One Life

What if all you had was $100 to feed a family of four for two weeks?  You could choose to spend that money however you wanted, but it's all you have for for food for the entire two weeks.

You could choose to go out to eat at a nice restaurant with that amount of money,  thinking you deserve it.  Yes, a break from cooking and cleaning up sounds really good. The kids would love you when you say, "Hey, get whatever you want on the menu!  There are no limits today!"   Chances are, you wouldn't have much left for the remainder of the 2 weeks. In the end, the wanton spending would leave you and your family impoverished and hungry.

Or you could carefully take stock of the resources you have, and  plan out how to make the most of the $100 over the 2 week period of time.  Your family would be thankful and happy with this choice, no doubt, as  there is enough to go around and no one goes hungry.  You would have creatively and  intentionally made the most of what you had.

Sometimes I think we approach life as though we have unlimited days.  It's easy to choose to spend our days how we want to, even wasting time if we choose to.  And when it comes to choices on how to spend our time, we have the luxury of choosing good over best because we can get to the best at some other time in life when we feel like it. Or, we might not even realize what is the best because we've been numbed by the illusion that we have an abundance of days and time.

As part of my job, I supervise students in an oncology clinical setting.  Oncology is where people with cancer are treated.  Occasionally, one of the patient's will open up about what he or she has learned from having cancer.  More often than not, the learnings and new perspective on life have to do with seeing in a new way the value of each day.  How each day is such a gift.  And with each day, learning to make the most of the things that are truly important in life.  With the diagnosis of cancer, each day, each moment, has become extraordinarily precious in part because time is now viewed in the context of a limited number of days. Most people, in that situation, choose to spend each day embracing what they view as most valuable and important.

I don't think we have to be struck with a terminal disease in order to learn to appreciate fully each day.  I do think a careful analysis of our life is required, taking time to evaluate what is important to us, and committing to pursuing those things wholeheartedly and intentionally.  I try, most days, to start the day with gratitude for a new day and a recognition that I need help from above in living this I've been given to the fullest.

Paul says it like this:  "Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that.  Don't be impressed with yourself.  Don't compare yourself with others.  Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life." (Galatians 6)

That's a lot of good wisdom and advice to live by. We've been given one life to live.  Let's make the most of each day, doing the creative best we can.  And may we each be blessed with an ability to see what truly matters.

Live Openly and Expansively

There's a verse in The Message translation of the Bible that pushes all of my buttons.  The Apostle Paul is speaking to the people of the Early Church.  Here's how it reads in The Message:

Dear, dear Corinthians [don't you just feel the love?] I can't tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open spacious life.  We didn't fence you in.  The smallness you feel comes from within you.  Your lives aren't small, but you're living them in a small way.  I'm speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection.  Open up your lives.  Live openly and expansively!"  (2 Corinthians 6:11-13, emphasis added by me)

Because I think that Paul, as a messenger of God, was urging people to be wide open to hearing and responding to God's ways, that becomes part of my take away from this passage.  Here is what I know I want to do more of in this next year:

• Take time to consider scripture and listen to God
• Write down in my journal what I sense God speaking
• Be willing to act on what I sense God is saying and doing
• Continue to invite God to work in my life, to show me how to live, how to think, how to break out of my own self-imposed limitations.  I know that without God's work in my life, I am constrained by my limiting thoughts and mindsets.  

I know this is pretty basic, but I also know that I don't want to get to the end of my life and see how small of a life I lived because I was closed off to God's Spirit at work in my life, or didn't take the time to really allow God to stir my heart and for me to respond.  My desire is to live as large and expansive of a life that I can and I know that I need God for that.

Be the Best You that You Can Be

The day I graduated from High School I walked away from the auditorium with a huge sense of accomplishment.  Not so much because I had a diploma in hand with academic honors, but that I had survived High School being me. Probably one of the greatest struggles of my life in terms of staying true to who I am took place in Middle School and High School.  It was worth fighting the battle back then because I think it may have helped me to gain some stronger "sense of self" muscles, if you will, that have sustained me during other times when the pressure was on to become either more than I am, or less than I am, or something other than I am.

A friend introduced me to a poem by e.e. cummings (1894-1962)  that has stuck with me over time:

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, day and night, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting."

I think in our culture we focus a lot of attention on being the best basketball player, or the best pianist, or the best designer with all of the attention being on the mastery of technical skills alone.  The status of "the best" at something will be achieved by a very select few, making it nearly an unattainable goal. There can be only one "the best" at something.

But the thing we can each be the best at is being who we are.   You alone hold the power to be the best you you can be.  No one else can do that for you.  The world needs you to be richly and authentically you if you want to leave a meaningful legacy.  And you need you to be richly and authentically you if you desire joy, purpose and meaning.

Be you today.  And be the best at it you can possibly be!

Dream Wide Awake

Joelle created this collage following our trip

A couple of years ago, my daughter and I took a road trip out to Washington DC for a week of sightseeing and mother daughter time. On the way out, in the midst of our many conversations, we stumbled on this phrase: Dream Wide Awake.  While probably not original to us (even though we think it might be!), we thought it was pretty cool because not only was it kinda catchy, it also spoke to the importance of being fully alert, alive and engaged in the world around us.  Obviously, dreaming while asleep has its place, but dreaming wide awake opens the world up to all kinds of possibilities and potential that could otherwise be missed. 

I think life is best lived when we are alert to every possibility and opportunity that lies before us.  I know I often fail to see what could be in every situation and every moment of every day.  What if, in every single moment that we've been given, we develop the eyes to really see the possibilities, to see the potential and to dream of what God might be doing in that particular moment in time.  And then, get in step with that to the best of our ability allowing the Light, Life, and Love of God to land on this earth through us.

If there's someone that I can think of that embodied life in this manner, it has to be Jesus.  It seems that with every encounter, Jesus was alert and wide awake to the things that God was doing in that moment, getting in step with God's dream for creation.  Paul knew how much our tendency was to sleepwalk- to go through the motions of every day without being fully alert and alive to the world around us- that he wrote "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead!" (Ephesians 5)  Perhaps 'the dead' were those who weren't physically dead, but just going through the motions of life barely conscious to all the possibilities and potential.

I know I have my days when I feel pretty dead, if you will; numbed by a full schedule, much less dreaming of what could be. I guess I hope that day by day I will grow to more deeply Dream Wide Awake. I think its part of what it means for me to be like Jesus. And the alternative isn't very appealing anyways.

More on Dreams

Yesterday I saw an article in our town's newspaper written by a local columnist that caught my attention.  The article was about dreams. I read it with great interest, as the topic of pursuing dreams is one I'm particularly drawn to.

As a parent, the author wrote how all of her big, lofty (to use her term) dreams had been traded in for dreams of:

"...the day when the white shower curtain stays white.  When no muddy hand prints appear two hours after its been bleached...I dream of the the day when the counters are free of milk that Nobody spilled.  When the Oreos don't have to be locked into a cast iron safe to prevent "evaporation". When a simple phone conversation isn't broken up by an ominous game of charades."  

On one hand, I loved the honesty of the article!  I so get where she's coming from and can relate entirely!  On the other hand, the article reminded me of why we have to fight for those larger, long term dreams that often lie deep within our hearts.  If we don't hold onto those, even if they have to be put on the back burner for a different season of life, we will completely lose site of them in the day to day of the immediate.  I would like to say to the author, "you can hold onto your 'loftier' dreams and still fulfill the dreams you have as a  parent".

Life has a way of causing us to forget our "loftier" dreams if we allow it. We can forget the "more" we were created for as we wipe the counters day in and day out, pick up the scattered socks, and make sure the homework gets done.  I'm reminded that there are short term and long term dreams.  The long term dreams don't need to give way to the immediacy of the short term, but it takes intentionality to not lose sight of the long term dreams in the midst of the day to day.

For me, writing for this blog is part of a longer term dream I have. Right now, there are about 50 things I can think of that I need to do, but those will have to wait because doing this, right now, is part of me acting on something that I believe I'm to be about as part of a longer term dream.

So, today, in the midst of all we have to do, may we each take an intentional step towards the more we were created for.

Dream On, Mama!

I am one who does better when I have a clear dream that I'm working towards.  I wilt when I lose sight of something more. I think that's true of all of us, though.  It's easy to get caught up in the routines of life, the tasks at hand, all of the things that demand our time and attention in the here and now, and simply lose touch of the dreams we carry  on our hearts. It takes a pretty high level of intentionality to stay in touch with those dreams and even more deliberate work to keep moving towards them.  There is probably no greater and more important work that I can do daily but to stay in touch with the dreams and visions that God has placed in my heart, carefully listening for next steps, and acting on what I know to do.

My daughter, who was 9 at the time, told me once to "Dream On, Mama!"  She meant it not in a cynical way, but in the purest sense. She's wired a bit like me; she has big ideas and big dreams for her life.  This struck me as encouraging because not only did it affirm my sense of dreaming and believing for more, but it reminded me of how much those around us need us to keep dreaming.  I think our culture has a way of neutering our dreams.  If we're not careful, we can unconsciously begin to opt for status quo and we can easily trade in our God-Given Dreams for the American Dream. Our families, friends, communities and the world need me, and you,  to be fully alive in our dreams and visions. Not only do we make a difference in the lives of others as we pursue our God given dreams, hopefully we are reflecting a piece of God's heart to the world around us.

Today, may our souls awaken to not only the God given dreams on our hearts, but to the things that we haven't yet dreamed of.

And I wondered what else wasn't set in stone

I am reading the fascinating autobiography of Elizabeth Murray, Breaking Night, where she tells her story of going from homeless to Harvard.   She recounts growing up in the Bronx with parents whose drug addictions were so great that all of the family's scarce resources went towards feeding and nurturing the addiction rather than feeding and nurturing the 2 children.  She and her sister went for days with no food to eat while her parents shot up around the clock.  Because living with hunger had always been her reality, she believed that this was just how it was,  that she would always be hungry.  Then one day she met a boy  who had found ways to hustle money from strangers by offering to pump their gas for a tip.  In so doing, he made enough money to buy things he wanted.  As she watched her friend collect money from strangers, the author tells of realizing for the first time ever that she didn't have to be hungry every day after all.  She had believed she was powerless over her situation until that moment when she saw  the possibility of a different reality.  She writes, "And I began to wonder what else wasn't set in stone."

What an empowering realization- that she could change her situation- and what a great question to ask ourselves!  What do I believe is set in stone that maybe really isn't?  Some things literally can't be changed. They are what they are:  our race, our past, our parents, for example.  But when you think of it, there really is very little that is truly set in stone about our lives.  We can so easily accept as set in stone things that limit us and hold us back because we just can't "see" another reality.

Now I want to be careful here.  What I'm not suggesting is that this is the quick ticket out of a difficult situation.  Its likely that there is a way through such situations that we just haven't seen or realized yet, that we probably have more tools and resources at our disposal than we've realized.  We aren't to simply flee from difficult situations, but with God's help find the power to go through them towards  a better reality.

I think its a question to at least ponder.  Jesus came in part that we might experience the abundant life. Maybe one of the reason's we don't more fully experience the abundant life is because we have simply believed, often unconsciously,  that there are things that are set in stone that really aren't.  We can  intentionally ask God to help us to "see" those areas of our lives that he wants to bring more to.

Trite phrase for the day: "God Guides Us"

On the heels of the last blog entry,  I've been thinking more about God's guidance in our lives.  I considered phrases like the following for the title of the last post:  "God Guides us to be Successful", and  "God Guides us into His Purposes." (Read "Navigating Change" for the context).  I decided those titles sounded too trite and the problem with trite is that the truth just gets lost.

However trite those statements may sound, the truth is, I believe deeply in God's guidance. In fact,  my life depends on it!. I see the propensity in me to wreck my own life, and that of those around me,  if it weren't  for God's guidance and leadership.

This past winter we bought a house in foreclosure that needed some TLC  so that we could turn it around and sell it.  Early one morning, while Charles, my husband,  was already at work, I started out to go finish up some painting in the house for an hour before the kids had to get up for school. I had only driven about 2 minutes down the road when I clearly heard what I've come to recognize as God's voice saying to me, "Check for your keys."  Just like that.  Interpretation: make sure you have the right keys to the house to get yourself in.  I pulled over to go through my purse, literally dumping everything out to check for the keys, only to discover that sure enough I didn't have the keys to the house with me. I'm not one to forget stuff like that.  So, I turned around and went back and got the keys.  Given that the house was a 15 minute drive from where we live, had I gone all the way only to discover I didn't have the keys to get in, by the time I got back home (another 15 minute drive) I would have simply spent the limited time I had driving over and then coming right back.  I was saved a great deal of frustration and disappointment.

Later, I was reflecting more on this experience as I shared it with my family.  I thought more about what I had heard, how it was said, and even what I didn't hear.  What I didn't hear was this:  "You don't have your keys with you." God knew that I didn't have my keys with me and instead of just telling me, I was given the guidance that I needed to discover that myself.  I could have chosen to ignore that and assume I had them like I usually do.  Yet, I know God's voice well enough by now to know that I should pay attention. So, God spoke not the answer into my life, but the guidance that I needed to stay the course, to be successful, to walk in the path of blessing, to move forward on the path I believe he had laid out for us with this house we had bought.

Guidance isn't really about giving us the answers directly, which I know at times I really wish it was!  But its about helping us on the journey so that we discover, with God's help, the path he has for us.  I think this is way more interesting and engaging and rewarding because in that process, I have the opportunity to learn to know God's voice, and to recognize how he's leading and guiding rather than just being told what to do.

So today may we each open wide our hearts and our lives to all of the guidance that God wants to give.  And may we listen and follow, each day coming more fully into his purposes for our lives.