the work of a graceful God helping me learn to clear my life to make space for all of these people he wanted to introduce.  The people that I only meet in line at the store once, but also the one's that I start to share life with as I begin shopping at our local farmers market and get to know the various vendors that show up week after week.  

So often we make agreements to fill our lives with things that are simply time fillers.  They fill our schedules, they eat at the patchwork of our lives, leaving us empty and cramming our schedules to the overflowing point trying desperately to fill our lives with a small scrap of something that brings us joy, but then we are too exhausted to actually experience the joy we were looking for.  

Living simply doesn't mean having nothing.  It doesn't look like a paupers house.  It just means letting go of the things that consume our time and energy leaving little to no time for living life with others.  What I've discovered is that I have the ability to show up for more things now than I did when I was overfilling my life.  I'm more available for those "best yes" moments because I'm learning to say no to so many more things.  Sometimes it's stuff, sometimes it's not committing to things I know drain me.  It looks different for all of us, but simple starts to create a beautiful pattern when more of us commit to living it.

What does your simple look like?

The Danger of Extremes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. 

God's Timing

It's a funny thing how sometimes when you are going through some of the moments that change and define you the most you somehow don't realize how important they are until you look back in hindsight.  I think that's one of the interesting thing about God's timing.  It's subtle.  I think that's something that I've realized over the last five months especially as some of the lessons and experiences I've had over the last five years have come together and started to make sense.  It's had me re-evaluating my life, the people God has sent into it and the impact they have made especially over the last four years. 

In meeting up with friends I hadn't seen in a few months I realized something about God's timing.  Sometimes it's not just about when new events, people or circumstances are introduced into our lives.  Sometimes it's about the fact he asks you to surrender something you hold dear so that he can return it for an even greater impact in your life. 

I think one of the greatest challenges I've faced came earlier this year, in the belief that God was asking me to give up something I held very dear with no guarantees for the future.  It made no sense to me that at a time in my life when things seemed to be going good I was being asked to give up what I loved and was familiar with, something that I could look at and see had been a positive thing in my life.  At that time as the events of two years began to come together into the events of a mere four weeks, the recurrent answer that came from a friend to my repeated question of why ended up being "It's all in God's timing."

It's an answer that seems to have repeated itself often over the following months and tonight I realized that not just the new things that come into our lives, but the renewing of old relationships as we are ready to deal with them or react to them in a different way are in God's timing as well.  If we try to recapture initial moments of relationships as we know them, we lose the chance to see what can develop in God's timing.  While we see our slice of time and how it impacts us if we refuse to allow God to work in his time we miss the opportunity to experience what he has in store for that relationship.  Sometimes it means allowing time for it to grow and sometimes it means letting go.  Ultimately it comes down to realizing that God truly does have a perfect time for everything and if we let him work things out in his time it turns out infinitely better than our timing.

To Live or Not to Live, That is the Question

It's funny how our life experiences can change how we see the world around us.  Earlier this year I found myself challenged by a friend to take the work I do on a daily basis and view it from the possible spiritual angles it presented.  At first I found myself thinking I'd try it, but not truly expecting it to impact my life in any significant way.  It would be a slight variation to the way I saw the world around me, but life would go on without any profound changes.

I'm still not entirely for sure what happened, but as I thought about the comparisons that had been made between the medical aspect of the heart and the world of work I had become so familiar with over eight years of nursing something happened.  I found myself looking at a world I was so familiar with through different eyes.  The things that had become routine for me began to take on an entirely different meaning. 

The interesting thing was that this thought process followed me to my position in Hospice which gave a new meaning to some of the ideas that were presented in this new field.  One of those was the idea of when you are facing death you learn to be aware of life and in doing so learn how to truly live.  Well, with the challenge still in my mind of looking for the spiritual application it brought a whole other meaning with it.

The thought I was left with is from a spiritual sense how much more spiritually aware would we become if we were to die to the world's idea of what life should be and what success is?  How much do we not live by attempting to live an ideal dictated by the status quo?  Is it possible that by striving for that ideal we exist rather than truly live as God intended us to?  What would happen if we were to allow ourselves to lose the idea of success that we have come to accept as "normal"?

For me I find that what began as a casual challenge has now become something I can't get away from.   It has changed the way I look at my everyday life and in doing so has changed me.  It has challenged me to evaluate what is important in life and in doing so how I live mine.