The Good Days and the Hard Days

Yesterday morning, I was talking to the IT guy when I casually put my hand right into my cereal bowl—which was still full of milk.

Yesterday afternoon, the checkout person at the grocery story accused me of stealing because I put bags of items into my cart after scanning them but before paying for them. She probably thought the screaming toddler who wouldn’t sit still was a cover-up for a shoplifting scheme.

It’s amazing how the events of one day can cross the entire map of emotions, from hilarious to humiliating.

Devotional points:

• Never assume you’re putting your hand onto your coffee mug without checking to make sure it’s not a cereal bowl.

• Next time you see the mother of a toddler having a hard time at the grocery store, give her a kind word of encouragement or offer to pay for her groceries. Don’t just watch her in the produce aisle and laugh at her.

I was going to write “To the Discouraged” today, but ironically, I couldn’t think of much more to say than what the Little Blue Engine repeats all the way up the mountain:

“I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.”

But maybe, sometimes, that’s all those who are discouraged need to hear—with one small twist:

I think you can.

Re-entry

Life is full of seasons. Duh. I don’t have to tell you that.

Some seasons are full of the type of day when your head springs off the pillow in the morning, and you sing in the shower, and a long lost rich relative sends you money in the mail, and random strangers smile at you as you skip down the sidewalk bathed in a pool of fresh sunshine.

Other seasons are marked by days when the shower handle breaks off in your hand while the water is stuck on cold, and you discover there’s no milk left after you pour yourself a bowl of cereal, and you get a flat tire on the way to work, and when you finally get there you find out your boss handed out raises while you were gone but you weren’t there so you didn’t get one.

My past year has certainly had both seasons—365 days worth of tears, laughter, and embarrassing experiences.

It’s covered more than 300 early morning alarms, long walks and talks, and dinners that are usually on the go. It’s been enough time to form a handful of good friendships, get a new job, have a new baby (!), go on a tiny vacation, spend time with family, and watch four seasons pass in colorful splendor.

Here’s to another year of seasons, with (hopefully) more blogging to document the days.

Curtis (he’s very wonderful) had to wait 25 years to see the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Baby Graham got to see it at 23 days old.

Lines in Pleasant Places

PSA: Few things are happier than a freshly walked Sunday with her head stuck out of the car window. Also, somehow it took me 25 years to discover how much a hot, thirsty dog can slobber.

Episode Let’s Take a Drive Just for Fun, featuring Sunday, AKA the slobberiest, friendliest black mutt

In other news, my new glasses came in today. I decided that, for the rest of my glasses-wearing life (so, potentially forever, unless someone wants to sponsor my LASIK surgery), I’ll probably get brightly colored frames.

As I told Curtis (he’s very wonderful), “People usually assume that if you have colorful glasses, you’re a little weird. And I’m a little weird. So why would I mind people knowing?”

In which I realize that my two front teeth are not exactly the same size—and now you’re looking. But mostly, THE NEW FRAMES WOOT WOOT

On a less newsy note, I’ve been thinking a lot about Psalm 16:6 lately: “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.”

Boundary lines determine a lot. Where you can go, and where you can’t. Where it’s safe and where it’s not. Often, boundary lines are marked by fences that keep the good in and the bad out. They can mean a lot of other things for us too—where we live, what we do, how we spend our free time, even what happens to us outside our control—some things that we see as positive, others that we see as negative. But at the end of the day, whether we view them as beneficial or annoying, boundary lines exist for each of us.

And that’s good.

A life lived without boundaries is a life headed toward disaster, like a car careening off the edge of a narrow mountain road with no guardrails. It’s natural for us to want our boundary lines drawn in easy places. We’re happy to keep the rules if they’re not hard, and we’re glad to go through something as long as it’s not too challenging.

But as I’ve thought about it, I’ve realized that perhaps that’s the wrong view. The space inside my boundary lines may be pleasant, but that doesn’t mean it will always be easy—but after all, the lines are there to keep me safe, whether or not I understand them.

The sheep might want the greener grass on the other side of the fence, but the wolf on the other side would make a quick dinner of them the minute their hooves hit the ground on the far side. My boundary lines may fall in pleasant places (they certainly have) and I’ll have a delightful inheritance, but there’s no promise that life will be easy inside the lines. And sometimes, it’s really not.

But there’s eternal safety and a delightful inheritance in store, so even when the boundary lines are hard, living in them is worth it.

We're Humans. It's What We Do.

What began as every introvert’s dream-come-true (“Hey, everybody stay home for a few weeks.”) has turned into an unsettling episode of a TV show that none of us wanted to watch (even the introverts). As COVID-19 rampages across the globe, disrespectful of life and liberty alike, we’re sitting in our homes wondering how long it’s going to take, hoping it won’t touch any of us personally.

Honestly, there’s plenty to be scared of—I don’t even have to tell you that, the news is doing just fine. At the root of our fear lingers the same gnawing realization: we just don’t know. Could be a week. Could be a month. Could be six months or a year. Could be more.

We’re off our routine, jolted into a new regular, trying to take things in stride. It’s serious, so serious, because everything that involves human life is serious. So serious.

It can be easy to lose sight of truth and good some days, when life seems to have swung off its hinges—but all is not lost.

Here are two important things to remember every day when we turn on the news and the first word we hear is “Coronavirus.”

1. There are still other things happening in the world. Babies are being born, people are falling in love (even from > 6' apart), children are learning the magic of walking and talking, scholars are studying and making new discoveries, and so much more. The precious gifts of life and discovery are still ours, even if they’re momentarily not our main focus. But someday, we’ll wake up and the sun will be shining and the birds will be singing, and the shelves will be fully stocked with toilet paper again. And we’ll sit up in bed and take a deep breath, and sing for joy at the gift of life.

2. We always fight. Humans are this strange, unique, beautiful thing—where every other force on earth believes “reason” and will give up when things get really, really impossible, we always fight back. We’re humans. It’s what we do*.

In my last post of 2016 (check it out here if you want to read the whole thing), I wrote about this, and (if I do say so myself) summed it up pretty well:

Over our Christmas break, we went to see Rogue One. Critique of the actual film aside (it was decent, but there was minimal character development, which was a bummer), there were at least a half-dozen previews before the feature film began. Almost every single one was about humans fighting aliens, humans fighting super-villians, humans fighting crime, humans fighting other-worldly forces, but always, humans fighting. 

I had an epiphany: everything fights humanity.

Because we fight back.

We fight crime, we fight things that are bigger than us, we fight hurricanes and earthquakes and fire, we set ourselves up against insurmountable odds. We do it without question, because it's what we do (like eating and sleeping and hitting snooze).

We live in a world that is littered, left and right, with the evidence of sin trying to win, but we haven't given up. We fight because we are not programmed to back down, because we believe that there is good and it is worth fighting for. We fight because Jesus Christ fought first, fought the urge to choose the easy route, and gave himself be brutally murdered so that we are not doomed to losing eternally.

Humans are the chosen enemy of every fictitious and fantastical world, because we are the only ones who will oppose them, who will stand and deliver in the face of impossibility, who will get knocked down and get up, again and again and again. Humanity is, to the avid warrior, the best opponent, because the human spirit exhibits unquenchable resilience in the face of insurmountable odds. 

We keep on fighting. Because even when the tunnel is caving in, even when it's dark outside and the stars can't make it through, we cannot just give up. We have to keep trying, even if the victories are infinitesimal, even if it's one step forward, five steps back.

I'm not given to profanity, but 2016 was a h-e-double-hockey-sticks of a year for a lot of people. Really, every year is. But it was also full of hope, redemption, and little kindnesses.

And God was gracious, and let us live in His green world, day after day.

2017 might be a piece of cake. Or it might be even worse. History proves that every year has the bitter and the sweet, intermingled throughout. 

Either way, we'll keep fighting for the better, fighting because God made us to be full of courage, not fear. We fight because the landscape of eternity is much larger than we can even imagine, but what we do still matters.

We are fighters, and even after a year that knocks our wind out, we'll take a deep breath and surge into the next one.

It will be delightful, and there will be delicious moments and snapshots we'll treasure forever. 

It will be brutal, and sometimes we will wish to crawl into a large cave and hide forever.

It will be 2017, and we will fight to live it better than we lived 2016.

We’re humans. It's what we do.

*Maybe it’s because we’re created in the image of God, and He first modeled stopping at NOTHING to get what was the most important to Him: us.

But That's Not What I Was Expecting

Wildest dreams seldom compare with the sunshiny, blissful, sometimes all-too-dreadful reality of real life.

When I imagined moving from Chicago, I saw friends and family lining the curb and waving to us as we embarked on our next adventure. Instead, Curtis and I alone pack-horsed a bunch of suitcases across a few city blocks, crammed our tiny Ford Fiesta full of stuff (wishing at that moment we’d just torched the whole lot and started from scratch), and drove out of the city in a June hailstorm. Well, that’s not how I pictured it happening.

We knew where we were headed, but we didn’t have a home to go to—so when we arrived at our tiny town in northern-ish Michigan late that night, we pulled into the driveway of a house we’d never seen to stay with people we’d only met briefly. This wasn’t exactly how I thought relocating would look.

Shortly after arriving in Michigan, we discovered it was going to take longer to close on our house than we thought. In the exactly 2 months during which we didn’t have a home of our own, we stayed in six different places. I feel like starting out a new life isn’t supposed to be like this.

The brakes on our car went out. We spent a lot of Sunday afternoons sitting in the driveway of the house, looking at it wishfully and praying about maybe someday owning it. I biked a lot, got a flat tire, got it fixed, biked some more. I started a new job. We were farm animals (sheep and donkey) in the local Fourth of July parade. We spent lots of Saturday afternoons at the beach of Lake Michigan. Most of our meals were eaten in the church kitchen. I took naps on the floor of Curtis’s office. Somehow I don’t feel very much like an adult.

On July 17, exactly two months after Curtis graduated with his MA and we moved out of our apartment in Chicago, we closed on a house in Michigan. It had been owned by an older gentleman who now lives with his son near Detroit. He left the house abruptly two years ago, so it was still full of all his belongings. Including lots of deer skulls. And 11 vacuums. Seven mattresses. Hunter orange countertops in the kitchen, yards and yards of retro wallpaper, and even some schnazzy camouflage carpet. A few acres. An apple orchard, grape arbor, and a semi-trailer container buried in the back yard. I guess this sort of qualifies as move-in ready.

Sweat equity is a gentle way to describe the amount of work we’ve put into the house in the past month, and it still feels a little like it’s just the beginning. Somewhere in there we acquired kitties. A hot water heater. A water pressure tank. A new well screen. A half dozen gallons of paint. Home ownership doesn’t feel very much like Pinterest makes it look.

Exactly a month after closing, last weekend we got the rest of our belongings from a storage unit in Indiana, where we kept them all summer long. Our furniture didn’t fare too well, but to my great ecstasy all my books are back with me. This is definitely not what I had planned.

Nothing about the process has happened the way I expected it to. It has taken longer. Been more expensive. Required more sweat, more patience, more creative problem solving. Between full-time jobs and house renovations, we’ve put in a few 70-hour weeks. In every way it has challenged my idyllic expectations of Our First House Together.

And in every way, it has been better.

Not because it’s been more pleasant—a few times, it’s been just the opposite. But because I know a few key truths:

Our house and everything in it is a gift from God. How could two poor college-students-turned-adults afford enough furniture for a whole house unless God gave it to them?

I get to take this adventure with my best friend. Curtis (he’s very wonderful).

We are not alone. We’ve entered into a community that loves us generously, serves us tirelessly, and can’t wait to do life with us.

Life will continue to be one thing after another that is different from my expectations. But I am learning that’s going to be okay.

The Satisfaction of . . . Well. You Know.

Most kids become shrewd entrepreneurs at a young age—I was no exception. I learned young that bargaining my way out of things seldom worked, but it didn’t hurt to see if I could get a reward for completing the assigned task.

Can you husk the corn for dinner?
Write a history paper about the pilgrims.
Will you go cut the grass?

Inevitably, my reply was something along the lines of, “What do I get if I do?” It’s humbling (and slightly mortifying) to admit my attitude of entitlement, even as a child. Thankfully, my wise mother was not easily susceptible to the old pull-the-wool-over-her-eyes-with-a-desperate-hungry-look trick. One time out of 50, she would grant me some incentive—which apparently gave me hope to keep asking—but the other 49 times, her answer to my, “What do I get if I do this?” was always the same.

“The satisfaction of a job well done.”

Young, ignorant, and more interested in material gain than building character, I didn’t usually appreciate that reply. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to understand the value of this perspective.

It’s very easy or do well on something when the reward is tangible. Every bride diets before her wedding, because she’s rewarded by fitting into her dress extra-nicely. Star athletes play well so they can sign multi-million dollar contracts. Ballerinas practice hard so they don’t trip and fall over during the performance when 2,000 people are watching.

But what about those things that no one sees? What if I’m committed to working hard on something for days and weeks and years and it never seems to matter and no one seems to notice? What’s in it for me when I do my best then?

The satisfaction of a job well done.

If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well whether you get rewarded or not. Recognition and incentive aren’t the only rewards. There’s also experience and character.

If it’s worth doing, it doesn’t matter who notices it’s good or even if it makes you rich. Maybe you’ll be the only one who notices and you’ll be broke till you die. But you’ll know that it was really good, and it’s better to die content with your work than chafing because you didn’t try.

And if it’s worth doing, you might as well do your best at it—because if you’re going to do it either way, why not make it great? Then maybe, just maybe, if you’re very lucky, someday someone might stumble across your painting or your book or your innovative plumbing methods, and you might strike it rich and famous.

But they probably won’t—and maybe that’s okay too. Because you’ll still have the satisfaction of . . . well. You know.

5 Ways to Survive a Job You Love

The complex challenge and delight of doing something you love for work is that you’re doing something you love . . . for work.

Firefighters don’t spend their off hours putting out blazes (unless spouse is not a great cook), and cashiers at walmart don’t go home and continue swiping items over the scanner (maybe just in their dreams).

After scribbling words and ideas for hours in a chair at a desk for a deadline and a client, writing for fun in my free time feels utterly unappealing. Crafting beauty no longer feels like a joy—it feels like responsibility, another item to check off a to-do list. But indulging the laziness and not writing introduces the creeping chill that if I don’t write, I’ll lose the ability. And that would be far worse than sitting down to write for an hour or two when I don’t feel like it.

There are plenty of variations to this.

• Maybe you do a job you don’t like and you’re struggling to get out of bed to go every morning
• Maybe you used to be passionate about your work but you’ve lost the spark
• Maybe you’re waiting for another opportunity or recognition and nothing has come along

It all begs the obvious question that has no obvious answer:

What in the world am I supposed to do now?

Though I have no really obvious pie-in-the-face answers, I have a few ideas.

1) Quit. Artists, don’t want to paint for salary? Trader Joe’s is always hiring—hawaiian shirts and hand lettered signs are just a two-weeks notice away. Or you could storm off and flip some tables, and they’re just a day away.

2) Persevere. When the going gets tough, that’s when it really matters to stick it out. There’s an uphill and a downhill to every mountain hike (unless you build a house at the top and never leave). It might just get easier if you don’t give up now.

3) Hold open hands. Remember that your job isn’t your life, and none of your personal value actually comes from working it. Don’t find your worth in client, coworker, or boss comments, or you’ll be riding the ever fluctuating roller coaster of compliments and criticisms and compliments and criticisms and compliments and criticisms and . . . Bonus tip: Ask your three-year-old if they care that you’re the CEO of your company, and odds are they’ll care a lot more that you’re their parent.

4) Nourish your passion. Reserve time and space to do what you love just for yourself, just because you love it. And if sometimes you end up spending all four hours staring at a blank canvas with a paintbrush in hand, don’t regret it. Just do it again next week. And if the same thing happens week after week, month after month, strongly consider 1).

5) Find a like-minded community. Even for the hermit-est introvert, there’s undeniable synergy in finding someone else who loves to do the exact same thing.

At the end of the day, there’s no hard and fast solution—you have to figure out what works for you. One word of hopeful advice: making a living is not worth losing your passion. There are other jobs in the world.