photo credit: Lauren Manning

How do you live without fear? How do you choose to love generously, unselfishly, freely?

Fearlessly?

You start by asking a few introspective, rhetorical questions, apparently… (at least that’s what I’m doing)

• What do I fear? That people will see me – small, hopeful, eager, unsure – and reject me?

• That I will provide only disappointment?

• That my dreams are too big for my britches?

• That I won’t measure up to some immeasurable standard?

You can’t be motivated by fear.

You can be bullied by fear, but not encouraged. Fear only pushes you into corners, closets, tight, dark, “safe” spaces. Fear inhibits.

You can be intimidated by fear. Out of fear, you want to please (who?), provide the right image, live the right kind of life. You get so busy trying to please others that you lose yourself. Fear clouds the clear vision. Fear confuses.

When you’re full of fear:

you don’t know what is important. You’re confused. Priorities? Uh… Your days are hit or miss. You’re running, scrambling, doing but never feeling like you’ve done enough.

You’re treating adults like children and children like potentates. You have a bad case of control-freak-itis. You’re envious and resentful, everybody has it better than you.

You’re tired but refusing to ask for or accept help. You can’t relax. You want your way or nothing. You’re not submitting, resting, growing, learning, enjoying. Instead, you’re resisting, defending, grabbing, creeping, scurrying from one day to the next.

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many might, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God. 1 Cor. 1

Why are we so susceptible to Fear?

We’re always trying to stabilize the transient things, solidify and structuralize these fluid circumstances and gatherings and moments and keep them untouched, unchanged, endlessly repeating. All because of fear.

We fear change, the unseen, unknown, unfamiliar. What if? What if?

What if we really held onto God as our safety? We would be able to accept change and still be safe.

We want safety.

We want stability.
We sacrifice so much for that feeling of safety, which in the end is still only a feeling, a sensation, a myth because the things of this world are passing away – all of them – no matter how solid and strong and sound and structured and stable they are.

(Still, she thinks, I wouldn’t mind just to experience that feeling for a while, even if it is just a feeling….)

The feeling of safety lures us, like a drug.

We see change as a precipice, we get near the edge and panic. Oh fear, my companion! Oh anxiety attack, my next of kin!

Quick, scuttle backward to some presumed safety net (a closed door, a steady paycheck, a smaller life, all the ruts of familiarity).
Feet on ground. Head in sand. We do not dare jump over that edge. It wouldn’t be smart. It wouldn’t be stable. It wouldn’t be safe.

Would it?

You can’t risk it.

Can you?

Or do you pull yourself out of the fog, the negative what if, and choose to see God everywhere (He is) and choose to know that He is faithful (He is) and jump – LEAP of faith! – (crazy, yes!) – into thin air over the edge?

Will you fall?  If you fall, a God you know also knows you. If the God you know is everpresent and evergood, He will be waiting and He will be willing and there is no fear, no fall, only freedom.

And then the what ifs starting ringing in your ears again, just when you’ve almost convinced yourself to DO IT, JUMP! GO! RISK! LEAP!

We whisper this to a friend, a brother, a sister, a spouse, a parent, and well-meaning, well-wishing, all sweetness and good intentions they say, Yes, but….
“Yes, but…”

“Yes, BUT…”

With God there is YES. Not “Yes, but…”

All the what ifs end with Him.

What if I stopped worrying  and simply did my work and trusted God?

What if I lived and moved and had my being in God’s economy and simply opted out of the world’s mess?
What if He did care?
What if even my mistakes in His hands bcame tools and steps that moved me to good?
What if I felt no fear?
What if I knew I would succeed?
What if every voice spoke truth, encouragement, and all doubt and pessimism and negativity was banished?
What if we believed in a God who is bigger wiser kinder more generous, more loyal, more exciting, more involved than we ever gave Him credit for being?
What if we are more than conquereors, really, a chosen generation, warriors, tribe of God, overcomers, victorious stewards, kings and queens, children of the Most High God?

Woudn’t that be something.

photo credit: Victor Bezrukov

There’s no real secret, it’s just this. Ancient wisdom.

There is one who gives freely, yet grows all the richer… Proverbs 11:24

—-

Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered. Proverbs 11:25

We live in a culture of self.

Self-sufficiency, self-preservation, self-defense, self-nurture, self-care.

These concepts aren’t necessarily bad – I’m a big fan of self-sufficiency, in many ways – but these concepts also aren’t necessarily good. Sometimes they’re just Self-ish.

But we do need to take care of ourselves, right? You know that feeling you get as a wife, a mom, a woman, a friend, a dependable person who can be counted on? That feeling that just once, just this once, you’d like to say HEcK with ‘em all, let ‘em handle their own messes! and drive away with screeching tires and really loud music?

Oh, um, is that just me that feels that way sometimes?
(How embarrassing.)

Anyway. Maybe you never feel that way, but I do. I’ll admit it. I want to be dependable, but I don’t want to be predictable. I want to be a good wife, but I also want to be my own person. I want to be a good mom, but I also want to do something besides mommy stuff.

The message we hear is to set boundaries, draw lines, etc etc. Make sure that we get taken care of. That our priorities are made important. I hear that a lot; I’ve even said it quite often, and it’s not always the wrong advice.

It’s just not always the best advice.

Here’s how I see it: there’s good, better, best. Oh, and there’s also bad.

• Bad is being a doormat who never voices an opinion, who lets herself be used and abused.

• Bad is also being a self-centered, spoiled brat of a woman who whines, complains, manipulates, and threatens to get her own way.

• Good is learning how to set boundaries so you’re not a doormat.

• Better is learning to communicate and compromise so you’re able to pursue your own dreams and help others too.

• Best is learning to take a giant step of faith, put all your dreams in God’s hands, give give give give give, and then see how He pays you back.

Best is scary. It’s a risk, or at least it feels like a risk.

It’s also got the greatest return-on-investment potential.

Look, I think God can work with us wherever we are. I know He’s met me in many different places. Sometimes the lesson I needed to learn was to be more honest, to stand up for myself. Sometimes the lesson I needed to learn was to be more humble, to let little things go, to give more of myself.

Right now the lesson He’s holding out to me, gently showing me, just kind of saying, Hey, look at this. You could, if you dared… is this lesson. The good-better-best lesson. The fact that I don’t oftennever choose best.

It’s a lesson of faith that is giant in my world. A lesson of risk-taking. A lesson of not standing my ground, staking my claim, planning my way, but of throwing it all into His hands, giving my heart out, and then seeing what He does with it all.

Gulp.

I’ll get back to you.

photo credit: piermario

But the “artistic endeavors” are just a single piece of the pie that is creativity.

Creativity is less about what you do and more about how you do it.

1. Limit the information being shoved at your brain in tiny bits and pieces.

start spending less time with those tidbits.

“Creativity is the ability to connect disparate ideas in new and useful ways,” says Sara C. Mednick, PhD, assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego in this article.

If your brain is only willing to munch on one tidbit at a time,

2. Find time for bigger stories.

3. Hang out with creative people

4. Expand your idea of what creativity is.

5. Be more silly, unafraid, juvenile, child-like.

6. Reject the first five ideas/solutions/answers you come up with for any given need/problem/question.

7. Give yourself limits:

• a $50/week grocery budget [money limit]
• 15 minutes to cook dinner [time limit]
• use your non-dominant hand to write or draw [ability limit]
• find a decent outfit at the thrift store [resource limit]

8. Get around different cultures, different people, different ways of life.

We get to boxed into our own version of normal, and when that’s all we see, we forget that normal is an arbitrary thing, defined differently by different people in different places and different times. Even in the same place and time, you can find all sorts of differences of normal when you venture into different subcultures. Are you a Christian? Hang out with some atheists. Are you from the city? Spend a weekend with a family of farmers; it’s a whole new normal. From the North? Go down South.

9. Fire your critic.

10. Get into unfamiliar, uncomfortable, strange, new, unnerving situations.

1. Get up, get up early, get dressed, go. Don’t waste time deciding, snoozing, hesitating.

3. Do the next thing.

7. Be the best version of yourself.

The emotions (like fear) are not immediately subject to reason, but they are subject to action. When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion – action will. -William Clement Stone

12. Shorten transitions. Go straight to the next thing. Keep your momentum.

There is too much pressure of duty and fear on you already, on everybody – too many ‘musts’ for the talent in you to begin to shine in a free and jolly way. I don’t warn you against action. I just want to cheer you up by saying that nervous, empty, continually willing action is sterile and the faster you run and accomplish a lot of useless things, the more you are dead. -Brenda Ueland

16. Live your ideal day today.

Good is the eternal enemy of the best. God always wants our best. We don’t achieve best by settling for the status quo or by staying stuck where we are. -Dr. David Bailey

21. Read a book every week.But don’t waste time on a book you hate. There are plenty of great books out there. Find one you love, one that is interesting, one that makes you think, one that helps you grow, one that takes you away. Read and skip tv for a night or two.

22. Never, never, never, never, never, never listen to guilt. Guilt doesn’t know what it’s talking about.

27. Go for it with crazy unstoppable passion.

Image: colorful shoes and cloth by Minimalist Photography

1. Quit repeating yourself.

Don’t say it if you don’t mean it. If you do say it, mean it. Say it once, leave it alone, then ACT if necessary to follow through on what you’ve said.
P.S. When saying stuff to your kids, e.g, instructions, commands, suggestions, etc., remember to be CLEAR and be BRIEF. Clear: don’t ask when you are actually telling. Don’t offer an option if there really isn’t one. Don’t confuse the issue. Don’t give too many choices. Simple is best here. Brief: The longer you talk, the less your kids hear. Short, sweet, and to the point.

2. Get rid of (at least) half the toys in your home.

If you’re thinking this is extreme, try it. Box up half of the toys/gear/supplies and stick it in the garage, attic, closet, whatever. If your kids ask for it specifically, then consider it worth keeping. If that hasn’t happened in a few weeks, give it away. Kids don’t need stuff as much as they need space, time, and freedom for creativity.

3. Equip yourself for the toughest meal time.

Maybe that’s breakfast for you, getting everyone out the door on time. Or maybe it’s dinner, what my sis and I commonly refer to as the witching hour, when everything and everyone seems to fall apart just as we’re trying to get supper finished and served. Either way, anticipate the stress by 1) planning quick, simple, easy meals; 2) keeping your pantry/fridge/freezer stocked so you always have something on hand; and 3) getting as much prep done ahead of time as you can.

4. Create a simple, daily routine for kids to follow.

Kids, in general, like routines. A simple routine does not mean you have to schedule your day and theirs in fifteen-minute increments. In fact, I beg of you, please don’t do that. But do establish some daily habits, like first we have breakfast, then we do chores, then we have art time… You can still have plenty of “unplanned” blocks of time, but giving yourself and your kids some mile markers through the day helps keep everyone sane, calm, and happy.

5. Institute room time.

Room time is essential, I think, if you have more than one kid (or hey, even if you only have one) and if you want to keep your sanity and give them their own creative space, too. We all need some down time, and especially for kids and stay-at-home Moms, we all need some down time away from each other. Room time provides that. In my house, it means the boys go to their room and shut the door and play with their toys in there (I don’t keep a ton of toys in there, by the way, mostly bigger, easy to pick up stuff like trucks. See #2.) Mara goes to her room and shuts the door and gets to chill by herself for a while. She actually asks for room time if I forget it. It gives her time to do some more complex stuff (art projects) or quieter games (her little ponies and dolls) that the boys often interrupt out in the main living areas.
I can hear if anybody destroys anything or gets hurt, but I can finish cooking dinner in peace or sit down and read for 30 minutes.

6. Quit feeling guilty about the FAIL days.

You’re a parent, you have days that are labeled with the big red FAIL stamp. This is how things go. We don’t like ‘em, and especially us Moms… oh, we think we should get it right, or mostly right, every single day. It’s not gonna happen. Yesterday was a FAIL day for me, to the point that I was really contemplating how much I could get for the kids if I put them on Craigslist. Lucky for them Joe got home just then… But you know what? We’re all human. The sooner we accept that, as parents, about ourselves, the sooner we can accept that our kids will also have faults, and we can deal with all those accumulate faults – theirs, ours, and everyone else’s – without freaking out. Freaking out, by the way, is not one of the 7 ways to be a better parent.

7. Reduce the demands on your life.

This one goes hand-in-hand with #6. It’s about expectations, and it’s about the fact that we often expect ourselves to live up to these demands that have accumulated over time. They can become burdensome, to say the least, and can keep us from enjoying life, relaxing, enjoying our kids, and doing the things that are really important (like napping). If you’re still obligated and performing simply because at some distant point in the past you agreed to some responsibility, consider if you might need to cut that off. We change, life changes, and we need to adjust the demands we allow ourselves to live under. More is definitely not better, unless you’re talking about more time with your kids, more time with your spouse, more time for yourself, more time to rest, and more time to be creative and have fun.

Image: mechika by I/Ong

“What I must do is all that concerns me,

not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.”

“Insist on yourself; never imitate.

Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.”

“Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.”

“Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstaces grow,

he then becomes the rightful master of himself.”

“To put away aimlessness and weakness,

and to begin to think with purpose,

is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment; who make all conditions serve them, and who think strongly, attempt fearlessly, and accomplish masterfully.”

-James Allen

—Photo by aprilzosia.

“Men of great faith have always called us to wake up to great expectations, and the prudent have always laughed at them and said that these did not belong in reality. But the poet in man knows that reality is a creation, and human reality has to be called forth from its obscure depth by man’s faith which is creative.” -Rabindranath Tagore

Climbing a Mountain is difficult work. You won’t succeed if you’re unfit (disabled by bad habits, bad character, emotional obstacles). You won’t succeed alone. Or without a vision. Or without the necessary skills. Or with the load of a pack mule strapped to your back.

How to Climb (or Not) a Mountain

You’ve got to be

Otherwise you’re doomed and they’ll make one of those movies about your death on the mountain, all terror and snow and avalanche and frostbite. You as a snowball, rolling back down to land in, yep, the ditch. Where, most likely, you’ll decide you should just stay.

You’ll tell yourself you don’t want no stinkin’ Mountain.

You’ll face the other way.You’ll build a little hut in the ditch, and you’ll fill your brain with numbing distractions and comparisons. You’ll pretend to be happy. You’ll try to forget there ever was a Mountain.

“We stand before this great world. The truth of our life depends upon our attitude of mind towards it – an attitude which is formed by our habit of dealing with it…” -Rabindranath Tagore

For me, getting out of the ditch and up the mountain means one thing right now: simplify. Simplify everything. I need to quit trying to be Superwoman (because I’m not) and accept my own limits (because they are real) and live in them wholly, find room for the things that matter and eliminate the things that are only clutter. Life-clutter. Life-sized dust bunnies filling up all the space, sucking out all the energy.

Time to up and murder some dust bunnies ’round here.

(This is all kind of figurative… you get that, right? I mean, I will kill literal dust bunnies as well, but I’m talking about something a little bigger…)

Simplify.

Simplify, simplify, simplify in every way possible. Quit doing what doesn’t really matter. Quit saying yes just because of the instant gratification of having pleased someone by saying yes (at the very real, extended detriment of then being obligated to put my time, energy, effort, space, resources, and very self into fulfilling that Yes).

I have managed to get myself so busy doing stuff, unimportant stuff, detail stuff, good stuff, stuff I voluntarily agreed to do. And all this stuff I do is at my own expense, at the cost of things that are important to me.

NOT anyone else’s fault. (Nobody ever held a gun to my head.)
It’s on me.

“For the simple are killed by their turning away, and the complacency of fools destroys them; but whoever listens to me [Wisdom] will dwell secure and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.” Proverbs 1:32-33

Photos by Kevin Dooley,   Jesse Hull, yacht_boy, and coda.