So my dear friend, Kate Vasey, and I had a long conversation yesterday over lunch at McAlisters... me here for her and for her baby shower, and our friendship... and using her like a jewel of wisdom and protection over my life for discussion on things that consume me.
So I spread out my paper: compiled lists of names and people and events and invitations and commitments and phone contacts and all the busyness that comes at my heart and pecks at my life -- like a fifth grade web brainstorm sheet, without the bubbles of lines and connection. Just things and people that all dabble at pieces of me and my energy... and wondering what to do and how to cut out or combine or care more deeply for them.
At first, we both just pretty much sat back and acknowledged the mess. Acknowledged the many words and disconnect and collaboration of everything and nothing that spread over the page, and hence, stuck like crunchy peanut butter in ones mouth -- parts creamy and good and lovely and blissful, but parts scrapping the crevasses or caught in teeth or just unable to come unglued from the roof.
I explained to her what each was, what was good or negative, life-giving, or soul stealing from each, and why there were on that pages and for what purpose they stood or interacted in my life.
And again, we both just sat back with overwhelmed, thoughtful, intentional faces, and me breathing a really big, lung-filling sigh of depletion and deep need for help and truth and her straight talk and ability to come at it with a spirit-charged dignity and grace.
And an hour or so later, we left. Me with a steady new lift of content and ability to move forward and clarity on how to get away from the garbage or liter or unnecessary plants or roots in my life, and with that, the removed spaces grows time and sustained love and goodness and energy for those people I really love, really dig in and care for. Really gather and give and get from.
We started with prioritizing people, and phone calls and e-mails and moved to church events and city gatherings and financial commitments. Everything from "Swim" to "Substitute Teach" to "Sabbath" was on the list, with "Lawsons" and "Roommate" and "Bekah Wallace" and "Book Club" and "Bake" and things on every side and inbetween. In the middle, I had written the words
Streamline Priorities, Intentionality and
Develop Rhythm, Schedule and
Life Giving, Giving Life in capital letters and drawn a box around them. This is the need, the linger, the calling, the purpose of each pieces of life for today, tomorrow, the wishings for the yesterdays. That we, I, live with purpose and value and intentionally, and from this, that all things in life combine and come as necessary ribbon strings from the worldview of the whole.
From there, we walked through things I had circled as unmovable priorities, like cement on the foundation of everything else, needing potent clarity to stand, falling in and holding like re-rods. In those circles stood "Church At Charlotte" and "Kelsey" and a few other non-removables which come at my heart like strong winds to a sailboat, giving speed and life, the ability to push forward and offer a place to rest and fan altogether, or commit to in a way that sails sturdy the power shifting of the boat, like moorings of purpose or commitments to my walk as this beholden Christian faith.
From there, we combined or overlapped, or altogether crossed out other pieces. Those which gobble time or are just one more random idea of mine, or (breathe deep) are another long-distance relationship that I feel guilty if I don't keep up, but just simply don't have the space or ability to keep up (and reality is, in likelihood and purpose, most of the time, neither do they). So it doesn't go into black-and-white of complete-ceasing, but these people or partakings get noticed as what they were, or at times are, but not as one more thing I need to do or beat myself up for not creating energy to call.
What it also meant, was taking the other, and trying to see how they could work together, like tying nautical knots along the sails to make them work as one rather than separate, stealing elements. This transferred to things like: "Jessica" + "Water/Outdoors" + "Lawsons" + "Swim/Run/Hike", so that rather than trying to do each of these elements separately, I could now take my friend Jess (who I know from Wednesdays at the Lawsons) and when we suggests coffee, since we both like to outdoorsy things, instead going kayaking at the local river bed -- which is way more fun, active, and something we both know we would rather do anyway, and now we get to do it together!
A one or two people or phrases were still left with perplexion. Friendships I have tried to delete, let go by the wayside, or walk away from... but won't let me out of. Or inklings that just won't die in me, but I don't know how to give to them only what I have left to give right now (like High School Youth Group/Young Life)... So the hashing continues a bit, but parts are solved, but recognizing seasons to minister and give, and parts by... honesty here -- taking more people off this blog-reading list.
Another pop-up that came scrawled on the bottom on the page was: Stop trying to fill a hole. I had written my heart on this page Thursday morning before packing the car, and when I sat back to try and "solve" it myself, this is what stood out to me. That I keep trying to commit, trying to do anything to fill the holes in my life. So I try and find a new friendship for coffee
(Bekah, I'm mad at you here! Oh wait, mad at me... Mad at missing Monday coffee! Grrr... you don't know who you are in my life and how deeply those Monday coffees came to my heart strings, and may you know just as deeply, that your spot in my life can NEVER be filled, no matter how many coffee dates or Cold Tangerines discussions I try to make up...) or think if I join another women's Bible Study it will fill a gap, or add another ministry, or group of friends, or Tuesday night commitment... that eventually, I'll find this perfect fit and flow that carries my life like new, full bliss forever.
But it's not true. So I end up spreading myself so thin, trying to fill up this hole. (I think it's grown from five years of struggle, with feeling bits of triumph -- from being so lonely that first year in NC, to back on GR after college and trying to reconnect or make new friends...etc... but has turned into a lifestyle of always looking for... more... or as Shauna Niequist defined it, a ravenous effort and spirit turning "into a cycle of frantic activity, without soul or connection.") So here I am, acknowledging the hole, and walking away, to find what looks instead like Israel desert land with tuffs of green grasses.
What it also means, is that this defining process of place and time and spaces allows and creates... time for ... good. Deep, truly earthy, good. Like coffee roasted with deep aromas filling up the morning waifs dancing in from Jenelle and my's kitchen. And beauty... like pausing now at Panera in my softly patterned yellow flowing skirt with words rolling like rhythm from my finger tips, while my precious, pregnant friend sleeps away the morning and prepares for the beauty of baby showers and blessings. And joy... like buying plane tickets and grasping the all the intensity and excitement that fumbles and rumbles out of mountain rivers, with Kate Riedberger and I screaming and giggling and panicking like school girls on a wild weekend, getting every ounce and energy out of the full joy of being alive and adventurous and rugged and ribboned as two loops on a bow together.
And it also concludes and caress' the Commandment of Sabbath, like milky smooth Dove chocolate , delectable and gliding over parts of your tongue and cheek that you didn't even know were there until the luxury of its softness touches there. It gives the Sabbath back its rest, it gives it back it's sense of rest and holy day and set apart and protectiveness. It gives it back its truth and... lets be honest, commandment which may have gotten gnarled and slid over in the last few months. It gives it a new look, which looks like this:
1. No unintentional phone calls.
2. No preplanned, life-taking lunches or dates or get-togethers.
3. The absolute ability to say NO, with truth and meaning and conviction and backbone. Saying NO for me, for God.
4. The now, welcomed room to decorate the day with other things from the "list" that give and get life -- blog reading, book writing, card creating... piano playing, outdoor hiking, Sunday school attending... novel reading, roommate talking, dinner making... journal scrolling, essay reading, lakeside sitting... And do them with intentional, spacious effort, energy, time, desire, and rest.
The pre-math of this, means mass contacting/emailing/phone call making to adequately inform those commitments and people in my life that I'm "unavailable" in these hours. Which means, I will refrain from e-mail scurrying, I won't pick up the phone, and I probably won't predestine long hours of the day to whoever it is that falls on my couch after church. I will be purposefully unavailable to most things and most needs. (I will allow the occasional need or life-giving or God-honoring thing... or the combination of friend-hike-worship, but for the most part, I'm going to be intentionally careful). In this, I guard myself from more gutting and burnout, and guard my love with God from nearing the edges.
Everything isn't "solved." Everything can't be. It's life. Not a composed project or meticulous speech outline or reading or prose. No, it's skirted with mishaps, dodged with rough discussions, complicated with death, marriage, break-ups, newborns, moving, careers, and all the other parts that we all, really, have on our pieces of paper, or couldn't foresee to even think to put them there until all of a sudden, they are there, whether we present them to be or not. So we gather back our sails, look into the shifting winds, and re-chart the map. We consult the one and only Compass, and come again into the waves of life.
But in this season, in this strand on the ribbon, in this sea, in this sifting, I'm stepping back. I'm walking away and protecting and releasing and observing. I'm putting together filled pages and adding blank ones, and allowing half-written ones, and re-writing and administering edited versions of ones, and coming back to life with new grace and potential and need and resonance, and being lifted with Sabbath rest and restoration, and fullness of joy and hurt and emotion, and more than anything, a deep, committed love to... me... To things that matter. To intention. To priorities. To rhythm. To life giving and giving life. To streamlining ribbons and sails.
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