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.

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.

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. 

Relationships & Lord of the Rings

My life as of late seems haunted by the topic of relationships, so I've come to the conclusion God's trying to make a point.  From random conversations at Starbucks to Bible study topics it's this repeating theme in my life right now.  Along with that I seem to have developed an obsession with Lord of the Rings right now.  I find myself sticking the DVD in for background noise while working around the house and inevitably find myself picking up a section that stands out to me.  Strangely enough for some reason the character of Gollum stands out to me right now.  He's a character I can't get away from.  I think in some way it's because much like Frodo, I relate to him.  I see a piece of myself in his struggles.  I think on previous viewings I saw him as a villain.  The last few times around I've started seeing him as myself.

There's a Gollum in all of us.  He's really just our everyday inner struggles brought to the outside in their purest, most socially unacceptable form.  I think the scene in The Two Towers in which Frodo is trying to understand Gollum as an individual really struck me this time.  "You were not so very different from a Hobbit once, were you?" is the part that especially stood out to me.  In that one statement Frodo connects with this social outcast, not only that he gives him his name and identity back.  A name and identity that had been lost by the choices he had made.  Frodo makes a connection to that part of this creature that everyone else had given up on.  Frodo gives him a chance to be redeemed by seeing him as more than he appeared.  Of course in the end Gollum chooses a path that leads to his destruction, but even that has significance to me.  Because of a little Hobbit, who was willing to see past the surface to the person that once was underneath he was given a chance.

This made me think what would happen if my struggles took a toll that was as apparent as Gollum's?  Would a Frodo come along and give me a chance to regain who and what I once was?  Would someone show me how I could be redeemed?  Which leads me to the question of what do I do?  Do I see past the Gollum in others to the Smeagol that lies beneath?  Do I focus on our differences or do I see our similarities and use those to build a relationship? 

I believe that God sends people into our lives for a purpose.  If we focus on those similarities our relationships become stronger by the support we share from our varied experience in life.  If we focus on the differences they will inevitably divide us and we become like Gollum living our lives in a distant cave cut off from those who can help with our struggles.  By focusing on those similarities we can find ourselves with a companion like Sam, who when the struggle became so great for Frodo said, "I can't carry it for you... but I can carry you!"   

Facing the Past

Recent conversations with a couple of friends combined with things I've found myself struggling with recently have made me think a lot about how our past affects us.  It's funny, but it seems like every time I start to think I've made progress in an area something happens that makes me think maybe not as much as I thought...  Maybe it's just God keeping me humble, but after managing for a few months with no issues from one I think maybe I had started to think I had it under control, which obviously meant God had to show me I'll never have it under control.  

I realize it's a lesson that will probably still have to be repeated occasionally, but I discovered something this time around that I hope I remember a little more quickly in the future.  To deal with wounds from the past the only way to heal is to continually give them over to a loving God.  Of course much like Frodo discovered after being stabbed by the Nazgul some wounds while they heal always leave reminders.  They bring with them certain reactions that are instictive because of the original pain they delivered.  We pull away from the pain that we expect. 

Of course even though we pull away almost instinctively we still have the final choice.  We can continue to pull away and react defensively or we can face our fears and insecurities and allow God to use others to help us deal with them.  I suppose that one thing that stood out to me as I personally faced some things and it was that maybe as a way of getting me ready for the next growing phase God had sent just the right people into my life to give me the reality checks I needed at the time I needed them.  People who weren't afraid to say slow down, hurry up, kick it in gear or even just wait. 

I think it brought me back in a full circle to something the last several months have been reinforcing.  Success in life really is about the relationships we make.  Not success in the "I made the Fortune 500 list" way, but success in that I accomplished things I never would or could have on my own and I did it because of the people who held me up when I was discouraged, encouraged me when I didn't see what God was doing and held out for the bigger picture they could see from their vantage point. 

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.

Reading and Relationships

I recently realized something about myself that I somehow managed to miss before.  My obsession with books has always managed to be a source of entertainment for my friends and family in some way shape or form.  Whether it was the fact that my books held my bed up better than the frame at one point or that I had more books in my closet than clothes, there was always something to find entertaining about my obsession with the written word.  It really didn't matter what it was I would read anything I could get my hands on.  In the last four months I have worked my way through that book collection and have taken it down to a mere fraction of what it once was.  I just realized though in looking over what I kept that there was this consistent theme that emerged from the choice of previously read books that I held on to.  

Now like every self respecting single young woman I will confess a LOT of the books in my collection seem to have been romance novels.  The interesting thing I discovered as I pulled books off of shelves and tossed them in boxes for Half Price Books, those were some of the easiest to part with and when I look at the remaining books now, I find a trend in the romance novels I couldn't quite make myself part with which led me to realize something that I didn't realize at the time I was reading them.  The trend I found myself noticing was that the books with the Cinderella storyline - Girl meets boy, instant attraction, short period of knowing one another, then on to marriage- didn't make the cut.  Every last one of them ended up in the boxes.  The ones that were left were those with more of a Beauty and the Beast storyline - Girl meets boy, a gradual friendship occurs and the couple ends up in a place where they discover their life has become better because the other person is in it to the point a deeper relationship develops almost without their realizing it until the relationship is threatened. 

That said, no the purpose of writing this is not to expound on some romantic revelation I had, but the fact that it made me realize even my preference in reading material has probably been telling me something for years and I just kept missing it.   Relationships that have meaning are hugely important to me.  I don't do well as an island.  I need people in my life who will encourage and challenge me and that I can trust to give me advice.  Those don't develop in the superficial world of Cinderella relationships.  Those are found in the darker less appealing world of Beauty and the Beast.  They are found as you come to accept one another with the faults and failings you both bring into the relationship. 

The thing I've always wondered about Cinderella is what happened over the next 10 years after she rides off with the prince?  After all they really didn't know anything about one another.  How many times did the fairy tale meet a bump in the road?  On the other hand I never wonder that in Beauty and the Beast.  They knew one another rather well, by the end of their story and were better set to expect the bumps in the road.  Yes, we tend to take away from Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast the romantic story, but as I looked at the books remaining on my shelf I realized that whether its a romance, biography, fiction or non-fiction I'm left with the feeling that my favorite books over the years have been telling me I have a desire for more meaningful relationships in every area of my life.  It's a funny thing to realize that you probably had the key to an area of your life long before you ever figured out what it was for...