I am about to embark on quite possibly the most significant professional challenge of my career.
A number of months ago, my husband and I decided we were ready to start trying for baby number two. Well, I was maybe more ready than him, but after some discussion, we really were ready to try. Not having tried at all for our first, we weren't really sure what to expect. After a few months of dutifully tracking my fertility and timing things out, nothing. We thought it would be easy and instant like the first time, but it wasn't.
I had already done the math in my head. Certain months are far better for being pregnant and taking an extended leave than others in my line of work. For me, August through October is my busy season with little time off and little forgiveness when it comes to tasks that need completing with near perfection.
At first, we were trying for an April or May baby. Then we were trying for a June baby. Then as the calendar wore on, I got anxious and knew we'd need to make an intentional choice: Stop trying for three or so months to ensure we'd avoid the busy season...or take our chances not knowing how long it might take us to see success. As dedicated as I am to my career, I am also dedicated to being the best mom and wife I can be. So to me, knowing that pregnancy wasn't going to be instantaneous, it made sense to keep trying and take any accompanying risks to my professional life.
We're pregnant. Due in July. I will miss my entire busy season, not just part of it.
But I'm choosing, with an obvious nervous quake in my voice, to see this as a professional opportunity. A challenge, if you will. Can I professionally ensure that my many tasks, events, and trainings are as successful with me away as they would be with me there? Can I really pull it off?
I've spent much of my career stepping into new challenges and roles without a lot of preparation or knowledge of the terrain. I've looked so many of my colleagues in the eye and said, "Trust me," and I meant it. I've had no proof of my abilities to accomplish what I say I will other than the results that I produce after the fact. In a few weeks, I will step into my boss's office, I will look him in the eye, and I will as him to trust me as I step away from my role and responsibilities during a critical time. I will have no way to ensure near perfection of the tasks and events that I need to pull off. I will have no guarantee of success. But I do have a track record. I have a record of success that I'll stand by, and hopefully by boss will to.
Yes, this will be the greatest professional challenge of my life. If I can do this, I know I can do anything.
Wednesday, November 02, 2016
Year of Intention: Do it now or later
One of the biggest struggles in my life and frankly a catalyst for this year's theme, is that I tend to delay non-gratifying projects. A prime example of this is our current method of laundry completion. It looks something like this:
1) Let the laundry pile up for several days until we start to run out of things to wear.
2) Line up several laundry baskets and begin washing and drying one after another.
3) Put clean and dry laundry into baskets.
4) Place baskets in random places throughout our living space.
5) Dig through baskets for several days to find what preferred clothing and wear it wrinkly.
6) When baskets are nearly empty, bring them to bedrooms, toss onto dresser top, and gather the next succession of dirty laundry waiting to be washed.
Now, for those with their laundry routine under control, I'm sure you're asking why in the world one would want to do laundry like that. The clothes is always wrinkled, always in view, and never in a home of its own like a closet or drawer. It is frustrating, to be sure, to have to hunt through several rooms of the house to find the cardigan I had intended to wear each morning. Was it in the clean pile on the dryer? Is it in the basket of darks on the couch? Maybe it's on top of my dresser? Ridiculous.
If I'm honest with myself, I really don't like doing laundry. Not at all. So I delay it. As long as possible. I try to do as little as possible in the laundry department that still allows me to be a somewhat functioning human being. But the fact remains that it still needs to be done. So is it better to delay and do as little as possible and endure the frustration of having laundry in many places unfolded, or do I try to change my habit and deal with laundry daily in an attempt to get it cleaned, folded, and put away in order to avoid the added frustrations?
This is a tougher decision than one would think. It's a conscious choice of enduring something either way. I either have to endure doing something I don't like to do in order to be satisfied at having done it after the fact or I have to endure the things that are frustrating about my current habits of delay and not worry about the fact that I'm rarely satisfied at all.
For me, it's also question of motivation and available resources. I really am motivated to change my habits because as part of this year's quest, I want to develop a tidier home. A tidy home does not have laundry strewn about in three rooms, unfolded, and a short sleeve away from falling behind the dryer. A tidy home doesn't have visible laundry anywhere. And this vision of tidiness would give me satisfaction. But it comes at a cost, the cost of doing something I don't like every single day. Can the motivation change my view of this disliked task? Could it eventually be something that I don't dislike at all because of the satisfaction that completion brings? And then those available resources, like time. Does a system get thrown off if I'm gone three days in a week? Can I uphold a change in behavior if resources are scarce making it harder to accomplish? The question of available resources, especially time, are always on my mind.
And let's not pretend that I only engage in this now-or-later battle over the laundry. This is actually so many things. It's the now of throwing away junk mail daily or the later of stacking it up and tossing it once a week. It's the now of putting away all of the work, lunch, daycare bags and containers as soon as we get into the house or the latter of tossing it all inside the back door and clean up the piles at the end of the week. It's the now of wiping up the spilled toddler dinner off the table and floor as soon as dinner is over or the later of getting to it after he goes to bed or the next morning when I step in the remnants.
Getting this picture? The now is always something I don't like to do coupled with the satisfaction of having it done immediately, and the later is the satisfaction of not having to do it right away coupled with the frustration of leaving it undone. Add to this the pressure of feeling like it all needs to be done whether or not I have the available time or energy to do it, and you've got one conflicted flailing woman.
But this Year of Intention was not meant to overwhelm or send me into a spiral of despair and strife. It was selected as such to create points of clarity and purpose, meaning and motivation. My habits to date are mostly just defaults in a busy world. It seems easier, albeit less pleasant, to delay doing things I don't like, but does that match the vision of the life I want? Well, that would require me to a have a pretty clear vision of the life I want. So I'll be starting there. Stay tuned as I work to craft this vision.
1) Let the laundry pile up for several days until we start to run out of things to wear.
2) Line up several laundry baskets and begin washing and drying one after another.
3) Put clean and dry laundry into baskets.
4) Place baskets in random places throughout our living space.
5) Dig through baskets for several days to find what preferred clothing and wear it wrinkly.
6) When baskets are nearly empty, bring them to bedrooms, toss onto dresser top, and gather the next succession of dirty laundry waiting to be washed.
Now, for those with their laundry routine under control, I'm sure you're asking why in the world one would want to do laundry like that. The clothes is always wrinkled, always in view, and never in a home of its own like a closet or drawer. It is frustrating, to be sure, to have to hunt through several rooms of the house to find the cardigan I had intended to wear each morning. Was it in the clean pile on the dryer? Is it in the basket of darks on the couch? Maybe it's on top of my dresser? Ridiculous.
If I'm honest with myself, I really don't like doing laundry. Not at all. So I delay it. As long as possible. I try to do as little as possible in the laundry department that still allows me to be a somewhat functioning human being. But the fact remains that it still needs to be done. So is it better to delay and do as little as possible and endure the frustration of having laundry in many places unfolded, or do I try to change my habit and deal with laundry daily in an attempt to get it cleaned, folded, and put away in order to avoid the added frustrations?
This is a tougher decision than one would think. It's a conscious choice of enduring something either way. I either have to endure doing something I don't like to do in order to be satisfied at having done it after the fact or I have to endure the things that are frustrating about my current habits of delay and not worry about the fact that I'm rarely satisfied at all.
For me, it's also question of motivation and available resources. I really am motivated to change my habits because as part of this year's quest, I want to develop a tidier home. A tidy home does not have laundry strewn about in three rooms, unfolded, and a short sleeve away from falling behind the dryer. A tidy home doesn't have visible laundry anywhere. And this vision of tidiness would give me satisfaction. But it comes at a cost, the cost of doing something I don't like every single day. Can the motivation change my view of this disliked task? Could it eventually be something that I don't dislike at all because of the satisfaction that completion brings? And then those available resources, like time. Does a system get thrown off if I'm gone three days in a week? Can I uphold a change in behavior if resources are scarce making it harder to accomplish? The question of available resources, especially time, are always on my mind.
And let's not pretend that I only engage in this now-or-later battle over the laundry. This is actually so many things. It's the now of throwing away junk mail daily or the later of stacking it up and tossing it once a week. It's the now of putting away all of the work, lunch, daycare bags and containers as soon as we get into the house or the latter of tossing it all inside the back door and clean up the piles at the end of the week. It's the now of wiping up the spilled toddler dinner off the table and floor as soon as dinner is over or the later of getting to it after he goes to bed or the next morning when I step in the remnants.
Getting this picture? The now is always something I don't like to do coupled with the satisfaction of having it done immediately, and the later is the satisfaction of not having to do it right away coupled with the frustration of leaving it undone. Add to this the pressure of feeling like it all needs to be done whether or not I have the available time or energy to do it, and you've got one conflicted flailing woman.
But this Year of Intention was not meant to overwhelm or send me into a spiral of despair and strife. It was selected as such to create points of clarity and purpose, meaning and motivation. My habits to date are mostly just defaults in a busy world. It seems easier, albeit less pleasant, to delay doing things I don't like, but does that match the vision of the life I want? Well, that would require me to a have a pretty clear vision of the life I want. So I'll be starting there. Stay tuned as I work to craft this vision.
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
The Year of Intention
A few years back, I started what has since become quite the tradition. I decided on my birthday to give the year ahead a name. I wanted to focus on a theme of sorts, something to keep me moving forward when I struggled, something to give me focus when I lacked it, perhaps something to blame when I wanted to cast blame. I'm not sure exactly. But this tradition has evolved into a self-fulfilling prophesy of sorts, not by some cosmic mystical accident, but because perhaps I want it to be so.
My first dedicated year was the Year of Go. Leading up to this year, I was becoming envious of my adventuresome friends as I felt like a hesitant, almost shy, sidelines participant in life. I needed to give myself permission to move ahead confidently, knowing that I could embark on new adventures, deepen relationships, and cast of inhibitions that were holding me back. And from what I recall of that year, I did. A casual acquaintance invites me over for coffee. Let's go! A colleague asks me to try out a new project with them. Go! It was a life-changing year of experiencing depths that I just hadn't ever allowed myself to experience before.
The years that followed were the Year of Celebration and the Year of Enough. Seeming opposites, and for good reason. The Year of Celebration brought into my life a marriage built on commitment, love, difference, and adventure; the completion of a hard-earned terminal degree through the defense of a dissertation I was proud of; and the growing of a new life inside me for the first time, an unexpected miracle that was the biggest celebration of all. I also spent the year centering myself by celebrating the small things in life, the daily gratitudes that welled my heart full. The Year of Enough allowed me to be okay with myself as I was. And while I still struggle with my enoughness, I have learned that it's a daily process coming to terms with your own limitations and being okay with them.
And so this year, I move ahead, wanting to move from acknowledging my limitations to pursuing both my weaknesses and my strengths with purpose. I hope it to be a season of evaluation, of reflection, and of making meaning of the things I do each day. And for those things I can make no meaning of, this year will be a process of eliminating them, clearing a path for those things that do have value and importance in my life.
It sounds so easy, you know, living with intention. But when I begin to think of all of the things I do without intention, without aim or purpose or goal, the task seems overwhelming. But these assigned annual titles are more than stand alone ideas. Luckily, they build on each other, making me a more whole person than I was the year before. So I will take the lessons learned from the Year of Yes, the Year of Celebration, the Year of Enough, and I will add those beautiful life lessons into my Year of Intention. I will move ahead fearlessly and without inhibitions. I will approach each day with a heart of gratitude for the opportunities that lie ahead. I will acknowledge the imperfection of my pursuits and my limits as a human, knowing that no process, no intention, no concept of wholeness or integrity is or can be perfect. And with all of that, I will pursue purpose and meaning and intention.
One last note about the Year of Intention. Upon looking up the definition of the word intention, I discovered a use for the word I did not know existed. In the medical field, intention means the healing process for a wound. I find this new discovering to be a very profound way to approach this year. While I know that I certainly have wounds of my own that need daily attention and evaluation and care, I also acknowledge the great many wounds that surround me in those that I love, in those I encounter, in those within my reach. And maybe this Year of Intention is less about the healing of my own wounds and more about the purposeful pursuit of the opportunities to aid in the healing of the great many wounds around me. And maybe, just maybe, those processes are really one in the same.
My first dedicated year was the Year of Go. Leading up to this year, I was becoming envious of my adventuresome friends as I felt like a hesitant, almost shy, sidelines participant in life. I needed to give myself permission to move ahead confidently, knowing that I could embark on new adventures, deepen relationships, and cast of inhibitions that were holding me back. And from what I recall of that year, I did. A casual acquaintance invites me over for coffee. Let's go! A colleague asks me to try out a new project with them. Go! It was a life-changing year of experiencing depths that I just hadn't ever allowed myself to experience before.
The years that followed were the Year of Celebration and the Year of Enough. Seeming opposites, and for good reason. The Year of Celebration brought into my life a marriage built on commitment, love, difference, and adventure; the completion of a hard-earned terminal degree through the defense of a dissertation I was proud of; and the growing of a new life inside me for the first time, an unexpected miracle that was the biggest celebration of all. I also spent the year centering myself by celebrating the small things in life, the daily gratitudes that welled my heart full. The Year of Enough allowed me to be okay with myself as I was. And while I still struggle with my enoughness, I have learned that it's a daily process coming to terms with your own limitations and being okay with them.
And so this year, I move ahead, wanting to move from acknowledging my limitations to pursuing both my weaknesses and my strengths with purpose. I hope it to be a season of evaluation, of reflection, and of making meaning of the things I do each day. And for those things I can make no meaning of, this year will be a process of eliminating them, clearing a path for those things that do have value and importance in my life.
It sounds so easy, you know, living with intention. But when I begin to think of all of the things I do without intention, without aim or purpose or goal, the task seems overwhelming. But these assigned annual titles are more than stand alone ideas. Luckily, they build on each other, making me a more whole person than I was the year before. So I will take the lessons learned from the Year of Yes, the Year of Celebration, the Year of Enough, and I will add those beautiful life lessons into my Year of Intention. I will move ahead fearlessly and without inhibitions. I will approach each day with a heart of gratitude for the opportunities that lie ahead. I will acknowledge the imperfection of my pursuits and my limits as a human, knowing that no process, no intention, no concept of wholeness or integrity is or can be perfect. And with all of that, I will pursue purpose and meaning and intention.
One last note about the Year of Intention. Upon looking up the definition of the word intention, I discovered a use for the word I did not know existed. In the medical field, intention means the healing process for a wound. I find this new discovering to be a very profound way to approach this year. While I know that I certainly have wounds of my own that need daily attention and evaluation and care, I also acknowledge the great many wounds that surround me in those that I love, in those I encounter, in those within my reach. And maybe this Year of Intention is less about the healing of my own wounds and more about the purposeful pursuit of the opportunities to aid in the healing of the great many wounds around me. And maybe, just maybe, those processes are really one in the same.
Monday, April 18, 2016
Encounters with the Risen Christ
I was asked to share a brief message with my church this past Sunday, a reflection of my encounters with the risen Christ as an extension of celebration this Easter season. I shared the following message that had been on my heart for a while.
---
I have been a parent for 389 days. 389 days of seemingly endless diaper changes, tears, tantrums, giggles, spit ups, wiping up, and so many firsts. In 389 days, I feel like I've learned more about the heart of Christ than perhaps any other time in my life.
After the longest days, the days that I'm not sure I can make it through, the days that rub me raw and edgy, the days that Kip pushes my every button, even on these days, there's this moment. This quiet moment where I lay my child down to sleep in his crib, and I pause and just look at him. And my heart wells up like it could explode, and this little voice whispers, "I love you so much I could die."
That's a really funny response when you stop and think about it. I love you so much I could sing and shout! I love you so much I could squeeze you for days! I love you so much that I want to give you the world. But die? I love you so much I could die? That's downright illogical. There's only one place a response like that could come from. Jesus looking lovingly at his people must have whispered, "I love you so much I could die." My heart is only a small reflection of his level of love.
But I'm supposed to be here talking about my encounters with the living Christ, the Jesus who beat death and lives in our world today. In 389 days of parenting, I have learned that the living Christ is woven deeply into my son. Kip was born with a heart built for joy and love. As he has grown and developed, he has found ways to express this joy and love through his daily existence. He wakes up eager to throw his arms around the neck of anyone he sees. He finds delight in the littlest things, a shared smile or giggle, reading books, knocking down block towers, experiencing the wind and sun of nature. He brings joy to those around him, playing peek-a-boo with strangers at Target, waving bye-bye to anyone who seems to be leaving, flashing his toothy grin.
Before Jesus left earth, he promised his followers that the Spirit would be in their hearts. It is this very Spirit that builds our hearts full of joy and love. And we are reminded in Romans that where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom…freedom that my 13 month old son seems far more familiar with than I.
Kip's heart is profoundly free. He merely exists and makes an impact on the world. He does not worry if he's happy enough, if he shared enough, if he loved enough, if he's served enough people with his gift of joy. He doesn't count up his mistakes each day, those times he doesn't want to listen to his mama or climbs the stairs even though he knows full well he's not supposed to. He never wonders if his heart is good or bad. He just lives in joy and love and freedom. And I can't help but wonder if this is the sort of freedom we're all supposed to be dwelling in. The freedom of knowing we have the Spirit within us, that we will make mistakes and learn from them, and that we, just by merely existing, by freely and fully dwelling in joy and love, have an immense impact on God's world.
---
I have been a parent for 389 days. 389 days of seemingly endless diaper changes, tears, tantrums, giggles, spit ups, wiping up, and so many firsts. In 389 days, I feel like I've learned more about the heart of Christ than perhaps any other time in my life.
After the longest days, the days that I'm not sure I can make it through, the days that rub me raw and edgy, the days that Kip pushes my every button, even on these days, there's this moment. This quiet moment where I lay my child down to sleep in his crib, and I pause and just look at him. And my heart wells up like it could explode, and this little voice whispers, "I love you so much I could die."
That's a really funny response when you stop and think about it. I love you so much I could sing and shout! I love you so much I could squeeze you for days! I love you so much that I want to give you the world. But die? I love you so much I could die? That's downright illogical. There's only one place a response like that could come from. Jesus looking lovingly at his people must have whispered, "I love you so much I could die." My heart is only a small reflection of his level of love.
But I'm supposed to be here talking about my encounters with the living Christ, the Jesus who beat death and lives in our world today. In 389 days of parenting, I have learned that the living Christ is woven deeply into my son. Kip was born with a heart built for joy and love. As he has grown and developed, he has found ways to express this joy and love through his daily existence. He wakes up eager to throw his arms around the neck of anyone he sees. He finds delight in the littlest things, a shared smile or giggle, reading books, knocking down block towers, experiencing the wind and sun of nature. He brings joy to those around him, playing peek-a-boo with strangers at Target, waving bye-bye to anyone who seems to be leaving, flashing his toothy grin.
Before Jesus left earth, he promised his followers that the Spirit would be in their hearts. It is this very Spirit that builds our hearts full of joy and love. And we are reminded in Romans that where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom…freedom that my 13 month old son seems far more familiar with than I.
Kip's heart is profoundly free. He merely exists and makes an impact on the world. He does not worry if he's happy enough, if he shared enough, if he loved enough, if he's served enough people with his gift of joy. He doesn't count up his mistakes each day, those times he doesn't want to listen to his mama or climbs the stairs even though he knows full well he's not supposed to. He never wonders if his heart is good or bad. He just lives in joy and love and freedom. And I can't help but wonder if this is the sort of freedom we're all supposed to be dwelling in. The freedom of knowing we have the Spirit within us, that we will make mistakes and learn from them, and that we, just by merely existing, by freely and fully dwelling in joy and love, have an immense impact on God's world.
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