My Three Words for 2017

Each year since 2013, I have paused in December to reflect on the year and envision the future.  I have made it a habit to choose three words to set the course for the new year.  These words are not exactly goals or resolutions, they are guiding principles, like compass points that keep me on the path of inward growth and outward purpose.  

Last year, my words were Lift, Pray, and Nourish.  They remained on my kitchen chalkboard wall for the entire year and I read them daily.  Here are my reflections on the power of these words:

Lift-  I wanted to get stronger through literal weight-lifting, and I wanted to be intentional with lifting burdens from others using my resources.  Happily, I am as strong as I've ever been thanks to a gym full of weights and machines and a log book where I track my progress.  And I've found ample opportunities to lift burdens of others...really, there is no shortage of burdens, so the onus is always on my listening and responding to the Holy Spirit.

Pray-  As always, this one is difficult for me, though I found recent comfort in this quote: 

“For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.” ― Thérèse of Lisieux  

I think I am of the "surging heart" type, not the "prayer warrior" type.  I think that is okay.

Nourish-  I did better than in the past providng nourishing meals to my family, while openly admitting that every Friday is pizza night and not the healthy kind.  I definitely nourished my mind with a great deal of reading.  Because of my daughter's new driver's license and my kids' schedules this year, a whole world of uninterrupted time opened to me, which I used primarily for reading and listening to audio books.  

So enough of the old. My three words for 2017: Place, Practice, Magnify

Place-  The French have a culinary term called "mise en place."  (French pronunciation: ​[mi zɑ̃ ˈplas]) It refers to having everything in its place before you begin, all the ingredients and the pots and pans in place after carefully reading the recipe.  I've experimented a bit with this in the kitchen lately: placing pre-measured ingredients in little bowls around me before I begin cooking, which makes me feel like a professional and a bit glamorous, like I'm on a Food Network cooking show. But the implications are greater than an organized meal prep.  What if my home, my work, my relationships, and my mind could be described as "mise en place?"   Lofty, I know. 

Practice-  Lately I have been fascinated with all things liturgical and iconic.  I want to know the meanings behind the church year, liturgy, spiritual disciplines, and religious icons.  My evangelical church does not typically enter into these things, which is fine.  Better to do the work on my own.  But the point of knowing the meanings is to practice and experience their intended outcomes, which is deeper communion with God and others.  I am starting with the Daily Examen. 

Magnify- Mary said in Luke 1, "My soul magnifies the Lord."  She spoke this in response to God interrupting her simple life with a GREAT CALL.  She spoke it in the midst of personal turmoil and fear.  Whatever God asks of me, I want to magnify him.  And I want to hold up a magnifying glass to the needs of the world.  And I want to hold up the unforgiving glass to my own sin so that I may be ushered into God's river of forgiveness and the Holy Spirit's unending assistance.  

And with that, I am now accountable for another year of growth.  

On the Son Leaving

When a person leaves your home, there is a tilt in your universe.  The balance scale, so carefully dialed in through the years, is suddenly weighted differently.  Your side is too heavy.  His side is too light.  His room is too clean.  His new life is too mysterious.  

I forgot to take pictures the day we moved him into his dorm room.  I suppose we were too steeped in the moment, reconstructing the futon, laying out the rug, debating the best place for the refrigerator.  I feel badly for not documenting such a momentous occasion: my boy, entering his new room carrying a duffle of clothes and linens in one hand and his banjo in the other, and me following behind carrying a laundry basket and wondering if I did enough to prepare him.  

I wrote him this morning, telling him it's perfectly normal to have an identity crisis at the beginning of college, where you are a small fish (maybe an amoeba) in a big pond.  I don't know that he's actually having one, but I suspect he is.  It's so much better to be known than to start over with a great herd of unknowns.  

Jesus must have felt that way, walking from town to town, humming some futuristic Whitesnake song, "Here I go again on my own..."  Starting over with new people.  Expecting rejection mingled with acceptance.  Leaning on a bit of miracle-making.  

My understanding of life has always depended more on metaphor than numbered lists of "how tos." Currently, life is a balance scale, off-kilter and needing the weights rearranged.  A photo of my boy in his new life would help. Perhaps a miracle would help.  What exactly is the weight of a miracle?  

Lent: Wild Beauty

For the beauty of the earth

For the Glory of the skies, 

For the love which from our birth

Over and around us lies: 

Lord of all, to Thee we raise

this our hymn of grateful praise.

One of the most thrilling, most frightening, most rustically beautiful places on earth is the deep woods of Canada.  My head floods with memories of the place four hours north of the border...an island my Opa bought in 1950 for $500 on a remote lake in the Ontario wilderness.  I went there over and over again in the summers of my youth, and I'm sure I'll be able to recall a thousand childhood moments when I'm old and frail and can't remember the way to the store.  

I love the smell of gasoline because Opa would fill the motor tank before the long trek from portage to island, splashing little rainbows into the shallows.  I love cliffs that echo and carpets of pine needles and blueberries off the bush and magnificent storms over the waters.  I love stepping off a slick rock into clear, cold waters.  These are a few of my favorite things, as Maria would sing.  

Yes, this is me looking like a bro.

One year, something in the night scared me.  I brought home recurring nightmares that hung over my sleep for many years...some unseen monster looming in my house.  As I said, it could be a frightening place, like the day I met up with a bear on the beach. We went our separate ways, thankfully.

Another year, burning embers floated on the wind and ignited my favorite tinder-dry pine tree, and within hours, all of it, everything Opa and our family built, was gone.  The vinyl siding on the cabin melted like snakes lying in wait among the smoking remains of our memories.  That was a sad year.  Opa never went back once it was beautiful again, which took about 15 years.  My dad and uncle return yearly, though, and have rebuilt.  

I learned my first lesson about God in that place.  I learned that when a person lays down on a rock under a cathedral of stars far removed from civilization, there is no chance of believing it is all random and meaningless.  God formed this wildly imaginative earth, flung the stars into space, and said, "Jill, this is for you.  Find me in it.  Thank me for it.  Worship me from it."  

It took me another decade to embrace the story of Christ, and now I see Him in the first bud of Spring and in the crushed leaves of fall.  I see Him in the towering cedars that point heavenward and in the tiny seed that seems so lifeless and dry but holds everything within it to accomplish its purpose.  

Today I sing the hymn of Folliot Pierpont, a fellow nature-lover, song-writer, God-worshipper.

For the beauty of each hour

Of the day and of the night, 

Hill and vale and tree and flow'r 

Sun and Moon and stars of light 

Lord of all, to Thee we raise

this our hymn of grateful praise.