What You Really Want, part V

pixabay/IsaacFryxelius

Continued from Part IV:

Admitting and acknowledging loss is healthy, but staying in the place of endlessly verbalizing everything that’s wrong in your life will make you ugly. Guaranteed. You’ve got a choice, no matter where you are, to wither into bitterness, or bloom into joy. Emotional honesty is one step in the journey. Choice is another.

Choose Joy

In every season, life is going to be cruel and relentless and you will cry your eyes out over a myriad things, but you can choose joy. Things won’t ever be fair and your friends will have privileges you don’t, but you can choose joy. Could it be possible that you have gifts they’d like to have?

There is glory and beauty in the darkness, could we but see! And to see, we have only to look. (Giovanni, 1513)

In every life stage, we will need to choose joy and live with purpose in order to live fully. Technically, it’s the same for everyone: be thankful here and now, and carry the posture of living with open hands to accept whatever is given. Practically, it’s going to look different for different people with different giftings.

For you now, when you read stories to children who aren’t your own, can you try to delight in their shining eyes and pudgy fingers? When the tenth friend loses her heart to a wonderful man and you feel left behind, can you find just two things today to put on your Thanks List? Can you intentionally plan a way to serve someone beside you, choosing to be less princess and more servant even if everything in you screams against it?

Probably the most insidious temptation is to believe the lie that even God has forgotten you, left you behind, and thus you’ll have to cope on your own forever. This lie is absolutely toxic. Please don’t swallow it!

God, in His endless faithfulness, will give you reasons to believe the truth, but you need to keep your eyes open to see it. The changeless truth is that He’s intimately acquainted with everything that makes you ache and smile. He’s never turned His face away from you—not even for a second—and even when you feel like despairing, He’s up to something good. It’s true!

Joy is far more than positive thinking or collecting cute sayings on Pinterest* or posing with a Starbucks cup. Joy comes from knowing your designer’s heart and knowing His intentions for you are good, good, good. Always. You can hang your heart on that and you will have joy that bubbles out often, and even if no man notices it, that joy will make you beautiful!

Which is really what you want, isn’t it?

This was an article I wrote for Daughters of Promise, a beautiful magazine for young women. Maybe you want to subscribe to it for the year, or give it for a gift?

*Relax–I LOVE Pinterest! And Starbucks. =)

16Jan2015

What You Really Want, IV

Continued from Part III:

When you start looking for things to be thankful for, you’ll be surprised at what emerges. Try it!

Self-pity equals wrinkles

Think of the most beautiful lady you know. I’m going to guess that she doesn’t spend much time pitying herself, but that her face is turned toward the light, and that she shines even when she’s honest about hard things.

There’s very little virtue in chirping “I’m alright—everything’s fine—who needs a man anyway?” I’m always on a search for emotional honesty because it’s at that point that truth can start soaking in, change us, and bring us to freedom. It’s ok to tell God that you’re tired of waking up alone and that it stinks to go to weddings alone. God’s big enough to take any rants you have. I hope that you also have a few friends with whom you can be honest. It’s ok to cry. You’re allowed to admit that you grieve a love that has no name or face.

Being honest (Jesus can take it off you!) means being vulnerable but also knowing the truest, most loyal love you will ever know.

You will not know the comfort and companionship of Jesus if you always insist that you’re ok, don’t need any help, and are never lonely.

While I was writing this article, I was drinking coffee in a darling café in Warsaw. (The café’s name was “Między Słowami” which means “among words.” Yes, it was as idyllic as it sounds. I’m very, very rich!) I looked up suddenly, and across the room, a tall, dark man was watching me. He was so handsome, I stopped breathing for a minute. He was too far away for me to see any emotion in his face, (Interest? Curiosity?) but a wave of something washed over me because suddenly I wanted to be noticed, delighted in, seen as beautiful, because no man does that for me.

Being honest about the voids I feel is ok, but I couldn’t stay there, and left the café when my coffee was finished.

15Jan2015

What You Really Want, III

Posted in life, singleness by Life is For Living book

Continued from Part II:

Because—and this is something to face squarely—you’re not a princess. As the Polish say so smoothly: you’re not the bellybutton of the world! Less princess and more servant will make your life richer than you can imagine.

Thanks multiplies joy

Being intentionally thankful for specific things makes your life blossom. One day I was pitying myself about being far away from my friends and my friend Jenny said, “Anita, you HAVE to give thanks NOW for THIS. If you don’t, you’re going to become a bitter, miserable person.” I burst into tears and said I don’t want to be bitter and miserable. So later that day, even though I felt everything was gray and dismal, I heard a CD playing beautiful songs and I made myself thank God that I could hear. I was washing dishes and looked out the window and saw bright blue sky and made myself thank God that I could see.

It was a baby step, but it was in the right direction, and I started thinking about how overwhelmingly rich I am, just by acknowledging two senses.

My friend Sarah says being thankful is life-changing. She was burning out by working full time and going to college and pulling all-nighters for brutal classes. She found a little hide-out in a stairwell at college that became her refuge. Here she could sit on the carpet and cry and list the things she was thankful for, despite her extreme exhaustion. One day as she sat there, she heard another student in the stairwell on his phone, talking for ten minutes, telling his friend that prayer makes a difference and that he should keep praying because God hears. Sarah put that conversation on her list. When you start looking for things to be thankful for, you’ll be surprised at what emerges. Try it!

14Jan2015

What You Really Want, II

Posted in life, singleness by Life is For Living book

Continued from Part I:

I know there are times when aloneness hits you and the idea of joy feels like a joke. I don’t know if anyone really gets used to being alone. But do you want to live without joy? Please don’t write it off as an impossible quality. Even if your dreams aren’t coming true and even if you fight back tears while the sparkly-eyed bride unwraps her gifts.

Looking beyond our bellybutton

Let’s look for some perspective. To do that, we many need to think outside our boxes.

What if you’re single now so that you can love on the troubled little ones at Kids Club? Could it be that your being unattached frees you to be more flexible and available to serve in places that need undivided energy and passion?

Is it possible that this season is giving you tools that will improve the rest of your life—skills like discipline, mindfulness, sensitivity, thankfulness? So where you’re at now does have purpose! While marriage is our design, no time of our life is solely a waiting area. Every stage is preparation and experience for the next step.

Let’s not waste time by pitying ourselves or begrudging others’ gladness. If I marry, I don’t want to look back on these years with regret. I want to have lived to the hilt and colored my days with the materials I had because I’ll know that today was preparation for my “new now.”

Being intentional means that sometimes you have to take yourself by the scruff of the neck and do what you don’t feel like. For example, when you’re going somewhere alone and you feel extra lonely, try singing. Maybe prayer songs? Or “Abide With Me”?

On a night when your best friend is going on a date, you could try to plan something that will keep you focused and involved with at least one other person. Not as an escape, but as a way to be pro-active and forward-thinking and not so near-sighted.

Because—and this is something to face squarely—you’re not a princess. As the Polish say so smoothly: you’re not the bellybutton of the world! Less princess and more servant will make your life richer than you can imagine.

13Jan2015

What You Really Want

Posted in life, singleness by Life is For Living book

The next 5 blog posts are going to be installments of an article I wrote for Daughters of Promise, a beautiful magazine for young women. The theme of the current issue is “intentionality, direction, and cheer”, so that was the over-arching theme I aimed for while writing about singleness.

If you and I would meet over coffee today and we’d introduce ourselves, I wonder how you’d describe yourself and your days. Maybe you’d tell me you were planning a bridal shower last night for your best friend. And tomorrow you plan to babysit your nephews after work. And that you love your job and your nephews and can’t wait for your friend’s wedding.

I’d notice your smile and the way you nod in anticipation. Would you also have the courage to talk about the pang that lies just under your happy activity?

Talking honestly about the ache of singleness might be taboo for you, but I’d like to erase some of that hesitance. Here is where we call it what it is, because honesty is the first step in walking toward freedom and light.

So on the night of that bridal shower, if something stabs you with wishing you could have some of those pretty things and lovely dreams, this is permission to admit the stab. Or your hunger when you hold your nephew to read a story and put him to sleep and you want your own little one to hold.

This is also a call for decisively stepping out of the pool of pain you could drown in. It’s not Operation Bootstrap. It’s the posture of open hands that will save you. Intentionally choosing another way of looking at things will also save you, as well as adopting purpose and joy here and now. These are some of the habits of abundance that God created us for.

22Dec2014

Beyond Money

Posted in Poland, teaching English by Life is For Living book

We completely wore out the fun Grinch story. I’m happy not to hear it for another year. So I chose to read Tolstoy’s “Papa Panov’s Christmas” to one student on Saturday. The story about the shoemaker expecting to see Jesus has many versions and translations, and this one was abbreviated, but even so there were some phrases and words that challenged my high intermediate level student.

To help her be able to take it in more easily, I read slowly, deliberately. When the cobbler kept watching the window for Jesus, I suddenly felt my throat constricting and slowed my words even more so I could control my shaking voice. Maybe he had missed his visitor? I felt his ache of disappointment. When the cold girl came with her hungry baby, my student’s eyes brightened and she interrupted: “I think she is Jesus!”

When we finished the story, she said she’s going to find it in Polish so she can read it to her children. No one ever said that about the Grinch story, even though we got lots of class mileage out of it. In his simple story, Tolstoy encapsulates the deepest longings and satisfaction of the human experience, and I felt honored to share it with my student and see her understanding.

Outside our apartment block is an outdoor market. At any time, I love shopping there, but these days leading up to the holiday season, it’s an Experience. I stood in line at the little old lady’s stand with the big blue barrels of sour kraut and pickles (the best in the town, everyone agrees). Beside us was another stand with three enormous square tubs that held maybe a foot of water crowded with dozens of fat, gasping carp. I tried to watch discreetly and not be too slack-jawed but all I wanted to do was stare and shake my head.

Older people stood in line at the tubs (my observation is that no one younger than 40 is willing to buy live carp and kill them) and carefully pointed to the fish they’d chosen. The beefy men selling them would scoop out the carp, weigh them, and pop them into trash bags. It was serious business. I couldn’t decide if the men were so serious because they were opportunists taking advantage of the tradition and the old people, or if this is simply the way things are done. I’ve been told that carp is the high point of the Christmas eve meal, so clearly buying, killing, or selling it is not a joking matter.

In other parts of the market, people were laughing and talking and exchanging wishes. I bought half a meter of beautiful lace for some presents sometime, and the ladies were so relaxed and positive and pleasant and wished me a merry Christmas as I left. Celebrating this season in a Polish town is so rich that I think everyone should be jealous of me.

This morning I had my last session of the year. My student is 71 or so, a retired Russian language teacher, and she had asked that this lesson would be Christmas carols. So I prepared music and lyrics for my favorites, “Lo How a Rose” and “O Holy Night.” She came with an elegant centerpiece she’d made with greenery from her garden, plus a box of butter cookies she’d made, plus 2 CD’s so we could listen to her favorite Polish carols. I made green tea for us, and we listened to the songs and sang along as we wanted, and drank tea and I munched her cookies and chatted in Polish because, well, it’s easier for her than English.

At the end of the hour, she was preparing to pay for the lesson, and I put my hand on hers to refuse it, saying today wasn’t a lesson, only pleasure, and I can’t take money for it. It wasn’t an English lesson, any way you look at it. “No, Anita, I beg you” she said, “You’re young and you need things. Please take this to buy what you need–maybe carp, or some meat?” She was dead serious.

The weather outside is frightful –driving rain coming horizontally in strong wind. No snow in sight. I hang onto my hood, walking home, and I’m sooooooooo glad vacation has started, and there are a million things I’m happy about, but something more than rain is making my cheeks wet.

The things I need are beyond money. What I have is more than I can hold.

12Dec2014

Potpourri

Posted in life by Life is For Living book

I’ve been preoccupied with many things besides the blog, so this post is going to be only bits of this and that.

First: the double give-away for Footprints on the Ceiling. I chose the elegant method of asking two housemates for a random number, and the number they chose was the comment number. The lucky names were Lolita Hershberger and Mary Ann Mast. That was a lot of fun!

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An ESL teacher milks every holiday and special occasion for lesson material. This week for me (several times) it was The Grinch that Stole Christmas. I thanked God again for Dr. Suess and I hope my students enjoyed the story as much I do.

Twice yesterday I introduced students to the silly song I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas. It’s simple vocab, and funny, and it went over great. But oh, it makes a dreadful earworm.

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I’m reading Steinbeck’s East of Eden. I find it both repulsive and wonderful. The vixen in it (no spoilers here, plus I’m only half-through) is what makes me want to throw the book across the room, but Samuel Hamilton keeps me from it because he is so beautiful and wise. I can hear the Irish lilt in him. That, and Steinbeck’s uncanny one-line observations about human tendencies keeps me engaged in the story. I hope I won’t be sorry.

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Have you seen sunshine today? Did you thank God for it?

30Nov2014

Battery Recharging

Posted in life, Poland by Life is For Living book

Yesterday our American group of 14 adults and children had a glorious time of celebrating Thanksgiving. Never mind that Thursday was a normal work day in Poland and none of our friends and neighbors know what the holiday is like. We still wanted to hang onto it, so we set aside Saturday afternoon and evening for that purpose.

As a mid-dinner activity, our hosts passed around a big brown bag. We were all to reach in without looking and pick out the first thing our fingers touched. Among the items was a candle, screwdriver, spool of twine, and mine was a battery. Then we all took turns saying something we’re thankful for, connected to the object in our hand.

I said that I’ve been thinking a lot of a year ago, and how sick I was, and after the surgery, my battery was completely out of power, but now it’s pretty much like new, and I’m so grateful.

I don’t do well with improv so of course afterward I thought of lots more I could have said.

Like how grateful I am for the previous day that recharged my batteries. Can I tell you about it?

First, I tidied up the house and laundry, and started preparing the stuffing I was making for the next day’s Thanksgiving dinner. Then Jewel and I went to a friend’s place in the country to find greenery. There were so many beautiful colors and textures of pine that we could hardly stop, and loaded arm loads of it into the car. Then we went to another friend’s place to pick up pine cones from the forest floor. The husband and wife came out to the car to welcome us, and I showed my bag I’d brought to put the pine cones in. The mom said something to the young boy who ran down the hill and came back up with a feed sack full of pine cones. So all I had to do was put them by handfuls into my bag.

“Come in and have tea with us, please? You haven’t been here for two months!”

We couldn’t say no. The youngest girl put out cups and saucers on the coffee table and the mom brewed her winter tea: Lipton with cinnamon, cloves, and lemon slices. As we drank, we chatted (all in Polish) and found out they were doing homework for their foster care classes.

“I wrote a story for my assignment. Can I read it to you?”

We said yes please, but please explain it to us in simpler Polish. “Oh, it will be simple, because it was written for three year olds.”

And it was, and it was a ~~magical moment~~ huge battery recharge, sipping sweet, spicy tea, listening to a new darling story about a little rabbit. Its burrow was broken and its mom was sick so the mice took it to their house, and wrapped it in cozy blankets and fed it hot soup. They gave the rabbit a mirror so that he could see someone who looked like himself. awwww!

Back home again, we finalized supper plans for 4 guests, and I put together Greek marinated chicken which I’d never done before and finished the stuffing preps and brought in the armloads of greenery.

With Messiah coming from the speakers, I arranged greenery and candles and stars on the coffee table and window sill. I couldn’t believe how the time flew as I deliberated colors and arrangements.

Our friends came at 6:30, the meal was a success, and we played games and talked and laughed til late. The dancing candlelight in the background gave me so much joy on top of everything else.

At the end, I was tired, but my battery was completely recharged. It had been a hard week. I’d had a stomach bug all week and couldn’t eat much and lost considerable sleep because I was fretting about things I couldn’t control. I’d cleared this day’s plans so I could stay home and do as little as possible. But despite those changed plans, in one day, so much energy came surging back.

Recharged batteries takes a certain level of self-awareness because it takes place when we don’t consciously make it happen. What are you doing when time is immaterial to you? When do you feel yourself relaxing and breathing deeper and slower? What happens to make you start laughing or humming to yourself?

For me, it happens when I

try new things, experiment, explore (it was Greek marinated chicken that day)
step out of routine
work with my hands
socialize
eat chocolate
handle color and texture
work with words

God made us so intricately, with so many layers, and I don’t know how it works that one layer affects so many others. I only know that He is very, very good to me in giving me so many ways that help recharge my battery and power up for the new week.

Photo Credit:

<a href=”https://www.flickr.com/photos/46151146@N04/9754012931/”>Takashi(aes256)</a> via <a href=”http://compfight.com”>Compfight</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/”>cc</a>

26Nov2014

Footprints on the Ceiling, Dorcas Smucker–A Double Giveaway!

Posted in books, recommendations by Life is For Living book

The initials on the front cover could be my dad’s initials, but they’re not. You’ll have to read the first chapter to find out the story behind the book title and the initials.

Because I’ve been following Dorcas’ blog for years, I’ve already read all the pieces she has in the book. So I’d read the delightful story of the footprint and initials, but had forgotten about it.

That’s one of the reasons I like this book: I get to revisit the lovely stories I’ve already read, but their details are hazy in my brain.

Footprints on the Ceiling, as all her other four books, are compilations of Dorcas’ monthly newsletter pieces. As I read this book, I repeatedly was amazed at Dorcas’ skill in organizing the stories to make them fit perfectly into this new setting. And the sections correspond with the title: kinds of footwear that connect with parts of life: children, change, forebears, travel, reflecting.

What I love about these stories is that they are filled with quirkiness and color. The lines that emerge when you turn the page are not what you expect, and even if you’ve read the blog posts before, you’re still surprised and amused. For example, the waddling Canada goose in the opening paragraph in “A Knack for the Absurd” had me in giggles until the end of the chapter.

Though there’s a lovely light-heartedness all through-out, the book isn’t all jokes and silliness. Dorcas thinks deeply and processes well, but she keeps her own advice and (usually) doesn’t take herself too seriously. This is a trait that I find endearing and inspiring.

There are tears in the stories too. I cried at the beauty of a family wedding that celebrated deep joy and healing after shattering loss and grief. Dorcas’ world-view doesn’t get stuck in pain and she lives in the reality that stories do go on, and it won’t always be dark and gloomy, so her words birthed hope in me.

Dorcas loves her family well, with fierce loyalty and service to her husband and children and extended family. She always blogs with great respect and love for her father who lived with them last summer, and in the book writes warmly of her mom’s character and legacy since her death. The stories are honest, but not voyeuristic. They are candid, but not at the expense of someone’s dignity. So we know that these Smuckers are normal people who fight and make up, and make messes and lose things but at the end of the day they don’t stay mad and they keep talking things out. Which is what every healthy relationship is made of, especially the family, God’s ideal social structure.

This is probably the quality that brings readers back to Dorcas’ stories: it’s real life. No fluff, no fancy-schmancy lingo. Forget the idea of blankety-blank Amish novels. Last winter when I was teaching at CBS, the chapter about Bible schools came out, and it was so on-the-money that it made the rounds to all the teachers. We completely identified with the rules, unspoken rules, and laughed knowingly about the signs God sends. Her novel, when it comes, will be made of the same colorful, earthy, human stuff, and I can’t wait!

For now, Dorcas is giving away a signed copy of Footprints on the Ceiling. To enter the giveaway, leave a comment below. I’ll close it next Wednesday, Dec.3, and you should get it in time for Christmas–a treat for yourself or a friend! This is going to be a double give-away, in that Dorcas will send a copy to the winner in the US. But if you live in Europe, you’ll be eligible for my copy. Isn’t that fun?!

Footprints on the Ceiling is available for $15 per book, postage included. You can mail a check to Dorcas Smucker, 31148 Substation Drive, Harrisburg, OR 97446. US addresses only. To send a copy to Canada or overseas, email Dorcas at dorcassmucker@gmail.com. Or find it on Amazon here

14Nov2014

We Have Only to Look

Posted in life, Poland, recommendations, singleness by Life is For Living book

Recently I read the book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. It’s the riveting story of her childhood, raised by her artist/hippy/rebel/paranoid parents who were always on the run. She writes with great candor and grace, never bitter about how she got dangerously burned while boiling hotdogs at age 3, or how she was forced to root in the garbage cans for food in high school because she was starving.

(It’s a really rough story in spots, and I don’t recommend it for young readers or to anyone who takes offense at honesty.)

I listened to several interviews with Jeannette, and something she said keeps coming back to me: the worst thing that happens to us is actually the best thing that happens to us.

So she was starving during much of her childhood, but it means that now she appreciates how she can go to a grocery story and buy ANYthing she wants. Their poverty limited them terribly, but it didn’t keep her dad from taking her out on the porch and giving her the planet of her choice for Christmas. He’d said she could have any star she wanted, but when she asked for Venus, he said “It’s Christmas. You can have a planet if you want.” What other child ever got Venus for Christmas?!

It keeps coming back to me–the idea that the things that are ‘bad’ can become something good. I say it carefully here, because I’ve not walked through the deep, devastating losses that many people have. But I want it to be true, that pain doesn’t have the last word, and that the yucky can be changed into good.

In my days and hours and minutes, it looks something like this:

When I repeatedly bruise myself in our poorly-designed kitchen, it means we have food to cook and dishes to wash.
I don’t like living on the first floor of our apartment building, but just outside my bedroom window yesterday I got to watch an older man carry a wooden cabbage slicer the size of Texas. It was wide enough to take a whole head of cabbage. Only in Poland!
A student who drains me is the reminder that I have energy to work and I have a job where I can be creative and be challenged every day, keeping boredom far away.
Housemates who have different priorities than I, resulting in potential frustrations, means I don’t live alone. Thus, I’m rarely lonely, and hopefully I won’t become stiff and unbending. (For an excellent read on this phenomenon, please treat yourself here.)
Being single when most women my age are mothers of teenagers means I am free to plan trips with my friends at a moment’s notice. Or pile books on the empty half of the bed.
Having undergone a harrowing surgery and long recovery gives me sensitivity to others’ physical pain and limitations.

Part of me doesn’t like listing these things, in fear that it feels chirpy. No one who is walking through a dark time wants to hear glib, pat words like “Look–you have dishes to wash which is more than some people have!” Or “Hey, be thankful for your freedom to travel!”

I think the transformation of good coming out of bad is a process of perspective that is hardly possible in the middle of the mess. There is value in being honest and saying “This really stinks, and I hate this.” But to walk out of that and look back on it from a safe distance is redemptive and healing.

Which is what God is all about. The change of perspective is way more than positive thinking and pulling yourself up by your own shoe strings. The picture of peace and joy and glory shining out of negative situations has God’s fingerprints all over it. Because His character is light, and the darkness will never, ever, ever over-power it.

This is what I hang my heart on.

Read The Glass Castle if you want to read a story told by a masterful writer. But more importantly, maybe today you can try to step back from your story and find the streaks of light piercing your clouds.

The beauty might surprise you.