19. take the time to notice

If you've ever watched an episode of House Hunters, you know that people are quite particular about their landscaping. Companies spend thousands of dollars to bring in the perfect arrangements, making their land a welcoming place for consumers to spend money. But let me ask you--when was the last time you stopped to actually marvel at the landscaping? Not your typical "Oh lookie, that house has some nice shrubs!" When were you last in AWE of the creation we so demand?

On a retreat to Prince of Peace Abbey in Oceanside, I discovered multiple leaves around the premise. I was so enamored that I started collecting them and storing them in my journal. They were all different. They had different ridges, edges, colors. Some were firm and some flimsy. Some were prickly and some inviting. I stopped to notice nature and couldn't help but wonder about the designer of them all. "Why so many leaves, God?" 

In college, my sweet friend Katie and I used to spend our mornings together observing The Lord. We would wake up early (or snooze 5 times then get up, but who's counting?) and sit in the living room to complete a journal entry, read scripture, or walk through a devotional. One morning we decided to sit outside. We planted ourselves on the patio and gazed at the trees. This sparked a conversation between us about creation and how it screams of a creator. We stopped to notice nature and it was the most effective devotional of all.

Gorgeous Kansas scenery (photo credit to Hayley Keener)

"For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and the sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God." 
- Romans 1:20 (NLT)

Did you see what Paul did there? He wrote that when we look at nature, our response should be knowing more about God, even knowing God personally. If it isn't our response--we aren't looking at it right.

I would encourage you to take time to observe nature. Don't just look at it, but really think about it. Where did it come from? How long has it been there? Why is it there? What does it say about God? What doesn't it say about God? This world would be an awfully boring place without any trees. Imagine the world without them for a moment... sad, huh?

Take the time to notice, you might just learn something that changes you.

18. He is the source of power.

When I was living in the sorority house, I remember that all of the outlets were upside down. I have no explanation for this phenomenon but I imagine the person who installed them just wanted to play a cruel joke on a lot of women for a very long time. It worked. I still try to plug my blow dryer into outlets upside down. It scarred me for life.

The funny thing is, in addition to the upside down outlets, some of the outlets didn't work. You'd plug them (upside down) into the top outlet, and... nothing. So you'd move it to the outlet beneath it and voilà-- POWER! My hair could be dried after all, thank goodness.

One of the actual dreaded outlets,
photo cred: Claire Boyts.. that
little princess!!

I've been reading a book called, "When people are BIG and God is small" by Ed Welch. In this book, he writes about our disturbing fear of people. I heard an analogy today from a good friend that said, "When you rely too much on people to give you your worth, it's like plugging a cord into the wrong socket and expecting to get power from it." When we plug into people to get our source of power and well-being, it's like plugging in our blow dryers upside down, into the wrong outlet. We get nothing. Our hair.. stays wet. People will let us down because they aren't capable of giving us power. It is a 100% guarantee of failure, we get no return on investment, and the worst thing is, it is idol-worship. No, it's not a precious little thing that we carved out of wood and pray to like the ancestors we judge for doing so in the OT, but rather, making people more important than God. Any THING we see more important than God is an idol.

This isn't a journey of "loving ourselves more," but instead learning to fear God more. How silly of us to spend so much time fearing people, when there is an active, living God out there who could destroy us in a split second? The answer is, stop plugging into people and start plugging into God. People can't give us anything, they are just like us. Welch points out that when we need people, we can't love them. So adding to our frustrations of not being "powered up" by other people, we also fail to love them like we want to.

"Well Emmy, I don't have ways to plug into God, what the heck does that even mean anyways???"

I thought you might ask, so I prepared a list of suggestions for how you can plug into God, and stop plugging into people:

1. Realize that all people are the same: messed up, broken, trying to put on a front to get ahead in life and appear all neat and put together. No person is perfect.
2. Spend time learning about who God is as a warrior (fighting for His people.) I suggest any book of the Old Testament, and a good book for this is "God is a Warrior," by Tremper Longman III.
3. Or just spend time in general learning about the character of God. I recommend "Knowledge of the Holy" by A.W. Tozer.
4. Go look outside...
5. Read any scripture
6. Keep a journal, look back on it in a year or so and see how many of your prayers were answered by people, and how many were answered by God (it'll look something like this: God, 110. People, 0.)
7. Notice that what promises to give us power by the worlds standards doesn't deliver. 
8. Matthew 6

I hope that you can take these things, and come up with a few of your own and figure out how to stop living this life trying to get your worth from things that cannot deliver. God wants to power us up, to fill us with all good things. We just have to spend time letting him in.

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This is a blog post about how to find your worth in God, not an extensive description of worth in general or the the current state of our society today concerning the matter of young women and their perceived value. It is merely a beginning.

If you would like to help me with further research so I can expand the subject of helping young women find their worth in general, please take this 30-second survey: 

Click HERE to lend your perspective!

I don't use your info for anything,  it's completely anonymous. I am simply looking for answers that only your unique perspective can help me to find. 

Thanks for your help.

Emmy

17. sometimes, we get a rejection letter.

Recently, I applied to be a Chick-Fil-A Franchise Operator. Not a manager, but a real owner. All they require is a $5,000 investment, surviving about 100 interviews with higher-ups, and then they give you the rest  of the funds to build, own and operate the franchise.

I thought, "This should be easy, I like leading people. How hard can it be to hire a few people, learn some rules and then get a franchise running?" The best part was how confident I was submitting the application. It is a bunch of "fill in your name, address, phone number" kind of stuff, accompanied by a few "yes" or "no" questions. "Have you committed a felony?",  "NO! I am clearly qualified for this," I thought.  There was only one space to brag about yourself on this interview: when they ask you about relevant experience. Now, I had done my research and I knew what they were looking for: entrepreneur, financially responsible, someone who would just own one business at a time, faith, loves people, etcetera. I was GOLDEN, just like those delicious chicken nuggets!

Once I got to the relevant experience question, I had to decide which leadership role to use. Sometimes people aren't very excited about hiring people who have been in sororities, so I didn't include that leadership role. There were other random Kansas State University leadership roles, but even those I didn't want to include. I mentioned them of course, but the one I really focused on was my middle school young ladies "Small Group Director" leadership experience. From many angles it sounds like a small business, so I went with it. I submitted the application and thought, "This is GOOD!" I knew I was going to own a Chick-Fil-A Franchise, simply because how crazy it sounded. I prayed before I sent in the application and off it went into cyber space. 

A few minutes later, I got a call from Atlanta... Chick-Fil-A headquarters. My heart was pounding and I thought, "An interview?? ALREADY? I just submitted my application 17 seconds ago! What am I going to say? I haven't owned a business.. what was I thinking!?!?" Regardless, I picked up the phone. Meredith was on the other line, asking me about my application. Turns out there had been a glitch and it wasn't submitted properly. I had to try again. 

So, I did. And then I waited. No phone call this time. The next day went by, and less than 24 hours later I got an e-mail from Chick-Fil-A. Here it is:

Needless to say, I didn't get the job. The funny thing is: I was convinced that it was mine. Even more so, I was convinced that this was God's plan for me because it played to my strengths and talents, despite how outlandish it sounded. I prayed for direction and I certainly got it. 

This helps me to trust God more. He guides me on the right path, and when I get off track, He sends me a rejection letter. Don't think God isn't looking out for you because your plans aren't working out. Sometimes, that's the greatest sign that He is in fact looking out for you.

16. He meets us in our stillness

So here we are, two months after the last blog post. What happened to me?
I broke my fingers? Not quite.. I, um... got too busy.

I recently learned in one of my classes that the clock was created by Monks to remind them when to pray. Interestingly enough, the clock has done the exact opposite: remind us of our to-do list and how little time we have to complete it. They took time to check in with God and center their minds before moving on to the next thing. We were encouraged to participate in a practice named, statio, which essentially means "the practice of stopping one thing before we move on to another." It's less about "meditation", or "connecting with your inner self, third eye," or whatever they taught my when I was in yoga school. It's about taking time to stop being a busy multi tasker with no time to connect to real life.  This practice includes stilling our minds, which sounded a whole lot like torture to someone who can't stop thinking for half of a second.

My mind doesn't stop running. It's worse than the energizer bunny. My mind would do circles around the energizer bunny then.. get into a philosophical debate with him or something. The thought of "stilling my mind," is foreign to me. I literally had to linger after class to ask the professor to clarify what my mind was supposed to be doing during this time that it wasn't thinking: "Does my mind actually have to be quiet? If I am supposed to think, what am I supposed to think about? How do you still your mind when it works overtime?" SO MANY QUESTIONS! He essentially told me that my mind should be quiet (to practice statio), and if anything came into my mind, I could focus on one specific word (which he said could be "peace," and I thought that was funny since thats my ONE WORD for the year!)

I started right away as I drove home without the radio on. I was going to still my mind: a risky endeavor. I tried really hard to think about "nothing."Once I arrived home, I felt like I had ridden a magical carpet to my doorstep. The time seemed to fade away and I was super focused. I kept taking time to stop between activities, to say goodbye to the old thing and welcome the new. From this silent reflection, I found out three semi-sad things about myself:

1. My mind is never quiet.
2. I try to do too many things at once.
3. (Worst of all) I am too busy.

I am stressed with a million things on my plate and I am not taking any time for the real stuff, the good stuff. I'm busy with what? Organizing? Trying to impress my professors? I don't even know. I do know I haven't been writing my blog. I haven't been journaling. I haven't been investing in people like I want to. I haven't been reading my Bible, but instead reading a few chapters out of every book I own. This past week, I even researched how the USPS Mailing system works just because I wanted to know. If I keep going on like this, I'll have read 1-2 chapters out of hundreds of books and learned almost nothing (turns out you need to read the whole book to get all of the points-- who knew!) I've been busy with stuff that doesn't matter. I'm not talking about getting things done because we have to, or work tasks, those have priority. I'm talking about trading effectiveness for efficiency. 

Now, I've been doing one thing at a time, taking time to clear my mind between each task, remembering God in between. Not only am I consistently more productive, but I am much more focused on The Lord. It's not that I haven't been inspired, or that I haven't wanted to write. I got too busy. Let's try to use our time wisely. Taking a break between each event in our lives gives us a mental priority re-check.

I officially commence my blog writing and will now prepare space for the next thing. Effectiveness!

"Be still and know that I am God. I will be honored by every nation. I will be honored throughout the world." - Psalm 46:10

15. bigger and better

"Cast all your anxiety on Him for He cares for you." 1 Peter 5:7

Saturday, January 25 2013: 
First full (weekend) class at Fuller Theological Seminary.

08:30am

I know no one.

Joining conversations here and there, but nothing meaningful comes out of it.

Time for introductions: Man explains how he works with homeless veterans in his spare time. Woman is writing a book. Professor is reading Aramaic but speaking in English. Translations happening at lightening speed.

Feeling alone.

Thinking about man who ministers to homeless vets.

Must write book soon.

12:00

Lunchtime approaches, my husband is due to arrive any moment to sweep me off my feet.

Lonely feelings will subside after his arrival.

He calls.

He has good reason, but will not meet me for lunch.

12:05

Herds of people practically skipping over to eat lunch together.

Big group that I’m not in.

I’m alone.

Tears.

12:15

Pei-Wei, Dan Dan noodles. YUM.

Feeling better.

So many noodles to keep me company. 

12:20

Prayer: "Jesus, please give me friends. It would be ideal if they would just come to me but if I can talk to them, please just give me the opportunity, I feel so alone."

1:05

Arrive back at class.

Man next to me introduces himself.

He’s a high school teacher.

Wants to be more educated.

2:00

Break time.

Get to know another classmate.

Deacon at church, daughter is 22.

Nice guy.

3:00

Driving home in gratitude because God answered my prayer, and quickly.

I gleaned so much wisdom from this day in class but here's just a little snippet:

First, we can be a little exclusive. I notice that about myself. I'll be in a big group, where I feel like I know a lot of people and even though I might notice a new person, I'm not exactly rushing over to make them feel comfortable. I am grateful that this happened to me and I got to experience that feeling of being totally alone. I don't think my classmates were trying to be exclusive, they were just comfortable. Of course new people are responsible for reaching out on their own, but you have an opportunity to make a difference. This isn't about responsibility, it's about opportunity. 

Secondly, Jesus is so good to me. Did you read my prayer?? He gave me what I thought was "ideal." Like Bob Goff says, with Jesus it's always a game of "bigger and better." As in, I give Him my little piece of trust and He gave me friends, a bigger and better sense of belonging.  

Be approachable, and trust God. Let Him be sweet to you, and you be sweet to others. 

Exclusivity is so out.