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I don’t ‘help’ people as often as I used to. That’s because somebody taught me to ask three questions first:
I’m finding it a much more restful (and respectful) way to be.
“[R]est for your soul.” Matthew 11:29
Not long ago, I was having a hard time. I told a friend, and he listened. He didn’t try to fix me or give me advice or encourage me to shape up or talk me out of feeling what I was feeling. He didn’t say much at all. Every once in a while, he would ask me a question, as if I were a work of art and he wanted to be sure to take in all the hidden beauty. In the end, he simply said, “I don’t want you to feel alone in this. I am here.”
Someday, when the tables are turned, I hope I remember what lavish listening feels like.
“Then the lame will leap like a deer. . . .” Isaiah 35:6
“An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one’s own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker’s world from the inside. . . .” M. Scott Peck
I find myself growing older on the outside, which is no great surprise. The great surprise is growing newer on the inside. Some days it feels like swallowing a star.
swallowing a star
makes it hard
to trudge through life
as if you hadn’t
and squeeze into rooms
all burning and bursting
with light
as if
you weren’t
“[O]n the inside, where God is making new life. . . .” 2 Corinthians 4:16
A long time ago, a much-older friend tried to convince me to set aside one whole day a week as a no-work day (and he saw ‘work’ as anything that would give me a head start in Monday’s rat race). It would be a day for breathing easy and enjoying people and delighting and celebrating and being refreshed. It would be a day of rest.
I had three small children and a job and a lot of other reasons for not listening to him. I couldn’t afford to have a day of rest. I figured I would start later.
That was thirty years (and about 1,500 weeks) ago. Now I’m the (probably) much-older friend trying to convince you.
“We mostly spend [our] lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do. Craving, clutching, and fussing, . . . we are kept in perpetual unrest.” Evelyn Underhill
“You shall work six days, but on the seventh day you shall rest. Even during plowing time and harvest, you shall rest.” Exodus 34:21
A few days ago, I had dinner with close friends, and we did something unusual. We told each other about our if-onlys.
You probably have your own collection--if only I had chosen a different career or grabbed that one-time business opportunity or gone to a different school or gotten married or whatever. The older you get, the more if-onlys you have.
If-onlys make you feel awful. They say, “It’s too late now. That ship has sailed. You had a chance to lead a full and satisfying life, but you blew it. You should be ashamed.” They convince you that, if only you had made different choices, you wouldn’t feel the gnawing emptiness you feel.
But they lie. Only one thing can fill our emptiness.
“Only holy time, in which we experience the presence of God, can fill our emptiness.” Marva Dawn
“In Your presence there is fullness of joy.” Psalm 16:11
I made a decision this morning. I decided to spend the day counting gifts. I decided to look for gifts everywhere and say thank-you for them and write down as many as I can. A friend is doing it with me, which will make it easier to stay on track when I feel more like complaining than counting. I won’t do it perfectly, but that’s okay. Every gift I count today will be one small step from stuffy to spacious.
“[A] spacious land that God has given. . . .” Judges 18:10
“She was a kind of abacus of thanksgiving in flesh and blood.” Mark Buchanan (of a woman in her eighties who spent her days counting gifts)
