Is there a dream or a goal or a hope or wish or prayer that looms before you and seems too big to accomplish?
I’ll give you a moment to think about it.
Got it?
Me too. A lot of them.
In Where the Sidewalk Ends, Shel Silverstein wrote this amusing little poem with a heap or wit and truth:
“Have you heard of tiny Melinda Mae
Who ate a monstrous whale?
She thought she could,
She said she would,
So she started in right at the tail.
And everyone said, “You’re much too small,”
But that didn’t bother Melinda at all,
She just took little bites and she chewed very slow,
Just like a good girl should,
… and eighty-nine years later she ate that whale
Because she said she would.”
I think sometimes the hopes and dreams and goals in our minds feel a bit like eating a whale.
And the trouble is, we kind of like it better when things are easy, right? We want the get-rich-quick-story. We want to be discovered. We want the overnight underdog-now-on-top thing.
Proverbs 13 speaks to this in an interesting way.;
“Wealth from get-rich-quick schemes quickly disappears;
wealth from hard work grows over time.” {Prov. 13:11, NLT}
The Practical Bite-Sized Way
A few years ago, we wanted to start reading aloud to our kids more, but weren’t sure exactly where that was going to fit into our sort-of-feeling-tight routine.
We decided to make use of those few minutes when we’d finished our dinner and the kids were still eating to read something aloud. Every once in a while, they’d be ready for bed ahead of schedule and we’d read then as well.
We started in January, and by May we’d read seven books (chapter books!) to our kiddos with time we didn’t realize we had — time that would otherwise been spent on a little of this and a little of that.
This one-bite-at-a-time principle doesn’t just apply to eating a whale. If you want a deeper walk with Jesus but don’t have an hour every morning, take the ten minutes you do have. Find an app to read the Bible to you while you drive to work, or set that alarm just a few minutes earlier and see what happens.
If you want to improve your relationship with your spouse or children, consider what you could do with ten minutes. Sitting on the floor for ten minutes to play with my four-year-old fills her cup big time. Taking ten minutes to talk over coffee before starting our work days is a life-giving practice between the hubs and me.
Andy Stanley said, “There is a cumulative value to investing small amounts of time in certain activities over a long period.”
Small bites.
Baby steps.
Big change.
May you pause today to see the small steps that will help bring about the big change in this one precious life of yours, friend.
P.S. The Children’s Miracle Network was not able to hold their annual telethon this year because of COVID-19 {what else!} Along with many other miracle families, we are raising funds to benefit the incredible hospital that (along with so many prayers) saved our son’s life. Please click here to learn more.
Ten Simple Ways to Share Your Faith With Your Kids is a simple ebook I created to help parents take baby steps toward changing the faith culture in their families.
My kids fell in love with the movie Curious George. I listened to it in the minivan so many times, I might be able to recite 75% of it from memory.
In one scene, Will Ferrell’s character, Ted (The Man With the Yellow Hat), realizes he’s made a mistake by choosing to send George away. He talks to his friend (a school teacher named “Miss Dunlop” played by Drew Barrymore) about the situation, and she immediately asks,
“Ted, do you want to hear what you want to hear, or what you should hear?”
When he replies, “Uh…could you run that by me again?” she continues:
“Do you want to hear the truth which you should hear and I’ll tell you, and not just what you think you want to hear? The truth is that George is gone and it’s your fault. Now the question is, what are you going to do about it?”
Miss Dunlop didn’t pull any punches, hey?
Proverbs 12 (along with many other places in Scripture) deals with the issues surrounding the giving and receiving of advice. But gosh, sometimes it’s really hard to take it, right?
The New Living Translation puts a few of these verses so plainly you almost want to laugh…
“…It is stupid to hate correction.” (v.1) {OUCH!}
“…the advice of the wicked is treacherous.” (v.5)
“…but the words of the godly save lives.” (v.6)
“Wise words bring many benefits…” (v.14)
And here’s one to really drive the point home clearly:
“The godly give good advice to their friends;
the wicked lead them astray.” (v.26)
If I’m going to be most honest, I’m going to tell you there have been many times in my life when I would’ve much rather had someone tell me what I wanted to hear, instead of telling me the truth.
Not too long ago, I asked a friend for advice about one of my kids, and she was honest with me.
The audacity.
At first, I was a little irritated that I wasn’t just hearing what I wanted to hear when I asked her opinion. But her honesty gave me so much food for thought that by the time I got home I was genuinely repentant — realizing I’d totally been making a bad choice with how I was handling a situation. And then I appreciated her friendship even more. I would’ve been stupid not to receive correction, right?
So, where are you going when there’s a big decision on the table and you don’t want to make it alone? Do you have friends who will tell you exactly what you want to hear? Do you have friends who will tell you the truth, whether you want to hear it or not?
And when you’re in the hot seat as an advisor — are you taking it seriously? If you aren’t sure what your opinion should be do you ever take the time to say “let me think that through/pray about that and then share my thoughts?”
There’s a constant tug on our heartstrings, each and every one of us, to choose some way that isn’t God’s way. In small ways and in big ways, we are going to feel pressure to (as discussed last week) do the thing that will give us the results we want, instead of the thing that is the right thing to do.
Let’s sum up this ‘thread’ of the conversation in Proverbs 12 with two potential golden nuggets, shall we?
1) Think carefully about who you ask for advice. Don’t choose the people who will tell you what you want to hear. Choose the godly people who will tell you the truth.
2) Think carefully before you advise your friends, spouse, children, loved ones… We honor the Lord when we spur one another on to good works — and God’s will is always where the good stuff is.
P.S. The Children’s Miracle Network was not able to hold their annual telethon this year because of COVID-19 {what else!} Along with many other miracle families, we are raising funds to benefit the incredible hospital that (along with so many prayers) saved our son’s life. Please click here to learn more.
P.P.S! If you are new around here, I’d love to welcome you to subscribe for a weekly deep breath and a slice of encouragement. I’ll send you my latest little ebook, Ten Simple Way to Share Your Faith With Your Kids. You can sign up and grab that right here.
Want to join me in taking a deep breath and just thinking?
I’ve been slowly strolling my way through Proverbs recently, and Proverbs 11 can be summed up with this one really hard question.
We’ll answer it when we’re eight years old, when we’re 18, 28, even 78.
You find it in these keywords, interspersed throughout the text, repeated in a dozen principles:
Goodness and integrity. Upright.
It can sometimes be a hard thing to lean in to. When the chips are down and you’re struggling because you didn’t study for that test. Or your biggest competitor seems to keep on one-upping you in the sports arena or the business world.
At some point in life we will arrive at this point where we have to ask ourselves this question:
Am I going to do the right thing because it’s the right thing, or am I going to do the thing that will get the results I want?
The Message version puts some of these situations into context like this: (all from Proverbs 11)
God hates cheating in the marketplace; he loves it when business is aboveboard.
A woman of gentle grace gets respect, but men of rough violence grab for loot.
When you’re kind to others, you help yourself; when you’re cruel to others, you hurt yourself.
Bad work gets paid with a bad check; good work gets solid pay.
The Word is very consistent on this point: There is an inherent and intrinsic value in choosing goodness. The good way, the good path, the right thing.
This doesn’t mean we will ultimately get the guy or we will eventually one-up that business foe. It doesn’t mean we will win a race against that competitor that we know is doping and just hasn’t gotten caught yet.
What it means is: The choices we make with our lives matter to God. And He wants us to choose well. If we only focus on the short game, we will probably want to take shortcuts to get ahead. But when we focus on the big picture and remember that the race we’re running is not a sprint, but a marathon, we might begin to trust:
Count on this: The wicked won’t get off scot-free, and God’s loyal people will triumph. {Proverbs 11:21, MSG}
People like to talk about cosmic justice or karma — but perhaps we’d be better off saying the God who created the Universe is intimately acquainted with His Creation. He loves goodness, and He loves justice. He cares about what happens. He cares about how people treat each other.
When we least expect it, it seems we can be sideswiped by a complex situation, but when we pull all the puzzle pieces apart and lay them out on the kitchen table, it still is, at the core that one simple question we have to answer for ourselves:
Am I going to do the right thing because it’s the right thing, or am I going to do the thing that will get the results I want?
While our nation is in turmoil, and so many hearts are in an uproar, what can we do to make a positive difference? We can show kindness. We can listen. We can pray. We can keep on showing up, keep on listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit and regardless of the outcome, keep on doing the right thing.
We may not have all the answers… let’s be honest, we don’t. But we believe in a God who does.
Let’s keep showing love, listening, and being kind.
P.S. If you are new around here, I’d love to welcome you to subscribe for a weekly deep breath and a slice of encouragement. I’ll send you my latest little ebook, Ten Simple Way to Share Your Faith With Your Kids. You can sign up and grab that right here.
Extra encouragement from this week’s Insta-inspiration…
Are we friends on Instagram? This week I shared some words about what we see when we look at a photo (like the one above) and what’s really true. I’d love to share and connect with you there.
In case your third grade Math curriculum didn’t cover this base, check numbers are a (relatively) simple way of quickly checking the answers to math problems without having to go back and rework the entire problem.
I promise this isn’t a Math lesson — don’t get antsy on me.
A sweet little nine-year old of mine and I were gathered at the homeschool table, going through the steps over and over again. We practiced finding the check numbers. Adding them to each other. Using them to check the problems we’d worked.
When the game in the math lesson was too complicated, I made up a simpler version where we just practiced the process over and over. We kept score and Blake won.
At the end of it all, it felt like an hour well spent.
I hustled to the kitchen, a few minutes late to get started making lunch.
A few minutes later, Blake sauntered in.
“155!” I shouted, just like I had in the game we’d played fifteen minutes earlier. “155! What’s the check number??!!”
He furrowed his brows and lifted a hand to his forehead — the way he does these days when he is asked a difficult question and he just can’t get his brain to help him with the answer.
After a pause and a few more eyebrow furrows he responded:
“What are check numbers again?”
My heart sank for a moment. We’d spent an hour — an entire hour — just practicing check numbers.
Fifteen minutes later, Blake didn’t remember — couldn’t remember — what I was talking about.
It would have been so easy to feel frustrated. Defeated. Overwhelmed. Discouraged.
Instead, I decided to smile.
If I could take a step back and distance myself from the situation, it was almost funny, right?
You probably know that last year we almost lost that nine-year-old. A brain aneurism almost sent him home to Jesus sooner than any of us were ready.
He’s a walking miracle. That he can read, jump, run and play is a gift. That he is able to do Math at all, that he still remembers the multiplication tables he learned before any of this happened is nothing short of glorious.
So the very thing that would make me want to throw my hands in the air in desperation? It’s also the thing that makes me realize how very blessed we are to have a day together to practice check numbers.
Even if that concept won’t stick and we have to try again.
Sometimes I give myself a moment to wonder — what sorts of things has God spared me from? How many almost-losts almost happened, and where, but for the grace of God, might I be?
I think someday we’ll find out — and we’ll be overwhelmed when we realize how miraculous every breath we get to take truly is. Just how much each day is a gift.
When we have a brush with death of any kind, gosh, aren’t we suddenly grateful in a whole new way to breathe, to feel… to be alive?
One Psalmist prayed it this way:So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom. {Psalm 90:12} In the midst of these complicated moments, when unemployment, scarcity and fear loom in the doorway, when sickness and loss lurk in the corners, we will gain a heart of wisdom by counting these days as gifts.
Here’s what I’ve learned in a nutshell:
The Big Picture: It’s hard to hold the idea that every day is a gift in our minds when life is hard or things go wrong. We forget every moment is a gift, and I think maybe it took me nearly losing a kid last year to gain this perspective. I’ll forget again and need to be reminded again, and so will you. We aren’t promised tomorrow, and it would behoove us to hold onto that thought!!
The Baby Steps: When an hour seems wasted, or a deficit seems overwhelming, try counting up instead of down. Calculate how many days you’ve had already. I’ve lived well over 13,000 days! Nearly 14,000 gifts. Nearly 14,000 opportunities to grow and change and learn and breathe and be. You GET to be here and live this day! Your perspective on its giftedness is really up to you!
So let’s count our days, take a step back to remember the big picture, and, when we can, try to laugh instead of crying.
Considering so many of the might-have-beens, today is a good day.
Also — just in case you missed the Ten Simple Ways to Share Your Faith With Your Kids freebie I shared recently, you can find it on the brand new Parenting Resources page I ALSO created for you! Find all the good stuff at https://www.carolinecollie.com/parenting/.
It all started with a well-designed laundry table. The hubs built this perfectly-dimensioned beast to make space for folding and to hold four laundry baskets on two shelves underneath. Adjacent to the shelves, there’s a slightly higher surface with hanging space underneath where the no-tumble-dry clothes live until I put them away.
It seemed like a glorious thing, built, assembled, and ready to make me a laundry-diva. Kicking dirty clothes in the bum and taking stains prisoner.
Until it wasn’t. Or I wasn’t.
Weeks and months went by and I felt almost every bit as frustrated with laundry as before — even though I had the perfect space to get it done.
Finally, I paused and just listened to the tension I was feeling. Why was entering the laundry room still filling me with dread?
It took me all of thirty-six seconds to place where the issue came from:
I always felt behind. Laundry always felt overwhelming.
I gave a few minutes to ponder this dilemma and to start asking questions. Laundry isn’t going away. It makes me feel like rubbish. What am I doing wrong? How can I change this situation?
A simple “what-if” question came to the surface.
What if I create a simple routine that means I do one load every day?
I mentally scanned my morning routine and came to a conclusion: in the amount of time it takes the hubs to make our morning coffees, I could come into the laundry room and start a load every day. Around our mid-morning snack time, I could come back in and switch those clothes over to the dryer.
Another ten minutes in the afternoon while a pot of water is boiling or dinner’s in the oven, and the load for the day is done.
It’s a simple story, right?
A small parable of intentionality, if you will?
But it turns out doing that one load of laundry per day, even for our family of six, seems to be enough.
I am no longer feeling overwhelmed (about laundry). And that, my friends, is a very nice feeling.
Why am I sharing this with you today?
One simple reason.
Now is a great time to…
Pay Attention to Tension.
We’re, globally, in a season of transition. As the limits and restrictions of COVID-19 are gradually lifted and we slowly work our way towards our new normals, there will be tension.
We’re likely to wrestle with the discomfort of moving back into busier schedules.
Maybe you will feel tension about:
Eating Habits
Exercise routines
The screen time you’re allowing yourself or your kids
The number of items on your calendar
I don’t want to introduce any tension you’re not already feeling. I simply want to encourage you to take the time to slow down and observe the tension you may discover.
Sometimes tension, whether it comes to the surface as a tightening in the stomach or a pang of anxiety in the chest, is our body’s way of telling us something we’re moving too quickly to notice.
When you get the sense that there is tension, don’t immediately assume something is awfully wrong. Sometimes something as simple as adding “start a load of laundry” to your morning routine can solve the problem.
If you’re feeling tension about something bigger than the chaos of your laundry room, I have a second little piece of advice to encourage you with:
Think Big Picture, Take Baby Steps.
Start by looking at the big picture and asking where the tension is coming from. Are you feeling some tension about your eating habits?
Great! We’ve identified something! We have information we can work with instead of a vague uneasiness plaguing our underbellies.
What is one baby step we can take to help us move forward? Let’s brainstorm.
Pick one night each week to add a new healthy recipe into your rotation at home.
Decide to only get take-out once a week, maybe Friday nights?
Research healthy recipes that you can double or triple and freeze and add them to the rotation.
Search online for a nutrition course or Master Class to help you learn more.
Look at that! We’ve gone from identifying a problem to thinking through numerous small steps that can help us work toward the bigger goal of making positive change.
You get to decide the next step, set the next goal, and keep working forward from there. Sometimes the first step is the hardest to take, but the momentum you build once you start moving will ramp up and help you push toward bigger change than you could have imagined.
As you face the season of transition ahead, I encourage you to pay attention to tension, friends. Remember, it’s often your body’s way of helping you observe something you’re moving to fast to catch on to.
Is there somewhere you’re feeling stuck today? Some tension you’re feeling that you’d like some encouragement about?
I’d love to welcome you to hit the comment button or shoot me an email and let me know. One of my foremost goals for the year is to serve you well. I’m here for you!
Also — just in case you missed the Ten Simple Ways to Share Your Faith With Your Kids freebie I shared recently, you can find it on the brand new Parenting Resources page I ALSO created for you! Find all the good stuff at https://www.carolinecollie.com/parenting/.
So…did you get a breath of fresh air this week? {It was a little prescription from wisdom last week!} Did anything tug at your heartstrings or speak to your soul? I hope you were able to take a moment, and if you weren’t, I hope you’ll try to today, or tomorrow… or the next day… and if after three days you haven’t found that moment, we might need to think about those yes’s you’ve been yessing, yes?
Last week we talked about the Wisdom that is plain to see if you take a moment, with a heart ready to learn, and wonder at the creation around you.
Today, I’d like to ponder that Wisdom that was intentionally placed deep inside that one precious heart of yours. That God-stamped “Know it in your knower” place where we inexplicably know things before anyone tells us — that stealing or killing is wrong, for example.
While “Conscience” might seem like a word borrowed from outside the Christian realm, Paul speaks plainly about it in his letter to the Romans, where he talks about the Gentiles who were never exposed to the Law (that being the Law of Moses), but who still do the things in the Law, “who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them…” (Rom. 2:15).
So often I’ve been in situations where deep deep down I just knew, this is the way or that is the way — inexplicably. I believe this is part of God’s thumbprint on us as His creation — part of the way we were created in the Image of God — to think and reason and sense His Will because our consciences accuse or excuse us as we ponder the road we take.
Once upon a time, back in our old abode, I took some time outside to breathe and think and to ask God to teach me. I looked at the new Hibiscus plant stretching toward the sky. Marveled at a patch of Oregano, spreading in a cosy corner. I gazed at the moon, low in the sky and more white than a good glass of milk, and then my eyes finally rested in a rather unexpected direction.
The Hubs had built raised garden beds for me, and in the springs and summers that followed we weeded and planted and tended and watched and tried our best to bring good things out of the soil. We had mixed success with cucumbers, heaps of Basil, a few butternut squash, bumper crops of Italian tomatoes, and times where the tomatoes just never really seemed to “get going right.”
That year, we had a big trip planned right in the middle of the summer, so after throughly weeding the garden with the help of a tenacious four-year-old, I stirred up the dirt and then just left it, still pondering whether to plant something now and leave it to the elements for three weeks, or to rather wait and see what late bloomers I might try when we got home again.
A couple of months later, my garden was chock-a-block full of plants of different shapes and sizes. Green and verdant and teeming with life. Unfortunately, none of the plants growing in those beds was edible, or even useful.
Every single plant stretching up toward the sun in those beds? Was a weed.
Did you notice how the foolish woman started out repeating the words of Wisdom in Proverbs 9? Just like Lady Wisdom, she says “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” But Lady Wisdom offers those lacking in understanding a meal, and an invitation to forsake foolishness and go in the way of understanding.
The Foolish Woman has a quite contrary idea: “Stolen water is sweet. Bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”
What does all this have to do with a garden full of weeds, if you please?
Well — stolen water is water you didn’t work for. Bread eaten in secret is probably bread you didn’t earn and shouldn’t be eating. The easy things come easy — but they are not the best things.
Likewise, it was absolutely effortless for me to grow a garden full of weeds. Truly! And feel free to try it sometime! With no effort whatsoever, you just stir that soil up, leave it alone, and see what treasure awaits you!
But the good things? The precious things? The things you’ll be proud of, the things that will feed your family, body and soul — they are not the easy things.
It would be a complete cinch to raise my children to be brats, right? If I just left them to their own devices, never corrected any wrong behavior, never spoke to them of kindness or sharing or thinking of the feelings of others, that inherent sin in their nature, that selfishness that we’re all born with — it would grow quite a garden in their hearts, wouldn’t it?
But would I be pleased, in the end, with those results?
Of course not.
Instead I’m trying my darnedest to model kindness, to cut out words of sarcasm because I don’t want to hear them repeated back to me, to touch gently, speak softly, listen carefully, and to encourage these little creatures in my care to do the same.
They also have that God-whisper in their hearts — built in.
Once, a darling eighteen month old heard me say “Don’t touch that” and I watched her wrestle. She looked at me, and then held out a finger again to the item I’d told her not to touch, wondering if perhaps she could get by on the pretense she hadn’t heard. But when I said it a second time, that little finger dropped to her side, and she turned and walked away from temptation, and back to me. She just knew it in her knower.
Deep in our hearts there’s a whisper of Truth from the One who created us. And Wisdom has an open invitation extended for us to come to her house and dine. We can feast on the wisdom of Creation — observe how easy it is to grow weeds, but what a challenge it is to grow good things — and we can learn.
We can feast on the Wisdom God breathed into our own souls — listening for and learning to recognize the whisper of His voice in our hearts, accusing or excusing so that we know the path to take.
There will always be the easy way.
Krispy Kreme donuts and fast food are easy. Preparing good, wholesome meals for our families is not.
Couch surfing and binge watching late night TV is easy. Getting up early to do the good work that is waiting for us is not.
Ignoring undesirable behavior and moving right along is easy. Having a heart to hear with a struggling child who needs correction… nope, once again… it’s not.
Take a moment today to ponder how you hear from God when you want His direction and guidance. Is it easier to hear outdoors, in the quiet? Do you often find direction when you open the Bible and dig in? Does the godly counsel of a trusted, faithful friend do wonders for your soul when you’re at a crossroads?
Wisdom cries out from nature, as well as from the depths of our own souls. Be still, listen, and take off your shoes.
And maybe? It helps to just know: the easy way is very often not the best way. Let’s pray God will refine us, and lead us deeper into longing for His very best.
Psst… Did you catch the news about a new resource I created for you? It’s called Ten Simple Ways to Share Your Faith With Your Kids, and you can find it on the brand new Parenting Resources page I ALSO created for you! Find all the good stuff at https://www.carolinecollie.com/parenting/.
I create resources to help people find deeper, more meaningful relationships with God through pursuing, pondering, and prayer. The "Shop" link above will take you to the home of many of the lovely resources I’ve created to help you keep walking one day deeper with Jesus.
I create resources to help people find deeper, more meaningful relationships with God through pursuing, pondering, and prayer. The "Shop" link above will take you to the home of many of the lovely resources I’ve created to help you keep walking one day deeper with Jesus.