Jar of Optimism

I have a jar of optimism on the table beside my bed.  What's a jar of optimism, you ask?  Well, a jar of optimism is a place to put thoughts that run contrary to one's natural thinking processes, especially if one is not naturally an optimist. I write my optimistic thoughts on little pieces of scrapbook paper, date them and stick 'em in the jar for all the world to see.  Or just for me.  They're my proof to myself that I do, in fact, trust God.  You do trust God, Shawna.  See, the proof's in the paper.  If you dug through my scraps, you'd find very determined statements like, "God will take care of me" and "He is working out everything in my life for good."

Some people are better at trusting God than others. But just because you're not good at something doesn't mean you'll never be good at it, right?  If I build my relationship with Him, trust will develop.  It's the natural progression of life with God.  Every time I open up part of myself to Him, hope or fear or love, and He comes through for me, which He always, always does in one way or another, trust grows.  I'm finding that I don't need to work so hard at it these days.       

I started filling up my jar in January of this year, right after I quit my desk job and stepped out on the ledge that's currently beneath me.  And I'm happy to report that at this very moment, my jar of optimism is almost half full. 

Love Knows Best

I want to walk alongside people and tell them how I have seen God come through for me.  He has.  He has blessed me in ways I never would have imagined.  Ways that fall into the category that Paul talks about in Ephesians...exceedingly abundantly above all that I could ask or think.  I am grateful.  Really, I am so grateful.

But how can I walk alongside people and tell them how I've seen God come through for me when there is a big gaping hole in the middle of me the size of my biggest dream and desire left unfulfilled?  What do I have to offer those people?  What story can I tell them?  What if they see through me and discover that hope and I have an on again/off again relationship?

I have wrestled with these questions lately.   And I think I have the answer.  God is God if all my dreams come true.  God is God if none of them do. He stands apart from me, holy and good and fully Himself.  And this is what I will tell them.  This is what I will tell you. He climbs into the big gaping hole and He fills it with Himself.  All at once, He leaves it empty and He fills it with Himself and I get to tell the story of how His grace is sufficient for me.

This is not the story I asked for, but it the story I get to tell.  This is how I've seen God come through for me.  He offers Himself in the place of the deferred hope.  Love knows best.

Twins

My brother took this picture of my sister and I last week.  I was fortunate enough to get to tag along with the Cushman family on their visit to Madera to spend some time with Josh and Sara and their little ones.  Usually when I tell someone that I have a twin sister, the question immediately follows, "So are you guys identical?" After 29 years of being twins, we still don't know the answer.  It is and has always been a mystery.  Most of the time when people ask me the question, I will do two things: 1) pull out the picture of Kimberly that I keep tucked away in my wallet (she laughs at me for this) and 2) share with the viewer my strong opinion that I do not think we are identical.  And usually the viewer is very quick to disagree with me.  I will say, though, that in light of the picture above, I would be tempted to consider the possibility that it may be true.  What do you think?  

Sushi Oh How I Love Thee

Yesterday I ate what I believe to be the single most delicious and delightful food on the planet.  It comes in many shapes and sizes.  Prices range from normal to splurge (the price I paid yesterday fell into the latter category).  The particular variety I ate was called the Madman roll.  Eel, tempura shrimp, cream cheese, and asparagus wrapped in a seaweed and tempura batter and topped with spicy tuna and spicy crab.  I have suspected something for quite some time, and if you know me well you have probably suspected the same thing: when God created me, specifically the part of me that houses the food appreciation and enjoyment component, He made mine extra big.  I am ok with that.

The Soil

I am nearing the end of The Land Between.  The book, that is.  My plan to draw it out over the span of many moons succeeded.

As I read through the final chapter, a chapter about Joseph and how he trusted God through the detours of his life, I am struck with a thought, unrelated to the text, but relevant still:  Singleness is not a curse.  It's not God's way of getting back at me for stealing those life savers when I was five (He assures me He has forgiven me for that). It's not a big black hole into which I have fallen and out of which I cannot climb.

Rather, it is the ground God has given me to grow roots of trust in Him.  Ground I did not ask for, but ground that is mine nevertheless.

Singleness is my soil.  Maybe not forever.  But for now, it's my place to grow or die.  I choose grow.

Manion writes, "Often God chooses to meet us with his blessing in a place we do not choose to be.  He will bless us on the detour.  He will bless us in the Land Between.  Often the place of blessing is not our place of preference" (p. 182).  This is my place.  Singleness.  It's not where I expected I'd be.  It's not where I hoped to be.  It's where I am.

Does that mean God is withholding kindness from me?  What ever happened to hope deferred makes the heart sick?  He put it in the Bible, not me.  It's His idea, not mine. And I can't say it's one of my favorites of His.

Interestingly though, He put something else in the Bible that applies here.  He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.  He offers Himself, the Healer, to the heartsick.  Perhaps his withholding is his kindness.  The Healer infuses water all the way to the depth of that soil, healing dry roots.

I have a part to play in this Land Between.  "We choose how we will posture ourselves on the journey.  We can close our hearts as the Israelites did or lay our hearts open to God as Moses did."

Oh how I want to do what Moses did.

Music Nostalgia

I just bought Constant by Out of the Grey on iTunes. I have been transported to the top bunk in my bedroom in 1997, complete with posters of Steven Curtis Chapman and Amy Grant on the wall space beside me. What a wonderful song this is. What an unusual 14 year old I was. Oh how I loved music. How deeply I felt about it. So what if I was shy and awkward and so profoundly unsure of myself. I felt the music course through me like a hot current. Painful. I listen to it now and I feel my feet more firmly planted on the ground, so to speak. I think I'm happier now than I was then (who really is happy when they're 14?). More comfortable in my own skin. But I still wish I could swim inside it. Immerse myself in that current and be carried away.

I Love Bullet Points

This will be short. I'm writing more so that I don't forget rather than for the sake of art, inspiration or discipline.

Here are some things I'm learning:

• If I am not honest with God because I am afraid of losing His love, we do not have relationship. We have small talk. There is no fear in love.
• Boundaries keep relationships healthy. God has boundaries too. He makes choices and I may not understand them or like them. He allows me the freedom to choose whether or not to trust Him. He doesn't demand my trust. Just as He won't be manipulated by whether or not I give it to Him.
• I think I might be a good teacher someday. Weird.
• I love making yummy omelettes and I love eating them even more.
• It could be that God wants to work out some character kinks in me as I journey through my land between. By withholding the thing I want, by allowing disappointment, by leading me through the wilderness, He is not only teaching me to trust Him, but He is graciously trying to burn away some of the dross in me that keeps me stuck in unhealthy patterns, thought processes, and behaviors. Ughhh...personal responsbility. I think this is what conviction feels like.
  

The Giant Blowhorn

I've been thinking a lot about the Israelites lately. Their wilderness. My wilderness. Their trust issues. My trust issues.

I was reading more of The Land Between the other day and these words struck me:

"Trust is the glue that holds any relationship together. Throughout these hardships, God desired to forge a people of trust...the Israelites are the people of promise, headed for the land of Promise, and they are totally unfit to take possession of the land in their current position. They really don't know God or trust Him. The purpose of the desert is to forge a relationship of trust."

Seems there's a theme here. T.R.U.S.T. And if I look at the rest of the Bible, I find the same theme woven through the pages, imprinted on each story, each character, each challenge, each victory. And if I look at my life right now, and my life over the past year and the decade or so before that, I find the very same theme poking it's pesky head at me everywhere I turn. It's as if God is holding a giant blowhorn inches from my ear, "Shawna, don't you think it's about time?"

Yes, I do.

I wrote a poem about it today.

fierce love look

shape me in the fire of this pain
to fit inside the hold of your arms
where fear is forgotten, only a vague
memory of days gone by when I knew
about you, saw you from a distance
in the pages and the pulpit, before
this fire illuminated that fierce love
look on your face

The Antidote

I was reading another book yesterday. The author, like most of us, wants to figure out a way to live life in such a way that circumstances don't determine her attitude, hope or trust in God. She writes:

That is how I wanted to be, I realized [watching a little boy twirling and dancing in circles, unencumbered and unselfconscious]. I wanted to be as a child, delighting in life, at peace with God, living in the grace of the moment. I wanted to live above the pull of depression and cultivate a heart of joy from which others could draw. I wanted to learn what it really meant to be filled with the reality of God, the love of God, and the joy of God every day, no matter what else is going on in my life (Dancing With My Father, Sally Clarkson).

What is the antidote for depression, anxiety, worry, sadness, stress and the cherry on top, that pesky all-encompassing feeling called OVERWHELMED?

Well, Jesus.

But also, gratitude.

Gratitude is the thing that loosens the muscles in our necks that get so stiff from looking down at all that is wrong and frees us to look up, to the One who is our help.

My heart is heavy, but I will look up. I will let gratitude change the direction of my eyes.

Here's some things I'm grateful for:

My best friend, who lives far away and who I haven't seen in almost three years, is coming to visit tomorrow. We're going to go to bookstores and coffee shops and I'm going to cook thai food for her. So excited.

My sister found out yesterday that she is having boy #2. This makes the count: Nephews - 4, Nieces - 2. Blessings.

I have the best church a girl could ask for. And they let me play the drums there.

What are you grateful for?

My Land Between

I'm reading a fantastic book right now. It's called The Land Between by Jeff Manion. The land between is a wilderness, a desert, a transition. A place potentially full of discouragement, anxiety, fear. An unknown. It's also a place where the ground is perfect for growing new things. Where truth finally has a chance to reach down to the roots and grow trust and hope, maybe for the first time.

In the land between, everything is stripped away. We get down to the bare bones of who we are, what we're about, where we're heading. The children of Israel made their choice in their land between. They chose to believe God had ripped them off. They walled themselves off in their wilderness. He couldn't change their minds. He tried.

How can I make a different choice in my land between? My answer is in Deut. 1:28-33. He carried them in His arms like a father carries his son all the way they went. But still, they didn't trust Him.

In my desert, in my wilderness, in my land between, I will be like Israel in His arms.

My roots will grow in Him.

And I will trust my Father.

The Car Wash

Funny story. Last week, taking full advantage of my transitional unemployment, I decided to wash my car. And by wash my car, I mean excavate the mound of trash and junk that had buried my poor trunk, vaccuum every reachable space, scrub my seats, wipe down all parts of the interior including the ones that I haven't really paid attention to ever in my 29 years of life, and of course, give the outside a nice, thorough washing and drying. I even sort of cleaned my tire rims. This was serious business.

I finished the project with pride and a wonderful sense of accomplishment. A couple hours later, I heard a knock at my front door. My gardener, very apologetically, confessed that he had accidentally splashed mud all over my car as he was blowing away leaves. I thanked him for letting me know. Then I went outside and washed my car again.

So here is the moral of the story: don't wash your car on gardening day.

Mess and Pressure

My bedroom looks like a tornado-swept Midwestern town. Or like a t-shirt turned inside out. My closet, drawers and bins have vomited their contents all over my floor, leaving me with a narrow and dangerous pathway from where i sit on my bed to the door.

I have a lot of work to do. I have to figure out what to get rid of, what to keep, what to do with what stays and what to do with what goes. I have to make the end result better than the starting point. If I don't, this mess and chaos will have been wasted.

I have to get it right. Just like I have to 'get it right' outside the walls of this room. Where the piles are made of pressures, not clothes and where there's a lot more at stake in walking the narrow path than just getting from my bed to the door.

Doing life God's way, not mine.

For most of my life, I've operated under a pass/fail mentality. I've approached life and God that way. If I succeed, He will like me. If I don't, He will leave. So the pressure builds. Doing life God's way because in my heart of hearts I desire to please Him...and because if I mess it up, I'll be on my own.

We all face the pressures of life every day in various shapes and sizes. Relational pressures. Financial pressures. Decision-making pressures. The list goes on. What I'm starting to realize is that my ideas about God and getting it right are simply not true. In fact, I found out that the Bible has some things to say about it:

"And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work." II Cor. 9:8

"May the God of peace, who through the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing His will, and may be work in us what is pleasing to Him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen." Heb. 13:20-21

Doesn't sound like the abandoning type, does He? He sounds more like the God who wants more than anything to walk the narrow road with me. Navigating through the pressures of life within the safety of relationship.

Me and Him.

You and Him.

Closed Chapters and New Beginnings

Another year comes to a close. Another year begins. I am grateful for closed chapters and new beginnings. Today marks the first of them for me and next Tuesday will be the next, when I leave my job of three years for the last time. This chapter has not been easy to say the least. But I have learned and (I hope) grown through the experience. I will begin the new year with hope for what's ahead and solid assurance that the God who brought me here, to the end of this chapter, is the God who will continue to offer His strength and love as He walks beside me toward the new beginnings.

The Maker of the Stars

The sky is unusually clear and full of stars in Riverside tonight. I was driving home with a wet face, underneath them, thinking about hope and hurt and God.

If I trusted God when i felt like it, I wouldn't trust Him as often as I'd like to admit. I wouldn't trust Him now. Why would I when my heart feels broken? Why would I when i feel a familiar sadness, the sadness of a very long dark night? I wouldn't trust Him, if trust relied on feelings. I rely on feelings far too often.

Trust in God relies on who God is. He never changes. He is always good and sovereign. If I choose trust over feelings, I will rely on the unchanging, always good nature and character of God. The Master of the Universe. The Maker of the Stars.

I can see those stars tonight. Most of the time I can't. That doesn't mean they disappear. They shine brightly whether I see them or not because the nature of stars is to shine.

The same is true of my God. He is worthy of my trust, always, whether I give it to Him or not.

The Way

Sometimes I get sidetracked on my way to God.

Old patterns of striving instead of being honest. Effort instead intimacy.

Playing in mud puddles under the weight of His glory.

Missing the point of it all.

God is love. He values love. He paid a great price for love.

What if, in my relationship with Him, I valued love above all else?

Love is a force to be reckoned with.

It moves everything it touches.

It moved Him to me even when I had broken His heart.

It moves me to Him in response.

Love is not the easy way.

But it's His way.

Kitchen Truth

I was driving down a road today, wrestling old questions I haven't asked in a while. I wanted answers. They didn't come. Still I told Him at the bottom of the hill I will trust You. Words to pin my opponent. Later, standing in my kitchen, somewhere between my microwave and refridgerator, a thought lodged it's way in to me, past all that doubt and lament: He knows what's best for me. That's the answer to my question. That's why I can trust Him fully and with confidence in His goodness. It is the Father's nature to love, protect, and provide for the child. Me. You.

On Words

I haven't written in so long. I haven't read books. Perhaps last year did me in. So many pages and pages and pages. I think I must have poured out my lifetime quota of words into this laptop. And all those books. All those stories. I don't have the energy to delve into them now. Maybe 2011 will be my year of literary drought. Is this a sad thing? Strangely, I don't think so. I think I shouldn't force it. I think I should relax and let the days run their course.

Mercy

I thought I was on the fast track to God
with well-honed discipline
and years of practice under my belt

so I kept on my way
spinning in my circles
and jumping through the hoops
I crafted with my own hands
because all along I thought
that's what you wanted

and I kept on my way
too distracted by my spiritual acrobats
to notice you standing quietly by
with mercy too good to be true
but true just the same

if I had stopped long enough
to catch my breath
and still the striving heart in me
I wouldn't have wasted so much time
on that mercy
that was never mine to earn in the first place
only to accept

The Day Planner

A new week. I have my handy dandy day planner beside me, given to me by my good friend Camille, along with my newly purchased colored pens. So not only do I get to make my daily, weekly, and monthly lists of things to do, but I get to make my lists in color. How exciting.

I never thought of myself as the day planner type. People who have day planners, according to my perception and observation, are generally 1) busy, 2) organized, 3) fiscally responsible, 4) type A personalities. I guess I don't see myself this way. Or maybe I just don't want to see myself this way. Maybe what I really want is to see myself as the free-spirited, hippy type who goes where the wind blows and pities those who must consult their planners before making decisions, appointments, and committments.

The truth is I really like having a day planner. I admit it. I love checking things off the lists I create. I love productivity. I love my new colored pens. I guess it's not so bad to be a little bit organized and maybe make a budget every now and then. Who knows, mayble I'll even do my taxes before April 14th this year. And there are definitely perks to being busy. Having friends, for one thing. Making plans with friends, that's pretty great too (after checking my availability, of course).

Nevertheless, I will take comfort in one small fact. At this point I still do not know whether or not day planner is one word or two, or if a hyphen is required. A small comfort. If you know, please don't tell me.

The Tunnel

i have been trying to write these kid's stories. devotionals. in the stories, i'm supposed to show rather than tell. use analogies. word pictures. things like that. when i say i have been trying to write them, what i mean to say is i have been trying to think of ideas so i can write them. i'm finding ideas are hard to come by. on my way home from work today, while making a good effort to discipline my thoughts towards the tiny tunnel opening where all the good ideas are hiding out, apparently, i had another kind of thought that was not an idea at all.

shawna, there must be something wrong with you. you have no ideas. that is bad.

sometimes trying to be a writer is exciting, when effort shapes something out of nothing. you look at it and you like what you see. other times, it's more like staring at a blob of clay that refuses to bend to your touch. or worse, it's like staring at a spinning wheel while it spins, no clay in sight.

i am learning, though. and it's an important lesson to learn.

try again tomorrow.

Chocolate-Stuffed Worrier

I tend to be a worrier. Often I am deep in thought about some problem I can't solve, some part of myself I want to fix, something I desperately want to control but can't. I think if I could just wrap my hands around that thing that is just outside of my grip I'd have peace and be ok.

I overestimate the size of my hands.

And I underestimate the volume of worry. Trying to wrap my hands around it is a losing game no matter how I play it. If you have ever seen the Lucy episode where she stands in front of a conveyer belt stuffing chocolate down her shirt and in her mouth and anywhere else she can stuff it, you understand what I mean. Worry is just like those pieces of chocolate. You pick one up, think you can breathe easily for a moment, then you look down and see a handful more in its place. It never stops.

So what's a chocolate-stuffed worrier to do?

Walk away. Lay them down and walk away. Instead of trying to hold it all together with my insufficient hands, I can find hands that are bigger and settle mine there, in His.

Hunger

I was heading east on the 10 this morning, nearing my exit. Ahead of me, all over the sky as far as I could safely see was beauty that touched the place in me where words are scarce. The place where longing feels like the size and pressure of a fist on a chest. I have known God most of my life and loved Him just as long. But on my way to work this morning, looking at the way the sun broke through the clouds, lighting up a stream of sideways sunlight in a storm-swollen sky, I wanted to love Him more. I wanted to know Him more than I do, more than I ever have. He was as big and fierce and beautiful to me as the expanse of the sky in front of me, and I caught just a glimpse. Just a glimpse was enough to stir my heart from apathy of another day to hunger.

The Brave Unfamiliar - Final Installment

One of these days I'm going to see all the ways He has led me. In the dark, in the hurt, in the dreams, in all of these ways, He has led me. He has taken care of me just like He said He would. One of these days I will finally realize that I never had to be afraid. I will finally understand the most important thing I could ever do is just simply rest in His love. That truth will set me free, just like He said it would.

And that truth will let me see Him, finally. Him, in His glory and protectiveness and fierce affection. As soon as I see Him, I won't be able to look at anything the same way again, because He will be there. He will be there at the job that makes me almost lose heart so often, walking beside me in those hallways whispering words of courage in my ears and molding my hand exactly to His own. He will be there in the lonely days, when I want what I don't have so badly that it hurts like a real ache, gently nudging me forward in the path He forged for me because He knows it's the best way. He will be there in the silence, letting me squirm and sweat beneath my barbell of effort, the ways I try to reach Him.

So many years of silence. So many years of squirming and sweating. He will be there, here, where He has been all along. The truth will let me see Him and it will lift the weight of the struggle off of me. Whether little by little or all at once, I will be free. And I will know that He has led me to that freedom from the very start.

This is the brave unfamiliar. It is happening already. It is happening now.

The Brave Unfamiliar...Continued

I've been thinking about what it means to face the brave unfamiliar. How does a person who has had only one way of approaching God for most of her life walk away from what she knows? It's not the God I know that I am walking away from. It's those old ways, the nerveous ways, of being in relationship with Him that I want to lay to rest. I've been thinking about how best to do that.

So I have been praying a couple of specific things daily: Holy Spirit, please lead me to truth. Holy Spirit, please reveal to me the love of the Father. Then I say out loud so I can hear myself say it: I rely on you to lead me to truth and I rely on you to reveal the love of the Father to me. I've never said that kind of thing about relying on Him before. I guess that makes it an unfamiliar idea. Ok. Progress.

I've also been thinking about how much fear motivates me. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of losing love and affection. Fear of messing up. Fear of time running out. Fear of my own shame. The list goes on. In my walk with God these past twenty years, fear has been as present and as strong a motivator as love. I hate to admit, but it's true. I studied the Bible for hours every day as a kid because I wanted to know Him more, yes, but also because I wanted to stay on His good side. I traded in relationship for performance. And the thing that kills me is that I knew what I was doing. I have known all along, but I couldn't let go of the fear because I couldn't let go of control because I could never accept that He made me good enough. So I made up my own rules for my own game and I measured my worth by how well I played. And I pushed Him away.

I have had this longing, deep and all-consuming, for as long as I can remember: To know the love of God in freedom and without fear. The problem is that there is only one way to freedom: Truth. And truth doesn't play by my rules.

The truth is fear is a waste of time. I know I've let it waste a lot of mine. Thank God tomorrow is a new day and His mercy will be waiting for me when I wake up.

My Two Favorite Places Besides Belgium

Ever since I was a kid, I have had this dream, a Big Dream, to live in Franklin, Tennessee and Canada. For those of you who have sort of grown used to having me around, you may blame my love of these distant lands on contemporary Christian music and Anne of Green Gables. As a young girl of ten or elven, being the innocent dreamer that I was, I was pretty sure that if I moved to Tennessee, I'd move in next to Amy Grant on one of the neighboring rolling hills of good old Franklin. And I was just as sure that I would be just as spellbound by the Lake of Shining Waters as Anne was on Prince Edward Island (and maybe I'd even meet my Gilbert there, too). So, I set my sights on the great beyond to the East and North. By the time I turned thirteen, I was a goner. My heart had flown away to far off places. My dream was no longer the silly musings a child. Somewhere along the way, it turned into a Plan--The Great Someday. And as for all of this Southern California business, I knew deep down in my soul that, just like Dolly Parton, I was only Travellin' Through.

I know that some of you would like me to take this opportunity to convey that I have grown out of my foolish childhood fancies, but this I cannot do. I have a feeling, a feeling born of a dream, that I was made to roam the roads between Highway 40 and Highway 65 and to breathe in the fresh, Canadian air. Lord willing, The Great Someday will happen...someday. In the meantime, I supppose I will bide my time while lounging at the beach this weekend.