The Wound of Love

C. S. Lewis wrote:

To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements.  Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  To love is to be vulnerable.

There is a certain wound that is created when you find yourself in the place of saying goodbye to something or someone you love sooner than you expected.  This happened to our family this week as we said goodbye to our nine year old puppy, Shelby.  

In looking back it seems like it should be odd that it was unexpected.  We had been struggling with weight loss and had many more vet visits in the last 6 months than she had since she was a puppy.  Somehow though as you are actively working on issues, it seems you can lose sight of the extent of the change going on.  You get absorbed in the details of managing the problems caused by the illness and miss seeing the bigger picture.  

Suddenly, something happens to change your perspective and you can look back and see how so many things tie together.  For me, I think that has happened in the last 24 hours.  

All of the sudden the reality of what we have been living in as a family, while trying to walk through the experience we did not fully comprehend we were going through, made various reactions both my husband and myself have experienced over the past couple of weeks find perspective.  

I often times struggle with what to make of the drama that can be Facebook.  In the middle of our sick puppy struggles, I actually found myself doing that again, but somehow now on the other side of things I get some clarity as to why certain things triggered emotions.

My husband happens to be extremely logical.  There isn't really a lot of emotion tied to most of what he says or does.  He saves the emotion for the more important things: me, our daughter, our baby in waiting and our puppies are some of his top priorities for expressing emotion.  Fortunately for him, a Facebook status that gets attacked as insensitive has less impact then it does for me.  Last week one of my struggles in the middle of walking through this experience of declining health with our puppy, who would leave us too soon, was my husband experiencing some extremely emotional responses to a Facebook post.  Normally, I can shake it off and move on, but something about these responses have stayed with me even a week later.

I have realized as I have thought about it more how much we fail to stop and think before jumping in to give an opinion someone's observation.  To defend the fact that maybe the article we decided to share felt like a knife to someone else's chest because of what they were going through.  For me some of the comments left me feeling like my husband was being told that the one posting was hoping I would get cancer so he knew what it felt like.

Our reality...

We were dealing with the situation even if we weren't completely aware of it in the moment.  The pain associated with seeing the articles people thought of as inspiring were too real for us.  We were watching the energetic puppy we loved waste away.  We did not have the diagnosis of cancer so we were fighting something we did not even realize we were dealing with, but we were experiencing it very acutely.

And then came Wednesday, the day we had to say goodbye too soon to our once energetic, little Boston, Shelby.  The puppy, who prepared us for our just as energetic little girl, Myka.  Who loved to play tug-o-war, but also loved cuddling for naps and movies.  

It is amazing the capacity for love we have as humans.  I am completely convinced we never tap into it's full potential.  At times like this I think it is because of the gapping wounds that love leaves whenever we experience loss.  We then attempt to wrap our hearts carefully with things that just brush the surface and give us false feeling without ever really risking giving our love to something that could make us feel that deeply again.  We tap into others emotions through blog posts, magazine articles and even Facebook posts and think we have felt.

Wounds hurt, whether they are inflicted by others or whether they are experienced by loss.  

To love is to be vulnerable.  

As Lewis so beautifully put it:

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.

It is true.  Whether it is a dog or cat, a child, spouse, even a church family.  To love means to be vulnerable.  It means to open yourself up to the emotional rollercoaster that reminds us we are alive.  To love is to connect to God through another, whether that other is animal or human.  To love also means to open yourself up to a portion of the pain that God feels in his interactions with us.

To truly love in that way is to touch the heart of God.

The Reflection in the Cross

Today I stopped.  

Exhaled.

And for a few stolen moments I allowed myself to walk through a nature park.  

In doing this, taking this time, I realized how much I push this to the back of my list even though I know I desperately need it.  I need that time alone to hear from God.  Somehow I convinced myself over the past few weeks that because I was at home with no one around that I should have been getting my soul fed by solitude.  However, there is something that I have discovered in the past few years about time alone in nature that draws me closer to God and irrevocably changes me.

Today, as I started my walk my head was full of white noise.  The what if's and what should I do's of life that clamor so loudly for my attention.  As I moved into the park I was greeted by the waterfall that has been created by the run off from the lake into a little creek.  While it was the sound of water moving through it's natural environment it had a loud sound that mimicked the sound of the white noise I had brought into the park with me.  

As I followed the path I had started on the loud sounds of the waterfall, moved to a gentler sound of the babble of the creek that ran to my left.  Less noisy, but still a busy sound that while quieter than the rush of the white noise and falls, it still carried a busyness with it.

As I moved a little further down the path, I arrived at the edge of the lake that creates a centerpiece for this little nature preserve.  It had a stillness, a quietness that was so beautiful it demanded emotion.  As I just listened though, I heard the slightest lapping of the water as the breeze skimmed across the otherwise still surface in front of me.  

As I stood there I recognized the need that my soul had been begging for the moment to experience the gentle brush of the breeze that is God's presence.  It has been begging me to move away from the waterfall of white noise and even the distraction of the babbling creek of activity and just be still.  

Introvert or extrovert, I am completely convinced that there moments when we can only truly connect to God in moments of stillness.  When we find those moments to stop the busyness that we choose to engage in that we fill our lives with and just let God show us how he sees us.  

When we run through life from one thing to the next, we fill our seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months and even years with the white noise that sends us to look to others for our reflection.  When our life is the rushing waterfall or the babbling creek it is impossible for us to see our reflection as God intended us to see it.  We will always see a distorted version of ourselves that leaves us believing we are less than who we were created to be.  

We have entered the season of Lent.  

The time we remember the events leading up to Christ death on the cross.  

Have you ever stopped to reflect on the fact that Jesus, the Son of God, went away in solitude prior to the events we remember on Good Friday and Easter?  

Even Jesus needed a moment of silence, some relief from the white noise, an opportunity for whitespace before he could assume the burden of the cross.  

Today, on my walk I was struck by all of the burdens we take on ourselves.  The crosses we take on and carry.  Church work, children's activities, charity commitments, small groups and the list goes on.  Activities that are well intentioned, but do we actually stop to ask if they are the crosses God wants us to carry?  

Jesus went to Calvary with one specific cross.  It was the cross that God had planned for him from the beginning of time.   Even with that one cross, Jesus needed someone to help him with that particular burden.  God had also planned the exact person, who would help him carry that particular cross.

It makes me ask of myself, how many crosses have I tried to carry that were not mine to pick up?  Was I less than successful because they were never mine in the first place so that one person who I needed to help me with them was not there?  It makes me think that sometimes the moments we experience failure can be because we have picked up something we were never meant to pick up and it is impossible to find the reflection of what God sees in us through that cross.  Since God never intended it for us, there is no reflection of who he is molding us into represented there.  When we fail to find that we look to others for the reflection we hope to find and then we begin to become distracted by the babble of the creek.  When we carry the cross we were not intended to long enough, the babble turns into a waterfall of white noise and we then exhaust ourselves trying to find the reflection that can only be found in the stillness of the lake where God's breath can be felt.

Is there a cross that you are carrying that you might not have been intended to carry?  Are you in a place where you are overwhelmed by the waterfall of white noise?  What steps do you need to take to introduce the stillness of the lake where you can feel the breath of God so that you carry only the cross meant for you?

The Exhale in Our Journey

There comes a moment in every journey when the one traveling must exhale.  

On a hike it might be so you can crest the next hill.  You draw in a deep breath and push through to the top.

In life it often feels like the need to exhale comes before moving into a new phase. A new place of being.  Out of necessity we find ourselves driven to release something from the past so we can move on.  

It feels like I am at that point of my own journey.  I am feeling this need to exhale.  To let go of the voices that try so overwhelmingly to silence my own voice.  It is funny, but up to this point I had not realized how many people and influences I allow to silence my voice.

Somewhere inside I let a lie take root that various people over the course of my life have spoken into in a way that made me believe it as truth.  A lie that said my words do not hold the same value as another's.  The lie that said I was not good enough in a particular position.  The lie that said because I happen to be female my voice should not be heard as much as someone who happens to be male.  

I look at my journey and realize that as far as I have come and as much as I have grown, I still have pieces of the lies that have been spoken into my life that influence how I use my voice.  I move slower toward what I know to be right because voices with authority in past parts of my journey have convinced me that they hear God's voice for my life better than I could.  It makes me hesitate and think that God speaks to them differently than he does me because I hear a different message from him.  It convinces me that what I hear has to be wrong. 

Right now the need to exhale at this part of my journey feels so strong it is almost tangible, like I could reach out and touch it.  

Exhale.

The word is like a breath of fresh spring air wafting through the open window.  An invitation to forget the death and cold of winter and the past and an opportunity to welcome and embrace new life and new beginnings.

Exhale.

It is an invitation to rest in the present moment of our journey.  To welcome God into the very second we are in and to experience his truth in a completely new way.  It is an invitation to be still, to hear the still small sounds that we ignored in the busyness that has been our past.

What does that look like for you today?  How does it change your present to say yes to the stillness that allows us to hear most clearly from God?  

Living Today

How often do we fly through our day, making our way through the to-do list and rushing to get the kids to the next event they have committed to?  We talk about wanting time, but how often do we intentionally make time to let life happen rather than allowing things to dictate our actions?

I know you're already thinking, if you only knew my life.  It's a season of busy.  While I understand that seasons of busy happen, I am also learning that those seasons last much longer than they should when we continue to just let life happen to us.  

Do you know what I notice when I browse the "Christian" book section in any given book store?  The current popular books for women all have a theme.  They are instruction books on "Breaking Busy", giving "The Best Yes" and overall how to incorporate rest into our lives.  Why is it so hard as women to actually limit what we do?  Why do we need our children to be involved in multiple extra curricular activities simultaneously?  

As mother's we often talk about impact in our children's lives, but do we ever stop to question the lessons we are teaching when we over book our own schedules beyond what we can humanly sustain?

Last year for the first time I created a mission statement for life over the next five years.  Where do I want to be?  What do I want life to look like?  How do I make that picture happen?  

My reality?  I have been hearing God tell me over the last couple of years that he wants our family to live more intentionally.  I have heard and tried to incorporate different things into our lives that will move us that direction, but the reality is that most of those things have managed to fall into place prior to last year without planning.  It has kind of been dumb luck that we have managed to embrace parts of intentional living.  

Last year, thanks to author and blogger Ruth Sokup,  Living Well Spending Less, I discovered the concept of setting goals and breaking down life into smaller chunks of time.  While as with most things when you first try them, there are parts I was not completely successful on completing in her suggested list of ways to accomplish goal setting, what I did find is that I met all 5 goals for the year by December 31, 2015!  It's an amazing feeling when you can look over the year and see what you accomplished despite the varying challenges that we face over the course of a year.  

So I met with success in goal setting last year.  Setting goals should have been something I focused on prior to January 1, 2016, right?  Nope, I was sooooo busy.  There was always something else begging for attention so I spent the month of January operating in survival mode always putting off what I needed to do for what was in front of me demanding my attention.

This weekend as January came to an end, I took some time to pull out that 2016 goal setting workbook and filled out those little spaces that made me focus on what the rest of 2016 needs to look like.  Do you know what I realized?  When I take the time to calm myself, separate from the chaos and put some effort into planning, the life of our family begins to settle down.  Rather than letting life happen to us, we begin to intentional decide what happens.  

As a result of my taking the time to decide what needs to happen this year to move our family toward that goal I set for 5 years from now, we are moving forward with purpose.  Once I put down on paper that I wanted to get our kitchen remodel done by a certain date, I began to realize if we break it down into small manageable projects, it moves toward a reality rather than just being something we "want" to do (and not even a week later 90% of the wallpaper that covered our kitchen floor to ceiling is down).

When I live today in survival mode, it effects my entire family.  When I live today intentionally, with a plan, well, then the reality is our family has more time than we imagined possible.  That wallpaper that came down in the kitchen since I set some goals, that has happened while my husband and I still take time to play crazy with our little girl nearly every night and manage the other household tasks along with school for me and work for him.  Oh, and did I mention that we both are volunteer staff members at our church?

Life has moments it gets overwhelming.  Whether we live in the overwhelming moments or pass through them is entirely up to us.  If you have never tried goal setting before I encourage you to try it!  It gives you a purpose, something you are moving toward.  Set dates on those goals for the year.  You'll find some of them you accomplish way before their due date and others need to flex to later dates in the year because life happens, but being able to look at where you have been at the end of the year is an amazing feeling.

Don't know where to start?  Check out Living Well, Spending Less for a great starting point.  She has a free Goal Setting Workbook via email that she offers when you sign up for her email.  She has lots of other amazing resources on her site that she has made available as well.  

When we live life running from commitment to commitment we are never giving the best part of ourselves to anything, including our families.  When we chose to actually begin to be selective at what we say yes to, well then we are able to give the best of ourselves to multiple things, most of all our families.  We give ourselves the ability to live in today rather than being overwhelmed by tomorrow and the things left to do from yesterday.

Choose to live in the today, this moment, with the people you are with right now.  Choose to stop the crazy cycle of letting life happen to you and create intentional moments and memories today.

The Rest of Exhale

Exhale.  

My One Word for 2016.  

Just a few short weeks into the month and I have already started to find myself challenged by the word.  Have you ever stopped to realize how quickly our calendars attempt to fill themselves up?  It kind of makes them sound like they are living beings, but often I think we fail to remember that they are inanimate objects that can be of great use or they can become the albatross around our necks.

A calendar can be the thing we look at to create space in our lives.  Or it can be the thing we fill to the max in an attempt to find our purpose and passion in life.  I have been so guilty of doing the later.  Feeling like I need to be doing to be productive.  It makes the moments when I am not experiencing forward movement feel like moments of failure.

Exhale.

Have you ever stopped to just observe your breathing pattern?  It is an exercise that both of my counselors have needed to remind me of occasionally as a means to manage my anxiety and panic attacks.

With my word for the 2016 being exhale, I have found myself this week doing that exercise not because of panic attacks, but because it serves as a reminder to rest in the moment.  

When I take a moment to exhale while purposefully grocery shopping it makes me observe the flowers that will add happiness and emotion to my living room.  

When I exhale while struggling with the varying moods of a 16 month old. who is still trying to figure out how to communicate what exactly it is she wants, I find myself seeing pieces of myself in this beautiful little girl.

In a world where we are surrounded with the latest medical journals, available with a mere click of the mouse, how do we miss that the most basic function of our existence is dependent on the act of exhaling?  We do it every day without thought as we breath in and breath out, but in our mental and emotional worlds we continue to push ourselves to the extreme trying to be productive and discover ourselves.  

Somehow in those moments I think we lose ourselves the most.  We lose sight of who God created us to be.  God creates some of us with amazing energy and drive, but if we focus only on that we lose endless opportunities to be present in the moments and with the people that surround us.  

Exhale.

Rest.

When we exhale as a physical function it provides our lungs the opportunity to rest.  We then have the ability to run marathons, climb mountains and if you're me.... Chase a 16 month old around the house.  These things are only possible when our lungs have that split second of rest.  But think about it.... How much resting do our lungs do in one day by the mere act of exhaling? 

In contrast, how often do we rest ourselves, our emotions, our bodies, our minds?  God creates our bodies with endless reminders that we were made to rest.  God begins the story of Creation by resting on the seventh day.  

One of my favorite stories from the Old Testament is the moment Elijah is hiding in a cave when this happens:

The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.

(1 Kings 19:11-12)

Wind.

 Earthquake. 

Fire.

All of these are high energy, driven occurrences, but those are not the moments when God chose to speak to Elijah.  God spoke in a soft whisper.  And when Elijah hears that soft whisper and responses, God is able to use him to do amazing things!  It's in the moments of silence and stillness when God has the space to speak the strongest into our lives.  

So whatever your word for the year might be, I encourage you to think about how it looks when you add the component of rest to that word.  

Reflections on 2015 and My One Word 2016

It's been months since I've posted.  I debated whether to even bother with it.  I'm pregnant, a mommy to an extremely active toddler, a wife and an adult college student.  All of those combined make life feel really overwhelming at times.  It's not really extreme busyness, but all of them combined mean that posting on a blog that isn't accomplishing a school assignment has fallen off of the radar for me.  

I suppose that all of that led to what has become my One Word for 2016.  2015 was full of choices made by myself and with my husband that definitely lived up to my word/s for 2015.  Recklessly Abandon.  In one simple year with only the agreement to follow God wherever that phrase led I find that it's been a year filled with change and challenges for both myself personally and for our family. 

Following God with Reckless Abandon means that you are challenged on whether you will do the things that do not make sense to anyone around you.  For us it meant leaving the church we were part of and over the next few months joining our lives (however painful slowly it might seemed to have taken) to a church plant 30 minutes away because God says "that is where I want to grow you".  It means reaching out to someone you've admired from a distance and risking rejection by asking "Will you mentor me?"  It looks like starting school when it hardly makes sense as you are no where near being in the career field that this degree will qualify you for and it means saying "yes" to God when He says you are finished with the job that is helping pay some of the bills.

For the past two years, I have chosen one word to live out through the year.  To be honest, the first time was largely driven by the fact the church I served at on staff decided to do a series on One Word and as part of the staff I felt a certain amount of pressure to perform and felt I should chose a word.  I find it funny how God can take something that you do out of a sense of duty and make it something that redefines your life.  That first year my word was Pieces.  I don't think I will ever forget that year...  It literally felt like my life fell apart.  I lost the one job I had that made sense to me and felt like it was suppose to be in line with my calling.  I experienced an isolating pregnancy and went into the end of 2014 depleted, alone and feeling extremely broken.  Coming into 2015, I had a certain amount of trepidation at choosing another word, but this time the challenge came from a blogger and author I had come to love and respect so I decided I would once again try the word for a year.

Entering 2016, I once again wondered if I really wanted to chance letting a word define my year and my answer came as I listened to a song that had come to my attention over the past few months.  Plumb's Exhale.  

Exhale.  It's a word that speaks of letting go.  Getting rid of the toxic things that hang over our lives and moving toward the grace, freedom and love that God offers us.  One of the things I have learned about myself is that as a relational introvert, I can have a tendency to hang on to relationships long after they have outlived their purpose in my life.  What I'm finding in this season of my life is that I have less capacity for things so I am going into the New Year knowing I have to be intentional with my time, energy and resources.  It means choosing wisely in what I hold on to and what I let go.  

Exhale.  

Let go. 

Somehow I already expect 2016 to be painful in some ways, but I have also learned out of two years of words that proved painful that in our greatest pain, God is doing some of His most powerful healing in our lives.  He is growing and stretching us because He knows what we are capable of becoming.  We become the one's to halt our own growth when we let fear dictate our lives and decisions.  What about you?  Have you ever tried One Word for a year?  Is this the year to try it?  I'd love to hear if you do!

Musings on #nospendOctober

So we are past the halfway point of our #nospendOctober.  We're surviving it....  Although we did discover that due to some unexpected things we had to alter it after the first couple of weeks.  We discovered that for some crazy reason, I wasn't able to study quite the same way if I didn't have my study sessions at Starbucks.  So we decided to add that particular luxury back in.  The scramble to try to do the studying in the house all of the time was just too much.  The library didn't seem to work very well.  Crazy, right?  I think I might get distracted by all of the other books begging to be browsed there so studying becomes difficult. 

I haven't been very successful at accomplishing all of the cool little organizational and cleaning challenges that Ruth at Living Well, Spending Less put together as part of the #31DaysLWSZ challenge.  I had to give up on that after the kitchen!  While I dream of organizing Myka's room, clearing out paperwork and cleaning out the bathroom closet, alas those items will have to wait until another time.  

Another thing I discovered last week is one way I tend to take some Spiritual Whitespace for myself is to grab lunch out on my lunch break once a week and go to the park.  After about 2 weeks of not doing that, I crashed.  I got to Friday last week and wanted to disolve into tears!  We decided that this was an acceptable compromise to the dining out budget, since eating at work can be a little challenging.  

My husband is much better at this no spend thing than I am.  That said I'm pretty sure he's planning a flea market binge November 1st....  In one way I'm glad we tried it.  On the other hand I'm ready for it to be over.  I haven't started counting days, hours minutes, seconds (mainly because that's math and it gives me a headache....), but I'm ready to be done with this particular challenge.  While it has helped us reset priorities, I'm quite tired of asking the question of does spending this money violate our no spend agreement.  I'm even questioning whether it has the same impact it does for us that it does for others since I hear us saying a lot of "we'll get it when #nospendOctober is over".  

I don't think I exactly regret this trial month of no spending, but I do think I expected different results when we started.  Maybe trying it when you are in school, are actively working through some heavy "stuff" in counseling and have a 1 year old presents a different set of challenges that make it just a little more than I think I care to take on again anytime soon.  Don't get me wrong I think it's an amazing idea.  But it's difficult in different ways from what I expected.  In retrospect I think I start to see this challenge as a great way to deal with our need for things.  I think maybe part of the reason this challenge is different for us is that we don't really have the ties to material things the way we did at one time.  We like to purchase the furniture, home decor and things that make our house uniquely ours, but we were already taking the question of do we genuinely need it?  Do we have a place for it?  What do we need to get rid of if we buy it?  before taking the challenge.  I think in that respect the challenge hasn't served the purpose intended.  So while I don't see myself jumping on board to do this challenge again anytime soon after we finish this month out, one thing I have learned is about extending myself grace.

When I was the one we needed to make exceptions for I felt like a failure.  Like somehow I was the reason this wasn't going to succeed.  After my time with God on Friday though, I came away with a different perspective.  In choosing to eat out that one time a week so I could go spend my lunchtime with God, it changes that lunch hour from something inward focused to using the resources around us (even if it's Burger King) to allow God to draw us closer to Him.  Rather than grabbing food because I'm running crazy, we chose to allot resources to provide an opportunity for some Spiritual Whitespace.  Can I share that after a two week absence from the trail I like to walk on my lunch, I cried?  In the "rules" of our #nospendOctober my heart had taken a huge hit.  I was following the rules so well that I had ignored for two full weeks what my heart was begging for.  I kept pushing through trying to do the task perfectly, not letting my heart be heard.  

I think that's the danger of challenges, church programs and all of the activities we use to fill our lives.  We are so busy trying to do all of them perfectly and not fail at any of them that we miss hearing our hearts beg for what they need.  So can I ask you to join me today?  Take some time out.  Say no to the craziness of life and let yourself hear your heart.  Take more than just five minutes away from the activity and let your heart hear from God in the stillness.  Introvert, extrovert, we both need those moments of stillness for our hearts to hear our Father.