Perception

Perception is a funny thing.  It's something that is formed in every one of us differently.  Our perception is formed by our life experiences, the wounds we've suffered, the joys we've felt and the grieving that has occurred in our lives.  

It's also seems to be one of the hardest things for us to accept about one another.   We so often want our experiences and life views to be the lens through which others see the world, but that is very seldom the case.  You see we weren't created in a factory.  We weren't all poured into a mold that sent us all out into the world exactly the same.  

We had different childhoods and different relationships that informed how we see the world.  They not only inform how we see the world, they impact how we experience it.  Actions that mean one thing to one person take on a totally different meaning for the person who has been wounded by similar actions.   Those relationships, actions and wounds mean that what can seem completely innocent to everyone else in the room can be the very thing that cuts the soul of one lonely individual.  

A little overwhelming though isn't it?  To think that at any given time, in any given place you could say the one thing that cuts to the heart of a person without even thinking about it or realizing it.  Because of perception a relationship could be forever altered by our words or actions....

Wow, that can be kind of a big thing if you think about it.  It can almost make one afraid to let any words come out at all....  

Now, step back a moment and really think about it.  

Our perception is formed by our life experiences, the wounds we've suffered, the joys we've felt and the grieving that has occurred in our lives.  

Perception is informed by our life experiences not just the wounds we suffer.  It is influenced by the joys we feel and not just our grieving.  If it takes all of these things to create perception in each of us, isn't it possible that we can change one another's perception?

Most definitely, the strongest example of changing perception that I can think of comes from Jesus when He speaks to the Samaritan Woman at the Well.  He changes her perception of what it is to thirst, He changes her perception of Him as a Jew and last, but definitely not least He changes her perception of herself.  He takes a woman who comes to the well to draw water during the hottest part of the day so she can avoid the ridicule and shame that being around others guaranteed and He had her running into the town square to tell those same people she had been avoiding about living water that didn't come from the well and not only that He had her owning her faults to every last one of them!  

I think the key to changing one another's perception starts with asking the simple question of why does the other person's perception need to change?  Are we just trying to get them to see things from our point of view?  Or do we genuinely see their need to have their perception changed so they see themselves as valued by God?  As being part of a community?  

For Jesus changing the perception of this Samaritan woman wasn't about making sure she saw what she was and what she had done.  It wasn't even about showing her who He was even though He did that.  It was about making God accessible to her.  Giving her the opportunity at relationship with Him.  In changing her perception He changed her world for the better!  

So again....  Perception is a funny thing.  It's something that is formed in every one of us differently.  Our perception is formed by our life experiences, the wounds we've suffered, the joys we've felt and the grieving that has occurred in our lives.  How will you change someone's perception this week?

Reflections on 2014

I find myself in a contemplative mood tonight.  I suppose it could be that it's the eve of the eve of a New Year.  It kind of makes one reflect on the events of the current year.  As I sit here the words of a song by Plumb come to mind...

"Standing on a road I didn't plan

Wondering how I got to where I am

I'm trying to hear that still small voice

I'm trying to hear above the noise"

It feels like that's been my life this year.  Struggling to hear above the noise of my doubts.  Struggling to hear the still small voice that is God when everyone around me is trying to advise as to what He is or might be saying about me.

I look back on 2014 and I'm nowhere near where I wanted to be.  I should be a semester into a Bachelor's in Biblical Studies.  I'm working the job that I thought for sure God was going to phase me out of this year.  Instead the job that I felt He wanted me in the most is gone.  And so I question, "How did this happen?  What did I hear wrong?  What's wrong with me that You changed the plan?"  

Then I think about all of the thought that went into picking out my word for the year.  To be honest I argued with God over my word.  It was weird.  Everyone else got to pick words like give, fight, love, etc.  Not me, God give me Pieces.  

Pieces....  Kind of what my year seems like.  It feels like the dreams from January are in pieces around me and most of them seem to be lost.  Pieces kind of indicates something is broken, right?  Who wants to go into the year with a word that hints of brokenness?

Of course God also gave me a really awesome song to go along with my word.

Still, it feels like my brokenness gets put on display for anyone to see.  Pieces means vulnerability.  It means that people all around me get to see the messiness of my life.  

As I reflect on the past year though I start to see the truth in the line that says...

"He knows how to make your pieces fit."

See the beauty of the word pieces means that I am broken, I am messy, I'm emotional and I've hurt a lot this year, but God has taken those pieces and is making a mosaic out of them.

A mosaic by definition is a picture or pattern produced by arranging together small colored pieces of hard material, such as stone, tile or glass.  In my case the material is the broken pieces of my hopes and dreams that when God steps in He knows exactly how to take the things that might not have quite worked out the way I had hoped and He makes them something beautiful all the same.  The even better part is that they become something far more beautiful than they would have been otherwise because God designed and redesigned the mosaic of my life.

When I'm in pieces that's when God's work shines through the brightest.  When I'm in pieces I'm not trying to hold myself together so people see the God I think they should see.  They see the God that is designing and redesigning me.  I suppose when I look at it through that lens the painful moments where I was being broken in some way have a new beauty and meaning.  

So..... What do you think God will do with Reckless Abandon for 2015?  Yep, technically it's two words, but it needed the adjective....

Oh, and I have a song for that too...

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.

A Different Vantage Point

Sometimes I seem to have such random thoughts that even I wonder where they come from and today was one of those days.  For some reason on the way to church the movie Vantage Point came to mind.  I believe it was a combination of events of the past week, reading material, conversations and life in general that seemed to randomly produce the thought process that included this particular movie. 

It was a movie that I enjoyed the first time I watched it because of its interesting twist.  Without giving away too much of the storyline, the thing I liked about it was the fact that the same events were shown through the eyes of different people and each time you got another person's perspective the storyline was given a deeper dimension.  The interesting thing with Vantage Point is that you get to the end of the movie and realize that in the end the reality everyone thought was true as viewed from their personal perspective actually changed when you put together all of the different perspectives that surrounded one 15 minute slice of time. 

I think especially a couple of conversations I've had this week have shown me how one dimensional my view of life can be.  It's almost like I recognize and acknowledge on some level that other people exist and matter and even have different perspectives, but it's a little harder to add their dimension to the storyline of my life.  To do that means I must make myself vulnerable.  I am required to share parts of myself that I would rather keep hidden or at the very least acknowledge to others that those fears and insecurities exist in me.  It means I'm exposed in some way and once that happens the person I've shared a part of myself with becomes a part of my story and in doing so has the potential to affect my perspective.

Think about it though.  How would our lives and relationships change if we could find a way to step away from ourselves and add the dimension of someone else's perspective to our world? It doesn't mean we have to agree 100% with their viewpoint, but sometimes in just hearing someone's perspective we can better relate to that person on other levels and makes us more conscience of the different levels that exist in the bigger story God has in which we play a part.  After all as much as I like to think it some days my story is not the biggest, most important one in the world.  It is only a small part of God's bigger story in which every one has their 15 minute segment that corresponds with mine, but involves their perspective and in putting those perspectives together the bigger picture starts to evolve.  Of course it evolves whether I put those perspectives together or not, but how much more effective could I be if I saw even one other person's perspective on my 15 minute segment of life?