10 Habits to Break (and NOT live by) :: small.

Small.

I often look down when I walk.  I do the same when riding trails on my mountain bike or hiking wooded paths.  This is not good practice and does little to keep me aware of all around and ahead of me.

My concern paints the world small and keeps my eyes gazing down at the day known.  The trouble with living this way lies in much of life peripheral being threatened by my thin awareness.

If I only train myself to see now, tomorrow stays hushed and faded in hopes and dreams that remain foreign in the unseen distance just ahead and around me.

When all we see is 'smalled' to now, our effort, too, slows to the shape of what we see.  So if we are cornered by disappointment and let downs, possibility of things better and life bigger seem to belong to others reaching for more.

The future belongs to those able to see beyond now.  It is then that life isn't mastered by moments but always vibrant, even through swelling waves tossing unfavorable.

Seeing life further requires recognizing life bigger than now.

In a word, faith.

Now here's where faith gets a bit twisted: faith isn't indestructible belief that blooms from a strong heart.  Faith is the humble confession of those broken by life and unresolved by the realization that you cannot possibly do it in your own.  So we bow in the smallness of who we are and trust for more; we never stay in the smallness.

God dwells all around and outside of the small.  He is forever beyond limitations felt in small moments able to lift you to the broad expanse of all ahead and beyond now.

Otherwise, your eyes are trained to look inwardly to your heart and ambition and effort - small becomes your outlook.  That's when life shrinks around the immediacy of now and left to be counted good in easy times and bad in difficulty.

Proverbs 3 gives sound advice that you should paint on the walls of your heart and ring in your confession.  Our response to life high and low should be full trust in God, who adequately authors the story of who you are.  We fully trust in rejecting self reliance and holding to God's bigger in our lives.

After all, the story belongs to the author, not the character.

(*image credit: ikea.com)

10 Habits to Break (and NOT live by) :: fear.

Fear.

Some say fear is necessary.  Some say evil.  Others argue a safety in terms of self preservation.  Others, like me, are too afraid to commit to one particular definition leaving ambiguity as to what fear is and the allowed heart spaces it resides in.

I don't know exactly what fear is other than an emotional response to something I'm unsure of, somewhere my feet feel foreign and unacceptable.

On a mountainside 12,000 feet above sea level, my heart pounding unusual and in disconcerted rhythm, my lungs grasping for more and my head spinning, I honored fear as wisdom.  The sprawl of back country in the Colorado Rockies absent of altitude acclimation quickly reduced my heart lost in romantic adventure. The manly within boasted through gasps, "I'm ... good, let's . . . do ... it!"

Fear subdued manly in shaky hands, rocky bluffs and waning strength.  We stopped in our uncharted, sighted tracks and instead navigated a safe descent.

Fear. Good.

Sitting bedside, alarm clock humming in dawn's still soft lit arrival, the day already felt too big.  It was, too big.

Little eyes searched for me in each waking.  I didn't know how to satisfy their wanting. Death stole what they never imagined was on the table for the taking but life took.  And God was twisted in the details, muddying our belief in his goodness.

Morning intimidated me but not nearly as much as the (maybe) thousands of unarrived ones following in sequence.  How to live sank low beneath fear allowed space in my heart and rule in my mind.

Afraid of my daughters' always maimed emotional state, Afraid of my lack of answers, Afraid of loneliness, Afraid of quiet, Afraid of good again, Afraid of faith I thought I held, Afraid that God was closer to the middle of circumstance than I thought he would be, Afraid of smiles, of conversation, of being found, of death, of incompleteness in life, of being forgotten, of bitterness, of tears still, of acceptance, of honesty, of love.  And in that shell of walls closing tighter each fearful morning, I chose to stay.

Fear. Bad.

Fear paralyzes and reconstructs brave hearts to lonely beggars wincing at light and life abounding.  I see now in a gaze behind me of the landscape flattened by fear - no peaks, no spikes, no change, just a down slope to less than and days sold in my giving.  Fear doesn't heed to permission or resistance.  It just multiples and shuffles the deck with a lying hand.

One passage I noticed in fear's down slope came at my weakest. Honesty.

Honesty offered a new way gently rising up back to life's surface where days were met with a smile, small but true.

Only in welcoming honesty into my smaller heart could fear be loosed.

For me, and probably you, too, I feared something that wasn't even real.

I feared not being able to control or stabilize my falling.  In a bothered scribbled confession, profaning the despondent then, God was seen by my eyes down-gazing.

Fear sets in habitual foundations as we purchase all that it's selling.  The break from fear's hold comes not in mere courage, but in honesty.  You're afraid and that's okay, but don't be afraid of being afraid.  When you do, fear habituates in your heart buying up all the real estate it can.

I saw it in the mountain back country of the Rockies and in the melting mundane of days sinking.

In the Disappearance of Today.

Hope.

I often wonder of tomorrow, when I am older and time runs beyond me, when my bone and muscle move much slower than my heart leads, when I have more space in each day for thoughts to circle.  Thoughts of how life will be for them and what life’s pressures feel like then.

I remind myself: they were created for that day ahead.

And it waits for them.

“Dad, do you think I can be . . .”  You fill in the blank because my little girls ask about them all.  My strong reply always echoes the same.  “Yes, you sure can.”

They will meander close behind me and stray in the distance as my daughters grow, get  older and begin to stand surer in life.  There will be many instances where I have little control.  I feel their strings pull a bit more as their day gets closer.  The truth is I have very little control over their course in life.  God has allowed my opportunity to reflect His glory and nature into their lives, but it is He alone who owns the days ahead.

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10 Habits to Break :: procrastination

There is a rhythm to all that we do, and don’t do.

What we allow and avoid, what we do and don’t and how we invest in the day and waste apparent opportunities serves to give insight to who we are, what we believe true and even our trust in all that is bigger, in God.

Despite common knee-jerk response, procrastination isn’t a total package negative thing.  Quite simply, procrastination is to intentionally delay in doing something.  Not completing an assignment could be the result of not knowing how to complete the assignment.  The inactivity cannot be a fully bad thing if the alternative is to complete the assignment incorrectly.  This space, or pause, on the way to finishing the assignment can be the precise place of learning and maturity. Often, in difficulty, learning escapes us.

As we sat there angled across from each other at the dining table, she just stared at the problem, deadlocked in can’t and frustrated with my question.

“What do you think?” I asked.

Silence hung between us as if she didn’t hear my question so after an extended pause, I asked her again, and again.  Finally, she forced out a frustrated response making it clear that if she did know, she wouldn’t just be staring at the problem but would solve it.

Elizabeth, my oldest, is a lot like me, in that she fears not being able to measure up to who and what she should be in her mind.  I struggle with it as a writer, as a father, as a son and everything else that I set out to accomplish.  If I can’t win, I quit.  It’s the reason I quit writing my book hundreds of times before I thankfully finished.  Just as Lizzie was deadlocked in her inability to solve a new mathematical word problem, I disengage in times I don’t have the answer, can’t see the process to completion or don’t know how to handle myself.

Procrastination, in and of itself, is not the enemy, but a needful pause to impulse or incomplete thought calling for space to process.  And yet if inactivity is the only effort given, procrastination grows into habitual response.

More so, the cause for procrastinate behavior allowed and extended must be dealt with.  I have to overcome fear of failure, disappointment or inability, in times of procrastination to avoid habit setting in deep ruts and rhythms in my life.

Back at the table, in the paralyzing silence between us, I asked a new question, one that nudged her thoughts into action.  I didn’t give her the answer to her problem directly, but tried to lead her to fearlessly trying even though she was insecure in her ability to answer correctly.  The point wasn’t whether or not she answered correctly, but that she moved from inactivity to activity as to avoid procrastination only setting in as a defining habit in difficulty.

Simply, she solved the problem she thought unsolvable by continuing.  It’s amazing the things we could do if we only did not procrastinate them away.  Snoozing the alarm clock every morning could be just snoozing the alarm clock, or it could be a habit chosen, given space to grow and affect your action and aim in life.  Just as waiting until the eleventh hour to finish a project you committed to, avoiding responsibility while given to any and all available distractions, rescheduling meetings, pausing in pursuit of a dream bigger than yourself and shelving all hope that you can accomplish what you set out to.

Procrastination delays many abled men from doing what they ought to do - but it is always the man who determines himself not abled that habit of delay becomes a growing regular foe.

In breaking unwanted, unhelpful habits, it is not enough to just stop doing something.  That habit must be replaced with a better understanding.

In each moment I begin to fade from difficulty and withdraw to inactivity, I pray for the grace God has built into each day.  Whether I lack the creativity to transpose thoughts to paper accurately or parent my daughters through difficult waters, grace gives me the courage to pause properly knowing that God will be faithful to lead me through.

image credit: philnel.com

10 Habits to Break (and NOT Live By)

We are creatures of habit calling for change yet comfortable in our worn rhythms.  Months quick fade to years and our feet settle, unable to step out of the smallest rut.

Some jump to categorize habits as bad behaviors needed to be broken, but this is only half true.  Habits are not enemies - how we hold to them are.  People live in good habits for a lifetime and live life well.  Living a healthy life requires healthy habits.  These healthy habits act as an infrastructure insuring goals and guiding to actual accomplishment.

The discipline of an artist diligent at early light leads to productivity and development while the artist who sleeps only dreams of what he might do. Contrarily, bad habits often lead us away from where we want to be and deeper into a crippled life.  For as many reasons as I can think of and prop against, the only reason for bad habits tolerated in my life . . . is me.  I hold on to habits that work against my desired course and aimed for outcomes.  I slow myself down, follow paths to dead ends, dream more than do and sleep later than I should.

Maybe you’re like me in that you flirt with the life you’d like more often than put your feet on to its path and push one foot forward.  I tend to move forward in spurts.  I get distracted and lazy and allow bad habits to occupy space that sucks time like a vacuum.

I’ve compiled a list of hold-me-down habits that need breaking, over and over again.

procrastination    fear   worry    small     idleness      distraction       seriousness        familiar independence, safety

I could probably continue to list habits that need discontinuing, but these are recurring behaviors and mindsets that I need to dislodge myself from.  I’ll spend time writing about each of these a bit more in depth in weeks ahead.

Surely you have a list, too.

Find a quiet corner with pen and paper and take time to envision the life that you want to live but because of allowed bad habits, are not living it.  List every habit holding you back, slowing you down and limiting your reach.  But don’t stop there.

Make a replacement plan.  Every bad habit must be replaced with something to reprogram your activity and focus.

And here’s a big reminder: your effort will always be small and limited.

Pray for God’s strong grace in each and every one of your days.

Setting habits is more than mere behavior modification.  It is not a case of behavior but of what you belong to.  Each day belong to the gifts that God has created in you and the day that He created you for.

Do This and Start Living Well.

At a glance over my shoulder, I spy many opportunities un-taken, aspirations abandoned, ideas given up on and life unfinished, in the fading distance behind.

Life left waiting.

Cards on the table face down in front of an empty swiveling chair.  Chalk the unfinished business up to a risk too demanding or a challenge deemed too daunting.  Either way it adds up to life incomplete, damaged and maimed by our choosing to not do rather than to do.  I feel as though every one of them outlines a small death of me on sidewalks behind.

For me, it was no different with the book I almost didn’t write.  I threatened abandon nearly every day.  Some evenings crawled by.  Minutes hung suspended in time as I procrastinated and counted excuses worthy of attention and affection.  I hated my pen and loathed the empty sound of would be keystrokes.

After all, writers should write . . . right?

And what if a writer doesn’t write?  Is he really a writer?  Or did he one day dream too high, much higher than his reach?

Even after writing a book, words don’t necessarily come easy for me, and that is precisely the point.  We find ourselves, not in what we produce but in the process - along the way to finishing what we started, even it was a late night, our hearts swelled with possibility and we swore we’d do it.  

Life is about finishing and in finishing, we learn to live well; much better than we ever could by taking the easier route around the mountain.  Up the mountain or through the mountain, but not around the mountain.

The one thing you can do to change the course and forecast of your life ahead is to finish.

Right here in this very moment don’t just nod your head and sink a bit in guilty agreement.  Finish.

Deny yourself escape and abandon and write the chapter, have the conversation, draw the plans, take out the trash, clear the garage, send the resume, schedule the class, buy the ring, book the trip.

Here’s all you need to become a consistent finisher: talent just don’t quit.

the one thing you'd better thieve from your child's heart tonight :: A DEEPER FAMILY post

The night lingered on and all subsided back to normal.  Excitement cooled to end of night, which meant bedtime.  And then another day. Before the next day’s arrival, I laid restless tangled in bad.

:::::::

From the very moment each of my daughters entered this life, they have owned pieces of my heart.

When tears well in their eyes widened or victory swells in their hearts soaring, I am with them attentive to the emotion present.  I love seeing them succeed.  More so, their faces lighting up bright and bold send my heart into the sky.  A smile slides across their face evidencing a flash of brilliant accomplishment in their growing little hearts, and I know they feel good.

Conversely, my heart sinks with theirs when they come up short, get it wrong or make mistakes.  In my head, I know these moments may end up being the best teacher to them, but still, it’s typically harder for me to watch them realize they’re on the wrong end.  Failure on any level is tough whether you’ve failed or the situation has failed you.  As they sink into themselves and darkened emotion they fade momentarily, and I know they feel bad.

These are two states of being both leading parallel off course. 

As a parent, my top priority is to love them as complete as I can.  For me, loving them in this way means to rid their little hearts of both misguiding thoughts and lock them on course to a healthy tomorrow.

Good and bad, defined in our effort and action that lingers, staining, as tomorrow killers and God haters.

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