Ann – Page 17

Saying No to Being Busy, Saying Yes to Resting in God

July 8, 2015 by Ann 2 Comments

The river here is humming. Steady, even, strong. We are in the mountains of Colorado on a family vacation, and in my hours on the back deck, I am attending to that hum. I am not just hearing, I am listening. And in the quiet of listening to the river, I am tuning in again to my heart. There is a lot going on there–many thoughts and things that have not had time to surface because of the constant pace of work and doing that fill my days.

We’re busy, aren’t we? We are a culture that values busyness, even if it’s not necessarily productive. I wear it as a badge of pride sometimes–I’m busy. The insinuation is that I’m busy doing important things. Really, a lot of times I’m so busy that instead of doing the important things in life I’m missing the important things.

I'm so busy that instead of doing the important things in life I'm missing the important things. Share on X

But here in the mountains, where the internet connection is spotty and the schedule is loose (our big daily items: hiking and napping), I’m slowing down. And I’m reflecting on how I’ve been living.

It’s been a long time since I’ve really taken time off. I don’t say that in pitying tone; I have loved my work for the last years and I have loved the writing projects that have filled up the margin that I’ve had. But this month, I’ve stepped back from working and deadline-based writing. I’ve been re-learning how to rest.

I’ll be honest; it’s not easy for me to really slow down and rest. I like feeling busy and I like having projects to work on. But this past month has been full of huge transitions for our family, and my soul has needed the time to reflect. I have needed to pull back and soak in the relationships and the days that are right in front of me. Everything is changing. These are good changes for our family, but I won’t get these days back. I want to live them fully. I want to be attentive to the live I am living right now.

I don’t want to spend my life busy with things that aren’t the most important. I don’t want to attend to the vibrations of my phone and my email and miss my daughter’s fascination with Legos or the passing whistle of hummingbirds mere feet from my eyes.

And so: God is using my time on the deck to remind me to slow down and tune in to His heart above all.

It’s the swell of summer: the river below the deck is high and full and fast. I have spent the mornings on the deck, praying and reading Scripture and marveling at how quickly the river passes me by. The water stops for no one and for nothing. It passes over and around rock, carries fish in its ribboning swirl, and stops for no man. It is a powerful force.

And I can’t do anything to change that river. No matter how much I do, my own strength could never stop that river or slow it’s flowing down, down to an end I cannot see. From above, on the deck, it’s so clear to me that that river is unstoppable, except by One much greater than me. He can stop those waves instantly, if he chooses. I cannot.

Busyness keeps my head down and keeps me from getting a perspective where I can really see the state of things. It keeps me mired in the tyranny of the urgent rather than living for what is truly important. It keeps me from seeing the unchanging current of the river, and it gives me the fleeting illusion that I can change things if I just work harder or longer or do something else.

The river reminds me: there is only One–Christ himself–who can change the course of things. My responsibility is to stay close to him, to follow him, to obey him. When I do that, he will guide and lead the river of my life. I don’t have to try to force the stream somewhere new. All of my busyness cannot change anything; one word from His mouth can.

All of my busyness cannot change anything; one word from Christ's mouth can. Share on X

So. I trust in him. I let him be in control. I stay faithful. If that leads to busyness, ok. But I’m going to seek to stay away from being busy just for the sake of trying to feel like what I’m doing is important. He already gave my life the highest value. He did the same for you. We don’t have to stay busy to be living a purposeful, important life. We are important because of Christ’s love and sacrifice for us.

Tomorrow, we’re going whitewater rafting. I’m excited to see where the river takes me. I won’t be in control, but I’ll be riding in the waves who are controlled by the One who is.

Filed Under: God, Life, Uncategorized Tagged With: Christianity, Christianity and busyness, faith, how can I trust God, how can I trust God more, no to being busy, should I be so busy, too busy, trusting God, why am I so busy

My Daughter, the Mirror, and Me: Healthy Body Image for Both of Us

June 24, 2015 by Ann 2 Comments

My newest piece is up at Today’s Christian Woman today; I would love for you to read the entire article here!

My daughter loves seeing herself in the mirror, drawn to her parallel image like a magnet. Ever since she has been old enough to recognize her reflection in the glass, she has smiled, giggled, and reached out for herself. It’s a beautiful sight. As one who has fought my own reflection in the mirror, I’m starting to understand these moments as what they truly are: sacred.

Ella is not yet two years old. Her belly is as round as a ball after each meal, and her legs still carry the remnants of baby pudge. She is stretching out, but she is still a little bit baby—a little bit soft. And she adores herself. Now that she’s walking, running, and trying to jump, she will run to the full-length mirror in our room and stand in front of it, watching herself as she moves. She usually dances and shakes her head, giggling at herself. More than once, I have caught myself with tears in my eyes and have prayed that she would always delight in her body like this.

It’s been many years since I have been able to do the same. That freedom, that lack of self-consciousness, that complete joy in her own reflection—that is an experience that I don’t want her to lose. But her growing-up years will take place in a culture that is trying to tell her she has nothing to delight in when she looks in the mirror.

A Lost Freedom

Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I looked in the mirror with pure delight. I do like myself, and I think that I have a healthy self-image. I don’t loathe my body or avoid mirrors, but even when I’m feeling fit and my clothes enhance my figure, I tend to focus on the aspects of my body that I don’t love. I focus on my rounding tummy, the girth of my thighs, the shortness of my eyelashes. And I try to do the work of covering up so as to not draw attention to those parts of my body. I might like how I look, but I rarely completely love what I see.

It’s been this way, to various degrees, since elementary school, when one of my female classmates told me that I had “big thighs.” After that, life was never the same.

I’m not being dramatic. Up until that moment, I had never even considered the size of my thighs. I knew that I had a body and that other people had bodies, but I didn’t consider how my body looked compared to theirs. I just knew that my legs worked well and that they helped me jump when I played basketball—that was all I cared about.

But when my classmate told me that she thought my thighs were big, I started looking at the size of my legs in light of the size of other girls’ legs. I discovered the ugly game of comparison. I shot up quickly in junior high and had knobby knees, but I didn’t develop any discernable bustline until years after many of my peers had needed actual bras. And although I was a bit gangly, I always carried a little weight in my tummy. It seemed that I would never have the perfect body I saw in commercials and magazines.

Nearly two decades later, I know that our culture’s interpretation of the “perfect” body is impossible—at least for me. And I really am okay with that. I’m not always thrilled, but I’ve made peace with my body. It does many things nearly perfectly—I can walk, even run, in this body. I have been able to carry a child. I can talk, and learn, and eat, and smile. These are amazing, nearly-perfect things. And I’m grateful.

Would I be happy if my metabolism was a bit faster? Probably. Would I like it if I had naturally smaller thighs? Sure. But the peace that I’ve gained with my body over these years since elementary school has been hard-won. And that’s why seeing Ella dancing in front of the mirror has both inspired and challenged me.

What She’s Teaching Me

My daughter has no sense of culturally imposed standards of beauty. She rejoices in her own reflection because she has no reason to not like herself; everyone in her life delights in her, and tells her so. Why would she not smile at her own face when she receives smiles on every side?

And this is what I always want her to have: encouragement about her body and praise regarding her internal—and external—beauty. Because she is beautiful. She is beautiful because the Creator of the heavens and the earth knit her together and delights in her (Psalm 139). He wove her every cell together when she was inside me. And still, as the one who holds all things together, he is remaking her, cell by cell, every day (Colossians 1:17). She is a wonder. She should be thrilled when she looks in the mirror! She’s a miracle!

Ella’s wonder with herself is calling me to remember that I, too, am a wonder. My working cells, my breathing lungs, my functioning brain—what a wonder I am! My thighs, knit together by a loving God. My tummy, sustained by an awesome Creator. What a wonder I am!

What a wonder you are! What a miracle, really, that any of us are here, living, gasping, hoping, loving, and speaking. All is wonder, truly.

Read the rest of the article here, at Today’s Christian Woman!

Filed Under: God, Guest Post, Motherhood, Parenting Tagged With: body image, Christian body image, Christians and the body, daughter, do I have a good body, faith, healthy body image, help my daughter with body image, Jesus

Meeting My Hero: Elisabeth Elliot

June 19, 2015 by Ann 1 Comment

After my freshman year in college, I went to England for seven weeks through a study abroad program. Our first week during the trip was spent in London, and on Sunday most of us went to a small church that one of our professors recommended. It was a church built out of grey stone, cool on the inside and airy.

During the service, the pastor announced that they had a guest speaker present, an American woman who would be sharing her testimony with the congregation. She had been a missionary for many years, he noted, and she had lost her first husband as a result of such missionary work. The woman he was introducing was Elisabeth Elliot.

I nearly fell out of the pew. During my first year in college, Elisabeth Elliot had become a literary mentor to me through her book Passion and Purity. I read about her life with fascination and awe, as well as with a sense of closeness—years before, she had been a student at the college I was attending, and while I read the book I sat in some of of the same places she described within her pages.

This book challenged and touched me for many reasons, one of which was that it is a book about Elisabeth’s love story with Jim Elliot, how the two fell in love and then surrendered this love to the Lord for five years until they were married. There were months when the two could not communicate, years when they only saw one another for a few days at a time. Their story of God’s provision and their commitment to purity is truly incredible; their love is the stuff of fairy tales.

Elisabeth’s life, however, has not been a fairy tale. Less that two and a half years after their marriage in 1953, Jim and four other men went to share the Gospel with the Auca people, a native tribe in Ecuador. All five men were speared to death, and Elisabeth was left as a single mother. Instead of folding into herself, however, Elisabeth soon took her young daughter and went back to the jungle, back to the same Auca tribe that had killed her husband. She went to share the Gospel with them, and through her strength, courage and faithfulness to the vision she believed God had given to her a Jim, many in the tribe of self-proclaimed killers came to faith in Christ and gave up their murderous ways.

Sitting in that church in England, I was overwhelmed with emotion as I heard her speak about her life and faith in Christ. I could not believe that it was actually Elisabeth Elliot standing 15 feet in front of me—this woman whose words has shaped me so deeply was in the same room! Later, I asked for her signature in one of her books and smiled at this living hero across from me. I still don’t know why she was at that small church in England on the one particular Sunday when I happened to be across the world in the same church. Whatever the reason, I know that morning was a gift.

Elisabeth has entered into glory, now. She is with Jesus, her greatest prize.

Although she wrote many books and spoke across the world, Elisabeth Elliot was not flashy, was not self-focused and she did not even have an “issue” that she campaigned for—hers was a message of a God who is faithful, regardless of the circumstances. In her own circumstances of losing Jim to Auca spears and her second husband to cancer, she stayed the course and lived as a testimony of Christ’s sufficiency in a world that increasingly tells us otherwise. In Passion and Purity, she asks herself:

“…The question to precede all others, which finally determines the course of our lives is, What do I really want? Was it to love what God commands…and to desire what He promises? Did I want what I wanted, or did I want what He wanted, no matter what it might cost?” (Passion and Purity, 41)

Elisabeth Elliot decided, again and again, that she wanted what God wanted, no matter what the cost. Her life is a deep witness to God’s ability to work in a woman completely surrendered to Him.

I am so thankful for her life, and for that brief moment in England when I heard her voice with my own ears. I look forward to seeing her again.

Filed Under: Forfeited Life, Forfeited Life Spotlight Tagged With: elisabeth elliot, faith, grace, Jesus, jim elliot, meet my hero, meeting my hero

5 Meaningful Ways to Say Goodbye

June 9, 2015 by Ann 4 Comments

The world we live in is increasingly mobile, and in this season of life, many of us may find ourselves moving for school, a job, a relationship, or even for an adventure.

Or, we may find ourselves waving goodbye to our dearest friends as they drive away to a new place while we stay put. Compared to a hundred years ago, it is remarkably simple to transport our possessions across the country. What is less simple is navigating the change in friendships when we — or they — move away.

However, saying goodbye — and learning how to do that well — is an important aspect of any meaningful friendship. How do we do that? How do we say goodbye to the people who have shaped our lives in a powerful way?

Here are five ways to say goodbye intentionally.

1. Acknowledge Change.
Some of the deepest pains from friendship come when someone feels forgotten or left behind. If you are moving across the world — or even across the state — be honest about the fact that your friendships will change. Talk with the people who will feel your absence most strongly and have a heart-to-heart about the fact that you can’t really know how the friendship will shift.

Saying goodbye doesn’t mean that anything went wrong in the friendship or that the friendship has failed. It simply is a reality of the world that we live in. Openly acknowledging and discussing that a change is coming in your relationship will make the transition clearer, if not necessarily easier.

Saying goodbye and learning how to do that well is an important aspect of any meaningful friendship. via @Darling #friendship Share on X

2. Under Promise.
As a deep feeler, I feel the urge to promise my close friends that we will talk every week, send letters in the mail, and text regularly. But, the reality is that I don’t know if I will be able to do those things and promising them such will only cause pain to my friends if I don’t follow through. It might even make them feel forgotten when they most definitely are not forgotten to me.

Instead, in seasons of change, it’s a good idea to under promise what you can offer in this next season. Be honest with yourself and with your friends. If you are taking a new job, it might be much more demanding than your current one. You will need current friends in your new community, and much of your time may need to be poured into getting to know new people, especially in the first months of change. But decide what you can promise — and stick to it. A call every other week? Put it on the calendar. A trip every year? Buy the tickets now.

We know how much our friends mean to us; often, they don’t. Tell them. #friendship Share on X

3. Say Thank You.
We know how much our friends mean to us; often, they don’t. As you prepare to leave (or watch them leave), put down in words what their relationship has meant to you. Thank them, specifically and purposefully, for how they have helped you grow, change, and love for the better.

Read two more ways to say goodbye well over at Darling Magazine, where this article originally appeared!

Filed Under: Friendship, Guest Post, Life Tagged With: Darling Magazine, darling magazine saying goodbye, faith in Christ, how to say goodbye, is this the end, saying goodbye, this isn't the end, why do i have to say goodbye, why is saying goodbye so hard

Building Blocks

June 4, 2015 by Ann Leave a Comment

My newest piece is up at Deeply Rooted Magazine–You can read the start of the article here and read the rest of it over at Deeply Rooted!

My daughter turned two last month. She’s a pensive fireball; just like me, just like her daddy. She takes everything in through her Wedgewood blue eyes—contemplating, assessing, wondering. She’s learning how to be a part of the larger world, how to interact with others meaningfully, how to give and take and share and play.

We were out of town last week, visiting family downstate. I took Ella to their local library for an afternoon. It has an amazing children’s reading and play area, and she was thrilled to get to climb and play with their puzzles and building blocks. The longer she played, the more children showed up, and I got to watch her interact with kids two and three years older than she. There was a sweet five-year-old girl who took Ella under her wing, showing her how to move chairs and draw masterpieces. There was a four-year-old boy who ran circles around Ella, jumping and yelling as she stood and watched.

Read the rest of the article here!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: children, christian kids, fighting kids, Jesus, my kids are fighting

Celebrating Marriage: Cultivating a Joy-Filled Relationship With Your Spouse

May 28, 2015 by Ann 2 Comments

This last week held some wonderful milestones for our little family. Our sweet girl celebrated her second birthday, and Michael and I celebrated our ninth anniversary–all on the same day! We have walked through much together in these last nine years, and my hope and prayer is that Michael and I will have the gift of continuing to walk together for many, many decades.

One thing that Michael has learned about me in these past years is that I am, by nature, a celebrator. I love any excuse to throw a party, share a special meal, or take a short trip. I grew up in a family full of celebrators, and I also think that God values celebration: his Son’s entrance into the world was marked by a heavenly chorus of worship and joy, Jesus loved to share meals (with sinners!), and the end of all time will be marked by a wedding feast. God is, by nature, abundant and generous. The best kinds of celebration are full of those things, too.

And this past week, when Michael surprised me with a surprise stay at a favorite hotel and dinner out, I was reminded, again, at how important it is for us to celebrate each other. The time away as just the two of us–even thought it was less than 24 hours–focused us, again, on the beauty and power of marriage. We reminisced on all that we have walked through in the last years; we dreamed about what is ahead. And we praised God for the gift of one another, celebrating Him and the Us that He has been making. It was a gift.

Here are ways that we can celebrate one another in marriage–in big and small ways, every day of the week:

1. Celebrate the small things. Praise from a boss on the completion of a project? A child that is finally potty-trained? Overcoming a personal obstacle? Look for ways to celebrate each other–search for ways to celebrate each other. Our marriage has been one in which we have come to enjoy celebrating one another, not just on anniversaries and birthdays, but for any number of reasons. Celebration doesn’t have to be big all the time, just intentional. An unexpected cupcake is a great way to celebrate a small victory, as is coming home with balloons to acknowledge the end of a challenging week!

Look for ways to celebrate each other--search for ways to celebrate each other. #marriage #healthymarriage Share on X

2. Celebrate what you love about one another. One of the worst patterns we can fall into as spouses is focusing on what we dislike in our partner. We can become nit-picky, discouraging, and frustrated when we think about all that we don’t like in person we married. Instead, choose to celebrate–not just acknowledge–the wonderful aspects of your spouse. Is she a woman who is gifted in hospitality? Consider celebrating her abilities as a host by buying her something that will encourage her gift–a new set of sheets or a cookbook she’s been eyeing. Write her a note telling her that you see and appreciate how hospitable she is with others–and that you want to encourage her gift. Is he artistic? Purchase an art class voucher for him at the local community college, or set up a mini work space in an unused space in your home. Write him a note acknowledging that you value his artistic abilities and that you celebrate him pursuing that gift!

Choose to celebrate--not just acknowledge--the wonderful aspects of your spouse! #marriage #healthymarriage Share on X

3. Celebrate in unexpected ways. Does your spouse love camping but you avoid sleeping under the stars? Consider a mesh of what you both love when it comes time to celebrate something big: perhaps glamping could bring your worlds together! Is one of you a die-hard sports fan while the other could care less? Consider getting tickets to the big game and give the gift of your time and attention to what your spouse loves for an evening or weekend–knowing that the celebration will mean that much more to your partner. When we stretch ourselves to celebrate the other in ways that are outside of our comfort zone, we may find ourselves surprised at how much fun we have!

No matter what type of celebration you bring into your marriage, the important thing is to celebrate the gift that you have in one another. Any marriage that stays together and honors the Lord is a miracle in itself–worth celebrating any day of the year!