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Little Choices Matter

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We all have those moments when we feel fully alive. A few days ago, I took my kids to our neighborhood park to play. It was a cold, sunny day and the chilly air invigorated us all and made me want to chase my kids around the park and slide down the slides with them.

As I pushed my three year old on the swing, I watched her face light up with laughter and her blonde curls dance in the sunlight. I caught my breath as I watched her face move forward and backward, high in the air as she shouted, “push me higher, Mommy!”

I stared deep into her eyes and saw joy there. And, to be honest, I just let my gaze hang out there for awhile…on her….nothing and no one else.

Maximizing Joy to the Glory of God

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I believe that God delights in our delight of Him and His creation. He wants us to be joyful. He loves it when we glory in the moment that He has placed before us right now. Like a picture, frozen in time, He doesn’t want us to miss what’s He’s giving us as a gift today.

While I know that as far as the big picture goes, I feel great about where I am and what I am doing, I am praying this year to make my little choices count. Because I’m realizing more and more that over time little things often become big things.

Here are some of the little choices I want to make this year:

I want to sit and quietly nurse my baby without making a grocery list in my head at the same time. I want to feel the soft warmth of his cheek against my hand and revel in it.

Because it will not last.

When my eldest daughter says, “hey Mom, listen to me play my violin!” I want to stop washing the dishes or folding laundry and sit down on the couch and give her proper attention. I want to give myself permission to enjoy her and appreciate her efforts.

Because this learning phase won’t last forever.

I want to actually lay down in my three year old’s bed and read her books as long as she wants to and have absolutely no agenda about when I’ll leave.

Because before I know it, her afternoon nap will be a thing of the past.

I want to stop myself before I lose my temper over a math lesson.

Because what matters most is my relationship with my daughter,  not  just checking a task off a list.

I want to encourage my husband more and complain to him less.

Because he’s an amazing person worthy of love and respect.

I want to turn off my phone when I am with others.

Because I can answer texts and emails later and people are most important.

We glorify God when we are fully present in the moment that He has given to us and receive it as the gift that it is.

This year, we will each have our share of painful moments, challenging moments, stressful moments, beautiful moments, exciting moments, alarming moments, moments of every emotion and every kind.

Let’s let our moments change us and mold us into the image of Christ this year, remembering that all our choices today do matter and are laying a clear path for our future.

 

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In Pursuit of Beauty

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The rain poured down from the heavy sky, soaking our clothes and hair, dripping off our fingertips onto the grass beneath our feet.

We had an umbrella but abandoned it long ago in favor of the wetness which permeated our skin and seemed to cause new life to flourish in our souls as well as in the plants all around us.

To be honest, we looked hysterical: I with my baby strapped to my chest and my girls like three little ducklings tramping behind me. We wandered along our street in search of twigs, acorns, pretty flowers and clovers and a few stones to collect for a fairy garden we were making.

It was Christmas Eve Eve and this was school. Well, this and making a heaping batch of sea salt Nutella fudge for our neighbors.

Inspired to Seek Beauty

I love nature. I always have. Fondly I recall a childhood filled with the marvels of the great outdoors – the great mountains and lakes of Utah – and then on to another lake where I lived, played, and swam until I went to college.

My favorite place on earth is our family cabin in the woods of Cashiers, North Carolina, where as a child I created homes for salamanders, snakes, and lizards and named streams and waterfalls.

But the inspiration to trek out into heavy rain with my four children that day came from C.S. Lewis. The last few years I have taken a headlong plunge into his works and still haven’t come out. I’m in “literary love” with this man’s writings and can’t seem to get enough of them.

So when my pastor encouraged us to read Lewis’s “Surprised By Joy,” I eagerly accepted the challenge. One of the first lovely discoveries I made from its contents was a story of Lewis’s first encounter with beauty as a child. It came in the form of his brother’s toy garden:

“Once in those very early days my brother brought into the nursery the lid of a biscuit tin which he had covered with moss and garnished with twigs and flowers so as to make it a toy garden or a toy forest. That was the first beauty I ever knew…It made me aware of nature – not, indeed, as a storehouse of forms and colors but as something cool, dewy, fresh, exuberant. I do not think the impression was very important at the moment, but it soon because important in memory. As long as I live my imagination of Paradise will retain something of my brother’s toy garden.”

In Pursuit of Beauty

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Beauty – real beauty, is all around us if our eyes are open to see it.

The older I get the more certain I am that beauty is often not found where the world says that it is.

It is not on the glossy pages of magazines filled with photoshopped models.

It is not in crowded stores with racks of designer clothing.

It is not in picture perfect houses, sparkling clean and flawlessly designed.

I see beauty in the wrinkles of my Grandmother’s 95 year old hands, rough with age and life and stories of generations past.

I see beauty in a simple clover covered with dew sticking through the pavement on my driveway, happily reminding me that life always finds a way through.

I see beauty in my messy kitchen and toy-covered floor, because life happens here and people are enjoying it.

This year, I am inspired to seek and be surprised by beauty all around me…to appreciate the lack of ostentatiousness in a simple daisy and the non-dramatic cover of an old but classic book which stimulates the imagination.

Where do you find beauty? Where do you seek it? Perhaps it can be found in humble people and quiet places – or simply where and when we least expect to find it.

But when we have caught a glimpse of genuine beauty we will know it – for it will be, as Lewis said, a foretaste of Paradise itself and whet in us a thirst and hunger to know the author of such beauty – God Almighty- the Beautiful One.

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No Ordinary People

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Today our family launched out on a “divide and conquer” shopping trip. My husband and I each took two kids and entered into the hustle and bustle of grocery and gift shopping for the big day.

I took my big girls and did the grocery shopping. The store was crowded and as I pushed my cart into the checkout line, I got a text from my husband indicating that we needed to get out pronto – it was a “parent code red alert” – the baby was tired and hungry.

As I hurriedly shoved all our Christmas goodies onto the counter, our cashier began to ask me some questions as the girls fought over who was going to swipe the cards and sign my name. She said, “How old are they? Are these your only kids or do you have more?” We laughed and I told her I had two more. She told me that she had five.

Then she paused.

She said, “I have one more – a little boy who died of leukemia when he was four. His birthday is December 23rd. He would have been 16 this year.” Her eyes filled with tears a bit as she looked back down at the groceries.

For just a moment, time froze. I forgot about the groceries on the counter and the baby crying in the car. I looked at this lovely woman and saw deep pain from a wound that gets ripped open further every year right at Christmas time.

I realized that I had approximately two minutes left with this woman. I said that I was so, so sorry for her loss. I looked at her name tag and told her that today the girls and I would say a special prayer for her. She smiled and said thank you and we pushed our cart away.

My eldest daughter said, “Mom, what is leukemia?” I explained the disease to her and we said a prayer for her together, asking God to comfort her and heal her heart during this week.

No Mere Mortals

We all have problems. Life is complicated and messy and often it is all we can do to stay afloat ourselves.

But when we see that the folks in our own life boat are doing alright and take a look outside, we may likely see some folks drowning in the water right outside our boat.image

It’s easy to push past people in a crowd without looking at their faces.

It’s easy to become irritated when they cut us off in traffic or rub us the wrong way.

But let’s not forget that everyone around us is a unique person with a unique story to tell – and that every interaction we have with every person has the capacity to encourage or discourage them in some way.

C.S. Lewis said it best in his book, ‘The Weight of Glory’:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.

It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.

There are no ordinary people.

You have never talked to a mere mortal…

But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors…

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.”

As we go about our business these last few days before Christmas, let’s stay alert to our neighbors.

Look up to see their eyes. This season can hold a lot of pain for many people.

Grasp their hand a little tighter when you say hello. Say a prayer for those who have lost loved ones this year.

And thank God for every person who encouraged your heart this year.

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