Sunday, May 24, 2015

You Just Don't Know...

On this journey forward this year, many ideas are finally coming into focus for me. This one I'm sharing today is one that has actually been forming in me for many years and through many life situations.  And it is a particularly hard one for me to embrace as a woman who prides herself on her intelligence, but that makes it no less true.  Here it is...

You don't know.  

Really.

You. Don't. Know.

Oh, we think we know.  We are more than happy to share with everyone we know exactly what we know. We are convinced that we completely understand all there is to it.  

But we don't know.

You can't look at me, for example, and understand how enormous the knee pain is that I work through on a daily basis.  You may see me limp from time to time.  And you perhaps have talked about it with me and know that the surgery that gives me hope for a better quality of life is 15 days away.  But you have no way of knowing that every step I take on my right leg feels like a knife is stabbing me, but that I keep on taking those steps because I am deathly afraid that the moment I intentionally stop taking them will be the day that I no longer can and that haunts me.

You don't know.

I'm not saying that you SHOULD know.  I'm not even saying that you CAN know, not fully anyway. What I'm saying is that you DON'T.  You hear me.  You pray for me.  You may even love me.  But you don't know.

Why is that important?  For this reason:  because you don't know, you don't get to judge.  

You don't get to see me sitting down at my desk instead of roaming my classroom like I might have in the past and make a judgment that I'm a lazy teacher.  You don't get to look at the dust piled high on nearly every surface of my house and deem me a horrible housekeeper.  You don't get to see the weight I worked so hard to lose come piling back on me and think I've given up and don't care anymore.  

You don't know.

Make no mistake...people DO make those judgments.  A few are even brave enough to own them...confront me about them and share their unsolicited wisdom...but you don't get to.  Because you don't know.

I know that I've been given this lesson in my life because I'm one who doesn't know, too.  And I've learned this lesson the hard way.  By assuming that I do know...when in reality, I don't.

I don't know that the marriage that looks so much better than mine from the outside is actually struggling to hold on and may not make it.

I don't know that the mom who looks to me like she's doing everything right is shaming herself daily for sins only she knows and is desperate for someone to help her.

I don't know that the kiddo who looks to me like she's highly intelligent and capable is dreadfully afraid of finding the subject she knows nothing about because then everyone will see how stupid she really is, so she stays up very late every night and makes sure that she knows as much as she can about everything she can.

I THINK I know these things.  I am a very keen observer of people.  I pay attention. But I don't know.

I. Don't. Know.

And because I don't know, I need to stop judging.  I need to stop believing I know what I can't possibly know.  And I need to just love people and offer them grace instead of judgment.  

I need to ask...and listen.  And then listen some more.  

I need to pray...and forgive.  And then forgive some more.

Perhaps more than anything, I need to remember always that I don't know.

This world is full of critics.  What it's decidedly short on is people who are willing to love. 

My move forward today...and hopefully every day hereafter...is to be one of those people.  It's better not to know and just to love.  It gets us much farther in the end, doesn't it?

Moving Forward....
Angie
:-)

Saturday, May 16, 2015

To Know...and Be Known

I had the chance to do some extraordinary things today.

The first event on my very busy weekend schedule was a meeting about the Global Leadership Summit, where I have the privilege of serving on a team that makes many people welcome in our building as they learn via live satellite feed from some AMAZING leaders.  I have listened and learned and had my life changed for the past 4 years now by this annual event, and knowing that I get to serve on this team is a delight, because I know firsthand the difference it will make in the lives of those who attend it!

At this first team meeting with some amazing ladies who are also serving at the summit, our leader ended our time together in prayer - not an uncommon thing to happen at a church meeting.  She asked us point blank questions about what was going on in our lives and spirits - also not unusual, given this particular leader's style and belief in the power of prayer.  What was incredible is that we opened up to each other in a really surprising way. We shared great joy, deep pain, confident hope, and abject fear with each other and then took a long time to intimately pray for and with each other.

If you've never done that, I strongly recommend it.  To be prayed over in that way moved me.  To pray over a sister in that way humbled me.  I needed that connection so much and hadn't expected to have that need met so wonderfully this morning.  Where I had planned on attending a meeting, God planned a little revival in my life.

When I left that meeting, with my emotional tank already feeling pretty full,  I moved on to today's next big event - a very long awaited meeting with some former colleagues of mine.  For several years, we were a teaching team together.  I'm not sure you could find four people who are more different from each other in temperament, but what we share in common far outweighs that.  We can teach...all of us...and although we do it differently, we also do it really, really well.  We were a dynamic, high-performing team and it is a huge joy for me to know that we made changes in this world because we changed the lives of kiddos and their families.  We did some of our best work together and I have looked forward to sharing this lunch with them for a long time now.

It didn't disappoint!  The meal was wonderful, and the company was even better!  Being together with my friends made the years melt away and I could remember being a fairly young, idealistic teacher on a faculty with these people.  They really have no idea, I think, that some things I still do in the classroom I do because of their influence.  Admittedly, I know next to nothing about how other careers work, having spent the past 27 years as a teacher, but I really hope that at least some jobs have the same spirit of collegiality that educators share.  We are far more than co-workers.  We are truly friends.

As we were sitting at the table catching up with each other and waiting for the whole group to arrive, for the second time today, a friend asked me point blank questions about what was going on in my life.  And for the second time, I answered honestly and opened up to someone who was genuinely interested in the answers.  More connection.

On the drive home from an uplifting happy time together it hit me. Both of these interactions today revealed something to me about  myself that I'm finally able to put words to.

There is very little that I want more in life than to know and be known.  

I live a transparent life most times, as this blog can attest, in an effort to be seen and known by people.  It means so much to me when someone says by their actions,

"Hey...I see you...I hear you...I know you." 

Because what that really screams to me is,

"I accept you...I care for you...I love you."  

I pay attention and try to be positive and encouraging to people for much the same reason...I want them to know that they are seen and loved.  I want to remind them that they matter and that my world is a better place because they are in it.

I'm going to keep praying about this and digging into it now that I finally have some words for it.  I suspect that I'm not really alone in this desire to know and be known.  In fact, I'd be willing to bet that many people in this world probably want the same thing to some extent.  We were made for connection and it is an unnatural state for us to be without it.

Sometimes moving forward is about who you bring with you.  I have some of the best companions I could ever ask for along for my ride!

Moving Forward...again...finally

Angie
:-)


Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Here....

I currently have 3 blog posts sitting as drafts in my work space, and tonight I finally figured out why.

My word for this year is forward.  I've been praying over it and striving to live it out as I stretch myself and do things I didn't think I could. Only lately, God is trying to make the move forward really clear for me...but I've been holding on to here.

Here is a place I know.  There's comfort in that, even though here is not necessarily a place I'm really enjoying in life.

Here is midlife, and all of the lovely changes in my body and attitude that brings, sometimes on an hourly basis.

Here is looking toward the end of my career and wondering if I've done all I could and what's still left to accomplish in the next ten years.

Here is contemplating an empty nest soon, and some days very eager for it to arrive, while others I sit in the bathroom and sob because I'm done raising little boys and I miss their hugs and their dirty faces that I got to scrub in the bathtub a lifetime ago.

Here is facing down another knee surgery next month because arthritis has taken all it can from me and I have no more left to give.

Here is contemplating many decisions made in my early 20's that are not really what I anticipated they'd be in my late 40's and wondering if this is all there is...and if it isn't, what can and should I do about that.

Here isn't really paradise, but it's not hell either, and I've been sitting here for a while now.

Waiting.
Wanting.
Wondering.
Waffling.

Those drafts of blog posts are symbolic of my life right now.  They're sitting here, too, every bit as disorganized and unfinished as the woman who penned them.  They're not ready to be seen.  They're raw and emotional and hard to digest. Just like the woman who penned them. In fact, I'm really tempted to just delete them.  Maybe that's the forward move - to let them go - let go of here and move my attention to there instead. To forward.

Some days, I'm just not ready for forward.

I wish it wasn't beckoning me.

But it is.