carrying fire: when obedience takes us outside the comfort zone

Posted on by March 30, 2023

The Lord gave me this amazing idea, and I was so excited to follow through…until it was time to actually do it.

As responsible people do, I came up with a lot of excuses. I hadn’t showered the night before; my hair was a mess and in no condition for video. And, as writers do, I found the most productive ways to procrastinate. Suddenly, cleaning my desk was of utmost priority. I put away the tape and scissors, filed a few papers, and stacked the books. Considered sweeping the floor, or washing the windows. I mean, it was that bad.

Add all of this to the fact that I have the technical skills of a Chihuahua.

So when the Lord asked me to start praying online every week – which, as I type it, sounds like the easiest thing ever and nothing to be intimidated by – I had no idea what was the best way to go about it.

carrying fire: when obedience takes us outside the comfort zone

When I finally did do it, it was in two parts – first, in hands-free mode, until I ran out of space and had to add the rest in selfie mode after figuring out how to splice and trim the video (gah). Because, like a Chihuahua, I told you.

Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress.

– 1 Timothy 4:13-15, ESV

But the opportunity to pray with and for anyone who wanted to join me on a weekly basis was a no brainer. Until my brain kicked in and started making excuses for me, of course.

Isn’t that the way it is with going forward, though? He calls us outside the comfort zone, but somehow we’d rather put it off or just not bother because we don’t understand how much breakthrough is at stake in going there.

Too risky. Too scary. Too unfamiliar. Too unknown.

I’m confessing to you right off the bat so you know you’re not alone in this. I don’t usually think of myself as a risk taker but when I look back at my life I realize I am one – but little things like praying online can still make me pause and squirm. Sounds stupid, yes?

We ask Him for direction, to light our way, and often the way He does that is by lighting a fire under us. We often respond by extinguishing those fires in any number of ways instead of having the boldness to pick up the fire and carry it.

We are our very own wet blanket, smothering our own growth.

We pooh-pooh it, telling ourselves it was just a silly idea and not Him at all, when in reality these steps of obedience are the key to unlocking answers we’ve been searching for.

Or we put it off. And our delay, like most symptoms of laziness, makes us work harder and longer in the long run.

And sometimes we give up before we start because it won’t be perfect, and we can’t control how people will respond to us. So we sacrifice our breakthrough on the altar of perfectionism and control – which is really just a monument to ourselves and our pride. If that altar were made into an idol, it would look like us.

But we usually need to accelerate our pain to accelerate our progress, so we might as well jump in and start doing it, whatever it is.

Starting that business. Filling out the adoption paperwork. Making that phone call. Researching that ministry opportunity. Writing that book.

Going on that mission. Taking that leap.

Saying yes.

Once the words leave your lips, they no longer belong to you. We have a monopoly only on our own thoughts. The act of speaking is not a conquest, but a surrender. When we open our mouths, we are sharing with the world – and the world inevitably interprets, indeed sometimes shifts and distorts, our original meaning.

– Frank Luntz, Words That Work

We wrestle with the feeling of exposure and tension after being vulnerable and laying it all out there, in teaching, writing, speaking, mentoring, moving — however you are leading others as they watch you follow Jesus.

But it turns out, the best way to go about anything is usually forward.

Going. Doing. Obeying. As opposed to stalling, fretting, and backsliding. Because life has a current to it, and every moment we are either moving further up and further in, or drifting back downstream. There is no neutral.

What answer can human intelligence make to God’s love for the world? What answer, for that matter, can it make to our own love for the world? If a person loved the world – really loved it and forgave its wrongs and so might have his own wrongs forgiven – what would be next?

And so how was a human to pray? I didn’t know, and yet I prayed. I prayed the terrible prayer: “Thy will be done.” Having so prayed, I prayed for strength.

– Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

There is a cost to disobedience, and it is much higher than just going outside our comfort zone.

He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

– Genesis 3:24, ESV

When we move in obedience, we go in freedom – bringing light, making progress, carrying His Presence as fire. But when we are forced to move by our own disobedience, we are pushed out in slavery.

The truth is, we move outside the comfort zone either way.

When we say yes, facing our fears and excuses, we’re no longer afraid of what the fire will do to us. We are invincible to burning when we learn to carry it.

____________

This is an excerpt from ABIDE volume 5: Obedience to Move Forward, available here.

plowing through: finding grace and balance in seasons of crazy

Posted on by July 7, 2021

The weekend is here but the house is a disaster, so let me introduce you to our normal method of tackling it: The Quick Boogie.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of a Quick Boogie, it is when everyone launches into a five-minute clean-up – a few people pick up the floor and put stuff away, someone throws dishes in the dishwasher, someone wipes down counters, and we all take turns bossing Finnegan, who, as the resident toddler, made most of the mess in the first place.

plowing through: finding grace and balance in seasons of crazy

Usually five minutes is enough. At the very least, it enables us to sit on the couch without getting gouged by a pick-up stick.

But this weekend, to indicate how much (or how little) sleep I’ve had over the last few weeks with a teething baby, I announced it like this:

“We need to do a quick boogie, real quick.”

And then – don’t try this at home, husbands – Vince announced, “Watch out, kids. She’s using redundancies.”

I gave him a Look and told him to watch out himself, or I’d start using adverbs, too. (In a marriage of writers, this is how fights start.)

“In that case,” he said, “I’ll quickly leave the couch.”

“You’d better, or I will violently kick you off it.”

The night before, Kavanagh woke up right as I was going to bed, and he stayed awake until 3 am, all kicky and restless. The next day was a filming day, and it was hard. I couldn’t remember simple pieces that I knew perfectly the night before while rehearsing, sentences and phrases wouldn’t come out clearly (hence the new “vabucolary” I invented, mentioned in the last newsletter), and we just sorta plowed through it.

Toward the end of the day I was utterly unmotivated to do anything. I didn’t want to be productive, and I didn’t want to think.

I wanted to veg on the couch. I wanted to clock out hours early and be done. I wanted to take a bath and read, but I was so exhausted that would’ve been dangerous, at least for the books. (I’ve only ever dropped one book in the tub, but that was Gulliver’s Travels, and it deserved it.)

I was out of gas. But when I realized that, it felt less defeating than failure. It wasn’t failure, it was exhaustion. When cars run out of gas, we don’t scrap them – we refill their tank. And we learn to pay better attention to the gauge before we run on empty (some of us, at least).

It’s hard to be clever and helpful and hopeful when you’re exhausted. It’s hard to think clearly or to know what to do next when we are too tired to even trust our judgment on simple things, like our ability to pair socks.

I know people like to say “Sleep when the baby sleeps” but that only applies to newborns around here. If we followed that advice to its logical extension, such as “Fold laundry when the baby folds laundry” or “Write when the baby writes,” this place would be a wrecking zone, like a Fisher Price tornado ripped through a library after loading up at a taco truck.

So when Kav is napping, it is our chance to work with two hands – exhausted or not. There’s no guarantee how long a six-month-old will nap, or how long his three-year-old brother will let him. We do other important things when he’s awake, like answer email, package books, and swear at the internet for being too slow.

As a result, most of my journal entries begin with “Kav is napping,” and, also as a result, are very short. Sometimes they look like this, broken into several efforts throughout the day:

Kav is napping so we are working. The next three sentences are about children playing too loudly and our need to reestablish quiet naptime rules to prevent me from turning into Raging Dragon Mommy. But it’s too late for now because Kav is already awake…

The next attempt yields seventeen lines of family events and work stuff; coffee is mentioned twice. That entry ends with, But Kavanagh is awake again, fifteen minutes later.

And then, one more try:

Aaaand he’s back to sleep, now that it’s time to clock out for the day. But Vin took the kids to youth group so maybe I can squeeze in a few more minutes.

[Nine lines here, in which I gripe about a podcast I got sucked into that turned out to be a condescending sales pitch. Boo, and also, hiss.]

And Kav is awake again. See? It was just a few more minutes.

Don’t misunderstand me; I love these tiny days. I love his wakefulness and don’t want to miss it and his blue-eyed smiles. But every new season brings new structures and routines, and learning to steward our time best in that adjustment takes some trial and error. So when he sleeps, we plow through.

Today, it’s warm and he’s just wearing a onesie; he falls asleep as I nurse him at the desk, and I pull my flannel off the back of the chair and wrap him up in it. At six months old, he’s still small enough that it makes a perfect blanket.

We had thunderstorms all last week, and I was in the bathroom when the loudest clap of thunder I’ve ever heard shook our house. It must’ve been right on top of us; the lights flickered, and the subsequent rumbling made me wonder if we were having another huge earthquake.

My first instinct was to look at the battery on my phone and immediately turn it off. My phone was woefully undercharged the last two times we had a major outage, including when the earthquake hit.

My next move was to down the glass of water I was holding, and refill it. Then use the toilet, and flush. These are the things we regret not doing as soon as the power is out and we wish we still could.

So I did all those things and went downstairs, and the lights were still on and everything was fine. It was just thunder. But every so often it isn’t, and we’re caught off guard – unprepared, slacking off, or just undercharged and dehydrated. There’s a balance to be had in plowing through. And there’s no shame for seasons of craziness when you can’t help it, but there’s also no harm (and much good) in getting in the habit of keeping things refilled, and charged, and flushed, and ready. Like ourselves.

So I preach to myself:

Rest when you can. Work when the baby sleeps. Drink the glass of water.

Write the sentences when they are fresh and flowing. Keep short accounts, and forgive the person who hurt you.

Don’t overschedule, so you have room to be impulsive for the right opportunities. Do that thing you keep putting off. Or, if it’s not really not worth doing, take it off your to-do list.

Hug the kids when they pass you in the kitchen. Teach the toddler over and over and over, to the point of redundancy, how to clean up after himself.

Show grace to yourself and others, as we all plow through — even if we have to use adverbs.

dark to light: change that does a work in us

Posted on by May 21, 2019

It is officially spring in Alaska: The willow trees erupted in stars, change is everywhere, and Vince is painting the kitchen. Don’t rub it in, though.

The man hates painting, but the jagged four-foot long tear in the sheetrock from last winter’s earthquake necessitated it. The kitchen walls were dark brown, the crack was stark white, and there’s no hiding it without addressing it – it must be mudded, retextured, and repainted.

dark to light: change that does a work in us

I think he’s cute in his painting clothes, with his hat flipped backwards. I also think I’m cute with a screwdriver, taking out the switch covers to help prep, easing my conscience before leaving him with all the real work while I escape upstairs to write.

The kitchen is going from brown to white, from dark to light, but the change is everywhere else, too, a sense of transition that feels like impending birth. We’ve been here before. Different times and circumstances but the same level of stress and uncertainty, and we survived. Thrived, even, and sometimes saw miracles and breakthrough. Other times, we just muddled through. In some ways we’re still muddling, still waiting for the resolution at the end of the story, praying the story ends well.

There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging how hard it is. The shifting ground, the earthquake, the trauma – we don’t pretend it was a little breeze when it knocked over trees, and we don’t pretend something was just a little tremor when it shook our foundations. We recognize the threat, and we inspect for damage so that damage can be dealt with.

Just as it is no big deal when we love those who love us back, it is also no big thing to be at peace when life is calm. But it is an entirely different thing to love without return, just as it is also an entirely different thing to feel peace and fight for calm when the world is shaking.

Whatever it is, we know He moves in the midst of it. These uncomfortable seasons bring questions to the surface and draw things out of us, and it’s productive.

No, really. Change does a work in us, as long as we don’t give way to fear.

And isn’t that the hardest part? I don’t think we ever graduate from fighting fear. Every time we up the ante and leave our comfort zone, we just graduate to new phases of fear and new ways to win over it. We feel the knots writhe in our gut over what’s going to happen. We wait for the news, the diagnosis, the prognosis. We wait for anything that’s certain, in the midst of weeks that feel saturated with uncertainty.

Fear, at its root, is often more than just being afraid of an outcome. Often it is fear that we failed – we failed to heal, we failed to fix that thing, we failed to protect that person, we failed to predict the future so that event didn’t occur, we failed to accomplish what we wanted to do.

We lost. Game over.

We failed to be God. And when this is the case, admitting as much means also admitting that maybe, just maybe, we’ve made ourselves into an idol.

And this stupid sheetrock is preaching to me. Listen:

Did the sheetrock fail in the shaking? Yes, and no. It cracked, but held. It wasn’t meant to do the foundation’s job and hold up everything. It was meant to do its own job, and bear the weight it was given, and let any failure be used for good – because change, and even failure, does a work in us when we let it. We go from dark to light, too.

We want perfection, and when we don’t achieve it (because we are, of course, imperfect humans) instead of glorying in what we did reach, we feel the lack and the loss. We feel the distance between where we got to and where we wanted to be.

And the enemy throws it right at us, taking it a step further: Not only did we fail, he hisses, but we are failures. The gap widens. The bad hand seems worse.

He’s a liar, we know. But knowing doesn’t always fix our feelings.

Our feelings are harder to reign in and correct. The only thing that fixes feelings is facing them, and that doesn’t seem like good news at first because we know that behind these Big Feelings are some even Bigger Feelings that we’d rather not admit. (We don’t just paint over the crack; we must also retexture. Gah.) In fact, ignoring those Bigger Feelings is often what allows the lie to creep in and hurt so bad in the first place.

It is the crack in our facade, and there’s no hiding it. It must be dealt with.

Facing these things is hard. So much pain. Ignoring it only allows it to build up for later, the pressure creating strain and damage on souls who were never meant to bear the weight of perfection, and denial, and holding it all in.

I recently read that you have to accelerate your pain to accelerate your progress. And I believe it’s true – one of the ways we accelerate both pain and progress is to face those fears we’d rather ignore, the grief we’d rather stuff, and the failures caused by our own imperfection.

There’s no help for failing. We all fail. None of us are perfect. But we wanted to be. So finally admitting failure is actually healthy, and good, and right – a victory in itself.

If you’ve been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you – you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing is ever going to happen again.

– C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The victory comes the morning after the deep grief of facing it all — the change, the imperfections and uncertainties, and the potential clean-up operation — when you look at yourself in the mirror and see resigned peace. And it hurts. But denial hurts worse, because refusing to acknowledge what is broken denies the healing that needs to seep into our cracked areas.

The consequences and what-ifs were all laid on the table. And instead of folding, you put everything in, because you know that in the end, you win. It is the only way we go from dark to light.