When You Have to Start Over...Again

You gotta keep your heart young

Don't go growin' old before your time has come

You can't take back what you have done

You gotta keep your heart young

-Brandi Carlile, Keep Your Heart Young

“…do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” 

-The Apostle Paul, Philippians 4:6-7

Sometimes you have to start not only where you are, but where you have been. 

I found this the other day when I decided to ATTEMPT some stretching after my afternoon walk. Which is also an ATTEMPT at getting back into some sort of exercise routine. Last month, I was so sick and stressed that I completely fell off my beloved exercise wagon. Now that I’m trying to break my way back in, I’m realizing that while it’s frustrating for anyone who is trying to get into any kind of shape to take two steps forward and one step back, for someone who is only recently enthusiastic about exercise and has fibromyalgia, it feels like two steps forward and 37 steps back. So the point for me this week is just TO MOVE. Just a little to remind my body that YES YOU CAN DO THIS. BECAUSE YOU’VE DONE IT BEFORE. 

While stretching and feeling the BURN, I thought to myself that sometimes you just have to start where you’ve already been. And that’s ok. As a recovering perfectionist, it’d be soooooo easy for me to focus on where I’ve been and that TODAY it just feels like I really SUCK AT THIS and my body will NEVER EVER get back to what it was. But you can only begin where you are at, which sounds dumb and like a lame Pinterest quote, but it is true when attempting anything new or forgotten. This goes for all kinds of things, of course. Like getting back into reading the Bible on a regular basis or eating well on a regular basis or going to bed at a decent time on a regular basis or keeping up with friends on a regular basis. 

I am the worst at anything on a regular basis. Well, when it comes to incorporating positive habits in my life. I can go for days before realizing, “Oh, I should exercise today! I should pull on some shoes and get my backside OUTSIDE.” I can go for days before realizing, “Oh, I should eat something other than leftover carrot cake for every meal!” I will happily get stuck in ruts of not going to bed before midnight before realizing that I should at least TRY to get ready for bed earlier. 

What I AM good at on a regular basis is overthinking and sabotaging my own thought life. SO GOOD AT THIS, YOU GUYS. I will inwardly berate myself for my lack of progress in ALL THE PARTS OF LIFE until I am completely cut off from any positive movement in any direction. So this is why I need the reminder that even I get to start wherever I’m at, even if I’ve been there a million times before. And that’s ok, because we all have to get back up after we get knocked down. We all have to start over. We all get to do things over again. And, as they say, practice makes perfect. Even if perfect isn't quite what we had in mind after all. 

One of the best things about having a chronic illness is that you get to let go of perfect. If you’re like me, this happened while being dragged kicking and screaming. And I still struggle with wanting to do EVERYTHING THE BEST and BEING ABLE TO DO IT ALL MYSELF. I always will, BUT the last couple years of being able to accept my weaknesses and focus on what I can do and can give have been REVOLUTIONARY. There’s such a freedom in letting myself off all the impossible hooks that I was on. When this happened, verses like Philippians 4:6-7 make so much more sense—I HAVE to ask God for help for EVERYTHING. Verses like John 15: 5 where Jesus says we canNOT do anything apart from Him and being continually with Him are so much more real to me now. Chapters like Isaiah 41 where God calls Himself our Helper over and over again mean the world to me more than ever before. Because I can’t help myself. I can’t just wish myself out of my weakness. I get to reach out and ask for help from the One who longs to be my Helper in all things. And He does. He always helps. It may not be in ways I wanted or thought of, but He always provides what I need. And if God Himself doesn’t expect me to do it all on my own, why would I expect the impossible from myself? 

So lately, I have been hearing the call to lay down my impossible expectations and lay down my obsession with all things perfect. I want to give up perfect. I want to stop mourning my past progresses and accomplishments so much, and focus more on what I can do in spite of my limitations. I want to listen to my mind and my body and my heart, and pace myself accordingly. I want to be ready to give grace to my weak places, and in turn, be always at the ready to do the same for others. I am ready to celebrate the smallest of victories, the most minuscule of mustered efforts. When I am already in this mindset, I am more ready to tell you about your victories, too. That you probably didn’t see before, because it’s very uncommon to throw on a party hat for meeting little goals or accomplishments. But in this way, we can all bridge the otherwise looming gap between what the lies we believe about ourselves and what we truly are: more than conquerers in Christ Jesus, people who know that love is our banner and our mission and our foundation. Let’s build each other up, pointing out small successes and happy happenstances. Let’s strive to be more like Christ toward each other, who does not expect the impossible from us, but only what He’s given us to give and to be. 

The water, always the water. 

My beloved Pacific Northwest beaches. 

Autumn skies and wind in the trees. 

Those heavens declaring the glory of our God. 

Coffeeeeeeeeee PICTURE! 

Not Benched: How Affliction Keeps Us in the Race

Why do you let me stay here

All by myself?

Why don't you come and play here?

I'm just sitting on the shelf

-She & Him, Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?

And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. 

-1 Peter 5:10-11

Benched. Shelved. Back seat. Hung up to dry. 

That’s how I feel a great deal of the time, what with one thing and another in life. Sometimes the chronic pain means I get to be fashionably late to my own day. Sometimes I make my coffee and toast and stumble back to bed, where I make a to-do list of what I’m going to do precisely when I can get up and get moving.

Being physically in pain every day makes me feel shelved in many ways. Paying attention to my body and attempting to pace myself means I have to be STUPID CAREFUL with my time and energy, which means saying no to lots of things, including good things. That’s just plain annoying. Needing to ask for help in household chores and shopping makes me feel pretty incapable sometimes, and I don’t like that at all. 

However, I think the biggest way that I feel BENCHED IN LIFE is the very dangerous and very real game of comparison. And man, is it KILLER. Some days, on the ones where I feel physically low already, it starts to feel like EVERYONE ELSE is out doing SOMETHING IMPORTANT. Something MEANINGFUL. Everyone else is OUT THERE. They are in it, they are running their races, they are getting AFTER IT. And here I am, waiting to get out of bed so I can shower when most people are probably on their lunch breaks. 

The truth of it is, of course, the Everyone Else I refer to in my head probably doesn’t feel like he or she is out there killing it. Everyone Else is struggling with something. I don’t know one single person in my life right now who ISN’T going through some kind of major difficulty, trying to sort out life’s cruel curveballs, trying to just do the best they can with what they have. Married, single, employed, unemployed, homeowner, renter, 20s, 30s, 40s, 80s. We all have something, don’t we? Something that makes us feel like we’re just watching life go by. The really good, juicy, happy parts of life. We all feel limited and stuck and weak sometimes, or maybe most of the time. And it makes sense that Everyone Else’s life starts to look a little better, a little easier, a little happier. 

Even with all this, affliction is not a word our culture uses very often, is it? We use words and phrases like stress, unfulfillment, need-more-self-care, going-through-a-hard-time-right-now, case-of-the-Mondays. I think we all tend to downplay our real sorrows, our real hardships, whether they’re physical, emotional, mental, or related to whatever life stages we find ourselves in. We are all very polite about our sorrows, because burdening each other or appearing weak or not in charge of our destinies is admitting that WE DON’T HAVE IT ALL TOGETHER. And that seems to be one of the worst indecencies we can commit in the Western 21st century. 

The Bible, however, was written in a time where people were brutally honest about their sorrows, like almost TOO honest for our Western ears. They called them what they were. Suffering. Affliction. Deep sorrows. Great troubles. I feel like honesty is a bit of a buzzword in our society these days, as though it’s some kind of magic incantation: if we can somehow be HONEST, our troubles will shrink and everyone will understand us if we can just be TRANSPARENT IN COMMUNITY. But what the honesty of the writers of the First and New Testaments does is lay a foundation for their relationship with God first of all. The Psalmists pour out their hearts and sorrows and sufferings before God Himself—they tell the truth about their sorrows. Beginning with their suffering allows them to move on to asking for help, to remembering God’s power and presence and love, to truly being dependent on their Creator and Redeemer. And this is a lesson I so desperately need to learn as a post-modern-living follower of Jesus. 

Of course, Jesus Himself tells us not to be surprised by our afflictions; as a matter of fact, he PROMISED SUFFERING. He promised the world would hate those who follow Him. But He promised then, as God promised all throughout the First Testament, that He would be with us, that He would be our Helper. He would be with His people, and His presence is truly enough. His nearness is what sustains us, from the beginning of the creation all the way to the 21st century.

When I read the Bible or talk with other Christians who have troubles, I slowly start to realize that having afflictions, having limitations, having weaknesses, having hang-ups, is not an automatic benching. Our troubles don’t strike our names from running the race. I’m still in it, with my chronic pain. You’re still in it, no matter what you’re facing. God still has things for us to do and to be—they probably just look really different from what we had in mind. They will be different because we will need His help and presence to do them. In our many weaknesses, we must abide in Him, if we want to do any thing at all (John 15). We are, as the Apostle Paul says in his second letter to the Corinthian church, afflicted but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted but not destroyed; always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies (2 Corinthians 4: 8-10). This is a great mystery, and one that I don’t fully understand, but as His followers, we somehow get to participate in the great life of Jesus Himself through our sufferings. He uses us in our limitations and it’s a beautiful and glorious thing to see His love and power at work in ways we couldn’t have imagined. 

Leaves and walking shoes: glorious. 

Nature: good for what ails. 

Beauty.