The Year of Practice

I am going to copy Ann Voskamp.  I'm naming the new year.  2011.  I've never named a year before, though I have made countless New Year's declarations and resolutions.  I like the idea.

I always end up looking at my resolutions like some sort of check-off list.  While I like lists and they have a place in my life, a list of resolutions seems never to be able to get "checked-off".  So it bugs me and ends up feeling like failure... even if I've done a relatively good job of keeping a resolution.  Naming the year, now that is something I can live with peacefully.  When my dear Tobitha wrote Impact, I knew then what I would be naming 2011.

Practice.  The Year of Practice.

You see, I am one of those little people that like to flit from one thing to the next.  I am going on to the next thing before I have even begun to master the last one.  I'm not proud of this.  Some people think I have a wealth of knowledge on a variety of subjects.  It's not true.  In reality, I know a little bit about a lot of things.  In a way, I am a quintessential Jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-none.  I'm a curious soul, interested in all sorts of things.  I don't stay on one road for too long.

But I wouldn't characterize myself as flaky.  :)

Anyway, I feel compelled by none other than the Holy Spirit Himself, to rest in the solid and un-shifting for awhile.  For me, it's a shift in from creating and pursuing to practicing.  Practicing what?  The stuff I already know.  This year is one for me to focus on God's perfecting work.

Lest anyone think I really am flaky, and have no clue as to how to actualize this grandiose idea, I will list some practical areas of practice:

remembering my many loved ones on their birthdays and anniversaries with cards and calls
choosing recipes from one of my many cook books as opposed to finding them from the internet
studying scripture
exercising my body daily but not legalistically or obsessively
making music in the way I know how
praying
smiling
deep breathing
hugging
speaking sweetly
playing
kissing
reading
counting blessings
listening
cleaning
teaching
loving
giving

See, I know how to do these things.  I don't have to research how to do any of them.  I just need to practice them.  There is nothing wrong with books that challenge us in a new way, like Radical for instance.  But I don't need to read a book right now about how to arrange my life in a way that will prove what Jesus really means to me.  I know what Jesus means to me and I have at least 19 ways to show it everyday.  This is my basic training, my boot camp.  Anything beyond that is like special ops training, and I'm just a foot soldier.

So I probably won't be learning a new art form this next year.  To be sure, there were some creative endeavors I had in mind that are now on the back burner.   No self-help or how-to or sweeping, this-is-the-new-big-idea books.
There's too much old wisdom I have yet to crack.

I can learn to be faithful in the small and ordinary.

Productivity will be birthed through practice.

Practice.

Counting 468-484

I had to chuckle yesterday.  At us.  It occurred  to me,  people are funny.  As smart as some of us are, we are still so very feeble minded.
How many times do we get the wrong answer on the test?
Take a wrong turn?
Miscommunicate with our words what our heads are thinking so clearly?
Misunderstand?

Often we can see a bookishly smart person who is socially inept or vice versa.

Yes, we are feeble minded, no matter the IQ.

And yet in all our creating and figuring and measuring and thinking and analyzing we can fool ourselves into thinking we are starting to figure IT out.

But I think she is asking a great question today.

How are you and the King enjoying each other today?

A question even the most simple of us can ponder.




Let me count some blessings,

a quiet house

the company of a sweet dutch girl
her sharing
me learning

comfort food
that I got to make it
satisfaction

children's cold medicine
snuggling in early morning hours with my girl

dog groomers

giving hearts

despite our best efforts... too many presents
realizing the blessing in that, and
making peace with it

Jesus, our Most Special Gift
being at peace with Him

Counting 434-467

My counting is inadequate.  It doesn't begin to define His grace and mercy and lovingkindness.


But it's good for me, and I hope it blesses Him.


friends that know you are there for them

an amazing story of God's grace in saving a marriage, and a soul

a freezer full of grass-fed, organic beef

a glass of wine and a late night spent with my love

him pulling me close in church

the grace given me from Him, and him and him and her

that our puppy didn't get sick after eating a whole stick of butter, wrapper and all

reuniting with my beautiful persian friend

making friends with a Dutch girl, and


having a Christmas guest

my god daughter praising Him

her sharing that with me

the promise of my oatmeal with apples and cinnamon

that on this cold, blustery day I have

Him
him
him
her
the pup
warm clothes
heat
a stove and oven
gas in the car
glasses with which to see
books to learn from
pencils and paper
internet
phone

and us....
my love and me
we and the kids
my friends and I
the gratitude community

Numbering the Multitude #412-433

"But godliness with contentment is great gain"
                                                            1 Tim 6:6


Ain't that the truth!?  Let's count....


my son, carrying big boxes of food for them in need
him growing up before my eyes
my eyes that get to see it

my daughter singing her heart out without a care, praises to Him who hears
the sound of "mama" from her lips
my ears that get to hear it

the scent of my lover wrapped up in sheets
the promise of his early morning kiss
the times I catch him noticing me

the willingness a child has to enter into the unknown
that they don't enter timidly, but rush in with wild, joyous, excitement
that I want to be more like that

a sister standing by her brother
she counts the cost
she does it anyway

that just because most people do it, doesn't mean we have to
that we find a better way
and we go it

them who learn to count their blessings
teaching me to see what I didn't see
recognizing what is in my cup

and it doesn't cost a dime

Spit it out

Care to spit out your thoughts?

This is quite literally the challenge our worship pastor left us with as he closed his sermon yesterday morning.  He had placed little Dixie-type cups in the backs of the pews throughout the church and then asked us to hold them up.  As the congregants studied those little plastic cups in their hands, he explained:

Saliva.  Think about  how many times in the last hour you have swallowed down your own saliva.  You don't think about it at all.  What if instead of swallowing it, you spit it out in the cup?  Gross, right?  What if at the end of the hour I told you to drink up all the saliva you had collected in the cup?  Double gross.

Now what if instead of the cup holding our spit, it held our thoughts instead?
What if we examined our thoughts, like we would that saliva, and make a rational decision about whether or not they were fit for consumption?  What if instead of taking in the junk.... we toss it?

Pastor Steve talked about  how we examine ourselves each morning in the mirror and work on ourselves so we can look the way we want to.  We give a lot of self-care to our outer shells.  How often do we pay that kind of mind to our thought life.... to our perception of reality?

Romans 12:2 (NLT) says "Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is."


He pointed out how this verse doesn't speak of transforming our emotions or our circumstances, but our minds.... the way we think.  It's amazing how much is at stake in just the way we choose to look at a thing.


For his final challenge, Pastor Steve's pointed to 2 Cor 10:5 (NIV), "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."


Take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.


So spit it out and see if it passes this test:


"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things." Phil 4:8 (NIV)




And so in the interest of renewing my mind in this way, I continue to join Ann and the rest of the Gratitude Community in counting the blessings.


#388-411


God's Word... oh how He speaks!
Holy Spirit making all things possible


new faces from far off places


how love can be comfortable and exciting at the same time


unexpected hugs


long-distance phone service


dishwashers


creativity of little people
creativity of big people
that there is no age limit on making cool stuff


a happy daddy


fallen golden leaves the size of your head


muddy, blackened-bare puppy feet romping through the woods


fog that softens twinkling city lights and blurs the moon
and makes me glad to be home


history making, touchdown-scoring Hail Mary 
this guy deflecting
this one being in the right place... at the right time


the work of the saints


memories


southern drawl transported fiber-optically


my minds eye, and 
the vivid things i see

Prodigal

The sun was setting low over the houses across from ours.  The street lights would soon be on,  illuminating the thousands of tiny, flittering bugs that seemed to spawn from those lamps.  The air was thick, like it always was.  Hot and thick.

The evening meal was regular, maybe it was soup with ice berg lettuce and little pieces of chopped tomato served on paper plates.  He was there that night.  His presence always welcomed, yet always heavy like the air around us.  The rattan and metal chair balked at his shifting weight.  As his feet shuffled under the chair, positioning his legs just so, the pain would be better.  He would eat voraciously.  Every last bite of that iceberg lettuce gone.  He'd wipe at the corners of his mouth with napkin first.  Then came the handkerchief for his nose.  Then he would speak.

He bent at the waist, leaning over table.  Thick, rough fingers curved in rest a top the worn glass as if on piano keys.  His burnished skin shone in the dim light of candelabra bulbs.  As usual, his thick silver hair was not a strand out of place.  And in his dark, smiling eyes I saw something new.
I was still a girl really, but old, and old enough to know what the knowing looks like.

He recounts the story of the prodigal son from the Bible.  With lips pressing, then parting, his head tilts and his brow creases deeper.  His thick, brown fingers tap the glass with growing pressure as he is connecting the long ago story with something now,  recent and deeply hidden.  He struggles with the things he cannot put to words.  And never had I seen into his heart like this.

"He's chasing after us, like the father and that son.... the prodigal....  we run from Him and...   He   runs after   us."  he chokes it out with the first tears I can ever remember him shedding.

By some standards, he was already an old man, but I still a child.  I remember thinking my greatest prayer answered.

"Yes Daddy.  He does."

The twelve signal systems

Diane Moore spoke at our church recently.  She is the host of Parent Talk Radio here on the west coast.
She spoke of what she termed the 12 signal systems.... a term and idea she does not own and credited to someone else, though I sadly did not write the man's name down.  Google is failing me as well in endeavoring to credit this man.

The 12 signal systems are really 12 ways of communicating and they can be ranked from least to most effective, though all of them are powerful ways of communication.

Below the 12 are ranked from least effective (read here also 'believable') to most effective:


12.  Verbal (speech)
11.  Written (symbols representing speech)
10.  Numeric (numbers and number systems)
  9.  Pictoral (2-dimensional things)
  8.  Artifactual (3-dimensional things)
  7.  Audio (use of nonverbal sounds and silence)
  6.  Kinesic (having to do with movement)
  5.  Optical (light and color)
  4.  Tactile (touch, the sense of 'feel')
  3.  Spatial (having to do with space)
  2.  Temporal (utilization of time)
  1.  Olfactory (taste and smell)

 It is amazing the amount of communicating one does without ever opening her mouth or picking up a pen or typing on a keyboard for that matter!

It is an eye-opening thing to think about the bottom half of that list, and what am I saying with the touch, space, time and olfactory stimulation that I employ daily, hourly and even by the minute?

Frankly,  I am found wanting.

Oh Lord, may my touch be frequent, soft and calming.
Help me not to claim space but share it.  Bend my will, dear Lord, so that I might give my time more than I protect it.
May my words and speech be like the sweetest honeycomb and a fragrant aroma to You and to those You give me.  Even while I feed their spirits in this way, teach me too, to feed their bodies and senses with sweet, savory, and satisfying tastes and smells.
Help me know when to light a room and when to darken it.
Make me to move more slowly and more in sync with Your Spirit.
Temper my tone... may it too, be an expression of Your sweet love.
Make me wise in the things I keep... may they too, reflect the hold You have on me.
Teach me to keep picture records of Your goodness be they captured on canvas or film or....
Help me not to confuse little with least.
May Your value on a thing, be it's proper measure.


Amen