On Sunday I challenged myself to write a post every day this week about things I am thankful for. It is now almost midnight on Tuesday, so you can see how that’s going.
But, I want to express my gratitude anyway. No… more than express it. I want to call gratitude up from within my heart; stoke the fires of thankfulness. I want it to be more than a cursory “Wow, I am so privileged.”
I want there to be genuine, joyful, amazed gratitude at beauty that I know, behold, have, see.
And this practice of beckoning grateful hearts is even more necessary this year. There is so much to be grateful for and our beings are thirsty for the soul-anchoring, heart-stilling, joy-inducing effect of giving thanks.
This year we need to be more thankful than ever!
We need to mine the hardships for the beauty that comes from ashes.
We need to give extra thanks for the people we love so much.
We need to acknowledge the incredible gifts we’ve been given and trace every single one back to the Giver.
Nothing to be thankful for this year? Quite the contrary!
Everything to be thankful for.
We have a different perspective to know a bit more about how to rightly value and treasure what we have.
We have everything that was taken, which has taught us, grown us, emptied us, refined us.
We have the One who daily fills us and sustains us with life, gifts, and grace that we hardly even have eyes to see.
May we receive eagerly and willingly with empty hands and grateful hearts.
The problem, I propose, is that we don’t feel like we’re stressed so we aren’t taking care of ourselves (or each other) as if we’re stressed.
I sat with friends several weeks ago. “I’m think I’m doing fine!” one friend commented. “You’re stressed,” I said.
There’s no way we aren’t stressed! We’ve adapted quite well over the past few months, but there’s no way it hasn’t all taken a toll in sneaky, subconscious, underlying ways.
We are UNDER stress even if we don’t FEEL stressed.
We’ve adapted and we are doing life but whether or not we realize it or acknowledge it, we’re running thin. We are tired.
I don’t feel stressed every day. I go about my days, work, do fun things, run errands, and have lots of joy. But when I step back and look at what we’ve experienced, how we have adapted, and what we have still in front of us, I have no doubt that we are all fine and not-fine at the same time.
So, knowing that I’m stressed even if I don’t always recognize it, I’ve started taking care of myself in ways that I would if I felt the stress and weight of life.
I asked the same thing to a friend a couple of weeks ago: “Knowing that you’re living under the weight of a lot of things right now, what are you doing differently to manage that and take care of yourself?”
I’ve also tried to keep this forefront in my mind when interacting with people. “They’re stressed,” I remind myself. I can operate under that assumption and stoke compassion and understanding in my heart.
So… What are YOU doing to seek deep soul rest and rejuvenation during this time?
There has been “I’m sorry,” “Can I ask you a question?” and “I don’t know what you mean.”
I’ve heard “Please forgive me,” “You need to know…” and “Can we talk about this?”
In the past year, it feels like I’ve been drinking from a fire hose when it comes to learning how to communicate — and there have been plenty of opportunities to put it into practice as well.
Sometimes I marvel at the fact that we humans ever communicate anything with any success.
Even within the same language, words are understood in different ways by different people; we use actions and intonation and imply things; we assume others understand.
Let’s not even talk about what happens when you add in a second language or move communication to typed words on a screen, removing voice, facial expressions, and body language.
In the best of situations, we try to explain something well and might be misunderstood. In the worst of situations we purposefully use words for harm. Things are said and left unsaid and both ways we hurt each other. Assumptions are made based on incomplete information and resentment is born.
We share space (literally and metaphorically) with other humans constantly.
Sometimes we rub one another raw, leaving a trail of hurt. And sometimes we breathe into one another a breath of life, the voice of God, the peace of His presence, the connection and wholeness of relationship that was always meant to be.
How do we create sustainable, life-giving, compassionate, and honest relationships?
I am convinced that intentional, clear, and kind communication is the foundation. In the push and pull of relationships, the give and take, the ups and downs, the needs and gifts, understanding the other’s perspective and communicating my own is essential.
This means asking questions, listening, assuming the best of someone, and seeking to understand how the other person processes and communicates.
And it means asking forgiveness, bringing up awkward conversations, asking what needs to change, and putting the other person before myself.
This is work but something tells me it’s worth it.
Sometimes I wish I knew how to identify trees and call them by name. I mean oak, cottonwood, birch, elm, and the like.
Although maybe they all have individual names as well. Maybe their Maker calls them each by name, like He does with the stars (Psalm 147:4). I wouldn’t put it past Him.
Whether or not I know what type of trees they are, I love to look at the green, leafy things then close my eyes to listen.
In addition to the fly buzzing around my head, I hear the breath of heaven weaving between the branches of the tree.
It sounds differently in each tree — the pine needles nearly whistle. A tree with stiff, small leaves seems to tinkle. And another rustles low and clear.
Justo frente a nuestro piso hay un colegio. A las 9:00 se escucha el “klak klak klak” de las ruedas de docenas de mochilas yendo al cole y a las 11:30 las voces de niños jugando en el patio.
En marzo, se congeló todo ese movimiento y desde entonces no había vuelto a escuchar el ruido del cole. Hasta esta mañana.
Hoy empezaron de nuevo los colegios aquí en Cáceres y cómo yo trabajaba durante dos años en un par de colegios, pues los tengo en mi corazón!
Pasé unos minutos esta mañana mirando desde el balcón a los padres y niños, mascarillas puestas y caminando con las manos agarradas.
La vuelta al cole en tiempos de coronavirus. Tiene que ser raro, preocupante, estresante, y emocionante a la vez. Pasé tiempo orando por los padres, niños, y profesores; por paz, bienestar en todos los sentidos, y corazones anclados en medio de todo.
Quiero pedir por el bien de esta ciudad a Él que nos sostiene con cada suspiro y nos acompaña por todo lo desconocido que viene.
Quiero aportar lo que puedo y echar una mano.
Quiero hablar palabras de bendición, esperando el mejor, y no palabras de crítica o desaliento, esperando el peor.
Palabras tienen poder. Donde sea que estemos, que hablemos esas palabras de bien sobre la tierra, la ciudad, y la gente. En fin, que sea un feliz vuelta al cole 🤗
“Singleness is freedom!” the multitudes say! Our individualistic, “all about me” culture encourages us “unhindered” ones to travel, squeeze singleness for everything it’s worth, and do whatever we want whenever we want.
There are certainly good upsides to the unfettered single life and I think I’m taking advantage of many of them.
However, I have to be careful because singleness has a tendency to make me incredibly selfish! After all, without some intentional rearranging of my life, the natural flow of my day does revolve around me.
I cook what I want, I eat when I want, I leave my stuff where I want, I arrange my schedule how I want, I go where I want… You get the idea. The list could go on.
Basically, singleness gives me the chance every day to think only of myself and what I want. And that’s so tempting for a self-centered person like myself!
Regardless of whether the single life is chosen or not, the problem is that it can easily and sneakily reinforce selfishness and self-centeredness.
In general, singleness — as opposed to being married or having kids — puts me in a unique position to have to work a bit harder to turn my heart outward to others instead of inward to myself.
Many of my married friends, old and young alike, tell me that marriage pretty quickly trains the selfishness right out of you. Or at the very least it reveals your selfishness to you left and right. Sounds horrible and like exactly what I want all at the same time.
Sure, if life is about putting myself first, then my singleness is all about me and I should live it up accordingly. But, if it’s not about me and fulfilling my every wish… then what?
What does it mean if my singleness should make me not more self-centered but instead more giving? And if my singleness is meant to, somehow or another, be for the good of other people and make God, not me, look beautiful and desirable?
The great magic of all of this is that we know that when we give joyfully and humbly of ourselves, we are filled more than we could’ve imagined. Living in a giving, selfless way is not a sacrifice or a loss.
I’ve tried to think of some practical ways to be considerate of others on a daily basis and train my selfishness out of me even in singleness.
One way I try to do that is to be intentionally considerate of whoever I live with.
While there are days that I wouldn’t mind living alone, I also know that living with someone is not only fun, it also “forces” me to, at the very minimum, be considerate of another person on a daily basis.
Living with someone is one practical step toward training that selfishness out of me (though I’m sure it’s a fraction of how marriage or kids trains it out of you!).
I bop my selfishness on the head when I pick up my things or wash my dishes. I bop it on the head when I take their plans into account before I invite people over. I bop it on the head when I apologize for something hurtful I blurted out when I get home at the end of a long day. Again, I could go on here.
It’s one small way, but it’s a start.
What other ways can you think of to do away with selfishness and consider others in your daily life?
In the end, the point is that I want to healthily take advantage of the time and freedom that singleness allows me while at the same time using it for personal growth and most of all the good of other people and the glory of God.
From what I’ve seen, this is no easy task and I have a long way to go, but I’m ready to put my hand to the plow!
A few weeks ago, Cáceres put up a memorial for those who passed away from corona. I personally know more than one person who will stand before it and mourn for their family members.
Death is never welcome. We want life and we want it to the full and it’s right to long for that.
During lockdown, for 48 days I leaned out of our window to clap for the medical personnel who were, as they say in Spanish, “at the foot of the canon” — fighting for life, watching suffering, and holding hands with death. I thought of the nurses I know and love and they are plenty, both in the States as well as Spain.
Forty eight times I clapped for them and more than that I prayed for them and checked in on them.
Then one day I saw the video of someone I know being wheeled victoriously out of the ICU while all the medical staff did their own clapping, celebrating that one victory over corona.
We celebrate life because we were made for it. We were made for fullness of joy and vibrant life and wholeness.
I’ve thought more about death — in general, of friends or family dying, of my own death — in the past five months than I have in a long time. I hope I’m not the only one.
This virus threatens to take our health and even our very breath; send us to the grave early, if you’ll pardon the frankness.
I was meant to inhabit this physical, 5’5″ body for a number of years. But, my days are counted. I have a birth date as well as a death date. I will grow old and get wrinkly skin.
If I don’t die of corona, I will die of something else. It takes a while for this to sink in and I don’t love to ponder it, but we must.
GB Caird says, “All men must die, and the question mark which death sets over their existence is just as great whether they die late or soon, alone or in company, violently or in their beds. Their ultimate destiny is not determined either by the moment or by the manner of their death… But by the opening of the heavenly books and by the true and just judgments which proceeds from the great white throne. The idea that life on earth is so infinitely precious that the death which robs us of it must be the ultimate tragedy is [idolatry].”
Jesus is the one I want to walk me through the gates of death and represent me before that throne. We must have more to stand on in life than a probability that we will survive this crisis or the cheap encouragement that “everything will be okay.”
Everything in our lifetime on earth might not be “okay” and you or I or someone we love might not live another day.
Although that uncertainty is actually how life always is, this odd, unknown virus puts us face-to-face with our humanity, our fragility.
We feel deep in our bones that we were made for fullness of life, not death. We were made for a perfect, flourishing, rich garden. I take comfort in the fact that the God who created us for that full life swooped down in human flesh to taste human suffering, to die and turn death into merely a seed that brings life.
I find myself afraid of the process of dying, but not death itself.
We westerners have a limited perspective on the supernatural. In general, we have eyes to see our physical life and little else.
It’s worthwhile to admit that we know so little. What if death isn’t the end — what if it’s the beginning? What if this life is not the most precious thing but merely a shadow of real life?
I’m currently studying the book of Revelation. That, combined with reading CS Lewis’ Space Trilogy, has helped me begin to imagine what is happening in the kingdom we are often unaware of and with the King we dare to ignore. Let’s peek behind the curtain and catch a glimpse of what we can’t see with our earthly eyeballs.
There is a King on a throne who is wiser than I can imagine. When I’ve chosen the privilege of connecting with him, trusting Him, and joining His kingdom, fullness of life starts now and continues even after I change this body for a brand new one.
In Christ, the one who conquered death, death can not steal from me.
““The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” – Jesus (John 10:10)
If I wanted some extra opportunities to grow in selflessness (and I did… kind of), I got them.
We all did. Hello, corona!
I don’t want to pass them up! I don’t want to miss the chance to take the 💩 of living in a corona-world and turn it upside-down — use it for good in my heart and for blessing in the lives of people I know.
If I can leverage this as a super duper opportunity to kill selfishness in my heart, forego my comfort for the sake of someone else, prioritize the needs of others, think first of my neighbor and esteem them highly… friends and family and brothers and sisters…
Well, if I can make it work for me in that way, I will be a bit closer to the woman God wants me to be, my tiny world will be a bit better, and the people I (figuratively) rub shoulders with will, hopefully, feel a bit more loved, valued, and cared for. Seems like one great way to make all of this worth it in the long run.
I think this has to be an active and purposeful training-out of the selfishness inside my heart, though. It’s possible to live in this time of corona and still be a selfish person. The year 2020 isn’t going to automatically take away my selfish side.
Maybe it should look like intentionally asking myself each day how I can prioritize someone else; who I need to take into account; where I can give, not take.
How would you put 2020 to work to train the selfishness right out of your heart? I’m taking suggestions!
I’m here to squeeze corona for all it’s worth.
No problem, 2020: I see you and with the Lord’s help, I’m gonna use you to kill a bit more of the self-centeredness in my soul.
One night at an observatory meant one impressive telescope, a sore neck from craning to look at the heavens, many words I didn’t understand, precious glimpses of the reality beyond view of the naked eye, and a lesson on our solar system that blew me away.
Did you know that there are stars that are a few hundred times the size of our sun? I didn’t. Forget twinkle, twinkle little star. More like burn, burn, gigantic ball of fire.
Take that fact about how big some of the stars are and remember that our sun is much larger than earth (where we feel dwarfed when we simply go to a big mountain) and your mind is ready to blow. We can’t conceive of the size of the known universe and certainly can’t imagine what exists that we don’t yet know about.
The theoretical lesson at the observatory ended and we marched outside to bend over the telescope. We sat in a circle around the machine, awaiting our turn to peek behind the curtain of the naked eye into the heavens.
Saturn’s rings are real — I saw them. The moon is riddled with craters. And, even under the telescope, there are groups of flaming stars that look like someone spilled salt.
Space has always scared me. The black, gravity-less unknown. It can feel like we are on a planet of life travelling through an abyss of scary nothingness.
But what do I know about it from looking up from little ol’ earth into the world of celestial bodies, gaseous planets, and ginormous stars that burn and soar?
We know nothing in the scheme of things and we don’t know what we don’t know. Maybe space is pulsing with life itself and we are living a shadow of it here on earth. What do we know?
This world is magical and glorious and if there is even more glory and fullness of life beyond what we see, what must it be like?
In C.S. Lewis’ novel “Out of the Silent Planet,” the main character finds himself hurtling from earth to another planet.
He comments on his fear of space: “Some moments of cold fear he had; but each time they were shorter and more quickly swallowed up in a sense of awe which made his personal fate seem wholly insignificant. He could not feel that they were an island of life journeying through an abyss of death. He felt almost the opposite.”
He goes on to talk about the majesty of traveling through space:
“He wondered how he could ever have thought of planets, even of the Earth, as islands of life and reality floating in a deadly void. Now, with a certainty which never after deserted him, he saw the planets—the “earths” he called them in his thought—as mere holes or gaps in the living heaven—excluded and rejected wastes of heavy matter and murky air, formed not by addition to, but by subtraction from, the surrounding brightness. And yet, he thought, beyond the solar system the brightness ends. Is that the real void, the real death? Unless . . . he groped for the idea . . . unless visible light is also a hole or gap, a mere diminution of something else. Something that is to bright unchanging heaven as heaven is to the dark, heavy earths.”
Doesn’t this imagining of space stoke your imagination?
The reality we see on earth is not the only reality. There is much we cannot see and are incapable of knowing. And I think it’s good to let my mind run wild with the possibilities of the majesty and glory and beauty and brimming life that is beyond what we see with our eyes.
The insignificance I feel before a great mountain is nothing compared to my insignificance (and even fear) before the galaxies. Yet the Being that oversees the celestial bodies was stuffed into the skin of a man —dignifying humanity, coming near, closing the gap, and bringing life. Our existence on this small planet might be minuscule but it is not overlooked, unwanted, or unimportant.
In the evening, before the sun goes down, the swallows take over the Cáceres sky.
I went for a sunset run with a friend and as we stopped to admire the painted sky, I looked up at the swallows and said, “I just love those birds because it looks like they’re just flying around for the joy of it.”
They don’t look like they’re flying to get somewhere important. They flit around and dive through thin air as if it’s their invisible roller coaster. Maybe they’re all surprise-attacking little bugs for their dinner or maybe some of them truly are flying around simply for fun.
You know how kids run just because? Outside play with their friends almost always includes running. Or, without thinking twice they, they break into a trot to get somewhere quickly. I did that today. I needed to get something from the other side of the yard and I ran for it. Why not?
Life isn’t always a piece of cake but I think we can sprinkle in enough just-because joy to get us through the days and then some.
Flit around the sky, run and skip through the lawn, dance across the kitchen, and sing for the sake of making music.
unsifted pensamientos 