Filed underUncategorized Written byAnnieon3rd Jan -11
So I am thinking about what I want most in life. It’s an easy list to make.
as much time as I can get with my husband
healthy, happy, creative, well-trained children
organized, comfortable, hospitable home
creative, fulfilling work/ministry like writing & worship, with growth and progress
Simple. Short list. But lofty goals. These goals require a lot of work. Daily, steady work, discipline, and sometimes intense effort.
All of which would be no problem if I weren’t lazy…
But I am.
Holidays and weekends get me, especially, because I want to sleep late, sit around, have uninterrupted hours to do all the things I don’t have time for… Instead I find that, strangely enough, even on weekends and holidays I am still the wife, mom, and the one in charge of running the house.
(Why didn’t anybody tell me about this “no days off” clause? Where was that in the fine print?)
So I’m still making meals, wiping noses, giving baths, giving instructions, cleaning up messes, enforcing the rules, trying to remember what the rules are, folding the laundry, sweeping the floor… And resenting it because, darn it, no matter how much I try to pretend that I am a naturally industrious, organized, perfect person, I’m not.
I’m a naturally lazy, disorganized, procrastinating, distracted, selfish person. Which means that this ongoing work of wife, mom, homemaker, writer, worshiper is going to require something like a complete transformation.
Ech. That sounds like a lot of work.
“Whatever you do, do it with all your might –Work at it, if necessary, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now. The old proverb is full of truth and meaning, “Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.” Many a man acquires a fortune by doing his business thoroughly, while his neighbor remains poor for life, because he only half does it. Ambition, energy, industry, perseverance, are indispensable requisites for success in business.”
-P.T. Barnum
“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
fit (able)
supported (not alone)
able (skilled)
motivated (filled with a vision)
free (no burdens not your own).
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
I’m dropping more and more. I’m cleaning out the house. I’m letting go of obligations. I’m saying no. I’m not taking on any new writing jobs. The money is always great to have, but I’m out of time. Which is more important?
Time.
The word for me in 2011 is to simplify, cut back, cut down, cut out, reduce reduce reduce. No adding until I am working, moving, progressing daily toward the (deepest) goals I have as a wife, mom, writer, worshiper. More room for the real, the deep, the creative. More cutting out of the superfluous, the busy work, the obligations.
I always think the key is Discipline, and that’s part of it I know. But there are other elements too, elements that drive discipline forward.
Things like Desire. Dreams. Doing.
Be a DOER. Less talking, excusing, imagining, procrastinating, fearing, wishing, distracting myself. More do. Sit and write. Stand and work. Be a doer.
Those words – how I need those words. How I need a row of sketchbooks and a jar of the best pens. How I am rapidly rabidly rambunctiously going to declutter this house and my life. How I am realizing that I am not naturally good at things I thought I could easily conquer. That’s okay; it’s kind of a relief to know I have to work at it. Like, hey, that would explain why I have to work at this so much…
So much dead weight.
So much stuff – tangible and intangible – that I carry around each day. It weighs me down, slows me down, drags me down and makes even the things I love to do difficult, slow, painful, irritating, hurtful, unpleasant, unlovely. Enough of that mess. (Say that emphatically.)
But all that dead weight – that’s why I become so deeply confused, so uncertain about who I am, what I love, where I’m going, why I’m breathing, what my purpose is in this life. Sometimes it’s just a big painful unpleasant business, trudging through life.
That’s what life becomes with so much dead weight: a trudge, a crawl in stinking, hostile, dry rocky thorny places, another fall into the ditch and…
I lay there.
I stay there, wondering why I’m trying to gather up the strength to crawl back out again. Easier to just lay there. Less painful to still myself in the muddy water, accept this place, surrender. Give up. Sleep in and crawl wearily out of bed at the last minute. Quit training, disciplining, trying – just threaten, repeat, ignore, complain. Don’t write. Get mad, blame people, and feel victimized by circumstances. Live in the ditch.
My ditch may be better, nicer, cleaner than someone else’s – no drugs or abuse or adultery here – but it’s still a ditch.
I am meant to live on the mountain.
But the way is, well, up a mountain. My hands and feet and knees ache, bleed on the climb. I forget: why am I climbing? Where am I going? What am I doing here?
The dead weight I carry is too much. I’ve no energy lefty for the climb, no strength to hold on, no mind or time for the vision, to way to renew it, see it, grab onto it, and remind myself why, where, what.
This is the point of life: don’t stay in the ditch.
Seriously. Sometimes I say, “Hey, honey, is there something I could change, do differently, you know, anything I’m doing that annoys you or you wish I wouldn’t do?” He always says something along the lines of, “No, baby, you’re perfect and I wouldn’t change a thing about you.”
Now, I know and you know that I’m not perfect. My blinded-by-love husband, though… he doesn’t see the flaws. Or if he does, he thinks they’re cute. And we’re past the honeymoon stage; at least we’re supposed to be. We’re six years, three (and 1/3) children into this thing. We’ve done stupid stuff, said stupid stuff, made mistakes, and we’re still figuring this whole “life” thing out as we go. There’s been more than enough imperfection on my part. But he doesn’t see it.
Sometimes it’s tough having a husband who thinks I’m perfect.
Really. He does something minor like come home late from work and I am well on my way to working up a good, satisfying MAD… One of those seething, cupboard-door-slamming mads where you can grit your teeth and feel justified because of the wrongness of it all. Except then he walks in the door and says something like, “Hey, baby, I’m sooo glad to see you and the kids. So sorry I was late tonight, I had to finish a work project and then help a crippled man across the street and then stopped to fix an old lady’s car on the way home. Can I help with dinner?”
How the heck can I be mad after that?
Impossible. Though I’ve tried. Trust me. Because I enjoy a good mad just as much as the next girl.
But, alas, I am married to the Good Samaritan.
He is an infinitely capable Good Samaritan, too, because he knows how to fix stuff. Cars, lawnmowers, go-karts, bicycles, tire swings, dryers, dishwashers, highchairs, boats, chainsaws, lights, chairs, scraped knees, me…
Honestly, the only good reason for a mad in six years of marriage that I’ve found is this: sometimes he helps other people when I want him to ignore all those other people and pay attention to me. Only me.
And if I tell him that, he does. He pulls in, slows down, says no. Pays attention.
I’m not a naturally merciful or generous person. I lean more to the “prophetic” side of things (thanks, Dad!), as in, if I see a bum on the street with a cardboard sign, I think, “Hey bum, go get a job and then you won’t need other people’s money!” I don’t think,
“Poor guy. He’s probably had a tough life.” I don’t think,
“Hmm, we should be generous to the poor.”
I roll up my windows. I don’t carry cash. I drive on. I don’t even feel guilty.
Generosity is still not a natural instinct,
but in the six years of being married to the most generous and merciful person I have ever known, I’ve learned a little bit:
It’s fun to be generous. Even when you can’t afford it. Especially when you can’t afford it. It’s a risk you take, offering out of the little you have.
It doesn’t matter what the person does with your generosity. That’s not your part of the picture. Your part is just to be generous.
Giving isn’t just about giving money; it’s about giving time, giving resources, giving energy, giving help, giving service. When you clutter up your life with obligations that don’t matter, you end up with nothing left to give other people.
There is a priority in giving; you shouldn’t give what isn’t yours to give, for instance. You should meet your responsibilities. You should make sure your family has their needs met, but the thing to remember is need isn’t the same as want. We can all live with much less than we think we can.
Last week a lady knocked on my car window
in the parking lot of St. Louis Bread Company. She launched into a somewhat reasonable explanation of why she was asking for money. I stopped her. I didn’t really care what her reason was. I gave her the $20 I had in my wallet, prayed for her, and when she left I wished I’d had more to give.
Maybe she’s a drunk. Maybe she’s a drug addict. Maybe she’s somebody’s daughter and she’s had a tough life. I don’t know, and I don’t need to know.
You know why my husband thinks I’m perfect?
Because he has what I understand now as generosity of the spirit; he doesn’t just give the cash he could use for himself. He doesn’t just give his time or his abilities. He gives grace, freely, recklessly. He gives enough grace to me to cover all the times I’ve been mad, or rude, or ignored him, or messed something up, or forgotten something important, or hurt him, or demanded, or controlled, or manipulated, or accused, or proved in some other inexcusable way how imperfect I really, truly, deeply am.
His generosity is what causes him to love me as much as he does. It’s not me. I’m not perfect. I don’t deserve it. I didn’t earn it. But I receive it, with open arms. And that’s why, sometimes, when I think, “Darn it, I wish Joe would quit offering to help, I really just want a weekend at home!” I try to stop before I say it out loud. Because when I put words out there, he will listen. And he will downsize his own generosity in order to make me happy.
And then he might figure out I’m really not perfect.
In Emperor’s New Groove, Kronk is, of course, my favorite character. I don’t really know how you could have another favorite character.
Kronk has a shoulder angel and a shoulder demon and carries on a few bits of dialogue with them in the movie. At one point, he ends up dismissing them: “Eh, you guys are confusing me, so, uh, begone or whatever it is I have to say.” “That’ll do,” they say, and disappear.
Kronk, You, and What’s On Your Shoulder
What I’m not going to say here is that if you just listened to the voice of God all the time, you wouldn’t have any problems. First, that’s far too simplistic, kind of obvious, and also depends on what you mean by problems.
Some fine people who seemed to have it together as far as listening to God’s voice continued to encounter what I’d define as problems. Lion’s den, anyone?
What I am going to say is that you do deal with voices. Loud ones, quiet ones, all kinds of ‘em, all the time. Yours, your past’s, your culture’s, and everyone else’s. Blah, blah, blah. Know how
I talk about how we talk too much? I think we do that, sometimes, just to cover us the voices blabbing away in our brains. We don’t know how to turn them off, so we talk louder to cover them up. That helps, a bit. But there’s a better way.
Get to the One Thing Already
So – big surprise – the one thing holding you back, my friend, is that you’re listening to, and then acting upon, the wrong voices. But here’s where it gets tricky, because it’s not quite as simple as a shoulder angel and a shoulder demon.
Would that it were. And maybe, deep down, it is, but the problem is that on the surface level – the level on which we hear the voices – things get muddled. Sometimes the shoulder demon dresses up like the shoulder angel. Sometimes the shoulder angel sounds, well, stupid. Sometimes it’s a regular carnival and everybody’s in costume.
Vibes. Get the Good Ones.
The reason we listen to the voices – any of them – is that they appeal to some part of us. But it’s subtle. It’s manipulative. It’s not always easy to identify, and oh-so-easy to justify. Here’s a simple way to differentiate:
The good voices move you forward from positive motivation.
The bad voices move you backward, in circles, or not at all from negative motivation.
And right now, let’s just go ahead and identify the absolute Queen of all negative motivation, at least as far as women are concerned.
Guilt, the Reigning Potentate of Bad Voices
Guilt is the Queen because she seems so right, so accurate. She’ll talk
to whatever matters to you. She’ll phrase it in such spiritual terms, such self-sacrificial words, that saying no to her will seem like the worst sin ever.
But let me be the one to clarify something for us all right here, right now.
God does not motivate us through guilt. God motivates us through specific conviction (something is wrong in what you’re doing, and this is it) and then equally specific encouragement (here is forgiveness, here is how to change). God pulls us onward, forward, by showing us what could be better in specific terms, not what might get worse in vague fear-shaped visions.
Queen Guilt, on the other hand: Vague. Subtle. Manipulative. General. Incessant. Overbearing. Fearful. Anxious. Keeps you running in circles. Keeps you from moving forward. Keeps you from letting go. Offers you no forgiveness. Offers you no hope. Commands you to change but offers you no way to do it.
Annie, 1: Queen Guilt, 0. Ha.
A couple of nights ago I had a list of things that I needed to get done for work.
Now, listen so you know where I’m coming from: I grew up with a stay-at-home Mom. I always thought what I’d be is a stay-at-home Mom. And I am. I’m also, however, a freelance writer. I get to work from home. I do this because, to my surprise, I discovered that I go stir-crazy if I’m not doing something in addition to being a Mommy. That’s just me.
On this evening, I had a backlog and we were in between Internet services at home (don’t even get me started), which meant that I needed to escape to wifi-land for a few hours. Which meant that I needed to leave my Baby and my babies. At home. On the weekend. Without me.
I didn’t have a nice dinner made. I did have a backlog of laundry, a house dirty from our crazy weekend, and a husband who can handle all that stuff, all the kids, and all my paranoias just fine, thank you very much.
But guess what I still felt as I pulled out of the driveway? Yep. Guuuuuilty. No matter that I was going to work, not to have a manicure. Didn’t matter. Queen Guilt was on the scene and just chatting me up like her BFF.
And I let it go on, all the way to the parking lot, before I finally realized I wasn’t talking to myself. I was being talked to. I was being told what to feel, couched in a whole bunch of vaguely spiritual “good wife-good mom” terms that just punched my buttons.
But that’s when I realized this: if God had wanted me to stay at home that night, this is NOT how He would be telling me.
At that point, I punched a few buttons myself, ejected Queen Guilt from the sidecar, went in and got my work done and got back home. End of story, until the next time…
What’s Your Next Time?
We’ve all got hot buttons. You know you do, and chances are those might be areas in which God is calling you to change. But don’t confuse the voice of God for the voice of guilt. Guilt will keep you spinning in the same cobwebs. God will set you free.
Remember: it’s not a question of which voice is loudest. It’s a question of which one you listen to, which one you hear, which one gets your attention. And that part is up to you.
Here’s a recap:
Bad voices will appeal to your insecurity, pride, ego, flesh, fear, stress, mistakes, past, comfort, ease, desire for security, need to be right, need to be needed, need to fit in, need to be liked, fear of man, religious sensibilities. Good voices will appeal to your morals, dreams, courage, humility, understanding, true confidence, sense of adventure, sense of risk, sense of purpose, deeper vision,
long-term goals, sacrificial love, wisdom.
Bad voices will be urgent: do it now, do it now, do it now or else. Good voices will be direct, specific, and consistent: this is the way, walk in it.
