Chunky!

I had a really hard day the other day. It wasn't because I had a lot of work to do. In fact, my workload wasn't that overwhelming at all. The problem was I didn't want to anything. My attitude stunk. I ended up talking with friends and procrastinating all morning long. I didn't get a thing accomplished in the morning. But the most incredible thing happened-at lunch, I prayed that God would help me reset my attitude and jump into my work in the afternoon. I was able to let go of the temper tantrum that had gripped me in the morning and actually had a very productive afternoon.

This made me think of how our days are less like a neatly arranged plate of food and more like a bowl of stew. If we're open to it, new emotions, motivations, and interpretations of our experiences will meet us in unexpected ways. But I think God enjoys showing up in the context of real life vs. in a planned church program or other compartmentalized experience. Like a bowl of stew, we may be be surprised by the chunks we eat in a day. We may dine on the spiritual equivalent of vegetables one day, and the next day chewing on chunks of meat (harder to chew, but much more nourishing). But usually, it will be both. It's up to us to really be present to taste our experience and enjoy it if possible.

I tend to want to break life apart and compartmentalize and reduce it so I can have control over it and reduce my spiritual "risk". Unfortunately, life is not compartmentalized and neatly arranged. Life is a mess. Joy, love, happiness, pain, sadness, stress - they are all thrown into the same pot for us to eat. If you feel you have complete understanding of something, it's either not living/inert, a reduction or facsimile of the truth, or you are mistaken. We can apprehend life, but we cannot comprehend it fully. To believe otherwise it to be disillusioned and set up for a painful fall as we are humbled by the Creator and put in our place as His creation.

What things do you reduce and break apart to gain control over? What fear are you dampening through this activity? What blessings are you missing by dwelling on the "chunks" of life that you don't want to "eat"?

Hard Questions

I learned of a tragedy last week that had the potential to shake my faith. A friend of a friend who had been struggling in many areas of life committed suicide by cop a couple of weeks ago. This was disturbing on many levels, since this man was a Christ follower and had prayed with my friend just days before for God's help in his situation. It brought up all kinds of questions for me about just who God is and a lot of "why" questions. If God is in control, how can evil be allowed in this world? Why does crap like this happen? Why do good people die? Where is God's justice in this world? Where is his Spirit, his presence? Where was God when this guy was losing his mind and his life?

These are tricky questions and ones without concrete answers. It's some solace to me that they've been asked of God since biblical times - many Psalms and the book of Job pose these same queries to God. And though I haven't received many solid answers since this happened, I did have a very helpful experience last Monday. I had a short coaching session with an acquaintance in which I was the client. I brought up these tough issues. Turns out, she had been trained as a pastor (coincidence?), and was quite skilled at listening to me "pour out my lament" without judging or trying to provide answers. I learned quite a bit in that session, including:

• God does not prevent us from feeling pain as his followers. What he does is infuse the pain with the possibility of his presence.
• We are called to rely on God, not on pat answers or formulas, or on how God has shown up in past situations. There is a part of me that would much rather create an answer sheet based on what I've seen and experienced from God in the past and disengage from living life with God. That is obviously contrary to the life we are called to - a full, eternal life that begins now as we walk with God every day and allow him to stretch and reform us in his image.
• Relying on the gifts God brings into our lives vs. God is also futile. This one is quite tricky, since human nature is always searching for a substitute for God. What better to fill the role than the gifts he provides? Of course, all things that are visible are temporary. Any time we're misaligned and worshiping God's creations, the rug will surely be pulled out from under us.
• In spite of my not knowing, God still acts. I don't have to have all the answers. It's not all up to me. I am a part of God's story, not the other way around.
• All efforts to construct limits for God will be blown apart. I always thought my image of God was always being challenged and broken apart so that a larger image of God could be created. The problem is, any image we create of God in our minds and hearts is inadequate. God is alive and wild. He cannot be caged, boxed in, or understood completely. We must relate to God as a Person, because he is. We're actually called to a relationship.

Even as I type, I know I will need to be continually reminded of these realities, which is part of the reason I'm blogging about them. These aren't the kinds of paradigm shifts one makes in a day or a week. I have gained a lot from asking these questions and realizing that God is here with us in our darkness and pain, even when we can't sense him and when all evidence around us is contrary to that truth. That's where faith comes in - believing something that flies in the face of worldly evidence.

Power vs. Control

I recently figured something out that has sweeping implications for me. I realized that there is a big difference between "power" and "control". Power is defined as the ability to act or accomplish something. Control, on the other hand, is focused around dominating or exercising restraint or command over something.

As human beings, we are imbued with an incredible amount of power. We have power beyond our understanding and imagination. The vast majority of our power is never tapped consciously. Instead, we often end up as victims of our own subconscious as it feeds back to us unconscious beliefs, fears, and hangups that we have fed it all our lives. One of the keys to fulfillment is to look into these dark areas and bring the lies and limitations that usually remain hidden to light.

By contrast, we have control over very little in our lives. We cannot control the economic or family situation we are born into, or the wounds and limitations of our families. We cannot control the weather or what obstacles we may encounter each day. We can only control our attitudes and responses to what life throws at us. And since most of us don't understand how to do this in a conscious way, we don't even take control over the precious little that we have domain over in our lives.

Why is this distinction so important? I have often gotten the two confused, to my detriment. I have a pattern of getting really excited about something new in my life and attempting to seize control of it until I choke all the life and fun out of it, then disengaging completely, moving on to a new area of focus. This usually happens in areas in which I have a natural talent. I get excited about how much power I can bring to a challenge, and I want to control all aspects of the area - how, when, and how often I get to express my power. But since I don't have domain over that, I end up being frustrated that things aren't happening just as I'd have them happen, and I often give up.

Coaching was like this for me. I got so excited last year when I learned about coaching and how natural it was for me. I knew down deep that I had discovered a key vocational expression for myself. After I earned my certification, I thought clients would simply pour in to my practice without my having to lift a finger. This didn't happen, of course. When it didn't happen like I wanted it to, I stopped all my efforts to learn and express the craft of coaching and my coaching "muscles" fell into atrophy. It wasn't until November that I realized I had fallen into this pattern and got engaged again in the pursuit of coaching mastery.

I think this distinction is especially crucial for Christians. As followers of Christ, we hear so often that we are to surrender to God and to God's will for our lives. But too often, I think we stop exercising the most precious gift in the world - that of the human will. The power of the human will cannot be overestimated. Just witness the people who, through sheer human determination (will) accomplish amazing feats, even without a conscious understanding of who God is or a conscious relationship with Him (I say "conscious relationship" because we all have a relationship to God, but sometimes we don't acknowledge it). But God's will for us is to have a full, vibrant, dynamic life. In order to have this life he wants for us, we need to exercise our will. We need to figure out what it is we really want and go for it. We need to dream, take chances, strive, and fail. We need to come to the end of ourselves so we can recognize our abject need for His strength. To me, a big part of surrender is surrendering my right to be lazy, to give up easily in the face of obstacles. If we can do all things through Him who strengthens us, we have no excuse to be defeated by this world's challenges. We just have to rely on God to supply the strength that we cannot muster in crucial moments.

The Patchwork Quilt

Well, after a very busy July, I'm back on the blogging circuit. I'm looking forward to a return to normalcy, along with some of my normal rhythms and habits.

A friend of mine spoke of life recently as a patchwork quilt. Apparently, when you are quilting, you can't go back and undo an earlier patch in the quilt without tearing apart the whole thing. She said she looks back on life in much the same way - many times, we have episodes ("patches") in our lives that are painful or that seem to have no purpose at the time. However, when we look back on the whole of our lives, they wouldn't be what they are - we wouldn't be what we are - without those patches. And we can't remove them; they are as much an integral part of the whole picture as the joyful and pleasurable parts of life.

This resonated with me so deeply since I tend to want to minimize or ignore those ugly patches in my life. But when I sit and survey my life, it's clear to me that I learned more about myself, about the loved ones in my life, and about God in those painful episodes that I ever have basking in His light. I honestly wish it wasn't this way, but it seems God uses those times when we are most challenged to do His greatest work.

What patches are there in your life that you tend to ignore or minimize? How did God use those patches to teach you about Him and about yourself? If you are in a tough patch now, can you open yourself to the possibility of learning and growing at this time?

The Dentist Chair

I went to the dentist for the first time in a while last week. OK, it has been at least two and maybe three years since I last had a six-month checkup. As a result, it was a very long and quite painful visit. After taking a completely new set of x-rays, the dental hygienist proceeded to scrape, scrape, and scrape some more. Then the dentist came in and diagnosed three cavities. So much for "out of sight, out of mind". I certainly paid the price for ignoring my dental maintenance.

There are many areas like this in life that don't require much energy to maintain. The problem is, that also makes it easier to ignore things we know we should be doing. The result is always the same: pain and expense. If we don't maintain our cars, expensive repairs result. In relationships, it's easy to ignore the little warning signs our partners give out that they are unhappy, only to be confronted with emotions that seem to be "out of the blue" or worse, a "Dear John" letter. The body is another area that will only be ignored so long before it turns up the volume on us in the form of disease or injury.

The traditional Christian response to pain of this sort is that we have sinned and are being punished for our sins. I don't think that is the case here. Rather, the pain and suffering are natural consequences of inaction. It's completely predictable. We have the ability to live in concert with universal truths or against them. But sooner or later, we have to pay the piper. Richard Rohr has said that growth only occurs through great love or great pain. I must admit, like most of us, I usually fall into the latter category before growth occurs in my life.

I know there are other "dentist chairs" that I am avoiding in my life. How about you? What areas do you know you should be paying attention to that you are simply ignoring? What are the natural consequences of continuing to ignore that area? What are some simple steps you can take today to address this area?

Still Life?

I was looking at a very nice painting the other day of some apples and cherries, a classic example of "still life". That started me thinking - the term "still life" is an oxymoron. Everything that is alive is always moving, even if only at the molecular level. This makes it impossible to pin down. Its dynamic aspect forces us to constantly change, adapt, and grow if we are to remain engaged with life. It's so tempting to cut aspects of life off or break them down to their piece parts so we can gain control over them and understand them completely. But when we do either of these things, the very element that drew us in - life itself - is gone, and the beautiful thing we hold in our hands withers and dies.

I can speak with authority on this subject because I am guilty of this error. In fact, this tendency reared its ugly head in my recent quest to earn my coaching certification. I found myself thirsty to learn all about coaching practices while in pursuit of my certification. Yet, once I achieved certification, there was a part of me that thought, "Whew, I can cross that one off the list", and I disengaged from the learning process. I was no longer on the master's journey. Instead, I was in danger of what Thomas Leonard calls a "dabbler" in his brilliant book, Mastery. According to Leonard, a dabbler is someone who is constantly chasing the newness and novelty of the latest shiny thing attracting their attention. But once the newness has worn off and reality sets in, they are off to the next thing.

Ouch. I realized I had been guilty of this very pattern, and faced a decision. Would I discard all I had learned and jump to a new practice, or get back on the path of mastery around my coaching practice? I chose to re-engage the learning process. This involved seeing my certification as a beginning point, not an ending. Sure, it's nice to have it, but without regular practice of those skills, I might as well not even have it. Said another way, I re-engaged the life in the coaching masteries. The shine has now worn off and I've been through a couple of plateaus. I now realize that this process is lifelong. Indeed, the master's journey never ends. There's always more to discover and learn, as long as we stay engaged in life.

Redwoods

My chiropractor just got back from Northern California, where she visited the redwoods. She was blown away by how massive they are. They grow up to 360 feet, or about as high as a thirty-story building. She said the canopy blocks out the sunlight when you're in the forest so you forget that it's a sunny day until you walk out from underneath it.

But what was most amazing to me is what she shared about the root systems of these giant trees. A redwood's roots only grow eight feet underground. It seems a root system that is that shallow would not be able to support the massive weight of a giant tree such as a redwood. But what is unique is that the roots grow outward, spreading for acres and intertwining with the other redwoods in the forest. It is this combined strength that gives them the support needed to weather storms they would be unable to survive alone. The parallel to humans is obvious: we are also able to withstand so much more if our roots are intertwined with others.

In fact, this anecdote reminds me of the human system model that Dallas Willard proposes is his brilliant work, "Renovation of the Heart". In it, he includes the social aspect of ourselves as part of the model. That is, our relationships with others is actually a part of who we are. As he puts it, "The natural condition of life for human beings is one of reciprocal rootedness in others." I in you and you in me, abiding with one another through thick and thin. It is not possible to go through this world alone, though it is possible to live under the illusion of aloneness. Sometimes we just need to be reminded of those that we share roots with, and of the need for these connections.

This need for relationship points us back to the relationship of the Trinity, reminding us that even within the Godhead, there is relationship. Relationship is a universal state, one that predated even the creation of the world. The fact that we are drawn to participate in relationships as a matter of living life fully points us back to this reality. It's another beautiful example of how this universe is fashioned to constantly mirror and reveal God. Humbling, ain't it?