Choices

Friends, my phone fell in the toilet for the second time in less than a year this past week. I feel like this is a metaphor for my life on so many levels. I waited a few days for it to dry out, took it to the phone repair desk here, and it is officially dead. I spent three hours on the phone ordering a new one. I have hijacked my husband’s phone until it comes in, which could be weeks since we are in Japan. He is graciously letting me keep it while he goes to work. I don’t want to be one of those people who is lost without their phone. I want to be a person who enjoys not having it. But honestly, I’m just not. I take care of so many things on my to-do list using my phone. I run my business from my phone. I take pictures with my phone. I navigate through a foreign country with my phone. I keep myself from total isolation during this pandemic with my phone. I use timers and alarm clocks and calendars on my phone. So, this is a frustrating situation. As always, I have choices. I can choose to walk in the dark or the light. I can choose to focus on the negative or the positive. I can choose to complain or be grateful.

I could get angry with myself. I tend to criticize and blame myself for any little thing that doesn’t go the way I want it to in life. Even if it’s something completely out of my control, I can find a way to believe it was my fault. But knowing that, I can listen for those thoughts and stop them when they come. Then I can say, it was a simple mistake. I forgot it was in my back pocket. The laws of gravity are definitely NOT within my control. I can respect God’s laws of nature and accept that I am a human.

I can choose to be angry that it took so long to order the new one, that they had no budget phones in stock so I’m paying twice what I would normally pay, or that it will take so long to arrive. Or I can choose to be thankful that a new phone is on its way, that it will probably be the highest quality phone I’ve ever had, and that my husband is here and sharing his phone with me in the meantime.

I can choose to criticize myself for feeling lost without my phone, or I can accept the fact that it’s 2021 and be thankful for this tool that simplifies my life in so many ways.

So, if you are facing a frustrating situation today, remember you have choices. Choose light, choose gratitude, choose faith, choose hope. Even if your whole life seems to be going down the toilet, you can be thankful for the opportunity to flush the crap and start fresh.

Showers and Floods

Does anyone else out there continually vacillate between strict discipline and wild spontaneity? Maybe it’s the difference between my creative brain and my logical brain. Maybe it’s the contrast between the scheduled world of public education I grew up in and the freedom of homeschooling that I live with now. It feels like half of humanity would scold me for either choice. Maybe it’s the change from working to staying at home. Whatever the reason, I can’t seem to stick to either a schedule or the lack of one for more than a week at a time. Something inside of me seeks to make every day EPIC. And it can’t make up its mind on exactly what IS the best way to induce epic-ness.

In order to achieve epic-ness, we must define it. Merriam-Webster says it means “extending beyond the usual or ordinary especially in size or scope.” Well, then. It’s basically impossible to do that every day. If epic is normal, it would eventually cease to be epic, and a new standard for epic would be established. So maybe both discipline and spontaneity are needed to achieve feelings of epic-ness. If my normal is constantly changing, then every day might feel epic, even if I am doing ordinary things!

By nature, I am not a planner. I’d much rather see where God takes me. But the sting of making many mistakes that could have been avoided by planning has trained me to seek out the perfect routine, in order to hopefully avoid such pain in the future. And here my discipline and spontaneity are at war again. It’s a cycle: We’ll have a good routine down, and then I’ll go through a time where new ideas are hitting me from every side, and I’ll change things to incorporate them. Or a life change will happen, and we are forced to change things. Or for some reason, everyone is crabby and nothing is getting done. So we take some time off and then have to get back into the swing of things, which is always rough.

Amidst all this chaos of life, I am constantly trying to figure out what is worthwhile. What is beneficial? What is necessary? What can we cut out? What should we add in? Should we do this daily, weekly, monthly, yearly?! Sometimes my mind is such a battlefield. I don’t want to waste time, and I don’t want to schedule too many things and leave no room for fun or deviation from the schedule. And just about the time I am satisfied with our “normal” routine, something changes.

Many days, I feel like I’m not enough. I feel I’m not doing enough. I feel like I should be doing something OTHER than what I am doing. I second guess every decision I’ve made. Some days I feel elated when I check off the boxes on my to-do list. Some days I feel elated when I rebel and refuse to do anything on my to-do list. On the days I am disciplined and stick to my “perfect” routine, I hope the showers of small things done over and over again, with love, become epic over time. On the days when I throw the schedule out the window and we go on a grand adventure, I hope the flood of excitement and the unknown will be epic.

I know we need both the showers and the floods to create a full life. And I think each one prepares us for the other. It’s the showers of mundane and monotonous, intentional, habits we do every day that prepare us for the floods. Hopefully they will root us in peace, love, faith, hope, good health, and an appreciation for the good and the beautiful. And it’s the flood of emotions and excitement from getting outside of our comfort zones that give meaning to our intentional habits. Hopefully they will leave us with lasting memories and life lessons.

Every day is epic, in its own way. 

The Sloth and The Butterfly

Sometimes I really don’t like being a human. It’s a lot of trouble. I don’t like change, and that just keeps happening, like, ALL THE TIME. Like for my WHOLE life. It’s ridiculous, really. And then I have to change to keep up with the changes. And I really like to just do whatever I want whenever I want to do it, and for those things that NEED to get done, well, I like to do those on autopilot. Change requires me to think. Change requires a lot of work. Change requires a lot of uncomfortableness. I’d prefer to be a sloth – take lots of naps, wake up for snacks, and poop once a week…perfect!

But I have to keep in mind that OTHER thing about being human: how I feel after I’ve changed. How I feel when I’m not uncomfortable anymore and I know more than I did before. I’m better at being a human than I was before. I’m able to look back at where I was and see how far I’ve come. I’m able to share with other humans what I’ve learned. I’m able to comfort other humans who are drudging through the same uncomfortable changes. So my humanity desires the life of a sloth, but God wants me to be more like a butterfly. He wants me to embrace change and go through it with Him. He wants me to crawl with Him, as a caterpillar. He wants me to grow with Him, as a chrysalis. He wants me to soar with Him, as a butterfly.

Some changes are small, and not really that important in the grand scheme of life. Like when I was 7 and the post office changed all the addresses for our route, so I had to memorize a new one. Or when I was 8 and my parents got a new refrigerator. Both of these things caused me great mental anguish at the time. But they didn’t have a huge effect on anything else (except as being evidence of how much I hated change and that I was terrible at dealing with it).

Some changes are big, and require a lot of work to accept. For me, these changes usually end up with me hitting a bottom and having to crawl my way back to the surface and my new reality. The first bottom I hit was a spiritual one. After many years of searching for God, I finally found Him. But not at all where I expected. After years of smiling on the outside and crying on the inside, of trying to control everything else so that I wouldn’t lose control, I finally gave up and asked for help. And God brought me into a personal relationship with Him. As a caterpillar, I longed for a personal experience with God, and I envied those who talked about their experiences with Him as if He was alive and right there with them. I wanted to believe He was real, but I wasn’t sure because I had never seen Him myself. When I finally cried out for help, He answered. He brought me to a safe place where I could get to know Him, and get to know myself. Reading, praying, sharing with others, seeing His work and feeling His presence. I’m still learning to fly spiritually, but I know God is real, that He is with me, and that He loves me.

The second bottom I hit was an emotional one. It came about seven years later. Even though I had been walking with God, I was still not so great at dealing with myself or with other humans. I was a doormat, a martyr, a control freak, and a complete emotional wreck. I cried out for help again, and God answered me. He brought me to a safe place where I could learn healthier ways of communicating, of living, of being in relationships with others. I learned I had choices. I learned I would be ok no matter what. I learned to set boundaries. I learned how to care for myself. I learned how to say no.

The most recent bottom I hit was physical. I never got back to my healthy weight after having my second child, and I continued to gain slowly over the last six years. I tried to exercise, but that always made me think I had a license to eat anything. Then I started feeling really weak and tired and found out I had low iron, so I cut back on exercising but still kept my terrible eating habits. Instead of making sure I took my iron supplements every day, I’d eat more when I felt weak and tired (even though it didn’t help). I hoped that once we moved to Japan and there weren’t fast food restaurants on every corner, I would drop the weight easily. That didn’t happen, so I signed up for Noom. I have loved the program because it focuses on the mental and emotional aspects that affect our eating habits and choices. I’ve definitely always been an emotional eater, but in the last few years, food had become an idol. It was my go-to for celebration and for sorrow, and every emotion in between. But God brought me to another bottom when none of my clothes fit anymore. My doctor had been telling me for three years that I needed to lose weight, but I disagreed. Once I finally accepted it and was ready to make a change, it didn’t seem so scary or impossible. And God has been with me every step of the way.

As a human, I hate hitting bottom. It’s painful. It’s difficult. It’s uncomfortable. It’s FULL of changes. I wish that life were easy! I wish that there was no drama, no struggles, no changes. But as a butterfly, hitting bottom is the thing that brings me life! How can I hate the things that taught me to fly?

Bible verses to consider:

Genesis 28:15: I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.

Jeremiah 33:3: Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.

Isaiah 43:19: See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

2 Corinthians 5:17: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old is gone; a new life has begun!

Ephesians 4:22: You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Ephesians 4:1: As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.

Ephesians 4:14-16: Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Exodus 20:2-3: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.

2020 Essentials: Thriving in Chaos

Not sure if you’ve noticed, but 2020 has been weird. Not just sort of weird, REALLY weird. And not just weird for some people, but weird for EVERYONE. The global pandemic is something I never imagined experiencing in my lifetime. Pandemics were things we read about in history books, not the local news. Like the rest of the world, 2020 has been weird for our family too. But every year feels weird for our family. We are a military homeschooling family. We moved to Japan in February, right before the world shut down. My husband left for quarantine and deployment at the end of April. And my kids and I are just sittin’ here, waitin’ to be able to go to Tokyo (hasn’t happened yet because of COVID-19). Maybe you’ve seen the meme going around social media about military families: “Getting our plans screwed up by the government before it was cool.” We never know what’s going on, we rarely know what day it is, and we’re never too sure what we’ll be doing in the future. While some people thrive in this environment, I, being an anxiety-ridden planner and control freak, have felt the military lifestyle drive me absolutely insane over the last 17 years. And then, when God called us to homeschool five years ago and brought us down the path of non-traditional learning, my insanity quadrupled. “What do you mean they don’t have to learn certain things at certain times? What do you mean life can be whatever we want it to be? What do you mean we don’t have to follow anyone else’s rules?” The freedom can sometimes feel totally liberating and totally suffocating at the same time.

The questions that I have been forced to ask myself over the past several years of building a life that is completely different than what I envisioned are the questions that many people are asking themselves now, as a result of the chaos of 2020. I don’t know how long this “new normal” will last for any of us, but I want to encourage you! It is hard, but you can do hard things. It is different, but you can learn new things. It is unpredictable, but you can be flexible. So here are some of the questions I have had to ask myself, and do some serious soul-searching (and Bible-reading) to find my answers. I hope that they will help you find your questions and your answers too.

1. What am I building my life upon? When this question first came up in my mind, I was sad to admit that the answer was accomplishments, awards, and the praise of others. I was a people-pleaser. I had spent my entire life trying to fulfill every goal other people said I should. I tried to be the best at everything I did, even if I didn’t enjoy it or drove myself crazy attaining it. I got a 4.0 in college but made zero friends outside of my job at the university library. That was pretty much the story of my entire life. Stressed out perfectionism: trying to prove to myself and the world that I was capable and worthy. What I try to build my life upon now is God’s kingdom – where I don’t have to be capable or worthy, because He will equip me to do whatever He has planned. So what are you building your life upon right now? “The wise man builds his house upon the rock.” - Matthew 7:24-27

2. Who is in control? My old answer to this would have been ME. I felt completely responsible for everything and everyone. I had to save the entire world every day. I had to be a good example for others and if they still didn’t get it, I had to tell them what they were doing wrong. If I had a problem, it must have been because of something I did to cause it. If only I had made the right decision, these things wouldn’t be happening to me, right?! It was exhausting. Finally I found out the truth: I am not, in fact, in control of anything but myself, nor am I the savior of the world. But God is in control of the world and Jesus is the Savior of the world. So I don’t have to worry. I can trust and not be afraid. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” – Romans 8:28

3. What is the source of my joy? Unfortunately, my answer to this for the longest time was my circumstances, my routine, and my productivity. It’s taken years of therapy, prayer, Bible studies, 12 step studies, and soul-searching to make any changes here. But the truth is, most of us humans want things our way and when we don’t get it, we’re unhappy. Keeping my focus on God’s fulfilled promises and the promise of heaven is a daily mental battle for me. My mind naturally goes to the negative – the things I need to “fix.” But daily gratitude lists, daily devotions, daily prayer, and daily devoting myself to passing on the knowledge of God to my kids keeps reminding me that I can find joy, contentment, and happiness when I am looking for it. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!” – Philippians 4:4

4. Who am I trying to please? Sometimes it was my family, sometimes friends, sometimes enemies, sometimes co-workers, sometimes my husband, sometimes my kids…but all of these turned out to be wrong. People are fallible. God is infallible. People get things wrong and make mistakes. God never gets things wrong or makes mistakes. When I have a question, I need to take it to God first. Many times the voices of the world are deafening and overwhelming. And most of the time, they are wrong. This has come up a lot for me when it comes to homeschooling. Sometimes I feel crushed by the pressure for my kids to succeed. But that’s what happens when I worry about the world’s standards instead of God’s standards. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.” – Romans 12:2

5. What is essential? This is a really hard one! And it usually leads to more questions. It is an ongoing process for me, as the answer constantly changes. I try to start with the most basic things and build from there. What has God called me to do? What are the needs of my (and my family’s) mind, body, and soul, and how do I meet them? What are my goals and dreams? What habits can help me get there? What can I do daily, weekly, monthly, yearly to reach them, and to do God’s will? If you can’t answer these questions yet, spend some time getting to know yourself and God first. “…I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” – Ephesians 4:4

6. What do I need to do to take care of myself? This one is a lot like the last one – always a work in progress! It goes hand in hand with finding out what is essential. What is self-care? It is knowing what you need to do to love yourself and keep your sanity. It is knowing yourself well enough to know how you’re feeling and how to respond to those feelings. It is knowing when to say yes, when to say no, and when to rest. It is learning how to trust yourself and your intuition. It is being able to enjoy time alone. It is knowing exactly what you would do with free time or what your hobbies are. It is nurturing healthy relationships and cutting unhealthy relationships out. It is setting healthy boundaries for yourself. “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” – Ephesians 4:22-24

7. Can my kids thrive in a non-traditional learning environment? Short answer: heck yes! Long answer: Humans are constantly learning, every second of every day. Can’t stop, won’t stop. Billions of people throughout history did not attend an organized institution of learning, and we’re still here. If you liked your old normal and your old routine, keep doing that! And if you’re unable to do that old routine now because of COVID-19, just know that this won’t last forever, and your kids won’t be behind on anything just because they’re not doing their normal school routine. But if the changes you have encountered are making you question your old routine and question sending your kids back to school, do some research, talk to some homeschool families, and talk to God about making a leap of faith. (I get it! It took me four years to commit to homeschooling!) “My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” – Colossians 2:2-3