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appreciation, change, clarity and direction, comfort, death, dying, enlightenment, eternal life, families, honesty, hope, letting go, living and growing, Love, mourning, new life, peace, perspective, spiritual growth, struggles

Living in the Valley

I moved to the valley, eleven years ago when my father first got sick.  Six years ago, he died.  I thought at some point after his death I would move out of the valley.  Instead, my mother, after years of caring for my Dad, got sick and my life in the valley continued.

You probably know this valley.  It’s the same one mentioned in Psalm 23….”Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”  Yeah, that valley.

I chose to move here years before I understood where I was moving to.  Back when I was young and had no idea of what it would cost me. I knew I wanted to stay in the same city as my parents.  My plan always was to care for them, when the time came.

The funny thing about moving to the valley is that you don’t necessarily realize you’ve moved until you’ve lived there for a while.  The move is both gradual and sudden.  Your loved one ages and you start to help in little ways.  A sudden illness or injury and you help out a bit as they recover.  What you don’t know at the time, is that sudden injury or illness is starting a chain of events that would have overwhelmed you had you ever realized your address had just changed and there was no moving back any time soon.

We all know what valleys look like.  They are low places, with shadows that hang over on all sides..  And these low places are filled with things most of us try to avoid.  Like fear and death. In the valley, fear takes on a life of it’s own…it has a form and a shape and it looks like death.  The threat of death, is always lurking in the shadows.  And then there’s the bone wearying tiredness and overwhelming and sometimes debilitating sense of loss, along with a need to always be on guard for the next problem.

In the valley you learn to fight.  Against ignorance…your own and others.  You fight against your nightmares, which threaten to become reality.  You fight to do what’s right. You fight against yourself when you want to quit and with others when they want you to quit.  The valley can be an exhausting place.

With all the lows of the valley, one might think it is a place to avoid.  Certainly anyone who chooses to live there can’t be right in the head!

But here’s the thing….there is beauty in the valley.  Beauty you can’t see anywhere else. There’s a beauty in the valley that transcends even what a mountain top view can offer. And the company in the valley is the reason for the view.  Psalm 23….The psalm that talks about walking through the valley of the shadow of death, also gives a promise.  And it’s the promise that provides the beauty.

“Yea,though I walk though the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for YOU are with me…..”.

Early on in the valley, I feared evil.  I was terrified by it.  Death was evil.  It was the enemy that you knew would win in the end, but that you would fight against with all your might.  The exhaustion that comes with fighting an enemy that is guaranteed to win is not only exhausting, it’s foolish.

I was controlled by my fears until I met Submission.   Submitting to the reality of our inability to control when someone dies moves you from a very dark valley, to a new valley where there is beauty and potential….right in front of you, that you are now freed up to see.  Submission is not giving up.  It’s not laying down the fight.  But it is recognizing what you can and can’t control.  Its choosing when and where to fight.  It allows you to see who the real enemy is.

Sometimes the enemy is ourselves…Fear is everywhere in the valley.   Left to our own devices, fear can overtake us.  But when I remember that the Psalm promises….”YOU are with me”...the fear is tamed and in the best moments, it is vanquished.

That YOU it mentions, is the Creator of Heaven and Earth.  I don’t just have a good friend or family member with me…..(though praise God when I do)……I have the God of the Universe with me!  He reminds me that even though I live in the valley, the valley isn’t all there is.  I’m choosing to live here for a time, so that the people I love don’t have to walk through this place alone.  Walking alongside someone who is in the valley, has eternal significance.

God knows how we look at death.  He knows how death and the fear of death motivates our choices.  He knows we need him beside us to walk though this valley.  When we freely and willingly go through the valley so someone else won’t be there alone, we are doing exactly what He has done for us.

And that is what love does.  It comes alongside.  It sits with us in the mess that the end of life can bring.  It is a place filled with loss and sadness.  They grieve and you grieve with them.  You grieve for the pain they feel.  For who they were and what has been lost. Their address has changed since coming to the valley and it makes them disoriented.  You remind them, no matter where they live, whether it’s in a place they’ve always known, or a dark valley or in heaven…they are loved.  You are the physical hands and feet of Jesus as they journey to what’s waiting for them, at the other side.  It’s an opportunity to bring light to the shadows and love to dark places.  And that love, makes it all worthwhile.

So these days, if you’re looking for me, you’ll find me in the valley.  I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying, but I won’t regret a moment spent here.  For although the walk is shadowed by death, the path is filled with life and love.

 

 

 

 

 

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addictions, blackouts, comfort, electricity, enlightenment, home, honesty, inertia, letting go, living and growing, peace, perspective, power, struggles, Uncategorized

Enlightened in the Dark

12 hours.  That’s all it was.   Short and sweet, really.   Friends in neighboring towns still don’t have it.   Power that is.   The completely underappreciated gift of walking over to a light switch, flipping it on and getting light in return.

12 hours, that’s all it took for me to appreciate that I am hooked.   Completely dependent on electricity.  The night time wasn’t so bad.   It wasn’t cold out and if it weren’t for my dog barking, I could have slept through the first 6 hours….blissfully unaware.

But my dog did bark, and I got up to check on him.   Flipped the switch to walk downstairs and…nothing happened.   Flipped it again, surely this was just a fluke?  Nope.  Nothing.   At that point, my son, who doesn’t believe in sleeping when it’s dark out, popped his head out of his bedroom and told me, “We’ve lost power.”   Oh.   Hmmm.

Now the nagging questions start.   Has anyone else lost power, why have we lost power, is everything alright?   It’s a little tough to tell at night if your neighbors have power.  But I spent a good hour, spying out different windows looking for a clue.

Then sleep….well, I would have slept except that’s when it dawned on me that my youngest wasn’t home from his shift that ended a t 11:30 pm and it was now 1:30am.  Thankfully after I sent a frantic text he responded quickly and assured me he would be home soon.  And he was.

So sleep finally came and quickly on it’s heels came morning.

Granted I was groggy that morning but still…..I found myself sitting – for two hours, in my recliner, doing pretty much nothing.   Don’t want to use the phone and drain my battery…but what is going on?   I need updates!!!  Meanwhile I continue to sit because somewhere in my head, without realizing it, I had determined I couldn’t do ANYTHING without power.   And it was at that moment I realized how truly dependent I had become.

Really, I could do nothing?   That’s ridiculous.   It was daylight after all.   Open the shades and get something done!  So I finally hauled myself out of my one recliner that is manually operated….did I mention how I also discovered in the middle of the night that when you don’t have power your electric recliners won’t work?   Who knew?!

While my kids wanted their devices, I wanted my FRIDGE!  Two weeks prior, someone left the door to my fridge open and in the morning I had the depressing job of throwing everything I had just bought the night before…out.   And here I was again.  Two weeks later and again, I had JUST gone food shopping.   But whatever!  I was use to this.   But the freezer too?   Man!   And no hot water, no oven, no curling iron (this was getting serious!) no washing machines, no, no, no, no……goodness, does everything plug in these days??   When you don’t have power it seems like it.

Even my land line disappointed me!   Like a dinosaur from times past, I have doggedly held onto my land line.  Because everyone knows when you lose power, only the land line works.  Except in this case, where we had lost our phone service too.

And then the magic happened.   A few beeps throughout the house….and voila!  Microwave clocks again tell time, TV’s work, phones can be charged.   Ahh, all is right with the world.

And I realize, I need to break this addiction I have to electricity.   Toughen up!   Kick it old school and go off grid!   I don’t want to feel this way again!   But as my refrigerator happily hums away, in my warm and well lit room, I find myself thinking maybe I’ll just get a generator…..

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addictions, decluttering, diet, healing, hope, inertia, letting go, living and growing, mourning, moving on, new life, peace, perspective, struggles, Uncategorized, will power

De-cluttering – Letting Go of the Inertia

Why does inertia have so much influence over our lives?   What is it that can make us want to do something for a long, long time and yet we just don’t?   I blame inertia but I can’t seem to put my finger on what causes the inertia.   Sometimes it’s as simple as a bad night’s sleep.   The next day is spent just trying to stay awake.   But other times, when lack of sleep isn’t to blame, why don’t I do the things I say and think that I want to do?

Some of the things are simple….pick up that piece of trash on the floor….umm, no, thanks…I will instead choose to walk by it 5, 10 or perhaps 25 times before I finally decide to take the half of second it needs for me to deal with it.  But as soon as I take care of it, I feel better.  Funny that such a simple thing can bring relief yet I don’t choose to simply pick it up, the first time I see it.  What gives??

Then there’s the bigger things….projects, jobs, dreams….I get where some of that inertia comes from.   These things require time and effort.   They may require skills I don’t yet have, connections with people I don’t yet know.   Maybe I don’t want to start one more thing that I might not finish.   Maybe I’m afraid I’ll fail.  Maybe deep down I don’t really want to do it or maybe I think it’s not worthy of my time.

I’m trying to de-clutter my life these days.   Honestly, I started the process 16 years ago but with five small kids at the time, my attention was often diverted elsewhere.   And as kids grow, de-cluttering means getting rid of the past.   That’s hard.  For a long time I found it impossible to let stuff go.

So over the last year I started looking at de-cluttering in a different way.   It wasn’t just about getting rid of stuff….although I have doggedly been doing that.  I started in January with de-cluttering addictions.   First to sugar, and most recently caffeine.   Controlling the will and ultimately changing what the will wants is a long slow process.  It takes a lifetime.  But I’ve learned it is possible.

Then I challenged my lifelong distaste (bordering on hatred actually) of exercise.  I started exercising most days, last summer.   But then the cool weather kicked in and I quit making the effort.   I started again this past summer and learned the difference between doing something because you should and doing something because you want to.   The longer I did it the more benefit I started to see and slowly, very slowly, I began to want to do it because it makes me feel better.

With each victory over my old stubborn will of downright refusal, I felt lighter….slightly less cluttered.   But inertia is still the enemy.   It whispers how busy i am – there can’t be time to exercise….how deprived I am…so many foods you can’t eat!   It tells me other things matter more.  Some days I listen to those whispers.   Most days now, I listen a lot less.

All this makes me wonder….has inertia ever been a problem for you?   Do certain circumstances provoke it in you?   How do you move beyond it?  I’d love to know.

 

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living and growing

A New Perspective for 2015

Bonnie Gray, the author of Finding Spiritual Whitespace, encourages her readers to ask God for a ‘word’ at the beginning of each New Year.

When I discovered Bonnie’s writings last year, I tried this and the word I received was ‘rest’. And much to my surprise, I actually have been learning to rest. I’ve learned that I can stop toiling at night – that not every hour has to have some pre-determined idea of productivity in it. I’ve learned that I like to rest. It’s not painful any more. And I’m growing in my ability to rest in Him and to rely on His time tables and not my own. The mantra’s ‘this to shall pass’ and ‘if it’s meant to get done, it will get done’ have been a solace to me. I have seen the truth in these ideas and by allowing them to be true, I have gained greater freedom from worry.
This year, Bonnie made the suggestion again to ask the Lord for a word for 2015. So I did. And at first I heard only silence. But I kept asking. And eventually a word came to mind. A word, I promptly dismissed. However, it pursued me. Nagging at me. And my response? “I don’t want that word! Bonnie’s word for 2015 is ‘Beloved’. I want a word like that. One that makes me feel special and loved.”

I was sitting in church a few weeks ago and the word debate was still going on in my mind. I was telling God that I didn’t like or want the word he gave me.
The word was ‘quiet’. 

Weeks had gone by and here I was still arguing with God over the very thing I had asked for. Sitting in church that day though, I started to be honest about why I didn’t want it.
I told the Lord, “Quiet is a weak word. I want a word that makes me feel better, stronger, loved….. ‘quiet’ isn’t going to do that.” And as I sat there, worries flooded my mind.
And God in his grace, gave me a nudge. I was overwhelmed by my worries and in that moment, I took my word and I spoke it to my worries. “QUIET!” And like the vaporous things worries are, they vanished. Gone. And I felt still.
And in that moment, I realized how foolish I had been. Quiet is a weak word? No. It’s full of power and strength. It’s an incredible gift. God had quieted storms and water. He spoke quiet into people’s hearts and minds and bodies. I was humbled by my foolishness and God’s kindness.
A short time later, I came down with a stomach bug. My body was NOT quiet. It was chaotic and out of control. I tried my quiet word again. And it did nothing. And I learned something. God reminded me that his gift is not a magic talisman. There was nothing wrong in trying to speak quiet into my body. But my disappointment in it not ‘working’ was where the learning needed to happen. Had it worked I might have been inclined to try that word in every situation. God was telling me that the power in the word only came from him. The quiet that He is offering is still bigger than I fully understand.
So, I’m trying to be more open now. To see what the Lord will do with this word in my life in 2015. He and I both know very well, that I have a heart and body and mind that desperately need quieting.
I encourage you to ask for a word…..and to learn from my mistake. Don’t fight it, if you get one. Accept it as a remarkable gift from the One who knows you better than you know yourself.

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