I've said it before, and I'll say it again for emphasis: There's no such thing (to me) as patiently waiting.
I'm impatient by nature. I want things to happen now, if not yesterday. At a meeting today, people chuckled when I clapped at someone else's comment that we can't wait any longer. I imagine they were surprised I didn't say it first. Apparently I have a comrade in arms.
It's been a challenging week. I'm waiting for something to happen that I'd prefer not happen at all. But if it has to happen, get it over with. I don't want to wait until next week. Just do it.
I remember my mother saying, "Watched water never boils." Actually, if you have enough flame under a kettle, it has to boil. But her point was, why stand there and watch it? It will seem to take longer that way. Go do something else.
So I'm not watching the pot. The week is busy enough. I have more than enough to do without fretting over something that will come anyway. There's almost nothing I can do about it.
There are lots of frustrations in life like that. Meetings that are cancelled or delayed. Having to wait at an office. Getting stuck in traffic. Watching the little wheel spin when a computer process takes a minute. Submitting an application and waiting for an answer.
Most of the time, that's just the way it is. Sometimes it's someone's decision or inaction that causes it. While there's rarely a point to getting steamed, I often do. I recall hearing that getting angry shortens your life. So, how much time have I lost?
The more I have to wait, the less patience I seem to have. I'm not getting any better at being patient. In fact, I seem to be growing more impatient about my impatience. Frustrated about being frustrated.
I'm not watching the kettle, or thinking about the week-off event. I think I'm going to bed. I have no impatience about sleep at all.
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Change and changing, our actions impact the lives of others
In His time. Such a hard lesson for me to learn. I think I've learned it and then I find myself out there doing it again, pushing for something to happen. Thinking that I have any control. And finding myself up against a wall of impossibility. Frustrating myself. Blaming others. Then realizing it wasn't mine to determine at all.
We live in this world. We have the ability to act and move, communicate and feel. But in all truth, if we are who we say we are -- Whose we say we are -- we are acting as His hands, feet, mouth and ears in this place. He is in control. Or She, if you like that picture better.
I catch myself observing life sometimes as if I was the third person, watching the interactions. Just glimpses of how our moments are so fleeting, yet so complex. We see many of our moments wasted, even as we know our time is so limited. Why can't this succeed? We needed this to happen yesterday. Come on! Don't you see how important this is?
Then, all of a sudden, a break through. Something changes. Another situation comes along to impact the first one, like the pool ball from a second shot dropping the stationery ball into the pocket. Except it's not so random. It occurred, not in my time, but His time, the right time.
Something happened today that I've waited three years to happen. Impatient me, thinking my frustrated thoughts about the people who had the ability to act and didn't. Yet something changed, and started the chain in motion. In September 2014, it was the right time.
How often am I on the other side, not acting when someone desperately wants something to happen? Frustrated that life is happening too slowly, an excruciatingly painful pace.
Here I am, actor and acted upon, changed and changing. A piece of His hands and feet, interdependent on others to be the continuation of the action.
Welcome to the world. Be the change you want to see, because the piece that only He sees is that we are the change agent for someone else.
We live in this world. We have the ability to act and move, communicate and feel. But in all truth, if we are who we say we are -- Whose we say we are -- we are acting as His hands, feet, mouth and ears in this place. He is in control. Or She, if you like that picture better.
I catch myself observing life sometimes as if I was the third person, watching the interactions. Just glimpses of how our moments are so fleeting, yet so complex. We see many of our moments wasted, even as we know our time is so limited. Why can't this succeed? We needed this to happen yesterday. Come on! Don't you see how important this is?
Then, all of a sudden, a break through. Something changes. Another situation comes along to impact the first one, like the pool ball from a second shot dropping the stationery ball into the pocket. Except it's not so random. It occurred, not in my time, but His time, the right time.
Something happened today that I've waited three years to happen. Impatient me, thinking my frustrated thoughts about the people who had the ability to act and didn't. Yet something changed, and started the chain in motion. In September 2014, it was the right time.
How often am I on the other side, not acting when someone desperately wants something to happen? Frustrated that life is happening too slowly, an excruciatingly painful pace.
Here I am, actor and acted upon, changed and changing. A piece of His hands and feet, interdependent on others to be the continuation of the action.
Welcome to the world. Be the change you want to see, because the piece that only He sees is that we are the change agent for someone else.
Friday, September 5, 2014
A gift of time to contemplate and do the inner work
What do you do when you expect a 90-minute blank space in the schedule? It would be so easy these days to fill it with music, phone conversations, information and other electronic noise.
But today marked a drive to the Valley. And I don't drive to the Valley much anymore. With my mind filled with personal, local and global concerns, I shut off the radio and phone and just allowed myself the space to "contemplate the universe." Connect with myself and God. Listen. Wait.
I went back to a place I experienced in my teen years. Solitude. Before the noise of life increased. No cell phones. No internet. Our youth pastor collected some appliance boxes and directed us to occupy said cardboard. She wasn't thinking homeless simulation. Just isolation. Time to think and pray and be alone with ourselves. At the time, I didn't want to admit it was actually useful. Today I could use that box more often. I'd add a cushion or pillow -- these 50-year-old bones don't do unpadded surfaces very well these days.
Rarely is there a time of solitude from my first waking moment to my last thought before sleep takes over. Spouse. Co-workers. Work. Music. Social media. Email. Maybe television or a movie. If there's any solitude, it's in my truck or the shower.
So, once I shared a few thoughts about current situations with God, I just let the time pass. And clearly, my mind wasn't vacant. "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
Enemies? I don't really have them. But there are certainly people who rub me the wrong way and seem to do everything in their power to work against me. Just because there isn't outright warfare doesn't mean there's not conflict.
It's easy to pray for the people you like. It's fairly easy to pray for those you don't know very well. But how about those people who oppose you? Those who you don't think deserve a shot of your attention? The words catch in the back of your throat as you say, "God, I think ________ needs your help." Or better yet, "God, help me to see ____________ as a child of God with the gifts you have given him/her." A handful of names quickly came to mind, and will remain there until my prayers turn my heart.
Then add two more people to the list. My husband. Yesterday didn't go very well. And the last couple of days, and if I'm really truthful, the last couple of weeks. Lately, it doesn't take much to make one of us snap at the other. "Heal us, God. Work from within to knock down The Wall.*"
And then there's me. It's easy to pray for what I think I need, but harder to pray for what I actually need. Patience. Self-control. Harder still to look for those sharp edges that God still needs to wear down.
I love the way The Message explains this piece of the Sermon on the Mount that I've heard over and over. Matthew 5:43-48 43-47 “You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.
48 “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”
*The Wall, an anonymous poem.
The Wall
Their wedding picture mocked them from the table,
These two whose minds no longer touched each other.
They lived with such a heavy barricade between them
That neither battering ram of words
Nor artilleries of touch could break it down.
Somewhere, between the oldest child's first tooth
And the youngest daughter's graduation,
They lost each other.
Throughout the years each slowly unraveled
That tangled ball of string called self,
And as they tugged at stubborn knots,
Each hid his searching from the other.
Sometimes she cried at night
And begged the whispering darkness to tell her who she was.
He lay beside her, snoring like a hibernating bear,
Unaware of her winter.
Once, after they had made love,
He wanted to tell her how afraid he was of dying,
But, fearing to show his naked soul,
He spoke instead about the beauty of her breasts.
She took a course in modern art,
Trying to find herself in colors splashed upon a canvas,
Complaining to other women about men who are insensitive.
He climbed into a tomb called "The Office,"
Wrapped his mind in a shroud of paper figures,
And buried himself in customers. Slowly, the wall between them rose,
Cemented by the mortar of indifference.
One day, reaching out to touch each other
They found a barrier they could not penetrate,
And recoiling from the coldness of the stone,
Each retreated from the stranger on the other side.
For when love dies, it is not in a moment of angry battle,
Nor when fiery bodies lose their heat.
It lies panting, exhausted,
Expiring at the bottom of a wall it could not scale.
But today marked a drive to the Valley. And I don't drive to the Valley much anymore. With my mind filled with personal, local and global concerns, I shut off the radio and phone and just allowed myself the space to "contemplate the universe." Connect with myself and God. Listen. Wait.
I went back to a place I experienced in my teen years. Solitude. Before the noise of life increased. No cell phones. No internet. Our youth pastor collected some appliance boxes and directed us to occupy said cardboard. She wasn't thinking homeless simulation. Just isolation. Time to think and pray and be alone with ourselves. At the time, I didn't want to admit it was actually useful. Today I could use that box more often. I'd add a cushion or pillow -- these 50-year-old bones don't do unpadded surfaces very well these days.
Rarely is there a time of solitude from my first waking moment to my last thought before sleep takes over. Spouse. Co-workers. Work. Music. Social media. Email. Maybe television or a movie. If there's any solitude, it's in my truck or the shower.
So, once I shared a few thoughts about current situations with God, I just let the time pass. And clearly, my mind wasn't vacant. "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
Enemies? I don't really have them. But there are certainly people who rub me the wrong way and seem to do everything in their power to work against me. Just because there isn't outright warfare doesn't mean there's not conflict.
It's easy to pray for the people you like. It's fairly easy to pray for those you don't know very well. But how about those people who oppose you? Those who you don't think deserve a shot of your attention? The words catch in the back of your throat as you say, "God, I think ________ needs your help." Or better yet, "God, help me to see ____________ as a child of God with the gifts you have given him/her." A handful of names quickly came to mind, and will remain there until my prayers turn my heart.
Then add two more people to the list. My husband. Yesterday didn't go very well. And the last couple of days, and if I'm really truthful, the last couple of weeks. Lately, it doesn't take much to make one of us snap at the other. "Heal us, God. Work from within to knock down The Wall.*"
And then there's me. It's easy to pray for what I think I need, but harder to pray for what I actually need. Patience. Self-control. Harder still to look for those sharp edges that God still needs to wear down.
I love the way The Message explains this piece of the Sermon on the Mount that I've heard over and over. Matthew 5:43-48 43-47 “You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.
48 “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”
*The Wall, an anonymous poem.
The Wall
Their wedding picture mocked them from the table,
These two whose minds no longer touched each other.
They lived with such a heavy barricade between them
That neither battering ram of words
Nor artilleries of touch could break it down.
Somewhere, between the oldest child's first tooth
And the youngest daughter's graduation,
They lost each other.
Throughout the years each slowly unraveled
That tangled ball of string called self,
And as they tugged at stubborn knots,
Each hid his searching from the other.
Sometimes she cried at night
And begged the whispering darkness to tell her who she was.
He lay beside her, snoring like a hibernating bear,
Unaware of her winter.
Once, after they had made love,
He wanted to tell her how afraid he was of dying,
But, fearing to show his naked soul,
He spoke instead about the beauty of her breasts.
She took a course in modern art,
Trying to find herself in colors splashed upon a canvas,
Complaining to other women about men who are insensitive.
He climbed into a tomb called "The Office,"
Wrapped his mind in a shroud of paper figures,
And buried himself in customers. Slowly, the wall between them rose,
Cemented by the mortar of indifference.
One day, reaching out to touch each other
They found a barrier they could not penetrate,
And recoiling from the coldness of the stone,
Each retreated from the stranger on the other side.
For when love dies, it is not in a moment of angry battle,
Nor when fiery bodies lose their heat.
It lies panting, exhausted,
Expiring at the bottom of a wall it could not scale.
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