Here, We Are.
Last week, I was gifted a lovely set of coffee mugs that stack neatly in a silver stand on my counter. They are crisp and perfect for public display! And they will serve their purpose. They have joined our wide collection of mugs from places or people that mean so much to us.
Our cupboard full of coffee mugs keeps reminding me of this half written blog sitting in my Google Drive. Each cup, perched precariously just within the confines of these shelves, seems to point out how full my life is. Admittedly, my life is very full and, somehow, life was wilder and more chaotic just months ago. As I carefully remove one mug each morning or refill the cupboard with clean mugs warm from the dishwasher, lessons are brought back to my mind.
The lessons they remind me of today are hard-learned and years in the making. In fact, back in 2015, I laughed and cried reading the stories Lysa Terkuerst wrote in her book The Best Yes. I found myself easily identifying with her struggles to learn how to make healthy decisions and how to determine when to say “Yes” to opportunities. I learned that saying “No” to certain things was saying “Yes” to others.
That book about decisions really sparked a personal endeavor to do two things:
Spend more time in prayer before making decisions - big or small.
Set boundaries in my life and hold myself accountable to those boundaries.
Fast-forward to Spring 2021, friend after friend made it a priority in our conversations to voice that there was a lot on my plate. My plate is not just my own - it’s my husband’s, my children’s, my dogs’ plate, and sometimes more. The number of beating hearts that were affected by my decisions in life had grown with the addition of our fourth baby, serving in a large ministry, and running the race of life at full speed.
But, I will say, I was a bit out of shape for the race. Jumping back in full speed after COVID shut downs and newborn life had me breathing hard and rubbing proverbial IcyHot on my weary mental muscles. I saw that in my husband as well. Everyone was rushing back to “normal” post-pandemic and we were grappling with what about “normal” was worth rushing back to.
You can’t just do less, sometimes. There are only so many things in life or in certain roles that you can delegate. When asked by caring friends this year what we could eliminate from our days that would give more time for rest and help up be ready to do what God had called us to do, my answer was the same:
I had been looking at our load - the work of our hands and our hearts - and figuring out what we could eliminate or delegate to someone else but I just never felt like any of the “extra” or “small” stuff was ours to let go of, yet.
We prayed. We kept going. We kept praying. We kept going. We prayed and we really did not want to admit that the piece of our life that needed to be handed off, the piece of the family puzzle that kept us from maintaining the boundaries set for our family was a piece we were unwilling to let go of. It would have been easier to off-load the “smaller”, “extra” pieces of our lives to keep allowing the biggest, ill-fitting piece more room to just sit in the middle of the puzzle. Not only would it have been easier on us to refuse to make that decision, it would have been easier on everyone else.
Truth be told, the “smaller” pieces were actually the most important pieces for our family in this season. Life was less of a puzzle and more like my functional coffee mug cupboard. There is a rotation in the process of using each mug, cleaning the mug, and replacing it carefully in the cupboard. There are some seasonal mugs that go in for Christmas and then return to storage to await the next most wonderful time of the year. There are mugs reserved for special occasions or tea parties in the back of the cupboard. There are mugs that have a broken handle or a chip that, once cracked to the bottom, will be sorrowfully discarded. And there are mugs that mean a lot but will be passed on as a gift or sent to a thrift shop because they just don’t fit in my hand the way they used to.
Similarly (or maybe as a stretch for this metaphor), God reminded us this year that there are things that we can be gifted at and passionate about that are not ours to do anymore.There are roles, titles, callings that were ours and now they aren’t. Maybe we have been given new directions and have to lay down old things for new things to have space. Maybe we weren’t careful enough, letting chips and cracks impair the integrity of the former gifts. Maybe we have grown and that just isn’t what we are called to anymore. Maybe all of these hypotheses are true all at one.
I know this: It is best to lay those things down in obedience rather than have them taken from you in resistance.
I most often resist the purposes of God for a primary reason: fear of what others will think of me. My sentences become laden with clauses that subtly justify my choices, in hopes that people will see my heart in my choices. I think to myself, If they just knew, they would understand. God reminds me that they aren’t the people I’m serving. He reminds me over and over and over again.
“Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
Galatians 1:10
I don’t get the opportunity to let every person into the kitchen to hear the details of why I can’t let certain mugs go or why the mug they gave me didn’t remain in the cupboard for more than a few months. If we spend our whole lives making decisions based on how others will respond, I fear we will all find ourselves at destinations less magnificent than the ones we could have arrived at. We will always land in the sovereign will of God, but our taste for the fullness of Joy offered in every moment may be off if our eyes were on the people watching instead of the Creator directing.
So, I finished this blog before the year’s end as I finished the end of the peppermint mocha creamer I splash into my mug of hot coffee each December. January is coming. I already see why we are where we are. God is doing new things and our only goal is to live quiet, godly lives.
Our boundaries are reset. Our hearts are healing, resting, and moving forward. May 2022 be a year of joy in the hidden and holy moments of life.
In the Love of Christ,
Hannah
