productive vs present

I woke up in the 3’s this morning. I described the feeling to my sister on the way to the airport.  It brought me back to the road trips I would take with my family to Kentucky, Wyoming, or the exotic land of the midwest… Wisconsin! My parents would gently wake us, and we would climb out of bed, still blinking our mr. sandman eyes. I would smile inside with butterflies fluttering, knowing that we were embarking on a Trayser family adventure.  Waking up while it was still dark was half the fun of the trip, even if I crashed the minute we left the driveway.

I woke up in the 3’s this morning to go with Austin on vacation to a place that used to be called home. There are some places that just drip with familiarity the moment you step off the plane. Phoenix, will inevitability and forever be one of those places. The sunshine literally hugs you when you take the time to soak it in. And never have I had more thawing to do when faced with the warmth and cozy caresses of the Arizona sun.

I came out with two books and a journal to the charcoal cushioned long chairs beside the Stockfisch pool in the backyard. Thirty minutes later, both books sat unopened, the journal blank with neglect ion. That  is what the desert sun does to a Chicago girl’s skin and a busied girl’s heart.  I felt like that late nineties Sheryl Crow song was on repeat in my brain. I wanna soak up the sun. While it’s still free.

Christmas is a funny season because it’s as busy as it is reflective. Meaningful as it is (tragically) filled with meaningless, and filled with productivity battling the power of the present moment.

At the beginning of a break from work, in the middle of the first day of vacation, landing the day after the most celebrated day of the year, my mind was perfectly planning and relentlessly rearranging to schedule and follow a day of nothing. Let me see if I can make it even simpler. On a day that I was determined to do nothing but slow down and enjoy, I had already planned my workout, my workout outfit, assigned my reading assignment for the day in my head, replayed the outlook for the week, and downloaded an app on my phone that fills the screen with sticky notes thanks to the brilliant over-thought of ‘real simple’ magazine.   Okay, that wasn’t any simpler.

On a day that I needed a nap in the sun more profoundly than I was even aware of, I hope to send a quiet warning to the over-worked and productive genius in all of us… stop. Don’t think deeper, try harder or even slow down, just stop. I’m finding the lure of productivity in my own life has been more for the oooo’s and ahhh’s of the people around me than the well done’s from my father in heaven.  I disregard the present moment with the hope that if I scribble ‘live in the moment’ at the bottom of my to-do list, I will magically end that day ahead of schedule with an impressive well-rounded mindset.   What a fool I have been to think that a day filled with more check marks than a third grader’s report card has truly accomplished more than a day lived soaked in the sun-like warmth of the Holy Spirit.

I’ve lived a couple days in the promise and power of His spirit. The minutes lengthen like stretched muscles and the moments with people I love seem to float above me like a virtual memory book. I do things that would otherwise scare me on an over-productive day and I ask things that I wouldn’t have time to hear the answer to on days filled up with appointments. I am obsessed with days like those. And God is his proudest when his children choose to live days like those.  But the gravitational pull of my sinful and fallen heart brings me subtly back into the tritely over-produced lifestyle mimicking the fast and the furious.

I was reading today about the difference in the warning label on cigarettes in the 1960’s to now. What first read something like, ‘use with slight caution’, now reads ‘cigarettes cause cancer, and will kill you if over used.’ Even though this present vs. productive battle is far from life-or-death, I feel like my productivity warning label is from the 60’s. I’ve heard it said that there are dangers to a busy life. I’ve listened to men and women that I respect deeply caution others of how the enemy can use the enticing praise of an over-scheduled and productive life as means to distract us from the truth of God’s timing and his perfect plan. But the warning remains watered down.  

So in the quiet of the desert, under the ironic peace of an olive tree, I pray that God would rush to my aid. That in my desire to try harder and be better, he would move and work in me to refine and prune like only he can.  Just for now. Just for today. 

all in

I wish there was some dramatic story I could tell behind why I have not done something I really love to do (write) in almost two months, but there’s not.  Like many of you, life has been moving along as it usually does—rhythmic, mostly pretty good, busy days, slower days, work, play, meet for coffee, read, clean, sleep, you know the drill. 

And tucked neatly away in a corner of my life is faith.  While discontent has been stirring in my heart for months, it hit me really hard not too long ago that the very same faith I claim to have— the one that keeps my life pretty dang comfortable— is the faith people all over the world will hide in a basement to talk about because they can be thrown in prison if they bring the conversation to a restaurant.  The faith people willingly give their lives to tell others about.  The faith that brings hope into a very dark world.  The faith that would cause a man to sell anything and everything he has ever owned just so he could follow with only one purpose the One at the center of it all.  This is my faith, but that is not what my life looks like.

So I stopped writing, because I felt like a fraud.  And yet somewhere in the act of admitting that, a small sense of relief hovered over my heart.  In my head, Jesus was saying something like this to me:

“Yes!  Get mad, be frustrated with your lack of passion for me.  I am not content either, Katie, because I don’t have your whole heart, we both know that.  And these things all around you that make you question where I am, finally, you notice them!  Please don’t act like this is something new, I have been begging my followers since the day I allowed them to walk on the earth to love justice as much as I love justice.   But you don’t.  You love your own lives, your jobs, your homes and everything you can keep not one day longer than I allow you to, and you work to protect those much harder than you work for my kingdom to come right where you are.  I could not be more clear about these things than I already have been… seek Me first, and everything else you worry so much about will be there.  But I meant it when I gave you those instructions in that order.  I will never leave you or forsake you, but that does not mean I do not ask anything of you…  Are you going to take my path, or yours?"

And that is where I am today, trying with all of my might to discern what He asks from my life.  Because it is not going to be the same thing He asks of you.  It is not going to be the same thing He asks of the widows and the orphans.  It is not going to be the same thing He asks of the millionaire, either.  But I think for most of us it is something more than we are giving him right now.  This is the cool thing about our God: He knows before we do when He has our hearts.  We want to put our devotion to Him into a monetary scale, or measure it in time, record it in a journal, or just compare it to other believers around us.  Who are we kidding?  The grave is empty, people, and if my most “sacrificial” response to that is to write a bigger check than I normally would, I may just have my Savior confused with something else.

I want my single-minded purpose to be God’s kingdom.  But you know what else, I love my job working with students and I want to do it really well.  I love reading books, and I want to build a huge library in our house someday.  I love having people over, and I want to be able to feed crowds with great food and decorate the table beautifully.  And I want kids—lots of them—and I would love to be able to paint their rooms fun colors, sign them up for every sport they want to play, and someday help them out with college educations.  But at a moment’s notice, without thought of a bank account, clothing, food or anything else, I want to respond to God.  If that means walking through muddy and garbage filled slums to bring a blanket to a shivering little girl, if it means taking the bus so that we have more to give, if it means our only vacations ever are to a Guatemalan orphanage, or if it means none of this and something I can’t even picture in my head right now… if responding to God means He is allowing us to be part of bringing His kingdom to earth, I want my heart to be so ready to say “Here I am, send me.”  It is funny how I have given myself the option lately, to be all in or not, because I don’t think God’s word gives us a choice. 

I don’t want to be a fraud.  I believe with every ounce of me that Jesus is who He says He is.  So it is time to be all in.  As I learn what that looks like in my life, in my marriage—because it is really our life—I am sure I will miss it, I will be too easy on myself, and I will still work pretty hard to stay comfortable.  But if Jesus is truly the only hope this world has, and if I let that dictate everything else I do with the years God gives me, maybe life will feel as full of joy as it ever could. 

In just a few days we get to celebrate the humble birth of a King.  Our King.  Let's give him everything we have... He did it for us.       

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Just like you, I’m very, very imperfect and still searching for God in so many ways.  But if it is at all helpful on your pursuit of being all in, these books below have been incredibly humbling and heart-shaping for me:

The book of Jeremiah
Yep, the one in the Bible.  Wow, ours is not a God who messes around.

The Inner Life by Thomas a Kempis
I think I underlined something on every page.  Kempis might as well have been talking directly to me when he wrote it!

A Place for Truth edited by Dallas Willard
Super academic and philosophical, but well worth the effort!  Basically, some of the smartest people in the world talking about truth, faith, Christianity, and really hard questions.  It is a big collection of speeches and essays and while I am not even finished with it, this book is bringing me deeply back to why I believe at all.

advent.ure

It’s a marvelous season. No two ways around it. I walked up our first flight of stairs tonight and immediately felt the glow of the Christmas lights welcoming me home. What a fantastic tradition it is to have miniature lights flickering inside and outside the house. It’s as if someone knew that extra light would be needed due to the ungodly hour the sun sets these days. This afternoon, I sat with a friend and drank a chai tea out of a red cup while the fire crackled behind us. Warmth in my soul battled the chilly Wheaton air, while sweet conversation lengthened the minutes and put a halt to the hurry. I. Love. Christmastime.

We’re right in the middle of celebrating advent. This year, more so than my twenty-four others, I’m struck by the magnitude of anticipation and giddy expectance linked to the coming King. So much so, that the adventure of expectation is popping up all around me. Similar to the theme of redemption over Easter, these days, it’s as if advent is the genre of music attached to the soundtrack of my life.

When I’m quiet enough to get away from my daily tasks and present enough to tune into the spirit, I think about a world stuck without the free gift of grace, chained without the freeing streams of mercy, and trapped without the true hope of glory. It must have felt dark. It must have felt lonely. It must have felt incomplete.

Yesterday I got to witness something miraculous. A young lady, who saw this world as dark, felt alone in her struggles and longed for genuine completion prayed to receive an early Christmas present. The gift of God’s never-ending mercy and revitalizing hope was hers, wrapped beautifully in His perfect timing. The coming king came right on time, and advent 2011 will forever be remembered as the day her adventure began. That, my friends, is a waiting game that never gets old.

Advent is Latin for coming. And whether you’re awaiting a vacation, a proposal, a grade, an answer, or even a new-born king, it’s coming. Advent is a special reminder to be content in the coming and excited in the midst of expectation. How sweet it will be when that day is here, but for now, I’m delighting in the days leading up to. Slowly learning to celebrate the wait.