Month: March 2018

This weekend I was at a home show, surrounded by dozens of vendors ranging from remodeling to roofing to windows, and more. It got me thinking about when we need to make changes to our lives.

Life, like a home, goes through various stages of decay and disarray.

When it comes to a home, there are times a simple refresh does the trick. A new coat of paint. Different décor. A good deep cleaning. Other homes require more significant work, such as a new roof, windows, or drywall. On some occasions, there may be extensive damage to the framework or other structural aspects where things need to be torn down to the foundation. Maybe even the foundation needs to be repaired.

When we encounter brokenness in our life, discerning the damage is vital as we begin the repair work. If we don’t, we may end up doing work that is overkill or not enough.

If our home needs new windows, we won’t tear the house down. If our lives need minor adjustments, we likely wouldn’t invest a significant amount of time working on it.

The greater threat is at the other end of the spectrum. If many of the 2×4’s in the frame of our house were rotting, we wouldn’t just slap another coat of paint on the walls. The same is true for our life. If our life calls for serious, deep work, we might need to tear things down to the foundation and rebuild.

Every life, like every home, needs repairs from time to time. Those who think we don’t are either naïve or living in denial. When those repairs needs to be done, we must be honest with ourselves about severity of the damage and what kind of work is required.

A house built on a damaged foundation will be unstable and everything built on top of it will be less sturdy. When you feel like your life becomes unsteady, it may be time to inspect your heart, mind, and soul, find the areas that need repair, and determine what steps you need to take next.

Regardless of what needs to be done, life is too short and too important to ignore the repairs we might be avoiding. Even if the task seems daunting, embarking on the journey will always be better in the long run than simply slapping on another coat of paint.

Every day we awaken with a clean sheet of paper, a story waiting to be written. The page is blank, but the mind of the narrator is not.

Yes, today is another opportunity to write a new chapter, but the reality is the stories we have already heard and experienced shape the stories we tell ourselves. The pages that have already been written will impact the words we pen on today’s blank page.

What are the stories you tell yourself?

Most of us, if we are truly honest, have many stories we would rather not share.

Stories of failure.

Stories of being let down.

Stories of abuse.

Stories of betrayal.

Stories of abandonment.

Stories of addiction.

Stories of not being good enough.

These are stories we often bury beneath the surface, cover with facades of happiness, mask with plastic smiles, disguise with humor, and numb with unhealthy behaviors. Stories that fuel anger, shame, and anxiety. Stories that weigh us down and paralyze us, eating away at self-affirmation and the ability to love others. Poison to our souls.

What stories are you telling yourself?

Changing the stories we tell ourselves requires us to stand and face the stories we have been exposed to throughout our lives. We must rumble with the ugly parts of our lives hidden in the basement, inviting them into the light to take away their power.

Once these stories are exposed, we have freedom to write new stories. No longer do we need to fear the basement. Open wounds become scars and past hurts become lessons.

But let’s be honest, this does not elimate the pain; grief will be our constant companion. We grieve words unspoken to those who are gone. We grieve moments that have cut us deeply. We grieve lost opportunities and stolen childhoods. We grieve broken relationships and past mistakes. We grieve ways that others hurt us and we hurt others.

Telling yourself new stories isn’t about ignoring the past, but embracing the past while simultaneously turning the page in the present. Telling yourself new stories means seeing the past in a new light, from a different vantage point. We can be freed from the toxins of the past while never forgetting the lessons learned.

Facing the past leads to a better future. Seek to learn and grow from stories already written. This will not be easy or painless; the journey can be excruciating. The path to healing and growth often leads us through some of the darkest places we have ever been. But remember, only when we have been through the darkness can we most appreciate the light, the light that offers a fresh page and an opporunity to tell yourself a better story.

Discussing parenting this weekend with a friend reminded me of something important. Our role as parents evolves over time. When our children are young, our primary role is answer giver, providing information and direction for our children. We make more statements than ask questions. Don’t touch that hot stove. Don’t walk into the street. Do your homework. Obey your parents. If you’re a parent, you know this only touches the surface.

As children mature, our role should change. Statements should evolve into questions. Giving information should transform into offering advice. Holding children close should change into letting them go.

Most parents, if we are honest, struggle with this transition. We want to keep telling our children what to do. We want to protect them from the dangers of life. We want them to be who we want them to be.

But the reality is, they are not us. They are themselves. They are different than we are. They may have different values, different opinions, and different behaviors. As we begin to see our children become their own people, we need to change our approach. If we continue to focus on making statements, giving information, and holding them close, we can retard their growth, frustrate ourselves, and take ownership of something that is not ours.

Evolution and change are part of life. They involve risk for sure. But they also offer opportunities for improvement. Our children have the possibility of being better than us, but that becomes more difficult when we seek to constrain them.

This is not an easy process. We will all blow it. Sometimes we will let go too quickly and other times we hold on too long. We are imperfect human beings seeking to help other imperfect human beings find themselves.

These last few weeks as I have watched students protest following a school shooting, I noticed a few things. Sometimes, we don’t offer enough guidance and other times we create too many restraints. I witnessed people on one side of the issue applauding these young people without seeming to challenge them to think more deeply. On the other side, I saw people belittle these young people, saying they have no idea what they are talking about.

What if, rather than either extreme, we all sat around a table and challenged opinions while also encouraging efforts? What if, instead of making statement to and about these students, we asked questions to engage in dialogue about the deeper issues at hand?

We need grace for each other and for our children. We must grant them the freedom to make mistakes, while maintaining an open posture to ask questions when the opportunity avails itself. Too often, I see parents try to protect their children from the world far too late into their lives, and in the process they often help create young legalists or set them up for ugly falls.

When we find that middle ground where dialogue and questions offer young people a chance to think for themselves while also remaining open to learning from our wisdom, experience, and mistakes, we will create an environment for growth. Our questions will then help the next generation find its own answers. This is going to happen anyway. Wouldn’t it be better if we served more as a help than a hindrance?

Have you ever watched clouds? I find relaxation, especially when it’s warmer, from laying on my back looking up at the clouds. They are always in motion, always changing.

Quick science lesson. Clouds consist of tiny droplets of water attached to something, often particles of dust. As the wind blows, these droplets gather together forming various shapes.

The Kingdom of heaven is like a cloud…

You and I are particles of dust, and when the living water attaches to us, we become more than we were before. We have life and form, and as the wind of the Spirit moves through us and around us, we gather together and the Kingdom expands.

The creation account in Genisis says that I AM breathed the breath of life into the dust and life emerged. Maybe this is the essence of I AM. Breath. Wind.

We often think of God as three people. The Father, a guy with a white beard sitting on a throne. Jesus, the human form of the divine. The Holy Spirit, which we’re not not always sure how to define. Does this blind us to something much deeper and mysterious.

Could it be that these three “persons” of the Trinity are just clouds, tangible representations of something beyond our comprehension? Sometimes I worry that our need for certainty and nice tidy explanations limits our understanding of I AM.

Is breath the essence of I AM? I admit I am not a Hebrew scholar. I know very little Hebrew. But I heard something recently that got me thinking. Take a minute and try this… Take a few deep, deliberate breaths. When you breath in, say “Yah,” and when you breath out say “weh.” Yah-weh. Yah-weh. I’m not sure if this is the “right” pronouncation for YHWH, but I find it fascinating when the word is sounded out this way. It almost sounds like breathing.

This past Wednesday in my yoga class, our focus was on breathing. For over an hour, my attention was continually on my breath. As the evening went on, I was reminded of how important breathing is – without it we die – and how often we take it for granted.

How often do we take the movement of I AM for granted as well? I believe that we need to think less of I AM as static and definable and more as dynamic and beyond understanding. When we embrace mystery and contemplate the vastness of creation and Creator, our eyes can be opened to a new level of consiousness.

When I was younger, we often watched The Sound of Music. It was one of my mom’s favorite movies. There is a song in the movie that says, “How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?” What if we approached I AM more like a cloud and less like something we can measure and define? Has our need to be right contributed to the violence, termoil, and pain in the world? Would our eyes be more open if we could allow ourselves to be engulfed in the cloud?

The next time you breath, take a look at the sky, watch the clouds for a few minutes, and open yourself to the movement of the breath that gives life to the world.