Enough

Throughout our time in Asia, God reminded me of a verse from Psalm 16:5, "Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup." I took that to mean that whatever came my way, He was in control of it, and it was good for me and my growth in Christlikeness.

I can't tell you how many times it didn't feel like that was true. When you're standing on the street corner with your 3 month old strapped to your chest and three consecutive cabs that you hail get snaked by other people, you can tell yourself, "This is assigned, this is assigned, this assigned" but it's not easy to rest in. I'd rather have the ride to the hospital than a lesson in patience and forgiveness, thank you very much.

Lately, though, I've been looking at this verse differently (and not because I'm hoping it means I get to skirt tough situations). When I read it in the ESV, it says, "Lord, YOU are my chosen portion and my cup." Huh. That takes me out of my circumstances altogether.

Over and over through these last few months, God has brought me back to this truth: He is enough for me. He is all that I need. He is what satisfies.

Our hearts are wily beasts. They hunger and thirst and desire and want. I don't think that's necessarily wrong. But I know that when I hunger and thirst and desire and want things outside of God, I will inevitable be disappointed. They will become idols, idols who cannot satisfy.

So He calls me back to Him, to desiring Him. He calls me back to see that He is enough. He is what I truly want. He is exactly all I need.

He is enough.

40 by 40

A friend of mine recently posted about her list of 40 things to do before the age of 40. At first I thought, "Hey, that's a great idea!" and then I thought, "I have seven hours." Oh well.

Instead, I thought I'd make a list of things I'm glad I did before the age of 40. Maybe things I'm glad I've learned. I'm not sure. Suddenly 40 seems like a lot and until I actually make this list I'm not sure what it will contain. So here goes:

40 Things I'm Glad I've Done/Learned: 

1.     I've followed God

2.     Learned that God loves me. A lot.

3.     Married a great man

4.     Became a mom

5.     Learned that you can’t be a perfect mom, but you can be a great one with God’s help.

6.     Lived in other countries

7.     Learned that God is bigger and stronger and wiser and basically more of everything than we believe He is. And the more you trust that, the better off you are

8.     Climbed the Great Wall (and therefore am now a true Han Chinese)

9.     Wrote a book (wait, what? Yes, but it's for a limited audience)

10.   Ran two half-marathons

11.   Learned that when taking up running you should have good shoes and take extra iron or you will hurt your feet and get anemic

12.   Preached in a church in Trinidad ("preach it sista!")

13.   Learned another language

14.   Used my degree – take that all you humanities haters.

15.   Learned how to take good photos

16.   Homeschooled my kids

17.   Rode a unicycle

18.   Played several musical instruments with varying degrees of competency

19.   Learned that as much as I don't like trials, I need them to be who God wants me to be (and who I want to be)

20.   Had cheap massages on the beach in Thailand, which is the best way to get a massage in the world

21.   Stayed healthy

22.   Learned that being healthy is as much about giving yourself grace as it is about eating well and exercising

23.   Had hard conversations where I had to be vulnerable and saw how it deepened my relationships

24.   Wrote a blog

25.   Consistently sought opportunities to share with others what God is doing in my life (i.e. through this blog)

26.   Tried to be as generous as possible with my resources

27.   Read extensively

28.   Made friendships a priority

29.   Learned to apologize often

30.   Went to LEAF (leadership development time) and purposed to apply what I learned there

31.   Became a LEAF coach

32.   Prayed. A lot.

33.   Learned that my value comes solely from my position as a child of God

34.   Kept my sense of humor

35.   Made keeping tabs on my own heart a value

36.   Learned that to keep an open, soft heart requires a willingness to bear pain

37.   Learned that my depravity is deeper than I could have imagined, but His redemption is far deeper

38.   Learned that our parents are a lot smarter than we give them credit for (and so are kids)

39.   Made mistakes

40.   Learned that I still have a lot more to learn

Cease Striving

I've never been one for being quiet or still. My mom loves to tell stories of my propensity to crawl, climb, walk, at an early age, and of a 2-year-old Gina marching into Sunday School singing, "Have faith, hope and charity, that's the way to live successfully!" One memorable report card from 2nd grade lauds my sociability with other kids, my willingness to participate in class discussions. It ends, though, with the downside, "Gina needs to learn to be quiet in class."

No, I'm much for quiet and still. I like to be on the move. I like to communicate. I tend to live my life at high speeds of taking in information, accomplishing all that I can, seeking opportunities to express myself.

Cease striving, and know that I am God might have been written just for me.

I need to have it phrased that way, "Cease striving." It packs more of a divine reprimand for me that just "be still." When I think of "be still" I imagine something that is already at rest and is being asked to just stay. "Cease striving" speaks more to my MO. I strive. Oh how I strive.

Don't get me wrong. I believe it's part of how God made me, this inclination toward activity. It's something I like about myself, the high capacity to do the things that interest me. The danger comes when my activity and my own chatter silence the voice of God, when I use my actions and my voice to try to find life apart from God, to make things happen in my ways and in my time.

Lately, I've been doing that. In my desire to find my place in this new chapter of life, I want to run ahead of God. I want to make noise so that I am seen and heard, recognized and approved. I don't want to rest in His ways or His timing, but that is exactly what He is asking me to do. He's asking me to cease trying to make life happen according my ideas, to stop looking for life apart from Him.

There's actually a great relief that comes in being reminded of that. I am His. He knows what He's doing with me. I just need to cease striving and let Him be God in my life.

What about you? Are you striving today?

Running from God

Well, here I thought I'd posted something a few days ago and I came to write another post and realized I hadn't! If you don't follow me on Facebook or Twitter then you might have missed my guest post on Judy Douglass' blog a couple days ago.

Judy is the wife of Steve Douglass, the president of Campus Crusade for Christ, International. We have met them in our time in Orlando and found them to be a humble couple who love God wholeheartedly.

Judy herself is full of passion and fire, and I am learning a great deal from her about how to be a godly woman who engages and loves the people around her. She's a prolific writer, and while you read my blog post at her blog, stay and read her posts as well. She's amazing!

Tell Me

"I'm a terrible sister." Our sweet girl told me this the other day, after a few days of too much time with her brother coupled with not enough activity in their days had resulted in unpleasant interactions between the two. 

I'm so glad she said it out loud. Too often those accusations from the enemy go unsaid in our hearts, and we continue to believe them. But spoken out, we can call them the lies they are. It's hard to do that alone, which is why I was glad I was there to remind her that it is not God who says those things to her. I could tell her what He would say - that He knows how hard it is to love, that He can and wants to help her, that He loves and has compassion on her. It was a good moment.

Lately I've been reminded how important it is to tell myself often, daily even, these things as well. I need to tell myself who I am in Christ, how He sees me, who He is. It's too easy to start listening to the voices of the world, to the voice of the enemy. 

But sometime it's hard. It's a hard battle to keep fighting day after day. Sometimes it feels like too much, and that's when we need others to stand with us. I wrote a poem years ago about this: 

Tell Me

Tell me the truth
about myself

Tell me things that free me
from the worry cage I've built

Tell me the upside-down things
that correct the world's twisted weavings

Tell me there are rocks to rest on
so I can come in from the storm

Tell me things that breathe new life
into this valley of dry bones

Tell me again to draw my sword
to cut through the enemy attacks on my soul

They say there are no easy answers
I know 
But there is One who answers still
Tell me what He would say
when I'm weak and lonely and tired

Tell me to listen to Him
Tell me
because sometimes I forget. 

What about you? Are you telling yourself the truth? Do you need others to help you?

An Acceptable Time

Psalm 69:13, "But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord. At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love answer me in your saving faithfulness."

An acceptable time. I read this verse this morning and this phrase has kept running through my mind all day. An acceptable time. This is when God will answer. He'll answer out of his abundant and steadfast love. He'll answer in his saving faithfulness. He'll answer at just the right time. 

That phrase just makes me stop, take a deep breath, and exhale. All those prayers I throw up to Him - some so fleeting I am barely conscious I do it, others through sweat and tears - they will be answered at just the right time. There is unspeakable comfort in this today.

Abundant. Steadfast. Faithful. Loving. Perfectly timed. That's how He answers.

Practically Perfect

"It was practically perfect!" he sobbed.

The "it" to which Ethan was referring was life in China. Yes, life in the country where pollution levels make LA look clean, where people stared and laughed and spoke at him in a language he could barely understand, where we lived in concrete high rises and fought to stay alive on the lawless roads, where we were thousands of miles from family, was practically perfect. That place, in his mind, was about as good as it gets.

In many ways, it truly was. Those last few years we had about 60 school age kids, mostly homeschooled, living within about a 2 mile radius of each other. They played together or had activities together nearly every day. Many of them were kids he'd known most of his life. China might not have been the most beautiful, convenient, easy place, but it was his place. It was his home.

The grief comes at unexpected moments, like a few nights ago, when he cried himself to sleep remembering this practically perfect place. It's not that he doesn't enjoy life here; he does, but it is a harder season. We all have them. As I look back on our life in Asia, I can mark the seasons like a roller coaster of ups and downs, "loving life" chapters, and "God please help us" years.

I told Ethan that this is part of his story. It's a tougher part - maybe a part he wouldn't have written. A story can't be all perfect; it has to have conflict, struggle, even tragedy, for it to be a really good story. And God's writing a really story for him. For us.

Being Human

So I'm in this women's group about shame. Yep, shame. Sounds fun right?And not at all awkward.

We're talking about it because it's the topic of a book we're reading by Brene Brown, and if you don't know who she is you should go find out. Wow. Just wow. Anyway, the book we're reading is called I Thought it was Just Me (But it Isn't). It's about recognizing shame and building shame resilience. Shame the fear of disconnection. It is the feeling that there is something about us that is wrong, and that wrongness separates us from others. It sends us into hiding.

What I keep coming back to as we talk about this topic is that so much shame comes from the fact that we all have a hard time just being human. Shame pokes us and outright sucker punches us when we buy into the messages all around us about what we should be, what we should do, what we should have. The expectations are huge and conflicting and impossible, but we try with everything we have to meet them so that we don't ever have to feel like we're the ones left out. Shame tells us that it's not ok to just be who we are, to be human.

I have a friend who says we all vacillate between believing that we are superhuman or subhuman. When we're superhuman, we think we can do it all, that if we try just a little harder we can achieve that ideal. We refuse to accept that we have needs or limits. Or we decide we can't do it, we're not good enough, we're less than, and we put ourselves in the subhuman category. We vote ourselves off the island. Either way it's shame at work.

I'm realizing through this group that shame doesn't have to win. We can all just be our imperfect, struggling, up and down, awesome and less than awesome selves. But to do that, we have to take a hard look at those expectations. We have to stop listening to them. But more than that - we need to talk about what they do to us. We've been doing that in this group, because the cure for shame is empathy. We share our stories and we listen and try to enter in and say "you're not alone." At times it feels awkward and uncomfortable because we want so much to do it well but more and more it brings the greatest sense of relief and acceptance. It's a joy to be able to say, "This is me being human" and to have others say, "Yeah, I'm human too."

Why can't we all just be human?

Keeping in Step

"How have we kept in step with the Spirit during this transition?" That was the question we were supposed to answer in a brief sharing time last week at the Cru day of prayer.

I'll be honest, my first response was, "The phrase, 'keeping in step with the Spirit' has not crossed my mind at all during this transition. Does that mean I haven't? And how would it go down if I just got up there and threw that out as my opening line?"

And to more honest, I was a little afraid. Afraid that if I got up there and shared how much I've struggled with holding fast to God in this transition, I would be the odd man out.

But I wasn't. We were the last to share that day, and the encouraging thing was that everyone who got up front talked about how they struggle to keep in step with God. By the time I got up there, I knew I was among friends.

Even better news is that I DO see how I've been trying to keep in step with the Spirit during this transition. For me, it's meant learning to slow down, stop trying to figure things out on my own, waiting for His direction, and responding in obedience.

But the thing that encouraged me the most that day was something from one of the other speakers. He talked about being expectant. I have been in the habit recently of starting my day by saying, "Ok God, it's you and me. In it together. I know you're at work. Show me what to do, and I'll do it." All good. Good stuff. Good way to start the day. But I realized that I can do that, and yet not really expect God to do anything. Or maybe just expect not much. So I've been trying to do that this last week, to go beyond, "I'm willing" to "I'm expectant."

What are you expecting Him to do today?

Bread Upon the Waters

This afternoon I had the opportunity to share a few thoughts about our transition at our World Wide Day of Prayer. It should be noted that until last night, I was imagining the WWDOP here the way it happened in previous years - about 40 of us in a basement sitting around tables. It was good for me to know, at least somewhat in advance, that we would be speaking in front of ALL the staff of Cru. Good thing public speaking is something I enjoy!

As I shared, I was reminded of Ecclesiastes 11. I once spent a good part of a summer meditating on that chapter. If you read it, you will probably think, "Wow. Seemingly one of the more confusing ramblings of the Old Testament." But God really spoke to me through it, to the point where I wrote one of my favorite poems about it.

And THAT is the point of my story. See, I always get around to it eventually. I wrote all that to introduce the fact that - ta da! - I want to share one of my poems. You might want to read Ecclesiastes 11:1-6 first to get some context. In short, what I read from it is, "You really don't know what God is going to do. Just focus on being filled with His Spirit and being expectant, and see what He does."

Bread Upon the Waters

Blow you winds where you will
only let that it may be
upon my back pushing me onward
causing my life to be
as bread upon the waters
poured forth heedlessly
yet anchored to You

I will take no thought of it
for where I fall, there will I lie
as I am filled, therefore will I rain
Rain upon the waters
Life returning to life
Take me, fill me, cast me out
on the path of your wind
O Maker of all things.

My Anchor

I have this picture in my head today of me in a tiny rowboat on a vast ocean. I know I've talked about boats a lot through our transition, but it's fitting - we are on a journey. So back to my rowboat - imagine me in a tiny rowboat, riding the waves, and as I look around I see nothing recognizable in any direction. In fact, forget the boat - it's actually more like a raft, Castaway style. Except unlike Tom Hanks I have not, at any point of this move, made a disemboweled volleyball my best friend and confidante. I am, thankfully, still far from that. Praise be to God.

I think we generally try to move toward life in a swimming pool. We want something manageable, something with defined edges, something with a dimension that doesn't wear us out. The walls of the pool are the roles and relationships we form that give boundaries to who we are. We can stretch out on an inner tube and enjoy.

Any kind of transition - getting married, becoming a parent, changing jobs, kids leaving home, moving across town - will affect the roles and relationships we have. They stretch our boundaries - maybe to an Olympic size pool, maybe a lake, maybe the whole big ocean. We have to learn to renavigate, to manage this different shape. We need to find those places where we can rest, to become familiar with the edges again.

And so there's me, imagining the ocean around me with no land in sight. I long for the edges, the boundaries, the things that make me go, "Oh right, this is where I am, where I belong, who I am, what I'm capable of." My temptation is to look around, paddle frantically, screaming, "WILSON!!" I find myself looking to others to tell me "here's land." I seek affirmation, acknowledgement, value, to make me feel solid again.

But the fact is, those things we think give us definition are ultimately not what define us at all. They are merely temporary boundaries, these roles and relationships God gives us for seasons. What we need, what I need, to remember, is that regardless of the size of my current situation, my identity comes from Him. He is the anchor who tells me, "I know you. I see you. You are mine. That is all you need."

And in this, transition is a gift. It's an opportunity to have all that I might depend on be stripped away, and to be called back (more frequently than I usually need) to who I am in Him. The truth of who I am in Him is a constant, grounding me regardless of the depth of water or the distance from land.

This is assigned

"How accurate are these things?"

"Umm . . . the box says 99%."

"So it could be wrong. Right?"

"I think that means it might say you aren't, but you really are. Not the other way around."

So began our parenting adventure nearly 14 years ago, just months before we planned to head overseas to live long term. I have to say, it wasn't the most thrilling moment of my life. In fact, I was stunned. I gave serious thought to the possibility that God had made a mistake, like maybe he took his eyes off me for a second and then looked back and said, "Oh, hey, are you pregnant? Oops."

Yes, I know, theologically unsound. Pretty sure God never says "oops." So I spent that summer pondering how on earth this could really be good timing in light of all I hoped to do that fall in China. God led me to Psalm 16:5-6, "Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup. You have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Surely I have a delightful inheritance."

Those verses said told me God is two things - sovereign, and good, therefore me being pregnant at that time was from the hands of a good God who knows what he's doing. That was hard for me to accept at the time, but I grudgingly said, "Ok God, show me how this is good" and he said, "Challenge accepted" and proceeded to blow my mind with his awesomeness. True story.

Those verses came back to me over and over again through the years. It was in little moments, like when I stood on the street corner with my 3 month old, hailing cab after cab because each one I called was snaked by a stranger, and I repeated to myself, "This is assigned. This is assigned." It was in big moments, like when we were suddenly asked to move to Singapore and leave all that we had come to love, "This too is assigned."

Sometimes I can look back and see so clearly how it was God who intervened and made things so much better than I planned (hello, Ethan). Other times I am still left wondering, but that doesn't mean they didn't accomplish what he wanted.

I've been mulling those verses again lately, realizing that I haven't been as conscious as I'd like to be, or need to be, of God's hand in the details, great and small, of my life. Something changes in my heart when I settle on the fact that nothing will come today without God's permission, without his promise to use it for good, without his commitment to be in it and above it. This is assigned.

This kind of Jesus

When I worked at Mankato State University, I had a student insist to me that Jesus was white, because she'd "seen the pictures."

Yeah. I've seen the pictures too. Jesus always looks so serene and other worldly, like in that one where he's standing outside the door in a halo of sunlight. I get the feeling that if I were to ask that Jesus what he's thinking about, he'd say something like, "Heaven" and I'd be all, "Oh" because I was thinking about chocolate, and then feel like maybe he and I couldn't relate very well.

But lately we've been watching The Bible on The History Channel. It's a great series, even if Noah has a Scottish accent and Moses seems a little unhinged, and Satan looks like a cross between Obama and Voldemort. What I like the most about it is Jesus.

When Jesus was with Peter in the boat, he just seemed so, well, human. He needed help getting into the boat. He sat casually and looked amused at Peter's lack of faith. He spoke earnestly to him, and with conviction. He looked at Peter like you would look at someone you just really like.

Throughout the series, I have watched Jesus' face with fascination. I see his joy when he's in the midst of friends. He's delighted with children. He's compassionate toward even the guard who came to arrest him. His face fills with sadness and tenderness as he is betrayed by a kiss. He's human.

And then he swirls his hand around in the water and brings tons of fish to the boat and reminds me, "Oh yeah, this guy's God." He walks on water, he heals lepers, he gives the religious leaders looks that penetrate to their souls. When asked, "Are you the son of God?" he answers, "I am" and I think, "These men stood in the presence of God and they didn't know it."

God with skin on. It's really such a gift. We get to see what God is really like. I realize that this is a TV show I'm talking about, but the fact is that God was human for a time, and he did feel all those things. I can relate to a Jesus like that. I have been imagining him, as I go through my days, picturing the look he would give me in moments I am experiencing. I think he would laugh with me. He would cry when I'm hurt. He would speak words of conviction with kindness and tenderness. He would tell me that he likes chocolate too.

And because of Easter, because of the resurrection, there is nothing to keep us from experiencing a relationship with that God, the one who knows all that we go through, who felt it with us, who still feels it with us. He is not someone who stands at a distance. He wants to walk through life side by side, doing life with us. Do you know this kind of Jesus?

Christ Who Gives Me . . .

This morning I received an email from Ethan that said, "I can do all things through Christ who gives me." I jokingly wrote back, "Gives me what? What is it Ethan? The suspense is killing me!"

But I was encouraged. This is his budding faith in action, as he was gearing up for what we both knew was going to be a rough day, reminding us both who we need to trust. He has a quarter paper due tomorrow, and in defiance of the word "quarter", he has chosen to instead try to do it in about a week. The last seven days could be titled, "The Butz family learns the meaning and consequences of deadlines." This morning he still had about 4/5 actually written, but not edited, and no bibliography. Nothing like a challenge for Monday morning!

To make it more interesting, Megan went to a birthday sleepover on Saturday night with 20 other girls where they were allowed to stay up until 1:30 am. I don't remember the last time I willingly stayed up that late. It was probably my freshman year of college, before I realized that I can't function beyond 10 pm. We learned yesterday that Megan can't function well herself on 6 hours of sleep. Today, we were still feeling the residual damage.

All that added up to an emotional day, the kind of day where my heart struggles to stay engaged with my kids, to enter in to their emotions fully, to just sit with them in their tears. Part of me wants to let them just cry it out, to say, "Yep. I get it. School is hard. Life is hard. I'm totally with you kiddo," and another part of me wants to move them through it as quickly as possible back to a place where they can actually finish the work and put us all out of our misery.

At times, I think, "This is too much God. My heart can't stretch any more. I can't sit through another meltdown. I don't have what I need for this."

But throughout the day, I've remembered Ethan's email. I can do all things through Christ who gives me . . . strength, yes. But really, fill in the blank. Patience. Compassion. Gentleness. A bigger heart. Whatever it is we need.

I Am an Israelite

As a family, we've been reading the Bible in a year together. At the same time, the church we've been attending is going through something called The Story, which is a 30 week overview of the Bible. We decided to throw in The History Channel's The Bible series for good measure. We are immersed.

One of the things that always gets me when I read the Old Testament is how the Israelites can seem so dense. I mean, seriously - God parts the Red Sea for you to walk through, and about a minute later you're complaining that you want to go back to Egypt? He provides food out of nowhere, but still you must grumble? The leader goes away for a little while and you decide the best option is to make a farm animal out of perfectly good jewelry to worship? So fickle. So quick to forget. So untrusting.

So much like me.

Sigh. The truth is, I am an Israelite. I have seen God do amazing things in my lifetime, both around me and in me. But give me a new circumstance, a new place in life, and I too often forget what God has done and who He is. I look at myself, my own resources, my lack, and I lose heart. That is what I have done these last few weeks, and it has not been pretty, my friends. Not. Pretty.

Isn't that what the Israelites did? They took their eyes off who God is and looked at their circumstances through their own eyes. God didn't change - their perspective did. They just plain forgot who they were dealing with.

Which is why Moses, in Deuteronomy, tells them about 100 times "do not forget the Lord." Remember what He has done. Remember who He is. That same God who parted the Red Sea? He's with you in your move. He's going ahead of you to find that house. He's here in Orlando. He's got plans for you.

When I realized this a couple days ago, I took some time to sit down, confess it to God, and to remind myself of who He is. He is good, He sees me, He is able, He is love. It doesn't matter the circumstances, it matters who we're looking at to take care of them.

Desire

What do you do with desire?

I'm not talking about "I desire bacon" or, "I desire a tropical vacation." 

I'm talking about deep heart desires, like the desire to be loved, respected, needed, safe, important, powerful, competent, noticed. If I don't get bacon on any given day, I'm not going to be hurt. I'm not even going to be hurt if I don't get chocolate, though maybe a little disappointed. But if my desire to be loved goes unmet, there is potential for deep ache. So what do I do?

Most people would agree there are two main directions we sway. One is to demand that desire is met. This often looks like anger and contempt. My kids disobey, and I insist that they change. I yell and put my foot down and demand that they do what I ask. Why? Because that's what parents should do? No - there are other ways to obedience. I do it because at a deep heart level, I don't feel respected by them, and I hate that. Their disobedience feels unloving, and I want to be loved and respected.

So I could go another route. I could deaden my desire. This feels like the more "Christian" option. I can tell myself that I don't care. I deny. I kill the desire. I tell myself that I am selfish for wanting it, foolish for looking to children to satisfy a desire. This is nothing more than shaming ourselves for having a legitimate desire. The collateral damage of this is that we begin to shame others for their desires as well.

Is there a middle ground? I believe so. It's what a friend of ours last night called, "liminal space." It's the place where you acknowledge the desire and you sit with it. I believe it's a place where you honor the desire. You say, "This is a true desire, a God-given desire." The difficulty of this in between place is that there is no guarantee that the desire will be met. In fact, often it's not. So we sit with the ache. 

Why on earth would we do that? Why would we intentionally put ourselves in such a place of vulnerability? Personally, I think it's because that's what God does. God desires. He desires relationship with us. He desires our love, our respect, our worship, our attention. He doesn't demand it. He never says He doesn't care anymore whether or not we respond to Him. He sits in the ache, longing for us. Like the father in the story of the prodigal son, He waits every day, bearing the disappointment, in the hopes that something good will come. What He desires will happen. 

So I believe that the liminal space is the place where God wants us to live because He lives there too. He wants us to develop hearts like His, hearts that are alive and full of desire. Hearts that are soft and vulnerable and honest. He wants us to honor the desires He has created in us. 

What do you desire? And what are you doing with it? 

Moving toward contentment

Nearly two months into 2013, I have to ask myself how I am doing with my word of the year. If I had chosen the word "chocolate," I bet I would be doing my best to live up to it. It's probably a good thing I didn't, though, because then my word for the year in 2014 would have to be "detox" which doesn't look very pretty embroidered on a pillow.

No, my word is "content." I had to look up the definition of it because that's what nerdy word lovers like me do. It means, "in a state of peaceful happiness; satisfied with a certain level of achievement, good fortune, etc. and not wishing for more; to accept as adequate despite wanting more or better."

Many words jump to mind for me as synonyms for "content" after reading this definition and pondering it: satisfied, accepting, peaceful, patience, submission, enough. It's a lack of striving, of trying to make life a certain way. It's receiving with gratitude and a quiet heart. It's freedom from being in control. It's taking a deep breath and saying, "This is ok."

In other words, it's the antithesis of my mode of operation. I've already started to think that a lot of my emotional woes would be solved if I could just grasp this state of being content. I think I've spent most of these two months simply becoming more aware of where I am NOT content and why ("the first step is admitting you have a problem").

This basically involves three areas - content with who I am, what I have, and what I do. The dissonance between where I am and true contentment stems usually from idealistic images I have in my head about the way those things could look. I am seeing how much what I look at - television, magazines, the internet - feeds my discontent.

I would like to say that I am ruthlessly eliminating the things in my life that breed discontent. I can say that I am trying to make choices to turn my heart away from them. It's little things - choosing not to watch the red carpet for the Oscars because I know it will cause me to be discontent with my body and my current state of non-famousness. Or trying to spend less time on Pinterest because after I look there, I find that I feel unsettled and uneasy about the lack of awesome DIY projects that could make my house look like a magazine ad.

Beyond that, it's mostly a conversation with myself. The number of conversations I have with myself on any given day are legion (the by-product of being a high communicator AND an introvert) but these are an attempt to be a little more directive with my thoughts. Meaning I am trying to be conscious to stop when I am feeling discontent and ask myself things like, "When you look at your own body, will you choose to be content? Will you say yes to what God has given you?" or, "When you look at the mess of things undone, can you smile and say, 'It's ok'?" and maybe hardest of all, "Will you be content to let God choose His own way of working your life and not demand your own ways?"

So am I more content? I don't know about that. I would say I'm more and more convinced that it is the key for me to live well here right now. I'm not there yet, but I'm moving toward it.

All Things for Good

I wasn't supposed to see my grandma at Thanksgiving.

We had plans to drive to Wisconsin, but because our shipment had been delayed repeatedly, Erik had to go to Orlando to receive it. My parents were going to visit my grandma at the nursing home, and I decided to go with them because it might be the last time I saw her.

It was.

So often decisions we make, or things that happen to us beyond our control, upon reflection appear to be the orchestration of God. Her funeral could have been last Wednesday, but because of some family issues they scheduled it for Saturday. I probably couldn't have gone on Wednesday because Erik just got back on Wednesday morning from his trip. I found frequent flyer tickets. Erik had a couple days off of work to stay back with the kids. All these things added up to me being present for my first family funeral since 1999.

He works all things for good. I look back on my life and there are some events in my life - Ethan's birth, the last semester in China (the first time around), our move to Singapore, our move back to China - where, on paper, it didn't look the way I would have planned it. Circumstances I wouldn't have chosen, seemingly ordinary decisions, plus God's impecable timing - they all interwove to create something better than I imagined.

I might not have said it at the time, but afterward I can look back and see a God who is tender hearted, who cares about the details, who does indeed work all things for good.

If I can see it so clearly in these circumstances, how many other times have there been when He did work and I just didn't recognize it? And how many more will there yet be?

Acquainted with grief

This past year, through a variety of means, I feel like I have become more acquainted with grief. I am often caught off guard by how quickly I am brought to tears by a song on the radio, a gracious comment from a friend, a conversation with a loved one, ponderings about all that we have been through this year.

This reminds me of a couple things: first, of Much Afraid from Hind's Feet on High Places. She is given two companions which are Sorrow and Suffering. When I first read that book, I was in college and I can't say I was much acquainted with sorrow or suffering. The argument could be made that I really don't know them now either. I would say I am coming to know them.

That's what "acquainted" means, after all. It's from the Latin, "to come to know." I believe most people want to avoid sorrow and suffering. They even believe that as Christians we are meant to avoid them, not to experience them, that if we do we are somehow lacking faith. Me, I just want to avoid them because they aren't much fun.

But my other thought about being acquainted with grief is: Jesus was. In Isaiah 53:3, it says he was "a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief." I find it interesting that of all the things we could be told about Him, we know that. I don't doubt that Jesus was a man who exuded joy, who could throw His head back and laugh. But we are told specifically that He was no stranger to sorrow and grief. Why? I think to tell us, "It's ok. This is part of the journey."

I feel like my heart can't even wrap itself around this knowledge completely, beyond, "This is a good thing." If Jesus knew it, He knows what it is like for me, and He knows that it is working something necessary and good in my heart. Most of the time, when I rub up against grief I am grateful (although I confess when it comes in the presence of others it throws me because I'm still not particularly comfortable with falling apart unexpectedly). I am grateful because I sense that it means my heart is being opened by this, that it's hopefully developing in me a greater capacity to enter in to the grief of others and to say, "I am coming to know this too."

Better Things Ahead

This week has left me a little speechless. On top of the emotional roller coaster of starting our kids in school and Erik being gone, death came twice: a dear family friend, and my sweet grandma. The first was wholly unexpected, the kind of death where you say, "But I just saw him . . . but he just . . ." It's stunning.

The second was a long time coming. My grandma was nearing 100 years old, and in recent years has been in a slow decline physically and mentally. This last week she'd stopped eating and wasn't responding much to people. She's finally free. 

All this brings into sharp focus the frailty of life, the fact that at any moment things could change. So I find myself delighting more in things I could easily miss - the sound of my son's voice from the back seat of the car, the new blossoms on our lemon tree, the sun rising through hues of pink, breath in my lungs. 

But it also makes me realize how far we are from Eden, how this world is nothing compared to the next. I think of our friend, who had a beautiful voice, and I imagine him singing praises to his God in a way he never has before. I think of my grandma whole, restored, full of joy. I think about how all that we enjoy and love here is but a poor substitute for what is to come. 

So let's love well and be people of gratitude and wonder for the gifts we are given, but let us put our hope in eternity where all will be made new. 

“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” C.S. Lewis