White Space

I visited my blog today for the first time in over eighteen months.

A blogger I am not.  And I writer, I will never pretend to be.

But I journaler, I am.

While the past eighteen months have quiet blog months, almost three whole journals have been filled with my ramblings.  Ranting.  Raving.  Thinking.  Dreaming.  Questioning.  Digging.  Musing.  Meandering. 

That’s a lot of writing. 

But the past fifty-four days have been a writing frenzy . . . I’ve devoured a whole journal. 

Excavating.

Excavating the soul.

Excavating MY soul.

"Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes but when you look back everything is different . . . " ~ C. S. Lewis

I came across this quote yesterday.

I liked it. 

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized why I liked it.  It is the essence of my last two months.

Recently, I decided that I needed to get serious about cleaning out stuff that P and I have accumulated during the past twenty-one years of being a family. 

At no time in my life have Lewis’ words rang more true for me: 

. . . finding a love note from my three year old daughter and looking up to see her ten-year-old self. 

. . . unfolding a letter from my sweet cousin and realizing that she’s been dead for twenty-five years. 

. . . opening a box full of my kindergartener’s papers and knowing that in 10 short months she will be a high school graduate. 

. . . uncovering my husband’s first pay stub as a salaried employee, remembering how much money we thought that was, and then wondering how on earth we managed on that small sum.

I didn’t realize I would be walking through so many long-forgotten memories. 

It’s been emotional.

It’s been hard.

But it’s been good. 

Cathartic.

While I didn’t read every page of my journals and family calendars of the past many years, I did flip though them and made an important discovery. 

Overwhelm and overscheduling is a recurring theme.

The consequences, numerous and painful to admit:

. . . distracted conversations and unkind words.

. . . too few meals around the dinner table.

. . . joys becoming burdens.

I’m out to change that. 

I’m on a quest for white space . . . space and time to fully engage in what life has to offer. 

It means saying “no” to a lot of good things. 

It means not filling my calendar up months in advance. 

It means becoming comfortable with staying put.

It means getting reacquainted with my family and rediscovering just how much I love them because the next time I look back, I don't want to be so surprised by how different everything is.

Being the Potter's Tool

For the past day and a half, I have been pondering my last post.

Asking God to use me is a huge prayer. Being willing and ready to take “inspired action” is even more huge.

Anyone can pray the prayer, but not everyone is willing to act on it. Am I?

To be redundant in my word choice, the hugeness of it has begun to settle in.

Admittedly, I am more of a convenience girl:  I go to God when it’s convenient . . . and I usually look for an instant answer.

But I want more than that. I want to BE more than that.

I’m beginning to realize that what I’m setting out to do is not a simple Q & A session with God.

Along with that, I don’t want this blog to be a brag-list of how God used me. I AM ready and willing . . . but how I go forth with writing about it is still something I’m grappling with.

It’s not about me.

It’s about God being the potter and me being the tool.

Here I Am

This morning began as many of my mornings do. I got a cup of coffee, sat down at the kitchen table, lit a candle and began journaling.

I journal a lot.

Not every day, and sometimes, not even every week, but quite often, it's how I begin my day. It's one way I focus on thinking about the bigger issues in my life. Lately, however, I've begun to think of my journal as more of a book of prayers.

The Roman god, Janus, who is the namesake of January, has two faces. He's a portal of sorts with one face looking back and one face looking forward: the perfect image of a New Year.

I'm not much on New Year's Resolutions, but figuratively speaking, it's the one time of year when we all have a clean slate; a fresh beginning. I like taking time to pause so I can reflect on the past year and ponder the New Year.

This morning, I took the opportunity to do just that.

Several things came to mind and this is what I wrote:

1. What would happen if I approached every new month as if it were the beginning of a new year? What if I took on the role of Janus on the first day of each month and intentionally looked both backwards and forwards?
2. At then end of 2009, I had an epiphany. My journal entry for December 30, 2009 was "many things that I get caught up in and am disappointed by can be changed with two things: a change in action and a change of attitude." I tried to keep that in mind during this past year and I want to continue into 2011.
3. I attended the funeral of John Yowell yesterday. He was 59. He was the husband of my two oldest daughters' Girl Scout leader. I didn't know him . . . but I wish I had. The Rector told a lovely story about John. Last winter, a friend asked him what he was giving up for Lent (she was giving up chocolate). Very matter-of-factly, he replied that he was giving up himself. He was going to be looking for ways to put others first.
4. How would my life change if I began each day by asking God to use me? Not just asking a casual question, but asking and really listening for the answer . . . and then being willing to respond. Boy, that's a scarey thought. I've prayed that prayer before and it's a VERY powerful prayer. It is NOT a prayer for wimps.

Almost before I could get that last pondering written in my journal, the word "blog" thundered into my mind. It came out of nowhere.

I have a blog, but I haven't posted anything on it in close to two years.

Am I serious enough about beginning each day with that question that I could commit to blogging about it?

Why would I want to blog about it?

Wouldn't it be a waste of time? There are so many blogs and so much info . . . who has the time to read one more blog? Who would want to?

Wouldn't it almost seem that I was tooting my own horn or patting myself on the back if I wrote publicly about how God was using me?

This whole blog thread seems so random . . . it just doesn't make sense . . .

Unless . . .

What if the blog-thing is actually a God-thing? What if that's His first answer?

It seems silly to me.

Why would God want me to blog?

On the other hand, why would He not want me to blog?

What if this IS my first answer and I just ignore it . . . ?

I guess it won't hurt anything if I just go with it.

For now, I'm going to do just that. I'm going to assume that I served the ball when I asked the question and that God volleyed back the word "blog."

I'm game, God. Here I am. How do you want to use me?

Breathing Space

There’s a window beside my bed.

Every morning, I wake up and look out of the window to see what kind of day it will be . . . weather-wise. Yesterday, I woke up to the most beautiful sight I’ve seen in a long time.

Snow was everywhere.

Six inches of snow covered the ground. It clung all the way up to the tippy top of the branches of the trees. The sky was clear blue and the sun lit the tops of the trees as it rose.

I had a full day planned for school.

In fact, looking back at the past two months, my jaw drops when I see how full our calendar has been. I’ve always tried to be discriminating when choosing my own activities . . . meaning that I don’t like being busy just for the sake of having something to do. And, over the years, as we’ve helped our children choose what activities they’d like to be involved in, we’ve tried to guide them towards the ones we felt would stretch them the most. The upside to all of that is that they like to participate in life . . . the downside is that we sometimes get caught up in busy-ness that crosses over into chaos.

When we woke up yesterday, the Big Guy said “you’ve got to let the kids play in this today.”

And so I did.

The kids were up with the sun and, even more surprising, they were dressed . . .
with coats, gloves, hats . . . and even socks. If it had been any other day, I would have had to ask where their gloves, hats and socks were and my question would have been met with a chorus of “I don’t know.”

They say that the most important meal of the day is breakfast. Not wanting my babies to go out in the snow without proper nourishment, I whipped up a heaping bowl of snow cream which was devoured by all. The kids reminded me of little kittens sopping up bowls of milk.

Those that wanted seconds, refilled their bowls and then they were all out the door to play in the snow. They played all day. And when they were cold, they invited their friends in to watch a movie and have some popcorn and hot chocolate.

Then they were back in the snow.

They had such a great day. And I loved watching them enjoy it!

I’m reading God’s Joyful Surprise, by Sue Monk Kidd (author of The Secret Life of Bees).

On page 163, she writes:

Consider how carefully God has designed space into the world. It’s the spaces that shape and define creation. Walk through a forest. Instead of the trees, look at the spaces between them and you’ll know where the peace of the woods comes from. Think of the spaces between the notes of a concerto or symphony. Without them there would be no music . . . And it’s the spaces we make in our life for God’s love that bring us peace and make sense of everything else.

Once Ann (Monk’s daughter) insisted on “typing” a letter to her grandma. She climbed up to my typewriter and pecked out a sentence one key at a time, very proud of herself. But unfortunately, you couldn’t read a word of it. She never hit the space bar. The words were all run together in one long meaningless jumble. If we looked at a sentence like that, we might see our lives. Throughout many of my days, I never hit the space bar.

Yesterday was our space bar.

More Intentional

New Year’s Resolutions.

I don’t like them . . . not at all.

There was a short time in my life when I made them. Mainly because that’s what you do for the New Year, right? They were always hastily made and even more hastily forgotten.

But last year, at the end of 2007, I decided I needed to give it another try. It had been a really hard summer and fall for me and I figured I needed to give myself something to focus on . . . some sort of balance on which I could measure my worth.

I gave a lot of thought to my list of resolutions.

I started listing out all the things in my life that I needed to change. The more I listed, the smaller I began to feel.

But I kept listing.

And I began to dread the New Year.

The last day of the Old Year, I woke up with one thing on my mind: the word Intentional.

I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I thought about it as I got up to let the dog out. I thought about it as I poured myself a cup of coffee with cream – the real stuff, because I’m a purist when it comes to my coffee. I thought about it in the shower and I thought about it while I checked my e-mail. I went to the kitchen to prepare some munchies for a party our family was going to later that day – and I thought about it there, too.

Finally, I knew what to do with my word.

I would make IT my New Year’s Resolution.

Why not?

I picked up the list I had compiled during the last few weeks. I studied it and saw the evidence of all the wrestling that had gone on in my mind . . . all the things I should work on were underlined, scratched out, rewritten, circled and prioritized.

I realized why I don’t like to make New Year’s Resolutions. They point out all the negative stuff in your life; all your short-comings.

So I decided to throw out my long list of “should do’s” and focus on my one word; on being intentional.

Being intentional has meant that I’ve had to take a good look inside . . . and outside. It has meant that I’ve had to be more honest with myself when it comes to making choices. I’ve had to learn how to say “no” to things that, a year ago, I would have said “yes” to. I’ve had to really think about what’s important to me.

I have to admit that my word hasn’t been at the forefront of each of my days this year. But it’s now the end of November and I actually remember what my resolution was. I can honestly say that there have been more days that I have worked on being intentional than days that I didn’t.

I’m not ending the year a different size, a vegetarian, or a tri-athlete. I think the change I’m aware of is not so much a change as it is a shift . . .

And I like the shift I see.

I like it so much that my New Year’s Resolution for 2009 will be two words.

More Intentional.

Photo: Mother watching her children participating in VBS inside her village church, Colote'el, Chiapas, Mexico, 2006.

Incredible Spirits

Monday, we began our 8th year of homeschooling at The Academy.

It’s been a tough week of trying to get back into the swing of things – for all of us, not just the kids.

This was the first time during our homeschooling journey, that I have allowed myself a true sabbatical. Not that I was diligent in holding office hours and planning sessions during the other summers. I just never allowed myself to pack up all the school stuff and completely shelve it for the summer.

During June and July, I didn’t even THINK about school.

The reward is that this has been a great summer . . . full of lazy days at the beach and in the mountains, children laughing and playing games and lots of lemonade!

Forcing ourselves back into the schedule of “real life” has been difficult, at best.

I’m reading Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Mortenson is a mountaineer-turned-humanitarian who has spent the last 15 years building more that 55 schools for impoverished Pakistan and Afghan villages. It is quite an amazing chronicle of Mortenson’s journey.

I’m only two-thirds of the way through the book, but something I read last night, on page 151, really struck me:

“Predictably, the jeeps carrying the wood [for the school] to Korphe were halted by another landslide that cut the track, eighteen miles shy of their destination. ‘The next morning, while Parvi and I were discussing what to do, we saw this great big dust cloud coming down the valley,’ Mortenson says. ‘Haji Ali [the village of Korphe’s chief] somehow heard about our problem, and the men of Korphe had walked all night. They arrived clapping and singing and in incredible spirits for people who hadn’t slept.’”

I’m reminded of the villagers in Chiapas, Mexico where Phillip and I have gone on several missions to help construct churches.

It’s not easy work.

For the Americans, the work day lasts from about 6:30 am until about 12:30 pm – then we have lunch and prepare for VBS with the village children. The villagers arrive at the site before daybreak. The husbands escort the wives to the community kitchen where they spend all day bent over open fires cooking beans, tortillas and chicken soup for their men and for us. The men spend all day tirelessly moving dirt, mixing cement, installing rafters and metal roofs.

It’s not easy work – but it is good work.

And everyone is happy.

As Mortenson said, there are “incredible spirits.”

There are incredible spirits because everyone knows what a blessing it is to have a school or church . . . to have a safe, warm, dry place and the freedom to learn and worship.

In our country, we’ve turned these blessings into expectations . . . and we take them for granted.

As my family begins this new school year, it is my fervent hope and prayer that we can remember what an honor and privilege it is to have the freedom to learn at home - that we can face each day with “incredible spirits.”

Photo: Building a church in Colote'el, Chiapas, Mexico, 2006 - with approaching thunderstorm.

Making the Grade

This morning, I had the rare opportunity to take the Boy to breakfast.

Alone.

Spending one-on-one time with any of our four children is something that doesn’t happen often. As homeschoolers, we’re all together . . . all the time.

I knew that if we stayed at home, it wouldn’t be long before he would ask to go play with his best friend. I was feeling selfish and wanted some uninterrupted time with our son.

So off we went to have breakfast.

The thing I love about taking most children out to eat is that they’re not impressed with exotic ingredients or artistic presentations (of course there are exceptions to this and the Chef is the perfect example – she will try anything and has an uncanny knack for choosing the most expensive item on a menu).

But the Boy is easily satisfied with two breakfast burritos, milk and a hash brown, so our logical choice this morning laid under the Golden Arches.

It happened to be Inspection Day for the restaurant and when I saw the inspector filling out the grade card, I had to laugh.

When I was young, my Dad was a Health Inspector and among other things, he inspected restaurants.

Like many children, keeping my room clean was my responsibility. This was not an area I excelled in. My idea of cleaning was pushing everything into my closet or under my bed. When I got older and wanted to put my mattress directly on the floor, I lost a major storage space. My solution was to clear a path from the door to my bed.

My parents’ solution was to keep my door shut.

One day, after I had cleaned my room, Dad decided to encourage me to keep it clean . . . or maybe he was just teasing me . . . he was good at both.

He brought his brief case to the dining room table and with authority, opened it up. He took out a grade card, got out his pen and signed it. He explained to me that all grade cards are required to be posted in plain sight. They are not to be hidden from view.

I shook my head in agreement . . . a second grader always wants to be in compliance with the laws of the state!

He took the grade card to my bedroom door and ceremoniously taped it up so everyone who entered my room could see my grade.

Then, he stood back so I could see it for myself.

An “A.”

Unbelievable . . . I had received the highest grade possible!

It was true. I had received an “A” and it was signed:

by a Blind Man.