New Beginnings

Food is at the heart of our celebrations.  It's how we mark the significant events in our lives:  We eat!  And we eat the kind of things that leave an impression.  Unfortunately, not only on our tongues, but also our waistlines.  Thank goodness significant events don't happen everyday. 

Take for instance when we discovered Tim had landed a school administration job:

And then to celebrate Isaiah's entry into Kindergarten:



How cool is it that our summer has been bookended by doughnuts and ice-cream?  But between all that sugar, there have been some uncertain moments not nearly as sweet.  I am incredibly thankful to be settled, still trusting, but at complete peace about stepping out in faith on a new path.

Thinking fondly of my sweet Isaiah boy.  Today he began a new path of his own.  Today he donned the traditional orange vest to join the ranks of kindergardeners all over our city.  He wore it proudly, and totally without fear:

All of these things, from special meals, to special vests, to special backpacks have the power of ritual, the tangible representing the intangible reality; something significant has changed. 

When our children are young, we are careful to mark milestones.  We take extra care to make sure they know they have stepped across a threshhold, and that it is a big deal.  I wonder if we fail to change as much as we age because we fail to mark our own milestones, our own intangible realities that may not be noticeable on the outside but have deep significance on the inside?

Or--

I wonder if we fail to make progress in our own transformation because we fail to marry intention with tangible, touchable expressions that keep our new trajectory constantly before us?  Sometimes it is the simple reminder that makes all the difference.

I've made my own kind of marker.  It's not much.  But I see it everyday, and it holds me accountable to the Holy Nudge to start moving in a new direction.  No one else can provide the momentum this Holy Nudge demands but me.  I know that if I don't keep intentionally choosing to move, the Nudge, and the Dream it represents, will dissipate.

Disappear.

I'm too chicken to wear my own orange vest.  Something obvious to everyone.  A bright sign post pointing to a new goal.  I'm too chicken to held accountable in such a public way, where everyone can ask--Have you done it yet?  How far along are you?  How is it coming?

In case my own resolve melts, I don't want to be caught in a gaping hole of obvious, having to not only stare down my own disappointment, but everyone esle's too.

So it's enough for me to tape my Nudges to the bathroom mirror, and each day ask myself how I will step out in faith.

I believe this is the stuff new beginnings are made of.

Perfection

I'm a recovering perfectionist.  A friend of mine would call it approval addiction.  I know its roots, where the hunger originates. The greatest symtom of this dis-ease is an obsession with trying to be perfect, obsessing over doing perfect, preoccupation with producing perfect .  There is no room in this "ism" for growing in grace.  There is just a ravenous need to get everything right.

God has a serious sense of humor.  Because His antidote to the inordinate quest for perfection is failure.  How deeply I've had to learn these lessons.  The gift in every failure I've opened is that I learn once again God loves me.  Not my credentials, not my finesse, not my accomplishments, just me.  His kid.  Among so many other beloved brothers and sisters.  I remember a sweet sentiment I heard years ago:  our picture would be on His fridgerator.


I'm pondering this.  Seriously.  I feel a tug in my soul to walk an unfamiliar path.  I feel like God is asking me to travel a new road, with new challenges, and new tests; I feel so unprepared.  Golly Gee!  The perfectionist in me is rising up, straining against the recognition that I'm His kid, that He loves me, that He doesn't expect me to know everything, that He just wants me to give myself to the new adventure.  And the old fears keep me paralyzed, holstered, immobilized.  The temptation is to not even start because I cannot start as an expert.  I must begin as a novice, an amatuer, one who pursues something because of love.  All I have to bring to the table is love.  There is no expertise.  There isn't really even a clue as to how to begin.

But God keeps calling. 

Keeps reaffirming the call.

Keeps confirming the new path.

What am I to do with my unkempt self in the face of Divine Longing that Yearns for me to move forward?  I have to take a step.  Unsure.  Wobbly.  Uncertain.

I've just recently finished Beth Moore's study of James.  It's been life changing for me.  And I love in particular the Divine picture of perfection James paints.  Here is what he has to say about the whole thing:

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.  And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4, NASB)

The scripture uses the image of perfection, but it is not unblemished.  In fact, it is the blemishes, the scars of trying and failing and getting back up again, that manifests this perfection.  The Greek term is teleios, meaning mature (consummated) from going through the necessary stages to reach the end-goal, i.e. developed into a consummating completion by fulfilling the necessary process (see http://concordances.org/greek/5046.htm).  So James urges us on in our journey, calling us to be joyful in the trials and testing.  Because the thing God is really asking of us and seeking from us is endurance.  We just have to keep showing up everyday and trying the new thing.  And failing.  And falling.  And getting up again.  And getting up again.  And getting up . . . .

And it is this constant oneing of ourselves to the path that produces the thing we yearn for the most--perfection.  Completion.  A maturation that is lacking in nothing.  We can trust the journey to give us everything we need to be everything we long for.  There is no magic pill.  There is no spiritual ab sculpter.  There are no shortcuts.  There is just the path ahead, a Savior who beckons, and the daily determination to get up again and get going.  And truly that is ALL we need.  Anything else is just a lie of the devil who is just so jealous of us he'll do anything to keep us from putting one foot in front of the other, including trying to convince us we don't have what it takes. 

The truth we have to hold onto is that we have everything we need.  Because we are His kids.  And in His eyes, we are already perfect for the path He's called us to.