Soul Mining

I spent some quality time in the car with my daughter, Jessica, yesterday.  We were talking about poetry, how for both of us we use it to articulate things we feel, not really conforming it to rhyme or structure, but to wrap our heads around a thing that we want to say out loud.  I call that process Soul Mining.

I journal.  It's a prose version of what I use poetry for.  I need to process things that happen, things I think, and sometimes the things I want to say, sort of as a dry run.  I've been journaling since I was 13 years old.  I still have all the old spiral notebooks and once upon a time I would have rushed in after them in a fire.  They contained the record of me, of my journey.

I even tried to convert them into a digital version by retyping them into a log of sorts.  (This way in case of a fire it would all be backed up!)  I got a few journals into this project and stopped.  Why?  Because I wanted to reach back in time and shake myself!  It had the same sort of feeling you might have when you are watching a horror movie, tossing popcorn at the screen telling the girl not to go looking in the dark basement in her skimpy PJ's! 

Yeah... so why would I want to save them from a fire if they were full of all my stupid mistakes?  Because this is where I learned from those mistakes.  It's the before and after snapshot of all the things I learned. 

That's what journals are good for. 

Everyone has their own way of doing it.  For me, it goes like this: the first several pages are full of high emotion.  I'll describe the situation I'm going through, how I feel about it, what other people have said, what I fear, what I hope, my hurts and disappointments... all of it.  Most often it's done with tear stains, scribbled out parts, underlining, doodles while I collect my thoughts, whatever is inside my head gets dumped onto the page.  Sometimes I'll take a break there, give myself time to shake off the last of the strong emotion and I'll grab my bible. 

When I come back to it, I'll reread what I've written.  If I'm lucky I'll recognize where I am just being over the top with the feelings, because I've given myself permission to blow.  Some of them aren't based in fact, but previous things that make me feel now like I did then.  When I pick up the threads of those feelings and trace them back I can see if they really belong to me or not.  (Raise your hand if you've ever carried around guilt for someone else's actions or inaction.)  If not, then I ask the Lord to help me unknot them and let them go, they belong to someone else.  Sometimes those feelings I've traced back from the past are because of harm I've done while hurt or angry, and I need to ask those I've wronged for forgiveness so that I can untie the knots and let them go too.

Sometimes those threads I've identified are tied to current issues, relationships and sins that need to be dealt with now.  The process is the same for now as it is for stuff from the past:  Submitting it to the Lord.

If I can trace those issues to actionable items, I build a plan for dealing with it.  Most often it means I am asking for or granting forgiveness.  Sometimes it means that I am giving other people grace for not living up to my expectations.  But in both cases, it involves the work of the Holy Spirit.  My journal is also a record of prayer, asking God to change me, to help me see the world through His eyes. 

Because I screw it up so bad when left to myself. 

Without His grace and mercy, I get caught up in getting justice and my perceived understanding of fairness.  Without the Holy Spirit's intervention into my journal/prayer-life, my entries look like laundry lists of anger and a record-keeping of wrongs and offenses done to me so that I can justify my own bad behavior.

With the work of the Holy Spirit, then I see those wrongs from a totally different perspective than my own.  When I can let go of the feelings that tie me to the moment, I can look at the big picture or behind the actions to the why of a thing. 

It doesn't always change the circumstances, but it changes me.  Those focused prayers, when I am submitted to the Holy Spirit, enable me to see the truth in a situation and react off of that instead of the feeling that rode me when I entered into the journal/prayer time.

Feelings are good for getting a temperature of what's going on in your heart, but feelings aren't always true.  Journaling is good for examining those emotions.  Journaling helps clear the truth from the feeling.  But the most important thing journaling does for me is that it allows me to talk to God.  He gives me room to pour out the stuff that's circling in my head, and because he's a real person to me I feel heard.  He cares about me and my day.  He wants me to lay down the heavy stuff beside Him so that he can replace it with joy, assurance, compassion, patience... whatever it is that I need.

Sometimes, I get spanked.  Sometimes He reveals to me that I am operating from the sinful side of my nature and if I want the good stuff He has for me, I have to be willing to let go of my righteous anger.  I have to get over myself and give Him time to confront and deal with those other people in His timing and not what suits me.  I have to give them room and time to mature at their own pace and not put up stumbling blocks that make it harder for them to come to God on their own.  It means, I have to pray for them, love them and actively look for ways to do good for them.  Because that's what He's done for me when I didn't deserve it.

Grace and mercy.  It keeps coming back to that doesn't it? 

Soul mining, the act of digging up the dirt, rocks and metals in our life - if we do it right, creates a well for the Holy Spirit to seep into your life.  It's the Living Water that Jesus was talking about to the Samaritan woman in the gospels.  The better you get at digging up the self-protecting and self-serving part of your nature, the deeper your well and the sweeter the water of the Holy Spirit.

It's hard work though.  Especially if you like to be right.  If you like to have it all under control and someone has to take the blame or responsibility for how you feel.  It's humiliating to keep digging up the same stupid rocks over and over again.  After a while you just feel covered in mud and the temptation is to sling it at anyone else.  That's human, sinful nature that is common to us all.

Aren't you glad that He doesn't leave us there?  My daughter Megan has been using the phrase (is it a popular one these days?) to "go die in a hole".  I always cringe at it, but in my mind it makes me think of the scripture in Jeremiah 4:13 where it says

"My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water."

Trust me, we all have a back yards full of broken cisterns.  They come in all shapes and sizes, from our for emergency candy stashes for those stress full days to the savings or retirement account, you hear what I'm saying?  Any time we rely on other things instead of God, we fill cisterns with our own resources, and store them for rainy days.  Hoping for the rainy days actually, because that's they only way those cisterns fill, they don't go deep and and when it's gone it's gone.  It makes us careful in who we share those resources with, doesn't it? 

Also, it has a by-product of deceiving us in to thinking that those rainy days of abundance are signs of God's favor, when it may not be true.  Good and bad fall on all of us.  That kind of water shouldn't be confused with the Living Water God talks about in scripture.  It's one of the reasons it's so hard for the rich to enter heaven (no need for God's abundance when they have such deep personal resources) and why money is the root of all kinds of evil.  Not that planning ahead or having resources to draw from are bad, only when you do that INSTEAD of digging the well.  But I digress...

If you have dug deep, and the resources are endless, it makes you want to pitch a tent for shade and invite the neighbors over, doesn't it?

The point is that we all do the digging, it's life.  We are all in the mud and we all have to deal with the sin that so easily ensnares.  The real question is where do you dig, and what are you digging for?

Journaling is my shovel.  What's yours?

Spinning Plates

Stress.  Worry.  Fatigue.  There's a bit of that going around my house these days.  So I struggle with trying to keep it all into prospective.

Sometimes it's simply a confluence of events that merge and overlap, stretching us thinner than we'd like.  Sometimes it's because we can't say no and agree to be responsible for too much.  The trick is knowing where your boundaries are, knowing your limits and not letting the expectations of everyone else, push you into putting their priorities ahead of your own... or Gods. 

It's hard when everyone else is screaming for you to do their thing, and the Lord speaks in a still small voice.  A voice that's only heard when we close everything else out and ask Him to say it again.  It's also hard when we carry our own agendas, agendas that require us to stay focused, on task and keep our eyes on a goal.   Our hands become so full of what we carry, or busy spinning plates, that we aren't able to receive what God would give us.  If you are like some in my family, you are very hard on yourself, with high standards and so very good at keeping all the plates spinning.

I won't go into the details of the particular stresses our family is under.  Some of it isn't my story to tell, and I didn't really bring it up here in this place to vent over the frustrations of the issues.  I bring it up, because how we handle stress is vitally important to God.  How we process it, how we treat the people around us, and how we come to terms with the responsibilities we are entrusted to, are where the rubber meets the road in how we live out our salvation.

The bible says that this process is a refiners fire, that the everyday messiness of our lives causes enough heat and pressure to separate the dross.  It creates a sludge of nastiness that has to be skimmed off the top in order for the metal to be pure.   

But the problem is that the process is uncomfortable.  It hurts.  It makes you want to lash out at people around you.  It makes you want to find someone else to blame.  That is human nature. 

The floating debris of sinful, human behavior when you are under stress is the very thing that God wants you to hand over to him.  Maturing doesn't happen in an instant.  Salvation does, but the rest is the ongoing refining process that gets decided in the little moments of your every day.  In the spaces between falling under stress and what you do with it. 

He knows that life is tough, that we have our priorities wrong and we take so much on that we are afraid to slow down.  Salvation doesn't mean that we suddenly are perfect!  All it means is that we have access to someone who is.  Someone who waits for you to ask for his help in dealing with the dross that's floating around in your vision.

He says, in Matthew 11:30 that his burden is easy and his yoke is light.  It means that we always have a partner to share the load.  It means that we have a place to set the worry, because His perspective changes our stress levels. 

Again, that sounds like a pretty image, but it doesn't help in the practical everyday part of slugging through a tough day, does it?  No.  That's because in order for all that to work, for it to function, it means you have to treat God like a person you can trust, and not an intellectual agreement you've made about your ethics.

Because of our pride and our tendency to blame shift, we cling to that debris I was talking about: our justifications for our behavior, the anger that we think makes us strong, the envy and jealousy that feeds our belief that other things will make us happy. 

To be yoked with Jesus means that you trust Him more than you trust your own abilities.  That's why the burden is light.  Because it's HIM working through you to accomplish things.

Philippians 2:12-13  So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

He is a real person, with his own plan for your life.  Most of us humans just don't like letting someone else have control.  At our core, we don't like someone else to have the ability to screw up our plans, goals and dreams. 

Trust is what it really comes down to then, isn't it?  Do you trust Him?  Is He a real person who is vitally interested in you, desiring to spend time with you, to heal you, to give you Joy and Peace? 

It's all decided in those tiny spaces where we make the choice of trusting in Him or relying on our own resources.  If you have not submitted yourself to the Lord while you are still liquid and malleable, then when the stress (heat) goes away, the metal of your being hardens again, and the scum on the top makes it even more difficult to hear that still small voice.  After a while, you build your own thick wall between God and you.  "That's just the way I am" and we justify our behavior.  All the while it eats at us that we are left with a plastic Christianity that has no power because we no longer have access to the one who can make us pure, make our burdens light. 

But first... we have to come to him.  Stop trying to do it on our own limited resources as though we don't want to bother him with it, and bring our crisis to Him.  Because the power to do the mighty things are decided in those small spaces between cause and effect.

A Christmas Reflection ~or~ The Ties That Bind

Picture of Megs and Max taken last year
during a romp in the snow.

While trying to peel apart the filters to make coffee, Max, our dog, went into a seizure while eating his breakfast. I'd just given him his morning pill with a dish of kibbles to chase it down - suddenly water and dog food are flying everywhere. 

So, upside? 

That mopping I didn't get to while prepping for Christmas dinner - is now done.  The snow we didn't get for Christmas is cheerfully falling now and Max is licking himself like a cat to clean up - even though we've rubbed him down with snow and cleaned him up.  Well, Megan did while I was mopping.  She tells me they had a snowball-catch game while they were at it.  My only wish is that I had pictures of the happy chaos outside.  (Picture above was from last Feb.)

My epilepsy-worry over the puppy is eclipsed a bit by the now clean dog, clean floor and snowball flight of the morning, and I sit down in my chair with a cup of fresh coffee to spend some of my morning with you. 

Christmas day was spent with Mom, Dad and Nate.  It was really nice having them over, though we missed Stacey and Stew - who just got engaged a few days ago.  (Congrats to them!).  They are planning on getting married some time this coming year.

It was a themed sort of Christmas this year.  Most of the kids were given gifts that let them explore their creative side.  We have a model car, rug hooking, and yarn with crochet hooks, needles and looms.  Now we all know how to cast on and do one-stitch in knitting, (it sort of went viral) Jessica has made several hats (amazingly good ones with a built-in cuff) and I foresee many pot holders and scarves in our future.

All good. 

It's the sort of thing you do side by side with someone while you talk or watch movies together.  There's one project going around that I've seen at least three people pick up and work on for a while and set down where it waits for the next person to put a few more rows on.  Even Bill learned how, so he could teach Jess.  She was getting frustrated and he wanted to decode the directions and help her learn by watching.  For him it was like a puzzle to solve.

He looked at me and said how he couldn't believe he was doing it.  It's not something he'd ever had an interest in learning how to do.  Ever.  And I smiled back at him and told him that his interest wasn't in knitting, it was in his daughter.  That man LOVES.  He's got the knack of it.  When they all were in a play one year, he did tech work behind the curtain, just so he could be near them.  That's the kind of man he is.  I've never known anyone like him.

We celebrated Christmas a day later with Mark and Robin.  Rebekah was with us for the day too (her car was getting fixed nearby and we were a happy landing place since we've been trying to make our schedules work to get together anyhow, love that lady!).  So when it was time to go over there, we dragged her along with us. 

We went to their new apartment and had pizza and a movie and exchanged gifts.  Robin has the place feeling like home with pictures hung everywhere, and Mark's got his movie posters mingled in with all the Christmas lights.  My favorite is the "Marvel Wall" of all the block-buster movies based on comics that have come out in the last few years.  Mina has had another hair cut since I saw her last, and the chickie feather, fly-away, hair that she used to have is gone.  It's coming in thicker and has body and a bit of swing to it.  Combine that with her legs getting longer and her vocabulary growing... *sigh*  She's growing out of that toddler phase and into a bright and inquisitive little girl.  Time is passing too quickly!  I'm so caught up in the active business that is happening in my own house and I miss seeing the changes in my granddaughter. 

It was a really wonderful Christmas, and I am blessed. 

Sometimes life is hard, sometimes it's easier to focus on the negative things.  The first-thing-in-the-morning-mess to clean up.  The nagging worry of a sick puppy that you can't fix.   Time speeding faster than you'd like.  The snow or rain that falls every time the roofers are supposed to come, and how you are going to pay to keep a roof over your kids heads.  The hundred other worries and expectations that dangle in my vision but aren't mentioned here...

I don't know where you are at, reader.  I don't know what kinds of joys and stresses orbit you, but I do know that how we approach them changes everything.  Do you come at life with a closed fist?  Are you so weighed down with worries and bitterness and resentment that your hands are too full to accept the joy and peace and love that are in front of you? 

We cling to what we know.  Those things we cling to, define us, because we mold our lives around them.

My Christmas wish for you, is that you would know Jesus.  That you would cling to Him and let Him exchange the things that are weighing you down for the good gifts that he offers. 

Thank you for spending part of your day with me, hearing about mine.  I am blessed to have some of you in my life, to know you on a personal level.  For others who have stumbled here from a wider net, thanks for taking the time to read through this long post.  It's time for me to step out of my devotion and journal portion of my day and go on to the next thing. 

My Life's Work

I had started a family web site not too long ago.  I had dreams of it keeping us all connected as the kids all grew up and moved out and started lives of their own.  I had a family calender and a family blog - thinking that we could all post things to a community site that would store it all.  The problem was it didn't "take".  I was the only one there and it remained my own vision.  Part of publishing to a blog is that you are speaking TO someone.  At the other site, I was speaking mainly to myself, out loud in an empty room. 

So I am moving select posts here; ones that are generic enough for friends who wander over from facebook or catch me on the net somehow through a search engine.  This way, when my kids are ready to read what I write and leave behind for them - it will be out here.  I'll migrate the stuff I don't want lost from there, over to here.  While in a sense I'm still talking to an empty room, (not much in the way of comments here) I do so now with the front door open. 

So if you are there at the door, listening in on my day today, what follows is a re post from that other blog.  In fact, it's the very first post from that one.  I was stating my reasons for creating it in the first place. 

It's funny, I just caught myself the other day saying exactly this same thing to Lys.  It was ready to speak because I'd already articulated the thought here in this format.

I'm looking for finding creative ways to use what I know and help those around me - specifically a written record for my kids. I don't know how long God will give me with you guys. Right now I'm healthy (though overweight) and not on any long term medications. This is the only legacy I will be able to leave to you guys, you are my life's work. Leaving written or photographic records is my way of banking something for your future, by establishing a steady past (foundation) to build on.


The rest is up to you. Your choices, your reactions to the things you can't control... all of them will build options and limitations of your own making. You get the credit for what you do with what you are given. If you are successful, it will be because you made the choices and imagined your future with it's goals and dreams, not me


But your past? Your understanding of what common sense is? That is something I have been giving you from the start, intentional parenting, making you my highest priority and life's work.