Bigger Picture Moment: Emphasis

We ask them questions, lots of question, when we're all gathered 'round the dinner table sharing plates from hand to hand and passing stories along words in much the same way.

What did you learn in school?

What did you talk about in church?

What did you do today?

And sometimes, at 3 and 5, they answer only in one-word sentence. But sometimes there's more, a full spread of dinner-table feast, coming from their open hands, open mouths.

It's then that I'm tempted to say we're doing this parenting thing well, that everything looks good. That our little shoots rapidly growing out of the soil of our lives look healthy.

That we've got kids who learn and succeed and communicate. Kids that do and go and see and experience.

And then I dig deep into me, and John digs deep into him, and we dig deep into each other during a heavy homework week for our Vantage Point 3 class, trying to uncover our values -- those very driving forces that influence our decisions, that steer the course of our path, that anchor us in the routines and happenings of our daily life.

Our values --they influence everything: how we spend our money, our time, our resources, our energy, the decisions we make, the relationships in which we engage.

No. Not our ideals, that which we aspire to be our powering forces.

Dig deeper. We loosen up the soil in our hearts and sink shovels in to get to the root of what's actually fueling the movement upward.

Our values.

In that digging and searching and uncovering, it becomes apparent that if we want to live intentional lives of authenticity and growth, transformation and depth, that we actually need to be more concerned with who we are rather than what we do.

Because what we do stems out of who we are. 

What we value fuels our decisions, yes, but our values grow out of who we are at the core, at the root.

This all circles back to the dinner table discussion in which we've been trying to engage.

We haven't been asking the wrong questions around the table each night; we do want to know what they've learned and done and enjoyed each day.

But maybe we've been asking them questions with the wrong emphasis, placing more importance on the doing and less on the being, less on the who they are becoming.

If we're far more concerned with who these little guys are and the kinds of people they grow to be, the passing of stories, the sharing of conversation around the dinner table should be a reflection of our intention -- growing strong roots rather than just good looking shoots.

"Superficiality is the curse of our age. The desperate need today is not for more intelligent people, more gifted people but for deep people." Richard Foster

Share your moment at Melissa's!

Thinking, That's All: On Busyness and Superficiality

"Superficiality is the curse of our age. The desperate need today is not for more intelligent people, more gifted people but for deep people." Richard Foster

In the busyness, the chaotic clutter of an over scheduled life, I felt this pang of loneliness in my heart that never really left.

Until about six months ago, I was so inundated with plans and to-do lists, that I couldn't even find time to have coffee with friends without scheduling it two weeks in advance.

I didn't think it was a problem at first; I was busy with really, really good stuff.

The stuff that suburban house-wife dreams are made of -- volunteering, Bible studies, attachment parenting group meetings, preschool meetings, meetings at our small business, MOPs meetings, babywearing meetings, church, blogging meetings.

Really, really good stuff.

Really, really good stuff that when laid out on a calendar seemed daunting and completely overwhelming.

And isolating.

And, erm, kind of empty.

And all of the sudden, I'm the guy with the trash bag bursting open in the middle of the garage and raising my hands in complete anxiety toward the heavens while sporting a robe and slippers and wondering if this is as good as it gets: {Watch this if that visual doesn't make sense}



The Emerging Journey: An Invitation... from VANTAGEPOINT3 on Vimeo.

Isn't there more to living than this -- this busy, overcommitted, over scheduled, relationships-on-the-backburner kind of life?

That's the question I was asking myself about a year ago when my mentor extended an invitation to apply for Vantage Point3, the Emerging Journey at our church.

She was vague about this nine-month-long, homework-included VP3 class, but I was intrigued, nonetheless.

Without ever knowing what I was getting myself into, I submitted an application.

And about three weeks into the class, questions about who God is and who I am and what God really wanted me to do with my life began to rock my world, much the way an earthquake shakes up a house -- knocking out old foundation blocks, jiggling and revealing faulty connections, ripping apart loose beams.

But God, the gracious carpenter, rebuilder that He is, moved in and began repairing the foundations, relying the bricks and reinforcing the beams.

In that rebuilding, I began to understand that busyness did not mean important.

Busyness didn't mean successful.

And busyness didn't mean productive.

Busyness was the bricks I'd haphazardly tried to shove to fill holes of loneliness and need for success into my own cracking foundation.

And while I was shoving replacement parts, regardless of whether they were built to do such a job, into places that needed reinforcement, it felt study.

Until it didn't.

VP3 helped me sort through these thoughts and take the time I desperately needed to reflect on what exactly I'd been doing.

And what God had been up to while I was busy doing whatever I'd deemed important.


During our leader training this week, I reflected on the journey I'd taken with VP3 and I began hearing the words of Richard Foster with ears that hear:

"Superficiality is the curse of our age. The desperate need today is not for more intelligent people, more gifted people but for deep people."

Often, busyness breeds intelligence, skill and utilizes giftedness.

But it steals the time needed to become deep people --

the time required to pay attention in the stillness to what God is up to in our own lives and in the world around us and in our neighbor's lives.

the time it takes to reflect on who God is and who we've been created to be.

the time necessary for building relationships and vesting our giftedness into people who are also part of our journey.

I know for me, I spent so much time building my resumes and building my skills and building my own small kingdom, that I totally missed the part with which God's always been most concerned about building: my character, the depth of my person, the foundations of my soul.

If superficiality is the curse of our age, busyness most certainly is the spell that casts the curse.

Each day I fight being bound up in its empty spell, but it's a battle I've deemed worthy of waging.

{If this strikes a chord in your heart, maybe VP3 might find a home in your heart, your church. If you're interested, I'd be happy to connect you with the coordinators of the program.}

****

Today as I begin my third year of Vantage Point 3, year one, with a new group of journeyers, I still find these truths I wrote more than a year ago to be applicable and persistent. Would you pray for our this new group and this new year as we walk together on our journey of discovering who God is, who we are and what God is already up to in our lives? Blessings on your Wednesday, friends. 

Thinking, That's All: The Space of Rest

We all quickly pour ourselves in through the door, breathing out the chaos of the day and inhaling the quiet of the space stretched out before us

Weekly we come together to slow down, to discuss life in this foreign land of busy, seven polar explorers* trying together to navigate the harsh terrain of our over-busy, over-scheduled lives in bodies that weren't meant to pushgopushpushgo.

You know that jar analogy? one of the seven asks, a half smile spread across his face. The one with the rocks and the sand and how if you put the rocks -- the big pieces of life -- into the jar first and then put the sand -- all the small, less important stuff -- in, everything fits?

The rest of us nod, all too familiar with the jar and the overflow of the sand spilling out everywhere and the rocks never all fitting.

It's a lie, he says, spitting out the words like bitter fruit.

I lean my head in to really hear what he's saying, and he continues.

All of that sand, all of those rocks -- you just can't fit it all. Some of that sand, some those rocks just have to go, he finishes, relieved to have spoken up against the prevalent thought that if we just ordered it all right it would fit.

The jar is only so big, someone else pipes in. 

It's true, I say. There's only so much space. 

We sit around this truth like its a fire radiating warmth into cool arctic air, explorers intent on thawing cold noses, hands, hearts that have been captured by numbness.

I know this all too well; time and space have long been rigid squares on the flipped open calendar I'm forever trying to pen my life into.

Thing is, though, just like the jar, all of the life I'm trying to cram in doesn't fit in two by two inch squares.

Just like we can't make the jar bigger, there's no way to add inches to the calendar boxes.

And, the truth be admitted, we weren't made to fill every crevice of time, every inch of the jar until both are overflowing out of control.

Truth be admitted, we were meant to rest, remember every one day out of seven.

Sabbath.

It's a  foreign sounding word here in the arctic -- archaic and bound up in thoughts of rules and judgement and nos.

But at its roots in means rest and remember.

After we unlearn all of what it isn't, breathe in a bit of understanding that was lost in translation of restirction and culture and supposed righteousness, what remains seems to be this enormous box with a ribbon.

And all I can ponder is if I'm really going to unwrap it instead of just picking at the paper.

*Annie Dilliard first related our journey here in this time and space to that of a journey of polar explorers who find that they cannot do life alone in such harsh elements. Her short essay appeared in our VantagePoint3 material that detailed what it looks like to live in community. Our group of seven is journeying together through year one of VP3. What we discuss in our groups is sacred, and I sought out permission before publishing from the group member who shared about the jar before sharing here his revelations that have lead to truth in my mind, just to be clear. :)

This piece is a product of our Bigger Picture Blogs Writing Circles, where writers come together virtually to share a work and then offer encouragement while giving constructive criticism while applying benevolent pressure to others in the circle.

Thinking, That's All: Presence

I never liked the silence of me alone in a room without at least the presence of another to make it less still.

And then I discovered a Presence in which I wanted to bask, with whom I wanted to rest in the timelessness of quiet, in the quietness of slow-passing time.

I forget so easily, though, as easily as I forget the one thing for which I went to the store when I'm walking to the checkout, cart full of things we only half-need --

I forget amid the constant foghorn of busyness sounding through the thick air that my heart is filled not by the workings of my hands, but rather its filled by His handiwork within my heart during these times of stillness, during these times when my mind switches off the constant drumming of a make-it-or-break-it beat and instead beats in the rhythm of grace and rest.

I forget that His rhythm beats in my heart best.

We spend two days, John and I, in retreat of everyday life, filling small pockets of time with silence in His presence, keeping company with others who seeking to live in the intersection of where their deep joy meets the world's deep need.

We come around the table, seeking the very spoken Words Jesus shared in the upper room with his disciples.

We break bread together, trying to make sense of those Words, apply them to the here and now of our lives.

Together, we share life in solid community, bound by an appetite to know Him and make Him better known in our own hearts and in the hearts of those who crave more than what culture says life is in the here, in the now.

We share what has left us tired and aching -- the loneliness of being alone in a crowd and the noise of brains that won't enter into the rest to which He invites us.

It is an extreme paradox, this place and time in which we live, where we feel most alone when we are together and when we seek to come into His presence we feel alone because we are taken captive by the thoughts, the fears, the busyness of the day.

We break in retreat these two days to keep company with God.

Together.

Alone.

TogetherAlone.

And the quiet isn't so quiet.

Together

Or alone

when we keep company in His presence.

Bigger Picture Moment: Depth

"Superficiality is the curse of our age. The desperate need today is not for more intelligent people, more gifted people but for deep people." Richard Foster

In the busyness, the chaotic clutter of an over scheduled life, I felt this pang of loneliness in my heart that never really left.

Until about six months ago, I was so inundated with plans and to-do lists, that I couldn't even find time to have coffee with friends without scheduling it two weeks in advance.

I didn't think it was a problem at first; I was busy with really, really good stuff.

The stuff that suburban house-wife dreams are made of -- volunteering, Bible studies, attachment parenting group meetings, preschool meetings, meetings at our small business, MOPs meetings, babywearing meetings, church, blogging meetings.

Really, really good stuff.

Really, really good stuff that when laid out on a calendar seemed daunting and completely overwhelming.

And isolating.

And, erm, kind of empty.

And all of the sudden, I'm the guy with the trash bag bursting open in the middle of the garage and raising my hands in complete anxiety toward the heavens while sporting a robe and slippers and wondering if this is as good as it gets: {Watch this if that visual doesn't make sense}

The Emerging Journey: An Invitation... from VANTAGEPOINT3 on Vimeo.

Isn't there more to living than this -- this busy, overcommitted, over scheduled, relationships-on-the-backburner kind of life?

That's the question I was asking myself about a year ago when my mentor extended an invitation to apply for Vantage Point3, the Emerging Journey at our church.

She was vague about this nine-month-long, homework-included VP3 class, but I was intrigued, nonetheless.

Without ever knowing what I was getting myself into, I submitted an application.

And about three weeks into the class, questions about who God is and who I am and what God really wanted me to do with my life began to rock my world, much the way an earthquake shakes up a house -- knocking out old foundation blocks, jiggling and revealing faulty connections, ripping apart loose beams.

But God, the gracious carpenter, rebuilder that He is, moved in and began repairing the foundations, relying the bricks and reinforcing the beams.

In that rebuilding, I began to understand that busyness did not mean important.

Busyness didn't mean successful.

And busyness didn't mean productive.

Busyness was the bricks I'd haphazardly tried to shove to fill holes of loneliness and need for success into my own cracking foundation.

And while I was shoving replacement parts, regardless of whether they were built to do such a job, into places that needed reinforcement, it felt study.

Until it didn't.

VP3 helped me sort through these thoughts and take the time I desperately needed to reflect on what exactly I'd been doing.

And what God had been up to while I was busy doing whatever I'd deemed important.


During our leader training this week, I reflected on the journey I'd taken with VP3 and I began hearing the words of Richard Foster with ears that hear:

"Superficiality is the curse of our age. The desperate need today is not for more intelligent people, more gifted people but for deep people."

Often, busyness breeds intelligence, skill and utilizes giftedness.

But it steals the time needed to become deep people --

the time required to pay attention in the stillness to what God is up to in our own lives and in the world around us and in our neighbor's lives.

the time it takes to reflect on who God is and who we've been created to be.

the time necessary for building relationships and vesting our giftedness into people who are also part of our journey.

I know for me, I spent so much time building my resumes and building my skills and building my own small kingdom, that I totally missed the part with which God's always been most concerned about building: my character, the depth of my person, the foundations of my soul.

If superficiality is the curse of our age, busyness most certainly is the spell that casts the curse.

Each day I fight being bound up in its empty spell, but it's a battle I've deemed worthy of waging.

{If this strikes a chord in your heart, maybe VP3 might find a home in your heart, your church. If you're interested, I'd be happy to connect you with the coordinators of the program.}



If you've seen a glimpse of the bigger picture through a simple moment this week, you can link over at Alita Jewel Treasures.

Everyday Life: Equipped

Big breath in and big exhale.

Whew.

John and I just finished an intense three-day training session intended on equipping us for leading a small group through Vantage Point3, the Emerging Journey.{You remember? The nine-month long journey we just completed where we really wrestledwith answering questions about God's character, how He's shaped us and what He wants us to do with ourselves.}

The VP3 experience is really hard to adequately explain because its very much like setting out a trek through the mountains with a group of friends -- there is a lot of beauty to be breathed in, a lot of stamina to be exerted and a lot of soul searching to do as you hike through some really steep valleys and up some intense terrain. And that mountain-top view? Well, you know that pictures can't even capture what you've really witnessed and embraced.

As we were talking today with Rob Loane of VP3 about how to best facillitate groups, he mentioned a video that really stirred my soul the first time I saw it. It does a really wonderful job of explaining the VP3 journey.

I wanted to share so you could catch a little glimpse of what we've done with the better part of our week out in beautiful Dyer, Indiana.

The Emerging Journey: An Invitation... from VANTAGEPOINT3 on Vimeo.

It leaves you a little breathless, no?

I guess that's what best sums up my feelings about the past few training days that have felt like hiking up another peak -- I'm a little breatheless.

Equipped, too.

And I'm thankful. And excited. And awestruck.

But mostly, I'm breathless.

Also, I'm not so sure I'm ready to come down from this second panoramic view; however, I've got to let the descent begin because that's the only way we'll get to start another expedition to a new lovely scene.

And if the last views were any indicator of the beauty that's to come, I certainly don't want to miss it.

Everyday Life: Affirmations

Like a college kid on graduation day, I feel like I'm standing atop of the diploma mountain, thinking back on the winding, beautiful, sometimes steep road I've tread daily for nine straight months.

Tonight is the last night of our nine-month long Vantage Point3 journey.

It's truly been a hike in every sense of the word.

Sometimes I've found myself winded and breathless, chest tight, heart pumping, swallowing the sting of tears while trying to navigate up the side of some rocky terrain.

And often I found myself standing under warm sun, basking its glow while soaking in a new view after painstakingly making my way through such a stretch.

I've heard that with climbing mountains you've gotta have good tools, a good guide and an amazing team.

We've had that and more.

The people who I ventured out with have spoken truth into my life and spoken grace.

They've carried my burdens and shouldered the wind while standing next to me.

They've given me new glimpses of my Savior's face and shown me other chapters in God's epic tale.

I'm so grateful.

Our last task as a part of the group was to write affirmations for each other ... and I'll admit, I didn't know quite what that should look like.

I mean, we've learned so much about God and about ourselves -- we've written our entire life stories and shared, we've divulged our values and our ideals, our callings and our priorities, our strengths, our seasons in life.

We've walked so many miles together, I didn't know what to highlight.

So I did the only thing I knew how to do {other than writing each person a blog post ha!}: I prayed for the right verses to come to my mind and I laid it all out on paper.

But, this time, instead of relying only on black and white to bring life to something, I added color.



Because sometimes, I feel like after we've just totally and completely emptied ourselves, poured ourselves into a journey, we need a piece of paper, a picture to hang onto to remind us where we've been.

{Instead of leaving me some love via comments, tonight will you just stand here with me as I revel in this mountain-top view? I cannot for the life of me figure out how to disable Disqus comments!}

Bigger Picture Moment: Growing

Much the way my small boys seemingly explode out of their winter jeans this time of year, with long, lanky arms and legs transforming from round baby chub, the buds just outside our front door burst through clumps of rain-saturated Earth, open, breathe, grow up toward the sun.



And all of these vibrant bursts of color are exquisite.



Well, except the lilac bush.

This year, it hasn't done much of anything, despite the pruning it underwent the past few falls and the rescue attempts we'd made to untangle its roots from weeds.



Even in winter's passing, the long season where life outside our four walls seems to lull and lie dormant for months upon gray months, the lilac bush stands bare branched, with no sign of small purple buds, no fragrant petals -- just long, thin, branches sadly swaying in the breeze.

It's kind of sad, really, even for a novice gardener like me.

I know just how lovely that bush could be, if only it would bloom.

I mourn for the lilac bush.

****
This past fall, I came to a major tunring point: I had an opportunity to join Vantage Point3: the Emerging Journey, a leadership-and-skill honing class hosted at our church.

I knew little about the class, but my mentor had promised me that it would rock my world. At that point, I was really struggling to know myself, who I was, what my strengths were and what my calling was.

And at that point, I'd been fiercly trying to hold onto pieces of myself that I thought defined me, refusing to bloom into something new if it meant losing those definitions.

Digging my feet into the frozen ground and silently hibernating in the very own winter of my heart, I wrestled with totally jumping into the material during the first few weeks.

But, like most gardeners, the Gardener of my heart wasn't content to leave his land barren.

So He watered me, he sunned me and he weeded out my heart.

I discoverd this Gardener in ways I'd never known before -- how He's always been working and tilling and moving the land, even when it seems dormant and still in the dead of winter.

I discovered that the seeds He planted in my heart weren't meant to stay seeds, they were meant to morph and transform and grow into very specific fruits that he had sown into my soul.

And in the light of sun and the flood of rain waters soaking the ground, even the most stubborn of seeds budged, broke through the soil and emerged on heels of winter.

Perfect? No. Not even close.

But blossoming, growing, yes.

Though there's a lot of spring left, a lot of growing still to do, I'm learning that I can't stay the same and really be all I was meant to be.

If we don't bloom, we end up barren, with the Gardner mourning His lilac bush and all it could have been.

****

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Live. Capture. Share. Encourage.