Perspective

As I caught up with a friend during a long overdue phone date last week, I was struck by how often she expressed gratitude or amazement over how my life has come together over the last three months.  When we last talked, it was January and I was experiencing both a frozen winter on the outside and a burned-out heart on the inside.  So many little (and big) things have happened since then, and I suppose her advantage in this conversation was being able to see all the changes at once.  When I step back and wiggle myself into the place from which she views my life, I find the results rather awe-inspiring too.  In the almost nine months since we last talked, and mostly in the last three or four months, I have changed jobs, moved, traveled a small chunk of the world, embarked on new adventures around town, and totally opened up the possibilities for my future.  However, during that phone call, I was a little confused.  Isn’t my life really hard right now?  Am I or am I not always involved in some seemingly important, internal, existential debate?  Am I not stuck between, well, anything and everything right now?  


Here is where it turns out that I have been mistaken in my perspective on my life over the last nine months (or really, let’s be honest- it’s more like two years).  Because I have not felt close to God, I have assumed that God has not felt close to me.  Because I assumed God is not close to me, I have also assumed that I’m on my own as far as plans go.  The conclusion, then, is that where I am right now is a product of my own planning, or mostly, where I have landed by chance as I have stumbled along the way.  But this sweet friend seemed to be under the impression that God has been directing my life all along, leading and guiding me, but mostly just providing for me when I have not been able to provide for myself.  The biggest example of this is where I am living, which my friend referred to as my “soft place to land.”  What a beautiful image!  But more importantly, what a beautiful truth.  I am not alone, and I am not in charge.  Now, of course, I know that, and have known it for as long as I can remember.  But there is a difference between knowing truth and living in it, and I suffer from the human condition of being stuck in that gap, halfway between intellectual assent and a changed life.  


Proof that I have known this truth before is found in my deep affection for the book The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis.  This book expresses this truth in such a unique and beautiful way.  The last time I spoke at youth group, I read the students my favorite part of this story, where Aslan reveals where He has been at work in young Shasta’s journey.  The revelation is not what any of us expect- sometimes He has seemed like an enemy instead of a friend, but the beauty of the providence is heart-rending.  I can’t even write about it without getting emotional.  The proof that, while I have known this truth, I have not lived this truth is found at the beginning of this paragraph, and in my fear about whatever is coming next, insecurity about hastily constructed plans and seemingly wasted time, and general ingratitude for where I am right now.  My hope is that each time I “know” this truth anew, I move one step closer to living it, because it seems to me that living this truth opens the door for the gracious spirit of humility and thankfulness that my friend shared with me last week to creep into every corner of my life and gently but forcibly remove the spirit of fear and timidity currently causing me to miss the goodness of God right before my very eyes.  And I, for one, will take thankfulness over self-imposed, needless misery any day.

My Favorite Things

In college I discovered that I love writing parodies of songs, particularly ones from musicals.  Also, the cheesier, the better (for a truly awesome example, please ask me about a certain tall person from my university and a song from the musical Wicked).  But really, it all began many, many years ago, with a project for my 8th grade health class called the Me Book.  It was one of those generic self-awareness-increasing, personal-history-recording sort of things.  I remember this project in particular for two reasons. One, I got to use cute paper and quasi-scrapbook my life (pretty much always a plus in homework assignments, to both my delight as well as my mother's).  Two, I finished it while on vacation with my family for Memorial Day Weekend, at an annual baseball tournament that my brother's team was playing in.  My teacher, Mr. Alvarez, has a son my brother's age who was on the same team that year (and many years to come, actually), and I can distinctly remember setting up scrapbook shop on a picnic blanket some distance from the baseball field and watching Mr. Alvarez while he lounged in a lawn chair, watching baseball without a care in the world.  I thought the whole thing was very unfair.  Actually, I still do.  That was 10 years ago.  Apparently I have a hard time letting go.  But back to the whole point of this long-winded story:  the Me Book required a variety of entries and themed pages, one of them having to do with things we liked.  I decided to write a parody of the song "My Favorite Things" (courtesy of Rodgers and Hammersteins' The Sound of Music).  It was pretty epic, especially for an 8th grader.

Fast-forward 10 years.  My trip to Germany this summer found me next door, visiting Salzburg, Austria, where much of the story of The Sound of Music takes place.  No thanks to our hostel and the millions of souvenir shops in that small town, various musical snippets from that show have been stuck in my head for the past two months.  When my birthday rolled around a few weeks ago and my friend Kerry bravely volunteered her sister and brother-in-law to host my party, she asked what the theme should be, and I replied without really thinking about it, "My Favorite Things!"  We ended up celebrating three early September birthdays that evening, so I forewent the theme, glad to share the occasion with friends quickly becoming my Spokane family, but my idea for a invitation with wording that fit into that of "My Favorite Things" is still bouncing around my brain.  Pair that with an attempted discipline of gratitude, and my new idea is to write a parody of "My Favorite Things" using things I am grateful for in this season.  Here's my attempt- please sing along.  No mocking though, because I'm a little out of practice, and this isn't a joke, it's my prayer of thankfulness.  Here it goes....

(boom-chuck-chuck, boom-chuck-chuck,
boom-chuck-chuck, boom-chuck-chuck)

Teardrops on Sundays, and sweet puppy faces,
Bright, shiny books, and bookmarks to keep places,
Birthday gifts, postcards, even bills and dumb things,
These are a few of my favorite things.


(boom-chuck-chuck, boom-chuck-chuck,
boom-chuck-chuck, boom-chuck-chuck)

Brand-new grandbabies, with sweet crocheted hats on,

Nights out with friends and nights in with movies on,

Sitting on my porch watching the sunset,

thinking to myself how I am so blessed.

(boom-chuck-chuck, boom-chuck-chuck,

boom-chuck-chuck, boom-chuck-chuck)

People with soccer balls, laughing and running,

even the sweat from our nose to our stockings,

Long-lasting summers that stretch into fall,

These are the things that I like best of all.

When the night comes, when my heart hurts,

when I'm feeling sad,

I simply am thankful for all of things,

and then I don't feel.......so baaaaa----------------------d!

Should-a-would-a-could-a

Confession:  I've been avoiding blogging.  Until this morning, writing something to post on here meant some reflection and self-evaluation, and honestly, that hasn't sounded like too much fun lately.  This morning it struck me that one of the things that is driving me most nuts about this season of self-imposed ambiguity is the lack of framework for my experiences.  I have been such a rule-follower for so long that I often wonder "Should I be doing this right now?" about any given activity.  I believe that this is a valid question, because in so many ways, there are less safety nets now that I'm out of school and not living at home (at least not as my parents' home).  So the question "Should I be doing this right now?" when I'm standing at Borders with an armful of books I don't really need to buy right now, or considering another trip to Europe, or trying to figure out how many chiropractor appointments to schedule is worthwhile.  My bank account will be grateful I paused for reflection.  But in other ways, this question is a bit silly.  This morning is a morning off for me, and I devoted most of it to sitting in a big comfy chair, just reading.  This sounds delightful.  This is what I have been waiting to do forever.  And yet, the ever-present question of "Should I be doing this?" was lurking just behind me, whispering itself over and over again.  Most of the time, I don't know what the correct answer to this question is, but for now, I'm going to try to dismiss it in the situations that don't require its presence.  That is one of the gifts of this season.  There are no "should"s for having seven-year olds braid your hair, or reading a book snuggled up in a chair, or sharing meals with people rapidly becoming your family.  So, should I be fully present to the people and experiences around me?  I think I know the right answer to this one.