Growing Pains

There is no growth without change; there is no change without fear or loss; and there is no loss without pain. Every change involves a loss of some kind: You must let go of old ways to experience the new. We fear these losses, even if our old ways were self-defeating, because like a worn out pair of shoes, they were at least comfortable and familiar.

Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life

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As one who gets sentimental over a "worn out pair of shoes", I immediately recognized myself in Warren's description of someone resistant to change. But change is what the Christian life is all about - allowing God to strip you of the old self in order to clothe you with the new. I don't mind getting new clothes - I just don't like parting with the old ones:)

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This recliner rocking chair has been in my house since before my life began until last spring when it got taken to Goodwill - 27 years together and now some stranger is sitting in it! I was quite adamant about keeping it, but mom was quite adamant about removing it from her home. To her it was ugly, but to me it was full of memories. I liked running my fingers over the rough textured 70's gold, brown, and rust stripes. I remember my sister and I burying Aunt Becky with pillows in it when I was probably 5 or 6, and its where my mom usually sat to nurse my younger sister, and apparently me and my older siblings as well. I liked sitting in it when I was home from college because it was cozy and familiar - it was home.

posing w/ the recliner rocking chair and a cypress knee that used to adorn my grandparents' house

To alleviate the pain of separation, mom suggested I take a picture to remember it by, so I did, and began taking pictures of every other object in the house that I had a sentimental attachment to as well - there were many. A great idea I thought, and one I plan to continue putting into practice - so many life stories those photos contain.

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Lucinda Matlock

I went to the dances at chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost,
ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
I made the garden, and for holiday
rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
and many a flower and medicinal weed-
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent, and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you-
It takes life to love life.

by Edgar Lee Masters
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Growing up is hard, but that is LIFE. Perhaps I make it harder by being so sentimental and resistant to change, but I'm glad to feel it so strongly. Life is good!

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Breathe Now

What does the future hold? So far I've not predicted it, but I keep trying. It is a life long question. I hold my breath in anticipation of the answers - tense and unsettled. Relax, just breathe!

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If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers - most of which are never even seen - don't you think He'll attend to you, take pride in you, do His best for you? What I'm trying to do here is get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving... Don't worry about missing out. You'll find your everyday human concerns will be met. Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.
-Matthew 6:30-34, The Message

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from "Breathe" on the new U2 album: No Line on the Horizon...

Every day I die again, and again I'm reborn
Every day I have to find the courage
to walk out into the street
with arms out
got a love you can't defeat
neither down or out
there's nothing you have that I need
I can breathe
Breathe now

I've found grace inside a sound
I found grace, it's all that I found
And I can breathe
Breathe now
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from my journal on Sunday 3/26/06...

Always coming back to this same reality:
life is a breathing in and out,
a heart beating over and over again,
a nourishing daily
-
Psalm 37:3
Trust in the Lord and do good today
Dwell in the land
and cultivate faithfulness
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God gives grace for today, to breathe in and out - what a freeing and boundless grace it is!

Doubt

I am participating in an Alpha class at the church where I regularly attend - Alpha is a 10 week program in which Christians and non-Christians fellowship over a meal, before listening to a presentation about a basic belief of the Christian faith, and then break up into smaller groups to discuss that issue. This past Wednesday we discussed the topic of evil and how the primary vice of the devil is planting a seed of doubt in our minds. We doubt that God is good, doubt that He loves us. We doubt that we are worthy of affection, of friendship, of employment, of ...

I need constant affirmation, a day without it leaves me doubting - does he like me, does she want to be my friend, am I doing a good job? Am I pretty enough, skinny enough, smart enough, funny enough, interesting enough, talented enough, fun enough? Am I ... enough??? Unfortunately I often look for that affirmation in the wrong place - from people, people just as insecure as myself. Every Christian "knows" that our true identity is in Christ, that we are affirmed by Him, but we often don't know it - doubt creeps in.

Currently I'm reading Abba's Child by Brennan Manning - only on ch. 2, but I think the theme of the book (in Kendra terms) is: we are Abba's child - good enough for God, so who cares about anybody else's opinion. Just be yourself! you is good enough.

Oh, but its so hard not to care about everybody else - the ones standing right in front of me. I can see the approval or disapproval on their faces. How I want to impress them, and receive their affirmation. Funny thing is, there's nothing more unimpressive than someone trying to impress you. How impressive and beautiful is the confident person who knows she is adored, adored and loved by God, without a thing to prove. I want to be her.

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from Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen

always looking for someone or something able to convince me of my belovedness...I kept refusing to hear the voice that speaks from the very depth of my being and says: "You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests." That voice has always been there, but it seems that I was much more eager to listen to other louder voices saying: "Prove that you are worth something; do something relevant, spectacular, or powerful, and then you will earn the love you so desire."

Marching Orders

"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want"
-my graduate adviser

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This tidbit of wisdom was given to me in response to a pretty time consuming and money consuming mistake I made in the lab last week. The mistake was definitely not "what I wanted" - so I guess I got "experience". The whole of one day was spent collecting almost 200 leaf samples, which I then began grinding up at 6am the next morning to extract dna from. The process can be long with so many samples, so I had to start early. On day two of the process, at about 6pm (12 hours later), I dropped one of the 2 plates of extracted dna on the ground - I was surprisingly calm - no cursing or crying:) - I just stared at it for a moment to comprehend what happened, figure out if it was salvageable (which it was not), and then continued working with the remaining plate. "Wow! I just lost half of all my work," I thought. Turns out the other plate didn't work either, so I actually lost all of the work that I'd done. 2 whole days of my life wasted!!! Wasted!!! Failures in the lab are quite common I'm told, and are what research is all about - learning via the process. Perhaps I'm not the ideal researcher, because I'm more interested in getting the job done, and do not have time for making such mistakes aka "gaining experience".

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From my journal on 12/18/07 concerning a different minor mishap:
'why do such things occur?' Why so many little frustrations that don't amount to enough to teach me any kind of lesson, but are just a nuisance?

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I put effort, time, and money into things - little things and big things - that don't always go as I've planned: lab experiments, relationships, cooking endeavors... And when they fail I think, "what a waste of time"! Why would God allow me to waste all that time? The obvious answer for the Christian is that God is strengthening, maturing, and drawing us nearer to Him. I think its easier to be convinced of that when we experience big flops, and God is growing us by leaps and bounds, while the smaller nagging ones just seem to be a nuisance. I have plenty of anecdotal flops to tell of - I'm quite good for that:) And most of them have been small scale, but I'd like to think that even though I've not faced any major hardships, God is still shaping and molding me just as much through the little losses I experience daily.

Elizabeth Elliot writes of how growing stronger from dealing with life's little nuisances has helped her not only to face life's greater sorrows, but also to realize that all of life's frustrations, big and small, are not a waste of time, but equally part of a process to draw her nearer to God. She writes:

While I understood in so great loss God surely must have some great gain in mind, I was not nearly saintly enough always to see the little needling trials of the day as my 'marching orders', the very process itself through which God's great gain would be realized. I was to march, not to leap and bound. It was left, right, left, right.

Too often I am concerned with the end result (i.e. getting dna from my leaf samples) and I want to accomplish my goal as quickly as possible. But God's goal is quite different than mine I think - He is less concerned about me getting to some artificial end, and is more concerned with the process itself - a process in which I get to know and experience Him. What seems like a failure and waste of time to me, is probably the exact opposite from heaven's vantage point - a goal accomplished and time well spent. If only I could see it that way too!