FOMO

Fishing in the spring is my jam and not once did the weather cooperate with my fishing plans during spring break!  Poor me..... Last Sunday was the only day to go fishing and I felt bad, too bad to go.  There was no way this right arm could cast in this condition.  So...I stayed home.  All day.  I. Did. Nothing.  My right arm said no. No computer work. No blogging. No cleaning. No reading. No chopping vegetables. No sewing. No gardening. Books weren’t even a great option because I was at that awkward in-between stage in the life of a reader where I miss the last book and am not enthused about the next book. And since it was gorgeous outside I had no desire to watch TV.  

So I walked around and looked at the nature on my property and watch my husband work like a mad man.  It was then that I met her.  I met my neighbor.  I am ashamed to say that I have lived next to her for TEN YEARS.  I have no excuse. Never in these ten years have I slowed down enough to have a conversation with my neighbor.  While I was on this roll, I walked over to visit with my neighbor on the other side.  I thoroughly enjoyed talking to her too.  As it turns out the “missing out” was not about fishing but  about having a conversation with my neighbors.  

FOMO, fear of missing out, is more prevalent today since we are constantly barraged with opportunities.  And 99% of them are good!  How do we chose when career, church, spouse, kids, children, grandchildren, funerals, weddings and birthday parties happen all on the same week? This is all in addition to the necessaries of work, cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry, and on and on.  

Here are 7 typical criteria that are commonly used when booking schedules.

1. Spouse is first. 
2. Family always first. 
3. Kids first, adults last. They need our support.  
4. Church always first. The other stuff is not as important. 
5. Career furthering first.
6. Try to squeeze in all of them, running breathless from venue to venue.  
7. Treat my world according to my calendar. First come, first served.  If you want my attention, get a spot on my calendar pronto! My calendar makes my apologies.  Everyone understands that.  

Chances are that you designate your time much like your parents taught you.  And if you don’t, you feel a little guilty about that.  But they lived in another time.  They did not have access to all the invitations that we have.  There was limited access to transportation and information. So how do we choose?  What is our rule of thumb?  How can we ever hope for spontaneity and relationships again?  

My first stop will be with that Sabbath thing God created. God designated rest in one of the Big Ten.  He designed our bodies to need rest.  This means we must choose.  Not to choose is to run ragged.  

Of course we should always defer to our living example of perfection. WWJD? Even Jesus stopped and spent quiet, intimate time with his disciples rather than always being out with the masses.  He also chose intimate dining in the homes of socially unacceptable folks.  He knew his time was short and his days were numbered, yet he spent time as if there was no deadline, giving his full attention to each individual.  Then he retreated into quiet places to be alone with his Father regularly.  

Think about the last funeral you attended. Would you have dropped everything to go play cards with that person with only a few day’s notice while they were alive?   For me, the answer would, sadly, have been no.  And yes, I realize that dropping everything to attend a funeral is one of the few socially accepted reasons to change our plans while dropping everything to go play cards is not. 

But does it have to be that way?  Must we be forced into a gridlock schedule of socially accepted values?  Have we trapped ourselves and our personal relationships with our iron-clad scheduling?   When was the last time you cancelled on an event just to have some face-to-face time with someone?  I’m not talking about observing your child’s peewee game.  That is not face-to-face even when we cheer loudly from the sidelines.  That is not the intimate attention that children crave.  Car time comes a little closer but since hand held devices will quickly consume this time together, it is not.  Movies are not either.  I’m talking about personal interaction of playing games, walking side-by-side hiking, camping, fishing, building a fort or campfire type time.  How many sporting events must we observe to equal in quality interaction one single game of Go Fish? 

Making memories with my enchilada construction team.

What if for one week we cleared our schedule of anything outside of work that was not face-to-face, creating margin in our week.  Margin is where spontaneity begins.  Margin is where relationships begin.  What if we reassessed our calendar and we placed priority on relationships choosing quality over quantity?

Marriage: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

There are two kinds of relationships: those that make both people better, never to be the same again, and those that only drag both people under, never to be the same again.  As a disclaimer, I have been in both and once I was in the relationship, there was nothing I did to make one fail and one work.  The success or failure was in the initial decision.  While recently talking candidly with my posse, we shared our regrets of bad choices turning into bad marriages. This again reinforced my view that the initial choice is the key indicator of success.  

Thinking about how these good and bad marriages began, I realized there were a couple of things that made the difference. First, how level-headed were both partners thinking when they made the decision of a lifetime together?  If either partner made that decision under duress or had more focus on the upcoming ceremony than the lifetime together, there could be trouble. By the way, I’m sure everyone has jitters, but mostly excited jitters, not fearful jitters.  If either was worried about what people would think, that is another death knell.  On both sides, there should only be excitement of the adventure of a life with this person you have chosen.  And if the wedding ceremony is the last thing on your mind, that is a great start!

When I look back on my 32-year-old good marriage, I see how my husband has smoothed my rough edges, pushed me to try new endeavors and helped me come out of my shell.  And that is just me.  Whenever we see lifelong friends of my husband’s, they always comment on how I made him a better man.  

It is relationships that nurture both partners that we all seek so desperately: the kind that will improve both of you.  I don’t mean that you will go into it with a plan to “fix” each other’s flaws, because that is the opposite of the improvement I am talking about.  That is pie-in-the-sky ridiculous!  You must be perfectly happy with the person you are marrying as-is.  You get what you see.  I loved my husband just the way he was when we said “I do”.  I didn’t care if he ever changed.  To me, he was perfect and I was one lucky girl.  And I think I could say that he felt the same about me.  Our upgrades are just the fruit of a happy relationship. 

Do we fight?  Oh yeah!  But one of the first things I learned about my husband is that he fought fairly.  There were no low blows. He taught me that.  But yes, there have to be fights.  This is what made us better.  Iron sharpens iron. 

Proverbs 27:17 NIV

[17] As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.

But to sharpen a blade you must hit at the right angle, taking care never to dull the sharpened edge with a rogue blow.  That is so important in marriage!  Control your tongue even in a fight.  Consider it your job to protect your spouse’s ego.  If you don’t know how to do that, learn it together before you get hitched.  If you do, both of you will improve together.  

Another point is that both of you must feel like you are deserving of the other.  Each must be equal in the partner’s eyes, both made of the same stuff. My husband and I are so hard headed that it is more like diamond sharpening diamond, but as long as you are equally tough, one can sharpen the other.  

If you are equally crazy in love, equally tough, and know how to fight fairly, your relationship will stand a chance in this world. If you haven’t got this, it is best not to force it. That will only cause unnecessary pain and suffering.  

Seasons

It has been a long hard winter for us Texans!  A normal Texas winter has a handful of curl-up-by-the-fireplace days in between an equal number of sunny days that are warm enough to get the fishing gear out and wonder where winter went.  Then, on a great year, there might have been a day or two of beautiful snow to show us the true gem of winter.  All in all, most of those winter days were sunny.  But this year....oh this year....the sun and the moon, made only a few rare appearances.  The icy chill was relentless and the rain and drizzle made us all vow to never move north of the Mason Dixon line. 

Today as I awoke wondering about the weather, my Bible reading lead me to Genesis about the life of Joseph.  In my opinion, it is by far one of the best Bible stories!  As I was reading, I realized just how long it was that he suffered in prison in Egypt. The way I read it, it looked like around 15 years.  He didn’t spring the joint until the age of 30.  Such a long season in a young life!  But how sweet that freedom must have felt when he finally was out.  And how much wisdom he learned while in prison!  He emerged no longer a brash braggart but pointing to God as his guide and rescuer. His spring had to be so much sweeter after this long stretch of his life in prison. 

So my point is this. Spring is coming, regardless of whether this phrase is understood figuratively or literally.  And it will be so much sweeter after a grueling winter.  Just as seasons seem to change overnight, so will this one.  But remember, just as we get used to the spring, winter will rear it’s ugly head periodically.  Yet each appearance will be further apart until, like a lizard, we are laying on a warm rock in the sun without a care in the world, soaking up that warmth.  

A Fresh New Sunrise

There are painful moments that define everyone’s life.  This is what my current Bible study by Lisa Harper about Job has been digging through.  This process has been tearful and healing beyond belief.  It has been therapy for my soul.  

Before this study, I always minimized my scars, swept them under the rug, and moved on.  I never thought they affected my current reality until the prying questions in Lisa’s book forced me to look at my pain.  That is when God connected the dots in my mind. I traced some breadcrumbs of current bitterness all the way back to my childhood.  I finally admitted to myself and to God that those multiple abrasions of childhood where indeed very unfair and a big burden for a small child. I realized that I wasn’t being a whiner-baby over something insignificant!  The fact that I remember that pain decades later is enough to tell me that I endured significant hardship as a child.  Knowing many children have had it worse, I always felt unworthy to cry about what I went through, but 55 years later I finally cried tears visualizing myself as a child enduring my lot in life. 

Through this process I realized that it is impossible to heal when you refuse to admit that you were wronged.  You just continue building bitterness every time the memory rears it’s ugly head.  But I also realize that only God can heal and being aware of this helps me remember to bring it to him whenever I feel that sting.  Now I must let go and lay it in the Father’s lap, walking away to a fresh new sunrise.  

Thank you Lord, for being my healer.  

Those Kind of People

I cringe when there is a news story about a scumbag who falls in my bucket.   A teacher or professed Christ-follower who does something heinous makes my skin crawl. And I know I need to duck from the shrapnel-like judgement on the whole group by the actions of his one.  Thoughtless or attention-seeking news reporting continually calls out groups of people by the actions of a few.  We have all seen judgement passed on groups of people. And this seems to escalate daily.  I believe it is in part caused by lazy, thoughtless thumbs up, share and retweet communication but that is a whole other topic! 

We as a society are constantly classifying people and drawing judgement by those groups.  Even my social media advertisements are filtered by the political affiliation to which they believe I belong.  I often receive advertisements for things which are clearly earmarked for some faction of society that does not apply to me.  Because of my Christian posts, they send me extremely conservative ads. But because I am a teacher I get liberal stuff too.  Of course they are right when they load me up with dog ads, but I love that I can’t be nailed down.  There is no bucket in which I fit!  And this is true for each of us.  None of us belong in a bucket.  Each of us is an individual that may or may not think like those whom we associate.

Here is another related example.  Do you ever quit listening to someone because you know them so well that you are sure you know what they are about to say?  Often I think I know a person’s opinion on a topic so my ears filter out their words. Sometimes if they repeat it three or four more times, it finally sinks in that they are saying something quite different from what I expected. This is just another form of the same issue.  My ears sort information by my preconceived ideas.  If what they say does not fit this mold, I never know about it because I have already shut down.  

As bad as it is today, this is not a new problem.  One of Jesus’ most famous parables addresses this very issue.  See Luke 10:29-37. It is the parable called the Good Samaritan.  It is about a man from one political affiliation reaching out to a man of a very different echelon.  He doesn’t mindlessly walk on by like others.  He sees a need and addresses it generously, disregarding any preconceived ideas. This is what Christ followers are told to do. 

Here is the take-away.  I have to start with me.  Even if this blog went viral, it would change nothing.  It is up to each individual to monitor his own prejudices against certain groups of people.  It is harder than ever to do this in our current political climate but that is no excuse. How many times have I judged people by their life choices, clothing, car they drive, news channel they watch, and on and on?  How many times have I quit listening because I thought I knew what they were going to say?  

Lord, make me sensitive to my own prejudices. Help me remember the author of prejudice is the Enemy. Help me spot it and immediately bring it to you.  Help me listen with an open heart.  Help me see the beauty and struggles in each individual regardless of their affiliations.  Help me stop this madness and empty all my buckets by the power of your Holy Spirit. Please help me love my neighbors as you commanded. Thank you.