Oct 7, 2014 | 31 Days, The Good Word
A big, smiling welcome to you! This post is part of a series I’m working my way through in the month of October, called Swim Your Own Race. If you’d like to start at the beginning (it is a very good place to start, after all) you can do so, right here.
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You may already know that my Hubs and I are photographers. One of the things we enjoy capturing the most is weddings. And while there are lots of important moments throughout the day, especially during the ceremony, there is this favorite moment we love to make sure to get — the moment when the groom sees the bride for the first time. Capturing the groom’s reaction to the bride was on my shot list last weekend. (We divide up things we want to make sure to capture to try to make sure we get all the imagery we want to have on a wedding day.) This was the first time this particular shot was my responsibility, so I was arms up and eyes ready as the bridesmaids and groomsmen made their way down the aisle, the beautiful little flower girl bounced her way to the front, and a tiny barefoot ring bearer reluctantly followed.
Then the groom saw the bride, ready to marry him, for the first time. When he saw her, his face flushed red. He face was so solemn — as if he was afraid he might not be able to breathe. His eyes sparkled with joy, and with flushed cheeks, you could tell, he fought back a few tears.
I imagine at that point just about everyone had turned to capture a glimpse of the beautiful bride making her way down the aisle on her Father’s arm. She was absolutely stunning, so breathtaking.
But I kept my eyes (and my camera) focused on the groom, and watched as his eyes never wavered. He unswervingly focused on his bride, walking down the aisle to marry him. Until she was standing beside him and the minister began to speak, he never took his eyes off her.
It was a beautiful moment.
There’s a reason the God who created the entire universe wants you to know that you are His bride. There’s a reason the metaphor of the wedding is used for the end of this world when God gathers His church to Himself, and we enter into the unfathomable and breathtaking joy of eternity in His presence.
One reason must be that He wants us to know how much He loves us. He wants us to deeply, fully believe that He is that groom waiting at the end of the aisle for His bride to come. He knows we, His bride, are not perfect, but He sees us as beautiful, dressed in the righteousness He bought for us.
I don’t know what that wedding is going to look like… I can scarcely imagine the cacophony of glory, in sound, in light, in joy, when the the groom who laid down His life for His bride welcomes her into eternity.
Over the next few days, I’d like to think through the metaphor of the coaches you have on your race to glory. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit each have a unique role to play in your journey, and its worth taking the time to ponder a little more of what that means to us.
But before we can dive into those thoughts, I wanted to bring just one thought to you today.
God loves you.
You may have had coaches, or fathers, or brothers who’ve hurt you in the past. You might still be bearing scars on your body or your soul from places where your race went wrong. They were not a part of the story God wanted for your life, but He is able to heal, and He is able to redeem — He is able to make such dark places on the timeline of your days shine so brightly when they work together for good, to become a part of your great story.
If all of eternity was composed into a single book, I want you to understand that while it would have some comedy, some tragedy, so many other elements, at the heart, it’s a love story.
It’s the love of a Father, sending His only Son. The love of a Son, laying down His life to make reconciliation a potential reality. The presence of a Spirit, enabling us to understand, enough to love, though limited and finite we are, we love, as we are able, in return.
If we could swim into the heights and depths and breadths of His love, to explore it, to understand it, to touch it and taste it, we’d just keeping swimming forever. Great is His love for us.
Know that the Maker of Heaven and Earth is watching your race today, friends. He loves your story, and He loves you.
Let that love propel you in your race today. Let it enable you to rest today.
He loves you. He loves you. He loves you.
xCC
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I mentioned joining the #31Days writing challenge again this year but forgot to mention that there are LOTS of other writers doing #31Days this October, too! One of my favorites is my friend Amanda at Seriously. There are lots of others that you can finding by visiting write31days.com.
Oct 6, 2014 | 31 Days, The Good Word
A big, smiling welcome to you! This post is part of a series I’m working my way through in the month of October, called Swim Your Own Race. If you’d like to start at the beginning (it is a very good place to start, after all) you can do so, right here.
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This past weekend, we were traveling for the Hubs’ work. He second shoots for a fantastically talented and super sweet photographer sometimes, and learns a heap in the process. The kiddos and I decided to travel along so that I could visit that very dear friend I mentioned yesterday and we did a little homeschool field trip at the same time.
Before we left on Sunday, we went to church together, and it was an interesting experience for me. At this particular juncture in my life, I feel more distracted than ever before. There are emails and Facebook messages waiting for a reply. Tasks on the to-do list of settling my Dad’s estate are waiting for my attention. There is always laundry. Always a menu that needs planning, a grocery list that needs to be scribbled out somewhere. Homeschool needs time and focused attention. Quiver Tree (our photography business) brings some extra tasks to the list. And I have the privilege of being a wife to one awesome South African Cowboy Hero Hubs, and I’m a stay/work-at-home Mama to three darling little pumpkins whom I love dearly.
Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by the task list, I sit on the couch with a cup of tea and just breathe for a little bit.
And sometimes, I scurry around the house, getting distracted by the 1,000 different little things that need doing that I never get the one thing done. I’m on my way to collect laundry to bring to the washing machine, when I see a shoe that belongs with its match in the Belle’s room. I scurry the shoe to the room and see that there are unfolded clothes waiting on her bed. I get to the bottom of that pile and find two dishcloths that should be folded and put away in the kitchen, so it’s off to the kitchen, where I notice a dish that’s been soaking and really needs to be scrubbed… and then the counter needs to be cleared off because it would just make me feel more peaceful and look nicer if it was clear and another stack of mail has arrived with a bill from the lawyers’ offices and heavens sake did I remember that bill last month?
Good luck getting done today laundry, you just weren’t shouting loud enough.
Even inside our little home without much distraction from the outside world, focus still isn’t my strong suit.
We took our kids each to their classrooms at the church we were visiting yesterday, and strolled into the auditorium for the worship service. I’d noticed as we passed the auditorium that it looked hazy in there. When I came in, it became apparent that they blow dry ice or some kind of hazy smoke into the auditorium to make the light show effective. As the lights lowered for worship, it reminded me of a concert, as blue and white lights moved and changed throughout the venue in time with the music. I wanted to close my eyes and just focus on worshipping the Lord, but I didn’t know the words to any of the songs, so I kept having to look at the big screens on either side of the auditorium. The words were across the bottom of the screen, so that they didn’t block the imagery of the worship leaders on the stage also being projected onto the big screens. I was too short to see all of the words and wondered why they couldn’t just put them at the top of the screen instead. (Ya know, then I could see them over people’s heads…)
I tried to pray and just focus on the Lord, but I could feel the big floodlights shining on my face and I was just too… distracted.
Back in his competitive swimming days, focus was a very important part of the Hubs’ preparation for a race. He typically had a very specific number in mind. Let’s say he was hoping to swim a personal best on the 400 meter individual medley, so he and his coach looked at his previous times, considered what time he would need to qualify for national championships, considered the circumstances, and came up with a goal time for him to work toward. This very specific number became his point of focus. The minutes, the seconds, the milliseconds. He’d write the time on post-it notes and put them up on his mirror to look at. He’d say it to himself as he fell asleep. He’d write it down again and again. This goal time for the swim was his focus, from the moment his fingertips touched the water until they tapped the wall. He counted strokes, kept time in his mind, and worked for that number.
Our lives are so full of distractions — ones created for us and ones that we create for ourselves. If I did a better job of making decisions about how to go about completing the seventeen tasks on a particular day’s to-do list, its likely I would be much more effective at achieving those goals. The Hubs has a complicated task management app that keeps him moving forward. I have a string of pieces of paper spread around the house with task lists, sometimes in duplicate, a few items crossed off.
If we say we are the people of God and we want to Swim Our Own Races with God at the center, how do we move past all the distraction?
The author of the letter to the Hebrews has clear instructions for us:
“…and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith…” {Hebrews 12: 1b – 2a}
The verses keep going and there’s so much goodness, but let’s just pause right there. How do we run with endurance in a world full of distraction that would pull us to the sidelines? What does it say? We look at Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.
Jesus is the name we can call on to help us make our way through the haze and smoke and lights. Jesus is the person we fix our eyes on waiting at the end of the race to welcome us to the glorious eternity His children are running toward.
Jesus is the time we should all focus on memorizing.
When a new company wants to be a successful, growing, thriving company, the leaders of that company are careful about where they focus their attention. The Starbucks success story has been read and evaluated again and again — examples like this are what companies that want to make it big study carefully. How did Starbucks grow into an international mega-powerhouse just decades after opening the door of its first coffee shop? How did it create that niche need that nobody knew they had? How did Apple single handedly create a market for personal tablet devices after other companies tried and failed? These are the things a company wanting to make it big will learn — this is their great cloud of witnesses. The written stories of the successes and failures and thorough evaluations of those who’ve gone before them are the pages of the Bible they study.
But what about the people of God? If we want to single-mindedly swim our race with love for the God of the universe at the center, where do we put our focus?
We look to Jesus… the author and finisher of our faith — and the Scripture goes on to give us an example of what to consider. Who for the joy set before Him endured the cross. He knows where He is going. He knows what He has to walk through to get there. But for the joy set before Him — the joy of paving a way back to God for all of mankind — He endured the cross — He willingly chose to make the sacrifice necessary to make it possible.
He is where we fix our eyes, friends. He is where we fix our hearts, church. His story is where we learn how to live single-mindedly. We can “swim” this race with singleminded purpose, looking forward to hearing those words when we stretch our arms out to touch the wall — Well done, good and faithful servant, well done.
Everything in this world is temporary. And this world itself is fading away, along with everything it craves.
But we have the Name above all Names to fix our eyes on. In studying His every movement, we will find the focus and direction to swim our own race for His glory.
Swim Your Own Race today, friends.
xCC
Oct 5, 2014 | 31 Days, The Good Word
Hey there, citizen! This post is part of a series I’m working my way through in the month of October, called Swim Your Own Race. If you’d like to start at the beginning (it is a very good place to start, after all) you can do so, right here.
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Alright friends, here’s a funny question. When is the last time you did something that you knew other people were going to think was totally weird? Like, you knew jaws would drop and heads would turn and people would ask…
What was s/he thinking?
But you said, ‘Ta heck with what they think… I’m going for it?
And there you went, streaking across that football field, or wearing that pizza on your head like a hat?
Are you drawing a blank? A little bit? Running through the deep recesses of your mind for some distant memory from middle school?
Still nothing?
Well, here’s an observation.
We probably care about what people think a little bit more than we would like to admit.
Let’s say we were given a very important task — to make a list of the top five things that are core values for us as individuals, or core values that we want to instill in our families.
These are the things that, if your kids grow up and this is all they leave {insert your address here} with, you’ll feel like you’ve done a decent job.
If you’re a believer, you’d (hopefully) put Faith at the top of the list. Maybe Family would fall in line behind it. Perhaps Kindness or Generosity would make an appearance. Education might be something you particularly value. Hard Work, Discipline, Diligence… Financial Responsibility? You could probably spend a good wee while working on that list, and it might be easier to choose a top 20.
But, even on your top 20, would Keeping Up Appearances make your list? What about Not Being Weird? Fitting In? Going With The Flow?
I’d hope not, and I think you’d hope not, too.
But.
Is this actually inside our hidden curriculum — something we model for our children to see, not with our words, so much as with our actions?
Let’s start with a simple example, shall we?
Your kid explodes at a pizza party. He’s totally disappointed that he has to leave early and you are totally embarrassed that your normally well-behaved almost-five year old is completely defying you, absolutely unwilling to leave the party without making a scene. He is so bummed that everyone else will have a good time for twenty more minutes, but you have another meeting with a builder or a banker or a lawyer because your Dad died, and you have to go.
By and by, you may observe that this is a truly true story, experienced by moi.
You try every trick in the book to convince this kid that it’s go time, but he is fighting you to the point that you are basically going to have to drag him out of there kicking and screaming.
You are overwhelmingly surprised because this boy just never acts like this.
Eventually, your incredibly flushed cheeks, shaky arms and legs manage to get your kid to the car. With no small amount of threatening.
Take a deep breath. Okay. This was my kid, but join me for a post mortem on this particularly painful experience. Step into my shoes and ask yourself this question.
When you get in the car, and you’re ridiculous angry with that kid, are you angry because they wouldn’t obey you, or because they embarrassed you? Dig deep friends. If you’re anything like me, the embarrassment takes the cake and eats it, too.
Obedience and respecting one’s parents falls under valuing family in my top five, but getting well and truly embarrassed in front of a big group of people is somehow projectile launched ahead in terms of why I’m angry and how I handle working my way through a discussion about what. just. happened.
Are you picking up what I’m putting down?
Great. Let’s move on and talk about somebody else. And it isn’t me this time.
I sat down across from a dear friend today. Very dear.
She has also spent a significant amount of time abroad and is also married to a man from our beloved continent, Mama Africa.
We were talking about how uncomfortable it is to feel different sometimes. And she told this story.
“I was at a Bible study, and one of the questions in the study was about things we couldn’t do without. One Mom was talking about her minivan, and how it has a screen for every kid and they can each watch their own movie or play their own games. [The conversation continued here with things you can imagine, answers that can’t do without the many modern conveniences of the Western World…] And it came to me, and I’d written down ‘My toothbrush and an extra pair of underwear.’ Because I remembered when [my husband and I] were working in that refugee camp for all those weeks, and I just wanted an extra pair of underwear, and I was glad I had my toothbrush.”
At the end of it all, she just felt weird. She felt different. And we had this mutual feeling — that we couldn’t say too much about our experiences around the world, like we should limit discussions of experiences outside the US to one per evening, so that it doesn’t seem like we are trying to wear a traveling badge, or just risk seeming weird and different.
Could this be true: While we might want to be ahead of the game in fashion, have the latest car to drive and the newest and cutest decorating our homes, we might long for a stand-out sense of style and simultaneously really want, to some extent, to blend in?
Are we willing to drive a second-string vehicle or live in a less aesthetically appealing home for the sake of giving more to the poor?
Are we willing to walk up to a stranger and deliver a word put on our hearts by the heart of God, at the risk of looking foolish?
Are we hungry enough for the things of God to lay aside every hindrance and the sin which so easily entangles us — one among many being the desire to look respectable, even our longing to be emulated — to lay hold of the story that God wants to author for us?
If we are walking the same way everyone is walking, it is hard to imagine we could simultaneously be on the narrow road we’re called to walk on.
Sometimes we think we’re in the Waters of Postponement, and we’re confident that we’re waiting on God, but He is waiting on something to be birthed in us.
And this could be the place where all this comes together:
Your Race is in Your Lane. You cannot wonder why this or that thing has already happened for them or them. You cannot worry what He or She or They will think if you decide to jump in and take a risk.
Teddy Roosevelt put it so eloquently:
“It’s not the critic who counts. It’s not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled. Credit belongs to the man who really was in the arena, his face marred by dust, sweat, and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs to come short and short again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. It is the man who actually strives to do the deeds, who knows the great enthusiasm and knows the great devotion, who spends himself on a worthy cause, who at best, knows in the end the triumph of great achievement. And, who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and cruel souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
Your Race is in Your Lane. But could you miss it because your eyes are on someone else’s? You feel like they got a head start, a better shake, a better circumstance to dive into? Or could your eyes be on the crowd? Do you wonder what the folks in the stands and the bleachers will say, while you’re racing? But doesn’t it differ, sometimes radically, from what you want to be said when you finish?
It’s not the critic who counts.
Ask yourself: how much do the opinions of others matter to me?
Then perhaps you will tell yourself: more than they should.
If you’re living the race authored by God uniquely for you, then it will not look like anybody else’s.
Don’t let your fear about the opinions from the grandstands hold you back from leaving it all in the pool.
Swim Your Own Race, friends.
xCC
Oct 4, 2014 | 31 Days, The Good Word
Hey there, citizen! This post is part of a series I’m working my way through in the month of October, called Swim Your Own Race. If you’d like to start at the beginning (it is a very good place to start, after all) you can do so, right here.
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I mentioned previously that the Hubs and I were both competitive swimmers. I use the term loosely in reference to my own swimming career, (I swam in High School) but much more appropriately in reference to Hero Hubs’ career — he started swimming around age ten and swam continuously, all the way to university level, participating in national competitions.
One of the Hubs’ dreams was to represent South Africa internationally before his swimming career was done. But when he was in his early twenties, his race took a couple of unexpected turns (out of the pool) that made that dream seem like an impossibility.
During HH’s time at university, he followed a girl he was interested in to church and truly met Jesus instead. His life was changed, his heart was changed, and this place that felt empty for a long time was suddenly full, with hope, with joy… with the many gifts that come from meeting your Creator and finding yourself in a place where you have a deep understanding of what it means that He gave His Son for you. Life was beautiful.
But not long after, his Dad’s business took a very sharp downturn in a down economy and he was sequestrated. He and my mother-in-love lost everything that was in Dad’s name, and it was a very dark, very low, very tough time for them.
HH made an assessment of the situation and prayed about what he should do. His parents were sending him to university, and he still had three semesters left. He decided if he set aside his swimming career, he could finish school in just one semester and reduce the financial burden to his parents. It seemed clear in his heart that this was the right course of action, so the decision was made.
He set aside the dream to follow the leading of God.
I wonder about what might’ve been in Mark’s heart at this point. I think of this Scripture and wonder:
As for God, His way is blameless;
The word of the Lord is tried;
He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him.
For who is God, but the Lord?
And who is a rock, except our God,
The God who girds me with strength
And makes my way blameless?
He makes my feet like hinds’ feet,
And sets me upon my high places. {Psalm 18: 30 – 33}
Sometimes we are asking God to bring us to high places, but the path seems to head in the opposite direction.
There’s a beautiful moment in a beautiful book called Hinds Feet on High Places
that I’ve mentioned here once before. The main character is told that instead of continuing to climb the mountain she’s hoping to climb, she is going to have to first go down into a valley, through a desert. The path seems to be taking her away from the High Places she is hoping to reach, so she calls to the Shepherd who has been leading her on this journey.
“Oh no,” she cried, “You can’t mean it. You said if I would trust You, You would bring me to the High Places, and that path leads right away from them. It contradicts all that You promised.”
“No,” said the Shepherd. “It is not a contradiction, only postponement for the best to become possible.”
I wonder what was in Mark’s heart when he let go of the dream — I think he thought he was setting down his swimming career then. Or did he hope somehow for his dream it to still be possible?
Around this time, the team that would represent South Africa in the World Student Games was being chosen. The World Student Games are similar to the Olympics in magnitude, competition and the experience itself… kind of a big deal.
HH’s name was on the waiting list — if another swimmer decided to drop out, he’d get the call that he was being invited to join the team. It seemed like his swimming career was as good as done, so he settled into the idea that he should focus on his studies and finish his time at University as quickly as possible.
Do you ever wonder what the disciples felt like when they watched the Man they’d followed for three years being buried in a tomb? What it meant to them, in their finite understanding of who Jesus was and the kind of change they thought he was going to bring to their own lives, to the Jewish people in oppression? How could the Christ be crucified and this be the right story?
It probably seemed very contradictory to what they’d hoped for.
Sometimes when we’re willing to lay down our dreams, God brings about a Resurrection. Sometimes the path moves in a direction other than the one we’re hoping for, and it is postponement for the best to become possible.
As you might imagine, Mark’s story didn’t end there. A few days later, he got the phone call that he was on the team that would represent South Africa in the World Student Games. His team traveled to Japan, he had a wonderful adventure, and he had the privilege of representing his beloved country in international competition.
I wonder where you are in your race today. Is there perhaps a dream you’ve laid down? Are you watching other people swimming laps while you feel like you’re still behind the starting blocks waiting for a whistle?
Hold tightly to the God whose way is blameless. His Word is tried and can be trusted. He can make your feet like hinds’ feet and cause you to walk on high places, but you must know that sometimes those high places are on the other side of a deep valley. Our limited understanding seldom pictures something coming to pass the way the Lord sees it. No mind has seen, no ear has heard… We are not fully aware of the great, interwoven tapestry He is weaving with our lives.
Don’t worry what He is doing in the lanes on the right and the left side of yours. Keep swimming your race, keeping your eyes fixed on Him. Trust that with God, even the hard places of postponement are places where the seeds are sown for a harvest of amazing, that would not have otherwise been possible.
xCC
Oct 3, 2014 | 31 Days, The Good Word
Hey there, citizen! This post is part of a series I’m working my way through in the month of October. If you’d like to start at the beginning (it is a good place to start, after all) you can do so, right here.
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Yesterday, we talked about Comparison, the terrible stealer of joy, and about the challenging truth that we are the only ones who can swim our own race. The encouraging take-home, (at least for me to hold onto) was that when we remember the Lord, keeping our minds confidently set on His goodness, finding that place where we trust deeply in Him, He meets us with a nothing-missing, nothing-broken kind of peace.
I’m very able to tell you first hand that when you make a decision to redirect your life towards any goal, you are going to be met with opposition. So if you took a deep breath yesterday, and said Yes, Jesus, and in your heart decided to press in, even when the pressing is hard, I wonder if your day might’ve gone differently than planned. And whether you might’ve had opportunities to live out what you proclaimed.
If Comparison is joy’s greatest thief, perhaps Thanksgiving is joy’s greatest harvester.
Turning and refocusing on the goodness of God is likely to bring you joy, but when opposition comes, you will have the opportunity to choose to keep swimming, to press in, to tread long in the waters of fear, or even to turn back toward the wall and gingerly swim back to where you feel safe.
The choice to press in when you meet adversity is such a wrestling match. Life doesn’t stop happening, and it often keeps bringing difficulties. The house that was tidy on Tuesday looks like a disaster zone by Wednesday evening. You arrive home to this hectic house at 9 pm, having not eaten dinner yet, but knowing a friend is coming over for coffee the next morning. The outdoor freezer door is left slightly ajar, and all the contents gradually defrost overnight for you to discover the next afternoon. The babysitter forgets that you’re temporarily not cloth diapering and for some reason the baby that is always pooping in the potty poops in two cloth diapers, without liners, and you discover each of those two rogue diapers separately, and therefore have two extra loads of laundry, and you’re leaving for the weekend the next morning and have to pack for four people, and you already had enough laundry to do! And your laptop dies.
And this may have all happened in the last forty-eight hours.
To me.
You can put a flag in the ground and say, I am going to give thanks, I am going to focus on the God who sees me, and loves me, and I am going to walk to this place no matter how long it takes me to get there:
You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore. {Psalm 16:11}
Yesterday, life handed me a heap of lemons. But the fact that yesterday morning I’d put a flag in the sand to remind myself and anyone else who cares to listen that there is joy for the taking if we fix our eyes on Jesus, changed my perspective completely.
When the freezer defrosted, I was disappointed, but I brought a perfectly defrosted meal to a friend, and I gave thanks because the Food Lion MVP coupon center gave me a coupon for anti-bacterial cleaning wipes, and even though I never buy those, for some reason, this week, I did.
My friend who came over for coffee wasn’t able to come as early as expected, so I knocked out a stack of dishes and a heap of great stuff in homeschool. Tidyness was restored!
I was thankful that none of our children were hurt, they were safe and taken care of, even if the babysitter forgot which diapers to use and I had a little extra work to do. The work got done, and praise the Lord, I actually own a washing machine and a dryer and they are in my house! What a luxury!
The laptop that died was exchanged for the first Macbook I ever bought, a year before that, and that exchanged took place back in Glasgow in 2009. It had been dropped, had a child pour a glass of wine on it, travelled through life in a few different countries, had been dropped again, survived children tapping those little keys to play games on the PBS Kids website… got dropped again… and still made it for over five years. Thank you, Apple. And thank You, Lord!
By the end of the day, I still had a smile on my face. I’d turned to Jesus and remembered to say “Teach Me Jesus” and He did.
There is always something to give thanks for. Always something worth seeing God’s glory in.
Trust in the Lord, and do good;
Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.
Delight yourself also in the Lord,
And He shall give you the desires of your heart. {Psalm 37: 3 -4, NKJV}
Can you feed on His faithfulness today? Can you find reasons to give thanks, make lemonade from that pile of lemons? If you dive into the pool and your goggles slide off your face, can you keep swimming?
Today is just one lap in the race of your life. The Author and Perfecter of your faith is intimately acquainted with what’s happening in your life, and readily available to lift you up and walk you through it.
Look for His faithfulness today, friends. You might be able to see it in a can of antibacterial wipes.
xCC
Oct 2, 2014 | 31 Days, The Good Word
Hey there, citizen! This post is part of a series I’m working my way through in the month of October. If you’d like to start at the beginning (it is a good place to start, after all) you can do so, right here.
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Let’s go ahead and get this party started by opening up the honesty box this morning. You don’t really have to say your answers aloud — I don’t know where you might be while reading this — but let me ask you a question, and do be so kind as to hit the pause button long enough to give an honest answer. (To yourself anyway.)
So, when’s the last time you thought about the overarching story of your life, and your place on the timeline, wherever that may be at the moment, and you just said, (aloud or in your heart) “Oh my stars, but I do love my life and I wouldn’t change a thing!”
Maybe yesterday… maybe last week… maybe ten years ago… maybe never? We probably fall into a few different categories on this one.
Now when’s the last time you looked at someone else’s life, someone else’s stuff, someone else’s story, and their place on their timeline, and you thought (but probably didn’t say it aloud) “Man, I wish I was doing that job. Or I wish I had that stuff. Or I wish I had the chance to do that over again.” It may not have been a cognizant comment, so much as a little tug on a heartstring, pulling you wistfully away to dream about something that is not your reality at present.
If you’ve ever stood on the starting blocks preparing to swim a big race, or stood in front of a large group because you have to do a presentation, or stared at yourself in the mirror before walking into a big interview, you know what it’s like to take a moment, breathe deeply, and kind of wish that you had a little extra help on your team to get you where you’re going. Moments in our life like these can be exhilarating, and also daunting, and we are usually painfully aware that we are the only ones who can walk them out.
If you’re planning to swim a big race, there’s one very important thing you need to know before you dive into that water: you have to swim your race. It will not help you, while you’re standing on the blocks, to look at the swimmers on the blocks around you, wonder who’s training them or what their personal best time is on the race you’re about to swim against them. It will not help you to dive into the water and spend every breath of the entire race craning your neck to the left or to the right to see where the swimmers around you are – you could maybe do that if you were just sprinting, but life is not a sprint! It’s clearly a marathon! You have to focus on what you prepared to do in the pool, you have to swim your race.
Like never before, we are bombarded with one particular thing, day after day, and that’s an opportunity for discontentment. The advertising that we see on our screens, on our billboards and in our magazines shows us how we can be prettier, dress better and have longer-looking eyelashes. It shows us houses that might look better than ours. Cars that might be nicer than ours. Exciting destinations that are not on our current travel schedule.
It’s an obvious breeding ground for discontentment, but we probably already know that.
But we give ourselves an additional dose as we watch the highlights of the people around us unfold on Facebook. Sure there’s sometimes very bad news, but often we see the beautiful pictures and fun things it seems like everyone else is seeing and doing. We forget that we’re looking at the highlights a few of our seven hundred friends chose to post, and we start to feel like the life we’re living is pretty lame in comparison.
But you are going to wake up tomorrow morning, and you are still going to be in the same body, in the same bed, with the same life to live — the same race to swim. So unless you’re one of the few folks who wakes up every morning to say, “Oh my stars, but I do love my life and I wouldn’t change a thing!” then, there’s kind of a disconnect between the race we want and the race we have in front of us.
You may have read it here, but you’ve probably heard it other places, too: Comparison is the Thief of Joy.
This morning the Hebrew word for peace was on my mind, Shalom. While there’s a wealth of meaning behind that one word, one simple definition of it is nothing missing, nothing broken.
Doesn’t that kind of peace sound really good? The peace where nothing is missing and nothing is broken?
Isaiah 26:3 says, “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.”
So apparently this perfect peace is available. There is a way to find it, and a way to bring it with us on the race that we’re running. Or swimming.
The author of the book of Hebrews offers an even clearer encouragement:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. {Hebrews 12: 1 – 2a}
So where do we go if we want to be able to say “Oh my stars, I love my life and I wouldn’t change a thing?” We fix our eyes on the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.
A few weeks ago, the Hubs and I were chatting about a difficult season in our lives, a real low point on the timeline where we could barely put one foot in front of the other, but we had to keep going. I commented, “I still just kind of wish we never had to go through that.” And then we looked at each other for a moment and thought, “Well, if we that hadn’t happened then, we wouldn’t have moved back to the States when we did.” And if you know much of my backstory, you know that I moved back to North Carolina and had eighteen months of time with my Dad, before he unexpectedly passed away.
Suddenly, I felt so differently about the hardship we faced that brought us back home. I realized it was a gift. A signpost.
I could not have seen that if I could not see Jesus. It looked like a broken place on the timeline of my life until I fixed my eyes on Jesus.
The world would like to tell us so much is missing and so much is broken. And sometimes things happen and we don’t have the gift of seeing how it’s good in anyway — it never looks redeeming, it always seems sad.
But the peace of God Isaiah mentioned back there didn’t come from understanding. It said God could give us perfect peace, because we trust Him.
As we embark on the journey of thinking about the best way to swim our own race, let this thought be yours for the keeping:
Your race is exactly that. It’s no one else’s but yours to swim. Looking at your timeline, it may seem broken and less than beautiful in so many places, and one of those places might be this very moment. But can I encourage you to lift your eyes to focus on the God who’ll never leave you? We may not understand so many of the hurts in our lives or in our world this side of heaven. But if we fix our eyes on Jesus, we can find a peace we won’t get anywhere else in the meantime (until we do fully know), and (we’ll continue this thought tomorrow) we might still see that there is so very much worth celebrating. So much that’s so good.
xCC
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