10 Day Reflection: Nothing & Everything

“I care too deeply.”

The answer I would give if you asked me to describe my greatest weakness. I care so much my insides twist at the thought of disappointing even a stranger.

I am the queen of pushing myself to the side to appease the needs of others. The empathy within me runs deep. To help others at my own expense is a strength and a weakness; it is nothing and everything.

Imagine the height of my empathy in a year when everything collapsed and careened out of control. My core was ravaged by the idea of caring for all of the pain in the world. When it became too much, I totally withdrew. I cannot face conflict when there is too much of it. It feels like exposing a wound over and over to a grain of salt, expecting a different outcome when it all just feels like pain. So I wrapped myself in the softest thing I could find, disengaged from as much as I safely could, and saved my empathy for the people I love the most: my husband and my kids.

That has been the last nine months in a nutshell, only in a rollercoaster of a pattern, with great months and incredibly hard ones.

Maybe you relate, maybe you don’t. Maybe this year has been pretty okay. Maybe this year has been the hardest of your life. It has been all out of the ordinary, right? And while I dislike the idea of change, I know this year is ripe for it. I don’t know how many times I’ve said, “I just want things to be normal,” only to realize that normal has changed completely, for now. It’s like traveling without directions, walking with a blindfold, wondering how to walk a path we cannot see without knowing where we’re going. I’ve been stopped for a long while, unwilling to move. There’s nothing special about today. But it does feel like the right day to take some kind of step in one direction or another.

Ten days of reflection is a nice way of saying I like to publicly process even though I’m a pretty private person. Processing how things are different compared to the way they were a year ago. My brain longs to say, “It’s nothing!”. But really, it’s everything. Nothing is the same; everything has changed.

As I was finishing up classes this past week, I had the chance to study Romans 14. It’s a chapter about the importance of not being a “stumbling block” to others. In other words, don’t do things that make faith difficult for others. In even better words (aka my interpretation), don’t be selfish.

One sentence in this portion of his letter to the Roman church has stuck with me for days. He says, “If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love” (Rm. 14:15). In this context, some believers feel free to eat what they like. Others don’t. This isn’t so much an issue today. Most of us eat what we like without getting mad at each other about it. But we do have a habit of doing what we want without considering how it could impact others.

The thing about following Jesus is the longevity of it. Acting in love is not a choice we make one time. It’s a choice we make all the time. Maybe it’s just me, but there are days when I feel like we each have our own definition of what love is. Or what it looks like. We use the same logic to explain our differences in politics, ideologies, or behaviors. Until our love is God’s, it’s some lackluster version of it.

Nothing feels the same, but really, I think it’s better that way. What was normal is being unveiled, exposed for what it was. Much of the normality we experienced was fine. But why would we return to what was without being changed by all that has happened to us? Why would we guard ourselves against the light when the light is known for revealing what was left in the darkness?

Everything has changed. Today feels like the right day to acknowledge that it’s true. I fear change and what it could expose in me. But maybe what it’s exposed is what I need and what I needed to throw out of my sight. It frees us up to look around and see where we are, what stumbling blocks we’ve left in our wake. It gives us a chance to stretch our limbs and move towards those who need our love the most. God’s love.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing. But maybe it’s everything.

Waterproof

I picked up the tube of mascara that I normally forgo every morning. Waterproof. I don’t need waterproof. I don’t plan on crying today. At least, I don’t feel stressed enough at this moment to warrant an overflow of emotion at the end of the day. But the other tube is empty. Actually, I can’t unscrew it because dried mascara has cemented it shut, so I threw it in the trash. Waterproof it is.

By the end of the day I’m scrubbing coconut oil on my 30-year-old eyelids, annoyed by the extra step this waterproof (unnecessary so far today) mascara is. I wash it away with face wash. Splash water on my face. I stand up tall to look in the mirror to make sure I got every bit, and it’s like my fingers snapped. Something clicked in my mind. Ten seconds have passed, and yet I’m realizing something fragile and true. With the snap of my fingers, clarity descended.

Before this year began, I had restlessness in my mind and my heart. Change was coming quickly, and I could feel it like an impending earthquake ready to dismantle what I’ve always known. Obviously, I didn’t anticipate…anything that this year entailed. But I did know something was changing in our life. I just didn’t know all the ways it would unfold.

To utter the truth, I didn’t know that 2020 would involve leaving our church home for a new one or leaving our community and friends for new people. I did know that God was calling us. But I am reluctant, stubborn as ever when change means taking action. Staying in the comfort of what we have always known was and is the safer option. It requires no risk. I can plan for it, line up my expectations, and live my life with little change. But God. We were called to leave. In the middle of a pandemic. I don’t know if that’s kindness or cruelty, but it felt like both some days. Everything we ever knew about familiarity, community, and the church body was thrown out the window. We had entered new terrain.

This year has also meant forgoing any (and all) of my plans. I am an empathetic person, and more often than not, I will do what works best for others. That’s not always a valuable characteristic. It depends on the situation at hand. This year has pushed me farther and farther to care for the needs of others. Where I thought I was compassionate, I have realized I am not. Where I thought I cared for my neighbor, I realized I didn’t really. This year has pushed me further: to be more like Jesus, more like His selfless, giving spirit.

As I rubbed the waterproof mascara from my eyes and looked at that woman in the mirror, I recognized her. The unidentifiable purpose for a year like this one had finally snapped into clear view. In a matter of seconds, I noticed it. Everything simultaneously felt flipped upside down and turned right side up. What has felt like a purely sacrificial year, a year of giving up everything, has been and will continue to be a year of preparation. Preparation for everything that God has meant for me.

And yet it feels nothing like preparation. What is preparation actually looks so mundane, boring, and inconsequential at this moment. Or it looks like everything that benefits everyone else except me. It feels like torture to do all the things I don’t want to do, pushed to my limits to do things against my nature in order to survive. It’s like trying to remove my waterproof mascara. Changing these habits of who I always was and who I thought I was meant to become…requires more than just water to cleanse. Sometimes it takes multiple steps to get rid of what has always been to make way for something new.

It’s getting closer to December. It has felt like the longest year of my life and the most difficult. Amen? We are all feeling some type of way. It is all hard, all testing, and all important. Every feeling that passes through me feels like wildfire or salt in wounds. Some days I don’t know how I’ll make it farther and farther. Yet here we are, months and months later, with a life that felt like it was hit by an earthquake, habits, and comforts upended that we’ve kept for years.

I don’t have any robust encouragement for you today. Saying that 2020 is a year of preparation might be true, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to make a plan to do all the things. It just means that while it is all hard, it doesn’t mean it is all for naught. When I find myself in the kitchen making something for my kids, I’ll turn the music up louder and sing to Jesus a little be more. I’ll cry when it feels like I need to and maybe even when I don’t. I’ll pray like my life depends on it because it does. And I’ll change. I’ll keep changing. I’ll wash off the old and find that newness there, too. Maybe it won’t be as pretty or put together as it was before. But at least it will be me. At least it will be true.

The Morning

I need the early morning. It would survive without me, but if I don’t wake to it, I breathe shallow breaths instead of deep, rejuvenating inhales.

This morning I opened my eyes to my alarm, and I laid there.

“Get up. Get up. Get up. You have to get up.” I say it in my mind until I’m awake enough to really hear it. My husband hates that I love to hit the snooze button. I’ll press it until 8 AM without question or thought. So I pester myself, pep-talk my way into wakefulness. I would rather close my eyes and go back to sleep. But what’s waiting for me is just as essential to my health as the sleep I crave.

I need the early morning, before my kids wake up, before I put clean dishes away, and before I do anything else. Just 15 minutes alone, time to pray, time to think, and time to read is all it takes for me to feel more like myself than if I choose to sleep in a little bit longer.

Get up. Get up.

The morning will move on with or without me. It will be there each day, waiting for me to fill its presence on my couch in the living room. It doesn’t need me for it to exist, it doesn’t need me for the promise of tomorrow. It is sure as the sun, sure as the moon, sure as the time that passes day by day. It welcomes me in whatever state I am in, which is so often disheveled and tired, unkempt, and messy. The morning sees the most vulnerable and unprotected version of me, the one that rolls out of bed with the hope that the morning will give me a little more of the peace that I so desperately need.

It’s hard to escape God when we live in a world like this one. People are unreliable in every way, even though they are made in the image of God. People let me down all the time. So unreliable. So unlikeable at times. Yet in the morning, when the sun rises and shines through my back door, snaking through the trees, I remember God better than before. The sunlight is like Him in so many ways: fierce and warm, reliable, and safe. The morning light is just as reliable. I can count on it to come through every day. Even if the sun is covered by clouds, still the sun rises. Even if the day is bleak, the morning still comes. Even if my bed would seem to be the safest place to hide from the world, still the morning finds me.

That’s the beauty of God. I wish that truth would permeate us like the warmth of sunlight. The truth is, it is not that God has to travel to come to us. He is as reliable as the morning: always there, ready, anticipating our welcome. We have to move toward Him. What’s more, even I don’t wake every day wanting to move toward that early morning light. Sometimes it’s just dark. Sometimes I am so tired, longing for the warmth of sleep, desperate for an escape from whatever the day holds. There are days when moving towards God feels just as painful as walking on the sun itself, feet burning, tears stinging in the heat. But the reward is always worth it: the moment I find myself in the reliable morning hours, I find Him right next to me. I look terrible. I look tired. I feel sluggish and unprepared for time with a God who loves me more than any sun in the sky. Yet He is always ready for me, always reliably present when I’m ready to be with Him, consistent as the sun.

What a relief it is that the rising of the sun doesn’t depend on me. What a relief that the presence of God is not dependent on my heart and soul. Both are near, regardless of me. Nothing we can do pushes Him away. Nothing we can do can stop the sun from rising and setting day in and day out. The least we can do is get up, make our way toward the couch where we’ll find Him waiting. Reliable as the sun. Reliable as the morning. He will meet us there.

Storyteller

Years ago she sat on the floor of her closet, waiting for salvation to change the circumstances of reality. The carpet fibers were filled with the remnants of her tears, the pages of her journal splayed open like an abstract painting on display. Everything and nothing made sense. The deepest desire of her young heart never met. She returned often for the reprieve of grace, like a war room of tears and truth.

Years passed. The journals she filled sat in a bin in the cold basement. The symbol of them is interesting, funny even. They’ve found themselves in a place that existed before she knew how to walk, and they’re surrounded by a history she will never know. That’s the gift of an old house. It houses memories forever, most of which will never be recalled without the presence of the soul who inhabited the walls. And for every new soul, a few memories are left to live in the walls and the windows, never recollected again.

In the corner, they sit, the memories of every day for years and years of becoming a woman. She walks above, navigating a world where everything is harder than it was when she first started writing. She writes less and less because she is needed more and more by eight other hands, eight other feet, four little souls. Difficulty isn’t the right way to look at it. Complexity is. There was once a time when everything was about her. Now, she fights for a day when any choice is hers for the taking. Throw in a pandemic of unprecedented times, and the choices become fewer and farther between.

It seems boring. Monotonous, even. The same thing, everyday. The same choices, everyday. The same work, everyday. This is the dynamic that threatens other women everyday: they feel lost to a world made up of the needs of others. Theirs fall to the wayside like rocks tumbling down a cliff as she and every woman like her makes choices that benefit everyone else. A blessing and a curse.

But recently, she picked up the pen again. What started as a memory of the days she was living turned into a practice for sanity, a recollection of God in her life. Sometimes it takes grace and hell colliding for something new to come forth. Waking before the children, staying up after bedtime, writing and writing for no purpose other than because it’s who she is. Love letters to a saving God, laments for a time she never wanted, gratitude for a life at all. If her journal could tell her story, it would be a one of vulnerability. It’s what she knows, like the backs of her hands. Acknowledging the present circumstance, the present feeling, the present thought is what moves her from mediocre to greatness. She looks on at others waiting or failing to do the same and wonders if they have yet to see the other side of their coin.

If there’s any reason to be better, it’s for the time we are in. It’s for the people we love. It’s for the minds we have within us, the hearts that beat, the souls that sway and ache in the wind. Making our way to the people we want to be, the better versions of ourselves, is a complex trek past what is often outside of our control. We need the blinders like race horses to keep our eyes on one prize, to keep moving towards a purpose and goal that transforms our present reality. I don’t know what I’d do without Jesus. All that might be left of me is a stack of journals that tell the story of a girl turned woman who fought hard to be herself and lost time and time again. He is what gets me through. He’s the one I write letters to, day in and day out, working to move closer to Him so I reflect more of Him. It feels like the loftiest of goals and the most trivial of decisions when the world falls and quakes in the wake of calamity. Yet it is this One, this God, who is the catalyst for every important movement that I can make. With Him, my story is His story. Without Him, I have journals in a basement.

The story we write is just as important as the story we reflect. It changes us from words on paper to living reflections of grace. From storyteller to the story we tell. From the potential to the living. From grace to grace.

The Chaos of Being Loved

Wake up. Pour coffee.

Sit in the chair at the head of the table and overlook the kids and their tablets, my chaos and my loves. We move through the motions of attendance, zoom calls, schoolwork, repeat. Weeks of chaos brought a consistency and routine that is chaotic from the outside but rhythmic for me. Moving, serving, answering, helping. Then we sleep only to awake and do it all over again.

I’ve never been more of a homebody than I am right now. I don’t realize I haven’t left the house in five days until it’s Friday, and the week has passed me by. I don’t mind it. I don’t question it. It is what it is, this rhythm. I mean, I could complain this all to the ground. Create cracks in the facade of “making it”. But I learned quickly that it’s an avalanche when the complaints start with me. Nothing works as it should, all of us crumble to tears, and the animosity is thick between us all. We really are making it through. One day at a time.

I’ve started waking before anyone else’s feet hit the ground. I have to get up before them and find the quiet space in my mind so that when there is no quiet, I can pour out patience from a place of peace. I wake and pray. Everyday. I never used to be a wake and pray type of person. I used to be a let-me-sleep-in type of person. But I realized I was falling apart when I didn’t have the quiet space. I was eager to be angry, anticipating the frustration, and all but willing to succumb to defeat. I just don’t know how we make it without Jesus. I don’t know how to survive the days when they are what they are. He gives me what I lack, which in this point in time, feels like everything.

I’ve given up more than I wanted to in the past few months. I am itching to be called in for something, anything. To get out of our current routine. To do something that feels more meaningful than what I’ve been given. We’ve experienced change this year that has pulled the rug out from beneath my feet multiple times. When all I want is to walk in the distinct calling given me by God, I can’t shake off the feeling that this year has given me the short end of the stick, the bargain I didn’t want, and second-best.

I’m sure you know what I mean. If ever the collective world felt the same about a time in life, it is this year. It cycles through my thoughts, circling my soul to tear me apart bit by bit. I question if the choices I’ve made are nothing but the wrong ones. I wonder if the result of what we have or haven’t done in a year have resulted in me feeling like I have lost myself. If I have given up on who I thought I was. I let “what ifs” dictate the way I stand and take up space in the world because I’ve allowed some kind of liar tell me otherwise.

The turmoil of questioning is like a rung towards existence. Unavoidable. You want to get where God is leading you? This is part of the trip. Is this really who I am? Have I royally screwed up this entire thing? How could this ever be made the way I hoped it would be?

It’s funny. What starts as an overlooking of my kids doing schoolwork in the comfort of our home becomes an assault on my character. I don’t notice it before it’s too late. Always too late. The brilliance of God is that He is not a liar. He is not a thief. And He does not destroy. That’s why He’s Creator.

If you’re like me, which I am just going to assume that you are, I hope I can shake you awake in this moment. What destroys your intuition and your confidence is a lie that was not fastened by God. He didn’t bind it to your existence or give you the space to acknowledge it as truth. That’s not our Jesus. He isn’t so ruthless that He would destroy you. It’s not in His nature.

What is true is that we were awakened this morning by His breath. I shuffled out of bed to grab my Bible and journal, and when I went towards Him, He came running towards me. He isn’t going to make us go far to find Him. I think He’s always within reach, always moving towards us. When I made coffee, sat down at our table, and watched my boys begin their day, I got more than I was ready to receive. I anticipated that my days as a mom would change and become less involved with my children’s lives. Instead, we’re just plain discipling them. Firsthand. I am given minutes and hours that I would not have had otherwise. Even more, they are making me better. They need me, and I’m realizing that I needed them, too.

What is true is that waiting on God is not a waste of my time. Waiting on anyone else is. He is faithful to the end. He is not wasting time by setting us on paths that don’t seem to align with our plans. Our plans suck, let’s be real. His are so magnificent and intricate that I’d take them any day over my measly ideas. His are better. So much better.

What is true is that chaos waits for us, and chaos is in us. What a patient God we have that He would love us enough to never leave us. He waits for me in the morning, while I’m drinking coffee, while I’m explaining math, while I’m reading for school, while I’m taking my two-year-old to the bathroom, while I’m writing another college paper, while I’m moving through the motions of routine. My world feels like a whirlwind, and I get to stand in the eye with Him and overlook it. Nothing a surprise to Him. Nothing out of His control. Chaotic love binds me to Him like a mother and child.

We sleep only to wake and do it all over again. Over and over. The same day, the same week, the same tasks over and over. Refereeing the same fights, holding, loving, reminding. Before I’m called in, I’ll hold each of these moments knowing it’s all a marvelous “get to”. He’s brilliant, isn’t He, to give us all something so precious as this.

First Day, Tired Eyes

I’m never going to sleep again.

It always felt that way. The next day, the first day, was always a day heavy with tired eyes because I never slept well the night before.

When I started having kids, I rarely thought about the first day of school because it was far enough away that I didn’t need to worry about it. Now we’re in the swing of school-aged kids, and I welcome the start of school with relief and also wish its banishment when I realize the end of summer has arrived.

This year, for the most obvious reason, is much more complicated.

Five months they have been home. Five months since they have sat in a classroom with friends. Five months since the world was turned on its head. And as the time for them to begin again draws closer and closer, I lay awake a night, thinking, I’m never going to sleep again.

When this happened to me as a kid, I would turn on Animal Planet and watch whatever show was on at the late hour. I loved watching Steve Irwin on his show. It was such an odd comfort to me when I was a kid to watch his show, like a distraction from what was coming with the morning light. Now I hold my phone and distract myself of sleeplessness with endless timelines, opinions, information, upheaval. I drown out anxiety with another form of it, until I fall asleep praying to forget what is distracting me so.

This year, our boys are staying home for school for a while. For an unknown amount of time. When I knew I would have a choice, this one was the automatic gut response, like my intuition and God Himself were telling me so. I was reluctant to choose because the finality of it felt damning in some ways and terrifying in others. How do I know what will work? How am I supposed to aid in their learning? Is this the chance to grow as a teacher in ways I didn’t know I need skilled? What if they hate it? What if I hate it? What if they learn nothing? What if…?

We sat down to dinner a few nights later, and I laid it all out for them. These boys…they are more empathetic than I realize, and they are more forgiving than I am. I told them we wanted them to stay home, that it seems right. And I’ll never forget how much they wanted it for themselves, too. Not because I said, “You must do as I say.” It’s because they really do want to be here. And by God, they want to be together. Their brotherhood is something I’ve always prayed would grow every year, and somehow they’ve loved every second of being together (outside of their arguments and physical altercations–remember, they’re boys). They are their truest selves here, and they still want to stay. It is a unique privilege that they want us and that I get to be with them for more time than I anticipated. My fears and “what ifs” changed, morphed into a realization that I get to do this. To be their mom and their teacher at a time like this is not a burden, and that alone leaves me speechless with gratitude.

With that in mind, every night I lay awake. The anxiety in my stomach is persistent. When everything is about to begin, I feel like all I want to do is hide.

But it hit me, quite unexpectedly, yesterday. I was standing with one of my boys in my dining room, and like whispers, I remembered. If there is anyone equipped for these boys, it is me. The anxiety I feel is not because we cannot do this; it is because I am afraid I will neglect to do this well. The standards I feel we must meet (and I expect to fall short in)? Standards put on me by an unseen force working against our good. These kids are not worried about a thing. They are not concerned about this not going well. They are more excited than ever. The sleeplessness in my mind and my body is a whole lot of fear with not real foundation of truth.

So I pray. A lot. I rest, more than normal, to give myself space leading up to this “unprecedented” moment. I remind myself that this abnormal year does not mean I must perfectly respond. There is no perfect response. There is a lot of grief, anxiety, unwanted circumstances. And with that, I must remember we are all doing okay and not okay, and God is here with us through it all and in between.

I wish so much that I could retreat from this world for a while. I wish I could find a place alone in the wilderness with my family, separated from the turmoil and stress. But I am reminded that the luxury to retreat from pain is not a luxury at all when we are all reeling. We all want to flee this, do we not? If normal could return in an instant, I think we’d all flock to it. But as of yet, we’re all riding these tumultuous waves, holding on for dear life without losing our sanity and ourselves. It is a unique comfort to notice that I am, in fact, not alone in the slightest. We are wading through uncharted waters with a total lack of experience all around. If anything, we are learning the terrain and working hard and finding out what we’re made of.

We’re all doing okay and not okay. It might feel like we’ll never sleep again. But you will. We will. And right before sleep overtakes me, I realize that this unprecedented life is changing me in the way I’ve always needed to grow and become. The pain of change is that it breaks us and remakes us into the people we must become for a world like this one.

The Fresh Pain of Change

Given what time does to us, it is remarkable we forget what we do. The pains of childbirth, the aches of running when we are not runners, the strain of pressure we thought we could handle but recognize far too late is not our cup of tea.

Again. And again. Our minds recoil and snap back to a reality before our downfalls, and we repeat the same mistakes, the same pains, and the same heartbreaks. Again and again.

I forget how painful change feels until I am past the point of no turning back. The change has occurred, a few steps ahead of me I move, and only then do I look back and realize the cutting off that has occurred. Like deadheading a rose on a beautiful bush, we prune what is slowly dying to begin to grow something new again. It changes the dynamic of our soul, whether we agree to like it or not, and it is a shift in our nature to move toward the sheers of cutting and dismembering to only recreate and regrow.

Like slicing through flesh to expose the infection, we gravitate towards fresh pain to enact a necessary change.

We sat this morning on our couch, like we have for Sundays on end to be with the Church virtually. It has not been easy. For people like us who actively serve in the church body every Sunday, we have been shoved in a different direction, where our service is forced outside walls that are expertly crafted. Instead, we attempt to engage with others who are much like us in these days of COVID where time is irrationally slow and impossibly difficult to remember. We rise to greet the screen, and I find myself surprised every time when God meets me where I am courageous enough to meet Him. We resist change when it feels like a war against our familiar. Yet that’s what we see our Creator doing, page after page after page in His story. Pruning, cutting, destroying, only to rebuild to create something better.

It is painful to change what we didn’t agree to lift the knife to embark on new life.

The moment it happens, the test begins. We don’t like the pain of change because it means revealing a truer part of ourselves that we can easily hide when we’ve memorized the landscape of our expectations. When we know the way, we take the easier path. It’s when the blade is through that the path changes, the landscape shifts, and the vision we held is lifted. Instead of being clothed with our belongings, we’ve got nothing to hold onto. We gather ourselves and everything our arms can hold. The fresh pains of change are like a dismemberment of our capabilities, reversing what we’ve always known, giving us a backward sense of what we’ve always believed to be true.

To sum up my world for this day and nearly every day for a year, it would be this: fresh pain of change.

I forgot what it was for things to shift nearly out of my control. I forgot what it felt to be uncomfortable in a new natural order of things within my life. I forgot what the pain of pruning feels like on a weary soul.

No one likes this much. It reminds me of the moments right before my youngest, Rosie, was born. I was careening in pain through the contractions. I remember laying on the bed, exhausted from feeling ready to meet this new life and also terrified at what it means to give birth. The contractions stopped for a moment. I was helpless to the pain. I was helpless to the inevitable. Whether I wanted it or not, this baby girl was coming into the world. But I didn’t want to be there anymore. I wanted to escape from the pain and reality that was seconds within my reach.

What is fresh pain is also an avenue for the way forward. A birthright to our life. A coming of age into our own humanity. It hurts like hell yet dawns on us a possibility of becoming.

The fresh pain of change means new life is coming.