Boredom...Just Don't

I caught the words 'I'm bored' come out of my mouth recently and it was sort of a startling realization! Wait, really? In the last year alone I've been to Paris, the Outer Banks of North Carolina (OBX!!!), and Israel with a group of amazing Aussies! I've been to four weddings, threw a wedding shower, bachelorette party, gave a maid of honor toast, spent a few weekends in NYC, and a few day trips to Boston...just to ramble off a few activities.  I'm too busy to be bored! When did boredom even have a chance to appear? The second I entered extended rest.  

Rest seems to be the word of the season these days. Grad school is done. Ministry is on hold. Debt must decrease and savings must increase...so travel must decrease too. Rest feels so unproductive and incredibly boring to me!  

But, like the clothing line Made Well, we can't be well until we rest well.  No circuit runs forever on it's own. I mean, no DC (battery powered) circuit anyway!  Creation mimics its creator - electronics require recharging just like the humans that made it!  There's yet to be a permanent power source we can plug into and stay running 24/7...as much as I joke about an IV drip of coffee, it just isn't realistic!  We need to sleep, we need to rest.  Sleep is wonderful! I can't seem to get enough of it!  I just can't stop resisting rest for some reason. 

The problem, if you're like me, is that thoughts begin to wonder (I haven't found the off switch for this yet); about work, relationships, our schedules, etc. The comparison game begins to be played which can spiral into a fatal prognosis that one's life is boring just because the current season seems slow.  Fast and busy somehow equates to meaningful and fun for some reason.  So if we see someone else with a perpetually full plate we subconsciously envy them IF we find ourselves in a 'season of rest.'  See, boredom is determination that someone else's life is better - that your process is somehow over, when really it's got much more ahead! When we limit our scope to the present moment we lose sight of the big picture and run the risk of ruining what lay ahead! 

I'm convinced that when building a house, the foundation takes the longest amount of time.  Case in point, if you walk by a Habitat for Humanity site, it seems like the digging and the laying of concrete takes forever and all the sudden you go by again and the frames and walls are all up, ready for the internal touches!  That's because foundation is the most important level.  Humanity is not like the process of building a home.  Houses are built in one direction...from the ground up!  I'm no contractor, but I doubt there's much back and forth in the process. That's why the foundation must be perfect so one can build on it!  But humanity operates in seasons that unlike the ones on our calendars, can overlap at times and even look like a three steps forward one step back pattern.  And unfortunately the seasons of life don't have clear welcome or exit signs so we might not even realize which season we're in right away.  

I used to take power naps in college. I refined the art of it. If I slept less than twenty minutes it wasn't enough and I'd be tired...if I slept more than twenty minutes but less than two hours I should have just skipped the nap altogether because I'd wake up feeling worse than I started.  Twenty minutes is the perfect power nap for me!  Seasons of rest (whether vacations or a semester off of school, or a break from that organization) are power pauses. They might seem useless but they are strengthening us to propel us into the next big thing, battle, or breakthrough. 

Pauses are powerful.  Ever be in a heated or heavy conversation, and the person responds with a lot of silence? Ever audition for a part and the call back doesn't come the day it was supposed to?  Or you're waiting to hear back from a job interview?  Pauses are powerful because they crank up the heat and make us sweat! Pauses can cause worry, panic, fear, you name it.  Seasons of rest are power pauses. The heat of uncertainty might rise, the waves that cloud our vision might rise...but don't panic.  Heat causes impurities to rise to the service so what is revealed can be healed.  Fine metals are made in crucibles to burn off imperfections until what remains is gold!  A power pause can be just what God has in mind when He won't show you the picture on the puzzle box, but keeps giving you puzzle pieces.  He's at work in and through us even when we see nothing happening in this season or can't understand the connections.   Don't give into the lie that you're bored. You just haven't realized the fun you're in the middle of yet;-) You're in a powerful process if you could only look up to realize it!

Life is cyclic and complicated and comes with many seasons that don't necessarily sync up with our friends seasons. Even if we want them to. But the quicker we realize we're not actually in control the smoother the ride will be!  Rest is more than just about health.  It's about release.  From the lyrics of one of my favorite artists, Josh Garrels, "My rest is a weapon against the oppression of man's obsession to control things ("The Resistance").  The movie doesn't stop just because I put the remote control down. Life isn't dull when at rest. It's packed full of process.  

I'm determined to not give into the lie of boredom; it's a trap that deceives me into thinking God's process isn't perfectly timed! 

Transition Tango

As I crawled into bed early, desperate to catch up on sleep and quiet my mind from the storm of thoughts and emotions blowing through it, I said a prayer to God;  "Please speak to me about where I am right now and if what I'm doing is actually your desire for me." I immediately opened Spiritual Java (by Bill/Beni Johnson, Kris Vallotton, Kevin Dedmon, Danny Silk, and Banning Liebscher - go get it), a compilation devotional that I've barely looked at in the many many months I've been in possession of it. And from the title alone, you'd think I'd have inhaled it already. But this book is more like espresso than coffee for me...I drink coffee every day, but I can't drink espresso too often because it's very powerful, I react strongly to it, but when I do have it, man there's kick!  I opened Spiritual Java after saying that brief prayer, assuming I'd pass out any moment, but instead what I read woke me up. "Where are you right now?"  Incredible.  You know, some people hear things like that and they dismiss it as coincidence. But I dare you to ask God questions and see for yourself how he'll answer through your surroundings or even in a whisper.  Or, maybe you need an adorable little girl in a restaurant to run up to your table and tell you "I like your shirt and I like your earrings and I like your necklace and your eyes and you smell nice" for you to realize God just gave you a love note in the form of a beautiful child:-) 

And so, where am I right now? In the channel of big transition. Transition in my thoughts, experiences, and location. Some of which I can express and some of which it's so deep within, I have no words to express the motion that is going on within. Seriously, I feel it but I don't understand it. My life changed drastically while overseas, but I'm home now and only have a perception of the change, not a full picture.  And so, each morning it becomes essential to seek Peace.  It sounds crazy, but I know I'm not. Whenever we start new seasons, those lies and insecurities creep into our thoughts and try to hold us back. Is this really what I heard? Peace.  I know I have the power to choose, did I choose right?  Peace. Will I mess up or mess someone else up?  Peace.  Can I really be freely me and fully known? Peace.  Will I like it when I get where I'm going?  Peace.  Peace is gold to me right now. It's the precious stone I'm eagerly mining. And each time I find Peace, I find joy too! But not just once, but over and over. The waves come back, but the peace comes back too.

My life often feels like abrupt transitions, so why not an abrupt transitional thought.  I've never felt particularly attractive while dancing. I'm definitely no Elaine from Seinfeld, thank goodness. But, it's like I think too much and my body pays the price:-o The fact that I'll get up on the dance floor at all is growth. I enjoy music. I enjoy company. But I also enjoy sneaking into the middle of the dance floor so I don't have to be that person on the edge for all the people watchers to judge.  I was at a wedding reception this past weekend that had a camera so the dance floor was projected to the back of the room on a big screen TV. What the heck!?....people watchers didn't even have to be close and they could stare and judge while they sipped their cold drinks and didn't work up a sweat, or get their embarrassing groove on!  The truth is though...they missed out on all the fun.  I'd rather get over myself and step out of my comfort zone because in the end it's way more fun than watching...even though there are definitely some good laughs that way too. 

Transition is a lot like a wedding reception. You know it's coming from the moment you get the invitation.   You know the dancing is coming. You might try to prepare a bit...get just the right dress or shoes or whatever. You might get pulled onto the dance floor, or you might put yourself there. But how will you dance? You won't know til you get there.  Transition is a tango that you don't quite know the steps to but you get yourself up on the dance floor anyway. You can't learn it until you try it. It will eventually get smooth.  Just like any transition.

Smooth transition is seen really clearly in Joshua 5:12 "The manna stopped the day after they ate this food from the land; there was no longer any manna for the Israelites, but that year they ate of the produce of Canaan." God provided food for 40 years in the wilderness until the time came for them to acquire their own.  There is always provision for us, no matter where we go.  Provision never ends even if our seasons change; it's just the way we're fed that changes.

"Regardless of where your storm came from, you have been trained for this moment. You do know what to do." (Bill Johnson, Spiritual Java).

Peek-A-Boo, I See The Real You:-o

How you respond to someone's eagerness to meet you reveals a LOT about your sense of self worth! I won't lie; this experience recently came my way. Like a knee-jerk reaction I wanted to retort something smart like "I hope you're not disappointed" or "Don't get your hopes too high." And you know... maybe follow it with an emoticon (since we were writing) to distract from the dagger it would throw. (But at who?) Perfect place for a wink face or my personal favorite, the 'oh snap' face:-o. But, I actually stopped myself this time unlike countless other times in the past where rapid responses or short phrases exposed true perspective of myself under the thin veil of a joke. This time I instantly realized I was about to put myself down (yet again). What seemed funny in the past suddenly seemed serious. And for the first time it occurred to me that I would have demeaned this person who had genuine excitement and an opinion worth valuing. 

I love how process is so personal. Mine won't look like yours and yours won't look like another's. The same is true with identity. The beauty of creation is intricacy and uniqueness paired with a powerful foundation of stability from a never-changing Artist who designed, fashioned, and formed us with Purpose in mind. For so long I didn't know who I was...or who I wanted to be. This resulted twofold; a rejection of whatever I perceived to reject me (even if ever so slightly) and an insatiable desire for someone to tell me who I was (or should be). See, I needed people to like me to like myself and I needed people to value me in order to value myself. Since people are people and no one can carry the weight of that need it left me frustrated, hurt, lost, and confused on a pretty regular basis. And so, when you don't know or like who you are you try to be someone else. And, of course you can't be someone else very well, so you'll attribute your worth based on a test you were never meant to take. It's kind of a crazy thought...it's like walking into the wrong classroom at test time, sitting down and taking the final, failing it and deciding you're an utter failure because you couldn't pass a test you never took the course for!!! The secret is that only God can tell you who you are and show you your value…only God, because he made you and knows you perfectly. As an engineer you’d think I would have learned this earlier; only the designer can define the design. 

An incredibly wise and dear friend of mine wrote about this topic some time ago. I want to credit her instead of recreating the words. She captured the essential issue of false humility (a false understanding of identity) so well. You can read the full blog (When Insecurity Dies and Love Lives at http://heatherlundberg.blogspot.com/): "What happens when I am not continually choosing to view myself the way God does? What happens when I only see with my natural eyes but don't ask for heaven's perspective? Sometimes we get so caught up in our own emotions that we become really self-centered. A sense of false humility can form when we allow our thoughts to become more focused on our weaknesses, inability, and lack rather than Gods power, strength and faithfulness. It is not only painful for me when I think this way, but it hurts and robs those around me. When I am choosing to live in a place of insecurity rather than my true identity, it prevents me from loving people the way I was created to. I don't realize the value of my thoughts, words and actions and this can cost others a great deal. Insecurity is placing your identity in what you feel and what others think rather than what is true. True humility is having the right view of God and how he sees you, and living from that place."

A different friend asked me recently to break this down a bit...into something like '5 tips to reversing false humility habits' or '10 exercises for hearing God's ideas for your identity.' I can't satisfactorily attack that in one blog unfortunately. So I will start with one tip today....Say "thank you" instead of deflecting and therefore rejecting a compliment. Sounds simple but it’s powerful. I'm not talking about flattery- that's a whole other topic because flattery can be manipulative. But let's look at genuine compliments and call them beams of light into your true identity. When you’re directly told something about your true identity, receive it! (This isn't a blanket statement to receive everything, but since your true identity was made in the image of God, you can trust what you’re receiving when it aligns with what God says about you). It will take some time to learn what to receive and what to reject, but I believe the harder part is to receive what we don’t believe about our self…but if we trust who said it we can trust ‘it’ too. The goal is to stop rejecting ourselves and learn to realize the subtle ways we do it. The sad fact is that we reject ourselves by not allowing ourselves to step into the truth of our identity. In my own life, I had a really hard time when someone would compliment me, especially if they would tell me I'm beautiful. I was not even slightly subtle with dismissing that!! I would get so adamant that it wasn't true; so much so, that certain people stopped telling me because they didn't want to argue with me even though they still thought it (learned this through being confronted). The craziest thing is after being confronted about it one time in particular, I gritted my teeth and said 'thank you'. I literally stopped allowing myself to reject the statement 'Jeri you're beautiful'. I feel silly sharing this, but the most powerful thing started to happen over time as I continued to say ‘thank you’ to similar things....the most negative girl I'd ever known in the past (myself) started to see beauty in the mirror and started actually seeing what was being said. It's not that I needed people to say it so I could believe it...I needed to hear God's voice in it and actually receive it from Him before I could feel it! The key is that thanksgiving receives truth and attracts more. Rejection (in this context) is both offensive to yourself and the one whose opinion you're dismissing. 

Sadly, I do this with God all too often. I know what His letters to me say. The Bible is very clear that I was made wonderfully, to be loved with an everlasting love, that I lack no good thing, that my mind is perfect, that there's a role in a vast adventure that only I can fill, and I could keep going... What if your love only ever gave you one love note...how long would you hold onto it and believe it before you started to doubt if he'd changed his mind? Would you even believe it at all? What if it were a whole book of love letters? What you believe about your identity determines your ability to receive love and give love.

The simple reality is we teach people how to treat us and a big part of that is how we treat ourselves...people will ultimately treat you the way you treat yourself.  The same is true with how you view yourself.  I think I failed to understand this far too long; to the point of unhealthy boundaries, a false sense of humility, and an irrational fear of confidence because I thought it only arrogant pride.  I read on a facebook wall recently that it's the grace of God that humbles a man without degrading him and exalts a man without inflating him!  I used to think humility was beating myself down (if I were really being honest), and never getting anywhere close to ‘exaltation.’  Wow, did I insult my maker or what!?   And I’m done insulting people too.  I’m obviously worth being excited to meet and loving, so I’m just going to receive it.  You are too! :-)

There's Just Something About Mystery

Plans and purposes can really seem like a mystery most times. Not plans we make ourselves, though sometimes our own motives aren't entirely clear.  But I mean the plans and purposes God has for our lives.  It's always easier as an outsider to see into someone else's situation and see what's going on, how it's working towards something, it's moving in a certain direction; what God is doing. It makes sense...when something is too close to your face you can't see it well unless you step back and let it come into focus.  Sometimes we're just too close to our self in our process that it becomes a great mystery as to what is actually happening while it's happening. As they say, hind sight is 20/20. But I believe foresight can be more clear than it actually is.

Last month, a young man from our youth ministry (MergeAhead.com) collaborated with some friends to buy one of our young ladies a car. Many contributed what they could to the gift! It was the coolest act of extravagant giving to see! He took the time to find the car, test it out, get it tuned up and ready to be presented.  She had no idea what awaited her that Sunday night. But, we all knew and eagerly awaited the moment it was revealed.  I wonder if she was yearning and maybe even stressing about a car at this time?   Over many many months past, I'd become privy that the pursuer of my best friend was planning to propose! He'd make plans and check in with me from time to time about it. It was all really exciting! The thing is, my friend had no idea. As time passed, and communication between the two of them became difficult due to a season he was overseas, it became clear to me that my friends heart was strained.  Oh it was so hard for me to listen and not be able to comfort her with the truth of what I knew first hand.  But, I refused to tell her anything that would ruin the surprise! It was an epic surprise, one worth concealing until the right time. The same was true about the car story. None of us wanted to ruin the tremendous moment ahead! And then, something hit me like lightning!  God is at work preparing things for us right now. We have moments where we cry out to God and feel like he's far off...but really he's busy preparing. And oh, what a marvelous surprise he is preparing for us! In fact, no eye has seen and no ear has heard what God is preparing for us...it's that original; it's that good!  It hit me that it's the romantic nature of God to conceal things from us until the proper time. He delights in surprising us and blessing us with our hearts desires. It must grieve his heart to watch us sweat; to watch us cry out and feel like we can't take it anymore. Funny thing is, it's always darkest before the dawn, and always tightest before payday!  But, God loves us too much to ruin the surprise! The moment of revelation is on it's way and it will be WAY better than a temporal soothing of our anxious hearts by a word out of season or a heads up of what's to come.  Besides, knowing in advance can have difficulties too! We'd waste away our days of present to get to the 'surprise' and miss the gems each day has in store and the incredible ways we can impact and encourage our environments merely by our present presence!

I used to think that the plans and purposes of God were always far off; always a mystery.  But not the kind of mystery that was alluring. The kind of mystery that was unnerving. I had trouble conceptualizing the goodness of God for most of my life really.  Things go down. People leave. Seasons change. Life happens. I can pinpoint when all of this began to change for me though.  My dearest friend from college flipped my thinking upside down and inside out when she sat me down one time about Jeremiah 29:11 ("For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope").  I'd heard this quoted to me over and over again and it became hard to think of it as anything other than far off hope that I wasn't sure I'd ever reach! She said this plan is not something you arrive at. It's something you're already living out, because it's already in process!  Whoa! Over many years this has been blossoming in my heart. And suddenly I see mystery as a magnificent romantic gesture of a wonderful surprise being prepared for me...even now, even as I write this. And while sometimes it's really hard to have this perspective for my own life and my own circumstances - and there might not be a single friend aware of the actual details that await me - I can rest assured that behind the door I find myself standing in front of,  God is preparing a table, a special meal, and awaits a purposeful and grand unveiling of His heart towards me through the revealing of the efforts of his planning all this time!

There's Nothing Nicer Than The First Night On Clean Sheets And Nothing Funnier Than Sneezing During Netipot

Hello Blog! As I embark into the world of blogging, I thought an introduction only appropriate.  Back in the day, I sat in a computer science class (C++) only to learn that all programmers everywhere start with the same simple set of code commands that make the computer output "Hello World."  I will say, I did successfully complete this task but have since learned that I'm a better writer than programmer, and although I maintain my day job as an engineer, my first hobby love was always writing!  Now, I can't promise to be grammatically correct all the time.  In fact, I like to make up words periodically.  Sometimes thoughts are confined by the words that exist and we need new expressions for them, like Javation Journal; an interweaving of words to reflect a coffee and technology generation (Java is COFFEE and a programming language for the non-techies out there) that can't have thoughts confined any longer, requiring innovative expression for the random moments in life (see this posts title), or the spiritually profound times you encounter God and just have to share it (can't stop listening to Endless Years https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/endless-years/id579013179), or the knowledge you pick up along the way.  Regardless of who follows Javation Journal, I plan to write what I know and express what I feel regardless of how serious or silly.