How To Live Well When Life is Wild

"All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full."

- King Solomon

I awoke to lightning. Now rain pours over us and runs like a river down the pavement below our windows. The world outside is purple, even though it is well past 7:00. Last night I planned to visit the gardens, go for a long walk, and shop. But the rain, with no one's forecast, just took over the world.

It feels like a parable. I have lived through months of mornings like this. It makes me ask:

How Can I Live Well When Life is so Wild?

I have asked myself this question often. Now, with rain pouring over the windows and my first cup of coffee steaming beside me, I turn through the pages of my journal. I come across an entry from September. Three simple ideas. So simple, I might pass over them. But they have helped me in every situation where I remembered them. 

1. Be Intentional: I need to be intentional about how I spend my time. There is a constant pull to be in a hurry, in a blur -- to be absorbed by busyness and distraction, to be carried down the river of demands, to be jostled about all day by wind and rain and traffic. To live well, I must resist this pull and choose deliberately. I must do it again and again.

Being intentional means I will review what I have done, reflect upon it, and use that to make new choices. I have found that Sunday afternoon is a good time for this. We like to go to a coffee shop. I think over the past week, perhaps talk to my husband, and then decide what I will focus on next.

2. Be Free. I have freedom to choose. I need to remember this at all times. Although I live in a river, I do not have to be carried along. God had given me a paddle by which I may steer my little canoe -- the paddle of choice. I can choose how to organize my efforts, where to lean, when to stop. The current is fast and demanding, but it does not have to be all.  If I live deliberately, it won't be. This one thing makes all the difference: I should pick up my paddle daily and choose.

The best way to practice this is to develop the habit of pausing: just pause and think, then pursue a course of action. I should resist people who want to press me to do things quickly or in a particular way. No one who truly respects me will try to overwhelm my free will.

3. Be Aware. Since I have surrendered my life to God, I should expect him to be guiding it. My Lord knows what I need beforehand. He prepares for me. He takes care of me. One of the ways he does this is by leading me forward. What signs, unexpected provisions, and repeated impressions can I notice along the way? He will show me where to push my canoe along the current.

When I reflect about my week, I should ask myself where these repeated impressions are showing up or where there has been unexpected provision of some kind. This is the simplest way to see where God is guiding me and leading me forward. I should have a place where I can record it.

__________

These simple concepts were written in my journal last fall. Since then, they have helped me in every situation where I remembered them. 

What helps you live well when life is wild?

4 Ways to Keep Writing Under Pressure

"If you make an honest transaction with your remembered experiences and emotions, you will reach the readers you want to reach."

- William Zinsser, Writing About Your Life

I am in full-time seminary, and I work part-time. My brain is packed and overloaded already. Finding any space to write, either in my mind or on my calendar, is a stretch. I have toyed with giving it all up. But then I remember what writing has given me. 

Why I Write

It all boils down to four things:

1. Writing is something I love.

2. Writing helps me do everything in my life better (and faster).

3. Writing makes me come fully alive.

4. In writing, I fulfill one purpose God had in designing me. 

Looking at it this way, why would I want to live without writing? I have often said that writing gave me a life I could not otherwise have. Do I really want to give that up? 

Now, I realize I don't need to. There are ways of being a writer in every situation, no matter how challenging. 

4 Ways I Keep Writing Under Pressure

Here's what I am doing right now. 

1. Fast 500: I write a fast 500 words first every morning. These words are about anything, and I craft them in my pajamas, if you must know. I link this to my Bible reading and prayer. I have an online Bible which is on my PC screen next to my journal. I do it all together.  

2. Fun 300: Next, I write 300 words on a manuscript. I am working on a psychological thriller right now. It's my second book. No, you do not want to read the first one I wrote. Trust me. 

When I write, I keep a playful attitude. I am playing, not working. I do not seriously expect to share my second book with anyone. If I do eventually share it, that will be wonderful. But no matter what happens, by the end of the year, I will have written another book. And that moves me forward as a writer. 

All of this writing takes 90 minutes. After that, I have the rest of the day for other tasks. I manage those much better if I've had some writing time. Alternately, I can write in chunks of 30 minutes at each meal, or  in the evening, since I don't watch TV. But those are back-up plans. 

Consistent writing works best for me at the earliest possible hour.  

3. Restful Reflection: On Sundays, when I am reflecting and relaxing, I draw from my diary for a weekly blog post which gives you a peek into my life. These are the types of posts my readers love most--ones that let them experience life with me and which offer a filtered perspective. Since I am providing only one post each week, I try to make sure it is one they want to read.

However, the weekly post is not just for my readers. I need to practice the art of reflection. It's too easy to write fast. Slowing down taps into a deeper creative level. Even though I'm only writing reflectively once a week, that's often enough to remember how. 

4. Time to Grow: In seminary, I'm learning much which will deepen and enrich my writing. Seminary also lets me build an on-the-ground network for later collaboration. Daily, I remind myself: I am taking time to grow. 

Writers want to put words on a page. Sometimes this driving desire creates tunnel vision. Writing is not just about word counts and page numbers. We don't write from a vacuum. Writing cannot do what a writer has not understood. Time given to training the mind is time well spent. 

This is Hard, But it's Worth my Time 

I'm not manufacturing some kind of positive spin to make myself feel better. What I'm doing is good work!  By these simple choices, I keep myself writing. I stay fully alive. I keep my brain "in practice" for the craft of my calling. Meanwhile, I learn things which will add insight, content, and depth to future manuscripts. 

If I continue this plan for three years, I will have a masters degree, a host of new relationships, and three books in my back pocket. That's a pretty good deal. 

How do you keep writing under pressure? How do you tap into creativity?

How I Found Strength for the New Year

“You've got to jump off cliffs all the time
and build your wings on the way down.”

― Annie Dillard



I can feel the change. Like a breath taken in and not released. I had to read myself to sleep last night. I turned on my little lamp and opened The Writer’s Journey and passed my eyes over the words until the tension in my stomach eased and night pulled me into slumber.

And I mused, “Ah. This is why the other students leave campus. To escape this feeling as long as possible.” I’m not sorry I stayed. I did leave it all behind me for several weeks, but now the spring semester presses upon me with urgency and I can no longer delay the impression.

It is early morning. The campus sits like a moist bowl under umber clouds. Rain is coming. The air smells of rain and somehow of books, too. Over the holidays, all was stillness and shuttered windows. This week, cars begin moving at 5:30. Utility vehicles shuffle goods and people. It brings to mind a board game. On which spaces are you landing today? The cafeteria? Student Center? No, not the library, not yet.

Today I shall land on the space tagged “office” to discuss my schedule with my boss. I will wear brown and robin egg blue. Because it reminds me of an early spring nest. Brown twigs and blue eggs. Yes! I am a little bird making a nest. I know it’s silly, but the idea comforts me and adds a playfulness that infuses me with resiliency.

It’s one of the things I need to remember this year, to be like a child, to remember wonder.

On my weekend walks, I saw for the first time how many nests are sitting in bare trees, left behind during winter. They are small, brown like the trees, and you would not see them unless you searched. Every tree seems to have at least one. I know because I looked. How can a bird build such a thing with only a beak and sticks?

I pull away from my musings to make coffee. Is there another smell in the world which so richly expresses brown? Perhaps the smell of rain hitting earth. I open a window. Fresh air spills into the room. I can hear the breathing of my family. Soon the light will rise in the east, but at this moment I am still tucked into the dark folds of early morning. I pour coffee into a white cup and add milk in a slow stream. Then I close my eyes like a girl and sniff. Yes, it is the essence of brown.

I will not linger much longer. The day will be full. But at this moment, I am filling the space with another kind of fullness.

Last week, I had a planning retreat where I thought about my life. I pondered, clarified, simplified. The result? My expectations have been pared back to the essentials. I am trim, lean in my soul.  I can feel the sureness of it, the fit that seems just right. I feel it especially this morning: I am ready to run.

But before I do, I pause to put a bit of wonder in my pocket. For strength.

How do you find strength for your soul?

Why I Don't Need Goals for 2012

I spent New Year's Eve reading my journals from 2011. In them, I rediscovered what God has done in our lives. I found on those pages a tender care I had missed in the flurry of constant change, of transition from one kind of life to another. I have already been given instruction in how I should live--through Bible study, situations, books, words of friends, and inner impressions.

But I have not paid attention.

My focus for this year is to actually put into practice what I have already been directed to do. I don't need new goals. I need to do what I already understand.

This is a surprise. I thought I needed a new strategy, a new vision. But here it is, right in front of me. I did not see it before. I have been shown, along the way, how to live well. It is enough.

In addition, there is one more thing I need to pay attention to. I need to notice what has already worked best. What are the changes which have been significant? What are the top ten changes I'm glad I made last year? In the last ten years? The last twenty? These hold wisdom for now. They can tell me what I need to know.

Wisdom from 10 Changes I'm Glad I Made Over the Last 20 Years

When I looked at my personal history this way, I found a recurring pattern. My best changes entailed:

1. Sacrifice: Each of my significant choices required a sacrifice. I paid a price for them which cost me. It means there are other things I could not have done or will not do.

2. Risk: With each choice, success was not guaranteed: there was considerable risk. I was unsure of the results. And it mattered.

3. Social Courage: My significant choices were challenged by others around me. They were unpopular options. People who genuinely cared about me were skeptical and concerned. Even more, these choices required that I paddle against the current of culture and convention. In every case, I disappointed or frustrated the expectations of others. I had to be willing to disappoint, willing to risk others thinking less of me.

4. Conviction: In each instance, I had a conviction which I could not shake that this was a choice I must make if I followed my conscience fully. I could not reconcile myself to alternative plans. There were plenty of pragmatic reasons to do otherwise. But my heart said yes, and I agreed to follow my heart, and that has made all the difference.

Is it possible that a satisfying and meaningful life is filled with decisions which require sacrifice, risk, social courage, and conviction? What do you think? Are there decisions like this for you now, or ones you are glad you made? 

Celebrating Christmas in a New Life

This Christmas, we are in an apartment on a college campus in a city. For the first time in over 25 years, I did not bake cookies, as my friend Laura Boggess did in her beautiful post: "Sweet Moments."

Until now, I thought I would always live in a small town, in a large house on a quiet street, with people coming and going through my door, sharing the homemade Christmas which had been passed on to me. I saw a timelessness coming to me and flowing through me to the next generation in traditions with each year being like the one before it. But all of that changed last winter.

I am now pursuing a Masters of Divinity. My husband Chris is also a graduate student. Finishing our first semester this fall, we both worked feverishly until mid-December on papers and exams. A few hours after I finished the last exam, my son and his new bride arrived for the weekend. We enjoyed our time together. Then I had just a week to prepare for Christmas. But I needed to rest. I was thoroughly exhausted. The first Monday, I could do nothing productive.

Beginning on Tuesday, I tried to pick one simple, high-priority task each day. That was challenge enough. Other than that, I went for walks. I went into the city and sat at a coffee shop with Christmas cards. We strolled through the zoo one evening to see the display of lights. I did a bit of shopping. We went to a candlelight service attended by about 2000 people. I bought ingredients for a pot roast and curried lentils, because that's what we wanted for dinner.

All traditions were out: we made it up as we went along. I called it a City Christmas.

I have stopped missing my old life. I am content. I am embracing a new season. I am being stretched, and in stretching I know I am fully awake. I am not dozing my way through middle age. I feel like a girl again, not a woman with a long history--just a girl waking up to the life ahead.

I know something I did not know before: we can be made new, if we are open to it. God is in the business of making us new all the time. We just don't notice. Then something big comes along, a big event, and wham! we suddenly see the changes all at once. We are amazed, perhaps even alarmed. But really it's been happening all the time. God is always at work, shaping and shifting and making us fresh. The important thing is to cooperate with him, to not become set like stone.

What has changed for you recently? Was this holiday different for you?

How to Read the Bible

The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed. 

- Thomas Paine

A new post is up at Poterion for your holiday reading. Feel free to share it with a friend or use it to launch a discussion about the Bible. How to Read the Bible is part of a series on why the Bible is different from other books, and what that means for us when we read it. As you scroll down on Poterion's front page, you will see other posts on this important topic.

I thought it would be interesting to write a series on the Bible and on who Jesus claimed to be, since this is the one time of year, more than any other, when the world turns to the Bible and listens to stories from it and ponders the baby lying in a manger. I thought it might be helpful to ask questions like: Exactly who was Jesus? Can we trust the Bible? What should we trust it to do exactly? 


I invite you to hop over to Poterion and reflect on what it all means for us in the 21st century. 

Our (new) Girl

After years of hard work, she will walk the AISLE.

It's not the same aisle you read about this summer. She will not be wearing a white dress, but a black one. White was for a new beginning then; black is for the period at the end of a long sentence now.

On Monday, she will graduate with a Bachelor's Degree in Public Health at the University of South Carolina.

But there is a bit more to her story. In September, our new daughter-in-law began residing with us on weekdays. Our son, her new husband, found an apartment for them in North Carolina where he has a job as a business real-estate broker. She traveled on weekends to see him and then back to us for classes each week. Even though this was difficult, she was determined to finish. Many weeks, she had to force herself to do it, because the pull to be with her new husband was strong.

To finish this semester, she also had to complete six classes, one of them a lab science, and work twenty hours a week. Four classes is considered a full load.

In addition, she also had the challenge of living with her new in-laws. Think about it for a minute: would you want to do it, as a newly wed? It tells you something about Allie, that she is brave and strong: she did all of this without batting an eyelash in her beautiful face.

During the weeks she was with us, people asked her, "So how is it, living with the mother-in-law?" This was the question posed nearly everywhere, in nearly every setting, so I am not revealing any secret conversations! When she told me about it on one of our evening walks, I thought it was funny.

She said that she tells them "It's fine!" and they don't quite believe her. "Really?"..."Yes, really!"

I stopped in the middle of the road.

I said, "Listen. You just tell them we are buds. If they have a problem with it, they can talk to me." Then we slapped hands in a high-five. (Yes, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law were doing a high five in the middle of the road on a college campus.)

It's been a pleasure getting to know Allie and watch her become grafted into our family. We've enjoyed cooking and hiking and chats over coffee. What you should know is this: she has her own unique relationship with each member of the family, which she helped to craft, and because of her maturity, I've been able to just sit back and enjoy watching it all develop.

Congratulations, Allie! You earned this, every step of the way.