Be Faithful

"The goal of faithfulness is not that we will do work for God, but that He will be free to do His work through us. God calls us to His service and places tremendous responsibilities on us. He expects no complaining on our part and offers no explanation on His part. God wants to use us as He used His own Son." ~Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest (emphasis mine)

Just a reminder-- one I needed (sigh!)--to get my focus back on who I serve, rather than what I am doing to serve. Click the link to go to read the rest of a great entry in the daily devotional for today.

The Reason Behind All This Time and Sand

Things I've done for work in the last couple of weeks:

• Fluffed and straightened limbs on a 14' Christmas tree
• Assembled and fluffed a 5 foot, 6 foot, and 7 foot tree
• Climbed on scaffolding and ladders to hang lights on 14' and 7' trees
• Got a splinter while climbing on scaffolding
• Shopped at 6 different Walmart stores and at least 4 Target stores
• Purchased black ski masks, industrial strength velcro, red umbrellas, gloves, 24 LED flashlights, 2 types of magnets, superballs, dog balls, tennis balls, mesh ball bags, 20+ yoga/pilates balls, 64 large (8" diameter) Christmas ornaments, 64 kickballs, Christmas tree lights, ribbon
• Deflated 15 inflated yoga balls by sitting on them and smashing the air out
• Super glued magnets onto large Christmas tree ornaments (didn't work--polarization is an unforgiving natural force)
• Cut and bent heavy gauge wire into Christmas ornament hooks. 64 of them.
• Painted a big wooden box bright Christmas green.

I need a manicure. My hands look like I've been playing with a grouchy cat. It's been a busy week, with tasks at work becoming more physical and more "under the gun" as the week wore on. I have to admit that it was hard to keep a good attitude at times. I wanted to be doing more creating and less intern-type tasks. I understand it's just the nature of being new kid on the block at the busiest time in the church calender year, but I had to keep fighting down "pitiful me" feelings of "isn't there someone else to do this?" and "this is not what I expected!"

The holidays prime you for reminiscing about "auld lang syne" even before the New Year arrives, and when you've had a year of change and new beginnings it's hard not to look back over your shoulder sometimes and say, "why can't it just be like it used to be?" It's hard not to miss the old times past where the kids happily spent time with us and even helped decorate the tree, I was enjoying most of my working relationships and felt a great level of competence and creative freedom in my work, and there was wonderful rapport with all our friends and family!

Ok, who am I kidding? While all of those were true maybe for brief moments, they weren't the norm. There are ebbs and flows in jobs and relationships. And some of those things are true even now--creative sharing, developing work relationships and friendships--and while the kids didn't help with the tree, they do seem to enjoy hanging out with us at least some of the time. So why the longing for the past?

There's a great song by one of my favorite artists, Sara Groves called "Painting Pictures of Egypt". The metaphor is from the story of the Israelites wandering in the desert in their long journey to the land God had promised them. They became so discouraged at one point they longed to go back to the place where they had been slaves. (Now, please! I'm not implying that where I came from was comparable to Egyptian slavery--just that it wasn't where God wanted me to stay!) Anyway, here's the chorus:

"I’ve been painting pictures of Egypt
Leaving out what it lacked
The future seems so hard
And I want to go back
But the places that used to fit me
Cannot hold the things I"ve learned
And those roads closed off to me
While my back was turned "

Change is hard. I don't want to go back. But I do miss it.

Make New Friends...

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one”
~ C. S. Lewis

Part of the fun in starting a new job is getting to meet new people and hopefully, make new friends. Part of the angst about starting a new job is that you have to start over meeting new people and trying to make friends! It feels a little like the first day being the new kid in a new school. You don't know the lay of the land yet--who is always pleasant, who is great one-on-one but not in a group (and visa versa), who will share their pencils freely, who doesn't like you to touch their stuff, who might just beat you up and take your milk money...you get the picture. All that takes time and interaction.

It can also be hard to let people know you. We tend to hold back a little-- fearful to show the real us until we feel safe that we will be accepted and liked for who we are. And if we've been burned in past friendships (at work or otherwise), the tendency to mask our authentic selves is even stronger. As I finish a second month at my new job, I feel like I'm finally letting down the mask a little bit and being myself. It feels good. Being myself is the thing I"m best at after all. So in the spirit of self-revelation, here's 5 things you might not know about me (I know, I know, it's a bit of a cliched blog thing--but I'm ok with being a bit cliched sometimes). Maybe one of them will make you say "What? You too?":

1. I hate coconut. It's one of the very few foods I dislike. Somewhere in my childhood there is the distinct memory of getting sick after eating coconut cake that has never left me. The fact that I really have only one food nemesis is telling in itself.

2. I did not have a full-time job until I was almost 40 years old. Now, I do consider being a stay-at-home mom working part-time the equivalent of a 40 hour a week job, and I did that for many years. But if we're talking really being gone 9-5 and having a boss and steady income full-time, I was a very late starter. As a side note, I also didn't start drinking coffee until I started working full time. I also didn't drink alcohol until about that time. Not sure about a direct correlation, but you be the judge.

3. I am not afraid of much of anything. No fear of heights, small spaces, snakes, crawly things, storms, etc. I don't like looking in mirrors at night--a leftover from some bad horror movie I saw when I was an adolescent--but I can do it.

4. I am really good at remembering the words to songs. My kids used to play a game where they would throw out a word and try to see if I could remember a song containing that word (try me, I dare you). I'm not sure if this comes from years of music lessons and singing in choirs or from too much easy listening radio and "Name That Tune" episodes as a child.

5. I have had some type of illness or physical malady most of my life. When I was young, I had severe allergies that led to sinus surgeries as a young adult. When I was newly married I had low back issues that weren't resolved until a recent surgery corrected the problem. When I trained and ran a half-marathon, I ended up with a tibial stress fracture. I've had carpal tunnel syndrome and surgeries to repair it. I've had endometriosis (sorry guys, I a 'female problem') that caused so much pain I had to have a hysterectomy in my early 30's. Through all this I've remained active--skiing, running, mountain biking, and hiking. I have a friend who used to say I was the "sickest healthy person" she'd ever met. As a mostly confident, self-assured personality, it's been annoying and frustrating and has kept me dependent on God. Maybe that's the point of it all. I've given up asking God why and instead just say to Him, 'stick with me here, ok?"

Bonus: Well, I just couldn't leave it at the last one--it was just toooo serious and pathetic!
I have seen almost every sci-fi movie made since the 80's. (The only exception would be those that lean heavily toward horror/slasher films, but I've even seen a few of those--see #3.)

So there you have it. A little mini-reveal of the real me--a little brave, a little broken, little nerdy. Now, please don't take my milk money. I just want to be your friend.

Learning is an Adventure

"We learn something every day, and lots of times it's that what we learned the day before was wrong." ~Bill Vaughn, American columnist and author

The honeymoon is over as they say. New jobs, like new relationships, can be heady, exciting adventures at the start, especially for extroverted, sanguine personalities like mine. We love learning new things and getting to meet new people. I also enjoy learning new processes and systems in an organization, and like taking chaotic, messy processes and and creating ways for them to be clear and usable. I haven't always been able to articulate or even recognize that I enjoy these things. Getting to know yourself is one of the benefits of having a few extra years as a grown up.

Jumping into the inner workings of a large church has been full of these types of adventures. I also enjoy the unpredictable and never-know-what-you'll-be asked-to-do next atmosphere of the artistic area I work in. I might be off to purchase a bunch of items one day (like a bunch of yoga balls), participating in a creative planning meeting the next, and doing research online another day. I love the craziness of it.

But, (did you sense that coming?) it's not easy. It is hard to be thrown into a fast pace Christmas-planning-crazy environment where you are trying to keep up the pace, when you don't quite have your feet under you. Feeling like you are trying to learn the phone and computer systems, decipher workplace slang (what's a M.O.S.? a Crunch?), and simply learn people's names is a challenge. And there is always the need to just "learn" people. Body language and tone can tell you far more than words, but it takes time to be able to pick up on the individual dialects. Like taking residence in a foreign culture, there comes a point where the awe of observing and absorbing new sights and sounds starts to wear on you and you miss the familiar and routine of your homeland.

Last week I had a bad day. I misread some of the lingo and I let myself get overwhelmed by the language barrier. I got stressed out trying to keep up and look like I was a native when still need the map now and then! It's good to be reminded that I am not always going to get it the first time, and that the natives are pretty patient here. I'm learning something new every day and trying to embrace it as an adventure. Which is a good way to live life, not just work, I'm thinking.