The Try Harder Mentality: Burning Holes in Our Shoes

Painting: "Pair of Shoes" by Van Gogh

To my Fellow Runners in the Rat Race,

A few weeks ago, somewhere in between brushing our teeth and tying the Bean's shoes, Bookguy and I were discussing high school, college, and the satirical essay in the Wall Street Journal by Suzy Lee Weiss: "To All The Colleges That Rejected Me."

Suzy Lee Weiss is a Senior in high school with a 4.5 GPA and a 2120 on her SATs, but she wasn't accepted to Princeton, Yale, Vandy, or Penn.  So what did she do?  She vented via op-ed -- in the WSJ of all places!  Then she appeared on the Today Show!

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She writes: "Colleges tell you, 'Just be yourself.'  That is great advice, as long as yourself has nine extracurriculars, six leadership positions, three varsity sports, killer SAT scores and two moms.  Then by all means, be yourself!  If you work at a local pizza shop and are the slowest person on the cross-country team, consider taking your business elsewhere."

Some readers of the article gave Suzy flack, calling her whiny and spoiled.  (The piece was written as satire, and if you watch the video above, you'll see she has a good sense of humor about herself.  I would hardly call her whiny.)

When asked about the response she's received to her article, Suzy explains: "Everyone my age, whether they wanted to get into Penn State their whole lives or Harvard is agreeing with me that it's just a rat race nowadays and it's such a business model as opposed to who's most qualified should get in.  It's a crapshoot, and I understand that."

There are a lot of things I'd love to discuss about this:

What indicates whether someone is 'qualified' for a specific college?  SAT?  GPA?  IQ?
Should having 'two-moms' be a determining factor for diversity?
Was all her hard-work and effort to get into an Ivy League in vein?

But the biggest thing the article stirred up in me was concern for my own children and the inevitable rat race coming 'round the bend.  

Honestly, I wonder how the rat race mentality is affecting the whole of us, not just our children.  The 'try-harder' mentality pushes, forces, and urges us to do more, so we can be more, so we can buy more and achieve more, enjoy more, because we deserve more.

We burn holes in our shoes.

Saturday morning we bumped into a friend from little league and learned his 12-year-old son, all-star baseball player, had decided not to try out for baseball his final season of little league.  He didn't want the two-hour practices three days a week, and the three-hour games twice a week, on top of two hours of homework a night.

Who can blame him?

I feel the rat race.  Do you?

I have three children in three different sports with three different social spheres.  I have a husband that works 50 hours a week.  I myself work 15-20 hours a week.  We volunteer at church and in our city, and I lead a bible study, and participate in a beautiful prayer group, and attend fundraisers and volunteer in the classrooms, and Bookguy helps coach baseball.  I don't intend to sound like Suzy Lee Weiss, but my point is, it's not just our children being worked to the bone.  It's all of us.

I find great tension in the thought that I am supposed to 'press on toward the prize' and simultaneously find rest in the vine.  How do I find rest when I'm pressing in?

Is it possible that pressing in might actually mean backing off?  How much restraint does it require of us, how much faith and surrender does it cost for us to slow down, to actually listen, to say no to our to-do list, to schedule time for creativity, friendship, and beauty?

Do we have a choice how fast we run, and whether or not we participate at all?  I believe we do.  

A while back I read a beautiful, true post over at A Deeper Church by Amber C. Haines called You Are as Valuable as the Orphan.  She's writes: "I wouldn't know a Sabbath if you threw me in bed with one, and I am indeed physically exhausted, but it's more than that.  It's been long enough now that I know it's not just us and our friends.  It's our own culture, church, and otherwise, caught up in a whirlwind of work-based righteousness, grappling to find meaning and aching to be a radical." 

It's not just Amber or Amber's friends.  Or Suzy and Suzy's classmates.  It's the whole lot of us.

Rats.  Running.  Crazy People.

Maybe we need to work harder at trying less.

Give ourselves permission to say no.

Prioritize better.

Run a different kind of race than the rest of the world.

It will come at a cost, I know.  But the alternative is continuing to burn holes in our shoes -- and that isn't very fun, or very effective, either.

I like to think that maybe a different pace, a different sort of life perspective, might one day be the thing that sets the Church apart.  Maybe our at ease, our confidence in God's timing and provision, our prioritizing of people over achievement and worldly success, our 'moving at the beat of His drum' will be the thing that becomes attractive to the stressed out, over worked, lonely, empty, achievement driven culture around us.  Maybe our neighbors will look at our steady, internal peace, and see something different -- Someone different.

"Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life
that don't really matter."    Francis Chan

Quid Pro Quo: Keeping Score is No Formula for Friendship

Quid pro quo, Latin meaning, "This for that."

It, (the quid pro quo), is a widely accepted outlook practiced every day in secular and Christian circles.  In some cases it's outright, and in other cases it's an implied expectation: 'you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours.'

If you share my post, I'll share yours.

If you come to my event, I'll come to yours.

If you invite my kid, I'll invite yours.

If you buy me dinner this time, I'll buy yours the next.

Some might argue that quid pro quo is good business etiquette --"sharing is caring" and who you know matters because referrals matter.  According to BusinessWeek, word of mouth is the best ad.  So we collaborate, build relationships, and we help willingly--not necessarily with selfish ambition (although maybe sometimes), but often with a desire to be a team player because we know "what goes around comes around."  

Motivated by guilt, fear, selfishness, or obligation, we say yes, when deep down inside we know we should say no.  Or we say yes because we're hopeful -- maybe if I do this for her, she'll do something for me?  

Last week I found myself a little miffed because I had been helpful to a friend and I didn't feel reciprocation.  I actually [shamefully] convinced myself the quid pro quo was friendship etiquette; after all, it's good manners to return the favor.  Friendships are built on give and take, I told myself.  I went out of my way for that person, now it's her turn to do the same for me.

Where was this coming from?  Ug.

I needed a heart check.  It came when I sat down to read and pray.

We are supposed to lay down our life for our friends.  I know this in my mind, but I have my selfish moments too.

It seems an impossible charge, to lay down my life for my friend.  [Some days it is easier to do this than others].  She is in a hard marriage and he needs help with a project and her daughter is a mess and she is coming to town, and oh, I have three children and a home and a job and a community that needs Hope.  There's not much room for laying down this crazy busy life, but I still try.  I catch myself when I make it about me, and I remind myself this: laying down my life for my friend is messy.  There is no formula for friendship.  Every relationship is different, and every season is different.  But one thing I am sure of -- laying down my life for my friend most certainly does not mean keeping score or obligating that person to do anything for me.

If you serve, serve willingly with no strings attached.
If you invite over, invite because you want to include.
If you reach out, extend your hand graciously without judgement.
If you share, share abundantly, without grumbling or complaining, out of the generosity of what was given to you. 
If you promote, do it with integrity, because you believe in a person, project, or product.  
If you love, love because you are filled by a Greater Love, not out of your flesh or your selfishness, but out of a genuine, overflowing, sacrificial, unconditional love.  

On earth as it is in Heaven,
{no tit-for-tat]
{thank goodness, or I'd be in real trouble},

Thank you, Birthmother

His birthmother ...

She is important.

She is important to him.  She is important to me.

I find myself thinking of her at the most random times.  And if I think of her, I'm sure the Bean will think of her.

I am not threatened by her.  I don't wish her away.

It is a big loss to me that we don't know anything about her.  

When we received our referral, at the time, it seemed a bit relieving.  We were going to fly to Ethiopia and pick him up and there was no birth family to meet, nobody's arms we were taking him out of, no birthmother relinquishing because of poverty, no birthmother dead from AIDS, no negative ...

What a lie.   

I wish I had a picture.
I wish I had an address.
I wish I had a genealogy.
I wish I had an explanation.

I wish I had something I could tell him.  I can tell him about his story in our family, but what of his first family?

When you know nothing, you are left to wonder everything.

I love what she's given me.
I think she is courageous.
I know she is beautiful (have you seen how beautiful my son is?).
I feel gratitude she chose life.
I am interested in who she is, what she is like, what she enjoys, what makes her laugh.
I wish I could tell her thank you.

Thank you for being his first mother.

for the person who struggles on Mother's Day

Painting: Gustav Klimpt

In a few days it will be Mother's Day.  Already I'm seeing tweets, emails, special Mother's Day sales, and posts honoring mothers.

I'm all about honoring mothers.

But I am also heartbroken for my friends who long to be a mother and are barren.  Ten percent of women struggle with infertility.  She is on the outskirts, watching friends get pregnant year after year, attending baby showers, trying to stuff down jealousy and sorrow.  She is sitting in our friend groups, silent, while we discuss our birthing stories, how we felt during our pregnancies, and breastfeeding woes.  She stands beside us as we dote on our toddlers and find joy in the cuteness of our children.  She and her husband spent their piggy bank (and then some) trying to figure out why they can't conceive.  She has been poked and pricked and lathered up with ultrasound gels; she's popped hormones that make her crazy; she's begged, pleaded, screamed, cried, and cursed because she cannot make what she wants, what she dreams, and the other 90% of women around her can.  

I'm sad for my friends who are mothers and lost a child -- who have miscarried once, twice, maybe three times -- they've peed on a stick and celebrated, and then watched it disappear five short weeks later, flushing clots -- dreams -- down the drain.  Or she birthed a child who lived only 27 minutes, or birthed a child stillborn, or lost her little four-year-old girl to an oncoming car, and lost her son to suicide at twenty-seven-years old.  On this day, when she is honored for being a mother, beside her there is no child, no card in the mail, no "Happy Mother's Day" from his lips, no flowers delivered to her doorstep.  

I'm anguishing for the mothers whose children are still alive but are lost -- they are missing, maybe in body and maybe in spirit -- they are unreachable, undiscoverable.  She moves about each day wondering where he is, what he's up to, when will he come home, is he even alive?  She dreamed of motherhood, but no, never thought her child would be that prodigal, that runaway, that addict, that abuser, that criminal.

I'm broken for the children who don't know their mother, or whose mothers have been absent, blasé, sick, or just plain old mean.  I'm sorry for the children who have been removed from the care of their mother because mommy was not safe, mommy did not take care of them, mommy was not kind to them, mommy was not a mommy.  This is the day when he is supposed to say I Love You and buy her a flowery card, when he's expected to speak words he cannot say to a woman undeserving of honor, a woman responsible for inflicting much pain and lifelong wounds.

I'm sad for the children whose mothers have died, from an accident or a sudden illness or terrible disease -- mothers who cannot lean on their mother because she is no longer here.  Children who bury holiday traditions and have nobody wrapping Christmas presents for Christmas Day.  Graduates who walk without a mother snapping her camera, and wedding photos without mother standing in her fancy mother-of-the-bride dress.

Mother's Day can be painful for many people.  Maybe you are one of them.  I'm so sorry.

For those of you that have opened up to me about your Mother's Day wounds, thank you.  Thank you for helping me be more empathetic to what you feel on Mother's Day.  I sincerely think most people are not intending to be insensitive.  (I know I wasn't.)  Many of us simply don't know what it feels like to be in your shoes, and we are intrinsically about ourselves.  :(  But when you share with us your story, your heartbreak, you help us be more sensitive -- you help us see the stupidity in what we say, the ways we've excluded you, how to be more considerate with our words and actions, and remind us to have more gratitude for what we do have.  

As we love our friends who suffer this Mother's Day, I'm reminded of this great quote by Henri Nouwen:

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.  The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."

If We Lived Desperate for Rescue

Photo by Dorothy Greco

He was a young boy when he first chucked a rock at the back of the drug dealer's head.  Trying to shoo him off the property, sick of seeing his mama doped up, he followed the dealer out the front door, watched him walking away, and in his rage, picked up a medium-sized rock.  His aim was quite good.

The dealer turned, red-faced, and pointed a gun at him.  He was nine years old (the age of my Pumpkin).

Grandma came to his defense, billowing up from behind him with a double-barrel shot gun.  Stout and refined, she cocks it, and she tells the dealer not to take one more step, or she'll blow him to bits.

This same grandma prays over the boy every night while he sleeps.  Dad is away and mother is strung out, but thank God for grandma.

Many mornings, he wakes with bloody scratch marks down his back.  He doesn't know where they come from, but grandma suspects she knows.  She tends his wounds.  She lays Bibles round his bed as he sleeps at night, to keep the cutting demons away.

Grandma's papa sold his soul to a witch doctor.  Literally.  In exchange for a monkey's paw.  That's how grandma knows where the red-stained scrapes came from.

"He was a gambler," he explains to me, sitting on the edge of the bed in a darkened motel room.  "He wanted a quick hand."

"A real monkey's paw?" I ask.

"Yes, ma'am," he says.

He explains how he came to Cali and joined a gang.  Mama and Grandma were back in Louisiana and Daddy was gone a whole lot, so he found family in his 'brothers.'  He's only a teenager, but he witnesses things most of us only see on TV.

I sit in a chair at the two-seater table listening, hardly able to believe 'the boy' is sitting in front of me, now a grown man, soon to be a papa himself, my friend, now a night security guard, now a follower of Jesus.

I say to him that everything that happened to him leading up to today was God's grace, and that it's amazing he is sitting across from me, sharing this story, sharing his life (because he could be dead).  I also commend him for his choices.  Because he did, eventually, choose a different life, a different path.  And we all have choice.

Sometimes I think those of us with easier stories, with easier lives, who rarely make hard decisions, who have yet to experience the total depravity of loss, who have yet to sink into the valley of suffering and abandonment, who have not been scratched physically by demons, I wonder if we fully understand the depth of what Christ did, what it means to be rescued, to have a good Shepherd, and why we are so dependent on God for all of everything we have.

We stroke ourselves on the back and sip drinks and enjoy our relatively simple lives not knowing that we too, are desperate for rescue.  Oh yes, we have worries.  We have burdens; I don't mean to minimize them.  But how many of us have felt a drug dealer's pistol pointed at us?  Or lived in a 10 x 16 motel room for six months, not knowing if we could afford food tomorrow night?  Or been abandoned by our mother and father in search of "family" at the ripe age of 16?

And if we had --- if we somehow not only survived such hardship, but we found love, joy, grace, and hope -- after all that -- how then would we live our today?  Would it be different than we live now?  Because we've seen the empty bucket.  We've lived the bottom of the barrel.  We've walked in the lowest valley, and we were saved.

I marvel at the Giver of second chances.  I hope it makes you marvel too.

###

PS.  The photo I used in this post was taken by my very talented friend Dorothy Greco.  Please visit her site and be inspired.  

PSS.  I asked permission of my friend to share these bits of his story.

New Mercies for New Days

Seven days ago we moved.  Seven days, and with each box packed, I fell further into sadness.

It wasn't the flood in the new house that triggered such reflection (Oh did I forget to mention that part?  Yes we had a flood -- on our moving day -- in our new house -- water oozing into two of the children's bedrooms, the hallway, the family room and laundry room, leaving us in tarps, dehumidifiers and fans for the next several days).

No, the new house is beautiful, and, (unbelievable as it may seem), it is located on our same street.  I'm not kidding.  Some of our closest friends (and fellow Ethiopian adoptive family) live on our street, and we couldn't imagine not being within walking proximity of them.  So we bought a house a little bigger, only 12 doors down.  

I was sad because the younger years of nappies, nursing, and toddling now seem behind us.  (Or at least that's the way it seems right now).  And I felt lonely -- stuck in my dusty house -- tossing delicate family moments into 16 x 16 x 16.     

I tape cardboard into squares.  I load.  I say goodbye to this place, this home, where my Pumpkin first learned to walk, where Peanut would hide behind the coffee table in a sea of books, where the Bean would swing for hours and drench himself with the hose.

Our actual house (spiffed up by the listing agent)

This is the kitchen of creaking cabinets, of drawers that get stuck when you open them, and sharpies on the wall.  This is my house of sage green.  This is the house where I hosted my first dinner party, where my water broke, where I cooked my first Thanksgiving turkey in March.  This is the shower of wait-four-minutes-for-hot-water, and the hallway of endless wrestling matches, and the glorified closet that housed our desktop.

This yard is the yard of countless (and I mean COUNTLESS) wiffle ball games.  I've played catch in this street with my kid more times than I can even count.  With 32 rose bushes, I've spent hours of my life pruning roses, enjoyed plenty of blood oranges, and clipped kumquat centerpieces.

There was the time Pumpkin, only 3 years old tripped on the stairs and fell into the thorns, scraping his back.  When we would walk down and share our afternoon snack with the neighbor's golden retriever. Stolen moments when we would peer over our fence and laugh at our neighbors.

Pumpkin on the day we moved into the old house.

And those darn sprinklers.  Oh my word, they drove us nuts -- mechanically operated, constantly flooding and breaking and needing to be replaced or repaired on a weekly basis.

It was our first family home.

Every box packed seems a memory fading, and this season, the season of my young motherhood, has somehow slipped by -- my babies no longer babies.  I talk myself into future memories, of what-will-be, of all there is to look forward to, even while reminiscing of what was and from where we came.

"Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most," Dostoyevsky wrote.  Maybe it isn't what we fear most, but it is what many of us fear a lot -- newness.  

What will it look like?  How will this pan out?  Will I wish the old back again?  Will I like this new home, this new me, this new life, this new job, this new season?  Will it fit?   

With each taped box, I grow.  I feel bits of sadness as I grow, but I grow none the same.  

It is as though I can feel my limbs sprouting up.  I am that new bud.  I've shoved my way through the crusted dirt, and I'm forging into tomorrow, even though I really, really liked yesterday.  

I look back at my daughter, and she's three.  Then tomorrow she turns eight.   She weighs 54 lbs. and wears braces, and I realize she might be me, or I might be her, and looking back on tomorrow I won't be 36, but I'll be 54, and that is how fast this all goes, this one life I have to live -- the life we each have to give.

The growth each day we do not see.  We back up against the measuring wall to see how many inches we've added, and cannot measure any remnant of change, of progress, when we look one day at a time.  But when we step back, when we pack boxes and reflect on a decade of memories under one roof, we witness what we couldn't see -- the Newness of each day.

Mercies new, every morning.  

Maybe you're packing up boxes and taping up memories of what was.  Maybe you're holding on to then.  I know how you feel.

I hope this day, in the middle of the grieving (because it's ok to grieve), I hope there's a sense of the growth too.  I pray you can see it in the boxes of memories packed away -- this is not the end -- you've come so far.  

You are courageously entering Newness.
     

The Elusive Calling: What Am I Supposed to Do with my Life?

"Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck.  Your profession is what you're put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling."  

Vincent Van Gogh

How do we find what we are meant to do?  This is the infamous and expansive search --  the quest for our unique calling.  This is the question that keeps us up at night, that makes forty-somethings leave their lives in search for something better, that keeps twenty-somethings from staying at a job for more than a year at a time, that causes many dates to never turn to wedding bells.

What on earth am I here for?  What am I supposed to DO with my life?

We bounce, slamming ourselves into walls.  We sit and ponder.  We write how-tos: 20 Ways to Find Your Calling (Forbes) and What You Are Meant To Be Doing--Find Your Calling (Oprah) and How To Find Your Calling (Institute for Faith, Works, and Economics).

I think of my grandfather and his German immigrant family working on a farm in North Dakota.  It's 10 degrees outside, and he's nine years-old and bundled, scouring the field in search of boulders that might shred the family tractor.  Twenty years later he's a grown man operating a grocery store, hand writing receipts and keeping track of the tabs of customers.

Who told us we have a right to a meaningful job?  Who defines whether our job has meaning?  And who says our job is our calling?

I'm leading a Bible study with several women, and we're sitting around talking about faith and the Names of God, (all of us from very different backgrounds), and the study asks a zinger of a question -- a question I've heard many times over -- a question I pretty much reject altogether.

The author asks: 'What has God uniquely called YOU to do?  Are you fulfilling God's calling on your life?"

We have about one centimeter high and four inches across to scribble our answer.

For a minute I think of throwing my book across the room.  Or quitting the study for the day.  But eventually, in somewhat of a fluster, I write: "God has called me to every day obedience.  I am to walk step by step with Him, and if I do so, then I am fulfilling His unique calling on my life."

I feel rebellious.

The problem I see with that over-used, over-emphasized, over-preached word "calling" is that many of us have limited the definition of "calling" to profession, career, and/or role.  Calling is about what we DO, not about who we ARE.  Calling becomes about assignment -- my calling to be a mother, or a psychologist, or a missionary, or a teacher;  my "calling" to "go into ministry" or "go on the mission field."  And then when our children walk out the door, when we lose our jobs, when our spouses suddenly die, when the funding doesn't come in, when we become desensitized with our workplace, or when we simply grow old and hunched over, what then?  Where is our calling?

In some ways the problem is related to our not knowing our giftings.  But it's more than that.

It's about our expectation.

We have an expectation that our calling is discoverable.  It's the gold nugget buried within the river bank.  Search for it, be patient, don't give up, we'll find it (or stumble upon it) one day, eventually, and our lives will never be the same.

We wait around for the phone to ring.  Literally, to "feel called."  Or bump into it at random -- the clouds align and a cross shines on the pavement before us -- like the four-leaf clover underfoot, we sift, searching for that one thing we are 'meant to do' that nobody else can make happen (unless, of course, God equips or enables or chooses someone else for the job).

For some of us, no matter how long we wait or how hard we search, the elusive 'calling' doesn't come.  We look upon people living out their calling with envy -- what's wrong with us that we don't know what we're supposed to do with our lives?  Why does He have something unique for them, but not unique for me?

We have an expectation our calling is going to feel deliciously good -- like the buzzer beater at the end of the game to win it all.  It's a perceived 'sweet spot' based on happiness -- the place where we feel sure we are doing exactly what we are created to do -- and anything short of worthwhileness must mean it is not, actually, what we are meant to do or be.

Bookguy was a 17 year-old teenager wondering what to do with his life when his folks, concerned he had no direction, brought in an outside person to help him identify his interests and his talents.  Upon conclusion of his evaluation, the instructor told my husband he should pursue professional golf and/or professional baseball as his calling.  Those were his predominant loves at the time.  Of course he was thrilled he could one day be Mike Trout (if only he works hard and believes, right?), but the idea that calling might actually require of us, might be detestably hard, is almost unheard of.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."

We have an expectation that our calling will be profound.  We want to become instant successes, start a business, invent something unique, write a book that impacts thousands, raise the next Margaret Thatcher, write music that reaches the Billboard Top 100, become the next Rick Warren, or make movies that matter.  We're a culture consumed with numerical impact, with ROIs, awards, and the recognition of man, so when our 'calling' is to be in the shadows, it's a tough pill to swallow.

I think about some of the people new to our church, who are breaking through strongholds, walking in recovery, and making tiny strides toward a better life.  Most of them are living so in the now, in the every day will-i-have-enough-money-at-the-end-of-the-month?, will-i-stay-clean?, will-i-get-to-see-my-child-one-day?, they take each day, one step at a time, one step closer towards their best selves, the people God wants them to be.

This is how I've started looking at calling.

It takes an extraordinary amount of discipline and maturity to live in today, walking step by step doing whatever I'm supposed to do today.  It takes discipline to say "I don't know."  It takes faith to trust in one-day-at-a-time.  It requires I lay down my desperate, freakish desire for control and trust He is at work.

He knows the reason I was made.  If I walk in step with Him every day I will walk into the Reason.  Maybe I'm here for something big and meaningful, or maybe I'm supposed to pick up rocks so the tractors don't break.

My "calling" is every day.