MAKs (May Acts of Kindness)

MAKs (May Acts of Kindness)

The last two months have been, to put it mildly, *insane* at our house, especially April.  I'll spare the gory details but needless to say, I'm thrilled that May is finally here.

The result of all this craziness is that I am now left tired, disorganized and cranky.  I feel as if I'm behind on 500+ projects or 'should do' items.  I'm not sleeping well, not feeling well and not functioning well.  My house is suffering from chronic 'stash and dash' cleaning.  I don't remember the last actual conversation with my hubby; we text a lot but are operating a bit like ships in the night. My kids are losing homework assignments, pawing through piles of clean but not folded laundry for clothes and have not had a consistent bedtime in weeks.  There is also a fair amount of bickering and miscommunication.  As you can see, it's been pretty ugly around here and I'd like it to stop.

My plan of attack?  Well, I've found in life that the best way to get back on track is not to hunker down and focus on ourselves but rather to be intentional about focusing on others.  So, for the month of May, my kiddos and I will be doing May Acts of Kindness.

This picture is a mural that we helped paint at a local school last weekend as part of our church's Weekend of Service.  It was so much fun and felt awesome to get out of our routines to do something specific and unusual to make other people's lives better.

I know lots of people do Radom Acts of Kindness in December but I always seem to buck tradition and like to do things a little off kilter.  Also, it is generally impossible to add one single thing more to the December calendar.  And, people need love and consideration just as much in May, right?  So, here goes!

I'm going to try to keep it as simple as possible, as creative but not costly as possible and as thoughtful as possible.  Also, I'd like my kids to participate so what we end up doing will be mostly kid friendly.  Anyone have ideas for us to do?

I'll post an update how it goes!

Storms and Decisions

Storms and Decisions

You know those times in life where it seems like decisions pile on top of you all at once and need to be made right now?  And, in and of themselves, most of the choices are manageable but they all stack up and all have a deadline?  Things like:

~Do we transfer the kids to a different school/teacher?

~Do we pour more money into the dying car or cut our losses and run?

~Do we put Dad/Granma/Aunt Sally in a nursing home and if so where is the money going to come from?

~Do we refinance the house?

~Do we get a dog or a security system?

~After school sports or no after school sports?

~Do we say yes to the job or stay where we are?

~Is it better to do the surgery or try physical therapy first?

~Go back to school?  

~Do we find a new church or stay committed here?

Yeah, that was our house last week.  Most of those scenarios aren't ones we are personally facing but someone we know or love has been in them.  Our choices were like those and it's been more than a bit stressful.  My brain is pretty much mush at this point.   I don't have any fingernails left (I know: really, really bad habit- don't try that at home kids!).

But, we prayed about what was before us, sought wise counsel and made the decisions.  And then, we stepped out in faith and followed through.  Some of them are pretty strange.  

For example, we made the deliberate choice to, God willing, have four kids in four different schools, in four different parts of town.  No buses.  Yeah, I'm gonna be living in my trusty Honda Odyssey next school year.  We didn't do that because I love driving all over SoCal but because we feel those are the best places for our kids for now.  I may be cursing that course of action come Fall.   

Anyway, after everything was decided and out of our hands, I felt great.....for about six hours.  

Then panic and doubt set in.

I knew with sudden clarity the fiery terror that swept through Peter's veins when he stepped out of the boat to meet Jesus, only to panic and  start to sink.  (Matthew 14:22-36)

I love Peter.  He was such a bonehead; he talked too much, made rash decisions, had delusions of grandeur, was inconsistent and easily distracted from the work at hand.  He reminds me a lot of myself.  

I too made the choice to 'step out of the boat', the USS Comfort Zone, and walk toward Jesus, who was calling me.  Then I got distracted.  I was very aware of how deep the water was beneath me.  I realized how big the waves were getting. And, how far away the boat was.  It felt very lonely.

I panicked.  

Fear came flooding over me and I started to sink quickly.  My emotions went from zero to haywire in .2 seconds.  It wasn't pretty, ya'll.

Fortunately, I made the same smart choice Peter did and simply said "Jesus!!"  He was there.  And, I knew I was safe.

The thing is, the water beneath us is deep; it always will be this side of Eternity.  The waves are big and getting bigger as time goes on.  Our boats are not reliable.  And sometimes, the choice to get out of the boat seems strange, counter-intuitive, stupid even.

But what I realized this week is that I am far better off with Jesus, out in the water, than I would ever be in some man-made boat of comfort. Honestly, is there any more perfect place to be?  I think not.

A Stupid and Dangerous Game

"Comparison is the thief of joy."

~ Teddy Roosevelt

I have 'radio silent' for a few weeks because I've been playing a stupid and dangerous game.  It's one that I struggle with occasionally and I know how dumb it is.  Sometimes I accidentally slip into it, sometimes I carelessly rush in.  The game?  That great and endless game of "Comparison."

How do I measure up?  

Where am I in the long line of Christianity?  "I'm behind you but way ahead of them so I'm doing okay."

"Is she a better mother than I?  She must be, everything she feeds her kids is organic and homemade."

"Wow...That was a great blog.  I'll never be that good of a writer."

"Is my marriage better than theirs?  Of course it is; we *never* argue about (fill in the blank.)"

And on. And on. And on.

Martha Stewart I am decidedly NOT.  Also, not much in my life is Pinterest worthy.  I don't homeschool, garden, sew, sell anything, etc.  I yell at my kids instead of patiently explain things. I bicker with my husband instead of calmly talking things out and serving him.  We eat fast food less than some but more than we should.  There are a lot of places where I feel inferior or not as good as someone else and, occasionally, places where I feel superior.  Enter the Comparison trap.

It's an endless game.  And a stupid one. Because comparison does one of two things to me.  It either:

A.) Discourages me and gives me an incorrect view of life or
B.) It causes me to start judging those around me and gets me up on my "holier than thou" high horse.

Either of those responses kill my faith. They sabotage what I'm supposed to be doing.  They suck up my time and keep me discouraged or distracted.  I'm no good to God in either of those places.  If I'm elbowing for a better place in line, I've got nothing left to do what I'm supposed to be doing and Satan loves that.

An additional side effect: I will always end up a loser when I compare.  There will always be someone smarter, thinner, richer, happier.  The world is full of people who are better writers, better parents, better organizers, more disciplined, funnier, faster, holier.  The list, like the beat that goes on, is infinite.  The ruler that I measure myself against will leave me coming up short.  Every. Single. Time.

I hate living like that.

In an effort to get myself out of compare/contrast mode, I did a Bible search.  Actually, the Bible has a lot to say about comparison but here's the thing-  it's almost always talking about God, not humans.  Only one time does it talk about comparing to one another....to say "don't do it!" (2 Cor 10:12)  Also, Jesus had a low tolerance to the jockeying for position that the Pharisees and the Disciples were always doing.  If He couldn't stand it with them, I'm thinking that He doesn't like it in me either.

My church is fond of saying that God draws straight lines with crooked sticks.

That would be me.  Right here.  Right now.  I'm pretty dang crooked.  Good thing God can use me anyway.  Regardless of how "_______" I am or am not, when I obey Him, He can use me.

I have to stop looking side to side.  Stop looking behind or in front.  Stop comparing notes with what other people have on their lists.  Look to Jesus.  Do the thing that is in front of me that He as asked me to do.

Today, that was write this post; regardless of how I think it turns out, how good it is compared to other things I read, regardless of what the feedback is.  Put down the stupid hypothetical ruler and write.

On "Being All Here"

"Each one of our lives is shot through, threaded in and out with God's provision, his grace, his protection, but on the average day, 

we notice it about as much as we really notice gravity or the hole in the ozone."  

Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines

Can I say that, so far, this blog is not at all turning out to what I had thought it would be?

To be honest, I'm not really sure what I was expecting but it wasn't this.  Most of the posts have ended up very different from what I thought they would be.  And, I had hoped to be more consistent than I have been.  I'm not sure if this is good, a sign that I'm following where the Spirit would lead, or if it just means that I'm a loose cannon on that storm tossed ship, The Internet.  I guess only time will tell.

One thing has been exactly as I had hoped though.  Blogging has forced me to slow down and pay attention.  I am tired of living life in a blur and my title, Being All Here, is an attempt to focus my brain, my thoughts on the here and the now.

Being a historian, I have a strange relationship to time.  I love it and yet I hate it.  I tend toward looking backward or looking forward without really looking around right now.  And, being a goal/task oriented personality, I have the hateful (to me) habit of blowing off present in favor of the past or future.  Anchoring my brain in moment is very hard for me.  Add to that what Ann VosKamp calls "mother-tired" and I turn numb.

Also, I am a handful of short years away from the Big 4-0.  This is a good thing but it is a little sad when I think that last decade of my given moments has simply evaporated.

Dash-1 (helicopter speak for the first helo in a formation, or in our house, the first child) is eye level with me now.  His hands are as big as mine.  I cannot keep his feet in shoes.  And yet, when I look at him, I don't see my Man-cub, on the rim of that vast and thrilling canyon of teenager-hood.  I see my little man; feeding cheerios to the dog from his high chair, lining his Hot Wheels on the windowsill, trying to hold his squirming body still to tame his wild hair.  That baby boy is gone, in a good way, but gone just the same.  I don't remember much of the intervening years.

But blogging is helping me to push aside the crowding voices and be in the minute.  To slow down.  To think.  To rest and to be here.  To hold on to right now so that I can actually remember it later.  To become a deeper person.  I can't write about something without thinking about it first and I'm liking this side effect.

One of my all time favorite books is Mark Buchanan's The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath.  I've read it at least 20 times and find something new every time.  In it he says:

"Being in a hurry.  Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me.  I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry.  But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all that rushing.  Through all that haste, I thought I was making up time.  It turns out I was throwing it away."  (emphasis added)

Yes.  THAT.

I'm slowly learning to:

~Let go of the hurry and the task.

~To pay attention to the tears when the brush gets caught in Dash-2's hair.

~To listen to the Christmas songs that Dash-3 sings as she colors, in February.  Or to watch and smile at her self-invented, yoga-ish routine she does in the living room.

~To notice when Dash-4, the baby, is entirely too quiet and intervene before it becomes a massive mess.

~To take pictures of....whatever, to help me see it, really see it.

Hopefully, eventually, I will do these things not because I might blog about them but just for the sake of marking them in my conscious.  But for right now, Being All Here is helping me to be all here.

A LESS kind of Day

I have not gotten one thing done today.

Well,  I say that dramatically.  I have done things: school runs, some laundry, dishes, posted a FB status update, changed some diapers.  But none of those things are on my miles long "to-do" list.  Maybe they should be, just for the pleasure of checking something off.

Whatever.  I have yet to finish something that I could scratch off my list.

Neither Mondays nor mornings are my thing and I tend to slink into the week with my yoga pants on, slurping coffee and mumbling.  Add to that it has been quite the month- 5 birthdays, one dead car battery, a new squadron, a trip to Disneyland, back-to-school with Christmas hangovers,  back to the routines at church, 3 parties, close friends in turmoil and a round of the stomach flu.

I'm reeling with tiredness.

This is not the "a good night of sleep and good meal will fix it" kind of tiredness.  I'm suffering from the "bone deep, soul weary, lay my head on Jesus's lap and cry" kind of tired.  The kind that comes sometimes when things start to crumble around you or the people you love and you just don't know what to do but run to the Cross.  It's not a necessarily a bad thing; it's just life.  Jesus promised this would happen.  But, it always seems to catch me off guard.

And, I have so many things to do, the list is literally sucking the life out of me.  Good things.  They are important and/or urgent and they are part of my job.  I know enough about myself to know that I am a great starter but a really bad finisher and I don't put stuff on my list if I don't think it's worth the effort to complete.

And yet....I sit here typing a blog instead of working on the relentless taskmaster of To-Do.

Some part of me wants to yell "Get up, girl, and just get started!  It's not so bad once you get going."  And, that's true.  But, then again, some days you just have to step back.

So, I am.

Today I am practicing my "Less" motto for this year in doing less.

Now, I can't do this for long, not even for the whole day, or the wheels would fall off the wagon of Team Nelson and life would get ugly.  But for now, I am turning off the volume of my DO DO DO voice and am doing LESS.

The lists and the jobs and the chores will still be there tomorrow.  The Dishes and Laundry Fairy has yet to find my house so those things will be there tomorrow.  The Thank You notes that are not yet written will be one day later.  Dinner may be cereal.  Life will go on.  Tomorrow will come.

After I decided to do LESS today, I was finishing my Bible Study for tomorrow (haha!  I did get one thing done to check off a list- go me!) I "accidentally" found Psalm 131:2

"But I have calmed and quieted myself, 

I am like a weaned child with its mother; 

Like a weaned child I am content."

Today is a 'lay my head on Jesus's shoulder and listen to His heartbeat' kind of day.  Like a weaned child, content to rest.

What do you do when you don't know what to do?

Recently, both my Marine and I have suddenly been faced with the possibility of going back to school in the next year or so.  Quite frankly, this is a shocking and scary proposition to me.  Since I graduated with a Bachelor's in History nearly 15 years ago, the only thing I've done with my degree is dust it.

We have been seriously blessed in that I have not had to use my education to find paying work.  I drag my husband and kids, and whoever else can't come up with a good excuse, to anything historical I can find.  If you need a useless historical factoid or small talk fodder, I'm totally your girl.  Research is my forte and I love to look up things, just because.

But, unless Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit are looking for staff writers, I'm up the proverbial creek without a job.  And with four kids who will hopefully want college educations too, I should figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

While I don't think this counts as a mid-life crisis (no urge to buy a flashy car or get a make-over, yet), it is slightly concerning that I have no idea what I'd want to get a Master's degree in or what to do with it afterward.  And, I've had to face the idea that if something ever happened to my Marine Pilot, I'd be the sole provider for our kids.  That's not something I could do at this minute.  Thankfully, God hasn't (and prayerfully, never will) asked that of me, but it is a reality that many military wives face.

So....what to do?

I've read that where the World's need meets your passion is where you should serve God.  Huh.  Well, since I am really not sure the World has a need where English manor houses are concerned, I must have another passion I have yet to uncover.

And, the only thing that comes to mind is this quote from a long ago Victorian Lit class (one of my favorites, which speaks volumes about my brain.  Weird.  I know.  My husband and kids will probably need therapy for prolonged exposure to me):

"Do the Duty which lies nearest thee, which though knowest to be a Duty!

Thy second Duty will already have become clearer."

Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus

Great advice.  Not exactly Biblical.

Or is it?

Isn't that the same idea behind Jesus's parable of the Talents?  

"Well done, good and faithful servant; 

you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over man things.  

Enter into the joy of your Lord."  (Matthew 25:21)

I'm not sure but they sound similar to me.  Do the next thing. Be faithful.  In big things or little things, "do the duty that lies nearest to thee."

But, what if my next thing is 900 loads of laundry and yet another round of floor mopping?  Or, car pool.  Get the oil changed or have that difficult conversation with my kids. Un-commit to something I should not have said yes to in the first place.  Speak words of Truth and Love to someone who does not want to hear them.  Do something I don't want to do (#exercise.  yuck.)  Potty training. (Double yuck.)  Feed the homeless man on the corner.  Not go shopping.  Balance my checking account.  Well, then, I guess I need to be faithful in those 'small things'.

In the grand scheme of things, this all looks silly.  What a load of First World, middle class, American problems I just listed off.  But, this is the life I have.  This is where God has placed me.  He could have put me anywhere on Earth, at any time in history.  He chose me for here, for now, so He must have something that He wants me to do here, now.  I'm not sure what that is.  Don't you wish that God would just send us a text message in the morning of what He wants us to do everyday?  I haven't gotten one from Him yet, so I'll keep doing what's right in front of me.

Maybe I won't go back to school at all.  Maybe I will.  Maybe I have a passion I know nothing about yet because I have more 'faithful' to do still.  I don't know.   

But I'm looking.  I'm praying, specifically, that He'll show me what to do and how to do it.  He always has.  I'm praying that I'll obey.  And, I'm doing those loads of laundry.  And praying.  And carpools.  And writing (Side note- This has been strange; for a decade and a half, I've rarely written anything longer than a thank you note.  Now, I can't seem to keep the words in).  And more praying.  Until the next duty becomes clear.

Brand New Year, Same Old Me

I always greet the new year with mixed emotions.

On one hand, I love the idea of a re-set.  The chance at a "do-over" is intoxicating and exciting.  And, it's Biblical (see Lamentations 3:23 and 2 Corinthians 5:17).  Grace for a new day and the chance to begin again are essential.

On the other hand, I know my track record.  I've needed and used what are probably more than my fair share of fresh starts.  The new year kicks off with grand intentions, or shall we call them, delusions.  Finally, I think, this will be the year that I get it together and become the "me that I want to be!"  But, by this time in January, I'm already struggling.  Come Valentine's Day I have basically given up, by Easter I'm not sure what my resolutions were and at the end of summer....resolutions?  What resolutions?

I am great at bringing the old me into the New Year, and isn't that the definition of stupid: doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result?  This lack of my perceived progress is at times very discouraging and depressing.  Why bother if I'm just going to screw it up, AGAIN?

Last year, though, I finally tried something new.  I set a simple goal- Drink more water.

That's all it was.  My whole "resolution" for the year was to drink more water.  Got it.  I think even I can manage that.  And, I did.

Now, that is going to sound really stupid to some people.  Duh!  It's water.

But I'm a recovering Diet Coke addict and this was big for me.  I knew all the reasons, the science, the answers.  But knowing truth doesn't make you follow it.

So last year, I drank more water.  I didn't measure and I didn't keep count.  I just tried to make water a habit and sort of got there.  I drink more water now than I did at the beginning of 2012; it's my default about 50% of the time, whereas before it was my default only when I was feeing sick.  YAY me!  As the saying goes, "Don't practice until you get it right.  Practice until you can't get it wrong."  I will keep at it.

That effort spilled over into other things and became my theme for the year- Be Intentional.

In years past, I would pick a verse and make a long list of things to do/to be/to become.  By now you know how that worked out.

Last year: Drink More Water and Be Intentional.

This blog is the fruit of some of that intentionality.  I also started running and ran two 5K races.  I managed an international move, partly by myself and things went great.  We bought a house based on lots of research and looking, not emotion and whim.  I was finally able to let go of a lot of the "stuff" that was clogging our lives.  All of those things could have gone very badly, if they had been done at all, if I had not been intentional.  Now, I'm not happy about all of the choices I made last year (hello, extra 15 pounds, so not nice to see you!), but I made progress.

It seems I need is simplicity.

So, I'm doing it again this year.  One thing.  One goal.  One focus.

2013 will be LESS.

In a topic for another blog, I'm overwhelmed by how much more, excess, too much, over the top life is in America.  And, while that's not necessarily a bad thing, for now, I need less.

I think my mantra this year may very well turn out to be John 3:30.  Not to get into a theological discussion about taking things out of context, my mind keeps churning over  :"He must become greater, I must become less."

Contrary to what I sometimes try, I can't control God.  I can't manage the "He must become greater."  I have know way of knowing or manipulating what that will look like, nor would I ever want to.  Only God can do that.  But I can control the "I must become less" part.  Less of my natural inclinations.  Less of my default settings.  Less of the 'Amy' habits.  I want to have less, do less, be less, to make room for Greater Him.

For me that will mean: Less yelling.  Less consuming.  Less spending.  Less wasting.  Less mindlessness.  Less eating.  Less busy.  And, less of things that He hasn't even shown me yet.  We'll get there.

For now, though, just....less.