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Obstacles or Opportunities?

While sitting at the airport in Charlotte this morning I checked my work voicemail and found out they are cutting my hours again. It’s official now, I’m only a part-timer. 20 hours tops. Yikes!

I struggled most of the morning with a growing self-pity over the frustrating lack of employment opportunities I’ve found in Nashville. My bills already outweigh my income. And now, losing another 10-12 hours a week, that gap becomes even bigger. But if I leave this temp agency, I lose my medical benefits. What do I do???

Having a nasty cold didn’t help my disposition. Or my thought processes.

Over and over I cried out to God to help me, to keep me from sinking in a financial quicksand…. but that was all I could think to pray: "Jesus help me!" Once I was airborne, I popped in Rita Springer’s cd, blocked out the rest of the world and focused my mind completely on God. At last I was able to think more clearly.

As I talked with God about this developing situation, I remembered the things I’d been reading and learning from Failing Forward. Things like seeing obstacles and problems as opportunities rather than chains and walls is what separates people who get stuck from people who fail forward. As all these various thoughts settled into the front of my memory, I felt a calm and peace begin to settle over me. And a determination to plow through this season so I can see what’s on the other side.

In the hours since arriving back in Nashville that feeling has faded. Perhaps its this cotton-head I have in place of a brain and the painful bright red thing that’s replaced my nose, that’s stolen my peace. I’m tired and light-headed. All I want is to sleep for a week and wake up to a new year and a new job. Perhaps even a new life.

Yet even as I type I know I already have that. Every day is a new life for me. I know in my heart I don’t feel as down and dark about the future as I currently sound. It really is the cold talking more than me when I spew that stuff…

And at the same time I am fighting a battle for my mind. I’ve been a person who’s seen obstacles as often as I’ve seen opportunities. Especially in the workplace. Makes me wonder at times if I’ve  consistently pursued the wrong vocation…

There are times when I find failure and problems and obstacles exhilarating. When I’m mixing sound, or editing some text, or writing text, or when I get a sudden inspiration and want to know or understand something deeper,  obstacles, failures and problems are challenges I take on with passion and intensity. I love solving those kinds of problems! I’ll take those on even at 6am — no minor miracle for a night owl like me.

But turn me toward problems with finances, or finding a job, or basic administrative duties and I’m suddenly paralyzed with fear, doubt and dark thoughts.

In Failing Forward, John Maxwell tells stories of various people who failed numerous times before finally realizing their dreams. In one he talks about John James Audubon, the man the Audubon Society was named for. He diligently pursued business venture after venture, all of which failed, convinced his vocation was there, and hunting and art were just hobbies. It wasn’t until his family was destitute and needed the food his hunting could provide and the money his art brought it that he finally found success.

I’ve often wondered…. how do you know when the obstacles you encounter are signposts screaming that you’re going the wrong way, and when they are mountains you need to climb to get where you want to go? How do I know the difference between problems caused because I’m on the "wrong bus," as it were, on the wrong path, and problems that are "just the price I pay to achieve my goals" (as Maxwell defines failure)?

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Merry Christmas Eve!

It’s Christmas eve! Okay, so it’s only early morning Christmas Eve, but since tomorrow… er, today… promises to be quite busy I may not get a chance to blog again until after Christmas.

We’re going to have our big turkey dinner tonight because Christmas day will be a full day of activity. Nina and Toby will be running down to Columbia to pick up Frances (their daughter) Christmas morning so she can be home for the day, Kevin, Jennifer, Jake and Kaitlyn, the family living with Nina and Toby, will also be here Christmas day, as will Stephen. So we’ll have a full, full house — and lots of activity going on.

Thank God I have a room downstairs in the basement where I can go when the crowd gets to be too much for me! I’m sooooo not a big crowd person. I have distinct memories of family holiday gatherings where I would disappear to what my mom called my "cave," aka my room, where I would go to "hide out" and recoup my energy for a while before facing the crowd again. It doesn’t matter that its my family. It still drains all the energy out of me. I’m definitely an introvert.

At any rate, I think the next few days will be fun — in spite of the crowd. And I’m looking forward to making new memories.

Merry Christmas ya’ll!

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Christmas Gift of Life

Jesus gave me a gift over 2,000 years ago. We celebrate the beginning of the gift Saturday — by giving gifts to others. Last Thanksgiving Nina and Toby introduced me to a new way to give. It’s called Pheresis.

Apheresis — Give Life, American Red Cross

In an apheresis (ay-fur-ee-sis) donation, from the Greek "to take away," donors give only select blood components ā€” platelets, plasma, red cells, infection-fighting white cells called granulocytes, or a combination of these, depending on the donors’ blood type and the needs of the community. Apheresis is most commonly used to collect platelets and plasma….. A single apheresis donation of platelets can provide as many platelets as 5 whole blood donations. In addition, a platelet transfusion from a single donor greatly reduces the chances of an immune system reaction to the transfusion. Bone marrow transplant, cancer and leukemia patients whose immune systems are already compromised, benefit particularly from single donor platelet transfusions.

To date, I’ve given over one gallon (!!) of platelets and blood through this process. Its a little time-consuming, and a bit arduous, but it is worth every minute of discomfort to know that I’m providing a vital gift of life for someone like my friend Helen, who’s bravely fought cancer for several years now. Each time I give, I do it in Helen’s honor. Even though I know that my platelets will probably go to someone in need in the Carolinas, and not to Helen, who’s in Texas.

Nina made an appointment for us and yesterday we both went up into Charlotte and spent a few hours donating our platelets. Soon I hope to find a place in Nashville where I can give as well. I’m not smart enough to cure cancer, but I can at least do something to help. And I found out yesterday that since I’m O-Negative (blood type) I’m needed for more than just platelets… they need my red cells as well. Next time I plan to give both.

Please visit their website, call the number, 1-800-GIVE LIFE, and give the Gift of Life to a cancer patient this holiday season.

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Who Comes Up With This?

WooHoo!! The new Harry Potter book is finally finished and will be released July 2005. I think I’ve read the first three at least three or four times, and book five (which came out July 2003) at least two times. I’m soooo ready for book 6!

As I read through the press release, though, I had to laugh… who do they think they are kidding?

An Unexpected Christmas Present Arrives

NEW YORK and LONDON, Dec. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling, the sixth in the best-selling series, has been scheduled for release on July 16, 2005 in the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia, it was announced today by Scholastic and Bloomsbury, her publishers…. The price will be $29.99.

Okay, now, why do they do that?? Why do they make the selling price something-99? As if we see that missing penny and think, "Cool! I’ll definitely by a book that’s $29.99… but I won’t pay a penny more!! Pa-leezze. Just say, $30, and get on with it. They do the same thing with gas prices… as if telling me the price is 1.879 is really going to convince me that I’m really not paying 1.88/gal for gas.

Give me a break.

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My Little Piece of Heaven

I’m sitting in Nina’s living room, and pilfering someone else’s wi-fi! And Nina and Toby don’t have wi-fi… I’m picking it up from a neighbor two houses down. Two houses down!! Oh, how I looooove my Mac!! Thank you, Larry, for helping me pick it out! And thank you, Cassie, for convincing me with just you’re Mac-crazy attitude that Mac is the way to go.

We’re just sitting here, Nina, Stephen (her son and my nephew) and I — Toby’s gone to bed — with a small fire going in the fireplace, "Jack Frost" keeping the temps down and all Christmasy outside, and "The Bishop’s Wife" playing on the dvd. Life is good!

We just passed the scene where the Sylvester (Cary Grant) and the Bishop’s wife were visiting with the Professor, and the sherry bottle and glasses keep getting magically refilled. After Sylvester (the angel) leaves, the sherry bottle refills again…. and I made a comment Stephen insisted I write down. I said, "That must be quite an angel. He must be Episcopalian."

If you have to ask what that means, you’re not a Baptist. šŸ™‚

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Finding Neverland

A place grownups say doesn’t exist. A place some would say you can only go in your mind. A place children visit everyday. And laugh and play and live as children ought to be able to live.

No, not the ranch, God forbid I talk about children visiting there!!

I’m talking about the place James Barrie created in "Peter Pan".  Tonight Nina, Toby and I went to see Finding Neverland, a film inspired by the events surrounding the writing of the play. It’s an amazing story, a beautiful, sweet, filled with great performances, two-tissue movie.

I left contemplating Neverland, the possibility of its existence and what it really looks like. I wasn’t ever enthralled with the movie versions of Neverland, either animated or live-action. Perhaps that’s why I never bothered to read the book it came from. Now, however, I think I might like to. I’d like to see what kind of images the words conjure in my own mind. Would I see fairies and pirates and mer-people the way the movies make them look? Or would I see creatures far beyond the ability of artists to capture on celluloid.

I’m pretty convinced it’s the latter more than the former. Mom used to tell me all the time I have a very vivid and creative imagination. I’m not sure she always meant that as a compliment, but I always took it as one. šŸ™‚  I don’t know how my imagination compares to others. I can’t crawl inside their heads and see…. but I do know I can imagine quite a bit, and always have. As a child, I lived more in my imagination than in the real world. I thought that I would outgrow that once I became a "grownup". I never did. Is that a bad thing??

I don’t visit Neverland like I used to. For many years I left my "adulthood" at the door and stepped into a world of magic and mystery. It’s amazing how adulthood can eventually steal you away from Neverland and keep you tied to the "real world". I was immune to that theft for most of my adult years, with only small bouts of adult-ness. Until last year. "Finding Neverland" points out that the death of someone you love, more than anything, can steal a person away from Neverland and leave them forever trapped in the Land of Adult. But it also brings up a question that has haunted me for ages: when does "believing" in magic and mystery become folly? When does imagination turn into pretense and/or denial of reality?

Can one live Neverland and in the real world? The movie would have us believe James Barrie did. He was Peter Pan, and also playwright J.M. Barrie… boy leader of Neverland’s lost boys and society’s man of the theatre…

But is it just more movie trickery, or can it really be done?

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Failing Forward

I started reading this book today. It’s by John Maxwell.

I’ve only gotten through chapter two so far, but man is it good! And challenging.

I’ve always struggled with a fear of failure, and taking risks. As long as I can remember I’ve felt I needed to be "perfect" at something. If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t even try it. It took me many years to get to a point where I’d risk looking like a fool, or worse, a failure, by stepping into things I didn’t think I could do.

For the most part, as I look back over the eight years or so since I started taking those steps, I see failure after failure. But I also see a difference in how I responded to those failures. It doesn’t keep me down as long as it used to. And it doesn’t scare me as much either.

I still have a few things in my life, however, that I look at as personal/ministry failures. India and Cyprus. I struggle with my own opinion of my time as co-team leader in India. And I have a love/hate relationship with my memories. I wouldn’t exchange the experience with a different one for all the money in the world. Yet at the same time, it was a deeply frustrating and unsatisfying one. The thing that frustrates me the most even now is that I cannot identify what exactly would have made it satisfying.

And Cyprus. I still cannot escape the deep sense that I failed because I didn’t return to the field. No amount of logic or reasoning or Scripture or God’s voice or… anything has yet to erase that sense. I just don’t know what to do with it all, how to view it.

Am I a failure? I don’t believe that question can be answered until I’m nearing the end of my days…. or perhaps until after I’m dead, for my story isn’t completely written yet. But, I must confess, there are days when I fear I am a failure. There are days when my mistakes and mis-steps pile so high that it’s hard to see past them and into my strengths. There are days when I feel I’m spending all my time in things that are not my strengths. It’s hard to not feel like a failure in that atmosphere.

That’s what I experienced that year in Cyprus. I felt so often I was not working in my strengths, and I despaired that I ever would be allowed to do so. In fairness, I cannot say that is the truth. For I don’t know if I would have been, nor do I truly know if I wasn’t working within my strengths. I have lost sight of "objective truth" (if such a thing exists) in that time period of my life. Its all a jumble of emotions and thoughts, struggles and spiritual warfare.

John Maxwell defines success in this way:

Knowing your purpose in life
Growing to reach your potential
Sowing seeds that benefit others

I wish I knew my purpose in life. I’ve read "Purpose Driven Life" and know all the churchy answers to this, about glorifying God and being a witness for Jesus to the world. But… it just seems to me, knowing God as I do, that I am not a random piece of Christ-tissue, here to just be one in a thousand. Perhaps that’s arrogant, but… dang, the more I think about it, the more convinced I become that I have a specific purpose, just as every cell in my body does. Sure every cell is here to keep me alive and well. But each one does it in a unique way. Even those with the same design have a specific purpose — whether that be to carry oxygen from my lungs to my heart, or to protect my soft parts by being a harder outer "shell"… every cell has a distinct, specific purpose. I’m convinced I do too. I just wish, with all my heart, I knew what it was (is)!

I’ve heard Erwin say on many occasions that for someone to say you have potential when you’re in your 20s is a compliment, but when they say it when you’re in your 40s, it’s an insult. As I read tonight, I came to the conclusion he’s wrong.

People in their 40s and 50s, even 70s and 80s, need to know there is still something in them that can be refined, seeds that still have yet to be sown and parts of them that still can grow.

But more than that, as I stare 40 in the face, I realize that, if I believe Erwin, then I condemn myself, as a failure, and to a life of mediocrity. There are still mountains to climb. Just because most people climb them in their 20s doesn’t mean that I can’t do it in my 40s. Just because I didn’t do it in my 30s doesn’t mean that I’ve missed my window of opportunity. Yes, the climb will be harder. I’m older and my body doesn’t respond as well to challenge, nor does it bounce back as quickly from fatigue and injury. It may take me longer, I will have to work harder. But I can still do it.

I’ve heard that the people who live the longest all have one thing in common: they never quit learning. They were always trying, learning, doing something new. I don’t want to live long. Right now I’m fighting an on-going fear of growing old. I don’t want to be alive when I’m 70 or 80, or, God forbid, even older. No, I’ve seen what age does to a body. No thank you. I’d like to die young please. But if I must grow old, and live well into those undesired ages… well then, I want to know there are still mountains I can climb. Okay, so those young’uns call it a "hill", but dang, it feels like a mountain to my legs!!

I like John Maxwell’s definition of success. But it’s a hard one for me to apply to my life, since it seems to me that all three go together and everything hinges on the first: "knowing your purpose in life."

I’m going to bed now, and perhaps my dreams will help me sort through all this and give me a little clarity…

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Snow Day!

Today I played in the snow! I danced and sang and threw snowballs…. it was so beautiful! I don’t think there’s anything more magical than falling snow. All of nature gets quiet when it snows, as if it knows something sacred has entered the scene.

I started my Christmas vacation week with a crowded flight to Charlotte Saturday morning. Then we drove up to Boone, NC — up in the Appalachian mountains — for Nina and Toby’s annual "Longjohn Christmas Caroling". And, yes, I did don a pair of longjohns and join in the singing. They’ve even re-written some of the carols, things like "Walking in Our Winter Underwear," to mark this special 32-year tradition.

I feel more up for celebrating Christmas this year, though there are still many times I struggle through the day. There were moments even as we carolled and I put on my best holiday smile that the words were pinging against my heart and leaving marks in its softest places, especially those raw, empty places where mom and dad live. I guess the holidays will always be bittersweet for me now. I have yet to decide if the bitter makes the sweet all the sweeter, or if it just makes it different.