inspiration

On Quitting

/ jenfletcher / 2 Comments

Almost two years ago, we struggled with the possibility of changing churches.  When we moved here in 2008, we did a month or so of dreaded “church shopping” but landed somewhere fairly quickly; in a place that was ideal for that chapter of our lives.  Nine years later, they were undergoing staff changes and things started to feel….not-so-ideal.  Things honestly felt completely off.  Add to this an out-of-nowhere, very extreme moment of bullying that one of my kids experienced, and things were finally officially set in motion.  We were moving on.

Words from a friend, watching from the sidelines, still echo in my head:  “You can’t just leave every time you don’t like something.”

She was seeing a pattern.  Pull son from school (2013).  Pull family from church (2017).  And I was so unsettled, so frustrated about this whole church-thing, that I let those words cover me like a blanket; weighing me down with should’s and ought’s and what’s right and commitment.  I let that set up camp in my head for a good long time.

Now we’re a few years out, and with that distance I feel like I can see more clearly, breathe more freely, and maybe (possibly) judge more fairly.  That, and my husband just quit his job, so quitting is back on my mind.  Some things I’ve considered:

  1. If you are miserable somewhere, why would you not leave?
  2. If a place/thing is no longer working for you, and you have tried different options–unsuccessfully–for making it work, why would you not consider moving on/getting rid of it?
  3. Isn’t the feeling of fear (involved in not knowing the next step) a better feeling than despair/sadness/misery (involved in staying where you are, and continuing to do what you’re doing)?
  4. How long do you have to stay in a situation you hate before you’ve “paid your dues” and can move on free of guilt?  Is that really even necessary?
  5. Isn’t it possible to acknowledge, “I had (x) wonderful years here….now things have changed and it’s time to move on?”  Sunk-cost bias doesn’t always apply in life.
  6. I think, though, most importantly….Do I want to look back over my life and see large swaths of misery when I could have done something to change it?  If this is the only life we get, don’t I want to use it in a better way?

My husband’s job change only partially falls into this situation.  He has an idea and he’s ready to take the leap to start acting on it.  The Best Job in the World–which he pretty much had since 2013 as a work-from-home pharmacist–had been sliding toward a tolerable slog (okay, maybe not so tolerable) for about the past year.  The shift in how he spent his days made it easier to go ahead and quit (see #1).  Now we’re off on a new adventure, because (see #3).

Friends, there are plenty of things we don’t have control over in our lives.  Events large and small happen every day that we can’t do anything about.  Don’t we want to act on the things we can?  

I’m ending this post with the Serenity Prayer.  It applies here more than ever.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; 
courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

–Reinhold Niebuhr

 

 

 

 

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Hope and Change

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A little over a week ago I finally planted the crocus bulbs that I’d bought last fall.  Winter hit early here, and my ridiculous to-do list of “things to do before the first freeze” was pretty much thrown out the window–I was glad simply to have gotten the hoses disconnected before the temps dropped.  (I did also manage to plant six shrubs….and that was it.)

Then it was January and for nearly a week, we had fall again.

Temperatures started out in that “not too bad when it’s sunny” 40 degree range, then up into the 60’s, and suddenly it was genuinely warm.….and I realized that with the ground thawed, I might be able to get those two boxes of crocus in the ground.

That’s when I started plotting this blog post.  Thoughts of hope and spring were collecting in my head and knocking about; I knew I had to work in Anne Lamott’s quote about how

It helps beyond words to plant bulbs in the dark of winter.

So that’s what we did, my five-year-old gardening partner and I, on a blustery 50 degree afternoon in January.  (50 degrees!  In January!!)

 

That was a Tuesday.  Then Saturday came, and the snow poured down…..this is Kansas, after all.

Honestly, even this weather makes me happy.  Nine inches of snow is more than that five-year-old has ever seen….this was the year she finally got to build her first snowman.  And this was decidedly the best kind of snow; the stuff that sticks to the trees and makes everything glorious, but melts on the still-warm streets.

So my thoughts shift to change.  Yes, hope and spring; but also, yes, change….things can go dark and silent quickly.  Those warm, sunny days can come crashing down days later, branches overwhelmed with heavy snow.  Bulbs planted in hope are now buried, a foot deep, under all that’s fallen.

Pay attention, though, to what that means.

If things can turn that quickly for the worse, they can also turn for the better.

Change works both ways.  For the bad…and for the good.

So this is still a post about hope.  Because it is January now.  But in time it will be April.  “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” (Psalms 30:5)

 

Start the Car

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As the year turned I was having my usual evaluation of The State of Things.  I’ve spent the better part of five years paring down this family’s life, and I was wondering–especially in light of a potential job offer–what was next.  Was it time to start adding in?  Was it time to say “more” instead of “less,” at least to some things?

What I really want, I’ve always joked, is for God to put a sign in my yard.  “Do this,” it would say, and I’d do it.

Reading during my quiet time one morning I came across this verse:

“I shall walk at liberty, for I have sought your precepts.” –Psalm 119:45

At liberty.

It’s almost like as long as I’m seeking him, following Him, I can do whatever.

Well, that can’t be right.  Can it?

Not even two weeks go by and I stumble across this quote in Emily P. Freeman’s book A Million Little Ways:

“Author Barbara Brown Taylor writes about a time in her life when she was desperate to discover what she was supposed to be doing with her life.  She describes praying to God, asking him that very question in her book An Altar in the World.

God’s answer to her was both surprising and infuriating.  She sensed him saying this:  Do anything that pleases you, and belong to me.”  (pg. 50)

Well….okay then.  Let me think on that.

One week later I’m reading in the book we’ve chosen for our Bible study and come to this beautiful (and comical) word picture:

“The difference between the mechanical and relational approach could be pictured like this:  Let’s say you’d been taught how to get written directions from God to go any place you wanted to go.  You could get in your car and hold these instructions in your hand, printed clearly in black and white.  That’s what many people want from God:  ‘Just tell me what to do!’          [See?  There’s that sign I want in my yard.]

But Jesus will not have it!  Jesus is relentlessly relational.  He gets in the car with you, takes the instructions out of your hands, and grins as he tears them up.  ‘Start the car!’ he says.

You feel uneasy; you just want the instructions!  You protest:  ‘How will I know when to turn?’

He smiles and challenges you to risk trusting him:  ‘I’ll tell you when to turn.  Start the car!’

You protest again:  ‘I need to know ahead of time!’

But Jesus replies, ‘Trust me.  We’re going to stop at restaurants you’re going to love; we’re going to see beautiful places; we’re going to stop alongside the road and help people you can’t stand.  It will be wonderful.  Start the car.”  (–When the Soul Listens, by Jan Johnson, pg. 6-7)

I’d like to think, by now, that I’m starting to get the point.  (I can be slow, don’t get me wrong, but this is a little much.)  All these moments formed the beginning of my “intentional” year, the things that came together just before I sat down to look at my days and do something about them.  I don’t have a map (honestly, I’m lousy at reading maps anyway), and I have no idea what the year in front of us holds (let’s be real, no one really does), but I plan on walking as closely to Him as I can.  If I’m close enough–and stay quiet enough–maybe I can hear his direction.

 

(Incidentally, the other option I considered for my word this year was “abide:”  “Abide in me as I abide in you…..I am the vine, you are the branches.  Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4-5).  It sounds like I’ll be focused on doing that anyway, “word” or no. )

Late bloomers

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I thought about titling this post “Winter is coming,” but figured that might be mistaken for other topics….

Back in the spring my older daughter and I planted morning glories and moon flowers on the south side of the deck, as we do every year.  The vines grow up and over the railing until we can see them from the living room and kitchen.  Planting both gives us flowers literally all day and night; in the morning and evening we get an added show as they all are still open, together.

This year we (ahem….I) made the mistake of not thinning the flowers.  It was spring, and seedlings were popping up all over, and the whole scene was just so full of hope….I couldn’t quite bring myself to snuff out the future of a handful of plants.

Big mistake.

This year we grew huge, enormous, giant vines.  Thick, winding, tangled vines.  Vines with leaves over three inches across.  They were massive.  I finally started going out once a week with a pair of scissors to chop out the vines I couldn’t guide along the spindles and railing.  They absolutely took over.

Flowers?  Not so much.

Eventually, late in the summer, some moon flowers appeared; then more and more.  I was grateful we’d gotten at least a flurry of blooms to enjoy and wrote off the rest.

Until mid-October, when the morning glories exploded.

Dozens upon dozens of buds–hundreds, even?– appearing all over the east section of vine.  They were everywhere, and finally starting to open.

I have no idea what finally set these flowers off; why, of all times, they chose the end of October to finally show up and do their thing.  Because the end of October, in Kansas, is….fickle.  Temperamental.  Unstable.  (Actually, that’s pretty much the weather in Kansas year-round.)

Sure enough, before these ever got a chance to bloom to their fullest, we had our first hard freeze.  They hung in through one night surprisingly well, but night two, well…..it’s definitely time to put the garden to bed for the winter.

We always hear about the late bloomers, the ugly-duckling stories of the awkward and unlovely who finally show up in their lives fully and beautifully.  But what happens if you forget to show up in your life until it’s too late?  Is there such a thing as too-late of a bloomer?

What would you regret not doing if you knew “winter” was tomorrow?

Words of Inspiration

/ jenfletcher / 3 Comments

Months ago–maybe even over a year–I put The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up on hold at the library.  I was something like 312th in line; at some point, we butted up against our hold limit, and I removed it from the list to put a hold on something else more pressing.  So when I found it at the library recently (on the shelf!), I snagged it.  On the way out I did a quick pass through the new book display and discovered her latest, Spark Joy.  I walked out that morning looking forward to a new round of reading and maybe a new way of thinking.

I enjoyed both books.  Some things I admittedly thought were a little quirky…the idea of folding every item of clothing we own I found a little ridiculous.  Our closets seem to be serving us just fine, thank  you–and maybe that’s why I thought it was a strange idea.  If we were struggling for storage or having trouble with making our space work, the folding concept might have really appealed to me.

Other things I felt strangely vindicated by:  keeping things that “spark joy” has apparently been a guiding force in my decluttering for years; I just hadn’t put words to it.  It was nice not only to have a phrase for what was leading me but also to have a reason for keeping the odd things I couldn’t quite bear to get rid of.  I’ve always theorized that if you get rid of enough stuff that doesn’t matter, you’re allowed to keep those things that do, even if it’s a little “weird,” to use my son’s favorite term.

The most important discovery for me, though, came from her book Spark Joy.  “No matter how much stuff you may own, the amount is always finite.”  The amount is always finite.  I almost have to use the word “epiphany” here….the realization that there was An End.  There would be a point where every room in the house has been gone through, has been evaluated, and has been decluttered.  That idea lit a spark under me (sorry, that was completely unintentional) and I dove into the basement storage area with renewed energy.  Because after all, it’s a finite amount of stuff!!

Basement storage, for our needs, is really very specific.  We need a place for seasonal decorations, a place for tools, and a place for those icky “you can’t  get rid of these tax records for at least seven to ten years.”  That’s it.  The unfortunate truth was that the room was turning into storage for “we might use this someday” (Exhibit A:  an inflatable wading pool I used when the bigs were about 6 and 4, around seven years ago) and “I’m too lazy to carry this trash upstairs” (Exhibit B:  that bag there…and there….and there….).  I went in inspired, and succeeded in creating a storage room that was actually a functional storage room.  The east wall consists of bins for seasonal storage, the northeast corner a workbench with tools, and the north wall ends in a small bookcase that holds two file boxes.  Yes, there is still a bit to weed on the tool bench, but the room is so clear that the bigs set up a table against the west wall and brought down some Legos.  (My son refers to this as “baby-free space.”  Even though the “baby” is three now.)

I weeded through our seasonal stuff and managed to narrow things down to one bin per season, except for winter.  Christmas means that pretty much all the other bins down there are “winter,” and I succeeded in scaling back enough to ditch one entire bin from Christmas storage.  In all, I’m down five bins of “stuff…” Amazing how things fit pleasantly when you’re not overcrowding your space.  😉

I now need to grab hold of that “the amount is always finite” idea and apply it to our laundry room closet.  Again.  But I will celebrate any victory I can!

Pursuing a Miracle

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It’s been ages since I’ve sat down and blogged.  It seems that no matter how much I want to write, life is too frantic and frenzied to make the time (more on that another day).  But sometimes you Must Make Time.

Does everyone have that “one friend” where you always wondered what happened to them?  I finally–finally–stumbled across my “one friend” on Facebook recently.  (Don’t scoff about how difficult that is until you try to locate someone named “Jennifer.”  There’s a heckuva a lot of us.)  I discovered that she’s dealt with more post high-school than some people deal with in a lifetime.  Right now she’s fighting another round of cancer and has been presented with an amazing opportunity to be entered into a clinical trial….pending the right amount of money.

Her deadline is November 1st.

This is my attempt to help out, even if only a little.  If you are reading this and are willing, please pray for Jennifer and consider donating, even just a small amount.  Every little bit adds up and I think it would be spectacular for so many little bits to lead to a miracle for her and her family.  Spread the word.  Sometimes the kindness of strangers does wonders…we seem to be willing to pay for the guy behind us in line at the drive-thru; maybe we’d be willing to put that money towards saving someone’s life.  Here is the link to read her story and donate, if you are so inclined:

http://www.gofundme.com/suckitcancerimliving

Thanks for reading.  And many thanks for praying.