12.28.16

"Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken. ..."

Loving the whole of Psalm 16 this morning. Feels kind of like a proclamation of mental health on David's part. He's resourcing with an Eternal nurturer. Describing real resilience. The counselor (and human) in me loves it :)

12.26.16

A few years back, I accidentally started a tradition of reading through Psalms between Christmas and New Year's. This morning, I was wondering why ... and I think there's just something about all that vulnerability, all those emotions - the vacillation between fear and courage, hope and despair, joy and sorrow, and the juxtaposition of the messy human and the beautifully Divine, that resonates with the end of a year and the beginning of another. I want to believe in transformation and revelation and redemption and reconciliation and celebration in 2017 ... and I just don't think I get there without wrestling first with the disappointments and losses and woundings and confusions and griefs of 2016. So, that's what I'm doing this week - leaning into the dichotomy of life on earth and breathing in Hope.

on scrambling

My state-required bi-weekly supervision sessions are costly, but they're worth it. Especially last week's hour.

A little backstory: Eight months into my new career and building my own business, I've been fighting a feeling of failure. I've been fretting over my lack of client hours (seriously, why did I choose a career in which it is my job to make my job obsolete?!) and the fact that a lack of client hours results in a lack of experiential learning opportunities. A lack of learning makes me feel largely inadequate. So, I been frettin'.

Frankly, I've moved beyond fretting to full-on desperation. So, with a lack of clients to talk about in last week's supervisory session, the conversation turned toward me and my fight against feeling like a failure. The conversation didn't start out that way. It started with me talking about all the things I was DOING to fix my perceived "problem."

Him: "So, you're scrambling." 

Me: "Yea, I'm scrambling. [thinking] I don't want to be bad at this counseling thing. I can't afford for this not to work."

Him: "Why do you scramble?" 

Me: "I don't want to talk about this."

Why didn't I want to talk about it? Because I can't handle this feeling of failing. I don't enjoy feeling like I'm not in control. I don't like being needy and vulnerable and uncomfortable. What does it say about me if I can't get this done right and well and NOW?

My supervisor, himself a great counselor, knew my answer. He didn't expect me to answer. He knows I know. Then he told me the story again of the research done on what sets the most successful entrepreneurs apart from the scrambling masses ...

Turns out successful people never think of themselves as failures. Things they do may fail (i.e. that failed), but they, themselves, are never failures (i.e. I failed).

So, as of right now, I have this knowledge that I'm not a failure ... but making it heart knowledge is where I'm a little bit stuck. If I don't rock this ... and the money and the acknowledgement doesn't flow ... somehow I have to figure out how to believe that it's okay and that it's not a reflection on who I am.

And there I go ... a scramblin' again .... :) It's quite the ineffective, but instinctual little pattern of doing life I've got going on, ain't it?

Chances are, how you're doing life isn't quite working for you anymore either. How aware are you of your unhelpful habits of doing, thinking, being?

Welcome to the reality of (and the best proof of the need for) counseling:

"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it." — Romans 7:15-20

on images and idols

This was first published on my old blog back in 2011:

 "All who worship images are put to shame, those who boast in idols — worship him, all you gods!"

Sometimes our house feels like an empty, dark shell on Sunday mornings. The husband's been at work since before the butt crack of dawn and the blinds are closed and there's a still chill in the air from the night's air conditioning …. so, waking alone and cold and to scare the spook away, I break the film with His Word — reading aloud — before shuffling through the house to let the light in and pour the coffee.

This morning, I flipped my bible open to Psalm 95 … read through Psalm 97 … and found my eyes returning to the verse I quoted above. Images. The physical form of an idol. The noun. How does the physical representation of a misplaced trust, hope and love translate to today?

I don't know. But I found myself thinking about how my faith has morphed from legalism to love over the years and then how sometimes my delight in how God is in all things beautiful and true leaves me enchanted with that beauty and that truth … but, ironically, distracted from He who embodies it … enables it … creates it … has intent for it (far beyond any scope or hope I could imagine).

The point: Sometimes I make idols of His blessings. I hold my hand out, watch the glitter fall into it, take a picture, write about it … and forget to look up and behold what I can't.

Just thinking. Love.