joy in the journey

It's strange to me that I'm experiencing so much joy this Lenten season. I think of Lent as characterized by an awareness of sin, contemplation, sacrifice, repentance, and the like, but definitely not JOY!

I got caught by surprise because I thought my "sacrifice" of being late would be hard and keep me mindful of God. While it has done that, it has also proven to be a big blessing. I've found that when you get somewhere early (or on time), you actually have time to talk to people, you might otherwise breeze by. Who knew!?

And reading the gospels with friends has been a blessing, too. First, the gospels in and of themselves are deep. (This, I knew!) But, reading them with others has afforded some neat opportunities to discuss troubling/challenging passages (which crop up in just about every chapter)! Plus, knowing that other people are reading with me helps me stay committed to my daily readings.

If there are a people who know how to "do Lent", it's our Catholic brothers and sisters, isn't it? I close with this "iLent" video that a Catholic friend of mine posted on Facebook. It's cute and rather clever.

Please comment and let me know how your Lenten journey is going. Is there joy in your journey?

Late for Lent? Not this year!

Tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, marks the beginning of the season of Lent.  I see Lent as something of a "spiritual reboot".  Like the next person, my devotional life can get dry or condensed to the point where I feel like I can't hear God's voice.  I put other things first and end up giving God my "leftovers" at the end of the day, when God deserves my "first fruits", as the Bible says.

Even though it's not in the Protestant tradition, I like the idea of giving something up to remind myself of Christ's sacrifice.  I also like to add something to "put on Christ" (Romans 13:14).  I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do this year, exactly.  Last year, I gave up Facebook, but that seemed too easy, in a way.

When I went to meet a friend for lunch last week, she confronted me about my penchant for running late, and that's when it struck me.  I want to give up being late for Lent!  I know that sounds crazy and might sound like I'm working on self-improvement (like the person who wants to lose weight and so decides to give up desserts for Lent).  But be that as it may, the truth is I could never be punctual in my own strength.  Giving up tardiness will without a doubt make me rely on God continually for the next 40 days.

Running late is just so ingrained in me.  I've often attributed my tardiness to my Hispanic heritage, and I genuinely believe that it plays a part.  A recent article in the Washington Post shed some light as to what makes a person perpetually late.  I can't remember all of the categories but "the producer" and "the deadliner" definitely applied to me.  "The producer" is compelled to squeeze too much into too little time, trying to check things off their list before they move on to the next thing.  "The deadliner" gets something of an adrenaline rush with a time crunch, that makes them feel efficient and effective, at least until they get to where they're going.  :}

These categories helped me to analyze what makes me tick (see clock picture with the warped view of time ;) and I hope this understanding can help me in my quest for Lenten change.  As a side benefit, my punctuality can communicate to those around me that I respect and love them and value their time as much as mine.

In terms of adding something for Lent, I plan on reading through the gospels, along with members of the praise team. We want to revisit all that Jesus said and did when he walked the earth.

How are you marking the season of Lent?  Are you adding something, subtracting something?  It's not "too late" :) to choose an activity or discipline for the coming 40 days.  Whatever you do, may it serve as a reminder to follow the Savior more closely than ever.

lather. rinse. repeat.

I wake up. I eat.  I work.  I eat some more.  I  work a bit more.  I eat and then I go to sleep.

It suddenly struck me the other day that I have way more in common with the hamster in his cage than I care to admit.  Life  is a series of  repeated cycles, not unlike the shampoo bottle directions:  lather, rinse, repeat.

Oh, there may be little variances here and there (the cage gets put near a window, I take a break from working up a sweat in the squeaky wheel), but there are still basics that need to be covered.  We eat but then several hours later, darned if we don't have to eat again.  We sleep but 18 hours later, you feel tired and have to lay down all over again.

For a person that craves variety, this revelation is rather depressing.  I'm certain this is not the first time the well-worn ruts of routine have made an  impression on me.  When my children were small, I'd mop the kitchen floor only to have a drop of grape juice ruin the effect half an hour later.  I'd translate the PTA newsletter for my kids' bilingual elementary school, and then a few weeks later, it was time to do it again.  Same hill, different day.

Is it though?  Photographer Paul Octavious has been photographing the same hill for four years (on different days, of course) and, well, here's a sample of his work.

Not unlike the snowflake, each day, each routine must have its unique gifts and connecting moments where life (and love) is found.  Today, in particular, when love is celebrated, I want to find and help create these moments.

Jesus wept

I want to be profound today.  I want to write something moving and revealing about the nature of grief.  But I can't.  I'm just too sad to do it.

I think it's good to be sad, even though it's hard for me.  I was raised to be the "good" kid in the family, which I took to mean, I was supposed to be the happy one, while others in my family were moody.  It's the role my parents carved out for me and it felt comfortable for me.  I liked being upbeat and happy.

As I came to faith, it seemed to validate my attitude.  I thought that as a Christian I was supposed to be happy all the time and if I wasn't happy, I should do what I'd always done---gloss over it.  After all, didn't Paul say "Rejoice in the Lord, always" and the punctuate it by saying "Again I say, rejoice!"?

But over time I came to realize that the abundant life Jesus promised meant I would experience both ups and downs.  And that there was some kind of "abundance" found in making it through both.  If I was just going up all the time (or pretending to go up all the time), I was missing something.  Mostly I think I was missing real, genuine connection with God and those around me.

So, I'm sad.  I'm sad imperfectly.  I'm not quite sure how to do it exactly yet.  But that's where I am.  I'm just putting it out there.

My stepfather passed away about a week ago.  We knew it was coming.  Parkinson's beat him up over the years.  That's just as sad as his parting, really.

And now I've heard that a coach from Severna Park High School just passed away.  He was in his 40's and led the baseball team and the Green Hornets.  He was in his 40's and left behind his family and many, many kids and peers who respected and loved him.

Tonight people from around the community have been invited to come to a prayer vigil at Woods at 7:30.  I want to be there too, to let people know that it's okay to be sad.  We can be sad together, as we share loss and pain.  After all, Jesus wept, too.

human "beings"

I am like one of those little toy cars, that you pull back repeatedly until it's all wound up.  Released, it begins  its crazed loops and out-of-control racing across the hardwood floor where it bumps repeatedly into the brown leg of an armchair there, the scuffed up moulding of one wall, here, until it finally peters out, sputtering and spent. 

And that's just what goes on inside my head, not to mention the exterior busyness that occupies most of my waking hours!  But I want to be like this:



...still...connected...peaceful. 

Oh, yes, there is a time for action, but also a time to "Be still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10). 

I am constantly working on learning what it means to be a human "being" rather than a human "doing".  That's why I enjoyed this recent NPR broadcast about mindfulness.  Even the 2-3 minute exercise the clinical psychologist recommended was valuable to me.  I bet if I slow down a bit, I will get more connected with who I am and I just might be better able to hear God's voice.   Check it out.

http://www.npr.org/2012/01/20/145525002/be-here-now-meditation-for-the-body-and-brain

city folks go west

Crunch, crunch, crunch.  My hiking boots made the pebbles talk.  And then, they would squirm, moving in unanticipated directions, causing my ankle to twist and my body to awkwardly stumble forward.  The dry heat, lovely at the start of our adventure, made us stop for water every 5-10 minutes as the day wore on.  One kid fell into a cactus (don't ask me how; I didn't see the incident, but only the scratches on her face and legs afterward which corroborated the story).  And this was supposed to be fun!?  Absolutely!  We loved every minute of it.

On our Christmas vacation, we headed out to Arizona to be with my brother-in-law and his family for a week.  There are 6 of us and 7 of them.  (I've never asked, but always suspected that he had one more child, just to beat the size of his older brother's family! ;) At any rate, we were quite the sight everywhere we went.  It was like "Cheaper by the Dozen", except that none of the kids looked like Ashton Kutcher and none of the parents looked like Steve Martin, but still...you get the idea.  There was quite a bit of chaos, that's all I'm sayin'.

Early one morning, the baker's dozen of us packed our pb&j sandwiches and piled into a van and headed about an hour outside of Phoenix for a day hike in the Superstitious Wilderness (oh, and I'm writing this on Friday the 13th----how apropos! :)  

The vistas, the connections, the challenge of climbing up (and later running down the mountain)----it all added up to a lovely way to spend our Christmas season.  Who needs a white Christmas anyhow?! ;)

 

Christmas crunch

I opened a kitchen cabinet and found 3 Barbies and a sticky, greasy lid to some missing crock pot.  I was at my mother's apartment last Saturday, helping her pack up as movers were wrapping furniture in cellophane to keep drawers from opening on the truck.  And I found random item after random item in unexpected places.  It makes perfect sense actually, because, as you may have guessed, my mom is the definition of "random".  (I appear just under her, as the second definition. :)

At any rate, packing boxes and moving my mom is not what I thought I'd be doing the last weekend before Christmas.  It's not necessarily what I wanted to be doing, either.  But there I was, just the same.

My mother and stepfather are struggling.  I know I've blogged about them before.  My stepfather has Parkinson's and dementia and my mother is his primary caregiver.  Sounds pretty straightforward, typed up in one neat little sentence like that.  But anybody who's had relatives with health issues or had to deal with aging parents knows how heavy this all feels. My mother has recently had health issues of her own (joint and muscle pain) and she is seeming increasingly confused and forgetful, herself.

Dealing with the move, caring for her and Mario, prepping for Christmas, squeezing in last-minute visits with friends and family before leaving town----well, it's all been too much.  I know many, MANY of you are also now feeling your own version of the "Christmas crunch".

To me, it began to feel as if I had a "1 TON" trapezoid weight resting on my chest.  (You know the ones that appear in the cartoons, at the circus?  Picture that on top of an already small me!) It's affected my breathing and my peace.

So I've been trying to take my own advice.  I told my worship team the other night (as a kind of pre-Christmas eve service pep talk) that the most important thing is for us to stay connected to God and to each other.  No one's Christmas season is as perfect as the idyllic scenes on the Christmas cards----not even the very First Christmas!

But what we are celebrating is the very fact that God is our Savior, our Life Preserver on the stormy seas of life.  Clinging to Him is the best chance we've got at making it!

So, cling to Him, I will.  This morning, I'm feeling a little more hopeful, as if the weight has shifted off of me.  Of course, I'm still in my p.j.'s as I type this, and am fresh from my devotional time with God.  The day is young and there's still plenty of time for me to put that weight back on top of me.  :P  But if it lands on me again, I'm going to make every effort to peer around it and over it to the bigger and more beautiful things around me.

"For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Savior which is Christ our Lord."