Friday night I happened to have an evening alone with my fourteen-year-old son, Alden.  Scott (my husband) and Kate (our daughter) were at a father/daughter night for the fifth grade girls.  Somehow, miraculously, Alden was not working on plans with friends by the time I got home.  So he and I set out to run some errands, rent a movie, and settle in for our own little mother/son evening.

We were almost home from Blockbuster when I ventured into what I consider to be a more grown-up conversation than we used to have.  That is, I volunteered information about my day instead of  just asking about his.  I launched in with, “Well, I’m really tired but I had a good day today.”  I went on to explain that most days I don’t get a lot of accolades for my work, but that day had been different.  A counselor has to always walk that fine line of looking for evidence that they are actually helping people, yet not depend on constant pats on the back to feel okay about themselves and their work.  There is always that knowledge that I cannot solve other people’s problems, and I had just had about a two-week run when that had been painfully clear to me.  So this day, last Friday, I had several different people tell me how much I had helped them.  I was floored.  And grateful.  And since I was hanging out with my teenager, he was the one I shared it with.

Now I have to tell you that there was a tiny bit of ulterior motive at work on my part.  I also had a little thought in the back of my mind that this could be a help to Alden.  He has had a good school year with a lot of accomplishments, but the previous evening we had attended the big 8th grade awards assembly and he didn’t get any of the big “surprise” awards that he knew he was in the running for.  I think I had some vague notion about a little life lesson for him somewhere in there — that when you get the accolades, it is really satisfying but most of the time you don’t get pats on the back for doing a good job.  I tried to explain that is why it meant a lot, because normally I don’t get a lot of that in my work and that is okay.

So I didn’t get very far before Alden said, “I’m not surprised.”

“You mean you’re not surprised that people actually find me helpful?”  Now this was a surprise, and I said so.  “I figured you and Kate wonder how I can help other people when I get so many things wrong myself.”  I mean, who knows all your flaws better than your kids?  They totally know that I struggle with my temper, especially when I haven’t had a full night’s sleep.  They see me letting my anxiety get the best of me.  They put up with me asking them multiple times every school morning whether they have their lunch and their house key, as if my asking enough times is going to insure their safety for the day.

Alden just said, “Yeah, but I don’t know how someone without problems would even be able to understand what people are going through.  It seems like you would have to have some problems yourself if you were going to be any good at helping someone else with theirs.”

Okay, I say stuff like this all the time but it really sounded different coming out of my child’s mouth.  Really?  If I was this ideal person that I wish I was, I may not have as much to offer to the people around me?  Is this what that passage in II Corinthians means?  “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

What if we all approached our weaknesses as our strengths?  What if we faced them and then asked God and our fellow humans to put them to use?  Could it be that our best gifts are contained in those parts of ourselves that we just can’t seem to conquer?  What do you think?  What are your best and worst traits?  Are the gifts inherent in the weaknesses?

“… for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

I love this sermon.  It gives me goosebumps to think of Mary coming to the empty tomb, with her grief and emptiness, and hearing her name spoken by Jesus.

I would love to hear your stories of moments or days or weeks or years when you’ve come to an empty place with your grief, or disappointment, or despair … and somehow heard or felt your name spoken.

Click HERE to read the entire sermon.

Happy Easter!

So what is it that you really want?  I know, not an appropriate question to ask during Lent, particularly at the beginning of Holy Week, when we liturgical Christians are all about fasting and penitence and identifying with the cross of Christ.  Putting aside what we want, giving up chocolate or coffee or trips to the mall, focusing on what we should want instead of what we really want.

But what is it that you really want?  I have a hunch that most of us have trouble getting down to the root of that question – and that when we do get down to what we really want, we find a deep part of ourselves and a place where we meet up with God.  Remember when Jesus said that it is harder for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle?   Well, I wonder if that isn’t because the more we are able to get what we want on the surface of things (chocolate, vacations, new clothes, big houses) – the easier it is to keep that question on the surface and never really get down underneath those surface “wants” to what we really want.

Sometimes when you’re not getting what you want, you have to dig a little deeper.  You want some new clothes?  That’s not a bad thing.  If you can just go out and get some, then that’s that and it’s taken care of.  You feel better.  But when you’re out of money and can’t just go get some, you have to sit for awhile with what you want.  What is it that you want?  Why do you want new clothes?  To feel better about yourself?  To celebrate Spring?  Aaaah … now we’re getting somewhere.

If you want to feel better about yourself, then let’s dig a little deeper yet … what might go even farther than new clothes, is learning how to love yourself, believing that you are loved by the Creator … and that may take a little more work than a trip to the mall.  Maybe you’ve never really believed you are worthy of love, or maybe you’ve worked hard to hide some nasty parts of yourself rather than face them and love them into the light.  You may need help, a guide or companion on the journey.  It may take courage to form new healthy relationships.  And who knows, along the way you may find that your old clothes feel new.  Or that you find more pizazz in the thrift stores than you did before, now that you’re taking a little more of yourself through the door.  But whatever happens with the clothes, I bet you are a little more sustained by getting down to what you really wanted and meeting God and yourself there.  Maybe that’s a little of what the Kingdom of God is.

You have a yearning to celebrate Spring?  Now that you’ve named it, find a way to do it if you can’t buy new clothes – & it will hold more meaning, not than buying clothes, but more meaning simply because of having named the desire.  Buy the new clothes if you can!  Celebrate Spring!  And having named your desire to celebrate the amazing gift of the natural cycle of seasons … you may do more than buy new clothes.  You may build more “nature time” into your week, you may join the Nature Conservancy, you might help plant a community garden in a poor neighborhood to bring a little more natural beauty to some corner of the world.  Maybe that, too, is a little of what the Kingdom of God is.

So try to ask yourself throughout the day and throughout the week — what do I want?  Make a list.  Big things, little things.  Don’t try to do anything about them yet, just notice them.  Then, before you do a thing about them, sit with that question a little longer.  Don’t let yourself go get what you want when you want it.  Ponder it.  What is it that I  really want?  Sometimes you really just want some chocolate.  Part of who you are is your physical body with all its needs and desires.  So note that you want some chocolate and either get some or don’t.  You’ve acknowledged a bit of who you are in the process.

But don’t stop there.  Keep sitting with the question.

What is it that you want?  You may or may not get it, but chances are you will get something that you need.  And that, too, will help usher the Kingdom of God into your life and probably into a bit of the world around you.

Take a chance and say what it is you want.

A lot!  As a person and as a Christian.  And as a mom.  You see, I have a daughter who competes and performs traditional Irish dance.  So St. Patrick’s Day is big for us.  Performances at least once a day this week – at the parade, at the public library, at retirement homes and the VA hospital.  Yesterday some of the dancers attended mass at a Catholic church downtown where the priest is Irish.  Their dance teacher sang The Lord’s Prayer in Gaelic.

Watching these dancers is transformative for me.  It takes every ounce of their concentration to execute the steps with precision.  They have to be aware of where the other dancers are and pay attention to their own feet and posture, keeping their hands tucked securely at their sides while they point their toes and jump and kick.  It takes about all the patience a parent can muster to get their dresses made, every skirt, cape, and sleeve hand-embroidered by a parent or grandparent or paid seamstress with the traditional Irish emblems.  Then the dresses are handed down when they are outgrown, until they are worn so thin they are coming apart.

The real beauty of all of this is that when those kids are dancing, it is about so much more than them.  They are connecting us to the history of a particular place across the world.  It is all about them and at the same time it is all about another group of people who came before them, developing a rich culture of music and dance.  Long before these dancers were born, there were people in the hills of Ireland working out these dances.  They taught them to their children, and they taught them to their children, and one of those children of children of children of children teaches those same steps to kids in Little Rock, Arkansas.  And when you watch them dance, you see the beauty of the dance itself and you also feel as if you’ve caught a glimpse of all those Irish dancers from “the old country.”

Take a look:

HERE

I love this bit of life that reminds us that we are smack in the middle of an old, old story.  We matter, just like those dancers matter.  It makes a difference when they put themselves into the dance, and spend time practicing and concentrating and making friendships with the other dancers.  The particulars of our lives matter, and it makes a difference when we work well and live well and love well.  And we also live in the context of a much larger picture, just like those dancers.  They are taking part in something that has been going on for a long, long time – and so are we.  As we work out who we are and what God is calling us to, as we go about trying to love our neighbors and ourselves, as we think and pray and work and rest and sing and dance and all those other things we do – we are stepping into that great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us.

What are the essential steps to which you are called to be faithful?  And how are you bringing your own God-given presence and style to those steps?

“In the silence of the morning

I am alive to the new day’s light,

alert to the early stirrings of the wind

and the first sounds of the creatures.

In the silence of my heart

I hear the yearnings that are in me and the fears,

the hopes that rise from within

and the doubts that trouble my soul.

In the beginnings of this day, O God,

before the night’s stillness is lost to the day’s busyness,

open to me the treasure of my inner being

that in the midst of this day’s busyness I may draw on wisdom.

Assure me again of my origins in you,

assure me again that my true depths are of you.”

-from A Celtic Psalter, by J. Philip Newell

“From dust you came, and to dust you shall return.”

Every year for more than a decade now, I have gone to church on Ash Wednesday to have someone say those words to me as they rub ashes on my forehead.  Every year I anticipate what it might feel like to have someone utter, with no apology or explanation, those haunting words to me.  And despite my anticipation, the moment itself is always a little startling.  It seems appropriate that I leave with ashes smeared on my forehead, taking with me a vivid if strange reminder of what I have just heard spoken.

Ash Wednesday service is where we begin our yearly journey into the Passion narrative.  We know that the story culminates with Easter, a grand celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus.  But first Lent.  “Like Christ, who spent 40 days in the wilderness praying and fasting before beginning his ministry, we spend the 40 days before Easter considering our lives and our relationship with the world around us” (from 2010 Lenten Meditiations).

It seems appropriate that Daniel M. posted a blog last week dealing with the frustration of our finite nature (Falling Whistles).  We cannot help everyone.  We are overwhelmed by our own limitations.  This is where we begin in our Lenten journey.  And then we say we are sorry for what we have done and what we have left undone.  After that we lift our heads and we say to God, but more to remind ourselves, “You hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent…”

Then we begin our 40 days of examination, and by the end we are walking with Jesus through his sufferings and remembering Christ’s compassion for the suffering.  And by the time we get to Easter … but that’s getting ahead of ourselves.  We’ll talk about that in 40 days.

Last week’s sermon at our church began with a Winston Churchill quote:  “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.”  It’s a great quote, and I’ve been thinking that this doesn’t just apply to buildings.  For instance, we shape (choose) our food; then it shapes us.  We shape our days; then they shape us.  The long and short of it is, we make our choices, and then they make us.

Our choices not only reflect who we are, they actually impact who we become in the future.

What brought this to mind is the realization that my current work has pushed me toward a prayer life.  I’ve always wanted more of a prayer life, and more of a prayerful posture toward life.  And suddenly I realize that I pray more than I used to.   Not because I consciously made a decision to really develop a prayer life right now, but because the nature of my work drives me to prayer.

I made a vocational choice toward what felt like both a calling and a longing, and that choice has begun to form me in ways I hadn’t expected.  I knew I wanted to develop and use some of my best and deepest gifts in a more intentional way.  What I did not know was that in doing so, I would be pushed toward fulfilling another longing — a longing for a more prayerful approach to my life.  It was a wonderful realization.

What are some of the choices before you right now?  How do they reflect who you are?  And how might they impact who you become tomorrow?

Self-care is a topic that often surfaces quickly in a therapy session.  And quite often, any suggestion toward tending to one’s own needs is quickly met with the assumption that self-care is selfish.  Many a client says, “But isn’t that selfish?”  or something like, “I don’t want to be a self-centered person.  My sister (or brother, or parent, or friend…) is very self-centered and I don’t want to be like that. ”

So I’ve started using the image of a bicycle wheel as a metaphor for one’s life.  A person who is centered occupies the core of their own life — the center of the wheel, where all the spokes meet.  A person who is self-centered lives out on the spokes and leaves the center empty.  They constantly need other people to fill their center.

The person at the center of their own wheel has something to give — an energy that flows out along the spokes and into the lives of other people.  The person living out on the spokes of their own life has trouble giving to others because the energy has to come from the center — and they are not present there.

The centered person assumes responsibility for their own basic needs, that life at the very center of their being.  They practice basic self-care.   They may not (in fact probably won’t) get all their needs met every day, but their life has an overall pattern of taking responsibility for themselves — paying their bills, getting physical nourishment, tending to their own spiritual life, seeking out and investing in healthy relationships, to name a few.   So when another person does meet a need for them (buys them lunch, offers a listening ear, prays with or for them, etc.) they can see it as the gift that it is.  There is a gratefulness for the other person and an awareness (and acceptance) of the gift.

On the contrary, someone who does not assume responsibility for their own needs must constantly ask other people to do so.  They are often demanding, asking everyone else to focus on them because they have not properly focused on their own center.  When someone else meets a need for them, they are only breaking even.  There is a lack of gratefulness because of the assumption that others will meet their basic needs.  Moreover, they have a hard time giving to others because all of their energy is toward getting others to do the work they have neglected in their own life.

Sure, there are people who in the name of self-care expect everyone else to bend to their plans.  But that is in fact the opposite of centered.  The centered person can make their own decisions and let others make  theirs.  The centered person doesn’t need everyone else to work around their needs and wants, because they have already established a life pattern that nurtures their center.  They don’t need someone else to do the work they are already doing.

A few questions to ask yourself today, this week, this month, this year:   Am I taking responsibility for my own basic needs, or am I expecting others to meet them?  Am I able to give from my center, or is it constantly empty?  Are there daily or weekly (or monthly or yearly) things I can do to live at, and nurture, the very core of my being?  Daily time to eat meals and exercise and get adequate sleep?  Built-in rejuvenation time?  Time for relationships that are life giving for me?

You may need to say no to a few things you usually say yes to.  But a little self-care can go a long ways.  All the way out from the center and into the lives of the people around you.