10 Habits to Break (and NOT live by) :: idle.

"Idle hands do the Devil's work, Paul." K. Vonnegut, ‘Player Piano’

Late into the evening I sit as still as I can to take in hours lived at a pace too fast to sustain, worried I didn’t do enough to give eternity to the day.

I should’ve written more words, set a plan for tomorrow, had better conversations with those I love . . . done-more-to-earn-more type of thinking.  Fruitless thinking that pushes my mind around the track in unending cycles until I fall asleep.  It’s not a good way to go.

Idleness creeps into my bones, not in my gaze ahead to promise and possibility, but as I look back over my shoulder to the hours lived already.  Its lingering effect leads me away from productivity.

I drift to uncertainty.

And uncertainty leaves me insecure of my doings.

Just a few days ago, my hands stayed and my thoughts circled much longer than hands and thoughts should and late evening buried me.  I could only give account to a couple hours of useful work.  The rest, categorized in worry, doubt, fear and frustration - the devil’s work as Vonnegut rightfully called it.

We should not be auto-bots mechanized to churn out lifeless work measured by a time frame commanding our start and stop.  That’s just as idle as standing still while the present continues to flow right through your legs.  For me, the habit of idle is about allowing my mind to be preoccupied by things I can’t change, or shouldn’t.  To make my point clear, going back through my day can be a very fruitful exercise of celebrating all things that went right and pay attention to what went wrong - good.  The danger in idleness is allowing thought to drift unhinged to purpose.

The counterbalance to idle thought and action is purposeful rest.

There can be plenty of purpose in sitting outside, quiet under the stars, and just exhale thoughts and weights held onto throughout the day.  Likewise, there can be many pitfalls to grabbing in the exhale.  That stickiness is called regret and that is where idleness brings me.

So how do you determine which path to take, purposeful rest clearing your mind for rejuvenation and new day or static thought tangled in idle recounting?

Quite simple really, practice rest.

For me, meaningful rest from a weighted schedule takes practice.  My tendency is to hold onto the weight while I’m not actually doing much at all, or rather can’t do much at all due to diminishing hours in the day or receding energy with which to do more.  I’m challenged by the limitations of hours and energy in each day.  It leads me to invest more into conversations with my family, work when work should be done and rest well.

Vonnegut would be for playing the piano rather than the piano playing for you.

of the stitched kind :: A DEEPER FAMILY MONTHLY FEATURE

(image credit :: elsabags.blogspot.com)

It’s funny how three little girls separated by five years can have such differing opinions on the exact same happening in life.  Personality, age, temperament and individual uniqueness all certainly attribute to the differences in response.  Each of my little girls are growing into their own little person.  They see life through lenses specific to them and interpret life accordingly.

Life hasn’t been all that easy for them.

Their little eyes washed of a certain innocence have filled with tears pushed out of them by grief and loss.  When they lost their mother, they somehow simultaneously grew tightly together and stood distinctly apart.

It’s been the greatest stroke of grace to watch much of their lives end, float in insecurity and find current pushing them into a glowing new horizon.

And all in three years.

So if you’d sit with one of my daughters at some point and ask them to describe the last three years or ask them to illustrate emotions in a drawing, you’d get differing, not opposing but layered, responses.

And they’re all right.

. . . READ THE ENTIRE POST AT DEEPER FAMILY

10 Habits to Break (and NOT live by) :: worry.

"What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted."

Worry.

We wake to find what we don’t have, what we wished for not waiting dream-freed in existence.  What to do, or say about what to think now?

We keep checking and there never seems to be enough, and so, worry becomes us.  In fact, the average person invests hours worrying about a variety of circumstances - finances, relationships, career, health, future, past, decisions made and to be made, etc.  Worry is a response to life uncontrollable or unavoidable.  Sometimes we are the cause for worry in life painted with our mistakes or irresponsibility, and figure we should do better; worry binds itself to our movements and decisions.  Other times, worry elevates in our hearts as life swings unyieldingly and the outcome seems all but favorable.

At some point along your way in life, you will worry your brains out and fret for hours, maybe even days piled on top of days, and your viewpoint will cloud a grayer hue as worry shrouds possibility of good and better.

While worry is certainly unavoidable, the holding to worry absolutely is.  Here’s something telling to consider: what is your initial reaction to adversity, large or small?

In honesty, my response echoes a hollow, worry.  There are times in my life when worry jumps from my heart.  In those times, I don’t think well.  My thoughts anemic to trust.  And so, worry leaves me floating neither in the here nor there, but somewhere in the vague middle, clothed in fear and undone in anxiety.

“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”

No matter how you make your way through life, what you do or don’t do, the opportunities you seize and the ones you let lie, all is vanity, worthless.  Years from now, no one will remember you or much of what you did, if even anything at all.  A common mistake made by those sunk in worry is the idea that life depends on effort birthed from our hearts and resolve.  That’s just not the case.  No matter the size of the life you build, it is all vanity.

We reach for what cannot be had by our own hand while seeing past simplicity.

I worry about making it to successful to appease my value and worth in this space of life I’m in.  I couldn’t possibly keep accurate count of how many hours I’ve stayed up sleepless, worrying about how my book will be received, what I will write next and if it will even matter.  Compound this worry about my career with the worry I invest in regarding my daughters and who they will soon be in life, and I span periods of months when I worry with more consistency than anything else.  One day, it simply will not matter in the grand scheme of things.

Life moves on; we must decide if we will live it or worryingly watch it pass by.

What’s larger and more founded than the fading details of our lives in years to come is right now.  If you are to quiet worry’s ringing and overcome it’s weight, you need to devalue your footprint in this life and cling to what really does have lasting weight.

Eternity will forever overshadow time, no matter its steep drops and treacherous, momentary climbs.  That is what the wisest king to grace this life, referenced as the Preacher, found at the ends of the Earth - all is vanity and meaningless in this life outside of God in eternity.

And so the striving and wriggling in days sinking as a boat swallowing water can be abandoned for a greater Knowledge.

In moments of worry, I must turn, not stare.  Worry is my friend when it causes me to pause and turn helpless to Christ who owns all I need.  I arm worry as my enemy when I sit and stare holding it as habit.

10 Habits to Break (and NOT live by) :: small.

Small.

I often look down when I walk.  I do the same when riding trails on my mountain bike or hiking wooded paths.  This is not good practice and does little to keep me aware of all around and ahead of me.

My concern paints the world small and keeps my eyes gazing down at the day known.  The trouble with living this way lies in much of life peripheral being threatened by my thin awareness.

If I only train myself to see now, tomorrow stays hushed and faded in hopes and dreams that remain foreign in the unseen distance just ahead and around me.

When all we see is 'smalled' to now, our effort, too, slows to the shape of what we see.  So if we are cornered by disappointment and let downs, possibility of things better and life bigger seem to belong to others reaching for more.

The future belongs to those able to see beyond now.  It is then that life isn't mastered by moments but always vibrant, even through swelling waves tossing unfavorable.

Seeing life further requires recognizing life bigger than now.

In a word, faith.

Now here's where faith gets a bit twisted: faith isn't indestructible belief that blooms from a strong heart.  Faith is the humble confession of those broken by life and unresolved by the realization that you cannot possibly do it in your own.  So we bow in the smallness of who we are and trust for more; we never stay in the smallness.

God dwells all around and outside of the small.  He is forever beyond limitations felt in small moments able to lift you to the broad expanse of all ahead and beyond now.

Otherwise, your eyes are trained to look inwardly to your heart and ambition and effort - small becomes your outlook.  That's when life shrinks around the immediacy of now and left to be counted good in easy times and bad in difficulty.

Proverbs 3 gives sound advice that you should paint on the walls of your heart and ring in your confession.  Our response to life high and low should be full trust in God, who adequately authors the story of who you are.  We fully trust in rejecting self reliance and holding to God's bigger in our lives.

After all, the story belongs to the author, not the character.

(*image credit: ikea.com)

10 Habits to Break (and NOT live by) :: fear.

Fear.

Some say fear is necessary.  Some say evil.  Others argue a safety in terms of self preservation.  Others, like me, are too afraid to commit to one particular definition leaving ambiguity as to what fear is and the allowed heart spaces it resides in.

I don't know exactly what fear is other than an emotional response to something I'm unsure of, somewhere my feet feel foreign and unacceptable.

On a mountainside 12,000 feet above sea level, my heart pounding unusual and in disconcerted rhythm, my lungs grasping for more and my head spinning, I honored fear as wisdom.  The sprawl of back country in the Colorado Rockies absent of altitude acclimation quickly reduced my heart lost in romantic adventure. The manly within boasted through gasps, "I'm ... good, let's . . . do ... it!"

Fear subdued manly in shaky hands, rocky bluffs and waning strength.  We stopped in our uncharted, sighted tracks and instead navigated a safe descent.

Fear. Good.

Sitting bedside, alarm clock humming in dawn's still soft lit arrival, the day already felt too big.  It was, too big.

Little eyes searched for me in each waking.  I didn't know how to satisfy their wanting. Death stole what they never imagined was on the table for the taking but life took.  And God was twisted in the details, muddying our belief in his goodness.

Morning intimidated me but not nearly as much as the (maybe) thousands of unarrived ones following in sequence.  How to live sank low beneath fear allowed space in my heart and rule in my mind.

Afraid of my daughters' always maimed emotional state, Afraid of my lack of answers, Afraid of loneliness, Afraid of quiet, Afraid of good again, Afraid of faith I thought I held, Afraid that God was closer to the middle of circumstance than I thought he would be, Afraid of smiles, of conversation, of being found, of death, of incompleteness in life, of being forgotten, of bitterness, of tears still, of acceptance, of honesty, of love.  And in that shell of walls closing tighter each fearful morning, I chose to stay.

Fear. Bad.

Fear paralyzes and reconstructs brave hearts to lonely beggars wincing at light and life abounding.  I see now in a gaze behind me of the landscape flattened by fear - no peaks, no spikes, no change, just a down slope to less than and days sold in my giving.  Fear doesn't heed to permission or resistance.  It just multiples and shuffles the deck with a lying hand.

One passage I noticed in fear's down slope came at my weakest. Honesty.

Honesty offered a new way gently rising up back to life's surface where days were met with a smile, small but true.

Only in welcoming honesty into my smaller heart could fear be loosed.

For me, and probably you, too, I feared something that wasn't even real.

I feared not being able to control or stabilize my falling.  In a bothered scribbled confession, profaning the despondent then, God was seen by my eyes down-gazing.

Fear sets in habitual foundations as we purchase all that it's selling.  The break from fear's hold comes not in mere courage, but in honesty.  You're afraid and that's okay, but don't be afraid of being afraid.  When you do, fear habituates in your heart buying up all the real estate it can.

I saw it in the mountain back country of the Rockies and in the melting mundane of days sinking.