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Do It Scared


So I have this ambition to write a book about transition. I’m good at ambition – I’m ambitious about a lot of things. But most of those things are within my grasp, private, typical. Or if they aren’t, no one knows about them anyway, so they don’t know that I failed.

In this, success or failure is not something I can call. It’s something others will call. Let me tell you: that terrifies me.

So I find excuses not to write. The house is dirty. I’m tired. I don’t have enough time to really get into it right now. I need to do this project for work instead. I should write a blog post (ahem).

Why? I’m afraid that when I sit down, nothing will come. Or I’ll look at it and say, “What on earth am I even trying to say here? This doesn’t make sense!” Or I won’t have enough material. Or maybe, after all my hard work, it will still fail.

I think I keep hoping that it will magically write itself. I’m discovering that my voice recorder on my phone is my best writing friend – this book might just be written in 30 second sound bites that hit me on the 417 or in the last waking moments of the day. Still, somehow those thoughts need to get organized and put down on actual paper, and that is what I have on my plan this morning.

Which brings me back to scared. But I’ve decided that my motto right now is “do it scared.” Stop waiting to feel confident or motivated or full of ideas or like you aren’t terrified to make this dream a reality. Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s doing it despite the fear.

What are you doing scared today?

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The Words that Linger

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People often ask me if I am fluent in Mandarin. The short answer is “no.” To me, fluency means “I can say everything in that language” by which definition all those people who say they are fluent in Spanish after their 4 years of high school classes are mistaken.

I cannot say many things in Mandarin, like ceiling or fertilizer or thumb tack. Never needed to. But I would call myself “functionally fluent” which means I could talk about that wall above me, or the stuff to put on the ground to make the plants grow, or a small thing to make my paper hang on the wall. I am a master at talking around the word I don’t know, like a linguist game of $10,000 Pyramid.

Despite my lack of fluency, there are certain words that I adopted during our time overseas which I may never lose, as they have become part of my vocabulary. I thought I’d take the time to share them today, just for fun. And they are:

加油：(pronounced ‘jah yo’) This literally means ‘add oil.’ It’s the Chinese way of cheering people on. Like ‘you’re competing in the Olympics? 加油!’ or ‘Your husband is gone for how long? Bummer. ‘加油!’ (you can guess which of those applies to me).

不好意思: (boo how ee suh) We were taught this means ’embarrassed’ but it’s more than that. It’s the catch all word for ‘this situation is awkward for me, and probably for you too.’ There were lots of ‘bu hao yi si’ moments overseas. I seem to have them here too.

麻烦: (mah fahn) Ah, ‘mafan.’ Maybe my favorite word. It means ‘inconvenient’ or ‘troublesome’ but saying those long words is too mafan, so we say this.

那个谁: (ney guh shay) This is the colloquial way to say, ‘What’s his face.’

厉害: (lee high) Ah, ‘lihai.’ There’s just no English equivalent. It means ‘intense’ or ‘serious’ or ‘powerful’ but in a good, striving for excellence kind of way. Like, ‘he studies 6 hours a night? Wah, he’s so lihai!” said with admiration.

就是这样: (jiew sure jay yahng) ‘That’s just the way it is.’ Like when you finish cutting your husband’s hair and know that’s the best you’re going to do, you say, ‘jiu shi zhe yang.’

快点儿: (kw-eye dee ar) As parents, we often employ the phrase ‘hurry up.’ I prefer to use the Chinese version, “kuai dianr!” (with my best northern accent, adding r to the end). My kids always respond, “I’m kuai dianr-ing!!” They’re just as annoyed with it in Chinese as in English, maybe more so.

These are some of the ones that linger. They tend to come out in conversation here, even with those who don’t understand, but now that you know them you can join in with me!

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Why I Need a Dog

Sometimes I imagine a conversation between the Father and Jesus that went like this:

Father: I think we should give Gina a dog.
Jesus: I don’t think she would like that. I think she would find it disruptive.
Father: Exactly.
Jesus: Oh, this is going to be fun.

Oh yes, she’s been disruptive. She’s required countless hours of training, walking, feeding. She has woken me at 4 am many times to throw up whatever it was she indiscriminately ate on the street the day before. Always 4 am.

We have shelled out crazy dollars to fly her around the world and attempt to diagnose various mysterious illnesses she seems to have. We have lived out the cliche of “everyone in the family wants a dog, but mom ends up taking care of her.”

And at the end of the day, I need it.

I need a dog to remind me that I am not as important as I think I am, and neither are the tasks from which she takes me.

I need a dog to slow me down, make me take walks around the neighborhood, go outside early in the morning and breathe.

I need a dog to show me how to love people well – to always greet them at the door like they’re the best thing that’s happened today, to stay close to them wherever they go, to depend on them for what you need.

I need a dog who burps in my face, and sticks her tongue out at me, and runs around like a Tasmanian devil, to make me laugh when I least expect it.

Disruptive? Yes. Fun? Absolutely. Just what I need? Yep.

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Zoom In

My favorite piece of camera equipment is my Canon 18-200mm lens, because I love to zoom in. The closer the better. I want to cut out extraneous things and just focus on my subject.

I’m finding this to be true in my on-going quest to abide as well. The more I focus on God, the more He fills my lens, other things are just pushed out. They become less important to me. I care less about my goals unless they are what God is calling me to do. I care less about being seen or known because I am focused on the one who sees and knows me most. I find myself comparing to others less because I simply don’t see them in my view anymore. It’s all Him.

Our pastor touched on this during the sermon this morning when he said, “When Jesus is bigger, when He is our focus, He is enough.” Amen.

It’s true. This week, through a variety of ways, I’ve spent more time thinking about God (preparing a talk for the middle schoolers, listening to podcasts during my drive times, reading 2 Corinthians which is hands down my favorite book of the Bible) and I feel like God’s been bigger to me. I’ve zoomed in. Oh to always have this view.

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No Substitute for Relationships

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Truth be told, I’ve started dreaming of the day when we say to one another, “Remember when social media was so popular? Yeah, that was nutty. Thank God it’s over.”

Realistically, I suppose it never will be, but lately I’ve found myself so aware of the downside of these interactions. They are communication rich but relationally poor. Yes, I know what is happening in the lives of people I would otherwise probably never contact (and many of them I would like to contact) and that’s maybe the reason I don’t quit altogether.

But it’s also become the equivalent of an increasingly crowded party where people fight for air time, value is measured in likes and retweets, a marketplace for comparison and shaming. Comments that seem witty on Twitter if said aloud in company to a person’s face would be unacceptably rude. It’s an environment where there is little accountability for the impact of our social interactions. People talk about being in “community” online, but it falls so short of what true community looks like.

Sometimes social media feels like a train rushing off somewhere to interesting places, and we’d better hop on or we’ll lose out. But the reality is that there is nothing new under the sun – that train is just circling the block over and over again, only in greater volume and with stronger opinions than before. What would happen if we shut down the noise? What if tomorrow Facebook and Twitter and Reddit and Tumblr and Instagram ceased to exist? Would we lose anything? Or would we gain?

I wonder if it would give us space to connect with people again, really. It might force us to call those people we wouldn’t see on Facebook. It would blow away the chaff of unnecessary information and opinions that are thrown out there. It might force people to be accountable for their words again.

I’m not saying social media cannot be used for good. I just want to remind all of us not to let it be a substitute for true connection. Like someone who snacks all day and never takes in a full meal, we can waste all our relational energy on surface connection and never reach true depth with others.

There is no substitute for real relationships. What we need is not one more person to validate our opinions or like our activities. We need people who linger with us for more than 140 words. We need people who will call us on what we say and how we say it. We don’t need the world to tell us our worth. We need real people. We need real interactions. There is no substitute.

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God in me

I remember my then three year old son wrestling with theology when he asked, “Mom, if Jesus lives in my heart and I eat food, will it go near Jesus?”

I’ve had my own theological wrestlings this week about God in me as I try to wrap my mind around the words, “Abide in me and I in you.” It’s one thing for me to try to make God my dwelling place, but then He turns around and says He’s going to choose to dwell in me too.

So that’s my abide pondering for this week – the fact that God abides in me. The God of the universe lives in me. What? When I think about that, so much in me says, “Are you sure You want to do that?

“I mean, I know me. I know that mixed up in all the redemption You’ve done there’s still a fair amount of depravity. I’m a sinner, God. Why would you want to do that?”

But that’s the great and awesome mystery. He’s not a God who redeems from afar. He gets right up in there and transforms from the inside out. He dwells in me while still renovating me into a place more fit for a king.

I’ve been asking Him to help me grasp this more deeply. I like the way Henri Nouwen puts it in his book Return of the Prodigal Son, “I am called to enter into the inner sanctuary of my own being where God has chosen to dwell . . . it is the place where I am held safe in the embrace of an all-loving Father who calls me by name and says, ‘You are my beloved child, on whom my favor rests.'”

It makes abiding even more appealing to know He’s already met me more than halfway. It’s a place where I can rest, trust, be loved. He abides in me. Wow.

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Gentle Whisper

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Last week I was on the internet going a little crazy following rabbit trails on some new writing websites I found. They were giving me ideas about how to improve my writing and expand my audience, and after awhile I realized that I had gone beyond, “Hmm . . . helpful input” to, “How do I get to be as amazing as these people?” and that, my friends, is when all wise people should close the computer and walk away.

So I did. I went up into my room, sat in my corner chair, and just took a deep breath. I sat there until my heart was rested again and I could get God’s perspective on the balance between wisely making the most of the opportunities He gives me, and trusting that what I have and who I am is where He wants me to be right now.

It reminded me of Elijah, who sought God on a mountain. He waited and listened for God.

First a powerful wind came. Then, an earthquake, and finally a fire passed by.

God wasn’t in those. God was in the gentle whisper.

We have to step away from the noise from time to time to simply be in His presence, and listen to His voice telling us what’s true.

He comes most often in silence.

I wrote a poem about this, back in my angst-filled, poetry writing days (I miss the poetry writing, but not the angst). Here it is, enjoy:

My Bit of Heaven

Not in the powerful wind,
nor the earthquake, nor the fire,
He came in the gentle whisper.

I Kings 19:11-13

My soul longs for solitude,
like a desert thirsts for water
And somewhere out there,
the solitude is calling me.

In search of it I find
Black cutout trees against an orange sky.
Snow lays unbroken, pure, white
as the peace it pours over me.

A single leaf is hurried
Scattering across the white in
reckless ignorance to the stillness it is in,
Too much like me.

I breathe in the silence
and realize I’m home.
His gift to me is a bit of heaven
filling my heart, loved poured in by the Spirit.

I only find it in the gentle whisper.

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Weekly Word – I Need Your Eyes

One of those words of wisdom I adopted as a young mom was the practice of making sure my kids were looking me in the eyes when I needed them to hear something important. I have so many memories of me saying, “I need your eyes . . . I need your eyes” while my children’s faces were inclined toward me, but their eyes were still straining to look elsewhere.

God has been telling me, “I need your eyes.” Not me sort of looking at Him while I’m holding out for something better out there somewhere, my half-attention while I peek at what’s around the corner. He wants all of my attention. He wants to be my only audience. Seek first His kingdom. In all your ways submit to Him. Fix your eyes on Jesus.

God made me a writer, and I love that. But it means I am in a constant battle to keep looking to Him rather than to the audience of the world. Facebook likes and twitter retweets and blog comments feed a desire to be known and admired. The problem is, they will never satisfy. He will.

So this is what abiding looks like this week: Giving Him my eyes. Letting the voices of the world slowly be drowned out by His voice calling me.

This is my first in hopefully a weekly reflection on my word of the year, Abide. Something like my 31 Days of Victory except hopefully much easier. At least the writing about it.

What about you? How are you living out your one word?

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Choosing to Abide

So I’ve been trying to figure out how exactly I’m going to do Abide this year. What does it look like to dwell in God? How do I do that practically speaking? I keep imagining myself trying to abide, which feels about the same as when you try to think about something and then you can’t think of anything at all. You know that feeling?

What I do know is that what I want is to learn to settle in to a more solid place in my soul. I feel like I’ve lived there before, and much of it came from an intentional intake of truth, truth that told me who I am and who He is and where I stand with Him. Henri Nouwen talks about it in his book Inner Voice of Love,

“You have to trust the place that is solid, the place where you can say yes to God’s love even when you do not feel it. Right now you feel nothing except emptiness and the lack of strength to choose. But keep saying, ‘God loves me, and God’s love is enough.’ You have to choose the place over and over again, and return to it after every failure.”

I feel like the last year I’ve been focused outwardly, and not in a good way. Not in an other-centered way, but in a survival mode-is there life out there-kind of way. This quote reminds me that the solid place is inside, where He dwells, and I have to choose to go to that place again and again, not only after every failure but even after every success.

So here’s to choosing to abide in the solid place. What are you going to do to start focusing on your word of the year?

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One Word 2014

Abide. It means to remain, to continue, to stay; to dwell, to reside. It’s a good word for me as I continue to try to sink roots into this new life in America. But it’s not America I need to abide in; it’s God.

This became clear to me about 9 months into the year. I am by nature a person who wants to feel valuable. I guess we all do, at our core. But the problem for me is that I can slip into thinking that my value comes from what I offer to the world. Being in a new place, people often don’t know what it is you can offer. That’s where I was for most of this year, feeling a bit invisible, like a kid on a playground waiting to be chosen for the team.

I know in my head that my value lies solely in my position as God’s child. My worth is established. But it’s easy for me to feed off the admiration and recognition of others, and to believe that it ups my status in the world. I had to keep reminding myself that a lack of acknowledgement from others changed nothing. I had to keep going back to what He says about me; I am valuable to Him and that is enough.

Then later in the year, things started to change. I had opportunities to do what I enjoy most – speaking, writing, connecting deeply with other women. So many days I would say to God, “Who am I, that I get to do this?” It fed my desire to feel valuable. But at the end of the day, I know it isn’t where I should put my hope, my sense of well-being. It is fleeting.

Hence, abide. Whether I am seen or unseen, known or unknown, I need to keep going back to Him to tell me who I am so that I stay grounded. I want to live from a solid place, not a changing one. To do that I have to abide in Him, my refuge.

What about you? Leave a comment and tell me what your word of the year is for 2014!

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