Time Out of Mind

I am thinking about time this morning.  

In my quiet time with Jesus each morning, I tend to journal on how I spent yesterday, and what I expect for today.  But this morning (partly because my children are still sleeping, and it is quiet enough for me to think more deeply) I began thinking beyond the physical details of the days more...to the point of them.  

I realize I feel perpetually guilty about how I am NOT spending my time, and that is a pervasive feeling.  Even when I am perfectly glad to be doing whatever it is I am busy about.  

Surely I am not alone.  There are forever an endless supply of choices for how to spend our time, and it is a puzzle of life to "redeem the time" in the right ways.  

Wouldn't it be grand to live in such a way that I feel peace about my choices in using the time that I have, the time that God has given me?  Not the usual results of appeasing someone, or doing what is needed, or scrambling to stave off the panic of being completely overwhelmed by all the many, many things that are needed--or even the result of pleasure.  

What if I lived in a way, day to day, that resulted in a pervasive, deep PEACE about how I have spent, how I am spending, how I plan to spend MY TIME?  

What a gift that would be.  What true satisfaction that would be.  What a way to think about an intentional life.  

"Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.  And walk in love...Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true) and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord...'Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.' Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.  Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is."  From Ephesians 5

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven..." Ecclesiastes 3:1  "Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and striving after wind."  Ecc 4:6  "If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, BUT HIS SOUL IS NOT SATISFIED with life's good things...I say that a stillborn child is better off than he." Ecc 6:3  "The end of the matter; all has been heard.  Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.  For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil." Ecc 12:13-14

Daddy's Girl

These are the daddies I celebrate.  I am so very rich.  

Spring Is Such A Maiden

Old Man Winter is not letting go without a fight this year.  Yesterday afternoon I was rejoicing to see that, except for the remains of the few largest, plowed-up heaps, the front yard snow was gone.  A couple of hours later, it was already covered in fresh white, with howling winds driving snow on what looked just like a raging winter storm.  Oh well, Spring can't be too far away.

Maiden Spring.  

People often think of "maidens" as delicate, timid, fragile. But I have known maidens who are full of energy, tenacious, strong, full of joy and unquenchable optimism, vitality.  Full of strength and gentleness.  Maidens who are forces to be reckoned with.  I was such a maiden.  

Spring is such a maiden.  

Loud

Revolutionary-feeling thought today: Christian culture so often dwells on the things we can't do freely in our society. We lament there's no prayer allowed in schools, bewail the unconscionable separation between church and state, or rail about people being too easily offended by Christianity.

What if

we stopped lamenting and bewailing and railing?

What if

we led by example, boldly starting and leading the prayer instead of waiting to be led?

What if

we participated in government as our consciences dictated, but went ahead and asked for Holy Spirit power to live out our faith with consistency across the divides?

What if

instead of railing about pansy feelings, we purposed ourselves to become unoffendable people?

Our kids have full freedom to pray in school or wherever they might want to. But we have to teach them and show them that in order for that to happen, they must initiate the praying. They can't wait for someone to tell them to do it--they must become the praying people. Our government doesn't have a beautiful track record for acting on its founding Biblical principles; if anything, those principles have been misapplied and used for evil. We have to live out the upside-down Kingdom, declaring through our integrity that His ways solve problems at their roots. We are just as easily offended by cultural issues as a wiccan witnessing kids praying around a flagpole. Except, get this: as Christians we're called to LOVE those who hate us, to PRAY FOR those who persecute us! And so our offense is uglier. Our offense has farther-reaching consequences. As ambassadors of the King of kings, we have way, way more authority than we realize--and when we use our authority wrongly, the consequences are much, much more weighty.

Test your faith. Apply it. Strengthen it. Exercise it. Live it out loud, like your faith matters.

Your faith matters.

Just Write

It is 6:05.  In the evening.  Prime time.  

And I am holed up in the guest room--Oh, look at my guest room!  In the last-published post it was the "office-guest-craft-stash it room".  We have turned a new leaf, and now I come in here sometimes just to stand in a quiet, pretty place:

Progress in the right direction.  My brain has been in a different place in the past couple of months, but I haven't really told you anything about it because, although I have had time, I haven't spent any of it on finishing and sharing my polished thoughts with you.  

So I'm holed up in the guest room, because tonight my husband came home from his day of teaching with a plan for me to write this evening, and to also write regularly.  It basically involves setting aside an evening a week to write while he takes on 3-kid duty.  To just write.  To write.

So, let me back up and tell you the earlier part of the story, because to dive right in to today's thoughts without their context is to miss the process, miss the richness.  For me it is rich.  It's okay if it isn't anything much to you.    

Through the autumn up until Christmas, I was accelerating along from about 72 to 120 miles per hour.  At one point Lincoln told me, "Mama, you're in charge of too many things."  You present a good case, kid.  His comment sank in deep, and I realized that it isn't simply a case of my not liking the pace; it is a true statement, and the pace is unsustainable and damaging to myself and the people I hold most dear.   

Andy and I called up a babysitter and walked down the road for a Reevaluation Date at our local diner. 

We came up with some changes, some redirection, and I began to sense light at the end of the tunnel.  

At New Year's, my sister-in-law gave me words for a concept, the ideas of which had already been brewing in my heart.  You've probably already heard of it: discovering your One Word.  It's enough of a concept now to generate books on a variety of contexts: your one word for the year, for life, for your business, for your lasting legacy, etc.  (I haven't read any of the books; I can't tell you whether they're any good.)  But I knew my word right away.

I painted it, because that's what I do.  I have begun applying it to all sorts of things: what I read, how many bottles of shampoo are in my shower, the ingredients in my food and how I cook it, how the laundry is sorted, how I think about social issues, how I'm pursuing Jesus, etc.  I don't think I am especially good at simplicity, but I am getting better, and that is the important thing.  

Life weaves together in wonderful ways, don't you think?  A year and a half ago, before I was thinking particularly about simplifying life, I sang a song for my Grandaddy's memorial service:

'Tis a gift to be simple.  

So 'tis.